26 April 2003
Iraqis just say “no”
Today, the Iraqi officials told General Garner that they could resume their work themselves, and did not need Western nongovernmental organizations and charities who are arriving here to help. They said they did not want Western overseers or helpers, and insisted they were self-sufficient.[source]
Oh, Canada!
The mayor of Toronto embarasses himself, his city and his country in a disjointed and incoherent TV interview. The local press says “It comes as no surprise around Toronto city hall that Mayor Mel Lastman doesn't always have an iron grip on the facts”. Despite the problems because of the WHO health advisory, the mayor claimed to have never heard of the organization. [source]Tales from Iran
One of the putative reformers in Iraq is admitting that he is afraid of the Americans and that the Iranian mullahocracy has failed – Mr. Nabavi, a close adviser to President Khatami saidYes, I am afraid. The Americans are apparently able do whatever they like; no matter the United Nations or even the Western public opinion […]If that last thought becomes common then the invasion will have won.[source, source]The fact that people prefer a foreign invasion to living in the Islamic Republic is only the sign of our failure.[…]
the best defense of Iran against the Americans would be to reinforce its democracy in order to deprive them of their [America] arguments
25 April 2003
Slowly the screw turns
[source]The Bush administration, seeking to bolster an emerging team of Palestinian leaders, is pressing Arab and European countries to cut back diplomatic contacts with Yasser Arafat and to divert funding of Palestinian activities
23 April 2003
Deporting terror sponsors
Matt Welch has an excellent suggestion for the first person to be deported under the new domestic security laws.Under a draft law being circulated in Washington, D.C., right now, […] Non-citizen residents could be deported on mere suspicion of threatening national security.Welch suggests making Prince Bandar of the Saudi Entity the first to go. Excellent choice! [source]
15 April 2003
Taking out the trash
US forces in Iraq are stepping back to let the locals get a piece of the action [source].In the densely populated northeastern slum area of Saddam City, U.S. Marines pulled back to allow local people to hunt "mujahideen" volunteer fighters holed up in the area.Yes, the Iraqis are watching this kind of thing and saying “I gotta get me some of that!”:"The locals said they wanted to take charge of Saddam City and we said: 'Roger that'," Lieutenant-Colonel Lew Craparotta, commander of a Marine unit that moved back from the fringes of the suburb, told Reuters.
U.S. Marine Sergeant Daniel Finn told Reuters the enemy opened fire on U.S. troops from six bunkers on the western bank.Who can blame the Iraqis after all they have endured?"We're not sure how many of them there were, but they opened fire and now they're dead," he said, adding that he guessed there were 15 to 20 Iraqis or other nationals involved.
13 April 2003
Arabs seethe over presence of Israeli battery
You can't make this stuff up [source, source]:The battery was discovered at a computer in a prominent advertising agency where one of the employees, a Sudanese national, was so upset about the issue that he took it up with Apple Centre and contacted the GDN."We were having trouble with our clock so we thought it might have been the battery," said the employee, who would not be named.
"As it turned out this was not the problem but we were surprised to find out that the computer contained a part made in Israel.
"But this raises interesting questions about how widespread it may be. We could have Israeli parts in our mobile phones, cameras and even our vehicles and not even know it."
11 April 2003
Palestinians confront another burning bridge
Nabeel Musawi, one of the main members of the INC enaged in the following exchange:Will the Palestinians be welcome to remain in a new, post-Saddam Iraq?[source]“Absolutely not,” Musawi snapped.
Journalist ethics
A while back The New Republic published an article about American Media accepting censorship and propaganda in order to have a presence in Baghdad. It was roundly condemned by those it criticized. It turns out that the article was too mild. The chief news executive of CNN admits that he deliberately covered up crimes against people affiliated with CNN and plots against US allies in order to be able to report from Baghdad. [source]09 April 2003
Laying down the smackie: A US General speaks
Hundreds of Muslim fighters, many of them non-Iraqis, were putting up a stronger fight for Baghdad than Iraq's Republican Guard or the regular army, a top United States military officer said yesterday.This guy must be taking lessons from the Brits. [source]“They stand, they fight, sometimes they run when we engage them”, Brigadier-General John Kelly said.“But often they run into our machine guns and we shoot them down like the morons they are”.
[...]
“They appear willing to die. We are trying our best to help them out in that endeavour,” he said.
BBC Bias Watch
More BBC bias. This article talks about how the BBC failed to report on the first American incursion into Baghdad while at the same time reporting the Iraqi claim to have driven the Americans from the Baghdad airport while other news services were streaming video of the Americans in the airport.NY Times incoherence watch
Slate eviscerates R. W. Apple Jr. who, despite his incoherence, self-contradiction and reality dysfunction, continues to be a front page writer for the NY Times.08 April 2003
The BBC losing audience share
The HMS Ark Royal has terminated the BBC on board and now watches Sky News instead because of the unacceptable pro-Saddam bias of the BBC. [source]History repeats itself
A poster from Hungary, advising the voters that they are still permitted to vote “NO” to joining the EU. Apparently this poster is a little too accurate because it's being removed as “hate speech” because it uses the wrong symbology. I wonder if the same rules apply to the “Bush = Hitler” protest signs. [source]Al Jazeera objectivity
An Al Jazeera reporter was killed during a Coalition attack on Baghdad. The reporter was staying in a building next to the Ba'ath Information Ministry and Republican Guard headquarters which the Western media had fled at the start of the invasion because it screamed “bomb me!” Al Jazeera put the standard spin on it [source]An Al-Jazeera reporter on-air said he felt, as did his colleagues, the U.S. strike was a deliberate attack against the network, since two missiles hit the building, not one, and that the raid happened at about the same time Abu Dhabi TV offices were hit.Al-Jazeera's own report has the headline “Dead Al Jazeera correspondent deliberately targeted”.
I will not be objective about this because we have been dragged into this conflict," said Tayseer Alouni. "We were targeted because the Americans don't want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people."
07 April 2003
The UN in action
A tale of waste, corruption and indifference is the legacy of the UN in Kosovo. [source]Kosovar journalist Beqe Cufaj, German correspondent for Koha Ditore, summed up the situation eloquently on March 23: “This morning when Berlin announced that the U.N. secretary general and the Security Council have tasked Germany and its government with compiling an urgent plan for humanitarian aid to postwar Iraq, a Kosovar could not help but shudder. . . .Let us hope this really involves humanitarian aid and nothing else. . . . Because if the Iraqi people have to undergo anything like what we have in Kosovo, God help them. . . . That should be the message to the Iraqis from the Kosovars, a people experienced with the U.N. and exhausted by life in UNMIKistan!”
06 April 2003
Teaching Judenhass in New York City
A NY Daily News investigation discovered some interesting things about textbooks in use in Islamic schools in New York City. For example,Jews subscribe to a belief in racial superiority. [...] Their religion even teaches them to call down curses upon the worship places of non-Jews whenever they pass by them! They arrogantly refer to anyone who is not Jewish as ‘gentiles,’ equating them with sin.– What Islam Is All About, IBTS, pg. 188; target readers: Grades 3–6.
05 April 2003
Tyrannophilic MP flees Iraqi refugee
George Galloway, British MP, refused to talk to Freshta Raper, a refugee from Iraq who has suffered torture, rape and chemical weapons. Galloway is the MP who said to Saddam Hussein “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability”. He wasn't interested in talking to one of the results of these sterling qualities. [source] UPDATE: It turns out that Galloway has been paying for trips to Iraq out of a fund he set up to pay for leukemia treatments for a four year old girl. [source, source]03 April 2003
An exchange of opinion about the war in Iraq
A story from the Washington DC subway [source]An elderly woman was behind me getting off the escalator and a young (20ish) female protestor offered her a pamphlet, she politely declined. The young protestor put her hand on the old woman's shoulder as a guesture of friendship and in a very soft voice said, “Ma'am, don't you care about the children of Iraq?”The old woman looked up at her and said: “Honey, my first husband died in France during World War II so you could have the right to stand here and bad mouth your country. And if you touch me again, I'll stick this umbrella up your ass and open it.”
I'm glad to report that loud applause broke out among the onlookers and the young protestor was at a total loss for words.
NY Times makes up quotes to generate anti-war spin
The NY Times falsely attributed a quote claiming that the Ba'ath were "a house of cards" to Vice President Dick Cheney and omitted the words “a bit” from the quote by Lt. Gen. William Wallace that “The enemy we're fighting isQuote of the day
Instantman sez, after reviewing some commercial satellite imagery,Ralph Peters quotes Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker as calling Baghdad “a landscape of death and wanton devastation, all stamped ‘Made in America’ ”. Give it up, dude. This is the Internet — and now we can fact-check your ass from orbit.
02 April 2003
Don't hold back – tell me how you really feel
An American tank crew explains their war plan:“Today Baghdad, Tomorrow Paris”. [source]I try to be cynical but it's hard to keep up
As bad as American journalists are, apparently foreign ones are even worse. As Jonathan Last says,On the one hand, it's frightening to realize that the global media operate on a professional level roughly equivalent to a bad college paper. But on the other hand, it's a little bit liberating: After all, with press like this, no wonder the rest of the world hates us--America really is besieged by a vast, left-wing conspiracy.An Instantman correspondent claims that a better description would be “more of a half-vast left-wing conspiracy”.
01 April 2003
True Brit
Who else turns a phrase like a Brit?The AP quotes Col. Steve Cox of the Royal Marines: “We had two suicide bombers turn themselves in yesterday because they didn't want to be suicide bombers any more. We are accommodating them.”