Chinese bribing foreign VIPs? Who knew?

Walt cannot resist publishing remarks attributed to a Memeber of the Parliament of Canada -- one of the old Reform group that fell off the turnip truck in 1997 and has since been re-elected as a Conservative.

Calgary member Rob Anders, still scraping the shit off his cowboy boots, says some of his colleagues (but not himself of course) have been set up by seductive Chinese spies, lavished with gifts of alcohol and offered business deals which were too good to be true. Can you imagine?

Mr. Anders is quoted in today's Toronto Sun as saying many MPs have told him that on their trips to China they’ve been approached by stunning women half their age “offering them to go out dancing, go to dinner, get a massage.” Gosh. Who'da thunk it? Is there even one businessman who hasn't been similarly propositioned on a visit to China?

“I know MPs who have taken up those offers", Mr. Anders warns. "They have to understand that when they are being done [sic], they are probably being taped [and] those tapes can, and will, be used.” Sold to opposition candidates, perhaps!

Mr. Anders was very discreet, refusing to name names. “My purpose in doing this is not to end colleagues’ political careers,” he said. “My purpose is to educated [sic] them so they are better aware of how they can be manipulated.”

Mr. Anders told the QMI agency he has personally witnessed the sons of two different MPs being seduced by women far too attractive to be interested in these “average looking” guys, including a 14-year-old, in Taiwan. [Oh. That would be the Republic of China, then -- not to be confused with the People's Republic of China except in official government policies. ed.]

“There is no way that any of those people could have been anything other than influence peddling agents,” he said. “That person is up to something when they knock on your door, minutes after your arrival in a foreign hotel offering themselves to you.”

With a brilliant analytical mind like that, Mr. Anders should be put in charge of Canada's spy agency! In fact, he said he’s discussed the matter with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service who seemed very interested and wrote down the girls' names and phone numbers.

Footnote: The picture of Mr. Anders was obviously taken long ago, before Canada got its own flag. He may have aged a little since then, but it appears he hasn't learned much.

Prez charms ladeez, slags media

"No kidding, ladies... it's this long!"

President Barry O'Bama is referring, of course, to the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. Since the waters started to get a tad over-lubricated, Mr. O has been keeping rather a low profile, lest he get tarred with the BP brush, so to speak. However, he surfaced earlier this week on The View, which seems to be some sort of hen party and gab fest.

Walt doesn't watch The View. However, I'm told that the celebrity ladies' usual sober and thoughtful analysis of current events gave way to a kind of mass adulation. Here we see the prez flanked by the last four voters who still approve of the way he's handling the crisis.

For his part, Mr. O'Bama spent his time dissing the media for raising "phony controversies" and making him look bad. Said the prez, "If we get our mojo back over the next several months, then I am absolutely confident that we are going to be doing terrific." [Walt didn't make this up. I checked. ed.]

It's easy enough to blame the media for your poor approval ratings and poor performance when the media isn't there to ask any pointed (or racist) questions.

By "racist", Walt means any question or remark which would cast doubt on the abilities or policies of the President. In today's America, that's what racism is -- not liking Obama. No racism on The View though!

Deadliest month yet

Today is the second-last day of July. Barring any bad news today or tomorrow, the death toll of American troops killed in Afghanistan will stand at 63. That surpasses last month's total of 60, making this month the deadliest so far in the almost nine years of the war.

No-one is bothering to keep an accurate count of Afghans who have been killed. It's not like in Apocalypse Now where "death cards" are being scattered on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters. Walt suspects they're taking fewer casualties than we are. One (1) was killed yesterday in Zabul province so that would make the score 4 for them and just one for us.

Civilians, though, are another matter. Also yesterday, four Afghan civilians were killed and three were injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, also in Zabul. It was when police arrived at the scene that the Taliban started shooting.

Meanwhile, in Kandahar, where Canadians are doing most of the fighting, a woman and child were killed and another child was wounded when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded. The intended victim was a politician. The woman and children were innocent bystanders, the kind of people we're there to protect.

Such is the war in Afghanistan, yet we soldier on, if you'll forgive the pun. Don't you wonder why?

Hijab, niqab, burqa -- what's the difference?

Ladies (?) wearing burqas

While visiting a tourist hotspot earlier this summer, Walt and the Mrs noticed some people covered in cloth from head to toe, in spite of 90-degree heat.

"What are they?" Mrs Walt wanted to know, "and why are they wearing those sheets?"

Walt replied that they were most likely strict Muslim women and that they were "those sheets" as a religious observance. I said "most likely" because you can't tell if they're women or men, which is one of the reasons for demands to ban the wearing of such dress -- to avoid terrorists disguising themselves and then wreaking havoc.

The dress in question is called the burqa, and for those who have always wanted to know the difference between the burqa, the niqab and the hijab, Walt will now explain.

The burqa, shown above, is the most concealing of all Islamic veils. It covers the entire body from head to toe, with just a small piece of mesh covering the eyes allowing the wearer to see out, as if through a cage.

The niqab is a veil for the face that leaves the eyes uncovered. It is commonly worn in much of the Middle East, and increasingly in Europe and North America as the number of Muslims here keeps growing. Recent demands that Muslim ladies remove the veil for identification purposes, for instance when voting or registering for something, have been called "racist" and "Islamophobic" by the usual gang of leftist human rights whiners.

The hijab is a square scarf covering head and neck, so as to conceal the hair but not the face. It is the most common style worn by Muslim women in the West.

Are the burqa and its milder variants symbols of devotion to Islam or symbols of the oppression of women? Does it matter? If someone wants to wear a particular uniform or costume or dress, a true libertarian would say, let them.

But when the manner of dress conflicts with the values of mainstream society, perhaps that's another matter. If someone feels like parading down the street naked, we have laws that say such undress is unacceptable.

What if someone wants to wear something which conceals their identity? Increasingly numbers of Europeans and North Americans feel this is also unacceptable.

France has banned the wearing of burqas in public. Today comes news that 54% of Canadians feel Canada should follow France's lead. A Leger Marketing online poll found anti-burqa sentiment highest in Quebec (73%) and the East (over 50% in Ontario and the Atlantic), and lowest (39%) in --you guessed it -- British Columbia.

UPDATE September 2013: If you're reading this because of the fuss about Québec's proposed Charter of Values, please read our comments "Multiculti types horrified as Charter of Québec Values bans religious headgear" and "What Québec's new Charter of Values will and will not do".

And don't be afraid to join the debate. We have a feeling that the Charter's ban on religious headgear has a lot of silent support, not just in Québec where it's clearly popular, but in the rest of Canada and other countries where people are sick of having to accommodate themselves to certain "minorities".

I'll tell you what you can do with it!

Did you notice the little row of icons [radio buttons, surely? ed.] at the bottom of the posts. This is a new feature on Blogger and enables you to share Walt's rants in five ways. From left to right...

You can e-mail the post. You can blog it. (I guess that means putting it in your own blog.) You can twitter it. You can share it on Facebook. Or you can share it on Google Buzz.

Why should you do this? Not to support Walt. Since I don't allow advertising, I don't get a red cent (or a non-communist cent) no matter how many hits my blog gets.

But I do like to think that every now and then something I say will make readers think about alternatives to the prevailing orthodoxy. The whole point of the blogosphere is to get people talking.

So, when you say to yourself "Hey, good point!", don't keep it to yourself. Share it!

Lettuce alone

Meet Amina Tarek. She's the one on the right, dressed in a costume stitched together out of ... errr ... lettuce leaves. She is promoting the biodegradable attire as an ecologically sound alternative to the Muslim burqa.

An added bonus, according to Ms Tarek, is that "if you get hungry and can't find a snack, you can always nibble on your sleeve". The theme of the campaign, according to the placard is "Let vegetarianism grow on you."

OK, seriously, Ms. Tarek is actually leading a PETA protest hoping to persuade Middle Eastern meat lovers to go vegetarian. Although her costume drew a lot of attention, police were not amused and officers arrested her and a colleague for not having obtained permission for their little demonstration.

She was released a little later, after Jordanian police realized the protest was about animal rights, not human rights. For her part, Ms. Tarek promised to "turn over a new leaf".

Are we liberal, conservative...or what?

Continuing with the theme of government intervention in our lives (see preceding post) let's turn to David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, July 19th.

Mr. Brooks poses the question of whether the politics of our time is predominantly liberal or conservative. His answer: neither. Read on.

When historians look back on this period, they will see it as another progressive era. It is not a liberal era — when government intervenes to seize wealth and power and distribute it to the have-nots. It’s not a conservative era, when the governing class concedes that the world is too complicated to be managed from the center. It’s a progressive era, based on the faith in government experts and their ability to use social science analysis to manage complex systems.

This progressive era is being promulgated without much popular support. [My emphasis. Walt.] It’s being led by a large class of educated professionals, who have been trained to do technocratic analysis, who believe that more analysis and rule-writing is the solution to social breakdowns, and who have constructed ever-expanding networks of offices, schools and contracts.

Already this effort is generating a fierce, almost culture-war-style backlash. It is generating a backlash among people who do not have faith in Washington, who do not have faith that trained experts have superior abilities to organize society, who do not believe national rules can successfully contend with the intricacies of local contexts and cultures.

The "backlash" of which Mr. Brooks speaks is the Tea Party movement, which to my mind is nothing more or less than the latest expression of libertarianism.

Sadly, those who espouse and preach libertarianism are now demonized as being "anti-progressive". It is implied, if not stated outright, by the liberal media that we who would reduce the intrusion of government in our lives are hopeless curmudgeons.

We are intent, the enlightened and progressive "thinkers" say, on returning the West to the dark ages, before we had the benefits of globalization, multiculturalism, secular humanism and all the other universally accepted ideologies unleashed on us in the hippy-dippy 60s. (See Walt, passim.)

To all the libertarians and curmudgeons out there, Walt says, wear your epithet proudly and proclaim your contempt for "progress" loudly. I'm pullin' for ya.