Troubles are not really troubles unless you quit work and incubate them–otherwise they are only incidental diversions. (Elbert Hubbard, 1911)
Canadian Military Matters
The National Post (April 24, 2003) has three reports on the military. They tell a sad tale. The article by ex-Major-General Lewis MacKenzie bemoans our withered ability to lead a UN force in Afganistan. It seems that we can only "lead" this effort if we can sign up another country's forces. Nothing is in place to effectively do this. Besides, despite Chretien's comment about our noble efforts in fighting terrorism, our troops will not leave Kabul and really be nothing but a bodyguard for President (mayor?) Karzai.
If you do not think that is pathetic enough, try to contemplate their defending this country.
The second article dealt with a cancellation of a veteran's Battle of the Atlantic ceremony because some asshole anti-war parade would disturb it. Those of us of a certain age really should not count on the slacker generation to defend us in times of war.
Then to round out the insult to our military, we get a letter from a Major (ret.) Russ Cooper, who rightfully wants to know why he, as a combat pilot in the first Gulf War, can get no recognition; yet, some guy who tried to enlist is given veteran's benefits. Who is in charge of the Ministry of Defense--Goofy?
To think that my father, a paymaster for those who worked at a jail for the Nazi prisoners, and my maternal uncle, who had been part of WW11, fought the good fight, each in his own way, and now we have these youngsters think that their anti-war stance (at best neutral--or as the kiddies say, "whatever") can save them from the gathering forces of mayhem, well bullshit! My Uncle Gordon was 20 years old and he crawled from one inch of Italy to the other, defusing land mines. His best friend, age 21, was blown away by a rigged Nazi jeep. Gordon did this because he believed that the Nazi barbarism must be checked. Later, he was lent to the British 8th Army and joined them in liberating the Bergen Belsen Concentration camp. As a kid, I was fascinated and plied him with questions about this. All he would say was, "We saw this and could not believe it. Could not believe that humans would do this. Later, our boys, tracked down the guards and their bosses and shot them like rats. I really don't want to talk about this any more." He understood evil on a basic level. I did not need any more lessons.
Thanks to a colleague, A Veteran’s Son
An Extension of Gro Bruntland’s Reach and the WHO’s Power?
A whole page of the Financial Post was devoted to three WHO-inspired articles: SARS: a test run for more power (Terence Corcoran FP11), WHO diet guidelines devoid of science (Steven Molloy, junk science.com, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute), and Genuine experts do not panic the public (Henry I. Miller, molecular biologist and fellow of the Hoover Institution).
Under Ms. [Gro] Bruntland . . . the WHO has been reaching high and wide into a host of areas that are beyond its legitimate goals and capabilities. . . . By throwing its weight around over SARS, the WHO is demonstrating its global clout. It’s a test run for the tobacco control campaign, and a door-opener for expanding WHO ambitions in any number of health areas.
Corcoran believes the Canadian health and political establishment are all “in the same intellectual game that distorts and misrepresents science and risk for political purposes”, now hoist by their own petard -- as Toronto is singled out by the WHO.
Molloy writes that the WHO’s nutrition guidelines (on fat, calories, carbohydrates, sugars, protein):
were pulled out of thin air and are devoid of science. Not a single study demonstrates they will prevent even a single case of chronic disease or make you healthier,
that the WHO’s guidelines are based on the judgment of panel members not scientific evidence, that “most chronic disease develops as a function of aging”, generally not a Third World problem. What is even more shocking is that:
When Grundtland took charge at WHO in 1998, about 17.3 million people died annually from largely preventable infectious and parasitic diseases, according the WHO’s own estimates. Now, at the close of her five-year tenure, the WHO estimates the death toll has climbed to about 18.4 million annually.
With news from Iraq diminishing in intensity, the next big topic is SARS. Miller’s ending says it all:
We need to learn more about what we don’t understand, and to seek out the advice of genuine experts for guidance. And, oh, yes, to take with a large grain of salt the pronouncements of TV’s talking heads.
Do you hear that?
The UN and AIDS
In Don’t turn Iraq over to the UN Elizabeth Nickson (National Post, April 11, 03 A16) detailed the case of Canada’s contribution to UNICEF by our own Stephen Lewis (# 2 at the agency then) who refused tins of infant formula for the children of HIV positive mothers because it came from multinationals – how’s that for socialist honour and compassion! Now he heads UNAIDS. Throughout Africa in all but Uganda, the UN has failed. Yet, in Uganda President Yoweri Museveni
invited Christian and Muslim clergymen to preach forthrightly to Ugandans about the need to abstain from premarital sex and stay faithful to their partners.
The government backed it up with publicity – “Abstain, Be Faithful or Use Condoms”, emphasizing the first two and the AIDS rate dropped from 21.2% in 1991 to 6.2%. Note: in Kenya, it is 15%, in Zimbabwe 32%, and in Botswana 38%. What is it in South Africa?
According to Nickson, UNAIDS prefers condoms to the self-denial preached by the priests, pastors, and imams and doesn’t want to acknowledge the growth of the Christian Church which would be
counter to the UN’s campaign against conservative Christians and indeed, conservatives of all stripes.
She concludes:
If we turn Iraq over to the UN, we will almost certainly spawn another generation of America-hating, capitalism-hating, science-hating young men and women who will seek to kill us.
There is more: all these articles are worth reading in their entirety. Now that evidence has come to the fore which may implicate British Labour MP, Galloway, along with Russia, France, and who knows what others in the Iraq-Saddam story, the left and the anti-war protestors do not look quite so benign in their concern for the poor of Iraq – and indeed for those of the West.
An aside: I always wondered why a couple from Toronto would take a winter break in the Caribbean and spend all their time looking up and meeting with local leftists / labour types -- in solidarity forever, they explained. I used to think what a waste of a vacation; now I find it altogether more sinister. To think that I even felt a little guilty at my own desire for sun and sand–unconcerned about the poor of the world, as they seemed to be. Maybe I was too hedonistic? Ha!
The road to Fascism is paved with socialist pretensions. (Grant Singleton)
Iraq's former deputy prime minister, now in US hands, was the urbane public face of the Saddam regime. But he may have helped the allies to target his ex-boss
Apparently, his family was placed under arrest before the war so that Aziz would not defect to the West. There is speculation fueled by a CIA member that Aziz may have provided the information on Saddam’s whereabouts for the initial bombing in Baghdad. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. See the next article.
John Simpson is the World Affairs Editor of the BBC. He wrote:
Tariq Aziz . . . is regarded in Washington as a particularly virulent war criminal. True, he is a thoroughly nasty piece of work; the last time I saw him, during the 1991 bombing of Baghdad, he shouted at me: "If you ask me another question, I shall have you liquidated."
He sat close to Saddam at meetings of the Revolutionary Command Council, and grovelled with the best of them; but he never belonged to Saddam's inner clique, deciding the policies of repression and murder. Simply because he did his job as a diplomat well, and annoyed America, does not make him a war criminal.
How would Simpson know whether Aziz decided “policies of repression and murder”? This, after the liquidate response? Sounds contradictory to me.
Funny how pervasive and insidious these attitudes can become – in certain rarefied circles. I once met an opera producer in London who had studied under Anthony Blount at the Courtauld; he thought Blount’s artistic contribution was such that it trumped his treason -- that the attitudes of Blount’s set were just so prevalent in that era. Of course, there is another possibility. Blount might have revealed something about missives, plots, or plans flying back and forth between the Duke of Windsor and the Nazis during the War, mightn’t he? Inside knowledge–if any exists--can be a real life saver.
Dictator Chic and the Emperor’s Clothes
Power manifests itself in conspicuous waste, and the habit grows until conspicuous waste imagines itself as power. (Elbert Hubbard, 1911)
Saddam’s conspicuous waste apparently required the help of torture, blackmail, and capricious killing on the slightest--or no--pretext. How many weeks did it take the US military to show Saddam power – not the power of obliteraton, but the power of the strong and the right -- to use it as discriminately as men in that situation could?
A friend in California wrote to agree with my assessment of Saddam’s Dictator chic; I think he felt Saddam should have been dethroned for his taste alone. He’s an artistic soul, not too interested in international politics – though he does concede the world did have better reasons. Fortunately for the West there are still military men left who have not been completely feminized into appeasement mode and making nice with the thugs of this world. And Canadians should have been with them; the more information that comes out of Iraq, the more our glorious leader has egg on his face. But he is the Emperor – and CBC will not see the splattered egg.
Soft Fascism
The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other. (Bertrand Russell: Freedom, Harcourt Brace, 1940)
Saddam understood that brand of fascism; there is another variety that I would call soft fascism.
Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of a private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. (FDR: message to Congress proposing the monopoly investigation, 1938)
Now think about whether there is an individual or group or private power that holds Canada and Canadians captive. Is there an arachnid at the pinnacle with a claque of arach-nits flattering the arachnid – planning, plotting and scurrying? Are there creative Desig-nits usurping law-making unto themselves -- making up the rules as they go? Are there perhaps taxpayer-funded organizations, media controllers, programs and initiatives that unwittingly enforce that power – all the threads associated with the web spun out from the centre? Puzzled? . . . . Of course, I was thinking of the overwhelming power of Microsoft over us through the PC and all the software programs that must be coded for it – because it has eliminated the competition.
Point of View: Al-Jazeera contravenes Canada’s core values
Keith M. Landy presented a coherent argument from a Jewish perspective for why Al-Jazeera would not be a positive addition to Canadian programming. (National Post, Apr. 26, 03, 12)
Canadians are defined by a set of core values, among them the inherent dignity and security of the person, pluralism, social harmony and cohesion and civility in public discourse. Al-Jazeera programming runs afoul of precisely these values and the body of jurisprudence Canada has developed to safeguard them.
I can only concur. Try to read the whole article.
Five Star Dinner Companions:
The more I watched televised reports on the Iraq war, the more I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we still had salons or something like a Canadian Algonquin Roundtable to which we could invite the most interesting people -- people who would let me be a fly on the wall -- or even let me submit the odd question? Would anyone else like to have a dinner conversation with Donald Rumsfeld, Vince Brooks, Tommy Franks, Robert Fulford, and Paul Kedrosky? Or Lewis MacKenzie, Diane Francis, Christy Blatchford, George Jonas, Andrew Coyne and Mark Steyn? Every day I read the work of others that could be invited. I’m so bored with the Canadian BS that’s trotted out as received wisdom -- surviving in our severely guided democracy under the aegis of a Canada Council Grant or a taxpayer-funded media event. Just to get another point of view in circulation!
A Brief Review: The Great Fire of Londonby Neil Hanson
Hanson does more than chronicle The Great Fire itself; rather, he uses this catastrophe to examine many facets of 17th Century London. The section on the infamous Jack Ketch, the official hangman of the time, is extremely revealing of our ancestors' tastes in entertainment. For instance, if Ketch was tipped properly, he would yank on the condemned man's ankles to shorten his strangulation. Another dodge was to sell the man's clothes and appear in the local Tyburn tavern with the hanged man/s rope around his own neck. He would, for a price, regale the patrons with a first hand account of the execution. In Canada, of course, he would have to be bilingual.
I think that Hanson excels in describing the hysteria that this calamity inspired. Rumours arose and took on immediate credence. The French were to blame. The Dutch were to blame. Papists were to blame. Even King Charles II was not above suspicion. The carnage and slaughters that these rumours bred probably surpassed the number of actual victims of the fire. And for the pyromaniacs out there, Hanson gives a forensic description of how arsonists work. Other useful information is given on everything from cremation time, to how individual fingers of flame from a firestorm 'track down' fleeing people.
Besides accurately showing many of us our ancestors--warts and all--Hanson has shown us our ability to deal with massive upheavals, a lesson that we may need to learn for future use.
