Europe is not at war against terrorists, the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has said, warning against a hysterical reaction to the threat of attacks in the wake of the Madrid bombings.

You don’t say….

“We have to energetically oppose terrorism, but we mustn’t change the way we live,” Solana has told the German weekly Bild am Sonntag in an interview to appear on Sunday, adding “Europe is not at war.”

Of course they’re not. He considers this whole unfortunate Madrid business an accident. Someone grabbed the wrong map, that’s all.
No, really.
The EU has been funding terrorism. Why would terrorists bite the hands that feed them? Ilka Schroeder – 25-year-old member of the European Parliament and former member of the German Green Party;

“The Europeans,” Ilka Schroeder said at Ben-Gurion University, “supported the Palestinian Authority with the aim of becoming its main sponsor, and through this, challenge the U.S. and present themselves as the future global power. Therefore, the Al-Aksa Intifada should be understood as a proxy war between Europe and the United States.”
In an earlier address in New York, she said it is “an open secret within the European Parliament that EU aid to the Palestinian Authority has not been spent correctly. The European Parliament does not intend to verify whether European taxpayers’ money could have been used to finance anti-Semitic murderous attacks.”

P. David Hornik makes these points in the Jan 12, 2004 article;

As for her notion of the Al-Aksa Intifada as a proxy war between Europe and the United States, it’s both compelling and questionable- more compelling in regard to countries like France and Germany, less so in regard to countries like Britain and Spain. It’s easy to adduce other reasons for the EU’s overall willingness to fund anti-Israeli terror, from traditional anti-Semitism (which Schroeder acknowledges as a factor), to the desire to deflect terror from Europe itself and keep it safely to the south, to the desire to appease local European Muslim voting blocs, to the desire to stay in the good graces of oil-rich Arab regimes. What’s clear is that, one way or another, Europe is addicted to Jew-killing; if today, amid its high-flown human rights rhetoric, it no longer engages in it directly, it’s able to do so by proxy, and it’s not about to stop.

No surprise that the EU response to the Spain bombing would be a beaurocratic one. Spain’s “learned her lesson”. No need to worry, now that that’s taken care of.

The measures include appointing a new “coordinator” to oversee the fields involved in the anti- terrorism fight — including police and judicial work, intelligence-sharing and cracking down on extremists’ financing.

Meaning, Solana plans to cut some allowances until these people remember who they’re being paid to bomb.

Thought mad cow was yesterday’s news?

Yesterday, Hunking tried to buy a frame for the $1.57 cheque he received from the Ontario Stockyards for the two cows that weighed about 400 kilograms each when they were sold Feb. 20 at auction for an average price of about 10 cents per kilogram.
…
Levinoff Meat Products Ltd. of Montreal paid $83.05 for Hunking’s two cows, but by the time the $45 trucking cost, $29 commission fee, $2.20 insurance, $5.18 GST and other incidentals were deducted, Hunking’s net from the sale was $1.57.

Certainly, these were cull cows, not fat steers from which steaks and choice cuts are made. But the food products they were turned into will sell for about the same price as they did before BSE. Someone is making some money.

New York Post

While much has been made about intelligence failures in the West, it seems that Saddam’s own senior officials, diplomats and spies offered him such a warped vision of the outside world that warnings went unheeded and the power of France and Russia to prevent the conflict took on mythical proportions.
…
On instructions from Saddam, Lt. Gen. Abed Hamid Hamoud, the head of the presidential office, ordered Naji Sabri, the foreign minister, to contact the French and Russian governments and tell them that Iraq would accept only an “unconditional withdrawal” of U.S. forces.
“Tell them that Iraq is now winning and that the U.S. has sunk in the mud of defeat,” said the letter, written on March 30 – 10 days into the war and less than two weeks before U.S. tanks entered the capital.
The letter was in response to a message the day before from Sabri, who had met the Russian ambassador to Baghdad and reported that Moscow believed “U.S. aggression has no future.”
“The conflict could continue for months, a year or two years,” the Russian envoy is quoted as saying.
…
Some of the intelligence fed back to Baghdad may explain why its analysis was so off the mark. One clumsy drawing from an intelligence officer at the Iraqi Embassy in Syria sent on March 22, two days after the start of the war, showed the location of 20,000 Israeli troops equipped with Patriot surface-to-air missiles allegedly camped in the western desert of Iraq.

Via Kathy Kinsley

Via Andrew Coyne
Federal Liberal appointee among those charged.

The RCMP accused Yves Bourbonnais, formerly of the Immigration and Refugee Board, and 10 others Thursday of forming a “very well structured criminal organization.” “The offences committed in the matter strike at the heart of the administration of justice,” said Staff Sgt. Sergio Pasin, lead investigator during a three-year probe of the activities.
…
The Mounties said the investigation revealed that between 50 and 60 people facing hearings were offered positive judgments from the board in exchange for cash bribes of $8,000 to $15,000 per person.
The people allegedly approached for bribes were from the Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and Italian communities in Montreal and Ottawa, said RCMP Sgt. Jocelyn Mimeault, a force spokesman.
“Obviously what we’re talking about is corruption.”
He declined to say whether any rigged hearings actually took place.

More background info here

so are the Days Of Their Lies…

In his opening statement to the Commons committee investigating the mess, the defiant former public works minister painted himself as the victim and said that the public accusations and innuendo has all but ended his long political career.
“I feel that I am the one who has paid the greatest price for this scandal so far,” he said. “I have lived up to my part of the bargain. In return, I now learn that I should be considered responsible for a fiasco that was not of my doing.”

[cue violins]

Gagliano was in charge of the department when it funneled millions of dollars to Quebec advertising agencies for little or no work.
As minister, Gagliano said he did everything in his power to fulfill his cabinet obligations. Management was not his responsibility, though. As such, holding him accountable for every department employee is unfair.
“I never had the control or power over my department that would have given me the ability to answer for all that went open with them.”

“I am just a patsy!”

Gagliano acknowledged he met with Guite three or four times per year and had signed off on some seven-figure spending increases without reviewing any documentation.
“I assumed all the paperwork … was in the file,” he said. “I didn’t see it, I didn’t ask for it.”

While his life trickled away waiting for a bone marrow transplant from his long lost brother, his ex-wife secretly plotted to steal the family firm…

In his questions for the former minister, Conservative Party MP Peter MacKay communicated his disbelief.
“You’re telling us today that you were just essentially a finger puppet of your own department, that you had no control over the sponsorship program?” he asked.

Hard to believe, but true. And the story doesn’t end there…. lost and presumed dead for these past two years, in reality, Gagliano was being held captive in a fortress in Denmark.
to be continued…
Andrew Coyne has the Hogan’s Heroes version.

Another scathing Auditor General’s report – this time, national security.

The Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness — which has a budget of $52 million per year — will come under particularly heavy criticism.
It faced a big test last August 14 when most of Ontario was hit with a power blackout and was found wanting.
For example, OCIPEP lost telephone, electricity and computer services at its own building.

Just great. 52 million bucks a year, and the brain trust at the command center for Emergency Preparedness never thought to pick up a couple of generators.

CTV’s Craig Oliver says unlike the auditor general’s�sponsorship scandal report, which came out February 10 and is still causing political reverberations, no wrongdoing will be suggested.

I see. If Liberal hacks skim off public money that was destined to be pissed away in unnecessary advertising schemes anyway – that’s “wrongdoing”.
But if Liberal negligence and incompetence exposes living breathing Canadians to terrorism, death, destruction and chaos – it’s not?

A New York Post article today The French War For Oil is all about France. Kenneth Timmerman forgot to mention another anti-war country with oil interests in Iraq – Canada.

… the French interest in maintaining Saddam Hussein in power was spelled out in excruciating detail. The price tag: close to $100 billion. That was what French oil companies stood to profit in the first seven years of their exclusive oil arrangements – had Saddam remained in power.
…
Almost as soon as the guns went silent after the first Gulf war in 1991, French oil giants Total SA and Elf Aquitaine – who have now merged and expanded to become TotalFinaElf – sought a competitive advantage over their rivals in Iraq by negotiating exclusive production-sharing contracts with Saddam’s regime that were intended to give them a stranglehold on Iraq’s future oil production for decades to come.
…
The Total contract, a copy of which I obtained, was “very one-sided,” says Hillman. (Hillman, a political economist and a managing partner at Trireme Investments in New York, did a detailed analysis of the contract.) An ordinary production agreement typically grants the foreign partner a maximum of 50 percent of the gross proceeds of the oil produced at the field they develop. But this deal gave Total 75 percent of the total production. “This is highly unusual,” he said. Indeed, it was extortion.
But Saddam willingly agreed: He saw the Total deal, and a similar one with Elf, as the price he had to pay to secure French political support at the United Nations.

What is the Canadian connection ?
Paul Desmarais Sr. His sons, Andr� and Paul Desmarais Jr. are the current co-CEO’s of Power Corporation of Canada, the majority shareholder in France’s TotalFinaElf.
Andr� is married to former PM Jean Chretien’s daughter, France.
Stockwell Day (Alliance) – during Question Period:

“I do not fault the Prime Minister’s family ties with his nephew, our Ambassador to France,” said Day “or with Paul Desmarais Sr. who is the largest individual shareholder of France’s largest corporation, TotalFinaElf, which has billions of dollars of contracts with Saddam’s former regime. With this valuable source of information and experience at his fingertips, has the Prime Minister ever discussed Iraq or France with his family or friends in the Desmarais empire?”

This link lists the prominant Canadian politicians who include PowerCorp on their resume – they include Trudeau, Mulroney – and current Prime Minister Paul Martin.
With the revelations about the UN Oil-for-food kickback scandal finally breaking the surface, and the depth of corruption in the Chretien government emerging via Adscam, the Chirac-TotalFinaElf-PowerCorp-Chretien connections are just hanging there for the picking, like rotten fruit from a tree.
That is, if the anti-American leftists in the Canadian media can bring themselves to face the possibility that Canada’s “principled” position on Iraq was all about oil.

PETA does get attention when they pull these stunts.

Why they continue to promote themselves as deranged extremists doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. There isn’t a lot of evidence that the organization is controlled by clueless idiots, (not to be confused with the clueless idiots who fund them with donations) so why do they insist on creating and then stepping into the wacko animal rights stereotype?
update On a less serious note – Wizbang is reminding us to commemorate Eat An Animal For Peta Day

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Evan Solomon of the CBC interviews Kofi Annan

EVAN SOLOMON: Ok. Let’s talk about relevance of the US [sic] itself. Famously, the president of the US said the UN risks irrelevance if it did not back the war in Iraq. It didnt. There have been, as you know, tensions between the US and the UN. Tell us, tell Canadians why Canada ought to spend the scarce dollars that we as a country have on UN operations? Why the UN is actually relevant?

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Pre-meditated “payback” for a legal hit on Vancouver Canuck captain Markus Naslund during a game Feb. 16.

Bertuzzi came up behind Moore, grabbed the back of Avalanche player’s sweater and delivered a round-house swing with his gloved right hand that struck Moore’s head. Moore fell head first to the ice under the weight of Bertuzzi, who came down on top of him at the 8:41 mark. A pool of blood formed around Moore’s head as he lay motionless on the ice. A stretcher was wheeled out and after a delay of nearly 10 minutes the 25-year-old native of Windsor, Ont., was taken off for medical attention.

Toronto Star

Moore had regained consciousness by the time he was off the ice, but some news agencies are reporting that he may have a broken neck. Bertuzzi has been suspended indefinitely by the NHL.
He should be in jail.
Update Moore’s neck fracture and concussion confirmed, and Bertuzzi is under police investigation for assault.

The country is in shock, I tell you. Our own Poster Family for Multiculturalism has admitted
“we are an al-Qaeda family”.
Ahmed Said Khadr and his family first came to national attention in 1996, when then Prime Minister Jean Chretien intervened on his behalf to gain his release from Pakistan, where he was being held on suspicion of financing the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad.
He and a son were killed, and a second paralyzed, in a raid on an Al Queda camp on the Afghan-Pakistan border last year. Another son is in US custody at Gitmo. The admission came by way of a fifth, Abdullah Khadr, who was recently released and made his way back to Canada. Of course.
CBC news interviewed the remaining family members for a documentary.
Now, could someone please shoot the mother, before she gets another chance to reproduce?

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has announced the winners of the 6th Annual Teddy Awards.

Ottawa: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) held its sixth annual Teddies Waste Awards Ceremony to honour the best of the worst in government spending at a black tie news conference today on Parliament Hill. CTF Federal Director, John Williamson, acted as master of ceremonies.

The expected spending scandals are listed, of course. But there are some lesser known gems.

Worst Use of Props — Pizza 9-1-1: The Ontario city of Kawartha Lakes’ fire department has offered to deliver pizzas to residents as part of a fire safety promotion campaign. If Kawartha residents own a working smoke alarm the pizza will be free.

It reportedly didn’t take long before residents realized that there was no limit set on the number of “smoke detector inspections” you could order to your door.

Manitoba Arts Council put up $5,000 to fund Aliza Amihude’s jewelry made with her toenails, pubic hair, mouse droppings and dead ladybugs. We are told one necklace sold for $360. No word yet if the “art” proceeds will be repaid to the Arts Council or dedicated to psychologist bills.

The complete list of award winners can be found at the organization’s website.

Miriam B�dard is a national Canadian hero in an unlikely sport – she won two Olympic gold medals in the biathlon at the ’94 games. The sport combines cross country skiing with target shooting.
She’s a national hero again today. Her attempts to draw attention to bloated invoices during her employment in the marketing department at Via Rail, resulted in being pushed out of her job. With the Adscam scandal being dragged into the full (partial?) light of day, she put her former boss, Jean Pelletier, in her crosshairs. She wrote to Prime Minister Paul Martin relating what had happened.
Pelletier, a Chretien appointee, had some choice words for her.

“I don’t want to be mean to her, but she is a weak and pitiful girl, a girl who does not have a spouse, as far as I know. She has the pressures of being a single mother who has financial responsibilities. Honestly, I find her pitiful.”

(B�dard is married, and drives a BMW. )
Today, Paul Martin had some choice words for Jean Pelletier. – “Clean out your desk”.

I’ve belonged to a fair number of email groups over my years on the net. My current list is a fairly typical snapshot of what lands in my email inbox, and are devoted to the following interests:

Topic Gnu Image Manipulation Program Canine Genetics Mark Helprin (novelist) l Honda CBR motorcycle owners Yamaha RD (vintage) motorcycles All-breed Canadian Dog Shows Local All-breed Kennel Club Bernese Mountain Dogs Miniature Schnauzer club list Miniature Schnauzer private list Mensa Political forum

posting frequency almost never frequently almost never on occassion almost never on occassion never never on occassion frequently seldom

The atmosphere on these lists ranges from the dry and highly technical, to the completely unmoderated where the highlights include inspired forays of insult exchange, featuring four-letter-word derivatives that would embarrass a longshoreman.
Why mention this? Because on a great many of these lists, there exists a small subset of self-appointed netiquette nannies. And because there are others who do not subscribe to their personal code of conduct for online discusson, they conclude that we must be unaware of what we are doing. The solution? Enlightenment.
Here, is a sample of one such pronouncement that recently graced my inbox, recieved second hand. In my own little world, these essayists are nearly exclusively the domain of dog club lists. Dog clubs are a bit unlike other lists, in that a great number of members are likely to be “real life” friends, enemies, competitors – or a schizophrenic combination of all three. Thus, debate has more than a passing electronic existance.

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Roger Simon has been on the UN Oil-For-Food scandal for weeks, and finally, the New York Times has broken the story in a big way.
Exerpts:

Perhaps the best measure of the corruption comes from a review of the $8.7 billion in outstanding oil-for-food contracts by the provisional Iraqi government with United Nations help. It found that 70 percent of the suppliers had inflated their prices and agreed to pay a 10 percent kickback, in cash or by transfer to accounts in Jordanian, Lebanese and Syrian banks.
At that rate, Iraq would have collected as much as $2.3 billion of the $32.6 billion worth of contracts it signed since mid- 2000, when the kickback system began. And some companies were willing to pay even more than the standard 10 percent, according to Trade and Oil Ministry employees.
Iraq’s suppliers included Russian factories, Arab trade brokers, European manufacturers and state-owned companies from China and the Middle East. Iraq generally refused to buy directly from American companies, which in any case needed special licenses to trade legally with Iraq.

No war, For Oil.

In the high-flying days after Iraq was allowed to sell its oil after 10 years of United Nations sanctions, the lobby of the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad was the place to be to get a piece of the action.
That was where the oil traders would gather whenever a journalist, actor or political figure would arrive in Iraq and openly praise Mr. Hussein. Experience taught them that the visitor usually returned to the hotel with a gift voucher, courtesy of the Iraqi president or one of his aides, representing the right to buy one million barrels or more of Iraqi crude.
The vouchers had considerable value. With the major oil companies monopolizing most Persian Gulf oil, there was fierce competition among smaller traders for the chance to buy Iraqi oil. And as long as Iraq kept its oil prices low enough, traders could make a tidy profit, even after buying the voucher and paying the surcharge

Scott Ott called ’em as he saw em…

Other Iraqi officials said the ministries were forced to order goods from companies and countries according to political expediency instead of quality.
“There would be an order that out of $2 billion for the Trade Ministry and Health Ministry, $1 million would have be given to Russian companies and $500 million to Egyptians,” said Nidhal R. Mardood, a 30-year veteran employee of the Iraqi Ministry of Trade, where he is now the director-general for finance.
“It depended on what was going on in New York at the U.N. and which country was on the Security Council,” he added. “They apportioned the amounts according to politics.”
One result, for Iraqis, was a mishmash of equipment: fire trucks from Russia, earth- moving machines from Jordan, station wagons from India, trucks from Belarus and garbage trucks from China.

The Chretien government’s steadfast support of the United Nations makes one wonder if the federal Liberals weren’t handing out advertising contracts in Iraq.
More links, including one to the NYT article, at Outsidethebeltway

Japan cult leader sentencing

Shoko Asahara, leader of the Japanese cult that released sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995, was sentenced to hang for multiple charges of murder today.

It has taken 8 years to get to a verdict and sentencing, Asahara can count on another 16 years before his appointment with the rope.
That’ll teach these terrorist folks a few thing or two about the consequences of using WMD’s !

Fall kills student
[Who are they kidding? This was a cull. -ed]

A Carleton University engineering student participating in a spitting contest with friends plunged 11 floors off a downtown highrise to his death late Saturday night. Ameer “AJ” Jinah was celebrating his 20th birthday in his apartment with about a dozen friends when the accident happened about 11 p.m.
Police said it appears Jinah took a running start to try to spit farther than his two friends when he unintentionally vaulted himself over the balcony railing.
“It was purely accidental,” said Ottawa police Sgt. Joe Simpson. “Momentum carried him beyond.
Police said alcohol was being consumed at the party.

They don’t make Engineering Students the way they used to. But think of the bright side – how many lives were saved because of his absense from the construction industry?

“He was one of the smartest, most polite guys I ever met in my life,” he said. “I think he was one of the classiest guys. He had a maturity beyond his age.”

He was three? Maybe I’m being harsh.

The CTV news:

According to a report in The Toronto Star, the environment minister’s staff helped a music festival secure the funding from the scandal-ridden federal sponsorship program singled out in the recent Auditor General’s report.
In the report from Ottawa, the newspaper said long-standing federal Liberal Party member Jamie Kelley approached Anderson’s constituency office in 2001 for help with the event.
The office was eager to help, he said.
“They told me of a secret slush fund where they could access money for constituency programs. There was no application form, no process other than to write a letter (to Public Works).”
After writing a four-page letter and following up with phone calls to the Minister’s office, he was assured Anderson had personally taken his file to then public works minister Alfonso Gagliano.

In the latest mea not culpa, Environment Minister David Anderson is denying that there was anything wrong with the transaction. Well, I guess he would, eh?
In other Adscam news, three Crown Corporation heads have been disciplined pending further review – Via Rail President Marc Lefrancois, Canada Post President Andre Ouellet and Michel Vennat, president of the Business Development Bank.
Andrew Coyne has lots of links, and this observation:

“Suspended? “Disciplined”? After the Beaudoin affair, why hasn’t Vennat been charged with something?”

I can’t be the only person struggling with this mental image.

Saddam Hussein is visited by the Red Cross and gets mail privileges.