Hope this is scary enough for you, my pumpkin carving skills remain fairly basic. This pumpkin display (one of last year’s Halloween photos) is actually much nicer.
This is a developing story, just off the wires:
The Dutch human rights activist Abdullah al-Mansouri has reportedly been sentenced to death in Iran. His son Adnan al-Mansouri says he received the news from a Syrian human rights organisation. He says his father, who was born in Iran, could be executed within 48 hours.
The details remain murky, but Amnesty International has confirmed that the Syrian organization mentioned is legitimate. More later.
Update by MvdG: NOS journaal adds that the Dutch Parliament is “shocked” by the news. The PvdA, SP, VVD and Groenlinks demand action from Secretary of State Maxime Verhagen: they want him to talk to the Iranian ambassador. PvdA MP van Dam said: “We have to hurry. We must prevent him from being executed.” VVD MP Jules Maaten calls the conviction - if true - “barbaric.”
Some things are more important than politics and international affairs. The Red Sox winning the World Series is one of them. I lived in Boston for many years and wondered whether the drought would ever end. It took 86 years — from 1918 to 2004 — for the Sox to again be baseball’s champions. It took only three years for it to happen again.
Kate McMillan of the well-known Canadian blog ‘Small Dead Animals’ has written a fascinating piece about the upcoming elections in her home province, Sasketchewan. In it she explains how huge economic potential can be throttled by a decade old psychosis:
While it seems cliche to mention it some 70 years later, the psychology behind what has been called Saskatchewan’s “politics of fear and envy” still traces its origins to the dustbowl depression of the 1930’s and the profound psychic impact it had on the province and its politics. It was in the dustbowl era that the predecessor to the NDP, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was born. The CCF pledged that they would not “rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full programme of socialized planning,” a program that has adherents in the province and some would argue - in the NDP government - to this day.
The consensus is that Sasketchewan has the natural resource base to rival Canada’s economic wunderkind Alberta. On November 7 we will know if it can be unlocked at which point the dustbowl may finally be put there where it belongs, in history books.
Before and after the Israeli strike. A nice clean-up job by the Syrians.
A senior U.S. intelligence officer:
It’s a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow. It doesn’t lower suspicions, it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It’s incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away.
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security:
It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity. But it won’t work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing.
Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Center for American Progress:
It’s clearly very suspicious. The Syrians were up to something that they clearly didn’t want the world to know about.
I wonder what that could be.
The hyper-security that is now the norm for regular passenger travel is an unleashed beast that knows no bounds. Quite recently I pointed to some disturbing incidents, but now it appears the entire information structure built around stepping on a flight is to undergo some drastic changes according to this blog (h/t Sullivan):
All travellers in the U.S. will be required to get government-issued credentials and official clearance before every flight, both within the United States as well as internationally.
All the dire predictions made about the Department of Homeland Security made at the time of its inception are steadily bearing fruit, and very bitter ones at that I might add.
Really, open source air travel will increasingly become a viable option.
Paul Kedrosky, a San Diego based tech-blogger, suggests we are witnessing the first disaster that uses the full slate of Web 2.0 offerings. The Google Map mashup indeed is very instructive.
Sometimes it seems politicians will do anything to receive a few extra votes. In the same week in which yet another rightwing-populist movement was founded in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party ( PVV, led by Geert Wilders, who is mostly known for his crusade against Islam and his Mozart-like hairstyle ) tried to grab the headlines with an offensive aimed at a sandwich containing vegetables and halal kebab. According to the PVV-MP Dion Graus the restaurant of the Dutch Parliament should not be allowed to sell any halal products, because such products are obtained “ from a slaughtering method that is unfriendly towards and unworthy of animals ”. It was clear that with his attack the honorable Mr Graus – who in the past has been accused of, among other things, abusing his pregnant wife, though none of the accusations led to prosecution or conviction – had more than just the well-being of animals in mind, when he openly expressed his disappointment that “ the islamization of our country has also reached the menu of our parliament ”. A visitor to the website of the Dutch daily De Telegraaf rightly remarked: “Does(n’t) the PVV have any other subjects to deal with?” (more…)
The feverish media atmosphere generated by the potential Turkish invasion of northern Iraq is on its way to reaching almost Cuban Missile Crisis proportions. Even Prime Minister Erdoğan has chastised certain Turkish media outlets for the manner in which they have covered the events of the past week. Having sold a lot of newspapers due to the most recent deaths and abduction of many out-numbered Turkish conscripts, there is little doubt that this type of media coverage will continue to carry the legacy of William Randolph Hearst for at least another few weeks.
It is the ambition of this observer to approach the question of a possible Turkish assault on N. Iraq in a way that touches on a number of factors and possible scenarios, which will undoubtedly influence the decisions made in the very near future. In addition, two recently published pieces about the potential Turkish invasion by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, the general manager of Al-Arabiya television, and by Gareth Jenkins of the Jamestown Foundation offer a number of very compelling insights for consideration. (more…)
Friday evening, while protesting something they probably know very little about, a collection of white, middle-class college kids (also known as Anarchists apparently) marched through the upscale neighborhood of Georgetown here in Washington, DC. Protesting the corporatey corporations doing their corporatey stuff, these spoiled children began hurling bricks at storefront windows, in order to smash the state and such.
Unfortunately, they also managed to smash some poor young woman’s skull open (see pic above). All of this was apparently in preparation for Saturday’s big IMF/World Bank protests, or whatever. This is partly why I rarely go downtown these days. A pack of spoiled college freshmen ready for class war? I’ll pass. (more…)
Co-blogger Jason yesterday argued that now is probably not the best time to take a moral stand by welcoming the Dalai Lama, ostensibly because it will once more ‘offend’ China.
Well, I respectfully disagree and would argue that the entire global community has always gone out of its way to avoid the scorn of Beijing. As a consequence, the Chinese have become extremely adept in merging political and economic issues to their advantage and much to the disadvantage of say Tibet, Taiwan and Chinese dissidents. Photos such as the one on top of this post have become rarities as a result.
Former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten was one of the few who dared to confront the Chinese leadership and for that was vilified by not only the Chinese but by many British politicians and business leaders as well. But argued Patten, there is no correlation between bending to Beijing and benefiting economically. Any form of kowtow in order to remain on speaking terms with China is likely to earn less respect from the Chinese in the long run, unnecessarily undermining the West’s position. So, every effort should be made to force China to live up to and accept certain codes of conduct and mutual respect, not to mention international agreements dealing with human rights. Rolling out the red carpet for the Dalai Lama is an important part of that and if that causes some aggravation in Zhongnanhai, well so be it.
Chanting “independence or death,” the shrouded women of the Persian revolutionary movement stormed the government building in Tehran. Demanding national independence and liberty, these women boldly unveiled, tossing their chadors to the ground in mass, public protest. Questioning the very manhood of the men who were an embarrassment to their fathers, these patriots threatened to take the lives of their sons, their husbands, in addition to their own, lest they live their remaining days in an occupied and stunted Persia.
This dramatic scene did not happen recently, nor did it occur during the more commonly understood Iranian Revolution of 1979. This happened during the waning days of a vibrant constitutional movement that would forever change the nation of Iran. From it they gained a parliament (or Majlis), and for the first time in Persian history, a set of rights and entitlements that didn’t flow from the crown or the cleric. Tradesmen, clergymen and secular intellectuals, men and women alike, desperately attempted to salvage the last vestiges of their young constitution from a despotic shah and his Cossack thugs.
Was thrown into Canadian Parliament yesterday by PM Stephen Harper. Although not exactly the conservative agenda that some initially projected, it is one that will force the Liberal opposition to eat it or face an election in which they run the risk of a serious defeat. So, if the Liberal opposition abstains or otherwise finds a way to express its discontent without triggering an election and thus accepting the new conservative agenda it will underwrite this inconvenient piece of truth: (more…)
At The Moderate Voice, Shaun Mullen writes that “I have broken what for me has been a cardinal rule in recent days in using Nazi analogies when writing about the Bush administration’s embrace of torture as well as a deafening lack of response from most Americans to this and other outrages not unlike the Germans who failed to speak out about the excesses of the Third Reich.”
Here’s the comment I appended to his post: (more…)
The five Caspian Sea border states met in Tehran today to discuss oil, gas water and nukes. President Putin professed his support for a nuclear Iran, and condemned the proposal of placing NATO and/or American forces in Azerbaijan. Some bloggers have taken this warning as tantamount to a military pact, but I differ. I shared my thoughts at RCP:
As it stands, the five nations–Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan–all have a proportional claim to the oil reserves that reflect the size of their coast line. Iran has claimed more, and acted on it in 2001 when they sent a gunship into Azeri waters to halt BP exploration.
For the Russians, their biggest fear is a proposed gas pipeline deal between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. This would cut into the Russian energy monopoly over the West, which would hurt the already struggling Russian economy.
So my guess is the deal goes as follows–no more talks of a gas pipeline, no NATO forces in Azerbaijan, and Iran sucks it up and takes their 13% of the water. Yay team Caspian!
So what say you folks? If the U.S., France and Israel went around UN conditions in order to strike Iran, would it provoke Russian intervention?
Would they both run to the Chinese?
Yesterday, the New York Times started — “The Board” — a blog written by the 19 people responsible for the paper’s editorials.
Not long after the tragic and unnecessary death of Carol Ann Gotbaum another unruly traveler has died, this time of Taser inflicted injuries at Vancouver’s airport, this weekend:
The death of a middle-aged man at Vancouver airport after being stunned twice by an electric shock from a taser gun sparked new appeals yesterday for a moratorium on police use of the high-powered weapon.
The man in his 40s began behaving wildly in the international arrivals lounge of the Vancouver airport. He was sweating profusely, yelling, tipping his luggage cart over and throwing chairs about, RCMP spokesman Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre said. He grabbed a computer off a desk at an arrival gate and was pounding on windows.
Everyone should encourage their animals to start up their own blogs. They should then link up and make blog pals with other online animals. This past weekend my cat Oscar began his own blog. So I thought I’d give him some hits by sharing the link.
Go easy on him, he’s just starting out. Luckily there is spell check and that helps his paws with his typing. Any other cats out there with blogs let him know and he just might want to link up.
Turkey has been the unequivocal star of this past week’s news agenda. Turkish cable news has featured a mindless stream of images featuring mortars being fired into the anonymous distance, well-equipped commando units waiting at attention, and other staged military exercises involving men with big guns and intimidating face paint. While Erdoğan and Gül are bathing in the warm light of nationalist sentiment generated by the recent deaths of soldiers and policemen, as well as the Armenian genocide legislation, it is the opinion of this observer that the current media and diplomatic buildup will amount to nothing more than the usual sabre-rattling. It would be surprising if future military actions amounted to something more than limited raids and aerial assaults. Full-scale invasions are expensive propositions and Turkey doesn’t exactly have the financial resources of the United States or even Russia.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a comment that was rather surprising in light of his country’s recent experience with full-scale invasions.
We urge all parties in the conflict to exercise maximum restraint and demonstrate the ability to assess the long-term effects of their actions, including those that might further aggravate the situation.
This comment seemed rather strange in light of the fact that Turkey’s ordeal with the PKK is ultimately an issue of a minority ethnic group’s will to politically separate. In many regards, Turkey’s situation in northern Iraq and south-eastern Anatolia is analogous to Russia’s debacle in Chechnya. Depending on one’s point of point of view, the underdogs were either “freedom fighters” or “terrorists”. Over the years, Russia has had its fingers burnt in a number of such blistering-hot pies ranging from Afghanistan to the northern Caucasus.
While there was some oil to be lost if Chechnya had successfully broken away, the main threat was the dismemberment of the very ethnically and regionally-complex puzzle that is the Russian Federation. This was especially a concern when Boris Yeltsin was proving rather incapable of running the show in Moscow. Vladimir Putin arguably reignited the disastrous campaign in Chechnya in order to rally the country around a single nationalist cause. Russian history is full of similar examples of the country’s political leaders using the “foreign threat” to their political advantage. It would seem that Turkish politicians have often capitalized on the “PKK-threat” for this same purpose.
Clearly, Russia’s voice concerning the PKK-issue is not as potent as it would be for an event related to Armenia or Central Asia. It is quite possible that Russia has already established certain economic ties with the Kurdish government in northern Iraq, which they do not want compromised. Vladimir Putin is apparently scheduled to visit Iran in the very near future. Hopefully, we will gain some greater clarity concerning this rather surprising statement at that time.
I’ve lost track of the number of times the Democrats have criticized Bush — rightly so in many cases — for being stubborn, ignoring the facts, denying reality, and so forth. Pelosi seems determined to show that these descriptions are as apt for her — and those she speaks for — as they are for the President.
From the New York Times:
On the ABC News program “This Week,” Ms. Pelosi was asked the tough question at the core of the debate over the Armenian Genocide Act: What if forcing a vote on the resolution were to endanger the security of American troops in Iraq?
“Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values — Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, torture,” said Ms. Pelosi, whose San Francisco district includes thousands of Armenian-Americans. “Our troops are well-served when we declare who we are as a country and increase the respect people have for us as a nation.”
Is this what Pelosi and some other Democrats mean when they say they support our troops? Do they believe that our soldiers and marines are better served by declaring “who we are as a country” and “increasing the respect people have for us as a nation” than by not creating needless potential obstacles to the withdrawal they so strongly wish for?
I am thoroughly, absolutely disgusted.
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