It's over, Dylan

Pet Rocks, mood rings, bell-bottoms, disco, Rubik's Cubes, acid-washed jeans, parachute pants, grunge, the Macarena, Lilith Fair, the Atkins Diet, Loose Change.

Damian P.

Hostages taken at Clinton HQ

An armed man has reportedly taken two people captive at one of Hillary Clinton's offices in New Hampshire:

Police were responding Friday to a hostage situation at the presidential campaign office of Sen. Hillary Clinton in Rochester, N.H.

Maj. Michael Hambrook of the New Hampshire State Police told WMUR-TV in Boston that an armed man believed to be carrying a bomb walked into the office about 1 p.m. Hambrook said two people were believed to be inside.

Clinton is in the Washington area.

Sadly, in the comment section at this CNN story, the trolls are already crawling out from under their rocks. ("This woman will bring chaos in this country as you can see it has just started. Can not stand her!" "Typical right-wing antics.") Here's hoping everyone comes out of this okay.

Damian P.

Update: two hostages have been released; no word on whether anyone else is still inside. The hostage-taker is said to have "a history of mental illness," which leads me to believe his motive isn't necessary political.

Sudanese justice, and other oxymorons

British teacher Gillian Gibbons escaped the lash, but she was sentenced to 15 days in jail, followed by expulsion from the country, for letting her pupils name a teddy bear "Muhammad." (Being forced to leave Sudan is punishment?) That's not enough for these guys, of course.

Sex columnist Dan Savage has a profane, but effective, response. The reaction here certainly is telling, though. Kill two people in the United States, and your government should do what it can to save you from death row. Get jailed in Sudan for giving a teddy bear the Muslim world's most common name in Sudan, and it's your own fault for not knowing better.

Damian P.

Update: Savage's full post is here, and it's a classic: "Gee, sentenced to be deported. You’re really twisting the ol’ knife there, Sudan. No doubt after being arrested on a bulls**t blasphemy charge, threatened with forty lashes and six months in prison, and then packed off to a prison for two weeks where she’s likely to encounter physical violence and may just contract malaria—I’m sure after enduring all that, Sudan, remaining in your sh**hole country was Gibbons’ fondest wish."

Three questions for Canadian Chavistas

1. If Stephen Harper and the Conservatives romp to victory in the next election, earning well over 50% of the vote, will you agree that they're entitled to do pretty much anything they want because they were fairly elected?

2. If the Americans overwhelmingly back Rudy Giuliani in 2008, would you respond to his Canadian critics by sneering, "Yes, of course you would know much better than the people of the United States who should run their government." (See the comment posted at "06:19PM" here.)

3. You say Chavez isn't planning to stay in office for the rest of his life, so let's say Venezuelans pass his constitutional reforms and then turf him in favor of a right-wing, pro-American candidate. Will he have the right to use the greatly increased Presidential powers in the Chavez constitution?

Damian P.

The East is Red, die gelbe Gefahr, or...

...the shape of things to fly. Airbus is already partly in the bag. West, we have a problem much bigger than tainted toys or pet food.

Mark C.

The mysterious memo

With signs emerging that even Hugo Chavez's supporters and allies are uncomfortable with his proposed constitutional reforms, the Chavistas are blaming a reliable old boogeyman:

Well, what a surprise. It is now being reported that a CIA memo from the US Embassy in Caracas has been intercepted. It contains a detailed plan of destabilization activities leading up to, and following, the current referendum.

Dawg has what purports to be the full text, taken from a pro-Chavez blog, and the story is all over "alternative media" sites. The New York Times, that notoriously pro-Bush, neoconservative propaganda organ, is skeptical:

A C.I.A. spokesman called the document “a fake,” while analysts, including investigators who had previously uncovered financing of Venezuelan opposition groups by the United States government, expressed doubts about the authenticity of the memo.

“I find the document quite suspect,” said Jeremy Bigwood, an independent researcher in Washington. “There’s not an original version in English, and the timing of its release is strange.”

Yes, I know, it's not like the American government hasn't done this kind of thing before. But seeing the English version of the memo would be nice, don't you think?

Damian P.

Democraski

Say what you like about Hugo Chavez's referendum scheduled for Dec. 2, but it will almost certainly be fairer than what's happening in Russia on the same day:

The Kremlin is planning to rig the results of Russia's parliamentary elections on Sunday by forcing millions of public sector workers across the country to vote, the Guardian has learned.

Local administration officials have called in thousands of staff on their day off in an attempt to engineer a massive and inflated victory for President Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party. Voters are being pressured to vote for United Russia or risk losing their jobs, their accommodation or bonuses, the Guardian has been told in numerous interviews with byudzhetniki (public sector workers), students and ordinary citizens.

[...]

The Kremlin has cast Sunday's State Duma vote as a referendum on Putin. Although Putin is obliged to step down as president next May, a landslide victory may be used to legitimise his return to power, possibly as early as the summer.

The president's personal popularity remains high. But support for United Russia is less solid. Independent experts say the party's true ratings are around 35% - well below the 55% figure suggested by state-controlled opinion polls.

In a leak to Russian media this week, one senior election official said that regional governors had been told to deliver at least 65% of the vote for Putin's party, an "unrealistically high" total that could be achieved only through electoral fraud and by compelling people to vote.

"The elections are going to be falsified," said Mikhail Delyagin, an economist and the director of Moscow's Institute on Globalisation Problems. "The elections that took place in the Soviet Union were less falsified than this one."

You can take Putin out of the KGB, but you can't take the KGB out of Putin.

Damian P.

Free speech? The Canadian Islamic Congress...

...takes on Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn. Don't you just love those human rights commissions? (Via Norman's Spectator; italicized part from another, reliable source.)

THE CANADIAN ISLAMIC CONGRESS

PRESS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

ISLAMIC CONGRESS LAUNCHES HUMAN RIGHTS COMPLAINTS AGAINST MACLEANS MAGAZINE FOR PUBLISHING ISLAMOPHOBIC ARTICLE

WHEN:
Tuesday, December 4, 2007 At 10:30 am

WHERE:
The Niagara Room (Lower Lobby),
Hotel Intercontinental,
Downtown Toronto next to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre,
225 Front Street West,
Toronto, Ontario.

WHO:
Faisal Joseph, CIC's Legal Counsel, Partner with the Law Firm of Lerners LLP. Mr. Joseph is a former Federal and Provincial Crown Attorney, and former Chair of the Criminal Section of the Canadian Bar Association (Nova Scotia).

WHAT:

The Canadian Islamic Congress has launched human rights complaints against Macleans Magazine and its editor-in-chief, Kenneth Whyte, for publishing a flagrantly Islamophobic article, "The Future Belongs to Islam", in its Oct 23, 2006 issue.

This article continues to be published on the Macleans website

The future belongs to Islam | Macleans.ca - Canada - Features

The complaints have been submitted to the British Columbia, Ontario, and Federal Human Rights Commissions on the grounds that the article subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt.

The complaints have been accepted by the British Columbia and the Federal Commissions; hearings have been scheduled in British Columbia for June 2 - 6, 2008.

The press conference will be conducted by Mr. Faisal Joseph who will be arguing the matter before the BC Human Rights Tribunal.

CONTACT:

Faisal Joseph

(519) 640-6342

Don't miss it if you're in the GTA. More on the Congress, hate crimes and free speech here. Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, of Waterloo University, remains Chair & National President.

A nice final shot from Mr Spector:

--What the Canadian Islamic Conference is saying about the 2 stories below

British teacher charged with insulting Islam over teddy bear's name

Saudi Rights Advocate Fights Back

(Several blank lines)

Mark C.

Damian adds: after this controversy, you'd think Elmasry and the CIC would be more appreciative of the right to free expression. You'd think...

Mark adds: On other parts of the Western front:

Only rich Iranians wanted democracy, he declared. The true voice of the masses, the tribune of the people we must attend to and negotiate with, was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

As for Mr Ahmadinejad, one might well say this sub-head in the Ottawa Citizen is a bit of understatement:

Iran weighs in with pessimistic [exterminationist - MC?] view of peace effort

[...]

"It is impossible that the Zionist regime will survive. Collapse is in the nature of this regime because it has been created on aggression, lying, oppression and crime," Mr. Ahmadinejad said following an Iranian cabinet meeting...

But of course he doesn't really mean it. Does he? I think what happens depends on what one's society's leaders ask one to do, after considerable propaganda.

Chavez and fascism

Roger Cohen, in the New York Times, sees the parallels:

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela hates fascists; they are central to his repertoire of insults. But he has not hesitated to deploy the imagery of death to bolster his leftist brand of petro-authoritarianism, now operating under the ludicrous banner of “Fatherland, Socialism or Death!”

The slogan looks almost quaint in its anachronism. Chávez would no doubt claim Cuban revolutionary, rather than Spanish fascist, roots for it (Fidel Castro also invoked fatherland and finality). The bottom line is this: Latin America’s oil-gilded caudillo is getting serious about ruling for life, just like Franco and Castro.

[...]

Certainly, the oil money Chávez has plowed into poor neighborhoods (at the expense of an oil industry suffering chronic underinvestment) has reduced poverty. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America said last year that the extreme poverty rate had fallen to 9.9 percent from 15.9 percent.

But more than spreading socialist ideals, Chávez has spread a form of crony capitalism, dedicated to his greater glory, that has imbued the economy with all the resilience of a house of cards.

Foreign investment has plunged, scared off by nationalizations. A huge disparity between the official and black-market exchange rates has encouraged get-rich-quick schemes for favored “Chávistas” while erecting endless barriers to trade. Price controls on staples have made eggs unavailable. This week, you can’t find chickens. Chávez’s socialism delivers subsidized gasoline and glittering malls but no milk.

Latin America has been here before, with the disastrous import-substitution and highly regulated models of the 1960s and ’70s. Most of the region has moved on, but not Chávez, who trumpets “growth from within,” whatever that is. The World Bank’s recently released “Doing Business 2008,” a ranking of the ease of conducting commerce, places Venezuela 172nd out of 178 countries.

Even some of his former allies finally think he's gone too far.

Damian P.

Gravel '72...er, '08

So Ron Paul's a little too mainstream for your tastes? Here's your guy. (Yes, as far as I can tell, he's still running.)

Damian P.

Kosovo kountdown (including "biological")

Time is getting short:

LONDON - The threat of a new war in the Balkans loomed yesterday after the collapse of talks between Serbs and Albanians over the future of Kosovo.

Three days of negotiations overseen by international mediators broke down with both sides refusing to budge over their claims to the breakaway province.

Kosovo's Albanian majority has threatened to declare independence unilaterally...

The breakdown of the talks leaves Kosovo in the same limbo it has inhabited since the United Nations took over its administration in 1998 after NATO drove out Serbian troops [that attack, not authorized by the UNSC, sure looks like it may have not really solved anything - MC]...

Russia, which sided with Serbia to block a previous western-backed independence deal, looks set to remain opposed. But even countries such as Spain, Greece and Cyprus have signalled their disquiet at an independence deal, fearing it could embolden separatists within their own borders.

In Moscow, Russian media quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying: "We cannot accept the incantation that this is a unique case, that independence is unavoidable.

[...]

No precedent exists for the creation of a new state by international committee and against the will of the sovereign power.

Serbia has cautioned that international recognition of Kosovo's independence could cause the Serb enclave of northern Kosovo to secede and spark a secession movement among the Serbs of Bosnia...

Berlin announced it would be sending an extra 500 German troops to Kosovo, bringing their contingent in the NATO-led force to 2,800.

In Brussels, Gen. John Craddock, NATO's supreme commander in Europe, said the alliance's 16,000-strong Kosovo peacekeeping force had plans to tackle any violence...

Then there's this rather gruesome view of the situation:

Predicting tough times ahead, the NATO commander in Kosovo called on Wednesday for clear guidance on how his force should act if the Serbian province declares independence as expected.

French Lt. Gen. Xavier de Marnhac also said the problem of tense relations between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority would eventually reach a "biological end" as the average age of the Serbs was much older.

[...]

Asked if he had requested more troops for his 16,000-strong force, de Marnhac said he could call on reserve forces outside Kosovo but had not done so yet. One such battalion was conducting mission rehearsals in Kosovo now, he said.

In his briefing, de Marnhac also noted the average age of Kosovo's Albanians was 28, while the figure for Serbs was 54...

Mark C.

Update: Just in case you think one is being alarmist:

UK troops ready for Kosovo crisis

Some immodest proposals on federal policing

If today's RCMP is not what it should be, what to do? I can think of no other developed country (and probably no others of any size) that has a national police force responsible for the following types of law enforcement (I confess I don't know quite the jurisdiction of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary):

-municipal policing (Ontario and Quebec and many cities in other provinces excepted)

-rural policing (all provinces except Ontario and Quebec)

-All policing in the territories

-highway patrol (all provinces except Ontario and Quebec, and the RCMP also does this on federal roads in Ottawa)

-Organized crime (drugs etc.)

-National security (terrorism, espionage)

-Border policing

-White collar crime (sometimes, e.g. Karlheinz Schreiber).

I'm sure I missed a few things.

It seems to me that all provinces should provide their own municipal, rural, and highway policing, by the means of their own choice. There then should be separate federal law enforcement agencies to deal with, in cooperation with the forces in provinces and municipalities as required:

1) Serious organized crime and national security matters (there are many common techniques involved, and both rely greatly on intelligence)

2) Border, airport, and port policing (this function should be part of the Canada Border Services Agency--think Vancouver Airport; one service might have done better)

3) The territories

4) White collar crime (small and mainly civilian, that is to say lawyers)

5) VIP protection.

Mark C.

Damian adds: the RNC is responsible for law enforcement in St. John's, Corner Brook, Mount Pearl, Conception Bay South and Labrador City. The RCMP handles the rest of the province.

Planted questions

Michelle Malkin did some digging, and found out that many of the questioners at last night's CNN/YouTube Republican debate were actually Democrats. And my response is...so what, exactly? If a Presidential candidate can't answer tough, even hostile questioning, he has no business running for President in the first place.

If CNN was deliberately choosing Democrats to post questions at the Republican debate, while shielding the Democrat candidates from Republican questioners, that's different. It also looks like some of the questioners misrepresented themselves as "undecided." Still, if conservatives are (rightly) attacking the Dems for being too chicken to debate on the Fox News Channel, they shouldn't be crying foul about this. If it's a fair question, it's fair regardless of who asks it. (This question, at least, is one with which the Republicans should be confronted.)

Damian P.

Can you fairly review a movie when you haven't seen the whole thing?

Probably not, but I try it here anyway. I actually wanted to see Hot Rod when it was in theaters this past summer, so it looks like I dodged a bullet there.

All my Blogcritics posts can be found here.

Damian P.

"Remarkable"

That's the BBC reporter's word for the results of cooperation between the US Army and the Sunni "Knights of Mesopotamia" in Baghdad (when I saw the BBC World story on CBC Newsworld at 1800 Eastern, Nov. 28, I'm sure I heard the word "spectacular"; can't find the video online).

"At the beginning, people saw it as an occupation which had to be resisted. But then they saw that the Americans were working in the interests of the people.

"They saw al-Qaeda doing terrible things. They were killing Sunnis, Shias, and Christians. There were bodies everywhere, being eaten by dogs. So we had to fight them," Abul Abed said.

[...]

We hear American helicopters buzzing overhead reminding everybody who is the real power behind all this, but the transformation on the ground is remarkable...

The major media, to give them some credit, are now covering this sort of development.

What a colossal irony it would be should the "bad war" (Iraq) succeed and the "good war" (Afghanistan) fail...

Mark C.

Update thought: Of course, as far as I know, the Canadian media have no-one actually on the ground in Iraq. So much for "Canadian perpectives".

The fading red serge

I'm afraid I have to agree with this (from a conservative Calgary professor):

...Compared to the federal police in Iraq or Colombia, the RCMP look pretty good.

Unfortunately, the only thing the RCMP of today have in common with the RCMP of old is the red serge uniform. Once, they were the best trained cops in the country. Once, they were incorruptible. Once, their commercial crime unit was feared by fraudsters. Once, they were non-political. Once, they were good at federal law enforcement.

But then something happened. Canadians have known for several years that senior management at A Division in Ottawa has been acting like backside-covering bureaucrats. The auditor general caught them breaking the law.

More politely, they failed to comply with provisions of the Financial Administration Act. Testimony before the Gomery Commission showed then RCMP boss, Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, to be evasive in his answers and his immediate subordinates to be highly economical with the truth. Zaccardelli's inconsistencies eventually got him fired.

The disarray at the bottom can be measured as much by the deaths of young Mounties as a result of faulty procedures and inadequate training as by the fate of Robert Dziekanski, the Polish visitor who was tasered and died in Vancouver airport, or Robert Knipstrom, who died in custody in Chilliwack, B.C.

These disasters are the final fruit of a management policy initiated a decade and a half ago that promoted "business efficiency" in police service delivery at the cost of effective policing and federal law enforcement.

[...]

Barry Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a Fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.

What ruin all the "management" rot has wrought--and in the federal public service generally. Thank goodness Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Hillier seems to have taken a different course for the Canadian Forces.

Mark C.

100,000%

That might be the inflation rate in Zimbabwe, but no one really knows for sure:

Zimbabwe's chief statistician has said it is impossible to work out the country's latest inflation rate because of the lack of goods in shops.

"There are too many data gaps," the Central Statistical Office's Moffat Nyoni told state media.

Many staple goods are often absent from shop shelves after the government ordered prices to be halved or frozen in a bid to stem galloping inflation.

September's inflation rate was put at almost 8,000%, the world's highest.

Other reports suggest the rate could be at near 15,000% and the International Monetary Fund had warned it could reach 100,000% by the end of the year. [via Marginal Revolution]

For Venezuela's sake, I hope someone explains what's going on in Zimbabwe to Hugo Chavez. As for you, Mr. Mugabe, I have two words: "Nicolae Ceausescu."

Damian P.

Update: speaking of Chavez, he's convinced CNN is trying to kill him. I knew that Jack Cafferty fellow seemed suspicious...

Driving a cab in Baghdad

It's still dangerous, but not as bad as it used to be:

In a city where few residents believe official statements on declining violence, whether from the U.S. military or the Iraqi government, some of the most reliable figures on security improvements can be found on the odometers of Baghdad's taxi drivers.

After years of sectarian warfare whittled down the list of neighborhoods where they could safely work, cabbies are once again crisscrossing nearly all of Baghdad. Every day they assess the constantly shifting boundaries between danger and security, hoping that life will return to normal, but mindful that this is still a city where anyone could be killed at any moment for no particular reason.

"There is a saying in Iraq that once you have seen death, you will not mind even if you have a life-threatening fever," said cabbie Haider Salim, 38, a resident of the Kadhimiyah neighborhood who drives a light blue Brazilian-made Volkswagen. "Of course Baghdad is still very, very dangerous. But we can live with this fever, because we are so hopeful that the situation will improve even more."

[...]

According to interviews with a dozen cabbies across the city, however, the mood now is far more hopeful than at any point since the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which plunged the country to the brink of civil war.

Abu Ahmed, 32, who lives just outside the fortresslike Green Zone, said that after the attack on the Shiite shrine, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, he could no longer drive on roads leading out of the capital. Even within the city, he said, it would have been suicide to travel to neighborhoods such as Ghazaliyah, Sholeh and Amiriyah.

"If you took a passenger to those areas," he said, "there was a good chance you would never come back."

Today, Abu Ahmed said, he takes passengers to any neighborhood in the city and any region of the country except for volatile Diyala province. "But I never go onto the side streets in the dangerous neighborhoods -- just the main roads," he said. "And sometimes I still have fear in my heart."

Damian P.

"Disciplinary wars" (wars of choice)...

...are a major conundrum for the US (and can lead to a nasty international image):

...more a matter of urgent choice than of absolute necessity.

I think of such wars as essentially wars of discipline. Their purpose is to preserve a favorable balance of power that is already in place in the world. We fight these wars not to survive but--once a menace has arisen--to discipline the world back into a balance of power that best ensures peace. We fight as enforcers rather than as rebels or as patriots fighting for survival. Wars of discipline are pre-emptive by definition. They pre-empt menace to the peaceful world order. We don't sacrifice blood and treasure for change; we sacrifice for constancy.

Conversely, in wars of survival, like World War II, we fight to achieve a favorable balance of power--one in which a peace is established that guarantees our sovereignty and survival. We fight unapologetically for dominance, and we determine to defeat our enemy by any means necessary. We do not harry ourselves much over the style of warfare--whether the locals like us, where the line between interrogation and torture might lie, whether or not we are solicitous of our captive's religious beliefs or dietary strictures. There is no feeling in society that we can afford to lose these wars. And so we never have.

[...]

...our great military might is not enough to compensate for our weak sense of moral authority, our ambivalence. If we have the greatest military in history, it is also true that we lack our enemy's talent for true belief. Our rationale for war is difficult to articulate, always arguable, and distinctly removed from immediate necessity. Our society is deeply divided and there is a vigorous antiwar movement ready to capitalize on our every military setback.

This is the pattern of disciplinary wars: Their execution is always undermined by their inbuilt lack of moral authority. In the end, our might neutralizes our might. Our vast power makes all such wars come off as bullying, even when we fight selflessly for the freedom of others.

Great power scares unless it is exercised within a painstaking moral framework. Thus, moral authority is the single greatest challenge of American foreign policy. This is especially so in wars of discipline, wars fought far away and for abstract reasons. We argue for such wars as if they were wars of survival because we want the moral authority that comes so automatically to them. But Iraq is a war of discipline, and no more. If we left Iraq tomorrow there would be terrible consequences all around, but we would survive.

Our broader war against terror, on the other hand, is a war of survival...

Pretty good analysis, I'd say. Especially in view of the constant video coverage of wars by western countries. Ever seen any video out of Kashmir? Just for some, er, perspective as to what gets our media's attention. Where's the outrage? Some background here, to this, not a "disciplinary war" in the eyes of the Indian government:

More than 42,000 people have been killed in the region since an insurgency broke out in 1989, officials say. Human rights activists put the toll at about 60,000 dead and missing....

Eighteen years and, right or wrong, the Indians are still fighting hard. Without too many people here in the west caring--though the Jihadis do. It's a war of survival for them too--bin Laden in 1999. Context, eh?

Mark C.

If only...

...we had political journalism in Canada like this. British journalism on the left ain't half-bad either--as for Gordon Brown's being "knocked down by a bus", he rather seems to have simply missed it. More from the Grauniad.

Mark C.

Update: A post at PajamasMedia provides an explanation (along with a Yes, Prime Minister video clip) of the comparative success of British print media compared to their US counterparts: "market segmentation" plus bias. Take that Walter Lippman.

Harperhitler

Chuckercanuck provides the thermometer of evil. How should it be administered? Quibbles invited as to method and gradients.

Mark C.

The latest blow to Hillary Clinton's campaign

The good news: she has a high-profile celebrity endorsement. The bad news: it's Barbra Streisand. (And I had her pegged as an Edwards supporter...)

Damian P.

Brave words from a Liberal

Whatever one may generally think of Ujjal Dosanjh (now critic for public safety), he's got the right stuff on this issue:

The Air India bombing and the issues it raises are not, sadly, simply a throwback to the mid-1980s.

Activists and journalists who cover these issues continue to receive threats. As recently as this past summer, I was the recipient of new threats. No one has ever been prosecuted.

My experience with terrorism and its proponents has led me to believe there are certain steps that should be taken to combat this threat.

The provisions in the Criminal Code should be reviewed and amended, if need be, to ensure that encouraging others to commit violence is made a criminal offence. For example, I received a threat last July on Facebook to the effect of: "I hope someone beats the living [expletive] out of you just like they did before when ur ass was crying in the hospital." I am advised that as far as current law is concerned, such wording is considered an expression of "opinion" and so is not prosecutable.

The glorification of terror and violence must be made an offence in the Criminal Code. This year alone, there were two significant publicized examples of terror being praised: floats at last spring's Vaisakhi parade in Surrey, B.C, were emblazoned with the picture of Talwinder Singh Parmar, the Air India mastermind. And a service honouring Parmar was held at a Sikh temple in British Columbia. These events send entirely the wrong message to anyone paying attention, particularly children.

Federal and provincial governments must work together to review the laws governing non-profit organizations to more effectively prevent terrorist financing from happening in Canada. A federal/provincial/territorial working group on non-profit status and charities would be very useful to ensure uniform standards across the country.

A lesson worth learning for us is that we in Canada are not immune from what has happened in such countries as France, the U.K. and Spain in terms of homegrown and terrorist violence. Air India was an earlier wake-up call that some of us took a long time to heed.

Finally, politicians must show leadership and not pander to minorities, no matter what the cause, if it even remotely involves the promotion, glorification or use of violence. If we believe -- as we claim to -- that Canada has to be an example to the rest of the world as a peaceful society, then we have to ensure that we nurture that peace actively and vigorously.

More from Jonathan Kay (National Post):

The courage of the 'blood traitor'

Mark C.

What does he think he is? Canadian?

In the unlikely event that John Edwards is elected President, you Americans are going to get publicly-run health insurance whether you want it or not.

Damian P.

Hindsight bias

ThinkProgress says the 62% of Americans who believe the government had advance warning of 9/11 are right:

The NY Post’s headline blares: “‘Blame U.S. For 9/11′ Idiots In Majority.” As frequent readers of this site are well aware, ThinkProgress does not condone 9/11 conspiracy theories which allege the attacks were an inside job. [The people in their comment section, on the other hand... - DP] But whether the Bush administration failed to heed warnings of a terrorist strike is not a conspiracy theory — it is a fact.

Here are some bits of information the NY Post may want to read up on:

1) Bush received intel briefing on Aug. 6, 2001 entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US.” The briefing specifically warned to “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks,” particularly targeted at New York.

2) CIA Director George Tenet briefing Condoleezza Rice and other top administration officials on July 10, 2001 about a specific urgent and looming threat from al Qaeda.

3) An FBI agent in Phoenix sent a memo to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, which advised of the “possibility of a coordinated effort” by bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools.

The alarming nature of the Scripps poll is not that 62 percent of Americans believe the government ignored warnings of 9/11; it’s that nearly 40 percent still aren’t aware of that fact.

In other words, the government was warned about the possibility of a terror attack, therefore they were warned about this terror attack. Richard Miniter responds:

...To prevent the 9-11 attacks (or any terrorist attack), intelligence officials need to know the target, timing, and type of attack, what counterterrorism researcher Kevin Michael Derksen calls “the three T’s of tactical intelligence.” Without knowing all three elements—when, where, and how—an attack cannot be stopped. If you knew that al Qaeda was going to attack the World Trade Center on September 11, but assumed a truck bomb attack, you would be inspecting cars while the planes crashed overhead.

A State Department intelligence officer once described the analytic side of the spy business this way:

“Imagine your boss… placing a lunch-size brown bag twisted at the top on your desk and asking you to tell him what the contents mean? Dutifully, you untwist the bag and spill the contents on your desk. The contents are some sixty pieces of a puzzle. As you look over the puzzle pieces you immediately notice that about one-third of [them] are blank, and another third appear to have edges that have been cut off. As you look at the pieces that have some part of a picture on them, you sense that this is really a mixture of about four different puzzles. Now keep in mind that you have no boxtop to tell you what the puzzle should look like and you do not know how many pieces are in the puzzle…welcome to the art of terrorism analysis. We rarely see a majority of the pieces of a terrorist threat puzzle. When we do, action is taken.

[...]

The only way that the president could have been warned prior to 9-11 would be if American intelligence had an “asset” among bin Laden’s inner circle in Afghanistan—and it did not.

Stubbornly, some believe that the CIA must have warned the president; essentially they assume that the CIA is omniscient. But as historian David McCullough, speaking in another context, told the Christian Science Monitor, “You can’t ever judge why people did things the way they did in the past unless you take into consideration what they didn’t know. Looking back, we say: They should have known, or listened to him or to her. It’s never that simple.’”

Why does this conspiracy theory linger? Historian Joseph E. Persico argues that it is simply human nature. Persico is an acknowledged expert on the last surprise attack on the American homeland, the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. He notes that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had some inkling of Japan’s dark designs before the December 7, 1941 attack. Relations between Washington and Tokyo had been souring for years and the U.S. was opposed to Japan’s bloody invasion and occupation of eastern China. So FDR knew that Japan might attack at some point. But there was no intelligence suggesting that Japan would attack at Pearl Harbor or when it would attack or how. Still FDR’s critics and many others continue to suspect that he knew all along and that he allowed Pearl Harbor to happen as a “backdoor to war.”

Bush's actions before and after 9/11 are legitimate targets for criticism, but pronouncements about "foreknowledge" of 9/11, an attack the likes of which the world had never seen, remind me of what people once thought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1988, everyone thought such a possibility was ridiculous. In 1993, everyone knew it was inevitable all along.

Damian P.

Update: some readers raise the issue of Bill Clinton's anti-terrorism policies and 9/11. His record is open to criticism just as much as Bush's, but there's also a lot of hindsight bias involved in blaming Clinton for attacks which occurred over eight months after he left office.

Good thing we still have Thomas Jones...oh, wait

The Cedric Benson experiment is over, at least for this season.

I was going to list some of the players the Bears could have taken 4th overall in 2005, but that was actually a pretty weak draft class. (Alex Smith went #1, for crying out loud.) Cadillac Williams (injury-prone) and Pacman Jones ('nuff said) went fifth and sixth. Shawne Merriman was a relative steal at 12th, if you don't mind the whole steroid thing...

Damian P.

Jack Layton's blinders (and our media's)

Jumpin' Jack is trying--fraudulently--to convince Canadians that the NDP has much in common with the victorious Australian Labour Party.

NDP Leader Jack Layton is rushing today to align himself with newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, promising an NDP platform in the next federal election that will closely follow the Aussie Labor leader's moderate formula...

But, as Norman Spector points out, this is "What any reporter covering Jack today should read" (so should Mr Layton):

...Labor Leader Kevin Rudd, only 11 months on the job, moved his party into the political centre, insisted he was an "economic conservative," and promised tax cuts and spending on health and education. With his cherubic face and carefully tailored suits, Mr. Rudd offered a reassuring persona to accompany his moderate policies...

They all should read this too:

...in another area of combat, Afghanistan, there have been suggestions that the new Australian government might even increase the numbers of its troops there from the current level of about 1,000.

Australian special forces are in a frontline role and a commando was killed on the eve of the election, the third Australian death in recent weeks.

Many Western governments have drawn a distinction between sending troops to Afghanistan and sending them to or keeping them in Iraq. They regard Afghanistan as an allied operation with a clear objective - to prevent the Taleban from returning to power in a country where it allowed al-Qaeda the freedom to plan its attacks...

More:

FACTBOX: Key policy themes for Australia's Labor

...keep and possibly increase troop numbers in Afghanistan...

So far I haven't seen that mentioned in any Canadian news stories or commentary (including Jeffrey Simpson's piece quoted second in this post) on the election. Odd, given the importance of the Afghanistan issue in our politics. Deliberate omission or simple ignorance?

Mark C.

Sean Taylor, R.I.P.

The Washington Redskins' safety died this morning after being shot in his home yesterday.

My morning paper said he was in critical condition and was responsive to doctors, but that the shooting damaged a major artery. I wasn't expecting this news. What a terrible waste.

Damian P.

"Greasegate", and CBC Newsworld on blogging

Further to this post, Maclean's writer Kady O'Malley was on CBC Newsworld's "Politics" Nov. 26 talking about how bloggers were dealing with "Greasegate" (my name for the affair). She quoted from my post above--go to 49:25 at the video--but then said that the Germans would be quite happy to have Mr Schreiber stay in Canada. As far as I know that is not true. This appears to be the situation from the German point of view:

...German authorities promised to make Schreiber available [in Germany - MC] for questioning in Canada's public inquiry should he be extradited.

Germany alleges Schreiber evaded income taxes on 46 million dollars by hiding commissions he earned for negotiating the sale of helicopters, aircraft and armaments.

Prosecutors also allege he bribed Germany's then-defence minister, Ludwig Holger Pfahls, to help secure the sale of 36 army tanks by German manufacturer Thyssen AG to Saudi Arabia, and defrauded Saudi Arabia by siphoning off large commissions in the deal...

Mark C.

Update: CTV's Mike Duffy, in an interview with Steve Madely of CFRA, Ottawa, makes it clear that the Germans do indeed want Mr Schreiber extradited promptly and are not pleased with our shenanigans:

The Germans are really put out. Speak to the diplomats at the German embassy privately, they'll tell you it's worse than a joke, they're very frustrated...

Lots more on the audio here, just after half-way through.

Justice Lamer

A long, distinguished career remembered. R.I.P.

Damian P.

"Club for Greed"

Robert Novak says Mike Huckabee is a "false conservative".

Mark C.

Update: Video of Mr Huckabee interviewed Nov. 25 on "Fox News Sunday" (and a transcript) available via this page, under "Choosing the President".

Devin Hester, you are ridiculous

He did it again. Twice.

Damian P.

Standing up to Chavez

By Hugo's own standards, 49% of his countrymen are traitors:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally.

Forty-nine percent of likely voters oppose Chavez's proposed raft of constitutional changes to expand his powers, compared with 39 percent in favor, a survey by respected pollster Datanalisis showed.

Just weeks ago, Chavez had a 10-point lead for his proposed changes in the OPEC nation that must be approved in a referendum, the polling company said.

Despite the swing, company head Luis Vicente Leon said he did not rule out a comeback by the popular president.

Chavez has trounced the opposition at the polls on average once a year and can deploy a huge state-backed machinery to get out the vote, Leon said.

[...]

"The debate over voting 'yes' or 'no' has burst into the very heart of Chavez's support base," Leon said in an interview. "We can see moderate Chavez backers ready to vote 'no' even though they like him."

Saturday's poll was the first Datanalisis survey in the campaign to project Chavez could lose. It also contrasted with the general trend of most other surveys taken earlier this month that have shown Chavez winning amid low turnout and despite widespread skepticism of his proposal.

Leon said the number of Venezuelans who say they will not vote has shrunk from a majority of voters to around 40 percent -- a change expected to boost the turnout of the opposition.

Will Chavez accept losing a vote for once? I don't see him as a man who gracefully accepts defeat...

Damian P.

Little science, much arts

The postmodern, post-colonial, Freud dude:

A new report by the American Psychoanalytic Association has found that while psychoanalysis — or what purports to be psychoanalysis — is alive and well in literature, film, history and just about every other subject in the humanities, psychology departments and textbooks treat it as “desiccated and dead,” a historical artifact instead of “an ongoing movement and a living, evolving process.”

[...]

Scholars in the liberal arts have tended to use Freud as a springboard to examine issues and ideas never dreamt of in his philosophy — like gender studies, post-colonial studies, French postmodernism, Queer theory and so on.

“American clinical psychoanalysis, and analysis as represented in academe, are at risk to become two ships that pass in the night,” the report said. As an example, the report points to a course on psychoanalysis and colonialism, two terms most clinically based analysts would never have imagined in a single sentence.

“I honestly couldn’t understand what they’re talking about,” said Prudence Gourguechon, the psychoanalytic association’s incoming president, referring to those kinds of courses...

Some serious revisionism on the dude here.

Mark C.

They don't make 'em like they used to

...and if you want to keep your car long after the warranty expires, that's a very good thing:

The number of vehicles 10 years old or older has increased steadily during the past decade, but statistics now indicate the numbers are accelerating dramatically.

Just as 60 is becoming the new 40 for fitness-conscious adults, 15 is starting to look a little like the new 10 in age among cars and trucks in Canada, industry watcher Dennis DesRosiers said yesterday.

"Canadian drivers are taking full advantage of their vehicles' increased usage potential by extending their ownership into previously unplumbed high-mileage territory," he said in an analysis on vehicle lifespans.

Research from DesRosiers Automotive Consultants and R.L. Polk Canada Inc. reveals the number of automobiles older than 10 years in Canada jumped to 6.7 million vehicles in 2006 from 3.9 million in 1990, which is an increase of 72 per cent.

Furthermore, the total number of vehicles older than 15 years has climbed by almost two million to 2.8 million since 1990.

In 2000, about 28 per cent of 15-year-old passenger cars remained on the road but the research found that last year, the number had climbed to 43 per cent.

Among nameplates, the research showed the survival rate for vehicles older than 15 years from offshore-based manufacturers including Toyota and Honda had shot up to 53.9 per cent last year from 30.5 per cent in 2000.

North American-based General Motors, Ford and Chrysler also had improved their survival rate for those aging vehicles to 43.7 per cent from 35.2 per cent in the same period.

The downside? Older cars' environmental impact:

...[DesRosiers] noted that if old autos stay on the road, it will take longer for more environmentally friendly and fuel-efficient vehicles to make an impact. A new vehicle emits 98 per cent less toxins into the air than a 15-year-old model.

"Keeping these old smokers on the road is definitely not good for the environment," he said.

DesRosiers also criticized lawmakers for focusing on forcing automakers to produce greener vehicles when the real challenge is how to reduce the number of older polluting autos on the road.

In Japan, tax rules make it very expensive for people to keep older cars, but such policies would be politically suicidal in Canada. Any other ideas out there?

Porsche is the durability champ, with over 97% of 11-15 year old models still on the road. They're very well-made, of course, but it's also safe to assume Porsche owners take much better care of their cars than, say, Saturn drivers. The biggest surprise is probably Subaru, which ranks in the bottom half (below the likes of Chrysler, Oldsmobile and VW) - but, then again, Subarus circa 1992 didn't have the cachet of their current models.

5.1% of 10-15 year-old Ladas in Canada are still being driven, and I have to admire anyone who can keep these things running.

Damian P.

M. Dion's preposterous priority

Here's the headline:

Schreiber's Cdn allegations trump German court case: Dion

In Canada all we have is a supposed political scandal of some sort. For all the efforts of the RCMP and others there are no, repeat no, criminal charges against anyone (and neither a public inquiry nor Commons committee hearings can lead to such charges). And if you believe there ever will be Canadian criminal charges arising out of Mr Schreiber's actions, find me a tooth fairy.

Yet for M. Dion, Canadian politics should supersede the trial in Germany of real criminal charges against Mr Schreiber. Here's a sample of what lies behind those charges--this was written in 2000, for pity's sake:

Just after lunch on Aug. 26, 1991, in the Swiss border town of St. Margrethen, three Germans converged in a shopping center parking lot. One of the men handed over an envelope containing $500,000 in cash. After a brief discussion, they went their separate ways.

Eight years later, the consequences of that meeting are rocking Germany's political Establishment to its core. The three who came together that day were Karlheinz Schreiber, a German-Canadian arms dealer; Walther Leisler Kiep, the longtime treasurer of Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union; and Horst Weyrauch, Kohl's trusted party accountant. The $500,000 passed from Schreiber to Weyrauch--payment, investigators suspect, for the CDU's support of a sale of 36 tanks by industrial giant Thyssen to Saudi Arabia. But this is not an isolated case of bribery. Prosecutors have established that the money landed back in CDU accounts. And that has led them to investigate a much broader web of corruption involving CDU finances and secret bank accounts run by former Chancellor Kohl.

[...]

How did it come to this? The CDU's troubles started in 1995, when prosecutors in Augsburg began investigating the dealings of arms dealer Schreiber. Investigators stumbled onto the $500,000 payment as part of a probe into commissions Schreiber received for lobbying work he did for Airbus Industrie and Thyssen in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It took them four years to amass evidence, but finally they issued a warrant for Schreiber's arrest on tax-evasion charges. Canadian police arrested the 65-year-old Schreiber in a Toronto restaurant last September [1999, good grief!]. He is now fighting the prosecutors' efforts to extradite him to Germany. In press interviews, Schreiber has said the payment was meant as a contribution to the CDU. BUSINESS WEEK could not reach him in Toronto for comment...

Should any Canadians actually be interested in the facts about what happened with any Airbus bribe money and Air Canada, it's a hell of lot more likely to come out in a German court than in any proceeding here:

Les procureurs allemands savent à qui Schreiber a versé de l'argent

[German prosecutors know who Schreiber greased with the money]

The Germans clearly believe they have some concrete things related to criminality--called evidence--that we do not have. And are unlikely to turn up in any sensible time frame. But M. Dion maintains we should not let that simple reality stand in the way of a great, if fruitless in any practical judicial sense, circus here.

Our political class are frankly juvenile beyond all reason if they do not see we have kept the Germans waiting long enough to deal with serious criminal matters. How would Canadians feel if the shoe were on the other foot?

German political uproar stops Schreiber extradition

Canadian criminal charges eight years old

Extradite Mr Schreiber immediately when judicial appeals have run their course. The Minister of Justice should not intervene.

Mark C.

What's the UN's exit strategy for the Congo?

The UN force, MONUC, was established in 1999. No doubt it is the sort of UN peacekeeping operation in which Canadians who oppose our mission in Afghanistan think we should participate, along with the UN mission in Darfur that just can't seem to get on the ground. One wonders why they think that way (in fact the Canadian Forces have ten personnel assigned to MONUC, along with eleven helping the existing African Union force in Darfur).

1) DR Congo threatens war on rebels

The head of the army in the Democratic Republic of Congo says he has given up all hope of a peaceful solution to the conflict in eastern Congo.

General Dieudonne Kayembe said force was now the only way to deal with dissident General Laurent Nkunda.

Fighting has continued in the North Kivu province for a third day, with government troops using heavy artillery against rebel forces in Rugari.

Gen Nkunda has threatened UN troops, accusing them of backing the army...

2) U.N. to help Congo disarm dissidents by force

U.N. peacekeepers will help Democratic Republic of Congo's army disarm eastern dissident groups by force in violence-plagued North Kivu province, U.N. and Congolese commanders said.

Army soldiers and fighters loyal to renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda clashed again on Thursday a few miles from Rutshuru, where the dissidents attacked an army base a day earlier and forced thousands of civilians to flee.

"Now that all peaceful means have been explored with no result ... we will enter into a phase where there is no other solution than to constrain them to (reintegrate) without delay or conditions," General Babacar Gaye, military chief of the U.N. peace mission MONUC, said in comments broadcast on Thursday on U.N. radio.

[...]

MONUC's 17,000-strong force has a mandate to operate with the army to reestablish security and protect civilians, but U.N. sources said for the time being it would limit its role to planning and logistical support for Congolese operations.

Sure doesn't sound very touchy-feely to me. For an example of the misinformation that a certain Canadian "expert", much loved by the media, spreads about the Congo (and other things) see this:

Fisking Michael Byers' bilge

More on Congo here, from August 2006:

Congo: Another brilliant result of "peacekeeping"

Mark C.

Howard's End

After 11 years in office, Australian Prime Minister John Howard - a stalwart American ally, and a leader who really understands the Islamist threat - lost the general election and his own seat:

Prime Minister John Howard of Australia suffered a comprehensive defeat today, with a coalition led by his Liberal Party losing its majority in parliament.

After four terms in office, he will be replaced by Kevin Rudd, a Labor Party leader and former diplomat. Mr. Rudd, 50, campaigned on a platform of new leadership looking for new answers for new challenges. He has said his first acts as prime minister will include pushing for the ratification of the Kyoto climate agreement and to negotiate the withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq.

The attempts by Mr. Howard’s coalition to stress their economic record failed to impress voters. The Australian economy has had 17 years of continuous growth, in latter years driven by Chinese demand for Australian iron ore and coal, and he had warned voters that a Labor victory would endanger the country’s future prosperity.

But despite the coalition campaign, there was little distance between the two parties on economic policy, and the defining characteristics came down to the personalities of the leaders and Labor’s promise to readdress broad concerns about the environment, health and education. Mr. Howard, 68, was running for a record fifth term in office, but many voters said they were ready for a change.

[...]

Early estimates had the Labor party gaining some 20 seats, to gain a14-seat majority in the 150-seat lower house. Television prediction seven had John Howard suffering the indignity of losing his own seat in the Sydney suburb of Bennelong in parliament to a former television anchor and rookie politician, Maxine McKew. He would be the first sitting Prime Minister to lose his seat since 1929.

“It is very likely the case that I will no longer be the member for Bennelong,” he said. Mr. Howard had represented Bennelong since he first entered parliament 33 years ago.

An understandably disappointed Tim Blair live-blogged the election. The environment, Iraq, and a general desire for change may have contributed to Howard's defeat, but The Times says labour reforms were a major factor as well:

Members of Mr Howard's own Government conceded last night that 68-year-old Howard's controversial Work Choices laws, which also curtailed workers' rights, were a major factor in his loss of Government and of his Parliamentary seat of Bennelong in suburban Sydney which he held for 33 years.

Australia's long-serving former Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, who left office in 1993, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) television election panel that it was ironic that Mr Howard's long political career had ended with the loss of his seat in Parliament.

He said that like Bruce, Mr Howard had been voted out because he had reduced workers' rights.

"It's a delicious irony and repetition of history," Mr Hawke told ABC television's election night panel.

The people have spoken, so there's no sense moping about it. I wish Mr. Rudd the best of luck, and I hope Australians appreciate the fine leader they had for the past decade.

Damian P.

The Maple Laffs Forever

"Toronto sports fans are either incredibly loyal--or incredibly stupid." A TV commercial for Bob McCown on The Fan 590, Toronto.

Mark C.

Damian adds: this guy compares the Leafs and the English national football team. If you're looking for me, I'll be over in the corner, weeping.

Update: The mind reels at where one finds the Laffs. This is from Airliners.Net. This Internet stuff is category confusing. Almost like the Bowl Championship Series.

Afghanistan is all about, er, copper

And China's there. So much for Cheney, Halliburton and Unocal. More on Afghan pipelines; and for the Chinese, in this case, oil.

One wonders if Ms Klein will be shocked, or if Linda McQuaig will fling some mud in another direction.

Ms Klein, I'm pleased to write, was chosen in Norman Spector's TODAY'S IDIOCY on Wednesday. Shocking, indeed.

Mark C.

Darfur never-never land

That hybrid UN/African Union force continues to be mainly a mirage:

...at the end of July, the United Nations Security Council decided [I fear my pessimism is still warranted - MC] to boost the AU mission with 12,500 soldiers, 6,400 police and a mandate with teeth. UNAMID, the hybrid UN-African Union mission in Darfur, came into being; at $3.5 billion for the first year alone, the most expensive UN mission ever. Germany, too, wants to participate, and the parliament in Berlin decided to send 250 Bundeswehr soldiers to Darfur. Even the Sudanese government agreed to the mission, with the condition that the overwhelming majority of the international troops in Darfur had to come from Africa.

But since then, Khartoum has done everything in its power to hinder the mission. It has gotten so bad that Jean-Marie Guéhenno, UN Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, warned last week in New York that the UN mission to Darfur may be facing failure before it has even begun.

[...]

The Islamist government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has shown extreme reluctance to allow non-African soldiers into his country. The UN, though, is insisting. There are no African units, it points out, that can do the jobs assigned to those soldiers waiting to enter Sudan: special forces from Nepal, engineers from Norway and infantry from Thailand.

Sudan's calculation is clear: Only a streamlined, efficient fighting force could earn enough respect in the region to put a halt to the fighting and disarm the Janjaweed. But Khartoum has no interest in seeing the war end. The African countries attached to UNAMID have already shown that they have little interest in confronting Sudan directly. The first soldiers sent -- a 22-person unit -- weren't even able to get enough fuel for their reconnaissance airplane. The mini-force hardly left Fashir, the capital of northern Darfur, and operated out of an office that suffered from frequent power outages.

[...]

...even if the UN/Africa force gets the green light from Khartoum, it is not clear that it could ever be effective. The logistical hurdles are immense. Most of the equipment for the force -- including weapons, materiel and food -- is to be shipped in to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. From there, it is a 10 day journey to Darfur, in the western part of Sudan, Africa's biggest country by area. But the biggest problem is that of supplying the troops with water...

The skepticism, in short, is everywhere. Few are willing to put much faith in a group of 26,000 soldiers asked to control a vast area full of rebels, government-sponsored troops and common criminals...

UNAMID is set to begin implementing its mandated tasks no later than the end of this year. Ongoing resistance by Khartoum, however, make that timeline unlikely. But even if the full allotment of UN and African troops are allowed to take up their positions, it is unclear that the conflict in Darfur will come to an end anytime soon.

Keep that timeline in mind.

Mark C.

Le jour de gloire est arrivé

Well, at least progress is being made:

France in no mood to say vive la revolution

As strikes appear to be losing public support, President Sarkozy's reforms gain favor.

[...]

The public has had it.

Mark C.

The Mirthmobile

The Amazon.com Automotive Editors' Blog makes the case for another much-maligned '70s car.

One of my first cars was a Pacer. Didn't have much room, though...

Damian P.

Real enemy identified

Thank you, Hollywood, for staying on top of the Christians-sacrificing-children problem that's plagued America for so many years.

I liked The Mist when I read it many, many years ago, but in an age when we're up against people who really do sacrifice children in the name of their faith, I'm just not in the mood to see more tiresome stereotypes about crazy Christers. The sad thing is, Stephen King and the filmmakers really do believe this kind of thing is "brave." (Once again, I applaud Grayson Perry for his honesty.)

Mind you, this kind of nonsense certainly doesn't help Christians' public image one bit:

The Centre for Inquiry and the Canadian Secular Alliance is calling an Ontario school board's decision to remove a children's book from its library shelves, "an overt example of the discrimination against atheists by the religious."

The Halton Catholic District School Board ordered "The Golden Compass" to be removed from library shelves at dozens of schools after receiving a complaint. It's reported the complaint was lodged because the author stated in an interview that he is an atheist.

The book, written by popular British author Philip Pullman, has won numerous awards including the Maine Student Book Award and the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults award.

Justin Trottier, executive director of the Centre for Inquiry Ontario, is urging the books be returned to shelves "so that libraries may continue to be places of learning and imagination."

Yes, it's a Catholic school board, though I note that Catholic schools in Ontario are publicly funded. But I always have a problem when a book is pulled from library shelves, especially when the decision comes in response to "a complaint." (Note the singular wording.)

Damian P.

Returning to Baghdad

Slowly but surely, Iraqis are trickling back to the capital as the security situation improves, according to the Washington Post. It's an encouraging development, but there's still a long way to go:

Days after she returned from Syria, 23-year-old Melal al-Zubaidi and a friend went to the market on a pleasant night to eat ice cream. It was a short walk, yet unthinkable only a month ago for a woman in the capital. Still, her parents were nervous, and Zubaidi wore a head scarf and an ankle-length skirt to avoid angering Islamic extremists.

The Zubaidis, a Shiite Muslim family, have yet to pass another boundary. When they fled Iraq five months ago, a Sunni family took over their large house in Dora, a sprawling neighborhood in southern Baghdad. When the Zubaidis returned this month, they were too scared to ask the new occupants to leave. So they rented a small apartment in Mashtal, a mostly Shiite district.

"Security is better," said Melal al-Zubaidi, who has a degree in engineering. "But we still have fear inside ourselves."

[...]

U.N. refugee officials estimate that 45,000 Iraqis returned from Syria last month, while Iraqi officials say 1,000 are arriving each day.

The returnees find a capital that offers greater freedom of movement. Shops are open later in many neighborhoods, and curfews have been reduced.

But those freedoms still come with constraints. Weddings, accompanied by honking cars and lively bands, are reappearing on the streets, but they still end before darkness falls. Visits to relatives and friends across Baghdad are more possible but still hinge on which group or sect controls each neighborhood. Some stores are selling alcohol, but fundamentalists watch for those who breach their codes.

Luay Hashimi, 31, returned to his house in Dora with his wife and three young children last month after fleeing to Syria nine months ago. Since then, 11 other relatives who also had left for Syria -- Sunnis like him -- have come back, too.

Hashimi no longer sees bodies in the street when he opens his front door. Sunni extremists no longer man checkpoints to search his vehicle for alcohol or signs of collaboration with the government or the Americans. Roads are being paved, and municipal workers are sprucing up parks and traffic circles. His patch of Dora is now a fortress, surrounded by tall blast walls that separate entire blocks.

The recent news from Iraq is extremely encouraging - but it's still way too early to declare the war won after all. Meanwhile, we shouldn't lose sight of trouble signs in Afghanistan.

Damian P.

Shocking Ms. Klein

Michael Moynihan responds to a leftist critic, who accuses Reason magazine of avoiding Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.

I haven't read the book, and this promotional film - cleverly featuring footage of electroshock therapy experiments, get it? - certainly won't get me to do so. Too bad Milton Friedman isn't around to defend himself.

Damian P.

He kept us out of war

Well, not in the way M. Chrétien (and most of our media) like to play the Iraq story, having forgotten the facts of only four and three quarter years ago.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien says one of the major victories in his career was standing up against pressure to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

[...]

However, Chretien, who has just published his memoir "My Years As Prime Minister," says there are moments in his long career that he is especially proud of, such as keeping Canada out of the Iraq invasion.

"For the independence of the country, saying no to the Americans on the war was a great moment for Canada," Chretien says.

"Of course it was not without risk. Suppose the war in Iraq had been a great success, I think it would have been a bit embarrassing for me. But I thought they were wrong and I said so."..

Er, no. There was no such principled position on the part of his government. They made it clear that they would go along with whatever the UN Security Council decided. The Council did not authorize an attack on Iraq as a result of Russian, Chinese and French opposition. So our prime minister made no great decision himself; he left Canadian policy in the hands of that nice troika. Some independent policy. A story Feb. 18, 2003:

After months of hesitation, Canada finally made it clear on Tuesday that it has no intention of contributing to a U.S.-led attack on Iraq that has not been blessed by the U.N. Security Council.

[...]

"The policy of the government is very clear. If there has to be military activity in Iraq, we want it to be approved by the U.N. Security Council," he continued.

[...]

Chretien and his senior ministers have consistently said that if the United Nations does sanction an assault on Iraq, Canada will take part [emphasis added].

Whether Canada's over-stretched armed forces could contribute much is questionable, since last week Ottawa announced it would send up to 2,000 troops for a year to take part in a U.N. peacekeeping mission based in Kabul...

Ah yes, the Kabul diversion. Whilst putting Canadian support of an Iraq war firmly in the hands of Russia, China and France, M. Chrétien had already made it impossible in practical terms for the Canadian Forces to do anything in Iraq should the Security Council approve an attack:

The former Liberal government led by Jean Chrétien rejected the advice of military commanders by deciding in early 2003 to send 2,000 troops to Afghanistan [as part of ISAF doing peacekeeping at Kabul--2004 update on that mission here], CBC News has learned.

[...]

The commander of the army at the time, Lt.-Gen. Mike Jeffrey...said the announcement of Canada's plans to send a battle group to Afghanistan — made in the House of Commons on Feb. 12, 2003 [emphasis added] — took him completely by surprise.

"I did not know when that announcement was made that the decision had been made to go," he said...

Perhaps good politics, but nothing to be proud of. Yet our media give this Liberal don a free ride and, moreover, are incapable of remembering what they were reporting such a short time ago. Isn't it wonderful what memory and Google can turn up?

Mark C.

Update: As for the current situation in Afghanistan:

Read them and draw your own conclusions

44 years ago today

...President Kennedy was murdered. This site has more than you ever wanted to know about the assassination, including responses to popular conspiracy theories.

Damian P.

Good news for NATO in Afghanistan

A post at The Torch (that ended up covering a whole lot more):

Dutch very likely to stay in Afstan until 2010

Mark C.

Damian adds: a new Senlis Council report contains some very discouraging news, however.

Paul Wells nails Don Jean

Nicely done:

Sorry, Jean Chrétien. You don't get to claim that the only reason Canadians are stuck in "killing fields" is because Paul Martin couldn't make a decision, and look down on other NATO countries for refusing the hard jobs. If your criticism of Martin has any meaning, the implication is that you'd have been as wily as any German Bundesweenie at skipping out of the hard jobs.

In fact, the comments in the La Presse article are profoundly distasteful at best. "When you go to war, some people die. Canada is ready but other (countries) aren't. But it's a collective responsibility."

But. If Chrétien were still in power in 2005, "I'd have stood up to NATO and to General Hillier and I would have told them we were staying in Kabul, or that we were going to the north of the country."

So if he'd stayed in power, collective responsibility would have been somebody else's problem. Nice.

Hugo just won't shut up

Though he's doing it to almost everyone else. From Terry Glavin:

Chavistas: Reporters Without Borders 'Working for US intelligence, Organizing Coup'

Mark C.

Damian adds: if this photo doesn't make you want to drive an electric car, nothing will.

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers.

Here in Canada, The Man says we have to work on American Thanksgiving, so I'm stuck following the Packers-Lions game on NFL.com. (Who would have thought that would be the most important game of the day?)

Damian P.

Update: looks like the real turkeys are wearing silver and blue today...

Update II: if you're stuck in the office, at least you don't have to watch Kelly Clarkson blowing out her vocal cords. Good Lord.

Update III: so, what's the most painful: the Jets' offence, Kelly Clarkson's singing, or Bryant Gumbel's announcing?

Please renew my subscription for the next 100 years

Celine Dion canceled her concert on the Halifax Common, allegedly after taking offense to a column in the Daily News. Who says public service journalism is dead?

Damian P.

Thoughts on Paul

Ilya Somin wonders just how "libertarian" he really is:

As the Club for Growth describes here, Ron Paul has opposed virtually all free trade agreements. Few ideas are more fundamental to libertarianism than free trade. As the Club has documented, Paul also has opposed school voucher programs. In both of these cases, in fairness, Paul claims that his position is based on the idea that some other approach - unilateral free trade or home schooling - is even more libertarian than what he opposes. Even if he is correct on these points, I see no libertarian virtue in supporting the far less libertarian status quo against free trade agreements and school vouchers respectively. Even if trade agreements and vouchers are not the optimal libertarian policies, they are surely superior to the status quo of tariffs and government monopoly schooling.

Perhaps worst of all, Paul has bought into the conservative nativist line on immigration. He not only favors a massive crackdown on illegal immigration but even seems to endorse the view that immigration should be "reduced, not expanded" whether legal or not. To my mind, the freedom to choose where you live and the right to move to a freer and more prosperous society are among the most important of all libertarian principles. From a libertarian perspective, our relative openness to immigration is one of the most admirable aspects of America.

[...]

Lastly, like David Bernstein, I am troubled by Paul's refusal to repudiate the Stormfront neo-Nazis, racists, 9/11 "Truthers," and other assorted wackos who have endorsed him. Paul is not responsible for the views of these people, and I do not believe that he personally agrees with them. However, his apparent unwillingness to distance himself from them suggests that he is insensitive to the despicable nature of their views, and the significant damage that association with them could do not only to his campaign, but to libertarian causes more generally.

Another Volokh Conspirator, David Bernstein, has more thoughts about the good doctor.

Damian P.

200 lashes

When I read that a Saudi court had sentenced a rape victim to 200 lashes, I thought they were medieval savages. Now that I've read their side of the story, I know they're...medieval savages.

Rich savages, unfortunately.

Damian P.

Anti-racsist, pseudo-intellectual totalitarians

Jonathan Kay (National Post) attends a conference on "Combating Hatred":

Then my panel began, and a middle-aged academic launched into a stream of jargon-laden duckspeak about "white privilege," "racialized spaces" and "existing paradigms of public discourse in the media." The larger point, buried in there somewhere, seemed to be that hotheads like me shouldn't be allowed to write the sort of thing that the Donald Wormes ["native activist and lawyer"] of the world find offensive...

Mark C.

If it's in the NY Times it must be...

...worth reading in this case:

Baghdad’s Weary Start to Exhale as Security Improves

Must be an awful lot of rotting socks out there today. Earlier good news here.

But Anne Applebaum sees bad news on a much broader stage.. I think she has a very good point, but her final sentence could be dead wrong. And if a Democrat is elected president (not that I'm advocating that) international opinion towards the US could turn quite rapidly:

...I have to say that this optimism is totally unwarranted. Not because things aren't improving in Iraq -- it seems they are, at least for the moment -- but because the collateral damage inflicted by the war on America's relationships with the rest of the world is a lot deeper and broader than most Americans have realized. It isn't just that the Iraq war invigorated the anti-Americanism that has always been latent pretty much everywhere. What's worse is the fact that -- however it all comes out in the end, however successful Iraqi democracy is a decade from now -- our conduct of the war has disillusioned our natural friends and supporters and thrown a lasting shadow over our military and political competence. However it all comes out, the price we've paid is too high...

Mark C.

Update: Even the BBC is getting on board. The horror! The horror!

Sticking with Musharraf

He's a man of his word, says President Bush:

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.

The comments, delivered in an interview with ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, contrasted with previous administration statements -- including by Bush himself -- expressing grave concern over Musharraf's actions. In his first public comments on the crisis two weeks ago, Bush said his aides bluntly warned Musharraf that his emergency measures "would undermine democracy."

The shift yesterday appeared part of a broader strategy to ease the crisis in Pakistan. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte carried a terse message to Musharraf during talks last weekend, urging the general to step down as chief of the army. Now, after this strong personal show of support from the president, the Bush administration expects the general to shed his military uniform before the end of the month, an administration official said.

[...]

Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said that "it's hard to imagine how the administration will be able to achieve anything in Pakistan if the president is so disconnected from reality."

"Almost everyone in Pakistan who believes in George Bush's vision of democracy is in prison today," Malinowski said. "Calling the man who put them in prison a great democrat will only discredit America among moderate Pakistanis and give Musharraf confidence that he can continue to defy the United States because Bush will forgive anything he does."

The "Bush doctrine" is dead. But you knew that already.

Damian P.

"Blasphemous Libel"

A British Christian group is trying to sue the BBC for broadcasting Jerry Springer - The Opera:

A Christian group trying to prosecute the producer and broadcaster of Jerry Springer - The Opera under blasphemy laws will take its case to the high court in London today.

Christian Voice wants to bring a case against Mark Thompson, the director general of the BBC, and Jonathan Thoday, producer of the award-winning musical, for blasphemous libel, but was refused permission by City of Westminster magistrates court. The group is hoping to launch what would be only the third prosecution in more than 80 years for an offence which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

[...]

Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said in 2005 that the show portrayed Jesus as a "coprophiliac sexual deviant". A coprophiliac is someone who is sexually aroused by faeces. The British musical, based on the US television programme, was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002. It moved to the National Theatre in 2003, and then to the West End. It toured the UK for 22 weeks in 2006, and is now showing in New York. The BBC televised the opera in 2005.

You're doing it wrong, guys. A few beheadings here and there, and no one will try offending you again.

Damian P.

Fair comment

Comparing an anti-gay activist to the Nazis or the KKK might be a bit extreme, but should the person who makes that comparison be held liable for defamation? The British Columbia Court of Appeal thought so in a 2006 decision. Canadian bloggers should keep an eye on this when it goes before the Supreme Court of Canada next month.

Eugene Volokh, meanwhile, has some concerns about a American decision holding the Fred Phelps mob - who are on the other side of the gay-rights controversy, to put it mildly - liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress after they held a characteristically sick protest at a soldier's funeral.

Damian P.

The Balkan powder keg

Stay tuned:

At the heart of the gathering crisis is the future status of Kosovo. The military intervention there in his first term is widely seen as Tony Blair's 'good' war - as against his 'bad' one in Iraq. The West acted to save persecuted Muslims. There was no dodgy dossier or mention of weapons of mass destruction. There was no oil at stake. Though there are these obvious differences, there is also a common lesson from Kosovo and Iraq. Wars are much easier to win than the peace. Intervention can be effective - as it was in Kosovo - in preventing the slaughter of civilians. Military action can remove dictators, as that conflict helped to trigger the removal of Slobodan Milosevic. But once a war is over, it is politics that has to deliver an enduring settlement.

Eight years after Nato drove out the Serbian forces [NATO is still providing the peacekeeping force there, under a UN Security Council mandate--sound familiar? - MC], the future of Kosovo is still contested. Europe has a massive stake in getting this right. Apart from the threat of renewed conflict, most of the overland drug and people trafficking routes go through the Balkans. Islamist terrorism is another reason for anxiety. The Balkans have been a training ground for jihadists. The European Union's long-term plan is to extend membership to all the ex-Yugoslav states, binding them into democracy, the rule of law and prosperity. Failure to peacefully resolve the future of Kosovo could be catastrophic and yet it is hard to see how success can be achieved.

The Kosovo Albanians - the vast majority of the province - want independence from Serbia. The most that Belgrade says it can tolerate is a loose autonomy. Europe, for all its pretensions to speak with one clear voice to the world, is divided. Greece and Spain have been wary of the idea of Kosovo becoming Europe's newest state. Madrid does not like to give encouragement to its own Basque secessionists. Greece is agitated about Macedonia. Britain and France and most of the rest of Europe favour an independent Kosovo under the novel concept of EU supervision designed to guarantee good behaviour towards its minorities.

Adding both complexity and peril, the future of Kosovo is entangled in the new Cold War between Washington and Moscow. America backs independence. Russia, traditional ally of the Serbs, is against. There was an attempt to come to a settlement earlier this year. It foundered when Russia declared that it would use its veto on the UN Security Council to prevent conditional independence for Kosovo.

Time is now very short. The mandate for the EU's peacekeeping force in Bosnia expires this week and it is contested whether it can legally continue if the Russians wield their veto. There is a 10 December deadline for agreement in Kosovo. It is almost universally expected there won't be any agreement. Then the really scary stuff threatens to start happening.

The Kosovans are talking about making a unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. That could set off an explosive chain reaction throughout the western Balkans as the Serb minority in Kosovo revolts and the government in Belgrade backs a breakaway by the Serbs in Bosnia. I don't like to predict the worst, but there is good reason to be fearful in a region seething with nationalist rivalries and ethnic hatreds and where thousands keep Kalashnikovs in their cupboards. One of the starkest warnings has come from the commander of the EU forces in Bosnia. He has talked about the need for Europe to be able to intervene militarily 'in the event of another outbreak of war'...

UDI by Kosovo on Dec. 10?

More after the jump...

Mark C.

Update: A pessimistic German view:

Conservative daily Die Welt writes.

"The elections do not mark the end of the Kosovo crisis, rather they mark the way towards difficult conflicts, which could become violent. The consequences will not be confined to the Balkans."

[...]

"If the north of Kosovo, which is mostly inhabited by Serbs, splits off from Kosovo and rushes into the open arms of Serbia, then the forces will be unleashed that showed their strength during the wars that marked the break up of Yugoslavia from 1991 and which could only been subdued from the outside -- with force."

"Is the EU and NATO ready for this? And where will the frontlines form? Firstly the Republika Srpska will break away from Bosnia-Herzevognia. The Europeans are involved there as they are in Kosovo -- in order to preserve a peace that was never anything more than a ceasefire [emphasis added]."

Meanwhile, inside the heart of Bosnia:

The Dayton Peace Accords called for the removal of foreign combatants from Bosnia after the Balkans war. But hundreds of mujahedeen fighters stayed, and today they are successfully spreading their fundamentalist Islamist views.

[...]

Wahhabism is quickly gaining ground in the country, with polls showing that 13 percent of Bosnian Muslims support the conservative Sunni Islam reform movement. The movement is financed primarily by Saudi Arabian backers, who have invested well over a half-billion euros in Bosnia's development -- especially in the construction of over 150 mosques. The 8,187 square meter (88,124 square foot) King Fahd Mosque in Sarajevo alone cost €20 million ($29 million), and it's also where radicals go to pray.

In trying to transform the country into a theocracy, the new preachers of fundamental Islam aren't just fighting with the Koran. In Kalesija, militant Wahhabis drove out the local imam after a fight between local Muslims and the Wahhabis. In the village of Dedici, residents took up their shotguns to defend their mosque against the attacking fanatics. Recently, the Careva Mosque (Emperor's Mosque) in Sarajevo locked its doors during prayer for the first time in its 441-year history when a group of Wahhabis tried to enter and perform their own prayer rites...