Comments on politics, the culture, economics, and sports by Paul Tuns. I am editor-in-chief of "The Interim," Canada's life and family newspaper, and author of "Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal" (2004) and "The Dauphin: The Truth about Justin Trudeau" (2015). I am some combination of conservative/libertarian, standing athwart history yelling "bullshit!" You can follow me on Twitter (@ptuns).

 
OGIC a Harwell fan

Great post by Our Girl in Chicago about the state of baseball announcing today. Now, she isn't being quite fair when she compares the Chicago White Sox play-by-play duo to the incomparable radio voice of the Detroit Tigers, Ernie Harwell whom she described perfectly:
"I grew up on the comparatively dry style of the great Ernie Harwell, whose relative formality didn't preclude a definite down-home appeal. Harwell, of course, had that gently cadenced southern purr going for him, making it sound like politesse and respect but not stiffness when, say, he called opposing players 'Mr.' Like anyone in his line of work, he had the trademark phrases that never fully escape becoming a bit of a schtick: the most theatrical and probably my least favorite was the home run call, 'it's looooooong gone' — though, gosh, it was a pretty little tune — and the one I most delighted in was his standing strikeout call, 'He stood there like the house by the side of the road and let that one go by,' stresses in all the right places. But the best thing about Harwell's work was everything he didn't say, his modesty and his economy. You got from him crisp accounts of the action, frequent reminders of the score, and the occasional well-placed anecdote—but mostly you got what what you needed to know."
I grew up in southwest Ontario and when I couldn't get New York Yankee games on 770 AM, I enjoyed Harwell giving the play by play for a team I could not care less about.
If you have ever winced at the banality that passes as analysis during the coverage of a ball game on the radio or TV, you have to read the rest of OGIC's post.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:23 PM

 
Summer vacation for politicos

NCC vice president Gerry Nicholls on how Canada's "leaders" are going to spend their summer. Nicholls says the Liberals:
"... will likely spend the summer months congratulating themselves for once again proving their political invincibility. Hey they may have broken a few rules, shattered whatever sense of ethics they had left and ignored centuries-old democratic traditions in the process, but the bottom line is they are still in power.
And for them that's all that matters. As long as they are in power, they can keep hanging out the goodies, and altering the rules that will allow them to remain in power."
As for Canada's de facto finance minister, NDP leader Jack Layton:
"... he will likely spend the summer riding his bike, vacationing in resorts powered by wind mills and figuring out what he will demand of the Liberals when the House resumes in the fall."
Nicholls advice for his old NCC colleague, CPC leader Stephen Harper: provide Canadians with a vision for the future, not photo ops at BBQs.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:24 PM

 
Hayes on al Qaeda-Saddam links

The Left has been up in arms this week about President George W. Bush linking Iraq to 9/11. Stephen Hayes has two articles over at the Daily Standard on the links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The first article examines how at least one Democrat (Jay Rockefeller) did at one time acknowledge the link. The second article is about how CNN flat out lies about the lack of any connection between the terrorist organization and the former Iraqi dictator.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:14 PM

 
Quotidian

"None of the Victorian mothers -- and most of the mothers were Victorian -- had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to be kissed."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:51 PM

 
Chatters on the moral decline of Canada

From Conservative MP David Chatters' (Westlock—St. Paul) speech on June 28 on Bill C-38:
"No, this is not about equality. It is not even about starting down the slippery slope toward moral decay because we are already well down that slope. We started down that slope with Trudeau's 'just society' theory which was launched 40 years ago. As an aside, I would like to remind members in the House, particularly the Prime Minister, that his own father had the moral courage to resign from the Trudeau cabinet rather than support the 1968 bill liberalizing divorce, homosexuality and abortion."
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:18 AM

 
What's the point?

The New York Times editorializes about new Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It concludes its editorial thusly:
"Unless the long-stalled talks with Britain, France and Germany make some real progress in the very near future, these European powers should acknowledge that diplomacy has failed and refer the Iranian nuclear issue to the United Nations Security Council. That will not necessarily produce a solution either, particularly if Beijing uses its veto to shelter Iran, an important oil supplier. But there is no point prolonging negotiations if Iran intends only to use them to buy time to further advance its nuclear weapons ambitions."
So let me get this right: the negotiations seem stalled and probably won't amount to much so it is time for the United Nations to address Iran's nuclear weapons program even though it likely won't don't anything about it either. So why go to the UN exactly? The only two reasons the Times could have for advocating this position is because 1) it ideologically favours any alternative, even one that it knows cannot accomplish a favourable goal, to the United States possibly acting on its own or 2) it ideologically favours the United Nations as the conduit for all action (and inaction), no matter what the cost.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:07 AM

 
You gotta love jazz musicians

AP reported yesterday that jazz trumpeter Chris Griffin died on June 18 at the age of 89. He was a member of the trumpet section in Benny Goodman's band and lead trumpeter in the orchestras of several television shows. And get this: when he died near the end of his ninth decade, he was engaged.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:03 AM

 
An European agenda for Blair

Anatole Kaletsky writes in the London Times about Tony Blair assuming the presidency of the European Union for the next six months and suggests that the British prime minister highlight the diversity -- the economic diversity -- of the continent:
"Mr Blair could emphasise the diversity of Europe by rejecting the concept of a single economic model to be followed by every EU country. The EU’s official economic policy (known as the Lisbon Agenda) is to create 'the world’s most competitive economy by 2010.' This objective is not just embarrassingly unattainable, but deeply misguided. Europe is not a single economy. It is a single market; a community of democratic nations, whose citizens choose different economic and social priorities."
I like the distinction between single economy and single market.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:59 AM

 
Scrap CAP to relieve third world poverty

The Daily Telegraph reports, "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown turned up the moral pressure on European leaders to scrap the £33 billion-a-year Common Agricultural Policy yesterday by saying that over-generous subsidies paid to EU farmers were perpetuating mass poverty in Africa." I am doubtful that Blair and Brown are motivated by a desire to help the poor of the developing world as much as they are interested in eliminating a major EU budget item that they are forced to subsidize. Still, Brown's words give the moral case against agricultural subsidies:
"We cannot any longer ignore what people in the poorest countries will see as our hypocrisy of developed country protectionism. We should be opening our markets and removing trade-distorting subsidies and, in particular, doing more to urgently tackle the waste of the Common Agricultural Policy by now setting a date for the end of export subsidies."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:53 AM

 
Gitmo a day at the beach compared to Vietnam

James H. Warner, a prisoner of war for five-and-a-half years in Vietnam, writes in the Washington Times and responds to Senator Dick Durbin's (D, IL) criticism of Guantanamo:
"Consider nutrition. I have severe peripheral neuropathy in both legs as a residual of beriberi. I am fortunate. Some of my comrades suffer partial blindness or ischemic heart disease as a result of beriberi, a degenerate disease of peripheral nerves caused by a lack of thiamin, vitamin B-1. It is easily treated but is extremely painful.
Did Mr. Durbin say that some of the Islamo-fascist prisoners are suffering from beriberi? Actually, the diet enjoyed by the prisoners seems to be healthy. I saw the menu that Rep. Duncan Hunter presented a few days ago. It looks as though the food given the detainees at Guantanamo is wholesome, nutritious and appealing. I would be curious to hear Mr. Durbin explain how orange glazed chicken and rice pilaf can be compared to moldy bread laced with rat droppings.
In May 1969, I was taken out for interrogation on suspicion of planning an escape. I was forced to remain awake for long periods of time -- three weeks on one occasion.
On the first of June, I was put in a cement box with a steel door, which sat out in the tropical summer sun. There, I was put in leg irons which were then wired to a small stool. In this position I could neither sit nor stand comfortably. Within 10 days, every muscle in my body was in pain (here began a shoulder injury which is now inoperable). The heat was almost beyond bearing. My feet had swollen, literally, to the size of footballs. I cannot describe the pain. When they took the leg irons off, they had to actually dig them out of the swollen flesh. It was five days before I could walk, because the weight of the leg irons on my Achilles tendons had paralyzed them and hamstrung me. I stayed in the box from June 1 until Nov. 10, 1969. While in the box, I lost at least 30 pounds. I would be curious to hear Mr. Durbin explain how this compares with having a female invade my private space, and whether a box in which the heat nearly killed me is the same as turning up the air conditioning.
The detainees at Guantanamo receive new Korans and prayer rugs, and the guards are instructed not to disturb the inmates' prayers. Compare this with my experience in February 1971, when I watched as armed men dragged from our cell, successively, four of my cell mates after having led us in the Lord's Prayer. Their prayers were in defiance of a January 1971 regulation in which the Communists forbade any religious observances in our cells. Does Mr. Durbin somehow argue that our behavior is the equivalent of the behavior of the Communists?
Actually, I was one of the lucky ones."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:43 AM

 
Conservatives running the next campaign on SSM

After reading Brent Colbert's post I decided to add my two cents on this issue over at The Shotgun. Two notable posts and opposite views on this issue can be found by reading Kevin Libin, who says that Conservatives could use SSM to their advantage in the next election, and Bob Tarantino, who has his doubts about that proposition.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:35 AM

 
Steyn interviewed

Right Wing News interviews Mark Steyn. Steyn answers questions on topics as diverse as his thoughts on the National Post, the future of NATO, who he favours for the GOP in '08, what blogs he reads, and post 9/11 foreign policy. I especially found his views on illegal immigration interesting, perhaps because, as the interviewer noted, it is a topic he seldom writes about:
"Both parties have been weak on illegal immigration, even though the 9/11 attackers used the illegal-immigrant support network to facilitate their operation. You can’t even use the word 'illegal' in polite society – ie, Democrats and media. Illegal immigrants are now fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community, the country’s biggest minority.. Anything would be better than the present system, of allowing illegal immigrants to corrupt national databases, live tax-free, change the results of state and local elections, and ultimately undermine the integrity of American citizenship.
The problem starts with the sclerosis of the legal immigration system. Routine and essentially non-discretionary immigration cases – such as a US citizen who marries a foreign spouse - take ages to be processed by the bureaucracy. That's time and resources that could be devoted to the real problems. When the INS mailed Mohammed Atta his visa six months to the day after he died ploughing his plane into the World Trade Center, I wrote that in the sense his paperwork wasn't completed until he was dead he may be a more poignant symbol of US immigration than we realize. The principles aren’t difficult: legal immigration from friendly states should be swift and efficient; US citizenship should be a privilege and hard to acquire; and illegal immigration should be all but impossible, rather than a rational choice for which you will pay no penalty."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:15 AM

 
Duh!

The Detroit News reports that patients who suffer heart attacks are at increased risk to die suddenly within 30 days -- even people with stronger hearts. Shocking. How could we get on with our lives without the health stories that appear in the daily papers?
(Hat tip to James Taranto)
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:08 AM

 
On why the war must be fought -- and won

Austin Bay has a good column on why it is necessary to see through the liberation of Iraq and fight World War IV (although he doesn't use that term). He concludes:
"Removing Saddam began the reconfiguration of the Middle East, an arduous process that lays the foundation for true states, where the consent of the governed creates legitimacy and where terrorists are prosecuted, not promoted.
A large order? So was World War II, when heavy history fell on The Greatest Generation. It's this generation's turn to accept the challenge or face the hell of destructive consequences."
Can this generation be the next great generation or will we lose our sense of mission, perhaps even our destiny?
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:59 PM

 
Quotidian

"So many young men got their likes and dislikes from Mencken."
-- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:50 PM

 
Good news from the OLO

Geoff Norquay, Stephen Harper's communications director, is calling it quits. Adam Daifallah is happy. Now Harper's only challenge is to find, as Daifallah says, the "pros who can outwit and outspin the Liberals." Right now I'd settle for competent and mildly effective, that being a giant step up from what Norquay et al have provided in the past year.
I have a thought about the idea of hiring a pro. Obviously they need to hire someone who knows the ropes but what about hiring someone who isn't a communications professional. Why not try a smart and talented blogger such as Stephen Taylor? I use Taylor as an example for several reasons. He's articulate, thinks outside of the box (his posts on who contributes to the CBC are incredible), and knows how to effectively use new media. There are now (at least) four job openings in the OLO, why not try something a little innovative?
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:37 PM

 
Unfree Canada

The Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of North America: 2005 Annual Report was released today and they found that Alberta is the only Canadian representative among the top five most economically free province and states in North America. Eight provinces -- all but Alberta and Ontario -- rank in the bottom ten (and Ontario ranks a horrible 47th out of 60). This should be a serious concern not only for free marketeers but the citizens of those provinces because as study co-author Fred McMahon says, there is a correlation between economic freedom on the one hand and prosperity and growth on the other: "Economic freedom is a powerful driver of growth and prosperity and those provinces and states that have low levels of economic freedom continue to leave their citizens poorer than they need or should be." In short, Canada's over-regulated economy is not only making Canadians uncompetitive but poorer. For those who don't have the time to look at the full report, a detailed press release is available here.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:26 PM

 
Bush's speech

New York Post columnist John Podhoretz said that President George W. Bush specifically addressed many of his critic's complaints about the continued US presence in Iraq, but more importantly the speech marked a new day in Bush's second term:
"Last night's speech marked the conclusion of the Social Security period of the Bush presidency, and a return to the war presidency.
Which is as it should be.
With 130,000 men at arms in Iraq, fighting for a cause that is belittled and misrepresented here at home by a full-throated political and ideological opposition, the troops need their commander in chief to keep making the argument that their efforts are vital. And the 290 million Americans here at home need to know that the president is as dedicated to winning the war as those who are fighting it."
Over in The Corner, Mark R. Levin makes a good point about some of Bush's critics:
"How soon some of our liberal friends forget. Among others, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer, Chris Dodd, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Jay Rockefeller voted for the October 11, 2002 congressional joint resolution authorizing the president, on his discretion, to go to war. Here, in part, is what the resolution said:
'Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq:
Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terroist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;
Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations ...'
And not a single news person bothered to ask any critics of the president's speech last night how they can square their offense at the president's linking terrorism to the war against Iraq when they did the same exact thing."
The Guardian's coverage is typical of the left-liberal criticism (on both sides of the big lake) that Bush erroneously invoked 9/11 -- "In his prime-time speech at Fort Bragg military base, the president mentioned September 11 five times in 30 minutes as he argued that withdrawal from Iraq would leave the US open to more terrorist attacks," the paper sniffed. They approvingly quote Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi who claimed Bush tried to "exploit the sacred ground of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq." The left continues to ignore evidence that is inconvenient to their criticism of the liberation of Iraq.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:05 PM

 
British Tory interview gleaned for advice for Canada's Conservatives

British Tory MP and likely leadership candidate David Cameron in his interview with the Daily Telegraph says two things that Canada's Conservatives should keep in mind:
"I don't even understand the debate about being a moderniser. It's perfectly obvious to me that if you don't reflect and love the country you're trying to lead, then you can't lead it."
And:
"People aren't the remotest bit interested in the future of the Conservative Party, they're interested in the future of the country and if we have interesting things to say about that then they'll look at us."
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:23 AM

 
Socially liberal British Tory wants tax fairness for families

Despite my headline I don't see the irony in David Cameron's call for taxes to support married couples as not to encourage the breakup of the family in the same way that London Telegraph seems to. (The paper's interview with Cameron is here.) I may find it odd that a socially liberal Conservative MP wants to support families but I think that many Tory MPs are motivated as much by a desire to see taxes reduced as they are by any semblance of social conservatism. What I find more troubling is that a conservative of any stripe would support lower taxes for married couples because individuals and the government have a shared responsibility to make families work. I think reducing taxes for opposite-sex married couples with children (Cameron uses families and explicitly states that families come in all shapes and sizes and thus could include homosexual couples and their children) is a good idea. I think that such families are the foundations of society and deserve support. But it is big leap from one institution (the state) supporting another (the family) to suggesting that the two are partners.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:05 AM

 
Rosett on UN reform

Again this week Claudia Rosett is doing what she does best -- skewering the UN and its Secretary General Kofi Annan. She begins her Wall Street Journal column thusly:
"The threat of the U.S. withholding cash from the United Nations has sent Kofi Annan into overdrive recently, with the secretary-general putting his name to yet another round of articles proclaiming such stuff as a fresh start and much progress and grand plans for reforming the U.N.--which he is particularly practiced at, having done it twice already, in 1997 and 2002.
This is a moment at which there is much to be learned about the U.N., though less from Mr. Annan's epistles than from the realities that have engendered them."
Rosett then skips over a series of peripheral but still substantial issues including the fact that Annan's articles attacking the US position are written by his pricey staff which is subsidized by the ... you guessed it, the US or that Annan recently took credit for the progress in Iraq despite the fact that he opposed its liberation and the very act that led to the nation's progress, namely the removal of Saddam Hussein as its president. Rosett even suggests that we take seriously his calls for reform even though it is his "signature relief deal," the Oil for Food scandal that is the immediate cause of the UN's troubles and Annan's declining credibility. ("Oil for Food fortified Saddam, helped corrupt the U.N. Security Council, and has since provided such diversions as the evolving tale of how the U.N. Office of the Iraq Program happened to hire a company that for more than five years paid the secretary-general's own son for not working in West Africa.")
Rosett says the real problem is money, which at least at the UN is the root of its problems:
"On the 38th floor of today's U.N., whence top management holds forth, there is one thing that matters more than anything else. It is not grand diplomacy. It is not world peace. It is not global prosperity. And it is certainly not transparency or any big push for democracy. It is money.
That might at first sound odd for an institution that to a great extent still works on what was once known in the last century as the Marxist principle of reallocating resources from each according to his ability, to each according to his need--starting with U.N. dues, and proceeding posthaste to the needs not of the word's poor and downtrodden, but of the U.N.'s own largely secret and erratically audited multibillion-dollar menu of ever-expanding projects. As we learned at great cost in the last century, the result of allowing secretive and unaccountable authorities to do all sorts of deciding about who deserves what is not utopia."
So it is all the more worrying that Kofi Annan's UN reforms include the requirement that the developed world contribute 0.7% of its GDP to "official development assistance." The UN, presumably, would allocate these riches -- $82 billion from the US alone, Rosett calculates -- but considering the agency's skimming of the Oil for Food aid program, there are no guarantees that the money will go to the people it is intended to help. That would be scandalous.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:47 AM

 
Safire's back at the Times

Alas, for one column only but, as one would expect from William Safire, its a good one. He writes about the case of outing a CIA agent (by Robert Novak) and the prosecutorial over-reach in harassing Safire's former New York Times colleague Judith Miller and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper. Safire looks at the prosecution's failure to prosecute for real crimes and thus his intention to go after names. Safire says it is time to move forward and explains how:
"To every privilege there are exceptions; a lawyer, for example, cannot conspire with his client in committing a crime, and a reporter's testimony may be necessary in a capital case. But this investigation has shown no national security crime at all, as defined in the identities act. Maybe an official misled an agent, or even perjured himself to save his job; is that sufficient cause to incarcerate innocent journalists and impede the entire press's traditional means of exposing official corruption?
Here's what needs to be done now:
1. The judge should resist the prosecutor's pressure for coercive, lengthy and possibly dangerous confinement. Judy won't crack and should not be made to suffer.
2. The prosecutor should submit an information bewailing his witness difficulties in fingering sources in false denial, but showing why no major national-security crime had been committed.
3. Mr. Novak should finally write the column he owes readers and colleagues perhaps explaining how his two sources - who may have truthfully revealed themselves to investigators - managed to get the prosecutor off his back.
4. The Congress should urgently hold hearings on shield bills to conform federal practice to the states' laws based on Congress's 1975 directive to the Supreme Court to apply 'reason and experience' to extending privilege - which the court did in its 1996 Jaffee decision to psychotherapists."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:41 AM

 
Courageous MPs

All but three Conservative MPs voted to defeat C-38, the government's legislation legalizing homogamy. They were joined by two independents (Pat O’Brien and David Kilgour), 38 MPs who bucked their party's wishes on this legislation:

Liberal No Votes (32)
Bonin, Ray
Boshcoff, Ken
Cannis, John
Carr, Gary
Chamberlain, Brenda
Commuzzi, Joe
Cuzner, Rodger
Galloway, Roger
Hubbard, Charles
Karygiannis, Jim
Khan, Wajid
Lee, Derek
Lastewka, Walt
Longfield
Malhi, Gurbax
Maloney, John
Matthews, Bill
McCallum, John
McKay, John
McTeague, Dan
Pachetti, Massimo
Savoy, Andy
Scarpaleggia, Francis
Simard, Ray
Simms, Scott
Steckle, Paul
Szabo, Paul
Tonks, Alan
Ur, Rosemary
Wappel, Tom
Wilfert, Bryon
Zed, Paul

Bloc No Votes (5)
Bouchard, Robert
Cardin, Serge
Gaudet, Roger
Perron, Gilles
Thibault, Louis

NDP No Votes (1)
Desjarlais, Bev NDP
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:25 AM

 
Shelby Foote, RIP

Shelby Foote was an excellent historian of the civil war. His three part The Civil War: A Narrative, remains the best, most readable book on a topic that has more than its share of books. The trilogy may have been more readable because 1) Foote was also a novelist and therefore could write compelling stories and 2) as the New York Times noted, "Though a native Southerner, Foote did not favor [the]South in his history or novels and was not counted among those Southern historians who regard the Civil War as the great Lost Cause." He was one of the few historians who truly understood the south but was still critical of the Confederacy. There was a renewed interest in Foote's work in 1990 after he appeared in Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War and his correspondence with novelist Walker Percy is possibly the best book of letters I've ever read. Foote passed away Monday at the age of 88. An obit can be read at the New York Times, news coverage of his passing at Reuters, and an appreciation at the Washington Post.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:03 AM

 
Stockwell Day on why C-38 passed

Yesterday, Conservative MP Stockwell Day (Okanagan—Coquihalla) said this about the same-sex marriage debate:
"This travesty has come upon us because of the pompous and alarming dictates of the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP who have robbed this chamber of its most vital integrity by not allowing MPs to vote freely according to their own hearts and the hearts of their constituents.
What is the pretense for this action that is pure tyranny on the part of these leaders? It is the view of the leaders that this is a matter of rights and, therefore, no other position is of value. That is the debate, whether this is a sacrosanct right or not.
Do we have to remind ourselves that almost every question we debate here touches on rights of some kind. What right in this chamber is paramount? The right to represent those who send us here. The Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP are violating that most precious right.
What is really disturbing is that if the bill passes, as it appears it might, it will pass even though a majority of the MPs, if they were allowed to vote freely, would not be supporting it."
A majority of Parliament, like a majority of Canadians, oppose redefining marriage but, assuming the Senate also approves the bill, Canada will have same-sex marriage because too many parliamentarrians, like too many Canadians, were sheep following the advisory decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:21 PM

 
It is time to take freedom in Iran seriously

Michael Gove has an excellent column in the London Times on the fraudulent Iranian elections and what the West should do next. Here's the conclusion:
"The Iranian regime’s clear belief that the West is weak suggests that it is preparing to press ahead with its ambitions to acquire a nuclear weapons capability, a goal that may be just months away. If the West is not to confirm a potentially fatal reputation for infirmity, we need to strike back, using the strongest allies we have in the region: the Iranian people themselves.
We need to provide hope to the millions who boycotted elections they knew would be frauds, run by crooks, to favour fascists. Western leaders should be asking Iran’s new President what he will do to free his country’s dissidents, like the heroic journalist Akbar Ganji who has suffered horrendously for daring to expose the corruption and criminality of Iran’s elites. Why isn’t our Foreign Secretary standing up for him, and his colleagues, as western politicians once stood up for Sakharov and Solzenhitsyn?
The longer our leaders remain silent in the battle for democracy in Iran, the more likely we are to see a far more ominous conflict escalate — between Iran and the democracies."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:13 PM

 
Quotidian

"Everyone is striving for what is not worth the having."
-- William Thackery, Vanity Fair
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:02 PM

 
'Don't be afraid. Don't be of little faith. I am with you.'

LifeSiteNews.com notes the coincidence that Bill C-38, the government's legislation legalizing homogamy, passed third reading on the same day that the readings in the Catholic Mass, scheduled years in advance, were about 1) Sodom and Gomorrah, cities punished for their immorality, notably homosexual sins, and 2) Christ's assurance that his disciples would endure the storm. LSN interviewed Toronto auxillary Bishop Pearce Lacey who reminded the faithful that they must not lose hope. Bishop Lacey said, "As in today's Gospel, the Lord is simply saying 'Don't be afraid. Don't be of little faith. I am with you'."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:43 PM

 
Poilievre on Liberal hypocrites

Yesterday, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre (Nepean-Carleton) had this to say about Liberals who "oppose" SSM but continue to prop up their government:
"We have on the other side of the floor a group of hypocrites, hypocrites who sit there right now and claim that they oppose this legislation. They claim that they want to protect the traditional definition of marriage. They do that because they know that the majority of Canadians in all polls that have come out on the matter support the traditional definition of marriage in all parts of the country. These members stand up in the House of Commons and claim that they are on side with the majority. Last week, when they could have put an end to it, they signed a written deal with the Bloc Québécois, the separatists, to see that go ahead, to see those votes occur, and to ensure that gay marriage will be on the agenda this week and will be passed into law.
I suggest that those 30-plus members who sit in the Liberal caucus and claim to support the majority view, which defends the traditional definition of marriage, but who last week voted with their government and with the separatists and the socialists are the real hypocrites in this debate."
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:46 PM

 
Questions re: SSM

Yesterday (June 27), Conservative MP Ken Epp (Edmonton—Sherwood Park) posed 43 questions about same-sex marriage and elements of the debate surrounding the issue.

Instead of restating the positions which I have already articulated in my previous speeches on this topic, I am going to ask a series of questions which I challenge others to answer honestly, to put aside prejudgments on these questions and to try desperately to think of these things on a deep level.

Here are the questions. They are not in any particular order. I just wrote them down as they came to mind.

Question 1: Am I ready to undo the traditions and teachings which have directed societies and nations over many millennia?

Question 2: Am I ready to contribute to a weakening of the family unit as it has come to be understood and sought after by generations of people in history?

Question 3: If I have a belief in God as taught by my religion, am I ready to go 180 degrees against the teaching of my religion?

Question 4: If I have no professed religious belief, am I ready to undo thousands of years of tradition and history?

Question 5: Why is it necessary to so profoundly offend the millions of Canadians who, from either a religious or non-religious basis, do not want to have the definition of marriage redefined?

Question 6: Have I read and studied with an open mind the hundreds of studies which show that children raised in families with their biological mother and father do best in all defined measurable categories?

Question 7: Do I really believe that it is in Canada's best interest to promote the increase of families which do not have a mother and father present for the development of the children?

Question 8: Am I ready to say to children brought into these homosexual unions that they may never know their biological roots, being denied forever the knowledge of either their biological father or mother?

Question 9: Am I ready to say to every person so raised that they do not have the right to determine their genetic heritage?

Question 10: Have I asked myself why in this debate the only questions of equality are for the equality of homosexuals, instead of the broader question of equality for all relationships, including non-sexual relationships?

Question 11: What are the actual benefits to society to have the traditional definition of marriage nullified?

Question 12: What benefit is there to the children involved in society as a whole if we transmit the message that fathers do not matter, or mothers do not matter?

Question 13: Is it really true that there are no consequences to a child being raised in a home where only one gender is represented in the parentage?

Question 14: Will this redefinition assist or hinder young people in gender identity issues?

Question 15: How will children in these relationships have any hope whatsoever of learning the roles of males and females when they are not being modelled for them?

Question 16: Why did members of the Liberal Party do a 180 degree reversal of their position of supporting the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of others, as demonstrated in their 1999 speeches and vote?

Question 17: Were the Liberals right then and wrong now, or were they wrong then and right now?

Question 18: Why would the Deputy Prime Minister, then minister of justice, speak so eloquently that the equality issues can be addressed without redefining marriage if she did not believe it?

Question 19: Is there some concern about the hidden agenda in the Liberal Party when it promised right before an election, “It is not the intention of this government to change the definition of marriage,” and then after the election do the precise opposite?

Question 20: Why will the Prime Minister not permit a free vote on this important issue for all members in his party, including cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries?

Question 21: Is it not important to hear the thousands of Canadians for whom this is a very important issue and to seek a compromise solution that avoids offending deeply so many good citizens of our country?

Question 22: Is it not a bit of a hollow promise on religious freedom if in the very vote on the issue Liberal members are not permitted to exercise their religious freedom and conviction?

Question 23: If their position on this bill is so right, then why can they not trust their members to vote correctly, without coercion?

Question 24: If this is truly a human rights issue and there are apparently some 30 or more members in cabinet or in parliamentary secretary positions in the government, why are these intolerant members permitted to continue in their positions?

Question 25: Why is the government giving false assurance of religious freedom when we already have a number of cases in which people with religious faith or leaders in religious organizations are being hauled before various tribunals and in some cases are being punished?

Question 26: Is there not a concern regarding the loss of individual religious freedom when this bill addresses only the apparent freedoms of religious organizations? I emphasize the words “individual religious freedom”.

Question 27: Is there not a concern with the fact that the Supreme Court, in its reference, ruled that religious freedom in the sense anticipated by the bill is not within the federal jurisdiction to grant?

Question 28: What about the marriage commissioners in British Columbia and Saskatchewan who have been given notice to solemnize same sex marriages or lose their credentials? What about their religious freedom?

Question 29: What about individuals like the teacher in B.C. who was suspended from his position solely on the charge of expressing his personal opinions in letters he wrote to newspapers?

Question 30: What about the individual in Saskatchewan who lost a case in which he was charged with quoting the scriptures?

Question 31: What about the Catholic school board that was forced to go against the teachings and beliefs of the church at a recent graduation ceremony?

Question 32: What about the mayor of a major Ontario city who was fined for not promoting a teaching that was against her religious beliefs?

Question 33: What about the religion based camp in Manitoba that was charged because it refused to go against the convictions and beliefs of its supporting members?

Question 34: Is it a concern that the democratic process is being trashed?

Question 35: Why are the million or so names on petitions presented in this House being ignored?

Question 36: Why are members of Parliament being bullied into voting opposite to the wishes of their constituents?

Question 37: Why was the justice committee of the last Parliament shut down before being permitted to report and the present special committee totally stacked with individuals on one side of the debate, having its work truncated in order to ram this legislation through?

Question 38: Why is this issue so urgent that it justifies an extended session of Parliament into the summer?

Question 39: Is part of the tactic to push it through quickly, using the excuse that members must get back to their commitments in their ridings and other parts of the country?

Question 40: Why is it so important to stifle the opposition to this bill?

Question 41: How come, in 1999 and previous votes, the traditional definition of marriage was clearly upheld and now, just a few years later, it is under attack?

Question 42: Why is the Prime Minister so determined to jam this bill through quickly? It is because he hopes the voters will forget by the time of the next election?

Question 43: If this approach in social policy is so defensible, why is there such fear that the voters of the country will react negatively against the Liberal government?

These are important questions and they demand honest answers. I fear that many members have been bullied or deceived into supporting this legislation. In my view, this legislation is wrong. We should do the country and its citizens a huge favour by defeating it and getting the solution to these problems right.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:40 PM

 
Liberals beholden to special interests

Conservative MP Mark Warawa (Langley) asked the government last week (June 23) if they had made a deal with any special interest groups to hastily pass C-38.
"Mr. Speaker, the government has admitted now that Bill C-38 is its single issue. This is a single issue government. It wants to socially engineer Canada to bring it farther left than any other country in the world. We heard that in committee. I sat on that committee and it was a sham. The committee was structured in a way that Canadians would not have an opportunity to give input. The number of witnesses who could appear was limited. The committee was stacked with only members who supported the government and they brought closure on that by manipulation. We heard from witnesses that religious freedoms in Canada would not be protected. We had amendments from all parties that the government refused. It called them out of order.
Will the government House leader not admit that there were special promises made to special interest groups? The government funded these special interest groups to come and support same sex marriage. What promises were made to these special interest groups?"
I, for one, don't believe a special promise was made or that there were any deals. I just think that the Liberals are beholden to the gay lobby -- or is it that the gay lobby is beholden to the Liberals -- and thus their interests are one and the same.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:12 AM

 
Nordlinger on Kofi

In his Impromptus column yesterday -- worth reading for the longish observations and recognitions of Cuban freedom fighters in the first third of the column -- Jay Nordlinger has this to say about UN Secretary General Kofi Annan:
"You know, when it suits him, Kofi Annan says he's just a humble secretary-general, servant of all the member-states of the United Nations. He is their mere employee, their instrument. Yet, when it suits him, he's "President of the World," and certainly president of the U.N., arguing with the United States about what its U.N. policy should be.
Isn't U.S. policy toward the U.N. a matter for the United States, and not for the U.N. secretary-general?"
Anyway, the Wall Street Journal column in which Kofi Annan lectures America about its relationship with the UN, the one that led Nordlinger to complain about Annan's self-aggrandizing posturing, can be found here.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:06 AM

 
Saudi oil reserves

The American Enterprise Institute's William Tucker says there is reason to doubt that Saudi Arabia's oil will flow as easily in the future as it has the last half-century. In his review of Twilight in the Desert by Matthew R. Simmons in the Wall Street Journal, Tucker says:
"First, Mr. Simmons notes, all Saudi claims exist behind a veil of secrecy. In 1982, the Saudi government took complete control of Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Co.) after four decades of co-ownership with a consortium of major oil companies. Since then Aramco has never released field-by-field figures for its oil production. In fact, no OPEC member is very forthcoming. The cartel sets production quotas according to a country's reserves, so each member has reason to exaggerate. Meanwhile, OPEC nations are constantly cheating one another by overproducing, so none wants to publish official statistics."
That is, there is an incentive to lie about the reserves. And there are facts and not just suspicions of Saudi Arabia to justify doubt about their capacity and thus future importance:
"Almost 90% of Saudi production comes from six giant fields, all of them discovered before 1967. The "king" of this grouping--the 2000-square-mile Ghawar field near the Persian Gulf--is the largest oil field in the world. But if Saudi geology follows the pattern found elsewhere, it is unlikely that any new fields lie nearby. Indeed, Aramco has prospected extensively outside the Ghawar region but found nothing of significance. In particular, the Arab D stratum--the source rock of the Ghawar field--has long since eroded in other parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The six major fields, having all produced at or near capacity for almost 40 years, are showing signs of age. All require extensive water injection to maintain their current flow."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:59 AM

 
Good news from Iraq

Arthur Chrenkoff has two weeks' worth of good news and here's my favourite (from the Los Angeles Times):
"Since President Saddam Hussein was ousted two years ago, the number of nuptials in Iraq has soared, say party planners, judges and clergy members.
Although there are no reliable countrywide statistics, those in the business estimate that the number of 'I do's' has doubled since the uneasy months before and after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Some say a better living standard is driving Iraqis to the altar. Others speculate that many weddings were postponed because of the war, and couples are catching up. And there are those with a more existential bent, who see wedding celebrations as a retort to death itself."
Certainly an increase in marriages is a vote of confidence in the future of the nation. And if it is merely an increase in celebrations of marriages rather than marriages itself, at least Iraqis feel like celebrating.
There are dozens and dozens of positive stories that the MSM is either ignoring or failing to highlight in the same way that terrorist killings of American soldiers or Iraqis lining up to apply for jobs make the front pages. But other good news include the capture of terrorist insurgents, greater transparency in post-secondary education, the holding of conferences for business women, using the internet to express political opinions and much, much more.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:46 AM

 
Monday morning quarterbacking

Senator Jean Kerry (People's Republic of Mass.) not-so-humbly offers some advice in the New York Times to President George W. Bush for his speech tonight:
"Our mission in Iraq is harder because the administration ignored the advice of others, went in largely alone, underestimated the likelihood and power of the insurgency, sent in too few troops to secure the country, destroyed the Iraqi army through de-Baathification, failed to secure ammunition dumps, refused to recognize the urgency of training Iraqi security forces and did no postwar planning. A little humility would go a long way - coupled with a strategy to succeed."
Now, a little humility from the man who lost last November's election would go a long way to restoring some credibility to the Democratic criticism of the president -- it is way to partisan. But Kerry hasn't said anything that The Economist hasn't said ten times in the past six months (including the past two weeks -- see, for example, this piece from the June 16th edition). Earlier in the column, Kerry suggests that Bush start to "tell the truth" because all the "happy talk" about Iraq is creating a gap between expectations and perception that is weakening support for the democratic project in Iraq among Americans. Of course, if Democrats told the truth, the whole truth including the good news from Iraq instead of focusing on the negative stuff to score points against the president, support for continuing effort to keep Iraq free would not be as fragile as it is.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:32 AM

 
LDCs support 0.5 version of free trade

The Financial Times reports that the 50 least-developed countries meeting in Zambia this weekend to strategize ahead of this December's WTO meeting in Hong Kong are said to be seeking a "binding commitment on duty-free and quota-free market access for all products from LDCs to be granted and implemented immediately" from the developed world and that such programs should be undertaken without any demand that the developing world reduce their own tariffs and trade barriers. The EU has already uniliterally reduced some trade restrictions for the world's poorest nations although powerful lobbies, usually in the agricultural sector have prevented this program from going into full effect.
Now I favour almost any reduction in trade restrictions, including unilateral reductions. One of the bright spots in any of Jean Chretien's cabinets was his first trade minister, Roy Maclaren, who favoured such an approach when necessary. But asking for unilateral concessions from others and not offering it yourself is opportunistic and unprincipled. At least Maclaren was suggesting that Canada reduce its own tariffs when other nations were not open to full free trade (even though he never actually pursued such a policy). All that said, opening western markets to tariff-free African and South American goods would benefit our consumers but it would be a politically difficult sell because most people think that economies exist to create jobs, not serve consumers. But such thinking is a mistake and politicians shouldn't pander to ignorance. Unilateral dismantling of trade restrictions advances the goal of offering domestic consumers a better market -- wider choice at the best possible price. It is just too bad that LDCs are asking for it because it would be the right thing for the West to do; better yet would be for the developing world to open their markets, too.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:09 AM

 
If musicians wanted to help instead of doing PR

The London Times reports on the extraordinary wealth of the artists performing int he Live 8 concerts: "If they can’t make poverty history by singing, they could sign a cheque. The final line-up for the Hyde Park Live 8 concert will put £2 billion worth of musical talent on stage." U2 and Paul McCartney alone are worth half that. But perhaps Bono has better things to spend his money on such as the $1,500 price tag of flying his favourite hat from London to a charity concert in Rome last month.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:48 PM

 
No to Gonzales

AT NRO Ramesh Ponnuru says that President George W. Bush would be making a horrible decision if he appointed Attorney General and former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court in essence because Gonzalez would only be half a justice. Noting that the law prevents justices of federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from participating in any case in which he (or she) "has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, advisor or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy." Ponnuru said that Gonzales "would have to recuse himself from cases dealing with a wide range of issues — from the Patriot Act to partial-birth abortion — because of his high-level service in the Bush administration." I know that Bush wants to appoint the SCOTUS's first Hispanic justice but he should look beyond the person who would have to step aside for what are expected to be some of the most important issues the Court will have to deal with in the next few years.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:36 PM

 
Quotidian

"And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood."
-- Philip Larkin, "Aubade"
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:31 PM

 
ID cards in England

The House vote is tomorrow. The Guardian has an interesting report on the politics of national identification cards -- the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will oppose the bill which Prime Minister Tony Blair says is merely enabling legislation. Blair wants the legislation to pass because ID cards are an "idea whose time has come," and, anyway, all the problems with the ID cards can be worked out eventually and maintains that the total cost of implementing them will be only 6 billion pounds although critics say the cost could be 10 billion. Meanwhile there is a report from a panel of 14 professors from the London School of Economics outlining the problems with the Labour government's legislation as it is. The Guardian summarizes the ten points of concern:
"It highlights 10 areas of concern: cost, renewing the biometric testing, replacing ID cards, enrolling difficulties, difficulties with card reader machines, non-cooperation from the public, civil liberty, privacy and legal implications, problems for disabled users, security concerns and the creation of a new offence of identity theft."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:08 PM

 
Goldstein's figuring out Martin quiz

Toronto Sun columnist Laurie Goldstein has a very funny column in which he illustrates the capitulations and fuzzy thinking of Prime Minister Paul Martin through a series of quizzes. Here's a sample:

1) When Paul Martin said in response to a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling, "We're not going to have a two tier-health care system in this country" did he mean that:

(a) We're not going to have a two-tier health care system?

(b) We're not going to have a two-tier health care system, other than the one the Supreme Court says we already have?

(c) We're not going to have a two-tier health care system, other than the one I helped to create as finance minister by gutting transfer payments to the provinces for health care in the 1990s?

(d) We're not going to have a two-tier health care system, other than the one we Liberals helped to create by ignoring the proliferation of private clinics across Canada, including those run by my family doctor?

Sorry, no prize for answering correctly.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:19 PM

 
LAT on PBS

The Los Angeles Times is liberal, its reporting too artisanly so, but its editorials are usually fair and often demonstrate serious thought. That's what makes this editorial on PBS so disappointing. It rightly notes that Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson has gone out of his way to find liberal bias in PBS programming, but the editorial never acknowledges that he might have a legitimate concern that deserves further query. Instead the editorial tries to score political points against the GOP. What, do they think they are the New York Times?
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:07 PM

 
Quotidian

"Where were the crowds? Had they come to the wrong place? There seemed to be a handful of black people and about twenty white students, just standing about. A huge banner said GAY FIST. Gay Fist? He had dreaded the thought of the noise and the commotion, but now he was worried about the silence."
-- Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:59 PM

 
1+1=PC

Diane Ravitch has an excellent article on the politicizing of the teaching of mathematics in Opinion Journal. Here's what the education blob is doing to what would seem like the one discipline immune to political corruption:
"They advocate using mathematics as a tool to advance social justice. Social justice math relies on political and cultural relevance to guide math instruction. One of its precepts is "ethnomathematics," that is, the belief that different cultures have evolved different ways of using mathematics, and that students will learn best if taught in the ways that relate to their ancestral culture. From this perspective, traditional mathematics--the mathematics taught in universities around the world--is the property of Western civilization and is inexorably linked with the values of the oppressors and conquerors. The culturally attuned teacher will learn about the counting system of the ancient Mayans, ancient Africans, Papua New Guineans and other 'nonmainstream' cultures."
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:29 PM

 
This is just stupid

Noor Huda Ismail writes in the Washington Post about Abubakar Baasyir, a Muslim preacher that teaches a class on Islam four times a week attended by about 100 prisoners of Indonesia's Cipinang Prison. What is odd is that Baasyir himself is a prisoner, accused of being involved in "planning and/or encouraging other people to commit terrorism" including the 2002 Bali bombing (202 killed) and the 2003 bombing of the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta (12 killed). He was cleared of any involvement in the Jakarta bombing but was found guilty of approving the Bali terrorist attack. Ismail's interest in this case stems from the fact Baasyir founded the Al Mukmin Ngruki board school -- the alma mater of "dozens" who graduated to terrorism. Ismail wonders why so many of his fellow alumni are linked to Jemaah Islamiyah (the column is a rather middling exploration), but for the question is why does a man convicted in association with one terrorist attack and linked to so many terrorists, get to preach and teach behind prison walls.
posted by Paul Tuns at 5:02 PM

 
Save the lake, eat a gull

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that sea gulls are the primary cause of E coli contamination in Lake Michigan and thus Chicago area beach closings. The paper reports that: "The birds weren't always a problem for Chicago area bathers. Their ranks were low in the early 1900s, thanks to our appetite for gull eggs and a penchant for plumage in women's hats. Now that we don't eat them or wear them, their numbers are up." That is not to say that human waste is not contributing to the contiminated water, just that fecal matter from gulls is the number one cause of E coli. But even then, it appears, humans must share the blame because their beach behaviour is attracting the poop hawks. The Sun-Times quotes Cameron Davis, director of the Alliance for the Great Lakes: "We found that 42 percent of what our volunteers are picking up from Chicago area beaches is either food or food packaging ... No wonder animals are heading to the beach. It's a smorgasbord."
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:43 PM

 
Dumping on Rumsfeld

New Republic editor Peter Beinart, a supporter of the liberation of Iraq, writes in his monthly Washington Post column that President George W. Bush should fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, asking "How can Bush offer a credible strategy for winning peace if he relies on an utterly discredited defense secretary to carry it out?" Beinart is right to criticize Rumsfeld for not using more troops initially but canning Rumsfeld would not be viewed as an admission of mistaken strategy by the critics of the liberation of Iraq and the War on Terror but as an admission that the whole project was a mistake. The administration cannot afford to do that because it would embolden domestic critics of the war and give the terrorist insurgents a moral victory. To answer Beinart's question -- "How can Bush offer a credible strategy for winning peace if he relies on an utterly discredited defense secretary to carry it out?" -- all the president needs to do it rely less on Rumsfeld. Rummy provides a much needed voice around the war room table but he cannot be, and I would guess is not the only voice the president listens to.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:34 AM

 
Felt's superior thinks he was motivated by revenge

F. Patrick Grey, the man appointed by Richard Nixon to become the FBI director,
thinks that the most famous source in history squealed on the president because he was upet at being overlooked for the top job and to get back at Grey.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:27 AM

 
My interview with Robert Cooper

In May I interviewed Robert Cooper, former foreign policy adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and currently director-general of external and politico-military affairs for the Council of the European Union, while he was in Toronto to deliver a Donner Foundation lecture and promote his book The Breaking of Nations. The story appears in today's Halifax Herald and is reproduced below.

Rethink use of force to solve world problems - ex-policy adviser
Countries urged to rely on regional or international organizations instead
By Paul Tuns
June 26, 2005
Halifax Herald

In recent years, there have been numerous books on how the international order is going to play out, the title of which became a catchphrase for an entire system of thought: Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and Donald Kagan's Paradise and Power.

Each of these books has animated the public discourse about either the post-Cold War world or, later, the post 9/11 world. They each began as articles in some journal, developed into a book and ended up becoming a misunderstood cliche about international affairs.

Everybody knows that Huntington wrote about the clash of civilizations but few could tell you what he said about it. Robert Cooper's The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century could soon join the company of such books.

Cooper is a former foreign policy adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and currently director-general of external and politico-military affairs for the Council of the European Union. He was recently in Canada to deliver the Donner Foundation lecture in Toronto and promote the Canadian release of The Breaking of Nations.

Cooper didn't set out to write a book but rather, gathered three previous works. They include a 1993 lecture on the failure of the nation-state that he gave while head of the planning staff in the Foreign Office, after witnessing what had just happened in Bosnia and Somalia. The others are an unsent memo to Blair on how to create peace, and a reply to Robert Kagan's essay on Paradise and Power, which examined the different approaches to international issues by the United States and Europe.

The three parts cohere surprisingly well and Cooper explains that they should: "They come from the same mind."

That mind, of course, is animated by an over-arching idea of the international order.

Asked to explain his thesis in a sentence, Cooper says it is "difficult to summarize," keenly aware of the fates of The End of History and other similar books that came to represent a single idea while the arguments presented in the books themselves have long been forgotten.

Nonetheless, he finds two main themes: that following the First World War, the "European nation-state system" was "demonstrably a complete failure," and, that with the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of the late 20th century, the age of empire had ended.

More important than his theses are their foreign policy implications. He suggests there are two major implications: that we must rethink the use of force and that countries must organize themselves in international organizations to address international issues.

He spends most of his time talking about the first implication, considering the second point self-evidently good.

Cooper explains that a people can no longer be governed by force.

"The idea of a conquered people is no longer valid," he says, explaining why empire is no longer possible. So instead of invading another country to control it, which is the traditional role of the military, armies now have two purposes - to defend nations and to defend goals.

In The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky has argued that democracy is a necessary precondition of peace. Cooper believes he gets it backwards - that peace is a necessary condition for democracy.

He says that free societies can only take root in regions that have some semblance of stability.

"In an atmosphere of threat," he says, "it is easy for despotic regimes to survive" because they blame external forces for their society's problems.

With this in mind, Cooper says that the West should continue to engage Iran and convince Tehran that it is in neither its nor the region's interest to continue to pursue nuclear weapons. He explains that Iran's pursuit of such weapons could lead its neighbours to do the same, with the result being a nuclearized Middle East.

While Cooper suggested a "series of carrots and sticks" to move Iran to a less belligerent position, he was short on specifics.

Similarly, on the issue of genocide in Sudan, Cooper offers few specific policies. In short, Cooper has broad goals but few policies to get us there.

Asked whether he was a realist or an idealist, Cooper said that he would agree with the neo-conservative argument that the idealist agenda is now also the realist agenda.

He supports American efforts to democratize the Middle East and says that whatever errors have been made the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

He said that he wished Europe "was more like the United States," citing America's willingness to act.

"When the United States wants to do something, it gets done," he says admiringly.

That said, he emphasized that "one United States was enough."

But while Cooper shares the neo-conservative enthusiasm for spreading democracy, he laments its rejection of international institutions.

"Idealism should be as much about international institutions as democracy."

He said that if neo-conservatives are going to accept the neo-Wilsonian world view, "they should accept the whole package," including former U.S. president Woodrow Wilson's vision of international co-operation through institutions.

Cooper says that only through institutions such as the UN or, more likely, regional institutions modelled on the European Union, will it be necessary to deal with the military and humanitarian challenges of the future.

But that's what you'd expect a senior bureaucrat from the EU to say, wouldn't you?

What you wouldn't expect is his willingness to reinforce the co-operative spirit of the EU with the military force the United States is prepared to employ.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:46 AM

 
Weekend List

Favourite James Bond villians & henchmen

10. Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), GoldenEye
9. Jaws (Richard Kiel), Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me
8. Tee Hee (Julius Harris), Live and Let Die
7. Brad Whittaker (Joe Don Baker), Living Daylights
6. Dr. Kananga/Mr. Big (Yaphet Kotto), Live and Let Die
5. Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), Thunderball
4. Fransisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), The Man With the Golden Gun
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence*), You Only Live Twice
2. Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe), Goldfinger
1. Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), View to a Kill

* So much better than either Telly Savalas' Blofeld in Her Majesty's Secret Service or Charles Grey's in Diamonds Are Forever.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:12 PM

 
Will an elected Senate restore balance?

Link Byfield, senator-elect from Alberta, made the case yesterday in his Calgary Sun column for an elected Senate as one way to restore some balance in Ottawa by diluting the power of the PMO. In short, senators who are elected by the people would not be beholden the prime minister and less susceptible to undo influence from the PMO. I'm not entirely convinced because Byfield doesn't address the issue of party discipline and the PMO would still have some influence over elected senators of the same party. Byfield says that elected senators could ask toughter questions of the government than, for example, the Official Opposition, but it is difficult to see how elected senators would have much differently than elected MPs. Furthermore, such senators, less secure in their jobs might have eyes on other patronage appointments. While I think an elected Senate is a good thing, I'm not sure that such a body (alone) would do much to restore balance between the PMO governors and the governed or hold the government to greater account.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:02 PM

 
At the trough

The Economist has a good article on farm subsidies. The OECD countries handed out $279 billion in agricultural subsidies in 2004 alone. The Economist notes:
"There is, though, wide variation between OECD members. Producer support is worth less than 5% of farm receipts in New Zealand and Australia, but amounts to roughly 20% throughout North America, 34% in the European Union, and a whopping 60% in Japan. And while the overall value of support has fallen from 2.3% of GDP in 1986-88 to 1.2% now, the reductions have been uneven (see chart above). Canada and Mexico have made deep cuts in their farm supports, for instance, while Turkey has actually increased its supports."
Nice to see Canada doing the right thing because farm subsidies hurt the poor and distort domestic and global agricultural markets. While there was some decrease in subsidies in the 1990s, progress has stalled in recent years -- a testament to the political power of a small but influential farm lobby.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:55 PM

 
Quotidian

"Lippman cared about social justice, but it was not an emotional issue for him."
--Ronald Steel, Walter Lippman and the American Century
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:50 PM

 
Glacial progress a Rwandan genocide case

AP reported yesterday that the UN has asked France to take legal action agaisnt Callixte Mbarushimana, a Hutu employed by the UN to deliver suppplies and protect UN workers on their stand-by-and-watch "peacekeeping" mission during the genocidal slaughter of 1994. Mbarushimana is suspected in the murder of 33 or 32 people (depending whether you trust the AP or Wikipedia), and that among his alleged victims were the UN workers that he was supposed to protect. Mbarushimana maintains his innocence and in 2004 won compensation from the UN for its dismissal of him three years earlier; the UN says that France, where Mbarushimana now lives, should take legal action because it admits it bungled its own internal review of the case.
Here's some interesting history on the case that demonstrates how the UN works (or doesn't). The UN cannot be held responsible for the fact that Mbarushimana effectively took over the UN Development Program in Rwanda when most of its international workers left the country after the violence in 1994. Nor can it be held responsible for the fact that he "drew up a list of people to be killed, including fellow U.N. employees." But consider this: Mbarushimana was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal based largely on eye-witness testimony from 20 people who say they saw him shoot and kill two people and that he was involved in the deaths of 31 more. The indictments came in 2001 although the UN knew about his involvement in the deaths of Rwandans and UN workers as early as 1995. Yes, justice moves slowly but did the UN have to give Mbarushimana two more assignments -- in Angola in 1996 and Kosovo in 2000?
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:58 PM

 
It's a war, baby

The AP reports the shocking fact that female soldiers are casualties of war in Iraq:
"The lethal ambush of a convoy carrying female U.S. troops in Fallujah underscored the difficulties of keeping women away from the front lines in a war where such boundaries are far from clear-cut.
The suicide car bomb and ensuing small-arms fire killed at least two Marines and four others were missing and presumed dead. At least one woman was killed and 11 of 13 wounded were female."
If you are going to fight a war where 11,000 of the 138,000 troops are women, such casualties are to be expected. According to the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation -- that's the saddest organization I've ever heard of -- the attack this week was the largest involving female servicemen since 1945 when six nurses were killed when a kamikazee slammed into the USS Comfort.
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:29 AM

 
Time for the UN to note that it might, someday, have to say something about Zimbabwe

This is quite extraordinary -- the Financial Times reports:
"Anna Tibaijuka, head of UN-Habitat, is expected to meet Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, tomorrow or Monday, to discuss an urban clean-up programme that critics say has left hundreds of thousands destitute, but which the government claims has slashed crime and improved hygiene.
Officials say her findings, backed by a team of political and humanitarian experts, will be crucial as Kofi Annan, UN secretary- general, decides whether to take a more proactive stance, or revert to its more traditional pattern of quiet long-term diplomacy."
Reverting to its more traditional pattern of quiet long-term diplomacy is a nice way of saying "silence" or "ineffectiveness." It is amazing that the UN had stood by and said nothing about Mugabe's "urban clean-up programme" that has left an estimated 200,000 homeless and 20,000 jailed. One could imagine how resolutions "strongly" condemning the country's actions in such a situation if instead of Mugabe it was Ariel Sharon doing the bull-dozing.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:54 PM

 
Quotidian

"But she slept lightly and impatiently, as someone for whom the next day there is something extraordinary in store."
-- Robert Musil, "The Temptation of Quiet Veronica."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:39 PM

 
Huh?

The Financial Times reports on Seymour Hersh's presentation at the Brighton Festival:
"Someone raises their hand to wonder whether Hersh thinks Bush is a zealot or a pragmatist. For Hersh the answer is easy. He finds himself almost nostalgic for the days of Henry Kissinger, and American foreign policy as realpolitik. If Kissinger had gone to war, he says, everyone would have assumed that it was a deal tied into oil futures. Bush says what he believes - whereas Kissinger, Hersh spits, 'lies like other people breathe'."
Let's get this straight: Hersh would prefer foreign policy decisions in the Middle East being made by a schemer, dealer and liar? Interesting admission (recognizing that the paragraph is the Times' characterization of what Hersh said).
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:32 PM

 
From the continuing story of Anglican correctness

The Guardian reports that, "Anglicans yesterday voted to urge their member churches to consider disinvesting from companies involved in Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands." Actually, I am surprised that they are just getting around to this, although they have been busy having a civil debate over blessing same-sex marriages in recent years.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:25 PM

 
This is neat

The New York Times has a pretty decent meet-the-editorial-board page with short bios and photos. Get to know the Leftist clique that writes the drivel that appears on the editorial page of the paper of record.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:43 AM

 
Back to the future?

Simon Heffer writes in The Spectator (free registration required) that the best leader for the British Tories would be the former leader William Hague. I agree that Hague has all the right attributes: smart, Thatcherite, charming and charismatic, articulate, etc..., but I think it generally a bad idea to go looking into the past for leaders. Policy, perhaps; principles, of course; but not leaders. And, anyway, he has already ruled it out for a number of reasons, none better than Mrs. Hague doesn't want him to.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:36 AM

 
Blix on Iran

The AP reports that former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix says that Iran is years away from acquiring nuclear bomb capabilities. Ah, that makes me feel better. Blix says, "I believe there is plenty of room for negotiations." A reminder to the UN and other avoid-war-at-all-costs types: the threat that the West will act militarily is the only way to get rogue nations to the negotiations table in the first place. And here's a question for Blix and pacificists: negotiate for how long? Can Blix be sure on the exact date for acquiring nuclear capabilities because once they have them it is definitely too late to do anything about it. One should view Iran developing nuclear weapons as urgent a problem as Iran having them.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:26 AM

 
CBC's humour-challenged comedian

Burkean Canuck on Rick Mercer:
"That Rick Mercer is a whining socialist with his trotters in the trough, er, on the CBC payroll, doesn't really bother me ... much.
I just wish the guy who is the on-air talent for a show billed as comedy was funny."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:59 PM

 
Quotidian

"I reached the grave conclusion during the Mass that I am nothing but a pencilled marginal note in the Book of Life. I am not in the main text at all."
-- D'Arcy Osborne, British envoy to the Vatican, quoted in Owen Chadwick's Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:56 PM

 
A moment of sanity in Berkeley

The school board in Berkeley, California voted down a measure to rename Jefferson Elementary School to Sequoia because the third president and author of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. The board considered the change after input from the school community: "In a referendum on the issue several weeks ago, students and staff at the school voted in favor of the name change by a wide margin. Students backed the change by a vote of 161-111. Staff members supported it 11-5. Parents and guardians also endorsed the move, but by a much narrower vote of 67-61." I'm sure that the students had no pressure applied to them by the teachers, nor were they the victims of their teachers' propaganda, especially when the New York Sun reported yesterday that students from kindergarten to Grade Five voted (that's kids as young as five).
In the same referendum that endorsed the name change, the name Sequoia was proposed for the new school name, coming out ahead of Sojourner Truth, Ralph Bunche (a black diplomat, Cesar Chavez, and Florence McDonald (a deceased Berkeley rent-board commissioner). Critics of renaming the school Sequoia point to the fact that the Cherokee nation under Chief Sequoia also owned slaves but proponents of the name claim that it would recognize the tree not the Indian leader. But perhaps the self-righteous citizens of Berkeley might want to focus on the name of their university town: Anglican bishop and philosopher George Berkeley who owned slaves that worked on his Rhode Island plantation.
One might also wonder about the community's priorities and whether or not the issue is honouring a man who owned slaves or just being politically correct. In the 1970s, the school board renamed Lincoln Elementary -- named after the president who emancipated the slaves -- to Malcolm X Elementary.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:26 AM

 
Brooks on the polls re: Iraq

Hit or miss New York Times columnist David Brooks hits a homer with a piece on the polls indicating most Americans want at least some U.S. troops to come home and growing dissatisfaction with President George W. Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. He begins the column:
"There's a reason George Washington didn't take a poll at Valley Forge. There are times in the course of war when the outcome is simply unknowable. Victory is clearly not imminent, yet people haven't really thought through the consequences of defeat. Everybody just wants the miserable present to go away."
Brooks explains:
"It's too soon to accept the defeatism that seems to have gripped so many. If governments surrendered to insurgencies after just a couple of years, then insurgents would win every time. But they don't because insurgencies have weaknesses, exposed over time, especially when they oppose the will of the majority.
It's just wrong to seek withdrawal now, when the outcome of the war is unknowable and when the consequences of defeat are so vast."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:46 AM

 
Klein's Clinton book

The moment I heard that Ed Klein's book The Truth About Hillary claimed that the former first lady was raped by her husband I knew I would not read the book nor care for the political fallout from it. Remember how Bill Clinton came back from his non-sexual sexual relationship "with that woman"? The Clinton's thrive on beating such allegations (and realities). I think if American conservatives pay much attention to Klein's book they are going to suffer the same fate that Canadian Conservatives suffered after the publicity over the Grewal tapes, namely an enormous backlash. But unlike the Conservatives north of the border, the conservatives south of it will deserve the public's disgust.
I think I am something of a rarity in this view of Klein's book, at least among the conservatives I talk to so I was happy to discover that Peggy Noonan doesn't like the book either. She writes at OpinionJournal.com:
"The real problem with Hillary biographies is that the picture they paint, if it is true, is difficult for a normal person to believe. No one could be that bad. No one who has risen so high in American politics could possibly be that bad. To believe is to go to a dark place.
And the charges seem so at odds--so utterly at odds--with the nice, smiling woman who calls abortion a tragedy and enjoys speaking of how much she prays. This is the problem all Hillary biographers have: It's too grim to believe. To believe that her story as presented by the books so far is true is to believe that she has clung to a premeditated plan for 40 years, that she is ruthless in the pursuit both of her own ambitions and of a deep and intractable leftist political agenda. And that she found her equal in a partner sufficiently hardhearted to stick with the plan, and the secrecy, and the weirdness. It's too over the top. It seems hard to believe, not because it isn't true but because it isn't likely, usual, expected. It isn't the kind of biography we are used to in our leaders. That is her great advantage.
What is needed is a big and serious book by respected reporters who can dig, think and type, and whose sourcing standards are high and unimpeachable. Will that happen? It would be big if it did. This book is not that book."
Put aside that last paragraph (although it is a serious problem for the Klein book): why demonize Clinton in such a personal way -- in the same way the Left in general and the Clintons in particular demonize their political opponents? Such claims will have no electoral traction unless there is a smoking gun and Klein's sources certainly don't qualify. I agree with the New York Sun editorial (subscribers only) which exhorted Hillary critics to challenge the senator from New York on her policies; it is on those that 2008 will be won or lost.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:29 AM

 
Regulating gas prices

Bob Howse has a good piece in the Halifax Herald on how the Nova Scotian can help reduce gas prices without jeopardizing the profit margins (and thus existence) of retailers: reduce regulation. Definitely worth reading, it includes an existing commercial model for profitable gas distribution which will reduce costs for retailers and thus, donwn the line, consumers.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:23 AM

 
A numbers game

The AP reports on an Information Technology Association of America study that finds women and most minorities (and whites) under-represented in the U.S. technology industry. Women make up only 32% of the IT work force, Hispanics 6.4% (they are 13% of the U.S. population); blacks and whites, too, were "under-represented" while Asians were over-represented. This is all very interesting but quite irrelevant. The ITAA disagrees. The AP characterizes the association's concerns this way: "With such underrepresentation, fewer people are available overall to work in high-tech, putting the nation at a disadvantage compared with China and India, where universities are graduating hundreds of thousands of science and engineering students per year — in some cases with nearly equal numbers of women and men." Or in the words of ITAA president Harris N. Miller, "We can ill afford to miss out on anyone with the right aptitude, skills and motivation to succeed in technical fields." But there is no evidence of that. If Asians have the aptitude, skills and motivation to succeed in technical fields, then the IT industry is doing just fine. In fact, it is just as likely that Asians with such attributes are not in IT as it is that blacks, Hispanics and women who share them are not in the field. It is preposterous to believe that in this highly competitive field that there are people with tech skills being excluded because they are black, Hispanic or female. The AP's suggestion that such under-representation means that there are fewer people available to work in the IT industry is unfounded; it is highly probable that the make-up of this workforce reflects the reality of the choices people make in conjunction with their skill sets and nothing more (or less) than that.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:07 AM

 
Willets on helping the poor and lowering taxes

British Tory MP David Willets writes in the London Times that Lord Saatchi's suggestion that the party should advocate lower taxes to help the poor is wrong-headed. Willets says that something more imaginative is necessary to help the poor than mere tax cuts. Willets says that whatever broad-based tax reform that will actually assist the poor will also cost the treasury too much because the middle classes, too, would benefit from the lower tax (whether it be raising the exemption or lowering the VAT). Willets almost sounds as if he is arguing against tax cuts but in reality he is reminding conservatives (and Conservatives) that merely tinkering slightly with tax rates will not solve the problems of the very poor.
Willets is right to suggest that a substantial reduction in taxes (that will benefit everyone) will be pricey. What he doesn't say is that perhaps such tax cuts would be worth doing if they force the government to reduce its spending.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:44 PM

 
Quotidian

"The Bible tells us to forgive our enemies; not our friends."
-- Geoffrey Madan, Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks (collected by John Sparrow & J.A. Gere)
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:28 PM

 
Nazis a no-no, but Gulag comparison doesn't matter

Here's a reminder of what Democratic Senator Dick Durbin (Il) said on June 14:
"If I read this to you and did not tell you it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."
The Washington Post's Mark Liebovic says:
"Someone should post a sign in the Senate cloakroom or wherever Important People Who Should Know Better will see it. The sign would warn politicians against comparing anything to the Nazis or Hitler or the Holocaust. These comparisons are not a good idea. Repeat : Not a good idea. It will only bring a massive headache, as Sen. Richard Durbin has learned.
... Durbin, the Democratic whip, became the latest politician who couldn't make his point without comparing the matter at hand -- the alleged mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- with the methods of the Nazis (and those of Pol Pot and the Soviet gulags, too)."
Several observations:
1) I don't think that Durbin is sorry because he really believes the nonsense he uttered.
2) He has learned that it was wrong to compare American behaviour to that of the Nazis or anyone else because he really believes the nonsense he uttered.
3) The fact that the Left is incessantly making comparisons to the Nazis is proof that their are intellectually vacuous.
4) Leibovic implies that while it is wrong to make comparisons to Nazis, it is not necessarily wrong to make comparisons to comparative communist monsters.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:40 PM

 
Haven't the people of south Asia suffered enough?

200,000 people died in the tsunami last December, millions more lost their homes and in Bill Clinton's column in the New York Times examining the challenges ahead the former president seems to care as much about trees as he does restoring some normalcy to the lives of the tsunami's victims:
"The construction effort also carries significant environmental risks. Wholesale, unrestricted logging can cause deforestation in some regions, particularly in Indonesia, doing great damage to rainforests and setting the stage for more natural disasters. Timber needs to be obtained legally, and conservation measures, like replanting mangrove trees rather than developing the land from which they were uprooted, should be part of the reconstruction."
This seems so high schoolish. Yes, people died, the narrow-minded student would write, but what about the rain forests that are dying due to globalism? But the high schoolishness continues:
"... we must do all we can to assure that the voices of the most vulnerable are heard. Will women survivors be involved in the design and execution of the recovery process? Will their property rights be protected? Will the Dalits (also known as the "untouchables") of India be discriminated against? Will poor families get documentation for their assets and have access to lines of credit? Will national governments give localities greater flexibility to meet their particular needs? Will children who survived be able to get back to school? Will the disaster usher in a new chapter in the peace processes in Sri Lanka and Aceh, thereby making it easier for aid to be distributed and reconstruction to take place wherever it's needed?
Thanks to the generosity of millions of people, we will have the resources to meet these daunting challenges. The World Food Program of the United Nations is feeding more than 700,000 people daily. Unicef is making substantial commitments to meeting the area's large needs for water and sanitation. Other United Nations agencies are doing their part."
Clinton has been to south Asia numerous times and if anyone knew the answers, he would. I would have appreciated insight rather than rhetorical questions. C'mon, I thought this guy was supposed to be the smartest president there ever was.
He ends with a story that could be touching if it were told by someone capable of sincerity:
"On my most recent trip to the region, I visited the Jantho camp for displaced people in Aceh, where I met a woman who had lost nine of her 10 children. As one of the camp leaders, she introduced me to the youngest camp member: a 2-day-old boy. She said the child's mother wanted me to give him a name. I asked if there was an appropriate Indonesian word for 'new beginning' and was told that there was: 'dawn,' which in their language is a boy's name. I think a lot about that little boy, and our obligation to give him a new dawn. We can do it together."
I applaud his optimism although his unanswered rhetorical questions about allowing women a voice in the rebuilding efforts and other forms of discrimination don't really warrant such optimism. That said, I just don't believe him when he tells this anecdote of naming the boy Dawn. I hope that the region recovers from December's horrible natural disaster that indiscriminately killed and destroyed that which was in its path, but whatever recovery they have will be due to the hard work of those in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, India and elsewhere -- the citizens, the volunteer organizations, private business and professional NGOs -- and not because of the publicity seeking efforts of Bill Clinton.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:17 AM