False Assumptions and Wishful Thinking

The best argument against the tactics of Israel's current Lebanon campaign is simple coldblooded pragmatism. Real Realpolitik if you like.

They won't work. The tactics are based on false assumptions about the nature of Hezbollah and the nature of the Lebanese people. The campaign itself is based on naive wishful thinking that the Lebanese will turn their anger on Hezbollah rather than on Israel.

Before the war began, Hezbollah's appeal was primarily confined to Shiites. Poor Shiites. Mainstream middle-class Lebanese who were Christians or Druze or Sunni didn't believe Hezbollah's claim that Israel would attack and invade Lebanon again. Israel has done an excellent job of convincing these mainstream Lebanese that Hezbollah was right all along and turned many who had harshly opposed the group into Hezbollah partisans.

And a whole new generation of young people is growing up with the memory of terror, pain and dead loved ones at the hands of Israelis radicalizing them for the next round of bloodshed.

Juan Cole has a thoughtful post about the true nature of Hezbollah and the current conflict.

South Dakota voters reject abortion law

Recent polling suggests SD's voters are on track to defeat the state's draconian new abortion law by a big margin come November.

The Mason Dixon poll sampled 800 registered voters and found that 47% plan to vote No on Referred Law 6 in November, while 39% of respondents would uphold the abortion ban.

The law has been nick-named the Napoli Law after the clueless, and rather sickening Senator Bill Napoli, who has some... interesting ideas about who would qualify for an exemption under the enormously restrictive law.

UN to Lewis Mackenzie: You don't know what you're talking about

BigCityLib links to the Mackenzie slapdown from EDWARD MORTIMER, director of communications, executive office of the Secretary-General, United Nations. He offers a stinging rebuttal to MacKenzie's biased interpretation of a week old e-mail with the facts of what really happened and was really reported the day of the attack.

Give war a chance - What could possibly go wrong?

At least 57 refugee civilians, mostly women and children huddled in a basement in Quana died early this morning under an Israeli Airforce bombardment.

These deaths can be directly laid at the feet of the world powers that made the cold calculation of letting Israel draw some blood for a week or two before allowing a ceasefire. And the cringing bootlickers among world leaders sacrificing decades of honest broker status and international respect to suck up to their Neo-con idols.

Naming no names.

Updated: Billmon explains why the show must go on.

Oscar Peterson being harassed

CTV Newsnet just did an interview with 80 year old Jazz Giant Oscar Peterson in his home in Mississauga. He's been dealing with an escalating pattern of abuse from a pack of racists harassing him in his home.

Jesus Christ!

Is this Mississauga in 2006 or Mississippi in 1956?

Updated with link.

Mako 1934 - 2006

You remember him as the old wizard who also does the opening voice-over in Conan. He broke down a lot of barriers and did the all time greatest cartoon opening voice-over ever.

For a long time I wanted to put "Shapeshifting Master of Darkess" on my business card.

Gerard Kennedy?

I think James Laxer is right here. Kennedy is the real threat to both the Tories and NDP. I also strongly agree with his post's last sentence.

Is it Chinese that uses the same ideogram for both crisis and opportunity?

The climb down begins?

Both sides underestimated the other side's beligerance and capability. Neither side had an exit strategy if things hyper-escalated, which they did... and now:

'OK, we'll all let go together on the count of three...'

Um... We'd like off this ride now please....

Saturday link blast

• Salutin on Root Causes "I don't think Stephen Harper likes Canada much"
• www.samizdata.net The only type of conservatism I have anything approaching sympathy with is the Libertarian strain. Comes from growing up reading Heinlein novels. I respect that unlike the current dominant conservative ideologies Libertarians want both money and people to be free. I see some contradictions, a naivete about the rational actor and a blindness to the unrestricted power being accumulated by corporations but for internal consistency they beat all the other strains of right wing thought.
• Alertnet Alerting humanitarians to emergencies.
  
• On The Road I'd buy On The Road, the scroll
  
• Lebanon - 1982 and now From Counterpunch. Bloody, destabilizing meatgrinder Part Two
  
• Bloggers Against Torture Join the anti-torture Blogathon
  
• Clinton to Coulter - Only gay when it comes to evil, crazy bitches From Crooks and Liars, Letterman spoofs Ann Coulter
  
• Bill Hicks - Bullies of the world Greatest comedian ever.
• Message for the day Sigh. More of the same here.
  

Shameless and Despicable

The Tories are actually trying to cash in on the suffering in Lebanon.

Lewis MacKenzie or the man's wife - who do you believe?

Lewis MacKenzie offered his interpretation of Major Paeta Derek Hess-von Kruedener's beliefs about the presence of Hezbollah militants using the UN post for cover - while failing to mention that he was the keynote speaker at a pro Israel rally the next day.

The Major's wife on the other hand, has flatly stated that she believes the assault was intentional. Israel is investigating the incident and refuses to allow the UN to be involved in the investigation.

Ireland's government has proven considerably less credulous than Canada's; Defense Minister Willie O'Dea and Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern have made it clear they flatly don't believe the attack was accidental. Ireland has pulled back it's UN troops, as has Australia.

The four monitors, who belonged to the UN Truce Supervision Organisation, were not the first UN peacekeepers to die during Israel's bloody attempt to stop Hizbollah militants firing rockets across its northern border.
A Nigerian member of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) was killed in Housh, a suburb of Tyre, when his house was demolished by an airstrike.
But while the death of the peacekeeper in his home angered the UN, the attack on the well-known bunker marked clearly on military maps available to Israeli forces left peacekeepers seething.
The entire Unifil presence in Tyre has withdrawn to the force headquarters a few miles south along the coast at Naqoura but yesterday a few peacekeepers who used to be based in the city went to recover personal possessions. "The guys who died were my friends," said a Belgian captain. "The situation is crazy."

Australia's Deputy Prime Minister was even blunter:

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, who served with the Australian Army in the Vietnam war, blamed rogue elements in the Israeli military for the escalation of violence.
"There is a rogue element in the Israeli military machine and it's about time the world called a spade a spade and recognised that that element has been there for several years and continues. "
In 1996 the Fijians, the poor old Fijians, maintaining a UN compound in exactly the same area, took a hit which killed 104 people sheltering in the UN compound."

Must be nice to have a government that stands up for it's people and stands behind it's troops.

In Israel, the penny drops

From Haaretz:

It is an illusion to hope that the 700,000 Lebanese refugees will direct their fury at their government, or that the population that still remains in place will evict the Hezbollah members from among it. As far as the population is concerned, responsibility for its catastrophe lies entirely with Israel, and failure to cooperate with whoever fights against Israel would be considered national treason. It was foolish to assume that the Lebanese political elite would dare to confront Hezbollah and use force against it. And anyway, who was even capable of using force? The Lebanese Army, whose bases were bombed as well?....

There is no military solution for this situation. IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz has already implied that the solution is political. The prime minister, who bears overall responsibility and will be required to give an accounting in the future, would do well not to lag behind the person who in any case will pass him the hot potato.

And a word about the price of American support. Sometimes it seems as if U.S. President George W. Bush wants Israel both to destroy Lebanon and to sustain painful losses. That way, Israel provides him with an excellent alibi for the war in Iraq: The fight against terror is global, the blood price is the same, the methods of operation and the means are identical, and the time needed for victory is long. The Israeli vassal is serving its master no less than the master is providing for its needs.

Emphasis added

The 'Hiding among Civilians' myth

Hezbollah fighters - terrorists if you prefer - have a policy of avoiding civilians. Not for any humanitarian reason, just because hiding among them is a guaranteed way of getting turned in by collaborators.

updated to fix clumsy phrasing spotted by commentator

Ann Coulter continues her descent into insanity

Bill Clinton is gay see, because he really likes to sleep with women.

In Ann Coulter's world this makes perfect sense.

All the King's Horses...

Peter W. Galbraith was the United States ambassador to Croatia, so he has a fair amount of experience with irredeemable failure of policy and unstoppable collapse. He points out that the American Iraqi mission is already over, it's just politically impossible to acknowledge it.

WHAT is the mission of the United States military in Iraq now that the insurgency has escalated into a full-blown civil war? According to the Bush administration, it is to support a national unity government that includes all IraqÂ’s major communities: the Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. O.K., but this raises another question: What does the Iraqi government govern?

And yet the Neo-Cons are now desperately grasping at the straws of the hope that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon will provide them with a proxy victory over Iran and Syria and pull the whole Neo-Con Middle-Eastern redemption fantasy out of the fires of humiliating defeat.

Can the world survive these naive utopian fantasists until 2008?

Chicago forces Big Box retailers to pay living wage

By a vote of 35 to 14, the Chicago city council yesterday approved a new ordinance requiring large retailers in the city to phase in a living wage for their employees of $10 per hour plus $3 per hour in benefits-- the highest minimum wage established for any industry sector in the country. If signed by the mayor, the law would raise pay for tens of thousands of workers in retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Toys R Us, Lowe's and Home Depot. A broad coalition of organizations including ACORN, labor unions and church groups worked together for its passage.

Municipalities, provinces and states are beginning to catch on to the externalization game whereby companies offload the costs of their employees basic survival needs onto local governments, public health systems, foodbanks and social services. Catch on and finally start calling such companies on their ways.

Of course the predictable suspects have shrieked like branded calves at this requirement to pay their employees enough to survive. They claim it will destroy their profit margin and keep them from building any more stores in Chicago. Of course after Santa Fe created a living wage of $9.50 per hour for large employers, Wal-Mart asked for approval to build a new Supercenter.

It isn't over yet, Mayor Daley who opposes the ordinance could still veto it. However the vote was a fairly veto-proof margin in favor and it would be his first veto in 17 years and it would be on behalf of Walmart. The optics would suck.

Did David Kelly really kill himself?

It was 2003 and Western governments were savagely lashing out at anyone questioning the pretexts for the rush to war with Iraq. In October, Robert Novak was used as the stalking horse by the Bush administration to punish Joseph Wilson for his public critique by outing his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, endangering her and her entire network and ending her career. Earlier in the year, in the UK, the Blair government had maliciously outed weapons inspector David Kelly as the source for a BBC story alleging the case for war had been 'sexed up'.

Within days he was dead.

And very quickly the death was ruled a suicide. Very, very quickly. Now however the case for Dr Kelly committing suicide is collapsing like a house of cards.

How far were some forces willing to go to protect the march to war?

Disgusting Cringing Bootlicker

Asked about UN head Kofi Annan's statement suggesting Israel had targeted the outpost, Mr Harper said: "I certainly doubt that to be the case".

"The government of Israel has been cooperating with us in our evacuation efforts, in our efforts to move Canadian citizens out of Lebanon and also trying to keep our own troops that are on the ground, involved in the evacuation, out of harm's way," he said.

And my favorite piece of blame the victim, defensiveness:

At the same time, he questioned why the UN had manned the outpost in Lebanon near the Israeli border as bombs exploded all around.

"We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war during obvious danger to these individuals," he said.

"Bitch shouldn't have been wearing those 'come fuck me' pumps after dark in that neighborhood. It's her fault and she probably wanted it."

Because it's their job jackass. Specifically it was their duty to monitor Israel's departure from and respect for Lebanese territory after the last time this happened.

But we encourage you not to draw any logical conclusions from that Steve, you toadying neo-con starfucker.

Want to do that poll again CanWest? I suspect the Canadian people have some exciting new numbers for you.

Update: The UN outpost contacted the IDF ten times over six hours begging them to stop shelling them:

The base near Khiam came under intense Israeli fire 21 times Tuesday — including 12 hits within 100 metres and four direct hits — from 1:20 p.m. until contact was lost with the four peacekeepers inside at 7:17 p.m., Jane Lute, assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, told the UN Security Council in New York.

Officials in the outpost called the Israeli army 10 times during those six hours, and each time an army official promised to have the bombing stopped, according to a preliminary UN report on the incident, which was shown to an Associated Press reporter.

Once it became clear those pleas were being ignored, the force’s commander sought the involvement of top officials in New York, a senior UN official in New York said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation of the incident was not yet complete.

Israeli officials had told the United Nations that the bombing around the base was part of an “an aerial preparation for a ground operation,” said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

UN officials said the observation position was well-marked, and a picture the world body released today showed the three-storey building was painted white with the letters “UN” emblazoned in large black letters on all sides, and a light blue UN flag hung from a nearby flagpole that was roughly 15 metres high.

Classic CanWest Distortion

Almost two-thirds of Canadians believe Israeli attacks justified

This is the late afternoon Calgary Herald online headline for the CanWest news service story. The headline for the same story in the Calgary Herald's hardcopy edition this morning - and presumably other CanWest outlets - was even less ambiguous:

Two of three Canadians back Israel, says poll

Well, that seems fairly clear, doesn't it?

But wait, the actual results are that "Almost two in three Canadians believe Israel's military action in Lebanon was either somewhat or completely justified"

Well immediately after Hezbollah crossed an internationally recognized border and abducted two soldiers I was prepared to believe some kind of military response was justified. Very, very quickly the disproportionate scale of the response passed my line for what was justified. So technically I could be described as thinking Israel was somewhat justified, at least on the 20th, which we don't discover until the eighth paragraph in, was when the poll was taken.

Some 'shit', to use a word recently popularized by the leader of the free world, has happened since then.

Can it be accurately said, that someone who on the 20th was feeling enough reservations to think Israel was only 'somewhat justified' could on the 25th be baldly stated to be backing Israel? Obviously not. It was bad enough that even the unspeakably lousy Calgary Herald felt it necessary to change the headline in it's online edition to make it slightly less objectionable.

Bottom line: the Israel right or wrong crowd at CanWest only plays these kind of sleazy distortion games when they think they have to. The real state of Canadian opinion on this subject scares the hell out of them. Enough to want to distort it in the hopes of changing it.

At least now that they've dropped the CP and are using their own news service they don't have to re-write other service's wire copy to make Israel look better and all Arabs look like savages.

Calgary One Million

Calgary's population hit the one million mark - arbitrarily, as of midnight. Whether the one millionth arrival first appeared at the maternity ward or at the Greyhound station off a bus from St. John's is unknown.

We have an infrastructure for about half our current population, and while yes, the jobs really do grow on trees out here, the apartments don't. We've all heard the stories of the folks making $25 plus an hour, and living in a shelter. A one night count back in May pegged the homeless population at 3,436. This was a very conservative lowball number.

Here's a housing aid link to pass on to anyone you know thinking of coming to Cowtown, they provide stuff like low interest damage deposit loans, credit counseling and emergency utilities help.

I have to go cram myself into a packed train now...