Banana Republic now has a line of clothing for petites! Woohoo! But the line is only available online and only to US customers. Does nobody care that there are short women living in Canada? Eh? Eh?
Not a whole lot has been going on in the past couple of weeks, seeing as how the students are all on vacation. But I know a lot of people check out this blog for the latest news from Concordia, so for the sake of completeness I’ll just throw in the two bits:
The Canadian Jewish Congress is supporting Hillel’s lawsuit against the CSU, and has set up a legal fund to solicit donations from supporters. See the press release for more details. B’nai Brith Canada is also seeking intervener status in the lawsuit on behalf of the Hillel plaintiffs.
Classes resume at Concordia this week, so look for more updates as the news happens.
I woke up at a quarter to six this morning to catch an insanely early flight at an insanely busy airport. As I stumbled bleary-eyed onto the plane, I realized I’d grabbed my complimentary copy of the Globe and Mail from the hotel room. As I’m not a subscriber, I generally only skim the headlines on their site, but today I got to read the whole paper cover to cover, including Rick Salutin’s column, which of course made me wish I’d left the damn paper in the door.
Four things the coming war against Iraq is not about:
1. It is not about terror.
2. It is not about weapons of mass destruction.
3. It is not about democracy.
4. It is not about preventing damage to the U.S. economy.
Oh yeah, then he goes on to say that he’s tired of the equating of being anti-Israel with being antisemitic. As if this somehow has something to do with Iraq.
Okay, as I was about to write something completely scathing in response to his sheer idiocy, I realized that Blackbloc already did (via Damian Penny).
The myth of the double-standard with Israel and Iraq regarding weapons of mass destruction is dispelled in an article in The Economist (via Noah). Despite the requisite jabs at Israel, it explains that it is Iraq, not Israel, who is in breach of international law in this case.
What, though, about Israel’s nukes? Does its status as an undeclared nuclear power put it on a par with Iraq, which has tried to become one? No. [. . .]
Two decades on, Israel has still not signed the NPT. This infuriates the treaty’s supporters, who have been striving to make it “universal”. But, as with any other treaty, governments are free not to sign. What they are not free to do is sign, receive the foreign (civilian) nuclear help to which signing entitles them, and then try to build a bomb secretly. This, it is now ruefully accepted, is what Iraq tried to do, and may still be trying to do. Israel is thought to possess a large nuclear arsenal, about which it is not being open and honest, and this is provoking to its neighbours. But it is not evidence of “double standards”. Being a nuclear-armed power is not, by itself, a breach of international law.
The article provides a lot more historical detail and essentially explains why comparing Israel and Iraq is like comparing apples to, well, plastic explosives.
Those wacky Raelians claim to have cloned a human baby, but suddenly there’s a question on whether a DNA test will be done after all. Of course, these are people who want us to take on faith that we all come from aliens, so I suppose they don’t have much tolerance for skeptics on the cloning thing either.
Despite the fact that this is evidently a hoax, human cloning will be a reality in the not-so-distant future. I had the opportunity, while on vacation, to discuss the potential ethical ramifications with several people including a relative who’s a very knowledgeable professor, and what emerged was fascinating and more than a little disturbing.
The question was this: assume, for the sake of argument, that human cloning can be done safely without risk of harm to the mother or the baby (this assumption can’t be made right now but it will be reality soon enough). Would it then be ethical to clone human beings?
My argument was that the process itself would be ethically neutral, as simply another technology, but that the ethical questions would emerge in terms of the motives and the potential consequences. It was pointed out to me that technology is not necessarily neutral, since there are purely negative technologies, with sole purposes of creating harm (such as those used to create atom bombs, for example).
But since scientific knowledge inevitably moves forwards, it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. So if the technology to clone humans will inevitably exist, what are the ethical ramifications?
Motive is one. Will the technology be used to genetically engineer “perfect” babies? Is a Gattaca-like universe not far off? Or will it be used to help infertile couples, cure terminal diseases, and better the lives of all? Who will control the technology – democratic governments, or the wealthy?
Then of course the questions of consequences emerge. Will we create a world in which men are unnecessary? Can clones be considered as human as “natural” babies? More so? Is this merely another stage of evolution at work – the next step, so to speak? Is something inherently wrong because it’s “unnatural”? After all, plenty of unnatural things are considered perfectly fine – everything from in-vitero fertilization to giving a woman in labour an epidural. Is our knee-jerk negative reaction to human cloning more of a conditioned disgust rather than a well thought-out objection?
Despite all of this, I still think human cloning is dangerous, and my instinct is to say it’s unethical as well. Canada is in the process of enacting legislation against it and I’d probably support it. But all these questions are bound to come up again soon, and the Raelians may be forcing our society to deal with them sooner rather than later.
Happy New Year to everyone. Hope you all had fun bringing in 2003.
I’m officially back from my vacation. Whistler had great powder, the Habs lost to the Canucks, and the word “service” is a contradiction in terms when it comes to the airlines. That about sums up my trip in a nutshell.
Beautiful sunny Whistler - purely to make you skiers out there very jealous!
Regular posting will resume tomorrow – I’m off to go hunt down some food.
This is it for me for 2002, folks. I’m heading off on vacation tomorrow. The skiing should be great but I’ll be without Internet access for the week. I’ll be back shortly after New Year’s, at which point posting will resume.
So have a good one, everyone, and try not to let any of the discussions get too out of hand while I’m gone. Best wishes for a Happy New Year.
Syria is denying Israeli allegations that Iraq is transferring banned weapons to them.
“This accusation against Syria is ridiculous because Syria signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called all Arab states to make the Middle East clear of weapons of mass destruction whether nuclear, chemical or biological weapons,” a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Damascus.
Oh, why didn’t you just say so? You say you’re innocent, therefore it must be true. You even signed a treaty! Gee, I feel so much better now. (Insert heavy sarcasm here).
The Progressive Conservative party has gone from Canada’s oldest and most prominent political party to a small group of peripheral candidates who seem to only get votes in the Maritimes. But that’s not the only problem they’ve been facing these days. With Joe Clark retiring, the Tories are in the midst of a leadership contest . . . only nobody wants the job.
Bernard Lord, the fluently bilingual young premier of New Brunswick, MP John Herron and John Tory, a veteran party strategist from Toronto, all opted out of seeking the leadership. Each had attracted organizational and financial backing within the party.
Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie has said thanks but no thanks to Tory recruiters. Vancouver businessman Rick Peterson, highly touted in the party as a young, bilingual B.C. voice, says he won’t make a leadership bid.
So far the only declared candidate is Heward (who?) Grafftey, a former cabinet minister.
It’s really too bad, because the Tory party was an important player on the Canadian political scene. The stigma of the Mulroney years aside, the party did have some good contributions to make, without slipping into the worst aspects of the right like the Alliance.
In the meantime, I think there’s a very big “help wanted” sign in the door of the party offices.
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