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Comments on politics, the culture, economics and religion by Paul Tuns -- in short, everything about the human endeavour from a non-hyphenated conservative perspective.
I am Toronto-based writer and editor, whose articles, columns and reviews have appeared in more than 35 publications. I am editor-in-chief of The Interim, Canada's life and family newspaper, author of Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal and a regular contributor to the book pages of the Halifax Herald.
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Monday, January 31, 2005
The hard work ahead Critics of the project to bring democracy to Iraq and make the world safer said elections do not make a democracy. True. To read about the long road ahead, check this story from the San Francisco Chronicle: "Apart from the vexing issues of the role of women and the status of Islam, the constitution will have to decide between a strong federal government with weak local control -- an option probably preferred by lawmakers representing the majority Shiite population -- to a loose confederation of states, an option attractive to the Kurds in the north, who have enjoyed semi- independence for more than a decade. Or any arrangement in between. The assembly is to prepare a draft of the permanent constitution by Aug. 15 and hold a national referendum on it by Oct. 15 -- a time frame many experts say is dangerously short -- followed by new national elections in December. That deadline can be extended -- once -- by no more than six months if a majority of the National Assembly so requests by Aug. 1. If the constitution is rejected by the voters -- or by two-thirds of the voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces, a mechanism designed mainly to protect Kurdish autonomy over Shiite objections -- the assembly will be dissolved and a new one formed by Dec. 31, with a mandate to write a new constitution within a year. After that, there are no further extensions, and the future slips into undetermined territory." None of this is going to be easy but it is necessary. But for now, lets celebrate the remarkable achievement of the Iraqi people yesterday -- one giant leap forward for Iraq, one small step forward for the Middle East. (Via Chrenkoff) Chrenkoff's got the good news from Iraq Check it out here. Long but worthwhile read. My favourite is this tidbit: "Throughout Baghdad, the turnout (reported as high as 95%) disappointed the boycotters: 'Asked if reports of better-than-expected turnout in areas where Sunni and Shiite Muslims live together indicated that a Sunni cleric boycott effort had failed, one of the main groups pushing the boycott seemed to soften its stance. "The association's call for a boycott of the election was not a fatwa (religious edict), but only a statement," said Association of Muslim Scholars spokesman Omar Ragheb. "It was never a question of something religiously prohibited or permitted".'" Of course that's what they'd say after the great turnout. The CBC's conflicts of interest It's vividly demonstrated by Stephen Taylor in a pie chart. Taylor notes that 82% of the political contributions made by CBC board of directors went to the Liberals (15% went to the Bloc and 3% to the Conservatives). And this matters because, as Taylor reminds us, "these powerful positions are appointed by the government and that state media should of course be unbiased." (Crossposted at The Shotgun) Reasons to be happy Leith Coghlin doesn't get why people are so depressed (it's probably weather related) and offers reasons to get out of that blue funk: "1) There is more sunlight at the end of January then there is at the end of December 2) We're closer to spring than we were on New Year's Day 3) Valentine's Day is forthcoming in February 4) St. Paddy's Day is upon us in March 5) Rejoice in the cold weather: we're Canadian and our national pride about our climate should not be solely that we survive it but rather that we relish it 6) Bundle up and you'll last longer outside (read: Ontarians don't dress well for cold weather; see my Christmas/New Year's List) 7) Go to bed earlier." Bayh with an eye on '08 Robert Novak said in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times that Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, invariably described as a moderate Democrat, voted against Condoleeza Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State last week (just one of 12 dissenting votes) was a sign that he reaching out to the leftist base of the party for a presidential run in three years. Novak said: "While President Bush easily carried Indiana and the state returned to Republican control, Bayh won his second Senate term in a landslide. His appeal to Republican voters, however, makes him suspect to the left. Bayh's vote against Rice could help with the liberal Democrats, whose support is needed for the party's presidential nomination." Media obsesses over the quarter empty portion of the Iraqi election glass The Financial Times can't resist poo-pooing even the positive news. I will never understand the United Nations The Independent reports that the UN has decided in its wisdom that the systemic killing of an identifiable group in the Darfur region of Sudan is not genocide. Instead, they are "crimes against humanity with ethnic dimensions." Nice UN-ese. And what does this mean for these non-genocidal criminals? Endless warnings to stop or else will issue more warnings. The anti-Bush left hates regular Iraqis, too The Kerry Spot checked out reaction to the Iraq election in the Democratic Underground and notes several disturbing posts including these: "I want peace for the Iraqis, but not at the cost of further empowering the Bush regime." And: "This election is an absolute fraud. It does NOT represent ALL the groups like the Sunni and the candidates are mostly US puppets. The people whi voted are either paid off or too stupid to be voting anyway. Sounds like a recent US election to me." To be fair, such comments are being criticized by others but it still demonstrates a certain mindset on the Left that, I'm guessing, isn't really all that fringe. The mainstream media -- unwitting ally of terrorists The Daily Telegraph has an excellent editorial on the three-quarters full glass of Iraqi democracy that the country enjoyed yesterday. The editorial's concluding paragraph is bang on regarding the nay-saying media critics of Iraq's democratic project: "... yesterday, Iraq became the most democratic country in the Arab world. What a pity that so many writers who, in other circumstances, are optimists about human progress, should shut their eyes to what is happening. In their determination to say 'I told you so', they are coming perilously close to siding with jihadi murderers. Shame on them." Sunday, January 30, 2005
The compassion of abortion Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe: "I don't dispute the need to reach out. Prochoice supporters are often heard using the cool language of the courts and the vocabulary of rights. Americans who are deeply ambivalent about abortion often miss the sound of caring." Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission on abortionist Joseph Durante who is seeking bankruptcy protection in order to not have to compensate those whose lives his botched abortions have ruined: "Durante filed for bankruptcy during the malpractice case against him by Ann Marie Santana, who alleged that in 1998 she almost died subsequent to an abortion at Durante's Victorville office. She suffered a perforated uterus, perforated bowel, and gross sepsis from fecal material erupting into her abdomen. In order to avoid paying any judgment in the Santana case, Durante filed the bankruptcy. In January 2004, he sold his Moreno Valley abortion office (the site of the 1996 abortion homicide of young black victim, Sharon Hamptlon) and in November abandoned his Victorville office where Santana had been injured. He continues doing abortions at his Palm Desert site on Painters Path. ... Durante has a long history of discipline by the Medical Board of California. In 1978 he was found incompetent in the care of female patients and given probation with 30 days of actual suspension. In 1986 Indio Community Hospital (now JFK Hospital) filed a complaint with the Medical Board against Durante for injuring several female patients who required emergency care. Durante was found to have no malpractice insurance and was thrown off staff at both JFK Hospital and Desert Hospital. In 1996 the Medical Board filed a case against Durante for negligence in the case of a baby he tried to abort but which survived. He was disciplined and placed on probation. In 1998 the Medical Board again disciplined Durante for falsifying a state record and suspended him for 60 days." Perhaps he didn't have time to file proper records and purchase malpractice insurance while he was so busy caring for all these patients. It's not Big Government, it's soulcraft Washington Post columnist George F. Will on President George W. Bush's conservatism: "It cannot be said of Bush, as was famously said of Martin Van Buren, that he rows toward his goals 'with muffled oars.' Bush has said, 'I don't do nuance,' and his 'ownership society' agenda -- from Social Security personal accounts to health savings accounts to tax cuts -- is explicitly explained as soulcraft. Its purpose is to combat the learned incompetence of those who become comfortable with excessive dependence on and supervision by government. His agenda's aim is to continue, in the language of his inaugural address, 'preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society.' That is the crux of modern conservatism: government taking strong measures to foster in the citizenry the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for increased individual independence." Because statecraft is soulcraft. Libertarians are wrong to believe that just getting government out of the way will bring about a perfect or even decent society. The stuff that libertarians love -- entrepreneurialism , hard work, self-reliance, etc... -- are virtues that now, paradoxically, require government inculcation. The harm that the state has done over the past century must be undone and sadly it is the government that is in the best shape to do the fixing. Former New York Times columnist William Safire has said that Bush's "conservatism" does not resemble the anti-government conservatism of the 1980s and early 1990s that saw the shedding government from every aspect of life as a panacea but a conservatism of providing choices and enabling personal responsibility. Over time, this will be revolutionary. It may redefine conservatism, too. Don't trust a Liberal Occam's Carbuncle on Paul Martin now and Anne McLellan then with the implicit question: do you trust the Liberals. Okay, OC's point is Liberal hypocrisy but I think the real issue is trust. Anne McLellan, June 8, 1999, then Minister of Justice, in the House of Commons: "Let me state again for the record that the government has no intention of changing the definition of marriage or of legislating same sex marriages. No jurisdiction worldwide defines a legal marriage as existing between same sex partners. Even those few European countries such as Denmark, Norway and Holland, which have recently passed legislation giving recognition to same sex relationships and extending some of the same benefits and responsibilities as available to married spouses, maintain a clear distinction in the law between marriage and same sex registered partnerships ... Although a same sex relationship may have many of the same needs, the Norwegian government clarified that it, the same sex partnership, can never be the same as marriage, neither socially nor from a religious point of view. ... I fundamentally do not believe that it is necessary to change the definition of marriage in order to accommodate the equality issues around same sex partners which now face us as Canadians." Prime Minister Paul Martin on January 22, 2005: ""Polygamy is against the law and, as far as I'm concerned, it will always be against the law." Whoever is the Liberal prime minister three years from now will no doubt want you to forget Martin, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler's and other cabinet minister's uncategorical statements that there will never be legally sanctioned polygamous or polyandrous relationships. Captain Obvious strikes again David Freddoso at The Thing Is comments on a Fox News report on a CDC finding that, "Risky sexual behavior among Americans is putting the public’s health at risk, according to a new CDC study" with great aplumb: "What???!!! I thought AIDS was caused by social stigma, a lack of federal funding, and/or not talking enough about sex!" Freddoso event posts a picture of Captian Obvious. Just wonderful. Steyn and Tuns on the same page Mark Steyn in today's Chicago Sun-Times: "The Afghan election worked so well that, there being insufficient bad news out of it, the doom-mongers in the Western media pretended it never happened. They'll have a harder job doing that with Iraq, so instead they'll have to play up every roadside bomb and every dead poll worker. But it won't alter the basic reality: that today's election will be imperfect but more than good enough. OK, that's a bit vague by the standards of my usual psephological predictions, so how about this? Turnout in the Kurdish north and Shia south will be higher than in the last American, British or Canadian elections. Legitimate enough for ya?" I make the same point on Behind the Story when it airs tonight. I predicted on Friday when the show taped that the media will focus on the one-quarter of the glass that is empty in an attempt to delegitimize the election. An example of the glass is half-full reporting can be found at the Daily Telegraph: "Polls have closed after a day which saw Iraqis defy the insurgent bombers and turn out in their millions to cast their ballot in an historic election." Despite numerous terrorist attacks, which the paper reports, there was at least a 60% turnout. Winning by losing The Observer reports that British officials have privately admitting defeat in their bid to win the 2012 Olympics saying they don't have a chance to beat Paris for the rights to hold the games. Ian Duncan Smith where are you? Latest MORI poll indicates that Michael Howard is about to lead his party to a disastrous election. There are good reasons to believe otherwise (are Brits ready to give Labour another huge majority? the war in Iraq is unpopular? the Conservatives are only six points behind Labour, etc...) but polls are polls and they are not always wrong. The British Tories have yet to give the electorate there a good reason to support them. The Observer reports that "Yesterday, Liam Fox, the party chairman, launched a major new poster campaign based around the message 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?', featuring campaign messages on key issues boiled down into simple handwritten slogans, including: 'It's not racist to impose limits on immigration'." Are Britons thinking what Liam Fox is thinking? Apparently not. Quote of the day Here's a nice reminder to the morons who would report on past Iraqi "elections" under Saddam Hussein that they were stooges. Mukhlas al-Mudafa, a contactor in the Green Zone in Baghdad, told Reuters reporters: "When we voted in the past, there was always a man watching us and asking us what we had written ... But today I chose with my full freedom and nobody affected that choice." The terrorist/liberal alliance Jim Robbins quotes from the Saudi Arab News in The Corner to illustrate the good news about the Iraq election: the terrorists hate it. The Saudi Arab News editorial said: "the very fact that the election is being held, despite all predictions, is a defeat for the terrorists and a much needed victory for moderation." It is noteworthy that liberal politicians and the media in the West and Middle Eastern terrorists and dictators all want the democratic project in Iraq to fail. The confluence of opposition to this experiment in bringing democracy to the Cradle of Civilization proves that hatred of Western values in general and President George W. Bush in particular makes strange bedfellows. (Crossposted at The Shotgun) A short history of Ted Kennedy From Diplomad: "...Sen. Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. The man has gone from being a killer, to a buffoon, and now to criminally irresponsible. Next July, Mary Jo Kopechne would have celebrated her 65th birthday; she probably would have grown children and be a grandmother. She, however, will always be 28 years old, thanks to Ted Kennedy, the man who killed her in 1969 just days before her 29th birthday; tried to cover it up; and then lied and used his family's considerable political power to evade punishment. From killer he went on to buffoon: Who can forget his absurd run for the Democratic nomination of 1980, or, his pontificating about women's rights during the Clarence Thomas nomination hearings? As he has aged, he apparently has begun experiencing a second adolescence, in other words, he's returning to his 1969 persona, to wit, he wants people, American people to die or, at best, doesn't care if they do as a consequence of his actions. How else can one explain his comments about pulling out of Iraq -- gleefully replayed by Al Jazeera? For a Kennedy to compare Iraq and Vietnam is doubly obscene: not only are the facts on the ground completely different, but it was JFK -- Teddy's elder brother -- who got us into Vietnam with no exit plan." Me on TV I'll be on Behind the Story on CTS tonight at 7 pm. Kathy Shaidle is on, too. The show taped on Friday and among the topics are same-sex marriage and the Iraq elections. Because a picture is worth more than a thousand words Maderblog has some wonderful pictures capturing the Iraqi defiance of the insurgents who threatened to kill those who took part in the elections there. Saturday, January 29, 2005
Most media ignore real voter fraud There has been much journalistic repeating of Democratic claims of voting irregularity, especially in Ohio, in an attempt to delegitimize the Bush re-election. However, very few East Coast journalists have noticed some real voting irregularities in Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported: "Milwaukee officials said Thursday that 1,305 same-day voter registration cards from the Nov. 2 election could not be processed, including more than 500 cases where voters listed no address and dozens more where no name was written on the card. But the revelation of the actual number of cards that couldn't be processed, far lower than previous estimates of 8,300 or more, raised new concerns, because it leaves a clear gap of more than 7,000 people who voted on Nov. 2 and cannot be accounted for in city records." 48 of the invalid ballots did not even have names on them. Who gave these people a ballot. Furthermore, the paper reported, "That number is higher than the 1,200 invalid addresses found by the Journal Sentinel, because the newspaper's review did not cover apartment buildings, due to problems in how the addresses appear in data bases." Also, of 73,079 registration cards sent out for verification, nearly 2,800 were returned as undeliverable. Democrat John Kerry won Wisconsin by 11,384 votes, which, as the paper reminds readers, was "one of the narrowest margins in the nation." So why isn't the media reporting what could be plausibly voter fraud? Perhaps because Wisconsin was a state that Kerry won with "one of the narrowest margins in the nation." Separation of church and state As one would expect, Burkean Canuck has the best reaction to Pierre Pettigrew's suggestion that the Catholic Church butt out of the same-sex marriage debate. Here's the concluding paragraph of his analysis: "Now, though, when the church attempts to speak out, exercising an authority separate from the state, a Canadian minister of the Crown makes a remark about separation of church and state implying the church should say nothing, undercutting the very principle of separation of the church and state -- the principle of plural authority. But when the church and people of faith question the Canadian state's moves to redefine marriage, they may just believe they are upholding the principle of the separation of church and state, the principle of plural authority -- and believe so correctly." Friday, January 28, 2005
Iraqi elections Check out the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies for links to Iraqi bloggers and media, and the FDD's election analysis. Don't trust the media about Iraqi elections Check out Friends of Democracy and Chrenkoff. I'll be on Behind the Story on CTS on Sunday evening to talk about homogamy and the Iraqi elections. About the latter I will be saying (mostly) don't believe the AP, New York Times, CNN and the Globe and Mail. They all want the experiment in Iraqi democracy to fail because it will make President George W. Bush look bad. And what if the election goes relatively well? The media will focus on half-empty glass (or perhaps quarter empty) -- the sporadic violence and the minority of registered voters who did not take part. Remember the coverage of the Afghan election with MSM predictions of low voter turnout, massive violence and women being intimidated to stay away from the polling booths. Missed on all three counts and the historic elections there were relegated to inside the paper. Prediction: if all goes well, the Iraqi elections get pushed inside the paper or at least under the fold. The Liberal government's warped priorities Trudeaupia notes Liberal hypocrisy when it comes to private healthcare: "For reasons I can never fathom, for some reason they work themselves into a rage over the idea of a private MRI clinic but then insist that private abortion clinics are not only tolerated, but must be publicly funded..." As The Monger notes in the comments section: "I think it's clear that it's perfectly all right, as far as the Liberals are concerned, for a pregnant woman to pay out of pocket for medical care during her pregnancy--as long as the baby ends up dead." Would you buy a used car from Irwin Cotler? I don't think Enter Stage Right editor Steven Martinovich would. Pointing to past lies Liberals have told on social issues and Canada's activist courts, Martinovich warns readers not to believe Justice Minister Irwin Cotler when he says same-sex marriage won't lead to polygamy. Martinovich writes: "Of course, this may never get to our judicially activist Supreme Court -- the one that features a member who recently proclaimed it was her mission to make social policy. As Mark Steyn pointed out in an essay on the matter last year, we live in a country where the immigrant isn't expected to assimilate to Canada, rather the country is expected to change for him. At some point there may be enough popular demand for polygamy that the federal government will simply accept it on the rights of the minority or multiculturalist grounds alone." The bottomless pit of education This C.D. Howe Institute study finds that despite a decreasing number of students in public education, the amount spent by governments on education remains the same. Thus the per student cost of education has increased about $1000 in eight years for a total of roughly $8,000 per student. Furthermore, in most provinces there has been no corresponding increase in standardized test scores. In other words, Canada's education dollars are not money well spent. Nobel winners back Kofi The AP reports that 70 Nobel laureates have said that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan should be allowed to stay at the helm of the international organization. The AP reports: "The letter, supported by Peace Prize winners Jimmy Carter and Elie Wiesel, among others, was made public Thursday. It expresses the laureates' 'deepest respect and support for Kofi Annan and the values he has embraced in his lifetime of work for peace and security'." I had no idea that Nobel winners in the fields of peace, literature, economics, physics and chemistry thought that bilking was a value worth embracing. Thursday, January 27, 2005
Another exciting website The Conservative Philosopher, featuring some serious, well, conservative philosopher's, including John Kekes, Francis J. Beckwith, and Roger Scruton. Be prepared for some heavy lifting intellectually (or is it intellectual heavy lifting?). A great new pro-choice blog The Club for Growth is supporting a pro-reform Social Security blog entitled Social Security Choice, with contributors that include Larry Kudlow, Pat Toomey, Herman Cain, Brian Wesbury and Don Luskin, among others. It is worth purusing once and a while if only to see cartoons such as this one and read Jay Leno lines such as this: "A lot of Americans are worried now. They say they can’t rely on Social Security anymore. And you know something, they’re right. If you want the government to pay for your housing and your food and your medical bills until your 80 or 90 years old you’re just going to have to kill somebody and go live on death row because that’s the only way it’s going to happen." (Hat tip to No Left Turns) Those who do not learn from history ... Dana at Canadian Comment on the lessons of the Holocaust: "There are troubling parallels between the systematic vilification of Jews before the Holocaust and the current vilification of the Jewish people and Israel. Suffice it to note the annual flood of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN; or the public opinion polls taken in Europe, which single out Israel as a danger to world peace; or the divestment campaigns being waged in the US against Israel; or the attempts to delegitimize Israel's very existence. The complicity of the Allies in WW II is mirrored by the support the PLO has been receiving from Europe, China and Russia to this very day. If remembering Auschwitz should teach us anything, it is that we must all support Israel and the Jewish people against the vilification and the complicity we are witnessing, knowing where it inevitably leads." Buchanan will be happy But friends of freedom and human rights should not be: Douglas Feith will leave the Defense Department by the summer. The Right and human rights Adam Daifallah notes a phenomenon that Jay Nordlinger has also written about recently: it is now conservatives, not liberals, who care about human rights abuses abroad. Daifallah mentions Jason Kenney's visit to the house of Zhao Ziyang and Jay Nordlinger about human rights abuses in Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Nicaragua and Vietnam. Both are worth reading and remember them when some Lefty claims that liberalism is the caring and compassionate political philosophy. Wednesday, January 26, 2005
NY Sun on Hillary's 'moderate' abortion speech Of course, it was no such thing but the New York Sun sees silver linings where they truly exist. In its editorial yesterday, the Sun said that Hillary Clinton's attempts to capture the centre (she has also moved to the right of President Bush on illegal immigration), which is an act of defining oneself, she "It increases the pressure on the Republicans to deliver on their agenda." Good. Furthermore, the paper warns that Hillary Clinton has signalled that she will follow her husband's lead on policy and politics and that includes "coopting the Republican agenda." That's easy to do when the Republicans won't enact their agenda. Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Check this site frequently in the next week Friends of Democracy is all about "Ground level election news from the people of Iraq." And not the bad news. Monday, January 24, 2005
Right and Left Burkean Canuck gives a brief history of where the political terms left and right come from (the French Revolution) and current account of the political agendas of the left and right (the left is against globalization, for state intervention in markets and social life, in favour of redefining social institutions, supportive of public education and the welfare state, and distrustful of police and the military, while the right is pro-markets, anti-state intervention in matters of economics and family life, against redefining marriage, for independent schooling and faith-based charity, and more pro-active on public and national security). All that said, Burkean Canuck notes, "When it comes to political parties in Canada, it just gets curiouser and curiouser." Why? "The Conservative Party of Canada is a coalition of libertarians, free traders and marketeers, values conservatives, small and medium-sized business entrepreneurs, and members of the middle class who want lower taxes. The Liberal Party of Canada is a coalition of libertarians, immigrant values conservatives, free traders and marketeers, members of the professional and business elite, and members of the middle class who variously either want lower taxes or think they're just fine as they are." Burkean Canuck admits that "this is a simplification of the complexities of the respective coalitions that constitute the two parties, but it's not inaccurate" and wonders, "which one is 'left,' and which is 'right'?" Perhaps the fact that the question even has to be asked is one reason why the Conservative Party's hold on the enthusiasm of movement conservatives is tenuous at best. Many voters (as distinct from activists) who would be part of the Conservative coalition feel comfortable enough with becoming, even briefly, part of the Liberal coalition. That being so, I would suggest that it is time for the Conservatives to insert some giant wedges into the political landscape to force divisions among their opposing coalition. (Candidates include same-sex marriage without the civil unions compromise and a massive sales tax or across the board income tax cut.) It is high time that the Conservative Party of Canada be unambiguously the (only) party of the right. Sunday, January 23, 2005
Announcements You can send comments to paul_tuns [at] yahoo.com. Blogging will be light for rest of the week because of 1) the paper I edit goes to press in the next few days, 2) I have some writing that I get paid for that must get done and 3) I have to stop neglecting my wife. You can order my book Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal directly from Freedom Press or from Barnes and Noble. No name calling now Johnny Carson's death gives BuzzMachine a reason to discuss popular and common culture. But there is no need to call Carson names, no matter how true the point might be: "He was, of course, the original Jon Stewart, who showed so much of news to be what it was: a joke. He and other, edgier comics of the day made comedy relevant." Will on Frost's Demo street cred Washington Post columnist George F. Will on Martin Frost, a former Congressman, and the man vying with Howard Dean to lead the Democratic Party: "Martin Frost is a political lifer eager to prolong his engagement in party affairs, which began in 1968, when, as a Georgetown University law student, he volunteered at the headquarters of Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign. Frost's 13-term congressional career was ended in November when he was one of four Texas Democrats who were victims of the mid-decade redistricting engineered by Rep. Tom DeLay. Democrats like victims as much as they dislike DeLay, so Frost has a double claim on Democrats' pity, which is their sincerest compliment." Going out on bottom In my previous post I say that Johnny Carson left his late night gig while on top of his game. Crossfire, on the other hand, did not. That said, Michael Kinsley, a former co-host (with Patrick J. Buchanan, back in days when both the show and Buchanan were better), says in the Washington Post that Crossfire and shows like it where ideological opponents talk past one another on the important issues of the day, have gotten a bad rap for their supposed role in degrading political discourse. I hate to say it but I agree with Kinsley. The article is well worth reading. There's Johnny Johnny Carson has died at the age of 79. Much can and will be said and I have only this to say: he left when he was still on top, embodying the old show biz adage leaving them wanting more. He will be fondly remembered by those who watched his Tonight Show because he did not stay past his welcome. He left the stage and enjoyed his retirement with the same dignity and grace that he displayed on it for roughly three decades. From Johnny's final monologue: "Now, originally NBC came and said, what we would like you to do in the final show, is to make it a two-hour prime-time special with celebrities, and a star-studded audience. And I said, well, I would prefer to end like we started -- rather quietly, in our same time slot, in front of our same shabby little set. It is rather shabby. We offered it to a homeless shelter and they said 'No, thank you'." Thank you, Johnny. Late night hasn't been the same without you. I don't mean to be insensitive but ... Perhaps if they weren't there in the first place, women in the military wouldn't be on the receiving end of loutish behaviour. The Independent reports that "Almost half of all women serving in the Royal Air Force have been sexually harassed, according to an internal report obtained by The Independent on Sunday." That is, about 1000 women in the RAF have (allegedly) been victims of sexual harassment in the past year. Not to condone such boorishness (and I have questions if it were that extensive) but it is utterly unsurprising. Men often behave boorishly around other men; you bring a lot of women into their world and make them one of the boys (war is a manly business), you should not be terribly surprised when men treat women as badly as they treat each other. More troubling, however, is the reaction. The paper reports, "Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, was called on last night to take urgent action to force the armed forces to institute 'fundamental reform' of its complaints system to protect victims." So instead of preparing the RAF to defend Britain or kill enemies, it is teaching men to be more sensitive toward the fairer sex. A much better idea would be to remove the women. After all, the military is about defending those that can't defend themselves. Right? Steyn on the liberal's favourite phrase de jour Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times: "The Democrats' big phrase is 'exit strategy.' Time and again, their senators demanded that Rice tell 'em what the 'exit strategy' for Iraq was. The correct answer is: There isn't one, and there shouldn't be one, and it's a dumb expression. The more polite response came in the president's inaugural address: 'The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.' Next week's election in Iraq will go not perfectly but well enough, and in time the number of U.S. troops needed there will be reduced, and in some more time they'll be reduced more dramatically, and one day there'll be none at all, just a small diplomatic presence that functions a bit like the old British ministers did in the Gulf emirates for centuries: They know everyone and everything, and they keep the Iraqi-American relationship running smoothly enough that Baghdad doesn't start looking for other foreign patrons. In other words: no exit." And while the Democrats have former KKKers blocking Condi Rice's appointment to the State Department and blather on about exit strategies, President George W. Bush is spreading and talking about liberty: "That was what Bush accomplished so superbly in his speech: the idealistic position -- spreading liberty -- is now also the realist one: If you don't spread it, in the end your own liberty will be jeopardized." Is there any doubt which one has more appeal to the hopefulness of Americans? Why Iraq but not China, North Korea or Iran Sidney Goldberg provides a simple to understand (even for followers of Michael Moore if they were honest), defense of the pragmatic approach to regime change in World War IV. Hint: it's not just about oil, but fighting winnable wars. Sidney Goldberg says: "Remember the movies in which a gang of criminals would rob a bank and then outrace the county police to the border of another county, cross the border, and leave the county police fuming in frustration because their authority prevailed only in their own county? I used to think this was the most stupid situation from an ethical point of view, even though the law was being upheld. Take this hypothetical case: You're walking along the border of a neighboring country and there's nobody in sight on either side, except for a guy who's beating up an old lady in the neighboring country. You're bigger and stronger than that guy and you know you could stop him, but to do so you would have to illegally cross the border. What to do? It's a no-brainer because saving the woman's life is on a much higher ethical plane than abiding by the laws of sovereignty. So you chase off the perpetrator and save the woman's life. What if two guys with baseball bats are beating up the old lady, who certainly will die from the blows? In this case, you don't go to her help, because they will kill you, too, and there will be two deaths instead of one. Extrapolating to the big picture, where the United States finds a people who are suffering under the yoke of a tyrant, and it is a tyrant that we can eliminate and thereby ease the suffering, we should go ahead and do it. This would violate the laws of sovereignty in favor of the obligations of ethics. This action should be taken unless it causes even more deaths and suffering than the existing tyranny. In that case we have to put it on a back burner until a better opportunity for change occurs. What we have to do, and I'm sure the President has thought this through, is go after the horrible but easy cases first, just as a good salesman makes the easy sales first and works his way up to the most difficult for last. He sells refrigerators first to people who have none and only at the very end of his campaign will he attempt to sell refrigerators to people who already have them. Therefore, China and Russia shouldn't be at the top of our list for 'regime change.' As the easier tyrannies open up to greater freedom, China and Russia will become more vulnerable and therefore subject to our pressure and influence." NFL prediction I would like to see a Pittsburg Steelers/Atlanta Falcons final but I expect that it will be a Philadelphia Eagles/New England Patriots Super Bowl. That said, the Steelers/Pats game should be fantastic. While everyone is talking about how the Steelers were lucky to get past the New York Jets last week (and they were), the Pats were equally dreadful against the Indianapolis Colts. The Pats won by a larger spread so their performance is not thought to be as bad/lucky. Because both teams have something to prove and because both teams have experience in bitterly cold and snowy games, the Pats/Steelers game could be one of the best conference finals ever. The Falcons are the better team but is a southern dome team in late-January Philly. This one will be abysmal to watch. Saturday, January 22, 2005
Let the Freedom Tour begin AP reports on the neocons coming out of the woodwork in Bush's second term and notes: "At her confirmation hearings this week, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice named six countries as "outposts of tyranny" that would get special attention from the second-term Bush administration: Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe." Sounds like a great start. Let the liberations begin. Coptic Christians may have died at the hands of Muslims and ... Yahoo runs this header on an AP story: "N.J. Killings Spark New Anti-Muslim Bias." Of course, if the Coptic Christian killed the Muslims the headline would still have been "N.J. Killings Spark New Anti-Muslim Bias." Many of us have said that modern art is garbage From Ottawa Citizen columnist John Robson's Top Five weekly feature: "Garbage collectors in Frankfurt, Germany, somehow mistake yellow plastic sheets lying in the streets for trash, not modern sculpture. To make sure it doesn't happen again, 30 of them are re-educated in modern art classes. Wouldn't sending the artists back to school be a better way of achieving the same goal?" Injury sidelines Trudeaupia We'll miss him and look forward to his return to regular blogging. Get well. Best parenthetical quote From Bradford Short at The Fact Is: "(and, as the great Wesley Smith has shown again and again, we were probably less racist in 1890 than we are willing to murder the disabled today-especially if the 'we' in that sentence is the Dutch branch of Western Civ.)" The definitive word on SpongeBobGayPants Relapsed Catholic: "If SpongeBob is so gay, why is he wearing brown pants -- with black shoes and white socks, no less? Please." Friday, January 21, 2005
GOP 2008 It's never too early to think about the presidential election of 2008. Robert Novaks says that New York Governor George Pataki has been asked if he open to becoming the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Novaks says that taking the UN post would eliminate the possibility of Pataki seeking a fourth term in Albany but would give him international experience if he has his eyes on a presidential run in 2008. Review of Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal You can read London Free Press columnist Rory Leishman's review of my book at The Interim. Leishman begins: "Legend has it that Canada's first Conservative prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was interrupted on the hustings by a leather-lunged heckler, shouting: 'I don't care what you say, John. My father was a Grit, my grandfather was a Grit and by golly, I'm a Grit, too.' To which Sir John responded: 'I take it that if your father and grandfather were jackasses, you would be a jackass, too.' Interim editor Paul Tuns is more polite than Sir John A., but no less eager to persuade hereditary Liberals to reconsider their allegiance to the Liberal Party. To this end, Tuns has written a fine book, Jean Chretien, a Legacy of Scandal." Top 10 lies It would be hard to improve upon Diplomad's 10 favourite lies. Here's the list, but check the Diplomad for the reasons why: 1) There's some magic 'Third Way.' 2) Foreign Aid Helps Poor People. 3) If the USA Pressured Ariel Sharon, there'd be Middle East Peace. 4) You can't make a country democratic by force. 5) The United Nations is the hope for the future of mankind, and its corollary, if we didn't have the UN we'd have to invent it. 6) Fidel Castro may be a dictator but Cuba has high social indicators. 7) A conspiracy killed President Kennedy. 8) No cultures are superior to any others. 9) You know the news if you see CNN, read the NYTimes, Washington Post. 10) We're all going to die of global warming. My only complaint is that they were listed in no particular order. How cowardly. Thursday, January 20, 2005
Three presidents, one mission "We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." - John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address (1961) "And as we renew ourselves here in our own land, we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom. To those neighbors and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We will match loyalty with loyalty. We will strive for mutually beneficial relations. We will not use our friendship to impose on their sovereignty, for our own sovereignty is not for sale. As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, not or ever. Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength. Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors." - Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address (1981) "From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause? These questions that judge us also unite us, because Americans of every party and background, Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one another in the cause of freedom. We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes - and I will strive in good faith to heal them. Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack, and our response came like a single hand over a single heart. And we can feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice, and the captives are set free. We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner 'Freedom Now' - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty." - George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address (2005) Taking the oxymoron out of political ethics The New York Post reports on an ethics manual for city councilors: "Two years in the making, the City Council's new 74-page ethics handbook for legislators and staffers is chock full of what they should already know: * Don't sexually harass employees. * Don't take lavish gifts from lobbyists. * Don't force government employees to work on campaigns." The Post retorts, "Not exactly rocket science." Then why do so many politicians not get it? Inauguration Day means politics as usual for Dems From an email dispatch from the Democratic Party today: "Today, the day of George W. Bush's second inauguration, Republicans are hoping that we'll just fade into the background. They're hoping that for the next two years we sit on the sidelines, and let them ram their agenda through. But we Democrats will never step aside. While Bush tries to build his legacy on a series of attacks against working families, the middle class, and seniors, Democrats will be there to stand up. We will fight President Bush and his Republican cronies as they try to: * Shift the tax burden away from the wealthiest to working families and the middle class by making his disastrous tax schemes permanent. * Undermine Social Security for today's seniors and future generations of retirees by privatizing the system. * Pack the Supreme Court with right-wing judges who will undermine our basic rights. While his second term is an opportunity to bring us together, to lead all Americans and strengthen the country with policies based on our shared values, President Bush has already started to promote his narrow, partisan agenda. But make no mistake about it. We will stand up and oppose Bush's attacks on our fundamental values. We can only succeed with you and other committed Democrats at our side. Sincerely, Terry McAuliffe Chairman" Apparently the Democrats received one message on Nov. 2: do more of the same, the same old thing that has prevented them from winning a majority of votes cast for president in any election since 1964. It is noteworthy that McAuliffe doesn't list any of the "shared values" that "all Americans" have. (Would they include abortion-on-demand? homogamy? giving the French veto power over American national security measures? surrendering Iraq to Islamic terrorists?) It is also noteworthy that McAuliffe says that his party can only succeed in bringing Americans together with "committed Democrats" fighting Bush. What about other Americans -- independents and not-so-committed Democrats? Too funny Fox News reports that Michael Moore's bodyguard was caught with an unlicensed gun. Fox reminds us that "Moore's 2003 Oscar-winning film 'Bowling for Columbine' criticizes what Moore calls America's 'culture of fear' and its obsession with guns." Daimnation says that "Moore has obviously fallen for the media- and government-created 'culture of fear' he decried in Bowling for Columbine. How sad. (By 'sad', I mean, 'hilarious'.)" UPDATE: MooreWatch is correcting the story about Moore's "bodyguard" Patrick Burk who perhaps was once assigned to provide security for Moore but is not his employee. MooreWatch also clarifies the events leading up to the arrest. Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Rice passes Foreign Affairs Committee test 16-2. Senator Jean Kerry (UltraD, France) and Senator Barbara Boxer (Ultra, UltraD, CA) are only Dems to oppose Condi Rice's nomination as Secretary of State. What a nightmare this would be Jeremy Lott predicts that Andrew Sullivan will be the New York Times' replacement for William Safire, the libertarian conservative hawk who is leaving his perch as one of the token conservatives on the op-ed page there. Assigned reading Burkean Canuck has some thoughts on "The Origins of Constitutional, Representative Democracy which are quite worth reading in which he examines the religious roots of the intellectual underpinnings of the American experiment. His concluding paragraph: "But a little more on Catholic 'subsidiarity' and Neo-Calvinist 'sphere sovereignty.' Both emphasize there is more to society than just the individual and the state. That there are various institutions and associations which when added to the individual and the state compose a healthy society. There are arguable differences between the two -- 'subsidarity' and 'sphere sovereignty' -- but both recognize the 'pluriformity' -- the plurality of institutions and associations -- of society. Both traditions have much to offer adherents of constitutional, representative government who might want to dive into their depths." A quick political question: what political party or parties, or even elected politician, in Canada, recognizes this, that there is more to society than just the individual and the state? Only a handful and they certainly are not in charge of their parties. How impoverished is our political discussion (and thus our politics) by libertarian conservatives who see only the good individual and the evil state and statist liberals who see only the good state and evil individuals. No wonder we are in the morally chaotic mess we're in. The liberation tour would bring Middle East peace This New York Sun endorses the idea of opening a new front in World War IV, taking the War on Terror to Iran: "It seems the president has taken to heart the criticism he received from Senator Kerry's camp for saying, during the campaign, that the war couldn't be won. It reminds us of all the talk during the Cold War about peaceful co-existence. The very concept was a recipe for slavery in one half of the world and fear and cowardice in the other. It will not be possible to have peace in the Middle East, let alone democracy, with the mullahs in power in Iran and in possession of nuclear weapons - or even working toward them. And efforts at a diplomatic solution will be barren absent the availability of the kind of military solution for which the Bush administration is now reportedly preparing." Did libs/journos expect Rice to say Iraq was a big mistake? The AP coverage of Condi Rice's confirmation hearings is typical of the mistified coverage that the soon-to-be Secretary of State would be so bold as to defend the war for Iraq just as she has for nearly two years now: "Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice gave no ground in Senate confirmation questioning Tuesday, insisting the United States was fully prepared for the Iraq war and its aftermath and refusing to give a timetable for U.S. troops to come home." Surprisingly, the New York Times coverage was more substantive although it, too, had that somewhat bewildered, "We can't believe she defends the war" tone to its story at times. The Financial Times displays a similar attitude. Quote of the day "It's a good rule of thumb that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, he can never compete with the political class's response to his idiocy." -- Mark Steyn in the Daily Telegraph on the furor over Prince Harry's costume. Remember when the good old days when the fighting took place on the ice Reuters reports: "A Canadian man, upset that his 9-year-old son was benched during a hockey game, allegedly choked the team's coach in a fit of rage, Toronto police said on Monday. The father, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban, allegedly reached over a partition to grab the coach after the boy was kept on the bench during Sunday's game." Oops The Centers for Disease Control over-estimated the number of obesity related deaths because of a computer software error. The AP reported: "The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published last March in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said that obesity-related deaths climbed between 1990 and 2000 to 400,000 a year — an increase of 100,000. In Wednesday's issue of the journal, the government ran a correction, saying the increase was a more modest 65,000 deaths or so." Call me cynical but the error was probably less computer related than ideological. Tuesday, January 18, 2005
I didn't know Santorum was Jewish The Financial Times reports that neocons are clamouring for regime change in Iran. Among the congressional members of this tribe are Senators Rick Santorum and John Cornyn, sponsors of the Iran Freedom and Support Act which "calls on the administration to back 'regime change' and promote and fund the transition to a democratic government through alliances with opposition groups that renounce terrorism." Aren't Santorum and Cornyn Christian? All joking aside, however, it is becoming tiresome to have any hawkish or pro-democracy foreign policy suggestion derided and delegitimized by being labeled "neoconservative." Isn't it time for liberals and journalists to be mugged by reality? A casualty of war The Financial Times reports that Mark Latham, leader of Australia's leftist Labour Party, has resigned from politics citing health reasons. It is just a guess of course, but I doubt that his health is so bad that if he had won in last Fall's election he would still be resigning. Prime Minister John Howard's re-election to an unprecedented fourth term should be read as an endorsement for his hawkish, pro-American and pro War on Terror foreign policy. The FT reports that "The resignation clears the way for former defence minister Kim Beazley, who led the party to losses in 1998 and 2001 national elections, to return to the party’s leadership." Just what Labour needs, I'm sure. From the Sore Losers file The Boston Globe reports that John Kerry used Martin Luther King Day to slam November 2 results by claiming that thousands were disenfranchised. "In a nation which is willing to spend several hundred million dollars in Iraq to bring them democracy," said Kerry, "we cannot tolerate that here in America too many people were denied that democracy." Let's hope that Iraq does not suffer the kind of demagoguery that America does from its top Democratic politicians. The myth of the non-existent mandate What is it with journalists and liberals who insist that President George W. Bush has no mandate? Following his 2000 election, Bush's political opponents scored some points against the president by claiming that he selected by the Supreme Court not elected by the people and that he didn't win the popular vote. Fine. But now Washington Post reporters Richard Morin and Dan Balz seek to discredit Bush's mandate with some odd criteria: "President Bush will begin his second term in office without a clear mandate to lead the nation, with strong disapproval of his policies in Iraq and with the public both hopeful and dubious about his leadership on the issues that will dominate his agenda, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll." Since when are mandates made by polls? What Morin and Balz mean is that Americans are still divided. But as P.J. O'Rourke notes in the current Atlantic, America's strength is its diversity and you don't have diversity without divison. Perhaps the Post's writers would like to ponder that while they hypocritically celebrate racial and sexual diversity while deriding political and economic (class) diversity. Monday, January 17, 2005
Hersh fisked big time Wizbang links to and notes the Pentagon's reaction to Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article on American involvement in and planning for Iran. Apparently, it was just a tease. After reading the Pentagon's reaction to Hersh, Wizbang says, "The Pentagon needs a blog, that way they can do this fisk idiots like Hersh more often." Ditto, especially after reading this from the official statement: "By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an 'alternative history' novel. He is well along in that work, given the high quality of 'alternative present' that he has developed in several recent articles." Ouch. Or consider this: "Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith and Israel, government or non-government, do not exist. Here, Mr. Hersh is building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists. This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker." Double ouch. Lighten up folks Yesterday, Nigel Farndale had a great column in the Daily Telegraph on Prince Harry's forgivable sin of wearing an SS uniform. He concludes: "It is literal-mindedness bordering on autism to assume he was in some way endorsing fascist views just because he wore a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party. That is like assuming a woman who wears a nun costume to a party must practise celibacy, or one dressed as a tart must admire prostitutes. It is an unhealthy state of affairs when we can no longer distinguish between real racism, such as the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and a little harmless mischief by an immature 20-year-old." In another column in the Telegraph, Kevin Myers writes that the IRA is the only serious Nazi-supporters in Europe today. But he also captures the essence of the silliness of dumping on Prince Harry for his unfortunate choice of costume: "Poor Prince Harry. How could he have foreseen that the kitsch Nazi imagery that has made The Producers such a smash-hit in the West End would cause such ructions when he playfully adopted it himself? Such a naïve and unworldly youngster could not possibly have guessed that the same fancy dress that is hilarious on a London stage, when worn at a private party would embroil him in an international scandal." Cut the Prince some slack. He made a mistake. Get over it. And let him get over it, too. On liberal tolerance James Wolcott on "certain circles" in New York in an interview with LA Weekly: "... it's not that they don't want to read Hilton Kramer, it's [that they believe] people like him should not be allowed to exist." What Walcott is especially critical of, though, is not anti-conservative animus but the inability of so-called liberals to permit disagreement among themselves: "But at The Voice this tension would build up, and a lot of the feuds that would break out were not about the subject itself, they really were office animosities that had been building for years. Nat Hentoff was the focus because the feminists hated him, and Hentoff would goad them sometimes, when he wrote about abortion and things like that. So there would be these big battles in The Voice that would seem to be about a particular issue, but they weren’t. They were really about the fact that they wanted Hentoff out. And I think that’s why a lot of publications are very cowardly. They don’t want that interoffice friction." The desire to fit in, to not rock the boat, may be the worst form of (self) censorship. (Hat tip to Irish Elk) For those of you miss hockey Losthockey is a great site, "primarily dedicated to the memory of NHL players from the 1920s and 1930s, who were not marquee players, but were no less a part of the game," to peruse. (Hat tip to Irish Elk) Surprise, surprise -- abortion advocates lie Conservative Battleground reports that legalization of abortion does not reduce abortion-related maternal deaths. (No comment about the increase in deaths for the unborn.) Once again, liberal pro-aborts have trouble with the facts: "The Women's eNews article also says that 5,000 women die from abortion each year in Latin America. [Carlos] Polo [director of PRI's Latin American office] thinks this highly unlikely, noting that in Peru, according to the Health Ministry, 542 Peruvian women died in 2002 from complications related to pregnancy and only 5% of those deaths occurred as a result of induced abortion. So a total of 27 women died in 'one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with what the feminists say is one of the highest abortion rates in the region,' he said. Peru, with 28 million people, has about 6% of Latin America's population. This suggests that the actual number of Latin American women who die each year from abortion is closer to 500 than 5,000." Bernard Nathanson, a prominent New York abortionist and founder of NARAL before changing his mind and becoming one of the most articulate pro-life spokesman, admitted that North American advocates of abortion just made up the number of abortion-related deaths without a shred of evidence. As Nathanson said: "How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL [the National Abortion Rights Action League], we generally emphasized the frame of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always '5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.' I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the 'morality' of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible." Apparently this dishonest tactic has been exported to the developing world. The Abortion Party II A letter writer to the Lodi (California ) News-Sentinel on Democrats and the abortion issue says: "...former Indiana Congressman Tim Roemer, an abortion foe, is favored to succeed Terry McAuliffe as Democratic National Committee chairman. Roemer argues that the party cannot rebound from its loses unless it shows more tolerance on abortion. He has the support of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, of San Francisco." Well, hardly favoured. According to The Hotline, via The Kerry Spot, Howard Dean is the clear front-runner to become the DNC chairman followed by Rep. Martin Frost and distantly behind is former Rep. Tim Roemer. Dean and Frost are pro-abortion. Dean has the support of 31% of DNC members (of which nearly half answered The Hotline's survey), Frost 16% and Roemer 4%. Roemer has little chance but at least his candidacy highlights the pro-abortion extremism of the Democrats. Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, Ken Mehlman, the chair of the RNC has named Joann Davidson, a founding member of the advisory board of Republicans for Choice, his co-chairman. Quite something for the those narrow-minded, fundamentalist Republicans. No doubt the media will continue with its story line that the Republicans struggle to be a big tent party whereas the Democrats are tolerant -- despite the facts that disprove this particular narrative. Bob Barr's Idiots of the Year From a dentist who pulled out a chain saw as a practical joke on a patient to a judge who made passes on a rape victim, the worst of 2004. Don't tease me Seymour Hersh's latest in the New Yorker hints at a possible American liberation of Iran. Hersh claims that the United States is already carrying out covert activities in Iran and that there is "extensive planning" for a larger attack. The US is probably and should be covertly active in Iran but I don't believe there are plans for another large scale invasion in the region. (I don't doubt Hersh's claim that he has inside sources who talk to him about this, but I do doubt the veracity of his sources.) But just in case it actually happens remember this line: "The core problem is that Iran has successfully hidden the extent of its nuclear program, and its progress." Why? Because six months after the liberation, liberals including Hersh will claim that there were no WMDs. The Abortion Party CNN reports that Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, considered running for the DNC chairmanship after pro-life former Rep. Tim Roemer entered the race. However, Michelman decided against entering the race herself instead focusing on defeating Roemer. She said: "I will spend the next month leading a vigorous effort to ensure that when the DNC elects its new leader, it selects someone who stands forthrightly for a woman's right to choose ... I will also urge DNC members to make an unequivocal statement that choice is both a fundamental value of the Democratic Party and an essential component of our winning message." It's been an resounding success so far, Kate. Quote of the day John Derbyshire on the Golden Globes: "Why would a nation need *two* movie awards ceremonies?" Do you know what your kids are wathcing? This Reno Gazette-Journal reports that the "racy" (media speak for sleazy) hit TV series Desperate Housewives is the most watched show by 9-12 year olds. Unreal. What the heck are their parents thinking? Was a Coptic Christian family co-operated to death? The New York Post reports that an Egyptian Coptic Christian family of four was murdered, possibly by Muslims, in ... Jersey City. The father was known to be a zealous user of chat rooms where he would apparently say disparaging things about Muslims. As Ann Coulter might say, that gives them license to kill you. Officials will not confirm if they suspect Muslim involvement in the quadruple murder. The Post noted that: "Osama Hassan, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, described the relationship between Copts and Muslims as cooperative if not friendly. 'I think there might be people that can get into physical fights, but not to the point of murder,' Hassan said." Apparently to Hassan, "cooperative" includes "physical fights." Of the murder of the daughter who just turned 16 this weekend, the paper reported, "The heartless killer not only slit Sylvia's throat, but also sliced a huge gash in her chest and stabbed her in the wrist, where she had a tattoo of a Coptic cross." (Crossposted at The Shogtun) How stupid do you have to be... ... to not notice a four inch nail embedded in your skull for six days. A dentist finds the root of a terrible tooth ache but exposes an Ohio construction worker as an idiot. Anti-Americanism and socialist class envy run amuck Reuters reports that the Brazilian foreign ministry has eliminated fluency in English as a requirement to enter its school for diplomats. Globo, a daily newspaper, editorialized that "This is just a statement of infantile anti-Americanism" and "a serious threat to Brazilian diplomacy." But Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said it is all about making the diplomat school more accessible and "democratic." Amorin said, "We can't allow that somebody doesn't pass the test just because they didn't study or live abroad." Sunday, January 16, 2005
The conflict of interest ends Not any Liberal conflict but that of baseball commissioner Bud Selig. His family has owned the Milwaukee Brewers for 35 years. The sale of the team to Los Angeles investor Mark Attanasio for $223 million is now official. The AP reports that "Baseball owners unanimously approved the sale," although who in their right mind would have opposed the sale of the commissioner's team? Liberals vs. independent inquiries Former Somalia Inquiry commissioner Peter Desbarats wrote in the Globe and Mail this week about the Liberal attacks on the Gomery inquiry and notes that there are similarities between now and the attempt to hinder investigation into the Somalia affair. (Hat tip to Bob Tarantino at The Shotgun). Desbarats writes that: "The last high-profile inquiry to run afoul of the government was the Somalia probe of 1995-97. The inquiry was created, in the usual fashion, to cool down a scandal that was embarrassing the government and some of its friends in the bureaucracy - the criminal misbehaviour of some Canadian soldiers during a peace- enforcement mission in Somalia. The inquiry bought time for the government but at the expense of having to face eventual exposure and condemnation at the hands of the inquiry." But they never had to face the music because on the eve of the 1997 election, the Liberals closed down the inquiry, its work being a possible obstacle to re-election. So Defense Minister David Young ordered them to finish their work within an unreasonably short time frame after months of Liberal government obstruction. Read all about it in my book Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal which examines, among other things, the former prime minister's approach to dealing with scandal: deny any wrong-doing, excuse or justify the wrong-doing, obstruct the investigation into the wrong-doing, move to next scandal so Canadians turn a blind eye to the government's misdeeds because of scandal fatigue. (American readers, by the way, can purchase the book through Barnes and Noble and, possibly, get me within the top 100,000 best selling books on their website; I'm currently around 143,000.) Here are excerpts from Jean Chretien on the Somalia affair from Chapter 2: The Somalia cover-up is a bizarre chapter from the first term of the Chretien government, one that began before the Liberals even came to power. In early 1993, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney sent the Canadian Airborne Regiment Battle Group to Somalia under the auspices of the United Nations to restore peace and deliver humanitarian relief to the impoverished people in the East African nation. On March 4, members of an Airborne Group platoon killed a Somali thief. ... The Inquiry into the Deployment of the Canadian Forces to Somalia was established and charged with looking at not just the Shidane Arone murder, but more broadly at the culture within the military to determine if that culture somehow increased the likelihood of such incidents.. It was soon discovered that further records were altered or destroyed. The Canadian Defence Headquarters ordered serving personnel not to co-operate with the inquiry until they cleared what they were going to say with the Chief of the Defence Staff. Although the initial event took place during the Mulroney era, the alleged cover-up occurred during the Chretien regime, from 1993-1995. The inquiry clearly became an annoyance to the government. Chretien complained that the inquiry was taking too long, saying that even Watergate was “settled in six or seven weeks.” (In fact, the Senate investigation of Watergate took 20 months.) Collenette was forced to defend allegations of paper shredding in the Department of National Defence. But instead of taking responsibility or even just clearly explaining what happened, Collenette saw anti-government conspiracies, criticized the Commission for taking media reports too seriously, and complained about the length of time the commission was taking to investigate. The Opposition called for the resignations of Collenette and Chief of Defence Staff, General Jean Boyle. Because of the Prime Minister’s comments about the excessive length of time the inquiry was supposedly taking, Preston Manning also charged that Chretien was “getting pretty close to participating in the cover-up by the military.” Critics of the government called upon it to just let the inquiry do its job....Peter Desbarats, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario, was named a commissioner of the inquiry. He kept a journal that later became a best-selling book, Somalia Cover-up: A Commissioner’s Journal. On October 4, the day Collenette resigned, Debarats said journalists (and presumably himself) were skeptical of the reason Collenette offered. “The discovery of the letter,” Desbarats writes, “allows Collenette to resign over a relatively minor matter, leaving the door open for an early return to cabinet, perhaps even before the election expected next spring.” As Preston Manning later put it, accepting the Defence Minister’s resignation over some dubious and often tolerated infraction of Cabinet ethics rules – Michel Dupuy did the exact same thing and was defended by the Prime Minister for just doing what MPs do – allowed Chretien “to get Collenette out of the kitchen without accepting blame for the fire.” Doug Young, who had served variously as minister of transportation and human resources, replaced Collenette. [By late 1996] both the Prime Minister and Defence Minister pressured the Commission to wrap up its proceedings. In his first days as Minister of Defence, Young had publicly indicated he wanted the inquiry to report by spring. Desbarats lamented not just Chretien’s comments about the slowness of the inquiry but his inability to defend himself or the proceedings. To do so would have been a political act, something Desbarats correctly thought to be inappropriate for anyone associated with the inquiry. On September 16, 1996, Chretien criticized the inquiry for the slow pace of the investigation. He did not mention that a primary reason for the slowness was the lack of cooperation from the military. Desbarats noted in his journal two days later, “Although we are not a court, we are a semi-judicial body that must remain independent of political influence.” At least this Commissioner felt that comments coming from the government were undue political influence. In mid-October, Chretien again criticized the length of the proceedings. Desbarats notes “Chretien went further than he should have in criticizing our inquiry for taking so long.” He continues: “Liberals had hoped originally that we would be finished long before the 1997 general election.” He adds that despite the political pressure, “everyone knows that it will continue through the election campaign,” and probably with great embarrassment to both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties. The government continued its criticism of the pace of the proceedings. Young went to the CBC and once again connected the timing of the inquiry’s report to the election: “Certainly [we] wouldn’t want to be in an election campaign with the inquiry still going on, having people telling me that I’m trying to cover something up.” When asked what was more important, a speedy trial or proper inquiry, Young responded, “It’s very important for me to end the inquiry.” Desbarats described the comments as, if not crossing the line, dangerously “treading a thin line between urging efficiency on us and appearing to want to close us down to prevent political embarrassment.” Young’s linking of the inquiry report and the election campaign, Desbarats said, brought “political considerations across the barrier that separates and insulates us from government interference.” By mid-November, the Privy Council Office, which had oversight of the inquiry (through its control of the inquiry’s purse-strings), began to exert pressure to get the report over and done with. Of course, Chretien could have waited for the inquiry to release its findings instead of calling an early election. But the government was seen to be putting undue pressure on the commission and to be doing so for political reasons. This was unlike the Airbus affair, in which the government led former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney though an agonizingly protracted legal battle because it claimed it did not want to interfere in a police investigation into the matter. In the case of Somalia, the government clearly tried to intervene in the inquiry process. Suddenly, but not unpredictably, on January 10, 1997, Young declared that the inquiry was to complete its hearings within three months – just before an expected election call – and report by June – just after the election was completed. It was only the third time in Canadian history that an independent inquiry was shut down by the government... Desbarats himself wondered about the efforts to pressure the inquiry. He told [jouranlist Lawrence] Martin “The fact that Chretien was willing to tamper with something like an independent inquiry for the sake of what appeared to be miniscule political advantage, I just thought, Wow, if he’ll do that, he’ll do anything.” What never made sense was Chretien’s willingness to go to the mat over so little. Chretien and his Minister(s) of Defence seemed to be covering for top civil servants in the Defence Department. One such civil servant was Robert Fowler, a figure central to the scandal at the Department. He was appointed to the United Nations directly from his Defence posting. Sun Media columnist Diane Francis wrote that Chretien “spirited [him] out of the country to a plum job” and muses that he had done so because “Fowler’s sister is married to Governor General Romeo LeBlanc, who happens to be one of Jean Chretien’s best friends.” She added, “[i]t certainly appears the boys look after the boys.” As is often the case, the scandal that ensued was over suspicion of the cover-up and not the initial wrongdoing, which, in this case, was something that had actually taken place on the previous government’s watch. It would not be the last time an inquiry into the previous government’s business would lead to serious bungling by the Liberal government. Springing back into politics The AP reports that trash TV talk show host and former Cincinatti mayor Jerry Springer will host a radio talk show in his former hometown where he promises to challenge President George W. Bush on a range of issues. There is speculation that he hopes to use his show to run for state-wide office in 2006 when Ohio will have both gubernatorial and senatorial races. Interestingly, it is Clear Channel, a supposedly pro-Republican broadcaster, who is turning its Cincinatti oldies station into a liberal talk show station with plans to eventually syndicate Springer's show. Extreme makeover This Washington Times editorial says that Hillary Clinton should have a difficult time hiding from her liberal record despite the efforts to cast her as a moderate. I disagree with the Times because I think that Clinton's faux hawkishness on the War on Terror will give her cover. That and the fact the media will do their best to keep that label away from her. Sure she has opposed numerous Bush judicial appointees, votes almost lock-step with the ACLU and has a life-long record of liberal advocacy. But will the average US voter look up various interest groups to see how liberal her voting record really is or what she has done over her long public life (save for her support of a national healthcare scheme)? She will also claim the moderate label because there will be Democrats who run against her who actually say what they believe instead of pretending to be something they are not. Ultimately, I think she will overplay her moderate credentials and the party will pick someone clearly to the left of her. And if that doesn't happen, she is likely to break under the strain of intense and constant media attention; she doesn't do well when she's challenged. Either way, Hillary will be denied either the Democratic presidential nomination or the presidency. Quote of the day "... we must question a society that increasingly marginalizes motherhood but desires its women to plunge bayonets and throw grenades. It's a sin to stay at home with the children and have a large family, but a modernist virtue to fire a flame-thrower." From Michael Coren's Toronto Sun column on the wisdom of George W. Bush and the president's comments against women in combat. Capital punishment, east and west Writing about the death penalty in the Washington Post, Charles Lane says: "There is a place in the advanced industrial world where people are regularly sentenced to death, and executed, for their crimes. Some of the condemned deny their guilt -- and there are confirmed cases of mistakes in sentencing. But government officials say the system delivers retribution and deterrence fairly and efficiently. This place is not Texas. It is Japan -- the only industrial democracy other than our own that still regularly executes convicted murderers. In 2004, the Japanese conducted two executions by hanging, the sole method employed there. In some years, the rate is double or triple that." Read that again closely. Lane says that people (by which he means criminals convicted of murder) are "regularly sentenced to death" and that there are an amazing two, four or six such sentences each year. How regular is the death penalty when only a pair of murderers are executed each year? Lane then explores a number of fascinating aspects of Japanese history and culture, including reaction of some Buddhists to the country's practice of executing murderers. Ultimately, Lane finds that Japan has capital punishment because, "Basically, Japan's leaders are giving their people what they want." How radical? He notes that many of the European nations that outlawed capital punishment had it either imposed on them from outside forces (Poland because it sought entry into the EU), imposed by leaders who could side-step legislatures (French president Mitterand banned it in 1981) or imposed on the country under less than democratic circumstances (Germany and Italy wrote it into their constitutions after World War II). He could have added that the Supreme Court imposed such a ban on Canada country. Lane grudgingly admits that majorities in even most European nations still support capital punishment, as do most Japanese. In his column, Lane laments that Japan is not likely to ban capital punishment any time soon despite the fact that several death row inmates were "exonerated" in the 1980s. (In 2000 I argued in both the Hamilton Spectator and Ottawa Citizen that exonerated death row inmates prove that the system works, not, as abolitionists insist, that it doesn't. Furthermore, there is no evidence in the United States that an innocent man has ever been executed, an issue Ramesh Ponnuru has addressed quite well in attacking those who hold up the "exonerated" and "innocent" as poster children for the abolition of capital punishment.) It is noteworthy that Lane, like most abolitionists, no longer addresses whether capital punishment is just or unjust in and of itself and instead relies on emotional manipulation based on the idea that innocents might die. No wonder capital punishment is seldom democratically eliminated: people cannot be persuaded that the moral right to execute murderers is wrong despite the attempts to emotionally blackmail them. In Japan, however, where two murderers were executed last year, (and, quite frankly, the United States where a mere 59 of the worst criminals were executed in 2004) it seems that not only are the innocent not likely to be executed, but neither are the guilty. American torturer gets 10 years How many Iraqi torturers were ever sentenced to 10 years in jail? Three others are awaiting trials. Reading the stories about it at the Washignton Times or Sunday Telegraph. I have more on this at The Shotgun. The (thus far) unlearned lesson of Rathergate This New York Post editorial, one of the best editorials I have read in ages, explains the connection between Rathergate and the need to scrap McCain-Feingold. As the Post says: "Rather's producer for the '60 Minutes II' segment at issue had been gunning for the president for more than five years. She had seen an opportunity in the clumsily forged Rathergate documents — and she took it. And the unseemly enthusiasm with which Rather went along made it crystal-clear where he stood on the matter of a second term for the president. He was against it. But the CBS-sponsored report did manage to discern politics at work, discovering that conservative ideology motivated the bloggers who managed to discredit the network's fraud within hours. Absent the bloggers, most of the rest of the mainstream media would have been more than happy to ratify the erstwhile Tiffany Network's political assassination attempt. CBS and the other broadcast networks always say otherwise, but the fact is they happily buy into and replicate the dominant liberal-media party line. Given that reality, political candidates — and interested independent individuals, groups and organizations — need to have as much freedom as possible to get out their own unique messages and points of view. Even if CBS weren't guilty of intentional bias, its single platform and vast resources reach — and influence — millions, usually without any counter-balance. Under the strictest interpretation of McCain-Feingold, those who wish to produce an opposing viewpoint to a CBS report — and attempt to run it on CBS or another broadcast network — are severely hampered..." The editorial concludes with pleas to respect the First Amendment. Definintely worth reading. Democrats offering aid and comfort to the terrorists Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times Mark Steyn explains the folly of liberal Democrats (but I repeat myself) who want to recognize terrorists as POWs as defined by the Geneva Convention: "But the urge by the Democrats and the media to raise them to the level of lawful combatants only makes things even more asymmetric: They can decapitate us while screaming 'Allahu Akbar!' and clean up on the DVD sales, while we're only supposed to ask name, rank and serial number, two of which they don't have and they're flexible on the first. The wish to gentrify the enemy and, by extension, their tactics will only result in more kidnappings and more decapitations." But there is method to the liberal madness. Terrorists are bad guys who need to be brought to justice, just misunderstood victims: "It's depressing that after three years the Democrats seem incapable of any kind of characterization of the enemy that approximates to reality. But it's not surprising. In the landscape of modern progressive pieties, there are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated." PLO calls for coffee break in attacks on Israel PLO urges Palestinian terrorists to halt their attacks against Israel for pragmatic reasons. The PLO Executive Committee is not, however, eschewing terrorism because it is an immoral tactics that targets the innocent but because it gives "the Israelis an excuse to obstruct Palestinian stability" by conducting military exercises. (For self-defense, I should add.) Perhaps Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's determination to meet violence with violence, instead of seeing every assault on innocent Israelis as a reason to "compromise" with those that seek to destroy them, is paying off. As Sharon recently said: "The army and the security forces have been instructed to increase operational activity to stop terrorism and they will continue to do so without restrictions — I emphasize without restrictions — so long as the Palestinians don't lift a finger." Ironically, these words may be what was necessary to bring some (temporary) peace to the region. Cubs to begin 97th season for rebuilding Hope springs eternal, and never more so than in the spring-time of every baseball season for the fans of every team who say to themselves, "maybe this year will be different." You'd think that experience would teach the fans of the the Chicago Cubs who, according to this analysis, will probably have another disappointing season. Last year they won 89 games but fell short of the playoffs because of injuries to their top two starters. This year they will miss the post-season because of the players they lost to free agency this winter: outfielder Moises Alou, starter Matt Clement, 2B Mark Grudzielanek, infielder Ramon Martinez, outfielders Ben Grieve and Tom Goodwin and catchers Paul Bako and Mike DiFelice. The most recognizable name from their list of acquisitions is catcher Henry Blanco and they still might trade team goat Sammy Sosa. Poor George F. Will who has to watch the 97th re-building year for his beloved Cubs who have not won the World Series since the last full year (season?) of the Teddy Roosevelt administration. Saturday, January 15, 2005
Modern day Nazis Kate McMillan writes about Prince Harry dressing up like a Nazi and begins with this priceless line: "In an era where Bush = Hitler, Ashcroft = Hitler (Rumsfeld would equal Rommel, if the left had any clue who Rommel was), I suppose it should come as a relief that there are still some individuals who are denied the right to invoke Nazi Germany, even in ill-considered 'fun'." It is a fine line between Democratic moderate and repellent sleazebag Jonathan Chait has a column in the Los Angeles Times that raises serious questions about former Senator John Breaux being named co-chair of President George W. Bush's tax reform commission. It opens very strong before tailing off some: "When the White House appointed retired Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.) to co-chair its commission on tax reform last week, newspapers described him, as they always do, with phrases like 'moderate,' 'valuable broker between the parties' and 'legendary dealmaker.' Given the conventions of objective journalism, a truly accurate description, like 'repellent sleazebag,' might be too much to expect. But was it truly necessary to shower him with such lofty descriptions? It's typical of the unfathomable esteem in which Breaux is held that only one news outlet saw fit to mention his current occupation: Washington lawyer, which is code for lobbyist. Breaux works for the law firm Patton Boggs, a notorious influence broker, and also represents two New York investment firms. These are pretty important details, given that his clients could have a strong stake in whatever tax changes Breaux's commission recommends." What wouldn't Jesus do? The Observer reports that the Church of England has endorsed euthansia with Canon Professor Robin Gill, a chief adviser to Rowan Williams, saying that sometimes there can be an "overwhelming case for it." Gill said that the CofE is out-of-step with most its congregants and therefore this apparent shift in moral teaching is a nod to democracy (rather than Scripture). Deborah Annetts, chief executive of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, someone who until now did not seem to care too much about what Christianity taught, reacted to the news with joy and indicated that it was the only logical thing the CofE could do. After all, as Annetts said, "Christianity is about compassion." Somehow I doubt that Jesus would have slit the wrists of 62-year-old Margaret Blackburn, as her husband Brian did in what the judge in his case called "the last loving thing" he could do for his wife, simply because she had only weeks left to live. Support Canada's conservative infrastructure There isn't a lot of it so what there is desperately deserves our support. The Western Standard is making changes to its layout and now has Colby Cosh as a sports columnist. Read all about it here and subscribe here. Friday, January 14, 2005
Steyn's second thoughts Writing in The Spectator, Mark Steyn reverses course a bit -- Osama bin Laden might not be dead. But he is neutered if not actually irrelevant. Steyn's column concludes: "Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, is largely irrelevant to all of this, and his comeback video only confirmed it. Dressed like a Gulf foreign minister, sounding like a cross between a torpid Fifties secular pan-Arab nationalist and the last MoveOn.org member to get to a Fahrenheit 9/11 screening, Omichael bin Mooren’s message boiled down to: Honey, I shrunk the jihad." NYT hypocrisy For nearly two years the New York Times has belittled the Coalition of the Willing and critizized so-called American unilateralism. In today's editorial, the paper says that Ukraine's withdrawal from Iraq is "punches a major and potentially fatal hole in the much-ballyhooed multinational division." But considering that the paper never gave treated the division as a serious contribution the effort in Iraq until now, why should be take this editorial seriously at all? Wednesday, January 12, 2005
The never ending scandal The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that "Calls for Mr Annan's resignation were once restricted to ideologically driven hardline US conservatives. Now diplomats in New York are openly asking whether the secretary-general can remain in office until the end of his term in December 2006." Of course, there is no real pressure for him to leave and it is highly unlikely that Kofi Annan would resign on his own even if he recognized that his continued presence at the helm of the UN undermines its already limited moral authority. The United States and other democracies must begin to agitate for his removal. The Telegraph article offers a pretty good overview of the oil-for-food scandal and the recent findings of the Volcker committee (which is looking at the fiasco) which recently released documents that it said demonstrated "UN officials were aware of the risk of abuse, and argues that proper scrutiny would have limited the scale of the fraud." Claudia Rosett has yet another excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal about this very issue. She writes today that "one of the big obstacles to getting to the bottom of the Oil for Food scandal is the sheer horror of actually having to read the reams of U.N. documents tied to the program--on the occasions when documents do turn up. It's a step forward that on Sunday Paul Volcker's U.N.-approved inquiry finally released the program's 55 secret internal audits, which Congress and others had been requesting for months." She says that among those audits are 19 that "shed some light" on another aspect of the corruption-ridden Oil for Food program: the role of the U.N. Compensation Commission. Established in 1991 "to channel some of Iraq's money into compensation for the victims of Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the UNCC was folded into Oil for Food when that relief program swung into operation in late 1996." That program allowed Saddam Hussein to sell oil to make humanitarian aid purchases (food, medicine) to Iraqi citizens. The UNCC took a cut. Saddam sold $65 billion worth of oil and the UN's agency did very well for itself -- 30% through 2000 and 25% from 2000 until March 2003 (the fall of Saddam). No wonder the UN opposed the liberation of Iraq -- it would hurt their oil revenues. Hmmm. The Left was sort of right -- one side in the debate over the war for Iraq was concerned about oil. Now, not all of that 30% went to the UN to keep. They dispersed some of that money to Saddam's Kuwaiti victims. The problem is, how much? The UNCC wasn't all that transparent as it "followed the usual Oil for Food practice of keeping confidential many of the details of its decisions, as well as the names of many of those receiving the money." Furthermore, as Rosett notes, these audits hardly reflect the glimpses of the internal audits Annan released to the UN General Assembly. Rosett says that the whole UNCC operation -- how commissioners were picked, how money was dispersed, the lack of accountability, channelling money through states such as Syria and Iran and pretend states such the PLO -- was abysmal and open to fraud. Rosett concludes: "The question for investigators should be not simply whether money was wasted by or bilked from the UNCC, but where that money went. These payments were funded out of the same Iraqi oil money, produced and sold under the same U.N. stamp of approval that brought us the Oil for Food scams from which Saddam skimmed billions. Saddam spent that money not just on palaces and scotch, but on arms smuggling, political-influence buying and quite possibly terrorist funding, even beyond payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers." Rosett suggests that the UNCC be examined closely. Of course it should, but it won't happen. If it was, it would only offer more ammunition with which to criticize Kofi Annan. (Crossposted at The Shotgun) Letterman on Memogate From David Letterman's "Top Ten Proposed Changes At CBS News" last night: 10. Stories must be corroborated by at least two really strong hunches. 8. Reduce "60 Minutes" to more manageable 15-20 minutes. 7. Change division name from "CBS News" to "CBS News-ish" 6. If anchor says anything inaccurate, earpiece delivers an electric shock. 3. To play it safe, every "exclusive" story will be about how tasty pecan pie is. John Miller commits a hate crime National Review's John J. Miller defends the use of the term frog to describe the French and offers theories about where its use came from ("The French fondness for eating frogs," "Frogs were a symbol of French royalty," "The fleur-de-lys is a stylized frog," "A non-Parisian putdown for Paris," and "A Paris putdown for non-Parisians"). He concludes his entertaining piece thusly: "The question of whether it's acceptable to call the French frogs is asked only because we live in an age of suffocating political correctness. For those who seek rhetorical counsel, my advice is not to worry about saying it. If anybody gives you a funny look, just add, 'Pardon my French.' In the meantime, let's keep an eye on the frogs — the real ones, that is. They may start to gripe about the French sullying their good name." All About Frogs offers other theories including several from World War II and one from Pushkin who thought that "when they say 'quai, quai' it sounds like a croaking frog." From Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay? The New York Sun editorializes about one of the finest public servants in the current administration, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control. Bolton is unpopular, labelled a neoconservative by foes despite the fact that he supported Barry Goldwater 41 years ago and follows in the steps not of Irving Kristol but Edmund Burke, because he has the audacity to challenge the Iranian and North Korean regimes and their desire to become nuclear states. The Sun says that it would be a shame if Bolton did not return in Bush's second term and endorses the idea that he be named ambassador to the United Nations. The UN would never know what hit them. But if Bolton is not kept around, in some role, there will be cheers in Tehran and Pyongyang. WaPo likes part of Maryland governor's record The raising tax part. In its lead editorial, the Washington Post looks at Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich's record and after praising him as a masterful politician, says he has done poorly at day-to-day governing. They do, however, praise those times when he is a "pragmatic moderate" who supports "modest revenue-raising measures." (Note: a moderate is a pro-abortion Republican; a pragmatic moderate is a pro-tax Republican.) The WaPo notes: "Ehrlich can point to some accomplishments. His program to overhaul the state's sewage treatment plants, funded by a $30 annual surcharge, known as a 'flush tax,' on virtually every Maryland homeowner, is an innovative approach to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay." Other "modest revenue-raising measures" Ehrlich supported that wins kudos from the paper was the increase in state property taxes and increased fees. It is great to see the GOP getting some praise from a major editorial board, it's too bad that they have to act like Democrats to get it. Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Who is afraid of Arabian Idol? Reuters reports that "Saudi Arabia's main mobile phone operator has banned its customers from voting by text message in a hit reality television show because it fails to 'match the values' of the conservative Muslim kingdom." The government-owned Saudi Telecommunications Company said it has blocked its nearly 10 million mobile customers from sending text message votes for the musical contestants on Star Academy 2, a combination of Big Brother and American Idol. STC spokesman Saad Dhafer said, "We feel the program does not match the values of the Saudi culture ... Our social and economic market research shows that our customers want us to operate in line with these values." Excuse my cynicism, but I assumed that a Saudi crown corporation doing "market research" in much the same way that Saddam Hussein had electiosn: with the pre-ordained conclusions proven correct. Oh yes, I remember these guys Here is a Canadian Press story for everyone who wondered what the sore losers of the Canadian Alliance-Progressive Conservative merger, also known as the Progressive Canadian Party, were up to: "They have been declared politically dead by many. But some old Progressive Conservative party members are refusing to be buried. Their Progressive Canadian Party chose Tuesday - Tory granddaddy Sir John A. Macdonald's birthday - to announce a national fund-raising drive to battle that 'western separatist' Stephen Harper. 'There were people who would have voted Progressive Conservative but they were denied that democratic right in the last election,' said former federal cabinet minister Sinclair Stevens. 'We want to make sure they will have that democratic right to vote in the coming election,' Stevens said. He is the party's chief fund-raiser and predicted donations in the 'hundreds of thousands,' would be collected in the coming year. Party president Tracy Parsons told a news conference the party will be building riding associations and planning a convention this year to provide an alternative to the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Harper." Well, I feel much better about the future of Canadian politics knowing that this collection of has-beens (Stevens and Heward Graffety) are there to fight for us. The British version of Chretien-Martin feud continues The Daily Telegraph reports that "Gordon Brown beat a tactical retreat in his epic power struggle with Tony Blair yesterday when he was forced to say he trusted the Prime Minister and pledged to give him 'absolute' support." If Brown is forced to continue to make such gestures, he'll replace Blair within 18 months. The good news about Iraq It will get better. I have repeatedly said that the critics of the American presence in Iraq too often confuse setbacks and obstacles with failure. The New York Times's David Brooks has a good column on how the "decent 95 percent" of Iraqis will win the peace. Brooks says "it is too early to despair" because "When the decent 95 percent of a society take on the ruthless 5 percent, and when the ruthless 5 percent have no positive vision, it just may happen that the decent people will somehow - eventually - win." 2008 Dems Reporterette says keep an eye on Tennessee's Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen. It is unlikely that a "moderate" southern Democrat is going to win the party's nomination but assuming he wins re-election in 2006, his name will be on nearly everyone's vice presidential list. Which probably means he doesn't have a chance to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Quote of the Day "Nothing gets the political class to lying their faces off like the chance to spend your money on their legacy." Robert Clayton Dean has proof at Samizdata. Delaying Iraqi elections threatens democracy everywhere Cliff May writing in The Corner about the ramifications of letting terrorists delay Iraq's election: "For reasons I don’t quite understand the Left has adopted the view that elections in Iraq should be delayed until the 'security situation' improves. On Fox earlier today, Ralph Peters pointed out to Ellen Ratner that to allow terrorists to set the schedule for democracy not only would be a mistake – it also, obviously, would provide an incentive for more suicide bombings, to keep the 'security situation' from improving, to prevent elections from occurring. And what would be the ramifications were we to establish the precedent that elections will be delayed whenever someone threatens violence against voters? Is it not possible that violent minorities in other countries – even these United States – might decide they’d rather an election not go forward? And might they not then threaten those who go to the polls? Would the Left say, in such an instance, that we too should delay elections until such time as the 'security situation' could be improved?" Book officially launched Last night we had the official launch of my book Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal at the Albany Club. My friend Adam Daifallah introduced me and Peter White had some closing thoughts on the need for Canadian conservatives to get the book into the hands of the apathetic and ignorant public (that's an observation, not a judgement). I couldn't agree with Mr. White more and you can help spread the word by purchasing Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal, reading it and passing it onto your friends. It would also be a good idea to buy copies for your local library. I'm available to speak about my book and groups that host me can keep a share of the proceeds of the sales at events at which I speak. Bob Tarantino, blogger extraordinaire at Let It Bleed, was there and he posted about the launch last night. Also, Burkean Canuck is reading Jean Chretien about "one of Canada's most electorally successful politicians. Begs the question: Is it all about winning elections? Jean Chretien was as brilliant a politician as Bill Clinton, with a different but nonetheless effective style." Sunday, January 09, 2005
I'll be back Tuesday I have a busy day and half ahead of me so I will not be blogging until late Tuesday. Frum on the UN Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, David Frum pens a devastating column on the irrelevance of the United Nations: "The UN describes its role in South Asia as one of 'assessment' and 'coordination.' Even this, however, seems to many to be a role unnecessary to the plot. The Daily Telegraph last week described the frustration of in-country UN officials who found they had nothing to do as the Americans, Australians, Indonesians, and Malaysians flew missions. It will be the treasury departments of the G-7 missions that make decisions on debt relief, and the World Bank, aid donor nations, private corporations, and of course the local governments themselves that take the lead on long-term reconstruction. And yet we are constantly told that the UN's involvement is indispensable to the success of the whole undertaking. How can that be?" Frum continues: "In a notable interview on December 31, Clare Short, the former international development secretary, explained that the UN possessed a unique 'moral authority,' and without this authority, the relief effort would be in trouble because … well, after that it gets hazy." He says that despite Short's claim, those that are acting are not doing so because the United Nations asked them to; indeed, in some cases, they are acting despite the UN's call for help. Let's return to that "moral authority." This is, after all, the same UN that awarded "the chair of its commission on human rights to Mummar Gaddafi's Libya." As Frum asks, "Whence exactly does this moral authority emanate? How did the UN get it? Did it earn it by championing liberty, justice, and other high ideals?" Perhaps the UN's moral authority stems from its aid work. Or perhaps not. As Frum notes, the UN's work in Iraq is at the root of the largest financial scandal in history (the food for oil scam), its efforts in Congo tainted by widespread sexual abuse of children and its aid in the Balkans by allegations of sex trafficking. From coming to the aid of smaller countries who are threatening by larger, belligerent neighbours? Nope, just ask Israel and Taiwan. Frum concludes that for some (read: the anti-American Left), the United Nations' moral authority stems from its antagonism to U.S. interests and ideals. And it has moral authority to the degree that it stifles American realization of its interests and the spreading of their ideals. China better off on one human rights issue than Canada The Associated Press reports that China will outlaw sex selection abortions in order to close the widening gap between the number of boys and girls in the country. Of course, simply lifting the one-child policy with its often draconian enforcement (including forced sterilization, forced abortion, employment blackmail and infanticide), might have been a better, more humane step but limiting abortion in this extremely modest way counts as progress in China. It is worth noting that several years ago Allan Rock, then Canada's health minister (and now the country's ambassador to the UN) would not answer questions about whether Ottawa should make sex selection abortions illegal in Canada. Also notable was the silence of so-called feminist groups in Canada who, although appalled by the fact that most babies killed by abortion for reasons of sex selection are female, could not find it in themselves to criticize abortion. Sadly, on this human rights issue -- the right of unborn girls not to be killed simply because they are female -- China is ahead of Canada. Trudeaupia shocked at Wente's honesty Kevin Jaeger at Trudeaupia has an excellent post on Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente's audicity to speak the truth about the "probably the most vast and scenic welfare ghetto in the world" (read: Newfoundland). Jaeger says: "You see, she is supposed to maintain the polite fiction that this situation is all Ottawa's fault, and that Atlantic Canadians had no hand in clamouring for the handouts they're currently dependent upon. Hogwash, of course. Atlantic Canada is a ghetto of pogey and pork because they will only elect porkmeisters committed to keeping the gravy train running. Anyone who pays the slightest attention knows these welfare schemes, regional bribery agencies, and bogus make-work projects are a vast web of corruption and that everyone involved in it should be ashamed of themselves." Wente is being criticized for her remarks (i.e. honesty) and the Globe has reportedly received more letters to the editor for her column than any previous column. Jaeger concludes that this must be because she challenges Ottawa's (and the media's) fantasies about how Canada works (or doesn't). Jaeger (and others, including myself) are shocked by Wente's blunt column; most of Canada is outraged. Thus is the state of Canadian political discussion today where, in the words of a university student with whom I was debating, facts are fascist. West does more for Musim victims than Muslim nations Peter Bergen writes in the New York Times that "Around the Islamic world it is common currency that Muslims are perpetual victims of Western and Zionist conspiracies," and he proceeds to list numerous examples. But, says Bergen: "...when Muslims are suffering, it is usually the West, and often the United States, that takes the lead in helping. For instance, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Washington mounted its largest covert aid program since Vietnam to help the Afghan resistance; when Somalis were starving in the early 1990's, President George H. W. Bush sent 25,000 American troops to help relief efforts; when Serbs were massacring Bosnian Muslims in the mid-1990's President Bill Clinton (belatedly) directed the United States Air Force to bomb Serbian positions, which led to the Dayton accords. More recently, it was the United States that overthrew the tyrannical government of the Taliban, a regime recognized only by three Muslim countries: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Other than Turkey, no Muslim nation has sent troops to Afghanistan to help stabilize the poorest country in the Islamic world" Now that Muslims in south Asia are in need following last month's devastating tsunami, who is helping. Oh yes, the West. As Bergen reports: "Muslim countries are contributing a relative pittance. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is contributing the most: a paltry $30 million, about the same as what Netherlands is giving and less than one-tenth of the United States contribution. And no Arab governments participated in the conference in Jakarta on Thursday where major donors and aid organizations conferred over reconstruction efforts. This anemic effort on the part of the richest countries is emblematic of a wider political problem in the Islamic world. For all of the invocations by Muslim leaders of the ummah, or the global community of believers, they typically do little to help their fellow Muslims in times of crisis." Instead of aid, we (and the victims of this natural disaster) are treated to the standard complaints of Muslims and calls for the followers of Mohammad to stand together. But as Bergen notes, "invocations of religious Muslim solidarity will do little to feed the millions of Muslims who remain acutely vulnerable to disease and starvation in the aftermath of this enormous natural catastrophe." It's time for the leaders of Muslim countries to put their money where their mouths are and follow the West's compassionate lead. (Cross-posted at The Shotgun) Deciding between '06 and '08 While there is nothing new here for those who watch closely, this Washington Post article looks at the record and possible future of Virginia Governor Mark Warner, Democrat with some claim to the moderate adjective. Warner is reportedly interested in running either for his party's Senate nomination in 2006 or possibly its presidential nomination two years later. (Interestingly, GOP Senator George Allen, the man Warner would challenge if he sought the Senate seat, is being mentioned as a potential contender for the Republican presidential nod in 2008.) For those who don't know much about Warner, the WaPo article is worth reading; despite a one-term limit for governors in Virginia, one way or another, we haven't heard the last from the "glorified cellular phone salesman." Saturday, January 08, 2005
Surprising candour at the Times The New York Times reports on Hamas on the eve of the Palestinian "presidential" elections and in the third paragraph notes "Hamas, which seeks Israel's destruction ..." True, but the Times has been very diligent in the past in their obfuscation of the true nature of Hamas. Indeed, the words terror or terrorist do not show up in the article at all. Peacekeeping is UN-speak for turning away from injustice Burkean Canuck writes about watching Hotel Rwanda and reminds us of the UN's and Canada's reponsbility in the Rwandan genocide just more than a decade ago: "Oh Rwanda, Rwanda ... So go the words of the song played over the closing credits. Several of those present to witness the massacre of some of the one million Tutsis killed before the Tutsi rebels drove the Hutus back in July 1994 had nervous breakdowns. And Nick Nolte who actually plays 'Colonel Oliver' as a composite of the Canadian UN Peacekeeping force commanders who included General Dallaire successfully conveys their frustration at being authorized to do nothing. But it was much worse than that. On January 11, 1994, General Romeo Dallaire sent a fax request from Rwanda received at 7:30 p.m., January 10th Eastern at Turtle Bay (UN HQ) by Undersecretary-General Kofi Annan, Chief of the Department of Peacekeeping informing him of intelligence that a conspiracy to scuttle the peace process was unfolding, including a plan to pursue a genocide of the Tutsis. Dallaire asked permission to confiscate the weapons of the Hutu militia. Kofi Annan consulted with UN Secretary-General Boutros Ghali and his personal military advisor, Major-General Maurice Baril. Mr. Annan then replied to General Dallaire's fax denying him permission since confiscating the weapons would go 'beyond the philosophy of Peacekeeping.' General Dallaire was instructed to await further orders, and he very reluctantly obeyed. After General Dallaire returned to Canada, he was found drunk in a City of Ottawa park, and suffered a nervous breakdown for which he received treatment. Major-General Maurice Baril was eventually promoted to Canada's highest military office, Chief of Defence Staff of the Canadian Armed Forces. Kofi Annan is serving his second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations. And the one million Tutsis massacred by the Hutus bear silent witness." Remember this pathetic episode when Canadians declare one of the things of which they are most proud is Canadian peacekeeping. Doing Canada proud Our Foreign Affairs Minister, Pierre Pettigrew is an idiot. Trudeaupia demonstrates why: "I don't have a link for this, but believe it or not this is my recollection of a scrum with Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew on the news. He flies to an island in Thailand for a photo op with Canadian forensic workers helping out identifying bodies and regurgitates the usual platitudes. Reporter asks: What other aid is being delivered by Canada in Thailand? Pettigrew: I don't know. Glad you flew to the other side of the world for the photo op, Pierre." As Kevin Jaeger says, why do Canadians insist that our politicians cut their vacations short for this? Pat Buchanan is crying in his beer right now Reuters reports that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has said he remain in the Bush administration despite persistent rumours he was leaving government. "I have been asked to stay and have accepted," Wolfowitz told the news service through a spokesman. However, the article tries to lead readers to believe that it is far from certain whether Wolfowitz will keep his current job. It repeats unsubstantiated rumours that he could become the US ambassador to the UN. However, it is unlikely that Wolfowitz would move to a position that would require Congressional approval. It's great news that Wolfowitz is staying on board and best of all, remaining Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man at State. Friday, January 07, 2005
NYT may charge for online edition Reuters has a story about hints from a Business Week story on the New York Times that the paper is considering making its online users pay for the priviledge of reading their falsehoods. Not that Reuters mentions the unreliability of the Times. The Business Week cover story has a lot on the internal politics and personalities but does not address the fundamental problem with the paper: its worldview taints its news coverage to the point of distorting the world about which it reports. Telegraphing a stupid movie I enjoyed Meet the Parents but I had no intention of seeing Meet the Fockers. Not only did I not like their title (which would have been a suitable sub-title) but I thought that the father (Robert De Niro's character) would become a caricature of the caricature that he was. Reading James Bowman's review of the movie, it appears my worries were warranted: "...Meet the Fockers tries too hard to exploit its most obvious comic materials for maximum effect without any regard for the serious side of comedy, the side that still manages to look to any significant extent like real life. Thus, neither what would once have seemed the most interesting source of comedy, the clash of WASP and Jew, nor the more permanently interesting — indeed, archetypal — encounter of the father of daddy’s little girl and the man who proposes to take her away from him, is of much interest here. Instead, the comic figure of control-freak and ex-CIA man Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) is made into a mere caricature, a buffoon. For the scary spook with his high-tech surveillance equipment is no longer to be feared but only laughed at as he tries to make a clone of himself out of his small grandson, the child of another daughter who is conveniently absent throughout the picture. Jack has had a cast made of this daughter’s left breast and straps it on himself in order to feed the boy her suctioned breast milk. Perhaps you can imagine how he looks so attired? At any rate, you will understand that the comedy here is not of the subtlest. In the previous film, it’s true, Jack was way over the top, but he was still recognizably human, mainly because he stood for every father just as Pam (Teri Polo) stood for every daughter and Greg/Gay for every suitor." I vaguely recall reading something in Mad magazine (of all places) when I was a child that lamented the replacement of personality with character. It is time, it appears, to lament the the replacement of character with caricature. Thursday, January 06, 2005
Good news from Michigan The Detroit News reports that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative has the required number of signatures (317,000) on petitions to get a 2006 state-wide referendum banning affirmative action programs in Michigan college admissions and government hiring. This will begin a two-year political and legal battle. Actually, it has already begun; David Waymire, spokesman for Citizens for a United Michigan, said, "This is a group that has lied and misled the public every step of their campaign so far. We have no reason to believe them now." Of course, there is no more misleading idea than that of affirmative action as a solution to problems that America's blacks face. I wish I had written this George Neumayr in the online version of The American Spectator on torturous logic of Democratic opposition to Alberto Gonzales becoming the US Attorney General: "The platform of the Democratic Party is built on a human rights abuse -- abortion. Yet Democrats still pose as champions of human rights. Today Senate Democrats will saddle up on their high horses to trample Alberto Gonzales for allegedly sanctioning human rights abuses against terrorists and detainees. The party of abortion will inveigh against 'torture.' Democrats who rationalize the near-infanticide of partial-birth abortion will accuse Gonzales of rationalizing detainee mistreatment. When Ted Kennedy and company are beating their chests in moral indignation, perhaps a Republican on the Judiciary Committee could ask: Does your definition of torture cover abortion procedures? Will the protections you extend to terrorists ever be extended to unborn children? Do your friends at Planned Parenthood observe the Geneva Conventions? The moral authority of Democrats who give more rights to terrorists than unborn children is nil. But desperate to regain 'values' ground on Republicans, the Democrats will make a show of treating Gonzales as their moral inferior. The same Democrats who couldn't abide John Ashcroft's piety at the confirmation hearings last time will appear quite pious themselves, chastising Gonzales for a lack of moral delicacy." Have I mentioned I have this book available? It's been a while since I shamelessly promoted my book, Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal which you can order through the publisher, Freedom House (Canada) Inc. or Barnes and Noble. Before I can begin serious work on my second offering for Freedom Press (sorry, no clues, yet), I have to reach a certain number of sales, a number that my publisher says I'm closing in on. Why does the GOP need advice? Jay Nordlinger on the recent spate of unsolicited advice given to the Republicans: "Look, I'm all for advice. But it seems sort of strange. I mean, consider: The Republicans have the White House, and, of course, the executive branch that goes with it. They have an increased majority in the Senate, and an increased majority in the House. They have a majority of the governorships. They have about half of the state legislatures. I mean, the GOP isn't doing that badly, if you're talking about electoral fortunes. (This is to say nothing about who's right, who's wrong, doctrinally.) If anyone should be a tad worried, it's the Democrats." Of course, considering that it is Democratic politicians and strategists and their liberal media allies mostly giving the advice -- people not necessarily truly interested in the best interests of the Republican Party -- such advice should be treated cautiously, anyway. Furthermore, as Nordlinger adds, Republicans have done extremely well since 1994 when conservatism became ascendent within the party, especially at the Congressional level. Republican moderates who urge the party move to the centre to remain politically viable must have been asleep the past decade. More on protesting CTV's Morgentaler biopic I didn't watch Choice, the mis-named Henry Morgentaler story, on CTV last night and I may or may not have comments after I watch it on tape in a couple of days. But what is clear from the emails I have received is that many of you found the airing of what is presumably an extremely biased portrayal of Canada's foremost abortionist (there's a designation!) incredibly offensive. Yesterday I posted an email about what you can do about such biased coverage. Below are two more links that were sent to me today where complaints can be sent regarding CTV's whitewash of the Morgentaler story if you are so inclined: The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council The CRTC My review of Dyer's War This review of Gwynne Dyer's War: The Revised Edition appeared this past Sunday in the Halifax Herald. War: The Revised Edition by Gwynne Dyer By Paul Tuns Gwynne Dyer has updated and revised his "classic" book on war, simply entitled "War: The Revised Edition." It appears that events have been so rude as to have overtaken his original work and that it needs updating. Two decades ago, in what was then still thought to be the middle of the Cold War, Dyer argued that an imminent war between the superpowers in the age of nuclear weapons meant that The End was nigh. Within the decade, the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet empire collapsed and many countries were spending their peace dividends. Obviously, there was no nuclear annihilation. Dyer returns with his central thesis that the nation-state has evolved in a way in which war-mongering is institutionalized. Although he updates it with specific examples of waging war from the past two decades, most notably the first Persian Gulf war, and an acknowledgement of the threat (relatively speaking, according to Dyer, not great) of terrorists in the age of weapons of mass destruction, the author's central preoccupation is still a massive nuclear strike that eliminates everyone. No doubt war is awful; nuclear war, even more so. Dyer explains that war no matter how warfare has changed -- and he has numerous examples of how it has and hasn't -- war is hell, and that the job of soldiers is to kill people. His examples cover millennia, although World War II gets only a passing four-word mention, but he relies on primary documents that best buttress his argument and ignores other studies and sources. It is odd, for example, that the greatest living military historian, John Keegan, gets barely a mention but that the letters and journals of officers who served in wars two centuries ago are repeatedly returned to for their insights. His pattern of lengthy quotation followed by sermonizing, followed by lengthy quotation and more sermonizing, etc..., is reminiscent of the type of essays that first-year university students write when they don't have anything substantial to say themselves. The excessive quotation is at once impressive and off-putting. Of course, Dyer does have something to say, just nothing original. Heck, it's not even new for him -- it is a revised edition, after all. The most serious problem with "War", however, is in what Dyer does not include and what he dismisses. In a book in which he talks about the institutionalization of war and its "internal logic" which "has frequently caused it to grow far bigger in scale than the importance of the issue originally in dispute," it is disappointing that Dyer did not examine the validity of the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction which receives just two mentions. It is important when considering whether all nations are a button away from innumerable nuclear missiles being flung to and fro whether it is indeed likely any world leader will push that button in the first place knowing the consequences. But to treat MAD seriously would severely undermine his argument, so he doesn't. Also, the author does not consider the cost of not waging war. This would be forgivable if "War" was truly about warfare and not a screed against its use. But peace is not simply the absence of conflict but the presence of justice. Some things must be worth fighting and even dying for. War is awful but so is tyranny or belligerent nations. And it is the aggressive neighbour that Dyer must ignore. It is unrealistic to think that all countries will give up their arms; all it takes is for one country to refuse to disarm to destabilize the entire globe. Dyer also refuses to give credence to the argument that the threat of war can keep the peace; if the "internal logic" of war is for a conflict to get out of hand quickly, many states will avoid unnecessarily aggressive behaviour? The proof is in the recent history: since it has become an open secret that Israel has acquired nuclear weapons, no Arab state has attacked the Jewish nation. Dyer glosses over that fact. Dyer is part of the liberal tradition in thinking about war, which military historian Michael Howard said (in "War and the Liberal Conscience") is marred "by naivete, by intellectual arrogance, by ignorance by confused thinking and sometimes, alas, sheer hypocrisy." Dyer demonstrates all these traits except hypocrisy. Dyer's "War" is too broad, too unrealistic and too one-sided to be of much value. Wednesday, January 05, 2005
War on Terror inconsistency by Bush administration This Washington Times editorial castigates yesterday's Syrian visit by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State (and Colin Powell best friend) Richard Armitage: "Mr. Armitage's performance was an unfortunate one, because the behavior of the Syrian regime does not merit gentle treatment. Far from it, Syria should be read the riot act. Syria continues to support Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups determined to sabotage the Jan. 9 elections scheduled to take place in the West Bank and Gaza. And it continues to subvert Iraq through its support of the terrorist insurgency there." The Times notes that Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has been extremely critical of Syria's role in anti-US, anti-democracy terrorism and other form of subversion in his country. The editorial adds: "Unfortunately, the State Department does not appear to share the Iraqi government's sense of urgency about Syria. In May 2003, Mr. Powell, while visiting Damascus, laid down the law to Mr. Assad about supporting Ba'athists and other terrorists working to subvert Iraq. Mr. Assad initially appeared to agree to everything Washington demanded, but Syrian support for the insurgency continued. Since then, Washington has repeatedly made the same demands, which Syria seemed to agree to and later reneged on. It's an approach that incoming Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice needs to change right away." Or, the Times should have added, risk having the US become the UN. What's in a name? Fr. Richard John Neuhaus often makes notes of trends in the naming of children saying that while he is not sure what specifically the rise and fall of traditional names signifies, it surely signifies something. As the Daily Telegraph reports from England, celebrity names (Ashton, Sienna, Keira and Scarlett) are becoming more popular and Biblical and traditional names are becoming less so. David, for example, fell out of the 50 most common names for boys for the first time since World War II. Also, as the BBC reports, Mohammed has "entered the top 20 most commonly chosen names for 2004 baby boys for the first time ever, according to the Office for National Statistics." Furthermore, the Daily Telegraph reports, "It would be in the top 10 were it not for the different ways of spelling the name, such as Muhammad and Mohammad." Cosh versus the ChiComs Colby Cosh: "The Chinese Foreign Minister's poem in honour of the tsunami victims proves, I think, that even in the bleakest hour, we can still unite in laughter at stupid Communist bullshit." To wit: "Nature cried In the wrath of waves, Flowers, withered, Fell to the fathomless sea, The injured seagull Wailing to the sky. Sleep well, my friends!" Proud to be Canadian Who cares if Canada is run by a bunch of Liberal losers -- we've got what really matters. Steve Martinovich notes in his ESR Musings blog: "So, the Canadians have won every major men's and women's hockey tournament since (and including) the 2002 Winter Olympics. Good to know we have something to brag about...well, besides our superior beer, women and poutine." Poutine? Steve's Canada obviously includes Quebec. A merciful end CNN is reportedly ready to end Crossfire's 22-year-old run. Finally. The show has been unwatchable for at least a half-decade and hasn't added to political discussion since Michael Kinsley and Patrick Buchanan used to square off. ESR's Person of the Year Enter Stage Right names President George W. Bush Person of the Year for the fourth straight year. Protesting CTV's Morgy biopic Tony Gosgnach, my assistant editor at The Interim, Canada's life and family newspaper, sent this email earlier today. I post it in it's entirety. (So does Kathy Shaidle at Relapsed Catholic.) Tonight at 9 p.m., the CTV television network will be airing an alleged biography of Canada’s most ballyhooed abortionist, Henry Morgentaler. Mistitled “Choice,” this purported bio-pic will predictably cast the protagonist as a gallant knight in shining armour, rushing to slay the evil Canadian political and religious establishments in order to bring the much-sought-after principle of choice to needy women across Canada. The reality, of course, is much different. Apart from his own questionable personal life and checkered dealings with women, Morgentaler has, in fact, been a darling of the Canadian establishment, not a challenger of it. A former associate of his, now turned pro-life activist, notes that Morgentaler used to boast loudly about how much money he was being given by governments to do his dirty work including, as was found after a freedom of information request, $5 million from the Ontario government just for security at his Toronto “clinic.” What Morgentaler has done is not emancipate women from oppression, but give tomcat-acting men a perfect vehicle to escape responsibilities for their misdeeds after they come to fruition. The irony of it all is that this further ensures women will be treated as sexual objects, rather than people in their own right the complete opposite of what Morgentaler has been professing all along. One can bet that the movie, despite being about abortion, will not show one dead preborn child’s body the end result of Morgentaler’s “heroism.” One can also rest assured that the movie will not deal with any of the major black marks that have soiled Morgentaler’s supposedly illustrious career including a $185,000 lawsuit that is currently underway over an alleged botched abortion at his Ottawa clinic. A client alleges that in August 2003, an abortion was performed on her at that site without anesthetic due to an inability to insert an IV. Immediately after the abortion, she claims, she experienced cramping and bleeding, which continued for weeks. The woman was later admitted to an Ottawa hospital to have a placenta and remains of a fetus removed. There’s a lot more. Go to Ted Gerk’s “Morgentaler Files” website at www.interlife.org/morgentaler and read about a number of other transgressions by Morgentaler over the years, which have all been ignored or duly covered up the establishment that he allegedly has been challenging. These include his improper reuse of medical instruments, his admission that he simply flushes aborted fetuses down the drain, his method of allegedly stuffing a sanitary napkin in a woman’s mouth to stop her from screaming in pain, a $725,000 award against his Halifax clinic for negligence and more. This is not the first time CTV has taken a slap at pro-life, pro-family Canadians. In the recent past, it also aired more than once a biased take on the Marc Hall case wherein a “Catholic” high school student won a “right” to take a gay accomplice to the school prom. That movie was assailed for being “deliberately calculated to offend Catholic sensibilities.” CTV has also aired anti-Catholic material on its programs Comedy Inc. and the now-cancelled Mike Bullard Show. In 2000, CTV’s W-5 program targeted pro-life crisis-pregnancy centres by sneaking in a hidden-camera-carrying “volunteer” to the Toronto Aid to Women centre and filming everything going on there for about a week. Significantly, CTV is owned by Bell Globemedia (www.bellglobemedia.ca/x/), which also owns the Globe and Mail which, in turn, gained notoriety for running a massive spread (penned by rabid pro-abortion feminist Heather Mallick) early in 2003 that clamoured for Morgentaler to be named to the Order of Canada. It appears that this bio-pic is the latest effort by the Bell Globemedia conglomerate to attempt to prop Morgentaler up to hero status in the eyes of the Canadian public. The Canadian public does not seem to give a hoot, however. According to an Ipsos Reid poll (http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=2483), three-quarters (73 per cent) of young women aged 18-34 in Canada don’t know who he is. Let’s keep it that way. Call, write or e-mail the following contacts regarding both CTV and Bell Globemedia’s relentless pushing of anti-life, anti-family and anti-faith agendas. These entities seem to think they can act with impunity in these matters, and it’s up to us to prove them wrong. Forward this communication also to contacts of yours who may be interested in this matter. ----- CTV Television Network P.O. Box 9, Station O Scarborough, Ontario M4A 2M9 Telephone: (416) 332-5000 E-mail: entertain@ctv.ca Bell Globemedia Inc. 9 Channel Nine Court Scarborough, Ontario M1S 4B5 Telephone: (416) 332-5700 Website: www.bellglobemedia.com Corporate Communications: Telephone: (416) 332-5280 E-mail: bellglobemediacommunications@bellglobemedia.com ** Note from Sobering Thoughts. It is much better, if you have the time, to send a letter, but emails or whatever you can do is fine. Bush not stingy US President George W. Bush puts his money where his mouth is and donates $10,000 to the tsunami relief effort. Working with terrorists New York Post columnist Eric Fettmann on Mahmoud Abbas, likely the next Palestinian "president": "Abbas hasn't changed his positions on any of the major issues. Rather, wishful thinking had made him out to be more moderate than he really is. ...On the issue of terrorism, for example, he has maneuvered adroitly: He's made it clear he has no intention of disarming terrorist groups, as required by the U.S.-sponsored 'road map' and demanded by Israel as the basis for future negotiations. Yet he seeks to mollify the Israelis by pledging to bring about "an end to terrorism" — not by open confrontation, but by politically co-opting Hamas and its terror allies through 'dialogue and discussion'." Bringing Hamas and its allies to the table (i.e. legitimizing terrorists) is the path to peace; crushing them, or at the very least, marginalizing them, is. One of the saddest realities of politics is the substitute of wishful thinking for rationale thought. Nowhere is that more true than in the desire to see Israel negotiate with those that seek to destroy the Jewish state. The powerlessness of soft power Apropos of a previous post, I link to a column earlier this week by the Toronto Star's Richard Gwyn which begins with the question: "Has our 'soft power' gone soft?" Gwyn defines what soft power is, at least in the mind of Canada's Liberal Party and their sycophantic media: "that amalgam of our international reputation and image, our capabilities in everything from diplomacy and foreign aid to the specialized know-how we can command because of our multiculturalism and diversity." And what does that get us? "...we've missed the chance to play a leading part in one of the most progressive of international developments in the last few years. This is the spread of democracy far beyond its core areas of Europe and North America into regions and societies with no historical experience of it." Because we under-finance our military, lack imagination when it comes to internaitonal affairs and have failed to adequately maintain our international obligations, "we're doing soft power work in a soft way." Gwyn concludes: "And while the world does need more Canada, there are, in this greatest of all humanitarian disasters in perhaps a century, no Maple Leaf flags out on the front lines so that everyone, and we ourselves, can now say that we are out there doing good in the Canadian way." (I address some of these issues in my book Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal.) So why do we practice soft power? Oh, yes, because we define ourselves as not American. As Gwyn notes, soft power "gives us an international identity that is clearly different from the far more aggressive one of the U.S." An identity that equals weakness, however, is not one that Canadians, or their leaders, should embrace. I can't believe this The Washington Post reports that former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes and former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk have dropped out of the contest to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee to replace Terry McAuliffe. The story concludes that, "Some Democrats continue to talk about trying to entice McAuliffe to extend his tenure, particularly if no current candidate catches fire." I don't believe it. Under McAuliffe's tenure, the Democrats have lost House seats, gained the Senate only after a GOP defection but lost just a year later; the Democrats lost more Senate seats last November, not to mention the re-election of President George W. Bush. Why would any Democrat want McAuliffe to stick around? Dan Balz's sources are either hopelessly misinformed or liars. Tuesday, January 04, 2005
This seems funny The Seattle Post Intelligencier reports this regarding the stolen election of Washington state: "The data showed that 895,660 people voted in the state's largest county. That's a problem, Republicans said, because King County tallied 899,199 votes -- 3,539 more votes than there were voters." Just to refresh people's memories: King County is where some uncounted ballots were found by the Democrats at the last minute before the second recount and election certification. The myth of soft power Ezra Levant's column in the Calgary Sun yesterday on the pitiful Canadian response to the tsunami disaster demonstrates that soft power is powerless: "In the aftermath of the tsunami disaster -- with more than 100,000 confirmed dead and some reports out of Indonesia indicating the number may actually exceed 400,000 -- Canada decided to send a 12-man 'reconnaissance' team. You know, to check things out. Write up reports. Send some memos. Canada does allegedly have a 'rapid response' team, designed just for occasions like this, consisting of 200 people who can be called up on short notice. Short notice is the key -- the team is even called 'DART,' just in case there was any confusion about how quickly they were designed to respond. But Canada does not have any strategic airlift capacity -- we have no big airplanes to send our DARTs darting." Has any other Nobel Peace Prize winner had a missile named after him? The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the latest Palestinian projectile: "Fighters in the Gaza Strip are proud to show off the latest addition to their arsenal of rockets - the 'Yasser Arafat'. Designed to fly farther and strike harder than other makeshift missiles, it is also a symbol of an arms race which defies hopes that Mr Arafat's death last month may be a catalyst for peace. 'Al-Yasser rockets show our love and admiration for our historical leader and symbol of our fight against occupation,' said Abu Qusai, a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade." Reality follows fiction The similarity between Chris Farley flick Black Sheep and the Washington gubernatorial race is noted in The Corner. The voice of moderation Consider this from The Independent about Palestinian "presidential" candidate Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen): "Mahmoud Abbas made an unabashed pitch to a boisterous rally of the Fatah faithful last night after angering Ariel Sharon's ministers by referring to Israel as the 'Zionist enemy' for the killing of seven young Palestinians in Gaza." Now remember, the Bush administration supports Abbas. Huge UK Tory mistake The Independent reports that British Conservative leader Michael Howard says his party might not win the next election. This is always a mistake; if you are seen to lack the confidence to win, the voters will follow that lead. Yes, I know that Howard was answering a question but the Tory leader usually skirted the issue or refused to acknowledge the possibility of defeat. What a stupid error. Most Annoying Newsmakers Bob from Accounting has the list of the 25 most annoying newsmakers of 2004. William Huang edges out Michael Moore. Rounding out the top five: celebrity who endorse politicians, griping Democrats/sore GOP winners and (a tie) the Olsen twins and Paris Hilton. (Hat tip to Chrenkoff) NR celebrating 50 years This year, National Review will turn 50. It will, occasionally, print past articles (like WFB's publisher's statement from its first issue) throughout 2005. NR was the first of the serious popular magazines and intelligent journals that helped popularize (and make respectable) conservative ideas in America. As Canada suffers from liberal intellectual hegemony and until the country's conservative movement has more than the Fraser Institute, National Citizen's Coalition, The Western Standard, a small number of regional think tanks and smaller number of traditional Christian or specialty issue publications and outfits (such asThe Interim, the socially conservative newspaper I edit), the Canadian conservative movement will do nothing to create more conservatives. The need for a conservative infrastructure has been identified. Where does it go from here? The challenges that faced William Buckley in 1955 America, as great as they were, are not as great as those that face The Western Standard's Ezra Levant in 2005 or a central Canadian version of Buckley or Levant. Read what Buckley said then: "NATIONAL REVIEW is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place. It is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation. Instead of covetously consolidating its premises, the United States seems tormented by its tradition of fixed postulates having to do with the meaning of existence, with the relationship of the state to the individual, of the individual to his neighbor, so clearly enunciated in the enabling documents of our Republic." Imagine how out of place a Canadian National Review would be? Without even the Declaration of Independence or two century old Constitution to fall back on, the challenge for Canadian conservatives are even greater. In a country where the predominant nationalist and patriotic notions are the domain of the Left (universal healthcare and anti-Americanism), the hurdles are much higher. But it must be done. Who would have thought in 1955, that National Review would be read, respected and revered in the White House 25 years later? Or that it would provide the intellectual sustenance for what is becoming the third generation of conservatives? Mark Steyn has written in The Western Standard that if the Conservative Party of Canada won a federal election by moving to the centre, why would it matter much? We need to move more Canadians to the conservative side of the spectrum, to have them understand that smaller government is intellectually and morally respectable and that caring and sharing need not always be done through the conduit of government. NR is a shining example of how to do it. Where is the criticim of true stinginess? Over at The Shotgun Ezra Levant waits for UN criticism for the lack of response to the tsunami disaster from the likes of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and China, who together have given a total of $22.6 million. Alexander the Not-So-Great Oliver Stone apparently made a terrible mistake in focusing on the homosexual credentials of Alexander rather than his military prowess. Warmer Brother pulls plug on "gigantic fiasco." Burma regime against the Burmese people The Washington Post reports that the tsunami death toll in Burma is probably larger than current estimates because the regime there is not letting independent international agencies in to survey the damage or relief need. Tony Banbury, the World Food Program's regional director in Asia, said "I think it's very reasonable to assume that there's been quite significant death and destruction caused by the tsunami in Burma, just as it has elsewhere." As David Frum notes in his NRO diary, "the suffering is being concealed from the world by that country’s corrupt and brutal military government." Frum wonders: "By what right does a small group of violent men deny their people access to international help after a disaster? Looking back on Rwanda, many people around the world came to reject the idea that 'sovereignty' entitled a government to massacre its people. But what about consciously dooming people to death by abandonment – can the claim of 'sovereignty' really entitle a government to do that?" It would be nice to hear from the UN on this matter, perhaps a sternly worded letter expressing the Secretary General's "disappointment" that the Burmese government is standing in the way of efforts to help the people of Burma. Well perhaps not that strongly worded. Saturday, January 01, 2005
Mother Nature is a bitch New York Times columnist David Brooks saysthat the tsunami that killed more than 100,000 people in south Asia (and east Africa, but no one seems to notice or care about them) is a very different natural world than enviro-romantics have led us to believe: "The nature we saw this week is different from the nature we tell ourselves about in the natural history museum, at the organic grocery store and on a weekend outing to the national park. This week nature seems amoral and viciously cruel. This week we're reminded that the word 'wilderness' derives from the word for willful and uncontrollable. This catastrophic, genocidal nature is a long way from the benign and rhythmic circle of life in 'The Lion King.' It's a long way from the naturalist theology of Thoreau's 'Walden' or the writings of John Muir. The naturalists hold up nature as the spiritual tonic to our vulgar modern world. They urge us to break down the barriers that alienate us from nature. Live simply and imbibe nature's wisdom. 'Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but find her our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds,' Thoreau wrote. Nature doesn't seem much like a nurse or friend this week..." |