Things I Didn't Know About Iran

Some interesting articles have popped up in the wake of the Iranian Uprising. Here are a few shocking things, I never would have thought about Iran:

David Frum:

The collapsing economy has exacerbated Iran's already horrific social problems. Iran is home to some two million narcotics users. Despite (or perhaps because of ) the regime's repressive sexual attitudes, prostitution flourishes: An estimated 85,000 prostitutes work in Tehran alone. Last year the head of Iran's anti-vice police force was arrested cavorting with six naked prostitutes in a Tehran brothel. It's generally estimated that Iran is home to 80,000 cases of HIV/AIDS -- three-quarters of these cases traceable to intravenous drug use.

Anne Applebaum:

Since 2006, the "One Million Signatures Campaign" has been circulating a petition, both online and in print, calling for an end to laws that discriminate against women: for equal rights for women in marriage, equal rights to divorce, equal inheritance rights, equal testimony rights for men and women in court. Though based outside the country, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, founded by a pair of sisters, translates and publishes fundamental human rights documents online; it also maintains an online database containing names of thousands of victims of the Islamic republic. In the last decade, Iranian women have participated in student strikes as well as teacher strikes and in organizations of Bahai, Christian, and other religious groups deemed "heretics" by the regime.

Junkies, hookers and women's rights protests. Not as pious, and conservatively Islamic as I had assumed.

Hitchens Cracks Wise on Religion in Toronto

The National Post has a series asking the question whether the Ten Commandments are really enough for today's society. Up to the plate: Christopher Hitchens

Mr. Hitchens described the first few commandments, those concerning idols and not taking the Lord’s name in vain, as “prolonged throat clearing.” In God Is Not Great he wrote that the Ten commandments could only be man-made because of the “monarchial growling about respect and fear, accompanied by a stern reminder of omnipotence and limitless revenge, of the sort with which a Babylonian or Assyrian emperor might have ordered the scribes to begin a proclamation.”

LOL!

Read the comments below the article. Religious people lash out frantically.

UPDATE: Little known fact: There were originally 15 Commandments

The Benefits of Being a Cheapo Canadian

Why are Canadian banks doing so well as compared to others in this economy? Colby Cosh says our banking prudence is in our cultural DNA: (read)

Both Kravis and Rowe suggest that the innermost core difference might be cultural — and, perhaps, ultimately a matter of the Scottish prudence and tight-fistedness that has survived in our banking DNA. This, of course, raises an obvious chicken-and-egg question: Has that spirit been preserved because we’re still using the same banks our great-grandparents did, or vice versa? International observers have noticed that our “principles-based” financial regulation takes a very different form from the “rules-based” style prevailing in the United States.

Down south, lenders are engaged in a constant chess game with the government. Were, the bank executives and the regulators have absorbed each other’s values to such a great degree — both taking the view that, to put it simply, the first goal of the Royal Bank is to make sure that there is still a Royal Bank 100 years from now — that internal audit procedures are tougher than any regulator would dare demand, and arguably more effective than any regime created solely by a narrow, politically shifting rule set. Plain old-school snobbery plays a role too. Only by means of a very powerful ethos of noblesse oblige can you staff a modern banking system, as we have, without dangling big short-term rewards in front of top executives and doing away with substantive board oversight.

My experience in technology sales has taught me there is a major difference between Canadian and American clients. Our own countrymen, we used to call "Cheapo Canadians." Money was always the object. I remember one time at a tech company, we introduced a consulting package to go with our software. A business could hire one of our people to implement our business model, and it was very expensive. On the floor, we were quietly skeptical that it was not going to sell. At first it wasn't. The VP of sales had us in for a strategy session. 90% of our potential customers were American. He told us to stop thinking like risk averse, penny pinching Canadians. If an American client said he couldn't afford it, don't believe him. He can get credit anywhere. Everybody down there, even with modest salaries, drive a BMW and live in a McMansion on credit. If you could sell the vision, money was no object. It was hyperbole, but he was right. It was 2004 and it ended up being a big seller down there. (Not so much in Canada.)

Backlash to Maclean's "Disturbing New Poll"

Barbara Kay in the National Post takes to task Maclean's Magazine for chiding Canadians as intolerent based on some poll findings. I meant to post on this, but I think Kay sums it up well. I expect better from Maclean's

Of the many features offending against minimal standards of objectivity in this poll, two stand out as especially discrediting.

One is Maclean's' solicitation of editorial commentary on the poll numbers from Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of Islamism-supportive CAIRCan. CAIR-Can has never repudiated Islamic terrorism and fellow-travels with the Muslim brotherhood. The Brotherhood is openly committed to the promotion of stealth jihad, and is universally acknowledged as the intellectual fountainhead of Sunni Islamic radicalism. No media organ should invite such an extremist institution to pass moral judgment on Canadians.

The other is Maclean's' overt editorial criticism around the very low level of acceptance for shariah law. Hostility to officially sanctioned shariah law is falsely linked here with negativism toward Muslims. In fact Canadians' opposition to shariah represents a wholesome rejection of Europe-style cultural suicide.

It is offensive that Canadians should be implicitly labelled racists for upholding democratic ideals over willfully blind multiculturalism. To regard the phrase "clash of civilizations" without ironic quotation marks is not a sign of hostility toward individual Muslims. On the contrary, national self-interest demands that we view Islamism and the dangers posed by radicalized Muslim youths with dread.

Read the whole thing.

National Post Podcast: Should Canada Repatriate Omar Khadr

I'm a huge fan of podcasts, and have had trouble finding good ones in Canada. I'm not sure how I missed this up until now, but the National Post has them.

Here is a good one with Jonathan Kay, Ezra Levant and Daniel Goldbloom arguing whether Canada should make the effort to bring back Omar Khadr. I won't give away too much, but I agree with Ezra. We have a roughly a thousand Canadians trapped in foreign countries, why does this terrorist get priority? Listen here for a lively 20 minutes.

Podcasts are perfect for people looking to hear good debates, or in depth interviews, that go beyond the shallow, 30 second, sound bite barking on cable tv. I love radio as a medium, but I find regular commercial radio virtually unlistenable. Podcasts are the answer, and it's almost entirely commercial free. It's great when you're doing things in and around the house, or if you have an MP3 player, to drive to.

Here's National Post's podcast page

My personal favorites are NPR, CSPAN Book TV and ESPN.

Opaque Canadian Forces Mission in Afghanistan

I take tracking the Canadian deployment in Afghanistan seriously. However, it's very hard to know what the goals and the results are when one reads the reports, like this one in the National Post: Forces dismantle police substation in Afghanistan ‘drawback’

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Canada's military says it has not abandoned villagers in the Taliban-controlled western Panjwaii district, insisting that the "drawback" of troops last week and the dismantling of a Canadian-built police substation are tactical victories.

Tearing down the Mushan substation signals the start of a new strategy that will see Canadian Forces troops move closer to Kandahar city, where the majority of Kandaharis live and where a greater security presence is considered an urgent priority.

But Mushan village and surrounding communities are now left without a fixed Canadian presence for the first time in two years, after hard-won battles and casualties in the area.

The police substation, lately referred to as a strong point, was taken apart and troops were redeployed in a large-scale operation called Munkiredal, the Pashto word for deny.

(...)

The entire Panjwaii district area remains an area of Canadian responsibility. The number of Taliban operating there is difficult to determine. Their movements are seasonal, and they concentrate in certain areas. Canadian officers can't say if there are fewer insurgents now compared to three years ago.

How do they expect to garner support on the homefront for the mission, when it is not clear what exactly they are doing and and if there is any success while doing it? The government needs to do more than claim: "We're doing important work."

National Post Calls for the End of Equalization Payments

Three cheers for the National Post today who published an editorial calling for the end of the equalization payment scam:

That leaves Quebec, which will get $8-billion in equalization this year, almost 60% of the total. Though Quebec politicians would protest loudly at any threat to this jackpot, anyone visiting Quebec would be hard-pressed to find justification for the lavish outlay. Whether in terms of schools, universities, health care, social services, industry, culture or business, Quebec is as advanced and sophisticated a society as exists in Canada, having prospered mightily in recent years. Yet it continues to receive massive annual payments from other provinces, even as its noisy nationalists proclaim themselves a "nation," fully capable of handling their own affairs.

The situation no longer makes sense, and the longer it is allowed to drag on the more damaging and politically divisive it will become. Politically docile as they have been trained to be, Ontario residents are unlikely to quietly accept a continued annual outflow of billions of dollars to other provinces while their own services suffer and unemployment approaches double digits. Alberta, despite its image as the land of plenty, will struggle to meet its own needs until another oil boom comes along. Neither province should be expected to keep running deficits to finance programs in other provinces that long ago caught up to their own.

We need more of this kind of talk in Canada. Quebec lives off the fruits of the rest of Canada's labor, and feels entitled to it. To show their appreciation, they elect a separatist party to the majority of their federal seats in every election since 1993. People are finally starting to wake up to the scam. Desperate times do create opportunities. When money is tight, people start watching where their dollars go.

On that note, I hope the National Post survives as a newspaper. You'd never see this kind of idea in the Globe and Mail, and certainly not the Star.

War for Defense Not Nation Building

George Jonas, in the National Post, thinks we lose focus of our objectives when we try to force western values on Afghanistan and Iraq. Why people should build their own nations

Third, we should remember we're not in Afghanistan to improve family law. We're there to eradicate the terrorist foe. We didn't go to Kabul and environs to decorate Eastern landscapes with Western motifs. We didn't go to replace autocracy with democracy, or an androcentric society with a gynocentric one. If we had, we'd be crusaders, just as Osama bin Laden keeps insisting we are. We went there to get the murderous SOB, not to prove him right.

I agree with Jonas on this controversial view. However, I really could have used this article in 2001 when we were ramping up to invade Afghanistan. Freeing women from Taliban oppression was a key issue to garner support. Even people who were weary of the invasion had to admit that helping the women of the country was a noble cause. It's disappointing, to say the least, that installing the new regime didn't do much good at all for them.

Galloway Ruling Feeding Conspiracies

As I have written, barring George Galloway from entering Canada is going to feed conspiracy theorists.

I said: "Next thing you know we are going to be hearing that the Free Masons secretly ordered [Galloway's speaking engagements] stopped."

Notorious leftist Linda McQuiag of the Toronto Star has stepped up: (No Free Masons though)

Indeed, it seems likely Israel had a hand in the decision to ban Galloway from Canada. In March 2008, the Harper government signed a broad-ranging security pact with Israel. The pact, which has received scant attention in Canada's Parliament or media, established close Canada-Israeli co-operation in "border management and security," under a management committee comprised of Canada's deputy minister of public safety and Israel's director general of public security.

So was the decision to ban Galloway not only absurd and anti-democratic, but also influenced by a foreign government?

Canadian government spokesperson Alykhan Velshi denied this yesterday. But what exactly does this secretive management committee do, and how might it affect Canada's Muslim and Arab populations?

via Jonathan Kay at the National Post

Property Defense a Crime?

Colby Cosh reports on the circumstances of a farmer that has Alberta talk radio on fire, in the National Post:

Brian Knight, 38, runs a farm near the hamlet of Tees, east of Lacombe; its rodeo venue is home to an annual donkey and mule show. Last Wednesday morning, Knight heard some noise and confronted three men outside his home. Two made the smart choice to hop into their truck and vamoose, but the third, hoping not to leave empty-handed, had jumped on a nearby four-wheel ATV and sped off on it. Knight got in his own truck, chased down the stranger on his ATV, and rammed it off the road. When the suspect fled, Knight fired a shotgun at him. No details of the ammunition have been provided, but buckshot or road salt would be good guesses; in any case, it amounted to distinctly less lethal force than a policeman might have used in the same circumstances. (No word on whether any staplers were found on the perpetrator.)

The lightly injured thief kept running, but was eventually rounded up by Knight's neighbours and kin. In a moment of deranged inspiration, he even tried to make off with another truck in which he was left to bleed while the cops were called. Knight now faces seven criminal charges, including assault, criminal negligence causing bodily harm and dangerous driving. The thief was taken to Edmonton, bandaged up and released by police without bail after being charged. The RCMP will not name him, but a local spokesman warned: "Don't take the law into your own hands. Contact the police as soon as possible, because all you're going to do is get yourself into trouble."

Perhaps only in Alberta do people still understand that this is nonsense -- that the police's privilege of investigating and punishing crime is derived from our primary right of self-defence, which we delegate but do not abandon, and that property is an extension of ourselves, and may be defended in the same way and for the same reasons we are allowed to defend our persons. No RCMP officer is transferred to an aboriginal community without abundant cultural-sensitivity training. Maybe something similar, perhaps involving a careful reading of John Locke's philosophy, should be done before assigning them to the Alberta countryside. (If Knight is found guilty, do you suppose he will get the benefit of a "sentencing circle" made up of other farmers from around Tees?)

I don't like the precedent. If somebody breaks into my home and I smash their head in with a baseball bat does that make me criminally reckless?

Frum Fights Off Criticism, Makes Case

A great op-ed by David Frum in the National Post, as conservatives beg him to explain himself and his "new" views:

George Bush narrowly won the presidency in 2000, and I was recruited to join the administration as a speech-writer. My initial brief was domestic policy and economics, and it soon become impossible to avoid noticing that the administration’s economic were not working very well.

(...)

So much of our energy was being absorbed instead by cultural battles left behind from the unfinished business of the 1960s and 1970s. Here, too often, we were on the wrong side of history: Back in the 1960s and 1970s, we’d been fighting to protect the common-sense instincts of ordinary people from elite interference. Now, in the Terri Schiavo euthanasia case, with stem cell research, on gay rights issues, it was we who had become the interfering elite, against a society that was reaching its own new equilibrium.

Of course, that’s not how conservatives saw it. We saw a country divided in two, red states and blue, NASCAR vs. NPR, real America against the phonies in the cities. A movement that had begun as an intellectual one now scornfully pooh-poohed the need for people in government to know anything much at all. But expertise does matter, and the neglect of expertise leads to mismanagement and failure — as we saw in Iraq, in Katrina and in the disregard of warning signals from the financial market. It was under a supposedly pro-market administration that the United States suffered the worst market failure of the post-war era, and that should have sobered us. Instead, we rallied to Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

Read it all. I wonder if what Frum is trying to do is going to have any effect? IMO, it's not. People are on the US right are dumbing down even more and becoming a cheap populist movement. David Frum has been mocked, and is the focus of hate like "Goldstein" in 1984.

Trash the Ceeb

Lorne Gunter gets on a roll in this column for the National Post. Tear it all down

Would you favour hundreds of millions of your hard-earned dollars going to subsidize Crossroads Television System (CTS), the Christian service with stations in Ontario and Alberta? Or how about al-Jazeera, the English-language Arab station that now has a place in Canada's channel line-up? Neither is anymore overtly biased than the CBC is to the advancement and defence of its causes. So where is the justification in denying those stations subsidies while lavishing nearly one-third of Ottawa's cultural budget on a service that captures less than 8% of Canadian television viewers and just about the same number of radio listeners?

But that is looking at the question from the wrong end. Rather, I should have asked the following: If the proselytizing on CTS and al-Jazeera TV can survive without largesse from the public treasury, why shouldn't the CBC have to do the same?

(...)

For a long time the CBC has justified its huge annual federal gift because it sees itself as the vehicle through which Canadians tell one another their stories. If this pompous self-image were ever true (and I'm doubtful), it cannot possibly be true now with only one in 12 Canadians actually watching.

CBC TV no longer carries the two most distinctly Canadian sports events of the year -- the Grey Cup and the Brier -- and the world has not ended, the country's identity has not eroded. Its hockey coverage, arts programming and original drama and comedy could all be picked up by cable and digital services and no one would notice.

There is simply no way to argue that it is worth $1-billion to all Canadians to keep the CBC alive. The few people who like its programming may insist it is worth it, but why should their preferences be kept afloat by taxing the 11 of 12 Canadians whose viewing and listening habits aren't being subsidized?

As President Obabma said: "A crisis can be a great opportunity." Here's definately the case. With country in severe economic decline it makes less and less sense for average people to support the massive subsidies to the CBC.

Wouldn't it be nice to see subsidy bums like Jian Gameshi, Rick Mercer and George Stroumboulopoulos be forced to get real jobs?

Funny Coulter Hit Piece in the National Post

My internet network was out last night. Today, I had to use the facilities at Starbucks, because the water in my apartment is cut off for repairs. I needed a laugh. I got one by John Moore writing in the National Post about Ann Coulter.

... Her latest volley of interviews has been more like Kabuki; she made a cursory series of mainstream media appearances but she was reduced to code-talking to the dwindling conservative base that still thinks George Bush did a heck of a job.

(...)

The core of Coulter’s thesis is that liberals get what they want by existing in a permanent state of victimhood. This is a rich theory for a woman who lives in that bizarre parallel universe where conservatives are eternally bedeviled and contained by that unholy trinity of the liberal media, academia and judiciary. It becomes an even more difficult case to argue when you consider how, in its spectacular flame-out over the last year, the American right has suddenly discovered two liberal hobgoblins — sexism and racism — to explain away the laughable fizzling of its last two darlings, Sarah Palin and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

(...)

While it’s sad watching Coulter trundling out her road show after her best-before date, it cannot be forgotten that her incendiary punditry was part of a machine of books, Web sites and talk shows that inflicted eight years of divisive and incompetent Republican rule on America (14 if you count House majorities). This machine has lobotomized the Republican Party to the point where a recent convention’s star attractions were Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh and a 13-year-old boy who was treated as an oracle because he could recite hard right talking points like the catechism.

Read it all. He has so many good lines.

If you need me I'll be at the Starbucks on Davie Street. :(

Not So Perfect Warren Buffett

I love this Colby Cosh analysis of Warren Buffett in the National Post: (read)

This is champagne-flavoured optimism at its finest. But more than in most years, one is aware that Buffett’s letter is an exercise, not only in teaching and accounting, but in selling the Warren Buffett brand. After a 12-month period in which shares in his company lost 19% of their value, even the Oracle can start to sound a little like that old hypocrite Polonius.

Even before the Dow Jones began its shocking collapse, market-watchers had noticed that Buffett’s rhetoric about derivative contracts as “weapons of mass destruction” didn’t square well with his actual portfolio. Now the chickens have come home to roost: “Derivatives are dangerous,” Buffett says in 2008, shortly before going on to explain why Berkshire is a party to no fewer than 251 derivatives contracts. “I believe each contract we own was mispriced at inception, sometimes dramatically so,” he says by way of excusing himself. In a time of economic grouchiness, one notices that as an explanation, this is little better than putting one’s hands together to make a whoopee-cushion noise. One party in a contract always thinks the other has “mispriced” the good or service being exchanged. I had understood Buffett’s endless attacks on derivatives to be founded on the premise that pricing them correctly is impossible in principle.

One notices other slightly hucksterish tendencies that might have gone overlooked in the good times. Buffett makes a big deal of endorsing mark-to-market accounting, but uses “book value” in stating the worth of many of his investments, including some of those derivatives. His big leap into insuring tax-exempt municipal and state bonds is outlined in the manner of an old-time mesmerist hypnotizing a maiden lady. Buffett loves the insurance business, in all its forms, because it’s characterized by “float” — the temporary costless use of free money from premiums — but he admits that if those bond-issuing institutions ever start defaulting, a cascade is likely to follow, and the quantitative models are pure shinola in such circumstances.

PQ Try Their Hand at Humour

The National Post had this article about the Parti Quebecois separatists, that made me angry, but I didn't pick up on the satire:

"In my opinion, the economic crisis demonstrates the necessity of sovereignty," PQ leader Pauline Marois told a party meeting on Saturday in Quebec City.

"It is time for Quebec to take charge. When we need to make sudden changes of course, as is now the case, do we really have the means to deal with the in-coherency of a federation? We must finish with being wards of another nation. The context proves it. Sovereignty is urgent!"

According to Ms. Marois, the benefits of separating from Canada would be almost endless.

"If Quebec were sovereign, we would have all our taxes. We would have more manoeuvring room to develop an economic strategy, to support families and workers," Ms. Marois said.

"If Quebec were sovereign, we could support our industries in the manufacturing and forestry industries. Our aeronautical industry would not be rejected in favour of outdated automobile manufacturers in Ontario.

LOL! I love good satire. No doubt she was winking while saying this. Une autre biere pour Mardi Gras, oui! Ho ho ho! "Bombardier would get even more money if Quebec separates!" Stop it you're killing me. "Hey Canada, stop draining all our money won't you? The economy is hurting because of it." Hahaha! Ok, ok. I won't drive home. Pass moi une autre!

Hat tip: Pat

Obama Visiting Canada Today?

I didn't even realize it. They really should have more coverage in the Canadian media on this event. I really had to dig to find it.

Ok, poor attempt at sarcasm over. I think David Frum's comments about the situation to be the best:

The opportunity:Barack Obama’s presidency is already going seriously wrong. His own administration concedes that their trillion-dollar stimulus plan will create few new jobs in the next 18 months. Public support for the huge plan is plummeting. And meanwhile Obama has neglected the single most urgent and important challenge facing the United States and the world: fixing the broken American banking system.

The contrast between Obama’s ideology-first, results-last leadership and the cautious pragmatism of Stephen Harper’s government shows strongly now, and will look only more impressive in the months ahead....

The Canadian public just shrug and say: But Obama is a cool, rock star and Harper's a white nerd. (Look at Warren Kinsella's post today, this is exactly what he's saying.)

People lose their minds with celebrity hype. Remember all those people openly weeping for Princess Diana, a person they don't know personally? Did she do anything for these people other than provide an object for "People Magazine" like star fawning? To me this is the same type of thing with Obamania. And it is something I don't entirely understand, when grown-ups get carried away with this sort of thing.

Brooding Harper Taking a Walk?

I'm seeing this story all over the place, that Stephen Harper is demoralized, and possibly contemplating retirement. The biased Canadian media always gives him a hard time, but there seems to be something to this. Don Martin from the National Post explains:

MPs confide there's a darkening mood in the big guy himself, hardly surprising given the stormy economic challenge Mr. Harper faces. One source says there was a blowup between a furious Prime Minister and key players last week. And PMO chief of staff Guy Giorno is now plotting the second major internal shuffle in eight months.

What does all this mean? Search me. But some who orbit just outside Mr. Harper's innermost circle speculate that a Conservative party with no heir apparent could lose its leader before the next election.

If true, I can't help but think of this as a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington tragedy.

Since I have reached voting age, Preston Manning, and Harper are the only politicians I have believed in. Guys who I backed with my mind and heart.

I saw Manning speak when I was a student at Carelton twice. The first time it was in front of, at most, 50 of us in a lecture hall. I was impressed that he spoke at a high level. He didn't play a phony populist and spoke as an intellectual. He quoted Burke and Locke.

Around the same time, a friend of mine attended a Paul Martin lecture, and he spoke about the future "green economy." There was a campus buzz. This was hip, new. Unfortunately this sums why Manning, a principled intellectual to fault, would lose out to the trendy, gimmick salesmen of the Liberal Party. (Such was being a student in Ottawa, you got to see politicians.)

Manning never could make it, but up came Harper after the Stockwell Day disaster. Same thing as Manning. He was a wonk. An economics geek, a number cruncher. Authentic. (Though not nearly as a good a speaker. It's unbelievable that Manning was seen as un-charismatic.)

Harper knew he had to play politics and win elections. The base, were prepared to accept compromises. He's won two elections, but as a minority government. No doubt, the office has worn on him. Why wouldn't it?

Harper needs a new, fresh plan of attack. Is it in him? Time will tell.

I still think he should have stood up to the coalition threat. Force an election. If not, allow them to take over with Dion as the PM. Can you imagine that clown presiding over things right now? This terrible budget would be theirs to hang around their necks.

Babs Hall Wants National Press Council

The National Post has an op-ed about Ms. Hall's quest for a censorship council. Frightening stuff:

As if Barbara Hall's own crude, broadsword agency were not destructive enough of free speech rights, now the Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) wants a national press council to further chill free expression in the media. And she is not looking just to curtail newspapers, talk radio and television news. Ms. Hall wants any new press council to have jurisdiction over Internet sites and blogs, too.

Of course, using the typically topsy-turvy logic of most modern rights crusaders, Ms. Hall has convinced herself that this thinly veiled censorship board would actually be the ultimate free speech defender. She seems to think the best way to preserve free speech is to limit it.

(...)

Similarly, making all writers, bloggers and broadcasters hostage to a national press council is merely the first step toward letting the Barbara Halls of the world decide what you get to hear, see and read. To that, we say: "No, thanks." And so should every newspaper reader, Web surfer and television viewer in the land.

There's no way I'm letting a dogmatic, commie like Babs get her mitts on the Daily Salt Shaker, that's for damn sure!

Harper Holds Firm With Khadr

Stephen Harper is keeping his cool and is not in a rush to bring grenade lobber Omar Khadr "home". (story)

Stephen Harper said Friday he rejects the premise that Omar Khadr was a "child soldier" because the young Canadian was not a member of an army when he was accused a lobbing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.

Far from backing down to mounting pressure to repatriate Mr. Khadr, Mr. Harper said he will not make any decisions until he finds out whether the U.S. is going to drop murder charges.

(...)

"As you know, Mr. Khadr is charged with some serious offences, and we'll have to see what the resolution of that particular issue is, but we have no indication at the moment of any withdrawal of charges."

This is a good point. Khadr was born in Canada, and his father was an Egyptian. He wasn't in an army. And, it's not like he was some innocent kid born and raised in a village in Afghanistan when US soldiers appeared and he had to protect his home.

What's the hurry to get this guy back? He blew up a medic with a grenade. Let's take a breath before we welcome him to Canada.

Harnessing the Sun and the Wind and the Soil

David Frum has a breakdown of Obama's speech in the National Post today.

He takes note of this point:

And indeed the address itself delivers an ominous early warning of how wasteful Obama’s spending will likely be:

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.

Obama wants to move away from coal-fired electricity on environmental grounds. Fine. The best alternative, hydropower, is largely tapped out in the United States. (Although there remain some large potential projects in Canada, especially in northern Manitoba.)

So what should be used instead? As a rule of thumb, nuclear power costs about 50% more than coal; windpower, at least three times as much. Solar power costs even more than wind, at least with existing technology.

Those basic cost factors imply that the money Obama wishes to invest in energy technology will almost certainly reduce US economic growth rather than accelerate it. Obama promises that his government will aid the private economy. In reality it will be burdening it.

That needs to be said. Whenever the argument of so-called clean energy comes up, wind, solar and ethanol, the politicians and environmentalists never say that it will hurt the economy. There would be more credibility for the movement if they were up front and said, we think it's worth it, even if it means recessions and unemployment. Instead we hear that it will help the economy, all those "green collar" jobs.