He's got a point

I don't think the Taliban are George Galloway's enemies, either.

Damian P.

Too late

A mistranslation? Doesn't matter now.

Damian P.

Films, funding and "censorship"

The Department of Canadian Heritage is "expanding slightly" the criteria for denying funding or tax credits to film productions featuring content deemed offensive. The Globe and Mail, true to form, tracks down some evangelist I've never heard of to take credit for the move and crow that he's stopped the federal government from funding movies that promote teh ghay:

A well-known evangelical crusader is claiming credit for the federal government's move to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content.

Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, and "numerous" meetings with officials in the Prime Minister's Office.

"We're thankful that someone's finally listening," he said yesterday. "It's fitting with conservative values, and I think that's why Canadians voted for a Conservative government."

Mr. McVety said films promoting homosexuality, graphic sex or violence should not receive tax dollars, and backbench Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers support his campaign.

"There are a number of Conservative backbench members that do a lot of this work behind the scenes," he said.

Mr. Day and Mr. Nicholson said through officials yesterday they did not recall discussing the issue with Mr. McVety.

Canadian Heritage officials confirmed yesterday they will be "expanding slightly" the criteria used for denying tax credits to include grounds such as gratuitous violence, significant sexual content that lacks an educational purpose, or denigration of an identifiable group. More details are promised next week.

Filmmakers and artists' groups, not surprisingly, are screaming that their constitutional rights are being violated, though one director seems to understand the real issue here:

Several powerful arts groups say the changes violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Yesterday, novelist Susan Swan, chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, pledged to lead her 1,600-strong membership in a protest.

"We're not going to sit back and accept this," vowed Ms. Swan, author of books such as The Wives of Bath and The Biggest Modern Woman in the World. "We don't like being told what kind of art we can make by the federal government."

Mr. Cronenberg, whose most recent film was the Oscar-nominated Russian mob thriller Eastern Promises, called the move an assault on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"The irony is that it is the Canadian films that have given us an international reputation [that] would be most at risk because they are the edgy, relatively low-budget films made by people like me and others that will be targeted by this panel," he said.

"The platform they're suggesting is akin to a Communist Chinese panel of unknown people, who, behind closed doors, will make a second ruling after bodies like Telefilm Canada have already invested."

[...]

Works by Martin Gero, the director of Young People Fucking (which opens in theatres in Canada in April), could also get a once-over from the panel.

"It seems ill-conceived from beginning to end, and is less about censorship than destroying the economic foundation of our entire industry," said Mr. Gero, who shot his debut feature film for $1.5-million with support from Telefilm and other government agencies. "It's old people fucking with the Canadian film industry."

I don't think the federal government is (or should be) telling anyone what kind of art they're allowed to make - simply what kind of art the government will fund with taxpayers' money. There's a difference.

The real issue is whether the government should be funding the arts at all. If it is, I personally think the criteria for determining "offensive" content should be very, very limited - certainly, much more restrictive than what Mr. McVety has in mind. But I don't think artists have a Charter right to money from the taxpayer, no strings attached.

On the other hand, if the government has decided to fund film production but uses religious criteria for determining what kinds of movies should be funded, then there may be grounds for a Charter case. (It's a little like the Sunday-shopping controversy: in the early days of the Charter, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Alberta's Lord's Day Act, but Ontario's store-closing law - which did not contain religious language - was upheld.) But I doubt the "Canada Family Action Coalition" (whatever that is) had as much of a role in this as the Globe or Mr. McVety seem to think.

Damian P.

Hezbollahpologists

A good piece by Michael Young about the far left's apologies, excuses and praise for an Islamist terror group:

...The party, though it is religious, autocratic, and armed to the teeth, often elicits approval from secular, liberal Westerners who otherwise share nothing of its values. This reaction, in its more extreme forms, is reflected in the way many on the far left have embraced Hezbollah's militancy, but also that of other Islamist groups like Hamas or Islamic Jihad—thoroughly undermining their ideological principles in the process.

The primary emotion driving together the far-left and militant Islamists, but also frequently prompting secular liberals to applaud armed Islamic groups as well, is hostility toward the United States, toward Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, and, more broadly, toward what is seen as Western-dominated, capitalist-driven globalization.

Fred Halliday, himself a man of the left, wrote scathingly of the dangers in the accommodation between Islamists and the left based on a perception of shared anti-imperialism: "All of this is—at least to those with historical awareness, skeptical political intelligence, or merely a long memory—disturbing. This is because its effect is to reinforce one of the most pernicious and inaccurate of all political claims, and one made not by the left but by the imperialist right. It is also one that underlies the U.S.-declared ‘war on terror' and the policies that have resulted from 9/11: namely, that Islamism is a movement aimed against 'the west.'"

[...]

...the reality is that Hezbollah is an immensely complicated question in Lebanon, where a majority of people are at a loss about what to do with a heavily armed organization that has no patience for state authority, that refuses to hand its weapons over to the national army, that is advancing an Iranian and Syrian agenda against the legal Lebanese government, and that functions as a secretive Shiite paramilitary militia in a country where sectarian religious assertiveness often leads to conflict. That many Lebanese should have seen [Norman] Finkelstein praise what they feel is Hezbollah's most dangerous attributes was surpassed in its capacity to irritate only by the fact that he lectured them on how armed resistance was the sole option against Israel, regardless of the anticipated destruction, "unless you choose to be [Israeli] slaves—and many people here have chosen that."

But Finkelstein is no worse than Noam Chomsky, or that clutter of "progressive" academics and intellectuals who, at the height of the carnage during the 2006 Lebanon war, signed on to a petition declaring their "conscious support for the Lebanese national resistance," described resistance as "an intellectual act par excellence" and condemned the Lebanese government for having distanced itself from Hezbollah, even though the party had unnecessarily provoked a devastating Israeli military onslaught that led to the death of over 1,200 people.

This behavior comes full circle especially for the revolutionary fringe on the left, which seems invariably to find its way back to violence. In the same way that Finkelstein can compare Hezbollah admiringly to the Soviet Red Army and the communist resistance during World War II ("it was brutal, it was ruthless"), he sees in resistance a quasi-religious act that brooks no challenge, even from its likely victims. What is so odd in Finkelstein and those like him is that the universalism and humanism at the heart of the left's view of itself has evaporated, to be replaced by categorical imperatives usually associated with the extreme right: blood; honor; solidarity; and the defense of near-hallowed land.(via Terry Glavin)

Damian P.

What? No existential threat?

David Ignatius writes about an expert's view on the future of Jihadism:

Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat -- and it's already clear that this will be a polarizing issue in the 2008 campaign -- should be required to read a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head and helps you see the topic in a different light.

[...]

The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into exaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda.

The numbers say otherwise, Sageman insists. The first wave of al-Qaeda leaders, who joined Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, is down to a few dozen people on the run in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The second wave of terrorists, who trained in al-Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, has also been devastated, with about 100 hiding out on the Pakistani frontier. These people are genuinely dangerous, says Sageman, and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a "clash of civilizations."

It's the third wave of terrorism that is growing, but what is it? By Sageman's account, it's a leaderless hodgepodge of thousands of what he calls "terrorist wannabes." Unlike the first two waves, whose members were well educated and intensely religious, the new jihadists are a weird species of the Internet culture. Outraged by video images of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq, they gather in password-protected chat rooms and dare each other to take action. Like young people across time and religious boundaries, they are bored and looking for thrills.

[...]

The third wave of terrorism is inherently self-limiting, Sageman continues. As soon as the amorphous groups gather and train, they make themselves vulnerable to arrest. "As the threat from al-Qaeda is self-limiting, so is its appeal, and global Islamist terrorism will probably disappear for internal reasons -- if the United States has the sense to allow it to continue on its course and fade away."

Sageman's policy advice is to "take the glory and thrill out of terrorism." Jettison the rhetoric about Muslim extremism -- these leaderless jihadists are barely Muslims. Stop holding news conferences to announce the latest triumphs in the "global war on terror," which only glamorize the struggle. And reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq, which fuels the Muslim world's sense of moral outrage.

I don't agree with all of Sageman's arguments, especially about the consequences of a quick drawdown in Iraq, but I think he is raising the questions the country needs to ponder this election year. If Sageman's data are right, we are not facing what President Bush called "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation," but something that is more limited and manageable -- if we make good decisions.

More on Mr Sageman here. I'd just note he seems not to take into much account the apparent broad alienation from their countries of residence of significant numbers of Muslims in the West. They may not be jihadis but neither do they seem to want to be part of us. Over time, if they do not integrate, that may indeed be an "existentialist" threat in the Steynian sense.

Mark C.

Thank goodness

We won't have Louise Arbour to kick around any more as UN Commissioner for Human Rights:

Arbour poised to leave UN post

[...]

Last month, she sparked a storm of protest when she issued a statement praising the launch of a new Arab human rights charter that includes a call for the elimination of Zionism -- language commonly considered code for the destruction of Israel.

She issued a clarification the next day, saying her office had pointed out the "incompatibility" of some provisions. It added the office continued to work for "the implementation of universal human rights norms."

But leading U.S. lawmakers wrote to Mr. Ban, saying her words flew in the face of what they understood to be his ideals.

"We remain highly concerned about Ms. Arbour's well-documented failures in judgment and sincerely hope that you will strengthen your efforts to reform the UN's broken human rights institutions," wrote Howard Berman of California and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking members of the foreign affairs committee in the House of Representatives.

In Ottawa, Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, also wrote to Ms. Arbour to say he was "troubled" by what she initially said.

U.S. officials were reportedly angered this month when Ms. Arbour spoke of Cuba's "unprecedented positive engagement" with the UN human rights system. She cited a few examples of progress, but critics said they were insignificant compared to Cuba's overall record.

Ms. Arbour has also been an outspoken critic of the U.S. use of water-boarding, saying the interrogation technique, which simulates drowning, qualifies as torture.

In November, UN Watch issued a report saying it had been unable to find any examples of her publicly confronting anti-Semitism while serving as the UN's chief advocate of human rights. But, her spokesman said Ms. Arbour had "continuously condemned the multiple forms of intolerance and discrimination, including anti-Semitism."

Mark C.

Bombardier blackmail?

One of our champion corporate welfare bums has raised a spectre:

Bombardier may move C Series work to U.S.

As Bombardier Inc. gets set to launch its new C Series airliner, the company is once again sparring with governments over financial aid.

The Montreal-based company is considering shifting major assembly work related to the new jet from Canada - and perhaps Northern Ireland - to the U.S., Pierre Beaudoin, the president of Bombardier Aerospace, said yesterday [Feb. 22].

The U.S. option - intended to counter higher currency costs in Canada and Britain - throws into question the financial commitments made two years ago by Canada, Quebec and Britain. Under terms of those agreements, up to 2,500 jobs were to be linked to C Series work in the Montreal area, and another 2,000 in Belfast, Northern Ireland...

Globe and Mail business columnist Konrad Yakabuski is not amused:

Who's more miffed that we're not going to the polls after all?

[...]

Trick question. The person most disappointed doesn't give a whit about politics even though he plays it well. Pierre Beaudoin, chief executive officer-designate atBombardier, would have loved to have watched the pols on the campaign trail outdo each other with promises of additional subsidies for the Bomber's resuscitated C Series project.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice can relax and evaluate Mr. Beaudoin's newest threat – to move final assembly of the proposed 110- to 130-seat family of aircraft to the United States – for what it is. There is no electoral knife at his throat requiring him to respond tout de suite to cries from unions, Quebec, Liberals or the Bloc to increase the $350-million in C Series aid Ottawa offered the last time around in 2005.

Back then, Paul Martin's Liberal government was faced with a similar ultimatum when Bombardier suggested the new plane might be built in New Mexico. Mr. Beaudoin even staged a photo op with Governor Bill Richardson to prove he was serious.

Mr. Martin's minority government was at the same time faced with a crucial confidence vote set for May 19, the loss of which would have forced an election. So it was that on May 13 came Ottawa's C Series package, which, coupled with the $118-million promised by the Quebec government, amounted to a record Canadian aerospace subsidy.

Alas, the election never came...

More after the jump.

Mark C.

Now, Bombardier wants an even bigger one or else – here we go again – as many as 2,500 Quebec assembly jobs could go south.

The price tag to develop the C Series has risen by $1-billion (U.S.) since 2005 to $3.2-billion. Bombardier says it needs governments to contribute a third of the total, so the combined aid previously offered by Ottawa, Quebec and the British government (£180-million, or $350-million Canadian) isn't enough.

Of course, that $350-million is today equivalent to 350 million George Washingtons, instead of $263-million (U.S.) in 2005. That should help, right?

...If the C Series was so risky back in 2005, it's not any less so in 2008. For every variable that's moved in Bombardier's favour since, others have moved the other way. Flying into Boeing and Airbus skies looks as kamikaze as it always has. Perhaps more so.

Under the original plan, Bombardier said the C Series would enter service in 2010, well ahead of a new generation of single-aisle planes from Boeing and Airbus. Back in 2005, the two behemoths were preoccupied with their B787 and A380 mega-planes. Under the new plan, the C Series won't be available until 2013. That doesn't give much of a lead over expected new 737s or A318s. And Boeing and Airbus aren't apt to concede any price war to Bombardier.

The C Series will need all the advantages it can get. Does Mr. Beaudoin need reminding that it's only by assembling the plane here that U.S. airlines – Bombardier desperately needs a big order from Northwest – can qualify for Export Development Canada financing? We didn't think so.

Like Mr. Richardson's presidential bid, it's hard to take Mr. Beaudoin's latest threat very seriously.

It should be noted that Bombardier's existing RJ series of planes has made quite a sales surge:

Bombardier RJ Business Charges Back

Best buys

The Consumer Reports auto issue is coming out soon, and for once, not all the top picks are Japanese:

...This year there were some surprises among the 10 categories, including Hyundai, which broke out with two Top Picks: the Elantra SE for Small Sedan and Sante Fe for Midsized SUV. Even a domestic vehicle managed to make it on the list (the first time in two years), with the Chevy Silverado 1500 Crew Cab earning a Top Pick in the Pickup Truck category. The rest of the honored vehicles all hail from Japan, including four Toyota models, one Mazda, one Infiniti and one Honda.

CR actually liked the Toyota Tundra better than the Silverado, but the Toyota had a below-average reliability record. (Cats and dogs living together! Mass hysteria!)

I'd still take a Mazda 3 over the Elantra, though. I'm curious to see how the Opel Saturn Astra tests.

Damian P.

Almost as messy as my office

William F. Buckley's work space.

Damian P.

Six Unimportant Things (II)

I've been tagged on my own blog, so here goes:

1. I hate eggs. Hate, hate, hate eggs. When I was a kid, I couldn't even sit at the table with anyone who was eating them, and even today I move things around so I won't be able to see them. That doesn't protect me from the smell, though.

2. I prefer overcast days to sunny days, especially in the winter. There's nothing worse than trying to drive when the sun is glaring off the snow and wet pavement.

3. Cars I've owned: 1995 Honda Civic, 2000 Ford Focus, 2001 Mazda Protege, 2004 Mazda 6.

4. Towns and cities in which I've lived: Mount Pearl, NL; Fredericton, NB; St. John's, NL; Torbay, NL; Corner Brook, NL; Halifax, NS; and, when the new house is built, Dartmouth, NS.

5. My favorite meal: chips and a turkey roll from Fabulous Foods (aka "Chalker's") on Merrymeeting Road in St. John's.

6. I was completely obsessed with Archie comics as a child. I still have many of them (and many more in my parents' house), and I will never get rid of them.

Tagged: Tex, Kathy Shaidle, Iowahawk, Rob Breakenridge, Colby Cosh and Meryl Yourish.

Damian P.

Latimer paroled

I suspect many Canadians feel as I do: that in taking the life of his daughter, whatever his intentions, he committed a terrible crime - but that he poses no threat to public safety, and that he's several orders of magnitude less dangerous than many people put back on the streets every day.

Robert Latimer is to be released from jail as soon as a bed can be found for him in a halfway house. In an unexpected decision released Wednesday, the Appeal Division of the National Parole Board reversed a December ruling by the Pacific regional office of the board denying Latimer day parole.

"He's going to be released in the next few days," said Nadine Archambault-Chapleau, a spokeswoman for the National Parole Board in Ottawa.

[...]

Laney Bryenton, executive director of the B.C. Association for Community Living, said that her group accepts the appeal decision, but continues "to be concerned that Mr. Latimer has shown no remorse."

Ms. Bryenton is also worried that Latimer has chosen Ottawa to live in a halfway house that he can lobby the federal government over the issue of euthanasia.

Bryenton said that Latimer continues to argue that "he shouldn't have gone to jail and that what he did was right - and we take profound exception to that."

His lack of remorse is disturbing, but I still prefer it to the common strategy of simply telling the parole board what they want to hear.

Damian P.

For all Canadians who love the Democrats...

Be careful what you wish for (there's this too):

Clinton and Obama vow to reopen NAFTA

Both Democrats make commitment in final debate before next week's crucial primaries

Mark C.

Update: Say it ain't so. It was all, gasp, insincere politics!

Obama's Sotto Voce To Canadians: I'm Demagoguing On NAFTA

Not that we Canadians are unfamiliar with such insincere withdrawal platforms:

...Over just a handful of days, the official Opposition effectively endorsed the government's handling of the extended [until 2011] Afghanistan mission...

Is Ruritania next?

Zenda alors!

'The Fortress of Liechtenstein Is Wobbling'

Possible Mulroney/Schreiber angle?

Tax evasion probe spreads to Canada

Authorities are reviewing client data allegedly stolen from LGT, a Liechtenstein bank, to see who owes money

Mark C.

"Six unimportant things"

Damian Brooks has tagged me for this. But it ain't no stinking "meme", it's a round-robin game:

1) I like going to Budgen's in Holt, Norfolk.

2) I hate Fox Sports Radio but sometimes at night can find nothing else on the AM dial; much prefer WFAN, New York or WMVP (ESPN), Chicago.

3) Movies I really like: "Dr. Strangelove", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Diner", "Sea of Love", "Tunes of Glory", "Dial M for Murder", "The Philadelphia Story", "Terminator 2", "Fargo".

4) The best weather is a bright, blue and sunny day in Ottawa, snow on the ground, and between minus 10 to 20 C.

5) The older I get, the more I like wearing track pants ("Track Pants Media?").

6) Kippers are my favourite food (Winnipeg Goldeye would be right up there, but try to get it outside Manitoba).

According to the apparent rules one must tag six others. Since I'm not going to bother to send each a message, how they (DP aside) will realize this honour knows only the Net:

Damian Penny

Terry Glavin

Chuckercanuck

David Pugliese

Norman Spector

John Robson

Mark C.

"Klansmen for Obama"

Well, not quite. But according to The New Republic, white supremacists and neo-Nazis don't seem as perturbed as you might expect by the prospect of an African-American President. Needless to say, they don't like Obama by any means, but they don't appear to think he's any worse than his white opponents. (via Hot Air)

...far from railing at Obama's rise, [David] Duke seems almost nonchalant about it. Self-described white nationalists like himself, he explained cordially, "don't see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton--or, for that matter, John McCain." Sure, Duke considers Obama "a racist individual," citing his Afrocentric Chicago church. But soon the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People was critiquing Obama as overhyped and insubstantial in terms you might hear from, say, Clinton strategist Mark Penn. "They say he's for change. What change? He's become almost a cult figure. I don't see any shining light around Obama's head. I don't see any halos," Duke said.

[...]

After Obama won the Iowa caucuses last month, Mark Potok, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, decided to survey the latest writings of the major right-wing hate groups he regularly monitors. How would America's vilest race-mongers respond to a black candidate's victory in a white Midwestern state? Again, the response was counterintuitive. "It was extremely weak," Potok says. "You could find people saying nasty words about Obama, but it wasn't red-hot at all."

That has remained the case even as Obama has become the front-runner. On several websites, forums, and online journals that promote the view of white superiority over blacks--the types of outlets that rejoiced over Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the Lower Ninth Ward--there is precious little discussion of Obama's campaign. The day after Obama's blowout win in Wisconsin, for instance, the home page of the poisonous Vanguard News Network featured stories on Serbian nationalism, home schooling, Holocaust-denial, and Pat Buchanan--yet nothing about Obama. It turns out that, although the white right certainly has no love for Obama, its hatred of him is muted--and directed less at Obama himself than at other nefarious forces behind him.

These "nefarious forces"? The white liberals presumably pulling Obama's strings, and - you guessed it - the Joooooooooos:

...It turns out that what truly animates the white supremacist contingent these days is not racism but anti-Semitism. The black man is of trifling concern next to the "Zionist Occupation Government," or ZOG, a term that describes puppet regimes of the global Zionist conspiracy. As one commenter on the popular white-power Web forum Stormfront explains it: "The blacks would be a non-factor if it weren't for the ZOG's legislations and skullduggery (civil rights act, hate crime laws, affirmative action, welfare, forced integration, etc etc ...), allied with a compliant media that promotes black worship." Thus, when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published an anodyne article on Obama's support among American Jews, white-power sites like National Alliance News ("your single source for worldwide pro-White news") quickly pounced. "Barack Obama: The Jewish Connection" came the breathless headline. (Never mind that Obama has had a rockier relationship with the American Jewish community than has Clinton.) "[U]ltimately he's just another Jew puppet," concludes another Stormfront commenter. "I look at his foreign advisers," adds David Duke. "[They're] Israeli supremacists. He's even got Dennis Ross!"

An interesting phenomenon (perhaps better described a non-phenomenon) considering how many so-called "progressives" are convinced the radical right will gun Obama down any minute now.

Or could it be that the Klan is just getting soft?

Damian P.

He'll always have Pyongyang

Michael Moynihan on Tom "Yes, he's still alive" Hayden's pilgrimage to Vietnam:

All of this growth, Hayden writes, "has come at the price of rising inequalities." Rather than the whole country living in grinding poverty, now only some do. ... Poverty has been significantly reduced as a result of Vietnam's partial embrace of markets and introduction of mild economic reforms. But behind every silver lining, Hayden finds a dark cloud: "[G]rowth has created catastrophic problems of infrastructure, traffic congestion and pollution." Traffic congestion? Recall that in 1979 Joan Baez, supported by concerned antiwar activists like Allen Ginsberg and Norman Lear, took out full-page advertisements in five major American papers appealing to the government of Vietnam to stop brutalizing, torturing and "reeducating" its citizens. Hayden and [Jane] Fonda refused to sign the document. And now he's bitching about traffic congestion and pollution.

Damian P.

Standing athwart history...

William F. Buckley, Jr., R.I.P.

Damian P.

"Idiocy of the day"

Norman Spector sends a memo to Linda "Bully" McQuaig:

Canada's military-industrial complex (McQuaig)

"In a defining moment for Canada, Jean Chrétien resisted U.S. pressure and kept Canada out of Iraq.

Now Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, in another historic moment, has shown that Chrétien's display of backbone was a one-time Liberal offering.

Dion's capitulation to the Conservatives and to the pro-war wing of his own party means that Canada will continue to fight America's war in Afghanistan until 2011 – despite clear public sentiment against the war."

Memo to McQuaig: JC also ‘defined’ us into Afghanistan, seconded by Paul Martin

Mark C.

Dion punts

The Globe and Mail describes the new federal budget as "parsimonious," but the Liberals won't vote against it:

Despite the budget's lack of significant tax or spending measures, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion immediately announced his 94-member caucus won't trigger an election by voting against it.

The budget is the smallest in 11 years – since Ottawa balanced its books – and represents a deliberate decision by the Tories to restrain spending rather than break open the kitty to meet a cacophony of demands for help as Canada's economy slows.

For example, the Tories could have spent a budget surplus that's swelled to $10.2-billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, but instead announced they'll use all of it to pay down federal debt.

To a large extent, the Tories are cash-starved by design: Last fall they used up most of the surplus on $14.7-billion of annual tax cuts. It was a move designed to deny opposition parties fiscal room with which to plan campaign promises for a possible 2008 election.

[...]

In this new cash-constrained environment, spending rises only 3.4 per cent next year, a dramatic shift after the first two years of Tory budgets expanded federal program spending by 14.8 per cent.

But even as they plead penury, the Tories loaded what they bet was enough spending in the budget that they could run an election on it if necessary.

The budget sprinkles cash across a range of groups from seniors to students, infrastructure-starved cities, police and veterans – spending designed to inoculate the Tories from public criticism that they did nothing as economic turbulence hit Canada.

Tory strategists are betting this fiscally prudent middle path will strengthen their appeal to what they call “Conservative-Liberal vote switcher” electors – particularly those in suburbs around Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, where the Conservatives want to gain seats.

These voters are fiscally conservative and cherish a tough no-deficit policy in Ottawa, strategists say, but they also want to see the government make incremental progress rather than “big splashy” efforts on other spending priorities.

According to Jane Taber, Stephane Dion (and Michael Ignatieff) wanted to trigger an election, but the leader was overruled by his followers:

Stéphane Dion followed the script developed by his senior caucus leadership as he announced yesterday that there wasn't enough in the Harper budget to justify an election.

The Liberal Leader, who insiders say wants an election, did not look like a happy man as he emerged from the House of Commons lobby, hand-in-hand with his wife, Janine Krieber, and as per the strategy told reporters that, although he didn't like the budget, the Liberals would allow it to pass.

The fact that his wife was there supporting him shows how difficult this has been.

His decision yesterday was the result of a long and testy meeting Monday morning with his key MPs and senators.

[...]

...[Ignatieff] was shot down, most significantly by national campaign co-chair David Smith, a veteran organizer and senator from Ontario. Mr. Smith said simply that the party wasn't ready to mount a national campaign, one insider said.

Others argued that they should not acquiesce to Mr. Harper by triggering an election that he seems to want; the election should be called on their terms and timing.

"It's a mess," said one MP about the state of play in the caucus over triggering the government's defeat. Some MPs believe that if the campaign team is not ready, after being put on notice as far back as the fall, then the leader should fire them all.

All that talk about the inevitable spring election seems like a distant memory now, doesn't it?

Damian P.

A panel I'll just have to miss

Sadly, I'll be having lunch with a friend and probably end up talking tanks and suchlike things:

FORUM: AFGHANISTAN 2020

Achieving a Diplomatic End to the War

February 27, 2008

9:30–12:00

165 Sparks St, Room 2-2

Via Terry Glavin. Twelve years of jaw-jaw, I guess, unless the Taliban don't take over sooner. More on the Rideau Institute here.

Mark C.

On second thought, maybe I will give vegetarianism a try

The A.V. Club staff taste-tests the infamous cheeseburger in a can.

Pray for The A.V. Club staff.

Damian P.

Terry Glavin takes on Mr Layton again

First at his blog; now in the Vancouver Sun:

Taliban Jack: How the NDP lost its way on the Afghan war

Mr Glavin points out, amongst other things, the important role of some stinking maggots burrowing within Jack's party.

Mark C.

Update: Mr Glavin also has a good post on the crushing defeat of the Islamists in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province in the recent elections:

The Pashtun "Red Shirts" Trounce The Jihadis At The Polls

An ugly meme spreads

Aussies jump on the Obama-is-gonna-get-shot bandwagon.

Do people like Phillip Adams really fear this possibility, or do they subconsciously hope for it? One of Blair's readers puts it best: "there is a certain type of liberal who is more interested in seeing every wicked thing he believes about America proved to be true, than in witnessing even his own utopian dreams come to fruition."

Damian P.

We're number eight

The top 25 Canadian political blogs are listed here. Number one is certainly no surprise, even though only part of his site is a blog in the traditional sense.

Damian P.

What the Canadian media don't want you to know

The positions of Senators Obama and Clinton on Afghanistan. Though our media are overwhelmingly pro-Democratic this is the dirty little secret that they very rarely mention--it might confuse Canadians, don't you know:

[...]

Senators Obama and Clinton have tacked in the opposite direction [from Sen. McCain]. Iraq, they argue, makes Afghanistan more dangerous. The Iraq war, Mr. Obama told an audience of supporters in Houston last Tuesday, “distracted us from the fight that needed to be fought in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda. They’re the ones who killed 3,000 Americans.” He has said that if elected, he would deploy at least two additional brigades in Afghanistan.

Senator Clinton, who has been to Afghanistan three times, holds a similar position, her aides say, except they say that she hasn’t specified how many additional brigades she would send to Afghanistan because she wants to further explore the security situation there first. Mrs. Clinton has proposed appointing a special envoy to deal with the Afghanistan/Pakistan border...

The Toronto Star had the good grace to print this letter of mine on the candidates' positions. Their editorial board, on the other hand, nicely managed a bit later to avoid this, I guess, rather too sensitive subject.

The Globe and Mail, for its part, did not print this Feb. 16 letter of mine:

John Ibbitson, in his review of Barack Obama's foreign policy positions ("Can Obama hit a curveball? [full text payer only]", Feb. 16) makes one remarkable omission. He never mentions Mr. Obama's position on Afghanistan, surely the issue of most relevance to Canadians.

Canadians appear to favour by a large margin the Democrats over the Republicans in the presidential race. So it seems to me they should be informed that Mr. Obama has said in a major foreign policy speech that he wants the US to send more troops "to re-enforce our counter-terrorism operations" in Afghanistan and that he also wants European members of NATO to eliminate the caveats that prevent their forces from fighting.

While Mr. Obama wants to get the US out of Iraq as fast as responsibly possible (a position that appeals greatly to many Canadians), he clearly intends no such action regarding Afghanistan. In fact his robust views on Afghanistan are fairly close to those of the Conservative government and poles apart from the "no combat" Liberal policy. Hillary Clinton's approach is not much different from Mr. Obama's.

It is important, when considering what our country should do in Afghanistan, that Canadians be aware of the plans of the two Democratic presidential candidates--one of whom has a very good chance of winning the office.

I copied Mr Ibbitson on the letter. He replied:

fair point, actually.

Says it all.

Mark C.

It's not just the Republican base...

...that is unhappy about a certain NY Times story on Senator McCain. It's also the Gray Lady's Public Editor:

...A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.

[...]

I asked Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, if The Times could have done the story and left out the allegation about an affair. “That would not have reflected the essential truth of why the aides were alarmed,” she said.

But what the aides believed might not have been the real truth. And if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed.

The Globe and Mail could certainly use a public editor (see also the Update here).

Mark C.

A lesson from the red carpet

Always wear a motorcycle helmet, kids.

Damian P.

The Captain is dead, long live the Captain

Ed Morrissey is shutting down his blog and moving to Hot Air.

Damian P.

Is it over?

Yeah, it's over. Andrew Sullivan writes the epitaph.

Damian P.

The wheels of war

First the road testing (the Canadian Army also now has Buffaloes and Cougars in Afghanistan):

[...]

A few weeks later in Charleston, S.C., I drove a hulking Buffalo at the instruction center for another MRAP [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected} manufacturer, Force Protection. A whining turbocharger signaled steady if not brisk acceleration to near the top speed of 60.

Another Force Protection MRAP, the 4-by-4 Cougar, is about 100 inches shorter than the Buffalo. Not surprisingly, when I drove the Cougar, it felt like a sports car by comparison, with quicker acceleration and a tighter turning radius. Still, with its roaring engine and climate-control system, you’d never mistake it for the smaller up-armored Humvee.

As a passenger riding in the back, I expected that the rear troop compartment in these vehicles would be cramped. But with comfortable seats mounted against the walls, each MRAP offered a fair amount of legroom, while the small windows let in ample light. Of course, had I been loaded with a gun, backpack, body armor and survival gear, my ride would have been a little different.

Now the main story:

Big Wheels for Iraq’s Mean Streets

Mark C.

Apparently, we support vandalism now

So says Mr. Nuance, anyway. He really doesn't look like a man who's winning an argument, does he?

Damian P.

Update: Kinsella updates his post, and inadvertently undermines his own argument:

In linking to this Gazette column, Kathy Shaidle - who professes to be a Christian - calls the young Muslim students who objected to Mark Steyn calling them vermin, "motherf**king parasites." If you are getting the impression that simply quoting Steyn's acolytes is enough to horrify most right-thinking people, you'd be right. That's why I quote them so often. There's nothing I can say that damns them more effectively than their own words.

The thing is, this is basically my argument against criminalizing offensive speech. If Mohammed Elmasry believes all Israeli adults are legitimate targets for terrorism, or if David Ahenakew believes Hitler was on to something, I want them to feel free to tell us about it. Heck, I want them to shout it from the rooftops. Otherwise, I might be fooled into taking their opinions on other subjects seriously.

Question: if hate speech should be censored by the government, why does Kinsella reprint it and link to it on his own blog? (Because you're a bigot, that's why.)

The "right" to respond

The law students who launched the Mark Steyn human-rights complaints (actually, Mohammed Elmasry launched the complaints, but never mind) state their case in the Montreal Gazette:

In our case we have filed human-rights complaints, not because Maclean's published 19 inflammatory articles focused on Muslims, but because it refused to publish a mutually acceptable counter-article on the first occasion that the Muslim community asked for one.

The issue is the right of our community to participate in Canada's national discourse on issues that relate directly to us, and not to be excluded. The objective is not to take a discussion of Islam off the table, but to make that discussion more inclusive.

A Google search shows that the students have recently been published in The Globe and Mail, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the London Free Press, the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star and even the National Post. Frankly, I'd say more people have had the chance to read their position on the issue than the Maclean's book excerpt that started the whole mess.

My suggestion to them would be that they start a blog. At some places they can do it for free, for crying out loud. And then, when they post something that offends me, they have to give me all the space I want to respond on their site, since that's evidently an inalienable human right these days.

Damian P.

Joke of the day

Good grief:

Ralph Nader announces third presidential run

Mark C.

Damian adds: Nader hasn't run for President as often as Harold Stassen, Lyndon LaRouche or Pat Paulsen, but the guy's only 73 years young (74 this Wednesday).

The campaign bus is ready to go.

It wasn't supposed to turn out like this

Tom Hayden, an old leftie, is rather disappointed with modern Vietnam (via Arts & Letters Daily):

During Christmas 2007 I traveled back in time with my family, to Vietnam, for the first time in thirty-two years. I was feeling a deep need to see the place once more, a regret at having withdrawn from a country I had visited four times during the war...

Now, suddenly for me, it was Christmas 2007 and Vietnam was ablaze with festive holiday lights, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. Though billboards of Ho Chi Minh were pervasive, the most ubiquitous bearded one this Christmas season was Santa Claus, beckoning shoppers from department store doorways, seen incongruously riding motorbikes, waving to little children. Spectacular strings of red and green lights were draped over the streets and stores, blinking at thousands of Vietnamese rolling along on bicycles and motorbikes, parting smoothly like schools of fish around pedestrians crossing the street. Restaurant-goers applauded Christmas carols sung by young Vietnamese women strapped in Heineken Girls sashes. None of this was about Jesus--Christmas is not a tradition in this Buddhist and secular-Marxist country--but all about corporate branding. The fancy Diamond department store next to Independence Palace was filled with shoppers, gawkers and Santas wandering the aisles of Lego, Calvin Klein, Victoria's Secret, Nike, Converse, Estée Lauder, Ferragamo and Bally. The nearby Saigon Centre bore a billboard proclaiming, More Shops, More Life.

Far be it from me to question the desire of Vietnamese to share our globalized consumer culture like everyone else, or to reject their aspiration to be the next Asian Tiger, or freeze them in memory as icons of selfless revolutionaries. Gentrification and consumerism, after all, have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen. It seems the way of the world. As I walked through the busy Christmas streets, however, I was gripped by the question of why the Vietnam War was necessary in the first place. Why kill, maim and uproot millions of Vietnamese if the outcome was a consumer wonderland approved by the country's still-undefeated Communist Party? The whole wretched American rationale for the war, that Vietnam was a dangerous domino, a pawn in the cold war, seemed so painfully wrong. Was there any connection between destroying so much life and causing the Vietnamese to go Christmas shopping? Would the same outcome--a one-party socialist government leading a market economy--have occurred in any event, without the destruction? Now that US naval ships were paying peaceful visits to Da Nang, this question nagged at me: is it possible that Marxism and nationalism won the war but capitalism and nationalism have won the peace?..

Too bad, Tom.

Mark C.

By George...

...Tony really seems to have done it. But it will take quite some time, if ever, for North American open-wheel racing to approach its late 80s/early 90s great days. I think an oval should be built in the Toronto area, both for open-wheel and NASCAR. Open-wheelers, with luck, could also still run Montreal and Edmonton. The one track I'll really miss is Cleveland, the most entertaining of all with its echo of post-WW II airfield racing.

Mark C.

Damian adds: people who want to see oval racing can watch NASCAR. Except for the Indianapolis 500, I still think the new IRL/ChampCar series should stick with road courses.

I don't care for street races anywhere except Monaco, so I'm with Mark on the idea of building a new track in southern Ontario. But instead of a new oval, how about bringing legendary Mosport up to standard?

Time to stop believin'?

Another new Chrysler product, another disappointing review. The cheap-looking interior, in particular, is a serious problem.

I honestly can't remember the last time I saw an automotive magazine or website rave about a new Chrysler product. (Probably the Charger, which came out in early 2005 as a 2006 model.) The Liberty and Avenger finished last in recent Car and Driver comparison tests, while the new minivan came third out of five (ahead of Nissan and Hyundai products, but behind the Honda Odyssey and aging Toyota Sienna). The Liberty is also panned on the latest Autoblog podcast, but the ultimate humiliation might have been Chrysler management's own take on the Sebring and Nitro:

A top Chrysler Group executive said in a recent frank internal question-and-answer session with employees that the automaker seriously misjudged the market in developing the panned Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Nitro last year, and is swiftly moving to improve current and future vehicles.

Answering often pointed questions from employees on Chrysler's internal Internet system, Bob Lee, head of powertrain engineering, acknowledged that many people at Chrysler are "outraged" over the issues with the Sebring sedan and Nitro SUV, according to a copy of the Q&A obtained by The Detroit News. Both vehicles received highly critical evaluations from Consumer Reports, which is influential with car buyers.

Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda and Chief Operating Officer Eric Ridenour are "quite upset" and agree the company "missed where the market was to end up versus our projections," Lee wrote.

Chrysler underestimated competitors, set standards too low in some areas and was not where it needed to be in areas such as fuel economy, interior quality, and limiting noise and vibration.

The new Challenger better be as good as it looks (on the outside, I mean - this interior doesn't look like it belongs anywhere near a $40,000.00 car).

Damian P.

Simpsons did it!

Dr. Hibbert in episode 1F19 (The Boy Who Knew Too Much"):

Well, only one in two million people has what we call the "evil gene". Hitler had it, Walt Disney had it, and Freddy Quimby has it.

The Daily Telegraph, Feb. 23, 2008:

The director of a Norwegian museum claimed yesterday to have discovered cartoons drawn by Adolf Hitler during the Second World War.

William Hakvaag, the director of a war museum in northern Norway, said he found the drawings hidden in a painting signed "A. Hitler" that he bought at an auction in Germany.

He found coloured cartoons of the characters Bashful and Doc from the 1937 Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which were signed A.H., and an unsigned sketch of Pinocchio as he appeared in the 1940 Disney film. [via Hot Air]

Damian P.

The Yanks are coming!

And they won't be back until it's over over here, one is led to worry:

Why does the Ottawa Citizen print a story regurgitating leftie paranoid idiocy?

Canada, U.S. quietly sign mutual military aid pact

Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other's borders during an emergency...

[...]

The left-leaning Council of Canadians [Maude the Barlow's home and native land; she has another residence here, together with Steve Staples and Prof. Michael Byers--I'll spare you further links on these maudits idiots unless requested], which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.

"It's kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites," said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.

Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.

"Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?" he asked...

"Soldiers with guns. In our cities. In Canada." In slightly dissimilar uniforms. I did not make it up. There was an emergency. A disaster. They weren't carrying weapons...most of them.

I am just freaking scared to death. One wonders why the reporter, David Pugliese, first sought out and then wrote up such a ludicrous "reaction".

As for "contentious" military integration, I'd like to see the Council's views on NORAD, now almost 50 years old. That contention just won't die.

"Over There", take two (better sound). Great song, great people.

Mark C.

Mugabe's opponent

Simba Makoni, a former Zimbabwean finance minister, is Robert Mugabe's main competition in "elections" scheduled for March 29.

By definition, that makes him one of the bravest men on earth. But RW Johnson, an invaluable observer of the Zimbabwe tragedy, says Makoni might actually have a shot at taking power, thanks to his support within Mugabe's ZANU-PF political party:

Mugabe has cancelled the Zanu-PF Politburo meeting and seems flummoxed. Normally, he would set the war vets to beat, torture and kill the supporters of any would-be opponent, but the problem is that he doesn't know who exactly within Zanu-PF is supporting Makoni -- and setting the war vets on his own party would, in any case, be asking for trouble. Secondly, he has relied on a crooked voters' roll, on large-scale electoral fraud in the rural areas and on the fact that all the counting is done by Zanu-PF stalwarts, most of them military. But with rumours flying thick and fast that Makoni has large-scale support within the police and military, it seems possible that Mugabe may not even be able to rely on the loyalty of the usual vote-riggers.

Thus far all Mugabe has said is that he will allow any result but one: He will not allow Zimbabwe to be turned back into a colony. Given what his own press say of Makoni, let alone about the MDC, this means he won't allow anyone but himself to win. But his intelligence organization, the CIO, has warned him to postpone the election, saying he could lose.

Makoni has had an undistinguished ministerial career and his reputation as a technocrat is not really deserved, but that is not the point. As everyone knows, once Mugabe goes, whoever succeeds him will immediately be offered aid by the EU, Britain, the U.S. and international institutions -- in return for sweeping political reform. The result would be to turn the economy around completely, and whoever was president would end up doing pretty much what the donors dictate. But if this were done under Tsvangirai or Mutambara, the corrupt and powerful interests grouped within Zanu-PF might all be swept away. Makoni, on the other hand, might be able to gain all the benefits of such a turnaround while leaving Zanu-PF in power and all those interests undisturbed. It is an alluring prospect for everyone except Mugabe himself.

Political science lesson: any country in which the ruling political party has a "Politburo" is completely screwed. Makoni would certainly be an improvement over the odious Mugabe - but if it's still ZANU-PF, how much would really change?

Damian P.

The Decline and Fall of Layton

Terry Glavin stares into the abyss of the NDP and does not like what he sees:

The Strategic Counsel poll released this week puts national support for the NDP at what may be its lowest ebb since 2004. It's tied with the Green Party at 12 per cent. The poll also provides some solid statistical insight into how the NDP's position on Afghanistan figures into it.

Canadians rated only health care (17 per cent) higher in importance than Afghanistan (14 per cent) as a national election issue. Afghanistan was identified as being more important than even the economy (13 per cent) or the environment (12 per cent).

Canadians are split on what to do: While a clear majority (61 per cent) opposes simply extending Canada's "combat mission" beyond 2009, we become evenly divided (51 per cent in favour) if other NATO countries pitch in - which is what John Manley's recent independent panel proposes, and what the Conservatives and Liberals say they also want.

But if you think this means that roughly half of Canadian voters favour the NDP's "troops out" politics, you're not even close. Nowhere near it. A mere six per cent of poll respondents said the NDP is the party best able to manage the Afghanistan file. Only five per cent said the NDP has "the best plan for Canada's military and defence."

This may mean that barely half of the NDP's own dwindling brigade of supporters take party leader Jack Layton seriously when he talks about Afghanistan. As for the Canadians who do, they barely register as statistical background noise above the poll's 3.1-per-cent margin of error. It could be as many as one in a dozen Canadians, or as few as one in fifty.

While Layton persists in the puerile claim that the Afghan mission is "not right for Canada," the Strategic Counsel poll shows that it's Layton's troops-out position that's not right for Canada. It's certainly not right for Afghanistan. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon calls it "a misjudgment [my post, Mr Glavin's is here] of historical proportions," something that's "almost more dismaying" than the opportunism of the Taliban itself.

What these poll numbers show is that it's not even right for the NDP. This should have been obvious from the beginning, because there is nothing left-wing or social-democratic or "progressive" about it. It's incoherent, parochial, and wrong. It's only understandable as a mix of pop and politics, the pseudo-left posture of the fashionably radical...

One awaits responses from Steve Staples and Prof. Michael Byers.

Mark C.

Did the Chief of the Defence Staff go too far?

Two posts at The Torch on General Hillier's February 22 speech to the Conference of Defence Associations:

1) Damian Brooks:

Misrepresenting Hillier

2) Mine:

CDS General Hillier, Afghanistan and Parliament

Mark C.

Future Britney

Just say no, children.

Damian P.

McCain's campaign boost

If there's nothing else to that much-talked-about New York Times story about John McCain, then all the Paper of Record(TM) did was rally the Republican base - including high-profile conservative critics of McCain - around their candidate:

Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign claimed vindication Thursday night after a sophisticated 24-hour counterattack turned a potentially lethal story in The New York Times into a conservative call to arms.

The piece about McCain’s friendly relations with a telecommunications lobbyist—long-discussed in political circles and planned for weeks by McCain operatives—was the first test of his ability to confront a public-relations crisis since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

But the reaction may have said as much about the mindset of the conservative movement on the brink of the general election as it did about McCain and his team.

“Even if they want to quibble within our own tribe, they’ll circle the wagons when we’re attacked by the Times,” said McCain campaign senior adviser Charlie Black.

Few commentators on the right—including some who regularly denounce ethical lapses or weaknesses of the flesh among Democrats—paused to assess seriously whether the Times’s suggestions of conflict of interest were well-founded.

Instead, many swallowed past misgivings about McCain to rally to his defense, on the apparent theory that anyone under assault by the most powerful institution in the mainstream media could not be all bad.

McCain should send the Times a muffin basket or something.

Damian P.

Update: more from Ed.

Hate speech for me, but not for thee

I think the Canadian Arab Federation should have every right to promote this garbage. Heck, I'm glad they're making so little effort to hide their beliefs.

It's too bad they don't feel so strongly about freedom of speech for the rest of us, though. But it's not surprising.

Damian P.

What price freedom?

It appears that for Liberal leader Stéphane Dion $350 million is too much to let people actually vote:

[...]

“Therefore, if it's a budget that appears to us as being acceptable or at least not too harmful for the Canadian economy, we could let it pass and avoid $350-million in [taxpayer] expenses for an election,” the Liberal Leader said...

Many pundits say the same thing, along with inane claim that Canadians don't want an election. When do people ever "want" an election? In any event if people can't be bothered with elections they do not deserve democracy. We had federal elections in 1962, 1963, 1965 and 1968; I don't remember the voters groaning in agony.

$350 million is a tiny cost in federal expenditures of some $230 billion. There may be good arguments against an election at this time. Those above are simply ridiculous.

Mark C.

Update: We also had federal elections in 1972, 1974, 1979 and 1980. In the sixties four elections in six years, with the elections just mentioned four in eight years. Most recently there have been elections in 2000, 2004 and 2006. An election around now in 2008 would be four in around seven and a half years. Hardly that unusual I would say, so why the aversion to a vote this time? Have we simply gone off elections (i.e. democracy)?

Cuban health care

Ilya Somin isn't convinced it's as wonderful as the Castropologists claim:

Taking Cuban official statistics at face value (as DeLong does), Cuban health outcomes and standards of living are roughly similar to those of Mexico and the Dominican Republic. In the 1950s, DeLong notes, Cuba was vastly better off than these countries and, on some measures (such as infant mortality) better than many Western European nations.

But there is an even more basic problem with the "at least Castro improved health care" excuse: it assumes that official Cuban government health care statistics are accurate. I find that assumption highly improbable. A government that brutally represses dissent and executed over 100,000 political prisoners out of a population of just 6.3 million is unlikely to be above falsifying its official statistics in order to improve its image. That was certainly common practice in other communist societies, including those which Castro used as models for his own.

When the Iron Curtain fell in Eastern Europe, scholars rapidly determined that official Soviet and East European statistics were routinely falsified to burnish the communist regimes' public image. As this foolishly credulous 1973 Time article noted, official East German stats indicated that, by 1970, East Germany had a higher standard of living than Italy and was rapidly closing in on Britain. Anybody with even the slightest familiarity with actual East German living standards knows how far such communist claims were from reality.

How bad is Cuban health care really? I don't know. Probably no one will know until the regime finally falls and honest data can be collected. For now, it's at least worth noting that the government health care clinics available to ordinary Cubans (those not members of the government elite) look like this and this. ...

Damian P.

Update: "at least Cuba has excellent, free health care" is, I'll admit, a better excuse than this:

...It's true that they're not as privy as we are with inventions, food and so on. But they make up for it with incredible dancing.

Experience is overrated?

George Will:

The president who came to office with the most glittering array of experiences had served 10 years in the House of Representatives, then became minister to Russia, then served 10 years in the Senate, then four years as secretary of state (during a war that enlarged the nation by 33 percent), then was minister to Britain. Then, in 1856, James Buchanan was elected president and in just one term secured a strong claim to being ranked as America's worst president. Abraham Lincoln, the inexperienced former one-term congressman, had an easy act to follow.

Damian P.

A nation's slow suicide

Michael Gerson on Zimbabwe:

During the hyperinflation of Germany's Weimar Republic, the number of marks in circulation went from 29 billion in 1918 to 497 quintillion in 1923. Workers were paid twice a day and given breaks to spend their money, carted in wheelbarrows, before it became worthless. Most Germans lost their life savings, leaving many prepared to blame others for their impoverishment. The Nazis blamed the Jews.

This kind of hyperinflation is rare in history, but we are seeing it once again, in Zimbabwe. Government officials claim an inflation rate of 66,212 percent (most months they refuse to release inflation figures at all). The International Monetary Fund believes the rate is closer to 150,000 percent -- about the level reached by Weimar Germany. [The official rate is now over 100,000% - DP] By some estimates, about 50 percent of Zimbabwe's government revenue comes from the printing of money. At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar was worth more than one U.S. dollar. Recently, the state-controlled newspaper raised its cover price to 3 million Zimbabwean dollars. Two pounds of chicken were recently reported to cost about 15 million Zimbabwean dollars.

A Zimbabwean friend who runs a business recently told me, "If you don't get a bill collected in 48 hours, it isn't worth collecting, because it is worthless. Whenever we get money, we must immediately spend it, just go and buy what we can. Our pension was destroyed ages ago. None of us have any savings left." Zimbabwean nationals who work on the U.S. Embassy staff in Harare have seen all their retirement funds wiped out. American government officials in the country carry boxes of money to pay at restaurants and must begin counting out currency at the beginning of the meal to finish by its end.

The government of Robert Mugabe has responded with the normal economic policy of tyrants: price controls. And these have naturally emptied the shelves in grocery stores and caused shortages of most basic goods. My friend's wife travels to Botswana to buy flour and sugar.

Mugabe manages to pay off his military leaders and political cronies with hard currency that comes from mining gold and platinum. He also sells farmland to Chinese and Libyan speculators -- land expropriated from white farmers, supposedly in the cause of Zimbabwean nationalism. Mugabe is literally putting his country on the block to maintain his power.

So why don't the impoverished people of Zimbabwe revolt? "The tragedy is that nobody is in the streets," says my Zimbabwean friend. "People are dying silently."

I've been reading (and blogging) about the Zimbabwean catastrophe for years, yet I never cease to be amazed and disgusted at what is happening to that country. And there doesn't seem to be a damned thing the rest of the world can and/or will do about it, except watch one man starve his people to death.

Here's hoping Mr. Mugabe chokes on his birthday cake tomorrow.

Damian P.

It's not just the wars

US military deaths (see Table 5. at link) since 2003 have never even been double what they were from 1993 to 2001 under the Clinton administration. There were 1,213 such deaths in 1993, half from accidents. There were 1,942 in 2006, of which 632 were caused by accidents and 739 by hostile action. If one examines the figures one sees that since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (and renewed serious fighting in Afghanistan since 2006) there has not been a great disparity between accidental and hostile action deaths.

In any case, for a nation of 300 million the totals are rather small especially in comparison with other wars (figures also at the link). Though obviously the wounded in recent combat would not have suffered so in peacetime. Something to keep in mind, along with the exceptionally good medical system that treats the wounded, the Walter Reed scandal aside.

Via cal2.

By comparison:

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson began a huge escalation of the Vietnam War that eventually brought American troop levels to over half a million. By 1968, the weekly death toll was over 500.

Mark C.

The Indians are coming

Mahindra, which has been selling tractors in the United States since 1994, plans to import a small, diesel-powered pickup next year.

I think America needs more small trucks and diesels (ditto for Canada), so I'm curious to see how this plays out. But a mid-twenties price for something built in India? I have my doubts. (The importer's role in the Cross Lander fiasco doesn't raise my hopes, either.)

Damian P.

Johnny B. McCain

The song played just as the Senator finished his speech after winning the Republican primary in Wisconsin:

But the election is just down the road apiece. Let's Barack 'n' Roll.

At this point political and cultural synthesis fails me. But perhaps not--Hegel may yet rule. Dig the cat. As for Mr Marx, another dialectician of note, you may or may not dig this depending on your attitude--and musical taste.

Mark C.

Jackboot junkies, continued

I'm actually a little bit surprised to see that George Galloway (yes, he's still around) retains so much affection for the Chinese Communists. The place has started looking a bit capitalist same since Mao died, after all:

FROM the outset the American right and their pathetic echo chambers here have been determined to wreck China's Olympic Games, or at least to diminish them in the way the Moscow Olympics of 1980 were.

Every button is pushed from China's supposed "occupation" of Tibet (in fact Tibet was always part of the Chinese motherland, and has been rescued from the mists of obscurantism under the demi- God Dalai Lama by the Chinese revolution) through its attitude to circus bears, the Falun Gong and its one-child policy. [If you aren't fighting Jews, Galloway isn't interested in your liberation struggle - DP]

What nobody expected was that China's Olympics would be attacked because of, er, what another government is doing in its country thousands of miles away, namely Sudan and Darfur.

[...]

They are prepared to do anything to stop the rise and rise of anew superpower to balance their own. They know that if nothing changes in 20 years nothing will happen in this world without China's agreement. That in 30 years China will be able to buy the American economy lock stock and two smoking barrels. And that in 50 years we will start to say that the 21st is the Chinese century.

For all these reasons the rest of us better learn to treat China with a little more respect. The days when foreigners could order China around are gone for good.

Via Harry's Place.

Damian P.

"They just can't help themselves," continued

A Guardian columnist (surprise!) blames the Danish cartoon riots on pretty much everyone except the people doing the rioting.

Damian P.

Open-wheel unity

The stupid IRL/ChampCar split is finally healing.

My next suggestion: get rid of the friggin' ovals, except for Indy, and make it a road-racing series. Heck, I'd even like to see the Indianapolis 500 start using the F1 track. (Blasphemy!)

Damian P.

Hellfires and ballots

I wonder if things like this...

HUNTING AL-QAEDA

Unilateral Strike Called a Model For U.S. Operations in Pakistan

...will continue after this:

Pakistan's ruling party concedes defeat

Mark C.

Update: Ed Morrissey gives the good news--and it really is a relief:

...The Islamists have all but disappeared from the parliament at this point, with MMA winning only three seats after calling for a boycott earlier.

[...]

The Islamists lost their mandate in the provinces as well. ANP, the center-left Pashtun party, will take the most seats in the Frontier province, followed by PPP. MMA only took 8 seats in that assembly, falling from power and obviously losing popularity in the region for its insistence on Islamist law. Musharraf's PML-Q won a plurality in Balochistan and will likely form a coalition with PPP to lock out MMA...

Jackboot junkies

Castro is gone, but we may never be free from these idiots.

Damian P.

Update: even after the Cuban Communists are ousted, they'll still have Hezbollah. (If you can make it through the video clip, you're made of stronger stuff than I.)

Even Apple can't win 'em all

Remember the Newton?

Damian P.

"They just can't help themselves"

A Halifax Chronicle Herald reader is upset with the Danish newspaper industry:

What possessed those morons in Denmark to republish the Muhammad cartoons? The last time they published them, people died in riots. Do they not care who dies again?

It is all fine and dandy to "champion free speech" from the safety of their newspaper offices in a democratic country, where they are protected and thousands of miles away from the angry mobs who will surely gather. Do these newspaper editors not even think about the innocent Westerners who have to work in countries where these angry mobs will gather?

I went through this two years ago working on a Danish-owned gas carrier trading to Muslim countries in the Mediterranean; fortunately, we were registered in the Isle of Man, not Denmark, and had no Danes on board. Still, when we went to Beirut, we had to have a Lebanese navy gun boat patrolling around us while we discharged our cargo to a pipeline one-half mile offshore, too far for an RPG from shore to reach (I hoped).

Those editors are cowards as they are protected from the consequences of their actions by thousands of miles and the democratic society they live in. Would they dare to "champion free speech" by waving one of the cartoons about in a town square in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Iran? No. They leave those of us who have to travel to those countries, and who transport the petroleum products they need to live comfortably, to suffer the consequences of their irresponsible behaviour.

John Lyle, Chester Basin

Actually, Danish newspapers republished the cartoons as a show of solidarity with cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who had an attempt on his life foiled by police. He's been living in hiding since November. Some "coward."

And notice who Lyle blames for the riots and killing: not the people doing the rioting and killing, of course, but the people who drew caricatures of a man who died over 1,000 years ago. The Muslims just can't help themselves, you see. Why, you have to expect these people to go insane when their deeply held beliefs are challenged. You can't possibly hold them up to our standards.

That's the "progressive" view of the current unpleasantness, at least. If you believe that the rioters should be held responsible for their actions; that you should be allowed to criticize and, yes, insult Islam just as you should be allowed to criticize and insult Christianity; and, that Danish artists should be allowed to depict Mohammed, just as Muslim artists had been doing for centuries; well...that's just racist.

Damian P.

Update: a fair point in the comment section:

My impression of his letter, which is consistent (for better or worse) with pretty much every Middle East expat worker I've met, is that it's not "progressive", it's pragmatic. He's complaining that the Danish journalists are making themselves heroes while he and his colleagues are the ones taking the risk of the consequences.

As you say, that may be unfair to the Danes. But he's not making a statement about philosophical assignment of guilt, he's talking about what decisions have the practical effect of keeping his head attached to his shoulders.

"His Hopeness"

David Brooks writes one of the rare witty columns you'll see in the NY Times (worthy of the Daily Telegraph, I'd say):

At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Mary Chapin Carpenter devotees in Berkeley, Cambridge and Chapel Hill. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what’s bound to be a national phenomenon: Obama Comedown Syndrome.

[...]

Up until now The Chosen One’s speeches had seemed to them less like stretches of words and more like soul sensations that transcended time and space. But those in the grips of Obama Comedown Syndrome began to wonder if His stuff actually made sense. For example, His Hopeness tells rallies that we are the change we have been waiting for, but if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we’ve been here all along?

[...]

If he values independent thinking, why is his the most predictable liberal vote in the Senate? A People for the American Way computer program would cast the same votes for cheaper.

[...]

The victims of O.C.S. struggle against Obama-myopia, or the inability to see beyond Election Day. But here’s the fascinating thing: They still like him. They know that most of his hope-mongering is vaporous. They know that he knows it’s vaporous...

Mark C.

Update: O.C.S. awaits Mickey I. (via Paul Wells):

Hope in America, Hope in Canada

...I'm for Obama...

Upperdate: 'Twill be interesting to see how long "Obamamatopoeia" lasts. More (via the Wolfman).

A reason why Islamism is spreading

...though the process does not lead to Jihadism in most cases. A good article from the Sunday NY Times Magazine:

Stifled, Egypt’s Young Turn to Islamic Fervor

CAIRO — The concrete steps leading from Ahmed Muhammad Sayyid’s first-floor apartment sag in the middle, worn down over time, like Mr. Sayyid himself. Once, Mr. Sayyid had a decent job and a chance to marry. But his fiancée’s family canceled the engagement because after two years, he could not raise enough money to buy an apartment and furniture.

Mr. Sayyid spun into depression and lost nearly 40 pounds. For months, he sat at home and focused on one thing: reading the Koran. Now, at 28, with a diploma in tourism, he is living with his mother and working as a driver for less than $100 a month. With each of life’s disappointments and indignities, Mr. Sayyid has drawn religion closer.

Here in Egypt and across the Middle East, many young people are being forced to put off marriage, the gateway to independence, sexual activity and societal respect. Stymied by the government’s failure to provide adequate schooling and thwarted by an economy without jobs to match their abilities or aspirations, they are stuck in limbo between youth and adulthood.

“I can’t get a job, I have no money, I can’t get married, what can I say?” Mr. Sayyid said one day after becoming so overwhelmed that he refused to go to work, or to go home, and spent the day hiding at a friend’s apartment.

In their frustration, the young are turning to religion for solace and purpose, pulling their parents and their governments along with them.

With 60 percent of the region’s population under the age of 25 [emphasis added - MC], this youthful religious fervor has enormous implications for the Middle East. More than ever, Islam has become the cornerstone of identity, replacing other, failed ideologies: Arabism, socialism, nationalism.

The wave of religious identification has forced governments that are increasingly seen as corrupt or inept to seek their own public redemption through religion. In Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Algeria, leaders who once headed secular states or played down religion have struggled to reposition themselves as the guardians of Islamic values. More and more parents are sending their children to religious schools, and some countries have infused more religious content into their state educational systems...

Mark C.

Whiskers clipped

Castro is officially stepping down:

An ailing Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he was retiring and will not accept a new term when the new parliament meets Sunday.

"I will not aspire to nor accept _ I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept _ the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief," read a letter signed by Castro published early Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma.

The announcement effectively ends the rule of the 81-year-old Castro after almost 50 years, positioning his 76-year-old brother Raul for permanent succession to the presidency. Fidel Castro temporarily ceded his powers to his brother on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery.

Since then, the elder Castro has not been seen in public, appearing only sporadically in official photographs and videotapes and publishing dense essays about mostly international themes as his younger brother has consolidated his rule.

Babalu will certainly have much more about this as the day progresses, while Tim Blair catches Reuters carefully avoiding a word that rhymes with "rictator." Anyone else think "resigning" is a euphemism for "dead"?

Damian P.

How NATO got into its Afghan mess/Foreign policy perspectives

Some good analysis from Fred Kaplan:

...it's worth recalling how NATO got involved in this war to begin with. What's happening now should be no surprise whatsoever.

In early 2006, NATO made plans to relieve the United States of command over operations in Afghanistan. The mission was seen as vital, above all, to NATO. It was a test of whether, in the post-Cold War era, the alliance had any role to play as a unified expeditionary force. To get all the nations involved, "caveats" were negotiated. Some nations would send troops, but only if they didn't have to fight; others would fight, but not at night; and so forth. Troops under NATO command, in general, could engage in "proactive self-defence," a deliberately vague term that permitted commanders to fire when fired upon and go after insurgents if they were spotted nearby. But they could not initiate offensive operations. (For that reason, the United States would keep 13,000 troops, mainly airmen, under its own command -- in addition to the 7,000 it was placing under NATO's -- so that somebody could continue to go after Taliban forces on the Pakistan border.)

The assumption, on the part of the NATO nations, was that the mission would be shifting away from "counterterrorism" to "counterinsurgency" -- that is, from "going after bad guys for the sake of going after bad guys" (as one British officer snidely put it to me when I visited Afghanistan that summer) to securing areas for the sake of promoting economic development.

In other words, most of the NATO nations agreed to send troops on the premise that they'd be engaged in peacekeeping, not warfighting.

Then, in the spring of 2006, the Taliban threw a wrench in the works by staging offensives throughout southern Afghanistan -- a huge area, about the size of Germany -- after four years of relative calm. (Actually, they'd been infiltrating the region all this time; they resumed their offensives only to resist the returning Western troops.)

The alliance isn't "evolving into a two-tiered alliance," as Gates said. When it comes to Afghanistan, it's been that kind of alliance from the start. As the fighting has grown fiercer, the inadequacies of this crazy quilt have become clearer...

I am sure that when Paul Martin's Liberal government made the decision to take over at Kandahar in 2005 we also did not foresee anything like the Taliban resurgence that occurred in 2006. Though the government did not exactly expect an easy time of it. But almost nobody in Canada--people, press or politicians--paid any attention. Afghanistan, as far as I can remember, was ignored in the last, 2005-2006, federal election campaign. Why do we not pay attention to serious things? Maybe we're just not interested unless Canadian soldiers die with cameras in the area, or politicians start (and then continue) shouting. And maybe our media are simply hopeless. Look at the immediately preceding link.

It's an interesting comparison of national concerns that the NY Times, in its lead editorial Feb. 17 on foreign policy priorities facing the next US president, buries Afghanistan in the last sentence of this paragraph, its seventh "question":

TERRORISM Is the war on terrorism a military fight? Should it even be called a war? How would the candidates improve America’s intelligence capabilities and elicit more cooperation around the world? What would they do to oust Al Qaeda from Pakistan? How would they ensure Pakistan’s cooperation while also pressing for democratic ref