InklessPW Paul Wells
You see how far Libya is from Western standards of democracy when you see how little thought Gaddafi has given to set design.

kady kady o’malley
So, is he going to scrum afterwards?

@roseneath_rd
I have no idea why we all worried about selling arms to this man

@PDuffysGhost
Gaddafi should get a twitter account.

@christineestima Christine Estima
YO GADDAFI IM REAL HAPPY 4U & IMMA LET YOU FINISH, BUT MUBARAK HAD THE BEST DESPERATE DICTATOR SPEECH OF ALL TIME.

@warrenellis
Gadaffi’s speech seems to boil down to “Everyone is on drugs except me. Also I am Batman.”

InklessPW Paul Wells
I’ve heard wedding toasts that were way too much like this.

lizzwinstead Lizz Winstead
Gahafi: Just another asshole who thinks doing Improv is easy.

wmacphail Wayne MacPhail
What does Gaddafi have against tablets? Has he tried the Xoom? Clearly insane.

TurboLiberal
He’s offering Libyans to come into the big, leopard printed tent at the centre of Libyan life.

BorowitzReport Andy Borowitz
After 5 yrs of silence, Clarence Thomas finally speaks: “Gaddafi needs to shut the fuck up.”

TabathaSouthey Tabatha Southey
This is when someone should say “Amazing, #Gaddafi, so interesting. You should start a blog!” and then everyone goes to the bar.

davebrindleshow dave brindle
Guess they’ll add the laugh-track in post-producton.

Jane Danzo, in her letter of resignation as Chair of the BC Arts Council and in various exit interviews that followed, has confirmed what most of us already suspected: that the Liberal government now sees itself as arbiter of all things cultural in the province. At last, we can begin to see the future.

In her bombshell fare-thee-well, Danzo told Minister of Ineffectuality Kevin Krueger that the Council’s job is “virtually impossible to accomplish because the Board’s relationship to government is not at-arms-length.” The Victoria Times-Colonist reports that her resignation was prompted by “a meeting late last month at the ministry” that “confirmed that the arts council does not have an independent voice from government, something Danzo once understood it did.” Or, as she tells straight.com, “it was made very clear that the ministry speaks for the arts. So I feel the council is hampered in its role as an advocate not to have an independent voice.”

Come, come, Ms. Danzo, why so glum? Sure, that whole “arms-length” thing is imperfectly understood by the Liberals — but imagine the riches to come!

For example: the world premiere of My Fair Gordon, produced by the Kruegerrific Dinner Theatre, in which a lowly Mayor’s assistant is taught to say “Take Axes to the Taxes of those what Backs Us” and becomes Premier, before being presented to high society at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group.

Or the upcoming exhibit at The Vancouver Art Gallery and Dollar Store: Images of Rich, in which photographs of the Minister of Housing and Social Development in his many fine suits serve as a metaphor for photographs of the Minister of Housing and Social Development in his many fine suits.

Or Triumph of the Bills, a specially-commissioned documentary film in which the province’s bankers and CEOs assemble in BC Place, where they are showered in what at first appears to be confetti but is soon revealed to be the proceeds of the HST.

We knew the government had something very special in mind for us when it announced its first foray into artistic production, the Spirit Festivals, earlier in the summer. These exciting events, Liberally-funded with the millions of dollars no longer being given to lesser artists like, well, artists, are intended to “build provincial pride” — and what’s more likely to do that than an event dreamed up by the former Minister of State for Mining? But they will be just a hint of what is to come now that the state has decided to find a barn and really put on a show!

And it’ll do all this on the lowest per capita arts funding of any province in Canada — $4, compared to an average $26 elsewhere. Now that’s talent.

So buck up, Ms. Danzo. Shelley described poets as the “unacknowledged legislators of the world,” so who’s to say legislators, in turn, can’t be poets? And who knows? If we’re really lucky — maybe they’ll quit their day jobs.

Jason Kenney explains the difference between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel at Monday’s session of The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism:

Irwin Cotler: “How does one distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and crossing the line?”

Jason Kenney: “Criticism of Israel predicated on a view of Israel as a criminal enterprise, as a state guilty of massive crimes against humanity simply for engaging in the normal responsibilities of a state to protect its civilian population from unprovoked attacks — I would say that criticisms of that nature go to the heart of the question. They are not criticisms based on particular policies or tactics; they are criticism of the existence of Israel as representing in that sense ‘the collective Jew,’ and this is the problem I have with organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. They do not seek a conventional peace settlement between two parties; they seek the destruction, the annihilation of the only Jewish democ- state in the world and the driving of the Jews into the sea, and I for one, unlike some, I take them at their word. That actually is their intention.

“And so I think here in the democratic west, we hear echoes of that that are sometimes less obvious, sometimes a little less aggressive, but nevertheless those voices who essentially say that Israel is an illegitimate state, that by virtue of its Jewish identity, it is an abomination and a criminal state. These kinds of sentiments in my view clearly cross the line from legitimate political criticism to an anti-Zionism which has at its heart a form of anti-semiticism. There is a global effort with voices in Canada not just to delegitimize but to demonize the Jewish state.”

What an appalling mess that is.

Apparently, despite the great care taken by the CPCCA to insist that they do not equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the “new anti-Semitism” includes “a view of Israel as a state guilty of massive crimes against humanity.” And if Israel represents “the collective Jew,” then any criticism of Israel is by definition anti-Semitic. Worse, it seeks to make Jews the world over collectively responsible for Israel’s policies in Gaza.

Lib MP Anita Neville and NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis both asked for an apology for the divisive and partisan Con 10% flyers purporting to show that the Cons are better friends of Israel than the Libs.

“Some of your policies and spokespeople” said Neville, “will create an anti-Semitic response.” Neville, who is Jewish, noted that the Con approach also makes Jews feel “other.”

Kenney found eight different ways of saying he did not understand what she was talking about. “All I get is praise from Jews,” he said, “everywhere I go.”

I’m beginning to see the real problem with Jason Kenney’s definition of “new anti-Semitism” at the CPCCA. It attempts to equate all Jews with Israel and then further reduces Israel to just the policies of its right-wing government.

You will recognize this of course as being the same tactic often used against Jews by genuine anti-Semites. It’s a very very bad idea.

Kenney did however get off the best line of the day during his criticism of KAIROS.

“Why focus so much on the liberal democratic state of Israel?” he asked.

Good question.

I love me some bias and hyperbole, which is why I’m such a fan of Fox News.  JUST jokes!  I like my nonsensical news sources to be a little more upfront about their nonsensicalness (all of whom are, I’m sure, rubbing their hands in unfettered glee at this newsy tidbit).  But I may have to start tuning in to ye olde Foxe now that former Governor of Alaska, one-time VP candidate, and all-around soccer-mommy winkster Sarah Palin is gracing the newsdesk.

That’s right, Her Lipstick-Wearing-Pitbullness is returning to the public eye. (Being Alaska’s governor doesn’t count.  They may get our news, but we sure don’t get theirs.)  In a move that hearkens back to her mid-election-run accusations against the great big media meanies, La Palin has stepped down partway through her term as governor due to a barrage of ethics lawsuits that she claims are draining her of “her ability to govern” (by which she means “of teh moneys”), in favor of “serving the public” outside of the political playground.

If Palin can’t handle the heat, it’s probably for the best that she abandon the lonely, frozen ship that is Alaska (if you will pardon a ridiculously mixed metaphor).  And if she’s stepping down as Gov to spend more time with her young son who has Downs Syndrome and her teenage-mama-daughter (and mebbe her other three kids, who are probably just as needy but make for less spectacularly inflammatory headlines), I would have taken that.  Hell, even if that weren’t the truth, it’d sound a thousand times more realistic AND altruistic than her claim that she’s taking this higher-profile, higher-paying, fewer-hours-working job to “serve the public.”  Although, to be fair, I am going to go serve the public by becoming champion of the World Poker Tournament.  Just so we’re transparent about my motives.

She is sure going to serve Fox News’s ratings, anyways.  Senior VP of Programming Bill Shine is quoted as saying “Governor Palin has captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum,” which FOR ONCE is totally true, if by “captivated” you mean “amused and annoyed in equal measure.”  I doubt it’ll last, but for now Palin is an attention-getting-magnet.  An entire generation of pop-culture bloggers and late-night talk-show writers will be tuning in regularly to see what fresh inanity they can poke fun at.  If this was an attempt to escape the scrutiny of Alaska, Palin seems to have overlooked the long (ok, at least a year) memory of the news-hounding public.  I’m surprised her own memory doesn’t extend back to that time her new employer outed her for not knowing that Africa is a continent.

But she wasn’t hired for being world-savvy.  Palin may have had a tenuous and mavericky grasp of geography, and when asked what newspapers she reads may have come back with the dubiously true if ambitious reply of “All of them, any of them.”  She may have had only a loose working knowledge, not only of domestic or international policy, but the word “policy” itself.  But no one flung jingoistic phrases like “job creation” and “shoring up the economy” with such verve and fanaticism.

So bring back Joe Sixpack!  Bring back the oddly unsettling winks!  Bring back Tina Fey in her Palin wig!  Let the “fair and balanced” commentating begin!

It’s hard not to sympathize with the Yanks who are upset with Heather Mallick. The former Globe and Mailer, now writing for cbc.ca, is so resolutely humourless, even when she’s trying to be funny, and so intransigently snooty (she wears white pearls in her website photo, for cripe’s sake), that I too feel, when I read her, that I have been sent to the principal’s office.

So it’s not surprising that Mallick set off a new iteration of the Pig War when she wrote dismissively of the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Fey. Er, Tina Palin. Sorry, Sarah Palin. Her takedown, a fine example of the “Ewww, she’s so lame” school of teen journalism, was noticed by Fox News, which in turn alerted the right-wing blogosphere. As of this writing, that has led to some 1423 comments on the CBC website, many from outraged Americans, many of them amazed to discover that you can get the internet in an igloo, as well as to Fox host Greta Van Susteren referring to Ms. Mallick as a “pig.” All very edifying. Throw in some mud and a few halter tops and you could sell tickets to it.

But here’s the thing, Americans. We have been through this before up here, and we are only trying to warn you, however clumsily we go about it. We have had our own Sarah Palin. And while the similarity has not been much remarked on, except by this numerologist, I believe it accounts for the alarmed reactions of many Canadians to your new would-be VP.

Her name was Kim Campbell. Like Palin, she was young, bright, attractive. Like Palin, she was groomed for high office by a desperate, older male politician of right-wing stripe. And like Palin, she started out great guns.

However, by the time Ms. Campbell finished running for Prime Minister in 1993, she had not only squandered her early popularity, but also largely destroyed the fortunes of her party. Think I’m exaggerating? Consider this: the Progressive Conservatives, for whom she ran, no longer exist; they were replaced by the Conservative Party, which may sound like the same thing, but — as another of our put-out-to-pasture politicians, Joe Clark, will tell you — isn’t at all.

She was not entirely our version of your Ms. Feylin — sorry, Palin. She had been to the London School of Economics, and not just on a tour. She did not present, nor present herself, as a hockey mom. She had actually already been the Prime Minister for a few months, through a quirk of parliamentary democracy of which I’ll spare you the details. Still, as we like to say here in B.C., and as they say up in Wasilla, Alaska, close enough for horseshoes.

So when we suggest your Republican war hero candidate made a big mistake in picking Ms. Palin as his running mate, we’re only trying to let you know that your two-party system may be at risk. You may be about to usher in an indefinite period of liberal rule, as happened here (and up here we actually call our liberals Liberals). Why Heather Mallick, who styles herself as something of a socialist, would want to keep that from happening, I don’t know, except that she pretty much hates all of you and may figure that you deserve John McCain. But understand: the rest of us do it out of neighbourly concern. And because we’re a simple folk, and that Palin/Fey thing is freaking us out.

Which is not to say you should stop haranguing Heather Mallick. Anyone who can suggest, as she did at the end of this Globe and Mail article, that Americans are mad at her because they’re not used to hard-hitting commentary, deserves all the haranguing she gets. But perhaps you’d like to move on to another of her pieces — say, this one in The Guardian, in which she refers to Alaska as “a frontier state full of drunks and crazy people” and observes that “our Yukon territory forms a blessed buffer zone.”

Gee — rancour, insularity, and smug patriotism all in paragraph. Maybe Heather Mallick has more in common with Sarah Palin than she realizes.

Afternote: Mallick’s column has been removed from the CBC website. The link above is to the copy on her personal website.