:: Bluestarblog ::

:: Friday, January 31, 2003 ::

Jonah Goldberg caps off another enjoyable read:

President Bush laid things out clearly when he said, "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. We will confront them with focus and clarity and courage." And it struck me; the first metaphor for Bush was still the best. He is a cowboy, in the best sense of the label. He's got a moral compass that points true north even if he's got to zigzag to get there. He speaks plainly. He's not dumb, but he also doesn't need to be the smartest man in the room because he's got right — "providence" in his words — on his side, and he knows the difference between shinola and other substances. This may not explain the dynamics of why Saddam's got to go right now. But after he's gone, when the Iraqi prisons and archives of terror are opened and the Iraqi people are free, Bush can simply say of Saddam, in cowboy parlance, "He needed killin'"; and everyone will understand.

:: Scot 12:22 AM [+] :: ::
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It's been a rough couple of days for the Toronto Star's editorial roll. Wednesday featured some paranoia from Ali Mekky, a member of the Star's community board (whatever that is), on big, bad, evil America. In one piece he manages to refer to the U.S. as a terrorist state, compares the U.S. and Israel to Robert Mugabe, declares the Taliban are still alive and well, and blames 9-11 on the victims.

On the slightly less fanatic side, two pieces here and here take the lack of argument/the insufficient case/the non-existent evidence angle on Iraq - ('we want to believe Saddam should be overthrown but we just don't have any proof').

Richard Gwyn on Wednesday and Gordon Barthos on Thursday wax defeated and suggest that now is the time we should consider our role as peacekeepers - you know, when the fighting is done.

To top it off Thursday, random musings from conspiracy theorist Antonia Zerbisias

If there was any serious or comprehensive analysis of Bush's latest round of tax cuts, and what impact they will have on his ballooning deficit, or on the country's soaring unemployment rate, or on the lengthening lines at food banks, I didn't hear it.

Have you tried reading?

:: Scot 12:09 AM [+] :: ::
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France, Syria coordinate Security Council efforts to avert Iraq war

France and Syria on their own little team? Oh I see good things out of this.

(from Pandavox)

:: Scot 10:54 PM [+] :: ::
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Hero of the day - William Young. Upon giving shoe bomber Richard Reid a life sentence:

“We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid,” he said. “We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. You are not an enemy combatant — you are a terrorist,” the judge said. “You are not a soldier in any war — you are a terrorist. To call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. You are a terrorist, and we do not negotiate with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.”

“You see that flag, Mr. Reid? That’s the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is long forgotten.”

:: Scot 9:32 PM [+] :: ::
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Joseph Traub reviews George Johnson's A Shortcut Through Time: The Path to the Quantum Computer.

Here's an older article on quantum research also from Scientific American.

:: Scot 10:45 PM [+] :: ::
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Hard to pass up a headline like this - Cowboys Welcome in Kurdistan.

As American troops move into the Persian Gulf and George W. Bush wags an angry finger at Saddam Hussein, a nervous euphoria is descending on Iraqi Kurdistan, the enclave in northern Iraq protected by the "no-fly" zone and governed by Iraq's rebel Kurdistan Regional Government. The feeling is very different from that in Europe, where the American president is constantly being admonished for his "cowboy" tendencies.

"Occupy us -- please!" a Kurdish man on the street demands of an American visitor. Indeed, the main fear of Iraqi Kurds I spoke to is that Washington will not attack.

"Iraqi officials warn us that Bush is all talk, that America will not invade," says Ismet Aguid, a former Iraqi foreign service officer. "But we remain optimistic."

So do we.

:: Scot 10:39 PM [+] :: ::
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Maxim under fire:

The latest edition of Maxim magazine, in an alleged "humor" article headlined "Maxim's Kick-Ass Workout," depicts a strapping man in a muscle T-shirt beating up an image of Mahatma Gandhi.

The article, attempting to show how fighting can bring fitness, calls for "a healthy regimen of violent assaults" and urges readers to "teach those pacifists a lesson about aggression." The three-page article includes 21 different scenes of the man hitting, kicking, choking and throwing Gandhi, who is named in the text, where the reader is urged to "ask Gandhi if he can see a change in your physique."

Equally stupid is this response:

"It's promoting hate crimes. In today's context, after Sept. 11 and with the anti-war movement, this article is telling people to beat the crap out of Asians and pacifists," said Michael Matsuda, chairperson of the Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance in Garden Grove, Calif.

Is Gandhi Asian?

(from BookSlut)

:: Scot 10:24 PM [+] :: ::
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Bush's SOTU as the first of four movements? James Lileks thinks like a musician:

Compared to last year, an underwhelming speech - but the more I think about it the less that bothers me; it’s probably the right speech for the time. Hard bones to gnaw, not fresh meat you can chomp and bolt. This will be seen as the first of four speeches - the SOTU, the Bush/Blair speech, Powell’s UN speech, and Bush’s address from the Oval Office the night the war begins. I think it was written with that procession in mind, which might explain its tenor.

The best analysis of the speech I've read thus far.

:: Scot 9:45 PM [+] :: ::
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Marni Soupcoff on human shields:

See, the thing about stopping people from dropping bombs on you is that you have to be someone for whom the people dropping the bombs actually have sympathy. So, in this case, you would have to be someone the leaders of the United States actually care about. Whiny left-wing publicity-seekers who support brutal Iraqi regimes, don't - generally speaking - qualify.

:: Scot 10:59 PM [+] :: ::
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Just finished watching the SOTU address and still no word on the invasion of Europe. Oh well - maybe next year.

:: Scot 10:39 PM [+] :: ::
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Banana Counting Monkey has a few observations on Canada's course of action regarding its relationship with the U.S.

It's not just the UK that faces that choice. Canada faces it as well, and the signs do not look good. As noted in the Mark Steyn column a few days ago, whenever the Liberals get a chance to follow their EUish ideals, they do so, no matter what the cost to Canada. What we are seeing in Canada at this time is the triumph of the EU ideology. (Let's just call it what it is, eh? Wide-eyed blissed out socialism)

The current growing distance between Canada and the US does not represent a failure on the part of the Canadian government, but the ultimate success of it's ideology. A recently as a decade ago, the fact that there was a unified right wing party meant there was a counterbalance to the Liberal anti-americanism and repairs to the damage done by liberals (albeit every 8-10 years or so) Now the Liberals do not have any practical (read- electoral) motive to tack to the right, posess a decade of accumulated arrogance and insularity feeding off each others' anti-americanism to the point where the logical identity for Canadians who wish to be "distinct" from the states isn't a Canadian identity, but an anti-american one. Especially when we have the UN and the EU to suck up to and preen for.

If the Liberals view our looming schism with the US as a problem, they only see it from a perspective that their actions should not cost Canada anything. Breaking from the US will be done in much the same fashions as the euros, with protestations of eternal friendship and the solid belief that ingratitude and spite should never have any consequences. As for the cost to regular Canadians through the economy, well the Liberals have a large store of experience in impovrishing large stretches of the country with only the nobelest motives. Why not go the whole hog?

Canada is playing with fire if it thinks it can distance itself from the U.S. the way Europe has.

:: Scot 10:04 PM [+] :: ::
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Nature vs. nurture? Leave it to Daniel Dennett to throw a third option into the mix:

Isn't it true that whatever isn't determined by our genes must be determined by our environment? What else is there? There's Nature and there's Nurture. Is there also some X, some further contributor to what we are? There's Chance. Luck. This extra ingredient is important but doesn't have to come from the quantum bowels of our atoms or from some distant star. It is all around us in the causeless coin-flipping of our noisy world, automatically filling in the gaps of specification left unfixed by our genes, and unfixed by salient causes in our environment. This is particularly evident in the way the trillions of connections between cells in our brains are formed. It has been recognized for years that the human genome, large as it is, is much too small to specify (in its gene recipes) all the connections that are formed between neurons. What happens is that the genes specify processes that set in motion huge population growth of neurons -- many times more neurons than our brains will eventually use -- and these neurons send out exploratory branches, at random (at pseudo-random, of course), and many of these happen to connect to other neurons in ways that are detectably useful (detectable by the mindless processes of brain-pruning).

These winning connections tend to survive, while the losing connections die, to be dismantled so that their parts can be recycled in the next generation of hopeful neuron growth a few days later. This selective environment within the brain (especially within the brain of the fetus, long before it encounters the outside environment) no more specifies the final connections than the genes do; saliencies in both genes and developmental environment influence and prune the growth, but there is plenty that is left to chance.

:: Scot 6:50 PM [+] :: ::
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As per request, here's a few puzzle and brain teaser websites from Mensa, the Golden Labyrinth, Bill's Games, Logicville, and Brainville.

On a related note, optical illusions - here, here, and here.

:: Scot 9:00 AM [+] :: ::
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The metaphysics of math - a terrific article on the 'golden ratio.'

Here's an excellent website on this as well as where this fraction is seen in nature.

:: Scot 8:22 AM [+] :: ::
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A fascinating voyage from outside the Milky Way to the quarks of a proton - macrocosm to microcosm in 60 seconds!

:: Scot 6:54 AM [+] :: ::
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I've been doing a lot of warbloggin' lately so, barring a surprise invasion somewhere, I'm taking the day of from jihading the jihadis - except for these comics from American RealPolitik.

:: Scot 6:40 AM [+] :: ::
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Good piece from Jonathan Rauch in the National Journal - Has Bush Bitten Off Too Much? Yes, But So Did Truman.

:: Scot 5:49 AM [+] :: ::
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Canadians Rex Murphy and David Warren take a look at speechwriter David Frum's The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush.

Warren's latest - An old movie - serves up a cogent assessment of what could cure the Middle East:

Iraq's neighbours need a humbling display of Yankee firepower right in their backyard, before they'll do much about Islamist fanaticism. A failure to invade Iraq, after the invasion has been signalled, will confirm to the West 's most lethal enemies that the U.S. is a paper tiger, shrinking from risk. Without something resembling a war, and therefore a victor, there can be no dictating terms. The net effect of such an "easy way out" would be to take most of the pressure off the other fanatic regimes, and help them focus it where they want it, on Israel, instead.

And the result of that can only be a much larger catastrophe, further down the road, in which the U.S. could find itself fighting, with even fewer allies, directly for the survival of some five million Jews, on the enemy's choice of battlefields.

I'll take this point further - every concession made equals another dead Israeli.

:: Scot 5:00 AM [+] :: ::
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If I've interpreted my site meter time zone share data correctly, I have a new reader in either New Zealand or Siberia. 'Welcome' - whoever you are.

:: Scot 4:42 AM [+] :: ::
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It's not too hard to find anti-war crackpotism in the Toronto Star, which is why Rosie DiManno's Bush has his 'casus belli' but will war be worth it? was a refreshing read. Just for good measure, she takes a nice shot at the UN.

But the U.N., of course, is sounding very much like the appeasement agency it has become — this being the same group that stood down and did nothing as 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus in Rwanda, who abandoned East Timor to the brutalities of Indonesian paramilitaries (and only had its shred of respectability salvaged by unilaterally acting Australian troops), that was thoroughly marginalized by NATO in Kosovo, and that may today elect the odious Col. Moammar Gadhafi as chairman of its Human Rights Commission.

If you haven't read already, Libya has been chosen to chair the Human Rights Commission. This is too ludicrous for me to even comment on.

Though I agree with most of what DiManno has written, I'm not so sure I agree with her assessment of Iraq's military:

As far as can be determined, Iraq has a regular standing army of 300,000 organized into 17 divisions, including three armoured and three mechanized, with possibly 600 T-72 tanks. The Iraq air force may have up to 300 aircraft, the air defence force comprised of 500 surface-to-air launchers, with a further 1,500 shoulder-launched SAMs.

And then there's the elite Republican Guard, of course, at least 80,000 of them, war-hardened and fiercely loyal. During the Gulf War, they didn't fight well but they fought hard and will do so again, probably to the death. Meanwhile, there are estimates from the Pentagon that, in the worst-case scenario, American casualties might run as high as 10,000.

I had a discussion with a friend last week about how long it would take from the first airstrike to the point where Saddam has no control over his forces. I predicted two days (a pro-American, coolest army in the world bias) while he more reasonably suggested one week. We agreed that the time it would take for complete occupation was anyone's guess.

DiManno's last word on this was my favorite:

Worth it? Some say never, under any circumstances. Many more say not now, under these circumstances.

As if the day of reckoning will never come.

A day of reckoning indeed. I'd rather go to war now than after the incineration of 10000+ civilians from one of Saddam's weapons.

:: Scot 4:23 AM [+] :: ::
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Andrew Sullivan on Britain's anti-anti-Americanism:

America is portrayed as an imperial force dedicated to what a Harvard professor recently described as "the crushing and total humiliation of the Palestinians." Yet it was an American president, Bill Clinton, who only two years ago brokered a deal that offered the Palestinians sovereignty over 98 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. (Arafat said no and his people are still living with the consequences.) America is described as waging a war against Muslims. Yet in almost every recent American intervention - in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan - it was for the sake of the security of Muslims that American soldiers risked their lives. America is described as relentlessly pro-Israel. But America gives almost as much foreign aid to Egypt and Jordan. America is described as imperialist. But in Afghanistan, recently liberated by the U.S., the Americans have done all they can to set up an indigenous government, capable of self-rule, and are pouring millions of dollars into reconstruction. America is described as unilateralist. Yet, after the worst terrorist attack in modern history, the U.S. patiently assembled a coalition to rid the world of al Qaeda's Afghan bases, and has waited eleven years while Saddam has violated almost every term of the 1991 truce. Even now, the U.S. has gone painstakingly through a U.N. route to achieve its goals. These are simply the facts. But in the new cult of anti-Americanism, facts don't seem to matter.

I'm happy to wager that history will find Tony Blair's resistance to this kind of cant as one of his signal achievements as prime minister. Blair is a liberal realist. He knows America isn't perfect; but that its power is essentially a positive force in the world. Without America, after all, Europe would still be under the shadow of an al Qaeda still lurking undeterred in its Afghan lair. Without America, Saddam might be sitting pretty in Saudi Arabia today with an arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Without America, there would be no united Europe, and there would be no new democracies in Eastern Europe ready to join. If that's the consequence of an American empire, then Europe is its chief beneficiary.

And Blair gets something else too. It is simply not in Britain's interest to give into the crass delusions of anti-Americanism. The notion that Blair is somehow George Bush's "poodle" is ludicrous, and certainly seen as such in Washington. By his emotional and instinctive support for the U.S. in the wake of September 11, by his steadfast support during the Afghan war and in the Iraq crisis, Blair has wielded more influence in Washington than any other world leader. Because of this, he now has more leverage over American power than any British prime minister in recent times, eclipsing even Thatcher's sway over Reagan. And that means an enormous increase in Britain's relative global power - now and for the future. If you don't believe this, contrast the results of Blair's diplomacy with Gerhard Schroder's. It's the difference between being at the center of world governance and utterly marginalized. In fact, Blair has managed to vault Britain back to the status of a genuine world power. When he huddles with George Bush at Camp David at the end of this month, he will be the most powerful British prime minister since Churchill at Yalta.

:: Scot 3:41 AM [+] :: ::
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Quote of the day:

"This looks like the re-run of a bad movie, and I'm not interested in watching it."

Bush on Saddam's disarmament efforts.

:: Scot 9:56 AM [+] :: ::
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A Canada-U.S. merger? Not likely says Mark Steyn:

Whatever it once symbolized, the border is now a very real dividing line between the two principal manifestations of Western democracy: an American system which emphasizes the primacy of individual liberty, and a Euro-Canadian system of top-down statism. Even without the war, the differences between the two are likely to increase rather than diminish over the coming years.

But, since the war, our flabby Dominion's position has weakened further. Not to be alarmist but I'd say the U.S. is coming to regard Canada the way Australia regards Indonesia. Yes, it's geographically close, an important trading partner, a cheap vacation destination and a nominal ally, but it has to be pushed and chivvied into taking even the most perfunctory action against obvious enemies, and everyone knows that all kinds of dodgy characters have the run of the joint. Bali was a soft target for the terrorists because it exists in both worlds -- a Western enclave in bandit country. Canada also exists in both worlds: We're the country that supports both the Princess Pats and Hezbollah.

Washington knows that now. The big story since September 11th is that they finally see us for what we are: foreigners.

:: Scot 8:41 AM [+] :: ::
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Frank Gaffney on why encouraging an Iraqi coup would be a mistake:

Still, the question occurs: Will a coup do? Would either Saddam Hussein's voluntary or unwilling displacement from the seat of power in Baghdad accomplish the needed regime change and its necessary consequences -- namely, the liberation of the Iraqi people and an end to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs?

Unfortunately, the answer is almost certainly no. For starters, there is a grave danger that the only change that will occur would be to replace Saddam Hussein with some other ruthless thug. Even if the latter did not come from the Butcher of Baghdad's immediate family -- given what is known about Saddam's sons, this is a singularly horrifying prospect -- an amnesty for his subordinates would probably ensure that the next Iraqi leader is one of his henchmen, Takriti clansmen or senior officers. Such an outcome is particularly likely in view of the Saudi and Egyptian governments' ill-concealed preference for despots.

An amnesty would also amount to a free-pass for people who must, like Saddam Hussein, be held accountable for war crimes and unimaginable human rights abuses. Without such accountability and a more general program of "lustration" aimed at purging the political system of the ancien régime's adherents, a post-Saddam Iraq will be denied the chance for real freedom. This chance was fully realized by Germany and Japan, at U.S. insistence, where lustration occurred. It remains, at best, a fragile opportunity for countries of the former Soviet empire where lustration has largely not transpired.

If anything, a "regime change" that amounts to a change of face, but not of character, may give rise to an even greater danger down the road. Those who were willing to do business with Saddam will surely demand that UN-imposed sanctions on his successor's regime be removed at once. With unchecked use of Iraq's immense petro-wealth, the next Saddam could rapidly finish whatever build-up of weapons of mass destruction his predecessor failed to complete. And it strains credulity that such a regime will afford international inspectors, let alone U.S. military personnel, with the sort of unencumbered access to Iraq's secret files needed if we are to learn, at last, the true status of these activities.

Worst of all, if the United States is seen by the people of Iraq as once again favouring their continued enslavement, albeit by someone whose record of brutality may be less well-known than Saddam's, we risk their permanent alienation. In the process, we would lose not only the opportunity to free one of the most industrious and capable populations in the Middle East, perhaps transforming Iraq into a prosperous and peace-loving nation. We would also squander the chance to create a model for bringing real democracy and economic opportunity to a region desperately in need of both.

:: Scot 8:34 AM [+] :: ::
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Is 'Baghdad' Scott Ritter a pedophile? Maybe not in the Catholic church sense, but this certainly gives him a creepier edge.

:: Scot 6:37 AM [+] :: ::
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Tim Blair has more on Le Carre's anti-American diatribe.

Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail weighs in.

:: Scot 12:42 PM [+] :: ::
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What do Heather Locklear, Ashley Judd, Bo Derek, and Condi Rice have in common? They're all Republican Babes of the Week!

(from one the blogoshpere's coolest names - Nikita Demosthenes)

:: Scot 11:17 AM [+] :: ::
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Should B.C. premier and Hawaiian drunk driver Gordon Campbell lose his job? Paul Wells offers a few interesting arguments against:

As a general rule, people outside government are far too prone to call for our political leaders to pay for every mistake with their jobs. Around here, I hear cries of "resign!" every week or so for every imaginable flaw or peccadillo. It doesn't matter who's in power. The song remains the same.

The minister knew. He must resign. The minister didn't know. He has to go. The minister was in a position to gain financially. Off with his head. He lost money -- which proves he could have gained. To the gallows. He's a lazy bum, a liar, a hypocrite. Show him the door.

His friends made money. Or they could have. Or they wanted to. Or we think he might have friends. Or he might make some friends some day. Swing low, sweet avenging sword of doom.

You might say: Yes, but these run-of-the-mill scandals and calls for resignation result from improper exercise of a politician's public mandate, not from private failings.

I say, precisely so -- but that argument weakens, rather than strengthening, the case for forcing a politician to resign for some error he makes on his private time. We need to be in the business of judging our politicians on their exercise of public functions, not on the morality of their private behaviour. I want to know whether a politician is an honest and intelligent steward of public policy, not whether he or she is a faithful spouse or a good parent.

And when we make the private life a proxy for the public -- when we fire a politician for his down-time behaviour -- we're not "holding our leaders to a higher standard." We're holding ourselves to a lower standard: admitting that we're too thick to handle a debate about tax rates and quality of service, so we need to base our judgments on something more garish and simplistic.

Two other things. First, how many times do we have to throw the bums out before we learn they must be replaced with new bums? Surely this question is most pressing in British Columbia, which by my count has beheaded 37 premiers since last March.

B.C. is steering into a serious economic storm, thanks partly to the mess the B.C. Liberals inherited and partly to their own crude handling of public finances -- instituting tax cuts, then partially repealing them; cutting more than they predicted; ballooning deficits. What you don't need to do on your way into a storm is replace captains. Especially since the rest of the Liberal front bench has, to be polite, not yet distinguished itself.

My second thing is this. Past a certain point, whose precise location is a matter for honest debate, the higher the standards we demand from our public officials, the lower the quality of the people we'll get. At some point, anyone with a lick of sense will wonder what the point of public service is. I'm quite sure we passed that point a long time ago.

:: Scot 9:06 AM [+] :: ::
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The best piece I have read this year courtesy of Victor Davis Hanson.

The Tyranny of “BUT”

(stop reading this bluestarhack and go read this)

:: Scot 8:44 AM [+] :: ::
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Larry Elder holds Michael Moore to task:

Moore, on the one hand, criticizes the Oprah audience for their alleged unfair and irrational fear of blacks. But then he flips, and celebrates this alleged perception of black aggressiveness -- wishing more blacks had been on the Sept. 11 hijacked planes -- and chastises weak-kneed whites for their passivity successfully exploited by the Sept. 11 hijackers. Tell that to the widow of Flight 93's Todd Beamer and the other heroic passengers who stopped that plane from its likely Washington, D.C., destination.

:: Scot 8:29 AM [+] :: ::
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Damian Penny coins a new term:

"Chickendove" - a person who opposes an invasion of Iraq, but won't volunteer to travel to Bagdhad and be a human shield.

:: Scot 10:56 AM [+] :: ::
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John Le Carre gives us another example of why novelists and geopolitics don't always mix:

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

No, this isn't from the Onion. It's from Britain's Times.

:: Scot 10:23 AM [+] :: ::
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When I saw the title of this article - Avril Lavigne, unvarnished - I thought I could look forward to a nice smear on the music industry's latest pop tartlet. No such luck. I'm still waiting for someone to ask her if she's really playing those guitars she's always posing with (hint: she's not).

Sometimes, however, I don't give the music industry enough credit for their water into wine abilities (or in this case, jaundice into heroin chic).

:: Scot 6:46 AM [+] :: ::
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It looks like McCallum's words about joining the invasion of Iraq sans U.N. approval has caused a stir in the Liberal caucus. Thumbs up to David Pratt, a heretofore unknown voice of reason from our morally bankrupt overlords:

David Pratt, a Liberal MP and chairman of the Commons defence committee, says it would be foolish for Canada to commit its troops only if military strikes are authorized by the UN, because the New York-based organization has proven weak in the past.

"I would not want to see us get into a situation in the future where every potential action that Canada might be involved in must have the sanction of the UN. I just don't see that as necessarily in our best interests," Mr. Pratt said.

"We have seen the failure of the UN in the past, in terms of Rwanda, and Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia in general ... I think that we have to determine where our own interests lie and, if necessary, to support our allies, when they need support."

He said he was torn over the possible deployment of Canadian soldiers against Iraq. He said any decision to commit troops should be based on "where Canada's interests lie," not on a decision taken by the Security Council.

Mr. Pratt added that "anyone who has looked at this situation really feels that Saddam continues to be a destabilizing influence in the region.

"It is a very difficult situation that governments are faced with, going the multilateral route through the UN and waiting for the reports of the weapons inspectors when we know he has had so many chances in the past to comply, and he has ignored them and obfuscated and tried to evade responsibility."

Whatever decision Ottawa takes, Mr. Pratt said, Canada's military contribution "would clearly be very limited because we have stretched ourselves beyond what is good."

And that's beyond bad.

:: Scot 6:04 AM [+] :: ::
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Toronto's mayor calls it quits

See ya around jackass. Thanks for screwing with my city these last few years.

:: Scot 5:50 AM [+] :: ::
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Ever wonder how Star Trek's Borg consume nutrients? It probably all started with something like this.

(from Defense Tech)

:: Scot 7:14 PM [+] :: ::
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Mark Steyn on Canadian terrorist-class immigrants:

What is immigration for? In the U.S., many parts of the country have, to all intents, full employment so immigration fills the jobs the locals won't do. In Europe, they have an aging population and costly social welfare, so young immigrants fill the gaps left by the Continent's collapsed birthrate. Neither of these arguments works in Canada: We have higher levels of unemployment than the Americans. And unlike Europe, thanks to the bias of our immigration policy toward "family reunification" (i.e., gran'pas and great-aunts), our immigrant population is actually older than our native-born. But the fact that immigration is of no discernible benefit to Canadians is what we like about it: It confirms us in our sense of our own virtue.

In that sense, the ever-growing Terrorist-Canadian community is only an extreme manifestation of our willingness to elevate over all other considerations the masochistic frisson we get from demonstrating our "tolerance" by letting in someone avowedly intolerant. True, as M. Chrétien and several of my colleagues have pointed out, September 11th was a failure of U.S. border control not Canadian border control. The difference is simple: In the U.S., letting in terrorists represents an immigration failure; in Canada, it's an immigration policy.

:: Scot 7:10 PM [+] :: ::
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My favorite punching bag, Noam Chomsky, is a big hit ... in Arabia! The Arab News reports that the Jenin non-massacre will be explained once and for all in the forthcoming 'Searching Jenin' - a collection of papers that will boil down to how evil Israelis the are (the Jewish ones that is) and crowned with a forward from America's most pitiful anarchist.

(from little green footballs)

:: Scot 7:03 PM [+] :: ::
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Margaret Wente has the last word on the Raelians:

Okay, so who knew? It could have happened. There might have been a baby. Just because these people have a UFO theme park and believe the human race is descended from aliens from outer space doesn't mean they're not legit. After all, didn't someone clone a sheep? Doesn't everyone clone embryos already? Anyone who has a petri dish could probably clone a baby. You can't rule it out, any more than you can rule out the possibility that I am the living reincarnation of Princess Aura, daughter of Ming the Merciless.

It's hard to pick the most cringe-making moment of this story, which proved decisively that journalists can't distinguish science from science fiction. Was it when Anna Maria Tremonti, a woman of impeccable authority, attempted to interview the chief Raelian on the CBC? Was it the fetching outfits of Brigitte Boisselier, the PhD who looks like a dominatrix in a whorehouse? Was it Connie Chung's session with Rael on CNN, when he insisted that she address him as "His Holiness"? And she did?

All I know is that, speaking as a journalist, I feel like reaching for the Kool-Aid.

I think I lost interest in this story somewhere around 'Did you hear this Raelian cult cloned a ...'.

:: Scot 4:33 PM [+] :: ::
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McCallum suggests shift in Iraq war policy

Canada may decide at a later date to take part in a military attack on Iraq even if the United Nations Security Council does not authorize the use of force, Defence Minister John McCallum said Thursday.

Don't believe the hype. While everything in this article might be true, there is no news here. It's actually the same non-committal we've come to expect:

Mr. McCallum said if the UN Security Council authorizes an attack, Canada will definitely be onboard.

He added: "If there is no such authorization by the UN, it's not yes or no, [it's] we'll decide later on," he said.

The Defence Minister emphasized that the Canadian government is hopeful that Iraq will comply fully with weapons inspectors.

He's praying for it.

"There is no country in the world more committed to the multilateral process of the UN as Canada," he said.

He's got that right - Canada is one of the U.N.'s biggest patsies. Not to look too gushy, he limps forward this disclaimer:

"We much prefer that but we may do it otherwise," Mr. McCallum said in Washington.

But probably not. Just when the article was getting good with the role Canada's heralded Joint Task Force 2 might play in the Middle East theatre, the writer had to reinject the same damn mantra I'm now reading in every piece on Canada and international affairs:

Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister (Bill Graham) is also hopeful that a diplomatic solution will arise out of the UN resolution.

We have to cease this slobbering love fest with the United Nations before it swallows us like a praying mantis. Every public yielding by every public figure is a step closer to outright assimilation by this socialist, transnational progressivist monster. Nonetheless, it looks like we will be there in arms if not quite in spirit.

:: Scot 4:14 PM [+] :: ::
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Daniel Pipes charged with McCarthyism (again). Stanley Kurtz has more on Pipes' recent university disinvitation.

:: Scot 6:35 PM [+] :: ::
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Hot stuff. A yahoo search for 'islamo fascism blog' pegged me at number 3.

Now that's warbloggin.

:: Scot 6:29 PM [+] :: ::
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Michael Gove makes it clear: The hatred of America is the socialism of fools

Anti-Americanism provides the drumbeat for the protesters who march at every significant left-wing rally. Whether the protest is nominally against war, global capitalism or environmental degradation, the real enemy is Washington. Every significant Left intellectual, from Harold Pinter through Dario Fo to Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky has made criticism of the American imperium his defining belief. But Yankee-phobia now extends far beyond the protest march and the academy.

The German Social Democrats and Greens put opposition to US foreign policy at the heart of their, successful, re-election strategy last autumn. The Liberal Democrats here have made criticism of US policy towards Iraq the single biggest dividing line between themselves and the Blair Government.

The cultural popularity of anti-Americanism, particularly among Britain’s intelligentsia, is striking. The surprise publishing hit of last year was Why do people hate America? by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, a work which set out to reassure readers that hatred of America was more than a rising sentiment, it was a moral duty. The top of the UK bestseller list is Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, a furious polemic against US foreign, domestic and economic policy by one of its own citizens.

Why then do the myths of America the Hateful take such powerful hold? Because anti-Americanism provides a useful emotional function which goes beyond logic and reaches deep into the darker recesses of the European soul. In centuries past those on the Left who wished to personalise their hatred of capitalism, who sought to make it emotionally resonant by fastening an envious political passion on to a blameless scapegoat people, embraced anti-Semitism. It was the socialism of fools. Which is what anti-Americanism is now.

Both America and Israel were founded by peoples who were refugees from prejudice in Europe. Europe’s tragedy is that prejudice has been given new life, in antipathy to both those states.

The piece unfortunately uses Europe and Britain too interchangeably. Good friends are there with you while others not so much.

:: Scot 2:02 PM [+] :: ::
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Hard to pass up a headline like this:

Trick or Treatment: Teen drug programs turn curious teens into crackheads.

(more on this later)

:: Scot 10:26 AM [+] :: ::
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Just by chance, I've read a fair number of articles on race and affirmative action lately - many with similar opinions.

Brent Staples in the New York Times gives a short history of the U.S. Army and its treatment of blacks in terms of promotions and officer positions. In praising the army as one of the better models of diversity, he quotes a very important stat - 12% of the army's officers are black. Not only is this figure is remarkably consistent with the percentage of Americans who are black, it was achieved without a quota system. Though the army does have certain facets of affirmative action in place, it is nothing like the apartheid found in universities and other workplaces. Staples makes note of this, yet advocates for the status quo on university affirmative action programs, such as University of Michigan's:

The typical Army base is far more racially integrated than the average town or college campus. The rest of the country lags behind. Most black and Latino students are still confined to mediocre schools that place even excellent, hard-working students at a disadvantage in terms of standardized test scores. Until this inequity is redressed, affirmative action programs like the University of Michigan's will be needed to ensure that talented minority students can enter the elite universities that generate much of the national leadership.

I'm not sure what he means by 'until this inequity is redressed' (it reads too much like somebody other than blacks and Latinos have work to do), but affirmative action programs like the University of Michigan's too often promotes the underqualified and impedes the deserving. Persisting with this form of racial entrenchment will ensure another generation of underqualified graduates and even more lawsuits. Stuart Taylor Jr., in Do African-Americans Really Want Racial Preferences?, says it best:

When colleges systematically admit (among others) upper-middle-class blacks from the best high schools ahead of (among others) better-qualified whites and Asians from less-prosperous backgrounds, on account of their race -- as every elite college does -- what exactly are they saying about the supposed beneficiaries of these preferences? Aren't they saying that black and Hispanic students are not, and cannot hope to become, smart enough or diligent enough to be held to the same standard as white or Asian students? However benign their intentions, don't such policies pin a badge of inferiority on every black and every Hispanic student -- including the many bright and hard-working students who need no preferences -- while telling the students themselves that not much is expected of them academically? Isn't that message more likely to perpetuate than to dissolve the most intractable source of racial inequality in America today, which is the dismally small number of black students -- no matter how prosperous their families -- who strive to excel academically?

After three decades of preferences, the message of their most fervent advocates is that black and Hispanic high school graduates, and black and Hispanic college graduates applying to professional schools, are still so academically weak that eliminating the double standard would lead to pervasive resegregation. They are saying that the children of preferentially admitted students still need preferential admissions. Should we settle in for another generation or two or three of this? When will it be time to try something else?

Taylor also uncovers a telling stat:

A January 2000 Zogby International poll of university students showed 77 percent of all respondents, 52 percent of blacks, 71 percent of Hispanics, and 78 percent of Asians rejecting the statement that "schools should give minority students preference in the admissions process." And 96 percent of all respondents said that "diversity of ideas and high academic standards are more important to a quality education than achieving ethnic diversity."

I attribute the notable percentage difference in the black response to the damage done by the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Cornel West on the black (especially male) psyche.

Phillip Richards, an English professor at Colgate University, has more on black preparedness and achievement.

Mader Blog linked to this article on the racism of anti-racists. It seems Britain is going through its own affirmative action woes:

Ethnic monitoring, though, is de facto intended as discrimination against whites, and can really have no other point. No one in a politically correct state such as Britain would use ethnic monitoring (nor should they) to reduce the number of Indian doctors, for example, or reduce the proportion of medical students who are of Indian subcontinental origin, the latter currently running at some 25%, that is to say between eight and 12 times the proportion in the general population. Nor would anyone use such monitoring to reduce the number of blacks in professional soccer teams, where they are grossly over-represented. It is only when ethnic minorities are statistically under-represented that racial injustice is assumed to have occurred: no other explanation of under-representation being possible.

Of course, political correctness is but a gestalt switch away from fascism. The statistics that at the moment serve to promote racial inclusion can be just as easily made to serve racial exclusion. One of the prime arguments of the Nazis, after all, was statistical: that the Jews of Germany, only 1% of the population, formed an immense disproportion of the university professoriate, cultural and professional elite. It was assumed that this disproportion was the result of a conspiracy and that it could not have happened spontaneously or organically, as it were: precisely the same argument that career anti-racists use to explain the absence of Jamaicans from the British judiciary.

In the name of anti-racism, anti-racists are obsessed with race. People who would deny that racial categories have any scientific or biological validity collect racial statistics with positively Verwoerdian obsession. They are conspiracy theorists, and would-be engineers of human souls. They are mirror-image Nazis. The signs are as yet slight, and the cloud as yet is only on the horizon. But I call upon the civilized world to impose drastic sanctions upon Britain before it is too late.

Not that close to Nazism, but fascist to be sure.

:: Scot 10:23 AM [+] :: ::
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Terrific piece from David Glenn on mental illness and state intervention.

:: Scot 7:49 PM [+] :: ::
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Paul Campos suggests a new strategy for the war on fat:

So what should we do about fat in the United States? The short answer is: nothing. The longer answer is that we should refocus our attention from people's waistlines to their levels of activity. Americans have become far too sedentary. It sometimes seems that much of American life is organized around the principle that people should be able to go through an average day without ever actually using their legs. We do eat too much junk that isn't good for us because it's quick and cheap and easier than taking the time and money to prepare food that is both nutritious and satisfies our cravings.

A rational public health policy would emphasize that the keys to good health (at least those that anyone can do anything about--genetic factors remain far more important than anything else) are, in roughly descending order of importance: not to smoke, not to be an alcoholic or drug addict, not to be sedentary, and not to eat a diet packed with junk food. It's true that a more active populace that ate a healthier diet would be somewhat thinner, as would a nation that wasn't dieting obsessively. Even so, there is no reason why there shouldn't be millions of healthy, happy fat people in the United States, as there no doubt would be in a culture that maintained a rational attitude toward the fact that people will always come in all shapes and sizes, whether they live healthy lives or not. In the end, nothing could be easier than to win the war on fat: All we need to do is stop fighting it.

:: Scot 5:04 AM [+] :: ::
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Christopher Hitchens on the etymology of evil:

There is probably no easier way to beckon a smirk to the lips of a liberal intellectual than to mention President Bush's invocation of the notion of "evil." Such simple-mindedness! What better proof of a "cowboy" presidency than this crass resort to the language of good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats? Doesn't everybody know that there are shades and nuances and subtleties to be considered, in which moral absolutism is of no help?

Apparently everybody does know that, since at election times the same liberal intellectual will, after much agonizing, usually cast his vote for whichever shabby nominee the Democratic Party throws up. And he will do so, in his own words, because this is "the lesser evil." So, it seems that we cannot quite do without the word, even though it's worth noticing that some people only employ it in an ironic or relativist sense, as a quality that must be negotiated with, accommodated, or assimilated.

Though the word is often heard on the lips of preachers and moralists, it does also figure in the reflections of modern moral philosophers. Faced with the evidence of genocidal politics in 20th-century Europe, Hannah Arendt, for example, posed the existence of something she termed "radical evil" and suggested that intellectuals were failing to allow for its existence as a self-determining force. Her phrase "the banality of evil" also enjoys wide currency, serving to help us understand the ways in which "ordinary men" can be mobilized or conscripted to do exceptionally ghastly things. If she had said "radical sinning" or "the banality of sin" she might have seemed sermonizing or naive, but then President Bush did not refer to an "axis of sin," did he?

It may not be of much help, in propaganda terms, to describe an enemy as "evil." Time spent in understanding and studying a foe is always time well spent, and absolutist categories may easily blunt this rigorous undertaking. But how far can certain analyses be taken without running up against a recurrence of Arendt's dilemma?

Occam's Toothbrush has more.

:: Scot 4:56 AM [+] :: ::
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Quite a few bloggers have put together awards and best of lists on everything from music, magazines, and movies to the most despicable, liberal, as well as self-correcting.

In honor of this, I've decided to compile a list of my top 5 bloggers of 2002:

Instapundit - The Elvis Presley of bloggers.

USS Clueless - This engineer turned encyclopedia has garnered a well deserved reputation for his inimitable essay blogging.

Daimnation - A Canadian lawyer offering the news of the day with his special brand of wit and common sense.

Dawson Speaks - Pure slut linkage. The inspiration behind my blog as a news, media, and research center.

Little Green Footballs - A highly popular and well designed site with the most active comments section in the blogosphere.

Not to overlook the morally indigent, here's my own 2002 Hall of Shame:

Noam Chomsky - Leftism's biggest pimp and poster boy. A once respected intellectual who is constantly redefining himself as a crackpot conspiracy theorist.

Gore Vidal - see above

'Baghdad' Scott Ritter - His trail of lies regarding Iraq's weaponry and intentions leads right to the chequebook of Shakir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American real-estate developer and Hussein sympathizer.

Cornel West - The intellectual nexus of black victimization and oppression. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson idolize him, which explains everything.

Heather Mallick - Wordspiller for the Globe and Mail. Simply an ugly, spiteful bitch.

:: Scot 4:29 AM [+] :: ::
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Cults by any other name. A couple of good pieces from the Economist I read over the holidays observing the piety of both Marxism as well as fitness club memberships.

:: Scot 4:20 AM [+] :: ::
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Religion of Peace strikes again:

Dual suicide bombings rock Tel Aviv

:: Scot 4:08 AM [+] :: ::
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Here's a disturbing article from the Jerusalem Post emailed to me by a reader. Since the link requires a pain in the ass registration process, I'm just going to post the whole thing.

EDITORIAL: Hatred in Canada

With the rising tide of anti-Jewish hostility in Europe getting so much attention in recent months, it is somewhat surprising that an equally worrisome trend across the Atlantic has gone largely unnoticed - mounting anti-Semitism in Canada.

With 360,000 Jews, Canada is home to the fifth largest Jewish community outside of Israel, and America's northern neighbor has long prided itself for its tolerance, openness, and freedom. But that legacy is now under assault amid a spate of recent, and deeply troubling, incidents.

Over the past 12 months, there have been more than 300 anti-Semitic incidents in Canada, or nearly one every day. Four synagogues have been the targets of arson attacks, Jewish day schools have received bomb threats, and there have been numerous property crimes and hate propaganda directed against Jews and their institutions. The most serious incident occurred in July, when David Rosenzweig, an Orthodox Jew, was murdered outside a kosher restaurant in Toronto by a neo-Nazi skinhead.

Jewish students on Canadian campuses have also been particularly hard-hit, with a string of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents. Take, for example, Montreal's Concordia University. In September, a riot broke out at the school forcing the cancellation of a speech by former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. During the melee, a Holocaust survivor was physically assaulted and kicked in the groin.

On December 2, Concordia's student union voted to revoke the status of the Jewish student group Hillel as a recognized campus organization and suspended its annual funding. This has prompted Concordia Hillel members to file a civil suit against the student union.

The situation on other campuses is hardly better. In fact, it has gotten so bad that 100 prominent Canadians signed an ad in the December 17 Globe and Mail taken out by a group called Solidarity with Jews at Risk stating, "An increasing number of students in universities and colleges say that they fear reprisals if they challenge prevailing pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel views. If they argue that Israel has the right to exist, they are often greeted with threats, even physical assault."

Rhetorical attacks on Jews have also taken place with increasing frequency. Earlier this month, Saskatchewan Indian leader David Ahenakew referred to Jews as a "disease" and sought to justify the Holocaust, asserting, "The Jews [expletive] near owned all of Germany prior to the war. That's how Hitler came in. He was going to make [expletive] sure that the Jews didn't take over Germany or Europe. That's why he fried 6 million of those guys, you know." Only after coming under a wave of criticism did Ahenakew apologize for his remarks.

The Canadian government has not exactly helped things through its clumsy handling of a number of Israel-related matters. In early October, the Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency confiscated newsletters published by the Ayn Rand Institute entitled In Moral Defense of Israel, claiming they had to determine whether the material constituted "hate propaganda." The newsletters were released a few days later.

Federal authorities have also been targeting the Canadian branch of Magen David Adom, seeking to cancel its tax-exempt status because some of the ambulances it has donated to MDA here are used in the territories, as if geographical distinctions should be drawn when it comes to saving human lives.

And yet, when it came to terrorist groups such as Hizbullah, Canada's authorities showed far less alacrity in clamping down on their activities. In October, Prime Minister Jean Chretien went so far as to attend a conference in Lebanon alongside Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Then, on November 27, when the Canadian government announced that it was adding six terrorist groups, such as Hamas, to its list of prohibited organizations, it incredibly refused to include Hizbullah. Only once B'nai B'rith Canada took the government to court was the Chretien administration embarrassed into reversing its decision.

For a country that has spent the past two decades fostering multiculturalism and decrying xenophobia, the spate of anti-Semitism in Canada is especially disconcerting. The fact that it has received less global attention than it deserves does not take away from the danger which it poses to Canadian society and its democratic institutions.

One Jew was already murdered earlier this year in the heart of Toronto because of his identity. It is time for the Canadian government to step in and take a firmer stand against anti-Semitism, before this age-old prejudice claims any more victims.

Maybe if we keep this up, we can supercede Germany and France as the West's finest Jew-haters (well, maybe not France).

:: Scot 2:07 PM [+] :: ::
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I was going to write a long and nasty post on Star Trek's latest assault on my loyalty - 'Nemesis,' but Roger Ebert said it best when he wrote:

I think it is time for "Star Trek" to make a mighty leap forward another 1,000 years into the future, to a time when starships do not look like rides in a 1970s amusement arcade, when aliens do not look like humans with funny foreheads, and when wonder, astonishment and literacy are permitted back into the series. Star Trek was kind of terrific once, but now it is a copy of a copy of a copy.

On Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart:

I tried to focus on the actors. Patrick Stewart, as Capt. Picard, is a wonderful actor. I know because I have seen him elsewhere. It is always said of Stewart that his strength as an actor is his ability to deliver bad dialogue with utter conviction. I say it is time to stop encouraging him. Here's an idea: Instead of giving him bad dialogue, why not give him good dialogue, and see what he can do with that?

Poor f/x, embarrassing dialogue, gratuitous hamming, cliche ridden, and near disregard of its own canon. You'll be hard pressed to find a better way of flushing eleven bucks down the toilet.

:: Scot 1:42 PM [+] :: ::
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For all my guitar playing readers out there (all three of four of you), my music site is finally up. There are enough lessons to keep you busy for about a year (with more on the way, including a few of my own) and enough resources to help you find anything you need. I've refrained from putting up links to musicians' classifieds as I have found that local (city specific) services are usually the best way to hook up with other players (with the possible exception of Harmony Central's Musician Ads).

:: Scot 1:11 PM [+] :: ::
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Who says search engines aren't helpful? A search for 'role playing elvish translators' in Yahoo lists me at number 18.

Speaking of search engines, here's an interesting story from SearchDay - Linux out-Googling Microsoft in 2002.

:: Scot 11:15 PM [+] :: ::
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Looks like a few days off turned into a week and a half. Hope your holidays were as good as mine!

I'd like to thank all of you who voted for Noam Chomsky in little green footballs' Idiotarian of the Year contest, but alas, the award has been captured by history's greatest monster - Jimmy Carter. He defeated finalist Michael Moore by nearly a 2-1 margin.

:: Scot 10:47 PM [+] :: ::
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