May 20, 2004
No control?
Yasser Arafat's apologists say he can't be expected to restrain Palestinian terror groups, because the Israelis have destroyed his security infrastructure.
If that's true, how can Arafat promise there will be no "isolated" (?) terror attacks at the summer Olympics? You don't think General Arafat has been lying his ass off the whole time, do you?
North Korean "education"
A horrifying look at what passes for schooling in Kim Jong Il's cult-state, in the Korea Times:
As children attend primary school, they begin to study the ``history of the Great Leader.'' This is followed in secondary school by another round, with a final dose at university. Since the 1980s, the ``revolutionary history of the Great Leader'' has been supplemented by the ``revolutionary history of the Dear Ruler'' (Kim Jong-il). In due course, the younger Kim has supplanted the dynasty's founding father as the primary object of official veneration.
However, political education does not end with these ``indoctrination classes.'' Even such seemingly apolitical subjects as mathematics are awash with political messages. Take, for example, a quiz from a North Korean math textbook: ``Three soldiers from the Korean People's Army killed 30 American soldiers. How many American soldiers were killed by each of them, if they all killed an equal number of enemy soldiers?'' Then a child may be offered more food for thought: ``The Great Leader-Father Kim Il-sung was, as a child, once given nine apples. He gave three to his grandfather, two to his grandmother, one to his father and one to his mother. How many apples did he give away and how many did he keep for himself?''
North Korean books on social subjects are permeated with statements about the Leaders' wisdom: ``The Great Leader Kim Il-sung was the great father of the people who during the 82 years of his life kept working for the people and did not allow himself a day of rest!''
Go Flames!
They're the first Canadian team to make it to the Stanley Cup final in a decade.
The new Jenin
More awful news: the Israeli army killed at least 10 Palestinian demonstrators at the Rafah refugee camp, where they're conducting a massive operation to destroy weapon-smuggling tunnels. The Israelis say the shots they fired were warning shots which were deflected off a building, and that some of the demonstrators were armed; the Palestinians say it was a deliberate massacre. No prizes for guessing who the media believes.
If the Israelis fired on unarmed demonstrators, it's completely inexcusable. If they're telling the truth, well...for most people, does it even matter?
Horror in Iraq
The U.S. military may have killed as many as 45 people in an air strike on a wedding party near the Syrian border:
U.S. military officials disputed suggestions that an American helicopter struck a wedding party in western Iraq on Wednesday and said coalition forces staged an attack against suspected foreign fighters.
Arab television and The Associated Press aired video showing the bodies of small children in a truck full of bodies and people digging graves as they quoted witnesses and Iraqi officials who discussed the attack.
But senior military officials in Washington said U.S. and coalition forces conducted a strike on "anti-coalition vehicles" along the Iraqi-Syrian border.
According to the military, at 3 a.m. local time Wednesday, coalition forces conducted an operation against a suspected foreign fighter safe house in the open desert. The house was 25 kilometers from the Syrian border, 85 kilometers southwest of Husaybah (search), military officials said.
Coalition forces came under hostile fire and called for support from the air. After the strike, coalition forces recovered numerous weapons, foreign passports, a SATCOM radio and two million Iraqi and Syrian dinars, military officials said.
I don't believe the Americans deliberately set out to attack a wedding, and they insist they've recovered weapons, satellite communications equipment and foreign passports from the house. But that really doesn't make this any less horrible.
May 19, 2004
Senator Jew-baiter
Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-SC), who will mercifully be retiring soon, doesn't say the Iraq war was all about oil. That's the good news. Here's the bad news:
Of course there were no weapons of mass destruction. Israel’s intelligence, Mossad, knows what’s going on in Iraq. It is the best. It has to know; Israel’s survival depends on knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction if there were any, or if they had been removed. With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel.
Led by Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Charles Krauthammer, for years there has been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel’s security is to spread democracy in the area. Wolfowitz wrote: “The United States may not be able to lead countries through the door of democracy, but where that door is locked shut by a totalitarian deadbolt, American power may be the only way to open it up.” And on another occasion: Iraq as “the first Arab democracy... would cast a very large shadow, starting with Syria and Iran but across the whole Arab world.”
[...]
Every president since 1947 has made a futile attempt to help Israel negotiate peace. But no leadership has surfaced among the Palestinians that can make a binding agreement. President Bush realized his chances at negotiation were no better. He came to office imbued with one thought — re-election. Bush felt tax cuts would hold his crowd together and spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.
So Bush isn't trying to democratize the Middle East cesspool to eliminate the climate of hatred and religious fundamentalism that led to 9/11. He's just doing it to make sure Israel survives and therefore secure the votes of American Jews, who make up barely 2% of the U.S. population. Oh, and the whole thing is being pushed forward by a deputy defence secretary, an advisor and a freaking newspaper columnist, all of whom just happen to be Jewish.
Did Hollings get Tam Dalyell to proofread this thing?
(via TV's Henry)
The painful truth
A lot of Atlantic Canadians won't like this column by Brian Lee Crowley, President of the Halifax-based Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. But that doesn't make it any less true. I've seen it close up.
Recently, the Charlottetown Guardian printed two articles. The first told the story of workers demanding the provincial government keep their failed fish plant open because there was no other work available.
The other article reported a call center with hundreds of jobs available was leaving the province because it couldn't get workers. It was in the same part of the island as the closed fish plant.
Reconciling the two news items is simple: In communities used to the EI/seasonal work cycle, such as that of the now-closed fish plant, employers trying to hire workers to work full-time, full-year have to compete with months of taxpayer-funded leisure time.
Potential workers don't look at the wages they would earn in a new year-round job, but rather at the difference between what they might earn in that new job and what they can earn with a short bout of seasonal work supplemented by months of EI. The difference is often pretty small, not least because the seasonal work cycle has already left these workers without job skills and education that might otherwise make them more valuable to employers.
There's more. A cardinal rule of economics says if you subsidize something, you'll get more of it. By heavily subsidizing seasonal work, EI causes more such work to be created.
[...]
What we have is a desperate mismatch between the skills our workers have and the skills local employers need, plus an EI system that pays people not to work and penalizes people who try to get an education (because students don't qualify for EI). Federal and provincial studies galore have repeatedly identified the perverse incentives in EI as the biggest obstacle to Atlantic Canada escaping its chronic underdevelopment.
To this poisonous mix, the election-bound federal government recently announced they were adding a further $300-million of your tax dollars.
Stephen Harper made similar comments a few years ago. The Liberals have already prepared attack ads based on it.
The Commie Who Wouldn't Die!
Castro's personal physician says ol' Fidel could live to be 140.
In North Korea, the government says Kim Jong-Il's birth was accompanied by twin magic rainbows and that the flowers bloom every year on his birthday (I am not making this up). The Cubans are only a little more sophisticated.
His kind of town
After 8 years in California, Pejman is moving back to Chicago to supervise the construction of Donald Trump's new skyscraper. Or maybe that was the guy who won The Apprentice. It's early and I've only had two coffees, okay?
Less speech = more debate
I haven't had a chance to read the Supreme Court's entire decision in Harper v. Canada (Attorney General), so who knows? It could be a masterful, convincing example of jurisprudence. But for the life of me, I simply cannot comprehend the idea that less speech from anyone other than a political party is essential to safeguard democracy:
A landmark Supreme Court of Canada has preserved a tight clamp on advertising by interest groups during election campaigns, ending the prospect of an election free-for-all in which groups blitz the government on issues such as the sponsorship scandal or same-sex marriage.
”While the right to political expression lies at the core of the guarantee of free expression and warrants a high degree of constitutional protection, there is nevertheless a danger that political advertising may manipulate or oppress the voter,” a 6-3 majority ruled.
”Parliament had to balance the rights and privileges of all the participants in the electoral process.”
[...]
The ruling was hailed as a victory by those who see unfettered third-party advertising as a licence for wealthy groups to drown out public debate and threaten free speech. The court agreed with their view that unrestricted free speech gives a much greater voice to those who possess the means to exploit it.
”This egalitarian model of elections seeks to create a level playing field for those who wish to engage in the electoral discourse, enabling voters to be better informed,” Mr. Justice Michel Bastarache wrote for the majority.
”In the absence of spending limits, it is possible for the affluent or a number of persons pooling their resources and acting in concert to dominate the political discourse, depriving their opponents of a reasonable opportunity to speak and be heard, and undermining the voter's ability to be adequately informed of all views.”
The majority said that while the election advertising restrictions violate constitutional free-speech guarantees, the breaches are justified.
One way or the other, the ruling was bound to dramatically affect Canadian democracy. Those who fought to uphold the law saw it as vital to prevent Canada slipping into U.S.-style elections where wealthy private interests hold the upper hand and use advertising to dominate public debate.
It's amazing, how you can completely shut down debate on any issue in this country by invoking the spectre of the hated Yanks. Want to reform medicare? That will lead to "American-style for-profit health care". Should judges be approved by Parliament? That will lead to "American-style ideologically-driven confirmation hearings". If the federal government proposed banning elections altogether, you can be sure Maude Barlow and the Toronto Star editorial board will say elections cause "American-style social division and conflict".
So, if "the rich" are allowed to spend as much as they want promoting their political agenda, will it distort the electoral process? I'm thinking of the Charlottetown Accord referendum campaign in 1992, when government, business and labour supporters of the Accord all united to outspend and out-promote the "no" side by a staggering margin. And they still lost.
All the money in the world can't force people to accept an idea they find unpalatable. It's too bad the Supreme Court of Canada thinks we're too stupid to make up our minds.
And as for these leftist groups who are celebrating about the Court sticking it to the National Citizens' Coalition, how quickly they forget. These are the same people who celebrated the Supreme Court's infamous Butler decision, which upheld anti-pornography laws. Customs officials subsequently cracked down - on gay and lesbian pornography, much to the chagrin of feminist groups who celebrated this infringement on our freedoms. (The feminist argument, if I understand it correctly, is that gay porn is okay because it doesn't involve men dominating women. No, I don't think it's anything more than self-serving bullshit, either.)
This decision is going to come back to haunt you in the same way, guys. Mark my words.
Update: Colby Cosh has more.
The missing scare quotes
The Toronto Star printed an edited version of my letter today. I expected them to cut it down, but I'm quite unhappy about how it came out:
Antonia Zerbisias took a post from my weblog completely out of context, as evidence that conservative "bloggers" are abandoning their sites now that the Iraq war has turned into a disaster.
In fact, most of the writers I mentioned have temporarily stopped writing for mundane reasons such as work commitments or vacations. Some have already returned. Most of us never left. And despite the continuing problems in Iraq,we remain adamant that removing one of the world's most brutal dictators was the right thing to do. Sometimes, our employment, family or other commitments get in the way, and Zerbisias is just fooling herself if she thinks we've all suddenly become ashamed of our writing.
Take a close look at the first paragraph, and note that they removed the quotation marks I put around "disaster". That was Zerb's word for what's happening in Iraq, not mine. It might not look like much, but I think it completely changes the meaning of the sentence.
I will be asking for a correction. Stay tuned.
Update: as this much-linked post shows, quite a lot has been going very right in post-Saddam Iraq. But of course, none of this matters, because Bush went to war exclusively because of weapons of mass destruction which never existed, except for that sarin shell, which doesn't count.
Update II: I'm not sure how it looked in the print edition, but on the web the letter has been corrected. I could come up with all kinds of theories about why they left out the quotation marks, but for now I'll just assume it was a mistake.
Update III: I just recieved this e-mail message from Don Sellar, the Star's ombudsman:
I was glad to see your letter in today's paper. People under attack or criticism deserve a chance to rebut or reply to columnists.
However, all letters to the editor are subject to editing for space or other reasons. I don't believe the deletion of the quotation marks altered the thrust of your letter, so no published correction is warranted. However, we'll put them back in the online version of your letter in a few minutes.
I bet they'd give Fidel a correction if he asked for it.
May 18, 2004
Gay marriage in Massachusetts
Andrew Sullivan, as you might expect, has a lot to say about this. As for me, I only have one thing to say to those who've recently tied the knot:
Congratulations.
Widespread panic
Michael Young, in Reason, writes about pro-war pundits who've been getting nervous about what's happening in Iraq. (Check this out, Antonia: he actually has examples.)
Cwazy Aunt Heather
Like many observers, Heather Mallick is troubled by Ontario's decision to allow Muslims to resolve their disputes using Islamic sharia law. (As I've written before, I think most of these fears are exaggerated, but considering what's being done in the name of sharia these days, I can understand the concern.)
Obviously, Ontario's decision to allow this is another example of Canadian official multiculturalism, right? Not according to Heather, who blames it on - you guessed it - the filthy Yanks:
This is interesting, not just because it's vile, but because it's part of a worldwide move toward privatizing everything, including the legal system. Ooooh, now we can go law-shopping.
Breaking up a nation's laws into a jigsaw puzzle where everyone gets one itty-bitty piece is part of a trend spearheaded by the Republican radical right in the United States. Junior Bush has opted out of international law -- shunning the treaty to establish the International Criminal Court, ignoring the United Nations in favour of pre-emptive strikes, rejecting decades of nuclear-weapons treaties, in effect ignoring the Geneva Convention, and even privatizing war. U.S. soldiers, many of them mercenaries paid by corporations out of public dollars, follow the law of the jungle with a level of torture that many of history's tyrants would have found unwise, shall we say.
[...]
There used to be one legal system per nation and a basic but growing system of international law. Everyone had to follow it. It's public. That's why they call it "the law." Small groups are suddenly reinventing the legal system to suit themselves, which destroys the whole point of jurisprudence. Law becomes a market force or product that suits the U.S. Republican notion of grabbing. "Me want," a baby babbles. And this particular baby shall get.
Mallick is really something. In fact, I just happen to have an early draft of her next column right here:
I locked my keys in the car again the other day. That's the fifth time this week.
Not surprising, is it? If America hadn't opted out of Kyoto, maybe our cities wouldn't be designed so that I have to use my car so much, and then this wouldn't happen as often. These filthy American Idol-watching, McDonald's-gulping, church-going, Bush-voting Yanks enjoy their massive SUVs while hiring homeless people to open their doors for them so they won't lock their keys in the car, while here in the good part of the world, we suffer again.
Damn you, Ashcroft!
[via Trudeaupia]
More Zerb reaction
Yes, I did indeed Fall Silent last week, because – ready? – I was on vacation. And I still posted four updates – one of which was specifically about the issues of the day - and wrote a national column about the response of some Senators to the prison scandal AND did a radio interview about current affairs. So she’s mistaken. And by “mistaken” I mean “too lazy to check her assertions against the facts.”
[...]
Note to Antonia.
Because you get hate mail doesn’t mean you’re good.
Or right.
And taking a single inert sentence and setting it apart as a paragraph for dramatic effect just looks like you’re padding the column to make the length.
Unless an editor did it.
Which is possible.
I suppose.
Actually, that's standard form for the Toronto Star. Speaking of which, I fired off this snarky letter to the editor this morning:
Sir -
It's too bad the "media critic" for Canada's largest newspaper has so little understanding of the medium she thrashed in her May 16 column.
Antonia Zerbisias took a post from my weblog (http://www.damianpenny.com) completely out of context, as evidence that conservative "bloggers" are abandoning their sites now that the Iraq war has turned into a "disaster". In fact, most of the writers I mentioned have temporarily stopped writing for mundane reasons such as work commitments or vacations. Some have already returned. Most of us never left. And despite the continuing problems in Iraq - which we've discussed with a frankness you'll rarely find on the Star's Opinion page - we remain adamant that removing one of the world's most brutal dictators was the right thing to do.
Yes, some conservative blogs have fallen dormant in recent months - as have weblogs from all over the poltical spectrum. Most of us aren't being paid to maintain these sites - we're just doing it because we enjoy it. Sometimes, our employment, family or other commitments get in the way, and Zerbisias is just fooling herself if she thinks we've all suddenly become ashamed of our writing.
That said, I must say I quite enjoyed seeing my site called "one of the top right-wing online pit stops for Canadians" in Canada's highest-circulation paper. It's amazing how many new readers I've picked up, who say I must be doing something right if Antonia Zerbisias doesn't agree with me.
Sincerely,
Damian Penny
Corner Brook, NL
Update: Bob Tarantino is back from Spain, and he takes his shot.
The fence is working
According to the IDF - not an unbiased source, I'll admit, but frankly no less biased than most "journalism" about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - successful terror attacks are down sharply since construction of the security barrier began, while thwarted attacks are way up. This chart says it all.
(via Yourish)
Air Canada on the brink
Air Canada has been negotiating with its unions to accept concessions to get new financing from a German Bank. The CAW is holding out - and if a deal isn't reached today, the airline could go under:
Canada and the Canadian Auto Workers will make a final attempt Tuesday morning to reach a cost-cutting agreement to save the insolvent airline.
Air Canada has reached tentative agreements with eight of nine of its employee unions. The CAW is the lone holdout in the bankruptcy negotiations.
CAW president Buzz Hargrove issued a news release shortly after midnight on Tuesday, saying the measures demanded by Air Canada amount to an annual pay cut of $10,000 per employee.
Hargrove calls that an unacceptable burden for CAW members to bear.
"When the salary range is between $35,000 and $49,000, this is asking too much of workers who have already given back to this company $165 million in concessions last year at this time," said Hargrove in the release.
[...]
Air Canada is seeking a total of $200 million in concessions from its nine bargaining units as part of a deal with Deustsche Bank. If those savings can be achieved, the German bank has agreed to underwrite an $850 million share offering.
A $10,000 pay cut would be rough. Really rough. But a $35,000-$49,000 pay cut would be even worse.
I have a vested interest here, and not just because I have 38,000 Aeroplan points which could go to waste. There is one excellent low-cost carrier, CanJet, flying out of Western Newfoundland, but they only offer a limited number of flights and destinations. If you want to get off the Rock without driving to Gander or St. John's, Air Canada is often the only game in town.
If they go under, I suppose WestJet and the horrible-but-cheap JetsGo would eventually fill the void. But the transition period would be brutal.
May 17, 2004
Sometimes, I must admit, I do wish I lived in Toronto
The great Victor Davis Hanson is speaking there this evening. Nicholas Packwood has all the details. If you get to meet VDH, say hello for me.
By contrast, who do we Newfs get? Gwynne Dyer. Life isn't fair.
"Go back to Massachusetts, Zionist pigs!"
Some gay-rights activists joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in London's Trafalgar Square yesterday, with placards demanding an end to the occupation and an end to persecuction of gays by the Palestinian Authority.
Members of two British gay rights groups were attacked when they attempted to participate in a demonstration for Palestinian rights.
OutRage and Queer Youth Alliance went to the protest march at Trafalgar Square to show their support for people of Palestine. But they also urged the Palestinian Authority to halt the arrest, torture and murder of homosexuals.
As soon as they arrived at the square members of the two groups were surrounded by an angry, screaming mob of Islamic fundamentalists, Anglican clergymen, members of the Socialist Workers Party, the Stop the War Coalition, and officials from the protest organizers, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
They variously attacked the gay activists as “racists”, “Zionists”, “CIA and MI5 agents”, “supporters of the Sharon government” and accused the gays of “dividing the Free Palestine movement”.
PSC organisers asked the gay activists to “stand at the back of the demonstration”, and when they refused blocked their placards with their own banners and shouted down the gay campaigners as they tried to speak to journalists and other protesters.
Most people at the Palestine protest expressed no hostility towards OutRage! and the Queer Youth Alliance. Some expressed positive support.
In the end, the gay groups were allowed to march in the demonstration. The two groups carried placards reading: "Israel: stop persecuting Palestine! Palestine: stop persecuting queers!"
Lovely folks, those 'peace' activists. The gay marchers are lucky they didn't have a brick wall tipped on them.
(via LGF)
Sarin in Iraq
A U.S. military convoy was attacked with an explosive device containing an artillery shell filed with sarin - the very kind of shell the Iraqis said they destroyed before the first Gulf War:
A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday. Two people were treated for "minor exposure," but no serious injuries were reported.
"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.
"A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent," he said.
The Iraqi Survey Group is a U.S. organization whose task was to search for weapons of mass destruction after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in last year's invasion.
"The round was an old binary-type requiring the mixing of two chemical components in separate sections of the cell before the deadly agent is produced," Kimmitt said. "The cell is designed to work after being fired from an artillery piece."
He said the dispersal of the nerve agent from a device such as the homemade bomb is "limited."
"The former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War," Kimmitt said. "Two explosive ordinance team members were treated for minor exposure to nerve agent as a result of the partial detonation of the round."
Before anyone gets too excited, there's no evidence that this shell was built by the Iraqis. For that matter, considering the "false positives" which have been reported as banned weapons in Iraq, I'm waiting for confirmation that this really was sarin.
But the WMD issue - which even I had pretty much conceded was dead, and an embarassing mistake by U.S. intelligence (and British intelligence, and French intelligence, and German intelligence, and UN intelligence, and...) - probably shouldn't be dismissed just yet.
Update: likely responses here.
Senility + Nihilism = Hunter S. Thompson
If they ever make a live-action movie version of The Simpsons, I think Hunter S. Thompson should play Grandpa.
(Note to Lileks: I can't wait to see you put the boots to Zerb tomorrow, but she writes for the Toronto Star, not the "Toronto Post". That's a grave disservice to much better papers like the National Post, Washington Post, New York Post and Badger's Quay Regional High School Post.)
Inexcusable by any standard
David Aaronovitch condemns "honour killing" in the Muslim world - and those in the West who would excuse it in the name of cultural relativism:
Sure enough, until very recently women (and men) were being stoned to death in Iran for adultery. In July 2001, according to the Financial Times, a Maryam Ayoubi was executed at Tehran's Evin prison at dawn. Iranian newspapers carried an account of her being ritually washed, wrapped in a white shroud and then carried to the place of execution on a stretcher where she was buried up to her armpits. There were many such stonings during the Nineties.
In 2003 an aide to the governor of the Iranian province of Khuzestan told the press that his office had received reports of the murder of 45 young women in a two-month period in honour killings. None of these crimes were prosecuted. Honour killings are rife in Pakistan, and there are a large number in Iraqi Kurdistan. In Jordan the sentence for carrying out an honour killing is set at six months. In the first part of this year more than a dozen Jordanian women were killed by their relations for having 'sullied the reputation of their family'.
And just so that we have an idea of what we may be talking about here, a fortnight ago there was a report from Istanbul about the trial of the father and brothers of a 14-year-old girl. This child had been raped and imprisoned by another man. The men of the family, from eastern Turkey, held a council and decided their honour could only be salvaged if the girl was killed. She was strangled by her father with a piece of electrical flex. He told police: 'She begged as I was strangling her ... but I did not take notice of her cries.'
In the 21st century? And there are less appalling variants of the same attitude. In Baghdad a month ago, while Nick Berg was staying at a hotel just down the road, I spoke with a representative of Moqtada al-Sadr. There were two things that concerned this cleric most about the new Iraq. The first was the rights of minorities to exercise a constitutional veto, which he opposed, and the second - more substantial - concerned his rejection of a code enshrining equality for women. He wanted it to be illegal to dress 'immodestly', for example. This was his red line.
There's the brave Iraqi "resistance", with whom the likes of John Pilger have thrown in their lot, and all that they stand for. As Aaronovitch notes, there are many brave activists throughout the Muslim world who are fighting what is being done in the name of their faith, and that those Westerners who claim to speak for them do them no favors by excusing and apologizing for such barbarism:
Last September, in Britain, Abdulla Muhammad Yunis was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his 16-year-old daughter, Heshu. The judge, passing sentence, said it was 'a tragic story arising out of irreconcilable cultural differences between traditional Kurdish values and the values of Western society'. An organisation called Kurdish Women Action Against Honour Killing wrote to him and rejected the possible logic of his words. The group demanded 'the recognition and insistence that universal human rights must be a redeemable promissory note for all ... With the turning of a 'blind eye', the notion of human rights loses meaning as a set of principles that govern all.'
Do we agree with this? And if we agree with it here, why would we not agree with it in Iraq or anywhere else? True, an easy assumption of superior virtue can blind you to what is good about others and what is bad about yourself. But do we really believe that it is the same thing accidentally to kill a civilian with a bomb as it is to cut off his head on camera? Or that a society and polity that is rightly horrified by prisoner abuse is to be compared with the one presided over by Stalin?
Antoniapalooza!
Jeff Goldstein has a roundup of blogosphere responses to Zerb's anti-blogging column.
I, for one, am not going to join my blogging bretheren in making cracks about Zerb's weight. (It would be hypocritical on my part, and besides, all cracks about weight on this blog are reserved for Michael Moore.) But by the standards she has applied to the United States after 9/11, surely she should try to understand what she did to make herself so hated, right?
Governing council head killed
The president of the Iraqi governing council has been killed by a bomb:
Abdel-Zahraa Othman, more commonly known as Izzadine Saleem, was among four Iraqis killed in the explosion outside coalition headquarters in central Baghdad, council member Nasier al Jaderji said.
Saleem was a Shiite and leader of the Islamic Dawa Movement in the southern city of Basra. He was a writer, philosopher and political activist, who served as editor of several newspapers and magazines.
The attack took place amid rising turmoil in Iraq as this country prepares for the United States to transfer power to an Iraqi interim government June 30. It underscores the risks facing those perceived as owing their power to the Americans.
Hamid al-Bayati, spokesman of SCIRI, said Saleem was trying to enter the Green Zone when the blast occurred and "he was killed." Al-Bayati did not know whether the bomb was triggered by a homicide driver or detonated in some other fashion.
Saleem was in a convoy of five vehicles, and the car carrying the bomb was adjacent to the council chief's car when it exploded, witness Mohammed Laith said. He said Saleem's driver and assistant were among those killed. Saleem held the council presidency, which rotates monthly among a selected group of members.
It's almost impossible to describe the sick feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I hear about something like this - a sickness brought on by anger at the bastards who did this, despair about whether things in Iraq are going to get better, and, yes, doubt about whether I was right to support the war in the first place.
The latter subsides when I recall what Saddam was doing before he was overthrown, and what Iraq would look like if coalition troops withdrew. But sowing the seeds of doubt - demoralizing Americans into withdrawing their forces - is almost certainly what the "insurgents" are hoping for as much as anything else. It's the only way they can win.
Update: Labour MP Ann Clwyd, a veteran human-rights campaigner who supported the war, tells of a very different Iraq from what you see in the media. (Melanie Phillips's description of Clwyd's appearance on BBC Radio Four, against a scrupulously impartial BBC interviewer, is worth reading as well.)
May 16, 2004
Instant blogging
("Heh" is a registered trademark of Glenn Reynolds)
Meme of the week
Of these 101 great books, the ones I've read are in bold:
Continue reading "Meme of the week"Turncoats stick together
Joe Clark is campaigning for Scott Brison. (Some free advice for Brison: no matter what Joe says, you need more votes than the other guy to win.)
Welcome, Toronto Star readers!
I've hit the big time. Antonia Zerbisias mentions this blog (and provides the URL) in her latest column, in which she tries to use this post as proof that we warmongering neocons are abandoning the blogosphere, now that the Iraq War "is a bloody, costly, tragic, world-dividing disaster that has led to more acts of terrorism by more groups." (The U.S. State Department says that outside of Iraq, international terror attacks were down sharply in 2003, though I'm sure Zerbisias has dismissed that as neoconservative disinformation.)
Sorry, Antonia, but several of the absent bloggers have already made it clear why they left and when they're coming back - and some long-absent bloggers, like the great Rachel Lucas, have actually returned in recent weeks. Bob Tarantino, the one-man Toronto Star demolition squad, is back from his vacation on Tuesday. We're here to stay, and we make no apologies for supporting the removal of one of the world's most brutal dictators. Deal with it.
(Antonia and I go back quite a long way. A couple of years ago, the great "media critic" used her column to promote an anti-Semitic conspiracy-theory website, before I and several other bloggers pointed out all the blatant hatemongering she somehow missed. The column in which she did so has mysteriously disappeared from the Star website, by the way.)
All that said, I have to say I do like being called "one of the top right-wing online pit stops for Canadians". That has a nice ring to it, even though I prefer to think of myself as more "center-right" or even "libertarian".
Update: as you might expect, Kathy Shaidle's response is absolutely devastating.
Update II: she slagged this guy, too.
May 15, 2004
They still hate us
Khalid Khawaja, an associate of Osama bin Laden, says Canada remains on the Islamofascist hit list:
The Al-Qaeda terror network views Canada as a legitimate target because it is a "selfish" nation committing "terrorism" against Muslims around the world, an unofficial spokesman for jihadists waging holy war against the West said Friday.
Khalid Khawaja, a friend of Osama bin Laden's who calls the Saudi terrorist and his followers "the most wonderful people of the world," told the National Post that Canadians should not be surprised if suicide bombers want to strike their country.
"It is very simple," he said. "As Bush says, either you are a friend or you are an enemy. So if you are not my friend, you are our enemy. So it is very simple. When you are supporting the enemy [the United States] then you are a target."
He also said Canada was hated because of its military presence in Afghanistan and its treatment of the Khadr family, notably Abdul Karim, the teen who set off a public outcry when he returned to Toronto for medical treatment after he was wounded in a shootout in Pakistan that left his al-Qaeda father dead.
If Al-Qaida hates us, by definition we must be doing something right.
The Sheikh stays home
The other day, I wrote that Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, imam of the Grand Mosque at Mecca and truly insane hatemonger, was coming to Canada. Today, a reader forwarded to me an e-mail from the Canadian Jewish Congress, stating that they looked into it and confirmed that Al-Sudayyis is not coming.
Thank God.
Won't this man do the world a favor and die?
Noted humanitarian Fidel Castro is savaging the United States for the Abu Ghraib prison abuse, the likes of which would never, ever happen in his totalitarian police state:
Cuban President Fidel Castro launched an immense anti-American protest on Friday with denunciations and ridicule of President Bush, saying the U.S. leader was fraudulently elected and trying to impose "world tyranny."
[...]
Castro accused the United States of fighting "wars of conquest to seize the markets and resources of the world" while Cuba, he said, was sending abroad thousands of doctors to save lives.
He insisted that Bush had "no morality nor any right at all to speak of liberty, democracy and human rights" and he said of Bush's 2000 election victory, "all the world knows it was fraudulent."
Posters portrayed the U.S. president wearing a Hitler mustache and accompanied by a Nazi swastika.
In a relatively early fallout of the Iraqi prisoner scandal, posters carried photos of abused Iraqis overwritten with the words: "This would never happen in Cuba."
Castro referred briefly to the scandal, saying the tortures had "stupefied the world" and he insisted that Cuba had never practiced such torture.
Suckers
But guess which Mirror reporter is defending the photos anyway?
May 14, 2004
Bye-Bye, Mr. Morgan
Piers Morgan has been fired as editor of the Daily Mirror after admitting its Iraq abuse photos were fake:
The editor of the Daily Mirror has been sacked after admitting its alleged Iraqi abuse pictures had been "a hoax".
Piers Morgan's decision came as the paper "apologised unreservedly" for printing the pictures.
The editor, one of the best known faces in Fleet Street, had earlier brushed away growing pressure on him to quit.
But in a dramatic turn of events, the paper's board forced the 39-year-old to step down with immediate effect.
A statement from the paper said: "The Daily Mirror published in good faith photographs which it absolutely believed were genuine images of British soldiers abusing an Iraqi prisoner.
"However there is now sufficient evidence to suggest that these pictures are fakes and that the Daily Mirror has been the subject of a calculated and malicious hoax."
Better late than never, but Morgan should have been sacked when he decided to hire John Pilger.
Al-Jazeera's shocking scoop
After causing a stir with its story about the Nick Berg beheading being a hoax, the "Arab CNN" has stumbled upon something even bigger.
De-Conradizing
The Daily Telegraph has dumped Barbara Amiel's column, allegedly for conflict-of-interest reasons. (She's a defendant in Hollinger's lawsuit against her husband, Conrad Black.)
Ever since Conrad Black's legal troubles began, none of his publications have drifted to the left more rapidly than The Spectator. I think Mark Steyn is still writing movie reviews, but he hasn't had an actual column in the magazine since April 24. And this week's cover story is about the Israeli security wall causing "misery in the Holy Land".
GG [heart] SH
Johann Hari's review of George Galloway's new memoir, I'm Not the Only One, confirms what we already knew: that the Honourable Member for Glasgow Kelvin long ago crossed the line between "peace activist" and "Saddam's bitch":
Galloway actually refers to the Shia Saddam murdered in the 1980s as "a fifth column" who "undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of their country's enemy", Iran. Nobody outside Saddam's squalid regime used this terminology; it was a justification for mass slaughter. It has been extensively documented that very few Iraqis supported Iran. They were killed because they opposed Saddam.
How about the passage where Galloway defends Saddam's claim to Kuwait, "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole"? Or his claim that Saddam's mass murder of democrats, Kurds and other opposition forces in 1991 was a "civil war" with "massive violence on both sides"? Again, only Ba'athists have ever used this language or narrative.
In 1991, a vicious tyranny exterminated its enemies. For Galloway to claim that two morally equivalent sides were fighting it out is staggering: he is equidistant between a poisoner and the medical crew waving an antidote.
There are large slabs of praise for Saddam. "Just as Stalin industrialised the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraq's own Great Leap Forward," he says. Amazingly, this isn't a criticism. Saddam is "likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity" and he developed "the living, health, social and education standards of his own people".
The decent people who make up the majority of the anti-war movement should shun Galloway. "Over time I came to love Iraq as a man loves a woman," he declares. By repeating this Ba'athist propaganda, you're certainly screwing them now, George.
May 13, 2004
Blaming Bush
Not that they needed an excuse to kill another infidel, but the monsters who beheaded Nick Berg almost certainly did it partly to further demoralize Americans and convince them to turn against the occupation of Iraq. By and large, it's backfired badly, but it did get that reaction from at least one American...
The father of Nick Berg, the American beheaded in Iraq, directly blamed President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday for his son's death.
"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.
In the interview from outside his home in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a seething Michael Berg also said his 26-year-old son, a civilian contractor, probably would have felt positive, even about his executioners, until the last minute.
"I am sure that he only saw the good in his captors until the last second of his life," Berg said. "They did not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend."
Two days after the publication of a video showing the execution of his son by five masked men, Berg attacked the Bush administration for its invasion of Iraq and its sponsorship of the Patriot Act, which gives sweeping powers of surveillance to the federal government.
Berg described the Patriot Act as a "coup d'etat." He added: "It's not the same America I grew up in."
I have never lost a child, and I can't even begin to imagine what Mr. Berg must be going through right now. He deserves our sympathy and our prayers.
But that doesn't mean I have to like what he's saying. George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld did not wield that knife, Mr. Berg. An Islamofascist killer did. And were any of us in your son's shoes, they would have done the same thing.
