| |
|
20. juni 2005
|
|
Mark Steyn has more on music and torture
By now, one or two readers may be frothing indignantly, “That’s not funny! Bush’s torture camp at Guantanamo is the gulag of our time, if not of all time.” But that’s the point. The world divides into those who feel the atrocities at Gitmo “must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others” (in the widely quoted words of Senator Dick Durbin), and the rest of us, for whom the more we hear the specifics of the “atrocities” the funnier they are. They bear the same relation to the gulags (15-30 million dead), the Nazi camps (nine million dead) and the killing fields of Cambodia (two million dead) as Mel Brooks‚ “Springtime For Hitler” does to the original. Nobody complained at Auschwitz that the guards were playing the 78s of The Merry Widow (the Fuhrer’s favorite operetta) with the volume knob too high. When that old KGB hand Yuri Andropov succeeded Brezhnev as the big guy in the Kremlin, he was reported in the western press to be a big Glenn Miller fan. But to the best of my knowledge no-one suggested he was in the basement of the Lubyanka torturing the inmates with “I Got A Gal In Kalamazoo”.
The first time the full-blast junk-pop treatment caught the eye of the media was a decade and a half back, when US troops bombarded the Panamanian strongman General Noriega with the Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought The Law (And The Law Won)”. In those days, nobody reckoned it was torture. But these days torture seems to be in the ear of the behearer. Because the jihadi find western culture depraved — and I’m not necessarily in disagreement on that, at least where Christina Aguilera’s concerned — we’re obliged to be extra-super-duper-sensitive with them.
My headline of course alludes to iconic comedian Spike Milligan's Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall. There is nothing to serious we can't make fun of it, at least not given a bit of time, but this war it seems to fall to various activists on the left to be the clowns.
5:33:02 PM 
|
|
Mohammed is in a room where he is suffering temperatures in excess of 110F (~43C), forced to listen to Metallica hard rock records played at extremely loud volume.
He's not at Guantanamo. He just shares a living-room with his brother Omar.
Hat tip Roger.
2:06:40 PM
|
|
After accusations of fraud and the bizarre spectacle when different results were published from different officials, Iran has now ordered a recount of random ballot boxes to confirm whether something wrong has been going on:
Electoral officials have ordered a random recount of 100 ballot boxes from Friday's Iranian presidential vote after several reformist candidates leveled accusations of vote rigging, state television said on Monday.
"The Guardian Council (supervisory body) deems it necessary to recount some votes in ballot boxes from Tehran, Isfahan, Qom and Mashhad randomly for a more careful study of the results," state television reported.
Television said the recount would involve 40 ballot boxes from the capital Tehran and 20 each from the other three cities.
Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing whether this check will be honest. The fact that only a small selection of ballot boxes will be checked, and that only the major cities are targeted ignoring the countryside where fraud is believed to be more common, surely indicates that this is just a whitewash.
In related news, reformists in Iran have reluctantly decided to support Rafsanjani to prevent hard-liner Ahmadinejad from winning. Rafsanjani, though immensely corrupt and closely allied to the clergy, has indicated that he knows which way the wind blows by branding himself a reformist and arguing for better relations to the west.
Let me suggest a slogan: 'vote for the crook, not the fanatic.'
At any rate, given that the unelected Guardian Council can block any law, bar any candidate and essentially do much as it pleases, and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei really has the final say on everything anyway, the election is pretty much a total sham.
12:44:42 PM
|
|
Douglas Wood, rescued from captivity in Iraq, said he wanted to apologise to President Bush and Australian prime minister Michael Howard for remarks he made on a video where he pleaded for foreign troops to leave the country.
Mr Wood, a civil engineer who has been living in the US, arrived at Melbourne airport accompanied by his American wife and an Australian foreign ministry official.
He told reporters he was sorry for having criticised Washington and Canberra's presence in Iraq while he was being held prisoner.
"The current policies of the American and Australian governments are the right ones," he said.
Prime Minister Howard, who has sent Australian soldiers to support US forces in Iraq, said he welcomed Mr Wood's apology had not solicited it. [sic]
"I appreciate what he said," Mr Howard told Australian radio.
"But I was not seeking any apology from Mr Wood. After what that poor man has been through, that would be the last thing I would want."
Obviously, most people would say anything to save their lives when some murderous lunatics point guns to their heads. Absolutely nobody could fault Wood for saying what he did. Thus, he has nothing to apologise for, but still this clarification is welcome.
7:35:43 AM
|
|
The results are still preliminary, but it looks like Hariri and his allies in the anti-Syrian opposition have won the four-week election in Lebanon, after taking a clean sweep in the north.
The anti Syrian coalition (Opposition) won the fourth round of the elections in Lebanon. Based on preliminary reports, victory speeches of the winners and concession speeches of the losers, opposition swept all the 28 seats of Northern Lebanon, giving them the 72 seat majority, they fought so hard to get during the past week.
Last week it looked like Aoun would succeed in splitting the opposition vote, but that has not materialised.
It remains to be seen what Hariri and his allies can and will do to build the divided country to stand on its own feet.
6:00:18 AM
|
|
A Romanian nun died after being chained to a cross in a cold room, denied food and water for three days, as part of an exorcism ritual. A priest and four nuns are charged.
Mediafax news agency said Cornici suffered from schizophrenia and the symptoms of her condition caused the priest at the convent and other nuns to believe she was possessed by the devil.
"They all said she was possessed and they were trying to cast out the evil spirits," police spokeswoman Michaela Straub said.
Father Daniel who is accused of orchestrating the crime is said to be unrepentant.
"God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil," AFP quoted the priest as saying.
"I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this. Exorcism is a common practise in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests," Father Daniel added.
Hopefully God can perform a miracle for him, too. He and his accomplices risk 20 years in prison.
5:45:05 AM
|
|
In a lawsuit against his employer, FBI agent Bassem Youssef has argued he was passed over for top anti-terrorism jobs, and his lawyer brought testimonies from top FBI leaders insisting knowledge of terrorism and the Middle East was wholly unnecessary to wage war on terror. Now the sworn testimonies have been sent to Congress.
"A bombing case is a bombing case," said Dale Watson, the FBI's terrorism chief in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001. "A crime scene in a bank robbery case is the same as a crime scene, you know, across the board."
The FBI's current terror-fighting chief, Executive Assistant Director Gary Bald, said his first terrorism training came "on the job" when he moved to headquarters to oversee anti-terrorism strategy two years ago.
Asked about his grasp of Middle Eastern culture and history, Bald responded: "I wish that I had it. It would be nice."
"You need leadership. You don't need subject matter expertise," Bald testified in an ongoing FBI employment case. "It is certainly not what I look for in selecting an official for a position in a counterterrorism position." [...]
Daniel Byman, a national security expert who worked on both congressional and presidential investigations of terrorism and intelligence failures, reviewed the Youssef case for the court. Byman concluded the spurned agent is one of the government's most-skilled terrorism fighters and that the FBI overall remains weak in expertise on the Middle East, terrorism and intelligence liaison.
"Many of its officers — including those quite skilled in other aspects of the bureau's work, lack the skills to work with foreign governments or even their U.S. counterparts," Byman concluded.
"Knowing about counterterrorism would help a supervisor ensure a proper investigation and avoid missing important aspects of the case," he said.
Watson, who oversaw the first two years of transformation, testified he could not recall a single meeting in the aftermath of Sept. 11 in which FBI leaders discussed the type of skills or training needed for counterterrorism.
Youssef's lawyer, Steve Kohn, pressed further.
"What skill sets would they need to better identify, penetrate and/or prevent a future Osama bin Laden-style terrorist attack?" Kohn asked.
Watson answered: "They would need to understand the attorney general guidelines for counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigation."
"Anything else?" the lawyer inquired.
"No," Watson answered.
Not impressive.
4:51:45 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.07.2005; 11:18:43.
|
|
|
