The Israeli taxi arrived at Sderot just before noon. Thousands of terrorist rockets have rained on Israeli towns within range of Hamas-ruled Gaza, as the world mostly ignored the thunder. Those who knew about the attacks seemed to dismiss the rockets as just a nuisance, like mosquitoes. Yet the rockets have grown more and more powerful, to the point where the largest these days carries about 60 times more explosives than a hand grenade.
Michael Yon, from Sderot.
That was close.
Meet Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer and Bill Richardson and Reverand Wright and, oh, you know Grandma Dunham….
(Now, could all of you squeeze over and make room?)
Good evening, EBD here. Welcome to the Wednesday edition of SDA Late Nite Radio.
During the 1972 Munich Olympics a group of terrorists from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan entered the Athlete’s Village under cover of darkness; less than twenty-four hours later, 11 Israeli athletes were dead. I bring this up for a reason: I’m guessing that a lot of SDA commenters of a certain age remember how our schoolmates, teachers, friends, neighbours, and our journalists, were uniformly heartsick and appalled at the unjustifiable and inhuman brutality.
A lot has changed in the intervening 37 years. If a similar incident were to occur now, legions of people, including journalists, would launch into a discussion on the matter of Israel and in so doing obviate, almost incidentally, the matter of the volitional and moral agency of those who murdered the innocent athletes. This approach, which endlessly rationalizes inhuman brutality, typically flies under the banner of enlightenment and compassion. As Daniel Pearl’s father Judea wrote in the WSJ:
“Somehow barbarism, often cloaked in the language or ‘resistance,’ has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words ‘war on terror’ cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil. I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic.” (emph. mine)
Tonight’s musical selection, written by Noel Coward, and banned by the BBC, is a dark satire on the rationalizations of the British anti-war movement. WWII was still raging at the time the song was released in 1943 but, since the Battle of Britain had ended, Cowards’ naive, earnest character was moved to declare with disarming blitheness and no small measure of self-congratulation that “the war is over,” and to advocate for forgiveness and warm relations with their newfound would-be friends.
Coward could not possibly have known the extent to which the voices he satirically appropriated would later become mainstream, or that his topical, contemporary song was a harbinger of things to come.
Here it is, then: Noel Coward singing Don’t Let’s Be Beastly To the Germans.
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.
A lefty gets his aneurysm!
News, National – “World’s best conservative blogger from small town Sask”
Wendy Gillis (editor-in-chief) did a decent job converting our email/telephone interview into a readable piece, though a few errors and misquotes creep in near the end (the most important of which she might have passed on to cartoonist, Matthew Stefanson – I’m not a member of any political party, and told her so.)
Nonetheless, this had me laughing out loud.
You can go here to download the original article from The Sheaf (pdf -24 megs), or click here for a .jpg version of the piece itself.
Don’t be so hard on him…
Recent releases show the Liberals raised less funds than the Conservatives in 2008. A lot less! So perhaps Michael Ignatieff can explain why he donated a grand sum of $0 in 2008, a year the Liberals under Stephane Dion were trying to topple the Harper government.
I don’t think foreigners are permitted to make political contributions under Canadian law.
Besides, if you’ve been paying attention to Canadian media lately, it’s only a matter of time before the Natural Governing Party will be back in a position to get everything they need through Public Works. Iggy’s so confident, he’s got the memo boy on stand by!
h/t Bourque.
Update – trusty commentor Ted shares this intriguing rumour… Michael Ignatieff’s contributions are not in the Elections Canada database as they have been funneled through an organization known to party insiders only as “the Laurier Club” … developing…
(PS.. would someone down there help Ted get the fishhook out of his mouth?)
California’s farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming […] Chu warned of water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest and particularly dire consequences for California, his home state, the nation’s leading agricultural producer.
In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.
“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he said. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.” And, he added, “I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going” either.
A Sierra Club propagandist? A Gore trainee? Nope – joke’s on Chu, America. He’s Obama’s new energy secretary!
Whoops – better put a hold on those buggy whips…
[Obama’s regulatory czar] has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets. “[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,” Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the University of Chicago Law school.
“Extensive regulation of the use of animals.” That’s PETA-speak for using government to get everything PETA and the Humane Society of the United States can’t get through gentle pressure or not-so-gentle coercion. Not exactly the kind of thing American ranchers, restaurateurs, hunters, and biomedical researchers (to say nothing of ordinary consumers) would like to hear from their next “regulatory czar.”
From tax evasion, to terrorist pardons, to granting your goldfish the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – is there nothing that an Obama cabinet can’t do?
Is there…
India has warned US President Barack Obama that he risks “barking up the wrong tree” if he seeks to broker a settlement between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
MK Narayanan, India’s national security advisor, said that the new US administration was in danger of dredging up out of date Clinton administration-era strategies in a bid to bring about improved ties between the two nuclear armed neighbours.
nothing that…
The European Union warned the US yesterday against plunging the world into depression by adopting a planned “Buy American” policy, intensifying fears of a trade war.
The EU threatened to retaliate if the US Congress went ahead with sweeping measures in its $800 billion (£554 billion) stimulus plan to restrict spending to American goods and services
Obama can’t do?
“The United States will use “all elements of our national power” to deal with Iran, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday after Tehran said it had launched a satellite into orbit.”
On the rockiest day of his young administration, President Barack Obama did what surely made him happy for a while.
He left.
More – The Impending Obama Meltdown
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Tuesday night vintage show, here is a little vignette of Miss Mae West in Goin’ to Town, at the International Club in Buenos Aries (1935, 3:35).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Find an anti-Semite;
I have never infiltrated a terrorist sleeper cell, but it seems that the enablers of terrorism congregate at UCLA, specifically their “Middle East Studies” Department.
I recently attended a symposium on “Gaza and Human Rights.” It is perhaps more than a coincidence that by combining the words “sympathize” and “terrorism” one gets the word “symposium.”
[…]
This was no human rights symposium. It was a conference on how best to spread anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, anti-Americanism, and blood libel.
The audience did have some Arab attendees, but a healthy plurality of the crowd consisted of 50 year old bald white guys and their various leftist causes that have no common links with Gaza issues outside of extremism and wrongheadedness.
The Che Guevara supporters were there, as were the Communists. Many of the students clapped when they saw others clapping, but spent the bulk of their time text messaging each other and checking their Facebook profiles. This might be the only benefit to their lack of attention span. The indoctrination process may not have succeeded, since lengthy diatribes do not fit into a 140 character Twitter world.
The spreaders of bile on this hate filled occasion was put together by Susan Slyomovics, the Director for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA. She was listed as the “moderator,” an ironic term given that there appears to be nothing moderate about her. She began this session with typical left wing academic condescension.
“I have done extensive research on Israel and Palestine. After all, this is not Fox TV. This is UCLA.”
Perhaps she meant Fox News, unless of course she was comparing her research abilities to Homer Simpson. She is one elitist that needs a research assistant to help her with her insults.
The abused always kick downwards.
You know, it probably doesn’t need to be suggested, but it seems to me that the video linked has the potential to provide raw footage for years’ worth of Youtube creativity…
Past their best-by date – a “Dear Jack” letter.
It must bug you Jack, that the Tories are competitive virtually everywhere in the country except in two cities, while you are really competitive only in the poverty pockets. I can see it with my own eyes Jack. I travel through one of those pockets every day. Your representative there is hardly ever there. And he doesn’t need to be. A monkey could win that riding representing the NDP. It’s dirt poor and safe. If this country was poor as you pretend it is, your vote would be far more efficient. But it’s primarily a middle class country and that’s why your party is just a rump, a protest movement.
Speaking of Jack… how stupid does an NDP supporter have to be, not to have noticed that their party’s modern raison d’être is to grant a handful of career opportunists access to a parliamentary pay-tit?
Most organizations with a 48 year record of uninterrupted failure would have folded by now – unless there was something in it for the losers at the top.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Monday night jazz show, here are Thelonious Monk and his Quartet performing Straight, No Chaser in Paris in 1969 (6:52).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Via Powerline – “How did Minnesota get to the point where its state capitol can become an outpost of a terrorist organization from the Middle East?”
… In upstate New York, a street view car hit a baby deer on Five Points Road – and then recorded the whole thing on Google Maps. Nobody noticed until, well, someone noticed, prompting a Daily What blog post, floods of traffic, and then a sequence of five street-level pictures being removed from the site.
h/t RdeB
The Human Rights racket has hardly skipped a beat, despite the humiliation suffered at the hands of the Levant and Steyn fiascos. This beauty comes to us courtesy the Saskatchewan HRC.
The essence of the discrimination ruling appears to have occurred at two points near the end of a heated exchange. During that afternoon of June 8, 2006, Pontes was angry that Tataquason had been there for more than an hour, drinking coffee and talking to his wife while she worked. Tataquason testified that Pontes told him; “Can’t you see she’s working? Get out, this isn’t the friendship centre!”
At other points in his testimony, Tataquason instead used the words “friendship inn.” Saskatoon’s Indian and Metis Friendship Centre is ethnically based while the Friendship Inn is not. The distinction was not noted in the ruling by tribunal member Donald Worme.
The other remark came as Tataquason was being escorted out. Tataquason told Pontes he’d “contact the chiefs and complain about the way Mr. Pontes treated First Nations people.”
Pontes told Tataquason to “go ahead and call his chief.”
Tataquason said he was “deeply hurt” by the remarks. It caused him to “trigger” memories of residential schools he has tried to bury since childhood. Tataquason testified that he “spiraled into depression,” leaving him unable to work. The remark is also responsible for his return to drug use, his marriage breakup, his homelessness and his committing petty crimes, Tataquason testified.
His then-common law wife, Roseann Durocher, testified it also caused her to return to substance abuse. She testified she “wholly believes” Pontes evicted Tataquason because of his race.
But there’s more – the tribunal member who handed down the ruling is Donald Worme.
Don’s legal practice has been focused primarily on those issues that impact Aboriginal people individually as well as on issues affecting First Nations governments and entities. He has been active in promoting and protecting both the collective rights of Treaty First Nation people, and defending and advocating the individual legal rights of Aboriginal people in numerous legal and public forums. Social justice issues, primarily restorative justice, for First Nations people and communities remains an important focus on Don’s legal practice.
Pontes has been ordered to pay $7,000 – and he says he ain’t going to.
I agree – “Congratulate John Pontes on being one of the last men with a functioning set of balls in all of Canada:”
The Cataquiddick case looks stronger by the day.
Update – Youtube spoils all the fun. You can see the video here.
