A nice summing up

Of what is wrong with the Canadian media:

It would be a far cry from his treatment among Canada’s elite ensconced in Ottawa, where few would comment even on the value of his home — pegged at $1.3-million by London’s Telegraph newspaper. The pastimes of Mr. Carney’s wife Diana were equally off-limits in Canada. Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells wrote on Twitter that it took the Telegraph “about three hours” to write the story no one in the Parliamentary press gallery — including him — would write during the nearly five years Mr. Carney has been at his post as governor of the Bank of Canada. rmb exchange

I very much admire Carney and wish him all good things as he goes up to the Bigs; but the reality is that the Canadian media really do a remarkably crappy job as they defer to perceived authority.

Green?!

As I write the Greens and the NDP are in a dead heat for Victoria.

In Calgary Centre, the Greens have 25% of the vote.

Yes, these are bye-elections and traditionally the crankier elements come to the fore. However, in Victoria, there is some danger that the Greens will take what had been a safe NDP seat. (Which I cannot help but be delighted by.)

Green voters are, of course, odd. They tend to be eco nuts of course; but many of them are simply fed up with business as usual politics. The idea of an effective protest vote is novel and useful. Remember, the Reform Party got its start with bye-election victories.

And, in a sense, the Greens make a lot more sense for the granola-class voters than does the NDP. The NDP has the public sector unions to pander to. The Greens are just strange enough that they need not pander to anyone. Which makes them attractive.

It also makes them a problem for both the NDP and the Liberals. The loonier elements of both would like to embrace the eco frendly, multiculti hysteria (and I use the term advisedly), nuttiness of the guilty female urbanites; but the Greens are stealing their thunder.

Were I advising the Conservatives I would find a way to support Greens in a few swing ridings across Canada. Let them take their loonieness national to the great detriment of the Shiny Pony and the Public Sector/BQ NDP. All Harper would have to do to be PM for life is continue being boring and let the assorted flavours of crazy on the Left beat each other up.

AAARGHGOOOOS!

I lived in Toronto for a number of years right on the Bathurst streetcar line which would bring the despairing Toronto Argo fans back from their latest defeat. Drunk, for the most part, they would let out the lament above.

Tonight they won.

Toronto, as it sinks beneath the waves of collapsing condos and the McGinty legacy,should rejoice. And thank the Heavens that the current, cancelled, NHL season means there is not pressure on the Leafs to repeat this once in a lifetime experience.

We won’t get fooled again…

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi defended his latest decree granting himself sweeping powers before supporters in Cairo as anti-Morsi demonstrators set fire to Muslim Brotherhood offices in cities across Egypt on Friday.

As enraged demonstrators torched Muslim Brotherhood offices in several Egyptian cities, a defiant Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi defended his recent decree granting himself sweeping powers before a crowd of supporters outside the presidential palace in Cairo Friday. france 24

Of course, as with every evolution in the Middle East, it is by no means clear the protestors are to be preferred to the the President.

Hanged…Excellent

NEW DELHI: In a secret operation, LeT terrorist and 26/11 attacks accused Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was hanged in the high-security Yerwada Jail in Pune at 7:30am today after a four-year-long trial. india post

Excellent!

Thanks Kitty!

Take out the Sinai

But Israel wants guarantees that Egypt will actively stop the flow of arms into Gaza from Sinai, and that seems a tall order. Egypt has been unable to control Sinai and would not want to be seen in the role of Israeli enforcer. Egypt is hoping Hamas will restrain itself on missile imports, but it is far from clear that Hamas wants to or can, given the range of forces in Gaza vying for power, including the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad. nyt

It is likely time to make the “tunnels” a bit longer. The fact is that the Egyptians cannot, or will not, control the arms flow from the Sinai. Israel can and should take this bit of desert as a cordon sanitaire.

The assholes in Gaza would have to pound sand in that event.

This would be a good thing.

Cyberwar…box smart

suspicious of the regime’s motives. Young, Kurdish, and recently finished with his mandatory military service, Othman opposed President Bashar al-Assad. Working for an Internet service provider, he knew that Syria—like many other countries, including China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain—controlled its citizens’ access to the Web. The same technology the government used to censor websites allowed it to monitor Internet traffic and intercept communications. Popular services such as Facebook, Skype, Google Maps, and YouTube gave Syria’s revolutionaries capabilities that until a couple of decades ago would have been available only to the world’s most sophisticated militaries. But as long as Damascus controlled the Internet, they’d be using these tools under the eye of the government. businessweek

Grownups know that what they put on the net can be traced back to their IP and, more to the point, often to their home.

Grownups either do as I do and post under my own name or get slightly clever and use proxies or, more clever still, use encryption and IP spoofing browsers. Were I in Syria, I fear, I would be using every trick I know not to be identified.

Imagine

Imagine that, one way or another, a powerful group of terrorists took over a part of Canada and started lobbing missiles into US border towns. And, imagine, that this group was happy to round up Canadian civilians to stand, at gun point, next to the missile launchers.

Would anyone suggest that the Americans were not entitled to hit the launchers?

Certainly if some kind of terrorist organization were to set up missile factories across the frontier in Canada and Mexico and start attacking targets in the United States, the American people would demand that their President use all necessary force without stint or limit until the resistance had been completely, utterly and pitilessly crushed. Those Americans who share this view of war might feel sorrow at the loss of innocent life, of the children and non-combatants killed when overwhelming American power was used to take the terrorists out, but they would feel no moral guilt. The guilt would be on the shoulders of those who started the whole thing by launching the missiles. walter russell mead

15 seconds

Imagine.

OK, Israelis, hit them hard and long. Walk through Gaza and clear the rockets.

There is nothing disproportionate about that.

God’s Speed.

Let’s hope Israel gets seriously “disproportionate”

Last night, Downing Street declared Hamas bears “principal responsibility” for the escalating crisis, branding rocket attacks on Israel “completely unacceptable”.

He gave an unrepentant defence of the decision to launch Wednesday and Thursday’s attacks on Gaza, which killed Hamas’s military leader Ahmed al-Jaabari.

“Israel will continue to take whatever action is necessary to defend our people,” he said. Officials last night however, said that no decision had yet been made to enter Gaza. the telegraph (behind a paywall so get the Tor browser or a public proxy like hotspot)

Dickheads who fire unguided missiles at population centers deserve a pretty severe thumping. Unfortunately, there will civilian casualties which, I suspect, the world’s press and bleeding hearts will whine about. (Advice to women and children – stay away from the Hamas “militants” as they are likely to attract fire.)

Hamas really is pretty dim.

Update: “Knesset member Tzipi Hotovely, who often is described as the “intellectual voice” of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, tells Newsmax: “I must say, for many Israelis this is a big issue. Shooting into the most important city is like shooting rockets into New York.

“This is something that is unbearable and impossible for any country to suffer and to accept,” she says. “We will do anything to prevent our people to suffer from terror and rocket attacks.” newsmax

Sending in ground troops to target specific cells, arms dumps and such like makes sense.