44 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. In some places, a shouted accusation amounts to a conviction:
    “Two Christian women were beaten and publically humiliated by an angry mob over apparently frivolous blasphemy allegations and they and their family are now in hiding for fear of being killed, The (Pakistan) Express Tribune has learnt.
    “According to the family, the allegations stem from a dispute between Amina, a Muslim, and her sister-in-law Zahira, a Christian, in an East Lahore locality. The two got into an argument on Tuesday night and though it appeared to have been settled, on Wednesday morning, after her husband Zahid had gone to work, Amina walked out onto the street and started shouting that Zahira had abused the Holy Prophet (pbuh).
    “A short while later, a group of men led by Muhammad Sameer, a member of a religious organisation keen on raising its sectarian profile, forced their way into the house and started slapping Zahira, said another of her brothers, Sohail. ‘Other men and women from the neighbourhood started gathering at the house too and they beat up my sister and mother. They were the only people in the house,’ he said.
    “’We tried our best to get her to confess her crime,’ Sameer told The Express Tribune. As a member of the religious organisation, he said he could not tolerate any derogatory remarks about the Holy Prophet (pbuh).”

  2. Sigh EBD, I hate reading what the world has become, or maybe always was.
    On more cheery topics, copain – pain = bread, therefore a copain is someone you would share bread with, eg, a companion.

  4. I’ll post this for a few nights for irregular readers – there will be a TGIF/Meet-up in Calgary this coming Friday, January 21st at 5-ish. Location to be determined.
    There are a few RSVPs already, if you would like to confirm attendance to help guesstimate what size place is required, please e-mail sdacalgary@gmail.com.
    Legal stuff; this TGIF is neither endorsed nor affiliated with Kate McMillan or this website, just a chance for readers, posters, friends and frenemies to get together. Cheers!

  8. Hey Erik, drink a toast to those of us who would like to be there but can not make it. Cheers!

  10. WOW. Where do you find ’em EBD. She might have even been cute without the haystack on her head, can’t really tell.
    Cheers

  11. “The Eurozone’s Next Crisis”
    In this interesting article there is one small, fascinating, information:
    Vanessa Rossi, senior research fellow at Chatham House, estimates that China already holds $1 trillion in European bonds (AP), about 10 percent of eurozone government debt.

  13. I would love to attend the get-together on Friday, bur I’m at work in the field, and cannot be there. I hope there will be a repeat some time in the future. Round about Spring breakup would be a good choice.

  16. Erik – toast me, okay? I’m an insecure egomaniac 🙂 I wish I could be there. Sadly I live in Halifax.

  17. Robert W. (Vancouver)
    P.S. Good thing they explicitly mentioned that he’s a “conservative” analyst. Otherwise we would have never known!
    I’ve seen several talking heads make the same critical analysis of this clip and for the life of me, I don’t see anything wrong with it. A Blood Libel it is, pure and simple. Falsely accused of causing the death of these people. Hundreds of people screaming for her death, it was like a scene out of the muslim primitives. And deliberately done to damage Conservatives and especially Sarah Palin.

  18. If she’s able to speak, I predict Giffords will give a short speech for the State of the Union Address. If she were ambulatory, I’d predict they’d pull another Christopher Reeve, Meals on Wheels stunt.
    In any event, I wager the Divider in Chief will use his bully pulpit to continue his Tucson speech. After being destroyed in November and passing several key laws in the lame duck, he’s got nothing else to run on.

  19. Toronto Star, Friday, Jan. 14. Martha (not-so-) Friendly.
    When a 14-month-old girl dies in an “unregulated” daycare, it’s not long until the advocates of state-run child care come along to pretend they have a solution.
    http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/921585–death-by-indifference
    “This tragedy is unambiguous evidence of the consequences of government failure to build a child-care system.”
    False. There is not a shred of evidence that such a tragedy could not happen in a child-care system built by government. Especially considering that most things run by government devolve into a mess, inferior to those in the private sector and much harder to fix.
    “Each tragedy has led to public inquiries and inquests, editorials and evidence about why the public oversight of child care provided by good regulation is fundamental for basic safety.”
    But regulations are often ignored, and there are no legal consequences for the regulators for doing exactly that whether through laziness, incompetence or corruption.
    “The statement of a mother who lost her child in unregulated care in 1999 still holds today: ‘Eighty per cent of children in this province are in unregulated daycare, but there’s nothing to protect them …'”
    There are laws against child abuse and criminal negligence causing death. But I repeat, there is no reason to think that a tragedy in an unregulated daycare could not happen in a regulated one.
    “But few people would seriously argue that finding a caregiver on the Internet or bulletin board offers parents who must go to work an acceptable ‘choice,’ especially if they’re low-income or newcomers to Canada.”
    Choice is precisely what these options provide. It would be a government monopoly on daycare that is not a choice. A standard leftist trick is to paint genuine choices in a free market as somehow lacking, while touting a coerced government monopoly as in the “public interest”, similar to the way they try to blur the difference between voluntary and coerced.
    “The provincial government must put in place a coherent plan for building a publicly managed early education and child-care system, the public funds — provincial and federal — to support it, and the political will to follow through.”
    The public education system is a disaster that often sends illiterates through to university. The eHealth project has spent a billion dollars with little to show. The rest of the health care system is spending us into oblivion, and still forces people to wait months for surgery to relieve their pain.
    Without competition and immediate accountability through the market, there is no incentive for service providers to provide a good service. That’s why the left and the unions want to eliminate it — to achieve political power without accountability. Part of their plan is to squander as much taxpayers’ money as possible.
    The overriding, mindless theme that runs through this article is: Government is perfect. Those of us who live in the real world know better, but the left (because their viewpoint is derived from the mysticism of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel) continues to indulge in what the psychiatrists call “magical thinking”. Since reason is not on their side, it’s the only kind of thinking they have.

  21. 95.9 fm Powell River has censored Dire Straights
    Money for nothing removing the word “faggot” and cutting out the entire verse.
    Come on people, we can’t let the PC crowd win.
    As a musician this offends me far more than any “bad word” and I’m ready to drop to C@#T bomb on these douch3bags.
    [d]

  22. Voodoo Haiti:
    “Former dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier returns to Haiti”
    “it was not immediately clear why he had returned.”
    http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1620227420110116
    …-
    “The only greater cesspools are in Africa.”
    “Why Haiti can’t recover”
    “Of all the words I’ve read to describe post-quake Haiti, the most apt is “dystopian.”
    Haiti is not only the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, it is also the most wretched and dysfunctional. By nearly every measure — stability of civil society, corruption, GDP, per capita income — Haiti is in the bottom 10% of nations worldwide. The UN’s human development index pegs it at 145th of 169 studied. The only greater cesspools are in Africa.”
    http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/13/lorne-gunter-why-haiti-can%E2%80%99t-recover/

  23. AGW Progress Report:
    “*which will lead to more carbon being stored in people’s home.(sic)”
    …-”
    “Dawson, YT”
    “-45 °C”
    http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weathermaps/?ref=canoe_en_p_text_weathermaps
    …-
    “*Cash-strapped UK to sell its forests to stop climate change”
    ““a tree is just a very aged plant that, like any other plant, comes to the end of its life”
    To raise revenue and stop global warming, the cash-starved UK government plans to privatize England’s crown forests. Environmental groups, unable to explain why climate change shouldn’t trump the preservation of forests, have to date been largely muted.
    The UK policy, revealed in November by Jim Paice, Minister of State for Agriculture and Food, would see a “very substantial disposal of public forest estate, which could go to the extent of all of it.” In part, he explained, the decision is ideological, a belief that the private sector is more efficient than the government in managing forests. But the ministry’s decision to privatize assets – which will provide it with £100-million — is largely driven by the need to fund itself and its climate change priorities in these times of government austerity.
    Under the government scheme, a more efficient private sector will increase the rate of cutting of forests, which will lead to more carbon being stored in people’s home.”
    http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/16/lawrence-solomon-cash-strapped-uk-to-sell-its-forests-to-stop-climate-change/

  24. Via the National Post via maz2: “Haiti is not only the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, it is also the most wretched and dysfunctional.”
    Blacks oppressing blacks. I’ve seen it in other Caribbean countries but Haiti takes the cake. It’s ironic in the extreme that the first independent nation in Latin America and the first black-led republic in the world is a country where blacks are mistreated by other blacks and live in dire poverty.
    No amount of foreign aid is going to help Haiti. Haitians need to help themselves. Until the corruption at every level of their society stops and the governing class begins to work for the betterment of Haitians — and I can’t see that happening anytime soon with all of the monetary aid flowing into the country (and straight into the pockets of the political and mob leaders) — Haitians will continue to endure lives permeated by violence and dire poverty in a dystopian hell of their own making.

  25. batb – exactly right.
    I recall saying that repeatedly last year on this blog – saying that Haiti was ruled by a corrupt set of about 30 families who did nothing, absolutely nothing for the population of Haiti but ruled-for-themselves only.
    This corrupt set of families are economically and operationally totally isolated from the population, speak a different language (French vs Creole), confine the economy to their own well-being, and govern for themselves alone.
    This same set relied and continues to rely on the international community to provide food, medical care, housing etc for the masses; this elite set provides none of this and as well, no education, roads, economic infrastructure for the people.
    I predicted that any monies that we sent would go straight to this set – and the lives of the masses would not change. I was roundly chastized for being heartless and inhumane. But take a look; if anything, the situation is worse in Haiti.
    The Elite Families will not allow any betterment of the people. Aid is sitting unused because the Elite requires a 40% payback from that aid before they will even let it into the country. Think of that…this Corrupt Set wants almost half of the international funding for aid to the people…to go to them.
    Why won’t these families enable the masses to achieve a better life? Simple. The Families would lose power.
    Now, Duvalier has returned. Hmm. He’s still a part of that Elite Set. What’s next?

  27. RCGZ: “WOW. Where do you find ’em EBD. She might have even been cute without the haystack on her head, can’t really tell.”
    Sheila (Anny Chancel) was a BIG French singing star in her day (mainly during the 60s and 70s but also into the 80s, turning into a writer by the 90s but popping up now and again right through to the present). Yes, she was cute, haystack notwithstanding.
    In the 60s, there were Sheila clothes, Sheila beauty products and inevitably, Sheila dolls.
    And she even married Ringo! Well, Ringo Willy Cat the French singer, not Ringo Starr, heh heh.
    She has a website (in French of course):
    http://www.sheilahome.com

  28. ET, I remember your warnings about not sending monetary aid to Haiti after the earthquake because of the endemic corruption there and I was on the same page, warning people not to send any money to Haiti through the UN or other quasi-governmental bodies.
    The only way to reliably know that your aid is going to the people who most need it, is to send it via a church organization you trust. Many Christian churches have been in Haiti for decades. They’re on the ground, they know the people, they know the system, and they use next to nothing of the funds for “overhead,” which eats up, sometimes, up to 80% of the funds donated to non-church charitable organizations.
    I know what I’m talking about. I lived in a Caribbean country years ago and lived through an earthquake, larger than the one that hit Haiti. The government “aid” was useless and corrupt — the money from the international community went straight into their and their friends’ and family members’ pockets. The churches and co-ops got together to provide genuine emergency relief. The church we were affiliated with sent a cheque from Canada, every penny of which was converted into medicine, rice and beans, and chain saws for the people at the epicentre of the quake to rebuild their houses. There was no overhead, there were no salaries to be paid, but there were a lot of volunteer hours put in to help the victims.
    I saw daily and first-hand how corruption and fear of saying anything — as vindictiveness/getting back at anyone who wrongs you is a strong feature of the culture of corruption — paralyzed the populace, ensuring they could never move forward. It’s as though every person had a foot nailed to the floor and just keep spinning around and around. I wanted to see an uprising — I really did — but people were just too ground down and scared to do anything. It broke my heart and made me mad. Things haven’t changed there, either.

  29. Must view: “BBC’s biased reporting of Global Warming – the consequences” (h/t James Delingpole)

  30. Posted by: Black Mamba at January 17, 2011 2:35 AM
    Well we could go to a Timmies and raise one in conjunction with the West…..LOL

  31. Defining/framing the Red-Green AGW fraud.
    Red-Green Mao Stlong’s fraud.
    Mao Stlong, aka Maurice Strong, is Liberal leader Bob Rae’s Uncle Mo.
    More here* framing Liberal Iggy and his O’Harvard buddy.
    “*Al Gore, Maurice Strong
    Obama’s involvement in Chicago Climate Exchange—the rest of the story”.
    “SUPPORTING THE SUN
    Every solar company in the world relies on some form of subsidy to build or sell its products. That’s because solar electricity is still about eight times more expensive than power generated by coal-fired plants. The global solar industry only really began to take off when, about a decade ago, governments introduced subsidies for clean energy systems in an effort to trim their carbon dioxide output and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.”
    “The difference with China
    The big difference with China, its solar critics say, is that Beijing helps only its own manufacturers — who then send their panels around the globe to reap additional subsidies in other countries.”
    “Toronto senior dies in extreme cold”
    A Toronto senior whose calls for help may have been ignored in the freezing cold on Monday has died.”
    (canoenews)
    …-
    “Is a solar trade war about to flare?”
    “EBERSWALDE, Germany – Germany’s fifth-biggest solar power park emerges as a smudge on the horizon long before you reach it on the outskirts of the small, sleepy village of Eberswalde, an hour’s drive north of Berlin. “In the far distance, you can see it,” Peter Kobbe says, pointing through heavy December snowfall as he steers his Citroen van along an icy road.
    Kobbe, 64, works at Finow airport, where a local investment firm built the 58 million euro (C$76 million) solar park in 2009. Finow itself was built by the Nazis before World War Two and later became one of the Soviet Union’s main Cold War hubs. Now the small aircraft that still use the airport share it with about 90,000 solar modules — which together generate enough to power 6,400 households a year.
    “This is where they (the Soviets) used to store their nuclear weapons,” says Kobbe, who runs a small museum documenting the airport’s history, guiding his van over the snow-covered landing strip.
    Now there’s a different foreign presence in Finow. When the first solar modules arrived for installation they came not from a local manufacturer — German solar company Conergy runs a factory just 45 minutes away in Frankfurt an der Oder, for instance — but from China’s Suntech Power Holdings, now the world’s largest maker of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules. “We were quite surprised when the trucks brought Chinese modules, and not German ones,” Kobbe says. “But they were probably cheaper.” Solarhybrid, which spearheaded construction of the park, says reductions in Germany’s renewable subsidies meant it had to use Suntech modules to stay competitive.
    Germany has long been the global solar industry’s engine. Europe’s biggest economy consumed more than half the solar panels produced around the world in 2010. Solar accounts for just 2% of Germany’s power production, but the country added a record 8,000 megawatts (MW) of solar modules last year — equal to the capacity of eight nuclear reactors — far outpacing Italy, Japan and the United States.
    So why are China’s solar companies benefiting at the expense of renewable energy manufacturers in Europe and the United States? Virtually non-existent a decade ago, Chinese solar companies now control two thirds of solar cell production in the $39 billion US global PV market.”
    http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Environment/2011/01/17/16915251.html
    *O’Fraud:
    http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9629

  32. Voodoo Jean:
    “Jean ‘astounded’ by former dictator’s return to her native Haiti”
    CHQR
    Liberal-left “vision” shattered.
    …-
    “Extent of Corruption in Countries Around the World Tied to Earthquake Fatalities”
    “A new assessment of global earthquake fatalities over the past three decades indicates that 83 percent of all deaths caused by the collapse of buildings during earthquakes occurred in countries considered to be unusually corrupt.”
    “The 2010 Haiti earthquake is believed to have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, primarily due to shoddy building construction. (Credit: U.S. Air Force)”
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110112132415.htm
    …-
    Get this from MSM:
    >>> “Enthusiastic supporters greeted him* at the airport, but it was not immediately clear why he had returned.”
    When was Iggy in Haiti?
    …-
    “*Former dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier returns to Haiti”
    http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1620227420110116

  33. AtlanticJim at January 17, 2011 11:36 AM
    “Well we could go to a Timmies and raise one in conjunction with the West…..LOL”
    Which Timmies Jim?
    btw, Can anyone know how to get an annoying whistling tune out of their head? Curse you EBD!

  34. http://alexgtsakumis.com/
    B.C.’ers who post here should check out this blog. Alex Tsakumis is doing the job the MSM won’t do on the B.C. Rail scandal,and Christy Clark’s role in it.
    It’s a must read for B.C. residents.

  35. ET/batb
    I too remember the aforementioned discussions. What’s interesting is that many of those that cried ‘racism’ then, are now bewildered and upset (ie George Clooney) at the corruption they’ve witnessed.
    Unfortunately for the people of Haiti, the political Left was too wrapped-up in ‘feeling good’ for their good deeds, and were not going to let ANYONE ruin the fun. Does this remind you of any other historical event we were not to ruin?
    I said at the same time that “if before we send the money isn’t time to worry about where it is going, then why bother worrying where the money has been sent after it’s gone?”.
    The bottom line is this; don’t stand in the way of a Progressive that is trying to ‘feel good’ regardless the fact you may simply be trying to prevent them from screwing themselves(see 08′ election).
    Also, the ease in which someone could contribute(ie text, and low amounts) made/makes it that much easier to hoodwink those that typically don’t donate. Only because of the relative ease, and lack of commitment required by those that donate does it make it that easy to scam those people. The easier to donate, the easier it is to scam those people. People in the ‘know’ understand that there is more to philanthropy that texting ‘haiti’ on your phone.

  36. BTW, in the Leftist’s mind ‘it’s the thought that counts’ not the results. I specifically remember a troll arguing along those lines.

  37. Ya know, if nothing else, the left is good for laugh every now and then.
    The latest example?
    A half dozen or so of them decided to protest the F-35 purchase. Where you might ask? Why at the main gate to the administrative side of Canada’s largest naval base of course!
    I’m guessing they missed the rather noticable lack of aircraft, aircraft hangers and runways….
    Texas Canuck, I am good for just about anywhere in HRM. I am out in Sackville, mamba, speak up!

  38. I wish I could be at the Calgary gathering. I’d just thought a few days ago that it would be great for the Toronto contingent of SDA to get together, especially if Kate was ever in the ‘hood, and then Calgary goes and gets a ceilidh together … and now Halifax …
    Sigh.

  39. Hmmm. I’m going to be out of town soon, and there is the whole secret identity thing, but it is tempting… let me think about it.
    Roseberry’s a local.

  40. Hey, what about us in the “gap”?
    I wish hairdos like Sheila’s would be in vogue again.

  41. Re: help for Haiti
    Good advice to stay away from the large organisations. We have been in contact with a Canadian who has been living in Haiti and experienced the quake. He is helping locals to learn the value of work and self sufficiency.They grow coffee and it is distributed and sold in North America.
    http://www.beansofhope.ca/

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