One to file under the heading of "irony"

The daily mails is reporting that one of the largest supporters of the British National Party has a Serbian wife:

Clearly, then, they don't know much about their own squire's new bride. For, by the deepest of ironies, the Mail has discovered that the latest lady in the Wentworth manor is of Eastern European extraction.
Strolling along a damp autumnal lane in her Wellingtons and padded jacket this week, her pet Doberman straining at the leash, the wife of the BNP's arch-backer looked every inch the English landowner's wife.
Yet the maiden name of 39-year-old Zorka Wentworth was Ilic. Her mother is from Kosovo, her late father Serbian. Having fled to Britain in the 1950s to escape the tyrannical communism of Yugoslavia under Tito, they were precisely the sort of immigrants who would be barred from entering the country if Griffin had his way.

BNP leader: Nick Griffin's policies would ban Zorka from joining his party
Although she was born in Bedfordshire, Zorka considers herself half-English and half-Serb, speaks with a very slight Eastern European accent (presumably because she was raised to be bilingual), is Serb Orthodox by religion and celebrates both Serbian and English festivals.
This kind of duality would hardly be welcomed in Griffin's ethnically sanitised Utopia. After all, during last week's Question Time debacle, the BNP leader described white Britons as 'aboriginals': English, Scots, Irish and Welsh people 'who have been here for the last 17,000 years'.
Ludicrously, Mrs Wentworth - who met her husband eight years ago, when she was working as a chef in the local pub, and became his third wife last year - would not even be permitted to join the party her husband bankrolls so generously.

Speaking of narcissism

George Will makes an odd point:

In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns "I" or "me" 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences conveyed the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago's case compelling.

A linguist objects at language log: Fact-checking George F. Will, one more time, but not for the first time:

• "Fact-checking George F. Will" (6/7/2009)
  
• "Obama's Imperial 'I': spreading the meme" (6/8/2009)
  
• "Inaugural pronouns" (6/8/2009)
  
• "Another pack member heard from" (6/9/2009)
  
• "I again" (7/13/2009)
  
• "'I' is a camera" (7/18/2009).

Now, to make a public fool out of yourself by writing an intellectually lazy column once is part of being a columnist. But to do it repeatedly because you haven't bothered to look at reactions to your columns, might that be a sign of narcissism?

CJC weighs in on the Lemire decision

With regard to this, the Canadian Jewish Congress says Lemire case decision wrong in law:

Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) said today it believes the decision in the case of Warman v. Lemire is wrong in law and should be appealed. CJC also noted it believes section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) remains constitutional.

The case involves a complaint filed against Marc Lemire, webmaster of freedomsite.org, by Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, for a number of alleged antisemitic postings on Lemire's web site.

"We are pleased that Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Member Athanasios Hadjis found that some of the material posted by Lemire violated s. 13 of the CHRA. However, we strongly disagree with his decision not to impose a cease and desist order because he believed the penalty provisions in the Act render s. 13 unconstitutional," said Joel Richler, CJC National Honourary Legal Counsel.

"Reasonable people can differ regarding the penalty provisions of the Act - that is a matter for the Federal Court of Canada to determine," said Richler.

"The Supreme Court of Canada clearly ruled that s. 13 was constitutional long before the penalty provisions were added to it. As such, Mr. Hadjis should have simply ignored the penalty provisions and applied the appropriate cease and desist order against Mr. Lemire," he added.

CHRT decision on Lemire

Interesting news yesterday. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled in a case about Marc Lemire and his site, freedomsite.org. Lemire has more or less been acquited: what he wrote himself was (apart from one post) not sufficiently hate-inducing to be penalized. Also, the CHRT finds that the section of the act covering penalties was unconstitutional, which surprises me. More later.

too true

I'd like one of these, please

FT: Apple Tablet Coming for Christmas:

Rumors that Apple is planning to release some kind of tablet-type device in the near future have been gaining steam over the past few weeks, and now The Financial Times is on board with reports that it will hit store shelves in time for the holiday buying season. Apparently the device will launch along with new content deals from the entertainment industry, and will also include some type of Internet connectivity -- most likely Wi-Fi.

The entertainment industry seems to be excited about Apple's tablet. "It's a portable entertainment device," an unnamed entertainment executive commented. "It's going to be fabulous for watching movies."

The tablet may also offer interactive booklets and liner notes to go along with electronic album purchases, which is likely a move to help boost CD-length album sales.

Scare tactics unjustified

There's quite an upset back in Canada on the recent advertisements of Shona Holmes, who has made a commercial for an American lobby group in which she claims that she had a brain tumour that threatened her life, that her treatment was delayed in Ontario, and that she had to pay for her own treatment by going to the Mayo clinic in the States. There is plenty of reason to wonder whether her story has not been so exaggerated that the story is essentially false (see Canadian blogger Creative Revolution on the groups who are funding Ms. Holmes other anti-medicare legal cases.

What I want to say now is that every system has cracks, and Ms. Holmes may have fallen through one. But having lived in Canada most of my life and now being in the States, I think I should assure my American neighbours that in my life I've never heard of anything like what Ms. Holmes reports. Yes, people have to wait sometimes for non-life threatening treatment. Sometimes they are suffering to various degrees during the wait. But life-threatening conditions gets quick attention. And most importantly -- everyone in Canada has access. No one goes untreated because they're uninsured.

Man wins rights case against B.C. neo-Nazi.

I just noticed this story from last month.

Man wins rights case against B.C. neo-Nazi:

Richard Warman has settled his federal human rights complaint about Internet hate posted by a Coquitlam man.

As part of a mediated settlement, Ciaran Paul Donnelly of Coquitlam agreed to permanently close his account on Stormfront, a U.S. website through which the hate messages were distributed, and ask to have his earlier postings deleted. He has also agreed to pay $1,000 in damages for making veiled threats against Warman and posting a picture of a sign reading: "The Church of Dead Warman."

Terms of the settlement, which prohibit Donnelly from posting further hate propaganda on the Internet or engaging in additional retaliation against Warman, will be registered with the Federal Court of Canada.

Small world

One of the interesting aspects of being a new blogger is finding friends and acquaintances in the blogging community.

For example, the blog Winters in Israel is written by a fellow from Jersey I happened to meet last year. He describes his experiences being a snowbird (as we Canadians call them) in Israel. In this interesting post, David Stolow describes a plumbing accident and the buckets and mops and other clean-up stuff needed to clean up a plumbing mishap. Elsewhere he gives his views on the Israeli election.

Blood and Politics and the mainstreaming of the White Nationalist movement

Over at the TPMCafé bookclub, Leonard Zeskind offers a brief description of his book Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. In it, he describes how

While this movement draws heavily from the constitutional understandings common at the time of the Dred Scott decision, they do not seek a return to Jim Crow segregation. Rather they are looking to create in the future a whites-only republic on the North American continent. In the vernacular of the civil rights movement, these white supremacists are not trying to put black people (and other people of color) in their "place," rather in their world there is no place for black people.

He urges against seeing these movements as necessarily allied or harmonious:

White power skinheads in this treatment are less "street soldiers" for older racists, and more a sub-cultural mini-movement searching for its own political territory. You will watch the anti-immigrant movement grow out of racist and white nationalist concerns, not out of economic hard times for white people.

On underestimation

A cool little factlet embedded in an article on estimations about the costs of climate change:

In 1980, McKinsey reported to AT&T that mobile subscriptions would rise to 0.9 million by 2000. The real number turned out to be ... 109 million.

Holocaust denial

Some interesting articles on the sociology of holocaust denial here,
here, and here

So long Farah; so long Michael

It's a sad day for pop culture. Farah Fawcett, whose poster -- you know the one I mean -- was in many lockers at my high-school, has passed away from cancer. And Michael Jackson, whose career set broke so many new paths, too. A sad day, and a sign that we're all getting older.

White supremacist blogger arrested for threatening judges

From Think Progress comes a story about the arrest of White Supremacist blogger Hal Turner for threatening to kill three Federal Judges.

Today, FBI agents went to the New Jersey home of white supremacist blogger/radio host Hal Turner and arrested him “on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb,” according to a statement released by the Justice Department. A summary of Turner’s dangerous tirade against the judges:


Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed “outrage” over the June 2, 2009, handgun decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, further stating, among other things: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.” The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.

Turner’s posts also “referred to the murder of the mother and husband of Chicago-based federal Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow in February 2005,” saying, “Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed.” In the Justice Department statement, U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald — who announced the charges — said, “We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period.”

There are, of course, nuts everywhere. But Hal Turner was fairly well connected:

Turner was once a prominent activist in New Jersey's Republican Party. To area conservatives, he was best known by his moniker for call-ins to the Sean Hannity Show, "Hal from North Bergen." For years, Hannity offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner's occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants. Hannity also chatted with him off-air, allegedly offering encouragement to Turner as he struggled to overcome a cocaine habit and homosexual leanings. Turner has boasted that Hannity once invited Turner and his son on to the set of Fox News's Hannity and Colmes. Today, Turner lurks on the fringes of the far right, spouting hate-laced tirades on his webcast radio show. Hannity, meanwhile, remains mum about his former alliance with the neo-Nazi, homing in instead on the supposed racism of black and Latino Democrats.

Oh, oh. Another Republican adultery scandal

It seems like only last week that a senior Republican publicly admitted to adultery. Today, another. The Republican governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, admitted to having disappeared for a few days to fly to Argentina to be with a woman he's having an affair with. From the NY Times:

Then Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a fiscal conservative seen by many Republicans as an attractive standard-bearer for the next presidential campaign, went missing. Worse, he returned.

His confession on Wednesday that he had been in Argentina with a woman not his wife — and not hiking the Appalachian Trial as his staff had said Monday — was another jolt of bad news for a party that has struggled to get off the ropes all year.

That it was the second such confession in little more than a week from a potential Republican presidential contender — Mr. Ensign had been exploring a run in 2012 as well — left party leaders dazed. They spent Wednesday alternating between gallows humor and yet another round of conversations about what the party stands for and who will give it its best shot to retake the White House.

Tsk, tsk.

Happy iphone story!

A happy story about a stolen iPhone and the technology that tracked it down!

SCOTUS upholds Voters Rights Act

The New York Times is reporting that the Voters Rights Act has survived (archived cache here):

The Supreme Court decided on Monday not to strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, a protection for the right of minorities to vote. That was very good news. The less good news is that the court, which has repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of Section 5, said it raises serious constitutional concerns. The ruling may signal that the court will be tempted in a future case to strike down this important safeguard.

Congress enacted Section 5 to clamp down on election officials who use tactics like gerrymandering and closing polling places to suppress and dilute minority votes. It requires states and local governments to “preclear” changes in voting rules with the Justice Department or a federal court to determine whether they would harm minority voting rights.

Update. An interesting discussion about this at Slate.

BC neo-nazi to give up the internet

Meanwhile, back in my old stomping grounds comes news of an agreement between an anti-racist campaigner, Richard Warman.

Man wins rights case against B.C. neo-Nazi:

OTTAWA - Richard Warman has settled his federal human rights complaint about Internet hate posted by a Coquitlam man. As part of a mediated settlement, Ciaran Paul Donnelly of Coquitlam agreed to permanently close his account on Stormfront, a U.S. website through which the hate messages were distributed, and ask to have his earlier postings deleted. He has also agreed to pay $1,000 in damages for making veiled threats against Warman and posting a picture of a sign reading: "The Church of Dead Warman."

Terms of the settlement, which prohibit Donnelly from posting further hate propaganda on the Internet or engaging in additional retaliation against Warman, will be registered with the Federal Court of Canada.

Donnelly, who posted his messages under the user name "Der Totenkopf" -- the death's head insignia of the German SS -- is a well-known figure in the Canadian neo-Nazi movement. He was a leading member of Western Canada For Us, a now-defunct Alberta-based neo-Nazi group that included Glen Bahr and Peter Kouba, against whom Warman has filed successful human rights complaints for Internet hate.

Another member was Donnelly's sometime girlfriend, Jessica Beaumont of Calgary, known as "Jessy Destruction" on Stormfront. She was the subject of another successful complaint by Warman, who has had 10 complaints about Internet hatred upheld by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in recent years.

Three of Warman's other complaints, including the one against Donnelly, ended in mediated settlements. Warman will donate most of the settlement money to a memorial education fund for the children of Kelly Morrisseau, an aboriginal woman whose 2006 murder in Gatineau Park, north of Ottawa, remains unsolved. The rest will go to the Canadian Anti-racism and Education Society.

Steve Jobs Had a Liver Transplant

The Wall Street Journal reports that Steve Jobs recently underwent a liver transplant. Jobs has been on a leave of absence from Apple since January. The liver transplant may be associated with the pancreatic cancer that he survived in 2004.

When contacted by the Journal regarding the status of Jobs, Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton would only comment that “Steve continues to look forward to returning at the end of June, and there’s nothing further to say.” Actually, there is.

Back in January, Jobs sent an e-mail to Apple employees announcing his leave of absence. In the letter, he talked about his weight loss, about “getting to the root cause” of the problem, and reversing it. According to Jobs at the time, the cause had been determined.…

Unlike in 2004, when Jobs hid his illness from all but a few people close to him for nine months before surgery for pancreatic cancer forced him to reveal it, at least some members of the Board of Directors were kept informed. More importantly, Apple COO Tim Cook was officially running the company during Jobs’ illness this time. It appears the company has adapted internally, if not externally, to the problem of Jobs’ health. While the public has no right to know about Jobs’ private life, perhaps a blanket policy of “no comment” would be better than questionable answers.

Shipwreck!

A cool story from the BBC: A sunken ship believed to carry over US$15 million in gold is located in the Magellan Straits off the coast of Argentina.

The cargo belonged to Argentine mining companies Cerro Vanguardia and Minera Triton and was on its way from mines in southern Argentina to Europe. The boat sank in heavy seas in mysterious circumstances in January.

One thing is still unclear: is the gold still on board?

No Canadian election this summer

Back home it is now clear that there won't be an election this summer. Ignatieff, as you'll recall, made certain demands, negotiated with Harper, and has now announced he will not bring down the government through a vote of no-confidence.

The most important point of compromise is a step towards reform of the employment insurance (see the CBC story here). A "blue-ribbon" panel of three Liberals and three Conservatives will work on the issue over the summer and report by Sept. 28, when the Liberals will have another chance to force a summer election.

Swine flu deaths in Argentina

The swine flu story is like a trip to the dentist. Just when you think the drilling is done, there's some more. Now it's reported that there are three more deaths in Argentina:

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine health authorities on Tuesday confirmed three more swine flu deaths, bringing the nation's total to four as it enters the South American winter flu season.
Two of the patients who died lived in Buenos Aires province and one in the Argentine capital itself, Vice Minister of Health Carlos Soratti told a news conference.

The thing just won't go away, but doesn't seem to be killing enough people to really put it on the front page, either.

Yea, Penguins!

The Penguins win! Yea!

James von Brunn: 'Obama created by Jews'

In today's NY Daily News 'Obama created by Jews': Holocaust Museum shooting suspect James von Brunn's chilling racist note:

Investigators found a sinister note inside the car of the geriatric neo-Nazi accused of storming the Holocaust Museum, court papers released Thursday show.

"You want my weapons - this is how you'll get them," reads the note discovered inside James von Brunn's car shortly after his murderous rampage.

"The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews."

Apple Officially Puts PowerPC Behind Them With Snow Leopard

According to this, Apple will not be supporting G4 machines for their next upgrade of their OS, code-named Snow Leopard:

One detail that escaped mention during the keynote presentation at Apple’s WWDC earlier this week likely does not sit well with users still clutching their beloved G4 machines, namely that OS X 10.6, also know as Snow Leopard, will finally drop PowerPC support and only run on Intel Macs. It’s unfortunate for people attached to their eMacs and 12-inch Powerbooks, especially given that Snow Leopard appears to be more resource-efficient than Leopard ever was.

I have fond memories of my old g4 laptop, which was great. But I suppose this was inevitable.

Not a good thing to say.

John Baird, who's been in politics for quite a while, is known for his ... um ... frankness and fierceness. He let just a little bit too much of this on display recently when he was heard telling Toronto to "fuck off" over a dispute about stimulus cash. Oops!

BNP elected to European party

The election for representation to the European Parliament is now finished. The increase in representation of far right parties is a concern. In Britain, the BNP has won its first seats ever:

Mr Griffin was elected for the North West region while Andrew Brons picked up another BNP seat in Yorkshire and Humber, where it won 10% of the vote.
Mr Griffin said the BNP was not racist, but won votes because it "spoke openly about the problem of immigration."
Labour's Harriet Harman described the result as "terrible" while Tory leader David Cameron said he was "sickened".

On the BNP, see here. Far-right parties succeeded elsewhere, too.

Update Paul Wells takes apart Mark Steyn's take on the election.

Cancer is sexy: Canadian minister

Here's a wild one. An old tape, accidentally made several months ago, has surfaced in which Lisa Raitt is heard saying that cancer is sexy. Yikes. You can see it all here.

If you're going to commit suicide ...

... don't do it this way. The New York Post has a story about an Israeli woman who tried to kill herself by laying down in front of a train.

A 56-year-old Israeli woman was only slightly injured after lying down on a train track as a fast-moving passenger train raced right over her during a suicide attempt, according to a shocking new video.

Instead of dying, the woman, who was not identified, suffered only a minor head wound during the incident on Sunday and immediately fled in her car, The Jeruslem Post reported.

The moment was caught on video and can be seen here:

This can't be good

The BBC is reporting that an Air France plane carrying 228 people from Brazil to France has vanished over the Atlantic.

No good deed goes unpunished.

From the realms of the truly bizarre comes this story about an Ohoian man arrested for mowing the grass in an Ohio park:

John Hamilton plans to fight the charges against him.

Authorities arrested Hamilton at 8:30 a.m. Thursday as the 48-year-old mowed the foot-high grass at Central Park. Police charged the Sunset Drive resident with obstructing official business and persistent disorderly conduct.

Wow, I hope they're right about his

Interesting rumours about Apple's coming announcements.

Cdn Deficit will be bigger -- much bigger

I don't think anyone should be really surprised by news that the Canadian federal deficit will be much, much, larger than we had been led to believe.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Monday the federal deficit will be "substantially more" than the government projected in January's 2009-2010 budget.

The initial deficit forecast was $34 billion. But Flaherty said that government revenues have been hit harder by the recession than expected.

"We will run a larger deficit in this year than anticipated in January, and I'll report further on that when the government reports to the people of Canada and Parliament in June with our update," he said.

The government has also forecast a $30-billion deficit for 2010-2011, and more deficits in the following three years.

Gee, it seemed like it was only a few months ago that Harper was claiming he'd never run another deficit.

Makes you proud to be Canadian…

Not quite. An awful lot of the world's medical isotopes are produced in Canada at Chalk River. This was shut down a couple weeks ago when a leak was discovered in one of the aging reactors. This is not good.

Apple To Slow Pace Of Major OS X Releases

Mac Observer notes that Apple has admitted to what many of us had thought: updates to the Mac Operating System have been slowing down.

During his talk, Tevanian said Apple has made great progress in making its products a good fit for businesses but said it will take time before they are seen that way.

"We've not been strong in that market in the recent past at all," he said. "We don't expect people to automatically just believe that this product is the best thing for them."

"Our goal right now is to just have people take a look," Tevanian said. "I think most people who take a look and have an open mind will be very pleasantly surprised."