In this article from City Journal (worth reading in its entirety, and all available online) Dalrymple discusses the clash between French school uniforms and Islamic headscarves. Just as after the Cambridge spies, gentlemen had to start reading other gentlemen's mail, so after 9/11 (and if we'd been paying attention, after 1979) not all religions can safely be accorded the delicacy to which they have in the Western world become accustomed.
There is nothing quite so health-giving as a good rant. Letting off accumulated rage and frustration in print leaves one with a feeling of satisfaction that is almost post-coital. John Derbyshire must surely have reached for a cigarette after delivering himself of the following piece of prose. The subject was what should be done about the government-funded modern art industry and the awarding of the Turner Prize to an "artist" who presented an empty room with a light switching on and off. Derbyshire opines thusly:
What do I think about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust off bolts for 20 years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal porridge. Then I think Mr. Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he should be killed by some not-very-humane method. Then the Tate Gallery should be reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment, the rubble carted away to be used as landfill, and the ground sown with salt. Then the fools who pay good money to look at this "art" should be packed into boxcars and tipped off the white cliffs of Dover, and their mangled corpses left to be feasted on by dogs, crows and crabs.
There, wasn't that splendid? I, myself, would have gone a bit more deeply into what I conceived to be the proper "not-very-humane-method" of dispatching the gallery employee and made reference to some of the more fiendish aspects of Turkish and Chinese penology such as the Death of a Thousand Cuts but that's only a quibble. Rant on John.
Here is an interesting article by Jack Layton. His first point, that the refusal to state a clear position is worse than almost any imaginable articulated position, and that this abuse of the electorate is only possible under our current scheme, is excellent. His second major point, that proportional representation is the answer, is less praiseworthy. Given that he would be perhaps the prime beneficiary of such a policy (there being too small a proportion of nutcases in almost any riding to elect an NDP, ahem, member, but enough throught the country to contribute a few percent of the House) is clearly not in the position of a disinterested observer.
His claim that coalition governments are not inherently unstable should be kept in mind while reviewing the histories of the governments of Israel and Italy, the two countries in which prop. rep. exists in the most pure form, and where chaos precedes and sometimes follows every major vote. Nonetheless, we are rapidly reaching the point in Canada at which almost any change would have to be for the better, as with every passing election we more closely resemble a third world kleptocracy. The danger with proportional representation is that having tried it we are unlikely ever to be able to change back, as the small parties who would make up more than 50% of the seats and who would immediately vanish back into obscurity would never agree to this.
One of the great Papist-baiting lines of the past several years has concerned priestly celibacy. Despite overwhelming evidence that the horrible behaviour of a few priests in the US (and they were few -- the Catholic church has fewer convicted sex offenders per capita in its employ than does Princeton University) had little to do with traditional pedophiles or repressed heterosexuals, and a great deal to do with homosexuals indulging themselves with adolescent males, a great hue and cry went up that celibacy must end. Who were they to declare themselves above sexual activity? How could they ignore the fact that all animals have sexual urges?
This argument is unpersuasive. All religions urge the channeling of carnal desires into holier directions, whether it be through laws concerning sexuality, diet, prayer and meditation, modesty or refraining from work. Exercising such self-restraint is one of the capacities that distinguishes us from animals. More to the point, though, this argument is anti-Catholic. When the same crowd who call for an end to papal celibacy start campaigning for an end to Buddhist celibacy (Buddhists believe that total abstinence is the goal not only for priests and monks but ultimately for all believers) then perhaps we should engage them more seriously.
Today is ANZAC Day, a memorial to the men of the armed forces of Australia and New Zealand who died in Turkey 88 years ago at the bloody battle of Gallipoli.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard told a memorial service in Canberra that the day was "about the celebration of some wonderful values - of courage, of valour, of mateship, of decency, of a willingness as a nation to do the right thing, whatever the cost."
Gallipoli was one of the most important battles of World War I but is scarcely remembered outside of Australia and New Zealand. It was fought to seize the Dardanelles, the strategic passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Victory for the British-led invaders would have knocked Turkey out of the war and allowed the easy re-supply of the Russian Empire. Instead it was a costly failure with catastrophic results: it discouraged the notion of amphibious assaults (which might have broken the stalemate in the West), sent the career of Winston Churchill into a decline, weakened the Russian Empire to the point where the Czar was deposed and the Bolsheviks were forced to take Russia out of the war and boosted the career of Turkish general Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk.
When I was a young man I carried my pack,
And I lived the free life of a rover,
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback,
I waltzed my Matilda all over,
Then in 1915 my country said "Son,
it's time to stop rambling for there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun,
And they sent me away to the war.
And the band played "Waltzing Matilda",
As we sailed away from the quay,
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers,
We sailed off for Gallipoli.
How well I remember that terrible day,
When the blood stained the sand and the water,
And how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay,
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter,
Johnnie Turk, he was ready, he'd primed himself well,
He showered us with bullets and he rained us with shells,
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us right back to Australia.
And the band played "Waltzing Matilda",
As we stopped to bury our slain,
And we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs,
And it started all over again.
Now those who were living did our best to survive,
In that mad world of death, blood and fire,
And for seven long weeks I kept myself alive,
Though the corpses around me piled higher,
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit,
And when I awoke in my hospital bed,
And saw what it had done, Christ, I wished I was dead,
Never knew there were worse things than dying.
And no more I'll go "Waltzing Matilda",
To the green bushes so far and near,
For to hang tents and pegs,
A man needs two legs,
No more waltzing matilda for me.
Today is the birthday of Oliver Cromwell, leader of the English Revolution which overthrew and executed King Charles I. Born in 1599, he was a Puritan country gentleman who was elected to Parliament in 1640. When civil war erupted in 1642 he took up arms against the king, rising quickly to the rank of general of cavalry in the forces of Parliament. By 1650 he had consented to the death of Charles, crushed the Irish and put down radical Leveller dissent in England. He was named Lord Protector in 1653 and ruled the new republic -- giving the people "not what they want but what was good for them" -- until his death in 1658. Under his government England defeated the Spanish, captured Jamaica, readmitted the Jews, instituted a limited kind of religious liberty, suppressed the theatre and other popular entertainments and outlawed Christmas.
The diarist John Evelyn recorded that Cromwell's was 'the joyfullest funeral that ever I saw for there was none that cried but dogs'. At the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 his body was disinterred and hanged as a traitor; his head was placed on a pole.
Those of a Puritan bent called him the English Moses but the disenchanted John Milton modelled his portrait of Satan in "Paradise Lost" on Cromwell -- one who would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Edmund Burke said of him that he was a man "in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed, but only suspended, the sentiments of religion." Matthew Arnold was not much kinder, calling him "the Philistine of genius in politics".
This is a very sad story, and we should do our best to stop such dangerous hucksters from bringing hallucinogenic plants into Canada, even if it is culturally insensitive. At a certain point, though, don't people have a responsibility not to be frickin' idiots, as Dr. Evil would say? Many many people claim to have benefitted from alternative medicines, and despite the ranting MDs you hear on TV from time to time, the odds of suffering ill effects are far higher in a hospital or GP's office than while visiting a chiropractor, herbalist, or acupuncturist. When the magic potion, though, is literally brewed up in a cauldron in front of you, when the prescribed dosage is "whatever the pot you brought will hold, repeated several times" and when the practitioners are from a culture that literally had not invented the wheel, doesn't it behoove the hapless consumer to ask a few questions before cheerfully chugging away?
This article takes the properly deferential tone in citing Miz Rebick's outrage that more Canadian hospitals do not perform abortions. For a crowd normally brimming with enthusiasm for exploring "root causes", though, there is remarkably little interest here in exploring the reason for this dearth of eagerness to terminate healthy pregnancies.
The great majority of abortions in Canada are D&Cs. This is a procedure for which all surgeons, ER docs and obstetricians have some training, since it is often necessary for a number of medical problems not involving pregnancy. (Ironically when done to remove uterine growths it can facilitate pregnancy for infertile women.) It is technically very easy, quite quick (under 20 minutes), and very remunerative for both hospitals and doctors involved, given the effort and time provided for the money received. The fact that despite this, significant numbers of doctors and nurses (those staff who are exposed most often to the very beginnings of life and the reality of its termination) prefer not to provide this medical procedure is significant. A reasonable number of hospitals throughout Canada have their policy set by board members drawn from the community; clearly many of them have severe misgivings about the wisdom or morality of providing terminations at their hospitals, despite the extra cashflow they would quickly enjoy if they did so.
Aren't the thoughts of these people at least as worthy of consideration and discussion as the indignation of Judy Rebick?
April 23 is a day rich in historical associations. It is, as all good Englishmen know, St George's Day. This dragon-slayer is also the patron saint of Portugal, Germany, Aragon, Genoa and Venice. A Syrian friend of mine once had a religious vision involving St George.
It is the birthday of many a creative genius:
William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon
Joseph Turner, Romantic painter
Max Planck, quantum scientist
Sergei Prokoviev, RUssian composer
Ngaio Marsh, New Zealandish mystery writer
Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American novelist
Avram Davidson, American fantasist
Roy Orbison, American singer
Slightly less worthy of praise but no less worthy of note are the following:
Herve Villechaize, Fantasy Island dwarf
Tony Esposito, Chicago Black Hawks goalie
Lester Pearson, Canadian politician
Shirley Temple, dimpled cutie of the silver screen
April 23 also seemed to be a good day for kings and writers to depart this vale of tears. For example:
Ethelred I king of Wessex, brother of Alfred the Great
Brian Boru, king of Ireland
Sweyn Forkbeard, king of England
Aethelbred II "the Unready", king of England
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spanish novelist
William Shakespeare
William Wordsworth, English poet
Rupert Brooke, English poet
But of all the sad events of April 23, what can surpass the greatest marketing disaster in American history, the 1985 introduction of New Coke?
Very few serious adherents to Judeo-Christian morality disagree with the principle that homosexual activity is morally wrong (as is, in fact, any sexual activity outside of marriage.) The great majority of Jews and Christians, though, bear no animus toward individual practitioners of homosexuality per se, and often have much sympathy for them. Very few people, after all, will pass their lives without struggling with one or another character defect. To suffer from urges to behave immorally is simply to be human, and while surrendering to those urges is never praiseworthy, it is nonetheless also a common human failing.
The government's decision to stage an (half hearted and tardy) opposition to gay marriage means that perhaps even the Natural Ruling Party have recognized that tolerance, though, is not the same thing as acceptance and at this point celebration. Loving our neighbours despite their lapses is mandatory, but encouraging and promoting these lapses is certainly not. This is a distinction with a long history in the Bible.
Ruth, the foremother of King David and the Messiah, was a Moabite. This is significant, for in Biblical times the Moabites were considered a hated and evil people with whom the Israelites were forbidden to marry. The reason for this is their origin in an act of drunken incest between Lot and his daughter. Lot had another daughter, though, and committed the same crime with her. Why then is it only with Moabites that Jews were forbidden to marry?
The name Moab derives from the Hebrew "from my father". In naming her child this, the first daughter was flaunting her sin (one of the three unredeemable sins, in Jewish law of the time) and trumpeting her son's origins before all the world. The second daughter named her son Benami, "son of my people", out of shame for her act, thus concealing the circumstances of his conception. For this reason the Ammonites, descendents of Benami, were never anathematized as were the Moabites. This illustrates how for millenia a lack of repentance for sin, indeed a seeming pride in it, compounds many times the original failing.
This should be borne in mind when reflecting on the celebration and legitimation of homosexuality in today's culture. It is unclear whether homosexual behaviour tends to stem from genetics, childhood experience, adolescent trauma, or some combination of these. In any case, such a predisposition may well be beyond the control of any individual, and they must not be harmed for suffering from it, nor for imperfectly fighting it. To pretend that this predisposition is normal or desireable, or that to act upon it is as valid as to marry and start a family, though, damages everyone, not least those with homosexual inclinations who are now deprived of social support for any option but self-indulgence.
The second important point of the story of the Moabites and Ruth is the universal potential for redemption. Students have often asked why the ancestor of the most important person in the Judeo-Christian conception of the world should be descended from such an act of sin. The most common answer is that individual virtue and dedication, and in Ruth's case specifically her devotion to her husband and his family, are more powerful than any stigma left by past sins. Because she was worthy of bearing children who would eventually lead to universal redemption through the Messiah, Ruth's example shows that no sin, either collective or individual, precludes atonement and redemption.
What does a human-shielding, nonviolence-modelling peace activist do when the shooting stops? Lisa Martens of Brandon and Christian Peacemaker Teams knows. She and four colleagues have returned to Baghdad, whence they fled during the war, and are now keeping an eye on checkpoints to make sure "American troops treat the people with respect."
It used to be said that proficiency at pool was the sign of a misspent youth. I think Ms Martens and her chums have found an even less useful way of wasting one's precious life.
Today is the birthday of Vladimir Ilich Ulanov, better known to the world as Lenin. Founder of the Soviet Union, one of the twentieth century’s most egregious political blunders, he may be reckoned both a dreadful writer and a mass murderer. It is therefore appropriate to honour him with a poem.
There was a great Marxist called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in,
That grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.
-- attr. Robert Conquest
Speaking of Praise-God-and-Flee-Fornication Barebone, that worthy gentleman had a son whom he named Hath-Christ-Not-Died-for-Thee-Thou-Wouldst-Be-Damned Barebone. After the Stuart Restoration of 1660 Puritan nomenclature went out of fashion and the son changed his name to Nicholas. Nicholas Barebone became a wealthy merchant who would be instrumental in founding London’s first fire-insurance company.
Other English Puritan names include virtues such as Prudence, Charity, Constance and Patience. One young lad was named Dust to increase his sense of humility.
Best of all were the "slogan names":
Be-courteous
Faint-not
Faith-my-joy
Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith
Fly-debate
Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world- to-save
Job-raked-out-of-the-ashes
Kill-sin
No-merit
Search-the-scriptures
Seek-wisdom
Sorry-for-sin
Zeal-of-the-land
Disturbed by patriotism and other signs of backwardness in his fellow Americans, a Bay-area writer is suggesting San Francisco should secede from the USA. He paints a picture of the perfect state that his fellow lefties could create in this enclave:
• gun control
• socialized medicine
• gay marriage
• instant citizenship for illegal immigrants
• public radio and television
• legalized marijuana
Why go to all the hassle of secession? A socialist paradise of the sort he envisions already exists. It's called Canada.
In 1653 the English Parliament was called the Rump, because it was only a remnant of that body which had been elected in 1640. 350 years ago today Oliver Cromwell entered the House of Commons and announced that the Members had grown immoral and corrupt (whoremasters and drunkards were some of the terms he used) and that the country could do without its services. “Take away that fool’s bauble” he cried of the Mace. At the point of the sword he dissolved the Rump Parliament.
Dexter normally does not support anti-Parliamentary coups but when he considers Cromwell's words below and the state of his own nation's Parliament he grows oddly wistful.
"It is high time for Me to put an End to your Sitting in this Place, which you have dishonoured by your Contempt of all Virtue, and defiled by your Practice of every Vice;
Ye are a factious Crew and Enemies of all good Government; Ye are a Pack of mercenary Wretches and would, like Esau, Sell your Country for a Mess of Pottage; and like Judas, betray your God for a few Pieces of Money; Is there a single Virtue now remaining amongst you?
Is there one Vice that you do not possess? Ye have no more Religion than my horse! Gold is your God: Which of you have not bartered your Conscience for Bribes?
Is there a Man amongst you that has the least care for the Good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes! Have you not defiled this Sacred Place, and turned the Lord's Temple into a Den of Thieves by your immoral Principles and wicked Practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole Nation.
Your Country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final Period to your Iniquitous Proceedings in this House, and which by God's Help, and the strength He has given Me, I now come to do.
I command ye, therefore, upon the Peril of your Lives, to depart immediately out of this Place;
Go! Get out! Make haste, ye Venal Slaves, begone!"
The doors were sealed and some joker pinned up a poster reading, 'This House is to be let: now unfurnished.' The Rump Parliament was briefly succeeded by "Barebone's Parliament", named after one of its leading members, the eminent Puritan Praise-God-and-Flee-Fornication Barbone (known to his friends by the diminuitive "Praise-God". His brother was the equally splendidly-named Rise-Up-and-Tell-the-Glory of-Emmanuel Barbone.)
I knew this would happen but it's just too delicious not to report here. After all the complaining that the left did about the harm that sanctions were doing to the poor innocents of Iraq, no opponents of the war seem now to be in a hurry to lift them.
The ruling clique in Ottawa declined to enter the war because it valued the principle of Security Council supremacy more than a chance to end the suffering of Iraqis. True to these principles it now favours prolonging the sanctions until the moment the Security Council deems them to be unnecessary. The fact that the Security Council contains veto-wielding countries who have a financial interest in prolonging the sanctions doesn't trouble our mandarins. The fact that the Saddamite regime is defunct doesn't appear to matter either. Yet more proof that to the Jacobin mind principle always trumps mere reality.
As garlic is to vampires and silver bullets are to werewolves, so is the human rights industry to Dexter: the mere sight of it causes his legs to tremble and his eyes to dart wildly seeking the nearest exit. Imagine his terror then at the recent news that Winnipeg will be shortly be home to a dazzling new Human Rights Museum.
The brainchild of newspaper baron and long-time Liberal Israel Asper, the museum will be jam-packed with items guaranteed to cause apoplexy in those of a conservative bent -- the Pierre Eliot Trudeau Awards Gallery alone should cause right-wing blood vessels to pop like bubble wrap. With its Walk of Shame, Tower of Hope and Sculpture Garden of Smug Self-Righteousness the complex is touted as a must-see tourist attraction. Long before the first busloads of glum school-kid conscripts have arrived for their compulsory injection of Correct Thoughts, the project has won promises of government funding from Sheila Copps.
This dreadful idea is unstoppable; too many malign forces are on-side for it to fail. Every cog in the umbrage industry will want a piece of the action; every ethnic pressure group, sexual deviation, political extremist and religious splinter with a shred of a claim to historical discrimination will be clamouring to be enshrined and thus validated as Genuine Victims. First Nations Persons, women, Jews, Japanese-Canadians and homosexuals are guaranteed their pedestals already but great fun will be had watching the second-and third-rank groups jostling for inclusion.
Will the Ukrainians, still smarting from their World War I internment camps, triumph over similarly disadvantaged Mennonites? Will they get extra points for their suffering in the Stalinist famine? What of the Armenians -- will their place in a glass case force the Turks to admit to certain unpleasant behaviour in the 1920s? Is there a spot in Asper's Rightsorama for the Palestinians, Hutus and Chechens? What of the transgendered, two-spirited and those whose channel surfing compels them to watch split seconds of "Will and Grace" as they race up and down the dial? But in the midst of the unseemly brouhaha that is inevitable as the museum nears completion who will spare a thought for the real victims -- those white middle-class heterosexuals whose tax dollars will pay for this farrago?
We are now starting to reap the dividends of M. Chretien's disdain for all things American. Canadians, do yourselves a favour; next time you hear a neighbour complain about layoffs, the diminishing Canadian economy, the lengthy delay to get into the USA for business or pleasure, shrinking markets to the south for our goods and services, and the fact that nobody takes us seriously anymore, remind him why, and tell him the name of his local Conservative or Alliance candidate.
Despite the fall of Baghdad and the apparent delight with which this has been greeted by Iraqis, the anti-war movement continues across Canada. Those marches scheduled for this weekend may be the first retroactive war protests in history. Though this may seem like demonstrating against the unlocked barn door after the horse has bolted, the idea may not be as silly as it seems at first blush. Why should the fact that a war is over -- a mere technicality of the temporal continuum-- keep one one from denouncing it?
There are a lot of wars out there which predate the protest period and about which concerned citizens of today might want to manifest their displeasure. Dexter, for one, has long carried a grievance about the Peloponnesian War and the shameful behaviour of the Spartans after the battle of Goat's Creek. On more than one occasion Clio has been heard to execrate those pesky Carthaginians and neither of us is entirely happy about the outcome to the War of Jenkins' Ear. "Carthago delenda est!" "Spartans Go Home!" "Resolutely Oppose the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Long Live the Continued Struggle Against Kaiser Wilhelm II!" Pray for a balmy week-end, faithful readers, there's a lot of marching ahead of us.
This is a shameful day for Canadians. The grandchildren of the men who died defeating fascism and Nazism are complacently chugging their Molson's and thumbing their noses at the people brave and determined enough to pick up the torch. Determined to stick by whatever Liberals have where other people have principles, Chretien will not even at this late date endorse the US-led action in Iraq.
The sight of crowds of Iraqis kissing the hands of Marines and waving posters of Bush in the air is at once moving and pathetic. Were it not for George Bush and the steel in the spines of his closest supporters, these people would still be living in a state run by terror and state-salaried thugs. I wish I could force every pacifist I know to look a liberated Iraqi in the eyes and explain why they were opposed to the war.
Journalist Robert Fisk has attained a level of fame not granted to many: his name has become a verb. So frequently have the wild claims of this man been exposed as gaseous vapour that now "to fisK" has become synonymous with demolishing a weak argument point by point or as "The Globe and Mail" recently defined it "to check a person's really absurd assertions against the facts." It was Mr Fisk who spread the word of the "outrageous slaughter" perpetrated by Israel in the "massacre" at Jenin. It was he who poopoohed the notion that the Americans had taken Baghdad airport, and who praised the preternatural skill of the Iraqi army at concealing itself, not realizing that the ultimate in camouflage is to run away before the enemy arrives.
In this light therefore Dexter directs your attention to a bitter column by the legendary Mr Fisk writing in today's "Independent". If you wondered how the fall of Baghdad would be viewed by the anti-American left no better reaction can be found than in this article, where he manages to sneer at coalition troops and the cheering Iraqis in the same breath, sparing kind words only for the foreign Arabs who had come far to fight for Saddam only to be abandoned and scorned. Not everyone is happy in Baghdad tonight: frantic mujahadin are trying to get on the next bus for Syria and Robert Fisk is sobbing in his beer at the Palestine Hotel.
An oddly misguided article in the National Post takes issue with those who prefer correctly spoken and written English. We get a clue right away that the author is perhaps not dealing with our version of reality when he says that Bush is criticized for his poor English because he started a "largely unpopular war." That's right, Bush started it. And in what anglophone circles is it unpopular? These days, with 72% of Canadians saying we should have backed Bush in the beginning, you have to confine your search to the academy to find large populations of English-speakers with whom it isn't popular.
In the wider sense, though, the author misses the point of language. Since it is the primary means by which we communicate, the less clear it becomes and the less precise its meaning, of necessity the less useful and communicative our language becomes. Try transcribing the conversation of a 13 year old to prove this to yourself; robbed of the facial expressions, shoulder shrugs and intonations that make up 90% of its meaning, the string of "uh" "like" and "F***" will be uncomprehensible.
Further, he equates "language snobs" with people whom he doesn't call racists, but obviously considers as such: those who frown on incorrect ghetto slang as "black speech" and prefer "white speech". (The fact that he associates these dialects with these skin colours leans more toward the notion that he is a racist, it would seem.) This is so typical of the jello-headed reasoning of educators and curriculum consultants who no longer believe in teaching grammar, because, a la Chomsky, children will learn the grammar that they need to function in their environment. "Ebonics" hurts nobody as much as it does black people; if they are not taught by their parents and teachers (and all too often they're not) how to speak proper English, they are forever marked to even the most casual observer as uneducated and as members of the underclass, regardless of their personal qualities and talents.
The genius of Western civilization is that you don't need to be a blood descendent of Jerusalem, Athens or Rome to be a rightful heir to their legacy. If we insist that all Canadian and American children learn how to speak English (and preferably another language, too) properly, we will do more to level the playing field and remove inequality than all the quota programmes put together.
This view seems to prevail chiefly in Christian and Jewish circles. If followers of the Religion of Peace felt a tiny bit as obligated to stress this point as does our Immigration Minister, the world would be a much quieter place.
Discussion with a friend from BC who lives in a suburb of Vancouver has yielded some insights. First, apparently, Vancouver proper is very liberal (and Liberal) while the neighbouring suburbs tend to be strongly conservative. My friend is thus not concerned about the possibility of similar "heroin maintenance" and "supervised injection" programmes spreading to his part of the city.
Second, while he thinks the plan is stupid and rewards criminal, unhealthy and general dumb behaviour, so long as it is confined to Vancouver there is for him and his suburban neighbours an upside: they all anticipate the rapid migration of druggies, prostitutes, drug dealers and their related megafauna out of Surrey, Burnaby, Westminster, North Vancouver et alia into Vancouver itself. This is from the perspective of non-Vancouverites not a bad thing, but it should give pause to the architects of the plan.
Finally, the fact that marijuana is at once the cheapest and safest and also the most commonly used illegal drug illustrates for all without fixed preconceptions the relationship between economics and criminal behaviour. It is a common fallacy that prostitution, non-marital childbearing and drug-taking are fundamentally irrational behaviours and therefore not governed by the laws of economics. This has never been borne out by reality. When welfare rates rise unwed births rise too; when they fall so do unwed and teen births (although not as radically as they rose in the first place; this genie can sadly not be rebottled.) Both the numbers of drug users and their average consumption vary in proportion to the cost of street drugs. Stricter enforcement of prostitution laws on either the supply or demand side of the equation has always demonstrated that market principles apply even in this trade.
The key to reducing these behaviours is to make them as costly as possible, in terms of economics, physical risk and social cost. Undoubtedly this will hurt deeply entrenched addicts and prostitutes; the benefit to society at large, people prevented from following these paths, and those who are persuaded by these measures to make a sincere effort to change seem likely to outweigh this harm by any reasonable measure.
For reasons that continue to elude me. the Liberal government intends to proceed with plans to make it easier for the populace to enjoy the recreational effects of marijuana. Indeed Justice Minister Martin Cauchon seems to think this is a matter of some urgency."I will move ahead as quickly as I can", vowed the doughty dopester. He may wish to consider the latest news from researchers in England who say that increased use of the deon weed has caused a significant increase in mental health problems.
According to Professor John Henry of Imperial College London modern cannabis is nearly 10 times the strength that the hippie generation was used to. "We know", he said, "that for those who take the drug there is a fourfold increase in schizophrenia and a fourfold increase in the chances of suffering major depressive illness."
Why an increase in mental illness with an attendant increase in health costs should be something that M. Cauchon wants to encourage is a mystery. Perhaps he fondly remembers his student days when a delicious smoky haze permeated the college dorm and short-circuited vital neural pathways in his young brain. Perhaps toking up in the Commons washrooms explains some recent bizarre Liberal foreign policy decisions.
Even if you have a strong stomach, this story may test your gag reflex. It shows that anti-war protestors, Chretienite appeasers and human shields have been protecting the following:
•A Saddamite death camp (graphic pictures from British troops)
• Baathist thugs who hang and burn children for cheering coalition troops in Basra
• Iraqi-based al Qaida terrorists planning nerve gas attacks on Britain
The April issue of Elm Street, the Canadian feminista magazine so awful it has to be given away, is now being foisted upon unwitting newspaper subscribers across the country. The current cover story is on the new plan of Vancouver's mayor to do something about drugs. His proposal involves providing better housing for addicts, supervised injection sites, and for those for whom abstinence and methadone are too unpleasant, the beautifully named "heroin maintenance", in which the government not only provides needles and instruction but also the heroin itself, free of charge.
It is telling that the advocates of this plan are all bureaucrats, at best a few steps removed from the actual addicts. Mayor Campbell himself is a former coroner, in which position he saw a great deal of the damage done by drugs but not much at all of the mechanics and psychology of addiction. Those who work directly in the field, whether trying to stop kids from ever starting or trying to save those already entrenched in addiction, tend to be strongly opposed to this plan.
Most of the advocates of this plan are charmingly well-intentioned and amazingly delusional. Perhaps they should study history in an effort to find a single example of a vice that decreased after being made cheaper, safer and more socially acceptable. Canada will have as many addicts, prostitute, criminals and deviants as it is willing to subsidize and accept; Vancouver evidentally can tolerate a lot of them.
There is a sense of palpable disappointment coming from some circles at the utter lack of racism in today's Canada. This representative of Asian Canadians, for example, cautions us that just because nobody has yet to find any proof of a backlash against Chinese-Canadians due to SARS doesn't mean we aren't all a bunch of Chink-hatin' rednecks. In place of actual racism she offers us an example of coworkers inquiring as to the health of an Asian friend. This insensitivity and hate mongering must stop!
Inasmuch as travelling to Asia or living with someone who has recently done so is a major epidemiological factor for SARS risk, perhaps this reflects merely an awareness that those with familial and cultural ties to China and Hong Kong are more likely to have done so than, for example, Norwegian-Canadians. Given that the vast majority of casualties to this virus have to date been Asian, why is it anything other than logical to speculate that Asians have a marginally higher risk of suffering from it? But the link between reality and allegations of racial insensitivy was broken many years ago. In the DSM an inability to make decisions and choices based upon reality is considered part of a number of pathologies. They're not viral, but they're still contagious. Expect more angry Asian-Canadian activists on the news, protesting our inherently racist society.
Except for ending slavery, fascism, the Japanese empire, international communism, apartheid, Serbian genocide, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, military force has never solved anything.
Andrew Coyne of the National Post via National Review Online:
The position of the government of Canada is clear. We have always clearly said that we would go to war only with the authority of the Security Council. Now clearly that means that in the event the Security Council did not give its authority, we would not go to war, except if we did. Certainly it is clear that we have never gone to war in the past without the Security Council's authority. Unless you count Afghanistan. Or Kosovo. Or World War II. Or World War I. Or the Boer War.
It couldn't be clearer. This war is unjustified under the Charter of the United Nations. On the other hand, we have always clearly said that Resolution 1441 of the Security Council provided all the authority needed to go to war; there was no need to vote on a second resolution. Unless, of course, there was a second resolution that was never voted on, in which case it clearly supersedes the first resolution, which was.
It's perfectly clear. The Americans lack the authority to launch this illegitimate and unnecessary war, which can only bring great suffering and instability to the region. At the same time, clearly it is their privilege and right to do so, and we wish them Godspeed.
It's as clear as can be. The inspectors should have been given more time to do their jobs. Force was unnecessary; inspections were working. In fact, they were working so well that we circulated a paper saying they should end in two weeks: if Iraq did not disarm by March 28 we would go to war.
It's clearer than clear. We have always said there was no proof Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, we agreed that he had to be disarmed of the weapons there was no proof he had. In fact, there was clearly no need to disarm him. The mere presence of all those American troops was enough to prevent him from doing anything with them. The president has won.
So we always give praise to the Americans. Saddam would not have made the concessions he did if the president hadn't threatened to use force. Clearly, this makes the U.N. more needed now than ever: to prevent the Americans from using force.
It's as clear as day. Regime change is not authorized by the United Nations. We do not support regime change in Iraq: after all, if we're going to go knocking over every genocidal dictator with a taste for weapons of mass destruction who has invaded two of his neighbors and defied 17 U.N. resolutions over a dozen years since a ceasefire that was never honored in a previous war duly authorized by the Security Council, well, where do you stop?
However, we are supportive of our American friends in their desire to get rid of Saddam.
At the same time, we believe that having fought a war to disarm him, the Americans should leave him in power, assuming he still is (we have not yet decided whether he should be restored to power once he's gone). But we agree with the official opposition: He should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity and brought to justice. There is no contradiction. He could serve out his sentence on weekends.
It's very clear. We are not participating in this war. We have always clearly said, however, that we would participate in the last war, the war against terrorism. So when Canadian warships are deployed to escort U.S. ships through the Persian Gulf on the way to Iraq, or when Canadian officers direct bombing runs on Iraq from AWACS aircraft, it should be clear that they are not fighting in the war in Iraq, they are fighting in the war on terror. Though there is clearly no link between the two, whatever those American morons say.
That was not an anti-American remark, and we regret any inference that it was somehow reflective of our personal opinions.
Do we make ourselves clear? We are not contributing ground troops to this war. That is to say, we are, but they are not in Iraq. That is to say, they are, but they are not in combat. That is to say, they are. But we do not support them being there.
Let us be clear. We are in favor of U.N. resolutions but against their enforcement; against the use of force but in favor of the threat of it; against fighting the war, but in favor of winning it. This is part of Canada's unique national identity. Other countries may support the war without participating in it. Only Canada is participating without supporting it.
You see, there's an important principle at stake here. That principle, as the prime minister said clearly in the House of Commons just the other day, is to show that Canada is an independent country, able to make up its own mind about whether to go to war. That is why we have always clearly said we would go along with whatever the Security Council decides. Or fails to decide. Whatever.
At any rate, we clearly have the support of a majority of Canadians, the ones who tell our pollster that although they do not want a war, they would accept one.
What could be clearer?
Excitable, not to say rabid, anthropology professor Nicholas De Genova made himself famous last week by telling Columbia University students that he wished "a million Mogadishus" on American troops in Iraq. When his desire that his fellow countrymen suffer death and mutilation at the hands of Islamic mobs became public knowledge the young academic clarified his remarks: what he really wanted, he said, was that they would suffer one huge Vietnam. Oddly, this did not seem to mollify his critics and now the bold spokesman for the triumph of Baathist torturers has had to go into hiding because of numerous death threats.
Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger had to perform a deft bit of legerdemain in simultaneously defending De Genova's right to free speech and distancing his university as far from the blowhard's remarks as was humanly possible. It is expected that fund-raising efforts will be seriously damaged by the controversy and the outrage it engendered among alumni. I say "amen" to that. It is Columbia's own fault that this sort of brouhaha has erupted and besmirched the university's reputation: it hired De Genova and lots more like him in the Anthropology Department. You must expect trouble and nonsense when you employ someone who sums up his research interests thusly:
"My ethnographic research explores the social productions of racialized and spatialized difference in the experiences of transnational Mexican migrant workers within the space of the U.S. nation-state. More specifically, I examine transnational urban conjunctural spaces that link the U.S. and Latin America as a standpoint of critique from which to interrogate U.S. nationalism, political economy, racialized citizenship, and immigration law."
Got that? Beneath the postmodern blather he is announcing that his academic work is meant to be turned to particular political purposes. His research on migrant labour and rap music and his speech at the infamous teach-in are all of a piece. Columbia has no right to express surprise at his radical opinions. A look at the faculty directory of the Anthropology Department will reveal many other professors of a similarly far-left persuasion spouting 1990s pomo drivel about "the politics of re-presentation", "reconstructed performances [serving] as regenerative mechanisms" or "negotiating gender and nation in performative space".
If De Genova survives the angry alumni who want to parade his head on a pole, his career is unlikely to suffer from the recent public relations blunder. The like-minded anthropologists who will decide on his tenure will certainly keep him around to blight the academic landscape for decades to come.
Proving that the far right and the far left are often indistinguishable, Austrian politician Jörg Haider (fan of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein) hopes for an Iraqi victory.
An optimistic Arab view of the consequences of Iraq war.
Given the virulently Anglophobic sentiment currently seizing the French collective mind, it is not surprising to see that vandals have descrated a cemetery in northern France where thousands of British and Canadian troops are buried. Snail-eating disciples of postmodernity expressed their existential angst by daubing gravestones with red-painted slogans such as "Dig up your rubbish. It's fouling our soil." "Saddam will win and spill your blood." "Rosbeefs go home". Beneath a swastika (drawn incorrectly) these children of the Enlightenment wrote: "Death to the Yankees."
This was too much for even Black Jacques Chirac's government to be associated with and his officials have made the correct noises of outrage. Really though, such shabby acts are only the logical conclusion of the attitude of generations of French politicians to their former allies. When Charles de Gaulle decided that France would withdraw from the military component of NATO and turf Allied troops out of his country Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson asked sarcastically whether we should take our war dead with us. If he had known then what was to happen to their graves in 2003 I imagine we would have. Should we now?
There is an interesting difference between the way Americans and the British Commonwealth have dealt with the bodies of the soldiers, sailors and airmen who die abroad in the service of their country. It is the American custom to return their dead to the USA to be interred either in their home towns or in a military burial ground such as the massive Arlington National Cemetery. The British custom, which Canadians have largely followed, is to leave the dead where they have fallen. Rupert Brooke, the poet of the First World War wrote:
Those words are inscribed on Brooke's foreign grave -- he died in 1916 during the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign -- and there is much to commend in the British attitude. Burial abroad ties the country of the dead soldiers to the places they fought for and it should, in a perfect world, ensure that the citizens of that country are mindful of the sacrifices that others made for them. In fact, in the Netherlands that is the case: Dutch men, women and children still carefully tend the graves of Canadian troops who died to liberate them from German occupation in 1945. The French have, alas, seem not to have caught on to the whole gratitude thing.
Perhaps then it's time to bring the Canadian boys home. From France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Malta, North Africa, Palestine, Italy, Russia -- from 74 different countries -- let's gather up our dead and solemnly lie re-inter them in a National Cemetery in Ottawa. This may be a way to draw the attention of the current generation of care-free, peace-loving Canadians to the cost of winning and maintaining freedom.
(Those who interested in the question of Canadian war dead may find The Maple Leaf Legacy Project worthy of note.)
London's "Daily Mirror" newspaper has been one of the shrillest opponents of the American-British war against Saddam Hussein. However, as the war seems to be going well for the coalition and as British troops score successes against the Baathist regime the flavour of its reporting has changed. This was particularly clear in an article today entitled "Horrific Secrets of Saddam's Police HQ".
The story describes a raid on a secret police building by a group of British commandos. In one of the cells the reporter discovered a live electric cable and two car tires; their purpose was explained by a British officer: "This is something we came across a lot in Bosnia. The interrogator would stand on the tyres while prodding the captive with the live cable. His own feet were insulated from the high voltage by the rubber. Primitive maybe, but a pretty effective and recognised form of torture in a lot of Third World countries."
Bosnia. Iraq. I see a trend here. In these countries nasty tyrannies oppress and murder their own people secure in the belief that national sovereignty will prevent other nations from interfering. But the world has changed and the failure of the UN in the First Gulf War and in Rwanda has sickened decent countries and led to a belief that it is often proper and just to mount an invasion to restore human rights.
The British officer who identified the torture equipment did not want his named printed so that his wife would never know the kinds of things he had to deal with. He is a good man serving a good cause and anti-war protestors back home who would leave evil undisturbed are moral pygmies in comparison.
There is a noteworthy photograph here of a group of protestors from something called "Military Families Speak Out". They carry signs saying "My son is a Marine. Don't send him to war" or "Don't Send Our Loved Ones to War."
I sympathize with the natural anxiety of parents and siblings who are troubled about their relatives working in a war zone. It would have made far more sense, however, for them to have exerted pressure on their loved ones not to have joined the military in the first place. Might it not have occurred to these worried mothers that the Marine Corps is an organization which, more frequently than many groups in society, sends its employees into battle?