This man was in charge of our military, once

Paul Hellyer's decades-long slide into dementia continues:

A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said Wednesday.

"I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation ... that could be a way to save our planet," Paul Hellyer, 83, told the Ottawa Citizen.

Alien spacecrafts would have traveled vast distances to reach Earth, and so must be equipped with advanced propulsion systems or used exceptional fuels, he told the newspaper.

[...]

Hellyer became defense minister in former prime minister Lester Pearson's cabinet in 1963, and oversaw the controversial integration and unification of Canada's army, air force and navy into the Canadian Forces.

More here. (Note that AFP says Hellyer "shocked Canadians...by announcing he once saw a UFO," while the Sun says he hasn't actually seen one.)

Damian P.

Tax Suzuki's carbon dioxide emissions

His words, that is.

If the Canada Revenue Agency is not politically biased, their chance to prove it is now.

Last Friday, David Suzuki launched a partisan political attack against the federal Conservatives in front of a group of Calgary elementary school kids, no less.

The renowned environmentalist savaged Prime Minister Stephen Harper in front of a gymnasium full of kindergarten to Grade 6 students, who raised $835 for Suzuki's self-named charitable foundation.

"The only thing (Harper) cares about is getting re-elected with a majority government," ranted Suzuki.

That most of those kids would have no clue who Harper is, didn't matter to Suzuki. He knew he had a soap box and insisted on using it for political purposes.

He admitted as much when he said some of his message was directed at the parents and teachers in the room, because the children don't vote and Harper doesn't care about them.

Suzuki was essentially urging those listening not to vote Conservative. That makes his message partisan and should exempt the David Suzuki Foundation from receiving tax deductible status...

More on St. David:

Little Miss Apocalypse

David Suzuki's willing use of children to promote his 'ecophobic' terror of the end of the world is reprehensible

Mark C.

Gen. Hillier on radio, TV

A post at The Torch here, with my summary of the radio interview and links to audio and video clips. The CPAC interview will be rebroadcast March 1,2 and 4.

Mark C.

The world will end at midnight (12:30 in Newfoundland)

It's all over in 2012, according to the Daily Mail. No point contributing to that RRSP, then.

Damian P.

Sideshow Iggy

Obviously, Michael Ignatieff had some gaffes left over from his leadership campaign and didn't want them to go to waste:

At a news conference before the vote, Maureen Basnicki, (pictured with daughter, Erica) whose husband Ken was among two dozen Canadian victims of the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks, urged MPs to "stop playing politics" and to "vote with their conscience and not with their party."

Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said he sympathized with terror victims but labelled their appearance during the debate as "just a sideshow," prompting an angry response from Basnicki.

"Sideshow? I was a victim of terrorism. My husband was murdered. I don't like to be a victim of politics. The issue here is the security of Canadians," Basnicki remarked. [Hat Tip: Brian Hoskins]

Damian P.

Sanctions that work

David Ignatius says imposing "law enforcement measures" against rogue states' financial institutions is proving effective:

Treasury applied the new tools to North Korea in September 2005, when it put a bank in Macao called Banco Delta Asia on the blacklist. There was no legal proceeding -- just a notice in the Federal Register summarizing the evidence: Banco Delta Asia had been providing illicit financial services to North Korean government agencies and front companies for more than 20 years, according to the Treasury notice. The little Macao bank had helped the North Koreans feed counterfeit $100 bills into circulation, had laundered money from drug deals and had financed cigarette smuggling. North Korea "pays a fee to Banco Delta Asia for financial access to the banking system with little oversight or control," Treasury alleged.

Wham! The international payments window shut almost instantly on Pyongyang's pet bank. Transactions with U.S. entities stopped, but the Treasury announcement also put other countries on notice to beware of Banco Delta Asia. The Macao banking authorities, realizing that they needed the oxygen of the international financial system to survive, took regulatory action on their own and froze the bank's roughly $24 million in North Korean assets. And around Asia, banks began looking for possible links to North Korean front companies -- and shutting them down.

A similar financial squeeze is being applied to Iran. Here again, the impact has come from the way private financial institutions have reacted to public pressure from Treasury. "As banks do their risk-reward analysis, they must now take into account the very serious risk of doing business in Iran, and what the risks would be if they were found to be part of a terrorist or proliferation transaction," says Kimmitt.

Damian P.

Angelina in the Post

Angelina Jolie has a piece about Darfur in today's Washington Post:

I've seen how aid workers and nongovernmental organizations make a difference to people struggling for survival. I can see on workers' faces the toll their efforts have taken. Sitting among them, I'm amazed by their bravery and resilience. But humanitarian relief alone will never be enough.

Until the killers and their sponsors are prosecuted and punished, violence will continue on a massive scale. Ending it may well require military action. But accountability can also come from international tribunals, measuring the perpetrators against international standards of justice.

Accountability is a powerful force. It has the potential to change behavior -- to check aggression by those who are used to acting with impunity. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has said that genocide is not a crime of passion; it is a calculated offense. He's right. When crimes against humanity are punished consistently and severely, the killers' calculus will change.

I'm as cynical about Hollywood activism as the next guy, and some would say her faith in the International Criminal Court is naive at best, but I think Jolie deserves a lot of credit for speaking out about the first genocide of the 21st century.

Damian P.

To heck with security, they need the votes

For Liberals, politics trumps everything; why worry about security? Jonathan Kay weighs in:

...Even if Bains' father-in-law has nothing to do with Dion's decision to oppose national security legislation that his own party drafted just five years ago, there is little doubt that certain ethnopolitical special interests are calling the shots here. Among veteran Liberal insiders, it is believed that the several hundred Sikh convention delegates Bains and his allies led into the Dion camp (via Gerard Kennedy) came with a price: an end to the investigative powers contained in the Anti-Terrorism Act, which was opposed for predictable reasons by various Sikh, Tamil and Muslim organizations.

[...]

No reasonable person opposes the participation of ethnic minorities in Canadian politics. What we should oppose, however, is ethnic delegates being manoeuvred en masse from one political camp to another by community leaders or their proxies.

[...]

Today, Parliament is expected to vote on the expiring Anti-Terrorism Act provisions. And if everything goes to script, a whipped Liberal caucus will stand with the peacenik extremists in the Bloc and NDP to water down our national security -- all to cement dubious intra- Liberal alliances. It will be interesting to see how many Liberals (if any) have the guts to stand up to Dion, who's declared that he won't sign the nomination papers of any dissenters [two Liberals had the guts, conscience, whatever--Irwin Cotler abstained and Tom Wappel voted with the government--a great party or what? - MC]...

Read the whole piece--lots of juicy details on ethnic and religious group machinations.

Mark C.

Update: "Sideshow Iggy". He's focused.

Upperdate: From Chuckercanuck:

The worst of his [Mr Kay's] allegations, to my mind, is calling Gerard Kennedy an empty vessel that drew ethnic politickers who saw a lump of clay primed for them to mold. Gerard Kennedy is not an empty vessel - he has a bold vision for the country. Remember, he wanted to make Canada the "first International Nation". You know, the kind of country that has no national interest and cedes its foreign policy to a hundred little lobby groups who, as Paul Martin would say with some admiration, "know how to defend themselves"...

Uppestdate: M. Dion responds to Mr Kay.

CSI: East Berlin

Even in East Germany, they had cheesy cop shows. Here's the 1980s version, with an insanely catchy theme song. (Note: the videos only seem to work in Internet Explorer.)

Damian P.

Terror laws voted down

A few Liberals dissented, but the opposition parties - including the one that passed the legislation to begin with - voted against extending anti-terror laws for three more years:

A government bid to extend two controversial anti-terrorist measures was defeated 159 to 124 in the House of Commons Tuesday.

[...]

The Anti-Terrorist Act measures — preventive arrests and investigative hearings — contained a sunset clause which meant Parliament was required to review and extend them every three years. A vote in the Senate on the measures, which are set to expire on March 1, where the Liberals are in a large majority, now is a moot point.

The preventive arrest clause enables police to arrest suspects without warrant and detain them for several days without charge if authorities have reason to believe a terrorist act will be committed. The investigative hearings provision, meanwhile, allows judges to compel individuals to testify in terror cases.

Conservative and Liberal MPs played hardball politics right up to the last minute, with Liberal MPs Navdeep Bains and Omar Alghabra threatening Liberal party legal action against Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre for claiming Dion had “collapsed under the pressure” of extremists and terrorist sympathizers in his caucus.

Former justice minister Irwin Cotler abstained during the vote. And at least four of the dozen Liberals who were absent had said publicly the were against their party’s position: B.C. MPs Keith Martin and Don Bell and Toronto MPs Derek Lee and Roy Cullen.

Damian P.

Conservative Prime Minister appoints judges; dictatorship imminent

"Independent judiciary put in peril," screams a headline in Law Times. That's the opinion of the Canadian Judicial Council, according to Helen Burnett's story, but not everyone quoted therein agrees:

With respect to the changes to the committees, Edward Ratushny, a professor at the University of Ottawa law school, says that the appointment is really the decision of the governor in council, so the fact of whether the person is shown to be qualified or well qualified does not hinder them in appointing someone, as long as they reach this level.

“I think there should be a wide range of possible candidates for them to select from,” he says.

“If these changes mean that they’re going to slip people onto the qualified category who otherwise would not have been qualified, I think that would be very unfortunate.

“But I’m not sure that these changes would necessarily do that.”

Bob Tarantino dealt with this pseudo-controversy very effectively here. When did the CJC and the Canadian Bar Association (of which I am a member) suddenly become concerned about the Prime Minister's relatively unfettered discretion to appoint high court judges? Around February 6, 2006, I think.

Damian P.

Christ's tomb

The Anchoress has dozens of links about this story. She concludes that this is the Gospel of Judas, 2007 edition. (Remember the Gospel of Judas? No? It was only last year...)

I think this is a perfectly legitimate subject for scholarly inquiry, but I'd also like to see James Cameron show some real cojones and start digging into the life of Mohammed.

Damian P.

"That's one small step for man"

Rogers Cable in Ottawa now offers as part of its "VIP" package--as far as I can see only one step up from the basic digital package--two channels actually worth getting: Turner Classic Movies and
AMCTV

Of course, Rogers just took the Golf Channel off the package I have, just when the channel is covering many PGA Tour events live. Having received the Golf Channel without extra payment for about fifteen years, I REFUSE TO PAY MORE. Bastards.

If you want to see one account of what Neil Armstrong was scripted to have said on the moon, see here. At least Rogers wasn't around to have frustrated me over this giant swing for mankind.

Mark C.

Damian adds: if you're frustrated with your cable company, I once again recommend StarChoice.

Close call for Cheney

If the Kossacks HuffPosters appear to be in a pissy mood today - more than usual, I mean - it's probably because their Antichrist survived an attack by the brave Afghan resistance:

A homicide bomber attacked the entrance to the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan Tuesday during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, killing at least 14 people and wounding a dozen more. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target.

Cheney's spokeswoman said he was fine, and the vice president later met with President Hamid Karzai in the capital, Kabul, before leaving the country.

There were conflicting reports on the death toll. Provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said 20 people were killed, while NATO said initial reports indicated three fatalities, including a U.S. soldier, a South Korean coalition soldier and a U.S. government contractor whose nationality wasn't immediately known. NATO said 27 people also were wounded.

[...]

Maj. William Mitchell said it did not appear the explosion was intended as a threat to the vice president. "He wasn't near the site of the explosion," Mitchell said. "He was safely within the base at the time of the explosion."

However, a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Cheney was the target of the attack.

"We knew that Dick Cheney would be staying inside the base," Ahmadi told AP telephone from an undisclosed location. "The attacker was trying to reach Cheney."

Strictly speaking, doesn't this mean Cheney can't be called a "chickenhawk" anymore?

Damian P.

Update: told ya.

Update II: Mark Steyn:

If [Cheney is] intending to "destroy constitutional government in this country", shouldn’t you get off your big Huff duff and join in, you lazy old armchair insurgent? What are you, a chickenhawk conspiracist? Why should it be left to a few brave patriots to dress up as a bunch of Pushtun goatherds and go liberate America from the Hitlerburton Reich?

[...]

What did you do in the Great War of Liberation, daddy?

I went to Starbucks and left a comment on Arianna’s blog.

I make a similar point on Shire Network News this week, also citing Shaidle's Theorem. (That is, if you genuinely believed your government was carrying out fake terror attacks in order to set up a totalitarian police state, you'd flee the country or take up arms instead of sitting around whining about it.)

Why she drives them crazy

Anne Applebaum on Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Curiously, what seems to rankle Europeans most is the enthusiasm with which Hirsi Ali has adopted their own secularism and the fervor with which she has embraced their own Western values. Though this continent's intellectuals routinely disparage the pope as an irrelevant dinosaur, Hirsi Ali's rejection of religion in favor of reason, intellect and emancipation seems to make everyone nervous. Typical is the British feminist who complained that not only does Hirsi Ali paint "the whole of the Islamic world with one black brush," she also "paints the whole of the Western world with rosy tints," which is, of course, far more objectionable.

[...]

...In America, the phenomenon of the flag-waving first-generation immigrant is familiar. In Europe, such a thing is unknown. Maybe once Europeans get used to the idea -- a Muslim immigrant who embraces Western culture with the excitement of the convert! -- they'll like Hirsi Ali better. And if they're lucky, others will follow in her footsteps.

Hirsi Ali will be speaking in Toronto tomorrow evening. I wish I could be there.

Damian P.

A laugh every six minutes

[Posted, with some modifications, at Blogcritics.org]

There are five funny things in the first episode of The 1/2 Hour News Hour:

1. "Vice President" Ann Coulter made fun of her infamous "convert them to Christianity" line.

2. Iran denied that its Holocaust-denial conference ever happened, and even if it did, the number of people involved was grossly exaggerated.

3. Revelations that Barack Obama used cocaine dropped his approval rating among Democrats to 99 percent.

4-5. A guy selling Che Guevara T-shirts also had shirts featuring Idi Amin ("People: The Other White Meat") and Kim Jong-Il ("No Fat Chicks").

As for the rest of it, well...you know you're in trouble when the running gag is about Ed Begley, Junior. Who will be the target of such cutting satire next week? Sean Young?

Aside from the whole not-being-funny thing, the main problem with The 1/2 Hour News Hour is that it aims its satirical guns at Democrats and liberals - never Republicans and conservatives. By contrast, the left-leaning satirists at The Daily Show and Canada's This Hour Has 22 Minutes will sometimes make fun of people who share their politics - and do it better. (Compare 1/2 Hour's lame ACLU parody ads with this story from the decidedly leftist Onion.)

I also hoped The 1/2 Hour News Hour would poke fun at its own network's hyperbolic spin on the news, with garish graphics, bombastic music and sound effects, but the show's look is really quite understated. Fox-haters will undoubtedly be amused by the fact that its satirical show looks more like a "real" news channel than regular Fox News programming.

There are plenty of very funny conservative bloggers out there. Maybe Fox News should offer them some writing jobs.

Damian P.

Canadian Forces: Three things you need to know/Afghanistan roundup

Jack Granatstein outlines the basics.

1) Procurement costs:

...Consider the four C-17s the Harper government has agreed to buy. Each of the huge transports costs about $250-million. The accrual cost, again in round numbers, is $4-billion. Many Canadians remain unaware of the change in accounting methodology, and government rules (or practice) do not appear to permit explanation. So a $1-billion purchase of necessary equipment appears to many as a $4-billion boondoggle. It's not, but it's a hard sell for all of us whose eyes glaze over at the mention of accountants' rules. The answer, of course, is to explain defence purchases (and purchases in every other government department, as well) by making it clear that the total lifetime package is included in the announced sum.

2) Procurement precariousness:

The second problem is that the $17-billion in promised equipment purchases naturally enough makes Canadians believe money is flowing in a torrent to the military. So it is, but only after a fashion. Equipment purchases are never final until they are contracted, built, and put into the hands of the troops. Governments can change and, with them, priorities. The Navy needed helicopters to replace the aged Sea Kings back in the 1980s, and the contract for those machines was carved in stone -- until Jean Chrétien came to power in 1993 and killed the deal. In other words, it ain't over till it's over...

3) Operational and maintenance lunches eaten:

...No one can say with confidence what extra costs the Kandahar operation is imposing on the military, but they are substantial -- certainly well above $1-billion a year. Most of this money seems to be coming from the existing budgets of the Department of National Defence, and the difficulty is that the Army, Navy, and Air Force are being forced to scramble to keep themselves operating as funds (and personnel) are pared away to support the mission.

The Navy made the front pages a few weeks ago when it tied up ships in Halifax and Esquimalt because it had run out of operating funds in fiscal year 2006-07, and would not have any more until fiscal year 2007-08 began. That was an unwise, partly political, ploy by the Navy's commanders, to be sure, but the problem is all too real. The operations and maintenance budgets of all three service environments are stretched to the breaking point now...

Mr Granatstein's conclusion:

There is only one answer: The Harper government must supplement the Canadian Forces' operations and maintenance funding now. An emergency appropriation of $1-billion will keep the military running at home and keep the soldiers in Kandahar supplied with what they need. Anything less and the government risks destroying the kudos it has deservedly won for its efforts to rebuild the Forces. The military might not survive, either.

And for the longer run the conclusions of the Senate Committee Senate on National Security and Defence are equally valid. Defence spending needs to be almost doubled in real terms to around two percent of GDP. Heck, let's just spend as much as the Dutch.

As for Afghanistan itself, the UK is committing 1,400 more military personnel until 2009.

The UK says it is having to send more troops because of the reluctance of fellow Nato members' to send their forces to southern Afghanistan...

The 1,400 figure appears to be in addition to the extra battalion already announced to be sent.

And for more stupid, and tendentious, reporting from the journalist I love to slag (with an h/t to the Globe!):

"Bring back the Iltis".

Mark C.

Update: I wonder if our media will notice this:

"Afstan: ISAF fighting forces to be up 7,300/7,300".

Upperdate: Chief of the Land Staff, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, describes what is keeping him awake at night. Note the reference to Prof. Michael Wallace, and double-check the Iltis link above.

Iran attack imminent? Unlikely

Captain Ed is skeptical of reports that the Bush Administration will soon launch military strikes against Iran:

...Dick Cheney says the option remains on the table, which it must to maintain a credible deterrent to the Iranian nuclear program, but otherwise the administration has done nothing to build political support for such a move. That lack of preparation clearly indicates that the White House has not embarked on that course, not even preliminarily. All we hear are leaks from various sources that the US has "plans" for an attack on Iran -- which means nothing except that we've gamed the scenario for the sake of being prepared. We probably have 'plans" to invade Russia and China as well.

We cannot attack Iran without gathering many more resources than we did for Iraq. Iran is three times the size of Iraq, and its terrain presents a much higher degree of difficulty than the relatively flat Iraq. Their military, while underresourced, is not in the same dreadful state of readiness that we saw in Iraq. Military strikes on Iran could not wipe out their defenses at the onset of action, and the war would result in a conflagration that would halt oil supplies to the entire world. That's a last-gasp option, and everyone knows it.

Israel might attack Iran, however. Supposedly, they want to get overflight permission from the US to transit Iraqi airspace for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Even that is at the preliminary planning stages, in case the Iranians refuse to back away from their nuclear program. The leak is intended as brinksmanship from the Israelis after Ahmadinejad's reckless rhetoric about wiping them off the map. I have no doubt the Israelis would carry out the attack if they deem it necessary, with our without our cooperation, but again, this is just working out the details of plans that have to be made in order to ensure preparedness.

If the US decides to attack Iran, we need to be sure we have people in charge who believe in the mission. Right now, I don't think it's a good idea, and I'm not surprised to find out that some senior staff officers at the Pentagon agree with that.

Who needs military strikes when our devious plan to raise the price of tomatoes is working so well?

Damian P.

The vanishing American motorcar

In 2006 GM, Ford and Chrsyler sold in the US 5.9 million trucks, vans and SUVs; they also sold (perhaps as an afterthought, especially at Chrysler) 3.2 million cars (see chart).

Toyota, Honda and Nissan sold 2.9 million cars. If you add Mazda (which for some reason sells much better in Canada than the US), Subaru and Mitsubishi, Japanese car sales were actually higher than those of the former Big 3.

For the good old days of the American motorcar, a nostalgic piece on Studebakers (disclosure--my father owned at least two). Nice photos, including one truck--note the '54 Starliner, the Loewy coupe.

Mark C.

Quote of the Day

Brendon on Forrest Whittaker winning an Oscar: "Finally the cast of 'Bloodsport' is getting the recognition they deserve."

Damian P.

The R-word

It's nowhere to be found in the PQ's election platform:

Quebec separatists have never been big on clarity. Why call yourself a separatist when sovereigntist sounds nobler? Why even propose flatout sovereignty when sovereignty- association has a gentler ring? And now, thanks to current Parti Quebecois leader Andre Boisclair, why hold a referendum when a "public consultation" seems much less painful.

The PQ officially purged the word "referendum" from its election platform on the weekend, promising instead to hold "a public consultation on sovereignty" as soon as possible after taking power. After more than 30 years of struggling to create a country, all the PQ has managed so far is to corrupt a perfectly good word.

[...]

It is true that the term "public consultation" has not been pulled from thin air. Quebec's Referendum Act is known in French as the Loi sur la consultation populaire, so one could say the province has already been through two public consultations on sovereignty, in 1980 and 1995.

But the reason behind the sudden affection for the legal term is plain: Quebecers are in no mood for a referendum. A CROP poll published last week in La Presse found two-thirds of respondents do not want a referendum during the next government mandate.

It probably won't matter anyway: a new poll puts the separatists eight points behind Jean Charest and the Liberals - and just barely ahead of the sorta-nationalist ADQ.

Damian P.

Read a burned book

Nat Hentoff describes what kind of literature can get you sent to jail in Cuba:

From kangaroo-court records I have seen, when independent librarians are sent to the gulags, certain confiscated books — and sometimes all books in their libraries — are ordered incinerated by the presiding judge. A biography of Martin Luther King was sent to the flames because, said the judge, it "is based on ideas that could be used to promote social disorder and civil disobedience." And the nonviolent King's own books have been burned.

Even works by Jose Marti, the 19th-century organizer of Cuban independence, have been incinerated. Maybe because of the pamphlet he wrote during his exile in Spain, planning the liberation of his homeland. Marti's pamphlet was about the horrors of political imprisonment in Cuba under a pre-Castro dictator.

Among thousands of other incinerated "subversive" books and pamphlets are those books by George Orwell, Pope John Paul II, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (particularly dangerous) and reports by Human Rights Watch.

[...]

Now, like the resisters in Ray Bradbury's novel [Fahrenheit 451], who were determined to preserve the freedom to read, a group of American and international librarians, authors and human-rights activists have started a liberating Read A Burned Book campaign — including a curriculum aimed at high school and college students. The campaign is also encouraging people in the United States and around the world to read the books that dictators, not only Castro, burned.

Details here.

Damian P.

Scorcese gets his Oscar

Officially, he won the Best Director award for The Departed, which also won Best Picture. Unofficially, the award was for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.

Damian P.

Who won, who should have won, and who's been forgotten

Stuck in the '80s reviews the 1980-1989 Academy Awards. I must agree that 1984 was a particularly weak year for movies (and I'll go to my grave insisting that Ghostbusters was the best movie of the year).

Damian P.

A Generals' revolt?

The Sunday Times says several top military commanders will resign if the White House orders a strike on Iran - which is also opposed by Defence Secretary Robert Gates:

...The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

“There are enough people who feel this would be an error of judgment too far for there to be resignations.”

A generals’ revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented. “American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.

[...]

A second US navy aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS John C Stennis arrived in the Gulf last week, doubling the US presence there. Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, the commander of the US Fifth Fleet, warned: “The US will take military action if ships are attacked or if countries in the region are targeted or US troops come under direct attack.”

But General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said recently there was “zero chance” of a war with Iran. He played down claims by US intelligence that the Iranian government was responsible for supplying insurgents in Iraq, forcing Bush on the defensive.

Pace’s view was backed up by British intelligence officials who said the extent of the Iranian government’s involvement in activities inside Iraq by a small number of Revolutionary Guards was “far from clear”.

Damian P.

The making of a meme

The Kossacks' latest hissy fit is about plans for a Democratic presidential candidates' debate being hosted by - get the smelling salts! - the Fox News Channel. Among their claims:

Four years ago, in typically unfiltered fashion, Fox cut away from the Democratic debate they hosted a couple of minutes before it ended, in order to give arch-conservative William Bennett the first shot at post-debate spin.

This is a perfect example of the way Fox News blatantly manipulates its coverage to put a pro-Republican spin on the news. Sure, it didn't actually happen, but it's a perfect example.

Is the "Foxblocker" still on the market?

Damian P.

What's 3,000 people in the long run?

Lee Harris responds to the assertion that America "overreacted" to the 9/11 attacks.

Damian P.

You can't parody the Oscars

Here's why:

(via The Corner)

Damian P.

Suzuki's tour bus

The Winnipeg Sun's Tom Brodbeck chides David Suzuki for using a polluting, diesel-powered bus for his cross-country global warming tour:

Political activist David Suzuki -- on a cross-country tour urging Canadians and politicians to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- may want to look in his own backyard before lecturing Canadians on how they're destroying the Earth.

With all the alternative-energy modes of transportation out there, Suzuki and his entourage are crossing Canada in a sprawling, "rock-star-style" diesel-burning tour bus, emitting more greenhouse gases during his 30-day tour than many of us do in a year.

[...]

Suzuki could at least have found a biodiesel bus, which emits far less greenhouse gases than conventional diesel.

"We were hoping to have biodiesel," Curan explained by phone, as the Suzuki tour drove out of Winnipeg yesterday. "But we were told towards the beginning of the tour -- for this company that we're going through -- that it would void the warranty."

Void the warranty?

Void the warranty? I see.

Suzuki is the same guy who tells us if we're not car-pooling, switching to smaller, more efficient vehicles, using transit and other alternative modes of transportation, we're sticking it to our grandchildren. We're killing the Earth.

You want to know how many people are travelling with Mr. Kyoto in this oversized carbon burner? Seven. Sometimes eight -- including the bus driver.

Eight people in a vehicle that could probably hold 30.

To be fair, Suzuki's foundation is buying "carbon credits" to offset the greenhouse gases emitted on his tour. But he couldn't he have reached many of his stops by train?

Damian P.

Save the planet: Ban minivans

In Canada some 40% of 2006 auto sales (around 1.6 million) were compact and subcompact cars, the great majority with engines under two litres. Large SUVs, the kind the media and environmentalists love to hate, made up just over one percent of sales. One the other hand, those warm and fuzzy minivans--whose sales have been sliding recently in the face of crossover competition--still made up almost ten percent of sales.

Now, given that minivans are real gas-guzzlers compared to the small cars that are already close to half the market--doing their bit to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, surely steps should be taken to force minivan buyers (along with buyers of mid-size SUVs) to switch to that sort of car?

See this comment thread from October, 2005. What say you, Dara?

Mark C..

Damian adds: for families with only one or two children, I'd recommend looking at a "mini-minivan" like the Mazda 5 or Kia Rondo. Or maybe a small station wagon: Ford recently ended production of the Focus wagon, but there may be a few left kicking around.

That's why they play the games...

...and why TV networks and sponsors hate match play golf tournaments (team events--Ryder Cup and President's Cup--aside). On any given Saturday you can end up with a tournament like the Accenture Match Play Championship; all the number one and two seeds are eliminated by the weekend. Bye, bye Tiger, Jim, Phil, Adam, Ernie, Retief, Vijay and Luke. That's eight out of the top nine in the world.

But remember that last year's champion, little known Aussie Geoff Ogilvy, went on to win the US Open.

Mark C.

Update: Final is Ogilvy vs. Stenson (Sweden), #11 vs. #8. Hardly shabby. Americans (and most Canadians) will tune out.

Among the kooks

Screw Loose Change and the Phoenix New Times have reports from the "9/11 Accountability Conference" in Arizona. No prizes for guessing whether the organizers actually disassociated with Holocaust denier Eric Williams, as promised.

In fact, prominent blackshirt Jim Fetzer openly admits that 9/11 denial and Holocaust denial have much in common:

Since Fetzer feels that way, I guess he'd agree we have every right to speculate about his mental health, too.

Damian P.

Shortest reunion ever

The Van Halen reunion tour is off again.

Damian P.

Mugabe's final days

He just celebrated his 83rd birthday, and among Zimbabweans, public anger is reaching a boiling point. Mugabe will be gone soon - the question is whether it will be in his palace or in a prison cell. Or dangling from a rope.

Damian P.

Why Martin Scorsese should not win the Oscar...

...for Directing (much though I admire him), why The Departed should not win Best Picture, and what's wrong with even very well made and well acted Hollywood movies over the last decade or so (think Heat):

[Possible spoiler alert]

In the last few minutes just shoot four people in the head since you can't think of any other way to finish the movie. End of story.

Jack Nicholson, though, is reliably evil and entertaining. He should have received a nomination, but not the film for Adapted Screenplay.

An analyis of Oscar stuff that makes quite a bit of sense.

Mark C.

Tim Hardaway's guide to NFL quarterbacks

This is satire. I repeat: it's satire.

Damian P.

I take back anything bad I've ever said about Chapters/Indigo

Any company so hated by the Death-to-Israel mob deserves our continued patronage. (via RightGirl)

Damian P.

The Canadian Forces: Deux nations

The Québécois really don't seem to want the Canadian military to be a fighting force, whereas those in another province do (paragraphs out of sequence):

Quebeckers, whose mostly French-speaking Royal 22nd Regiment is just arriving in Kandahar [not so--a few elements arrived some time ago but the main battle group is not coming until August - MC] ahead of what is expected to be months of renewed fighting against a resurgent Taliban, want most strongly (71 per cent) to scrap any combat role for the Canadian Forces.

If the Vandoos start taking casualties, anti-war sentiment in Quebec may harden.

By contrast, only four in 10 Albertans want a "peacekeeping only" military.

Now this is really scary:

The national average among the more than 1,000 respondents to the Ipsos-Reid poll was 58 per cent favouring only peacekeeping...

The figure would probably be around 50-50, not counting Quebec. That is the result of at least two decades of what amounts to propaganda from our educational systems, our media, and our governments (I'm including the Mulroney one).

Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail, the author of this story, starts it in this fashion:

Four in 10 Canadians think it's okay for Canadian soldiers to beat their captives in Afghanistan and nearly two-thirds doubt investigations into alleged detainee abuse will uncover the truth, according to an Ipsos-Reid poll released yesterday.

[...]

More than a third (37 per cent) of respondents said they believe Canadian troops "are involved with torturing" prisoners...

Now whyever might Canadians think such nasty things about our soldiers? A large part of the reason might just be stories Mr Koring himself wrote recently about allegations of prisoner abuse. The allegations were then picked up and given huge publicity by the rest of our media. See these posts by Damian Brooks at The Torch:

"More spinning than a figure skating competition"
"Desperate fabrication"
"You want a 'conversation'? You got my half of it..."

Mr Koring really does have a lot to answer for.

Full poll details are here.

Mark C.

Certificates struck down

The Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously ruled that certain federal anti-terrorism laws are unconstitutional:

The certificates allowed government officials to use secret court hearings, indefinite prison terms and summary deportations when dealing with non-citizens accused of having terrorist ties.

"There is a problem... because the people that are named are not given a chance to see all of the evidence against them," said CTV's Rosemary Thompson at the SCC. "That violates a section of the charter that would require a fair trial."

The judgment comes in response to a constitutional challenge of the certificates.

The SCC heard arguments last June from lawyers of three men -- Syrian-born Hassan Almrei, Algerian native Mohamed Harket and Morocco native Adil Charkaoui -- who had spent years in detention under the security certificates.

[...]

The judgement is not saying that the detentions are wrong but that the accused must have access to the evidence against them, said Thompson.

"Nothing is really going to happen to them in the next year, the current regime will exist for the next year," she said. "What is going to change is the way these hearings take place."

The full decision, which I have yet to read, is here.

Damian P.

Four Years

Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman has been given a prison sentence - three years for "insulting Islam" and one additional year for writing unkind things about Hosni Mubarak.

I can't find an e-mail address for the Egyptian embassy in Ottawa, but contact information for their diplomatic missions in the U.S. can be found here.

Damian P.

Update: more about this disgusting affair here.

Trudeaumania

As everybody in Canada expected, Justin Trudeau is going into politics:

Justin Trudeau has confirmed to CTV News that he will try to take on the Bloc Québécois, by seeking the Liberal nomination in the Montreal-area riding of Papineau.

Trudeau was originally expected to run in the Montreal-area Outremont riding, recently vacated by Jean Lapierre, a former Liberal cabinet minister.

Instead, he will seek nomination in the tougher Papineau seat, currently held by Bloc MP Vivian Barbot.

"I don't want to be handed anything, I don't need to be handed anything, I'm more than capable of bringing the fight and it will be a chance for me to demonstrate my own political abilities," said Trudeau.

Needless to say, that last name is a gigantic political advantage. (Ask George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Paul Martin, Sheila Copps, Peter McKay, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Preston Manning, Richard M. Daley and several dozen Kennedys.) Still, like Greg Staples, I will give him credit for running in a Bloc district instead of being parachuted into a safe Liberal seat.

Damian P.

Why is Canadian development work around Kandahar ineffective?

Damian Brooks gives a large part of the answer in one word, CIDA, and suggests the current government has a serious responsibility to shake up the agency.

Mark C.

"We don't want to fight..."

That about sums up M. Dion's lastest revision of Liberal policy on Afghanistan:

Liberals back Afghan mission until 2009

Certainly no-one can accuse the Liberals of "Jingoism"; they surely do ignore the rest of the nineteenth century song:

We don't want to fight,

But by Jingo if we do,

We've got the ships,

We've got the men,

And got the money too.

We've fought the Bear before,

And while we're Britons true,

The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

Mark C.

When moonbats attack!

Anyone who wants to copy this guy should remember that conservative Republicans own lots of guns. Just sayin' is all.

To me, the most interesting part of the story is the guy's frothing anti-semitism. ("I'm as WASPish as they come, but goddamn, god bless Iran and may this bastard state be wiped from the map." I'm pretty sure the "bastard state" is not Delaware.) The Jew-hating lunatics are getting pretty feisty lately, aren't they?

Damian P.

Only in 1978 could anyone think this was a good idea

I love bad movies, but even I couldn't finish this one.

Damian P.

Iranians speak out

Norman Geras reprints a letter signed by 23 academics (most of them still living in Iran, but including a University of Toronto professor) condemning Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference.

Damian P.

Well, they are experts on hunger

Guess which country is poised to gain the vice-presidency of the World Food Programme?

Zimbabwe may gain the vice-presidency of the World Food Programme (WFP) — despite the collapse of its own agricultural sector.

All seven African countries presently on the WFP's 36-strong executive board are believed to support the bid of Robert Mugabe's regime.

If successful, Zimbabwe will be in line to become the president of the world's largest supplier of humanitarian aid next year.

Once one of Africa's leading food exporters, Zimbabwe has needed WFP supplies since 2001. At present, almost one million of its people, mainly orphans and schoolchildren, are receiving emergency food aid.

One Zimbabwean who won't go hungry is Mr. Mugabe, who just turned 83 years old.

Damian P.

Talk about torque steer (in a manner of speaking)

From Car magazine, Stephen Bayley, February 2007, p. 26 (text not online as far as I can find):

...the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Many years ago (I was driving a Scirocco GTi at the time so that's how many years ago it was), the Suffolk branch of the USAF vouchsafed me a sneak look at Mildenhall. Just back from a Mach 5 [sic] tour of the Soviet Union [target doubtful - MC], I found this enormous, startling, sinister aerial hot rod of the Cold War just as it had been tugged into its hangar. The Blackbird routinely stretched by 18 inches during flight, but back on chilly Earth the elastic patterns of its exotic metals had to reverse themselves.

So there it sat, crackling, ping-ing, boing-ing, and ticking: engines and systems silent and mute, but the carcass still alive. Such an amazing machine. I asked the pilot about the legendary 'Upstarts' (flyboy euphemism for a single ram-jet 'stopping' and the dire effects of massive assymmetric thrust at 3000mph [sic]) and he said 'Well, gee, it just waters the crap right out of your eyes'.

Well it would, wouldn't it?

Mark C.

The problem with (many) historians today

David Frum writes a superb summary of the good parts in R.J.B. Bosworth's Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship 1915-1945.

But the good parts are less than half the book. As for the rest:

...Bosworth's book raises the question though whether the worst harm done by current academic fashion may not be the harm done to the minds of professors who might otherwise have been first-rate.

I dont complain so much about the incessant insertion of his own extraneous opinions on contemporary politics. If he doesnt like Silvio Berlusconi, that is his business. (Although it does rather call into question an author's judgment when he compares the Nazi air attack on Guernica to NATO's intervention in Kosovo.)

No, the two great evils of this book are politics writ small, academic politics: the mind-wearying invocations of the race-sex-class orthodoxies of the modern academy - the pages of text wasted in toadying citations of the work of feminist colleagues to whom the author wishes to suck up - and the no-detail-too-boring approach that defines modern "social" history.

[...]

At one point, Bosworth reports an incident in which a peddler tells a group of villagers some inaccurate information on the progress of the war. He seizes on this as evidence that despite the Fascist state, Italians retained "their own ways of knowing." This is one of the currently fashionable preoccupations of social history: that public ignorance represents - not ignorance - but an inspiring refusal on the part of the downtrodden to allow race/sex/class hierarchies control their minds.

Half the book is the work of a gifted historian; the other, of an ingratiating academic politician...

I've read the book (more here). Mr Frum gets it exactly right.

Mark C.

Weak Horse, Strong Horse

Scott Burgess compares a list of educational "reforms" suggested by the Muslim Council of Britain with the Church of England's suggestions for Lent:

Overall, these two documents show us on one hand a growing group, increasing in power and confidently laying out its demands, while on the other we see an institution disappearing into well-deserved meaninglessness.

Osama bin Laden, December 2001: "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." These days, the Anglican Church looks more like a donkey.

Damian P.

What Palestinian Christians?

It's beginning to look likw only one type (note the photo) of Arab will be acceptable pretty soon.

The feuding Palestinian parties met in the holy city of Mecca (Makkah), hosted by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. Mecca is an odd choice for a summit site, because non-Muslims are not permitted to enter the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medinah. There are checkpoints on the highways into the holy cities, at which non-Muslim motorists who may have missed the "Muslims Only" signs are advised not to go any further.

[...]

The centuries-old presence of Christians in the "Arab-Islamic" world is dwindling. Where there were hundreds of thousands, there are now communities of only a few dozen families. Most dramatic of all, Bethlehem, once a majority- Christian city, is now three quarters Muslim. Christians increasingly feel like aliens among their own people, as Islamic identity dominates the national ties of Palestinian heritage. Meetings in Mecca will only confirm the fears of Palestinian Christians that there is little future for them in the "Arab-Islamic" nation...

Mark C.

Afghanistan: Bilge from Byers

Prof. Michael Byers is Steve Staples' equally evil twin. That anyone with such complete disregard for facts can be a university professor drives me nuts. He writes in the Toronto Star, February 20:

Since becoming Canada's top soldier two years ago, Hillier has pushed the politicians hard. At his own swearing-in ceremony, he criticized Paul Martin for underfunding the military; one month later, he browbeat the Liberal cabinet into volunteering troops for a combat mission to Kandahar.

We all know Liberals are wusses, but that wussy?

Then-prime minister Martin and his ministers assumed Canadian casualties would be limited. So far, 44 soldiers have lost their lives. Hillier, the professional upon whose expertise the politicians relied, should have explained the real risks to them.

This is what Gen. Hillier said in July, 2005 (the Kandahar mission was announced by then Minister of National Defence Graham in May, 2005):

...Hillier says Canadians should realize the mission the Canadian military is undertaking in Afghanistan is a dangerous one that could lead to casualties.

Did the General change his tune in just two months? More from the professor:

Under Hillier's leadership, Canada's role in Kandahar has morphed from a "provincial reconstruction team" made up of soldiers, diplomats and development personnel, into a "battle group" supported by Leopard tanks.

Where's the morphing? Prof. Byers just called it a "combat mission" above. No secret in July, 2005, either [full text not online]:

...the next three missions [rotations, I think - MC], involving 2,000 troops, will be heavily centred in the southern mountains, where soldiers will be called upon to hunt down and fight the insurgents.

Prof. Byers goes on:

Characterizing the enemy as "detestable murderers and scumbags" [in July, 2005] can only exacerbate the situation...

Well, Jack Layton was against the scumbags before he was against the mission:

"Controlled anger, given what's happened, is an appropriate response," NDP Leader Jack Layton said. "We have a very committed, level-headed head of our armed forces, who isn't afraid to express the passion that underlies the mission that front-line personnel are going to be taking on.

"A bit of strong language in the circumstances, I don't find that to be wrong."

Now the professor plays the Bush card:

On the whole, Hillier has been content to adopt the approach of the Bush administration, emphasizing aggressive search-and-kill tactics and downplaying diplomacy, development, and international law.

It just happens however that since last summer Canadian troops have following the approach of NATO ISAF, not the Bush administration. The professor also never mentions in his piece that the ISAF mission has the unanimous authorization of the UN Security Council. Development has not been played down either (whether it's effective is another matter)--see the January, 2006, "Afghanistan Compact", also unanimously endorsed by the UNSC and of which Canada is a part.

More "B" words:

Hillier shares the dubious company of U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in stubbornly refusing to admit his mistake.

If there has been a mistake, primary responsibility rests with the Martin government, not the General. Mr Graham said this in a speech in the fall of 2005 (one of several explaining the new Kandahar mission that our media essentially ignored--and remember there was not one question on Afghanistan during the federal election leaders' debates):

...we will be deploying a Task Force of about 1,000 troops into Kandahar for one year. As an essential complement to the reconstruction efforts of our PRT, this force will provide much needed security in the region...

...Canadians should be under no illusion; Kandahar is a very complex, challenging and dangerous environment and mission. The part of Afghanistan we are going to is among the most unstable and dangerous in the country. Indeed, that is why we have been asked to go there and that is why we are going there...

No decent respect for the truth, chez Prof. Byers. Then there's this gem from the NDP's National Defence critic:

"How can the military plan rotations that Parliament has not approved?" Ms. Black asked.

I imagine a prime minister speaking to the House of Commons:

The government wants to send troops to help deal with the current crisis in Ruritania. Once the House approves the mission, the government will permit the Canadian Forces to make plans. When those plans are ready, and accepted by the government, we will then inform the House of the composition of the mission, what its members will do, and how long the mission may take. Thank you very much and please vote in favour of the Ruritanian mission.

Good grief. More from Damian Brooks.

Mark C.

Fed Follies

A letter of mine published at Economist.com:

SIR —

In "What the Lords are for" you write that "Canada's Senate...cannot veto laws". Not so. The legislative powers of the Canadian Senate are completely equal to those of the House of Commons except that the Senate cannot initiate money bills. It can veto any bill but almost never uses that power since, as you point out, its members have no democratic legitimacy as they are appointed by the prime minister. The Senate's legitimacy is further weakened since the seat allocation to various regions and provinces is increasingly unrepresentative of the country's changing distribution of population.

The current Conservative government is making efforts to institute some Senate reforms but the government is a minority one and its proposals are unlikely to be accepted by the opposition parties. Major legislated reform moreover would require amending the constitution in concert with the provinces, a practical impossibility in Canada.

You also write that "Britain is not federal". Surely it is, but the federal units (Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, England) simply have differing amounts of autonomy — none in the case of England. A typically muddled British example of federalism, with varying degrees of "vitesse".

Mark C.

Me too

Stephen Pollard:

One of my pet hates is people who holiday in Cuba, usually accompanied by the sentiment: 'we want to see it before it gets all commercialised'. Last week I heard a distinguished academic say how much he preferred Prague in the 1970s and 80s, before it became so 'commercialised'.

For 'commercialised', read 'free'. These people deserve the contempt of anyone who believes in freedom. Their moral code is no better than those who holidayed in Durban under apartheid, on the basis that - as some family friends once put it to me - 'you never see the blacks so you can completely escape the apartheid'.

Damian P.

Jailed for blogging

Today's Washington Post has a piece about Egyptian blogger Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, who has been arrested and detained for speaking his mind:

Soliman, 22, was expelled from Al-Azhar University last spring for sharply criticizing the university's rigid curriculum and faulting religious extremism on his blog. He was ordered to appear before a public prosecutor on Nov. 7 on charges of "spreading information disruptive of public order," "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the President." Soliman was detained pending an investigation, and the detention has been renewed four times. He has not had consistent access to lawyers or to his family.

[...]

Soliman has criticized Egyptian authorities as failing to protect the rights of religious minorities and women. He has expressed his views about religious extremism in very strong terms. He is the first Egyptian blogger to be prosecuted for the content of his remarks. Remarkably, the legal complaint originated with the university that had expelled him; once, it was a great center of learning in the Arab world, but it has been reduced to informing on students for their dissent from orthodoxy.

More here.

Damian P.

National Defence: Liberals clueless; Conservatives could do better

A post at The Torch:

National Defence critic is Liberal with the truth/Feuding at Fort Ottawa?

Mark C.

The incredible truth unmasked!

So you thought Stephen Harper was Bush-lite, the president's poodle, or something like that?

This is what a Toronto Star reporter informed us in a story, February, 16 (yes, this is how they write "news"):

Bush was largely parroting the Ottawa point of view in calling for more troops and fewer restrictions on NATO nations [in Afghanistan]...

Holy cowboy! The president is actually the prime minister's pet bird! A complete rethink about who's responsible for every bad thing in the whole wide world is immediately in order.

Mark C.

Journey to the Center of the Universe

My girlfriend and I are heading to Toronto for a few days, so posting will be light until Wednesday. See you at the blogger bash.

Damian P.

First they were against terrorism...

...then they just didn't care. Needed votes in T.O and Quebec or something. Chuckercanuck points out that Osama did not get the memo about Kyoto. On the other hand...

Actually, maybe they did get that memo and their call to attack our oil industry is only to help us meet our Kyoto commitments.

Mark C.

From GM to GMC?

Automotive News reports that General Motors may take Chrysler off Daimler's hands:

General Motors is in talks to buy all of its struggling rival Chrysler Group from German-US auto giant DaimlerChrysler AG, media reported.

Automotive News, a weekly trade publication, cited sources in Germany and the United States, two days after Germany's Manager Magazin reported the same discussions taking place.

[...]

Automotive News said: "High-level talks are taking place between DaimlerChrysler AG and GM executives.

"Although the two companies have discussed cooperation on a large SUV (sport utility vehicle), say sources at both companies, the potential deal would go beyond limited product development alliances," it said.

Part of the problem with General Motors is that it's already too big and unwieldly to compete effectively with Toyota. Didn't GM learn anything from its catastrophic alliance with Fiat?

Damian P.

The next Darfur?

Oxfam says Chad is Africa's next disaster area:

A humanitarian crisis on the scale of the disaster in Darfur could take place in neighbouring Chad and endanger hundreds of thousands of lives, Oxfam said yesterday.

Four years after war began in Sudan's region of Darfur, the fighting has spread into eastern Chad, where about 120,000 people have been forced to leave their homes.

Another 250,000 refugees, who escaped the fighting in Darfur and fled over the border, are also living in this remote and lawless area. Sudan and Chad accuse one another of arming rebels on their territory.

The notorious "Janjaweed" militia, armed and raised by the Khartoum regime, have raided villages inside Chad.

Damian P.

Hugonomics

Oil-fueled inflation, combined with price controls, is leading to food shortages in Venezuela:

Shortages have sporadically appeared with items such as milk and coffee since early 2003, when Chavez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor.

Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 percent during the past four years in an economy awash in petrodollars, and food prices have increased particularly swiftly, creating a widening discrepancy between official prices and the true cost of getting goods to market in Venezuela.

"Shortages have increased significantly as well as violations of price controls," Central Bank director Domingo Maza Zavala told the Venezuelan broadcaster Union Radio on Thursday. "The difference between real market prices and controlled prices is very high."

Most items can still be found, but only by paying a hefty markup at grocery stores or on the black market. A glance at prices in several Caracas supermarkets this week showed milk, ground coffee, cheese and beans selling between 30 percent to 60 percent above regulated prices.

The state runs a nationwide network of subsidized food stores, but in recent months some items have become increasingly hard to find.

[...]

Gonzalo Asuaje, president of the meat processors association Afrigo, said that costs and demand have surged but in four years the government has barely raised the price of beef, which now stands at $1.82 per pound. Simply getting beef to retailers now costs $2.41 per pound without including any markup, he said.

"They want to sell it at the same price the cattle breeder gets for his cow," he said. "It's impossible."

Since the laws of economics do not apply to Hugo Chavez, dammit, he's threatening to nationalize supermarkets:

President Chavez told a gathering of pensioners in the capital, Caracas, that he was waiting for the "first excuse" to take over privately-owned outlets that manipulate prices.

"If they insist on violating the interests of the people, the constitution and laws, I will take away the warehouses, the shops, I will take away the supermarkets and I'll nationalise them," he warned.

[...]

Some private companies are also concerned about President Chavez's intention to make them allow their employees time during the working day to study socialism.

Their studies will be strictly voluntary, I'm sure.

Damian P.

"Do the math"

Why "one tier" health care will fail:

B.C. Health Minister George Abbott refers to them as the killer slides...

"The future looks very, very scary," Mr. Abbott said in an interview...

The first graph Mr. Abbott brings out is one showing per capita health expenditures by age group in British Columbia...

...Between 70 and 74, they rise to $5,745; between 80 and 84, $11,651; and, when a person is 90 and over, the price tag goes up to $22,074 a year.

"Now you look at this graph," the minister said. "This is the one that makes you worry."

The graph is titled: "B.C.'s age demographic is shifting over the next 25 years with 100 per cent plus growth in seniors age groups."..

Over the next 25 years, the number of B.C. residents...70 to 74 [will increase] 133 per cent. The number of those over 85 is expected to grow 131 per cent.

"It's pretty easy to do the math," Mr. Abbott said.

Compare these realities with this clap-trap from Andre Picard.

Mark C.

They still don't seem to get it

Two headlines that tell a story:

1) Daimler Considers Sale, Partners for Chrysler Unit (possible partners, Renault and Nissan; possible sale, GM!)

2) Chrysler Group 4.7-Liter V-8 Engine Debuts in New 2008 Dodge Dakota

Some interesting charts and graphs from Der Spiegel are here. Then there's German media comment on the situation.

Mark C.

I actually want to see this

Universal is developing a film about Milli Vanilli.

Damian P.

Top Gear in perspective

Jeremy, James and Hamster might have had a rough time in Alabama, but here's a story from their side of the pond:

I am away filming in Liverpool - a great city, but with expensive camera equipment in the back streets, there is, how shall I put this delicately, a security issue. One colleague recalls regular payoffs to "Keith the Thief". On another occasion a crew was approached by a youth wanting £10 to "mind your car".

No, the producer said firmly, he didn't need that, there was a big aggressive dog sitting on the back seat. Short pause. "Oh aye," says the youth. "Puts out fires, does he?" He collected the tenner.

(For the record, I've been to Liverpool and had a great time.)

Damian P.

The Globe's latest hatchet job

Bob Tarantino dismantles a hysterical front-page story about the Harper government's appointments to Judicial Advisory Committees.

Today's front-page story in the National Post illustrates the Liberals' astonishing hypocrisy on this issue:

Liberal Members of Parliament have in recent days repeatedly accused the Conservative government of appointing partisans to committees that vet judicial appointments, but a review of those selected by the previous government has found a significant number of them had Liberal ties.

[...]

...[Michael] Ignatieff said yesterday in an interview that his motion is not simply "our patronage versus their patronage.

"It's a deliberate attempt by the executive branch of our government to stack and create a court system in its image," he said. "I do not think that the Liberal party has ever gone out and said, 'Here is our justice philosophy and we're going to stack the court with people who subscribe to our philosophy.'"

Wow.

Damian P.

The end of Parliamentary supremacy?

Responsible government in Canada, under which the executive must have the support of the legislature on major policy matters, appears to have been flushed.

The House of Commons, soon to be followed by the Senate, has passed a bill requiring that Canada meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. Unless the government, i.e. the prime minister, advises the Governor General not to sign the bill she will do so and it will become law (there is a digression here--see after the break).

We are in the presence of an absurdity under the Westminster system. Parliament (legally the House, the Senate and the Governor General) will have approved a bill that the executive (the Cabinet or, more accurate in current circumstances, the prime minister) will refuse to implement. In other words the executive government will have chosen not to be responsible to the legislature.

That will be the de facto end of our constitution, based in this case on the convention of precedent. As I see things the government had no choice but to consider this vote as one of no confidence. It has now lost the confidence of the House on an important issue of policy, without which it has no constitutional ground for remaining in office. Prime Minister Harper should immediately ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call an election.

This is not a simple matter of partisan politics; it is a matter of the fundaments of our political reality.

If the prime minister does not act as suggested above he is a renegade in power. Our constitution will have been irrevocably changed. Parliament, as with the Cabinet, will become little but a focus group.

But then Cabinet government in Canada died some time ago. We now have a primus, no pares. What will this shift produce in the end?

Mark C.

As to the prime minister's advising the Governor General not to sign a bill: that course is constitutionally possible but in practice inconceivable. For the Governor General, even on the advice of her minister(s), to reject the will of the houses of Parliament would negate the meaning of responsible government, an executive (legally the government, or Cabinet, acts as the "Governor in Council" with the approbation of the Governor General) responsible to the legislature. A once autocratic head of state would be replaced by an autocratic head of government--and all the while maintaining the Westminster system convention that the head of state--except in the most extreme circumstances--must accept the advice of her minister(s).

Conventions clashing.

Amateur Half-Hour

If this clip is any indication, Fox News' upcoming Half-Hour News Hour (good thing that title doesn't remotely resemble any CBC programs, or anything) desperately needs Iowahawk in the writers' room.

Damian P.

Clarkson in California

Someone has posted Jeremy Clarkson's The Good The Bad The Ugly DVD special, in which he tries to find a decent American car, to YouTube (divided into eight parts). Clarkson's snobby disdain for the Yanks is evident, but even the biggest American-car fan must concede some of his points, especially about Big-Three interiors.

It's worth comparing the "gun-toting redneck" scene, which is obviously staged (an actor is credited for the part of "Billy Bob") with the Top Gear gang's infamous run-in with angry yokels in Alabama. The latter may have been embellished in the editing room, but it certainly doesn't look scripted. (Captain Slow insists the incident was real.)

Damian P.

Will the West get the guts before it's too late?

Celestial Junk quotes John Keegan, from The Face of Battle:

Battle therefore … is essentially a moral conflict. It requires … a mutual and sustained act of will by two contending parties and, if it is to result in a decision, the moral collapse of one of them.

CJ's conclusion, after his analysis:

If Keegan is correct, as I believe he is, then we in the West won’t muster the will needed to defeat Islamic Totalitarianism until a true cataclysm assails us. It may take any number of forms, but until then, it is only a minority of Westerns who have the will to prevail. The rest want to go back to a blissful September 10th slumber, where they can focus on concocting myths about American hegemony, Global Warming, and International Zionist conspiracies. Not until they face cultural extinction will they muster the will to fight; and perhaps not even then.

Mark C.

Afghanistan: What should Canada do?

Conservative Senator Michael Meighen, deputy chair of the Senate Committee Committee on National Security and Defence, says that the withdrawal option is largely aimed at putting pressure on the larger NATO allies to start fighting.

You will note that Mr Harris interviews the Senator intelligently enough. But some minutes earlier he had said that Canada, to keep up our effort in Afghanistan, would be (a direct quote from memory) "pissing away" billions of dollars. I wonder why he did not put the matter to the Senator in those terms. One attitude when attitudinizing, another when interviewing, with a pretended decent respect for the opinion of the interviewee. Maudit hypocrite--or suck up?

Somewhat earlier, on Feb. 13, there was a discussion on CFRA's "Lunch Bunch" with Scott Taylor (just back from Afghanistan) of Esprit de Corps magazine (part 1 and part 2). Mr Taylor cannot quite bring himself to advocate a rapid withdrawal of Canadian troops; he does skate hard to avoid distinguishing between the fairly violent south and the generally peaceful rest of the country.

Mr Taylor also makes something of the fact that the CF at Kandahar have Tim Horton's and Afghans are dirt poor (literally true for most of them). But our troops do fight. Are the amenities of such non-fighting members of ISAF as the Spanish, Germans, Italians or French not also worth discussion? Currywurst, anyone?

The Senlis Council, the group Mr Taylor was travelling with in Afghanistan, has just issued a report slamming ISAF. There are some good points amidst the barrage of negativity. But one wonders how they imagine this recommendation can be followed right now in light of the security situation in southern Afstan:

10) Development and aid investments equal to military spending...

Mark C.

Canada on the hit list

An website allegedly linked to Al-Qaida calls for terror attacks against Canadian oil facilities:

Al-Qaida has called for terrorist strikes against Canadian oil and natural gas facilities to "choke the U.S. economy."

An online message, posted Thursday by the Al-Qaida Organization in the Arabian Peninsula, declares "we should strike petroleum interests in all areas which supply the United States like Canada," the No. 1 exporter of oil and gas to the U.S.

"The biggest party hurt will be the industrial nations, and on top them, the United States."

The same group, the Saudi arm of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, claimed responsibility for last February's attack on the world's largest oil processing facility at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia's eastern province.

Obviously, Canada is paying the price for Stephen Harper's slavish devotion to Chimpy McHitlerburton's neocon foreign policy. Just like, um, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela:

A feature article, entitled "Bin Laden's Oil Weapon," encourages operatives to continue to follow earlier directives from bin Laden to strike oil targets not only in Saudi Arabia, but elsewhere, according to a translation by the SITE Institute, a non-profit U.S. group that monitors terrorist websites

Three western countries are mentioned in the call-to-arms -- Canada first, followed by Mexico and Venezuela. Would-be attackers are instructed to specifically target oilfields, pipelines, loading platforms, and carriers.

Damian P.

More controversial than the Snickers ad?

The NFL refused to run an ad for the U.S. Border Patrol in the Super Bowl program, apparently because it described the reasons America has a border patrol:

The National Football League refused to run a recruitment ad for the U.S. Border Patrol in last week's Super Bowl program, saying it was "controversial" because it mentioned duties such as fighting terrorism and stopping drugs and illegal aliens at the border.

"The ad that the department submitted was specific to Border Patrol, and it mentioned terrorism. We were not comfortable with that," said Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the NFL. "The borders, the immigration debate is a very controversial issue, and we were sensitive to any perception we were injecting ourselves into that."

The NFL's rejection didn't sit well with Border Patrol agents, who called it a snub of their role in homeland security and said it was "more than a little puzzling."

[...]

Mr. Aiello said that the NFL offered the department a chance to run a generic recruiting ad, similar to ads the U.S. military runs, but that the league never heard back from it.

"We proposed a more generic recruiting ad for the department that didn't highlight the borders, which brings up the immigration issue and the immigration debate. That's controversial," he said.

Damian P.

So much for that "martyrdom" crap

Moqtada al-Sadr has fled Iraq, according to ABC News:

According to senior military officials, al Sadr left Baghdad two to three weeks ago and fled to Tehran, Iran, where he has family.

Al Sadr commands the Mahdi army, one of the most formidable insurgent militias in Iraq, and his move coincides with the announced U.S. troop surge in Baghdad.

Sources believe al Sadr is worried about an increase of 20,000 U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. One official told ABC News' Martha Raddatz, "He is scared he will get a JDAM [bomb] dropped on his house."

Sources say some of the Mahdi army leadership went with al Sadr.

Though he is gone for now, many believe al Sadr is not gone for good. In Tehran he is trying to keep the Mahdi militia together. (via Captain's Quarters)

Damian P.

"Afstan and Kyoto: A tale of two international initiatives"

The Prairie Wrangler has an interesting analysis of how the two problems are approached, especially by progressives.

Mark C.

One reason to like the MSM

Brigitte Pellerin of the Ottawa Citizen likes Daimnation! (disclosure: I have used her columns as the basis for posts ten times, e.g. this one).

...There's a whole cottage industry out there of dedicated bloggers spotting and highlighting hidden biases (real or imaginary) in the mainstream media.

For example, two weeks ago the Citizen ran a picture of Iraqi prisoners sitting on the ground being watched by soldiers. The caption said: "Arrested militants sit blindfolded ..." even though the men in the picture aren't blindfolded at all Maybe the person who wrote the caption was badly distracted at the time. Or maybe he or she just assumed Americans and their allies mistreat opponents [oddly enough I can't find this exposed on any blog - MC]...

...I think their [blogs'] increasing popularity is due in good part to the fact that folks prefer openly opinionated news rather than secretly opinionated news. When I go to Little Green Footballs, I know what I'm likely to get. Ditto with Daimnation! [emphasis added] and Inkless Wells. So instead of griping that such-and-such a reporter must secretly be a Liberal or anti-George Bush or what have you, I focus on what they're writing and move merrily along.

Sure, many blogs are of doubtful reliability. The advantage of the MSM is we'd soon go out of business if we constantly printed or broadcast rubbish; readers then advertisers would drop us like yesterday's old cliches. But why not combine the best of both worlds?

We could have media outlets that are openly opinionated but have high ethical standards and a reputation for reliable accuracy -- by which I don't mean never making mistakes but correcting them promptly when they occur.

Yes, those of us who are media/political junkies would have to read more than one newspaper and watch more than one broadcast. But we do that anyway. Other people would simply choose which outlet best reflects their own outlook and get the news from a perspective that doesn't offend them...

Sounds like a good idea to me. In Europe most, and in Britain many, papers have a more or less openly acknowledged bias (as does the Toronto Star) that one can take into consideration as one pleases.

Ms. Pellerin's own blog is here. Her husband, fellow Citizen columnist John Robson, is also a good read (and a good listen on CFRA, Ottawa, "Madely in the Morning", Fridays 0810-0900).

Mark C.

Update: Oops! Eleven now.

"Bet you didn't know" dept.

Iran is importing gasoline. But essentially temporary problems with oil production are still no excuse for a nuclear power program (and note who gets the blame in the NY Times headline and first paragraph).

Western political and economic pressure on Iran over its nuclear program has chilled foreign investment to the extent that it is now squeezing the country’s long-fragile energy industry, adding strains to a government that is burdened by sanctions and wary of unrest at home.

The world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, Iran sits on the second-largest oil and gas reserves. But it has struggled in recent years to keep its oil production, currently running at about four million barrels a day, from falling.

[...]

...Iran has had to appease a population historically prone to unrest. It spends about $20 billion each year, or 15 percent of its economic output, to keep consumer prices low for gasoline, natural gas, electricity and other energy products, according to estimates from the International Monetary Fund and others. Those subsidies have prompted double-digit growth in consumption in this country of 70 million people.

[...]

It has managed to hold its own, but just barely. Moreover, Iran’s refining capacity lags far behind its domestic needs, so the country is forced to import 40 percent of its gasoline...

Mark C.

The deal

More details about the tentative agreement with North Korea:

Under the agreement, which was reached by six countries in Beijing after nearly a week of talks, Pyongyang will freeze the reactor at the heart of its nuclear programme and allow international inspections of the site.

[...]

Under the agreement, North Korea must take the steps within 60 days, and in return it will receive 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil or economic aid of equal value.

It will receive another 950,000 tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent when it takes further steps to disable its nuclear capabilities, including providing a complete inventory of its plutonium -- the fuel used in Pyongyang's first nuclear test blast in October.

The 1 million tonnes of fuel would be worth around $300 million at current prices for heavy fuel oil, which is used in power stations, shipping and elsewhere.

The steps for now do not involve the provision of 2,000 megawatts of electricity that South Korea pledged in a September 2005 deal reached by the six countries. That is reserved for after the completion of denuclearisation of North Korea.

The electricity, at an estimated cost of $8.55 billion over 10 years, would be about equal to North Korea's current output.

John Bolton is skeptical:

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Communist state should not be rewarded with "massive shipments of heavy fuel oil" for only partially dismantling its nuclear programme.

"It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world," he told CNN.

Damian P.

Every vote counts

The provincial Liberals win a by-election by an agonizingly close margin - and under astonishing circumstances:

A Liberal candidate plucked a narrow victory Monday night in a Newfoundland and Labrador byelection, with a counting error briefly giving the win to the governing Progressive Conservatives.

Dwight Ball won by an 18-vote margin, Elections Newfoundland and Labrador reported Monday night. Earlier in the evening, the electoral office's website had PC candidate Darryl Kelly winning by 12 votes.

"There's no question — it was a roller-coaster," Ball said late Monday night.

One of the 34 stations neglected to count the 30 votes that had been cast for Ball when numbers were reported to the electoral office's website, chief electoral officer Chuck Furey said Monday night.

[...]

The reversal of fortune shocked both Tory and Liberal supporters. A would-be victory party at PC headquarters was extinguished, with some volunteers leaving in anger.

At Liberal headquarters, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, with once-downbeat Grits celebrating their first byelection win since Premier Danny Williams took office in 2003.

The Tories are still way ahead in opinion polls, but the Humber Valley vote was affected by a number of local issues - most notably the closing and planned reconstruction of the Nicholsville Bridge - and the resignation of the district's Tory MHA over irregularities with her constituency allowance. Still, with the Liberals in total disarray, I doubt many people expected this.

Damian P.

A deal with the DPRK?

If this pans out - and, more importantly, if North Korea can be made to stick to its side of the bargain - it's a tremendous development:

Negotiators on the North Korean nuclear crisis reached an apparent breakthrough early Tuesday that awaits only formal approval from six world capitals.

Envoys haggled until early morning Tuesday to end the stalemate over how much energy assistance and aid to provide North Korea in exchange for firm steps toward nuclear disarmament.

U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill said all envoys agreed on the wording of a final revised text produced by the Chinese hosts of the talks.

"We don't have final approval yet, and that's very important," Hill cautioned.

But he added that North Korea envoy Kim Kye-gwan was consulted repeatedly on the revisions and appeared to approve them. All the envoys including Kim were awaiting approval from their respective capitals overnight.

If North Korea can be contained, the world - especially Asia - can breathe a little easier. When its mad, totalitarian regime finally collapses, we can breathe much easier.

Damian P.

Afghanistan: Senate Committee fingers NATO allies...

...and suggests a possible Canadian pull-out. Not without some justification--but is our allies' slackness sufficient justification for our giving up? Surely if the job still needs to be done we should keep doing our part--if our military is capable and if there seems a reasonable chance of success. Not just pick up our marbles and go home, in what would amount to a snit...

Canada should consider pulling its troops out of Afghanistan if some of its NATO allies continue to refuse to allow their troops to fight on the front lines near Kandahar, says a Senate committee.

“NATO must deploy more resources in Afghanistan and use those resources in a better way than we have done to this point. If this proves impossible, Canada should be prepared to consider withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan as soon as our current commitment ends [Feb. 2009],” concludes a report by the Senate committee on national defence and security...

NATO has tried unsuccessfully to find thousands more troops to fight the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan, where 36 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat were killed in the last year.

The report fingers Germany and France as two countries that refuse to allow their troops to deploy to the south from other, less volatile parts of the country.

The Senate panel’s top recommendation is for Canada to continue pressuring its NATO allies to provide additional troops to help train Afghan National Army troops. Canada should also send 250 additional army trainers, as well as 50 additional RCMP officers to train Afghan police, the report says...

The Toronto Star has its own take: "Senate report blasts mission". A CTV story highlights Pakistan, development and corruption. From the CBC story:

"Afghanistan is only remotely connected to the modern world," it [the report] warns. "Anyone expecting to see the emergence in Afghanistan within the next several decades of a recognizable modern democracy capable of delivering justice and amenities to its people is dreaming in Technicolor."

Only too true, I think (a Reuters story uses the same quote).

The full report is here, and the Executive Summary here (via Army.ca).

Damian P.

Update: Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star concludes the war is lost and Canada should bug right out.

Image set back 100 years

The Top Gear guys drove $1,000.00 beaters from Miami to New Orleans. In Alabama, they had a challenge to paint inflammatory slogans on their cars to see who would get shot at. Things did not go well.

(If they ever get around to making that U.S. version of Top Gear, let's see the hosts drive through certain parts of Glasgow with "Celtic are shite" painted on their Austin Allegros.)

Damian P.

How not to report on Loose Change

London's Evening Standard (and its sister rag, The Daily Mail) runs a puff piece on the 9/11 "documentary" Loose Change, repeating the film's outrageous charges - sorry, "questions" - without a hint of skepticism:

In other words, on a fateful September morning in 2001, did America fabricate an outrage against civilians to fool the world and provide a pretext for war on Al Qaeda and Iraq?

This, and other deeply disturbing questions, are now being furiously debated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Why were no military aircraft scrambled in time to head off the attacks? Was the collapse of the Twin Towers caused by a careful use of explosives? How could a rookie pilot - as one of the terrorists was - fly a Boeing 757 aircraft so precisely into the Pentagon? And who made millions of dollars by accurately betting that shares in United and American Airlines, owners of the four doomed aircraft, were going to fall on 9/11 as they duly did?

These questions, and pretty much everything else in Loose Change, have been answered and debunked over and over again, most notably by Popular Mechanics and websites like 911myths.com and Screw Loose Change. But the Evening Standard sees no reason to acknowledge this, nor to point out how the original Loose Change opens with "proof" that missiles were attached to the planes that struck the World Trade Center - only to have this inflammatory (and stupid) allegation completely dropped, without explanation, in the second edition. The blackshirts try to make hay out of the fact that early reports on 9/11 were later retracted, but it's okay when they do it. They're just asking questions.

Damian P.

Viva voce

Latin as a living language (from Between the Woods and the Water, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, p.80):

...I was fascinated by a remote shelf full of volumes of early nineteenth-century debates in the Hungarian Diet [Parliament]; not by the contents--humdrum stuff about land-tenure, irrigation, the extension or limitation of the franchise and so on--but because they were all in Latin, and I was amazed to learn that in Parliament until 1839, and even in the country courts, no other language was either spoken or written.

And it was only in 1837 that the East India Company ended the use of Persian in the courts.

Both languages are Indo-European.

Mark C.

Letter of the week

Setting the record straight:

To Senator Biden, ‘Articulate’ Is a Compliment

In “The Racial Politics of Speaking Well” (Week in Review, Feb. 4), about Senator Joe Biden’s use of the word “articulate” to describe Senator Barack Obama, Lynette Clemetson suggests the following rule: “Do not use it as the primary attribute of note for a black person if you would not use it for a similarly talented, skilled or eloquent white person.”

During the recent hearings on Iraq that Senator Biden presided over as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he referred to the following people as “articulate”:

Leslie H. Gelb
Edward N. Luttwak
Lawrence J. Korb
Robert Malley
Senator Lisa Murkowski
Peter W. Galbraith
Frederick W. Kagan
Ted Galen Carpenter
Gen. Jack Keane
Senator Edward M. Kennedy

While Senator Biden has expressed his regret that anyone was offended by his words, we wanted to make it clear that his reference to Senator Obama was sincerely intended as a compliment.

Alan L. Hoffman
Washington, Feb. 9, 2007
The writer is the chief of staff for Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Any quibbles with the list?

Mark C.

The madding crowd of journalists and scientists

Too much learning is a dangerous thing, according to David Warren (in today's Ottawa Citizen as "Triumph of sensationalism"):

Once upon a time, there were two modes of journalism, called tabloid and broadsheet. The distinction was clear. The first (tabloid), aimed at the more ignorant and credulous section of the population, was shamelessly sensationalist, and indifferent to its own track record. The second (broadsheet), aimed at the more intelligent and sceptical -- businessmen, especially, with money on the line. It cultivated greyness and sobriety, and was fixated on reputation. Tabloids were for fun, broadsheets were for information.

In my own lifetime as a journalist I have watched this distinction evaporate, and the unrestricted triumph of the tabloid ideal.

[...]

So far as I can make out, there has been similar “progress” in the scientific world. The academic researcher, like the broadsheet beat reporter, was once a rather grey man who feared overstatement, but could give you a straight answer to a straight question, even if it was, “I don’t know.” The best were (in both cases), broadly grounded. That is, a researcher in some arcane area of, say, climatology, would have a good general science background, including the history required to contextualize his own work. He was therefore not naive.

The decay of standards is not subtle. The academic science world, persisting on tax money, has been intellectually flatlining. It becomes increasingly a closed camp of ideologues whose job security depends on their avoidance of apostasy. In a word, science is being swamped by an almost religious scientism. Whereas serious, open-minded research has retreated almost entirely into the corporate research labs, where a different ethos prevails.

This is the environmental scare that should worry us. That we are becoming, increasingly, the prey of sensationalism in the service of scientism.

C.P. Snow's Two Cultures converging? (I've often imagined Pope's lines belted out as hard rock, by John Lennon perhaps--think "Money".)

Mark C.

"The right's strain of appeasement"

Mark Steyn agrees with some of the arguments in Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy At Home, but ultimately comes away unimpressed.

Damian P.

"Victory Is Not an Option"

A very thorough and pessimistic article about Iraq by Lieut.-Gen. (ret'd) Willian Odum (a former head of the US National Security Agency). Well worth a full read.

While Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, flails away--"A road map out of Iraq"--trying to find a decent exit. I don't think he succeeds; "road maps" in the Middle East don't seem to lead anywhere in reality.

Niall Ferguson, of www.niallferguson.org, for his part sees grave folly in any attack on Iran.

And Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large of The Washington Times, despairs of the West in general.

Not a happy Sunday's reading.

Mark C.

The most haunting photo you'll see today

...can be viewed here. (via Hit & Run)

The groom is U.S. Marine Sergeant Ty Ziegel. This is his story.

Damian P.

Pay up, Richard

Tim Blair accepts Richard Branson's challenge to reduce greenhouse has emissions.

Damian P.

Iran's Israel obsession

This week's cover story in The Weekly Standard, about the Iranian government's obsession with Holocaust denial and the destruction of Israel - a hatred that predates Ahmadinejad's election as President - makes for sobering reading.

Author Matthias Küntzel devotes much of his attention to explaining how Middle Eastern anti-Semites can simultaneously believe that the Holocaust was a hoax, that the Jews had it coming, that Israelis are Nazis and that Hitler was a great man:

...Why, if Iran wishes Israel ill, does it deny the Holocaust rather than applaud it? Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial has been especially well received in the Arab world, where it has won praise from Hezbollah, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas. Yet in the Arab world, Hitler is admired not for building highways or conquering Paris, but for murdering Jews. How can Holocaust denial be most prevalent in a region where admiration for Hitler remains widespread? To unlock this paradox it is necessary to examine the anti-Semitic mind.

Holocaust denial is anti-Semitism at its most extreme. Whoever declares Auschwitz a myth implicitly portrays the Jews as the enemy of humanity: The assumption is that the all-powerful Jews, for filthy lucre, have been duping the rest of humanity for the past 60 years. Whoever talks of the "so-called Holocaust" implies that over 90 percent of the world's media and university professorships are controlled by Jews and are thereby cut off from the "real" truth. No one who accuses Jews of such perfidy can sincerely regret Hitler's Final Solution. For this reason alone, every denial of the Holocaust contains an appeal to repeat it.

[...]

Obviously, from a logical point of view, enthusiasm for the Holocaust is incompatible with its denial. Logic, however, is beside the point. Anti-Semitism is built upon an emotional infrastructure that substitutes for reason an ephemeral combination of mutually exclusive attributions, all arising from hatred of everything Jewish. As a result, many contradictory anti-Jewish interpretations of the Holocaust can be deployed simultaneously: (1) the extermination of millions was a good thing; (2) the extermination of millions was a Zionist fabrication; (3) the Holocaust resulted from a Jewish conspiracy against Germany that Hitler thwarted and punished; (4) the Holocaust was a joint enterprise of the Zionists and Nazis; (5) the Zionists' "Holocaust industry" exaggerates the murder of the Jews for self-interested reasons; (6) Israeli actions against the Palestinians are the "true" Holocaust--and so on.

We are dealing here with a parallel universe in which the reality principle is ignored, and blatantly contradictory fantasies about Jews all have their place so long as they serve to reinforce anti-Semitic paranoia and hatred: a universe in which the laws of reason have been abolished and all mental energy is harnessed to the cause of anti-Semitism.

Amid the confusion, this universe is characterized by two constants: the refusal to come to terms with the facts of the Holocaust as it actually took place; and a willingness to find in the Holocaust a source of encouragement and inspiration, a precedent proving that it is possible to murder Jews by the million. This is why the precise content of Ahmadinejad's Holocaust tirades is not the issue. He is obsessed with the subject because he is fascinated by the possibility of a second Holocaust.

So what can we do about Iran? Niall Ferguson says a military invasion would be counterproductive, and I think he's right. Some recent reports suggest that the mullahs are increasingly divided about Iran's nuclear program, in no small part because of economic pressure on the country - if true, a sign that sanctions could work.

Damian P.

Better cocktail party chatter...

...and perhaps preparation for CBC radio interviews. Comment parlerdes livres que l’on n’a pas lus? (Translation: how to Talk About Books that You Haven’t Read?):

Well, zut alors! A distinguished French literary professor has become a surprise bestselling author by writing a book explaining how to wax intellectual about tomes that you have never actually read.

Pierre Baynard, 52, specialises in the link between literature and psychoanalysis, and says it is perfectly possible to bluff your way through a book that you have never read — especially if that conversation happens to be taking place with someone else who also hasn’t read it. All of which just goes to confirm what I’ve always thought about French academics, which is that mostly they are oversubsidised frauds...

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Mark C.

Damian adds: I wish I'd known about this when we had to read Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders in high school...

Kyoto, the Liberals and Maurice Strong...and Alberta

Diane Francis suggests why the party involved Canada in "economic suicide":

The Liberals' commitment to Kyoto is economic suicide, and I believe that the whole exercise was cynical and a favour to Liberal insider Maurice Strong.

Now the Liberals are leading a charge to force the Tories to live up to commitments that the Liberals never did in four years. That's because they realized the commitments were not realistic.

But Kyoto wasn't renegotiated because Mr. Strong is a buddy of former Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. When he was involved in United Nations operations, he organized the UN's Earth Summit to deal with pollution. He asked for, and got, Canada's unconditional support for Kyoto.

But Canada agreed to commitments of dramatically reducing emissions that no one else did...

[...]

The failure to impose rules on every country in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Russia is why Kyoto is not worth the trees that were cut down to provide the paper it was written on nor for the sea of newspaper articles still devoted to it...

...I believe that Canada can clean up its act, and here are some ways this can be accomplished dramatically without ruining the economy [these proposals will offend every shade of the political spectrum - MC]...

Rex Murphy, for his part, has a warning:

A repetition of the offensive national energy program -- for so Albertans will, and ferociously, see it -- would make the rattling of Quebec separatism, at its most intense, sound like the sweet cooing of a chorus of poppy-dazed doves.

If anyone thinks putting a halt to Alberta's economic future would pay a dividend in cooling the planet, they might also want to contemplate that it would simultaneously ignite a political inferno within, what we are so often pleased to regard as, the world's most successful Confederation.

Mark C.

There are crimes, and then there are crimes

From a post by "Roller" at Daily Kos:

The Holocaust was a monstrous crime against the Jews but isn’t it an even bigger crime for Israeli warmongers to claim that it was somehow the suffering was not inclusive to every single person who suffered and was destroyed by Hitler and his evil regime? (emphasis added)

My answer would be "no." (via LGF)

Damian P.

A victory for freedom of expression

Good news from France:

A state attorney Thursday called for the dismissal of a court case brought by French Muslims against a satirical weekly that printed caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed, saying the cartoons denounce terrorists' use of the Muslim faith but do not damage Islam.

The trial, which opened Wednesday, has drawn nationwide attention in a country with Europe's largest Muslim community and a strong commitment to freedom of expression and secularism.

Journalists and politicians have testified and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sent a letter of support for the weekly, Charlie-Hebdo.

Damian P.

When Holocaust deniers attack

This is just scary:

In a bizarre attack, a well-known author and Holocaust scholar was dragged out of a San Francisco hotel elevator by an apparent Holocaust denier who reportedly had been trailing him for weeks.

Police escorted Elie Wiesel to San Francisco International Airport on Feb. 1 after a man accosted Wiesel in the elevator at the Argent Hotel, at 50 Third St., after Wiesel participated in a panel discussion at a peace conference and before Wiesel was scheduled to catch a flight back to New York.

[...]

In a posting Tuesday on the anti-Zionist Web site ZioPedia, a writer using the name Eric Hunt takes credit for the attack: “After ensuring no women would be traumatized by what I had to do (I had been trailing Wiesel for weeks), I stopped the elevator at the sixth floor. I pulled Wiesel out of the elevator. I said I wanted to interview him.”

Wiesel grabbed at his chest and yelled for help, according to the posting. “I told him, ‘Why don’t you want people to know the truth?’ His expression changed, and he began screaming again. …” the posting reads.Police reported that the suspect tried to force Wiesel into one of the rooms, but ran away when Wiesel started yelling.

The online posting states that the writer intended to “bring Wiesel to my hotel room where he would truthfully answer my questions regarding the fact that his non-fiction Holocaust memoir, Night, is almost entirely fictitious.” Later in the posting, the Holocaust is portrayed as a “myth.”

Damian P.

3 for 3

The provincial Tories won all three by-elections held on Thursday, although turnout for all was noticeably low. Jason Hickman looks into the reasons why.

This kind of nonsense is the sort of thing that turns Newfoundlanders off provincial politics altogether:

Transportation Minister John Hickey said Friday the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary has cleared him in an investigation over double billing of his constituency allowance.

Hickey — who briefly left his cabinet post in January over the issue — said he may sue former premier Roger Grimes for defamation, over comments Grimes made about whether Hickey's double billings were deliberate.

[...]

Williams's decision to reinstate Hickey appalled Grimes, a former Liberal premier who was defeated by Williams in the 2003 election.

Grimes, who said Williams prejudged a police investigation, also said he believed Hickey could not have double-billed repeatedly by accident.

Hickey, who had repaid the money in January, said Grimes has until Monday morning to apologize for his remarks.

"I'm just sending a message loud and clear here this morning. He has 72 hours to make a clear, unambiguous, unqualified apology for the disparaging comments, defamatory comments he has made on the public airwaves," Hickey said.

Grimes told CBC News on Friday he is standing by his comments. He said Hickey may as well contact his lawyer because he will not apologize.

"Well, they better sue me, because freedom of speech is alive and well in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Canada," Grimes said.

"I said nothing wrong. I said nothing that I didn't think to be right and proper," he said.

"The court of public opinion is in on people like Mr. Hickey. They were stupid and dumb, and they double-billed, and they got caught."

Grimes said a possible court case would only be a waste of taxpayers' money, although he said it will not cost him anything, because he will defend himself.

I'm not sure exactly what Grimes said about Hickey, so I can't say whether Hickey has a case. In a way, that's the point: Newfoundlanders have mostly forgotten Grimes's mercifully brief tenure as Premier and opposition leader, and legal action usually ends up drawing more attention to the allegedly defamatory comments.

As for Grimes, if he plans to defend himself (something I would pay good money to watch) he may want to visit the law library and read a few textbooks on defamation and slander.

Damian P.

Go Directly to Jail

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a lower court decision requiring the incarceration of a man who refused to pay child support:

In a 9-0 decision, the court said that an Ontario lower court judge had acted within the law when he imposed a 45-day jail sentence on a wealthy plastic surgeon, Dr. Kenneth Dickie, who fled to the Bahamas to avoid paying support payments.

Family law experts said yesterday that the ruling gives judges a powerful tool to use against ex-spouses who try to stall or wriggle out of paying support.

Dr. Dickie's three children and his ex-spouse, Leaka Dickie, may ultimately gain little from the ruling, since Dr. Dickie lives beyond the reach of Canadian law. However, experts said that numerous other aggrieved spouses will reap the benefits of her battle.

"This powerful decision is a clear signal to support defaulters -- pay your bills now," said lawyer Ryan Teschner , whose firm of Heenan Blaikie won the case for Ms. Dickie. "This sends a clear signal to those who intentionally break family law orders that you may be thrown in jail."

"You cannot ask for court rulings in your favour and at the same time flout court rulings against you," Heenan lawyer Trevor Guy said.

The full (and very short) decision is here. The court also ruled that a "deadbeat" spouse cannot appeal the child support order until he takes steps to live up to its terms:

Laskin J.A, in dissent [in the Court of Appeal decision] was of the view that the court had a discretion to refuse to entertain Dr. Dickie’s appeal and that, based on the record showing continuing disobedience with court orders, it should have exercised that discretion. Hence, he would have adjourned Dr. Dickie’s appeal until Dr. Dickie had taken steps to comply with the court orders below. ...In our view, the Court of Appeal had the authority to refuse to entertain Dr. Dickie’s appeal and, had it exercised its discretion as proposed by Laskin J.A. and for the reasons he gave, we would have found no basis to interfere with the result.

In family law, they say no order is ever final, and a person owing arrears of child support can apply to reduce or eliminate the amount owed - if he can show a change of circumstances, such as a reduction in income. (Here in Newfoundland, courts regularly add an annual recalculation clause to get around this problem.)

I'll be curious to see if anyone tries to use the Dickie decision as authority for possibly jailing someone who refuses the other parent access to the children. (A brief QUICKLAW search turned up one case, the 1999 McMillan decision in Ontario, in which that was done. However, "the best interest of the child" always governs, and courts are not rarely to rule that putting the primary caregiver behind bars lives up to that principle.)

Damian P.

US Senators sounding like Canadian MPs

Charles Krauthammer writes (about debate over the "surge" in Iraq):

A serious legislative body would not be arguing over degrees of disapproval...

Words. The Democrats are all in favor of "redeployment" and pretend that this is an alternative plan. But the word redeployment is meaningless. It simply means changing the position of our soldiers and, implicitly, changing their mission...

Compare with Dion and Ignatieff, who wish to "rebalance" the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. There's also M. Duceppe; at least Jack Layton just wants to cut and run.

Now, some honest words on "balancing" from the head of UNICEF, Canada (via Babbling Brooks).

Mark C.

Who's out to get the Canadian Forces?

Been wondering who's behind The Globe and Mail's screaming coverage of alleged prisoner abuse in Afghanistan? Likely Eddie Greenspon, the Editor-in-Chief. Maybe he's just trying to make up for his paper's neglect of our mission in Afghanistan--until there were bodies.

This is what the lead Globe reporter on the story, Paul Koring, wrote to Damian Brooks of The Torch in an online exchange February 9:

...I think your questions about story placement are perfectly valid. But I can't answer them. Senior editors make those calls. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't...

Well, Steady Eddie is the most senior editor of them all, so...

He has been working pretty desperately for some time to "reimagine" the paper so it can compete in the digital world. But to imagine that this would end up with something close to sheer sensationalism...as with his decision to hype Kyoto (the January 27 edition).

Mark C.

Because the mainstream media has treated it with such dignity and respect

Reuters huffs about the online reaction to Anna Nicole Smith's death:

From different corners of the Internet, commentators who once considered Smith worthy only of off-color jokes purported to seek out the deeper cultural meanings of her death. Most came up brutally short.

Instead many observers reveled in jokes about the size of the former Playboy model's breasts or the extent of her drug problems -- topics thought to be fair game in the world of celebrity gossip.

Blog search site Technorati.com showed mentions of Anna Nicole Smith spiked fivefold on Thursday. Still, at little over 44,000 mentions, Smith measures only one-tenth the blog star power of pop music sensation Britney Spears.

The occasion gave free rein to the pseudonymous savagery which passes for informed commentary on the Web.

Damian P.

Alleged prisoner abuse and the good professor

For some analysis I recommend:

More spinning than a figure skating competition (Feb. 07)

Desperate fabrication (Feb. 08)

Damned if you do... (Feb. 08)

Mark C.

Iranian nukes

Timothy Garton Ash twists himself into intellectual knots trying to square the circle of how to stop Iran getting the bomb without using militry force. He concludes limply and frighteningly:

And Plan B? If all this fails, and we're not going to bomb Iran, then Plan B can only be containment and deterrence. The price to Iran of testing, let alone actually using, a nuclear device should be set very high. We should start now taking all measures we can to prevent an Iranian bomb being swiftly followed by a Saudi or Egyptian one. But I wouldn't count on this working either.

So here's the score: if we bomb Iran, the world will be a more dangerous place. If Iran gets the bomb, the world will be a more dangerous place. Conclusion: the world is likely to be a more dangerous place.

The Economist also runs all around this mulberry bush and ends up without any convincing policy to prevent the nukes. Looks like wishful thinking is the only kind left.

Mark C.

Internal battle at The Globe and Mail

The news staff at "Canada's National Newspaper" have been playing to the max the allegations of prisoner abuse by Canadian troops in Afghanistan. The paper's front page headline February 6 is here.

These were at the top of the fold, front page, February 7:

Hillier orders full inquiry into treatment of detainees

Defence Minister O'Connor vows findings will be made public: 'This is not Somalia'; Professor who found pattern of suspicious injuries doubts military can investigate itself; Military officials will scour Afghanistan looking for 3 men who had been held by soldiers

And the front pager, February 8:

Detainee whistle blower's 'agenda' attacked

Naval officer tried to intimidate him, law professor says

And inside the paper:

Public probe on detainees 'imperative,' panel told space

Investigation into allegations of abuse called vital to keeping confidence in Forces

One might conclude that the news staff is, to be generous, "torquing" the story. The editorial board seems to think so too. The same day they provided some balance that is fair:

Those allegations of military misconduct

...based on what we do know, there is no evidence that the military is in any way dealing with another Somalia-type scandal of the sort that did such severe damage to the image of the Canadian Forces more than a decade ago. It is also important to remember that Canada is in a full-scale war in Afghanistan against a vicious enemy whose soldiers hide by dressing like ordinary farmers and blending in with civilians. The Taliban do not play by the rules, which makes the soldiers who have to confront suspected members necessarily wary and tense...

These internal battles would be amusing if the spin of the news reporting were not so pernicious. For a dissection of the reporting, see this post by Damian Brooks at The Torch. Bruce Rolston at Flit picks up on Damian's post and does his own analysis.

Mark C.

Update: More from Damian Brooks, including an exchange with Globe reporter Paul Koring. Well worth reading to see Mr Koring's underlying attitude--as Damian puts it:

...I'm surprised Koring didn't simply say "Good questions, Mr. Brooks. In reply, I'd point out GUANTANAMO, and furthermore ABU GHRAIB SOMALIA AIRBORNE DOGS GENITALS CIGARETTE BURNS HUMILIATION. I hope that answers your questions."

Let's see how long this lasts

The Saudis have brokered a power-sharing agreement between Fatah and Hamas:

As part of the reported deal, the two sides would divvy up cabinet posts — nine for Hamas, six for Fatah, and four independents — in a government that would be headed by the current prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. Significantly, Hamas would also agree to “respect” previous international agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Those agreements include, ostensibly the 1993 Oslo accords, which Hamas has always rejected.

[...]

...there was a suggestion last night that the EU, which has become openly more uncomfortable with the boycott as Palestinian suffering has mounted, would move ahead of the United States and Canada to lend its support to the unity government. “I believe this agreement could be accepted by the European Union. We have had talks with European parties who say such an agreement could be accepted,” Nasser Shaer, the Deputy Prime Minister in the outgoing government, told Reuters.

Damian P.

Update: Victor Davis Hanson has a few questions.

Who are we?

The Globe's Margaret Wente thinks Canada's elites don't care.

You have to feel a little sorry for the good folk of Hérouxville, Que. Ever since they hit the headlines with their bold statement that stoning women will not be tolerated in their town, they've been turned into a national joke. They are mocked in editorial cartoons and tut-tutted by the pundits, who delight in pointing out that Hérouxville's fear of immigrants is entirely uninformed by any actual contact with them. They have been deplored by politicians and condescendingly profiled in all the major media. They have been denounced by Muslim groups, who are threatening to take them to the Human Rights Commission.

[...]

The Declaration of Hérouxville has struck a nerve, and it's one the elites would be foolish to ignore. The vast majority of Canadians believe that in spite of our official policy of multiculturalism, it's up to newcomers to fit in. In one typical poll taken in 2005, 69 per cent said they wanted immigrants to integrate into Canada, while only 20 per cent said they should maintain their own identity and culture.

Yet people are increasingly uneasy that newcomers aren't fitting in. Toronto is ringed by ethnic enclaves where people can live and work entirely in their native languages [major story at link]. Many second-generation kids feel estranged from the broader culture.

Come to think of it, what is the broader culture? In Toronto, where half the kids in high school now come from outside Canada, the absorptive capacity of the system is being severely tested. No politician dares to ask aloud if we're bringing in more people than the system can bear. But ordinary people are asking, and with good reason.

Mark C.

The last word on the John Edwards/Pandagon thing

Courtesy of Iowahawk. (Warning: foul language, and lots of it.)

Damian P.

A Jew promotes the Blood Libel

Ariel Toaff, a professor at Bar Illan University in Tel Aviv, says medieval Jews must have used the blood of Christian children in religious rituals, since they confessed and all. I suppose he believes witches really existed, too. (Via Hot Air)

In the book, Prof Toaff describes the multilation and crucification of a two-year-old boy to recreate Christ's execution at Pesach, the Jewish Easter. The festival marks the fleeing of the Jews from Egypt and Prof Toaff says Christian blood was used for "magic and therapeutic practices."

In some cases the blood was mixed with dough to make the azzimo, unleavened bread, eaten at Pesach.

He says the acts took place in northern Italy, around the city of Trento in German-speaking areas that border modern-day Austria.

Prof Toaff bases his book on confessions he says came from Jews captured and put on trial for the practice, which took place from 1100 and 1500. [emphasis added]

Toaff's book is called Easter of Blood - pretty good title for a horror movie, no? - but I submit that a more appropriate title would have been, See, Even I Don't Like The Jews, So Please Don't Kill Me.

Damian P.

"Mule Train"

My favourite song, until I came across Bill Haley on the juke box.

Mark C.

Update: Mark Steyn really likes Frankie Laine; there must be a deep significance here.

The intellectual dishonesty surrounding climate change

Robert Samuelson also has a suggestion that may make sense:

...The dirty secret about global warming is this: We have no solution. About 80 percent of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), the main sources of man-made greenhouse gases. Energy use sustains economic growth, which -- in all modern societies -- buttresses political and social stability. Until we can replace fossil fuels or find practical ways to capture their emissions, governments will not sanction the deep energy cuts that would truly affect global warming.

[...]

Anyone who honestly examines global energy trends must reach these harsh conclusions. In 2004, world emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2, the main greenhouse gas) totaled 26 billion metric tons. Under plausible economic and population assumptions, CO2emissions will grow to 40 billion tons by 2030, projects the International Energy Agency. About three-quarters of the increase is forecast to come from developing countries, two-fifths from China alone. The IEA expects China to pass the United States as the largest source of carbon dioxide by 2009.

Poor countries won't sacrifice economic growth -- lowering poverty, fostering political stability -- to placate the rich world's global warming fears. Why should they? On a per-person basis, their carbon dioxide emissions are only about one-fifth the level of rich countries. In Africa, less than 40 percent of the population even has electricity.

Nor will existing technologies, aggressively deployed, rescue us...

What we really need is a more urgent program of research and development, focusing on nuclear power, electric batteries, alternative fuels and the capture of carbon dioxide. Naturally, there's no guarantee that socially acceptable and cost-competitive technologies will result. But without them, global warming is more or less on automatic pilot. Only new technologies would enable countries -- rich and poor -- to reconcile the immediate imperative of economic growth with the potential hazards of climate change...

Steve Janke also sees intellectual dishonesty chez les Libéraux.

Mark C.

The Wahabbi steamroller

I'm pretty sure Johann Hari is no fan of Mark Steyn, but his latest column picks up on a theme Steyn raises in America Alone: that the biggest globalization success story of all has been Saudi-funded Wahhabi Islam.

In his eighteenth-century oasis, Mohammed abd-al Wahhab had a dream. He dreamed of an Islam stripped down to a cold list of mechanical rules, strictly enforced, severely upheld. He ordered whippings and beheadings of Muslims to "purify" the faith. He smashed up and burned down the worship-places of the softer, more mystical Muslims all around him. And - his smartest move - he cut a deal. He met with the chief of the desert bandits who lived in the nearby long stretch of sand called Najd - a man named Mohammed Saud - and offered him his allegiance, in return for enforcing his severe new brand of Islam. The Saud ruling family and the Wahhabi doctrine have been locked in a stiff waltz ever since.

More than two centuries later, oil was discovered under the territory of this bandit-king, and billions of dollars began to soak into the Kingdom. True to their ancestor's deal, the House of Saud used this black gold to promote the ideas of Wahhab - no longer merely on their own sands, but across the world. By paying for thousands of schools, mosques and trained imams, they dispersed the ideas of one reactionary little preacher to every continent. It has been a corporate strategy that leaves Ronald McDonald looking like a puffing, obese slouch. Slowly, steadily, they are succeeding in eroding other, gentler forms of Islam. They are globalising Wahhabism - and your petrol purchases are paying for it.

[...]

Our governments are not stopping this Wahabbi-Saudi hate machine for a simple reason: as the New York Times writer Thomas Friedman puts it, junkies don't talk back to their dealers. We are addicted to the Saudi oil supply - it lubricates our cars, our planes, our food supply routes. In the face of this hunger, talk of national security or democratic ideals soon sinks into an oily gloop. Until we have built up clean, green alternatives to Middle Eastern oil (and isn't global warming reason enough?), you and I will keep on paying at the petrol pump for this propaganda against us.

Damian P.

There's no Five Hundred in your future

Ford , in a rather desperate but sensible move, is renaming it the Taurus, with a minor restyle. Pics here.

This is why Ford is desperate and GM still in serious trouble. And this is why Toyota is smiling. Will these talks lead to anything?

Toyota’s recent purchases have even fed speculation that [chief executive] Mr. Watanabe may next set his sights on bigger game: the struggling No. 2 American automaker, Ford Motor, with which Toyota has held talks about possible cooperation...

Mark C.

Update: DaimlerChrysler slashing too: 2,000 jobs in Canada alone (why don't most of our media use the company's real name?).

Imagine the international and media uproar...

...if Israelis were accused of this:

Staged killings by security forces set off protests in Indian Kashmir

The story, as security forces told it, was simple: they'd killed a Pakistani militant during a gunbattle in a small Himalayan town late last year. The dead man was a member of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based group feared across India.

But Abdur Rahman Padder was actually a 35-year-old Indian carpenter and father of five. He died, authorities now say, as part of a murky plot by rogue policemen who were killing innocent villagers to claim rewards and government honors.

The revelation of his death, and the exhumation of his body and the bodies of at least four other civilians they believe died in similar circumstances, has deeply shaken Kashmir. It has set off days of protests and strikes, and deepened the cynicism of an already-cynical population who have complained for years that innocent people were being killed by security forces...

India has an estimated 700,000 soldiers in Kashmir, fighting nearly a dozen rebel groups since 1989. The rebels are also frequently accused of rights violations — against both Indian forces and civilians they suspect of working with Indian authorities. In many areas, the region has the feel of an occupied country, with soldiers in full combat gear patrolling streets and frisking civilians.

More than 68,000 people [emphasis added], mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict...

Why aren't Muslim countries (and large segments of our media) in a state of constant outrage over Indian actions in Kashmir? They've killed many more Muslims than the Israelis have Palestinians.

Mark C.

Damian adds: actually, Kashmir is a major cause celebre for Islamists, who generally despise Hindus as much as they despise Jews (even more, in some cases, since Hinduism is arguably a polytheistic part). But it is interesting to note how little attention it gets, compared with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel's status as a "colonial," first-world state probably has a lot to do with this.

Toons on Trial

A French satirical newspaper, Charlie-Hebdo, is on trial for publishing the Danish cartoons:

Opening arguments began Wednesday in a defamation trial against a French satirical weekly that reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed last year, stoking outrage and violence across the Muslim world.

Charlie-Hebdo magazine and the publication's director, Philippe Val, are charged with "publicly slandering a group of people because of their religion."

If convicted, the charge carries a possible six-month prison sentence and a fine of up to $28,530.

The Paris Mosque and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France brought the charges.

The caricatures, one of which showed Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban, were published first in a Danish paper in September 2005, and sparked angry protests across the Muslim world and in Europe. Many European papers later reprinted them in the name of media freedom.

France's Charlie-Hebdo ran the drawings last February. The magazine featured a cover page showing Mohammed with his head in his hands, crying and saying: "It's hard to be loved by idiots."

The verdict will tell us whether France still has anything resembling a spine. Cheers to conservative Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy for defending Charlie-Hebdo's right to publish the cartoons, and the leftist newspaper Liberation for running the offending drawings itself in solidarity. Jeers to the BBC for its continued refusal to show what the fuss is about.

Damian P.

Taken-out-of-context watch

The head of a Saudi-funded private school is confronted about hatemongering textbooks on the BBC. (The stock response makes its appearance with about 3:04 left in the video.)

Damian P.

Update: more here.

The wolverine and the grizzly

In his speech at the Canadian Club, Ottawa, Prime Minister Harper says he prefers that pair when comparing Canada and the US to the mouse sleeping next to an elephant. Good on him.

Mark C.

Afghanistan: The Globe and Mail's agenda at work

The main front page headline today:

Military investigates claim Canadians abused detainees:

Civilian agency also wants answers after allegations at least one Afghan was beaten

And inside the paper:

Ottawa silent on fate of captured terror suspects:

No accounting for scores of detainees that have been handed to Americans, Afghans

For a corrective, read this column in the Calgary Herald:

Soldiers' triumphs lost in the spin

Mark C.

Update: The good professor who raised the issue seems to see no need for any actual investigation:

An Ottawa professor is calling for the resignations of Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and the Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier for what he says is their failure to address possible abuse of detainees by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa law professor, said O'Connor and Hillier should resign over Canada's "routine practice of handing over prisoners to known torturers."..

Our failing immigration policy

Strange bedfellows:

1) Licia Corbella in the Calgary Sun:

That Canada's federal immigration system is broken is really not debatable.

The current point system put into place by the federal government that places so much emphasis on high levels of education seems, on the surface, to make sense, but in reality is nonsensical.

[...]

Canada -- and Alberta in particular -- needs workers, and lots of them. But what Canada and Alberta do not need is more foreign-trained doctors or PhDs whose credentials we do not recognize and likely never will.

What Alberta needs in droves are skilled labourers, not dubiously trained foreign professionals.

Bricklayers, carpenters, pipe-fitters, welders, butchers and bakers have the kinds of skills that could be tested easily and therefore could be put to work in their chosen fields almost immediately upon arriving in this country...

2) Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail:

Last week, Statistics Canada provided yet another report -- the sixth in the past four years by different institutions -- showing what's going wrong. Why things are going wrong is a bit of a puzzle. In 1993, the immigration criteria were changed to give more importance to the educational qualification of immigrants. The results were dramatic. According to Statscan, among immigrants 15 years and older, the share of those with university degrees jumped to 45 per cent in 2004 from 17 per cent in 1992. Those in the skilled class [I don't think this means pipefitters - MC] rose to 51 per cent from 29 per cent.

The reasoning for the change was simple: more skilled people would do better for themselves and the country. Alas, low-income rates for immigrants during their first year in Canada were 3.2 times higher in 2004 than for Canadian-born people -- higher than at any time during the 1990s.

[...]

So we have the law of unintended consequences. Although stabs have been made at figuring out what happened, governments are still groping for definitive answers. Yet, governments keep driving up the number of immigrants: 262,000 in 2005, 235,000 in 2004, 221,000 in 2003 -- with all political parties committed to admitting more

Mr Simpson, in rather coded fashion, then daringly suggests a possible reason for new immigrants' problems:

Could it be that the source countries of immigrants are making integration and economic success harder? A few researchers have posed the question; no one has given a serious answer. Perhaps none can be given, since talented people come from everywhere...

Mark C.

Garth Goes Grit

Garth Turner is going to join the Liberals, according to CTV News. (By my count, that makes three former Tory leadership candidates - Brison, Stronach, and Turner - who've changed sides.)

Maverick MP Garth Turner, who was booted from Conservative party ranks last fall, is expected to join the Liberal caucus, CTV News has learned.

"I'm being told that Garth Turner, who was kicked out of the Conservative caucus, and has been sitting as an Independent, is expected to join the Liberal caucus this afternoon," CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reported on Newsnet.

"I understand negotiations are ongoing now and Liberal party insiders say that they expect that Mr. Turner and Liberal Leader Stephane Dion will make that announcement this afternoon."

Turner has called a news conference for 5 p.m. ET.

[...]

...[Last year] Turner argued on his weblog that MPs who defect to another party should have to run for re-election under their new party in a byelection.

"If you want to be a Liberal, be elected as a Liberal. All those things have honour but the honour is bestowed by the people, not by the individual."

A Liberal source told The Canadian Press that Turner is "absolutely not" going to resign his Halton seat and run for re-election in a byelection. (via SDA)

He's already acting like a Liberal!

Damian P.

Just tax it

Anne Appelbaum says a carbon tax is the simplest and most effective way to deal with greenhouse gas emissions:

The much-vaunted treaty creates a complicated and unenforceable system of international targets for carbon emissions reduction, based on measurements taken in 1990. Critics of the American president have condemned him for failing to sign it, conveniently forgetting that the Senate rejected it 95 to 0 in 1997, a margin that reflects broad bipartisan opposition. At the same time, few of the Asian and European signatories are actually on track to meet their goals; those that will meet the targets, such as Britain, can do so because their economies rely less on industry than they once did. Canada and Japan aren't even close to compliance; China and India, whose emissions rates are growing most rapidly, are exempt altogether as "developing" countries -- which, given their economic strength, is absurd.

None of which is to say that reduction of carbon emissions is impossible. But the limiting of fossil fuels cannot be carried out with an unenforceable international regime, using complicated regulations that the United Nations does not have the staff or the mandate to supervise, with the help of a treaty that effectively penalizes those who bother to abide by it. I no longer believe that a complicated carbon trading regime -- in which industries trade emissions "credits" -- would work within the United States either: So much is at stake for so many industries that the legislative process to create it would be easily distorted by their various lobbies.

Any lasting solutions will have to be extremely simple, and -- because of the cost implicit in reducing the use and emissions of fossil fuels -- will also have to benefit those countries that impose them in other ways. Fortunately, there is such a solution, one that is grippingly unoriginal, requires no special knowledge of economics and is easy for any country to implement. It's called a carbon tax, and it should be applied across the board to every industry that uses fossil fuels, every home or building with a heating system, every motorist, and every public transportation system. Immediately, it would produce a wealth of innovations to save fuel, as well as new incentives to conserve. More to the point, it would produce a big chunk of money that could be used for other things. Anyone for balancing the budget? Fixing Social Security for future generations? As a foreign policy side benefit, users of the tax would suddenly find themselves less dependent on Persian Gulf oil or Russian natural gas, too.

I'm not sure it's as perfect a suggestion as Appelbaum seems to think, but it's better than an unenforceable, fatally flawed treaty.

Damian P.

Turner turned off

The website of rabidly racist internet-radio host Hal Turner has been shut down by hackers. Turner, who has openly called for the murder of judges on his show and website, has gone to court to stop them. (People like Turner aren't big on irony.)

An anonymous cadre of pranksters has targeted Turner's weekly Internet radio program and Web sites, in escalating attacks over the past two months that have all but put him out of business.

Turner, a white supremacist who has advocated violence against minorities and government officials, is trying to fight back, with a federal lawsuit that accuses five Web sites and "John Does 1-1,000" of engaging in fraud, extortion and racketeering.

Acting as his own attorney, Turner recently asked a judge in Newark, N.J., to grant an injunction against the Web sites, which he says make the attacks possible. But the judge said he first needs to hear from the defendants — whoever they may be.

[...]

"He is a racist. He is viciously anti-immigrant. He's an anti-Semite and he openly urges violence of the worst sort," said Etzion Neuer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League's New Jersey office.

Although the ADL "cannot condone any of the actions against him," Neuer said, "there's a certain irony that Turner is appealing to the courts when he has previously called for the death of judges ... I don't think any right-thinking person sheds a tear when Turner ceases broadcasting, but we would hope this would happen by legal means."

Mark Potok, who monitors hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, finds it amusing that Turner is turning to the legal system for help.

"He has gone from advertising `portable (expletive) lynching machines' to actually calling for the assassination of half of Congress and any number of other people," said Potok.

"If you watch what he says, he's very aware of exactly what the limits of constitutionally protected speech are," Potok said. "(He) is walking that line about as close as humanly possible."

I don't normally condone cyber-attacks, but if there's anyone in America who deserves this kind of treatment, it's Hal Turner.

Damian P.

Iran's ambassador to Newmarket

The imam trying to build a new mosque in suburban Toronto openly supports Iranian-style Islamic revolution and theocracy, and his new neighbours don't like it one bit:

What started as a mundane zoning proposal for a Newmarket mosque has now made Zafar Bangash the target of a neighbourhood's wrath and once again ignited international debate about the separation of politics and religion.

Bangash's name may not be well known to many Canadians but his writings and his stridently anti-Israeli views, forceful support for an independent Kashmir and advocacy for Iranian-inspired Islamic theocracies has attracted international notice and the attention of Muslims and politicians at home.

For eight years Bangash has been the president of the Islamic Society of York Region, often leading prayers at the modest mosque in Richmond Hill that sits on 13 hectares of property at the edge of the Oak Ridges Moraine. Now he hopes to build another mosque in Newmarket.

Yesterday, that proposal led to a packed Newmarket city hall meeting filled with residents who said they didn't oppose the building of the mosque, but the man behind it. After the proposal passed, the debate continued with residents frustrated their voices weren't heard.

Much of the opposition comes from Bangash's writings in a publication known as Crescent International, which has a Markham office and advocates for an Iranian-inspired regime in Muslim countries.

"Muslims must strive to overthrow the oppressive systems in their societies through Islamic revolutions, and not by participating in fraudulent elections organized by the elites operating through various political parties that actually divide the people," he wrote in a July 2005 column in the newsmagazine.

Do I even have to tell you his response?

Bangash dismisses the concerns of the Newmarket mosque as Islamophobia and says people have taken his political comments out of context.

Damian P.

Vote early, vote often

I've added a link to the PJM Presidential Straw Poll in the sidebar.

Damian P.

English vs. Latin Americans

Perhaps there was not that much to prefer between them in the colonial period, according to this author.

Mark C.

Chinese pleasure-dome for Khartoum

Beijing has a rather different attitude than we do. But Kubla Khan might be proud:

Last week China's leader, Hu Jintao, provided Sudan [during an official visit] with an interest-free loan to build a presidential palace. With that gesture, Hu demonstrated his contempt for the Western understanding of the world -- and for Western policy toward his own country.

Sudan, you will recall, is the scene of the Darfur genocide...

China's diplomats are forever reassuring the world about their country's "peaceful rise," and Hu duly expressed support for an expanded peacekeeping force in Darfur. But everything else about his visit demonstrated the gap between Chinese and Western priorities.

[...]

China is not financing a presidential palace by mistake; it is doing so deliberately. It is not financing just any presidential palace; it has chosen a president so odious that his fellow African leaders hold their noses at him...

...there is an even more disturbing question: What does China's policy toward Sudan say about the West's policy toward China? The West is engaging with China on the theory that economic modernization will bring political modernization as well; otherwise, the West would merely be assisting the development of a communist adversary. China's Sudan policy is an assertion that this link between economic and political modernization is by no means inevitable, even in the extreme case. You can construct oil refineries, educate scientists, build ambitious new railways -- and simultaneously pursue a policy of genocide.

I wonder how many Canadian journalists would write such a piece?

Mark C.

Gutfield TV

Greg Gutfield's new show, Red Eye, premieres on the Fox News Channel tonight. At two in the morning. (3:30AM in Newfoundland.) Despite the presence of Rachel Marsden, I'll be watching - or, in this case, taping.

Damian P.

Chutzpah

The Muslim Students Association at UC-Davis demands that the government investigate the background of a former PLO terrorist.

Of course there's a catch:

The Muslim Student Association (MSA) at UC Davis called today on the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to investigate and deport Walid Shoebat, a self-confessed “ex-terrorist”. Mr. Shoebat is scheduled to deliver a speech at UC Davis’ Freeborn Hall this month. The event is organized by Students for Defense of Democracies.

In a statement, the MSA at UC Davis said:

“We repudiate and unequivocally condemn terrorism, as a grave and serious crime that should be punished in the strictest means possible. We are concerned that a self-confessed ‘ex-terrorist’ is walking freely in the country, simply because he has converted to Christianity and supports this country’s policies towards Israel. We call upon the FBI and DHW to investigate the claims regarding Shoebat’s violent past and to see whether he disclosed this information when applying for his citizenship.

Damian P.

Climate change: Angela no Angel

The German press is accusing the chancellor of hypocrisy:

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas called on Germany to increase its efforts to fight climate change, saying the country had so far failed to take the lead in combating global warming.

"If Germany bucks the trend, then the rest of Europe won't go along with it," Dimas told the paper. "And if Europe isn't going along with it, neither will the rest of the world."

[...]

The left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes: "...Despite having declared climate protection to be a central task of her EU and G8 presidencies, she [the chancellor]is at the same time carrying on an embarrassing fight with the European Commission to prevent real consequences for German industry. ...

"Protecting the environment is fine -- so long as it doesn't hurt the German economy. This double-dealing can only be stopped through binding international regulations. Every government has to stick by them, irrespective of which industry sectors have financed election campaigns and which lobbyists are exerting pressure...

Sound familiar? Including the hypocrisy of politicians?

Meanwhile, the WSJ thinks the IPCC report merits close reading:

...Yet the real news in the fourth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be how far it is backpedaling on some key issues. Beware claims that the science of global warming is settled.

[...]

The IPCC report should be understood as one more contribution to the warming debate, not some definitive last word that justifies radical policy change. It can be hard to keep one's head when everyone else is predicting the Apocalypse, but that's all the more reason to keep cool and focus on the actual science.

Mark C.

Rudy's gonna run

Unless something drastic happens, a Giuliani candidacy looks certain:

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor whose popularity soared after his response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, moved closer to a full-fledged campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Monday.

In a sign that he's serious about running for the White House, the two-term mayor was filing a so-called "statement of candidacy" with the Federal Election Commission. In the process, he was eliminating the phrase "testing the waters" from earlier paperwork establishing his exploratory committee, said an official close to Giuliani's campaign.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting any disclosure by Giuliani.

[...]

The steps Monday put Giuliani on the same level, legally, as McCain and Romney, the other two top-tier GOP candidates who have formed regular exploratory committees and filed statements of candidacy.

If things in Iraq don't improve significantly over the next year or so, Giuliani may be the only GOP candidate who can win the next election. And I think card-carrying Republicans, who may not like his positions on abortion and other social issues, realize that.

Damian P.

It would have been funnier if they'd used "The End" as background music

Hot Air has posted videos of most of this year's Super Bowl commercials. A notable omission: the much-maligned "suicidal robot" spot for GM, which I thought was quite clever (even though IKEA did a similar - and even better - commercial a few years ago).

Damian P.

Climate change: The Grauniad's "heavy breathing"

David Frum "unpacks" the insinuating journalism of a certain progessive London tabloid (The Times and The Independent are now also tabloids--The Daily Telegraph is the only national news daily that is still a broadsheet).

Mark C.

The better team won

Colts 29, Bears 17, and the game wasn't as close as that score makes it appear. There's no way I can candy-coat a dreadful performance by the Bears after the first fifteen minutes. By the start of the fourth quarter, the Colts had possession of the ball for over two-thirds of the game.

If we had to lose a Super Bowl, I guess I'm glad it was to Peyton Manning and the Colts, who could not have been more deserving winners. And at least the Bears made it as far as they did. All things considered, I'll take a Conference championship and Super Bowl loss over a humiliating defeat early in the playoffs, like last year.

Best commercial (out of a pretty lame crop): the Bud Light rock, paper, scissors ad.

Damian P.

Where all these "Super Bowl Champion Indianapolis Colts Chicago Bears" shirts will go

The International Herald Tribune describes the fate of championship kit made for the team that loses the Super Bowl:

Beth Colleton was working for a relief agency in Ethiopia when she spotted a boy wearing a Green Bay Packers 1998 Super Bowl champions T- shirt. She might have been the only person in the village to do a double-take; the Denver Broncos were the 1998 Super Bowl champions.

After Colleton, director for community ventures for the National Football League, returned home, she saw a documentary film about Romanian orphans. One of them was wearing a Buffalo Bills Super Bowl champions T-shirt, even though the Bills lost four consecutive Super Bowls in the 1990s. "I almost fell out of my chair," she said.

This year, as usual, the NFL ordered 288 T-shirts and caps depicting the Indianapolis Colts as the winner of Super Bowl XLI. And they ordered 288 more depicting the Chicago Bears as the winner.

Rather than discarding those made for the losing team, the league now donates them to World Vision, the relief organization that Colleton worked for in Ethiopia for a month, for distribution in places like Niger, Uganda and Sierra Leone. This way, the NFL can help one of its charities and avoid traumatizing one of its teams.

"Where these items go, the people don't have electricity or running water," said Jeff Fields, a corporate relations officer for World Vision. "They wouldn't know who won the Super Bowl. They wouldn't even know about football."

The gear is flown, along with school and medical supplies, into a major city. It is then driven to one of the villages where World Vision staff members work. They distribute the shirts and caps at a community center.

The Onion broke this story last year:

10-year-old Akello Semesseke, wearing the new "World Champion Seattle Seahawks" T-shirt given to him Tuesday by an anonymous NFL-licensed promotions manufacturer, expressed his gratitude for the gift while admitting he was not familiar with the sport of American football. ..."My father refused his new shirt," Semesseke explained, "because although he did need one, he felt it would be disrespectful to the World Champion Eagles, who kindly gave him both a shirt and cap last year."

Damian P.

Update: looks like the Bears will be the champions in some parts of the world, anyway.

Got that?

If you aren't serving in the military, your opinion about the war shouldn't matter. And if you are serving in the military, your opinion about the war shouldn't matter.

Damian P.

A Canadian progressive supports Nick Cohen

...and takes on other "progressives". Good posts from Terry Glavin:

"London Calling: The Whole World Is Upside Down"

"What's Left? A Chat With Nick Cohen About It All"

"Nick Cohen Strikes Back At the "Smear-Job" Lie"

Agree with it or not, it's like I said: "Whatever else you might say about What's Left? you'd have to be pig-ignorant or a liar to write it off as a right-wing diatribe -- although that hasn't stopped many of Cohen's critics."

It sure didn't stop them from filling up the comments here, and one of them strayed so deep into Jew-bashing territory that not only did his disgusting remarks disappear, he himself vanished entirely. And someone will blame the Jews for that, too, I bet.

Which is another thing that's really starting to get to me. It's high time we started laying the blame where it belongs:

Blame Canada.

UPDATE: It's a bit like watching a trainwreck in progress, but if you're amused by berserking you won't want to miss the ongoing saga I refer to above, in the comments. Tyee editor David Beers and I are called bigots, and David, for banning comments persistently "derogatory towards Jewish people," is accused of taking offence to comments that "criticize Israel harshly" and unfairly objecting to views regarding "Jewish attitudes towards Palestinians and other Arabs." In a perverse way it's too bad the comment that set this off isn't still there (in which, as I recall, I was condemned for having a Jewish attitude about things or something), but I am happy to report that you can still read comments in which I am exposed as "gatekeeper" for "neocons and warlovers" and I tell "Goebbels type lies" as I go about my affairs, which consist of making "hateful neocon propaganda against the peace movement."

Which is a phenomenon I touched on here.

Peace out.

In Terry's case I think I'll give peace a chance.

He also takes on the Golfperson.

Mark C.

[Post subsequently edited - DJP]

Quote of the Day (II)

Mark Steyn responds to a correspondent to says America has "descended into fascism":

You dislike Bush, you disagree with his policies, you think Fox News is biased, star-spangled bumper stickers creep you out. None of that makes America Fascist. It makes it a free country of different viewpoints freely expressed. Grow up.

Damian P.

The worst one yet

A truck bombing in Baghdad, most likely carried out by Sunni "insurgents," killed at least 125 people:

A suicide bomber detonated more than a ton of explosives in a market in central Baghdad late Saturday afternoon, killing at least 125 people and wounding 300 in the deadliest single bombing in the capital since the war started.

The blast at the al-Sadriya market in a predominantly Shiite Muslim area leveled at least three buildings and set fire to dozens of businesses, trapping scores of people under piles of rubble.

The explosives were hidden under produce and bags of groceries in the back of a pickup truck that the driver parked near an entrance to the market.

[...]

The attack followed a recent string of bombings targeting places where Shiites congregate in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country. Officials say Sunni insurgents are behind the violence, which comes as the Iraqi government and U.S. military are stepping up security in the capital as an intended first step to restoring order in Iraq.

We should be outraged that this is still going on. Instead, I fear we've become numb to it.

Damian P.

Today's the Day

Today we uphold the legacy of the greatest team of all time (and it was the greatest team of all time, regardless of what the NFL Network says). My prediction: Bears 20, Colts 17. Everyone says the Bears can't do it? Remember this, from just two weeks ago:

Leave your predictions in the comment section. GO BEARS!

Damian P.

The struggle continues

The Communist Party of Canada is holding a convention in Toronto this week, and the 65 delegates continue to hold to the one true faith:

"The first airplanes didn't work, the pilots died, but the principles of the first flying machines were excellent." says delegate Antonio Artuso, 61, by way of explaining communism's failure to thrive in the 20th Century, and his continuing belief that it will one day triumph.

"It takes time for systems to work," he adds.

Artuso, an accredited translator from Montreal, says he donates $2,000 a year to the party, has been a communist for 35 years and becomes more communist every day.

[...]

Mistakes have been made, [leader Miguel Figueroa] points out.

The first wave of socialism contained "distortions and perversions."

"I continue to be confident that the next wave of socialism will be qualitatively different, qualitatively better, because we've learned a lot of lessons from the past."

I know these guys are supposed to be atheists, but I can't help thinking about the Jehovah's Witnesses repeatedly recalculating the date of Christ's return.

Damian P.

Lloyd George, Eden, or both?

Tony Blair: "Like all great political tragedies, however, the fault lies not in Mr Blair's stars, but in himself." Plus ça change. Interesting thoughts from Niall Ferguson:

...I shall be dismayed if David Cameron [UK Tory leader] agrees too readily to the Government's latest proposals to reform the House of Lords by making half the members elected, 30 per cent nominated by the parties and the rest appointed by a commission to ensure (it's hard not to groan) ethnic, gender and regional balance.

Mark C.

Quote of the Day

A line from Socialist Wanker, spotted at Harry's Place:

"Hamas and Hizbollah will be sending delegates to the next anti-war conference in Cairo, Egypt, from 29 March to 1 April."

Damian P.

Paul William Roberts blows it

Big time.

The Canadian publisher of an acclaimed bestseller on the U.S. invasion of Iraq has halted shipments of the book after an Atlanta newspaper said its text contains numerous passages that should have been attributed to one of its writers.

Toronto author and Harper's magazine contributor Paul William Roberts has admitted that his 2004 book, A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq, contains "elements [that] . . . closely resemble or are indistinguishable from passages" in an article in the Sept. 29, 2002, Atlanta Journal-Constitution by deputy editorial-page editor Jay Bookman..."

Couldn't happen to a nicer plagiarist and hater of the US. Here is a polemic against America. And Here is his apologia for Islam. Both published in "Canada's National Newspaper". More of his screeds are here.

Mark C.

Travers blows it

Big time.

...After previously deciding wisely on equipment that would be useful in fighting wars among the people and foolishly on big-ticket items of dubious value, the defence minister is now potentially in the market for everything from tanks to fighter aircraft and Arctic icebreakers.

This appears today in the Ottawa Citzen:

...the Harper government appears to be backing off election promises to build a deep water port in the Arctic and launch a fleet of armed icebreakers.

Instead, according to the government's Canada First Defence Strategy paper, it will construct a forward operating refuelling and berthing site for navy ships and build six Arctic patrol vessels.

Not buying Navy icebreakers will be the right decision. But note this caution about the recent series of stories (such as the one here) by David Pugliese in the CanWest papers, based on a leaked copy of the strategy paper:

Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier also sent out a message yesterday to all units regarding a series of articles that have been in the Citizen this week detailing the Canada First policy.

He said the strategy document is under constant revision and has not yet been approved by the government. News reports based on "previous iterations" of the strategy document are speculative and, "in some cases, inaccurate," according to Gen. Hillier.

By the way, Jim Travesty refers to our "potentially" buying new fighters. Maybe around 2017, that is. He really should do some research.

Mark C.

Updates:

1) "It Pays Not To Speculate on Defence" (CANFORGEN means Canadian Forces general message--but I still do not see Navy icebreakers).

2) First C-17 in August, no details on regional "benefits".

"Terror-Free" gasoline

A gas station in Nebraska purports to be selling products made without petroleum from the Middle East or terror-supporting states:

Claiming U.S. dollars used to purchase gasoline made from Middle East oil funds terrorism, a group called the Terror-Free Oil Initiative opened the nation's first "terror-free" gas station.

The Coral Springs, Fla.-based group opened its first station Thursday in west Omaha, seeking to sell only gas that originates from countries that do not support terrorism and from oil companies that don't do business in the Middle East.

The House of Saud gets a little wealthier every time we fill up our cars, so this is a great idea in theory. In practice, however, not all of the gas sold by Terror-Free Oil lives up to its name:

Sinclair Oil Corp., which operates truck stops and gas stations throughout the Midwest and the West, will be the initial supplier, said Terror-Free Oil spokesman Joe Kaufman.

Dalton Kehlbeck, a regional manager for Salt Lake City-based Sinclair, said most of the company's oil comes from the U.S. or Canada, but some is bought on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where oil from all over the world is traded.

"It's a basket of crude oil," he said of the exchange oil. "We cannot be sure where the conglomeration of the product comes from."

The same is true of most oil products sold in the United States.

According to the Energy Information Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, oil refineries often mix oil from different sources and companies during refinement and shipping.

The United States imported an average of 2.3 million barrels of oil a day from the Persian Gulf region in 2005, according to the administration. That accounted for about 9 percent of U.S. consumption.

Ultimately, the real goal should be not just buying less oil from Middle Eastern despots - not to mention Russian and Venzuelan despots-in-training - but to reduce our oil consumption altogether. (Related: even Reason's Ronald Bailey, a longtime skeptic of global warming, now concedes that "if the debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming wasn't over before, it is now.")

Damian P.

Not your grandfather's Hindenburg

I'd sure book passage on one of these (full text subscriber only):

Luxury cruises could be taking to the skies if a California-based company is successful in building the world's first mobile, air-based hotel.

Worldwide Aeros Corporation is in the early stages of designing elaborate cruise blimps that can travel at 220 kilometres per hour and carry up to 250 passengers.

The first Aeroscraft hotel, a scaled-down version capable of serving about 30 passengers, is expected to be completed by 2010.

Marketing experts say the concept of "air hotels" -- complete with luxuries such as state rooms, observation decks, restaurants, bars, spas and casinos -- could restore elements of glamour and romance to travel.

Mark C.

"We just don't get no respect" dept,

From the WSJ "Best of the Web Today":

Bottom Story of the Day
"Halifax Hosting 2011 Canada Winter Games"--headline, CBC.ca, Feb. 2

At least they're checking the site--but probably not a Good Thing.

Mark C.

It wasn't meant as a compliment?

A British Muslim leader compares his country to Nazi Germany. (With anti-Jewish hate crimes on the rise, he may have a point, but not in the way he intended.)

The arrest of nine terrorist suspects in Birmingham proves Muslims in Britain are being "persecuted" like Jews in Nazi Germany, an Islamic community leader has claimed.

Dr Mohammad Naseem, chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, said Britain was becoming a police state and said the government was picking on the Muslim community to pursue political goals.

[...]

...speaking before Friday prayers, Dr Naseem said Muslims were "persecuted unjustly". "The German people were told Jews were a threat. The same is happening here."

He said the terror arrests were an example of the government justifying its political agenda and anti-terrorism laws. "This is a persecuting course of action that the government has taken. They have invented this perception of a threat. To justify that, they have to maintain incidents to prove something is going on."

If Naseem is really concerned about the rise of a new Nazism - as opposed to using a cheap rhetorical trick, Heaven forbid - maybe he should be pushing the MCB to recognize the importance of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Damian P.

Quebec and the military

Quebec's pacifism and how it has until recently driven government policy: Jack Granatstein continues his series in the National Post.

Andre Boisclair was chosen to be leader of the Parti Quebecois in November, 2005. Young, good looking, and articulate, he and his lifestyle seem to many observers to embody the ethos of the young professionals who now drive Quebec society. But in his policy views, Boisclair harks back to older traditions. "We are a peaceful people," he told a meeting of his party's constituency presidents in March 2006. As an independent nation with its place in the United Nations, Quebec would be "ecologist, pacifist, expressing solidarity, and favouring an alternative vision of globalization."

[...]

...by the time of the Great War, Quebec had become an anti-military society or, to put it more exactly, a society against participation in British wars. In August 1914 anglophones hurried to enlist in Montreal, the Eastern Townships, and Quebec City, but the French-speaking hung back. There were 1,200 in the first contingent to go overseas in the autumn of 1914, but, by the time of Vimy Ridge in April 1917, the Canadian Corps of four divisions with forty-eight infantry battalions contained only one French-speaking battalion, the 22e Regiment.

The trend continued during the Second World War. To young men like Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 20 years old when the war began, the conflict was of little interest. Canada was not threatened, the fate of France was all but inconsequential, and, while Hitler was evil, Quebec should sit out the fighting and oppose conscription, though it would take any war factories that might be offered. To read Trudeau's wartime writings, to peruse the pro-Vichy wartime editorial pages of Le Devoir, to go over the nationaliste speeches against conscription and against Charles de Gaulle's Free France is to believe that a severe form of blindness afflicted the intellectual leaders of French Canada.

To this day, opinion polls demonstrate that a deeply pacifist and anti-military Quebec is the least supportive region of the country when it comes to the government taking steps to fix the Canadian Forces. An Ipsos-Reid opinion poll in February 2003 found that only 3% of francophones considered military spending to be a high priority.

Canada has had a run of long-lived prime ministers from Quebec -- Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien -- who, from 1968 to 2003, have been exquisitely cognizant of Quebec's attitudes and beliefs. The result is that Quebec drove policy in these years.

Via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs.

Mark C.

Update: A review of Mr Granatstein's book, Whose War Is It?, from which the series of articles is drawn.

America-hating Communist!

Stephen Harper won't be watching the Bears win this weekend:

The prime minister offered a candid reply when asked for a prediction on Sunday's National Football League championship game between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts.

He also took a nationalist jab at the NFL.

"I have to admit I'm not following it,'' Harper said Friday.

"Being prime minister of Canada I can assure you I focus my exclusive football attention on the Grey Cup -- which is always much more exciting.''

[...]

Harper's shot at the tediousness of the Super Bowl, however, may be based more on perception than reality.

While the NFL's marquee event did result in a string of memorable snoozers in the 1990s, punctuated some years by scores such as 55-10 and 52-17, it has become more competitive.

Five of the last nine Super Bowls have been decided by a margin of one touchdown or less.

Meanwhile, only three Grey Cup games over that period have been so close.

Damian P.

But how many hundreds of millions will it cost?

Liberal national defence critic Denis Coderre says his party would cancel the C-17 contract (no details yet on divvying-up of regional juice).

Mark C.

Prince really interviewed

Another "Ten Yards of Awkwardness" post at KSK:

Drew: When doves cry, I don't actually think it sounds like 2 family members fighting. I think it probably sounds more like EEEEEEEEEEYYYYYEEECHHHHH!!! Ur thoughts? Prince: (says nothing)

Drew: Ur a Jehovah's Witness. Can I just tell U in advance that I'm not really interested the pamphlet Ur going 2 inevitably give me?
Prince: (says nothing)

Drew: Was the song "Cream" really just about dairy products?
Prince: (says nothing)

Drew: I know this is the Super Bowl, but: Boy versus Girl in the World Series of Love: WHO U GOT?!
Prince: (says nothing)

Damian P.

The last word on Boston

Mario Loyola at The Corner:

I think the Boston authorities should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. They mistook obvious toys for bombs and sent the entire city into a paroxysm of war-on-terror paranoia. And now they're taking out their frustrations by lynching two quasi-hippies who quite are quite rightly mocking them and everyone else who thinks they did something wrong.

Reports that those guys held back from explaining the provenance of the gadgets are serious if they knowingly held back for any significant length of time. But the main point is that by the time they figured out that it was all their fault, the authorities had already caused a city-wide panic over funny-looking gadgets that look exactly nothing like a bomb.

Whether those guys did anything to apologize for, the Boston authorities should apologize for turning the United States into a planetary laughing-stock. The European press is going to have a field day with this. Normally world opinion can cook in its own stew as far as I'm concerned, but I'm going to be traveling abroad soon and I really hope I don't have to answer questions about this incredibly embarrassing incident.

Damian P.

Update: actually, this is the last word.

Jews are the new Jews

In 2006, the number of antisemitic attacks in Great Britain were the highest in over two decades, according to the Community Security Trust. (Via Meryl Yourish)

Anti-Semitic attacks reached record levels in Britain last year and peaked during the conflict in Lebanon, a study showed on Thursday.

Race hate incidents—ranging from death threats to physical assault—rose by more than 30 percent to almost 600.

"These are the worst figures we have had in the 23 years since we have been monitoring it," said Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust, which advises Britain's estimated 300,000 Jews on safety issues.

"British Jews are stupidly blamed and randomly attacked over international tensions for which they bear no responsibility," Gardner said.

[...]

Gardner said four of the incidents last year were potentially life-threatening. A Jewish man was stabbed in London, others were beaten with metal bars and broken bottles.

"I want to kill all Jews and my name is Hitler," one Arab shouted before punching an Orthodox Jew in the face at a London underground railway station and trying to push him off the platform.

Another report says anti-Jewish hate crimes in Britain were slightly down last year - but that they sharply increased in other European countries, most notably Germany and Austria:

According to the figures, there was a 66 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Austria, while Germany saw a 60 percent rise. In France, there was a 20 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents, with the same level of increased incidents reported in Russia. In the UK, reports of anti-Semitic attacks dropped by three percent.

Amos Hermon, of the Forum, reported the rise, which included two anti-Semitic murders. One victim, Ilan Halimi, a French Jew murdered in January of 2006, will be buried in Israel next month. The other, Pamela Wechter, was shot dead by a Muslim gunman in the Jewish Federation Building in Seattle in July.

Images of a bullet-ridden Oslo synagogue, and worshippers at a Moscow synagogue coming under attack were included in a booklet about the current state of anti-Semitism in the world.

[...]

Almost all forms of anti-Semitism, from the anti-Israel boycott attempts by the radical Left, to the propaganda of Islamic extremists, shared the attempt to equate the State of Israel with Nazi Germany, Hermon pointed out.

He displayed a Swedish cartoon in which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is portrayed as a Nazi concentration camp guard.

By equating Israel with Nazism, anti-Semites hoped to spread the "message that the Jewish nation has no right to exist, because the Nazis, according to international consensus, have no right to exist," Hermon explained, adding that this was the charge in Iran's state anti-Semitism.

I bet that guy who renamed himself "Hitler" regularly compares Israel to Nazi Germany, too. These people just aren't big on consistency, except for their consistent hatred of the Jews.

Damian P.

Joe who?

How red was my Tory? About as pink as Lloyd "Softy" Axworthy. I would say Mr Clark's brain is a "developing area".

"I believe Mr. Harper and his colleagues are moving away from the central elements of the foreign policy that has been a strength of Canada under both Progressive Conservative and Liberal governments," he [Clark, who has taken up a post as a professor with the university's Centre for Developing Areas Study] said in a speech at McGill University.

He cited the "remarkable closeness" to U.S. foreign policy, an absence of priority for issues in the developing world, the deterioration of Canada's relationship with China, and an erosion of the status of Canada's professional foreign service.

"Canada's foreign service is widely recognized as one of the best in the world," he said [around 1955 - MC]. "My strong impression is that they are receiving neither encouragement nor resources from this government."

He also cited the Harper government's repudiation of the Kyoto climate control treaty, signed by the previous Liberal administration. "There is no question that it injured our international reputation," he said.

[...]

He said he supports Canada's mission in Afghanistan, but criticized the government for not allowing a proper parliamentary debate on its conduct...

Mark C.

Letting the terrorists win

At the Playboy blog - you read that right - Jamie Malanowski says the Boston Lite-Brite fiasco proves that Americans have become too paranoid about terrorism:

This is getting out of hand. The 9/11 terrorists killed 3,000 people. They’ve caused this country to spend billions to prevent attacks that didn’t come and weren’t ever coming. We’ve wasted millions of hours in security hours and thrown away millions of nail clippers and bottles of mouthwash preventing the boogeyman from coming after us. And now the terrorists are causing us to lose all sense of proportion. They’re making us look foolish. They’re taking away our sense of humor. A handful of them have the mightiest nation on earth terrorizing itself.

Isn’t it time we stopped being afraid?

I agree that worries about terrorism shouldn't control our lives, and things obviously spiraled way out of control in Boston yesterday. That said, if another 9/11-style attack happened tomorrow, how much do you want to bet Malanowski - and other people who use the word "boogeyman" to describe the terror threat - would be screaming the loudest about how the government "fell down on the job"?

Damian P.

The China Syndrome

Does anyone really think Kyoto, and any successor agreement, will cope with this? I wonder if Environment Minister Baird will raise the issue in Paris tomorrow.

China has become a global environmental problem...The massive nation is already the world's second-biggest producer of greenhouse gases after the United States.

[...]

Chinese factories are already producing three times as many air conditioning units as they did five years ago. And although few people drive cars in China compared to industrialized countries, in Beijing alone the number of vehicles is growing by a thousand each day. In order to feed its appetite for energy, China is building coal-fired power plants as fast as it can [emphasis added]. Every seven to ten days a new plant begins spewing smoke into the sky. The amount by which China increased its power production last year alone is greater than Britain's entire capacity.

[...]

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has also distanced himself from the country's raping of the environment to promote "sustainable growth," which includes an ambitious nuclear program. At least 20 new nuclear power plants are to be built by 2020 -- but the communist leadership doesn't say where the radioactive waste will end up...

Beijing also actively participates in the international emissions trade and provides foreign environmental polluters with opportunities to buy their way out of their obligations by financing somewhat clean chemical plants...

At a recent United Nations conference on climate change in Nairobi, the Chinese demanded that developing nations not be forced to make cuts in greenhouse gases. Only after pushing through this condition -- from which China has the most to gain -- did the Chinese delegates vote to work towards a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.

Mark C.

"In our cities": Conservative campaign promises and the Canadian Forces

What may be done to fulfill the pledges to base regular Army "rapid reaction" battalions in Goose Bay and Bagotville (as well as Trenton and Comox)? These units would hardly be the same thing, and I have no idea how effectual this basing would be in military terms.

Given the headline for David Pugliese's story in the Ottawa Citizen, perhaps the Liberals should start re-running that attack ad from the last federal election campaign (paragraphs out of sequence):

Military wants more troops in cities

...the Conservative strategy [no it's not, Mr Pugliese--it's the military's "strategy" to satisfy the Conservatives - MC] calls for the regular force "footprint" to be increased across the country. A Northern Sovereignty Support Centre will be established in Goose Bay, N.L., and the 439 Combat Support Squadron at Canadian Forces Base Bagotville, Que., will be expanded and redesignated as an "expeditionary" unit to better support domestic and international operations. In particular, the squadron would support deployments of the military's rapid-reaction Disaster Assistance Response Team.

Why not put the Northern Sovereignty Support Centre in, er, the North? After all, "Joint Task Force (North) is currently under construction" (formerly Canadian Forces Northern Area Headquarters) at Yellowknife. Goose Bay sure is a long (political) way away.

Will 439 Squadron do all the expeditionary stuff with only Griffon helicopters, all they now have? Maybe they will get some of the new heavy-lift Chinooks.

The Forces will also establish a new "naval reserve division" in Prince Rupert, BC. That move is in "recognition of Prince Rupert as a major seaport and a growing economic link between Canada and the Far East," the strategy document adds.

Between now and 2016, the army will establish "territorial response battalions" in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Niagara-Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Saint John, Halifax and St. John's. The units would be designed to react to domestic emergencies such as natural disasters or a terrorist attack.

The details are outlined in the Conservative government's "Canada First" defence strategy, which has been leaked to the Citizen. No date has been set for the strategy to be released publicly. The report outlines the direction the military will follow over the next 15 years.

During the election campaign, the Conservatives promised their government would create territorial battalions...

[...]

The plan calls for the regular forces to increase to 70,000 by 2011 and then to 75,000 by 2016. The reserves will be increased in size to 30,000 over the next five years and then to 35,000 "over the long term."

[...]

The current number of personnel in the regular force is about 63,800. The reserve force is now around 24,000, according to figures provided by the Defence Department.

According to the strategy, the army reserves will undergo a fundamental transformation to be able to respond more effectively to domestic emergencies in rural and urban areas. The reserves will provide the bulk of the personnel for the territorial battalions, in addition to still seeing its members volunteer for overseas missions such as Afghanistan...

But take it all with a grain of salt. From another story:

A spokesman from the defence minister’s office refused to confirm any details from the leaked document.

"This is pure speculation," said Isabelle Bouchard, comparing any analysis of the draft plan to complaining that a soup is too salty before getting a taste. "No decision has been made. The plan is not done."

At least this looks pretty certain:

The government of Canada has finally inked a $3.4-billion deal with Boeing Co. to buy four C-17 Globemasters...

CTV News has learned that government officials will announce details of the contract on Friday.

Quebec is only to get 25% of the industrial offsets, despite the lobbying efforts of the Public Works Minister, Sen. Fortier.

Mark C.

Kyoto and those united Europeans

Trying to implement Kyoto is not so simple, even for the well-greened Euros:

Stavros Dimas, the European Union's environment commissioner, is none too happy with the German government or auto industry.

The European Commission, led by President Jose Manuel Barroso, says it will water down a Dimas-penned plan that would have required auto-makers to create lines of cars that would limit greenhouse gas emissions to an average of 120 grams of CO2 per kilometer by 2012. That's down from an environmentally unfriendly average of about 160 grams today. But Dimas is hatching a revenge plan that, if nothing else, would deal a PR blow to Germany's luxury car industry.

The commissioner is reportedly preparing to swap the gas-guzzling Mercedes sedan that ferries him around Brussels each day with an environmentally friendly Japanese hybrid. The EU is planning to replace its current fleet of luxury sedans, and Dimas is said to be looking at Toyota's Prius hybrid, as well as a higher-end Lexus hybrid made by the same company.

[...]

On Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would oppose any strict EU emissions on car emissions, arguing there should be different caps for different models. A day later, German Economy Minister Michael Glos of the conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's Christian Democrats, called any limit on car values "unacceptable to us."..

Mark C.

The world's favorite tyrant

Today's National Post has a superb piece, originally from The Spectator, about ol' whiskers:

"Why is it that dictators of the left are not scorned in the same way as those of the right?" asks my fellow Peruvian, the Nobel prize-winning novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa.

"Was General Pinochet, in his 17 years in power, crueller or bloodier than Fidel Castro has been in his four decades ruling Cuba?"

Good question. Both men crushed their opponents, closed down hostile media, suspended parliamentary democracy and filled the administration with their friends and family. The main difference is that, unlike Castro, Pinochet eventually submitted himself to the ballot box, offering Chileans a referendum in 1988 on whether they wanted to keep him. By 57% to 43%, they voted No, and Pinochet grumpily stomped off the stage. Not that his resignation won him any credit with lefties. As a Marxist friend told me accusingly at the time, "He's just trying to make Fidel look bad." To this day, the slightest connection with rightwing authoritarianism disqualifies a politician from office. Fair enough, you might say. But, at the same time, Europe's palaces and chancelleries teem with former "sandalistas": youngsters who volunteered to work on collectives in Cuba and Nicaragua. No fewer than seven European commissioners are ex-communists, including Britain's Peter Mandelson, who visited Cuba as a student.

[...]

There are few sights so degrading as Western lefties arguing that all this is somehow compensated by the fact that Cuba is good at producing ballerinas and doctors. Even in socialist terms, Castro ought to be a disappointment. One of the first things to strike a visitor to the island is the visible ethnic disparity: whites and mestizos run the place, while blacks are in as wretched a condition as anywhere in the Caribbean. Indeed, for a long time, Castro deliberately tried to displace the racial problem by encouraging black Cubans to volunteer for the war in Angola. As a good Leninist, he knew all about countries exporting their internal contradictions.

One thing, and one thing alone, allowed the old monster to get away with it: Washington's 44-year-old economic blockade. All countries rally round their leaders when they are at war, and Castro's Cuba has been semiofficially at war since he seized power. The U.S. sanctions allowed him to escape blame for his mismanagement. It's not communism that has reduced Cuba to this squalor, he could assure his people--it's the yanqui embargo. ...

Damian P.

Run, Tex, Run

Tex is mulling over a possible run for the Australian Senate. You have got to read his campaign speech.

Damian P.

"Collaborators" targeted

More about yesterday's terror arrests in Britain:

Muslims serving in the Armed Forces, Civil Service and the police are targets for British-based Islamists after detectives foiled an alleged plot to kidnap and behead a soldier home on leave from Iraq.

Security sources said last night that a gang of British extremists had allegedly drawn up a hitlist of Muslim soldiers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan to become the first victims in the UK of an al-Qaeda style “online” kidnap and beheading.

The suspects are believed to have narrowed their choice to a shortlist of three men. Last night one of the soldiers was understood to be in protective custody after a six-month intelligence operation culminated in a series of predawn raids in Birmingham involving 700 police. A number of the would-be kidnappers are believed to be still at large. Senior officers alleged that the plan was to force the soldier, under torture, to denounce his role in the Army and behead him on camera.

[...]

The intention was to announce the time of the execution, film it and then post it on a website with a warning that other British Muslim “collaborators” would face a similar fate for taking part in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army has begun a recruitment drive in the West Midlands for Muslims. One investigator said that Muslims would have been given the clear message: “Don’t go out and kill your brothers.”

According to The Daily Telegraph, the death of a British Muslim serving his country may have inspired the plot:

MI5 began watching the alleged plotters after a tip-off. It was received shortly after the death of Jabron Hashmi, an Army corporal, whose family live close to some of the predominantly Muslim areas raided yesterday. Cpl Hashmi, 24, a Muslim born in Pakistan, was killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

More than 400 people attended his funeral at the Central Jamia Mosque in Birmingham last July but he was also denounced by local extremists as "a traitor" who should be denied a Muslim burial. A photograph of his body was placed on the website of a proscribed Islamist group.

The corporal's brother said last night that his death could have provided the catalyst for the latest suspected plot. Zeeshan Hashmi, 28, a former soldier, said: "I think my brother's death highlighted the presence of Muslims in the Army."

Why don't more moderate Muslims speak out against extremism and terror? Because doing so could get them killed.

Damian P.

But I support the...ah, screw it

Washington Post "national and homeland security" blogger William Arkin stands up for the troops in his own special way.

Damian P.

Update: William, when you're in a hole, stop digging.