Canadian journalism's reputation threatened by shabby journalism

That's a lame bit of reportage on view at the Globe and Mail.

Campbell Clark manages to spin 1500 words of uncorroborated speculation into a vaguely threatening yarn about Islamic terrorists using Canadian passports, with not so much as a nod in the direction of the well-documented use of Canadian passports by Israeli agents.

Maybe that's why the Islamists have started using them; border guards around they world will automatically assume they are Israeli secret agents!

Today's Toronto Star offers a similarly ahistorical perspective in a story about women's rights in Afghanistan.
(What Afghan women fear, p A3)  After reading this story by Hamida Ghafour one could be forgiven for thinking Afghan history began in 2001, before which a centuries-long reign of Islamist darkness ruled the land

This conforms neatly to the narrative the Nations of Virtue like to project; that the world would be a wretched place indeed if not for our civilizing efforts. The truth of the matter is that women in Afghanistan were free to be educated and free to work in the bad old days of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, but Cold War imperatives compelled the USA to destroy that society by creating, arming, and funding the Taliban.

The subtext is obvious; without the civilizing hand of the occupiers, all the gains made by Afghan women in the past ten years are at risk.

Israel doubles Iran war casualty estimate

A couple of weeks ago Ehud Barak's office floated the egregiously imbecilic estimate of 200 Israeli casualties in the event of war with Iran; 300 in the event Hezbollah were to be involved.

Yesterday outgoing Minister for Homeland Defense Major General Matan Vilnai  gave an interview to Reuters in which he opined that a war with Iran could last thirty days, involve a couple hundred missiles per day striking Israeli cities, and result in up to 500 casualties.

What are these people smoking? Are such assumptions based on the track record of the home-built Qassams in-coming from Gaza? They must be! It is inconceivable that hundreds of missiles can land for thirty days on end and incurr only a few hundred victims.

It is obvious what game is afoot here. It's all about reassuring the public that an attack on Iran is not such a bad thing. Besides, there's a good swath of the younger public who need a spot of war to divert themselves from their social protests.

Vilnai has accepted a diplomatic posting to Beijing, from where he will at least survive to reflect on the error of his estimates.