...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Gag me with a P.E.I tater: A Canadian icon—Anne of Green Gables—has gone, er, green. From the Ceeb:
Anne and Gilbert, the musical featuring fictional redhead Anne Shirley that started its Summerside run earlier this month, has gone green.
Producer Campbell Webster has purchased just over $300 in carbon credits to help offset fuel and other energy usage during staging of the theatre production, and ease the effects
"There's a certain elegance to it. It can be a simple way to offset the carbon fuels that you use," Webster told CBC News.
Being staged at the Harbourfront Jubilee Theatre from July 15 to Sept. 19, Anne and Gilbert is a love story based on Lucy Maud Montgomery's popular Anne of Green Gables book series.
Carbon credits are vouchers used to sponsor clean-energy research and projects, in an effort to counterbalance carbon emissions produced by activities such as driving or air travel.
Webster purchased his credits from Planetair, a non-profit Montreal company dedicated to reducing greenhouse gases...
Personally, I happen to adore
A race to the finish: Joe Conason in the Chicago Tribune says that it’s taken decades for science and society to “catch up” to Al Gore.
Dhimmitude or brinksmanship?: I’m not sure. From the
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt (AP) - President Bush's top national security aides said Tuesday their double-barreled show of diplomatic and military support for friendly Arab allies this week is not a shot across Iran's bow.
"We are out here to talk about the long term," Secretary of Defense Gates said, as he and Secretary of State Rice began two days of meetings among
If
The Cabinet secretaries also said during a joint press conference in this
"There clearly is concern on the part of the Egyptians, and I think it probably represents concern elsewhere in the region, that the United States will somehow withdraw precipitously from
Newsflash for Bush and Condi: the Saudis are the enemy, same as the mullahs.
Sickening: UN "peacekeepers" are racing to Darfur.
Far too late to save the tens of thousands of Christians, animists and black Muslims who have fallen victim to the Arab janjaweed militias unleashed by Khartoum's decades-long jihad.
Cultish devotion and catastrophic thinking: Lots of true believers on the Left who go ga-ga for
Global warming has become the apocalyptic cult of the new millennium. None of the other jeremiahs, throughout the ages, can hold an end-of-the-world candle to ozone-layer mystics prophesying climate Armageddon.
I just came across the ultimate Al Gore coffee table book, "The World Tomorrow: Scenarios of Global Catastrophe" by Yannick Monget.
On the jacket, the author is described as "the founder and chief representative of the Ankaa Group, an organization dedicated to conceiving and developing ambitious projects for the environmental protection of
If that weren't enough of a contribution to mankind, we are told Monget "has written several volumes of socially committed science fiction in
"The World Tomorrow" is a lavishly illustrated book that stunningly depicts ecological end-times in familiar settings.
This enviro-porn compliments the ravings of Global Warming's nuttier acolytes - chimp girl Jane Goodall, at the Live Earth
Not to be outdone, and demonstrating that the Kennedy clan loses brain cells with each succeeding generation (impossible as that may seem), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- son of RFK and president of something called the Waterkeeper Alliance - raved to the Live Earth audience: "Get rid of all of these rotten politicians (presumably, Republicans) we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies. This is treason and we need to start treating them as traitors!" His old man, who once worked for Joe McCarthy, would be proud.
Boy Bobbie could have put it differently: "This is heresy. And we need to start treating them as heretics!" Which way to the Global Warming auto-da-fe?
The environmentalist canon may be described thusly: 1) Global Warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions is revealed truth. 2) If we don't repent, mankind will be eternally damned. 3) Doubters are monsters and mental defectives comparable to Holocaust-deniers and members of the Flat Earth Society. And 4) It's time to purge our SUV sins by abolishing the industrial revolution and turning to pig manure and solar power for energy. The former may in found in abundance among Global-Warming advocates in Congress and the media...
Much of the above is also driven by the same kind of leftist self-loathing that prompts true believers to embrace the
The wonder-full land of Oz: Donning his customary rose-colored glasses, Israeli novelist Amos Oz surveys the terrain, and can’t get over all the wonderful things he can see. From the Globe and Mail (article available online for extra shekels):
Hardly anyone seems to notice the good news from the
But what about the
Positive changes are evident in both the Olmert and Abbas governments.
Party-pooper that I am, I sent the following response:
Amoz Oz is cheered by what he sees as the positive developments in relations between
They will? Such wishful thinking borders on the delusional. It ignores the fact that the Palestinians have already soundly rejected Mr. Abbas, who presided over a tyrannical, inefficient and corrupt regime, albeit an ostensibly secular one. It also fails to consider that Hamas, in the grand tradition of fascists who made the trains run on time, has brought law and order to
Hooked on Hamza: Abu Hamza, the choleric cleric who used to heat up the jihadi laddies from his pulpit at the
Poor man. To cheer him up, I’ve written him a poem:
A cleric called Hamza the Hook
Is not just some regular shnook.
Jihad’s his agenda,
But here’s the addenda—
He failed, both by hook and by crook.
Hooky, in his former life
Bewitched, unbothered and bewildered: How are British universities dealing with the growing threat of Muslim students being radicalized on campus? They’re not. They’re depending on their “moderate” Muslim students to deal with the problem because the dhimmis in charge are more afraid of being labelled racist than they are of the holy war. From the Telegraph:
…Their [the four Muslim undergrads who were just locked away in the slammer for “glorifying Islamic terrorism”] views alarmed the university's Islamic Society, when at a meeting, Zafar [one of the undergrads] called for Muslims to kill anyone who dared re-publish Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.
The society ejected them, but the university only became aware of the incident after the police raids.
A university spokesman said the society's decision to isolate the group demonstrated that moderate Muslim students were prepared to act when they came across unacceptable behaviour.
Up to 48 British universities have been infiltrated by fundamentalists, according to Professor Anthony Glees, the director of
A Government report published in December warned of "serious, but not widespread, Islamic extremist activity in higher education institutions".
Government guidance, which asks staff to log suspicious behaviour, has been rejected by the University and Colleges Union, which described it as a "witch-hunt".
Government guidance has evidently misunderstood the concept of the “witch-hunt”—a paranoid and mean-spirited search for dangerous enemies who are largely a figment of the hunters’ over-heated imaginations. It ain’t a witch-hunt if there are actual witches, ones bent on making Islam supreme.
Sweety assault: A curious piece in the Telegraph by Tim Butcher, one of the Western reporters who went on a Hamas junket in It was the name of the bus company chosen by Hamas to drive foreign guests around The tour was meant to counter weeks of adverse publicity about the supposedly draconian nature of "Hamastan" - the name given to the Gaza Strip by critics of the Islamist movement since its violent takeover last month. So for five sweaty hours, the coach from Sweety Tours took a few dozen reporters on a tour of the Gaza Strip to try to counter this image. The bus stopped at the presidential guest house - Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian national authority and Fatah leader is locked out of A great deal was made of the fact the portrait of Mr Abbas still hung in the main reception room. But then a few minutes later the bus passed a vast mural of Yasser Arafat, the former Fatah leader. The mural was pockmarked with fresh-looking bullet holes. "We believe in freedom of speech and democracy," said Ahmed Bahar, the deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament and a senior Hamas figure. His words would have sounded more convincing had the Hamas authorities in Gaza not chosen yesterday to arrest several distributors of Palestinian newspapers from the West Bank, the territory still under Fatah control. The bus continued to the main prison in None of the inmates was prepared to speak about torture even though human rights groups had documented cases allegedly committed by Hamas security forces. The coach party was then taken to the main The bus tour was a clumsy propaganda exercise but it is worth remembering that a few weeks before Hamas came to power Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter, was being held hostage with warnings that other Western journalists would be targeted. Oh, so you mean Hamas is to be applauded because under its rule Western reporters are now safe? Good for the reporters, perhaps, but considering the whole wretched context of jihadis in charge of
"Wiggle room," Taliban-style: Who says the Taliban aren't reasonable? Why, they've given the infidels three more hours to meet their demands, after which they promise to off the 23 Christians they've been holding hostage.
Three strikes yer out: A blast of reason from—of all places— Ha’aretz. Danny Dayan notes the senselessness of
Former prime minister Ariel Sharon led Israel into two giant experiments. Most regrettably, both of them were colossal failures. Nevertheless, his successors are currently playing around with the idea of returning to his failed experiments, with the near-messianic expectation that this time they will succeed. The Big Pines campaign of the summer of 1982 was aimed at making Bashir Gemayel the ruler of Lebanon so he would sign a peace agreement with Israel and ensure the security of the northern communities. The results are known: Gemayel was elected president, but he was assassinated before he managed to be sworn in. Sharon's plan collapsed like a house of cards. Bashir's brother Amin Gemayel ignored all the understandings between the two sides. And today, after years of wars that have exacted hundreds of dead, the peace of Kiryat Shmona depends to a large extent on the mood of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
In the summer of 2005, Ariel Sharon carried out his second large experiment: the forced evacuation of thousands of Israelis from their homes and the transfer of the Gaza region to the Palestinians. For the first time a Palestinian state was established on contiguous territory, clear of any Jewish presence. Just a few months after the withdrawal and establishment of the de facto state, the Palestinians elected Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as prime minister. Hamas later took over the administrative and military mechanisms in the Gaza Strip by force. An Al-Qaida-Hezbollah-Hamas state is currently located on the Israeli border and is supported by Iran. It is raining rockets on the South each day. The diplomatic plans gathering steam these days in the offices of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Vice Premier Haim Ramon are an exact reprise of Sharon's dud operations. The plans aim to establish a "clean" Palestinian state on contiguous territory that covers nearly all of Judea and Samaria - the West Bank - just like Gaza. To prevent, supposedly, the severe damage that has been brought on us by the Gaza state, Israel will ensure the rule of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whether or not this is what the Palestinians want, just as in Lebanon.
Abbas (Abu Mazen) is the man who wrote a doctorate on "The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement." He was involved up to his neck in the murder of the Israeli athletes in Munich and has promised the refugees in Lebanon that they will return to their homes in Israel proper.
An Israeli withdrawal from most of the territories of Judea and Samaria and the establishment of a Palestinian state there will inevitably lead to the same disastrous results of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. In the absence of Israeli settlements and the Israel Defense Forces' control of the territory, a Hamas takeover is only a matter of time. The notion that Gaza is a Hamas state whereas the West Bank is not entirely contradicts the facts. In the last regional elections to the Palestinian parliament, Hamas won 30 seats in Judea and Samaria, while Fatah won only 12. In Hebron, for example, Hamas won all nine seats.
So it is clear that without Israeli intervention, the days of Abbas and his colleagues are numbered. To prevent a Hamas takeover of a future Palestinian state, Israel will have to base its control on what the left in its wickedness likes to call "IDF spears." However, the IDF will not be there. Maintaining Abbas, without an Israeli presence on the ground, is an impossible mission. Sooner or later Abbas' fate will be like Gemayel's…
New Yorker's mislabelling: The this week's New Yorker, David Remnick has written a profile of Avrahum Berg, an Israeli politician and a former speaker of the Knesset whom the magazine dubs a Zionist “apostate.”
Those of us who align themselves on the opposite end of the political spectrum have another name for him: raving moonbat. That’s because Berg and his batty, self-despising ilk--exemplified by Israel's useless Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert--are ensuring that
Getting it—in part: An editorial in the International Herald Tribune is a mixed bag. It “gets it” about the perils of arming oily Wahhabists:
The Bush administration and
While Washington hasn't protested publicly, Riyadh is pouring money into Sunni opposition groups and letting Saudis cross the border to join Sunni insurgents fighting the U.S.-backed, Shiite-led government.
So far, neither
A failed Iraqi state with Saudi Islamists holed up in Qaeda sanctuaries in its western deserts is clearly not in the interests of the Saudi monarchy. But for Rice and Gates to have any chance of changing Saudi policies, they will have to go beyond the administration's usual mix of bullying and denial and address legitimate Saudi concerns.
One such concern is
Then again, the editorial doesn’t “get it” about
After years of mistaken
Yeah, I’m sure Iran's crazed almost-nuclear theocrats, eagerly awaiting the long-deferred return of their Messiah (he fell down a well in the 9th Century and hasn’t been heard from since), as well as the untuous Wahhabists, whose oil wealth funds the export of their toxic theology/jihadism to all points of the planet, are just itching to sit down and hash things out with Great Satan—and each other.
Good thinking, IHT opiner.
Depressed Swedes: According to the 640 radio report I heard about an hour ago, the death of Woody Allen’s favourite film director, Ingmar Bergman, at the age of 89 is said to have “cast a pall” over Sweden.
Yeah, because they were such chuckleheads before he died.
The Bloomberg article about Bergman’s passing is the only one I’ve read so far that mentions Bergman’s “dirty little secret”—a youthful fling with Nazism:
The son of a priest, Bergman described his own childhood as based on concepts such as sin and confession, punishment in the form of brutal floggings, forgiveness and grace. Bergman settled the score with his father, Erik, with the partly autobiographical ``Fanny and Alexander,'' where a stern, Lutheran bishop torments his stepchildren.
Bergman said his authoritarian upbringing may have contributed to an ``astonishing acceptance of Nazism'' before World War II, a stance for which he was later deeply apologetic.
Advantage, Hamas: Hamas’s victory in
When the Islamist group Hamas conquered the Gaza Strip in June it seized an intelligence-and-military infrastructure created with
According to current and former Israeli intelligence officials, former
Hamas leaders say they acquired thousands of paper files, computer records, videos, photographs and audio recordings containing valuable and potentially embarrassing intelligence information gathered by Fatah. For more than a decade, Fatah operated a vast intelligence network in
Hamas leaders are expected as early as tomorrow to go public with some of the documents and the secrets they hold.
The exact nature of the threat posed by the intelligence grab in
But a number of former
"People are worried, and reasonably so, about what kind of intelligence losses we may have suffered," said one former
A
Close ties between Hamas and the governments of
A lesson the White House, as well as Parliament Hill, has yet to learn.
Wahhabi Scouts: Don’t look now, but another icon of Western civilization is being Islamized. From Arab News: JEDDAH, Prince Mohammed ibn Nawwaf, Speaking about the general situation of Saudi scouts, Abdullah Al-Fahad, secretary-general of the Saudi Boy Scouts Association (SBSA) and deputy-president of the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Al-Fahad said, “We now have around 100,000 Saudi scouts and 15,000 guides. We hope to increase the number of scouts each year by at least five percent.”… Oh, that William--he's a chip off the old blockhead. The set-up of Scouts and Guides is ideal for those pursuing an Islamist agenda because the genders are already separated, as per the requirements of sharia law: He (Al-Fahad) added that Saudi girl guides also have important roles to play, which should not be underestimated. The Saudi Girl Guide Association functions separately under the supervision of Islamic scholar and university lecturer Fatima Naseef. Along with earning the usual merit badges, Saudi Scouts (but, for obvious reasons, not Guides) can demonstrate their good citizenship by helping others fulfill one of their Islamic duties: The secretary-general added that 3,000 Saudi boy scouts will be deployed during the upcoming Haj to guide pilgrims using state-of-the-art GPS technology. To this end, an e-map of Mina and Arafat will be produced to enable scouts to guide pilgrims using GPS. “The software for the map is ready. In the meantime, we shall train scouts in the use of GPS technology, so that they could locate the areas to which pilgrims, who have lost their way, could go.” And consider this: once they outgrow scouting, the helpful lads will be the perfect age to become martyrs for Allah.
Saudi slime: As the Bush administration gets set to sell weapons to the oily Wahhabists, an editorial by Youssef Ibrahim in the
• In the past 30 years, Saudi charities, government funds, and the Saudi royal family itself have sent thousands of wild-eyed,
• The CIA and British and Iraqi intelligence agencies estimate that a majority of the suicide bombers in
• The 1987 founding of Hamas — a Palestinian Arab terrorist group that originally was the
• Half the terrorists killed by the Lebanese army in the ongoing siege at the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in
The myth of
In other words, the custodians of the two holy mosques—who arrogate to themselves the Earthly pleasures that are only available to horny young “martyrs” as a posthumous reward, the incentive for their martyrdom—are a bunch of royal hyprocrites. And extremely dangerous ones, to boot.
Dopplegangers: Ever noticed how a certain waxen but still vital potentate