International
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Even senior officials at the agency, who have gone out of their way to accommodate the Iranians’ concerns, have little confidence that the Iranians have any intention of reaching a compromise. “All they seem interested in is extending the talks as long as possible while all the time they continue with their uranium enrichment programme,” said an official close to the talks. “Their entire strategy appears to be based on playing for time.” telegraph
Not even the UN is able to kid itself much longer that Iran is going for a bomb, Or at least the materials to make a bomb.
George Bush has five months, more or less, in office. At the moment his place in the history books, fairly or unfairly, stinks.Which means that he has very little to lose pushing over the rotten edifice which calls itself the government of Iran. Not do the Israelis have much to lose trying to take out a capacity which could eliminate Israel.
Yes, the Euros will whine and, no doubt, Lloyd Axworthy will let out a howl. But there is no reason at all for Bush to leave the Iranian problem his succesor,
Written by jay on July 25th, 2008 with no comments.
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Pour yourself the late Sunday night coffee or glass of wine, get comfortable, and go and read Jonathan Chait’s brilliant deconstruction of one of the left’s saddest cases: Canada’s own Naomi Klein.
But Klein was intellectually unfazed. Rather than re-think the economicist premises of her recent radicalism, she set out to synthesize her old worldview with the post-9/11 world. “I felt it emotionally,” she told The New York Times, “before I understood it factually.” Doggedly connecting the dots, she discovered that the Iraq war was–guess what?–part of the same economic tissue that connected Nike and the World Trade Organization. Klein is nothing if not a totalistic thinker. Everything always adds up, and darkly. the new republic
What has always struck me about Ms. Klein is that her world view admits no possibility of doubt, much less error. She knows the truth and sets out to find the facts that back her up. Chait, a rather more nuanced thinker, finds more than a few facts which shoot her down. Not that it matters: to the sort of people who read Klein, “truthiness” is more important than actual fact. And much more interesting.
Written by jay on July 20th, 2008 with 5 comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and International and culture and economics and idiot lefties.
Dr. Dawg is more than a little exercised at the rise of what he sees as a resurgent fascism in Italy. And he means old skool fascism as opposed to the simple trope much enjoyed by the left of calling anyone who disagrees with them “fascist”. He has a point and one which he and his lefty pals (not to mention Liberals) should be taking to heart.
Italians had decades of Center-Right and Center-Left governments. None were very effectual but, then again, there were no existential issues facing Italy. Business got along just fine in a culture of officially winked at corruption and tax evasion. Politics, to a large degree, consisted of doling out public jobs and funds. That began to change in the 1990s when illegal immigrants and rather phony “refugees” began to arrive in Italy to supplement growing communities of other, documented, immigrants. Dawg cites the issues surrounding the Roma in a number of Italian cities, but Muslim migrants have also piled in.
Like most European countries Italy took a relatively liberal line with these new migrants extending welfare, social services, education and medical services. So long as the immigrant communities were relatively small Italians seemed able to adjust. However, as the immigration continued and as Italian birthrates declined, the non-elite mass of Italians began to seriously question the value of that immigration.
What Dawg sees as fascism - and there are certainly more than a few reasons to describe it that way - is also what I would describe as a cultural nationalism. And it is a cultural nationalism which I suspect will become increasingly prevalent in European countries with relatively large Muslim communities.
One of the great conceits of the left and center-left post-war politicians is that culture does not matter and that we are moving towards a multi-cultural, post national, world. The implication of this belief is that the very idea of “Italianness” is little more than a historical relic which will, with in the embrace of the EU, gradually become a quaint folk custom. Which might well have happened had the EU kept its borders shut to non-European immigration. But, of course, the EU positively encouraged Muslim immigration and the bien-pensant are now reaping the whirlwind.
Now, for the political elites, the essential differences between Western/Christian culture and Eastern/Islamic culture were matters to be ignored or studied or accommodated. Those elites rarely had much to do with the day to day reality of the cultural conflicts which arose. However those conflicts were and are real despite the arm waving and denial of the political elites.
Democratic politics has a generally conservative tendency - most politics takes place without there being much chance for actual change because the elite practitioners of such politics generally agree on all but the most trivial points. To a degree, this elite agreement is one of the main reasons why voter turnout has precipitously declined throughout the West in the last few decades.
However, at a certain point, the politics of elite accommodation effectively collapse in the face of focussed public anger. This can happen very quickly - as it has in Italy - and reflects a sea change in an electorate. Elite politicians ride along happy in the belief that their position, secured by effective media collusion, is secure. After all, when was the last time the voters in a democratic nation voted for real change?
The answer to that question is another question: When was the last time that voters in a democratic nation were confronted with an existential challenge to their culture? Mass, non-assimilated, immigration is just such a challenge and the voters of Italy met it by tossing the old coalition politicians out of office and replacing them with politicians who promised to address the real concerns of ordinary Italians.
I would not be at all surprised to see more of this happen in Europe. And in Canada too if dimwits like Dion really think they can do Green Rape with impunity.
Written by jay on July 13th, 2008 with 29 comments.
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LOL or, for targeting purposes, this.
Written by jay on July 12th, 2008 with no comments.
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France has denied citizenship to a veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that her “radical” practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes, a legal ruling showed on Friday.
The case will reignite debate about how to reconcile freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the French constitution, and other fundamental rights, which many in France feel are being challenged by the way of life of some Muslims.
Le Monde newspaper said it was the first time a Muslim applicant had been rejected for reasons to do with personal religious practice.
“She has adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes,” said a ruling by the Council of State handed down last month and sent to Reuters on Friday to confirm a report in Le Monde. reuters via Kathy
While there is much to be said for tolerance and reasonable accomodation, there is also a great deal to be said for essential principles. Basically the woman in question was kept in close confinement and had nothing to do with France and knew nothing of France. Not unreasonably she was denied French citizenship.
Now the language of the decision suggests that the woman “adopted a radical practice of her religion”. Did she? Or was this forced upon her by her husband and male relatives force this practice upon her with the full approval of their particular segment of the Muslim community?
The poor woman was ignorant of the essential principles upon which France is governed; but that is unlikely to have been her fault. Rather it is more likely to have been the fault of the males in her life who, to a degree, would have been aware of those principles and chose to directly reject them.
If anyone is at fault it is the anti-assimilationist males who kept this woman isolated. If anyone should get the boot it is the people who created the environment where this poor woman was denied the basic human dignity - or even the knowledge of such dignity.
It might well be a good idea to kick the husband and male relatives as well as the other husbands and male relatives and any religious leaders involved right back to Morocco where they would not have to deal with the interfering French state.
The poor women might be better off being allowed to stay in France in a shelter where she can be deprogrammed from the beliefs of this nasty cult.
Written by jay on July 11th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens, more or less on a dare from Editor Graydon Carter, agreed to be waterboarded. You can watch the video here and read Hitchens’ account here.
Hitchens’ second go, which is what I think the video is of, lasts, perhaps 15 seconds and half a cup of water. No question, the Hitchens gag reflex and fear of drowning leave him wide open to the fear which waterboarding creates.
And, equally no question, this is a horribly effective means of scaring the living daylights out of someone.
Which is, of course, the point.
Hitchens’ conclusion is that this is torture and that “I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.” And, of course, he’s right. We all wish that waterboarding, leave aside the nastier, leaves marks - visible and invisible - end of of torture, need never be associated with our names. But have we that luxury?
At the moment I think we do which is why Graydon Carter was happy to dare Hitch to go mano mano with a damp towel. It is a luxury hard won by 4000 dead in Iraq, dead Canadians in Afghanistan, a series of successes against a strategically inept al Qaeda, the beclowing of radical Islam and, frankly, a great deal of very good luck.
Will that luck hold; Lord I hope so.
But here, via Andrew Sullivan, is the case for the other side:
But at yesterday’s Aspen panel on nuclear non-proliferation, the general consensus was that there’s a reasonably high likelihood that a nuclear device will be detonated in an American city, New York or Washington most likely, at some point in the next ten years. And the experts on the panel, John Holdren and Joe Cirincione among them, are not exactly attached to the Bush Administration worldview. After such an attack, we’ll look back — those of us still around, obviously — on our efforts to combat al Qaeda and judge them inadequate to the task, just as we look back now on the Clinton Administration’s pre-9/11 preparations (and the Bush Administration’s, as well) as thoroughly inadequate. So I suppose I’m convinced of two things simultaneously: Al Qaeda is fairly weak, and not very popular at all, and that this might not matter as much as people think. jeffrey goldberg, the atlantic
Written by jay on July 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
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In Johannesburg, Robert Mugabe was given a rousing welcome by Africans from across the continent. As he addressed the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, we ululated and sang his praises, and after his brief speech we gave him a standing ovation. He spoke of the wonderful work he had achieved in Zimbabwe with his “agrarian reforms” in a country where 70% of prime land had been owned by just 4,000 white farmers
Here was an African leader who was prepared to redress the injustices of the past by giving land back to its rightful indigenous owners. Here was a government doing what our own was afraid to: dealing with the problems of inequitable distribution through one short, swift surgical action. Here was a black man giving the former colonial masters the finger. We went into frenzied applause when he thundered: “So, Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe!”
It did not matter to us that the process was not done in a way that respected the rule of law, or that the so-called agrarian reforms were an election ploy to win votes from a peasantry that had been marginalised since 1980. the guardian!!
Long past time for on the ground adult supervision I’d say: the murderous bastard and his cronies will be re-elected today. Nice to see that the Guardian has noticed that not all African politicians are saints.
Written by jay on June 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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watch the oil tankers bobbing about the Gulf. A popular flutter among the gambling rich recently has been to hire a tanker, fill it with oil (it will hold two million barrels) and park it in front of a refinery. Watch the price; if you lose your nerve, you can quickly dock and sell your cargo; but a $1 rise means you’ve netted $1.5 million. During the 1979–80 oil shock, 30 tankers were famously moored off Manhattan. Their owners spied on each other for any sign of movement until market spirits fell abruptly, and all 30 simultaneously raced to dock. the spectator
Tony Curzon Price writes a bit about oil prices and how the high price of oil is likely due to speculation. He takes The Economist to task on the basis that the “free market” is not working.
Mr. Price seems to be incapable of understanding the critical role speculators play in discovering price. He quotes George Soros “Oil prices are high because of a series of self-feeding beliefs, which, as George Soros says, are ‘intellectually unsound, potentially destabilising and distinctly harmful’. Soros has it about right and I have to bet he is short in the oil market.
Markets correct, often violently. The oil market is no different. Sometime in the next few days, weeks or months, the tankers will rush to port. When they do the price will fall and the shorts will make perhaps the biggest killing ever seen on the planet. And what they are being paid for is providing the needed correction to a market in which real supply and real demand are in rough balance but there is a perceived gap. That is the value of the short seller in any market.
Written by jay on June 22nd, 2008 with no comments.
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“We can’t ask the people to cast their vote on June 27 when that vote will cost their lives. We will no longer participate in this violent sham of an election,” Tsvangirai said.
He addressed a news conference in Zimbabwe’s capital after thousands of militants loyal to Mugabe prevented opposition supporters from gathering for its main campaign rally. the star
Tsvangirai made the right call. Unfortunately he may have made it too late.
Peter Osborne makes the case for our (meaning the West’s) duty to protect; but given the WEst’s capitulation an Darfur there is no reason at all to suppose we are likely willing to go in and prevent the creeping genocide which is Robert Mugabe and the thugs who surround him.
After all, to march a brigade or two of well equiped Western soldiers into a failed state in Africa would look a bit too much like neo-colonialism (or adult supervision which is even more insulting). Best to leave the Africans to sort it out in their own, culturally approved of, manner with Chinese supplied AK47s and the delights of the machete.
Heaven forbid that we trample on the soverign rights of nations and the inherent right of elderly black potentates to preside over the slaughter or starvation of their political opponents.
The UN, the bien pensant and the lefty internationalists cling to the Treaty of Westphailia and solemnly intone that “We Must Always Forget the Lessons of Rwanda.
And so we shall.
Written by jay on June 22nd, 2008 with no comments.
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The wife of a Zimbabwean opposition party member has been brutally murdered in what is being labelled as one the most grotesque atrocities yet committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime.
Dadirai Chipiro, wife of Patson Chipiro who heads the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district, had a hand cut off as well as both of her feet before a petrol bomb was thrown through her window. daily mail
There are some of us who still remember Rwanda and the fact that African and Western governments stood by as the tribal tensions escalated to genocide have to ask what, if anything, we are prepared to do to stop Mugabe’s thugs.
In point of fact, in our post colonial cringe, the answer is not much. After all, interfering in the “internal affairs” of even the most disastrously failed state (viz. Burma) would be, at best, paternalistic, at worst imperialistic. So, rather than breach the core tenets of politically correct post colonial inaction we are likely to sit on the sidelines and let the tribalists have at it.
Post colonial thinkers will, no doubt, think this racist, but a bit of adult supervision might go some distance to preventing the acceleration of a political genocide in Zimbabwe.
Written by jay on June 13th, 2008 with 2 comments.
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