Debbye has a post worth your time. Here’s a taste;

The failure of the electorate to administer a sharp rebuke to the Liberal Party for corruption and mendacity is depressing. Some back home say the American press was too voracious in pursuing the Watergate story and the leads arising from the hearings, but up here I’m seeing the other side of the picture: too many in the media seem almost disinterested in learning the truth and complacently let the government investigate its own wrongdoing with the occasional plaintive bleat that the commission has uncovered little of substance.

It’s one of the reasons that blogging on politics is so much more an uphill battle in this country – the media is so uniformly supportive of the Liberal establishment that scandals that should generate front page headlines and news magazine specials, are likely to be quickly buried behind NHL contract talks and the latest Michael Jackson court footage. Canadian media outlets are not in the business of exposing the Liberal underbelly.
Even when the corruption is as staggering as that of Adscam, there is a line they will not cross – the line that might just get a conservative opposition party elected. Witness the performance of the CBC and CTV during the past election campaign. With the LIberal party badly damaged by the continuing revelations coming out about the sponsorship scandal, they quickly pulled the gloves back on to stroke the “social issues” pony, aggressively pushing their campaign coverage towards the burning question of whether Canadians found Stephen Harper “scary”.
This afternoon, “broadcaster and investigative journalist” and talk radio host Peter Warren featured journalist Charles Smith of Newsmax and his articles concerning the “blockbuster” revelation that there are Canadian ties – through Power Corporation – to the UN Oil-For-Food scandal.
GASP … who knew?
Of course, the knowledge of the intricate links between Power Corp. and officials at the highest levels of the UN and the Canadian government has been widely distributed on the blogosphere for months and available to any number of enterprising journalists. (The Newsmax piece cited on Warren’s program appeared here at lowly little SDA two weeks ago.) We know that members of the media read a variety of Canadian and US bloggers, so ignorance doesn’t explain the silence – the failure to cover the story can only be attributed to malpractice and corruption of basic journalistic principles at the highest editorial levels.
The surprise expressed by callers to Warren’s show was genuine and their reponse predictable – they were appalled. We all should be, but not at Power Corp., Chretien, Strong and their peons in the Liberal government – who like any member of the genus Mustela are guilty only of doing what comes naturally – but at a Canadian media establishment that has pledged a higher allegiance to the Liberal Party of Canada than they have to the truth.

February 6th is the 94th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Trey Jackson has created a comprehensive tribute.

Jeff Goldstein provides the quintessential summation of the number one non-story of the week;

“In fact, my guess is that Gore could have shown up at Auschwitz wearing a suit made from Jackie Mason and trimmed with the ass hair of Woody Allen, and Givhan would have bent over backwards to frame the Democratic VP’s fashion choice as ‘a daring deconstruction of the kind of traditional ceremonial mourning practices that have turned commemorations of singular events like the Holocaust into mundane – and cynically commodified” photo ops for heads of state and /or their proxies.’ Or some such.”

Exactly.

James Joyner reacts to a “large and well-organized attack” by Palestinian insurgents at a crossing point in the Gaza Strip . A 300 lb bomb was complimented by attacks with mortars and automatic weapons by militants, leaving several Israelis dead.

Clearly, the attempt to bring democracy to Israel is doomed to fail. The insurgency is growing stronger, despite almost sixty years of fighting by the U.S.-backed government and the expenditure of billions of dollars. How many more must die before we call this operation off?
Several things are clear:

The arrogant refusal of the Israelis to get more international support is a key reason they are now losing.

The Israelis did a poor job of planning for this operation and have failed to react quickly enough to events on the ground.

The Israeli Army is too small. More troops have been desperately needed for half a century now, yet the administration has failed to provide for them.

The failure of Israeli leaders to provide adequate armor for its people is outrageous.

A draft is imminent if this operation is not called off.

Sharon is a chimp.

Rumsfeld must go.

About right.

Bob Tarantino is in fine form.

Regardless, the glimmers of democracy in the Middle East can only be a good thing. And I think now would be an opportune time to reflect on the fact that, nearly a year ago, Israel assassinated two Hamas leaders (Yassin and Rantisi), which prompted much shrieking and wailing from the usual bunch that Israel was obstructing peace, that in taking such “provocative” steps Israel was slitting its own throat, that, in the immortal words of Matt Good, Israel was “making things worse” by taking out terrorists and thugs. The Globe and Mail condemned Israel’s actions (LIB response here), as did the Toronto Star (really, no LIB response necessary), and predicted that a rain of hellfire would descend on Israel for having the temerity to defend itself.
Nearly a year later, and none of that has happened. None of it.
On a related note, the same chorus was telling us for years that to remove Arafat would have been tantamount to suicide for Israel, because those who would replace him “would be even worse” for Israel. Again, so much hot air. Arafat dies, and seemingly within twenty minutes the Palestinians are holding elections and everyone (from the US to Israel to the EU to the Palestinians) is all giggles and hugs about the “new opporunity for peace”. The usual suspects are now reduced to mewling about how “Palestinians have proved that they can be the most democratic of Arabs”.
Not quite the conflagration we were instructed to expect, is it?

This little gem has already been widely linked, and for good reason.

Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro collegues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular:
” See, this is why George Bush is so dumb, theres a disaster in the world and he sends an Aircraft Carrier…”
After which he and many of my Euro collegues laughed out loud.
and then they looked at me. I wasn’t laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster.
I’m afraid I was “unprofessional”, I let it loose –
“Hmmm, let’s see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?
Something with its own inexhuastible power supply?
Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water?
Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it?
Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies?
Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier?
Well “Franz”, us peasants in America call that kind of ship an “Aircraft Carrier”. We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that’s right, NONE.

(The rest)

Via James Joyner this preview of Donald Sensing’s upcoming book, tentatively titled Truth and Its Consequences.

This war is in fact a religious war all around, even though we of the West generally shun the idea. Unquestionably, though, our Islamist enemies know it, as do hundreds of millions of other Muslims who have not taken up arms against us. Even Muslim voices who counsel peace to their brethren understand what the real religion of Western people is, often more than we.
In the last several hundred years the West evolved a distinctive answer of what is truth and what is its authority. In contrast, Islam’s progress in that inquiry mostly stopped just as the West was shifting out of first gear. Until the last half-century, the divergence between the West’s and Islam’s theology and philosophy of truth was not a basis for contention. After World War II the divergence took on a character that unfortunately was much more adversarial than cooperative, and finally more violent than peaceful.
This history, later coupled with cheap technology, worldwide communications and increasing globalization of economies and politics, butted headlong into Islamic societies that were ruthlessly patriarchal, theocratic, tribal and anti-democratic, all antithetical to what the West had become. After a four-hundred year hiatus, armed conflict between the West and a powerful strain of Islam broke out again.
This book is an historical, philosophical and religious exploration of how America and the West came into potentially catastrophic conflict with a prominent strain of Islam. For that topic, everyone, regardless of religion, creed or nationality is intensely interested in questions about truth and its authority. Like Pilate, both we and our present enemies realize that some answers are very threatening and that not all answers can be reconciled with one another. Unless we improve our understanding of the deep roots of the conflict and what is really at stake, we can’t effectively discern what to do next.

Donald Sensing is a retired military officer and Methodist minister. Read more…

Methinks we need more Newfoundland politicians. They seem to be among the few who have the integrity to say what needs to be said, without equivocation or first checking a laundry list of special interests whom they must take care not to speak the offensive truth to.

“When asked why he was visiting Khadaffy in Libya, Martin explained “a number of world leaders have seen him,” so it appears this is the reason that our own great world leader wished to see him. This is the same Khadaffy who accepted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in which 270 people, including two Canadians, were killed; the same Khadaffy whose son wants us to apologize because we dared to apply sanctions to his country in opposition to such murderous terrorism.
A recent proverb states that “eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.” Unfortunately, in Canada, since 1945, it is the weasels who are the most successful in getting into power and are there now. The PM and his colleagues weasel to the discredit of the reputation of Canada — equivocating, quibbling, defaulting on and getting out of obligations.” – John Crosby, in today’s Toronto Sun.

What a contrast to Paul Martin – the quivering, bulging, stammering, dithering human incarnation of the so-called Liberal “big tent” – ever at the ready to have stakes pulled from the current position and moved to lower ground.
h/t – reader “Reido”
update – Get a Newfoundlander’s take. (Westerners identify, Captain.)

The Diplomad notes with great alarm that the above Guardian article ran on December 3, 2003, based on information that was already about 24 hours old, so do the math! We’ve used up Ms. Wallstorm’s 12 months and are now eating into her 18 months upper limit! We’re all going to die! We won’t be able to elect a Republican in 2008! We’ll all be dead — and dead voters vote Democrat — and we’re all going to starve to death, or, well, maybe not, no, it appears we’ll have a good lunch while we wait for the world to end..

Sure, if you like to dine out in courtrooms.

Raskolnikov, from Times of Winnipeg:

I have met many indian artists. Although most are not as radical as Eh, many, if not all, of them, seem very limited in outlook. They can paint one hell of an eagle and their headresses bow before no one; when I ask them, however, as artists, how they feel towards, say, Leonardo and his use of sfumato, a key technique that I often see in indian painting and it’s use of bold color and transitional shadowing/lighting, I often get no reply, or a simple grunt of dissmissal. The vibe I get is that these artists either have no idea who Leonardo, Raphael, Giotto et all are, or else they do know and don’t care, these foreign artists and the connotation of being representatives of oppressive colonial countries rendering them irrelevant. (Not that Italy handed over many pox-infected blankets, but maybe I’m just splitting hairs)

Good stuff.

Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker, covers a topic that’s been sticking in my craw for a while now – the hijacking of the word “progressive” to repackage failed and/or subversive leftist ideologies.

Buried in the term “progressive” (as the left uses it) is the assumption that history is moving inexorably, even if by fits and starts, in a certain direction, one that is understandable to those who possess the secret decoder ring. This is why government is so necessary. It alone can bring order to the chaos and messiness which individuals, left to their own devices, impose on their masters, and on the intellectuals who see so clearly what the rest of us cannot perceive.

Go read Colby today.

“… the Supreme Court has left itself–for better or worse–defenceless against polygamy. You don’t think “views diverge” on how many people belong in a marriage? All they do, all over the world, is diverge. There is a great deal more “divergence of opinion” on this subject than there had ever been, before about 1970, on what sexes could get married. The language used here is so doctrinaire in its deference to disagreement that Muslims and unreformed Mormons have, to all intents, already won their case. Feminist opponents of polygamy in fundamentalist religious communities will find, soon, that the “living tree” bears bitter fruit.”

A reader passed along this thoughtful piece by Thomas Lifson, at the American Thinker. It’s a nicely condensed version of the historical tug-o-war underlying the modern debate about Canadian “identity”.

Canada’s national identity has always been based on the fact of their being not American. This is an inevitable outcome of living next door to a behemoth with ten times the population and little concern for foreign countries, even (or especially) the ones right next door, whose differences with us are popularly regarded as retrograde imperfections. It is also a product of the fundamental fracture in Canada, between French and English Canadians, who have not embraced the concept of a melting pot, and who therefore do not have that much in common, other than being non-Yankees.
The Americans who have decamped for Canada have tended historically to be our dissidents, the dissatisfied, and historic losers – starting with the Tories who opposed the American Revolution, and reinforced by the contingent of draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. They looked back with anger and contempt at their less enlightened former countrymen. In contrast, the Canadians who moved in the opposite direction tended to be the ambitious strivers, like James J. Hill (the “Empire Builder” railroad magnate) or the current raft of entertainers like Jim Carrey and Martin Short. The exchange generally has not favored the Canadians. While American business and culture are studded with outstanding achievers of Canadian origin, the Americans fleeing to Canada collectively do not occupy a prominent place in the ranks of the accomplished.
Before the independence movement for Quebec became a dominant concern of English Canada, their relative Britishness gave Anglophone Canadians something positive to embrace, as a mark of their difference from Americans. They were a Dominion of the Queen, after all, not just a country. But when the Quebecois assaulted the rest of Canada with an outbreak of terror and assassination in the late 1960s and early 70s, followed by a serious popular electoral movement aimed at independence, the Union Jack had to disappear from the flag, and appeasement of the angry Francophones became priority number one for those who wished to save Canada as a viable nation.
Think of the emotional impact. That very Britishness, which had been embraced as a proud heritage and special difference from the Americans, now became a mark of inhuman domination. Quebec regarded The Union Jack and all that went with it as the lingering wound of an historic oppression with its ancient origin on the Plains of Abraham. This sudden need to discard a former source of pride was a traumatic loss for English Canadians, who take justifiable satisfaction in their inherent niceness. People who live through life-threatening winter weather every year tend to take seriously the obligation to help one another out, provide mutual aid and comfort, and offer a warm smile as the default setting when dealing with each other.
Now shorn of the positive symbols of English Canadian distinctiveness, always fearful of absorption into the overwhelming colossus to the south, and in desperate need of a way to reassure themselves that they were good people (in the face of many years of angry recriminations from the Francophones), Canada had no alternative but to embrace the newly-merging multicultural orthodoxy. This bizarre, murky, and constantly-evolving doctrine has no substance, other than decreeing that virtue is a function of oppression, or if no oppression happens to be available, a pale and lifeless virtue can be salvaged by deference to those who claim oppression.

Good observations. I have another.
I once had a heated debate over a bar table in northern Alberta with a man in his early twenties. He had a list of one word reasons for hating Americans – and he did use the word “hate”, along with “warmongers”, “Vietnam”, and “rude.” Strong words from a man who was otherwise a model of calm civility.
It didn’t make sense to me – it sounded like he’d met some particularly obnoxious people. Finally, I asked where he’d been in the US, to have formed impressions about ordinary Americans that were so different from what I’d experienced in my travels?
He had never been south of Calgary. I guess I should have known. His contempt was bred of a faux familiarity, based entirely on impressions formed by his exposure to various media – pop culture, movies, political news, historical information. Canada is unlike any other country in the way we are bombarded with American media. He was critical in a way you’d expect of someone who disliked a “drunken” cousin he’d only “met” through video of wedding dances. The poor fellow in the video is none the wiser – it’s not a two-way feed.
Had he walked into the bar directly in front of real live visiting warmongering Americans, arm in arm with the distant cousin – he’d still stand aside and hold the door open for them.
Our famous tendency to reflexive politeness is not urban myth – I have apologized too often for being inadvertantly jostled or having my foot stepped on to pretend otherwise. But it’s a phenomenon mostly reserved for strangers – the tendency disappears when we’re around people we know well.
The garbled mixture of scornful superiority and hyper-criticism, alternating with pronouncements and polls affirming our “friendship” and shared values, may be partly a consequence of this struggle. The US as both the stranger and the familiar family member. Mix in a goodly percentage of cultural and economic incest, and it’s a wonder Canadians haven’t come completely off our rockers.

I watched the landing of Air Force One today while on a break. It’s not anti-Americanism that has Canadians so uptight. It’s planus envy. The CBC couldn’t stop reminding viewers of the “armour plated limousine” and “snipers on the rooftops”. As the entourage made their way down the red carpet on the tarmac, was it just me — or did George W. Bush glance at the yattering Prince Adrienne like a dog who wouldn’t stop licking himself in public?
It all seems to have been too much excitement for Pierre Berton. He was 84, doddering beloved old lefty historian. The non-fiction railway track genre mourns a giant.
Peaktalk has a good roundup of more useful Canadian reaction and commentary.
For the most part, I spent the day up to my elbows in automotive base coat, and haven’t caught on my own reading. (Or bathing, to be unnecessarily honest….) Some links of interest I’ve spotted here and there:
Chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Senator Norm Coleman calls for Kofi Annan’s head in the WSJ.
Websters announces “A four-letter term that came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year’s presidential campaign tops U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam- Webster’s list of the 10 words of the year.”
Related: Dan Rather, still crazy after all these years. Brian Williams – because his parents didn’t know how to spell “brain”.
And, in local news: best. agribition. party. ever.

On the eve of his first official visit to this country, A Canadian Bush Backer Speaks Out. The letter is featured at Pieter Dorsman’s Peaktalk.

Recently I got into a discussion with a few Canadian friends about the Bush victory in the 2004 Presidential election and the ongoing war in Iraq. These friends are well educated and cultured people with a preference for European wine and movies with sub-titles. I suppose they could be described as middle-of-the-road liberals and made for pleasant company at dinner over a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau … at least until the subject of George W. Bush came up.
Their reaction to the re-election of the President was unequivocal. Choice of language included adjectives such as “dreadful”, “shocking”, “appalling” and even “bizarre”. Their self-righteousness was more akin to arch inquisitors passing judgement on a proven devil worshiper, rather than dinner companions airing views on a President of the United States.
When I offered a contrary opinion, there was a hush and eyes widened with genuine horror – as though the late hour had induced the first physical evidence of my ‘werewolf within’. One of them even said – “are you feeling alright Aidan?”

Or, maybe they just thought they were being cool.
I’ve seen a little of this myself. When the subject was raised a month ago at a family gathering, my aunt expressed unspecified outrage at the US President, put her hands over her ears and left the room. She didn’t elaborate beyond that. But then, I suspect she spends more time in Beaujolais-sipping circles than I do.

This exerpt from the Bill Whittle essay entitled “WAR”;

There are two images I will never forget, and I expect I will think of them often in the days and weeks to come. For in the front row of this parade of horror and depravity, I have watched a fundamentalist Islamic crowd stone two women to death. They were covered head to toe in shockingly white linen – the better to see the bloodstains. Taken into a field and buried up to their waists, they looked like odd white sails on a sand horizon, until the stones began to fly, leaving red carnations where they landed. One of the women just crumpled, bent at the waist, and I still pray that this person was knocked unconscious within the first minute or so. The other did not go peacefully into that good night. She died fighting and struggling, enduring the most sickening lurches as the unseen stones fell on her, twisting under that now-scarlet hood, trying to protect her face as best she could, as hundreds of her friends and relatives vented their rage, calling out the name of their god as we would cheer on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Allahu Ackbar! Allahu Ackbar! Allahu Ackbar!
I will not forget that image.
And I will not forget another one, either. As long as I draw breath, I swear I will never forget the sight of two people holding hands, and leaping from 108 stories above the hard concrete sidewalks that I myself have walked, gawking skyward at one of the wonders of the world. I will not forget them. I will not forget their fall, the spin that finally tore their hands apart as they fell forever, forever down that quarter-mile. I will never stop wondering what they said to each other in that last moment, or their cries to each other as they launched themselves to their deaths, having watched their friends take the same leap a few moments before. I will never forget what an unimaginable hell that their cozy office, full of coffee mugs and pictures of grandchildren, had become in order for them to make that choice, with the ruins of their friends visible on the streets so far below them.

His book, Silent America, is now out.

Imagine is “America’s alternative national anthem since 9/11�?
Words fail me.
And that’s something I have in common with John Lennon at the time he was writing that saccharine totalitarian dirge. – Andrew Stuttaford

A Belmont Club history review for the modern Nazi distortionist.

If Hitler was altogether more evil than we can conceive, he arose from a time and circumstance which few if any can still remember. Any comparisons between the 1945 and 2004 are likely to be inexact. Those who point to the shooting of Jihadi in Fallujah by a US Marine as evidence that America is drifting into Nazism would do well to remember that in 1945, American troops who arrived in Dachau were so disgusted by what they saw they executed hundreds of SS guards on the spot. This is a link to remarkable photographs of the incident.

“The killing of unarmed POWs did not trouble many of the men in I company that day for to them the SS guards did not deserve the same protected status as enemy soldiers who have been captured after a valiant fight.

To many of the men in I company, the SS were nothing more than wild, vicious animals whose role in this war was to starve, brutalize, torment, torture and murder helpless civilians.” Flint Whitlock, The Rock of Anzio, From Sicily to Dachau: A history of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division.

Iraq link roundup:
Greyhawk: It’s a good thing we’re communicating by written words now rather than spoken, because there’s a helicopter parked about 50 yards from me, still running, an ambulance next to it with a guy on a stretcher in between. It’s loud – but it’s also dark out right now so I can’t see if it’s an American on that stretcher or an Iraqi. Whoever it is they’re on their way out now. A must read.
Jeremy Brown on the current peril of Iraqi blogger Zayed. (Healing Iraq).
Rising concerns in Europe about the “growing ethnic tensions as EU nations struggle to absorb a steady stream of poor, mostly Muslim immigrants.”
James Joyner has the MSM versions, plus good news on debt forgiveness.
Donald Sensing on the Marine shooting, and how it might be viewed under the Geneva Convention.
Powerline sums coverage up succintly today –

Today, the Associated Press reports: “Violent Attacks Sweep Baghdad; GI Killed”: […] Baghdad is, I believe, a city approximately equal to Los Angeles in area and population. One can fairly question whether incidents occurring in six locations constitute “widespread clashes” “sweep[ing] Baghdad.” But, as always, the tone of the coverage of the Iraq war reflects the agenda of those who write the news.

Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University writes on the effects of left wing groupthink at universities, and the effect it has on career advancement and curriculum.

Yet while the lack of conservative minds on college campuses is increasingly indisputable, the question remains: Why?
The obvious answer, at least in the humanities and social sciences, is that academics shun conservative values and traditions, so their curricula and hiring practices discourage non-leftists from pursuing academic careers. What allows them to do that, while at the same time they deny it, is that the bias takes a subtle form. Although I’ve met several conservative intellectuals in the last year who would love an academic post but have given up after years of trying, outright blackballing is rare. The disparate outcome emerges through an indirect filtering process that runs from graduate school to tenure and beyond.

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