small dead animals

Ooops

Roger L. Simon;

In the midst of live-blogging the Iraq election the other night, I received an email that got my attention. It was from the State Department situation room and, aside from the ego-flattering surprise that people so highly placed were reading this blog in the midst of such an event, it contained some disappointing (although not horribly surprising) information about CNN correspondent Jane Arraf.

Many of us had just watched Ms. Arraf waiting with what "seemed" like great dismay in front of an empty polling station in Mosul. The Iraqis were not turning out to vote. Then, an hour or so later, she popped up at another polling place in the same city that was crowded with voters, explaining that she had "switched polling places." But she hadn't. According to my situation room correspondent, her first venue was not a polling place at all. For whatever reasons (embarrassment? bias? both?), Ms. Arraf omitted this important fact.

A Liberal Slice

Stephen Taylor has been generating pie graphs based on data pulled from the Elections Canada website. For example, this one represents the political contributions by party of the current CBC board of directors....

He's tracked down the "corporate whores", too.

Chris, at Striving Against Opposition decided to run the names of some of the 134 law professors who released a letter condemning Stephen Harper's stance on traditional marriage through the Elections Canada donate-a-meter... what he found is not that surprising.

"All I Had Was A Little Soup"

The leading contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination collapsed today just before she was to give an address on health care.

That'll teach her to accept dinner invitations from Massachusetts senators.

I'm So Ronrey... So Ronery And Sadry Arone... con't

First the great masterpieces began to disappear, followed by a renewed interest in nuke negotiation, and now ....

North Korean agents in Beijing and Ulan Bator are frantically selling assets to raise cash - an important sign, says one activist, because "the secret police can always smell the crisis coming before anybody else".

Or marionettes!

Let's Play Charades

Linda McQuaig says today's charade is simply about Iraq's oil. And Barbie dolls.

*

Rise To The Occasion

Principles are eternal. They stem not from our resolution or lack of it, but from elsewhere where, in patient and infinite ranks, they simply wait to be called. They can be read in history. They arise as if of their own accord when in the face of danger natural courage comes into play and honor and defiance are born. Things such as courage and honor are the mortal equivalent of certain laws written throughout the universe. The rules of symmetry and proportion, the laws of physics, the perfection of mathematics, even the principle of uncertainty, are encouragement, entirely independent of the vagaries of human will, that not only natural law but our own best aspirations have a life of their own. They have lasted through far greater abuse than abuses them now. They can be neglected, but they cannot be lost. They can be thrown down, but they cannot be broken. Each of them is a different expression of a single quality, from which each arises in its hour of need. Some come to the fore as others stay back, and then, with changing circumstance, those that have gone unnoticed rise to the occasion. Rise to the occasion. The principle suggests itself from a phrase, and such principles suggest easily and flow generously. You can grab them out of the air, from phrases, from memories, from images." - Mark Helprin ; Statesmanship And Its Betrayal, April 1998

" No one in the United States should try to overhype this election. This election is a sort of demarcation point, and what really counts now is the effort to have a legitimate political reconciliation, and it's going to take a massive diplomatic effort and a much more significant outreach to the international community than this administration has been willing to engage in.  Absent that, we will not be successful in Iraq."

- Sen.John Kerry, Meet The Press, Jan.30 2005.

Overheard At The GOP Retreat

New York Times;

"In another presentation, Senator John Thune of South Dakota introduced senators to the meaning of "blogging," explaining the basics of self-published online political commentary and arguing that it can affect public opinion."

Tom Daschle could not be reached for comment.

H/T Wizbang

"I Cannot Describe What I Am Seeing"

60%*

*- early estimate of 72% revised

CNN

Even in Falluja, the Sunni city west of Baghdad that was a militant stronghold until a U.S. assault in November, a steady stream of people turned out, confounding expectations. Lines of veiled women clutching their papers waited to vote.

"We want to be like other Iraqis, we don't want to always be in opposition," said Ahmed Jassim, smiling after he voted.

In Baquba, a rebellious city northeast of Baghdad, spirited crowds clapped and cheered at one voting station. In Mosul, scene of some of the worst insurgent attacks in recent months,
U.S. and local officials said turnout was surprisingly high.

One of the first to vote was President Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Muslim Arab with a large tribal following, who cast his ballot inside Baghdad's fortress-like Green Zone.

"Thanks be to God," he told reporters, emerging from the booth with his right index finger stained with bright blue ink to show he had voted. "I hope everyone will go out and vote."

[...]

Baghdad's mayor was overcome with emotion by the turnout of voters at City Hall, where he said thousands were celebrating. "I cannot describe what I am seeing. It is incredible. This is a vote for the future, for the children, for the rule of law, for humanity, for love," Alaa al-Tamimi told Reuters.

Husayn writes at his newly renamed blog, Democracy In Iraq (Is Here!) ;

What a day it has been. I am very tired, but I am at peace, something I havn't felt in this regard before. I am happy to report that I found very few people during my post-voting trip through Baghdad who had not voted. I even got a few to "convert" and go out and vote. When confronted with the fact that staying away from voting was futile, some who had opposed the election relented, and went and made their mark.

Even now, I have no idea who is going to win, but it really isn't important. It is enough for me to know that our new government won't be the result of a sham election, that it will be the will of the people. We will not know who won for a few days, maybe weeks, but this is just a minor headache, and should not be taken by anyone to attack the election or it's validity. We don't have the machinery or technology available in the United States or other countries where you can find the result of elections overnight. We will one day though, and today is the first step on that path.

Let me end today's posts with a picture I found of a woman who was so overcome with emotion at voting that she cried. I believe this picture symbolizes every Iraqi's feelings today.

Jarvis has a fabulous roundup of quotes and links from bloggers in Iraq. Instapundit has lots, too.

Meanwhile, the networks are scrambling through the archives for material to fill the timeslots reserved for election bloodbath coverage. Jonah Goldberg, " I just walked over to my computer after seeing that the Today Show was offering viewers a segment on new shaving technologies for men."

Iraq Election Blogging

I'm having ISP problems this weekend, and finding it difficult to enter posts, so activity here may be light.

Don't forget to keep up on Iraq election progress at Friends Of Democracy - it's on the left, on the blogroll. Iraqis reporting from the ground, in Iraq.

update
Jeff Jarvis has a must read roundup of quotes from free Iraqis, as well.

Now, and thanks to other humans, not from my area, religion and who don't even speak my language, I and all Iraqis have the real chance to make the change. Now I OWN my home and I can decide who's going to run things in it and how and I won't waste that chance. Tomorrow as I cast my vote, I'll regain my home. I'll regain my humanity and my dignity, as I stand and fulfill part of my responsibilities to this part of the large brotherhood of humanity. Tomorrow I'll say I'M IRAQI AND I'M PROUD, as being Iraqi this time bears a different meaning in my mind. It's being an active and good part of humanity. Tomorrow I and the Iraqis that are going to vote will rule, not the politicians we're going to vote for, as it's our decision and they'll work for us this time and if we don't like them we'll kick them out! Tomorrow my heart will race my hand to the box. Tomorrow I'll race even the sun to the voting centre, my Ka'aba and my Mecca. I'm so excited and so happy that I can't even feel the fear I though I would have at this time. I can't wait until tomorrow. - Ali - of Free Iraq

Liveblogging at Iraq Election Wire.

Skeptics And Heretics

Yesterday I had a brief meeting with the veterinary opthalmologist we've been working with in our ongoing research into retinal dysplasia in Miniature Schnauzers.

During our conversation, he mentioned his frustration with a decision by the Canine Eye Registry Foundation. CERF tracks the incidence of eye defects in breeds of dogs. Board certified veterinary opthalmologists use formal diagnostic forms that are designed to be read by computers and fed into the CERF database, which forms the basis for breed clubs and geneticists to track the prevalence of genetic eye disease.

Well, that's how it's supposed to work.

The researcher has been working on a specific type of retinal defect - retinopathy - in a handful of breeds. With several peer-reviewed published papers in the library, CERF concluded that the defect should be added to the form, so that data collection can begin.

However, for reasons unexplained, CERF decided to place retinopathy into the grouping of retinal dysplasias.

That's problematic. Retinopathy is clinically and genetically distinct from retinal dysplasia. Placing it under an inappropriate category not only limits the ability to track this unique defect, it also corrupts the data on retinal dysplasia. It makes as much sense as lumping in statistics on schizophrenia with data on brain tumours.

Last night I was doing some surfing, and stumbled upon a discussion from Dean's World from last month, titled HIV Skepticism, about the "sloppiness" of the research linking HIV to AIDS. It's interesting reading, and even if you disagree with the premise (advanced in the book Inventing The AIDS Virus by Dr. Peter H. Duesberg), there are compelling arguments that conventional wisdom about "AIDS" may be as much politics and scientific group think, as it is scientific fact.

Dean Esmay has been interested in this for a few years;

Either Peter Duesberg was a monstrous liar or, by the mid-1990s at least, no one had ever demonstrated with any scientific rigor that HIV caused AIDS--and people had only come to believe it by a combination of well-meaning panic to stop a horrible disease, bureaucratic bumbling, pettypoliticking, and greed. No there was no conspiracy, but there was certainly a massive interlocking of government SNAFUs, scientists with huge conflicts of interest, a breakdown of the peer review process, and people in charge of that process who now had vested personal interests in maintaining the status quo.

Or: Duesberg was full of it. There really didn't seem much alternative explanation. The man was too careful, too meticulous, and provided too much documentation. He had to be taken seriously, if only to prove him wrong.

Or so I thought.

Instead, there seemed a virtual press blackout on the book. Most of the reviews in the mainstream press were short, snotty, and condescending. It was clear that they weren't interested in arguing with Duesberg, and when they didn't sniff at him like rancid garbage they ridiculed him, and mocked anyone who wanted to take him seriously.

I began to feel like I was either wildly paranoid or this was a dizzyingly frightening look at just how the confluence of billions of dollars of government money, journalistic laziness and incompetence, and petty politicking had polluted medical science, science reporting, and public health policy.

In December, Dean contacted the author of a more recent book on Duesberg's work - Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS: A Scientific Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg, one George L. Gabor Miklos, PhD.

Quoting the review in Nature Biotechnology, itself, worth reading in its entirety;

Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS should be compulsory reading for those concerned with`what the U.S. (and other Western) governments are buying when they spend public money on cancer and`AIDS research. It should also be compulsory for pharmaceutical and biotech executives, since most of`their potential targets for solid tumors are irrelevant entities that continue to clog drug development`pipelines.

Finally, it should be read by anyone who is interested in the way scientific theories develop and are`shaped by historical circumstances.

Miklos had this to say, in personal correspondance with Dean;

Bottom line; Duesberg is correct on both counts...on the basis of DATA...not hysteria. Your readers can be as angry as they like, but they should save their anger until after they have evaluated`clinical DATA...and then they should direct their anger at their own medical profession.

The scientific data do not support the hypothesis that the HIV virus causes AIDS.

If you have Kaposi sarcoma and you have antibodies to the HIV virus, the CDC says you`have AIDS...by definition!

If you are diagnosed with Kaposi sarcoma and you don't have antibodies to HIV, then you don't have AIDS...you have Kaposi sarcoma!....go figure!

Tell me Dean, if you are diagnosed with blue ears and you have antibodies to the HIV virus, the CDC would say that you have AIDS....if you don't have antibodies to the HIV virus you would have blue ear disease....what a joke. Your own CDC essentially defines any disease where you have antibodies to HIV in your system as AIDS. If you have malaria and and you have antibodies to the HIV virus, the CDC would you have AIDS...by definition! So AIDS equals malaria...this is clinically stupid.

You ought to ask your readers."What is AIDS?"...DEFINE IT!

Does it all seem too far out in left field to merit a look? Is it possible that the entire scientific community is basing its assumptions - and research - on AIDS on sloppy research, unsupported by the data?

Before answering that, go back to the top of my post, and re-read the portion about how the world's most authoritative body on canine eye disease is collecting data on retinopathy.

(HIV Skepticism at Deans World)

Fun stuff

Outside the Beltway is having a "Fun with Fiction Contest"

Rules:

It?s time to find out just how literate and witty OTB readers are. The goal is to change one letter of a book title so as to give the story an entirely new meaning. After the altered title, offer a one or two sentence explanation of the new story.

There are some pretty good entries there already.

Serendipity

Despite the "security situation", the streets of Bagdad are fairly crawling with photographers.

Youd wonder why more of them don't get killed, the way they loiter around in groups and all.

Via Instapundit.

Auschwitz Fashion SS

Jeff Goldstein provides the quintessential summation of the number one non-story of the week;

"In fact, my guess is that Gore could have shown up at Auschwitz wearing a suit made from Jackie Mason and trimmed with the ass hair of Woody Allen, and Givhan would have bent over backwards to frame the Democratic VP's fashion choice as 'a daring deconstruction of the kind of traditional ceremonial mourning practices that have turned commemorations of singular events like the Holocaust into mundane - and cynically commodified" photo ops for heads of state and /or their proxies.' Or some such."

Exactly.

Wardrobe Malfunction

Anheuser-Busch is pulling an advertisement planned for this year's Super Bowl that would have poked fun at last year's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" that exposed Janet Jackson's breast during the halftime show, according to a published report.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the ad would have shown...

Why bother with the description, when Wizbang has the video?

Embrace Hollywood

"Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story." - Michael Moore*

Heh.

Winter Driving Survival Kit

When travelling by automobile in the winter, be sure to include in your emergency kit the following useful items: candles & matches, high-calorie food items (like chocolate), snow shovel, emergency flares, extra blankets, and 30 litres of beer.

Small Dead Feminist

I don't believe I've expressed my views on feminism.

This bit at I Could be wrong has prompted me to share.

If there are prejudices in Universities against women in science, they are remarkably subtle. The prejudices against men are institutionalized and overt. Concerning institutional restrictions against any speech the feminists don't like: these restrictions are massive, overpowering, and virtually 100% intimidating. On the rare occasion such speech is uttered by a professor in a prominent university, it tends to be national news.

I speak as a woman who has worked in a male work setting for all of my adult life. I can say with some authority that the time has come to dismantle organized feminism.

Allow me to first acknowledge the pioneering work of those who did break ground in the struggle for equality rights for women - the right to vote, the right to equal opportunity in politics and employment and property rights. I have gratitude and the deepest respect for the accomplishments of those who were, at the time, considered little more than legal property, subject to the authority of male family members.

As they say, though - "that was then, and this is now". The "then" that "was" has been consigned to the dustbin of history for quite a long time. What loose threads remained in women's equality were tied up a long time ago.

If women were the rational, thinking human beings our acronymed advocates claim we are, "organized feminism" could even choose to commemorate the moment of the movement's modern obsolescence  - if "organized feminism" wasn't such a monotonously predictable leftist waste of female flesh.

The moment occured in 1979. It came in the person of a woman named Margaret Thatcher.

Alas, in the eyes of organized feminism, this didn't "count". Margaret Thatcher's ascent to the Prime Ministerial post in Great Britain - and two time re-election? Meaningless. An irrelevant footnote of history not worthy of true feminist recognition.

You see, Maggie Thatcher was a conservative, which unfortunately, made her a man.

(Had the grand "Iron Lady" only had the good sense to be a lesbian, the feminist movement would have died a natural death in an uncontrolled chain reaction of spontanious head explosions - but such was not to be.)

25 years have now passed, and Maggie Thatcher has lived long enough to see her accomplishments safely consigned to history. If her tenure as three-time Prime Minister of Great Britain are not sufficient to put the feminist movement to bed with a warm pat and a "well done", well, this whole "equality" thing was just not meant to be.

Though women of today have demonstrated the ability to accumlate vast wealth and govern great nations, while women represent, numerically, the majority of humankind, we must accept that true "equality" can never be ours. The feminist movement has failed, through no fault of our own. It's just that the goal wasn't valid to begin with.

There's no way around it, girls. It is time to throw in the towel and accept our inferiority to men.

Kosovo: Under The Radar

Guardian;

Kosovo is fast becoming "the black hole of Europe" and could descend into renewed violence within weeks unless the EU takes urgent action, senior diplomats and international experts warned in Brussels this week.

But continuing EU indecision over the breakaway province's demand for independence from Serbia, coupled with the ethnic Albanian majority's failure to embrace reform and respect Serb minority rights, are paralysing plans to launch "final status" talks this year.

Five years after Nato ejected Serbian forces and imposed an international administration, the UN and the US are still lacking an exit strategy. Serbia, meanwhile, wants its territory back.

In an attempt to show willing, Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner, met Kosovan leaders in Pristina this week. Mr Rehn said the EU would raise the issue when President George Bush visits Europe next month. But according to Erhard Busek, who heads the international stability pact set up after the 1990s Balkan wars to promote democracy and development in south-east Europe, the EU must take the lead.

"Kosovo is a European issue and we Europeans have to get our act together," Mr Busek said. "If Kosovo goes wrong, we in Europe will be first to face the consequences of migration and organised crime."

With unemployment approaching 60%, a disastrous lack of foreign investment, and with 50% of the population aged 25 or under, "there is a huge social problem - a timebomb in the making".

Of course, this is getting wall to wall coverage from the Quagmire Watch Set.

Doug Hanson, at the American Thinker, "The prediction of EU impotence in the face of renewed violence and "payback" in the Balkans once US forces were withdrawn have, unfortunately, come true."

How I Spent My Spring Vacation

Huh.

Someone wasn't thinking.

Are YOU interested in spending up to 30 days along the Arizona border as part of a blocking force against entry into the U.S. by illegal aliens early next spring?

I invite you to join me in Tombstone, Arizona from APRIL 1 - 30, 2005 to protect our country from a 40-year-long invasion across our southern border with Mexico.

Chris Simcox of Civil Homeland Defense, and the publisher of the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper in Tombstone, Arizona has helped protect our borders for five years with only a handful of patriotic volunteers. It is time we provided him with reinforcements.

I am recruiting volunteers to converge on the southern border of Arizona for the purpose of aiding the U.S. Border Patrol in "spotting" intruders entering the U.S. illegally.

This is strictly a volunteer project. No financial subsidies are available. And, you will probably need a tent, sleeping bag, hiking gear, etc. You will be responsible for all costs associated with your participation.

Subsidies? I know people who would pay for the chance to do this.

Kinsella vs Spector

Today, we bring you a glimpse into the Canadian political/media establishment;

Not surprisingly, neither of these lusers[1] have permalinks.

The realization that these twits once had a role in "running the country" goes a long way towards explaining a few things.

Footnote:
[1] correct spelling.

Cat Blogging

Agreed.

Friends Of Democracy Election Blog

Michael Totten writes;

We have more than a dozen local Iraqi correspondents, at least one in each province, filing daily reports. These reports include news, interviews, quotes, photos, whatever they can get in a day. They aren't professional journalists. They are more or less ordinary Iraqis. Some of them you already know - Omar and Mohammed from Iraq the Model, for example. Others you don't know because they don't speak or write in English. Their reports are translated from Arabic before
they are uploaded to the reports site.

My job isn't to edit the reports, exactly (they are published raw on a secondary site), but to run a blog on the main site which summarizes, excerpts, and links to the reports from the field. I'm also going to be excerpting and linking to essays and posts in the Iraqi blogosphere and - on rarer occasions - stories in the mainstream and Middle Eastern media. The idea is to let Iraqis themselves tell their own story of their own first free election.

The site is called "Friends of Democracy: Ground level election news from the people of Iraq." To the best of my knowledge there is nothing else like it anywhere out there, at least not in English. (We also have an Arabic site.)

If you have the time and the inclination, please give us a link.

Let's get this into circulation, folks.

http://www.friendsofdemocracy.info/

Living In Mail Boxes

I mentioned the work being done by Stephan Sheransky uncovering voter fraud in the 129 vote margin overturning of the Washington State election for Governor.

Now, he's set up a searchable voter database, and my what the people aren't digging up. (Well, apart from the people who apparently dug themselves up on election day.)

ROGERS NANCY B 180e MAGNOLIA WAY W SEATTLE Abs
ROGERS STEVEN B 180e MAGNOLIA WAY W SEATTLE Abs
GREEN MARGARET M 181e MAGNOLIA WAY W SEATTLE Poll
GREEN SUZANNE 181e MAGNOLIA WAY W SEATTLE Poll
RASMUSSEN JOHN R 181e MAGNOLIA WAY W SEATTLE Poll
RASMUSSEN KATHLEEN M 181e MAGNOLIA WAY W SEATTLE Poll
ROSSELL DELOREZ 182e MAGNOLIA WAY W SEATTLE Abs
ROSSELL DENTON 182e MAGNOLIA WAY W SEATTLE Abs

This is my block; Suzanne Green is my next door neighbor. She lives alone. Margaret Green is her daughter who does not live at 180e Magnolia Way W; she lives in Bellevue.

***

Anyone interested should take a look at the 1500 block of 4th ave in Seattle. There are 25 "voters" registered on the even side of the block there, with 19 of them voting absentee. As I see it out of my office window, that address is a park across from Westlake Center (you know, the one where all of the paid DNC kids were trying to drum up support to 'beat George Bush').

LogNazi

Interesting ip addresses have been hitting this post today.

Host: mail.corporate.southam.ca /archives/001266.html Referer: http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q= Host: mail.nationalpost.com Referer: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/001266.html

I wonder how many in big media know that we can tell when you read or mail a page link? And that we know what you were searching for, when you found it?

Heh. I'm such a log Nazi.

Revenue Canada Announces Simplified Tax Form

Canadian Islamic Congress Slams "Biased Report"

The Canadian Islamic Congress is none too happy with this Report on Global Anti-Semitism released by the US State Department on Jan.5. Some exerpts from the news release;

1. The report is politically motivated, and lacks independently audited and verified statistics. The fact that this report has been issued by a government department and not an NGO; plus the fact that it addresses only one form of hatred against one specific minority (Jews); and that there were no other reports commissioned to address equally serious hate-issues against other worldwide minorities (e.g. Christians, Muslims, Blacks, First Nations, Aboriginals, women, the poor, the disabled, homosexuals, etc.), clearly shows that political motivation is a far higher priority for the U.S. State Department than human rights or social justice.

Translation: "Propoganda from the filthy Zionist Neocon Cabal in the Bush Administration".

2. The report addresses only anti-Jewish hatred, completely ignoring the equally important issue of Islamophobia (hatred towards Muslims).

A little problem with word definitions, here. "Phobia" means fear of, not "hatred".

Muslims around the world -- especially in areas where they are in the minority -- have been, and still are, victims of discrimination, harassment, physical and mental abuse...

They won't get an argument from me on that.

Deepika Thathaal (search), or Deeyah, was born in Norway of mixed Asian roots. Her father got her into music and has supported her throughout her career. All was going well until she dared to show a little skin - and that's when the threats started. "I would get very abusive phone calls," she said. "I would get abused as I walked down the street. I would have people spit at me."

At a concert in Norway, she was attacked on stage by angry Muslim men who thought she was degrading their culture. But Thathaal doesn't flaunt her heritage. She's just a European woman pursuing a pop music career - who also happens to be Muslim.

Canadian Islamic Congress media release contact:
Dr. Mohamed Elmasry
(519) 746-4107 (O)
(519) 577-2267 (Cell)
e-mail: np@canadianislamiccongress.com

COREN: So what are you saying?

ELMASRY: I'm saying that it has to be totally innocent, OK? Totally innocent are the children, obviously, OK? But they are not innocent if the army [inaudible] in civilian clothes, OK?

COREN: What about women?

ELMASRY: The same, if they are women in the army...

COREN: Anyone over the age of 18 in Israel is a valid target.

ELMASRY: Anybody above 18 is a part of the Israeli army...

COREN: So everyone in Israel and anyone and everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid target?

ELMASRY: Yes, I would say.

[...]

COREN: I've got to tell you I think you've just dug a very large hole for yourself there. I am not unsympathetic, and I do believe that Israelis use way too much force and I believe that Palestinians are blanketed with the term "terrorist," which is very unfair, but what you've said there, I believe, is very dangerous talk. There's a massive difference.

IRFAN SYED (LAWYER): I wouldn't be so definitive as saying that everybody over 18 is a legitimate target. I mean obviously that goes too far. I mean even according to our faith belief, you have to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. That includes women, children, the elderly and all that.

ELMASRY: Everybody above 18 is a combatant.

Swimming Against The Mainstream

Via Powerline, these poll results of Iraqis translated from the Arabic newspaper Alsharq Alausat.

72.4 % of all of those polled said they would participate in the elections.

97% of Iraqis in Kurdistan said they would participate in the elections.

96% of Iraqis in the southern provinces (mainly Shiite areas) said they would participate in the elections.

33% of Iraqis in the central provinces (Sunni Area) said they would participate in the elections.

10% of Iraqis in Central provinces (Sunni Area) said they have not yet made their mind if they were going to vote or not.

62.1% of those polled said that the elections will be neutral and free.

17.8% said elections will not be neutral and free.

66% said that the elections must take place under current circumstances.

53.3% said the security is good in their area..

21.7% said that security was average in their area.

25% said that security was bad in their area.

This is consistant with virtually every report out of Iraq that isn't filtered through the mainstream media's bomb-a-day "escalating violence" coverage mantra. Chrenkoff notes that "The deputy director of operations in Iraq for the US military, Air Force Brigadier General Erv Lessel... confirmed that a dramatic 50 per cent reduction in terrorist activity had been seen over recent days", though cautions;

Everyone - the Iraqis, the media, the Coalition forces - are expecting a dramatic surge of violence on the election day, as the insurgents and terrorists put all their resources in a concerted effort to derail the poll. But that hasn't happened yet, so let's wait until Sunday with all the "escalations of violence."

Sisyphean has more.

LARK Program

The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. ,20016 Dear Concerned Citizen: Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Our administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear in Washington.You'll be pleased to learn that thanks to concerned citizens like you, we are creating a new division of the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the "Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers" program, or LARK for short. In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care. Your personal detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence next Monday. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you can just call him Ahmed) is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of admonishment. It will likely be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers. We will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with those you so strongly recommended in your letter... ....Pg.2

Regretting His Martyrdom

Next Time, Call Canada

Canadian blogger Chris Almeny has advice for milblogger Citizen Smash - "*Some* Americans need to learn that the United States is not and need not be the "Superman" of the world.".

Smash takes it to heart.

Twice in the past hundred years, the United States sent troops to Western Europe to fight for "freedom." To the people of France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and Austria, we offer our most heartfelt apologies for interfering in your affairs. Please rest assured that it won’t happen again.

To the peoples of Polynesia, Micronesia, Indonesia, Indochina, the Philippines (again), China, and Korea, for whom America spent so much blood and treasure to free from the "oppression" of the Japanese Empire, we're sorry. We’re sure that you could have handled the matter much better without our "assistance."

After subjecting their citizens to all-out war, the United States forced Germany, Japan, and Italy to "democratize." We apologize for being so presumptuous. In retrospect, we should have trusted you to come up with your own form of government -- we’re certain you would have been much better off in the long run, left to your own devices.

We apologize to the people of South Korea for "defending" you from your brothers to the north. This was clearly an internal matter for Koreans to decide, and we had no business meddling in your affairs.

The Trudeaupian left's vision for Canada has come to fruition - from "punching above our weight" to "peacekeeper nation" to punchline.

update I crossposted this at the Shotgun, where "EssEm" commented;

I am American-born, but lived in Toronto for 17 years and became a (dual) Canadian citizen while there. I returned to the US some 13 years ago. I recommend people take a second look at Pierre Burton's "Why We Act Like Canadians". It gave me a way to value the Canajan --which is often, I suspect, confused with the Ontario Liberal-- way of looking at the world. Yet I have come to see that while it might be advantageous to Canada to act more like America in relation to the rest of the world (though hardly possible now), it would not be advantageous to America, or the world, for the US to act like Canada does.

Even while I was living in TO, I realized that I had moved to the "sidelines of empire". Even if you are picturesque, well-behaved and have a sense of social responsibility, that cannot replace being enormous, dynamic to the point of unstable, restless, driven and successful. And the world treats you very differently. Canada is like a planetary Mr. Rogers (forgive the American cultural reference). It might be nice if everyone were more like him, but...they ain't. In fact, most of the world is run by and has always been run by the Sopranos (again, the cultural ref). To handle that, you need a combination of decency, cunning self-confidence and explosive power.

In my long discovery of what made Canadians and Americans different, despite superficial similarities, I did discover in Ontario something that I still can detect in Canadian life: "a pre-disposition to disapprove". I recall the cold power behind a word I often heard in my 17 years: "inappropriate".

It seems to me that the rigid moralism of old Scots Toronto the Good has not disappeared, but has morphed into the multiculty quasi-pacificist Euroid self-righteousness of post-Trudeaupia. From here, in the heart of the Empire, in the Belly of the Beast, with Tony Soprano vividly imagined not just as "another voice in the global symphony", but as "The Crips and the Bloods Do Sharia" it sounds distant and tinny. Sad. Some of my best friends are still in Canada.

Michael Moore's Best By Date

Flashback Sept.8, 2004 - small dead animals prognostication:

Michael, Michael.... The Oscars are in February, darling - well past your "best by" date, if you know what we mean. And then, there's that problem of you being an absolute pig. (Get a trainer, would you?) But be sure to say hello to those quaint little documentary people for us though.

Oscar Nominations: Moore shut out.

Beauty And The Geek

Take seven brainy nerds and seven dim beauties, add Ashton Kutcher as a matchmaker and what do you get?

I dunno. Another reason to list the TV on Ebay?

The goal of "Beauty and the Geek" is to couple seemingly mismatched pairs and see which can work best together, said David Janollari, the network's entertainment president, on Saturday. "It's really looking at stereotypes of people and how we look at beautiful women and not-so-beautiful men," he said.

Except for the "It's really looking at stereotypes of people and how" and "not-so-beautiful men" part, my tendancy is to think this is on the up-and-up.

They will go through a series of competitions: combining wits on a camping trip, learning how to dance and working at a deli (the guys help the girls figure out how to make change).

Oh, have some real fun - make the boys teach them Java code.

"Beauty and the Geek" joins NBC's "Tommy Lee Goes to College" as the two most colorful reality series planned by the networks this summer. The NBC series follows the rock star as he enrolls in college in Nebraska.

"Tommy Lee College Sex Video Downloads"

Don't mind me. Just getting out ahead of the coming Googlelanche.

"Israeli Apartheid Week"

"All of those who still don't believe that Women's Studies, Gender Studies and other absurd programs are just a front for extreme-left, pro-terrorist groups raise your paw."

Updates: Armanious Slayings

I was going to start looking for updates on the slaughter of the Armanious family in New Jersey, but Michelle Malkin has already taken care of it. She makes some pointed observations in her link-rich post;

The brutal murders of the Armanious family, whose members were devout and outspoken Coptic Christians from Egypt, are getting scant MSM attention. The stories that do get published have a P.C., "can't we all just get along?" bias:

"Killing of family shatters religious harmony," reads one headline. What about the family that was shattered?

"Jersey City slayings spur new wave of anti-Muslim bias," reads another headline. Yet, the anti- Christian bias that may reportedly be at the center of the slayings has been downplayed in favor of other motives and, some argue, whitewashed.

I'd like to know why this has received zero coverage by Canadian media.

What's that you say? Oh. It's just a local story.

As opposed to the "Canadian interests" served by the coverage of the Scott Peterson case?

Biggest Fraud Case In Sask History

CBC;

The probe into a breach of policy at Saskatchewan's social services department has become an RCMP investigation of what may be, if proven, the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the province.

Note to CBC: See Spudco.

While no charges have been laid, police raided Evelyn Hynes' office, seized files and a computer. Government sources admit nearly a million dollars is unaccounted for.

Hynes was convicted of defrauding a bank in Newfoundland in the 1980s for more than $600,000. Working as an assistant loans manager, she made up phony clients and bogus loans over six years. She was sentenced to two years in jail but was later pardoned.

After getting out of jail and becoming a social worker she moved to Saskatoon, rising through the ranks of the provincial government to become a middle-level manager. But government officials didn't check Hynes's criminal record when they hired her in 1989. At that time, she had not been pardoned.

Eh... would someone please ask how the pardon came about?

Update -
Both Ms. Hynes and her husband, Grant Matheson were employed in the same office with the Benefits and Audit Program and left on the same day. Both were on salary at over $80,000 a year. Escorted from their offices in December, the department has been under a "no talk" order ever since. Quote from a source: "DCRE usually eat their own rather than proscecute them."

As so often happens in these cases, the irony positively drips. Hynes also enjoyed a second paying position, teaching classes at the University of Saskatchewan in poverty. Former President of the Saskatchewan Social Workers Association, her work on "Social Work Ethics and Income Security" was adopted by that association. (Someone may want to be checking over the books there as well.)

Considering that social assistance recipients in Saskatchewan have even the most trivial overpayment of funds corrected by docking from their future disbursements, regardless of the hardship it may cause - it will be interesting to see what the NDP government does with Ms. Hynes pension plan.

The NDP's claimed drop in welfare caseloads would do an Enron accountant proud - by creating new program names, they shuffle clients into new check-recieiving categories that bypass the field worker and go directly through SaskTel.

One such example is the Saskatchewan employment supplement, a support system for the working poor. Once under the umbrella of the welfare system, recipients now report income to a call center on a monthly basis, via 1-800 number, and recieve their income top-up. To apply for welfare in Saskatchewan you dial a 1 800 number, apply for a "transitional employment allowance" - meaning you just want some money until you can find a job - and the government will simply cut you a check.

There is no social services interview or other system in place to prevent abuse, as it's considered too costly to do so.

Apparently, the same applies to Department of Community Resources and Employment managers.

Reader Tips

The letter from one LTC Tim Ryan that got wide distribution on the blogosphere, was published by the World Tribune. They got letters.

While everyone else is counting the "freedom" appearances, Rich Richman is more interested in the fire in George Bush's inauguration speech.

The Intifada continues, complete with baby martyrs.

A documentary about Iraq without the input of a fat socialist weasel.

The National Post editorial could have saved someone a lot of typing by just cutting to the money quote: "Mr. Cotler must do all in his power to convince his colleagues that this is one instance in which there are bigger issues at play than a few ethnic votes. If they don't agree, perhaps he should rethink whether this is a Cabinet he belongs in."

A little sympathy for the devil at Rolling Stone Magazine - he's on the payroll in the advertising department.

Good Question

An unnamed source is credited in the WAshington Post with leaking some details - and blunt talk - covered in the meeting between Paul Martin and George W. Bush during his visit.

"(Bush) leaned across the table and said: `I'm not taking this position, but some future president is going to say, Why are we paying to defend Canada?' "

It takes an American president to say what no Canadian politician has ever had the guts to admit.

Tensions In Malta

Staying well below the media radar is another European state struggling with illegal immigration. I don't know enough about Malta or the political climate to offer any opinion. But, I will offer that there is a pattern in the non-coverage given to these problems by western media. The issues facing the Dutch in the wake of the Van Gogh murder, "Action Sweep Out" in Germany and this incident all share a common theme. Times of Malta, Jan.19;

Malta came under intense international criticism yesterday following last week's incidents between army personnel and illegal immigrants at the Safi Barracks.

Speaking to The Times while accompanying the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, in talks with the European Commission in Brussels, Raymond Hall, the UNHCR's European Bureau director, said the UN agency was "deeply concerned about the apparent use of excessive force by Maltese soldiers when breaking up a peaceful demonstration by asylum seekers and irregular immigrants last week".

[...]

Mr Hall said the UNHCR was shocked with the incidents especially since people had to be hospitalised following a peaceful protest. In the context of what happened, the UNHCR reiterates its advice that Malta should re-examine its detention policy, which involves mandatory detention for as long as 18 months and is by far the strictest in Europe.

He said: "The UNHCR is strongly opposed to the practice of mandatory detention, whereby asylum seekers are routinely detained until such time as they are recognised as refugees".

[...] "The UNHCR has discussed Malta's detention policies and conditions with the authorities on a number of occasions over the past couple of years. Last June, the UNHCR submitted a detailed report to the authorities which outlined a wide range of shortcomings in the four detention centres and contained numerous recommendations for changes.

"Despite a number of official letters requesting further dialogue, the UNHCR has to date received no official written response from the Maltese authorities."

The UNHCR spokesman said his organisation fully appreciates Malta's concerns that, given its proximity to major smuggling routes from North Africa, it risks being overburdened with asylum seekers and irregular migrants. However, he added, the High Commission does not believe such concerns warrant detention as a deterrent.

Keeping in mind my aforementioned disclaimer, I think that a country only 8 miles wide and 15 miles long, and within rafting distance of northern Africa, might be extended the benefit of the doubt for creating strong deterents to illegal immigration. CIA Factbook: Malta

Not that everyone is rushing to apologize;

Norman Lowell the fiery leader of the far-right Imperium Europa, said yesterday that illegal immigrants not only threatened Malta's security, but also posed a "sanitary, cultural and genetic" threat to the country.

Mr Lowell was addressing a 200-strong crowd who gathered on Safi's main square yesterday afternoon to "express solidarity" with the Armed Forces following the incidents at Safi Barracks on January 13, in which 26 irregular immigrants and two soldiers were reportedly injured.

Around 15 policemen placed barriers around the square before people gathered in front of St Paul's band club, adjacent to the church, where electricity for the loudspeakers was provided. While it was evident that a few turned up out of curiosity, others seemed to be paying attention to Mr Lowell as he spoke. Mr Lowell started his speech by attacking the media for being "against the army and the boys in blue". Waving a stick in the air from time to time, he said the media were controlled by "those who know where true power lies".

"It's the media which control and twist public opinion," Mr Lowell claimed, adding that the media were responsible for painting a negative picture of him. "I am a libertarian and not a Nazi or a Fascist," he said.

Mr Lowell said Malta is the only country that still had a "homogenous" race. The rest of Europe, from Ireland to Poland, was "contaminated" and it would not be long before Europeans would want to come here to experience the "real spirituality".

"This is why we have to annihilate the black coal," Mr Lowell said.

A group of men, who all wore sunglasses and caps, the collars of their jackets covering their chins, clapped heartily when Mr Lowell mentioned the Brigadier of the Armed Forces. Mr Lowell said that at this point, the AFM commander should not resign "even if he had the gravest of personal problems".

Mr Lowell said the authorities were secretly going to change the law so that illegal immigrants would have a renewable visa to stay in Malta. He attacked Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini who said recently that an immigrants' centre should be set up in Malta. "I will find Mr Frattini in Brussels and he will have to apologise publicly," Mr Lowell shouted.

Immigrants entering Malta on boats should be stopped 14 miles offshore and warned not to come ashore, Mr Lowell said. The upcoming conference on illegal immigration would turn out to be yet another farce, with Government and Opposition on one side and the NGOs, who "have nothing better to do", on the other, he said.

Mr Lowell finished his speech by raising his stick in the air and crying "Ave!"

Yeow.

More at the Maltese blogs Immanuel Mifsud and Toni Sant.

Nibble Nibble

Sean, at Pol:Spy has been following Queen Adrienne's travel habits - no small feat.

On Thursday I wrote this. Today my wife found this:

Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson flew to Europe on a commercial jet for her controversial post-Christmas vacation, Rideau Hall reports. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, officials have repeatedly cited increased security measures when defending Clarkson's use of government planes.

Her decision to fly commercially - at her own expense to an undisclosed European location Jan. 9 - was revealed yesterday by spokesman Randy Mylyk after questions were raised about the GG's absence and whereabouts at the time of the memorial service for Alberta's Lt. Gov. Lois Hole. - CNEWS

How interesting. I know of no other Canadian blog that brought this up. I did, and I also tipped off Mr. Weston at the Ottawa Sun that I was doing so. Now Randy Mylyk is falling all over himself to stop this story before it grows legs. Another coincidence? Uh huh. I'd appreciate it if people didn't tell Norm Spector that a Canadian blog may have had an influence on how a story played out. I'd feel badly if the poor old fellow keeled over from the shock.

Heh. Go read this, too.

Nibble nibble.

"Action Sweep Out"

Reuters:

German officials are drawing up lists of hundreds of Islamic militants to be deported from the country under a new law making expulsions easier, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel said on Saturday. Der Spiegel said authorities were already using their powers under an immigration law introduced this month in conducting an operation dubbed "Aktion Kehraus" ("Action Sweep Out"). The Interior Ministry declined to comment on the report beyond saying that deportations were a matter for Germany's 16 federal states.

Under new rules, potential deportees will not be able to use normal legal channels to challenge an expulsion order. A special panel of the Federal Administrative Court will be responsible, with no right of appeal. Der Spiegel said judges were expected to deal with up to 2,000 cases per year.

Since the revelations in 2001 that Arab students who had lived for years in Hamburg led the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Germans have questioned their liberal laws under which some suspected militants even draw welfare benefits. Interior Minister Otto Schily has suggested that evidence of training at an al Qaeda camp should be clear grounds for expelling a foreign national. Distributing videos calling for "holy war" could also be punished the same way.

Hat tip - Outside The Beltway

Iraq Election Broadcast And Forecasts

Passing along an Iraq election broadcast, via INDC; entitled "Heroes of Iraq". (There's also a transcript at the link.)

Milblogger "Adventures of Chester" looks at predictions by George Friedman (Stratfor) for post-election Iraq and the implications for the "insurgency";

The Shia understand they cannot simply remain in a defensive mode. They have been passive in the run-up to the election, but after the election their credibility as the government of Irraq will depend on how they deal with the guerrillas. They must either suppress the guerrillas or negotiate a deal with them. Since a deal is hard to imagine at this time, they will have to act to suppress them. If they don't, the government will either be destroyed by the insurgents, or Iraq will split into two or three countries, an evolution unacceptable to the Shia or to Iran.

Therefore, the Shia will fight. The Shiite leadership has made it clear it wants the United States to remain in Iraq for the time being. This does not mean it wants a long-term American presence. It means it wants US forces to carry the main battle against the Sunnis on its behalf. In the same way that al-Sistani wanted the Americans to deal with Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr during the An Najaf affair, he wants the Americans to carry the main burden now.

The United States is prepared to carry a burden, but it is not prepared to single-handedly deal with the Sunnis any longer. The Shi hav substantial armed militias. It is these forces -- not the failed Iraqi army the US has tried to invent -- that will be the mainstay of the regime. The Shia don't want this force ground up because it is the guarantor of their security. The United States is not going to protect the regime without these forces engaged.

At this point, something interesting happens. The Shia have a greater vested interest in the viability of this government than even the Americans. The Americans can leave. The Shia aren't going anywhere. For the first time, the United States has a potential ally with capabilities and motivation. Most important, it is an ally that is not blind on the ground. Its intelligence capability is not perfct among the Sunnis, but it is better than what the Americans have.

Chester considers the capabilities and challenges of incorporating existing and disbanded militias, and the implications for Syria - "if the Iraqis have good intelligence of Syria's involvement, harboring, or support of the terrorist insurgency, it is entirely possible that the Iraqis will tell the US that Iraq will do something about Syria with or without the Americans . . .".

She Feels They're Pane

Helen Smith-McIntyre, chair of the Saskatoon Police Service Committee on Diversity, has called for the scrapping of a police aptitude test that discriminates against visible minorities, who have higher than usual failure rates. Smith-McIntyre took the test and "passed" - if one discounts that she didn't complete it within the allowed time.

The half-hour test measures grammar, spelling and reading comprehension.

Not For The Faint Of Heart

Against all advice, I went ahead and looked at it.

Now, excuse me for a few minutes as I curl up on the floor in a fetal position.

Naming The Enemy

Diana West tells it like it is;

I found it wickedly ironic that around the time the Website Islam Online claimed Fox television decided "to remove some stereotypical aspects about American Muslims" from its terrorism series "24" -- whose hero, after defusing the terrorist threat from Bosnia, South America, Germany, and corporate America, now battles honest-to-goodness Muslim terrorists -- real-life news broke about the vicious murders of a Coptic Christian family whose bound and gagged bodies, slit throats and stab wounds on a Coptic cross tattoo immediately raised fears that the crime may have been Islamic in nature, a slaying of "infidels" -- in Jersey City.

Out Migration: A Solution

Long day at the shop. Overnight a foot of snow had drifted in over the inch of ice that froze to every road surface during a lovely rain we had a couple of days ago. Driving to town was no picnic. Neither was the drive home.

(click for full size)

Airbrushing is "automaton" work. There's not a lot of thought required, and so the mind tends to wander - similar to the phenomenon that occurs when on a long drive with an open can of solvent in the car.

And today, as I buzzed and brushed along on the masks, I began to think about things. Just things at random, as I am wont to do. Sparked, perhaps, by the knowledge that the masks were Edmonton bound, I began pondering the most serious problem facing the province of Saskatchewan today - the inability to attract young people who are highly educated, and have an entrepreneurial spirit.

Suddenly, it came to me - a solution. As brilliant ideas often are, it was breathtakingly simple. It's so damned simple I can't believe no one has proposed this before.

Our province has an brand identity problem. The name "Saskatchewan", while unique and memorable (if not pronouncable), is burdened by negative imagery. A simple word association experiment illustrates the problem ... "Saskatchewan ... taxes .. socialists ... Tommy Douglas .. not dead enough ... roadkill ... bad roads ... blizzards ... wind ... drought ... grasshoppers ..."

It doesn't help that we're on the shelf right next to a province that's got a Red Hot Rating in every consumer report.

Let's face it - Alberta is our number two problem. It's easy to move from Saskatchewan to Alberta. No hills to climb or rivers to ford. Those Albertans are clever. They use gasoline pumps as bread crumbs - the further west you drive, the lower the fuel prices.

Time to face facts. As fond as we are of it, the name's got to go. There's simply too much baggage, too much bad press. But what do we replace it with? Cuba's taken.

Here's where my idea really started to pick up speed. Picture this scene if you will - a nice millionaire family is brainstorming for a place to move, work, invest and make even more money, and they go "Hey, why not Alberta! They have oil, conservatives, no sales tax.. "

Why not indeed! And so they get a map of Canada, seeking fertile ground to put down new roots...

I can hear the pennies dropping...

True, we might get a higher than average representation of dyslexics, but on the balance, I think it could work. Absurd? Perhaps. Revolutionary? Certainly.

Too stupid?

Well, funny you ask. In Saskatchewan, there's really no such thing! In fact, the Calvert government has taken a stance that when it comes to building the economy of this province, no idea is too stupid to consider.

Alberta. Albreta. Alberta. Albreta.. See? It sounds better all the time.

Blogging, Journalism & Credibility

Jeff Jarvis live blogged his Harvard workshop entitled Blogging, Journalism & Credibility. Pretty good observations from a wide variety of participants from both big media and the blogosphere. An exerpt I liked;

: Jay Rosen is presenting his paper. He said the "war should be over between bloggers and journalists, the cartoon dialogue... Even though it makes for good feature stories and great blog posts, bloggers vs. journalists doesn't help us much." He said the tension between them will go on and its necessary and inevitable. But the tsunami story makes it "obvious that blogs have a role in journalism."

Dave Winer said this morning that I was Jay's Frankenstein. Jay said it's the opposite. Jay's right. He has made me think about media (read: my life) in new ways.

After summarizing his paper, he quotes Rebecca Blood saying that part of the reason for conflict is that blogging and journalism are in a "shared media space." That is the reason the war is over because no one is leaving that space.

Jay is making a point he made on Brian Lehrer's show a few weeks ago: that this not about the "media" but about the "press" and the press is now owned by the people. That is the real shift of power. "They have to share the press with the public."

Isn't that precisely the problem with CBS? Dan et al could not bear to share the press with the public. But the public demanded it. The public won that battle.

The rest is here

via OTB.

Related, Reynolds quotes Lileks:

"I'd say it's a throwback to the old newspapers, the days when partisan slants covered everything from the play story to the radio listings, but this is different. The link changes everything. When someone derides or exalts a piece, the link lets you examine the thing itself without interference. TV can't do that. Radio can't do that. Newspapers and magazines don't have the space. My time on the internet resembles eight hours at a coffeeshop stocked with every periodical in the world - if someone says "I read something stupid" or "there was this wonderful piece in the Atlantic" then conversation stops while you read the piece and make up your own mind.

Inquirer Exclusive

For Those Who Couldn't Be There In Person

Music!
Celebrity!
History!
Aunt Jemima!

Career Opportunities

Kevin Steel is offering helpful employment advice to disaffected Americans in the arts community.

Postcards From Kabul, Jan.20

More photos from a friend serving in Afghanistan.

Had an email from a friend that mentioned they did not see any women in my pictures. Yes there are women there. The men are the ones that run the market and do most of the 'shopping/bartering', but not all of it. Most women were a blue berka there. I was told the color is for the region in which they live. Blue was Kabul, green Kandahar, and there was also an orange.

A group of young girls. There are more photos at at this directory.

Hypocrisy Doesn't Get Better Than This

"Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story." - Michael Moore*

Filmmaker Michael Moore's bodyguard was arrested for carrying an unlicensed weapon in New York's JFK airport Wednesday night.. Police took Patrick Burke, who says Moore employs him, into custody after he declared he was carrying a firearm at a ticket counter. Burke is licensed to carry a firearm in Florida and California, but not in New York. Burke was taken to Queens central booking and could potentially be charged with a felony for the incident. Moore's 2003 Oscar-winning film "Bowling for Columbine" criticizes what Moore calls America's "culture of fear" and its obsession with guns. - Foxnews

update - the story has been updated. It appears that Mr. Burke was a former Moore bodyguard.

Nibbled To Death By Ducks

It's been quite a "Spectorcle" at the Shotgun group blog - the past month's incidents best summarized by Bob Tarantino at Let It Bleed.

On December 18, Spector posted this piece, entitled "Political Escapism--Further Thoughts", which opened with this: "I suppose you could call Kathy Shaidle's last posting 'Canadian content.'" Somewhat bizarrely, it ended with this: "Kathy, perhaps it's your position on abortion that has taken you out of the Canadian political arena. It would be great if you didn't try so so hard to take others with you. We need them here." Quite what abortion had to do with anything was a bit unclear. Nonetheless, thirty-one comments were spawned, including the beginnings of a strangely ad hominen battle between Spector and Shaidle.

[...]

Then things got really weird.

On January 3, 2005, Spector posted this piece, entitled "Jaeger on Judges". This seemed slightly bizarre, as Kevin Jaeger hadn't previously been heavily involved in the festivities, nor, to the best of anyone's knowledge, had Kevin ever written the things which Spector's post appeared to attribute to Kevin. Sixty-three comments followed.

Jaeger responded with this post, querying on what basis Spector was attributing the positions to him.

At that moment, things went from weird to abso-freakin'-lutely bizarre.

I think my only significant contribution to that dustup was a suggestion to Norm that debate might evolve more productively if he would observe "standard blog etiquette" and include links to the quotes he was attributing to others. Norm did not agree;

"As to your interpretation of blog protocol, the exchange in question is archived on this site and easily available if you care to intervene on the substance of this exchange.

"I'm sure Kevin recalls what he wrote a few weeks ago. If you don't, do the grunt work yourself."

Well then!

Things settled down somewhat and were relatively calm - due in no small part to several top tier bloggers throwing up their hands in exasperation and walking way - until yesterday. It all began with my post criticizing one NYT writer Sarah Boxer, entitled "The Myth of 'Responsible' Journalism".

Now, perhaps "Sarah Boxer" is a pseudonym Norm Spector uses for Arts pieces in the New York Times. Or maybe he moonlights as an editor there. If so, I can understand why my comments might strike a nerve. Sharing in the comments, he offered;

"Kate, Relax. The New York Times hasn't even noticed your blog, much less criticized it. ... still hoping that Canadian bloggers will notch some achievements.... to date, Canadian bloggers are in the dumpster down in the basement. ... I know why the media stay away from those stories; I guess bloggers do because it takes too much real work ...

Now, I thought those odd criticisms to direct to a group of mostly unpaid amateurs of varying interests. I became curious about that "research" and "fact checking" that these professional journalists are so renowned for. I asked , "Norm, do you actually read blogs? If you do, what is your usual daily list of reads? Who's on your secondary list? Those are serious questions. I ask, because so many of your comments and criticisms of "Canadian bloggers" seem based on false premises and misconception."

His response;

"I read very few Canadian blogs; the other day, I took apart a Kinsella posting, for example.

"I look at others when traffic is directed to me from sites and I'm curious why. For example, yesterday there were a few hits from Kathy Shaidle's site.

"Don't read US blogs, but look at a few when I see an interesting link in Taranto, or Slate or whatever."

With that, a mystery is solved - the mystery as to why he has no respect for standard linking and quoting etiquette, why he clings to a misconception that Shotgun bloggers have as a primary goal the election of a Conservative government, why he seems not to have noticed that the majority of Canadian bloggers do not consider themselves to be journalists at all. For all intents and purposes, he doesn't read blogs.

Holding himself to the highest standards of modern investigative journalism, Norm's admitted lack of research is thus no barrier to criticizing our "failures" as party supporters and investigative journalists. I guess we should have known all along.

The comments thread rose to a shining Spectorly pinnacle;

When you're in a position to bring down a Canadian Dan Rather, or to break open the Canadian angle on oil for food,let me know. Until then, I'm not interested, nor are my readers. [emphasis mine]

Well, that had all the sting of being told my pizza joint is losing fried chicken customers.

I guess I can take a little of the blame. I should have disclosed more about the nature of SDA and saved him the trouble of that unperformed "grunt work". I might have offered that a blog with categories devoted to "roadkill" and "penis news", that blows up Toronto Star columists in animated gifs, isn't in the business of breaking open hard news angles - and saved him the flight of fanciful arrogance, presuming to speak for "his" readers. (Though, I will allow the possibility that his familiarity with his readerhip's interests may stem from it being largely confined to family and friends.)

My motivation in dragging out this blogger laundry? The verbal tug-of-war between new media bloggers and this particular dead tree journalist at the Shotgun does a very nice job of illustrating the highly personal nature of the animosity of what some call "legacy media" towards the internet in general, and the blogosphere in particular. On that level, it's really worth slogging through the ad hominens to see the phenomenon unfold in the first person. (And who am I kidding? The ad hominems are the best part.)

On another level, the protests, the insults and dismissiveness of the Dan Rathers, the Jonathon Kleins and the Norm Spectors conjure up a visual -- one of lone, frustrated, raging dinosaurs, their bites blunted by age, skin sagging on massive frames, the ground shifting under their feet -- wondering where all those damned nibbling ducks are coming from.

They must soon choose to make the effort to evolve and adapt. Or not.

Norm, I truly hope you have it in you.

Lights! Camera! Compassion!

Garth Pritchard is in Sri Lanka, with the DART team. He writes in the Toronto Sun;

IT WAS a circus when Prime Minister Paul Martin visited the disaster area of Kalumai in Sri Lanka this week for a photo opportunity. His people from Ottawa, including the RCMP, were pushing people out of the way, grabbing at cameras, and trampling over graves on the beach in order to photograph the PM.

An RCMP guy tried to interfere with my camera, but one of our soldiers intervened.

A couple of women from the PM's office were running around yelling at people.

It got out of hand. It was crazy.

The whole visit was a photo opportunity -- with cameras set up for the PM in designated spots: Martin on the beach looking out to sea, Martin amid the wreckage, Martin with a homeless kid, Martin taking a token drink of water produced by the DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) water purifier.

He met with the Canadian commander, Lt. Col. Mike Voith, and a small medical team but didn't visit the camp of the 200 Canadian military people here for tsunami victims.

Martin's handlers wanted no one but their people taking photos. The padre was even shoved out of the way.

90 minutes later, he was gone.

Little Red Corporation Meets The Big Bad Fox

Rachel Marsden;

The CBC is freaking out with the arrival of Fox. So much so that they're frantically working on a documentary about the Fox News Canadian invasion, in which they will tell Canadians what to think. Given that Fox News is now in direct competition with the CBC for whatever remnants of an audience the CBC has left, this has about as much credibility as Ford doing a documentary about General Motors, telling you that GM cars suck.

True to form, CBC was busy getting their ducks in a row before interviewing Marsden for the "documentary".

The crack journalistic staff at the CBC is apparently fond of conducting its esteemed "research" on Internet chat boards. Just this week, I was forwarded an e-mail sent behind my back, by the CBC, to United Press International - for whom I write - asking them about some "research" that the CBC correspondent happened to come across on the prestigious Internet.

After refuting the claim and having a good laugh about it, I tried my hand at "researching" the way a CBC reporter would: Just for kicks, I randomly typed the CBC journalist's name, John Kerry's name, and the word "naked" into a Google search and came up with some rather interesting hits on chat boards. Maybe I should e-mail his employer to enquire about my "research," too?

Sounds about right.

Postcards From Kabul, Jan. 19

This lesson is about IED or UXO. As you know the military has a million acronyms and abbreviations for things. Unfortunately I do not remember the exact wording for these, but it has to do with explosive devices.

When we first arrived at camp, we had a AAG briefing. Another abbreviation that escapes me at the moment, but it was basically a briefing on what to do and not to do while there. One part of the briefing was devoted to mines. I know there are a lot in the area, but I honestly did not know how many until I left the camp. There are mines and unexploded shells/casings everywhere. Yes and lots of 'accidents'. Lots of locals with only one leg or missing fingers/hand. We were told, that the locals scavage everything. So if we saw say an old tank or vehicle in one piece, not to go near it, as it was likely booby trapped.

There is a picture of mine clearers. They have been hired to move across areas of fields and remove or detonate the ammo.

Another of the pictures shows you white/red rocks. At first when clearing areas, they put up wooden signs to explain the state of the area. Of course the locals being the scavangers they are, the wood signs disappeared. So another way had to be found. Since rocks are in abundance they used painted rocks. The rocks are white and red. You can walk between white rocks, but the red side means the area has not been cleared or there are mines there.

(links fixed now).

Reader Tips

Catching up on a few of the links sent my way that I haven't had time to do justice to:

How much longer will it be, before the critical mass of Middle East immigrants tips the electoral scales just enough to have the Government of Canada delist al-Qa'ida as a terrorist organization? It's certainly worked for the Tamil Tigers. Why let a few unfortunate mistakes (like the invention of the suicide bomb, 60,000 dead and assassination of two heads of state) get between you and a quarter million Liberal-voting constituents?

In an attempt to fact check my post about the new and yet-to-become-airborne A380, J.M. Heinrichs does not offer how many lawnchairs will fit in the hold of this Russian taxi.

You can't keep a good blogger down. Welcome back, Rasky.

And now for something completely different. First, turn up the volume.

Hazlet, NJ Beheading Case Solved

The mystery of a coincidental beheading victim found 30 miles from the murdered New Jersey family has been solved.

According to Nuss, Persieck decapitated himself by using three separate ropes, tying one end of each around a light post in the back parking lot of the theater located on the northbound side of Route 35, and the other around his neck.

Once the ropes were secure, Persieck got into his 2004 Ford Explorer and started to drive. His head was found approximately 100 feet from his body, Nuss said.

"There were no skid marks, so we don’t believe that he was going at a high rate of speed. He had about a 40-foot run-up so we figure at best he was doing 30 mph at the moment of decapitation," Nuss said.

The vehicle coasted to a stop about 200 feet later, after it hopped a curb and hit a small tree. Nuss said that it was evident after talking to family members and discovering other supporting materials, that it was a suicide.

"Apparently, he [Persieck] had been having problems recently in his life. He left six pages of notes in the vehicle, which we found afterward," Nuss said. "The kids who found the victim were definitely shaken up."

You don't say.

The Myth Of "Responsible" Journalism

It's little wonder that "pajama" bloggers respond with a reflexive sneer when "professional journalism" criticizes our work as "irresponsible", "lacking accountablity" - when no less than The New York Times publishes crap with the potential of causing the deaths of innocents.

Jeff Jarvis;

Sarah Boxer's story on IraqTheModel in today's New York Times Arts section is irresponsible, sloppy, lazy, inaccurate, incomplete, exploitive, biased, and -- worst of all - - dangerous, putting the lives of its subjects at risk. . . .

So here is a reporter from The New York Times -- let's repeat that, The New York Times -- speculating in print on whether an Iraqi citizen, whose only apparent weirdness and sin in her eyes is (a) publishing and (b) supporting America, is a CIA or Defense Department plant or an American.

Ms. Boxer, don't you think you could be putting the life of that person at risk with that kind of speculation? In your own story, you quote Ali -- one of the three blogging brothers who started IraqTheModel -- saying that "here some people would kill you for just writing to an American." And yet you go so much farther -- blithely, glibly speculating about this same man working for the CIA or the DoD -- to sex up your lead and get your story atop the front of the Arts section (I'm in the biz, Boxer, I know how the game is played).

How dare you? Have you no sense of responsibility? Have you no shame?

Has she no editor?

Times article here. (Registration may be required.)

American Digest has been googling, and has more on Sarah Boxer.

It isn't a mystery to me how Boxer was assigned to, or pumped for, this "Blogging" article in the Times. Having been in and around the editorial types at New York newspapers and magazines for decades, I can well imagine the editor's mindset when confronted with either Boxer's desire to write about this or the need of the Times' "Arts" section to get with it on 'the blogging thing.' Boxer is young, Boxer is "hip," Boxer must "get it." Except, of course, she doesn't, but the editors at the Times have no way of knowing that, because they get it even less. In fact, none of them have to get it. They are, after all, The New York Times. Who would better know later what they don't know now?

[...]

Will the Times issue a "correction" if Ms. Boxer's article leads to the death of the brothers at IraqTheModel? Doubtful. Will Ms. Boxer be given the blog beat at the "Arts?" Much more likely. After all, she's given every indication that she doesn't understand what she is writing about, is willing to push liberal bias, knows who to contact, and, more importantly, who not to contact. All without being told. In short -- a good soldier, "one of us." That's grounds for promotion at The New York Times. In addition, having cut her eye-teeth on "arts criticism," she's an unusually bad writer. That's golden.

Postcards From Kabul, Jan.18

You have been busy. I caught the postcards from Afghanistan on your blog as well as the comments. Here are a few more pictures of the progress that is going on. The one guy was right. There are a lot of smiling faces. They love to have their pictures taken. I was riding air sentry in the rear of the bison, while taking some pictures. We never travel alone. We have the bison, plus at least one other vehicle, in this case a SUV. No one is allowed to come between the bison and SUV. It was my job to make sure of that and monitor any one moving close to the bison. A big concern was the possiblilty of magnet bombs being attached to the bison. Most of the people we encountered were happy to see us and gave us the thumbs up sign, but I later found out the thumbs up has 'another' meaning there. lol

Anyway, while taking pictures one day. A taxi driver saw me and wanted his picture taken. He followed us half way through the city gesturing for me to take his picture. Finally he moved on.

These people are working hard to restore what they once had. In the short time I was there, I could see the progress being made. You see them making bricks and hauling bricks. There is a photo attached of a building, half destroyed, yet half has been reframed and bricked in. There are people living in it. Unfortunately as in any culture of people, there are those who try to improve and those who could care less. In the middle of the market areas the stench is unbelievable. There is a trench that runs parallel to the road everywhere. It is filled most times with raw sewage, right next to the vendors carts. There was also a huge pile of garbage between some carts. I am talking, taller pile than a man. Yet down aways there are people with shovels, shovelling out the garbage and hauling it away in wheelbarrels, so that water can drain properly.

Another of the attached photos shows a picture of the stone houses built up the side of the mountain. If they build on the mountainside, they do not have to pay tax. Some of those houses are a long ways up. You can see the graves in the forground. I meant to ask our linguist about it, for they stick tree branches/poles into the ground and attach green pieces of cloth to it. Not sure why green. I will ask once I am back at work.

There are full sized versions of these, plus other photos, at this directory.

No War, For Oil: BNP Paribas

Paul! Say it isn't so!

One of those who made out like a bandit is a rich Canadian whose bank made millions and whose Paris-based holding companies include the originally French-Belgian oil company TotalFina Elf, which cut lucrative deals with Saddam's Iraq and is currently operating in war-torn Sudan.

(I hope that someone notices that the UN's own oil-for-blood investigator Paul Volcker has ties to Power Corporation...)

Top among these is the European-based BNP Paribas bank, which the U.N. chose to administer the program and which reportedly received nearly $1 billion for its efforts.

Congressional investigators reviewing the bank's actions have discovered broken rules, missing documents and improper transfers by BNP Paribas, which up until now has been assumed to be a French bank.

In fact, BNP Paribas is actually controlled by Power Corporation, an appropriately named Canadian company that has a shocking track record of 'business' relationships with the worst gangsters and tyrannical regimes in the world.

BNP Paribas also has one other distinguishing feature: a direct corporate and familial relationship with the persons running the government of Canada for the last 20 years.

The truth about BNP Paribas and Power Corp. sheds a new light on Canada's seemingly bizarre anti-American foreign policy in the Middle East, in China and elsewhere.

BNP Paribas bank is part of a holding company, Pargesa Holding, which is jointly owned and controlled by the Frère and Desmarais families. Paul Desmarais Sr. is the chairman of the group, while Albert Frère is the vice-chairman. Gerald Frère, Albert's son, is one of three general managers who oversee day-to-day operations, and Paul Desmarais Jr. is also an officer.

Pargesa, and thus Power Corporation and the Canadian Desmarais family, holds a controlling significant stake in TotalFina Elf, the Belgian-French petroleum multinational corporation formed from the merger of Total and Petrofina.

Read on

My head is still spinning. Desmarais ... Power Corp ... Paribas ... Chretien... Martin .... Canada's No-War-for-Oil-for-food foreign policy? Who would have thunk it....

Uncle Meat

Proving that even a kid bred, born and raised in the shadow of the Mother Party can overcome his political handicaps and rise to lay claim to the elevated status of Right Wing Nutjob[tm] - I direct you to the new digs of a blogging conservative-by-choice, my cousin Kevin Sinclair.

You Saskabloggers be sure to add him to your blogrolls.

Hate, or Terrorism?

Update on the slaying of the Armanious family;

ABC News has learned that a cousin of the slain family has been a translator working for the prosecution in the trial of Lynne Stewart. She is the radical lawyer accused of smuggling messages from imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, to terrorist cell members and associates.

Previous post here.

(via Powerline)

update, via Malkin. All I can say, is that I hope this isn't related.

A gruesome discovery in New Jersey, as a severed head and body are found near a movie theater in Monmouth County.

Hazlet is only 31 miles from Jersey City. *
Jan.18 update - The Hazlet incident is apparently a bizarre suicide.

No Thanks

Just what the flying public has been clamouring for - a 308 ton excuse for losing your luggage.

Though - no one has yet tried to actually fly the thing. There's a remote chance that Airbus has invested $10.7 billion developing the worlds largest taxi.

Canada, We Got A Problem: Update

Updating the curious discovery that charitable organizations (among others) have been making donations to the Liberal Party Of Canada, Vitor's efforts have made it to the National Post (subscriber only, unfortunately).

Also mentioned in the article, is something discussed last week in my own comments section - the "circular funding arrangements from the government of Canada to Native and Metis organizations back to the Liberal Party of Canada". Dust My Broom has been following that angle.

More efforts here, too.

Smacking Down Seymour

"Award Winning" journalist Seymour Hersh;

"The secret Pentagon missions have been going on in Iran at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected ow - OWW! yeeeOOOWWW !! YEEEEOOOOWWW!!!..".

Postcards From Kabul

(Click on the thumbnails to load the full size photo.)

Personal photos, sent by a friend serving in Afghanistan in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Campaigning In Sadr City

Another installment (#19) of Arthur Chrenkoff's roundup of good news from Iraq. Give it a read - if only as a reality check as to the woefully inadequate and one sided coverage we recieve from our mainstream broadcasters. An example - remember the seige of Sadr City?

Brig. Gen. Jeffery Hammond of the 1st Cavalry Division, says Sadr City is the safest place in or around Baghdad. About 18,000 people have reconstruction jobs, he says, earning about $6 a day. "Sadr City is what the future of Iraq can look like," he says. Those who were once taking up arms are now talking democracy. 'Before, the men were buying black cloth for their (martyrs') banners. Now for the election, we are buying white cloths' for posters, says candidate Fatah al-Sheikh.

For Helprin Fans

Adam Walter blogs a Mark Helprin book tour stop. While the purpose was to promote The Pacific and Other Stories., with Helprin, politics invariably comes up.

[T]he first question asked was political. A man said he had read A Soldier of the Great War and taken it to be very humanitarian & anti-war in tone, but in reading about Helprin recently he was shocked to learn of his "hawkish" leanings. The man referenced New York Times reviews of Helprin's books.

In beginning his response Helprin said, "Well, let me tell you a story about the New York Times" - This drew an appreciative laugh from those of us who could understand the sort of trouble that that ultra-liberal paper would cause for a conservative author. His trouble with the paper began when they ran a spurious report that Helprin was someone who "read no living authors." There was no truth to this comment; he had never said anything like it. Later, they "outed" him as a conservative, beginning a piece on him by listing the political party he belonged to; something that's just not done in book reviews, and something they hadn't done with other authors. The paper also ran a piece representing him as a terrible liar, accusing him even of lying about his service in the Israeli infantry. Since then the paper has routinely misrepresented him and his work, and he has had to work very hard on book tours to counter the unprofessional animosity the paper has directed at him. The New York Times has refused to print his refutations of their lies, and they've refused to retract them. All of which is doubly frustrating for Helprin, considering that his father was once an editor at the paper.

Lots of other interesting observations, and a brief foray into an unfortunate stereotype, but not a bad read.

Know nothing about Helprin? Start with this excellent e-review

Young Offenders At Play

Regina Police have announced that they have cracked a longstanding case of serial arson -- in the past several months, over 150 fires (most in garbage bins) have been set in north central Regina. (via local radio - I'll provide a link if one becomes available)

Except - the case wasn't exactly "cracked" . The police... uh.... knew all along who was responsible. They just couldn't do anything about it until the suspects outgrew their judicial immunity under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. In other words, authorities could do little more than run around putting out fires, until the arsonists turned 12.

Typical of our Trudeapian justice system, check out this chart from a government of Canada website.

The figures produce a total of 74%. There are no statistics provided on violent crime.

Insider Trading At CBS?

The Dinocrat reports that CEO Summer Redstone sold $12 million in CBS stock in the midst of the Rathergate cover-up, and asks;

Where are the lawyers? For that matter, where are the journalists?

Viacom's and CBS's lawyers should have been involved in vetting the stock sale taking place almost a week into the Rathergate scandal, and following the elite media's extensive discussion of the document fraud, not to mention the non-public CBS News ratings issues, and the big problems with the network's affiliates. Yet none of this apparently happened, at least that we know about.

Curiously, or perhaps we should say incuriously, the TIME Magazine report by Neil Gough did not mention the stock sale at all. Can you imagine an interview of Ken Lay or Martha Stewart or virtually any CEO who sold some stock at a questionable moment, wherein the reporter does not even bother to ask about it? Suppose it had been Rupert Murdoch.

Good question.

(hat tip - Powerline)

Just Saying....

There's something "intellectually" consistant about the manner that this site displays on Opera.

Comforting Censorship

What sex slaves?

Obsequious Eye For The Martin Guy

I'm starting to wonder if his photo-op handlers aren't secret Chretien Camp infiltrators...

New Jersey Family Slaughtered By Islamists?

Via Kathy Shaidle, this NY Post angle on a story that has disturbing parallels to the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Van Gogh.

Hossam Armanious, 47, who along with his wife and two daughters was found
stabbed to death in his Jersey City home early Friday, would regularly debate religion in a Middle Eastern chat room, one source said.

Armanious, an Egyptian Christian, was well known for expressing his Coptic beliefs and engaging in fiery back-and-forth with Muslims on the Web site paltalk.com.

He "had the reputation for being one of the most outspoken Egyptian Christians," said the source, who had close ties to the family.

The source, who had knowledge of the investigation, refused to specify the anti-Muslim statement. But he said cops told him they were looking into the exchanges as a possible motive.

The married father of two had recently been threatened by Muslim members of the Web site, said a fellow Copt and store clerk who uses the chat room.

[...]

"When we saw the pictures, you could tell that they were hurt really, really bad in the face; especially Sylvia," said Milad Garas, the high-school sophomore's great-uncle.

The heartless killer not only slit Sylvia's throat, but also sliced a huge gash in her chest and stabbed her in the wrist, where she had a tattoo of a Coptic cross.

Also found murdered were the wife, Amal Garas, and the parents' other daughter, Monica.

Fred Ayed, the deacon at St. George and St. Shenouda Church, where the deeply religious family attended services, said he's worried that the murders could have a ripple effect.

"I am concerned for the safety of our community," said Ayed, who knew Hossam for 30 years. "People are scared because one family was slain like cows," said Moheb Ghabour, publisher of a local newspaper for the Coptic community.

The NYT has a brief item stating the entire family was bound and gagged, and their throats slit.

Malkin has more.

When Everyone Is Hitler

In an era where Bush = Hitler, Ashcroft = Hitler (Rumsfeld would equal Rommel, if the left had any clue who Rommel was), I suppose it should come as a relief that there are still some individuals who are denied the right to invoke Nazi Germany, even in ill-considered "fun". The entire media kerfuffle over Prince Harry should seem bizarre in today's atmosphere of rampant "Nazi-ism", if it weren't so completely predictable.

David Frum ;

Doesn't CS Lewis somewhere have an observation that it's a trick of the devil's to persuade an age to go rushing to the gunwhales away from the sin to which they are in no danger of succumbing - tipping the boat into the sin from which they are in danger? (If anybody has the actual quote, please send it along so I can replace the unwieldy sentence above.) Europe in general and the UK in particular are in ZERO danger of succumbing to the menace of German Nazism. Meanwhile, genuine fascists dressed in keffiyehs are engaged in thuggery, subversion, assassination, and terrorism on European soil. Can't we persuade the journalists busy inveighing against poor Harry to take on that cause instead?

Frankly, I personally find it much less disturbing that Harry wore a swastika to a party that his father, the future King Charles III, is reported to enjoy relaxing in Islamic bedouin robes at home.

Poor Harry might have saved himself a lot of trouble by adding a George W. Bush mask to the costume.

Give Me Liberty

Alaa;

As for the elections, they are doing their best to intimidate and threaten people. What can be more abominable than this; openly intimidating people from participating in the first truly free elections in the history of not only Iraq but also probably the entire region. And what lame excuses they give! The security situation? But it is you gentlemen who are responsible for the havoc. And; what guarantee can there be if the elections are postponed that the situation will not get worse? In fact, we all know that you will do your damn best to aggravate it further in the vane hope that you might achieve your vile objectives. Fair elections cannot be held under occupation! : As if we ever saw any fair elections when there was no "occupation" for almost a whole century when your minority clan was lording over the people. Besides, Palestinian elections were recently held under Israeli occupation, and we did not see anybody objecting. You are not telling us that the Israeli occupation is better than the presence of the MNF who have liberated the country from your tyranny. Oh, and they want a precise timetable for the MNF to leave. That, we assure you does not stem from any patriotic sentiment. You can be certain that within few hours from the departure of the last American soldier, the old Saddam military and security apparatus will reemerge from their holes, reinforced this time with the vampires of the Bin Laden clan and their likes. The pogrom that would ensue then would be a horror unparalleled in the entire history of genocide and mass murder. In fact, it would be merciful, if our American friends "nuke" the whole place before leaving (to use the cute expression I have read somewhere). That would eliminate the scum while giving the rest of the population a quick death, which is better than the horrible torture that could await them; a kind of mercy killing, you might say: Euthanasia.

Well, I am sorry, but these are horrible thoughts for the New Year. Nevertheless, do not go thinking that we have weakened. This time America is right, and the Iraqi people will never allow the clock to be turned back. No matter what sacrifices are required: We Shall Overcome.

Love to all our friends in America and elsewhere: You shall be proud of the Iraqi people, your grateful friends.

Sadly, it's hard to tell whether he's speaking of the terrorists who are targeting the innocent, and slaughtering Iraqi security forces - or to the political left and their co-conspirators in the western media.

Singh Screwed Sgro?

Alternate headline: "It Takes A Thief".

How deliciously ironic to think that a chronic abuser of Canada's ludicrously lax immigration and deportation policy has finally bitten the hand that unleashed it.

And Brent Colbert has some interesting finds on Citizenship and Immigration Committee chairman Andrew Telegdi's past in student politics.

(The Chevron - University of Waterloo, circa 1974)

George Bush Kills Police Sgt., Updated

Version One -CNN, January 11:

Investigators said he may have been driven by a desire to avoid returning to Iraq.
Andres Raya was scheduled to report back to Camp Pendleton, near San Diego, on Sunday after a weekend leave.

Instead, police said, he went out with a semiautomatic rifle and drew officers into an ambush outside a liquor store in Ceres, a town of about 35,000 next door to his hometown of Modesto.

Raya's mother told the Modesto Bee that her son "came back different" from his last assignment, which included service in western Iraq's insurgent hotbed of Falluja.

"In speaking with family, they conveyed to us that their son did not desire to return to Iraq," said Lt. Bill Heyne, a spokesman for the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department.

[...]

A statement from Camp Pendleton said Raya was on weekend liberty when he was killed. The Marine Corps is assisting police with the investigation, the statement said.

Raya was a driver in the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment -- an element of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, much of which is serving in Iraq.

According to the Marines, he had been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.

Version Two - Modesto Bee, Jan.15:

The 19-year-old Marine who gunned down two police officers was a Norteño gang member who plotted a deadly attack on police, not a veteran suffering the stress of war, investigators said Friday.

A toxicology report shows that Andres Raya was high on cocaine Sunday night when he shot and killed 39-year-old Sgt. Howard Stevenson and severely injured officer Sam Ryno, 49, outside George's Liquors on Caswell Avenue.

Information presented at a Friday news conference contrasted sharply with the image that police and Raya's family initially portrayed of the young man, that of a traumatized soldier who snapped and committed "suicide by cop."

"The easy answer to this would be to blame it on Iraq," said the lead investigator, Lt. Bill Heyne of the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department.

But he said an investigation into Raya's background showed that he harbored violent tendencies and an anti-government attitude long before he went to war.

Raya, a lance corporal who worked as a Humvee driver, did not engage in combat during seven months in Iraq, Heyne said. But Raya saw a fellow Marine suffer a leg injury when a bomb exploded under a vehicle in his convoy.

Raya bragged to Marine buddies that he had bought an SKS rifle in Modesto and left it with one of his "boys." It was capable of carrying 30 rounds of high-powered ammunition. When they asked Raya why he needed the weapon, he replied that a 7.62-caliber round could penetrate a cop's armor, Heyne said.

Blog Payola

Hugh Hewitt takes on Bill O'Reilly on the topic of blogs accepting payola from special interests.

Shhhh... It's A Secret

The recent rush of world leaders to India is remarkable. Starting from Russian President Putin to major Senators from America have visited or are planning to visit India. [inc. Paul Martin - ed]. European Union is in deep discussion with India on cooperation. All sanctions against India's nuclear programs and Indian Space Research Organization are in the process of being lifted. India is cooperating with Europeans and the Americans in space explorations and technology research program. India is also part of World Trade Organization. India is receiving major outsourcing contracts in IT and call-center service work from America and Europe. India's Forex reserve is at a level never imagined before because of international direct investments from Western nations, Japan, Korea and others. Interestingly, China the arc rival of India changed its posture in the last few years to make India's friendship and trade a priority. India is slowly getting to the point when it is accepted as a permanent member of the Security Council. All the five Security Council members China, America, Russia, France and UK support India's inclusion.

All that and an obsolete nuclear program!

Hat tip - James Bow

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