Pretty much all the major relief organisations are accepting online donations, including MSF, the International Red Cross, UNICEF, and a special relief fund through Federation CJA. Please give what you can.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Ian Paul doesn’t think that Google will actually pull out of China. But whatever ends up happening, the implications of this statement could be huge – both for Google as a business, and for China. Stay tuned.

Since last week, it seems that way. Even though the Vietnamese government is issuing denials.

Some Vietnamese Facebook users launched a Facebook group in protest of the blockage, but as of right now it appears to only have a handful of members. Hmmm, wonder why that could be?

Of course, as Barack Obama found out last week after giving a speech in China about internet freedom, protests against censorship have an above-average risk of, well, being censored.

Oh. That’s why.

Algeria became the last African nation to qualify for the 2010 World Cup finals on Wednesday, beating Egypt 1-0 in a bruising playoff in neutral Sudan. The breakthrough came in the 40th minute, when defender Antar Yahya’s volley clipped the bar and ducked in from a long cross from Karim Ziani.

Let the games begin…

No word on whether Alice Cooper will be releasing a song on the subject.

And Venezuela continues its steady slide into repression.

Better hope that umbrella is big enough to protect you from the ensuing shitstorm, Hillary.

Meanwhile, without George W. Bush in office anymore, Chavez has redirected his efforts towards the world’s favourite scapegoat: Venezuela’s Jewish community. In the past few years, antisemitism in Venezuela has reached staggering levels, and there’s every indication that things are only going to get worse.

On a scariness scale of one to ten, this little tidbit of news ranks somewhere around a… zillion. Even though it’s not exactly news that North Korea has nuclear capabilities, the fact that it’s being openly defiant about it and making threats isn’t exactly what we refer to as “good news”.

Possibly the least reassuring quote in the subject comes from South Korean PM Han Seung-soo:

“Although we are at an impasse, I’m sure that China, together with the other partners, will be able to solve this problem eventually.”

Thanks. That’ll help everyone sleep more soundly, I’m sure.

The defeat was astonishing, particularly because Chavez had pulled pretty much every trick in the book to stack the deck, from bribing people with promises of a shorter workday and more pensions, to shooting protestors, to shutting down all non-state-run media. Didn’t he read the chapter in the megalomaniac how-to book on how to stuff the ballot boxes?

People are breathing easier today. But Chavez isn’t one to be graceful in defeat. What will happen next is anyone’s guess.

A United Nations panel rebuked Myanmar, Iran and North Korea on Tuesday for human rights abuses, overcoming objections by developing nations that the move amounted to “demonization” of some states.

The resolution on North Korea expressing concern about systematic and widespread rights violations won the strongest support in the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee, passing by 97-23, with 60 abstentions.

Another resolution strongly condemning the use of violence against peaceful demonstrators in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was passed by 88-24, with 66 abstentions, in what Britain said was “a declaration of support for the Burmese people’s desire for change.”

A third vote expressing deep concern at rights violations in Iran was passed by 72-50, with 55 abstentions.

The non-binding resolutions will be sent to the 192-member General Assembly, which generally votes in the same way as the committee.

The representative from Uganda was among several members of the Non-Aligned Movement, which groups 115 mostly developing nations, who argued against singling out some states.

He said such issues were best left to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council and should be addressed through dialogue rather than what he called the “demonization” of some countries.

Demonization, eh? You mean, what is usually done to Israel in a typical U.N.’s day’s work?

Two bombs exploded aboard a train bound from India to Pakistan, sparking a fire that killed at least 66 passengers on Monday, an apparent attempt to sabotage a peace process between the nuclear-armed rivals.

One person was detained in connection with the midnight blasts on the train about 80 km north of New Delhi, Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav was quoted as saying.

The Samjhauta Express runs between Dehli and Attari in India and Wagah and Lahore in Pakistan twice a week, and is nicknamed the “Friendship Train” or the “Peace Train”, due to its route between the two rival countries. The symbolism of literally trying to derail peace must have been too tempting for the terrorists to resist.

Meanwhile, neither India nor Pakistan appears prepared to take the bait:

There was no finger-pointing by India and Pakistan, as there has been so often in the past after violent attacks.

The prime ministers of the two countries called each other and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said the attack would not be allowed to undermine the two countries’ peace efforts.

Progress? Or numbness to terrorism in a part of the world that has seen far too much of it already? It’s hard to say. But more people are dead for no reason today. That’s all anyone can state for certain. The rest? Who knows?

Luckily for Fidel, he’s already managed to pass his revolutionary torch.

Eleven young women and 18 of their children are living in a shelter in a community in the Carmel region. The only difference between them and the rest of the residents is their origin: They have all escaped from the terror of genocide in Darfur, they have all somehow infiltrated into Israel and left behind families that they will never see again.

These women are not only haunted by the atrocities they have endured and by the family they have left behind – probably never to see again – but they face extreme hardships in Israel. Most crossed the border illegally from Egypt after enduring many hardships in their journeys, and their husbands are in prison. They are young women struggling to raise babies alone without any means of support besides the donations that keep the shelter running. They are in a land and culture that couldn’t be more different from their own. And the Israeli government, despite being openly sympathetic to their plight on a world stage, is not offering much help:

“The state claims that the refugees are a security threat because they are citizens of an enemy country, and I want to mention that during the Holocaust Jewish refugees were turned away from numerous countries with the excuse that they were German citizens. We cannot forget that we are talking about human beings, even if their religion and skin color is different. We have to give them the opportunity to continue on with their lives and overcome what they have lived through”.

I don’t mean to pick on the Israeli government here; obviously, Israel needs to balance its security concerns against its humanitarian ones. And the whole world should be doing more, Canada included.

Still, these women are eager to try to rebuild their lives in any way they can:

“The most important thing for them is education. They want to send their children to kindergarten and to school and to learn Hebrew. They all willingly learn about Judaism and the traditions of the Jewish people, and every Friday we have a Shabbat party.

“They also want to go to work, and are always asking me to try to arrange work for them. Every visitor is inundated with questions, maybe he has news from their husbands in prison, or knows when they will be allowed to go to work.”

The shelter needs help, and I encourage everyone to consider making a donation:

The shelter subsists solely on donations and needs all possible supplies: baby supplies such as blankets, sheets, clothing, cribs and carriages; a dryer; toys; and books in Arabic and English ,and Hebrew and English school books. To donate email sigal@hotline.org.il

Let’s spread the word.

A German pensioner who won a prize and worldwide fame for breeding his country’s largest rabbit — Robert, a 10.5kg (23lb) bruiser the size of a dog — has been offered an unusual opportunity to exploit his talents overseas.

Karl Szmolinsky has been given a contract by North Korea to supply giant rabbits to help to boost meat production in the reclusive Communist country, which is suffering severe food shortages. The only problem is that such huge rabbits consume vast quantities of food themselves as they grow.

Of course, if they ever get around that problem, we could be in for trouble. Today, it’s simply breeding large rabbits to feed starving people. Tomorrow, the supersized bunnies could be roaming the globe. They’re big… they’re furry… and they bite!

More than 3,000 people died in political violence under Pinochet’s rule, many at the hands of repressive secret police. Some 28,000 people were tortured in secret detention centers and hundreds of thousands of Chileans went into exile.

Car horns blared as detractors of the deceased former dictator danced and cheered in Plaza Italia, a major intersection near the city center where Chileans usually congregate to celebrate sporting victories.

“I’m going to celebrate with my family the death of the tyrant. I even have a bottle of Brazilian cane alcohol we’ve been saving for 25 years to celebrate this day,” said Santiago Cavieres, a 75-year-old lawyer.

“I was in the National Stadium (a sports stadium used as a concentration camp in 1973) and from there they sent me to the Chacabuco concentration camp, where I was for eight months… Everyone there was tortured,” he said.

Despite Pinochet’s human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved Chile from Marxism. Supporters say his economic reforms put Chile on track to become Latin America’s model economy.

Pinochet’s coup to gain power, supported by the Reagan administration, is often pointed to as yet another example of American interference gone wrong. And while it’s easy to understand why – at a time when Communism was perceived as the biggest threat facing America – the decision to support Pinochet was made. The United States is not the only country guilty of this, but there have certainly been numerous prominent examples of it in the last number of years stemming from U.S. policy.

The problem is, the world isn’t divided into good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats, Cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers. Politics isn’t like a bad Western movie (and Reagan knew a lot about bad Western movies). Oftentimes, the enemy of my enemy is also a bad guy, and is also an enemy.

We’re still making that mistake today. The U.S. allying with extremist Shi’ite Muslim groups in Iraq, post-Saddam, is just one more chapter in this saga. And we can already see just how well that’s working out.

The trouble is, often the only person strong enough to oppose one bad guy is another bad guy; moderates tend to be weak in countries facing war and lack of law and order. Faced with the choice of backing the strong extremist or the weak moderate, most will choose the strong extremist and close their eyes to his darker deeds.

But it didn’t work then, and it’s not working now. It’s time to change how we look at the world, to stop breaking it into good guys and bad guys, and to stop supporting an enemy’s enemy that will only come back to bite us in the ass.

(By the way, who had Pinochet in the Dead Dictators Pool?)

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Fiji’s president had dissolved parliament and sanctioned the removal of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Tuesday.

“I have been advised this morning that the president of Fiji has acted outside his constitutional powers and supported the removal of the democratic prime minister by the military,” Clark said in a statement to the New Zealand parliament.

I only spent about 3 hours in Nadi’s airport, so I didn’t really get to see anything. But Fiji is full of tourists year-round; it’s one of the most popular vacation spots for Kiwis and even Aussies. It seemed like such a sleepy place; it’s bizarre to think of what it must look like with military roadblocks.

U.S. ambassador David Wilkins is mistaken when he assumes all Canadians would be offended if our prime minister’s name were placed in the same sentence as Kim Jong Il and Osama bin Laden. I believe that it is insulting to put Kim Jong Il and Osama bin Laden’s names in the same sentence as Stephen Harper’s and George W. Bush’s.

Why? Because Kim Jong Il’s country is not destroying the planet’s environment and bin Laden is not in bed with Saudi oil anymore. They are not the reason future generations will die from global catastrophes. Future generations will hail North Korea for its lack of energy use and bin Laden for fighting imperialists who mess up the environment.

Yes, just as future generations today hail Adolf Hitler for tackling that pesky problem of overpopulation in Europe.

North Korea has committed “crimes against humanity” against its own people according to an independent report published on Monday that made a long-shot appeal for the U.N. Security Council to deal with the issue.

Released after North Korea’s October 9 nuclear test, the report describes Pyongyang’s brutal treatment of its citizens, from the beatings of pregnant women to force miscarriages to the abduction, torture and execution of political prisoners.

Commissioned by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, the paper seeks to spotlight rights abuses that have been previously reported but are often overshadowed by concern about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

(Emphasis mine).

And that, after all, is the point. North Korea has been committing horrific crimes against humanity that beg the question of why, more than sixty years after swearing “never again”, the world sits back and allows them to happen.

The answer to that question can presumably be found in two little words: nuclear weapons. The theory is that, while in the midst of dealing with the nuclear crisis, there’s little that the world can do about anything else North Korea is doing.

So what’s our excuse, then, when it comes to (nuclear-less) Sudan?

Damian links to this Times article from last week in which a janjaweed defector explains, in horrifying detail, the atrocities that he helped commit against civilians.

As I’ve said before, I don’t take Nazi comparisons lightly, but in some cases they truly are warranted. This is one of those cases, without a doubt.

Unnatural death occurs with alarming regularity here, despite the carefully cultivated impression that President Vladimir V. Putin has presided over an era of stability, economic progress and resurgent national pride. Some say it occurs because of it.

“This state killed Anna Politkovskaya,” Grigory A. Yavlinsky, a once-prominent democratic leader, declared bluntly as the mourners filed out into a cold, gray afternoon.

Russia is unquestionably a dangerous place for journalists — less so than only Iraq and Algeria, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Thirteen of them have been killed since Mr. Putin came to power in 2000, a little more than two a year on average.

It’s not only journalists who are in danger when they speak out. Vladimir Putin hasn’t been particularly tolerant of any kind of political dissent. Anyone who speaks out, threatens him, or becomes too powerful has a way of mysteriously disappearing, as Putin works to steadily and quietly curtail many of the post-Soviet freedoms that have been built in Russia.

When my sister was studying Russian politics in university, she used to rant about the situation, lamenting the blind eye that the West has been turning to Russia – the gradual erosion of human rights, the trouncing that the political system has been taking, the efforts of Putin to cling to power. Not too many people noticed, though. It appears that Politkovskaya’s murder was the catalyst needed to open our eyes, and we will need to be much warier from here on out.

I’m sure that, mixed in somewhere with her publicity-seeking media hogging behaviour, Madonna is trying to do some good in Africa, even if accidentally. But my sense is that Madonna knows about as much about poverty in Malawi as she does about the Kabbalah. In other words, not a whole lot. At least Angelina Jolie is sincerely involved in child poverty and refugee causes, and does a lot of work under the radar. On the other hand, Madonna seems to be just looking for the next new fad to fill whatever emptiness she has in her life. I feel bad for her kids – all of them.

If you want an interesting and informative perspective about Malawi from someone who’s actually spent some real time there, outside the presence of TV cameras, read this.

Except that we already pretty much all knew about them. And there wasn’t really anything anyone could do before, so what will really change here? The United Nations? Is anyone really delusional enough to think that this organization which is currently unable to do anything about the mass murder still ongoing in Sudan can do anything about North Korea? It’s not as though a UN threat of sanctions would be too scary to a country already suffering mass starvation. Or that anyone really believes anyone – US or otherwise – would use a military option. In short, a nuclear North Korea is pretty much a fait accompli, because the rest of the world has no options.

Damian thinks the only option for North Korea has to come from within:

Ultimately, the only ways Kim will be removed from power are a potentially catastrophic outside invasion, or an uprising from within. The former is a non-starter; the latter could work. From here on out, we should redouble our efforts to support those brave North Koreans who oppose their government, and to get news and information to the most hermetically sealed society on earth.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with Damian on this one, for a few reasons:

1) North Korea has no real viable, organized opposition of any form; it’s the world’s least free and most oppressive regime, where opposition is systematically stamped out in its infancy.

2) North Korea is also desperately poor, has no real economy, no rule of law, no independent institutions… in short, it’s much, much worse than even Iraq. We mustn’t assume that the removal of Kim Jong-Il would liberate a country just waiting for the opportunity to instill a flourishing democracy. There is no indication that the removal of the dictatorship would leave anything but total chaos and anarchy. And a situation where chaotic anarchy meets nuclear weapons might be the only thing scarier than the current situation. At least we KNOW which crazy guy has his finger on the button now. What will happen when it’s a free-for-all?

The question we should be asking is, why now? Granted, Kim Jong-Il is crazy, but by some accounts he’s also crazy like a fox. This test was an in-your-face to the West, an in-your-face to the United Nations, and an in-your-face to Bush. And its timing was no coincidence. Given the geopolitical factors in the rest of the world, namely the mess in Iraq and Iran’s ongoing game of nuclear chicken with the U.N., Kim Jong-Il probably decided the time was ripe to flex his muscle a little bit.

But does this mean we’re on the verge of nuclear disaster? That depends on your perspective. The worry about Iran going nuclear is that Ahmadinejad might be crazy enough to actually not care about the consequences of launching a nuclear strike, so deep is his hatred for Israel and the West. Is the same true of Kim Jong-Il? Or is North Korea just trying to prove a point?

These are questions that were always hard to answer about nuclear weapons, but if we think this is the worst of it, then we’re kidding ourselves. To date, nuclear weapons have only ever been in the hands of countries, ranging from democracies to despotic dictatorships with crazy leaders, but all countries nonetheless. It’s only a matter of time until a terrorist group or rogue organization gets ahold of nuclear weapons. What then? What happens when there are no diplomatic options to even attempt?

We’d better start thinking about it, and soon, because if you think that this week is scary, I fear we ain’t seen nothing yet.

My solution? Send in our ultimate weapons: Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

The U.S. and British sponsored resolution would authorize the deployment of 20,000 U.N. troops and police in Darfur to take over from some 7,000 African Union troops, who have been unable to end bloodshed in the western Sudanese region.

Though the resolution, likely to be put to a vote on Thursday, would state that Sudan would need to agree to the deployment, it was expected to add pressure on Khartoum to drop its opposition to U.N. peacekeeping troops.

“Our judgment here is that we think we’ve found a formulation that would win acceptance on the (Security) Council,” U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters at the United Nations.

What about a formulation that would actually end the bloodshed?

This resolution – even if it passes – will be nothing more than symbolic. The U.N. is having trouble finding a few thousand troops to send to Lebanon; where will it find 20,000 for Sudan? Even if they go, chances are they’ll be equipped with nothing more than a blue helmet and a whistle. And, of course, for any of this to have made a difference, it would’ve had to have happened about four years ago.

As usual, the United Nations fell asleep at the wheel, and millions have been paying the price. If this resolution passes, it will be another case of far too little, far too late. Isn’t it time we admit that the U.N. is completely and utterly powerless to prevent, diffuse or end armed conflict and genocide?

Update: Similar sentiments from this Gazette editorial about Venezuela’s bid for a seat on the security council:

It’s not as if Chavez could make the Security Council less effective than it is now. Russia and China already take care of that, as we have seen in the case of Iran’s determined rush to acquire nuclear weapons. Sanctions? No no, say the Russians and the Chinese. Let’s talk and study for a few more months before we get to sanctions. What could go wrong?

From Rwanda to the Balkans to Darfur to Lebanon, and elsewhere, the Security Council has shown itself impotent and useless. Or worse than useless, as in approving a toothless resolution to disarm Hezbollah.

[. . . ]

Slaughter continues in Darfur, Iran becomes nuclear, Hezbollah re-arms. At the UN, meanwhile, urbane and well-dressed diplomats keep talking about process.

Venezuela on the Security Council? Hey, why not? It’s not as though other members such as Syria have exactly set the bar all that high.

I wonder whether, if the cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon actually comes into effect tomorrow, news outlets will bother sending more than a token representation over there to cover what’s really going on? The cynic in me doubts it very much.

D’oh! China has banished Homer Simpson, Pokemon and Mickey Mouse from prime time. Beginning Sept. 1, regulators have barred foreign cartoons from TV from 5 to 8 p.m. in an effort to protect China’s struggling animation studios, news reports said Sunday. The move allows the Monkey King and his Chinese pals to get the top TV viewing hours to themselves.

Foreign cartoons, especially from Japan, are hugely popular with China’s 250 million children and the country’s own animation studios have struggled to compete. Communist leaders are said to be frustrated that so many cartoons are foreign-made, especially after efforts to build up Chinese animation studios.

The most ironic part of this news story? That China, a Communist nation, is really doing nothing worse than what the CRTC does here in Canada. Ain’t it great living in such a free country?

Three Israeli backpackers were evicted from Fiji after a Muslim immigration officer ruled that they had humiliated Palestinians during their military service in the territories.

The three – Amit Ronen, Eldar Avracohen, and Nimrod Lahav – left Israel in February for a tour in Australia.

In July they decided to spend a week in Fiji. On July 13 they arrived at Fiji airport where a surprise awaited them.

“We gave our passports to the officer, and when she saw we are Israelis she asked for ID cards. We told her we don’t understand why we need ID cards and she responded shouting: ‘You know very well how to ask Palestinians for IDs and humiliate them for three years.”

That’s what Avracohen wrote in a complaint letter he sent to Israel’s Ambassador to Australia Nati Tamir.

The three were held at Fiji airport for six hours and officials rebuked their pleas to be allowed to make a phone call.

Armed policemen took them to a cell at the airport where they spent the night before being sent back to Australia.

Catch that? A night in jail with no phone call, for having done absolutely nothing besides present a passport that happened to be from Israel.

There are a zillion Israeli backpackers in Australia right now. I ran into them in just about every hostel, on every bus, and in every tourist site imaginable. A fair number probably travel to Fiji on a regular basis. Fiji’s economy is largely tourism-based, and they depend on this business. I hope this story reaches the backpacker community far and wide, and that travellers of all stripes band together to refuse to go to Fiji until a suitable apology is issued. (Judging by the antisemitism too prevailant in the backpacker community, though, I wouldn’t hold my breath).

On that note, time for bed.

The prison blog of a New Zealand political activist jailed for the rare crime of sedition has outraged opposition politicians but corrections officials say it’s within the law.

After being jailed this month, Timothy Selwyn begun publishing the internet diary via an outside supporter and his latest entry gives an account of a jail-yard assault by prisoners on a fellow inmate.

He has also criticised the judge who sentenced him.

Something tells me this will wear thin pretty quickly. After all, once the novelty wears off, who will want to read about the daily life of a guy who spends most of his time locked in a cell?

Probably the same people who watch Big Brother.

From the crumbling riverside capital Kinshasa through to the thick jungles of the Congo river basin and the mist-shrouded peaks of the east, Democratic Republic of Congo was holding its first democratic polls in more than 40 years.

Over 4 million people have been killed in the DRC in the last decade alone in the deadliest war since World War II, amidst chaos and horrors unimaginable to most of us. It’s the world’s most criminally underreported mess, and is symptomatic of the Western press’s tendency to “write off” some regions of the world while focusing excessively on others.

Nobody who has been paying even cursory attention to the DRC lately will be naive enough to think that today’s elections will magically solve everything and usher in stability, peace and prosperity. But it’s a first step.

North Korea will upgrade its arsenal “in every way by employing all possible means and methods” and will greet any aggressors with “all-out do-or-die resistance and unprecedented devastating strikes,” Kim Il Chol said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

The PDRDC isn’t even bothering to feed anyone stories about “power stations” anymore. Emboldened perhaps by the world’s staggering inability to do much of anything to stop his horrifying regime from going nuclear, Kim Jong-Il is taking this game of chicken to the next level.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Well, things are getting worse there, believe it or not:

Fighting between tribal militia groups in Darfur is on the rise, driven by the prevalence of weapons in the region, the senior United Nations envoy to Sudan warned today.

The situation in Darfur’s north and west, where clashes have become more violent recently because of the greater availability of weaponry, is particularly tense, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Jan Pronk told reporters during a press conference in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

He added that both fighting between the parties to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) and other groups, as well as fighting among rebel groups, has heavily affected the civilian population.

That’s UN-speak, so for the uninitiated, here’s a rough translation:

Peacekeeping efforts are woefully inadequate, and there’s still all-out chaos in Darfur. Militia groups and rebel gangs are bringing in weapons and using them to kill displaced people in camps where they’re supposed to be under UN protection. Millions of people who were forced from their homes and raped and tortured and starved and saw their family members killed sometimes right in front of their eyes are still facing the imminent threat of death even after years of “monitoring the situation”.

And the world watches Lebanon and wags its finger at Israel and does nothing to so much as lift a finger in Sudan. As usual.

Anyone who still believes that the United Nations has a role to play in protecting people or brokering crisis situations should just take a long hard look at Darfur.

Of course, that’s not really the case. We’re one world and the reverberations of today’s attacks will be felt everywhere. But the knee-jerk cynicism is there just the same, and it says otherwise.

Over 150 people are dead for no good reason today. Hopefully we won’t lose sight of that.

The most feared terrorist in Asia, Azahari bin Husin, the man responsible for the two Bali bombings and an attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta, has blown himself up after being cornered by police in East Java.

Meryl, I see your question and raise you this one: How is it that I only found out about it through reading your blog?

Reuters top stories? Nope. AP? Not a chance. CNN? Andrea friggin’ Yates is a lead story but no sign of the news about bin Husin.

I guess successes in the vastly unpopular War on Terror would be conterproductive. Failures sell many more papers, right? Especially when Bush can be blamed for them.

The United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday unanimously approved a proposal to set January 27 as the “International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.” The decision was made at the end of a special General Assembly session that began at UN headquarters in New York on Monday.

[ . . . ]

It also rejects any denial of the Holocaust, condemns discrimination and violence based on religion or ethnicity, and calls for the UN to establish an outreach program to encourage the public to engage in Holocaust remembrance activities.

The resolution, introduced Monday, was sponsored initially by Israel, the United States, Australia, Canada and Russia. Since the draft resolution was distributed for the first time in August, 91 UN member nations have added their names, including eight Muslim countries and several countries in Africa and South America.

Of course, we can’t expect an unconditional condemnation of atrocities against Jews from the United Nations:

Jordan’s UN Ambassador Prince Zeid al-Hussein called the Holocaust “a crime of the most colossal proportions” that was inflicted on European soil by Europeans against Europeans.

But he said it should not be used as a moral justification for the “continued domination of one people by another,” an obvious reference to Israel and the Palestinians.

That much is to be expected, but I find it amazing that so many Muslim countries actually passed the resolution in the first place.

So is this the UN’s “pound of flesh” that they can point to – an easy way to claim to be against antisemitism each time it condemns Israel for some pointless double-standard in the future? Or is the sentiment genuine?

Oh well… Whatever it is, it’s a step in the right direction.

Three powerful bombs tore through New Delhi markets packed with families and shoppers on Saturday ahead of the biggest Hindu and Muslim festivals of the year, killing more than 50 people and wounding scores.

Charred bodies, blood, glass and smoking debris littered the blast scenes as rescuers frantically pulled out the dead and wounded while thousands of shocked survivors milled around trying to find out what had happened to missing relatives.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the coordinated blasts, set off within minutes of each other, an act of terrorism. He said it was too early to speculate who was to blame.

I’m not sure what’s worse – the attacks themselves, or the likelihood that they’ll get quickly shrugged off as merely the latest in a long list of terrorist attacks. There’s very little that can shock the world anymore, sadly.

Argentine soccer hero Diego Maradona promised Cuban President Fidel Castro on Thursday he would be at the front of an anti-Bush march in Argentina next week.

[ . . . ]

“I think Bush is a murderer. … I’m going to head the march against him stepping foot on Argentine soil,” Maradona said, appearing on Cuban television with Castro.

“I promised the ‘Comandante’ that I would do it and I will,” the 44-year-old football legend said, referring to Castro.

“For me he is a god,” Maradona said of the 79-year-old left-wing Cuban leader, whom he considers a friend and a father figure who helped him kick drugs.

Oh, get a room, you two!

Somehow I think these guys would tend to disagree with Maradona’s assessment of the ‘Commandante’:

The 40-member National Chorus of Cuba, which specializes in patriotic songs about the glories of the Revolution, is touring Canada. Twenty members just defected en masse in Toronto.

But of course, what would they know? Unlike Maradona, they’re actually Cuban.

The United Nations said yesterday the earthquake in Pakistan was a worse disaster than last year’s tsunami, as its secretary general, Kofi Annan, warned of a second “massive wave of deaths” if international aid were not dramatically scaled up. “This is a huge, huge disaster … perhaps the biggest ever that we have seen. It is a race against time to save the lives of these people,” Mr Annan said in New York.

Unfortunately, due to donor fatigue from the Tsunami and from Hurricane Katrina, the dollars aren’t pouring in at the rate they’re needed.

It’s easy for us to be cynical. I’m the first to admit it. Because of my line of work, often my first reaction to an emergency isn’t “how awful” but “looks like we’re going into emergency mode at work and not sleeping for a week”. Not very compassionate, true, but part of the job.

Still, it’s hard for anyone to look at the numbers and not react. Last week, when we sent out the emergency mailings for our clients, we were using the number of 40,000 as the death toll. Today it’s up to 79,000. And it could still go higher. The numbers are absolutely staggering.

Please, if you have the means, make a donation to the aid effort. It doesn’t take much and it can really help.

Iraqis vote on their constitution tomorrow, as they struggle to implement democracy despite increasing attacks and sabotage.

And, with rookie Yann Danis in nets for the first time, the Habs shut out Carolina on Wednesday. Next, they’ll take on the Leafs at home… and I’ll be happily cheering them on from the reds!

Have a good weekend, everyone.

The blasts struck the seaside area of Jimbaran Bay and the bar and shopping hub of Kuta, 30 kilometers (19 miles) away at about 8 p.m. Saturday night (8 a.m. ET).

In addition to the 26 fatalities, hospital officials said 102 people were wounded. One of those who died was a 16-year-old Australian boy, officials said, while South Koreans, Americans, Japanese and Britons were among those wounded.

Though there have not been any claims of responsibility, it looks like this was just the latest work of suicide bombers from Jemaah Islamiyah, the Al Qua’eda-affiliated terrorist group in Indonesia.

Have we lost our capacity to be shocked at these occurrances? Three years ago, the world recoiled in horror when bombs in Bali killed 202 people, mostly Australian tourists. But since then, countless attacks have occurred: Kenya, Riyadh, Madrid, Istanbul, Taba, Moscow, London… where will the list end?

North Korea promised to give up its nuclear weapons program on Monday, defusing a high-stakes crisis, but skeptics said the deal hammered out in Beijing was long on words and short of action.

South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China — the other players in the six-party talks — in exchange expressed a willingness to provide oil, energy aid and security guarantees.

Washington and Tokyo agreed to normalize ties with the impoverished and diplomatically isolated North, which pledged to rejoin the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps probably sees this as a golden opportunity to milk the West for all they’re worth, while pretending to give up weapons it has no intention of parting with. Or – worse – continuing to develop such weapons and then selling them to terrorist groups all over the world.

It’s important to give diplomacy a chance here, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any alternative. So I’ll try to be cautiously optimistic for now… or at least fake it. But with an unstable dictator like Kim Jong-Il at the helm, though, who knows what North Korea will do next?

In this past month alone, a plane crash-landed in Toronto – an episode in which, miraculously nobody was hurt. But not everyone was so lucky. A terrible crash in Greece killed 121, and a devastating crash in Venezuela killed 160.

There were also smaller crashes, such as the plane that went down in Switzerland, killing 4, a crash in Acupulco, Mexico that killed two people, and a crash in Durban, South Africa that was survived by all six people aboard. And that’s not even all of them.

Then last week, a crash in Peru killed dozens of people.

Now there’s been another plane crash in Indonesia that has claimed 149 lives. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of terrorism.

And a plane crashed in the Congo, killing 7. It seems that the pilot tried to land in poor visibility and crashed into a tree.

I’m seriously starting to question the statistics that tell us that flying is so much safer than driving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not out to spread conspiracy theories or anything. By all accounts, these crashes happened due to bad weather or pilot error, and their timing is just a coincidence. But what on earth is going on here?

He has outlawed opera and ballet and railed against long hair and gold teeth, but now President Saparmurat Niyazov is determined to wipe out another perceived scourge: lip synching.

Niyazov has ordered a ban on lip synching performances across the tightly controlled Central Asian country, citing “a negative effect on the development of singing and musical art,” the president’s office said Tuesday.

Milli Vanilli will have to skip the Turkmenistan stop of their next tour, I suppose.

The former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, was accused on Monday of receiving nearly $150,000 in kickbacks, and another U.N. official was arrested on charges of pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from U.N. contractors.

How much lower can the U.N.’s credibility sink?

Brazil, Germany, Japan and India have introduced a resolution to add six permanent seats to the council, four for themselves and two for Africa, and four nonpermanent seats.

The U.N. is already incapable of getting anything done. The General Assembly is a joke and nobody takes its resolutions seriously. The Security Council still has a teensy little bit of clout… and expanding it would strip that completely away.

Here’s an alternate proposal for true U.N. reform: give the democracies 5 times the number of votes as the dictatorships. That would be a good start, anyway.

Sudan arrested the local head of an international aid agency on Monday over a report on hundreds of rapes in Darfur in the first such action against a top relief worker since a rebellion in the area began in 2003.

Paul Foreman, the country head of the Dutch branch of aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), told Reuters he had been arrested but was being freed on bail.

[ . . . ]

Farid said the arrest warrant had been issued after consultation with the governmental Humanitarian Aid Commission. Under Sudanese law, he said MSF should have consulted the Commission before publishing any reports.

In New York, Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, expressed concern about Foreman’s arrest and urged Sudanese authorities to drop the charges immediately.

“It is an incontestable fact that rape and sexual violence are rampant in the ongoing crisis in Darfur,” Egeland said in a statement. He said MSF Holland’s “work in treating victims of rape and sexual violence, and speaking out about the terrible crimes being committed has been exemplary.”

The tragedy of Sudan’s Darfur region is that the whole catastrophe was created by human beings while other human beings stood by and did nothing to stop it. The figures are staggering: more than 2 million driven from their homes, some death figures up in the neighbourhood of 400,000 including those directly murdered by the janjaweed and others dead from starvation or disease. The stories that survivors have told about mass rape are truly horrifying.

But the Sudanese government admits to nothing. Not to arming and funding the janjaweed militias. Not to being responsible for the genocide – and let’s call a spade a spade here – that continues to be carried out as the world fumbles and fumes and for the most part stands idly by. And certainly not to what everyone knows is fact.

Compared to the horror stories already widely circulated in the press, MSF’s report was nothing new. But now, the head of MSF has been charged with “spreading false information” simply for speaking the horrible truth. Sadly, I have a feeling that the world will ignore this injustice as well.

Debbye warns us that Carolyn Parrish may be staging a comeback, now that Paul Martin’s so desperate to inflate his ranks with just about anyone. Why can’t she just disappear?

Imshin and Lisa both share travel tales.

And over at Peaktalk, a strongly-worded post criticizing the Liberals of playing politics with human lives in Darfur. On principle I agree, though I have to sadly admit that there’s precious little that Canada could do even if we were honestly committed to trying.

Amnesty singles out the United States for shirking its responsibility to set a better global example for human rights protection.

“The U.S.A., as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide,” said Secretary General Irene Khan in the foreword to Amnesty’s annual report.

The report calls the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay — which holds some 540 prisoners from about 40 countries — “the gulag of our times.” Detainees were being held there, some for more than three years, without access to legal representation.

Pictures of abuse of Iraqi detainees at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison are also cited in the report. Amnesty says the photos were never adequately investigated.

“When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity,” said Khan.

The report talks about violations by the worst offenders, including North Korea, Zimbabwe and China. But these are mentioned in the same breath as free, democratic countries like the United States and Australia… and of course, Israel.

Amnesty claims that human rights should be universal, and the same standards ought to apply to everyone. Its mission states clearly that:

AI’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

Sure, equal and consistent standards, right? Except when they’re countries they dislike, such as the U.S. and Israel. Then, the standards are different.

Anyone who can call Guantanamo Bay the “gulag of our times” with a straight face, while essentially ignoring the true gulags of our times in places like North Korea, has squandered all credibility. Amnesty International lost theirs a long time ago.

Update: As if that wasn’t bad enough, Lynn has more on Amnesty’s seemingly incurable obsession with targeting Israel.

It looks like there might not be an election after all, as the Conservatives’ polling numbers slip and Harper looks increasingly like a vengeful opportunist each day. The Conservatives are going to have to come up with a better argument than “we’re not the Liberals” if they want a turn in power. In the meantime, Martin’s gamble seems to be paying off, and his shaky government might get its life support extended a little longer.

More idiocy on parade as the annual workers’ event of May Day results in “clashes with police”. That’s the media’s non-judgmental way of saying that a bunch of idiots smashed things and then reacted violently to police who tried to get them under control. Oh yeah, and they really really don’t like Jean Charest. Just in case we didn’t know that already.

North Korea’s getting bolder as the Dear Leader of Death Camps slowly realizes that the rest of the world can’t or won’t do anything to stop them. Canada won’t sign onto the US’s missile defense plan, but Japan certainly sees the value in it.

Violence is on the rise again in Egypt, as suicide attacks on tourists by Islamist terrorists sent a chill through the region. This pretty much rules out any hope that last month’s attacks at Taba were isolated incidents. One thing we can pretty much count on: if Egypt’s tourism industry suffers, they’ll find a way to blame Israel somehow.

And last but certainly not least, Passover is over and I’m back to eating real food again. It’s great to have a meal that doesn’t taste like cardboard!

This one?

U.S. President George W. Bush walks arm in arm with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at Bush's ranch in Texas. Source: Reuters.

Or this one?

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem on the first trip ever by a Kremlin leader to Israel. Source: AP.

Shall we put it to a vote?

The former KGB agent said the break-up of the USSR in 1991 had left tens of millions of Russians living in new states outside the Russian Federation.

Speaking the week after Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State, said he had accumulated too much personal power, the president insisted he remained committed to reform and a strong state.

However, if actions speak louder than words, then the warning bells ought to be going off all over the place. Much of what Putin has done during his reign – er – leadership has been designed to suppress any political opponents and set himself up to be the de facto perpetual leader of a Russia that’s looking more and more like the Soviet Union he so laments each day:

He also rounded on the recent “Orange” revolution in Ukraine and similar protests in Kyrgyzstan, both former Russian allies, warning that they would not be permitted in Russia.

“Any unlawful methods of struggle … for ethnic, religious and other interests contradict the principles of democracy,” he said. Mr Putin warned that such upheavals would not be tolerated in Moscow. “The state will react [to such attempts] with legal, but tough, means.”

Putin is gaining nerve every day. The Soviet Union may be gone, but it’s not forgotten.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday the United States and Britain bore part of the blame in the Iraq oil-for-food debacle by allowing unsupervised oil exports that Saddam Hussein exploited.

Annan, addressing a seminar on the United Nations and the media, said most of the money Saddam earned was by oil sold to Jordan and Turkey outside of the $67 billion U.N. program.

Only countries like the United States and Britain had interdiction forces that could have stopped it. But he said they “decided to close their eyes to Turkey and Jordan because they are allies.”

Annan may be corrupt and useless but he understands his political stage flawlessly. The same morally bankrupt people who refuse to condemn him for his role in the scandal will be only too happy to blame America, public enemy number one.

North Korea is to strengthen its “atomic potential” in response to Washington’s hostile policies, Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency quoted the president of its parliament as saying Thursday.

The article then continues to expand on the quotes from the Dear Leader of Death Camps for – count them – ten paragraphs, before bothering to mention that “Washington’s hostile policies” don’t really exist except in Kim Jong-Il’s mind:

On Feb. 10, North Korea said it possessed nuclear weapons and was dropping out of six-party talks aimed at ending its atomic ambitions. It blamed U.S. hostility for the decision to pull out.

About six weeks later, the North said it was forced to increase its nuclear arsenal because it saw the U.S. military as a serious threat.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said Washington has no plans to invade the North.

Frankly, I’ve given up expecting fair media coverage from Reuters.

Kim Tae Jin, a North Korean who was imprisoned by the government before defecting in 1997, told the commission that “there is absolutely no freedom in North Korea.”

“In a political prison camp in North Korea, one must forget that he or she is a human being,” said Kim, who spent five years in a camp and endured eight months of torture and interrogation.

“There were numerous people who spent 20 to 30 years in the prison camp simply because of some ludicrous crime their grandfather allegedly committed,” said Kim.

Mr Rammell said that the European Union will sponsor a resolution at the commission to condemn North Korea’s record of abuses, adding that he expects it to be passed by a large majority.

I’m absolutely shocked… not that North Korea’s human rights record is unimaginably bad, but that the UN Human Rights Commission would consider taking a 5-minute break from its full-time Israel-bashing activities to actually comment.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

That’s a real comfort to the nearly 200,000 dead and over 2 million homeless and starving people in Sudan, who were failed by the UN’s total and utter failure to prevent or even name genocide when they saw it. Again.

Security forces quickly blamed Abu Sayyaf, a small Muslim rebel group associated with al Qaeda, for the improvised bomb in General Santos and a grenade attack at a bus terminal in Davao that killed a young boy.

In Manila, six people were killed in an explosion on a bus at a commuter terminal near the crowded Glorietta mall, major hotels and the nation’s financial and diplomatic core.

“There’s a strong possibility the attacks could all be linked,” said Norberto Gonzales, the national security adviser.

“They have admitted two. We will know more later.”

Also, a car bomb in Lebanon killed at least 13 people, including former Lebanese Prime Minister (and presumptive target) Rafik al-Hariri:

A previously unknown Islamist group said in a videotape aired by Al Jazeera television that it carried out the attack because of Hariri’s support for the Saudi government. The claim could not be confirmed.

Hariri had remained politically influential since his resignation and recently joined opposition calls for Syrian troops to quit Lebanon in the run-up to a May general election.

Widespread speculation that the Syrians are involved cannot yet be confirmed, but I wouldn’t be too surprised. There’s a long tradition among terrorist governments to dissociate themselves with the bands of terrorists that they directly fund and control.

And I will never stop wondering why there aren’t massive international “end the occupation” rallies against Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.

“We … have manufactured nukes to cope with the Bush administration’s evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Sadly, the international media is playing right into the horrifying regime’s hands, painting this as more of a political issue for Bush than a legitimate threat to the security of the world:

The statement also poses a challenge to Bush, who has long backed a diplomatic solution to the crisis but now faces two nations he once named as part of an “axis of evil” being openly defiant about their nuclear programs — North Korea and Iran. He went to war with the third axis nation, Iraq.

While most people have known for years that North Korea was building up its nukes, this official announcement signals that the “Dear Leader” has been emboldened by the world’s refusal to do anything about Iran or really anything about much of anything lately. Even if North Korea has had the nukes for a while, the announcement is a signal that they might be willing to use them.

This is not good news, to put it mildly.

If we can go so far as to attribute logic to a madman, we might suggest that Kim Jong-Il knows full well that the United States is the only country who might even try to do something and that the rest of the world hates the U.S.’s guts. He’s probably banking on the fact that most people will assume that America is more dangerous than a regime that sends children to prison camps that have gas chambers reminiscent of Auschwitz, that starves its own population en masse, and that ranked dead last in the Index of Economic Freedom for the umpteenth year in a row.

But never mind all that, of course the world would be safer if we just got rid of Bush. Suuuuuuuure.

FreeNorthKorea.net has plenty of reading material about the kind of things that are going on in North Korea even as we speak. I challenge anyone to read it and not be legitimately terrified at the idea that this country could launch nuclear warheads.

This according to the United Nations, which displays its gutlessness even more glaringly as each day goes by. Cause calling the horrible situation in Darfur, Sudan by its rightful name would require the U.N. to actually do something, and they certainly want to avoid that:

A United Nations inquiry into the mass killing of black Sudanese in the country’s western Darfur region has refrained from calling the assassinations a “genocide” – an outcome Khartoum sought.

Instead, the UN investigators say the violence by Arab militia is evidence only of “genocidal intentions,” adding this constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The commission finds both the government and the Arab janjaweed militias “are responsible for … crimes against humanity,” including killing, rape and torture of black tribes in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

It said the attacks on villages aimed to “drive the victims from their homes,” but stops short of saying the government had a policy of genocide, saying rather that individuals had a “genocidal intent.”

[ . . . ]

Those designations fall short of the legally significant “genocide” label, which would have obliged the 15-member UN Security Council to take immediate measures under international law to stop the killing.

So what’s the U.N.’s brilliant solution to stop the violence which so far has killed more than 70,000 people?

The inquiry also says the council should use its power to have the UN’s war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court, prosecute people suspected in the killing.

That is likely to lead to a complicated three-way split among the Security Council’s five veto-bearing permanent members. While the United States, Britain and France support taking some sort of action, Washington opposes the ICC. Russia and China, meanwhile, have resisted taking any action. China has oil interests in Sudan, while Khartoum buys Russian arms.

This ought to destroy any delusions that anyone still had that the United Nations could protect the world. Lacking the will and the means to stop the genocide, the U.N. has taken the easy way out by refusing to call it a genocide. Like, if you don’t call it genocide, it never really happened. Or something.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Nobel Laureate author Elie Wiesel, a death camp survivor, both questioned whether the nations had the will to stop mass murder 60 years after the massacre in Europe.

“If the world had listened, we may have prevented Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia and naturally Rwanda,” Wiesel said.

A better question might be, when genocides are occurring, what will the U.N. do about it? So far, the answer seems to be not much

Being the U.N., of course, it was inevitable to hear things like this:

“What sense can we make of this important commemoration, when we allow through our inaction, year after year, one people to dominate another, to deny the latter many of its most basic rights, and so, with the passage of time, also degrade it as a people,” said Jordan’s U.N. ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the only Arab speaker.

There go those Jews-as-Nazis comparisons again. But hey, at least Jordan was represented. I suppose the other Arab countries would find it difficult to deny the Holocaust if they had attended.

But in case those reasons don’t seem quite cynical enough for you, if you’re American, Dubya has a selfish reason to give:

President Bush (news – web sites) said U.S. aid efforts following Asia’s killer tsunami would improve America’s image in the Muslim world.

[ . . . ]

“In … responding to the tsunami, many in the Muslim world have seen a great compassion in the American people,” Bush said in an interview with ABC News to be aired on Friday.

The president, initially criticized for a slow and limited U.S. response to the tsunami, said he was “very impressed … by how quickly we have responded” to deploy military equipment and personnel for the international relief effort.

“I’ve got to tell you, our military is making a significant difference,” he said.

Bush has been accused of many things, but genius has never been one of them. Nevertheless, you’d think at least someone on his senior staff might realize that it doesn’t look so good to use a natural disaster that has killed over a hundred and fifty thousand people as a PR opportunity.

Sheesh.

The gift, by Kroum and Eva Pindoff, who made their fortune by founding the record retailer Music World, is the largest-ever gift to the Canadian Red Cross during a disaster appeal, the organisation said.

The couple pledged 100,000 Canadian dollars (82,000 dollars US) for tsunami relief on Friday, but after reflecting on the disaster, decided to do much more.

“After seeing more stark images of this tremendous tragedy and misery, my wife and I were up most of the night, grief-stricken,” Kroum Pindoff said.

“We wanted to help alleviate the suffering, and decided we had to make a more substantial gift.”

That’s the kind of staggering generosity that somehow helps to restore a bit of faith in humanity.

Of course, people will start saying that they did it through the business for the tax deduction, or as a publicity stunt, or a number of cynical reasons that I’d probably usually be the first to list. But for the moment, I’m choosing to believe that they made the donation simply because they felt it was the right thing to do, and wanted to help. Sometimes it’s good to set cynicism aside for a moment and give people credit for their generosity.

I try not to let my professional life intrude on my blog too much, but I feel the need to make an exception, because this situation is exceptional in a lot of ways. For those of us who work in the nonprofit sector, it’s a bit like suddenly being placed under a microscope. Sure, our clients are raising money for worthy causes all the time… but suddenly, here’s one that’s important. It’s enough to turn any of us into a cynic – especially me, who was cynical to begin with.

But in a strange way, it has had the opposite effect on most of the people I work with. Everyone is working longer hours, making the extra effort, trying to do whatever we can to pitch in and help out. It’s one of those times when we’re reminded that the work we do isn’t just about production schedules and copy and artwork deadlines, but about real people and real emergencies. Yes, we’re aware of that every day, but sometimes we lose sight of the forest amidst the day-to-day stress of taking care of the trees.

For those of us who want to pitch in and contribute, the possibilities seem endless. The Globe and Mail’s listing contains 34 different charities that are collecting funds.

I ultimately decided to donate through Federation CJA, who is collecting donations locally to be distributed through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Yes, I know that at times like this it’s probably better to put politics aside. But unfortunately, that’s a bit of a pipe dream, and the initial rejection of Israeli aid by Sri Lanka, as well as the Arab world’s inevitable blaming of the Joooooos for the disaster itself only serves to remind us of the world’s pettiness. So I figure that when the dust settles and someone thinks to ask what North American Jews contributed, that my donation will be counted this way.

Yes, in a perfect world, everyone would rush to the aid of everyone else without regard for religion, race or politics. But we live in a very imperfect world. So maybe my solution to the problem of how to help is an imperfect one. But that’s something I can live with.

Not the greatest blogging start to 2005, I know. But hey, I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions to blog more often. (Actually, I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions at all, since I never actually keep them.)

But even though I’m on vacation – from work, from the blog, from reading the papers – I, like many other bloggers, felt it would be horribly remiss of me not to at least make mention of what is pretty much the only news story these days that matters.

First of all, to help: pretty much every relief organization in the book is accepting donations. Money is being collected in the biggest disaster relief effort in history – from individuals, from governments, from the whole world. And all this much-needed help is being accepted… with one notable exception. If you do want to help through Jewish channels, the JDC is taking donations. For Canadians, the CJC is collecting on their behalf.

At times like this, though, the thing I always think about is, well, how big a disaster does something have to be to encourage people to help? Until last week, money was pouring in to help the millions in desperate need in Sudan, as the “conflict” that the UN doesn’t have the guts to call genocide in the Darfur region rages on. But now, the story that food aid to the region is being suspended because it’s too dangerous for aid workers, well, that’s lost in the shuffle. After all, only 40,000 people have died in the Sudan crisis. That’s nowhere near the staggering 80,000 who have died so far in just a couple of days in Tsunami.

80,000. 40,000. Do these numbers even have meaning anymore? Where do we draw the line? Do we donate only when there are four zeros? Record-high generosity for the Tsunami relief funds is much needed and appreciated, but the cold reality is that disasters mean an influx of cash for some at the expense of others who aren’t grabbing as many headlines because their work doesn’t have as many zeros.

Of course, we can’t help everyone everywhere. We all do what we can in small ways. But sometimes I wonder how much of what we do is all about a numbers game.

Or else what, though? That’s the question nobody seems to be able to answer. Because military action is pretty much a non-option, and half the Security Council members won’t support sanctions, either.

Why does this seem suspiciously like an attempt by the USA to demonstrate the utter uselessness and powerlessness of the United Nations?

Canadians for Action in Darfur, a coalition of more than 40 community groups, is planning a rally Nov. 7 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Queens Park.

The coalition, co-chaired by Canadian Jewish Congress, Ontario region, and KAIROS, the justice wing of the Canadian Council of Churches, was formed to address the horrors being committed in the Darfur region of Sudan, said Simon Rosenblum, director of public policy and Israel affairs for CJC, and co-chair of the rally’s steering committee as a representative of CJC and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

[ . . . ]

Other community groups in the coalition include Ve’ahavta: the Canadian Jewish and Humanitarian Relief Committee; the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism; Oxfam Canada; Save the Children; and CASTS (Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan).

What’s going on in Darfur is yet more evidence of the UN’s inability to do anything about this crisis, which has been going on for months. I hope that Canada steps up to do more, at least on a political frame because it’s clear there’s very little we can do militarily.

Today, a group from North Korea made it to the Canadian embassy in Beijing:

Forty-four North Korean men, women and children scaled the walls of the Canadian embassy in Beijing in a likely bid for political asylum, an embassy spokesman said.

It was one of the largest groups ever to burst into a diplomatic compound in the Chinese capital in a desperate attempt to escape poverty and oppression in their Stalinist home country.

Officials are still sorting out exactly who is in that group. Until then, it is unclear what their fate will be, as China has not been sympathetic to refugees from the People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps:

China treats North Koreans as illegal immigrants and has an agreement with Pyongyang to deport those it catches. But it has allowed Koreans who succeed in getting into foreign missions to leave for South Korea via a third country.

Those returned can face harsh punishment by the Stalinist government.

If it is determined that these people are legitimate political asylum-seekers, one hopes that they will be granted asylum someplace safe… and allowed to speak whatever tales they may have to tell, to provide even a tiny insight into the vast darkness that is North Korea.

The predicted North Korean response is: “Oh yeah? And if we don’t agree, what are you gonna do about it?” The predicted U.N. response is, well, silence.

In the meantime, the U.N. couldn’t be seen slouching on its regularly scheduled programming, so it resumed calls for a “nuclear weapons-free zone” in the Middle East – a call clearly aimed at Israel:

Israel has always said that it does not oppose signing the NPT, though only after there is stable peace in the Middle East.

It is an annual ritual at the IAEA annual conference that Arab and Muslim states try to get a resolution on the table that calls on Israel to give up its alleged nuclear weapons arsenal.

The last time they succeeded in getting such a resolution adopted by the IAEA General Conference was in 1991. Since 1987, the IAEA conference and U.N. General Assembly have passed 13 such resolutions. Israel has ignored them all.

Israel, by any normal standards, cannot be considered a threat to world security, and its neither-confirm-nor-deny policy is a necessity in a world that won’t let it defend itself from destruction by any means. Of course, since when are U.N. standards normal standards?

No, U.N. standards are more like these:

“Israel’s unsafeguarded facilities is a real threat to international peace and security,” Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, told the conference.

Excuse me for laughing. Iran, which has openly threatened to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons, claims that Israel, who would never dream of using the nuclear weapons they allegedly posses, is the threat to world security? But Iran knows that the best way to divert attention from itself is to attack Israel, the eternal scapegoat.

Mah nishtana?

I have a feeling that most of the world expects and secretly hopes that Israel will deal with Iran’s nuclear program the same way it dealt with Iraq’s ambitions in 1981. Of course, everyone will condemn Israel for it and bluster and threaten. But none of them want to see a nuclear Iran either, and they know that Israel’s the only country that will actually do something about it.

Hypocrites.

“The Security Council has been bogged down in debating the issue,” said Martin, who pledged $20 million Cdn to assist the African Union in its drive to quell fighting between government-backed militias and rebel groups.

“While the international community struggles with definitions, the people of Darfur struggle with disaster. They are hungry, they are homeless, they are sick and many have been driven out of their own country. Tens of thousands have been murdered, raped and assaulted,” told the gathering.

“Our common humanity should be a powerful enough argument and that is precisely what is missing. Put simply, there is still no explicit provision in international law for intervention on humanitarian grounds.”

Martin also admitted that intervention in Sudan is too little, too late:

“We should have intervened last June when Canada called for it,” said Martin, who acknowledged progress had been made with a UN Security Council resolution last weekend that threatens sanctions if violence continues in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

“It’s been a long time in coming, far too long in coming,” he said.

We could argue that Canada’s aid is also too little, too late. But realistically, there’s very little our overextended military could do.

Martin has been relatively invisible on the international scene since taking office last December. This is his first effort to try to take a leadership role, in the spirit of Canada’s past reputation. And certainly, the crisis in Darfur needs more attention to be called to it – from a country other than the US, which has very little credibility right now thanks to the Iraq situation, the election, and general anti-Americanism.

Canada’s call to action is a step in the right direction, and I think Paul Martin deserves props for his speech today and his call to action. Unfortunately, the United Nations he is addressing is one that’s hell-bent on inaction.

Just another typical day.

Update: Both the US and South Korea are saying it’s unlikely to be nuclear. Which, of course, begs the question of what it was.

Update #2: North Korea says it was for a hydroelectric project. But this is North Korea we’re talking about, so the credibility of that statement is somewhat suspect. Just look at their statement:

Paek, who was providing the first North Korean word on the explosion, said it was part of a construction project to build a hydro-electric dam in the remote mountainous region of Ryanggang on the Chinese border.

The BBC said that when Paek was asked why North Korea had not explained earlier about the blasts he told Rammell Pyongyang had not done so because all foreign journalists were liars.

I suppose that’s a good reason… if you subscribe to the North Korean version of logic.

In the strongest U.S. statement to date on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today said for the first time that “genocide” has been committed there and that the government of Sudan and Arab militias “bear responsibility.”

[ . . . ]

Powell’s use of the word “genocide” for the first time in describing the situation in Sudan followed a strong debate within the government. On one side of the argument, some human rights officials contended that a declaration of genocide would be a powerful statement that would draw world attention to Darfur and promote efforts to halt mass killings there.

However, some in the U.S. government argued that the explicit use of the word might alienate the Sudanese government and limit U. S. ability to pressure its leaders to halt marauding Arab militias, which have killed, raped and tortured black African refugees in the region.

Right. The Sudanese government. The people who armed the Janjaweed in the first place. Let’s tiptoe around because we certainly wouldn’t want to piss them off.

U.S. Congress already declared the situation a genocide, but the White House has been reluctant to say so until now. However, that’s better than the United Nations and the European Union, both of which are running scared from the term, because it would imply that action would be required by the international community.

Tens of thousands of people keep dying in Sudan. And the world refuses to do anything about it. Now that the Bush administration has used the G-word, will it really change anything?

Imshin calls it every parent’s worst nightmare. She’s right, I suppose.

But it’s more than that. It’s every civilized society’s worst nightmare, because how can a country stand firm on policies of refusing to negotiate with terrorists, when the lives of innocent children hang in the balance? As Damian points out, Israel found that out the hard way in 1975.

Once upon a time, war had rules. People died, sure, but most of them were combatants. And children were always off-limits.

But that’s the thing about terrorism. It’s so scary because terrorists don’t play by the rules. And now, children have become targets… because terrorists don’t recognize any lines of human decency.

However this crisis ends will probably be a tragedy. But the greatest tragedy of all would be if terrorists learn that targeting children works. Then, no child can ever be safe.

Russian investigators were under pressure on Wednesday to establish quickly who was behind a suicide bomb attack on a busy Moscow street that killed 10 people and injured 51.

Russian officials have made no public accusations, but the attack by a female bomber bore some hallmarks of past actions by Chechen rebels seeking independence for their Caucasus mountain region. It came a week after 90 people were killed in two simultaneous air crashes officials blame on suicide bombers.

Still waiting for the media to grant Israel the same rights to defend itself against extremist Islamist terrorism as it grants Russia.

Now the real question is, faced with their version of 9/11, how will Russia react? If Putin’s record against Chechen rebels is any indication, he won’t let this slide. But I’m willing to bet he’ll continue to oppose the US at every turn in the United Nations.

Russian officials say they have not found any signs of terrorism in the near-simultaneous crashes of two passenger jets.

The planes crashed within minutes of each other Tuesday night after taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, killing all aboard.

No sign? Not exactly:

“Siberia Airlines does not exclude the possibility that the Tu-154 plane crash was caused by a terrorist attack,” the airline’s statement said.

“This is supported not only by the circumstances of the two air disasters taking place at the same time, but also by the telegram received by the Siberia Airlines Flight Control Center from the watch commander of the military sector of the main center of the Russian Unified System of Air Traffic Control just after the planes disappeared from radar screens.”

The telegram, the airline said, noted that the two airplanes “simultaneously disappeared in Moscow and Rostov zonal centers. A hijacking warning alarm went off on one of the planes. I request the airport personnel to be more vigilant during passenger screening and boarding the plane.”

If it was terrorism, so far there have been no claims of responsibility. Chechen rebels are one possibility; Al Qua’eda is of course another. Of course, it could have just been an accident… but the coincidence seems implausible:

Investigators said it was extremely unlikely for two planes to crash on the same day due to accidental causes.

But FSB officials conceded they had not found any concrete evidence that the crashes were due to terrorist acts. The wreckage at both crash sites appeared to rule out acts of sabotage, officials said.

In the meantime, Ha’aretz reports that two of the killed passangers were Israeli citizens living in Russia. That part is almost certainly just a coincidence. Though I wonder if we’ll hear any wacked-out conspiracy theories about “3,000 Israelis who didn’t get on the flight” in the coming days.

I also wonder, if this turns out to be terrorism, if Vladimir Putin will be called before committee hearings to try to determine why he didn’t act to prevent it.

Zimbabwe’s controversial President Robert Mugabe was voted the third-greatest African of all time, topped only by South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, in a survey for New African magazine announced.

Mugabe, widely criticized outside Zimbabwe for stifling dissent and crippling the economy of his once prosperous southern African nation, was an “interesting” choice because “a high-profile campaign in the media has painted him in bad light”, the New African wrote.

The London-based magazine said responses flooded in after the survey was launched last December to nominate the top 100 most influential Africans or people of African descent.

That’s almost as absurd, as, say, La Presse nominating Yasser Arafat as “Person of the Year”… oh wait, that really happened.

This survey result really calls into question what the readership of this magazine must have been thinking. Too much of Africa remains plunged into poverty, war and conflict, disease (the highest percentage of HIV and AIDS in the world), and tyranny. With much of the world almost ready to write off Africa as beyond being able to be saved, the continent is in desperate need of cultural role models. Mugabe, needless to say, is not exactly an inspired choice.

(By the way, none of this will stop African countries from continuing to attack Israel on a regular basis).

North Korea has described US President George W Bush as an “imbecile” and a “tyrant that puts Hitler in the shade”.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman was responding to comments President Bush made last week in which he described the North’s Kim Jong-il as a “tyrant”.

This pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? Kim Jong-Il, the “Dear Leader” of gas chambers and concentration camps, who has killed and tortured countless members of his population and prompted comparisons to Auschwitz and outrage by Yad Vashem. The “Dear Leader” of child prisoners and sex slaves. The “Dear Leader” who prefers to starve his entire population rather than accept outside aid. The “Dear Leader” of nuclear weapons factories who refuses to even talk about disarming.

But no. In this upside-down world, Bush is clearly the person who merits comparison to Hitler. The “Dear Leader” must be just misunderstood. Or something.

The United Nations says it is concerned by Sudan’s lack of progress in bringing security to Darfur, where more than a million people have fled their homes for fear of militia attack.

Sudan has less than two weeks to prove to the U.N. Security Council it has made progress towards disarming marauding Arab militias known as Janjaweed, or face possible sanctions.

Let’s review, shall we?

Was the U.N. “concerned” about the years of fighting? Was the U.N. “concerned” about the ethnic cleansing and genocide (a word that they still refuse to say) that has so far cost 40,000 people their lives and sent a million more fleeing for theirs? Where has the “concern” been all these months while the Sudanese government backed and armed the janjaweed, who have been brutally killing, raping, and torturing tens of thousands?

But hey, it’s happening in Africa and it’s so far away, so who really cares anyway right? And what do we know about Sudan, or about Chad, besides that there’s a lot of people there starving and dying? And besides, it wouldn’t be politically-correct to say that what’s actually happening is Muslims killing black Africans. Especially because there’s no way to blame George W. Bush, and there’s no way to blame Israel.

Go read this horror story. Now imagine a million or two more like it. Then try to tell me that we should be relying on the U.N. to ensure international security.

The U.N. fucked up royally in Darfur, just like they fucked up royally in Kosovo, in Rwanda, in the DRC… in virtually anywhere else there’s been a conflict. And, as usual, it is the innocent who pay the price.

An EU military-civilian team that visited the region last week reported Monday that atrocities were being committed on a large scale, but declined to classify them as genocide. Team leader Pieter Feith stressed, however, that his trip was only five days and was not an expert mission.

“It’s up to the United Nations … to make this decision,” an EU official said Tuesday on customary condition of anonymity. “The aim of his mission was not to see if this was genocide or not. The aim was to see how the EU could further support” resolving the crisis.

So what else would you call 30,000 dead people, all of one background, being systematically murdered by people from another?

Oh wait, in Europe I believe they call that “Monday”.

Simultaneous bomb attacks struck the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan as well as the state prosecutor’s office in the capital Tashkent Friday, killing at least two people and wounding five.

The action appeared clearly coordinated, days after the start of a trial in Tashkent of 15 suspected Islamist extremists on charges of trying to overthrow the ex-Soviet state in connection with attacks in March that killed nearly 50 people.

The three late afternoon blasts in Uzbekistan, a mainly Muslim country that backs Washington’s “war on terror” and hosts a U.S. airbase, appeared to have been triggered by suicide bombers, almost certainly on foot.

I’m willing to bet most Americans and Israelis didn’t even know they had embassies in Uzbekistan. Well, they know now. Two people were killed at the Israeli embassy; no injuries were incurred at the American one.

And of course, there are no eyebrows being raised anymore. It’s just assumed to be logical for terrorists to target Americans and Israelis: the coalition of the international bullseye.

Frustrated by a chronic funding gap for the U.N. relief effort in the Darfur region of Sudan, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will issue an urgent appeal Wednesday to wealthy European, Asian and Middle Eastern governments that he believes have been too stingy in addressing the humanitarian crisis, senior U.N. officials said Tuesday.

It only took 30 thousand deaths, 180 thousand refugees fleeing into Chad, over 1 million people displaced from their homes, and more than 2 million in desperate need of food and medical treatment before Annan intervened.

It makes me think – not for the first time – that Mark Steyn said it best: “The problem is, by the time you’ve gone through the UN, everyone’s dead.”

The politically-correct will continue to rant and rave about the only “legitimate” action being that taken through the United Nations. But I bet if the 30,000 people who have already been ethnically cleansed in Sudan while the world stood idly by got a vote, they would have a few choice words about waiting for the UN to take action.

South Korea will go ahead with its plan to send 3,000 troops to help rebuild Iraq despite a threat from Iraqi militants to behead a South Korean hostage, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

[ . . . ]

The group holding [33-year-old businessman Kim Sun-il] said South Korea had 24 hours from Sunday night to withdraw its decision or they would behead him, Arabic television station Al Jazeera reported.

“I am telling you that there will be no change to our government’s basic spirit and position — our plan to send troops to Iraq is for the support and reconstruction of Iraq,” Choi said.

[ . . . ]

“If we accept the terrorists’ demand this time, the terrorists will continue threatening the world,” he said.

South Korea knows a thing or two about tyrannies. Their next-door neighbour has taught them well. Still, who woulda thought that the country that has shown so little spine lately in dealing with their Northern counterparts would stand so firm on their Iraq commitment?

Sichan Siv, the U.S. delegate to the council, accused Sudan of having no right to sit on the rights commission because of ethnic cleansing in Darfur where government troops are accused of backing Arab militia which pillage black Africa villages, raping and killing. The Khartoum government denies it is involved in ethnic cleansing.

This isn’t too surprising. The U.N. is a master of hypocrisy. After all, when Libya can chair the Human Rights commission, then it isn’t too much of a leap to see how we end up with a commission whose primary purpose seems to be condemning Israel while whitewashing all the human rights abuses taking place around the world by its own members.

But it does strike me as ironic that, while the UNCHR re-elects Sudan, another UN body, the UNHCR (not to be confused) is frantically trying to help over a hundred thousand Sudanese refugees who’ve fled into Chad because of the ethnic cleansing that Sudan denies is taking place. And UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that large-scale ethnic cleansing could take place without quick intervention.

So, to the United Nations, I have to ask: which is it? Is Sudan worthy being part of a human rights watchdog, or are they the guys the watchdogs ought to be watching? The UN’s schizophrenic behaviour shouldn’t surprise me anymore. It really shouldn’t.

The European Union (EU), backed by countries including the United States, expressed concern on Thursday at reports of grave and systematic abuses in North Korea, including “infanticide in prison and labor camps.”

The EU, in a resolution presented to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on behalf of 37 countries, also called for appointing a special U.N. investigator for the first time to go to the reclusive, Stalinist country.

I’m wondering if they actually expect the UN to get off their asses and do something?

April 7 will now be set aside in Canada to remember the victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the office of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin announced.

“April 7 marks one of the most profoundly tragic days of our time,” the statement from Martin’s office read.

It was on this day in 1994 “that the horrors of genocide were unleashed in Rwanda. Approximately 800,000 people were slaughtered over the ensuing three months,” the statement said.

“The Government of Canada has accordingly declared April 7 as a Day of Remembrance for the victims of the 1994 Rwanda genocide.”

It would take me days to write about how woefully inadequate this token gesture seems.

“We didn’t know” was the excuse of most of the Western world and international community, who looked on silently while over 800,000 people – mostly Tutsis – were murdered.

Last week, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan apologized for what he called “sins of omission” in allowing the genocide to happen:

“The international community is guilty of sins of omission,” Annan told the crowd gathered in New York for the summit.

The head of the UN peacekeeping agency at the time, Annan said he thought he did what he could.

“I believed at the time that I was doing my best. But I realized after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support,” he said in his opening speech.

To Annan, I have to say, far too little, and far too late. Canadian Romeo Dallaire, who had a front-row seat for the horrors, blamed the world’s leaders for failing to respond to his cries for action:

The UN force had a limited mandate and an insufficient number of troops and weapons, and that appeals for reinforcements were rejected, Dallaire told the court.

He specifically mentioned France, the United States and Belgium, the former colonial ruler which had the largest number of UN troops in Rwanda, as being “unco-operative.”

“… I did not get intelligence information from them,” he said.

Belgium ordered the withdrawal of its peacekeepers, the backbone of the operation, shortly after Rwandan troops killed 10 of their soldiers.

At least Dallaire went to Rwanda to face down his demons, and commemorate the date. Which is more than can be said for any of the leaders he blamed.

Rwanda is a testament to the complete and utter failure of the United Nations. Period. It’s been ten years now, and people are finally starting to wake up the fact that this international body is completely toothless, and will refuse to take action until it’s ridiculously, tragically far too late.

So we pause for a moment and remember.

But it’s not enough. Instead of a moment of silence for Rwanda, how about a moment of action – for North Korea… for Sudan… for Congo… for people anywhere their lives and freedoms are jeopardized. Because it’s one thing to regret inaction after the fact. Hindsight is 20/20. It’s another thing altogether to witness atrocities being committed right now, even as we speak, and fail to think about how people will think of our failure to act in 10 years from now.

That’s the true lesson of Rwanda. If we say “Never Again”, we ought to mean it.

North Korea built [a gulag system] on the Chinese model and added a new depravity — child political prisoners. Neither the Soviets nor the Chinese sent children to the concentration camps but the Dear Leader sends the entire family. One of the best accounts of the North Korean gulag is written by someone who was sent to the camps at the age of nine, because his grandfather had offended the system. His sister was only seven; she was also sent to prison. In North Korea, the children of political prisoners are called “seedlings.” Official propaganda proscribes the proper treatment of these children, “desiccate the seedlings of counterrevolution, pull them out by their roots, and exterminate every last one of them.”

The camps are designed to exploit the prisoners’ labor until they die. Prisoners are given difficult and dangerous labor such as mining under unsafe conditions. Children are assigned heavy work as well, such as logging. Even before the famine of the mid-1990s, prisoners, including children, were on rations that would not sustain life in the long run, much less allow for any sort of normal growth. Since the political prisoners are never released, there is no danger of them divulging military secrets; they are assigned to work on missiles and other special weapons. One camp, Camp #14, is notorious for its use of prisoners “as guinea pigs for developing chemical warfare technology,” according to information obtained by the Seoul Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights.

This stuff makes my stomach turn. And there’s more:

It’s bad luck to be an even moderately attractive young woman in the camps. High Communist Party officials troll the camps looking for victims to be used as sex slaves. If the women become pregnant, they are forced to have an abortion without anesthesia. When their usefulness is over, the women are murdered. Their deaths are covered up as “shot while trying to escape.” In much the same way, the Nazi “Death Doctor,” Josef Mengele, used to comb the arriving trains for an attractive evening companion, only to have her shot the next day.

No, this isn’t Germany 60 years ago. It’s happening in North Korea right now. And the world is content to do nothing about it, because North Korea is communist and communism is the solution to the evil capitalism of America and the Zionist Cabal and the evil Joooos that everyone’s so much more concerned about condemning. And besides, Kim Jong-Il has nuclear weapons probably and he’s crazy and he might use them so what can anyone do anyway? And it’s so far away so it’s easy to close our eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist, right? Especially cause nobody ever escapes from Camp #14 so there are no eyewitnesses to write books or go on speaking tours to raise awareness.

Sickening and disgusting, all of it.

Debbie was taken to one of the so-called training camps for President Robert Mugabe’s Green Bombers youth brigades. That night the camp boys came into her dormitory. They locked the doors, then took it in turns to rape her. “The boys… told me: ‘If you cry, if you make a noise, we’ll beat you.’ ” The ordeal didn’t end there. Debbie said she was raped again – and again, every night for the next six months. She shared her blanket with an 11-year-old girl called Sitembile. The little girl would scream night after night as she too was raped.

The morning after being gang-raped for the first time, Debbie asked the camp commander for medical help. He told her not to complain and sent her on a 20km run. Like many of the other youths in the camp, she was often deprived of food for days at a time, and frequently beaten.

One day Debbie was caught trying to escape, and was sadistically punished. She was buried up to her neck in the ground. When she was dug out hours later she was made to roll in raw sewage. “The water, it was dirty,” she said. “My head was rolling inside.” The commanders then forced Debbie to eat her meal with the other inmates without being allowed to wash. “The commanders, they laughed,” she said.

Debbie, now 22, is understandably a deeply traumatised young woman. She fled to South Africa after speaking publicly about her experience in Zimbabwe. As a consequence, she now lives isolated and in hiding, in fear of Mugabe’s secret police. At least two Zimbabweans have been tortured, one to death, for telling the truth about the camps.

But Mugabe is Zimbabwe’s “democratically-elected” leader, right?

Ousted Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed from exile in Africa Monday for peaceful resistance to what he called the “occupation” of Haiti and repeated a claim he was kidnapped by U.S. forces.

Not that I’m supporting the rebels, mind you. Haiti’s a mess. But Aristide wasn’t much more of a “legitimate” leader than the rebels who outsted him, and his willingness to immediately tap into world hatred of Americans to get sympathy of the despots isn’t scoring him any brownie points in my book.

“Stabilization force”. Hmmmm. So what does that amount to now, two guys to hold the net steady while the third shoots the puck?

Ending months of uncertainty, the office of Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan stayed Mr. Ri’s removal order yesterday and ruled he is not a war criminal — contrary to the findings of the Immigration and Refugee Board, which rejected his asylum bid last September.

The ministry ruled that the risk Mr. Ri would be tortured or killed if deported outweighed any danger he may pose to Canada.

This reprive was widely expected… but it raises more questions than it answers. Again, I sense the public hasn’t been getting the whole story.

Once again, I’ll state that without knowing all the facts of the case, it’s hard to judge. There have been numerous cases of people claiming refugee status who were clearly abusing the system.

But even Immigration Canada doesn’t seem to think that Ri is guilty of any crimes against humanity:

Robert Genier, a senior analyst with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, endorsed a much-criticized decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board. That ruling found Mr. Ri guilty of war crimes merely for being a trade official in North Korea’s secretive, repressive regime. No allegations of specific crimes against humanity have been made against him, and Canada’s War Crimes Unit found no evidence of wrongdoing.

[ . . . ]

“I am satisfied [Mr. Ri] would be at risk of cruel and unusual punishment if he were to return to North Korea,” ruled C. Lemonde, a pre-removal risk assessment officer with the Canadian Border Services Agency.

However, Mr. Genier, a more senior immigration official in Ottawa, reviewed the findings and concluded last week that Mr. Ri was not entitled to Canada’s protection “because of the nature and severity of the acts committed” by him.

Something doesn’t jibe here. There’s a contradiction. Either he’s a war criminal or he’s not… but IRB seems to want it both ways.

The deportation order can still be stayed on humanitarian grounds:

A source in the Immigration Department indicated that Mr. Ri would likely get a favourable ruling and be permitted to stay.

Still, critics suggest the fact that he was twice labelled a war criminal shows the refugee-determination system is flawed. There has never been any specific evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Ri. But IRB member Bonnie Milliner found him complicit in crimes against humanity because he willingly joined the government and did not leave at the first available opportunity.

It’s not as though you can just hop on the first flight out, so that criteria seems harsh in light of the facts. But as they say, something smells fishy here. I suspect we’re not getting the whole story, and I wonder what’s not being said.

Putin condemned the blast, calling it terrorism.

“Only with the united efforts of the world community can we deal with this plague of this 21st century,” Putin said, according to Interfax.

The president said he would not exclude the possibility that terrorists were trying to pressure the Russian leadership ahead of March elections, and restated his position that the government would never negotiate with terrorists, Interfax reported.

In Grozny, Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov denied that Chechen rebels were behind the blast.

What Putin doesn’t mention is that the “plague of the 21st century” was the “plague of the 20th century” in Israel. People didn’t combat suicide bombings in Israel because they figured that the terrorism was “Israel’s problem”. Now the tactic has spread – Riyadh, Baghdad, Moscow – and containment is tougher because the terrorists know that their weapon of choice is effective.

My condolences to the victims of today’s cowardly attack and their families.