Month: April 2005

Serbia-Montenegro’s ambassador in Washington finally managed to deliver a proper smackdown to the Washington Post, castigating the publication for its vulgar misrepresentation of the situation in Kosovo. The Post’s editorial of March 24 was basically a rehash of ICG propaganda, along the lines of a pro-Albanian independence campaign that has been waged since late January. It was literally begging for a response, and what a response it was!

So far, every time the Embassy has tried to react to the routine demonization of Serbs in the media – and there are many more occasions on which it should have, but did not – the results were clumsy, ineffective and weak. Which is why the kind of language Ambassador Vujacic uses in the April 2 letter to the Post is such a surprise. Instead of futile appeals to “human rights” and democracy, he cited the sum of Albanian rule in the past 6 years: expulsions, destruction, violence. Then he delivered the punch:

The shameful reality in Kosovo can no longer be blamed on Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian “nationalism” or the unfulfilled promises of the international community. Serbia is ruled by the democrats who overthrew Mr. Milosevic and the international community has so far, if anything, shown disproportionate patience with the province’s terrible human rights record.

Serbia and the international community share the dream of an autonomous, responsible, multiethnic Kosovo, safe for all citizens. Ignoring reality, recycling false excuses or appeasing extremists is not the right course of action.

Continue reading “Serbian envoy delivers Post smackdown”

In Backtalk:

Pete Komen’s Law of Politics: Never believe anything until it is officially denied.

Marcia Schneider: Ralph Nader should talk about us.

Peter Yff: We don’t know what really happened in Halabja.

Greg Cunneen asks: If the purpose of “rendition” is not torture, then why are prisoners being sent to torture-friendly non-coalition countries, rather than torture-averse coalition countries?

And more…

—

James Howard, of PowerSwitch.org.uk: Just reread your posting from December 12, 2004 [“The Economics of Oil“] where you wrote:

“Curious about the present level of POT’s popularity I checked Google News and found that in the past few days POT has been mentioned in articles on numerous dissident sites, including Axis of Logic, Al-Jazeerah, ProgressiveTrail.org, From the Wilderness, Slashdot, DisInfo.com, CounterPunch, Znet, Common Dreams, AlterNet, Mother Jones, and Washington Dispatch. Two Indian news sites also mentioned POT but no mainstream Western sources did.”

I wonder if the recent Hirsch report to the US Department of Energy, the cover story in Moneyweek, the mentions in Bloomberg news and the recent Deutsche bank study would sway your mind on the matter?

Furthermore, have you read Michael T. Klare’s Resource Wars? Vital reading for anyone antiwar (should be everyone!).

Sam Koritz: My point in the quote above is that antiwar sources are promoting a fringe theory, peak oil theory (“POT”) — the idea that petroleum production is about to peak, or has already peaked. Despite the sources that you cite, I still believe that POT is a pretty fringe idea — but this is a minor point. My main point is that, barring some sudden shock to the system, the price mechanism is perfectly capable of replacing and reducing the use of petroleum, without a serious crisis. To argue otherwise (besides being wrong, in my opinion) is to provide patriotic Americans with a reasonable motivation for US military control of oil-rich regions. To what I’ve already written on the subject I’ll only add a quote from Victor Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner’s Practical Speculation:

… [Julian Simon’s] discovery arose from his attempt to find out why real commodities prices were constantly decreasing and why predictions of commodity shortages are always wrong. He likened the situation to looking at a tub of water and marking the water level, and then observing people putting water from the tub into buckets and taking it away. But when the tub is examined again, the level is higher than it was at the start. He attributes the constantly increasing water to discoveries of improved methods of production of goods that are in shortage and the development of substitutes. “More people and increased income cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity and prompt investors to search for solutions. These solutions eventually lead to prices dropping lower than before the scarcity occurred.”

Israel’s the former, I’m the latter. From Ha’aretz:

After half a century of reticence and recrimination, Israel on Wednesday honored nine Egyptian Jews recruited as agents-provocateur in what became one of the worst intelligence bungles in the country’s history.

Israel was at war with Egypt when it hatched a plan in 1954 to ruin its rapprochement with the United States and Britain by firebombing sites frequented by foreigners in Cairo and Alexandria.

But Israeli hoped the attacks, which caused no casualties, would be blamed on local insurgents collapsed when the young Zionist bombers were caught and confessed at public trials. Two were hanged. The rest served jail terms and emigrated to Israel.

Embarrassed before the West, the fledgling Jewish state long denied involvement. It kept mum even after its 1979 peace deal with Egypt, fearing memories of the debacle could sour ties.

“Although it is still a sensitive situation, we decided now to express our respect for these heroes,” President Moshe Katzav said after presenting the three surviving members of the bomber ring with certificates of appreciation at a Jerusalem ceremony. …

Now tell me that speculation about Mossad complicity in the assassination of Rafik Hariri is out of bounds. (I don’t happen to suspect such complicity, by the way, but the Israeli government’s track record provides no reason to dismiss it out of hand.)

Justin Raimondo wrote this article in December 2003 about this Pope standing up for peace.

Justin Raimondo wrote this article in December 2003 about this Pope standing up for peace.

I found this leftover April Fool’s joke linked from Roger Simon’s WarBlog. It is a joke, right? If it isn’t, at least tell me the title of the blog is.