Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 30, 2013, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A9 R ICHMOND, B. C. - The Royal Dream Team has done it again. With the arrival of George Alexander Louis, it has assured the Commonwealth monarchy's existence for at least this century and probably into the next. Baby Cambridge's arrival has added to the ascendant popularity of Kate and William and, of course, the entire idea of royalty and the monarchy. The Queen is a great grandmother and Charles is a first time grandfather. There were 41- gun salutes, and a 62- gun salute from the Tower of London. Canadians have been joyously revelling in the baby's birth - with bakers making blue and white cookies in Winnipeg to 21- gun salutes in Ottawa to illuminating Niagara Falls, the CN Tower and Parliament in blue to honour the baby boy. The " sails" at Vancouver's Canada Place were lit with baby blue lights. The baby news is good news because it represents the continuity and stability of our moderately successful constitutional monarchy form of government. It has served Britain well for centuries and I think most Canadians would agree it has certainly stood us in good stead for 146 years. Not everyone is happy with the idea of a royal baby. This is a free country and there are some who would prefer we become a republic, like the United States, with an elected head of state. There are good arguments for going that way, but there are at least as many for keeping our heredity constitutional monarchy. There are also a few sourpusses who slither out whenever the Royal Family comes into focus to make snide comments about the rejoicing. They always start their objections with a great deal of force: " Who cares?" is shouted from the rooftops and echoed through the comment sections of online media. The who- cares crowd expends boundless energy telling anyone who will listen how little they care. In fact, I can't recall a more vociferous lack of caring in my lifetime. Some try to explain their dreary negativity. Annoyed at the hubbub, they mutter the royal baby is not news, just gossip. When it is suggested they don't have to read or watch it, they get angry and quite bitter. " All we need is another royal to pay for out of our taxes" or " Another freeloader is born." This is followed by dark aspersions about the stupidity of " the colonial masses" who are taking pleasure from the royal baby. They call the very idea of the monarchy " anachronistic" and a vestigial leftover of long past centuries. Indeed, Canadian anti- royalists inevitably whine we are feudal door mats and bemoan the fact we have a head of state who is a " foreigner" - descended from tyrants no less! Three wannabe Canadians have launched a lawsuit because they want Canadian citizenship but they don't want to swear allegiance to the Queen. Goodness. So why did they come here? What part of constitutional monarchy didn't they understand? With any luck they will leave and find another country, better suited to their needs. I think all this rudeness and ill temper is the result of ignorance and envy, fuelled by an unusually hot and sticky summer. The fact is, the Queen and her family give net economic benefit not only to the U. K., but also to Canada. The cost to the state is more than offset by the money brought in to the country due to the high level of interest in the monarchy and its history. The Queen pays income tax, a relatively recent innovation. Charles, the heir apparent, does not get money from the state and also pays tax. But for now, as a Canadian citizen and British subject, I have no concerns or reservations about bowing to the Queen, whom I greatly admire. But there is not a damn thing she can do about it if I refuse to curtsy. Her power is strictly limited. She exists by the grace of her subjects. As Prince Charles put it in The Changing Anatomy of Britain by Anthony Sampson: " Something as curious as the monarchy won't survive unless you take account of people's attitudes... after all, if people don't want it, they won't have it." If the majority of Canadians wants to be a republic, then so be it. We could do worse than to emulate our American cousins. But for now, our system seems to work as well, and, with a new baby making headlines, it's much more fun. Marilyn Baker is a freelance writer in Richmond, B. C. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Winnipeg Free Press Tuesday, July 30, 2013 A 9 POLL �� TODAY'S QUESTION Are you satisfied with the service provided by Manitoba Public Insurance? �� Vote online at winnipegfreepress. com �� PREVIOUS QUESTION Who should get the start at quarterback when the Blue Bombers play B. C. Aug. 5? Buck Pierce 19% Justin Goltz 81% TOTAL RESPONSES 3,615 Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 VOL 141 NO 254 2013 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204- 697- 7000 BOB COX / Publisher PAUL SAMYN / Editor JULIE CARL / Deputy Editor T HE trend is undeniable: The days of hauling animals around and hurting them in the name of entertainment are quickly coming to an end. Winnipeg is the latest municipality to slam the door shut on circuses using exotic animals. Mayor Sam Katz and the Winnipeg city council made it clear they will no longer tolerate circus cruelty. All around the world, cities and entire countries are banning exotic- animal circus acts. Austria, Bolivia, Colombia, Greece, Paraguay and Peru have done so already. Others, including Britain and Scotland, are on the verge of doing so. Besides outright bans, many cities are saying no to the tools circuses use to inflict pain, such as the bull hook - a heavy baton with a sharp metal hook on the end that can rip and tear elephants' skin - and electric prods. Since circuses control animals with these cruel devices - or more accurately, attempt to control them, since so many have run amok - such prohibitions effectively keep the animals out. Only a decade or so ago, the fabulous Cirque du Soleil was one of the few alternative circuses around. The demand for cruelty- free entertainment has skyrocketed, and now there are more than a dozen vibrant, innovative productions touring North America that don't exploit animals. Even consummate huckster P. T. Barnum couldn't convince today's informed public beating animals and keeping them in cages and chains from birth to death is acceptable. The empirical evidence of what life is like for animals in circuses is undeniable and readily available to the public. Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, for example, paid a record $ 270,000 to settle multiple violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. At least 30 elephants have died while in Ringling's hands since 1992. Former employees of Ringling have come forward to report egregious abuses, including forcibly removing baby elephants from their frantic mothers, tying them down by all four legs and slamming them to the ground, surrounded by " trainers" wielding bull hooks and electric hotshots. An undercover investigator videotaped a Carson and Barnes elephant trainer who was viciously attacking elephants with a bull hook and shocking them with electric prods. The elephants screamed in agony while recoiling from the assaults. The trainer can be heard instructing his students to sink the weapons into the elephants' flesh and twist them until the elephants scream in pain. Despite being ordered to pay a $ 7,500 penalty to settle nearly three dozen charges of violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, the Liebel Family Circus continues to drag around an elephant named Nosey, even though she is suffering from a chronic skin condition. The Piccadilly Circus was given an official warning by federal authorities about its animal- handling practices. The Kelly Miller Circus has been cited for denying adequate veterinary care to an elephant with a painful, oozing puncture wound on her ear, among other abuses. The facts are simple and stark: Animals in circuses suffer tremendously. Every parent or grandparent who buys a ticket is contributing directly to the animals' misery. Every child who exits a show believing hurting animals is " fun" leaves a bit of his or her heart behind. Our elected officials should enact additional laws that put a stop to an outmoded form of " entertainment" that has no place in a civilized society. Jennifer O'Connor is a senior writer with the PETA Foundation. - McClatchy Tribune Services MARILYN BAKER JENNIFER O'CONNOR Winnipeg joins worldwide movement to end circus cruelty S INCE 2007, the perils of a sexually transmitted disease called HPV ( short for human papillomavirus) have been recognized as a health hazard for women and, quite properly, the Ontario government has provided girls in public schools with a free vaccine. That's all good. Boys, unfortunately, were not included in the early health warning, launched by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, and were left out of the vaccination plan. And that's a shame because even though HPV causes cervical cancer in women, it's also responsible for genital cancers in men. Despite this risk, boys aren't given the same public- health protections. So it's high time Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews provides the free vaccinations to school- age boys. They are no less worthy. It's becoming increasingly difficult for Matthews to ignore the chorus of voices in the medical profession demanding the same preventive care for young men. Not only would the vaccination stop men from getting genital cancers and warts, but it would serve to limit the spread of the virus. Cancer threat aside, that's one less STD to worry about. Health experts, such as the Toronto Board of Health and Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, are rightly lobbying on behalf of boys. And last year, the immunization advisory committee recommended males between the ages of nine and 26 receive the HPV vaccine. However delayed, it was a welcome directive. It's a shame Ontario hasn't so far listened. In its defence, the health ministry says it is still " reviewing" Health Canada's approval of the vaccine for boys. That's nonsense. After all, for several years now, parents who have the financial means have been able to buy the vaccine from their family doctor. It's great they can afford to be proactive, but families who cannot afford the $ 500 price tag should not be excluded from preventive health care. As a recent Toronto board of health report noted, " this is a significant cost to access a potentially life- saving vaccine." Other jurisdictions see its value. Prince Edward Island started the vaccination program for boys earlier this year. And Australia offers free HPV vaccines for all boys. Clearly, they have heeded the medical advice. Unfortunately, in Ontario, boys will be refused the vaccine until Matthews makes the wise decision to acknowledge they, too, have the right to such an important health protection. T WO massacres committed by the Egyptian army in one week. At least 130 people killed in the streets of Cairo for protesting against the military coup. It is worse than a crime ( as the French diplomat Talleyrand remarked when Napoleon ordered a particularly counterproductive execution). It is a mistake. It is also a crime, of course. The killing has been deliberate and precise: only trained snipers could produce so many victims who have been shot in the head or the heart. Gen. Abdel Fattah al- Sisi and Adly Mansour, the tame president he has installed, tell the kind of lies that generals and politicians always tell when this sort of thing is going on, but the reports of the journalists on the scene leave no room for doubt: this is murder. But it is, above all, a mistake. When the army fulfilled the demands of the anti- government demonstrators in Tahrir Square on July 3 by overthrowing the elected president, Mohammed Morsi, after only a year in office, it must have known that his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood would protest in the streets. And it must have had a plan for dealing with those protests. Soldiers always have plans. The simplest plan would be just to wait the protesters out. The Muslim Brotherhood could put large numbers of people on the streets, but at least in Cairo even larger numbers of people would go to Tahrir Square and support the coup. Use minimum force, contain the demonstrations by both sides, and wait for people to get bored and go home. In the meanwhile, push on with the process of rewriting the constitution to remove the Islamic bits inserted last year by Morsi's party and hold a new referendum to ratify it. By the time fresh presidential and parliamentary elections are held early next year, the Muslim Brotherhood will presumably have found more modern and moderate leaders to replace Morsi - and in any case the secular parties will win the election. Was this really Gen. Sisi's scenario for the future when he overthrew Morsi's government? Perhaps: the army's moderate behaviour in the first week after the coup could support that hypothesis. But it wouldn't have taken long for the soldiers to understand that things were unlikely to work according to plan. The problem was not so much the imprisoned president's refusal to legitimize his overthrow by cooperating with the military, or the tens of thousands of peaceful pro- Morsi demonstrators camped out in the streets. Morsi's non- cooperation was predictable and so were the pro- Morsi crowds, but his supporters were patient and peaceful. Wait another month or so, and most of them would probably go home. In this scenario, the turning point would have come when Sisi or his advisers finally realized that the Muslim Brotherhood could wait it out too. Whatever the intervening process, if the Brotherhood was really free to run again in the promised election next year, it might win again. That would be catastrophic for the army's very privileged position in Egypt - so the Brotherhood had to be excluded from politics. That is a charitable take on the army's motives. The likelier explanation, alas, is that Sisi planned to ban the Brotherhood from the start. Democracy be damned: the " deep state," that permanent collusion between well- fed Egyptian soldiers and bureaucrats and the foreign military and commercial interests who feed them, is making a comeback. And the political idiots on Tahrir Square are cheering it on. Either way, the army's political project now requires the massive use of force: the supporters of the Brotherhood must be driven from the streets, by murder if necessary, and its leaders must be criminalized and banned. And other political idiots, in Washington, London and Paris, are going along with that too. U. S. President Barack Obama is uncomfortable with what is happening, but he won't call it a coup because then he would be obliged to cut off $ 1.5 billion a year in aid to the Egyptian army. Instead, he calls it a " post- revolution transition" and promises that the United States will be a " strong partner to the Egyptian people as they shape their path to the future." His loyal sidekick William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary ( also known as " Tonto"), asks the Egyptian authorities politely to refrain from violence because " now is the time for dialogue, not confrontation." ' Fraid not. Now is the time for murder, and foreign democrats are holding the murderer's coat. Egypt is the biggest Arab country by far, and so long as the democratic revolution prospered in Egypt you could still say the " Arab Spring" was changing things for the better, even despite the calamity in Syria. But it's very hard to see how the Egyptians can find their way back from where they are now. Even worse, the Egyptian coup is stark proof that political Islam cannot succeed by taking the democratic path. The message it conveys to devout Islamists all over the Arab world is Osama bin Laden was right: only by violence can their political project succeed. Thanks a bunch, Gen. Sisi. Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. Worse than a crime in Egypt Boys no less worthy of HPV protection The Toronto Star OTHER OPINION Royal baby is more fun than republic GWYNNE DYER MANU BRABO / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Killed by security forces, the corpse of a supporter of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi lies in a Cairo field hospital Saturday. A_ 09_ Jul- 30- 13_ FP_ 01. indd A9 7/ 29/ 13 11: 30: 39 PM ;