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Friday, December 05, 2003

Infamy! 

I've finally arrived! After I left the Norm Theatre, Riaz Behra, PSG head and all-around loudmouth, came up to me and asked, "Are you blue revolution?" Although a bit taken aback at first (people recognize me?!), I acknowledged him, at which point he and his buddy went on to ask why would I back Israel and their evil occupation and such.

Unfortunately, I was hungry and was getting cash from the ATM to buy pizza so I answered their questions and left without a lengthy debate. Sorry guys, but hey, if you want to debate, there's always next time. But then, if you wanted to debate, you would've went inside the theatre and debated with Dr. Pipes instead of yelling "Globalize the Intifada!", right?

I think their reasoning was that I obviously wasn't one of those evil Zionist Jews, so I must've been misinformed and that there was still a chance that I could see the light. Sorry to disappoint, but I care too much for people blown up in restaurants and wedding parties for you guys to save me.

Daniel Pipes At UBC: The Protests 

So yes, there were protestors outside the Norm today rallying against Dr. Pipes. Not too interesting bunch, really, with the usual PSG folks and some people from an organization called "Jews for a Just Peace".

I was inside the Norm collecting donations for Magen David Adom (which, by the way, got around $90!) and signing people up to Dr. Pipes' mailing list, so I didn't get to watch a lot of the fun outside, but I can hear their very loud shouting.

Some excellent slogans I heard: I kid you not: these guys did yell "free tuition!" It was after they found out that the AMS endorsed Dr. Pipes' visit and they got all huffy-puffy about freeing UBC and such. It's interesting how these things take on a life of its own.

I didn't see it myself, but I heard that other festivities included them spitting and name-calling (I won't go into specifics here). Mmm tolerance and debate. Don't forget that every single one of them could've went inside and debated Dr. Pipes themselves, but decided that hurting their throats with shouting slogans (which always are in iambic tetrameter, curiously enough).

It's too bad I missed it all. Or maybe I should be counting my lucky stars.

Daniel Pipes At UBC: Question Period 

After Dr. Pipes' speech was a question period where audience members could query Dr. Pipes on various issues. Many good questions were asked on things such as Israel's diplomatic isolation and whether a Palestinian state should be accepted (to which Dr. Pipes said, as before, that talking final status right now is premature).

There was a part where Dr. Pipes called for Israel and other democracies to leave the UN (for an international organization for democratic states only), which was met with resounding applause. I must say that I'm glad to know that I'm not alone in seeing the ridiculousness of dictatorships voting alongside democracies and the false legitimacy that the UN supposedly gives to everything these days.

I think it was a really great tactical move for Gordon (president of Hillel) to ask Dr. Pipes on the famous "The Palestinians are a miserable people...and they deserve to be." line (which was used by the PSG in their propaganda). The line, of course, was a total falsehood, and it was a great opportunity for Dr. Pipes to refute it himself.

Of course, there had to be a guy that yelled that Dr. Pipes, with his "unfounded" views, will live on as the most evil man in history. Sometimes I wonder why people embarrass themselves like this.

It was unfortunate that question period ended on a somewhat sour note. A young lady had been in line for a microphone, but it was made clear much earlier that the previous question would have been the last. She grabbed the mike anyways and pleaded to ask a question. Seeing that the situation was essentially out of his hands, Ariel, president of the Israel Advocacy Club, asked that she be given thirty seconds. The lady then goes on to ask "as a fellow human being" (uh-oh you know what's coming is gonna be a doozy), how Dr. Pipes proposes to "win the hearts" of Palestinians and the world. Dr. Pipes replied matter-of-factly that in the current war, survival, not "winning hearts", should be the issue. So far, so good, right? But now the questioner claims that Dr. Pipes said that the only way out was killing (or something of that sort), which was totally false, disgusted a vast majority of the audience, and Dr. Pipes had to simply leave the podium to avoid giving credit to such slander.

Overall, I would say that the question period was not quite as intellectually stimulating as the speech itself, but it was a good opportunity for Dr. Pipes to speak on some other things that he didn't touch on before.

Daniel Pipes At UBC: Outline 

Here is an outline and some explanation of my writing on Dr. Daniel Pipes' lecture today.

I divided the writing into a post on Dr. Pipes' speech itself, the question period after, and the protests outside.

These are some organization names I used
IAC
Israel Advocacy Club (affliated with Hillel, but independent), which organized today's lecture. I'm a proud IAC member.
Hillel
The Jewish students' organization.
PSG
Palestinian Solidarity Group, which organized the protests.
If it all reads incoherently, I apologize but my brain's still fried from two previous exams and four exams plus a project coming up. Although I must say that today's event was a great change of pace. Certainly a lot more interesting than financial accounting or linear regression!

Daniel Pipes At UBC: The Speech 

The topic of Dr. Pipes' speech was "War in the Holy Land: Where do we go from here?" While I have read enough of Dr. Pipes' writing to find common ground with what he said, I still found the speech to be an enlightening experience.

The speech was divided into two parts: how did the current crisis in Israel come about, and how can we resolve the situation there.

Dr. Pipes begins with what he sees as the two mistakes with the Oslo process: In a sense, I'm not new to these ideas, and I feel the same way. But the conclusion that Dr. Pipes leads to is something that most people, including myself, have not really accepted in our hearts, even if we think that we believe what he concludes.

Dr. Pipes challenges us to take a paradigm shift: there is a war, and the only way out is for one side to give up on its objective, whether it be for the Israelis to pack up and leave their country, or for the Palestinians to stop aiming to destroy Israel. Everything we hear right now about trying to solve the whole mess, whether it be diplomacy, security walls, even the extreme view of Palestinian deportation out of the territories, the truth is that none of these things will end this conflict. The Palestinian people need to be learn unequivocally that Israel is here to stay and that it deserves to be. Stopgap security measures might lessen Israel's bleeding, but the bleeding will continue. And as for diplomacy and negotiations, it is much too early to be chatting "final status" when the first priority is survival on a national and personal level.

Take, for instance, my various carpings and ravings on the Geneva "Accord". Dr. Pipes doesn't care: any diplomacy before the Palestinians accept Israel's existence is premature and doomed to failure. Palestinian state? Doesn't concern him (yet). The Allies didn't debate the nature of the post-WWII governments of Germany and Japan: why is the present any different?

Dr. Pipes was emphatic, but fair. He points out that the current violence hurts Palestinians more than it hurts Israelis. They are the ones whose economy is in shambles (Israel, historicall the largest employer of Palestinians, has been forced to cut them off), whose children run off to blow themselves up in discotheques and marketplaces, whose terrorist ways have forced the IDF to install checkpoints and now the security wall. Therefore, it would help the Palestinians even more than the Israelis that Palestinians renounce their objective of destroying Israel.

And my IAC colleague Lenora was right: Dr. Pipes does have an excellent speaking voice.

The Sad State Of Amnesty International 

I'll be honest here: Amnesty International makes me squirm. Not because I'm against advocating human rights. Because I find that Amnesty's priorities always appear in the wrong order, leading to a lot of self-contradictory statements and misplaced positions.

Take, for instance, this column by Kate Allen, head of Amnesty International UK. Now, what caught me first was the title. I don't know if it's the creation of Ms. Allen or the Guardian editorial staff, but I can't think of a much worse title than "Why pick on Robert Mugabe?" It makes criticizing Zimbabwe like schoolyard bullying. Ironic, since Mugabe would make a much better schoolyard bully than any of his critics.

The crux of the column is that Zimbabwe is hardly the only human rights transgressor in the Commonwealth, which makes standing up against Zimbabwe difficult because we do not appear serious in our criticism. And indeed, a quick glance at the Freedom House Map of Freedom 2003 shows a number of Commonwealth countries with less than sparkling human rights records. Countries such as Pakistan, the Maldives, Sierra Leone and Mozambique were all either categorized as "not free" or "partly free".

But who are the first three countries that Allen goes after first? India, Britain, and Australia, three liberal democracies with independent judiciarys, fair elections, and vibrant and vocal presses. So what puts them to prominence? Their counterterrorism legislation enacted post-9/11 to protect themselves in the "war on terror" (scare quotes hers, not mine).

The column then points out the Bahamas and Jamaica for still having capital punishment, matter-of-factly considering the death penalty a human right violation. No word on the independent and transparent legal system of the Bahamas (Jamaica's legal system is admittingly clogged with back cases, so I would not call it a shining example of judicial excellence).

Finally, after seven paragraph, Allen finally moves on to the real bad boys, such as Nigeria and its stoning and flogging, and Uganda and its police torture. Nonetheless, she manages to write three times more on India, Britain and Australia as she did on these real human rights violators.

Finally, Allen closes off with a call for South Africa and Zambia to pressure the Mugabe regime. Zambia? The same country with two straight tainted elections and ranked 86 out of 166 countries in press freedom by Reporters sans frontières? For someone ranting and raving about Britain and Australia, her choice for who to pressure Mugabe comes as something of a surprise.

This column reflects really what I find to be so convoluted about Amnesty's reasoning. First consider the column's thesis, that the Commonwealth cannot make Mugabe listen to its will until it addresses all its members' human rights violations equally, big and small. It totally disregards several truths. The first one is the most obvious: the Commonwealth itself is a politically weak organization that has the ability to order countries to do jack squat. Secondly, Commonwealth members are split over whether to punish Zimbabwe severely or try to bring it back into the fold, illustrating that it is not so much a unified Commonwealth voice is falling on deaf ears as it is a weak, divided Commonwealth voice that is being heard by Mugabe. Finally, and most importantly, the countries that Allen believe should be the ones applying pressure to Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia, are the ones that want to give him a free ride, while the ones that she indicts so passionately are the countries that are standing up to Mugabe.

This specific example leads to the more general trend of I must address: the way that people like Allen ends up bashing robust democratic countries more than the real problem states of the Commonwealth. I don't know whether this is some sort of anti-Western bias or a double standard that holds developed democracies to higher standards than emerging democracies or non-democracies, but it's definitely not an impartial assessment of the situation out there. I'm not saying that human rights violations don't exist in developed democracies, but I'm certain that such violations are much more easily revealed, scrutinized, criticized, and eliminated in developed democracies. I also believe that because of this, any actual transgression in a developed democracy will be far less severe than something in a less free country.

Now, I'm sure many people in Amnesty feel that they should and they are spending more time and effort criticizing countries like Burma, Zimbabwe, and Iran than places like Australia and Britain. It's just that when the organization's public face writes a column that does the opposite of this, and indeed contradicts its own position by promoting Zambia as a worthy country to criticize Zimbabwe, it makes me shake my head and wonder how an organization that advocates something so important for all of us can gets its facts so messed up.

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

The Dangers Of Geneva, Part II 

Israel asks Secretary Powell not to meet with the authors of the Geneva "Accord". If something like Geneva was to take place between private Americans and [insert terrorist state here], they would be prosecuted under the Logan Act. Considering this fact, listen to what Powell has to say:
Mr. Powell says the talks would not contradict Washington's support for the internationally-backed "road map" peace plan. But he says he should be able to meet with anyone who has ideas toward achieving peace.
It's enough to make you sick. But hey, if that's not enough, find out exactly what happy pro-peace festivities occurred at Geneva at the signing ceremony (via LGF).
"The road map's first basic phase has been substantially rejected as the Israeli government has ignored mild American objection and continued to colonize Gaza and the far-reaches of the West Bank and to build an enormous barrier wall on Palestinian land," Former American President Jimmy Carter said.
To borrow from Michael Moore (bear with me!): We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious politicians that negotiate a fictitious peace accord. We live in a time where we have a man sending Israel to its destruction for fictitious reasons.

Standing Up Against Sistani 

The Iraqi Governing Council said to Sistani and his insistence for national elections: you can shove that idea up where you pulled it out..

Now, previously, I had written against direct elections, although I gave his intentions the benefit of the doubt. Others, however, have been less than flattering (via LGF). Nonetheless, I think we can all be glad that the IGC is showing some spine and opposing Sistani, whose idea will move Iraq towards anything but a stable democracy.

Is the IGC a bunch of self-serving schemers who like their jobs a bit too much? Probably. But do we still need to show a certain Shiite cleric who's really looking out for the well-being of every Iraqi, instead of every Shiite Iraqi? Damn straight we do.

Rantingprofs puts it best:
And what the Council is saying, apparently has been saying, is that if this election codifies a situation where everyone automatically caves to Sistani because it's easy, then we're creating a democracy on the grounds on giving one single cleric a veto over procedures -- with no institutional basis for doing so. The Council is right to not want to set that up as a precedent, and to not want to teach Sistani to expect that, no matter how big his following.
And indeed here's what an IGC member said:
"We cannot deny there is an attempt to set a precedent on Sistani's side and our side," one member said. "This is more than about elections. It's about whether we will allow one man to dictate the terms of our sovereignty."
"One man, one vote" indeed.

Monday, December 01, 2003

Don't Hold Your Breath 

Farmers getting taxed for their livestock's upset stomachs: this is the sort of insanity that Kyoto may lead to. Everyone in North America should beware of the dangers of ratifying Kyoto. Let's just say that you can't go wrong with a 95-0 vote.

PS: I know that cow expel methane naturally, not because they have indigestion. Which makes this even worse.