June 30, 2005
Vacation Time
I'm off to PEI this afternoon. Back July 12. I am taking the laptop with me (so I can watch some DVDs during the six-hour ferry ride to Nova Scotia, potentially longer if the ship is blocked by angry crab fishermen again), but there likely won't be any new posting until I get back.
See you in a few weeks.
Steyn interviewed
John Hawkins landed another interview with the world's greatest columnist. A couple of excerpts:
In London, the most competitive newspaper market in the world, papers thrive by encouraging distinctive controversial voices. In America, the average Gannett or other monodaily prefers a tone of self-regarding dullness. As my friend John O'Sullivan put it, "They neither offend nor delight" - as a matter of policy. Yes, they're broadly "liberal," but not in a lively virtuoso engaging way, only in a dreary J-school way. I think they're missing the point here. They don't realize that they do have competitors now, in new media. In 1978, having driven your print competitors out of business, you could afford to be a dull city newspaper. I don't believe you can now.
[...]
I stopped [writing for the National Post] because they fired the Editor and Deputy Editor and various other folks I liked, like the Marketing lady. I'm all in favour of firing people, but not if the guys you replace them with aren't as good. So I left. The National Post was one of the great adventures of my journalistic life, not just because it was a conservative venture in a liberal country, but because it brought a tremendous brio and humor to a torpid newspaper culture. There seemed no point in sticking with the paper on its slide toward smugly conventional Trudeaupian mediocrity. Today the paper still has some great individual voices - Robert Fulford, George Jonas, Andrew Coyne - but it has no coherent identity, and the reality of an over-regulated media environment in a one-party state means that the current owners have compelling reasons to remain Liberal Party courtiers. Conrad Black, the paper's founder, was a very rare exception to that rule.
He also recommends some of his favorite blogs, but he inexplicably left out this one.
Another moderate
Dr. Ahmad Dewidar, head of the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan, has met with President Bush, Governor Pataki and Kofi Annan. But I doubt he talked like this during those meetings:
"The Zionist community numbers only three million, but they control the government, the politics, the economy, and the media in the U.S. At the same time, the Islamic community numbers 11 million, but its influence is weak. There are a number of reasons for this."
[...]
"Many are interested in preventing our influence in society – first and foremost the Zionist lobby, which influences the media at present, so that we cannot spread our ideas and spotlight our leaders and our successful models. Even when a Muslim tries to work in the media, he has to contend with five million media employees who are controlled by the Jews."
[...]
"As for the American policy of controlling the region... The American regime believes in a [certain] ideological or religious program, which is like the New Testament for it. [This program] is the result of a great intellectual effort by a man who is powerful and influential among the intellectuals, who is called Sharatsky [sic; apparently referring to former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky] – a Jew in origin. [His idea] boils down to the claim that in order for America to live in security, it has to change the perceptions in the Middle East regarding the [people's] sense of participation in the political process, and regarding freedom, democracy and education. This, [according to him,] is because the oppression of these [Middle Eastern] societies leads to extremism, which is ruining their countries and America... This Jew has despicable goals, and we see their effects today in America's actions in the region, imposing its opinion and its outlook on democracy, education, and political involvement on our [Arab and Islamic] countries."
June 29, 2005
Societal collapse imminent
That's what some people are saying in response to this, anyway. I remain unconvinced. (But hey, if we're all tree-worshipping pagan sex slaves twenty years from now, I'll apologize.)
Meanwhile, you can make of this what you will:
An exodus from Stephen Harper's office has decimated the Conservative leader's PR team as he strives to appear more friendly and election-ready.
The Canadian Press has learned that Harper is set to lose two more communications staff as he embarks on a national trek of campaign-style whistle stops.
He has become a magnet for criticism as the Tories lag well behind the Liberals in public opinion polls despite the sponsorship scandal.
Communications director Geoff Norquay is resigning from the post less than a year into the job.
Strategic communications director Yaroslav Baran is also leaving.
That brings to four the number of public relations strategists to call it quits in recent weeks. Jim Armour and Mike Storeshaw left earlier this month for private-sector jobs.
For the love of God, Steve, don't base the entire campaign around the gay-marriage issue. It's like giving the media and the Liberals a loaded gun.
You know, the Huffington Post turned into an extreme-left kook site so gradually, I hardly even noticed
Now they're comparing Bush to the BTK killer. As Glenn Reynolds notes, "that Hitler thing was getting sooo passé."
Why is it that these people never compare Bush to people like Stalin, Mao or Castro? Oh, right.
The £10,000,000 apology
Michelin is going to spend that much money refunding people who bought tickets to the United States Grand Prix, and handing out free tickets for next year:
Tyre manufacturer Michelin have offered a full refund on all tickets bought for the United States Grand Prix in Indianapolis, which went ahead without the seven teams that the French company supply. They also offered to hand out 20,000 free tickets for next year's race.
The gesture, which could cost the company as much as £10 million, came on the eve of today's meeting of the World Motor Sport Council in Paris to decide the fate of the teams who refused to contest the race on grounds of tyre safety.
The development coincided with the launch of legal action in the United States against Michelin, Formula One, the FIA, the teams and Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which has potentially catastrophic financial consequences for those involved as it is open to anyone who bought a ticket to join.
Death of a totalitarian traitor
I don't usually put down 93 year-old recently-deceased great-grandmothers - but then again, most 93 year-old recently-deceased great-grandmothers weren't unrepentant spies for Stalin:
Melita Norwood, who died on June 2 aged 93, caused a brief flurry of excitement in 1999 when it was revealed that not only had she spied for the Russians for four decades, but that the authorities had known of her treachery but had done nothing about it.
The story of Norwood, a jam-making great-grandmother and self-styled "Bolshevik of Bexleyheath", broke in September 1999 after she admitted being "Hola", a KGB agent exposed in papers produced by Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist who had defected to the West in 1992.
Norwood's treachery had begun in the 1930s when she was a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association and passed on secret documents, including details of Britain's first atomic bomb.
Her security clearance was revoked in 1951 amid suspicions about her Communist sympathies, and suspicions hardened into certainty in 1966, when the "Venona" files of decrypted Soviet communications revealed that she had worked as a spy in the immediate post-war years. Yet MI5 decided not to interview her, and she continued to pass documents to her Soviet handlers until her retirement in 1972.
When further evidence came to light following Mitrokhin's defection, junior MI5 staff decided not to pursue an investigation because it "might have led to criticism for harassing an old lady", and eventually the law officers too decided not to prosecute. The decision led to an investigation by the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, which concluded that MI5 had made a series of "serious failures".
Far more outrageous, in the view of the press, was the fact that Norwood treated public indignation about her treachery as a huge joke. She steadfastly refused to accept that she had anything to be ashamed of: Soviet Communism was "a good experiment, and I agreed with it… I would do it again," she told reporters.
If only Hitler had gotten little old ladies to run the death camps, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble.
In family law, no order is ever final
That's what they told us in law school, and here's more proof:
After their divorce, Hynes paid $300 a month in spousal support and $500 for each of their children. When his income as a family physician dropped, he decided to return to school to become a psychiatrist and a court terminated the support payments on the understanding that improving his professional credentials would benefit the family.
Three years ago, with her ex-husband earning approximately $250,000 a year as a psychiatrist, Tierney-Hynes asked to have her support payments reinstated to $11,180 a month, plus a lump sum of $500,000.
Last year, her former husband succeeded in having her claim thrown out of court without a trial. The judge based her ruling on precedents that barred courts from changing orders that terminated or denied support payments.
But in a unanimous decision yesterday, a five-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned that long-standing law. The court ruled that judges now have the power to change court orders that dismiss claims for spousal support, effectively expanding the ability of divorced spouses to return to court to seek payments.
The decision means divorced people in Ontario, who were unsuccessful in their bid for spousal support, can now try to have the decision changed. According to some legal experts, the decision also opens the door to the prospect of court battles years or even decades after a marriage breakdown.
It "means there is really no finality," said Toronto family law lawyer Stephen Grant.
"Now, a court dismisses your claim, circumstances worsen, 20 years go by and you can come back and have another kick at the can," he said yesterday.
I presume this one will be going to the Supreme Court of Canada. For now, it only applies in Ontario, but it could still be persuasive authority in other provinces - especially since the ruling was based on the federal Divorce Act, not provincial legislation.
June 28, 2005
His best speech ever
Full text here. Some of President Bush's speaking appearances in the past have been absolutely painful to watch (he's not the orator Adolf Hitler was, as the CounterPunch crowd would say), but he seemed genuinely confident and resolute this evening.
I wish Bush had explained that the WMD issue was just one of several reasons for the invasion of Iraq, and I'm also a bit surprised he didn't address the allegations about Guantanamo Bay. Aside from that, I couldn't argue with any of it. In particular - and maybe I'm reading a bit too much into this - I was thrilled to see him acknowledge Saudi Arabia's role in the fight against Islamofascist terror:
Some of the violence you see in Iraq is being carried out by ruthless killers who are converging on Iraq to fight the advance of peace and freedom. Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others.
[...]
Across the broader Middle East, people are claiming their freedom. In the last few months, we've witnessed elections in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon. These elections are inspiring democratic reformers in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Considering he was holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah not too long ago, I think this is a sign of progress. Let's hope he's finally putting some pressure on.
The classical liberal's worst nightmare
Bob Tarantino says the Conservatives are planning to campaign on the issue of repealing same-sex marriage legislation should they form a majority government. He thinks it's a very bad idea, and so do I:
One can only assume that to be the case; which is to say, the Tories better have some pretty staggering poll numbers. Because it seems they want to have their cake and eat it, too: after arguing that the proper forum for the decision on same-sex marriage was Parliament (which is probably correct), they now have to come up with some rationale for ignoring the decision of Parliament (or the impending decision) and trying to substitute a different decision of Parliament. Which, in and of itself, is fine: just because a legislature makes a decision one day doesn't mean that the issue is decided for all time; societies need the flexibility to re-visit matters. But are there really enough people that agree with the Tories that it makes sense for them to make this the primary issue in a campaign? Especially in the teeth of anti-conservative, pro-SSM media coverage?
Maybe the Tories have numbers and strategic advice which indicate that strong advocacy on their part of traditional marriage will be enough to shave sufficient numbers of supporters away from the Liberals in "marginal" ridings to tip the balance of Parliamentary power in an upcoming election ("marginal" in the sense that the Liberal margin of victory wasn't so large in the last election), but that seems to be a long shot: the "conservative immigrants" voting bloc which the CPC seems to think it can sway would need to be awfully large to switch the election results (especially since, I assume, those immigrant communities are concentrated in urban ridings where the Liberal margin of victory is rather high).
One further danger: if the Tories are explicit in their determination to ensure that if/when they win a majority they will repeal same-sex marriage legislation (and they need to decide whether that will be the case whether they win this year, next year or five years from now), there may be a countervailing loss which makes up for attracting "conservative immigrants". In other words, how many people out there who would otherwise be willing to vote Tory will decline to do so because they have been assured that a CPC majority means repeal of the legislation? Are the numbers sufficiently small to outweigh potential gains from anti-SSM voters? When the numbers are as tight as they seem to be when determining majority/minority governments, it would seem that the CPC needs to be extremely sure that this gambit is a winning one.
Canadians who vigorously oppose gay marriage have nowhere to go except to the Conservatives, unless they waste their votes on the Christian Heritage Party. It's the fiscally-conservative-but-socially-liberal voter the Tories need to put them over the top, and who knows how many will be driven away by a campaign like this? I'll still vote for the Conservatives because of, well, pretty much every issue except same-sex marriage - but many, many more will stay home, spoil their ballots or hold their noses and vote Liberal.
More mainstream media fraud
An acclaimed columnist for the Sacramento Bee may have faked 43 sources over the past twelve years. Meanwhile, a Globe and Mail reporter made up details about a meeting between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, in order to make a dubious point about Palestinian "dispossession".
Update: AP writer Jennifer Loven travelled through time to report on President Bush's Iraq address - before it even happened! (As I write this, the speech is scheduled to begin in about ten minutes.)
(via LGF)
Cut off further
You need a permit to make an international telephone call from North Korea, but even that's not enough control for Kim Jong-Il's regime:
North Korea has cut most of its international phone lines since late March over concerns that sensitive information about its society will flow out of the isolated country, South Korea's spy agency reportedly said Tuesday.
Spy agency officials told a closed-door session of the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee that international phone connections had been cut at most of the North's trading companies and at government agencies since late March, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
Since April, even people with permits to make international calls have been able to do so only under the strict surveillance of security officials, the report said.
Spy agency officials said the steps were taken to eliminate sources of instability ahead of the 60th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, as well as the 60th anniversary of the founding of its Workers' Party.
Nothing surprises me about that government anymore.
Conversations with a would-be killer
Not to be missed: Manuela Dviri, an Israeli journalist involved with a charity providing medical treatment to Palestinian children, interviewed failed suicide bomber Wafa Samir al-Biss in prison.
When a soldier asked her to remove her long, dark cloak, she turned to face him. All her movements were taped by the military surveillance camera at the checkpoint: calmly, deliberately, she took off her clothing, item by item, until she looked like any normal young woman in T-shirt and jeans. It was then that she tried to set off the belt containing 20lb of explosives hidden beneath her trousers. To her horror, she did not succeed. Desperate, she clawed at her face, screaming. She was still alive, she realised. She had failed her martyrdom mission.
That afternoon, on June 21, the 21-year-old, Wafa Samir al-Biss, was brought before the press by Israeli intelligence. Her neck and hands were covered with scars caused by a kitchen gas explosion six months earlier. The ugly scars - which had been treated in a hospital in Israel - had probably helped turn her into the perfect would-be huriia (virgin), the ideal martyr, since they would make it difficult for her to find a suitable husband.
[...]
Wafa had been sent on her mission by the Abu Rish Brigade, the small militant faction with links to Fatah. She did not, she said later, regret it, though she stressed that her decision had had nothing to do with her scarring. "My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''
Asked whether she had considered the consequences of her planned attack, that it might have now precluded access to Israel for Palestinian patients who meant no harm and needed special medical treatment that could be achieved only here, she answered: "So what?" With a flat look in her eyes, she said: "They pay you the cost of the treatment, don't they?"
And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"
June 27, 2005
Another clumsy move
The Conservatives are trying to undermine pending same-sex marriage legislation by by saying the separatists' support makes it illegitimate:
Stephen Harper set off a political uproar Monday when he appeared to blame Quebec separatists for the pending legalization of gay marriage.
The Conservative leader called into question the legitimacy of a law that's expected to pass this week with help from the Bloc Quebecois. "Because it's being passed with the support of the Bloc, I think it will lack legitimacy with most Canadians," Harper said.
"The truth is most federalist MPs oppose this."
Conservative justice critic Vic Toews went further.
"The federalist MPs in Canada, the majority of them, would oppose (gay marriage) on a free vote. So what we are seeing now is simply an agreement by this government with the separatist Bloc - who have no long-term interest in staying in Canada."
The comments were swiftly rebuked and ridiculed by rivals of all political stripes.
Personally, I have no problem with tweaking the Quebec separatists at every opportunity. But the last thing Stephen Harper needs right now is to be seen as anti-Quebec - not to mention hypocritical, considering that the Conservatives had no problem with the Bloc helping them try to bring down the government altogether just last month.
Just how politically tone-deaf can this party get?
Don't even talk about it
White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters he's "disappointed" to see the ACLU debating provisions of the PATRIOT Act at an upcoming meeting. "I would have expected the ACLU to be a little more circumspect," he said.
Once again, we see the spectre of fascism creeping over the so-called "land of the free", where politicians tell citizens and private organizations what they can and cannot talk about. It's absolutely disgusting, and...wait a minute, my mistake. It's actually federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh telling the Canadian Medical Association they shouldn't even discuss the role of private health care at their annual convention. Never mind!
Federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh says he's "disappointed" with Canada's doctors -- and especially the head of their influential national association -- for planning a debate at their annual meeting this summer on the role of private health care in this country.
In a weekend interview, Dosanjh responded sharply to comments made last Friday by Dr. Albert Schumacher, president of the Canadian Medical Association.
"I am extremely disappointed," Dosanjh said. "I am wondering where Dr. Schumacher wants to take the CMA. I am disappointed that he wants to take the CMA in a direction where he sees a private health care in Canada.
"I would have expected the president of the CMA to be a little more circumspect."
In fact, neither Schumacher nor the senior members of the CMA are advocating the wholesale abandonment of medicare. Rather, they've suggested it's time to consider limited use of private health care in conjunction with the public system.
But Dosanjh said even this would lead to the destruction of medicare, and he urged doctors to exercise caution in reviewing such options.
"I don't see a great rush to set up private health care," he said of the Canadian public.
"There are people who still remember the dark days of private health care, where people had to sell their farms and sell their homes to care for their loved ones."
In a perfect world, the CMA would pass a resolution telling Ujjal Dosanjh to fuck off. (via Angry in T.O. at The Shotgun)
(By the way, I'm sure some of you are thinking about Ari Fleischer's infamous "watch what they say" comments at a White House press briefing shortly after 9/11. In context, Fleischer's remarks weren't threatening at all - but for the true believers, it will always be proof of totalitarianism descending on America.)
Insufficiently grateful to his captors
I would say the Australian left has hit rock bottom, except that I'm sure they'll find some way to sink lower than this:
[Andrew] Jaspan is editor-in-chief of The Age, Australia's most Left-wing daily newspaper, and on ABC radio on Wednesday said how "boorish" and "coarse" Wood was at his press conference this week when he called his captors "a---holes".
You might wonder whether Jaspan, the Englishman whose paper on that same day published a big picture on page one of naked girls from Big Brother, has the right to call anyone else "coarse".
But far more shocking was his apparent demand that Wood be more grateful to the men who'd snatched him, kicked him in the head, kept him blindfolded and bound for 47 days, shaved him bald, killed two of his colleagues, made him beg for his life, and -- says a fellow hostage from Sweden -- shot several other prisoners in front of him.
Let's run the tape.
Said Jaspan: "I was, I have to say, shocked by Douglas Wood's use of the a---hole word, if I can put it like that, which I just thought was coarse and very ill-thought through and I think demeans the man and is one of the reasons why people are slightly sceptical of his motives and everything else.
"The issue really is largely, speaking as I understand it, he was treated well there. He says he was fed every day, and as such to turn around and use that kind of language I think is just insensitive." The ingrate.
I haven't heard much lately more perverse. If what Wood went through is Jaspan's idea of being "treated well", I finally understand why The Age seems so dismayed by the fall of nice Saddam Hussein, who similarly treated his victims so well that more than 300,000 have been found in mass graves. They must have been simply tickled to death to be there.
An editorial in The Australian contrasts the treatment of Wood with that of "Australian Taliban" David Hicks:
If Douglas Wood had emerged from captivity and blamed John Howard, Tony Blair and George W. Bush for his troubles, he would have become an instant hero in some circles. By now he would be have been offered a Chair in Middle Eastern Studies at one of our major universities, and ABC Radio National would have been renamed Radio Doug in his honour. Instead, Mr Wood had the temerity to disparage his captors, praise his liberators and declare our Iraq mission worthwhile. His name has been mud ever since.
[...]
Since Mr Wood was deprived of his livelihood by his abductors, and has done nothing wrong, it is hard to see why his decision to sell his story arouses such ire. After all, if there were no interest in that story, he would not receive $400,000 for it. That, coincidentally, is about how much taxpayers were forced to kick in to a fawning and unwatched SBS documentary about Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks. Instructively, Mr Wood's support for the US alliance disqualified him from the sympathy of some commentators, while Mr Hicks's avowed anti-Semitism, along with the fact he trained with al-Qa'ida, flowed off them like water off a duck. Ackland hints darkly that a man like Mr Wood must have had nefarious reasons for being in Iraq. His earlier judgement on Mr Hicks was that he is a "woebegone idealist". Sorry?
Placed in context, the vilification of Mr Wood is the latest in a series of bad calls made on the Left since September 11, 2001. While the leaders of the social-democratic parties in Australia, Britain and the US made the principled decision following 9/11 - to support democracy and civilised values against religious fascism - for many on the Left the idea the US could be the victim rather than the perpetrator of evil was a head-spin. At every step along the road since then, their strategy has been to appease the fascists and castigate the US and its allies. In this upside-down world picture, nobody is too discredited to be fashioned into a hero and nobody too blameless to be set up as a villain.
(via timblair.net)
Update: audio of Jaspan here. He starts talking about Wood around the 4:30 mark.
Among the privileges granted to Douglas Wood while he was in captivity: getting to hear his fellow hostages being murdered.
The flag can handle it
Steyn gets it exactly right, as usual, on that stupid anti-flag-desecration amendment recently passed in the House of Representatives:
Unlike Congressman Cunningham, I wouldn't presume to speak for those who died atop the World Trade Center. For one thing, citizens of more than 50 foreign countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, were killed on 9/11. Of the remainder, maybe some would be in favor of a flag-burning amendment; and maybe some would think that criminalizing disrespect for national symbols is unworthy of a free society. And maybe others would roll their eyes and say that, granted it's been clear since about October 2001 that the federal legislature has nothing useful to contribute to the war on terror, and its hacks and poseurs prefer to busy themselves with a lot of irrelevant grandstanding with a side order of fries, but they could at least quit dragging us into it.
And maybe a few would feel as many of my correspondents did last week about the ridiculous complaints of ''desecration'' of the Quran by U.S. guards at Guantanamo -- that, in the words of one reader, ''it's not possible to 'torture' an inanimate object.''
That alone is a perfectly good reason to object to a law forbidding the "desecration" of the flag. For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat senators want to make speeches comparing the U.S. military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It's always useful to know what people really believe.
Do not miss Steyn's comments about the one time he saw the Canadian flag getting burned on television. (Personally, I wish more of the world's kooks, tyrants and fascists thought the Maple Leaf was worth burning.)
June 26, 2005
No quick victory
Donald Rumsfeld admits the Iraq insurgency could last for many years to come, but he says it will ultimately be defeated by the Iraqis themselves:
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday warned that the insurgency in Iraq could go on for at least a decade and confirmed that the army had been in contact with some of its leaders in an attempt to quell the violence.
He spoke after insurgents launched coordinated suicide bomb attacks which killed at least 33 people and wounded dozens more in the northern city of Mosul.
Mr Rumsfeld said that Iraqis, not US troops, would eventually bring an end to attacks that have killed thousands of civilians and 1,730 American soldiers.
His downbeat assessment, during a television interview, was in stark contrast to a claim at the end of May by the vice presiden, Dick Cheney, that the insurgency was "in its last throes".
Mr Rumsfeld said: "We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."
Mr Rumsfeld confirmed that US officials were taking part in talks with insurgent leaders in Iraq. Asked about a report of two such meetings in yesterday's Sunday Times, he told Fox News: "Well, the first thing I would say about the meetings is they go on all the time."
He added that Iraq had a sovereign government which could choose its own relationships with different groups of insurgents. "We facilitate those from time to time," Mr Rumsfeld said.
The Bush Administration has done itself no favors in making overly optimistic predictions like Cheney's, and here's hoping it will be much more realistic about Iraq from here on out. In the meantime, U.S. News and World Report notes that the "militants" are getting at least a little of their funding from "peace" activists in Europe:
Turns out that far-left groups in western Europe are carrying on a campaign dubbed Ten Euros for the Resistance, offering aid and comfort to the car bombers, kidnappers, and snipers trying to destabilize the fledgling Iraq government. In the words of one Italian website, Iraq Libero (Free Iraq), the funds are meant for those fighting the occupanti imperialisti. The groups are an odd collection, made up largely of Marxists and Maoists, sprinkled with an array of Arab emigres and aging, old-school fascists, according to Lorenzo Vidino, an analyst on European terrorism based at The Investigative Project in Washington, D.C. "It's the old anticapitalist, anti-U.S., anti-Israel crowd," says Vidino, who has been to their gatherings, where he saw activists from Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Italy. "The glue that binds them together is anti-Americanism." The groups are working on an October conference to further support "the Iraqi Resistance." A key goal is to expand backing for the insurgents from the fringe left to the broader antiwar and antiglobalization movements.
"Not antiwar but on the other side," indeed. (via Blithering Bunny)
Christians defended
Norm Geras and Blithering Bunny are avowed atheists, but that doesn't mean they have any time for casual put-downs of religious believers.
Why they hate psychiatry
The "Church" of Scientology's long-standing feud with psychiatry is explained here. To make a long story short, it stems from L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics - which premiered in a pulp sci-fi magazine, and serves as a kind of founding text for Scientology - being dismissed as blatant quackery by the mental health profession just after it was released in 1950. (via Let it Bleed)
That's not to say there aren't legitimate criticisms of the psychiatric profession. But the likes of Tom Cruise and Kelly Preston are just blindly mouthing Scientology propaganda, and it's good to see Cruise being called on it during interviews to promote War of the Worlds. (Matt Lauer is lucky Cruise didn't shoot lasers from his hands, like he did with the late Oprah Winfrey.)
Africa's blind eye
The African Union had a golden opportunity to show its commitment to democracy and political reform by condemning Robert Mugabe's destructive policies. Instead, it's letting Mugabe get away with it:
The African Union rallied to an African leader, saying it would not intervene in a Zimbabwean campaign of evictions and arrests that has been described as cruelly anti-poor because Robert Mugabe might be trying to help his people in the long term.
"I do not think it is proper for the AU Commission to start running the internal affairs of members states," Desmond Orjiako, spokesman for the 53-member union, said Friday.
He acknowledged: "It is painful that the poor people in Zimbabwe are being displaced."
"But if it is in the interests to prevent crime, or improve sanitation or ensure the health of the people or ensure Harare does not turn into a slum, I do not see how the AU should take over the internal legislation for action the government says they have taken to improve the livelihoods of their people," Orjiako said.
[...]
The African Union has intervened elsewhere on the continent, earning praise at a time when rich nations in the West are looking for signs any overture on their part to increase aid to Africa would be met with political reforms.
The African Union suspended the membership of the tiny West African nation of Togo and imposed a travel ban and economic sanctions after what many saw as a military coup there in February. An AU envoy is now charged with finding a political solution for Togo.
The African Union also has peacekeepers in the volatile Darfur region of Sudan and is mediating truce talks between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels.
Mugabe's status as an anti-colonialist hero, and his viciously anti-white rhetoric, have probably ensured his immunity from condemnation by Africa's other leaders - even though his victims are overwhelmingly black. Roman Catholic Archbishop , who has bravely spoken out against Mugabe's crimes against his nation, put it this way during an interview on British television:
[Jon Snow suggests that comparison with Pol Pot is 'pretty extreme'.] It's not extreme. I mean here is a man who is not giving any warning to people, pushing them out, something like one and a half million people. This is extremely cruel, very much like Pol Pot, and this will lead to people starving. People are already starving in the country because Mugabe didn't call for aid, at least not in time, and he's politicizing food in certain areas. So now these people are being forced to go to the country where there's nothing. The rain didn't come down... So, what will happen to these people? They're going to starve...
[Jon Snow asks why there isn't more protest from neighbouring states, from Africa.] You must understand there's an African club here. They will support one another come what may... They think that the Western world works to its own advantage... and they feel that we Africans, we must support one another, not embarrass one another by criticizing one another. It's an African club mentality here.
June 25, 2005
The Islamofascists' next target
According to the New York Observer, members of the radical "Islamic Thinkers Society" - like their militant bretheren in Europe - have begun harassing gays and lesbians:
The dispute between an irascible lesbian conservative from Queens and a militant new group well on the fringes of the city’s Muslim community might appear to be a marginal conflict. But to New York’s gays and to some of its Muslim leaders, the scene in Jackson Heights bears a worrying similarity to communal conflicts that are challenging the idea of tolerance across Europe, with particular flashpoints in Holland and Scandinavia. There, young immigrants and the children of immigrants have been drawn to a more radical Islamic ideology than that of their parents. On the extreme fringes, these young men have committed acts of violence against Jews and gays, and in a case that shocked Europe, one young Dutchman of Moroccan origin murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in an Amsterdam street.
"It’s almost a cliché to define it like this, but in the end it’s a question of whether you can tolerate intolerance," said Leon de Winter, a Dutch novelist who has written on the Van Gogh murder. "We are defending the openness, the diversity of this society against tendencies from other cultures, in which this kind of openness which we celebrate is being regarded as a threat."
In this conflict, gays have become canaries in the ideological coal mine. Western liberals have tended to cut Muslim groups slack on their ideological pronouncements, in part out of sympathy with some of their causes—the insurgencies in Chechnya and the Middle East, for example—and in part out of a sense that anti-Muslim sentiment in the West is a more pressing problem than anything Muslims themselves might do. [A telling example here - Ed.]
But the rise of gay bashing on European streets has pushed the question of tolerance a step further and led some to question their reflexive defense of a put-upon minority. It has also opened up a heated debate within the gay community, and among liberals in general, over whether the proliferation of intolerant strains of Islam requires liberals in the West to take a harder line on issues like immigration and assimilation.
(via Andrew Sullivan)
On a somewhat related note, the City of Jerusalem has cancelled a gay-pride parade scheduled for June 30, largely because of pressure from Jewish and Muslim religious authorities. What a disappointment for those of us who believe the mere presence of a gay-rights movement illustrates the fundamental difference between Israel and its neighbours.
Why Africa is poor
Amount of foreign aid recieved by Nigeria between 1960 and 1997: £220 billion.
Amount of money looted from the Nigerian treasury by politicians between 1960 and 1999: £220 billion.
The scale of the task facing Tony Blair in his drive to help Africa was laid bare yesterday when it emerged that Nigeria's past rulers stole or misused £220 billion.
That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent.
The figures, compiled by Nigeria's anti-corruption commission, provide dramatic evidence of the problems facing next month's summit in Gleneagles of the G8 group of wealthy countries which are under pressure to approve a programme of debt relief for Africa.
Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has spoken of a new Marshall Plan for Africa. But Nigeria's rulers have already pocketed the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. After that mass theft, two thirds of the country's 130 million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water supply.
The biggest thief was the late military dictator Sani Abacha, who stole between £1 billion and £3 billion during his five-year rule. (His widow keeps sending me e-mails asking for help in hiding the money.) Nigeria is under a new government today - but the onus should be on the new rulers to prove it can govern competently and honestly before we give that blighted nation the help it needs.
Hardliner elected
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the mayor of Tehran, has been elected President of Iran:
Hard-line Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sweeping toward a stunning presidential election victory over veteran cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani with the backing of Iran's religious poor on Saturday, officials said.
Political analysts say a win for Mr. Ahmadinejad, 48, could spell an end to fragile social reforms made under outgoing President Mohammed Khatami and harden Iran's foreign policy toward the West, particularly over its nuclear program.
An official at the Islamic Republic's Guardian Council, which must approve the results, said that with 12.9 million votes counted, Mr. Ahmadinejad had secured 61 per cent.
The Associated Press reported that a top aide in the Rafsanjani campaign said their figures also pointed to a victory for his opponent.
The official turnout was 47% - much lower than in the first round of balloting, and a good indication that disgruntled younger voters just didn't bother. Or were prevented from doing so:
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all state matters, banned supporters from the two sides from holding victory celebrations after a fractious campaign marred by allegations of electoral irregularities.
Aides to Mr. Rafsanjani, who was president from 1989 to 1997 and has cast himself as a reformer, accused the hard-line Basij militia of trying to intimidate voters to back Mr. Ahmadinejad.
"We know massive irregularities have taken place in steering votes towards a certain candidate in which the Basij has played a role," one aide, Mohammad Atrianfar, told reporters.
Officials at the Interior Ministry, dominated by reformists who back the former president, also complained of illegal election-day campaigning.
June 24, 2005
Babysitter Broadcasting Corporation
The BBC is going to introduce a time delay in live coverage of "sensitive news events", so particularly "shocking" scenes can be removed. Don't want to make the viewer uncomfortable, you know.
Had these guidelines been in place on 9/11, I guess the BBC wouldn't have shown these planes slammering into the towers. Then again, most other news channels have deemed these images too disturbing and/or inflammatory to show us, so why should the Beeb be any different?
Torture admitted?
AFP says the Americans have admitted mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to the UN Committee Against Torture. (Which got me wondering, does anyone else ever admit anything before the UN Committee Against Torture?)
Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.
The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.
"They are no longer trying to duck this, and have respected their obligation to inform the UN," the Committee member told AFP.
"They they will have to explain themselves (to the Committee). Nothing should be kept in the dark."
UN sources said it was the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.
[...]
"They haven't avoided anything in their answers, whether concerning prisoners in Iraq, in Afghanistan or Guantanamo, and other accusations of mistreatment and of torture," the Committee member said.
"They said it was a question of isolated cases, that there was nothing systematic and that the guilty were in the process of being punished."
The US report said that those involved were low-ranking members of the military and that their acts were not approved by their superiors, the member added.
I can hear the cries of "whitewash!" already. As for me, if the "torture" consists of playing loud rap music and turning off the air conditioning, I'm not going to lose any sleep. But if prisoners have been physically beaten (and there have been confirmed deaths in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, though not at Guanatamo Bay), it's completely unacceptable, and the American government should come clean about it. Of course the worst conditions at Guantanamo don't even come close to what happens in the prisons of the Arab world (or the prisons elsewhere in Cuba, for that matter), but that's not really the point; the United States should be held to a higher standard than, say, Saddam's Iraq.
People say Guantanamo and the War on Terror have severely damaged America's image abroad, and that may be true. In some cases, the damage may be justified. But does the United States want to appease people who have more positive feelings toward China?
Another interesting celebrity fact
Tom Cruise is completely fucking insane. (But is that even a surprise anymore?)
An interesting celebrity fact
Jennifer Lopez, aka J.Lo, aka a lot of other names too vulgar to post here, has been in 18 movies. Not one has made over $100 million at the box office.
(via The Superficial)
That so-called "horseless carriage" will never make it, either
Gavin O’Reilly, incoming chair of the World Association of Newspapers:
I think participative journalism is a dangerous precedent for our industry. People forget that newspapers have always been an interactive medium, people have always been able to interact with us through the mailbag.
The corrupt continent
Once of these shake-your-head-in-disbelief articles, in The Spectator, reveals the absolutely staggering extent of corruption among Africa's rulers. While the people struggle and starve, their Presidents and Prime Ministers - known as the "WaBenzi" because of their particular fondness for the S-class Mercedes-Benz - spend lavishly on limosuines, airplanes and mansions. And much of it is paid for with foreign aid:
The legacy of colonialism is a continent carved up by arbitrary frontiers into 50-odd states. But the WaBenzi are a transcontinental tribe who have been committing grand theft auto on the dusty, potholed roads of Africa ever since they hijacked freedom in the 1960s. After joyriding their way through six Marshall Plans’ worth of aid Africa is poorer today than 25 years ago; and now the WaBenzi want more.
Of course, not all Africans who own Mercedes cars are WaBenzi and nor am I suggesting DaimlerChrysler are at fault in any way. Thanks in large part to anti-state corruption drives by the World Bank, a middle class of hard-working, talented entrepreneurs has emerged in Africa in the last two decades. Africa’s future depends on these young entrepreneurs, and they want to buy quality cars for the same reason successful Westerners do. As one Kampala businessman says, ‘I am a serious person and I want that to be portrayed even through the car I drive.’ Free trade for Africa would certainly create more Mercedes-Benz owners. The WaBenzi, by the way, loathe free trade. Reduced bureaucracy means less opportunity for graft, and the traditional way of getting someone else to buy your German-built machine.
Take, for example, Malawi’s ‘Benz Aid’ scandal. In the year 2000 Bakili Muluzi was hailed as a paragon of African ‘good governance’ following the demise of Life President Hastings Kamuzu Banda. The Economist rated Blantyre as the best city to live in in the world. Britain promised to increase its aid from £30.8 million to £52.4 million in a single year specifically to help the 65 per cent of Malawians existing on less than 50 pence a day. Malawi’s government celebrated by purchasing 39 top-of-the-range S-class Mercedes at a cost of £1.7 million. In the furore that followed, Clare Short, then international development secretary, ruled out a ban on aid to Malawi, explaining that the money used for the car purchases had not been skimmed off British aid but some other donor’s.
[...]
Last year King Mswati III of Swaziland went against the grain. He passed over Mercedes and went for a £264,000 Maybach 62 for himself plus a fleet of BMWs for each of his 10 wives and three virginal fiancées selected annually at the football stadium ‘dance of the impalas’. Imagine if he continues buying BMW for his wives; his dad collected 50 spouses and 350 kids. In May southern Africa’s Mr Toad changed his mind about Mercedes and roared up to his rubber-stamp parliament in a new S600L limo. The total bill for his car purchases alone will be about £750,000, or three quarters of the annual figure for British assistance. Of the £14 million Swaziland gets in foreign aid, £9 million goes on the king’s balls, picnics and parties — and cars. Yet 70 per cent of Swazis languish in absolute poverty and four out of ten have HIV/Aids, the highest rate in the world. [emphasis added]
There is much, much more. And any regime callous and corrupt enough to waste money like this shouldn't get a nickel from Western governments. Not only is the money failing to make it to those who need it, it's legitimizing an African ruling class which has betrayed and cheated its people for decades. It has to stop.
(One historical quibble: the author, Aidan Hartley, says Mercedes-Benz was "was ticking along, doing nothing special" until the 1960s, when the leaders of newly free African countries started snapping up Pullman limosuines. "Nothing special"?)
Budget rammed through
After months of savaging the Conservatives for making a deal with the Bloc Quebecois to try bringing down the government, the Liberals made a deal with the Bloc Quebecois to ensure the federal budget would pass on Third Reading:
The federal Liberals scored a quick and decisive victory Thursday night, catching the Conservatives off guard by passing their controversial budget amendment and ensuring their minority government is safe until the fall.
Bill C-48, the NDP amendment to the budget that adds $4.6 billion in social spending, passed third reading by a vote of 152 to 147.
Losing the vote would have automatically triggered a federal election. But after months of threats to bring down the government, the budget bill last night was the last matter of confidence the House of Commons will vote on this session.
In a surprise move, and with a number of Conservative MPs missing, the Liberals marched out a rarely used obscure procedural motion to cut off all debate and force an immediate vote on the budget.
The Liberals had forged a deal with the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois to get the motion carried.
Many Conservative MPs had already left the House when word got out the Liberals were going to force a midnight vote on the budget.
Conservative leader Stephen Harper, who was forced to rush back, blasted the three-way alliance.
"When push comes to shove the Liberals will make any deal with anybody," Harper said after the vote. "And it doesn't matter whether it's with the socialists or with the separatists or any bunch of crooks they can find."
Once again, the Liberals revealed their sheer ruthlessness - and once again, the Conservatives were caught napping.
Update: of course, given these poll results, we're probably lucky not to be heading into an election.
June 23, 2005
Classy
Where else but in The Guardian would you find subtle, thought-provoking political satire like this?
(via LGF)
Grimes' district goes blue
PC candidiate Clayton Forsey has been declared the winner of the provincial by-election in Exploits, the Central Newfoundland riding vacated by former Liberal leader (and premier) Roger Grimes.
Grimes held that seat since 1989, and the Williams government is at the point in its mandate when the opposition parties usually do well in by-elections. If there's a more thankless job in Newfoundland than leader of the Liberal Party right now, I don't know what it could be.
The Right has spoken
Now that Ed Klein's poison-pen biography of Hillary Clinton is out, the evil conservative RepubliKKKan fascist Nazi Karl-Rovian neoconservative Jew...er, Zionist hordes are speaking with one voice again. Captain Ed, Glenn Reynolds, John Podhertz, Michelle Malkin, Jim Geraghty, Decision '08, Peggy Noonan, Bill O'Reilly...all of them agree that the book is, um, sensationalist trash. (More here. Personally, I haven't read the book and have no plans to, but I'm not even going to dignify its most lurid allegations by posting them to this site.)
Wizbang has two absolutely priceless quotes from the demented Oliver Willis, who has a bit of a double standard about this kind of thing. (No, really?)
Exploiting the dead
This vile comment in favor of the anti-flag-burning amendment, from Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-California), is every bit as despicable as anything Sen. Durbin has said recently:
Ask the men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center. Ask them and they will tell you: pass this amendment.
As a Hit & Run commenter puts it, "if I was on top of one of the towers, a burning flag would be the least of my concerns." (Others say "Duke" was referring to the firemen who hoisted the flag at Ground Zero, but that's not much better.) It's one thing to say 9/11 established the need for strong anti-terror policies, and I have little patience for those who say the Bush Administration has "exploited" the attacks for that purpose. It's something else entirely to invoke 9/11 to pass this affront to all that America stands for, and if "Duke" has an ounce of shame he'll apologize.
That's a big "if", of course.
Update: now Democrats are crying foul about comments by Karl Rove:
Democrats are demanding that White House adviser Karl Rove immediately retract and apologize for comments that liberals responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes by wanting to "prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
"The one thing New York has had since Sept. 11 is unity," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "To inject politics into this and to defame a large number of people" is outrageous, he said. "It's not what New York and America is all about."
Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, said in a speech Wednesday that "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said in the speech to the New York state Conservative Party just a few miles north of Ground Zero, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."
Rove said the Democratic Party made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.
Rove's comments are grossly unfair to Democrats like Joe Lieberman and Richard Gephardt, who take national security issues seriously - but quite accurately describe the MoveOn.org crowd. And these days, there's no doubt about which wing controls the Democratic party.
Sauber Sold
BMW is buying and rebranding the Sauber F1 team. The new team will begin boycotting F1 races racing next season.
Williams can still have factory BMW engines until 2009, but don't bet on it. (My money says the Williams-Honda will return in 2006.)
Blogs censored in China
And in other news, the sun rose in the east this morning. Chris Myrick says TypePad-hosted weblogs are being blocked by Chinese internet service providers, almost certainly at the behest of Beijing - and with the assistance of companies like Cisco Systems and Alcatel.
June 22, 2005
I'm an amendment to be, yes, an amendment to be...
I thought this issue had already been decided in the late 1980s, but the House of Representatives has voted in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban the burning of the U.S. flag.
Eugene Volokh explained why this is such a bad idea in the Los Angeles Times last year:
Right now, when people -- mostly blacks -- are deeply offended by what they see as a symbol of racism and slavery [the Confederate flag], the legal system can powerfully tell them: "Yes, you must endure this speech that you find so offensive, but others must endure offensive speech, too. Many Americans hate flagburning as much as you hate the Confederate flag, but the Constitution says we all have to live with being offended: We must fight the speech we hate through argument, not through suppression."
But what would we say when flagburning is banned but other offensive symbols are allowed? "We in the majority get to suppress symbols we hate, but you in the minority don't"? "Our hatred of flagburning is reasonable but your hatred of the Confederate flag is unreasonable"?
If you were black and saw the Confederate flag as a symbol of slavery and racism -- and millions of blacks do, whether you agree with them or not -- would you be persuaded by these arguments? Would you feel better about America because of them?
[...]
The [First] Amendment is a truce: "I won't try to suppress your ideas, if you don't try to suppress mine." And the flagburning amendment risks shattering this truce.
(both links via InstaPundit)
Grewal cleared
The federal "ethics commissioner" (no matter how hard I try, I still can't write that phrase without scare quotes) has cleared Gurmant Grewal of any wrongdoing with regard to immigration visas:
Gurmant Grewal, the embattled Conservative MP facing allegations on several fronts, can breathe easy on one of them today.
Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro is recommending that no sanctions be imposed on Grewal in connection to an immigration controversy, in which he asked constituents to post bonds in exchange for help in obtaining temporary visas.
Grewal admits he asked for signed guarantees of up to $100,000 if visitors failed to leave the country when their visas expired.
But Shapiro says Grewal never pocketed any of the money, and never intended to.
"No profit personal to Mr. Grewal was either intended or realized," Shapiro says in a report tabled this afternoon in the House of Commons.
He adds that Grewal made an error in judgment which placed him in an apparent conflict of interest. But he says the B.C. MP simply made an honest mistake.
Grewal was also cleared with regard to that weird airport incident a few weeks ago. It's starting to look like the man deserves an apology from those of us who called him an embarassment to the party - if he can make up for that tape-editing fiasco.
The real story now is, did Immigration Minister Joe Volpe abuse his authority?
The investigation began when Immigration Minister Joe Volpe asked the Federal Ethics Commissioner and the RCMP in May to look into two Conservative MPs who were allegedly helping immigrants in return for money.
Volpe never divulged how he came across the information.
"I had some information that came to my hands and I handed it off to the same authorities," Volpe said at the time.
Slouching Toward Genocide
Didymus Mutasa, head of Zimbabwe's secret police, quoted in the Weekly Standard: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle."
Zimbabwe has ten million people (down from 13 million a few years ago). And they mey get to six million sooner than expected: in addition to bulldozing homes and businesses in the major cities, the Zimbabwean government is also preventing those left homeless from growing food.
I'm not sure what's worse: that a government is behaving like this, or that the world is standing by and letting it happen. Right now I'm thinking there's only one way Zimbabwe is not going to end up like Rwanda, Darfur or the Congo, and it involves Robert Mugabe's body hanging from a telephone pole.
Some things are just too damn easy to make fun of
Tom Laughlin, off curing cancer since The Man kept Billy Jack Goes to Washington from getting a wide release, is producing a fourth Billy Jack movie, tentatively titled Billy Jack’s Crusade to End the War and Restore America to its Moral Purpose.
I think they're going to have a little trouble fitting that on a poster (not to mention angry protests from CAIR for using the "C" word), so Protein Wisdom readers have come up with some alternate titles. (In the meantime, if you get the chance to see the E! True Hollywood Story about Laughlin, check it out. Hollywood has never seen a mind like his, and you can take that statement however you want.)