From here:
The man known for much of his career as “Bush’s brain” has caused a storm of protest by saying that he is proud of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on prisoners by the US and internationally condemned as torture. Karl Rove said that the Administration “broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information”.
The first public hint of the programme of CIA rendition flights and coercive interrogations led eventually to terrifying first-person accounts of waterboarding, including that of the British columnist Christopher Hitchens. It felt, he wrote, “as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face”.
Anything that causes liberals to froth at the mouth and clamps a huge wet paw over Christopher Hitchens’ face can’t be all bad.
It had to happen eventually, I suppose:
So far, she has been a staunch advocate of all things blue.
The first woman in Britain to direct adult films revealed yesterday, however, that her political colours are of a different hue.
Anna Arrowsmith, hailed in some quarters as a champion of ‘female-friendly porn’, has been chosen as a Liberal Democrat candidate in the General Election.
If elected, Ms. Arrowsmith will be spending most of her time in the parliamentary locker-room showers with her camera.
But first, let’s remember the animals:
A nationwide referendum is taking place in Switzerland on a proposal to give animals the constitutional right to be represented in court.
Animal rights groups say appointing state-funded animal lawyers would ensure animal welfare laws are upheld, and help prevent cases of cruelty.
Opponents say Switzerland does not need more legislation regarding animal protection. The Swiss government has recommended that voters reject the idea.
There is already one animal lawyer in Switzerland.
And now to David Cameron: there is no conservative party in the UK, but the party masquerading under that name is going after the gay vote:
In the latest development in his campaign to show how dramatically the Tories have changed, David Cameron has published the party’s first-ever official list of openly gay MPs.
The Conservatives say they have 20 openly gay candidates standing in the Election. Of those, 11 told party chiefs they were ‘happy’ to be named in the first authorised list of gay Conservative candidates.
It has led some to suggest jokingly that the Tories might change the party’s traditional blue colour to the rainbow flag of the gay movement.
Mr Herbert [a party spokesman] said: ‘A successful political party ought to look like the country it seeks to govern. If we were truly representative, we would have 99 women, 16 black or ethnic minority and ten gay MPs.’
Mr. Herbert, unwilling to be outdone by Swiss sapience, went on to clarify that should the Tories win, to ensure fair representation the cabinet would include 5 dogs, 3 cats, a parrot (a stand-in for David Cameron) and a gaggle of geese in the back benches.
Raul Castro wants us to think he is sorry a political prisoner has died:
Cuba’s leader Raul Castro “laments” the death of a detained activist who had been on hunger strike for nearly three months, its foreign ministry says.
It marks a rare expression of sorrow by the country’s leadership, often rebuked over its human rights record.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in hospital in Havana on Tuesday, 85 days after he began refusing food, sparking criticism of Havana from the US and EU countries.
The 42-year-old was arrested in 2003 in an crackdown on opposition activists.
But the Cuban president said neither Mr Tamayo nor anyone else on the island had been tortured.
Mr Zapata, who was declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, had been refusing food in protest at jail conditions and died in the capital’s Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital.
Anyone remotely interested what happens to you in Cuba when you express opinions contrary to the government owes it to himself to read Against all Hope by Armando Valladares. Valladares was a guest of the Communist paradise’s prison system because had the temerity to express doubts in Cuba’s expression of Communist perfection. Here is an excerpt from the end of the book when he was released:
As the cars sped along, a flood of memories rushed over me. Twenty-two years in jail. I recalled the two sergeants, Porfirio and Matanzas, plunging their bayonets into Ernesto Diaz Madruga’s body; Roberto Lopez Chavez dying in a cell, calling for water, the guards urinating over his face and in his gasping mouth; Boitel, denied water too, after more than fifty days on a hunger strike, because Castro wanted him dead; Clara, Boitel’s poor mother, beaten by Lieutenant Abad in a Political Police station just because she wanted to find out where her son was buried. I remember Carrion, shot in the leg, telling Jaguey not to shoot, and Jaguey mercilessly, heartlessly shooting him in the back; the officers who threatened family members if they cried at a funeral.
I remembered Estebita and Piri dying in blackout cells, the victims of biological experimentation; Diosdado Aquit, Chino Tan, Eddy Molina and so many others murdered in the forced-labour fields, quarries and camps. A legion of spectres, naked, crippled, hobbling and crawling through my mind, and the hundreds of men wounded and mutilated in the horrifying searches. Dynamite. Drawer cells. Eduardo Capote’s fingers chopped off by a machete. Concentration camps, tortures, women beaten, soldiers pushing prisoners’ heads into a lake of shit, the beatings of Eloy and Izaguirre. Martin Perez with his testicles destroyed by bullets. Robertico weeping for his mother.
And in the midst of that apocalyptic vision of the most dreadful and horrifying moments in my life, in the midst of the gray, ashy dust and the orgy of beatings and blood, prisoners beaten to the ground, a man emerged, the skeletal figure of a man wasted by hunger, with white hair, blazing blue eyes, and a heart overflowing with love, raising his arms to the invisible heaven and pleading for mercy for his executioners.
“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” And a burst of machine-gun fire ripping open his breast.
Think about that before you take your next vacation in Cuba.
Canadian health care is good enough for average Canadian citizens, but the political elite demand something better; something that can only be found in the US:
Danny Williams, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, has broken his silence on his decision to undergo heart surgery in the U.S., and the controversy it caused.
Williams, who is recovering at his condo in Sarasota, Fla., said people shouldn’t take his decision to seek medical help outside the country as a reflection on health care in Newfoundland and Labrador. He said he has the “utmost confidence” in the province’s health-care system.
“It’s a bum rap … for someone to try to turn around and say, ‘You know, Williams doesn’t have confidence in his own health-care system because he had to leave the province.’ Well, I had to leave the province because it was recommended to me by my own doctors that for this particular type of surgery I should leave the province.”
So sorry you had to leave the province, Danny; and thanks for the vote of confidence in Canada’s health care system for everyone but you.
Update: Apparently the treatment Williams received is available in Canada.
Labour have turned the UK into a training ground for Islamofascist terrorists; the BNP are the next best thing to Nazis; the Liberal Democrats are so naïve that they “Believe in Fairness” and the Tories have become the gay party:
Cameron tells Rowan: Make your Church pro-gay.
Tory leader David Cameron has launched an astonishing attack on the Church of England over its attitudes to homosexuality. In an interview with the gay magazine Attitude, Cameron tells award-winning journalist Johann Hari that ‘our Lord Jesus’ would back equality and gay rights if he were around today. He says he doesn’t want to get into a row with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. ‘But I think the Church has to do some of the things that the Conservative Party has been through – sorting this issue out and recognising that full equality is a bottom line full essential.’ He also introduces a new phrase to the English language, one that might be current in High Tory circles but not one I’ve heard before, in reference to Muslim women: ‘Blowing the hijab off them.’
Ho ho. And we all thought he was a politician.
From the National Post:
Since last fall, the federal Conservative government has been withdrawing taxpayer funding from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that use their grants to take sides against Israel in the Middle East conflict. Now comes word that last week, Ottawa told the United Nations it would no longer fund the world body’s Palestinian refugee agency. From now on, Canadian aid to Palestinians will be directed to specific projects. We will no longer give lump-sum aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), since most of that money simply goes straight into the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) general treasury, where it might be used for humanitarian projects or might be used to arm and train terrorists.
This is a bold move for Ottawa, which is the first Western government to cut off funding for UNWRA.
Although UNWRA has long been a biased player in the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is seldom criticized for its incitement of anti-Israeli hatred and violence by Palestinians. It has funded textbooks that deny the right of Israel to exist and paid teachers who call on Palestinian children to push the Jewish state into the sea. It harbours radical Islamists and anti-Semites on its payroll and was even caught in 2004 using its own ambulances to ferry terrorists away from Israeli sites they had just attacked.
First KAIROS and now UNWRA. I await the keening howls of woe from Fred Hiltz and his groupies with considerable anticipation.
