kimmy

The whole campaign strategy smacks of arrogance. It's unfortunate and off-putting. "The election is not the time to talk about issues. We'll explain our plans after we're re-elected." Blah. Up yours, Ralph. -kimmy

Native population was just a guess. Given the completely disasterous health statistics amongst Canada's aboriginal populace, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if higher infant mortality was among them. Alberta has over 5% native populace, as opposed to under 2% in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes and 4% in BC. However, Manitoba and Saskatchewan do indeed have over 13% native population, so obviously my guess is off the mark. -kimmy

I think that the page I linked to did a thorough and logical job debunking the video you posted, Syrup. Did you actually read it? Specifically, the March 2002 photograph of repair efforts underway at the Pentagon reveals the full extent of the damage to the Pentagon and the amount of penetration the airliner achieved, which in itself counters most of the claims made in the video. Go back and read the page I linked to, Syrup. Did you mean the debunking page I posted, or Syrup's top 10 conspiracy theories page? (this one: Of Big Oil, By Big Oil, For Big Oil ) I did find this page very interesting, because much of what it says is very logical. However, most of the arguments he presents fall into 2 categories: * Why the US government would be motivated to participate in such a massive deceit. (#1, #2, #10) * The that it is possible. (#7, #8, #9) Yes, there are certainly reasons why having an excuse to invade Afghanistan worked out pretty well for certain people. But he seems to be trying to lead us to the conclusion that Bin Laden was framed... which falls somewhat flat, when Bin Laden himself was on our TVs just a few weeks ago explaining how he conceived of the attacks. To me, it would seem the only way conspiracy theorists could work around that is to conclude that Osama is acting on behalf of the US government. -kimmy

For a critical assessment of the claims made in the video, check out... http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/pentagon.htm Even the most wild-eyed fruitcakes will have to concede that the Twin Towers are, in fact, gone, yes? The numerous independant videos of airliners striking them would have been rather difficult to fake, yes? On a morning when 3 other airplanes were hijacked and crashed within a short time of each other, 2 of them being flown with precision into buildings, is it really that hard to believe that a 4th plane was crashed by hijackers? Or are we to believe that the incident at the Pentagon was completely unrelated to the other events which happened at exactly the same time? How does Occam's Razor go, again? -kimmy

There certainly must be some explanation for the infant mortality rate being 1.9 over the national average and for it rising in 4 straight years. Immediately pointing to the healthcare system might be premature, however. The article mentions Alberta having lower birth weights than the national average, and a higher number of pre-term births. That, to me, suggests maybe there's some environmental or cultural factor coming into play. It might be as simple as Alberta having a higher proportion of native population than the national average, which (as horrible as it sounds) might be enough to explain the higher infant mortality rate on its own. -kimmy

Thanks, caesar I saw tonight on CTV that the resorts at Whistler are planning on hiring only 80% of their usual staff, in anticipation of lower tourism thanks to the plummeting US dollar. Not good news for young Canadians who work in the hospitality industry. -kimmy

My French being as poor as it is, I relied on the Google translator, and hopefully I got the essense of what he was saying. I guess this is the flip-side of my post last week about Muslims bearing a responsibility to speak out against the extremists within their own community. I remember during Gulf War v1.0 , even young as I was at that time, watching CNN with daddy. The whole experience fascinated me immensely. Particularly haunting was the footage of the Iraqi anti-aircraft weaponry firing tracer-bullets into the night sky in desperate, futile hope of hitting one of the ghosts that was raining explosives upon Baghdad. An analyst mentioned one phrase which I still remember. In discussing the durability of the Coalition's relationship with Iraq's Arab neighbors, the analyst replied that an old Arab tradition is "With a brother agaisnt a cousin; with a cousin against a stranger." Meaning, even though there may be divisions within the Arab world, their tradition and sense of loyalty dictates that whatever those divisions might be, they stand together against an outsider. In a sense, one can see the same attitude in the response to Mr Martineau's request. -kimmy

Here's a challenge, Big Blue... go to your kitchen and look through everything on your shelves. See if you can guess which ones have trans-fats. Read the labels. I bet you can't figure out which ones have trans-fats in them. -kimmy

One company (I think it was Voortman's cookies) got some positive press a while ago by removing trans-fats from all of its products. The president said it was the right thing to do, and confessed that it didn't actually take a lot of effort to do it. -kimmy

Some people might cite Australia's participation in the Iraq invasion as the reason for Al Qaeda's enmity towards the Aussies. They'd be wrong, of course; the Bali bombing, targetting a resort popular with western tourists but Aussies in particular, was of course prior to the Iraq invasion. Well, they'd reply, maybe it's because of Australia's participation in the Afghanistan invasion. Well, not really. Australia has been on Bin Laden's hit list since 1999, before the Afghanistan invasion. Bin Laden has spoken of Australia's role in the UN-approved intervention in East Timor as an outrage against Islam. Perhaps the apologists would argue that the UN intervention in East Timor is an attack on the sovereignty of the Muslim state of Indonesia. Perhaps the apologists would look for some way in which the Catholic East Timorese somehow provoked their slaughter at the hands of the Muslim militias. Perhaps if the Aussies had just looked the other way, if they'd ignored the UN resolution to stop the slaughter in their own back yard, maybe those 88 Aussie tourists wouldn't have been killed in Bali. But that seems to me a long way to bend over to appease the terrorists. I bring up the Aussies and East Timor because it strikes me as a good example of the problem of this mentality that the Islamist terrorists are just sticking up for their people. The problem, specifically, is with who decides what the Islamists will take offense to or strike back against. We don't decide what they decide is worth fighting over. The UN doesn't decide. A rational, impartial observer doesn't decide what the Islamists will fight against. The Islamists decided what they will fight against. They decided that the "illegal" Iraq invasion was an attack on Islam... but they also decided that the UN-approved, Chomsky-endorsed, genocide-preventing intervention in East Timor was an attack on Islam. I just don't trust the judgment of the terrorists, and shaping our world policy to take into account what they might view as an insult is just plain insanity. -kimmy

Well, they'll never form a government, so their policy platform doesn't matter to me. I think Brian Mason is better suited than Taft to the job of opposition leader. -kimmy

Yes, I read the editorial the first time. I did indeed "Think about it." Did you think about it? I understand that the author of the editorial didn't like the movie, but that alone doesn't make it hate literature. I understand that the Muslim community didn't like the movie, but that doesn't make it hate literature either. I'm not prepared to take their word for it that it's hate literature. It could easily be a case of "the truth hurts." Suppose somebody made a documentary about sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Is that "hate literature", or is it "the truth hurts"? You can't answer that question without watching the movie. And you can't tell me that making that movie is an abuse of free speech just because it makes Catholics angry. Sometimes important messages are controversial. Sometimes important messages make people upset. That's the whole point of free speech. Speech that nobody objects to doesn't need to be protected. Speech that is controversial needs protection. -kimmy

Why????? I explained "why" pretty thoroughly in my previous post to Terrible Sweal. I'm not a Christian. I'm not a member of that community. So the comparison you're hoping to make doesn't apply. But yes, I have taken part in denouncing what I saw as extremist Christians. I've written letters and editorials. Not that my voice is even needed in this regard, since our society as a whole keeps a tight watch on Christians. There is vigourous public debate amongst Christians about all issues within the church. There's no equivalent within the Muslim community, as far as I can tell. Yes, I'm aware of the situation in Ireland. What has that got to do with anything? We should not be apologizing for anyone or anything. That's a large part of the problem, as I see it at least. We hold Muslims and others to lower standards because we don't want to seem intolerant. -kimmy

Now that is a real confidence builder. I guess it pays to take the time to do a daily backup. What I meant was that the programs that are dangerous to remove were ones that made the computer impossible to use... in other words, if Eureka had anything like that one his computer, he wouldn't be posting messages here. Generally, if you have a serious spyware problem on your computer, you're going to know it. I have Mandrake 10.0 installed on one of my other computers, and in a dual-boot setup on this one. I'm still learning some of the intricacies, but for the most part, the new distributions seem to make it pretty smoothly. With the easy setup and all the public licence software available, I think it is becoming a viable alternative to Windows. And having alternatives is a good thing. -kimmy

Have you actually seen this movie, Syrup? If not, then how did you decide it would be considered hate literature? -kimmy

That might be true, caesar, but what harm can it do? For anybody who hasn't heard about these kinds of problems, knowing could do a lot of good. Eureka: whether it's safe to remove that stuff or not depends on what kind of stuff it is. For most stuff that Ad-Aware will turn up, it should be safe to delete. When Ad-Aware takes you to the page where it lists the things it found, you should see a row of check-boxes. You can click in the boxes to select them (or right-click and choose "Select All".) Almost everything should be safe. I've only ever encountered a couple of things that created problems during removal... and they were things that crippled the victims' computer so badly it was virtually unusable. Cartman: I'm not expert in exactly what makes IE susceptible to this kind of crap, but I believe it has to do with the integration of ActiveX. It's supposed to be a feature (for doing stuff like automatically installing plug-ins or performing Windows Updates...) but winds up being a vulnerability. Specifics, I'm not aware of (my job was to calm people down, identify their problem, and walk them through a solution.) As for why I use Firefox instead of IE, well, aside from being safer from those kinds of problems, it's also so much nicer to use. Tabbed browsing, built-in search! Yay! -kimmy

Seriously, Cartman. I mean it. Do I seem *that* right wing? I don't really think I am. Just because I make fun of Maplesyrup a lot doesn'tmean I'm an arch-conservative... it just means I find Maplesyrup funny. The Tories are going to form the government, which truthfully I don't mind. And even if my vote helps elect an NDP MLA in my riding, there's no chance of them forming a government. That would be ridiculous. Democracy works best when there's credible opposition to the party in power. I don't mind the Tories, but I don't want them to get any more complacent or arrogant than they already are. So yes, I'm voting for the NDP, even though I honestly couldn't care less about what policies they hold. -kimmy

There's a problem with that point of view. You are purporting to place a positive obligation to do something on people who have done no wrong. You're not a child abuser are you? No? Well, then why aren't you out campaiging against child abuse? You're not a con-artist are you? No? How odd that you haven't built a website against grifters, then. I wouldn't say an obligation. I would say that it's in their self interest to do so. Your examples are a little off the mark. I'll offer a couple that I think are a better parallel with the dilemna a moderate Muslim might face. Imagine I'm a Pro Life activist. Imagine I'm going to meetings, I'm handing out pamphlets, I'm doing whatever Pro Life activists do to promote their beliefs peacefully. In the course of doing so, I encounter amongst my group some people who have angry and extreme views about abortion providers. After talking with them, I start getting the idea that they might seriously be capable of plotting a clinic bombing or a sniper-attack on an abortion clinic worker. If I'm truly sincere in my pro-life beliefs then I owe it to those beliefs to take some kind of action. First off, because a clinic bombing or sniper-attack would bring disrepute upon the whole pro-life movement. And secondly because committing murder is in itself against my pro-life beliefs. Or, imagine I'm a gay rights advocate. If some bozo opens a chapter of the Man-Boy Love Association in my city, I'm going to war against them, because their fucked up beliefs are going to turn public opinion against the work that I'm trying to do, even though I don't have any personal connection with them other than being gay. In fact, the presense of the Man-Boy Love Association probably puts my own personal safety at risk. Friendly, easy-going moderate Muslims ought to recognize the threat posed to their own well-being by the small fringe of radicals in their community. Firstly, because the bad apples bring negative attention to the whole community (as being seen in Holland right now) and secondly, because if rejecting hate is truly a core belief in Islam, then they owe it to their beliefs to act against the extremists in their own community. -kimmy

As a former Microsoft technical support agent, I can tell you that at least 3/4 of cases I dealt with were due to security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. I use Firefox, and I wouldn't even consider using IE as my primary browser. And, if you haven't already, read about spyware here: Microsoft security info and obtain Ad-Aware here: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ or Spybot S&D here: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ (both are free.) And it goes without saying that if you haven't got anti-virus protection on your computer, you should get some, ASAP! An antivirus program which I use on my own computer and have found to be superb is available at: http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/1/ It's available for free to home users! The internet can be a dangerous place! Be careful! -kimmy

First off: golly, Syrup... did you see the woman's mug-shot? If scoring with that pig would have made you the school hero, you must have gone to one messed up school. Second: not exactly sure how this is federal politics, but whatever. Third: I bet not very many parents would be as enthusiastic as you to hear that a teacher was introducing their kids to alcohol, marijuana, and prostitution. If I found out that some teacher was buying sex from my hypothetical child and offering around booze and drugs, I would be taking a blowtorch and pliers to parent-teacher night. And finally... "doing what comes naturally" might cut it if you're a chimpanzee... but as human beings I like to think that we have choices. Having seen her photo, I have no doubt that she is a very lonely woman; however I would suggest that one of the choices available to her would have been buying some D-cells for her pocket-rocket and renting some videos instead of paying children to have sex with her. -kimmy

Klein has said this is his last election, but he's also said he's committed to serving a full term. Alberta's Liberals are rather invisible. The ND are more visible and vocal critics of the government. There has to be an opposition in the Legislature, and I don't think the Liberals have the stomach for the job. I will be voting NDP, and not because I especially like them, just that there has to be some opposition under the Dome and the NDP are, as I see it, the only party with the intestinal fortitude for the job. -kimmy

Garbage!! If the right to free speech extends only to the point where it makes people uncomfortable or where people don't like what you're saying, then it's completely worthless. -kimmy

Roger that, syrup! I've read it and am ready to discuss. One thing I wonder as I read this is that if Holland is, indeed, one of the most liberal societies in Europe, then why would curtailing immigration from Turkey and Morrocco be such a bad thing? It sounds like Holland might not be a good place for conservative Muslims. It sounds like their beliefs will be at odds with the society. Another thing that occurs to me is that those 1 million overwhelmingly peaceful Muslims in Holland have to take a little ownership of the situation. Of course, the Muslims always denounce things like the Van Gogh murder AFTER the fact. Nice effort, gang, but too late to be any good. Moderate and peaceful Muslims will need to be more pro-active in denouncing the extremists in their community. We continually hear the positive P.R. work, the informational outreach booths on university campuses and so-on, all informing us that Islam is the religion of peace, we have only tolerance and love, Islam denounces violence and hate, etc. If Islam denounces violence and hate, shouldn't they be a little busier with the denouncing? But they don't denounce it. They deny its existance within their community. The only hate they seem interested in denouncing is hate directed towards them. For example, take the Dar al-Madinah mosque in Vancouver which came to light after Vancouverite Rudwan Khalil mysteriously turned up in Chechnya fighting Russian security forces. After all the negative press about the hateful anti-Jewish sermons, we get denial and disassociation from mainstream Muslims. "Whoa whoa, wait, he's crazy, he doesn't speak for us." That might be true, but wouldn't it be a little more convincing and reassuring if it didn't take until after a flurry of negative publicity to have this denouncement take place? Surely somebody in Vancouver's mainstream Muslim community was aware of Sheik Kathrada and knew what kind of venom he was spewing... if they were more active in policing their own, it would make their talk of rejecting hate as a principle of Islam seem like more than empty words. -kimmy

I was seven years old when the war ended... the Persian Gulf War... and I guess I should be thankful that I can't even imagine what it would be like to go off to war. I have only the deepest respect for those that have done so. I watched some of the coverage of the Ottawa ceremonies on CBC Newsworld this morning. Towards the end of the show, one of the reporters interviewed a 16 year old girl who was collecting signatures for her petition in favor of Canadian intervention in Rwanda. She seemed so pumped up about it that it made me want to smack her. "We're Canadians, we should go fight for peoples' rights because that's what we believe in (etc.)" First off, chick, I know you're not in the military, because you're 16. Second, I know that even if you were in the military, you wouldn't be on the front line because you're female. So you're collecting signatures to risk other peoples lives in a situation you'll never face. That's mighty big of you, miss. Personally, I would be quite ashamed to be campaigning for others to be making such a sacrifice that I wasn't prepared to give myself. I am glad that we live in a country that has only voluntary military service. And I hope that our leadership will always be very careful and wise in deciding when to put Canadian lives at risk. -kimmy

I think my earlier post might have been unclear. I'd like to just take a moment to repair an ambiguous phrase. When I said: What I meant was: "I'm not sure that the Christian celebration this week amongst US soldiers (as described in Black Dog's article) would be as offensive to Muslims as the beef-tallow musket-wadding was to the Hindu soldiers." I hadn't been aware that there were Muslims among the Sepoy, but as I said I'm no historian. You might be right in that they're both examples of cultural insensitivity. But I do feel there's a difference. Asking Hindus to handle beef-tallow grease (or Muslims to handle pork-fat, as you mention) is an affront to their religion. On the otherhand, allowing Christians to worship is actually spelled out in Islam. "Dhimmis". I'm not sure if it's specified in the Quran or the Hadiths, but it's a tradition that goes all the way back to Mohammed, so Christians worshipping (albeit loudly) shouldn't be an affront to Muslims. -kimmy