Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada "Of Interest To Me" May20 -- May31, 2003
Email: mike -at- mikecampbell dot net
The opinions expressed on this website are those of the author alone, and are not necessarily those of his employer or any organization with which he is affiliated.
News Resources
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
Friday, May 30, 2003
Right, Left and a whole lot more
Stephen den Beste has some very interesting comments on the various ways we try to describe our socio-political selves.
Gotta run, but I'll try to think about Stephen's definitions and where I fit in regarding Stephen's different axiomatic measures. You do the same.
1:03pm ADT
Paul Greenberg on the increasingly difficult Clinton revisionist history watch.
He's diligently building a different, fictive record now, and separating fact from fiction will require eternal vigilance.
12:55pm ADT
The Washington Times comments on the current status of Missile Defence.
Missile defense is one of three centerpieces for a new collective defense, along with counterterrorism cooperation and antiproliferation regimens for weapons of mass destruction.
Joining this defense club is a mark of sanity and stability, one dividing the constructive from the destructive. Nations that remain outside the umbrella make an open statement about their goals.
It's also cheap insurance. Diplomats, generals and spies make mistakes. Unlike most of the rest of us, when they make mistakes the costs are huge. The Washington Times quotes the Bush administration's new National Security Presidential Directive 23 as saying "History teaches that, despite our best efforts, there will be military surprises, failures of diplomacy, intelligence and deterrence. Missile defenses help provide protection against such events."
Only the willfully blind ignore the message North Korea sent in August 1998 when Pyongyang fired a multistage missile and confounded Clinton administration risk estimates. That launch demonstrated that the United States, Europe, Japan and the rest of the world are vulnerable to rogue missile attack. It's a callous falsehood to argue otherwise.
12:51pm ADT
James Lileks comments on Enterprise, particularly how the various Star Trek series have reflected their times.
Then there’s Deep Space Nine. Standard reaction: I never got into that one. I understand why; as with Next Generation, the first two seasons chewed donkey bris. But it had better characters...
Yup, I agree (and have said so here recently). Although I did get into it more towards the end.
So how is this Trek a reflection of the zeitgeist? Well, it was different right out of the box; it’s set before the Federation was incoporated. It gives us the future as pre-history. The only other aliens on Earth’s side are the Vulcans, who are in this context the Europeans - the older, more cynical, “wiser” culture attempting to restrain this brash upstart planet. There’s no way the show’s creators could have anticipated how prescient this would seem when they thought of the show, but after 9/11 this theme stood out in hot glowing letters. And then came the season finale:
Earth is attacked by a suicide bomber. There's much death and devastation. The Enterprise is sent to a far-off place to retaliate. The Vulcans refuse to help.
It gets better: the area into which the Enterprise heads is called “the Expanse,” which shares the same vowels as “Levant,” and the same concept as “the Empty Quarter.” But that’s probably unintentional. And it’s probably unintentional that the Expanse is known for causing absolute madness to all who go there. We even see a fragment of a log from a Vulcan ship - they’re all at each other’s throats, screaming, drinking blood, etc. Unintentional or not, there’s no other way to read this: the Enterprise is going to the galaxy’s cradle of suicide bombers, and it’s a place where everyone goes absolutely nuts.
The finale of season 2 wasn't a great episode, or much of a cliffhanger. But it was likely a great set-up for the next season.
12:41pm ADT
Thursday, May 29, 2003
Charles Krauthammer recently laid it out for the anti-war left.
With every mass grave discovered, those who marched with such moral assurance just two months ago under the banner of human rights and social justice must make an accounting. In the name of peace, they supported the legitimacy and defended the inviolability of a regime that made relentless war on every value the left pretends to uphold:
• Human rights: Outside of North Korea, Hussein was the greatest violator of human rights in the world. The list of his crimes, the murders and the tortures, will take a generation to catalogue.
• Economic equity and social justice: Hussein was not just a murderer, he was the king of robber barons. Since 1983, Iraq has not even had a national budget. Every penny of its wealth was plundered by Hussein and his fellow Mafiosi and spent on the most grotesque extravagances, while his people were made to starve.
• The environment: Hussein was unquestionably the greatest eco-terrorist in history. During the Gulf War he produced the worst deliberate oil spill ever. He followed that with the worst oil-well fires ever. Then came perhaps the most astonishing ecological crime in history: deliberately draining the marshes of southern Iraq in order to depopulate and starve out the Marsh Arabs, who were hostile to his regime, creating a wasteland that will take years for the world -- meaning Iraq's American rescuers -- to undo.
Torturer, murderer, plunderer, despoiler. "We've gotten rid of him," said presidential candidate Howard Dean, prewar darling of the Democratic left. "I suppose that's a good thing."
It was a very good thing. A noble thing. And rebuilding the place that Saddam Hussein destroyed is an even nobler thing. It is fine to carp about our initial failures at reconstruction; it is well to remember, however, the nobility of the entire enterprise.
If the enterprise is noble it is because it seeks to destroy the forces that would themselves destroy what Churchill called "the temples of Man's freedom and Man's honour". Good things may come of it, but they're not the reason for the enterprise's undertaking. It must be done, regardless.
9:49pm ADT
The difficulty is not winning the war; it is in persuading people to let you win it -- persuading fools.
-- Winston Churchill to his secretary, Marion Holmes, 7 October 1943
9:28pm ADT
The Editors at NRO like Bush's tax cut and say it's the most pro-growth tax cut since 1981.
Liberals have been furious in their criticism of the tax cut. They have represented it as huge. But $350 billion represents less than 1.5 percent of projected federal revenues over the next ten years. They have claimed that it is deceptive to have the tax cuts expire in a few years, since conservatives will press for the expiration date to be pushed back or eliminated. But the cut-off was necessary to squeeze the tax cut into the artificial limits that liberals insisted on.
The most justified liberal jape at the administration is that tax cuts are its entire economic policy. We would prefer that the tax cuts were supplemented by other salutary policies, such as trade liberalization, spending cuts, and deregulation, particularly of the telecom industry. But those measures have either already been precluded by administration policy or are politically unattainable. The bright side for Bush is that he has time for an economic recovery. Ronald Reagan's recovery started later than this in his first term. And changes in the American economy since then — the increased importance of the stock market, above all — mean that recoveries can affect voters faster than they used to. If the markets rebound, lingering unemployment will not be so dangerous to Bush's reelection.
9:23pm ADT
Glenn Reynolds has more on Bob Geldof's pro-Bush, anti-EU comments, and what Geldof thinks of Robert Mugabe and his pals.
“He (Mr Mugabe) is engaging in state-sponsored terror and famine and that cannot be allowed,” Geldof said. “He is a shame on the face of Africa.”
Not in Paris, apparently.
Geldof, on his first official trip to Ethiopia since the days of Live Aid in 1985, added: “You people should be demanding that Mugabe steps down. I don’t care where he goes. He can join Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia, he can join the ghetto of tyrants, but get him out of there.”
Hmm, I've haven't thus far replaced my Boomtown Rats vinyl albums with cd's ~ could be time to start.
8:49pm ADT
British PM Tony Blair is in Iraq.
"You fought the battle, you won the battle, and you fought it with great courage and valour," Blair told the soldiers in Basra. "But it didn't stop there. You then went on to try to make something of the country you had liberated. And I think that's a lesson for armed forces everywhere, the world over."
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CREDIT: Associated Press Stefan Rousseau |
The look of anger, humiliation, and hopelessness on this child's face is too much for me ~ I must turn away! Anglo-American imperialist bastards!
7:17pm ADT
"Stereo & Mono", the latest ~ about a year old or so ~ from former 'Mats frontman Paul Westerberg. I love Westerberg and I really enjoy this one; my brother's a bigger fan, and thinks this is Paul's best work. Rough around the edges, for sure; he recorded it at home, complete with mistakes and cut-off recordings. As usual, truly great songs. Real is about the best word to describe it. I recommend it.
7:02pm ADT
Tim Blair says that The Guardian’s computers must have switched to overload when this story hit the screens:
Bob Geldof astonished the aid community yesterday by using a return visit to Ethiopia to praise the Bush administration as one of Africa's best friends in its fight against hunger and Aids.
The musician-turned activist said Washington was providing major assistance, in contrast to the European Union's "pathetic and appalling" response to the continent's humanitarian crises.
"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian.
The neo-conservatives and religious rightwingers who surrounded President George Bush were proving unexpectedly receptive to appeals for help, he said. "You can get the weirdest politicians on your side."
Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid, claimed. "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all."
I suppose this must poke a few holes in Jean Chretien's 'legacy' plan, as being Mr. Africa seemed to be part of it. Given Chretien's criticism of Bush in recent days, how's he gonna square this? Especially when Jean's buddy Bill is so heavily implicated.
Looks like another part of Chretien's legacy plan saw some minor damage, as backroom deals by Liberal MPs may delay the bill until 2005, a year after Chretien leaves, with parties being allowed to possibly raise more money. As I understand it, this bill will provide more public subsidies to federal political parties, weighted by the party's past electoral/popular vote performance.
For a system like Canada's, though, where the number of elected seats often has little to do with the overall popular vote, perhaps this system won't be as kind to incumbents. I'm not saying that I like it; it just may not have the intended effect.
6:36pm ADT
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Happy Birthday, Trinity-Anne! Don't let your Pop drink too much in celebration.
9:18pm ADT
Discount Blogger has kindly provided the link to the TIME Canada story on Where Has Canada Gone?
It's a pretty hard-hitting look at the current situation and how we've arrived here.
Some 50 years after Canadian troops helped win World War II and Canadian diplomats helped shape the international institutions that remade a shattered globe, Canada seems to have neither the will nor the wallet to make its mark on the world. Canadians can look back with pride at their past achievements on the world stage: the heroism at Dieppe in 1942 and on D-day in 1944, the brokering of the truce that stanched the 1956 Suez crisis, leadership in dozens of U.N. peacekeeping missions in the 1960s and ’70s. But those glory years are gone. Canada’s influence these days is more like a phantom limb: it feels to Canadians as though it’s still there, but to many observers the reality is different. The nation’s ability to extend power and influence has been hacked back to a shadow of its former self. “We are now a marginal player in the world,” says Hugh Segal, who heads the Montreal-based think tank Institute for Research on Public Policy. “We have a series of conceits about how important we are and about how much our views count that is completely unrelated to reality.” Christopher Sands, a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, agrees. “Canada’s footprint in foreign affairs is getting smaller,” he says. “It’s an important, Western, decent country but certainly not a principal player.”
Increasingly, Canada seems to be a child hiding in tangled underbrush. You know it’s there, but you just can’t find it.
But you can still turn on CBC any old time to hear the likes of Lloyd Axworthy drone on about the joys of 'soft power'.
Hey, wasn't Jonah Goldberg vilified back in the Fall for talking about the same stuff at NRO? Has TIME Canada joined the 'neocon cabal' (I know, Jonah, you're not a neo)?
8:49pm ADT
Core Principles for a Free Iraq
Donald Rumsfeld writes that the transition from tyranny to liberty is always difficult.
It is now just seven weeks since Iraq's liberation--and the challenges are there. As Thomas Jefferson put it, "we are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed." It took time and patience, but eventually our Founders got it right--and we hope so will the people of Iraq--over time.
We have a stake in their success. For if Iraq--with its size, capabilities, and resources--is able to move to the path of representative democracy, the impact in the region and the world could be dramatic. Iraq could conceivably become a model--proof that a moderate Muslim state can succeed in the battle against extremism taking place in the Muslim world today.
We are committed to helping the Iraqi people get on that path to a free society. We do not have an American "template" we want to impose: Iraqis will figure out how to build a free nation in a manner that reflects their unique culture and traditions.
Rumsfeld goes on to list a number of guidelines that will be followed in the development of the new Iraq. Go ahead and read'em.
8:33pm ADT
In The Atlantic, Christopher Hitchens reviews Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars".
I personally became powerfully nauseated by seeing Clinton up close in New Hampshire that year. His big, red-faced frame didn't seem so much "imposing" as simultaneously needy and greedy. He lied aggressively about Gennifer Flowers and, sitting next to his wife, let her do his marital propaganda for him. He fundraised as if there were no guidelines. When the polls seemed to sag, and he sought to burnish his tough-on-crime credentials, he flew back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of a brain-damaged black convict named Rickey Ray Rector. This episode isn't mentioned at all in Blumenthal's narrative, but it revolted a few people at the time, as it should have. By this stage Blumenthal was fully on board the candidate's train; and I'll never forget a Georgetown dinner, at which he was probably the most conservative person in attendance, where various liberals wondered aloud what the limits of "lesser evil" politics might be. One misgiving after another was mentioned, until Blumenthal impatiently quelled the bleats. "You don't understand," he said. "It's our turn."
There's no real trick to thinking like an apparatchik. You just keep two sets of ethical books. Thus, or in this case, only bad people get paid for their disclosures. Only Republicans ever use race in politics. And only reactionary thugs ever campaign as law-and-order exploiters of the death penalty. So Gennifer Flowers can be impugned, not for having a story to tell but for having a story to sell. Rickey Ray Rector can be given a lethal injection during a cliff-hanger primary because Clinton needs to show that he can't be "Willie Hortoned," as the saying then went. If Blumenthal can't mention, as he often does, that some of Clinton's critics made money on their efforts, then he can insist that the President was attacked by people who wanted to play the race card. Indeed, he asserts that it was "the racial dynamic" that led to Clinton's eventual acquittal at the impeachment trial.
8:26pm ADT
Monday, May 26, 2003
Acquired the dvd version of Frank Capra's "Lost Horizon" (1937) on Friday, and we watched it over the weekend. Pretty neat to see this one, both a Hollywood and Capra classic, based on James Hilton's 1933 novel. It's budget at the time was equivalent to around $30-40 million. Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt are fine as the leads.
| From a film history perspective, it's interesting how they patched this one back together. The 1937 release was cut down during the war, perhaps due to the film's (naive) pacifist message. The original 132 minutes were cut down by 25 minutes over the years in various film releases. As the century wore on, all copies of the original full-length film had deteriorated, although they were able to salvage a full-length sound track. Some pieces of the missing 25 minutes were restored from a 16mm version found in Canada. |
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However, the restorers were not able to come up with 7 minutes of film from the original. In this dvd version, these 7 minutes (at a few different points during the film) are taken up by an insertion of various still photos as the sound track continues in the background. It's a beautifully made film; too bad some parts are missing. Hey, maybe they're still out there somewhere.
As for the story, Colman plays a Brit named Robert Conway (whose brother was apparently removed from the family home in infancy and raised in America ... an accent comment, sorry). Conway is an English hero, a soldier and diplomat. If he is not already Foreign Secretary, he will be made FS as soon as he returns to England. People seem to think he is one of the slim hopes for the world during the darkening scene of the 1930s.
On his way to Shangri-La (he doesn't know he's going there), Conway tells his brother that, if he was a leader, his strategy would be to lay down his arms and get his countrymen to go along with him. Then, the other side would see that they were decent, trustworthy blokes, and would lay down their arms. Alas, says Conway, he wouldn't really do it that way; he would just go along with the same old stupid way that humans behave.
But, we all know how this naive pacifism would have played out in the 1930s.
If the Luftwaffe and the German Army and Navy met no resistance from Britain in 1940, the result would have been slavery for the people of England, and death to any Jews who happened to be living there. There would have been no war, but there would have been Hell anyway ~ into what Churchill called "the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science." Would we even be free of it today? In these terms, it's hard to see how Orwell was wrong when he said that pacifism is essentially pro-fascist.
Worse, the vision of the High Lama of Shangri-La is for all the wise pacifists of the world to gather there in Shangri-La, away from the troubles of the world, until the time when the silly humans have really mucked it all up and the Shangri-La-ite leaders can walk out of their sanctuary to lead humanity out of the ruins. So, the message is that you should sit back, relax, and let the guy with the rifle enslave you, and, by the way, I'm going to tell you this from the happy confines of my wonderful mountain hideaway all the while you are being enslaved.
Sorry, boys. It seems there was another way to deal with totalitarian aggression -- fight against it and destroy it. [I know, I know, these people maybe didn't know or think much about totalitarianism. Hilton didn't know about Hitler in 1933. Still, the message comes out of an assumption that the other guy with the gun has good intentions, he's just been confused and that's why he's pointing it at you. Since he's just like you, lay down your gun and he'll lay his down. Forget that you have a free society to defend and he might be driven by a fascist police state and the evil goals of a 'maniac of ferocious genius' who runs the place. What then?]
Sure, may we all find our own inner Shangri-La's. We don't have to be slaves to get there.
I enjoyed the film though; it was a good story, a beautiful production, and it's very interesting to me to see this bit of film history. It's one that you should watch at some point.
7:52pm ADT
Colby Cosh provides commentary on the upcoming Canadian Progressive Conservative (Tory) Party leadership convention.
No doubt some individuals are genuinely thrilled that there still exists a political party which is exactly like the Liberals, only with blue signage. (Tory allegiance, for example, may be convenient to interior decorators during certain periodic upheavals of fashion.) But generally most Conservative organizers, workers, and voters may be assumed to fall into one of two groups: (1) pathological status-hounds who consider it easier to get ahead inside an attenuated party structure, and (2) haters of everything associated with western Canada. (Or--to anticipate the objection that Joe Clark is rumoured to have at one time lived in Western Canada--anything associated credibly with the region.)
6:41pm ADT
Saturday, May 24, 2003
Colin May, one of those Innocents Abroad, comments on the recent TIME (split run Canadian version) cover story on Canada: Where Has Canada Gone? The second largest country in the world is being swallowed up by its own irrelevance.
Update: Looks like the above was a link to the TIME cover story which has since changed; can't find the 'Canada' story. Anyway, Michael Demmons wasn't impressed.
10:34am ADT
Victor Davis Hanson tells it like he sees it ~ a great, hard-hitting assessment of how he sees the world, and how it's changed since September 11th.
10:01am ADT
Here's hoping all my American readers enjoy the long Memorial Day weekend and get some pleasant weather. And, of course, that you take a moment to remember those who gave their lives for your (and my) freedom.
I'm like Michael Demmons ~ I learned to recite "In Flanders Fields" from memory when I was a kid and have never forgotten it. Canadians remember their war dead in November, but we remember with you this weekend, too.
Take a moment, if you will, and visit my online tribute to my Dad's Uncle Joe, who was killed in battle in Holland on February 10, 1945. Not an American, of course, but he died in a shared cause.
Some of you may know that 188 American servicemen are buried here in Halifax, in graves that were almost forgotten. More here. Remember them, too.
Update: Right We Are has thoughts and info on Memorial Day here and here (via Jay Solo)
9:27am ADT
Speaking of web presences, I started this website in January 2000, the thrust of the site at the time being my tour of Halifax. At the time, the mikecampbell.com domain was for sale for US$600.00, and the mikecampbell.net was still up for grabs so it was a no brainer.
I note the mikecampbell.com is still 'under construction copyright 2000'.
Well, I'm happy with the dot net. We must live with our choices in life.
9:20am ADT
Damian Penny, who has a great new web presence, covers the story from Iraqi doctors who report now that Saddam forced them to freeze dead babies so that they could be later paraded through the streets to show how UN sanctions were killing Iraqi children.
The Newsday story reports:
Under the sanctions regime, "We had the ability to get all the drugs we needed," said Ibn Al-Baladi's chief resident, Dr. Hussein Shihab. "Instead of that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all the fault on the USA. Yes, of course the sanctions hurt - but not too much, because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get everything we can by money. But instead, he spent it on his palaces."
Alas, concludes Damian,
The Pilgers, Fisks and Chomskys spent years blaming the Americans for all the little children who were being killed as a result of sanctions, and the lefties ate it up. (Pilger even filmed a documentary called Killing the Children, and heaven knows the degree to which he collaborated with Saddam's regime to get it made.)
And they will never, ever admit they were wrong. Never.
9:08am ADT
Spinsanity straightens us out on the liberal media coverage of George W. Bush's recent comments on Al-Qaeda. It started with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd misquoting Bush (leaving an absolutely signficant line out completely), and it then being carried by people like CNN's Bill Press and Paul Begala.
The President said that those Al-Qaeda leaders that were either dead or captured were not a problem anymore. The Dowd/Press/Begala spin is that Bush is saying that Al-Qaeda is not a problem anymore, when he clearly said no such thing. It's just sad.
Spinsanity quotes Begala, who even referenced Bush's correctly and then pushed the Dowd 'quote': Not a problem anymore. ... is our president ignorant or is he misleading us?
Good question, Mr. Begala -- ignorant or purposely misleading?
8:53am ADT
Thursday, May 22, 2003
Santa Security Alert - Code Red!
For 29 years, the CIA had on file a terrorist threat against the Jolly Old Elf himself by none other than the diabolical Group Of The Martyr Ebeneezer Scrooge (GMES).
Dear Santa ~ if you don't bring me lots of presents this year, the terrorists will have won!
8:31pm ADT
Peter Oborne writes that Tony Blair has had his day, and that British Labour is splitting apart.
Since the 1997 general election, 13 of Blair's 22 Cabinet Ministers are no longer there (some are trouble-making backbenchers). Claire Short is the latest, with Robin Cook recently resigning, as well.
Interesting point regarding New Labour having always been more of a strategy than a political movement. As comfortable as Blair has appeared as a war leader since September 11th, standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush, it wasn't that long ago that Blair looked and acted more like a Clinton clone.
I'm only slightly reminded of 1945, when Churchill's success as a war leader saw him get the boot at the polls. Besides being on opposite sides of the House, Churchill had just finished leading a wartime government represented by all parties. Despite its success during the war, and Attlee's job well done as Deputy PM, the government was bound to break apart and return to regular party warfare, particularly as a general election loomed.
By the way, I just thought up that subject title. I suppose it's been used before but not to my knowledge. Fairly clever, if I do say so myself.
8:06pm ADT
I'm grateful to every blogger who has linked to this blog -- thanks again to everyone.
The latest links are from: Jay Solo (I'm one of those Rogue Blogs That Don't Indicate Recent Updates ~ sorry Jay, it would help if I knew what I was doing); fellow Canuck Colby Cosh; and, the Hayek Center's PrestoPundit blog.
Prestopundit has me linked under its "Liberal Sites" section (as in classic liberalism). As a fan of Hayek and a reader of his work (The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit so far; The Constitution of Liberty is on my shelf ready to read, hopefully some day soon), I'm especially proud of the Hayek Center link.
7:34pm ADT
Donald Rumsfeld comments in the Washington Post on the future of the United States military ~ he wants it to be a lot leaner and more flexible, with civilians doing civilian jobs, leaving the military to do the military work.
... we must transform our armed forces. Our forces need to be flexible, light and agile, so they can respond quickly and deal with surprise. The same is true of the men and women who support them in the Department of Defense. They also need flexibility, so that they can move money, shift people, design and deploy new weapons more rapidly and respond to the continuing changes in our security environment.
Today we do not have that kind of agility. In an age -- the information age -- when terrorists move information at the speed of an e-mail, money at the speed of a wire transfer and people at the speed of a commercial jetliner, the Defense Department is still bogged down in the bureaucratic processes of the industrial age.
7:25pm ADT
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Keith Windschuttle writes in New Criterion on the hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky has declared himself a libertarian and anarchist but has defended some of the most authoritarian and murderous regimes in human history. His political philosophy is purportedly based on empowering the oppressed and toiling masses but he has contempt for ordinary people who he regards as ignorant dupes of the privileged and the powerful. He has defined the responsibility of the intellectual as the pursuit of truth and the exposure of lies, but has supported the regimes he admires by suppressing the truth and perpetrating falsehoods. He has endorsed universal moral principles but has only applied them to Western liberal democracies, while continuing to rationalize the crimes of his own political favorites. He is a mandarin who denounces mandarins. When caught out making culpably irresponsible misjudgments, as he was over Cambodia and Sudan, he has never admitted he was wrong.
Today, Chomsky’s hypocrisy stands as the most revealing measure of the sorry depths to which the left-wing political activism he has done so much to propagate has now sunk.
Take some time to read this, and keep it in mind the next time you're in Chapter's with all those Chomsky titles staring back at you.
9:15pm ADT
The domestic trailer for Rise of the Machines is here. Note to self: If I see one movie this summer, make sure it's this one. (Awesome navigation at the film's website, btw.)
4:27pm ADT
David Farrer warns us all, and UK whisky drinkers in particular, to be wary of being ripped off at the pub.
Some of us are being ripped off:
WHISKY drinkers are being swindled out of £4m a year by licensees who substitute cheap spirits for genuine Scottish malts or blends.
Industry officials are calling for bigger fines for offenders. As readers will no doubt have noticed, I am not one to argue for a large role for the state. Arguably, though, protection against theft and fraud is a legitimate government activity and so I have no real objection to fines for fraudsters.
Hang 'em high, I say!
I have a fairly decent single malt Scotch collection at home, but rarely order whisky at a pub, tavern, bar or restaurant. And then it's usually at a bar that obviously has a good single malt selection. And I'll never order more than one. Beside it being frickin' expensive, I view a good single malt as I would a brandy ~ to be savoured and enjoyed, not chugged down just to get at the next one.
The Campblog's current whisky selection includes:
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The Macallan, 12 years |
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Oban, 14 years |
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Glenmorangie, 10 years |
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Glenmorangie, Madeira Wood Finish |
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Glenmorangie, Sherry Wood Finish |
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Aberlour, 10 years |
I also have some of those "Classic Malts of Scotland" gift sets which feature samples from the following fine whiskies: Talisker; Lagavulin; Glenkinchie; Dalwhinnie; Cragganmore; and, Oban.
I have nae tasted a dileag* of the waters of life in some time, so this evening I may have to indulge.
* pronounced 'jillag' or 'jillik'. In Scots Gaelic, the word dil refers to a large amount of water, a flood. Placing '-ag' at the end of the word forms the diminutive, and is often used to describe a drink of alcohol.
Many of you know, but perhaps some don't, that the word 'whisky' (not 'whiskey') comes from the Gaelic, 'uisge beatha', meaning water of life. Ah, can one think of a more aptly named food or beverage?
3:31pm ADT
Musical artist and arch-global-capitalist Sheryl Crow is on the cover of Fortune magazine. She's pushing Steve Jobs' new iTunes Music Store, the music industry's hope to counteract KaZaA and the other Napster-like internet music file exchange services that helped the U.S. music industry's sales drop 8.2% last year.
Hmm, but if the best way to avoid war is to not have enemies, isn't the best way to avoid music piracy to stop making people pay money in exchange for that music?
I wonder what her 'friend the communist' would say?
12:05pm ADT