The dubious reconciliation pact that has been signed between Fatah and Hamas, the latter purporting to be the governmental authority in the Gaza Strip whilst simultaneously carrying out acts of terrorism against Israel, is another step back in the road to an independent Palestinian state.

As James Kirchick writes in Hareetz, the “useful idiots” supporting this reunification genuinely consider themselves friends of the Palestinian cause, but are unable to detect their cognitively dissonant support for a paramilitary organization that decried the death of mass murderer Osama bin Laden.

As Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told media this week, “we condemn the assassination…of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.”

Bin Laden was a deranged, psychotic cult leader who carried out an act widely considered to be amongst the most heinously evil in contemporary human history. That he represented the idealistic image of a holy warrior for Palestine tells you all you really need to know about Hamas, or the potential for peace with this group of ragged rage-filled radicals.

Hamas is everything that self-professed liberals should be “prejudiced” toward: obscurantist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, warlike and rejectionist. It calls for the death of homosexuals and bans dancing.

This is the paradoxically perplexing thing about the left’s devotion to the Palestinian cause. Hamas, and other religiously inspired fanatics in the Arab world like them, represent everything anathema to liberal sensibility. Those who openly mourned bin Laden’s long overdue date with the afterlife deserve the harshest sort of condemnation from the liberal-left usually reserved only for evangelical Christians.

But, as we all know, that sort of outrage is meted out to nice safe targets like Rob Ford and Don Cherry, racists both. The same useful idiots who hyperbolize our new majority government as the beginning of a George Bush-style Americanization of our country are deafeningly silent when it comes to criticizing a people who launch rockets from children’s schools and use women as human meat shields.

via — Terry Glavin

A 48-year-old man who raped and forced his children into prostitution has been found guilty of sexual abuse in Germany and sentenced to 14 years, six months in prison:

The court found 48-year-old defendant, identified only as Detlef S., guilty of 162 counts of sexually abusing his children and forcing his daughter and stepdaughter into prostitution between 1987 and 2010.

23 years of sexual abuse for the victims. Unfortunately there will only be 14 years of sexual abuse for him.

If you haven’t read about the vegetarian couple who were denied adoption on the Greek island of Crete, well now’s your chance. Apparently this one has been making the rounds in the vegetarian blogs and news sites because they find it utterly appalling that these prospective parents might be denied adoption based upon dietary reasons.

Apparently the city’s welfare services cited the concern that the parents would foist the dietary restrictions on the child, a reasonable concern under the circumstances, when the University of Crete medical school recommended a diet that includes meat. The decision was made because they believed it would not be in the best interests of the child to be placed in a home where meat is not provided as a dietary option.

In this instance I don’t believe the action taken by the city was too extreme. After all, even though there are many proponents of a vegetarian diet, the mainstream medical world acknowledges meat as an essential food group. Health Canada, for instance, recommends a diet that includes meat although it suggests meat alternatives such as beans, lentils and tofu. Health Canada also recommends two servings of fish every week, and lean meats with no fat or salt.

That isn’t to say that a child would be unhealthy on a vegetarian diet. But I think it would be reasonable to ask whether the adoptive parents intend to include the child in their dietary regimen, and to prove that they understand the dietary requirements of children and the meat substitutes required to get proper nutrition. This point cannot be overstated, as children can develop Vitamin B12 deficiencies by not eating the right proteins.

So, why should adoptive parents should be forced to explain their dietary choices when birth parents aren’t required to do so? On the surface it may seem like an intrusion. After all, some parents would probably fail the criteria of raising their own children by government standards. But it’s reasonable to conclude that the state will attempt to find as suitable a home for a ward of the state as possible. Fortunately, the state is not yet able to enforce dietary compliance for children not under their care. (Though this is no doubt worthy of a futuristic movie).

I’m not sure why a parent would want to raise a child solely on vegetables anyway. It’s difficult enough to get my children to eat the single leaf sprinkled atop their meals for balance, let alone a sea of greens. Subjecting yourself to this kind of torture doesn’t seem worth any potential benefit to the child.

Having said that, I don’t think parents should be denied adoption solely based on their own personal dietary preferences. And much is missing from the article that might be of interest. Do the parents intend to feed the child only vegetables? What are the reasons for the vegetarian diet? Are they based on ethical or health motives? The former usually comes with a willingness to forgo the needs of humans for the imagined needs of animals.

A vegan baby died in 2004 because his parents fed him nothing but soy milk and apple juice. The parents deservingly got life in prison for their extreme folly, as prosecutors noted the couple intentionally neglected their child and refused to take him to the doctor even as the baby’s body wasted away. Such extreme examples are good reason for concern, particularly with very young children.

I think if the Crete parents can have their diet approved by a medical professional, they should be allowed to adopt. Otherwise it’s reasonable to seek a couple more open to the full range of food choices.

Iran is considering boycotting the Olympics because the above logo is too “Zionist.” Um, I guess the best answer I can come up with is, “good.” More of this.

Personally, I can’t see the word Zion. Here’s what I see:

The title is a jest, of course. But when I originally book-marked this article, the United Nations were in the process of “debating” whether they should suspend Libya’s membership in the Human Rights Council. That article has since been updated to show that the U.N. has done the least useful thing possible, which in the case of the U.N. isn’t very much:

The General Assembly voted by consensus on the council’s recommendation to suspend Libya’s rights of council membership for committing “gross and systematic violations of human rights.” It also expressed “deep concern” about the human rights situation in Libya.

The vote does not permanently remove Libya from the council, but prevents it from participation until the General Assembly determines whether to restore the country to full status. The resolution was sponsored by Arab and African states.

First of all, what was Libya doing in any Human Rights Council anyway? The very idea is ridiculous. The country has been a totalitarian dictatorship for 41 years and the leader of that dictatorship is a man who pioneered state-sponsored terrorism. That the United Nations only “suspended” their membership is like holding the door open for Osama bin Laden.

The membership of the Human Rights Council reads like a who’s who of tyrants and autocrats. Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Qatar, Uganda, Zambia and everybody’s personal favourite, Saudi Arabia. The last country is especially noteworthy, ranking 12th worst in the world in a freedom index compiled by Freedom House.

Of those on the index considered “not free”, 11 countries are members of the United Nations Human Rights Council. One has to ask what the purpose of such a council is if it has the kind of members who commit crimes against humanity with impunity. If ever there was a more compelling reason to disband the disastrous international organization, this would have to rank at least second place.

I mean, if it literally takes exterminating members of your population indiscriminately — as opposed to behind the scenes as such honourable members as Russia and China do — how accountable can this organization really be to “human rights?” And can membership for Iran be far behind?

In other news, war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. I read it in a book somewhere.

With the recent revolts in Arab states that have brought down tyrants like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia, it is interesting to note that the list of dictatorships abroad is still comprehensive. And though both of those countries are certain to be succeeded by like-minded dictators, for a time we here in the west can swallow the placebo of hope and change. Today’s brutal massacre of civilians in Libya by dictator-for-life Muammar Gaddafi might be just the wake-up call we need.

For all the complaints we levy against our own government, and the hyperbolic vitriol of our attempts to help others as “neocolonialism”, the reality is that we have largely ignored the kind of repression, torture and violence that has had a permanent presence in dozens of totalitarian states for the past 30 years. The following is a list of current dictators in those states:

North Korea: 63 years, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il-sung (father and son)
Cuba: 52 years, Fidel and Raul Castro (brothers)
Libya: 41 years, Muammar Gaddafi
Iran: 31 years, Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei
Angola: 31 years, José Eduardo dos Santos
Equatorial Guinea: 31 years, Obiang Mbasogo
Syria: 30 years, Bashar al-Assad and Hafez al-Assad (father and son)
Cameroon: 28 years, Paul Biya
Zimbabwe: 23 years, Robert Mugabe
Sudan: 22 years, Omar al-Bashir
Kazakhstan: 21 years, Nursultan Nazarbayev
Uzbekistan: 21 years, Islam Karimov
Chad: 20 years, Idriss Déby
Tajikistan: 18 years, Emomalii Rahmon
Eritrea: 18 years, Isaias Afewerki
Belarus: 17 years, Aleksandr Lukashenko
Venezuela: 12 years, Hugo Chavez
Algeria: 12 years, Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Rwanda: 11 years, Paul Kagame
Ivory Coast: 10 years, Laurent Gbagbo

(Not included in this list are the monarchies that serve as hereditary dictatorships)

…to train police. Further to the Update here,

Media out! Of Afghanistan/People’s Daily Online Update

the latest:

THE HAGUE — The Dutch cabinet agreed Friday to a police training mission to Afghanistan, 11 months after the last government collapsed in a spat over military deployment to the conflict-torn nation.

“The cabinet decided today to send an integrated police training mission to Afghanistan in the period 2011 to 2014,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced after the weekly cabinet meeting.

“In total, the mission will entail 545 men and women,” he said, adding it would have a “strict training objective. No component of this mission will be involved in any military offensive.”

The decision comes some six months after Dutch troops withdrew from Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)…

NATO’s request for an extension of the Dutch deployment sparked a political row that led to the centre-left government’s collapse in February last year, precipitating the August pullout.

The governing coalition at the time was led by the Christian Democratic Action, which is now part of a right-leaning minority government in a loose alliance with the anti-Islam PVV, which is opposed to the training mission.

The government “needs a majority in parliament” to send the mission, said spokesman Henk Brons.

That means Rutte will need support from opposition lawmakers in the face of the PVV’s disapproval.

The prime minister said Friday the purpose of the new training mission would be “the strengthening of the civilian police and justice system in Afghanistan” and the “advancement of the constitutional state”.

The mission would include 225 police trainers in Kabul, Kunduz and Bamiyan.

“We will also retain four F16 (fighter jets) in Afghanistan. The F16s play an essential role in finding roadside bombs and boosting our security on the ground,” he said.

That will involve technical support personnel, including medical and logistics experts, as part of the team, said Rutte, arguing that the Netherlands’ work in Afghanistan “is not done”…

Rutte, who insisted the decision was “thoroughly deliberated” and based on the outcome of two fact-finding missions to Afghanistan, said the security of the Dutch trainers would be ensured by troops from Germany, the lead ISAF nation in Kunduz.

More from AP via the CBC website (will our other major media cover the news?):

…
The government says in a letter to parliament the mission will involve 225 police trainers and 320 military support staff who will be stationed in the capital Kabul and the northern province of Kunduz…

Plus earlier from Radio Nederland:

…The Dutch trainers would be deployed under the auspices of the European Police Training Mission (EUPOL)…

…Four Dutch F-16s would have to stay on in Afghanistan to provide protection to the troops. The jet fighters would have to be relocated from the southern province of Kandahar to the north of the country. The F-16 unit includes about 120 troops, bringing the total number of personnel for the mission to about 500…

So much for those quittists hoping for a grand Western bug-out. And aren’t those F-16s just a hoot?

…
Our government…has not been willing to employ our CF-18s in Afghanistan to support the CF and allied forces there even though urged to do so by our allies.  Too fearful of political and media reaction if a bomb or missile killed some civilians accidentally, don’t you know…

H/t Terry Glavin.

Update thought: The real message here, what with Canada’s also retreating to a training role, is that only two NATO members–the US and UK (plus the Danes)–are willing to engage in extended combat in Afstan.  Pathetic.  And why the Brits have a real special relationship with the Americans and we do not.  The way of the real, not Byers and Staples, world.

Mark
Ottawa

Eric Morse and Eugene Lang have their doubts:

…Small, relatively prosperous, yet ethnically and religiously divided, this West African country with one principal export (cocoa) already has 9,000 UN peacekeepers on the ground, one of the UN’s largest operations. Gbagbo [still claiming to be president after an election the UN says he lost] faces both an international and African community united in outrage against his intransigence.

It should be a recipe for successful international action to remove him.

Instead, the aftermath of the election is turning into a prolonged standoff, a test of the relevance of the UN…

As for the UN, Gbagbo has thumbed his nose at New York, demanding peacekeepers leave the country. Although the UN is steadfastly refusing to retreat, the Security Council peacekeeping mandate does not extend to active military intervention in a political confrontation.

It’s unlikely Gbagbo will go anywhere he’s not forced to go, and that is the nub of the issue: How do you get rid of a despot who shows no sign of moving, and has a significant armed force at his disposal?…

That leaves the possibility of armed intervention. ECOWAS has had a fairly respectable record with this in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia, but Ivory Coast is something else again. Gbagbo’s forces are capable of strong resistance if they are so minded.

Unless Gbagbo is persuaded it is in his self-interest to quit, the possibility of either a prolonged standoff or a bloody civil conflict or both is uncomfortably real. The international community has expressed its will and may be close to finding out that it has no realistic way to impose it, despite having thousands of UN troops on the ground. That would highlight the impotence of the UN as an entity capable of forging the political consensus for a military intervention, much less actually organizing an effective on-the-ground effort. And if civil war, genocide or crimes against humanity occur in Ivory Coast following the failure of the international community to force Gbagbo out, you can effectively say goodbye to the lofty and idealistic UN doctrine of Responsibility to Protect [see "There’s a responsibility to protect us from Pink Lloyd and Soft Rock"]…

It might well take the military efforts of France — the former colonial power that still has troops in the region and has a record of intervening in African hot spots — to save the UN’s bacon and restore something resembling democracy to Ivory Coast. France has said it won’t do it but in the end it may not have much choice. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

Eugene Lang, former chief of staff to two Liberal ministers of national defence, is co-author of The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. Eric Morse is a former Canadian diplomat who is now vice-chair of security studies at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.

Meanwhile, in the same edition of the Ottawa Citizen, pernicious Prof. Michael Byers reveals a sweet stink of hypocrisy:

…
Canadians can help…by demanding that Ottawa support a UN-authorized military intervention by ECOWAS…

But why not simply have the Security Council give the UN peacekeepers already there (and reinforce them if necessary) a more robust mandate rather than outsourcing the job?

After all Mr Byers has not approved of the Security Council’s outsourcing (more here) the job in Afstan to NATO:

…Prof. Byers believes that “it’s time to move from a combat-oriented approach to one that focuses on negotiation, peacemaking and nation-building. … It’s time to move NATO troops out, and UN peacekeepers in.”..

So the Security Council’s outsourcing military intervention is a Good Thing in Ivory Coast but a Bad Thing in Afstan. UN peacekeepers are all that’s needed in the latter but not in the former.

Huh?

Update: A version of this post is at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute’s 3Ds Blog.

Mark
Ottawa

Further to,

…F-35 Update

this is what our government is saying:

Canadian officials defend F-35 jets

Canadian officials leapt to the defence of the controversial F-35 military jet Thursday after significant concerns were raised with the stealth fighter earlier in the day in Washington.

While U.S. concerns are specific to one particular vertical lift model, Canadian critics say ongoing cost overruns and lengthy delays should raise a red flag for a Conservative government determined to spend billions on the U.S.-made planes.

“I say without hesitation … this is the only aircraft for the future,” said Major General Tom Lawson, assistant chief of the air staff, who insisted the proven conventional model Canada is buying should not be confused with the short takeoff vertical landing (STOVL) under the gun in the U.S.

The Harper government is pushing ahead with plans to buy 65 F-35 jets at a total cost of $9 billion, which could jump to about $16 billion when service costs are factored in. Delivery of the first jets is not scheduled until 2016.

U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates earlier told a news conference the joint strike fighter program has received special scrutiny given its “substantial cost” and “ongoing development issues” as part of the planned U.S. military budget cuts.

Gates announced the Marine Corps’s F-35 STOVL version has been put on a two-year “probation” to get it back on track in terms of performance, cost and schedule…

Lawson said development of the conventional F-35 has been advancing well and “it’s from that that I take great promise with this program and great confidence in it.”

The general said Canada is “buffered somewhat” from any further delays in the delivery of the F-35s because the recently upgraded CF-18s provide “manoeuvre space in when we would purchase aircraft. So, if required, we might be able to extend the final date of service of the F-18 [bit of hedge there].”..

The Parliamentary Budget Office is to issue a report next month on Canada’s proposed F-35 purchase.

“We are monitoring developments regarding F-35 development. We will look at input and life-cycle cost estimates. We are working with colleagues in the U.S. and the U.K.,” parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page told the Star…

That should be very interesting. It is true that the F-35A the government intends to purchase has had a lot less testing trouble than the F-35B. But now for some serious details, not reported in our media, that will affect delivery dates and almost certainly increase the cost of the planes– since production will ramp up more slowly–in 2016 (or whenever, depending on how well F-35A testing does progress in reality).

1) Defense Technology’s “Ares” blog:

…Gates has decided to keep FY2012 (Lot 5) low-rate production of the F-35 to 32 aircraft, the same level as 2011, versus the planned 42 aircraft, although progress of the F-35A and F-35C has been “satisfactory”.

Update: Satisfactory or not, the completion of systems development and demonstration (SDD) is delayed to early 2016, versus mid-2015 as planned in the restructuring of the program early last year.

SDD finishes with the conclusion of development testing and precedes initial operational testing and evaluation, so this probably pushes initial operational capability into 2017 [emphasis added]. (The individual services are assessing their IOC dates.) This will cost an additional $4.6 billion.

The production ramp will also be flattened out, cutting another 124 aircraft out of LRIP, through the ninth batch, in addition to the 122 removed last year.

A total of 41 more F/A-18E/F Super Hornets will be acquired [emphasis added, see here also], alongside 150 life-extended F/A-18C/Ds, to fill Marine and Navy squadrons as a hedge against late JSF deliveries [and note that the Navy's F-35C has had "satisfactory" progress]…

2) Fort Worth (where the F-35 is built) Star-Telegram:

Defense secretary proposes cutting 124 F-35 purchases

Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlined a five-year plan Thursday to reduce defense spending by $78 billion, including a dramatic cut in purchases of the F-35 joint strike fighter.

After more than a year of reviews of the oft-delayed and over-budget program, the Pentagon now plans to order 325 jets between 2012 and 2016, 124 fewer than anticipated a few months ago.

Gates’ plan would significantly slow production increases at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth factory and likely affect the company’s plans for hiring workers over that time.

Lockheed has been anticipating about 200 foreign orders during that period, but most of those nations are also dealing with budget problems and worried about rising F-35 costs… [But not our government, at least publicly.  And it still claims up to 5,000 F-35s will be built, from which Canadian industry will make huge bucks.  That's the real reason the government, as opposed to the Air Force, wants the plane--the hoped-for jobs and votes.]

Gates’ proposals will be included in the proposed 2012 defense budget submitted to Congress next month. Of the money saved by buying fewer jets, $4.6 billion would pay for continued development and testing…

The Pentagon now has 61 early-production F-35s on order. It was expecting to buy another 43 with the 2011 budget, but Congress has not yet appropriated the funds and has indicated wanting fewer planes…

Yet our government professes to see blue skies ahead.

Update: A version of this post is at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute’s 3Ds Blog.

Mark
Ottawa

If only.  Still one cannot imagine a leading Canadian federal politician in such a picture:

Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, his wife Svetlana Medvedeva, 
and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at an Orthodox Easter celebration 
at Christ the Savior Cathedral, Moscow, April 4, 2010

Much earlier and all too, er, Soviet:

Mark
Ottawa