[MUSIC] Jessica Simpson

I've heard Jessica Simpsons' latest album. All that I can say about it, and all that you need to know about it, is that she never should have covered "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)". It's just one of those things.

[REVIEW] Paul Monette, Borrowed Time

Paul Monette's 1988 Borrowed Time, a memoir of the last years that he spent with his partner Roger Horwitz before the latter's death from AIDS, is typically cited as one of the most important works in early HIV/AIDS literature. Certainly it's a well-written book, and certainly it's a sad book, but for the longest time it confused me as to why this is the only book from that literature from that time that makes me cry. Then I remembered Margo Lanagan and her masterly "Singing My Sister Down", and realized that Monette manages to capture the terrible pain of a prolonged departure so masterly. Reading Borrowed Time, one follows Monette as he gets used to having less and less of Horwitz as his AIDS progressed, eventually retreating, attenuated, to the margins of consciousness. Still, even at the end when Horwitz was about to pass, there was still so much of him there, that the moment of final separation is unbearable.

[BRIEF NOTE] Who do you talk with?

Last week, Canadian Conservative parliamentarian Jason Kenney attacked opposition MPs who visited Lebanon and suggested that negotiations should be opened by Hezbollah. After comparing Hezbollah to the Nazi Party, Kenney denounced their bias.

"Their idea of a balanced approach is one where Israel is always wrong," Kenney said at the press conference. "This represents a totally irresponsible approach to foreign security policy."

More recently, it has come out that Kenney delivered a speech at a rally organized by the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq.

Conservative MP Jason Kenney is coming under scrutiny for his appearance at a rally organized by supporters of a banned terrorist organization.

This comes two days after Kenney, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, condemned fellow parliamentarians for their comments about another terror group.

A photograph of Kenney at an April rally, organized by the Committee in Defense of Human Rights in Iran, appears on the website of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Toronto Star reported Thursday.

The council is the political wing of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), which is one of the names used by the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq.

The Mujaheedin-e-Khalq is an armed Iranian rebel group formally designated as a terror group by the governments of Canada, the United States and the European Union.

After being expelled from Iran by the young Islamic Republic, the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq went on to ally itself with the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, staging attacks on Iran in conjunction with Iraqi forces and then, after it was easily fought off, establishing training camps in Iraq that did double duty as prison camps for dissidents within the movement. Many American neoconservatives wanted to cultivate the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq as an alternative government for Iran, proving the truth that you shall know them by their works. The best thing that can be said about a Mujaheedin-e-Khalq government in Iran, at least after reading the relevant reports from Human Rights Watch and other organizations, is that it would collapse quickly, long before it could ensure that everyone received their special Kool-Aid rations.

What's the difference between the two movements? The Mujaheedin-e-Khalq is a terrorist group with a vile ideology with no influence on the ground; Hezbollah is a terrorist group with a vile ideology with plenty of influence on the ground. Talking to the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq yields nothing since the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq can provide nothing. Talking to Hezbollah, however unpleasant a task, can yield quite a bit. If North Korea is a plausible diplomatic actor, after all ... But then, ideology always obstructs vision, doesn't it?

[POLL] Will Belgium last?

From United Press International, hyperlinks within added by me:

The political leader of Flanders says Belgium is an "accident of history" and only its king, soccer and beer have any value.

The Telegraph reported that Yves Leterme started a brouhaha when he made the comments about a nation that is increasingly divided between Flanders, the Dutch-speaking north, and the French-speaking [Walloon] south, with Brussels as a bilingual international city in the middle.

The Telegraph said Leterme sniped that years of devolution had eroded the kingdom to the point where Belgium "now amounted to nothing more than the king, the national football team and certain brands of beer."

He added that the 175-year-old Belgian nation was "an accident of history with no intrinsic value." The country was created in 1830 when southern provinces broke away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Strictly speaking, Leterne is of course correct. The Belgian state can trace its ancestry back centuries, at least as far back as to the Hapsburg Netherlands and before that to the lands of the Burgundians, even (if you want) back to the Celtic Belgae. That said, Belgium is very much a product of contingent circumstances. Even as late as the 1830 Belgian Revolution, things could have gone differently: the France of Louis Philippe might have managed to partition the Netherlands' southern provinces with Prussia and the rump Netherlandic state, or the Belgians might have been able to take Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and the modern Grand Duchy of Luxembourg from the Dutch state, or the Dutch might have managed to reconquer their southern provinces. The ten-province, three-language, three-region Belgian state that exists now is very much a product of generations of constant effort.

It may all come to naught. The major problem facing the Belgian state is the confrontation between the self-governing regions of Flanders and Wallonia. The gallicization of Brussels and the growth of Francophone communities in Brussels' periphery is an issue of note, as is the dependence of the post-industrial economy of Wallonia on massive transfers from Flanders, as is the growth of Flemish nationalism. Little unites Belgium's peoples, and much divides them.

Flanders and Québec are roughly of a size, but the Flemish--most unlike the Québécois in Canada--form a majority of Belgium's population. If, frustrated, they opted for independence, the viability of a rump Wallobrux state consisting of Wallonia and Brussels is eminently open to doubt. The rattachistes favouring the annexation of Francophone Belgium would be happy. (I've heard little said of the likely French attitude towards the annexation of economically troubled areas with a total population. France doesn't need an East Germany, not in its present state. Might it want one? Different story.)

I'm agnostic on the question. My readers, now, likely are not. At least three are living in Belgium right now. I'll throw the floor open to all of you: A poll!

[Poll #810596]