The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is not nearly so benign as the National Post would like to paint it, but can you imagine the Palestinians ever agreeing to reduce their safety out of concern for their enemy's well-being? Today Israel's High Court ourt ordered parts of the security barrier rerouted because it "injures the local inhabitants in a severe and acute way while violating their rights under humanitarian and international law."
... on Mark Steyn's Letters page. Two points in particular articulate aspects of my general disgust. First, the "what do they have to do to lose" theme ... it's hard to think of a government anywhere in the developed world that has shown such contempt for its own citizens, and still, they won (yes, only a minority, but that's a slap on the wrist compared to what the Liberals deserved). Second, I'm beginning to think that, between the Maritimes' addiction to free money in transfer payments, and between Ontario's addiction to being in power, even when their own economy is circling the drain, the Liberals may be headed in the direction of Mexico's PRI, whose rule was characterized by corruption, meaningless elections, and knee-jerk anti-Americanism, and who ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century.
During the incredibly tedious political commentary interspersed with the reporting on TV last night, the same phrase came up again and again: "women's rights." The context, usually, was "many undecided voters, perhaps afraid that Stephen Harper would undermine women's rights, voted Liberal." It was obvious the speaker really meant "Stephen Harper might not strongly support elective abortions, throughout a pregnancy, funded by the taxpayer, and of course all right-thinking voters will reject him because of this."
It's interesting that even the most rabid abortion advocates go to such lengths to avoid defining the right to abortion which they consider so crucial. It would be too much to hope that they might say, in an interview, "I support a woman's right to have a doctor inject potassium into the heart of her fetus, if she decides she doesn't want to be pregnant in the third trimester." But really, why won't they say "I support access to abortion"? Why so coy? We hear euphemisms like "a woman's right to choose", as if universal adult suffrage, or the right to religious freedom, were at stake. To choose what, if you please? Do abortion advocates realize that most people have strong reservations about unrestricted elective abortions, and don't want to be forced to think about the issue in any detail?
The other offensive aspect of this turn of phrase, of course, is that it reduces "women's rights" to access to abortion, and by doing so relegates other issues to the bottom of the agenda. I don't doubt that there are women in Canada today who define "women's rights" as meaning unrestricted, free, elective abortion. The great majority of women in other times and places, though, as well as a hefty chunk of today's population, have other priorities.
A hundred years ago in Canada, (and today in the Moslem world) it might have meant the right to vote, to own property, to apply for credit or a mortgage without a male co-signer. In Canada today, this is reality. In medieval Europe (and today in the Moslem world) it might have meant the right not to be forced to marry, or the right to refuse to have sex against her will. In Canada today, this is reality. Can anybody really talk credibly about a threat to women's rights in a country in which women have complete equality with men, and not even the crustiest paleocon in the CPC would even imagine changing this?
To women in other communities in Canada today (the women who aren't in lockstep with the media and Liberal Party) women's issues, since their "rights" aren't in any meaningful way in jeopardy, could mean many things besides abortion. A "women's issue" might be the ability to live in a society in which marriage and motherhood are respected, not denigrated. It might mean the ability to live in a society whose culture doesn't equate feminine success with androgyny, or one that has a conception of female beauty a bit more complex than adolescent nudity. The euphemism of "women's rights" then does two important things for modern feminists: it couches abortion in inoffensive terms, and stifles debate at the source, since it's nearly impossible to frame opposition to a "right" in terms that won't be immediately dismissed; and it quashes discussion of the issues about which many women in Canada and elsewhere care deeply. In the US, Feminists For Life is one of the few groups trying to reverse this. We need them in Canada.
Referring to Jack Layton's plan to export Canadian-style gun control to the U.S., a National Review columnist notes:
In addition to being awfully arrogant, this plan is ironic, since more crime probably flows from Canada to the U.S. than vice versa: The nation has an overall crime rate half again higher than the United States'. Toronto, once the safest large city in North America, now has more muggings, car thefts, and violent assaults per capita than New York City. All of Canada's major provinces would rank among the 20 most dangerous American states. Since American crime rates peaked in the early 1990s, crime has fallen in 48 American states and over 80 percent of America's major cities. Meanwhile, it has risen in six of Canada's ten major providences and seven of its ten largest cities. The reasons for this divide are complex, but it's notable that the United States imprisons wrongdoers at about five times Canada's rate and has about a quarter more police on a per-capita basis. Canada, meanwhile, can boast only of a national gun-registration database that cost 1,000 times more than originally projected.
News that the Bloc Quebecois has won a record number of seats in La Belle Province (motto: "We Resent") and that Monsieur Duceppe feels that this brings his captive people a step closer to sovereignty has not saddened any of us in the Castor household. Loyal readers will know that, in Dexter's opinion, the sooner the homeland of Celine Dion, Brian Mulroney, the Mohawks of Oka and Lucien Bouchard casts itself loose from the bounds of federalism the better. On that happy day the most corrupt, left-wing, isolationist, irreligious, nicotine-addicted part of Confederation will be given its own sandbox to foul and a robust, unhyphenated Canadianism will be possible at last.
True, we will miss the Montreal Canadiens and our national hockey team will be the poorer for the absence of the likes of Mario Lemieux but what else will we regret? What about the cuisine? I confess a certain fondness for poutine, maple mousse and tourtiere but I urge you to consider this: what do we really know about what goes into French-Canadian food? The sinister side of Quebec cookery was revealed to me this week when I asked for a Google translation of a website featuring recipes from that province. Look at what their fancy French names turn out to be when rendered into English.
Some might take a chance on "pouding with cranberries with the vapor" or "hiding-place with eggs" but are there anglophone bellies stout enough to dine on "boiled of ox salted with the pastes"? "Scallops with the furnace?" "Hare hot-water bottle?" Perhaps. But consider the cannibalism exposed in: "Ragoût of wolf-sailor"! What kind of debased people eat "ragout of legs" or commit sacrilege by munching on "sections of pig stuffed with St-Jean-of-Matha"? And dear heaven, what would lead a person, even a Quebecois, to dine on his own relatives in "grandfathers with the cornflowers", "brioches the made-to-order of the good moms" and (worst of all) "grandfathers of grandmother"? Yecch. Where is PETA when you need it?
A Liberal/NDP coalition. All corruption, all taxation, all the time. And impeccably politically correct. I nourish the faint hope that after 9 months or so of this government, it will collapse, and voters will finally find the courage to vote for those scary, unPC Tories. But I wouldn't bet anything at all on it.
In the months ahead, watch for the following: foreign policy will become even more anti-American; our economy will be further hampered by the implementation of Kyoto and other junk science gestures; "gay marriage" (homogamy, as John Derbyshire has brilliantly named it) will be enacted throughout the country; and absolutely nobody will be prosecuted for AdScam, inter alia.
Seeing the red handwriting on the wall, this evening Dexter spared himself hours of suffering at the hands of televised party flacks and professional entrail inspectors. He went instead to a movie, "Starsky and Hutch", which he deemed a worthy giggle-fest and came home to find that after millions of votes had been cast, a Liberal minority had replaced a Liberal majority. No surprise there -- the scary Liberal and NDP ads had worked well enough to keep the Conservatives from power.
What was surprising was the look of glee on the face of Paul Martin. The last time I saw a similar expression, it was on the visage of O.J. Simpson who was just coming to terms with the jury's verdict. Can this capering doddard be the same Paul Martin whose party had just lost 33 seats, seen the revival of a credible right-wing alternative, witnessed a record vote in his home province for the party who wishes to destroy his country, and who finds himself slated to spend the next two years as Jack Layton's love-slave? Never has the sheer delight at the acquisition of power been so plainly written on a Canadian politician's features.
I urge those conservatives who are blubbering in their beer to consider some positive outcomes of the 2004 election. It is true that blots on the democratic escutcheon such as Hedy Fry and Bill Graham were returned to Ottawa. But look on the bright side: No more Svend Robinson. No Olivia Chow. No Glen Murray. No more Shelia Copps or Ethel Blondin. No Joe Clark.
The new left-wing coalition will be fun to watch. The Conservatives with their greater numbers will have plenty of opportunities to hold Liberal-NDP feet to the fire and allay some of the overwrought fears that were engendered in the campaign. The lack-wits who ran the Tory media campaign and who failed to respond to the around-the-clock televised accusations of extremism will be taken out and shot and a new team prepared to put sensibles policies before the public will take their place.
The real question is whether the ruling gangsters have been truly scared into good behaviour or whether they believe themselves invincible. The look on Paul Martin's face seemd to suggest the latter. The fun is about to begin.
... is the name of the term I have just invented to describe "an unreasonable fear or hatred of the Right." This phenomenon has been manifest amongst left-wingers in both Canada and the United States of late and needs to be regarded with pity and loathing by all decent folk.
Dextrophobia can be most clearly diagnosed when its sufferers show signs of "argumentum ad Hitlerum" -- an uncontrollable tendency to compare their enemies to Nazis. We saw this when a Manitoba Metis leader linked historian Thomas Flanagan to Adolf Hitler for proposing policies that would treat aboriginals as any other Canadians. Yesterday Al Gore referred to Republican critics of his policies as "brownshirts" and earlier this week Guido Calabresi, an appeals court judge, compared George Bush's 2000 election to the way Mussolini and Hitler came to power.
It is not enough to cite "Godwin's Law" -- that the first party to mention the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument is in progress -- there is something very serious at stake. No one is in real danger from a Harper or a Bush victory this year. Puppies wll not be eaten. Virgins will not be sacrificed. Gay men will not be forced to marry lesbians in remote Alaskan breeding camps.
Attention, lefties: conservatives are your neighbours and fellow citizens. We teach in your schools; we sit next to you at CFL games; we buy your kids' raffle tickets; we share the land in peace, if not harmony. Drop the hate speech and let's argue in a civilized manner.
Some random thoughts on last night's Leader's Debate (which I had not planned to watch but the Roughrider massacre on the other channel gave me little option):
• Jack Layton must have spent much of his youth being bullied on school playgrounds. That chirpy smile and smart-ass attitude would have been an irresistible target at my school where young thugs ruled at recess and the diminuitive, polysyllabic Dexter had nose rubbed in the dirt on a daily basis. (This explains why Martin Prince is my favourite "Simpsons" character.)
• Gilles Duceppe was the most effective of the speakers. Having nothing to contribute nationally and having only to highlight injustices done to Quebec, he had a safe bastion from which to fire at Martin.
• Stephen Harper was the only one to attack Duceppe for his separatism. The love-fest between Layton and the BQ leader over the magnificence of Quebec's massive daycare program was cloying. Nor did anyone trouble to ask Duceppe why, with daycare so massively subsidized in Quebec, that province leads the nation in the unwillingness of its women to reproduce.
• Paul Martin gamely stuck to the attack-the-Conservatives-exclusively script except for one delicious moment when frustration with the yappy Layton got the better of him. Annoyed with yet another interruption by the mini-Marxist, Martin snapped: "Did your handlers tell you to talk ALL the time?" Layton's punctured amour-propre was priceless -- he recoiled in alarm: he was talking about weapons in space! That is no laughing matter, sir.
• The postmortems conducted by the CBC and CTV could not have been more different. The CBC pronounced Martin the winner, because Harper had not delivered a knock-out blow. CTV boldly declared Harper the winner of the election, perhaps with a majority -- even Gerry Caplan, the NDP strategist, admitted that no mud was sticking to Harper's teflon image.
• Watching the electronic applause meters at the bottom of the screen was fascinating. Two things were clear: anti-Americanism played very well with the audience and Layton inspired an automatic distaste.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was elected as Spanish Prime Minister largely because he pledged to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq if no deal with the United Nations had been reached by June 30. On June 8 such a deal was reached, Spain having voted for it at the Security Council. But where are the Spanish troops? Oops, it seems that they are already back in Spain with no intention of returning. So much for Spanish honour, a commodity as scarce these days as Spanish bravery.
Michael Carlin provides an assessment of Spain's future role in western civilization. His concuding paragraph is especially bleak:
The brittleness of Spanish political culture, such that it broke when put under the stress of terrorism, cannot be attributed to either terrorists or political opportunists. Such as these can only devour already moribund carrion. It must have been immediately apparent to the terrorists that Spain was living on borrowed time. With one of the lowest fertility rates in the known world, Spanish couples have created a hollow society united by the weakest of links. As Alasdair MacIntyre has so carefully argued, this substitution of sentiment for the more organic societal norms of faith and family straitens all forms of discourse, rendering impossible any substantive moral discussion within society as a whole. What blandishments can such a contraceptive society offer to the only children of Spain’s eco-vanity to make them come in from the bottelón and join in the search for a common good beyond the earnestly felt emotion of the moment? Little in the way of immediate gratification or collective high can be offered to compete with the fraternal thrill of calling a sitting Prime Minister a murderer to his face. The sad fact is that we cannot rely on Spain or the rest of Western Europe for anything but continued moral failure while its citizens are still too self-obsessed to replace their own populations.
The mermaid in question and the town's coat of arms may be viewed here.
Ripped from the pages of the Polish newspaper The Pomeranian Voice comes this true tale:
"Let us not delude ourselves," councillor Piotr Wszolkowski told the cultural committee of Ustka Town Council. "Our town's present crest is not very attractive. In particular, the mermaid’s breasts are just not big enough, and this element of the design urgently needs altering. I have my own ideas of just how big they should be, and will soon put forward a modified design for immediate consideration by the entire Town Council."
The size of the mermaid’s breasts on the traditional town crest had been raised earlier in the meeting by Adam Brzoska, the chairman of the committee on economic affairs. "The depiction of the mermaid reflects the tastes of another era," he told the meeting. "Bigger breasts would obviously make the town more attractive to tourists, so she should be given silicone implants without delay." However, Town Council chairman Jan Olech disagreed, saying that "I find her breasts attractive as they are. Small breasts are a sign of youth, and their size is of secondary importance. The most important thing is that her breasts should be pretty and encourage visitors to want to holiday in Ustka." And Mayor Jacek Graczyk ruled that "as the matter has not been officially brought to my attention, it does not officially concern me. However, I should like to put on record that I like all mermaids, no matter what kind of tits they have."
The matter was referred to the Heraldic Commission of the Ministry of the Interior, whose formal permission will be required before any breast enlargement can take place.
Aside from a moment of misguided giddiness in 1984, I have never been a fan of Brian Mulroney's. There was always too much blarney about him; he gave off a palpable air of hyperbole. This was evident in the eulogy he gave today for Ronald Reagan where one Brian Mulroney features as much as the late president. Nonetheless, I loved the ending of his speech, a line from Yeats in "The Municipal Gallery Revisited": "Think where man's glory most begins and ends and say - my glory was that I had such friends.'' May that be said of all of us.
PITMAN – On 7th May, to POOEE (nee Gubbins) and SPENCER, a beautiful daughter, Ruby Rhapsody Panda, a sister for Mimi Magenta Poodle.
- Daily Telegraph birth announcement.
Here are the highlights of the new Security Council Resolution on Iraq. It recognizes the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi Interim Government and the end of an official occupation by June 30. It sets out the steps to elections and gives a final date for the pull-out of coalition troops. Looks like a slam-dunk diplomatic victory for Bush and Blair.
It has been evident to many for the past few years that the root causes of Islamic terror do not lie in the Palestinian question, poverty or underdevelopment. They lie in a nasty form of Islam called Wahhabism, promulgated in the Arabian peninsula in the late eighteenth century and adopted as the official creed of the Saudi Kingdom. The oil revenues that the Western world pours into Saudia Arabia have been used for decades to fund schools, mosques and colleges around the world where this vicious fundamentalism tooks hold among local Muslims. The result is beheadings of Christians in the Philippines, the beheadings of Buddhists in Thailand, the enslavement of animists and Christians in Sudan, bombings of Shiites in Pakistan and the most recent round of corpse mutilations in Dhofar.
The New York Times takes a watery look at this phenomenon and the Saudi ruling family's reaction.
They may be cowardly, feckless crapweasels but the Spanish Socialists certainly know how to cover themselves in military glory, at least the chest part of themselves. Prime Minister Zapatero recently annnounced that the Grand Cross of Military Merit would be awarded to those who had participated in the PULL-OUT from Iraq. Among those garnering the decoration were several generals and Jose Bono, the Minister of Defence, who had served in his post for all of three weeks.
Historically, medals and honour have not usually accrued to those who run away without a shot being fired and this fact was not lost on Opposition members of the Spanish legislature. After a torrent of abuse, Bono has reluctantly handed back his decoration but not without dislocating his shoulders while patting himself on the back. Quoth the brave minister: "By renouncing the Grand Cross of Military Merit, I'd like to say that there's another medal, the best decoration that this Government can display, and it's the affection of so many Spaniards for having withdrawn the troops from Iraq, where they should never have been sent."
Bono really shouldn't regret losing the medal. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco won it three times and Kim Philby, the British traitor and spy, was also a winner -- hardly good company for a man of Bono's exquisite sensibilities.
"A panel of experts" recently published a list purporting to rank the 100 Most Naturally Beautiful Women of Alll Time. Humbug! I have perused the list and have concluded that it should be renamed "100 Recent Female Showbiz Celebrities".
Even given this reclassification the "experts" have included some egregiously unattractive woofers. Madonnna? Grace Jones? Nathalie Imbruglia? Not only would they not pass the "eating crackers in bed" test, I wouldn't let them carry the crackers home from the grocery store. Moreover, the panel seems to have listed some women twice. Marilyn Monroe for example appears at #27 and again at #36. Is this "Some Like It Hot" Marilyn up against "Seven Year Itch" Marilyn? Similarly, Beyonce Knowles is both the 18th and the 29th most naturally beautiful woman of all time; Vanessa Paradis appears at both 24 and 68. (This reminds me of the old country and western song entitled "I Went to Bed at 2 with a 10 and Woke Up at 10 with a 2.")
The list is top-heavy with mono-named bimboes -- Madonna, Iman, Gisele, Jamelia and Dido -- and lingerie models but where is the ineffable beauty of a Merle Oberon, Hedy Lamarr, Gong Li or Arielle Dombasle?
Since this claims to be a list of all-time beauties I will remedy the shameful absence of women before the age of the motion picture camera. Herewith is Dexter's Compendium of the Most Beautiful Women Before 1914:
01 Helen of Troy. Aphrodite, goddess of love, promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, though cinematic portrayals of Helen have tended to the blonde and insipid, e.g., Diana Dors, Sienna Guillory and Diane Kruger. Much better to think of her as she appeared to Christopher Marlowe and Faustus:
Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!
02 Simonetta Vespucci. You've all seen her face but may not have known her name. Simonetta was a 15th-century Florentine teenager married to a cousin of the man after whom America was named and mistress to one of the Medici mob. Sandro Botticelli was smitten and, having seen her, would paint no one but her. Here she is in her most famous appearance, The Birth of Venus. Simonetta died at the tender age of 22 of a lung infection. Thirty-four years later, Botticelli asked to be buried at her feet.
02 Diane de Poitiers. Mistress of two kings of France, Francis I and his son Henry II. In fact she carried on with both of them at the same time.
03 Louise de la Valliere. Another French royal mistress, this time to Louis XIV. While other women were happy to be debauched by the king of France, Louise was a reluctant concubine and became a nun when Louis grew tired of her. She later wrote a book entitled "Reflections on the Mercy of God, by a Penitent Woman".
04 The Duchess of Alba. Though married to a Spanish nobleman she is said to have been the lover of Francisco Goya who painted her several times, most notably as The White Duchess. Historians still argue over whether she was the model for the Nude Maja.
05 Pauline Bonaparte. Sister to the emperor Napoleon I , model to the sculptor Canova and famous for the perfection of her feet, whose powdered flesh she allowed vistors to kiss.
06 Lola Montez. Actress, adventurer and courtesan, mistress to a mad king, Montez scandalized Victorian Europe but died penniless in America.
07.Lily Langtry The mistress of the future Edward VII of England, the Jersey Lily also caught the fancy of the western legend Judge Roy Bean who named a saloon after her.
08 Evelyn Nesbit, the "girl on the red velvet swing", participant in one of the great scandals of the early twentieth century. As a teenage artist's model she was seduced by the famed architect Stanford White but she married elsewhere for money. Her husband, Harry Thaw, was an unstable young millionaire who alternately whipped her and idolized her. On June 25, 1906, the jealous Thaw walked up to White in a rooftop restaurant and shot him to death. Thaw's lawyer played on White's reputation as a vile debaucher of innocent young things and kept his client from the noose -- Thaw was committed to an insane asylum. The divorced Evelyn's beauty faded and she died old and addled.
