Tour de Farce

This sure is lancing the boil. There go any remaining US TV ratings.

When the 98th Tour de France kicks off on Saturday in Strasbourg, 58 of the world's best cyclists will be absent from their teams. Managers for 21 of the teams registered to take part in the French cycling event declared after a meeting that all of the riders named in a Spanish blood doping investigation would be suspended from their teams. The teams also said they would not appoint replacements, meaning the starting lineups for many would be anemic.

The disturbing waves of news began on Friday morning when Germany's T-Mobile team announced it had suspended Jan Ullrich from its Tour de France cycling team because of allegations and apparent evidence linking the champion cyclist to a blood doping scandal. Ullrich's teammate, Oscar Sevilla, and trainer Rudy Pevenage have also been suspended by T-Mobile.

The T-Mobile team members are among 56 cyclists who have been named in connection with a blood doping investigation by Spanish police that has already resulted in charges against a Spanish doctor. T-Mobile said it made the decision to drop the riders because of the latest developments...

Sure beats MLB (for the moment).

Update: Der Spiegel scooped: "The Tour de Farce".

Mark C.

Afstan: Ottawa Citizen's bad reporting

Mike Blanchfield either has not done his research, or else he has an "agenda" (just like David Pugliese?).

After delays and controversy, Aug. 1 has been set as the day Canadian troops in Afghanistan will finally transfer to a NATO-led command after almost a year under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign.

"The handover will be a very smooth one. I'm hoping to be present (in Kandahar)," David Sproule, Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan, said in an interview yesterday at Foreign Affairs headquarters.

Mr. Sproule said he has spent "a fair bit of time" recently discussing the change of command with Lt.-Gen. David Richards, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, as well as Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of Defence staff.

The expansion of the NATO mission into southern Afghanistan has been fraught with delays and was expected to come much sooner this year.

Canada will take command of the newly expanded NATO presence in southern Afghanistan, and will contribute about 2,200 troops to a 6,000-strong southern force that will comprise more than 3,000 British military personnel and about 1,400 from The Netherlands.

In all, the southern mission will expand NATO's total force in Afghanistan to about 16,000 troops.

Since Canada redeployed its military to the south last August, it has been under the banner of Enduring Freedom, which some critics claim has hampered the Forces' ability to conduct non-combat reconstruction missions. Enduring Freedom operates separate from NATO forces and is, for the most part, leading the anti-terror combat operations against the Taliban insurgency that has swept through southern Afghanistan in the last year...

Lots of nonsense here. This is what Col. James Yonts, spokesman of the US-led Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, said on February 20 this year:

...at the end of the day when this transition [to NATO in the South] happens in late July...

I do not see any significant delay from "late July" to August 1. Mr Blanchfield is creating the impression that there are problems with our mission in southern Afghanistan--where Canada will continue in command when control there shifts from US Operation Enduring Freedom to NATO--that simply do not exist.

Moreover, the bulk of our forces were not redeployed to Kandahar in August last year. A Provincial Reconstruction Team of some 200 soldiers was deployed then which--contrary to the impression in the story--has been doing reconstruction work. Most of our troops remained in Kabul with NATO ISAF. Some moved later to Kandahar (under Operation Enduring Freedom) and their base in Kabul, Camp Julien closed on November 29. Our battle group at Kandahar only started arriving in mid-January this year.

Mark C.

Toronto Star supports Conservatives' military procurement plans

The wonders at the Star's editorial page continue. First they bash Bob Rae for opposing our Afstan mission, now they fully support the government's massive (because the Liberals never bought what they promised in a timely fashion) military procurement plans. Plans that the Star's reporters (like those at the CBC) nonetheless insist on calling a spending "spree". Plus the Star seems to support buying firepower too!

For a decade, the Canadian Forces have been hobbled by a lack of air- and sealift, at a time when the United Nations and allies such as the United States have looked to us for speedy military assistance to deal with 9/11-style threats, natural disasters, failed states and threatened genocide.

So Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government has taken steps to beef up Canada's military presence by rolling out $17 billion in programs this week to improve its ability to get from here to there. The programs follow on similar, but much more limited, initiatives taken by the former Liberal government...

Lest anyone forget, Canada has been named as a target by Al Qaeda. At the UN, we have pushed the "responsibility to protect" civilians who face genocide. That requires more firepower than traditional low-risk peacekeeping. Even at that, we remain committed to peacekeeping in the Middle East and other places. For all this, we need more troops, more weapons, the means to get to hot spots and the ability to resupply our forces.

Yesterday's announcement of $8.3 billion to buy and maintain four Boeing C-17 Globemaster strategic lift cargo jets or ones like them to replace the Antonovs, plus 17 smaller tactical lift aircraft to replace our aging Hercules transports, caps a week of much-needed mobility fixes. The military will also get three new supply ships ($2.9 billion), 16 heavy Chinook-type helicopters ($4.7 billion), and 2,300 trucks ($1.2 billion). This equipment will begin to be deployed in the 2008-2012 period.

All this will "put spine back in the Canadian Forces' ability to help people," Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier says. It is an investment at a time when we have 2,300 troops in Afghanistan risking their lives defending democracy and thwarting terror, and when we face new challenges policing our three oceans and preserving stability elsewhere...

The idea being promoted by the new Conservative government is to better configure the Canadian Forces to project force, as well as humanitarian aid, far from our shores. And now that Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has addressed the mobility issue, he is focusing on buying [amphibious] assault ships, Stryker mobile gun systems and attack helicopters [firepower: one can only hope the government listens to Mr O'Connor - MC]...

...the harsh reality is that Canada needs to spend billions if it is to play any continuing role in the world — in peacekeeping and peacemaking.

And no Dosanjh-style carping about what in some cases may amount to sole-sourcing!

Update: Then there is this silliness from the Vancouver Sun:

The need for the new hardware is clear. The government will be replacing assets that are worn out, obsolete or simply non-existent [thank goodness that is conceded - MC]...

But we have also seen how our needs change as the world changes around us and we adjust the way we want to respond.

Our combatant role in Afghanistan requires different tools than we needed in decades past for peacekeeping...

Nuts. CF equipment has always been bought in the context of potential combat. Semi-pointy-stuff for Afstan, LAV IIIs--including for "peacekeeping" in Kabul, was actually bought by the Liberals. CF-18s sure did a lot of peacekeeping in Kosovo and Serbia. Just like the PPCLI in Afstan in 2002. The "traditional peacekeeping" myth that will not die. In any case almost all Army equipment required is essentially the same.

Mark C.

Nasty piece of work to be barred from Canada

According to CTV News Immigration Minister Monte Solberg has given the order to keep Sheik Riyadh ul-Haq out.

The federal government has taken steps to prevent a controversial British imam from entering Canada on Friday to speak to a Muslim youth conference in Toronto, CTV News has learned.

Sheikh Riyadh ul-Haq, a prominent cleric in England who has been accused of publicly vilifying Jews and Hindus, among other groups, was slated to be the keynote speaker for the weekend Youth Tarbiyah conference, sponsored by the Islamic Foundation of Toronto.

Sources told CTV News that Immigration Minister Monte Solberg informed immigration officials that ul Haq should not be allowed into the country because of his extreme views.

The cleric has been accused of making inflammatory comments about Jews, Hindus and moderate Muslims, as well as gay, bisexual and transsexual people.

Ul Haq was recently called into the Canadian High Commission in London and was told he would not be admissible to Canada on grounds that his views could incite hatred and violence...

News of the imam's planned visit has enraged Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and gay-rights groups, who wrote last week to Solberg calling for Canada to refuse ul Haq entry to Canada under anti-hatred laws.

In a letter, the Muslim Canadian Congress, Canadian Jewish Congress, Hindu Dharma Mission and Egale Canada, a gay-rights group, said ul Haq's history of "dangerous and inflammatory" statements are an affront to Canadian values...

Good on Monte.

Update: The imam will speak by video feed. So much for any suppression of "freedom of speech".

A British imam accused of inciting hatred will not attend a gathering of Muslim youth in Toronto this weekend, organizers announced yesterday, but Sheik Riyadh Ul-Haq will still speak at the three-day event via live video feed...

Mark C.

July 1

I'm taking a little trip to Cape Breton this long weekend, so I'm handing the keys over to Mark and the other guest-bloggers until Tuesday.

July 1, of course, is Canada Day. (God forbid we call it "Dominion Day" and risk offending somebody!) But it's also Memorial Day in Newfoundland and Labrador, a day to commemorate the bravery, sacrifice and dedication of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont Hamel. Never forget them.

Damian P.

B-Listers for 9/11 Truth

A celebrity of even less consequence than Charlie Sheen questions the "official story" of September 11:

Blink 182 star Tom DeLonge has followed in the footsteps of Charlie Sheen by becoming the latest celebrity to publicly doubt the official version of events behind 9/11 and voice his belief that the attacks were an inside job.

DeLonge is the lead singer in Blink 182, a southern Californian punk/pop quartet that has had two US Billboard number one selling albums and whose 1999 album Enema of the State went platinum five times over.

During a hosting spot on a San Diego’s KAVA-FM radio station, DeLonge talked with Professor James Fetzer about evidence of 9/11 inside involvement.

"We do know that the buildings came down in a fashion extremely similar to a controlled demolition of a building - we do know that expertise that is needed to fly those gigantic planes into that exact location could never have been achieved by someone that just learned how to fly a small plane, said DeLonge."

Discussing the failure of NORAD to enact standard operating procedure and intercept the planes and Norman Mineta's testimony about Cheney's orders 'still standing' - DeLonge stated, "Cheney knew that the planes are coming in and he capped the order to leave it alone so it could hit."

"It's so weird how our own government did it to us, 9/11 was not perpetrated by a bunch of people that just learned how to fly planes," said DeLonge. (via Fark.com)

Ed Asner, Charlie Sheen, Tom DeLonge...which important celebrity will be next to speak truth to power and reveal the shocking truth about September 11? Roseanne Barr? Arsenio Hall? The guy who played "Felipe" on Three's Company?

Damian P.

Bored of the Rings

Megamusical will close after five months and a bit. Toronto did not acquire the Hobbit and is just not world class.

...we also have to acknowledge that, despite all talk to the contrary, little Toronto was just a stand-in for big London.

And the tax dollars of us Ontario taxpayers are not at work but at risk:

When asked when the province of Ontario might expect to be repaid the $3-million it lent the production, Mr. Mirvish [producer] said the government was just one of many investors who would have to wait until the show moved to London...

Damn Yankees just wouldn't come.

But the mayor and other Toronto officials said that a general decline in U.S. tourism is also to blame...

Moreover,

Canadians just don't get it...

Damn North Americans. Maybe we and the Americans still have a lot in common.

Apologies for the groaners.

Mark C.

UN nearing 200 members/Quebec separatists look longingly

"Montenegro Becomes 192nd Member of UN". Dream on, separatists. But BQ leader Gilles Duceppe can still look on the sunny side. Silly Gilles.

Duceppe said Canada's decision to recognize Montenegro's independence vote is good news for Quebec's sovereignist movement. Duceppe said the 55-per-cent threshold needed to separate was set within Montenegro and once it was reached, Serbia recognized the result. Montenegro has also separated without any change to its boundaries, he pointed out.

In the case of Quebec, the threshold of 50 per cent has already been recognized by the three main political parties within Quebec, said Duceppe, meaning that is the threshold Canada would have to recognize...

Others, however, say the precedent set by Montenegro actually benefits the federalist cause.

Patrick Monahan, dean of Osgoode Hall law school and an active participant in the court challenges surrounding Quebec's right to secede, said in the case of Montenegro, the European Union proposed a threshold of 55 per cent - higher than the 50-per-cent-plus-one threshold sovereignists maintain. Secondly, the Montenegro referendum question was clear about the intention to become an independent country.

As for the territorial integrity of Quebec, the Supreme Court made it clear that would have to be negotiated, Monahan said...

Let's see Quebec negotiate with the EU about an acceptable percentage and question.

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne eviscerates Mickey I. on the Quebec "nation" question.

Mark C.

Feminine Sharms

No, I don't know why Soviet television had commercials for makeup, either. Maybe the Ministry of Cosmetics didn't want people buying Revlon stuff on the black market? (And did the Buddy Holly estate get any royalties for the background music?)

More USSR TV advertising here. It's absolutely fascinating, to see how the people who ran the Soviet Union were rabidly opposed to capitalism - while trying desperately to imitate it.

Damian P.

Israel and "The shame of the United Church"

Margaret Wente of the Globe has it exactly right (full text not officially online):

Rev. Frances Combs is a slight, polite, soft-spoken woman with snow-white hair and sensible shoes. You can tell she wouldn't hurt a fly. Too bad that such a nice lady has become an apologist for Hamas.

Rev. Combs, a minister with the United Church, co-chairs the Task Group for Ethical Investment in the Middle East. Yesterday this group, which represents around 300 congregations in Ontario, held a press conference to announce that they stand in solidarity with Sid Ryan to bring the rogue state of Israel to heel.

"We are very pleased to commend CUPE Ontario for advocating economic pressure to end the illegal occupation of Palestine," she said. They're calling on church members to boycott goods and dump stock. Don't buy GE light bulbs, because GE is a war profiteer. They also want Ottawa to demand identifying labels on all goods imported from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories...

The United Church is the largest Protestant denomination in Canada. Three million Canadians claim it as their religious affiliation. And now, the church has joined the shabby parade of left-wing extremists bent on demonizing Israel as the root cause of all the problems in the Middle East. These groups include the largest teachers union in Britain, which, to the disgust of many of its members, has voted to boycott Israeli academics and universities that don't dissociate themselves from the government's "apartheid" policies...

Meantime, thousands of CUPE members, of all denominations, are outraged at Sid Ryan and their Ontario local (the largest in the land). Perhaps the United Churchgoers of Canada will be outraged at their leaders too. Perhaps they'll decide that instead of boycotting Israel, they should boycott their own church. One can only hope.

Mark C.

Damian adds: people like to call the United Church (which is neither) "the NDP at prayer," but I think that's a grotesque slander of the New Democratic Party, which rarely goes this far in demonizing the Jewish state. "The Socialist Workers Party at prayer" is more like it.

"We hate Canada"

These women seem to have something in common after all. Some excellent investigative reporting by the Globe and Mail that gives flesh to "the biggest elephant in the room":

Wives of four of the central figures arrested last month were among the most active on the website, sharing, among other things, their passion for holy war, disgust at virtually every aspect of non-Muslim society and a hatred of Canada. The posts were made on personal blogs belonging to both Mr. Amara and Ms. Farooq, as well as a semi-private forum founded by Ms. Farooq where dozens of teens in the Meadowvale Secondary School area chatted. The vast majority of the posts were made over a period of about 20 months, mostly in 2004, and the majority of those were made by the group's female members...

Some excerpts:

There is nothing casual about Ms. Farooq's interpretation of Islam. She reiterates the belief that jihad is the "sixth pillar" of the religion, and her on-line postings are decidedly interested in the violent kind. In the forum titled "Terrorism and killing civilians," she writes a detailed point-by-point explanation of why the Taliban is destined to emerge victorious in Afghanistan.

Ms. Farooq's criticism is often directed first at other Muslims. When another poster writes about how he finds homosexuality disgusting, Nada replies by pointing out that there are even gay Muslims. She then posts a photo of a rally held by Al-Fatiha, a Canadian support group for gay Muslims. "Look at these pathetic people," she writes. "They should all be sent to Saudi, where these sickos are executed or crushed by a wall, in public."..

In a thread started by Mr. Fahim's wife, Mariya, marking the death of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi after an Israeli missile strike, Ms. Farooq unleashes her fury: "May Allah crush these jews, bring them down to their kneees, humuliate them. Ya Allah make their women widows and their children orphans."..

Ms. Farooq's hatred for the country is palpable. She hardly ever calls Canada by its name, rather repeatedly referring to it as "this filthy country." It's a sentiment shared by many of her friends, one of whom states that the laws of the country are irrelevant because they are not the laws of God.

In late April of 2004, a poster asks the forum members to share their impressions of what makes Canada unique. Nada's answer is straightforward.

"Who cares? We hate Canada."..

Ms. Jamal's zealousness for homegrown Muslim causes is matched only by her rejection of just about everything Canadian. As the June, 2004 federal election draws near, she repeatedly advises Muslim youth to completely avoid the process. Voting, she tells them, inherently violates the sovereignty of God, making it the most egregious sin against Islam.

"Are you accepting a system that separates religion and state?" she asks. "Are you gonna give your pledge of allegiance to a party that puts secular laws above the laws of Allah? Are you gonna worship that which they worship? Are you going to throw away the most important thing that makes you a muslim?"..

In May, 2004, the Meadowvale students come across an extremely graphic video showing the beheading of a U.S. hostage in Iraq. Mr. Fahim, posting under the name "Soldier of ALLAH," praises the killers as mujahedeen who will be rewarded in the afterlife...

Mike McDonell (RCMP Assistant Commissioner) said on June 3 that "They represent the broad strata of our society...Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed."

I do not think any further comment is required.

This is what a senior Australian minister said this February:

Anyone who believes Islamic sharia law can co-exist with Australian law should move to a country where they feel more comfortable, Treasurer Peter Costello says...

"There are countries that apply religious or sharia law - Saudi Arabia and Iran come to mind.

"If a person wants to live under sharia law these are countries where they might feel at ease.

"But not Australia."..

Mr Costello can publicly recognize an elephant when he sees one, unlike Canadian officials.

Mark C.

Hamas under arrest

Israel has arrested 7 Hamas cabinet ministers and 20 other Hamas MPs as part of its operation to find Cpl. Shalit:

Israeli troops today arrested dozens of Hamas ministers and MPs as they stepped up attempts to free a soldier kidnapped by militants in Gaza at the weekend.

The Israeli army said 64 Hamas officials, including seven ministers and 20 other MPs, had been detained in a series of early morning arrests.

Abdel Aziz Duaik, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, and the religious affairs minister, Nayef Rajoub, were among those held.

"The arrests of these Hamas officials ... is part of a campaign against a terrorist organisation that has escalated its war of terror against Israeli civilians," the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said.

The Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, an ally of the president, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the arrests.

"We have no government, we have nothing. They have all been taken," he said. "This is absolutely unacceptable, and we demand their release immediately."

The Hamas-linked Popular Resistance Commitees murdered an 18-year-old Israeli settler, Eliyahu Asheri, shortly after they kidnapped him:

The IDF confirmed early Thursday a report the Popular Resistance Committees issued from Gaza that it had executed Eliyahu Asheri, 18, of Itamar, who was kidnapped earlier this week in the West Bank. Asheri's family has been notified.

His funeral was scheduled to take place at 2:30 p.m. in Jerusalem, with the funeral procession to pass from Beit Sanhedria to the Mount of Olives in the city.

[...]

OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh revealed on Thursday morning that the youth had been shot in the head immediately after the kidnapping on Sunday.

On Wednesday, elite police and IDF forces arrested Popular Resistance Committees operative Osam Abu Rajil, who was suspected to have been involved in the kidnapping. Abu Rajil led the forces to a mountainside north of Ramallah, where Asheri's body was found buried, Army Radio reported.

Naveh confirmed Thursday that Abu Rajil was personally involved in the kidnapping.

Naveh told Army Radio that the cell that abducted Asheri was instructed and paid by sources in Gaza for the kidnapping.

Get them. Get them all. IsraellyCool is live-blogging events again today.

Damian P.

ENGERLAND!!!

The Germans may look like better footballers so far, but the English are champions of an even more important sport:

England's massive army of World Cup fans is drinking Germany dry, it emerged yesterday.

Breweries warned beer could run out before the final because of huge demand from our supporters.

In Nuremberg, organisers revealed 70,000 England fans who flooded the city drank 1.2MILLION pints of beer - an average of 17 pints each.

Astonished bar keeper Herrmann Murr said: "Never have I seen so many drink so much in such little time."

His bar at a fans' tent in the city ran out after they drained all 32 of his 50-litre (11 gallon) barrels.

Herr Murr calculated Britons were shifting beer at a staggering rate of 200 pints per minute.

City official Peter Murrmann said: "The English proved themselves world champs. They practically drank us dry."

Damian P.

IDF Wake-Up Call

Good morning, Mr. Assad:

Israeli warplanes buzzed the summer residence of Syrian President Bashar Assad early Wednesday, military officials said, in a message aimed at pressuring the Syrian leader to win the release of a captured Israeli soldier.

The officials said on condition of anonymity that the fighter jets flew over Assad's palace in a low-altitude overnight raid near the Mediterranean port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria. Israeli television reports said four planes were involved, and Assad was home at the time.

The officials said Assad was targeted because of the "direct link" between Syria and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group holding Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, in the Gaza Strip. Syria is host to Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's exiled supreme leader.

Damian P.

Quote of the Day

"Hamas (Fatah too) 'recognizes' Israel in the sense that, to take a random example, Nicole Simpson's murderer recognized her."

- James Taranto

Federalism on the march

A new poll puts Jean Charest and the provincial Liberals ahead of the PQ for the first time since April, 2004:

Premier Jean Charest says he "felt great" when he woke up to a poll that put the provincial Liberals in front of the Parti Quebecois for the first time in more than two years.

But Charest doesn't appear to be in a hurry to call a provincial election. The premier noted on Tuesday that he has until as late as 2008 to call an election but he's expected to call an election next spring. A Leger Marketing poll said Charest's Liberals had 37 per cent support among those surveyed, compared to 33 per cent for Andre Boisclair's Parti Quebecois.

Charest normally doesn't comment on the results of poll and the "I felt great" comment was much more than he usually says.

Mario Dumont's Action democratique du Quebec had support of 17 per cent of those surveyed.

The fledgling party Quebec Solidaire had six per cent support.

The poll was published in Tuesday's edition of Le Journal de Montreal. It was taken over the St-Jean-Baptiste holiday weekend from June 22-25 and surveyed 1,000 people. (via Greg Staples)

Note to non-Canadian readers: there is no provincial Conservative Party in Quebec, so if you're firmly opposed to separation from Canada, the Liberals are really the only game in town. (The ADQ is generally considered Quebec's right-of-centre party, but its commitment to Canada is shaky at best.) Charest, in fact, led the federal Tories before he made his move back into provincial politics. For once, the Liberals doing well is actually a good thing.

Damian P.

And now a word from our sponsor

Damian P.

Update: for sheer novelty value, I'd love to have one of these (though I certainly wouldn't pay $20,000.00 for it).

Who should represent British Muslims?

Conservative MP Michael Gove, in an excerpt from his new book, argues that UK authorities are giving credibility to Muslim organizations that promote hostile views of the West:

For moderate Muslims the picture is dispiriting. They see the most religiously conservative and politically provocative groupings enjoy the lion's share of attention and they wonder how serious the British State is about countering extremism. How can they convince young men within their community that the path of moderation brings respect and a voice in the nation's deliberations when the most influential voices are seen to belong to those with radical agendas?

In Islamist circles a complementary message is absorbed. The British State does not have the courage to face down the advocates of political Islam. Islamists in Britain scent weakness. Just as Islamists abroad believe the West does not have the stamina to resist
for long, so Islamists within the UK believe the momentum is with them. Islam's Leninists have drawn the bayonet, probed, and found mush...(via David Frum)

The book is titled Celsius 7/7. A second excerpt is here:

Islamists believe in the re-ordering of society to secure total submission to a narrow, puritan and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. They are conducting a civil war within the Islamic world designed to overthrow existing regimes, which they consider to be unforgiveably apostate, and replace them with a single and unified Muslim state, the restored Caliphate. Islamists believe that the sanctity and culture of Muslim lands are menaced and defiled by Western influences, from capitalism to feminism, which have to be eradicated...

The bloodshed should not stop at Islam's current borders. Not just because those nations which are unIslamic constitute dar-al Harb, the House of War, which constantly threatens the security of the Muslim world. But also because Islamists are driven by a divine mission to ensure the whole earth, in due course, learns to submit to Islamist rule.

The belief that Islam's sovereignty over the whole globe is necessary and total was powerfully displayed on BBC TV's Newsnight in February 2006. Anjem Choudray, one of the leaders of the UK Islamist group al-Ghurabaa, rejected the suggestion that he might be happier pursuing his fundamentalist approach to religion and politics outside the secular and liberal political culture of the UK. England, he informed the viewers, "belongs to Allah". And just in case we didn't appreciate just how far short of Allah's, and his, standards, we fell, Choudray utterly rejected any notion of accommodating his beliefs and practices to the norms of our democratic society, arguing, "if you put me in the jungle, should I behave like an animal? Of course, not"...

As an aside, can anyone imagine a Canadian MP (other than Mickey I.) actually writing a book worth reading?

Mark C.

Canada is largest US source of foreign oil

Who knew? Not the Americans. But they still like us a lot:

A whopping 88% of Americans have a favourable view of Canada despite Ottawa's refusal to join the Iraq war and the recent arrest of homegrown terrorists, according to a new poll.

At the same time, only 4% were aware that Canada is the No. 1 supplier of oil and gas to the United States, ahead of perceived major exporters such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran...

Maybe Americans are glad they we are sharing the burden (along with many other countries) in Afghanistan--though I doubt many outside Congress are actually aware of our mission there.

Mark C.

Into Gaza

The IDF is going to get its man back:

Israel sent tanks into southern Gaza after conducting air strikes on at least two bridges and a power plant in a government-sanctioned operation -- one prompted by the weekend capture of a 19-year-old Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants.

"They're saying that their objective now is to go into the Gaza Strip and do house-to-house searches if they have to in order to find the captured soldier," CTV's Janis Mackey Frayer said from Jerusalem.

The bridges, which divided Gaza between the north and south, were destroyed to limit "the ability of the terrorists to transfer the kidnapped soldier," the Israeli military said in a statement.

No casualties were reported in the strikes that essentially cut Gaza in two, Palestinian security officials said.

[...]

Speaking under the condition of anonymity, Israeli military officials confirmed an isolated operation has been authorized for a "terrorist infrastructure" in southern Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned the military is preparing for a large-scale military offensive, which would be the first in the territory since Israel's historic withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

Israeli tanks and about 3,000 troops had massed along the Gaza frontier where captured Cpl. Galid Shalit is believed to be located.

Meanwhile, Hamas is already backing away from reports that it has reached a deal to "implicitly" recognize Israel. I'm shocked too.

Abbas, the Palestinian president, had sought to soften Hamas's line in the hope of ending the US-led financial siege aimed at forcing the group to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept peace accords.

During weeks of wrangling in the power struggle, Abbas tried to get Hamas to accept a document penned by Palestinians in Israeli jails which implicitly recognises Israel.

Hamas accepted it only after amendments it insisted would allow it to stick to its "agenda of resistance" to Israel.

"The document included a clear clause referring to the non-recognition of the legitimacy of the Occupation," said Sami Abu Zuhri, the Hamas spokesman, using the group's term for Israel.

[...]

But Hamas legislator Salah al-Bardaweel said: "We said we accept a state (in territory occupied) in 1967 - but we did not say we accept two states."

A senior aide to Abbas said the agreement clearly meant Hamas accepted Israel. Yasser Abed Rabbo accused Hamas of "playing with words in order to save face".

Damian P.

Update: Pajamas Media has a blog roundup, while Aussie Dave is live-blogging "Operation Summer Rains" directly from Israel.

Stupid amendment fails

The U.S. Senate fell one vote shy of passing the proposed constitutional amendment against flag-burning. Good. I'm with James Taranto on this one:

Burning the flag is a stupid and ugly act, but there is something lovely and enlightened about a regime that tolerates it in the name of freedom. And of course it has the added benefit of making it easier to spot the idiots.

This Dana Milbank column shows the pure, unmitigated cynicism that characterized the Senate debate on the issue:

If wrapping oneself in the flag were a form of desecration, senators on both sides of the issue would have been in some trouble yesterday. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called a midday news conference outside his office with two colleagues. They stood in front of three gold-trimmed flags, eagles atop each.

"The American flag represents everything this country stands for," Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) told the assembled. "I am ready to go on this amendment!"

But is this the most important issue facing the nation? Frist was uneasy. "You know, it's interesting, in terms of the question of why, why, why now," he began, then decided to rephrase the question. "Is it important?" he asked. "You bet it's important."

Fortunately for Frist, his Democratic counterpart was struggling on another flag-bedecked stage. "I think we have some misplaced priorities," Sen. Harry Reid (Nev.) said, condemning the amendment at a news conference. "I don't think it's the right time to bring up the issue." Reid seemed a bit sheepish as he acknowledged, "I'll vote for it."

So if he thinks bringing it up is such a bad idea, why is he voting for it? "I'm confident it won't pass," Reid explained.

[Sen. Orrin] Hatch alone seemed unburdened of doubt. "This sends a message to the [Supreme] Court like it's never been sent before!" he said. "In my opinion, there's nothing that would supersede this in importance."

Damian P.

Update: Reason's David Wiegel writes, "when you consider the bills Congress could be passing, maybe it's not all bad that it's going to run out the clock with a bunch of meaningless bilge." Heh. Indeed.

Choking streak continues

Nope, this won't be the year Spain finally does something at the World Cup, either.

Pity they had to lose to the French, but even I have to say Zinedine Zidane's extra-time goal (video highlights here) was a masterpiece.

Damian P.

$2,651,644.00 million of tchotchkes

Auditor General John Noseworthy has handed down his latest report on House of Assembly misspending, and it's a whopper:

Newfoundland and Labrador's auditor general is questioning why more than $2.6 million in government funds was paid to three companies for items such as lapel pins, fridge magnets and key chains.

John Noseworthy reported Tuesday that more money was paid to a fourth company connected to a suspended senior official at the house of assembly.

"This is unprecedented," Noseworthy told reporters at a news conference. "I've never seen anything like this in my career."

Noseworthy's office found that payments totalling $2,651,644 were made between 1999 and 2005 to Zodiac Agencies, JAS Enterprises and Cedar Scents International for promotional materials.

Noseworthy said the money was spent largely on "low value novelty items," as well as a number of more expensive items, such as customized gold rings for members of the house of assembly.

However, Noseworthy told reporters his staff could find no evidence that the items ever existed.

[...]

Noseworthy's investigation of spending at the legislature had already rocked the province's political establishment before the release of Tuesday's report.

Last week, former government house leader and natural resources minister Ed Byrne resigned from cabinet after Noseworthy revealed that Byrne and three other provincial politicians are being investigated for overpayments totalling more than $1 million on constituency allowances.

Noseworthy said he has turned his findings on the payments to suppliers over to the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Justice. A police investigation has also started into the constituency allowances.

The entire report (only six pages long, including appendices) is here, in PDF format. Unlike most political scandals, where the blame can be laid at the feet of one political party, this one makes everyone look bad: the mess began under the Liberals, continued under the Tories, and even a New Democrat may be involved. Look for the Williams government to take a hit when the next opinion poll comes out, but any support they lose will likely end up in the "not sure/no opinion/completely farking pissed off" category, not the opposition parties.

Newfoundland bloggers Ed Hollett and Liam O'Brien are also covering this story, from very different angles.

Damian P.

Fixing the "fiscal imbalance"

An interesting post by Andrew Coyne, and another. But will the Conservatives dare to go far enough?

Mark C.

"Tories OK Liberal military buys"

"$2B fleet of ships among purchases planned by Grits". The headline and the sub-head of a story in which reporter David "Hillier Youth" Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen desperately credits the Liberals for a decision by the Conservative government:

Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor's announcement that the Harper government was going to spend more than $2 billion on a fleet of new supply transport ships for the navy is a case of deja vu of the first order.

In April 2004, then-prime minister Paul Martin launched the same program, with Liberal defence minister David Pratt announcing the exact details Mr. O'Connor outlined yesterday in Halifax...

...now, in a savvy public relations move, the Conservative government has embraced the Joint Support Ship program as its own, highlighting it as evidence of its commitment to rebuild the Canadian Forces...

Several of the military equipment announcements by the Conservative government over the next few days may be equally familiar.

Today in Valcartier, Que., it will announce the purchase of a new fleet of trucks, also originally outlined in the Liberals' defence policy paper last April, albeit with few details. The same goes for the plan to buy new medium-lift helicopters, an acquisition process the Harper government is to release tomorrow in Edmonton.

On Thursday, the Conservatives will announce the procurement of tactical airlift planes. Last fall, the Martin Liberals announced the same $5-billion program to buy a replacement for the aging Hercules aircraft, but didn't get far into the project before losing the January federal election.

The Harper government differs from its Liberal predecessor when it comes to long-range military transport planes. The Liberals decided those were too expensive to buy, especially since such aircraft could be quickly leased or obtained from NATO when needed...

Fine and good. This is what the military has said it needed, not the Liberals. But the Liberals never actually bought one damn thing on the list!

Mark C.

A+ for Asian students

Margaret Wente of the Globe examines academic achievement in Toronto high schools:

School's out this week across Toronto, and, as usual, the top-achieving students are no surprise. For years, their ranks have been dominated by Asian kids, especially Chinese, increasingly South Asian, with a sprinkling of Eastern Europeans. For all the hardships faced by new immigrants to Canada, many of their kids are the brightest of the bright. They run rings around the Canadian-born kids. Across the city, immigrant and first-generation students make up a disproportionate share of high-school valedictorians. And they also make up a disproportionate share of dropouts...

In an act of commendable bravery, the Toronto District School Board has been gathering statistics on drop-out rates by ethnicity. It found that the kids most likely to finish school are the Romanians. They have the lowest drop-out rate of all (10.8 per cent), followed closely by the Chinese (12.0), Gujaratis (14.3), Bengalis (16.7) and Tamils (16.9). The most likely to drop out are the Portuguese (42.5 per cent), English-speakers from the Caribbean (40 per cent), Hispanics from Central and South America (39.1 per cent), and Somalis (36.7). Canadian-born kids -- barely still in the majority, -- are in the middle of the pack (22.9)...

Why do Asian kids do so well? A lot of it has to do with cultural capital -- the set of habits, expectations and values shared by the family and the group. Cultural capital isn't about how smart you are. It's about how much value you place on education, how persistent you are in overcoming obstacles, and how hard you're willing to work to achieve your goals.

Asian educational achievement is stunning. When California eliminated racial preferences, Asian university enrolment soared. Asians account for 13 per cent of California's population, but they make up 25 per cent of the undergraduates at Stanford and 41 per cent at Berkeley...

The education system is supposed to be the great equalizer. So what can the schools do about these achievement gaps? People in Toronto are discussing all the usual stuff -- a more inclusive curriculum, more ethnic teachers, more outreach to families, more rejection of ethnic stereotypes, and, of course, an end to discrimination. But the education system's ability to equalize the outcomes is probably severely limited. That's because cultural capital is formed at home and formed early...

Mark C.

Defence procurement: Jim Travers drags Bush into it

Facts, research...who cares when one can bring Bush into an issue in order to discredit the government? The Toronto Star's Mr Travesty gets things very, very wrong:

Among those Harper is pleasing are O'Connor, the arms industry that until recently paid his lobbying fees, Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier, George W. Bush and, of course, Boeing. In buying everything from the [C-17] Globemasters to helicopters, ships and trucks, Harper ends a nasty dispute between O'Connor and Hillier and sends another strong signal south that, more than a friend, Canada is an ally.

That's important to an increasingly isolated Bush administration. And it's a help to both the Pentagon and Boeing as they try to extend the slowing Globemaster production run as far as possible...

That is nonsense. The Administration has been trying to stop C-17 procurement; it is Congress that is trying to extend it. From Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, April 5:

Senate appropriators on April 4 went a step further than their House counterparts to protect the C-17 aircraft, recommending $227.5 million toward advance procurement for more of the heavy lifters in fiscal 2008...

The administration requested none of the above, as it is looking to halt production at 180 aircraft and spend the money elsewhere (DAILY, March 30). But Senate appropriators added their voices to the expected chorus of lawmakers who are concerned with the administration's plan...

Yet another demonstration of the utter ignorance of the Canadian media about defence issues. Pitiful.

Mark C.

A nasty piece of work may not be allowed into Canada

What's up with Sheik Riyadh ul-Haq? The government is clearly trying to do something, but what is it?

A controversial British cleric scheduled to speak in Toronto will not be allowed to board a plane until he speaks with Canadian officials in London.

Shaykh Riyadh ul Haq, a British citizen, has been booked as keynote speaker at a Youth Tarbiyah conference this weekend for 2,000 delegates in Scarborough.

The organizers maintain ul Haq is a charismatic speaker, with a strong following amongst Muslim youth in Canada. But he has been accused of preaching hateful sermons against Jews, Hindus and moderate Muslims.

In an internal Air Canada memo obtained by the Toronto Star, which is addressed to at least one airline, gate security and ticket agents have been told not to allow ul Haq to board Air Canada planes. Instead, the memo says, the passenger must contact the Canadian High Commission in London, which issued the directive to Air Canada...

...Lesley Harmer, the [immigration] minister's director of communications, said, "Anyone who comes here and practises hate speech will be arrested and prosecuted under Canada's Criminal Code, and we don't welcome anyone that practises hate speech."

However, when asked how such directives work, Harmer explained that Canada Border Security Officials reserve the right to restrict an individual's entry into the country.

"They are the ones that make decisions on whether an individual from a visa-exempt country is admissible to enter into Canada...

Mark C.

The Incredible Shrinking Automaker

How the mighty have fallen because they couldn't make cars people want to buy (even if, pace Buzz Hargrove, quality has improved). Is there an Optra or Aveo or Epica in your future? Does anyone even recognize them?

In an employee exodus that is one of the biggest ever, about 47,600 union workers at General Motors and its former division, the Delphi Corporation, accepted early retirement or buyout offers, the companies said Monday.

At G.M., about 35,000 workers will leave at the end of the year, the company said.

The number, representing nearly a third of G.M.'s 113,000 hourly workers, is significantly higher than the company had expected. As a result G.M., which intends to close 12 plants by 2008 to pare costs and become more competitive, will reach its goal of eliminating 30,000 jobs two years ahead of schedule, the chief executive, Rick Wagoner, said...

Mark C.

Another name named

Liberal Wally Anderson is the third sitting MHA whose constituency expenses are being investigated.

The Auditor General is also investigating a former Liberal MHA. Poor Gerry Reid: the biggest scandal in years falls right into his lap, but with two members of his own party implicated, he can't really do much about it.

Damian P.

Get Smart

DaimlerChrysler's on-again, off-again plan to bring the tiny Smart FourTwo to America is on again. (Thanks to a Da Vinci Code promotional boost, perhaps?)

The Smart Car has been available in Canada for a few years now, and I've seen plenty of them in Toronto and Halifax. That's why I think this clever, attention-getting little car will be a smash hit in larger American cities, too. (Joe Sherlock disagrees.) That said, if I were in the market for something that small, I'd buy a Honda Fit or Kia Rio5 and spend the price difference on a big-screen TV.

Speaking of small cars, Karl Brauer of Edmunds.com responds to the heavily hyped new documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? here. (I thought we knew that already.)

Damian P.

Blacklisted in the USSR

Back in the day, when Soviet trawlers regularly docked in St. John's, Russian fishermen would sell their old LPs at Fred's Records on Duckworth Street so they could get some money to buy essentials (cigarettes, condoms and rusty old Ladas). While browsing the used vinyl, I remember coming across albums by Bon Jovi and Queen on the "Melodiya" label, but there's a reason I never saw any Russian albums by Pink Floyd or AC/DC:

It is one of the strangest line-ups of rock and pop stars ever, a place where the Sex Pistols, Madness and AC/DC rub shoulders with Village People, Donna Summer and Julio Iglesias.

But what these, and 32 other acts, have in common is even more surprising: they were all on a secret blacklist issued by the communist authorities in the former Soviet Union.

[...]

The blacklist, titled 'The approximate list of foreign musical groups and artists, whose repertoires contain ideologically harmful compositions', was drawn up by Komsomol, the Communist Party's Youth Wing. It was written in the obscure and verbose language of Soviet bureaucracy and riddled with classic Cold War paranoia.

Despite their left-wing street-cred in the West, the Clash were banned for "punk and violence", as were, among others, the B-52s, the Stranglers and Blondie.

Heavy metal acts such as Black Sabbath, Nazareth, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were blacklisted for supposed offences including religious obscurantism, violence, racism and anti-communism.

Talking Heads joined the list for "myth of the Soviet military threat" and Pink Floyd were blacklisted for "distortion of Soviet foreign policy".

But more mainstream acts also fell foul of the communist authorities. The Village People were deemed 'violent', Tina Turner was banned for "sex", Summer for "eroticism" and several artists, including Iglesias and 10cc, for "neo-fascism". (via Colby Cosh)

Damian P.

Shooting Fast Eddie Said in a barrel

Even the defence, by Maya Jasanoff in the London Review of Books, is limp. "Post-colonial" discourse for your delectation - the author at least has a decent respect for reality, hard though it be for her to admit it. An earlier guest-post on the book under review is here.

Ms. Jasanoff concedes the first trench line:

So how effectively does Irwin challenge Said? Factual purists will be delighted by his pot-shots. He makes mincemeat of such sweeping assertions as ‘Britain and France dominated the Eastern Mediterranean from about the end of the 17th century on.’ He corrects several inaccuracies concerning the medieval and Renaissance periods, and disputes Said’s representation of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. He effectively contests the portrayal of Orientalism ‘as a unified, self-confirmatory discourse’ by emphasising internecine disagreements. He provides an impressive list of Arab academics to challenge the suggestion that Orientalism has prevented Arabs from writing about themselves...

Now for some discourse:

Another disappointing aspect of Irwin’s encyclopedic approach is the relative dearth of overarching analysis. All this rich evidence begs questions. The most obvious ones concern inspirations and motives...

Of course, there is a perplexing ambiguity to Said’s presentation of the relationship between imperialism and scholarship. Does Orientalism act as a substitute for empire? Does it enable empire? Or is it the consequence of empire? (Phrasing the questions in parallel terms: does knowledge act as a substitute for power; does it enable power; or is it the consequence of power?) Irwin’s systematic attention to Oriental studies across Europe does much to counter Said’s contention that Orientalism was the product of the ‘three great empires – British, French, American’. For one thing, as Irwin quite rightly notes, ‘if one wants to give full and proper consideration to the relationship between Orientalism and imperialism, then one should turn to Russia with its vast empire of Muslim subjects.’ An equally gaping lacuna in Said’s work, Irwin stresses, concerns German Orientalism: German universities exercised scholarly hegemony at a time when German states possessed no Oriental colonies at all [my emphasis, and there goes the whole imperialist construction - MC]...

...Irwin has no truck with efforts to ‘“negotiate the Other”, “reinvent alterity” and suchlike enterprises’ pursued by post-colonialist literary critics; and it is easy to mock their sometimes convoluted prose. It is far less easy, however, to dismiss their impact in replacing Said’s now outdated binary conception of Otherness with richer analyses of hybridity and identities...

Duhh. Let us now dismiss this nonesense and re-read The State and Revolution or Mein Kampf, that we may learn the effects of wrong and evil thought - directly in the case of Hitler and less directly but rapidly in the case of Lenin - on the real world. While Fast Eddie's lies fester and distort. And excuse murder.

Update: Moral equivalence at its worst, from an exhibit on the Soviet Gulag that is touring the US:

..."Brutal systems have played a prominent role in many countries, including the United States," one of the exhibit's last panels tells visitors. By itself, that one clause--"including the United States"--would be bad enough. But the panel continues. "Although slavery ended after the American Civil War, its consequences persist. The repercussions of the Holocaust in Europe and apartheid in South Africa reverberate even today. Similarly, Russians face the legacy of the gulag. How can citizens in these countries face up to the horrors of the past?"

Just as it is the small details of the Gulag exhibit that lead one to consider the depth of the deprivation its captives endured, it is the word "similarly" that so effectively undermines what has just been shown. After all, if the Gulag is "similar" to anything in American life or history, does it teach us anything about the Soviet Union--or about anything at all? "If you cannot distinguish between levels of evil, you are a cause of evil." Such was the astute reaction of a man whose father spent a decade in the Gulag, when confronted with this moral equivalence in the paragraph above...

Mark C.

New martyr created

In a move that will make everybody at the University of Colorado a little smarter, the school plans to fire Ward Churchill:

The University of Colorado announced Monday that it will dismiss controversial professor Ward Churchill.

"Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado Boulder," CU Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano said Monday afternoon.

Churchill has 10 days to appeal, which entails making a request to have the university president or chancellor forward the recommendation to the faculty senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure. A special panel will then conduct hearings on the matter and make a recommendation to the president on whether grounds for dismissal are supported.

Another committee found Churchill guilty of research misconduct and another panel recommended that he be fired because of "repeated and deliberate" infractions of scholarship rules.

[...]

When his essay was brought to light in January 2005, Gov. Bill Owens, state lawmakers and relatives of Sept. 11, 2001 victims in New York immediately denounced it. University officials concluded Churchill could not be fired for the essay, but in March 2005 they launched an investigation into allegations of plagiarism and other research misconduct.

"A committee last year began to look at his writings including his essay on 9/11," said DiStefano. "We determined his writings were protected under the First Amendment. However, during that process there were allegations of research misconduct."

Last month, an investigative subcommittee concluded that Churchill repeatedly fabricated his research, plagiarized others' work and strayed from the "bedrock principles of scholarship."

Churchill is not being fired because of his political views, but that will not stop his canonization as a victim of the stifling of dissent in Bush's Amerikkka. Whether he gets picked up by another school or becomes a prolific speaker on the ultra-left lecture circuit, he need not worry about where his next meal is coming from.

Damian P.

How Muslims see us, and vice versa

Further to this post, The Guardian reports on a new survey which shows that British Muslims are "the most anti-western in Europe":

Public opinion in Britain is mostly favourable towards Muslims, but the feeling is not requited by British Muslims, who are among the most embittered in the western world, according to a global poll published yesterday.

The poll, by the Washington-based Pew Global Attitudes Project, asked Muslims and non-Muslims about each other in 13 countries. In most, it found suspicion and contempt to be mostly mutual, but uncovered a significant mismatch in Britain.

The poll found that 63% of all Britons had a favourable opinion of Muslims, down slightly from 67% in 2004, suggesting last year's London bombings did not trigger a significant rise in prejudice. Attitudes in Britain were more positive than in the US, Germany and Spain (where the popularity of Muslims has plummeted to 29%), and about the same as in France.

Less than a third of British non-Muslims said they viewed Muslims as violent, significantly fewer than non-Muslims in Spain (60%), Germany (52%), the US (45%) and France (41%).

By contrast, the poll found that British Muslims represented a "notable exception" in Europe, with far more negative views of westerners than Islamic minorities elsewhere on the continent. A significant majority viewed western populations as selfish, arrogant, greedy and immoral. Just over half said westerners were violent. While the overwhelming majority of European Muslims said westerners were respectful of women, fewer than half British Muslims agreed. Another startling result found that only 32% of Muslims in Britain had a favourable opinion of Jews, compared with 71% of French Muslims.

Across the board, Muslim attitudes in Britain more resembled public opinion in Islamic countries in the Middle East and Asia than elsewhere in Europe. And on the whole, British Muslims were more pessimistic than those in Germany, France and Spain about the feasibility of living in a modern society while remaining devout.

The poll results, which can be viewed here, are decidedly mixed. On the plus side, "confidence in Osama bin Laden" has collapsed, and a significant majority of Muslims in Egypt, Jordan and Indonesia believe democracy and Islam are compatible. On the other hand, even in Europe, most Muslims refuse to believe Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks. (They weren't asked who they believe actually did it, but I have a pretty good idea.)

On a related note, Cathy Young has a new piece in Reason about the line between legitimate criticism of the Islamic faith and prejudice against Muslims. You won't agree with all of it (I don't), but Young's columns are always worth reading.

Damian P.

Why no "UN Army" will work

Canadians seem incapable of understanding that, in terms of enforcing international peace and security, there is no such thing as the UN. There are the five permanent members of the Security Council, each pursuing its own national interest. Only rarely - as with the 1991 Gulf War and currently with Afghanistan - do those interests coincide to the extent of authorizing the use of armed force. Maj.-Gen. (ret'd) Lewis Mackenzie explains:

A collection of well-meaning academics and security experts recently proposed the creation of an international rapid reaction force that could be deployed within 48 hours of a green light from the United Nations. It's a bad idea...

...this month...academics and security experts raised the idea of a standing professional UN army numbering 15,000 military, police and civilian staff, including logistics and nation-building specialists. Details of the concept are found in the book A United Nations Emergency Peace Service: To Prevent Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, which was presented at the UN.

The authors opine that such a force would accelerate the UN's glacial response to the myriad of peace and security problems that cry out for intervention, and they cite Rwanda and congo as prime examples. They suggest that the UN force could be on its way to a trouble spot within 48 hours and perhaps even be pre-deployed to nip an emerging crisis in the bud before it blossoms...

To suggest that the existence of a UN army would have helped stop the genocide in Rwanda or could be used to take on the current genocide in Darfur is naive. The stumbling block for both was and is not a lack of resources but rather a lack of commitment beyond national self-interests by some of the Perm 5 members. In the case of Rwanda, there were no self-interests strong enough to authorize intervention; in Darfur, the self-interests of at least two members (related to oil production) [guess which? - MC] mean their vetoes stand in the way of any forceful action. If a UN army did exist, it would still be sitting on its hands far away from Darfur.

I would not be the least bit surprised if the Security Council itself would veto any attempt to create a UN army. If one exists, there would be pressure to use it - and the Perm 5 wouldn't like being backed into a decision-making corner...

By the way, about 99% of people are unaware that current US and Coalition operations in Iraq have full Security Council authorization until the end of this year. Take that, UN lovers!

Mark C

Hug needed

If you think you're feeling a little out of sorts today, check out this guy.

Damian P.

A death in the blogosphere

"Acidman" Rob, whose site Gut Rumbles was one of the first blogs I discovered, has passed away. May he Rest in Peace.

Damian P.

Prosecute the leakers, not the Times

That's what John Hawkins argues.

InstaPundit, Austin Bay and Hugh Hewitt are decidedly unimpressed with Times editor Bill Keller's response to the controversy.

Damian P.

Who needs a plot when you've got 93 car crashes?

Whatever you're doing tonight, cancel it and watch the original Gone in 60 Seconds, a 97-minute film in which 93 cars are destroyed, on the Speed Channel. Of all the great car-chase movies of the seventies and early eighties, this is the best. (And the less said about the Jerry Bruckheimer remake, the better.)

Damian P.

The cowardly carmakers

Some people will say the new Chrysler Sebring looks like the result of a one-night stand between a Crossfire and a Saturn Ion, but I quite like it.

I'll say this for Chrysler: unlike two other American car manufacturers who shall remain nameless, they're not afraid to build cars some people will think ugly, just as long as other buyers think they look great. This and this, on the other hand, prove that their respective makers were terrified of offending potential buyers, resulting in vehicles that will never merit a second glance.

Damian P.

Englandistan in depth

Are a great number of Muslims in the UK really antagonistic toward their own country? An article in the New York Times Magazine is rather pessimistic. It also gives considerable detail on the counter-terrorism measures the UK is taking--much stronger than anything here in Canada. A few excerpts:

Lord Carlile of Berriew, a Welshman who is Britain's independent reviewer of counterterrorism laws, has wide access to classified intelligence about terrorism plans. He is the last person you would expect to hype the dangers. For one thing, his party, the Liberal Democrats, has reaped electoral gains by opposing Tony Blair's war on terror, particularly Blair's belief that Iraq is a front in that war. For another, Lord Carlile has made a name for himself as a civil libertarian — a champion of legal underdogs from the terminally ill to the transsexual — and civil libertarians are the ones who have led the opposition to antiterror measures. "How serious is it?" he asked, sitting beside a conference-room table in his law chambers off the Strand on a sunny morning this spring. "Very. Complacency, tempting though it is, is the worst possible attitude. We've been fortunate we haven't had more attacks. There will be more."...

Aggressive information-gathering is also meeting steady community opposition. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 lets the police designate areas where anyone can be stopped and searched without cause. Muslims say that Section 44 is being used to target them. It tends to be the first thing heads of Muslim organizations complain about if you bring up the war on terror. Liberty, the British equivalent of the American Civil Liberties Union, has accused the London Police of making virtually the entire city a Section 44 area...

Like most modern "diaspora" immigrants, the Pakistani-British visit their native country with little difficulty. There were 400,000 British visitors to Pakistan in 2004. All countries with large Muslim diasporas are vulnerable to the worldwide Wahhabi radicalization fomented at mosques and cultural centers financed by Saudi Arabia's government and its private charities. But on top of that, Britain is vulnerable to radicalizing trends of South Asia — India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. These trends risk becoming Britain's own, particularly among its socially isolated minorities...

More after the jump.

Mark C.

But over the past quarter-century, Britain has seen a dispiriting tendency toward segregation, or resegregation. Young newcomers have not found a niche in the service economy as easily as the arrivals of 40 and 50 years ago did in the industrial one...Last year, Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, warned that much of Britain was "sleepwalking its way toward segregation." And this segregation is especially entrenched among Muslims. The researchers Tariq Modood and Richard Berthoud have shown that only 1 percent of British Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have white partners, versus 20 percent of Afro-Carribeans. The percentage of South Asian Britons who return to Bangladesh and Pakistan to find wives or husbands is hard to measure, but some researchers place it above 50 percent, and a European demographer calls ethnic endogamy "arrestingly high."..

When you talk to many Muslim leaders in Britain, you hear them focus almost obsessively on international politics, to the exclusion of religious, social and local political issues. The charitable way of looking at this is to say that it is a function of young people's burning to change the world — for the median age of Muslims is more than a decade younger than that of other Britons, which is pushing into the early 40's...

...A poll in February in The Daily Telegraph showed that 40 percent of British Muslims favor the establishment of Islamic law — but only piecemeal, and under certain circumstances. Even in heavily Muslim neighborhoods, there is no great public clamor to ban alcohol — usually a telltale sign of pro-Shariah agitation. And Britain's relaxed laws regarding religious dress — more akin to the American model than to the French — have allowed it to avoid the controversies over the Muslim headscarf that have roiled the rest of Europe. But Mustafa's [Taji Mustafa, a charismatic and confrontational spokesman for the group Hizb ut-Tahrir] other claim — that the vast majority of citizens in heavily Muslim Whitechapel sympathize viscerally and overwhelmingly with the radical position on Israel and, more generally, on foreign policy — must be faced squarely. For Mustafa is unquestionably correct.

People often talk about the "diversity" of the British Muslim population. This is fair if the dimension you are concerned about is skin color or per capita income or attitudes on the relative merits of Hanafi and Hanbali jurisprudence. But if the dimension is Western foreign policy, then there is really very little diversity at all. A Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism leaked from the Home Office in 2004 found that a main source of anger among youth was "a perception of 'double standards' in British foreign policy, where democracy is preached but oppression of the 'Ummah' (the one nation of believers) is practiced or tolerated, e.g. in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya." By overwhelming numbers, Muslims oppose all intervention in the Arab and Muslim world. Somewhere between 64 and 80 percent, depending on the poll you consult, opposed the recent Afghan war...

Foreign policy may be the only dimension on which moderates and radicals agree. But it happens to be the dimension the terrorists cite when they blow up buses. That harmony of worldview is a dire problem for Britain in general and Muslims in particular — no matter how narrow the terrain on which it is built. It creates a climate in which a sympathetic hearing is guaranteed for any claim that the real cause of terrorism is Iraq or Israel or America's love of big oil. (And if you are hunting terrorists by, say, tapping phones, it makes terrorists impossible to identify solely through the politics they profess.)..

...Britain is now betting that the country will retain its historically bottomless reserves of sang-froid in the face of a threat that is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the threat of the I.R.A.; that there is something in the makeup of Britons that makes them more stoical than, say, Americans in New York about bombs going off; that the quiet tenor of the British fight against Islamist terrorism thus far is a sign of good manners and forbearance, not of abject fright or sneaking sympathy; and that Britain in the age of the Diana funeral is the same country it was during the blitz.

It is a risky bet.

This is my happening, and it freaks me out

Whatever you're doing right now, surely it's not so important that you can't take a few minutes to watch the suitably insane (and NSFW) trailer for the 1970 cult movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. (via Kathy Shaidle) Yes, "X" was a real MPAA rating back in 1970. (The film would probably get an "R" today, but just barely.)

I finally saw Beyond the Valley of the Dolls when it aired on the wonderful new Drive-In Classics channel recently, and the whole film is just like the trailer: incoherent, laughably dated, gratuitously lewd and violent - but never, ever boring. The trailer and Rick McGinnis's review of the recently released DVD should tell you whether this kind of thing is your bag, man.

Damian P.

Update: as McGinnis notes in the comment section, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls screenwriter Roger Ebert - yes, that Roger Ebert - is still proud of his work on the film, and even has an audio commentary on the new DVD. Here's an article Ebert wrote to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the movie's release.

David Manning lives

Gene from Harry's Place reveals the truth about a laudatory blurb on the back cover of St. Noam's new book, and offers a blurb of his own.

(If you don't know the sordid saga of "David Manning," click here.)

Damian P.

Satan is a Democrat

I have nothing at all against the good people of Utah, but somehow I'm not surprised to find out that's where this story comes from:

As if beating a five-term congressman wasn't hard enough, John Jacob said he has another foe working against him: the devil. "There's another force that wants to keep us from going to Washington, D.C.," Jacob said. "It's the devil is what it is. I don't want you to print that, but it feels like that's what it is." Jacob said Thursday that since he decided to run for Congress against Rep. Chris Cannon, Satan has bollixed his business deals, preventing him from putting as much money into the race as he had hoped.

Numerous business deals he had lined up have been delayed, freezing money he was counting on to finance his race.

"You know, you plan, you organize, you put your budget together and when you have 10 things fall through, not just one, there's some other, something else that is happening," Jacob said.

Asked if he actually believed that "something else" was indeed Satan, Jacob said: "I don't know who else it would be if it wasn't him. Now when that gets out in the paper, I'm going to be one of the screw-loose people."

Jacob initially said the devil was working against him during a Wednesday immigration event, then reiterated his belief Thursday in a meeting with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board.

"There's a lot of adversity. There's no question I've had experiences that I think there's an outside force," he said. (via Andrew Sullivan)

Damian P.

What news is fit to print?

Tim Blair compares the several major newspapers' decision not to publish the Mohammed cartoons with their decision to reveal details of classified anti-terrorism programs. He concludes, "instead of merely classifying its anti-terror programs, the US government should devise a code that renders the programs as Islam-mocking cartoons. Newspapers would never publish them."

I can't bring myself to say the New York Times shouldn't have been allowed to run its story about government surveillance of banking transactions, but that doesn't mean I can't wish they hadn't. Investor's Business Daily has a good editorial on the subject. (via LGF)

Damian P.

"Prince Naz," "Moorish Science" and terrorism

The Sunday Times has more details about the seven people arrested in Miami on terrorism charges, and their bizarre beliefs:

The ringleader of the seven men accused of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago was a “Moses-like figure” who carried a crooked cane and wore a cape as he sought to recruit followers to a religious cult called the Seas of David.

Narseal Batiste, 32, a martial arts enthusiast, led his oddball group of what he called “soldiers” seeking to wage a “full ground war” against America, according to charges brought last week.

The father of four, known to his followers as Prinze Naz, sometimes wore a bathrobe when entering the shabby warehouse in Miami that FBI officials claim was the base of the would-be terrorists.

[...]

Batiste grew up in Chicago and, as a young man, joined the Guardian Angels, a beret-wearing citizens’ crime prevention group. In 1994 he told his father, a former preacher, that he was “joining the Muslims” but his beliefs bear little relation to orthodox Islam.

A close friend said his teachings came from the Moorish Science Temple of America, an early 20th century religion founded by the Noble Drew Ali, a wandering African-American circus magician who claimed to have been raised by Cherokee Indians and to have learnt “high magic” in Egypt. Ali went on to style himself an “angel” and prophet of Allah.

The Seas of David borrows tenets from Judaism and Christianity as well as Islam and emphasises self-discipline through martial arts.

Batiste was known to hate President George W Bush and the war in Iraq. Neighbours would see his followers practising martial arts but paid little attention to them. “It seemed like a military boot camp,” said one.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that this is not the first time a believer in "Moorish Science" has been caught trying to organize a terrorist attack:

Another adherent of Moorish Science was Clement Rodney Hampton-El, who was convicted in 1995 of taking part in a failed plot to blow up New York city tunnels and landmarks with truck bombs.

Some background about the religion, which doesn't appear to have much in common with mainstream or radical Islam, here.

Damian P.

Aaron Spelling, R.I.P.

The producer of Dynasty, Charlie's Angels, Beverly Hills, 90210 and dozens of other memorable shows has passed away at age 83. Spelling's Internet Movie Database entry, with 212 producing credits, says more than any obituary could.

Damian P.

Is there a Ford in his past?

Igor Tudor plays for Croatia. I'm partial to the 1932, 1940 and 1956 Tudors, myself.

Mark C.

Entire 50% of NDP caucus under investigation

Further to Ed Byrne's resignation for alleged problems with his constituency expenses, the Auditor General and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary are also investigating an unnamed Liberal MHA - and every New Democrat half the New Democrats in the House:

The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary says they have received a letter of referral from the Department of Justice with regard to the Auditor General's Review. A team of RNC investigators have been assigned and are meeting with the Auditor General. Police say the matter is in the preliminary stages and they are unable to comment at this time.

Liberal Leader Gerry Reid says he now knows which member of his caucus is the subject of an investigation by the Auditor General, but he will not reveal the name. Reid says he received a call from the MHA late last night. He says it's troubling since suspicion has been cast on his entire caucus, including himself. Reid says it's going to be difficult to restore people's faith and trust in government.

Meanwhile, the NDP MHA for Labrador West isn't talking publicly, but his lawyer confirms Randy Collins is the subject of an investigation by the Auditor General. Lawyer Ed Hearn says they have asked John Noseworthy for information.

I have no idea which Liberal MHA is in trouble, but I know which one I hope is in trouble. (I don't like getting sued for defamation, so I won't say who it is unless he or she turns out to be the one who is indeed under investigation.)

Damian P.

Correction: I thought former NDP leader Jack Harris had resigned from the House, but he's still listed as an MHA. (Hat tip: antirealist)

A future for Futurama

Comedy Central will begin airing new episodes in 2008. I presume they got around budgetary concerns by deciding to pay Dr. Zoidberg even less.

Damian P.

Senate Committee: Conservative defence plans "too timid"

The Committee on National Security and Defence is really gung-ho:

The Conservative government is heading in the right direction when it comes to defence, but needs to move farther and faster, a Senate committee says.

The senators say the government needs to pump billions more into defence and recruit thousands of more people if it wants to meet what they call its No. 1 responsibility: the protection of Canadians.

Senator Colin Kenny, the Liberal chairman of the defence committee, says the annual defence budget - which is projected to hit $20.3 billion by 2010-11 - should be $25 billion to $35 billion. "Probably closer to $35 billion."

The committee says the military should be beefed up to 90,000 people from the present authorized level of about 64,000. The government has promised to bring the Forces up to 75,000.

The senators also recommend a multi-billion-dollar military shopping list, ranging from trucks and artillery pieces to heavy, long-range transport planes, attack and transport helicopters, new ships and, eventually, new fighter planes.

They say the government's plans are too timid...

The report admits that selling a bigger defence budget is a political challenge, but the senators say it can be done.

"We see a lot of other countries that manage to do it," Kenny said.

He said Canada currently spends $343 per capita on the military compared with $648 for Australians, $658 for the Dutch and $903 for Britons...

I like the double Dutch. With their CH-47 Chinook transport (that we sold them) and AH-64 attack helos in Afghanistan.

The report is also an indication of the good work the Senate can do. The Commons could never produce anything like that.

Mark C.

Damian adds: I can't believe I just allowed something positive about the Canadian Senate to appear on this blog.

Ed's expenses

The Auditor General accuses Ed Byrne of claiming over $326,000.00 more in constituency expenses than he was legally entitled to - and says three other current or former MHAs are also being investigated, and implies that none of them could have pulled this off without collusion of House of Assembly staff:

A politician who has resigned his Newfoundland and Labrador cabinet seat submitted claims worth more than 10 times the amount to which he was entitled, an auditor general's report says.

Ed Byrne stepped down Wednesday as Newfoundland and Labrador's natural resources minister, after Auditor General John Noseworthy advised officials, including Premier Danny Williams, about Byrne's use of constituency allowances.

Noseworthy's audit found Byrne had signed and submitted claims for $358,142 during the 2003 and 2004 fiscal years, or more than $326,000 above his $31,500 limit.

Constituency allowances are given to members of the provincial legislature to pay for such items as office rental, supplies and miscellaneous services. They vary from member to member, depending on the size of their district and distance from the capital. Byrne represents the St. John's-area district of Kilbride.

[...]

Noseworthy said the overspending could not have happened without accounting staff from the legislature knowing about it.

"It seems to me that there had to be some sort of collusion at the house in order for claims of this magnitude to be processed … The [Royal Newfoundland Constabulary], who now have the file …will have to look into that and make that determination," Noseworthy said.

Noseworthy — who is also examining spending by other MHAs — said some spending reports tabled in the legislature were false.

[...]

Noseworthy confirmed Thursday that three other politicians — one current Liberal MHA, a former Liberal MHA and a sitting New Democrat — are being investigating for overspending on their constituency allowances.

In total, Noseworthy — whom Williams empowered to examine spending by politicians, after the Tories won the 2003 provincial election — said claims filed by the four politicians together exceed $1 million.

Noseworthy will not name the other politicians until he finishes those reports.

This is starting to look interesting. Really interesting.

Damian P.

Pope Markos I

TNR's Jonathan Chait has an amusing piece on Markos Moulitsas's holy war against his magazine:

He has refused to link to our stories--except of course the minority that attack the left, all the better to display our enemy status--and declared us irrelevant and buried in the dustbin of history. Except now, two years after having unleashed his most terrible weapons, he has to bury us all over again. And so, he urges his readers, "If you still hold a subscription to that magazine, it really is time to call it quits." This is like the Catholic Church digging up the heretic it had already burned at the stake so it can excommunicate the corpse a second time.

Kos, seemingly aware that this is an unsatisfactory punishment, proceeds to urge his readers, "If you see it in a magazine rack, you might as well move it behind the National Review or even NewsMax, since that's who they want to be associated with these days." Not subscribing isn't enough. Loyal Kossacks must hide it in newsstands so other liberals will not be exposed to our ideological impurities. [via Andrew Sullivan]

John Hawkins has a useful summary of "Kos-gate" here. Meanwhile, there's some interesting stuff going on at the Huffington Post, too:

Influential website the Huffington Post tried to ban one of its bloggers after he discovered an anonymous heckler on his blog was actually the Post's technology manager.

In his Huffington Post blog, Peter Rost exposed the identity of the heckler - known as a "troll" in blogging parlance - which prompted the Post to temporarily block his access.

[...]

Dr Rost wrote a Huffington Post blog exposing Andy Yaco-Mink as the troll, suggesting that he had probably manipulated the Post's systems to get his comments placed in the readers' favourite comments.

He wrote: "In order for the Huffington Post to maintain its credibility, the site needs to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest or rigged rankings."

This prompted the Post to block his access to the site.

"You have not been 'fired' but rather asked to refrain from posting as our editorial staff felt that your recent blogs were not in line with the mission of our site," the Huffington Post wrote in a letter to Dr Rost. [via LGF]

Contrary to the Guardian story, Dr. Rost says he has not been allowed to resume posting at the HuffPost. Who's telling the truth here? Either way, it's impossible not to watch.

Damian P.

Jeffrey Simpson: Eco-Sage or Impresssionist Whitewasher?

Yesterday in an online chat at the Globe and Mail website, Canada's master of the stunningly obvious extended his repertoire of bureaucratic bromides into a new economy of truth:

Peter Lucas, Langley, B.C.: Perhaps the Conservatives are stalling [on acting on climate change as you write in you column today] because, contrary to popular belief, they understand that the science behind man's contribution to global warming is shaky at best. But it would be political suicide to confront the new great religion. Perhaps they realize global warming is natural. Perhaps they realize global warming would be good for Canada.

Jeffrey Simpson: Peter: In saying that science is shaky behind climate change, you are in a dwindling and largely discredited minority. You are welcome to cling to his shaky position, but it's becoming — or I should say has already become — marginal. Even the Chinese accept the science behind global warming.

Now would those be the same Chinese who won an exemption from the Kyoto Protocols and have ramped up greenhouse gas emissions in a binge of energy consumption to fuel breakneck economic expansion? Or did we gentle readers miss some earlier sonorous backgrounder of his?

Could it be that the Chinese government in fact acknowledges the existence of the "science" underpinning global warming... and are comforted by its passionate embrace within the chattering classes of competitor nations, viz. the esteemed Mr. Simpson?

One might well think that, but I could not possibly comment.

Paul Canniff

God bless the Toronto Star

If only Buffalo Bob Rae and most other Liberal leadership candidates knew as much and analyzed as well:

In two recent leadership debates, Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison came under fire from their rivals for voting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives to extend our role until 2009.

Ignatieff, in particular, has drawn fierce criticism. Bob Rae says Canadians don't need a "Harper lite" leading the official opposition. Joe Volpe claims Ignatieff embraces a "Made in Washington" foreign policy. And Lloyd Axworthy, a former Liberal foreign minister who is not in the race, says Ignatieff reflexively supports "American military adventures" instead of assuming a "responsibility to protect" civilians.

While Canadian opinion is split on the Afghan mission, these criticisms are simplistic. Liberal candidates who seek to differentiate themselves by proposing that Canada quit any active military role and instead volunteer only for lighter peacekeeping-style duties, or who fear we are "losing our way" or becoming an "occupying" force, do our country no service.

Three prime ministers now, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Harper, have agreed that a stable Afghanistan is in our interest. Chrétien, no fan of foreign entanglements, did the right thing when our American neighbours were attacked on 9/11. He sent commandos [actually, mostly regular infantry: 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (3 PPCLI) Battle Group - MC] to help oust the terror-friendly Taliban. He also offered Afghans aid to restore democracy under President Hamid Karzai and to set up a new central government and rebuild. Later, Martin agreed Canada should play a lead role disrupting Taliban insurgents who pose a serious threat to the new government...

Canadians must remember that our 2,300 troops and $800 million in aid are in Afghanistan at Karzai's express request, under a United Nations mandate and with 37 countries, including our North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners. The legitimacy of this mission is beyond criticism. Ignatieff and Brison deserve credit, not censure, for their defence of it.

True, the mission has evolved over time. Canadian forces were initially [secondly - MC: even the Star ain't perfect, see two paras above] in relatively safe Kabul, the capital. They are now in dangerous Kandahar, part of the U.S.-led Enduring Freedom counterinsurgency campaign. They are fighting Taliban instead of doing an easier job under NATO in a calmer region. But NATO expects to take over even this mission soon...

Meanwhile, the New York Review of Books has a pessimistic but honest article on Afghanistan that should be read. Strange days indeed...

Mark C.

In denial?

Martin Collacott, a former Canadian ambassador in Asia and the Middle East, does not think the new government (or most anybody else in Canada) is yet willing deal with reality:

Last week our envoy in Washington, Michael Wilson, told Americans they should not be unduly worried about threats of terrorism on the Canadian side of the border -- that we have things under control. While it is the task of the ambassador to project a positive image and get the best deals he can for Canada, the message must be credible to be effective. Unfortunately, the one Wilson delivered was tainted with the same kind of denial of the seriousness of our situation that undermined attempts by the previous Liberal government to convince the United States that reports of terrorist activity in Canada had been exaggerated...

There is no substitute for frank acknowledgement of the extent of the problems we face in dealing with terrorism on our soil. The Americans know in detail what we are doing well and what we are not doing well. It is all out there in the public domain -- more often than not in the form of statements from our own officials. A case in point was the revelation on Monday by the head of the Canadian Border Security Agency that in the first six months of this year, 300 cars drove into Canada from the United States without being screened and that the police were only about to catch up with 70 of them to determine if they were a security threat...

Overall, the Conservatives have done a fairly impressive job of pursuing the fight against terror. But they should now be prepared to admit that we still have a long way to go and start outlining the steps that need to be taken.

Slipping back into the state of denial that all too frequently characterized the Liberal approach -- particularly in it dealings with Washington -- will do little more than erode our credibility.

Mark C.

Military procurement update

One hopes the competitions for the helicopters and for the Hercules replacements don't drag on like the one for the Sea King replacement:

On Monday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is set to announce in Halifax that the Conservative government will fund the building of three new supply ships at an expected cost of about $2.1 billion.

On Tuesday, the announcement will be to give the army new trucks. That promise, worth about $1.1 billion, will be made in Quebec.

On Wednesday, in Edmonton, will come the official announcement about helicopters. The prime minister will issue an invitation to tender for 15 new helicopters at a cost of about $4.2 billion.

Finally, on Thursday at CFB Trenton in Ontario, Harper will announce a competition worth $4.6 billion to replace Canada's aging fleet of Hercules aircraft, some of which date back to the 1960s.

Harper will also promise to buy at least four C-17 transport planes, which are massive heavy-lift aircraft, at a cost of $3 billion...

Remember, all these cost are life-cycle (spares, training, maintenance, etc.) and spread over God knows how many years. The actual purchase prices are much lower. As for why the helos are needed:

Soldiers would be less likely to be killed or maimed by insurgents if helicopters were used to supply bases instead of increasingly dangerous convoys through hostile territory, a Canadian military spokesman said yesterday after a series of bloody attacks in Afghanistan.

"If we are going to be using vehicles on the ground to bring goods, to bring supplies to our forward operating bases, yes, it's problematic, because you're more exposed to IEDs as opposed to using a Chinook," Major Mario Couture said yesterday.

"No doubt, it would be a nice piece of equipment to have."..

Mark C.

The flag that freaked out a nation

[originally posted to Maple Lions]

After Ghana scored its second goal against the Czech Republic last week, defender John Paintsil waved an Israeli flag in tribute to the nation where he plays professionally. Needless to say, the reaction in Egypt’s government-controlled press was predictible:

Ghana defender John Paintsil’s waving of an Israeli flag to celebrate his team’s World Cup goals drew a barrage of insults and furious reactions in Egyptian newspapers.

Paintsil, who plays for Israeli club Hapoel Tel Aviv, celebrated the two goals in Ghana’s 2-0 win over the Czech Republic by pulling an Israeli flag out of his sock and waving it at the cameras.

“The ignorant and stupid Paintsil, who spent 20 days in Egypt during the last African Nations Cup, plays for Hapoel,” sports commentator Alaa Sadek wrote in the daily Al-Akhbar, explaining to baffled Egyptian audiences Painstil’s link to Israel.

“Egyptians supported the Ghanaian team all the way until the 82nd minute, and regretted it after the Israeli flag (waving),” screamed a bold red headline in the independent daily Al-Masry al-Yom Monday.

“As soon as the referee blew his whistle to start the match, Egyptians were out enthusiastically, almost hysterically supporting Ghana, until defender John Paintsil took out the Israeli flag,” read the paper’s front page article.

The live commentator on the Arab satellite channel broadcasting all World Cup matches in the region abruptly cut short his trademark “goooaaaaaaal” when Paintsil brought out the flag.

“What are you doing, man?” the bewildered commentator said.

The main question on Egyptian lips after the match was “why?”

Some papers described Paintsil as a “Mossad agent”, others said “an Israeli had paid him to do it” but the most elaborate theory was offered by the top-selling state-owned daily Al-Ahram.

“The real reason,” sports analyst Hassan el-Mestekawi wrote, stems from the fact that many Ghanaian players go through football training camps set up by an Israeli coach who “discovered the treasure of African talent, and abused the poverty of the continent’s children” with the ultimate goal of selling them off to European clubs.

“The training program for these children starts every morning with a salute to the Israeli flag,” Mestekawi claimed.

The Ghanaian Football Association issued a whimpering apology. With Ghana playing the Great Satan as I write this, a commenter at the British blog Harry’s Place writes, “considering Ghana’s football team is full of Mossad agents, whilst the United States as a whole is run by Zionist paymasters, or vice versa, whoever wins out of Ghana and the USA today, it will be a great victory for The Zionists. Hurrah!”

Damian P.

Update: Ghana wins, 2-1, and goes through to the next round - ahead of the Czech Republic and the United States, two nations ranked in the top five by FIFA.

I'm telling you, these Mossad agents control everything.

The elusive WMDs

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has released a declassified letter (PDF format) saying approximately 500 munitions filled with "degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent" were found in Iraq quite some time ago. Captain Ed has a big roundup.

I'm intrigued by the report, obviously, but right now I'm taking it with a grain of salt for several reasons:

- I've been burned by reports like this before;
- I can't understand why, even if they were "degraded" and ineffective, a desperate Saddam wouldn't have used them against American forces; and,
- above all else, I can't understand why the Bush Administration wouldn't have released or leaked this information long ago. Captain Ed offers a couple of possible explanations:

So why keep this quiet? Perhaps CENTCOM did not want to tip the AQ-I forces to their continued existence. Another explanation may have been that some of this got captured through active intel sources that would have blown continuing operations. Obviously the Intelligence Committee felt that the need for secrecy had passed.

[...]

Rick at The Real Ugly American has an update with an explanation of the reason the Bush administration kept this quiet:

General Tom Mcinerney is reporting on Fox Hannity and Colmes right now that that the administration has been keeping this low profile to avoid exposing 3 of the 5 members of the UN Security council; Russia, China, and France. McInerney says these weapons will be traced to these countries, and asserts it is well known that Russia helped Saddam move most of his WMD stockpiles out of Iraq before the war.

We wanted to keep France, Russia, and China from embarrassment? Well, maybe. And if that is true, then maybe the White House has decided that the silence has hampered its attempts to get tough on Iran, and thus the declassification now.

I can believe the first two reasons, but I just can't buy the argument that the Bush Administration would pass up the opportunity to embarrass the French, Russians and Chinese. (Would you?)

Damian P.

Update: ThinkProgress cites a Fox News report - I can't believe I just wrote that phrase, either - that, according to the Defense Department, the weapons in question were acknowledged by the Iraq Survey Group but dismissed as unusable and degraded. This isn't looking good for Santorum (whose re-election bid, as several foul-mouthed ThinkProgress commenters note, is in serious trouble).

Austin Bay has some interesting thoughts on the story.

Coulter takes the high road again

Say what you want about John Murtha, but calling him "the reason soldiers invented fragging" falls somewhere between "offensive" and "incitement to murder."

Ann Coulter is drunk on her own outrageousness, and the best way to sober her up is to ignore her. (Of course, by posting about this, I just gave her exactly what she wants.)

Damian P.

Update: "being a war veteran does not shield you from criticism," says one of my commenters, and he's absolutely right. But the key word here is criticism, not the kind of deeply personal attacks promoted by Coulter.

On the other hand, I don't think she's Hitler, either. Yeesh.

Byrned

Natural Resources Minister Ed Byrne has resigned from cabinet following unspecified allegations by the Auditor-General:

A Newfoundland and Labrador minister who resigned Wednesday because of an audit into financial matters at the legislature will be welcome back in cabinet if he is cleared, Premier Danny Williams says.

In a bombshell announcement that has rocked political circles, Williams announced Ed Byrne has relinquished his natural resources portfolio amid an investigation that involves several other members of the house of assembly.

Speaking to reporters at a hastily assembled news conference Wednesday evening, Williams said little about the nature of the complaint against Byrne, other than Auditor-General John Noseworthy is investigating "financial issues" at the house of assembly.

Williams also said that the investigation includes politicians of all parties and that the number of MHAs involved in the probe is in the "single digits."

[...]

Williams said Noseworthy has been working on an audit that covered issues involving the operation of the legislature. The investigation includes constituency allowances given to politicians for conducting their legislative business.

Noseworthy would not comment on his findings, but said a report will be released Thursday.

The open-line shows on VOCM should be pretty interesting today.

Damian P.

Leskun v. Leskun

The full decision is here. This is arguably the most important part:

...The 1985 Act sought to eliminate misconduct, as such, as a relevant consideration. Section 15.2(5) of the Divorce Act now provides that in making an interim or final order for spousal support, “the court shall not take into consideration any misconduct of a spouse in relation to the marriage”. In addition, s. 17(6) of the Divorce Act instructs the court not to consider any conduct in a variation application that could not be considered in the making of the initial order. These provisions make it clear that misconduct should not creep back into the court’s deliberation as a relevant “condition” or “other circumstance” which the court is to consider in making or varying a spousal support order (s. 15.2(4)). Misconduct, as such, is off the table as a relevant consideration.

There is, of course, a distinction between the emotional consequences of misconduct and the misconduct itself. The consequences are not rendered irrelevant because of their genesis in the other spouse’s misconduct. If, for example, spousal abuse triggered a depression so serious as to make a claimant spouse unemployable, the consequences of the misconduct would be highly relevant (as here) to the factors which must be considered in determining the right to support, its duration and its amount. The policy of the 1985 Act however, is to focus on the consequences of the spousal misconduct not the attribution of fault. [emphasis added]

At the risk of oversimplifying a complex (and, for family lawyers, frustrating) area of law, Canadian courts have held that a person may be entitled to spousal support if she is unable to support herself, for health reasons, years after the marriage has ended. It would be a perverse situation indeed if a party otherwise entitled to support couldn't get it because her depression was caused by her ex-husband's conduct.

In other words, it's an important case, but hardly revolutionary.

Damian P.

Blogger Banned

Self-proclaimed "political ADHD activist" Charles LeBlanc has been barred from the New Brunswick legislature building, allegedly for harassing MLAs and staff members:

A New Brunswick blogger and political activist has been permanently barred from entering any buildings or stepping on any property within the provincial legislature district in Fredericton.

Charles LeBlanc, a prolific blogger who writes about poverty and the province's political and corporate power brokers on his website, was issued the barring notice on June 19.

The notice, posted on LeBlanc's blog, accuses him of demonstrating "unacceptable behaviour within the legislative precincts, which has included harassment and disrespectful behaviour toward legislative staff, members of the Security Detail and members of the public."

[...]

The legislature's administration committee approved the ban, including Liberal house leader Kelly Lamrock, who says his office must protect its staff from harassment.

"There are cases where security decisions are made for the well-being of members or the staff people," Lamrock said. "And there is an employer's responsibility to protect employees. Those have to be balanced with the very, very, very high duty to keep parliament open and accessible to everyone."

But Liberal MLA Abel LeBlanc says banning the blogger just doesn't make sense. "I disagree with Charlie being barred from the legislature. I disagree. Everybody has the right to come to the legislature. Their favourite saying, the Tories, is that 'It's the people's house.' Well, he's a person and he should have the right."

LeBlanc has gained notoriety in recent weeks for attempting to join New Brunswick's legislature press gallery and getting arrested at a trade conference in Saint John.

I have no idea what this guy has been doing at the legislature, so all I can say is that his blog makes him look, well, eccentric at the very least.

Damian P.

Urge to kill...rising

I swear to God, if I have to watch that Rogers commercial - you know, the one with these cooler-than-thou hipsters who went all the way to Germany without buying their World Cup tickets in advance - one more time, no court would hold me responsible for my actions.

Consider yourselves warned.

Damian P.

Fault, divorce and spousal support

The Supreme Court of Canada will hand down a potentially important ruling on these issues later today:

When infidelity and divorce leave a spouse devastated for years afterward, unable to work, whose "fault" is it anyway? Should a cheater pay if the ex-partner can't move on? And for how long?

The Supreme Court of Canada rules today in the bitter Vancouver divorce case Leskun vs. Leskun [sic] that will decide those very questions — a pivotal ruling that could re-introduce the concept of "fault" into Canada's "no-fault" divorce law.

When the Divorce Act was amended in 1985, Parliament made "marriage breakdown" the single ground for divorce, usually after a year's separation. [Note: Marriage breakdown can also be caused by one party's adultery or physical or mental cruelty. - DP] And legislators directed courts not to take account of misconduct when deciding spousal support. It was the dawn of "no-fault" divorce.

[...]

...in 2003, Judge Nancy Morrison found Sherry Leskun still not "self-sufficient."

"She is consumed by bitterness over the end of her marriage and what she sees as the betrayal and duplicity of her former husband and her inability to move on in the workforce is unfortunate," Morrison said, ordering the $2,250 monthly payments continued.

In 2004, the British Columbia Court of Appeal reluctantly upheld the order. It, too, found Sherry Leskun so bitter she couldn't make a new life.

But two of the court's judges found she was entitled to the payments because the emotional consequences of her ex-spouse's misconduct had played a huge role in her failure to achieve self-sufficiency. Another judge said "bitterness" cannot be an adequate reason for failing to do so, but upheld the order due to Leskun's age, family and medical difficulties.

Gary Leskun then appealed to the country's highest court, asking it to overturn the rulings. He warned of a "legal tsunami" of applications to the court if it re-introduces the notion of "fault" into divorce law.

Subsection 15.2(5) of the Divorce Act does indeed say, "the court shall not take into consideration any misconduct of a spouse in relation to the marriage" in determining spousal support, so it will be interesting to see if and how the Supreme Court of Canada gets around that wording. (If they uphold the lower court rulings, the rationale will probably be that Ms. Leskun is so emotionally damaged that she cannot support herself - regardless of the reasons why she became so distraught in the first place.)

Damian P.

Update: the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed Mr. Leskun's appeal. The decision doesn't appear to be online yet, but here's the CTV News story:

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Wednesday that a man who was found to be "carrying on behind his wife's back" must continue spousal support payments.

The decision means that the emotional consequences of a spouse's misconduct can be considered when judging spousal support, despite no-fault provisions in the federal Divorce Act.

[...]

...the top court's decision is unlikely to open the floodgates to other review applications from resentful partners, CTV's Rosemary Thompson said after hearing the ruling.

"This court is saying very clearly that spousal misconduct cannot be considered as the sole factor ... you've got to look at the entire picture. That's always what the law has said in this issue," Thompson said outside the court.

It appears, then, that a spouse cannot claim support just because the other party committed adultery - but if the adultery contributed toward the recipient spouse's inability to work or get her life back in order, she may be entitled.

What sorts of diversity are OK?

Following on Andrew Coyne's analysis, a couple of contrasting views:

1) Dr. Mahfooz Kanwar's (via SDA); and

2) The Prime Minister's.

Mark C.

Darfur update: Sudanese president says no UN force

This is rather as expected. I wonder if Jack Layton, Senator Dallaire, Keith Martin, David Kilgour and all the other Canadian do-gooders who want Canada to "do something" now favour our joining in an invasion of Sudan. But who else would join us in the invading? Or maybe our "diplomatic muscle" will persuade the president to change his mind. Bets?

President Omar al-Bashir vowed on Tuesday that he will never allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur, his strongest rejection yet of the United Nations' plan to try to halt violence in the war-torn region.

"This shall never take place," al-Bashir said of the U.N. deployment. "These are colonial forces, and we will not accept colonial forces coming into the country."

"They want to colonize Africa, starting with the first sub-Saharan country to gain its independence. If they want to start colonization in Africa, let them chose a different place," he told reporters at a press conference alongside South African President Thabo Mbeki...

Update: It's all a Jewish plot. Of course.

Upperdate: Sudan is mad at the UN.

Mark C.

All Asians look alike (to CBS News, anyway)

Oops.

Damian P.

Morons in Malaysia

Jimmy Walter, one of the most prominent members of the "9/11 Truth" movement, teamed up with veteran Jew-hater Michael Collins Piper to beg Mahathir "Jews rule this world by proxy" Mohamad for help with their "independent investigation" into the attacks (proving, once again, that while not all 9/11 conspiracy freaks are anti-semites and Holocaust deniers, nearly all anti-semites and Holocaust deniers are also 9/11 conspiracy freaks):

A group of concerned Americans and their sympathisers has sought the support of former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in their effort to push for an international investigation into the Sept 11 2001 (9-11) tragedy.

Representatives of the group, including a survivor of the attacks on the World Trade Centre (WTC) in New York, met Dr Mahathir here Monday with a claim that the official version of what transpired on that day was far from the truth.

"We want him (Dr Mahathir who is chairman of Perdana Global Peace Organisation) to help us set up an international commission to reopen the investigation," said Jimmy Walter, who has brought together individuals under the Reopen 911 organisation dedicated to opening a real investigation into the tragic attacks.

Joining him were American Free Press journalist Michael Collins Piper, Yvonne Ridley who is the political editor of Islam Channel United Kingdom and William Rodriguez, the last man to run out of the WTC before it collapsed.

They claimed to have evidence that the towers came down in a controlled demolition, and that a much bigger agenda lurked behind the war on terror, unleashed soon after with the attack on Afghanistan and Iraq by United States-led forces.

Convinced that was what really happened, the Reopen 911 organisation is offering US$1 million to anyone who can prove that explosives were not used in the catastrophe that killed thousands. [via Harry's Place]

If there were some way we could use all the stupidity in that room to power our cities, we'd never have to worry about the price of oil again.

Damian P.

Yesterday: "Jews control the world." Today: "Zionists control the world."

A European Muslim cable TV network sponsored a panel discussion in London called "Why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism," which was pretty much exactly what you'd expect:

Informed, honest debate on the Middle East has been stifled because of a fear of being accused of anti-Semitism, according to the participants in a discussion hosted by the Islam Channel in central London on Thursday. The broadcaster is the largest Islamic television outlet in Europe.

The discussion, titled: "Why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism," was filmed against a backdrop reading "Zionism: The cancer at the heart of international affairs."

The discussion was chaired by Alan Hart, a former ITN and BBC correspondent whose latest book, "Zionism: The real enemy of the Jews" was recently published. He said, "The anti-Semitism card is something the Zionists have exploited to suppress debate."

He said the mainstream media had concealed "the truth of history" out of fear of offending Jews and thanked CEO Mohammed Ali of the Islam Channel for "his courage in widening the debate."

[...]

Three Jewish anti-Zionists sat on the panel, including a representative of the haredi Natorei Karta, along with Palestinian scholar Ghada Karmi.

Ilan Pappe of the University of Haifa's political science department, a revisionist historian at the forefront of calls for a boycott of Israel, said that to divorce Zionism from Judaism it was necessary to refrain from using Zionist terminology. For example, you should not talk about a Jewish Diaspora. "The only diaspora is the Palestinians, therefore there is a need to adopt new language," he said.

The Natorei Karta sect was represented by Rabbi Ahron Cohen, who was a member of the delegation that went to Iran to offer support to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in March following his comments that Israel should be wiped off the map.

Cohen said, "Zionists imposed a secular faith state on the Palestinians, this is immoral and the underlying cause of the strife. Zionism and Judaism are incompatible concepts. Many Jews do not approve of Zionism but they cannot say this publicly."

So, let's review: Jews Zionists control the media, the Jewish Zionist state is a "cancer," and antisemitism is the Jews' Zionists' own fault. I'd have an easier time taking their arguments seriously if they didn't sound exactly the same as the worst stereotypes about Jews, with "Jews" crossed out and the Z-word penciled in.

Damian P.

Canadian Air Force procurement: Euro lobbying/A400M problems?

The most informative reporting is, as usual, non-Canadian:

Two European aerospace groups have launched vigorous lobbying campaigns to thwart alleged plans by the Canadian government to shut them out of three of Ottawa’s biggest military equipment orders in recent years.

EADS submitted an unsolicited bid to the department of national defence last week for 16 Airbus A400M military transport planes after reports that the Canadians were about to order four C-17 Globemaster aircraft from Boeing of the US without calling for competitive tenders. The Globemaster order would be worth about C$2.5bn ($2.2bn).

Speculation is also rife that Ottawa will favour another US group, Lockheed-Martin, to replace its ageing fleet of smaller C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.

Meanwhile, AgustaWestland, the helicopter group, is worried that Ottawa is set to give Boeing’s Chinook heavy-lift helicopters a head-start over Agusta’s Cormorant Mark II [Canada flys the Cormorant for search and rescue as the CH-149 - MC].

“We’re slightly concerned that we’re being frozen out of a competitive process that is open, fair and where the playing field would be level”, said Richard Thompson, senior vice-president at EADS’s military division.

Agusta-Westland is currently claiming C$1bn in damages from the Canadian defence department relating to a big helicopter contract awarded to US-based Sikorsky in 2004. The European group contends that the tender requirements were written in such a way to exclude rival bidders...

Here's the kicker:

The European groups also maintain that Canada is depriving itself of valuable industrial benefits by opting out of a competitive bidding process.

I hope our government realizes that it's not about jobs and votes; it's about giving our military what they need to do the dangerous work the government orders them to do.

Update: The foreign press has its limits too. From Rescue Randy at Army.ca:

The reality is that the reporter has mixed up the A400M proposal for the airlift competition with the helicopter competition. EADS represents Eurocopter, not Agusta-Westland - that company is a direct competitor to EADS. If Richard Thompson was promoting a helicopter for the Chinook competition, it would have been either the Eurocopter Cougar EC 725 or the NH-90. Once again, you can't believe anything you read, very little of what you hear, and only half of what you see.....

Airbus, for its part, is denying that the troubles of the A380 will have any effect of the schedule for the A400M.

Funding for the planned Airbus...A400M military transport plane is completely secure and will not be affected by problems surrounding the company's flagship A380 airliner, a top official said on Thursday [June 15].

Airbus, which says nine countries have placed orders for a total of 192 A400Ms, is trying to sell the plane to Canada. The aircraft is due to receive its full certification in 2009.

Richard Thompson, a senior vice-president at the military wing of Airbus, dismissed the idea that the A400M program could be jeopardized by delivery delays with the A380 superjumbo airliner, which are set to cost Airbus parent EADS billions of euros...

Thompson said there were far fewer variants of the A400M than the A380, which meant the transport craft would not be affected by engineering delays.

"The industrial ramp-up that is planned for the A400M is far more conservative than for the A380 program and therefore we do not foresee any similar type of problems for the A400M program," he said...

I'm not so sure there will be no engineering delays. This is from "Weight Watchers" in the June 5 issue [text only for subscribers] of Aviation Week and Space Technology (to which all Canadian journalists covering the military should subscribe, but I doubt that even one does):

Airbus is striving to cut weight on its A400M military transport while increasing the aircraft's maximum takeoff figure by almost six tons to accommodate fuel.

The aim is to drive down structural weight, in what industry executives describe as an "aggressive" effort. "We have a robust weight-reduction program, and it is on target," one Airbus Military executive says. Range and payload are contractually guaranteed, but this is not the case for aircraft weight, he notes...

First flight is also slipping [emphasis added - MC]. Initially anticipated for January 2008, this is now foreseen as taking place slightly later in the first quarter. Overall, the development and production schedule remains tight, with little slack for any further delay if initial deliveries are not to be affected. Delivery of the first aircraft is due to France in 2009, 77 months after the May 31, 2003, contract award.

Maximum takeoff weight for the A400M has risen to 136.5 tons from 130, according to the Airbus executive. This is driven partly by redesign work to meet fuel payload requirements...

The A400M is now projected as being able to carry a 30-ton payload 2,400 naut. mi., down 150 naut. mi. from previous range estimates, says the Airbus executive. For a 20-ton payload this figure is now 3,450 naut. mi., a 100-naut.-mi. reduction. Its ferry range is also reduced by 150 naut. mi. to 4,750 naut. mi...[and Canada needs all the trans-oceanic range we can get - MC].

One also wonders how the all-new engine's development program is proceeding.

Mark C.

Moral relativism, not multiculturalism, is the problem

So says Andrew Coyne:

It’s a slippery word, with multiple meanings. Is it, as it is sometimes used, merely a synonym for the observed fact of ethnic and cultural diversity? Is it the ideology that all cultural norms are of equal moral value, the dreaded cultural relativism? Or is it the policy of official multiculturalism, complete with grants for folk-dancing and heritage language training?

If the latter, we can stop right here: it’s a silly policy, which has had very little impact for good or ill. To be sure, it has fed the careers of a few professional ethnics and their political patrons. But for the vast majority of immigrants, it is an irrelevance. Certainly, if the charge against official multiculturalism is that it encourages immigrants to live apart from the rest of society, the facts would seem to dispute it: ethnic minorities are measurably less ghettoized in Canada than in other countries -- again, Britain is an example.

The more troublesome definition of multiculturalism is that suggesting a broader cultural confusion, an inability to sort out which values ought to be shared and upheld by society at large, and which left to personal or community choice. But this kind of multiculturalism I think should be seen not as a cause, but a consequence: part of a broader malaise that leaves us unable to tell right from wrong, or to defend basic precepts of civilized life against either the sophistries of tenured radicals or the cruder assaults of their revolutionary cousins.

[...]

The problem is not that immigrants are not absorbing Canadian values. The problem is that there we have provided them with so few Canadian values to absorb. We are the country of the notwithstanding clause, the country that exalts the virtues of pragmatism and compromise before all. We do not take a stand, we split the difference. Indeed, we cannot even bring ourselves to take a stand against our own destruction: it is “for Quebecers to decide.”

The roots of this anomie, oddly, lie in the ideology of Canadian nationalism. Where other nations defined themselves by what they were, we defined ourselves by what we were not, viz. Americans. Where other nations aspired to the universal, we retreated into the particular, obsessed with what made us different, unique, special. Canadian nationalism invented itself as just another species of identity politics, with no higher claim than “we are not you.” Should we have been surprised to discover other identity groups within our midst, with the same claims?

The answer to multiculturalism is not, however, monoculturalism. It is not, as the British writer Melanie Phillips suggested in her contribution to this series, to preserve traditional Canadian values from the insidious “doctrine of universalism,” or to exalt the majority’s culture over that of minorities. Precisely the contrary. It is to uphold universal human values -- starting with the idea that there are such values. And amongst those values is pluralism, the principle that every human being is entitled to pursue his own vision of the good life -- so far as this is compatible with the vision of others, on their own such quest.

Damian P.

Neverendum

Mark Steyn on the world's worst separatist movement:

So Montenegro is now a nation. The last remaining non-Serb republic in Yugoslavia flew the coop the other week, and joined Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia . . . hang on, isn't it Bosnia-Herzegovina? Or has Herzegovina split, too [no - MC]? Who knows? Slovenia's independent, and Slovakia. Slavonia wasn't, or not the last time I checked. But East Timor is, and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and every other Nickelandimistan between here and Mongolia.

What's the big exception to this otherwise universal phenomenon? Answer: a certain distinct society at the eastern terminus of the 401. It turns out Quebec truly is a distinct society: it has the most inept secession movement of any jurisdiction on the planet...

...in the wake of the Soviet collapse, any folks who thought they were a nation could pretty much be one. And evidently Quebecers don't, not in any meaningful way. Why not? They've got all the characteristics of a nation. Compared to their nominal compatriots, they speak a different language, they come from a different ethnic stock, they have a different (albeit mostly residual) religion. By contrast, Montenegrins are all but identical to Serbs in lingo, race, religion and culture. And yet 600,000 fellows up in the hills now have their own nation, and seven million Quebecers don't.

You'll search hard in Quebec for any signs of affection for Canada. The symbols of the state are all but absent. You can drive for hours in the hinterland and not see a single Canadian flag flying from anything other than a post office...

...you'd be hard put to find anyone in Quebec City who considers himself Canadian, outside a few tourists in the bar of the Chateau Frontenac. Quebec "nationalism" did a grand job at lowering the province's Canadianness to all but undetectable levels. What they failed to do was provide anything to put in its place. It's an old political axiom that you can't beat something with nothing. The Péquistes were very effective at transforming the Canadian something into a big nothing, and then they left it at that. But it seems you can't beat nothing with nothing. Quebec nationalism successfully semi-detached itself from Canada, only to run out of gas in no man's land...

...unfortunately the fact that Quebec secession is never actually consummated became the central dynamic in Canadian politics: other countries have to cope with separatist movements; Canada had to cope with a never-quite-separating separatist movement, and over the years the Dominion's national identity took on many of the weaknesses of Quebec's "national" "identity." A decade ago, I characterized the interminable Québécois sovereignty dance as Canada's Hokey Pokey: Sometimes they're in, sometimes they're out, but mostly they just want to shake it all about. That's how it's likely to go for another decade or three. It would be better for both parties if Canada seceded from further participation in Quebec's phony independence movement.

Catalonia and Spain however know how to go about business in a practical way (and Catalonia gets to be recognized as a "nation" at the same time), while the UK wrestles with the "West Lothian Question" (hint: Hadrian's Wall). Some good ideas for the Canadian federation can be found here.

Mark C.

Would you qualify for an honourary degree?

Lorrie Goldstein has a marvelous column about the moral cowardice at Ryerson Elementary (formerly the Ryerson Institute of Technology). A sample:

...we would kindly ask you to answer the brief questionnaire below in order to determine whether you are worthy of receiving an honorary doctorate from Ryerson.

Don't worry -- there are no wrong answers.

Even if we disagree with your responses, we will still give you an award. We will just say that had we known of your views prior to offering it to you, we probably would not have given it to you, but now we have to for the sake of free speech. Ready?

- Question 1: Are you (a) a supporter of same-sex marriage (b) a really big supporter of same-sex marriage (c) the biggest supporter EVER of same-sex marriage ever or (d) the Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan?

- Question 2: Are you (a) politically correct (b) totally politically correct (c) so politically correct it hurts or (d) a fascist?

- Question 3: Academic freedom at Ryerson University means (a) academic freedom (b) is this a trick question? (c) nothing important or (d) what would you like it to mean?

- Question 4: Anyone offered an honorary doctorate from Ryerson University should (a) decline with thanks (b) try not to laugh (c) auction it off for a couple of bucks on eBay or (d) run away screaming...

Mark C.

Exonerating Israel

Just like with the Mohammed Al-Dura shooting and the Jenin "massacre," the world rushed to damn Israel for the killing of Palestinian civilians on a Gaza beach. (The Israelis themselves apologized for the incident, as they did when Al-Dura was killed.) Just like with the Al-Dura shooting and the Jenin "massacre," the case against Israel is falling apart. And just like with the Al-Dura shooting and the Jenin "massacre," it won't make the slightest difference to the "anti-Zionist" movement.

Damian P.

Polite N.Y.

Most people will probably dismiss the (decidedly unscientific) Reader's Digest survey which found New York to be the friendliest major city in the world. (New Yorkers themselves, who revel in their reputation for rudeness, will likely jeer the loudest.) But, personally, I did indeed find New Yorkers to be friendlier than people in London or Toronto.

The friendliest people on earth, of course, are right here in Newfoundland. Do you know what we call Newfoundlanders who aren't friendly? "Cashiers."

Damian P.

Horrifying, disturbing, terrifying, and absolutely brilliant

This is even more frightening than the Connie Chung video. But it's doing its job, isn't it?

Andrew, this is the DUMBEST... AD... EVER!!!

It's so dumb that after you drew attention to it, one of my buddies forwarded it to me, and in turn I forwarded it to a few of my friends, and...

Hold on a second...

Damian P.

Remember, we're the closed-minded ones

A telling excerpt from the Chronicle of Higher Education's piece on the spectacularly misnomered "Scholars for 9/11 Truth":

James H. Fetzer, the co-chairman of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, retired last month from his post as a distinguished McKnight university professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. He wanted to focus more on the movement. "Whether there's another critical-thinking course being taught at the University of Minnesota is relatively trivial," he says, "compared to this."

Mr. Fetzer, a voluble, impassioned man who often speaks in long paragraphs, is no stranger to conspiracy theory. Before September 11, he had a side career investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But the issues surrounding the Scholars for 9/11 Truth are far more acute, he thinks. In Mr. Fetzer's mind, the country is in a state of dire emergency.

Hence, it does not much bother Mr. Fetzer that outside scientists have largely refrained from tackling the group's arguments. "I don't think it's a problem," he says, "because we have so much competence and expertise among ourselves."

911myths.com, a Web site run by a software developer in England, is one of the few venues that offers a running scrutiny of the various claims and arguments coming out of the 9/11 Truth movement. Mr. Fetzer has heard of 911myths.com, but he has never visited the site.

"I have been dealing with disinformation and phony stories about the death of JFK for all these years. There's a huge amount of phoniness out there," he says. "You have to be very selective in how you approach these things."

"I can assure you the things I'm telling you about 9/11 have objective scientific status," he says. 911myths.com, he says, "is going to be built on either fabricated evidence, or disregard of the real evidence, or violations of the principles of scientific reasoning."

"They cannot be right," he says.

Screw Loose Change has more.

Damian P.

Ryerson Elementary

Margaret Somerville accepted her honorary degree at Ryerson University, but not without several displays of pure childishness from professors and students whose high ethical standards she fails to meet:

Ryerson University students and faculty members peacefully protested the institute's controversial move to give an honorary degree to McGill University Prof. Margaret Somerville by donning rainbow-coloured stickers and clothes.

The internationally renowned ethicist has said she is in favour of gay rights, but against same-sex marriage. She argues a child's right to have both a mother and father trumps the rights of potential gay parents.

[...]

As she accepted the degree, two faculty members on stage turned their back to the audience and held up a banner saying, "My Ryerson honours equal rights."

"I'm very angry about Ryerson's decision to honour Margaret Somerville and in particular to give her an doctorate of science because I find her views very unscientific," said computer science professor Sophie Quigley, who was one of two to turn their back to Somerville.

Two students refused to shake Somerville's hand as they accepted their degrees.

Some faculty members wore rainbow stickers or scarves at the ceremony, eliciting cheers from the crowd as they passed by.

Several faculty members refused to attend the event, choosing instead to stay outside where a group of demonstrators had gathered to protest peacefully.

Ryerson University President Sheldon Levy said the school might not have offered Somerville the degree if it had known there would be such an angry reaction.

Speaking last week, Levy said although free speech and academic freedom are important, the Somerville case was causing problems.

I, too, am extremely disappointed in Somerville - not because of her beliefs, but because she didn't tell Ryerson to fuck off.

Damian P.

Update: more at the Toronto Star.

New Germany, same old "peace" movement

In the 1980s, writes Jeffrey Gedmin in the Weekly Standard, (West) Germany's so-called "peace" organizations ignored, excused and occasionally even endorsed Soviet aggression while directing all its ire toward the United States and its warmongering cowboy President. Some things never change:

...I walk by the North Korean embassy nearly every day in Berlin. It's a stone's throw from my apartment in Mitte near Friedrichstrasse. Although North Korea is the last Stalinist regime on earth, and is building nuclear weapons while starving its population to death, I've not seen a single concerned citizen from the peace movement with a sign or a flower before the embassy's entrance. Meanwhile, the number of protests here calling for an end to the slaughter in Sudan stands by my count at about zero. Still, Iran should be a no-brainer. Or so you would think.

The German peace movement has always been antinuclear. Iran wants the bomb. The peace movement loves the U.N. and international law. Tehran defies the International Atomic Energy Agency. The peace movement condemns the "arms race." When Iran goes nuclear, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey will also want the bomb. The peace movement cherishes human rights. The mullahs stone women to death. The peace movement is modern, multicultural, and secular. President Ahmadinejad believes in the Hidden Imam and relishes a good clash of civilizations. The peace movement likes peace. The Iranian leader has called for a U.N. member state to be wiped off the face of the earth.

Okay, it is tedious to state the obvious, but the German peace movement--always the largest, most vocal, and best organized in Europe--is once again exposed as a farce and a fraud. During the Cold War it thrived on anti-Americanism and a good dose of Soviet bloc support. In the '80s, for example, East Germany's secret police helped finance the work of "Generals for Peace," a group of eight former NATO generals opposed to the stationing of NATO missiles in Western Europe. These included the lover of Petra Kelly, the desperate, strident young woman who helped start the Greens. Kelly and General Bastian killed themselves in an apparent suicide pact in Bonn in the fall of 1992.

[...]

What's really amusing (or creepy) is not the glaring hypocrisy of the peace movement's inaction over Iran (or Sudan, North Korea, and Syria for that matter), but rather what some of these oily groups are serving up at smaller meetings and online publications these days. The Network of the German Peace Movement is worried that a "pro-Western government" could come to power in Iran. The German Peace Society says Iran needs the bomb to defend itself against America and Israel. Professor Georg Meggle of the University of Leipzig agrees. In a policy paper written for the Peace Research Group at the University of Kassel, Meggle says, "Iran would be stupid" not to pursue its current course.

Of course, this isn't just a German thing.

Damian P.

Will this nasty piece of work be allowed into Canada?

The Conservatives had the guts to ban the Tamil Tigers. What about this fellow? The National Post editorializes:

Since the charges filed earlier this month against 17 Toronto-area residents for an alleged Islamist terror plot, there has been concern about what exactly is being preached in this country's mosques. All of the suspects, after all, were born and raised here, and none appeared to come from radical families. Moreover, among the 17 detainees is a Mississauga imam who is believed to have inspired the other young men with his radical teachings...

...we would expect our government to do everything in its power to keep out clerics who have been preaching hate elsewhere.

Whether or not Ottawa is indeed willing to do so may well be tested by how it handles the planned visit of Sheik Riyadh ul-Haq.

Formerly a cleric at Birmingham Central Mosque, one of England's largest mosques, Mr. Haq has been described by Tarek Fatah -- host of Canadian TV show The Muslim Chronicle -- as "a nasty piece of work." According to transcripts distributed last week by the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD), Mr. Haq has delivered speeches and lectures in which he has endorsed martyrdom; claimed that other religions are engaged in a "war against Islam"; described the Taliban as trustworthy "servants of Allah"; attacked Muslims considered by Westerners to be "moderates"; described Jews and Hindus as "the most unrelenting, unforgiving" enemies of Islam; and repeatedly launched other rants against Jews, including claiming they believe they "are superior to every other race" and have "monopolized" everything from "the global economy" to the Holocaust, and urging others "to see through their propaganda, their lies, and deceit and to view them as they really are and thus treat them accordingly."..

The good Sheikh's words can be purchased here and here. But what if you pay by credit card, do not pay in full, and then are charged interest? The site Islamise.co.uk does say: "As credit cards facilitate Haraam (interest) we encourage all customers to use bank account cards". Only "encourage"? Why not refuse to accept credit cards and just accept bank cards? Enquiring minds...

Mark C.

As of today, Maury is the respected journalist in the family

Oh. My. God.

Damian P.

Noam Chomsky deconstructed

The Observer's foreign affairs editor, Peter Beaumont, is hardly uncritical of the United States - but he still does not like what he finds in the cunning linguist's latest book. (Via Arts & Letters Daily)

Reading Failed States, I had an epiphany: that by applying a Chomskian analysis to his own writing, you discover exactly the same subtle textual biases, evasions and elisions of meaning as used by those he calls 'the doctrinal managers' of the 'powerful elites'. The mighty Chomsky, the world's greatest public intellectual, is prone to playing fast and loose.

It is important to recognise this fact because the Chomskian analysis has become the defining dissident voice of the blogosphere and a certain kind of far-left academia. So a sense of its integrity is crucial. It is obsessively well-read, but rather famished in original research, except when it is counting how often the liberal media say this or that in their search for hidden, and sometimes not-so-hidden, bias. Crucially, it is not interested in debate, because balance is a ruse of the liberal media elites used to con the dumb masses. Chomsky is essential to save you, dear reader, from the lies we peddle.

And, boy, is it a big lie this time. What Chomsky is taking on now is America's claim to be the world's greatest democracy. Failed States posits, tendentiously, that the US has become the ultimate 'failed state', a term usually reserved for places like Somalia. It is a terrorist state and a rogue state, a country that has brought us to the brink of annihilating darkness. These big claims are bolstered by his familiar arsenal of exaggeration, sarcasm and allusion...

...Chomsky chooses to deal with America's growing democratic deficit not by putting it under a microscope, but by reaching for hyperbole. He suggests an America in the grip of a 'demonic messianism' comparable to that of Hitler's National Socialism. Except that it isn't...

But what I find most noxious about Chomsky's argument is his desire to create a moral - or rather immoral - equivalence between the US and the greatest criminals in history. Thus on page 129, comparing a somewhat belated US conversion to the case for democracy in Iraq after the failure to find WMD, Chomsky claims: 'Professions of benign intent by leaders should be dismissed by any rational observer. They are near universal and predictable, and hence carry virtually no information. The worst monsters - Hitler, Stalin, Japanese fascists, Suharto, Saddam Hussein and many others - have produced moving flights of rhetoric about their nobility of purpose.'..

The same sort of intellectual dishonesty as that practised by Fast Eddie Said. Meanwhile, Robert Kagan examines the depths of mindless anti-Americanism.

Mark C.

Damian adds: now that he's blasphemed their living god, Beaumont is preparing for an onslaught of spam from the Chomsky cultists. My favorite quote in his review: "is that really what you see, Mr Chomsky, from the window of your library at MIT? Is it the stench of the gulag wafting over the Charles River? Do you walk in fear of persecution and murder for expressing your dissident views? Or do you make a damn good living out of it?"

Reynolds reviewed

My review of Glenn Reynolds's An Army of Davids is up at Blogcritics.org. I also recommend you check out this podcast of an Army of Davids aymposium at the Cato Institute.

Damian P.

Afghanistan: General observations

A summary of the situation by Bill Roggio, embedded blogger with the Canadian Forces:

- Pakistan's lawless tribal belts are a major source of Taliban support, including indoctrinating, funding, arming and training Pakistani and Afghan Taliban recruits...

- The Taliban is unable to stand up against the Western militaries when they attempt to mass in large formations (100 to 300 fighters, equivalent to company or battalion sized units). Their advantage is they know the local terrain far better than the Coalition forces. The solution is to get the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police trained, equipped and on the front lines in southeastern Afghanistan.

- The levels of effectiveness of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police varies from unit to unit. The Canadian soldiers trust the army units, but are very wary of police units...

- The Taliban's weapons are not as sophisticated as the media reports would lead you to believe. Their primary weapons are AK-47 assault rifles and RPG-7s (the old variant of the RPG). Rarely are mortars brought to bear on the battlefield...

- The strength of the Taliban lies in their ability to blend in with the local population, and intimidate or coerce the local population when they must. There are small pockets of Taliban safe havens in southeastern Afghanistan...

- The poppy fields provide a major source of income for the farmers in southeastern Afghanistan. The Coalition and Afghan government made a serous mistake in its implementation of a poppy crop eradication program without providing an alternate source of income. The destruction of crops turned the local population to seek protection from the Taliban. A senior coalition officer indicated a major shift in the policy dealing with the poppy crops is in the works...

Mark C.

A depressing view of life in Iraq

The Washington Post has obtained a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad describing the hardships and threats with which its Iraqi civilian employees live. Needless to say, it makes for sobering and heartbreaking reading.

It's one thing to dismiss media reports about the situation in Iraq. It's much, much harder to dismiss negative reports when they come from the American embassy.

Damian P.

Joltin' Joe

Say what you like about Michael Ignatieff, at least he takes national defence issues seriously, which is probably why most of the other Liberal leadership candidates are ganging up on him. Joe Volpe, buoyed by the youth and energy of his supporters, is leading the charge:

Joe Volpe is spoiling to be the bad boy of the otherwise polite and low-key Liberal leadership race, now accusing his rival Michael Ignatieff of sharing the same politics as Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

At the second leadership debate, in Moncton yesterday, Volpe pointedly singled out Ignatieff in his opening remarks, waving a newspaper headline about his views on Canada's role in Afghanistan, and arguing that only Harper would agree with the former Harvard law professor.

Volpe did it deliberately and unapologetically, declaring to reporters later about Ignatieff's debate performance: "I only heard Harper's narrative."

Volpe also calls Ignatieff "very Republican-minded." He was going to call him "the new Hitler," but that would just be childish.

Damian P.

Medical Tourism

Canadians who need medical care are going to India to beat the waiting lists for surgery, and perhaps enjoy themselves while they're at it. Sure sounds attractive when you read the Ontario waiting times...

When his doctor in Nova Scotia treated his chest pain with cholesterol pills and a wait-and-see attitude, Richard Johnson decided to get a second opinion — and ended up fast-tracked into surgery to open his blocked arteries.

To get it he came halfway around the world, to Escorts Heart Institute & Research Centre in New Delhi, a high-tech private hospital directed by Dr. Naresh Trehan, a New York University-trained Indian cardiac surgeon Johnson found on the Web.

He was treated within hours after landing here last April. Total cost for a 10-day stay, including a side trip to the Taj Mahal in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes: $6,000 (U.S.)...

But Johnson is on the leading edge of a trend: "medical tourists" from Europe and North America who seem willing to overlook the poverty, teeming streets and decrepit airports of India if it means circumventing long wait times and high costs for health care.

For Canadians, who will have to pay out of pocket even for medically necessary care, speed is the crucial attraction...

As a bonus, patients may be treated with advanced techniques not routinely available back home. Ninety per cent of open-heart surgeries at the Apollo chain of 33 hospitals, for example, are done without shutting down the heart — easier on the patient but more challenging for the surgeon.

Foreign patients, who pay about 25 per cent more than Indians, can also opt for a vacation package deal with airport transfers, deluxe hospital room, mobile phone and sightseeing...

India's tourism and health ministries are pushing the concept. They set up a commission last year to oversee accreditation of hospitals and set prices in U.S. dollars, to avert both gouging and undercutting [talk about a public/private partnership!- MC]...

According to a provincial government website, 90 per cent of Ontario patients [see this link for the dirty little secret about waiting times - MC] needing hip replacements wait 336 days; knee replacements, 395 days; and cataract removal, 291 days. In India, a normal wait for surgery of any kind is zero to 10 days...

The Toronto Star, whose editors normally recoil in horror at any suggestion that people should be allowed to pay for medical care, does have its moments.

Mark C.

The perils of an elite that does not serve

Excerpts from a review of AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes From Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country, by Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer.

In 1956, 400 of Princeton's 750 graduates served in uniform. By 2004, only nine members of the university's graduating class entered the military. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia and many other schools do not even allow ROTC on their campuses. The gulf is growing in Congress, too. In 1971, three-quarters of our representatives had military experience. Now, fewer than a third do, and that number drops with each passing year. Some citizens see no problem with this. We are indeed fortunate not to live in a militarized society, and our hyper-capable armed forces enjoy, at least superficially, broad support from the American people.

But Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer, who've written the book in alternating sections, unite to argue convincingly that there are at least three dangerous consequences of a civil-military divide. First, it hurts the nation's ability to make sound military choices. Uniformed service is not a prerequisite for individual expertise in the conduct of war. Abraham Lincoln -- arguably America's greatest wartime president -- never served in uniform (although he spent three months in an Illinois militia). In the aggregate, however, we benefit from having veterans in every corner of our decision-making apparatus: as presidential advisers, members of Congress and active citizens. Without them, our civilian leaders embody less and less of that visceral wisdom forged in harm's way, and the problem perpetuates itself: If young people don't serve today, then we won't have older veterans in leadership positions tomorrow.

Second, a schism between the military and the rest of us weakens the armed forces. Absent broad and deep ties throughout society, the military becomes "them" instead of "us." Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer fear that such a force "will be overused and underled and that support will run out fast for any project that becomes a political liability." Consider that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, unlike most political leaders today, both had children in uniform in the Second World War. Whether such personal connections actually affect policy is almost impossible to say, but common sense supports the authors' assertion that "the grunt on the ground is best equipped, best trained, and best served when the opinion makers have a personal stake in his or her well-being."

The greatest problem with an isolated military, however, is even less tangible. "When those who benefit most from living in a country contribute the least to its defense and those who benefit least are asked to pay the ultimate price, something happens to the soul of that country," write the authors. That argument makes for the most powerful reading in the book: "We are shortchanging a generation of smart, motivated Americans who have been prejudiced against service by parents and teachers. Their parents may think they are protecting their children. Their teachers may think they are enlightening them. But perhaps what these young people are being protected from is maturity, selflessness, and the kind of ownership of their country that can give it a better future."..

I would argue that the schism is much deeper in Canada and has even more deleterious effects. The percentage of University graduates that ever serves in the Canadian Forces must be miniscule. I doubt that even five percent of our 308 MPs have ever served in the military, and that Cabinet ministers have any real clue about what they commit our forces to. And certainly the soul of this country has been largely cut off from the ideals of selflessness.

Another telling indicator of the disconnect: the Liberals' disgraceful commercials last election about troops in the streets of our cities, as if those troops were some sort of alien menace--rather than Canadians who perform a great duty and service for our country.

Mark C.

Some Brits just never get over their imperialist attitude

A letter I just sent to The Sunday Times:

Simon Jenkins, in his column, "Under the Afghan sun, a dark new reality is taking shape" (June 18), writes that British troops are working with "some reluctant Canadians". That is an insult to the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. I doubt very much that Mr Jenkins has bothered to talk to them. They now number some 2,300 personnel; they are carrying out their mission with the utmost professionalism, with dedication, and with enthusiasm. There may be considerable reluctance about the mission amongst the populace in Canada but there is not amongst the troops in the field.

I might moreover point out that Canadian Brigadier-General David Fraser is now the Commander of Regional Command South in Afghanistan. Brigadier-General Fraser is in fact in operational command [Combined Task Force Aegis] of the UK forces engaged in Operation Mountain Thrust, a fact not mentioned by Mr Jenkins.

Indeed Mr Jenkins' ignorance of what is actually going on is further demonstrated in this phrase of his purporting to describe what will happen after the operation is finished: "When the troops return to the security of Kabul..." That is nonsense as the troops with be returning to their bases in Regional Command South, not to Kabul where they are not stationed.

Update: "Paras strike deep into the Taliban heartland".

Mark C.

The truth, in book form

Popular Mechanics has expanded its excellent article debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories into a book to be released on August 15. (via Screw Loose Change)

The conspirozoids, I presume, are desperately trying to find out whether any of the contributors has the same last name as a Bush Administration official, which would definitively prove the whole thing is part of the cover-up.

Damian P.

Rempel returns

One of my favorite Tory bloggers is back.

Damian P.

The Truthout about Leopold

Freelance reporter Joe Lauria has a revealing piece in today's Washington Post about his dealings with the man who briefly convinced the world - well, a lot of bloggers, anyway - that Karl Rove had been indicted.

Damian P.

Twenty years from now he'll be living in the suburbs, wearing a suit and tie and supporting the Conservatives. I guarantee it

The Corner Brook Western Star inexplicably gives space to this happy fellow to write the "Target Youth" column every Saturday. His columns aren't available online - for once, it's probably good that the Star has such an awful website - but peruse his poetry and you'll get the idea.

Downey's latest masterpiece is a list of "stuff that makes me smile," which includes "Osama bin Laden, and only because his mere existence is a mockery of the United States" and "the terrorist plan to behead the prime minister." Does anyone at the Star actually read this stuff before the presses start rolling? (Evidence that they don't: a couple of years ago, some readers got upset when Downey made several references to getting drunk in a column. Which probably wouldn't have been so bad, except that the column was called "Teen Talk" at the time.)

Damian P.

From high school drop-out to Princeton teacher

Captain's Quarters explains why having the correct political beliefs helps a German politician looking for a future career.

Mark C.

Getting one's priorities right: "Fritsch, Woods fail to cut it"

"Manotick native joins struggling Tiger on sidelines for weekend play". Ottawa Citizen headline and sub-head that are truly worthy of the Toronto Star at its best.

Vijay is lurking. Montie would really be a story. Duval would be a sensation.

Update: The Phil de Velde moment: "I am such an idiot." Geoff Ogilvy is now #8 on the Official World Golf Ranking. Poor Montie, his third second-place at the US open and still no major.

Mark C.

The Hemi bubble bursts

Autoextremist.com says Chrysler is in trouble:

After shouting from the rooftops that their Hemi was the performance engine to have, Chrysler has been caught out by two rapidly escalating developments: 1. The 300/300C is yesterday's news (which is anathema in our faddish "of the moment" culture) and 2. The sustained high price of gasoline is counter to the image of the Hemi's muscle + power image. Chrysler aims to counteract that with a new campaign that will tout the mileage of the Hemi, but who's kidding whom? After spending millions upon millions of dollars burnishing the image of the Hemi in the American consumer consciousness as a high-performance icon, that dog won't hunt - even with a T-Bone.

The high gas prices haven't helped sales of the Dodge Ram trucks either, which is killing them. And how about the Jeep Commander - which is the winner of our 2006 "Answer to the Question that Absolutely No One was Asking" award? It's a huge sales disappointment and contributing mightily to Chrysler's inventory woes. [With styling evidently inspired by ARO, it's also the ugliest new American vehicle since the infamous Aztek. - DJP]

[...]

On top of everything else, Chrysler is now spending more on incentives per vehicle on average than their cross-town rivals, and they're loading up on fleet sales to boot. Funny, but we don't hear much "we're smarter than the average car company" talk coming out of Auburn Hills these days.

Chrysler has one bright spot to be sure - the new Dodge Caliber is a much-needed hit for them, but that's where my optimism ends, because they're dreaming about the upcoming Jeep Compass (our leading nominee for our 2007 "Answer to the Question..."), just like they were dreaming about the Jeep Commander. And they're expecting the new Sebring to be the greatest thing since sliced bread in a segment full of top-notch cars, and they're dreaming about that too.

The Caliber is indeed a hit, but a sixth-place performance (out of seven vehicles) in Car and Driver's last economy-car comparison test doesn't bode well for its future. (The Pinto was a smash when it came out, too.) Is there another car company on earth that lurches from wild success to the verge of bankruptcy as often as Chrysler?

Damian P.

The monoversity

Further to this post of Damian's, a summary of this column by the Globe's Margaret Wente (full text not online).

Our universities are supposed to be bastions of free thinking and reasoned debate. But, these days, nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes, it seems they'll celebrate every kind of diversity except diversity of opinion. That kind of diversity must be stamped out. And dissent from the prevailing ideology will be interpreted as hate speech.

So it is in the Margaret Somerville affair..

Dr. Somerville's job is to provoke thought. Presumably, that's why Toronto's Ryerson University decided to give her an honorary degree. Ryerson used to be just a college but eager to let everyone know it's playing in the big leagues. Perhaps that explains why many of its students and faculty are determined to be as dogmatic and obnoxious as the ones at the University of Toronto. They've tried to block the degree. They say Dr. Somerville is guilty of homophobia and hate speech...

Dr. Somerville is opposed to gay marriage. She arrived at this position because she thinks that having same-sex parents isn't all that great for kids. She thinks kids do best with two parents, one of each gender, to whom they're biologically related. All other arrangements in her view are second-best...

Sadly, nuance doesn't count in the culture wars. You're either with us or against us, and there's no tolerance for anything in between...

Ryerson should have told the protesters to get a grip. Instead, it wavered and waffled and utterly embarrassed itself. Eventually, it decided to go ahead -- but only after the people in charge of honorary degrees said they never would have picked her if they'd been aware of her shocking views...

...Not for nothing have modern universities been called islands of repression in a sea of freedom. If you're really interested in diversity, you'll have to look somewhere else.

Dr. Dawg, meanwhile, has an outraged sniff of homophobia at Carleton's granting an honourary degree to the good Rabbi Reuven Bulka, a true pillar of the Ottawa community.

Mark C.

Damian adds: as with most Globe and Mail articles, you can read the whole thing if you type the entire headline into Google News.

Afstan: The Globe's editorial writers take on "Softy" Lloyd

Unlike their reporters, editors and certain columnists, the Globe's editorial writers have not succumbed to "quagmiritis" (full text not online).

Lloyd Axworthy wants Canada to help protect Afghanistan, but he doesn't want Canadian soldiers to hunt down the Taliban. Bewildering...

the United Nations did authorize an international security force, now comprising 37 countries, including Canada, to work with the Afghan government (which accepts the help; no trampling necessary) to make the country safe for elections, children's education and ultimately a peaceful society based on the rule of law.

"After all," Mr. Axworthy wrote, "while NATO troops are off chasing the Taliban in the hills, hundreds of schools and mosques are being attacked and their teachers and moderate imams being kidnapped or killed." He seems to be suggesting that Canada put a guard on every mosque and school. This is impossible, and poor tactics besides. It's purely a defensive strategy, which is no more logical than having a municipal police force engage in anti-gang patrols rather than seek out the criminal gangs where they live...

...Now that the Conservative government has extended the mission, Liberals such as Mr. Axworthy say it is nothing more than a U.S.-style counterinsurgency. It is not "made-in-Canada." It is "war-fighting." What did he think the responsibility to protect involved? Charm-school graduates streaming over borders handing out bonbons?

A subtext to his piece was its attacks on Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff, who supports the Canadian mission. But wait -- wasn't Mr. Ignatieff on the international commission that developed the responsibility-to-protect protocol? The principle does not belong to Mr. Axworthy, and it is disappointing to see him trying to undermine its exercise in such difficult circumstances...

This is worth remembering about Mr Axworthy (h/t to Mike H.):

...the Axworthy who crafted the Liberals' Gulf War policy in opposition in 1991, commiting Canadians to the anti-Saddam Hussein coalition - unless they were actually shot at.

The Chretien Liberals opposed Canadian participation in a military action fully sanctioned by the UNSC and conducted by a broad international coalition that included Syria and Egypt.

Mickey I. gets it right:

An unrepentant Michael Ignatieff aimed a pre-emptive strike at opponents who have criticized his support for extending Canada's mission in Afghanistan on the eve of today's second Liberal leadership debate, insisting peacekeeping missions cannot be abandoned "when the going gets tough."

The campaign's apparent front-runner toughened his arguments for keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan until 2009. Other contenders sought to exploit that position as his chief vulnerability in last week's first leadership debate, portraying his view as too conservative and perhaps un-Canadian...

Two comments.

1) What is the basis for reporter Campbell Clark's using the word "unrepentant"? It is a word loaded with negative connotations suggesting Mr Ignatieff has committed a sin. Is this Mr Clark's view about Mr Ignatieff's supporting our Afstan mission?

2) So supporting the mission is "un-Canadian". Yet so many Canadians mock and disparage the US when the phrase "un-American" is used there. Maudits hypocrites. And how can it be un-Canadian to support a mission that has the unanimous authorization of the UN Security Council, as the Globe editorial poined out? But then facts (if they even know them) mean nothing to our rabid anti-Americans.

Mark C.

The French want to fight. Axworthy doesn't

The former Liberal foreign affairs minister and true believer in "soft power" doesn't like what we are doing in Afghanistan (full text not online).

...Led by Michael Ignatieff, Liberals ended up giving Stephen Harper enough votes to have free rein in a war-fighting effort that precludes other potentially more effective efforts to protect the people of Afghanistan and takes Canada out of the new peace-building strategy being developed at the United Nations...

Somehow this is not precluded and has escaped the Softy's gaze:

Since August 2005, a Canadian PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] has operated in Kandahar, where it is expected to remain until February 2007. The PRT brings together elements from the Canadian Forces (CF), Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in an integrated Canadian effort, also known as the All of Government approach...

Lloyd issues further vapourous piffle:

...Canada should begin to apply the principle of "responsibility to protect" to our mission in Afghanistan...To utilize this Canadian-sponsored R2P principle in Afghanistan would mean recalibrating our strategy away from simply adopting the counterinsurgency followed by U.S. forces and developing one that focuses much more on the protection of civilians. After all, while NATO troops are off chasing the Taliban in the hills, hundreds of schools and mosques are being attacked and their teachers and moderate imams being kidnapped or killed....

Hundreds? Precisely when NATO is in the hills? Source? In any event, if those Taliban aren't hunted from time to time they will be able cause even more damage, injury and death.

This is what UK General David Richards, in command of NATO ISAF said recently (translation):

My military forces will not only be used to defeat the Taliban, but also to assure the future of villages and communities...

That should sound good to Lloyd but he won't care in his anti-US fixation.

Update: Liberal Ted at Cerberus says it even better.

And guess who has been chasing the Taliban as part of US counterinsurgency actions for three years? French special forces, operating as an integral part of US Operation Enduring Freedom. Why are they doing this (translation)?

It is a very political decision taken directly by the president. As seen from Paris the presence of French special forces in Afghanistan is primarily considered a strong signal to the US, demonstrating France's commitment at their side in the struggle against terrorism.

An idea that would never occur to Lloyd, ever more Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc. The French have a phrase for it: raison d'état. It is also doing one's duty.

Lloyd, in summing up, of course cannot resist saying that Canada should...

...reallocate resources now dedicated to war-fighting in Afghanistan to other peace-building initiatives that cry out for attention and leadership. Darfur leads the list.

H/t to Norman's Spectator for the French stories.

Mark C.

From a theory to a right to an obligation

I support same-sex marriage, but I also believe reasonable people can oppose this massive change to a cherished tradition. (Even Sweden hasn't gone that far yet.) That's what unnerves me about this story:

What was supposed to be an honour bestowed by Ryerson University on renowned ethicist Margaret Somerville has turned into an ordeal that she says has left her in a state of shock.

Ryerson's awards committee issued a statement yesterday implying doubts about whether she is an honourable person and suggesting it would not have invited her to receive an honorary degree next week if it had known her views on same-sex marriage.

Somerville recently argued before a parliamentary committee that children need to know their biological origins, and the norm should be that children are raised by biological parents.

Her comments were interpreted as anti-gay and activists launched a campaign to have the honour rescinded.

Somerville says the statement's wording implies there was evidence of dishonourable conduct. She said it is frightening that she would be condemned for speaking her mind as an invited participant before a Parliamentary committee.

Kathy Shaidle has more. Ten or fifteen years ago, the very idea that gay couples should be allowed to marry was barely more than a fringe belief. Today, it's not only legal in Canada (at least until this fall), but opposition to same is suddenly grounds for having your honourary degree revoked. I don't think we're on the verge of denying ordinary university degrees to students who don't hold the correct political beliefs, as Dissonance and Disrespect suggests, but that doesn't mean some people - especially those who make the most noise about their own tolerance and sophistication - wouldn't be in favor of it.

Damian P.

"Johnson" is a synonym for...

CIA-analyst-turned-Plamegate-pundit Larry Johnson: "Karl [Rove] is a shameless bastard. Small wonder his mother killed herself. Once she discovered what a despicable soul she had spawned she apparently saw no other way out."

Maybe he has a new book out, too.

Damian P.

Military procurement: Here's really hoping

If these proposals go through, the Canadian Forces will finally start getting a lot of the kit they desperately need. The $15 billion (life-cycle) cost is nothing to get excited about; last November, Liberal Minister of National Defence Bill Graham put forward a $12.1 billion procurement plan. That failed to fly and was replaced by a $4.6 billion plan for a Hercules replacement.

With Canada's military stretched thin in its largest overseas combat deployment since the Korean War, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has approached Cabinet with a $15-billion wish list for badly-needed equipment...

...the military is asking for:

· More than a dozen new Lockheed-Martin Hercules short-haul tactical aircraft;

· Up to five Boeing C-17 Globe Masters -- long-haul strategic transport planes currently being used by the U.S. military;

· Two naval supply ships, to replace vessels that have been in service for 40 years; and

· Boeing-built heavy-lift Chinook helicopters -- a staple of the U.S. and British armies...

But while Cabinet isn't likely to turn down the requests from two generals, it isn't quite a done deal...

The main differences from the big November 2005 proposal are the addition of the C-17s and supply ships, and the deletion of a fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft replacement.

The Navy has been asking for three joint supply ships (JSS) with a much wider range of capabilities than the two aging auxiliary oiler replenishment (AOR) ships they are to replace, plus an amphibious ship.

The amphibious ship is rather like the "hybrid" aircraft carriers proposed by the Conservatives in the 2004 election--a proposal that the Liberals attacked mercilessly and maliciously. [Remember Paul Martin exclaiming that Canada should get "medical carriers" instead? - DJP] I wonder if the fact that only two supply ships are mentioned is a hint that these may be much more bare-bones than the JSS - that is, just better AORs. That might free up money down the road for the amphibious ship (ships?). The Dutch have a nifty example but there are several other possible sources (France, UK , US, Spain and Italy).

Of course Airbus is bleating hard, lobbying furiously and promising jobs for Quebec:

Meanwhile, French plane manufacturer Airbus has issued a plea to the Tory government to ensure that a fair, competitive process is in place when it makes its multi-billion dollar purchase for long-range military transports.

Richard Thompson, commercial director of Airbus Military, told reporters in Ottawa Thursday that a contract with Boeing would cost almost twice as much as a comparable one with his company.

Instead of buying two separate fleets, said Thompson, Canada would satisfy most of its tactical and strategic airlift requirements and save up to $2 billion with the A400M -- a four-engine turboprop military airlifter...

The A400M has not flown yet and it will have an all-new engine (PWC should have won the competition for this on merit but the Euros gave it to a Euro consortium--why should we reward this behaviour?). In any case, the A400M simply does not have the trans-oceanic range and payload to be a good strategic lifter for Canada. Airbus has said first delivery to Canada would be in 2011, but it's unlikely that date could be met. (Denial from Airbus here.) And the Hercules replacement is needed urgently.

Mark C.

But what about the tax on minivans?

True silliness from a trendy, Torontonian Liberal leadership candidate. Going to tax the CRV or RAV4?

Mark C.

Satan has taken control of the universe

That's the only logical explanation for this.

Damian P.

An insurgency in trouble

That's what documents seized after the death of al-Zarqawi suggest, anyway. Here's hoping.

An Al Qaeda document linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi purports to show that Iraq's insurgents believe they face a "current bleak situation" that may require fomenting a war between the US and Iran to "get out of this crisis."

The document, released Thursday, could not be independently authenticated. But senior Iraqi officials were ebullient about its message, as well as the magnitude of intelligence "treasure" that has emerged surrounding Mr. Zarqawi's death.

This is "the beginning of the end of Al Qaeda in Iraq," Mowafaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, declared Thursday, adding that the data include network names and locations gleaned from Al Qaeda computers captured before Zarqawi's death. "The government is on the attack now ... to destroy Al Qaeda and to finish this terrorist organization in Iraq."

"The documents and all the arrests mean there has been a depletion of talent" among Zarqawi's group, says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm.

[...]

Among the solutions is to "use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance," the document states. That may prove difficult, says Ranstorp in Sweden, because a top Al Qaeda in Iraq media chief, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, was believed killed in the week before Zarqawi.

"This means their ability to put on a brave face has been damaged," says Ranstorp. "There have been some substantive man losses - qualitative losses" of Al Qaeda operatives.

The Al Qaeda document gives a broad assessment, from apparent ordnance shortages to stoking a clash between the US and Iran. It also includes a lengthy list of potential "delegated wars" that would ease pressure on the resistance.

"The best of these wars to be ignited is the one between the Americans and Iran, because it will have many benefits in favor of the Sunni and the resistance," the document reads. Among those benefits are the "possibility of acquiring new weapons from the Iranian side, either after the fall of Iran or during the battles."

It even asks the rhetorical question of how to draw the US into open conflict with Iran. "It is necessary first to exaggerate the Iranian danger and convince America ... of the real danger coming from Iran."

Damian P.

The mask slips a little further

Fresh off their big konvention in Las Vegas, the Kos Kids respond to Yale's decision not to hire Juan Cole:

(via LGF)

Damian P.

Quote of the Day

The British announcer (I didn't get his name, unfortunately) during the England-Trinidad World Cup match, after the ball struck Dwight Yorke in a particularly sensitive area:

"That one hit him right in the Michael Ballacks."

Damian P.

Another Canadian Muslim speaks out

Emran Qureshi, a fellow at Harvard Law School, seconds Tarek Fatah. (Full text not online.) One hopes Mr Qureshi's view of the nature of Islam is accurate.

The news that a group of Toronto-area Muslim radical misfits allegedly planned to commit terrorist attacks against Canada is evidence that the war within Islam has lapped up on our shores. Most Canadian Muslims are shocked at the news. Sadly, they should not be.

The argument that this has nothing to do with Islam is false. The young Muslim adults who learned to hate our generous and tolerant Canadian society learned it not from pimps or drug dealers, but from Islamic fundamentalists who preyed on them within Canadian mosques...

Until recently, Islam as understood by most Muslims was largely humanistic and inclusive with Sufi readings particularly popular. Canadian Muslims effortlessly adapted into the broader society with new and old Canadian heritages fusing and blending together. This has been, for the most part, the picture of Canadian Islam...

Salafi utopianism and a politicized understanding of Islam masquerade as Islam. Both, however, repudiate humane and ethical precepts within the Islamic tradition. The message becomes more dangerous for young Muslims living in the West who are taught a distorted version of Islam that loathes the very society they live in. Jihadis take this stilted understanding and posit an apocalyptic conflict between Islam and the West: one in which the West is besieging Muslim lands and peoples. In this world view, they are simply defending the Muslim ummah (community) against a rapacious West. Here, the Internet helps constitute a globalized jihadi subculture...

Some Canadian Muslim leaders have responded by denial, alleging "root causes": Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East, or our troops in Afghanistan. They should, instead, reflect on the poison that is being disseminated, the ruined young lives, and the resultant prejudice engendered toward Muslims within the broader society.

Other Muslims argue that the real issue is Islamophobia and prejudicial attitudes and nothing more. This is a facile and borderline apologetic response.

Canadian Muslims have rights and responsibilities that come with citizenship. Canadian Muslim leaders should not continue to evade the seriousness of recent events and their responsibilities in cleaning up this mess, and Canadian Muslims who participate in and donate to Canadian Islamic charities and institutions should insist on moral and ethical accountability.

We owe nothing less to our country [emphasis added - MC].

Mark C.

Voting: Are you a citizen? Who cares?

Elections Canada seems much more exercised about whether people vote in the right riding than whether they have the right to vote at all--which only Canadian citizens have (full text not online). A strange sense of priorities, one which at least one Conservative MP does not seem to be questioning:

In the next federal election, you might need more than a utility bill in order to cast your ballot.

Under proposals tabled by chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley at a House of Commons committee yesterday, electors would be required to produce some form of official identification, likely with a photograph, when they arrive to vote.

The measure would be a dramatic change from lax provisions introduced with the permanent voters' list in 2000 -- where even magazine address labels and cable bills are accepted as proof of residency and identification for electors on the list...

Mr. Kingsley's list of suggestions to the committee included a proposal to "require proof of identity at polls" under a section dealing with the integrity of elector eligibility...

Mr. Preston [Conservative MP] said in light of complaints and horror stories from the last two elections -- including incidents where hundreds of voter information cards were left unsecured in apartment buildings -- photo ID is necessary.

"I think we're pretty much getting to the point now where you walk in and say 'Hi, I'm Joe Smith at 15 A St.,' and if there's that guy on the list, you vote," Mr. Preston said in an interview. "There are a lot of other things in this country you have to have photo ID for, and they seem a little less important than voting."..

It's not only about identity, Mr Kingsley or Mr Preston; it is also about citizenship. How about asking voters to provide proof of same?

Mark C.

World Cup link of the day

Our indispensable friend Michael Ledeen explains why Iran's loss to Mexico was particularly painful for the Mullahs. The name of Mexico's winning goal-scorer has a lot to do with it. (That said, I'd still like to see some really solid Iranian wins.)

Slightly off topic, Mr. Ledeen highlights a spot of good news from al-Reuters:

"BAGHDAD, June 13 - U.S. President George W. Bush told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Tuesday Iran’s “interference” in Iraq must end, said Iraqi government sources who attended the talks."

Quoth Mr. Ledeen: "Can it be that, at long last, we are going to take steps against the mullahs to save the lives of our fighters and the Iraqi civilians who have been targeted by the terrorists who are armed and manipulated by the Iranians and the Syrians? Faster, please."

Amen!

Ranald

Brandcasting

The wave of the future: a small radio station in Boston is giving Snapple exclusive sponsorship rights for the next six months.

WFNX-FM, an alternative rocker with sister stations simulcasting in Maine and New Hampshire, has partnered with Snapple. Through July 4, New England-area listeners who tune in will not hear any other product promoted on WFNX's airwaves. Instead, they will get up to 55 minutes of music every hour and Snapple-related DJ chat (but no real ads), about Snapple-sponsored concerts and events. Both partners also benefit from the media stir that this one-of-a-kind arrangement has created.

Coleman calls it "brandcasting."

Well, there's no way it could make radio worse.

Damian P.

Sampson can't sue the Saudis

Britain's law lords have overturned a court decision which allowed Bill Sampson and his colleagues to sue the Saudi government:

Four men who claim that they were tortured in Saudi Arabian prisons lost the right to sue their alleged torturers in Britain yesterday.

The law lords allowed an appeal by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against a decision by the Court of Appeal in 2004 giving the men permission to sue. They ruled that the authorities were protected by the State Immunity Act 1978 from proceedings brought in the English courts.

[...]

To establish their right to sue for damages, the claimants had to show that the grant of immunity to the Saudi defendants under the State Immunity Act would be disproportionate, as inconsistent with a binding principle of international law. They had failed to do so.

Lord Hoffmann said international law was based on the common consent of nations.

"It is not for a national court to develop international law by unilaterally adopting a version of that law which, however desirable, forward-looking and reflective of values it may be, is simply not accepted by other states."

Damian P.

380 headaches

I've been very enthusiastic about the Airbus A380, an absolutely massive airliner which could do for air travel today what the 747 did in the 1970s. (That is, make it cheaper than ever.) But according to BusinessWeek, the plane's official debut has been delayed by production and logistical problems:

Airbus' A380, the world's largest passenger jet, is turning into a mega-problem for Airbus and its parent, European Aeronautics Defense & Space (EADS). On June 14, EADS shares plunged 34% after the company acknowledged that A380 production delays would reduce operating profits by $2.5 billion for 2007-2010. The delays, caused by difficulties in installing electrical wiring systems, mean that some airlines now will have to wait about a year longer than expected to receive their planes.

[...]

Moreover, landing new orders for the A380 looks increasingly difficult for Airbus. Not only have the production delays dented its credibility, but one of the plane's key selling points now appears in doubt. The A380 was designed to appeal to carriers at congested airports such as London Heathrow and Tokyo Narita, which hoped to make maximum use of their limited landing slots by squeezing more passengers onto a single plane. But safety concerns that turbulence from the big plane could threaten nearby aircraft now threaten to undermine that argument.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, meeting in Montreal in early June, let stand an earlier recommendation to require any jet landing behind an A380 to stay at least 10 miles behind it—twice the distance required for Boeing's 747. Airbus says it's still in talks with safety authorities, and that its own tests show that turbulence in the A380's wake is no greater than the 747's. But few new A380 orders are likely to come in until the issue is resolved.

One consolation for Airbus: Boeing is having its own problems with the 787 Dreamliner.

Damian P.

World Cup links of the day

- Mick Hartley explains why the tournament is better than the Olympics. "Footballers are normal guys who just happen to be very good at football. Olympic events are full of tree-trunk-thighed weirdos." (As though there aren't any of those playing soccer.)

- Harry Hutton: "Oh to be in England, now that football’s there, to drive around beeping my car horn like a c**t, and taunt my idiot countrymen in German. ...Most of them are too thick even to insult me properly, though sometimes they’ll come back with, 'Two World Wars and one World Cup,' which I always counter with, 'Three World Cups and one economic miracle,' and then Deutschland Uber Alles or the Horst Wessel Song."

- Commenter "Mojo" at Hutton's blog: "I knew there was general apathy about the World Cup here in the US, but I hadn't realized until yesterday that it had even spread to the members of the US team. Their theory seemed to be, 'If you can't beat a team from half of a collapsed communist country, at least lose in humiliating fashion.'"

- Slate finally answers the question we've all asked at some point: "what's with all these Brazilian footballers with only one name?"

Damian P.

The scary thing is, Ahmaninejad is the sane one

...compared with presidential advisor Mohammad Ali Ramin, at least:

"On a visit to Gilan University, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s advisor Mohammad Ali Ramin said to a group of students in the town of Rasht, 'Ten years ago, when I brought up the issue of the Holocaust for the first time in this country, my goal was to defend the Jewish people. But among the Jews there have always been those who killed God’s prophets and who opposed justice and righteousness. Throughout history, this religious group has inflicted the most damage on the human race, while some of its groups engaged in plotting against other nations and ethnic groups to cause cruelty, malice and wickedness.'

"'Historically, there are many accusations against the Jews. For example, it was said that they were the source for such deadly disease as the plague and typhus. This is because the Jews are very filthy people. For a time people also said that they poisoned water wells belonging to Christians and thus killed them,' Ramin said.

[...]

"Ramin also claimed that the spread of bird flu was a conspiracy plot cause[d] by the failure of America, Israel and Britain in the Middle East. Ramin pointed out that to cover up and hide their failures, these countries have spread the news about the bird flu to preoccupy and distract public opinion for some 5 to 6 months. 'Nobody asks how a bird that had the flu could fly from Australia to Siberia,' he said, adding that even the Iranian minister of health had claimed to have stopped the disease at Iran’s borders. He claimed the holocaust story and bird flu rumors are interrelated. He attributed the killing of millions of chicken was to control the price and amount [of] chicken in the market."

No blood for chicken!

Damian P.

Interesting matchups today

One of the most moderate Muslim states takes on one of the most repressive at the World Cup today. The nations in the late match have an, um, eventful history together, to say the least.

Damian P.

America says thanks

Will the Liberals, NDP and Bloc protest this blatant American interference in Canadian affairs?

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a resolution commending Canada for its commitment to Afghanistan.

Indiana Republican Dan Burton introduced the resolution saying he wanted U.S. legislators to recognize Canada's vote last month to extend the Afghan mission by two years into 2009.

The resolution passed by a vote of 409 to 0.

Burton says Canada's decision signals its commitment to the global war on terror and its friendship with the United States.

Burton says the vote is a small token of appreciation to Canada, which he says is facing its own growing threat of terrorists inspired by al-Qaida.

Our vote was 149 to 145. Meanwhile, coalition forces are launching a major offensive in southern Afghanistan (full text not online).

The U.S.-led coalition is drawing on more than 11,000 troops at its disposal -- including 2,200 Canadians -- for the biggest offensive against insurgents since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

The push by American, Canadian, British and Afghan troops aims to squeeze Taliban fighters in the southern mountains of Afghanistan extending over four volatile provinces...

Operation Mountain Thrust will involve about 2,300 U.S. conventional and special forces, 3,300 British troops, 2,200 Canadians, about 3,500 Afghan soldiers and air support troops, said U.S. Maj.-Gen. Benjamin Freakley. There will also be coalition air support...

The offensive began on a smaller scale on May 15 with attacks on Taliban command and control and support networks. According to U.S. military and Afghan figures, about 550 people, mostly militants, have been killed since mid-May.

Another goal of Operation Mountain Thrust is to set the conditions for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, which takes command in Afghanistan from the U.S.-led coalition in late July or early August...

Wish them all well.

Update: Detailed report by embedded blogger Bill Roggio.

Mark C.

Fixing federalism

One of the Globe's best columnists, Neil Reynolds, is confined to the Report on Business (full text not online).

Before they can take back their lost revenues, however, the provinces must take back their lost constitutional responsibilities. Over the years, Quebec partly excepted, they have traded innumerable responsibilities for federal cash allowances. They have done so more or less voluntarily and sometimes enthusiastically. But they have never done so permanently.

No matter how far into provincial territory the federal government intrudes, it can't assert a proprietary claim to the land. No matter how much the federal government spends on health care, on education, it does so only with the consent of the provinces. The provinces must now withdraw this consent.

This is the point that Mike Harris and Preston Manning made (as senior fellows of the Fraser Institute) in their recent report on "rebalancing and revitalizing" the nation's governance. Citing prolonged and profound federal intrusion into fields of exclusive provincial jurisdiction, these illustrious analysts are calling for "the devolution of power, responsibility and revenue capacity from the federal government to the provinces."...

...For the past 50 years, though, Canadian governments have relentlessly centralized. Federal governments usurped the authority of provincial governments...

Political, bureaucratic and administrative power have moved relentlessly up, up and away, leaving behind a people rendered incompetent to join the public debate by the sheer complexity of the institutions that govern them...

...Health care, education, social assistance, child care -- all should be financed and delivered, as our constitution properly provides, by the government closest to the people requiring them.

The federal government should mind its own business.

Mark C.

My hero

In this video, the proprietor of a conspirozoid website runs across a busy San Diego street while screaming "9/11 was an inside job" over and over. Unfortunately, no Darwin Awards are issued.

Damian P.

Wave it with pride

The sight of England's national flag during World Cup season is too much for the delicate sensibilities of some Guardian and Independent columnists, according to Stephen Pollard and Scott Burgess.

Damian P.

NS Tories hang on

Rodney MacDonald's Conservatives have been re-elected in Nova Scotia, but it was close: 23 seats to 20 for the NDP and nine for the Liberals (not including hapless Liberal leader Francis MacKenzie, who lost his own riding).

Because of the Tory government's decision to impose a $2,500.00 cap on general damages for "minor" auto-accident injuries, I'm not sure I could have supported MacDonald this time around. Could I have brought myself to cast a ballot for the NDP or the Liberals? Good thing I wasn't obliged to vote in this one.

Damian P.

Screech needs help

This is either a moderately amusing hoax, or the most pathetic thing in the history of the world.

Damian P.

They mean what they say

If someone keeps saying he wants to kill you, writes David Aaronovitch, it's a pretty safe bet to assume he really does want to kill you:

We dismiss zealots at our peril. Suppose they had atomic weapons. Though I am not in favour of any military action against Iran, I’m not in favour of complacency either. It has become the habit of some media Tullochs to play down the significance of the utterances of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. Jonathan Steele in The Guardian was keen last week to tell readers that the “wiped off the map” stuff was wilfully mistaken. “The remarks are not out of context,” he wrote. “They are wrong, pure and simple. Ahmadinejad never said them. Farsi speakers have pointed out that he was mistranslated.” He was just repeating some old stuff from Khomeini; he didn’t mean like, right now; Iran never invades anyone anyway; in any case he’s only one among many competing forces in Iran. So back off.

The problem with Steele’s analysis is that the official Iranian translations of President A’s words refer to “wiping Israel away” (a distinction here between “away” and “off the map” seems unimportant). Ahmadinejad has also said that Israel is a “stain” that must be erased, that Israel is a “rotten tree” that would be destroyed by a coming “storm” and suggested that “Germany and Austria can provide the . . . (Zionist) regime with two or three provinces . . . and the issue will be resolved”. Finally.

[...]

Of course, it could all just be nonsense, as it wasn’t with al-Faisal and Abu Hamza. But it does remind me of these words from David Edgar’s play Albert Speer. The dead Hitler is reproving the dying Speer. “Why,” he demands, “did you insist that anti-Semitism was ‘a vulgar incidental’? I said it — clearly time and time again. I didn’t say ‘resettlement’ or ‘cleaning efforts’. I did not speak of ‘special handling’. And yet you all insist that when I said the Jews must be destroyed, I only meant ‘defeated’. That when I said ‘eliminate’ I didn’t mean ‘exterminate’, I only meant ‘exclude’. That when I said ‘purge’ and ‘perish’ and ‘annihilate’ it was, of course, a metaphor. Why was I cursed with never being taken literally? How could the world have been so blind? And how could you?” Well?

Damian P.

Kosovo: A NATO exit strategy--after seven years

But what about Bosnia-Herzegovina? And should the few remaining Serbs in Kosovo living adjacent to Serbia be allowed to join it? If there is a principle here, how can it be applied in one case and not the others, especially after the Montenegrin precedent?

And for those demanding an "exit strategy" for Afghanistan, what has been the exit strategy for NATO in Kosovo? The Canadian Forces were there for the first year and then just withdrew, long before there was any exit strategy for NATO as a whole.

Seven years after Kosovo was placed under United Nations control, it appears increasingly likely that the province will be allowed to formally break away from Serbia and become an independent nation. Members of the UN Security Council appear to be leaning toward permitting Kosovo to go its own way; the council is expected to vote on Kosovo's fate by the end of the year, unless the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians, who have been negotiating unsuccessfully for months, reach a resolution...

The six nations working on a plan for Kosovo's future - Britain, France, Italy, the United States, Germany and Russia - have coordinated international policy in the province since it came under the control of the United Nations. Their representatives say they will try to craft a resolution to be voted on by the Security Council that will be so specific to the province that it will avoid setting legal precedent for other separatist groups [my emphasis; that will be clever indeed - MC]...

...Serbian leaders, wounded by Montenegro's recent break from Serbia and bitterly opposed to yet another split, say Kosovo independence could encourage the breakup of Bosnia and Herzegovina, another former Yugoslav republic.

Milorad Dodik, prime minister of Bosnia's Serb Republic - the area seized by Serb forces within Bosnia during the 1992-95 conflict there - said the region should "affirm the right to self determination" by holding a referendum.

The republic has remained part of Bosnia since the end of the conflict, but many Serbian politicians there have long hoped to unite with neighboring Serbia...

...Some leaders in Serbia have suggested that Kosovo itself should be split, with the Serb-dominated north allowed to remain a part of Serbia, while the Albanian-dominated south forms its own government.

"If the Albanians want independence, maybe they should give something in return," Cedomir Antic, a member of G17 Plus, a political party that is part of the Serbia's coalition government, said in a recent interview...

Lest we forget: The Canadian Air Force took part in the 1999 aerial bombardment of Kosovo and Serbia proper - a combat action that the Liberal government authorized with no UN Security Council approval.

Mark C.

Blaming the Bike

Today's poll on the Sports Illustrated website: "Should teams prohibit pro athletes from riding motorcycles?" So far, it's running 58-42 in favor.

Had Ben Roethlisberger been wearing a helmet, of course, he probably would have walked away, and we wouldn't be having what is starting to look like the wrong debate. (I expect Tex will have some choice words for Sports Illustrated and anyone else who tries to blame Roethlisberger's motorcycling hobby instead of his boneheaded refusal to wear head protection.)

Damian P.

Truth now out

Karl Rove will not be indicted after all:

Top White House aide Karl Rove has been told by prosecutors he won't be charged with any crimes in the investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity, his lawyer said Tuesday, lifting a heavy burden from one of President Bush's most trusted advisers.

Attorney Robert Luskin said that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald informed him of the decision on Monday, ending months of speculation about the fate of Rove, the architect of Bush's 2004 re-election now focused on stopping Democrats from capturing the House or Senate in this November's elections.

Fitzgerald has already secured a criminal indictment against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush — on a brief and secretive trip to Baghdad to meet with Iraq's new prime minister — was notified that Rove had been cleared.

"We are pleased that the special counsel has concluded his deliberations," Perino said. "Karl is, as he has been throughout the process, fully focused on the task at hand — crafting and building support for the president's agenda."

The announcement cheered Republicans and a White House beleaguered by war and low approval ratings. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove, said Rove "is elated" and said that "we're done."

PJM has a big roundup of (mostly) conservative blogosphere reaction, while Mark Coffey surveys the wailing, conspiracy-theorizing and excuse-making amongst the left-wing bloggers. (Via LGF) Oddly enough, there's no banner headline here yet...

By 2006 standards, this is turning out to be a pretty good week for Bush, isn't it?

Damian P.

Westerns: Truth, legend and moral choice

A searching appreciation of the two Johns, Ford and Wayne, in the New York Times:

...their movies, however deeply revered and frequently imitated, have also been attacked, mocked, dismissed and misunderstood. If, from the late 1930's to the early 1960's, they defined the classic western — a tableau involving marauding Indians, fearless gunslingers, ruthless outlaws and the occasional high-spirited gal in a calico dress — they also begat the countertendency that came to be known as the revisionist western, with its nihilism, its brutality and its harsh demystification of the threadbare legends of the old West...

...Wayne himself, from his star-making entrance as the Ringo Kid in "Stagecoach" (1939) to his valedictory performance in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962), his last western with Ford, is hardly the simple personification of manly virtue his critics disdain and his admirers long for. Even when he drifts toward playing a John Wayne type rather than a fully formed character, there is enough unacknowledged sorrow in his broad features, and enough uncontrolled anger in that slow, hesitant phrasing, to make him seem dangerous, unpredictable: someone to watch. He is never quite who you think he will be...

The real subject, though, is not how the West was conquered, but how — according to what codes, values and customs — it will be governed. The real battles are internal, and they turn on the character of the society being forged, in violence, by the settlers. Where, in this new society, will the frontier be drawn between vengeance and justice? Between loyalty to one's kind and the more abstract obligations of human decency? Between the rule of law and the law of the jungle? Between virtue and power? Between — to paraphrase one of Ford's best-known and most controversial formulations — truth and legend?..

Wayne, Cooper, Stewart, Bogart, Gable, Fonda, Mitchum, Ladd and Holden all act different versions of American archetypes dealing with the above issues. Who are their Canadian equivalents? Sutherland, Plummer or Pleasance (although Donald Sutherland did play the good Dr Bethune)? And equivalent Canadian movies? Does English Canada (now known as RoC) have any dramatized, indeed mythical, expressions of itself?

The Brits also deal with moral choice: a great movie, Tunes of Glory.

Mark C.

"Quagmire" update

The inimitable Ibbitson, of the "quagmire"-obsessed Globe, raises the spectre without actually using the "Q" word (full text not online). Just like his colleague Geoffrey York.

Bob Rae...is...presenting himself as the candidate who has all Michael Ignatieff's smarts, eloquence and bilingual fluency, but who, unlike Mr. Ignatieff, isn't prepared to risk turning Afghanistan into Canada's own little Vietnam, which many Liberals now fear that engagement could become...

Funny, I haven't seen any news stories of Liberals linking Afstan with Vietnam (yet). A Google News search doesn't turn up anything either. Now some Liberals may indeed be thinking quagmire, but why is Mr Ibbitson highlighting this so strikingly?

And it wouldn't just be "Canada's own little Vietnam". It would be the US's, NATO's, indeed that of the coalition of 37 countries. Funny also that the Canadian media so rarely mention the breadth of the international military commitment; they seem intent on creating the impression that basically it's just us and the Americans. Hmm.

Mark C.

Cheering on Iran

An Iranian blogger describes cheering for her World Cup team - and, after Iran's 3-1 loss to Mexico, a conversation with a taxi driver who insists Team Melli has been ordered to lose:

...“The mullahs did not want us to win. They told the players: ‘make sure you lose.’”

“No way.”

“You didn’t grow up here. You don’t know the lengths they would go to to keep us off the streets and to keep us from celebrating. We are a rich country with a great culture, but they have ruined us.” [via Harry's Place]

I'm not sure even the mullahs would go that far. (Certainly, the soccer-mad Ahmaninejad wouldn't.) But once again, I find myself thinking a couple of Iranian victories will open up something the religious fascists can no longer control.

Damian P.

Zarqawi is gone, but the terror continues

Fifteen dead in northern Iraq:

Two car bombs targeting police exploded within a span of 30 minutes in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 15, police said.

The first explosion was a parked car bomb targeting a police patrol Tuesday morning in the city center. Ten people, including two policemen and eight civilians, were killed and nine people, including a police colonel, were wounded in the attack, Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said.

A suspected homicide car bomber then tried to go through the checkpoint of the Kirkuk police directorate some 30 minutes later, but the guards opened fire, causing the car to explode.

Qadir said two policemen and three civilians were killed and six people were wounded, including one policeman and five civilians.

Damian P.

Shrinking Giant

Too bad the CBC didn't check its facts before it spent $8-million on the Tommy Douglas miniseries:

CBC Television has agreed to pull the movie Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story from all scheduled broadcasts in response to criticisms it was historically inaccurate.

When the two-part miniseries ran in March, it received some good reviews but also criticisms from historians who said its portrayal of James Gardiner, premier of Saskatchewan in the late-1920s and mid-1930s, was inaccurate.

One example cited was the suggestion Gardiner drank alcohol, when in fact he was a teetotaller. In one scene, Gardiner berates miners in the 1931 Estevan coal strike in a broadcast to the province. However, historians say the speech never happened and Gardiner wasn't premier during the strike.

On Monday, members of the Gardiner family received an e-mail from CBC Television's executive vice-president Richard Stursberg.

He said CBC hired a historian who concluded the character created for the film does not reflect the historical record.

"In response, we are pulling Prairie Giant from all scheduled broadcasts and we have halted both home and educational sales," Stursberg said in the e-mail.

More details here. I have rather mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I hate seeing my tax money used to slander historical (and present-day) figures whose politics weren't left-wing enough for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. On the other hand, if every biopic with historical inaccuracies in it was pulled from video store shelves, your local Blockbuster would be a very empty place indeed.

Damian P.

My new podcast obsession

If you came of age sometime between 1980 and 1989, you'll want to subscribe to this.

Damian P.

An old-fashioned fisking

Coyne vs. Fisk. No contest.

Damian P.

Big Ben injured

Ben Roethlisberger has been seriously hurt in a motorcycle accident:

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was badly hurt in a motorcycle crash Monday and undergoing surgery. The extent of his injuries was not known.

Roethlisberger was in serious but stable condition, said Dr. Larry Jones, chief of trauma at Mercy Hospital.

"He was talking to me before he left for the operating room," Jones said before the operation. "He's coherent. He's making sense. He knows what happened. He knows where he is. From that standpoint, he's very stable."

The 24-year-old Roethlisberger likes to ride without a helmet, a habit that once prompted coach Bill Cowher to lecture him on the dangers.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that Roethlisberger wasn't wearing a helmet. The Associated Press reported it wasn't clear whether he was wearing a helmet or not.

The crash happened at an intersection at the edge of downtown at about 11:30 a.m. A pool of blood was still visible there by early afternoon.

I hope Roethlisberger comes out of this okay - and that he gives up riding a motorcycle without a helmet, which is as stupid as playing NFL football without a helmet.

Damian P.

Update: the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says Reothlisberger "lost most of his teeth, fractured his left sinus cavity bone, suffered a nine-inch laceration to the back of his head and a broken jaw, and severely injured both of his knees when he hit the ground."

Football and Freedom

Iranians are cheering on their World Cup team but not their government, according to Publius Pundit. (More of the ever-popular protest-babe photos here.)

Damian P.

Shameless self-promotion

I have a letter in today's Ottawa Citizen:

Much as I admire Lewis MacKenzie, and much as I agree with his criticism of Senator Romeo Dallaire's politics, Mr. MacKenzie is perpetuating a uniquely Canadian delusion when he maintains the Canadian Forces could indeed send some 1,000 troops to Darfur (though Mr. MacKenzie does say that "I am not recommending that this be done.")

Canadian politicians and pundits continue to demand that Canada "do something" about Darfur. Many advocate sending significant numbers of Canadian soldiers. The reality is that no one else wants Canadian soldiers to be sent.

United Nations officials have made it clear that any UN force (and it is still not clear that a force with an effective mandate from the UN Security Council will ever be sent) should not contain a large number of Western troops, for reasons that should be obvious: Sudan is predominantly Muslim. These officials want more African troops to strengthen the African Union forces now there, along with troops from Islamic and South Asian countries.

UN officials also want logistic and technical support from NATO. NATO, for its part, is willing to provide such support but has also made it clear that there will not be NATO boots on the ground.

So the UN does not want Canadian soldiers, and NATO (to which we belong) will not be sending soldiers in any numbers. Do all those Canadians advocating that we do so propose that we act all on our own? What nonsense. And what ignorance of international reality those Canadians display.

H/t to Norman's Spectator and Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs.

Mark C.

Dealing with the inflammatory imams

Lysiane Gagnon reports the views of a Muslim member of the Quebec National Assembly (full text not online).

Fatima Houda-Pepin, the Moroccan-born MNA for the riding of La Piniere, on the south shore of Montreal, was one of the brave Muslim women who campaigned against the introduction of sharia-based family tribunals in Ontario.

Ms. Houda-Pepin, a forceful opponent of radical Islam, didn't mince words when she spoke to a reporter from Le Devoir, a few days after the discovery of an alleged terrorist plot in Southern Ontario. She didn't beat around the bush to designate the "root cause" of Islamist terrorism. It is due, she says, "to the hateful propaganda" that is spreading within the Muslim community "under the cover of religion."

Muslims, she says, are exposed to "extremely violent" speeches against the "infidels" -- meaning "non-Muslims and dissident Muslims" -- in mosques and various religious circles. "We'll have problems," she says, "as long as we let this kind of indoctrination go on."..

...these extremist religious views are largely an "imported product," financed by foreign religious groups. "You have people coming here as imams, who've been trained and paid to promote a kind of Islam that has nothing to do with Canadian realities. This has been going on for 25 years."..

Ms. Houda-Pepin can't understand why Canada doesn't use the Criminal Code against the preachers who are spreading hateful propaganda. "We promptly act against [supremacist] skinheads, but when the same kind of ideology is part of religious speech, we don't touch it."..

And the views of University of Toronto (don't flinch) immigration expert Randall Hansen:

"We have to be far more proactive in making sure the integration process is complete and make sure that people don't develop values that are hostile (to Canada). In practice that would mean things like taking a closer look at the curriculum of private Muslim schools, watching mosques and getting into the issue of whether imams should be bilingual and trained in Canada, instead of in countries like Pakistan," he said...

Hansen said a good start at making the integration process more complete, and monitoring Muslim schools, would be a rethinking of the multiculturalism policy introduced in 1971 by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau.

"My guess is that the whole multiculturalism policy is not so much harmful as useless," Hansen said. "It doesn't make the situation worse but it hasn't delivered what it intended to deliver -- that people would feel more attached and loyal to Canada."..

Key, he said, is to clamp down recruiters of young Muslims.

"Sometimes, they are radical imams, radicalized members of the community, or people sent from abroad to specifically radicalize young people. That has to stop," Hansen said...

Starting with looking at Imams and Korans from Saudi Arabia.

Update: Ezra Levant wonders about the Muslims' "special exemption" in the context of hate crimes (wrong-headed though he thinks such laws are).

Mark C.

From perogies to the prospect of Sharia law: Multiculturalism and Muslims

Robert Fulford examines the origins and consequences of mulitculturalism in Canada. It all started because, understandably, some immigrants thought they weren't "English Canadian". So instead of "bicultural"--the term used in the early 60s--we became multicultural, little realizing where it might end.

The arrest of a group of Canadian Muslims accused of plotting terrorist attacks in Toronto has thrown a shadow over a favourite monument of Canadianism: multiculturalism. Whatever the fate of the suspects, this cherished concept is suddenly up for grabs.

A little more than 30 years ago, Canada changed its approach to the question of absorbing immigrants. We had traditionally believed in old-fashioned pluralism: people of different sorts maintaining independent cultural traditions, but living side by side in an integrated society...

In the 1960s, after Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson assigned the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism to design a fresh approach to English-French relations, citizens whose origins were neither British nor French began to fear they were being excluded from a new version of citizenship.

Ukrainian-Canadians, in particular, feared the extinction of Ukrainian uniqueness...

By 1972, Ottawa had a minister responsible for multiculturalism and in 1973 a Multiculturalism Directorate. Other groups were involved, but Ukrainians remained influential...

The crucial year was 1982, when, after much lobbying, multiculturalism made its way into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms through Section 27, which states: "This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians."..

For many, especially ethnic-group leaders and politicians who sought their support, official multiculturalism was the ideal approach to an increasingly diverse country. Few suspected that in two decades, this process would produce young Canadians who neither understood nor respected the institutions that had made Canada a desirable immigrant destination...

...We should also make it clear that in Canada a religion achieves legitimacy only when its adherents respect the spiritual values of others.

Salim Mansur, a Muslim professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, wrote in the Toronto Sun on Saturday: "We [Canadian Muslims] preach tolerance yet we are intolerant. We demand inclusion, yet we practise exclusion of ... those with whom we disagree." In what he called a "brutally honest" response to this month's events, Mansur argued that "We have made hypocrisy an art, and have spun for ourselves a web of lies that blinds us to the real world around us." Religious freedom becomes a very pale idea when used to assert a belief in one true way and contempt for other beliefs.

In this unhappy season, we need substantial criticism of multiculturalism and a redefinition of what it means. On these issues, we should look for a much better and more candid performance from our political leadership, from the media (which too willingly accept ghettoization), and from the various religious and ethnic groups in Canada. Perhaps we have to begin by admitting that over 30 years we have made some grave mistakes.

Update: Mark Steyn weighs in.

The multicultural society posits that each of its citizens can hold a complementary portfolio of identities: one can simultaneously be Canadian and Jamaican and gay and Anglican and all these identities can exist within your corporeal form in perfect harmony. But, for most Western Muslims, Islam is their primary identity, and for a significant number thereof, it's a primary identity that exists in opposition to all others. That's merely stating the obvious. But, of course, to state the obvious is unacceptable these days, so our leaders prefer to state the absurd...

That's how nations die -- not by war or conquest, but by a thousand trivial concessions, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal. How many Muslims in Toronto sympathize with the aims of those arrested last week? Maybe we could use a book on the subject. But which Canadian house would publish it? And would the faint-hearts at Indigo-Chapters carry it?

Mark C.

A Liberal blogger's lament

Further to Damian's post below, this post by Ted at Cerberus on the need for Liberals actually to think, rather than react knee-jerkedly, is worth reading. Some excerpts:

...So bankrupt are the Democrats of progressive ideas that they resort to knee-jerk attacks on Bush, which is essentially defensive posturing, rather than taking the agenda back from him with a solution-oriented agenda focused on bettering the lives of the underprivileged.

I see a lot of the same things here with Harper, especially with the Bush-Harper comparisons. Really, has there been any attempt to replace or revamp the great vision of the New Deal or the Great Society or, for here, the Just Society? Have there been any truly inspiring policies from our side of the fence?..

...The response of many liberals and many on the left to 9/11 has often been particularly disappointing. Even if we were to say that conservatives are ignoring root causes of global terrorism, what on earth would addressing these do to protect us from existing terrorists. Bush did not make up this bogeyman for political purposes, folks; he only capitalized on it."..

...But rather than focus on progressive new directions to help Canadians in need, all you hear about are the repetition of entrenched orthodoxies into meaningless mantra ("no two tier healthcare", “health card not credit card”). Slogans don’t save lives. If you believe in universally accessible healthcare as I do then we have to open up our minds from our claustrophobic thinking. I mean, if socialist France can embrace some private care and have even greater and more universal healthcare at lower cost, why can’t we even talk about it?

Not a bad start.

Update: The thread at small dead animals.

Mark C.

A blogger's lament

Matt Welch, one of the first bloggers I discovered shortly after 9/11, says blogs have become just another partisan echo chamber:

“What do warbloggers have in common, that most pundits do not?” I enthused. “I’d say a yen for critical thinking, a sense of humor that actually translates into people laughing out loud, a willingness to engage (and encourage) readers, a hostility to the Culture War and other artifacts of the professionalized left-right split of the 1990s…a readiness to admit error [and] a sense of collegial yet brutal peer review.”

Man, was I wrong.

[...]

So what’s wrong with a bunch of human beings using technology to organize themselves into political groupings? Absolutely nothing. The purpose of enhanced freedom is to enhance people’s ability act freely in the ways of their choosing, and we shouldn’t be surprised when they choose to do the same stuff they were doing before, only more efficiently. As I argued in my first-ever media column for Reason (“Hack Roast,” April 2004), partisanship is often the most powerful fuel driving media criticism, unearthing apolitical facts in the course of expressly political acts.

As with the last decade of boom-bust cycles on the World Wide Web, the only thing self-publishing has not lived up to has been the wildest and most specific hype of its most ardent enthusiasts—like me. And even if I was wrong about the transformative political nature of the post-9/11 blog explosion, the ensuing growth of the form has made it exponentially easier to seek out truth, however you define it.

But as I look back at December 2001, and prepare to hang up the blogging fun of Reason’s Hit & Run for the stodgier print pages of the L.A. Times, I can’t shake the feeling of nostalgia for a promising cross-partisan moment that just fizzled away. Americans are always much more interesting than their political parties or ideological labels, and for a few months there it was possible for readers and writers alike to feel the unfamiliar slap of collisions with worlds they’d previously sealed off from themselves. You couldn’t predict what anyone would say, especially yourself.

Damian P.

Justice

From The Atlantic's profile of the late, unlamented Al-Zarqawi:

Despite their enthusiasm, al-Zarqawi, al-Maqdisi, and Abu Muntassir did not appear to be natural revolutionaries. Their first operation was in Zarqa, in 1993, a former Jordanian intelligence official told me, when al-Zarqawi dispatched one of their men to a local cinema with orders to blow it up because it was showing pornographic films. But the hapless would-be bomber apparently got so distracted by what was happening on the screen that he forgot about his bomb. It exploded and blew off his legs.

Damian P.

The Lion sleeps well tonight

Vijay breaks his "slump" (he's not Tiger but better than Nippleson).

Meanwhile, at Silverstone, Alonso wins but what a boring race. I don't think one car amongst the leaders ever passed another.

Mark C.

Gambling with the cod stocks

Fisheries scientists are uneasy with the federal government's decision to reopen the Newfoundland inshore cod fishery:

The resumption of Newfoundland’s inshore northern cod fishery will stunt the growth of future populations of the fish, leading fisheries experts said Friday.

While the federal fisheries minister insists the decision was based on sound science, recent federal research indicated such a move could hinder recovery of offshore stocks.

In a November 2005 report, the federal government noted there was a strong possibility that cod swimming beyond the province’s 12-mile nautical limit routinely migrate inshore to feed during the spring and summer.

"At current offshore population levels, any offshore fish exploited in an inshore fishery may further impede recovery in the offshore," said the 69-page report, released six months ago.

[...]

Enforcement of catch limits — expected to total 2,300 tonnes for commercial fishermen — will be up to the fishermen themselves.

But using such an honour system is a bad idea because there’s no way to check for abuse, said George Rose, chairman of fisheries conservation at Memorial University’s Marine Institute in St. John’s.

"I’m not confident at all that this can be done," Rose said.

He also questioned whether the quota levels for the one-year pilot project were intended for scientific purposes.

"A trial period of one year is not going to tell us anything. ... Science doesn’t need that much fish caught."

Efforts to restore the fish on a long-term basis are being traded off in favour of a short-lived fishery, said Howard Powles, an expert with the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

In May 2003, the group listed the Atlantic cod as a species at risk.

Many Newfoundland fishermen, on the other hand, say there's plenty of fish. I hope they're right, but on this subject, I learned a long time ago to expect the worst.

Damian P.

The IDF claims its innocence

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has apologized for the killing of eight members of a Palestinian family picnicking on a Gaza beach, which Hamas has used as an excuse to call off its uneasy cease-fire with Israel. But the Israeli military now says it did not fire the fatal shots after all:

A top Israeli general says the country's armed forces didn't cause the explosion that killed eight Palestinians on Friday and ended the fragile ceasefire in the region.

Hamas, which leads the Palestinian Authority parliament, blamed the deaths on Tel Aviv as its military branch resumed attacks on Israel for the first time in 16 months.

But Israeli Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant said Sunday the military can prove it wasn't Israeli fire that hit the beach in Gaza, killing eight people.

Galant, who commands Israel's southern command, said Israel stopped firing 15 minutes before the explosion.

This is starting to sound awfully familiar.

Damian P.

Trudeau as terrorist threat

Douglas Fisher wonders how the fascist young Pierre, advocating violent separatism, escaped action against him by Canadian security authorities during World War II.

I was immediately struck by some parallels between the Young Trudeau story and today's news.

Just last week, police in Toronto arrested 17 Muslim men and accused them of plotting violent acts against national figures and institutions. In Young Trudeau, we learn that during World War II there was in Montreal a ring of French-Canadian Roman Catholics with treasonous aims similar to those alleged in Toronto. And Trudeau, later cherished by many as our greatest prime minister, was its chief planner and manifesto writer -- while at the same time holding a second lieutenant's commission in the Canadian Army reserves!

This incredible story tells how Canada's "Abraham Lincoln" spent his formative years as a key member of this secret group called the "LX," dedicated to organizing a revolution. Members planned to overthrow the government of Quebec, separate Quebec from Canada, and set up a French-speaking Roman Catholic republic called "Laurentie." It was to be a "corporate" state, much like fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini...

There are three topics the authors unfortunately deal with only slightly: His relationship with his mother and her social relations with English Canadians; his romantic and sexual associations with women; and how he, a healthy young man in the army reserves, managed to evade overseas service during the war and instead leave for Harvard in 1944 despite a desperate shortage of infantry, including in Trudeau's own regiment, which precipitated the conscription crisis of 1944-45.

The big blank about Trudeau's war service ties in with something else historians of World War II will have to explain: The federal government's incompetent intelligence when it came to monitoring domestic threats to Canada. Not only did Trudeau speak boldly at public meetings, opposing Canada's participation in the war, his own files reveal him to have been the key philosopher and planner of a secret group dedicated to breaking up the federation.

How were he and his secret cohorts able to avoid arrest and internment? Their intentions, after all, far exceeded anything in the mind of Montreal's mayor, Camillien Houde, who was interned for most of the war.

Mark C.

Fragile security at the Canadian frontier

Andrew Coyne examines the reality behind the gross Canadian over-reaction to remarks by US congressman John Hostettler (chairman, House subcommittee on immigration and border security) on Canadian security and immigration weaknesses. The congressman has some points, the "South Toronto" silliness aside.

Mark C.

Dealing--or not--with Native illegality at Caledonia, Ontario

The Ontario Provincial Police have been hobbled by the politically-correct Liberal government of the province, and the violence has escalated. Finally some native suspects are actually being sought by the OPP. Useful round-up at small dead animals and some good analysis by Steve Janke on the state's need to maintain its monopoly on violence.

Mark C.

From WaPo on Haditha

Josh White of Washington Post reports "Marine Says Rules Were Followed" on today's website Page 1.

Gleeful anti-Americanists aren't going to approve of WaPo's reporting anything that may detract from Haditha as Bush's My Lai. One can credit the Pentagon for probing both the action and the alleged cover-up. One can also credit the Post for covering this development.

My concern is that Congress may decide to interfere (in typical knee-jerk fashion) with military SOP rules of engagement. Look to John McCain to lead the charge in the Senate and John Murtha in the House.

Ranald

A cool welcome for Team Melli

The Iranian national team (whose nickname, "Team Melli," is explained here) plays Mexico later today, with Mahmoud Ahmaninejad's deputy in attendance. German politicians and Jewish organizations are planning a protest:

Iran's Football team will be met with a series of protests across Germany during their World Cup campaign as anger mounts against the country's viciously anti-semitic President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Senior politicians, Jewish groups and a prominent German TV host will join a demonstration today in Nuremberg hours before Iran play their opening match of the tournament against Mexico in the city. They are furious that Ahmadinejad's deputy, Mohammad Aliabadi, has been allowed into the country after the Iranian President called the Holocaust 'a fairytale' and called for the destruction of Israel.

'Aliabadi has not distanced himself in any way from the statements that his President has made,' said Sacha Stawski of pro-Israel group Honestly Concerned, who are helping to organise today's rally. 'It's highly unlikely he thinks any differently. Until he distances himself from the regime we will protest against him.'

Aliabadi went to Friday's opening ceremony and first game in Munich and is due to watch his countrymen in their opening fixture in Group D in Nuremberg at 5pm.

A cross-party group of German politicians is due to speak at the protest, including Gunter Beckstein, Bavaria's right-wing Interior Minister, and Claudia Roth, the co-leader of Germany's Green Party. The country's most famous Jewish TV personality, Michel Friedman, will also attend. He has threatened to take legal action against Ahmadinejad if he comes to Germany, where Holocaust denial is a criminal offence.

Meanwhile, pro-Ahmaninejad marches and rallies planned by the neo-Nazi NPD have been banned or cancelled:

The demonstrations were arranged after German neo-Nazis said they intended to stage pro-Ahmadinejad welcoming parties in the three cities to show solidarity with Tehran because of its outspoken attacks on Jews and Israel. However, many of the events have been banned by the police or the courts. In addition, the NPD, Germany's main far-right party, has also called off several rallies, after deciding not to risk tarnishing Germany's image during the World Cup.

On Friday police raided the NPD's Berlin offices and confiscated 3,000 'racist' World Cup guides, which target black players in Germany's squad and warn of 'foreign infiltration'.

I cannot bring myself to actually cheer for the Iranian team, but in a way, I hope they do well. Millions of Iranians will pour into the streets to celebrate a big win - and chances are, they'll start demanding much more than a championship.

Damian P.

St. Mugabe's Church

Just when you think the situation in Zimbabwe couldn't get any more surreal, you read something like this:

More than half the Anglican priests from Harare, the largest diocese, have fled the country, protesting that the church has become an extension of the regime. At least 10 have sought sanctuary in Britain.

The controversy revolves around Nolbert Kunonga, the Bishop of Harare, who last year became the first Anglican priest in Africa in more than 100 years to face prosecution by his peers. The charges included preaching racial hatred.

Since his appointment in 2001 Kunonga has consistently used his pulpit at St Mary’s Cathedral to praise Mugabe and decry critics of the regime. As a reward he was given a farm and a seven-bedroomed house overlooking a lake.

Now the 56-year-old bishop has started ordaining government ministers and party officials with no theological training, including Joseph Msika, the vice-president.

Any priest who dares to speak out finds himself transferred to a remote parish and intimidated.

Damian P.

Afstan update: Canadians now favour the mission/Perils of polls

Pity the Globe did not put this poll with a headline on the front page. This was their screaming May 6 headine: "SUPPORT PLUMMETS FOR AFGHAN MISSION". This is the headline from today's story on p.A4, "Majority believe terrorists will hit Canada: Support for mission to Afghanistan continues to grow, new poll suggests"; the sub-head is not included in the Web version.

...Canadians are also more supportive of the mission, with 48 per cent saying they back sending the troops, compared with 44 per cent who oppose the move. Support now outweighs opposition by four percentage points, compared with earlier this month when opposition outweighed support by 14 points.

Mr. Gregg [chairman of the Strategic Counsel, the firm that conducted the poll for The Globe and Mail/CTV News] says the figures show that Canadians are not prepared to use the threat of terrorism as an excuse to get out of Afghanistan. Interestingly, support for the mission has increased the most in the province of Quebec [emphasis added - MC], where 39 per cent support the move, up from 27 per cent last month...

This is what Mr Gregg was saying a month ago:

"For good or ill, we continue to see ourselves as kind of the Baden-Powell of the world community, doing good deeds, not getting killed or killing others."

This is what he is saying now:

...a rising number of Canadians also say they support the mission in the strife-torn country, according to a new poll taken in the wake of last week's arrests of alleged terrorists in Toronto.

“There's a recognition that this is just part of the world we live in right now and that we have to participate in it...It's part of almost an international realism.”

According to Mr Gregg's interpretation of his polls Canadians have gone from Boy Scouts to hard-headed realists in one month. The only value of Mr Gregg's interpretations is as flavour of the month; they are simply his personal spin, not serious analysis.

Another interesting poll:

In the end, only a minority of Canadians (31%) offer the opinion that "terrorist threats like this one have everything to do with the fact that Canada's troops are involved in combat in Afghanistan" - most (61%) say "that even if Canadian troops weren't in Afghanistan we'd still be a target for terrorism because we are a Western Country".

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of CanWest / Global News from June 6-8th, 2006...

This is what Mr Gregg's poll found:

Canadians also appear to be convinced that Canada will be a target of terrorism because of its presence in Afghanistan. Fifty-six per cent say the Canadian presence there makes an attack more likely, up a substantial 18 percentage points from last year...

Note that these answers are not contradictory. They simply give very different impresssions as a result of different questions. It is actually quite reasonable to believe that our current mission in Afstan makes terrorist attacks more likely in the future (Strategic Counsel) while at the same time believing we would be a target even without our military presence (Ipsos Reid).

But the former poll produces much more negative-seeming results than the latter.

H/t to Army.ca.

Mark C.

"Homegrown" Canadian terrorists are really just like "Weather people"

Rick Salutin has a full page article in the Globe, June 10, "The way the wind still blows" (p.F6, full text not online). In it he essentially denies the significance of religion in motivating "homegrown" terrorists and compares them to the FLQ and the Weathermen of the late 60s and 70s in the US. It's all about idealistic, youthful "rage against injustice", you see. Sigh.

In a fit of truly mad and anachronistic political correctness he renames the Weathermen the "Weather people" (I wonder if Bob Dylan is considering altering his lyrics). Must we now refer to the Americans who rebelled against the British at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, in 1775 as the "Minute people"?

If you Google "Weather people", after you get through the meteorological types the first hit related to Mr Salutin's nomenclature comes from: The Guardian! Quelle surprise.

A good article in the Ottawa Citizen by Robert Sibley that counter-balances Mr Salutin's inclusive view: "Rethinking multiculturalism: How does a country respond to people who consider many of its key values anathema? It's a question Canada must answer".

Mark C.

World Cup podcasting

The Times, Daily Telegraph and Guardian all have special podcasts for the World Cup.

I haven't heard the Telegraph's "pubcast" yet, but the Times and Guardian programs are very entertaining. (Certainly, more entertaining than England's first match.)

Damian P.

"Stalwart fundamentalist Muslim criticizes Canada"

Do you think the Globe and Mail would publish that headline? This is the banner headline it published at the top of p.A10 today (Ottawa edition): "Stalwart of Christian right criticizes Canada".

The headline is over the continuation of this front page story on the silly remarks by US congressman John Hostettler's about "'South Toronto' as a hotbed of Islamic extremism".

[Damian adds: is there even such a place as "south Toronto"? That sounds like the reference to "the East side of Chicago" in "The Night Chicago Died."]

The story contains this paragraph, obviously the origin of the continuation headline:

Mr. Hostettler, a 44-year-old engineer who was first elected in 1995, is a stalwart of the Christian right and a fierce opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage. Last year, he accused Democratic members of Congress of "demonizing Christians" after a Wisconsin Democrat alleged that there was "abusive religious proselytizing" at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado.

Now how in heaven's name is that relevant to the story, unless we are supposed to infer that somehow his Christianity is linked to his comment on Muslim extremism? But if there is a link the story should simply state it. And what possible relevance do his views on "abortion and same-sex marriage" have?

I smell similar agendas working together here on the part of the reporter, Alan Freeman, and certainly on the part of the headline writer in Toronto.

Update: The Globe actually printed a letter June 10 making essentially the same point about the irrelevance of the Christian angle. But the letter referred only to "the national media", not the Globe itself! I suppose the author chose the words carefully in the hope of a better chance of publication.

Mark C.

What Muslims in Canada need to recognize and do

Some very pertinent observations from a senior member at Army.ca. I urge you to read them.

Mark C.

Report clears BBC of bias in Middle East coverage

Who'da thunk that? Read a critique of the report, especially its torturing of logic and common sense (now what about the CBC?). The jihadis must clap with glee when they read such piffle.

The BBC seemed to appreciate the need to take particular care in reporting on the middle east when it recently appointed its own panel to examine recent coverage of the conflict...

But the report which was eventually published, drawn up by Quentin Thomas, the civil servant who masterminded the Northern Ireland peace process, draws four remarkable conclusions. First, it states that “apart from individual lapses, sometime of tone, language or attitude, there was little to suggest systematic or deliberate bias; on the contrary there was evidence… of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial.” Second, it maintains that, “one side is wholly under the occupation of the other and, however reluctantly, necessarily endures the indignities of dependence.” Third, the report asserts, “that Israeli fatalities generally receive greater coverage than Palestinian fatalities,” thereby proving a “disparity in favour” of Israel at the BBC. And lastly, Thomas believes that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be distilled into “two rival narratives.”

Any truly objective assessment of the BBC could never conclude that its coverage of the middle east conflict is “fair, accurate and impartial,” let alone that it is biased in favour of Israel. Take, for example, the BBC’s coverage of the late Yasser Arafat. In one profile broadcast in 2002, he was lauded as an "icon” and a “hero,” but no mention was made of his terror squads, corruption, or his brutal suppression of dissident Palestinians. Similarly, when Israel assassinated the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 2004, one BBC reporter described him as “polite, charming and witty, a deeply religious man.” This despite the fact that under Yassin’s guidance, Hamas murdered hundreds. And what of Orla Guerin’s editorialising? On one occasion, she accused Israel of cynically manipulating “a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes.” The “youngster” was a child suicide bomber...

Mark C.

If the Thomas Report were genuinely independent and objective, it would directly challenge the BBC’s moral equivalence. But instead, it tries to justify it by saying that Israel and Palestine “are not on equal terms,” and that this “asymmetry is most strikingly manifested in the fact of occupation.” “Balance,” it continues, is best achieved “where the parties to a dispute are on equal footing.”

In other words, the BBC can be forgiven for showing bias in favour of the Palestinians, even when they murder innocent civilians, because they can’t match Israel’s “defence and intelligence capability.” They are, according to Thomas, “frequently in the position of challenger,” whereas “the Israelis are necessarily in the position of authority.”
Indulging Palestinian terrorists who target innocent Israelis, on the basis that they are “challengers,” is morally reprehensible. It is like saying that al Qaeda is justified in flying civilian planes into buildings because it doesn’t have the defence capability of the US, or that the IRA was justified in blowing up Earl Mountbatten because it couldn’t match the sophistication of British military intelligence. That sort of moral equivalence one expects from George Galloway or Noam Chomsky. It is not, however, what you would expect from an “independent panel.”..

Thomas’s “independent” panel is wrong to present the conflict in terms of “two rival narratives.” The phrase “rival narratives” [aaarrgh!] implies that there is no objective standard with which to judge the respective experiences of Israelis and Palestinians. So, once again, we are in the realm of moral equivalence when moral clarity is demanded. But if Thomas and the BBC sought such clarity, they would readily admit that, since its creation, Israel wanted peace with its Arab neighbours. The totalitarian regimes that surround it, however, quest longingly for Israel’s extinction. Except for Jordan and Egypt, the rest of the Arab world still refuses to acknowledge Israel's UN-mandated legitimacy. It is that basic struggle for survival, in the face of virulent and violent antisemitism, that forced Israel to adopt the defensive measures it has throughout its history...

The only way this bias that affects the BBC can be tackled is through genuine openness rather than inquiries run by people who share the same perspective. That means an honest public acknowledgement of what so many in the BBC will freely, privately, confess. A soft left worldview influences too much of what the corporation produces. We have a right to expect more honesty from the broadcasting service we are being asked to pay for. It is about time we got it.

The games begin

The opening match of the 2006 World Cup, Germany vs. Costa Rica, started less than a half hour ago. BBC Sport has a quick review of all 32 teams. Nedless to say, Brazil is the favorite.

If you're in the UK, you're in luck: the BBC website has live audio and video, but only for British internet users. As for North Americans, unless you have Rogers/Yahoo! internet service (Canada) or ESPN360 (U.S.), no live, online World Cup coverage for you.

Come on England!

Damian P.

The annotated Loose Change

This version of everyone's favorite 9/11 "documentary" features text commentary and footage refuting the filmmakers' conspiracy theories. Highly recommended.

Damian P.

It's not just "George Bush's War on Terror"

...but you'd never know it from major Canadian newspapers. As far as I know, the Globe was the only one that gave this story any coverage: specifically, a one paragraph news brief, that did not mention Canada, in the Ottawa print edition. No wonder so many of our politicians and pundits are ignorant of what is going on:

NATO is expanding its force from 9,700 to 16,000 by late July, doubling international troop numbers in the southern region, which was the Taliban's heartland.

The deployment of more troops into former Taliban strongholds in the south has been met by a wave of attacks, including suicide bombings against international forces, including 2,300 Canadians, and their Afghan allies...

The alliance hopes to complete its expansion across the whole of Afghanistan by November by taking on the eastern sector, bringing its total numbers in the country to up to 25,000, although Rumsfeld said the exact timing was not yet certain...

The United States has said it will take command of the NATO force in Afghanistan through 2007, replacing the current British general.

The Pentagon said the United States has at least 21,000 troops in Afghanistan but there has been talk of a cut of as much as 20 per cent. Many of those who remain will be incorporated into the NATO force as it moves south and east. However, the United States will also maintain a combat force independent of NATO to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaida militants...

One of the Globe's most irritating pundits, Rick Salutin, writes on Canada and Afghanistan today (full text not online):

...it may be more useful to go the painstaking routes of aid and diplomacy, while letting local forces sort themselves out, rather than trying to militarily impose a plan.It also may mean cutting loose from the U.S. agenda, which has its own aims. The United States invaded because it wanted to attack someone after 9/11, and in pursuit of geopolitical goals that do not coincide with ours...

Some observations on this drivel:

1) If the local forces are left to "sort themselves out" then it will be rather difficult to provide aid in the south and east. Moreover, the Taliban might eventually win again. Does Mr Salutin want that? And with whom are we to conduct diplomacy? The Taliban?

2) We would not be just "cutting loose from the U.S. agenda". We would be cutting loose from the NATO (see above) and UN Security Council agendas. Why does Mr Salutin not mention those facts?

3) The US did not "invade" Afstan. The Northern Alliance received air support and assistance from special forces (both US and British); that however is not an invasion. Substantial foreign ground combat forces--including Canadian--only entered the country after the Taliban regime had been deposed by indigenous Afghan forces in November 2001, and those foreign troops entered with the agreement of the Northern Alliance. It is important to remember in this connection that the Alliance had kept Afghanistan's UN seat, so the US and others were actually supporting an internationally-recognized government.

4) The action against the Taliban was not just because the US "wanted to attack someone". It was because the Taliban had allowed al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to run extensive terrorist training camps and to plan terrorist acts, including 9/11, in Afstan. The US demanded that the Taliban surrender bin Laden for trial; the Taliban refused. Military action followed. At that time US "geopolitical goals" coincided completely with Canada's. Indeed in February 2002 the Liberal government sent Canadian troops to Kandahar for a combat mission fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Yet Mr Salutin's mythic and anti-American version of reality is widely believed.

Update: An excellent post on similar lines at Celestial Junk.

Mark C.

"It's raining in Antarctica"

A shocked Jack Layton auditioned for the job of House weatherman during Question Period yesterday. But is it raining in the Gobi Desert? Enquiring minds...

Update: House "weather person" to keep Rick Salutin happy.

Mark C.

Food Fishery allowed

This is the dominant news story in Newfoundland today - and I think I'm the only person in the province who isn't thrilled about the news:

The federal government is opening up more of the fish stocks, both from a commercial and recreational perspective.

Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn made the announcement in Petty Harbour during a news conference yesterday.

There will be an expanded food fishery with a daily bag limit of five fish per person and a boat limit of 15 in area 2J3KL. The season will open August 1st and close September 4th and licences and tags are no longer required. Hearn says people can go out and fish on any day during the five-week period.

That Newfoundlanders have a strong emotional attachment to the fishery goes without saying. That the cod stocks are still in trouble also goes without saying, though many Newfoundlanders will point to some areas where the fish appear to have returned and say everything is back to normal.

It isn't, and until we know for sure, we should proceed with the utmost caution. If that means Newfoundlanders cannot catch a meal of cod, it's a tragedy, but it may be necessary to avoid a potentially catstrophic effect on the fragile cod stocks. Can one person catching five fish per day destroy the stocks? No, but 100,000 Newfoundlanders (a significant percentage of whom had no interest at all in the recreational fishery until Ottawa told them they couldn't) catching five fish per day certainly could.

Disallowing a food fishery would be sad, but I think it would be necessary. Too bad it's politically suicidal to say so. (And while we're on this subject, is it "fair" that Newfoundlanders' recreational cod fishery will be more limited than similar fisheries in the Maritimes? Probably not - but it's not "fair" that Newfoundland workers don't require as many weeks of work to collect Employment Insurance, either. Sometimes, different rules are needed for different situations, and the recreational cod fishery in Newfoundland is probably bigger than in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I. combined.)

Damian P.

Conviction overturned

David Ahenakew's hate-speech conviction has been struck down by the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench:

David Ahenakew's lawyer declared a "victory for common sense" Thursday as a judge overturned his client's hate crime conviction and ordered a new trial.

In a 35-page decision, Court of Queen's Bench Chief Justice Robert Laing said the original trial judge did not properly assess whether the former head of the Assembly of First Nations had the requisite intent to be convicted of a hate crime. "It was a victory for common sense, that's what I think," said Ahenakew's lawyer Doug Christie.

"It demonstrates that angry, unconsidered words should not constitute criminal offences. They may be bad words, they may be things we shouldn't say, they may even be offensive, but they are the price we pay for freedom in democratic society."

Ahenakew was convicted of wilfully promoting hatred and fined $1,000 for comments he made about Jews to a Saskatoon reporter in December 2002.

[...]

In his decision, Laing pointed out that the reporter, James Parker of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, was the one to approach Ahenakew.

"Until Mr. Parker asked his first question, the appellant had no knowledge about what the subject matter of the questioning would be," Laing wrote.

"Thereafter, his statements were made spontaneously in response to questions from Mr. Parker."

Laing noted that during the interview Ahenakew told Parker, "I'm not gonna argue with you about the Jews," and when Parker phoned Ahenakew afterward to clarify the remarks, Ahenakew hung up.

"The foregoing evidence was relevant on the issue of the appellant's intent and his defence that he did not 'wilfully promote hatred of persons of the Jewish faith,' " Laing wrote.

The full decision is here, in PDF format. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like the appellate judge ruled that Ahenakew's comments were more akin to manslaughter than murder: that is, there was no premeditation on Ahenakew's part. You can be sure we haven't heard the last of this one.

Andrew Coyne: "This is absurdity squared. First absurdity: pretending that a statement that Jews are a 'disease' who deserved to be 'fried' was not hate speech. Second absurdity: prosecuting people for their opinions, however addled."

Damian P.

The Rooney Risk

[Originally posted, in slightly different form, at Maple Lions]

England football coach Sven-Goran Eriksson (a fine Olde English name, no?) wants to play Wayne Rooney against the Swedes on June 20 - and Rooney's owners at Man U are fit to be tied:

Relations between Manchester United and the Football Association faced total collapse last night following Sven-Goran Eriksson’s insistence that he might defy medical advice and play Wayne Rooney in the group stages of the World Cup.

Manchester United believe the England head coach has reneged on an agreement to abide by the findings of independent medical specialist Professor Angus Wallace.

Although Rooney’s metatarsal has healed, Wallace says the player will not be match fit for the group stages and risks another injury. But Eriksson said yesterday that he would choose when to play him. Although Rooney will not face Paraguay tomorrow or Trinidad and Tobago next Thursday, Eriksson wants to be able to use him against Sweden on June 20.

The Swede’s uncharacteristic defiance of United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has left the Scot and the club, Rooney’s employers, incandescent with rage.

It is understood that United chief executive David Gill and his FA counterpart, Brian Barwick, were involved in a fierce telephone dispute yesterday in which Barwick accused Gill of being “irresponsible” over Rooney. [emphasis added]

When in doubt, go with the doctor’s orders, I say. I’d love to see Rooney back as soon as possible, but I have a bad feeling about this.

Damian P.

Where to focus the hunt for "homegrown" terrorists

Christie Blatchford wrote:

...at one point Chief Blair actually bragged -- this in answer to a question from the floor -- "I would remind you that there was not one single reference made by law enforcement to Muslim or Muslim community" at the big post-arrest news conference on Saturday.

Indeed, law-enforcement types there took enormous pains to say just the opposite: The arrested men are from a diverse variety of backgrounds ("They're students, they're employed, they're unemployed" one official said, which is akin to running the gamut from A to oh, C); they come from all parts of Canadian society; blah, blah, blah...

The Associated Press reveals the key to the profile: "Most suspects in Canada plot from suburbs".

One supposes newly-immigrated potential terrorists, on the other hand, tend to congregate downtown.

Mark C.

The romance of aviation

Is this part of the constellation of Canada's cultural firmament?

A battle between Canada and the United States could be brewing over the fate of what's believed to be Canada's last surviving Super Constellation aircraft after a permit to export the plane to a Seattle museum was denied last week.

The 1953 California-built Lockheed aircraft, once the pride of Trans-Canada Air Lines (now Air Canada) fleet, was sold last year to Seattle's Museum of Flight for a reported $50,000 (U.S.) after more than two years of negotiations with its unidentified Canadian owner...

Groups such as the Toronto Aerospace Museum and the 12,000-member Air Canada Pionairs have mounted on-line petitions to try to keep the aircraft north of the border. Earlier this year, Ottawa's Movable Cultural Property Directorate told the Seattle museum that the Constellation was on the Canadian Cultural Property Export Control List as an artifact of possible historic or cultural significance to the country.

When an unidentified representative of the plane's Canadian seller applied for an export permit April 27, the application was referred to Richard de Boer, a Calgary-based aviation appraiser, who spent a month investigating the history and value of the plane.

Late last month, de Boer told the permit-issuing officer that he deemed the Super Connie "to be of significant cultural and historical importance to Canada," whereupon the officer declined, on May 25, to issue the export permit. The owner of the aircraft has until the end of this month to request a review of this refusal by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board, whose next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 18-20...

...if the board concurs with de Boer's assessment, it can establish a delay period of two to six months during which it can try to get a Canadian institution to make "a fair cash offer" to the owner of the Lockheed...

I'm torn on this. The Super Constellation was not Canadian-made and is, except for true aircraft aficionados, unknown to the Canadian public. What about property rights and the free market? What really is "a fair cash offer"?

On the other hand it is the single most beautiful multi-engine prop plane ever designed. It was the last (along with the DC-3!) reciprocating engine plane flown by TCA, from 1954 to 1963.

Moreover, in 1956 I was a child flying from London to Montreal in a TCA Super Connie. The pilot let me stand behind him and the co-pilot in the cockpit, just holding on to some grip, as the plane touched down at Dorval. Times that will not come again. I think I know how I'd decide.

Mark C.

Excuses for Zarqawi

Just as we're arguing about when and how it's appropriate to criticize the politics of people who lost their loved ones on 9/11, along comes Michael Berg, whose son was murdered and beheaded on camera by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, mourning the man who wielded the knife and saying President Bush is the real killer:

The father of Nicholas Berg, a U.S. contractor believed to have been beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, said Thursday that al-Zarqawi's killing will only perpetuate the cycle of violence in the Middle East.

"I think al-Zarqawi's death is a double tragedy," Michael Berg told The Associated Press after learning a U.S. airstrike had killed the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. "His death will incite a new wave of revenge. George Bush and al-Zarqawi are two men who believe in revenge."

[...]

Berg said the blame for most deaths in Iraq should be placed on President Bush, who he said is "more of a terrorist than Zarqawi."

"Zarqawi felt my son's breath on his hand as held the knife against his throat. Zarqawi had to look in his eyes when he did it," Berg added, pausing to collect himself. "George Bush sits there glassy-eyed in his office with pieces of paper and condemns people to death. That to me is a real terrorist."

That's what he told the Associated Press. Here's what he told Reuters:

"I don't think that Zarqawi is himself responsible for the killings of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq," Berg said in a combative television interview with the U.S. Fox News network. "I think George Bush is.

"George Bush is the one that invaded this country, George Bush is the one that destabilized it so that Zarqawi could get in, so that Zarqawi had a need to get in, to defend his region of the country from American invaders." [Zarqawi was from Jordan - DJP]

[...]

When an Islamist Web site showed the video of a man severing Berg's head, the CIA said Zarqawi was probably the one wielding the knife. The father said he was not convinced.

"I have been lied to by my own government," he told Reuters on Thursday.

Does Michael Berg deserve our scorn, or our pity? I think he deserves both.

Damian P.

My new blog obsession

The Comics Curmudgeon, which hilariously deconstructs the funnies in your daily newspaper. Check it out, and you'll be hooked. I especially enjoyed his comments about Mary Jane Parker's budding movie career, and Peter/Spidey's jealousy thereof:

Yeah, because the last thing I’d want if I had a high-stress job, time-consuming job that paid exactly nothing — like, say, being a superhero — would be for my wife to suddenly become extraordinarily wealthy. I mean, dude, you can climb up walls and what not, and now you’re feeling inadequate because you make less than your woman? I would definitely like to sign up for this sort of marital problem. I’m sure I’ll feel a twinge of discomfort, just before I dive head first into my Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pool of money that I didn’t have to work for.

Damian P.

"Great, kid. Don't get cocky."

It was good advice when Han Solo said it, and it's good advice when Reason's David Wiegel says it:

It's fantastic news that U.S. forces have killed a terrorist who murdered hundreds or thousands of Americans and Iraqis in cold blood. It's definitely not wise for pundits to take that news and bash Iraq War skeptics over the head with it. Doing so has become a ritual after every milestone in the war - the fall of Baghdad (and the Saddam statue), the killing of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, the transfer of power to the provisional government, the victory in Fallujah, the killing of al-Zarawi's deputies, the first election, the second election, the third election, and now the killing of al-Zarqawi. Every time, when victory didn't swiftly follow, support for the war and faith in America's Iraq policy ebbed a little further.

With a real victory to celebrate, why would a Iraq War stalwart's first reaction be to mock skepticism about the war that has, so far, proven correct? Nothing better underscores the difficulty of predicting the aftershocks of events in Iraq.

Damian P.

The gang that couldn't vote straight

Bloomberg News: "Canadian Lawmakers Accidentally Pass Budget in House".

The Canadian government's C$227 billion ($204 billion) budget was passed in the House of Commons after opposition lawmakers accidentally failed to stand up to debate the spending plan.

[...]

Opposition lawmakers were expecting Conservative member Diane Ablonczy to speak in the House. When she didn't show up, the speaker moved on to the budget, and opposition politicians were caught off guard.

"Let's not make a mountain out of a molehill -- we oppose the budget," said Liberal leader Bill Graham. "It's an unfortunate error, but it doesn't change anything."

A so-called "take note" debate, where lawmakers are asked to express their views on an issue, was held instead, though it won't change the outcome of the budget vote.

Yet people think it important that they debate major issues like Afghanistan.

Mark C.

Maj. Gen. (ret'd) Mackenzie nails Lieut. Gen.(ret'd) Dallaire

Mr Mackenzie thinks the good Senator's reversal of position on Darfur is devoid of sense and smacks of partisan politics.

In Senator Dallaire we have someone who, two years ago, prior to his accepting a partisan appointment to the Senate, was part of the chorus rightly calling for western military intervention, primarily from NATO countries, to stop the genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan. On taking his seat in the Senate he immediately abandoned his professional judgment and limited operational background gained from his experience commanding the largest operational failure in the UN's history.

He could have been a strong voice for intervention by professional militaries to stop the genocide, but instead opted to abandon his principles and, displaying "an acute lack of courage" himself, vocally supported a flawed Liberal foreign-policy decision to merely help the inadequate African Union peacekeeping force with some cash, vehicles and a handful of advisers, saying that was enough for Canada to contribute.

To make matters worse, following a short visit to the Darfur area he yet again displayed an astounding lack of military judgment -- or succumbed to partisan pressure, or both -- when he opined that the situation for the victims of the genocide was improving. The fact that fewer victims were being slaughtered because the genocide was working and therefore there were fewer people left to kill was presumably not considered.

In a bizarre change of heart, the senator went on to suggest that those of us who continued to call for western intervention were recommending a racist solution: "Anybody who says that the era of the white man going into Africa and sorting out their problems ... should remain is someone who's totally disconnected from the reality of Africa" was his response.

Senator Dallaire held his anti-western-intervention opinion for the relatively short period prior to the defeat of the Liberal government. Then, completing a 360-degree change of course he returned to his original call for western intervention in Darfur -- presumably ready to accept the mantle of racist by his own definition. His weak excuse for the change of heart was that the situation in Darfur o had deteriorated since his visit, a statement not substantiated by the facts, which suggests a lack of military awareness when he visited the area, or once again "an acute lack of courage" to disagree with his party's stand on Darfur...

Much as I admire Mr Mackenzie, his belief in Western intervention is unrealistic. But he is at least consistent. And non-partisan at this time.

Mark C.

Here come the wet blankets

This is the first anti-World-Cup article I've seen this year, but unfortunately, it almost certainly won't be the last. (He's absolutely right about Israel and FIFA, though.)

Damian P.

Parliamentary Press Gallery: listen up

Your issue isn't an issue. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, said it best on TVO's Studio 2 last night: "You don't get stories by going to press conferences."

You get them by "digging". Start working.

Mark C.

Xenu is my co-pilot

The Church (snicker) of Scientology is sponsoring a car in one of NASCAR's lower divisions. The team is called "Ignite Your Potential Racing," but "Ignite Your Wallet" would have made more sense.

This might be the first time Scientology has sponsored a NASCAR team, but I remember seeing "Dianetics" logos plastered on Indy 500 entries in the eighties. And in 1988, Mario Andretti refused to drive in a sportscar race until the Dianetics sponsorship was removed from his car.

Damian P.

Piling on

The Anchoress and InstaPundit round up conservative blog reaction to Ann Coulter's disgusting comments about the 9/11 widows.

Is this the beginning of the end for Coulter? Here's hoping, but the controversy is probably going to help her book sales, at least for the first few weeks.

Damian P.

Update: Lileks: "Everyone writes something that makes them say oooh, I shouldn’t. Most people take it out. Some people hope it makes it into the press kit."

Update II: Captain Ed: "Let me make this point clear, since it seems to have escaped some. Had Ann said in her book that the media should not shield the 9/11 widows and Cindy Sheehan from criticism or hold them up as unassailable voices with the only moral standing for commentary, I would have applauded that effort. Had she said that Kristen Breitweiser accrued too much influence and used it inappropriately, I would consider that just fair commentary; after all, Mrs. Breitweiser chose to go public and push policy, and that means opening one's self to criticism.

However, there is a HUGE difference between that and explicitly saying that these women are 'enjoying' their husbands' deaths. It implies that they have reveled in their murders, and cared less for their husbands than for a few moments in the spotlight. It's cruel, it's irrational, and it's unnecessary for the point she makes. I don't care if she goes on then to argue the points I made above -- she lost me when she lost her humanity."

Update III: fair comment on the "Jersey girls" here. (via Kathy Shaidle)

Terminated

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq, is getting to know his neighbours in Hell this morning:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader in Iraq who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and kidnappings, has been killed in an air strike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a first-hand look at his face. It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said al-Zarqawi was killed along with seven aides Wednesday evening in a in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, al-Maliki said.

Loud applause broke out as al-Maliki, flanked by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.S. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters at a news conference that "al-Zarqawi was terminated."

The announcement came six days after the Jordanian-born terror leader issued an audiotape on the Internet, railing against Shiites in Iraq and saying militias are raping women and killing Sunnis and the community must fight back.

Damian P.

Update: PJM rounds up blog reaction here.

Update II: Candygram!

Rick Moran calls Zarqawi's death "fantastic news" but wisely counsels against getting too overconfident or cocky:

...the basic reality we have to face is that killing Zarqawi, while a necessary step on the road to victory, is also just a milepost on that road and that the likelihood that this will slow down al Qaeda in Iraq is very small. That outfit is so diverse and nebulous with cells spread out all over the country that the death of its high profile leader means little to the overall effectiveness (or ineffectiveness as has been proven lately) of its operations. The amount of latitude given these cells to mount their own missions also means that outside a blow to their morale, there will be little decrease in AQI’s operations, a stated goal of which is fomenting a sectarian civil war.

And Zarqawi’s death doesn’t affect the thousands of Sunni insurgents who show little sign that their attacks will abate. The Sunni’s share AQI’s wish that the sectarian violence currently roiling the streets of Iraq escalate into a full scale civil war.

Many would say it already has. The killing of Zarqawi is a disaster for the brave Iraqi resistance(TM), but Iraq still has a long, long way to go.

Afstan: More on the Canadian media's "Death Watch"

First, it didn't happen. Though our two major television news websites are grudging in their headlines.

Harper's office denies Canadians captured

Taliban kidnapping claim false, Canadians say

You just can't be too careful when dealing with the new government.

Meanwhile, blogger Bill Roggio (embedded with the Canadian Forces) tells how the "Death Watch" goes into action.

Tonight I had the displeasure of witnessing the Death Watch in action. An Al Jazeera report, based on an unsubstantiated claim from an unnamed Taliban source, indicated a Canadian soldier was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Reuters repeated the unsubstantiated claim, which later morphed into an unspecified number of Coalition troops. Canada's Globe and Mail, in a rush to press, misidentified the lead Canadian Public Affairs Officer, Major Scott Lundy, as the "spokesman for NATO Special Forces" (the webmaster later corrected this and removed the reference to Major Lundy altogether.)

The Canadian media rushes into action, trying to get to the bottom of the story which very likely is a Taliban information operation. Cell phones are buzzing, reporters are pressing the public affairs officers for quotes. The Death Watch is in full news-gathering mode. Media outlets in Canadian are requesting live interviews and quick columns from their reporters at the airfield. The Canadian forces are in turn conducting a headcount but discount the reports, as this has happened in the past. If this is a false report, as it likely is, the propaganda machine of al-Qaeda and the Taliban has succeeded yet again in manipulating the Western media into doing their bidding. The DeathWatch continues as I submit this post, and Al Jazeera is downplaying the reports of the kidnapping...

H/t to small dead animals.

Mark C.

Read on for a description of what the various militaries are actually doing in the general region.

Elsewhere in southeastern Afghanistan, there is real news to report, and it is the Taliban that is taking the brunt of the casualties. As the hot and dusty Afghan summer begins, NATO is increasing its presence in Afghanistan, particularly in the Southeastern provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar and Zabul. NATO forces are expected to surge from 9,000 to 17,000 troops by the end of the summer. The U.S. commitment of troops in Afghanistan is expected to decrease by one bridage, as forces are decreased from 23,000 to 20,000 troops. This results in a net gain of 5,000 NATO troops during the summer.

Kandahar Airfield plays an important role in the buildup of NATO forces in the southeastern portion of the country. NATO forces surge into Kandahar Airfield prior to the deployment to the provinces, swelling the base population to over 8,000 at times.

The U.S. Army is patrolling the Arghandab Valley in Zabul province, where the Taliban has . Zabul remains a major focus of Taliban efforts to dismantle the local police forces. Five police were killed and four kidnapped in the provincial capitol of Qalat. Earlier in the week, five police are said to have murdered seven of their brethren and then joined the Taliban. Based on the brutality of the incident, the police were likely Taliban infiltrators rather than defectors.

British forces engaged in their first round of combat in the Naz Zad district of Helmand province, killing five Taliban. Coalition forces (a generalization used when referring to Special Operations units) killed three Taliban. France, Britain, Holland, Canada, America, Australia and a host of other nations have special operations forces operating from Kandahar Airfield.

The Afghan National Army and Police, along with U.S. Army, killed thirteen Taliban while retaking the southern district of Chora in Uruzgan. In the northeastern province of Kunar, two U.S. soldiers were killed during a Taliban suicide attack. Taliban leader Mullah Omar has called for the Taliban to leave the tribal lands and take the fight into Afghanistan.

The Ted Rall of the right

This time, it's Ann Coulter's turn to make fun of 9/11 widows:

When their husbands were killed on 9/11, four New Jersey widows tried to find out why - and now no-holds-barred conservative pundit Ann Coulter is mercilessly denouncing them as "witches."

"I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Coulter writes in her new book.

Her brutal words were challenged yesterday on national television by "Today" host Matt Lauer - and she was slammed by the widows she derided as self-absorbed, limelight-seeking "harpies."

[...]

In "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," the uncompromisingly right-wing Coulter writes the Jersey Girls have no right to criticize President Bush or any of the failures that led to the terror attacks.

"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis," Coulter writes.

"And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy. . .

"These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them."

Coulter has every right to criticize the widows' politics, but this is several hundred miles over the line. I've contacted Pajamas Media, with whom I have an advertising deal, to ask that no more ads for Coulter's Godless appear on this site.

Damian P.

Update: there's a 48-hour turnaround time before PJM can remove an advertisement from your site, so that's why the Coulter ad is still coming up.

It's fun to hate him, isn't it?

WWTDD.com on Kevin Federline's collapsing gravy train marriage: "Man, Kevin's rap album is gonna be huge hit. He's always been one tough customer, but his street cred will go through the roof now that he lives in the basement of the pink mansion while the male nanny is upstairs seducing his wife. Just like a real gangster!"

Damian P.

There's a soccer tournament or something starting Friday

A primer for the footie-challenged here. (Canada didn't make it, which is I'm rooting for the ancestral homeland. Up here, all matches will be broadcast on Rogers Sportsnet and TSN, with the final on CTV.)

Here's a printable schedule, in PDF format.

Damian P.

Good luck, Gerry and Lorraine

73% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians would vote for Danny Williams' Tories if an election were held today. The Liberals and NDP are 17 and 6, respectively.

Does that mean the Tories would actually win 73% of the vote? Not likely: there are many, many Newfoundlanders who support Danny Williams but will still vote for their local opposition MHA. (Even Joey Smallwood never got 73% of the popular vote.) But the new Liberal and NDP leaders must be wondering what they've gotten themselves into.

Damian P.

Memorial University of Newfoundland

My theory about my alma mater's new logo: the designer got his four-year-old son to draw the last two lines, and he doesn't know how to use a ruler.

Damian P.

Why baby-boomers don't produce great art

Television and a few other things. I think Philip Marchand is really on to something:

[Edward] Albee, back in 1962, riveted American culture with his profanity-ridden Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? No dramatic work since has so fascinated and disturbed Americans. Even though there are playwrights working today who are at least as talented as Albee, they don't have his aura. He's like a general at Waterloo or Gettysburg 40 years after the battle. He's a survivor of a period when culture meant something.

This is not baby-boomer nostalgia, even though we are talking about the '60s. Albee is not a baby boomer. Neither is McCartney nor Jagger nor Dylan nor Keith Richards — these rock stars were all born in the early '40s. They were lionized by the boomers, but they were not of them. All the baby boomers did was buy their records and attend their shows.

The real force behind the 1960s revolution was a generation born in the 1930s and, to a lesser extent, in the early 1940s. We speak constantly about the baby boomers and the "Greatest Generation," the veterans of D-Day, but we rarely refer to the generation born in-between.

It was precisely this generation, however, that transformed our culture. From this demographic cohort came the men and women who became the icons of the 1960s and who have had no equivalent successors. They cast very long shadows...

Why have these people born in the 1930s and early 1940s exercised such disproportionate influence?..

...this generation was the last to grow up without television. This, of course, does not set it apart from previous generations, but it may well have given its cohort a decisive advantage over the following generation of baby boomers.

Television, as we now know, has a hypnotic effect that destroys your mind. Well, more or less...

...the generation of the '30s and early '40s took advantage of a unified culture that has since disappeared. The artists, writers and activists of this generation wrote and performed and argued before an audience that often saw the same movies, viewed the same newscasts, and read the same journalism...

Mark C.

Foiled again

The Globe and Mail has obtained RCMP documents saying twelve terrorist plots have ben disrupted in the past two years:

The RCMP has quietly broken up at least a dozen terrorist groups in the past two years, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

"We have completed 12 disruptions of national-level terrorist groups across the country," the Mounties say in briefing notes prepared for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

Disruptive tactics -- sometimes as simple as letting targets know they are under close surveillance -- are used to prevent a terrorist attack when the police do not have enough evidence to lay criminal charges, the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service say.

Unlike the high-profile arrests and court proceedings resulting from the weekend roundup of terrorist suspects in Southern Ontario, the public rarely learns about these operations, federal security officials say.

[...]

Disruptive tactics can take many forms, including interdiction of persons or matériel at border points, denial of charitable status to front groups, deportation of non-citizens on security grounds, or "defensive actions as a result of threat assessment," CSIS spokeswoman Barbara Campion said. CSIS, the RCMP and other agencies "have a duty to prevent and disrupt terrorist acts . . . before these individuals have the opportunity to carry out their terrorist plans."

Use of disruptive tactics in anti-terrorism cases represents a sea change in the way the RCMP deals with security threats, senior Mounties say. Police officers by inclination and training try to collect evidence that can be used to support a criminal charge and prosecution. But officers are now recognizing that disrupting a plot in its early stages can be a bigger success than making arrests, often after crimes have already been committed.

Disruptive tactics fell out of favour with the RCMP as a result of Mountie security-service scandals in the 1970s. Mounties then sometimes broke the law to disrupt groups, such as the now infamous case of the burning of a barn in rural Quebec to prevent the building from being used as a meeting place by Quebec separatists and the U.S. Black Panthers.

Damian P.

Truth from a Canadian Muslim leader

Tarek Fatah, Communications Director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, writes an eye-opening article in the Toronto Star(!). Good on him. And good on the Star.

Three years ago when Kuwaiti Islamist scholar Tareq Al Suwaidian told a Toronto crowd that "Western civilization is rotten from within and nearing collapse ... it (the West) will continue to grow until an outside force hits it and you will be surprised at how quickly it falls," he was lustily cheered by the nearly 2,000 young Muslim men and women.

I was deeply offended by the hostile remark, but the thunderous approving applause of the young audience simply stunned me. All I could do was muster the courage and stage a polite walkout.

That day I resolved to fight this hostility toward the modern nation-state and Western civilization that was engulfing a section of Canadian Muslim youth; one that was being fanned by the leadership of the traditional Muslim organizations and Islamic radicals who took inspiration from the ruling elites of Iran and Saudi Arabia...

While the overwhelming majority of Canada's Muslims have been stunned by this development, few can honestly deny that they had seen this coming.

For years, some of us have been incessantly talking and writing about the growth of this extremist phenomenon, this contempt for secular parliamentary democracy and non-stop berating of Muslim youth who become "Canadian" and warnings to them that they will be punished in the hereafter if they do not adhere to the barren version of Islam where joy itself is a sin.

In the last five years, we Muslims have had more than our share of terrorism done in the name of our part. Whether it is terrorist attacks in India or the hundreds of simultaneous bombings in 300 cities of Bangladesh; whether it is massacres of Muslims by Muslims in Iraq or the genocide of Muslims by Muslims in Darfur, the traditional leadership of the Muslim community responds repeatedly in a similar manner: abject denial.

Every tragedy that has befallen the Muslim world has been labelled as an American or a Zionist conspiracy. The conspiracy stories have gone from the ridiculous to the absurd...

During the discussion [on TVOntario's Studio Two], [Ali] Hindy claimed he knew eight of the accused. According to his analysis, the suspects may have been involved in military training to fight a jihad overseas. He went on to say that when young Muslim men come to him asking to go overseas to fight, he discourages them and tells them to fight their jihad "here."

Flabbergasted, host Paula Todd asked him, "Why? What do you mean?" Cornered, he took refuge — like so many Muslim clerics who encourage jihad, take when trapped — in philosophy: "By jihad I mean the inner jihad ..."

Mark C.

Damian adds: Fatah's article and his organization say a lot of things that need to be said by moderate Muslim leaders - which is why I was disappointed by his support for CUPE's proposed boycott of Israel (and his endorsement of Desmond Tutu's borderline anti-Semitic theories about the power of the "Jewish lobby") and the simplistic conspiracy theorizing in his last parahraph:

It is ironic that Muslim extremists are portraying themselves as anti-imperialist when, in fact, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are nothing more than a creation of the CIA. Muslims need to recognize that the agenda of these extremists is a cult of hate and fascism, not one of advocacy for their community. [emphasis added]

Darfur update: What UN Charter Chapter VII peacekeepers?

This sort of report is still not being carried in the Canadian media.

It is a month since a peace deal was signed between Sudan's government and the main rebel group. Yet the frustration among the people of Darfur, and among the 7,300 peacekeepers from 25 African countries they look to for protection, is growing each day.

Insecurity remains rife and the peacekeepers can do little to improve the situation.

"Monitoring this agreement with only the troops we have now will be a failure," said Lieutenant Colonel John Asabre, in charge of intelligence and security at the African Union Mission to Sudan (Amis) headquarters.

Most analysts say the Darfur force should be doubled in size, with the power to protect returning refugees and to disarm militia. Yet the western nations that sponsor Amis have made an increase all but impossible by holding back funding. Some soldiers have not been paid for three months.

Hands tied, the AU has agreed to hand over the mission to the United Nations at the end of September. But there are serious doubts that this will take place [emphasis added - MC] by then, if at all.

While Sudan's government has finally agreed to let a UN assessment mission into Darfur later this week, the president, Omar el-Bashir, remains strongly opposed to a "blue helmet" takeover.

A UN security council delegation arrived in Khartoum on Monday to try to twist his arm. But even if it is successful, analysts say Mr Bashir is likely to insist that the mission's scale and mandate remain largely unchanged. And if not, Amis will continue to limp along...

H/t to Norman's Spectator.

Update: A misleading headline, courtesy the CBC: "UN peacekeepers heading to Darfur, group agrees". Not quite, but such headlines just add to the almost complete absence in this country of a realistic understanding of what is going on.

The UN Security Council and the African Union have agreed that a UN force should take over peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region, once they have the approval of the Sudanese government [emphasis added - MC]...

The next step is the arrival Friday in Khartoum of a joint UN-AU team that will hold talks with the Sudanese government next week and then head to Darfur to make a technical assessment for a possible [emphasis added - MC]] UN peacekeeping mission...

Mark C.

Afstan: US offers to take command of NATO ISAF next year

I wonder how this will play out in certain Canadian political and media circles.

The United States has offered to take command of the NATO force in Afghanistan next year following the current British stint in charge of the expanding peacekeeping mission, diplomats said Tuesday.

The handover to a U.S. general is expected to take place in February as part of an overhaul of the NATO mission. The changes will include introducing a more flexible, multinational headquarters to replace the system of rotating national commands which has been in place since the start of the operation in August 2003...

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said his country would like to take command in 2008.

NATO is scheduled to expand its peacekeeping mission from 9,000 to 16,000 by late July when it is scheduled to take on security in the dangerous southern region. Later this year, it hopes to complete its expansion by moving into the eastern sector, which will likely take its total numbers to 21,000.

The U.S. is hoping to reduce its troops numbers this year from 19,000 to 16,000. Many of the remaining U.S. troops will be incorporated into the NATO force, notably in the eastern region, where Americans will be the lead nation under the NATO command. Britain is taking command in the south [presumably around the end of this year when Canada's command of the Multi-National Brigade Headquarters ends], Germany commands the north, and Italy the west.

However, the U.S. will also maintain a smaller combat force independent of NATO with the aim of hunting down Taliban and al-Qaida remnants...

H/t to Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs.

Mark C.

The keystone Jihadis

Tom Walkom makes a pretty good case that the Toronto terror suspects were hopelessly incompetent. (Of course, this is Tom Walkom, so he can't resist spinning nonsensical conspiracy theories about how "convenient" the arrests are for the Harper government.)

Damian P.

Update: Christie Blatchford: "on Sept. 10, 2001, the idea of a bunch of terrorists hijacking jumbo jets and flying them into targets as diverse as the twin towers and the Pentagon would have seemed laugh-out-loud funny, too. Ditto, in early July last year, the prospect of a group of young men, as apparently British as warm beer and cricket, turning themselves into suicide bombers to lay waste to London's tube system would have seemed equally preposterous."

The Baghdad Taliban

Zeyad says religious extremists have completely taken over parts of the Iraqi capital. Right under the Americans' noses. (via Andrew Sullivan)

Damian P.

A music legend is gone

Billy Preston is dead at 59 after a lengthy illness.

Preston is best known for singles like "Nothing from Nothing" and "Will It Go Round In Circles," but he also played on "Get Back" (a song officially credited as "The Beatles with Billy Preston"), the Rolling Stones' "Can You Hear Me Knocking?" and Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, co-wrote "You are so Beautiful," toured with the Stones and Ray Charles, played with the Beatles on the roof of Abbey Road Studios and appeared on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. Not too shabby.

Damian P.

Jihadi terrorists are the real "racists"

Steve Janke exposes the awful truth:

...I didn't know Islam was a race. I thought it was a religion.

Second, the accusation is being leveled at the wrong people. The media and the police aren't the racists. The racists are the alleged terrorists (as well as the the real ones who have been convicted in the US, in England, and elsewhere around the world) who refuse to allow Italian Catholics, Swiss Calvinists, Russian Orthodox, Indian Hindus, Japanese Shintos, or even your run-of-the-mill atheist join in their plots and attacks.

As long as Islamic terrorism remains a Muslims-only club, then Muslims are the ones who are going to be arrested.

Perhaps the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal should look into this.

Update: Bring in the Muslim Mounties, regardless of race.

Mark C.

Take that, corporate media!

Zerb lavishes praise upon her own newspaper's coverage of the Toronto terror arrests (which, despite the occasional lapse into PC silliness, has been very good) and sneers about the way the Toronto Star stuck it to the capitalist death beasts, man:

What nailed this story is a dogged reporter pounding a beat, a paper investing time and resources on good old-fashioned journalism — something on which the corporate media, and the bloggers who attack them, can't, or won't, spend.

Yessir, the corporate media was really shown up by the Toronto Star, an alternative weekly published by the People's Solidarity Collective, a commune which squats in a burned-out factory near the Gardiner Expressway, publishes using old mimeograph machines rescued from dumpsters, and pays its reporters in Canadian Tire money. Oh, wait...

Kathy Shaidle fires back here.

Damian P.

America blinks

According to the Associated Press, the United States is prepared to provide nuclear technology to Iran if it stops enriching uranium:

In a major concession, the United States is prepared to provide Iran with some nuclear technology if it stops enriching uranium, diplomats said Tuesday.

The offer was part of a package of incentives presented to Tehran Tuesday by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said the diplomats, who were familiar with the proposals. The diplomats demanded anonymity in exchange for discussing details of the offer, which was agreed on last week by six world powers in a bid to resolve the nuclear standoff with Iran.

This sounds a lot like the deal with North Korea in 1994, and we all know how that turned out. My theory is that the Americans are making this offer on the assumption that Iran will reject it out of hand, thereby proving that the Iranians are interested in much more than just a power plant.

Damian P.

RFK, Jr. refuted

When even Salon says your anti-Bush conspiracy article is full of crap, you've kind of blown what little credibility you had left, haven't you? (Via InstaPundit)

Damian P.

Taliban/al Qaeda take 2?

Militia Seizes Somali Capital: Islamic Group Ousts U.S.-Backed Warlords

Mark C.

D-Day plus 62

President Ronald Reagan said it so well:

"You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you."

Thank-you, ladies & gentlemen of our armed forces, for your service.

Recalling Juno Beach.

Thank you Mark!

Ranald

Health care: How long can PM Harper be "incremental"

Mark Steyn analyzes a long-term elephant in the Prime Minister's room. One hopes a majority government will finally allow moving beyond "one-tier" band-aids.

Stephen Harper...[is] what I would call a principled incrementalist: that's to say, he may move cautiously, but he moves and in the right direction...

...most anyone who seriously looks at the issue understands that the present health care system cannot be "saved" in any meaningful sense, and that even "fixing it for a generation"--i.e., the next half-decade--is less and less viable given the underlying trends. That being so, unless the Canadian political class wants to find itself at the mercy of Paris-style mobs a decade down the round, they need to put the issues on the table now...

Take the "aged dependency ratio"--the number of elderly people receiving state benefits relative to the working-age adults slogging away each day to pay for them...Canada is an in-betweeny sorta nation on these projections--22.9 per cent. But that's still potentially catastrophic, for the health system and much else.

What to do? In The Globe and Mail, John Ibbitson says hey, no problem, let's just do what we've been doing for years, only more so. Or as the Globe headline put it: "Canada's Future Rests With Open-Door Immigration." But just because you leave the door open doesn't mean the folks you want are going to come through it. Hard-working talented young immigrants will be at a premium in the years ahead, and there aren't many compelling reasons for them to come here and pay tax rates of 60, 65 per cent or whatever it'll be by then to fund the swollen state liabilities cooked up in the seventies and eighties. So "open-door immigration" will likely result mostly in "family reunification"--an endless thread of elderly mums, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents that does nothing to reduce our age imbalance. If our future "rests with" open-door immigration, there won't be one.

...these unsustainable liabilities threaten the social fabric of the state. Some [countries]...will reach a tipping point, after which it's merely a question of who grabs the levers of power in Rome or Madrid or Berlin first. I'd rather Canada started talking about these issues before it gets to that point.

Mark C.

Are.You.Canadian? (II)

Two columnists get to basic issues.

1) Jim Travers in the Toronto Star:

...this is a domestic problem with offshore roots, not just a foreign problem manifesting itself at home. If the allegations are true and the plot more than a fantasy that became a conspiracy, we are under attack from ourselves...

In pursuing multicultural tolerance, Canada has been negligent in reinforcing essential, common-denominator values. Most of those are self-evident: human rights, the rule of law and the understanding that one person's freedom ends where another's begins.

These are all-defining and remain easily powerful enough to make this country a magnet. But what's slipped through cracks is that being Canadian requires a commitment passed from generation to generation.

Stripped bare of rhetoric and religion, politics and ethnicity, citizenship requires putting the national interest first.

To their shame and often for partisan advantage, politicians have been blinking when influential communities and interest groups fall below the threshold of what it means to hold a share in a nation of 33 million. As this weekend's events compellingly argue, that blindness is not sustainable.

In celebrating its differences, Canada must also protect the values that map the perimeter of its shared and evolving space. Along with all levels of government, every community leader, group and ethnic fragment shares responsibility for deciding what is acceptable and exposing what won't be tolerated.

Canada chose long ago to be the world in one place and, happily, that choice is not reversible. But the tougher decisions remain ahead for a country that must forge cohesion as immigration continues to rise and becomes even more diverse.

2) Rondi Adamson in the Christian Science Monitor:

Aly Hindy, a high-profile imam in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, called the arrests "an attack on the Muslim community." He went on to say that, "We are abusing our boys for the sake of pleasing George Bush." Rather than speaking out against extremism, or entertaining the notion that perhaps his country's security forces know what they're doing, Hindy called the charges against the men "home-grown baloney."

Even moderate Canadian Muslim groups, willing to show part in Canada's justice system, are mitigating their statements. The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) praised the work of Canada's spy agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But then they scolded the Canadian government for not funding "academic research to diagnose this serious social problem and provide scientific solutions to it." A scientific solution to Islamofascism? Bring it on.

The group also chastised Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper for portraying events "as a battle between 'us' and 'them.' " Following the arrests, Mr. Harper stated that "we are a target because of who we are. And how we live." One wonders - do the members of the CIC not consider themselves part of the "we" Harper referred to, when he spoke of Canadians? If so, that is indeed revealing.

The Muslim Canadian Congress fared only a tad bit better. They praised the police, and expressed dismay that members of their community might be guilty as charged. And then they managed to blame President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and even Harper for the fact that any such terror cells might exist. So far, only the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada (CAIR-CAN) has managed to issue a condemnation of terror, and praise of the police, without tacking on a "but," a "Bush," or a "Canadian troops in Afghanistan."

I was happily surprised at CAIR-CAN's press release. I shouldn't have been. We must expect that Western Muslims will wholeheartedly condemn Islamofascism, without any conditions placed on that condemnation. Without that, we may reach a point of divisions too deep to mend.

Mark C.

Afstan: How the media cover the Canadian Forces

A post at Small Dead Animals by Bill Roggio, an American blogger covering our troops, with a very interesting comments thread including contributions by other journalists: Roggio: Canadian Media On "Death Watch".

Update: John Gray (who has not been in Afstan recently) writes off our mission in a CBC Reality Check. The headline and subheads:

Canadians in Afghanistan, where the news is never good

The descent into anarchy

Is it a war that is doomed to be lost?

Must be a quagmire. Three months and a bit into the mission.

H/t to Army.ca.

Mark C.

Signs of extremism

Some of the Toronto terror suspects' high school classmates witnessed their conversion to radical Islam firsthand:

[Amin Mohamed] Durrani, who has been charged with training and recruiting for a terrorist group, would often spend time with two younger friends at Stephen Leacock Collegiate who were also taken into custody. "They all hung out together," said Syed.

Some of the youths charged have friends in common who played basketball together at the local mosque. Friends remember Fahim Ahmad — another of the 12 adults arrested — joining the youth at those games.

Durrani and the two younger friends also prayed together at an informal place of worship called Musalla-E-Namira, close to the school, where security guards yesterday were pointing out reporters and warning students not to speak to them.

The modest prayer room is on the top floor of a two-storey plaza, alongside seedy storefronts and dumpsters. Worshippers use a back door that looks more like a warehouse entrance.

Another of the high school friends who went there was a recent convert to Islam, whose parents were apparently upset when they'd caught him praying in the washroom at home and, according to some acquaintances, had an angry confrontation with people at the musalla.

It was there that the friends gathered to listen to fiery sermons by an amir, or preacher, that were full of anti-American talk and literalist interpretations of the Qur'an.

[...]

Although in different grades at their high school, Durrani and the other two — and possibly others from the school — had been "inseparable friends" for a long time.

Inspired by rap music, Durrani dressed in urban gangster style. A second youth was a popular kid, the envy of his friends for dating the school's hottest girl. The third was a bright kid with an interest in sciences, who volunteered with the school's Muslim association.

But some schoolmates said they noticed a drastic change in this group of friends toward the end of 2005. They started skipping school to attend the musalla's lectures, and some started wearing traditional dress.

"Not that there is anything wrong with that," said the source, "because dressing that way, for a good Muslim, makes you humble. But these were guys who were also acting strange."

The popular boy often talked about politics, especially about the 9/11 attacks.

"He talked a lot about the U.S. and manifest destiny and that stuff," said Alex Tang, a student at Stephen Leacock. "But he loves Canada. He'd rather live in Canada than in any place in the world," he added.

The same youth was known for giving great speeches in class.

"His teachers liked him. He talked like a college professor," said Tang. "He probably had all that knowledge from his friends, his parents and his outside schooling."

Liberal MP Wajid Khan had a run-in with one of the accused last year:

Khan realized with a shock on Saturday that he knew one of the accused, or rather, had had an encounter last year with Qayyum Abdul Jamal, the 43-year-old caretaker and frequent radical speaker at Mississauga's Ar-Rahman Islamic Centre.

Khan had been invited to speak at the Islamic centre at a Mississauga strip mall. Jamal was slated to introduce him. But in the process, the avowed fundamentalist launched a verbal attack on Canadian institutions and, in particular, on the deployment of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, where, he said, they were raping the Afghan women.

"It was all kinds of derogatory things," Khan recalls.

"I said, `You're talking a lot of nonsense. The troops are doing a wonderful job there.'

"I told the congregation that this was misinformation and they shouldn't accept it. Then I walked out."

He later learned that some members of the centre were "so upset with Jamal they roughed him up a little, pushed him."

Damian P.

Fooling nobody

Even LaShawn Barber is skeptical about President Bush's lame attempt to make a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage - seriously - a major election issue.

Glenn Reynolds: "There are times when I've found Bush's transparent lack of enthusiasm for this measure comforting, but of course it just makes it more obviously pandering when they trot it out at this point. Or maybe I should say 'attempted pandering,' since if LaShawn's reaction is typical it's not a very successful effort."

Damian P.

The day from Hell

Happy 06-06-06, Satan worshippers! Fittingly, today a remake of The Omen - the film that subjected me to endless jokes about my name - is released, as well as Ann Coulter's new book, Godless.

Damian P.

Update: Robert Englund, who played Freddy Krueger (though he'll always be "Willie" to me), turns 57 today. Also, the Angels are playing the Devil Rays.

Update II: BBC News: "A woman born weighing 6lbs 6oz on 6 June at 0600 BST, and who is 66 on 6/6/06, is refusing to drive on her birthday to help avoid accidents."

Update III: more proof that Bert is evil: in this song he sings "6-6-6" four times...

Update IV: HRH the Prince of Darkness, Jim Treacher, has still more 6/6/06 links.

The latest SNN is up

The featured interview this week is with two Australian bloggers who attended a Cindy Sheehan speech and somehow emerged with their sanity intact. My audio commentary, recorded before the Toronto terror arrests, is about the latest cowardly cartoon-related capitulation by Chapters/Indigo.

Damian P.

Holy rollers

A letter from Jack Wolock of Columbus, Ohio - wonder if Ranald knows him? - in the July Car and Driver:

Would Jesus drive an SUV? Of course. Here's why: The total gas consumption of three VW Beetles - or six Mazda Miatas - to haul Jesus and his apostles would be far greater than if he drove the largest SUV. (Only Judas would have had to walk.)

Not quite. The Chevy Suburban has seating for eight, and the much-maligned Ford Excursion only carries nine passengers. (In any event, the Excursion ceased production last year.) On the other hand, if our Lord had an extended-body Ford E-350 van, he could chauffeur around not only his disciples - including Judas, who presumably would be relegated to the back row - but even his wife and kid.

(In theory, at least. Personally, I think any Lord and Savior worthy of the name would have nothing less than one of these.)

Damian P.

Challenges facing a (declining?) West

Niall Ferguson's new book (and TV series), The War of the World, raises some big issues.

His new book clobbers an established historical truth - that the 20th century was America's, and a triumph for the West over Communism and fascism. "It seeks an answer to the question, why was the 20th century so violent considering it was an age of such material and scientific progress?" He traces the most violent outbreaks - in eastern Europe, Asia and Africa - to those areas with a combination of three factors: ethnic disintegration, economic instability and a declining empire. The real story of the 20th century is not the triumph of America and Europe but "the climb of Asia and descent of the West's wealth and values".

Ferguson says we are in the middle of a "huge rebalancing of the world ... a very painful, ongoing transition". China and India's eventual dominance is not certain, but the prognosis for the West is clear: the Asian tigers are at large, so watch your back.

More worryingly, Ferguson believes "the latent civil war" in Iraq could be the precursor for another bloody century in the Middle East and beyond. "If that extremely toxic idea of a clash of civilisations - between Islam and the West - moves into Western European democracies, home to large numbers of Muslims ... the consequences could be frighteningly violent. Ethnically heterogeneous societies can blow up if they are subjected to big economic or geopolitical strains.

"I am not arguing that all multi-ethnic societies will explode - only in very particular circumstances. But we shouldn't be complacent. If we don't learn the lessons of why the last century was so bloody, the chance of it recurring increases."..

But China and India face challenges of their own over the long haul.

Update: A particular problem China is facing but which India may be overcoming.

Mark C.

A loss for Chavez

Self-proclaimed "responsible leftist" Alan García defeated Hugo Chavez's preferred candidate, Ollanta Humala, to win the Peruvian Presidential election:

Former president Alan García defeated nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala in Sunday's runoff election, earning a second chance to lead the country he steered to economic devastation in the 1980s.

García campaigned to protect Peru's free-trade economy from what he portrayed as the false promise of Latin American populism, arguing that Humala's plan to exert more state control over Peru's mining and energy sectors would isolate the country economically and discourage private investment.

Humala conceded defeat late Sunday after García led 55 percent to 45 percent with 77 percent of the votes counted.

García cast the election as a referendum to determine where Peru would position itself on South America's political map: with moderate, left-leaning leaders such as Chile's Michelle Bachelet or with populists like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

Describing himself as a responsible leftist, García, 57, had warned that his opponent could lead Peru toward an authoritarian brand of confrontational nationalism. Chávez repeatedly praised Humala and ridiculed García during the campaign, which some election observers and many voters labeled as foreign interference. García exploited it to his advantage.

Damian P.

Return of the Killer Muppet

Samizdata links to more of Jim Henson's shocking and hilarious ads for Williams Coffee, featuring a proto-Kermit who keeps finding new ways to inflict serious bolidy harm on some poor sucker who doesn't like it.

Damian P.

"The Decline of the West"

Oswald Spengler may have been only just short of a century premature. Der Untergang des Abendlandes was published in 1918.

...it is a vision of humanity’s moral career that remains of deep interest today.

Civilizations have their seasons, Oswald Spengler taught—Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter—and it is the winter of Faustian Man that is upon us: the conclusion of a supremely individualistic epoch in which space and time have been annihilated, machines have become ever more ingenious, no limits or taboos on thought or conduct are allowed to exist, moral nihilism flourishes, primitivism thrives, and a millenarian religiosity is preparing to take wing:

'With the nineteenth century begins the winter of the West. Its thousand years of cultural vitality are over; there is no true artistic creativity left. The preceding centuries were marked by an instinctive sense of form and style—Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque—but the new age is inchoate and confused.

It is the rise of the middle classes that explains this cultural incoherence. They resent the aristocracy with its refined manners and sure taste; they pursue untrammelled freedom as an end in itself; their ignorant artistic forays produce meaningless fluctuations of style—the warfare of Classicism and Romanticism leads to endless barren “experiments.”

Political life is equally meaningless. Parliamentarism provides a talking shop that obscures the basic political reality—the triumph of money. Before the power of financial speculation everything gives way: constitutionalism, democracy, even socialism. Politicians are the agents of financial interests...'

Some of that has a ring of today's Canada about it.

H/t to Arts & Letters Daily.

Decline also seems to me related to the Western intelligentsia's increasing loathing of their own societies--an appreciation that has worked to undermine broadly our confidence in Western values and institutions.

Mark C.

Terrorism plot: Nonsense from Canadian officials

Lorne Gunter dismisses the hooey that tries to explain the Ontario plotters' motivation.

We could let Muslims practise sharia law within their own community and guarantee Muslim students and employees set-aside space at schools and work for their five-times-daily prayers, and still the jihadis among us would conspire to buy explosives and plot to blow up Canadian targets until we all agreed to live under sharia law and worship Allah at dawn, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon and dusk.

Radical Muslims are not interested in what we will let them do. "You do your thing and I'll do mine" is a Western notion. Jihadis are motivated by a desire to make everyone else in the world bow to Muhammad, too...

The response of too much of officialdom to last week's revelations will be to call for redoubled efforts on behalf of pluralism: new anti-racism ad campaigns, more money for multicultural groups and festivals, new curricula in schools, more cultural sensitivity training for judges, politicians and bureaucrats...

Meanwhile, others will call for the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan. They will argue the presence of our soldiers doing war in a Muslim nation is behind the uncovered plot.

According to police and intelligence sources, though, the alleged terror cell began its scheming and planning more than two years ago, when our only presence in Afghanistan was a 700-strong contingent patrolling the relatively peaceful capital, Kabul, as part of a NATO peacekeeping force. In other words, this cell allegedly began scoping out Canadian targets, training and assembling its materials long before our current combat-oriented mission in Kandahar against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Does our current mission upset jihadis? Undoubtedly. But they allegedly were mad enough to blow up innocent Canadian civilians even before our mission changed. If our troops were not at war with Muslims, something else would be the provocation. It doesn't take much...

Mark C.

"Ignoring the biggest elephant in the room"

One that "sported the traditional Muslim male beard". Christie Blatchford of the Globe exposes the pandering of the authorities (full text not online).

I drove back from yesterday's news conference at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto in the northeastern part of the city, but honestly, I could have just as easily floated home in the sea of horse manure [elephant dung, surely - MC] emanating from the building.

So frequent were the bald reassurances that part and religion had nothing -- nothing, you understand -- to do with the alleged homegrown terrorist plot recently busted open by Canadian police and security forces, that for a few minutes afterward, I wondered if perhaps it was a vile lie of the mainstream press or a fiction of my own demented brain that the 17 accused young men are all, well, Muslims.

But no. I have checked. They are all Muslims...

Barely two days after the nighttime raids...the great Canadian self-delusion machine was up and running at full throttle...

Such is the state of ignoring the biggest, fattest elephant in the room in this country that at one point Chief Blair actually bragged -- this in answer to a question from the floor -- "I would remind you that there was not one single reference made by law enforcement to Muslim or Muslim community" at the big post-arrest news conference on Saturday.

Indeed, law-enforcement types there took enormous pains to say just the opposite: The arrested men are from a diverse variety of backgrounds ("They're students, they're employed, they're unemployed" one official said, which is akin to running the gamut from A to oh, C); they come from all parts of Canadian society; blah, blah, blah...

But what came clear at that meeting yesterday [at the Islamic Foundation], which was an odd mix of community venting and news conference, is that many of those people who went to the microphone to ask questions, and some of those who answered them from the podium, are far more concerned about a possible anti-Muslim backlash to the arrests than they are about the allegations that a whole whack of their young people were bent on blowing something up in the city; that they are generally worked up about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and the Americans in Iraq, and that even as they talk about Islam being a religion of peace, they do not sound or appear particularly peaceable...

Mark C.

Ontario terrorism plot and intercepts: Top blogged story

This Toronto Star story is the top "blogged about" news story according to the Washington Post. The posts are listed here.

Mark C.

The sting

A Canadian Press report describes how CSIS investigators uncovered evidence which led to the Toronto arrests, by monitoring "anti-Western" activity on the web:

Canadian teens who were spending their time on websites promoting anti-Western sentiment were being watched from cyberspace by Canadian investigators who bided their time as they waited for words to turn into action.

Those investigators soon unravelled a sinister plan to detonate three tonnes of explosive material on unsuspecting civilians in and around Canada's most populous city - an investigation that culminated Friday in 17 high-profile arrests.

It was in 2004 that tech-savvy spies noticed some teens spending more and more time reading and posting to extremist websites, sources revealed to the media. The sleuthing sparked a probe by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service which eventually uncovered an attack plan by a group of extremists.

The country's top investigators came together through an Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, or INSET, comprised of RCMP, CSIS, federal agencies and provincial and municipal police.

The cloak-dagger group is made up of more than 400 highly skilled sleuths who spent thousands of hours diligently conducting the investigation, officials said in announcing the raids.

The arrests came after three tonnes of ammonium nitrate - a common garden fertilizer that's easily transformed into a power-packed explosive charge - was allegedly purchased from undercover officers, the Star reported.

The oldest person arrested, 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal, was a well-known Islamic extremist who took over a more moderate mosque, according to sources cited in the CP story. The Associated Press, meanwhile, reports that the suspects attempted to purchase ammonium nitrate - a fertilizer which can be used in explosives - from undercover RCMP agents:

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police itself delivered three tons of potential bomb-making material to a group that authorities said wanted to launch a string of attacks inspired by al-Qaida, according to a news report Sunday.

The Toronto Star said the sting unfolded when investigators delivered the ammonium nitrate to the group of Muslim Canadians, then moved in quickly on what officials called a homegrown terror ring.

The newspaper said that investigators learned of the group's alleged plan to bomb targets around Ontario, then controlled the sale and transport of the fertilizer.

Authorities refused to discuss the Star's story and have revealed few details of the purported plot, or how the sting developed.

Andrew Coyne links to a Toronto Star report on the sting, which says the RCMP replaced the ammonium nitrate with harmless powder just before making the deal and subsequent arrests. That doesn't change the suspects' alleged intent, of course, but it suggests that the situation may not have been quite as urgent as the police suggested:

If you intend to make and explode a bomb, and you attempt to obtain the materials necessary to that end, then you're just as guilty whether or not you ever succeed in making the bomb and regardless of whether the materials turn out to be ammonium nitrate or baking soda.

And no, it's not "entrapment" just because the police sell it to you, or pretend to. It's your intent that counts: to show entrapment, you have to show, in effect, that the police planted the thought in your brain -- that the idea of buying tons of ammonium nitrate and blowing up a building with it would never have occurred to you had the cops not cajoled you into it.

But that stuff about the police having to move fast to prevent an imminent attack seems a bit over the top.

Damian P.

Keep digging, Mr. Elmasry

Kathy Shaidle catches Mohammed Elmasry advocating racial profiling.

Well, at least he's not advocating killing Israelis again.

Damian P.

I can think of one

Today's Toronto Star features detailed profiles of the adults arrested on terror charges this weekend - and also this classic piece of mass-media denial:

In investigators' offices, an intricate graph plotting the links between the 17 men and teens charged with being members of a homegrown terrorist cell covers at least one wall. And still, says a source, it is difficult to find a common denominator.

Any references to the suspects' religion are passing at most. Substitute "Canadians" for "Americans" and "Harper" for "Bush" in this comment at Roger Simon's blog, and the attitude of many Canadian media outlets is summarized perfectly:

"Do media elites see Americans as hardcore racists, everready to flame into nightriders when they learn of Muslim youth on the prowl? Do they see themselves as social monitors holding back a tide of bloodletting vengence?"

ABSOLUTELY!! These elites believe they run the country because they are better (smarter, nicer, more stylish, more sensitive, more caring) than the hoi polloi. They are an unelected elite, and are just brimful of merit.

I have a theory about this. One suggestion as to why Saddam hid the WMDs [Ummm... - DJP] was that he was more afraid of an Iraqi uprising against him than he was of an invasion by the US. However, if we look at the dynamics here, it makes some sort of sense: the Great and Beloved Leader and Father of his Country is terrified of his people - he thinks they are capable of ANYTHING, which is why he knew that they must be controlled at all costs.

Just like our own elites: they truly believe that - if not carefully monitored, us People will riot and string up Muslims from every lamp-post at the least provocation. In their view, the Military, especially, is certain to run amuck at any time (thus the obsessing over Abu Ghraib, and now, jumping all over Haditha) - and, of course, probably has, almost continuously, and Rumsfeld, etc has Covered it Up.

And with Bush in power, the Elites are wringing their hands, knowing that the RedNecks are rampant, uncontrolled, willing and able to do ANYTHING!!!!

Sadly, as if trying to prove that point, some idiot did indeed smash in the windows of a Toronto mosque this weekend.

Damian P.

Never Forget

The Chinese government violently crushed the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square seventeen years ago today. Democracy activists have created this video to commemorate the event. (Via InstaPundit)

Change may come peacefully or violently - hopefully the former - but China will be free.

Damian P.

Not-so-great Britain

The city of Glasgow has mandated that pubs must serve all beverages in plastic cups (glass can hurt people, you know), while several companies have banned the English flag, just in time for the World Cup, because of threats from a radical Islamic group.

Don't laugh about the glass thing. You know it's coming here eventually.

Damian P.

Freedom fighters strike again

For those of us who supported the invasion of Iraq, the allegations of a civilian massacre by U.S. Marines in Haditha has inspired feelings of shock, outrage and guilt. Will apologists for the brave Iraqi resistance(TM) feel the same way about this?

Gunmen have dragged 24 people, mostly teenage students, from their vehicles and shot them dead in the latest wave of violence in Iraq. As Iraqi leaders appeared deadlocked overnight on naming new interior and defence ministers seen as critical to restoring stability, the relentless killings continued.

Police said gunmen manning a makeshift checkpoint near Udhaim, 120km north of Baghdad, stopped cars approaching the small town and killed the passengers.

The victims included youths of around 15 and 16 years old, who were on their way to the bigger regional town of Baquba for end of term exams, and also elderly men, they said.

"(The attackers) dragged them one by one from their cars and executed them," said a police official.

The killings took place in Diyala province, scene of frequent attacks by insurgents waging a campaign of bombings and shootings to topple the US-backed, Shiite-led government.

Some tried to flee but were gunned down, a police source said.

Damian P.

Canadian Forces: More vis. min. Boy Scouts the answer

Some young journalists utterly fail to understand what armed (note that word) forces--such as the Canadian Forces--are all about.

...the military has failed to recruit visible minorities and new Canadians. Those who identify themselves as visible minorities make up less than three per cent of the regular Forces and four per cent of the reserves. In total, there are fewer than 2,500 visible minorities in the military...

The effectiveness of this country's role in the world rests on having a multicultural military. When Canadian soldiers go abroad, diversity is what they can count on to win hearts and minds. Speaking another language is an asset, but being from another culture means soldiers see solutions to problems from different perspectives.

The need is urgent given Canada's presence in Afghanistan...

I'm sure that, amongst others, Chinese, Hindu, Filipino and Jamaican Canadians will have special insights into how to win Afghan "hearts and minds". Such diversity also could not but melt hard Taliban hearts. The hearts of the same people who destroyed the Bamian Buddhas with artillery fire.

Another problem is that cultural minorities tend to have misconceptions about the nature of Canada's military, which is less a fighting army than one designed [emphasis added] for peacekeeping, disaster response, reconstruction, humanitarian missions and border patrol...

Wow. Tell that to our CF-18 fighter pilots, the crews of our Navy's frigates, and our soldiers in LAV IIIs in Afstan. What was the design of our military that has a combat mission at Kandahar now, had one there in 2002, and bombed the Serbs in 1999? Not to speak of the Canadian Forces that (though we tend to forget it) actually took part in the 1991 Gulf War.

Mark C.

How close did Trudeau come to destroying Canada?

Snippets from an excellent article by Robert Sibley:

What about official bilingualism and multiculturalism? Both are widely regarded as bedrock Canadian "values."...

But there are others who say such policies have fragmented the country to the point where to speak of a national identity is an oxymoron. "Multiculturalism does little more than affirm our commitment to moral and ethical relativism," says law professor Robert Martin. "That is, it affirms that we stand for precisely nothing."..

As political scientist and constitutional expert Peter Russell explains, what is in question "is not the actual Charter but the Charter as a political icon and Charter worship as a misguided political fundamentalism that renders the Charter a source of disunity in Canada." In his essay "The Political Purposes of the Charter," Russell argues that the "negative side" of the Charter has been the transferring of policy-making "from the legislative to the judicial arena." Such a transfer "represents a further flight from politics, a deepening disillusionment with the procedures of representative government and government by discussion as (the) means of resolving fundamental questions of political justice."

Other critics say a "Court Party" -- radical feminists, civil libertarians, social and environmental activists and academics -- has used the Charter to serve its narrow interests, seeking through litigation and media pressure to effect social changes it cannot achieve by democratic means. While the Court Party might insist they are out to protect rights, the real consequence is the usurpation of government-by-consent with government-by-coercion.

"Issues that should be subject to the flux of government by discussion are presented as beyond legitimate debate, with the partisans claiming the right to permanent victory," write F.L. Morton and Rainer Knopf in The Charter Revolution & The Court Party. "In short, court rulings replace parliamentary votes. The result, ultimately, is an increasingly divided political culture in which political opponents regard each other less as fellow citizens and more as competing interest groups."..

Even judges have become social engineers, say the critics, using the Charter to reshape Canadian society to suit their own image. Law professor Robert Martin, in his book The Most Dangerous Branch, argues that in the wake of the Charter, Canada's Supreme Court judges now make social policy that legislators fear to challenge. Such activism usurps the tradition of parliamentary supremacy and offends fundamental principles of democracy because the judges were never elected to make social policy. "Canada," he declares, "may be the first country in the world to have experienced a judicial coup d'etat."..

...the fact remains that Trudeau entered federal politics to destroy Quebec nationalism and enhance Quebecers' attachment to Canada. Nearly 25 years later, while the "Charter Canadians" identity has sunk deep roots in English-speaking Canada, Quebecers remain estranged from the rest of Canada in terms of their constitutional allegiances and their notions of political community...

Mark C.

"The majority sported the traditional Muslim male beard."

How we desperately scramble to avoid speaking the truth.

From an unmarried computer programmer to a university health sciences graduate and the unemployed, the 17 suspects charged in a foiled terrorist plot represent a “broad strata” of Canadian society. [emphasis added]

“Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed,” RCMP assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell said Saturday.

H/t to Captain's Quarters.

Update: A relevant post and comment thread at The Shotgun Blog.

Would anyone in 1940 have tried to express "understanding" for the motivations of any German-Canadians planning terrorist acts in Canada because our country was:

a) at war with Germany, or
b) had interned some 850 German-Canadians?

Her thesis takes a fresh look at a controversial topic: the internment of 850 German-Canadian civilians during the Second World War. Accused of being Nazi spies, saboteurs and subversives, the internees were granted an opportunity to defend themselves. In the course of these appeal tribunals (the transcripts of which form the backbone of Ms. Lorenzkowski's research) state officials and internees passionately debated what it meant to be a "good Canadian". The study reveals conflicting concepts of citizenship and the important contribution of "hyphenated" Canadians to changing definitions of loyalty, civic duties and the nature of Canadian society...

As far as I know we were as democratic a country after the war as before. Perhaps because our side won, and knew to a large extent what was at stake.

Mark C.

Burgess vs. Hari, Round 3

I give it to Burgess on points.

Hari, being attacked from all sides, defends himself against charges of "Islamophobia" here.

Damian P.

Update: Hari has posted blogger Alex Higgins's more detailed, two-part response to Burgess.

Denial is a river in Scarborough

A prominent Toronto-area Imam says the terror allegations are all a big hoax. But of course.

Aly Hindy, imam at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough, said the charges would be proved false.

"I think it will fall apart. I'm just worried for the community. This is an attack on the Muslim community. Canada has the best Muslim community, we are very safe and peaceful," he said at the centre.

"We are abusing our boys for the sake of pleasing (U.S. President) George Bush," Mr. Hindy said outside the courtroom.

"The CSIS and RCMP are feeling threatened -- not of terrorism but of losing their jobs. They need to create an atmosphere of fear in the country to keep their jobs.

"They talk of homegrown terrorism. This is homegrown baloney."

The National Post says the Toronto arrests are linked to investigations and arrests in the United States, Britain, Bosnia, Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh.

Damian P.

Flashback: Hindy and his mosque were in the news last July.

Update: many more updates at Andrew Coyne's blog.

"Home-grown terrorism": Our new mission in Afstan not the cause

If anyone, including some of the usual suspects, says that a major cause creating the alleged terrorist group busted in Ontario June 2 is our combat mission at Kandahar (and our help thereby to President Bush's "Global War on Terrorism"), then that person is:

a) ill-informed, or
b) deliberately mendacious, or
c) both.

The investigation of the group began well over a year ago when our troops were in Kabul--under NATO--essentially doing peacekeeping and not combat. The new mission to Kandahar had not even been announced. The Kabul mission itself was almost without controversy, except for criticism of Canadian Forces' equipment such as the Iltis jeep.

To think that that mission could in any way be a major motivator for the alleged terrorists srikes me as simply nonsensical--and likely dishonest. I hope--but do not expect--our media to raise these facts when "experts", or "representatives" of the Muslim community, raise the supposed link.

Stewart Bell, fortuitously, has a major article on home-grown terrorism in the National Post today.

Mark C.

Sen. Dallaire accuses PM of lacking courage/Aircraft procurement

It's sad to say, but the good Liberal Senator really has been losing his grip for some time, especially about Darfur. But now he is playing politics with Afghanistan:

"I think setting up the Liberal party to split over Afghanistan is a demonstration of lack of courage (on the part) of the prime minister," he said...

Now that he is acting as a partisan, his views can only be treated--like Liberal defence critic Dosanjh's--as politically motivated.

But Sen. Dallaire is right about this:

He decried the "emasculation" of the Canadian Forces through more than a decade of budget cuts and said even increased spending promised in the latest federal budget won't meet the military's needs...

Let's hope this story is accurate:

The Harper government is expected to announce as early as Monday a $5.5-billion investment in a fleet of long-range cargo planes and the replacement of its aging Hercules transports, sources say...

Most...projects, including armoured trucks, ships and other aircraft, have been pushed back to the fall, but two major transport aircraft purchases are ready to launch.

The most controversial of the two will likely be the purchase [sole-sourced] of four C-17 Globemaster long-range strategic transports at a cost of $1 billion for the planes themselves, plus a 20-year support and maintenance plan that will bring the overall cost to $2.5 billion...

The Tories will also revive part of a plan announced by the Liberal government shortly before the last federal election to replace the aging fleet of Hercules transports at a cost of $3 billion for up to 16 new planes.

The government is expected to open that project for competitive bidding, but industry insiders say the specifications will likely favour the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin's modern version of the Hercules, the C-130J.

Sources say the Conservatives could not risk sole sourcing two large airplane purchases, so they expected the statement of requirements for the Hercules replacement will be brief -- as short as one or two pages as opposed to thousands of pages of details specifications usually placed before bidders -- and it is expected to call for delivery of the planes by about two years.

That would eliminate the C-130J's main competitor, the Airbus A-400, which is in the design phase and isn't expected to go into production until 2009...

Mark C.

Terror arrests in Toronto

CSIS has arrested seventeen people - five of them under eighteen years of age - who were allegedly planning terror attacks in southern Ontario:

A series of terrorist attacks plotted against unspecified targets in southern Ontario were "inspired by al-Qaida," a CSIS official said Saturday, adding that the ring of suspects arrested posed a "real and serious" threat.

Three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a commonly used fertilizer used to make explosives, were recovered by police, who say that's three times the amount used in the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma that killed 168 people.

[...]

Of the adults, six are from Mississauga, just outside Toronto; four are from Toronto and two are from Kingston in the eastern part of the province.

Most were Canadian citizens or residents. Police described them as coming from a broad "strata" of society. Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed. The adults range in age from 19 to 43.

Much, much more on this story, including a big roundup of blog reaction, at Pajamas Media.

Damian P.

The craziest, most time-consuming meme ever

My fellow Newfoundlanders John Gushue and David Janes have listed all the songs on their computer which are exactly three minutes and thirty seconds in length. You'd have to be a total loser, with absolutely no life, to go through everything on your computer and make a of list all your 3'30" songs. So here's mine:

Diamond Rio - "Night is Falling in my Heart"
Bonnie Tyler - "It's a Heartache"
Eddie Money - "Take Me Home Tonight"
Toby Keith - "Should've been a Cowboy"
Odds - "Jack Hammer"
Sonny & Cher - "The Beat Goes On"
Mr. Big - "Green-Tinted Sixties Mind"
Firehouse - "Shake and Tumble" (Shut up)
The Guess Who - "Dancin' Fool"
George Jones - "I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair"
Beyonce - "Naughty Girl"
Soul Decision - "Faded" (Shut up, shut up, shut up!!!)
ABC - "The Look of Love"
The Band - "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
Dire Straits - "Twisting by the Pool"
Jimi Hendrix - "Hey Joe"

These are just the ones I've downloaded as singles, since even I don't have time to go through all the CDs I've ripped. Pretty good insight into the strange combination of timeless classics and total crap I've collected, isn't it?

Damian P.

Update: here's another list, from another Newfoundland blogger. Note the presence of..."Faded" by Soul Decision.

Update II: another Newfoundlander weighs in. He won't admit to having anything by Soul Decision, though.

Let the cries of "cover-up!!!" begin

American soldiers have been cleared of any misconduct in the deaths of civilians (including children) at Ishaqi, Iraq:

Horrific images of Iraqi adults and children have fueled new allegations that U.S. troops killed civilians in the Iraqi town of Ishaqi. But ABC News has learned that military officials have completed their investigation and concluded that U.S. forces followed the rules of engagement.

A senior Pentagon official told ABC News the investigation concluded that the allegations of intentional killings of civilians by American forces are unfounded.

Military commanders in Iraq launched an investigation soon after the mid-March raid in the village of Ishaqi, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell will make a statement about the Ishaqi allegations today in Baghdad, ABC News has learned.

In Ishaqi, American forces were going after a high-value terrorist target they succeeded in apprehending. The U.S. military reported in March that four people died when the troops destroyed a house from the air and ground.

But previously unaired video shot by an AP Television News cameraman at the time shows at least five children dead, several with obvious bullet wounds to the head. One adult male is also seen dead.

From a public-relations perspective, this is actually bad news for the American military. Part of the outrage over Haditha comes from the alleged cover-up by the Marines' superior officers, and you can be sure many people will write off the Ishaqi findings as yet another whitewash. (And, of course, if this does turn out to be a whitewash, all hell will break loose.)

Damian P.

Kermit's dark past

You have to see these old commercials for Wilkins Coffee (a company that evidently still exists, by the way) created by Jim Henson.

It's a little like seeing the very first Simpsons shorts from The Tracy Ullman Show, isn't it?

Damian P.

Professional Protestor back to work

Immigration Minister Monte Solberg was assailed by a bunch of lunatics at a public meeting today (hat tip: Brian Hoskins), and guess which perennial rent-a-mob leader was involved:

A speech by Immigration Minister Monte Solberg was abruptly cancelled Wednesday when a group of hecklers besieged him in an Ottawa church.

About a dozen protesters began shouting as Solberg took the podium during the annual meeting of Citizens for Public Justice, a group that lobbies on behalf of refugees.

The demonstrators, who called for an immediate moratorium on all deportations, surrounded Solberg at the podium, and then blocked his exit from the front door of the Christ Church Cathedral on Sparks Street.

When Solberg managed to slip out through the hall's back door, the protesters followed and circled his car. Police eventually cleared a path for the vehicle.

[...]

Jaggi Singh, a well-known local activist who participated in the protest, dismissed Solberg's unheard speech as a "false dialogue" and defended the move to prevent him from delivering it.

"These are set pieces," Singh said. "They're photo-ops, where a couple of nice innocuous words are said, and there's innocuous applause, and that's it. [emphasis added]

Singh (who lives in Montreal, contrary to CBC Ottawa's description of him as a "local activist") was part of the lynch mob that got Benjamin Natanyahu's speech at Concordia cancelled in 2003. Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "freedom of expression" activists spend their ample free time shutting down speech they don't agree with?

Damian P.

Update: firsthand account here. (via Kathy Shaidle)

Schlock would have been a better name

Michael Yon is suing the publisher of a heavily promoted new magazine, Shock, for unauthorized use of his most famous photo.

Damian P.

Afstan: Dumb US policy on Afghan army

This really does give me furiously to think, though I note that I've seen no such positive reporting about the Afghan army in the Canadian media:

Four years ago this spring the United States began building an Afghan National Army, which has since emerged as arguably the least ambiguous success story of the postwar reconstruction here. While military power in Afghanistan was once synonymous with partisan, warlord-run militias, the new army is a multiethnic, battle-hardened and increasingly professional force -- tangible proof of how nation-building can work in even the unlikeliest of places.

Unfortunately, this accomplishment is under threat, not just from a resurgent Taliban but from the Bush administration itself, which is keen to trim its contributions to the Afghan army. Against Kabul's objections, the U.S. military hopes to cut the planned end-strength of the Afghan defense sector by more than 25 percent; rather than building the 70,000-man force previously agreed upon, the goal is now 50,000...

What makes the Pentagon's approach all the more shortsighted is the genuine desire of many Afghans -- this week's rioting notwithstanding -- for a strong, long-term alliance with Washington...

Given how little sense it makes, what is driving the Pentagon's new fixation on affordability? Part of the explanation lies with a shift in authority over the United States' Afghan policy. A year ago, the power was squarely in Kabul, in the hands of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, who were both committed to a strategic partnership.

With their departure, authority has now shifted to the U.S. Central Command and the Pentagon, which have decidedly different priorities. Asked about the guidance they receive from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on building the Afghan army, officers here often cite the same three questions: Why is it taking so long, why do you need so many people, and when can we leave?

It's hard to imagine a worse trifecta. Rather than viewing the Afghan army as a short-term, stopgap expenditure that should go away over time, the Bush administration needs to start treating military assistance to Kabul as a guaranteed, stable commitment -- much like U.S. aid to front-line states during the Cold War...

Mark C.

US minivan sales tank

Amongst all the other problems of the Big Two:

...sales of S.U.V.'s, pickups and minivans fell 10.2 percent [for May]...

Meanwhile, in Canada:

On the truck side, Dodge Caravan minivan sales grew 33.6 per cent to 7,320, while the Jeep brand gained almost 27 per cent.

And a clear indicator of the fact that Canadians are significantly poorer than Americans:

Entry-level vehicles [i.e. small ones] in the U.S. comprise slightly less than 25 per cent of the market, while in Canada, the figure is nearly 43 per cent...

Mark C.

Damian adds: "singnificantly poorer" than Americans? That's a bit much, I think. I believe small cars sell better in Canada partly because of a less prevalent pickup/SUV culture than in the States, and partly because of higher gas prices.

The really staggering news in that London Free Press story about GM's declining market share: in May, Toyota sold more vehicles in Canada than Ford, 23,530 to 23,044.

Loose Change con artists

More evidence, as if any more were needed, which proves that the makers of Loose Change aren't merely misguided or confused, but are blatant, unrepentant, brazen liars.

Damian P.

Mohammed cartoons' publisher: How to deal with European Muslims

Flemming Rose, cultural editor at Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper, points out the flaws of multiculturalism and societal guilt as the bases of policy towards immigrants. Sound familiar?

...the unbalanced reactions to the not-so-provocative caricatures—loud denunciations and even death threats toward us, but very little outrage toward the people who attacked two Danish Embassies—unmasked unpleasant realities about Europe's failed experiment with multiculturalism. It's time for the Old Continent to face facts, and make some profound changes in its outlook on immigration, integration, and the coming Muslim demographic surge. After decades of appeasement and political correctness, combined with growing fear of a radical minority prepared to commit serious violence, Europe's moment of truth is here...

[The following three paragraphs are out of sequence for emphasis. - MC]

Yet multiculturalism that has all too often become mere cultural relativism is an indefensible proposition that often justifies reactionary and oppressive practices. Giving the same weight to the illiberal values of conservative Islam as to the liberal traditions of the European Enlightenment will, in time, destroy the very things that make Europe such a desirable target for migration.

Europe must shed the straitjacket of political correctness, which makes it impossible to criticize minorities for anything—including violations of laws, traditional mores, and values that are central to the European experience...

For the immigrants, the expectation that they not only learn the host language but also respect their new countries' political and cultural traditions is not too much to demand, and some stringent (maybe too stringent) new laws are being passed to force that. At the same time, Europeans must show a willingness to jettison entrenched notions of blood and soil and accept people from foreign countries and cultures as just what they are, the new Europeans.

Now, in Europe's failure to grapple realistically with its dramatically changing demographic picture, I see a new parallel to that Cold War journey. Europe's left is deceiving itself about immigration, integration, and Islamic radicalism today the same way we young hippies deceived ourselves about Marxism and Communism 30 years ago. It is a narrative of confrontation and hierarchy that claims that the West exploits, abuses, and marginalises the Islamic world. Left-wing intellectuals have insisted that the Danes were oppressing and marginalising Muslim immigrants. This view comports precisely with the late Edward Said's model of Orientalism, which argues that experts on the Orient and the Muslim World have not depicted it as it is but as some dreaded "other"...

H/t to Arts & Letters Daily.

Mark C.

This kind of thinking gave birth to a distorted approach to immigration in countries like Denmark. Left-wing commentators decided that Denmark was both racist and Islamophobic. Therefore, the chief obstacle to integration was not the immigrants' unwillingness to adapt culturally to their adopted country (there are 200,000 Danish Muslims now); it was the country's inherent racism and anti-Muslim bias...

The role of victim is very convenient because it frees the self-declared victim from any responsibility, while providing a posture of moral superiority. It also obscures certain inconvenient facts that might suggest a different explanation for the lagging integration of some immigrant groups—such as the relatively high crime rates, the oppression of women, and a tradition of forced marriage...

...[a] great impediment to integration is the European welfare state. Because Europe's highly developed, but increasingly unaffordable, safety nets provide such strong unemployment insurance and not enough incentive to work, many new immigrants go straight onto the dole...

Equal treatment is the democratic way to overcome traditional barriers of blood and soil for newcomers. To me, that means treating immigrants just as I would any other Danes. And that's what I felt I was doing in publishing the 12 cartoons of Muhammad last year. Those images in no way exceeded the bounds of taste, satire, and humour to which I would subject any other Dane, whether the queen, the head of the Church, or the prime minister. By treating a Muslim figure the same way I would a Christian or Jewish icon, I was sending an important message: You are not strangers, you are here to stay, and we accept you as an integrated part of our life. And we will satirize you, too. It was an act of inclusion, not exclusion; an act of respect and recognition.

Alas, some Muslims did not take it that way—though it required a highly organized campaign, several falsified (and very nasty) cartoons, and several months of overseas travel for the aggrieved imams to stir up an international reaction...

Afstan: The Globe's agenda secret no more--it's a "quagmire"

Today the Globe and Mail grouped together three letters to the editor on Afstan. Not one of them used the "Q" word. Yet the Globe's heading for the letters is The Afghan quagmire (full text not online).

At least they've come out of the closet.

Mark C.

Boycott Egypt

Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey had a piece in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor calling for a boycott of his country over President Mubarak's increasingly repressive policies, including the jailing of blogger Alaa Abdel-Fatah. (Alaa is arguably Egypt's best-known jailed blogger, but he's not the only one.)

The Canadian Union of Public Employees seems to be into boycotts these days, so maybe they'll help. Yeah, right.

Damian P.

When you're in a hole, stop digging

Sound advice, but Joe Volpe doesn't appear to have learned it:

Some of the kids who gave thousands of dollars to Joe Volpe's campaign for the Liberal party leadership were motivated by a speech he gave at their school, Volpe said Thursday.

[...]

Volpe said his campaign staff received an e-mail from Mary Shechtman, whose husband Allen is the former vice- president of Apotex Inc., a Toronto-area pharmaceutical company. The Shechtmans, their 11-year-old twins and 14-year-old son each gave the maximum $5,400 donation to Volpe's campaign.

Volpe, the former immigration minister, said the kids heard him speak during the last election at Bialik Hebrew Day School in Toronto and found him compelling.

"Apparently these kids just connected with me; they loved what I did," he said. "When they heard I was running for the leadership, they said 'What can we do?' "

Volpe said it wasn't so far-fetched that young people could care about politics.

"There are families where kids actually talk about these things," he said.

Bialik Hebrew Day School has 800 students from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 8. Uri Korin, the school's director of education didn't remember Volpe giving a speech at the school, but added it's possible he might have spoken to a class and he wasn't aware of it.

Volpe, dancing like the late Gregory Hines, now says he'll support legislation which would ban political contributions from people under 18 years of age. In other words, there's nothing at all wrong with it, but he'll vote to ban it anyway. Got it.

Damian P.