Nice Work if you can get it

Women wishing to enter Canada to work as strippers must provide naked photos of themselves to qualify for a visa.

The Canadian Embassy in Mexico says "stage photos during performances are required'', says Ottawa's CFRA radio.

Immigration officers are having to pore over naked pictures of hundreds of exotic dancers to keep imposters out of Canada.
ananova via Paul Jané

The Conservative Habit of Mind

Blog considered

"The nature of a blog is to type faster and longer than a daily newspaper can print,'' Warren Hinckle, of The San Francisco Examiner, wrote last year in a column about the Web's role in covering that story. "At times, as the world turns, the instant observations can prove to be wrong, or bypassed by events. ... But the rush of instant reaction and posting of contrary opinions is the opiate of Web site junkies."
argus leader

When you're this rich

"We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics," the wife of Sen. John Kerry told her fellow Pennsylvanians on Sunday night at a Massachusetts Statehouse reception.

Minutes later, Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, questioned her on what she meant by the term "un-American," according to a tape of the encounter recorded by Pittsburgh television station WTAE.

Heinz Kerry said, "I didn't say that" several times to McNickle. She then turned to confer with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and others. When she faced McNickle again a short time later, he continued to question her, and she replied: "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."
the star

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defended his outspoken wife Teresa Heinz Kerry on Monday after she bluntly told a reporter to "shove it."

"My wife speaks her mind appropriately," the Massachusetts senator said during a visit to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral where he promoted U.S. innovation and ingenuity.
reuters

Nobody knew Nothing...

The Public Works review, covering three years of advertising contracts from 2000 to 2003, had been expected to find significant improvements over the previous three years because of changes in the way contracts were managed.

The government revamped some advertising procedures in 2001 after persistent problems with the files.

But the new review, completed last November, found almost no improvements. Investigators could not even locate about 5 per cent of the files chosen for examination.

For the files they could locate, statements of required work were inadequate, there was lack of justification for choosing one supplier over another, and there was often no paperwork to demonstrate that the invoices submitted were valid.
the star

The threat

We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their cause.

It seems like a small distinction - emphasizing ideology instead of terror - but it makes all the difference, because if you don't define your problem correctly, you can't contemplate a strategy for victory.

When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement, not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their extensive indoctrination infrastructure of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength, laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time horizon can be totally different from our own.
david brooks, new york times

Bye Troll

As explained by the Washington Post, "the Palestinian Authority is broke, politically fractured, riddled with corruption, unable to provide security for its own people and seemingly unwilling to crack down on terrorist attacks against Israel." One unnamed Fatah member estimates that 90 percent of gang activity is carried out by Palestinian Authority employees.
daniel pipes, capitalism magazine

Mad Monger...Danger

Graham is a revolting twerp. He's the pus inside the pimple of Lloyd Axworthy's "soft power" idiocy. To make this weasel the Minister of Defense is to say a big "f*** you" to every man and woman in uniform.
the monger

UN in Iraq - On whose side?

A year later, the lessons of de Mello's fate remain unlearned.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has named a new envoy to Baghdad: Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, an experienced diplomat and Pakistan's ambassador to Washington. And once again the United Nations insists on going to Iraq not as a partner of the U.S.-led Coalition and the newly installed interim Iraqi government, but as what would amount to an official opposition to both.

It would be criminal to send Qazi and his staff to Baghdad where, deprived of adequate protection, they would be easy targets of the terrorists.

For the U.N. to treat the Coalition as lepers is bad politics, to say the least. The United States and its 33 partners account for some 60 percent of the U.N.'s total budget. The Coalition is made up of nations from all continents, including two of the five veto-holding members of the Security Council.

Yet the U.N. bureaucracy insists that no one associated with the Americans should have a role in protecting its Iraq mission.

It was to avoid the American "lepers" that the Security Council voted seven weeks ago to create a special international force to protect the U.N. mission in Iraq. So far, however, not a single country has offered to join. And the French, Germans and Russians (who had most opposed the use of U.S. troops for the purpose) are not even prepared to contribute money for such a force. Worse still, they are pressuring other countries not to offer troops.
ny post

Hot

Gaza<

The gunmen, intensifying pressure on Arafat to stamp out alleged corruption in his government, exchanged fire with Palestinian forces in a military intelligence compound in Rafah and set a nearby office alight.
reuters

Hey, Smokers are Crazy

More than 50 per cent of people suffering from clinical depression smoke, while the figure rises to 95 per cent for schizophrenics. But smoking among the general public has dropped to about 25 per cent. 'The assumption is that people with psychiatric conditions are self-medicating,' said McGehee. 'They are smoking because the nicotine in particularly helpful in alleviating their condition.'
the guardian

Our Lady Peace Thwarted by Mullahs

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi walked out of court Sunday to protest proceedings in the murder of an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist and threatened to take the case to international organizations.

Iran's hard-line judiciary on Sunday concluded the trial of a secret agent charged with killing photojournalist Zahra Kazemi. Canada's ambassador was barred from Sunday's court session, further straining Iranian-Canadian relations.
the guardian

denBeste's Creed

I am a "Conservative" because I am a classical liberal. I believe in liberating people from unnecessary limits imposed by government or society. My basic view of law is strongly oriented towards the principle of "law of right" over "law of good". I oppose laws which try to enforce "good", and I oppose laws which meddle just for the sake of meddling. We choose to make some kinds of decisions collectively, and we choose to let individuals make other decisions for themselves. Liberals favor letting individuals make such decisions, and only favor collective decisions if the benefit is strong enough to offset the axiomatic harm of reducing liberty for individuals.
denbeste

Worth reading

"Wahabi" refers to the most "puritanical" and "fundamentalist" Islamic creed or sect (all these Christian terms need important qualifications when applied to Muslims). It is the sect that most directly and literally embraces "the sword of Islam", the spiritual cause of spreading Islam by violence. But those who embrace the sword cannot be restricted to Wahabis. Even less can they be restricted to members of specific terror cells.

In the course of three years' intense study of the issue, I've become convinced that there is -- well, this is a slight exaggeration -- no such thing as "Al Qaeda". It is, more precisely, only a name applied vaguely to one of several financing and logistical arms of the Wahabi branch of what could more accurately be called the "Islamic Jihad". Not an army, nor a disciplined network of underground cells, but an historical movement -- and thus more comparable to something like "the Enlightenment" in the West, than to any organized militia. Not to say the Jihad shares ideals with the Enlightenment -- far from it -- but rather, it is similar in being a vast idealistic movement, consciously advanced by men who co-operate as and where they think they can be most effective -- but taking their orders, ultimately, not from men but from "the zeitgeist", or "Allah".
david warren

Building a conservative Canada

One more run up to Palestinian civil war

Bye Al Jazeera, we hardly knew you

Easterbrook sends a dart at the Fat Bastard

Creating a conservative infrastructure

While I agree with the analysis I am not inclined to think the media/intellectual infrastructure does not exist, at least in embryo. AIM, the Fraser Institute, the National Citizens Coalition are the beginning; but outfits like the Canadian Tax Foundation and some of the other specialist institutions have the information and the analytic capacity to make a difference.

The question is whether or not the conservatives in the country, as distinct from the Conservative party, will make the effort to use those resources.

Simply putting together policy meetings on a non-partisan basis would be a huge step. So, frankly are group blogs like Shotgun.

Building an infrastructure is, to a degree about creating an environment in which intelligent people can hammer out decade and multi-decade visions without too much concern for the day to day political reality.

If you look at the rise of neo-conservatism in the United States you have to go back to Commentary thirty years ago.

A few years ago the magazine I founded, two chairs, sponsored a film at the Vancouver film festival the title of which I forget. It was about the intellectual ferment in New York in the 1970's. One of the interviewees, whose name I also forget, said, "So we were at lose ends and we did what intellectuals do when they are at loose ends, we started a magazine."

Ezra's effort with the Western Standard is a decent effort but is news rather than policy driven. What is needed right now is a magazine with the funding of The Walrus with a policy component.

Bluntly, so long as The Walrus and Saturday Night wander about with attacks on the idea of GDP as features, the vast majority of Canadians are never going to hear a conservative message. Not because that majority will ever read a wonkish conservative mag; rather because the people who frame the day to day political debate in Canada will have no counterpoint to the slushy liberal center.

A Canadian version of the National Review is something to be devoutly wished for; but I can't see a young Buckley on the horizon to found it.

The right could do worse than to look at David Beers, BC Federation of Labour funded online effort, The Tyee - for whom I sometimes write. It is three steps above Rabble in both the intelligence of its material and its willingness to be entertaining rather than unrelentingly earnest. And, critically, it is a paying market.

Another online success story worth looking at is TechCentralStation. Again, smart, often funny, on the news in a way that the stodgy dead tree magazine world can't be, and a paying market.

Online is certainly the way to go but with funding and a sense of style.

Building intellectual infrastructure would be a matter of committing $4500 dollars a week for around three years. It sounds like a lot of money - a quarter of a million a year - but it would have multiplier effects and spinoffs which could bootstrap exactly the sort of climate Canadian conservatism needs.

Dumb and Fat

The results showed that youngsters exposed to more than two hours a day of TV could attribute 17 per cent of being overweight, 15 per cent of raised blood cholesterol, 17 per cent of smoking and 15 per cent of poor cardiovascular fitness directly to their childhood viewing habits. The results remained the same after taking into account adjustments for factors such as social background, BMI at age five, parents’ BMI, parental smoking and the subjects’ physical inactivity at age 15.
the scotsman

Movie Magic

Al-Jazeera comes to Canada

In its ruling, the commission said distributors of Al-Jazeera in Canada will be required to guard against the broadcast of "any abusive comment."
cbc

Meanwhile in Redmond

The concept of running applications within the web browser is not a new one, and indeed has been tried before and failed. But today, with a combination of cheaper bandwidth and improvements in storage and clustering technology, things are looking promising....

Google is a very good example of this. The reasoning behind its new webmail product, Gmail, puzzles many, but makes a lot more sense when you think of it as the first in a line of major web applications built to replace desktop programs. If you start to consider Google's own system as your hard drive, and your browser as your operating system, you might see how Microsoft could be deeply worried. No one would need to keep buying Windows, or upgrading Office if all they had to do was pay Google a monthly stipend for effectively unlimited storage, guaranteed backup and an installation or upgrade process consisting of typing in a URL.
the guardian

Heresy, in the Anglican Church....Never!

The Church of England's general synod at York will today discuss whether the church should reinstitute what would in effect be heresy trials to discipline errant or unorthodox clergy for the first time in nearly half a century.

The move comes with the church still in a febrile state over issues of homosexuality and whether it should ordain or promote gays and lesbians in the ministry.

But both liberals and evangelicals fear any move to discipline clergy in the church over teaching, ritual or ceremonial issues could rebound on them.
the guardian

On the Other Hand

Researchers at Rice University, along with a company called Nanospectra Biosciences, have determined that gold-covered nanoparticles, 20 times smaller than a red blood cell, will quickly pool in tumors when injected into the bloodstream. The nanoshells, when illuminated with a near-infrared laser (which otherwise passes harmlessly through living tissue), will heat up sufficiently to incinerate the tumors completely, in every test.
worldchanging

As someone with a passing familiarity with this sort of work, I can tell you that the odds of a 10-year-old getting this thing to work are slim: one of the biggest issues in DNA labs is their obsessive cleanliness and orderliness, because stray contaminating DNA can ruin the analysis. I doubt any 10 year old is going to be able to do this sort of work properly.