Category: Uncategorized

This guy’s priorities are clear:

I had a horrible feeling in my stomach this morning when I saw

that Hussein had been capatured.

This is a BIG boost for *. This will be used in campaign literature. It will make Dems and others who opposed the war look bad as well. I don’t regret opposing shrub’s war of aggression on Iraq but it sure will be hard for the candidates now, unless they press the Where’s Osama issue but since a majority of Americans already believe that Hussein was behind 9/11/01 it hardly matters.

All of a sudden I am not confident he will lose in 2004.

Then there’ll be those with the same ‘horrible feeling’ but more intelligent than to articulate it. Also, check out this report of George Galloway’s reaction. (Both via Tim Blair.)

Finally, the last moments inside the hiding place from the only man in a position to tell us:

I’m hiding there now, in a cleverly disguised seven foot deep hole. No way those idiot Americans will find me here!!!

Hold on. Someone’s at the door. I wonder who that could be at this hou

Hey, I got that blogger profile out of him just in the nick of time.

Nobody told Thabo that thing about stopping digging:

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has sprung to the defence of Robert Mugabe and blamed Britain for the crisis in Zimbabwe.
…..
President Mbeki dismissed Commonwealth concerns about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, saying it had lost sight of the land issue, which he described as the core of the problems in Zimbabwe.
…..
Lovemore Madhuku, a prominent Zimbabwean academic, said: “The point is that Mbeki is now looking a bit silly by his campaign to defend the totally indefensible.”

Yes, and worse than silly. Try and run with it: because of the land issue… human rights abuses, torture, starving your political opponents and so forth. A bit like some of the root causes stuff about September 11. See also this, and the fifth item of my earlier Catching up post.

Is the ‘Noam’ in ‘Noam Chomsky’ the same as the ‘No Am’ in ‘No American policy can be supported’?

Just a thought – to introduce two book reviews you should read today. The first is Nick Cohen’s review of Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (via Harry’s Place); in which Cohen says of the left:

[M]illions abandoned their comrades in Iraq and engaged in mass evasion. If you think that it was asking too much to expect it to listen to people in Iraq when they said there was no other way of ending 35 years of oppression, consider the sequel… [T]he Kurdish survivors of genocide and groups from communists through to conventional democrats had the right to expect fraternal support against the insurgency by the remnants of the Baath Party. They are being met with indifference or active hostility because they have committed the unforgivable sin of cooperating with the Americans. For the first time in its history the Left has nothing to say to the victims of fascism.

The other review is by Michael Burleigh and of William Shawcross’s Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq. Burleigh writes:

William Shawcross is one of a handful of European intellectuals who have bravely resisted the Gadarene rush to condemn Bush and Blair for liberating a country accurately described as “a prison above ground and a mass grave beneath it”.
…..
The battle in Iraq is between the remnants of a regime based on mass murder, aided and abetted by Al-Qaeda pirates, and coalition forces who, in addition to maintaining security, are struggling to repair the infrastructure and to help shape civil society. To frustrate that mission, the powers of darkness have killed not just American soldiers, but such figures as Brazil’s Sergio Vieira de Mello who bravely decided to put themselves in such terrible danger. Let’s hope that Shawcross is right in believing that the coalition leaders have the will to stay that particular course. If they don’t, we will all bear the terrible consequences.

Burleigh also refers, in passing, to ‘the BBC, which every evening almost wills coalition failure in Iraq’. (Hat tip to Dan Jones.)

And this, if confirmed, would be almost as interesting as the last, if confirmed; maybe more so:

Iraq’s coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day “work programme” Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.

(Via InstaPundit.)

See here:

Ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been arrested in Iraq, according to unconfirmed reports.

Members of the Iraqi Governing Council and Kurdish officials said he had been captured in his ancestral hometown of Tikrit, north of the capital Baghdad.

Also here, here, and here.

(Updated at 11.25 AM.) Fox News is giving ‘US officials’ as its source for the story:

TEHRAN, Iran – Saddam Hussein…, the former Iraqi dictator and most-wanted figure by the U.S.-led coalition, has been captured in Iraq, U.S. officials told Fox News.

Multiple high-level sources told Fox News they are almost certain that coalition troops captured the former Iraqi leader in a raid designed to net him in his hometown of Tikrit.

The officials said the former leader, who during his rule slept in lush palaces while many ordinary Iraqis lived in poverty, was found “cowering” in a basement in a home raided by coalition soldiers. The sources said coalition forces were “testing” the person believed to be Saddam to confirm his identity.

News of the potential capture made its way around Iraq like wildfire, with Iraqis in Tikrit and the capital city, Baghdad, celebrating the news by firing guns into the air.

Cowering in a basement!

(Updated again at 11.40 AM.) Of the Iraqi blogs I’ve looked at, so far only Sam at Hammorabi has posted on this:

It is a victory for the victims of his regime and the righteous people of Iraq and the WORLD at large.

BBC world has been showing big celebrations live from Baghdad including celebratory gun fires.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL AND HAPPY NEW YEAR (2004) WITHOUT THE TYRANT!
It is a VICTORY TO ALL OF US.

Sam is promising updates.

(Updated at 11.50 AM.) The Guardian now has Tony Blair confirming that the man captured is Saddam. The text of the Beeb report, with which I started, keeps being amended, so don’t blame me that my excerpt is now only approximate.

(Final update at 12.50 PM.) Paul Bremer: ‘Ladies and gentlemen – we got him!’ – followed by jubilant applause from the press conference. My own tuppenceworth: yeeeeeeeeeehah!

(Correction: this is the final update – at 1.05 PM.) You can see the video of the Bremer press conference if you go here: scroll down a bit for the Saddam mugshot on the right. How long before those ‘Yes, but…’s? No time at all.

(Obliged to correct myself again – at 3.45 PM.) The BBC video I’ve linked to now no longer shows the beginning of the Bremer press conference, but goes straight to the pictures of Saddam undergoing medical examination. Now, why? It couldn’t be that ‘Ladies and gentlemen – we got him!’, followed by jubilant applause, was somehow not kosher by them? It surely couldn’t.

Ophelia Benson, of here and – in a different sense – also here, has a piece in today’s Guardian on bad writing. She starts by saying:

It may seem like an exercise in administering corporal punishment to a deceased equine quadruped, to say harsh things about academic bad writing – but of course it’s not, for the cogent reason that the horse is not dead. Academic bad writing is a thriving, flourishing, burgeoning industry. The market is saturated, but the rain keeps falling.

Read on.

It’s taken me a while between the last instalment and this one, and apart from the usual reasons for delays of that sort – too much else going on – there has been a reason intrinsic to the exercise itself: I’ve been finding it very difficult to arrive at my track rankings on the two albums to be highlighted today. First I found that my judgements were slightly different from what they’d been last time I went through the exercise (early 1997), and so I had to listen again to make sure of them; and then I had to listen yet again if I still hadn’t settled things. I know you all wouldn’t want to think I was taking the matter lightly.

Bronwen Wallace (from Keep That Candle Burning Bright and other poems):

[Y]ou’ll… know what I mean when I say there’s nothing like country for a hurtin’ song, something to do with steel strings, I think, and the way a country voice isn’t afraid to let you hear the places where it breaks, that twang it gets from carrying bluegrass and gospel a little further west. A voice like that knows something about how to carry longing, too. I mean the hard, practical work of it, day to day.

1980 – Roses in the Snow

Roses in the Snow is the only Emmylou album, in my own view, that can challenge Luxury Liner and/or Elite Hotel (see the earlier instalments) for top spot in the Emmylou album rankings. How do I rank these three, in fact? For the answer to that question you must wait, mouth watering, until the end of the series. Anyway, Roses in the Snow was Emmy’s most bluegrass album to this point, and a triumph. Ricky Skaggs is there again and, rightly or wrongly, I think I see his influence. Ranking the tracks was a great headache, as I’ve said, except that rock solid throughout was my number 1 – by A.P. Carter. Top track: Gold Watch and Chain. Runner-up: Jordan. Bubbling-unders: Roses in the Snow; Green Pastures; The Boxer.

1981 – Evangeline

Not in the same class as the foregoing, but a good ‘un all the same. The title track is by Robbie Robertson and some of you will recall that Emmylou appears in The Last Waltz, singing this number with the Band. (The Band, now there’s something for Canada to boast about. OK, partly.) Top track: I Don’t Have To Crawl. Runner-up: Evangeline. Bubbling-unders: Spanish Johnny; Millworker; Mister Sandman.

Thanks to those other Emmylou blogger fans who’ve linked to earlier instalments in the series. Those I know about: Mitch Berg at Shot in the Dark; British Spin at British Politics; Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber; Scott Johnson at Power Line; and Middle Aged Curmudgeon at UK Politics on the Left. There is a large (40%) Minnesota contingent. If you’ve linked and I’ve omitted you through not knowing, please give me an email shout. It’s a developing Emmylou blogger net!

[The first three instalments were posted on November 2, 16 and 19 at the old normblog site.]

In the last couple of days I’ve noted a number of items for blogging which I was unable to deal with because of other calls on my time. I set them down now, without much elaboration, for those looking for interesting reading matter.

> Here is the second part of the Christopher Hitchens interview with Frontpage. It’s about Israel-Palestine and is excellent. More or less each time there’s a new Hitchens piece, mumblings, rumblings and grumblings occur in the anti-war sector of the blogosphere, posts and comments boxes both: ‘Mweugh… him again’. In case my own contrasting viewpoint isn’t yet plain, let me just say that Christopher Hitchens towers over his detractors as a towering object towers over other things.

> Ruben Gonzalez (1919-2003) died a few days ago. There’s an obituary by Robin Denselow here. Most who know Gonzalez’s music will have been directed to it by the magnificent Buena Vista Social Club.

> Someone else who died recently is a former colleague at the University of Manchester, the sociologist Hamza Alavi. There are links to several appreciations of Hamza here. (Hat tip to Leo Panitch.)

> From a Guardian leader on global disparities in internet access:

While the digital divide is narrowing within richer countries – about half of all households in the UK now have access – it is widening between the industrialised and developing worlds mainly because of the slow pace of change in the latter. About 90% of global internet users come from industrialised countries even though they have less than 20% of the world’s population. Africa, which makes up 19% of the world population, is home to only 1% of internet users.

> For anyone interested in what’s happening in Zimbabwe this interview with Samantha Power, of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard, is a must-read:

I’ve been to a lot of countries that are going through or have just been through war or genocide, but I’ve never been to a peacetime country where civilians are suffering as they are in Zimbabwe.

(Hat tip to SdeW.) Also, read about Beatrice Mtetwa who has been named Human Rights Lawyer of the Year.

A specially appointed commission has recommended to the French government that religious symbols should be banned from schools. I expressed my doubts about this recommendation a few weeks ago (November 14), and those doubts are only strengthened by aspects of the two reports here. They say, in turn:

It is not currently illegal to wear religious symbols in French state schools…
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[B]acking a law on the wearing of headscarves is a big majority of MPs from right and left, and more than half the French population.
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Leaders of the French Catholic and Jewish communities have expressed opposition to legislation.

And:

The panel recommended a ban from classrooms of all “obvious” political and religious symbols. More discreet symbols, such as small crosses, would be acceptable, it said.
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There also has been an alarming rise in anti-Semitic attacks, and teaching about the Holocaust “becomes impossible” in some classrooms.

If it hasn’t hitherto been illegal to wear religious symbols in state schools, this shows that it isn’t the wearing of them as such that is incompatible with the ideal of secularism within French public education, and the idea that a small crucifix is somehow more acceptable than a headscarf is absurd. What about a wristband bearing the Star of David? Or a glove? Still small enough, or already too big? The proportion of the French population in favour of the ban is also not to the point. This is a freedom of belief issue, and for freedom of belief to mean anything people need to be able to articulate their beliefs, short of incitement to violence or other provably harmful instances of their doing so.

I also find it difficult to believe that in schools or classes where it has become impossible to teach the Holocaust, the situation would be improved by a ban on the wearing of headscarves. The problem obviously needs to be handled, as does that of the ‘alarming rise in anti-Semitic attacks’ (and I don’t mean handled in the spirit of Chomsky’s recent claim that anti-Semitism ‘scarcely exists’ in the West, a remark some of his blogospheric defenders have judged to be perfectly reasonable.) But a ban on religious symbols doesn’t seem like a good approach.

I came across this about myself in a comments box across the pond at Winds of Change:

If he’s a Marxist and a defender of human rights, I’d say he’s confused…

Well, I’m sometimes dazed, actually, more than I’m confused, about the way certain others of Marxist persuasion, or merely formation – and indeed others, more generally, on the left – have found it possible to align themselves lately on matters relating to human rights. But confused? About this, I don’t think so. I very much don’t think so.

On a connected matter, for anyone who’s not already seen them, I direct you to these observations of Harry’s:

Those of us who self-identify as being part of the left are constantly battling with the seemingly trivial issue of political labels. We search for ways to differentiate ourselves from the Stoppers and the other nihilists. Because to merely tell someone you are left-wing these days is to invite a series of assumptions that cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. It is presumed that to be left is to oppose military-humanitarian interventions and expected that you subscribe to a crude anti-Americanism and take a Luddite position on globalisation.

It seems to me that there are two ways to deal with this. You can simply stop calling yourself ‘left’ and the personal dilemma is dealt with. Or you can try, through whatever means you have avaliable to you, to begin to be part of the process of redefining what the left is about.

I prefer the latter option and I hope Hitchens and others who share his perspective on Iraq and the broader picture will continue to state their position in terms of how it relates to real left values.

There are times, such as when thousands of ‘leftists’ take [to] the streets to save Saddam, that such an approach seems to be bordering on the impossible or the pointless. It certainly requires a large dose of patience and optimism.

But then, if you are on the left, haven’t those qualities always been required?

Amen to all that.