SDANewsNet;

The top United Nations aid official said today that Canadas’s military offensive in the Panjwaii region of Afghanistan is a “disproportionate use of force” but he again emphasized that all sides were guilty of violating humanitarian law.*.
Jan Egeland, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinatorwas was reacting to reports that “as many as 72 Taliban insurgents were killed in fighting with Canadian and Afghan forces in Panjwaii that began in the early evening Saturday…”
There were no Canadian casualties.
Egeland pointed to the unequal loss of life as evidence of Canadian heavy-handedness in the conflict.
“This was clearly a disproportionate use of force,” he said during a visit that included an inspection of mud huts destroyed by a NATO air strike. Thousands of civilians have fled the conflict.
“Canadians must take responsibility for not limiting the losses inflicted on the Taliban to numbers more in line with their own paltry losses in this conflict.”
No attempt was made to contact Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department officials for reaction, but the Harper government came under heavy criticism from opposition members who expressed concern with their “apparent lack of diplomatic efforts” to resolve the conflict.
When asked if he were in favour of the Taliban being taken off the terror list, Etobicoke Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj said: “Yes, I would be.”

Editor’s Note – prompted by one of our readers, I would like to recommend the well known blogsite Scrappleface as supplemental reading.

PETA – This road must to be restored to wilderness so that chickens may again migrate free of the destructive effects of humans on their natural environment!

I was one of the few to break from the pack, and rise to his defense when David Emerson crossed the floor.
I stood fast in my support during the “Harper is a cold parent”, “Harper is fat”, and “Harper wears frumpy vests” controversies.
I did not waver during the barring-the-media-from-CFB-Trenton crisis.
I have been as steadfast and reliable a defender of Stephen Harper as a dyed-in-the-wool partisan could hope for.
But no more. The news that a contingent of Celebrity Activists®, Gulfstream socialists, and legacy-challenged politicians are in Toronto to attend the most important photo-op* on the planet – and that my Prime Minister is nowhere to be seen – is simply too much.
This is not the behavior Canadians have come to expect – and deserve – of their Prime Ministers. Not at all.

(Original “Passion Of The Toys”)

A little something to brighten your afternoon.

This was inevitable.

Mark Collins is at it again.

inside a Beirut bunker.

Actually, I think he’s beginning to look a lot like Jack Palance.

Mount St.Helens Attacked By Giant Space Fly!

No, really. For example;

Does he have a certain fondness for German Shepherd dogs?

Would he prefer a vegetarian diet?

Have you noticed your World Atlas keeps falling open on the map of Poland?

Jeff Goldstein sits down with one of the most fascinating corpses of 2006;

protein wisdom: “So. What was the last thing that went through your head just before you went to your eternal reward…?”
al-Zarqawi:
protein wisdom: “Besides pieces of farmhouse foundation and bits of your sternum, I mean?”

On “Achievement”

The Winnipeg Sun brings us this happy ending;

Schenk scaled a 32-foot-long ladder and managed to clamber onto a thick branch — which neighbours estimated to be at least 40 feet off the ground — begging the cat to come into his arms.
“This guy’s too old to be doing this,” said a neighbour named Jim as worried residents and emergency workers watched the man cling to the tree.
Schenk eventually got a hold on Max. A loudly meowing cat in hand, Schenk began clambering down the tree’s thick trunk before inching his way down the ladder as worried neighbours, firefighters and paramedics watched.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I confess to shedding a quiet tear every time I see a cat skeleton in a tree.

According to a CKNW “news flash” the Ethics Commissioner has stated that no rules were broken in the floor-crossing. I’ll see if I can find some links.
What a surprise.
I wonder how Jack & his buddies feel about the Ethics Commissioner now?
UPDATE: CTV has details
crossposted

I have never understood why Ontario (or maybe it’s just Toronto, I don’t know) actually ships their garbage to the US, Michigan to be specific, in the first place. Ontario’s land mass is 1,076,395 km² and Michigan’s is 56,890 mi² – you don’t need to do the math to see that already this is making zero sense (to me, anyway).
What’s really strange is this article implies that interstate garbage dumping is something of an industry.

Granholm and Democratic legislators have pushed for a series of measures that would limit the importation of out-of-state trash and improve the safety of waste being hauled into Michigan.
House Democrats want the state to institute a higher dumping fee, which they say would discourage Canadian dumping by raising costs. Michigan now charges just 21 cents per ton, the lowest rate in the region.

How weird is that? Were some guys smoking stogies in a back room in the State Capitol Building sitting around, shooting the breeze & someone (probably not an environmental-activist-kind-of-guy) says “Hey, we don’t have enough garbage here! Where can we get some?” Is this some get-the-unemployed-working project gone horribly wrong? Did some other stogey-smoking guy (probably a union-kind-of-guy) say “Excellent idea! I’ve been saying we need to make government work for the people, and the people need good jobs. Garbage men get paid good money, so let’s do it! Job creation! Brilliant!” And then some shipping-magnate-kind-of-guy saw dollar signs?
But that still doesn’t explain why Toronto, or Ontario, or both are shipping their garbage to Michigan. For crying out loud, how hard is it to create a landfill?
Yes, they stink. They’re GARBAGE, after all, but that can be controlled. If you get creative with recycling & the processing of, well, garbage, then seriously, how hard can it be? Apparently, you don’t even have to have massive quantities of land available, if you do it right.
If someone out there can explain this mystery to me, I would be forever grateful.

MIddle East Times;

Thousands of people flocked to southern Egypt on Monday to seek blessing from a calf that they believe was born as God’s reply to the publication in Europe of cartoons depicting the Prophet, police said.

Some 20,000 thousand people had gathered in front of Mohammed Abu Dif’s house in the village of Tunis to see the holy mammal, whose skin folds when he was born reportedly formed the words “There is no God but Allah”, a police official said on condition of anonymity.

(The skin folds are reportedly visible only to those who stand very close to the animal.)

Caller ID (2.6 meg)
(h/t Inoperable Terran – one of the blogosphere’s best linkmeisters, who thinks it fails at its probable intended purpose.)

Since I’ve offended someone…

Sgt. Torn: Drop the gun! Drop it! Drop it!
Ahmed(in un-subtitled Arabic):Muhaia, dirka muhaia! Jihad allah dirka fatwa�..jihad�. (slowly trails off)
Their eyes lock in a longing stare as both slowly lower their rifles.

---

Notice: there was a server changeover last night at my host, and I not only lost a few newer posts, I couldn’t access this comments thread until this morning. Apparently, there are a few people who still get sucked into feeding the trolls. I’ll deal with him, but in the meantime – just stop responding. Thankyou.

Received from anonymous source;

“All of the evidence is not in, but it appears that US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice may have slept with Prime Minister Paul Martin when she was in Ottawa.
I will send details when they become available. All I have now is this photograph.”

BREAKING
MARTIN ISSUES DENIAL