April 21st, 2007
You are currently browsing the articles from Jay Currie written on April 21st, 2007.
Go read Melanie Phillips.
Dave Gaubatz, however, says that you could not be more wrong. Saddam’s WMD did exist. He should know, because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don’t know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war. the spectator
I’ve never had the slightest doubt that Saddam had WMDs of at least the chemical variety. And, I suspect, they are sitting in Syria or Iran or both at the moment.
Mind you, taking down Saddam was a good thing even without the WMDs; but the worry here is that two states which are certainly dangerous to the rest of the world may well have benefited from the Bush admin’s incompetence. And, yes, it looks a bit like the CIA was covering up - so what? The Administration controls, or should control, the CIA and it is increasingly clear that it didn’t and doesn’t.
Written by jay on April 21st, 2007 with 5 comments.
Read more articles on International and Terror.
I’ve been commenting around on Canadian blogs on the assorted commentaries about the slaughter at Virgina Tech.
A few general points:
- deadbolts - good deadbolts would have saved dozens of lives
- metal doors - a locked metal door keeps the people behind it safe
- escape methods - a roll up rope ladder would have saved lives. Hell, a decent piece of rope tied to a radiator would have saved lives.
- training - every person who is attending a school of any sort (and who is in a likely to be targeted building of any sort) should receive a basic training as to what to do if they hear gun fire. Lock the door, pile up the furniture figure out how to get out of the area.
- advanced training - basic take down strategies. Three guys beside the door to jump the attacker with the rest of the class piling on.
My point being that there is no reason that 32 innocent people needed to die. But, and here is the hard thing, preparation requires that we actually acknowledge the possibility of evil and train ourselves and our children to deal with it. That, I’m afraid, contradicts the happy chat view of the world which our universities and, indeed, our governments seem intent on propagating.
Written by jay on April 21st, 2007 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and Education and Terror and culture and media.
Blogging has also been a boon to democratic participation as one can participate in formative policy based debate with other citizens as frequently or an infrequently as they wish. Democratically, a citizen is not simply reduced to a voter anymore. steve taylor via gen-x at 40
Steve writes well and reflectively on the question of whether of not being a blogger means you are a journalist. And he notes that the fact of blogging in itself is only the beginning of the answer to that question.
A blog is nothing more than a publishing platform and, as such, does not confer any particular status on the person publishing. On the other hand, if a person behaves like a journalist - that is reports news, looks for facts, interviews news makers - I don’t think there is any question that blogger is a journalist regardless of what the Parliamentary Press Gallery may think.
More interesting, I think, is Steve’s observation that the capacity to publish has the effect of elevating a person from mere voter. And that is what is revolutionary and rather intimidating about blogging.
A great deal of the political life of Canada (and most Western democracies for that matter) has taken as granted that the “voters” are to be consulted every few years for what amount to a confidence vote. Substantive positions are reduced to talking points in a truncated spate of political campaigning which is reported by the media as a cross between a horse race and a prize fight.
Bloggers can and will do better. The only problem is reach. A paper as awful as the Toronto Star gives platforms to assorted hacks and idiots from which they reach literally millions of readers. Blogging isn’t there yet and is not likely to get there in its present configuration.
However, what it is doing is holding MSM feet to the fire with stories like Kate’s today on how the CBC clearly photoshopped a picture illustrating a Kyoto story.
This sort of reporting is not going to change the inherent dishonesty of much of the Canadian MSM; but it does put them on notice that they no longer operate with impunity.
That’s a start.
Written by jay on April 21st, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and blogging and media.