Long Live the Newspaper of Record

I will be reading the New York Times even more now. They have finally gone back to acting like a great paper should. I hope more newspapers take their lead. I actually believe in the freedoms established and codified by the founding fathers of this country, and luckily, now once again, so does the New York Times.

Think of an elephant.... and human rights

Been at the local again, and in amongst an article about Guantanamo, there was one small paragraph stating that the US were going to abolish the rule forbidding torture by the army. Stunned I read on. Not only will they abolish this rule, but they also want to remove all references to the Geneva Convention and human rights from the army and national security chartas. Okay, so I checked the internet and found nothing else on that matter, which makes me wonder whether the correspondent was 1. wrongly informed or 2. the story was kept under wraps elsewhere, it has happened before. Thought nothing more, just that if it were true, there would be a public outcry.If anyone knows anything....

Then yesterday good old Tony (Blair or Bliar) was saying on the news that in future prisoners and suspects human rights will be curtailed as the human rights of ordinary citizens needed to be protected. To quote Tony "placing a far higher priority, on what is a conflict of rights, on the rights of those who keep the law rather than break it". Nothing happened. Checked the net and found out that the poodle has been trying to chip away at human rights for a long time, using the war on terror as an excuse and taking the power to override court decisions (he's just like his mentor really). You think a lawyer would stand up for his clients rights, but not Tony. Habeaus corpus be damned. Remind me again how people ended up in concentration camps in Germany in WW II. Oh yes, they were deemed to have not quite the same human rights as the average German, by virtue of their colour, beliefs, origin and sexual orientation. Anyone spot a slippery slope somewhere?

The best bit is that last year he was attacked by the press for his measures, but this year he must have got a spin doctor in, or read the book about the elephant, for now its not about taking away rights from some, but about protecting the rights of others. Works out the same, but sounds better in the media and will find the mass support needed to quell trhe voices of dissent. Same idea really as calling tax cuts for the rich tax relief. Sounds better and everyone will go for relief.

Update 29.6.2006
A most excellent articlein the Independent today. The situation in the UK is even worse then I thought. Feel free to read it, just mind you don't get arrested.

Bush visits the outer territories

Any pretense of Iraq being a sovereign nation with an elected government in charge that the US military is simply assisting to maintain security was lost yesterday when the country's Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was not informed of a state visit until minutes before he was to meet the US President...right there in Baghdad in what is supposed to be Maliki's own country. It sends the obvious message that security is so precarious there that the country's supposedly legitimate and America-friendly Government is not permitted to know who is coming or going. It could also mean that the Administration doesn't trust the Iraqi Government a whole hell of a lot. So let's all just stop pretending that Iraq is anything more than a protectorate of the US military that is currently experiencing the beginnings of a civil war. Anything else is just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking at best and propaganda at worst. I wonder which country is going to burden the US taxpayer next by having itself overrun and turned into a war zone? And I wonder how many more of my tax dollars are going to go to enriching slick contractors out there making money off of all the misery? So many questions.

Shame on us.

I recently read an article asking where the young protesters were when it was time to rally against the Iraq war, the impending Iran war, the corruption, etc. It asked whether our youth had become so disillusioned and apathetic, seeking only to secure their own future, that they dared not stand up and voice their opinions. I though back to the 2003 anti war rallies, and remembered that here it was mostly fourty somethings who attended, with a smattering of younger people. The latest protest in France on the other hand, with students barricading the university, was about legislation which would impact on their employment. They did not barricade the universities or Paris in 2003 to voice their opinion, but only when it concerned their livelihoods.

Pink ( a singer for those who do not know), is the only one I know that has produced a nicely vitriolic song expressing her opinions, but I'ld be glad to hear of any other songs from a popular singer which get to the point. Nonetheless what happens? A US schoolgirl gets told she cannot perform the song at a talent show. Which makes me wonder how many people know about it. And where are the other songwriters, where is a rewrite of Hair? Even if you look at Hollywood, the main opponents to the war are the older generation Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, and some members of the Sheen family.

So I come to conclude that the writer was correct. Our children no longer really care about anyone else but themselves, their careers and their livelihoods. Yes, they may donate to Greenpeace and Amnesty when asked, but they would not put themselves out to help anyone else. They will not stand up and be counted, but would rather hide in the shadows. Which also explains the growing brutality and thoughtlessness in this world, from "Happy slapping" to fallen old people being ignored in the road. Which explains why people are surpised when you help them, it's just not normal anymore. What an indictment of our education, both at home and in school, and the example we as parents have given them.



Dear Mr. President
Come take a walk with me
Let's pretend we're just two people and
You're not better than me
I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly
What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep
What do you feel when you look in the mirror
Are you proud?
How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why
Dear Mr. President
Were you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
How can you say
No child is left behind
We're not dumb and we're not blind
They're all sitting in your cells
While you pave the road to hell
What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine
How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held
Can you even look me in the eye
Let me tell you bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you bout hard
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you bout hard work
Hard workHard work
You don't know nothing bout hard work
Hard workHard workOh
How do you sleep at
How do you walk with your head held high
Dear Mr. President
You'ld never take a walk with me
Would you


Pink Live

Death of a Bastard

Zarqawi the psychopath/SOB/bastard/opportunist has been killed. I'm sure no one will miss him, probably not even the screw-ups that have been following him. He took advantage of a war zone to get away with serial murders and to attempt to make himself into some kind of bad-assed legend. Unfortunately the governments and the Press of most western countries played along with this and built him up to be as big and bad as possible. Much like other serial killers, he probably got off on all the coverage and all the loathing.

However, a couple of months ago, both The Washington Post and The New York Times ran articles describing how the Pentagon had played up the threat of Zarqawi and co. for what they called the domestic audience. I posted about it here on World View (see "Propagandized" from April 10, 2006). Perhaps the Pentagon's rationale had been that making it look like there was this one bad guy behind everything horrible that's going on in Iraq was a useful vehicle for support for the war. And to their credit, it worked. However, after both papers of note exposed the, shall we say, dramatization of the Zarqawi phenom, perhaps he outlived his usefulness as a big bad wolf.

And now, the world is minus one psychotic f***-up. That's fine, but it won't change anything in Iraq. Every US General that has been quoted on the question of the make-up of the insurgency has admitted that it is mostly made up of Iraqis who see themselves as resisting an occupation. To be fair to the Generals, they also said that attacks by foreign fighters were more brutal and more deadly than those by locals, which made sense when you thought it through. However, if you look at the news over the last month, it looks like general brutality all around has taken over. This is a country in meltdown.

I see no other viable option for the Coalition than to start figuring out how to make three countries out of Iraq.

Billy Preston R.I.P.

Billy Preston: 1946-2006

Are they that stupid?

The Canadian police and security forces recently arrested 17 young men, city dwellers, educated, mostly of Arab descent, who had ordered and either received or were about to receive three tons of the very same fertilizer-based, explosive material that Tim McVeigh had used in Oklahoma City. This news is both frightening and relieving. Frightening in that the alleged conspiracy got as far as it did, but relieving because they were found out and stopped. There's just one more thing though, looking away from the matter of fanaticism and radicalism for a moment, how could anyone that is obviously not a farmer be so stupid as to order three tons of a material that was a well known explosive? And how could a fairly large group of people from an ethnic group that is obviously being targeted by surveillance be dumb enough to think that they could pull this off? Not to be alarmist, but isn't it possible that these guys were trying to get caught? And if so, why would they do that? In order to be decoys? In order to test how quickly they were going to be found out? In order to fail and thus not have to die for a cause that they may have started to doubt? Maybe even in order to fail and not be vulnerable to reprisals from their former handlers? It seems as if there are many possibilities there, and I hope that people who know their stuff in this regard will look at it from those angles as well. Because it just seems a bit implausible that there is nothing more to this story than what we have heard so far.