From Cork to Toronto

Raleb Majadele has been nominated to the Cabinet as Minister of Science and Technology by the leader of the Labour party Amir Peretz . Labour is in coalition with Kadima whose leader Ehud Olmert serves as Prime Minister. This follows the appointment of a Druze (though without portfolio) in 2001. Despite the opposition from hardliners I hope this appointment sticks and is a tangible step towards better co-existence with Arab Israeli citizens - certainly better willingness for co-existence than Binjamin Netanyahu displayed recently .

All of those who think the process by which Saddam Hussein met his end shows Iraq's maturity as a developing democracy should really watch the video available on the internet, complete with the taunting by the al-Sadr militiamen, not Iraqi government forces, dragging Saddam to his death. I don't know if it showed the actual hanging as I found it revolting and turned it off. Shouldn't be surprised - it's cleaner than how the West's friends in Saudi Arabia do it, after all.

Seen at Dunner's blog . Not content with self-portrayal as barbarians on camera at Abu Ghraib , these soldiers have added video, making Iraqi kids run in an attempt to get a proffered water bottle. One poor kid ran for ages and then when the idiot grunt tossed the bottle some kids standing nearby got it anyway. Let freedom ring, huh?

The San Francisco Chronicle reports : Israeli intelligence officials have complained to Britain and the United States that sensitive night-vision equipment recovered from Hezbollah fighters during the war in Lebanon had been exported by Britain to Iran. [snip] one of the pieces of equipment is a Thermo-vision 1000 LR tactical night-vision system, serial No. 155010, part No. 193960, manufactured by Agema, a high-tech equipment company with branches in Bedfordshire, England, and San Diego. [snip] The equipment, which needed special export-license approval from the British government, was passed to the Iranians through a program run and administered by the U.N. Drug Control Program. The equipment uses infrared imaging to provide nighttime surveillance that allows the user to detect people and vehicles moving in the dark at a range of several miles. The report quotes an anonymous British Foreign Office official: "We've been encouraging the Iranians as part of their anti-narcotics ...

When you have bloggers such as Far and Wide's Steve V and Sicilian Notes' Richard Waghorne , the former a raging critic of Israeli operations in Lebanon and the latter a largely uncritical supporter, agreeing on something you can't help feeling like the unlikely has happened - France is doing something right. They have both criticised France's reluctance to increase UNIFIL troop numbers beyond a fairly token 400, up from their current commitment of 200. France's reluctance is mirrored by the Germans who have offered naval anti-smuggling patrols and perhaps border security, the UK and Denmark who have also offered ships, the Italians who are ready to send 3,000 but not yet and the Irish who have earmarked 200 (which would bring them up to the legal maximum of about 850 overseas at any time due to the Liberia mission) but who are also holding back . The reason is that which I posted on some days ago (albeit having taken a second swing at it) - Resolution 1701 does...

Security Council Resolution 1701 section 12: Acting in support of a request from the government of Lebanon to deploy an international force to assist it to exercise its authority throughout the territory, authorizes Unifil to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilised for hostile activities of any kind, to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council , and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers, and, without prejudice to the responsibility of the government of Lebanon, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence; What a pity it has taken several invasions of Lebanon to get these words which most people probably thought a UN force would have had befor...

Maria Minna's sense of national interest in her reaction to Wajid Khan's appointment as Harper's special adviser mirrors Benjamin Disraeli's nineteenth century thinking. I must say I hadn't considered myself lucky to live west of Coxwell Avenue (and thus Jack Layton's constituent rather than Minna's) for quite a while but today I do. Hedy Fry makes it clear that she is all for the same kind of ideological uniformity the Tories are regularly accused of. Jim Karaygiannis' attack is probably not entirely unrelated to the fact that Khan recently replaced him as leadership campaign chair of Joe "Youth for" Volpe. It's a bit startling (but as an immigrant also encouraging) to watch the rapid rise of the former head honcho at Dufferin Mazda and the object of many FAN590 morning show comedy sketches. He had already been in the news for confronting Qayyum Abdul Jamal , one of the 17 arrested on terrorism charges, at a Muslim centre in his ri...

Jean Charest visited France today and received an offer of assistance in the evacuation of Lebanese-Canadians from President Chirac. Since Stephen Harper's last stop before Larnaca was Paris, how did this offer not take place then? While the offer is of course most welcome, how can this be diplomatically proper on the part of the French? The BQ must be doing handstands. Meanwhile Dalton McGuinty was talking equalisation with Pat Binns. I wonder was it Ontario equalisation money that funded the new Quebec office in Munich ...

A question posed by Martin Sheen in his TV role as the President of the United States . Israel answered that question, correctly long ago - there is no virtue in meeting an attack on your territory with anything other than overwhelming, punitive force sufficent to dissuade future attacks. While I would oppose many Israeli security policies, in which Islamic state would you have seen the courts override the executive on humanitarian grounds, such as with their decision on the Concrete Curtain? The pullout from Gaza was widely predicted never to happen because Israel wouldn't stand up to its extremists - yet the landgrab settlements there have been removed. The proportional response from Hamas was to kidnap soldiers from the Israeli side of the fence. The proportional response from Hezbollah was to continue firing missiles into northern Israel - the fact that their missiles can reach Israeli soil at all being because (a) Israel complied with the negotiated settlement and pulled o...

Can't help but feel the best reaction the "international community" (there's a joke) could have to the recent Palestinian election is to ignore the fact of who was elected and pretend it's really still Fatah in power, sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting LALALALALA if someone says the H-word . If the Shinners are any guide, the best way of neutering them is to turn them into, essentially, class traitors by drowning them in money, ministries and motorcades. There will always the residual "Ruairi Bin Bradaigh" types left screaming for martyrdom but the "Peace Process" moved faster in NI when the ban on having Grizzly Adams on the telly was lifted and even faster once they got into Stormont.