February 2011 Archives
It really is that simple a choice: OPEC blood oil or Canadian ethical oil. There aren't a lot of other alternatives out there. North Sea oil is running out; America can only produce a fraction of its own needs. It's us or the world's butchers.
So of course the perfidious EU sides with their friend, Gadhafi.
Where did Moammar Gadhafi, the brutal dictator of Libya, get the money to pay the foreign mercenaries who are butchering his people? How did he pay for those French-made fighter jets strafing protesters?
Europe, mainly. Europe buys 80% of Libya’s oil. Other than terrorism, that’s pretty much the only thing Libya exports.
That would be the same Europe against which Gadhafi’s regime committed most of its terrorism. In 1984, the Libyan embassy in London opened fire on peaceful protesters outside, mowing down 11 of them and killing a 25-year-old police officer named Yvonne Fletcher.
Gadhafi was just getting warmed up. In 1986, he bombed a Berlin nightclub killing three people and injuring 230. In 1988, he bombed a 747 jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground. In 1989, he bombed a plane flying from Chad to Paris, killing 170.
But to European politicians, oil is thicker than blood.
So two years ago, the U.K. released the Lockerbie terrorist mastermind. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was just eight years into a life sentence when the Scottish government let him out on “compassionate grounds.” He was welcomed back to Libya as a hero, with Gadhafi’s son greeting him at the airport.
British Petroleum admits it lobbied for a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya — it denied any role in al-Megrahi’s release — to help clinch a business deal. No point letting the Italians get all the Libyan action. A few years ago, they built a $7-billion pipeline under the Mediterranean to bring natural gas over from Libya. Germany, France and Spain are happy customers, too. Together, Europe buys $100 million worth of oil from Gadhafi. Every day.
None of this is news. It’s olds. It’s been going on for years. What’s new is last week, the very week when Gadhafi and his son told the world they’d fight democracy protesters to the last bullet, was the week the European Union chose to criticize Canada’s oilsands because — get this — they say we have 20 more grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of oil than Libya does.
It’s true, it takes more energy to produce oil from Canada’s oilsands than from Libya’s desert because we have to steam it out of the sand.
European oil imports from Iraq and Nigeria have the same carbon footprint as our oilsands. Those countries burn off the natural gas that comes up when they pump oil — an illegal environmental practice in Canada. And oil from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela has even higher carbon emissions.
Our European friends are silent on all of this.
It’s showboating, since Canada only exports oil to the United States. If Europe wants to make a big deal out of not liking the oil we’re not selling to them anyway, that’s fine. But fair’s fair. If they don’t like Canadian oil because of 20 grams of CO2, let’s insist they swear off oil with blood in it.
Reports put Gadhafi’s spree at 1,000 people dead. The human body has about 185 ounces of blood. So that’s 185,000 ounces of blood, not counting the blood of Libyans who were only injured. Divide that into Libya’s 1.3 million barrels per day, and you’ve got 4 ml of blood per barrel of crude.
So about as much blood as would fit in a tube of lipstick.
Who should Europe buy its oil from instead? Sudan, the butchers of Darfur? Iran, to finance nuclear weapons? Saudi Arabia, funder of the world’s terrorists?
But judge not lest ye be judged! They love their Audis and BMWs in Europe, so much.
So if Gadhafi destroys his oil wells as he says he might, and if Egypt blocks the Suez Canal, and if other OPEC tyrants fall, let’s set aside a few barrels of the ethical stuff to sell to Europe.
At $150 or $200 a barrel, we won’t even need to say “told you so.”
Sonya Thomas is five feet tall and weighs just 105 pounds. But last fall she won the world chicken wing eating competition in Buffalo, N.Y., devouring 181 wings in 12 minutes. She claimed she was still hungry, and an hour later ate 20 more.
She edged out Joey Chestnut, her 6-foot-2, 218-pound rival. He ate 169 wings. But in 2008 in Philadelphia, Chestnut packed away 241 wings, though he took half an hour to do it.
Together Thomas and Chestnut can polish off more than 400 wings in a sitting.
That’s more than 200 birds.
Around the same time as the Buffalo wing festival, another 200 birds died. But they weren’t eaten in New York. They were caught in a freak ice storm in northern Alberta, and landed on Syncrude’s oilsands tailing ponds. Government wildlife officers ordered them euthanized.
Linda Duncan, the NDP MP for Edmonton-Strathcona, called the bird deaths “reprehensible” and said “no amount of penalty” was enough. She demanded the tailings ponds be shut down — which would mean shutting down the whole oilsands mine at Mildred Lake. If Duncan got her way, more than 3,000 people would lose their jobs.
Duncan’s proposal would fire 15 workers for every dead duck. That’s nutty, but not much nuttier than the $2,000-a-duck fine Syncrude had to pay for a duck accident in 2008.
But as a new video produced this month by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy points out, the duck obsession of Linda Duncan and other oilsands haters is misplaced.
The Frontier Centre compared the number of birds killed by the oilsands with the number of birds killed by a wind turbine at an Ontario wind farm — allegedly a more environmentally friendly source of energy.
When the rate of bird kills was measured, kilowatt hour by kilowatt hour, windmills were 445 times deadlier than the oilsands.
You can watch the center’s video at http://bit.ly/
birdblender, but it’s not for the squeamish.
Where is Linda Duncan’s outrage for those dead birds?
Wind power proponents know their industry is a disaster when it comes to birds. Part of the Canadian Wind Energy Association’s strategy is to publish a “fact sheet” that admits windmills kill birds but shifts the blame to cats — as well as buildings and windows — for even more bird deaths.
How would that go over in court if Canada’s windmill operators were ever charged with a criminal offence, like Syncrude was?
“Your honour, it’s true that our windmills kill birds. But so do cats. And you wouldn’t prosecute a cute little kitten, would you?”
An elementary school in Bristol, in the U.K., learned about windmills the hard way. The local government spent more than $30,000 to build a 10-metre-high windmill at the school. The manufacturer said it would only kill one bird a year. But after 14 birds were killed in a six-month period, the school shut it down for fear of traumatizing the children. Headmaster Stuart McLeod said he started coming in to work early just to scoop up the carcasses before the kids arrived.
Jimmy Carter’s signature windfarm in Altamont, Calif., admits to killing about 5,000 birds a year, including protected species such as golden eagles. So that’s 5,000 birds a year for 30 years now. If they were fined $2,000 a bird like Syncrude was, that would be $300 million in fines.
Birds aren’t the only things killed by windmills. Researchers at the University of Calgary found bats are even more likely to be killed — the change in air pressure causes their lungs to explode. Oh well. Nobody likes bats anyways. They’re the environmentalists’ sacrifice species.
A cat has an excuse for killing a bird — that’s what cats eat. Sonya Thomas and Joey Chestnut have an excuse — that’s what they eat, too.
But what’s the excuse of windmill salesmen whose sole pitch is their environmental benefit?
Is it OK to butcher countless birds — and create noise pollution, and make beautiful countrysides ugly — if you mean well?
Like all political candidates, Peter Kent, the federal environment minister, has a spending limit when he campaigns.
In Kent's riding of Thornhill, Elections Canada has set that limit precisely at $95,547.01.
Kent has to disclose his expenses too. So we know, for example, he spent $11,970 on salaries and $10,727 on rent and utilities.
Kent has to reveal the names and amounts of anyone giving him more than $200. The maximum donation he can accept is $1,100. And he can't take money from corporations or unions.
That's the law for Canadians.
But what about foreigners?
It's probably a question Kent is asking, given that a lobby group — partly financed from the U.S. — has launched an election-style campaign against him this week.
A long-time Ottawa lobbyist named Rick Smith is boasting he will make unsolicited phone calls to 50,000
homes in Kent's neighbourhood, because Kent said Canadian oil is more ethical than oil from OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran. Smith's paid staff won't just be making phone calls. They say they'll be "on the ground" in Thornhill for months.
Many observers expect an election to be called next month. Kent, and his Liberal and New Democrat competitors, have to recruit volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls -- it's the only way to stay within their legal budget.
Paid armyNot Smith's paid army. He won't have to stay within a spending limit, or disclose who gave him money, or what he's spending it on.
It's not U.S.-style politics.
It actually is U.S. politics.
Because no fewer than six high-priced U.S. donors give money to Smith's lobby firm. The Mott Foundation from Flint, Mich., is one of them. Its website says an average donation from them is $100,000.
Even if Kent were able to raise that much money, it would be illegal for him to spend it.
Other deep-pocketed foreigners send money to Smith, too. His lobby group gets cheques from Colorado to California, from Massachusetts to Minnesota. Smith calls his lobby group Environmental Defence, and he humbly describes himself as "Canada's most effective environmental action organization."
But given his reliance on foreign funds, is it accurate to call his activities Canadian?
Why does Smith need to take foreign money? Is it because Canadians won't support him?
Earlier this month, Smith called for Canadians to write angry letters to Kent about oil.
But he did something unusual:
He promised big prizes -- including an iPad and iTunes gift certificates. When you need to give away prizes to people to write letters, that’s not grassroots support. That's Astroturf.
Imagine the outrage if Kent offered iPads -- starting at $549 each -- for people to write supportive letters to the editor. It wouldn't just look tricky. It would look desperate. Who has to buy support?
InterferenceThe Tides Foundation is one answer. As researcher Vivian Krause revealed, that San Francisco-based foundation alone gave Smith $310,000 to fight the oilsands. Five U.S. donors alone have poured $190 million into Canadian anti-oil and anti-forest lobbies in the past 10 years.
If the roles were reversed -- if Canadians spent huge sums interfering with U.S. domestic a airs -- Congress would convene hearings and our ambassador would be summoned.
This isn't about whether
Kent should be re-elected. It's about who gets to decide if Kent is re-elected: Canadian citizens, or U.S. billionaires.
Congratulations to Egyptians, whose 82-year-old dictator, Hosni Mubarak, resigned on Friday.
Congratulations to their new dictator, 75-year-old Gen. Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, head of the Supreme Military Council.
Congratulations to Al Jazeera, the satellite news channel owned by the Arab dictator of Qatar. Al Jazeera didn't just cover the street protests in Egypt, they openly encouraged them. Al Jazeera was against Mubarak because he was an ally of the U.S. and kept peace with Israel.
Congratulations to the Muslim Brotherhood. As their name suggests, they're fundamentalists who want the world to live under Sharia law, with the Qur'an as the constitution. In 1981, they assassinated the last Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat. They didn't have to go to the trouble to get rid of Mubarak this time.
Congratulations to Mohamed ElBaradei, the United Nations bureaucrat who left Egypt 46 years ago for the more pleasant surroundings of New York and Vienna. No organization has been a more loyal protector of dictatorships than the UN. And no UN bureaucrat has done more than ElBaradei, who went to passionate lengths to stop the West from liberating Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and whose most recent achievement was delaying inspections of Iran's nuclear program. Congratulations to him, for managing to convince the world's free press he is the democratic heir apparent in a country he hasn't lived in since the 1960s.
Congratulations to U.S. President Barack Obama. Shortly after his election, he flew to Cairo to make his keynote speech to the Muslim world. In 6,000 rambling words, he barely mentioned freedom or democracy. But he did mention them. He told Egypt that "freedom" meant the freedom for women to wear a religious veil, and that "democracy" was up to each country to interpret "in its own way."
So he must have been pleased these past weeks to see most of the women in Egypt's protests were wearing the Muslim Brotherhood-approved veil. And as a sensitive multiculturalist, Obama surely approves of the newfangled idea of "military democracy." Perhaps the phrase sounds better in Arabic.
Congratulations to Iran, which has for years done its best to undermine Egypt, the largest and most powerful Muslim counterweight in the region. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn't been a tyrant as long as Mubarak. But Ahmadinejad proved during Iran's own rigged elections that a successful dictator doesn't let democracy activists rally day after day in the streets — they are immediately thrown in prison, or just killed. No messy protests are allowed in the Islamic Republic of Iran — unless their hate is directed at Ahmadinejad's enemies.
But most of all, congratulations to the journalists of the mainstream media. As always, this revolution was about them — just ask them. More media attention was given to the fact that CNN's dreamy anchor, Anderson Cooper, was roughed up by protesters than was given to investigating the anti-women, anti-secular, anti-Semitic, anti-western ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, though they're the likely victors of any "election" that might be held in coming months.
Most of today's journalists are too young to have covered the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, so this was their moment. So they are weepy cheerleaders, not reporters. And they are only too happy to say "ditto" to whatever Al Jazeera tells them is happening.
The fact that some of Egypt's protesters use Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter is so flattering because journalists love those too. Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood also uses Twitter and blogs, just as Iran's Ayatollah Khomeinei used audio cassettes in 1979 to spread his Islamic revolution.
And let me congratulate myself for my exquisite hatred of Mubarak, a hatred that predates the current fad. I savour this moment of jubilation and vindication. And I will wait until tomorrow to contemplate my new emotion — a deep fear that, like the fall of Iran's shah in 1979, things are about to get far, far worse.
One hundred-and- fifty-four Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan, not just for the big things such as fighting international terrorists, but for the small things, too.
Like the right of Afghan girls to go to school. Simple things, like the right to listen to music. These things were actually banned under the Taliban, which enforced sharia law.
So what would our soldiers think of Winnipeg's Louis Riel School Division, where a dozen Muslim immigrant families have demanded changes to the curriculum to accommodate their fundamentalist view of Islam? The families don't want boys and girls in the same classes, such as physical education.
And they don't want their children to hear to any instruments or singing in music class, either.
Instead of sending their kids to a private or religious school, they want the public schools to change.
Superintendent Terry Borys says the families are "adamant' about this, despite both phys-ed and music being compulsory. So the suggestion now is the children be allowed do their musical requirements through a 'writing project."
Brilliant. A music class with no music.
No word yet on how they'll accommodate the request for gender apartheid in gym. How long before parents can "adamantly" demand no mere woman teaches their son — or if she does, that she has to wear a veil?
Don’t laugh. Last fall the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Muslim women can ask for a court order to clear men out of a courtroom — court sta ff, lawyers, even the judge — before taking off their veils to testify.
If you want a look at the future, look at the United Kingdom.
In 2007, some schools stopped teaching the Holocaust because it contradicted the anti-Semitic views held by "adamant" families there.
The history of the Crusades was dropped too, because the "balanced" approach taken by schools contradicted what the local mosques were teaching.
And in 2008, schools in Bristol yanked gay-friendly books out of libraries when Muslim parents complained.
Liberal litmus test
This is an uncomfortable subject for liberals. Equality of men and women is an essential western principle. Acceptance of gay rights is the new liberal litmus test. Teaching historical facts in the face of religious faith is the foundation of secular enlightenment.
But many liberals don't confront bigotry when it arrives in the form of an immigrant, non-Christian visible minority.
Here's a tip for politically correct liberals wondering how to respond to sexist, anti-gay, anti-Semitic demands from new Canadians: Pretend they're old white Christian men.
If the Pope demanded public schools shut down music classes or boys and girls be segregated, you can imagine the outrage. We're well trained in the phrase "separation of church and state."
Well, how about separation of mosque and state? How about promoting Canadian values?
Last week, British PM David Cameron said he'd had enough. "We've even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values. So, when a white person holds objectionable views ... we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices come from someone who isn't white, we've been too cautious frankly — frankly, even fearful — to stand up to them."
Cameron vows to cut off funding to any group that opposes the equality of women, or integration of immigrants.
Who is the better liberal: Cameron or the Winnipeg school board?
My new Sun column looks at Obama's role in Egypt. I'm not sure if even Reagan could save Egypt from going the way of Iran. But at least he would have tried.
Can you name a single Arab country that has switched from being a dictatorship to a democracy?
The only answer is Iraq. And the explanation for that is 200,000 U.S. and British troops who kicked out Saddam Hussein’s military dictatorship in 2003, and the 50,000 U.S. soldiers still there today, protecting that democracy from Iran-backed terrorists.
Iraqis tried to liberate themselves with a series of rebellions in 1991, after the first Gulf War had weakened Saddam. But the West didn’t lift a finger to help, so Saddam crushed them.
Not that revolutions are impossible in the Middle East. But the only successful ones are military coups, replacing one dictatorship with another.
Why should Egypt be any different?
Unlike Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall fell, Egypt does not have a critical mass of democratic, liberal leaders waiting in the wings. In Poland, for example, Lech Walesa had been fighting against the dictatorship for years, organizing independent unions and participating in illegal strikes. In Egypt, the most active dissidents are with the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood.
And unlike the sustained covert assistance that Walesa and other activists received from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, Egypt’s liberals have been forsaken.
The West gave groups like Walesa’s Solidarity financial and organizational support. But more important was moral support. In 1983 Reagan called the Soviet bloc an “evil empire.” Liberal media mocked him as an uncouth cowboy. But Soviet dissidents saw it differently.
Anatoly Sharansky was a Russian human rights activist rotting in a Siberian gulag when he heard about Reagan’s remarks. “Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan’s ‘provocation’ quickly spread throughout the prison,” he later wrote. “We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth.” The Pope actually went into Poland — the first pope to visit a Communist regime — and his message, first heard in his inaugural address as pontiff, was crystal clear: “Be not afraid”. When people lose their fear of a tyrant, his days are numbered.
U.S. President Barack Obama had his chance for his own Reagan moment in Egypt. A few months after his inauguration, he flew to Cairo. No doubt Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s dictator, was as nervous as the Polish dictators were. And Egypt’s dissidents were as hopeful as Walesa had been.
But the opposite happened.
In a rambling, 6,000-word speech, Obama used the word freedom only five times, and the first two were to sheepishly convince his dumbfounded audience that America was free. He said his government had “gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it.” So he didn’t come to Cairo to promote freedom of women not to wear veils. He came to tell them how he was fighting for veils back in America.
Democracy got a token mention, too — four words out of 6,000. Again, it was half-hearted. “I know, I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq.” Iraqis were finally free of Saddam, and he was apologizing.
He then said, “Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way.” Egypt has rigged elections. How could Obama’s remarks be taken as anything other than approval?
That was two years ago.
Today protests in Egyptian streets are being actively promoted by Iran. And the leading candidate for president is an anti-American, UN bureaucrat who has publicly endorsed the Muslim Brotherhood.
Egypt will have its revolution in the end — Mubarak has promised as much. The Muslim Brotherhood will get today for free what they didn’t get when they assassinated Egypt’s last president in 1981.
Had Obama given a rousing speech for freedom, it probably wouldn’t have been enough. But his timid, embarrassed mumbles surely share part of the credit for the brazen confidence of the Muslim Brotherhood these past weeks.
WASHINGTON -- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Friday urged U.S. officials to approve a proposed oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, calling Canada a "secure, stable and friendly" neighbor that poses no threat to U.S. security.
By contrast, many other countries that supply oil are not stable, secure or friendly to U.S. interests, Harper said at a White House news conference following a meeting with President Barack Obama.
Harper did not name any other country, but pipeline supporters have singled out countries such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iran as places where the United States faces security threats and instability. Canada's environment minister has used the term "ethical oil" to describe his country's crude supplies, saying Canada respects human rights, workers' rights and environmental responsibility.
Al Gore went from wooden vice presidential drone to a Nobel Prize-winning, Oscar-winning billionaire sex machine in just a decade through the magic of Global Warming™.
Which got me thinking.
Ethical Oil is fine and all. But I think that Global Colding™ is where the big action is at this decade. Though it looks like I've got to wrestle Tim Blair for the rights.
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