Burma - Where Neocon is not a dirty word

The Times Online

There are so many heartbreaking things about what is going in Burma, but for a foreigner one of the hardest to bear is the optimism. There are few foreign journalists here, but people treat them as saviours, encouraging them to get the story and the pictures out, with a touching faith that it will make a difference.

"Tell them to send foreign troops, UN troops," said a young monk at the Mwe Kya Kan pagoda. "Please, fly them to our country to save our lives." An American in Rangoon told me yesterday about an opinion poll carried out on Burmese attitudes to US foreign policy. "Like most people, they thought that it sucks," he told me. "But not for the usual reason. Burmese wanted to know why George Bush hasn't invaded their country yet."

I don't have anything more to add.

File this under - you can run, but you cannot hide

I meant to comment on this story yesterday but time was a little too tight. Ynet News:

IDF forces in Nablus on Wednesday arrested 36-year-old Tanzim member Hayman Zaban, who was involved in carrying out the lynch in Ramallah some seven years ago in which Israeli reserve soldiers Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami were killed. Zaban is the last of the suspects in the incident to be arrested, and was transferred to defense forces for investigation.

"Zaban was shocked when the soldiers came to arrest him," an IDF official said, adding that the Tanzim member was unaware that Israeli security forces were still on his trail. The military said Zaban had eluded IDF forces up until now by moving from one West Bank city to another. Following the lynching, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak vowed that the IDF would reach all those involved.

Nurzhitz and Avrahami entered Ramallah by mistake while driving to an IDF base in the area. They were stopped by Palestinian officers and taken to the local police station, where they were beaten and stabbed to death by an angry mob that stormed the station while hundreds of locals cheered the killers on.

Justice will not ever be fully rendered for Nurzhitz and Avrahami in this life, but a start could be made if someone could be found to restrain Olmert from freeing him in the future.

Innuendo

I have been highly skeptical of most of the reports explaining the IAF incursion into Syria, and as the tales of nuclear stockpiles grow, I grow far more skeptical. I saw this piece Silence in Syria, Panic in Iran at The Spirit of Man. It probably contains the sanest explanation I have read for the Israeli incursion into Syria.

On September 12th the FARS news agency announced that Vladimir Putin would be making a personal visit to Iran within a month's time. At the time, I wondered what possible back story there was to this visit. Now I suspect Vlad may have some explaining to do or just maybe he has to offer a few new tweaks to placate his one of his loyalist and biggest customers? How I would love to be a fly on the wall for that state visit.

Settlement Irony

The Jerusalem Post carries a report of a crackdown on "illegal settlement activity" by Jews:

Binyamin police and the IDF detained for questioning overnight three Hashmonaim residents suspected of planning to erect an illegal outpost in the West Bank at the beginning of next week.

Forces discovered equipment that was thought to be planned for use in the establishment of the outpost as well as what security officials called "propaganda material." The three refused to cooperate with their investigators and claimed that that probe was politically motivated. On Tuesday, settlement activists said that they intend to preempt the political agenda of territorial concessions by creating five new West Bank outposts during Succot.

According to one of the organizers, Datya Yitzhaki, some 25 families are ready to defy security forces and establish the new communities on Sunday.

Meanwhile Ha'aretz is reporting that the Jerusalem municipality can find room to authorize another 1900 homes for Arabs - in Jerusalem. Go figure.

I'd rather the gravy train passed me by so I can live

John Ivison of the National Post sees signs of the Harper government's new more pragmatic approached to China.

All the signs point to a more nuanced approach to China than the one initiated by Mr. Harper last year, when he promised he would not "sellout to the almighty dollar" by allowing concerns about human rights to be overshadowed by the prospect of improved trade.
(...)
When it comes to China, a new pragmatism has usurped the "principled" foreign policy the Conservatives advocated in opposition. As one official put it: "Harper caught so much criticism that he has calculated that whatever points he scored standing up to the Chinese, he lost more by risking the biggest gravy train going by." Tomorrow: Beijing's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics offers Canada and the world an opportunity to pressure China on its human rights record.

I hope for all our sakes and lives he is dead wrong, and if anything, the Canadian government will take a much harder line on the Chinese government as well as encouraging Canadian companies to diverse the hell out of China. Soft power diplomacy is utter bunk, and should be known henceforth as a bankrupt political philosophy.

There has yet to be a totalitarian government who has been pressured into making substantial human rights concessions because of diplomatic pressure brought by its trading partners. If soft power diplomacy is so effective; ask yourself why the international track record so abysmal, and why isn't Cuba one of the freest nations on the face of the planet? Concerned Cuba librarians are literally dying to know. Poisoned pet food, toothpaste, toys, food, cribs…the list of consumer goods and produce from China literally grows weekly with toxicity.

A woman of valor

Forget Christiane Amanapour. Karnit Goldwasser asks the hard tough questions. Ynet News

During the questions we made eye contact, we looked at each other more than once. The look on his face changed the moment he realized who was facing him and what I wanted from him," Karnit Goldwasser, wife of kidnapped soldier Ehud Goldwasser, said after her meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York.

Goldwasser managed to enter Ahmadinejad's press conference at the United Nations building in New York on Tuesday, and told Ynet that the she was surprised by the treatment the Iranian leader received upon his arrival. "He came in and started to smile at everyone. The reporters gave him great respect… As he walked by me he said hi to me, because he still didn't know who I was. He thought I was one of the supporting journalists, and that he was walking into a place where everyone loved him. He seemed very pleased," Goldwasser recounted.

Goldwasser said she was not afraid to present the president with her question, and asked him, "Hello, my name is Karnit, the wife of Ehud Goldwasser, the soldier who has been held captive for over a year. Since you are the man that is behind the kidnapping due to the aid you grant Hizbullah, why don't you allow the Red Cross to visit the two soldiers?" she asked. The president ignored the question. "Now he knows that the kidnapped soldier's wife can reach him too," Goldwasser told Ynet, "he knows that he does not scare us."

Not carrying the proper press pass, Goldwasser was escorted by security out of the room towards the end of the press conference.

Shame. And not one reporter objected to Goldwasser's ejection.
Shame

Fishing in Cyberspace

The Globe and Mail is reporting that the Canada Revenue Agency's merry band of bureaucratic thieves is fishing in cyberspace.

The Canada Revenue Agency has won a Federal Court order requiring eBay Canada Ltd. to turn over the names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all high-volume sellers on the popular website. The CRA wants to find out whether those individuals or companies are reporting the income they made from online sales in 2004 and 2005.

"The CRA is seeking to verify compliance with the obligations and duties under the Income Tax Act of certain Canadian taxpayers selling goods in an online marketplace," said an affidavit filed in court by Aziz Fazal, a Toronto tax officer who heads an audit group within the CRA that is leading the probe. "In particular, the CRA seeks to verify the reporting of income by certain Canadian taxpayers selling goods via the eBay marketplace."

Is it really so much to ask that Canada Revenue Agents have at least some evidence or grounds for reasonable suspicion of wrong-doing before initiating law suits and tax witchhunts on the public dime? And if you cannot comprehend why the behaviour of the CRA has no place in free society - perhaps you should give serious thought to relocating to a country which is more simpatico with your worldview. I hear Beijing is pleasant this time of year.

Talk about those unintended consequences.

Fatah in its desperate bid to win Palestinian hearts and minds away from Hamas has arrested most of the local imans from the 'West Bank' which in turn is causing a severe iman shortage. Taken from the Globe and Mail:

The strategy has helped Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas strengthen his hold on power here, after losing Gaza to Hamas in bloody clashes last summer. But now, his government faces a new problem: a chronic shortage of preachers across the West Bank during Islam's holiest month.

"We are in the midst of a major imam shortage," said Jamal Tawalbeh, the Palestinian minister of religious affairs. "Many of our mosques are now empty. We have requested emergency help from the government," he said. By the government's own estimates, nearly 2,000 mosques lack qualified preachers.

Local "volunteers" have temporarily taken up those posts. In some cases, these new recruits are unlikely stand-ins."The local commander of the al-Aqsa martyrs brigade was leading prayers for several weeks. And he had a gun," complained one worshipper at the al-Raouda mosque in Nablus.

Got to give Fatah credit for employing a real win-win strategy - call to prayer today and be prepared to implode tomorrow.

Brotherhood in the Holy Land

Ynet News is reporting this sad tale of woe:

Three youths from the Galilee village of Arabeh were indicted on Monday on charges of physically assaulting and attempting to murder a Palestinian illegal alien suspected of stealing Koran books from the mosque in the village. The Haifa Magistrates Court heard that the three youths had kidnapped the Palestinian man with the intention of causing him severe bodily harm.

Two of the accused, aged 21 and 19, took the 24-year-old Palestinian from Hebron to an olive orchard where they threatened to kill him if he did not admit to having snatched holy books from the mosque. The two suspects picked up the Palestinian man in their Subaru car at the village's entrance where he was hitchhiking. Amer Asala and Mohammad Yassin were also accused of striping the youth naked and tying him to a tree.
(…)
The prosecution told the court that the suspects had set up makeshift gallows where the placed a noose around the Palestinian's head and threatened to pull the chair from beneath him if he did not confess to the theft. Asala is accused of kicking the chair from under the Palestinian who hung in the air for a couple of seconds before fainting.

I do believe the medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch accurately captured the spirit of a Palestinian state in action.

The Morning After the Release of Halo 3

At work yesterday I kept soliciting opinions on whether or not I should let my teenage son leave the house at 11pm to pick-up his pre-ordered copy of Halo 3 last night. The river of opinion was running firmly against but an odd thing happened. The more I heard from the entrenched “NFW” crowd the stronger my gut instinct swung towards the yea crowd. Well, maybe calling the “yea” people a crowd is a bit of an exaggeration.

Just before I left work for the day, Montana called me to add a little more pressure to my decision. Montana’s friend Peter would not be allowed to go to the game store unless Montana was with him. In fact, Peter would not even be allowed to leave the house unless Montana picked him up at the door. Apparently, I now held the fate of two boys in my hands.

Montana’s friend Peter is not just a favoured child but the only son as in ‘only child’ of Vietnamese immigrants which means he is cuddled and suffocated to the extreme. Peter can never get a cold. Sniffles and a slight fever almost always mean potentially TB. A headache may be the sign of a brain tumor. Do you see where I am going with this?

For some strange and inexplicable reason, Peter’s parents trust Montana. Montana has become the gold standard for Peter’s parents to judge all over males. This is really quite surprising given that Montana is not even close to being Vietnamese, and Peter’s parents probably know only 50 English words between the two of them. It is not like Montana has ever waxed poetically about his values, ethics or sense of life to Peter’s parents. In fact, Peter’s parents don’t even trust any of Peter’s male cousins/uncles but they implicitly trust Montana to look out for their son.

I didn’t think the idea was particularly wise and I could come with very valid reason to say NFW, but when I walked through the door I told Montana he could do it. As lame and as anal as it sounds, years ago, I consciously made a decision about the kind of children I wanted to raise. I thought long and hard about how I would go about creating the environment which would work best to produce thoughtful independent adults who would be an asset to the community in which they lived in.

I didn’t think it was particularly strange that Montana sought my permission because he knows I am both reasonable and fair-minded – he has a track record with me. He knows when I do say ‘no’; I try to do so in a way in which he can understand my rationale is just. He might not agree with my decision but he trusts I have a valid point. But more importantly; Montana has a track record with me. He doesn’t usually make outrageous demands or ask for general frivolousness.

This little midnight jaunt obviously meant a great deal to him. He has spent most of the summer getting up 5 days at week at 3am to shower, eat and get ready to walk out the door by 4am in order to be at work at 4:30am. He has never been late and he has worked a 12 hour day as hard as any grown man. He saved his money and this was to be his reward for a hard earned wage.

One of the things I believe as a parent is that if you want to raise responsible children you start by giving them responsibility. A little at a time. Otherwise don’t presume because when they reach the magical ages of 12, 14, 16, 18 years they will suddenly, via osmosis, know how to act responsibly. If Montana can work like a man, and he wants to assume the freedoms of a man; than what better way to ensure he acts like a man than to put the safety of another human being under his charge. Besides even Peter needs time off from his prison of love for good behaviour.

Last night, Montana knew he had to be home by 1:15am (at the latest). He knew he had to be bright eyed and bushytailed to get to school before 8:50am.

He left the house to arrive at Peter’s house by 11:00pm. By 12:15am, Montana had managed to pick up his Halo 3 Special Edition, walked Peter to his apartment door, got home and played a few rounds of Halo 3 so that when his 1:15am curfew came round he was found safely in his bed. And all is well in our world.



PS - HALO 3 has become a religious gaming experience for me and totally outclasses HALO 1 & 2.

Even the Elders just aren't what they use to be

So has anybody thought to ask Mearsheimer & Walt why the Israel lobby had not been able to stop Ahmadinejad from speaking at Columbia University?

Speaking of speaking – best line Ahmadinejad uttered has to be a cross between "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country" to Iranian women are the freest in the world. Tell it to Zahra Kazemi.

What do mother and mean have in common?

My oldest son has asked permission to go with his friends to the midnight launching of Halo 3 at our favourite gaming store tonight. He wants to pick-up his pre-ordered copy of Halo 3 with his friends.

So the issue becomes; do I let my 14 year old, 5’11” 175 lb son leave the house at 11:30pm on a school night to go with his friends to pick up a copy of a video game? He promises to a) be home by 1:15am, and b) not to play the game until school Tuesday afternoon.

There is a ‘C’’ too. If I let him go he will let me play the game first. So far I have only committed to a "maybe - I'll think on it". My inner Mother is saying, "No Fracking Way!" which conflicts with my inner woman who says "DEAL".

Who are you going to blame?

I figure it must be an emotionally liberating experience for Palestinians to be able to blame absolutely anything and everything on the Zionists/Jews. Think about it. Poor communal sanitation habits caused your home to be washed out in a sea of sewage – blame the Zionists/Jews. Your son eats bananas, and then dies of cancer; it’s the Zionists/Jews fault. Your daughter is caught shagging same Fatah official for pita money; it’s the Zionists/Jews fault. Ha’aretz:

The four children, aged 9 - 14, were treated for light to moderate injuries, said Health Ministry official Moaiwa Hassanein. They were playing in a former Israeli settlement, Hassanein said.

Hamas security officials said the explosives were left behind by the Israel Defense Forces. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, removing 21 settlements and all its army bases. However, Palestinian militants also use the settlement to launch rockets into Israel.

a canadian natural disaster

Internationally, Canadians have this reputation or image that we are culturally boring people. Boring as in bland - like toast. What I really don’t understand how we get this image/reputation given that our “public intellectual class” is almost always mentally ill and it shows.

Robert Fulford’s book review of Naomi Klein’s latest “shocker” carries a by-line which also doubles as the most apt description of Naomi Klein I have ever read outside of “fucking loon.”

“A friend to Hezbollah, an enemy of logic.”

h/t Daimnation!

Olmert insanity continues

Relentlessly. Ha’aretz reports:

The cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 90 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture for the holiday of Eid el-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The prisoners slated to be released are members of the Palestinian factions Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and are all considered without "blood on their hands" - meaning they were not directly involved in the killing of Israelis.

The original list contained 100 names, but 10 prisoners were removed after it emerged that they did not fulfill all the criteria. The updated list of 90 names will be brought before the cabinet subcommittee for the release of prisoners later Sunday for individual approval. After it is approved, the list will be published, and the public will be given 48 hours to appeal.

Just remember, the Palestinians will not release the Israeli being held hostage as a gesture of goodwill for Ramadam.

Same old, same old truce offered

The first line of this Jerusalem Report really says it all:

Israel has rejected an offer by Hamas to renew a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, Israel Radio reported Friday.

But here is the context:

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's office reportedly contacted a senior diplomatic source in Jerusalem through a third party before the cabinet decided on Wednesday to declare Gaza a "hostile territory." After the cabinet decision, the source responded to Hamas's proposal, saying Israel would not hold talks with the group at this time.

On Thursday, Haniyeh met with representatives of the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza and asked them to abide by any cease-fire agreement Hamas would strike with Israel. The groups expressed willingness to assent, but wanted to wait for Israel's response.

Meretz chairman Yossi Beilin said Friday that if Israel has in fact rejected Hamas's proposed cease-fire, it is an irresponsible decision both for the residents of the western Negev and for kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit. "Israel has no other real solution to these problems, and it must reach a cease-fire with Hamas," Beilin continued. "Israel can do so through a third party, parallel to the diplomatic process with the PLO," Beilin said.

Like neogiating with the PLO worked out so well and Oslo Accord was a great success – just ask the thousands maimed and dead.

In November 2006, Hamas in the Gaza Strip agreed to stop launching kassam attacks against Israeli civilians in exchange for a full military pull-out of the IDF from the Gaza Strip. The IDF were operating in the Gaza Strip (Operation Summer Rains) after the June 2006 kidnapping by Hamas of an Israeli soldier from Israel proper.

Here’s the NY Times account of that truce:

SDEROT, Israel, Nov. 26 — A cease-fire in Gaza appeared to be holding on Sunday after Palestinian factions stopped firing rockets at Israel in exchange for an Israeli troop withdrawal from the territory.

The cease-fire, part of an agreement reached late Saturday by Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end five months of fighting in the territory, was to have taken effect at 6 a.m. but got off to a shaky start when Palestinian militants belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched nine rockets into southern Israel.

One rocket crashed through the roof of a house in this Israeli border town but caused no injuries. The other rockets landed in open areas. By 10:15 a.m., the rocket fire had stopped.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, who had been under intense domestic pressure to authorize an even bigger military operation in Gaza to stop the rocket attacks, spoke of restraint. “The state of Israel is a very strong country,” Mr. Olmert said. “It is strong enough to fight terror, and it is strong enough to show restraint in order to give an opportunity for the cease-fire to come into full comprehensive and practical effect.”

In Sderot, which has borne the brunt of the Qassam rocket attacks, residents ventured out in the streets to shop and get some air, some of them for the first time in days.

Since allowing the ‘opportunity for the cease-fire to come into full comprehensive and practical effect’ more than 700 kassams have been launched Sderot and a whole new generation of Sderot children have been growing up to the sounds of air raid sirens.

And Hamas wants another truce for exactly the same thing. Yossi Beilin thinks it’s a good idea. Theses guys are such jokers.

My fridge is kosher

My grandmother (who raised me) was a remarkably well-schooled old-world-style woman for a woman who never stepped foot in the old Europe until long after she was grown-up. She literally saw everything and anything as a sign or omen of what only she could correctly interrupt. This made her the augur of the family, and depending on your point of view; either the scourge or saviour of the neighborhoods we lived in. While I am a thoroughly modern woman, in a decidedly New World kind of way, there is still a little part of me, who remains the daughter of my old world grandmother.

I just learned my refrigerator died on the eve of Yom Kippur. The Last Amazon told me everything in it smells really bad. I told her to just toss the lot out and I would speak to the landlord right away. According to my landlord, no one can fix the refrigerator until well after Yom Kippur has ended. I find this surprising since this is Canada, and not say a Jewish state, like say - Israel. My daughter, having inherited her great-grandfather's paranoia, believes this is a omen for fasting. She almost had me convinced until I remembered that since I am the first direct female descendent of my grandmother's lineage, I can safely declare - only the fridge needs a truly long fast. G’mar Chatima Tova

Iran’s Doggie Jail…or why Lassie could not last on Tehran's mean streets

Iran is fast becoming a Monty Python skit come to life Persian style:

September 14, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Since the creation of the Islamic republic in Iran in 1979, the acceptability of dog ownership has been debated by the authorities. Iranian officials say that according to Islam, dogs are considered to be dirty animals, and people who own dogs are viewed as being under Western influence. Some conservative clerics have denounced dog ownership as "morally depraved" and say it should be banned.

Friday prayer leader Hojatoleslam Gholamreza Hassani, who is known for his hard-line stances, was quoted a few years ago as saying that all dog owners and their dogs should be arrested. In the past, dog owners have received warnings or were forced to pay fines for having a pet dog. Despite such harassment, dog ownership has increased over the years, especially among young people in Tehran.

One of them is 23-year-old Banafshe, whose dog was recently detained in Tehran for 48 hours and then released on bail. Banafshe says she was walking her young puppy, Jessica, when Iranian police snatched the dog and took her to a dog "jail." The dog's crime was "walking in public." Banafshe claims the police insulted her, but out of fear for her dog, she didn't protest. She said she told the police that Allah says in the Koran that nothing bad has been created in this world.

"They said, 'We want to get rid of Western culture,'" Banafshe said. "They said, 'You live in an Islamic country, it's not right to have dogs. Are you not Islamic? Why does your family allow you to own a dog?' They insulted me, they even told me that they hope my dog will die. But there was nothing I could do but cry. You can't imagine how badly I was insulted." The new clampdown on dogs follows a recent order by the head of Tehran's security forces, Ahmad Reza Radan, who said it is against the law for dogs to walk in public. The order has left many people baffled.

The Islamic bias against dogs had me baffled me until I remembered this from the Perek Shirah – “No dog sharpened its tongue against any of the children of Israel” (Exodus 11:7). Can the Mullah’s really hold a grudge that long?


H/t Winston @ the Spirit of Man

Iranian Air Farce

Nothing says 'all hat-no cattle' like threatening to turn out your seventies-style-sub-par-no-parts air force against your ‘sworn’ enemy. Take from the Jerusalem Post:

Supporters of the "Zionist regime" will receive a response from Iran during the world Qods Day rallies on October 12, the IRNA news agency reported government spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Elham, saying Wednesday. Qods Day is held each year on the last Friday of Ramadan as a day to voice Islamic opposition to Zionism.

"The US loses all opportunities to cooperate with regional and other world states by trying to support a regime [the Zionist regime] which is now at its weakest political and social position," Elham said. The spokesman, who was addressing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Israel, did not specify what an Iranian "response" would entail.

He also warned that Washington's insistence on its wrong policies and arrogant approaches would have no result "but further political disgrace" for itself. Elham's remarks came hours after a report by the Fars news agency that the deputy commander of Iran's air force said that plans have been drawn up to bomb Israel if it attacked Iran.

"We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime (Israel) makes a silly mistake," deputy air force chief, Gen. Mohammad Alavi was quoted as telling Fars in an interview.

Wow - October 12th. Well, I won’t be holding my breath this October 12th but I do think it’s a tad irresponsible for the Associated Press not to have asked the Iranians to commit to which millennium the Iranian Air Farce was taking out the IAF in.

I just can’t see the shock and awe factor of a tutu

Let me say it so you don’t have to. I know I am a relatively cold and unfeeling individual and having established my credentials, let me say this plainly - This has to be one of the most whacked initiatives in the military I have heard of for sometime. Ynet News:

In an effort to fight the spreading phenomenon of draft dodging, the IDF has decided to form a military dance troupe that would allow outstanding dancers to continue pursuing their vocation within the army. The troupe is the initiative of prominent dancers and choreographers David Dvir and Ido Tadmor.

"Talented dancers do not enlist in the army and leave the country for a career or studies abroad," Dvir explained. "Unlike exceptional athletes, an outstanding dancer needs to be in a supportive environment constantly, and the arrangement that had existed so far – of service that allowed limited time to dance - hurt their career," he added. "Therefore, many of them decided not to enlist and we felt that an entire generation of dancers was slipping through our fingers."

An IDF military dance troupe. Let me guess, they will call the dance unit "Nutcrackers". This ought to shock and awe the Syrians, Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah et al into submission.