New Media

The Taliban continue to one-up themselves when it comes to conduct unbecoming an officer human being:

A 12-year-old boy caught in the act Friday as he put a homemade bomb under a road in the volatile Zhari District grabbed a baby as a human shield to protect himself from attack from the United States helicopter that spotted him…

“The Taliban are obviously manipulating children and using them as cannon fodder,” said Major Robert Dunn of Ottawa, who oversees operations in southern and western Kandahar.

“There is one place west of Kandahar City where they shoot at us every day through a shield of children. They actually stack them up, with 8-year-olds at the front and 15-year-olds at the back.”

Entirely predictable, given the rules of engagement the international mission is working under in Afghanistan.

Not to say that our rules are bad. Avoiding civilian casualties is and has been a top priority from the very beginning of this fight, at least from our side. In fact, the international community and sovereign Afghan government cannot beat the Taliban without such a policy firmly in place.

Just pointing out once more the terrible challenge of fighting an enemy whose only use for Geneva Convention documents would be as toilet paper. It’s a hellish job. But it’s necessary.

Another example of brave resistance by the “freedom fighters”

It’s long past time for environmentalists to confront a strategic problem that is partly of their own making. Ideological partisans who favor doing nothing to build our societies on a more sustainable foundation (out of irrational fear that such responsible action would constitute communist-style state interference) have done an excellent job in framing the entire environmental conservation movement within the contentious climate change debate. Perhaps owing to this, the latest Pew study showing Americans are less concerned about global warming than just a year ago (although a majority still does believe the USA should be joining other countries in setting climate change standards). This plays right into the obstructionists’ hands.

The science of climate change can never conclusively prove that humans are to blame for increasingly wacky weather and climate phenomena (ie. melting icecaps, increasing incidence of forest fires, floods, hurricanes and me shoveling the six feet of snow that built up on the roof of my Vancouver apartment building last winter). With so many variables affecting weather and climate, someone can always claim that climate change is really caused by all of the energy expelled in the production of climate change science reports. Without definitive proof, the climate change “debate” degenerates into PR battles that cherry-pick facts to prove… well, nothing. For climate-change “deniers”, that’s the point — lack of 100 per cent verifiability leads to indecision and lack of action. They win by default.

There’s no question that the green movement got its biggest boost in recent history with the screening of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Since then, the environmental movement has kept on using that film as a centerpiece of green evangelizing. This takes focus off of related environmental issues that seem to have a better chance of changing minds about the need for action at the state level, not just at the local level of those who already buy local, recycle, bike to work and so on. Just a few examples:

1. We’re running out of energy. Remember how high energy prices got before the economy took a nosedive? Back when the economy was humming, demand outpaced supply, driving up the cost of not just the stuff we put into our cars, but everything else. When the economy picks up, energy demand will rise once more, worse than before.

2. Desertification is spreading. When all the water and forests are gone, bad things happen. Look at the poorest, most messed-up countries in the world and you’ll notice that most of them don’t have any trees in them. The area we call the “Fertile Crescent” is practically devoid of forests (as the denizens of this ancient land chopped them down long ago) and is also the number-one flashpoint for violence and conflict in the world. Coincidence? Nope. It’s not all about religion and culture; environmental degradation has already been the cause of poverty, misery, riots, revolutions and interstate conflicts.

3. Pollution kills people. As an example, we have Bangladesh, where air pollution is blamed for taking the lives of 46,000 people per year. That’s fifteen 9/11-sized casualty counts, per year, for one country.

Climate change is important and is connected with all three of the issues mentioned above. But it’s not the only point of discussion. Environmentalists need to hit the obstructionists with the issues — all of the issues. The alternative is debating climate change until long after the environmental issues have become environmental disasters.

Reporters Without Borders reports that Canada’s freedom of speech has measurably suffered, apparently due in part to the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s censorious activities (Details at Ezra Levant’s blog). Chris Waddell, a journalism professor at Carleton University, criticizes the institution in the CP thusly:

Waddell says the second thing that comes to mind is the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which has come under fire recently over a couple of high-profile cases.

One of those cases involved a Mark Steyn book excerpt on the Maclean’s magazine web site. The excerpt was accused of promoting hatred and contempt of Muslims.

That case was tossed out, but led some to demand that the commission be disbanded.

Mind you, we’re still ahead of the Yanks. Apparently, the Danes are today’s beacon of freedom in the world.

Getting back to the point, though, isn’t it long past time to disband the CHRC?

Rex Murphy’s Take on the CHRC

Were the fellows caught off the waters of Vancouver Island trying to sneak into Canada really refugees? It’s not looking that way so far. If they’re not, they ought to be sent back, and fast — or we’re going to be promoting even more queue-jumping ahead of the refugees who are truly in need of a safe harbor.

First of all, if the first reports that these men are from Sri Lanka are to be believed, then they are part of the mass migration of Sri Lankans leaving their country to avoid “the aftermath of a bloody civil war”. But with the war over, and no reports of violent reprisals from either the government or now-defunct Tamil Tigers, the threat of violence is really hypothetical — as opposed to the actual rampant violence faced by nationals in Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Mexico, Sudan, Somalia… well you get the idea.

Some might bring up the horrible conditions of those Sri Lankans stuck in the refugee camps in the newly captured northern territory of their island. Undoubtedly, those people in the camps should be given help and resettled… in their homes, in Sri Lanka. But it’s beside the point anyway, since the men taken off the boat are clearly not stuck in tents eating gruel on the other side of the world. Instead, they’ll be housed here on the taxpayers’ dime until we make a decision about what to do with them.

When we typically think of refugees, we typically picture them as desperate people seeking a better life free of bullets, starvation and red-hot pokers. You would expect such people to first seek the geographically closest nation that could take them in. The Sri Lankan asylum seekers landing in Australia and Indonesia seem to fit that bill better than all the way across the Indian and Pacific Oceans to our neck of the woods (and India’s coast is practically a swim from Sri Lankan territory). So why did they come out all this way?

Longtime support of the Tamil community from Canada (even when a lot of the dollars that got sent appeared to end up in the hands of terrorists) may have something to do with it. A reputation for having a broken immigration system is another. Sri Lankans aren’t coming here because they fear bullets in the back of their heads — they’re coming here because Canada is a rich country, and they want the opportunities for themselves and their families that they just can’t get in their own country. These are laudable reasons for coming here and Canada absolutely needs enterprising individuals to come and work, build businesses and contribute to our communities — but if that’s what they want, they should arrive after fulfilling immigration requirements, not as fake refugees.

If these boat people are the real deal, in immediate danger from war or political violence, then they ought to be let in as refugees. If not, we should deport them. We can and should let refugees into our country to live lives in peace and freedom — the real refugees, that is.

Actually, not. But I thought it made a more interesting headline.

The real story, to absolutely no one’s surprise:

The action in Geneva by the 47-nation council was a sharp setback for Israel, which had labored to discredit the month-old U.N. report. The council’s vote could force Israel to defend itself for months or perhaps years — in diplomatic forums, if not criminal tribunals — as U.N. bodies grapple with highly charged fallout from last winter’s conflict in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

While the council embraced a report that condemned both sides, the resolution itself criticized only Israel and was adopted by a wide margin.