United States of Empathy decides families belong together

Not all families of course. If you're a young American man from Compton looking at life in prison on a three-strikes count, nobody is suggesting you be allowed to keep your family together. And quite frankly, nobody in the media or across the punditocracy much gives a shit.

If, on the other hand, you're a young woman from Honduras arrested for entering the US illegally, Americans will rise up in their hundreds of thousands to march for your right to keep your family together.

What gives? A whole lot of politicking, that's what.

The anti-Trump media are ecstatic to have discovered a fresh beatin' stick with which to pummel the Orange Ogre. Yup, Trump's ICE goons are tearing families apart... the barbarity, the horror!!!

The humanitarian prerogative of keeping families together is a very recent discovery on the part of America's opinion makers. It's a rather selective empathy. It doesn't apply to those millions of marginalized Americans ensnared in the prison-happy judicial system, nor does it apply retroactively to anything that may have happened in the Before Trump era. Here's a recent story at VOX (hardly a pro-Trump media outlet) comparing immigration policy today with the Obama era, when Americans of good conscience neither knew nor cared about what happened at the border.

And let's never forget former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's profoundly compassionate insights into the deaths of half a million Iraqi children back in the Clinton era. I suppose that's different; those children have long been reunited with their families in Paradise.

Speaking of Albright, here's her acceptance speech at the Atlantic Council's 2018 Freedom Awards 
gala last week, where she was honoured for her lifetime achievements for "liberal democracy" and Empire. Truly an inspirational porridge of sanctimony and bafflegab!

But it does prove that a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand children are no big whoop one way or the other in the over-arching sweep of American Exceptionalism.


Unless of course their narrative can be harnessed in the cause of "the resistance."

How to bury Gaza

I've been reading newspapers long enough to know that the biggest stories go on the front page. Or at least the story that the editors deem to be the biggest.

For a whole lot of reasons, the Gaza story is by far the most important at the moment. Sure, global warming could bake us to a crisp, but not this week. MH17 is a plane crash that killed three hundred people. That deserves to be front page news, for a day or two, maybe a little longer if there are peripheral elements to the story, such as when that plane is shot down by a missile.

I was therefore perturbed when, as I was perusing the front page of Canada's newspaper of record yesterday morning, I couldn't find Gaza. Instead, five days after the event, MH17 remains the top story.

Except it's not so much about MH17 anymore; it's all about what Putin will do next, which could be anything from shooting down another civilian airliner to annexing Lithuania or Poland or the rest of Ukraine, apparently. Other stories deemed worthy of the front page are the Duffy Drama, a Chinese guy in BC charged with spying for China, and a court ruling about Canadians' legal rights to portage a canoe.

But no front page news about Gaza.

I'm leafing through the paper... mayor dies of wasp sting... car gets stolen... Rob Ford...

Pages 6 and 7 are entirely given over to anti-Putin propaganda presented as an insiders report on the imaginary Donetsk People's Republic.

Still no Gaza news.

On page 8 I was shocked to learn that big-talkin' John Baird wants Europe to take a tougher line toward Moscow.

Finally, on page 9, I encounter a Gaza story; "Hamas shows resilience despite shelling."

Hmm... that's not a good sign. Globe editors with an admiring headline for Hamas? Things must be going worse than we realize in Netanyahu's "Operation Over the Cliff."

OK, no wonder they buried it on page 9.

So today I pick up my paper, and guess what the top story is? Putin! Oh for f@cks sakes! And once again two pages of anti-Putin propaganda on pages 6 and 7!

First glimpse of Gaza-related news comes on page 8, where I learn that Ottawa has not yet formally banned flights to Israel but Air Canada is cancelling them anyway.

They're probably anti-Semites.

The editorial board at The Globe and Mail, on the other hand, should know better than to bury the biggest story in the world deep in their newspaper.

Khadr case makes mockery of Canada's human rights pretensions

Omar Khadr's legal reps are once again pleading with Canadian authorities to repatriate the poor bastard from Gitmo, like they promised to do a year ago.

It's all over the news.

It's been informative to see how the big media handle the story. I've seen headlines referring to Khadr as a "convicted war criminal" and a "convicted terrorist".

What Omar Khadr was at the time of his alleged crime was a child soldier. He was a fifteen year old Afghan kid who allegedly threw a grenade that killed a US soldier.

This happened in Afghanistan.

From some perspectives this would make him a great Afghan patriot.

Because Khadr had dual Canadian-Afghani citizenship, and Canada is a NATO/ISAF stalwart, from the Canadian perspective this makes him a "war criminal".

But as the whole world knows, Canada is the most do-goodery of all the do-good nations. The most virtuous by far of the Nations of Virtue.

After all, Canadians are so overbearingly virtuous that they came up with R2P, the "responsibility to protect".

That's a little slice of do-gooder flim-flam that allows virtuous and powerful nations to make war on weaker nations on the pretext that if they don't, bad stuff might happen to citizens of said weaker nation. It is especially applicable if said weaker nation happens to sit astride serious oil reserves.

This was the rationale behind the war on Ghadaffi.

So it's not surprising that the virtuous Canadians were also leading the fight against the use of child soldiers. They were one of the biggest promoters of UN resolution 1261.

So here is a child soldier, a Canadian citizen, tortured by the Nations of Virtue into a "confession", and more than ten years after the facts Canada still refuses to honor its obligations under UN resolution 1261, and indeed, its obligations under the Geneva Convention.

To say nothing of common sense and common decency.

All for the sake of making brownie points in Brussels and Washington.

SHAME!

How do you like those NATO rebels now?

The Guardian has an interesting story about how the various NATO empowered militias have become the scourge of civil society in post Gaddafi Libya. In this most recent episode a rebel faction kidnapped a prominent surgeon and human rights activist and tortured him for a few days, just to let him know that it's the guys with guns who call the shots, and not the NTC crowd busy getting the oil flowing for their NATO overlords.

In short, they've had a taste of power and they like it. They like it so much it doesn't look like they intend to turn it over to the pathetic NTC any time soon.

Al Jazeera has a story about another rebel group taking over the Tripoli airport. What's obvious is that there is no central authority that can hold the estimated 500 rebel factions to account.

And what are the Nations of Virtue saying about Libya's decline into anarchy? Why nothing of course. The US/NATO hegemon has moved on to greener pastures, and the Western media has moved along with them.

The media are all over saving Syria next.

If the salvation of Syria looks anything like the liberation of Libya they should spare themselves the trouble and let the Syrians figure it out.

In the meantime they could, just as a goodwill gesture, return to Libya and clean up the mess they created there.

Greeks will leave Euro, end of world nigh

It's all over the news, except they're still mostly sliding in the modifier "might".

Ain't no "might" about it.

The people have had enough of the austerity enema.

According to the mainstream scare-mongers, once Greece says goodbye to the Euro and welcome back to the drachma, all hell will break loose.

And I'm quite sure the "global capital markets" will do some serious heavy breathing.

Not to worry.

Underneath that Rumpelstiltskin economy that thrives by passing paper around a daisy chain of insiders, there is still a real economy where real people make real stuff and provide services that really matter.

In the short term, global capital markets will indeed have a shudder.

In the long run, the people who can do real stuff and provide meaningful services will be fine.

But a lot of straw-spinners will be out of work.

The invisible Arabs of Jerusalem

"A city polished by time".

Indeed. And Bonny Reichert polishes things up some more in a feature travel article in today's Globe and Mail.

She's makes no mention of evictions, house demolitions.

She's polished out the ethnic cleansing.

The words "Arab" and "Palestinian" are nowhere to be found.

There is a passing reference to the "Muslim call to prayer", although who they would be calling is left to the imagination.

Another passing reference to a time when she would have considered Jerusalem "too political, too dangerous" to visit.

The nature of that danger and those politics is again left to the imagination.

Polished from memory.

It's been polished into the perfect tourist destination, Jerusalem has.

Sparkling, safe, and apolitical.

What's news and what's not

There's been tons written all over everywhere about how "news" has become entertainment programming.

That's pretty much true.

The other morning the CBC started out their "World Report" with a story about what might be revealed at the Victoria Stafford murder trial that day.

Victoria was the kid who was murdered by a couple of loser crack-heads from Woodstock a couple of years ago. A sad sad story.

But is speculating about what might happen in court on any given day any kind of a "news" story? Should it lead a newscast that purports to be a serious news program of global reach?

No and no again.

It's the same pretty much everywhere you go for your news.

Many of the US sites are just full of speculation about John Edwards' mistress these days.

Edwards is an also-ran in the richest sense of the word. Also a major league slimer. But why does the fact that he dropped his trousers for gals other than his cancer stricken wife constitute news?

It doesn't.

What else is on the news radar?

RIM stocks falter. That's news?

Gingrich drops out of GOP race. That's news?

Bin Laden's diary is big news these days. Now that Obama has made the Osama kill a central plank in his re-election campaign we'll be hearing tons and tons of imaginary updates from bin Laden's diary.

Oh, and don't forget the Facebook IPO. A bunch of self-dealing self-interested insiders keep issuing press releases and the media pass this garbage on as though it's important news.

At last report Zuckerman values his lucky strike in the $100 billion range. Is that news?

Zuckerman's lucky strike can disappear as quickly as it appeared. One billion is too rich a valuation for Facebook, never mind a hundred.

But check your news sites.

All this stuff is considered news.

Fareed Zakaria declares Mexican drug war going great!

That's an insight he shared with the GPS audience this morning.

When you're as well-connected and high profile a journalist as Fareed you're obviously privy to inside intel that's not available to the rest of us.

So we'll have to take Fareed's word for it that in spite of the 50,000 dead Mexicans and continuing saturation of the American market with illegal drugs, Calderon's US-dictated war on the cartels has turned some sort of imaginary corner.

Fareed's info is obviously so top-secret and up-to-the-minute that even the heads of state gathered at the recent Cartagena conflab hadn't heard of it. With the exception of Obama and his trusty parrot Steven Harper, every leader in the Western Hemisphere, Calderon included, has had their fill of the "war on drugs."

One of the few bits of supposed evidence that Zakaria cited was that no less than forty high level cartel operatives have been killed since Calderon launched this war in 2006.

Leaving aside the question of whether eliminating forty senior narcos justifies 50,000 dead, what does he suppose happens when a senior leader is taken out?

He is immediately replaced by younger and more aggressive leaders. Based on what I hear from folks who buy the stuff, the continued ample supply of illegal drugs would seem to bear that out.

So is Fareed's declaration of almost-victory based in reality, or is it based on White House talking points?

Good news from the farm suicide capital of the world

Check it out.

It's from the Reuters site and it is one happy uplifting story. Seems those backward Indians are finally getting with the program and switching to tractors from their traditional oxen.

Seems you only have to feed the tractor when you need it. The oxen you have to feed year round. Indian farmers are enjoying the same spike in income that American farmers saw when slavery was eliminated.

Of course, we've gilded that moment in history as the "emancipation of the slaves" so we've blocked from memory the economic realities behind that emancipation.

Anyway, nowhere in that happy story about farmers in Maharastra is the word "suicide" mentioned. I find that odd, because Maharastra has been the world leader in farmer suicides for many years.

So is this a "good" news story or just an incomplete one?

Bringing transparency to censorship; Russian politician proposes good news quota

Vladimir Zhirinovsky is the Newt Gingrich of Russian politics. He may be full of shit but none the less he from time to time passes an interesting idea.

In light of the previous post about the French election I was intrigued by Zhirinovsky's suggestion that there be a quota for good news.

For example, the Globe story on the French Presidential election could carry this disclaimer;

Important aspects of this story have been omitted in order to meet the good news quota.

Is that not preferable to having some faceless editor arrogantly take upon himself the responsibility of denying you access to the news? At least now the news consumer knows that he or she is missing something.

Alas, the next conundrum will be who gets to decide what news is "good" news.

Again in the case of the Globe's treatment of the French election, the surging popularity of the hard left might be bad news to the paper's editorial board, but could very well be good news to many readers. Who will decide what is what?

All the news that's fit to print or all the news that comfortably fits?

If you've followed the French Presidential election campaign at all you'll know that one of the most exciting or terrifying developments, depending on your point of view, is the emergence of the Left Front.

The Left Front is an amalgam of left-wing groups loosely organized around the Communist Party. Its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has promised a 100% tax on incomes over 300 thousand euros. He's also promised to turn France away from the German-dictated austerity agenda that is crippling Europe. He's the most exciting voice in the Presidential race.

So how is it possible for The Globe and Mail to publish a half page feature about the French Presidential election today without once mentioning either Melenchon or the Left Front?

Ted Nugent and the cancellation of the Ontario spring bear hunting season

Since the Michigan Madman keeps popping up in the news I'd like to refer back to when he was making headlines in the Toronto Star.

For many years Terrible Ted used to bring his extended family across the Saint Clair River every spring for a spot of bear hunting. Ted was a rich and reasonably famous dude and his hunting party spent tons of money in the rural Ontario economy.

Then, back in '99, Premier Mike Harris, out of the blue, cancelled the spring bear hunt.

Now, on the face of it, you'd think Mike and Ted would have quite a bit in common. Mike was one of those hard right guys who would feel right at home at a Tea Party tea party. A slash and burn union-busting redneck all the way.

So the cancellation of the spring bear hunt was a bit of a shock. People took a second look at Mean Mike. If he cared enough about those cuddly bear cubs who lost their mommies to the spring hunt, he really couldn't be such a bad guy, could he?

Of course the more liberal reaches of the media couldn't help but soften their approach to Harris after that. That most liberal of liberal Canadian newspapers, the Toronto Star, invoked the Nuge in its attempt to whitewash Harris.

You see, of all the critics of the cancellation, the Motor City Maniac was the most vocal, and that's just the foil that the Star needed to discredit all the other critics.

Like, if a self-proclaimed "greasy gun-loving guitar player" from Michigan is against this, it's obviously a good idea. Case closed.

They didn't dwell too much on the back story. A big Harris financial backer by the name of Robert Schad had a soft spot for cuddly bear cubs. Over brandies one night he says to Mean Mike, "hey pal, I'm thinking of another six-figure contribution to your re-election fund, but how would you feel about doing me a little favor? I've just been so worried about all those homeless motherless bear cubs we see every spring because of that darned spring bear hunt..."

And the rest is history.

The rest of the history includes more reports of nuisance bears every year all over rural Ontario, to the point that they're becoming a threat to campers and cottagers, but that's another story.

Sooner or later the spring hunt will be back and so will Ted and his high-spending posse.

US claims Taliban attacks are "clear sign of our progress"

Taliban fighters launched seven simultaneous attacks in the Afghan capital today.

The attacks come less than a month after Senators Lieberman, McCain and Graham penned an op-ed in the Washington Post called Sustaining Success in Afghanistan, an article that pushes wishful thinking into the realm of self-delusion by taking as its point of departure the premise that there is some "success" to sustain.

Today's Taliban attack is one of the most serious in Kabul since the Talibs were routed in 2001. If there is a momentum to be seen in Afghanistan, which side is it favoring? Facts on the ground would suggest that it is the Taliban who are sustaining success.

Nevertheless the usual spin barrage came from the usual sources today. Hillary condemned the attacks as "cowardly".

Ambassador Ryan Crocker actually managed to turn it into a good news story. Good news for us, at that! Somehow the fact that eleven years after their defeat the Taliban can launch attacks at will in the capital is a "clear sign of progress"!

Crocker must be thrilled that while our progress was manifesting itself in Kabul today, just over the border in Pakistan 400 Taliban and al-Qaeda militants were sprung from a Pakistani prison.

There'll be lots more signs of our progress in the weeks and months ahead!

Guardian sings praises of Libyan war scribes

Here's proof you don't have to fight a war to profit from one.

You can just write a book about the war you didn't fight. Not only can you make a few bucks, but it'll perk up the resume something fierce!

That's the road that Alex Crawford and Lindsey Hilsum have taken. These are two Brit journalists who spent some time covering NATO's war on Libya last year.

The Guardian has nothing but good things to say about their books. It's so much more comfy talking about the books than it is talking about the war, I suppose.

I haven't read the books so I don't know how great they are, but after reading the review I have to say that this Gadaffi chap must have been the most evil of evil dictators.

That fact that the Libyan people enjoyed the highest standard of living in Africa aside, life under the evil dictator must have been awful. A full belly and a roof over your head and a free education at the foreign university of your choice count for nothing when you're not free.

There is one faint hint in the review that maybe the Libyan people were better off before we freed them from the evil dictator. The reviewer concludes with the observation that now that they are free, it is up to them, the Libyan people, to decide what to do with that freedom.

Apparently our work is done.

Celebrating poverty; how Fox News spins economic reality for young people

Back in the dark ages any teen with enough get up and go to land a part-time job at the corner gas station could own a car.

A car meant freedom. You could visit the girl or the liquor store or the drug dealer or the church in the next county any time you wanted. Freedom.

That was the dark ages. We've had a lot of progress since.

Among other things car ownership was a status marker. Owning a car marked you as someone who was free to visit the next county or the next state whenever you wanted, for whatever reason.

That was the dark ages.

We've made a lot of progress.

By the time the '90's rolled around, car ownership among teens had pretty much died out. A teen might be able to afford the latest Nike sneakers, might be able to afford a Bulls jacket, but probably couldn't afford to own a car.

Minimum wage doesn't go as far as it used to.

Today any teen can walk up to a cell-phone kiosk in any mall and walk away with a phone that works. That's the new coolness factor. Minimum wage will cover a minimum cell plan.

You can't visit the next county or the next state, but you can text your "friends" all over the world.

This is what Fox News is talking about when they crow about web-savvy teens not wanting to drive.

It's not that they don't want to; they can't afford to.

But the no-spin folks can spin that into a feel-good story.

CNN:Is the war in Afghanistan unraveling?

Thats the lead to an article on CNN's home page right now. March of 2012.

Is the war in Afghanistan unraveling?

How retarded would you have to be to have that thought cross your mind for the first time in March of 2012?

The war in/on Afghanistan has been unraveling since that first blush of victory eleven years ago. Eleven years ago we'd put paid to the Talibs and their Al Qaeda cohorts. A few short months of carpet bombing, lots of on-the-ground help from the Northern Alliance, and the Taliban were supposedly on the run.

The war has been "unraveling" ever since.

Today, even as over 100,000 ISAF troops remain on the ground, the Taliban are in control of almost all of the country outside the major urban centers. And those major urban centers aren't safe zones for ISAF troops. Rather, they are combat zones.

Is the war in Afghanistan unraveling?

No.

It's over.

We lost.

US loses key Africa ally and it's Gadaffi's fault

Up until today the land-locked African country of Mali was a key US ally in everything from the war on Libya, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the war on Chinese influence in Africa.

All gone in the blink of an eye.

No wonder the White House is leading the chorus of "international" condemnation of the coup that has Mali President Toure running for his life. "International" in this case means the usual basketful of US vassal states in Africa and beyond.

It's interesting to see how Western media are spinning this story. Up until today Mali has been consistently portrayed as a model African democracy. Sure, it's one of the poorest countries in the world, but their President is democratically elected, and they play along with all the standard US initiatives like the war on Gadaffi and the war on drugs, so obviously they are good guys.

The democratically elected President was ousted by "renegade soldiers" according to CNN and Reuters. Fox had them as "drunken soldiers". Hey, I guess that would explain why you'd want to overthrow a "democratic" US-friendly government in one of the world's poorest countries...

So how was this Gadaffi's fault?

Mali has for many years had issues with its Taureg minority. The Taureg are a nomadic tribe that wander in and out of the various countries around the Sahara. They suffered the usual litany of abuse that nomadic people everywhere in the world suffer, but they found a friend in the eccentric Gadaffi.

Gadaffi not only allowed the Libyan-based Taureg the same rights as all Libyans, but he welcomed Taureg from neighboring countries into his military. When Gadaffi was deposed by last year's nine month NATO campaign, tens of thousands of them headed home, looting military stockpiles along the way.

When they got back to Mali they joined up with their fellow tribesmen who have been staging a long-term struggle for independence from the most stable democracy in Africa.

With their ill-gotten booty from the looted Libyan military stockpiles they've been easily kicking the shit out of the regular (US sponsored) Malian army. And it's that army that today pushed our ally President Toure out of the Presidential Palace.

Another one bites the dust.

Peace and prosperity just around the corner as Libya reopens stock exchange

They're celebrating this week from Tripoli to Benghazi. True, you can't walk to the market for fear of a militia shake-down or worse. There is no government. Everything except the oil sector is in ruins...

BUT THEY GOT THEIR GODAMN STOCK EXCHANGE UP AND RUNNING!

This good news comes via the BBC, a major anti-Gadaffi cheer-leader right next to Sarkozy, and we now know he had a few things to hide.

I'm a bit old-school on this kind of stuff. I don't believe "news" media should be cheer-leading one way or the other. But having cheered on the NATO rape of Libya, the droids at the BBC can't stop themselves from cheering more, hence this good news about the Libyan stock exchange.

Their source is one Ahmed Karhoud, who is apparently the general manager of the newly re-opened bourse. Here's what Ahmed has to say;

This opening sends a sign to the world that Libya is now a stable country where the economy is kicking off again. We still don't have a government but we have the infrastructure to become the financial hub for North Africa.


OK BBC, you're quoting a guy who admits Libya doesn't have a government but holds it out as the HQ for African finance?

And this is what passes for responsible news reporting these days?

Gandhi, Mandela, MLK,... have WHAT in common with Syria?

Here's what the think tank at Falling Downs is talking about when we claim that Al Jazeera has lost its claim to being a reliable news source.

Dr. Larhi Sadiki's faux editorial is so extravagantly far-fetched that I hope the legal representatives of Messers Gandhi, King, and Mandela will serve notice.

It is always a winning strategy to lard your cause with great names. However, when you invoke the three greatest names of non-violent resistance in support of your armed insurrection, surely that is a bridge too far.

Obviously some Syrians have had enough of Assad. Some of those, spurred on by a misguided belief that NATO would be prepared to deliver a "Libya, the sequel", took up arms. The arms and the encouragement have been orchestrated from outside the country from the very beginning of Syrian Spring.

While it's fanciful to invoke the names Mandela, King, and Gandhi, no serious person harbors any illusions about what would ensue if "protesters" in South Africa, India, or the USA took up arms against their government.

In every case we'd be doing exactly what Assad is doing.

Journalistic integrity alive and well and heading out the door at Al Jazeera

When was the last time you heard of an American journalist quitting their job because they felt their employer was interfering in their work?

It doesn't happen, at least not in the big leagues. CBS/Fox/CNN/ABC/NBC all want you to believe that they are bastions of objectivity and journalistic integrity. That's why their staff never quit their jobs. They are truth tellers working for the American news machine. What kind of bias could there be?

Over the past decade or so Qatar based Al Jazeera has elbowed its way into the big leagues of international journalism. They've gained a reputation for beating the American networks to the big stories, especially in the Middle East, and presenting the stories in a way that might get some noses out of joint in Washington but which is enormously popular in the rest of the world.

Al Jazeera was celebrated internationally for it's integrity and objectivity. The fact that W wanted to bomb their Baghdad offices during the Iraq war just enhanced their reputation.

Alas, that reputation took something of a hit during NATO's war on Libya last year. The Qatar government, sponsor of Al Jazeera, had been feuding with the Colonel for many years, mainly because of Gadaffi's repeated calls for the masses in the Gulf states to rise up and throw their unelected American-supported elite out of office.

The anti-Gadaffi bias in Al Jazeera's coverage of that war was obvious to anyone who followed it. No longer was Al Jazeera the unbiased voice observing a standard of integrity that the New York Times and the BBC could only dream about. Al Jazeera had joined the club.

Evidently the Qatari royal family who fund Al Jazeera are no fans of Syrian President Assad either. While they still coast along on the strength of a reputation made years ago, their actual coverage makes it clear that they have become the official propaganda outlet for the Free Syrian Army.

At the same time, the network has studiously avoided coverage of the uprising in Bahrain, another oil-rich pro-US sheikdom right next door to Qatar. This obvious bias in favor of Qatar's friends and against her perceived enemies has become too much for some of the staff at Al Jazeera's Beirut office. As of this week at least three high ranking staffers have quit their jobs in protest.

What a concept! Putting one's integrity before the security of a paycheck. That's something we don't see in America anymore.