Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Gimme shelter
Too trivial for an update to my CT post on war crimes, but Melanie Philips (to whom I am not linking more because I cannot be bothered than as a conscious snub; I am not linking to my own post either) has managed to provide the ultimate reductio ad absurdum of the bad faith with which a lot of people are crying crocodile tears over the war crime of "sheltering" behind civilians.
She has attempted to claim that the apartment block at Qana (erratum: it was an apartment block elsewhere in Lebanon, thanks Chris) had its civilian protection compromised because Hezbollah had been seen firing an anti-aircraft gun from it.
Surprisingly enough, it is not a war crime under the Geneva Conventions to mount an AA gun on a building which is being attacked from the air.
In related news, Melanie Philips describes the Daily Telegraph's coverage of the Qana bombing as a "psychological pogrom against Israel"; I presume that Eve Garrard[1] has been informed of this new outbreak of Holocaust denial, from a somewhat surprisng quarter.
Update: Just to clarify, it is not the killing of the civilians which Mel is comparing to a pogrom; it is the reporting of their deaths in the Daily Telegraph. So far no word on which atrocity the coverage in the Western Mail resembles. The Melanie Philips Naziometer currently stands at 5, but I think it would be a foolish man who sold short at this price.
[1] If you can't be bothered, this is a link to what I believe may be the worst argument ever printed on the Internet; that placards saying "Bush = Hitler" are equivalent to Holocaust denial because if Hitler was only as bad as Bush then the Holocaust could not have been that bad (I defy anyone to tell me that's an unfair paraphrase). If the pogroms were only as bad as one day of a broadly Israel-supporting newspaper's coverage, then it is certainly hard to understand what all the fuss was about.
this item posted by the management 8/01/2006 02:01:00 AM
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