At tough times in my life, with the landlord tossing my clothes and record collection out on to the street, I could have used an aunt like Benon Sevan's. Asked to account for the appearance in his bank account of a certain $160,000, Mr Sevan, executive director of the UN Oil-for-Food programme, said it was a gift from his aunt. Lucky Sevan, eh? None of my aunts ever had that much of the folding stuff on tap.

And nor, it seems, did Mr Sevan's. She lived in a modest two-room flat back in Cyprus and her own bank accounts gave no indication of spare six-figure sums. Nonetheless, if a respected UN diplomat says he got 160,000 bucks from Auntie, we'll just have to take his word for it. Paul Volcker's committee of investigation did plan to ask the old lady to confirm her nephew's version of events, but, before they could, she fell down an elevator shaft and died.

If you're a UN bigshot, or the son of Kofi Annan, or the cousin of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, or any of the other well-connected guys on the Oil-for-Fraud payroll, $160,000 is pretty small beer. But, if you're a starving kid in Ramadi or Nasariyah, it would go quite a long way. Instead, the starving-kid money went a long way in the opposite direction, to the Swiss bank accounts of Saddam's apologists. "The Secretary-General is shocked by what the report has to say about Mr Sevan," declared Kofi Annan's chief of staff, Britain's own Mark Malloch Brown. [. . . . ]

But not this week.

If Judy Sgro had any brains she would cut her losses and withdraw her civil suit. Unlike selling out her office, being an intelligent and competent Minister of the Crown has never been an allegation made against the York West MP. She runs the risk of having more disturbing details of her come out while she defends herself from allegations that never should have had to be taken seriously in the first place.

Judy Sgro was the author of her own misfortune. It’s about time that she realized this. [. . . . ]

It's almost more firepower than Toronto Police can bring to bear and it was seized from a car any thief could have easily made off with, cops said yesterday. "This is better armament than we have as a police service," Chief Julian Fantino said as the 30 sub-machineguns, high-powered rifles, semi-automatic handguns and shotguns were laid out on display before him.

"This is what our men and women face on a daily basis and it's unconscionable, it's unacceptable. It shows you just how vulnerable we are. "

[. . . . ] Tak Kwong Chan, 39, is charged with fraud and weapons-related offences. [. . . . ]

Among the pictures from Iraq's historic election this week, the most revealing were those of Iraqi women patiently waiting in lines to vote, then coming out with their stained index fingers after voting. [a badge of courage]

Iraqis were warned repeatedly -- by hooded men with bombs and bullets -- against participating in an election. The pontiffs of terrorism declared that election and democracy represented American values of unbelief in opposition to their version of Islam.

In the Sunni triangle around Baghdad, their slogan was "from the box into the box" -- i.e., from the ballot box into the coffin.

But the women of Iraq, like their Afghan sisters, understood instinctively -- without any aid from United Nations experts -- what freedom means for themselves and for their families.

They understood freedom as purging of fear that made their lives for so long an unbroken narrative of tears. [. . . . ]

In light of the "no Jews allowed" global anti-terror conference that kicked off today in Riyadh -- attended by Iran, the Muslim World Council, and the United States -- I had intended to send out an APB for The Diplomad to weigh in this morning. What is the Diplomad? [. . . . A few of his words follow:]

We've likewise bemoaned the destruction of the once-valiant nation of Red Ensign Canada (no Maple Leaf at this house!) by those who seem ashamed of their country's honorable and courageous role in defending the West and freedom, and now want it to be an anti-American sharia-besotted Botswana with snow. [. . . . ]

Evan Coyne Maloney argues that the University of Colorado should not fire [Ward Churchill] for his comment that the victims of 9/11 got what they deserved for being little Adolph Eichmanns. Says Maloney,

Creating an environment where tenured professors can be fired for controversial remarks is a dangerous precedent to set. [. . . . ]

HINDROCKET adds: I think the whole tenure system needs to be rethought. It doesn't make any sense to cover all misdeeds with the blanket of "controversy," and say that because a professor is "controversial"--regardless of whether that means he's a Republican or a pederast--he is protected. The taxpayers of Colorado are paying Professor Churchill's salary, and they and others pay tuition so that their children can be competently educated. Churchill is obviously not a competent educator. There is no reason in the world why taxpayers and parents should be compelled to pay his salary in perpetuity, no matter how much of an idiot he is. If it requires a change in the tenure system to inject a modicum of common sense into our universities, let's reform the tenure system.

Some will say: but that will leave our universities susceptible to currents of politics or fashion. To which I answer: Really? You think? As opposed to what--the situation we have now, in which any scholar who admits to conservative or Republican tendencies is less likely to be hired as a professor than I am to play in the NBA? Cry me a river.

It is suicidal for the EU to draw on Europe's worst political traditions, the common denominator of which is the idea that evil must be appeased and that the best way to achieve peace is through indifference to the freedom of others. [. . . . ]

How are Diplomads so in the know about all this global-warming business you might be asking yourselves. Well, the answer is:

WE were there at the creation (almost). No, not when the earth's crust cooled, or even when our Neanderthal forebearers were lighting big fires to prevent themselves from freezing to death. But we were there at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 -- which was the bar mitzvah, the confirmation, the rite of passage for what has grown up to be today's truly rabid Global Warming Cult. [. . . . ]

Do we even remember "all that" now? The lunacy that appeared after 9/11 that asked us to look for the "root causes" to explain why America may have "provoked" spoiled mama's boys like bin Laden and Mohammed Atta to murder Americans at work? Do we recall the successive litany of "you cannot win in Afghanistan/you cannot reconstruct such a mess/you cannot jumpstart democracy there"? And do we have memory still of "Sharon the war criminal," and "the apartheid wall," and, of course, "Jeningrad," the supposed Israeli-engineered Stalingrad — or was it really Leningrad? Or try to remember Arafat in his Ramallah bunker talking to international groupies who flew in to hear the old killer's jumbled mishmash about George Bush, the meanie who had ostracized him.

Then we were told that if we dared invade the ancient caliphate, Saddam would kill thousands and exile millions more. And when he was captured in a cesspool, the invective continued during the hard reconstruction that oil, Halliburton, the Jews, the neocons, Richard Perle, and other likely suspects had suckered us into a "quagmire" or was it now "Vietnam redux"? And recall that in response we were supposed to flee, or was it to trisect Iraq? The elections, remember, would not work — or were held too soon or too late. And give the old minotaur Senator Kennedy his due, as he lumbered out on the eve of the Iraqi voting to hector about its failure and call for withdrawal — one last hurrah that might yet rescue the cherished myth that the United States had created another Vietnam and needed his sort of deliverance.

[. . . .] Why would the world listen to a stumbling George Bush when it could be mesmerized by a poet, biographer, aristocrat, and metrosexual of the caliber of a Monsieur Dominique de Villepin?