There is a droll little tiff being enacted in Catholic circles in New York, a struggle between pro- and anti-war priests who are trying to bend their parishioners in different directions. When one of them urged prayers for peace, another replied with prayers for victory and reference to "Our Lady of Lepanto." Since we seem to be involved in a war between cultures and different views of history it might be instructive here to consider why the name Lepanto can arouse emotions over 400 years later.
The Battle of Lepanto was an epic clash of galleys off the coast of Greece in 1571. It was a battle fought for control of the eastern Mediterranean by a coalition of forces from Catholic Europe led by Don John of Austria and the navy of the Turkish emperor, Selim II, led by the renegade Ali Pasha. It was an enormously bloody affair between two huge fleets -- each side marshalled over 200 ships -- remarkable for the decisive use of cannon by Don John and by the wounding of Miguel Cervantes (note the reference to Don Quixote in the final verse below). The Turks suffered a crushing defeat that lifted the spirits of Christians, prompting an outburst of artistic celebration that was to include this poem by G. K. Chesterton, a piece of literature that is more relevant now than when it was written.
Lepanto
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,—
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
Here is an excellent editorial on the problems facing the Arab world. While I normally loathe discussion of root causes, whether of terrorism or domestic crime, robbing as it does the criminal and immoral of any agency or logic, this article makes some very valuable points. The truth is that the Arab world does passionately hate the West (which in pure form applies only to the USA and Israel; Europe and Canada have abased themselves at the feet of the Third World too effectively to be full members anymore) and there is a reason for this hatred.
The reason is not the bad behaviour of the West, or imperialism, or the fact that many Arab youngsters are now more conversant with Coke, McDonalds and Britney than with their own traditions. The reason is the utter inability of the Arab world to compete with the West, whether economically, military, culturally, or even for the citizenship of its best and brightest, who are almost unanimous in their desire to get as far from Arab countries as possible and make lives for themselves in the West.
Much of this is also true of Africa. Africa has not been a significant problem for the West for a few reasons, chief of which is it horrific internal divisions, which have led many tribes to hate and blame each other rather than us. Due to geography and history, though, the Arab world is much closer to the Western world, and also enjoys fewer ethnic and religious divisions. This facilitates a monomaniacal hatred of the West.
Peters in his article is optimistic for the future. I don't entirely share his optimism; to me it seems entirely possible that the Arab world will only change when it has been assimilated to an extent back into civilization, which will likely entail fairly radical changes in the religion, culture and politics of that part of the world. He does an excellent job, though, of showing "why they hate us."
Also seizing every opportunity to miss an opportunity, our own Dear Leader has refused to travel to the USA to accept an award for conserving park areas. The politically charged and highly volatile park situation being what it is, it would clearly be unacceptable to make this trip. The niggling benefits of trying to redeem Canada and his government in the eyes of the American public and government truly vanish beside the significance of M. Chretien's principled refusal to attend this meeting.
One of the biggest disappointments of the war in Iraq thus far has been the failure of Turkey to allow US troops to open a nothern front from bases on its soil. This has meant that very expensive preparations have had to be foregone, makeshift expedients such as last night's airdrop undertaken and, undoubtedly, many lives needlessly lost in the drive to Baghdad.
Some have blamed the Islamist government for this decision but this story places the responsibility elsewhere. It seems that the Coalition was betrayed in the Turkish Parliament not by the Muslims but by the secular opposition who had been counted on to continue their traditional pro-Western policies but who decided to throw their lot in with the Axis of Weasels instead of the US. Why? Because France and Germany threatened to bar them from the European Union if they didn't toe the anti-American line.
Consider this for a moment. It is one thing to oppose American plans in the United Nations and it may be argued (though not by me) that trying to keep a bloody war from starting was a good deed. It is something else entirely to work against a NATO partner once a war has started and to tie his hands while he is fighting against a monstrous regime. The actions of France and Germany can have no noble gloss put on them; they amount to simple treachery and hostility.
One of the advanatges of this war in Iraq is that it has made clear who is on whose side and who can be counted on as genuine friends. A fascinating shift in alliances is underway and there will be more surprises before too long. Canadians might ask themselves these two questions: who do we want to be linked to? and why should anybody think we have anything to offer?
It has come to the attention of the Canada bashers at National Review Magazine's web site that yet another Canadian politician has insulted America and the eagle-eyed Yankees have linked to today's debates in our Senate chambers.
Again some Ottawa hack with his nose buried in the public trough took his snout out of the feed tray long enough to belch out an embarrassing statement about our neighbours that was neither a rational criticism of a particular US policy or even an attack on a set of politicians with whom he diagrees; again a Liberal has slagged an entire country in an offensive manner.
The silver-tongued orator managed to craft the following finely-honed piece of poetry, to wit:
"Screw the Americans!"
Move over, Sir John A. To the back of the bus, Sir Wilfrid Laurier. A new voice for Canada has emerged with a new vision for the future.
The modern Demosthenes in question is Monsieur Laurier Lapierre, a man of intense self-regard who resembles our old friend Svend Robinson in many, many ways and who, like so many former talk-show hosts with connections to the Liberal Party, is a Member of the Order of Canada. You may read of his manifold accomplishments here where he is pleased for you to learn that he is "widely-known and respected across Canada for his extraordinary [sic] achievements as an author, journalist, commentator and educator." Senator Sharon Carstairs, Liberal leader in the Senate hailed him for "his achievements and unconditional dedication to our country."
Monsieur "Screw the Americans" is mercifully no longer a Member of the Standing Senate Committee on Defence and Security.
I'm sorry but I'm still vexed over Chretien's decision to align my country with the Axis of Weasels. I don't want Canada to be on the same side as France or Germany, two nations who will have no moral credibility as long as a single human remains alive who knows who Pierre Laval, Charles de Gaulle, Adolf Hitler and the Red Army Faction are. It genuinely pains me when I have to read the following statements from countries who have not had the history of opposition to tyranny as Canada has but who now are putting us to shame. (These are from the always-readable Jay Nordlinger Impromptus column.)
The Prime Minister of Albania(!) says:
"We give unreserved support to the efforts by the United States, and we are proud to be alongside our allies in the fight for the liberation of the Iraqi people. . . . [Albania] is also proud to unconditionally offer our airspace, land, and ports to the United States and other countries taking part in the coalition against Iraq."
President Uribe of Colombia, a country in the midst of its own civil war:
"We are part of the coalition, along with countries such as the U.S., Spain, England. . . . Many of these peoples, like Colombians, have withstood terrorism, and, like us, they know that this scourge — terrorism — must be made to end so that we can live peacefully. . . . Fellow Colombians: To request solidarity, we have to express solidarity."
How about the Danish prime minister:
"If on every occasion we allow a ruthless dictator to go free, because we do not like war, we risk paying a very high price. . . . That is why we must move into action. We cannot simply stand by and watch as a ruthless dictator seriously and persistently violates U.N. decisions."
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda says of the American-led coalition:
"They should act when they are right to act because the Security Council can be wrong. It was wrong in Rwanda. . . . You might avoid war and have a worse situation. . . . That is why I was giving a comparison with our case. People avoided a war or doing very much and it ended up with a genocide."
Clearly the world has changed. The countries that gave us Luther, the Enlightenment, Goethe, Debussy and Johann Sebastian Bach have now run out of mojo and can only offer us lessons in assuming the supine position. The high ground is now occupied by Albanians and Rwandans and Canadians can only look up.
By heaven, those traitorous swine have gone too far this time!
There is a story here about a meeting in Iraq between Patrick Graham and Sacha Trudeau, son of another Canadian politician with unconventional views on family life. In the midst of this piece is an amusing anecdote about an American reporter assaulted in 1970 by Pierre Trudeau lackey Romeo Leblanc -- a good career move for both as the journalist was then posted to China and Leblanc (a lowly press secretary) went on to the ultimate patronage appointment as Governor-General.
Young Trudeau seems to have prudently fled Iraq but the fruit of Mr Graham's loins remains at his freelance post.
All razor-tongued critics of our current government should know that the upstanding Member Graham has a child; it was the fact that he was married with a child that added so much piquancy to his mid-1980s adventuring, although why he gets to travel to Washington when Polanski is still banned for lesser sins is puzzling.
If Patrick Graham is a human shield, this is probably news to him; he seems to be under the impression that he is the National Post's correspondent in Baghdad, and the last remaining Canadian journalist in the city, so the NP says. His writing, though, based on the Post's archive of the past 14 days, available online, indicates an alarming sympathy for the human shields, as well as a lack of journalistic rigour.
As a side note on human shields: if their presence did influence US military actions, this would be very disturbing. If a target is of such significance that it must be bombed, regardless of Iraqi casualties, it would be very odd if the addition of a few dimwitted American casualties, all of whom have been warned to get out of the way, made a difference to the decision makers.
An Arab newspaper in London is reporting that Vice-President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter is a human sheld volunteer about to enter Iraq to deter the Anglo-American-Australian-Polish-Dutch-Danish-Ugandan coalition from bombing. Everyone in the US is denying the report; apparently the young women named is still in Colorado.
BUT the same article also claims that Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham has a son doing yeoman service as a human shield for Saddam. I am not going to wish any harm to this idealistic lackwit but I do wish that his father would fly to Iraq and take his boy's place. Preferably atop a target of military significance. Graham would be doing Saddam and Canada a service at the same time.
An interesting piece from the Globe and Mail about Canada's lack of real support for UN peacekeeping.
In January 2000 Jason Kerr stabbed Joe Garon to death with a home-made knife and an ice pick during a fight at the Edmonton Institution. In February of last year Kerr was acquitted of charges of second-degree murder and possession of a dangerous weapon by Justice Terry Clackson who said that the convict had used the weapons to deter and defend himself against a "first strike." To most observers this seemed to be granting Canadian prisoners the right to carry arms.
Today an appeal court struck down the acquittal of possession of a dangerous weapon but, for reasons inexplicable to any but the keen judicial minds on the Alberta bench, the court allowed the murder acquittal to stand.
Correctional officers hailed this as a triumph of common sense and said that without such a decision on the arms charge, security in Canadian penal institutions would have been impossible to maintain. A spokesman for the guards' union said that the court had sent a strong message to prisoners: "You may get away with murder but you will not get away with having a hand-made weapon in the jail system."
Does this make sense to anybody outside of the criminal industry? Killing another prisoner is OK but heaven help you if you get caught with a sharpened comb? Only in Canada could this judicial decision have been treated as a victory for law and order.
I hope that when I am 87 I am as active and feisty as Eugene McCarthy, former Democratic senator from Minnesota who ran several unsuccessful campaigns for the presidency. He continues to speak out against war, write poetry and denounce the two-party system in America.
I hope that when I am 87 I am mentally more agile than Eugene McCarthy. In a recent speech he blamed President Bush for using religion as a justification for war in Iraq. "This is a faith-based war," McCarthy said. "The worst thing is faith-based religion." Yup, faith-based religion is right up there in terms of evil with competition-based sport, profit-based capitalism and nutrition-based food. Perhaps only sound-based audio is worse. Thanks to Planet-Mungo-based McCarthy for pointing that out.
I am going to offer a suggestion: left-wingers are by nature less polite than conservatives.
Michael Moore's use of an Oscar podium to attack his President and country in the midst of a war is just the latest example of the left's delight in hijacking public ceremonies to express personal feelings. Here are some other low moments that come to mind:
• Pierre Trudeau showing disrepect to the Queen at the Commonwealth Games
• Svend Robinson interrupting President Reagan's speech to the House of Commons
• Marlon Brando's refusal of his Oscar delivered by Sacheem Littlefeather
• Poets invited to the White House by Laura Bush wanting to turn a tribute to poetry into an attack on Republican foreign policy
• Jimmy Carter's and Bill Clinton's breach of the taboo against former Presidents criticizing incumbents
• George Clooney's gratuitous jibe at Charlton Heston's Alzheimer's condition
There are times when good manners ought to trump a perceived need to vent outrage. If you find the presence of a political foe intolerable, quietly absent yourself. If someone offers you an honour which you find repugnant, decline politely and in private. Never sneer at someone who can't hit back, either because he is a guest or helpless or better behaved than you.
In a democracy, these rules should apply to public figures of all stripes. Why is it they are broken only by the left?
Donald Rumsfeld has complained that Al-Jazeera's gleeful video of dead and captured Americans is a violation of the Geneva Convention. I wish he had gone public with similar dismay when it appeared as if U.S. interrogators had beaten two of their prisoners to death in Afghanistan.
Saddam's public relations people may have meant this piece of barbarism in the same spirit as the Islamic murderers of Daniel Pearl displayed his severed head: as a way of bolstering the flagging spirits on the losing side. It may temporarily comfort a few of the torturers in Baghdad who are now regretting their career choice but it is a ploy that will backfire. Even Jacques Chirac will be embarassed by his defence of these Saddamites and pleas for any sort of accomodation with the Baathists short of unconditional surrender are now a non-starter.
Moreover, anyone who thought that Americans would lose their zest for this fight they way they did in Somalia in 1993 when the "Blackhawk Down" atrocities were aired have not reckoned on the difference between Bill Clinton and George Bush as Commander-in-Chief or noted how Americans have become more aware of the nature of their enemies since 9-11.
The chemical weapons factory which the Americans report having captured must manufacture baby food because the inspections were working. Weren't they?
It seems that the missiles that Hans Blix couldn't find are popping up in Kuwait -- where they are either exploding or being shot down by Patriot batteries. Al-Fatahs and SCUDs which that nice Mr Hussein said he did not possess have been fired by Iraqi troops at American targets behind the lines. Thank goodness Jean Chretien had declared that UN inspections had worked or people might have been endangered by these things.
In the light of an alleged attack by a Muslim-American soldier on his own officers it is interesting to consider the moral dilemma of such troops, as expressed by recent rulings issued by Islamic clergy.
Such dual loyalties are not new or exclusive to Muslims. Indira Gandhi was murdered by her own Sikh bodyguards after she had ordered an attack on a Sikh temple in Amritsar. Christian officers serving in the Wehrmacht overcame their personal oath of obedience to Adolf Hitler and took part in a number of coup and assassination attempts against the Nazi leader.
Lt-Colonel Tim Collins, of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, told his troops to be ferocious in battle and magnanimous in victory after bringing the enemy to his rightful destruction. Seventy-five per cent of his officers are from Ireland, but he is also in charge of a company of Gurkhas and soldiers from Fiji, Antigua, St Vincent, South Africa, Australia and Canada.
Lt-Col Collins warned the troops it was possible not all of them would come home.
"It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive but there may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign," he declared.
"We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow."
Lt-Col Collins told his men he would tolerate neither cowardice nor a killing spree, but they should show no mercy to forces who remain loyal to Saddam Hussein.
He also declared that any Iraqi troops who declared a truce in the face of the advancing allied troops would be embraced by the coalition and permitted to fight for regime change in their own nation.
"The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his nemesis and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction. There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls and they are stoking the fires of hell for Saddam," he said.
"He and his forces will be destroyed by this coalition for what they have done. As they die they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity."
Wearing his kukri, the blade he is entitled to carry as a Gurkha commander, Lt-Col Collins said: "We go to liberate not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.
"There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly. Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send. As for the others I expect you to rock their world.
"Wipe them out if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory.
"It is a big step to take another human life. I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them.
"If someone surrenders to you then remember they have that right in international law and ensure that one day they go home to their family. The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please."
"As for ourselves, let's bring everyone home and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there."
An interesting article in the German magazine "Der Spiegel" illustrates why Europeans are having a hard time taking Bush and the USA seriously: they haven't a clue about the power of religion.
The authors, Hans Hoyng and Gerhard Spörl, state that "anyone who fails to take seriously the role of religion in "God's own country" (the US' view of itself), a country whose currency bears the motto "In God we trust," fails to understand America." Yet nothing illustrates the failure better than the article these two produce.
For them religion is bunkum for the weak or hypocritical. All through this piece are references to "false piety", "Christian fanatics" or "holy warriors" yet they show no connection between the rhetorical excesses of Bible Belt preachers and the thoughtful men of faith in the White House. On the contrary, archfiend Donald Rumsfeld is shown praying that God curb the "lust for action" and George Bush is depicted seeking the counsel of rabbis and Muslim leaders as well as Christian clergy. Hoyng and Spörl show that religion changed Bush from an unsuccessful drunk to a disciplined world leader who is his own boss in the White House but that only makes these secular Europeans more suspicious.
The presence of Jews in the White House, the "Kosher Nostra", also gives them the creeps. Though Bush's foreign policy circle is far less Jewish than Clinton's, these sons of Deutschland perceive the ominous hand of Zionism in American Middle East actions.
The article ends with Bush speaking to Marines about to be sent into Iraq: "Der Spiegel" notes that "he urged them to do their duty, not so much as a commander-in-chief encouraging his troops, but rather as a field chaplain: 'Don't just try to be a good soldier or a good sailor. Remember to love your fellow man as you yourselves would wish to be loved.' " That doesn't seem too terribly frightening an image to me but it clearly bothers the Germans. A country in the hands of such a simpleton, acting out of motives connected to religion, must surely be a danger to sophisticated Europeans with a "worldly understanding of power and politics."
A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."
Arafat's beleaguered brethren are once again leaping atop the wrong side of history, supporting Saddam Hussein. In a just world, the Americans would remember this next time they try to force a silly peace accord on Israel. They probably won't.
Sacha Trudeau is serving as a human shield in Baghdad. There may yet be a positive outcome to this war!
Sadly, these misguided souls are probably acting out of sincere if absurd convictions. The day that they volunteer to serve as human shields in Jerusalem markets, or on passenger jets in Europe and the USA, is the day that I shall stop making fun of them, and wishing nasty fates upon them.
Those who thought that refusing to join the American coalition would keep Canadians safer around the world learned the sad truth today. An assassin has murdered a Canadian, an American and a Yemeni at an oil-drilling site near Marib. Another Canadian was seriously wounded by the murderer who had apparently not learned of Prime Minister Chretien's principled stand against war conducted without the approval of the United Nations. The problem, I guess, is that all us infidel dogs look alike.
“There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food . . . on one occasion, I saw Qusay [President Saddam Hussein’s youngest son] personally supervise these murders.”
--- From a 2003 statement to British human rights investigators; cited by a Welsh Labour Party MP as one of the reasons he supports immediate war on Saddam Hussein. Note that since 1991 the Iraqi government has been the subject of a UN Security Council resolution calling on it to end such treatment of its own citizens. Armed force wielded by Americans, British, Spanish, Australians, etc., will soon act "unilaterally" to abolish Baathist torture and murder.
Canada sides with the Iraqi, Chinese, Russian and French regimes in finding such intervention intolerable. You can tell a lot about a country from the company it keeps.
Speaking, as I was, of the spinelessness of Canada's Liberals I am reminded of one of Winston Churchill's more cutting remarks. It was directed in January 1931 at Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald.
"I remember being taken as a child to the celebrated Barnum's circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as 'The Boneless Wonder'. My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench."
What would the greatest man of the twentieth century say today about Jean Chretien?
It seems unfortunately to be true that the majority of Canadians do not support a US-led, non-UN sanctioned attack on Iraq. At risk of sounding indelicate, though, it would be very interesting to see what the rate of support is among Canadians, excluding first generation immigrants from hostile countries and Quebec, two consituencies that have, at the very least, divided loyalties.
In an AP article appearing in newspapers today (no link available) several Canadian aboriginals and scientists talk about AIDS and Canada, and specifically the aboriginal population. This group is overrepresented statistically in new HIV cases, and all those interviewed believe that the problem will only get worse in the immediate future. This is indeed troubling, and it is important to be aware of these trends, since ideally it would lead to allocation of resources in the most efficient way possible.
That's not the only lesson to be drawn, though. Discussing why aboriginals are contracting HIV faster than the rest of the country, the article states that aboriginals are more likely to live in high-poverty dysfunctional communities. Fair enough, and also not news for anyone familiar with northern Canada. Because of this, though, the author concludes that aboriginals are more likely to engage in "high risk coping skills, like drugs, sex and alcohol abuse."
"Coping skills"? There are so many problems with this that it's hard to know where to start. Some groups have apparently defined deviancy so very far down that rather than being considered symptoms of immorality, irresponsibility or stupidity, these behaviours are now considered "coping skills." Like welfare for teenage mothers and affirmative action, this ideology is a fine example of mushy headed liberalism working to the detriment of the very people it purports to help. Needless to say, the more "drugs, sex and alcohol abuse" are considered legitimate forms of recreation or stress management, the more of this behaviour we will have thrust upon us. By reducing the penalties for deviance and increasing public sympathy for it, we are in effect not just rewarding those who engage in these behaviours but penalizing those who find more constructive ways to deal with the stress of life on a wretched reserve.
The final (for the moment) problem with this attitude is that it suggests that promiscuity and substance abuse are the by-products of poverty and learned helplessness. If anything, though, the relationship is the inverse: every child born to an unwed and usually underage mother in this community contributes to the low standard of living of the average Canadian aboriginal. Every drug addict or drunk strengthens the relationship between reserves and crime, poverty and ill health. Many aboriginals and others seem to think that in the absence of poverty and social dysfunction, promiscuity and drugs would magically disappear. In fact the best way to create a functional and healthy aboriginal population is to do everything possible to lower this community's rates of substance abuse and non-marital childbearing, bringing them closer to the rates for society as a whole. A very good start is to stigmatize these behaviours, and not to present them as inevitable and understandable choices.
Well, it's official. After months of offending our closest ally and largest trading partner by dithering and affectations of moral superiority Canada has announced it will play no part in the liberation of Iraq. That is to say, the philosopher and philanthropist Jean Chretien has decided that without a specific authorization from the United Nations Security Council such a struggle would be illegitimate.
We didn't have a League of Nations resolution that authorized our entry into World War II but Frenchmen weren't heard to complain too loudly when our army landed in Normandy in 1944. No UN mandate was required when Canadians joined the bombing of Serbia to bring a halt to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. When Western forces invaded Afghanistan to rout al Qaida and effect a regime change Canadian soldiers and airmen were there without permission from the UN.
Chretien's stand may be popular in the Liberal party which seems the natural home for the spineless. It may even be popular with that majority of Canadians who have forgotten that peace and civilization are the products of hard choices and nasty battles not the inevitable result of political correctness or happy thoughts. But this present popularity will not shield Chretien or our generation from the contempt of posterity which will judge us to be worthy successors of the League of Nations, Mackenzie King and other craven appeasers.
In January 1994 the United Nations had a force of peacekeepers in Rwanda, operating under the mandate of Security Council Resolutions 812, 847, 891 and 893. This small lightly-armed force was commanded by a Canadian general, Romeo Dallaire, and included hundreds of Belgian troops whose presence was a reminder of their country's former colonial rule there. The job of these soldiers was to prevent violence between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority, peoples who had a long history of mutual antagonism that had sometimes burst forth into murder and masssacre.
On January 11 General Dallaire sent a fax to United Nations headquarters in New York. This message, which was to be read by his superiors including another Canadian military officer, Maurice Baril, and the Undersecretary in charge of peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, warned of an impending civil war and genocide. An informant, well-placed in the Hutu administration, had told him of illegal arms caches in the capital, that paramilitaries were planning to butcher their opponents at at the rate of 3,000 an hour and that the Belgian blue berets were to be particularly targeted. Dallaire requested that he be given permission to act at once, seizing the arms caches and providing sanctuary for the informant and his family.
Annan's deputy Aziz Iqbal refused to allow Dallaire to act against the planned murders, or to seize the illegal weapons or offer refuge to his informant. Instead the Canadian officer was ordered to share his information with President Habyarimana (whose men were planning the massacres) and ask him to look into it.
What followed, of course, was what the informant had told Dallaire would ensue. Ten Belgian paratroopers were captured and hacked to death, prompting their government to pull their men out of Rwanada. 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered while UN forces stood by helplessly.
Who was held reponsible for this failure? Not the UN: they received the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. Not Kofi Annan: he was promoted to General Secretary of the United Nations. Not General Baril: He was promoted to Chief of Canadian Defence Staff. Dallaire was made the scapegoat. The Belgians wanted to put him on trial for negligence, Saturday Night magazine ran a story blaming him for the catastrophe and the poor man suffered a breakdown as a result.
Thus, the man who asked for a large heavily-armed force of peace-keepers and who got a small bunch of ill-equipped troops instead, who warned of a genocide and was ignored, who asked for permission to intervene and was refused, whose Belgian detachment was yanked out of the mission -- this is the fellow made to take the blame.
Just one question: if this is an example of the United Nations acting to back up its own resolutions, why are we looking to it for permission to move against Iraq?
Barring something strange happening, this procedure will likely be banned some time in the next few months. This is a good thing for everyone; it is a grisly act with no medical benefits to anybody. The reason why the ban will likely pass is that even pro-choice or the undecided have little trouble making up their minds against PBA when they know what it involves.
One of the great aces held by pro-abortion activists is the fear of a woman dying from complications of pregnancy because she could not have an abortion. Many people who define themselves as anti-abortion or pro-life are ambivalent on this issue, and would likely agree that in the case where continuing a pregnancy could be fatal to the mother, the option of abortion should be available. NARAL and other lobby groups in the US have long linked PBA to this sentiment; they agree that the procedure is awful, but isn't it better than condemning a pregnant woman to die?
The problem with this reasoning is that such a situation (one in which a woman's life is at stake unless she has a PBA) never occurs. If in later pregnancy, the only time it is performed, a woman's health or life is threatened by continuing gestation, childbirth, either induced or by Caesarian, provides the health benefits of ending the pregnancy and is a vastly safer option for the mother, with lower risk of maternal death, injury or future infertility. If this straw woman, whose health is endangered by late term pregnancy, wants to be a mother, she can give birth early and keep the baby; if she doesn't want to be a mother she can give birth early and place it for adoption. (All the reasons why people prefer adoption to abortion, such as avoiding stigma, embarassment, discrimination, violent reactions from family or partner are clearly moot by the 7th or 8th month.) So really the only reason for a PBA instead of an early delivery is if the mother wants not so much not to be pregnant but instead for the baby to die.
This is something very few people anywhere on the spectrum defend. There are arguments to be made that a contraceptive error shouldn't force a woman to bear an unwanted child; this argument can hardly apply to a woman mostly through her pregnancy, who faces either childbirth or the much riskier, more traumatic PBA. It is argued that rape victims shouldn't have to bear a rapist's child, but while first and second trimester abortions are readily available that has no bearing on whether third trimester abortions must be allowed for these unfortunates. In short the conventional arguments for abortion in terms of women's rights are that women shouldn't be forced to go through pregnancy, and that they shouldn't be forced to become mothers. The argument that women should have the right to kill their viable children is one that very few are prepared to defend (Pete Singer comes to mind) and for good reason.
In Canada, where we have no abortion law as such, the situation is a bit different. Theoretically PBA could be done at the 40th week of gestation and be entirely legal. Due to provincial regulations, hospital rules and the unwillingness of doctors to do this, it seldom occurs. National numbers aren't available but anecdotal numbers from hospitals and provinces indicate that while not unheard-of, PBA in Canada is exceedingly rare. It would still be appropriate to ban it outright.
The helpful remarks made by the latest Iranian crackpot illustrate two things that astute observers of the Middle East have known for some time. The first is that the much touted "plight of the Palestinians" is of no concern to the Moslem world. At every turn they have kept these sorry folk in the worst position possible, knowing that a group happily absorbed into the ethnically identical Jordan and Lebanon would at best stop harassing Jews and at worst cause problems for Arab dictatorships.
The second is that the land of Israel is only desirable to the Moslem world to the extent that the Jews currently control it and they do not. If they placed any substantial value, religious or otherwise, on the land and archaeology of that nation, a nuclear attack upon it would of course be out of the question. Needless to say neither lesson will be learned by the wilfully blind negotiators of Oslo and their ilk; reality has never been a stumbling block for their plans, and there is no reason to suppose it will become one at this late date.
Just in case you need reminding how much truth there is in the phrase "Axis of Evil", the second-ranking Islamic clergyman in Iran has recommended a nuclear attack on Israel. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani notes approvingly that atomic bombs would utterly destroy Israel but the Muslim world would suffer "only damages" in response.
"Jews shall expect to be once again scattered and wandering around the globe the day when this appendix is extracted from the region and the Muslim world", quoth this far-seeing statesman who neglected to mention that any nuclear attack on Israel would almost certainly also wipe out the Palestinians of the region.
Joining the Iranians in emitting threats of atomic Armageddon are their Axis partners the North Koreans. The red-breasted Stalinist loons of Pyongyang have resumed their development of nuclear weapons and have threatened to turn American cities into "a sea of ashes" but in a crystalline example of Freudian transference have accused the USA of belligerence and aggression.
...was where to put the tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers who surrendered to the first non-Iraqi they met. We might well have that problem again. This is highly encouraging for everyone except SH.
Let the bells ring out, let the banners fly! Jean Chretien has declared that George Bush has already won in Iraq and there is no need for further use of force. This news was greeted with great enthusiasm in Baghdad where tens of thousands of delirious Iraqis poured into the streets to celebrate their new-found freedom.
"Praise to Allah!" shouted Abdul Malik, an ecstatic shop-owner and father of three, "Our long national nightmare is over!" Malik told reporters how Saddam's secret police had been responsible for the torture and murder of his two brothers, who had been active in a university political discussion group, and how his youngest daughter had died of blood poisoning due to the shortage of medicines in Iraq. "For years the tyrant has spent our oil-for-food revenues on weapons and palaces, but now thanks to Chretien's announcement we are free! I am going right away to stone the barracks of the Revolutionary Guard."
Similar outpourings of joy were expressed in the south of the country where Saddam's forces had carried out nerve gas attacks on Shi'ite villages and in countless underground interrogation cells where mutilated prisoners were heard to mumble thanksgivings to the Canadian prime minister who had so swiftly brought an end to decades of Baathist dictatorship.
"What a blessed country Canada must be," stammered long-time torture victim Mustapha Muhammed between spasms, "To have such a man as Jean Chretien for Prime Minister must be heaven indeed. As soon as they remove these electrodes from my testicles I will hobble to your embassy with a letter of gratitude."
Bouyed by his success in bringing peace to Iraq, Chretien is expected to make similar announcements of victory later this week. On Tuesday it is believed that he will declare the Israeli-Palestinian crisis to be "just a little misunderstanding" that he has been able to clear up and on Thursday Canadians hope to hear their leader state that the common cold has been cured along with world hunger, colon cancer, global warming and Sheila Copps. When asked by a reporter if his recently-discovered miracle-working would include an end to Liberal corruption and one-party rule Chretien changed the man into a gerbil.
Here is a new challenge for the anti-war crowd and the human shield industry. Are you prepared to denounce, decry, march against, write poems against, and generally get all upset about a nation preparing to invade its neighbour if that aggressive nation is NOT the United States? If so, prepare to marshall the full force of your moral vigor against -- Turkey.
When last we encountered Turkey it was denying the United States and Britain (its most trustworthy allies and NATO partners) the right to launch an attack on Iraq from its soil. This would have the effect of making an anti-Saddam war much more difficult by allowing Iraqi forces to defend a much narrower front. It is safe to assume that this Turkish decision will cost American and British lives. To their credit the good guys didn't whine and they made the proper responses about Turkey being a democracy and having the right to ... etc., etc.
But lo, what do we have here? Why, it's a Turkish army massing on the Iraqi border and preparing to launch itself into its neighbour's territory! To smash the godless forces of Baathist tyranny, no doubt, and to aid the allies in their quest to drive Saddam from power? Well, no. The Turks mean to invade northern Iraq to ensure that the Kurds there are neutralized and entertain no dangerous ideas of autonomy which might spread to their brethren inside Turkey.
This is very shabby behaviour and the Americans have warned against it. It is a move fraught with dangers and will certainly retard Turkey's progress toward acceptance as a Western nation and not just another Middle Eastern problem.
For all you fans of appeasement out there, March 7 is the anniversary of Hitler's 1936 militarization of the Rhineland, a violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact. The reaction of the League of Nations to this breach of international law was swift -- it censured the Nazis and decisively took no further action that would have provoked the testy Germans to violence. Nine years later Allied armies suffered thousands of casualties in breaching the defences that Hitler had erected there.
It is interesting to reflect that in 1936 the country that most wanted to use an armed solution to solve this crisis was France. It was Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government in Britain who were the arch-weasels, pleading that they were unwilling to live up to their commitments because of anti-war sentiment at home, military unpreparedness, and general dislike of the French, particularly by veterans of World War I. Economic sanctions were considered but thought to be unworkable. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden suggested that he complain to the Germans that they had put the British government in an uncomfortable position and it was up to Mr Hitler to now show his good intentions -- not by obeying the treaties his country had signed but by not putting too many Wehrmacht units into the Rhineland and frightening the French. Cabinet minutes of these meetings make for sad reading by anyone who knows that the German troops were under orders to immediately pull back if they encountered resistance. We also know only too well that this policy of treating international scoff-laws gently led to Hitler gobbling up Austria, the Sudentenland and the rest of Czechoslovakia over the next three years before finally provoking the little tiff known as World War II.
What was Canada's position at the time? "Collective bluffing cannot bring about collective security," said Prime Minister Mackenzie King but he took no steps to strengthen the hand of the western democracies or Canada's own defence capabilities. In fact his 1937 visit to Berlin convinced him that we and the rest of the British Empire had little to fear from Hitler.
Not content with flushing the remnants of Canada's former glory down the toilet, Foreign Affairs minister Bill Graham is apparently using his spare time to tinker with his blind trust holdings. Anyone interested in Graham's earlier (and much more interesting) escapades should read this.
Theodore Dalrymple presents an excellent and brief look at why European academics hate Israel.
An excellent article by Christopher Hitchens on why going into Iraq without Turkey's help may be a good thing in the long run. Part of the price the Turks had been demanding for the use of their territory in the war against Saddam had been a free hand for themselves in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. This would have been intolerable to the Kurds who have set up their own quasi-democracy in this enclave which has been protected from Baghdad by British and American airpower. Since the Turks have bungled the negotiations with the Americans the US is now freer to assure the Kurds a high degree of autonomy in a post-liberation Iraq. This will be the first step in a sensible reorientation of the artificial borders that were drawn after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
In their zeal to prevent a tiny number of people from being exposed to minute amounts of something that might be somehow harmful, environmentalists have sentenced hundreds of thousands of Africans to suffer and die from malaria. DDT is highly effective against mosquitoes, primary carriers of malaria, and is considered safer than ever for humans when used correctly. Further, judicious use of DDT prevents people from resorting to an action with far worse environmental consequences: clearcutting wooded areas or putting more harmful chemicals into stagnant bodies of water.
Following an excellent principle, though, that one should never attribute to malice what is amply explained by incompetence, I believe that environmentalists are suffering from an inability to understand numbers. This is not uncommon in our society, as evidenced by all the people who think their odds of winning the lottery are smaller when the jackpot is large, since more people buy tickets. Many of the effects, though, are less funny.
Gigerenzer's Calculated Risks and J. A. Paulos' Innumeracy are both excellent guides to this field written by mathematicians for a general readership. Both authors mention two of the fields in which innumeracy hurts people the most: medical diagnostics, and environmental policy. For example, many governments have in the 1980s and 1990s tried to implement (and some have) compulsory premarital AIDS testing (and many had other tests, as well.) For a low-risk group, though, the chances of a false positive are many many times higher than the chance of a true positive. That means that for every 100 couples informed that one of them has HIV, this would be the truth in fewer than one case. This is boggling. The sheer damage this could do to the people and relationships in question far outweighs any potential medical value of routine testing. Gigerenzer documents at least five cases in which Americans committed suicide after being given a false positive test result, without being advised as to likelihood of a false result. These people died because their doctors and counsellors didn't know what they were talking about.
In matters environmental the shape usually taken by the innumerate is a cavalier attitude toward the risks of the course they adopt. This is because they aren't equipped to assess the risks of both possible courses of action. To be sure there is some risk to some people if DDT is used in central Africa. All the research indicates that this risk is extremely small. On the other hand there is a risk to many people if DDT is not used, and the research and empirical evidence show that this risk is quite large (80 000 deaths in one year from a preventable disease would in any other context be considered outrageous.)
Another aspect of this problem is the current campaign against SUVs. Yes, they contribute slightly faster to pollution, and yes, this presents a small risk to a certain population. That is, if everyone drove an SUV there would be a few more deaths every year than there are currently, mostly from asthma and possibly from cancer. On the other hand, if everyone drove an SUV there would be substantially fewer traffic fatalities every year, since SUVs outperform almost every other car in collisions. I don't know which presents the higher total cost to society, and I don't deny that there are other factors on both sides of the argument that should be considered. It is at best disingenuous, though, to present the case as if there is no disadvantage to banning SUVs in terms of human safety.
Hugo Gurdon agrees with me. The best part of his editorial:
"Whichever way the Security Council swings, the UN is finished as a snare for the legitimate exercise of American power. If the Council rejects the new resolution, it will be ignored. If it votes Aye, it will do so -- in plain view of the world -- only because it prefers to hang on to Mr. Bush's coattails than eat his dust."
And on the subject of another topic in today's NP, Miz Carolyn Parrish -- I spoke too soon in assuming that only France and Germany step carefully through the minefield of foreign policy, wary of offending the seething mobs of PLMs in their midst. Miz Parrish apparently represents the riding with the highest proportion of Arabs and Mohammedans in Canada. But this is surely a coincidence.
As Germany, France (aka Germany's holiday annex) and Russia (aka even though you spent half a century trying to kill us all we aren't holding a grudge) prepare to veto any pro-war resolutions, it becomes harder and harder to find a reason to continue participating in the UN, and certainly to continue pumping large amounts of money into it and its various organs.
According to the Preamble to its consitution, often referred to as the unconditional surrender of the English language, it exists to prevent future wars. So far the track record isn't good; on the other hand if the UN spent half as much time actually trying to prevent Third World massacres as it spends pissing on Israel and distributing condoms free of charge in every public bathroom in the Third World, it might have accomplished something. With reference to our current debacle, to the extent that it can push actual war with Iraq and North Korea further and further back, the UN ensures that when it happens it will be far bloodier and messier, with higher casualties on both sides, than it would have been otherwise.
Blocking American action and harassing Jews aside, the two main functions of the UN appear to be the creation of transnational agreements and international health and relief work. The first of these is an unqualified mess; the vision of the ICC seems to be a world in which democratically elected leaders and their advisors can be prosecuted by the minions of genocidal maniacs. The second, while containing some important components, is also on balance a waste.
The structures through which the UN provides aid to refugees are not without serious problems. In Israel, for example, the "refugee" camps go a long way toward preventing Arabs from actually getting on with their lives and accomplishing something; it is in effect a subsidy of political foment and terrorism. The actions of UN staff in these camps with regard to the bombing and shooting of Jews by the "refugees" range from incompentence to occasional assistance. Mark Steyn once made comments to the effect that if the UN truly wanted to destroy the Jews they should start protecting them the way they do Israeli Arabs; within a generation all erudition, virtue and ambition would be stripped away and replaced with hatred and infighting.
Some arms of the UN, such as UNICEF and WHO, do more good in the world than they do evil. Even in these cases, though, policy is dictated more by lobby groups than by health interests; how else to explain the millions devoted to providing condoms and oral contraceptives to people who lack clean water? How else to explain a group that puts a higher priority on eradicating Mother's Day than on wiping out "honour killings", female genital mutilation and the selective abortion of daughters?
The USA already gives a phenomenal amount of money to the Third World in many different forms of aid. It should withdraw from the UN, and use the billions that membership costs it to improve its armed forces (aircraft carriers come to mind, to end reliance on Turkish and Saudi nutcases) and in further aid to those countries who are worthy of it. So should Canada, of course, but that will never happen.
For those of you wondering what too much postmodernism can do to your brain, look no farther than this. I would rather see crack cocaine distributed free in daycare centres than pay taxes to subsidize this sort of bogus scholarship in universities. Michel Foucault is answering for this right now in some particularly nasty corner of Hell.
First, on AIDS spread in Africa. Michael Fumento in The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS points out that, as HIV is most efficiently transferred when there is an open sore present, the vast prevalence of VD in Africa makes a huge difference. If, instead of sending to stricken countries complicated and expensive antiretroviral drugs of dubious efficacy, the UN, WHO and other concerned parties sent the much cheaper and more effective antibiotics needed to cure syphillis and gonorrhea, they would do infinitely more to slow the spread of AIDS.
Second, on violence as a cause of death in pregnancy: in discussion with friends in the medical field I've become aware of an interesting point. Most of the medical complications that result in maternal death become most severe toward the end of pregnancy. If a woman is being treated for a life-threatening problem during pregnancy, and if it becomes clear that she will likely not survive, I am told that a C-section is routinely performed for viable fetuses (which most are in the 8th and 9th months.) Thus the cause of the mother's death is a complication of pregnancy, but she will not be considered to have been pregnant when she died, since strictly speaking the baby had been delivered. (This is a bit grisly.) Thank heaven this is relatively rare in our society, as is any death of a pregnant woman. This might go further toward explaining, though, why death by violence appears to be a disturbingly high proportion of deaths of pregnant women.
Of course, while any violent death is a travesty, and the murder of a pregnant woman even more so, it can't be stressed enough that the reason we are even discussing this is that our standard of living is so much higher than almost everyone else's. In countries where clean water is hard to find, more pregnant women die of violence than in North America, but these deaths are dwarfed by the many who die of inadequate nutrition, lack of even minimal health care, and so on.
Paul Johnson on the French:
"...it still comes as a shock to see how badly the French can behave, with their unique mixture of shortsighted selfishness, long-term irresponsibility, impudent humbug and sheer malice. Americans are still finding out--the hard way--that loyalty, gratitude, comradeship and respect for treaty obligations are qualities never exhibited by French governments. All they recognize are interests, real or imaginary. French support always has to be bought."
Incidentally, I'm entirely in favour of bumping France from the UN Security Council in favour of India. It's the world's largest democracy, it's pluralistic and largely anglophiliac, and replacing France (which kowtows to its terrifying and out of control Arab population) with India (which understands the dangers of cozying up to fanatics) would really, really annoy the world's Peace Loving Mohammedans.
British historian Paul Johnson assesses the moral legitimacy of the United Nations:
The assumption, in many minds, seems to be that whereas individual powers act on the world stage according to the brutal rules of realpolitik, the U.N. represents legitimacy and projects an aura of idealism. In fact, more than half a century of experience shows that the U.N. is a theater of hypocrisy, a sink of corruption, a street market of sordid bargains and a seminary of cynicism. It is a place where mass-murdering heads of state can stand tall and sell their votes to the highest bidder and where crimes against humanity are rewarded.
Yup, that sounds about right to me.
Swedish environmentalists have finally come to the same decision that I reached years ago: recycling is a waste of time. A group including the former director general of the country's environmental protection agency claims that collecting household paper and glass was unprofitable and that plastics should be burnt to generate electricity.
In a move that is as unsurprising as it is hypocritical British "human shields" are returning home as war in Iraq becomes more likely. Some of them have run out of money and others are concerned for their safety -- apparently the Iraqis wanted them to stand in front of actual military targets instead of the daycares and petting zoos that the brave Britons had come there to defend.
Those plucky heroes of the Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action Group who remain behind are also moving quickly to get out of the way of incoming ordinance. They have decided that henceforth they shall be "witnesses" rather than protectors. That sounds a bit like the role of the United Nations.
Here is an interesting article on AIDS in Africa. The author writes with more candour than is usually seen in such discussion, and sheds light on three particularly African quirks that hasten the spread of HIV in the dark continent.
A politically incorrect observer would quickly note that all three of these customs are directly attributable to a society that derives its morality, sexual and otherwise, from paganism and idolatry. Further they contain a strain of mysogyny without parallel in modern Christianity and Judaism (and, of course, theoretical Islam, although Islam in practice has some equally horrifying problems with women.) The best possible way to stop HIV from spreading via the mechanisms described in the article would be a massive campaign to Christianize the continent, and to persuade Africans to limit their sexual contacts to consensual marital activities. The author also fails to discuss a fourth and most gruesome mechanism of transmission: the behaviour that stems from the legend that intercourse with a virgin cures AIDS. This behaviour, too, is incompatible with being a Christian. (The author tells us that there are many Christians in his country, but they sure don't seem to behave that way.)
Many present-day Christian churches, though, and especially the oldest and most established, like the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, are plagued by cultural relativism. Who are they to say that African sexual practices aren't just as valid, moral and correct as monogamy? Just because incest, wife-swapping and virgin-raping are different from our mores, that doesn't mean they're wrong, does it? In fact it does. Perhaps this is the most subtle and pernicious form of racism these days: by declining to extend the benefits of the Judeo-Christian tradition to Africans, for whatever reason, we are helping them to die horribly.
The omniscient chattering classes in the US and elsewhere are fond of sneering at the US "selection", and of proclaiming that Bush won through rigged court processes and due to his pedigree. It should be borne in mind that Bush received at least 49% of the popular vote, while Gore received at least 1% less; Ralph Nader picked up the remainder. Due to the eccentricities of the American electoral system this caused more confusion than it ought; in any other country it is easy to become leader with substantially less support.
In fair Canada, on the other hand, land of electoral idiocy and well-meaning but befuddled conservatives, an incompetent, arrogant and generally odious man can get around 40% of the popular vote while securing almost 60% of the seats in Parliament and enjoying an unquestioned victory. CNN rent-a-pundits are fond of saying that more people voted against Bush (by which they mean voted for someone else) than voted for him; it would be hard to find an election in which a Canadian PM earned a majority, rather than a plurality, of the popular vote. If anyone can suggest with a straight face that Bush lacks a mandate because he garnered less than 50% of the vote (and if they ignore the 2002 results) they must be horrified and stunned at the undemocratic chicanery of the 2000 Canadian election.
The mission of the USA is clear; after Baghdad, on to Ottawa, after which Sheila Copps shall be classified as an offense against humanity and Margaret Atwood can be destroyed as a weapon of mass destruction. Chretien and his undemocratic stooges have lied to us long enough. Time for regime change!
Prime Minister Jean Chretien yesterday announced his misgivings about the notion of ousting Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. When my country's beloved leader has moral anxieties I want him to know I'm there for him. I feel his pain. I've been feeling pain from Chretien for 11 years.
Quoth our P.M. : "Myself, I think that the consequences can be very grave when we go for a change in regime... Who's going to be next? ... This is a very dangerous concept."
Don't worry Jean, Dexter is here to help. Here is a handy guide for when a regime should be changed:
• If it achieved office promising to remove the GST and after 11 years in power that hated tax remains.
• If it achieved office vowing to renegotiate NAFTA and after 11 years in power no steps have been taken toward that goal.
• If 11 years after paying millions to scrap a deal for modern Navy helicopters our 1960s-era Sea Kings have the flight characteristics of anvils, endanger our troops daily and cause us international embarassment.
• If this regime's flunkies endanger a friendly relationship with our largest trading partner by calling the American president a moron and the American people bastards.
• If it insists on pouring more money into a failed gun registry even after a $23 million dollar commitment turns into a $1 billion dollar flop.
• If vanity and a crass love of power for its own sake keep a wretched leader clinging to office while ignoring corruption, incompetence and hypocrisy.
• Or if the regime makes war on its neighbours and its own people causing the death of millions.