"Reporting for duty!" he said as he snapped off a salute to his own televised image. Has there ever in the history of human vocalization ever been a more contrived, false and self-conscious speech than that of John Kerry at the Democratic convention? I marvel that he wasn't laughed off the stage. If help is, indeed, "on the way", it must surely consist off a team of paramedics prepared to do an emergency sincerity transplant.
Canada's first gay divorce is going to test the legal system yet again. Apparently there are no provisions for same-sex dissolution.
The couple had been cohabiting for five years but the marriage lasted only five days after the wedding. You see, kids, this is why your parents think it's a bad idea for two people to live together before they get married.
What do the following countries have in common: the United States, Israel, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau and Australia? Answer: they are the only countries on the face of the planet to oppose a United Nations resolution backing the ICJ ruling against Israel's security wall. Europe and Asia were unanimously united against Israel's right of self-defence while only a few scattered countries in Latin America, Africa and Oceania abstained. Final score 150-6.
What of Canada, you ask. Well, we abstained too, placing ourselves firmly in the vowel-rich camp of Uruguay, Cameroon, Tonga, Vanuatu, El Salvador, Uganda, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Can someone tell me what it means for us to register "no opinion" on this extremely important matter? Either we suport the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice or we do not. Either we think that their ruling that Israel cannot defend itself against Palestinian terror (an inescapable conclusion if one reads the court's decision) is horse-puckey or we do not. Is this what "soft power" has come to mean: not taking sides?
Excited by the prospect of proportional representation? Try this schematic of the European Parliament and be very afraid.
Anyone who thinks that the Liberals are offering anything different or that they have learned any lessons from the recent election need only glance at the new cabinet annnounced today.
Ujjal Dosanjh who led a disastrously incompetent NDP government in British Columbia is given the Health portfolio, thus guaranteeing a refusal to consider new ways to fund medical care.
The splenetic Bill Graham whose self-righteous bluster could not disguise a bankrupt foreign policy is moved to Defence, this guaranteeing the continued decline of our military establishment.
Gay floor-crosser Scott Brison is made Public Works minister, this guaranteeing that the perennial underdevelopment of the Maritimes will be papered over in an avalanche of pork to eastern constituencies.
Separatist floor-crosser Jean Lapierre who guided the Liberals to a sound thrashing in Quebec is given Transport and made number-two man in the country, thus guaranteeing resentment in both in his home province and the West.
On a final disgusted note, who knew that we had a minister for "Families and Care-Givers" or that we needed one for "Infrastructure and Communities"?
Proof that age does not necessarily convey wisdom. 58-year-old singer Linda Ronstadt has touted the buffoonish Michael Moore at each stop of her recent concert tour and told an interviewer: "It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know." Unfortunately for Ms Ronstadt her leftish comments at a Las Vegas performance led to much of the audience walking out in noisy protest and management banning her from the premises.
Dexter is neither a Republican nor a fundamentalist but he is doing his small bit for civilization by henceforth removing the chubby chanteuse's songs from his iPod.
Sixty years ago today a small number of Germans attempted to redeem the honour of their nation and save the world from further catastrophe by planting a bomb that they hoped would kill Adolph Hitler. Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, a disfigured war hero, carried an explosive device into a bunker where Hitler was meeting with army officials to discuss the fighting on the Eastern Front. When the bomb went off von Stauffenberg assumed that the Fuehrer had been killed and he alerted his fellow plotters in Berlin. For a time forces of the resistance occupied important locations in the capital but when news of Hitler's escape became known, Nazi supporters rallied and the plot collapsed. Hitler conducted a thorough purge of the army and the intelligence services with thousands of officers, agents, civil servants and civilians arrested and tried in the coming months. Many were tortured and executed.
Here is an Honour Roll of some of the men and women involved in the July 20 plot and other acts of resistance to National Socialist tyrannny:
Claus von Stauffenberg, soldier. Lost an eye and a hand in North Africa. Executed the day following the plot.
Wilhelm Canaris, admiral and military intelligence chief. A long-time secret opponent of Hitler, active in passing information to the West, protecting dissidents and rescuing Jews. Executed at Flossenburg concentration camp April 9, 1945.
Julius Leber, left-wing journalist. Tortured for two months and executed in January 1945.
Ludwig Beck, former chief of Army general staff. Unsuccessfully tried to recruit Field Marshal Rommel into the plot. Arrested on July 20, he was allowed to commit suicide.
Henning von Tresckow, army officer. Attempted to blow up Hitler's plane in 1943 and part of the July 20 plot, he committed suicide.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Protestant theologian. Arrested in 1943 for his part in aiding Jewish immigrants and supporting the underground Christian church, he was executed along with Canaris on April 9, 1945.
Hans and Sophie Scholl, Catholic students and leaders of the non-violent "White Rose" movement. Beheaded 22 February 1943.
It should be noted that these and other acts of resistance to Nazism received no encouragement from the Allies. So great was hatred of all things German in 1944 that news of the failed assassination was greeted with delight in some circles in the West. The New York Herald Tribune compared the plotters to seedy gangsters and British civil servant John Wheeler-Bennett said: "The Gestapo and the SS have done us an appreciable service in removing a selection of those who would undoubtedly have posed as "good" Germans after the war... It is to our advantage therefore that the purge should continue since the killing of Germans by Germans will save us from future embarrassments of many kinds."
An interesting article on the differences between Americans and Canadians.
More trouble for the Kyoto crowd: a new scientific paper places much of the blame for global warming on the sun. Apparently it is burning hotter than at any other time in the recent past.
From the Vancouver Sun
A story published July 12 stated incorrectly that former Vancouver Canuck David Babych is spearheading the logging of a Mayne Island site that he owns. In fact, Mr. Babych does not own the property, is not an officer or shareholder of the numbered company that owns the property and is not spearheading the logging of the area.
If you have a suspicion that the decision by the International Court of Justice concerning the Israeli security fence was ill-advised and bad law, you are probably right. According to this editorial the ICJ has concluded that Israel has no right of self-defence against Palestinian terrorism.
From the Wall St Journal's "Best of the Web":
An item yesterday http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005356#experts (since correcetd) misquoted an article in the Times of London. The quote should have read, "Finding water, shelter and food are the three keys to survival on a desert island, according to experts," not, "I grafted you into the tree of my chosen Israel and you turned on them with persecution and mass murder. I made you joint heirs with them of my covenants, but you made them scapegoats for your own guilt."
Note please that this link is through the "science" directory on Canoe.ca, not "junk science" or "rants from washed-up environmentalists".
We can all agree that AIDS is bad and that the Third World is too poor. We can further agree that it would be lovely if fewer people died of AIDS and fewer people lived in abject poverty and misery in the Third World. Just about everything else in Suzuki's essay is objectionable. In a throwaway remark he includes Uganda in a list of countries that have dealt well with AIDS. He doesn't mention that Uganda's success is due to the "ABC" programme, which emphasizes first abstinence, then monogamy, and last, condom use. He also doesn't mention that abstinence-oriented education in the Third World has proven much more effective than the model he touts so highly from Thailand, in which free condoms and testing are provided to prostitutes. So Suzuki, who routinely criticises politicians whom he considers to put politics before the health of our environment and "the children", is in fact against the most effective way of preventing people from getting AIDS because he finds it politically offensive.
Now, how to deal with people who already have AIDS? Suzuki wants the West (meaning the USA, plus a token contribution from Europe and Canada) to provide heavily subsidised drugs throughout the Third World. Charitable and generous on the face of it, yes, but in reality this isn't productive. It will be done either by massive government subsidy, which will artificially raise the price of drugs in North America, meaning that while those in the Third World will have more access to cheaper drugs, right here, we will have less access to more expensive drugs; or by the other route, favoured by overextended governments, which is to coerce drug companies into taking the hit themselves by providing cheap drugs to Africa and eastern Asia. This will in effect be a massive penalty paid by those very companies that are putting the most money into research, and could greatly inhibit the development of new and vitally important drugs for years to come.
Then there are the logistics. How much have you helped someone in rural Africa if you give him drugs to slow the development of his AIDS, but he has no fridge in which to keep them, and no clean water with which to drink them down? Basic infrastructure improvements would do more to extend the lives of Africans, both with and without HIV, than any amount of drugs in their absence. Better yet, we could try and get their economies functioning properly, that the Third World could build roads and plumbing, hospitals and universities, and finally lose their victim mentality.