Vogue felches another dictator

The world of fashion presents itself as being about aesthetics.

This week Vogue magazine has shown itself to be so skindeep as to be sickening.

You see it has undertaken a sycophantic paean to Asma al-Assad, wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Assad is President because his father was.  He inherited it from his delightful father Hafez al-Assad.  Hafez al-Assad established a police state under rule of the Ba'ath Party combining Soviet style socialism with the brutality of an ethnic minority (he was Alawite) seeking to dominate a majority that might otherwise be less enthused about his rule.

The Syrian police state detains without trial and executes political opponents.  There is no independent media or political dissent permitted in Syria.   One of its techniques of extracting information from dissidents is the "Syrian chair" which carefully bends ones back backwards until vertebrae break one at a time.

Vogue didn't mention that though.

Neither did Vogue mention the at least 17,000 people massacred at Hama in 1982, as Assad senior sought to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood, but essentially shelled and bombed the city for days on end to clear the population.   

However it did mention how Bashar Assad won the 2000 election with 97% of the vote - no questioning of that at all.   Not a mention of how free and fair Syrian elections are not.

Yet the article is mostly about his wife.  A London born Syrian girl, daughter of a cardiologist who was working with JP Morgan when she started "dating a family friend" who was Bashar.  As if that was just like anyone dating the son of a dictator.  What a world!

The rest of it is gushing sycophancy.  All the good work she does, how "normal" their life really is, and how she is part of the effort to modernise Syria and build a civil society in a Middle East full of Islamists.

Yes.  

No difficult questions asked about torture, extrajudicial executions and political prisoners.  Nothing about the suppression of speech and political discourse.  Nothing about alliances with Iran, nothing about invading Lebanon.  Nothing about overthrowing its elected government.  Nothing about chemical and biological weapons. 

Foreign Policy says:

It's hard to imagine that a Vogue editor woke up this morning and decided it wouldn't be hugely embarrassing to publish a puff piece today, at the moment of the greatest upheaval in the Middle East in two generations, about Syria's ruling family. But that appears to be exactly what happened. 

The article does not once mention the protests currently under way in the Middle East, including scattered evidence of demonstrations in Syria. Instead, the article focuses on Syrian first lady Asma Assad -- the "freshest and most magnetic of first ladies," endowed with "[d]ark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace." At a time when other Middle Eastern first ladies, notably Tunisia's Leila Trabelsi, have been the target of protesters' wrath, this may not be the wisest moment for Asma to flaunt her glamour.

Vogue.  Not just vapid and intellectual fodder with those with the depth of a teenage groupie, but instrumental in providing succour and good publicity to dictatorship.   Then again, Naomi Campbell's brainlessness in her dealings with dictator Charles Taylor was simply more evidence of an industry built on making money from being clueless.

Daily Telegraph's offence to New Zealand

I'm livid, beyond livid.

The Daily Telegraph being one of the serious UK newspapers, and one of the only two remaining true broadsheet format newspapers (the FT being the other) is one of the great newspapers of the world.  Yes, it tends to side with the Conservative Party,  but this political slant is well known and understood.  In the UK you know the politics of your papers, but they write for a broader church than that.  The Daily Telegraph exposed the ridiculous expenses claims of MPs from all parties before the last election, and did not hesitate to expose Conservative MPs as well.

One of its writers is Geoffrey Lean.  He is considered an "environmental correspondent" having previously been environmental editor for the more left leaning  Independent.  His Telegraph blog is here, but his insult is not located here.

It is this headline:

"New Zealand earthquake : the vengeance of Mother Nature".

Yes, the implication being that some anthropomorphised entity has inflicted vengeance on New Zealand.  For what? Why?

He goes on:

"as the people of Australia and New Zealand have been the latest to find out, she also has a nasty and highly destructive temper."

The female is "mother nature", so again he implies this is a cognitive being who is angry.  I am sure he doesn't really believe this but he goes on...

"And she's getting more irritable as the years go by. The devastating earthquake in Christchurch, and Queensland's cyclone and floods, which have so tumultuously ushered in 2011, follow the second worst year for disasters on record."

The end is nigh.  So what?  What have people done to reap this?

"Munich Re says that 90 per cent of last year's disasters were due to the weather, providing "further indications of advancing climate change". Sceptics disagree, and certainly no particular disaster can be attributed to global warming. But the increase is what most scientists have long predicted would happen as the world warms up."

So a reinsurance firm is making a link, but he naturally say no disaster can be attributed to global warming, but the increase is what would happen as the world warms up.

Sound like he is blaming the earthquake on global warming.  He goes on talking about droughts, floods, storms and hurricanes and then says:

"And, of course, earthquakes, like the disaster that has hit Christchurch, have nothing to do with it."

Whew, thank goodness for that, except hold on. What the hell is that headline about?  Why write about it now?  Why the fuck say "New Zealand earthquake: The Vengeance of Mother Nature" unless you are making some link?

"But whatever the cause of the increase in disasters, humanity has made their impact far worse."

He then says buildings make things worse, which of course implies we should live in caves or tents, a rather inane comment really.

He backs out of linking the earthquake to anything:

"Christchurch aside, maybe Mother Nature sometimes has reason to be annoyed."

Who?  Aren't you the annoyed one?

Not as annoyed as me.  You see he didn't mean anything, but he did try to get attention because of the earthquake.  He had a headline that is vile, as if Christchurch was the result of nature's "anger" at humanity, he did it while corpses are still being pulled out of the rubble.  Even ignoring his hatred of humanity in treating nature as if it is a living being that emotes, it was in appalling bad taste.

Even worse bad taste was that this article was one of the "Editor's choice" on the website.

For shame Daily Telegraph.  For shame!

Hitchens damns Obama's impotence

Writing in Slate, Christopher Hitchens shares my disappointment at Obama's complete failure to show any kind of leadership on Libya.

He writes:

it became the turn of Muammar Qaddafi—an all-round stinking nuisance and moreover a long-term enemy—and the dithering began all over again. Until Wednesday Feb. 23, when the president made a few anodyne remarks that condemned "violence" in general but failed to cite Qaddafi in particular—every important statesman and stateswoman in the world had been heard from, with the exception of Obama. And his silence was hardly worth breaking.

Meanwhile as I have already said, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have placed themselves with Gaddafi.  China and Russia's authoritarian leaders have naturally sat on the fence, hoping their own people don't get any bright ideas or that anyone looks in their own blood splattered back yards.  Obama acts similarly.

It is an outrageous withdrawal from world affairs, one that would put no pressure at all on Russia or China to relent on a resolution at the UN Security Council.  Yes, in Egypt it was difficult for the US to be at the forefront in a revolution that deposed an erstwhile ally, when it both feared the instability but welcomed the call for freedom and democracy. Yet, with Libya it should have been different.

Hitchens continues pointing out the bravery of those without the world's most potent military on their side.

By the time of Obama's empty speech, even the notoriously lenient Arab League had suspended Libya's participation, and several of Qaddafi's senior diplomatic envoys had bravely defected. One of them, based in New York, had warned of the use of warplanes against civilians and called for a "no-fly zone." Others have pointed out the planes that are bringing fresh mercenaries to Qaddafi's side. In the Mediterranean, the United States maintains its Sixth Fleet, which could ground Qaddafi's air force without breaking a sweat. But wait! We have not yet heard from the Swiss admiralty, without whose input it would surely be imprudent to proceed.


Quite, it is so feeble as to be embarrassing.  Americans should be embarrassed and mortified at how far their country has fallen in international affairs.   It could take relatively painless steps and gain enormous goodwill and support in the region, and do more to generate friendship and pro-Western feeling than anything else could.   Though this is the same President cutting broadcasts by the Voice of America to China.

It is rather straightforward Mr President:

- Libya has long had a history of being an arch-enemy of the US and your allies;
- Gaddafi's history has been one of unashamedly shedding blood of innocents and supporting those who do so;
- The USA is, despite your inept efforts, still by far the world's largest economy and military superpower.

I even think Hillary Clinton would do more.

Dubya certainly would have.

Chavez and Castro side with Gaddafi

Pinup boy of so many in the left, from Ken Livingstone to Matt McCarten, Hugo Chavez, is siding with Gaddafi as is Fidel Castro (Spanish reports).

Who is surprised?

The international left has long been sympathetic to this thug, a thug who has chemical and biological weapons, admits it, who has engaged in terrorism against civilians whether by plane or by nightclub.  

They are all murdering thugs, all of whom happily use force against those who they disagree with, all part of the transnational community of tyrants.  The only difference with Chavez is that he is an elected one who has not been completely unhindered in his pursuit of power.

At what point will the lowlives in the West who have lauded the likes of Chavez and Castro admit they got it wrong?  That they, like the legions of useful idiots who denied the mass slaughter under Mao, who denied the mass slaughter under Stalin, some who even denied the Khmer Rouge's genocidal scale rivers of blood, who constantly apologised for regimes that are as bloodthirsty as the anti-Marxist military dictatorships and thugs who they targeted.

Those of us who actually do believe in individual freedom have been consistent, called a spade a spade.  Called Castro, Chavez, Pinochet, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, Suharto, Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad, Bokassa, Mobutu, the lot, all dictators.  All vile, all despicable, all inexcusable.  Some are worse than others, but none deserve to be celebrated or supported.

So what's wrong with some people?

Half mast in London

New Zealand High Commission, Haymarket, London

It's all terribly sad, and the TV news has stories from Christchurch every bulletin.

However, some may find some humour that just two blocks up from the High Commission was the loss of much beer...

It's a hill, and it's a sloping ramp, but some learn from doing