Syrian Reactor

Over at the WaPo is a piece about that Israeli raid on the Syrian reactor.

Reading this I wonder if we aren't in for another 9/11 at some point. There is a little too much diplomatic white-washing going on here.

Happy 4/20!

Thanks to NR for the heads up.





The Golden Road by The Grateful Dead.

Athena V. The Furies

Camille Paglia is probably one of the coolest people on the planet and here is why.

Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family

This one goes out to all the bloggers currently being sued for whatever....

I am Woman, Hear Me Bore

The L.A. Times has this piece from a feminist.

Ugh, where to begin. For one thing this story never changes. A women in middle-management could have said the same thing 20 years ago and it goes back to when "uneducated" women wrote 26 line sonnets with alternating trochaic and iambic lines about, you guessed it, "uneducated" women.

I would also take issue with how this sophist dovetails her experience with an alpha-male asshole into restraining orders, rape and third world violence.

After all, Women Strike for Peace was founded by women who were tired of making the coffee and doing the typing and not having any voice or decision-making role in the antinuclear movement of the 1950s. Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being. Things have certainly gotten better, but this war won't end in my lifetime. I'm still fighting it, for myself certainly, but also for all those younger women who have something to say, in the hope that they will get to say it.

I wonder if Susan B. Anthony would have thought that anti-proliferation would be so tightly enmeshed with womens rights?

What about the sugary diary style she's writing in? She said she was forty-something, right? Doesn't she write books, too?

Finally, it seems it's a women's problem if she can't assert herself to the position she believes she's attained. It isn't with God and All The World she should be taking issue with, but with herself.

Thanks to Ms. Shaidle

Maclean's Responds

Maclean's Magazine has finally sounded off on their own HRC controversy.

These guys played it pretty safe, I think. Tell me that isn't true.

Secondly, provincial governments must follow suit, eliminating their own versions of Section 13(1), or at the very least granting print media organizations an exemption just as broadcasters are exempted from the federal law.

Got that, at least liberate us from the aforementioned tribunal insanity. let the bloggers deal with 'em.

Thanks Maclean's

Liberal is as Liberal Does

Liberals are finally starting to come around to this free speech thing. I suspect that liberals pivoted after having to re-read their J.S. Mills.

If that's the case it let me say it would be a welcome change.

Welfare Art

The National Post has a great series of articles from their in-house talent on Canada's Biggest Mistakes.

Marni Soupcoff has a great one about art subsidies (scroll down page for the rest of series).

The Canadian government has been funding the arts since long before I was born. The CCA was created in 1957, just a few years after CBC television came on the scene, and CBC radio has been around since the 1930s. Clearly, Canadians are accustomed to having their money transferred from their own bank accounts to those of the nation's broadcasters, sculptors and poets. It doesn't seem to bother most of us, but I still think it's been a big mistake.

Frankly, with all the serious things that can harm a country like Canada it's nice to have this one to kick around. I suspect Canadians put up with "welfare art" as penance for their insatiable appetites for American content. American television is better produced and written. A large percentage of Canada's succored hacks couldn't even dare to emulate it. I doubt they even care to.

Therein lies the rub. The "welfare art" crowd thinks Canadians should pay penance, too.

Thelma & Louise II - Now They Have Penises

With the new Kinsella/ Warman lawsuit pending against the owners of FreeDominion.ca Mark Steyn notes:

Celebrated Canadian ass-kicker Warren Kinsella has now joined his friend Richard Pieman in suing Free Dominion. Even by Warren's recent standards, this seems majorly lame. I wouldn't mind a chap suing over being called a Nazi were it not for the fact that Kinsella bandies Nazi accusations around so carelessly at anyone who disagrees with him - me, Ezra, Kate, Jay Currie, we're all Nazis. But, fortunately for him, we're non-litigious ones. So far.

Yes, Mr Steyn. It seems that Warren is lacking what most modern law-talking dudes lack, that is a spirit of the law. For one to sue for being called a Nazi I would think that such a person would be required to adhere to the spirit AND the letter of the law. Kinsella, a lawyer, clearly doesn't.

As for the duo of Kinsella / Warman, I wonder if they'll hold hands when they drive off the cliff.

Spirit of '71

Eric Burdon and War. (Yeah!)

Sadr Days

Looks like Al Sadr is feeling the heat.

Chavez Nationalizes Cement Industry

Over at Bloomberg.com an article about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plans to nationalize the cement industry.

The nationalization order comes as Chavez seeks to relieve shortages due in part to the country's record oil income. The government is restricting food exports and Chavez said in January he would ban asphalt sales abroad as well. Chavez has accused building-material suppliers of establishing a monopoly that overcharges and slows home and road construction.

Meet William A. White

Ezra Levant and freedominion.ca thinks William A. White (AKA Bill White, Commander) may not be real but a simple Google search would have yielded this.

So, this is a guy who is known to locals as a bigot, he's on camera and further documented by roanoke.com as "William A. White, the commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party." That's a lot of social discomfort for one "F.B.I" plant and that is what the "real" Nazi's believe Bill A. White to be.

I would be suspicious of the internecine warfare between the dubious leaders of basement brand Neo-Nazism.

Wikipedia

'Roo Republic

Australian PM Kevin Rudd reaffirms his support to an Australian republic.

Here's hoping we follow suit. It seems silly for Canada to hang on to a heritage that is being absorbed into the broader European Union. Whether Canadians would admit this to pollsters or not, but we're more aligned with Yankee values than we are with Euro-Brit values.

Any average Canadian wholly expects the American system of rights to be taken as his own, perhaps with the exception of the second amendment, but they do none the less. What better way to to entrench those rights with the birth of a republic?

Yeah, That's the Ticket!

More bunkum from the Clintons.

Private Clinton

Get this. Hillary Clinton was gonna join the Army, but her eyes were so bad they wouldn't take her. Likely story, but if true confirms HRC is the Batman to Bill's Robin.

Russia Growing Up?

Here is an interesting opinion piece from the The Moscow Times.

During a recent meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin made an extremely important statement. "Under modern conditions, when there is no longer confrontation between two hostile systems, an endless expansion of the military and political alliance is not only impractical, but counterproductive," he said.

In other words, Putin admitted that NATO did not represent a military threat to Russia. What is actually bothering him then? His further comments provide the answer: "It would seem that attempts are being made to create an organization to take the place of the United Nations. NATO is already going beyond the scope of its mandate. We have nothing against helping Afghanistan, but ... this is not a NATO problem."

The entire article is rather optimistic, but that last phrase leaves the door open for an anti-NATO which diminishes the likelihood that our optimism is of equal amplitude.

UPDATE:
Putin doesn't want new Cold War.

ABCs, 123s, and STDs

I didn't write that headline. It's the actual title of the piece but I couldn't have come up with something better and it seems to fit.

The president of NOW, Kim Gandy says that abstinence and "Just Say NO" aren't working and that kids are coming up empty handed vis-a-vis sex education.

I don't come down on either side of this, honestly. I grew up with enough ignoramuses to know that sex education can be helpful to a kid whose parents just can't explain these things or even cared to do so. More than few I doubt were even capable of trying.

That being said, I wouldn't want my kids, if I had any, to learn about the birds and bees from the likes of NOW or any other leftie busy-body. All too often these people have supplemental agendas that involve alternative lifestyles, abortion and of course, gender politics. All of which have very little to do with Jimmy wondering if he can use tinfoil for a contraceptive. These people aren't interested in illuminating or defining a path through the myriad of consequences that modern sex entails. They want money and they want it to push something other than what they claim to be offering.

What kills me though, is that the Church knows full well that if you put a bunch of young people in a room and wave the prospect of having sex by way of arranging quick and easy marriages that the kids will marry and hook up. I wonder why NOW thinks that even with the best of intentions, that these horny teenagers won't take sex education as consent to have sex.

P.S. Me and my stoner buddies would've kicked up a right ruckus asking stupid questions like "Can you use tinfoil as a condom?". Just ask Sex with Sue who got more than one hopped up call from us.

From Sweden

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you guitar dickhead (and we're all dickheads trust me), Yngwie Malmsteen.

Calling Herecles

May the gods bring down a hail of stones for this mockery of the Olympic games. Surely the Greeks meant for free men and women to compete and not these barbarians.

Canada's 911?

From the Daily Mail.

A gang of British Muslims planned to blow up seven planes within hours in the biggest terrorist atrocity since 9/11, a court heard yesterday.

Two thousand passengers would have died in the plot by eight fanatics working "in the name of Islam", the jury was told.

It could have involved up to 18 suicide bombers. And they were almost ready to strike.

The jets they targeted would all have been bound from Heathrow to cities in the U.S. and Canada, it was claimed.

A little bit o' mud in the eyes of all those who cry that Canada isn't a terrorist target.

300 Part Deux

According to Israel's jpost.com, Iran continues to assemble centrifuges. However, they have yet to be linked up to the oppressive regime's main enrichment plant

The clock is ticking....

2001 - A Space Exposition

The key to understanding the opening of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey is a simple understanding of symbolism. Accepting one can take the work of Clarke as symbolist is debatable, however the monolith is the one thing that can easily be called a symbol.

What does it symbolize? I think human progress. One day the apes wake up and there it is, like any technology really, it animates them, they rally around it and they kick the tires. Each epoch of humanity has had rallying points, flash points of technological advancement. With each step in the technological ladder, all of humanity, within the flash point, soaks up the new technology.

By that I mean, humanity takes a leap forward and your average human, over a steady period of exposure becomes a product of that technology. Basically, think about asking a person in the 70's if they think a font is a typeface or a type of Swedish dessert and they'd be likely to choose the latter.

The digitial revolution became an impetus for regular folk to educate themselves in the aspects of desktop publishing and all the sub-classes contained therein (color management, image manipulation, HTML, editing software etc...). Who would need to know any of this stuff in the 80's? And how would a person from the 80's react upon learning that one day he'll need to learn all of it?

Yet, here we are. Everybody within the sphere of the digital revolution can do these things, some to a greater degree than others, but my point is that everyone is doing and can do it. The one thing that stands before all is the computer. It is a monolith. We have poked and prodded, screamed and kicked at it (and still are) we have rallied around it and it probes each of us, drawing out these sleeping attributes. With it we have extended our selves around the entire planet.

This is what the monolith is. It is not God, not in the sense that these gods created the universe but they are playing with god-like power. Technically it's an extra-terrestrial probe/animator. It probes each ape as it approaches, seeking out attributes on which it can evolve. The monolith doesn't accelerate evolution in all the apes it touches, only a few that carry the seeds of intelligence. The is the literal function of Clark's monolith, from the book. It gets kinda deep when you read the 2001 saga.

The symbolic function is one of monolithic progress. In this case a simple bone, used as an implement to extend the apes reach. The ape teaches the others in his tribe how to maximize the benefits of this new technology, a bone. That's it. How the ape uses it is of no use to the monolith. It merely reports it's findings and in this case the sentients have decided they will check in later, a lot later.

The monolith did not create the conditions for an ape or a prehistoric-human to do murder. We see at the beginning that he is hungry, his family weary of prowlers and is struggling against his natural environment. He is not doing murder by using his bone-implement, he is surviving. He is extending the life of his family by supplying provisions that are now more easily procured and security by the brute force of his club.

These new conditions provide some leisure time, a time to dream, to plan to move forward.

Cut to Exterior of Orbiting Space Station....

I can't remember exactly if the scene of that ape smashing the bones is in the book, I think it's a Kubrick device and it's meant to convey exactly what i'm saying about the "bone". The bone is swung down into the bones of the dead animals and eventually on the upswing we cut to the space station. I think the shot is a symbol of man's low and high culture.

Play It Again, Madge.

In yet another display of my generation's commitment to originality Madge is remaking Casablanca.

Or maybe it isn't my generation's inability to create works that haven't been mined from classic rock. Maybe culture has been driven by spoon-fed dilettantes for just too long.

Bill Clinton Redux

Bill Clinton's freaking out again

This is rich:

It was "very good, very intense," said undeclared superdelegate Christine Pelosi, the daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"The word 'tirade' may be used differently out here than in the rest of the country," said Chris Stampolis, who supports Clinton's presidential bid and also attended the meeting.

"There was not a single swear word, no screaming, no pounding on anything."

It's always what the definition of is is with these people.

OK, maybe Barack can't win, but if the Dems won't select the winner, why not Bill Richardson or John Edwards then?