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Chavez in Belarus
Via Harry’s Place — Hugo Chavez of Venezuela visits Belarus and proclaims it “a model social state.” Here is the Human Rights Watch overview on Belarus. Needless to say it’s a horror show. What will it take for progressives like Harry Belafonte to stop lionizing Chavez? We’ll see. One of his next stops is Tehran.
Iraq’s civil war
Rumsfeld weighs in: Q: Is the country [Iraq] closer to a civil war? SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don’t know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it. If you think of our Civil War, this is really very different. If you think of civil wars in other countries,
Turkey-Iraq drama
Turkey has been threatening to invade Iraqi Kurdistan to put an end to PKK attacks launched from Iraqi soil. Turkish hardliners are drawing direct comparisons to the Israel/Hezbollah situation. A Turkish invasion would be yet another calamity on the global stage, but one comment gives me some hope: For all the clamor for a military strike, “the sane members of
War notes, cont’d.
By this time nearly a third of Lebanon’s population has been displaced by Israel’s bombardment. Israel has a very poor track record on this score. I distinctly recall Shimon Peres, in ’96 during Operation Grapes of Wrath, saying outright that Israel was deliberately creating a refugee crisis in order to pressure the gov’t of Lebanon. This was and is, of
Just a tad behind the curve
This just in, from the World Saxophone Quartet’s “Political Blues”: I’m gonna take the metroliner down to Washington and give them some advice;Keep your politics to yourself and leave the brown countries alone/Keep your politics for yourself and leave the Third World alone/And while you at it, hit up on your cell phone to warn Abbas about Sharon […] Doh!
War notes
1. From yesterday’s AP, a comment by the UN’s Jan Egeland on Hezbollah’s use of human shields: “Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending… among women and children,” Egeland said. “I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this.
At another glance
Zvi Bar’el in a recent Haaretz: Until this war, Lebanon was the dream of all those who believe in multiculturalism. It is the only state that grants equal rights to some 18 ethnic groups and sects, which managed, albeit with great difficulty, to build a balanced political system and in the last year was given a global round of applause
At a glance
Marc Cooper excoriates U.S. “scuttle diplomacy,” noting NY Times reporting on fast-track weapons transfers from the U.S. to Israel. This doesn’t seem to have penetrated the thick skulls of the cable news talking heads. The U.S. is not simply giving Israel “breathing room” to hit Lebanon (although Tony Snow denies even that much, with an arrogance that makes Ari Fleischer