BEEN OUT ON a meeting, came back and did some paperwork, now I'm out for one of these three-hour lunches (used to be three-martini lunches, but years go by and now it's going to be one at most...). After lunch I'll be in another meeting, so it's quite possible that there won't be any posts until later in the afternoon / early evening. It's one of these days, you know. Be back later or, if things turn out to be longer than expected, tomorrow. Don't miss me much, though...

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THE RUMORS of Fidel Castro's death were clearly exaggerated.

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WHAT GLOBAL WARMING, AGAIN?

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AN INTERESTING POST by Dave Kopel on the right to self-defense in different cultures and contexts. It follows the news of Nazanin, an 18-year old Iranian girl who's been sentenced to death after she killed one of the three men that were trying to rape her and her 16-year old niece.

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A GERMAN MAGAZINE reports that Saudi Arabia is developing a secret nuclear program with help from Pakistan. Our friends indeed.

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DUTCH MPs fear Venezuelan invasion of the Antilles:

Members of parliament in the Netherlands have urged the Minister of Defence to re-evaluate the defensive capabilities around the Netherlands Antilles. According to the government parties CDA and VVD, there is a growing threat coming from Venezuela, which has made several claims on the islands. The Minister of Defence, Henk Kamp, attempted to reassure the parliament by claiming that the Venezuelan armed forces would pose no threat. However, parliament members do not shore the minister’s optimistic view and claim that the forces currently present would not be sufficient in case of an invasion attempt by Venezuela and have therefore asked for a new strategic analysis of the region. Depending on its outcome, they have also asked the minister to re-evaluate the forces currently present and, if necessary, strengthen the capacity.

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BELARUS protestors arrested after last weekend's pro-democracy demonstrations have gone into a hunger strike.

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RUSTY SHACKLEFORD at The Jawa Report has much more on the Saddam document that I mentioned yesterday.

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WATCH THAT RECOIL!! A funny short (16 seconds) video in .wmv format. Heh™.

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ANOTHER DOCUMENT from the Saddam Docex files; this time it's a memorandum by Iraq's intelligence services about a trip in Iraq, on January 2003 (that is, almost in the brink of war) by two European businessman, both well known for being engulfed in the Elf bribe scandal. Loïk Le Loch-Prigent, former chairman of the corporation, and Dieter Holzer, the unofficial representative of the German establishment. There's no earthshaking revelation, at least there's nothing that we didn't know already: Chirac against the war, Schroeder aknowledging he won the last election thanks to being opposed to Bush and Blair plans, Chinese reports that WMDs were move to Syria, etc. But it makes a very interesting reading, opening a window to how these deals under the table work.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES has a relatively dismissive piece on the Docex documents from the Saddam era. They forget that any bad translation would be self-corrected on the spot, just as errors or lies in the blogosphere. Or maybe it's just sour grapes because they're not the gatepekeepers anymore; one can almost smell their hurt feelings, and their longing for a time when they could selectively publish what suit their own agenda.

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AS YOU CAN SEE, there's been no posting today; haven't had enough time to do any minimally interesting post, so I though it was better not to do any just for the sake of it (of course, you can argue that this one is just that...).

Back tomorrow; in the meantime, you can always check Pajamas Media: there's always something there.

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MORE ON THE EVIDENCE that there were links between Iraq and Islamic terrorists, including al-Qaeda.

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REMEMBER, there were not only Russian scientists in Iraq prior to the war, but allegedly the Russian ambassador gave Saddam the plan of attack. Yes, the Russians are trying to deny it; the attempt can be seen under a different light simply by looking at these pictures.

I know, I know; the fact that there were so many Russians there only days before the war started doesn't necessarily mean that they actually informed Saddam of anything. But if we apply the Halliburton rule of evidence so dear to anti-war people ("the was was done so that Cheney could handle big contracts to the company he was working in before entering the White House, and that's just because, well, because he knew them and sure they were friends"), this is should also be a slam dunk, shouldn't it?

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ABDUL RAHMAN, who was going to be sentenced to death for his conversion from Islam to Christianism, will be released today after the judge dismissed the case against him because of lack of evidence. That's the good news: the bad one is that the same judge sent the case back to the prosecutor for more investigations. Let's hope international pressure works.

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I GUESS we'll have to start Pandora Anonymous or something. "Hi, my name is Barcepundit, and I'm a Pandora-holic"...

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BLINKPRO: Does anybody know what the hell is happening to that bookmarks hosting services? It's been down since Friday.

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I THINK IT'S NOT a recent cartoon, but just saw it:

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POLICE BRUTALITY in Belarus, where the situation is really heating up; more information at Never Yet Melted.

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"Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts & Fairy-Tales": don't miss this this great analysis by Martin De Vlieghere and Paul Vreymans at the Brussels Journal.

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CHAVEZ, the Western left and the 'Che complex': an outstanding blogpost written from a leftist perspective. A true leftist, I'd say (via Marc Cooper).

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SO THE UNSCOM INSPECTIONS were going well and poor Saddam was proving that he was innocent, right? Then, why would he hide, Cold War-style, Russian and Turkish scientists so that they couldn't be interviewed by inspectors in 2002?

I'm not who says they did; it's the Iraqi intelligence services themselves, in a memorandum translated by Ray Robison from the Docex dump.

By the way, all this and more can be also found at Iraq Files, over at Pajamas Media.

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29 REASONS why America sucks, by Greg Gutfeld at the Huffington Post, no less. Really funny.

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FOR THOSE OF YOU reading Barcepundit with a RSS reader, I just want to alert that I have corrected an earlier post about Salon's Bushism of the Day. I stand corrected.

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MAGNIFICENT, SUPERB MARK STEYN on the Iraq war and "stability" of the Middle East region. Read it from top to bottom, and enjoy.

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SO I WRITE A COMMENT on ETA's ceasefire yesterday and, apparently 1/ I peddle some party line when in fact I wrote it 23 minutes after the announcement, more than an hour before any official reaction from any party or the government, 2/ I am a Basque-phobe, because I mistrust an offer by a Basque terrorist group. Basque nationalists like this guy like to accuse everybody who is critical of ETA of demonizing the Basque people (an absurd accusation in my case, but I'm not going to give personal explanations here) because, they say, it's as if we were saying that all Basques are ETA terrorists. You'll notice the irony: if I criticize ETA, why is he jumping to defend the Basques? Isn't him who equates Basques and terrorists?

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STILL MORE PROOF OF where Zapatero's geostrategical vision lays:

A motion against Hugo Chavez presented by representatives of Partido Popular in Spain's Senate was rejected yesterday by Zapatero's government. The motion, seeking to defend Spanish citizens rights residing in Venezuela, who have been subject to kidnaps, lynchings, extorsions and whose small farms have been expropriated, was dismissed.

The issue seems to be the lack of attention and support dispensed by Spain's diplomatic representatives to victimised Spaniards in Venezuela. Raul Morodo, Spain's Ambassador to Venezuela and staunch Chavez supporter, has ignored completely the plights of the affected until now, refusing even to meet with them.

The Spanish ambassador to Venezuela is a disgrace; there's more details at the link.

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A SUPERB ESSAY by Neo-neocon on Norman Rockwell's 'The Four Freedoms'. Don't miss it.

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AARON HANSCOM comments on ETA's ceasefire.

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ANOTHER WEISBERGISM of the day: in his section 'Bushism of the day', Jacob Weisber at Salon a/ wants to distort reality, or b/ doesn't mind letting everybody know of his inability to follow a relatively simple argument. He laughs at Bush because he said:

"After the bombing, most Iraqis saw what the perpetuators of this attack were trying to do."—(On the bombing of the Golden Mosque of Samarra in Iraq) March 13, 2006, Washington, D.C.

You only have to read the quote in context to see that it was a part of an argument that you can agree or not, but which makes perfect sense:

After the bombing, most Iraqis saw what the perpetuators [sic] of this attack were trying to do: The enemy had failed to stop the January 2005 elections, they failed to stop the constitutional referendum, they failed to stop the December elections, and now they're trying to stop the formation of a unity government. By their response over the past two weeks, Iraqis have shown the world they want a future of freedom and peace -- and they will oppose a violent minority that seeks to take that future away from them by tearing their country apart.

UPDATE (March 24): Duh. Apparently it's me who fails to understand things... A reader points out that the Bushism was "perpetuators", and not what I thought. I wish I could say that it was the absence of [sic] in Slate, as opposed to the White House transcript, what fooled me. I don't really know how I goofed. My bad.

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WITH THIS, it's not only proven that it was reasonable to believe that Saddam had WMDs, but it's also transparent the effort by the MSM to lie and cover the truth. Turns out that Saddam's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, was a CIA informant for a short period of time. NBC asks in the headline: "Saddam’s foreign minister told CIA the truth, so why didn’t agency listen?"

Very simple: they did.

Because lower in the report, it says: "On the issue of chemical weapons, the CIA said Saddam had stockpiled as much as "500 metric tons of chemical warfare agents" and had "renewed" production of deadly agents. Sabri said Iraq had stockpiled weapons and had "poison gas" left over from the first Gulf War."

So NBC shouts one thing in the headline, and then writes down below something that completely undermines its assertion. They don't even feel the need to hide it. That's because they trust in the power of the headline, aware that most people don't go further than that because it has a bigger visual effect; the headline is what's going to stay in people's minds. Then, below, they provide the other information so that they can plausibly deny that they were hiding information.

Clever, if it worked.

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READER ERP emailed a comment to my post on the veil as a liberation for Muslim women; it's quite politically incorrect, so I simply had to publish it, with his permission:

As a mere man, you don't understand what western, non-Moslem women mean when they say that the enforced wearing of burqas in public is liberating. This is because, not having spent your entire lives being judged on your appearance, you and all the other men don't get it and that's why your comparing it to negro slavery or segregation in the U.S. south misses the point entirely.

It's a little tricky, so try to follow me. It's liberating to be FORCED to cover up from head to toe because then you aren't being judged, so you don't have to look your best, don't need to make sure your clothes and hair are presentable, etc. just to run out for a loaf of bread. Since men haven't been socialized to worry about their appearance, it's probably impossible to understand just how deep this goes. Nothing I can think is comparable.

If this burqa business isn't enforced and women can cover up or not, it's not at all liberating because those covering up will be suspect of being particularly ugly and or disheveled and disreputably messy. Get it? When all women MUST cover up, then we all can pretend we're past beautiful and dressed beautifully and perfectly groomed even if the truth is far different.

That's why western women might opt for it.

Of course, the reason Moslem women conform is entirely different. Here the comparison to slavery works. They do what they're told because they're terrified of the consequences if they don't.

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I'M NOT TOO SURPRISED because in Spain it's everyday's stuff, but nevertheless perhaps you'll be interested in learning that a prominent German politician, Oskar Lafontaine, has called Americans "terrorists". Not Bush, not Rove, not the neocon warmongers: all Americans. The worse thing is that, after the controversy erupted, Sueddeutsche Zeitung deep-sixed the report; worse still, it's been erased from Google's cache.

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YESTERDAY IT WAS a document showing that Saddam planned to collaborate with Palestinian terrorists in Iraq to carry out an attack with anthrax. Today there's another not-so-stunning revelation straight from the Docex documents from Saddam's regime: that Iraq's intelligence services met with Osama bin Laden in 1995 in Sudan.

Yes, I know it was metaphysically impossible since Saddam was secular and Osama was a religious nut, bla bla bla.

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SUPERB WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL (unfortunately a subscription link) about the trouble in the streets of France:

The right to assemble is a pillar of free society. But in France it's the only pillar its citizens seem to take seriously. So much so that any public debate of import gets conducted in the streets rather than through the ballot box or institutions of a purportedly mature democracy.

In less enlightened societies, as opposed to the birthplace of the Enlightenment, that's usually called mob rule. But the violent street demonstrations roiling France's cities today, and the unhappy career prospects of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, are the latest symptoms of an ailing democracy.

[...] How instructive it would be to send Alexis de Tocqueville through France today. He'd find dependence on the state and the absence of individualism, symbolized by the low levels of private charity and civic engagement. He would not find the bounty of groups and lobbies of healthier democracies. "In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government," Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" asserts, "in the United States you are sure to find an association."

Yes, the banners of student groups add color to the street demonstrations. But look closer. The force with real bite is the public-sector employee unions. Blue-collar workers long ago abandoned the union movement, leaving civil servants who, like Charles de Gaulle once said of France's cosseted farmers, are desperate to hold on to their "mediocre but secure" posts.

The government workforce -- one-quarter of the population -- can terrorize the majority by stopping the trains or turning off the electricity. In other words, the state funds its own opposition, which torpedoes even modest efforts to modernize France. By marching with the public-sector unions to defend this status quo, the boys and girls of the Sorbonne are saying they want to be "mediocre but secure," too. What a dream for a 20-year-old. And a useful warning to Americans about the danger of giving public-sector unions too much power as well.

Read the whole thing, if you have a chance.

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BREAKING NEWS: CNN is saying that the Basque terrorist group ETA has announced a permanent ceasefire. Still no links. Well, last time, at the end of the 90s, the truce revealed itself as a kind of hudna, that is, a time to regroup and re-arm when they were particularly weak. As they are now. This is why it was so absurd for Zapatero to negotiate with them under the table. Let's see what Mr Appeaser may have given them.

UPDATE. Link here; many more at Google News.

UPDATE II. Well, I'm looking for the translation of the communique into English; from what I've seen in Spanish, ETA's ceasefire is contingent to their claims for an independent Basque country is met, and this is going to be difficult. What they are doing is to say they'll stop the violence as long as a negotiation towards that end is started, which implicitly means they can go back to killing is they're not satisfied. The conclusion is that they're still using violence, or the threat of violence, a part of the political process. Doesn't sound like the end of ETA to me. That would be if they had announced they regret all they've done in the past, asked for the victims' forgiveness, and turned in all their weapons.

UPDATE III. Here's the full text of ETA's statement.

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IF WE'RE SO CONCERNED with civil wars, how come the media isn't giving similar attention to this one?

Eyewitnesses said most of those wounded in Monday's fighting in the Gaza Strip were policemen who tried to prevent Fatah gunmen from taking over government buildings and security installations. The two sides exchanged gunfire for several hours in scenes that many Palestinians said were reminiscent of the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s.

Rand Simberg's explanation is, of course, correct.

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CARNE ROSS has a fantastic article in Slate on the Western Sahara, the land no one pays attention to:

If any part of you wants to believe that the world is fundamentally just, that wrongs are eventually righted, and that those of us in the West are fair and righteous in the way we treat other countries and cultures, consider the story of the people of Western Sahara. Their history proves that you can have right wholly on your side, international law emphatically in support of your cause, be on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council for decades, and still be ignored.

I guess that's because they haven't started to blow things up like the Palestinians. Are we giving people an incentive for violence? Is this the lesson?

This bit is just is just the beginning of the piece, so go and read the rest. As I said, it's a great one, though Ross still forgets the role -rather, the absence- of a part who could have made a difference, and had a moral responsibility because the territory was a former colony after all. I'm talking about Spain: all governments since the restoration of democracy after the Franco dictatorship have virtually abandoned the Sahrawis.

Oddly, just like the Kurds, Sahrawis used to be a cause célèbre of the Spanish left, who were demanding governments to do something about it. The left's support of the Kurds ended, well, you know when it ended: when Coalition troops stepped in Iraq in 2003, and when the left realized that Kurdistan has been a staunch ally of the US and one of the, understandably, fiercest opponents of Saddam.

And the Spanish left support of the Sahrawis ended exactly as Zapatero won the 2004 election and started cozying with Morocco as no Spanish government had done before. Interestingly, it was an electoral victory only three days after a massacre perpetrated by a group of assassins composed mainly -but not only, as there were other nationalities, also Spaniards well known in the undeground dealings with security forces- by Moroccans. What it's been proven so far is that these Moroccans who committed the heinous act of March 11 in Madrid were foot soldiers. The question is, foot soldiers for who?

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WOW, ALBERT, I don't know what to say, that's quite a honor!

(you can get Einstein to write what you want here; via Drinking From Home)


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THE WHOLE POST is interesting (I also mentioned that in a previous post), but the last picture is plain scary.

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HAS THE MOTHER of all smoking guns been found among the Docex documents? Ray Robison, a former member of the Iraq Survey Group, thinks he has found it: a memo by the IIS about plans to handle small vials of anthrax to terrorists of al-Quds (Palestinians). Read it all.

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IF YOU STILL HAVEN'T READ THESE, you should:

• My Ideal War: How the international community should have responded to Bush's September 2002 U.N. speech, by Christopher Hitchens
• Rewind and replay: Dr. Sanity's comments on Hitchens' piece above
  
• The stone face of Zarqawi: Iraq is no "distraction" from al Qaeda, also by Hitchens, and
  
• It's three years since the disarmament of Saddam and all that followed..., by Gerard Baker, an ucrony, or rather a dystopia, about what would have happend if there had been no war in Iraq.
  

Food for thought after yesterday's third anniversary since it began.

UPDATE. Add Jeff Goldstein to the list.

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BELARUS hopefully-a-revolution will be liveblogged; Robert Mayer is at it again for the third day.

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PIETER DORSMAN at Peaktalk makes excellent points about women and Islam, particularly regarding the increasing number of European women who are converting. He also quotes an interview with Dutch minister of transportation, also a female, who seems to agree that Muslim women are "liberated" by covering themselves up. To this I say: whatever floats your boat is fine with me. But it's the explanation to it what bothers me: the Dutch minister says: "Wearing a headscarf is of course culturally determined. And that’s the way these women experience that, because that’s how they experience their religion. In addition, the headscarf offers opportunities for women is some Islamic countries, because without one they won’t be able to leave home."

Yeah, sure. And blacks in segregated Alabama should be grateful and liberated to be able to go to a "Colored people" bathroom, otherwise they would have had to crap on the floor outside. Not to mention blacks in the slavery era; they had endless opportunities thanks to the shackles and chains, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to leave their huts.

It's the same logic, ain't it?

The point is not whether Muslim women are free to cover themselves up. It's whether they're free not to; it's what happens if they decide not to use a veil, what counts. And we know what happens: in most Islamic countries, and in Islamic areas in Western cities, at a bare minimum it means at least not being able to leave their homes.

Where's the "liberation" in that?

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SORRY FOR THE slow blogging; I had planned to write something on the 3rd anniversary of the Iraq war but, actually, the best thing you could do is go and read what Iraq The Model has to say.

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THAT'S FUNNY.

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THE ELECTIONS IN BELARUS went as feared: with multiple irregularities and Lukashenko emerging as the winner. At this moment, Milinkevich supporters are gathering in thousand at October Square in Minsk, and the fear is that this may become an ugly thing. Both Andrei Khrapavitski at Belarus Elections 2006 and Robert Mayer at Publius Pundit are liveblogging.

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AKBAR GANJI, an Iranian political prisoner who almost died from the hunger strike he held in protest for the condition he was held in, has been finally freed.

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HOURS AND HOURS will be spent by this blogger at the multimedia section of TCM (Turner Classic Movies)'s website. It has lots of trailers, movie clips and stills of thousands of the most significant movies of all times (via Hugh Hewitt).

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WE'VE GOT MAIL! Look at the comment left in my Spanish blog, in the post about Iraq the Model's translation of documents from the Saddam era:

I came across your blog: Frustrating and one sided. But on the other hand you are a pundit, or worse, a wannabee pundit. I hope you die. Have an ice day.

p.s. I bet you don't care people are going to die because of your warmogering. You just feel smart.

Thanks buddy, I like you too! Hmm, can I have an ice-cream day instead?

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REMEMBER GENERAL SADA, the former no.2 of the Iraqi Air Force during Saddam's rule, who says that WMDs were airlifted to Syria just before the war? Vik Rubenfeld went to see him speaking two days ago in Los Angeles, and recorded it. Here's the video.

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GATES OF VIENNA has a second installment of its Islam's Bloody Borders project, in which the relationship between the terrorist attacks since 2001 and the Islamic population in the countries is analyzed. Check it out.

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LOOK AT THE DOCUMENT that my buddies Omar and Mohammed of Iraq The Model have translated. It's from Iraq's intelligence services, and is one of the millions found after the war. It's a pdf, but I'm copying the main points (emphasis mine):

Our Afghani source #002 (info on him in paper slip '1') has informed us that Afghani consular Ahmed Dahistani (info on him in paper slip '2') had spoken before him of the following :

1-That Usama Bin Ladin and the Taliban group in Afghanistan are in contact with Iraq and that a group from the Taliban and Usama Bin Ladin's group had conducted a visit to Iraq .

2-That America possesses evidence that Iraq and Usama Bin Ladin's group had cooperated to strike targets inside America .

3-Incase Taliban and Usama's group are proven involved in those sabotage operations, it will be possible that America directs strikes at Iraq and Afghanistan

4-That the Afghani consular had heard about the Iraq connections with Usama Bin Ladin's group during his presence in Iran.

We're going to do a special coverage of this at Pajamas Media; in fact, I think we can take some credit for what seemed a wild idea: given the impossibility of hiring enough Arabic translators for more then 2 million documents, why not releasing all documents and put them on a website so that they could be translated by bloggers all over the world? Roger Simon floated the idea with Rep. Hoekstra and others in Washington during his trip for the Intelligence Summit, and it seemed as if no one had had that Eureka moment yet. Having many bloggers working over the same publicly available documents ensures the quality of the translations; it's open source intelligence at its best, all thanks to the Internet. Ain't that grand?

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AARON HANSCOM unveils the radicalism of Mark LeVine, associate professor of history at UC-Irvine.

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INTERESTINGLY, Saddam showed at his trial yesterday that he has a better memory than war critics who still insist that it was only nonexistant WMDs what took us to war...

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IRAQI SUNNI AND SHIITE religious leaders decree the spilling of innocent blood as a sin and call for the rejection of sectarianism; that something that the Iraqi newspaper Al-Ayat reported and that we can only read in the West thanks to people like Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, who has the translation. Of course, the MSM cannot cover this, otherwise, how could they keep on sounding the civil war horn?

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