The UN’s Margareta Wahlstrom, aka “United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General’s Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries” – (yes, this is her title) is calling all psychiatrists;

“Counselling is the key thing as people have lost everything — children, family, shelter… which is why the UN will launch these appeals,” she said after visiting Sri Lanka’s southern region of Galle.

And after the psychiatrists arrive, then what? Why – family planning, that’s what. Lifesite;

“The United Nations Population Fund, the UNFPA, is calling for US $28 million in donations to re- establish ‘reproductive health services,’ in the Tsunami-stricken regions of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, according to a UNFPA press release published Thursday.”

As expected, the Diplomad is inside-reporting on the job.

Seeing these UNocrats perched at the table, whispering to each other, back-slapping, shaking hands, they seemed like a periodic reunion of old cynical Mafia chieftains or mercenaries who run into each other in different hot spots, as they move from one slaughter to another, “How are you? Haven’t seen you since Bosnia . . ..” As the hours wore on, however, and I nervously doodled in my note pad, shifted in my chair, looked at my watch, and thought about all the real work I had to do that evening, I decided that, no, labeling them mafiosos or mercenaries was much too kind. They seemed more to be the progeny resulting from a mating between a mad oracle and a giant carrion-eater. They were akin to some sort of ancient mythical Greco-Roman-Aztec-Wes Craven-Egyptian-bird-god that demands constant sacrifice and feeding, and speaks in riddles which only it can solve. Yes, I decided, the UNocrats are great hideous vultures, roused from their caves in the European Alps and in the cement canyons and peaks of Manhattan by the stench of death in the Turd World. They leisurely take flight toward the smell of death; circle, and then swoop down, screeching UNintelligble nonsense. They arrive and immediately force others, e.g., the American tax payer, to build them new exclusive nests in the midst of poverty, and make themselves fat on the flesh of the dead. My friends, allow The Diplomad to present to you The High Priest Vulture Elite (HPVE).
These genuinely repulsive, arrogant creatures survive only because the world’s rich countries, the non-Turd World, allow them, too. We in the First World find it politically impossible to reveal their pronouncements as the cant they are. For many in Europe and among the New York Times crowd, helping maintain these mad vultures substitutes for genuine action, “The UN is on the job!” In addition, for many senior bureaucrats and minor politicians, there is always the hope that if they play the game right, they, too, can join the High Priest Vulture Elite: We see the ranks of the HPVE full of Scandinavians and leftist Americans, and the occasional pompous Euro-Brazilian, all of whom parlayed mediocre domestic careers of lip-biting humanitarian symbolism into well-paying tax-free sinecures in the HPVE.

Well, with oil-for-food finally buried, we knew they’d be on the prowl for new bodies.

The Diplomad has several good entries on the tsunami disaster relief, there’s no point linking to a single one. Just read all the way down. This bit though, cuts to the chase – in response to criticism of the US by former British International Development Secretary Clare Short that “Only really the UN can do that job, It is the only body that has the moral authority.”;

Do I really need to say anything more? “Only really the UN can do the job?” We have US C-130s flying in and out here dropping off heaps of supplies; US choppers arrive today; USAID is doing a knock-out job of marshalling and coordinating US and local resources to deliver real assistance to real people. The Aussies have planes and troops delivering stuff; even the Indians have goods on the way. The UN? Nowhere to be seen. OK, I’m not being fair. Last night they played host to a big “coordination” meeting of donors to announce that the UNDP has another large “assessment and coordination team” team arriving. Our USAID guys, who’ve been working 18-20 hrs/ day, came back furious from this meeting saying everybody would be dead if the delivery of aid waited for the UN to set up shop and begin “coordinating.” The UN types are upset with the US, Ms. Short, dear, not because we’re undermining them but because we’re showing them up as totally inept.

Which reminds me – any word yet from our Canadian 12-member “reconnaissance team” ?

(hat tip – Protein Wisdom)

He knows when you’ve been sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
So be good or else he’ll sell your presents on Ebay.
(hat tip)

Christopher Caldwell on the growing Islamic crisis in Holland (in tomorrow’s Weekly Standard), “Holland Daze – The Dutch Rethink Multiculturalism”;

“… the public has been told for two decades now that they ain’t seen nothing yet, that this is only the first wave of a long era of immigration, which they’d better learn to love. The immigrants the country now hosts have been difficult to manage. Part of the problem is the interaction of high immigration and what was for years a generous, no-questions-asked welfare state: As many as 60 percent of Moroccans and Turks above the age of 40–obviously first-generation immigrants–are unemployed, in the only major economy in Europe that has consistently had unemployment at or below American rates.
Most of these immigrants are Muslims. Muslim immigrants had begun to scare people long before Pim Fortuyn, the charismatic populist, turned himself into the country’s most popular politician in the space of a few weeks in 2002, by arguing that the country was already overloaded with newcomers. (Fortuyn was assassinated by an animal-rights activist in May of that year.) Already in the 1990s, there were reports of American-style shootouts in schools, one involving two Turkish students in the town of Veghel. This past October, newspaper readers were riveted by the running saga of a quiet married couple who had been hounded out of the previously livable Amsterdam neighborhood of Diamantbuurt by gangs of Muslim youths. There were incidents of wild rejoicing across Holland in the wake of the September 11 attacks, notably in the eastern city of Ede. The weekly magazine Contrast took a poll showing that just under half the Muslims in the Netherlands were in “complete sympathy” with the September 11 attacks. At least some wish to turn to terrorism. In the wake of the van Gogh murder, Pakistani, Kurdish, and Moroccan terrorist cells were discovered. The Hague-based “Capital Network,” out of which van Gogh’s killer Mohammed Bouyeri came, had contact with terrorists who carried out bombings in Casablanca in 2003. Perhaps the most alarming revelation was that an Islamist mole was working as a translator in the AIVD, the national investigative service, and tipping off local radicals to impending operations.
The question naturally arises: If immigrants behave this way now, what will happen when they are far more numerous, as all authorities have long promised they will be? It has been estimated that the country’s two largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, will be “majority minority” very soon (Rotterdam is today at 47 percent), and already 65 percent of primary and secondary students in both cities are of non-Dutch parentage. London’s Daily Telegraph, citing immigration experts and government statistics, reported a net outflow of 13,000 people from Holland in the first six months of 2004, the first such deficit in half a century. One must treat this statistic carefully–it could be an artifact of an aging population in which many are retiring to warmer places. But it could also be the beginning of something resembling the American suburban phenomenon of “white flight,” occurring at the level of an entire country.

Read the rest.

A Lileks offering for today, for those of us waiting and uneasily wondering if we shouldn’t thaw a lasagna for emergency backup.

I don�t think people in the Evil Coastal Godless Baal-Loving Media hate Christianity. I�m sure some hold it in disinterested contempt, the way they view NASCAR and Simplicity dress patterns and those giant salad forks some people inexplicably used as kitchen-wall decorations.

“Never in the history of Canadian Liberal asshattery has so much been owed by so many, to so few”

update: a petition has been launched.

It’s not just “exotic dancers” getting the fast track.
CTV news;

The RCMP has charged five people, among them an Immigration Canada official, with corruption and fraud after several morning raids in Ottawa Thursday morning.
The RCMP are alleging the group received up to $25,000 in fees from at least a dozen Arab immigrants seeking permanent resident status.
The arrests are the culmination of an investigation that began in January. There will likely be more arrests, the RCMP said.
RCMP Cpl. Nathalie Deschenes told CJOH’s Anna-Karina Tabunar that the suspects were allegedly approaching immigrants and promising that their applications would be fast-tracked for fees ranging from $4,000 to $25,000.
One of the five suspects is the 34-year-old operations manager at the Ottawa branch of Citizenship and Immigration.
[…]
These arrests will likely sharpen the focus on Immigration Minister Judy Sgro, whose resignation opposition critics have been demanding in recent weeks.
She is currently the subject of an investigation by the federal ethics commissioner, prompted by allegations she received an improper election donation.
Critics have also lambasted Sgro for her office’s decision to extend a residence permit to a Romanian stripper who worked on her re-election campaign; and over Ottawa’s controversial program to allow foreign strippers to get special work visas.

When the stripper story broke, my first reaction was that Sgro’s department has been infiltrated by someone with associations to organized crime. The connections to the sex trade are too well known and too obvious for even the dimmest beaurocrat to feign ignorance. In this case, it appears the corruption was well established and well supported. That tells us it’s been in place for a long time.

Breaking News from the NHL… Gary Bettman is now speaking about the status of the negotiations between the owners and NHL players association:

“Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blahblah blah blah blah blah, blablah blah blah blah blah. Blahblah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blahblah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah – bblah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah .”
[…]
“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah.”

Bob Goodenow. NHLPA Executive Director responds;

“Beak beak beak beakbeak. Beak beak beak beak beak beak, “Blah blah blah blah”. Beak beak beak, beak beak beak beak beak beak beak beak, beakbeak beak beak beak – beak beak! Beak beak beakbeak beak beak beak beak beak. Beakbeak. “

Yawn.

Climate Control Bureau senior policy adviser and Environment Canada spokesman Burns Coutts*(link now dead) gets a 5 year jumpstart on the One-Tonne Challenge.
*Dorothy Halton [,,,] was found strangled to death in her condo. She was an emergency room physician who was described by her friends and family as compassionate, energetic and talented. Her ex-boyfriend, Burns Coutts, a senior policy advisor with Environment Canada, was charged with first-degree murder. (December 2004)
Hat tip – Kevin Jaeger

Federal Gun Registry – $2 billion
Official Bilingualism – (another) $750 million
“Queen” Adrienne – $19 million
Sheila Copps “free” flags – $15.2 million
Leaky, combustable used submarines – swap for land lease in Alberta.
Search and rescue helicopters for crashed Snowbirds at 15 Wing Moose Jaw – $0

(Currently shopping for: tattoo equipment for Federal Prisons; new money launderers advertising agencies… )

Canada’s Strategy To Combat Terrorism : “Be proactive. Do not wait for threat to emerge. Announce preemptive surrender.”

Iraqis living in Canada and Germany face problems in taking part in next month’s elections because the two countries are worried that polling centres might be attacked, Iraq’s electoral commission said.

The Axis Of Appeasals.

The Canadian government told the IOM that “for security reasons it could not hold foreign elections on its territory”, Ayar said in a statement.
This could lead to a deal on voting arrangements for the country’s 36,000 Iraqis, most of whom live in or near Toronto, being delayed or even scuppered, he said.

Huh. Wasn’t that easy? If only we’d know about this “scupper Toronto votes” thing in time for the last federal election.
Then again, there aren’t any Libranos on the IOM ballots.

As revelations about the Oil-For-Blood compete with news about the sex abuse scandal by staff in Congo, comes this latest tidbit out of Kofi Annanland;

Today, Mbarushimana remains a free man, living in Paris. But there are troubling questions about his conduct in Rwanda a decade ago and the actions of the United Nations.��
“They killed on his orders,” says Tony Greig, an investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal. “They manned road blocks, they killed people, they got rewarded with cows and beer.”
Greig says eyewitnesses directly linked Mbarushimana to more than 30 murders, including killings of fellow U.N. workers.
[…]
So what did the United Nations do?
After learning of the allegations in 1999, the U.N. kept Mbarushimana on its payroll. In fact, when he was arrested for genocide, he was working for the U.N. in Kosovo – on a project to stop genocide.

Details of UNScam – the connection of Clinton pardonee Marc Rich, payments to Kofi Annan’s son, among others – are conveniently tracked at Friends of Saddam.
Via Instapundit

Well, think about this way – just maybe, after these east European prostitutes fresh faced bright young girls have worked a few years, and have a little nest egg built up, they’ll use it to pay their way through medical school and help to offset the doctor shortage in Canada.
It could happen!
And, just maybe, when she’s canned completed her work as Immigration Minister, Judy Sgro can apply her talents in a field she’s equally qualifed for. After all, she’s made all the right connections.
It could happen!

VISITS TO DRUDGE 11/23/04 – 009,461,140 IN PAST 24 HOURS

John Podhoretz reviews Alexander…

Oliver Stone’s Alexander, which opens today, isn’t just bad. It’s Springtime for Hitler bad. I haven’t guffawed this hard since I saw Airplane for the first time 24 years ago. This is one of the colossal catastrophes of all time. At a screening on Monday night, during the death scene of Alexander’s lover Hephaiston, people were screaming with laughter as Alexander made a big speech while, behind him in soft focus, Hephaiston went into a conniption fit and croaked. Plus, Angelina Jolie plays Alexander’s mother like she was Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. It’s almost worth seeing, but don’t, because if you’re like me and want to see OliverStone utterly destroyed for his artistic and political crimes, you will make sure not to contribute to the box-office coffers of what is sure to go down in the annals of moviedom as Heaven’s Gate with rampaging evil elephants (no, I’m not kidding).

If it’s that funny, I might just try to get out for that one.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, apart from living in that stinking hole, which, all things considered, sucked the big black camel dick.”

(Hat tip, Head Beeb via Charles Macdonald.)

Brace yourself for the flood of disturbing photographs and film clips from this breaking scandal.

The United Nations is investigating about 150 allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. civilian staff and soldiers in the Congo, some of them recorded on videotape, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.
�
The accusations include pedophilia, rape and prostitution, said Jane Holl Lute, an assistant secretary-general in the peacekeeping department.

Oh. Did I say “breaking”?

Lute, an American, said there was photographic and video evidence for some of the allegations and most of the charges came to light since the spring.
[…]
In May the United Nations reported some 30 cases of abuse among peacekeepers in the northeastern town of Bunia, where half of the more than 10,000 soldiers are stationed.
Last month, one French soldier and two Tunisian soldiers were sent home, U.N. officials said. Three U.N. civilian staff were suspended.
The United Nations has jurisdiction over its civilian staff but troops are contributed by individual nations. Consequently, the world body has only the power to demand a specific country repatriate an accused soldier and punish him or her at home.

Listening to Rawlco radio as I type this. Something about Baghdad… Ozzy Osbourne’s house break in…
Perhaps someone should splice in some footage of US Marines or prison guards, in order to bring this story the coverage it deserves.

Discuss.