Wednesday digest

- Amir Taheri says the big losers in the Middle East conflict are the Palestinians. This continues a pattern whereby the big powers in the Arab world use the Palestinians as a club with which to bash Israel when it suits them, while simply paying lip service to their cause the rest of the time. Truly, no one cares less about the Palestinians than their so-called "brethren".

- Passengers aboard a British flight recently pulled a United 93 of sorts and created an on-the-spot no-fly list. Not a good idea, that, but I share the sentiment the author points to in that the notion that everyone should be treated as an equal-opportunity terrorist is ridiculous.

- Calling Al Gore ... where are this year's hurricanes?

- Sage advice to the Left: if you want to usurp the Right, you better start breedin'.

- As well as the North American economy is doing, I've long suspected that a large part of it is based on smoke and mirrors - in other words, excessive credit card consumption. I'm not an economist, but I don't think this is a good thing. Debt is a fact of life, but to go on a massive spending binge while throwing caution to the wind is quite another. The more debt people take on, the longer and more difficult the next North American recession is going to be.

- And finally, this is absolutely appalling. So much for treating people as individuals. Reality TV has reached a new low and I hope this begins the end of it. I urge everyone to boycott the next edition of "Survivor".