The state prosecutor’s office found that in 2009 the Madrid municipality had quietly moved nearly half its pollution sensors from traffic-clogged streets in the city centre to parks and gardens.
Related: The Great Thermometer Extinction.
The state prosecutor’s office found that in 2009 the Madrid municipality had quietly moved nearly half its pollution sensors from traffic-clogged streets in the city centre to parks and gardens.
Related: The Great Thermometer Extinction.
And how you can vote for Watts Up With That.
Multiculturalism and mullahs: The British prime minister gets it
…‘State multiculturalism’ has failed – Cameron [with video]
…
I wonder how much detailed coverage Mr Cameron…will get in the Canadian media…
The answer today: almost none (the Vancouver Sun did carry an AFP story–in their “Life” section and I suspect it was online only; the Toronto Star had a Reuters story, again I bet online only). Now why might that be? Your thoughts?
Update: Lowell Green of CFRA Ottawa did most of his show today on Mr Cameron’s speech, with extensive audio clips. You can listen live to the re-broadcast tonight at 8 pm ET (thanks to MadMacs of Bytown in “Comments”) or hear the show here at Feb. 7.
Upperdate: A nice analysis from Publius, with a glance back to Enoch Powell (and complete video of Mr Cameron’s speech):
Please, Go Back to Where You Came From
…
The shock of the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks began a slow questioning of this intellectual straitjacket. David Cameron’s about face on multiculturalism – he was actually attacking the somewhat more nebulous concept of “extremism’ – is belated recognition that Powell’s concerns were not wholly unwarranted. Cameron was also correct to stress cultural values as defining Britishness, rather than some trivial custom or symbol. This is something which Powell actually missed, or perhaps took for granted. Britishness is really an idea. A crude racial nationalism could never have held together the British union for so long, or built a vast and polyglot Empire. These were universal values, if often expressed in Anglo-Saxon terms.
The real victims of multiculturalism are not the old stock British (or Canadians, or Americans), but the immigrants themselves. There are few worse tortures imaginable, at least for decent and aspiring men and women, to escape from the primitive hell of much of the Third World, to reach a free and civilized land, only to be confronted with the nightmare you left. A nightmare made all the worse because officialdom regards these throwbacks not with horror, but with sympathy and support. A century ago the British were civilizing the world, today they are helping to de-civilized themselves. That is what Enoch Powell feared, and what belatedly David Cameron has realized.
Update: Multiculturalism and its discontents:
Gurmukh Singh…
It need not be added that if Mr Singh’s name was Mr Jones – or Powell – he’d be denounced as a bigot. He’ll probably be denounced as an Uncle Tom, in short order, by members of his own group. That he is stating the blindingly obvious to anyone who has attended these events, is beside the point. The pieties must be defended…
Affirmative Action meets Wild Kingdom;
Nothing’s worked. Not the clamp on federal timber sales that hammered Oregon’s mill towns. Not the lawsuits or the listing as an endangered species. The belated work to retain and restore its favored old-growth habitat will take decades to unfold. Twenty plus years of trying to save the northern spotted owl and it’s still slipping away.
Come summer, federal wildlife officials expect to finish a draft environmental impact statement that most likely recommends taking to the woods with shotguns. Over the next year, in three or more study areas from Washington to northern California, they might kill 1,200 to 1,500 barred owls — the larger, more aggressive competitor that has routed spotted owls from much of their territory and become, along with habitat loss, the biggest threat to their survival
Note: The spotted owl is a vital member of the ecosystem, as it permits environmentalists to kill off the forestry industry.
Abe Froman – “I say let the owls fight their own war. America always gets embroiled in these regional wars and they never seem to end well.”
h/t Lee
In 1961 a series of five-minute, one-song shows starring gospel legend Mahalia Jackson aired on American network TV. In tonight’s selection, from that series, she sings God Will Take Care Of You.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
Is it just my imagination or is there a striking similarity between the economic problems of Egypt today and where Obama was clearly taking America?
To open a small bakery, our investigators found, would take more than 500 days. To get legal title to a vacant piece of land would take more than 10 years of dealing with red tape. To do business in Egypt, an aspiring poor entrepreneur would have to deal with 56 government agencies and repetitive government inspections.
Update: Excellent video showing how bureaucratic red tape destroys economies. h/t Oz
While I very much support the right of ALL people to be free of the shackles of their oppressors, the pro-Egyptian Freedom campaign *appears* to be taking a pretty ugly left turn towards the all too familiar “Hate Israel” narrative.
Blazing Cat Fur reports on what is happening in Toronto and Pamela Geller illustrates what’s happening in New York.
Here’s a photo of Taliban Jack:
Listen to this video but try not to actually watch it. After listening to it, answer this question:
Was this a video of:
More brilliant economic analysis by using SWPL to predict bubbles.
I really dislike the idea of the CRTC becoming involved in the Usage Based Billing policy.
I don’t, in the least, disagree with UBB. If the large communications companies weren’t under the purview of the CRTC, they would have been doing it years ago because it makes sense; use more, buy more. There is a lot of dark fibre in the urban rings, but that doesn’t string regions together. A couple of key technological improvements in fibre have expanded bandwidth by a factor of ten or more, but that has allowed the backbones to keep up rather than future-proofing.
In about ten years, given no more improvements, there is going to be a big infrastructure charge to supply the bandwidth that will be required. Without the ability to charge users for what they are using where is that money going to come from?
It would be ridiculous to think that any company will invest in that kind of expense from the goodness of their hearts so it will come down on the users instead, UBB ensures that it comes down on those demanding the bandwidth the most.
Currently the arguments I’ve heard from the tin-foil hatted types is that the successful communications companies were pushing this because of businesses like Netflix or Skype cutting into their market. That argument may be valid, but a person really should look at both sides of the coin. Netflix, Skype and similar are basing their businesses on not having to pay for the road they run on. They are taking advantage of the broadband that was put in place without them or their customers contributing to the pot.
Instead the average and below average user subsidizes the Torrent fiend and those same lower bandwidth users will be paying for the future requirements because the Netflix user can’t have jitter in their HD. How many garage start-ups are developing Internet provided rich media applications? How much more bandwidth is going to be required in the next few years for the next YouTube?
Making everyone pay the same price regardless of usage isn’t “fair”, it’s socialism.
Cheers,
lance
Updated: The CRTC decision.
Nicola Timmerman’s Valentine’s Day reminder.
Please send a brief message to the troops. There are fewer and fewer messages I find, and often they are weekly from the same people.
Go to www.forces.gc.ca and pick English or French and then click on the right hand side box which says Write to the Troops. You can write a bilingual message if you want..
In our Saturday night tips music, filmed during a 1970 cross-Canada tour, The Band charges their way through a slop-happy version of Slippin’ and a Slidin’.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
Just waiting for our prime minister (see post immediately below by Robert) or the US president:
‘State multiculturalism’ has failed – Cameron [with video]
Earlier opinion:
1) The days of doing deals with Muslim extremists are over
As minds are concentrated on matters abroad, the Prime Minister is about to deliver a few home truths, says Charles Moore...
This afternoon [Feb. 5], in Munich, David Cameron will tell some of these home truths. As I mentioned in this column a couple of weeks ago, the Prime Minister has become exasperated by the way much of the permanent bureaucracy, in its attempt to counter violent extremism, ends up appeasing it [how about this, Mr President?].
Coming at the subject from his Big Society, “we’re all in this together” perspective, Mr Cameron finds the opposite – a sectarian world in which Muslims are encouraged by extremist leaders to identify themselves in as aggressive and separate a way as possible. They are taught to aerate their grievances in order to get political power and public money. He does not deny that some grievances exist, but he rejects the idea that they cause, let alone justify, terrorism. He will point out that it is often Muslim professionals born here, and prospering in middle-class freedom, who are most radicalised. He is horrified that young men educated at some of our best universities pick up noxious ideas from some student Islamic societies. He is caustic about the double standard which defends such ideas in the name of academic freedom: this would never happen if they were the vapourings of white racists.
The true boldness of Mr Cameron’s message lies in his view that non-violent extremism is an entry-chamber for terrorism itself. He blames Islamist doctrine – the political ideology advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood under the cloak, or rather the veil, of religion – as the bad thought from which bad actions naturally spring. It fills the dangerous vacuum created by multi-culturalism…
2) David Cameron takes on the ideology of Islamist extremism
Today’s [Feb. 4] detailed revelations in the Telegraph from the Wikileaks hoard reveal the depth of concern on both sides of the Atlantic at the way Britain has become a forcing house for the ideology of Islamist extremism. MI6 told the Americans it was worried about the “unique” terrorist threat posed by our “home grown” extremists. The US in turn poured thousands of dollars into funding its own secret counter radicalisation campaign…
I wonder how much detailed coverage Mr Cameron or these WikiLeaks will get in the Canadian media.
Update: This however is what one of the Globe and Mail’s leading reporters/columnists/deep thinkers/whatevers thinks:
Who’s afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Maybe Mr Cameron, that silly young man (text of his speech here)–Dauntless Doug Saunders of course knows better. He doubtless would have thought that Mao’s ChiComs were really just “agrarian reformers” (scroll down a bit)?
There’s a peculiar story out of Winnipeg about a dozen Muslim families who have recently arrived in our country and absolutely don’t want their children enrolled in music classes or the boys & girls in the same phys-ed classes together.
This is a perfect opportunity for a Jason Kenney moment, when someone, be they in the local Muslim community or the school board, looks these parents squarely in the eyes and politely but firmly says, “You are in Canada now, not your homeland. A big part of your responsibility as a newcomer to our nation is to allow your children to become somewhat integrated into the society where they are now privileged to be. Failure to do this is disrespectful to every Canadian around you.”
Will that happen? No, I doubt it. Expect a “Human Rights” grievance to be filed against Winnipeg’s Louis Riel School Division within a few months and CBC News to do an in-depth “analysis” of why it’s racist & bigoted to not respect the cultural sensitivities of these families.
John Ivison nails what I believe a lot of Canadians are thinking. You know, those outside of the liberal elitist circles in Ottawa & Toronto.