Tuesday, August 22, 2006

No sense of irony! (or humor?)

From the Christian Broadcasting Network news (i.e. Pat Robertson):

"For the U.N. to be effective,” Bush said, “there must be consequences if people thumb their nose at the U.N. Security Council."


Well, Mr. Bush, let's face the consequences of your thumbing your nose at the U.N. Security Council, shall we?

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Hurricane Katrina won't go away!

Looks like the ethnic cleansing explanation might not be paranoia:

Forensic engineers have since uncovered design and construction flaws that some say border on criminal negligence.

Friday, August 11, 2006

I already talked about Lieberman

Here it is:

Building a majority party involves creating coalitions within the party, not circular firing squads. That means we all have to compete cleanly within the party primary, then swallow our pride and support the nominee who was chosen by the majority of our fellow Democrats, who are not really our political opponents, much less enemies.


I was talking about Hackett and Senator Schumer there, but it goes for Lieberman, too. It even goes for anyone who loses to a Democrat to their right. We can't afford to fight each other this year. There is too much at stake!

Let's keep focussed on reality

Let's all remember what really happened in the latest terror plot.

Pakistan found out about the plot and notified the British:

Reports from Pakistani intelligence, suggesting the direct involvement of senior Kashmiri militants linked to al-Qaeda, convinced British intelligence that the plot had to be taken seriously. Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch was brought in to the operation last December.

The Bush administration had nothing to do with it..

No, the US administration is too busy in Iraq to do anything about al-Qa'ida.

But how will the latest terror plot play in the US heartland?

We all know that the Republicans and their media will try to paint the Democrats as soft on terror. They've already started by saying that the Democrats have been hijacked by extremists.

Thank God some papers at least report it right:

Democrats contend that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a distraction from the war against al-Qaida. A new CNN poll shows that 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq.


And it looks like the American people are finally starting to wake up:

Democrats were favored over Republicans by 46 to 38 percent in an ABC-Washington Post poll early this week when people were asked whom they trusted more to handle the fight against terrorism.


Let's hope they stay awake through election day!

Friday, August 04, 2006

More on the Arab League and Darfur

I've already complained that expecting the Arab League to stop the killing in Darfur is like expecting the Ku Klux Klan to stop the lynching of Blacks in the US. (Yes, there are people, even Black people, who actually expect the Arab League to intervene to stop the killings.)

Now someone else seems to have picked it up:

The message seems clear: the Arab League is not as concerned with the DEPTH of the evil as they are with PERPETRATORS of the evil. Two hundred Arab civilians killed by Israel is a more newsworthy story than 20,000 Africans killed in an Arab League country. Perhaps the urge to be self-critical is unwise and bad for “Arab morale” in this time of asymmetrical warfare, entropy in Iraq and widely rampant anti-Arab sentiments. But further neglect of Darfur will be for the Arab League what Rwanda was for the UN: the grossest moral failing of its existence . . . the beginning of the end.


I don't know if Rwanda was the beginning of the end for the UN. I don't claim to foretell the future. I will reiterate that the Arab League should not be expected to intervene when Arabs kill non-Arabs. That's not why it was created. It was created to support the ethnic interests of Arabs, i.e. to foster Arab nationalism. I don't think it should continue to exist. And anyway, it can't even defend the ethnic interests of Arabs in Lebanon. It is at best impotent, at worst evil. Get rid of it.

And for humanity's sake, someone please fund an adequate African Union force, and if necessary an OIC force, to Darfur.