Israel On The Offensive

"Disproportionate response" was the anti-Israel, pro-Hezbollah buzzword during the early days of the war.

Now it's "ceasefire," even though everyone knows that a ceasefire will only allow Hezbollah to rearm and reinforce for the next round of attacks.

So Israel is going to get the job done before its enemies can do anything about it:

Israel approved a massive new ground offensive into southern Lebanon in a gambit aimed at bringing Hezbollah to its knees before the international community imposes a ceasefire. Fifteen soldiers were killed Wednesday, the deadliest day for Israeli troops in the war.

The plan to force Hezbollah guerrillas, and their short-range rockets, out of southern Lebanon and past the Litani River would escalate the fierce fighting there and, if successful, leave Israel in control of a security zone that it evacuated six years ago after a bloody 18-year occupation.

A new Israeli offensive would also put tremendous pressure on the United Nations to agree quickly on a ceasefire to end the fighting that has killed at least 829 people, caused widespread destruction across southern Lebanon and forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters. Israeli officials implied they would halt the new offensive if a ceasefire agreement removes Hezbollah from the border.

Which, of course, will not happen.

An enemy that deliberately plants its rockets in civilian neighbourhoods and then sheds crocodile tears over the inevitable civilian deaths will not give up its only military and propaganda advantage without one hell of a fight.

Israel may have no choice but to level southern Lebanon.

The usual suspects will scream if it does.

But they won't be satisfied until Israel is wiped off the map, anyway.

Source: Globe and Mail

Return

I have returned from my holiday at the secure undisclosed location.

Regular commentary will resume tomorrow morning.

Hiatus

This blog will be on hiatus for the next two weeks whilst I holiday in a secure undisclosed location.

I expect to return as full of bias, partisanship, bigotry, vitriol, intolerance, arrogance, bombast, illogic, rudeness, vulgarity and cruelty as ever.

The Last Shakers

The last four Shakers in the world are preparing for the end of the famous sect:

These are the last Shakers, living in the world's last active Shaker community, which has survived for 223 years in this idyllic and isolated hilltop village 35 miles northwest of Portland, Maine. Here, the four faithful live a life of ascetic simplicity and abide by the three C's: celibacy, confession of sin, and communalism. "The real misconception about the Shakers is that we're all dead," says one of the four, Brother Arnold Hadd, only half-jokingly.

....

While they pray for more converts, the Sabbathday Shakers - as pragmatic as they are pious - have been working to ensure that their legacy and their land will outlive them, should Shakerism die off. They're well aware that several dismantled New England Shaker villages were long ago subdivided into housing lots or turned into prisons. "We'd been very concerned," Hadd admits, "because our neighborhood has changed so radically in just a short period of time." The Shakers worry not only about encroaching suburban sprawl but rising costs like heat and their property taxes, which hit $24,432 this fiscal year. (The Shakers have never sought tax-exempt status as a religious group.)

So, five years ago, the Protestant monastic sect initiated a plan, put together by the national nonprofit Trust for Public Land, to sell preservation and conservation easements to two nonprofits, Maine Preservation and the New England Forestry Foundation. These two groups, along with eight other nonprofits and public agencies, are behind the national campaign to raise money to buy the restrictions - about $2.8 million in government grants and private donations has already come in, and they hope to net another $900,000 and conclude the deal by the end of September. The agreement would protect this pristine village of mostly whiteclapboard buildings and the 1,643 acres that straddle the town lines of New Gloucester, Maine, and Poland, Maine, from ever being developed or subdivided. "We can't put up a Wal-Mart. Or a housing development," Hadd says. "The land always has to remain for agricultural and forest purposes."

And by selling future development rights, the Shakers will be able to afford to maintain and repair their 18 historic structures, from the original 1794 Meetinghouse to a 1910 garage built to house the group's first car. Hadd won't divulge what it costs to run the village, but obviously a few million dollars would be a godsend. The Shakers get by largely by leasing 29 lots (on which sit lakeside cottages), about 1,000 acres of forest, 30 acres each of farmland and orchards, and a huge gravel pit. They run their enormous enterprise with help from six year-round and six seasonal employees. The Friends of the Shakers, a volunteer group with about 60 active members, makes semiannual visits to paint fences, stack firewood, and perform other tasks. "I'm not a Shaker and never could be, but when you go to that place you carry away a spirituality," says Judy McCaskey, a volunteer and campaign contributor who lives in Chicago.

Frankly, I was surprised that there were any left.

Citius, Altius, Fruitius

No doubt the men's pole vault and women's broad jump will be hotly contested at the inaugural Montreal Outgames.

Along with the men's baton relay.

To say nothing of the bareback riding events.

The good news is that CBC Sports is not covering it live.

Yet.

Volpemania: Revenge Of Jimmy The K

Jim Karygiannis isn't getting mad about being fired by Joe Volpe. He's getting even:

Less than a week after bolting from Joe Volpe's troubled campaign, controversial Toronto MP Jim Karygiannis is considering making his own bid for the Liberal leadership.

Karygiannis said Wednesday he's determined to fill a foreign policy "vacuum" that he believes exists among the 11 declared contenders for the party's top job. The unilingual, cigar-chomping "Jimmy K," known for his hardball but effective organizing tactics, said filling the vacuum does "not necessarily" mean throwing his own hat in the ring. But he would not rule out that possibility.

So what is this foreign policy vacuum that only Jimmy The K can fill?

For the moment, Karygiannis said he's going to talk to "ordinary Canadians and Liberals across the country" about the need for a "protocol" on how to deal quickly and fairly with Canadians trapped abroad by man-made or natural disasters.

"During the last three or four months that I was helping with the leadership campaign, I found a vacuum out there," Karygiannis said in an interview.

He believes Canadian victims of last year's South Asian tsunami were treated differently than those fleeing war-ravaged Lebanon.

"Our foreign affairs policy, when it comes to reflecting the make-up of this country, it's a patchwork of different ideas and a patchwork of jerk-knee reactions."

In other words, Canada needs a plan to get its citizens of convenience all out of harm's way whenever war or natural disaster strikes to shore up the Liberal ethnic vote.

Jimmy the K may not be a foreign policy expert, but he knows ethnic politics like no other except Joe Volpe.

Unfortunately, a leadership bid would split Joe Volpe's vote instead of peeling off support from other candidates, thus increasing the risk that Volpe might not win the leadership with all his instant members.

We can't let this happen.

There's only room enough in the Liberal Party for one embarrassing ethnic ward-heeler.

Source: Macleans

Peacekeeper Killed: Kill Peacekeeping?

The great Canadian peacekeeping myth officially died in Afghanistan when the Canadian public realized that our military acquitted itself better in combat than in all the ill-defined United Nations missions to date.

But our opposition politicians insist on keeping it alive:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, under attack by political opponents over his Middle East policy, said yesterday he will seek explanations from the United Nations and the Israeli government about the "terrible tragedy" that killed a Canadian peacekeeper in Lebanon.

Mr. Harper described as "troubling" events surrounding the Israeli attack that killed four peacekeepers, including Canadian Major Paeta Derek Hess-von Kruedener, who was serving with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization. Canadian officials characterized the major as missing and presumed dead.

The peacekeepers were killed when a bomb hit their post in the town of Khiyam, near the eastern end of Lebanon's border with Israel.

The Prime Minister offered no condemnation of Israel for the deadly bombing and instead suggested that the United Nations should not have put the men in harm's way.

Of course. The United Nations force was there to supervise a truce, not to actually enforce it. What could the UN have done over there, undermanned and underarmed, to prevent Hezbollah from firing rockets at Israeli civilians and Israel from striking back?

Ask Alexa McDonough and Bill Graham:

Members of the opposition were quick to criticize Mr. Harper's failure to demand an apology from the Israelis. And they condemned the Conservative decision to side with Israel in the dispute, saying Canada has abandoned its traditional role of peace broker in the region.

"I think Canadians are justifiably very distressed about how Harper tossed in the towel on diplomacy from Day 1. He is basically just prepared to be on the other end of George Bush's tether and essentially played no role whatsoever in pressing for a ceasefire that is desperately, desperately needed," said Alexa McDonough, the NDP foreign affairs critic.

Liberal Leader Bill Graham said Major Hess-von Kruedener died doing what Canadians expect of their people in the Middle East: keeping peace.

"Canada for a long time had a traditional role in the Middle East that was difficult but it was one that enabled us to be an interlocutor that [allowed] us over the long time to advance the cause of peace," Mr. Graham said.

"Mr. Harper, for his reasons whether they are domestic politically or ideological has chose to abandon that position of Canada and now we are seeing what can be the long-term consequences of that."

In other words, call for a ceasefire so that Hezbollah can rearm, regroup and perhaps bring in Iranian and Syrian forces to launch a full-scale invasion of Israel. All the while blithering about "multilateral diplomatic solutions" and "ending the cycle of violence."

Major Hess-von Kreudener did not die keeping the peace: there was never a peace to be kept. He died so that the United Nations could maintain its hypocritical position of appearing to do something while secretly cheering for Hezbollah.

Let there be no more pointless sacrifices for the United Nations.

Source: Globe and Mail

Love Song To Cecilia Lucas

Only Iowahawkcould parody self-parody so effectively:

You were born in the Valley to a life in a suburban cage
Encino, where mean girls and cheerleaders
Drop bombs of hate on the unpopular girls
Shy poetry club chicks like you
With 1480 SATs and early admission to Berkeley
Fed by the violence and lookism of the dance squad
Raised in a four bedroom colonial
They wouldn't let you wear your Che T-shirt to prom
But your heart and your armpit hair still grew proud and strong

You scare me too
Not just because you have that Code Pink Manson girl freak-vibe
Not just because you repeat, repeat, repeat
All those quotes from your dog-eared volumes of Chomsky
and Zinn
and Edward Said
Begging me to understand
Can't we just hold each other
Instead of talking, talking, talking
About your Masters thesis?

It scares me
When I admit to myself
When I look at you
My mousy infidel grad student who can't shut up
That yeah, I'd hit that

The other Jihadis laugh and scowl
They repeat, repeat, repeat
The story of Abdul and the nasty crab lice
He picked from the International ANSWER chick
And how it itched like a mofo
Until his martyrdom

If only they took the time to see
To look
To sense
The beauty of your mind
Your fundraising potential
To look beyond your face
and realize your booty isn't half bad
And how you could maybe help organize a sleeper cell in Oakland

But I don’t sleep much these days
And I’ve tried hard
But the thought of you, my beloved
And the Zionist airstrikes
Make me more jittery than chugging two liters of Jolt cola

I am learning to have hope in you
I am learning to see you as so much more
I am thinking maybe you could shave those legs and wear this grocery sack
If ever we make love

You amaze me.
Born in the suburbs
Raised in a colonial
You did not accept ROTC on Campus
You did not accept the injustice of UC defunding the Young Maoist League
You did not accept late homework submissions
Of fratboy freshmen
When you TA'd Critical Lit 1406

I love you too
But I will never be yours
I'm a rebel
A loner
I'm bad news, baby
And you don’t want me inside you
Because once you go Omar, you'll never go kuffar

But we'll resist together
You and I, my beloved hippie cooch
I will be your Jihadi Angel
The Leader of Your Pack
Turn me loose, turn me loose
Like Fabian
Like Bobby Vee
Like Elvis himself
I will croon my ballad of Zionist resistance
To your screams of delight

I had a dream that we met in Paradise
as lovers
as martyrs
Me in a Tel Aviv pizza parlor
You in the Encino mall

What was it you were looking for
That took your life that night?
They said they found my semtex belt
Clutched in your fingers tight.

Burma Shave

Berkeley graduate students: the gift of overeducated stupidity that keeps on giving!

Love Song To Hezbollah

Hat tip to Midwest Conservative Journal for bringing Berkeley grad student Cecilia Lucas' love poem to Hezbollah to the wider audience it deserves for much-needed derision and outrage:

I Don’t Want to Love You, But I Do

You were born out of death to a life in a cage
Where bombs are not the only reason people die
Fed by the violence of hunger and homelessness
Raised by colonialism
Your heart and your will still grew strong

You scare me
Not just because they tell me to be scared
Not just because they repeat, repeat, repeat
The story of 1983
Begging me to understand
Americans are worth more than Lebanese

Why do they never tell me about Jihad al Bina
That you have created so much
Saved so many lives
Improved so many more

It scares me
When I admit to myself
That I would be more scared without you
If I still took the time to see

To see the violence that does not just fall from the skies
that exists in hunger and homelessness
in colonialism

It scares me
That my hope is tangled up
In actions I would never want to commit

But I don’t sleep much these days
And I’ve tried hard
But I haven’t found
Anything
to give me hope that they will listen

They repeat, repeat, repeat
The story of Gaza withdrawal
Hoping we won’t see
The violence that continues
That kills in so many ways
Hoping we will now support it
Or at least stop looking

They insist talk does not work
When there is no one to talk to
It is hard to find an interlocutor
When you’re not willing to listen
To see
To feel

How do you keep faith that talk will work
When even they are insisting it won’t?

I am learning to have hope in you
I am learning to see you as so much more
Than those actions I would never want to commit

You amaze me.
Born out of death to a life in a cage
Raised by colonialism
You did not accept imprisonment as natural
You did not accept hunger as justice
You did not accept
the ceaseless killing in so many ways
Of those next to you
Or those farther away

I love you
But I will never be yours
I don’t want you inside me
You are too male for me

And I cannot, gratefully, fully silence the voice that insists:
Some deaths you did accept
Including of some who were listening

That is why the full statement that the question-marks pry me with reads:
It is sad, but I’m learning to have hope in Hizbulla

Maybe it is the naivety
of one whose life has never been directly threatened
I still believe:
Be the change you want to see in the world.

You can even send her an e-mail at Common Dreams News Center.

Let's buy her a one-way ticket to Lebanon so she can read her poem to Sheikh Nasrallah in person. One-way, because she will almost certainly be stoned to death, if not for being an infidel whore, then for writing bad poetry.

Volpemania: Call The Cops

Nice office you got there, Jim. Shame if anything were to happen to it:

Toronto MP Joe Volpe's rocky campaign for the Liberal leadership just keeps getting more bizarre.

Things got so bad that police were called to settle a dispute between Volpe officials and his former campaign manager, MP Jim Karygiannis.

....

Post-firing, "Jimmy K" wouldn't let a Volpe official into campaign headquarters in Scarborough to retrieve computers, which held a list of 35,914 new members recently recruited by Karygiannis on candidate Volpe's behalf.

These names are critical. The campaign team must be able to follow through in contacting new Liberals, as well as long-time party members, over the summer. Volpe needs their support in September when Liberals in ridings across Canada choose delegates to the Nov. 28-Dec. 3 leadership convention in Montreal.

"Apparently, the lease was in Mr. Karygiannis's name," Volpe spokesperson Corey Hobbs explained yesterday. "But it's just administrative stuff — a technical glitch."

....

Tempers flared so hotly last Friday, the Toronto Star has learned, that Karygiannis called police to stop the Volpe official from taking the computers. The offices are in a little shopping centre on Kennedy Rd. north of Lawrence.

When officers arrived from 41 Division, Karygiannis apparently told them it had all been a big misunderstanding and no police report was filed.

The landlord came later and locked up the offices. It now appears that nobody is getting in.

What the Volpe campaign lacks in dignity, it makes up for in entertainment value. Any bets on when the first guy gets sent to jail or the emergency room on this campaign?

Source: Toronto Star

Scott And The City

Scott Brison loves Toronto.

Toronto doesn't love Scott Brison. Well, except around Church and Wellesley.

But what an embarassingly gushing load of over-emotive, cliche-ridden prose. The sad part is that Brison probably wrote it himself.

But the National Post has hit on a great idea all the same: ask the Liberal leadership candidates what they think of random Canadian communities.

Ask Michael Ignatieff what he thinks about Vegreville, home of the world's largest Ukranian Easter egg.

Get Hedy Fry's opinion about Prince George.

Or any of their opinions on Calgary.

The articles just write themselves.

Staying Behind

We're learning more about the loyalties of the Canadian citizens of convenience in Lebanon with each passing day.

Recent media reports would have you believe that tens of thousands of dual citizens are all lined up at the docks waiting for the ship to carry them to Canada.

Apparently most of them are standing by Lebanon in its time of need. Which makes you wonder just why they're even holding on to Canadian citizenship in the first place:

Fewer than one quarter of the Canadians registered with their embassy in Lebanon have taken up the government's offer to get them out of the war-torn country, as officials say dwindling numbers mean the evacuation is winding down.

By late yesterday afternoon, after five days of exodus, slightly more than 7,900 people had boarded ships chartered by Canada to take them to safety. Only 2,800 of that number had actually reached Canadian soil, leaving thousands of evacuees in transit on ships headed for Turkey or Cyprus, on the ground there, or on airplanes headed to Canada.

There are more than 38,000 people registered with the Canadian embassy in Beirut. While Foreign Affairs representatives refused to say publicly how many of that total they believe to be tourists and how many have settled permanently in Lebanon, one official estimated yesterday that the temporary visitors account for about 20 per cent of the total.

The good news is they're not demanding a free ride out of danger on the Canadian taxpayers' dime.

The bad news is that the media will inevitably complain that Canada abandoned these people, even though they had no intention of leaving.

The worse news is that some of them will likely be discovered to be Hezbollah militants and supporters.

But at least they have made it clear where their loyalties lie, without doubt.

Source: Globe and Mail

Love And Marriage

There is no man so bad that he cannot find some woman so foolish as to marry him.

Kim Jong Il is but one example.

Marc Emery, though more foolish than evil, is another:

Marc Emery, Canada's so-called Prince of Pot, got married Sunday to a woman who apparently doesn't mind the idea that her new husband could spend large parts of their marriage in court or in jail as part of his mission to legalize marijuana.

“I will support him no matter what happens in any situation,” Jodie Emery, 21, said shortly after the wedding. “I'm just so happy right now to be married to him.”

She said she married Mr. Emery, who has been arrested 21 times, knowing full well he may spend many years in a U.S. jail.

And it was an affair for the society pages:

The wedding ceremony took place under a white tent in the city's Queen Elizabeth Park where about 100 guests sat in suits and dresses continually passing around joints.

....

After the ceremony the bride, wearing a long, white strapless wedding dress, lit up what she called a “wedding doobie.”

The Emerys then shared, in front of a crowd of media, their first joint as husband and wife, inhaling the smoke and then kissing each other.

Bet this marriage doesn't last longer than a couple years, if that. This sort of publicity stunt marriage never does.

WWW.BLEEDINGOBVIOUS.CA

The government can't just look up to see if the sky is blue: it has to form a committee and hire somebody to research and report to it.

Thus the need for a poll to find out that people like to google the government:

The federal government recently paid a little more than $65,000 to The Strategic Counsel, a Toronto-based polling firm, for a report that told them people use such popular search engines as Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista and Google to find Web sites.

The not-too-surprising information was provided in a final report completed in March after the firm was asked by Health Canada to test "the impact and recall of vanity URLs." (URL is short for "universal resource locator" and is a standard way of giving sites on the Internet a unique address.)

The report, written after 32 two-person discussion groups held in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and Calgary, dismissed the use of Internet addresses such as www.gosmokefree.ca with obvious names because people still have trouble remembering them despite their handy handles.

"There is minimal to no recall of URLs given the dependence on search engines. During the course of these groups, most searching was done through a search engine, felt to be by far the easiest way to find whatever one is looking for," the report's executive summary concluded.

"Even when given the actual URL, a number of participants called it up through the search engine."

Anyone could have told you that. But then it wouldn't be on paper for the public servants to cover their asses with.

Starved

Saddam Hussein is reportedly feeling quite weak after 17 days on a hunger strike.

He still has a ways to go to break Bobby Sands' all-time record, though.

Rent-a-Crowd Marches In Toronto

This is not really news, as such, because you can get 10,000 people to march for any cause in Toronto at the drop of a hat. Print up enough posters and call the right organizations and swarms of the professionally outraged will be at Queen's Park demanding the repeal of the laws of thermodynamics.

This entire article could have been written without actually attending the event because it is the banal reporting the cliched:

Hundreds of red and white Lebanese flags waved on Toronto's downtown streets as thousands of protestors called for an end to the violence in Lebanon.

To the beat of drums, the demonstrators yesterday gathered first at the Israeli consulate on Bloor St. W. before marching to the United States consulate on University Ave.

The horde chanted slogans condemning Israel for the deaths of Lebanese civilians and slammed Prime Minister Stephen Harper's comments calling Israel's response "measured."

....

Other organizers included the Canadian Peace Alliance, Canadian Arab Federation, Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation, and the Muslim United group.

And the Canadian Auto Workers, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, International Socialists and a few random NDP politicians were there too. Not that I know for sure. But I just know from experience that they'd be there, whether their membership had a real stake in the matter or not.

Source: Toronto Star

From War To Justice

If no one else is happy with Stephen Harper's flight to Cyprus to pick up a hundred-odd evacuees from Lebanon, the Ottawa police will be, because they just got a fraudster who could have thumbed his nose at them from Lebanon indefinitely:

A man who hobnobbed with Stephen Harper on the prime minister's private plane after escaping the fighting in Lebanon was arrested at the Ottawa airport on outstanding fraud charges early yesterday.

Travelling with his wife and four children, Abbas Hachem, 40, was detained by authorities after landing at about 4 a.m.

Officials conducting a screening of the 88 passengers on the plane had been notified he was wanted by Ottawa police for failing to appear in court on six charges of fraud over $5,000, two counts of uttering forged documents, and one count of conspiracy.

After being taken into custody by Canada Border Services agents, Mr. Hachem spent the day in cells at the Ottawa police station and Elgin Street courthouse before the Crown consented to his release after insisting Mr. Hachem and a former neighbour sign a $500 bond. The neighbour also had to promise Mr. Hachem will follow his bail conditions.

Stephane Rondeau, deputy director of communications at the Prime Minister's Office, said RCMP officers in Cyprus fully screened Mr. Hachem prior to the flight and found the outstanding arrest warrant.

However, the man has no history of violence or anything else that would cause concerns, he said.

"The RCMP found he didn't represent a risk to the prime minister or to anyone else on the plane," Mr. Rondeau said, adding the RCMP took the matter to Mr. Harper and his staff for a final decision.

"For humanitarian reasons, the prime minister and his staff decided against separating him from his wife and children, and they travelled back to Canada to safety together," he said.

Now that is a well-played move! A humanitarian act that serves the interests of justice, and also highlights the more egregious problems with these citizens of convenience.

There are probably more evacuees with outstanding criminal charges or civil judgments in Canada outstanding against them who are about to learn that running away from a war zone doesn't get you out of all your troubles.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

Volpemania: Collateral Damage

A Hezbollah Katyusha has just gone thousands of miles off-target and detonated right in the middle of Joe Volpe's leadership campaign, taking out his campaign manager and possibly thousands of instant Arab Liberal party members:

After an angry falling-out with his national campaign manager over the Middle East, Toronto MP Joe Volpe insists he still can win the Liberal leadership without "Jimmy the Mechanic" running his campaign.

Volpe (Eglinton-Lawrence) wouldn't say yesterday whether he fired fellow MP Jim Karygiannis (Scarborough-Agincourt) — the first person hired on the team — after they argued over the Israeli bombing of Lebanon.

....

The argument was over Volpe's strong support for the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, which the Jewish state deems necessary in order to stop Hezbollah extremists who are firing missiles into Israel from bases in Lebanon.

Earlier this week, Volpe told political columnist Warren Kinsella that 1,000 missiles have been fired and "that is an act of war."

He went on to say that other Liberal governments have "declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization. We cannot now make excuses for its behaviour."

Karygiannis blew up when he read the comments on Kinsella's blog. The two argued Thursday and the split came yesterday.

"You can't hold a country hostage, be it Israel or Hezbollah," Karygiannis told the Canadian Press yesterday.

....

Karygiannis is considered a master organizer, although his tactics have been called "bullying" by his critics. He has worked hard to pull in support for Volpe among ethnic organizations, including various Canadian Muslim groups.

Last week, during an interview at Volpe's Scarborough headquarters, he proudly pointed to a recent letter from the Canadian Arab Network, in which the GTA-based group praised Volpe for telling them he "would work with the democratically elected government in Palestine without preconditions."

Nobody plays ethnic politics better than Joe Volpe, but then, nobody runs bigger risks playing ethnic politics than Joe Volpe.

The more you rely on the ethnic vote, the more likely that your campaign will be damaged by events happening thousands of miles away.

And the more difficult the diplomatic balancing act becomes within your own campaign. You end having to become a foreign policy expert just to deal with local riding associations.

But at least Volpe knows, unlike the rest of his competitors, how difficult brokering a Middle East peace agreement really is: he can't get one within his own campaign, and that's only with words and not rockets being fired.

Source: Toronto Star

Inter Arma Silent Leges

It is perhaps just as well for the country, though not perhaps for the United Nations, that Louise Arbour left the Supreme Court to become the top common scold of international law.

And it is just as well that she was not around for the Nuremburg trials, because she would have had Allied leaders thrown in the dock for not playing nice with the Nazis:

The scale of killing and maiming of civilians in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territory pointed to possible war crimes, the UN human rights chief said yesterday.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said international humanitarian law was clear on the need to protect non-combatants in any conflict. "This obligation is also expressed in international criminal law, which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity," she said.

"The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control," she said, without directly accusing anyone.

In a statement, she expressed "grave concern over the continued killing and maiming of civilians in Lebanon, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory".

Ms Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court judge and war crimes prosecutor, said the "indiscriminate shelling" of cities and the bombing of sites where civilians would suffer were unacceptable.

Israel air strikes have accounted for most of the 327 deaths in Lebanon in the eight-day-old war which began after Hezbollah guerillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. The Lebanese Shia militia has rained rockets on northern Israeli towns and villages. Twenty-nine Israeli civilians have died in the violence.

It's clear whose side Ms. Arbour is on: Hezbollah's. The woman who scolds Israel for killing civilians whom Hezbollah deliberately put in harm's way as human shields for their rocket launchers can't tell an unavoidable tragedy from a war crime.

Or perhaps she can, but dares not admit her partiality towards Hezbollah, instead burying it under a load of scholastic and legalistic pieties.

Inter arma silent leges.

At least this particular legisperita should be.

Source: The Australian

More Letters From Ahmedinejad

Dear Angela:

If you're not using the gas chambers that never existed, could we borrow them to finish the job you never started?

Sincerely,

Mahmoud.