62 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  2. Salman Rushdie: His life, his work and his religion.
    (news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article1868548.ece) Excerpts:
    Within this Talibanist morality, there is room for great slabs of delusion and hypocrisy. In Shalimar the Clown, Rushdie shows sparingly how the jihadi fighters of Afghanistan have sex with adolescent boys, and the next day chop to pieces men they have dubbed “homosexual.” “One of the great untold stories of al-Qa’ida is that they are all these men who f@#k little boys. They all have these disciples who they’re ostensibly training in the way of the warrior, but they’re also enjoying. For a while, then they go off — and they have their wives and families at home. It’s like Classical Greece.” Does he think Osama bin Laden has done it? “I wouldn’t like to say,” he says tactfully. “He’s an Arab, he’s not an Afghan. But Mullah Omar, he’s another story…”
    He senses soft racism in the refusal to see Islamic fundamentalists for what they are. When looking at the Christian fundamentalists of the United States, most people see an autonomous movement of superstitious madmen. But when they look at their Islamic equivalents, they assume they cannot mean what they say. “One of the things that’s commonly said by Islamists is that it’s acceptable to bomb a disco, because a disco is a place where people are behaving in a disgusting way. Go away and die — that’s all bin Laden wants you to do. It’s not just about Iraq, it’s about ham sandwiches and kissing in public places and sex with girls you’re not married to.” He pauses. “It’s about life.”
    It horrifies Rushdie that so many people in his natural political home — the left — don’t get it. They seem to imagine that when people call for a novelist to be beheaded for blasphemy, they are really calling for a return to the 1967 borders, or an independent Kashmir, or an end to the occupation of Iraq. As he says this, I blurt out a repellent question: was there a small part of him on September 11 that felt almost relieved — that thought: ” Now they’ll understand”? He pauses, a long pause, the only one in this interview. Have I offended him? But he answers with the same contemplative calm as before. “It wasn’t, actually. What an awful thing to think. But… but I remember after 9/11 that a lot of people did finally get it, and I remember thinking — it’s a shame that 3,000 people had to die for something pretty obvious to get through people’s heads.”
    “What I fear most is that, when we look back in 25 years’ time at this moment, what we will have seen is the surrender of the West, without a shot being fired. They’ll say that in the name of tolerance and acceptance, we tied our own hands and slit our own throats. One of the things that have made me live my entire life in these countries is because I love the way people live here.”
    Rushdie sees surrender stamped on every one of the “faith schools” being constructed by Tony Blair. “To say the solution to the problems religion has caused is more religion… it’s just crazy,” he says. It will only reinforce the sealing off of Muslims from the world that is symbolized by the veil, which he sees as a hideous anti-feminist shroud, ” a one-woman tent.”
    And the curse of amoral nuclear might applies to another country Rushdie knows well – Pakistan. He says the situation there is “scary, extremely scary” – much more so than the Iranian near-bomb that rivets our headlines. His old country is, he says, “one assassination away from having Islamic fanatics in charge of a functioning nuclear weapon, which they may not mind using”. Rushdie feels sick to be “put into the position of hoping that Pervez Musharraf [the country’s dictator] has a long and healthy life just because – what is the old rhyme? Keep a hold of nurse so you don’t get something worse? Because behind Musharraf there is the possibility of something much worse. He’s an arsehole, a dictator, no better than Zia, but in the ISI [the Pakistani security services] there are people much worse, who want a very radical Islamist state.”

  3. A Minister of Climate Change and Water Conservation? A former rock star as Environment Minister? Details of the new Aussie cabinet:
    Seven women, new faces in Rudd team
    The South Australian senator Penny Wong was given the new cabinet position of climate change and water. She will be Australia’s chief negotiator on ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and in discussions for a global greenhouse gas reduction target to succeed the Kyoto agreement.
    Senator Wong will also be responsible for implementing Labor’s state goal of a 20 per cent mandatory renewable energy target by 2020.
    According to BBC:
    By far the most eye-catching appointment is that of Peter Garrett as environment minister, our correspondent says.
    Mr Garrett, who has been an MP since 2004, is best known as the former front man of rock group Midnight Oil, who had an international hit with the song Beds Are Burning.
    P.S. Congratulations on 7,000,000, Kate.

  4. San Francisco once again shows what happens to government finances when the government harasses people who pay taxes and uses their tax money foolishly:
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/29/BAV9TDBMR.DTL
    Note: The story refers to SF’s $6 billion annual budget. There are approximately 850,000 people in SF. That’s approximately $7,000 per resident. Of course, it doesn’t count what the state and federal governments are spending, as well.
    You’d think that other governments (in all countries) would learn from SF’s example.

  5. It’s looking like a Dion Xmas.
    O, Come, all Ye Faithless.
    Has Citoyen Dion ordered his Xmas goose?
    Liberal riding president Dhillon says: “If not, the knives come out.”
    More by Dhillon: “There’s a little bit disappointment but he’s still the leader and they want to give him a chance to fight one election.”
    “Only one?”[sic]
    …-
    Liberal faithful offer lukewarm support for Dion
    By Joan Bryden, THE CANADIAN PRESS
    OTTAWA – Paper is the traditional gift given to someone celebrating a first anniversary.
    In keeping with tradition, Liberal rank and file are giving Stephane Dion what could be termed paper-thin support as he marks his first year as leader.
    He’ll celebrate the event this weekend in Montreal surrounded by Grit riding presidents from across the country. Interviews with a sampling of those presidents suggest there’s a consensus that Dion deserves a chance to prove his mettle – mixed with lingering doubt that he’s up to the task of winning the next election.
    Typical was Harvey Hyndman’s assessment of Dion.
    “You’ve got to give this guy a chance,” said the president of the Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing riding.
    Still, Hyndman said Liberals in his northern Ontario riding “just don’t know if he’s got what it takes to win an election, that’s for sure. Most of the Liberals, they’re really worried about that.”
    Similarly, New Westminster-Burnaby president Gurdev Dhillon said Liberals in his British Columbia riding “figure (Dion) should be given a chance because the public doesn’t know him that good at present.”
    “There’s a little bit disappointment but he’s still the leader and they want to give him a chance to fight one election.”
    Only one?
    “See what happens,” Dhillon said. “Maybe he might be the next prime minister. Who knows? If not, the knives come out.” …-
    http://tinyurl.com/3dr7qp

  6. irwin daisy – the Slovakian uranium story was the lead story tonight on the Brit Hume News Hour on FOX.

  7. CBC betrays its Liberal bias/arrogance in this agit-prop piece. Find the sneering of the CBC leftists in its use/choice of words.
    CBC throws in “flip-flop” in its editorial/op-ed.
    CBC = POS.
    Citoyen Dion says: “”Let me try again in English,”, in Dionglish?
    …-
    In a jab at Nicholson’s proficiency in French, {Citoyen] Dion offered to repeat his question for the Conservative minister.
    “Let me try again in English,” he said to guffaws in the House. “On Monday the minister said he doesn’t have the power. Today we learned his department is ready to use the power it pretends he doesn’t have. So what is the truth?” …-
    Liberals hold Nicholson to fire over Schreiber flip-flop (cbc)…-
    http://tinyurl.com/23vz69

  8. Citoyen Dion eats caw, caw, caw …
    Liberal Citoyen Dion has acknowledged Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Harper as being a world-leader with profound influence/leadership in foreign/world affairs.
    How’s that for eating crow, humble pie? CAW, caw, caw …-
    Liberals’ Dion to travel to Bali climate change summit
    Liberal Leader Stephane Dion says he will travel to Bali, Indonesia, next month for the United Nations climate change summit to ensure that the Harper government doesn’t push the world in the wrong direction in the fight against global warming.
    “I will do everything possible to make sure this conference works well,” Dion said. “I don’t have a mandate to negotiate, but I know a lot of people [from other foreign delegations] and I take the cause of climate change to heart.”
    “We are speaking about the worst ecological threat that humanity is facing, and I will do my best.”
    Dion said he has asked the government to accommodate him as part of the official Canadian delegation, but he has not received an answer yet. He did not say, however, how he would pay for his trip if the government refuses.
    “I am the leader of the official Opposition [in] a G8 country, [and] there is a minimum amount of decency that this government must have, so we will see,” Dion said.
    Bloc Quebecois environment critic Bernard Bigras and NDP critic Nathan Cullen have both indicated that they are making their own arrangements to attend the conference after the government refused to accept them in the official Canadian delegation. …-
    http://tinyurl.com/28dugx
    “‘Wolves deceive their prey, don’t they?’ one said
    to me recently.”
    DEROY MURDOCK: Al Gore, global warming and convenient untruths
    http://www.newsobserver.com/2191/story/801916.html

  9. cal2 — thanks for that link to top ten clean cities. Ottawa (named number 4) “has a light rail system” . . . boy that’s a hoot!

  10. “Court enforced appeasement, galloping sharia, the current state of Islamization in Europe.
    Warning: Extremely depressing article:
    gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/11/cool-war-warm-war-hot-war-part-2.html#readfurther”
    Posted by: irwin daisy at November 29, 2007 2:20 PM
    Irwin: You said it. Extremely depressing. There have been many such depressing articles at GOV. And in other blogs. As depressing as they are, a lot more people need to read them and think about them.

  12. ” if he means they aren’t going to let unqualified students into med school just to rush through and meet government set targets, I certainly don’t have a problem with that. Without a link we can’t judge his comments for ourselves.”
    I don’t think I’ve ever read a more idiotic statement than this. But then what would you expect?
    Horny Toad

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