Thursday tips.
The overwhelming compassion of Stephane Dion
Talk about giving primacy of place to the truly peripheral. I’m beginning to believe this man is educated far beyond his intelligence. Stephane Dion hereby fails one of the fundamentals of leadership: the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
And just think: a single-digit point swing in the next election, and this man could be Canada’s next Prime Minister.
The “Invite An Islamist Holocaust Denier To Columbia To Denounce Him” Tactic
Bumped, with updates.
How’s that working for you?
“This could serve as a vehicle for dialogue between the U.S. and Iran,” said Faiza Ali, speaking for the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Chancellors of six Iranian universities and academic centers on Tuesday expressed indignation at aggressive tone and degrading behavior of head of Columbia University Lee Bollinger in hosting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
They forwarded a protest letter to Bollinger to voice outrage at his ignorance of the principle of hosting the president of Iran, a country of great civilization and a 7,000-year history.
“It is a shame for an academic center that such hateful and impolite words are uttered by its president. It is regretful that the media owners easily elicit what they want the president of a reputable university to say in his lecture,” they said in the letter.
“Your statement about Iran was full of undocumented charges brought by the media and some of which were the outcome of misunderstanding which needs dialogue and closer study,” it said.
Just like the holocaust!
Properly chastized, Ahmadinejad declares that “the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed,” asserting that his government would disregard calls by “arrogant powers” to end its uranium enrichment.” .. while… “The Columbia speech brought him derision in many Western circles, but it apparently delighted audiences back in his country, who have come to depend on the Iranian leader to deliver his fiery anti-American sentiments.”
Update – It’s Ahmadinejad Week at Cox & Forkum!
The American Left responds: Ahmadinejad ‘sounds entirely too reasonable’
Y2Kyoto: In The Pay Of Big Socialsm
IBD;
George Soros is known for funding groups such as MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire’s backing of what he believes in problematic? In a word: transparency.
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute , which gave him “legal and media advice”?
That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.
That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly “censored” spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.
Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen’s OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.
We’ve mentioned Hansen in the past;
NASA scientist James E. Hansen, who has publicly criticized the Bush administration for dragging its feet on climate change and labeled skeptics of man-made global warming as distracting “court jesters,” appears in a 1971 Washington Post article that warns of an impending ice age within 50 years.
Big Wheat
Big Copper.
Big Aluminum.
Big Tungsten.
All of their prices have increased as fast if not more so than oil.
It’s True!
“Species in vulnerable habitats may be going extinct before their existence is even known.”
Apparently, this has been going on for a long time!
A New Stat Holiday For Manitobans
Just think of it as Mental Health Day.
Reader Tips
Note: Please refrain from link dumping in other threads, unless they are directly on topic. If I forget or don’t get a tips thread going early enough for your taste – too bad. Don’t do it.
Somewhere In Vancouver
A village has uploaded its idiot.
What’s The Opposite Of Diversity? (Update)
An update to the UVic Students’ Society ban on the military story;
It’s interesting. In the past few days, my feelings have run the gamut from shame, to anger, to excitement, to pride, to hope.
Today was a victory for democracy and freedom of choice. In an overwhelming display of disapproval for the UVic Student Society board of directors’ paternalistic and elitist attitude toward the student body, we packed over 100 students into the upper lounge of the Student Union Building (SUB) for the UVSS meeting. Many spoke of their frustration over the motion passed earlier this month, students abhorred by the decision of the board to give in to the demands of a small faction of the student body who wished to “send a message to the military” by banning them from recruiting in our SUB and condemning our men and women in uniform as “war criminals” on nothing but allegation.
At the beginning of tonight’s meeting, a motion was added to the agenda to put the matter of the ban to a student body-wide referendum at the annual general meeting, a movement which was passed. What ensued was more than 2 hours of speeches from students, both for and against overturning the motion from earlier this month to ban the Canadian Forces, though admittedly, we outnumbered the UVic Students Against War (SAW) group by an extremely wide margin.
The SAW crowd claimed that they were not suppressing freedom of speech or freedom of choice. They brought forth their usual tirades about “imperialism”, “militarism of Canadian society”, “allegations of torture”, etc, which they felt justified them in campaigning to the board on September 10th, even without a representative of the military present to defend the CF. One anti-war activist stood up and accused us of attempting to intimidate them by organizing and rallying our numbers to the meeting, saying that in fact it was US who were in the minority. I sincerely doubt that. They had just as much warning about the meeting as we did, organized appropriately, and brought out everyone who supported their argument. It just so happened we did the same thing and brought nearly ten times their numbers. One of them even played the race card, denouncing our side as “mostly white” privileged and upper-class students. When one member of our side, a student-soldier who had served seven months in Afghanistan, spoke of the merits of the Canadian Forces’ work in that country as well as emergency responses in crises at home, the minute SAW crowd interrupted with cries of “whatever!” “bullshit!” and “shut up!”
The motion to overturn the ban until the vote at the AGM was carried easily. Most of the board members who voted in favour of the ban abstained, while the remaining directors unanimously voted to overturn it.
So, for the next few weeks at least, the Forces are still welcome in our Student Union Building. The matter will go to a popular vote, as it should have in the first place. If the movement to permanently ban the military should win, I will of course be disappointed, but so be it. What counts is that the student body as a whole now has the opportunity to decide for themselves, not a board elected by 8% of all, manipulated by leftist radicals and voting on their own politics, rather than the voices of those who elected them in the first place.
This has become a movement which transcends the political spectrum of left and right. It is a matter of freedom of choice and the right to hear a pro-military voice in this institution, as well as pursue a career in the armed forces should we so desire. We = have the momentum, and I believe we will win the vote at the AGM in the end. If I am wrong, then at least the matter will have been settled by open democracy.
Graham Noyes
3rd year Political Science and Military History student, University of Victoria.
Update – Graham Noyes was interviewed by Charles Adler today. You can download the segment at the CJOB audio vault (beginning at 3:44).
Reader Tips
Tips thread.
In The End I Think It Was Worth It
Just to know he had his hopes raised.
Meanwhile, Back At Intended Audience Land…
Despite entire US media objections, negative propagation and hue and cry in recent days over IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s scheduled address at Colombia University, he gave his lecture and answered students questions here on Monday afternoon.
On second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall where the Iranian President was to give his lecture as of early hours of the day, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not going to attack any country in the world.
Before President Ahamadinejad’s address, Colombia University Chancellor in a brief address told the audience that they would have the chance to hear Iran’s stands as the Iranian President would put them forth.
[…]
The audience on repeated occasion applauded Ahmadinejad when he touched on international crises.
More from this equally legitimate source; – “Columbia University promised a full investigation into charges of police brutality after today’s reported Tasering of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had come to the Ivy League school to give the annual Adolph Hitler Memorial Peace and Tolerance Lecture.”
For all the fawning over Bollinger’s introductory remarks, Al Jazeera and Time are both giving Ahmadinejad the win;
It’s an faculty lunch speech dispatched against a man accustomed to command the secret police, rockets, EFPs, sophisticated propaganda and disinformation cells. Bollinger was game, but not only is he not in the same ring, he doesn’t even know where the fight is scheduled to take place. If this is what our intellectual leaders think is effective resistance against the Islamic Revolution then we are in serious trouble.
“What’s the most important thing Americans need to know about Iraq that they don’t currently know?”
Michael Totten has a first rate report out of Ramadi;
The Provincial Security Forces are a “national guard” of sorts controlled by the tribal authorities in addition to the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police in the area. They resemble a militia in some ways, but they’re a legal branch of the Iraqi security forces, authorized and paid by the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad.
“An ice truck dropped off its ice at a checkpoint,” he continued. “The truck behind it in line exploded. Everybody was killed. For a five or six hour period we weren’t sure the PSF would go back to work. But eight hours later they were back in business. They are 100 percent committed to anti-terrorism and anti-sectarianism.”
“What’s the worst thing you’ve seen here?” I said.
He wasn’t sure what to say and had to think about his answer for a few moments.
“The worst thing I’ve seen, I think, is the aftermath of a VBIED,” he said.
A VBIED is a vehicle-born improvised explosive device. In other words, a car bomb.
“I’ve seen that about ten times,” he continued. “Some people are turned, literally, into red blotches. Some are just vaporized. Their families will never see them again, not even their bodies. And the smell…there’s this awful car bomb smell, the acrid stench of homemade explosives and diesel fuel. Nothing else in the world has that smell. Most of the VBIEDs were intended for civilians, but the Iraqi Police usually stopped them first at the checkpoints. So they were the ones who usually got blown up. The driver of the VBIED would panic because he was caught and then kill everyone at the checkpoint. Nevertheless, the Iraqi Police kept bravely manning the checkpoints and replacing the police who were murdered. I’m telling you, they aren’t doing that for 310 dollars a month.”
That’s just a taste, Be sure to read it all.
Laying Down The Brush
I’m a professional artist today due to the singular inspiration of one man.
Rest in peace, Ken Danby.
What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?
University. A long-time reader writes;
I’m a 3rd year polisci/history major at the University of Victoria, and since Thursday, this has been the #1 issue here:
“UVic Students’ Society (UVSS) chairperson Tracy Ho broke a 6-6 deadlock at a Sept. 10 UVSS board meeting by voting that the military should be banned from the SUB.
“The motion was passed to clarify a policy amendment passed 10-1 by the last UVSS board of directors in April.That board amended the society’s policy on military issues to include, “The Society is opposed to the militarization of Canadian Society, and is unsupportive of a Canadian military establishment that violates international law and human rights.” […]
“The ban voted in on Sept. 10 means that the Canadian Armed Forces will be unable to attend the annual recruiting fair put on by UVic’s Career Services in the SUB every January. The Armed Forces attended last year’s recruiting fair.”Basically, a radical leftist anti-war organization with a membership around 20 decided to table a motion at the UVic student society meeting earlier this month to ban recruiters, and the UVSS board passed it, deciding we students are too “uninformed” to make our own decisions. The nearly 20,000 students at UVic have been painted with the same brush as these dozen or so wackos, and we’re not going to take it.
There has been massive outcry in response to the student union board’s decision. So far, it has resulted in the formation of a pro-recruiter facebook group numbering 271 in less than 48 hours, reactions from the Army.ca forums, another facebook group at the University of Toronto (if you can believe it) condemning UVic, and a massive stack of letters to the student newspaper. The facebook group founder is going to be speaking to The Zone 91.3fm radio station here in town, several organizers (myself included) will be passing out anti-UVSS flyers on campus, and the local media are being informed. Even students who are against the war have joined up with us because they recognize this for the blatant violation of democracy it is.
I’m just sending this to you to help dismiss the image of UVic students as a bunch of pinkos and hippies. The majority of students here want recruiters on campus, and we’re going to fight for our right to have them here at the upcoming student society meeting on monday. There is going to be massive attendance, as well as a major takedown of the radical lefties who have hijacked our democratic process.
I just submitted my application to the air force last week, so I’m not about to let this down.
The link above has to be read in its entirety to be believed.
(More – “Military ban an affront to free speech”.)
Reader Tips
Your thread for today.
“The issue here is not free speech.”
“It is naïve to ignore the uses to which Ahmadinejad will put his invitation. Over the past years, Ahmadinejad’s confrontational rhetoric and policies have resulted in diplomatic isolation and economic hardship for Iran. These developments are unpopular among Iranians. It is beneficial to Ahmadinejad and his regime, then, if he can claim to the Iranian people that his leadership is not hurting their country. If he can demonstrate that he is treated abroad as a respected leader, he will be better able to counter his critics at home. Columbia’s invitation thus gives political assistance to Ahmadinejad.
“Bollinger has written that “it should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas…implies our endorsement of those ideas.” That is true. But the argument against the official invitation of Ahmadinejad is not an argument against listening to his ideas. It is an argument against bestowing prestige on Ahmadinejad.”
CANCON! Mahmoud I’mmadasajihad has released a 70 page booklet condemning Canada’s human rights record, prompting fears that the move could trigger a swoonami at NDP headquarters.
Updates:
American Thinker: “To understand Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mindset and behavior require close scrutiny of the elaborate and intricate theology of Hujetieh Shiism, perhaps the most fundamentalist of the numerous Shiite sects.”
Schwarzenegger steals some thunder – “says he will sign legislation requiring California’s multibillion-dollar state pension funds to divest from [Iran].”
Speaking truth to terror – a round-up of reaction to Bollinger’s smackdown. He didn’t say anything that many others haven’t been screaming from the rooftops for months – including George Bush. But he said it to his face, so give him credit for that.
Blackwater: “one man’s terrorist is another man’s security contractor”
…the hatred which the Left harbours for Blackwater, and companies like it, is further illustrated by the fact that the New York Times (albeit in coverage slightly more grounded in reality) has taken to calling Blackwater’s employees ‘gunmen’, lumping them together with the Mahdi Army and al-Qaeda insurgents. Clearly the Times is taking the line that one man’s terrorist is another man’s security contractor.
Despite trumpeting the headline ‘Iraqi Report Says Blackwater Guards Fired First’, the Times is as unclear as everyone else about what happened on Sunday. (Note how the only reports coming out of Iraq that the Times doesn’t view with suspicion are those that portray Americans in a bad light; clearly one benchmark it thinks the Iraqi government has met is the ability to divine precisely what happened in a firefight from confused and conflicting accounts).
If you read the story you’ll discover that the convoy’s escorts had every reason to believe they were being ambushed. An Iraqi soldier who witnessed the incident said a car approaching an intersection that the convoy was about to cross ignored a policeman’s order to stop, and was on the wrong side of the road. Suicide car bombs are a fact of life in Iraq; the Blackwater men had to make a split-second decision, and they fired on the car. Witnesses said the escorts then threw non-lethal ‘sound bombs’ to keep people away from the scene. This apparently drew fire from Iraqi Army soldiers and police officers, and we know the rest.
In other words, according to the Times’ own account, after – rightly or wrongly – stopping the car, the Blackwater team had apparently contained the incident until they were fired on by Iraqi forces. It could be that the Iraqis thought the Blackwater guards were insurgents. However, you would think security forces in Baghdad would recognise an American convoy by now, and it’s no secret that some elements of the Iraqi army and police have been infiltrated by militias; but in this instance we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
So the incident appears to have escalated through a series of tragic mistakes. A number of different investigations are taking place, and that might have been the end of the matter for the time being. But Prime Minister Malaki chose to loudly condemn the actions of the contractors, and threatened to throw Blackwater out of the country (this now looks unlikely to happen), possibly by way of trying to shore-up his own fragile support. And of course the media piled in.
[…]
The Times, meanwhile, has been working the Green Zone trying to get someone to say something bad about Blackwater. The best it can come up with is this:
“But among the rank and file of security contractors, Blackwater guards are regularly ridiculed as cowboys who are relentlessly and pointlessly aggressive, carry excessive weaponry and do not appear to have top-of-the-line training.”
Blackwater’s contractors are drawn from the ranks of ex-military and law-enforcement professionals; many of them are ex-special forces. They may very well be overly aggressive, but they’re hardly cowboys. As the ‘myths v reality’ section on the company’s website notes, while 30 of its contractors have been killed, no one who Blackwater has protected has ever been killed or seriously injured. You’ll find a first-hand account of the lengths Blackwater goes to in ensuring the safety of its charges here. As Hillary Clinton would say, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief to imagine that the US State Department would entrust the lives of its personnel to ‘cowboys’.
(emphasis mine)
More analysis here (including video) – “BTW, the “no-one-else-was-shooting” thing ought to be pretty simple to resolve: Either that broken down vehicle was full of bullet holes when it got back to the Green Zone or it was not. Hopefully that will be in the joint report.”
h/t
‘Cause The Left Has All The Intellekshuals
They get stuff like analagees and stuff like that.