June 2007
Monthly Archive
June 22, 2007
NATO’s Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is urging Canada to “stay the course” in Afghanistan after the mandate of “the mission” expires in 2009.
In Montreal to attend an international conference, Scheffer said, “I know how dramatic it is if Canadian soldiers pay the highest price,” Scheffer said. “But I still say, you are there for a good cause … You are there to defend basic universal values.”
Fortunately no one called upon the Secretary-General to explain just whose “universal values” we are defending and what the Afghan people and their leadership think of those values. If we’ve learned anything surely it’s that Afghan values and Western values don’t always have a lot of universality.
Scheffer said it’s important that all 26-members of the coalition carry on their missions. Carrying on and staying the course probably sounds pretty good to this guy because it avoids the fundamental issue of why some nations, such as Canada, are carrying far more than their fair share of the burden.
June 22, 2007
In November, 1997, a gang of kids murdered 14-year old Reena Virk. They swarmed here and beat her up. Then two of the gang followed her, beat her again and drowned her in the Gorge in Victoria, B.C. It was a truly horrific, vicious murder.
Today the boy convicted of the murder, Warren Glowatski, was given day parole. Nothing particularly unusual about that except that, on hand to support him was Reena’s mother, Suman Virk.
Following Glowatski’s sentencing, the Virks made it clear they had no interest in vengeance and were saddened that, atop their daughter’s death, these young people had ruined their own lives.
The Virks have kept an eye on Glowatski while he was imprisoned and they formed a profoundly compassionate opinion of the young man. That led them to attend Glowatski’s parole hearing last Thursday to lend their support.
“He was an angry, scared little kid, who was trying to prove something in a negative way,” Suman Virk told the media after the hearing.
“Today I think we see a young man who has taken responsibility for his actions and is trying to amend the wrong that he did.”
Utterly remarkable people.
June 22, 2007
Now that Abbas and Fatah have been forceably driven out of Gaza, Hamas is wasting no time in putting Fatah’s execution and torture apparatus on display.
The current spin we’re getting from the US, Israel and others, including Canada, has Fatah as the West’s best friend, the good guys, and Hamas just a bunch of murderous Islamist thugs. Don’t eat that stuff Charlie, that’s horse shit.
Not only was Fatah corrupt but it ruled by murder, torture and terror. Der Spiegel’s Ulrike Putz took a tour through the recently abandoned Fatah installations:
“The cells are small, perhaps six feet by six feet, with only an overhead lamp to provide light. The toilet is a hole in the floor behind a small wall. The prisoners have scribbled graffiti on the walls, including slogans like “Al-Qaida in Jerusalem” and “Islamic Jihad.” One inmate even scratched the phrase “Mother, oh my mother” into the plaster.
“The headquarters of the Fatah-controlled security force in Gaza have been open to the public since last Thursday. Every day is open house now.
“For years the complex was a symbol of the horror disseminated by the security forces that reported directly to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This is where Hamas men were taken after Fatah had arrested them. Some of those lucky enough to be eventually released reported that they had been tortured. Others disappeared forever.
“Human rights organizations like Amnesty International have long voiced criticism of systematic human rights violations in the security force’s prisons, both in Gaza and the West Bank. In this respect, the fact that Hamas captured the Fatah headquarters in Gaza last week was more than just strategically significant — it was also a highly symbolic act.
“‘This building is a symbol of injustice in stone,’ says Abu Mohammed, an officer in Hamas’s militant al-Qassam Brigades, who led the attack on the complex. He and his unit have occupied the compound since the building was captured, and Abu Mohammed is using the gatehouse as his office. ‘We came because we wanted to see the place where our brothers were killed,’ he says.”
June 22, 2007
ABC News has obtained a satellite picture that it claims reveals Pakistan is nearing completion of a previously unknown, third plutonium production reactor.
The highly unstable Musharraf government is believed to already possess some 60-nuclear warheads. The new reactor, and an earlier one also nearly complete, are believed to allow Pakistan to build another 10-warheads per year. It is also believed that with larger stocks of plutonium, Pakistan will be able to design smaller, lighter and more powerful warheads better suited to its lovely line of short and medium-range missiles.
Pakistan is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and so is not subject to inspections. The US, by contrast, is a signatory to that treaty but governs itself as though it wasn’t.
June 22, 2007
Oh, I forgot. Quasimodo was a good guy, sort of. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, seems to think he too lives in some sort of bell tower, high above the American constitution.
Cheney is now claiming that the Vice-President of the United States is not part of the executive branch and therefore is exempt from a presidential directive governing the protection of classified information by government agencies. Let’s see, he’s not part of the judiciary, he’s no judge although he’s quick to judge. And he’s not part of the legislative branch, no one elected him to congress. So, if he’s not part of the third branch – why he’s a big, greasy hunk of nothing!
There really is no end to this Dick.
June 21, 2007
Peter Brookes, The Times of London
June 21, 2007
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the BBC today that the Taliban, “…is not a threat to the survival of Afghanistan, its government, its future objective.” This assessment flies straight in the face of the continual claims of NATO and mission-friendly supporters such as our very own Stephen Harper.
Mr Karzai also said international forces in the country should do more to prevent the killings of civilians. As for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Karzai said they don’t “have the guts” to seriously threaten the Kabul government.
June 21, 2007
Have you ever heard a number as bizarre as “one million, five hundred thousand per cent”?
That’s the estimate of the coming inflation facing the people of Zimbabwe says US ambassador Chris Dell.
Dell told The Guardian, “Prices are going up twice a day, in some cases doubling several times a week,” said Mr Dell, who is approaching the end of his posting to Zimbabwe. “It destabilises everything. People have completely lost faith in the currency and that means they have lost faith in the government that issues it.
“By carrying out disastrous economic policies, the Mugabe government is committing regime change upon itself,” he said. “Things have reached a critical point. I believe the excitement will come in a matter of months, if not weeks. The Mugabe government is reaching end game, it is running out of options.”
I expect when Mugabe goes out, it’ll be much like the end of Mussolini, with the tyrant hanging by his heels in some public square. It’s hard to imagine him getting out of this alive.
June 21, 2007
Guess who’s planning on taking another bite out of the Democratic vote in the 2008 election? It’s Ralph Nader, the “independent” without whom Al Gore would have defeated George Bush in 2000.
Nader, who took 2.7% of the vote overall, captured 97-thousand votes in Florida, the cornerstone state that Gore lost by only 537 votes, using George Bush’s math and the Supreme Court’s alchemy.
But for Nader Kyoto would have stood a vastly better chance of success, the Middle East would not be in flames and America would still have the respect of the world.
In an interview with the newspaper Politico, Nader said, “The two parties are still converging. I really think there needs to be more competition from outside. Democrats have become, over the years, very good at electing very bad Republicans. Democrats always know how to implode, how to waver, how to not be authentic.”
Nader took a broad swipe at Hillary Clinton. “She is a political coward,” Mr Nader said. “She goes around pandering to powerful interest groups on the one hand and flattering general audiences on the other. She doesn’t even have the minimal political fortitude of her husband.”
Ralph Nader – building a Republican dynasty, one stolen election at a time.
June 21, 2007
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