Monday Post

Back to regularly scheduled programming.


Michael Ignatieff wants a coalition to help bring down a functioning government. Canada's Obama is hard at work.


Heather Mallick, if Harper were to win a majority, people like you would still wrap your heads in tin foil.



Because Kim Jong-Il cares...about himself:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has sent half a million dollars to aid Korean expatriates in Japan after the devastating earthquake and tsunami, Pyongyang's official news agency said on Thursday.


Decades of tightly controlled economic policy that has seen North Korea channel much of its scarce resources to arms development has left the country acutely short of cash although its leaders continue to live lavishly, according to South Korean news reports. Food is also reportedly scarce.

Japan, formerly Korea's colonial master, is frequently lambasted as a "war monger" in North Korea's state-controlled media along with South Korea and the United States.

"Leader Kim Jong-il sent (a) relief fund of 500,000 U.S. dollars to Korean residents in Japan who suffered from the killer quake and tsunami happened there," KCNA news agency said.

Half a million U.S. dollars is equivalent to the annual average income earned by 520 North Koreans in all of 2009, according to Bank of Korea data.

 U.N. sanctions in 2009 imposed for its nuclear and missile tests that defied international warnings have further cut into North Korea's finances, choking off much of its lucrative arms trade.

The North's Red Cross has separately sent $100,000 in disaster relief to Japan, KCNA said.

What prompted this act of "generosity" on Kim Jong-Il's part? Forgiveness or compassion for Korea's former foe? Hardly. Why not show everyone what truly humane man he is? If this meaningless stunt was meant to avert the world's gaze at his atrocities, no one is buying it!



Because he's Ezra Levant:

Saturday was so-called Earth Hour, a publicity stunt created by the World Wildlife Fund where enthusiasts were supposed to stop using electricity for an hour. Only a rich, luxuriant society would fetishize poverty and want. Japan is still rebuilding; there are still parts of that country where electricity is not back on. They are in a permanent state of Earth Hour deprivation — not as some fashion statement but because of a tragedy. How is that state of despair a morally commendable situation?

It was human development, industry, capitalism, electricity — and in Japan’s case, safe nuclear power — that has made the difference between their more modest death toll and the 230,000 who died in Indonesia’s earthquake and tsunami in 2004, or the 220,000 who died last year in Haiti. Haiti’s earthquake was less than 1% as powerful; it was their lack of industrial development that made it so deadly.

Is that really the state of affairs we want to be worshipped on Earth Day? For centuries, guilty, rich, white liberals have professed their admiration for the “noble savage” — an unspoiled man, typically in a pre-industrial civilization, not yet spoiled by our modern ways or troubles.

It’s a fantasy, it’s condescending, it’s political psychotherapy for the idle rich who feel guilty about how easy their own lives are, and who are clearly looking for some spiritual meaning they themselves lack. But in a world where there are enough natural threats to man’s happiness and longevity, fetishizing primitive economies is a suicidal fetish.

Yes!


Would any of the "thoughtful" eco-bots care to trade places with the poor people of Japan? They live in the dark; they are now destitute and hungry. Isn't that what Earth Hour is all about- being without the necessities of life like ready electricity and running water?



Just ONE of the reasons why Earth Hour and its fetid cousin, Earth Day, are a joke.



Why speaking skills matter.



Hideaki Akaiwa: Last Action Hero.