The Shotgun Blog
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Saturday, October 20, 2007
Bobby Jindal: The Next Governor of Louisiana
Well, it's official. Bobby Jindal, an Indian-American who converted from Hinduism to Christianity in his teens, is the next Governor of the State of Louisiana. He wins outright - with 54% of the vote. The runner-up had 18%. Remember this the next time someone tries to claim that all Americans, Southerners, Republicans, etc. are racists.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 20, 2007 in International Politics | Permalink | Comments (76) | TrackBack
Extremist Iran=Fascism
Finally someone said it. To bad Tony Blair waited till he was out of office to do it.
Tony Blair: Iran extremism like rise of 1930s fascism
“I said straight after the attack of September 2001 that this was not an attack on America but on all of us. That Britain’s duty was to be shoulder to shoulder with you in confronting it. I meant it then and I mean it now.”
Posted by Leah Dowe on October 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (47) | TrackBack
Maher Arar & Afghanistan: The Globe's Colin Freeze Reports
Don't mean to steal Yoshi's thunder with another Arar post, but The Globe & Mail's Colin Freeze has another interesting story today casting doubt on the $10m man's CAIR- and left-wing-activist-endorsed "official narrative". In "Why the US won't remove Arar from no-fly list", Freeze (in an awkwardly-written story probably mangled by a pro-Arar editor) quotes Justice O'Connor and his commission counsel essentially admitting that Arar probably was in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, despite Arar's vehement and repeated denials:
...he stated in his findings that even if one were inclined to believe coerced confessions, the Syrian information would hardly be grounds for marking Mr. Arar as a terrorist for life.
"The training camps were diverse in nature," Judge O'Connor writes. "Some could be described as terrorist training camps, others only as mujahedeen training camps.
"Based on the Syrians' information, it could not be determined whether Mr. Arar was a member of al-Qaeda or had received specific terrorist training. He could have gone to Afghanistan as a religious Muslim with a desire to fight the infidels or he could have had more nefarious intentions."
A fascinating passage. O’Connor, whose inquiry was prohibited from examining US or Syrian evidence, and was not supposed to be examining whether Arar had ever trained in Afghanistan, nonetheless finds it necessary to make excuses for some hypothetical young man who may have headed to Afghanistan “with a desire to fight the infidels” (news for you, O’Connor - you are an infidel!). Further, the O’Connor commission specifically leaves open the possibility that Arar did train in Afghanistan:
In an interview Friday, Paul Cavalluzzo, Judge O'Connor's commission counsel, explained why the inquiry didn't settle the Afghanistan question.
"What the report says is that one's presence in Afghanistan is a very complicated and nuanced question. If the person is a mujahedeen fighting the Soviets ... we looked upon these people as freedom fighters and nationalists," Mr. Cavalluzzo said. "However, if they were in Afghanistan after 1996, when al-Qaeda moved to Afghanistan, and attended an al-Qaeda training camp, that's a different story."
He added, "as far as Arar is concerned, there was the allegation and it wasn't proven either way."
Aha! They seem eager to provide Maher Arar with a convenient excuse, should more evidence of his actions in Afghanistan in the early 1990s come to light. Apparently, it would be OK if he was there fighting infidel Soviets, but it would not be OK if he was there fighting with Bin Laden after his return from Sudan in 1996. However, there is an obvious, glaring error in this logic, of course: Arar was alleged to have trained in Afghanistan in 1993, when Al Qaeda was already well-established, and when the Soviet Union was already long tossed into the dustbin of history. Thanks guys, but your excuse for Arar doesn't make any sense.
Maher Arar was interviewed for three hours by a US Congressional committee this past week, via teleconference from Ottawa. I’ve only had a chance to skim through the video (which can be found here in RA streaming format), and although the parts I’ve seen have only featured fawning and friendly questions, I’m hoping to go through it carefully to look for inconsistencies or slip-ups, and, possibly, a tough-minded Republican asking serious probing questions.
As Maher Arar runs around the world undermining virtually any attempt at fighting Islamic extremists in our midst, we deserve to know if he’s doing it based on truth, or lies. More on the topic in my post from earlier this year, "Maher Arar: Why the US won't (and shouldn't) let go."
Posted by Neil Flagg on October 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Arar: The Missing Pieces
Once again the odious Maher Arar is in the news, continuing his endless saga of public weeping over his extremely remunerative and allegedly torture-filled stay in a Syrian prison. I would note that I use the word “allegedly” advisedly: so far as has been established, the evidence that Mr. Arar was in fact subjected to “torture” in Syria is entirely circumstantial and based upon the claims of an individual (that is to say, Mr. Arar himself) with an obvious persona and financial interest in exaggerating the hardships that he faced to the greatest possible degree.
As one might expect, Democrats – and Republicans of a certain bent – staged a contest to see who could kow-tow more thoroughly to the alleged victim. To say that the sight filled me with unutterable loathing would be putting it very mildly. My own Grandparents were, despite total innocence, actually deprived of their liberty entirely on account of their race. They had no shady connections or questionable associates. No pattern of suspicious activity. And they were not only imprisoned for substantially longer than Mr. Arar was, but they were also deprived of all of their property. They were unreservedly innocent – but they didn’t get millions of dollars, nor did they spend the rest of their lives attacking the government and undermining its ability to go about its business.
To tell the truth, despite endless news stories – and millions of dollars spent – for some reason we still don’t know the full story about Mr. Arar and why he underwent what he did. The conventional narrative is that, without any basis in fact, the RCMP, CSIS, and American authorities sent an innocent man off to be tortured by the Syrian government – presumably simply on accounts of his religion. The problem I have with this story is that it doesn’t explain why the RCMP, CSIS, and others – who have shown, how shall I say, an unusual solicitude towards those who practice the faith of Mohammed – would single out this particular innocent Moslem for such cruel mistreatment.
(Continued at adamyoshida.com)
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 20, 2007 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBack
Friday, October 19, 2007
Iran; 150 years under Putin
An excellent entry by a UK based Iranian blogger about the Russian-Iranian relations and Putin's recent visit to Iran.
Posted by Winston on October 19, 2007 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
John Howard: He's Still Got It
In Australia, John Howard has managed to get the Liberals back into the fight. The latest polls show the (good) Australian Liberals closing the gap on Labor from 56-44 to 53-47. Even better news is that the Liberal numbers in marginal seats are looking pretty good. In 1998, the Coalition (the Liberals and a few other parties) beat Labor despite losing the popular vote 51-49.
It's worth noting that Labor led the polls in the run-up to the elections in 1998, 2001, and 2004. In fact, in 2004, an Australian nemesis of mine took great delight in spending most of the year assuring me that Howard was doomed to defeat.
How does he do it? It's really very simple. Howard ignores the bleating of the media and, instead, goes in for the kill on key issues time and time again. And, of course, his Liberals are also relentless in their assault against the opposition.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 19, 2007 in International Politics | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The veil
I was on CTV's The Verdict tonight, talking about "reasonable accommodation". That debate is framed as a discussion about all immigrants but, as with so many other euphemisms, it's actually about Muslim immigrants or, to be even more accurate, radical Muslim immigrants. I am a hawk, but I truly believe that most Muslims in North America came here to flee various medieval hell-holes, not to bring the hellish qualities of Pakistan, Egypt, Iran or other places with them. This hope of mine was confirmed last February when the Western Standard published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and didn't buckle under pressure to recant. I couldn't believe it when our circulation department told me of how many Canadian Muslims bought subscriptions to our magazine in support of our stand, but it was true.
It is endlessly frustrating to me that the go-to media spokesmen for the Muslim community are radical Muslims, such as those at the Canadian Islamic Congress (whose president said on TV that any adult Jew in Israel is fair game for a terrorist attack) and CAIR-CAN, one of whose spokesmen debated against me tonight. Moderate Muslim voices like Tarek Fatah of the secular Muslim Canadian Congress are under-reported -- especially since violent threats against Fatah by radical Muslims forced him to resign.
Shahina Saddiqui was the CAIR-CAN rep tonight -- she was the one who tried to get the Jews of Winnipeg charged with hate crimes last year for watching a movie about Muslim terrorism. Of course, the cops laughed Saddiqui out of the police station -- that sort of thing doesn't quite work in Canada, yet. Saddiqui's left quite a track record of illiberal statements out there, including one that she tried to disclaim on the air tonight -- a comment five years ago explaining away female genital mutilation.
When someone with Canadian values hears about female genital mutilation, the only response is to recoil in horror and disgust. Saddiqui preferred to explain it as an attempt to keep Muslim girls chaste. As with so many other statements by CAIR-CAN, the Canadian Islamic Congress and other radicals, if you took the same words and had them spoken by white males -- say, a priest -- you'd be shocked. There is still a thick enough layer of political correctness towards these topics, even six years after 9/11, that an honest discussion is still tough to get to.
I'm impressed that Quebec's feminists have finally cut through that fog. A dozen years ago, they looked at Islam as an enemy of the white, Christian patriarchy, and thought "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and, as with so many other leftists, backed radical Islam against the West. They have since come to their senses, and realized that the Taliban, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and too many Canadian imams are so retrogressive on women's rights that they make the Pope look like Liberace on the subject by comparison.
That's what this is about: calling radical Islam to task when it is sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic and illiberal. Maybe one day we'll even hear the civil liberties types talk about the separation of mosque and state.
The public has given up waiting for the media, political class and even police to talk -- or even think -- clearly about these subjects. The most startling thing I saw on the rest of The Verdict was the SES poll that showed that only 5% of Quebeckers, and not many more in the rest of Canada, believe in making more one-way accommodations to immigrants. It's been thoughtfully argued that John Tory's defeat in Ontario was because of fears of opening the door wider to Muslim radicalism. (I regret that Calgary's Alnoor Kassam -- a fully-integrated, liberal, Ismaili Muslim -- probably lost votes in Calgary's mayoralty election for this same reason.)
The SES poll and these other political anecdotes are proof that ordinary Canadians are coming up with their own home-made political solutions to Muslim radicalism, since the establishment won't give them any formal options (and the Muslim community has not solved this problem themselves by properly isolating and disowning the radicals amongst them). It's a sure sign that the wilfully blind elites are losing the argument when, as on tonight's show, so many of them call for political "education" of the common people.
I would have liked to have had more time tonight, and our segment was difficult with three panelists in three different cities, but I enjoyed the chance to be the lone voice all night arguing against one-way multiculturalism, and I enjoyed trying to smoke out the facts beneath the euphemisms -- pressing on issues like women's rights, gay rights and freedom of speech, issues that were once the domain of liberals, liberals who now stand gagged by their own soft bigotry of low expectations of Muslims -- they refuse to call out racist, sexist, anti-gay Muslims where they're do so in a flash with white Christian men.
Watch the whole show here and give me your brickbats or bouquets.
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 18, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (54) | TrackBack
The Fox in the Hen House
UN Watch condemned the election of Libya today to the UN Security Council. “Electing Colonel Muammar Qaddafi to maintain international peace and security is like naming Jack the Ripper to fight sexual harassment,” said Hillel C. Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based monitoring organization. “We’re also concerned with the election of Vietnam, a country that continues to deny its citizens fundamental political and religious liberties.”
Neuer expressed concern that “the West is silent as Libya is quickly acquiring a series of new and important UN posts — including its unanimous August election as head of the UN’s “Durban II” anti-racism process through 2009 – even as its record on human rights remains appalling.” The UN and African Union will meet in Libya at the end of the month for Darfur peace talks.
From UN Watch
Posted by Leah Dowe on October 18, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Mandatory Sense
The predictable drumbeat has begun against the government's pledge to crack down on crime. Naturally, the Liberals have already started one of their instant issue-based Facebook groups over the issue. Typically, they're trying to prove that crime is practically unknown in the Trudeaupian wonderland usiing statistics about “
Canada's overall national crime rate, based on incidents reported to police” a phrase which make these statistics are worthless for determining anything about the real state of the country.
Indeed, while we’re at quoting things from Statistics Canada, here’s this, courtesy of the Hon. Maxime Bernier:
“88 per cent of sexual assaults, 69 per cent of household thefts, 60 per cent of physical assaults were not reported to police.”
- Criminal Victimization in Canada, Statistics Canada (2004)
Now, I’m not saying that the Tory policy is a panacea – but at least it’s something. They’re not talking about an American-style system here: they’re talking about, at the very least, ensuring that career criminals aren’t let free time and time again, that people who commit serious acts of violence with guns aren’t released the next day to shoot at someone else, and that serial pedophiles won’t be set free to harm children, accompanied by a warning from the police that the criminal they have just released into the community will almost certainly offend again.
Seriously, the best thing that the Liberal Party has had going for it over the years is that it’s usually fairly tactically clever. Attempting to convince people that crime is all in their heads as a result of Evil Corporate Media Propaganda™ is just plain dumb. One need only to drive through some parts of Vancouverto see that anarchy has overtaken some of our streets.
This is a particularly cruel on your part as, most of the time, the unreported crime and constant disorder doesn’t victimize people like me – and probably like most Liberal activists – I live on the third floor behind a heavy deadbolt and I walk down to an electrically immobilized car in the morning. Sure, there’s a chance that I’ll be randomly caught in the crossfire of a gang war, or perhaps killed in a robbery-gone-wrong at work, but the chances of anything happening to me on any given day are slim-to-none.
On the other hand – who do you think is most likely to be victimized by serial criminal offenders let loose upon the streets to shoot, rape, rob, and murder practically at whim? Why, it’s the very poor and dispossessed about whom they care so deeply and from which Liberals derive their deep sense of moral superiority over the rest of us.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 18, 2007 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Anti-Indie Pop Fascism Marches On
So basically, the other day U.S. Customs seized a hard drive that a courier was attempting to carry across the border with some new songs by Death Cab for Cutie on it. Now, naturally, the paranoid elements of the left are suggesting that it was a case of fascist censorship, or whatever.
It's probably worth noting that, apparently, for whatever reason the employee who was carrying the hard drive was refused entry into the United States - for reasons which aren't made at all clear in the article. Having crossed the U.S. border many, many times at the same crossing (the Peach Arch) I feel confident in saying that, in general, the US border guards don't turn people away without a reason and insofar as there was some reason why the person carrying the hard drive was refused entry the seizure of said hard drive is probably somehow related.
But, anyways, this really stood out in the article itself:
Walla said he believed the confiscation was random, but Barsuk and some music publications hinted it may have been more than a coincidence that such a political album -- it includes songs criticizing the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq war and the firings of U.S. attorneys by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- was seized.
Political protest music is one thing - but, really - a protest song about the firing of a few US Attorneys? WTF? Never mind that, if you've ever heard anything by Death Cab, this is all the more bizarre.
In general, this is yet another sign of the global left's descent into insane paranoia. Is it reasonable for any sane person to believe that American border guards sit around listening to audio files on computer hard drives for anti-George Bush lyrics? Really? Never mind - are there no editors at the Associated Press? No one to ask if there's a newsworthy angle in offering an outlet for the narcissistic delusions of some emo musician?
There’s no story here, other than the non-story that these people are obviously, clinically speaking, crazy. It’s pretty hard to have a reasonable argument about anything with people who seriously believe (and report!) that the government is working overtime to attempt to suppress the revolution which might otherwise be incited by indie pop protest songs about Alberto Gonzales.
The article is worth reading, insofar as it provides an archetypical example of the "false balance" technique which the leftist media loves to adopt. Namely - print a bizarre and entirely unverifiable allegation, then seek balance by quoting someone denying said allegation halfway through the article. Typical.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 18, 2007 in Media | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBack
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Dion’s fate sealed: Phase one of Iggy/Rae takeover complete
(Cross-Posted to Flaggman's Canada)
(Pic h/t National Newswatch)
Before today's decision to prop up the Conservative minority government, there seemed to be two schools of thought in pundit land on what the Liberals should do: a) avoid defeating the government to "fight another day" until the party's fortunes under Stephane Dion improve; and b) trigger an election, and use the expectedly-poor results to justify the removal of Dion as leader.
Neither scenario made much sense. The Liberal Party, in every region of the country save for Toronto proper, is literally imploding under Dion. More time means more destruction. And to trigger an election knowing the results will be a dramatic loss of seats would be, for a party already strapped for cash, absolute suicide. No, the backroom boys in the Liberal Party had neither of these scenarios in mind. They have a third, which seems to have been put in motion in the wake of the Outremont debacle, that will see both an election avoided, and Dion gone.
Here's what I believe is happening: the back-room masters have decided to allow Dion to make himself look so bad - through his crumbling inner circle, his lack of caucus support, and his bizarre justifications for letting the Throne speech pass - that the party will have no choice but to call a quick leadership review, dump him, and hold a Bob Rae-Michael Ignatieff battle to move on to a new era with a spring 2008 election under the new leader.
Just look at Iggy's sly mug. He's been looking like this for days, as he's bounced from camera to camera, telling anyone who will listen that "Canadians don't want an election" (the familiar call of a party that knows it's going to get its ass kicked). And hey, what do you know - Bob Rae (whose brother, John, happens to have been recently reinstalled as the key man in the Liberal Party's back-room) has been bouncing around from camera to camera saying the same thing!
I don't think they're in collusion - but I do think they understand well the dynamic that needs to play out for their party to have any life whatsoever in the next several years, and for themselves to have a viable party to lead. They each want to take over the ship, and they each realize that they need to do so with a reasonably-sized caucus. So, they each needed to make sure Dion did what they wanted - avoid an election that could reduce them to Tories-circa-1993 levels.
So it goes - phase one, the survival of the current caucus, is complete. Phase two - the removal of Dion - starts tomorrow. BEFORE he has a chance to vote the government down on the crime bill next week.
Posted by Neil Flagg on October 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
The Liberal Party, the Conservative Party and the Media Party
It's okay for political activists to write for newspapers -- that's what the editorial columns are for. But what's the excuse of Richard Brennan, a Toronto Star reporter?
As Steve Janke points out, Brennan's style isn't just to collect news -- it's to make news, and then to report on the story he creates. That's dirty tricksterism when it's done by a political campaign. When it's done by a reporter, it puts a lie to journalism's claim to be a profession.
Here are Brennan's latest thoughts as a "reporter", as shared with a left-wing activist magazine: Harper follows "the Republican handbook" and wants to "produce unfiltered messages disguised as news". He uses "bully tactics" towards reporters.
Those are fighting words. They're fine for someone who is a political opponent of Harper; or even for someone whose job is to "fight" for more "rights" for journalists on Parliament Hill, as the Parliamentary Press Gallery, a quasi-union, seeks to do. But can someone who is clearly such a partisan pretend to write straight reportage for the "news" pages?
It's difficult to imagine the mirror image of this -- a conservative activist who rails against Liberals during his free time, but who keeps a day job as a "reporter" in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. He would be fired; before that he would be shunned by his colleagues. But none of that happens to Brennan. No wonder Harper treats the gallery with such gleeful contempt.
UPDATE: A commenter points out something that I missed -- Brennan is the president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Does that make it better or worse? In this fight between the gallery and the P.M., it's clear that Brennan can't separate his duties as PPG president and reporter -- he's consumed by his PPG fight.
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Enlightened Comment of the Day: John Derbyshire
I have made several attempts to describe or summarize it, but words fail me: read the whole thing.
Cross-posted to the China e-Lobby
Posted by D.J. McGuire on October 17, 2007 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
The Cold Civil War?
In Maclean's, Mark Steyn wonders if America is engaged in a "Cold Civil War" - that is to say, a civil war without direct confrontation. I've been wondering the same thing for some time.
Indeed, I've been asking a simple question without getting a good answer: what if 2008 ends up being like 2000? What are the chances that it would result in blood being spilled? I would guess that they're pretty high - certian elements of the left are growing daily more violent and more distanced from reality.
I think that there's another - partially hopeful, partially gloomy - analogy to describe the present situation. While we hear a lot of loose talk about "the fall of the American Empire" a la the fall of Rome - I think that the United States today is far closer to the Roman Republic at the end of its life than it is to the Roman Empire. Niall Ferguson likes to call the United States an "empire in denial." I think that's actually very apt.
Like Rome, circa the first century BC, the institutions of the Republic have been corrupted by a toxic brew of extreme personal ambition and misguided populism. Few, deep down, have confidence in their ability to fairly and correctly settle the problems of the day. Similarly, like Rome, the United States posesses great latent power which it is unable to effectively use because of the failure of its political institutions.
I'd note, in the interests of full disclosure, that this argument - to some extent - is raised in Orson Scott Card's novel "Empire" without really taking a position for or against or going into detail.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 17, 2007 in International Politics | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBack
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Way up North
And, finally, here's the last of my items that were not published when the Western Standard went under. It's just a short one, and was to run as a "Whaddya Know?" feature in the Western Front section. The question was:
Will the establishment of a new Inuit government in northern Quebec disenfranchise non-Inuits?
It certainly seemed so, based on news reports in August that described how a landmark agreement had created a new Inuit body that would rule the northern third of Quebec. But a Quebec government spokesman says the impression left by the media was simply false. In truth, the new government will be based on geography, not race or ethnicity. Nevertheless, the new body bears some close scrutiny.
The agreement in principle, which has yet to be approved by the Quebec or federal governments, will establish the Nunavik Regional Government (as opposed to the already existing Nunavut Territory), which initially will consolidate social, school and health services into one large regional government. Local councils will continue to exist in the 14 member communities which are home to about 10,000 people.
The government spokesman, who talked on the condition of anonymity, says the NRG will encompass all the area in Quebec north of the 55th parallel. The body will have only those powers which are delegated to it by the Quebec National Assembly, powers which at this stage do not include the collection of income or sales taxes. All residents of northern Quebec, regardless of ethnicity or race, will be eligible to sit in the NRG’s 21-seat assembly, he says.
This should make the new body democratic. However, the 900-strong Naskapi aboriginal group, which lives on the southern edge of Nunavik, is worried its interests will be steamrollered by the Inuit majority. Also of concern is the fact that the NRG may yet get more powers, which would create a province-like government that, although largely funded by southern Quebeckers, would be unaccountable to southern voters.
#
--TERRY O’NEILL
Posted by Terry O'Neill on October 16, 2007 in Aboriginal Issues | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Deep sea, deep green
Here's another of my unpublished stories from the vaults of the late Western Standard. I wrote it early in the summer, so it's a bit dated now. For more news about the company I'm reporting on, see its website: http://www.planktos.com/Newsroom.
Somewhere off the shores of the Galapagos Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, a lowly phytoplankton needs a boost of iron. But, according to Planktos Corp. of San Francisco, plankton living in this environmentally important area of the sea can’t get enough of their daily iron dose, a problem that’s causing the population of the minuscule sea organism to collapse, adversely affecting all sea life in turn. But Planktos, a publicly traded company that employs controversial Vancouver financier Nelson Skalbania, has a solution: dump 45 tons of iron filings into the ocean, thus not only pumping up the carbon-dioxide-gobbling phytoplankton but also reducing global warming in the process.
Save the seas and cut global warming at the same time? Planktos says it’s feasible, but its plan hinges on eco-sensitive corporations, individuals and governments paying the company to spread the iron dust in the ocean to offset their greenhouse-gas producing activities elsewhere. But while the company and its European subsidiary, KlimaFa (which specializes in reforestation), churn out press releases promoting their carbon-offset work, critics say the company’s science and business plan are both questionable.
Shares of the company were trading on the risky OTC Bulletin Board in the (US) $1.30 range in mid-July, compared to eight cents last fall. Critics have noted that Skalbania was charged in 1997 and ultimately found guilty of stealing $100,000 from an investor. He was also involved in several stock-market ventures of dubious integrity.
The centerpiece of Planktos’ activities is a ship called the Weatherbird II, which sailed from Washington, D.C. last spring but by mid-summer was still in Florida taking on 10 tons of iron, along with supplies and scientific equipment to ready itself its test-run “voyage of recovery” to the South Pacific. “Our real goal this year, more than any of the business experiments,” spokesman David Kubiak says, “is to try to get some public awareness, to put plankton right up their with penguins and polar bears, the poster kids of planetary distress.”
Stirring words, but they’re largely falling on deaf ears among environmentalists. "This is an irresponsible and unpredictable venture by purely profit-driven individuals," Elizabeth Bravo, of Accion Ecologica of Ecuador, said earlier this year. "It threatens our climate, our marine environment and the sovereignty of our fisherfolk and it should be stopped."
Nevertheless, the acting leader of the B.C. Green Party, Christopher Bennett, says he is intrigued by the Planktos plan. “My gut reaction is that polluting the ocean can’t be the way to clean the ocean or the planet,” he says. “But I’m open to new ideas.” In the meantime, he’s calling for the formation of a voluntary association to assess all companies’ environmental claims. “Based on my own experience over the last two to three years,” says the former corporate public-relations consultant, “30-40 per cent of businesses are making claims about their environmental record that are false, that are probably not entirely accurate at all.” Will Planktos end up in this group? Only the plankton know for sure.
#
--TERRY O’NEILL
Posted by Terry O'Neill on October 16, 2007 in Science | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Ignorant Comment of the Day: What was Stanley Kurtz thinking?
Stanley Kurtz's latest column on Stalinist North Korea (National Review Online) is quite unique; in the column, he managed to be dazzlingly brilliant and shockingly ignorant at the same time and with the same words. That's hard to do.
First, I'll dispatch with the brilliant part: Kurtz is one of the very few pundits who has never really signed on to the six-party nuclear talks, and now that Stalinist North Korea's nuclear dalliance with Syria is an open secret, he aims squarely - and correctly - at the Bush Administration for its weakness . . .
. . . The piece is brilliantly and cogently written for its limited scope. However, it is exactly the limitation in scope that also makes the piece completely useless.
Why do I say that? Simple, in all of Kurtz's 2,200+ words on Stalinist North Korea, the number of times he mentioned Communist China was - exactly - zero.
(Full post at China e-Lobby)
Posted by D.J. McGuire on October 16, 2007 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Monday, October 15, 2007
Give your head a shake
John Sutherland, the engine driving the insightful JohnOnLife website, has been quite actively lately. His newest entry is a direct challenge to those who continue to believe that pro-lifers are a small, violence-prone minority.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on October 15, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Nutty Profs II: Readers' Choice
Here is another of my stories that ended up on the shelf when the Western Standard folded earlier this month. It’s my second annual look at Canada’s “nuttiest professors,” which features a list compiled with the help of our readers. Enjoy.
When West Vancouver Secondary School graduate Mitchell Neal decided over the summer to enroll in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, the institution’s good academic reputation was only one factor in his choice. Many of his friends had decided to attend university “back east,” so social considerations also figured in his choice. “Generally, I’m looking forward to enjoying campus life at a reputable university,” says the 18-year-old, “and to the experience of living away from home for the first time.”
Neither Neal (not his actual surname) nor his parents visited the campus before he picked Queen’s, but word-of-mouth recommendations, bolstered by the fact two of his cousins had traveled east to attend (and eventually graduate from) the Ontario university, helped seal the deal. But the decision-making process doesn’t come so easily for all the university- and college-bound young men and women emerging from the ranks of the 340,000 students who graduate every year from Canada’s high schools. Choosing the right college or university to match one’s interests and aspirations can be a daunting task. And considering there’s an average of more than $4,300 a year in tuition on the table, not counting books, travel and room-and-board, you certainly don’t want to make a mistake.
The decision-making process is not made any easier by the fact there’s no generally-accepted Canada-wide system to measure the institutions in such important objective, quantitative areas as academic budgets, average class size and professorial qualifications. One national magazine does attempt an annual survey, but its results are marred by the fact that many leading universities have refused to participate in the ranking exercise.
Moreover, the yearly results shed virtually no light on subjective or qualitative issues involving such vital areas as the standard of teaching and the biases of particular departments, important considerations when enrolling in such contentious and often left-leaning disciplines as political science, sociology, anthropology, English and history. Many students turn to the popular ratemyprof.com website in an effort to glean some insight, but it’s a strictly anecdotal forum that allows students to rate individual professors, not entire departments, faculties or universities.
The Western Standard’s annual “Nutty Professors” listing attempts, albeit in a completely subjective manner, to address this information shortfall. We think that what goes on inside individual classrooms is important and that it matters whether a poli-sci professor is an unapologetic Marxist or paranoid anti-American, a description that fits some of this year’s inductees.
Indeed, at a time when such avant-garde and toxic concepts as “whiteness studies” are being entrenched in universities, it’s important to know who is propagating ideologies that many students and parents would undoubtedly find objectionable or repellent. Consider the fact that one “whiteness studies” proponent has explained that the discipline contends, “There is no crime that whiteness has not committed against people of colour . . . We must blame whiteness for the continuing patterns today . . . which damage and prevent the humanity of those of us within it.”
Nevertheless, there doesn’t actually seem to be any concrete way to assess whether an entire school is, for example, tilting too far left. In the U.S., the best measure seems to be the Princeton Review’s annual listing of the continent’s best universities; this year’s edition names 366 institutions, including only two Canadian universities, McGill in Montreal and the University of Toronto. The report is based on interviews with 120,000 students. Author Robert Franek explains that students’ answers to questions, such as whether they are nostalgic for Ronald Reagan or for Bill Clinton, help place their institutions on the political spectrum.
For the record, neither of the Canadian universities made the top-20 list in either nostalgia category. Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California was home to the most students pining for Reagan, while Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina laid claim to the most students yearning for Clinton. Thomas Aquinas also finished second on the list of institutions where students pray on a regular basis, while Warren Wilson finished third on a list where students saw themselves as Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, clove-smoking vegetarians—all of which should paint a rather precise picture of the respective schools for high-school grads and their parents.
“What we found, what students are telling us, is that there are different types of universities,” Franek says, “that there are universities that are unapologetically liberal, that are unapologetically conservative in their political views, religious views and so on. You should know what the political climate is likely to be on that campus. That’s very difficult to find in any university-published publication or certainly on a university website. We’re providing that information for them.”
This works for anyone planning to attend a U.S. institution, McGill or the U of T, but it’s of no help to someone planning to attend one of the other 63 universities in Canada. Alex Usher, vice-president of the Toronto-based Educational Policy Institute, a think-tank, figures there’s just one sure way to take the measure of a university’s intellectual climate. “Go visit,” he says. “It’s the only way you’re going to know it . . . I think even on a quick campus visit, you can get a pretty good sense. Certainly, the differences between institutions are usually fairly apparent if you just walk around, watch people go in and out of classrooms, see what’s on the bulletin boards.” Regardless, he doesn’t know of any Canadian university, other than explicitly religious ones, that have “what you would call a consistent ideological position across a range of subjects.”
In light of the failure of the aforementioned national magazine’s effort to produce a comprehensive comparison of Canada’s universities, Usher’s EPI has called for the adoption of national post-secondary standards, built on comparable quantitative data. Burnaby, B.C.’s Simon Fraser University is one of about two dozen Canadian institutions that have dropped out of that magazine’s ranking project. “We decided a year or two ago that we would no longer put the bureaucratic effort and cost into filling out the complicated survey that [the magazine] requires for its rankings,” says SFU president Michael Stevenson, “because, frankly, the rankings convey information that is really garbled and indefensible.” Nevertheless, Stevenson explains that the university is open with its data, and he understands that the magazine will be modifying its approach in the future.
On the more subjective side of the equation, the administrator believes that parents and prospective students should assess universities by careful visits.
As for such student-based, anecdotal services as ratemyprof.com and the Princeton Review, Stevenson points out that universities themselves have long conducted “fairly systemic” surveys to chart students’ feelings about their professors. And, anyway, “I don’t think we learn a hell of a lot from these things, to be honest,” he says. “Generally speaking, what we learn is that small residential communities encourage a great sense of satisfaction and enjoyment on the part of students who attend them. And students who go to big, comprehensive, research-intensive institutions feel more alienated from those institutions. (According to the Review, this is certainly true of the U of T, which, with more than 59,000 undergrads, is Canada’s largest university. It ranked sixth worst in North America in frequency of class discussions, third worst in availability of professors, and 18th worst in student happiness.)
Stevenson also downplays ideological considerations, saying he doesn’t think Canadian universities “vary a lot in this respect.” Regardless, he doesn’t think students should avoid any university because of an ideological tilt. “I personally think that would be a shame,” he says, “that, indeed, the glories of a university education are to be exposed to new ideas and to controversy, and to the opening up of intellectual horizons. But at the same time to have arguments and debate disciplined by very strong traditions of intellectual rigour and evidence.” It sounds great in theory, but try advancing a defence of the patriarchy in a typical women’s studies course and see what happens.
Peter Cowley, for one, thinks concern over ideological tendencies is legitimate, and he sees no reason why a tool couldn’t be developed to measure faculties’ leanings. “There might be some way to search the databases in scholarly journals,” says Cowley, who is the director of school performance studies at the Fraser Institute, “and somehow or other categorize the content in such as way as to point to the possibility that a given group of academics is more or less radical.”
What a researcher would probably find, he supposes, is that “the output of these various faculties within each institution may be radically different with regard to the level of nuttiness.” Almost everything is measurable, he concludes, if you put your mind to it.
For now, though, Canadians will have to make do with anecdotal evidence, word of mouth, personal observations and, of course, this magazine’s unapologetically subjective and not at all rigorous list of the country’s nuttiest professors.
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And so, without further ado, here are our new inductees in the Nutty Profs hall of fame:
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Omar Aktouf
Professor of management, Ecole des hautes études commerciales, Montreal
Aktouf is an anti-American, anti-capitalist far-left ideologue of the first (or should we say lowest) order. Like most self-respecting Yankee bashers these days, he subscribes to the theories of French paranoid Thierry Meyssan, who says the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon was a fraud. A favourite of the left-wing Council of Canadians crowd and a twice-failed candidate for leftist parties, Aktouf put a firm stamp on his reputation last fall when, in addressing a student conference in Montreal on African development, he called U.S. president George Bush an animal, “with all due respect to animals.” He then accused the Bush administration of carrying out the “nazification” and “fascification” of the capitalist system, and sees American policies as contributing to a third world war. Finally, Aktouf lamented that political decision-makers “don’t want to hear this communist, they don’t want to listen to me.” No wonder!
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Alexander Keewatin Dewdney
Professor Emeritus of computer science, adjunct professor of biology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.
An experimental film-maker early in his career, the self-professed nature lover earns his place on our list through his membership in the delusional “Scholars for 9/11 Truth” organization, which has called al-Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on the U.S. “one of the greatest hoaxes of history.” The “academics” aren’t exactly clear on who was responsible for killing 3,000 civilians and what their motives were, but they smell a rat in the person of George W. Bush. “We’re not a bunch of yahoos,” Dewdney has protested, “we’re professional people.” Maybe so, but his primary reason for doubting the official 9/11 line is remarkably flimsy. A Muslim convert himself, Dewdney reasons that, because suicide is a sin in Islam, there can be no Muslim suicide bombers or hijackers. “I’d much prefer that it was Islamic terrorists [responsible for 9/11],” he said, “if only they existed.” Say hello to delusional Dewdney.
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Shiraz Dossa
Professor of political science, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, N.S.
You get a measure of this prof’s prickly personality by reading his official St. FX biography, which claims he was “initially miseducated in a multiracial British colony in Africa,” and then “succeeded, accidentally,” in earning a Ph.D at the University of Toronto. His “miseducation, regrettably, continued” under at series of profs at the U of T. Despite having such a big chip on his shoulder, this ingrate had been flying under the nutty-prof radar until he made the controversial decision to attend an Iranian conference last year attended by Holocaust deniers and white supremacists. Dossa says he himself is not a Holocaust denier, but his hanging out with such a disreputable crowd was a monumentally bad decision, not made any better by his insulting defence of his actions. For example, he attacked columnists at a Toronto newspaper for criticizing him, writing, “It is worth nothing that these Christian boys have unlimited latitude in the Globe and Mail to trash Muslims even as they defend ‘civilization,’ Israel and Jews.” His critics would no doubt agree with the last line in his St. FX biography, which reads, “His only significant contribution to making this world a better place is his daughter Shirin.”
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Mark Wainberg
Professor of medicine and microbiology, McGill University, Montreal
Accomplished AIDS researcher Wainberg has long been noted for his intolerance of dissenting scientific opinions about the nature of the disease, and once said that anyone who didn’t agree with the prevailing HIV-transmission theory should be locked up in jail on charges of “public endangerment.” So much for academic freedom. A big booster of widespread distribution of anti-AIDS drugs, Wainberg once denied holding shares in Quebec’s Biochem Pharma Inc., which manufactures a key drug to fight the disease, but then owned up when presented with evidence. Although not gay himself, Wainberg has been described as being a strong supporter of “queer rights.” Perhaps this explains his actions as last summer’s big AIDS conference in Montreal. First, he publicly criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper for failing to attend the gathering, which Wainberg was chairing. Then he drew criticism for repeatedly failing to quiet attendees who booed speakers, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who had said that abstinence and sexual fidelity were important tools in the fight against AIDS. “Anyone who would articulate that being faithful is the solution to this problem is clearly putting their heads in the sand,” Wainberg explained, ignoring reams of information to the contrary.
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Rinaldo Walcott
Associate professor of sociology and equity studies, University of Toronto
The very embodiment of stylish political-correctness, Walcott once wrote a long essay on why hip-hop music is important and edited an anthology on black Canadian culture that was criticized for being full of half truths and butchered grammar. A self-identified homosexual, Walcott criticized gay marriage—not because he thinks it is immoral, but because he fears it will transform gays. “Will queers now have to live with the heterosexual forms of guilt associated with something called cheating?” he asked, as if “cheating” was an entirely artificial concept. But his most redoubtable claim to infamy came last year when he attended a symposium at the U of T held to discuss links between the then-recent arrest of 17 terrorism suspects in the city and Canadian multiculturalism. As recounted by columnist/participant Margaret Wente, the dreadlocked Walcott “denounced the entire proceedings as a racist exercise in colonialist discourse” (whatever that meant), accused Wente of being a monger of hate speech, and then stormed out of the room. Presumably to write another rant against straight, white society.
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Nutty Profs Hall of Fame
2006 Inductees
Taiaiake Alfred, University of Victoria
Joel Bakan, University of B.C.
Shannon Bell, York University
Michael Chossudovsky, University of Ottawa
Shadia Drury, University of Regina
Thomas Homer-Dixon, University of Toronto
Michael Keefer, University of Guelph
Kathleen Mahoney, University of Calgary
John McMurtry, University of Guelph
Leo Panitch, York University
Sophie Quigley, Ryerson University
Sunera Thobani, University of B.C.
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--TERRY O’NEILL
Posted by Terry O'Neill on October 15, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Trouble for Christians in Gaza
Christian Bookstore Owner Was Tortured Before His Death
The owner of a Christian bookstore in the Gaza Strip who was found dead this weekend was publicly beaten by Islamic gunmen accusing him of spreading Christianity, witnesses and Palestinian Arab security officials said.
The body of Rami Ayyad, director of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, was found Sunday riddled with gunshot and stab wounds. He had been abducted the night before as he closed his shop, a local Christian group said.
Gaza-based Islamic groups had accused Ayyad, a Baptist, of engaging in missionary activity. His bookstore was firebombed in April, and since then Ayyad had told relatives he was receiving death threats from Islamists.
The day before his abduction, Ayyad said he was being followed by a car with no license plates.
Witnesses and security officials associated with Hamas's so-called Executive Force told The New York Sun that Ayyad was publicly beaten a few blocks from his store before being shot to death.
Posted by Leah Dowe on October 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Dealing With Communism/The Long Telegram
My friends at the National Review have an extended discussion going on the Long Telegram, the present state of the Global War on Terrorism, and the advisability and logistics of confronting the Soviet Union in the period immediately after the Second World War.
It began with a related question – why has there been no “Long Telegram” in this war? That is to say, no galvanizing and transcendental document which lays out simply and clearly the path of victory. In short (I mean it, because the rest of this is very long) there’s been no “Long Telegram” in this war because there was one in the last war. Kenan’s document and the strategy that it laid out – and how it was followed in the years thereafter – exhausted the American people and left them incapable of following such a simple and direct strategy in a state of relative unity.
Political life, I’ve often said, is kind of like a locked steering wheel. When parked, you can shift it only slightly from one side to another – and that with a high degree of force. When unlocked, however, one can spin the wheel wildly to one side or another before choosing to lock it again. When so locked, it will again move only slightly – but from its new centre.
The choice here wasn’t between either ordering Eisenhower east in June 1945 and the “Long Twilight Struggle” of the Cold War. The other option – the best option – runs somewhere in-between. In the day, they called it Rollback.
What could have been doing in 1945-1946? Nuclear production could have been ramped up. Military production could have been vastly increased – many of the weapons which were due at the end of the war were, frankly, amazing. Another two to three years of research and development within the West at the rate of 1945 would have put the weapons of 1955 or so into Allied hands by the end of that period of time. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union – cut off from foreign assistance – would be lucky to get as far as they did in our timeline.
Yes, the American and British people were exhausted. And so, just like in 1918, they made a conscious decision not to finish the job – not to put the screws in while they had the chance and, thus, they paid a terrible price in the years that followed. “Republic’s cant fight wars,” lamented the Civil War diarist Mary Chestnut. She was at least half right.
Combine high-level military spending, a far more aggressive approach to Soviet espionage, constant covert warfare against communism wherever it might be found, and finally an ultimate policy of waging a war of liberation against the Soviet Union itself and you get, in the end, a chance – if things move fast enough – to create the kind of world order – a true Pax Americana – which could have lasted for centuries.
(Continued at adamyoshida.com)
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 15, 2007 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (57) | TrackBack
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Reefer Madness
My local TV listings magazine, TV Week, has a column by Dr. Rhonda Low, who gives health advice on CTV news programs. Her column from Sept. 29 (which never made it online) addresses a recent study, in The Lancet, compiling the results of 35 medical studies on marijuana use:
....The studies found that smoking marijuana could increas the risk of developing a psycholtic illness by an alarming 40 per cent. And worse, the more you use, the greater your risk. "Heavy users" (defined in the research as daily or weekly users) showed a 50 to 200 per cent increase in the risk of developing psychosis.
"It is actually confirming what we have seen clinically, in that people are prone to psychosis have a chance of having exposure to a drug like marijana and that will bring the psychosis home," says Dr. [Bill] MacEwan [director of the Schizophrenia Clinic at the University of B.C.]"
Dr. MacEwan goes on in the column to qualify what he says, noting that there are many factors in a person's life that lead to mental illness, but he adds "So, if you have that family history of schizophrenia, I'd say yes, you should maybe watch what kind of substances you use and how much you are using."
It will be interesting to see if these sorts of medical findings will lead to Canada having a stricter law-enforcement attitude towards marijuana.
Posted by Rick Hiebert on October 14, 2007 in Science | Permalink | Comments (76) | TrackBack
A Note on the Recent Ontario Provincial Election
I had expected Tory's Tories to do badly, but not this badly, worsting Ernie Eves mediocre 2003 performance. The most important thing to remember from this election is a statistics: 31.64%. That is the percentage of the popular vote captured by the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. Under the leadership of Mike Harris the party captured 44.8% of the popular vote in 1995 and 45.1% in 1999. Hugh Segal, John Tory and the rest of the Red Tory crew, please explain yourselves. I, and many like me, are often accused of political nostalgia. We want Mike Harris, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to resurrect themselves. Times have changed and we must change with the times. Ontario and Canada face new challenges. Very true. So why, my dear Red Tory friends, do you keep proposing the solutions of the 1970s? If yearning for the happy days of Mike Harris is being stuck in the past what's trying to get Bill Davis II elected Premier of Ontario? Cutting edge? I want a conservative leading the Conservative Party of Ontario. The tactics are debatable, the values are not. As Maggie pointed out, the facts of life are conservative. Until Ontario's Conservatives re-gain the courage of their convictions we're stuck with Dalt the Default. There is one spot of hope in these dismal results, the election of Randy Hillier, albeit by the narrowest of margins, in his Lanark riding.
The trick for Mr. Hillier going forward is not abandon his convictions and to improve his manners. The outsider sometimes needs to heckle to get attention. Being arrested for civil disobedience is not something, however, you want keep up as an MPP. After the 1999 election debate I recall one journalist describing Mike Harris' performance as almost presidential. This journalist was no admirer of the former premier, but the redneck from Nipissing had transformed himself into a Canadian statesman, even to his enemies. During this election's coverage on TVO, the former Harris minister Janet Ecker made mention of the social changes that had taken place in the 905 area since 1995, a bastion of Conservative support at the time. Since then, noted Ecker, the 905's electoral behavior was beginning to follow that of the 416, stemming, she noted, from the increased urbanization of this region of the province.
The real gap, she continued, developing in Ontario and Canada is not between classes and regions, but between rural and urban. John Tory, who is Toronto down to his pricey loafers, was seen as the perfect vehicle to bridge that gap. No one seems to have bothered asking what exactly he was going to bridge that gap with, aside from his lovely smiling self. Randy Hillier's political theme thus far has been property rights. Hillier has insisted, despite assertions from his critics and some of his admirers, that he is not fighting for land rights, but for property rights as such.
The encroachment of government on the property rights of private citizens is a phenomenon far more keenly felt in rural areas, where the ownership and management of property is often essential to livelihoods, than in urban areas. Yet a curtailment of freedom, such as the use and exchange of property, harms us all. Rent controls and many zoning laws limit housing stock in urban areas. High taxes discourage investment. There is an ample and fertile field for Government to Back off in Toronto, Ottawa, London or Hamilton. Urban areas tend to lean Left not so much because they are more ethnically diverse, and therefore supposedly more tolerant - never is it asked who is tolerating who - but because of the economic nature of cities. The division of labour is far more intensive than in rural areas. Most urbanites perform very specialized and often quite esoteric skills to earn a living. It is easier for an urbanite to see themselves as part of a collective, less of an individual, than a farmer who is essentially a small - though sometimes big - scale entrepreneur. The best way to bridge the urban-rural divide is not with rather shallow positioning and image politics, but with clear, simple and good ideas. Freedom is as good an idea as it gets.
Cross posted at the Gods of the Copybook Headings
Posted by PUBLIUS on October 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBack