We are travelling to France tomorrow, to stay with friends in Paris for a few days. Then we’re off to Holland’s countryside to see some relatives, then to Amsterdam for two days to see how the Dutch do it. For the second week, we travel to Bordeaux in the south of France, where we will be staying in a cottage (a gite). Assuming that we decide to return to Canada, we’ll be back October 29.

I will be writing when I can. I’m looking forward to learning the European perspective on things in general and Canada in particular. I’ll keep you updated!

It’s your call whether or not the saga of Mr. Abdul Jabbar continues or not. The unfortunate fraudster has a remarkably tin ear for humour, perhaps because of the language barrier, and shows no sign that he is catching on. So it’s up to you. Do I continue this indelicate minuet, or drop him like a greased goat?

Toronto Star columnist Slinger makes the point yesterday that if the Catholic Church wants to play “hardball” with Paul Martin and deny him communion because of the legalization of gay marriage, Paul Martin could press for taxation on the Church.

This vengeful approach seems highly unlikely. But it does bring up a good point. If churches act like special-interest groups, why do they enjoy tax-free status?

Angry in the Great White North, the blog I love to hate these days, argues that taking away the tax-exempt status of churches will put them into lobbyist overdrive:

But in general, the Church leaves well enough alone. And she can do so because she is not taxed.

Imagine if she were subject to taxes. Suddenly the Church would no longer be concerned only with the most serious examples of the State failing to fulfill its role. Now the Church would become involved in matters of finance, in budget decisions, in the minutiae of how the GST was calculated on the gasoline excise tax — anything and everything.

People like Slinger think the Church is butting in now?! Take away the tax exempt status, and bishops will be a common site in the halls of Parliament Hill. Like any other constituency having its money taken by the taxman, the Church would move quickly and forcefully to protect her interests.

Of course, I had to respond:

I don’t want to be petty, but there’s something irritating about referring to religions as “she” or “her”. The Catholic Church is not a woman even though you may be in love with it. Just had to get that early morning irritability off my chest. ;)

This discussion over religious taxation reminds me of a trip I took to Detroit’s worst areas a few years ago, with some American friends. I noticed that there was an enormous number of churches that looked like little more than houses with some kind of religious symbolism tacked on. On some streets it seemed like every third or fourth house was a “church”.

I asked them why that was, and they told me that churches paid no property taxes. So it was a good tax avoidance strategy to start a “church” in your home.

Anyway, we all know that religions, including Catholics, like to meddle in the affairs of state. The fact they concentrate on certain issues more than others – abortion instead of traffic regulations, for example – has less to do with their tax-exempt status, and more to do with the issues that are important to them. They are like any other special interest group. The American NRA concentrates on guns, MADD concentrates on drunk driving, the Church concentrates on men who have sex.

In spite of this, we all know that the special status afforded to religions, including their remarkable tax breaks, isn’t likely to go away any time soon. Although why I, as a non-religious person, should have to bear higher taxes because of that strikes me as an unfair, and indeed, most un-conservative notion.

Equal treatment by the law. Sounds good to me!

That’s what Bush, in yesterday’s speech, called the “set of beliefs” that America is currently at war with. His speech was typical in a lot of ways, from the amusingly hypocritical: “that’s the essence of democracy: making your case, debating with those who you disagree”, right to the downright misleading as he attempted to illustrate that the war in Iraq does not motivate terrorism: “Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet the militants killed more than 180 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan”.

The technique of creating and referencing an imaginary world is a trademark of Bush’s speeches – and in fact, his administration’s treatment of the public in general – but there is also a central theme here, which is the struggle to answer the question: Who is the Enemy?

As we have had pounded through our heads time after time, the enemy is Terrorism. But in this speech, Bush seeks to pinpoint this enemy more precisely than he has in the past, describing “a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane”.

So the enemy is an ideology. We must fight ideas. But this is something America – I mean, Democracy – can handle, because it’s done it before. Bush: “in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century”.

So Communism is out of the way, handily defeated by Democracy and its sidekick Capitalism. The new ideology to beat is Islamo-Fascism. But what about the 1.3 billion people living in communist China, now the United States’ biggest trade partner? Will the war on Terrorism be considered a success if in 20 years 1.3 billion people are living in an Islamo-Fascist state?

The reality is that the major struggle in the last half of the 20th century was between the United States and the Soviet Union. Bush is unable to define the current struggle in the same concrete terms:

Many militants are part of global, borderless terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, which spreads propaganda, and provides financing and technical assistance to local extremists, and conducts dramatic and brutal operations like September the 11th. Other militants are found in regional groups, often associated with al Qaeda — paramilitary insurgencies and separatist movements in places like Somalia, and the Philippines, and Pakistan, and Chechnya, and Kashmir, and Algeria. Still others spring up in local cells, inspired by Islamic radicalism, but not centrally directed. Islamic radicalism is more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single command. Yet these operatives, fighting on scattered battlefields, share a similar ideology and vision for our world.

This definition of the enemy – “global, borderless terrorist organizations”, “local extremists”, “regional groups”, “paramilitary insurgencies”, “separatist movements”, “local cells” and “operatives” – is apparently clear enough that Bush is able to simply refer to “militants” for the rest of his speech. “These militants are not just the enemies of America, or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity”, “The only thing modern about the militants’ vision is the weapons they want to use against us”, “we’re disrupting militant conspiracies”, etc.

But militant simply means fighter. So who is the Enemy? Fighters. “We’re fighting fighters”, Bush seems to be proclaiming. Fighters who he openly admits aren’t part of the same organization, or even connected to each other.

This isn’t just the latest attempt to spin the war in Iraq. It also reveals practical, military problems. Know thine enemy is one of the most basic military guidelines, but the Commander in Chief of the army cannot even define the enemy in concrete terms. Worse still, if the enemy is an ideology, a group of ideas, what good is an army at all?

For the full text of Bush’s speech, click here.

Came across this the other day and got my first fax today. Pretty cool! You can get your own non-local fax number and it costs nothing. Faxes go to your email so no fax machine required. Just click here to sign up.

My fax number is 1-514-371-0868. Fax me stuff. Photocopy and fax your head or a body part and I’ll post it up.