BHS

I wish I'd gotten into this thread earlier. My apologies for jumping in. I was a self-described socialist in my teens and early twenties. I protested in Toronto against George Sr.'s Iraq War Oil Imperialism. It was around that time that I started questioning my political and philosophical positions. I realized that I didn't care for the protest crowd, which seemed to consist largely of people who wanted to twist the purity of my intent ("NO WAR FOR OIL!!!") into any number of other unrelated causes. I'm sure that people currently involved in protests are familiar with my dilemma. I wasn't for International Socialism or Lesbian Feminism or any of the other causes that tended to supercede what I felt was really the issue at hand. You know, the nominal issue for the prostest. Plus, the Trotsky guys all have a lazy eye that's kind of creepy - am I wrong? I also noticed that my older college friends, guys I respected who'd been in the "real" world for a while and come back to school, were all self-described conservatives. I argued with them, and they laughed at me, because I honestly hadn't given much thought to what I'd committed myself to, beyond basic superficial assumptions. Let me point out here, that I respect the Left, even though I tend to make light of them and even slander them from time to time, as whimsy suits me. A bird can't fly on one wing, and democracy wouldn't be democratic for very long if the Left were permanently shut out of politics. I still learn a lot from my friends who maintain a socialist bent. I hope there's a similar sense of interdependence among those who may disagree with me. Anyway, at this point in my life I'm a thirty-something neo-classicalist liberal, of the Jacksonian mindset. Read pretty much anything by Mark Steyn or Steven Den Best or Bill Whittle to see where I'm at.

Spoiler alert!!! Though everyone is familiar with the events depicted, I've included details about how the director and producers chose to recreate them that may not be appreciated by people who wish to be "surprised" by small technical details. My wife and I saw the matinee on Saturday. Not many people in the theatre, but there never is for a matinee in the area where we live, so it's hard to say how successful the movie will be from first hand experience. I would guess that it'll hit the earnings list around 5 out of 10 for the weekend. If I'd bothered to research ahead of time I would have discovered that Paul Greengrass was the director, and I would have prepared myself by taking a fistful of Gravol. His first non-indie movie was The Bourne Supremacy, and watching that movie I remember my biggest criticism was that I hated the hand-held stuff. Watching the DVD extras I discovered that this is something he is particularly proud of, and it's become his trademark gimmick since. In United 93 the entire movie is shot with handheld cameras. By the one hour mark I was ready to vomit from motion sickness. Just something to keep in mind if you're planning to see the movie and you have a weak stomach. That's, again, my biggest criticism. The handheld thing gives a documentary feel, but it's unnecessary. The story is incredibly intense and doesn't need the gimmickery. The film was very good, from an historical standpoint. It's clear that great pains were taken to recreate the events as accurately as possible, right down to the timeline: the movie occurs in real time, from about 8:20am (though this is never indicated, I'm just guessing) until the plane hits the ground. (Except for a brief introduction that shows the terrorists purifying themselves at their motel rooms, at around 5:00am, again a guess). There was no attempt at superfluous dialogue to explain technical jargon, and there was a lot of technical jargon. There was no attempt at premising special relationships between passengers a la Titanic. This film doesn't even go so far as to moralize the subject. I was surprised to feel some empathy for the terrorists throughout the film. You know what their intent is from the first frame of the movie, and yet you can't help imagining the circumstances from their position. They are scared. They are as jumpy as cats throughout the entire film, and it draws you in. The terrorists speak only a few words of English (and only after the highjacking has started), so their is some subtitling. But you don't really need to follow their dialogues. Body language and facial expression tells everything. Let me say here though, that the film is not in any way meant to portray the terrorists as victims or martyrs or heros. They are clearly murderers of the most despicable order, without any sense that the people they're travelling with are anything more than obstacles to achieving their goal, to be killed off as needed without compunction. It's a strange thing to get to the part of the movie where the everymen fight back successfully, and to not cheer for them because you know they're going to die anyway. "Hopeless rooting" is maybe a way of putting it, the feeling that you want them to carry on and keep trying even if there is no hope. A couple of other things. A lot of the people who are arguing that this movie is being released "too soon" seem to be the same people who were happy to see Michael Moore release "Farenheit 911" two years ago , a film which made light of the events from a filmmaker who had the indecency to ask why Bluestaters should be targeted instead of Redstaters, as if the terrorists cared. Ditto for "Bowling for Columbine" for the horror mentioned earlier in this thread. Also, I take minor exception to August's post above about the military being "incompetent". Inexperienced, yes, but incompetent is an unfair perjorative. The movie indicates that the first two planes hit the World Trade Center before anyone was even sure that hijackings had taken place. By that point the miltary commanders at NORAD were prepared to shoot down aircraft but couldn't obtain clearance from the President. That the President was unreachable that day was a quirky twist of fate, not incompetence. ("My Pet Goat" not withstanding.)

So you're saying that new, radical interpretations of executive power (which include, apparently, the right to abridge the law and possibly the Constitution itself) don't matter because Bush is going to be gone in 2 years or so? I took a break. How've you been keeping? Glad to see you're still here. Only people hot for Bush's blood view the approach he took in regard to warrantless wiretaps as "new" or "radical". We've been over this. You say potato, etc. I'm amazed this topic is still being discussed. I had no idea you guys were this desperate. That Bush's term is limited is only part of the point. You don't just get rid of a sitting President. Only a handful of Presidents have been impeached, and I don't believe that any of them were actually removed from office. Certainly not the last guy who went down that road, old what's-his-name, good looking bloke from Arkansas, scheming harpy for a wife.

Yes, you're quite right, it was FTA. Turner was a former PM and that qualifies for your argument. It is a proven fact Brian Mulroney lied, READ THE BOOK. He was not a man of integrity, just based on what he said about his follow politicians. He left his party completely destroyed, tried to force Meech Lake by locking in his Premiers (and wrongly blamed Cyde Wells when it was Elijah Harper who was rightly responsible), blew Charlottetown, doubled our national debt, forced privitization, stacked the senate to pass his GST...Yeah, a great legacy. As a public figure, anyone can criticize or support. Hardly an ad hominem. Read more of his blunders here: http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/09/19/MulroneysWhoppers/ I'm always amused when I read putative lefties complaining about right side politicians "increasing debt". As if you wouldn't have screamed blue murder if Mulroney had cut all of Trudeau's beloved (and expensive) social programs. That's assuming you're old enough to remember back that far.

So this NSA Wiretapping is not just for suspected international terrorists anymore, they are spying on the local American population for piracy. Wake up people, this will get worse, more news is going to come out on this. In my searching for NSA related articles I came across a few interesting things. Over at The Political Gateway it has been lerned that a tried terrorist will now go free because of the illegal wiretapping. Here is something over at Media Matters with a Fox "My Opinion" piece. Kind of scary. Watch that video please and tell me this does not alarm you. WTF ??? Well if the Americans do not like what the president is doing, they have every right to wage a 'war' on Bush. Get him out of office. Regardless of his claims that the wiretapping program leak hurt the security of the Nation and tipped off Al-Queda. Bush works for America, not the other way around. The reason why it was leaked? My guess is that some important people felt that the American population should know what their governent is doing. Not okay for it to be leaked, but ok for warrentless wiretappings by your own government. Another article here at The Jurist This should send up some red flags among you. Do you have any idea how the Constitution applies vis-a-vis presidential terms of office, or are you just ranting?

Give me a break Geoffery,you know and I know if you want to see these cartoons you don't need to see them in a newspaper.There is no reason to print them with the Internet to give you and anybody else all the cartoons you want. I've seen a lot of variations of this argument. I'm jumping into this argument late, and maybe this has already been said. Gratuitously printing material that's known to be offensive is contemptible in any case. But you can't write about this story with any seriousness if you aren't going to print the at least some of the cartoons at least once. A story about political cartoons that doesn't offer a sample is preposterous. These cartoons are not in themselves offensive by the standards to which political cartoons are normally held in the Western media. Most aren't even as offensive as the drecht printed in MAD magazine, which has a target audience ranging from children to young adults. The notion that a mere image of Mohammed is offensive is also preposterous, given the long history of Islamic art in which the prophet has been depicted numerous times. Further, Mohamed with a bomb in his turban is an apt image for West's fear of religion-inspired terrorism, and conveys more about that fear than most 800 word essays could. If Christians were engaging in similar acts of terrorism it would be just as apt for a political cartoonist to illustrate Jesus on the cross with a bomb in each hand. Such an image would also be just as offensive to Christians as the Mohammed image is to Muslims, but creating offence is part of the political cartoonist's art. In every cartoon the shock is intended to illustrate a deeper point. In the case of these particular cartoons, the only difference is that the offended parties are perceived to be more likely to bring harm to themselves and others. But that perception, or indeed fact, doesn't suddenly make the cartoons illegitimate for public viewing or discussion. Muslims are taking offense at these cartoons because they want to be offended, which is illustrated by the fact the cartoons were printed months before the Islamic world took notice, and then only after they were taken on a tour of the Middle East designed specifically to fire up resentment.

Given the current U.S. government's track record, that's probaly a far more worrisome point than who manages the facilities. To be sure, the continuing sorry state of port security is a major blot on the administration's record. True, port security has been weak for decades, but 911 should have prompted serious changes, changes that haven't happened. It's almost like they want terrorists to sneak something through. Fresh meat for the conspiracy minded...

On the right track. Afghanistan would be under Taliban control, al-Qaeda would be flourishing more than currently and we wouldn't be stealing American jobs. As much as i dissagree with Gore accusing Harper of such "trechery" correct me if I am wrong but the United States and Canada are in Afganistan under NATO, so no matter who wouldve/could've been president now Canada the United States and other countries would be freeing Afganistan from the Taliban regime. We are not "now" freeing the Afghanis from the Taliban. That was accomplished within the first few months of the invasion, and would have been regardless of who was commanding the US military. It was a really, really, unfair fight. The question still stands as to whether NATO would have gone into Afghanistan in the first place, if Al Gore was in charge. Certainly, NATO is as much of a crippled and ineffectual organisation as the UN is, without American leadership. Call me cynical, but I doubt the invasion would have happened if left up to a concensus vote by NATO member countries, without American prompting. It would be like Darfur: everyone agrees something needs to be done, nobody wants to take any concrete actions. However, I happen to believe that 911 was such a major event in US history and so affected America's political reality that a Democratic president would have reacted much the same way that Bush did. Meaning, at least the invasion of Afghanistan would have happened, if not further exploits in the Middle Eastern theatre.

Via Google: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/stacks/wellstone.guest.html Disregard Rush Limbaugh if you must, but there are plenty of links and references embedded.

How do the people who only speak (Chinese/Hindi/Spanish/fill-in-the-blank) get by? Is the problem that there aren't enough French speaking doctors obtaining medical licences, or that too many people want to live in an area with a shortage of French doctors without bothering to learn English, and our official language policy rewards their obstinance by making the majority pay for services they aren't allowed to benefit from?

A couple of follow up points: 1) Lileks follow up article 2) Again, I'm not a racist and my opinions on this matter do not stem from racism. I don't have a problem with the people of UAE, I have a problem with their government, a problem which is unrelated to the racial makeup of it's constituents. Essentially, I don't trust the government of the UAE in it's resolve to stand firm against terrorism, and all of my posts are in line with this central issue. 3) I'm not sure why Drew has been so emphatic about the point that DP World will be managing the ports but not owning the land they sit on. The practical difference between a manager and an owner/manager is the piece of paper in this case. Or does having a deed confer some special powers to the land holder that allows them to act with less accountability? Help me out. 4) I'd just like to try to expand the parameters of the argument a little bit. Presumably, the people who are arguing in favour of the ports deal in this thread wouldn't mind foreign companies managing Canadian ports. If it's reasonable for a foreign company to manage our ports, is it not also reasonable for a foreign company to manage (or own) the airlines that connect our cities? Does the same logic not also apply to cabotage?

BD: I note that your rebuttal completely ignores that I was comparing Coulter to Moore, not Lowery. Let's all say it together now: RED HERRING. If you want your comparison to stand though, let me admit that I missed part where Coulter spoke at Reagan's funeral. I also missed the part where Reagan's eulogies were used as a bully pulpit to attack sitting politicians. But it was a long service, and I have an inordinately short attention span.

Drew Cut out implying racism in all of this. Nothing I or Lileks wrote is intended to be racist, no matter how you read it. Trying to cow me by playing the racism card won't work. The political reality is that average Americans are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that the government of a country that produced two of the 911 hijackers (and was the last government on the planet to recind support for the Taliban) will now be "managing" (does that word suit you?) some of the biggest port facilities in the US. And the word is "shiftless" not "shifless". I thought you should know, since it seems to be prominent in your rhetorical arsenal.

What's so hard to believe? How would the potyential collapse of the global economy (on top of the potential loss of millions of lives) be viewed as a good thing from any perspective? It just seems sometimes that the extreme left is hoping for any and all catastrophes, so that their doomy prognostications are proved correct and all the non-nutters are taught a big important lesson. That's the subtext I'm getting from a lot of posts.

False dilemna. Weak, dude. How so? It was obvious from his speech that Carter was comparing the wire-tapping of the Kings to the current NSA wire tapping program, which is intended to target terrorist cells in the US. Comparing the two instances of wiretapping is the same as comparing the Kings to suspected terrorists, unless you really believe that the terrorist threat is a trope and the NSA is using terrorism as a blanket cover for the phone tapping of a broader segment of the public. I don't, but that seems to have been your argument in the past. As I said, Ann Coulter is as much of a fringe loony on the right as is Michael Moore on the left. She's an attack-dog humour columnist who makes extreme and provocative statements for the sake of being funny. She's in no way central to the philosophical discussions of the American right wing, the way that, for instance, Kos and Atrios are on the left.

The fundamental question here: why allow foreign ownership of port facilities in the first place? Especially when ports are such an abysmally weak link in national security? Ports security has been an issue warming on the back burner since 911, and while this sale has brought the issue to the forefront, it didn't create it. I think Lileks has captured the sentiment best, and essentially restates what I posted above, better than I did: James Lileks

What: you think you'll enjoy paying $25 a gallon at the pump? True enough Okay, let me get this straight: American meddling in the Middle East will lead to a regional conflagration, and shut down local oil production. Meaning what, a 25% drop in global oil production at most? And this leads to a tenfold increase in price? I know you're being facetious, but come on. This is all assuming, of course, that a conflict involving the entire Middle East won't quickly spread to Europe and Asia, meaning global war and a shutdown of the global oil market, meaning that North America learns to live on Canadian oil production alone. From an eco-warrior standpoint, isn't that a good thing?

Let me ask you this: what would you be writing here, if Bush hadn't gone to the funeral? I'm pretty sure I already know. Also, Coretta Scott King was alive and well for the first four years of Bush's presidency. Presumably, if she'd said anytihing unpleasant about Bush during that time you'd be quoting it. The fact that you and likeminded people are using the occurance of her death, when she can no longer issue a correction, to presume to put your own words into her and her husbands' mouths speaks volumes. No it's not a starwman. If anything the raging hypocricy is from moronic right wingers like you who faint whenever a Democrat does soemthing you decree undecorous, even as you champion mouth breathers like Ann Coulter, Dick "GFY" Cheney, etc etc. In short: Republicans set the bar for sleaze, but you lap it up like its bad chocolate. Pretty weak, comparing Coulter's Moore-like attention-seeking antics on unwatched cable news talkshows with using the opportunity afforded by a famous and well respected woman's death to appeal to a partisan crowd and make inappropriate jabs at a captive and silent target. I don't know where you get off calling Dick Cheney a mouth breather though. I guess a mouth breather is anyone that BD disagrees with. Hmm. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King spent their lives fighting poverty, racial injustice and war. They lived and breathed politics, and in the former's case, died because of them. So for mincing little pricks like you to declare that the event celebrating the life's work of one of these political activists should be free of politics (not to mention the titanic arrogance of presuming that you know civility from a hole in the ground) is ridiculous. The fact that it comes from a political party known for tarring its opponnents with every imaginable smear renders their sudden outrage an air of comic stupidity. Dr. King had a dream that some day American minorities would be treated equally with whites. Finally, a president comes along who promotes two blacks to senior positions in his cabinet, and the knee-jerk left responds by declaring them "house niggers". And then you people turn around and use the occasion of his wife's funeral to politically attack this same president for not being as true to Dr. King's vision as you are. You've all got a lot of chutzpah.

What terrorists? Um, the terrorist cells presumably being targeted by the controversial NSA program. Unless you really believe that Bush is jerking off to the secretly taped phone conversations of soccer moms. What line is thta? More to the point: what fucking business is it of anyone if soemone's funeral is turned into a political rally, especially if that person was, ah, political? Where do the Republicans get off dictating what's proper? Who appointed the conservative punditocracy Miss Manners? Whoa, calm down, feisty. Even everyone's favourite anti-Bush cheerleader Jon Stewart made a point of mocking the fact that the anti-Bush jabs were getting standing ovations. At a funeral. I'm sure there are plently of other non-conservative types who felt that turning a dignified memorial service into a typical Washington Mall rally was a little bit weird.

It doesn't matter if Ports World is completely legit and staffed entirely by Brits, or even Americans for that matter. It doesnt' matter if the UAE has been America's best friend in the war on terror and has provided countless tidbits of anti-terrorism info, and deserve to be rewarded for it . I think the best analogy for any help the UAE has given is the prison snitch: someone who is in the bad books and is using the knowledge gained by being in league with the outlaws to better his own circumstances. And like a prison snitch, there are rewards which are appropriate and rewards which are not. Going to bat for him, declaring him a trustworthy and model citizen, at the expense of your own future reputation, is not appropriate no matter how helpful he has been. But this is the path Bush has chosen to follow. This is political poison for the Republicans, and it will come back to haunt them. If the Dems are smart (which is currently a topic for debate, and this will be a good IQ test for them) they'll ride this story all the way to November. Bush saying that he'll go so far as to veto any bill against the sale (when he hasn't vetoed anything else!!) only adds fuel to the fire. In the week or so since this story became front page news, the Republicans have gone from facing a divided Democratic party still lacking a serious foreign policy platform, to handing the Democrats the perfect foreign policy end run. Here's the easy-to-follow scenario that Middle American grasps intuitively: there is a large likelihood that at some point, maybe even years from now, terrorists will succeed in mounting another attack on US soil. If any of the materials used in that attack came into the country through a port under the financial pervue of a UAE government company, do you think that will be good for the Bush administration's legacy and the Republicans in general, or not so good? Do you think the fact that Bush was confident that US Customs and the Coast Guard had it all under control will change the optics after another attack? Yes. It will probably make Bush and his supporters look more idiotic that anything the Bush Derangement Syndrome crowd have managed come up with on their own.

I think it would be difficult, perhaps impossible to hold a memorial for a politician or a well known political activist without politics creeping in. It's to be expected that Jimmy Carter would use the opportunity a eulogy presents to make ill-conceived swipes at the President. (Did he really mean to compare the Kings to terrorists?) . I think the line is crossed when the mourners turn en masse to cheering and jeering.

Is it true that Mike Duffy has a picture of Harper from the seventies wearing suggestively plaid bell-bottoms? Because, that might mean he's, well, you know...

More likely, we'll be talking about how we should have invaded Iran before it got nukes, and since the mullahs' nukular fatwa the Yanks have decided to screen every vehicle crossing the border for radiation, and we'll marvel at what a huge surge in our economy that this has brought, and then we'll laugh at how cleverly sarcastic we can be when we're starving. And, likely, we'll blame former President Bush for getting the US tied up in Iraq which, as stable as it is, was never as much of a problem as the Republican neocon racist warmongers made it out to be. I mean, it was obvious all along that Iran was the real problem. And we'll probably blame Hamas' use of intentional starvation as a political tool on him too. That is, before the Egyptians finally drove the Gaza Palestinians into the Mediteranean to almost no one's surprise.

So, if I may clarify: the "legality", and the morality, of a country intervening militarily into the affairs of another is entirely dependant upon whether or not the intervenor stands to gain economically from the action. You accuse the other side of reasoning this way without any evidence, and then turn the reasoning on it's head and claim it as your own. Interesting. You're willing to argue that the invasion of Iraq was illegal and immoral on any number of grounds despite the humanitarian issues, but that an invasion into Sudan under identical conditions is perfectly acceptible because the US stands to gain nothing? (You're wrong, by the way: Sudan has enormous oil wealth, and it hasn't made a bit of difference. Perhaps you think a military incursion would go straight into Darfur and leave the oil-rich part of the country inhabited by the putative aggressors untouched. Which, by the way, would suit China just fine, speaking of countries that base their Security Council approval on how it affects them economically.)

During the Cold War. Keep it in historical context. For instance, how many dictators enjoy the open support of the American government at present? (I qualified the statement because if I made it absolute I know someone would come back at me with third hand information about CIA operations in one of the 'stans. And I'm not in the mood to follow links to conspiracy websites at the moment.) You just know that Chimpy wants a Hitleresque playmate for the sandbox he had installed in the Rose Garden. Again, context. Post 1991 Iraq wasn't a destabalizing force in the region because the most powerful military force on Earth kept constant vigilence to prevent it from regaining it's military footing. If the Americans had left policing the ceasefire agreement to the Eurocrowd Iraq would have been back up to speed and menacing every nation within Scud distance before the end of the 90's. Now, explain to me how a country, "ravaged" by the evil Amerikkkan Armed Forces and on the verge of civil war by your estimation, is more of a threat to it's neighbours than pre-1990 Iraq was.