Gleaned this morning from the blogosphere:

Terry Glavin: UN Chief warns against disengagement in Afghanistan

To my knowledge, this is unprecedented.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, in an essay about Afghanistan written for the Toronto Globe and Mail, has quite properly called the bring-the-troops-home position as “almost more dismaying” than the opportunism of the fascist thugs preying upon on the people of Afghanistan. The troops-out position is a “misjudgment of historic proportions,” he writes.
Read it all here.

Every sentence is right. Every single sentence.

It’s all about this.

Are Canadians ready for this kind of commitment? I'm not so sure, though I do have some trust in the present government that it wants to do the right thing. The big question, for me, is, how far will it go in resisting the anti-American mood that grips the Canadian mainstream? Because, strangely enough, the discussion about decamping from Afghanistan is very much bound in that general disease, anti-Americanism and appeasement of Muslim easily-outraged sensibilities. There is certainly a malformed amalgam of negative sentiments and Indecent-Leftish argumentation which provides the support for this quite popular position.

Let's see if the call from the UN chief can undo some of this negativity.


Via Solomonia: Media's complicity in Palestinian "argumentum ad misericordiam"

There is a personal tragedy here, but the questions remain as to what use that tragedy was put and who caused it. One immediate takeaway while watching is the brutality with which the Arab media treats its audience. Contrast to Western media which still avoids showing the full scope of the horror of 9/11 - Arab media shoves as much blood and agony into your face as inhumanly possible. Western media has its purposes...Arab media another, and they are at odds. What those cross-purposes are should be obvious.

Read more and watch the film, here.

Update:

And here is another Hollywoodisation of Palestinian suffering, albeit on a "lighter" scale:

Blackout

The Israeli embargo has left the Gaza Strip without electricity. The Palestinian Parliament was forced to meet by candlelight on Tuesday night.


Helpful illustration here.

Simply Jews has more.

Michael J. Totten, here.