Losing ground

This is not surprising at all.:

A new poll suggests Tory support is sliding over voter concern that Canada has become too cosy with the United States on Middle East policy.

You gotta walk it by yourself, Mel

So Mel Gibson thinks Jewish people are supposed to "help him heal"?
Mel, try to imagine how little anybody cares.

Mel Gibson acknowledged making anti-Semitic slurs during a drunken driving arrest and begged Jewish community leaders Tuesday to meet with him to find "the appropriate path for healing."

Why should any Jewish person care to meet with Mel Gibson anyway -- does he think he's something special, God's gift to Judaism maybe, that he now deserves personal help?
I think Mel better get busy solving his own problems.
I used to hear the same BS during the early days of the women's movement -- it was supposed to be a women's job to educate her man about how wrong his sexism was (as well as do the housework, I guess). If he continued to be a sexist pig it was somehow HER fault for not teaching him well enough or something.
Note particularly how this attitude lets the man off the hook for making any personal changes or doing any work or taking any responsibility for educating himself -- while woman's work is never done . . .
Well, its the same now with Mel and his anti-Semitism -- its up to him to do the work he needs to do to change his attitudes -- and if he finds out now or later that no Jewish person wants anything to do with him anymore, well, that's the penalty he pays -- this still wouldn't let Mel off the hook for changing his own prejudices.
Like the hymn goes:
You've got to walk that lonesome valley
Well you gotta walk it by yourself
Well there ain't nobody else gonna go there for you
You gotta go there by yourself

Today's Nelson moment

Ha ha!
Ross is on holidays, I think, so I am taking the opportunity to note this story - Trade minister acknowledges softwood deal could be 'dead on arrival'

'It is fair to say that if we do not have sufficient buy-in from industry there really isn't an agreement to bring before Parliament,' Emerson said Monday. 'So the first bridge we have to cross is to get the agreement supported by the appropriate number of players in the industry, otherwise you're dead before arrival.'

Yes, we knew that.

Hezbollah (or Hizbullah or whatever)

One of my previous posts has quite a discussion going on in Comments about Hezbollah and terrorism and Israel and the whole damn thing. Here is an interesting contribution to that discussion -- Juan Cole's description of how Hezbollah and Al-Quaeda are different:

Western and Israeli pundits keep comparing Hizbullah to al-Qaeda. It is a huge conceptual error. There is a crucial difference between an international terrorist network like al-Qaeda, which can be disrupted by good old policing techniques (such as inserting an agent in the Western Union office in Karachi), and a sub-nationalist movement. Al-Qaeda is some 5,000 multinational volunteers organized in tiny cells.
Hizbullah is a mass expression of subnationalism that has the loyalty of some 1.3 million highly connected and politically mobilized peasants and slum dwellers. Over a relatively compact area.

Read the whole article if you can. Cole concludes:

The Israelis cannot win this struggle against a sophisticated, highly organized and well armed subnationalism.
The only practical thing to do when you can't easily beat people into submission is to find a compromise with them that both sides can live with. It will be a hard lesson for both the Lebanese Shiites and the Israelis. But they will learn it or will go on living with a lot of death and destruction.

Great line of the day

John at AMERICAblog notes that Mel Gibson has been directing a mini-series about the Holocaust. He suggests some additional directorial pairings:

Black Like Me, by David Duke.
The Harvey Milk Story, by Jesse Helms.
The American Presidents, by Squeekey Fromme.
A Brief History of Time, by George W. Bush.
The Laramie Project, by the Rev. Fred Phelps.
The Wonderful Field of Nursing, by Richard Speck.
Kids Say the Darndest Things, by John Wayne Gacy.
And of course...
The Naked Chef, by Jeffrey Dahmer.

Over-reach

So Israel is suspending the bombing campaign and withdrawing from a ground offensive -- but its not a cease-fire like the world has been asking for, oh no, not at all.
OK, call it whatever you want. Maybe this debacle will end as incoherently as it began.
Steve Gilliard says:

I can't stress enough how badly this has gone. The IAF [Israel air force] has become renowned for blowing up hospitals. . . . Now, after the inevitable errant bomb, Israel is shamed before the world. . . . Hezbollah has not been much better, but Israel lost the battle of equivency when they tore up gas stations and red cross convoys. Now, Hezbollah's rockets are a footnote to Israel's bombs.

The other losers in this battle are the United Nations, and the United States.
In spite of Kofi Annan's own calls for ceasefire, protesters trashed the UN offices in Beirut and Palestinian gunmen assaulted the UN compound in Gaza City.
And the US government isn't getting any respect these days, either. Lebanon's government reportedly refused to meet with American Secretary of State Condi Rice. And Ireland refused permission for the use of Shannon airport by US planes flying bombs to Israel.
That last one has me shaking my head in disbelief -- Ireland? Telling the big bad United States to PFO?
The Bush administration overreached too -- they seized on the Israel-Hezbollah war as the ideal time to try again to get John Bolton through the Senate. Bad idea.

Great line of the day

Watertiger at Firedoglake writes:

If this week proved anything it was that Bush is to Middle East diplomacy what Ted Bundy was to blind dates. Only without the social skills . . . or boyish good looks.

18 days in July

Former CIA agent Ray Close describes how close the world is to widespread war in the Middle East:

. . . intelligence being produced for the Bush Administration by the Pentagon strongly supports the thesis that Hizballah operations are directly controlled and closely managed from Teheran ... this [is] an exaggerated picture of the real situation [which] contributes to an unhealthy and even dangerous mindset in Washington, leading to potentially serious miscalculations and errors of judgment by President Bush and his closest advisors at this very critical time . . .

Former CIA agent Larry Johnson provides further details:

I am disturbed to learn that this analysis enjoys so much credibility at the senior levels of the USG [United States government]. This is, of course, the point of view being pushed so hard by both the Israelis and the neocons in Washington.
I was equally upset to hear this view repeated unanimously (and identically) by a variety of people on national TV yesterday, coming from Senators McCain, Schumer, George Allen and John Warner as well as official spokespersons from State and the NSC. It was as if they were all reading from the same artfully crafted briefing sheet . . . It is a dangerously one-sided point of view that furthers Israel's long-standing objective of luring the US into a violent confrontation with Iran. The ultimate consequence could be that everyone in the USG --- Democrats as well as Republicans --- from the President on down --- will, by such dangerously oversimplified logic and careless rhetoric, accelerate America's momentum toward:
(1) officially defining and treating Hizballah's actions against Israel just as if they were atrocities by international terrorism aimed directly at the people of the United States, and thereby:
(2) making it almost inevitable that both political parties in the US will talk themselves into a "moral" commitment to aggressively confront those who encourage, support and harbor Hizballah terrorists (i.e. Syria and Iran), and thereby:
(3) making impossible the establishment of any constructive dialogue with either Iran or Syria in which other critical issues, such as Iraq and nuclear proliferation, for example, might be dealt with by means short of violence. In other words, this widely-supported urban legend is rapidly becoming another potentially disastrous conflation of biased intelligence analysis, simplistic political bombast and lunatic fringe right-wing Christianity that could drive us toward another major military confrontation --- whether or not that was really our carefully considered and intelligently reasoned objective.
I do not think I am overstating the danger here. Once momentum starts moving in that direction, we might soon find ourselves in another situation where stubborn pride, as much as anything else, would make it hard for us to modify our rhetoric and admit our inability and that of our Israeli allies to disarm and dismantle the military arm of Hizballah. It's a proxy war right now, but if our surrogates (the Israelis) fail to achieve their objectives, they will attempt very purposefully to broaden the conflict into a much larger one directly involving the United States and Iran.

Halifax protest

Hmmm - this is interesting:

Hundreds demonstrated in Halifax on Saturday to condemn Prime Minister Stephen Harper's defence of Israel's attacks on Lebanon . . .

When we were in Halifax, though of course we were there for just for a few days, it struck us as a very pro-military town. So if THEY are protesting, I wonder what the rest of the country thinks...

Today's pop quiz

We take as our text a question and the full answer from today's Bush and Blair news conference:

QUESTION: Mr. President, three years ago, you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab-Israeli peace. And yet today there is an Iraqi prime minister who has been sharply critical of Israel. Arab governments, despite your arguments, who first criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune. Now they're sharply critical of Israel. And despite from both of you warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored. So what has happened to America's clout in this region that you've committed yourself to transform?
BUSH: It's an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.
For a while, American foreign policy was just, "Let's hope everything is calm" -- kind of, managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.
And so we've taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.
And make no mistake: They're still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for.
In the long term, to defeat this ideology -- and they're bound by an ideology -- you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.
And, look, I fully understand some people don't believe it's possible for freedom and democracy to overcome this ideology of hatred. I understand that. I just happen to believe it is possible. And I believe it will happen.
And so what you're seeing is, you know, a clash of governing styles.
For example, you know, the notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them.
And so they respond. They've always been violent.
You know, I hear this amazing kind of editorial thought that says, all of a sudden, Hezbollah's become violent because we're promoting democracy. They have been violent for a long period of time. Or Hamas?
One reason why the Palestinians still suffer is because there are militants who refuse to accept a Palestinian state based upon democratic principles.
And so what the world is seeing is a desire by this country and our allies to defeat the ideology of hate with an ideology that has worked and that brings hope.
And one of the challenges, of course, is to convince people that Muslims would like to be free, that there's other people other than people in Britain and America that would like to be free in the world.
There's this kind of almost -- kind of a weird kind of elitism that says well maybe -- maybe certain people in certain parts of the world shouldn't be free; maybe it's best just to let them sit in these tyrannical societies.
And our foreign policy rejects that concept. And we don't accept it. And so we're working.
And this is -- I said the other day, when these attacks took place, I said it should be a moment of clarity for people to see the stakes in the 21st century.
I mean, now there's an unprovoked attack on a democracy. Why? I happen to believe because progress is being made toward democracies.
And I believe that -- I also believe that Iran would like to exert additional influence in the region; a theocracy would like to spread its influence using surrogates.
And so I'm as determined as ever to continue fostering a foreign policy based upon liberty. And I think it's going to work unless we lose our nerve and quit. And this government isn't going to quit.

1. Huh?
2. How many imaginary enemies has Bush got?
3. Do you think he has imaginary friends too?

Great line of the day

The Sideshow references this Gore Vidal interview:

I would suggest Canada or New Zealand as a possible place to go until we are rid of our warmongers. We’ve never had a government like this. . . . This is an eternal war against terrorism. It’s like a war against dandruff. There’s no such thing as a war against terrorism. It’s idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It’s advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

Emphasis mine. I liked the whole interview, but having once worked in advertising and PR, I appreciated this little segue about the advertising industry.

Kangaroo courts

It's pretty clear what is going on still with the Guantanamo prosecutions.
For hundreds and hundreds of the people imprisoned at Gitmo, the Bush administration has no evidence of wrongdoing and never did.
I'm not saying they have no "admissable" evidence, as in evidence which under usual rules of courtroom procedure and legal precedent can be admitted into court. I'm saying they haven't got "any" evidence, as in no evidence at all -- just some story, perhaps, that some anonymous neighbour told some soldier years ago and thousands of miles away. Or a personal rival to a tribal chief. Or someone who was driving past a checkpoint at the wrong time. Or trying to hide from a firefight in their front yard.
The thing is, the Bush administration KNOWS this. They KNOW they have locked up hundreds of innocent people. They just cannot admit it to the world -- bad for morale, you know, plus think of how embarassing it would be for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. Can't have that, can we?
So in defiance of what the Supreme Court has been ruling for the last three years, the Bush administration continues to be bound and determined to keep the Gitmo detainees far far away from any actual US judge -- who would take one glance at the story the prosecutors are trying to sell, and would throw it out as a ridiculous tissue of lies and delusion.
Once again we're seeing the Bushies trying to gin up some kind of kangaroo court:

A copy of the draft, obtained this week by The Washington Post and others, explains how the government would create commissions of U.S. military personnel who could impose a penalty of life imprisonment or death based on evidence never disclosed to the accused. Military judges could also exclude defendants from their trials whenever 'necessary to protect the national security.' . . . The draft states that using the federal courts or existing military court-martial procedures to try suspects in the war on terrorism -- described formally as "alien enemy combatants" -- is "impracticable" because they are committed to destroying the country and abusing its legal processes. Routine trial procedures would not work, it states, because suspects cannot be given access to classified information or tried speedily. Service members involved in collecting evidence cannot be diverted from the battlefield to attend trials, and hearsay evidence from "fellow terrorists" is often needed to establish guilt.

Billmon weeps

From Billmon, A Blight Unto the Nations:

I've felt many emotions about the Israelis before. I've admired them for their accomplishments -- building a flourishing state out of almost nothing. I've hated them for their systematic dispossession of the Palestinians -- even as they smugly congratulated themselves for being the Middle East's only "democracy." I've pitied them for the cruel fate history inflicted on the Jewish diaspora, respected them for their boldness and daring, honored them for their cultural and intellectual achievements. But the one thing I've never felt, at least up until now, is contempt.
But that is what I'm feeling now. The military and political leaders of the Jewish state are doing and saying things that go way beyond the blustering arrogance of a powerful nation at war. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they are behaving like a gang of miltaristic thugs -- whose reply to any criticism or reproach is an expletive deleted and the smash of an iron fist.
The most brutal public example would probably be the suggestion by the Israeli Justice Minister (!) that the IDF now has the world's blessing to simply line up the artillery and turn every village in southern Lebanon into a rubble pile -- lest too much Jewish blood be spilled in the vicious door-to-door fighting required to "make something happen" on the ground.
. . .
I've been watching events in the Middle East off and on for the past 25 years, and I've seen the Israelis get ugly before. But I can't remember a time when I've seen them this ugly . . . Massively disproportionate use of force (as defined in the Geneva Conventions, not the fevered war porn fantasies of Right Blogistan) reprisal terror bombings, an if-it-moves-shoot-it mentality on the ground:
"Over here, everybody is the army," one soldier said. "Everybody is Hezbollah. There's no kids, women, nothing." Another soldier put it plainly: "We're going to shoot anything we see."
And now a proposal to turn all of southern Lebanon into a free fire zone.
This all might be considered normal military behavior for, oh say, a Bosnian Serb militia captain, circa 1991, but when the political and military leaders of an allegedly civilized state start talking this way, something big is going on, and going wrong. The dehumanization of the enemy (much of the Israeli press routinely uses the word "terrorist" to refer to any Hizbullah fighter or Palestinian militant), combined with the rage and humiliation at not being able to stop the rain of rockets falling on northern Israel, are knocking the props out from under whatever remains of Israel's claim to be different from, and morally superior to, its enemies.
The Israeli national persona has always had a macho swagger to it (it's part of the rationale for the state -- that Jews should be able to act like "normal" masculine hyperpatriots everywhere) but what we're seeing now is something different. It has a nasty edge of hysteria to it, a compulsive need to prove to the Arabs, and the world, that Israel still can and will stomp on anyone who gets in its way. The fact that Hizbullah is now demonstrating the limits of Israeli power -- or rather, the limits on how much Jewish blood the Israeli government is willing to spend to exercise that power -- is only making matters worse. The Israeli leadership elite is starting to sound like the semen-crusted violence addicts at Little Green Footballs. Given how much real violence the generals and politicians can inflict, that's a sobering thought, to say the least.
Combine this with an enormous sense of historic grievance ("Serbs will never be beaten again!" "The Versailles Treaty has shamed the Fatherland!") and a gnawing fear of encirclement, and you've got all the ingredients for a catastrophe, of the kind that could leave the Israelis, and their American patrons, up to their necks in blood -- of the innocent and the guilty alike.
. . .
If there's one thing that should be obvious from this God awful tragedy in the making, it's that history has a savage sense of irony -- cruel and pitiless almost beyond belief. That Israel, haven to Holocaust survivors, should find itself in this situation, and respond to it in this way, is enough to make the very walls of Jerusalem weep. As I weep now.

Will they ever learn?

How can the Democrats argue against Bush's foreign policy if they are willing to go along with his choice for UN ambassador, a man who happens to be one of the architects of that foreign policy?
Guys --- you don't get to be the new ruling party by agreeing with the old ruling party -- why should anyone bother to vote for you if you can't be bothered to take a stand?
AP is reporting that the Democrats just aren't quite sure yet whether they will filbuster John Bolton or not:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has 'not made a decision either way' on calling for a filibuster, his spokesman said.
Political experts said choosing not to filibuster Bolton could be a political tactic in an election year, when Democrats plan to argue the Bush administration has failed at bringing peace to the Middle East and bringing U.S. troops home.
'To turn the issue to a Democratic filibuster, rather than Bush's foreign policy is a mistake,' said Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Boston University.
If Bolton is at the United Nations, 'he's someone they can point to' as obstructing real progress, he said.

Seems to me I remember back at the last congressional mid-terms, when the Democrats were just so anxious to get that pesky Iraq vote over with so they could get back to campaigning. The "political experts" were dishing out the same BS then, too, about how argumentative and negative the Dems would look if they didn't vote the way the Republicans wanted them to.

Stupidest. Remark. Ever.

So Harper thinks it was the UN's fault our soldier was killed because he shouldn't have been in the way of Israel's bombs.
Does he think it is Canada's fault that our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, because we shouldn't be putting them into the path of Taliban bullets?