Winning hearts and minds

Juan Cole reports on the results of a recent opinion poll in Egypt:

a poll of the Egyptian public. . . found that Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, is the most popular politician in Egypt. In second place comes Khalid Mashal, the radical Hamas leader who operates from Damascus and has been implicated in terror attacks inside Israel. In third place? Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Funniest. Comments. Ever

The Poorman post is funny enough:

Title:God Damn I Hate Working For Living
Text: If anyone has figured out a way around this particular problem, please email me. I promise I won’t tell.

There's something about The Poorman that inspires the funniest comments and this post has some great ones -- like these:

~I realize you were young and inexperienced at the time, but in hindsight you should have chosen your parents more wisely.
~Be chronically ill . . . and beg for donations, which grow fewer and fewer as time goes on. I don’t really recommend this one.
~If you send me 5 dollars, I’ll send YOU the secret to making money… the EASY WAY!!!!!
~Work - the curse of the drinking class.
~Work is a fucking scam. What kind of world is this that some people spend 60 hours a week pulling fries out of hot grease? What does a $300,000 car say to the cosmos? “Please, fucking wipe us out with a giant asteroid already”, is what.
~Don’t you get regular payoffs from kos in exchange for not mentining the scandal with his kittens? The rest of us do.
~Ooh, I know! Nobody ever went broke soliciting contracts from Republicans for pie-in-the-sky, never-gonna-reach-even-the-r&d-phase defense technology.
~I heard that if your roomate commits suicide, the government will give you money every year for the rest of your life.
~There is this guy in Nigeria who is looking for a business partner. I’ll forward you his e-mail.
~Get a dog or cat that can sing opera. It’s always worked for me.
~Hostages can be real money makers.

And finally, this one:

~Apparently, if you drink a lot, do a lot of coke, and crash your dad’s businesses into the ground, you can become President.

What you can do with a jar of Nivea

Harry Hutton:

I’m flying to the US this afternoon. I’m going to try to smuggle a jar of Nivea cream on board. Then, half-way through the flight I’m going to stand up and scream, “Look out! There’s a balm on board. Salve yourselves! Aarrrggh!”

Great lines of the day

From James Wolcott - who else?
First, a riff on Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's fall to 40 per cent in the Israel opinion polls:

. . . the bitter irony to those of us accustomed to the toasty crunch of bitter irony first thing in the morning is that even with Olmert's facedown splat he's still got better poll numbers than Bush! If Bush clawed his way back into the forties, the Note would form a conga line and bugger each other until they squeaked, Peggy Noonan would paint herself pink and roll downhill like an Easter egg, and Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss would make the rounds of the political chat shows to muse knowingly about Bush's Reaganesque Indian summer, and his durable bond with the American people (most of whom despise him. . .

Then onward to a discussion of the Bush 'legacy':

If Seymour Hersh's sources are creditable (and I think we can all agree Hersh's track record ), Bush has made up his one-track mind for the rest of us that he will not leave office without neutralizing the threat of Iran. Not having learned the lesson of Iraq about the danger of apocalyptic hyperbole, the media are already beating the bass drums like a corps of Michael Ledeens . . . I still have my doubts as to whether the US will attack Iran. As Emmanuel Todd writes in After the Empire, the recent US pattern-- evidence of its atrophied superpower prowess--has been to bomb countries much weaker than itself, while shying away from more formidable foes (such as North Korea). Iran is no pushover, and Hezbollah out-smarted and out-toughed Israel in Lebanon, making even an airstrike on Iran a more difficult sell. But one thing we've learned in the Bush years is never to anticipate that reason will prevail.
Lind: "For America, the question is whether Washington will continue to demand that we go down with the Israeli ship."
Or is it that Israel will go down with the American ship?
I suppose it's a distinction without a difference to the watery grave.

Emphasis mine.

AIDS? Harper says Euuhhh!

Foghorn says "There's something EUUHHH! about a kid who doesn't like baseball."
I was reminded of Foghorn's sneering distaste when I saw today's story about how Harper isn't going to make any announcements about HIV/AIDS funding during the Toronto conference.
So HIV-AIDS is too "political" now? Since when did politics ever scare Harper?
Nope, I think our Steve is actually saying, "there's something EUHHH! about HIV-AIDS". He doesn't want to be associated with it. Thus, he embarasses Canada before the world and displays his own incurably parochial "small town" attitude -- where the most important consideration is " oooh, what will the neighbours think?"
Well, so what do you suppose two of the world's most influential men, Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, think about our prime minister now?
And here's what some others thought:

Interim Liberal Leader Bill Graham: "this was an opportunity to show leadership and to genuinely help, and if the money comes, great. But it would be a shame that it couldn't be done in a way with the global community that's here, and so many young Canadians could've said, 'We're proud of you.' "
BC MP Keith Martin: "[Postponing the announcement] shows a complete lack of respect for this disease and for the people who suffer from it and for the people who work in it. The government has been missing here. They've showed no presence, no plan, no money."
Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa: "It just shows the chaos of their activity, there's just no focus at all. . . . The Conservatives have known for many months that this conference was coming. They've left a sour taste in everyone's mouth. The entire activist, research, scientific world is now skeptical about Canada's intention and motives. So even when the announcement does come - no matter how good it is - it will be viewed skeptically. They've just done themselves damage."

Safety, front and centre!

From Crooks and Liars

Is this actually news to anyone?

Hmmm -- without a warrant, listening to the phone calls and reading the emails of US citizens is unconstitutional.
Is there anyone, anywhere in the world, who didn't already know this?

Great line of the day

Digby describes how the American government is war-gaming against the "terro-hippies" -- peace activists, anti-globalization radicals, eco-freaks, animal rights activitists and all the other long-haired weirdos who first exposed themselves at Woodstock and have been threatening the very foundations of civilization ever since:

. . . it's only a matter of time until one of these terro-hippies gets around to killing you in your beds and writing Helter Skelter in organic beet juice on the bedroom walls.

Calling Blair, Harper, Merkel and Abdullah

It is time for the leaders of the world to step up to the plate and do something to stop George Bush from bombing Iran.
There must be a few world leaders that George Bush still gets along with and still might listen to -- the four I can think of are Tony Blair, Stephen Harper, Angela Merkel and King Abdullah.
Glenn Greenwald describes why neither American public opinion nor a congressional vote will stop the delusional Bush administration from attacking Iran if they want to.
Probably they will also ignore the 21 former US generals, diplomats and national security officials who are releasing a letter about how Iran is "not a crisis". A few other leaders have apparently spoken out so far as well: Hans Blix and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
So what is everyone else going to say? For most of the countries of the world, it doesn't matter because Bush and Cheney don't care what they think either. The Bush administration will ignore the Security Council, Russia, China, France, Mexico, Central and South America, Japan, the rest of the Middle East and the Far East. Even Olmert, having lost to Hezbollah, will have lost Bush's respect.
But I do think perhaps there is a chance that if Bush hears advice to back off Iran from the few world leaders with whom he still gets along -- I'm thinking of Tony Blair, Stephen Harper, Angela Merkel, and maybe also King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia -- that he might hold back.
Its a small chance, I agree, but it's likely the only one we've got.

Adapting to "alternatives other than democracy"

So is the US going to "win" in Iraq by "adapting" to dictatorship?
Stay tuned.
When you read a New York Times story about the Iraq war, you can usually get the real news just by reading the last paragraphs first. Here's today's example.
The story begins with 18 paragraphs about how awful things are in Iraq for the American military.
Paragraph 19 contains the news that even more American troops are going to die in Iraq next month because that's when the new street-by-street fighting in Baghdad is actually going to begin:

The Pentagon has decided to rush more American troops into the capital, and the new military operation to restore security there is expected to begin in earnest next month.

Hmmm - a Baghdad offensive in September? Just before the congressional mid-terms? I wouldn't put it past Rove to try to spin the increased casualties into a demand for support for their "bloody but unbowed" Commander-in-Chief.
But be that as it may, here's the bombshell revelation that I started this post to write about, the final paragraphs of the story:

. . . some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.
“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month . . .

So maybe Chalabi will finally get himself installed as Dictator of Iraq after all?
I think it would be pretty hard for Bush to spin this one as just another part of the Bush administration's new "win by adapting" stragegy. But then again, "up-is-downism" is back, and Bush can convince himself of just about anything.

Teach your children well

Here are some photos from Yahoo news showing children of southern Lebannon -- who, with their families, appear to have ended the war just as supportive of Hezbollah as their parents are.
This doesn't bode well, I don't think, for the Israeli/Bush administration idea that the people of Lebanon will turn against Hezbollah as a result of the war. The photo cutlines in italic are from Yahoo News:


Aya Hussein Hayder, accompanied by her sister Mona, leaves the rubble that was her grandfather's house with a salvaged poster of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.


A Lebanese boy at the funeral procession of Hezbollah militant Moustafa Kamal Rakein.


Another Lebanese boy crying during this procession.


Children pictured in the back of a car flying a Hezbollah flag just metres from the Israel-Lebanon border.


A Lebanese girl waves a Hizbollah flag as she returns home with her family following the ceasefire, in the city of Tyre.


A Lebanese boy carries a Hizbollah flag as he walks along a road . . .


Three Lebanese youth sit in the street in front their destroyed building in the Hezbollah stronghold of the southern suburbs of Beirut.


A young boy recovers a Koran and a stuffed animal from the ruins of a house destroyed in the Israeli bombardment of Kfar Sir, a village near Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon.


A displaced Lebanese man carrying his son speaks with Hezbollah fighter in the Hezbollah strongholds of the southern suburbs of Beirut.


Lebanese people walk through a destroyed street, next to an anti-U.S banner, in the Hezbollah strongholds of the southern suburbs of Beirut.


A family drives past a destroyed building in a car decorated with Hizbollah and Lebanese flags in Beirut's southern suburbs.
Note from Cathie: See the professional quality of the printing on the "Made in USA" banners placed on these ruins. Nobody has to teach Hezbollah anything about PR and framing the debate, do they? And its not just in Beirut, either ---


An anti-US banner decorates the rubble of a building destroyed during the month-long Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, in the southern village of Abbassiyeh, close to the port city of Tyre.

And who is there, helping these people out? Why, Hezbollah ...

Lebanese Hezbollah supporters sweep the street in a destroyed residential area in the southern suburbs of Beirut.


Hezbollah social workers take information from residents in Beirut's southern suburbs . . . Hundreds of people went to Haret Hreik Public High School Wednesday to register the damage caused by Israel's one-month bombing and which the militant Hezbollah group promised to rebuild.

And on the Israeli side:

An Israeli man takes a picture of his son posing next to Israeli army tanks being loaded onto trucks at an army staging area near the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.

Great line of the day

Well, its about time. Glenn Greenwald says Americans are finally realizing that terrorism is a law enforcement issue.

If George Will can come out and say that John Kerry was right about how best to approach terrorism and the Bush approach does nothing but increases it, then perhaps we can soon reach the point where national journalists will understand that there is nothing "strong" about wanting more and more wars, and nothing "weak" about opposing warmongering and advocating more substantive, rational and responsible methods for combating terrorism.

You know, the law enforcement approach isn't very romantic.
But even a cursory glance at history would seem to indicate that the nations which try to make war on terrorists, like Russia with the Chechnyans or China with Falon Gong, principally succeed in making a lot of martyrs, while nations which pass democratic laws and gather evidence and build legal cases can be successfull in putting enough terrorists in jail to give the country enough time to deal with "root causes" so that terrorist tactics lose their appeal.

Great lines of the day

Juan Cole quotes Patrick McGreevy:

VL Day?
It’s 11 pm in Beirut, and honking cars and motorbikes are cruising the Corniche while their occupants discharge Kalashnikovs into the black air shouting “Allahu Akbar.” If only we had electricity and lights, the triumph might be more believable.
. . . The Battle of Lebanon was a rude little war that played like a blockbuster summer film. This, perhaps, was the fundamental mistake that Israel and its US backers made: they underestimated the articulateness of Lebanon—a multilingual country, connected to a global diaspora, with a history so compelling that novice and seasoned journalists are drawn to its stories by instinct.
Hezbollah’s tactics countered Israel’s brilliantly before the world’s gaze. As the vastly more powerful force, the IDF could have crushed Hezbollah, but only by conducting a genocide on the Shiite people of southern Lebanon who support its resistance. And genocide, on global TV, is the one sin Israel cannot survive. Hezbollah is a designer resistance force, shaped by repeated Israeli blows against Arabs—designed not simply to counter its powerful adversary’s field techniques, but to infiltrate its soul and seek its deepest pain. It finds this pain like a heat-seeking missile finds its warm target because Hezbollah’s resistance, too, is born of pain. This is the madness we confront.

And the winner is . . .

Bush is arguing that Israel defeated Hezbollah. But that's not what his former supporters think. Glenn Greenwald finds these quotes:

National Review Editors- In addition to winning in Lebanon, Iran has the upper hand both in Iraq and in the contest over whether it will be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. If current trends continue, the Bush administration’s project in the Middle East will require the same sort of expedient we have just seen in the Israel–Lebanon conflict: a papering over of what is essentially a failure.
Dan Riehl So, it turns out the lofty anti-terrorism rhetoric of Bush was little more than what some speech writer wrote to be read from a screen. . . . This will embolden the opposition in Iraq and could lead ultimately to the destruction of Israel. Our war President has turned out to be a disgrace.
Paul Mirgenoff, Powerline Blog Over at NRO's corner, John Podhoretz contends that this would mean the end of the Olmert government. I'm tempted to suggest that our government, having seemingly lost its will to oppose (or even to let others oppose) our deadliest enemies, deserves the same fate.
Michelle Malkin Israel and the West surrender to Hizballah.Terrorists and the U.N. win.
Peter Brookes, Senior Fellow, Heritage Foundation, NRO Symposium If there is a clear winner in this war, it’s Iran.
Soshana Bryen, NRO Symposium Thus far, the U.S. and Israel lose; Iran wins.
Anne Bayefsky, NRO Symposium Kofi Annan’s wide grin, as he stood side-by-side with Secretary Rice on Friday, said it all. He won. But America and freedom’s cause lost.
Jeff Goldstein Israel and the US have been defeated. Hizballah will grow emboldened. As will Iran.
Pamela "Atlas" Oshry, interviewer to John Bolton Bush Administration Betrays Israel and America
Daily Pundit [in a post recommended by Instapundit] . . . Bush's proud words of five years ago stand revealed as hollow and meaningless. What happened? What happened was one of the biggest failures of leadership in Presidential history. Bush supporters will claim that Bush was done in by a liberal media and the ferocious hatred of liberals and leftwingers, but that is one of the things true leadership is all about: Managing and overcoming opposition in order to achieve the necessary goals - in this case, the destruction of world Islamist terrorism and the regimes that support it.Bush turned out to be singularly ill-equipped for this task, both by skill and by temperament. His public relations management was curiously hesitant and badly timed, and, of course, his inabilty to speak effectively in public was a gigantic handicap. His temperament, it eventually became clear, was hesitant, overly calculating, timid, and "compassionate." Compassion has its place, but not in warfighting. The Bush we know would not have pulled the trigger on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He abdicated the hard decisions in favor of political maneuvering and meaningless gestures.

Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer both said this weekend on Fox that Hezbollah won and Iran has been strengthened.

Ouch! With friends like these...
Of course, these wingnuts want to see some warmonger like Cheney elected in 2008 -- someone who will gleefully "pull the trigger" on nuclear warfare just to kill a few hundred or thousand Arab teenagers and religious zealots who the American wingnuts have inflated into some kind of worse-than-the-Nazis-and-the-Cold-War- all-together threat to the very foundations of our civilization and to life as we know it, etc etc.
Actually, when I read these quotes, I was somewhat relieved that maybe, just maybe, Bush is NOT going to plunge the West into war with Iran. But likely I am living in a fool's paradise -- Seymour Hersch says the whole Israel-Hezbollah war was a dry run for a coming US-Iran war. Ths Israeli loss may delay this, but only if the Bush administration agrees that Israel actually did lose:

". . . the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it,” the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney’s office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that [other Arab] nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war . . . some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.”

And thus we come full circle, back to my first reference to Bush believing that Israel won.
So when will the rest of the world step up and declare that the US/British plan to attack Iran is both criminal and insane?

"Criminal" rates of interest

Considering the profits being made by Canadian banks, they should be helping out in our low-income neighbourhoods instead of just abandoning poor Canadians to companies like this:

A B.C. Supreme Court judge says a B.C. payday loan company was charging 'criminal' rates of interest to clients borrowing to make it through to their next paycheque . . . 21 per cent interest rate and a processing fee of $9.50 for every $50 borrowed . . . $75 fee if a cheque is returned and if the borrower wants put off a loan payment, [a fee of] $25 for every $100 deferred.

I'm not surprised that the judge said this was criminal. I know companies are not in business for their health, but this is abuse, because these customers don't have any other options.