Wednesday, January 15, 2003

The Peoples' Blogfree Republic   Link

Those freedom-loving capitalists in the Chinese Communist Party have banned blogging in China (via Damian Penny - congrats Damian! - and Charles Johnson).  Blogspot is a U.S.-based internet site where more than one million people write their own web logs (or 'blogs').  Blogspot sites in China have been inaccessible for about a week.  China has about 50 million web-surfers.

Says the CNN article:

Authorities openly control Internet and media content in China. ... Internet police, who number nearly 40,000 in Beijing alone, block several foreign news sites and often force Chinese Web pages to delete content judged objectionable.

An official at the Ministry of Information Industry, the telecoms and Internet regulator, said the block could be due to material deemed pornographic or detrimental to government interests. [my bolding]

"The Chinese government would never tell Western sites what to post or what not to. They have freedom of expression," he said. "So it will just take away access."

No, the Chinese government would never tell Western sites what to post or what not to ... with the only reason being because they can't.  They would if they could.

China blocked access to Google (in Sept'02), which has soared in popularity due to its ability to run searches in Chinese, in a crackdown on Web content ahead of a watershed leadership handover in November.

Hmm, I hope this doesn't happen in Canada with our upcoming watershed leadership transfer.

The ban was lifted about 10 days later after Google protested.

In March 2002, about 130 major Web portals, including Yahoo Inc, signed a self-censorship pledge that drew fire from critics who said the sites were sacrificing freedom of expression for the sake of business.

Chinese portals such as Sohu.com have devised a thorough list of terms -- including President Jiang Zemin, the Falun Gong spiritual group and Tiananmen Square protests -- which are automatically filtered from the site.

Hey, you mean all I have to do is post President Jiang Zemin or Falun Gong or Tiananmen Square on this page and my website will also be banned in China?  Cool.  Is that all?  Gee, why would anyone in China want to look up information on those search terms anyway?  Could someone in China confirm whether I'm banned or not - thanks!  8:49pm AST

Sheryl's T-Shirt    Link

According to one of rock-babe Sheryl Crow's t-shirts, war is not the answer.  Her t-shirt does not specify what precisely is the answer, so we're left to wonder.  I suppose one would have to assume that peace is the answer.  Sounds correct.  We all want to live in peace.  No one wants to go around killing other people or their children (do they Bill Blaikie?) -- of course not.  So, we will just live in peace.

But wait.  There are those nasty terrorists to think about.  There are also a few murderous, totalitarian dictators in the world -- one likely has nuclear weapons already; the other seeks to develop them and refuses to be honest with the world about his plans for these and other dangerous weapons.  And some of these murderous dictators would likely export their dangerous weapons, possibly to these terrorist groups; one such murderous dictator even went so far as to take his country out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and has decided to begin testing long-range missiles.  Now let me think here ... if you take yourself out of a nuclear nonproliferation treaty, this would tend to lead others to believe that you would, at some future point, export nuclear material and/or weapons.

In National Review Online, Adam Mersereau writes on Down with the Peace Movement: The trouble with the antiwar warriors.  "More evil than war, however, is the sentiment that pervades the peace movement: That there is nothing worth fighting for."

Is there really nothing worth fighting for?  If you (the anti-war pacifist) knew in 1935 that tens of millions were about to die in a world war, would you have taken up arms against Hitler while it was still possible to de-fang his Nazi hordes?  Would you at least appreciate others doing so?  Would you have taken up arms to protect your freedom and that of your family if Nazi or Communist forces invaded North America or Great Britain?  Would you have worked in Churchill's Home Guard - or its North American counterpart - against such an invader?

As Orwell wrote:  Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other.

Thankfully, for our sake, there were men and women who chose to fight against tyranny.  Thankfully, there are such men and women today.  And I quote Orwell again (via Silent Running):  "We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us."

Andrew Sullivan links to this Martin Kettle piece in The Guardian.  Says Andrew, Kettle basically concedes the argument for removing Saddam but then ends with a weak anti-war argument.

Kettle discusses the point made by legal historian Philip Bobbitt ~ "that the very existence of al-Qaida makes Iraq's weapons capacity much more threatening than it would otherwise be, whether or not there has been any direct collaboration between the two. And he says that the demand for conclusive evidence of weapons acquisition by Iraq is inadequate. "It must be better to take action before we know the situation we most fear has indeed come about," Bobbitt concludes, though he is careful to add that this is not the best way of challenging the weapons danger in every case."

While I don't share Ms. Crow's political views, I do love her music and own all her albums.  8:13pm AST

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Churchillian First Lines    Link

Before Christmas, in National Review Online, Jay Nordlinger posted a compilation of readers' favourite book first lines.  It was quite an interesting list; some appeared to be quite illuminating with respect to the rest of the book to come; others, not so.  Some were just plain funny.

This prompted me to check into my own Churchill books for first lines, and I've compiled them here.  9:18pm AST

Update: I've received some more feedback from my Churchill Center listserv colleagues.  Someone corrected me on one of the first lines: the one for The River War.  I had used the first line from my copy of Frontiers & Wars, which is a compilation of Churchill's early war journalism.  I have been kindly advised that there was an entirely different first line from the first edition of The River War (1899).  It just amazes me that a abridging editor would change a book's first line!  Wednesday, January 15, 2003  9:10pm AST

She Shoots, She Scores    Link

Congrats to Hayley Wickenheiser, Canadian Salt Lake '02 Olympic women's hockey gold medalist, for becoming the first woman to play a non-goalie position in a professional hockey league.  She's currently involved in a 3-game tryout with a team in a professional league in Finland, and got an assist in her first game.  Hayley also medaled for Canada in women's softball.  8:00am AST

Sunday, January 12, 2003

Relax, It's Just A Game    Link

The Canadian Hockey Association has sponsored a great series of television and print ads aimed at abusive sports parents, 'what if kids pressured us the way we pressured them?'  Check them out.  In one television spot, a father is pulled over by a traffic cop with the kid in the backseat.

The kid:  "Oh, you've got to be kidding!  That call stinks! You stink!  Right Dad?  Tell him, you're not just going to sit there and take this are you?  Stand up to this moron.  Tell him that call was crap!  Don't hold back, let him have it!"  Kid, to the cop: "What are you looking at, Loser?"  11:30am AST

Korean Crisis    Link

CNN reports that North Korea blames the U.S. for the current crisis.

<engage sarcasm>  Well, they do have a point - it was the U.S. that agreed to appeasement in 1994.  And, it was under this U.S.-brokered appeasement deal that North Korea was to reneg on the terms of the deal during the 1990s and renew its nuclear program.

And it certainly is heartening to see the free people of Pyongyang, a million strong, gathering in protest.  How could one not be moved by this display of support for their Great Leader by these citizens of an ultra-Stalinist state?

But if the people - a million of them - really wanted to get out on the street in protest at any time, regardless of the issue, the state apparatus would let them, right?  Yes, of course it would.  As we all know, free speech is one of the great features of totalitarian societies!

Is it incorrect to refer to North Korea as 'Stalinist'?  Nope.  As Christopher Hitchens wrote, North Korea is the world's "proto-Stalinist" state.

U.S. officials believe that NK has already developed one or two nuclear weapons.  The North Korean ambassador claims that his country has "no intention of developing nuclear weapons."  Yet, on January 7th, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, "There is an increasing danger of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula due to the US criminal policy toward the DPRK (North Korea)".

But, how can there be 'an increasing danger of nuclear war' if the DPRK doesn't have nuclear weapons itself??

Michael Kelly writes on the myth that this crisis was brought on by Bush's aggressive rhetoric, that it's made worse by Bush refusing to negotiate, and that this reflects foreign policy incoherence vis a vis Iraq.  "Conventional wisdom tends by its nature to get things wrong, but seldom this wrong and seldom this dangerously wrong. This is wrong to the point of divorce from reality."

Charles Krauthammer believes that a continued North Korean threat to the US and its allies (and the continued danger of Kim Jong-Il selling a nuclear weapon to terrorists) could lead to China's worst nightmare - a nuclear Japan.

Karen Elliott House: The Lessons of North Korea.

William F. Buckley, Jr.: Pyongyang Blues  8:31am AST

Saturday, January 11, 2003

My Steelers, See Ya Next Year

Ugh.  Oh, man -- I'm drained after watching that Steelers/Titans game, with the Titans taking it in overtime.  While I'm sorry my boys lost, that was an exciting game.  Anyway, My Steelers had a good season; better luck next year.  9:45pm AST

Tootoo    Link

Jordin Tootoo was easily the most popular player at the recent World Junior Hockey Championships held here in Halifax.  Picked by the Nashville Predators in the 6th round of the 2001 NHL Entry Draft (98th overall), Jordin is the first person of Inuit descent to be drafted by an NHL team, and hopes to be the first to play in the NHL.  Tootoo grew up in Rankin Inlet on Baffin Island (that's waaaay up there) and was raised in the traditional Inu culture.

At just 5'9", Jordin's still an exciting, skilled, and hard-hitting player.  It will be interesting to watch his career.  (It took me a while to figure out that his sweater number, "22", was a pun on his name.  D'uh.)  6:00pm AST

More (not Moore) on Anti-Americanism    Link

Writing in The Times, Michael Gove believes that "The hatred of America is the socialism of fools."  Gove writes:

A trigger-happy starter of wars and provoker of enemies? The truth is that the US has been painstakingly slow to involve itself in foreign conflicts. ... An imperial exploiter? The truth is that America seeks to disentangle itself from anything which smacks of neocolonial occupation.

Gove also reiterates Charles Krauthammer's rebuttal of the myth that America is the oppressor of the world's poor.  The 20th century gave us 3 excellent examples of homogenous societies that became split along extreme political lines -- North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, East and West Germany.  In all three cases, the societies that followed the American way saw much greater freedom and prosperity.  5:46pm AST

Friday, January 10, 2003

What Do Bloggers Drive?    Link

In honour of the opening to the public of the Detroit show, Damian Penny has compiled a list of what bloggers drive.  Yours truly is so listed ... and jealous.  11:17pm AST

Korea Is Not Quite Iraq    Link

Victor Davis Hanson with another great piece, this time on the obvious differences between the Iraqi and Korean situations, and why American (and Western) policy should be different in response to each one.  The point is that Iraq must be dealt with sooner than later, because 'later' means 'too late' -- Iraq will have become another North Korea.  5:06pm AST

North Korean Crisis    Link

With Pyongyang announcing that it will pull out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, world leaders are finally aghast.  The US and its Allies are working to stem the crisis.

My guess is that North Korea knows that the West will continue to pander to its demands, now that it has made the most of its 1994 Carter-brokered, Clinton-signed appeasement deal and developed nuclear weapons and can hold Seoul ransom.  As crazed as he is, Kim Jong-Il no doubt realizes that, although selling a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group will gain him some hard currency, it would draw a most terrible response from the United States should that terrorist group ever use that weapon against American targets.  Any exported nuclear weapon will always be tied to Kim's neck.

So, pulling out of the NNT just another means to try to extract more out of the West.  By pulling out of the NNT, Pyongyang basically announces that it intends to try to export nuclear weapons.  If this isn't cause for an intense blockade, I don't know what is -- ah, but North Korea would view that as an 'act of war'.  Shouldn't the entire world view the withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as an 'act of war' in itself?  Anyway, difficult diplomacy lies ahead.  Now that the South is held hostage, the diplomacy is made even more difficult.  5:02pm AST

Thursday, January 9, 2003

Halifax, Host wit da Most -- Halifax just finished a very successful hosting of the World Junior Hockey Championship.  19 of 21 games at the Halifax Metro Centre saw over 10,000 fans (very close to maximum capacity), and Halifax set an overall attendance record for the championship tournament.  Three cheers for Fred MacGillivray, the organizing committee and the over 1,400 volunteers who made it happen.  Canada won silver, losing the 3-2 final match to the talented but spitty Russian side.  10:24pm AST

On Gathering Storms -- Yet another timely Churchill quote:    Link

"When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong, these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history."  --  Winston S. Churchill, House of Commons, 12 April 1935

Robert Courts has compiled a great list of Churchill quotes that could be related to September 11th.  My favourite, and one that I submitted to Robert, was a radio broadcast that Churchill made at the height of the blitz, September 11th, 1940.  10:10pm AST

The Two Towers

I thoroughly enjoyed Peter Jackson's "The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers", and can't wait to see it again.  However, there are several plot alterations (and even a few inventions) in the film, some more forgivable than others.  The two that bother me the most are with respect to Foromir's interaction with Frodo, and the Ents and their decision to go to war.  In the book, Foromir is much more trusting of Frodo's story; he doesn't take Frodo, Sam and Gollum to Osgiliath - he lets them go in the wilderness.  In the book, the Ents decide to go to war during the Ent Moot; they don't need to see the destroyed fringe of forest near Isengaard in order for them to want to go to war against Saruman.

For a story that's supposed to be about trust and friendship, these two plot changes were probably unwarranted.  9:34pm AST

Face it, Hitch    Link

I received Christopher Hitchens' "Why Orwell Matters" for Christmas (thanks, Santa Sis!) and have read it.  An interesting, comfortable read; recommended for anyone interested in learning more about George Orwell.  Unfortunately, Christopher drags out the old & easily-refuted Churchill/Shelley canard.

To me, worse than getting the Shelley stuff all wrong (someone obviously has a 'facing' problem), Hitchens sticks it in during a discussion of how Orwell's experiences at this time lead to the Big Brother propaganda of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.

He first discusses the fact that Orwell knew of Churchill's speeches.  So, the point of Orwell having listened to Churchill's speeches (and having admiration for them) leads to Big Brother's evil oppression.  Hmmm, Orwell couldn't have picked up any of these notions in, say, Spain?, or in observing the Soviet Union?

Of course, totally unrelated to this, Hitchens now throws in the Shelley canard.  That Orwell "might have been amused" by the story -- well, certainly he might have been amused.  So what?  Anyway, Hitchens obviously tries to lead his reader and somehow connect the Shelley thing with the spectre of Churchill-inspired Big Brotherism (even though Orwell didn't know about this story).  "The voice of Leader was ventriloquized for the masses..."  Ugh.

Doesn't sound like 'facing' to me, Christopher.  (Otherwise, a good book.)  9:19pm AST

Thanks for the Links

So far, thanks to Damian, David and Dawson for the links.  Hmmm, time to branch out to other letters of the alphabet.  (Like maybe G or C.)  4:57pm AST

A Plea to Rick Berman    Link

I've noticed that, unlike the United States Navy, the producers of Star Trek have not included Winston S. Churchill among those for whom ships were named.  Over the years, out of hundreds of named starships, the shows have had Star Fleet ships named for many important figures in recent human history, i.e. U.S.S.: Armstrong; Biko; Bradley; Bradbury; Cortez; Crazy Horse; Curry; Drake; Farragut; Fleming; Gandhi; Grissom; LaFayette; LaSalle; Livingston; Magellan; Nimitz; Pasteur; Rabin; Revere; Roosevelt; Shepard; Sherman; Thomas Paine; Tolstoy; Truman; Wellington; Yeager; and, Zhukov - to name a few.

Many worthy names, but one is definitely missing.  Who did more to secure the 'broad, sunlit uplands' of humanity's Star Trekian future than Winston S. Churchill??  4:50pm AST

Car-blogging    Link

Damian Penny's doing a fine job following the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.  The engines on some of these cars, such as the Ford 427 (should be renamed, the Ford Kyoto?), are unbelievable.  It will be interesting to see what happens with the Ford U-car, it's enviro-vehicle (hydrogen fueled).  Not sure about the price, but Honda and Toyota did have new hydrogen-fueled cars hit the market on Dec02'02.  Ahem, Honda's leases for Cdn$10,461/month and Toyota's is Cdn$15,691/month for a 3 year contract.  Aside from making some wealthy environmentalists feel better about themselves, I'd guess it will be decades before this technology can bring affordable, efficient vehicles to the masses.  4:48pm AST

Birth of The Campblog    Link

Here I go.  With my News & Views page getting somewhat lengthy, not really being a blog per se, and me being not quite sure how I wanted to split things up or reorganize it, I've decided to leave it 'as is' (more or less) and simply dive into blogging.   4:28pm AST

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