Sunday, May 28, 2006

A Message for the Left

Is there no one on the left who can be stirred into action by genocide? Do you have to base your opinion of Iraq and Iraqis under Saddam Hussein solely on the words and actions of the current American president? What about the hundreds of thousands of dead and exiled Iraqis and those who speak for them? Why not listen to their voices?

Organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, year after year, produced reports like this one. The UN's Special Rapporteur on Iraq did the same, and, in fact, declared Iraqi’s regime to be the worst human rights violator since Hitler. There are numerous websites with documentation as well, such as this one, this one and this and this.

Have you forgotten the work done by Iraqi opposition groups in exile and their appeals to Western leaders such as Bush and Blair? Have you forgotten that Clinton, too, wanted the regime toppled and it was he, as President, who put his signature on the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, and announced it using these words:

"The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership."


Why are you so fixated on the WDM issue? Have you forgotten that most of the democracies in the world believed Saddam Hussein either had or was preparing to resume production of WMD? It wasn't just the US, and certainly not just Bush. The Clinton administration believed it and so did the majority of Congress. Your rote repetition of the "Bush Lied" mantra is sickening.

Are you saying that the leaders in a host of countries like Great Britain, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Ukraine, Australia, Norway, the Philippines, Hungary, Portugal, Netherlands, Iceland and Spain also lied?

If you are, then refute this, this and this, will you?

Your notion, repeated so often as to be nauseating, that because there are other tyrants in the world where there is no oil, then the invasion of Iraq must be only for oil, is never supported with even the tiniest shred of evidence. But then you proceed to engage in the most sophistric arguments imaginable, so it shouldn't be surprising. When asked to name another tyrant whose kill record approximates Saddam Hussein, and who is still massacring people, your best attempt is to name tyrants who have long since gone, or whose record doesn't even come close.

Your position brings to mind a scenario wherein a person walking on the banks of a swift and turbulent river sees three people drowning. One of them is close and within easy reach, but the person on the river bank decides not to save the drowning man for the simple reason that he cannot save all three.

Instead, your best argument is that they should be taught how to swim. Well it's a bit too late, that. At worst, you decry those who make an effort to save the drowning man, simply because they didn't make an argument before hand which pleases you.

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Saturday, May 27, 2006

Liberal catnip blathers - er - blogs again!

Another chapter in the utter nonsense saga that is liberal catnip's blog. Scroll down to her very last bit where she quotes from a speech made by Bush which contains a supposed blooper:
"This is only the beginning," Bush said. "The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation."
Huh?? What blooper, catnip? Seems like reasonably good English and proper sentence structure to me, not to mention a very lofty statement. Was it because your speaking notes tell you he was supposed to say something like this?
"This is only the beginning. The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to American Imperialism and we will not rest until the promise of global domination crushes every people in every nation".

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Europe's Sins

Islamists have been reported returning to Europe to renew the Jidadist struggle against the infidel West.

Remember the man in Afghanistan who was going to be put to death for converting from Islam to Christianity? Italy offered him asylum. Now Italy has been identified as a target by an Islamist terrorist group for having transgressed.

Remember Theo Van Gogh who was murdered for producing a film that highlighted the suppression of women in some Islamic cultures. A sequel is planned and for that the Netherlands is now on the hit list.

France is also targeted for passing a law forbidding school girls from wearing the hijab.

Read more here and here.

Good luck Europe. Better get your act together.

Hat tip to Stefania, Sicilian blogger at Free Thoughts.

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Media Bias Once Again

Blogs just have to be the best thing going. This morning, on my regular blog tour, I, of course, visited Iraq the Model to see what's up in Iraq that we never hear about elsewhere.

Imagine my surprise (not) when I read Omar's critique of CNNs coverage of a press conference by Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, and his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki. I had read a similar account on Google News yesterday and had found it rather disturbing. Both the CNN report and the one I had read suggested Iraq's foreign minister supported Iran's right to develop nuclear technology and for the moment there was no need to worry about them developing nuclear weapons.

Omar translated an Arabic audio clip of the same press conference and here is his version of what Zebari actually said:

"We respect Iran's and every other nation's right to pursue nuclear technology for research purposes and peaceful use given they accept [giving] the internationally required guarantees that this will not lead to an armament race in the region…"

He also provided a link to the audio clip so that people who understand Arabic could make up their own minds, which is a nice touch not often seen in the main stream media world.

This follows a big tizzy earlier in the week in which Canada's National Post published a story which they later retracted saying that Iran was passing legislation that required dress codes of its citizens, including special colours that were to be worn by Jews and Christians, reminiscent of the yellow star forced upon German Jews by the NAZI regime. The left went wild, accusing the National Post and, and by extension, because they are both (gasp!! Oh the horror!!) "right wing", Stephen Harper, too, of fomenting a rush to war.

As it turned out, the National Post apologized and Hansard, the verbatim record of the debate in Parliament, clearly showed that it was members of the Liberal Party caucus who rushed to conclusions, believing every word of the National Post, while Harper viewed the news with skepticism and is on record stating he wanted verification of it. In any case, the Conservative Party was hardly chomping at the bit to rush to war, as so many on the left wanted us to believe.

This leaves me wondering if CNN will also retract and apologize. The media often gets things wrong. The media is biased and there isn't much point in pretending it isn't, even if a particular organ takes pains to minimize it. Every day the media has to select what it will cover from a vast multitude of possible stories and simply the selection therefrom introduces a degree of bias, never mind all the other multitude of ways in which bias leaks in, right up to and, many say more frequently now than ever, opinion pieces being published as though they were the news.

Blogs, however, are filling a much needed role by shining the clear and irrefutable light of truth onto the mainstream press. The National Post-Liberal caucus fiasco was all over the Canadian blogosphere and within hours the evidence was out. Both the National Post was forced to retract and the liberal-left lie about Stephen Harper was exposed.

A third story happening this week is the decision by Stephen Harper to not allow the Ottawa press gallery their usual piranha-like feeding frenzie in the Parliament buildings. Is there any connection? Ya think???

Oh well. It could be worse, I guess. At least Iran and Iraq are talking. I'm sure with the uprisings reported happening in Iran, and despite their efforts to ban any media coverage of them (I wonder why we aren't hearing any protestation from the left about that?), the government in Tehran will want to tread more carefully than it has in recent weeks. After all, ever since the Islamic revolution way back in the days of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's women have been fulfilling their ascribed roll and mass producing more Iranians. There are now a disproportionately large cohort of younger people in Iran who are not particularly thrilled about being placed at risk by their raving lunatic leader and the puppet masters who pull his strings.

(This entry is cross posted on Search)

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Thursday, May 25, 2006

Why I Love Blogs.

1. You can learn all kinds of stuff that the MSM doesn't tell you or tries to keep from you, like all kinds of things going on in Iraq that don't explode and kill.

2. People of like minds can collaborate and inform, providing access to information not easily obtained elsewhere.

3. One can peer into the vacant space between the ears of the lunatic left and marvel at the echo chamber that keeps repeating the same drivel over and over and over.

4. And most of all, one can witness the most stunning and hilarious coups when one astute blogger blows apart the lunatic ravings of another, such as what happened to our dear liberal catnip today, whether she knows it or not. Werner Patels on Politics & Society does a nice job of nailing her to the wall in his 3:53 and 3:58 posts.

Meanwhile, some very interesting things are happening both in Iran and in Eqypt. Rebellion and dissent are on the rise in both places. Read the Egyptian Sandmonkey's blog entries for the past couple of weeks and The Spirit of Man, for Winston's reports on the recent uprisings in his ancestral home, Iran. I firmly believe that the bold strike in Iraq initiated by Tony Blair and George Bush has had ripple effects throughout the region and it would not surprise me in the least if the regimes in both Iran and Egypt will be the next to fall.

The Middle East is in flux and with any luck, democracy will arrive sooner rather than later. There are even some interesting things happening in the Israeli-Palestine arena.

Blog that, catnip.

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Monday, May 22, 2006

Welcome to the Centre of Canada's Socialist LaLa Land

Let me see now. This blog is gonna be about politics and society, here and around the world. I'm going to concentrate on two passions. The first is poking holes in the lunatic leftwing ideology that seems to permeate the political landscape here in my part of the world. I thoroughly enjoy exposing lies and hypocracy, so this should be fun. I'll also deal with Middle Eastern issues, another passion, and just about anything else that catches my eye and makes me want to laugh or puke.

Oh, and I will reserve a special spot for comments aimed at liberal catnip, a little girl leftie who banned me from her website for daring to disagree with her. Such is the childish sensitivity of the looney left. But alas, poor catnip has the dubious distinction of being the prototypical example of leftwing lunacy and arrogance. Look. for example, at her entry of today's date, May 22, 2006. She apparently thinks that lefties hold a monopoly on virtue. Not only that, but she seems to confuse the American political system with a "first past the post" type of democracy. WOW!!! If only she knew. Yes, it does include first past the post elections. But it also includes the Electoral College; the equal representation of states in the Senate; the Supreme Court; and so on.

Enjoy.

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