Month: December 2005

Why do Bush-boosting, pro-war Americans especially seem to find it impossible to imagine walking in another’s shoes?  Via Jim Henley and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, you’ll recognize the typically American Bushie right-winger attitude in the following Al Jazeera post:

The following exchange took place in between an Anonymous poster and myself in the comments section of this blog:

Anonymous:

Though you broadcast these screeds in detail because it is "news" that you have a "duty" to report, when I search the Al Jazeera site for the phrase "honor killings" I get nada. Not a single hit. Don’t you think that the murder of women throughout the Islamic world by their uncles and fathers and husbands because these women have the audacity to date who they want or express what they think is newsworthy?

Me:

You make mention that our website does not mention "Honor Killings" – that is true since we don’t use American English – we use English English.

Try your search using "honour" instead – or just click here  for Google results.

You see, sometimes little cultural misunderstands can cause such a big fuss.

Let’s keep talking. Enjoy the weekend..!

By Mohammed posting on the Al Jazeera staff’s weblog, Don’t Bomb Us . 

"Let’s keep talking," Mohammed says.  But Mohammed’s cheerful optimism causes me to cynically recall this line from an old song:

All lies and jest, still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Who to believe? Here’s Allawi’s account:

Iraq’s former prime minister Iyad Allawi said gunmen tried to assassinate him in Shi’ite Islam’s holiest shrine on Sunday, forcing him to cut short an election campaign visit pursued by an angry mob.

“It appeared to be an assassination attempt,” the secular Shi’ite said on his return to Baghdad from the holy city of Najaf.

He said 60-70 men in black, armed with guns and knives, set upon his party as he prayed at the Imam Ali mosque.

Here’s an Iraqi police captain’s account:

A crowd hurling shoes, rocks and tomatoes forced former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to cut short a visit on Sunday to Iraq’s holiest Shi’ite shrine during a campaign trip to the city of Najaf, police officers said.

A spokeswoman for Allawi, a secular Shi’ite, said she had no information on the incident but confirmed that Allawi, who is challenging the ruling Shi’ite Islamist Alliance bloc at next week’s parliamentary election, had been in Najaf during the day.

A police captain, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a large crowd of worshippers at the Imam Ali mosque hurled sandals and shoes at Allawi — a grave insult in Iraqi culture.

A second police officer said some of Allawi’s bodyguards fired in the air to disperse the crowd and that also threw rocks, sticks, tomatoes and other projectiles. Police also intervened to break up the disturbance, he said.

Both policemen said they believed supporters of militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were responsible for the disturbances, though evidence for this was unclear.

“When Allawi entered the shrine, a few people, believed to be Sadrists picked up batons and threatened to attack him,” the police captain said at the scene after the incident.

“His American and Iraqi guards fired in the air when everyone started throwing shoes and sandals at him.”

I like the shoe story better.

The first anniversary of Ukraine’s U.S. government-backed -and-subsidized “Orange Revolution” provoked this bitter comment from Yevgen Zakharov, co-chair of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, who last year was manning the barricades in Kiev against the supposedly evil Leonid Kuchma:

“Turns out it wasn’t a revolution after all. All the same people are still in power. It’s just that those who were first in line before are now second in line, and those who were second in line are now first. But all the same names are at the front of the line.”

How does that song go? “Meet the new boss — same as the old boss.”

Amazingly, the European Union has just awarded Ukraine “free market” status — this is said of a country where meat prices are set by the government, and price controls are so stringent that, in many localities, meat is unavailable at any price. As Matthew Schofield of Knight-Ridder reports:

“Yushchenko’s team increased pensions after retirees complained they could no longer afford meat. At the same time, however, he shut down the black market meat import business, fulfilling a pledge to fight corruption. The result? Demand from pensioners for meat grew, while supply decreased. Prices doubled, leaving pensioners again complaining that they couldn’t afford meat and making matters worse for millions more Ukrainians.”

That’s a “free market” that only the EU could love!

In the wake of this phony “pro-Western” revolution, corruption wafts its way through Ukrainian society like a poisonous fog. As the Times of London informs us:

“Reporters revealed that Andriy, his 19-year-old son, drove a top-of-the-range BMW and spent hundreds of dollars in fashionable Kiev nightspots. It later emerged that the President’s son owned the rights to the logos and slogans that helped to sell the Orange Revolution.”

Gee, how did Yushie Junior get those “rights”?

After the U.S. government poured millions of taxpayer dollars into financing this phony “revolution,” this is what they have to show for it: a Ukraine still crippled by corruption, and, as Yushchenko’s former chief of staff (who resigned in disgust) put it: “Corruption is even worse than before.”

Ukraine is still mired in statism and corruption, but, oh wait … one thing has been accomplished.

Just remember: you read it here — and here, and here — first.

Hey, I’m not saying Tony’s necessarily completely right about this –

now im not saying that Charles Johnson and Roger L. Simon are in bed with the Bush Administration, or the Instapundit. those guys are fair and balanced. any time the Republicans make horrible mistakes, the first people to point them out are Little Green Footballs and Professor Reynolds.

but i am saying that in light of the latest example of Propaganda from Above – Pajamas Media is starting to look fishier and fishier.

But what if he’s on the right track?  It’s worth speculating about, surely – after all, they did it in Iraq.  It would explain the Pajamistas’ fake ads, and why they aren’t even trying to fix their crappy website.    Anyway, check out his argument – why im so glad im not a Right Wing Blogger in 2005-2006 or a member of Pajamas Media

Later, from tony’s comments – -Uh-oh, looks like Tony hit a nerve.  Pajamaman Jeff Goldstein comes out brandishing rhetorical sledgehammers.

UPDATE:  I just went over to osm.org while checking the links in this post and look what they have on their front page up at the top:

Have traditional American journalists really not yet discovered the independent media in Iraq: local bloggers who risk their lives to offer real-time reports, led by people like dentist-brothers Mohammed and Omar at Iraq the Model? Today, Iraq the Model offers an update on the mid-December national elections that you won’t see in the independent U.S. media.

Aren’t those the guys Jarvis had a mental breakdown over when Alex at Martini Republic and Juan Cole blogged about wondering if they weren’t a little CIA-front-like?  Why, yes, I do believe they are.  How ironic that the Pajamahadeen would trot them out to represent REAL journalism in Iraq.

Via the HuffPuff:

“The United States Agency for International Development is seeking applications for an Assistance Agreement from qualified sources to design and implement a social and economic stabilization program impacting ten Strategic Cities, identified by the United States Government as critical to the defeat of the Insurgency in Iraq. The number of Strategic Cities may expand or contract over time. USAID plans to provide approximately $1,020,000,000 over two years to meet the objectives of the Program. An additional option year may be considered amounting to $300 million at the discretion of USAID. Funds are not yet available for this program.”

The only “social and economic stabilization program” that will work is bringing our troops home. That alone will end the insurgency, and motivate the Iraqis to start taking care of their own security.

The most important “Strategic City” isn’t in Iraq, however: it’s Washington, D.C., where Congress is being buffeted by the rising tide of antiwar sentiment in this country — and where nothing less than sending in tanks to secure the U.S. Capitol may be enough to do the trick.

Nikolas Gvosdev, editor of The National Interest, takes down Reason magazine’s Cathy “”there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks” Young:

“How easily Americans play hard and fast with the truth. History is now being rewritten so that all semi-autocratic, dictatorial regimes in the region must now be ‘pro-Moscow. So Young writes, ‘Nongovernmental organizations were instrumental in bringing down authoritarian pro-Moscow regimes in Ukraine and Georgia.’ Kuchma and Shevardnadze were PRO-MOSCOW? That’s news to me. Shevardnadze was a constant thorn in Russia’s side, the one who brought U.S. forces into the country for the train and equip program, the one who constantly refused Russia’s demands to allow Russian forces to enter Georgian territory and who pushed hard for the complete removal of all Russian bases, an instrumental figure in getting the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline under way. Kuchma–let’s see, the one who helped to form GUUAM–the U.S. attempt to counterbalance Russian influence in the region, who sent troops to Iraq, who did his utmost to frustrate Russian attempts to create a Russian-dominated economic union. But no matter. It spoils the narrative, of pro-Russian autocrats and pro-American democrats.”

Ms. Young, yet another neocon masquerading as a “libertarian,” is outraged that the Russians are taking measures to ensure against a repeat of the U.S.-funded “color-coded” coups that were victorious in Ukraine and Georgia. She is particularly peeved that Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch whose Communist Party connections enabled him to loot entire industries, now finds himself in some legal difficulties. The great problem for Young and other would-be “democracy”-exporters, however, is that the Russian people don’t like the meddling of Western governments in their affairs, and are supportive of President Vladimir Putin, whom the neocons have targeted as their next “Hitler.” As Gvosdev puts it:

“The U.S. is running into what I call the ‘democracy paradox’ in a number of countries–what happens when those who share your vision are a real minority and couldn’t win at the ballot box? In the 1990s, we told our democratic reformers in Russia to ignore democracy and rule by decree. This is the conundrum we face in the Middle East, and increasingly will face in Latin America as well.”

As long as U.S. taxpayers are funding ostensibly “private” organizations like “Freedom House” and other do-gooder NGOs to further George W. Bush’s Trotskyite policy of worldwide “regime change,” we shouldn’t be surprised that the Russians and others are closing to the doors on our fingers. And it isn’t as if Putin is putting restrictions on Western NGOs without popular support, as Gvosdev points out:

“Some 59 percent of YOUNG Russians (e.g. those who came to maturity in the waning days of the USSR or in the post-Soviet period altogether) believe that foreign donors try to use their assistance to Russian NGOs to interfere in Russia’s domestic affairs, and a whopping 72 percent said foreigners should stop trying to impose their ideas on Russian society.

The main consequence of our neo-Jacobin foreign policy is not an upsurge of support for the U.S. and its crazed foreign policy that owes more to Trotsky than to the Founders, but what I have called the boomerang effect — and not just in Russia.