Blog

a corrupt society adds more corruption,” he added. “America has to commit suicide if the world is to be a better place.”

Ah well. (Via lgf)

As the UN send a team to determine whether what’s happening in Darfur counts as genocide, the Onion ask, what do you think?

network was exposed last week. Now, a link to terrorism has finally been unearthed.

While the world remains fixated on the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the other evils of his regime are being systematically exposed – for the few who are still interested in them.

But the documents revealing he passed £40 million of oil vouchers to Palestinian terrorists show that, in the war on terror, Saddam was a legitimate target. His was one of the few regimes that gave insurgents the financial oxygen needed to survive.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has used many names, but is still little heard-of. Its most infamous atrocity was the “black September” attacks in 1970, when members hijacked four aircraft bound for New York.

It is committed to extinguishing Israel, and its commitment to violence has meant it standing defiantly aside from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) – whom it believes sold out to the cause by agreeing to the Middle East peace process.

Officially listed as a terrorist organisation by British and American governments, it is exactly the kind of organisation which Saddam Hussein was long accused of supporting. But no-one was able to prove it until the documents of his dictatorship started to be unearthed.

The 2,300-member Iraq Survey Group has produced a report which confirms many of the worst fears of pre-war Iraq. While it did not find any WMD, it says insurgency left its search even more restricted than that of the United Nations inspectors who operated under Saddam.

So it has instead built a paper-chase – piecing together fragments of the dictatorship which show how Saddam worked out that the United Nations system was easily corrupted and would allow him to issue oil vouchers, in secret, to bribe his new friends.

The UN’s oil-for-food programme was protecting him from the United States threat while helping him to bribe aides of Jacques Chirac, the French president, and the office of Vladimir Putin, then the Russian prime minister.

But to extend this to the PFLP was extraordinarily brazen. He was daring to bankroll international terrorists – with sums of money which could keep the cells financed for years.

Clive Davis in the Times, in the context of the film “Team America: World Police”, wonders about the sad conformism of current British comedy:

There was certainly a lot to be said for the British alternative comedy wave of the 1980s. Nobody would want to go back to the days when Bernard Manning was regarded as suitable prime-time viewing. (As one who had to endure versions of his jokes on the school bus every morning in my teens, I am grateful my sons are not subjected to the same racist drivel.) On the other hand, now that the rebels have become the new Establishment, weighed down with riches and fêted by Question Time producers, an awful complacency has set in: Blair is bad and Bush worse is about the limit of most comics’ worldview.

The rest of the arts world is not much better. The truth, I suppose, is that the baby-boomers who administer our mighty cultural industries are content to behave as if the world stopped on a sunny afternoon in the Sixties. Iraq, to them, is Vietnam; Dubya is Nixon with a twang. Thatcher, Reagan and the fall of the Berlin Wall are figments of the imagination. […]

Perhaps there is a revolution stirring among the video-game-playing couch potatoes. That is certainly a more reassuring prospect than the thought that Parker and Stone’s nemesis, Michael Moore, really has become the spokesman of slackers who not only can’t be bothered to vote, but don’t care how many lies and distortions are crammed into Fahrenheit 9/11. It goes without saying that most of the media have fallen down on the job of educating the film’s audience about Moore’s falsehoods. The good news is that Parker and Stone take their revenge on Moore in Team America by blowing up his puppet on the screen. Another step down the road of bad taste, I grant you, but it will give some of us a lot of guilty pleasure.

The UN food relief agency are warning that they’re unable to distribute aid in northern Darfur due to the deteriorating security situation:

Ethnic warfare in Sudan is spreading so quickly that 6,500 people in Darfur are being driven from their homes every day, the United Nations has warned.

In a devastating assessment, the UN has also said it is now unable to distribute aid to northern Darfur due to security risks – a Scottish humanitarian worker was killed by a landmine last Sunday.

Some 220,000 Sudanese….have been made refugees in the past four weeks alone, as Janjaweed Arab militiamen continue their campaign against non-Arab villages. […]

Manuel Aranda Da Silva, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan, said the tentative ceasefire had been replaced by violence so severe that his team could no longer operate in much of the country.

The Dutch foreign minister Ben Bot on the other hand, leading a delegation from the EU, was deeply impressed by his talks in Khartoum with the Sudanese government:

“What is important is that the Sudanese government has adopted an open and positive attitude,” said Mr Bot, representing the rotating EU presidency. He went on to suggest – then dismiss – a December deadline for sanctions.

“If it turns out that in the next two months the situation is worsening, then there is no other option for us than to apply sanctions and we have made that crystal clear,” he said.

But Mustafa Osman Ismail, his Sudanese counterpart, immediately criticised the idea, saying sanctions would smack of a “colonial” European attitude towards Sudan. “International and military intervention on Darfur and imposing sanctions against Sudan are ruled out,” he said.

At that point, Mr Bot seemed to backtrack immediately. “There is no question of a deadline or timetable for sanctions,” he then said. “What is important is that we continue dialogue.”

Absolutely. The most important thing is not to be seen to be adopting colonial attitudes. With Ben Bot on the case, the people of Darfur need fear no more.

There’s been considerable commentary on the death of Derrida – this from Johann Hari being the latest contribution.

One of the better books I’ve read on the subject of deconstructionism is David Lehman’s “Signs of the Times”. He concentrates mainly on the case of Paul de Man, the Yale post-modernist guru who was revealed after his death to have written anti-semitic articles for a collaborationist journal in his native Belgium. One of Lehman’s points is that a post-modern denial of the possibility of objective truth would be an excellent emollient for an uneasy conscience. If words are just signs which only attain meaning through their difference from other signs – if there is nothing outside the text – then writing is removed from the range of activities which might have consequences, and ultimately from the realm of morality. What I took from this, by extrapolation, was that the whole obscurantist movement in post-war French philosophy, of whom Derrida was perhaps the most famous exemplar, was a wonderfully French way of dealing with post-war guilt.

Yes I know, this is glib in the extreme (and no, I’m not saying each individual thinker had guilty secrets to hide – I realise Derrida was too young, nevermind being Jewish). I still like it though, as at least a partial explanation.

From the Scotsman:

A mass grave being excavated in Iraq’s “killing fields” has yielded evidence that the country’s forces executed women and children under dictator Saddam Hussein.

US-led investigators have located nine trenches near the northern town of Hatra containing at least 300 bodies. They are believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s.

The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said.

The scientific exhumation is aimed at helping to convict Saddam of crimes against humanity.

“It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field,” said Greg Kehoe, a US lawyer appointed by the White House to work with the Iraqi Special Tribunal. “Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them.

“I’ve been doing grave sites for a long time, but I’ve never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason,” added Mr Kehoe, who spent five years in the Balkans. “It’s a perfect place for execution.”

The victims are believed to be minority Kurds killed during 1987-88. One trench contains only women and children, apparently killed by small firearms. Another contains only men, apparently killed by automatic gunfire.

Mr Kehoe said the women and children had been taken from their villages with their belongings, including pots and pans, shot – often in the back of the head – then bulldozed into the trench.

Some of the mothers died still holding their children. One young boy still held a ball in his tiny arms.

International organisations estimate more than 300,000 people died under Saddam’s 24-year rule and Iraq’s Human Rights ministry has identified 40 possible mass graves countrywide.

Update (see comments): experienced European investigators aren’t taking part “as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death”.

f the embargo, imposed after Chinese troops crushed the Tiananmen democracy movement with many deaths in 1989. But diplomats listed it among the opponents, along with Nordic countries concerned about human rights and east European states sensitive to U.S. lobbying.

“There was no consensus. It will require further discussion,” German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters after the 25 ministers discussed the China embargo.

French President Jacques Chirac, who is visiting China to boost economic and political ties, denounced the embargo on Saturday in Beijing as a “circumstantial measure which is purely and simply hostile to China” and had no justification.

“That is why France, like most EU countries, is in favor of lifting this embargo,” Chirac said.

The United States has lobbied publicly and privately against a lifting of the ban, citing Chinese threats to Taiwan.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are continuing to play tough with Taiwan:

The Chinese government has rejected a call by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian for peace talks and warned against moves towards formal independence.

Mr Chen used a speech on Sunday to urge Beijing to agree to talks to resolve tensions over the build-up of weapons between the two rivals.

But China has dismissed his “false overtures” and said his “separatist” plans risked a “great catastrophe”.

Beijing has repeatedly pledged to invade if Taiwan declares independence.

“If Chen Shui-bian remains bent on sticking to his splittist and Taiwan independence activities, he will never bring peace and prosperity to the Taiwan compatriots, but will only bring great catastrophe,” said China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Zhang Mingqing on Wednesday.

“Taiwan independence is the biggest danger to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and the Asian region.” […]

In his speech, President Chen asserted the island of Taiwan was a sovereign nation.

Tensions have been high since Mr Chen was re-elected to a second term in March.

The US state department welcomed Mr Chen’s speech as constructive, prompting Beijing to ask America to stop sending the island the wrong message.

China has more than 600 ballistic missiles pointed at the island and is adding 60 to 70 new missiles each year.

Taiwan, which broke with the new Communist state in 1949, is locked in a debate over whether to strengthen its defences even further with US military aid.

Russian authorities are sending hundreds of extra police and troops to Ossetia, as the mourning period for the victims of Beslan comes to an end:

Tanik Kuizev has waited 40 days for revenge for the Beslan school massacre.

Mr Kuizev’s 12-year-old daughter was among the hostages who survived. However, last week he finally buried his niece, after a delay in identifying her disfigured body.

Today is the final day of the 40-day traditional mourning period for the 330 victims – more than half of them children – who died in that maelstrom of gunfire and explosions.

Tomorrow, Mr Kuizev vows, he’ll bury a member of the rival Ingush ethnic group to avenge the murders.

The 3 September attack was carried out by a band of militants with links to Chechen rebels, some of whom came from the province of Ingushetia, which borders North Ossetia.

“There will be violence. It won’t be noisy. It will be quiet – one person at a time,” said Mr Kuizev as he walked through the remains of the school, stepping over stuffed toys left in memory of the victims. “They say, ‘forgive, forgive’. How do you forgive something like this? How do you explain this? Forgive? No way.”

“It’s not a secret that we are waiting [for the end of the mourning period],” said 67-year-old Sergei Tandaleyev of the village of Sunja. “We will demand that [the Ingush] leave. All of them.”

This post at Tacitus is well worth reading for some background.

The novelists asked by Slate for their presidential voting intentions (via AL Daily) provide hours of fun for all the family. My favourite so far, from Nicole Krauss:

I really think it’s not alarmist to say that if Bush is reelected to another four years, it may be the end of life as we know it.