Mon, Nov 29/04
Briefly…

The fits-and-starts posting is due to moving house, my ftp server being down for the entire weekend, and the fact that Bell/Sympatico's unprecedented boobery has confined me to dialup internet for a week now. Good thing my rickety old Dell has a 56k modem buried in there somewhere. Apologies to those who visit here, whoever the hell they are. Please write <sniffle>.

To conclude today's posting fit, a few brief notes:

The whole thing was stupid, but this is funny
Bruce Garvey in Saturday's National Post (subscribers only, but not to worry — it's crap): "…the Sunday night primetime snore is about to anoint Pierre Elliott Trudeau as The Greatest Canadian. Take my word for it, it's a done deal that the so-called philosopher king will overtake Tommy Douglas…"

Whoops!

Zahra Kazemi, not long for the news
"An Iranian government spokesman has warned Canada's new ambassador will get into 'trouble' if he pursues the Zahra Kazemi case." Charming: the mob hit as diplomatic gambit. That's Iranian hospitality for you, I guess.

I am unclear as to why we are sending Gordon Venner or any ambassador to Tehran at all, having made exactly zero progress in finding justice for Kazemi and her family since we recalled Philip MacKinnon in July. Realistically, though, this was always something that was going to slowly fade into oblivion. The international community has a hard enough time dealing with Iran on issues of global importance; it's unreasonable to expect Ottawa to prick up Tehran's ears on a matter of, uh, non-global importance. It's tragic, but give it a year and it'll all be ancient history — does anyone remember Nguyen Thi Hiep?

This isn't lamb. It's a lamb.
Colby Cosh linked to this account (free subscription, which you should already have) of an expatriate American's disappointment with her stay in Canada. She is quite right that "there's nothing subtle" about the sort of anti-Americanism that one encounters on university campuses (where, as a medical sociologist, I am assuming this Nora Jacobson spends most of her days). In "subtle", I think her friends thought they had found a word that conveyed "cowardly, impotent, but also somehow honourable."

There is no such word, of course. Still, I am surprised that Jacobson sensed such open hostility. I suspect her mistake is that she hasn't been wrapping herself in the American flag before entering into polite discussions. In my experience, the casually anti-American Canadian turns into an apolitical pussycat at the first sight of a real live American citizen. "I dislike Americans," I can see this woman's purported friends saying to each other. "Nora's an American."

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