March 31, 2004
BROWN: THE NEW WHITE
In comments at The Daily Ablution:
Did anybody catch Robert Fisk inadvertently fisk himself on the BBC programme about Osama bin Laden last night? He was describing how he took bin Laden's picture in Sudan, with words to the effect of how his subject stood in the road in flowing white robes. Instantly Fisk's picture comes up with bin Laden standing in the road in flowing brown robes.
Whatever their colour, those robes can’t conceal a genuine man of cats:
The British journalist Robert Fisk was invited to his mountain lair.
After a long, cold journey he was taken to a tent. Osama entered, "like a cat," Fisk said, "A very, very lithe muscular man."
Well, he has to be, to crawl through that little kitty door.
TOO QUICK OFF THE MARK
Mark Latham’s Zapatero plan is in trouble:
Australia's intelligence agencies have been hauled into the furious political debate over Labor's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq, appearing to dispute Mark Latham's claim that he had received lengthy briefings on the issue before the decision.
With both sides tossing insults over the Labor policy, the Department of Defence intelligence chief and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service hastily wrote letters that bolstered the Prime Minister's attack on the Labor plan.
Hilariously, Latham is trying to brazen his way out of it:
Labor leader Mark Latham yesterday accused Prime Minister John Howard of keeping Australian troops in Iraq for political gain and of surrendering policy-making to al-Qaeda.
Oh, please. Latham made this an election issue, as Paul Kelly identified days ago:
Mark Latham has taken his most important decision as Opposition Leader – to re-establish Iraq as an election issue by saying he wants to bring our forces home by Christmas.
Now Latham is demanding an apology:
Federal Opposition leader Mark Latham has made a personal explanation to Parliament to insist he did have lengthy intelligence briefings on Iraq from Australia's intelligence agencies and accused the Prime Minister of misrepresenting his position.
"My briefing with ASIS on the 11th of February included substantial security matters relevant to Iraq - these are the facts," Mr Latham said.
Mr Latham told Parliament that in January he had a lengthy meeting with the Deputy Secretary of the Australian Intelligence and Security (ASIS) in the Department of Defence, and was also briefed by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIO).
"The meeting was scheduled to go from 5:00pm to 5.45pm, and my recollection was that it went longer than that," Mr Latham said.
Laborites wish they'd been told:
Labor MPs are questioning leader Mark Latham's lack of consultation on big policy announcements.
The discontent has appeared following Mr Latham's announcement last week that a Labor government would bring troops in Iraq home by Christmas.
However, it also emerged yesterday in relation to the announcement that Labor would abolish the Aboriginal national body, ATSIC.
At a scheduled Caucus meeting yesterday Mr Latham was told he had not run the announcement past concerned MPs until just before it was made.
But the major issue of unilateral policy statements centred on his pledge to bring troops back.
Senior frontbenchers have not been able to confirm that the decision, and its specific timetable, had been discussed by shadow cabinet.
I completely agree with this revolted observer:
When I saw Latham say we had to bring our 850 troops home after June 30 “to defend Australia” I was disgusted. Pure populism it was, and I thought Australians would see through it big time, which they have.
It was painful to see Latham’s foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd on Lateline last night having to dodge and weave to avoid stating the obvious – that he did not agree with Latham’s hard and fast timetable for exit. Latham has neutralised Kevin Rudd with this decision, damaging one of his best assets on national security.
Is Latham really saying the danger to Australia is so acute that we need 850 troops to join the 51,0000 troops stationed in Australia? That’s scare mongering at its worst.
As Howard rightly said speaking to his motion in the House of Representatives today that troops should not be withdrawn before the job is done, that would mean hauling back our troops from East Timor and the Solomons too.
Damn straight. Meanwhile, Rob Corr wants us to do it for the children.
COLUMN REPORTED FOR CHUCKING
Mentioned in this week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin are Simon Crean, Mark Latham, John Pilger, Andrew Gilligan, Saddam Hussein, Will Saunders, Dave Burgess, Peter Lowy, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Janine Lowy, Alan Ramsey, John Howard, Paul Keating, and John B. Howard.
Also in The Bulletin is Diana Bagnall’s investigation of Australian anti-Semitism:
In 2003 the number of anti-Semitic incidents – including physical violence and property damage, abusive calls and email, and graffiti – logged by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry reached 481, the highest level recorded and more than twice the average recorded over the previous 12 years. Few Australians in mainland states, for example, are probably aware that over the new year, someone used weedkiller to burn a swastika and the words "Kill the Jews" into the lawn of Parliament House in Hobart. Swastikas are regularly sprayed around university campuses, where anti-Israel sentiment runs high.
WHEELY INSENSITIVE
Der Spiegel’s interview with new Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Rantisi begins awkwardly:
You are following in the footsteps of murdered Sheikh Ahmed Yassin at a critical time ...
(Via Erik at Wax Tadpole)
BLOODY MONDAY
In the letters pages of The Age, Australian John Stewart applauds Ireland’s smoking ban:
Well done to the Government of the Republic of Ireland who had the political courage to impose a smoking ban on all workplaces as of last Monday - including pubs and clubs.
Having spent some time in Ireland, and being aware of the almost ubiquitous pub culture there, I find it somewhat amazing that they have been able to do it without a massive backlash from patrons and publicans alike.
The backlash is already beginning:
"I won't be enforcing it, and I won't be telling my staff to enforce it, simple as that," pub owner Danny Healy-Rae said of the ban, which takes effect Monday. The law applies to any enclosed workspace: more than 10,000 pubs, as well as billiard halls, private clubs, home offices, even a lone trucker's cab.
And also politically:
One of Waterford's most famous and busiest pubs is calling on its customers not to vote Fianna Fáil in the local elections in protest at the smoking ban.
FRIES WITH THAT?
An Italian anti-burger activist experiences the rare phenomenon of drive-thru detonation:
An apparent attempt to blow up a McDonald's drive-in restaurant in northern Italy was foiled on Sunday but the suspected terrorist died when his car exploded with him strapped inside.
Witnesses said a man, later identified as Moustafa Chaouki, a native of Casablanca, drove his Fiat Tempra into the queue of cars waiting at the restaurant in Brescia, 100km east of Milan, at 10 pm. His car contained four cylinders of kitchen gas, each with a capacity of more than 70 litres.
PET HORROR OF 'PROFESSOR CRUEL'!
Excellent Brit blogger Natalie Solent confesses her shameful academic dishonesty:
My main motive for cheating was lunch.
The London Sun will soon learn of this, causing Solent to be known UK-wide as the ‘Eater Cheater’. Subsequently we’ll see headlines like NOSHING NAT’S BUNNY BRUTALITY!
Dog-ownership reveals more joys each day. Our teeny dog Laptop is best pals with an enormous, friendly, enormous, bouncy, adorable, seriously enormous Retriever puppymonster who, in line with this blog's strict policy of total anonymity for companion animals, we shall call Dog X (not his real name). Dog X is the very soul of benevolence and charitable endeavour: he knows you want dead rabbits and he does his best to bring you them.
For lunch!
KERRY WOBBLES, BUT DOESN'T SHAKE
A bunch of TV ads might be all Bush needs to counter the Clarke controversy:
A week of hearings on Capitol Hill and criticism from a former counterterrorism aide have eroded President Bush's poll standing on fighting terrorism. But that's nothing compared to the damage that Bush's campaign ads may have done to Democratic candidate John Kerry.
Kerry has a new slogan to replace I Don’t Fall Down, which didn’t trial well among Secret Service focus groups in Idaho. He’s now going with I Don’t Shake:
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who will undergo minor shoulder surgery on Wednesday, faces a politician's worst nightmare while recovering -- no shaking hands.
"I think initially we'll have him avoid handshaking," said Dr. Bertram Zarins, who will perform the outpatient surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital.
"But as he feels the strength improving, and when he tries to shake a hand if it doesn't hurt, then I think it's alright for him to do it," he said in a conference call with reporters.
Looks like another Purple Heart for the man who won Vietnam.
UPDATE. Christopher Hitchens writes:
To listen to Clarke now, you could almost imagine that the invasion of Afghanistan and eviction of the Taliban—the actual first response of the administration to Sept. 11—had not taken place. To listen to Clarke, also, you would suppose that any Iraqi connection to terrorism was sucked straight out of Rumsfeld's or Wolfowitz's thumb.
One theory that does collapse completely is that of administration foreknowledge—the Bush people were evidently in no shape to take any quick advantage of the events and seemingly hadn't bothered to plant even one Iraqi among the mainly Saudi hijackers. But in my experience, dud theories die only to be replaced by new and even dumber ones. The current reigning favorite is that fighting al-Qaida in Iraq is a distraction from the fight against al-Qaida.
ALISTAIR COOKE
Alistair Cooke, who retired only weeks ago, has died at 95.
UPDATE. Mark Steyn posts a 1996 Cooke profile, and Scott Burgess remembers a favourite Cooke line:
Nothing dies harder among the intelligentsia, among writers especially, than the quiet notion that they have a superior understanding of the art of politics.
March 30, 2004
HOLDEN CALAIS ROADTEST
Eight-cylinder engines are a powerful force for good. Remember the 1980s, when V8s were unfashionable with local manufacturers? Remember how society suffered? Remember the hair? The music? All these things are connected, people. You can’t base a society around sixes and fours without certain unpleasant consequences.
Times have changed. Holden, unlike Ford, never completely banished the V8 from its range, and now offers V8s in almost everything except the micro-sized Barina -- and mentioning that has probably inspired Holden’s next concept car.
Among various alarmist folks, however, the V8 will always cause, well, alarm (broadcaster Derryn Hinch once urged a V8 ban, apparently unaware that the Rolls-Royce he then owned was powered by, yes, a V8). So a market niche exists for what we might call the polite V8; something combining rugby league strength with a rugby union accent.
Enter the Holden Calais, pitched at the BMW-aspiring executive market. Equipped with the optional 5.7 litre 235kW V8, the Calais is tuned to conceal muscle; a single exhaust outlet deliberately mutes any tell-tale eight-cylinder rumble, in keeping with the car’s refined, non-winged, spoilerless appearance. Not that the Calais is without visual impact, an opinion supported by a young Albury drive-through bottle shop attendant I’ll call Dave:
Dave: “Mate, in a car like that, you should do some laps of Dean Street. See if you can pick up.”
Me: “You think so? But I’m almost 40 years old!”
Dave: “Doesn’t matter, mate. Let the car do the talking.”
Thanks, Dave. The Calais is more of a whisperer -- you’ll rarely wander above 2000 rpm under normal driving conditions -- but it carries a big stick. It’ll righteously stomp most anything encountered on even the briefest Hume Highway overtaking zone. Aggressive freeway driving tends to cover the lameness of the ageing four-speed auto, too, which is calibrated (in power mode) to change up at around 6000 rpm. Around town it gets a little fussy, hovering over changes and making those curious dual-clunk downshifts Commodore owners have learned to ignore.
No such complaints about the handling. The previous Calais was criticised by some as a “yank it and bank it” device; that is to say, it was better manouvered by force rather than finesse. The current machine, riding on wider tyres, and with suspension revisions all over the place, responds best to fingertip-level inputs. Gone is that awkward feeling in previous models that the car must first be “settled” into high-speed corners before proceeding.
Look, we’re talking about a $55,000-plus luxo-sport unit here, but the handling is so good, the power steering so direct, and the torque so abundant you feel you’d be easily able to steer it with your right foot, speedway-style, were it not for an overly-intrusive traction control. When activated it kicks back hard through the accelerator. Excuse me, but the driver is meant to be pushing you, Mr Grouchy Pedal. Absent any means of overriding power cuts to the rear wheels, genial understeer prevails.
Brakes the size of Bert Newton’s face make sure all this energy is easily contained. Trying to find the point at which fade begins is a fool’s errand, so I tried, several times, and couldn’t locate it. Pedal feel isn’t great, but remains unvarying.
So much for the sport side of the equation. The luxo half is where most sales will be made. Ride is brilliant, masking most of the lateral thump usually associated with low-profile wheelware. Electronically-adjustable front seats can be configured to suit all but those whose tax returns list main source of income as sideshow attraction. Standard equipment includes just about everything. Finish and fit is summarised by the German-quality sound that accompanies door closure.
Speaking of sound, that V8 roar can still be enjoyed if the windows are down and the revs are high. Think of it as an aural antidote to the ‘80s.
(Originally published in the Sunday Telegraph, March 28. Next up: the Chrysler Crossfire)
TAXES SPENT
No posts this afternoon. The ABC is sending around a camera crew for a blogger story they're putting together, so I'm busy hiding all the Hitler statues and extinguishing that burning cross in the yard. The JAIL PUBLIC BROADCASTERS banner out front better come down, too.
RULED BY BASTARDS
Bernie Slattery reports:
The Australian wasted some space this morning correcting a quote it attributed to National Party Senator Sandy McDonald saying "Syria is a country that has been a bastard state for nearly 40 years.''
It should have read "Syria is a country that has been a Baathist state for nearly 40 years.''
As Bernie says: “Wish they'd explain the difference.”
FREE JOHN HOWARD
John Howard's WSJ opinion piece is now available to non-subscribers:
In the wake of the indiscriminate slaughter of almost 200 commuters in Madrid, global commentary seems as much focused on the political implications for Western governments as on the perpetrators.
It will be doubly tragic if mass murder is rewarded with even the perception that our resolve has weakened. At the very least the victims--those killed and injured--deserve an absolute assurance that this outrage will make all of us more determined to stand together against terror. Now is not the time for us to be diverted from this global mission.
Words are weapons in the information age and there is a need for vigilance to ensure we are not signaling weakness in the face of this ongoing threat. There can be no excusing the inexcusable. The messages we send, whether as leaders of governments or leaders of opinion, must be that we will stay the course and finish the job.
That “stay the course” idea seems to have some appeal.
UNITED NEMESES
A couple of years ago, on James O’Loghlin’s ABC program, I said a whole bunch of unpleasant things about the UN. Fellow guest Keith Suter, a past president of the United Nations Association of Australia, was alarmed; in particular, the idea that we should get out of the UN struck him as ridiculous.
Turns out I wasn’t unpleasant enough about this gang of oil-drenched, child-starving degenerates.
A NEW ERA DAWNS
Doug Payton previews humankind’s salvation:
Today is the first day for the official liberal talk radio network, "Air America". The anchor for this network is Al Franken's "The O'Franken Factor". I guess that there wasn't any real good way to spoof the title of "The Rush Limbaugh Show", so he went with O'Reilly's. And that sounds to me like he's already set the tone for his show; comedy, parody, attack, and, oh yeah, issues (maybe). As I said over a year ago, this should tell you all you need to know about how this crew is going to go about their business; they'll attack ideas with comedy, where complex ideas are oversimplified and you'll be too busy laughing to notice the errors. Franken himself said, "I think the audience isn't there for a liberal Rush, because I think liberals don't want to hear that kind of demagoguery." This from a guy who wrote a book titled, "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot".
Doug’s prediction: “Franken's show is gone in 2 years.”
UNEXAMINED CLARKE
Shaun Carney in today’s Melbourne Age:
A sensational new book by America's former anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke suggests that the Bush White House allowed itself to be consumed by its obsession with Saddam at the expense of overseeing a co-ordinated global response to terrorism.
The Clarke story in Australia is mostly the story of Clarke’s book; few revelations of his contradictory paper trail have been reported. Here’s one example, from an interview previously noted by several bloggers: in March 2002, Richard Clarke told PBS:
On the day of Sept. 11, then the day or two following, we had a very open mind. CIA and FBI were asked, "See if it's Hezbollah. See if it's Hamas. Don't assume it's Al Qaeda. Don't just assume it's Al Qaeda." Frankly, there was absolutely not a shred of evidence that it was anybody else. The evidence that it was Al Qaeda began just to be massive within days after the attack.
Clarke’s story has changed; in his interview with 60 Minutes, “see if it's Hezbollah, see if it's Hamas” became “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.” And, as Time magazine pointed out, Clarke’s recollection then evolved to demands for: "Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaida, a memo on Iraq and the attacks."
Also from the PBS interview, this exchange:
Interviewer: A lot of people looked at Sept. 11, and said "Massive intelligence failure. Haven't seen an intelligence failure like this since Pearl Harbor." What's your opinion on that allegation?
Clarke: I think it's a cheap shot.
ROBERT'S IRAQ ADVENTURES, CONTINUED
Robert Fisk reports, in his fashion:
Exactly a year after the Anglo-American armies invaded Iraq, I found five young men some days ago busy smashing up what was left of a Saddam statue in this little dusty border village. The torso and head of the dictator had long disappeared from his plinth at the frontier station but his legs and one arm and a battery of monumental missiles still lay on the ground in gleaming steel. Two American attack helicopters were racing up the border - still trying to find Donald Rumsfeld's Al Qaeda hordes as they supposedly swarm into Iraq - but what caught my eye were the heads of the five young men so assiduously hammering and sawing and hacking at the remains of Saddam's statue. Four of them were wearing black face masks, the fifth had a black hood over his head.
A year after we overthrew Saddam, Iraqis now have to hide their identity when they attack his image. What does that tell us about "new Iraq"?
What does it tell you about old Iraq that Saddam’s image was never attacked at all? (Another question for Fisk: if these anti-Saddam youngsters were so scared of reprisals, why were they “assiduously hammering and sawing and hacking” at an already-destroyed statue, in broad daylight, masks or not?)
If you are in Iraq, in Baghdad, driving its dangerous roads, the evidence of collapse and failure is everywhere ...When I drive these highways I now wear a "kuffiah" and "thobe" on my head. My driver wears Western trousers and shirt but I am in Arab clothes to avoid being attacked ... What does that tell us about Iraq a year after its "liberation"?
It tells us that Robert Fisk is the guy in the kuffiah and thobe riding alongside someone wearing Western trousers and shirt.
How do we explain now the armies of truculent, often ill-disciplined mercenaries now roaming Iraq on behalf of the Anglo-American occupation authorities? Many thousands of them British, some are well-trained, many are not ... When I pleaded with one British gunman in sunglasses last week to at least put a shirt over his gun to conceal it when walking in and out of our hotel, he pointed a finger at me.
"Listen mate," he shouted. "If I see someone with a gun come to shoot you, I am going to walk right past and do nothing."
Bet he was among the well-trained ones.
GOODBYE, LOSERS
Ron Rosenbaum kisses the crazy Left goodbye:
It’s a goodbye that’s been brewing ever since the Really Big Idiocy, the one I encountered barely a month after Sept. 11, from a more illustrious figure on the Left, an academic Left paragon.
It’s also a long goodbye, every word of which is worth reading.
(Via reader Ted M.)
March 29, 2004
MULLAH DOWN
Old Hook-Hand might be in the market for some additional limb hardware:
Mullah Mohammad Omar, the fugitive leader of the Taliban, was wounded in a U.S. bombing raid earlier this month that killed four of his bodyguards, Deutsche Presse-Agentur said, citing a newspaper report in Pakistan.
Omar was injured in the legs and left side of his body and won't be able to move about for two months, DPA said, citing an interview in the Urdu language daily newspaper, Ausaf, with Jabbar Aziz, a doctor. The report said the raid took place in the southern Afghan province of Zabul.
Stand by for more complaints about targeting the infirm.
SMH SPINS FOR OSAMA
According to captured terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Heathrow airport was next on al-Qaeda’s list:
Al-Qaeda terrorist network leader Osama bin Laden instructed his operations chief to prepare a strike on London's Heathrow airport soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, it was reported yesterday.
In a dispatch from Kabul, Britain's The Sunday Times newspaper said it had seen transcripts of the interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the most senior al-Qaeda operative to be captured in the US-led war on terrorism.
Mohammed, 37, who was seized in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March last year, stated that he met bin Laden in the Afghan capital Kabul several days after the September 11 attacks.
"It was at this time we discussed the Heathrow operation," he was quoted as saying in the transcript.
"Osama declared (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair our principal enemy and London our target," he said.
That all seems reasonably straightforward. Now look at how the story is spun by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Fray, under the headline Bin Laden's British payback target: Heathrow Airport:
Osama bin Laden ordered the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks to organise a massive strike on Heathrow Airport to punish Tony Blair for his support of the US, it has been revealed.
In The Age’s version of Fray’s story, Blair is to be punished for his close support of the United States. What “support” is Fray talking about? This planned Heathrow attack was apparently discussed prior to any British military commitment to the war on terror; only days after September 11, in fact. The Sunday Times piece upon which Fray’s article is based mentions nothing about US-related payback:
Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader, ordered a devastating attack on Heathrow to punish Tony Blair, calling the prime minister his “principal enemy”, a senior lieutenant has revealed. He told his operations chief, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to prepare the strike on the airport at a meeting in Kabul soon after the attacks on America in September 2001.
Fray appears to have added the payback notion in order to wed this story to domestic debate on Australia’s ties to the US and our involvement in Iraq. Shameless, no?
Letters to the SMH here. Letters to The Age here.
KILLING FIELDS
You think Australian cricketers are tough on their opponents? Just ask former Indian Test player Atul Wassan about the Pakistanis:
Interviewer: Have you ever faced the famous Pak sledging?
Wassan: Yeah. They are brash and bullheaded. Comments like, "I will murder you" are very common. Being a thorough Punjabi, I have given it right back to them. One of my famous tiffs was with Martin Crowe and Mark Greatbatch of New Zealand. However, I would prefer not to disclose what kind of words were exchanged.
Wassan also has strong opinions about Muttiah Murilitharan, who has just been cited for chucking:
Murali was reported by match referee Chris Broad during the final day of the third Test, which Australia won by 121 to take an historic 3-0 clean sweep of the series.
Reading from a written statement Broad said his report relates only to Murali's new delivery, the "doosra", which turns away from the right-handed batsman.
"The concern is that this ball may be delivered with an action that is not in accordance with the laws of the game," Broad said.
"Accordingly I have submitted this report for further investigation.
"In making this report I would like to emphasis it relates to this new delivery only."
Murilitharan’s been sending down this garbage during the whole series, and they only report him when it’s over. Fun backyard experiment for the cricket-aware: try getting something (a tennis ball, say) to break left using an offspinner’s action. It’s surprisingly easy ... if you throw it.
NEWS BITS
• John Kerry meets the workers.
• The spokesman for pro-logging group Timber Communities Australia is one of those guys with job-appropriate surnames.
• Triple J’s Steve Cannane poses a question:
The Australian record industry has just had its best year ever. But it doesn't want you to know about it. This month ARIA announced its sales figures for last year. In its press release, it talked about Delta, it talked about falling CD singles sales, it talked about the rise in DVD sales, but at no stage did it tell us it was the industry's best year ever. Why bury the good news?
• And Imre Salusinszky reports directly from the the war that nobody can pronounce:
The renewed outbreak of violence between Kosovo's Albanian Muslim majority and its ethnic Serb minority has shattered the fragile peace of people who can't follow the politics of the Balkans.
The re-emergence after five years of Europe's main Christian-Muslim conflict has also reignited fears of ethnic cleansing and of people in English-speaking countries having to try and pronounce the names of cities such as Srbica, Gorazde and Kragujevac.
But the biggest danger in a collapse of Kosovo's delicate ethnic balance would a "domino effect" by which people in southern Kosovo would be forced to leave their homes, and then people in London, New York and even Sydney would be forced to pretend at dinner parties that they had the faintest idea of what these primitive peoples were actually arguing about.
March 28, 2004
TARGET-RICH ENVIRONMENT OVERLOOKED
Her injustice antennae twitching furiously, Kerry Nettle denounces the shameful Australian government:
The Australian Government's failure to condemn Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was shameful and out of step with international opinion, a rally in Sydney was told today.
Greens senator Kerry Nettle told the rally the federal government had failed its international duty by not immediately condemning Israel's attacks.
"It's a shameful act that the prime minister did not condemn these acts," Senator Nettle said.
Two hundred people enjoyed Nettle’s Hyde Park speech before being returned to their wards.
UPDATE. Alan Dershowitz thinks the likes of Nettle can go to hell:
Last week's targeted killing of the wheelchair-bound head of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, by the Israel Defence Forces was a moral and lawful instance of pre-emptive self-defence.
Yassin was a combatant under any reasonable definition of that term, and combatants - including leaders - are appropriate military targets during a war of the kind Hamas has declared against Israel.
From his wheelchair, this blind bigot gave advance approval for acts of terrorism directed against Israeli civilians and Jews. Most recently, when Israel killed three Hamas militants who were on their way to launching an attack against Israelis, the Hamas website carried the following acknowledgement: "The three martyrs were on a holy mission when the Zionist US-made helicopters fired two missiles toward their vehicle."
Yet Hamas condemned the Israeli action that prevented an act of terrorism against innocent civilians. What else is a democracy supposed to do: wait until the terrorists strike?
AREA MAN CLAIMS TO 'UNDERSTAND DOWD'
John Kerry endures some gruelling MoDo analysis:
I wasn't sure how to ask John Kerry, so I just blurted it out: "Is there anything we need to know about your relationship with your father?"
I didn't think the country could take another vertiginous ride on the Oedipal tilt-a-whirl. It's hard not to see the Bush unilateral foreign policy — blowing off allies and the U.N. to rewrite the ending of a gulf war his father felt had ended appropriately — as the ultimate act of adolescent rebellion.
"I know what you're saying," Mr. Kerry murmured.
He does? Meanwhile, Margo Kingston brings Sydney Sun-Herald readers up to date on the Richard Clarke controversy:
Bush's former top counter-intelligence man Dick Clarke wrote in a book released last week that Bush was more interested in Iraq than al-Qaeda, even on September 12, 2001, and saw September 11 as cover to get away with invading Iraq.
Bush "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide", Clarke wrote. "Nothing America could have done would have provided al-Qaeda and its new generation of cloned groups [with] a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country."
You get the feeling Margo hasn’t followed subsequent developments in this story very closely. Luckily for us, Mark Steyn has.
NOAM CHOMSPIRASKY
I stand to be corrected on this, but Noam Chomsky seems to be suggesting that coverage of US deaths in Iraq is designed to somehow increase support for the Illegal Unilateral Invasion:
There's a lot of focus on the American death toll but personally I think that's partly propaganda exaggeration. Polls have demonstrated time and time again that Americans are willing to accept a high death toll - although they don't like it, they're willing to accept it - if they think it's a just cause.
Beats me. Of course, when Cambodia was being erased by the Khmer Rouge, Noam had another body-count theory:
Allegations of genocide are being used to whitewash Western imperialism, to distract attention from the `institutionalized violence' of the expanding system of subfascism and to lay the ideological basis for further intervention and oppression.
Those pesky “allegations”. They haunted Pol Pot to the grave.
SPOOKS NEEDED. MUST BE FLUENT IN HTML
Got mad computer skillz and so forth? Then become a spy:
ASIO is to recruit more than 150 extra spies to bolster Australia's defences against the growing threat of Islamic terrorism.
The new vacancies will include general intelligence officers, surveillance officers, engineers and IT specialists. The agency is also keen to recruit linguists fluent in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, Pashtu and Urdu.
Computer experts will be required to "map" terrorist activities and to cross-reference data on terrorist suspects in Australia and overseas. All applicants should be self-starters and highly motivated, according to ASIO.
Hey, EvilPundit! Job for you!
IRON HEEL TRIUMPHANT
All hope is lost, reports tragic Terry Lane:
The leftish magazine Overland turns 50 this week. When Stephen Murray-Smith started the magazine, we still thought that argument could persuade and even change. But this week in his anniversary lecture and article, writer Barry Hill despairs: "The point is, everyone knows about it, and most of us feel - realistically - that we can do nothing as the Iron Heel of Corporate America treads where it wants." Exactly.
Argument can persuade and change, Terry. Just not your argument.
HE LIVED BY THE SWORD
Some years ago I met a woman whose boyfriend had been killed in a motorcycle accident. At his funeral, she was surprised -- well, a little more than surprised -- when his four other girlfriends turned up.
Sounds like murdered Melbourne criminal Andrew "Benji" Veniamin had the same sort of deal happening:
"Our plans for the future will be sadly missed, but you'll always remain in my heart," KK wrote in the Herald Sun's death notices.
"You left me, the best part of you, to cherish and to love our daughter," Nataline Falzon wrote.
And Cherie is hurting: "I ... wish you were still in my arms."
Bree declared her love for Veniamin, while "The Girls", Karlie and Tiffany said they would miss the fun times they shared.
Rena said Veniamin's name was engraved in her heart in letters of gold: "You're the sweetest person that has touched my heart."
Veniamin’s touching evidently wasn’t restricted to Rena. Or her heart.
OIL AND FOOD
The Age’s Roger Franklin explores the UN -- a bastard hive of turkey thieves and ham bandits who may have pocketed $11 billion worth of Iraqi oil for food money.
LIONEL HUTZ WASN'T AVAILABLE
French lawyer Jacques Verges has been chasing this particular ambulance since December:
A French lawyer who made his reputation defending some of the world's most notorious figures says he will take on Saddam Hussein as his latest client.
Mr Verges says the request came in a letter from Saddam Hussein's nephew, Ali Barzan al-Takriti.
Good work, kid. You don’t like your Unkie Saddam? Check this lawyer’s list of former clients, and see how many of them aren’t currently dodging the big tattooed guy in the showers.
(Via reader Kevin N.)
REUTERS NEEDS COUNTERS
The Reuters headline:
At least 15 die as US battles insurgents in Iraq
And the story below the Reuters headline:
Running battles between US troops and insurgents in the Iraqi flashpoint town of Falluja have killed a US Marine, an Iraqi cameraman and at least six other civilians.
As reader CJ points out, that’s eight.
UPDATE. Scott Burgess corrects me. I was wrong. The additional fatalities -- from a separate incident in Tikrit -- are mentioned deeper in the piece.
March 27, 2004
AS-NEW SHOES ACQUIRED
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul McGeough reports from Gaza City:
It's Wednesday night, and more daring than the military march-past is the presence in the front row of two marked men - Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the 56-year-old pediatrician who has stepped into Yassin's shoes as leader of Hamas in Gaza, and his deputy, Mahmoud Zahar, also a doctor.
He stepped into Yassin’s shoes? That’s more than Yassin himself ever managed. McGeough’s dependence on cliche is excessive, though not always so comical; in this one piece we’ve got crowds going wild, people melting away into the night, and spectators hanging from the rafters. Cannons are loose. Doubts are grave. Effects are knocked-on. Rich seams are mined, soul-searching sparked, reveries emerged from. Baghdad is eerily quiet; on tenterhooks, in fact.
Grief? There are outpourings of it. Futures, naturally, are bleak. A lull in proceedings is grist to McGeough’s mill. His appetite for this crap is insatiable. SMH columnist Mike Carlton loves it, however:
McGeough's gifts as a prose stylist are matched with peerless skills as a reporter.
You think so, Mike? The problem with cliches is that they’re so old hat.
UPDATE. Here’s a non-cliche that should catch on: fearbiter.
COLUMNIST CONFESSES
Professor John Quiggin’s site attracts fewer than 300 unique readers per day, yet it’s still more popular than his column in the Australian Financial Review:
It's puzzling to me that, although the stats say the blog has far fewer readers than the Fin Review (where I've been writing for ten years) my daily experience is the opposite. Far more people in my circle of friends and acquaintances seem to be aware of the blog than have read the column.
It's possibly unwise of Quiggin to admit this. Editors at the Fin Review might ask why they’re running a column that nobody, including the author’s friends, can be arsed reading.
POLL CHANGED, FINALLY
A new poll is up at left. I expected greater early support for the SNURB T-104 Hell Brick, but you know how fussy people are about ordnance these days.
O'NIHILIST O'NEILL
Brendan O’Neill, who just knows we hardline anti-terrorist types lust for massive random bomb attacks, also knows that polls reflecting post-war Iraqi happiness aren’t to be trusted. The idea that Iraqi lives may have been improved by Saddam’s removal seems to be difficult for Brendan to accept.
It’s kind of obvious that Brendan, although he doesn't like to admit it out loud, would secretly, guiltily welcome a disaster in Iraq as an opportunity to berate his opponents and as a reminder of his own moral indefatigability. Nice.
(Via Rob at SemiSkimmed)
UPDATE. Mark Steyn offers an alternative view:
I don’t think it’s possible for anyone who looks at Iraq honestly to see it as anything other than a success story. Not perfect by any means, but a year after the war was launched the glass is at least five-eighths full, and by any objective measure Iraq is immensely improved. If you belong to Not In Our Name or Environmental Choreographers Against Genocide or Spaniards For A Quiet Life or Former Tory Cabinet Ministers United For A Saddamite Restoration, you can dispute that assessment. But in doing so you’re at odds with the Iraqi people.
SUPERWISE AL
"I know what argument is more likely to resonate with Australian voters," writes Sydney Morning Herald sourboy Alan Ramsey. That’s a big call, especially from someone who doesn’t know birdflesh from plastic or Christmas from Thanksgiving.
Ramsey also writes of "the angst in Washington, where Bush - in an election year going as badly for him as it is for Howard in this country - is under immense pressure on the economy as well as over his Administration's deceit and dissembling over the invasion of Iraq, the supposed war on terrorism and the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington of 2001."
Wonder if Ramsey is up for a bet on Bush’s re-election?
UPDATE. Professor Bunyip probes Alan Ramsey and his SMH cellmate Mike Carlton. Go read it!
ANOTHER CLARKE APOLOGY DUE
Richard Clarke cheerleader Tim Dunlop wrote this one year ago:
In the direct aftermath of 911, a number of members of of the bin Laden family were helped out of the country by the US Administration in planes chartered by the Saudi goverment. Barely a question asked, and security guaranteed.
So it may be of interest to Dunlop and the rest of the Bush-hating Clarke wishers to learn just who was responsible:
It was Clarke who personally authorized the evacuation by private plane of dozens of Saudi citizens, including many members of Osama bin Laden's own family, in the days immediately following Sept. 11.
Ouch.
DISGRUNTLED EX-EMPLOYEE ALERT
Raines trashes the Times:
Howell Raines, the former editor of the New York Times, has unleashed a ferocious assault on the newspaper he worked at for 25 years, describing a newsroom characterised by conflict, "lethargy and smug complacency".
In a lengthy article in the next edition of Atlantic Monthly, Mr Raines is unsparing in his criticism. "The tendency towards mañana journalism can infect newcomers as if it were carried in the air ducts, like Legionnaires' disease," he says. "Thus the pernicious world view - 'it's not news until we say it's news' - gets inculcated with amazing speed." He repeatedly professes his affection for the newspaper that he ran briefly before being fired last year after a reporter, Jayson Blair, was found to have invented or copied elements of at least three-dozen stories.
He maintains, however, that the newspaper needs substantive reform to get off "its glide path toward irrelevance". He writes: "I felt on the day I became executive editor and on the day I drove away from West Forty-third Street for the last time that the Times badly needs to raise the level of its journalism and to do so quickly in order to survive."
Get a blog, Howell!
UPDATE. Noting Raines’ use of the phrase “manana journalism”, reader Ken Summers asks: “Who’d have thought that liberal extraordinaire Raines would casually throw out such a racial slur?” Hey, he’s only following Arthur Sulzberger’s example.
March 26, 2004
JUDY DAVIS, LIBERATOR
Judy Davis read what the ABC described as a stirring anti-war poem during last week's Ba'ath Party rally in Sydney. Examined more closely, the piece Davis chose (written by Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani) could easily be taken as an anti-Saddam call to arms:
If I knew I'd come to no harm,
And could see the Sultan,
This is what i would say:
'Sultan,
Your wild dogs have torn my clothes
Your spies hound me
Their eyes hound me
Their noses hound me
Their feet hound me
They hound me like Fate
Interrogate my wife
And take down the name of my friends.
Sultan,
When I came close to your walls
and talked about my pains,
Your soldiers beat me with their boots,
Forced me to eat my shoes.
Sultan,
You lost two wars,
Sultan,
Half of our people are without tongues,
What's the use of a people without tongues?
Half of our people
Are trapped like ants and rats
Between walls.'
If I knew I'd come to no harm
I'd tell him:
'You lost two wars
You lost touch with children.'
The Sultan is no longer in power, the people no longer live without tongues, wives aren’t interrogated, and friends’ names aren’t taken down by spies. Well read, Judy! Listen to her damn the tyrant here.
And, if you can stand it, you may also listen to John Pilger's strange nuclear theories. One highlight: his sneering mention of "the ABC's soft Media Watch program".
UPDATE. A bunch of pro-American counter-demonstrators appeared at the Ba’ath Fest in Melbourne -- and several of them appeared to be of Middle Eastern appearance. Wonder if anybody interviewed them? Could be a story there.
Naturally, the friends of democracy didn’t approve, and removed the offending pro-liberation banner. (Check this sign carried by one of the pro-libs: "Make Love After War".)
UPDATE II. The crushing of dissent continues! Actually, it’s more like the punching of dissent. Another report on the same incident here.
NEWS BRIEFLETS
• A stupid Michael Moore joke (scroll down a little) is taken seriously in Bulgaria and Spain:
Bulgarians who worked at the World Trade Center in New York City received a warning not to got to work on September 11, 2001, when terrorists rammed hijacked passenger jets into the twin towers, bestseller author Michael Moore writes in his latest book "Dude Where's My Country?"
• The New York Times thinks the Victorian countryside qualifies as remote Australian outback.
• Noam Chomsky has ditched comments at his new blog following ferocious right-wing joke attacks.
• It takes a hyper-educated doctor of philosophy to point out society’s complex realities:
Homelessness is a visible indication of the existence of poverty in Australia.
IT'S 6AM. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR FAKE TURKEY IS?
Colleen Redman keeps the legend alive:
I doubt that many people realize that the turkey used in another photo-op, when Bush was in Iraq on Thanksgiving Day, was a fake. In reality it was 6 a.m. and the soldiers ate, not the Norman Rockwell-looking (fake) turkey that was presented, but from cafeteria style steam trays.
It’s nearly April, and Colleen is still horking up conspiracy theories that were dashed before Christmas. What’s that phrase the Left used to use? “Move on?” Something like that, anyway.
WHAT CREDIBILITY ISSUES?
When it comes to Richard Clarke, Tim Dunlop is wearing rose-coloured glasses over rose-coloured contact lenses stuck to eyeballs treated with rose-coloured lasers:
... the guy oozed integrity yesterday, highlighted by the fact of his apology to the families for not stopping the 9/11 attacks. People might like to suggest (though I haven't seen it done yet) that he was insincere or just being politically astute, but I doubt very much that you can fake something like that. To attack the sincerity of the apology is just going to leave the attackers looking more desperate and petty than they already do ... "the White House's Clarke problem" (love that expression) ain't going to go away.
Man. After a dose like that, you need Jeff Jarvis for the antidote.
BAD BECOMES GOOD
"Australia tops honest companies list," reports the ABC:
Australian companies are seen as the least likely in the world to offer bribes when operating offshore.
Advocacy group Transparency International has surveyed 800 business experts in 15 developing nations to give Australian firms the cleanest bill of health, ahead of companies from Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Canada.
Nice story, huh? Now take a look at the way it was originally presented just a few hours ago.
(As spotted by super-wily Zem, of vigilant.tv)
VIDEO QUIZ
Evan Coyne Maloney is kind of like a right-wing Michael Moore, except friendlier, slimmer, and funnier. And he gives away ketchup and waffles instead of eating them.
MOONBAT FLIES CLOSE TO REASON
George Monbiot is shocked:
The survey the BBC conducted recently in Iraq is shocking to those of us who opposed the war. Most respondents say life is now better than it was before the invasion. Those who thought the United States was wrong to attack are outnumbered by those who thought it was right.
We know that the Bush and Blair governments lied about their motives for war. We know that humanitarianism was used as a cover for imperialism. We know that thousands of civilians were killed. But we do neither ourselves nor the Iraqis any favours by using them to ventriloquise our disgust. We can say without contradiction that the war should not have happened and that it has been of benefit to the Iraqi people by ridding them of one of the world's most abhorrent dictators.
Well, George can say that without contradiction. Normal people may find it a little difficult. Read on as George, having almost realised something, stumbles towards the inevitable inconclusive conclusion.
March 25, 2004
NOAM BLOGS!
Noam Chomsky is Turning the Tide at his brand new blog. Three posts so far; no links. Here’s a sample of online Noamish wisdom:
People in the more civilized sectors of the world (what we call "the third world," or the "developing countries") often burst out laughing when they witness an election in which the choices are two men from very wealthy families with plenty of clout in the very narrow political system, who went to the same elite university and even joined the same secret society to be socialized into the manners and attitudes of the rulers, and who are able to participate in the election because they have massive funding from highly concentrated sectors of unaccountable power that cast over society the shadow called "politics," as John Dewey put it.
Boring! Much livelier copy is available from Noam’s commenters:
My old friend Noam! On behalf of all the terrorists, genocidal dictators and child abusers who you have dedicated your life to supporting: Welcome to the Blogosphere!
But beware, there is true democracy here. Only a man like you can put it down. Help us. Post your wonderful speeches.
Salam!
Posted by Yasser at March 24, 2004 10:22 PM
(Via reader David)
UPDATE. It ain’t easy being Noam. Just ask reader Noam Rotenberg:
Please continue to mock, insult and fisk Noam Chomsky. Or to use his nonsense, please deconstruct his presuppositions, oil geopolitics, paradigms, hegemony ... yada yada yada.
But would you be so kind as to consider referring to him as Chomsky instead of by his first name? Please note my first name. All my life, after I introduce myself, people first say "Noah? Like the Ark?", and then once they're corrected, they say "Ah, like Chomsky". One insensitive friend even calls me 'Chomsky'. Imagine how that makes me feel! You used the term 'Noamish wisdom'. Hey, I visit your blog, and Damien's and Glenn's and Charles' almost daily, so I'd like to claim the term 'Noamish wisdom' for myself.
OK, so I'm not really that thin-skinned, but how many famous Noams are there in the world? There was a Noam who used to direct Barney Miller episodes, but that underrated show (with a cool theme song) is pretty much forgotten. Besides, he also directed Mr Belvedere. So, how about we make people with the surname Chomsky tainted by association instead of innocent people with the name Noam?
After all, those Chomskys are probably related to him. Unless you go all the way back to Exodus, I most certainly am not.
SNOW FLAKE
A spokesman for that snowboarding swearmouth from Massachusetts employs a familiar-sounding Kerry defence:
The Sen. John Kerry team seems more than a mite embarrassed the presidential wannabe cursed out a Secret Service agent as "that son of a bitch" after colliding with him while snowboarding last week. Asked if that's appropriate language, Kerry's spokesman, Michael Meehan, tried to wriggle out of answering on Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes." Quoth Meehan: "I don't know. I wasn't there ... it's a hypothetical I'm not interested in ... I wasn't there. Were you?" Nope, but the report of Kerry's trash talk came from the ABC News field producer who was there and appeared in the New York Times (though with the expletive deleted).
Unless you were actually there -- either in Vietnam, or on the deadly stumble-slopes of snowy Idaho -- you really can't understand the horrors John Kerry has known. By the way, how come the NYT deleted Kerry’s expletive? It’s not as though the phrase is banned in the Times’ pages.
DICK CLARKE INFO FRENZY
Behind the curve on all this Richard Clarke business? Instapundit has a whole lot of Clarke links, while Tim Dunlop is summarising Clarke’s book, chapter by chapter.
In non-Clarke news, Damien Penny explores the limits of Canadian multiculturalism and David Kaspar reports on Germany’s state-funded Lederhosen crisis.
TEEN REBELLION
Palestinian terrorists send a teenager to die -- and Israeli soldiers save his life:
A 16-year-old Palestinian youth with a suicide bomb vest strapped to his body was caught at a crowded West Bank checkpoint today.
Soldiers, taking cover behind concrete barriers, sent a yellow army robot to bring scissors to the teenager so he could cut off the vest and then made him strip to his underwear to ensure he was unarmed before detaining him.
The incident began about 4pm when soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus received intelligence a bomber was in the checkpoint. They immediately shut down the crossing and began searching the hundreds of people gathered there, the military said.
"We saw that he had something under his shirt," said Lt Tamir Milrad.
"He told us he didn't want to die. He didn't want to blow up," Milrad said.
The kid’s brother told reporters: "He doesn't know anything, and he has the intelligence of a 12-year-old." Really? Compared to his explodey elders, he’s a genius.
BLOGJAM
Tim Dunlop is too busy to write this week’s Webdiary Blogjam, so I’m forced to stand in for him. Blogjam will therefore be presented in lowbrow tabloid gossip-column style:
Word on the street has it that the reason Gary Sauer-Thompson is always on the road and catching planes is because he’s a staffer for Senator Meg Lees. Why so secretive about this, Gary? Are those wedding bells I hear? ... Spotted explaining trade basics on commercial TV last week was economics blabbermouth Professor John Quiggin, who also won a major prize of some type ... Laughing at carrot-headed leftoids is illegal, right? Bernie Slattery hasn’t heard ... Blues god Christopher “Blind Lemon” Sheil could really use an updated road map the next time he’s in Mississippi ... What is it with Gianna and men? Recently knocked up by some litigious dude, it turns out she used to date a lowly junkie ... Western Australia’s Robert Corr is very angry with Germaine Greer. What else would you expect from a corrupt Howard supporter? ... Bob Brown isn’t really a big-deal Man of Principle, at least according to Gareth Parker ... Want to attract Professor Bunyip’s eye? Then just drape an empty wine cask over your head ... Niall is still an idiot ... Sam Ward drunkenly spills the beans on the latest Australian football scandal ... Hey! Could those rumours about Geoff Honnor being gay possibly be true? ... And the Wogblogger has a long-distance election prediction.
More next week, from Blogjam Central!
OPPRESSION IS GOOD FOR YOU
The Gulf Daily News reports:
Veiled women are protecting more than their modesty - they are also less prone to nose and throat cancers because their veils screen out viruses, a Canadian doctor said.
Professor Kamal Malaker said women in Saudi Arabia suffered a low rate of the Epstein Barr Virus which causes nasopharyngeal cancer.
Which nicely balances out the danger of honour killings.
PEACE PROTEST UPDATE
Some people don’t need a giant puppet or a sign to make their point:
Jose Perez, a 39-year-old Gulf War veteran, dealt with protesters on Saturday about as effectively as anyone can. He was in Fayetteville, N.C., home of Fort Bragg, to counter-demonstrate against antiwar protesters.
"Here's the thing. We're right and they're wrong," Perez said.
TARGETS, OLD AND NEW
During all the who-knew-what-when controversy about Osama bin Laden’s September 11 plans, is anyone going to remember this?
"There were a very large number of women and children in that compound and it's almost like he was daring me to kill them," Clinton said. "I felt it would hurt America's interests if we killed a lot of Afghani women and children and didn't even get him."
”Him” being OBL his bad self. A more recent terrorist theory is dealt with by Jose Maria Aznar:
In the hours that followed the attacks, our investigation focused on one obvious suspect, the Basque terrorist group ETA. It was a reasonable inference to make, and those who say otherwise are being either naive or dishonest. History has left us with clear evidence of ETA's sinister habit of killing during election campaigns. The terrorists always attempt to soak our democracy in blood on the days when we Spaniards go to the polls to reaffirm our liberties.
ETA has committed more than 800 murders, among other crimes, over three decades, and has sought always to weaken and divide our democracy, which has just celebrated its 25th anniversary. A few days earlier, the group had tried to carry out an attack with 500 kilograms of explosives, one that failed only due to the intervention of the Guardia Civil, the national police. Those detained in this failed attack had a map that highlighted the zone of the Henares Pathway, through which run the trains that were targeted on March 11. And it was ETA that, on Christmas Eve, attempted another slaughter at Madrid's Chamartin station, also thwarted by our National Police. And to continue the ghoulish catalog, the same terrorist group brought two vans loaded with more than 1µ tons of explosives to Madrid in December 1999. Once again, our security forces foiled what would have been mass murder.
My government was not alone in attributing the March 11 attacks to ETA. In the first few hours, the president of the Basque Autonomous Region, the secretary general of the Socialist Party, the general coordinator of the United Left and the secretary general of Catalonia's Esquerra Republicana, among others, did likewise.
This isn’t what we’re hearing outside of Spain. Also, David Kaspar reports that German opposition to the war hasn’t secured Islamic friendliness:
German President Johannes Rau has cancelled a stopover in Djibouti on the last phase of his east African tour after German security services warned him of an alleged assassination plot by Islamists. Instead, he's flying back to Germany, direct from Tanzania. Rau's office said German intelligence agencies had a tipoff that terrorists had wanted to target Rau as a representative of a Western nation.
We’re all targets.
March 24, 2004
CARBLOGGING
Sydney readers of a wheel-minded nature should grab a copy of this weekend’s Sunday Telegraph, for my full review of Holden’s way-impressive Calais. I’ll post the review here after publication.
Next month’s reviews include the swoopy Chrysler Crossfire and, to celebrate Earth Day, the V10 Volkswagen Touareg.
These and future reviews will involve a whole bunch more online stuff, including pics.
INCOMING
Please congratulate Mr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi on his wonderful election victory. And make it quick, before anything, like, happens to him:
A Hamas hardliner who has pushed for accelerating attacks on Israel and ruled out all compromise is the new leader of the Islamic militant group in Gaza following Israel's assassination of the group's founder.
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a 54-year-old paediatrician, told tens of thousands of cheering Hamas supporters at a Gaza City soccer stadium today that he was chosen in secret elections.
In his acceptance speech, Rantisi made his priorities clear.
"My people, we must unify under the umbrella of resistance," he said, and exhorted the Hamas military wing to "teach this Zionist occupation a lesson".
That “umbrella of resistance” didn’t help his predecessor much. Maybe Rantisi should try a brolly of defiance or an IDF-proof parasol.
UPDATE. Mark Latham obviously expects more of the same from our Hamassian buddies:
I don't support the things Hamas has done in the future.
ATTENTION, BRITISH READERS
Is anyone able to supply the full text of this? Or a link to the entire article?
Yes, I believe it was a just war
By Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard
UPDATE. EURSOC supplies several extracts from the Gilligan piece. (Thanks to Bargarz for pointing this out). EURSOC begins by quoting Gilligan:
"One year on (since the war began), however the most important fact is that nobody’s worst fears on that wakeful night have come true. The vast majority of us, Iraqis, journalists, and Tony Blair alike, survived. Fedayeen guerrillas struck the coalition with small numbers, but there was virtually no real fighting with Saddam’s regular forces. The bombing of Baghdad looked scary on TV, but it didn’t even begin to approach the daily tonnage dropped on, say, Hanoi during Vietnam, London or any German city during the second world war.
"'Shock and awe' lasted an hour and a half, rather than the promised three days. And with only a few ghastly exceptions, the targeting, in the capital at least, was very precise. Colleagues who arrived after the war was over kept asking us where all the destroyed buildings were.
"There never was a military stalemate, a refugee crisis, a hundred thousand civilian dead …"
He goes on: "That old doom-mongers favourite, the revolt of the 'Arab street' across the Middle East, has remained as much of a mirage as any weapon of mass destruction."
Gilligan is largely critical of Blair’s reasons for going to war, rather than the war itself. "Right war, wrong reasons" he says:
"More than anything else, what discredited the war was the rush to conflict, the need to claim Iraq as a pressing danger. From this need stemmed all the Government’s most famous tabloid half-truths and non-truths. No one I know ever doubted that Sadam had WMD, or could rebuild them quickly. It was a perfectly fair inference to draw from his behaviour, even, if it now seems to have been wrong. But no expert, spook, or politician I ever met, apart from a few New Labour androids, believed Iraq’s WMD were a threat 'current and serious' enough to require military action in March 2003."
And via Melanie Phillips, news that anti-war Guardian columnist Andrew Anthony is now opposed to anti-war protesters:
I say this as someone who 12 months ago was probably 60% against the war, at least in the manner in which it was launched. Since then my doubt has remained roughly constant. What has changed is the doubt I have about the anti-war protesters. That is now running at record high levels ...
The response of some in the Stop the War coalition to the Atocha atrocity is reminiscent of the Eloi in HG Wells The Time Machine, who assumed a position of abject defeatism when attacked by the Morlocks, thinking it better not to get involved. The statement, however, that almost makes me want to campaign for George Bush's re-election was published in last week's New Statesman. It reads: "The current threat of attacks in countries whose governments have close alliances with Washington is the latest stage in a long struggle against the empires of the west, their rapacious crusades and domination. The motivation of those who plant bombs in railway carriages derives directly from this truth."
No, that wasn't the latest tape message from Bin Laden, that was written by John Pilger.
'NAM VET REBUILDS LIFE
You know those homeless Vietnam veterans you’re always reading about? John Kerry isn’t one of them.
SUCCESS AT LAST
The ABC has finally driven Israel into the sea.
WHEELCHAIR-BOUND COLUMN EXECUTED
Mentioned in this week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin are Tony Jones, John Howard, Peter Wilkins, Ricky Ponting, Matthew Elliott, Mark Latham, Bob Brown, Nick Sherry, Geoff Walden, Catharine Lumby, and Wally Potato.
MEMORIES ... MISTY, BLOOD-SOAKED MEMORIES
For the benefit of all who never met him, the BBC presents Sheikh Yassin: Life in pictures:
1: Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin, assassinated by Israel, was an inspiration to disillusioned young Palestinians and a hate figure for Israel. Hamas is one of the largest and most militant Palestinian groups fighting Israeli occupation.
No kidding.
2: He devoted his early life to Islamic scholarship and was considered by supporters primarily as a religious figure.
Honour Allah, and attach the detonator here, next to the primary Semtex load!
3: He was welcomed by Yasser Arafat when he was released from prison in 1997, in exchange for two Israeli agents held by Jordan after a botched mission to kill a Hamas member.
The Israelis seem to have fixed that “botching” problem.
4: He became an increasingly powerful figure, and Hamas attacks, in which scores of Israelis have been killed, posed a major obstacle to peace negotiations.
You really think so?
5: Sheikh Yassin opposed the Oslo peace process and refused to recognise the state of Israel, advocating resistance rather than talks.
Surprise me.
6: Scores of Palestinians were inspired by his message to give up their lives, and became suicide bombers.
Scores more Israelis died. Their level of inspiration isn’t recorded.
7: Sheikh Yassin said all suicide bombings - the latest of which came eight days ago in Ashdod - were a "response to Israeli crimes".
Such as “being Israeli”.
8: His hatred of the United States was also well known.
You don’t say.
9: Hamas support was boosted by its charitable activities and support for Palestinians suffering economic hardship.
Well, someone’s got to help out when the breadwinner is spread all over a bus somewhere.
(Via LGF)
MILLER TIME
The NYT’s Judith Miller was accused last June of being a Bush propaganda operative. Antony Loewenstein, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald’s Webdiary, today further explores Miller’s and the NYT’s role in promoting war on Iraq.
Er ... yeah.
PARAFISK
”It doesn't take an awful lot of courage to murder a paraplegic in a wheelchair,” writes Robert Fisk. “But it takes only a few moments to absorb the implications of the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin yesterday.” Actually, Robert, old man Yassin was apparently a quadriplegic, so it took twice as much courage to off the bastard. Fisk continues, in his way:
Yes, he enthusiastically endorsed suicide bombings - including the murder of Israeli children. Yes, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, in a wheelchair or not. But something went wrong with the narrative of the news story yesterday, and something infinitely more dangerous - another sinister precedent - was set for our brave new world.
Several obfuscatory paragraphs follow, in which Fisk rambles about Yassin’s earlier jail time, and Yassin being freed as the result of a deal between Israel and the Palestinians (years ago, before matters were at their current level of import). Eventually -- having touched on, and then moved quickly away from, Yassin’s lust for the death of Israeli children -- Fisk makes his point:
Yet another Arab had been assassinated. The Americans want to kill Bin Laden. They want to kill Mullah Omar. They killed Saddam's sons. Just as they killed three al-Qaeda men in Yemen.
The Israelis repeatedly threaten to murder Yasser Arafat. It's getting to be a habit.
Fisk seems puzzled. Why would anybody want to kill Osama bin Laden?
No one has begun to work out the implications of all this. For years, there has been an unwritten rule in the cruel war of government-versus-guerrilla. You can kill the men on the street, the bomb-makers and gunmen, but the leadership was allowed to survive.
Now all has changed utterly. Anyone who advocates violence - even if they are palpably incapable of committing it - are now on a death list.
Poor Yassin, all crippled up and everything. Poor Osama, what with his dialysis issues and advanced decomposition. Leave the infirm murder advocates to advocate murder in peace!
So who can be surprised if the rules are broken by the other side?
Cute. Our fault again. Okay.
The top guys are now in the firing line. Let us not say we didn't know.
I’m not sure what that means, but I think I want to know about terrorist top guys being in the firing line. Repeatedly.
LAFFS FROM THE LEFT
According to Vanity Fair, all the best blogger jokes these days are coming from lefty sites.
Not sure if this place was among those surveyed; take a look, anyway. Or check out notoriously humourless right-winger Frank J. interviewing John Derbyshire.
March 23, 2004
GORE'S 50% ENDORSEMENT
Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean, but only donated $1,000 to Dean's campaign -- half the amount permitted.
WORST TOY EVER
Mark Steyn on shield mastery:
A neighbour of mine refuses to let her boy play with "militaristic" toys. So when a friend gave the l'il tyke a plastic sword and shield, mom mulled it over and then took away the former and allowed him to keep the latter. And for a while, on my drive down to town, I'd pass Junior in the yard playing with his shield, mastering the art of cowering more effectively against unseen blows.
That's how the "peace" crowd thinks the West should fight terrorism: eschew the sword, but keep the shield if you absolutely have to.
Count the Dissident Frogman and Merde in France among the sword-carriers. More on that atomised Hamas spiritual leader: Hanan Ashrawi says that most basic tenets of international law have been violated, and asks: "What happens to due process, presumption of innocence?"
Good question. I wonder what process was followed in the case of Abdallah Quran?
REDUCE TARIFFS OR DIE!
Why do terrorists do the awful things they do? According to Bishop Desmond Tutu, it’s because they are frustrated free traders:
The developed world has massive, massive agricultural subsidies that ensure that farmers in those rich countries can produce their stuff cheaply. And there are high tariffs that prevent the developing country from being able to sell their goods. And so you say, these guys are playing a game and they make the rules for the game and they are the referees in this games. It is so lopsided that anyone seeking to be a normal person realizes that the odds are stacked against us so horrendously that people will say, I am ready to do anything to get out of this trap.
As James Taranto notes:
We sympathize with Tutu's criticism of Western trade policies, but if he thinks Osama bin Laden and his followers are agitating for free trade, he's nuts.
True, but it’s entertaining to consider Tutu’s notion that the likes of Australian film stars might be a root cause of terrorism.
MEALY-MOUTHED, MORALLY OFFENSIVE
Nine News is reporting that Labor’s Mark Latham has “joined other world leaders” in condemning the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
Latham’s comments are yet to hit the wires. Here’s a piece on global reaction to the happiest day in Yassin’s life, which the Bush administration isn't very happy about. NRO’s Joel Rosenberg writes:
Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin was the Osama bin Laden of Palestinian terrorism. By assassinating Yassin, the Israelis just applied the Bush Doctrine to one of the most deadly terrorist leaders on the planet. In the winner-take-all war on terror, countries are either with us or against us. They either take decisive action — even preemptive military action — to bring terrorists to justice, or they are guilty of aiding and abetting the enemy.
Israel's side is clear.
You'd think, therefore, that the Bush administration — fresh off of losing Spain as a major ally in the war against radical Islam — would be grateful and publicly praise our only democratic ally in the Middle East as a true partner for peace.
Think again.
The Bush administration's initial reaction to Israel's act of self-defense has been mealy-mouthed, pathetic, and morally offensive.
Agreed. Meanwhile, if you prefer your moral confusion to be pitched at truly ceiling-busting levels, there’s always Yvonne Ridley:
I had the privilege recently of meeting some brothers who fought in Afghanistan against America and Britain. No doubt if the authorities knew their identity they would be wearing orange jump suits by now, squatting in cages in Guantanamo Bay.
One thing that struck me about these brothers was how principled they were ... going on jihad for ideals almost forgotten in a selfish world corrupted by greed and power. The driving force that led them into battle in the mountains and caves of Tora Bora was no different to that which propelled 2800 men AND women from the United States to fight in the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
As far as I’m aware, neither side in the Spanish Civil War was fighting for the right to prevent women living as human beings.
(Via Angela Bell)
THEY MEAN THIS IN A GOOD WAY
Attention, Indymedia revolutionaries! You now have a new dead hero:
Iraqi leaders condemned the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, whom they hailed as a "Palestinian Che Guevara".
They're right; the resemblance is uncanny.
"Put me on your bedroom wall, infidel western teen!"
Yassin’s got all of Che’s qualities -- wild beard, fashionable headgear, no pulse -- plus additional groovy wheelchair charisma! No wonder artists adore him.
SPOCK FOR DEAN
Enter ritzy US zip codes in the Fundrace search engine and all manner of celebrity donations are revealed. Here are some standouts; hit the links to see how much cash they horked up for their respective candidates:
GEORGE W. BUSH
JOHN KERRY
HOWARD DEAN
WESLEY CLARK
JOHN EDWARDS
DICK GEPHARDT
DENNIS KUCINICH
JOE LIEBERMAN
CAROL MOSELY BRAUN
• Don King
Earlier celeb-hunting here.
UPDATE. Apparently CNN doesn’t know