I’m up to my ears in work these days – but the following should keep you occupied for a while.
Patrick S Lasswell;
Embedding with the Peshmerga is different than going with the other Coalition forces. For one thing, there is the absolute absence of paperwork. Michael showed me some of the bureaucracy he has to struggle with to go to Baghdad. On the other hand, we had to provide our own car and driver. Since we had an ace driver who was also our translator and friend, this was fine with us. Going in a low visibility sedan instead of a Hummer with a turret and “ATTACK ME” written all over it also has a certain appeal.
From the safety of the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya – where the war is already over – Kirkuk looks like the mouth of Hell. It’s outside the safe fortress of the Kurdistan mountains and down in the hot and violent plains. The city doesn’t look much better up close, and you can feel the tension rise with the temperature in the car on the way down there.
Gun Town USA – 25 years murder free.
More news from the left’s favourite anti-Bush nation;
The Iranian Supreme Court has overturned the murder convictions of six members of a prestigious state militia who killed five people they considered “morally corrupt.”
There was much more to pick from. Thanks everyone for taking the time to send tips in. Time constraints keep me from replying to most emailed tips, but your effort is always appreciated.
“If back in the mid-nineties, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would not exist because we would have concluded it was not necessary” Dr. Tim Patterson – Professor of Geology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Carleton University
“No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…climate change provides the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world” Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister
“Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen” Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC
I got this item from the Drudge Report, which plays off against a recent rebound-lachrymose attempt at portraying the killer as victim:
“THE grandfather of Cho Seung-Hui said yesterday: “Son of a bitch. It serves him right he died with his victims…”
The rest is here
Forward to Lorne Calvert, MP’s & MLA’s:
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth
One-sided, Misleading, Exaggerated, Speculative, Wrong
By Marlo Lewis, Jr.1
An Inconvenient Truth (AIT), former Vice President Al Gore’s book on “The planetary
emergency of global warming and what can be done about it,” purports to be a nonpartisan,
non-ideological exposition of climate science and moral common sense.
In reality, An Inconvenient Truth is a colorfully illustrated lawyer’s brief for global warming
alarmism and energy rationing. It is a J’Accuse hurled at fossil fuel energy-based
civilization, especially the United States, and above all the Bush Administration and its
purported allies in the U.S. oil and auto industries.
We do not expect lawyers to argue both for and against their clients, nor do we expect
“balance” from political party leaders. However, although Gore reminds us—in the film
version of An Inconvenient Truth—that he “used to be the next President of the United
States,” and concludes both the book and the movie with a call for “political action,” he
presents AIT as the work of a long-time student of climate science, a product of
meditation on “what matters.”
He asks his audience to expect more from him than the mere cleverness that can sway juries or win elections.
What we get instead is sophistry. In AIT, the only facts and studies considered are those
convenient to Gore’s scare-them-green agenda—and in many instances, Gore distorts the
evidence he presents.
Nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate
policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or just plain wrong. The
present OnPoint summarizes my findings.
An Inconvenient Truth does the following:
One-Sided
• Never acknowledges the indispensable role of fossil fuels in alleviating hunger
and poverty, extending human life spans, and democratizing consumer goods,
literacy, leisure, and personal mobility.
• Never acknowledges the environmental, health, and economic benefits of climatic
warmth and the ongoing rise in the air’s carbon dioxide (CO2) content.
• Never acknowledges the major role of natural variability in shrinking the snows
of Kilimanjaro and other mountain glaciers.
• Never mentions the 1976 regime shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a natural
ocean cycle, which is a major cause of recent climate change in Alaska.
• Presents a graph tracking CO2 levels and global temperatures during the past
650,000 years, but never mentions the most significant point: Global temperatures
were warmer than the present during each of the past four interglacial periods,
even though CO2 levels were lower.
• Never confronts a key implication of its assumption that climate is highly
sensitive to CO2 emissions—that absent said emissions, global climate would be
rapidly deteriorating into another ice age.
• Neglects to mention that, due to the growth of urban heat islands, U.S. cities and
towns will continually break temperature records, with or without help from
global warming.
• Neglects to mention that global warming could reduce the severity of winter
storms—also called frontal storms because their energy comes from colliding air
masses (fronts)—by decreasing the temperature differential between colliding air
masses.
• Highlights London’s construction of the Thames River flood barrier as evidence
of global warming-induced sea-level rise, but does not mention that London is
sinking two to six times faster than global sea levels are rising.
• Ignores the large role of natural variability in Arctic climate, never mentioning
either that Arctic temperatures during the 1930s equaled or exceeded those of the
late 20th century, or that the Arctic during the early- to mid-Holocene was
significantly warmer than it is today.
• Cites a study that found that the number of recorded wildfires in North America
has increased in recent decades, but not the same study’s finding that the total
area burned decreased by 90 percent since the 1930s.
• Fosters the impression that global warming can only be good for bad things
(algae, ticks) and bad for good things (polar bears, migratory birds)—depicting
nature as a morality play.
• Cites a study by Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr, of the University of
Colorado, that found an overall loss in Antarctic ice mass during 2002-2005, but
ignores a study by University of Missouri professor Curt Davis and colleagues
that found an overall ice mass gain during 1992-2003. Three years worth of data
is too short to tell anything about a trend in a system as vast and complex as
Antarctica.
• Cites a recent study by John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey that found a
0.5° Celsius (C) to 0.7°C per decade wintertime warming trend in the midtroposphere
above Antarctica, as measured by weather balloons, but fails to
mention that the same study found much less warming—about 0.15°C per
decade—at the Antarctic surface, or that NASA satellites, which also measure
troposphere temperatures, show an Antarctic cooling trend of 0.12°C per decade
since November 1978.
• Misanthropically sees “success” not in the fossil fuel energy-based civilization
that has enabled mankind to increase its numbers more than six-fold since the
dawn of the industrial revolution, but in the recent reduction of global population
growth rates.
• Compares Haiti—which suffers from deforestation—unfavorably with
neighboring Dominican Republic—which enjoys lush forest cover—to illustrate
the impact of politics on the environment, but ignores another key implication of
the comparison: Poverty is the environment’s number one enemy.
• Notes that “much forest destruction” and “almost 30%” of annual CO2 emissions
come from “the burning of brushland for subsistence agriculture and wood fires
used for cooking,” but never considers whether fossil fuel energy restrictions
would set back developing countries both economically and environmentally, by
leading to more such burning.
• Neglects to mention the circumstances that make it reasonable rather than
blameworthy for America to be the biggest CO2 emitter: the world’s largest
economy, high per capita incomes, abundant energy resources, markets integrated
across continental distances, and the world’s most mobile population.
• Impugns the motives of so-called global warming skeptics but never
acknowledges the special-interest motivations of those whose research grants,
direct-mail income, industrial policy privileges, regulatory power, prosecutorial
plunder, or political careers depend on keeping the public in a state of fear about
global warming.
• Castigates former White House official Phil Cooney for editing U.S. government
climate change policy documents, without ever considering the scientific merit of
Cooney’s decisions to delete certain passages as “speculative.”
• Waxes enthusiastic about cellulosic ethanol, a product with no commercial
application despite 30 years of government-funded research, and neglects to
mention that corn-based ethanol, a product in commercial use for a century, is still
more costly than regular gasoline despite oil prices exceeding $70 a barrel.
• Misrepresents the major auto companies’ position in their lawsuit to overturn
California’s CO2 emissions law by neglecting to mention that CO2 standards are
de facto fuel economy standards and that federal law prohibits states from
regulating fuel economy.
• Blames Detroit’s financial troubles on the Big Three’s high-volume production of
sport utility vehicles, even though U.S. automakers probably would not exist
today had they been “ahead of their time” and pushed hybrids during the 1990s,
contrary to consumer demand. AIT says nothing about the biggest cause of
Detroit’s falling capitalization—unaffordable payments for employee benefit
packages negotiated decades ago.
• Touts Denmark’s wind farms without mentioning any of the well-known
drawbacks of wind power: cost, intermittency, avian mortality, site depletion, and
scenic degradation.
• Never addresses the obvious criticism that the Kyoto Protocol is all pain for no
gain and that any policies far-reaching enough to noticeably slow warming would
be a “cure” worse than the alleged disease.
• Claims a study by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton University
shows that “affordable” technologies could reduce U.S. carbon emissions below
1970 levels even though the authors specifically note that their study does not
estimate costs. AIT also neglects to mention that Socolow and Pacala’s study is a
response to a 2002 study by Martin Hoffert of New York University and 17 other
energy experts who concluded that, “CO2 is a combustion product vital to how
civilization is powered; it cannot be regulated away.”
Misleading
• Implies that a two-page photograph of Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina shows
that the glacier is melting away, even though the glacier’s terminal boundary has
not changed in 90 years.
• Implies that, during the past 650,000 years, changes in carbon dioxide levels
preceded and largely caused changes in global temperature, whereas the causality
mostly runs the other way, with CO2 changes trailing global temperature changes
by hundreds to thousands of years.
• Belittles as ideologically motivated the painstaking and now widely-accepted
methodological critiques by Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph in
Ontario and Steve McIntyre of the Hockey Stick reconstruction of Northern
Hemisphere climate history.
• Cites increases in insurance payments to victims of hurricanes, floods, drought,
tornadoes, wildfires, and other natural disasters as evidence of a global warmingravaged
planet, even though the increases are chiefly due to socioeconomic
factors such as population growth and development in high-risk coastal areas and
cities.
• Distracts readers from the main hurricane problem facing the United States: the
ever-growing concentration of population and wealth in vulnerable coastal
regions, which is partly a consequence of federal flood insurance and other
political subsidies.
• Ignores the societal factors—such as poverty—that typically overwhelm climatic
factors in determining people’s risk of damage or death from hurricanes, floods,
drought, tornadoes, wildfires, and disease.
• Implies that the 2006 tropical cyclone season in Australia was unusually active
and, thus, symptomatic of global warming. In contrast, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes the season as “near average.”
• Re-labels as “major floods,” a category defined by physical magnitude, a chart of
“damaging floods,” a category defined by socioeconomic and political criteria.
• Re-labels as “major wildfires,” a category defined by physical magnitude, a chart
of “recorded wildfires,” a category reflecting changes in data collection and
reporting, such as increases in the frequency and scope of satellite monitoring.
• Conflates the Thermohaline Circulation (THC), a convective system primarily
driven by differences in salinity and sea temperatures, with the Gulf Stream, a
wind-driven system energized primarily by the Earth’s spin and the lunar tides,
exaggerating the risk of a big chill in Europe from a weakening of the THC.
• Presents a graph showing the number of annual closings of the Thames River tidal
barriers from 1930 to the present, even though the modern barrier system was
completed in 1982 and became operational in 1984. This apples-to-oranges
comparison conveys the false impression that London faced no serious flood risk
until recent decades.
• Blames global warming for the decline “since the 1960s” of the emperor penguin
population in Antarctica, implying that the penguins are in peril, their numbers
dwindling as the world warms. In fact, the population declined in the 1970s and
has been stable since the late 1980s.
• Implies that a study finding that none of 928 science articles—actually
abstracts—denied a CO2-global warming link, shows that Gore’s apocalyptic
view of global warming is the “consensus” view among scientists.
• Reports that 48 Nobel Prize-winning scientists accused President Bush of
distorting science, without mentioning that the scientists acted as members of a
“527” political advocacy group set up to promote John Kerry’s 2004 campaign for
president.
• Implies that the United States is an environmental laggard because China has
adopted more stringent fuel economy standards, glossing over China’s horrendous
air quality problems.
Exaggerated
• Exaggerates the certainty and hypes the importance of the alleged link between
global warming and the frequency and severity of tropical storms.
• Hypes the importance of NOAA running out of names (21 per year) for Atlantic
hurricanes in 2005, and the fact that some storms continued into December. The
practice of naming storms only goes back to 1953, and hurricane detection
capabilities have improved dramatically since the 1950s, so the “record” number
of named storms in 2005 may be an artifact of the resulting data. Also, Atlantic
hurricanes continued into December in several previous years including 1878,
1887, and 1888.
• Never explains why anyone should be alarmed about the current Arctic warming,
considering that our stone-age ancestors survived—and likely benefited from—
the much stronger and longer Arctic warming known as the Holocene Climate
Optimum.
• Portrays the cracking of the Ward Hunt ice shelf in 2002 as a portent of doom,
even though the shelf was merely a remnant of a much larger Arctic ice formation
that had already lost 90 percent of its area during 1906-1982.
• Claims that polar bears “have been drowning in significant numbers,” but this is
based on a single report that found four drowned polar bears in one month in one
year, following an abrupt storm.
• Claims that global warming is creating “ecological niches” for “invasive alien
species,” never mentioning other, more important factors such as increases in
trade, tourism, and urban heat islands. For example, due to population growth,
Berlin warmed twice as much during 1886-1898 as the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the entire world
warmed during the 20th century.
• Blames global warming for pine beetle infestations that likely have more to do
with increased forest density and plain old mismanagement.
• Presents a graph suggesting that China’s new fuel economy standards are almost
30 percent more stringent than the current U.S. standards. In fact, the Chinese
standards are only about 5 percent more stringent.
Speculative
• Warns of impending water shortages in Asia due to global warming but does not
check whether there is any correlation between global warming and Eurasian
snow cover (there isn’t). If Tibetan glaciers were to melt, that should increase
water availability in the coming decades.
• Claims that CO2 concentrations in the Holocene never rose above 300 parts per
million (ppm) in pre-industrial times, and that the current level—380 ppm—is
“way above” the range of natural variability. Proxy data (leaf stoma frequency)
indicate that, in the early Holocene, CO2 levels exceeded 330 ppm for centuries
and reached 348 ppm.
• Claims that a Scripps Oceanography Institute study shows that ocean
temperatures during the past 40 years are “way above the range of natural
variability.” Proxy data indicate that the Atlantic Ocean off the West Coast of
Africa was warmer than present during the Medieval Warm Period.
• Blames global warming for the record number of typhoons hitting Japan in 2004.
Local meteorological conditions, not average global temperatures, determine the
trajectory of particular storms, and data going back to 1950 show no correlation
between North Pacific storm activity and global temperatures.
• Blames global warming for the record-breaking 37-inch downpour in Mumbai,
India on July 26, 2005, even though there has been no trend in Mumbai rainfall
for the month of July in 45 years.
• Blames global warming for recent floods in China’s Sichuan and Shandong
provinces, even though far more damaging floods struck those areas in the 19th
and early 20th centuries.
• Blames global warming for the disappearance of Lake Chad, a phenomenon more
likely stemming from a combination of regional climate variability and societal
factors like population increase and overgrazing.
• Claims that global warming is drying out soils all over the world, whereas pan
evaporation studies (which measure the rate of evaporation from open pans of
water) indicate that, in general, the Earth’s surface is becoming wetter.
• Presents one climate model’s projection of increased U.S. drought as authoritative
even though another leading model forecasts increased wetness. Climate model
hydrology forecasts on regional scales are notoriously unreliable. Most of the
United States, outside the Southwest, became wetter during 1925-2003.
• Blames global warming for the severe drought that hit the Amazon in 2005.
However, RealClimate.Org, a web site set up to debunk global warming
“skeptics,” concluded that it is not possible to link the drought to global warming.
• Warns of a positive feedback whereby carbon-induced warming melts tundra,
releasing more CO2 locked up in frozen soils. An alternative scenario is also
plausible: The range of carbon-storing vegetation expands as tundra thaws.
• Claims that global warming endangers polar bears even though polar bear
populations are increasing in Arctic areas where it is warming and declining in
Arctic areas where it is cooling.
• Blames global warming for Alaska’s “drunken trees”—trees rooted in previously
frozen tundra, which sway in all directions as the ice melts—ignoring the possibly
large role of the 1976 PDO shift.
• Blames rising CO2 levels for recent declines in Arctic sea ice, ignoring the
potentially large role of natural variability. AIT never mentions that wind pattern
shifts may account for much of the observed changes in sea ice, or that the
Canadian Arctic Archipelago had considerably less sea ice during the early
Holocene.
• Warns that meltwater from Greenland could disrupt the Atlantic thermohaline
circulation based on research indicating that a major disruption occurred 8,200
years ago when a giant ice dam burst in North America, allowing two lakes to
drain rapidly into the sea. AIT does not mention that the lakes injected more than
100,000 cubic kilometers of freshwater into the sea, whereas Greenland ice melt
contributes only a few hundred cubic kilometers a year.
• Warns that global warming is destroying coral reefs, even though today’s main
reef builders evolved and thrived during periods substantially warmer than the
present.
• Warns that a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels to 560 ppm will so acidify
seawater that all optimal areas for coral reef construction will disappear by 2050.
This is not plausible. Coral calcification rates have increased as ocean
temperatures and CO2 levels have risen, and today’s main reef builders evolved
and thrived during the Mesozoic Period, when atmospheric CO2 levels hovered
above 1,000 ppm for 150 million years and exceeded 2,000 ppm for several
million years.
• Links global warming to toxic algae bloom outbreaks in the Baltic Sea that can be
entirely explained by record-high phosphorus levels, record-low nitrogen-tophosphorus
levels, and local meteorological conditions.
• Asserts without evidence that global warming is causing more tick-borne disease
(TBD). A 2004 study by Oxford University professor Sarah Randolph found no
relationship between climate change and TBD in Europe.
• Blames global warming for the resurgence of malaria in Kenya, even though
several studies have found no climate link and attribute the problem to decreased
spraying of homes with DDT, anti-malarial drug resistance, and incompetent
public health programs.
• Insinuates that global warming is a factor in the emergence of some 30 “new”
diseases over the last three decades, but cites no supporting research or evidence.
• Blames global warming for the decline “since the 1960s” of the emperor penguin
population in Antarctica based on a speculative assessment by two researchers
that warm sea temperatures in the 1970s reduced the birds’ main food source. An
equally plausible explanation is that Antarctic ecotourism, which became popular
in the 1970s, disturbed the rookeries.
• Warns of “significant and alarming structural changes” in the submarine base of
West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), but does not tell us what those changes are or
why they are “significant and alarming.” The melting and retreat of the WAIS
“grounding line” has been going on since the early Holocene. At the rate of retreat
observed in the late 1990s, the WAIS should disappear in about 7,000 years.
• Warns that vertical water tunnels (“moulins”) are lubricating the Greenland Ice
Sheet, increasing the risk that it will “slide” into the sea. Summertime glacier flow
acceleration associated with moulins is tiny. Moulins in numbers equal to or
surpassing those observed today probably occurred in the first half of the 20th
century, when Greenland was as warm as or warmer than the past decade, with no
major loss of grounded ice.
• Presents 10 pages of before-and-after “photographs” showing what 20 feet of sea
level rise would do to the world’s major coastal communities. There is no credible
evidence of an impending collapse of the great ice sheets. We do have fairly good
data on ice mass balance changes and their effects on sea level. NASA scientist
Jay Zwally and colleagues found a combined Greenland/Antarctica ice-loss-sealevel-
rise equivalent of 0.05 mm per year during 1992-2002. At that rate, it would
take a full millennium to raise sea level by just 5 cm.
• Forecasts an increase in U.S. renewable energy production during 1990-2030
more than twice that projected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Wrong
• Claims that glaciologist Lonnie Thompson’s reconstruction of climate history
proves the Medieval Warm Period was “tiny” compared to the warming observed
in recent decades. It doesn’t. Four of Thompson’s six ice cores indicate the
Medieval Warm Period was as warm as or warmer than any recent decade.
• Calls carbon dioxide the “most important greenhouse gas.” Water vapor is the
leading contributor to the greenhouse effect.
• Claims that Venus is too hot and Mars too cold to support life due to differences
in atmospheric CO2 concentrations (they are nearly identical), rather than
differences in atmospheric densities and distances from the Sun (both huge).
• Claims that scientists have validated the “hockey stick” reconstruction of
Northern Hemisphere temperature history, according to which the 1990s were
likely the warmest decade of the past millennium and 1998 the warmest year. It is
now widely acknowledged that the hockey stick was built on a flawed
methodology and inappropriate data. Scientists continue to debate whether the
Medieval Warm period was warmer than recent decades.
• Assumes that CO2 levels are increasing at roughly 1 percent annually. The actual
rate is half that.
• Assumes a linear relationship between CO2 levels and global temperatures,
whereas the actual CO2-warming effect is logarithmic, meaning that the next 100-
ppm increase in CO2 levels adds only half as much heat as the previous 100-ppm
increase.
• Claims that the rate of global warming is accelerating, whereas the rate has been
constant for the past 30 years—roughly 0.17°C per decade.
• Blames global warming for Europe’s killer heat wave of 2003—an event caused
by an atmospheric circulation anomaly.
• Blames global warming for Hurricane Catarina, the first South Atlantic hurricane
on record, which struck Brazil in 2004. Catarina formed not because the South
Atlantic was unusually warm (sea temperatures were cooler than normal), but
because the air was so much colder it produced the same kind of heat flux from
the ocean that fuels hurricanes in warmer waters.
• Claims that 2004 set an all-time record for the number of tornadoes in the United
States. Tornado frequency has not increased; rather, the detection of smaller
tornadoes has increased. If we consider the tornadoes that have been detectable
for many decades (category F-3 or greater), there actually has been a downward
trend since 1950.
• Blames global warming for a “mass extinction crisis” that is not, in fact,
occurring.
• Blames global warming for the rapid coast-to-coast spread of the West Nile virus.
North America contains nearly all the climate types in the world—from hot, dry
deserts to boreal forests to frigid tundra—a range that dwarfs any small alteration
in temperature or precipitation that may be related to atmospheric CO2 levels.
The virus could not have spread so far so fast if it were climate-sensitive.
• Cites Tuvalu, Polynesia, as a place where rising sea levels force residents to
evacuate their homes. In reality, sea levels at Tuvalu fell during the latter half of
the 20th century and even during the 1990s, allegedly the warmest decade of the
millennium.
• Claims that sea level rise could be many times larger and more rapid “depending
on the choices we make or do not make now” concerning global warming. Not so.
The most aggressive choice America could make now would be to join Europe in
implementing the Kyoto Protocol. Assuming the science underpinning Kyoto is
correct, the treaty would avert only 1 cm of sea level rise by 2050 and 2.5 cm by
2100.
• Accuses ExxonMobil of running a “disinformation campaign” designed to
“reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact,” even though two clicks of
the mouse reveal that ExxonMobil acknowledges global warming as a fact.
• Claims that President Bush hired Phil Cooney to “be in charge” of White House
environmental policy. This must be a surprise to White House Council on
Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chairman James Connaughton, who hired Cooney
and was his boss at the CEQ.
• Claims that the European Union’s emission trading system (ETS) is working
“effectively.” In fact, the ETS is not reducing emissions, will transfer an
estimated £1.5 billion from British firms to competitors in countries with weaker
controls, has enabled oil companies to profit at the expense of hospitals and
schools, and has been an administrative nightmare for small firms.
• Claims U.S. firms won’t be able to sell American-made cars in China because
Chinese fuel-economy standards are stricter, even though many U.S.-made cars
meet the Chinese standards.
Conclusion. Vice President Gore calls global warming a “moral issue,” but for him it is
a moralizing issue—a license to castigate political adversaries and blame America first
for everything from hurricanes to floods to wildfires to tick-borne disease. Somehow
Gore sees nothing immoral in the attempt to make fossil energy scarcer and more costly
in a world where 1.6 billion people still have no access to electricity and billions more are
too poor to own a car.
Nearly every significant statement that Vice President Gore makes regarding climate
science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or
wrong.
In light of these numerous distortions, AIT is ill-suited to serve as a guide to
climate science and climate policy for the American people.
Not all Europeans have given up. This Brit is “Priceless”.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=418_1176494781
*
That’s one special soup, I think.
“The protest blockade at Deseronto is a decidedly laid-back affair,
as shown in this photo from Loyalist Pioneer’s Christopher Clarke.
Here, Tyendinaga Mohawk Police Senior Const. Marcel Maracle, left,
relaxes with protest organizer Shawn Brant as the pair waited for
a pot of corn soup to heat over the campfire.”
I guess now we know… why nobody’s getting arrested.
*
Ontario Liberals: Incandescent lightbulb pushers will be criminals within five years.
Ontario Conservatives: Five years? What are you waiting for, do it now!
Un-be-lievable. This is our choice in an election year??!?!?!
http://flaggman.wordpress.com/2007/04/19/you-can-pry-my-lightbulbs-from-my-cold-dead-hands/
Thanks for providing us with those comments, Lorraine. What are they saying?
I admit I don’t understand Patterson’s point. I think he’s saying that modern science rebuts kyotoism.
How about Stewart’s claim that ‘climate change’ will enable the development of justice and equality in the world? Justice in totalitarian dictatorships – which are predominant in the world in the ME, in Africa, in Asia? How will climate change remove the dictators, the lack of democracy, the corruption? Oh – by having the democratic industrial nations bankroll these dictatorships!!! Ah, yes.
Equality? Equality of what? One’s nature as a human being? But, for example, Islamic fascism rejects equality of humanity. So?
Or, Houghton’s stupendous statement of serendipity. ‘If we don’t announce disasters,no-one will listen’. Well, sir, if you don’t announce anything, no-one will listen. Now – ‘that’s disastrous’.
Minneapols – no, make that MISSISSAUGA – cab drivers won’t pick up people with dogs
w3.mississauganews.com/mi/people/story/3945131p-4557533c.html
[snip]
A dog may be man’s best friend – only don’t try to take Fido in a Mississauga taxicab with you.
That’s what many passengers are discovering, prompting City Hall to review its public vehicle licensing bylaw.
“A growing number of individuals are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain the services of a taxicab since several drivers do not allow dogs into their car, apparently due to cultural or religious grounds,” said director of bylaw enforcement Elaine Buckstein, in a report to the Public Vehicle Advisory Committee (PVAC).
The bylaw examination was requested by Ward 9 Councillor Pat Saito who noted Mississauga Transit permits dogs on its buses. Taxicabs licensed by the City, however, are only required to transport a person with a service animal, such as a guide dog.
…
Avtar Singh Punia, chair of the Ontario Khalsa Durbar and a driver with Airline Limousine, agrees. Although the Sikh faith permits dogs in homes and cars, Sikh drivers will not always allow dogs in taxicabs because they can shed hair, drool or emit an offensive odour, he said.
Iman Hamid Slimi of the International Muslims Organization said traditionally dogs have been seen as impure in the Islamic faith, although they’re considered a good animal. When the saliva of a dog touches clothes or body, then the Muslim is considered impure, he noted.
According to the Star, Toronto is on the verge of bankruptcy, despite huge consecutive property tax increases over the years.
Why does this not come as a shock? Could it be that David Miller is another socialist, from the line of socialists that last caused the provinces near bankruptcy under Bob Rae?
Did Mark Holland mislead the House? And why did the Liberal party delete the video and the PDF on this story from their website?
Al
A particularly vile leftist exposed.
On the recording Alec Baldwin can be heard berating his 11 year old daughter, Ireland, calling her “a rude thoughtless little pig” without “the brains or the decency of a human being.”
He was, afterall, upset that she didn’t asnwer her phone for a planned call.
“I don’t give a damn that you’re 12 years old, or 11 years old, or that you’re a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn’t care about what you do as far as I’m concerned. You have humiliated me for the last time with this phone.”
Notice the self absorbed, juvenile and selfish traits shared by all leftists, including the commentors on this blog.
The recording is all over the news and was published by TMZ.com.
Hmmmm, Alberta is flush with cash. Maybe we should lend them a few million in exchange for Toronto city council doing some silly jig while chanting that Alberta is the new “Center of the Universe”. And they would have to be wearing wranglers, wearing cowboy hats and boots, and carrying guns while they were doing it.
That makes me smile.
And now..on cbc..we have the seal-hunters stuck in ice BLAMING the current gov’t for their predicament!CTV is showing PMSH in Wpg for Human Rights Museum..and cbc showing a phoned in interview with a frozen-in seal hunter.I guess ya gotta make priorities.Much more important to never miss an opportunity to slag the Cons.
*
There’s an interesting comparison to be made between
the city of Toronto and the country of Jamaica itself…
“High as its homicide total was in 2004, it was higher still
in 2005, reaching a record 1,674 among a population of
2.7 million people, surpassing the rates of both Colombia
and South Africa.”
“By comparison, Toronto, with almost the same population,
witnessed 80 homicides that year, 52 of them gun deaths.”
*
I haven’t seen this noted here, but some Federal Tory backbencher – Joy Smith, who I have never heard from before, and don’t want to hear from again – wants to create a new internet registry. Run by the CRTC, it would keep tabs on every one with an internet account. Certain material, such as kiddie porn and terrorist materials would be banned, and if your ISP doesn’t block such material, its executives can face fines and jail time. So much for doing original research.
Now call me crazy, but I thought we already had laws banning kiddie porn and hate speech, and not just on the internet. And with the inevitable “enforcement creep”, in a few years we might see political debate – such as the global warming scam – banned as well. Finally, she wants materials that “promote violence on women” to be banned. Apparently, material that promotes violence on men is perfectly acceptable.
We already wasted a billion dollars on the gun registry. I have to believe there are more internet users in Canada than gun owners, so this will be an even bigger nightmare.
This is a very bad idea, and I suggest writing to your MP, regardless of party, and tell him/her how bad this is. I don’t trust anyone to decide what content I should or should not see. The net result would be any website that had any controversial material that wasn’t based in Canada will just block all traffic to Canada. (This has happened in part in Australia and China.) Great – we finally broadband access to the world, and the politicians want to start throwing up roadblocks.
Its mathematical. The United States has a better record on school shootings than we have here in Canada. Canada is worse.
Specifically, in four separate incidents, a total of 19 people have been killed by gunfire in Canadian schools in the last 20 years. A larger total of 30 people have been killed in mass shootings in US schools over the same period. The US population is 10 times larger than Canada’s, therefore percentage wise our record is far worse than our friends to the south. And Canadians have gun control!
Is it asking to much for journalists and editors to research school shootings before taking the position that gun control is the obvious solution to prevent these acts? Probably. They have strict gun control in the UK and it did not prevent 16 people from being gunned down in Dunblane.
Bias in the form of too pro-Canadian, too pro-gun control, too anti-US, or poorly researched, lazy journalism rules Canada’s MSM. Here are the facts.
MONTREAL
Dec. 6, 1989 Ecole Polytechnique Marc Lepine, an unemployed 25-year-old, kills 14 women at l’Ecole Polytechnique.
MONTREAL
Aug. 24, 1992 Concordia University Dr. Valery Fabrikant, associate professor of mechanical engineering, kills four colleagues.
DUNBLANE, SCOTLAND
March 13, 1996 Dunblane Primary School Thomas Hamilton, a disgraced scoutmaster, kills 16 children and one adult.
LITTLETON, COLO.
April 20, 1999 Columbine High School Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold go on a rampage, killing 12 students and a teacher.
TABER, ALTA.
April 28, 1999 W. R. Myers High School Todd Cameron Smith, a 14-yearold dropout, shoots three students and kills one.
RED LAKE, MINN.
March 21, 2005 Red Lake High School Jeffrey Weise kills his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and seven other people, including a teacher and a security guard.
MONTREAL
Sept. 13, 2006 Dawson College Kimveer Gill, a 25-year-old Laval resident, kills one student and injures 19 with three legally owned guns.
NICKEL MINES, PA.
Oct. 2, 2006 Amish school Charles Carl Roberts, a 32-yearold milk-truck driver, kills five girls, aged seven to 13.
If the stranded sealers have anyone to blame, blame gore. He said the ice was melting and they apparently believed him. Same as those women who went to the artic and got in trouble. Time to wake up idiots, gore/suzuki and redgreen are lying to you.
Still no cbc coverage on PMSH now holding press conf.on ctv.Nice back and forth between Fife and Kate Wheeler after PMSH speech.
Fife:positive spin on announcement,but ‘too bad it took private citizen(Izzy Asper) to start.’
Kate:hums and haws,then wonders about “concerns about how certain aspects will be displayed(links the Asper family..infers the ‘Jew’ conection)..then wonders if it will need a public board of directors to ‘oversee’,as will need ‘balance’ Unbelievable!
And for those that really want to lose their lunch..head on over to G&M comments on this museum.Clear picture there of the ever-tolerant,all welcoming to the party,Libs.Truly shocking,and sickening.
Your daily religion of peace “isolated incident”
KILI FAQIRAN, Pakistan (AP) — The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive’s head to cries of “God is great!” and hoists it in triumph by the hair.
“This is not an argument for ignoring the wretched of the world: Sachs is obviously right that we have a moral duty to do the best that we can, but that will involve learning from those countries which have transformed their prospects over the past quarter century. In Fighting the Diseases of Poverty (International PolicyPress) Indur Goklany points out that, while Sub-Saharan Africa has a higher food supply per capita than it did 25 years ago, its growth in that most basic measurement of individual well-being has been vastly outstripped by China. The world’s most populous nation has achieved this by the same means which brought prosperity to the developed world: industrialisation. Aid had nothing to do with it.”
Dominic Lawson, The Independent. April 15th.2007.
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/dominic_lawson/article2444424.ece
I’m as anti-AGW as the next intelligent thinker. However, I must point out to the people using the ice off of NFLD as proof against GW that they are quite wrong.
The problem there is being caused by chunks of floating sea ice being blown by winds and tides into the coast of NFLD and jamming up with tremendous force. It is not a sheet of ice on the ocean being created by low temperatures.
So linking the two does a disservice to the real reasons why AGW is a hoax. We mock the Kookies for doing it please let’s not do the same.
With regard to the Islamic and Sikh rejection of dogs in their taxis, the taxi is not their home, but their place of business. If the place of business is a service to the public, then, to discriminate against some people is unacceptable.
I blame our Charter and our insane policy of multiculturalism, which has rejected immigrants as citizens in a civic sense and instead, insisted that the population be divided into groups defined by their origin.
This categorization of the Canadian population by origins rejects the basic notion that we are all, first and foremost, citizens in the civic sense. That is, that we are first, equal citizens – all of us – in a nation-state. We are all Canadians.
Our Charter rejects citizenship as a civic commonality. Instead, it divides us into isolate categories. These categories are hereditary; civic citizenship is abandoned. We are not Canadians but members of a group. The group’s definition is its hereditary origin.
The Charter first divides the Canadian population into two subsets, defined by language. English and French. These are hereditary classifications. You are born into one of these subsets.
Then, it further divides the population into many subsets, called ‘multicultural’. These are in reality, defined by ethnic and religious origin. Again, you are born into these subsets; they are hereditary classifications.
The commonality of ‘being Canadian’, which is a civic citizenship – a shared identity found by being in this geographic terrain, under the same democratic rule of law – is abandoned by this action of categorizing people by origin (linguistic, ethnic, religion).
So- we get multiple groups, which then become politicized. That means that they become sites for authoritative power over the individuals within that subgroup. Each group develops its own leaders – many are corrupt, authoritarian.
They each strive for political power – because we idiots actually FUND THEM to remain within these subgroups. We fund immigrants to remain isolated in these subgroups.
They each strive for clear descriptive identities and insist on following their old rules. They ignore the Canadian rules. So- they refuse to convey people with dogs in their taxis, because in their group – dogs are not allowed.
They totally reject the notion of the civic citizen, ie, the individual who shares a national identity with everyone else in the country.
Our Charter says nothing about the nature of citizenship as a civic identity. Instead, it is all about the nature of citizenship as a membership in a hereditary group – a linguistic, ethnic or religious group.
This is the result – we have no Canadian identity because we reject the civic citizen and instead, opt for multiple tribes. Disastrous.
Amazing book review at TheTyee about Michael Moore called “Forgive Us Our Spins: Michael Moore and the Future of the Left” by two former progressive’s, at The Tyee of all places.
The wing ding left out here on the Left Coast are besides them self over the review and demanding the writer Terry Glavin commit suicide…or something close to it.
Dam it’s fun to see one of the “Progressive” gods get gored by one of it’s own 🙂
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/04/17/MichaelMoore/
It’s a Maggie Thatcher moment:
OTTAWA – The Conservative government will today reveal details of a plan that will enable Aboriginal Canadians living on reserves to buy their own homes for the first time in what Jim Prentice, the Indian Affairs Minister, asserts is “one of the most important structural changes in a generation.”
Anything that frees Canadian citizens from the misery pimps is good news.
yyc – that’s a vital and important change. The native reservation system is a corrupt travesty. Allowing individual private ownership – tremendous.
The reservation system has essentially meant that the natives did not own the land. The gov’t did; the natives had the use of it, for their collective, not individual, usage.
So, if they ran a business on the reserve, the money went to the reserve – not to the individual running the business! No private ownership allowed, no private businesses. They couldn’t even start up a business, as they couldn’t get a bank loan against the land. Because they didn’t own the land; the gov’t did – for the whole collective.
So, you created a climate of extreme dependency. The federal gov’t would provide the funds to set up a business. But, the band were/are heavily corrupt and nepotism is basic. So, the band chief gets the money from the gov’t, sets up a business with part of the money (pockets a great deal of it) and hires all his family members to run it. Whether it succeeds or not is irrelevant; the grant keeps coming.
Others in the band can’t compete; they can’t get any money to start up their own businesses – the money goes to the band chief (and his family and friends). They can’t get a bank loan, remember, because they don’t own their homes or their land. So- they move into a permanent mode of welfare.
Owning their own homes is a first start to getting rid of the corrupt nepotism that is the reserve system – and into private ownership and civic rather than ‘special group’ citizenship.
The Conservatives do things ‘step by step’, a tactic called ‘bricolage’ – like a builder of bricks – one at a time. And suddenly, a house is there.
So, it’s an important first step.
Breaking story:
Possible shooting at Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,267462,00.html
http://inshallahshaheed.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/the-virginia-tech-shootings-%e2%80%9cdo-not-grieve-over-the-disbelievers%e2%80%9d/
“I, as a Muslim, don’t feel any sorrow over what tragedies occur to the Americans,”
This muslim pig is talking about the Virginia Tech shootings.
Check out the poll on CTV.ca today.
Right now as I’m looking at it:
Q: Will you be making an effort to go green for Earth Day?
Results:
Yes = 434 votes(28 %)
No = 693 votes(45 %)
I’ve already done all that I can = 428 votes(28 %)
Just more proof piled up high on the mountain that refutes Kooky’s assertion that Canadians are willing to pay their fair share to meet Kyoto. Less than 1/3 polled will go Green for a single day. And Kooky wants us to do it in perpetuity.
Hey. Don’t you guys/gals know that the stats for Gun City,USA are fixed. All they do is once a year,all the residents are counted,then all shipped out somewhere else until same time next year. They have been doing this for 25 years. That’s why they haven’t had any gun-related crimes for so long. Or so Wendy Cueiker told me.
Cause: Suzuki skinny dipping with MayDion, Boob Rae, and Ricky Mercer. Video from CBC; “The Naked Snails”.
Pollution kills les escargots. Ya can’t make up this bs from CBC/Parks Canada. No cause and effect mentioned. Complete hogwash.
Smell a CYA?
…-
Forbidden swim kills endangered Banff snails
An illicit swim in an ecologically sensitive hot spring at a national historic site in Banff has killed at least five endangered snails.
A vandal broke into the Cave and Basin historic site last week and swam in an outdoor hot spring that is home to Banff Springs snails, an endangered species under Canada’s Species at Risk Act. [,,,]
The vandal swam undetected because a motion sensor temporarily failed, but it has since been fixed, he said. …-
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/04/20/snails-breakin.html
Too many links to mention, but the calls of exxagerated costs to “fix” global warming abound today.
Apparantly the left doesn’t see the incredible disconnect between the cries of a worldwide calamatous event, rooted in our very way of living, our dependence on oil, our overconsuming ways in an industrial age,
and their claims that to “fix” it well be easy as pie, with little effect on our economy and way of living.
A guy swims and 5 snails are dead?? Whatever did he do in the water? On second thought, why shouldn’t the snails die? After all, it’s the way it should be.Survival of the fittest and all that.
Concerned Students Sponsor Terrorism Awareness Program
Worried about ignorance among students concerning the objectives of Islamic fascism and the “unholy alliance” between campus leftists and jihadists seeking to undermine the War on Terror, the Freedom Center has launched a Terrorism Awareness Project to equip conservative students with an intellectual toolkit containing all the elements…-
(via free republic)
Terrorism Awareness Program
After conferring with students from several universities who were concerned about both the ignorance about the objectives of Islamic fascism among their fellow students and also the “unholy alliance”…-
http://www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org/
Has anyone noticed how absolutely rude and combative CBC’s Susan Bonner is with Conservatives.
Today she rudely snapped at Peter VanLoen and interogated him like she had some kind of right to know if they were going to table the Clean Air Act next week.
These announcements are made in the House of Commons Miss Bonner – not to commoners like you!!!
She then tried to goad the press gallery pundits that the fact PM Harper has a tour aide to look after incidentals like wardrobe, TV makeup etc. like most PMs have had infinitum into agreeing that this so called “story” had legs!!!
What does anyone know about Susan Bonner. Which Liberal insider is she married to, sleeping with or otherwide beholden to as that seems to be the case with most of these blatantly partisan talking heads.
Like good old Susan Delacourt. Or Jim Traverse frustrated out of a Liberal Senate or Ambassador appointment.
Cho family update:
“The family of Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho told The Associated Press on Friday that they feel ‘hopeless, helpless and lost,’ and ‘never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence…. He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare,’ said a statement issued by Cho’s sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, on the family’s behalf….
“‘Our family is so very sorry for my brother’s unspeakable actions. It is a terrible tragedy for all of us,” said Sun-Kyung Cho, a 2004 Princeton University graduate who works as a contractor for a State Department office that oversees American aid for Iraq.
“‘We pray for their families and loved ones who are experiencing so much excruciating grief. And we pray for those who were injured and for those whose lives are changed forever because of what they witnessed and experienced,” she said. “Each of these people had so much love, talent and gifts to offer, and their lives were cut short by a horrible and senseless act.'”
There’s more from the story that I quoted from, including a note that the Cho family is currently under police guard.
Well what do you know, Osama bin Laden studied economics in university. Just like Stephen Harper.
Isn’t it funny how right-wing-nuts think alike?
Just voteed in ctv poll, no is now 45% with yes 28& and I’ve done all I can 27%. Where do these guys get the idea this is a major issue for the voters.
I didn’t get a chance to post on “Waiting for the Reload.”
It’s just as well. Writing a manual just bores people.
For the record, I’ve been in a few tight spots and I confess that I feel most heroic while sitting in my living room with cordial companions, thinking about how I would handle a dangerous situation.
When I’ve actually been in dangerous situations I felt considerably less heroic, and my most luminous thought was, “Shit!”
OK, I’m for guns and good training and all of that, but it’s not likely we’re going to turn everyone into Rambo.
So here are a couple of suggestions I think would go a long way to diminishing our problem.
Simply install really substantial doors that lock from the inside. Even if rounds come through the door they’ll lose a lot of velocity, and only a nutcase would be standing in front of the door.
Every classroom should have an additional door that can only be opened from the inside, that would be an exit to the outside.
People might have lockers and such on an inside corridor, but once you’re in the classroom, you can lock people out, and all the people inside can exfiltrate the area.
Windows should be big enough to climb through after breaking them.
This doesn’t answer every contingency, but if we’re really trying to find a way to minimize the possiblities presented to a rogue gunman, this could work.
It would be a good idea for monitoring systems to be installed, that could follow the gunman as he crept through the corridors, and a system that would alert teachers to the fact that it was time to button up the classroom and start herding the kids out the emergency door.
Susan Bonner is a disgrace! She bristles when interviewing a Conservative–the body language is
remarkable. Get her e-mail address and flood her with objections.
Don Newman treated Baird the same way demanding that he answer a question about the Clean Air Act. Baird should have said he is not responsible to the CBC or to journalists.
Why do Conservatives agree to appear on these panels?
*
Having made a major-league mess of the year old, as-yet-unresolved
aboriginal standoff in Caledonia, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty is
apparently now at his wits end… over a similar situation developing
in Deseronto.
See, here’s the question Dalton… if I go down the road and commandeer
the local lumber yard and threaten to take over the neighbouring town,
how long do you think it would take an OPP SWAT team to stand me down…
one way or another?
*
More Native terrorism (note the explicit threat of force against law enforcement):
Aboriginal protesters vowed Friday to maintain their planned 48-hour blockade of eastern Ontario’s main rail corridor despite a court injunction ordering them off the railway crossing.
…
The long-simmering land dispute near Deseronto, Ont., erupted around midnight Thursday as members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte moved to occupy the rail line, shutting down freight and passenger train from Toronto eastward to Ottawa and Montreal.
Protest organizer Shawn Brant accepted a copy of the injunction and shook the hand of the police officer who read the court order to the protesters at the site, some 30 kilometres west of Kingston. While Brant said they’ll leave peacefully after 48 hours, he added they won’t leave before then without a fight.
“There comes a point in people’s lives when you have to stand and you have to fight, and there are bigger things for us to consider,” he said.
“If (police) want a disaster on the Deseronto boundary road, then they should consider enforcing (the court order).”
cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/04/20/4080122-cp.html
*
“Greg in Dallas said… This doesn’t answer every contingency,
but if we’re really trying to find a way to minimize the possiblities
presented to a rogue gunman, this could work.”
greg… you’re missing the point. it isn’t possible, or even
sensible to TRY prepare for every contingency.
There are 1200 people in Canada who die every year from
farming accidents. Farmers know this… they try to prepare…
but the number of deaths is fairly static.
Some people wanna call… “Safety break… nobody works,
nobody gets hurt”… but then we’d starve.
You wanna make any sort of impact on this type of incident,
you focus on walling off people who are insane. That means no
more politically correct bullshit like… “We know he’s as crazy as
a sh!thouse mouse… but we don’t wanna hurt his feelings, or
infringe his rights.”
You have someone as obviously disturbed as Seung-Hui Cho…
you medicate that f@cker so heavily you can use him as a doorstop.
And that, my friend, will save lives.
*
Leftist Tribune blows smoke across the Channel.
Citoyen Dion will arrive on election day at Orly on his way to Vimy Ridge, Fwance, with Taliban Jack. Jacky can’t vote; but, Citoyen …
…-
France is set to turn a ‘historic page’
PARIS: Breaking with the past has been the leading theme in the most unpredictable and passion-rousing presidential election in France’s recent history. On Sunday voters will choose two candidates for a runoff next month. Whoever they pick to succeed President Jacques Chirac will probably usher in a new style of politics.
Three of the four main candidates are given a serious chance of winning the Élysée Palace: Nicolas Sarkozy, the center-right front-runner; Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate; and François Bayrou, a centrist in third place…-
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/20/news/france.php
A schizophrenic mental-health patient being detained indefinitely for sexually molesting two young Toronto girls six years ago is on the loose after slipping away from his escorts at a Rogers Centre baseball game Tuesday night.
Police issued a public alert for 31-year-old Mylvaganam Vaasuhan, an illegal immigrant and diagnosed pedophile, and voiced concern that without his medication, which he does not have, the fugitive could pose a threat, particularly to children.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070419.WHITBY19/TPStory/TPNational/Ontario/
Agreed.
I called it a Thatcher moment because one of Thatcher’s early moves was to force the housing authorities run largely by Labour party member to assist in tenants buying their own properties.
This is a huge step.
(last comment to ET)
The Global Warming Myth?
The End Is Not Near — Instead of Panicking Over Climate Change, Learn to Adjust to It
By JOHN STOSSEL
April 20, 2007 — – The heavy breathing over global warming is enough to terrify anyone. …-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1820943/posts
Stossel has erred here:
“If sea levels rise, we can build dykes and move back from the coasts. It worked for Holland.”
Bob, do you really believe that the police will enforce the court order, or will they do what they have done to Caledonia and sit back, watch and hope that the protesters will leave. The cost to VIA RAIL in one day, mind blowing…..
Christopher Hitchens has a wonderful piece in City Journal about one of the USA’s first wars against the Muslims of North Africa – the Barbary Wars. As a result of the American Revolution the British no longer protected the American commercial fleet in the Mediterranean from the Islamic pirates.
Some excerpts…
How many know that perhaps 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780? We dimly recall that Miguel de Cervantes was briefly in the galleys. But what of the people of the town of Baltimore in Ireland, all carried off by “corsair” raiders in a single night?
…
But one cannot get around what Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripoli’s ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (It is worth noting that the United States played no part in the Crusades, or in the Catholic reconquista of Andalusia.)
Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman did not fail to mention the size of his own commission, if America chose to pay the protection money demanded as an alternative to piracy. So here was an early instance of the “heads I win, tails you lose” dilemma, in which the United States is faced with corrupt regimes, on the one hand, and Islamic militants, on the other—or indeed a collusion between them.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_urbanities-thomas_jefferson.html
albatros39a said “Osama bin Laden studied economics in university. Just like Stephen Harper.
Isn’t it funny how right-wing-nuts think alike?”
Economics must be an important subject if such diverse people study it, unlike environmental earth sciences and paleoanthropology.
Question for you, dodo2.0: How can you dig up bones without disturbing the environment?