DRONES CLUB

From the Guardian 13 June:

The US believes that Israeli officials lied to them about the export of Harpy Killer drones to China.

The officials claimed that Israel was merely refurbishing old drones which had been exported with American consent. The US argued that the drones had been upgraded using new technology which it had shared with Israel.

The tip-off was when the Chinese began advertising them at military tradeshows as Super Double Happy Killer drones.

Kevin Michael Grace, 1.09 a.m., 15 June 2005►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

The longer I live, the more convinced I become that one of the greatest honours we can confer on other people is to see them as they are; to recognize not only that they exist but that they exist in specific ways and have specific realities... I am reliably informed that in order to understand the sectarian killings in Northern Ireland one should become acquainted with Irish history and the sentiments to which its convolutions have given rise. That sounds reasonable enough to me; though the same man who gave me that advice looked somewhat shocked when I made mention of Sri Lanka. "But that's the Third World," he said. What is true for Ireland should also be true for Sri Lanka and everywhere else. Why have these double standards? We must cast off the rag-trade mythologies with which we clothe our perceptions of mental and spiritual worlds unfamiliar to us.
—Shiva Naipaul, "The Illusion of the Third World," An Unfinished Journey

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.33 p.m., 14 June 2005►

RIP SCOTT YOUNG

The Canadian Press obituary of Scott Young, who has died at 87, made much of the fact he was Neil Young's father. Now I don't suppose that anyone under the age of 50 would remember, but Scott Young was once a big deal in Canadian journalism. Not that I ever saw his columns; I grew up reading the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Province, and that's it. There were no national newspapers then, and the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Telegram meant nothing to me. Nevertheless, Scott Young was once a big deal to me and my friends who for years knew of Neil Young as Scott's son. Yes, we saw him from time to time on Hockey Night in Canada, but to us Scott Young's fame rested on three children's books he'd written and we'd devoured: Scrubs on Skates, Boy on Defence and Boy At The Leafs' Camp. 

The novels are a loose trilogy that brought to life the dream of millions of Canadian boys in the 1960s, which was to play hockey for the Toronto Maple Leafs. That was certainly my dream, and, strangely, the fact that I never learned to skate never impinged on it. The boy who realized the dream was called Bill Spunska, and years later I learned that Young had likely based him on the legendary Bill Barilko. Like Barilko, Spunska was not particularly talented, but he triumphs through the steadfast application of dedication, determination, selflessness and other superannuated Canadian virtues.

I use the word "superannuated" advisedly. The novels were last published in 1985, and according to one Jane Robinson, a Manitoba librarian, 

Their original age shows in subtle ways. The language of conversation, the sex role stereotyping, and some of the situations are no longer applicable and as a result the characters are not believable. 

Oh, I daresay, but one could say the same of Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Doubtless Robinson would have enjoyed them more if they'd featured a gay Philippino immigrant who triumphs over "racism," "homophobia" and " body image issues," but Scott Young was writing about a Canada that no longer exists.

Except in our memories. It was only when I saw that Mr Ed was now available on DVD that I fully understood how a piteous longing for the ancient regime has come to consume North Americans. McClelland and Stewart should reissue the Scrubs trilogy in a single volume—with less hideous artwork than they used in 1985—and market it not to the kiddies but to us aging boomers. I bet they'd make a packet.

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.26 p.m., 14 June 2005►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Precocity nurtured in me a febrile, inchoate iconoclasm...fostered by my fondness for Dostoyevsky's novels. I read and re-read the "Grand Inquisitor" sequence in The Brothers Karamazov; no less alluring was the murderous conceit of Raskolnikov. The old thrill returns whenever I pick up Crime and Punishment and glance at its opening lines. "On a very hot evening at the beginning of July a young man left his little room at the top of a house in Carpenter Lane, went out into the street, and..." That sentence always makes me want to write. (A few select authors have that effect. Most don't.)
—Shiva Naipaul, "Beyond The Dragon's Mouth," Beyond The Dragon's Mouth

Kevin Michael Grace, 3.38 a.m., 13 June 2005►

MILKIN' IT

While it is the pundit's duty to offer prefab opinions on every burning issue of the day—Gaza pull-out: Prudent or reckless? Christina Aguilera: Breach of the Geneva Convention? Thongs peeking out from low-rider jeans: End of the world as we know it?—I must confess I have little to say on the merits of breast feeding. My prolife friends will go on about the Great Nestlé Conspiracy to reduce women to sex toys, but I remain unmoved. Mother's milk for those that want it, formula for those that don't, I say.

Of course it's never that simple these days. As Thomas Fleming told me a while back, America is prostrated by social Calvinism. If it's good, it must be made mandatory. If it's bad, it must be proscribed. Which explains why life has come to resemble a bad John Irving novel. Or any John Irving novel. Public breast-feeding fanatics, called "lactivists," bring Barbara Walters and ABC to their knees. And look, there's my old friend Teddy Boy Byfield, resplendent in his battered drape coat, quiff gleaming in the febrile night light, press cutting in one hand, rusty switchblade in the other, putting the boot in.

For a man who defines himself against the world, Ted has always had a hazy understanding of the mundum to which he stands contra. In any program of cultural literacy, Barbara Walters would be 100-level material, but Ted apparently hadn't heard of her until last week. So he asked around, procured some corrupt data, forced it into his template, and out came an ex cathedra pronouncement:

The Catholics have the Pope, the Protestants have the Bible, and the feminists have Barbara Walters.

Damning enough, one might think, but Ted's gorge has only begun to rise. Barbara Walters is anti-child, anti-human, a "monster." She had, you see, declared on The View that being compelled to endure the "spectacle" of a mother nursing her child was "gross and disgusting." 

Monstrous, indeed. Except that Walters said no such thing. From the 7 June New York Daily News:

Walters said she felt awkward sitting with her hairdresser next to a woman who was breast feeding on an airplane.

"It made me very nervous," Walters said on the May 17 show. "She didn't cover the baby with a blanket. It made us uncomfortable."

Most pundits know the keen disappointment of being presented with a particularly outrageous comment, mentally constructing a "Why oh why?" around it, then discovering they've been had. This is not a sorrow that Citizen Byfield has suffered much, however, as he has always considered verification infra dig. Only "journalists" waste their time on that sort of thing. De l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace has always been his motto.

So on he blunders:

The image of the mother nursing the child is, surely, one of the primal positive symbols of humanity.

The mother gives herself to the child, and because she does this, the human race continues.

That has always been the message of the nursing mother, and it is an altogether satisfactory message. The normal male reaction to it is curious.

The female breast, when it is not serving this purpose, arouses in most of us an erotic response.

It is, literally, sexy.

But as soon as it is turned over to this other function, the whole erotic element vanishes, and another value replaces it.

It seems beautiful, but in a very different way.

But why is the female breast "sexy"? Because it is a sexual organ. Breast feeding is "literally" a sexual act. Beautiful, no doubt, but there are many beautiful or essential human functions that make us "uncomfortable" and are—or were—protected by taboo. As Mrs Patrick Campbell might have said, I don't mind where women breast feed, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.

Life is full of surprises, yet who would have foreseen Ted Byfield as a sexual revolutionary? Where's the Committee of Public Safety when we really need it?

Ted's view: A crime against humanity

On the stereo, Loudon Wainwright III, Unrequited, "Rufus Is A Tit Man":

For my lungs and my liver
I do definitely fear.
I like to suck on cigarettes
And drink the wine and beer.
The doctor says I'm oral
And I believe it's true.
Ah son, you look so satisfied
I envy you.

(Although, come to think of it, mother's milk doesn't seem to have helped poor Rufus much.)

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.35 a.m., 13 June 2005►

THE GOLDEN RULE

Steve Sailer has drawn attention to the work of scientist Kevin J McGraw, who has had a go at answering Freud’s question, "What do women want?" His answer:

In cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Miami, women don't go weak for sensitive, caring guys, no matter what anyone told you. Cash wins. As does the big luxury car; the expensive suits; the strong, handsome jaw line; the alpha personality.

The inclusion of the last two characteristics is a rather laboured attempt to drape female cupidity in the noble guise of "evolutionary psychology." (It’s good for the species, people!) If evpsych is correct, and women are "hardwired" to go weak for "alpha males," then wouldn’t we expect the often notoriously beta, even epsilon, male scions of wealthy families to strike out with the chicks? I think we know the answer to that question—it ain’t done with smoke and mirrors.

In their song, "Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls," Ron and Russell Mael of the ever-wonderful Sparks hit the nail on its ugly head and spare us the tautologies. Women prefer men with money to those that lack it. C’est tout. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As they walk down the street arm in arm, I see them and once again feel the need to ask myself the question, the question that has weighed heavily on me of late. How is it possible that a guy and a girl so dissimilar in physical appearance—there being such a disparity in how attractive each is—be nonetheless in what would appear to be some sort of relationship?

How do we explain this? An attraction of opposites? No, that theory has been refuted by many experts in the fields of human psychology. A much greater attraction seems to come from one more similar to oneself. Personality, perhaps? Without intending to sound judgmental, I would say that he doesn't look like what was once called a "live wire" or "the life of the party." He appears rather expressionless. His movements are stiff and even awkward. Perhaps he is a person of some intellect—an expert in science, the arts, political theory. No, I think not. See how well tailored his clothes are, how well cut his hair is.

I must confess to you, my listeners, that I have been a little less than honest in pretending I had no answers to my previous questions. You see, I lost someone very dear to me, someone very beautiful, to someone much like him.

Ah, you ask, surely there must have been other areas where you were deficient and he was not. No, I don't believe so. My shortcomings were of an economic nature. He was rich. I was not. You see, I underestimated the appeal to her of things—imported things on wheels, large things with manicured lawns and Olympic swimming pools, things to wear around her neck that would glisten in the night light. Things. Still, I am not bitter. Rather, I am an observer who saw first hand how life may not be fair. Would things have turned out differently between me and her had I moved up the corporate ladder quicker, been born of more noble stock or done better on one of our journeys to Las Vegas? Perhaps. In fact, I'm certain of it. Things would have turned out differently between me and her. I know this now. It ain't done with smoke and mirrors.

"Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls" comes from the latest Sparks album, Lil’ Beethoven. Chris Blackwell’s Palm Pictures has graciously posted MP3s of it here, but that doesn't absolve you from buying it. Or of buying the Live in Stockholm DVD, which presents a theatrical translation of this masterpiece and, as a bonus, includes performances of 15 Sparks favourites, including "The Number One Song in Heaven," "Talent Is An Asset," "When I Kiss You (I Hear Charlie Parker Playing)" and the immortal "This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us." (Metalheads take note: Dean Menta of Faith No More is the guitar player.)

Sparks hearkens back to those halcyon days of pop music when "smart" and "funny" were not synonyms for "failure." Aside from its satirical preoccupations, Lil’ Beethoven is a musical examination of the possibilities of the multilayered human voice, the same vein Brian Wilson mined in the Smile sessions. I cannot praise it highly enough.

In concert, "Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls" is illustrated with a delicious joke: tower of glower Ron Mael walking out with a leggy Swedish blonde, a screen capture of which follows below.

Ugly guy with beautiful girl: You always know what the story is

Kevin Michael Grace, 11.58 p.m., 11 June 2005►

POETRY CORNER

Ill Luck

So huge a burden to support
Your courage, Sisyphus, would ask;
Well though my heart attacks its task,
Yet Art is long and Time is short.

Far from the famed memorial arch
Towards a lonely grave I come.
My heart in its funereal march
Goes beating like a muffled drum.

—Yet many a gem lies hidden still
Of whom no pick-axe, spade, or drill
The lonely secrecy invades;

And many a flower, to heal regret,
Pours forth its fragrant secret yet
Amidst the solitary shades.

—Baudelaire, translated by Roy Campbell

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.37 p.m., 11 June 2005►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

I discussed this matter of the novelist's moral responsibility with George Dwyer in his Leeds bishopric. I was invited to a Yorkshire Post literary luncheon at which he said grace. George had written his master's thesis on Baudelaire and knew all about flowers of evil. Literature, even the kind celebrated at a literary luncheon, was an aspect of the fallen world and one of its tasks was to clarify the nature of the fall. Thoughtful readers of novels with criminal, or merely sinful, protagonists achieved catharsis through horror, setting themselves at a distance from their own sinful inheritance. As for thoughtless readers, there was no doing anything with them.. With the demented, literature could prime acts of evil, but that was not the fault of literature. The Bible had inspired a New York killer to sacrifice children to a satanic Jehovah; the murderer Haigh, who drank the blood of the women he slaughtered, was obsessed with the Eucharist. The guest of honour at this literary luncheon was C.P. Snow, whose wife Pamela Hansford Johnson was to write a book about the Moors Murders. The child-killer Brady confessed to having possibly been moved by his reading of the Marquis de Sade's Justine. Lady Snow said that if the life of one innocent child could be saved through the obliteration of the world's literature, then we should not hesitate to set fire to it. That was very much a non-Catholic view. George Dwyer knew we had to live with the Devil.
—Anthony Burgess, You've Had Your Time

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.32 p.m., 11 June 2005►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Bach and Mozart were wonderful, but after Beethoven, I felt, it was all on a downhill path.
—Tom Bethell

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.40 p.m., 10 June 2005►

FROM THE LEAGUE THAT IS BUSH

Who do you have to merge with around here to get a legit copy of a Conservative press release? They won't send them to me; I know because I asked and didn't get a reply.* A 9 June press release, ostensibly from MP Jason Kenney, assures us that the Gurmant Grewal tapes are now born-again pristine. For some reason, however, this good news is not archived on the Conservative Party website. Nor can it be found on Kenney's website. I found it, as did Buckets of Grewal, on the Neale News website.

The mysterious Conservative press release of 2 June was also "leaked" to Neale News in this manner. Kenney's press release is not on letterhead (neither was the 2 June release) but at least it does contain his name and telephone number, unlike 2 June, which is anonymous. 

What's going on here? Are there two classes of Conservative press releases: aboveground plain vanilla for hoi polloi and double-secret extra spicy for the chosen few? Can a communication not officially archived be considered an official communication at all? Is this the point?

I read of an upheaval in the Conservative flackery. Something tells me things are going to get worse before they get better. 

*Garry Breitkreuz's office sends me his releases, but they're good guys over there.

Kevin Michael Grace, 12.16 p.m., 10 June 2005►

MASTERS OF PROSE

Government no longer has a monopoly on the wait lists of the nation. What long lists they hath created by foot dragging, the private sector has a constitutional right to reduce through accelerated treatments driven by credit cards.

So decreed the Supreme Court in one of those seminal rulings guaranteed to reverberate decades into the future as Canada's most sacred birthright gets an overhaul.

One chemical salesman with a bad hip has cleared the way for private insurance companies to invade Quebec, offering coverage for diagnosis, treatment and surgery wherever there's a buck to be made from a queue-jumping service.

And this much is clear: What's constitutionally okey-doke in Quebec is just a few legal baby steps from getting the green light across Canada...

This bare-majority ruling dovetails with the poll-proven majority view of Canadians that they should have the right to use their own resources to buy relief from the fear and agony of languishing on a list until a hospital bed finally opens up.

The government has only itself to blame. After Paul Martin's debilitating cuts to provincial health care transfers 10 years ago, provincial health delivery went into a spiral it cannot escape now with Baby Boomers starting to strain the system.

And while the system bled nurses and doctors, Liberal prime ministers allowed the thin edge of the two-tiered wedge to splinter into increasingly accessible private-care alternatives.
—Don Martin, National Post, 10 June 2005

Kevin Michael Grace, 10.28 a.m., 10 June 2005►

NEVER MIND THE WHY AND WHEREFORE

One day healthcare competition will be legalized. It will happen quickly, and shortly thereafter Canadians will wonder what all the fuss was about. If we’re lucky, it will happen before every provincial government is bankrupted.
—The Ambler, 11 May 2004

We're not going to have a two-tier healthcare system in this country. Nobody wants that.
—Paul Martin, 9 June 2005

I do. And I'm not alone. According to a June 2004 Léger Marketing poll, a majority of Canadians agrees with me. And now the Supreme Court of Canada has spoken—single-payer medicare violates the Quebec Charter of Rights. I had never heard of this document before, and it is obviously nugatory, as no provincial parliament can bind its successors, but never mind that. The high priests of the mystery religion that is our Canadian Charter of Rights have worked their oracle and ruled against communism. Oh, happy day!

Happy, that is, unless you are rentier who lives off communism or a politician who sucks up to the rentiers. And that's just about everybody I've heard today, barring Mario Dumont, who said, "It's a victory for those who want the freedom to choose a system that works." God bless you, Mario. It's a shame the ADQ isn't a national party. As noted above, Prime Minister Martin has donned the mantle of King Canute. Conservative leader Stephen Harper was MIA, but his deputy, Peter MacKay, squealed that Canada might soon have a "10-tier" medicare system. You mean as our Constitution mandates? Oh dear, oh dear, we can't have that. It would be anarchy, anarchy I tell you. Imagine if medical care were sold in the marketplace, if it were treated as just another luxury, like food and shelter and energy?

No, it doesn't bear thinking about. Or so Stephen Harper declared two months ago.

Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the right-of-centre Fraser Institute, Harper said a plan to gut medicare, floated recently by former Reform party leader Preston Manning and former Ontario premier Mike Harris, was both naïve and misguided.

Manning and Harris say the federal government should kill the Canada Health Act, the federal law governing medicare, and withdraw almost completely from the health field.

"I could not imagine a proposal that's more of a non-starter than that one," Harper said yesterday.

He acknowledged that free marketeers in the mainly business audience might not like his new position on healthcare, but said that political realism demanded it.

"There is a consensus across Canadian society that those [free-market] norms should not dominate in the provision of health-care services."

And, he said, Canadians support medicare because it works for them.

"I will never compromise public health insurance in the country because it is the only system that most Canadian families, including my own family, have ever used."

I know why the caged bird sings. Because he's Canadian.

The political reality that Harper invoked in April to justify his support for communist medicine no longer exists. Public health insurance as we have known it has been "compromised" by the Supreme Court, which has given us permission to be free, to leave Cuba and North Korea behind and join the rest of the world. As a bonus, we can save the provinces from bankruptcy. The question is, Mr Harper, are you willing to flee your cage?

Kevin Michael Grace, 7.51 p.m., 9 June 2005►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

There is a famous Swiss story about a depressed man who goes to see the doctor.

"Doctor," says the man. "I am miserable. Everything is desperate, and nothing I do seems to make it better. Please help me."

"You're in luck," says the doctor. "The great clown Grock is in town. Go and see him perform. He's so funny! He could cheer anybody up, however low they're feeling."

The man looks infinitely sad. "But doctor," he says. "I am Grock."
—Andy Miller, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.34 a.m., 9 June 2005►

THAT WAS IN ANOTHER COUNTRY: AND BESIDES, THE WENCH IS DEAD

Colby Cosh considers risible my selection of Richard Hell for the prestigious Thought For The Day™ slot:

When Richard Hell says "I'm as nihilist as the next guy," it's not a "thought for the day," but an "understatement for the ages," innit? Who exactly is the "next guy" here—Dylan Klebold? Don't people draw Richard Hell to convey the concept "nihilist" when they play Pictionary? Isn't this like Paul Lynde describing himself as "somewhat camp"?

"I'm as _______ as the next guy" is a well-known trope. I think Hell was making a joke. Anyway, I never thought he was a nihilist. If you can cite a better example of bruised romanticism in popular music than "Love Comes In Spurts," please share it with the rest of the class. In the event, Hell's comparison of Scorsese with Shakespeare betrays both unusual insight and high moral seriousness. Which is why I quoted it.

BTW, you might think twice about condemning a man for a T-shirt he wore when he was 25. I may have to dig out my snaps of CJC in Judas Priest livery. 

Hell (right) and friend, 1982: Insert obligatory
'Poor Yorick' joke here (pic by Laura Levine)

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.24 a.m., 8 June 2005►

COUNTDOWN TO IMMOLATION

A few days ago I had a long conversation with well-known Western Canadian activist of unimpeachable integrity, a fellow I have known since 1992. Mostly I listened, and he ranted. Canada was no longer a democracy, he told me. The Liberals must be brought down. By any means necessary. If this means working with "the Devil," he said, so be it. Yes, we were talking about Gurmant Grewal.

One does get weary of being accused of trading in moral equivalency. My activist friend berated me hotly for harping on the Conservative mote while ignoring the Liberal beam. I responded, as politely as I could, that I didn't need (or appreciate) any lectures on Liberal perfidy. My record in this regard speaks for itself. Even so, said my friend, it's well past time all you fair-weather friends in the media got behind Stephen Harper and his party.

Bollocks to that. If the Conservatives or any other party want my services as a propagandist, they can make me an offer, and I might consider it. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. I had hoped the Canadian "Right" had put aside Pecksniffery when it put paid to Preston Manning. No such luck. One gets especially weary of being told that "Everybody's doing it" is not a good excuse. It's a perfectly good excuse, if the "it" in question is blameless. There is nothing wrong with inducing MPs to cross the floor or step aside with the promise of future preferment. This is called "patronage," and, yes, everybody does it. People do not enter politics because they want to "make the world a better place" or whatever; they enter politics because they want to get ahead.

The Conservative Party is not a crusade. It is a party conceived in deceit and betrayal, midwifed by oligarchy, committed to binning every policy that once distinguished Reform from the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives. Stephen Harper's "hidden agenda" is no agenda at all; it is a praxis: By any means necessary. You thought we stood for something, did you? Oh, grow up.

I strongly recommend that readers head over to a site called Buckets of Grewal. (Thanks to Blank Out Times for the heads up.) Therein you will find proof that Grewal's tapes have been edited repeatedly in order to exculpate Gurmant Grewal and incriminate Tim Murphy, Ujjal Dosanjh, Joe Volpe and Paul Martin. Such is the extent of the editing that the result can be described only as fraud.

And Stephen Harper and his minions are up to their necks in it. Check out this slideshow of some of the excisions. It is now glaringly obvious that the excuse given by the Conservative Party for the "glitches" in the tapes is not physically possible. Anyone who has ever made CDs knows that files are often truncated, but these truncations are caused by corrupt source materials—the computer attempts repeatedly to write the corrupted file to the disc, gives up, then moves on to the next file in the chain. What the computer does not do is repeatedly stop and restart the transfer, conveniently omitting embarrassing material. The Conservative press release was not merely a pons asinorum; it was another fraud. No wonder they buried it.

The Conservatives, presumably the Official Opposition Leader's Office, had possession of the Grewal tapes for two weeks before various versions of them began to be released. It is now indisputable that the Conservatives connived in the tampering of the tapes or engaged in a cover up of the tampering or both.  

Gurmant Grewal was sent to Coventry yesterday, i.e., took "stress leave." (And did he present a note from a physician, I wonder.) Effectively—and this has been mentioned nowhere else that I know of—he accepted temporary suspension, with pay, from the Conservative caucus. Apparently Harper believes this—combined with the Ethics Commissioner's investigation—will silence discussion of his little local difficulty. Sorry, chaps, can't discuss it. Ongoing investigation, you know.

It's not going to work. Conservative MPs, including Peter MacKay, are putting as much daylight between themselves and Grewal as they can. Grewal, as Saturday's nervous collapse at Vancouver Airport testifies, has added desperation and madness to his previously existing character set of ignorance, arrogance, stupidity, vanity and venality. It is a near certainty he will shortly shop Harper just as he shopped Murphy and Dosanjh.

Shortly, too, the Press Gallery will wake from its slumber and ask Stephen Harper some pertinent questions:

1. What was the provenance of the Grewal tapes for the fortnight after his May 18 press conference?

2. Who tampered with the tapes?

3. Who authorized the release of the tampered tapes?

4. Who authorized the June 2 press release?

5. And that old Watergate favourite: What did Stephen Harper know, and when did he know it?

I was wrong about the Grewal affair. It is not a "skit." It has become a conflagration that will consume Stephen Harper and doom any chance the Conservatives had of ousting Paul Martin. So my question for my Western Canadian activist friend (and all the other members of the Our Stephen Harper Fan Club) is this: How do you like your cloven-hoofed boy now?

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.55 p.m., 7 June 2005►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Gangs of New York itself, though I never lost interest, is thin. Scorsese's view is just too narrow. It's a kind of macho Catholic fatalism (even God is killed by humans, one must realize...) which seems to say that life is meaningless so the only thing worth doing is to violently compete with other men until you are eventually beaten (die). It seems to say that all there is in life is a kind of personal and clan honor as exhibited by the high style with which one is physically trying to defeat the opposing clans/men, which clans/men are actually exactly like you, but that doesn't matter because the whole point is just to fight "honourably" to the death because life is meaningless. I like action movies and I'm as nihilist as the next guy but I get tired of this single note. It does make me feel like getting up and going out of the theater and killing someone, but as I say I'm somewhat susceptible to the mind-set. War is a drug. 

I don't get catharsis from Scorsese's movies though. Julie Taymor's version of Shakespeare's Titus was for me a prime example of the cleansing possibilities of relentless extreme violence in a movie. That movie never let up in its vicious bloodiness, it completely put you through the wringer, and it too was all about clan and revenge and competing for power, but you came out of it feeling cleansed rather than having murderous urges kicked up. You come out cleaner than you went in because Shakespeare is granting violent drives as inevitable and then letting you release them privately in the theater; he's not upholding them as the underlying and overriding ultimate reality of human life
—Richard Hell

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.39 a.m., 7 June 2005►

ONCE A FLACK, ALWAYS A FLACK

No writ yet from battling barrister Ersatz Brilliantine. I suppose I'll just have to wait my turn, as there are hundreds before me. (More on the hundreds soon.) One tends to forget just how busy Ersatz is. Such energy he has! Such staggering credentials! Publishing, punditry, moral posturing! As for researching, fact checking, thinking, they're clearly surplus to requirements. 

Ersatz routinely accuses the CBC of bias against his beloved Reform/Alliance/Conservative Party. Everyone in the business knows that CTV is far more hostile to the Canadian "Right" than the national broadcaster, but CTV wouldn't do as a straw man for two reasons. 1. It is privately owned. And 2. Its owners employ Ersatz. While it would be foolish to deny that the CBC displays a fairly consistent Left-Liberal bias, it also true that the CBC has been much fairer to Ersatz than he has been to the CBC.

Would Ersatz care to be reminded now that two years ago he proved unable to read a simple press release from Hollinger International? That as a result he falsely accused the CBC of inventing charges against Conrad Black, charges to which he'd already copped? That he concluded "conservative hero" Black was guilty of nothing more than a "clerical error"?

In today's Calgary Sun column on Gurmant Grewal, Ersatz is worse than merely lazy. He twists the truth until it begs for mercy. This is how he characterizes the allegations the Grewal tapes have been fiddled with: 

Yet this [the alleged ethical failures of the Liberals] is balanced out, we're told by the CBC, by the fact that CD versions of the tapes were recorded in a manner that has several clear interruptions.

Major, substantial moral errors—no, not errors, for that implies mere sloppiness; these are acts of commission, deliberate disreputable acts—on behalf of the government, using public trusts and powers, are sawed off against minor tactical errors and quirks by an amateurish opposition backbencher.

The CBC said no such thing, and Ersatz knows it. Ersatz has taken his—or rather his party's—lame explanation for the "glitches" in the tapes, bound it with tortured English and forced it into the CBC's mouth. But why just the CBC? The Liberal Party, CFRA Radio, the Canadian Press, the Globe and Mail and the Asper family's CanWest News have all concluded, after examinations by audio experts, that the tapes have very likely been crudely edited. 

Once a flack, always a flack. And once a demagogue, always a demagogue:

It is the same amoral approach the media took...during the Cold War: That the USSR and the West were equally guilty of crimes against humanity. How many times did the CBC repeat the Soviet line that U.S. treatment of Blacks was morally equivalent to Stalin's gulags?

You asking me, Ersatz? How many times? Um, er, hang on a minute, I'm thinking, OK, how about this: None. 

The Soviet line? As in, sure, we killed millions, but American Negroes have separate drinking fountains? You know, Ersatz, I'm a little surprised. I always figured you were a slapdash opportunist and economical with the actualité, but I never thought—until now, that is—that you were stupid. 

Kevin Michael Grace, 4.02 p.m., 6 June 2005►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

If wine disappeared from human production, I believe there would be, in the health and intellect of the planet, a void, a deficiency far more terrible than all the excesses and deviations for which wine is made responsible.
—Charles Baudelaire

Kevin Michael Grace, 12.13 p.m., 5 June 2005►

BOMBIN' THE N

This book tag business has finally caught up with me, as I feared it would. I was going to ignore it, but Jay Currie asked me, and he's a hard man to refuse. So,

How Many Books Do I Own?

About a thousand now. I have owned many thousands of books over the years and a decade ago was forced to break up an excellent library collected with great care and at great expense. But I've blubbed about that before. Free advice: bibliolatry and relocations don't mix.

I've noticed that book collecting tends to inspire mystification and downright hostility in others. Favourite inane question: "You read them all?" Translation: You pretentious wanker. No, but I've read many books that are not here.

What Was The Last Book I Bought?

Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writing by Evelyn Waugh. All of it, including the stuff that's been out of print for yonks, in one handsome volume from those fine folks at Everyman's Library, a snip at $25 (more than slightly higher in Canada).

What Was The Last Book I Read?

Chaucer, 1340-1400: The Life and Times of the First English Poet by Richard West. West taught me two things I didn't know—the Great Plague of the 14th century did not leave Europe "bummed out" and neither did the Spanish Flu of 1919. Which left me thinking, when and why did we all become infected with self-consciousness? And it reminded me of one thing I knew already—Barbara Tuchman is not to be trusted.

Five Books That Mean A Lot to Me

Here are seven:

The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz. I could name any number of Szasz's works, but this is the one that made him famous. Szasz taught me that much (most, actually) of what passes for "reason" or "science" today is really perverted theology. Free advice: Not hated enough? Want to bring others to the shouting stage in record time? Quote Szasz.

Liturgical Revolution by Michael Davies. In three volumes: 1. Cranmer's Godly Order. 2. Pope John's Council. 3. Pope Paul's New Mass. Davies taught me that the Second Vatican Council was greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, greater even than the First World War. And he introduced me to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the greatest prelate since St Athanasius.

The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom by James Burnham. Burnham taught me that everything I thought I knew about politics was wrong, that anyone who trusts in Stephen Harper or any other "lion" wants his head examined. More important, he taught me why. Hint: Who whom?

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Paradise.

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. Inferno.

When I Whistle by Shusaku Endo. A Japanese Orpheus and Eurydice. It made me cry.

A Bed of Flowers by Auberon Waugh. The genocide of the Biafrans has no memorial that I know of, so this little novel will have to do. ("Never again!" eh? Pull the other one.) Waugh observed at close hand the deliberate starvation of two million Africans as the governments of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union cheered on their killers while making pious noises against "tribalism." (The late, sainted Canadian humanist Pierre Trudeau made a famous "joke" about it.) In response, Waugh wrote this parody of As You Like It: a meditation on power, wealth and the labour theory of value. Actually, it's about a bunch of hippies who move to the West Country in search of the Holy Grail. They find it, too.

Tag Five More

Nunc dimittis servum tuum.

Kevin Michael Grace, 5.45 a.m., 4 June 2005►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY (SPECIAL PERSONAL MANIFESTO EDITION)

There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible.
—Auberon Waugh

Kevin Michael Grace, 3.57 a.m., 4 June 2005►

EZRA SUE, EZRA SUE, EZRA, EZRA, EZRA, EZRA, EZRA SUE

From Eclectica, June 11, 2001:

THOSE ALLIANCE LAWSUITS IN FULL

From our legal correspondent

Chuck Strahl is suing Elections Canada for its refusal to register Alliance Classic as the name of his new party.

Martin Handford, creator of Where's Waldo?, is suing a numbered Alberta company for its unauthorized Where's Stockwell? game.

Poseidon and Neptune, the Greek and Roman gods of the sea, are suing author Tom Flanagan and Stoddart Publishing over the book Waiting for the Wave. In a joint press release, the deities claim, "Some wave! A damp squib, more like it."

Dennis Matkosky, Michael Sembello, Universal Music and Paramount Pictures are suing Ezra Levant. They claim Mr Levant's May 17 statement, "I'm an Alliance maniac," will damage sales of the upcoming DVD release of Flashdance and of the original soundtrack album.

Ezra Levant is suing Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, the estate of the late John Bonham and Atlantic Records for defamation. Mr Levant asserts that Led Zeppelin's song "Communication Breakdown" ("Communication breakdown/It's always the same/I'm having a nervous breakdown/Drive me insane!") implies he acted recklessly and incompetently as Canadian Alliance communications director.

Ezra Levant is suing Elektra/Asylum Records and the members of the band Better Than Ezra. The statement of claim demands the band change its name to Stockaholic!, or alternately, the Ezra Levant Blues Implosion.

Kevin Michael Grace, 3.38 p.m., 3 June 2005►

LIBEL CHILL

Ezra Levant has responded to my Calgary Southwest post by accusing me of deliberate and malicious falsehood. "Defamation," to be precise, and he suggests rather heavily that unless I amend the post I will face legal unpleasantness. He also suggests I am an anti-Semite.

I am not going to amend the post because it is not defamatory. Levant is a lawyer, and he should know better. I would suggest he calm down and read my final paragraph again. 

Here is Levant's email, complete and unedited:

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ezra Levant" <ezra@westernstandard.ca>
To: <kevin_grace@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 11:16 AM
Subject: Ezra to Kevin

Dear Kevin,

I have just read your website. Your analogy between me and Gurmant Grewal is absurd in every regard. In the case of the Calgary Southwest byelection, neither Stephen Harper nor I held any public office at the time, nor had access to any public funds, nor could we participate in any Parliamentary vote or other government decision. However, under election law, as party leader, Harper legally held unfettered discretion to approve or disapprove of my status as a Canadian Alliance candidate.

When Harper called on me to step aside, I asked him if he would refuse to sign my nomination papers, as was his right under the law. He said he would not refuse; I then told him I would continue to be the candidate. After several days of gauging public response, both nationally and locally from my own team of supporters, I unilaterally decided to step aside -- an announcement, made by press release, that caught Harper by surprise. (He had begun giving media interviews in which he accepted that I would be the candidate in the riding.)

I handed over to Harper's campaign all of the assets of my campaign, including tens of thousands of dollars worth of voter data, a pre-paid 6,000-square-foot office, the human resource assets of my team, pre-paid billboard space, etc. Since some of those assets were paid for by me personally, I asked to be reimbursed for them. I was not.

When I stepped aside as the candidate my two remaining fundraising dinners were cancelled. This left me with a five-figure campaign debt, paid off through a public fundraising dinner later that summer (for which no tax receipts were issued.)

You are smart enough to know the difference between what happened in Calgary Southwest and what is happening in Ottawa today. Even if your innuendos about pay-offs were true, which they are not, the differences would still be so fundamental as to reveal any comparison by you as a clear swipe at my reputation. That's called defamation.

Given that there was no pay-off whatsoever, not even a payment for actual assets and leases given for free to the party from me, I trust that you will amend your website post accordingly.

I can't help but note that, when you were seeking a job from me as the Western Standard's TV critic, you didn't hesitate to telephone me directly and privately. It is no surprise to me that when you are taking a defamatory swipe at me, that you know is logically flawed (and now you know it is factually flawedm [sic] too), you ambush me on your website.

Classy, as always. At least you managed to avoid the Jewish angle.

Yours truly,
Ezra Levant
Publisher, Western Standard

As to the question of malice, Ezra Levant was my friend for several years. I was the first producer to give him a radio interview, and I did him other favours. Despite this, Levant waged a protracted campaign in 2000 to destroy my personal and professional reputation by claiming I had repeatedly inserted anti-Semitic comments in Alberta Report, going so far as to suggest I attacked Dr. Henry Morgentaler primarily because he was Jewish. Intense pressure was applied on Levant's behalf against Link and Ted Byfield. To their credit, they refused to sack me or to run the illiterate, inaccurate and, dare I say, "defamatory" screed Levant had composed against me. In fact, no newspaper in Canada would touch it. Finally, however, he found a sympathetic ear in Melissa Radler, daughter of David Radler and a reporter for a Jewish newspaper in New York City.

I had the perfect opportunity to have my revenge on Levant the next year, during his brief but tumultuous tenure as "Stockaholic" communications director for the Alliance Party. In my capacity as political correspondent of The Report, I interviewed Levant many times, and during those conversations he was wont to ask, "I've forgotten; are we on the record or not?" But a concern for Levant's obvious vulnerability—as well as simple Christian forgiveness—precluded vengeance.

Levant will remember that I gave a rave review to his Kyoto tome (praise he quoted on his website, despite my putative anti-Semitism). He will remember that I greeted with alacrity his decision to start the Western Standard. And he will surely remember that I authorized him to examine and then keep the detailed dossier I had compiled from many sources of the editorial, subscription and financial structure of The Report. Almost none of this information was in the public domain, and much was secret, so I'm certain Levant found it useful. 

And so, yes, I did grovel before Levant two years ago and ask for a job. I was desperate and thought that perhaps Levant would be as willing to forgive as I had been. 

Levant threatens to sue a lot of people. As I've mentioned before, I can't abide bullies, so Levant will get no corrections or apologies from me. Litigate and be damned! But before you do, Ezra, ponder the words of Stephen Harper: 

In this business, you are presumably on the public record at all times.

I may be old, but my memory is sharp.

Two-fisted Ezra Levant:
Sue in haste, repent at leisure

Kevin Michael Grace, 1.25 p.m., 3 June 2005►

WAS THERE A DEAL IN CALGARY SOUTHWEST?

Audio experts hired by Canadian Press, the CBC and CanWest News have concluded it seems likely that portions of the Gurmant Grewal tapes were edited. Two audio engineers at CFRA Radio came to the same conclusion. Of course this doesn't constitute proof of Ujjal Dosanjh's allegation that the tapes were tampered with, but whatever credibility Grewal had left is pretty much gone. As Paul Wells asks, "Who still thinks it was brilliant tactics for the Conservatives to withhold the taped evidence from police for 13 days?"

The Conservative Party responded to the tampering issue with a press release and a re-release of the "corrected" tapes. Too bad they didn't issue this press release to their own website. Apparently the Harper Conservatives evaluate access to information requests on a "need-to-know basis." In the event, their explanation for the anomalies in the tapes is difficult to understand and inherently dubious, not to say "Nixonian."

It occurs to me that Stephen Harper has personal experience of a situation not terribly removed from the Grewal and Stronach cases. Three years ago, Ezra Levant (now publisher of the Western Standard) was persuaded to withdraw his nomination as Canadian Alliance candidate in Calgary Southwest so that newly-elected Alliance leader Harper could run in his stead. Levant had invested much of himself and others, financially and otherwise, in securing the nomination and advertising his candidacy. The affair precipitated much bitterness. (Scroll down from here to read my account for The Report.)

Joe Paraskevas reported in the Calgary Herald, 20 April 2002:

Levant, who ran three major fundraising events since last fall, reportedly spent up to $200,000 to raise his profile in Calgary Southwest. He then reportedly asked for compensation after reluctantly stepping aside for Harper, the new party leader, late last month.

Asked by reporters whether he would reimburse Levant, Harper said he was waiting to see the former party worker's expense reports.

But the Alliance's executive director Cyril McFate, across whose desk a request for reimbursement would come, later said he has not received a formal such request from Levant.

Five questions for Messrs Harper and Levant:

1. Did Levant (or anyone associated with his campaign) request compensation?

2. If so, did Levant (or anyone associated with his campaign) raise the issue before or after he stepped aside?

3. Did Harper, his party, staffers or anyone affiliated with them offer any assurance to Levant before he stepped aside that he would be "looked after," "taken care of," etc.?

4. Was Levant compensated?

5. If so, how much, and who or what supplied the compensation?

Just so there is no ambiguity: I don't believe it would have been illegal, unethical or immoral for the Alliance to have made a deal with Levant. And I don't know whether any deal was made. But I think we should be told.

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.39 a.m., 3 June 2005►

CHURCH CALENDAR

(The following first appeared 3 June 2004)

Today is the feast of Saint Kevin of Glendalough, patron saint of Dublin. A monk and a hermit, he was said to have lived to the great age of 120. He is also said to have been much loved by animals and much harassed by women. He is often represented holding a blackbird. Although one of the most famo