While reading Al Jazeera, I came across this article, which details Robin Cook's call for Britain to pull out of Iraq. Because some people refuse to believe Al Jazeerah, despite it being a news aggregator and thus no more or less trustworthy in any instance than the source it cites, I note that Cook's call for Britain to pull out has been reported in various other news outlets.
Cook's demand that Britain bring the boys home is not what I find interesting, though. What I find interesting is that of the 23 British soldiers killed in the conflict so far, 14 have died in helicopter accidents, four in combat, and five as a result of "friendly fire." In other words, American and British forces have shot more British soldiers than Iraqis.
Maybe Cook is right. Britain should turn its soldiers around-- not to bring them home, but to make sure they're shooting in the right direction.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
The website of Playa Del Fuego, a group that organizes Burning Man-style events on the east coast, has been replaced by an ominous message.
By application of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the website you are attempting to visit has been restrained by the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania pursuant to Title 21, United States Code, Section 853(e)(1)(A).
Under 21 USC 853, the federal government can seize assets (including domain names) with relatively little process for violations of drug control laws. Section e of that law allows seizure of assets without conviction to protect the seized property, and in many cases, no charges will ever be brought and the property will never be returned. Courts have approved these seizures, including, I believe, the Supreme Court.
The DEA has recently been using this law to seize domains that are used to sell drug paraphernalia. John Ashcroft introduced the initiative, Operation Pipe Dreams, with some fanfare. This has been covered by ZDNet, the NYTimes, and Cannabis Culture did a somewhat funny piece called Bong Shops Under Attack! There has been talk that the DEA is even operating some of these online stores in order to collect evidence against large-scale buyers, but that might just be rumor and conjecture.
The PDF site seizure is a joke (of course it is-- WHOIS still shows the old nameservers), but who cares? Asset seizure happen every day, and they are real, and you should be outraged as much as if it happened to PDF. The DEA has cast its net fairly wide in seizing sites: 2600 also had some domains seized. The point is for you to laugh at the joke and then to understand the nature of the problem and then do something about it.
The problem is this: Asset forfeiture laws are an absurd and unconstitutional method of punishing people without convicting them of any crimes and without giving them any recourse to juries. It's as unamerican as you can get.
You hear that knock on the door? That's the police state come to take you away in the middle of the night. If you don't hear that knock on the door, it's because they're not knocking. They're just busting right in.
If this kind of government censorship offends you, donate to the EFF, which is the organization fighting for your right to free speech online.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Al Jazeerah (not Al Jazeera), which aggregates mid-east news, reports an Indo-Asian News Service article claiming that "British Soldiers Refuse to Fight" because they don't want to contribute to the civillian casualty count in Iraq.
Two British servicemen have been sent home from the Middle East after refusing to fight in the war against Iraq, The Sunday Times reported. They said they would refuse to fight because of the civilian casualties being caused by the US-British attack. They face possible court martial and up to two years in jail for disobeying orders. The two British soldiers are from 16 Air Assault Brigade, a frontline unit, which has been engaged in heavy fighting in southern Iraq. Their lawyer says they were ordered to return to the brigade’s barracks in Colchester, Essex, after raising their objections earlier this month. The cases were confirmed this weekend by Justin Hugheston-Roberts, a solicitor advocate who chairs Forces Law, a nationwide group of 22 law firms that acts for service personnel and their families. “These cases are being handled by a very experienced lawyer,” he said. Gilbert Blades, a Lincoln-based lawyer, said the Ministry of Defense was trying to hush up the cases because it feared a public relations disaster.
And before anybody objects that Al Jazeerah is less than trustworthy (they're a news aggregator, and they're as trustworthy as their sources, as far as I'm concerned), the story has been reported by ABC, Business-Standard.com, Pakistan's Daily Times, and Scotland on Sunday."
My question, is what does this mean? Two British soldiers is not many, even if these guys are facing a couple years in jail. When significant numbers of soldiers start demanding conscientious objector status, that will be news. When officers come home in body bags with bullet holes in their backs, that will be news. This is just statistical variance. We should expect that out of so many tens of thousands of troops, a couple would object in this manner, no matter what the civillian body count.
This is not news. Not yet. But such objections could grow. That would be heartening, to see the armed forces refuse to be party to this ridiculous war. To see the American and British youth exercise their consciences, stand for what they believe in and stop the senseless killing. We will all pay the price of this war, but if those we ask to pay the ultimate price refuse to do so, there would be no war.
Update: A reader has accused me of advocating that soldiers shoot officers in the back in protest. Perhaps I should be clearer: I would be heartened to see conscientious objectors. I would be disgusted to see body bags of any kind. Refusing to fight is one thing. Fighting against Americans to avoid fighting for Americans is another.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
What happens if terrorism in America becomes an every-day reality instead of a semiannual atrocity? What happens if suicide bombings make the local news instead of just CNN and Al Jazeera?
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 125 Israelis died from suicide bombings in March 2002. That's 125 people in one month in a tiny country of 6.5 million people. It's not like the Israelis are soft on terrorism, either.
Israeli Defence Forces have applied rigorous security checks, cultivated Arab collaborators and developed impressive intelligence resources to prevent and pre-empt certain suicide attacks. Yet the method has been of limited efficacy...
Preventing determined suicide bombings without completely shutting down society is just an incredibly difficult task, if not an impossible one.
So what happens if that kind of violence comes to America? Whither the peace movement, then? If we think Ashcroft, the Patriot Acts, and wiretapping are over the top now, just wait to see INS no-knocks, torture redefined, and expanded secret courts. As in Israel, we become that which we hate. It's already begun, and there is no end in sight.
Terrorism cannot be overwhelmed with superior technology and force. It must be destroyed at the ideological level. It's too easy for a few extremists to do extreme damage. We must strike at their support networks, which means not just policing the fund raising sources, but also waging war at the level of image and propaganda. We need to convince people that working with America and not against it is the right thing to do. We must convince people that America is not out for Muslim blood.
From a propaganda standpoint, the war in Iraq is a disaster. The only thing that can matter now is to truly rebuild Iraq as a beacon of democratic light and freedom in a middle east plagued by darkest abuse of power.
Link via the Agonist.
Polis | 1 Writebacks | #
Peter Arnett, a reporter of some note for his Pulitzer Prize coverage of the Vietnam war and his last-to-leave Baghdad coverage of Gulf War I, has been fired by NBC and National Geographic for giving an interview to state-run Iraqi TV in which he said, "The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan."
While trying to save his job (or perhaps while trying to appear humble enough to get the next one), Arnett was contrite:
I want to apologize to NBC, MSNBC, National Geographic EXPLORER and the American people for clearly making a misjudgment by giving the interview to Iraqi Television. Clearly by giving that interview I created a firestorm in the United States, and for that I'm truly sorry.
Now, the Washington Post reports that Arnett has been hired by Britain's Daily Mirror. Apparently Arnett's statements aren't considered treason over there.
Arnett's fortunes, so recently dashed and then swiftly restored, are of only mild interest. What is more interesting is that now that Arnett is riding high on the hog, he has left behind any pretensions to humility. "I report the truth of what is happening in Baghdad and will not apologize for it," he said.
Regardless of how you feel about Arnett's statements to Iraqi media (and I actually don't think they were a big deal), this man, a reporter we rely on to relate some semblance of truth about war, is a liar, and not a very good one. That alone should be reason enough to prevent his employment.
Links via Talkleft, the Agonist, and Talkleft.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Mollyblog cites Jerry Lembcke's Spitting Image and claims the stories of Vietnam Vets being spit on by anti-war sympathizers are just myths. But this is wrong. It happened.
A couple months ago, this was hashed out on an email list I participate in when somebody cited Spitting Image. And people immediately leaped to attest to having seen or experienced spitting. One such post is a first-hand report of this behavior: "I have seen it and experienced it on returning in '70. My Dad saw it too coming back in '66." Another writer cites his father's experience: "[Lembcke] didn't talk to my dad. My dad was as honest as they come. If he says he was spit on, by God he was spit on."
And those guys aren't the only ones. Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene's 1989 book, Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned From Vietnam counts scores of first-hand reports of spitting. Scores of vets being spat on is not a widespread problem, and Lembcke does a good job of casting doubt that every incident cited by Greene actually happened. But Greene doesn't claim to have recorded every incident and his claim that numerous vets were spat on stands. Besides, it's always people citing Lembcke who claim there were no incidents. Lembcke himself, though, has admitted, "Indeed, it seems likely to me that it probably did happen to some veteran, some time, some place."
Lembcke's point is not that spitting didn't happened, but that such incidents were infrequent and exaggerated in the story of the Vietnam war. He said, "The spitting image is a myth, however, not because the alleged acts of spitting did not happen, but because of the way the image functions in the society." He goes on to say America focused on the spitting more than the actual events warranted because it helped explain how lack of home front support cost us the war. This is a far cry for claiming that vets were not spat on.
So many people have cited Lembcke's book by now, that we have a new myth, the myth that no vets were spat on. For example, one reporter writes "there's no documentary evidence" of spitting. It has been repeated and reported and cited without the nuance of Lembcke's argument so many times that people now actually claim no spitting ever occurred. Why, some guy even wrote a book that proved it!
It is possible or even probable that vets were spat on less than we collectively remember. It is possible that spitting incidents were exaggerated and dramatized. But they happened, and those (like Slate) who say these incidents have been reduced to the status of urban myth dishonor all the vets that actually experienced it.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Although the Girl and I moved in together last year, we still haven't managed to unpack all our books. And that means we haven't managed to sort all our books. So today, I spent a couple of minutes trying to put the poetry together, the novels together, the non-fiction together, the photography together, etc.
I quickly discovered that we have lots of doubles, including Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. That's not so odd, but we also both own his Shame, his Satanic Verses, and his Ground Beneath Her Feet. Among our doubles are also Sartre's The Plague, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Freud's Leonardo di Vinci, Leaves of Grass, the Brothers Karamazov, and most of Vonnegut. A stoop sale will be held unless anybody reading wants any of these.
I also found a book I once gave her. It's an academic book full of essays on second wave feminism called Daring To Be Bad. It's a great book, but my first thought upon seeing it was "What kind of idiot gives his girlfriend a book about feminism?" An academic book, no less. Stupid acts like this, I'm sure, is why so many of my exes prefer the company of women.
Update: the books are claimed.
In 1953, Iran was a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. The Shah was on the throne. The CIA helped the Shah overthrow the prime minister and seize control of the country.
We did this because the prime minister was a threat to American interests in two key ways. First, he had socialist leanings (and ties to the USSR) and led a movement to nationalize certain foreign-owned businesses. America helped military leaders loyal to the Shah overthrow the prime minister because we figured he wouldn't be such a pinko. Second, one of the sectors he wanted to nationalize was oil. Under his leadership, Iran nationalized all their oil fields (in 1951, I think), which had previously been under British control.
And that, in a nutshell, is America's problem with democracies. Aside from America, democratic movements tend toward nationalist socialism. Given the choice between democratic, nationalist socialism and dictatorial capitalism, America has consistently chosen the latter. It's hard to control democracies, and we felt a need to prevent the spread of statist structures, even when those statist structures were democratically chosen by the people.
So what will the US do to Pakistan when populist democratic movements steeped in Islamic fundamentalism start winning elections? Better answer quick, because it's already happening.
Via Oliver Willis.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Somebody on the Blosxom list asked for a very simple plugin that can just be dropped in to see if his plugin setup is correct. So I tossed together the test plugin.
Just drop it in your plugin directory and load your blog. No need to mess with your flavour files at all. You should see "TESTING...plugin found, loaded and run." above your posts. It might even appear twice. This will let you know that your plugins are being found, loaded, and run by blosxom. If you don't see those words, your setup is not working right.
You can get the test plugin on my flavours, mods and plugins page.
Talkleft has an interesting post that asks what tribunal should try Saddam. Several are listed (U.S. Military Tribunals, Nuremburg-style tribunals, U.N. tribunals, hybrid tribunals, and the International Criminal Court), but one, my favorite, is missed. Whatever Hussein's crimes against the world, surely his crimes against the humanity of the Iraqi citizenry are greater. If the US is truly going to Iraq as a liberator, the proper arbitrator of Hussein's fate is the new government. This is standard fare following a coup, and it gets America off the punishment hook, which the rest of the Arab world would like to stab us with.
In that same post, Talkleft notes one professor's view that because the war is illegal under international law, a trial in any tribunal would be tainted. I disagree. It wasn't legal for America to kidnap Noriega, but we did it and we tried him. No problem. It is the law in America that if we can get the culprit here, it doesn't matter how he got here. We have jurisdiction. I doubt anybody else does it differently. Legally, how you arrest the guy is a completely different issue from whether you can try him once you arrest him.
The truth is that international law isn't as neat and clean as national law. All these people on both sides of the debate saying we should enforce international norms and laws presuppose a legal system that doesn't exist. International law is not as formal as American law. It's a hazy coalesced system of agreements that shift as power shifts. The law is only as good as the power to back it up. It's sort of like law in a primitive area shortly before the rise of civil society.
And this is why all the arguments based on International law on whether we should have invaded Iraq are worthless. To say Iraq violated agreements and therefore we're justified to invade is wrong. Whatever underlies those agreements is our justification, not the agreements themselves. If Iraq is a threat, that threat is our justification to invade. Whether he broke some promises or not is not that important. We should respect our agreements and hold people to their agreements, but the force with which we hold people to agreements should be based on the underlying justifications. For example, we would never invade Canada because we choke on their smog. Likewise, we shouldn't invade Canada just because Canada reneges on an agreement to cut back on smog.
And so it goes with trying Hussein for his crimes. International law is a morass of might makes right, and we should avoid wading into that murky soup. Virtually every successful coup ends with expelling or imprisoning the former ruler (South Africa being the only exception I can think of, and that was regime change by election as much as a coup). Iraq's regime change should be no different. Hussein knows that if he falls from power, there will be a long line of people waiting to separate him from his limbs. There is no need to worry that Iraqis won't Ceausescu Hussein.
So let the good times (and the heads) roll.
Update: Talkleft has another great post linking to articles on the legality of the war. I agree that the war is illegal, but I continue to say that the legality of the war is irrelevant.
Polis | 24 Writebacks | #
Talkleft has an interesting post that asks what tribunal should try Saddam. Several are listed (U.S. Military Tribunals, Nuremburg-style tribunals, U.N. tribunals, hybrid tribunals, and the International Criminal Court), but one, my favorite, is missed. Whatever Hussein's crimes against the world, surely his crimes against the humanity of the Iraqi citizenry are greater. If the US is truly going to Iraq as a liberator, the proper arbitrator of Hussein's fate is the new government. This is standard fare following a coup, and it gets America off the punishment hook, which the rest of the Arab world would like to stab us with.
In that same post, Talkleft notes one professor's view that because the war is illegal under international law, a trial in any tribunal would be tainted. I disagree. It wasn't legal for America to kidnap Noriega, but we did it and we tried him. No problem. It is the law in America that if we can get the culprit here, it doesn't matter how he got here. We have jurisdiction. I doubt anybody else does it differently. Legally, how you arrest the guy is a completely different issue from whether you can try him once you arrest him.
The truth is that international law isn't as neat and clean as national law. All these people on both sides of the debate saying we should enforce international norms and laws presuppose a legal system that doesn't exist. International law is not as formal as American law. It's a hazy coalesced system of agreements that shift as power shifts. The law is only as good as the power to back it up. It's sort of like law in a primitive area shortly before the rise of civil society.
And this is why all the arguments based on International law on whether we should have invaded Iraq are worthless. To say Iraq violated agreements and therefore we're justified to invade is wrong. Whatever underlies those agreements is our justification, not the agreements themselves. If Iraq is a threat, that threat is our justification to invade. Whether he broke some promises or not is not that important. We should respect our agreements and hold people to their agreements, but the force with which we hold people to agreements should be based on the underlying justifications. For example, we would never invade Canada because we choke on their smog. Likewise, we shouldn't invade Canada just because Canada reneges on an agreement to cut back on smog.
And so it goes with trying Hussein for his crimes. International law is a morass of might makes right, and we should avoid wading into that murky soup. Virtually every successful coup ends with expelling or imprisoning the former ruler (South Africa being the only exception I can think of, and that was regime change by election as much as a coup). Iraq's regime change should be no different. Hussein knows that if he falls from power, there will be a long line of people waiting to separate him from his limbs. There is no need to worry that Iraqis won't Ceausescu Hussein.
So let the good times (and the heads) roll.
Update: Talkleft has another great post linking to articles on the legality of the war. I agree that the war is illegal, but I continue to say that the legality of the war is irrelevant.
Polis | 14 Writebacks | #
I shaved before I left tonight, for I thought I might meet Salman Rushdie. I already knew what I was going to say to him. "Hi, you danced with my mom at a Paul Simon/Bob Dylan concert!" I was sure that would hook a conversation. The story of how my mom came to boogie with the greatest writer of the 20th Century will have to wait for another time. Tonight I turn to an altogether different drama.
When I arrived at the Apollo to see Midnight's Children performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, I was disappointed. I had the worst seats in the house. I was upstairs, in the last row, all the way to the right. You couldn't get a further, higher or more oblique view of the play, or of Rushdie, who surely had mid-orchestra seats at worst.
From that high, the air tasted of sour grapes. Rushdie probably wasn't there tonight at all, I figured.
The play, though, was wonderfully done. Many of the actors did such a great job. Salim Aziz never leaves the stage through the whole play. It must be an exhausting role, but he carries it through so many stages of Salim's life, back and forth and up and down. Very impressive.
The play packs a lot into a few hours, and where the book is languid, the play lopes through passage after passage. This is Padma's version. Straight chrono, easy on the speechifying. The perforated sheet, three years of enticing enchantment, becomes 30 seconds on the stage. It's a pity, because where the book has feeling of fate, of interlocked stories that must be as they are, the play feels like shuttling towards the obvious end. Still, for all the hurry up, I enjoyed it.
The play provides much more than the book in the way of historical context, which is helpful. Frankly, the book lost me at times, and I had trouble connecting its major events to the history of the Indian subcontinent. The play used videos and newscaster-style clips to explicitly connect the plot of Salim's life with the struggles of India and Pakistan. The maps didn't hurt either.
The program included a glossary. The first definition in it:
Christian - Believer in Christianity, a religion based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in the first century AD. Christians believe that Jesus, also called Christ, was the Son of their god and that by his death he made it possible for them to enter a realm of bliss after their own demise.
If that doesn't make you laugh, your humor is as shallow as the Lovers of Kashmir.
With the added history and the plot served like courses at a formal meal, the play makes a great addition to the book. I wonder how the hell anybody that hasn't read the book followed it. Aunts, Uncles, Mothers, Fathers, Ayahs over three generations! Who knows who is who anymore? And then there's the middle of the second act, when neither India nor Rushdie can cope with the late 60's and early 70's. Salim is off fighting in a Bengali jungle. This is the Apocalypse Now portion of the play, when Salim is a snail crawling on the edge of a straight razor. He and the play are saved by magicking them back to Delhi in a hamper. I saw several people in the audience frantically turn to each other and say, "What the fuck?"
One thing that was odd about the play was that every 15 minutes there was simulated fucking. Gratuitous, weird, frantic fucking. Much more fucking than in the book. Fucking nymphs. Fucking air. Fucking skeletons. Maybe that's how you update a book from 1981. More fucking!
The play did much with minimal sets. People marched in with just a few props and with lighting and pantomime, they suggested the rest. The backdrop was a video screen. Upon the screen was cast a multitude of images. Midnight's children conferred in Salim's mind. Salim roamed the region of the dead while shirtless in the Lotus position. Old clips of history and family events were narrated by manly newsreel voices. Sometimes it worked, but most of the time, the video was a distraction.
The bottom line on the play is that it's great, but the greatest thing about it is that it reminds you how amazing the book is. This is the best book I've ever read. The Booker of the Bookers. The most complex, intricate, layer after layer of symbols and artistry, fantasy and reality, meeting to mix so many ideas about the birth of a nation and the failure of a dream. A book about hope and failure, creation and destruction. At once savage satire and earnest prayer. The book is a mine of rubies and diamonds.
I always thought diplomats were milquetoast drunks who had cush jobs going to posh parties and bantering with the wives of foreign heads of state. Their greatest responsibility was to keep their affairs discrete and stay out of the way of the CIA. Turns out some of these folks have dignity after all.
Ann Wright, Deputy Chief of the U.S. Embassy to Mongolia, has resigned in protest:
I disagree with the Administration’s policies on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea and curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. itself. I believe the Administration’s policies are making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government service as I cannot defend or implement them.
You can read her resignation letter in Government Executive Magazine. They also have a decent story on her resignation.
Wright is at least the second diplomat to resign because of the war. John Brady Kiesling, a political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, also resigned last week. His letter of resignation was printed in the N.Y. Review of Books, and Geodog has a decent writeup of the Kiesling talk he attended. The letter is an excellent read from a guy that has spent much of his career outside the United States. He resigned in protest and to salve his conscience, but he also believes these wounds can be healed by a change of course:
Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system with the US and the EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid.
I, too, believe America can recoup its lost stature on the world stage. Many people have been convinced by recent events that America is run by thugs with more cash than friendship. But countries are not run by people, they're run by politicians. And politicians the world over have a notorious record of succumbing to the pressures of cash and thuggery.
When the people aren't watching (which is most of the time), foreign governments will go back to their usual posture, which is supine with wallets open to catch cash. America has long pursued a policy of pressuring other nations with military, political and economic power. That will not change, and neither will their susceptibility to that pressure.
Less arrogance would help. Less arrogance would reduce the concessions we'll make to get foreign cooperation. It might, in some instances, make the difference in whether we get cooperation or not. But business is business and the business of politics must go on.
Via The Agonist.
Polis | 12 Writebacks | #
On October 30, 2001, the Department of Defense cancelled the "any service member" mail program. Unless you have the name and mailing address of someone in the military to send the cards to, anonymous mail for "any service member" will not be accepted due to the Anthrax threat. The program has not been reinstated for the war.
Looks like the terrorists won.
Correction: looks like the domestic terrorists won.
Polis | 10 Writebacks | #
After seven years, the Taxi & Limousine Commission is finally retiring the screeching recordings of almost-famous has-beens that nag New Yorkers and tourists to buckle up.
For those of you that haven't heard them, imagine the voices of Elmo, Jackie Mason, the Rockettes, Chris Rock, and Eartha Kitt yelling at you to buckle your seat belt. Now imagine you're the cabbie and you hear this all day long. The T&LC got a lot of hate mail over this program, and I bet most of it was from their own hacks. I've heard more than one cabbie mutter murderous threats under his breath when Elmo asked for the 100th time that day, "What's a receipt?"
Before they installed the voices of washed-up entertainers, we were reminded to buckle up by a woman with a heavy Queens accent. She had the Jewish mother thing down perfect, and I actually considered buckling up a couple of times because of her. She was ditched in favor of b-list celebs after just a year because people found her voice grating. I always missed her.
The big argument against an independent Kurdistan is that Kurds would use their country as a base to smuggle weapons and conduct terrorist operations in southern Turkey and western Iran. Given that Kurds already control northern Iraq, I fail to see how having a formal border to the south would prevent them from smuggling to the north.
In other words, how would Turkey and Iran be less able to secure their borders against Kurdistan than against Iraq?
The answer is that Kurds would achieve prosperity and safety in Kurdistan as they have never enjoyed. That enhanced control over the land, prosperity (imagine, they could have an airport that comprises more than a strip of dirt in the desert!), and safety would give them a relatively safer haven to attack Turkley and Iran. The Turkish objection to Kurdistan, then, becomes an objection to Kurdish prosperity and safety.
Perhaps the other reason Turkey opposes Kurdistan is that it would be awkward to have to deal diplomatically with a neighbor that is constantly pressuring Turkey on behalf of mistreated and oppressed Turkish Kurds. Just ask Bush how he feels about Vincente Fox these days.
The American objection to Kurdistan is that if the Kurds had the safety and prosperity to smuggle and base terrorist operations, they would do so. Kurdish Nationalists would attack Turkey and Iran from Kurdistan. Then Turkey and/or Iran would move into Kurdistan to protect themselves, much as Israel did in Lebanon and much as Turkey has already started to do in Iraq. Of course, America would have an obligation to intervene, either diplomatically or militarily, to protect the country we created. We don't want the hassle. The Kurds have little to offer America, and so America has little to offer the Kurds.
Polis | 9 Writebacks | #
We've drafted dolphins and sea lions to hunt mines and capture frogmen in the Persian Gulf. Said the Girl's mother: "If only we could replace Cheney and Rumsfeld with dolphins."
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
People, please stop sending email about how Resolution 1441 justifies the war. If the war is justified, it's not because of 1441. If you think violation of 1441 is all the justification we need to invade, I presume, then, that you would support the invasion of Israel by a coalition of Arab nations seeking to throw Ariel Sharon's ass in jail because Israel is in violation of dozens of UN Security Council resolutions involving its relations with the Palestinians and also because the Israeli nuke program is in violation of Resolution 487. Or maybe Greece should invade Turkey because Turkey is in violation of many UN Security Council resolutions regarding Cyprus. Should Russia swoop down to the Armenian/Azerbaijani border and start clubbing people because Armenia is in violation of Resolution 822? Oh wait, we only go after countries with WMDs. In that case, let's simultaneously invade both India and Pakistan because their nuke programs are in violation of Resolution 1172.
We better get busy.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Rachel Corrie was an activist associated with the International Solidarity Movement. She opposed America's support of Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This opposition included standing in front of Palestinian homes to prevent the Israeli government from bulldozing them to the ground. It also included burning mock American flags.
On 16 March, Rachel was standing in front of a home in Gaza, trying to prevent a bulldozer from razing it. The bulldozer came toward her, but did not stop. It crushed her to death. By some accounts, after crushing her, it backed up and crushed her body again. Israeli officials called her death an accident. US News Link has an account that calls it murder. BBSNews has quotes from people attached to the situation. NPR also covered the story.
Here are some unsettling pictures of Rachel, before and after being crushed by the bulldozer.
Rachel's death has sparked a lot of debate about whether or not Rachel deserved her fate and whether she was a martyr or a fool or both. First, people argue about the facts. Was it an accident? Did the driver of the bulldozer not see her? The answer to these questions seems to depend on how you feel about the situation in Israel. Second, people argue about whether Rachel deserved her fate, whether she was an advocate of terror, and whether her death was just.
One thing we know. Rachel's actions were beyond what many Americans accept as proper behavior. To many people, burning an American flag, even a mock flag, is enough to mark you as a terrorist or sympathizer. To more sympathetic people, though, Rachel was a peace activist. She put herself in harm's way to protect the homes of Palestinians from being destroyed. If you read her ideas in her own words, some say she sounds idealistic and committed to peace. Others think she was a terrorist dupe.
Whatever the story, her death is a tragedy. Nobody should be bulldozed to death, accidentally or not. Bulldozing Rachel is not a proper response to her actions. If she was in the wrong, she should have been arrested. Regardless of whether it is the government or the protestors who is right about whether that home should have been destroyed, the solution is not to crush protestors to death. Whatever necessities of protecting Israel from terrorism underlie destroying that home do not justify killing Rachel. They could have destroyed that home without killing her, just as they have destroyed many other homes without killing other protestors.
I feel sorry for Rachel and her family. Rachel was a young and idealistic girl, but her death is sad. Even if she was a terror advocate (as the WSJ called her), she deserved better. Even if she hated America, she deserved better. She might have been monstrous, but we should not, and neither should the Israeli government.
In the US, the State Department has called upon Israel to investigate Rachel's death. I'm sure that investigation wil conclude that her death was an accident. Some are calling on the State Department to conduct an independent investigation, but I don't see how that's possible. We'll never know what really happened that day. All I know is that no matter what happened, a young lady has died needlessly while chasing, however foolishly, an ideal of peace.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Where is Raed? -- read it for news from the target's perspective. Salam Pax writes with a clear voice about fear and uncertainty. He is for regime change, but he is against the war:
No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said war not a change of regime), no human being in his right mind will ask you to give him the beating of his life, unless you are a member of fight club that is, and if you do hear Iraqi (in Iraq, not expat) saying “come on bomb us” it is the exasperation and 10 years of sanctions and hardship talking. There is no person inside Iraq (and this is a bold, blinking and underlined inside) who will be jumping up and down asking for the bombs to drop. We are not suicidal you know, not all of us in any case.
I think that the coming war is not justified (and it is very near now, we hear the war drums loud and clear if you don’t then take those earplugs off!). The excuses for it have been stretched to their limits they will almost snap. A decision has been made sometime ago that “regime change” in Baghdad is needed and excuses for the forceful change have to be made. I do think war could have been avoided, not by running back and forth the last two months, that’s silly. But the whole issue of Iraq should have been dealt with differently since the first day after GW I.
The entities that call themselves “the international community” should have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant, should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war five minutes before midnight.
What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging for days now: how could “support democracy in Iraq” become to mean “bomb the hell out of Iraq”? why did it end up that democracy won’t happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful.
The situation in Iraq could have been solved in other ways than what the world will be going thru the next couple of weeks. It can’t have been that impossible. Look at the northern parts of Iraq, that is a model that has worked quite well, why wasn’t anybody interested in doing that in the south. Just like the US/UK UN created a protected area there why couldn’t the model be tried in the south. It would have cut off the regimes arms and legs. And once the people see what they have been deprived off they will not be willing to go back, just ask any Iraqi from the Kurdish areas. Instead the world watched while after the war the Shias were crushed by Saddam’s army in a manner that really didn’t happen before the Gulf War. Does anyone else see the words (Iran/not in the US interest) floating or is it me hallucinating?
And there is the matter of Sanctions. Now that Iraq has been thru a decade of these sanctions I can only hope that their effects are clear enough for them not to be tried upon another nation. Sanctions which allegedly should have kept a potentially dangerous situation in Iraq in check brought a whole nation to its knees instead. And who ultimately benefited from the sanctions? Neither the international community nor the Iraqi people, he who was in power and control still is. These sanctions made the Iraqi people hostages in the hands of this regime, tightened an already tight noose around our necks. A whole nation, a proud and learned nation, was devastated not by the war but by sanctions. Our brightest and most creative minds fled the country not because of oppression alone but because no one inside Iraq could make a living, survive. And can anyone tell me what the sanctions really did about weapons? Get real, there are always willing nations who will help, there are always organizations which will find his money sweet. Oil-for-Food? Smart Sanctions? Get a clue. Who do you think is getting all those contracts to supply the people with “food”? who do you think is heaping money in bank accounts abroad? It is his people, his family and the people who play his game. Abroad and in Iraq, Iraqis and non-Iraqis.
What I mean to say is that things could have been different; I can’t help look at the Northern parts of Iraq with envy and wonder why.
Do support democracy in Iraq. But don’t equate it with war. What will happen is something that could/should have been avoided. Don’t expect me to wear a [I heart bush] t-shirt. Support democracy in Iraq not by bombing us to hell and then trying to build it up again (well that is going to happen any way) not by sending human shields (let’s be real the war is going to happen and Saddam will use you as hostages), but by keeping an eye on what will happen after the war.
To end this rant, a word about Islamic fundis/wahabisim/qaeda and all that.
Do you know when the sight of women veiled from top to bottom became common in cities in Iraq? Do you know when the question of segregation between boys and girls became red hot? When tribal law replaced THE LAW? When Wahabi became part of our vocabulary?
It only happened after the Gulf War. I think it was Cheney or Albright who said they will bomb Iraq back to the stone age, well you did. Iraqis have never accepted religious extremism in their lives. They still don’t. Wahabis in their short dishdasha are still looked upon as sheep who have strayed from the herd. But they are spreading. The combination of poverty/no work/low self esteem and the bitterness of seeing people who rose to riches and power without any real merit but having the right family name or connection shook the whole social fabric. Situations which would have been unacceptable in the past are being tolerated today.
They call it “al hamla al imania – the religious campaign” of course it was supported by the government, pumping them with words like “poor in this life, rich in heaven” kept the people quiet. Or the other side of the coin is getting paid by Wahabi organizations. Come pray and get paid, no joke, dead serious. If the government can’t give you a job run to the nearest mosque and they will pay and support you. This never happened before, it is outrageous. But what are people supposed to do? thir government is denied funds to pay proper wages and what they get is funneled into their pockets. So please stop telling me about the fundis, never knew what they are never would have seen them in my streets.
I wish him well.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
OK, so maybe the promised shock and awe has been shelved in favor of grumbling about the French. But we're still racing through the desert, headed for Baghdad so fast we can barely count the white flags. In a bunch of places, we're not even taking prisoners because the Iraqi military is is so badly armed that they're fighting with rifles made of balsa wood. Operation Are You Happy Now Dad is a success. America gets it on with the overwhelming force.
And it's about to get overwhelminger. America's latest secret weapon is Optimus Prime. He heads to the Middle East tomorrow, presumably with a big cannon and a taste for battle. Optimus Prime is so bad ass he'll kill all the Saddams.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
We've put together a little admin plugin for Blosxom. Basically, it's the web interface that some of you have wanted. It won't obviate FTP, but it will let you post, edit, delete, and move files. It will preserve timestamps when you edit (or not, if you so choose). It will also let you change timestamps to whatever date you want, which means you can remove the entries_index plugin.
The plugin takes a password to log in. If you're logged in, it adds options after every post that will let you edit that post.
It is aware of your subdirectories and will let you post to whatever subdir you want.
The biggest and stickiest issue with a plugin like this is file permissions. If you FTP a bunch of stuff to your server, a typical setup will result in files and directories that your scripts don't have permission to modify. We've worked around this a little by using Net::FTP and having the script ftp to localhost to gain access. It's not an ideal solution, but it seems easier than asking users to mess with taintperl and setuid.
Configuration is simple, or at least it will be. You specify a password, give it a valid username/password for your ftp server and then add two variables to your templates. Unfortunately, there is another step, which is patching Blosxom to pass a CGI object to plugins. We are hopeful and confident that future versions of Blosxom will do this without needing patching.
Future versions of the admin plugin will probably rely more heavily on Net::FTP, as that has been working out rather well on the Brutal Hugs system. Net::FTP is part of any standard Perl install, but we will try to support alternate methods for those users without FTP servers on their web servers.
Because this is still a pretty rough plugin, we're requiring anybody that wants to use it to send us an email. That way we know who is using it and can send out updates in the event of a problem. Also because the plugin is pretty rough, we're asking people to only use it on test beds. Hopefully, there are no data-eating bugs, but there might be some lurking in the code.
So, if you want to test admin version 0.1b1, let us know.
Update: Since we posted this, several people have suggested alternatives to using FTP. We're not sure where this will lead, but getting away from Net::FTP is definitely desirable. Now we just have to figure out what apache2's perchild mpm is and how commonly it is installed.
New York is made for walking. Tonight, I was at a party on East 12th and I walked home to Hell's Kitchen at 2am. It's a great walk. Up through Union Square, over to Chelsea, Herald Square, Penn Station, Port Authority. Most people wouldn't take that walk, but I have to do it. Here's what I would have missed if I'd taken the train home:
On 21st Street, four girls wearing too much makeup and bright, skin-tight clothes, flanked by muscle men in tight black turtlenecks, dockers, gold chains. They are obviously confused. A young lady turns to me as I pass.
Her: Hey, you know where Centro Fly is?
Me: I'm sorry, I don't know.
Her: What use are you? Get outta here!
Me: Maybe it's in Jersey.
Thankfully, we said all this as we were walking past each other. Had I stopped to chat, I'm sure the men in her party would have mulched me and sent me home in a very small box.
Coming up on Herald Square, crowds of white folk who don't know how to cross streets or hail cabs. Typical tourists, I think. Then I hear their