January 12, 2004
Spanking decision soon
On Jan. 30, the Supreme Court of Canada will hand down its decision in Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law v. The Attorney General in Right of Canada. The CFCYL is challenging section 43 of the Criminal Code, which allows parents and teachers to use physical correction of a child, provided it is reasonable under the circumstances.
This application has been dismissed in the Ontario Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, but I expect at least one or two SCC Justices will agree that the spanking defence should be abolished. Were I a betting man, I'd bet against CFCYL getting its application granted, but it wouldn't really surprise me if they won.
I do expect the court to narrow the circumstances in which physical discipline would be appropriate, and that's fine. But here on Earth, most of us realize that parents sometimes have no choice but to use physical force against a child, especially when that child is on the verge of harming himself or others. One can only hope the Supreme Court isn't that far out of touch.
Quote of the Day
"It’s not about right v. left all the time. Sometimes it’s citizens v. thugs."
- Lileks
The BBC's double standard
Former Labour MP Robert Kilroy-Silk was suspended from his BBC job for an article which savagely criticized Muslim countries. Poet Tom Paulin has not been suspended from his BBC job despite openly calling for Israeli "settlers" to be "shot dead":
The BBC was accused last night of operating double standards over its suspension of Robert Kilroy-Silk for his comments about Arabs while it continues to use a contributor who has called for Israelis to be killed.
Tom Paulin, the poet and Oxford don, has continued to be a regular contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review arts programme, despite being quoted in an Egyptian newspaper as saying that Jews living in the Israeli-occupied territories were "Nazis" who should be "shot dead".
Andrew Dismore, the Labour MP, said he found it hard to understand why the BBC had moved against Mr Kilroy-Silk but had not taken any action against Mr Paulin.
"I am not defending anything Mr Kilroy-Silk has said, but I was greatly upset by what Mr Paulin said, and I think the rules should apply to people equally," said Mr Dismore. "Mr Paulin said awful things about Israel and Jewish people. He should have been kept off BBC screens while his own comments were investigated. I was surprised that that did not happen. It smacks of double standards on the part of the BBC."
Mr Paulin made his comments in the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al-Ahram almost two years ago, saying that US-born settlers in the occupied territories should be shot dead. "I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them," he said, adding: "I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all."
Personally, I believe both individuals should have the right to make their remarks without being thrown off Britain's national broadcaster. But if the BBC must suspend its broadcasters for expressing "inappropriate", you have to wonder why "anti-Jewish" speech doesn't merit disciplinary action while "anti-Arab" speech does.
Well...you don't have to wonder for long, of course.
Update: more from Stephen Pollard.
January 11, 2004
Computerless
My CD burner died, so the laptop goes back to Staples today. Hopefully it won't take too long to fix (it's still under warranty), but any posting over the next few days will be at the office.
Mike Peckham advised against getting a Toshiba laptop, with which he's had problems in the past, so I bought a Compaq instead. But guess which company made the CD burner?
Pro-peace or pro-tyranny?
Leo McKinstry, a former member of Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (the group that invented the "peace" symbol, by the way), says the CND doesn't give a fig about disarming anyone except the Americans:
It might be thought that CND's members would rejoice at Mr Bush's success in demilitarising the most dangerous regimes on the planet. But they could not care less. Trapped in their anti-Western ideology, they continue to trumpet the claim that America represents the greatest threat to world peace, wilfully ignoring the obvious truth that it is the reality of US force which persuades - or compels - rogue states to disarm.
Such myopia has been at the heart of CND since its creation in 1958. Peace campaigners have only ever been interested in British or American disarmament. They never marched against Soviet missile programmes, never organised demonstrations outside the Chinese embassy.
[...]
There are, though, some deluded souls who still believe the West can protect itself through unilateral pacifism. This amounts to nothing more than cowardice, as CND admitted last year in explaining its opposition to action in Iraq: "War greatly increases the risk that instead of being disarmed, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction may be used." So, like Mr Bush and Tony Blair, CND actually believed Saddam had WMD, but was too terrified to do anything about them.
Read it all.
January 10, 2004
A game for the ages
Wow.
It looks all over for the Rams, but they score 11 points in the last 6 minutes, during which their kicker retrieves his own onside kick. In overtime, John Kasay kicks a 40-yard FG which would have won the game for Carolina, but the Panthers were called for delay of game, moving them back 5 yards, at which point Kasay misses. Then the Rams miss a field goal. Finally, the Panthers score in the opening seconds of double overtime.
Keep in mind that Carolina did all of this in St. Louis, where the Rams had won 14 in a row. I was skeptical of them all year, but it looks like the Panthers are for real.
And the Rams? They've had the talent to win it all over the past 4 years, but it ends in disappointment again. Mike Martz will be gone by the end of the week.
The smoking gun?
The BBC says Danish troops might - might - have found chemical weapons shells buried in Iraq:
Danish troops have found dozens of mortar shells in southern Iraq which could contain chemical weapons according to initial tests.
The 36 120mm mortar rounds appeared to have been buried for at least 10 years, the army said.
All showed traces of blister gases, the army said, a group of chemical compounds which include mustard gas.
US officials confirmed the apparent find and said the weapons were probably left over from the 1980-88 war on Iran.
Results of more extensive tests should be available in about two days, the Danes said on an official website quoted by the Reuters news agency.
Biting satire at chapters.indigo.ca
Check out the "Look for Similar Items by Subject" section on their page for David Frum and Richard Perle's An End to Evil.
(Needless to say, the page for Michael Moore's latest book does not refer viewers to the diet books section.)
Update: meanwhile, Amazon's absolutely insane "customer reviews" for An End to Evil have to be read to be believed. ("Perhaps, for instance, we could lobotomize Perle and Frum so they can't write any more blueprints for world domination as they've done here, and as Perle has done once before, under the auspices of PNAC. ...What we really need is a nationwide neoconservative purge on the scale of the anti-communist purges in the early part of the previous century.")
Any book that can piss off leftists this much must be worth reading.
America's most arrogant candidiate
Wesley Clark has already sneered that he would have captured Osama bin Laden (1957-2001?) by now. And in the unlikely event that Clark becomes President, this comment will almost certainly come back to haunt him:
Wesley Clark said yesterday the two greatest lies of the last three years are that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks couldn't have been prevented and that another attack is inevitable.
He said a Clark administration would protect America in the future.
"If I'm president of the United States, I'm going to take care of the American people," Clark said in a meeting with the Monitor editorial board. "We are not going to have one of these incidents."
Clark, a retired Army general, envisioned a future in which Americans "have more confidence in ourselves as a people." He continued: "Nothing is going to hurt this country - not bioweapons, not a nuclear weapon, not a terrorist strike - there is nothing that can hurt us if we stay united and move together and have a vision for moving to the future the right way."
I agree that 9/11 - the planning of which began during the Clinton years - could have been prevented. That no heads have rolled in the wake of 9/11 is a very legitimate knock against Bush. But preventing the attack would have required a lot of luck, and raids and arrests that would have made people like Clark howl in protest and mock the Bush administration's "paranoia". (Well, actually, Clark probably wouldn't have mocked it at the time, because he didn't realize he was a Democrat until a few months ago. But I digress.)
But think about what this guy is saying: there will be no terror attacks on American soil if I become President. Terrorists only have to get lucky once. Short of turning the country into a totalitarian state, how does Clark intend to keep tabs on everybody planning a mass killing - especially when his party seems committed to eliminating any hint of "racial profiling" against young Arab males?
The arrogance is almost too astonishing to believe. It's not as bad as hinting that Bush "knew" 9/11 was coming, but it's pretty close.
You lost, guys. Deal with it
I've never heard of Hanson Dowell either, but appearently he's the new leader of the federal PC party. Which, of course, does not exist anymore.
A group of disgruntled Tory activists is attempting to revive the federal Progressive Conservative name by appealing to Elections Canada for party status.
Hanson Dowell, a Nova Scotia lawyer, is the self-proclaimed interim leader of the reconstituted party, with Toronto businessman Oscar Johvicas its interim president. The federal PC party was disbanded last month following a ratification vote that approved a merger between the Canadian Alliance and the Tories. The new merged entity is called the Conservative Party of Canada.
At the time, both merger participants registered trademarks on their old party names so that no one else could appropriate them.
That hasn't stopped more than 200 former Tories from signing a letter seeking to resurrect the federal PC brand.
"I know damn well it would be a long haul at the very best," Dowell said in an interview Friday after filing with Elections Canada.
"But the truth is there are people who need a (political) home."
Awwwww. Make of it what you will, but CP put a picture of Jack Layton next to this story.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the latest poll shows the Liberals far ahead - no surprise there - but the Conservatives are at a respectable 24% - well ahead of the NDP, and better than their 21% showing just before Christmas. (Naturally, the media is highlighting the results that show Conservative supporters believing Paul Martin is a better leader than Stephen Harper.)
January 09, 2004
Prosecuting The Miracle
Liberal Senator Mobina Jaffer and MP Joe Peschisolido are cutting their association with The Miracle, a B.C. Muslim newspaper which published a hateful tirade against Jews:
Liberal Senator Mobina Jaffer says she will no longer write for a B.C. newspaper that published an article accusing Jews of faking the Holocaust and staging the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Jaffer, a Muslim who is holding meetings in Canada and Israel between Palestinian and Jewish women, said she was saddened and sickened by the anti-Semitic tirade in The Miracle, a weekly newspaper based in this Vancouver suburb.
"The tone of the article that was published, I have to tell you, made me sick," the B.C. senator said today. "That is just to me not acceptable."
Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido, who has run advertisements in the The Miracle, also said he will no longer place ads in the paper.
"I was shocked and outraged when I actually read the article," said the Richmond MP.
Good for them - although, as a reader pointed out, we'd never hear the end of this if Conservative politicians were caught up in this mess. That said, I have a hard time believing a "moderate" paper would go off the deep end so unexpectedly, and I wonder if this is the first time The Miracle has published garbage like this. (It doesn't seem to be on the web, so I have no way of knowing.) Is this really the first time The Miracle offended Peschisolido and Jaffer, or is this the first time anyone else has noticed?
The paper is also being investigated for a possible prosecution under Canadian hate-crime laws. I have a problem with such laws on principle, though I believe Miracle editor Nusrat Hussain is being disingenuous in claiming the "free speech" defence. (Would he be so tolerant of, say, the very blog you're reading?)
Dennis Miller put it best: when we let people promote this hateful trash without fear of prosecution, we know exactly where these people are. I want these people to let it all out and tell us what they really think about Jews and other infidels, so I'll know who's genuinely "moderate" and who's just hiding what they really believe. Here in Canada, for every Hussain or Ernst Zundel brazen enough to risk prosecution, I'll bet there are a dozen "socially acceptable" commentators who keep their hatemongering behind closed doors.
(As for the vile Edgar Steele, whose writings I've noticed before, the Southern Poverty Law Center has a profile.)
Update: the Vancouver Sun's Pete McMartin confirms my suspicion that The Miracle has published similar nonsense on other occasions:
In the Dec. 26 edition, the front-page story was "The Saddam Hussein Capture Hoax," an article taken from La Voz de Aztlan Web site, a radical Latino independent news service -- which, incidentally, often publishes anti-Jewish stories. The story's thesis? Hussein had been in custody since July and his capture was staged for political purposes.
The Edgar Steele story ran a week earlier, in the Dec. 19 edition. How come Peschisolido and Jaffer are only denouncing it now?
My eyes! My eyes!
For God's sake, somebody gouge out my eyes!
(Am I being cruel? Well, this woman's idea of elevated discourse is to call Irshad Manji a "professional lesbian", so TS.)
Krauthammer: We Are Safer
Charles Krauthammer thrashes Howard Dean for saying the capture of Saddam "hasn't made Americans safer":
The idea that we are not safer (a) because we are still losing troops and (b) because al Qaeda has not been extinguished, amounts to an open-court confession of cluelessness on foreign policy.
The first is the equivalent of saying that we were not safer after D-Day because we were still losing troops in Europe. In war, a strategic turning point makes you safer because it hastens victory, hastens the ultimate elimination of the hostile power, hastens the return home of the troops. It does not mean there is an immediate cessation, or even a diminution, of casualties (see: Battle of the Bulge).
The other part of the statement -- we cannot be safer because we are still threatened by terrorism -- is even more telling. It rests on the wider notion, shared not just by Dean but by many Democrats, that so long as al Qaeda is active, we are never any safer. This rests on the remarkable assumption that we have a single enemy in the world, al Qaeda, and that it and it alone defines ``safety.''
It is hard to believe that serious people can have so absurdly narrow a vision of American national security. The fact is that we have other enemies in the world.
Saddam was one of them, and he is gone. Libya was another, and it has just retired from the field, suing for peace and giving up its weapons of mass destruction. (Gaddafi went so far as to go on television to urge Syria, Iran and North Korea to do the same.) Iran has also gone softer, agreeing to spot inspections, something it never did before it faced 130,000 American troops about 100 miles from its border.
Krauthammer has way too much faith in Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, a questionable U.S. ally at best (though arguably the best the Americans will possibly get from that country). But read the whole thing.
January 08, 2004
Get these nominations in
Nominations are open for the 4th annual Weblog Awards. Thanks to The Meatriarchy (a nice fellow I had the pleasure of meeting at the Paradise, NL Tim Horton's over the Christmas holiday) for nominating me in the "Best Canadian Weblog" category.
Essential Viewing
Kathy tipped me off to "Forbidden Iran", tonight's episode of Frontline, dealing with the horrific crackdown against Iranian dissidents opposed to the "Islamic Republic".
Each PBS station seems to set its own schedule, so check your local listings. (I get it from Buffalo, which will show it at 9PM Eastern this evening.)
In defence of France
Theodore Dalrymple explains why he's moving there. (Mainly, they're sliding into "cultural oblivion" less rapidly than Britain.)
I don't agree with much - nay, any - of this, but Dalrymple is always interesting.
Zionists on Mars!!!
The NASA Mars Rover has a small plaque as a memorial to the seven Columbia astronauts - including Ilan Ramon, who has a small Israeli flag next to his name. (Hat tip: Stan Brin.)
I can't wait until the Arab media hears about this.
Why Lawyers have such a bad name
A man in Wisconsin plans to sue the cable company for pushing an "addictive" product.
I am not making this up.
Cable TV made a West Bend man addicted to TV, caused his wife to be overweight and his kids to be lazy, he says.
And he’s threatening to sue the cable company.
Timothy Dumouchel of West Bend wants $5,000 or three computers, and a lifetime supply of free Internet service from Charter Communications to settle what he says will be a small claims suit.
Dumouchel blames Charter for his TV addiction, his wife’s 50-pound weight gain and his children’s being “lazy channel surfers,” according to a Fond du Lac police report.
Charter employees called police to the local office at 165 Knight’s Way the evening of Dec. 23 after Dumouchel showed up with a small claims complaint, reportedly intimidated an employee and made “low-level threats” to employees’ safety, according to a police report.
The report states Dumouchel gave an employee five minutes to get a supervisor to talk to him or their next contact would be “in the ocean with the sharks.”
According to the report, Dumouchel told Charter employees he plans to sue because his cable connection remained intact four years after he tried to get it canceled.
The result was that he and his family got free cable from August of 1999 to Dec. 23, 2003.
“I believe that the reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we watched TV every day for the last four years,” Dumouchel stated in a written complaint against the company, included in a Fond du Lac police report.
“But the reason I am suing Charter is they did not let me make a decision as to what was best for myself and my family and (they have been) keeping cable (coming) into my home for four years after I asked them to turn it off.”
No, there is no chance in hell that this legal action will succeed. And the story makes reference to a small-claims action against the cable company, for which (in Newfoundland, at least, and presumably everywhere else) a lawyer is not needed. I can't even see the shadiest lawyers, the ones who run the really lurid ads on the local Fox affiliate, taking a case like this.
But we're still going to get the blame.
January 07, 2004
Quote of the Day
"The Times has an op-ed today by Colin Powell. The Guardian, on the other hand, has one by Osama bin Laden. You can't say their editors don't know their audiences."
"We're just sayin', you know?"
The anti-Israeli (and, I'm willing to bet, Saudi-funded) Washington Report on Middle East Affairs is complaining about the U.S. Holocaust Museum:
It is Congress, of course, which allocates taxpayer dollars—specifically, in the case of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on interior and related agencies. In addition to the Department of Interior, “other agencies” for which the subcommittee is responsible include the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Kenndy Center.
Washington Report readers who wish to keep track of how many of their tax dollars go to support the Holocaust Museum are therefore advised to pay attention to news reports on federal arts and humanities funding—and to continue reading beyond the first few paragraphs.
[...]
Americans well might wonder why, at a time when a memorial to World War II veterans who died for this country only now is being undertaken, when a national museum dedicated to Native Americans is just being completed, and when ground is far from being broken for a museum devoted to African Americans—the latter two groups having suffered here, at the hands of this country—the U.S. government places a higher priority on a museum dedicated to the victims and survivors of a European horror. [emphasis added]
In theory, it's possible to take a position like this without being a rabid Jew-hater - just as, in theory, Communism can be made workable.*
*Well, actually, it can't. But you know what I mean.
(via Bill Herbert)
Jew-hatred in B.C.
The Miracle, a Muslim newspaper in British Columbia, has been reprinting the works of noxious antisemite (and Michael Rivero fave) Edgar Steele:
Copies of a B.C. Muslim newspaper have been turned over to the province's hate crimes unit after it published an article accusing "the Jews" of everything from faking the Holocaust to staging the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Canadian Jewish Congress made a complaint seeking a criminal investigation into what it called "a virulently anti-Semitic article" published in The Miracle, a weekly newspaper distributed in mosques in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.
The edition of the paper featuring the page-long list of misdeeds it says were committed by Jews also includes a column penned by Liberal Senator Mobina Jaffer and an advertisement by the local Liberal MP, Joe Peschisolido.
"It isn't Arabs lying about and guilt-tripping us with 'the holocaust' -- it is Jews," the article reads. "It wasn't Arabs who caused the Great Depression -- it was Jews. It wasn't Arabs who started WWI -- it was Jews. It wasn't Arabs who started WWII -- it was Jews."
The Dec. 19 article by Edgar Steele of Idaho goes on to blame Jews for 81 other items, ranging from pedophilia and organized crime to "race-mixing," militant feminism and "forcing us to allow homosexuals to lead Boy Scout troops." [emphasis added]
Begin the thawing of Joe Gibbs
A bombshell: Joe Gibbs is returning to coach the Washington Redskins. I guess this means he'll have to sell his minority interest in the Atlanta Falcons. Should be able to hang onto his NASCAR team, though. (Maybe my post heading is a bit cruel, since Gibbs isn't really that old - but I can't help thinking this is a desperation move by the 'Skins, who have lurched from crisis to crisis these past few years.)
I would have put money on Jim Fassel getting the job. As soon as I heard Washington was no longer an option, I figured Fassel would go to Arizona - but now it looks like Dennis Green is the front-runner for the Cardinals job. Maybe Oakland, or the Jaguars? I can't see Fassel, who took the Giants to a Super Bowl a few years ago, being left out altogether.
Chrysler goes wild
Chrysler introduced this 850hp, quad-turbo V12-powered supercar at the Detroit Auto Show last week:
Of course I hope they build it, even if it will be significantly detuned for production. But I'm even more enthusiastic about another Chrysler concept car, the Dodge Slingshot, also unveiled in Detroit:
The Slingshot is based on DaimlerChrysler's tiny Smart car, sold in Europe, and has a 100hp three-cylinder engine. That may not sound like much, but it could be quite a bit for a car this small. And it looks like a lot of fun. But the main reason I like it is because, if they ever build it, I could probably afford one.
January 06, 2004
Is it homicide?
A fascinating case from Greenwich, Connecticut: a mentally unstable man allegedly stabbed his mother to death on New Year's Eve. A blood transfusion could have saved her life, but in accordance with her religious beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness, she refused it, and died shortly thereafter.
Michael Peckham thinks a murder charge can be laid, but he wants to know what we lawyer-bloggers think about it. Assuming a court found that the accused intended to kill the victim, I think a Canadian court would enter a conviction.
Syria has WMDs
Bashar Assad all but admitted, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, that the last Ba'athist state has chemical and biological weapons:
Syria is entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own chemical and biological deterrent, President Bashar Assad said last night as he rejected American and British demands for concessions on weapons of mass destruction.
In his first major statement since Libya's decision last month to scrap its nuclear and chemical programmes, he came closer than ever before to admitting that his country possessed stockpiles of WMD.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Assad said that any deal to destroy Syria's chemical and biological capability would come about only if Israel agreed to abandon its undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Assad's position is perfectly reasonable, considering how Israel launched unprovoked wars of annihilation against Syria in 1948, 1967 and 1973, and keep launching terrorist attacks into the country today. (I guess I should emphasize I'm being sarcastic, since a disturbing number of people really believe the Jooooos started all these wars.)
Assad also says Israel is completely, 100% to blame for the poor, helpless, desperate suicide bombers. But he doesn't hate Jews.
This, he said, was the most important part of his message to Britain and the West. He did not use the term "suicide bombings". He referred to "this thing" or these "operations" and he claimed that they were out of control.
"We never say it is legitimate or not. And we have never supported or condemned this thing. The form of resistance is determined by the people who have the problem."
What others thought was of no consequence. "It doesn't matter if we like it or not, if we support it or condemn it. He [the suicide bomber] is going to die and he doesn't care about your opinion. They are not going to go and kill themselves because the head of an organisation tells them, 'Die, it's your turn'. He is going to die because he wants to."
He claimed that the terrorist "organisations" behind them, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, no longer held sway over those who chose to die. Israel was responsible, he added, and only Israel could stop them. "These are individual operations. They can get explosives if they want to," he said.
"So what is the reason that led to this operation? The Israeli killings, the Israeli occupation, the settlements. If your readers want these operations to stop they should deal with the reason for them.
"More killings by Israel will have a reaction. It's a reality we cannot control. Even the organisations cannot control this reality. Only Israel, when it stops killing, won't have any more killing."
But surely as an Arab leader he had influence that could be used to urge Palestinians to abandon violence? He rejected the idea. "Many voices encourage them not to die, but they are going to die."
[...]
Yet asked directly why he appeared to hate Israel and the Jews so much, Mr Assad denied the suggestion. "I have never said such a thing. We don't hate. We look for peace. If you hate you cannot talk about peace. Peace and hatred are mutually exclusive."
There were Jews in Syria who were full citizens and had been for centuries, he argued. A recent count put the total of Syrian Jews left in the country at about 100.
This sort of thing, of course, could only be produced by a completely non-antisemitic regime that wants peace. Enjoy these little interviews while you can, Assad. Your time's almost up.
Mars in color
The new color photos from NASA's Spirit rover are absolutely astonishing.
It got me thinking: we always assume, if there is intelligent life on other planets, that aliens from outer space will come here and contact us. (And instruct us in the principles of their sacred book, To Serve Man.) But presuming aliens care as much about cost efficiency as we do, isn't it more likely they'd send some sort of machine instead?
Maybe they're already here now. I'm particularly suspicious about these things.
The Flash Air 737 mystery
I've much conceded that the crash of an Egyptian Boeing 737 into the Red Sea last week was simply an accident, not a terrorist attack. But the Globe and Mail says terrorism still cannot be ruled out:
Egyptian authorities were quick to blame unspecified technical problems, but a previously unknown Islamic group claimed yesterday that it had downed the airliner and several aspects of the crash raised troubling questions. Several other Boeing 737s have crashed after suffering rudder malfunctions at low altitudes.
A caller saying he represented a radical Islamist group in Yemen, Ansar el-Haq (Apostles of Truth) telephoned Agence France-Presse in Cairo to say the aircraft had been downed in an "attack."
The caller warned of future attacks against Air France flights unless the French government rescinded a law that bans Muslim students from wearing headscarves in public schools.
Although no evidence of terrorism has emerged, the relatively low altitude of the aircraft — about 1,600 metres — as it climbed away from Sharm el-Sheikh airport put it well within range of small, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
"We cannot exclude either accident or criminal cause,'' Michel Wachenheim, head of France's Civil Aviation Authority, said yesterday.
I'm still leaning toward "accident" until I see convincing proof of an attack. (I can easily see an obscure fringe group like "Ansar el-Haq" claiming responsibility for an accident, just to get its name in the papers.) But if this was a case of terrorism, will the French start wondering what they did to make people hate them so much?
That's the standard to which they hold the United States and Israel, after all.
Financial crunch coming
PriceWaterhouseCoopers has completed its review of this province's finances, and the mess Roger Grimes left behind is even worse than we thought. The provincial deficit will be $827 million this year.
By my rough calculations, Newfoundland and Labrador has a higher deficit per capita than the United States*, and we haven't even captured any genocidal dictators with it. (I suspect our deficit as a percentage of GDP would be even worse.)
Premier Williams announced a public sector wage freeze in a televised address last night, much to the chagrin of the big public employees' unions. (NAPE had planned to seek a 21% raise over three years, though the leader "expects that will come down in bargaining".) I have friends who will be hit by this wage freeze, so I can sympathize. But I also ask, where is the money going to come from? Do we raise what are already the highest taxes in the country? Cut health and education spending? Go even deeper into debt? Or just hope the money fairy will take care of everything we need?
Over the next few months, Newfoundlanders will express their frustration at major cutbacks coming at a time when the provincial economy, flush with oil and mineral revenues, is supposed to be booming (in St. John's, at least). My rudimentary knowledge of Keynesian economics tells me that's when a state should cut its spending, to make up for what was pumped into the economy when times were hard.
I feel sorry for whoever has to explain this to the public service, though.
*The American deficit reached a shocking $374.2 billion in 2003. With 290,809,777 Americans, that comes out to $1,286.75 per capita. The 2001 census listed 513,000 people as living in this province, and assuming that hasn't changed dramatically, the deficit would be $1,612.09 per person.
Update: ladies and gentlemen, I am an idiot.
As a reader pointed out, my U.S. vs. Newfoundland deficit comparison compares the American dollar with the less valuable Canadian dollar. At current rates (according to this currency converter), the provincial deficit per capita is approximately US$1,259.84.
So, in American dollars, our per-capita deficit is slightly less than what the Bush Administration has racked up. (I've little doubt, however, that the U.S. deficit is smaller as a percentage of GDP.)
January 05, 2004
New Entry Requirements
This CP article explains how new U.S. immigration rules, which will require many visitors to get visas or be fingerprinted, will affect Canadians. Long story short: Canadian citizens just visiting the States won't be affected too seriously, but landed immigrants and Canadians living or working in the U.S. will come under greater scrutiny.
For America's sake, I hope they do a better job enforcing these regulations than they did before 9/11.
MoveOn.org=David Irving
I could write something about the "Bush=Hitler" ads posted on MoveOn.org, but I couldn't possibly say it as well as Jonah Goldberg:
Show me the camps. Show me the millions of people being gassed. Show me the tattoos on people's arms. Show me elderly Muslim men being beaten in the streets, their stores smashed, and books burned. Show me huge piles of emaciated bodies stocked high like cords of wood.
Instead, on the web we find juxtaposed pictures of Bush with a dog and Hitler with a dog; Bush posing with children and Hitler posing with children; Bush appearing before large crowds and Hitler appearing before large crowds. By such "standards" every president — every politician — since at least the day photography was invented is a Nazi. To assume the mantle of "reasonableness" — as [CounterPunch's Dave Lindorff] does — by conceding that Bush isn't as good an orator as Hitler was, is to claim soundness of mind by conceding that a clock doesn't melt because vests have no sleeves.
[...]
This has nothing to do with partisanship. It has to do with the fact that such comparisons are slanderous to the United States and historical truth and amount to Holocaust denial. When you say that anything George Bush has done is akin to what Hitler did, you make the Holocaust into nothing more than an example of partisan excess. Tax cuts are not genocide, as so many Democrats have suggested over the years. (For example, during the Contract with America debate, Charles Rangel complained that "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things" that were in the Contract with America. In other words, the Contract with America was in some way worse than what Hitler did. At the end of the day, that is Holocaust denial.)
Or Dennis Miller:
Everybody in the world is Hitler. Bush is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler. The only guy who isn't Hitler is the foreign guy with a mustache dropping people who disagree with him into the wood chipper. He's not Hitler.
The Arab world's shame
The Associated Press has filed a damning report on the way the Arab states bordering Israel, who bawl and scream about the way these nasty Jooooos are mistreating Palestinian "refugees", systematically deny any rights to the blighted Palestinians:
The anger is focused chiefly on Egypt and Jordan for having signed peace treaties with Israel, but it goes further, to the frustration of having lived as second-class citizens in neighbouring Middle Eastern states for 55 years since fleeing their homes when Israel became a state.
Arab states, which have fought four wars against Israel in the name of Palestine, maintain that to grant them citizenship would be to give up on their dream of returning to the homes they lost when the Jewish state was created.
But to the Palestinians, the wars were fought as much out of self-interest as concern for the Palestinians, that the verbal championing of their cause is rhetoric to rally the Arab states' own masses, and that it isn't matched by decent treatment of the refugees.
[...]
Palestinians in Egypt suffer restrictions on employment, education and owning property. When Egypt announced in September it would grant nationality to children of Egyptian mothers married to foreigners, it did not include Palestinians.
In Lebanon, where nearly 400,000 Palestinians live in 12 refugee camps, Palestinians cannot own property or get state health care.
According to Nasrallah, Lebanon bans refugees from 72 areas of employment, including medicine and engineering.
Things are better for Jordan's 1.7 million Palestinians, who are nearly one-third of the population and enjoy Jordanian citizenship. In recent times, however, the government has moved to "Jordanize" jobs in the army and other sensitive areas like state radio and television and the interior ministry.
Syria, with a population of 18 million, is a strong verbal supporter of the Palestinian cause, but refuses citizenship to its 410,000 Palestinian refugees.
Hisham Youssef, spokesperson for the 22-nation Arab League, acknowledged that Palestinians live "in very bad conditions," but said the policy is meant "to preserve their Palestinian identity."
"If every Palestinian who sought refuge in a certain country was integrated and accommodated into that country, there won't be any reason for them to return to Palestine." [emphasis added]
The remarks of Saeb Erekat, still listed as a Palestinian "cabinet minister" even though he's announced his "resignation" about 50 times now, are even more extraordinary:
The PLO tends to agree with that line, while adding its voice to demands for better treatment of the refugees.
"Palestine is the national home for the Palestinian people wherever they are now," Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat, a West Bank Palestinian, told the AP. How they achieve that right is a matter for negotiation with Israel, he said, but added:
"We are against the settlement of the refugees in any country, but the host countries should provide the refugees with a dignified living. ... The host countries should allow the refugees to work, to live and to move in dignity until they achieve their right of return."
Translation: the Palestinian leadership opposes any attempt to let them settle in Arab states, because it ruins their chances of destroying Israel.
Even the strongest supporter of Israel must admit that thousands of Palestinians became genuine refugees after independence in 1948, and that they are entitled to fair treatment. (Similarly, Arabs should admit that at least as many Jews became genuine refugees from their countries around the same time, but they never do.) But the way the Palestinians have been so blatantly used by their fanatically antisemitic "brother Arabs" is absolutely sickening - not to mention the way the "international community" has expanded the category of "Palestinian refugee" to include millions of Palestinians who have never set foot in Israel. (This Enter Stage Right article has all the details.)
Make any excuse you want, but the fact is that such a ridiculously definition of "refugee" would never be used if the Jews weren't being painted as the enemy. Prove me wrong.
Go Bluelights!
A Florida school district plans to convert two abandoned K-Marts into new schools.
In theory, such a plan would save millions of dollars and several months over building a new school. It would also send Telegram columnists and VOCM Open Line callers into spasms of rage were it introduced in Newfoundland. (Then again, there are rumours that the old Canadian Tire here in Corner Brook will be turned into a hospital building, so who knows?)
(via Joanne Jacobs)
America's embarassing ally
The New York Times says Pakistan produced a sales brochure hawking nuclear weapons technology to potential customers - including Iran and North Korea:
The Pakistani leaders who denied for years that scientists at the country's secret A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories were peddling advanced nuclear technology must have been averting their eyes from a most conspicuous piece of evidence: the laboratory's own sales brochure, quietly circulated to aspiring nuclear weapons states and a network of nuclear middlemen around the world.
The cover bears an official-looking seal that says "Government of Pakistan" and a photograph of the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. It promotes components that were spinoffs from Pakistan's three-decade-long project to build a nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium, set in a drawing that bears a striking resemblance to a mushroom cloud.
[...]
In 2002 the United States was surprised to discover how North Korea had turned to the Khan laboratory for an alternative way to manufacture nuclear fuel, after the reactors and reprocessing facilities it had relied on for years were "frozen" under a now shattered agreement with the Clinton administration. Last year, international inspectors and Western intelligence agencies were surprised again, this time by the central role Pakistan played in the initial technology that enabled Iran to pursue a secret uranium enrichment program for 18 years.
The sources of Libya's enrichment program are still under investigation, but those who have had an early glance say they see "interconnections" with both Pakistan and Iran's programs — and Libyan financial support for the Pakistani program that stretches back three decades.
The scary thing about Pakistan is that Pervez Musharraf, on whose watch this blatant flogging of nuclear technology has occurred, is probably the least radical Pakistani leader the Americans (and the rest of us) can possibly hope for. It's increasingly hypocritical for the U.S. to continue supporting these guys - but God only knows what will happen should Islamic extremists take over.
The Times also notes, once again, that the "axis of evil" comment - an analogy mocked and dismissed repeatedly by the Times itself - has some basis in fact:
Even more worrisome are the kinds of exchanges that do not move on ships and planes, what Ashton B. Carter, who worked in the Clinton administration on North Korean issues, calls "substantial technical cooperation among all members of the brotherhood of rogues."
North Korean engineers have been sighted living in Iran, ostensibly to help the country build medium- and long-range missiles. But the growing suspicion is that the relationship has now expanded beyond missiles, and that the two nations are warily dealing in the nuclear arena as well.
"We're debating the evidence," said one administration official.
January 04, 2004
Monkey thrown from back
22 for 26 for 377 yards and 5 TD passes. Damn.
I'm undoubtedly jinxing them by posting this, but now that Manning has finally proven he can win in the playoffs, there's no reason to think the Colts can't go all the way this year. (Indy vs. New England in the AFC title game should be another classic.)
Media circus incoming
ABC's PrimeTime Live and Good Morning America have snared Pete Rose for interviews later this week.
If Rose is finally going to admit what everyone in the world knows - that he bet on baseball - I think he should be allowed into the Hall of Fame. If the likes of Ty Cobb (who deliberately tried to injure other players, for crying out loud) can be allowed in, it's hard to justify keeping out Rose. That said, if the title of his upcoming book - My Prison Without Bars - is any indication, it's going to be a sickening display of self-pity from a man who really has no one else to blame but himself.
(As long as we're on this subject, one of my readers said Rose should never be reinstated if he bet on his own team. If he was betting against the Reds, I'd agree. But if you're betting that your team will win, it's not really a conflict of interest, is it?)
Did you say something, "Osama"?
Al-Jazeera - whose editor-in-chief does a poor job containing his enthusiasm for the "Saudi dissident" - has aired another audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden:
The Al-Jazeera satellite channel broadcast an audiotape Sunday purportedly from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in which he urged Muslims to continue fighting a holy war in Iraq and the Middle East rather than cooperate with peace efforts.
The speaker, who referred to recent events — including the December capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, called on Muslims to "continue the jihad to check the conspiracies that are hatched against the Islamic nation." He said the U.S.-led war against Iraq was the beginning of the "occupation" of Gulf states for their oil.
"My message is to incite you against the conspiracies, especially those uncovered by the occupation of the crusaders in Baghdad under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, and also the situation in (Jerusalem) under the deceptions of the road map and the Geneva initiative," the speaker said.
[...]
[Al-Jazeera editor-in-chief] Hilal said he was certain the voice on the tape was bin Laden's.
"It is bin Laden's superb and special Arabic language that is very hard to emulate," Hilal said. "It is undoubtedly his voice, his style, and the typical examples from history he uses." [emphasis added]
The guy sounds just like John Pilger, doesn't he? Until I see a video - specifically, a video which clearly shows Osama referring to recent events, with his lips clearly marking everything he seemingly says - I shall continue to believe he's been dead since early 2002.
You can't parody alternative newspapers anymore
Milwaukee's Shepherd Express, in its "2003 Winners and Losers" issue, called Fidel Castro a "Big-Time Winner" because he was "elected to a sixth term since 1976 at the age of 76."
(via The Corner)
The football gods strike again
Here's a tip: if you ever find yourself quarterbacking an NFL team, and you win the overtime coin toss, do not loudly tell the ref, "we want the ball and we're gonna score." As Gregg Easterbrook would write, the football gods simply will not let you win.
As I write this, Matt Hasselbeck just found out the hard way.
The rehabilitation of Milosevic
Slobodan Milosevic was tried before a UN-sanctioned international tribunal - the same kind people are now demanding for Saddam Hussein. A few weeks ago, he was elected to the Serbian Parliament. Only Mark Steyn appears to have noticed this:
On the last weekend of the year, Slobo won a seat in Serbia's legislature, as did his fellow "alleged'' (as Wes Clark would say) war criminal Vojislav Seselj, and Seselj's extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party won more seats than anybody else.
But hang on a minute. Aren't Milosevic and Seselj in jail at the Hague and facing the stern justice of an ''international tribunal''? Why, yes. Slobo's been on trial for two years already, and they're only just wrapping up the prosecution. Among the witnesses was, of course, Gen. Clark, who couldn't resist boasting that he's the only Democratic presidential candidate ''who's ever faced a dictator down. I'm the only one who's ever testified in court against one.'' Au contraire, right now it looks like Slobo is the only Serbian parliamentary candidate who's ever faced a U.S. general down.
Anyone who goes goo-goo at the mention of the words ''international tribunal'' -- i.e., Clark, John Kerry, Howard Dean and the rest of the multilatte multilateralist establishment -- should look at what it boils down to in practice. Even though the court forbade Milosevic and Seselj from actively campaigning in the Serbian election, they somehow managed to. In other words, ''international law'' is unable to enforce its judgments even in its own jailhouse.
But it's worse than that. One reason why Slobo is popular again in Serbia is precisely because of the ''international'' trial. In 2000, when the strongman of the Balkans was swept from power, he was a discredited figure, a European pariah reviled as a murderous butcher. After two years of legal hair-splitting at the Hague, he's all but fully rehabilitated.
[...]
Up to the moment Saddam popped out of the spider-hole, the international jet set's line was that deplorable as Saddam's rule might be -- gassing Kurds, feeding folks feet-first into industrial shredders, etc. -- it was strictly an internal matter for the Iraqi people. The minute the old boy was in U.S. custody, the international jet set's revised position was that gassing Kurds, feeding folks into industrial shredders and so forth were crimes against the whole world and certainly not a matter for the Iraqi people. Instead, we need a (drumroll, please) United Nations-mandated international tribunal.
This is what the Zionist neocons would call chutzpah.
Those ignorant Brits
Whenever he visits England, Michael Moore loves to mock his countrymen for their sheer stupidity, symbolized by their supposed inability to locate other nations on a map.
I'm not expecting him to comment on these poll results anytime soon:
Sixty-five percent of Britons don't know in which US city the hit musical "Chicago" is set in, according to a nationwide survey for an upcoming TV quiz show.
Another 57 percent didn't know where the celebrated television soap opera "Dallas" was set, and two-thirds were equally at a loss to identify the city at the heart of the Roger Whittaker ballad "Streets of London".
YouGov, a market research organisation that uses on-line panels, questioned 1,000 respondents for a quiz show on Channel 4 titled "Beat the Nation" that goes on air next Monday. Its findings were released Friday.
The poll also indicated that 67 percent of Britons don't know when World War II ended, 64 percent didn't know where the French Alps were, and 70 percent didn't know where the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is based.
I find it impossible to believe Britons, Americans or anyone else are really this stupid - which makes me wonder just how these polls, which come up three of four times a year on the wire services, are carried out.
Koshergate
Tim Blair says he won't support the Collingwood AFL team as long as they're sponsored by Emirates Airlines.
As for the issue of El Al not listing halal meals as being available on their flights, the consensus in my comments section seems to be that kosher food is acceptable to Muslims, but not vice versa. (One reader writes, "Osama Bin Ladin would eat in a Kosher restaurant. Then he would kill the owner.") Zach Cohen makes a pretty good case that Emirates' conduct is much worse than El Al's:
Does El-Al have a policy of refusing to accept requests for meals that meet Muslim guidelines?
Does El-Al say that since they are a 'Jewish' airline, that they don't expect Arabs to fly with them?
All you have is a page at El-Al's website that does not list Halal. How this compares to an Arab airline refusing to serve Kosher meals and saying that they don't except Jews to fly with them is beyond me. You have evidence of the airline refusing to do one thing and two bigoted reasons as to why they do this.
And then you have a menu at El-Al's website.
I've e-mailed the NYC office of El Al to find out their policy on halal meals, and I'll let you know if I get a reply.
January 03, 2004
Rose comes clean
ESPN says Pete Rose admits to betting on baseball in his upcoming autobiography.
You betrayed me, Feschuk. You broke my heart
The National Post's TV critic, NFL handicapper and all-around wiseass, Scott Feschuk, has left the Post to become a speechwriter for Paul Martin.
I don't know what's worse: that Feschuk won't be writing about television anymore, or that he's working for a Liberal Prime Minister.
You can't parody American liberal-arts colleges anymore
Bard College, in Annandale, New York, has an "Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies."
America has supposedly been in the throes of brutal McCarthyism since 1950, but is there another nation on earth where a university professorship would be named after a convicted traitor? (Then again, although no Canadian university has set up a "Fred Rose Chair in Political Science," I have to admit such a thing wouldn't surprise me. Especially if it's endowed at Concordia.)
(via Kathy Shaidle)
Something isn't kosher here
The United Arab Emirates' national airlines provides several special meals to cater to dietary requirements of several different religions, with one exception. I don't have to tell you which faith is left out, but "Tom Paine" found out the hard way:
A month ago, I booked a return flight from Melbourne to Auckland on Emirates.
My travel agent, xxxxxx xxxxx at xxxxxx xxxxx in Australia (ph xxx xxxx-xxxx), told me that my request for a kosher meal on the flight would be no problem.
The request was confirmed on my itinerary when the tickets arrived.
Aboard the flight to Auckland on December 25th (EK404), I was informed that there was no kosher meal available.
I have already faxed you seperately the special meal request form I was given by the cabin staff, so you can verify this account.
I was advised to contact the airline in Auckland. I did so on Monday, and was told that Emirates has a policy of refusing to accept requests for meals that meet Jewish religious requirements.
I was also told that Emirates is “an Arab airline, so we don’t really expect Jews to use us”.
Paine's letter to the airline has gone unanswered, and, noting that the UAE was home to the Holocaust-denying, Jew-hating "Zayed Center", states that Emirates would probably rather lose millions of dollars in business than cater to Jewish passengers.
Absolutely disgusting - but not at all surprising, really. (This may not embarass anyone in the United Arab Emirates, but it should cause some discomfort for Emirates-sponsored Chelsea FC of the English Premier League and Collingwood in the AFL.)
Update: a reader advises that El Al doesn't offer a halal meal on its flights. If that's the case, they're no better than Emirates. If anything, it's even more disappointing.
Update II: another reader says Muslims actually regard kosher food as halal, so there's no need for a separate category. I don't know whether this is true, nor do I know whether Jews regard halal food as kosher. If the latter is true, Emirates' all-halal menu would presumably be acceptable.
An accident?
An Egyptian charter airliner, carrying mostly French tourists, has crashed into the Red Sea:
A charter airliner carrying 148 people mostly French tourists crashed into the Red Sea on Saturday shortly after taking off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, officials said. No survivors were reported.
The military sent helicopters and small patrol boats into an area full of floating suitcases and other debris to search for survivors. One body was recovered and a marine official in a nearby port said at least 50 body parts were retrieved.
The Boeing 737 jet, which disappeared from radar after it took off shortly before 5 a.m., was headed to Cairo for a crew change before continuing to Paris. No distress call was made, airport officials said on customary condition of anonymity.
The crash occurred amid a week of heightened concerns about terrorist threats from the air that have led to increased security and canceled flights around the world. But Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry called the crash an "accident" that may have been caused by a mechanical problem.
Right now, there is no evidence that the plane was hijacked or deliberately crashed. With all the increased terror warnings these past few weeks, we have to remember that the overwhelming majority of plane crashes are caused by human error or machanical failure. This could be nothing but a terrible accident. But Egypt's record of investigating air crashes - specifically the 1999 EgyptAir crash, where the Egyptians have ignored and buried compelling evidence that the plane was crashed deliberately - does not inspire confidence.
Update: French authorities say the plane tried to return to the airport before it crashed. If that's the case, this was likely a dreadful accident.
January 02, 2004
That's it! Back to Winnipeg!
Personally, I doubt anything will come of this, but it's still pretty cool:
Seven years after losing the Jets to Phoenix, it appears the city of Winnipeg wants the National Hockey League back.
The Winnipeg Sun reported Thursday that the city's deputy mayor Coun. Dan Vandal penned a letter to Penguins owner Mario Lemieux on Dec. 9 to consider moving his team to Manitoba.
In his message sent to Lemieux, Vandal pointed out that the league is facing "difficult decisions" with an imminent labour shutdown, and said Winnipeg was ready to welcome the struggling club if it can't make things work in Pittsburgh.
An even better idea? Let Pittsburgh - a city that actually has winter - keep the Penguins and bring the Phoenix Coyotes back to Winnipeg. (And move the Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Anaheim Mighty Ducks and Atlanta Thrashers to Saskatoon, Hamilton, Quebec City and Halifax while they're at it. And what the heck, bring the Carolina Hurricanes back to Hartford. Oh, and get rid of the red line, increase the ice surface and make the net bigger. And then maybe I'll start watching hockey again.)
Where's The Spectator?
Their site has been completely messed up these past few weeks. I know Conrad Black has been having some legal trouble lately, but surely he can afford to hire someone to fix it, right?
America's most significant new car
GM has unveiled the Chevrolet Cobalt (Cobalt?), a replacement for the 22 year-old Cavalier, at the Los Angeles auto show.
The new Corvette and Mustang, both set to debut in Detroit later this month, will get most of the attention, but this is the one that really counts. No U.S. automaker has a quality product to compete with the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla. (The Ford Focus, which I drive, is a great design, but suffered serious quality problems in its first few years.) I'm not sure how much money Honda makes from each Civic, but I know no Civic owner who hasn't been completely satisfied with his purchase - and a satisfied Civic owner will likely become an Accord owner as time goes on.
The Japanese carmakers have picked up young buyers at the lowest end of the market, and kept them for life, while the U.S. manufacturers have concentrated on expensive trucks and SUVs to make a quick buck. But few people in my age bracket can afford an SUV, and we're looking for the best small car we can buy. Down the road, when we can afford something bigger, we're likely going to go back to whoever sold us a good entry-level car when we were younger.
Long story short: Chevrolet needs to get the Cobalt exactly right, and more importantly, they'll have to replace it after 4 or 5 years, just like the Civic and Corolla. If GM is still making this car 10 years from now, we'll know they just don't get it.
Willie Nelson: It's all about oooooooil
I love Willie Nelson, but I really wish he'd stop trying to be Bruce Cockburn:
There's so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth
We believe everything that they tell us
They're gonna' kill us
So we gotta' kill them first
But I remember a commandment
Thou shall not kill
How much is that soldier's life worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth
"They're gonna kill us so we gotta kill them first"? Sounds about right to me.
Willie's going to debut this song at a fundraising concert for Dennis Kucinich, which will also feature Bonnie Raitt and ex-Doobie Michael McDonald. It's a "No Nukes" reunion!
Murder City
Chicago had more murders than any other American city in 2003, but the real story is the absolutely startling decline in the U.S. homicide rate over the past decade:
The city finished 2003 with 599 homicides, police said Thursday. That was down from 648 a year earlier and the first time since 1967 that the total dipped below 600.
Still, the nation’s third-largest city outpaced all others for the second time in three years. New York, with about three times the population, ended the year with 596 homicides. Los Angeles, which had the most murders in 2002 at 658, wound up 2003 with an estimated total just under 500.
Chicago’s new police superintendent, Philip J. Cline, joined colleagues elsewhere in blaming homicides largely on a volatile mix of gangs, guns and drugs.
[...]
In New York, the unofficial murder tally of 596 compared with 584 in 2002. That was a 2 percent jump but still made 2003 the city’s second straight year below 600 — dramatically less than the 2,245 homicides recorded in 1990.
St. Louis logged its lowest murder total in more than four decades, a showing that police credited to aggressive efforts to track down violent offenders.
Police said there were 69 killings in the Gateway City in 2003, matching the total of 1962. The number was a 39 percent decrease from the 2002 total of 113.
Washington, D.C. had 247 murders last year, and Detroit had about 365. (What kind of crazy, mixed-up world are we living in, in which Detroit has only one murder per day?)
January 01, 2004
The 2003 Despicable Dozen
Now that 2003 has come and gone, here are the 12 people who did more than their share to make life a little less tolerable last year:
12. Roger Grimes. To the best of my knowledge, no other incumbent premier has ever encouraged welfare fraud as a means of economic development.
11. Michael Jackson. Then again, perhaps this entry should be reserved for the star-struck parents who let their children spend the night with this genetic anomaly.
10. The Dixie Chicks. No, I don't believe they deserve to be boycotted for speaking out against President Bush. But once they started comparing themselves to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, their place on this list was assured.
9. Robert Fisk. Next time someone tells you Fisk is an authoritative reporter, remember this. And this. And this.
8. Michele Landsberg. Many presumably reputable journalists plugged 9/11 conspiracy theories this past year, but the Toronto Star's most left-wing columnist (shudder) deserves special mention for not only alleging that Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, but also arguing that Iran, not Iraq, gassed the Kurds in 1988.
7. Richard Neville. This legendary Australian freakazoid went Landsberg one better by not only plugging the Iran-gassed-the-Kurds lie, but endorsing 'whatreallyhappened.com', a website which alleges the Jooooos had Al Gore's son arrested because Gore didn't endorse Lieberman.
6. Ted Rall. A suicide bomber killed 5 people in a Baghdad restaurant yesterday. For Rall, I guess it was a happy new year.
5. Ted Honderich. Any asshole can support Palestinian suicide bombers. But it takes a special asshole indeed to cry "censorship" when his publisher decides not to release his pro-Jew-killing book - and then demand that the university professor who complained about him be fired.
4. Andrew Murray. The leader of Britain's influential "Stop the War Coalition" is an unrepentant Stalinist. You'd think this would be a big story. You would be wrong.
3. Noam Chomsky. When is predicting a "silent genocide" not predicting a "silent genocide"? When the world's most famous linguist is the one pedicting it. Or not predicting it, as the case may be.
2. Michael Neuman. I think it's wrong to collaborate with antisemitic hate websites, lie and encourage "vicious racist antisemitism" to help the Palestinian cause. But then again, I'm not a philosophy professor.
1. George Galloway. You know why he tops this list. But if I say more, I fear I'll be sued.
1.1.04
It's 2004 - and still no mass-produced flying cars, vacations in space, or teleportation. The movies assumed we'd have all of this by now - not to mention videophones and humanoid robots. (I think AT&T; tried to introduce the former, only to find that people simply didn't want to be viewed on a video screen while talking on the phone.)
On the other hand, Hollywood also assumed the world would be an ecological wasteland by now. (The movies of the 1970s assumed the world would become dangerously overpopulated by now; in the 1980s, it was nuclear holocaust; in the 1990s, it was the destruction of the ozone layer; and Fox has a big global-warming blockbuster, The Day After Tomorrow, set for release this summer.) So I guess we shouldn't complain, should we?
December 31, 2003
But they have such good intentions
John Hawkins has a list of the 10 worst posts from Democratic Underground in 2003. Greater love hath no man, than that who would read an entire year's worth of DU postings for our entertainment.
Meanwhile, in Britain, Johann Hari's column supporting the overthrow of the North Korean Stalinists is getting a cool reaction from the Chomskyites:
"First of all, I'd have Hari arrested for inciting international crimes and for supporting an international criminal (Vollertsen) [This is the brave doctor who is trying, desperately, to undermine the North Korean regime by sending radios on balloons across the border, and who is helping starving refugees to cross over into relative safety. He is, apparently, an ‘international criminal’ – unlike the leaders of the North Korean regime]. I'd have him thrown in a cell with Saddam, just so he (Saddam, that is) could thank Hari for the 12 years of sanctions and bombings that not only created the pretext for him to maintain a 'national security state', allowing him to imprison and torture and execute so many of his, ahem, own people, but also allowed him to make out like a trojan. [No, I don’t understand that either.] Not to mention the million five of his people killed by the sanctions without him even having to lift a finger. Then I'd have him (Hari, this time) arraigned before a special tribunal of the United Nations to answer charges that he incited the UN to pervert the course of it's own charter.”
But we're the greedy jerks who don't care about anyone else, of course.
I, Jerk
Joseph Heath, writing in the IRPP's Policy Options magazine, has us conservatives all figured out. We aren't right-wingers because we believe the free market is the greatest engine for wealth creation and economic opportunity ever devised; because the welfare state has made many people hopelessly dependent upon it; because we believe people deserve to be treated as individuals instead of faceless members of a racial group; because the Islamofascist threat in this century is every bit as dangerous as the threat posed by the Nazis and Communists in the last centruy; or because Western culture, for all of the atrocities carried out in its name, has made people freer, healthier and happier than any other civilization in history.
Nope. We're conservatives because, essentially, we're greedy assholes:
Many years ago a friend of mine - a man of scrupulously centrist political convictions - told me that although he found the left wing and the right wing to be equally confused, he tended to have more sympathy for the left. "When they screw things up," he said, "at least you can say that their heart was in the right place."
[...]
Whereas the left wing tends to attract bleeding hearts, the right wing tends to attract jerks. Of course there are all kinds of fancy intellectual reasons why why one might want to shrink government, reduce taxes, and curtail entitlement programs. But a lot of people support these policies simply because they don't they don't care about anybody but themselves. They are, in other words, self-interested jerks. Many even have a mean streak, which makes them react to claim of victimization in a punitive rather than compassionate manner.
"Their heart was in the right place." No matter what atrocities get carried out by a communist regime, you'll always have a significant part of the population making that very excuse for it. Closer to home, and on a (mercifully) smaller scale, no matter what poisonous hate get posted on IndyMedia, you'll always have a few people saying "at least they mean well".
Heath, by the way, is a philosophy professor at U of T - the same profession as Oxford's Ted Honderich, who openly endorses suicide bomb attacks against Israelis; Trent University's Michael Neumann, who brags that he would lie and encourage "vicious racist anti-Semitism" to help the Palestinians; and, of course, Princeton's legendary Peter Singer, for whom the lives of animals are sacred but those of the disabled are not.
Makes you wonder what's in the water at the major schools of philosophy. But at least their hearts are in the right place, eh, Mr. Heath?
December 30, 2003
Mao worship
A dictator whose regime killed 50 million of his own people, and who set up an unprecedented totalitarian cult of personality, is still worshipped and praised by many of the people he oppressed - not to mention thousands of deluded fools here in the West.
If you're planning to e-mail a response along the lines of, "but he improved health care and education," don't waste your time. Hitler improved social programs for his people, too. No one makes that feeble excuse for Nazism - and, as a society, I think we've failed miserably in not making Communism as politically unacceptable. As far as I'm concerned, there is little difference between these idiots and these ones - except that the former uses slightly more palatable rhetoric.
Update: meanwhile, whoever pulled this off deserves some sort of medal:
The Cuban authorities have launched an inquiry into how the official newspaper of the Communist party ran a front page photograph of Fidel Castro which appeared to have been doctored to make him look like Adolf Hitler.
When the edition of Granma hit the streets this month party officials began to retrieve as many copies as they could, an operation which appears to have deterred foreign journalists based on the island from reporting the story. [Actually, they've most likely ignored it just to make sure they won't get kicked out of the country - Ed.]
The picture appeared above a story which reported President Fidel Castro's meeting with North American students. Close examination of the photograph shows that the image of the Cuban leader has been subtly altered to make him look like the Nazi leader.