Mark Steyn:

The mistake made by virtually the entire Western media during the Arab Spring was to assume that social progress is like technological progress – that, like the wheel or the internal combustion engine, women's rights and gay rights cannot be disinvented. They can, very easily. In Egypt, the youth who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood are more fiercely Islamic than their grandparents who backed Nasser's Revolution in 1952. In Tunisia, the young are more proscriptive than the secular old-timers who turned a blind eye to the country's bars and brothels. In the developed world, we're told that Westernization is "inevitable." "Just wait and see," say the blithely complacent inevitablists. "They haven't yet had time to Westernize." But Westernization is every bit as resistible in Brussels and Toronto as it's proved in Cairo and Jalalabad. In the first ever poll of Irish Muslims, 37 percent said they would like Ireland to be governed by Islamic law. When the same question was put to young Irish Muslims, it was 57 percent. In other words, the hope'n'change generation are less Westernized than their parents. 36 percent of young British Muslims think the penalty for apostasy – i.e., leaving Islam – should be death. Had you asked the same question of British Muslims in 1970, I doubt the enthusiasts would have cracked double figures.

Read the whole thing here.

Fact: Anybody who still doubt global warming after the summer we are having is crazy!

Not quite as commie as Dear Leader might Hope:

A majority of Americans want the Bush tax cuts extended for everyone, despite a strong push by President Barack Obama to eliminate them on higher incomes, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

The poll found 52 percent of registered voters saying they want all the tax cuts extended, including the tax cuts for incomes above $250,000…

[…]

Some of the strongest support for extending all of the tax cuts came from some of Obama’s most reliable supporters, such as young voters, minorities and the poor and working class.

Not to nit-pick, but the last games to be held in London was in 1948.

Fact: Anybody who still doubt global warming after the summer we are having is crazy!
Posted by: Quebecois NDP separatiste at July 14, 2012 10:12 PM

Hey silly little person.
Fact: Just because it's warmer where you are [that's called weather] does not mean it's anomalously warmer everywhere on the globe. That's why it's called 'global' warming.
Got it yet?

Nice handle. When are you useless twits going to separate and stop sucking off Alberta's petro-teat. Hopefully soon.

“We’ve had 44 presidents and they’ve all had mentors,” Kengor told me during an exclusive Blaze interview. “Yet never before in the entire 200-plus year [presidential] history of this country, have we had a president with a mentor who was a card carrying member of the Communist Party.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-communist-part-i-the-real-frank-marshall-davis-exposed/

Thanks James, I appreciate it. I corrected the post.

Btw, pointing out a bald-assed piece of historically incorrect information isn't nit-picking; saying something like "Teófilo Stevenson weighed 221.1 lbs, not 221 lbs, when he won gold in Munich" -- that would be nit-picking.

"In the first ever poll of Irish Muslims.." Those words alone are shocking enough. I still hold out faith though that the police and legal system that turns a blind eye to Islamism now will turn a blind eye to the pushback when it comes. Mostly because there will be no money for police or the legal system and they will just take the path of least resistance and hide in the shadows when the crap hits the fan.
And as I have mentioned on numerous occasions it will be the Football Associations and their fan base that end up being "the law of the land".
For a country that fought Cromwell, William of Orange and the C of E for generations they sure bent over for the muslims pretty quickly.

If we mention Stevenson fought at 209 lbs is that nit-picking or just being an ass?

I'm aware of the attitudes towards science and technology here, but had to share:

http://lightbox.time.com/2012/07/12/interactive-panorama-step-inside-the-large-hadron-collider/?hpt=hp_c2#end

Panorama of Large Hadron Collider (go fullscreen). Things like this instantly restore my faith in humanity. The effort and knowledge that went into something like this, so massive yet intricate, just blows my mind.

"I'm aware of the attitudes towards science and technology here..." did you see the user poll last year (?) where we self-identified what we do? Engineers seemed to be the largest demographic. Being one of them, my dislike is for religion that portrays itself as science. Specifically, CAGW that will kill us all, does not follow the scientific method, and for which none of the adherents will state their falsification criteria.

Cool view though.

"Just wait and see," say the blithely complacent inevitablists. "

Where have we heard that before? Leftist is as leftist does...

EBD, 10:10p.m. --

I am a huge fan of Mark Steyn, but I think he is being a bit inconsistent: he argued at the time that the reason we (meaning, primarily, the major Anglosphere countries, except, er, Canada -- though there were one or more Canadian Army officers in senior operations positions in Baghdad) invaded Iraq was so we didn't have to invade everywhere else.

I'm no "blithely complacent inevitabilist", but I supported the Bush Doctrine then and still do now: the risk of inaction in light of 9/11 was greater than the risk of Bush's and Blair's attempt to turn the domino theory upside down (only bad and worse decisions were available, also according to Mark Steyn at the time).

I've heard it asserted by at least one Arab woman writer in Canada (I have no idea if it's true) that a benefit of the Arab Spring has been to cause the Canadian diaspora of Middle Eastern states to lose at least some of their fear of criticism of governments in the old countries. Which may be related to why we're hearing so much criticism of Iran's activities in Canada lately (I understand that Iran is not an Arab state).

And besides which, a 51/49 presidential election in Egypt with bad and worse choices and 800,000 disqualified votes may not yet end in disaster (how about a little, "we'll get 'em next time" enthusiasm?). Can you imagine Pat Martin's, Charlie Angus's and Bob Rae's reaction to 800,000 disqualified votes? As it is, we're not likely ever going to hear the end of how 1,100 alleged phone calls managed to "steal" the election for Stephen Harper. So overall, I hope the jury is still out on the Arab Spring.

A major problem, as Steyn points out, is Obama: can you imagine a situation where Eisenhower repudiated the Roosevelt/Truman Doctrine in the way that Obama has repudiated the Bush Doctrine, thereby nullifying a wholesale change in US foreign policy in response to a wholesale change in geo-politics? We'd have never heard the end of that, either.

Quebecois NDP Separatiste, 10:12p.m. --

Fact: I don't think I'm crazy, but I'm doubtful about AGW. "Crazy" is a pretty inexact term, which I'm supposing you're using to suggest an irrational response to a set of arguments and supporting information. "Doubt" is something different and a great deal more exact in its meaning -- in a situation of uncertainty, after an examination of the evidence presented, one concludes that, on the balance of probabilities, the arguments don't follow. I don't like uncertainty any more than the next Jacques or Jacqueline: I'd like to know the answer to the AGW question as well. The policy implications are then a whole different matter. In general, I'd say that more precise, less inflammatory language on all sides would be helpful, if understanding and acceptance is what folks are after.

To Quebec pseudo-independence dipper - What, too hot to bang pots with wooden spoons while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask marching down St. Catherine Street? Wake me up when the Saguenay's on fire, like that massive 300-square-kilometre wildfire in the days of New France.

$ FKA gord: "For a country that fought Cromwell, William of Orange and the C of E for generations they sure bent over for the muslims pretty quickly." - It's called ~60 years of socialism under Fianna Fáil (propped up by the Labour and Workers' parties), from 1936 up until the "Celtic Tiger" years; a time when Ireland was still hemorrhaging ambitious, entrepreneurial people. See also Saskatchewan and the Maritimes.

C_Miner: SDA Reader Occupation Survey, circa 2008.

A quick Wikipedia search tells me that the Olympics were in London in 1908, and 1928.

Correction to my last, that's 1908 and 1948.

moderate muslims ??? that's an oxymoron of the 1st order.

full RCMP statement at...

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/qc/nouv-news/com-rel/2012/07/120713-eng.htm

until it's removed for being 'harrassing towards islam" of course

Former Muslim Stereotype Fighter Charged with Hizballah Support

by IPT News • Jul 13, 2012 at 2:41 pm

Canadian officials have charged a woman with trying to smuggle parts for AR-15 rifles to Hizballah operatives in Lebanon. Mouna Diab, 26, originally was arrested in May 2011 as she tried to leave Canada with the parts in her luggage, and later charged with exporting gun parts, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) statement said.

Further investigation determined Diab was following instructions from a Hizballah operative. In addition, she persuaded others in her community to carry weapons parts in their own travels to Lebanon, but the statement said "that her victims were unaware of what was in the packages."

Diab is the first woman charged under anti-terror laws Canada enacted after 9/11, reports Stewart Bell at the National Post. She formerly served as vice-president of the Association of Young Lebanese Muslims, Bell reported, saying the group worked to fight "hurtful" stereotypes against Muslims.

Canada has listed Hizballah as a terrorist group since 2002, the RCMP release noted. It is part of the agency's mandate to investigate support for terrorist groups in Canada. "In doing so, the RCMP plays a crucial role in reducing threats posed to national security, whether they are in Canada or elsewhere in the world," the statement on Diab's arrest said.

Hizballah support in North America is well established and often involves criminal activity ranging from fraud and other financial crimes to supplying weapons and other military supplies.

Every country chip in and hold the Olympics
only in Greece every four years until it dies
a natural and very overdue death.

seperated frenchie is just the proverbial little boy pissing in the ocean thinking it will make it rise, fairy tales are not real frenchie, if you had had a mommy that cared, she would have told you that.

Quebeccois NDP separatiste: You were obviously born well after the 1930's. You don't know hot and drought! Oh, yes, CO2 was much lower as well than today! please refer to: www.c3headlines.com/2012/07/extreme-global-warming-noaa-confirms-modern-us-warming-not-as-hot-vs-1930s.html

"There is no 'abrupt' increase in CO2 absorption, it is gradual as CO2 levels rise and plants become less stressed by low CO2 levels. At 150 ppm CO2 all plants would die, resulting in virtual end of life on earth.

"Thank goodness we came along and reversed the 150 million-year trend of reduced CO2 levels in the global atmosphere. Long live the humans,” Moore concluded.

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/16681/Greenpeace-cofounder-Dr-Patrick-Moore-Thank-goodness-we-came-along--reversed-150-millionyear-trend-of-reduced-CO2-levels-in-global-atmosphere-Long-live-the-humans

jwk - yup, that's it. The disadvantage of google is that you need the right keywords. I obviously didn't find them. Was it really 4 years ago?
Wow.

My bad - the above warming numbers are quoted in July 14th, "Watts Up With That" article.

Ban firefighting & Lake Erie.

...-

"CNews | Firefighter killed on the job in Montreal

MONTREAL – A 39-year-old city firefighter died on the job after his own pumper truck struck him during an emergency call."

...-

"Globe | ‘Stampede OK, rodeo no’: Activists demonstrate after chuckwagon horse deaths"

"LFP | A deadly day at the beach

Once again, Lake Erie’s unpredictable waters have taken two more young lives."

Red-Green's "Final Solution".

...-

"This circle was created through the ‘Nobel Cause’ which we formed in Potsdam in 2007."

"Why German Prof. Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber & Co. Will Become The Object Of Ridicule For Future Generations"

http://notrickszone.com/2012/07/15/why-german-prof-hans-joachim-schellnhuber-co-will-become-the-object-of-ridicule-for-future-generations/

...-

"House of the Wannsee Conference"

"The Wannsee Conference
At noon of 20 January 1942, a meeting of approximately 90 minutes took place in the dining room of the SD guesthouse.

Representatives of the SS, the NSDAP and various Reich ministries attended this meeting, which was convened by Reinhard Heydrich, Head of the Security Police and SD. The subject of the meeting was the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”."

http://www.ghwk.de/engl/wannsee_conference.htm

Quebecois separatiste - you are obviously too young to remember the heat wave in, was it 2005 or 2003 in Europe, where hundreds died in France, while its president vacationed in Quebec, in cool North Hatley, with a 24 hour emergency ambulance on call. In Paris, at the moment it's below 20C, and below 10C at night. Hmm. How's that for global warming?

Ahh, EBD, we'll have to 'agree to disagree'. Your fascinating Steyn commentary doesn't persuade me because fundamentalist utopianism is always higher in populations living without risk. The second and third generation of immigrants can easily belong, fervently, to the NDP (think of its ranks in Canada) or the communist party or the OWS or the Islamic utopianism. That's because there's no economic or political risk to them. Youth lives within utopianism.

Now, back to reality. First - I agree with David Southam's excellent comments. All of them, excellent.

Reality consists, not of the immediate level, which I call the individual level, and which various others have defined as the zone of Nominalism...Reality consists also of a deeper infrastructural level. This level is long term, operates via normative relations people live within, in their economic, political, family, kin, educational actions.

So, you'll get societies around the world, operating let's say by big scale irrigation agriculture (ancient China, Egypt, Inca, Aztec) and what is strange is that they will all operate within the same economic, political, religious patterns of organization. They've never been in contact but they are similarly organized. Hmm.

Same with other economic modes. I posit about ten basic types and each type, no matter where it develops on this planet, has a similar normative set of organizational relations. Oh, and similar population levels as well.

That's why I maintain that the MENA, which has reached the economic and political carrying capacity of a tribal, no-growth, statist one-industry economic mode, must implode and develop a civic, growth oriented, capitalist private enterprise middle class economy. And with that civic infrastructural change, the ideology will also have to change.

Just as it did in the West, which moved from its tribal medieval era, its repression of its population, its 'all knowledge is known', into a civic mode and a capitalist economy.

I know that you, and others here, think that the ideology, the rhetoric, is the essential cause of history and I'll continue to be unconvinced of this. I think there are deeper processes operating in societies: population size, economic capacities, political freedoms and so on.

Best News reports:

"London twits pull plug on legends McCartney & Springsteen"

http://www.newswatchcanada.ca/

All of the factors mentioned above, ideology, social, economic, including changes to the environment, have influenced the movement of people at various times throughout history.

We had better get this one right, or...we will all be wearing burkhas or a casket.

Global Climate Report: TO Twits.

...-

"Torontonians took to Twitter to post photos of their rain-drenched neighbourhoods."

"Thunderstorms across the city cause flash floods, landslides"

Also:

"Glass rains down on Toronto, again"

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/15/thunderstorms-across-the-city-cause-flash-floods-landslides/

ET, 6:57p.m. --

Your argument as I understand it is certainly the key assumption behind the Bush Doctrine. On balance, for the reasons you provide, I think the policy could ultimately prove successful, and at a fraction of the real cost of the military and economic support that the Allied governments provided to Western Europe after 1939. But the United States is a big question mark at the moment.

I meant to mention earlier that I think that the issue for the Arab and wider Muslim world will be how the populations there ultimately define their self-interest: waxing the pyramids or taking them down or flying airplanes into office buildings or whatever is not going to put food on the table for Egyptians or other Arabs, and I think/hope they'll come to that realization sooner or later. But the "risk-on" position they now find themselves in, with no one to blame for the outcome but themselves, would only have been delayed or prevented by Western indifference to, or continued support for, the former regimes, with much more serious implications for the West.

Which is what I don't get about Obama on the Middle East -- as Mr. Blair noted in his memoirs about the Caira speech, apologize for what, exactly? The key NATO states essentially covered for Obama in Libya, and the Syrian situation, with all the damage it is doing to American credibility, could have been resolved much sooner with presidential leadership and resolve from the United States. I'm very worried that America is making the same kinds of mistakes now that they made during the Vietnam era and over the Shah of Iran -- it took the local populations of the Vietnam debacle decades to come around and we still have yet to appropriately confront Iran. Back-door solutions like drone strikes and cyber attacks are not what's needed now.

David Southam - thanks for a second excellent post.

Yes, basically, the outline I'm suggesting, which is the encouragement and enabling of a middle class economy in the MENA (Middle East and N Africa) - with middle class understood as private sector development of small and medium businesses - is the Bush doctrine. And, since all political systems must empower the wealth producing sector, then, since this middle class must become the majority in the MENA, this also means the development of a constitutional democracy. That is, a government in control of the electorate.

And yes, it is indeed about the self-interest of the Islamic world. They can't live on tourism, on Suez tolls or on oil revenues - and they know this. Neither can they live on rhetoric, despite the fervent imaginations of the utopian fundamentalists. They must live in reality - and reality requires private sector wealth production to serve the enormous increase in MENA population over the past decades.

I also agree that this implosion and transformation has been delayed by Western support for the old regimes. Think of Obama's utterly ignoring the Iranian demonstrations for freedom and his support for Ahmandinejad.

And I agree - back door drone strikes aren't the point. As for Obama, don't get me started! I consider him a pathological narcissist, historically and economically utterly ignorant. As a narcissist, his focus is only on his ability to control, via manipulation, other people. IF he cannot control you, then you literally cease to exist for Obama.

I'd say his approach to the MENA is exactly that. The Islamists are indifferent to his charm and waves; he can't manipulate and control them, and therefore, for Obama, they actually cease to exist.