Tag: News, Politics, Events

What Next…No Butter Knives?

I am not exactly a candidate for NRA membership but this bit of news about shutting down a Toronto university shooting range with a perfect track record smacks heavily of something very smelly:

While news of the closing came to light recently, the university made the decision months ago, during a regular five-year review of Hart House activities, says Rob Steiner, U of T assistant vice-president. When it came to allotting the institution’s scarce resources, the committee couldn’t reconcile firing weapons on the university’s grounds with the U of T’s core values of “discovery and education,” safety and maximizing the opportunity for dissent, he said. “Shooting a gun on campus. Sit with that for a second. It leaves me cold,” Steiner said. “This campus is a gun-free area, full stop. You can learn about safety on campus and shoot somewhere else.”

The civilized and safe doing of anything outside the criminal is a pursuit of excellence. Interesting to note that U of T has a professor with a Phd in Experimental Nuclear Physics who worked for NATO who likely pursues his vocation excellently and safely. There is a fencing team. There maybe a a boxing team and there is a wushu club, training in Communist Chinese martial arts programs. Likely all pursue their craft safely and excellently. The Canucks Amuck, a wargaming club, even meets monthly at Hart House.

But a gun club…that’s different.

Red Tape Or Something Else

A fairly alarming report in the NYT this morning detailing how the Iraqi government appears to have little interest in getting control of the rebuilding being undertaken there:

In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day. Because the Iraqi government will not formally accept projects like the refurbished turbines, the United States is “finding someone at the local level to handle the project, handing them the keys and saying, ‘Operate and maintain it,’ ” another official in the inspector general’s office said.

It would be naive to have expected after more than four years that there would not be tensions between the civil authorities in Iraq and the American forces but this appears to be a plan to undermine success as much as anything. What to do with this information? There can’t be any point in continuing to reconstruct only to watch projects fall apart soon after. That is nothing but building sand castles. But, like the person stuck in the manic needy relationship, you may be too aware of the alternatives.

Post-Trial Blackness

This, of course, is the real question, the real angle on the Conrad Black trial – the Mrs.:

As the judge in Conrad M. Black’s fraud trial began reading through the verdict in the criminal fraud prosecution against him last Friday — finding Mr. Black guilty on four counts — Mr. Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, was observed scribbling a note and passing it to her husband. It isn’t known what the note said, but someday it could be. Some Canadian publishing executives believe that Ms. Amiel might be willing to write a book dealing with the experience of being by her husband’s side during the unraveling of his storied career as a newspaper magnate.

The NYTs article does raise a couple of questions. First, why does the Globe call him “Lord Black” when that is not his name but a title given by another country? It’s not like you give up your name in the way that a nun does and it’s not like he was born to the title. Second, long before the criminal activity was in the news, when Black was a topic of gossip and CBC interviews of mutual contempt, Barbara Amiel was one of the bigger issues, apologist for the meanest of human causes though a few that were not, pal to the privileged that she, too, craved to join without any apparent entitlement – and something of a garbage mouth. And though she is now described as a journalist I can’t recall any reporting or news-breaking she took part in. And a columnist mainly for McLeans, playing the role the counter-point right-wing nut-bar.

The meanness in many of us watch to see what she will do should Conrad go to the Big House, should all the assets be seized in the end, the corporate veils pierced. Should we care? Or is that something of a corruption of the word “care”?

Chatfest Friday Style With Bullets

Can there be 100 comments without ry? That was the question I asked myself last night. We have settled into a kind rapport even with our differences. Is this middle age? Yesterday at the beer blog, I cited a post that I wrote in October 2003. That’s a long time ago. When do blogs hit middle age?

  • Blackness Update: Connie found guilty on four counts…those being criminal counts…no pardon expected.
  • …nuttin’…sympatico is choppy this mornng…uh, oh…
  • Lunch is approaching Update: I caught this guy on one of the morning news shows and now believe that Jim Early’s work on North Carolina BBQ could be a key to understanding the culture of the Western World.
  • Global warming may be good news for Ontario as long as we all plant ash trees now!
  • I think this is the blog that sets the standards for all blogs of a certain class of blogs. Did people do this before there was a medium to record that they were doing it?
  • PEI is all a dither. What else is new? Well, I will tell you one thing that is new – apparently a rock band said “fuck” during a concert and the entire community is going last-scene-of-Frankenstein. Chris has the whole story. There is a law in PEI that sets out how to do a rock concert and this is the only way you are supposed to do it under the Rock Performances Act (Marine), RSPEI 1957, ss 87-213.

Bullets postponed until bandwith available.

Update: Why does my broadband cut out in thunder and lightning? Does it rely on AM radio at somepoint between here and there?

  • This is nuts:

    The Harper government has been told to stop referring to “fighting terrorism” and the Sept. 11 attacks, and to banish the phrase “cut and run” from its vocabulary if it is to persuade a skeptical public that the military mission in Afghanistan is worth pursuing.

    If we are going to ask our youth to fight, speak about what they are fighting for. If you disagree, speak about the nature of your disagreement strongly. I may not vote for you but I will respect your free expression of your view. But for God’s sake, leave the PR consultants out of this. And as for not connecting 9/11 to Afghanistan…are you crazy?!?! Has no one any memory of the BBC leading the charge into Kabul? That is the theatre where all the resources of the Iraq war should have been focused. Offer me war bonds.

The Most Wednesdayish Wednesday

Humid night. Bad sleep. What to write about. I write this to write every morning, you know. That is about it. Waking up habit. Things could be worse. If what the not-convicted two in Britain are right, the face another trial while they try to explain how they were tricked by the others into being bombers and quit as soon as they found out. What if that is true? Conrad may be facing a retrial as well. Being accused is drag enough but being possibly falsely accused and a jury not being able to make up its mind would be an uber-drag. Or is this most drag? Or this? Humidity makes everything draggly.

But thankfully we are protected by leaders with gut…not guts…gut. That is not dragg-ed at all.

Making Pals Worldwide

Benny’s just doing a great job to reach out and make the world a better place:

The Vatican said Tuesday that Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church are not full churches of Jesus Christ. A 16-page document, prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Pope Benedict used to head, described Christian Orthodox churches as true churches that suffer from a “wound” since they do not recognize the primacy of the Pope.

We never invite him over to the BBQ, too. No doubt the Anabaptists, Campbellites and Moravians are shattered at the news. Time to rumble? Gee-wiz, sane Protestants never get to rumble anymore.

Bullets And Chat And Friday And Stuff

How will I remember this week? How will it sit in the past? I loaded and unloaded a canoe by myself this week. I bottled a hefeweizen. I ate well-roundedly and got a decent amount of sleep. If a nuclear holocaust were to come and I survive like those few in A Boy and His Dog or even Mad Max this is the sort of week I’ll miss. If not, I’ll have a hard time recalling it.

  • Update: Who is this “the left” that the Flea and some like the Babbler speak of, though the latter admits the truth? Cases would be much better made with out reference to boogie men. There is a distasteful and false presumption among those who elect themselves to speak for the equally vacuous “the right” that patriotism, security and common sense (despite all the evidence) is their sole inheritence. Given a recent pole [Ed.: see below] that says 40% of conservatives are against the war in Afghanistan, it is a meaningless broad brush. Name names. Focus the slur on the fringe. Admit the fluidity and undemarkated nature of the problem. Put up.

    Break slamming point of correction: And just like that the Flea did in most excellent fashion…

    A self-selecting group exhibiting the psychopathologies outlined above and related psychopathologies concerning the free market, crime and punishment and reality-testing deficiencies regarding the weather. The real left, the ones who continue to advance universal values of liberty and equality, do not exhibit these symptoms. Here I am thinking particularly of Christopher Hitchens and those of us who advance under his banner.

    I can heartily live with this as long as “the real left” includes those large number who see the same security ultimately in participating in a social welfare system as well as well-resourced police and military. I once came across someone flogging the idea that only persons of the right were in the military. Horse pucks.

  • Update: Sounds like leasehold improvements to me. Pay up, Royals.
  • A good week for baseball. The Sox gave a thumping to Tampa Bay and, due to the badness of scheduling, will play them 15 times from here on in. No wonder there is now the sort of talk that does one no good.
  • The Baseball Hall of Fame has a snazzy new website.
  • An interesting article in the NYT about the continuing random police checks that have occurred in that city’s subways since 9/11.

    Terrorism experts said the program’s effectiveness was not so much that it is a tight barrier to keep terrorists out of the subways, but that its fluid nature could keep any attack planners off balance. Trumpeting the program publicly is also a deterrent, they said.

    That and John Smeaton – the West’s best defences.

  • Brother Doug considers how to dequill.
  • In addition to Smeaton proving that Scots in fact are the toughest wee bastards in the worrrrld, Scots finalized their take over of the UK with the beginning of the government of Gordon Brown who has made a wise decision:

    British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday he had given orders for government offices to “fly the flag.” He said he had abolished a rule which allowed government buildings to raise the British flag, the so-called Union Jack, only 18 days a year. “It was because they listed the number of public events and on no other days would the Union Jack be flown,” said Mr. Brown, who has pushed for efforts to promote a British identity for all citizens.

    Good for Mr. Brown. I have to admit, I like that in the states more flags are flown and that they seem to represent each person not the government. We do well around Canada Day but, aside from the politics, the bi-colour is frankly just a little less eye catching. I had though the Red Ensign had recently be raised back to official status but can find now reference this morning. Viva Tanganyika, if you know what I mean.

A quiet week here but not so elsewhere.

Isn’t Winning Us Keeping Schools Open?

…and not teaching them to kill us? Sure we need a better statement of purpose being enunciated by the government (a point well made by Ben here) but this makes it very difficult to see how I could vote Jack in the near future:

NDP Leader Jack Layton told a news conference today that Canada should pull its troops out of Afghanistan before more lives are lost in a war he says can’t be won. “What they are being asked to do now is participate in a mission that has no prospect of military success,” Layton said. “It will simply escalate and prolong itself until we realize that it is not going to accomplish its goals.”

I would like to know the factual basis for this assessment…or if one was undertaken at all.

Extremism

Of all the “-isms”, extremism is the best. Mainly because it means nothing but also because in the 1990’s…or was it due, like so much, to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure that extreme became a positive. Anyway, Nixon was against it and had the CIA rooting it out in Canada in the 1970s right about when they were working with the mafia on stuff. Apparently the mafia is not extreme.

Ottawa was one of at least 10 foreign cities targeted by the CIA in a clandestine operation in which the agency tried to ferret out those who were fostering U.S. “extremism” in the early 1970s. The program, codenamed MHCHAOS, was described by the U.S. spy agency in documents it released yesterday, chronicling misdeeds ranging from assassination plots and domestic and foreign spying to surveillance of journalists.

I thought it was “Mu-chachos” when I first read it in my uncoffee-ed state which would only make it more excellent although the “chaos” thing is all master of disasters, so maybe it is a pretty good code word.

I wish I had the job of writing the code words for stuff. I would have saved a special place for “Operation Excellent”.