surprise, surprise...

from this article in the Guardian:

Germany's new Left party, which could play a crucial role in deciding the next chancellor, faced acute embarrassment yesterday amid claims that at least seven of its MPs had collaborated with the Stasi, the East German secret police.

The head of Germany's state-held Stasi archive, Marianne Birthler, said she had documents to prove the MPs had worked as "inoffizielle mitarbeiter" (unofficial collaborators).

...

The revelation came as the Left party held its first meeting as a parliamentary group after Sunday's inconclusive general election. It is made up of members from the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to East Germany's Communist party, and a new west German leftwing alliance, the Workers and Social Justice party. It won 8.7% of the vote, coming second in eastern Germany.

Who woulda thought?! I wonder to see how the public reacts to it. Hopefully, Germany, even former East Germnany, is no Russia where her president once boasted with pride that "there could no 'former' chekists".

via Daimnation

Michaelle Jean says au revoir to her French passport

Michaelle Jean to give up French citizenship

CTV.ca News Staff

Governor General-designate Michaelle Jean is to renounce her dual citizenship as she prepares to take up the vice-regal post.

In a brief written statement issued on Sunday, Jean said she was giving up the French citizenship she acquired when she married Jean-Pierre-Lafond, who was born in France.

The Haitian-born Jean said it would have felt "kind of strange" to remain a French national, given the duties she will be assuming, including the title of commander-in-chief of the Canadian Forces.

"In light of the responsibilities related to the function of the Governor General of Canada and commander-in-chief of the Canadian Forces, I have decided to renounce the French citizenship that I acquired for family reasons in 2004," Jean wrote in her statement.

She said that French authorities have accepted her request to give up her citizenship in that country.

Jean's decision came despite earlier assurances from a French embassy spokesperson that she wouldn't have to give up her dual citizenship to assume the post.

What's the big deal, guys, I don't get. But okay, if you insist (see picture) I'll play along to soothe your barbaric insticts...

good old days...

David Warren comments on the latest realise of some FBI secret files:

Yes, those were the good old days, when the FBI (and, our RCMP) investigated people just for being Commies. Or alternatively, to establish that they were not. From this distance in time, it seems all so risible.

Well, For the Left McCarthyism has become a synonim of the new Dark Ages
witch-hunt and anticommunist hysteria.
Indeed, it is now widely acceptable as unconscionable to 'investigate' someone, let alone 'prosecute' for holding certain political beliefs unless of course... well, try to substitute the word 'commie' for 'nazi' it would become much more plausible to justify this type of prosecution and 'witch-hunt'.
Unfortunately, the modern PC dogma regarding communism is to say that 'the idea itself was good, even noble, but it were the people who tried to carry it out who has given communism a bad name'.

P.S.From the same colum:

We learned, to our amazement and titillation, that U.S. federal agents dismissed John Lennon as a revolutionary threat, on the grounds he was always stoned.

:-). Those FBI folks knew their stuff...

crying wolf makes a mendacious call

Liberal groupie and unreformed Cretienite Lawrence Martin laments the dumbing down of mass culture in today's Globe.
Unlike his usual non-sensical leftist drivel, I tend to share some of his disgust at the continuing devolution of men into simpletons.

It used to be that people got on airplanes and went to sporting events in jackets and ties. Nowadays, it's sweatshirts and other bowling-alley gear. Cargo pants and tattoos spread over half an acre can get you into most restaurants, as will T-shirts saying “You know where you can stuff it, beanhead.”

Too bad he didn't mention the ubiquitous presense of flip flops and sweat pants on campus.


But then he predicably slides down to offer the reader a half-backed apologia of the CBC:

If the CBC runs stuff that is too highbrow to attract a big audience, it is deemed a failure.

and one paragraph later he takes a cheap shot at Ronald Reagan:

Mass culture's engine is America. Some credit another post-Trudeau guy, Ronald Reagan, with ushering in the dumbing-down era. The Gipper, who owned more horses than books, was initially written off as a classic simpleton who wouldn't be able to cut it in the big leagues because he didn't know enough.

But if, as one congressman said of him, you could walk through his deepest thoughts without getting your feet wet, it didn't hurt. He was the great Republican success story. Now all presidents want to be as uninformed as he was.

Earth to Martin! Don't you remember that it was your guy, Jean Cretien, who liked to pose as 'da liddle guy' from Quebec and whose inability to make a coherent sentence in one of the country's official languages was more manifest than mine :-)(and reportedly his French was bad too).
As to the underappreciated sophistication of the CBC, I can only offer a sardonic grin. One of the worst intellectual crimes the Left has committed is the appropriation of such terms as 'critical thinking'. Spouting left-wing dogma and anti-Americanism doesn't pass as 'high-brow stuff'. You're still entitled to hold those views, Mr. Martin, but mind you - please don't try to pretend to be more sophisticated just because of that.

Update: Bob Tarantino has also commented on Martin's column.

The cardinal flaw of social democracy

Mark Steyn makes a broader sweep while commenting on the results of the last German elections:

Guardian and Independent types have had great sport with America over the last couple of weeks, gleefully citing the wreckage of New Orleans as a savage indictment of the "selfishness" of capitalism.

The argument they make is usually a moral one - that there's something better and more compassionate about us all sharing the burden as a community. But the election results in Germany and elsewhere suggest that, in fact, nothing makes a citizen more selfish than lavish welfare and that once he's enjoying the fruits thereof he couldn't give a hoot about the broader societal interest. "Social democracy" turns out to be explicitly anti-social.

As they say on the Russian side of the blogosphere, PPKS or in English - I subscribe to this point of view completely.

roots of anti-Americanism

Masha Gessen writes for the NY Times Magazine:

One reason people do not like Americans is that they wear their seatbelts. One European guide to understanding the American psyche claims they think that “death is optional.” A lot of people abroad are aware of this American quality because it is what so often makes wealthy, well-intentioned and well-educated Americans staggeringly ineffectual humanitarian workers. They simply cannot understand how it can be that all Serbs smoke and that no Russians ever wear seatbelts. Americans may not really think that death is optional, but they do believe that it is just: it comes first for those who smoke, drive drunk or fail to use condoms.

Canadians, even those who think of themselves of being so different from their American cousins, think essentially the same way.

movie review: in good company

Well, it's probably be the worst movie I've seen this year. Or it may be not too bad:
depends on whether it depicts correctly its main setting: corporate office culture.
The plot's main twist: a fifty-something guy is demoted to give way to a twenty-six old hot-shot who ends up dating his daughter only to wind up being dumped and fired from the job, is simple enough.
But amidst firings and hirings, just one thought came to mind:
corporate office slaves could be so easily replacable for one reason only: what they do is marketing and selling BS and anyone can do it. Just for the perspective's sake: if you need a good carpenter or any other specialist. How easy would be for your to find another person to replace that person even if you don't get along...
But I digress:
The movie was mediocre to worse all most in any aspect, save for moderately adequate Dennis Quad's performance.
The lazy and unimaginative script, cheesy background music, slow pace, poor acting.

In general, my verdict is:
BORING!!! (3/10)

P.S. apparently lots of people at IMBD have came up a great deal of praise for the movie. Some even thought it was profound (just can't believe it). Go, check out yourself...

qwerty type of rambling

"litigious ramifications of a HaraKiri"
pondering about some peculiar features of the University's policy in hiring foreign sessionals.

CBC: mindless and pompous at the same time

George Jonas, in article at the National Post, on his 35 years stint at the CBC:

The CBC's dramatic programs throughout the 1970s and 80s were for the most part indigestible blobs of stodgy sententiousness offered as "social relevance" and covered with thick sauces of leftist sentimentality. During my tenure, Canada's public broadcaster specialized in shows that managed to be earnest without being serious and trendy without being innovative or original. If America's low-end television was mindless, coarse or "violent" during the same period, it was generally fast-paced and fun to watch (or at least mildly diverting). The CBC, taking what it thought was the high road, combined vulgarity with stuffiness. Being mindless and pompous at the same time was a challenge, but CBC programmers responded admirably to it.

The leftist sentimentality Jonas speaks of was and still is a direct consequence of the ideological stances of its staff:

To say that most people in TV public affairs were NDP supporters -- as the newspapers put it from time to time -- was the least of it. Current affairs types were not mere social democrats, but committed opponents of free-enterprise liberal democracy. There were probably producers in public affairs who might have drawn the line at working for the Soviet Union as agents of influence, but they would have been regarded by their colleagues as right-of-centre.

Jonas' description is no mere historical exercise, it's still pertinent today: the diversity of political leanings among its employees amounts to the variety of shades of the same color:
moderate left, hard left, and the loony left.

Thou shall have the right to steal (some conditions apply)

The opinion section of a typical student newspaper is full of crap. Mostly, a left-wing type of crap of course for 'being political' on campus invariably means belonging to the loonie-left crowd. Why am I reading it then, you may ask? Well, sometimes it's just hilarious but a more profound reason would be that the poor student hacks are less apt in sugarcoating and obscuring their true beliefs, unlike their senior counterparts either from the so called MainStream Media, the 'soft' Salon, or even the insane folks at Indymedia.

Here's the most idiotic statement I've ever seen in print:

Looting, of both groceries and weapons, has overwhelmed the city, attracting almost more attention than the storm itself. The types of looting that endanger the community—such as mugging, or theft of weapons or dangerous goods—are appalling.

Yet when it comes to food, or even costly items being stolen from big-box stores, I have to wonder what anyone expected a desperate population abandoned by those in power to do? Most petty looters are no doubt stocking up on pilfered jewels or electronics because they lost everything and know that they won’t be able to expect much from a federal government that left them to die in the first place.[emphasis mine]

You can read the rest of the article, though I must warn ya that there's nothing more in it than a sloppy rehash of left-wing dogma.

German press coverage of the Sudeten crisis

Disclaimer: the exceprt below is completely fictional. No such article and review were ever published. All similarities are purely coincidental.

From the American Journal of Political Science, p.138, the review section:

Unfortunately, the author's bias and political leanings have been revealed in that no distinction was made between Germany's unlawful interference in the conflict and the fact that Germany might have a legitimate interest in acquiring some Lebensraum in the East. Furthermore, it is impossible not to take account the presence of a large German-speaking minority...

from an academic discussion

И вряд ли он имел в виду изъятие части советской истории из Истории (как событие, несопоставимое с другими событиями) и превращение ее в символ абсолютного зла и предмет квазирелигиозного культа, политического биллиарда и крупномасштабной китчевой индустрии. Да еще с еврейскими комиссарами в роли нацистов в кожаных куртках.

It's unlikely that he meant to exclude part of the Soviet history from History, as an event incommensurate to other events. He didn't advocate turning it into a symbol of absolute evil and the subject of quasireligious cult, a political blackjack, or a largescale kitch industry, which would have Jewish comissars cast in the role of Nazis in leather jackets.
Yuri Slezkine, Ab Imperio vol.1, 2005.

Can you guess what's this all about? Your thoughts, any?

truth about chernobyl

This is the title of today's Globe and Mail editorial (behind subscription wall)which itself is based on this story, reported by BBC.

Experts have estimated that around 4,000 people will die from the effects of the 1986 accident at Chernobyl.
The figure, in the report by the Chernobyl Forum, is much lower than other estimates.
....
The report says there is "no convincing evidence" that there has been a rise in other cancers because of Chernobyl.

It says confusion over the incident's impact has arisen because many emergency and recovery workers have died since 1986 from natural causes which cannot be attributed to radiation exposure.

It says: "Widespread expectations of ill health and a tendency to attribute all health problems to exposure to radiation have led local residents to assume that Chernobyl-related fatalities were much higher."

Altough I was just a kid at the time I remember the Chernobyl histeria: dosimeter sales skyrocketed, people were afraid of eating mushrooms and berries for the fear of contamination, and a popular evening news program had radition levels announced at the end of each telecast (they had to give up pretty quickly for it became quite apparent that it'd be the same numbers over and over again).


The Globe's editorial writers go even further make the following conclusion:

The greatest health problem arising from the accident is continuing mental trauma brought on by fear of radiation and by unnecessary evacuation from areas with low, lingering background radiation. Millions of people in what are now Russia, Ukraine and Belarus still receive some kind of Chernobyl benefits which, the report says, have “undermined the capacity of individuals and communities concerned to tackle their own economic and social problems.”

Last time I was in St. Petersburg, the local TV news channel was running stories about a group Chernobyl 'liquidators' (i.e. those who worked in and around Chernobyl and have been recognized by the sate as 'Chernobyl vets'). They were on a hunger strike due to non-payment of their Chernobyl benefits. The reports showed them lying in bed in a seemingly empty apartment only to get up to give another interview. What I found slightly odd was that while complaining of their ailing health and blaming it all on Chernobyl those guys were puffing away and evidently were heavy smokers.

personal nagging: it sucks to belong to the wrong country

So, I'm flying to St. Petersburg, Russia this fall and I got an excellent deal, 300 CAD cheaper than the next cheapest one. Except, that it isn't so. The route goes through Seattle and there's an overnight stay in Copenhagen.
And I have to apply for transit visas for passing through both even though it's only a couple of hours in Seattle. I understand that there's a terrorist threat and although it still sucks it doesn't make me angry per se to apply for a transit visa to get through. However, what I don't understand, and what makes me angry, is the fact that the cost of a transit visa is the same as the regular tourist one. A Danish Schengen visa would cost you 55 CAD and it used to be 15 for transit. The American one is 100 USD and I'm not gonna step outside of the freaking airport, for Christsake!!!
The deal is still good though but most of it would be eaten away by me not having the right citizenship.

perpetual cycle of identity politics

The most fascinating thing about modern-day identity politics is its perpetuity: new identities are being 'discovered' a.k.a. made up as we speak...

CanWest News Service ran this report today:

OTTAWA - Canadians with a mother tongue other than English or French aren't well-served by Ottawa when seeking employment insurance benefits and other services, the federal government admits in an internal report.

The report suggests the government start providing more help to EI applicants in languages other than English and French, especially in major urban areas, and that it become more sensitive to the needs of allophones.

Failure to do so is unfair to allophones -- those who have difficulty with the official languages, says the report, obtained by CanWest News Service under the Access to Information Act.

In regular English "unfair to allophones" means that the goverment is the one at fault for allophones' inability to learn adequately one of the official languages.

Those who make 'identity politics' their source of income are of course all over it:

Allophone community leaders charge that the provision of services only in English and French is "increasingly at odds with the demographic makeup and linguistic diversity of Canada's major urban centres."

What's most remarkable here is the newly coined term 'allophone community leaders'. What's 'allophone community' anyway? The report makes it sound as if it's heterogenous group who migh pose legitimate claim for recognition. This is of course sheer nonsense. Yes, there are lots of people, including myself, whose native tongue is neither English, nor French. However, except that unfortunate fact, there's nothing in common between a Haitian and say Pakistani or Hungarian. Therefore, the 'allophone community' is a purefiction, and not so harmless, as it may seem at the first sight. For if those 'leaders' are indeed real persons they must be representatives of certain (!) communities, not the mythical 'allophone' one. They of course could make a conceivable claim on behalf of their particular linguistic group but then obviously an inconvinient question will arise: if you want to have services provided in the language A, then one may have an equally legit demand to have the same privilidge extended to the language B, which would make the line of claims potentially endless. Hence, there's the allophone community cover up.

The most disgusting thing of course is the fact that the report was an internal investigation of the Federal Government, i.e. taxpayers money have been spent on this nonsense. But, welcome to Trudeaupia!

Mark Steyn on the new G-G

As usual, Steyn provides a total ROFL experience,

So, when I heard the host of Newsworld’s post-National slot had been raised to the viceroyalty, I naturally assumed it was one of those tweedy bow-tied experts on the “Antiques Roadshow”.

(Read it all)

New Orleans: stop the blame game!

And another thing to think about when we start pointing fingers is this. The government is never equipped to handle a crisis like this. There's too much bureaucracy -- initiative-stifling bureaucracy which prevents swift, effective action. I would like to hear from government employees on this. The nature of that bureaucracy is such that you have very specific guidelines to follow for even the most minute tasks. You need approval for just about everything, and the person you need approval from usually needs approval to give you the approval.

This guy is blogging from the spot. Th entire post and his blog in general are defenitely worth reading.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

the Katrina disaster ends, the blame game begins

It didn't take quite long for the Left and liberal-friendly media to start putting the blame on where it squarely belongs: the prince of Darkness a.k.a. George W. Bush.
Accusations vary in their nature and temerity and it's not up to me determine the validity of all of them. I've heard some blaming the administration and Bush personally for the inadequate response to the disaster. It could've been better, critics say, had Bush not diverted money and effort to his pet war in Iraq. Again, I'm not qualified to defend Bush on this one, though I must say before trying to properly assign blame for this those people should look at the state and city authorities first.
But I've heard an altogether different line, which I find utterly moronic. It goes like this:
The hurricane Katrina is a direct consequence of global warming. The Bush adminstration has refused to address this problem and here we go, bingo: New Orleans lies in ruins and people are running amok. It's all your fault, oil-lovin' Dubya!!

Even if one is to accept the highly questionable premise that the hurricane's magnitude and devastating force with which it hit NO had something to do with global warming, it still makes no sense. Do you really think that even Bush had ratified Kyoto and banned the country's all SUV fleet thereby cutting emissions in half, the trend would have been reverced in a matter of just four years. Isn't global warming supposed to be a long term phenomenon.
One can conceivably argue that by implementing all those things a future hurricane, say fifty years from now, would be averted.
It couldn't have had any impact on Katrina whatsoever!

he couldn't say it better....

An exec of a small 'eco-capitalist' company talking to one of his volunteer sales rep:
how do you convince people that they should buy our product:
Well, first of all people should buy our product because it would make them feel better about themselves....

(CBC's Venture: the Worm Man)

Blog menace: mainstream media guy strikes back

Steve Maich, in an article in Maclean, takes a look at the blogging phenomenon. To sum his argument up, the blog hype is highly overrated and its threat to mainstream media is overrated. As a business columinst he does so with the help of some statistical data:

For one thing, there are wild discrepancies in the estimates of how many blogs are actually out there. Some figure the number is as high as 30 million worldwide. But once you strip away pseudo-blogs that are really ads or scam traps, and subtract dormant sites, the numbers plunge precipitously. A couple of sites dedicated to tracking blog traffic estimate only about two to four million blogs are actively maintained.

Still, that's a lot of blogs and lots of readers. Or maybe not.

It was late last year that the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported two seemingly incongruous facts: that 27 per cent of Internet users regularly read blogs, but that 62 per cent of the online population still didn't know what a blog is. In fact, 40 per cent of those who said they read blogs then said they didn't really know what a blog was.

Do you read blogs regularly? Oh, yes.

Do you know what a blog is? Um . . . no.

This little comedy routine played itself out 143 times in a survey of just over 1,300 people. But that didn't stop the believers from trumpeting that blog readership soared 58 per cent in 2004. What they often fail to point out is that the overwhelming majority of blogs get almost no traffic. According to data from SiteMeter and other tracking services, more than 99 per cent get fewer than 10 hits a day. [emphasis mine]Even the ones that do attract readers don't hold their attention very well. The same reports suggest that the average blog reader stays on a site for just 90 seconds.

Well, the 99% figure might as well be true. But then if you believe the lowest overall estimate it still leaves us with approximately 200,000 blogs that get more than hits a day. And if just one per cent of those get, say, 1000 hits a day, it's a formidable number.
For example, this blog certainly belongs to the former category (and it was somewhat soothing to find out that I'm just like 99% of other guys, blogging in vain :-) - but again, I don't really care. However, if you, the reader, happen to care about my writing, let me know :-)))
Yes, many, if not blogs are full of crap, as Maich has pointed out. But the difference is that unlike the mainstream media business anyone has a shot at becoming a media star whereas becoming a conventional journalist is not that easy.
One discernible danger though is that with the proliferation of blogs it'd be hard to find good ones. But Google rules and so it's totally impossible.

life little moments

I was standing in a lineup at the downtown Save-on-Foods when I heard the deafening sound of a descending plane. “And the airport is not even here” - said the woman in front of me. “The city airport is near by”, replied the cashier. “They fly over all the time but it’s rarely that they fly so low”. Imaging a likely disaster (last hundred meters before the runway, the crush, the fire, the smoke, live reports on all channels in the evening), I exited the store. Soon, however, the mystery of a low flying aircraft manifested itself to me. I saw two military jets (must’ve been F-16s, fighters) flying over the Legislature, quite low indeed. In the overcast sky, they looked menacing and at the same time, awe-inspiring.
At that moment, I remembered the War of the Worlds. It’s otherwise a mediocre, if not dumb, movie had its moments; one of which was a sight of military jets flying overhead the characters on a suicidal mission to fight the aliens. That was splendid.
I’m no pacifist, yet not trigger-happy either. I would not, like someone I used to know, refer to a tank as ‘poetry in motion’. But it’s hard to deny that the sight of a military jet zipping past you supersonic in the sky is one of the most breathtaking pictures one can see in this life. I just hope that it’s gonna be always OUR jets in the sky above me and my fellow country men.

Happy birthday, Alberta!

Alberta's centennial festivities have kicked off today. I just heard Ralph Klein on the radio saying how proud he is to live in this province.
I plan to offer on the subject a bit later but for now I'm joining the choir:
Alberta: first hundred years (1905-2005) well spent. Congratulations!

on those, impervious to reason...

1) The Bush administration is the worst adminstration ever in the history of the U.S. All Dubya does is to f..ck up America and the world on everyday basis.

2) Dubya is such a lousy president. Look, he spends more time on vacation, away at his ranch in Texas, than any other president!!!

So, if all Bush does causes harm only then how come you want him to work harder. Would it be even more detrimental to the world/America???

I've heard these two many times. Are these lines logically congruent?
But again when it comes to G.W.B. logic, reason, all those little inconvenient things, necessary prerequisits of critical thinking, needn't stand in the way. Guilty as charged, end of story.

This one , and many other instances of such 'logic, are the signes of the Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS - hat tip to Bob Tarantino). One doesn't have to be a Bush fan to recognize it for what it is - a fine example of herd mentality.