CBC hires Heather Mallick: do I need to say more?

CBC.ca welcomes columnist Heather Mallick who joins the ranks of Canada’s finest journalists with the introduction of her column, Stand on Guard. Heather’s column launches today on CBC.ca, and will run every second week thereafter at www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint.

(via Antonia Zerbisias)

My beef against Ms. Mallick is not that she's a left-wing journalist. There's plenty of her ilk out there. It's not even the fact that she's the living embodiment of the most disgusting, hypocritical left-wing type - a chardonnay socialist who prefers to slam economic inequalities and rampant poverty from the comfort of her upper middle class mansion in suburban Toronto (an instant disclaimer: I made up the last one - I have no idea how much Mallick's house is worth or where she actually lives but I dare you to prove me wrong - I don't think you will be successful).
My main objection is that Mallick is breathtakingly, unequivocally stupid. That's it, folks. She is an idiot - plain and simple. If you don't believe me - search through "Let it Bleed" archives to find Bob Tarantino slamming her columns on regular basis.
At the same time, I am not a bit surprised that CBC has hired her - that's what being Canada's subsidized public broadcaster is all about: a safe haven for all kinds of rabid, crazy lefties. The only good thing is that no one actually pays attention to what comes out of CBC, save for Hockey Night in Canada and perhaps the National so Ms. Mallick should be get accustomed that she'd have to toil in obscurity, which I don't think this drama queen is really prepared for.

squeezed out: Summers falls

For those who understand:
this story

Harvard University's embattled president, Lawrence H. Summers, resigned this afternoon and will be replaced, on an interim basis, by Derek C. Bok, who was president of Harvard from 1971 to 1991. Mr. Bok was chosen to "clean up the mess and make conditions right for the next president," said a senior professor with knowledge of the tumultuous events of today in Cambridge, Mass.

Mr. Summers, who had been buffeted by controversy for more than a year, was expected to resign on Monday, the professor said, and this morning's Wall Street Journal said his resignation was imminent.

Google news is a good source but one can get lost easily in the midst of news items. However, I've managed to find an interesting piece on Summers, written by a PolSci prof, who is trying to refute the claim that Summers has fallen victim to the left-wing professoriat:

Economics and business at Harvard flourished under this former Treasury Secretary and World Bank vice president. One conscientious Harvard economist, Richard Parker, couldn’t get the administration to remove the name of former Sotheby’s auction emporium chief Alfred Taubman from Taubman Hall after his federal conviction, imprisonment and cynical self-celebration in Christopher Mason’s The Art of the Steal. Even more galling was Summers’s support of economist Andrei Schleifer after his conviction in the Russian bond mess. And there was his somewhat more amusing indifference to the 2005 arrest of economics professor Martin Weitzman, caught neglecting the standard market practice of paying for goods by swiping the latest of several truckloads of horse manure from a neighboring farm.

Meanwhile, a 20 year veteran Harvard maintenance man was demoted and had his pay cut by a third for shouting at a supervisor. And student protestors had had to occupy University Hall for weeks (shortly before Summers became president) to win a minimum $10 wage for tearfully grateful Harvard employees.

It was priorities like that, not the petulance of the politically correct, that turned even faculty moderates against Summers. His interim replacement, former president Derek Bok, is everything a defender of liberal education should be, but Summers’s departure doesn’t answer these big questions:

Will American universities keep governing themselves as communities of scholars, independent of political and market riptides, or will professors be employees in a cockpit of global-capitalist management? And will great undergraduate colleges keep nourishing American civic-republican leaders virtuous enough to save capitalism from itself, as they’ve sometimes had to do? Or will colleges be morphed into crucibles of a global ruling class accountable to no polity or moral code?

I just love the first selection - Jim Sleeper's idea of compassion is pretty pathetic actually.
In regard to the second: oh, please, give me a break. Just like in that invaluable Soviet joke, I have already quoted on another occasion - anyone can go the Red Square and shout 'down with Nixon'. It's easy to keep screaming 'down with Bush' while you at academia but try to shout 'down with Chomsky/Faucault/Derrida' see what happens to you.

Canada-Russia: two zip.

Canadian Mens' hockey team has lost to Russia in a quarter final game at the Turino Winter Games. I watched the game and the Russians weren't that good, actually. It was rather the Canadian squad that looked wretched and unispired. It was their game to lose and pack home early - ain't no medals for you, Canucks, sorrrrrrrrrry!!!
Meanwhile Ovechkin, Malkin and Co. rock!

Canada's social engineering: just another example

From today's Globe:

Overbilled phone users won't be repaid a penny

SIMON TUCK

With a report from Catherine McLean in Toronto

GATINEAU, QUE -- The CRTC said yesterday that Canadian telephone customers have been overbilled to the tune of $652.7-million over the past few years, but the money will not be going back to them.

The federal regulator ruled instead that telecommunications companies such as Bell Canada and Telus Corp. should use most of the money -- equivalent to about $50 a customer -- to expand offerings in underserved markets, primarily rural and remote communities.

So phone companies have racked a large amount of dough by overcharging their customers but according to Canadian government officials, "once taken, forever gone". Returning the monies to customers would be so 'un-Canadian', as they can be put towards a higher purpose:

CRTC chair Charles Dalfen told reporters yesterday that expanding broadband services, also known as high-speed Internet, is an important social and economic goal.

One can weigh in on the merits of providing subsidized internet access to remote and rural communities but it's beyond the point. It's up to the people and their representiaves to decide whether money should be spent on this or not. The failure to do only reveals the contempt those unelected bonzas of CRTC have for regular folks who wouldn't be able to appreciate the merits of their enlightened agenda.

History notes: elegant prose

On General MacArthur(reading history books):

He was not susceptible to hints or indeed to outright orders of which he disapproved...

Leaders of the past were vile, sly, cunning, treacherous, arrogant, cynical, immoral and in many ways thouroghly despicable men. But they look like giants compared to today's intellectual midgets - modern politicians. How sad...

dated Soviet political humour

There are three kinds of unnatural love:
that between a man and a man,
between a woman and a woman,
and between one socialist country and another socialist country.

on the cartoon kerfuffle: at last

Much has been said, written, uttered, and spit out in regard to the decision of an otherwise obscure, global-wise, Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, to publish 12 drawings pertaining to Islam, including the most notorious one (allegedly) depicting the Prophet.
I just wanna add my two cents by focusing on a small party of this story. While the cartoons have been reprinted by various European media, in North America no major newspaper has done so. This fact was noticed that the explanation was that it somehow another evidence of Europe's deep xenophobia and intolerance.
But I think the difference here is that in Europe 'militant secularism' is much more pervasive and powerful whereas in the USA, and by extention in Canada, religion has always been in much higher regard. Protestant Europe rejected religion long time ago, long before the current tide of post-modern secularism based on the fanatical hostility to the two thousand year tradition of European cultural Christian heritage, which has firmly put Europe on the road to oblivion, began to hold its sway. Religion was traded away for the first time, for nationalism in XVII-XIX centuries. Then came communism and nazism and by the time the current holders of the discourse arrived there had been not much left to salvage.

Despite Muslims' continous claims that they took offence at the cartoons due to their religious beliefs it is quite evident to me that deep down they are offended as people. On the other hand, European (overwhelmingly post-modern and hence 'liberal' in the American sense of this word) intellectuals are offended that Muslims do not want to see how they had always defended and excused them as people.
For European intellectuals it has been always customary to distinguish between ethnicity/race and religion. That's why up to this point it was quite easy for Euro-politicians to condemn Israel and suppor the Palestinian cause, as they thought of the Palestinians as just another victim of Western imperialism and in this context their particular religious beliefs were of little importance. When they mock and denigraded GOD that was always presumed that it was the Christian God simply because other Gods didn't matter and mocking and denigrading Judaism became off-limits after the Holocaust. But it would be only a matter of time before the hostile attitude towards RELIGION in general will be tested against Islam and so the time has come.

However in the long run this dispute will be resolved in a realm far the intellectual and cultural battlefield of today. It will be demography that determine the future. Post-modern(Protestant) Europe is dead and will only become deadder by simply dying out in a generation or so. I'm not so sure it will be Muslims who replace the Danish, Norway, Swedish, German and so 'folk' but I know it is going to happen.

P.S. On a second thought I should probably replace Protestant with post-Protestant - American evangelical movement is alive and well.

Your political leanings: test (in Russian)

Поздравляем!!! Вы - либеральный демократ

Вы либеральный демократ. Ваш пра-прадед был способен запросто снести любую коронованную голову, но с тех пор много изменилось. Эра революций кончилась. Теперь каждый гражданин имеет избрать в парламент своего депутата и влиять на принятие законов. Все в государстве идет по закону и по порядку. Каждый может купить, продать и обменять все что хочет и заработать себе на жизнь, если не нарушает законов и не навязывает силой своего мнения. Если при этом одни живут лучше, другие хуже, одним все удается, а другие в нищете, то это результат их собственного выбора. Для нас главное, чтобы все было законно и без насилия.

Пройти тест

Liberals' leadership race: it's a give-away game!

CTV reports:

Tobin won't be running for Liberal leadership

Updated Wed. Feb. 1 2006 6:31 AM ET

CTV.ca News

Another Liberal leadership prospect has dropped out of the early race to replace Paul Martin, with Brian Tobin announcing he will not be putting his name forward.

Just reminded me that nobody was rushing in to replace Gorbachev after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Similarly, when Canada's government party is out of business of governing, suprise, suprise, political heavyweights are reluctant to step in.
I heard Tie Domy campainged for Belinda Stronach this time. Since fighting seems to be on decline in the new NHL he might be up for a new career move.