Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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Praise for Voice
"A smart fellow...I do like, recommend and learn from Barbera's blog." -Roger L. Simon
"Your blog is bullshit"- anonymous angry French reader.
Isn't this a lovely idea. In the UK children as young as three will be asked to grade their teachers.
In the latest, and most ambitious, extension of the inspection culture, children as young as three will be asked to mark the quality of their nursery lessons by ticking a happy or sad face on Ofsted forms. If they want to express a more subtle verdict, they can tick a third, impassive face.
Just what the hell is going on over there? Teachers now have to worry that their students are always 'feeeling' good and aren't agitated or 'overworked' in any way lest they face reprimand. This is the new 'If it feels good, do it' culture that gets to remove any authority (oh sure, they are saying it is for research purposes but can anyone truthfully argue that this won't soon extend to a formal practice) that doesn't allow them to 'fully express' themselves. Watch, next it will be parents and a sad face will end with children being removed from homes where the children are 'sad'.
In case you didn't get the memo Republicans are worse than terrorists. That according to Cynthia McKinney.
She [Majette] also said McKinney had taken campaign contributions from Arab terrorists on Sept. 11. McKinney touted herself as the "defender of the weak and the poor." "We don't racially profile our contributors," McKinney shot back. "My opponent has a lot of Republican money flowing into her coffers."
There are some good ones here. Reparations for slavery is now the equivalent of affirmative action. Then, she claimed to be vindicated for her accusations about Bush since the House Committee had been convened. Of course ignoring the fact that she accused Bush of having foreknowledge of the attack and allowing it to happen so he and his friends could make money. Which bears no reality at all to the subject matter being looked into by the committees.
Iraq may be the 'live fire' testing ground for the new e-bomb. Sounds like too much spamming.
US intelligence reports indicate that key elements of the Iraqi war machine are located in heavily-fortified underground facilities or beneath civilian buildings such as hospitals. This means the role of non-lethal and precision weapons would be a critical factor in any conflict.
High Power Microwave (HPM) devices are designed to destroy electronic equipment in command, control, communications and computer targets and are available to the US military. They produce an electromagnetic field of such intensity that their effect can be far more devastating than a lighting strike.
Rumors are swirling in Turkey. The Chief of Staff has had to deny a rumor that 5,000 Turkish tropps are in Norther Iraq and gurding an airport in the region under Patriotic Union of Kurdistan control.
Scan down for some wors by the Turcomen lader, Aydin Beyatli, in Northern Iraq. He is warning thet the 2.5 million of them in the country need to be a part of the post-Saddam negotiations or there may notbe peace. And he claims the US has already offered an invite to rhe next INC meeting. Echoing the INC he says that the Irai army (apart from the 400,000 Republican Guards) should not be the US target, implying that they are ready to bolt (on the other hand, let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of Russians who did not want to fight for Stalin but had the choice of getting shot by Germans or Bolsheviks).
"This operation should be the last U.S. operation" Beylati said.
I ask Lewis if he was surprised by September 11. "I was surprised that they were able to do something on such a scale, and with such meaningless ferocity," he says. "I was also enormously impressed with the civilised response of the American public in general, the concern not to condemn Islam as a whole."
He is less impressed by the quality of the discourse among the television gasbags: "As a specialist on Islam, I find myself disturbed by all the nonsense being talked, by both Muslims and non-Muslims. On the one hand, you have people who would have you believe that Islam is a bloodthirsty religion bent on world destruction. On the other hand, you have people telling us Islam is a religion of love and peace - rather like the Quakers, but less aggressive. The truth is in its usual place."
I guess after all the years of having to endure the denunciations of Said and others Lewis takes a jab:
"There is a certain melancholy pleasure in having been right when so many people were wrong. I obviously didn't predict an atrocity like this, but I had been saying for a long time that something had gone radically wrong in the Arab world and that there was a growing hostility to the west that was likely to express itself violently."
During lunch a chance encounter withTom Friedman who's daughter is thinking of attending Princeton makes for some intersting conversation. Lewis goes on to make the Suadis something a little more domestic...."Imagine, if the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation obtained total control of Texas and had at its disposal all the oil revenues, and used this money to establish a network of well-endowed schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their particular brand of Christianity. This is what the Saudis have done with Wahhabism. The oil money has enabled them to spread this fanatical, destructive form of Islam all over the Muslim world and among Muslims in the west. Without oil and the creation of the Saudi kingdom, Wahhabism would have remained a lunatic fringe in a marginal country."
The two small groups trying to push Sharia onto Indonesia withdrew under threat of massive defeat in the People's Consultative Assembly.
Earlier this week, NU and Muhammadiyah leaders warned that introducing syariah could increase friction between the Muslim majority and other religious groups. 'Giving formal acknowledgement to one religion, directly or indirectly, will certainly lead to disintegration,' they said in a statement.
Now this is intriguing. The Jordan Times is reporting that Abdullah Bishara, a secretary general of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council has said that despite what the Gulf States are saying in public they will fall in behind a war against Saddam.
“Rest assured that the Gulf states won't throw a wrench in the wheel,” in the event of war on Iraq, Bishara told AFP on Wednesday. “There is a discrepancy between what is being expressed publicly and what has been articulated quietly,” he said after months of open protests by Gulf states against a new US-led war on Iraq. “The US doesn't need any support, it needs acquiescence,” he noted. “It'll obtain the latter and won't get the former. “Everyone in the Gulf will be happy (with a change of regime in Iraq) but won't say it publicly. They cannot endorse it, but there is acquiescence.”
Kuwaiti political analyst Khaldoon Al Naqib saw little real problem for Washington, even though the emirate has also come out against serving as a base to attack Iraq. “The fact that they (US) are the guardian of security in the Gulf gives them leverage in the Gulf,” he noted. “Gulf leaders are willing to give whatever the US demands of them.”
This along with the talks that the INC has had with Washington and Tehran (which ishopefully in the process of being overthrown as we speak. Hello...CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, NY Time? Are you out there? Why hasn't Bush come outand made a public statement about the protests?) along with the construction in the GUlf has me more optimistic than I was this morning when I heard Armey..
In a letter to the Minneapolis Star Tribune Hugh Palmer, the president of the American Refugee Committee, responds to an anti-American diatribe in which a Columbia University professor (can you say this surprises you?) "The world thinks we are fighting for ourselves. What people say is 'You're so rich and powerful, you don't even think about us -- unless you need something.' ". While admitting we are not perfect he shares some experiences he has had:
• Nationwide flooding, triggered by Hurricane Georges, shut down every major road in the Dominican Republic. Shortly after dawn I rode a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter into a tiny village isolated by floodwaters. Beside me sat the local Catholic bishop. While he asked village leaders about health emergencies, I helped U.S. and Dominican soldiers hand food and medical supplies to a bucket brigade of men, women and children.
An old woman in a mud-spattered dress gripped my wrist and spoke to me. I couldn't understand her through the noise of the helicopter engine. "What did she say?" I asked the bishop's interpreter. "She said, 'God bless America,' " he replied.
• High in the mountains of Kosovo, 200 villagers hid under makeshift shelters from the Serb paramilitary forces that had burned their village. I stood outside the armored van that members of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission had used to bring me here. "We'll bring you food and water purification tablets," I said. An old man responded, "Thank you for your help, but what we really need is peace."
I shook my head, "I'm not a diplomat or a soldier," I said. "I can't bring peace. We should all pray for peace." The old man nodded, "We will pray for peace," he said. "But we will put our faith in the United States of America."
• I was a bit nervous to be the first American official to return to Baidoa, Somalia, since the collapse of the peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s. I shouldn't have been. People swarmed around me as if I were a celebrity. A young man from the crowd pulled me aside and, in excellent English, said, "Please tell the families of the American servicemen killed here that their young men did not die in vain. They saved the lives of tens of thousands of our people. We will never forget them or America."
The Iraqi National Congress sounds pretty optimistic here. This is a bit over-exuberant but in the past their intelligence has often proven more accurate than that generated by our own agencies.
They are saying that military action on our part will be minimal as there is so much unrest even within Saddam's army. Seeing their performance (including those few groups of the Republican Guard that actually saw action) in the first Gulf war I think this may be possible. There may not be as effective a fighting force equivalent to the Northern Alliance (who, don't forget, got the same media treatment that the Kurds and opposition groups in Iraq are getting now) but, the people of Oraq are probably better prepared to aid in an uprising, or get out of the way.
That being said, it would still require a large initial force to unseat Saddam and to be prepared to step in if opposition were faacing defeat. I do think, as I say below that a post-war Iraq will not be the disaster and quagmire that is being hyped. As long as we (or opposition troops) can defend the oil fields, the newly installed government will need initial funds and equipment to get started but they would soon be on their feet, with a fairly unified government (assuming they, the Turks and the Kurds can work something out) with a decent (compared to Aghanistan) infrastructure would soon be pumping oil, making money and lessening the influence of House Saud.
So, to a dgree they may be right. I hope they are and I hope they know more than they are letting on in terms of dissafection even within the ranks of the Republican Guard.
Can you imgine the number and nature of the resolutions in the UN passed the day after Ariel Sharon said that his plan was to "cleanse the land of Israel from Palestinian desecration." And he said that "all those who try to aggress against Israelis and Jews" will find themselves "buried in their own coffin."? Now change Israel to Palestine, Palestinian to Jews, Israelis to Arabs and Jews to Muslims and you have part of Saddam Hussein's speech yesterday. I am sure there will be a resolution passed tomorrow that will pass nearly unanimously (with only Iraq and North Korea voting nay) that denounces Saddam for such this.
Meanwhile every protective, defensive and rescue operation carried out by America or Israel will be called racist/genocidal/aprthied.
William Grimm an American living in Germany writes about coming to the realization that anti-Semitism is indeed alove and well. in Europe.
Then the little things start to happen that over a period of time add up to something very sinister. I'm on a bus and a high school boy passes around Grandpa's red leather-bound copy of Mein Kampf to his friends who respond by saying "coooool!." He then takes out a VCR tape (produced in Switzerland) of "The Great Speeches of Joseph Goebbels." A few weeks later I'm at a business meeting with four young highly educated Germans who are polite, charming and soft-spoken to say the least. When the subject matter changes to a business deal with a man in New York named Rubinstein, their nostrils flair, their demeanors attain a threatening mien and one of them actually says, and I'm quoting verbatim here: "The problem with America is that the Jews have all the money."
They start laughing and another one says, "Yeah, all the Jews care about is money."
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I half expected one of them to start talking about the historical veracity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Here were four young, charming, well-educated Germans spewing forth anti-Semitic bilk that would have made Julius Streicher proud. I found that this type of anti-Semitic reference in my professional dealings with Germans soon became a leitmotif (to borrow a term made famous by Richard Wagner, another notorious German anti-Semite). In my private meetings with Germans it often happens that they will loosen up after a while and reveal personal opinions and political leanings that were thought to have ceased to exist in a Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945.
Did the NY Times really let Thomas Friedamn write and the get in print on their Editorial Page (the one that actually carries that title) the line: "The Palestinians have convinced themselves, wwith the help of many Arabs and Europeans, that their grievance is so special, so enormous that it isn't bound by any limits of civilized behaviour, and therefore they are entitled to do whatever they want to Israelis."?
Holy Crapamoly! Isn't this exactly what the Civil Rights movement was meant to end?
The New Deal for Communities (NDC) in Nottingham is electing new members to its board in October, but voters are allowed to vote only for a candidate from the same ethnic background. Supporters said the new system would ensure that businesses from ethnic minorities got "the board member they felt would represent their interests best".
For a good counterpoint to Ritter who constantly says Saddam is not a threat. A British member of the UN inspections teams talks about Saddam's WMD.
We had some successes but it took four-and-a-half years to produce enough evidence to force the Iraqis to admit that they did indeed have a biological weapons programme. That just shows how difficult and challenging the task was, the enormous effort the Iraqis took in hiding this programme.
Saddam poses no threat?
One of our successes was to uncover the main production facility at Hakam, about 60km outside Baghdad, which appeared to be making an additive for animal food and a biological pesticide.
We managed through documentation to prove that they were actually producing anthrax and botulinum toxin, two of the most deadly agents. Much of this work we did outside Iraq - looking at invoices and export documents, talking to the companies that had exported materials to Iraq.
A French_Israeli team of doctors in Israel have cured blindness in mice. Nice to see a research group from a major French research group (French Institute of Health and Medical Research) not infected with this silly boycott if cooperation with Israeli scools and researchers.
It starts with scale. In the past, conventional terrorist groups like Hizbullah in the Mideast, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, or the Basque separatists in Spain focused mainly on local issues and audiences. Their international presence, such as it was, funneled money and sympathy back into home-grown struggles.
Bin Laden thought big. Building on his years of covert fighting to undermine the Soviet attempt to control Afghanistan – resistance funded by the US, Arab leaders, and others as part of the final armed struggle of the cold war – bin Laden expanded into other fights. Recruits were shuttled through Afghanistan for training and combat experience by the tens of thousands. In the 1990s, these well-trained and combat-experienced "Afghanis" began to pop up in Bosnia, Algeria, Southeast Asia – anywhere that local troubles offered the Islamists a toehold.
One of bin Laden's innovations is no-credit killing. Traditional terrorist groups have taught us – their global audience and pool of candidate victims – to expect claims of responsibility for sneak attacks. By insisting on "credit" for mayhem, the terrorists ensure that we appreciate their commitment to violence as the path to improvement in our general welfare.
No such claims come from bin Laden. Apparently intending to deflect superpower retaliation, the Al Qaeda network has evolved a tight, no-fingerprints policy as it plans and executes strikes.
The bin Laden formula for superterrorism appears to include sophisticated communications and elaborate chains of businesses, some criminal, some seemingly straight. The scaled-up Al Qaeda network has a capacity for what a business executive would term strategic control – for tailoring itself, its workforce, and its "products" to the changing "marketplace."
Seaquist warns that adopting the strategy of our foe may not be the best way to combat him.
How should we – the US and its allies – respond? Clearly, we need to be inventive ourselves. In Washington there is talk about creating new kinds of military units that can move as secretly and as nimbly as the terrorists.
Mimicking Al Qaeda may not be the best strategy. Top generals sometimes win battles by bypassing the enemy army and seizing the objective with less bloodshed. Our objective is a civil, democratic world.
Rather than trying to outdo bin Laden with spreading our own covert organizations and secretive methods around the world, perhaps we should be moving forward from Afghanistan with a campaign that learns how to smother bin Laden and Al Qaeda with our most powerful tool – open, democratic, collaborative societies.
To a degree I think, and have here said before, that this is correct. This should be one of the methods we use to combat terrorism but we also must use every tool at our disposal, to do anything less would be criminal and result in more Americans dead.
Forgive me if this is a bit rough. I will try to smooth it out tomorrow. I just blasted it out start to finish, right off the top of my head.
The Europeans and other allies that are having complaining about attacking Iraq are partly doing so because of a desire to not see the American 'hegemon' (in actuality that is just a code word for peace. I mean, we fought and freed Germany, Japan, Kuwait and South Korea among othes and how many of them are our 'client states'? With all our wealth how many now stand unquestioning with us now in our war on terror?) but, underlying this is, I think, a fear of the unknown. For years now Europe has been consumed with creating the billions of regulations necessary to control the EU (you know, curvature of bananas and cucumbers, consitency of sauce, what can legally be called 'parmesian' cheese, recycling rules to be put in place before the means to recycle, deciding drivers of cars are always responsible for accidents with motorcycles) and has been looking forward to a quiet retirement with US power keeping things calm for them. Sept 11th caused them to look up from their plans but now they want us to just be good kids and go back to the way things were.
For all of the talk about 'we have considered, carefully, what a war on Iraq will entail', have we really? Saying that the overthrow of Iraq will cause turmoil in the Middle East is probably an understatement. Iraq is not Afghanistan (yes we all know that but, I mean it in a different way). Afganistan was only recognized by three nations, Iraq is a force in the region, it does not exist in total isolation. A major change of government here would have greater impact for its neigbors than the fall of the Taliban.
Iran, if not already in the midst of a revolution (which may be happening right now, if the media chose to report what is really happening and not what the religious hardliners and 'reformers' are feeding them), will certainly be in some amount of upset. Surrounded by a pro-to-neutral Afghanistan and Iraq. And dealing with a youthful population that wants a better life.
Saudi Arabia's oil will no longer be as important (while the small Emirates that are mostly quiet will probably not be too adversely affected by the shift) which will in turn reduce their standing within the Arab and Muslim world. As it stands every country that has rapidly expanding population if converts to Islam is influenced most strongly by the money flowing from Saudi oilfields. Without this massive carrot their influence in these countries will ebb. And within the Arab world the rich and industrialized (well they have industrial stuff but they import people to be industrious) they would face the possibility of of no longer competing for the coveted role of the leader of the Arab world (vied for by the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians). Plus a large part of the population that enjoys the fruits of oil wealth but do not actually posess that wealth may rise up. This could result in a fundamentalist shif resembling the Taliban and would force some tough decisions on the US, especially if this happened while operations were still ongoing in Iraq. The reduction of oil-money to terrorists in Kashmir may have an impact on that regoin also. Creating more tension as they were more desperate for cash? or allowing Musharref to prove he wants change by stamping out the weakened groups?
Syria would no longer have the backing of an Iran in turmoil and with an unshackled Iraq between them, things could be sketchy. Assad would be faced with a cutoff from Iranian weapons to supply a demanding Hizbollah who may soon be clamoring for more direct Syrian support and hardware. Since the young Assad has come to power Syria's army is having difficulties keeping their tank, planes and heavy gear up to date. They are not the military presence they were in the Gulf War. And Assad could soon find himself facing the choice Musharref has had to make. Hizbollah could be more of a threat to him than Musharref's militants have proven to him.
With Syria facing a internal problems and having its own inner turmoil the nationalists in Lebanon may take their chance to gain their independence. This could be a really bad scene as witnessed by the last civil war. This may actually be one of the few places that will require intervention. Watch for Hizbollah to take advantage to create havoc for Israel alon the border.
King Abdullah of Jordan, may sit on the sidelines depending on the final pretext for the war against Saddam. Either way I think that when Saddam falls Abdullah is strong enough and has a good enough intelligence ageny to shut down any attempts to overthrow him. I also think he is smart and...shal we say...modern enough to realize that a more represntative and open constitutional monarchy is the way to go. He knows that right now he rules what is probably the most trustworthy Arab government in the Middle East. He could easily parlay this advantage into a major leadership following the fall of Saddam.
The Palestinian Authority and Yasser will be in difficult straits (which is why they want a settlement now, before Saddam goes and they are bargaining with stste-sponsored terrorism on their side). The money flowing from Saudi Arabia and Iraq could be disrupted and the money from the EU and the US is not sufficient to keep the Palestinians at subsistance level and fully fund a terror war that may have to get weaponse from further afield. Arms supplies may be upset if there is turmoil in Syria. The Palestinians may well be forced to the table with their hands out. Unfortunately this could come from desperation more than a feeling that it is time to make peace for real (always keeping in mind the trojan horse idea). Hopefully with the lack of support from present sources this would come over time.
Egypt is a wild card. I think Hosni Mubarek is...not necessarily intelligent (I used to speak arabic fairly well and have a number of Egyptian friends. The people of Egypt don't consider Mubarek to be a scholar)...cunning, a survivor. I think he, himself, is not anti-American. But there are many within Egypt a powerful segment that poses a threat to Mubarek (allowing them to get away with what goes on in state run media) so he cannot appear to go to far. He would, surely, never publicly back the ouster of Saddam. Effectively, I think Egypt is a stalemate. The best we can hope for is silence from Mubarek (with some behind the scenes help; information, detention of anyone caught there and stuff like that) and the usual vitrol from their media. After Saddam's fall, I don;t know what will happen in Egypt. Is mubarek ready toallow a more representational government? Are the people ready to have a government that is not a threat to Israel?
On ther fringe, the Gulf Emirates: Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Yemen would probably see which way the winds are blowing and quietly move to more representative non-terror supporting monarchies. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar have started this process to a degree and if events move quickly folowing the fall of Saddam, things could move more quickly for these countries. Probably for the better. But they may also be drawn into the possible turmoil faced by the House of Saud.
Ghadaffi would probably find himself in a tough position without Saddam we would be looking more closely at him. With the British going to talk to him as we speak this may be something that is on the table. He has not yet created the African Union he is aiming for and could well find himself isolated and willing to make a move toward moderation. We would have to offer immunity, in return for admission of complicity in Pan-Am 103 (we did it for the Soviets, the Emperor of Japan, Civil War leaders) and compensation for the families. As removed as Libya is from Israel/Palestine andas secular as the nation is (often lacking the hate-filled rhetoric coming from many of our 'friends'). We do have to take into account that we do have limits. We will be stretched thin dealing with everything else that could be happening. There will not be any popular revolts in Libya and the most pragmatic approach would be a truce and openinng of relations. Even if we use Britain as proxy.
As for Iraq itself. There does need to be some sort of deal that assures both the Kurds and Turkey. It would be tough but is something that could be worked out on the table more likely than a battlefield. Especially with a big enough carrot dangled in front of them. The INC is more capable and informed than State and the Pentagon give them credit for. I think they could forge a solution that would result in fairly stable government in Iraq. The people are secular and not split into tribal warring factions like the Afghans, they are used to living under the rule of law (as oppressive as that rule is). A moderate and sensible police force would not find too much resistance. If we can carry out the war without too much damage to the infrastructure it is there and waiting. the oilfields are there and the pipelines flowing, if we captured them before Saddam can torch them the newly created government would have an ready source of income. As for American troops some may be necessary depending on how Saddam goes down but the number necessary would probably be fewer than the 7,000 presently cooling their heels in Saudi Arabia. (An interesting note on the discussion of Iraq. Yesterday Iran announced that they would not take in any refugees from Iraq if the Great Satan does invade. Just throwing that bit of info out there.)
So, where does all of this leave me on the debate on what to do about Iraq? I don't know, I understand that European reluctance. If what I have laid out comes to pass it would create turmoil that would take years to sort out. To be sure what emerges is better it would be a full time task for us, we would have to be sure that this would be very nearly the final blow against al-Qaeda and terror. If we put the resouurces ino assuring a stabel future for the region, it could well be the most profound shift in word politics since American independence. Representative governments and Constitutional Monarchies (on the British and European model) in the Near East may signal a future trend toward representative government. But it could also end up with revolutions and a fundamentalist shift in the major countres in the region that may sweep away the smaller Emirates in the process. Leaving us with a mess that could be worse than what we have now.
I think everyone; European, Commonwealth and American can agree that Saddam has to go someday. The problem being, the longer he is there the more likely he is to acquire nuke and expand his bio and chem arsenal. At this point does deterrence work for us or him? What will we be willing to do t othwart Saddam's plans a Middle East he will rule with the threat of his nuclear arms? Will we give him Kuwait? Allow him to crush the Kurds and Southern Iraqis? Ship as much oil as he likes? Extract tribute from every other country in the region to keep his reign of terror going?
To argue that domination of the Gulf is not his goal is to bury one's head in the sand. He loves war and death as much as any of the dictators of the past 100 years. A few million dead civilians mean nothing to him, if they stand in his way. He himself says the 'Mother of all Battles' is not over and will not be over until he crushes America. We know he aims for weapons of mass destruction and hehas used them and once he has nukes will not fear using chem and bio for his lesser goals.
'International Law'? He started two wars and used chemical weapons on his own people and has breached the treaty he signed at the end of the Gulf War. What control will stop him from using nukes when he gets them and things it will be advantageous to use them? The ICC? Who will go in and arrest him? It will require a war at a time of his choosing (i.e. when he makes his move) when he has an arsenal of nukes.
I think by allowing the situation in the Near East to continue on the course it is going will end with a conflagration. Radical Islam will continue to grow. Israelis and Palestinians will continue to die. Iran may have an aborted revolution that ends in a crushed population. The smaller emirates may succumb to widening Islamist influence. If we go to take out Saddam now we will be in the driver's seat and be able to maintain sme semblance of control over the turmoil in the region. The danger in waiting is more dangerous thanthe danger in acting now. Therefore I find myself in favor of action in the very near future. I just think we need to be sure we have situations outside the region under control first. Europe, Africa, South East Asia and South Asia don't have to be active in the war against Saddam but we need their assurances that they can and will take care of any al-Qaeda related issues that come up with a minimum of American help. Once we have that laid out...On to Baghdad.
Daniel Pipes is down in Australia. It is interesting that he is branded an anti-Muslim extremist. He is just telling us exactly what the Radical (and even some not so Radical) Muslim groups themselves have said. They want to supplant Western Democracy and Secular Law with the Sharia. Even groups in moderate Muslim countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Nigeria, are are trying to impose Sharia rule on their nations even if the majority of the populations do not want it.
This is a fairly common tactic by people who have no solid foundation of truth from which to debate. When you hear an uncomfortable truth you scream as loud and often as you can that your opponent is racist or whatever sort of -ist fits. Look it is fairly obvious that someone has declared war on us, I don't think it racist or anti-Muslim to come to the fairly easy conclusion (just look at the fatwas and videotapes from bin Laden and the other Islamists) that we are fighting Militant Islam (and yes Iraq is not ruled by militant Islam but Saddam dons that mantle when it suits him and supports anyone who will further his own goals). Just because we opposed the Soviets and still oppose Cuba doesn't mean we are at war with all Socialism or we would be at war with all of Europe. We fought our war against the Taliban without making it a war on all Afghans. We can, as Pipes asserts, be at war with Militant Islam without being at war will all of Islam.
I do take exception to one instance Pipes gives here. The woman in Florida who would not take off her viel for her license photo. I don't know what groups were backing her claim but I did hear Hussein Ibish on the radio (not usually a voice of moderation) say that this woman's claim was completely baseless and foolish.
That's how biased reporting works. If 50% of the population supports something the liberal-leaning media supports it is called solid support or a majority. If it is something they oppose, say school vouchers, it becomes mixed support. Of course there is the added bonus here of ignoring and distorting a few things. There has never been any intimation that money will be taken from public schools as a result of the vouchers, in fact the amount given in the vouchers is often a good deal less than what is paid per student in the public schools leaving more in the system per student. Also they do give us the poll numbers for those most affected by school vouchers. Namely inner city and minority familes who support vouchers usually by a 4-1 margin.
I'm Roman Catholic and this really pisses me off. The Church can't figure out how many strikes to give priests who rape young boys but the know exactly what to do about women who want to be priests.
The Vatican has excommunicated seven women who claim to be priests and refuse to repent, saying Monday that the group had ``wounded'' the Roman Catholic Church.
Wounded the Church? They have no problem coming right out and definitively saying this is wrong and will result in your excommunication but....rape a child and we'll cover it up for a few decades and then talk until it all goes away.
However, the women did not ``give any indication of amendment or repentance for the most serious offense they had committed,''
And the rapists who have hurt children in their care and the superioirs who hid it and moved them into places where they could continue their sins and crimes showed proper contrition?
Nick Machiavelli over at the Razor adds this to the silly column today in the Globe.
You've hit upon one of my pet-peeves, and one that hits close to home. Both
my father and my wife's father were on ships preparing for the invasion of
Japan in the summer of '45. In the 1990s I spent 5 years in Japan and met
some people who would have been on the other side of the beach had my father
and father-in-law landed as part of the invasion.
I met a Japanese man who as a little boy was being trained to run towards
the foreigners carrying a backpack. What he didn't know at the time was that
he was being trained to carry explosives which would have been detonated
when he got close to American GIs. I met a "habakusha" - atomic bomb
survivor - who blamed the Japanese emperor for sacrificing his own people
intead of himself (the status of the emperor was the sticking point in the
negotiations held via the Swiss; the USA wanted an unconditional surrender).
One of the best books on the subject is Japan At War which provides first
hand accounts of the militarism and fanaticism of the Japanese. They make
al-Qaida look like the bunch of wussies they are.
Some moral relativists have said that we should have blockaded Japan until
it surrendered. What they don't know is that Japan was completely dependent
on its colonies for food. Japan also lost a good portion of its workforce to
the war. Those that weren't killed were in China, Korea and other locations
off the mainland. The result of a blockade would have been starvation on a
massive scale. The estimates I've seen were from 5-15% of the population of
100 million.
Do the math: 200,000 dead by atomic bomb or 5-15 million from starvation.
As a student of the Japanese who has lived among them and continue to hold
the deepest respect for them (even as they rot my kids' brains with
Pokemon), I get annoyed with the arguments against how we concluded the war
against them. Your letter against intellectual ignorance is much
appreciated.
But, but, but...I thought they were only misunderstood men who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and were caught up in the haevy-handed Israeli actions. Apparently Cyprus is not happy with the first hand experience they have had with a Palestinian terrorist. Abdullah Daoud refuses to abide by any of the conditions that he agreed to (hmm....sound familiar?) in accepting exile after the standoff when he and his compatriots occupied (in contravention of the International Law) the Church of the Nativity. And now Cyprus wants him out.
``Daoud has become undesirable as he is causing trouble with the authorities, refusing to cooperate with the police and by associating with suspicious persons,'' Justice Minister Nikos Koshis told the official Cyprus radio.
``Daoud refuses to conform to the terms of his residence in Cyprus, he rejects police protection or escort, he moves around without informing the authorities and generally creates trouble,'' Koshis said.
Cypriot Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides told reporters Tuesday that Cyprus had allowed Daoud to stay temporarily ``as a guest'' on condition he accepted police protection and abstained from political activity.
``If he continues to violate these conditions the police may be forced to take action and treat him like an illegal immigrant instead of as a guest, and restrict his movements,'' Cassoulides said.
``He is very unhappy and frustrated because he is still in Cyprus without his family, while the other 12 Palestinians who were accepted by European countries have been joined by their families and are leading normal lives,'' Abdo said.
That's too bad. The thousands of Israelis who are missing loved ones never to return as a result of murders orchestrated by Daoud are, no doubt, moved by his plight.
James Carroll has a piece today about America's 'crime' of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, claiming that the US did it stricly as to intimidate Russia. I objected enough to send a letter:
I find Mr. Carroll’s characterization of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as crimes to be offensive. He completely discounts the possibility of millions of dead Americans and Japanese in a horrible campaign on the Japanese mainland to give the Americans a more sinister and cynical motive for the use of atomic weapons. He does this by misrepresenting what was happening in the Pacific Theater.
In the months leading up to the firebombing and the atomic bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima the Americans and Japanese fought a number of grim battles, where American troops were often outnumbered, that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead. Battles so fierce that their names have, rightly, entered our lexicon of sacred places. Places where Americans fought against overwhelming numbers and won. Iwo Jima and Okinawa where 19,341 Americans lost their lives and 58,229 were wounded and the Japanese lost an estimated 130,000.
These were battles for small patches of land. Despite Mr. Carroll’s depiction of ‘de-fanged’ Japan, the truth is that until these battles were won and the first firebombing of Tokyo occurred on May 10th, the Japanese mainland had not been the site of a single battle. A still fresh population in a land that had not, like Europe, faced hard years of war could hardly be described as ‘de-fanged’. The final push to Berlin by the Americans, Russians, British and other allied forces cost upwards of a million casualties. This was against an all but defeated German army that had its collective back against its own capital and whose industry and population had, to that point, taken a much more severe blow than the Japanese had. What would the cost have been for a nearly all-American force to invade the Japanese homeland in an attempt to end the war? We will never know for sure, but looking at the grinding defense of Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Berlin we can, with some authority, assume that the losses would have been great.
Mr. Carroll says that by this time there was ‘no chance of an allied defeat’. This is misdirection on Mr. Carroll’s part. The questions asked in dropping the bomb was not ‘If we do not do this will we lose the war?’ it was ‘If we do not do this how many more Americans and Japanese are going to die and how many more years will it take for Japan to concede it has lost?’ The alternative would have been to maintain conventional bombing of the Japanese mainland followed by a ground invasion. Does Mr. Carroll maintain that this would have resulted in fewer deaths (military and civilian)? If so I would argue that he is delusional. On the contrary dropping the bombs can, accurately, be said to have saved lives, both American and Japanese.
If Mr. Carroll would truly like to find crimes during World War Two, I suggest he look into the Rape of Nanking (200,000-300,000 innocent Chinese civilians slaughtered by Japanese soldiers in Nanking and 20-30 million more during the entire occupation of China), or perhaps the Holocaust, or the Bataan Death March. His self-flagellation here is pitiful and an insult to those who fought and died in the battle to defeat Imperial Japan.
I was sitting with my wife watching Doctor Zhivago and was thinking about Pasternak and what he saw, survived and told us. Did a bit of stumbling about the net on him and came across a pretty nifty page of Rich Geib's Heros. It is good stuff and I recommend it.
In the wake of some grumbling in Australian anout the 'wrongs' of Vietnam, the federal president of the Vietnamese Community in Australia tells us what lesson he learned fromthe Vietnam War.
Of course before he learned his lesson he understood well the course material, something the nay-sayers have yet to do truthfully.
Some say that the Vietnam War was not for a good cause, it was American expansionism in disguise. But the Soviets and Chinese poured in billions of dollars and several hundred thousand military personnel to help North Vietnam invade the South.
Some say that the "domino theory" about the spread of communism was just a scare created by Washington. But even the official biography of Ho Chi Minh says: "He deemed it his task to spread communist doctrine in Asia in general and in Indochina particularly." Hanoi-friendly regimes in neighbouring Laos and Cambodia are proof of his zeal.
Some say that the Vietnam War was not a good cause because the West killed innocent civilians. But anti-Saigon journalists did not reveal that communist guerrillas posed as civilians, to ensure that civilians were killed. And, while they highlighted the hundreds of My Lai victims, they were silent about the thousands massacred in Hue in 1968 by the communists. Some say Ho Chi Minh rightly invaded the South, because the South avoided holding a national reunification election that he was certain to win. But in North Vietnam there would have been only communist candidates, because Ho had assassinated all nationalists who fought alongside him against the French. And in the South, his cadres were ready to assassinate non-communist candidates.
What is the lesson learned?
What is this lesson? For me, it is this: the Vietnam War was for a good cause, and if we fight a war, we should not fight half-heartedly.
If we do not learn this lesson he warns well what follows such delusion and loss of will to defend what is right.
...a million people were thrown into concentration camps, where thousands were killed.
In the central highlands, political dissidents among the Montagnards, Vietnam's Aborigines, are tortured and killed and their churches outlawed.
Hundreds of political and religious prisoners remain throughout Vietnam. I have a list of more than one hundred nuns, monks and priests, many of whom have rotted in prison for at least two decades. Unless some have died from maltreatment, the list is growing because new arrests and imprisonments take place often.
Interesting. The article I noted No Mention of Massacre in Jenin Report from the Financial Times back on 08/02, as a perfect example of the FT's anit-Isreal bias, is not there anymore. I did a search on their site and couldn't find it. Anywad I did find another copy of it here at Business Day.
Gavin Newsome, a politician in San Francisco, is being labeled a racist and KKK member. Why is this? Because he has sponsored a ballot measure that would replace the approximately $320 in monthly cash assistance the city gives to the homeless with $59 -- plus housing, utilities and meals. That bastard!
The AP reports that the War on Terrorism is bad. Why? In Pakistan, partly as a result of the use of the internet by the murderers of Daniel Pearl, internet cafes will be requiring identification of internet users. Which will in turn make people using the internet for 'naughty pleasures' uncomfortable.
When discussing tax-dollar funding of Amtrak apparently the Washington Post sees 58%(continuing subsuidy) and 20%(increasing subsidy) as strong support and substantial. I wonder if these numbers will be kept in mind as they report about the coming war in Iraq?
I thought Alec Baldwin was into feelings and liberal causes. On Howard Stern just now he makes an insinuation that Matt Drudge and Richard Johnson are homosexuals that have hit on him and were spurned leading to their constant attacks on him. If Rush Limbaugh had said this about Baldwin can you imagie the outrage that would ensue?
Wow apparently, unbeknownst to us, the Democrat party in CA is drifting to the center. I didn't know Lee, Boxer, Davis, Feinstein and the others were embracing conservative values. Oh wait, that's only in comparison to Al Sharpton.
Democratic committee member Poppy Demarco Dennis of Del Mar called herself surprised by Sharpton's sounding of traditional Democratic themes. "He's been portrayed as rather extreme and one sided,"
"As far as I'm concerned, he's a dedicated Democrat," said Orange County state Assembly candidate G. Nanjundappa.
California's Democratic party chief Art Torres, a 20-year state legislator, invited Sharpton, urging delegates to see him in person rather than how he is portrayed by the media. Torres said Sharpton "has rejuvenated, in my opinion, the civil rights movement."
Can't you just feel the centrist drift?
The Rev. also urged the attendeed to reject Ward Connerly's initiative to ban state and local governments from recording a person's race. Says Al, "We feel that it is a veiled way to hide racism in the marketplace and the business arena." Of course he has never talked to Connerly about the initiative nor has he met him, but Al has never been one to let ignorance of the facts get in the way of a good cry of racism.
Documents that detail Japan's atomic bomb efforts during WWII and were smuggled out by one of the scientists working on the project are being returned to Japan.
As a follow up to the previous items we have this story about a protest against the Chief of SFPD's plan to hire more officers. Of course the protesters just want more money in social programming...i mean programs for ex-convicts. They complain about a lack of jobs. I've got a bit of a radical idea for them. If you don't force business out of your state with extreme and ridiculous regulations and taxes maybe there would be more jobs.
Violent criminals who prey on San Francisco's residents and visitors have a better chance of getting away with their crimes than predators in any other large American city.
The San Francisco Police Department solved, on average, just 28 percent of the city's murders, rapes, robberies, shootings, stabbings and other serious assaults between 1996 and 2000, a Chronicle computer analysis shows.
That was the lowest violent crime "clearance rate," or solution rate, among the nation's 20 largest cities. The large-city average was 42 percent.
This is precisely the mediocrity that socialism and berueacracy breed. Added to that, their desire to disarm us so that we cannot defend ourselves from these crimes.
The Chronicle found a police department that doesn't pick inspectors on the basis of ability and performance, where few are held accountable for inferior work or effort, where solving crimes is not the highest goal, and where inspectors often investigate crimes from their desks rather than going out to interview victims and find evidence and witnesses.
And just in case you wanted to feel a little less secure about airport security:
Few have had a longer look at the SFPD than Jeff Brown, for 22 years San Francisco's elected public defender and a police critic.
"My sense of the San Francisco Police Department as a whole is there really is a lack of professionalism," said Brown, now a member of the state Public Utilities Commission. "It's a pretty sloppy department."
Brown says Lau, whom Mayor Willie Brown appointed chief in 1996 after 25 years on the force, hasn't been effective.
"I've never seen leadership within the department," he said.
"We're doing the best we can with the resources we have," said Lau, a candidate for a federal airport security job.
A furious row is set to erupt between Britain and Europe over proposed legislation to make car drivers responsible for all accidents involving cyclists - even when the bike rider has broken the law and is in the wrong.
And this little quip sums up socialism pretty well:
. Whoever is responsible, pedestrians and cyclists usually suffer more.
Another column about the financial crisis at EU hedaquarters. I wonder if the major news media will be using the same terms to describe it asthey do when talking about Enron or Martha Stewart or any otther US 'big businesses'. Oh silly me, they probably won't find it important enough to report. After all, if people start questioning that accounting practices of teh EU they make take a closer look at our own governments accounting. Which, heaven forbid, may result in real calls for reform and accountability.
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