"If Carter beat Reagan in 1980, would New Orleans have flooded?"

A trivia question: did a post with that title appear on the Huffington Post blog, or at the parody site Huffington's Toast?

The answer shouldn't surprise you one bit.

The vultures start circling

If it's not left-wingers saying Bush caused Hurricane Katrina by not ratifying Kyoto, it's "Christian" extremists saying the people of the "wicked" city of New Orleans brought it on themselves. Absolutely vile.

Update: right on cue, here come the race hustlers. (via Hit & Run)

Never mind

Cindy Sheehan has changed her mind on that "I have to meet with the President to get answers" thing.

Did the levees have to break?

They're staples of every bad disaster movie: the heroic engineer/scientist/professor warns everyone of impending catastrophe if his recommendations aren't followed, and the politician who blows him off. If this disturbing story in Editor & Publisher is true, that may have happened in New Orleans:

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

To be fair, the story notes that work was being done this summer on the levee near the 17th Street Canal, where most of the damage occured. And even if the Corps had gotten all the money it wanted, I'm not sure that would have been enough to prevent a disaster of this magnitude. (I have a feeling engineers will be debating this for years to come.) But it does merit further debate and discussion.

(via The Corner)

Update: a dissenting opinion here.

An island of sanity in an ocean of madness

Mr. Gutfield, should you ever find yourself in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, the beer's on me.

Update: I use the word "madness" literally.

How Canadians can help

The Canadian Red Cross and the Christian charity Samaritan's Purse are accepting online donations for Hurricane Katrina relief. As I find more Canadian charities helping the relief effort, I'll update this post.

Update: the UJA of Greater Toronto has set up a Hurricane Katrina relief fund.

Update II: The Mennonite Disaster Service is accepting donations for Katrina victims. There's no specific provision for Hurricane Katrina on the Salvation Army's donation page, but you can specify where you want your contribution to go.

Update III: also the Anglican Church-affiliated Primate's World Relief and Development Fund.

Update IV: World Vision.

What hurricane?

Still nothing from Jack Layton or Paul Martin regarding Hurricane Katrina. Of the major national party leaders, only Stephen Harper has issued a statement expressing his condolences (of course, since he has to curry favor with his American neoconservative corporate Zionist masters!!!)

Update: the federal government has issued a formal statement and offered assistance. (via Angry in T.O.)

"That oughta satisfy the little SOBs"

Bob Tarantino, the Canadian blogosphere's go-to guy for criticism of the Supreme Court appointments process, has the latest on the Martin government's latest pointless gesture toward "reform".

If Tarantino has been called to the Bar for ten years, I'll make a submission promoting him for the Supreme Court.

Who thought that was a good idea?

It's not surprising that Kos can't express his sorrow about Hurricane Katrina without taking a slam at George W. Bush, nor is it surprising that he doesn't say what else the President could do about it. (Bush will visit the region on Friday, but if he'd done so earlier, you can be sure the Kossacks would have savaged him for "capitalizing on a tragedy" and "diverting much-needed resources away from rescue efforts". It's just the way of these people.)

That said, I can only conclude that Karl Rove must have been napping when Bush decided playing the guitar yesterday was appropriate. Robert Stanfield found out the hard way that a bad photo-op can do staggering political damage, and surely some of Bush's advisors must have known this would be fodder for left-wing websites and newspapers ("Bush fiddles while New Orleans drowns!") for weeks to come. Bad move, George.

In related news: if gas prices haven't yet gone up in your area, I suggest you top off your tank right now.

Update: Andrew Breitbart, in the comments section for this post at the Huffington NoSignOfGwynnethPaltrowYet, says the "guitar" photo was taken before the levees broke in New Orleans, when most people (including myself) thought New Orleans had been spared the worst damage. (Not surprisingly, Breitbart is completely ignored by subsequent commenters. Couldn't someone at least have responded, "your a brainwashed Nazi!" or something?)

Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe's descent into madness and megalomania has fallen off the radar in recent months, but that doesn't mean things have been getting any better:

Zimbabwe's parliament voted Tuesday to give President Robert Mugabe new constitutional powers to seize farmland and to restrict travel by government opponents in a country whose government is already regarded as among the most repressive in Africa.
[...]
The practical effect of the changes was hard to predict in a country where the government has already endorsed violent land invasions, demolished hundreds of thousands of homes, shuttered independent newspapers and threatened would-be protesters with arrest and attack.

"We are the immediate targets," said Paul Themba Nyathi, spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, speaking by phone from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city. "They are going to take away our passports. I'm sure of that."

No great loss

The Bears have given up on Chad Hutchinson. Not that I have high hopes for the quarterbacking tandem of Kyle Orton, Jeff Blake and Kurt Kittner (who?), mind you. Isn't Jeff George available again? What about Tim Couch? Ye Gods, it's painful to watch.

In other football news, the Saints will be playing out of San Antonio for the time being.

Stampede

A scene of almost unimaginable horror in Iraq: over 630 Shia pilgrims were killed in a stampede after terror rumours panicked the crowd.

More than 630 people were killed in a stampede and attacks in Baghdad on Tuesday as thousands of Shi'ite Muslim faithful gathered near a sacred shrine, officials said.

The US military said helicopters had fired on suspected rebels who carried out the mortar attack on the shrine and had sent ground units to the area to assist in tracking down those responsible. A dozen individuals were detained for questioning.

This would be a disaster under any circumstances. In an country rocked by tension between Shi'ites and Sunnis, it's absolutely catastrophic.

Update: CNN says the death toll is now 841, mostly women and children. My God.

Sunken city

Michelle Malkin's blog, which has been full of updates on Hurricane Katrina, has an astonishing aerial photo showing much of New Orleans underwater. It looks like something out of a movie. This evening, the news chanels also showed video taken from a news helicopter, showing the horrifying devastation in Biloxi, Mississippi.

News reports are suggesting that hundreds may have died. InstaPundit has a list of relief agencies accepting donations. The Canadian Red Cross says its American counterpart has not yet asked for donations from Canadians, but the agency is still seeking help for other hurricanes which struck the Caribbean earlier this year.

Update: all the bodies haven't even been recovered yet, but Robert Kennedy, Jr., in the Huffington Self-Parody, is already calling Katrina karmic payback for the Bush Administration's refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol. But the the New York Times - really! - strikes a more sober note:

...the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.

In 1995, hurricane patterns reverted to the active mode of the 1950's and 60's. From 1995 to 2003, 32 major hurricanes, with sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater, stormed across the Atlantic. It was chance, Dr. Gray said, that only three of them struck the United States at full strength.
[...]
Global warming may eventually intensify hurricanes somewhat, though different climate models disagree.

But even that seemingly large jump is not what has been pushing the hurricanes of the last two years, Dr. Emanuel said, adding, "What we see in the Atlantic is mostly the natural swing."

(via Warwick)

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

CBS News is starting a blog:

After a controversial run-in with bloggers last year that helped sink "60 Minutes Wednesday," CBS has hired a "nonbudsman" to write a blog that will go behind the scenes at the news division.

Ververs will be a kind of media reporter, mostly focused on CBS News, reporting and writing about how the news is gathered, produced and placed. In addition to providing Journalism 101, "Public Eye" also could offer extended versions of segments that appeared on CBS, interviews with correspondents and producers and maybe even the daily story meeting for the "CBS Evening News."

Phelps of Arabia

Some startling details in the Wikipedia entry for Fred Phelps:

In 1997, before the fall of Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War, Phelps wrote Hussein a letter praising his regime for being, in his opinion, "the only Muslim state that allows the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to be freely and openly preached on the streets". Furthermore he stated that he, if U.S. Government and laws permitted and at the invitation of the Iraqi government, would like to send a delegation to Baghdad to "preach the Gospel" for one week. Hussein granted permission, and a group of WBC congregants traveled to Iraq to protest against the U.S. The parishioners stood on the streets of Baghdad and in heavily patronized Baghdad establishments holding signs reading:

[vulgar slogans deleted]

Phelps mourned the fall of Hussein's regime and has consistently criticized the invasion of Iraq, citing, "IRAQ=USA=SODOM" and keeping a toll on his webpage celebrating the death of every American soldier killed and pronouncing loyalty to Iraq.

Phelps has also repeatedly championed Fidel Castro for Castro's stance against homosexuality; in 1998 Harper's magazine published a letter Phelps sent to Castro in which he praised Castro and lambasted the US. In 2004, when a pro-homosexual Cuban refugee announced plans to travel to Cuba, Phelps sent another letter to Castro "warning" him of the man's plans and requesting travel visas for a group of WBC congregants so that they could follow the refugee around Havana with signs bearing anti-US and anti-homosexual slogans.

One thing I've always wondered about Phelps is how this disbarred lawyer, who "ministers" only to members of his family and a few hangers-on, can afford to travel all over America (and occasionally Canada) holding vulgar protest demonstrations. And I presume getting to Baghdad in 1997 wasn't cheap, either. Who's funding this guy? (Probably worth a read: the complete text of a book about Phelps, available online.)

No Jews allowed

Jordan's authors and poets can't even bear to be in the same room as someone who might be Jew...er, Israeli. (Compared with our progressive, tolerant artistic communities in the West, the Jordanians' attitude toward Israel and the Jews is...well, pretty much the same, actually.)

Jordan's writers union said Sunday that it was boycotting a weeklong international poetry festival over claims an American citizen allegedly holding an Israeli passport was allowed to participate, a charge vehemently denied by organizers.

When asked what information he had proving the American poet identified as Shawki Bani Ami held an Israeli passport, al-Mashayekh said he had none, adding only that "his name is Israeli." (via Roger L. Simon, who suggests that PEN should look into this)

Sadly, this kind of thing is all too common in the Arab world. Earlier this month, an Israeli official was unceremoniously booted off Al-Arabiya television after the Lebanese "expert in international law" with whom he appeared protested at having to share screen time with one of them. (via Harry's Place)

Update: meanwhile, some Palestinian activists in Toronto have filed a formal complaint against a regional police chief for studying anti-terrorism and law-enforcement strategies in Israel. The increasingly essential Angry in the Great White North has some background on the complainants - two of whom have served on the federal Immigration and Refugee Board.

Death in Mississippi

Hurricane Katrina didn't cause as much damage in New Orleans as expected, but dozens of people were killed in Mississippi - many of them in the same apartment complex:

Hurricane Katrina's strike on Mississippi killed at least 54 people Monday, 50 of them in one county, state officials said, and caused what Gov. Haley Barbour called "catastrophic damage" along the coast.

According to Kelly Jakubic with the Harrison County Emergency Operations Center, an estimated 50 people have perished as a result of the storm, with 30 confirmed deaths at the the St. Charles apartment complex, near the beach in Biloxi.

Now the question becomes, why weren't that state's coastal areas evacuated like New Orleans was? And if they were, why did so many people in the same building stick around?

Until the revolution comes, we'll use lawsuits

Che Guevara presumably didn't think much of the concept of intellectual property rights, but that's not stopping his family from suing to prevent unauthorized use of his image:

But as well as being one of the world's most reproduced, the image has become one of its most merchandised. And Guevara's family is launching an effort to stop it. They plan to file lawsuits abroad against companies that they believe are exploiting the image and say lawyers in a number of countries have offered assistance.

"We can't attack everyone with lances like Don Quixote, but we can try to maintain the ethics" of Guevara's legacy [no comment - Ed.] said March, who will lead the effort from the Che Guevara Studies Center which is opening in Havana later this year.
[...]
Korda's daughter Diana Diaz has continued to fight political misuse of the picture.

Reporters Without Borders had superimposed Che's face on a picture of a baton-wielding riot policeman. The caption said: "Welcome to Cuba, the world's largest jail for journalists."

(via Let it Bleed)

Goalless no more

Boy, did we need this to come true:

Newcastle United pulled off a sensational transfer coup when they finally managed to persuade Michael Owen, the England forward, to keep his World Cup dreams alive on Tyneside.

Owen will undergo a medical on Tyneside this afternoon before sealing his switch to St James' Park in a move which represents a coup for Newcastle on a par with their capture of skipper Alan Shearer back in July 1996.

Teach your children well

They start their moonbats young in San Francisco.

Next: NBC wins exclusive broadcast rights to Hurricane Katrina

This is just...surreal:

CTV News, Global News, City TV and CPAC have filed a joint complaint with the Department of National Defence for giving exclusive coverage to CBC of the state funeral of Sergeant Ernest (Smokey) Smith, the last recipient of the Victoria Cross who died earlier this month.

In the letter, obtained by The Hill Times, the four broadcasters also said they were "censored and denied access to a news event of important national interest," and demand to be reimbursed for the costs CBC charged for access to the coverage of the state funeral which took place in Vancouver.
[...]
When they found out that CBC was the sole host broadcaster before the funeral, the three stations got together and proposed that two of eight camera positions in the church be assigned to private broadcasters and in turn they would provide a common pool at no charge, but DND rejected the offer, Mr. Hurst said.

Mr. Hurst said CTV paid the CBC $2,500 for news access and decided not to carry a live feed, which would've cost the network $6,500. Mr. Wyatt said Global also paid the $2,500 fee and decided not to carry a live feed. "[The situation] was forcing us into a position where we were held hostage by two tax-supported organizations, one the Department of National Defence and the CBC. We paid the ransom," he said.

The soundtrack of my life

The newest meme: go here to find the Top 100 songs from the year you graduated from high school, list 'em on your site, highlight the ones you like and cross out the ones you hate. You underline your favorite, and ignore the ones to which you're kind of indifferent.

God, what a mediocre musical year 1991 was. I still maintain that Nirvana is one of the most overrated bands of all time, but in reviewing this list, I can kind of understand why we needed Nevermind to come out that fall...

1. (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Bryan Adams (I bet Bryan Adams was thinking, "this crap sells like hotcakes every wedding season" when he wrote this one)
2. I Wanna Sex You Up, Color Me Badd
3. Gonna Make You Sweat, C+C Music Factory ("Dad, why did you take me to a gay steel mill?")
4. Rush Rush, Paula Abdul (lost to the mists of time: the Rebel Without a Cause-inspired video with Keanu Reeves in the James Dean role, dude)
5. One More Try, Timmy T
6. Unbelievable, EMF
7. More Than Words, Extreme (great example of how a hit song can destroy a band's career - Extreme normally had a much harder sound than "More Than Words", but few rock fans took them seriously after it hit #1)
8. I Like The Way (The Kissing Game), Hi-Five
9. The First Time, Surface
10. Baby, Baby, Amy Grant (I never thought I'd say this, but I wish she'd never abandoned "Contemporary Christian" music)
11. Motownphilly, Boyz II Men
12. Because I Love You (The Postman Song), Stevie B
13. Someday, Mariah Carey
14. High Enough, Damn Yankees
15. From A Distance, Bette Midler (from a distance, this song is still a piece of shit)
16. All The Man That I Need, Whitney Houston
17. Right Here, Right Now, Jesus Jones
18. I Adore Mi Amor, Color Me Badd
19. Love Will Never Do (Without You), Janet Jackson
20. Good Vibrations, Marky Mark and The Funky Bunch Featuring Loleatta Holloway (shut up)
21. Justify My Love, Madonna
22. Emotions, Mariah Carey ("EEEEEEEEEEEE!")
23. Joyride, Roxette
24. Romantic, Karyn White
25. I Don't Wanna Cry, Mariah Carey
26. Hold You Tight, Tara Kemp
27. You're In Love, Wilson Phillips
28. Every Heartbeat, Amy Grant
29. Sensitivity, Ralph Tresvant
30. Touch Me (All Night Long), Cathy Dennis
31. I've Been Thinking About You, Londonbeat
32. Do Anything, Natural Selection
33. Losing My Religion, R.E.M. (sorry, but I never liked R.E.M.)
34. Coming Out Of The Dark. Gloria Estefan (don't want to sound cruel, but she really milked her bus accident for all it was worth, didn't she?)
35. Here We Go. C+C Music Factory
36. It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over, Lenny Kravitz
37. Where Does My Heart Beat Now, Celine Dion (amazingly, there was a time when Celine Dion was listenable, if not great)
38. Summertime, D.J. Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
39. Wind Of Change, Scorpions (I liked it in 1991, but maybe I was just so happy about the fall of communism that I didn't realize how lousy the song was)
40. P.A.S.S.I.O.N., Rhythm Syndicate (somewhere in Hollywood, there's a guy in a seedy bar, telling everyone who'll listen that he was in a group called "Riddim Shyndicate" that had a top 10 hit in 1991. And everyone else is thinking, "yeah right, rummy")
41. The Promise Of A New Day, Paula Abdul (years before Corey Clark came along, Abdul was involved in another "scandal" because of the video, in which she was artificially slimmed down)
42. I'm Your Baby Tonight, Whitney Houston
43. Love Of A Lifetime, Firehouse (I still like "Don't Treat Me Bad", though)
44. Fading Like A Flower (Every Time You Leave), Roxette
45. This House, Tracie Spencer
46. Hole Hearted, Extreme
47. Power Of Love-Love Power, Luther Vandross
48. Impulsive, Wilson Phillips
49. Love Is A Wonderful Thing, Michael Bolton (a perfectly good name, until that no-talent assclown came along)
50. Rhythm Of My Heart, Rod Stewart
51. Things That Make You Go Hmmmm..., C+C Music Factory
52. I Touch Myself, Divinyls
53. Tom's Diner, DMA
54. Iesha, Another Bad Creation
55. Something To Talk About, Bonnie Raitt
56. After The Rain, Nelson
57. Play That Funky Music, Vanilla Ice (some songs should just never be remade. Ever)
58. Temptation, Corina
59. Can't Stop This Thing We Started, Bryan Adams
60. I Can't Wait Another Minute, Hi-Five
61. 3 A.M. Eternal, The KLF
62. Time, Love and Tenderness, Michael Bolton
63. Saideness Part I, Enigrna (the Gregorian-chant fad had died out by Labour Day, thank God)
64. Around The Way Girl, LL Cool J
65. I'll Be There, Escape Club
66. Cream, Prince and The N.P.G.
67. Now That We Found Love, Heavy D. and The Boyz
68. Show Me The Way, Styx (the original was bad enough, but the Gulf War remix - anyone else remember that? - was in a class of awfulness all its own)
69. Love Takes Time, Mariah Carey
70. Cry For Help, Rick Astley (I said, shut up)
71. The Way You Do The Things You Do, UB40
72. Here I Am (Come and Take Me), UB40 (see "Play That Funky Music", above)
73. Signs, Tesla (commie crap - but the rest of the album, Five Man Acoustical Jam, was great)
74. Too Many Walls, Cathy Dennis
75. Crazy, Seal
76. I'll Give All My Love To You, Keith Sweat
77. Place In This World, Michael W. Smith
78. Something To Believe In, Poison
79. Wicked Game, Chris Issak
80. Get Here, Oleta Adams
81. Round and Round, Tevin Campbell
82. Silent Lucidity, Queensryche (14 years later, I still have no friggin' idea what Queensryche were talking about)
83. I'm Not In Love, Will To Power (see "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" above)
84. Piece Of My Heart, Tara Kemp
85. Real Real Real, Jesus Jones (holds up way better than "Right Here, Right Now". These guys deserved better.)
87. Just Another Dream, Cathy Dennis
88. Everybody Plays The Fool, Aaron Neville
88. Strike It Up, Black Box (I said, shut up!)
89. Rico Suave, Gerardo
90. Disappear, INXS
91. Groove Is In The Heart, Deee-Lite
92. All This Time, Sting
93. The One and Only, Chesney Hawkes
94. O.P.P., Naughty By Nature
95. Freedom 90, George Michael ("I'm rich and famous! Waaaah!")
96. I Saw Red, Warrent
97. Miles Away, Winger (not one of their best efforts, but I still love Winger, dammit)
98. Do You Want Me, Salt-N-Pepa
99. The Motown Song, Rod Stewart
100. Shiny Happy People, R.E.M.

Update: I gotta admit, 1986 was even worse. Good Lord.

This meme seems to be having an anti-nostalgic effect on people, at least if they graduated after 1972. (Say what you like about the sixties, the music was a hell of a lot better than what came after.)

Finish your coffee, son, it's good for you

To all these people who said all the coffee I drink is bad for me: who's laughing now?

When the Ink Spots sang "I love the java jive and it loves me" in 1940, they could not have known how right they were.

Of course, too much coffee can make people jittery and even raise cholesterol levels, so food experts stress moderation.

Moderation? BAH!

Category 4

Hurricane Katrina has been downgraded from Category 5, so the damage to New Orleans might be a little less than anticipated. Keep your fingers crossed...

Hurricane Katrina edged slightly to the east early Monday as it bore down on the Gulf Coast, providing some hope that the worst of the storm's 150 mph winds might not directly strike this low-lying city.

Mayor Ray Nagin said he believed 80 percent of the city's 480,000 residents had heeded an unprecedented mandatory evacuation as Katrina threatened to become the most powerful storm ever to slam the city.

Update: WDSU, the NBC affiliate in New Orleans, is running a hurricane blog. They're reporting damage to the Superdome roof, but thankfully it appears to be relatively minor.

Update II: yes, I've already come across at least one "progressive" Canadian blogger (no, not that one) saying the eeeeeevil Yanks deserved this because of Iraq or the softwood lumber decision or something. I could get angry about it, but it's probably better for my health to simply accept that some people were just born assholes, and there's really not a darn thing I can do about it.

Deal pushed through

The draft of Iraq's new constitution has been completed, but despite desperate attempts to bring the Sunnis onside, their leaders aren't going to endorse it.

I had hoped a deal satisfactory to all Iraqis could be reached, but it's hard to have much sympathy for the Sunnis when you remember how they treated the Shia and Kurds when they were running things - and when you read stories like this:

In Tikrit, at least 2,000 protesters assembled near the office of the Association of Muslims Scholars - a hardline Sunni clerical group opposed to the U.S. occupation - carrying Iraqi flags and portraits of the former dictator.

Sheik Yahya Ibrahim Al-Batawi, an organizer of the protest, read a statement denouncing the ``Jewish constitution,'' saying its goal was to divide Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines.

Escape from New Orleans

The entire city is being evacuated as Hurricane Katrina approaches. Good luck and Godspeed to any readers and bloggers in the area, and I really hope New Orleans, a city that ranks very high on my must-visit list, comes out relatively unscathed.

Newfoundlanders' favorite sport is bitching about the weather, but it's at times like this that I realize, once again, how lucky we are. (Given the choice between fog and hurricanes, I'll take fog every time.)

Update: this is one of the creepiest weather bulletins you'll ever read.

Update II: InstaPundit, not surprisingly, has a massive roundup of Katrina-related links. LGF links to lefty bloggers who, even less surprisingly, are blaming the hurricane damage (which, um, hasn't happened yet) on President Bush.

Every time a Daily Kos reader gets his tongue stuck to a frosty flagpole, I bet he thinks Karl Rove had something to do with it.

No goal

Four games into the new EPL season, and Newcastle has yet to score a goal. Not one. Not even against newly-promoted West Ham United, who held them to a scoreless draw (and their only point so far this year).

Between this and the Bears' continuing quarterback woes, I have a feeling this is going to a long, miserable winter.

Smearing her way to the top

A tip for aspiring American radio journalists: write the most grotesque, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel lies in your college paper, and you may get hired by NPR. That's what happened to Mariam Sobh, anyway.

"Tom Paine", in his latest Shire Network News podcast, calls Sobh's "anti-Zionist" smears a classic example of projection. He has a point: the degree of similarity between her (fake) Ariel Sharon quotes and the (real) quotes from the Arab media translated by MEMRI is absolutely astonishing.

Beyond disgusting

The "Reverend" Fred Phelps and his family continue to travel all over America picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq - God's punishment, allegedly, for defending a country that tolerates gays and lesbians. There really are no words to adequately describe it, are there?

I always thought Phelps was a disgrace to Christianity - but this religion-blogger says Phelps has actually established a completely different religion, and that his few followers usually refer to themselves as "Tachmonites". (via Relapsed Catholic)

Bloggers in the news

Kate McMillan and Colby Cosh are quoted in this Saskatoon StarPhoenix story on blogging. (Are you really getting 600 e-mails a day, Kate?)

The Liberals' real opponent

Susan Delacourt, in the Toronto Star, suggests that the Liberals will run a solidly anti-American campaign in the next federal election, ignoring Stephen Harper except to paint him as a tool of the Yanks. (Yeah, I'm shocked too. Maybe they'll keep an eye on Gerhard Schroeder's campaign for ideas.)

There are many possible reasons that the official Opposition has suddenly become an afterthought in the minds of Liberals. But perhaps it's because the governing party is seeing a bigger foe on the radar screen these days: the United States.

Even the very domestic concern of the CBC labour dispute, which has thrown 5,500 journalists and technicians off the job, provoked a jab or two at the Americans. Heritage Minister Liza Frulla and Ottawa MP Marlene Catterall were talking about the need to protect the public broadcaster's future as a way to ensure that this country didn't end up with the broadcasting culture we see in the U.S.
[...]
The "left" streak shows up, cynics say, around election time, when Liberals pull out the old tactic of running from the left and governing from the right. Thanks to the precarious state of this minority government and Martin's vow to hold an election in the coming year, the Liberals are in a perpetual state of election readiness. Hence, it could be argued that, for political reasons, the anti-American streak is being allowed to peek out a little more from government than it normally would.

Oh, and that guy the Liberals seem to have forgotten? A Conservative politician who goes by the name of Harper? Watch for Martin and his Liberals to suddenly remember his name in this political context, as a politician who'd be far too cosy with the U.S. and its values — all those things that have Martin's Liberals suddenly talking as if public enemy number one at the moment is the United States.

Unfortunately, unless Stephen Harper takes time from the BBQ circuit to do something about this, it's probably going to work. Coming out strongly against the Bush Administration's indefensible decision on softwood lumber - a slap in the face to every Canadian who believes in free trade, including most Conservatives - would be a good start.

Sailor White, R,I.P.

Newoundland's best-known professional wrestler has passed away at age 56.

White was a former WWF (now WWE) tag-team champion, but left the organization after a major falling out with Vince McMahon - just before wrestling became huge in the early 1980s. Returning to St. John's, White set up a local pro-wrestling circuit and even made a few stabs at provincial and federal politics, once running for the Green Party and, on another occasion, for the infamous "Canadian Extreme Wrestling Party". But years of hard living and physical punishment took a staggering toll, and White had been quite ill for the past few years.

White was a family friend of my buddy Neal, but I never got the chance to meet him. Too bad, because I'll bet the man had some incredible stories to tell.

Simply Unsuitable

While I was away earlier this month, a video came to light showing Michaelle Jean and her husband cavorting with former - and unrepentant - FLQ terrorists. (I haven't been able to find a working link to the video online, but Calgary Grit summarizes its most damning aspects.) Being a former Quebec separatist shouldn't, all by itself, disqualify you from being Governor-General. But when Jean won't say how she voted in the 1995 sovereignty referendum, and when her "loyalty" statement contains little more than weasel words about never belonging to "a political party or the separatist movement", well, what are we supposed to conclude?

Kate McMillan reprints an e-mail, sent to Winnipeg radio host Charles Adler, from someone who experienced FLQ violence firsthand:

I visited the site and watched the film clip. To say that I'm offended is to understate the case. The people she is cavorting, laughing and toasting with are some of the same people who tried to kill me.

Paul Martin has insulted all of Canada including the people of Quebec.

Michaelle Jean is not getting a mere patronage appointment, a Senate seat or even a cabinet position. She's being appointed the Queen's representative in Canada. Surely to God, Paul Martin could have found a less polarizing figure than this?

Blog News

Melanie Phillips is back after a month-long hiatus.

Pejmanesque has been abandoned - but don't fret, because Pejman has launched a new group blog, A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days.

Same old Jane

33 years after her propaganda trip to Vietnam, Jane Fonda will once again share a platform with a Marxist, totalitarian enemy of America. (And once again, we see the standard media whitewash of Galloway, who was allegedly expelled from the Labour Party "making remarks opposing the Iraq invasion in 2003." Plenty of Labour MPs came out strongly against the war, but Galloway openly called for the defeat of British soldiers.)

In the event that any Galloway fans are reading this blog, I'll say it again: you cannot say you "support the troops" and also support a man who openly roots for the people trying to kill them, nor can you call yourself a "peace activist" and also support a man who calls for the violent destruction of Israel. You just can't.

No deal

The latest deadline for Iraq's new constitution has passed, with the Speaker of Parliament desperately trying to keep the Shi'ites and Kurds from pushing it through over the objections of the Sunnis:

The credibility of Iraq's political process was in danger last night as parliament again failed to vote on a draft constitution which a Sunni politician said was "fit only for the bin".

The impression of growing crisis in Iraq was reinforced when a new front erupted in the violent rebellion, with Shia Muslims fighting each other with guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

While Western observers are primarily concerned with the role of Islam in the draft constitution, the key sticking points for Iraqis seem to be whether Iraq will become a federal state (which, given its sectarian divisions, would seem logical) and what happens to the country's oil revenues.

I'm trying to remain optimistic about this grand experiment, but it's looking more and more like Iraqis are going to squander this remarkable opportunity to create an Arab democracy. (Unfortunately, much of the blame must be laid at the feet of the Bush Administration, for failing to commit enough troops to combat the devastating extremist violence.) The most depressing aspect of all this is that many people will conclude that an ethnically divided society like Iraq can only be held together by a violent, totalitarian dictator like Saddam. And if that's the case, perhaps Iraq shouldn't be a country in its present form at all. (At the very least, the Kurds, who have enjoyed semi-autonomy since 1991, deserve their own state.)

If Iraq descends into total civil war, and if the Americans and British are forced into a humiliating withdrawl, I suppose the gloating among anti-war pundits and bloggers will be loud and proud. So be it. But while I can understand why leftists would be thrilled to see their ideological opponents proven wrong, I cannot even begin to understand why they would be happy to see Iraq descend into chaos and theocracy, unless their goal is to see Bush and the right humiliated at all costs. Of course, for many of them, that is their only goal.

Update: good point from Gerard Baker in The Times:

...weren’t we better off with a dictatorship, that, for all its faults, at least walled in the chaos? The answer is still “no”.

The reason is that the apparent stability that Saddam provided for us was a false stability. You can’t treat a people as he did for 30 years and not create the conditions for explosive violence with long-term implications for your own people and way beyond your own borders. Indeed what we are seeing now is not what would have happened in the absence of Saddam, but the consequences of what Saddam did to his own people for all that time. You cannot build an international order by embracing tyranny for half the world — we tried that in Iran and Saudi Arabia and Indonesia for decades. We didn’t get stability; we got violence, much of it directed at us.

Oil ain't over

The price of a barrel of oil hit $68 today, and analysts say it will almost certainly go beyond $70. But The Prize author Daniel Yergin says we're not even close to running out of the black stuff yet, and that the next decade should actually see a serious boom in oil production. (Presumably, that means the price should come down, too.)

Prices around $60 a barrel, driven by high demand growth, are fueling the fear of imminent shortage — that the world is going to begin running out of oil in five or 10 years. This shortage, it is argued, will be amplified by the substantial and growing demand from two giants: China and India.

Where will this growth come from? It is pretty evenly divided between non-OPEC and OPEC. The largest non-OPEC growth is projected for Canada, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Angola and Russia. In the OPEC countries, significant growth is expected to occur in Saudi Arabia [uh oh - Ed.], Nigeria, Algeria and Libya, among others. Our estimate for growth in Iraq is quite modest — only 1 million barrels a day — reflecting the high degree of uncertainty there. In the forecast, the United States remains almost level, with development in the deep-water areas of the Gulf of Mexico compensating for declines elsewhere.

While questions can be raised about specific countries, this forecast is not speculative. It is based on what is already unfolding. The oil industry is governed by a “law of long lead times.” Much of the new capacity that will become available between now and 2010 is under development. Many of the projects that embody this new capacity were approved in the 2001-03 period, based on price expectations much lower than current prices.
[...]
The growing supply of energy should not lead us to underestimate the longer-term challenge of providing energy for a growing world economy. At this point, even with greater efficiency, it looks as though the world could be using 50 percent more oil 25 years from now. That is a very big challenge. But at least for the next several years, the growing production capacity will take the air out of the fear of imminent shortage. And that in turn will provide us the breathing space to address the investment needs and the full panoply of technologies and approaches — from development to conservation — that will be required to fuel a growing world economy, ensure energy security and meet the needs of what is becoming the global middle class.

On a related note, a memo to Andrew Sullivan: high gas prices will get people out of their massive SUVs. Self-righteous "shaming" will not.

You're making it very hard for me to support legalizing it, Marc

This is more effective than any anti-drug ad I've ever seen.

Sure they support the troops

CNSNews.com is an unabashedly conservative, Republican news site owned by Brent Bozell's Media Research Center, so this story should probably be taken with a grain of salt. That's the only thing keeping me from flying into a vicious rage at the sheer gall of these people:

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the current home of hundreds of wounded veterans from the war in Iraq, has been the target of weekly anti-war demonstrations since March. The protesters hold signs that read "Maimed for Lies" and "Enlist here and die for Halliburton."

The anti-war demonstrators, who obtain their protest permits from the Washington, D.C., police department, position themselves directly in front of the main entrance to the Army Medical Center, which is located in northwest D.C., about five miles from the White House.
[...]
Kevin Pannell, who was recently treated at Walter Reed and had both legs amputated after an ambush grenade attack near Baghdad in 2004, considers the presence of the anti-war protesters in front of the hospital "distasteful."

"You know that 95 percent of the guys in the hospital bed lost guys whenever they got hurt and survivors' guilt is the worst thing you can deal with," Pannell said, adding that other veterans recovering from wounds at Walter Reed share his resentment for the anti-war protesters.

Mind-boggling.

Who cares about the Kurds?

The Iranian government has come down hard on its Kurdish population, and Michael Petrou, in Maclean's, notes that the world could hardly care less:

Iran, like most dictatorships, assigns a government "minder" to shadow foreign correspondents in the country and to control whom the journalist talks to. Most correspondents don't like to mention this in their dispatches. It ruins their allure as rugged and independent truth-seekers.

Journalists who rub a dictatorial government the wrong way may find their visas revoked and their employer's bureau shut down. In the end, it's easiest just to do what you're told. And if you're told not to cover the deadly violence in Kurdistan, well, maybe there's a press conference about Iran's nuclear energy program you can report on instead.

I wonder if reporters for the CBC, which made a big show out of refusing to let its journalists be "embedded" with American troops in Iraq, have ever had any qualms about this practice? Have they ever even acknowledged it?

The bigger problem is an uglier one. Some causes, and some people, are fashionable to Western journalists and to the public at large, and some are not. Imagine for a moment that 20 unarmed Palestinians had been killed by Israeli soldiers in the last month, with hundreds more injured and scores arrested. Is it even conceivable that this would not be front-page news? Already, photographers working in the Middle East have to work hard to avoid getting other photographers in their photos of stone-throwing Palestinian children. The only photos of the unrest in Iran come from local residents.

And what of the so-called "peace" protesters? Unarmed civilians are being shot down by government troops in helicopters. Where are Bianca Jagger and the rest of the celebrity activists? Where are the marching throngs with their "Free Iran!" and "Free Kurdistan!" banners? Are Kurdish lives somehow less valuable than Palestinian and Iraqi ones? Almost all Kurds are also Muslims. Where is the outrage? Or are the deaths of innocent Muslims only enraging when they are killed by Americans or Israelis?

If America, an American ally, or Jews aren't involved, it isn't really a scandal, then, is it?

(via Let it Bleed)

You know you're obsessed with The Simpsons when...

I was in court this morning when the judge mentioned a lawyer named "Molloy", and the clerk said she wasn't sure who he was. I immediately thought, "he's the cat burglar!"

(Which would explain the world's largest cubic zirconia in his office...)

For the first time ever, a heavy metal concert became a scene of violence

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this firsthand account of the Ozzfest show in Los Angeles, in which Iron Maiden's set was sabotaged in retaliation for their comments about Ozzy using a teleprompter in concert, but it's still pretty darned entertaining.

(via Colby Cosh)

Aren't the "Minutemen" supposed to keep people like this out?

The best argument yet for sealing the American border.

World domination scheme continues

Google has released Talk, its instant-messenger program.

(By the way, if anyone wants a gmail account, let me know. I've got plenty of invites.)

Yeah, the attacks were bad and all, but what about my problems?

Look, a lot of innocent Muslims have had it rough these past few years, so I can't blame them for trying to combat stereotypes about their faith and terrorism. But might I suggest that this is not going to help matters?

Islamic youth organisations that were not part of Prime Minister John Howard's summit yesterday say they have been working against extremism behind the scenes.

They have chosen a date for a planned day of action - September 11.

Who do they think they are? The CBC?

"Yee-haw"

If you're not listening to the IMAO Podcast every week, you'd better be dead or in jail. And if you're in jail, break out.

More good podcast news: "Tom Paine" has revived "Blog News", hands down the best part of the Silent Running podcast.

When you're in a hole, stop digging

Pat Robertson now says he didn't mean the Americans should kill Hugo Chavez, just that they should "take him out":

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson on Wednesday said that his comments regarding Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were "misinterpreted."

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we are trying to assassinate him, we should go ahead and do it," Robertson said Monday. "It's a whole lot easier than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

Pat Robertson is a nut. On that, we're pretty much all in agreement. (Though if President Bush consulted him regarding Supreme Court appointments, as Andrew Sullivan says, that makes this silly scandal somewhat legitimate.) But in the greater scheme of things, I'm more worried about Chavez hanging around with Castro and funding Marxist guerillas than what a legendary moonbat said on his TV show.

Two very different countries

You can always count on the Aussies to tell it like it is:

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law should get out of Australia, a senior government minister has said, hinting that some radical clerics might be asked to leave.

"If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said.

I cannot imagine even a Conservative Canadian politician making such a bold statement - though I can imagine the storm of outrage, unseen since Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's visit to Quebec City, which would result if one did. It never ceases to amaze me how Canada and Australia - two British Dominions relatively similar in size, population and wealth, which gained their independence around the same time, and both with large, diverse immigrant and minority populations - have developed such starkly different political cultures. What happened?

Aside from our having fewer weird animals with crazy names, the biggest differences between Canada and Australia are Canada's large French population, and our country's closeness to the United States. In many ways, French-Canadians see the world very differently from their English countrymen (never mind our differences over the Iraq war, look up the 1942 conscription referendum results), and history shows that you simply cannot form a majority government in this country without electing a significant number of MPs from that province. And Canadians have reacted to the colossus next door by defining themselves almost exclusively in opposition to the uncouth, warmongering Yanks.

The biggest difference between Canada and Australia is that, Down Under, politicians are less afraid to offend people when necessary. Good for them.

Iowahawk on a roll

Two instant classics: "The Michael Moore Fat Farm Diaries" and "Ingmar Bergman's Dukes of Hazzard". Read 'em now.

Dr, Robert Moog, R.I.P.

The inventor of the synthesizers which bore his name has passed away. In tribute, I'm playing "Popcorn" by Hot Butter.

Good question

James Taranto: "If [Jessica Lynch] appreciates privacy, why does she have a publicity agent?"

Busted!

Bob Tarantino absolutely tears the guts out of a Toronto Star column on Toronto's recent wave of gun violence.

Which reminds me: just before the CBC went on strike, I heard gun-control advocate Wendy Cukier interviewed about this problem on The World This Weekend. She was asked whether the billion-dollar firearms registry was worth it, and passionately replied that it was. After all, gun violence had fallen sharply in Canada - since new gun-control legislation was introduced in 1991.

Even the registry's strongest supporters can hardly be bothered to defend it anymore.

What would a "war on Islam" look like?

Eric the Unread has some suggestions. (Don't forget to click on his final link.)

I'll chip in five bucks toward the plane ticket

Poor widdle Karla Homolka wants to leave the country.

I hear Zimbabwe is nice this time of year.

The first draft

The New York Times has posted a partial draft of the new Iraqi constitution. (If anyone has a link to a complete draft, let me know.) The controversial clause 1 states that no law may contradict "Islamic standards" - but neither may it contradict "democratic standards" or "the essential rights and freedoms mentioned in this constitution", including freedom of the press and freedom to organize politically. Ultimately, if this constitution is adopted, it could all come down to what kind is Islam is followed by the jurists who will interpret this document. (And don't think the Saudis and Iranians will resist the temptation to meddle.)

There's a healthy debate over the new constitution in The Corner. One important point noted by John Derbyshire: the text of the constitution won't matter one bit if Iraq's future government doesn't hold itself to the provisions and limits therein. Stalin's Soviet constitution guaranteed freedom of expression and freedom of religion, too.

Update: Michael Totten is much less optimistic.

Our Saudi problem

The Good Lord must have a sadistic sense of humour, because He put the world's largest oil reserves under Saudi Arabia, giving the Wahabbi cultists billions of dollars to propagate their intolerant, xenophobic, sexist and hateful version of the Islamic faith:

Contrary to widespread Western beliefs about the trajectory of the Middle East as a hesitant but inevitable climb to liberal democracy, the region is actually going the other way – fast. Academics call this "Islamicisation", the spread of radical Shi'a and Wahhabi beliefs and practices throughout the region. Because of this trend, the Middle East one sees nowadays is nothing like it was, say, fifty years ago. Around the 1950s, about the time oil was being discovered in the Gulf, many Muslim nations were relatively liberal by today's standards. Alcohol flowed freely, women went uncovered and there was lively public debate about "Ataturk's way", the separation of Islam and state, modernisation, and dialogue with the West. The Middle East seemed to be going in the right direction.

Oil meant that the Saudis now had the means to change the world to more resemble them. The mountain would come to Mohammed. Their mission, their warped religion told them, was to change the world to be like them, except that they had Mecca and would thus be the most important women-beating goat-herders in the world. Many educated Arabs secretly bemoan the fact that Mecca is situated in a place of such ignorance and extremism. Why not Oman? ask some. Neighbouring Oman, has a much more gentle brand of indigenous Islam known as Ibadhism, which preaches tolerance as a key Muslim virtue. Why not Oman, indeed.
[...]
As far as segregation in Bahrain is concerned. It may come. It may not. It will not however be the last instance of an attack on liberal urban Islam by a desert sect that was peripheral in the golden age of Arab culture or, indeed, filmmaking. Perhaps the best symbol of all that has been lost is the coquettish, slightly tipsy Arab woman so beloved of old Arab comedies. Then she was laughed at. Now she would be stoned to death.

Michael Graham had it wrong: what we're dealing with today is not so much a Muslim problem as a Wahabbi/Saudi problem. And rather than sit back and hope they'll reform, we have to do something about it - including doing what we can to end our reliance on their oil, and combatting their apologists' assertions that their strict regional customs, such as forcing women to cover their heads, are "Islamic".

(via Galley Slaves)

Update: remember the outcry when a Republican congressman held out the possibility of nuking Mecca in response to future terror attacks? Turns out the Saudis are doing a pretty good job of destroying Mecca themselves:

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.

Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.

Meanwhile, it's not just the Wahabbis pushing their hardline version of Islam on the rest of their fellow Muslims. According to Amir Taheri, the supposedly-required hijab wasn't even invented until 1970, by an Iranian Shi'ite cleric, and never really took off among Muslims until after the Islamic revolution in 1979. (Ironically, it was inspired by the headgear worn by Lebanese Catholic nuns.)

Dissent stifled

Michael Graham, a talk-radio host in Washington, DC, has been fired for his comments about the Muslim faith. (Among others, he called Islam a "terror organization".)

Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect remained on the air for months after he made his controversial 9/11 comments, and he subsequently popped up on HBO. The Dixie Chicks went on a massive, sold-out concert tour after they slammed President Bush in London. But I doubt those whose hearts bleed for these brave free speech martyrs will say a word about what happened to Graham, except to say he had it coming. ("Freedom of speech doesn't mean you should be allowed to launch bigoted attacks on peoples' cherished beliefs, after all. Now let me get back to reading The Da Vinci Code.")

Good luck, Chuck

Conservative MP Chuck Strahl has been diagnosed with lung cancer. You can send him good wishes here.

A very bad sign

According to Reuters, the first draft of the Iraqi constitution states that the country's laws must conform with the Islamic faith:

A draft constitution for Iraq to be presented to parliament on Monday will make Islam "a main source" for legislation and ban laws that contradict religious teachings, members of the parliamentary drafting panel said.

Critics have accused Shi'ite Islamists who dominate the interim government and parliament of planning to impose clerical rule in the style of neighbouring Shi'ite Iran. They deny it.

I'll have to see a more detailed report - not to mention the draft text - before commenting further, but this isn't looking good.

Update: the BBC says the constitutional negotiators have asked for three more days to finish their work.

Let her meet the President

Laurence Simon hits one out of the park.

(via Small Dead Animals)

Mick's walker fell on her

CBS: "Fan Hurt As Stones Kick Off Tour".

Grumble, but don't panic

The price for a litre of regular gasoline in Corner Brook skyrocketed to 115.6 cents today. Still enjoying your Chevy TrailBlazers and Dodge Durangos, guys?

This is a bloody nuisance, to say the least, but Steven "Freakonomics" Levitt says we shouldn't panic about oil running out anytime soon - or even remaining this expensive:

What most of these doomsday scenarios have gotten wrong is the fundamental idea of economics: people respond to incentives. If the price of a good goes up, people demand less of it, the companies that make it figure out how to make more of it, and everyone tries to figure out how to produce substitutes for it. Add to that the march of technological innovation (like the green revolution, birth control, etc.). The end result: markets figure out how to deal with problems of supply and demand.

Which is exactly the situation with oil right now. I don't know much about world oil reserves. I'm not even necessarily arguing with their facts about how much the output from existing oil fields is going to decline, or that world demand for oil is increasing. But these changes in supply and demand are slow and gradual -- a few percent each year. Markets have a way with dealing with situations like this: prices rise a little bit. That is not a catastrophe, it is a message that some things that used to be worth doing at low oil prices are no longer worth doing. Some people will switch from SUVs to hybrids, for instance. Maybe we'll be willing to build some nuclear power plants, or it will become worth it to put solar panels on more houses.
[...]
If oil prices rise, consumers of oil will be (a little) worse off. But, we are talking about needing to cut demand by a few percent a year. That doesn't mean putting windmills on cars, it means cutting out a few low value trips. It doesn't mean abandoning North Dakota, it means keeping the thermostat a degree or two cooler in the winter. (via InstaPundit)

The Washington Times reports that the Bush Administration is coming under pressure to increase CAFE standards for cars and trucks, but expensive gas will probably do more than any government policy to drive Americans (and Canadians) into more fuel-efficient vehicles. What amazes me is just how unprepared the "Big Three" American automakers, who've been splurging on profitable trucks and SUVs for the past ten years, have been for a world of expensive gas. In contrast to Toyota and Honda, which have introduced or will soon introduce small sub-compacts and hybrids to the North American market, Ford and Chrysler have nothing smaller than the Focus and Neon. GM has the Chevy Aveo, but I wouldn't count on a rebadged Daewoo to save the company.

Good idea

Walter Kirn, guest-posting for Andrew Sullivan:

The next time a presidential candidate makes his ritual drug confession, I think they should be given a choice: serve out the prison term or pay the fine that applied when they offended or recuse themselves and their administration from enforcing the same laws. Better yet, let them commit to changing the laws that they were fortunate enough not to have been caught breaking. Fair? I think so.

Me too.

Speaking of ten-cent brains...

Trent Lott still doesn't get it, if his autobiography is any indication.

Million dollar talent, ten cent brain

Lawrence Phillips has been arrested again, this time for running over three teenagers with his car. Not a smart move, when there's already an arrest warrant out for you after you tried to choke your girlfriend to death.

Travel advice

Kerry Howley, at the Reason blog:

The poor-but-oh-so-happy sentiment pops up without fail in any crappy travel magazine version of a visit to Myanmar, Laos, or Nepal (and probably any other desperately poor and badly governed country), in which "the people" are always gleeful, generous, and colorful. I'm not exactly sure what it is about being ruled by insane dictators that makes people so damn nice, but here's an idea: If you're a Western travel writer, or, say, German tourist, and you're going to an impoverished country full of hungry people in which you clearly stand out as someone with money to spend, people might be extra nice to you.

I've lost count of how many times I've heard someone just back from Varadero Beach talk about how nice and friendly the Cubans were. I'm sure Cubans are indeed fine people, but please don't tell me - or even imply - that it's because of the enlightened policies of their beloved leader.

An Islamic Iraq?

Disturbing new reports suggest that the Bush Administration, desperate to finalize a deal on a new Iraqi constitution, is willing to cede a greater role to Islamic sharia law:

The United States has eased its opposition to an Islamic Iraqi state to help clinch a deal on a draft constitution before tonight's deadline.

Stalemate over the role of Islam, among other issues, meant last week's deadline was extended for a week. Outstanding disputes could produce another cliffhanger tonight, triggering a further extension.
[...]
Conservative Shias, dominant in the Iraqi government, had clashed with Kurds and other minorities who wanted Islam to be "a" rather than "the" main source of law.

Dozens of women gathered in central Baghdad yesterday to protest against what the organiser, Yanar Mohammad, feared would be a "fascist, nationalist and Islamist" constitution. "We are fighting to avoid becoming second class citizens," she said.

Charles Johnson and Egyptian anti-terror blogger Big Pharaoh suggest Americans call the State Department to express their outrage, and I can't blame them. If Iraq becomes another Iran, the war definitely will not have been worth it. That said, it was perhaps inevitable that the Islamic faith would have some influence over the Constitution in this overwhelmingly Muslim country; the real issue is whether fundamentalist Muslim clerics will be making the laws for secular Iraqis.

Many Western constitutions make reference to Christianity - even here in Canada, the preamble refers to the "supremacy of God" - and it's probably asking too much for Iraqis to leave Islam out altogether. In the end, it is their country, and it was inevitable that a democratic Iraq would make decisions the Americans wouldn't like. But the Bush Administration shouldn't allow itself to be rushed into a deal that would turn Iraq into the kind of theocracy it's been trying to eliminate.

Ouch

No one can stick the knife in like Mark Steyn:

Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.

Never forget

The Soviet Union crushed the "Prague Spring" 37 years ago today.

These idiots probably think the Soviets showed too much restraint.

Update: compared to the World Festival of Young Totalitarian Jackasses, the Catholic youth festival in Cologne has cuter women, better beer - and not a Che T-shirt in sight.

I'm not Catholic, so I can laugh at this without fear for my eternal soul

You know you have a German Pope when...

Fox, meet henhouse

The British government has appointed a Jew-hating Muslim extremist to a commission responsible for, um, taking on Jew-hating Muslim extremists:

A Muslim accused of anti-Semitism is to be appointed to a government role in charge of rooting out extremism in the wake of last month's suicide bombings in London.

Five months before 9/11, Mr Bunglawala also circulated writings of Osama bin Laden, who he regarded as a "freedom fighter", to hundreds of Muslims in Britain.
[...]
Mr Bunglawala's job at the Home Office will be to help to organise a programme to tackle radicalism and extremism among young Muslims.

Although the programme had yet to be completed, Mr Bunglawala said that the BBC had allowed itself to be used by "highly placed supporters of Israel in the British media to make capital out of the July 7 atrocities in London". (via Tim Blair)

Meanwhile, while I was away, Canada's best-known "moderate" Muslim leader was at it again:

Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, has angered a Jewish group with his condemnation of two recent Liberal appointees as "bad news" for Muslims.

"With the Muslim community's vulnerability to negative attention since 9/11 . . . there is understandable nervousness at the news that two of Canada's most active supporters of Israeli domestic and foreign policy will now have key voices in Canadian security and foreign policy decisions," said Dr. Elmasry, a professor of computer engineering at the University of Waterloo.
[...]
Dr. Elmasry was the centre of a controversy last November after he said on television that all citizens of Israel over the age of 18 were acceptable targets for suicide bombers. He has retracted the statement and apologized. (via Kathy Shaidle)

What they'll say

Peter Briffa predicts what British newspaper columnists will write if there's another terror attack in London. Great stuff. ("George Monbiot": It’s worth remembering that, yesterday, in the hour between the two bombs, fifty people were being murdered in Detroit, five species of beaver became endangered, twenty-seven thousand acres of Brazilian rainforest were reduced to timber, 18 oil wells were drilled in Southern Iraq, 20 thousand SUVs will have been sold worldwide, and 48 schoolchildren will have died of passive smoking in Scotland alone. I make these points not to trivialise what happened, but to put it all in perspective.)

I'd love to write something similar about Canadian columnists, but how do you parody, say, Heather Mallick?

(via Blithering Bunny)

The Case Against Intelligent Design

University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne, reviewing the ID textbook Of Pandas and People in The New Republic (free registration required), absolutely demolishes "Intelligent Design" theory. I've been kind of agnostic (no pun intended) on the merits of ID, which is part of the reason I haven't written about it much, but Coyne makes a very, very damning case.

According to Coyne, "theory" - as in, "the theory of evolution is only a theory" - is grossly misunderstood outside the scientific context, and that's why proponents of ID have been so successful:

It is important to realize at the outset that evolution is not "just a theory." It is, again, a theory and a fact. Although non-scientists often equate "theory" with "hunch" or "wild guess," the Oxford English Dictionary defines a scientific theory as "a scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts." In science, a theory is a convincing explanation for a diversity of data from nature. Thus scientists speak of "atomic theory" and "gravitational theory" as explanations for the properties of matter and the mutual attraction of physical bodies. It makes as little sense to doubt the factuality of evolution as to doubt the factuality of gravity.

The physical evidence for Darwin's theories is actually overwhelming, much to the chagrin of ID supporters, who scramble to find more "holes" in them every time new fossil evidence is discovered. Ultimately, like those who believe in alien abductions or that the Jews carried out the 9/11 attacks, "Intelligent Design" advocates always respond with "yes, but..." every time their theories are disproven. And, of course, a scientific hypothesis isn't falsifiable, it isn't scientific at all:

Insofar as intelligent-design theory can be tested scientifically, it has been falsified. Organisms simply do not look as if they had been intelligently designed. Would an intelligent designer create millions of species and then make them go extinct, only to replace them with other species, repeating this process over and over again? Would an intelligent designer produce animals having a mixture of mammalian and reptilian traits, at exactly the time when reptiles are thought to have been evolving into mammals? Why did the designer give tiny, non-functional wings to kiwi birds? Or useless eyes to cave animals? Or a transitory coat of hair to a human fetus? Or an appendix, an injurious organ that just happens to resemble a vestigial version of a digestive pouch in related organisms? Why would the designer give us a pathway for making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its enzymes? Why didn't the intelligent designer stock oceanic islands with reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish, despite the suitability of such islands for these species? And why would he make the flora and fauna on those islands resemble that of the nearest mainland, even when the environments are very different? Why, about a million years ago, would the designer produce creatures that have an apelike cranium perched atop a humanlike skeleton? And why would he then successively replace these creatures with others having an ever-closer resemblance to modern humans?

The final blow to the claim that intelligent design is scientific is its proponents' admission that we cannot understand the designer's goals or methods. Behe owns up to this in Darwin's Black Box: "Features that strike us as odd in a design might have been placed there by the designer for a reason--for artistic reasons, to show off, for some as-yetundetectable practical purpose, or for some unguessable reason--or they might not."
[...]
Well, if we admit that the designer had a number of means and motives, which can be self-contradictory, arbitrary, improvisatory, and "unguessable," then we are left with a theory that cannot be rejected. Every conceivable observation of nature, including those that support evolution, becomes compatible with ID, for the ways of the designer are unfathomable. And a theory that cannot be rejected is not a scientific theory. If IDers want to have a genuinely scientific theory, let them propose a model that can be rigorously tested.

So much for the question of how life evolved. That's not to say we shouldn't think about the question of why. As usual, I'm with Lileks on that one:

I have no doubt about evolution – a recent article in the Wall Street Journal detailed a study of some eggs laid down over many tens of thousands of years. Some low-life creature of little significance. The eggs showed how the creatures had adapted to changes in the predator population – growing spikes, losing them, growing them again. The article also pointed out variances within evolutionary biology camps, how they reacted to the data, and pointed out that it’s hardly a monolithic block staffed with unwavering acolytes. Opinions differ. Except, of course, for the idea that evolution occurs, which would seem to be a prerequisite for being an evolutionary biologist. But not one of the scholars asked the why behind the why, and I wouldn’t expect them too. Not their job.

Yes, yes, bad analogy. Although putting a newspaper in the hands of an illiterate tribesman in the Amazon might give him pause; he would have no idea how this was put together, let alone what it was. I just hesitate to say that we have it all figured out, and everything above and around and below is simply clockwork crafted by the hand of chance.

Free trade for thee, but not for me

Congratulations, Mr. President. Congratulations on giving Canadians who hate your country - and believe me, there are a lot of them up here - ammunition by blatantly flouting the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement:

Derek Burney, Pat Carney, Allan Gotlieb, Simon Reisman and Gordon Ritchie were key members of the negotiating team that forged the 1988 free-trade agreement between Canada and the United States.

The Americans' refusal to respect the tribunal's decision represents “an egregious, shocking, dishonourable breach of their obligations,” says Mr. Ritchie, who was deputy chief negotiator during the original negotiations.
[...]
Mr. Gotlieb, who was Canada's ambassador to the United States during the talks, also believes that the very foundations of the North American free-trade agreement have been undermined.

He notes that the Americans insist they are not in violation, although all of those interviewed found the reasoning of Rob Portman, the U.S. trade representative, ludicrous and incomprehensible.

Aside from imposing our own tariffs on American imports to Canada, and probably setting off a mutually destructive trade war, there really isn't much Canada can do about this. But someday, the Americans will need our help - perhaps on security issues - and Canadians are going to be a lot less inclined to give it. If a relatively hawkish, pro-American blogger like me is this angry, what on earth are Liberal and New Democrat MPs - who, like it or not, actually run the country - thinking?

Chossudovsky's friends

B'nai Brith is criticizing Michel Chossudovky, University of Ottawa professor and Canada's most prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorist, for the rabidly anti-semitic material on his website:

A Jewish group has filed a complaint to the University of Ottawa against one of its professors after the discovery of content on his website that blames Jews for the terrorist attacks on the United States, and claims the numbers who died at Auschwitz are exaggerated.

Another posting suggests the number of Jews who died at Auschwitz during the Second World War is inflated.

None of the Holocaust-denial stuff was written by Chossudovsky himself, and the most vile material appears in the reader discussion forums - not that there isn't a lot of revolting, absolutely insane conspiracy material officially published on the site, which I will not dignify with a link. But I've always said the conspirozoids' methods are remarkably similar to those of Holocaust deniers, so it shouldn't be surprising when 9/11 conspiracy discussions inevitably become anti-Semitic hatefests. (Not all 9/11 conspiracy theorists are Holocaust deniers, but almost all Holocaust deniers are also 9/11 conspiracy theorists.)

For his part, Chossudovsky - whose Global Outlook conspiracy rag is a lot easier to find in Canadian bookstores than, say, National Review - is called "Canada's Chomsky" by many of his students and colleagues. I think they actually mean that as a compliment. (For the record, the "Global Research" site contains at least one article savaging St. Noam and Ward Churchill for not believing 9/11 was an American/Israeli conspiracy.)

It made sense in 1998

CNET's list of the Top Ten dot-com flops proves, once again, that anything involving Whoopi Goldberg is a bad idea.

(via John Gushue)

It's always - and only - Christianity

Charles Moore on The Da Vinci Code, and a Reverend's decision to let the filmmakers use his church for 30 pieces of silver...er, £100,000:

The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 20 million copies across the world. So now it is to be a film. Sir Ian McKellen is acting the character the novel calls "British Royal Historian Sir Leigh Teabing". Sir Leigh, who has "a thick English accent", manages to evade tight security because he always carries an "embossed card identifying him as a Knight of the Realm".

Leonardo Da Vinci comes into the plot because, although he painted Christian subjects to "fund his lavish lifestyle", he knew the truth about Mary Magdalene and left clues to this in his paintings. This code is cracked by Sophie and top Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), who explains how the Church has lied to preserve its power and suppress "the sacred feminine".
[...]
Here is my suggestion for Dan Brown's next best-selling project. How about a story based on the "spectacularly sensational" fiction that the Prophet Mohammed was secretly slain early in his career and his place taken by the evil pagan Abu Jahl, known to Muslims as the "Father of Ignorance"? Tracing this theme through "clues" hidden in the architecture of highly filmable top religious sites such as Mecca, Jerusalem, Najaf, Qom etc, the novel would thus "prove" that Islam was a fraud and that the Muslim world was controlled by a hidden cult known as the Ignoramuses, who had made it their business to keep women in subjection for the past 1,300 years while getting their hands on fabulous oil wealth. Truly, the most explosive airport book ever.

I think not, and I think we all know why.

On principle, I don't believe artists should refrain from writing books or making films just because someone might be offended, so I'll gladly defend Dan Brown's right to publish and promote The Da Vinci Code. (Whether he has the right to say this nonsense is true is another matter.) But even though I'm a nominal Christian at best, few things grind my gears than the spectacle of artists savaging the Christian faith and those who believe in it, and then patting themselves on the back for being so "brave" and "provocative", when they would never do the same kind of thing about any other faith - and there's one faith, with almost as many worldwide followers as Christianity, I'm thinking of in particular. After all, who's had the easier time of it these past few years: Dan Brown or Salman Rushdie? Andres "Piss Christ" Serrano or Theo van Gogh?

Camille Paglia, even less of a Christian than I, gets it exactly right:

The far right wouldn’t have any opinions about art if it weren’t for those big incidents in the late ‘80s to the ‘90s when some stupid work was committing sacrilege...It’s always Catholic iconography, I might point out. I am atheist, by the way. It’s never Jewish. It’s never Muslim. So I am saying this is a scandal. The art world has actually prided itself on getting a rise out of the people on the far right. Thinking, “We’re avant-garde.” The avante-garde is dead. It has been dead since Andy Warhol appropriated Campbell’s Soup labels and Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe into his art. The avante-garde is dead. Thirty years later, 40 years later, people will think they are avante-garde every time some nudnik has a thing about Madonna with elephant dung, “Oh yeah, we are getting a rise out of the Catholic League.” (via Mick Hartley)

It's not "daring" anymore, guys. It's tiresome.

You knew it was coming

The evil BusHitler Neocon Zionist PNAC cabal gave Cindy Sheehan's mom a heart attack!

Damn, these guys are good.

(via Angry in T.O.)

A prediction

Regardless of whether it's actually any good, Rolling Stone will call the Stones' A Bigger Bang "their best album since Some Girls."

You're welcome

Israel is pulling out of Gaza, leaving it to the Palestinians, and here's the thanks they get from the UN:

The United Nations is embroiled in a dispute with American Jewish organizations over the funding of Palestinian banners in Gaza, and US Ambassador John Bolton on Wednesday protested the "unacceptable" payments.

The dispute centers on the UN Development Program's payment for materials produced by the Palestinian Authority for Israel's disengagement from Gaza which include banners saying: "Gaza Today. The West Bank and Jerusalem Tomorrow." (via CAMERA's new Snapshots blog)

The leader of Hamas isn't falling over himself with gratitude, either. Few people are. Charles Krauthammer - who supports the withdrawal, but thinks it should be the last unilateral concession Israel makes - gets it exactly right:

Far from Israel getting any credit for this deeply wrenching action, the demand now is for yet more concessions -- from Israel. The New York Times called the Gaza withdrawal ``only the beginning'' and declared sonorously that Ariel Sharon ``must also be forewarned'' that giving up the West Bank must be next.

How were these concessions met? With a savage terror war that killed 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more.

He's back, too (or is he?)

Andrew Coyne put up his first substantive blog post in months this past Wednesday. Hopefully this signals his long-awaited (by me, anyway) return to regular blogging. (A bad sign: he hasn't posted anything new since then.)

Miss me?

I'm back again, and after I catch up on a week's worth of e-mails and posts at my favorite blogs, regular posting at this site should resume. In retrospect, as my friend and tech-support guru Mike suggested, I should have gotten someone to guest-post for me while I was away. (Anyone interested? Don't raise your arms all at once.)

The drive up the Northern Peninsula was great - or, I should say, it would have been great had the Viking Trail been resurfaced since the Peckford administration. This could be one of the best driving roads in the country, but once you get past Gros Morne National Park the condition of the road is absolutely horrendous. Maybe buying that 4x4 would have been a good idea - except that I'd be stuck paying over $1.06 for a litre of gas these days. (I try to look on the bright side of expensive oil - it could be an economic bonanza for Newfoundland, with large reserves of offshore oil and natural gas, and it might get the automakers to send some of their high-quality European- and Japanese-market small cars over here. Still, paying over $50.00 to fill up a Mazda Protege - which, admittedly, has a huge tank for a small car - is absolutely painful.)

Before I go...

Day by Day cartoonist Chris Muir needs your help.

Okay, now I'm really gone. See you in a couple of weeks.

A brief blogging hiatus

If you've been ticked off with my taking these weekend trips during which I don't update the blog, you're going to love this. I'm going to St. John's for a few days, and then I have a week-long business trip on the Northern Peninsula. In other words, no new posting until Saturday, August 20.

Hey, it's too nice outside for you guys to be spending all your time in front of the computer anyway.

Israel's gift to Hamas

It is not in Israel's best interests to remain the occupier of millions of hostile Palestinians, and that's why I support the pullout from Gaza. (Eventually, a similar pullout from the West Bank will be necessary.) Ending the occupation would also give the Palestinians a chance to show they can create a functioning state free from Israeli occupation, supposedly the cause of all their problems. Unfortunately, Daniel Pipes notes that the Gaza withdrawal is being seen as a humiliating Israeli defeat, not a gesture of goodwill:

Given that about 80% of Palestinian Arabs continue to reject Israel's very existence, signs of Israeli weakness, such as the forthcoming Gaza withdrawal, will instead inspire heightened Palestinian irredentism. Absorbing their new gift without gratitude, Palestinian Arabs will focus on those territories Israelis have not evacuated. (This is what happened after Israeli forces fled Lebanon.) The retreat will inspire not comity but a new rejectionist exhilaration, a greater frenzy of anti-Zionist anger, and a surge in anti-Israel violence.

Palestinian Arab intentions worry even Israeli leftists. An Arab affairs specialist for Ha'aretz, Danny Rubinstein notes that Prime Minister Sharon decided to leave Gaza only after anti-Israel carnage there had escalated. "Even if these attacks were not the reason why Sharon came up with the idea of disengagement, the Palestinians are certain that that is the case, and this has reinforced their belief that Israel only understands the language of terror attacks and violence."

The fundamental problem with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the Palestinians - and their fellow Arabs - simply will not accept the presence of a Jewish state in their midst. The Palestinians should not get their own state until they accept that Israel is here to stay. But can that attitude even change as long as the Israelis are still occupying the West Bank and Gaza? Probably not. How to solve it? I wish I knew.

The newest blog meme

In response to this and this, here are my ten favorite not-really-obvious-or-well-known TV shows of all time. (In the spirit of the thing, I'm leaving out my "Big 4" - The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy and South Park.)

Airline - this show should be used in anger-management classes, to show people how stupid they look when they get angry in public. But what's with all the silly sub-plots they've thrown in this season, following people to eating contests and poker tournaments and stuff? I want more crazy people saying they'll never fly Southwest Airlines again, dammit.

The Amazing Race - Four words: "My ox is broken!"

Arrested Development - Fox is notorious for cancelling classic shows before they have the chance to find an audience, but you can't blame them for the fact that no one is watching this one. I blame you, the viewer.

Drew Carey's Green Screen Show - if this had been on HBO and had been hosted by some "alternative" comedian, it would have been on five Entertainment Weekly covers by now.

King of the Hill - anyone can create a TV show or movie in which red-state suburbanites are portrayed as repressed, psychotic and unhappy (and whose creators then pat themselves on the back for being so "edgy"). Creating a topical animated comedy which actually takes their side is downright subversive.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - I've been looking for years, and I still haven't found a satisfactory reason for why at least some episodes never aired in Canada.

Newhart - in a way, I found the celebrated series finale a bit depressing, because it meant all the characters weren't actually "real". Even though it was a fictional TV show. Don't ask me to explain it.

Pardon the Interruption - Tony and Michael could be arguing about ballet, and I'd still watch.

Sledge Hammer! - I have a bad habit of missing classic shows while they're on the air, but I did watch this one religiously during its two-year run in the mid-eighties. Considering that it aired on Friday night, that's kind of sad, really.

Top Gear - what the Speed Channel should have been. Forget the episodes shown on Discovery Channel or BBC World, which are shown months late and edited for North American consumption, and download fresh episodes from the internet on Monday morning.

Tagged: 10shows

Not okay being gay

The Independent has a story about the strange case of David Akinsanya, an openly gay BBC reporter looking for a way to "reverse" his sexuality - not because of his spiritual beliefs (he says he isn't religious), but because he just wants to have a "normal" life with a wife and family.

I don't think you can "change" your sexual orientation any more than you can change your race, so Mr. Akinsanya is probably in for a long, lonely struggle. (Yes, I've heard about ministries and maverick therapists who believe homosexuality can be "cured", and I've seen nothing to convince me they're pushing anything but quackery and false hope.) But this kind of thing does beg the question: what if someone did come up with a way to medically change a person's sexuality? Progressive wisdom has it that a person has an inalienable right to do whatever he wants with his body - up to and including ending his life - so how can someone who believes that argue that you shouldn't be allowed to change from gay to straight? (Or, for that matter, to change your skin color? Or to get silicone breast implants?)

That's the kind of question probably best left to, say, an episode of South Park.

The Amazing Adventures of Choice-Woman

Dawn Eden has, um, "highlights" from a cartoon featured at a Planned Parenthood website. You don't have to share Eden's anti-abortion beliefs to find it kind of creepy. (And can someone out there tell me what "Pray for thy sins" is supposed to mean?)

Update: I finally got around to watching the entire cartoon this evening, and...wow. There exists not a word in the English language to describe the lameness therein. I really hope some of Dawn's readers make good on their threat to give it the MST3K treatment.

On the take

Paul Volcker's latest report says the head of the UN oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, took thousands of dollars in kickbacks and bribes:

The United Nations’ own inquiry into the Oil-for-Food scandal concluded yesterday that the head of its largest humanitarian programme took nearly $150,000 (£84,000) in kickbacks, most of it in stacks of $100 bills.

But the company was only able to get the contracts — and pay the kickbacks — because Iraq had allocated the oil to Mr Sevan. The report found that Mr Sevan had conspired with AMEP’s owner, Fakhry Abdelnour, a cousin of Dr Boutros Ghali, and an AMEP officer, Fred Nadler, the brother of Dr Boutros Ghali’s wife, Leia.

Sevan has resigned from his position and slithered back to Cyprus. Meanwhile, a United Nations procurement officer, Alexander Yakovlev, has plead guilty to fraud after taking almost a million dollars in bribes from companies doing business with the UN.

And you can be sure all of this is just the beginning.

You know, this would have been useful three months ago

Just in time for their book deals to go through, two of the Michael Jackson jurors now say they think he was guilty after all.

The children of the world thank you, ladies.

Brave Sheikh Omar ran away

Savior Sect founder Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, supporter of jihad and suicide bombing in England, has scampered off to Lebanon like a scared little girl:

Omar Bakri Mohammed, one of several British-based Islamist clerics facing possible terrorist incitement charges, has fled to Lebanon, it was reported last night.

Bakri, 47, had caused considerable concern after urging Muslims not to give information to the police and apparently calling the July 7 London suicide bombers "the fantastic four".

Good riddance. But it's too bad the people of Lebanon, who so boldly stood up against Syrian occupation earlier this year, are forced to put up with him now.

Word

An anonymous commenter at Galley Slaves: "Why must all actresses starve themselves into stick figures? Do they really think that's sexy? There is not one guy I know -- not one -- who is turned on by the sight of a woman's rib cage."

Our loss

Arthur Chrenkoff will retire from blogging in a new weeks because of a new job he's taken. Bummer.

The strange, sad case of Cindy Sheehan

If you read only one blog post about Sheehan, the outspoken "peace" activist whose son was killed in Iraq, make it this one.

I cannot even begin to understand the pain and sorrow that poor woman is going through. But that doesn't mean her inflammatory remarks, and the motives of her new friends on the radical left, should go unchallenged.

Among the death-cultists

Around the time of the 7/7 bombings in London, a Sunday Times reporter went undercover as a member of the "Savior Sect", successor to the supposedly defunct Islamofascist group Al-Muhajiroun. What he found shouldn't be all that surprising four years after 9/11, yet the Islamic extremists' toxic combination of nihilism, narcissism and black hatred still has the power to shock:

Another man, Nasser, in his early twenties with a wispy henna-speckled beard, implored our reporter to “unlearn” the brand of Islam that he had been taught as a child and to adopt a new approach.

With a new member in the audience, he added carefully that he was not actually “inciting anyone to violence in the UK”. But the violence was not far away. The following afternoon the reporter witnessed an Asian man being beaten by members of the Saviour Sect for “insulting” their version of Islam.
[...]
On July 3, Sheikh Omar Brooks of Al-Ghuraaba addressed the group at its Saturday night lecture.

He told the audience that it was a Muslim’s duty to stay apart from the rest of society: “Never mix with them. Never let your children play with their children.”

When a Muslim fundamentalist group publicly condemns "terrorism" or the murder of "innocents", they should be asked what they believe such words really mean:

This is not, of course, something that they would say in public. When Bakri finally commented publicly on the bomb attacks, he condemned the deaths of “innocents”. But this was not quite the remorse it seemed.

In the preamble to the sermon he referred to the bombers as the “fantastic four”. He explained that his lament for the “innocent” applied only to Muslims. It was a linguistic sleight of hand which he summarised as: “Yes I condemn killing any innocent people, but not any kuffar.”

Wedding crashed

I finally saw the sleeper hit of 2005 last night, and while I generally enjoyed it, I have to admit I was expecting better. The idea of two guys sneaking into wedding receptions to pick up women is brilliant and inspired, and that's why I was kind of disappointed Wedding Crashers did so little with it - there's a montage early in the movie showing them getting into different weddings, but most of the film is standard fish-out-of-water stuff taking place at Christopher Walken's palatial home after the wedding. (Walken was criminally underused, by the way.) It's not a bad movie, and it times it was genuinely inspired (the painter was hilarious), but it could have been a lot better.

Mild spoiler after the jump...

Will Ferrell - who's been in three of the four movies I've seen this summer (Kicking and Screaming, Bewitched and Wedding Crashers) - got a big cheer from the audience last night when he made his surprise cameo. The so-called "Frat Pack" - Ferrell, Vince Vaughan, the Wilson brothers, Jack Black and Ben Stiller - has only been around for a few years now, and it'a amazing how many above-average-to-classic comedies they've made in that short time - Old School, Zoolander, Anchorman, Starsky & Hutch and Dodgeball. Even the much-maligned Bewitched came to life when Ferrell and Steve "Brick Tamland" Carell were allowed to cut loose. How long has it been since we've had this many great comic actors working together so often?

"Welcome to hell - here's your accordion"

That's the punch line to one of my favorite Far Side comics, so I'm kind of surprised this didn't summon the Dark Lord himself.

By an incredible coincidence, the "Dave Penny" quoted in the article has the same mother and father as me. I'm really jealous that he's going to make it into the Guiness Book of World Records before me, even though I've been trying for years .

Defining deviancy down

Not surprisingly, last week's shooting rampage by an Israeli army deserter - which I have yet to see a single pro-Israel blogger or commentator condone or excuse - is a propaganda gift for those who believe the Israelis are as prone to terrorism as the Palestinians. Juan Cole is typical:

Note also that this act of terrorism was impelled by the Israeli government merely moving a few thousand citizens out of non-Isreali territory back into Israel proper. Imagine if a foreign power forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of Israelis into refugee camps. Wouldn't that provoke significant terrorism on the part of the displaced? (Voila, you have the Palestinian radical groups).

Well, here's the thing. The past sixty years or so have seen millions of Jews forced into death camps all over Europe, and thousands more forced out of their home countries in the Middle East after the founding of Israel. In many cases, Jews did fight back against their oppressors; who knows how different history would be had they fought back more, or had the rest of the world devoted to them even a fraction of the sympathy or attention given to the Palestinians?

But the Jews never adopted the culture of death-worship we see among the Palestinians, who put so much of their resources into inciting their young to suicide terrorism against innocent civilians, and who celebrate their "martyrs" at home while whining before gullible Western audiences about the Israelis forcing them into such "desperate" tactics. Many ethnic and religious groups - even other Muslims - are oppressed in ways the Palestinans could not even begin to imagine, and they haven't resorted to anything like what the Palestinians have done. Otherwise, there would be suicide bombings and terror attacks every week in Khartoum, Harare and Beijing. Despite what apologists and dhimmis like Cole say, there is nothing at all inevitable about an oppressed group resorting to terrorism. It is a choice that a group - or, to be more precise, its leaders - make on their own.

It was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who came up with the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe the way antisocial, criminal behavior was increasingly tolerated and explained away. The same kind of thing seems to be happening in the way we view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the methods used by the Palestinian "resistance" are now accepted as normal, the kind of thing any group would do if their land and cities were occupied by a foreign power. What would once have been considered nihilistic and sick is now considered inevitable and even honorable, and now other "resistance" movements co-opted by Islamofascist extremists, notably in Iraq and Chechnya, are doing the same thing.

Terrorism isn't "inevitable" - but if we keep romanticising it and making excuses for it, it will be. It's certainly helped the Palestinians move their grievances to the top of the list, even if it hasn't helped them actually get a state.

Gorgeous George goes too far

British commentator Rod Liddle once wrote a column for The Spectator titled, "Things were better under Saddam", but even he has lost patience with a Member of Parliament now openly pandering to the lunatic fringe of Islamofascism:

One assumes that [Galloway] is speaking how he thinks Arab people speak and it has turned out like a sort of Ba’athist equivalent of Peter Sellers doing Goodness Gracious Me. But I’ve been up and down the Edgware Road in London and I haven’t heard Arabs speak like that. Meanwhile, most of Galloway’s constituents at home are Bangladeshi — and they don’t speak like that.

Even for someone who agreed with you about the war in Iraq and the deception perpetrated by our government to prepare us all for it — the latest stuff feels suspiciously close to treason. It is hard to know whether we should laugh at Galloway or hang him.

Peter Jennings, R.I.P.

The Canadian-born host of ABC's World News Tonight has lost his battle with lung cancer. He was 67.

Many bloggers have criticized Jennings' reporting in the past, particularly of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I'm sure the time will eventually come for an authoritative review of what bias, if any, existed in his work. But for now, we should remember a man many of us grew up watching (I can't remember a time when Jennings wasn't on television), and who was damn good at what he did, right up to the end. His 2003 documentary on the Kennedy assassination, and the various conspiracy theories surrounding same, was a superb piece of journalism.

Calling treason treason

The British government is considering laying treason charges against Islamic clerics who openly endorse terrorism:

British prosecutors said Sunday they would consider treason charges against any Islamic extremists who express support for terrorism, as a Briton suspected of links to Al Qaeda was deported from Zambia.
[...]
Meanwhile, Attorney General Lord Goldmsith's office said the Crown Prosecution Service's head of anti-terrorism would meet with senior Metropolitan Police officers to discuss possible charges against three prominent clerics as part of a crackdown on those the government believes are inciting terrorism.

The spokeswoman said prosecutors may also seek access to taped recordings made by an undercover Sunday Times reporter who reportedly recorded members of a radical group praising the suicide bombers as "The Fantastic Four."

About time. And while they're at it, they should go after this guy.

Gone to Eastport again

Back Monday morning. Have a great weekend.

It's not just the left

Michael Totten has a thoughtful post on the old "the Nazis were socialists" argument - that is, ideologues' attempts to place all of their enemies on the other side of the political spectrum:

Yesterday I showed how at least some Islamists are a bit on the chummy side with German neo-Nazis. That’s why I titled the post Islamofascists. A handful of commenters (two, I think) thought this was evidence that Islamists have an alliance with “the left.” Um, no. It isn’t. German neo-Nazis are anything but left. If you don’t believe me, ask them what they think of the left. Ask them to self-identify. They will probably answer your email if you ask nicely. I can’t imagine they are flooded with polite inquiries.

Anyway, connections between Islamists and neo-Nazis just remind us that there are enemies (not merely opponents) on the extreme right. And there are enemies (not merely opponents) on the extreme left, too. Check out what British MP George Galloway is saying on Middle Eastern television if you think I’m overstating things. It has been a long time since I’ve seen such a repulsive and filthy performance.

This is why the concept of a "political spectrum", a straight line from left to right, really doesn't make much sense. The ultra-left and the ultra-right may profess very different ideas as to how society should be organized, but they really aren't that much different in practice - hence, the presence of Noam Chomsky articles on neo-Nazi websites, and fringe-left sites like CounterPunch teaming up with Holocaust deniers and rabid anti-Semites. For most of us, would it even matter which totalitarian ideologues took power?

A kind of "political clock", with the middle at 12:00 and the lunatic fringe just on either side of 6:00, the Republicans at 3 and the Democrats at 9, would probably make more sense. The closer you get to the far left, the more you resemble the far right, and vice versa.

The exodus that wasn't

The flood of refugees from America, escaping the evil Nazi fascist BusHitler junta that stole the 2004 Presidential election, never materialized:

Canadians can put away those extra welcome mats -- it seems Americans unhappy about the result of last November's presidential election have decided to stay at home after all.

But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election.
[...]
Data from the main Canadian processing center in Buffalo, NY shows that in the six months up to the U.S. election there were 16,266 applications from people seeking to live in Canada, a figure that fell to 14,666 for the half year after the vote.

Well, of course American leftists never escaped to Canada...because they've all been locked up in concentration camps!

No word for it but terror

An AWOL Israeli soldier, evidently upset about the pullout from Gaza, went on a shooting rampage in Jerusalem:

A 19-year-old Israeli soldier opened fire inside a bus Thursday, killing four Israeli Arabs before being killed by an angry mob — the deadliest attack on Arabs in Israel by a Jewish extremist since 1990.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denounced the shooting as "a despicable act by a bloodthirsty terrorist" and ordered police to give top priority to the investigation. Settler leaders also condemned the attack.

So, will Ken Livingstone or John Pilger make excuses for this because of the gunman's "desperation"? Don't hold your breath. (And, of course, they shouldn't - and neither should defenders of Israel. This act was vile, unforgivable and unjustifiable terrorism.)

Note, by the way, that many of the same wire services which judiciously avoid the "M" word when describing attacks by Palestinians mention the gunman's Jewish faith in their headlines.

New judge wanted

The Honourable Mister Justice Jack Major is retiring from the Supreme Court of Canada. I can't remember the last time the high court appointment process was proceeding simultaneously in Canada and the United States, but it will be quite educational to watch John Roberts being grilled and his appointment vigorously debated (and the media looking for dirt on the adoption of his children) down south, while Paul Martin's next judicial nominee is appointed to Canada's highest court with nary a word of discussion - and strictly on merit, nothing to do with his or her political beliefs, of course. (Bob Tarantino: "any guesses on whether the Chaoulli decision will prove to have been an aberration in the jurisprudence?")

Up here, positions on the Supreme Court have historically been apportioned by region - three seats apiece to Ontario and Quebec, two to the West and one to Atlantic Canada. Major is from Alberta, so presumably his spot will be given to someone from Western Canada - which is why this part of the CP story stands out:

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has said he's prepared to seriously consider candidates proposed by the Quebec government to fill vacancies in the court.

Last August, the Quebec government wrote to Cotler asking for a "formal participation" in the process to select justices.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

I really, really hope this is true. And if it is, I really, really, really hope they don't screw it up.

(via idontlikeyouinthatway.com)

Control yourselves, ladies

James "Hurricane" Wolcott has decided to raise the level of debate by making fun of Captain Ed's physical appearance. (The insult also makes the kind of veiled reference to Ed's sexuality that would have Wolcott bawling "homophobe!!!" if a conservative made it - but since it's James Wolcott, professional journalist and man of mystery, I'm sure it's meant to be deep and sophisticated or something.)

So, does Wolcott look anything like that skinny caricature he features on his own site? Here's your answer. You know why Hurricane Dennis didn't do as much damage as people expected? Because James Wolcott ate it.

(via Michelle Malkin)

Governor General named

Adrienne Clarkson is going to be replaced by another CBC host: Michaelle Jean, who hosts The Passionate Eye and Rough Cuts on Newsworld. (I'm having nightmarish visions of Mary Walsh becoming the Queen's next representative in Canada.)

I'll reserve judgment on Jean until she commences her vice-regal duties. But compared with Monique Begin, the other front-runner for the post, I think Martin made the right choice.

Update: Adam Daifallah says Jean might be a Quebec separatist and an anti-monarchist. But surely that doesn't mean she's unfit to be the Queen's representative in Canada, right? (I mean, it's not like she supports private health care or something...)

A Canadian hero

Ernest Alva "Smoky" Smith, Canada's last recipient of the Victoria Cross, has passed away at age 91.

May he rest in peace - and may we never forget that, no matter how often some try to deny it (I'm looking at you, Ms. Parrish), warriors like this are part of our national character.

Leaving Ferrari

So, what's better for a race driver: being the perennial number-two man at a top F1 team, or being the number-one driver at a lesser team? Rubens Barrichello will find out in 2006.

I'd have a lot more respect for Rubinho if he'd told Ferrari to screw off after the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix.

Big Man, Big Heart

Wrestling might not be a real sport, but Mick Foley - aka "Mankind" - is a real gentleman.

Steven Vincent, R.I.P.

The freelance journalist and author, whose book In the Red Zone I'd been planning to read for some time now (and who ran a weblog here), was kidnapped and killed in Iraq yesterday. Captain Ed and Arthur Chrenkoff have touching tributes, as well as details about the people who likely committed this appalling crime.

Update: more dreadful news: fourteen Marines were killed in an attack near the Syrian border.

Miracle in Toronto

When I first saw the news of yesterday's plane crash in Toronto, I thought it would be miraculous if anyone survived. That everyone made it out is absolutely astonishing.

Mysterious disappearance

That photo taken directly from a neo-Nazi website, which supposedly shows a hideous Jewish monster cowering underneath the American flag, has vanished from the MPACUK website. Now, how did that happen? (The logical answer, of course, is that the Jooooooos hacked their site and added the picture to make MPACUK look bad.)

Harry's Place has more on MPACUK and its links to Holocaust denial and rabid Jew-hatred - and its affiliation with Britain's ultra-left "Stop the War Coalition".

Update: this isn't the first time MPACUK has scrambled to cover its antisemitic tracks. Well, to amend a phrase from the early days of the blogosphere: this is the internet, and we can screenshot your ass.

Regatta Day

If you're in St. John's, enjoy your day off. Is there any better feeling than hearing on your clock radio that the races are on and you don't have to go to work today?

Galloway on tour

George Galloway ("a hero for our time" - James Wolcott) is making the rounds of the Arab TV news channels, and his rhetoric grows ever more inflammatory, hateful and, yes, anti-Semitic with each fawning interview:

Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do anything about it.
[...]
It's not the Muslims who are the terrorists. The biggest terrorists are Bush, and Blair, and Berlusconi, and Aznar, but it is definitely not a clash of civilizations. George Bush doesn't have any civilization, he doesn't represent any civilization. We believe in the Prophets, peace be upon them. He believes in the profits, and how to get a piece of them. That's his god. That's his god. George Bush worships money. That's his god - Mammon.

I could only watch a few minutes of the video before shutting it off in disgust, but I did make it far enough to notice his little Ariel Sharon imitation during the Al-Jazeera segment. David Hirsh, commenting at Harry's Place, has Galloway's number:

Galloway is consciously doing his best to be inflamatory. In his racist imagination, the most effective way to inflame an Arab audience is to compare the Jewish presence in Jerusalem to a rape. Not a rape of his audience, you understand; he is not talking to women. It is a rape of their daughters. Their beautiful daughters.

Now, nobody on the left, nobody in the Labour movement, nobody in Parliament, no liberal, no Guardian columnist, no Muslim, no SWPer, can be in any doubt what Galloway is.

Not that they give a damn. Speaking of British fascists, now we know where the Muslim Public Affairs Council-UK (MPACUK) - whose spokespeople sometimes appear on the BBC - gets its material. (Screenshot here.)

Not dead enough

How quickly they forget...

Left-wing Berlin senators want to reassemble a giant statue of Russian Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that was removed from the former eastern half of the city in 1991 shortly after German reunification.

"The Communist period is the most asked-after period by tourists in Berlin," said Natascha Kompatzki of Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH.

Actually, there's at least one other German historical era I'm sure even more tourists ask about, but I don't expect any of that period's statues to be restored anytime soon. I hope not, anyway.

(via Davids Medienkritik)

Stupidest. Moral-equivalence. Argument. Ever.

Where else but in San Francisco?

Update: still, try as she might, a mere San Francisco Chronicle reader can't compete with the master of moral equivalence, the dean of dhimmitude, Juan Cole:

The terrorists don't have an ethnicity in common. Richard Reid and Lindsey Germaine were Caribbean. Others are Arabs. Some have been Somali or Eritrean or Tanzanian. Others have been South Asia (India/Pakistan/Bangladesh). Still others have been African-American or white Americans. They don't even have to start out Muslim. Ayman al-Zawahiri was particularly proud of an al-Qaeda operative in Afghanistan who had been an American Jew in a previous life. Ziad Jarrah, one of the September 11 hijackers, appears to have been a relatively secular young man right to the end. It isn't about religion, except insofar as religion is a basis on which the recruiter can approach his victim. Islam as a religion forbids terrorism. But then so does Christianity, and that doesn't stop there being Christian terrorists. They are a fringe in both religions.

If you try to "profile" the terrorist using such social markers as class or ethnicity, maybe even religious background, you will go badly astray.

Kind of takes your breath away, doesn't it? (via Across the Bay)

Did you need the new rec room that badly, Iggy?

I'm a bit late getting to it, but Slate has a hilarious article on the most inappropriate songs used in television commercials. Number one was one of only two ad campaigns that make me change the channel: Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" being used in ads for Royal Caribbean cruise lines. (The other, by the way, is the "Joy, chief chicken inspector for Mary Brown's" commercials running on Newfoundland radio. Any Newfoundlanders reading this will know what I'm talking about.)

My favorite use of a song in a commercial? Probably "Mr Roboto" in a Volkswagen ad a few years back. (And these commercials for VW - "the kind of car company that would gleefully embrace the noisy-neighbor demographic", notes Teevee's Lisa Schmeiser - normally bug the hell out of me.)

Useful idiots then and now

Anthony Browne in The Times:

Elements within the British establishment were notoriously sympathetic to Hitler. Today the Islamists enjoy similar support. In the 1930s it was Edward VIII, aristocrats and the Daily Mail; this time it is left-wing activists, The Guardian and sections of the BBC. They may not want a global theocracy, but they are like the West’s apologists for the Soviet Union — useful idiots.

Islamic radicals, like Hitler, cultivate support by nurturing grievances against others. Islamists, like Hitler, scapegoat Jews for their problems and want to destroy them. Islamists, like Hitler, decree that the punishment for homosexuality is death. Hitler divided the world into Aryans and subhuman non-Aryans, while Islamists divide the world into Muslims and sub-human infidels. Nazis aimed for their Thousand-Year Reich, while Islamists aim for their eternal Caliphate. The Nazi party used terror to achieve power, and from London to Amsterdam, Bali to New York, Egypt to Turkey, Islamists are trying to do the same.
[...]
The support of Islamic fascism spans Britain’s Left. The wacko Socialist Workers Party joined forces with the Muslim Association of Britain, the democracy-despising, Shariah-law-wanting group, to form the Stop the War Coalition. The former Labour MP George Galloway created the Respect Party with the support of the MAB, and won a seat in Parliament by cultivating Muslim resentment.

When I revealed on these pages last year both the fascist views of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the fact that he was being welcomed to Britain by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, it caused a storm that has still to abate. Mr Livingtone claims that Sheikh al-Qaradawi is a moderate — which he is, in the same way that Mussolini was.

(Via Mick Hartley. Also note this post at Harry's Place, which notes Browne's correspondence with the rabidly anti-immigration - some say racist - VDARE site.)

Imagine his hand on the button

Enlightened folk like Ken Livingstone tell us the suicide bomber is the weapon of the desperate and impoverished, who cannot afford missiles or jet fighters. Well, Iran has plenty of jet fighters, and it's on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, but the country's new President still seems pretty sold on this "martyrdom" idea:

Art reaches perfection when it portrays the best life and best death. After all, art tells you how to live. That is the essence of art. Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermine the foundations of our independence and national security. They undermine the foundation of our eternity.

Have no doubt... Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world.

Any questions? (via LGF)

Toronto blog bash

I can't make it, being 1,100 miles away and all, but details are here.

Don't mention the war

Great column by Andrew C. McCarthy on the Bush Administration's decision to rebrand the War on Terror as the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism":

The W-word is apparently out. Wouldn't want to refer to a war as a "war." After all, according to the head of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Richard Myers, "if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." He is referring, of course, to people in military uniforms. Soldiers killing jihadists before they can blow up another U.S. embassy, or navy destroyer, or skyscraper. Surely you can see why that would not be a solution.

Funny: We have 30-year-old "war on drugs" and a half-century-old "war on poverty," and no one ever before seemed worried about evoking images of "people in uniform" hunting down narcotics peddlers or feeding the hungry.
[...]
With all the things we could usefully expend brainpower on, it's hard to figure why anyone would choose the guaranteed futility of trying to change a brand name that, for better or worse, is now ingrained. Just ask Prince how well that whole "The Artist" thing worked out. It's akin to saying the Yankees will now be known as "the Bronx Batters," because, well, you know, saying "Bronx Bombers" could trigger thoughts about people in uniform. (Did I say "trigger?" Oops. Sorry. I meant "prompt.")

Nope — don't want to go there. The enemy, after all, is not just any extremism. It is Islamic extremism. We are in this tongue-tied mess in the first place because the I-word is even more verboten than the W-word, which we've now so shrewdly changed to the S-word that Arabs will interpret as the J-word — the J-word being the very inconvenience that leads us right back to that little I-word.

The King is dead

Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has died at age 83. His successor, Abdullah, has been the country's de facto ruler since Fahd's 1995 stroke, so we shouldn't expect anything about the country to change. Unfortunately.

Update: Jeff Jarvis: "I’ll be eager to see who the White House sends to that funeral. Hope it’s the gardener." I'm leaning toward the plumber, myself. Or, even better, a Jewish lesbian who insists on driving herself to the funeral.

Out of Uzbekistan

After Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov turned his guns on pro-democracy demonstrators a few months ago, I chided the Bush Administration for its relative silence on the matter, compared with its support for democracy movements in other former Soviet republics. Well, the Americans must have said something Karimov didn't like, because he's forcing them to leave their military base in his country:

Uzbekistan has ordered the Pentagon to leave a military base that has played an important role in its war on terror as tensions with Washington over the country's human rights record have abruptly come to a head.

The Uzbek authorities say that fewer than 200 people were killed when soldiers fired on demonstrators after a prison riot that led to violent protests across Andizhan. Human rights groups say over 700 were killed, including many unarmed civilians. Washington was initially slow to criticise Tashkent but in recent weeks has, to the fury of Mr Karimov, pushed for an international investigation into the incident.

Donald Rumsfeld visited the area last week looking into alternate locations for an American base, so it looks like the U.S. knew this was coming down. And getting out is a good thing - staying in Uzbekistan, and making a deal with a vile dictator like Karimov, would probably harm the war on terror more than losing an air base.

Wangersky gets one right

I usually can't figure out what the hell the Telegram's Russell Wangersky is talking about, and I rarely agree with him when I can. But his recent column on this past weekend's "protest" food fishery is dead on:

It doesn’t matter that we’re being treated differently than other Atlantic Canadians, and it doesn’t matter that some people believe we have an inherent right to put a codfish on the table. This fishery is wrong, and it will be used against the residents of this province for ages. We complain that the federal government won’t protect fish from foreigners, and then fish illegally ourselves.

Are we different than Nova Scotians? Of course we are. We have far different traditions, and a far greater connection — at this point — to the sea. Nowhere near the same proportion of Nova Scotians will take to the water to catch groundfish — and they will take far less fish.
[...]
Even beyond that — most people in the province probably know residents who had never shown an interest in jigging a cod before they were told they couldn’t, and those same residents were among the first to decide they simply had to get out and “get their fish.” I know people who have lined up every year for the food fishery — even though they don’t like cod.

It’s being trotted out by warhorses with their own political agendas, by those who want to make themselves bigger by wrapping themselves in somebody else’s flag, by those who would take the self-reliant history of a great people and wear it like a trendy T-shirt. It’s also being championed by people with a lot less to lose by getting caught fishing illegally; I wouldn’t want to be the hapless commercial fisherman who might face losing a boat and a livelihood because of the blandishments of someone whose total exposure involves a recreational dinghy and a small motor.

The collapse of the fishery in 1992 should have taught us just how fragile the marine environment can be, and that from here on out we should err on the side of caution in determining how much cod we can take in the future. But as soon as the stocks showed the smallest sign of recovery in some bays, we were demanding our "right" to a "food fishery", as though our children would starve to death if we weren't allowed to do it.

What have we learned? Not a damn thing, except that our problems are the fault of everybody else in the world except ourselves.