July 2003 – Page 4 – Gavinsblog.com

Made it, late due to

Made it, late due to trains! Packed room, MP speaking now!

Shite, this is going to

Shite, this is going to take a while to fix. Just lost 3 months of material. Grrr Radio, I’m really getting pissed off with you.

Blair stands by Iraq intelligence

Tony Blair has responded to the allegations made in the Foreign Affairs Committee report.

The fact is that we put before the House of Commons and indeed the country the case that we made. I should tell you right at the very outset, I stand by that case totally. I am quite sure we did the right thing in removing Saddam Hussein. I’m quite sure we did the right thing because not merely was he a threat to his region to the wider world, but it was an appalling regime that the world is well rid of and I think the British army and the British people can be proud off of the part they played. And so I refute any suggestion that we misled either parliament or the people totally.

Canada gets interesting

Naomi Klein is supporting her country today, with a praising of the introduction of some liberal laws that she says make Canada a hippie nation.

· The Liberal party government of prime minister Jean Chrétien did not support the invasion of Iraq (“opposed” would be too strong a word, since we maintained troops in the region).
· On May 27 the government introduced legislation to decriminalise the possession of marijuana. People caught with up to 15g will get the equivalent of a parking ticket. US drug tsar John Walters has promised to “respond to the threat”.
· On June 17 the government announced it would introduce legislation to legalise gay marriage. This will bring the entire country into compliance with a court ruling that has already made it legal in Ontario. US gays and lesbians have been flooding into Toronto to get hitched.
· On June 24 the government announced the opening of the first “safe injection site” in North America in Vancouver, which averages 147 overdose deaths a year. The publicly funded facility will provide needle exchanges and health assistance to heroin addicts. Walters calls this one “state-sponsored personal suicide”.

America seems to be watching them closely.

My results for President

My results for President
1. Kucinich, Cong. Dennis, OH – Democrat (92%) Click here for info
2. Gephardt, Cong. Dick, MO – Democrat (83%) Click here for info
3. Edwards, Senator John, NC – Democrat (69%) Click here for info
4. Kerry, Senator John, MA – Democrat (68%) Click here for info
5. Libertarian Candidate (67%) Click here for info
6. Sharpton, Reverend Al – Democrat (58%) Click here for info
7. Lieberman Senator Joe CT – Democrat (54%) Click here for info
8. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT – Democrat (52%) Click here for info
9. Graham, Senator Bob, FL – Democrat (50%) Click here for info
10. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol IL – Democrat (49%) Click here for info
11. Bush, George W. – US President (21%) Click here for info
12. Phillips, Howard – Constitution (19%) Click here for info
13. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. – Democrat (-6%) Click here for info

I think that means I’m a Democrat.

U.S. grapples with delays in restoring basic services to Iraq

Dick O’Brien criticises the Irish Times for quoting two different figures for US casualties since May 1st. I am not sure who is right, though I read this today in the Herald Tribune, by Brian Knowlton.

Two more U.S. troops were killed in attacks Sunday and Monday, the 70th and 71st to die in Iraq in guerrilla-style ambushes or from other causes since President George W. Bush declared May 1 that major combat had ended.

“Or other causes”. Hm

Guardian in the US

Paul over at An Oasis points to a story in the New York Metro about the Guardian publishing a US version for its growing US market. Interesting stuff.

No, he said. Were bringing the Guardian to America. Were going to publish an American version.

Our fake patriots

So why is it deemed by the right to be patriotic both to oppose the EU and to appease the US? Why has the old reactionary motto “my country, right or wrong” been so smoothly replaced with another one: “their country, right or wrong”? Why does the British right now believe it has a God-given duty to defend someone else’s empire?

American empire, unlike European convergence, is also unequivocally a project of the right; it establishes the political and economic space in which men like Murdoch and Black can work without impediment. But perhaps most importantly, our fake patriots know where real power lies. Having located it, they wish to appease it. For the very reason that the United States is a greater threat to our sovereignty than the European Union, they will not stand up to it.

George Monbiot wonders why the British right is not getting angry about becoming America’s doormat. He talks about recent news reports saying that British citizens may be extradited to the US, at the request of the US, without any evidence before a court. He then goes on to wonder about recent comments by Geoff Hoon, in which he suggests that the UK military may never fight a war without the US.

The decision was an easy one

Interesting media story over on Volkh, linked to Fox News. A presenter in the US got the sack from MSNBC for his attack on a caller to his show:

Oh, you’re one of the sodomites,” Savage said. “You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How’s that? Why don’t you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it.”

Such blatant disregard even for plain manners, nevermind the bullshit logic and insulting language, is reason enough to sack Savage.

Seeing mortal danger in a superpower Europe

William Pfaff with another excellent contribution to the transatlantic debate. Well worth the read.

France is systematically denigrated, as to a lesser extent is Germany – Germany is thought salvageable, or open to intimidation, once Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is gone. France is portrayed as suffering from “a profound pathology,” and America’s enemy. In Washington power-corridor leaks to the press, in neo-conservative magazines and on the Internet, France is said to be driven by hatred, national vanity and the personal vanity of Jacques Chirac, and as allied with the radical Arab world out of fear of France’s unassimilated Muslim population.

It is described as incorrigibly and dangerously anti-Semitic. The French, like the Germans (the Daniel Goldhagen argument), are described as instinctively anti-Semitic and culturally disposed to totalitarianism.

France even is “not a Western country anymore” since in “many” cities “no teenage girl can go out in the evening, at least without a full burqa.” (These quotes are from the neo-con Web site www.FrontPageMagazine.com, whose contributors include quite well-known figures, including some from the political right in France itself).

This kind of nonsense sets the tone. Few Americans acknowledge any intellectual or moral weight or merit on the “old” European side, and certainly not on that of France.

Only one person in the Bush administration has acknowledged a European intellectual challenge, and she is National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Speaking in London last week , she made a reasoned condemnation of an international system of multipolarity, and implicitly of the “efficacious multilateralism” (the EU’s term) that Europe defends.

She said multipolarity is outmoded, in the past “a necessary evil that sustained the absence of war but did not promote the triumph of peace.” Something different, under American leadership, must take its place.

The argument, however, is not only a European-American one. It is an American-American debate.

How easy it was for the US to become somewhat hostile to France. And how much anti-Americanism do I come across in Europe? Lots. How much more of a step is it to go from anti-France to anti-European, or to go from anti-American to yet colder relations?