You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby (Bumped)

Religion Of Submission 128 Comments

“You grew up in freedom, and so you can spit on freedom, because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom.” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Allahpundit;

Not quite parody but dangerously close. How can she be so disgustingly pro-American, he wonders, and yet so stridently anti-Islamic? Doesn’t she see that Islamists and “Christianists” are two sides of the same coin?

MWV file here if you have problems with the CBC version (34 megs).
Don’t miss the comments. It seems that having one’s genitals sliced half off in the name of Muslim purity, a colleague murdered in broad daylight in the street for the crime of criticizing Islam, living in hiding under armed guard, and being forced from your home by court order because your neighbors fear the jihadists who have pledged to kill you is insufficient personal experience from which to draw conclusions about the relative merits of Islam and America.
As one of the progressive CBC faithful so eloquently explains, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is little more than a “prized puppy”.
Or, to think of in another way – of about the same relative value under his belief system as the average Somali woman is entitled to under Sharia law.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
h/t.
(It was suggested I bump this item closer to page top so that readers don’t miss the Dennis Prager link below)
Update – Avi Lewis is becoming famouser by the minute…. developing….

Q: How Do They Get Rid Of The Stupid Lawyers?

Insufferable Twits 57 Comments

A: They appoint them to the bench

Justice Ellen Gordon ruled Friday that border officers — who routinely question travellers and search their vehicles — violated three sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms when they interrogated Ajitpal Singh Sekhon and dismantled the truck he was driving without a search warrant.
[…]
According to Gordon’s reasons for judgment, Sekhon, a Canadian citizen, tried to enter Canada via the Aldergrove border crossing on Jan. 25, 2005.
The border guard decided Sekhon was suspiciously tense and sent him to be questioned in the customs office, where he was locked inside while another inspector searched the truck.
With the help of a drug-sniffing dog, the ruling says, guards found a false compartment below the truck bed, at which point Sekhon was informed that he would be detained and that he had the right to legal counsel.
However, Gordon concluded that Sekhon had been detained from the moment he was locked inside the office, violating sections 9 and 10 of the Charter, which prohibit arbitrary detention and guarantee the right to a lawyer.
Gordon’s judgment says inspectors eventually dismantled the vehicle to find 50 bricks of cocaine.
But the most important part of the ruling is Gordon’s conclusion that guards violated section 8 of the Charter — freedom from unreasonable search or seizure — since they never applied for a search warrant.
The Crown lawyer pointed out that the Customs Act routinely allows such searches without a warrant based on reasonable grounds for suspicion.
The two border inspectors involved said they had never applied for — or even conceived of applying for — a search warrant in their careers.
But the judge wrote that officers followed a “lucky hunch,” not reasonable suspicions, in launching their search.

It gets better;

the same judge ruled last October that RCMP drug squad officers violated the Charter by faxing a justice of the peace to get search warrants. She argued that the Criminal Code requires police officers to appear in front of a judge to defend their requests. By this logic, border guards would have to present themselves before the court for every vehicle inspection.

Y2Kyoto: Solar For Us, Dung For You

Climate Cult 23 Comments

Common sense interrupts the climate change debate;

Few people in Africa got to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff two weekends ago, because most have neither television nor electricity. That’s just as well, because they would have been aghast at Live Earth’s bizarre message.
In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa.
[…]
Please, Europe and America, spare us! You can cut your own emissions if you want, but don’t tell us what to do. We really have much more serious and urgent threats to deal with. Unfortunately, our beggarly governments are very susceptible to diktats from on high, especially when they are offered aid (which they use to line the coffers of their bank accounts): don’t encourage them!
Humanity has proven itself hugely adaptable. We survived an Ice Age and a period probably much hotter than today (around 8,000 years ago). The Dutch salvaged land from the sea and built on it. In Saudi Arabia, they drink desalinated sea water. The Tuaregs adapted to the blazing heat of the Sahara and the Eskimos adapted to the freezing cold of the Arctic.

Indeed. It’s an observation that eludes the “1 degree rise in temperature will destroy life on earth as we know it” CBC fruit-fly cult and their megaphones in media.
Just as things look even more grim for the future of that dysfunctional continent, a glimmer of hope appears on an unexpected front;

Rising prices for food have led the United Nations programme fighting famine in Africa and other regions to warn that it can no longer afford to feed the 90m people it has helped for each of the past five years on its budget.
The World Food Programme feeds people in countries including Chad, Uganda and Ethiopia, but reaches a fraction of the 850m people it estimates suffers from hunger. It spent about $600m buying food in 2006. So far, the WFP has not cut its reach because of high commodities prices, but now says it could be forced to do so unless donor countries provide extra funds.
[…]
She said policymakers were becoming more concerned about the impact of biofuel demand on food prices and how the world would continue to feed its expanding population.

If an inflationary food-into-fuel market has the net result of forcing the UN to cut back on its dictatorship funding programs, Africans may finally have a chance to turn their backs on dependency and get legitimate economies off the ground.
Won’t happen though. There are too many hungry bureaucrats at the UN working hard to ensure things stay exactly as they’ve always been.

No War For Mango

Religion Of Submission 14 Comments

Time for the Philippine government to admit defeat against the insurgency and pull their troops out of the Philippines;

At least 14 government troops were killed in some of the heaviest fighting with Muslim insurgents in the southern Philippines in recent months, officials said Wednesday.
Military officials said they had recovered the bodies of 14 marines after clashes with suspected Abu Sayyaf militants late Tuesday in Tipo-tipo, a hinterland town on Basilan island, and that at least 10 of them had been beheaded.

This has to be frustrating for Islamists who go to so much work for so little attention by the international press. Unless they can get the Americans involved, there’s virtually no hope of earning a media-declared victory.

“The people have just turned against al Qaeda here.”

Terrorism 14 Comments

HH: I’m joined now by satellite phone from Baghdad by intrepid reporter Michael Yon. He’s actually in Baquba. Michael, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show, always a pleasure to speak with you. How goes the fighting on the ground?
MY: Well, it’s really slowed down here in Baquba, Hugh. I was just in the TOC or the headquarters about fifteen minutes ago before I came on the show, and they were like the Maytag repairmen here. I mean, Baquba has just…you know, it was a very serious fight when it started, Operation Arrowhead Ripper on the 19th of June, I came in with them, but it quickly abated. The people have just turned against al Qaeda here. And so Baquba is really, the big fight now is to get the food distribution working again, which it already is. You know, they’ve got that going. And now, they’re working on fuel, because the fuel relates to electricity and water pumping. So really, they’re working on more civic things now. There’s still some combat to do, but not a lot, actually, because like I said, you know, the people just turned against al Qaeda.
HH: Now Michael Yon, a lot of people don’t know the significance of Baquba. And so can you explain what peace in Baquba means for the larger war effort?
MY: Well, it’s huge, because al Qaeda had claimed Baquba as their capitol, their worldwide capitol. And you might recall one of the things that kind of upsets people about my reporting is I said Iraq was in a civil war, and I said that way back in February of 2005, and I continue to do so. But when I first wrote that, I was in Baquba, in 2005, and I spent two or three months here. And it was just total…you could see it, and you could see al Qaeda was trying to foment that civil war, because that’s their underlying strategy, is to do that. And so getting, fracturing al Qaeda here, and al Qaeda alienating so many Iraqis, it’s helping us to put a damper on the civil war.
HH: Now yesterday, Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the surge has failed. Do you think there’s any factual basis for making that assertion, Michael Yon, from what you’ve seen in Iraq over the last many months?
MY: He’s wrong, he’s wrong. It has absolutely not failed, and in fact, I’m finally willing to say it in public. I feel like it’s starting to succeed. And you know, I’m kind of stretching a little bit, because we haven’t gone too far into it, but I can see it from my travels around, for instance, in Anbar and out here in Diyala Province as well. Baghdad’s still very problematic. But there’s other areas where you can clearly see that there is a positive effect. And the first and foremost thing we have to do is knock down al Qaeda. And with them alienating so many Iraqis, I mean, they’re almost doing it for us. I mean, yeah, it takes military might to finally like wipe them out of Baquba, but it’s working. I mean, I sense that the surge is working. Reid is just wrong.

Here’s the rest.

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 65 Comments

The BBC owns up to deliberately lying about the Queen’s photo shoot.
Why we’re losing the war at home.

“READ THIS. And, as has often been raised at this blog, reflect on the role of our media. There is reason to examine the mission critically. But do so intelligently and with some knowledge–which is what our media are almost completely incapable of doing. “

“LAST month Australians endured our coldest June since 1950. Imagine that; all those trillions of tonnes of evil carbon we’ve horked up into the atmosphere over six decades of rampant industrialisation, and we’re still getting the same icy weather we got during the Cold War.”
Time for the Thai government to admit defeat against the insurgency and pull their troops out of Thailand;

In an interview with Thai television on Wednesday, General Surayud said his government will continue its efforts to end a three-year insurgency that has left more than 2,000 people dead.

A “liberal supporter” demonstrates the progressive attitude towards women that the left is famous for.
Add yours in the comments.

Y2Kyoto: Dry Dock

Climate Cult 32 Comments

Can the ice caps melt fast enough save Canada’s sea ports?

Chart Datum varies from country to country, but always follows some low water definition. In Canadian coastal waters, our present target threshold is Lower Low Water Large Tide (LLWLT). LLWLT is the lowest predictable tide *averaged* over an 18.6 year tidal epoch. […]
STATION 00065 – SAINT JOHN
LAST DECADE AVERAGE
4.43
AVERAGE FOR ALL YEARS
4.47
-4CM
[…]
STATION 07735 – Vancouver, BC
LAST DECADE AVERAGE
3.07
AVERAGE FOR ALL YEARS
3.08
-1 CM
[…]
STATION 05010 – Churchill
LAST DECADE AVERAGE
2.57
AVERAGE FOR ALL YEARS
2.58
-1 CM

Apparently not.

Political Death Wish Of The Week

Political Animal 32 Comments

Guess who wrote this?

“Speaking of Merasty, people should really take the long-view. If he had legitimate reasons to resign, then he will be back when he’s ready. If he left because he’s upset at not getting the shadow cabinet position that he wanted, then maybe we are better off without such quitters. Either way, the bright side is that we have a chance to bring in a new face. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s David Orchard.“

Other possible “bright” sides:

  • “There’s a chance that the next LIberal candidate for Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River will be diagnosed with an antibiotic resistant form of TB.”
  • “There’s a chance that an asteroid will hit northern Saskatchewan and save us the cost of a TV“.
  • “There’s a chance that ____”
    Your turn to fill in the blank!

    • The Email Of Settled Science

    Climate Cult 172 Comments

    Marlo –
    You are so full of crap.
    You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.
    Mike
    Michael T. Eckhart
    President
    American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)

    H/T reader “Ross” who explains;

    Marlo Lewis is a lawyer who works at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington. He published a well-reasoned article critiquing a cap-and-trade proposal before Congress, based on recent testimony he gave before a Senate committee.

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