the blue revolution

I think most people would agree that sexual predation upon innocent children is one of the most heinous crimes that can exist. So why does the reporting on the Michael Jackson story seem more appropriate for something like Bennifer than a real crime? Imagine allegations that someone in your neighborhood has been sexually molesting children: the press coverage would probably be somewhat sensationalist, but at least it'd be serious. Watching Michael Jackson go to the police station from a helicopter is not serious.

Adam Yoshida and Robin Wallace ask some serious questions about the Jackson case. Yoshi wonders why, in the ten months or so after the release of the Bashir documentary that details Jackson's disturbing behaviour, nothing about this issue came to light. He also asks how many people close to Jackson know anything about this, and why they did nothing. Wallace wonders at what sort of parents would even allow their children to stay with Michael Jackson (via Winds of Change). Makes you think, doesn't it?

All this reminds me of the Law & Order episode where a child was offered by his parents to a pedophile celebrity for money to treat his cancer-stricken brother. It gave me chills. This case gives me the exact same feeling, but when the media treats the case like so-called "reality TV", one wonders exactly how did we get to such lows.

Rantingprofs finds one instance of moving towards handing over security responsibilty to the Iraqi people. I think it can be summed up as "the mind is willing, but the flesh is weak." While I am encouraged by the support from the Iraqi people, the lack of supplies and extensive training to the Iraqi police make this a very risky venture for the time being. Dauber is right: let's start spending some of that $87 billion where it matters.

Two pairs of car bomb attacks within a week in Istanbul makes Turkey a new pivotal battleground in the war against Islamic terrorism. Turkey isn't perfect: its human rights history. especially towards its minorities, is horrendous. Also, the Turkish military has served as a political Sword of Damocles (albeit to align it in a secular Kemalist direction). But its citizens are well-educated and Western in their outlook, which make them our ally and an enemy of the Islamists.

I've read much analysis that suggest that attacking Turkey, a Muslim state, would isolate the Islamists within the Muslim world. While I hope that this would happen, I would argue that there is just as likely a move within the Muslim world to isolate Turkey. Turkey, after all, is probably the only Islamic nation that has grown up and is moving to join the rest of the world. Muslims stuck in the past will want nothing to do with such a country. But most importantly, Turkey's relations with much of the Arab world is based on a history of Ottoman colonial rule. Turks are seen both as oppressors of Arabs and the failed keepers of Islamic glory (they were the ones who lost the Balkans and Africa to the West). I would imagine that, in some quarters of the Muslim world, people have a smug smirk and the thought that the apostate Turks got it coming to them.

Some Turks are already urging a return to Islamic roots. That is a dangerous step: Turkey has gone so far towards freedom and prosperity, and to turn back now would be disastrous. To battle the Turks' fear of abandonment, the West must do more to ensure them that we will not shut them out. That means the US must continue its efforts to facilitate Turkey's entry in the EU (Turkey is the only country I would support joining the EU!). It means intense efforts to resolve the issues of Cyprus and the Kurds, major sticking points between the two sides. It means making sure that Turkey maintains its military alliance with Israel, which benefits both countries. The Turks have shown in the past that they do not yield easily to threats. If we make it clear that we are on their side, Turkey will be a key partner in defeating Islamism.

Daniel Pipes makes the case for transferring power to the Iraqis in his latest column. I've always been a big fan of Dr. Pipes, so I found his points very reasonable. I wrote last Sunday that I prefered the "Macarthur model" of occupation. In a sense, I still do, but as I said even back then, "it is politically impossible for that to happen these days."

However, I think Dr. Pipes is still somewhat overly optimistic about the transfer of security responsibilities. For example, he thinks that Coalition forces should withdraw from inhabited areas and set up their bases in the desert. This would be fine if the current insurgency was aimed primarily at the Coalition presence: the average Iraqi would not be caught in the crossfire, and it is much easier to defend against an attack when you're surrounded by sand, not people. However, attacks against such targets as the UN and ICRC demonstrate that the insurgents intend on attacking average Iraqis too. The Iraqi security apparatus, IMHO, not yet reached the quality level needed to convince Iraqi citizens that they are safe without Coalition help.

Dr. Pipes also failed to cover the fact that the current moves towards Iraqification has a strong taste of political motivation. If this is a cover for militarily getting out of Iraq completely, it should be condemned in the strongest words possible.

However, his argument for giving power on the ground to the Iraqis is sound and pragmatic. He knows things can go wrong (in which case, he argues for the Coalition in the desert to intervene), and he doesn't have grandiose hopes of a Jeffersonian democracy in Mesopotamia (something that I admit that I am not immune against). But he does think that Iraqis, given the opportunity, have the ability to create, not necessarily Utopia, but the best country that the Arab world has ever created. That, indeed, is already something to be proud of helping to bring about.

Dr. Pipes is visiting UBC in two weeks! It's probably the only exciting event in the next few weeks (as opposed to exams and term projects!).

Zayed of Healing Iraq needs your help. The NYT's security personnel are blocking his friend's brother in Baghdad from getting at his family stores and property. The stores are desperately needed to provide income for his family.

Arthur Sulzberger

Chairman and Publisher

The New York Times

November 15, 2003

Dear Sir:

I am writing you on an issue of immediate concern.

My name is Ghayda Al Ali. While I am from Iraq, I am currently visiting the United States. As you can understand I am very interested in events back home. There is a most disturbing situation there which you should be aware of as your paper is an involved party.

My family has a property in the green zone in down town Baghdad on Abi-Nuas street. The New York Times rents the adjacent property. For several weeks now my brother Ali Al Ali has been denied automobile access to our property by security guards. Until two days ago we thought this was a coalition security measure. Now we known these guards are not coalition personal but are instead the private security force employed by your news paper.

The family property has two store fronts. Yesterday (Saturday November 15, 2003) my brother and two hired men were in one of the stores installing shelves. My brother lost his livelihood in the war and needs to open this store to make a living. His efforts were interrupted by several of the security guards employed by your paper. He was knocked roughly to the floor and threatened. Your guards pointed there AK-47 rifles and my brother and his work men and told them they would be shot if they did not leave immediately.

I feel sure if learned the United States Army was responsible an incident such as this you would feel obligated to publish the story and condemn the act.

In this his case I respectfully suggest you have an obligation to do somewhat more.

My family needs full use of its lawful property. This means no interference of any type to access to the building. Your guards also block access of potential customers to this business location. While mindful of the security requirements of your Baghdad employees I believe they do not completely supercede our legal right to use our property.

I hope this is a simple misunderstanding that you can correct quickly. My family hopes yet to have The New York Times as a good neighbor. I urge you to contact me or my brother quickly as an indication of your good faith. I can be reached at the email address ghaydaalali@yahoo.com Ask for Ghayda (pronounced Ride-dah). I will provide an email address for my brother upon hearing from you.

I will follow up this email with a letter to your office sent by United States Postal Service.

Please look into this matter quickly.

Sincerely,

Ghayda Al Ali

I e-mailed a bunch of NYT personnel about the situation. Is this partially motivated by my attitude towards the NYT? No doubt. But it is still something that would help a family that desperately needs the help, and if a good bunch of people join me in e-mailing the NYT, it would give them notice of the power of blogs. Power that can be used to do other great things as well.

Living in Canada, gay marriage is, in some sense, une peine perdue, so I don't feel any strong feelings about the MA decision. Nonetheless, Eugene Volokh (who supports gay marriage) makes some important points about today's decision.

First off, the decision does increase the likelihood of legal recognition of polygamous and incestuous marriage. Gay marriage proponents (such as Andrew Sullivan), for the most part, claim that this is all a load of rubbish. However, they refuse to admit that their arguments for gay marriage (especially those in the courts), based on human rights and equal treatment arguments, apply equally to polygamous and incestuous relationships.

Sullivan says:

There is a critical distinction between an involuntary sexual orientation and a choice of a polyamorous lifestyle - a choice that can be made by gays or straights.

He ignores, of course, millennia of human history of polygamy and adultery, and the fact that until this century, homosexuality itself is consider to be something that is not innate.

Also, most gay marriage advocates must say that gay marriage should be allowed even if heterosexuality can be conditioned, because their argument is based on the right to marry based on love. To say that such an argument stops at the polygamy or incest point are fundamentally inconsistent with the gay marriage position. The truth is that proponents of gay marriage see this slippery slope as extremely bad PR, which it is. But ignoring it doesn't make the argument go away.

Second, Volokh starkly illustrates what judicial fiat in the gay marriage issue may lead to. It's probably not that likely, but it's certain that the gay marriage issue will be a hotly contested issue for years to come in America.

As a Chinese person, this is especially poignant (via Andrew Sullivan).

A clarification here, the vaunted sense of British fair play means fair play just for the British. When ruling the world, we were entirely justified in sending gun ships up Chinese rivers to support the opium trade and would have very miffed if some Yankee upstart had been going around shouting "no blood for dope" at Disraeli. Burger-scoffing surrender baboons in the war against yellowism, John Bull would have said. Jingoism? We invented it.

Note that I'm not one to say that the British colonial era was a particularly bad thing in itself: Hong Kong would never develop into the free, capitalist metropolis it is today without it. Nonetheless, there is something to be said about the difference between the Opium Wars and the Iraqi liberation: the former produced a good for people out of a war of commercial interest, and the latter will likely turn out to produce commercial interest, but out of a war to produce good for the people of the free world and the oppressed Iraqis.

Oh, and if you're going to shout "blood for oil," let me remind you that the Opium Wars were about making a moral stance against buying something and getting attacked for it. The war in Iraq was the exact opposite: America held on for over a decade to the sanctions punishing Saddam's regime, despite the immense commercial opportunity in abandoning them, and afterward launched an invasion that could've devastated whatever oil infrastructure was left.

But I digress. This article is about Britons, and their cosy prejudices about America (they have them too!) being disturbed by President Bush. Alas, even the Brits are some time away from understanding the true cosmopolitan nature of America. But they're getting there. As opposed to the French, moving in the opposite direction.

If there is any doubt about the power of Glenn Reynolds, I think this would put it conclusively to rest:

Last week I called attention to the rather laughably anti-Bush agenda of a workshop sponsored by the International Society of Political Psychology. This week, according to John Ray, they're saying that members are departing in droves, as this letter from the ISPP's President reports

What's hilarious is the fact that the e-mail in question tries to win back its members while using the very anti-Bush vitriol that is probably repulsing them. This guy is so oblivious that the only way this sort of charade can end is natural selection.

By this Guardian/ICM poll, it looks like Andrew Sullivan is right about British common sense, to my relief (via Andrew Sullivan, Rantingprofs).

The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world.

I'm sure the folks at the Guardian are disappointed. But hey, it's not for lack of trying. Damn bastards.

I have no doubt of the pain a mother must go through if her daughter was raped and impregnated by her brothers. But only in a place like the West Bank would the mother murder the daughter and weep that she did it to protect the family's honor (via LGF).

ABU QASH, West Bank - Rofayda Qaoud - raped by her brothers and impregnated - refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she bought the unwed teenager a razor with which to slit her wrists. So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family's "honor" through murder.

Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter's room last Jan. 27. "Tonight you die, Rofayda," she told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next, Qaoud sliced Rofayda's wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of "No, mother, no!" After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the stick.

[Several paragraphs later]

While honor killings committed in the heat of the moment - for example, by a husband who catches his wife in bed with another man - generally carry a six-month to one-year jail term, Qaoud will likely be sentenced to three to five years in prison, Tarifi says. The fact she is a mother who was trying to protect her family's honor mitigates the crime of premeditated murder, which is punishable by death under Palestinian law, he adds.

The brothers are serving minimum 10-year sentences in a Palestinian jail in the West Bank city of Jericho for statutory rape of a relative, Tarifi says.

[Down to the final paragraph]

"My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by people," Fatima explains with a shy smile. Leaning into Qaoud's arms, the little girl adds: "I love my mother much more now than before."

(emphasis mine)

Evidently Arab "honor" is measured by the amount of innocent blood on one's hands. This is a culture so sick in the head that I am at an absolute loss at even trying to think of ideas to cure it.

Sean Bannion fears the accelerated moves toward Iraqi sovereignty will spell something really bad, not just because of the security issues and all that, but because Iraqi culture has been so polluted by decades of life under Saddam that the sort of civil society needed for Iraqi democracy to really flourish simply isn't there yet.

I'll be honest: my preference in how the occupation should be run is the Macarthur model (without the snuggling up to war criminals, of course). But I also know that it is politically impossible for that to happen these days. So I don't know if I can pass judgment on what's happening now, but I certainly don't feel good about it.

And if I keep hearing that all this is motivated to scale down the US military presence in Iraq, I think the Democrats should make an election issue out of this. Because if the objective is bringing troops home, it isn't going to work. But I doubt they would do that: they're too busy thinking up ways of getting out of Iraq even faster.

Arno Weinstein tears into the "Geneva Agreement" for what it really is: a pact by the devil, with the devil, for the devil (via LGF).

Imagine this: a group of Americans, say presidential candidate Howard Dean, Senators Ted Kennedy, Fritz Hollings and Robert Byrd, go to the wilds of Pakistan and meet with the lieutenants of Usama bin Laden. They carry with them a “peace” proposal hammered out with various al-Qaida supporters in the United States calling for the unilateral withdrawal of American forces from all Islamic countries. They present the proposal to terror agents representing bin Laden, work out the kinks and arrive at an agreement aimed at ending the conflict between al-Qaida and the United States. What would the overwhelming majority of Americans say? In unison, the outcry would be: "Treason!"

I'm just hoping that the people behind Geneva stay outside any real decision-making position for a very long time.

As if the years of haggling with Libya, agonizingly slow trial, and failure to convict one of the suspects wasn't enough, Lockerbie victims get slapped again with the pampered treatment of the Lockerbie bomber that was convicted.

is not enough for

If there's something they should play on that television of his, it should be footage of the aftermath of that horrible December day in 1988.

Two Canadians differ on whether President Bush's visit to Britain will help or hurt him.

Mark Steyn is thinking really hard why would President Bush want to visit the UK and give the opposition the chance to shrill out questions like "How we lost Britain?"

Adam Yoshida (ah yes my old high school classmate) thinks that President Bush can turn against the anti-war protesters, but he would have to face them head-on and call their bluff.

I think that Yoshi can be right (and I certainly wish that he is), but it would take an immense amount of political guts on the part of the President. Otherwise, it might indeed be handing a can of gas to the pyromaniacal opposition.

We've all learned to take things written in the NYT or the Guardian with a huge heap of salt. However, there are writers in both newspapers that still have all their marbles.

Andrew Sullivan praises John F. Burns' work in the NYT. He calls Burns the "New Orwell", which seems a bit over-the-top to me, but I agree that his article today is beautifully written, fair, and insightful. It doesn't sugar the problems in Iraq, but portrays them in a realistic and accurate manner. It also doesn't blanket describe the opinions of the Iraqi population.

William Sjorstrom digs up David Aaronvitch's column in today's Guardian. As Sjorstrom puts it:

Aaronovitch is not the Guardian's token conservative. He is the Guardian's token "not loony."

Read it. It shows you don't have to be a Bush lover (nothing wrong with that!) to have a sense of reality.