Dumbing way down

Dr Dawg earlier this year got in a tizz-wazz about comments at Small Dead Animals. One wonders what he thinks about the stuff "Canada's National Newspaper" publishes online:

[...]

Expert Eel from OttaPettaOshawawawawa, Canada writes: Scot Loucks cannot have a decent conversation without resorting to insults, well no matter as many right wing neocon warmongers seem to have the same disfunctional problem.

* Posted 30/04/08 at 3:10 AM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment

Expert Eel from OttaPettaOshawawawawa, Canada writes: resorting to insults is the last refuge of the incopmpetent, scot

* Posted 30/04/08 at 3:11 AM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment

Expert Eel from OttaPettaOshawawawawa, Canada writes: calls me an idiot then runs away like a scared little coward.

typical.

* Posted 30/04/08 at 3:16 AM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment

Scot Loucks from Pickering, Canada writes: Expert Eel.... lol... I'm a con hack?????????????

What does that make you? You never have anything new to say. You repeat the same old Baaaaa all the time. Sheep maybe. You don't read with any comprehension... you attack lot a neutered Rottweiler.

Go attack somebody at your own IQ level... might I suggest my hamster.

* Posted 30/04/08 at 3:16 AM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment...

Remember, the Globe's comment threads are "moderated". Editor-in-Chief, steady Eddie Greenspon, is trying to save his paper by making it more, er, relevant and hip. But, really...

If you'd like to know about the substantive issue of the thread--training the Afghan army and why Canada should be there--take a look at this. More on the Globe's Afghanistan coverage here.

Mark C.

"Oil Wars"

David Frum posts:

Very interesting from Foreign Affairs - better on analysis than prescription, but hey ... who isn't?

The world is far more peaceful today than it was 15 years ago. There were 17 major civil wars — with "major" meaning the kind that kill more than a thousand people a year — going on at the end of the Cold War; by 2006, there were just five. During that period, the number of smaller conflicts also fell, from 33 to 27.

Despite this trend, there has been no drop in the number of wars in countries that produce oil. The main reason is that oil wealth often wreaks havoc on a country's economy and politics, makes it easier for insurgents to fund their rebellions, and aggravates ethnic grievances. Today, with violence falling in general, oil-producing states make up a growing fraction of the world's conflict-ridden countries. They now host about a third of the world's civil wars, both large and small, up from one-fifth in 1992. According to some, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq shows that oil breeds conflict between countries, but the more widespread problem is that it breeds conflict within them.

Mark C.

Abstainistan

Chuckercanuck dissects one element of the Parliamentary handling of the "in and out" affair (in the Commons' Question Period today the Conservatives appeared to show that the phrase was first applied to BQ campaign financing methods--some of the evidence).

Mark C.

Two cheers for high gas prices

I cringe every time I fill up my car at $1.321 per litre, but there is a pretty bright silver lining:

Black gold is filling tax coffers as crude oil prices surge, notes Calgary-based energy consultant Michael Ervin - and the higher prices may persuade more consumers to buy fuel-efficient vehicles.

"The real benefits economically really do relate to the government revenues derived from it," he said.

"Not only directly in the form of royalties, but indirectly through income taxes on a working population that work in this industry."

One need only look east, to Newfoundland and Labrador, to see a province that has benefited from resource royalties.

The price of crude largely fuelled a provincial budget surplus Tuesday of $544 million. Next year will also mark the first time since joining Confederation that Newfoundland will not receive equalization payments.

[...]

Other provinces, such as Quebec and Ontario, get hit with the triple whammy of a higher Canadian dollar, soaring energy rates and high commodity prices. However, Ontario automakers could stand to gain from manufacturing more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Mark Nantais, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, says countries with high fuel prices tend to have more fuel-efficient cars, which presents market opportunities for Canadian automakers - not to mention the environmental benefit.

"There's many different things that results from the price of fuel," he said. "One is people, because they have a set transportation budget ... they will buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle."

But determining whether consumers change their driving or vehicle purchasing habits in the face of higher gas pricier is difficult because there have been few studies on the subject.

I don't think it will change Canadians' driving habits, as much as it will influence us to buy smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles next time around. General Motors, not coincidentally, is cutting back full-size truck production this year.

In the United States, meanwhile, I can't say I'm surprised to see Hillary Clinton promoting a gas-tax holiday for the summer. But I am disappointed to see John McCain jumping on that bandwagon - and impressed with Barack Obama's refusal to join in:

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite. (via InstaPundit)

Damian P.

Outsourcing

Some of the in-game animation for Grand Theft Auto IV was done in Iran, evidently.

Damian P.

Coincidence?

If this is true, it's so unbelievably devious, you can't help but admire it:

Everybody is talking today about how much the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's latest unrepentant militant remarks hurt his most prominent parishoner, Sen. Barack Obama, and his chances to win the Democratic presidential nomination and the general election. So much so that the Obama camp realized the latent danger overnight and the candidate was forced to speak out publicly a second time today, as The Ticket noted here earlier today.

There was little doubt left in today's remarks by Obama, who recently said he could no more disown Wright than he could the black community. He pretty much disowned Wright today. Obama described himself as "outraged" and "saddened" by "the spectacle of what we saw yesterday."

But now, it turns out, we should have been paying a little less attention to Wright's speech and the histrionics of his ensuing news conference and taken a peek at....

who was sitting next to him at the head table for the National Press Club event.

It was the Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, a former editorial board member of USA Today who teaches at the Howard University School of Divinity. An ordained minister, as New York Daily News writer Errol Louis points out in today's column, she was introduced at the press club event as the person "who organized" it.

But guess what? She's also an ardent longtime booster of Obama's sole remaining competitor for the Democratic nomination, none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. It won't take very much at all for Obama supporters to see in Wright's carefully arranged Washington event that was so damaging to Obama the strategic, nefarious manipulation of the Clintons.

Their supporter, Reynolds, helps arrange a speech by the outspoken and egocentric Wright which receives blanket national coverage to the disadvantage of Clinton's opponent. As Louis writes: "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted."

No matter how far behind they look, do not bet against the Clintons.

Damian P.

Update:...or maybe not:

National Press Club president Sylvia Smith responded today to a Daily News article reporting that club member Barbara Reynolds, a Hillary Clinton supporter, organized yesterday’s breakfast talk with Dr. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

Smith said by phone this morning that she still doesn’t know if Reynolds supports Clinton, and doesn’t care either way.

“Reverend Wright is newsworthy, period,” Smith said.

But Wright wasn’t as newsworthy two years ago when Reynolds first pitched Barack Obama’s controversial pastor as a potential speaker for the press club, according to Smith.

At that time, the speaker’s committee—of which Reynolds is now a part of, but wasn’t at the time—didn’t move forward with selecting Wright.

“He wasn’t newsworthy then in the broader context,” Smith said.

The Canadian Forces: Watch it and...

The strange contrasts of soldiering. A slide-show tribute set to the song "If I Ever Leave this World", by Paul of Celestial Junk. Kind of broke me up:

Here's a direct link to the piece at YouTube.

Mark C.

Our "National Newspaper" raises the Iraq bogeyman

Anything to cast doubts about our Afghan mission. The start of a post at The Torch:

Marines in Afstan: The Globe and Mail catches up...

...and starts with a clanger. Here's the first paragraph of today's front-page story (note the dreaded "I" word in the headline, and the threat of "Americanization"):

U.S. brings Iraq-like surge to Afghan conflict

LASH KARGAH, AFGHANISTAN -- A force of 3,500 U.S. Marines charged into southern Afghanistan this morning in an effort to reduce the heavy casualties suffered by Canadian and British soldiers in the region, bringing with them new pressures on Canada and its allies to adapt to U.S. tactics and methods.

Hardly all charging in this morning. And the force referred to in southern Afstan is not 3,500 strong but rather is the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit of some 2,300 personnel (around another 1,000 Marines are being sent where needed, mainly to help train Afghan police)...

Mark C.

Update: Real faces of US counterinsurgency.

Canafrance

Plus ça change, plus ce sont les mêmes idées:

...it seems doubtful that Sarkozy’s overtures to the United States will outlast his own administration.

This was foreshadowed on April 8, when Sarkozy faced down a vote of no confidence because of his plans to deploy a battalion of 800 French troops to Afghanistan (France already has 1,600 soldiers in Afghanistan, mostly around the capital, Kabul.) French leftists accused Sarkozy of a dangerous “Atlanticist [continentalist? MC] drift” that risked turning France into Bush’s lackey. The leader of the “moderate” opposition Socialists, François Hollande, said Sarkozy decided to send French troops to Afghanistan “under pressure from the Americans” and that France risked losing its independence on the world stage...

The scary thing is that a lot of Canadians thinking the same way are anglophones.

Mark C.

Wright overload

I think it's a perfectly legitimate story, but geez...

Damian P.

Ceasefire demanded

Elmasry and Co. finally realize that, even if they win some battles before human-rights commissions, they've lost the war of public opinion.

Damian P.

The Politicar

He didn't want to mess up his Ford with a lot of bumper stickers, you see...

Damian P.

Leaders without followers

Alan Keyes is America's Paul Hellyer, except that Hellyer actually won a few elections.

Damian P.

What ever happened to responsible journalism?

A thoroughly rhetorical question. Here's a gem of a screaming front-page, top of the fold, headline in "Canada's National Newspaper":

Why grocery bills will soar

This is from the story's fourth paragraph:

Mr. Shenfeld [a senior economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce] estimates food inflation will jump from zero to 3.5 per cent next year, outpacing the overall inflation rate for the first time in years...

Some soaring. I wonder why they didn't run this headline for this story:

Transit wages to soar

This is the third paragraph:

The tentative three-year contract must still be ratified by the union's members, but if approved, it will give the TTC's 8,900 bus, subway and streetcar drivers, mechanics and janitors 3-per-cent annual raises and phased-in improvements to their benefits. The deal will make TTC drivers the best paid in the greater Toronto area, Mr. Kinnear said. Neither side would release a price tag on the settlement.

I mean, what's half a percentage point to journalists looking for soaring?

Then the settlement was rejected by union members. I think this actually would be an appropriate headline for a resulting CBC piece:

Tempers soar as transit workers strike

But Dr Dawg soared in support of the strikers; solidarity forever! Andrew Coyne, meanwhile, has a suggestion for dealing with public transit woes generally: privatize. And Colby Cosh wonders if a "boorish, dangerous mob" (guess who?) was responsible for the strike.

Mark C.

Too much for Andrew Sullivan

Even he now believes Obama has to distance himself from the good Reverend:

I knew he was an exhibitionist; many of his sermons at Trinity, read in their entirety, do fall within the tradition of some prophetic teaching; I can forgive occasional outbursts from fiery preachers; he has done much good in his own neighborhood and his interview with Bill Moyers struck me as defensible; parts of his address at the Press Club were completely uncontroversial and even contained some important truths.

But what he said today extemporaneously, the way in which he said it, the unrepentant manner in which he reiterated some of his most absurd and offensive views, his attempt to equate everything he believes with the black church as a whole, and his open public embrace of Farrakhan and hostility to the existence of Israel Zionism, make any further defense of him impossible. This was a calculated, ugly, repulsive, vile display of arrogance, egotism, and self-regard...

[...]

Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright's views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against: the boomer, Vietnam era's obsession with its red-blue, white-black, pro and anti-America fixations. That is not what this election needs to be about; and Wright's massive, racially divisive and, yes, bitter provocation requires a proportionate response.

Anyone else think Rev. Wright is now openly trying to sabotage Obama's campaign? And I don't think it's just about resentment that the candidate is trying to put some distance between them; people like Wright have an awful lot invested in the idea that America is too wicked and racist to ever elect an African-American President.

Damian P.

Update: Dana Milbank has more.

Kashechewan insanity

That this continues, year after year. More here, here, here and here.

Mark C.

Have you bought Ford stock lately? (part II)

First a profit. Now Kirk Kerkorian. Then good news from (gasp!) Buzz Hargrove. A fusion of interests? Who'd a thunk it?

Mark C.

Mike Monaghan, R.I.P.

One of Western Newfoundland's best-known lawyers - and a man who taught me so much when I was an associate at his firm - has passed away at age 65:

A well-known lawyer and judge who had been active for decades in western Newfoundland politics has died of cancer.

Mike Monaghan, 65, died Sunday at hospital in Corner Brook.

Monaghan — a former law partner to both Finance Minister Tom Marshall and to Clyde Wells, the former premier and current chief justice of Newfoundland Supreme Court — had worked for many years with the Progressive Conservative Party, and offered himself for election twice.

[...]

In 2006, Monaghan was appointed a provincial court judge.

Funeral services will be held Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the Cathedral of the Most Holy Redeemer in Corner Brook.

It was an honor to have known and worked with him.

Damian P.

Talking to the enemy

Sitting down to chat with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? Fine. But sitting down with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday? Treason!

Like it or not, Fox News Channel is the top-rated news network in America, and once he has the nomination sewn up, Obama will need quite a few regular Fox viewers on his side. The candidate seems to realize this, even if some of his particularly excitable supporters (not to mention some particularly excitable competing news channels) don't.

Damian P.

Update: I didn't see it, but Power Line gives Obama a good review for his appearance.

It's not all about Afghan energy

A letter of mine in the April 21st Hill Times (a weekly inside the Queensway paper for politicos, journalists, lobbyists and bureaucrats):

Dewar makes a great to-do about Afghanistan and energy, no?

Re: "Parliament is ignoring 'New Great Energy Game' in Afghanistan, says MP," (The Hill Times, April 14, p. 1 [text no longer online]). NDP MP Paul Dewar makes a great to-do about Afghanistan and energy. That is simply silly. Afghanistan has no role in the production or transportation of Central Asian oil, the big prize in this great game, and only a potential, not terribly significant, role regarding natural gas.

Most of that oil is in Kazakhstan, far to the west of Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan has no need for Afghanistan as a pipeline route. Kazakh oil is now exported by pipeline via Russia and to China. Kazakhstan is also, as the story notes, planning an oil pipeline (a natural gas pipeline is also under consideration) through its own territory to link up across the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan with the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. This pipeline ends at the eastern Mediterranean in Turkey.

There are also plans to export Kazakh oil via Iran.

There is indeed a long-standing plan for a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and maybe India. But that is hardly a vital national security or capitalist interest for NATO members. Moreover, given current conditions, such a pipeline is not likely to be built for quite a while. In any case most of the gas would be for Pakistani and perhaps Indian consumption—not a major concern for other countries.

On the other hand, there are also plans to export Turkmen gas to Europe via a trans-Caspian pipeline. That plan is a lot more important to European NATO members (and the U.S.) than Afghan pipeline possibilities. In addition, plans are well advanced for a pipeline, to be completed in 2012, to export Turkmen gas via Russia. Once again the Afghan angle for Turkmen gas exports is pretty small beer by comparison.

Mark Collins
Ottawa, Ont.

Since then:

India formally joins Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan gas pipeline project

Mark C.

"Dislocating a shoulder to pat ourselves on the back..."

Damian Brooks posts at The Torch on a story about the blog in The Maple Leaf, the magazine of the Canadian Forces.

Mark C.

"Support our troops"

Not the ones one might think. Stewart Bell gets the goods:

Naeem Muhammad Khan wants everyone to "Support Our Troops," but he's not talking about the Canadian Forces in Kandahar.

From his apartment in Toronto, Mr. Khan has been posting messages on the Internet calling Osama bin Laden a "hero" and "champion of Islam."

The 23-year-old fundamentalist's on-line logo combines the black Taliban flag and the outline of an AK-47 above the Support Our Troops slogan.

Between sips of iced coffee at Tim Hortons, Mr. Khan explained that he is a supporter of the Taliban, as well as other armed Islamic groups.

"'Support our Troops' means supporting the mujahideen [Muslim soldiers of God] who are fighting for their freedom and rights against illegal occupation in many, many places over the world like Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine and Somalia," he said later in an e-mail.

Views like these are becoming increasingly common in Western countries, Canada included, and they are worrying to governments concerned about radicalism and violence.

Mr. Khan is an Islamist, not a terrorist, but what most disturbs moderate Muslims like Tahir Gora are his harsh comments about those who do not subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs.

In his online postings, Mr. Khan calls Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji and other moderates "apostates" and says that under Islamic law the punishment for apostasy is death. The same goes for those who insult Islam.

"Behead her!!! And make a nice video and post it on YouTube," he writes about one so-called "Islam basher." As for "Jews who support Zionism and Israel...since they are killing Palestinians...killing them is not bad...they deserve to die."

Elsewhere he writes that, "Those who hate Islam and want to destroy is [sic] will have their fates decided by the swords of Muslims Inshallah [God-willing]."

Mr. Khan said he was angry when he wrote these and did not mean anyone harm. He said he meant that those killing Palestinians deserve to die and that under Shariah law the sentence for apostasy and insulting Islam is death.

But Mr. Fatah and Mr. Gora say such expressions go too far, and are becoming all too common in Canada...

Read on, please. Time for a complaint to, gasp, the Ontario Human Rights Commission? Just kidding. But as for needing new laws against inciting terrorism...

Intelligence expert Professor Wesley Wark said Mr. Khan's "odious" views raised the question of whether Canada needed to specifically outlaw the incitement of terrorism.

"They naturally make one wonder about remedies for such grating speech. Our current anti-terrorism legislation does not specifically sanction incitement to acts of terrorism. Should it? At the very least we need a proper debate in this country, similar to the one held recently in the EU Parliament...

A Q&A with Mr Khan is here. Then there's "Islamic Rage Boy" (via Kate McMillan).

Mark C.

Elmasry and free speech

Mohamed Elmasry's desire for the elimination of Israel (not to mention the elimination of Israelis) is well-known, so I can't say I was shocked by his glowing review, in The Muslim Observer, of a book calling for a "one-state" solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. (Wink, wink.)

I was taken aback by his final paragraphs, however:

You’d think that a man as versatile and gifted as Kovel would receive front page coverage in American and Canadian media about his book, which was published in 2007.

But this did not happen in our so-called “free” press and broadcasting networks, because these systems are free only to those who own them and use their power to express their own views. And that is a sad loss for everyone. [emphasis added; via Blazing Cat Fur]

Translation: the owners of newspapers, magazines and TV stations (not to mention websites and blogs, I presume) should not be allowed to determine their content. Indeed, this is the very basis for Elmasry's human-rights complaints against Maclean's - he (and his sock puppets) were allegedly denied the inalienable human right to have the magazine publish their response to Mark Steyn's book excerpt.

Mohamed Elmasry's idea of a "free press" is one in which publishers should be forced to publish content mandated by the state - and/or by enlightened human-rights activists like Mohamed Elmasry. (I bet there's an exception for The Muslim Observer and similar publications, though.)

Here's a tip for Elmasry: if you don't want to be called an "Islamofascist," stop acting like a fascist.

Damian P.

The Ministry of Wankers

Something tells me the guys who designed this were in on the joke.

Damian P.

The Canadian progressive mind at work

That would be a "liberal" mind in the US:

Two heated public debates are taking place north of the 49th parallel these days, and broadly speaking, both debates pit progressives against conservatives. The funny thing is that the progressives are illustrating how it is possible to believe two mutually contradictory things at the same time...

Mark C.

Durban II

The sequel is looking even worse than the original, if such a thing is imaginable.

Damian P.

Have you bought Ford stock lately?

Dearborn makes a profit:

Ford Motor (F) Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally has from time to time over his 19 months at the helm of the ailing automaker said he prefers to underpromise and overdeliver on results. He did just that Apr. 24, posting a $100 million profit in the first quarter, much better than the loss Wall Street expected and a nearly $400 million swing in net earnings from the same period the year before.

The results were impressive considering the recessionary climate in the U.S., which is depressing auto sales overall; high gas costs that are pushing down demand for Ford's most profitable pickup trucks and SUVs; and rising costs of commodities used to make vehicles.

Ford's automotive operations earned a pretax profit of $669 million, compared with a loss of $895 million the previous year. Its results in Europe, South America, and Asia went a long way to offset the continued losses in North America. The Volvo unit lost $151 million.

[...]

Ford expects to lose money this year on the whole, but far less than the $2.7 billion it lost in 2007. Mulally said that despite the worsening economic environment in the U.S., Ford's toughest nut to crack, he is sticking to his goal of overall profitability in 2009.

Damian P.

The problem ain't ethanol as such

Roger Cohen sees a whole lot of things fueling the apparent food crisis:

Fads come fast and furious in our viral age, and the reactions to them can be equally ferocious. That’s what we’re seeing right now with biofuels, which everyone loved until everyone decided they were the worst thing since the Black Death.

[...]

The supposed crimes of biofuels are manifold. They’re behind soaring global commodity prices, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, increased rather than diminished greenhouse gases, food riots in Haiti, Indonesian deforestation and, no doubt, your mother-in-law’s toothache.

Most of this, to borrow a farm image, is hogwash and bilge.

I’ll grant that the fashion for biofuels led to excess, and that some farm-to-fuel-plant conversion, particularly in subsidized U.S. and European markets, makes no economic or environmental sense. But biofuels remain very much part of the solution. It just depends which biofuels.

Before I get to that, some myths need dispelling. If Asian rice prices are soaring, along with the global prices of wheat and maize, it’s not principally because John Doe in Iowa or Jean Dupont in Picardy has decided to turn yummy corn and beet into un-yummy ethanol feedstock.

[...]

Those hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians now eating more will be driving cars within the next quarter-century. What that will do to oil prices is anybody’s guess, but what’s clear is that ethanol presents the only technically and economically viable alternative for large-scale substitution of petroleum fuels for transport in the next 15 to 20 years. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a necessary bridge to the next technological breakthrough.

The question is: which ethanol?

Right now, the biofuel market is being grossly distorted by subsidies and trade barriers in the United States and the European Union. These make it rewarding to produce ethanol from corn or grains that are far less productive than sugarcane ethanol, divert land from food production (unlike sugarcane), and have dubious environmental credentials.

What sense does it make to have a surplus of environmentally friendly Brazilian sugar-based ethanol with a yield eight times higher than U.S. corn ethanol and zero impact on food prices being kept from an American market by a tariff of 54 cents on a gallon while Iowan corn ethanol gets a subsidy?

“It would make a lot more sense to drop the tariff, drop the subsidy, and allow Brazilian ethanol into the United States,” said Philippe Reichstul, the chief executive of a biofuel company in São Paulo. “Pressure on U.S. land will be slashed.”..

Mark C.

David and Afghanistan

Versus Iraq--two posts at The Torch:

1) New US Centcom commander and Afstan

2) US considering command structure changes for Afstan

Mark C.

Update:

US wanting effectively to take command of combat areas in Afstan?

"Who are the world's top public intellectuals?"

Prospect magazine is running an online poll with 100 names (guess who won the poll when done in 2005?). Canadians included are Michael Ignatieff (Mickey I. finished 37th in 2005), Steven Pinker (26th), and Charles Taylor (new). Naomi Klein was, gasp, listed in 2005 and, gasp, finished 11th. She has thankfully not been included this year.

You can vote for five; voting closes May 15. You can comment:

...please don’t be shy about letting us know how absurd/barbaric/sexist/anglocentric you find our selection, in the comments below. But be warned! The wittiest and/or most caustic responses may well find their way on to our letters page.

What's Mickey I. done over the last three years to warrant continued inclusion? Is that a public intellectual you see before you during the Commons' question period? Surely one mea culpa in the NY Times Magazine is not enough.

Mark C.

How far we haven't come

Today's fuel-economy champions are barely an improvement (and, in many ways, a step back) from Ned Flanders's car.

One good thing about $120-per-barrel oil - it might convince Suzuki to bring over the Metro's highly-regarded successor, the Swift.

Damian P.

You'd think the giant poster of Hitler would have tipped him off

Ladies and Gentleman, the stupidest politician in Indiana America the World the universe:

U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika.

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn't know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

"This is just a great opportunity for me to witness," he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

[...]

Zirkle is running against Republican Luke Puckett of Goshen and Joseph Roush of Plymouth in the May primary. He lost twice before in primaries to former U.S. Rep. Chris Chocola and has made doing away with pornography and prostitution his top campaign plank.

"I told (Channel 16, WNDU in South Bend) in the beginning that I'd speak to any group that wanted me to speak," Zirkle said Monday. He said he's also recently spoken on the subject to a pair of black journalists.

"I'm keeping my promise. I'll speak to any group. (The National Socialist Workers Party) was interested in the targeting of white people for prostitution."

A few people are trying to compare this to Obama meeting with Bill Ayers or attending Jeremiah Wright's church, which reminds me of this exchange from South Park:

Kyle: Do you realize how retarded that sounds?

Super Adventure Club Head Explorer: Is it any more retarded than the idea of God sending his son to die for our sins? Is it any more retarded than Buddha sitting beneath a tree for twenty years?

Stan: Yeah. It's way, way more retarded.

Damian P.

Dutch-owned businesses burned, boycotted all over Bible Belt

Film director Paul Verhoeven's theory about Christ's birth:

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, "Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

[...]

The 69-year-old Dutch-born director, who also directed "Showgirls" — starring Elizabeth Berkley in one of the most panned films of the '90s — and sci-fi action hits like "Total Recall" and "RoboCop," as well as the sci-fi bust "Starship Troopers," claims he and co-biographer Rob van Scheers have written the most realistic portrayal of Jesus ever published.

The book, which also states that Christ was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot, one of the 12 original apostles of Jesus, as the New Testament states, will be published in the Netherlands by Amsterdam-based Meulenhoff in September, according to the Reporter.

Verhoeven is in discussions for an English-language version, the show business newspaper reported.

Question: when Verhoeven appears before the Pearly Gates, will he have a harder time explaining away this book, or Hollow Man?

Damian P.

Newfoundland's turn?

Dal Law professor Philip Girard surveys possible replacements for retiring Supreme Court Justice Michel Bastarache. By tradition, one spot is reserved for Atlantic Canada (Bastarache is from New Brunswick), and no Newfoundlander has ever been appointed to the top court:

So who’s in the running on the Rock? First of all, not the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal, Clyde Wells. This PM is not going to appoint a former Liberal premier to the Supreme Court. And the man will be 71 this year, leaving him only four years in office. That would be a real slap to the province: let’s appoint someone we know will only be there a few years, then you can wait sixty years for your next turn.

There are some impressive candidates on the Newfoundland courts. Leo Barry has a breadth of experience that makes him attractive: LL.M. at Yale, practice in St. John’s, professor at Dal Law School in the 1970s, chair of the provincial Labour Relations Board, MLA and cabinet minister, and his French skills are reported to be up to par. His iconoclastic record of having run for the leadership of both the provincial Conservatives and the Liberals at different times, however, probably nixes his chances in Ottawa. [Barry actually led the provincial Liberals, during their mid-80s wilderness period. - DJP]

Derek Green has had a McLachlinesque career, starting on the Trial Division, being promoted to the Court of Appeal, and then going back to the Trial Division as Chief Justice. A Rhodes Scholar with no obvious prior political connections, Chief Justice Green conducted a sensitive inquiry last year into the alleged misuse of MLA expense accounts.

Michael Harrington’s name comes up frequently. He was appointed to the Trial Division last year by the Harper government so he is a known quantity. He has a very high reputation among Newfoundland lawyers but whether he has the royal jelly for a Supreme Court appointment is less clear, and his French skills are unknown.

There are some capable women candidates on the Newfoundland courts, including Gail Welch, appointed to the Trial Division in 1999 and recently elevated to the Court of Appeal, but something tells me that Stephen Harper is not the man to give the Supreme Court of Canada a female majority. The opportunity to ameliorate the gender gap in his support must be tempting, but the chance of alienating his own core voters is probably too high to risk it.

(Yep, Girard has we Tory core voters pegged. "He appointed another fe-male to the Supreme Court? Screw that, I'm votin' Christian Heritage Party next time.")

I think Wells has a better shot than Professor Girard believes. He might have been a Liberal, but that doesn't mean he was ever a liberal. The potential reaction in Quebec, considering Wells's famed opposition to the Meech Lake Accord, might be the biggest strike against him.

Damian P.

Pennsylvania is the new Mississippi

Barack Obama represents a new kind of politics, which will take America beyond its brutal divisions, end the triumph of dirty politics and demagoguery, and allow the nation to concentrate on the real issues. And if you don't vote for him, that's because you're racist.

Damian P.

New Logo?

The reviewer, in the Times Literary Supplement, of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is rather caustic:

...it soon becomes clear that free- market ideologues, though genuflecting to Chicago, include virtually anyone who has expressed any doubts about central planning, state ownership, or any aspect of the regulation of modern economies. This no doubt adds vigour to the polemic, but it makes this book about as useful a guide to modern economics as a book on the state of contemporary religion written by an atheist for whom there is no real difference between Catholics, Quakers and Bible Belt fundamentalists.

[...]

Cherry-picking the evidence is particularly important for Klein's favoured strategy of guilt by association, when she implies, for instance, that since many torturers have been keen on free markets, free-market ideology leads intrinsically to the use of torture. It is not clear what, on this theory, explains the use of torture by Communist or otherwise anti-capitalist governments. Since she never mentions it, she may not be aware that it has ever happened.

Klein is not shy of moralizing. Amnesty International comes in for scorn for concentrating on torture in its 1976 report on Argentina and failing to see that the real problem was capitalism...She cannot quite pin the 2004 Asian tsunami on the Chicago School economists, but she implies that they must have greeted it with a round of applause. This is not, it should be understood, a book for those who like nuance.

There are moments of unintentional black comedy when, on her tour of the world's hot spots, Klein jets in to Baghdad to tell the inhabitants that their real problem is capitalism and finds, as the bombs explode around her, most of her interlocutors wishing they had a little more capitalism and a little less civil war...

...Nowadays Naomi Klein's business is selling books, and she uses morality as a branding tool with a deft glibness that many corporate executives must envy. She has learned her trade well.

But Ms Klein is still a step above Ms McQuaig in the pantheon of raving anti-American female Canadian writers.

Mark C.

Blame Hillier!

Norman Spector chooses Linda McQuaig for TODAY'S IDIOCY:

Among vicious crimes, this one stood out: Two strong young men savagely beat and kicked a frail, ailing 59-year-old man to death, and then kicked, punched and taunted a woman who intervened to help him.

But, amazingly, the young men – reservists in the Canadian military – caught a huge break last week: the Crown accepted a plea bargain for manslaughter, enabling them to dodge the far more serious charge of second-degree murder.

[...]

According to testimony at the trial, Deganis, before attacking Croutch in the middle of the night, had attempted to attack another person in a bus shelter and, during the attack on Croutch, Deganis shouted he "hated bums and homeless people and wanted to take them on."

The woman who intervened said Deganis thrust his military tags in her face and screamed: "This gives us the right to kill all the homeless bums, crackheads, whores."

Did these men somehow feel their military affiliation entitled them to behave like thugs?

This raises the disturbing possibility that these young reservists considered the Rambo-like posture of Canada's top general, Rick Hillier, gave them a licence to behave aggressively.

Certainly Hillier – who announced his retirement last week to much fawning in the media – set a very different tone for the Canadian Forces, referring to the enemy in Afghanistan as "detestable murderers and scumbags" and suggesting the role of the Canadian military is to "be able to kill people."..

More on Ms. McQuaig here.

Mark C.

Can anyone here play this game?

If the federal Tories' intention was to turn a potential scandal into a major scandal, well, mission accomplished:

Political parties try to control media coverage, especially when there's bad news. But rarely do high-level briefings end with senior officials running for the fire escape.

A comical scene played out in Ottawa on Sunday after a Conservative party spokesman invited select members of the press to a secret meeting in a downtown hotel to discuss allegations the Tories violated elections law. The party wanted to release documents relating to the RCMP search of Conservative offices last week.

The party is accused of exceeding the limit on national advertising by $1-million.

Ryan Sparrow, a party spokesman, sent out e-mails on Saturday inviting some media outlets to a private meeting with him, Tory campaign organizer Doug Finley and a party lawyer. News outlets were given specific meeting times at the Lord Elgin hotel.

Ottawa is a small town where nothing is a secret for long and word leaked out. By Sunday morning, the Liberal party had the hotel name, boardroom and times of the Conservative press briefings. Details spread to media outlets deliberately not invited.

[...]

Uninvited reporters were asked by hotel management to leave the building, but they refused to go. Party officials claimed yesterday the CBC and other outlets had been practically "breaking down the doors" trying to get in.

The meetings eventually broke up early before all the intended reporters had a chance to see the documents.

The Conservatives fled using the fire exit, saying they had nothing to hide but were blocked by the media scrum.

I hate to say it, but this guy has a point:

...a top Liberal Party guy was actually criminally charged on Friday in Montreal. That, too, is news - but it has completely disappeared in the wake of the Tory election fraud stuff. Interesting, that.

What does it all mean? Well, I'd venture there are a couple cautionary lessons, here: one, like Mr. Clemens once said, don't get into a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. The Tories did, for two years, and now they're paying for it. Big time.

I'm not sure this mess is enough to oust the Tories from power - the Liberals are certainly in no position to benefit from a Conservative spending scandal, and Tory voters are unlikely to migrate to the New Democrats or Greens, even as a protest vote. (In Quebec, unfortunately, "soft nationalist" Conservative voters may go to the Bloc.) But it could make all the difference between a Harper majority and another minority government.

Damian P.

Embittered pastor speaks out

PASTOR ROGER BYRD

BIG BIRD

HUMM

ARE THEY BROTHERS

Damian P.

"Can you smell what Barack is cookin'?"

The candidates appear on WWE Raw. Seriously. Obama at least gets an amusing line, while McCain looks like he might actually want to fight you. As for Hillary...now it's just getting sad.

If Presidential contenders must make these embarrassing TV appearances, I wish one of them would say, "Sock it to me?"

Damian P.

Complaining that everything you buy is made in China?

Well, it looks like the you won't have to worry about the Chinese auto invasion for a while yet:

China's fast-rising auto makers, enjoying spectacular growth in domestic and emerging markets, are postponing their ambitions in North America as they focus on easier markets in the near term.

The biggest Chinese auto makers, which had earlier signalled that they might enter North America as early as next year, are now admitting that they need several more years to build dealerships and meet regulatory hurdles.

Their sales in China and other emerging markets have soared so fast that they now regard North America as a lower priority. Car sales jumped by 21 per cent in China in the first quarter of this year, showing no signs of weakening after five years of 20 to 30 per cent annual growth. China has become the world's second-biggest car market, behind only the United States, and it could overtake the U.S. within the next decade

[...]

Chery signed an agreement with Chrysler last year to produce a low-cost vehicle to be sold under Chrysler's Dodge brand in North America, but both companies said yesterday that the project is still under discussion and the proposed new car is still being developed...

Mark C.

Damian adds: the Chinese auto industry has a long, long way to go, but at least some of them are really trying. (From this angle, the Geely GT actually looks pretty cool.)

Update: Will China save the mega-SUV?

High, wide and fuel-hungry, the gleaming black Cadillac Escalade on display at the Beijing auto show is an unlikely car for an era of record oil prices.

Although U.S. sport-utility vehicle sales are tumbling, automakers are finding that for China's newly prosperous car buyers, bigger is still better.

So General Motors has made the Escalade a star of its auto-show display and is eager to get it on the market here.

"If you look at the fastest-growing market segments in China, there are two -- SUVs and luxury cars," said Joseph Y.H. Liu, GM China's vice president for sales and marketing...

Re-Talibanization

No one expected Kandahar to become Amsterdam overnight (the likelihood of Amsterdam becoming Kandahar is a subject for another post), and as the Christian Science Monitor reports, there remains considerable resistance to re-introducing the cultural restrictions imposed by the Taliban.

That doesn't make this story much less depressing and infuriating, though:

Shafi Samandari thought the days of the Taliban would never come back. "I love listening to music and going to wedding parties," the Kabul resident says. "After the Taliban was toppled, I was sure that we could start living normally again."

The Taliban may not be returning anytime soon, but if some Afghan lawmakers have their way, Taliban-era laws will once again reign over the country. Last week, a group of members of parliament (MPs) put forth draft legislation that would ban T-shirts, loud music, women and men mingling in public, billiards, video games, playing with pigeons, and more – all regulations from the notorious Taliban era.

The move is the most recent attempt by religious conservatives to restrict "un-Islamic influences." Many observers say it's the latest sign of growing Talibanization in Afghanistan.

The draft law comes a week after members of parliament voted to ban wildly popular Indian soap operas from airing on Afghan channels.

The programs, emotional dramas featuring forbidden trysts, family intrigue, and Hindu imagery – drew the ire of conservatives and religious figures.

In January, Afghan journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh was put on death row for downloading an article from the Internet that questioned women's roles in Islam. Mr. Kambakhsh, who was convicted by an Islamic court, is scheduled to appeal in the coming weeks.

Late last year another prominent journalist, Ghaws Zalmai, was jailed for translating the Koran into the local Persian language.

While most analysts don't expect this most recent law to pass, there is a real threat that these moves will fuel religious conservatives and make the Taliban's ideas more acceptable, according to Haroun Mir cofounder and deputy director of the Afghan Center for Research and Policy Studies, based in Kabul.

"Even if the law doesn't pass, it will provide legitimacy for the Taliban by approving of Taliban-era laws," Mr. Mir says. This will bring together the fundamentalists, he adds, and put moderates on the defensive – creating a propitious climate for the proliferation of Taliban ideology.

I strongly support our mission in Afghanistan, but even I'll have to question what we're doing there if the Taliban's odious, medieval policies are brought back. For Canadians who don't think we should be there, it's yet another reason why. (via Hot Air)

A question: how much of the Taliban resurgence is directly caused by our futile, counterproductive attempt to eradicate one of the country's largest industries? (More here.)

Damian P.

Thank goodness Canada has no "Press Ombudsperson"

Unlike Sweden (via Celestial Junk):

Yrsa Stenius, the Swedish press Ombudsmann, wants to press charges against certain bloggers. She is worried about developments on the Internet, where anybody can just write anything they want. She says this has gone too far. She fears this trend could even spread to the mainstream media, unless something is done and a legal precedent is established to rein in unruly bloggers.

[...]

Yrsa Stenius is originally from Helsinki, Finland, from the country's Swedish-speaking minority. She has been associated with Aftonbladet since 1979, and was even their political editor-in-chief in the mid-80s, and was a columnist for them as late as 2007. In 2006, she severely criticized the publishing of the Muhammad cartoons by newspaper Jyllands-Posten in Denmark as hateful misuse of free speech. When it was announced in 2007 that she would become press Ombudsman, the conservative blogger Dick Erixon, one of Sweden's most famous political bloggers, wrote the post "A press Ombudsman against free speech," where he quoted her criticism of the Muhammad cartoons, which she made while working as a columnist for the newspaper Aftonbladet...

We just have our human rights commissions.

Mark C.

Damian adds: Mark, please don't give Barbara Hall any ideas...

In a wide-ranging interview this week about the upcoming changes to her commission's mandate, she stood firmly by her position that media have a responsibility to put their writings through a "human rights filter" before publication, and said the commission is keen to call out those who do not, jurisdiction be damned.

Unintended eco-consequences

There might be a bigger enviro-scam than ethanol, but I can't think of it at the moment:

In recent years, we've heard that climate change could be catastrophic for nature and humanity. But it's becoming increasingly evident that over the next few decades, climate-change policies could prove even more catastrophic.

Food riots have erupted in Mexico, Morocco, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mauritania, Cameroon, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Egypt have all placed restrictions on their rice exports to drive down domestic prices. Pakistan has reinstated food rationing, which is also under discussion in Bangladesh and rumored in Sri Lanka.

Supposedly climate-friendly policies in the United States and the European Union — subsidizing the production and consumption of such renewable biofuels as ethanol and biodiesel — have diverted such crops as corn, soybeans and palm oil from food to fuel. This, in turn, has increased prices for food worldwide at a time when the highly populous and newly prosperous East and South Asian countries are demanding more of it.

[...]

These food-price spikes threaten to undo one of the world's signal post-World War II achievements. In the '50s and '60s, many feared that famine was inevitable. Instead, we witnessed a vast reduction in chronic hunger, from 37 percent of the developing world's population in 1970 to 17 percent in 2001 — despite an 83 percent increase in population.

Increased agricultural productivity, trade in food commodities and aid from the developed world resulted in a 75 percent drop in global food prices after 1950, making food available to the bottom-rung billions worldwide. The current bump-up in food prices threatens to reverse these gains.

The conversion of natural habitat land for produce-cultivation purposes had been the single-largest threat to biodiversity worldwide, but over the last half century, the global agricultural footprint has nearly stabilized. Now, this achievement is also in jeopardy.

What the US ethanol subsidies do for corn, the European Union's biodiesel subsidies do for palm oil. EU policies stoke an artificial demand for biodiesel, leading to the clearance of high-biodiversity forests in Malaysia and Indonesia. In both the European Union and the United States, lands previously set aside for nature conservation are once again coming under the plow to meet subsidized biofuel demand.

(via Rob Breakenridge)

Damian P.

Mr Steyn at his best

"...To modify Brecht, we need to elect a new people, if only to file more "human rights" complaints..."

[there's a translation]...Wäre es da

Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung

Löste das Volk auf und

Wählte ein anderes?

Mark C.

Damian adds: more about the out-of-control Ms. Hall here and here.

Five Alive

A number and accuracy. A letter to the Vancouver Sun, not published:

Barbara Yaffe, in her column "Two factors mean the end of air travel as we know it" (April 17), refers to "a new type of passenger aircraft, designed for fuel efficiency -- one that's bat-shaped, resembling a B-52 bomber..."

I'm afraid Ms Yaffe has confused the 50-year old B-52 Stratofortress, which is a conventional design with a fuselage, wings and vertical tail, with the US Air Force's latest bomber, the B-2 Spirit. The B-2 is a so-called "flying wing", without a separate fuselage and wings, and without a vertical tail; it indeed might be called "bat-shaped".

What a difference a "5" makes. What some people in fact are considering for future airliners is what is described as a "blended wing" design. This is one in which, as with the B-2, the fuselage and wings are not distinct structures; instead there is a large and wide central structure that seamlessly blends into the wings.

The problem with this design, from the passengers' standpoint, is that most of them in the wide, central cabin--the "20-seat rows" that Ms Yaffe mentions--are far away from any windows and may feel uncomfortable flying without an easy view outside the aircraft.

References:
http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=83
http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=82
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/b797.htm
http://www.twitt.org/bldwing.htm

Mark C.

The Anna Kournikova Maria Sharapova of racing

Danica Patrick gets her first win.

Damian P.

China to the rescue!

Good grief:

A Chinese cargo ship believed to be carrying 77 tonnes of small arms, including more than 3m rounds of ammunition, AK47 assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, has docked in the South African port of Durban for transportation of the weapons to Zimbabwe, the South African government confirmed yesterday. It claimed it was powerless to intervene as long as the ship's papers were in order.

[...]

Despite international criticism, the Chinese government has been a longstanding backer of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's authoritarian regime, supplying it with jet fighters, military vehicles and guns. China, or Chinese businesses, are reported to have sold radio-jamming devices to prevent independent stations from contradicting the state-controlled media, and have signed vital agriculture deals. Even the blue tiles on Mugabe's latest 25-bedroom mansion, reminiscent of Beijing's Forbidden City, were a gift from China.

China has in the past used its veto at the UN security council to prevent the Zimbabwe issue from being raised, on the grounds that the country's problems were an internal matter...

Now some good news:

Communist Chinese weapons shipment to Zimbabwe blocked by South African dockworkers

Solidarity forever!

Dock workers and police send China arms ship packing from South African port

But maybe there's some other rescuing:

Chinese troops are on the streets of Zimbabwean city, witnesses say

Mark C.

Damian adds: the ship is reportedly on the way to Angola for unloading. In this case, it's a good thing Zimbabwe is landlocked.

Good news update:

Zimbabwe arms ship heads back to China

Beijing accuses critics of trying to create conflict as vessel leaves with bombs, bullets on board

Stein beats Spurlock (and Jet Li beats both)

The creationist documentary Expelled finished ninth at the box office this weekend. Not a great performance, but considerably better than Morgan Spurlock's Where in the World is Osama bin Laden, which only earned about half as much per screen. (Faced with two high-profile, ideologically opposed documentaries, Americans decided en masse to see Jackie Chan and Jet Li in The Forbidden Kingsom.)

The best way to critique a movie is to make your own movie, and I'm pleased to see some conservatives taking the initiative. I just wish they weren't using the movie to promote pseudoscience.

Damian P.

Canadian Forces weekend update

Just in case you're wondering about the big picture:

DND 2008-09 Report on Plans and Priorities

Lucky for you, I've done some excerpting.

Mark C.

Weekend Linda McQuaig update

A post at The Torch:

Linda "Shoot the Hippo" lashes out

Mark C.

Leave Stéphane alone!!!

The media pile-on against the alleged leader of the federal Liberals has been relentless, and Robert Fulford is feeling kind of bad for the guy:

In The Globe and Mail, demonstrating that Dion is a disaster for his party, Michael Valpy searched his imagination for flaws he could add to the already thick anti-Dion indictment. He came up with an accusation unique in the history of political writing: Dion suffers from inadequately aged skin! Valpy charged him with looking “untouched by life … A too-smooth face.”

Michael Adams, renowned pollster, went further, assuming the role of psychosexual social analyst. “This man has to be more masculine,” declared Adams. “He has to think about how to be more masculine.” Even for a pollster, that was insolent. Still, Adams tried to help. He suggested Dion be photographed doing something physical — and, if possible, tell jokes. As for the Globe’s Jeffrey Simpson, he delivered the kiss of death: Dion is “a well-meaning, intelligent man,” wrote Simpson, words indicating that the date of the execution is about to be announced. Simpson suggested that Dion should promise to raise the GST to the level originally established by the Mulroney government. He could thus frustrate potential
assassins by committing suicide.

But in the highly popular sport of Dion persecution, Chantal Hébert of the Toronto Star has established herself as unquestioned champion. Her critique may be less baroque than what Valpy came up with, less Freudian than the notion floated by Adams and less condescending than Simpson’s dismissal, but she’s more persistent than any of them. In January, she wrote that Dion would be the leader to watch this year and nobody can complain that she hasn’t watched him. She’s relentless. Dion is to her what militant Islam is to Mark Steyn.

[...]

All of this raises a humanitarian question. “Canadian values,” as the Toronto Star likes to put it, demand that we firmly oppose the use of torture. Given that principle, how can Canadian journalists permit the torment visited upon this one hapless citizen? We can’t. I’m preparing my brief to the torture committee of Amnesty International.

Damian P.

Iceland, the US--and China's grace

It's a funny old financial world:

...Until last year, Iceland’s economic track record in this decade had been phenomenal—its annual growth rate averaged close to four per cent over the past decade, and its per-capita gross national income is now higher than that of the U.S. This year, though, the country’s currency, the króna, has fallen twenty-two per cent against the euro; the economy has stagnated; and a global rating agency has put the nation’s three major banks on a credit watch...

...The subprime crisis, in which investors realized that they had greatly underestimated the risks of lending to people with bad credit, has spawned a wider credit crunch: investors now suspect disaster behind every door, and even seemingly solid borrowers find credit much harder to come by. The subprime crisis was an earthquake that caused a tsunami: the quake has done plenty of damage on its own, but the tsunami looks set to do even more.

Iceland has been swamped by that tsunami because it trusted in the availability of global credit in time for that credit to evaporate. And the fact that Iceland has been so dependent on foreign investors makes those investors even more skittish about investing there: in markets, weakness often begets weakness...

...that’s the second lesson of Iceland’s plight: even in a flat world, there are different rules for different players. In order to prop up the króna, and keep foreign capital from fleeing, Iceland’s central bank has had to raise interest rates to an astounding fifteen per cent, a move that will slow the economy to a crawl. By contrast, the dollar, while weak, has evaded the króna’s precipitous fall; the Federal Reserve, far from raising interest rates, has slashed them; and Congress is borrowing a hundred and fifty-two billion dollars to hand out tax rebates.

[...]

...countries like China and Japan keep pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into U.S. securities. They’re doing this not out of kindness, of course, but because the U.S. is a colossal market and they need us to keep buying stuff. The world can’t afford to have the U.S. fail, and so we are able to get away with behavior that would wreck smaller countries. Great for us, but when we look at Iceland’s predicament we should say that there but for the grace of China go we.

Mark C.

Maclean's defends itself

The Ontario Human Rights Commission is a government agency with the power to impose penalties and sanctions upon private citizens and businesses. Maclean's magazine is a privately owned magazine with the power to impose nothing. But, hey, same difference, as far as the Canadian Islamic Congress's lawyer is concerned:

Critics of the OHRC statement have since complained that the commission made its findings without having first allowed Maclean’s to present its side of the story. This, they allege, is unfair. Ironically, it was Maclean’s editorial management that precipitated our human rights action when they would not allow for a representative response from the Muslim community, a chance to "present their side of the story," if you will, after Maclean’s published Mark Steyn’s ludicrous allegations that Muslims are engaged in a global conspiracy to take over the West in a "bloody" civil war, to colonize the West in the same way that the "white man" did to "Injun" land. This decision by Maclean’s management was upheld by the same individuals who are now critical of the OHRC statement as being in line with freedom of expression.

(Note, by the way, that Mr. Joseph is described as "counsel for...the four Osgoode Hall law students who filed a human rights complaint against Maclean’s magazine." In fact, CIC head Mohamed Elmasry is the complainant, despite his best efforts - successful, it would appear - to make the media believe otherwise.)

The magazine's unforgivable sin is its alleged failure to give the non-complainants an opportunity to respond to Mark Steyn's book excerpt. In an editorial, Maclean's tells its side of the story:

Not surprisingly, the article generated enormous reaction from our readers. In the weeks following publication, we printed 27 letters to the editor, reflecting a broad range of opinion on the merits of Steyn's thesis. This is more letters than we've published on any other subject in recent years, and several of those we did publish were part of a campaign run by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington and its affiliate in Ottawa. But six months after the story appeared, and long after we believed the debate had subsided, we heard from a group of law students angry about the article, and demanding a meeting. Normally we wouldn't meet with aggrieved readers regarding a six-month-old story. But because it involved sensitive issues, we agreed to sit down with them and to discuss their concerns.

The students complained that the story and the cover image we used, presented a prejudicial and sinister image of the Muslim community and stoked unreasonable fears of a Muslim conspiracy to take over the world. To bolster their complaints they selected a handful of other articles from the magazine that they felt presented an unfair and negative portrayal of Muslim people.

We answered that Steyn's article was an interesting and well-researched essay expressing the opinion of the author. We pointed out that nowhere does it suggest there is a plot for global domination involving the entire Muslim community (in fact, he distinguishes between various factions in the Muslim world, moderate and radical). Furthermore, we had already printed many letters dealing with precisely the same counter-arguments the students were raising. We demonstrated that our magazine is staunchly supportive of peace-loving, law-abiding Islamic-Canadians. Indeed, we have taken several editorial positions explicitly in support of the Muslim community, including the right of Muslim women to wear whatever religious garments they choose, and the merits of public funding for Muslim religious schools. Finally, we explained that Maclean's is dedicated to asking provocative questions and fostering debate on important public issues.

This did not satisfy the students. They demanded the right to respond with an article of equivalent length, by a writer of their choosing and with a cover of their own design. The editors of this magazine would have no opportunity to edit the article except for spelling and punctuation. According to their terms, they would be free to write anything they wanted, however inaccurate or unreasonable or offensive or libelous or criminal or otherwise unsuited for our publication.

They also wanted a substantial sum of money donated to a charity of their choice. If we refused any of their terms, they said they planned to bring a human rights complaint against us. They said they were also contemplating a criminal action against us.

We told them that we couldn't possibly meet their demands. No publication could. It would violate an editor's responsibilities to his publication, his readers, and his profession. We told them we would rather go out of business than to give over complete control of space in the magazine to anyone on such terms. We stand by that decision. Faced with their ultimatum, we asked if there was anything else we could do to satisfy them. They said "no" and smiled.

Since that meeting, the students have been communicating an inaccurate version of what transpired. For example, it's not true, as they claim, that we said we would rather go out of business than allow them right of response; we said we'd rather go out of business than allow them to respond entirely on their terms. They claim now that they would have settled for a reasonable right of response; we asked if they were firm in their position, and they said "yes." We were prepared to give them an opportunity to have their say, but they gave us no opening for reasonable conciliation. Several weeks later, we learned they had complained to federal human rights authorities, and to similar commissions in British Columbia and Ontario.

Since we all have the inalienable right to get our responses published in newspapers and magazines now, has Mark Steyn threatened a human-rights complaint if the CIC won't publish his articles in their newsletter?

Damian P.

He said it, not me

Paul Watson actually made some sense, thirty years ago:

In a 1978 CBC radio interview, now being circulated on YouTube, Paul Watson slams Greenpeace and others for focusing protests on seal hunting because "it is very easy to exploit," even though the species is not endangered.

Watson, the 57-year-old co-founder of Greenpeace who later established the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, tells the interviewer that conservation groups campaign to protect seals because the animals are "cute" and their images help generate more donations than efforts to save other species.

"Oh, it's definitely because it's easier to make money and because it does make a profit," he says in the seven-minute discussion with Barbara Frum.

"There are over a thousand animals on the endangered species list and the seal isn't one of them," he says on the video, which shows a static shot of Watson and two other men, and a rolling text of what is being said.

During the interview, Watson also criticizes Greenpeace for sending members from California to the ice floes off Newfoundland and Quebec to oppose the hunt.

"They're coming from the highest-standard-of-living region in North America, they're travelling to the place of the lowest-income-per-year area on this continent, telling them not to kill seals because they're cute," he said.

At another point on the video, Watson says there are several species of dolphins off the U.S. coast that are being fished to extinction but are receiving no attention from animal welfare groups because the cause does not bring in donations.

Damian P.

Burning issues of the day

Some people have odd concerns:

Is the Dalai Lama anti-gay? Is Tibetan Buddhism inherently homophobic?

Then there's this odd form of address in the "Comments":

I don't know if Mr D Lama is such a person.

That's from the person writing the third place finisher as "Best progressive Blog of 2007" (scroll down).

Mark C.

Damian adds: to be fair, it's worth noting that Laura K. supports a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, in no small part because of Tibet.

The Toronto 18 11

The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente is worried (with good reason in my view--full text payers only):

It was almost two years ago when the world media swarmed to Toronto to cover the sensational arrest of 18 Muslim men charged with conspiring in a homegrown terror plot. Even at the time, some of the plotters' loose talk sounded like adolescent bravado. Storm the CBC? Now that will bring the infidels to their knees! Behead the Prime Minister? Yeah, sure, if they could figure out how to find Parliament Hill.

"I hope this case holds up," I muttered at the time. Otherwise, our law enforcers are going to look awfully stupid.

[...]

And so the Toronto 18 have dwindled to 11. Even so, the complex case is so bogged down in lawyers and procedure that no one dares predict when it will go to trial. Maybe this decade, maybe not. The British managed to try their airplane bomb-plot suspects in well under two years, but such speedy justice is evidently beyond our reach.

[...]

The stakes in the case of the (now) Toronto 11 could scarcely be higher. It's the biggest test to date of Canada's new anti-terror laws. It also tests the credibility of the police, the intelligence service and the prosecution, whose reputations will be hammered if (and this is a big if) it all falls through. Most of all, it will test the public's willingness to believe what our leaders tell us - that there really are bad guys among us who pose a mortal danger to our way of life, and that we can get them. If the rest of the case goes south, it would be a serious blow to our anti-terrorism efforts.

That's why the sooner we get answers, the better. But this is Canada - so don't hold your breath.

Mark C.

Well, it worked in the '80s...

An Illinois Dodge dealer dusts off the Lee Iacocca playbook. What part of your brain controls your dignity, and how do they remove it when you become a car salesman?

Damian P.

What "elitist" really means

It's all about race, folks. Isn't everything?

Damian P.

Where's the "North"?

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown sucks up to Americans from a Labour point of view; but oh! the hurtful slight to Canada:

Enlarging the Anglosphere

...I want to suggest how our Atlantic relationship – which has always been rooted in something far more fundamental and lasting than our common interests or even our common history and common language – can be renewed and extended into new areas for a new generation.

[...]

Last month, the British Council launched the Transatlantic 2020 initiative to bring together young leaders from America [emphasis added - MC], the U.K. and Europe...

Now we all know that when Brits speak of "America" they mean the US alone. But the British Council actually says:

Transatlantic Network 2020 (TN2020) seeks to create sustainable, multilateral networks that span the Atlantic by engaging future leaders from North [emphasis added] America, the UK, and the rest of Europe to collaboratively address global issues.

And Canadians are taking part. Why do you wound us so by omission, Mr Brown? And that headline certainly excludes our Québécois brethren. Such appalling diplomatic insensitivity. Rivals our own Maxime Bernier.

I also hate to think what the poor Mexicans, of NAFTA fame, must be feeling. The British Council, for its part, seems to have forgotten them completely.

Mark C.

Ledeen on the War

It's difficult to top Michael Ledeen on his home turf. The good Doc has a lot to offer...and when I'm behind on my blogs for a week, Mr. Ledeen's Pajamas site is a great place to get caught up on the War.

Those who argue against support of revolution in Iran think they are favoring peace, but it’s just the opposite. They are making the next chapter of Iran’s thirty years’ war against us, more likely. That chapter will be more violent than anything that has gone before. It may still be avoidable.

Faster, Please.

If you're interested in Canada's perspective in all of this, one can't do better than This Guy. (But you knew that...)

Joseph Hayyim

Protest sign of the day

Umm...

Damian P.

A "bizarre, cult-like group"

That's how Terry Glavin describes a group opposed to Canada's military mission in Afghanistan.

Mark C.

Justice, Canadian style

Canadians are almost universally outraged about this:

...a Canadian woman who has been imprisoned in Mexico for two years, said his client was shocked when a judge told her he could take up to 30 days to issue a ruling on her case...

Before any trial that is. How about this in Ontario?

...He spent 16 months in jail before being granted bail, with 13 of those months in isolation, his lawyer said...

Do we have any sense of perspective? Or maybe are we actually just a wee bit culturalist (if not racist)? Put another way, why have our media not noticed the apparent hypocrisy in the way cases in Canada are covered compared to those involving Canadians abroad?

Mark C.

I've had it with Sarko

I mean, really:

...Mr. Sarkozy’s taste is said to be for Lionel Richie and Celine Dion. (Mitterrand mulled over Dostoyevsky; de Gaulle consumed Chateaubriand.)..

Talk about MOR--this is a hyperpresident? Maybe Sarko saw Lionel "Live In Paris". I wonder what our other Dion thinks of his president's cultural leanings.

Mark C.

The middle kingdom's middle class...

...are not the best hope for democratic change. Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail writes from experience (full text payers only):

[...]

I'm not sure what took us so long to get outraged. It's not exactly a secret that the folks who rule China have been oppressing the Tibetans for quite a while, not to mention condoning the slaughter in Darfur in exchange for Sudan's oil, backing the murderous regime in Myanmar, poisoning their own population with toxic sludge and throwing people they don't like in jail.

How come we didn't notice? Maybe we were too busy deploring the United States. But now that China is the world's new bad guy, the Olympic Games have become the latest litmus test of Western virtue. The moral choice is clear: Show up, and condone tyranny. Or boycott the Games, and force the tyrants to feel the wrath of world opinion. Stephen Harper's snub has no doubt rocked the Politburo.

Okay, so maybe not. We in the West make one fundamental error. We imagine that, if only the Chinese people knew what we know, they, too, would be marching in the streets. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Shortly after the last Olympics, I spent a few weeks in Beijing. I wanted to find out what was on the minds of the young and educated meritocracy - the Chinese equivalent of the Westerners who are demanding boycotts and marching in the streets. So I spent a lot of time hanging out at Starbucks. The first thing I learned was that everyone had kept track of every medal won by the Chinese. Their Olympic achievement was a proxy for the nation's honour.

The twentysomething kids I met had well-formed views of their nation's past, and its future. They all believed that China deserves more attention and respect. They didn't ask a single question about the West's attitude toward Tibet because, in their view, it's none of our business. Tibetans are a backward, troublesome bunch who are profoundly ungrateful for everything China has tried to do for them.

To us, China is a world-class bully. To them, China is a model of restraint. One earnest student suggested a small war might be in order. A small war to take back Taiwan. This sentiment is widespread - reclaiming Taiwan is hot stuff in Internet chat rooms.

Nowhere did I find anyone who regarded the central government as a human-rights oppressor. This is partly due to censorship, of course, but not entirely. The kids I met had scarcely heard of Tiananmen Square, although one young woman said the 1989 crackdown had been a good thing. The Chinese are very big on order. They believe that, without a strong government, the place would fly apart. To them, democracy is a Western indulgence, and they think that China's controls on basic human freedoms - the one-child rule, and so on - are quite justified...

That coincides with much that I have read elsewhere. So much for "engagement" through trade (or the Olympics) as the means for opening things up.

Mark C.

Ford has a hit

...but is the Focus selling well because of high gas prices, or because Americans genuinely like it?

I don't think the two-door Focus is a bad-looking car, at least from the side, but that front end is a disaster. If there's one thing I really hate about Ford, it's the company's insistence on keeping the good stuff for the rest of the world.

Damian P.

Goodbye, Rick

A post at The Torch:

Breaking: CDS Gen. Hillier to step down

Damian posted about the general in July 2005:

"A soldier, not a diplomat"

Three cheers for Newfoundland's own General Rick Hillier...

Mark C.

Update: Good stuff from Christie Blatchford, Rosie DiManno (the Toronto Star!), and in a Globe and Mail editorial:

The right man, in the right place, at the right time

Out of Scientology

Three cheers for character actor Jason Beghe, but he better get himself a good lawyer.

(From wwtdd.com: "Tom Cruise could be training an army of roller skating kitty cats with lasers on their heads that would turn non-believers into sandwiches, and it would still be the most rational and level headed thing I’ve heard about scientology in years.")

Damian P.

Deadeye Stéphane (or Stephen)?

Or, lord love a duck. Can you imagine a Liberal leader--even a Conservative one--saying something like this?

[...]

“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” she said.

“You know, some people now continue to teach their children and their grandchildren. It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are. Not because they are bitter.”

[...]

"As I told you, my dad taught me how to shoot behind our cottage,” she said. “I have gone hunting. I am not a hunter. But I have gone hunting."

Clinton said she has hunted ducks.

Video here. There sure are differences between American and Canadian political culture...

Mark C.

Damian adds: Hillary Clinton, firearms enthusiast. This woman would say she's a robot time-traveler sent to kill John Connor if it would help her get elected.

She has family in Scranton? Maybe she knows Dwight Schrute, though I always pictured him as a Ron Paul supporter.

Update: George Will reflects on the Democrats' obsession with the "false conciousness" of the broad (white) masses.

Hardly Know-It

If you had him in your "alive or dead?" pool, here's your answer:

Canadian writer Farley Mowat