The silly season begins

The latest session of parliament has begun with a new plea from Paul Martin that our parliamentarians conduct themselves with a higher level of civility, so as not to have this session degenerate into the farce the last one turned into. This would be fine if his plea was aimed at the members of his own caucus as much as it is at the opposition, since it is usually some loose lipped Liberal making allusions to the Klansmen from the opposition, or fictional cross burnings - right before they plead with the opposition to "please, stop the name calling!"

I have a stopwatch on how long this new era of "civility" will last - just wait until the Liberals get caught up in some sort of scandal, or even engaged in some meaningful debate, before they take out the brush and start tarring, because you know its much easier for them to attack the messenger than the message - why an actual debate would require some actual thought, and an exchange of ideas...its always proven much easier for the Libs to plant their flag on the high ground and start blasting away...

And I guess as long as we keep electing them, this is the best we can expect

Insurgents gun down 5 Shiite teachers at school

Yes, those brave "insurgents" are at it again, gallantly fighting to free Iraq by, um, killing schoolteachers? Oh yeah, thats the way to show that your all about re-building Iraqi society. Once again, its stuff like this that makes me believe that the gaggle of idiots over here marching on the US consulate demanding an "end to the war" need to pull their heads out of their asses and take a look at who is actually killing all the Iraqi's now - and who are now actually putting up the greatest obstacles to rebuilding the country.

I'll give you a hint - its not the "evil" United States.

Of course to some, it doesn't matter who is pulling the trigger or driving the suicide bus, its still the evil US that takes the blame for every dead body over there.

Do these people, with their nice homemade signs and wonderfully original and thought provoking chants ("no blood for oil!"), honestly believe that if the US pulled every soldier out of the country that the "insurgents" would just drop their weapons, give each other high fives and start looking for jobs? Hardly. The country would become an even worse bloodbath than it is now.

These fools need to stop living in the 60's - thinking that they are fighting the good fight to put an end to the war in Viet Nam. Uh, folks? Iraq is not Viet Nam, y'know. And incidentally, they should look at what happened to Viet Nam post US pull-out and talk to some of the survivors of the communiest re-education camps to get their opinion on how all that went... I'm sure those folks did not cheer the fact that the evil US was gone - especially the ones who were summarily shot.
If the "insurgents" (and to set the record straight, they really should be referred to sub-human-muderingterroristscumbags) have graduated to murdering school-teachers in braod daylight than what do think is going to happen if the US pulls out and leaves "security" entirely up to the under-equipped and under-trained Iraqi forces? Do ya think that the terrorist scum bags might take that as a signal that their efforts have been rewarded - and hey, if somethings working, why stop?
I would say that at that point, every charred Iraqi corpse could be laid at the feet of the "anti-war" movement.


Now - lest you think I have my head stuck in the sand here, I do believe that the US made a collossal mistake in invading Iraq (they've really stepped in a pile of shit there)...and I'm no cheer leader for George W. (I do believe he has the whiff of the religious zealot about him, and uses that to guide his judgement a wee bit too much for comfort).
Ultimately, its also just that I believe that the "anti-war" crowd are a couple of years too late. If these protests didn't work before the invasion, what makes them think its going to work now?

Goodbye Gaza - a game of give and take...

Read this in a recent article about Al-Qaida infiltrating the Gaza strip

"Palestinians said any decision to move Gaza settlers to Maskiyot would ruin the positive atmosphere created by the Gaza withdrawal. "It seems that the Israelis give with one hand and take away with the other," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Celebrations at the evacuated West Bank settlements continued Wednesday. Dozens of gunmen from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group with ties to Abbas' Fatah movement, fired in the air.

"This is our victory ... the victory of your weapons," Zakariye Zubeydi, a leader of the gunmen, told several hundred supporters. "We will continue to expel them (Israelis) from every centimeter of Palestine." "

So - let me get this straight – the Palestinians are upset because the Israeli’s aren’t completely living up to their obligations under the “road map”, and yet, to listen to the rhetoric coming from their side, they have no intention of even glancing at the map as they career happily down the road in their suicide car bombs. The line about expelling “them” from every centimeter of Palestine certainly doesn’t sound like words of encouragement for those deluded souls who actually believe that a “two state” solution is possible. Rather, it sounds like the Islamoid death-cult is taking the Israeli pull out from Gaza as a grand victory, and even more as encouragement to continue and expand their efforts to blow Israel from the map piece by piece and body by body.

But of course, rather than seeing any criticism of this, what we’ll probably see is more wailing that the Israeli security wall is illegal, a violation of human rights, a violation of international & humanitarian law, and the worst thing ever in the history of the world. Seems that if anything is going to change, then the world has to stop giving a free pass to the Palestinians on issues like this – no more of this attitude like “oh, listen to those quaint oppressed Palestinians talking about blowing up all the jews….oh the poor souls...so cruelly oppressed – what do you expect?”…well, I’d expect that the rest of the civilized world needs to raise the bar for the Palestinians a wee bit higher – as in, get your shit together, stop preaching & teaching virulent hatred as if there was nothing more important in all the world than hating & killing jews, and start focusing your energies on building a functioning society – in other words, stop looking back like 50 years of Israeli history is going to disappear and you are going to return to the homes 99% of you have never seen, and get on with building a functioning state – OR we close the taps and all your Western aid funding dries up…

Now I understand its really easy for someone sitting comfy here in the Great white north to pontificate about this, but really, is there any other way? Coddling these people, accepting their every whine as Truth (Arafat and his gangs were masters at manipulating world public opinion) has ultimately been the worse thing for the Palestinians. Rather than forcing them to accept the hard truths, we’ve merely given them the encouragement to indulge in this collective 50 year old fantasy that if they cry hard enough, if they blow up enough stuff , then “turn back the clock” day is right around the corner and they will be able to scratch out Israel from their maps and pencil in “Palestine”.

People in glass houses...

I could not help but be struck by the supreme irony of our beloved PM standing up at the UN this past week and lecturing the rest of the world on the futility of "lofty rhetoric" being unmatched by concrete actions. This from the man who has promised to "Fix health care for a generation" (or, well, to throw a big pile of cash at it and hope that no one really notices the complete absence of anything resembling an actual "fix" or reform), and to "end the politics of cronyism (er, maybe after he appoints all of his leadership team to the senate? But these are all highly qualified people! They just happen to also be prominent Liberals who just happened to have been working on his unending leadership campaign for the last 10 years - they can't really be classified as "cronies" can they?

Yeah, Martin is the one to stand up and lecture all those other bad world leaders.

Perhaps the video they showed on the news of Martin practising his speech (showing how polite Canadians are by doing this while another speaker was adressing the assembly) was actually him honing his ability to keep a straight face while he read off those lines...

Let all play the blame game...

Check this out for a comprehensive listing of who is to blame for the unfolding disaster in New Orleans...