I can’t read his stuff without hearing that Canadian accent in my head.

Ross McKitrick;

By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity. People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

Everything looks like the Internet;

Two facts are often overlooked by pundits attributing North African social unrest to a social media campaign. First, according to the CIA World Fact Book, less than 10% of the combined populations of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia have internet access. Second, the literacy rate across these four countries averages approximately 68% of the adult population. Collectively, these penetration rates across the populations mentioned do not translate into the levels of protest seen in the streets of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Something more was at work.

h/t Adrian

…but that seems like almost too lofty a goal. It’s like focusing on getting in the NBA when you haven’t even learned to dribble the ball. I think we need more realistic goals for the Middle East; instead of Middle East Peace, how about Middle East Not Quite as Much War and Crazy Dictators?

Let the European bastards freeze in the dark;

What’s new is last week, the very week when Gadhafi and his son told the world they’d fight democracy protesters to the last bullet, was the week the European Union chose to criticize Canada’s oilsands because — get this — they say we have 20 more grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of oil than Libya does.

Michael Totten revisits Qaddafiland.

Whatever one may think of Mother Corpse (or Allan Gregg), this segment today on CBC Radio’s “The House” is really worth the listen, audio link in quote:

…
Can you rely on political polls and the pollsters who analyze them? Pollster Allan Gregg from Harris Decima and former parliamentary reporter Paul Adams have a few warnings…

Mr Gregg is truly scathing about the current breed and the use our media make of them.

Yuri Bezmenov
Uploaded by onmyway02. – Up-to-the minute news videos.
h/t Mad Mike

Loads of people here go spare at the mere mention of any possible Canadian link to torture in Afstan. So where are the howls of outrage when our government itself says the things below?

Man who could face execution in China loses deportation fight
…federal Crown counsel Kristina Dragaitis assured Judge Boivin on Tuesday that China can be trusted to try Mr. Zeng only on the charge of contract fraud he is currently facing. She said that a stiff prison sentence is the worst punishment he would face.
“To suggest they might be cute about it and use a low offence to avoid all the kafuffle about penalties is purely speculative,” Ms. Dragaitis added.
Ms. Dragaitis conceded that Chinese authorities sometimes use torture to extract confessions, but she said that their targets are usually members of religious groups, such as the Falun Gong. As a person accused of an economic crime, she said, Mr. Zeng need not fear similar treatment.
“The applicant doesn’t fit the profile of people who are tortured by security forces,” Ms. Dragaitis added. “I don’t think anyone can say there is no chance of torture, but the issue is whether it’s more likely or not.”..

More here on another country that also brings out the best in Canadian hypocrisy:

Corruption? What stinking corruption? And what stinking torture?

So, it’s a good thing Obama withdrew combat troops from Iraq, yes?

Brendan O’Neill;

You couldn’t have asked for a better snapshot of the chasm that divides today’s so-called expert classes from the mass of humanity than the snow crisis of Christmas 2010. They warn us endlessly about the warming of our planet; we struggle through knee-deep snow to visit loved ones. They host million-dollar conferences on how we’ll cope with our Mediterranean future; we sleep for days in airport lounges waiting for runways to be de-iced. They pester the authorities for more funding for global-warming research; we keep an eye on our elderly neighbours who don’t have enough cash to heat their homes.

Via

So the idea that economies are national and can be managed by an inspired bank of Canada is nonsense. These global expansions have been universal. They afflict everything, and when the party is on everybody thinks it’s great and they take on a whole lot of debt. The problem in the contraction is that the economy isn’t big enough to service the debt, so then you have to go into the great “bond revulsion” whereby, as I said, they’ll get marked down and priced to exceptionally low numbers. Many issues will be in default, a feature of a post bubble contraction.The fed or the bank of Canada can provide a stimulus, but all it is is throwing credit at a credit contraction and hoping that it will go away. I mean these guys are dealing with no empirical evidence whatsoever. They are dealing with theories that have been pulled out of somebody’s imagination.

An interview with Bob Hoye. (I know – I too thought the imagination was located somewhat higher on the body).
Related – The Irish Independent is reporting that the Swiss Central Bank no longer will accept Irish government bonds as collateral. The story also notes that one of the world’s largest bond firms, PIMCO, is no longer purchasing debt issued by the Irish government.

North Korea continued to show why it is known as “the international equivalent of Charlie Sheen.” The entire nation of Greece went into foreclosure and had to move out; it is now living with relatives in Bulgaria. Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, all the while insisting that they would be used only for peaceful scientific research, such as — to quote President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — “seeing what happens when you drop one on Israel.”

Read on – Dave Barry’s Year In Review.
h/t Lev

We, the undersigned.
h/t Larry

Hear my prayer.

It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

“My friends, let us adopt a totally new approach. Let us acknowledge that Jordan is Palestine.”

Part 1.

Full video and text of Geert Wilders’ speech in Tel Aviv.

Ezra Levant and Andrew Nikiforuk debate ethics of Alberta’s oilsands from Trevor Howell on Vimeo.

And there’s more, at Spin Assassin

Fix bayonets.

(Lyrics here.)
h/t subversible

Charles Adler at his best;

And now these goons who run the United Nations tell the greatest country on earth that we have a solemn moral duty to rehab Omar Khadr. We Canadians don’t take our moral cues from an organization that buried its moral compass in the jungles of Rwanda, that shot up its moral compass in the mountains of Yugoslavia, that defecates daily on its moral compass in Darfur.