The World Category Archive

Normally, I would have no concerns whatsoever that Stephane Dion will embarrass the Canadian government in Bali, where there is a major UN conference is taking place concerning climate change. The leader of the Liberal Party has taken it upon himself to go to Bali, though it is not clear why. As the leader of the opposition, Stephane Dion cannot speak on behalf of the government or explain government policy. He has promised in the past never to criticize the Canadian government in front of foreign dignitaries.

Indeed, in a recent incident, Stephane Dion had an opportunity to criticize Prime Minister Stephen Harper to a foreign official, and yet he was very careful to avoid doing so.

At the time, I congratulated him on it, and based on that incident, I have every confidence Stephane Dion will not disappoint me this time.

And yet...I'm nervous. There are signs that Stephane Dion is planning to embarrass all of us.

Kyoto was a fundamentally stupid plan.

And its failure wasn't the fault of George W Bush or of Stephen Harper.

Heresy has reached new levels. Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner at Oxford would run the risk of being burned at the stake by enraged environmentalists if it weren't for the carbon dioxide that would be released as a result.

The wife of Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion, Janine Krieber, recently gave a speech at Queen's University. It was an official Liberal Party event, and the audience was treated to Krieber's insights into the ins and outs of terrorism.

And guess what? Apparently the BlackBerry from Canada's RIM would make a real good tool for terrorists.

Put aside that the Kyoto Protocol is fatally flawed, based on bogus number that even supporters admit would have little impact on their own much-vaunted (but equally useless) computer model predictions. The fact is, where it matters, no one cares.

China is exempt from the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, given a pass because it argued that the "world's factory" needed more growth to finish emerging from the status of a developing country. Sure. Whatever. But even if China, as one of the planet's largest producers of greenhouse gases, was included in Kyoto, it wouldn't have mattered.

As illustrated on Car Free Day, one of the world's most carefully controlled populations under the rule of one the world's most enduring dictatorships simply ignored the government-supported environmental initiative.

I've discovered I'm in a distinct minority when it comes to Paris Hilton. I just don't like what I see in the larger picture. A lot of people I've spoken to seem all too happy to watch Paris Hilton being jerked to and fro by the various elements of the justice system. I find that attitude odd. What did Paris Hilton ever do to them? I, for one, don't enjoy this at all. Not only do I think we can feel for Paris Hilton, I think the way her case is being handled suggests the machinery of justice is definitely out of kilter.

Law enforcement officials in the US have foiled a plot to ignited the fuel supply to John F Kennedy Airport in New York. But I have to say that I'm confused by just what the alleged terrorists thought they could accomplish.

Last year, the Iranian government hosted a conference roundly denounced by the West as Holocaust-denial gabfest. One Canadian attended, Shiraz Dossa, a professor from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. Drossa was condemned by people both within the university and across Canada. Dossa has now issued a defense.

The problem is that his defense seems to bring focus on his not-so-latent anti-Semitism.

Mixing plastic component melamine in pet food.

Antifreeze diethylene glycol in cough syrop and toothpaste.

Deaths suffered by both animals and humans.

Imports from China have killed, and continue to kill.

Now Chinese monkfish is contaminated. And with one of the deadlist neurotoxins known to science. Tetradotoxin is best known as active poison in the deadly pufferfish.

Breaking: Ersatz Colgate toothpaste in the United States might contain DEG. And I just bought a suspicious tube of toothpaste in my local dollar store in Canada.

Brush your teeth...and die! Thanks to Chinese quality controls. On the other hand, the toothy grin on the skull-and-crossbones has never looked so bright and shiny.

Ségolène Royal, Elizabeth May, and Farhan Chak have all recently engaged in vicious attacks on their opponents, likening them to dictators of the worst possible kind. When violence erupts because well-meaning fools decide that history ought not to repeat itself, and that these budding Hitlers must be stopped by any means possible, they insist they've been misinterpreted. That is, of course, nonsense.

The Chinese government is weighing in on the pet food contamination that has been linked to imported wheat gluten. Not surprisingly, the Chinese are insisting they were not responsible.

The media seems satisifed to blame melamine for the deaths of cats and dogs who were fed contaminated food from Menu Foods. I think we're moving too quickly.

Some people think there has been progress with regards to the pet food contamination that has caused Menu Foods to recall huge amounts of product from store shelves. Now a new compound, melamine, has been named. But after some research, I'm confused. Melamine just doesn't seem to be nearly toxic enough to be responsible for the deaths of the animals reported so far.

The pet food poisonings that have struck across North America has been tentatively linked to imported Chinese wheat gluten that was contaminated with aminopterin, a rat poison that is not used in Canada or the United States. But this is not the first time bizarre and dangerous Chinese rat poisons caused pain and suffering in the United States. In 2002, a 15-month-old girl suffered permanent damage from a rat poison whose primary ingredient is so dangerous that scientists aren't even sure what the lethal doses are.

Aminopterin is still the prime suspect in the food poisoning that has claimed the lives of over a dozen pets, and quite possibly hundreds. Suspicion keeps coming back to the wheat gluten used as a base for the preparation of these foods by Menu Foods. The wheat gluten was imported by China, so I started reading some background on Chinese agricultural practises.

The application of pesticides has been descibed as "irrational" as recently as last October.

The story of the poisoned pet food has not progressed much since the revelation that the poison aminopterin is almost certainly the culprit. The question remains. Just how did the wheat gluten get contaminated, if indeed that was the source?

Jack Layton's plan for Canada during the war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah was to run to the UN and demand a peacekeeping force to keep Israel and Hezbollah apart, blaming both sides equally. Prime Minister Stephen Harper had no qualms in blaming Hezbollah for the fighting, and in pointing out that Hezbollah is interested only in Israel's destruction. Hezbollah would use a ceasefire as an opportunity to repair the damage inflicted by Israel, and to be re-armed by Iran.

Guess who was right?

Ward Churchill's legacy to the world will not come from any of his academic writings, plagiarized or not. It will be a new process at the University of Colorado that will see professors who are clearly unworthy of their position removed from their lifetime position in a matter of three months.

Pet owners across Canada and the United States are worried that they've been feeding their dogs and cats poisoned food. Today, that poison, aminopterin, has been blamed for over a dozen animal deaths, and more are likely to be blamed on the contamination. The company that made the food, Ontario-based Menu Foods, is trying to understand how the poison, which is not licensed for use in North America, got into the supply chain. While we wait, I'm going to indulge in some irresponsible musing about who would stand to gain from this.

Animals rights activists want to kill an animal. A baby bear, in fact.

Why? Because it is being humiliated.

How? Well, the humans give it milk, and shelter, and attention. Wicked stuff like that.

The former chapter president of the Virgina branch of the American Civil Liberties Union has been arrested on charges of posessing child pornography.

Given the ACLU's position on child pornography, you have to wonder just what happened to Charles Rust-Tierney.

George Orwell's nightmarish world of 1984 is taking a step closer to reality in Malaysia, where Islamic forces are taking their cues from the most purely atheistic society ever described in literature.

The story of Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor facing dismissal for academic fraud, is quickly coming to a conclusion. In 30 days, a decision will be taken.

Deb Frisch is at it again. This time she is making comments about the lawyer, Jeralyn Merritt, who is blogging about Frisch's scrap with Jeff Goldstein.

Among Frisch's comments:

• Jeralyn Merritt is a shyster, which means someone, in particular a lawyer, who acts in unethical or unscrupulous manner
• Jeralyn Merritt is a hypocrite because she defended Oklahoma city bomber, Timothy McVeigh
• Jeralyn Merritt is inciting violence against Deb Frisch through Merritt's blog
• Jeralyn Merritt is over 60

In Minneapolis, there has been a recent problem with Muslim taxi drivers refusing fares at the airport. People who were carrying alcohol or were accompanied by dogs, including seeing eye dogs, were told that they could not get a ride. Why? Because of Islam's ban on alcohol, and the fact that dogs are considered unclean.

In case you were wondering just how big the problem is, almost 75% of the taxi drivers are Somali Muslims. But they are being influenced by an very fundamentalist Arab Muslim group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Well, the cabbies, prodded by these imams, pushed too far, and the regulating authority is about to put in tough new rules. New rules for a group of religious believers designed to limit they ways in which they can express their religious beliefs. Sounds familiar.

You know that the Web 2.0 has come into its own when it hosts the the war being waged by the forces of civilization against the terrorists.

In one week, we have learned how both sides are using Google in particular as a means of striking at the other side.

It's a given that teens ought not to be allowed to purchase cigarettes. Everyone knows it is an effective way to keep a cap on the rate of teen smoking.

Really?

I stumbled on a story out of the UK in which 2007 will see the minimum age to purchase cigarettes rise from 16 to 18, but the rate of teen smoking in the UK is already the same as in Canada, where the minimum age is 19. So what will this age change (and presumably the resulting prosecution of store owners trapped by overzealous tobacco inspectors) do to the rate of teen smoking in the UK?

Probably nothing at all. And the UK government knows it.

Canadian philanthropists are helping out lone soldiers in Israel. What is a lone soldier? I have never heard of the term either, but apparently it is an issue in the Israeli Defence Force.

Of course, helping Jews is unacceptable in many quarters, and those who can't stomach the idea are targetting Chapters/Indigo, the Canadian bookselling mega-chain, for the private actions of its CEO, Heather Reisman.

Another evil Jew-controlled (and profitable) corporation -- heck, it deserved to be picketed.

Is Iran a problem that is going to solve itself? One economic analysis suggests exactly that. But the same data can be used to come to a very different conclusion -- that the moment to affect change has come and gone, and that the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government have embarked on the path to developing nuclear weapons knowing full well their time would soon come to an end.

Is Google being used as a funding source for Islamic terrorists?

According to a news conference held yesterday, the AdWords programs is being used to generate funds for terrorists.

Deb Frisch gained some notoriety a while back when she issued death threats against the two-year-old son of a conservative blogger -- presumably for the crime of being a conservative.

The uproar cost Frisch her position as a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona.

The situation reached the courts, and the news today is that Frisch was alleged to have violated a restraining order. Instead of appearing in court to explain her side of the story, she seems to have disappeared.

An arrest warrant has been issued.

The Russians are circling the waggons, refusing to cooperate in the investigation of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. The former spy died in Britain, after being exposed to a lethal poison incorporating the radioactive element polonium-210. You know the Russians are hiding something when they resort to bald-faced lies. The Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika made the outrageous statement that the poison could not have come from Russia. That would only be true if the Soviet space program used up every last bit of polonium for the Lunokhod moon walker program. They certainly had enough polonium on hand in 1970 to keep not one, but two moon rovers warm through the frigid lunar night.