Category: Networks

Leave it to the brilliant Noam Chomsky to peer deep inside the brain of the Anglosphere and expose our fascist ways:

Political leaders in both Washington and London, which assisted in last year’s American-led invasion, insist that what they want to establish in Iraq is a government that answers to the wants, needs and goals of its own people.

Chomsky doesn’t believe it.

“Is there any evidence that the U.S. or Britain has tried to do that anywhere?” he asked.

“They’re imperial powers.”

So there, mes amis. And you know he’s right about the US and the UK’s historical failure to support even a single democratic state — if you ignore India, Canada, Mexico, all of South America, most of Africa, Europe, the rest of Asia, and Australia/New Zealand.

Who does this deranged bastard think he’s kidding?

If you haven’t seen Mark Steyn’s One Year On article, go check it out. He compares his predictions from a year ago with those of the Progressives, ending with this:

ONE YEAR ON: Iraq’s provisional constitution is the most progressive in the Arab world. Business is booming. Oil production is up. The historic marshlands of southern Iraq, environmentally devastated by Saddam, are being restored. In February, attacks on coalition forces fell to the lowest level since the liberation. Attacks on the oil pipelines have fallen by 75% since the autumn. In a BBC poll, some 60% of Iraqis say their lives are much better or somewhat better than a year ago; under 20% say they’re worse. Seventy per cent expect their lives to be better still a year from now, and only five per cent say worse. Eighty per cent of the country is pleasant and civilised, and the Sunni Triangle will follow. Not a bad year’s work.

That’s what we call a Happy Ending.

Tom Friedman gets Spain right in today’s column:

I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep their troops in Iraq — to make clear that in cleaning up their own democracy, they do not want to subvert the Iraqis’ attempt to build one of their own. Otherwise, the Spanish vote will not be remembered as an act of cleansing, but of appeasement.

My dream is that the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain announce tomorrow that in response to the Madrid bombing, they are sending a new joint force of 5,000 troops to Iraq for the sole purpose of protecting the U.N.’s return to Baghdad to oversee Iraq’s first democratic election.

The notion that Spain can separate itself from Al Qaeda’s onslaught on Western civilization by pulling its troops from Iraq is a fantasy. Bin Laden has said that Spain was once Muslim and he wants it restored that way. As a friend in Cairo e-mailed me, a Spanish pullout from Iraq would only bring to mind Churchill’s remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Right on, dude.

While we’re all preoccupied with gay marriage and potty-mouthed radio shows, the Spaniards have had to confront terror attacks. Unfortunately, they failed to make a serious response, as you can see by reading Iberian Notes on Sunday’s election.

Don Quixote, your people need you.

Evidence points to Al Qaeda in addition to their claims of credit:

MADRID, Spain – The wave of bombings Thursday that killed at least 190 train commuters and injured 1,240 others could have been the work of Muslim extremists, Spanish officials said after finding a van carrying detonators and an Arabic-language tape containing verses from the Quran.

Spain has a long history of ETA terrorism, and a longer history of conflict with Islam, so the question is how much influence this tragedy will have by way of stiffening the Spaniards’ resolve to carry out the war to its conclusion. While PM Aznar has been a strong supporter of the Coalition in Afghanistan and Iraq, he’s not had much support from his people.

That may change now.

UPDATE: Tim Blair points to Iberian Notes, a leading Spanish blog.

Local burger chain Burgerville is switching to hippie meat:

In its ongoing commitment to using the highest quality ingredients available from the Northwest, Burgerville met with Oregon Country Beef four years ago about becoming its beef supplier. At the time, the small co-op of family ranches was unable to meet the volume required by the 39-unit Northwest fast-food chain. Today, Burgerville will become one of Oregon Country Beef’s largest customers purchasing more than 1.75 million pounds of beef each year. All of Burgerville’s burgers, from the signature Tillamook Cheeseburger and Pepper Bacon Burger to the regular hamburger, will feature the natural beef.

Cool.

The UK Sunday Express reported yesterday that coalition forces have got Osama and his bestest buddies boxed in on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, and his capture is nigh. Pakistan offers the kind of denials that go along with an ongoing military or police operation that’s close to completion:

When asked if 8,000 para-military troops were being sent to the tribal areas in addition to the 4,000 already stationed there on request from the political administration, Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said requirements for operational deployment were determined by the military authorities and no such request had been received from the political administration of tribal areas.

This is a hot story overseas, but not so hot in the US, where CNN coverage is most prominent:

Government sources told CNN the Pakistani army is ready to conduct a big operation against al Qaeda and Taliban elements in the Wana area.

Cynical wags suggest that the Bush Administration doesn’t want to capture Osama until October, but just between you and me I don’t think the timing matters. The Kerry/Edwards/Clark argument against the Iraq operation was that it was a distraction from the hunt for Osama, whose capture would clearly put that saw to rest. The newly-cooperative attitude of the Pakistani intelligence service sprang from the same well as Libya, Syria, and Iran’s new-leafishness so one man’s distraction is another’s incentive.

Hat tip to Sitarama.

This picture taken in Seattle yesterday says it all about life in the Northwest, earnestly.

Another year, another E-Tech Conference from Bill O’Reilly’s evil twin, and once more technology’s being co-opted to seduce gullible young people into a political movement somewhere to the left of Kucinich. It’s particularly amusing that the Cult of the Sacred Camel had a special “Digital Democracy teach-in” without anybody who actually believes in democracy and understands digital technology, with the exception of Jeff Jarvis, and nobody at all to speak from the center or the right of the political spectrum. They pulled a similar stunt last year with a panel on Warblogging that was devoid of actual warbloggers. I complained to Doc Searls and Dan Gillmor about that panel, but by now it’s obvious what the scam is so no fuss from me — O’Reilly is obviously trying to pick up where L. Ron Hubbard left off when he died. O’Reilly’s pricey conferences are the birthplace of the bubble that ate the Dean campaign, so it’s a natural that flim-flam Joe Trippi was a featured speaker.

Here’s a couple of good takes on David Kay’s actual findings from Iraq. First, see Totten on what Kay actually said to Tom Brokaw:

TB: The president described Iraq as a gathering threat ? a gathering danger. Was that an accurate description?

DK: I think that?s a very accurate description.

TB: But an imminent threat to the United States?

DK: Tom, an imminent threat is a political judgment. It?s not a technical judgment. I think Baghdad was actually becoming more dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier if the war had not intervened.

And then see Belmont Club’s take on the intelligence:

The liberal sneering at the American failure to find WMD stockpiles in Iraq is like making fun of a man who, having been tested for diabetes, receives a negative result but is told that what he really has is cancer. The US rightly feared that rogue states were developing weapons of mass destruction but did not have the breadth of imagination to conceive of the extraordinary web of cooperation between Pakistan, North Korea, European arms dealers and the Arabian states, who contributing according to their abilities, solved the problem of the atomic bomb. We went looking for an Iraqi bomb and found an international one.

The sneering class is already claiming that Kay says the WMD threat in Iraq was all hype and lying, but that’s not what he’s saying at all. It’s a fact that he didn’t find WMD stockpiles in Iraq, but it’s also a fact that he found all the ingredients of a weapons program that was in significant violation of th UN sanctions. Given the ineffectiveness of the CIA and the long run-up to the war thanks to French obstructionism, this is about all that what one would expect him to find. So you won’t be hearing me saying “Bush lied, and Kay said so.”