Free Republic

The French must have been kidding if they thought they could get rid of the proposed new European Constitution by voting against it. Jacques Chirac was already assuring his fellow heads of state and government, before the referendum, that a “non” vote would be only a minor setback. And as the results were announced, he would not admit that his government had done more than “taken note” of them. Jean Claude Juncker, the unelected President of the E.U., politely suggested countries that got the answer wrong would have to vote again until they got it right. He saw no reason...

The perspicacious reader will have noticed me treading water the last week — with Land Rovers, yachts, and catfish for my topics — as I puzzled over the stance I should take towards political developments in my benighted home and native land. A week ago Saturday I concluded, after a fortnight's disgrace in our House of Commons, that, "The dignity and decency of Canadian life had been leeching away, for so long, that we are now past writing any 'lament for a nation'. The Canada of which I was once so proud now sleeps with the worms." As I said,...

At the end of a second week of disgrace in Parliament, I can find no upside. Paul Martin contrived to remain in power by purchasing Belinda Stronach (at the bargain price of one second-tier Cabinet seat). The Conservatives released a tape, recording the prime minister’s chief of staff negotiating the purchase of two other members; with no major outcry. The government, which had lost the confidence of the House last week, established the principle that “possession is ten-tenths of the law”, by clinging to power until it was able to buy what had previously eluded it, with the resources of...

From the lips of the lovely Belinda Stronach, Canada received her Judas kiss yesterday. It allowed a bottomlessly corrupt government to escape an election; to continue in office with an agenda that will tear to pieces what remains of our social fabric; which will radically advance the cause of separatism in Quebec, and spread it irretrievably to Western Canada; which will put the country on the fiscal skids. This should not be understated: our country has been delivered into the hands of the wreckers. I am writing this column now because I do not believe I could persuade my editor...

The idea that Israel can promote peace by unilaterally withdrawing Jewish settlements from occupied territories is one of the world's great "no-brainers". Like other no-brainers, it shows no brains. The Israeli cabinet is now losing its most intelligent and impressive member — Natan Sharansky — thanks finally to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of unilaterally pulling the few Israeli settlements out of Gaza. As usual, the headlines are captured by the superficial and irrelevant details. The Israeli newspapers were vexing themselves yesterday over whether the IAF should demolish the settlements after moving their inhabitants (many of the adults now becoming...

Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axisby Bat Ye’or Fairleigh Dickinson. 384 pp. $49.50For the past 30 years, the Jewish scholar Bat Ye’or, born in Egypt but long resident in Geneva, has been developing formidable credentials as a chronicler of “dhimmitude,” a term with which she is closely associated. Constructed from the Arabic dhimmi, the word characterizes the submissive status of peoples conquered by Islam but allowed to live. Sometimes at the edges and sometimes in the face of an academic world that has become increasingly politically correct, Bat Ye’or (a Hebrew pen name meaning “daughter of the Nile”) has been challenging myths...

We could summarize the less obtuse journalistic comments on President Bush's meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah at his (Bush's) Crawford, Texas ranch in this way: The United States wants cheap oil and democracy; the Sauds want dear oil and despotism; the Arabians (as opposed to their rulers) want dear oil and, maybe, democracy. On the oil, the problem is not one the Sauds can solve for us, until we (the consumers, in U.S. and elsewhere) succeed in breaking the OPEC cartel through which prices are manipulated within extreme limits of market reality. Destroying OPEC would force them, the extended Saud...

I am still hoping for a democratic revolution in Canada, but while I am waiting, let me return to my more usual turf as a commentator on "world affairs". It appears to me that the Communist regime in China is beginning to crumble. I know that remark reeks of optimism, and my reader should know that I have expected the Beijing regime to join the Soviet one on the trash heap of history for some time. This is because I do not share in the almost universal, though seldom spoken, journalistic and academic assumption that the Chinese are an inferior...

Curiously enough, the Liberals have woven the legal rope from which they may soon be hanging. As I've learned from several commentators and lawyer friends, their anti-gang legislation, delivered in a pre-election publicity scramble eight years ago, and now written into the Criminal Code as section 467, may prove the means by which even the slipperiest and most exalted characters could be brought within sight of a jail. It has always been hard to make a criminal fraud charge stick. It requires the assembly of a chain of evidence such as can seldom reach the top of an organization. It...

Though it is now partially lifted, Justice John Gomery's publication ban on testimony to the "Adscam" sponsorship inquiry highlighted differences between Canada and the United States. These were once not so terribly large. While one country might be loyal to a Crown, and the other to a Flag; while one might stress "peace, order, and good government" over the other's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; while most of one country remains north of most of the other — we shared a legacy of freedom. A free press, and free speech; the public's right to know about important events,...

We are getting used to these democracy demonstrations, in Kiev, Beirut, La Paz, Bishkek, and wherever. There should have been no surprise to see a million people on the streets of Taipei, in the "Republic of China", over the weekend, demanding democracy. The only thing odd about their demonstration, is that they were demanding to keep a democracy they already have. The demonstrations were really directed towards the "People's Republic of China", across the narrow Taiwan Strait, which has now aimed more than 800 surface-to-surface missiles at the little island: almost enough to sink it. The Red Chinese continue to...

Having presented the positive side of developments in the Middle East in recent columns, it is time to glance at the other side of the ledger. The good news is that, spreading from Beirut, and now in public squares from Morocco to Pakistan, citizens of authoritarian Arab and Muslim states are demanding Western-style democracy and constitutional government. The Arabic word, "Kifaya!", which means "Enough!", is being shouted all over. The bold American action in imposing democracy on Afghanistan and Iraq has had precisely the resonance the Bush administration predicted. And the quick action of the U.S. State Department and others...

How many times have I had to tell you, gentle reader, to read anything President Bush says. There was a joke made by the louche webloggist, Wonkette, to the effect that the Bush administration has been sadly lacking in empty gestures. The President not only seems to mean almost everything he says, he seems to act on it soon after. This is, as my reader must agree, very eccentric behaviour in a politician. I'm not saying Mr. Bush utters deathless prose; I'm just saying read his texts if you want some clue to what is going to happen next. (Always...

We will see if the boxcars can remain coupled, but for the moment we have a new and thrilling passage in international diplomacy — if "diplomacy" is the mot juste for a high-stakes game of brinkmanship. France and America are on the same side. (Praise the Lord! hallelujah!) They are staring right into Bashir Assad's eyeballs, while telling him with increasing clarity and amplitude that Syria will be withdrawing from the Lebanon. It would be cute to attribute this to the devastating charm of Condoleezza Rice. Even that owes more to timing: for there was no blood left to be...

I've been writing less about Iraq and the Middle East lately, because I've been taking my breath. Several large matters are in transition, and it is almost impossible at this distance (or perhaps at any distance) to see what will come out. One of these large matters is the transition of the Bush administration into its second term. The appointment of Condoleezza Rice to replace the retiring Colin Powell at the U.S. State Department is not a clear shift to right or left, an advance or retreat from what has previously been understood as the "Bush doctrine". It will become...

Okay, guys, this is it: my third, and for the moment, last kick at the evolutionary can (the first two appeared the last two Wednesdays). I can't resist, I've received so much mail, though it's beginning to go circular. Please, nobody send me any more links to the standard websites for evolutionary apologetics: I must have read them all. The best is the "Talk Origins Archive" (an easy Google-search). Anyone who wants to see the scientific arguments for an evolution unambiguously descended from Darwin, go there: enjoy. The thing is superbly well done. It is after all designed to provide...

Algeria was the first Arab country to hold a general election, in which it was possible for the government to fall. "Palestine" (quotes, for it is not yet formally a state), will be the second, tomorrow. At the end of the month, Iraq will become the third. What matters here is not what went into the elections, but what comes out. A democratic order is not merely a matter of elections. Even Stalin had elections, for show, and governments in many Arab states have mounted similar carnivals. The word "democracy" is shorthand for a complex bunch of practical ideas, from...

So: are we evolving or not? The issue resurfaced this year with the discovery of "Homo floresiensis" — which is to say, the grapefruit-sized skull of some hobbit-sized being — in the limestone cave of Liang Bua on the Indonesian island of Flores. She lived perhaps 18,000 years ago. The Indonesian, Australian, American, and Dutch palaeontologists found other bones, too, of her contemporaries nearly as short, but the media flourish was over the "woman" only one metre high. She has been assigned the name "Hominid LB-1", but let's call her "Flora". By a series of inferences we gather that she...

Perhaps the reason we are reading comparatively less about "Israel/Palestine" lately is that there is so much real news, and so much of it is astounding, and hopeful. The media are allergic to good news, and run from it as from holy water. The greatest single piece of good news was presented as if it were a tragedy — Arafat is gone. As became inmediately evident, he was blocking the only possible way forward to the "two-state solution" that all but the terrorists claim to support. Abu Mazen — whom we should really start calling by his real name, Mahmoud...

Excuse me, I'm stupid. I'm trying to figure out what the word "conscience" might mean, in the mind of Paul Martin -- or to make it a little less personal, in the mind of any prominent post-modern political leader. John Kerry for instance. In the recent U.S. election, Mr. Kerry was at pains to affirm that he believed, as a good Catholic, that human life begins at conception. Now, that was an admirably plain statement. For if life begins at conception, the procurement of an abortion must be tantamount to murder. And, good Catholic that he is, Mr. Kerry would...