PROPER ENGLISH IS, LIKE, TOTALLY AWESOME

From: What is the most annoying phrase in the English language? (The Telegraph, February 23rd, 2007)

Here are many dozens of contributions (I almost wrote “literally dozens”) from Telegraph readers on the solecisms and popular gobbledegook that raise their blood pressures. Most are indeed abominations, but the more I read the more I cringed at recognizing my habitual reliance on no small number of them. It proves once again how it is nearly impossible to master this rich, vibrant language made for curmudgeons.

IT’S THE MAIN COURSE, NOT THE DESSERT

From: China's Premier says democracy up to 100 years away (Scott McDonald , Globe and Mail, February 27th, 2007)

Communist leaders have no plans to allow democracy in the near future because they must focus on economic development before political reform, China's No. 3 leader said in comments published Tuesday.

Democracy will emerge once a “mature socialist system” develops but that might not happen for up to 100 years, Premier Wen Jiabao wrote in an article in the People's Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper.

For now, China must focus on “sustained rapid growth of productive forces ... to finally secure fairness and social justice that lies within the essence of socialism,” Mr. Wen wrote.

The Premier said the country is “still far from advancing out of the primary stage of socialism. We must adhere to the party's basic guidelines of the primary stage of socialism for 100 years.”

Mr. Wen said China would develop its own democratic policies and that a socialist system was not contradictory to those policies.

“A highly developed democracy and a complete legal system are inherent requirements of the socialist system and important symbols of a mature socialist system,” Mr. Wen said.

It is a bit of a conservative trope that socialism was defeated with the fall of the Soviet Union and that the superiority of liberal democracies is now acknowledged by nearly everybody. This may prove to be naive in that it underestimates the resolve and ability of the left to re-invent itself and its rhetoric. Although almost nobody touts state ownership and direction of the economy anymore, there seems to be a growing belief in the progressive world that democracy, while highly desirable in theory, is at odds with other more urgent objectives like social justice, human rights, ecological balance and even growth. Leftist ideologues used to argue that marxist states were in fact more democratic than Western ones. Today, in the groupspeak of the left, democracy has replaced the withering away of the state as the apocalyptic dream autocrats promise is just around the corner to those they are crushing beneath their heels.

THE WILL TO DISBELIEVE

From: Scholars, clergymen deride Jesus documentary (Marshall Thompson, Globe and Mail, February 27th, 2007)

Archeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land have derided assertions in a new documentary produced by the Oscar-winning director James Cameron that contradict major Christian tenets.

The Lost Tomb of Christ argues that 10 ancient ossuaries –– small caskets used to store bones –– discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Discovery Channel.[...]

Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight.

“I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this,” Mr. Pfann said. “But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear.”

Which leads us to wonder whether, if religion has been implanted in our genes by evolution, the same must be true about scepticism.

WHEN WE URGED YOU TO EXPRESS YOURSELVES, WE MEANT ABOUT GEORGE W. BUSH

From: Parents defend son's speech on boredom (Melissa Leong, National Post, February 26th, 2007)

The parents of an 11-year-old Mississauga student are charging that school officials violated their son's right to freedom of speech after the boy was prohibited from reading aloud a dissertation about classroom boredom.

Frank and Donna Trimboli say they were upset when their youngest son, Gianmarco, returned home from St. Sebastian Catholic School about two weeks ago with news that his speech was "unacceptable and derogatory." The teacher and principal asked him to produce another for his Grade 6 class, Mr. Trimboli said.

"I was really upset. You're taking my son's voice out of his mouth," he said last night.

What a great slogan for a return to sanity in the classroom.

RATIONALIZED BIGOTRY

From: Charest backs 'no hijab' ruling in soccer (Graeme Hamilton, National Post, February 27th, 2007)

Quebec Premier Jean Charest yesterday supported a soccer referee's decision to order an 11-year-old player to remove her hijab, likening the incident to a game in his youth when he and his teammates were told to tuck in their jerseys.

"I see that as the application of a regulation by a sports federation that wants, for the practice of its sport, to see to it that all players can perform properly," Mr. Charest told reporters during a campaign stop yesterday. Debate over the "reasonable accommodation" of religious minorities in Quebec society has become an issue in the province.

On Sunday, Asmahan (Azzy) Mansour of an Ottawa girls team, the Nepean Hotspurs, was told to remove her hijab, the Islamic headscarf, when a referee judged that it presented a danger to her or her fellow players. Her coach protested and pulled his team from the indoor tournament in the Montreal suburb of Laval -- a move that four other Ottawa teams imitated in solidarity.

Asmahan wore her hijab during games on Saturday without incident and has never had a problem playing in her home province.

However, the Quebec Soccer Federation yesterday stood behind the referee's decision, saying the rules of the international governing body of soccer, FIFA, prohibit all jewellery and headgear.

"FIFA rules state that they are not going to let players play if they are going to put themselves or other players at risk," said Valmie Ouellet, the federation's technical director. Ms. Ouellet said the hijab could endanger the person wearing it: "If it becomes untucked and the player is running on a breakaway, for example, and another player pulls on it, I would imagine it would be quite a jar to the neck and head of the player wearing the headgear."

Of course, soccer has always been very concerned about this danger. We should probably ban the kippah too on the basis that the fellow wearing it might get hurt when somebody tries to knock it off.

Update: Just to show that nothing is ever simple about this kind of thing, it appears the referee who banned her from wearing her hijab was a Muslim.

FOR SKIPPER

From: Circumcision helps prevent HIV infection, studies confirm (CBC, February 23rd, 2007)

Adult male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection from heterosexual intercourse by up to 60 per cent, three trials suggested.

Early results of the trials conducted in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa were so positive that the studies were ended early to give all of the men participating a chance to get circumcized.

Full data from the trial appears in Saturday's issue of The Lancet.
"This is an extraordinary development," said Dr. Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization's AIDS department. "Circumcision is the most potent intervention in HIV prevention that has been described."

Boy, that first-order evidence sure does have a knack of doing a one-eighty on you.

Hey, Skipper, whose idea was this crazy nonsense in the first place?

NOW THAT WE’VE ALL REACHED AGREEMENT ON THE BASICS

From: Row over family values splits Cabinet (Gaby Hinsliff and Ned Temko, The Observer, February 25, 2007)

A leading minister is to rally to the defence of single parents amid a growing cabinet split over whether the government should champion marriage. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, will warn that family policy should not be based on 'the prejudices of yesterday's generation' or hung up over whether parents are married or not, but focused on what children need.

His words will be seen as a sharp change of direction from the line championed by the Work and Pensions Secretary, John Hutton, backed by Number 10, arguing that two parents may be better than one for children and that the benefits system at present discriminates against marriage.

Johnson will tell a conference on Tuesday: 'Family policy must be bias-free - to express it in a more Clintonesque manner, "It's the parenting, stupid". Not all children from married couples fare well, and other family structures are not irretrievably doomed to fail.'

His intervention comes as figures close to Gordon Brown criticised Downing Street for not responding more quickly or coherently to David Cameron's promises of tax breaks for married couples or to his argument that absent fathers are to blame for gun and gang culture. The government had failed to show a lead and stand up for lone parents and cohabitees, said sources in the Chancellor's camp: 'It almost smacks of "well, maybe we should be looking at some of these things", but on what possible planet would we be looking at [tax breaks]?'

The issue is incendiary because it strikes at the heart of politicians' private lives. Tony Blair, famed for one of the strongest marriages in politics, is said to be concerned that the Conservative leader's argument has resonance, while other colleagues fear the demonisation of single parents and cohabitees. Brown's wife, Sarah, was raised by her mother for some years after her parents divorced and the couple are close to author J K Rowling, who has campaigned on behalf of lone parents.

Of course. It’s not about whether your parents are married. It’s not about whether you see your dad or even know who he is. It’s not about whether you go to daycare or anybody is home for you after school. It’s not about whether your mom has a new boyfriend. It’s not about whether anybody is telling you what you can and cannot do. It’s not about being punished if you do something wrong. In fact, it’s not about anything concrete at all.

It’s about a special magical thing called "parenting".

EL JUEGO PRECIOSO

From: Argentina's Soccer Gangs Test Limits of Public Tolerance(Monte Reel, Washington Post, February 24th, 2007)

Even by the standards of Argentina, where people like to joke that soccer is less a pastime than a pathology, a recent surge of fan violence has been exceptional.

In the past two weeks, local stadiums have erupted in mass fights -- some of them all-out brawls injuring dozens of fans -- an average of every other day.

Politicians are vowing reforms, and most fans and league officials are blaming the violence on organized hooligan groups known as barrabravas, which are increasingly labeled as out-of-control mafias eroding the integrity of the sport.

On Tuesday afternoon, as police fired rubber bullets into a crowd to separate warring fans in a Buenos Aires suburb, a congressional committee was grilling the president of River Plate, one of South America's most famous soccer clubs, about the violence that has resulted in the closure of its 65,000-seat stadium for five games.

Among the incidents in question was a gun-and-knife fight Feb. 11 among members of a River Plate hooligan gang that sent picnicking families fleeing the stadium.[...]

According to local security officials, the gangs -- which began in Argentina in the 1950s -- have begun exporting their methods. Javier Alberto Castrilli, an official with Argentina's Interior Ministry who is in charge of soccer security, said the barrabravas' influence has spread in the past five years across South America and into Mexico.

"Here in South America, in countries where five years ago you'd never be able to imagine that so much soccer-related violence could exist . . . organization among barrabravas has reached very highly developed levels," Castrilli, a former World Cup referee, said in an interview Tuesday. "Groups abroad are copying the chants, the songs and even the flags that got their start here in Argentina."

We are delighted to be absolved of the outrageous slander that we are anti-European.

WHO WILL SLAY THIS DRAGON? (Via Brothersjudd)

From: The Literary Tenor of the Times (Mark Helprin, Claremont Institute, Winter, 2006)

One seldom encounters pure nihilism, for just as anarchists are usually very well-organized, most of what passes for nihilism is a compromise with advocacy. Present literary forms may spurn the individual, emotion, beauty, sacrifice, love, and truth, but they energetically embrace the collective, coldness of feeling, ugliness, self-assertion, contempt, and disbelief. And why? Simply because the acolytes of modernism are terribly and justly afraid. They fear that if they do not display their cynicism they will be taken for fools. They fear that if they commit to and uphold something outside the puppet channels of orthodoxy they will be mocked, that if they are open they will be attacked, that if they appreciate that which is simple and good they will foolishly have overlooked its occult corruptions, that if they stand they will be struck down, that if they love they will lose, and that if they live they will die.

As surely they will. And others of their fears are legitimate as well, so they withdraw from engagement and risk into what they believe is the safety of cynicism and mockery. The sum of their engagement is to show that they are disengaged, and they have built an elaborate edifice, which now casts a shadow over every facet of civilization, for the purpose of representing their cowardice as wisdom. Mainly to protect themselves, they write coldly, cruelly, and as if nothing matters.

But life is short, and things do matter, often more than the human heart can bear. This is an elemental truth that neither temporarily victorious nihilism, nor fashion, nor cowardice can long suppress, which is why the literary tenor of the times cannot and will not last. And which is one reason among many why one must not accept its dictates or write according to its conventions. These must and will fall, for they are subject to constant pressure as generation after generation rises in unprompted affirmation of human nature. And though perhaps none living may see the change, it is an honor to predict and await it.

BREACH OF TRUST

From: 'We have absolutely no reason to give up' (Graeme Smith, Globe and Mail, February 23rd, 2007)

Exactly one year after Canada took responsibility for Kandahar, many Canadians are expressing deep skepticism about that dream. Canadian troops fought the biggest battles of their generation to protect this dusty city on the other side of the world, losing 45 lives and spending $2.3-billion in Afghanistan so far, and the broad outlines of the country's plight have hardly changed: It remains terribly poor, and plagued by a vicious insurgency. This week, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion called for Canada to give up the mission in Kandahar by 2009 at the latest, saying the whole approach was flawed.

But a dozen interviews with key players in Kandahar, including the provincial governor and two of President Hamid Karzai's brothers, suggest that the people who are the most intimately involved in building Afghanistan are vastly more optimistic than observers abroad. A positive outlook is a job requirement for many of these people, as they have staked their careers, or their survival, on the effectiveness of foreign intervention.

Their arguments in favour of the Afghan project, however, are also rooted in a broader understanding of the historical context of Canada's struggles in Kandahar, and the significance of the fight for the country's south. They listed the mistakes of 2006, and the dangers of the coming years, and all of them reached the same conclusion: success is possible.[...]

These optimists describe a city slowly emerging from the grip of fear, enjoying unprecedented interest from aid donors and hoping to seize this chance to build a legitimate economy. If all goes well, and that's a major caveat, they say it's possible that the next few years will see Kandahar light up with new sources of electricity, establish new factories, revive its agricultural exports and resume its ancient role as a major trading centre.

While the major battles around Kandahar in 2006 are usually viewed by Canadians as proof that the situation got worse last year, the Afghan leadership views the fighting as a necessary step, a component of success rather than a hallmark of failure.

It is one thing to overstay one’s welcome, but just imagine being a young Afghan full of gratitude and hope for the future and being told by a “progressive” Canadian that the situation is hopeless and that he would be much better off if Canada withdrew in favour of the Taliban while promising to protect him through human rights initiatives at the United Nations.