Ignatieff; Bush's Useful Idiot

Ignatieff remains Bush's 'useful idiot', a wonderful twist on the old Cold War phrase, despite his attempts to distance himself from the White House. Even in Liberal Leadership debates he refuses to denounce the invasion of Iraq.Ignatieff takes fire over his position on Iraq


Bush’s Useful Idiots :: Tony Judt: Whatever happened to American liberalism?
London Review of Books

To be sure, Bush’s liberal supporters have been disappointed by his efforts. Every newspaper I have listed and many others besides have carried editorials criticising Bush’s policy on imprisonment, his use of torture and above all the sheer ineptitude of the president’s war. But here, too, the Cold War offers a revealing analogy. Like Stalin’s Western admirers who, in the wake of Khrushchev’s revelations, resented the Soviet dictator not so much for his crimes as for discrediting their Marxism, so intellectual supporters of the Iraq War – among them Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, David Remnick and other prominent figures in the North American liberal establishment – have focused their regrets not on the catastrophic invasion itself (which they all supported) but on its incompetent execution. They are irritated with Bush for giving ‘preventive war’ a bad name.

What I felt was disappointing about a lot of Canadian opposition to the war was that very few people seemed to give a damn about the human-rights situation," Ignatieff says. "Very few seemed to care that peace had the consequence of leaving 26 million people inside a really odious tyranny."

Macleans.ca | Culture | Books | SMART GUY, EH?

NY Times March 14, 2004

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

The Year of Living Dangerously

By MICHAEL IGNATIEFF

o I supported an administration whose intentions I didn't trust, believing that the consequences would repay the gamble. Now I realize that intentions do shape consequences. An administration that cared more genuinely about human rights would have understood that you can't have human rights without order and that you can't have order once victory is won if planning for an invasion is divorced from planning for an occupation. The administration failed to grasp that from the first moment an American tank column took a town, there had to be military police and civilian administrators following behind to guard museums, hospitals, water-pumping stations and electricity generators and to stop looting, revenge killings and crime. Securing order would have meant putting 250,000 troops into the invasion as opposed to 130,000. It would have meant immediately retaining and retraining the Iraqi Army and police, instead of disbanding them. The administration, which never tires of telling us that hope is not a plan, had only hope for a plan in Iraq.

Also See

Liberal Leadership Race

Ignatieff


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Economic War

As I said here the war in Lebanon was as much about economic competition as it was about Hezbollah. Business Owners, Workers Charge Israel Deliberately Targeted Lebanon's Economy


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Lebanon

Israel

Imperialism







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Noble Acts

Noam Chomsky on Noble acts. From an online video available at SEED.


In fact, you can see it very clearly by just comparing historical events that are similar They're never identical, but similar.

Take the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the US invasion of Iraq—just take those three. From the point of view of the people who perpetrated these acts, they were each a noble effort and done for the benefit of everyone—in fact the self-justifications are kind of similar. It almost translates. But we can't see it in ourselves; we can only see it in them, you know. Nobody doubts that the Russians committed aggression, that Saddam Hussein committed aggression, but with regard to ourselves it's impossible.

I've reviewed a lot of the literature on this, and it's close to universal. We just cannot adopt toward ourselves the same attitudes that we adopt easily and in fact, reflexively, when others commit crimes. No matter how strong the evidence.

See:

The Noble Cause

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Jehovah Witnesses Were Right

Yep. But as usual for the wrong reasons.There was something to their fear of blood transfusions. And in this age of AIDs their concerns become part of a mass cultural fear of blood transfusions. Science has met their challenge and found out that perhaps what appeared as an faith based belief may have a valid health foundation.

Liver Transplants Succeed Without Blood Transfusions

Jehovah's Witnesses refuse blood transfusions. This does not prevent them from contracting hepatitis C or other diseases that necessitate liver transplants. Surgeons have developed techniques--such as withdrawing up to 1,500 milliliters of the patient's own blood for reinfusion during the surgery--to deal with these religious strictures. And a new study of liver transplant patients seems to show that avoiding donated transfusions might be good for both blood banks and patients with no religious objections.


Of course the JW's have been wrong about the end of the world, the other key tenant of their faith.

1914 was one of the more important estimates of the start of the war of Armageddon by the Jehovah's Witnesses (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society). They computed 1914 from prophecy in the book of Daniel, Chapter 4. The writings referred to "seven times". The WTS interpreted each "time" as equal to 360 days, giving a total of 2520 days. This was further interpreted as representing 2520 years, measured from the starting date of 607 BCE. This gave 1914 as the target date. When 1914 passed, they changed their prediction; 1914 became the year that Jesus invisibly began his rule.

1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994, etc. were other dates that the Watchtower Society (WTS) or its members predicted. Since late in the 19th century, they had taught that the "battle of the Great Day of God Almighty" (Armageddon) would happen in 1914 CE. It didn't. The next major estimate was 1925. Watchtower magazine predicted: "The year 1925 is a date definitely and clearly marked in the Scriptures, even more clearly than that of 1914; but it would be presumptuous on the part of any faithful follower of the Lord to assume just what the Lord is going to do during that year." 6 The Watchtower Society selected 1975 as its next main prediction. This was based on the estimate "according to reliable Bible chronology Adam was created in the year 4026 BCE, likely in the autumn of the year, at the end of the sixth day of creation." 8 They believed that the year 1975 a promising date for the end of the world, as it was the 6,000th anniversary of Adam's creation. Exactly 1,000 years was to pass for each day of the creation week. This prophecy also failed. The current estimate is that the end of the world as we know it will happen precisely 6000 years after the creation of Eve. 9 There is no way of knowing when this happened. More details on the WTS predictions.

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Earliest Writing in North America

And no it's not the Golden tablets given to Mormon founder Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni.....Though to his credit, being a scryer and seer, his belief in the ancient peoples of North America being more advanced turns out to be more true than the spiritualist faith it was based on.

Science

Stone Writing Earliest Seen in Americas
The Cascajal block, pictured here, was found in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1999. Since then archaeologists have confirmed it bears the earliest known writing in the New World.

The arrangement and pattern of the symbols suggest the ancient Olmec civilization was using written language roughly three centuries earlier than previously proposed.

"We are dealing with the first, clear evidence of writing in the New World," said Stephen Houston, a Brown University anthropologist. Houston and his U.S. and Mexican colleagues detail the tablet's discovery and analysis in a study appearing this week in the journal Science.

SEE:

Archaeology

Mormons

Atlantis


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The Weaker Sex

Contrary to the gender myth promoted by male chauvinists, females are not the weaker sex.

Bird Moms Manipulate Birth Order To Protect Sons

When marauding mites turn up in a house finch's nest, she shelters her sons from the blood-suckers by laying male eggs later than those containing their sturdier sisters, according to new research.

Making sure the vulnerable baby boys are exposed to mites for a shorter period allows both the sons and the daughters to survive long enough to leave the nest.

"Sons are more sensitive to the mites than daughters," said Alexander V. Badyaev of The University of Arizona in Tucson. "Mothers minimize sons' exposure to mites by laying male eggs later than female eggs. As a result, the males are in the nest fewer days."

And what applies to birds also applies to humans. During late pregnancy miscarriages in humans, the survival rate for males is less than for females, during the miscarriage if the embryonic development is interupted the surviving fetus if it was in the process of becoming male reverts to female.

Boys vs. Girls

natural selection may encourage weak mothers to have a disproportionate number of female infants because they are more likely to survive pregnancy, a characteristic that would be particularly valuable in times of hardship. Any biologist will tell you that a pregnancy with a male child has a substantially higher risk of miscarriage and stillbirth, such that the numbers of male to female infants at birth are roughly equal, even though far more male infants are conceived. Further, studies of neonates confirm that premature female infants survive at much higher rates than premature male infants of the same gestational age. Certainly, in lean times, natural selection would encourage the selection of the gender most likely to survive pregnancy and birth, thereby justifying the biological expense of a woman’s pregnancy. Male infants simply don’t fit the bill. A pregnancy with a male fetus is useless if the infant doesn’t survive the pregnancy and birth. Accordingly, a mother in “poor condition” would be “better off” having a girl because a girl is much more likely to survive the pregnancy. In times of abundance, natural selection would also favor a “strong” woman taking to the biological risk of expending energy and resources on a male pregnancy. Because resources are abundant, the investment in a pregnancy that is more likely to end in miscarriage would be less costly.

See:

Rushton Is A Fascist

Feminism

Biology

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Here Come De Judge

To rephrase the Who's 'Won't Get Fooled' Again....meet the new judge same as the old judge. New judge ejects Saddam from trial


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Iraq

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The Noble Cause

Like Harper here is another politician claiming that the war in Afghanistan is a noble cause but he too admits they underestimated the resistance. I think the word they are looking for is ignoble.

Browne: Taliban surprised us
UK: Defence secretary admits Britain underestimated Afghan resistance.
Full text of Des Browne's speech
Comment: John Williams

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Afghanistan

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The Perils of Leaving Home

The perils of leaving home to speak at the UN. Especially if you are a crooked politician.

State of emergency in Thailand amid coup rumours

Commentary: Thailand's 'coup attempt'

On BBC the coup prempted their coverage of George Bush's speech to the UN. Ahhhh to bad so sad.

Thailand's turbulent politics

Thailand's latest political crisis traces its roots back to January when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra sold his family's stake in the telecoms firm Shin Corp.

The move angered many, mainly urban Thais, who complained the family avoided paying tax and had passed control of an important national asset to Singaporean investors.

Profile: Thaksin Shinawatra

John Aglionby, south-east Asia correspondent
Tuesday September 19, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra being forced out in a coup d'etat would be an ironic twist in the career of a man who has preferred to write his own rule books rather than abide by prevailing conventions.

From his transformation as a little-known police colonel into the nation's most popular ever leader via a farcical attempt to buy Liverpool football club in 2004 and a bizarre alleged plot on his life last month, Mr Thaksin has always led an arrogant larger-than-life existence where wheeling and dealing behind the scenes has been as important as what is presented to the public.

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Negligence

Say it ain't so....
Pledges made last year to substantially increase the volume of official development assistance, including a doubling of aid to Africa by 2010, must be met. Responding to a question after the briefing, Mr Wolfowitz named US as a major defaulter to the commitment.

Of course when one spends all of ones International Aid and development funds on making war well.....what do you expect. The Cost of Iraq War calculator is set to reach $318.5 billion by September 30th, the end of fiscal year 2006.

Wolfowitz isn't he the guy who was in charge of the war in Iraq, the one that was supposed to be self funding thanks to all the oil.



See:

Africa

World Bank

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