Right Pulse

Mark Steyn with Hugh Hewitt on the main stream media ignoring Iraq now that things are going well:

HH: The BBC this morning, a correspondent sort of recreating your jaunt into Fallujah after the war had concluded, the first phase, went with some Brits into Basra, and barely could conceal his surprise at how peaceful Basra has become in the last three months since the Maliki-ordered offensive. And he had a cup of tea, or he had some ice cream, they couldn’t get him any tea, in the middle of Basra. Do you think the world is quite aware of how extraordinary the changes in Iraq, Mark Steyn?

MS: No, because nobody wants to order up a script rewrite. Basically, the American networks, the big three plus CNN plus MSNBC, and then the rest of the world, BBC and Reuters and all the rest of it, decided that Iraq was a quagmire three or four years ago, and nothing is going to deflect them from that storyline. It’s like soap opera with no twists. And so the fact that the plot did change, the fact that essentially in three quarters of Iraq now, life is more pleasant than it has ever been, because of that, these guys have simply decided we’re not going to cover this story. There is no Iraq. Iraq is either a quagmire, or it’s no news at all. And it’s actually disgraceful. It does tell you a lot about the predisposition of what is meant to be a profession of inquiry, the predisposition of these so-called journalists to the store-bought storyline you warm up in the microwave every night, regardless of what’s actually happening on the ground.

The same could equally apply to the media in Australia.

From the UK Telegraph on why Russia, South Africa, China and a bunch of other nations voted against imposing sanctions on Mugabe:

China’s investment in Africa has increased hugely recently, but the real reason for both these vetoes isn’t economic: it is fear of the precedent that would be set if the UN explicitly authorises action against a country because it is governed by a tyrannical autocrat….there is a tacit pact between the world’s dictatorial regimes to ensure that they can continue to deny their people basic democratic rights: they know they themselves will become vulnerable if it is established as a principle of the UN that there is a limit beyond which governments are not entitled to oppress their own people.

Readers should also note that Indonesia, as a member of the Security Council, abstained from the vote. So to the solution:

John McCain, the Republican candidate in America’s presidential election, has suggested an alternative to a UN deadlocked by the vetoes of China and Russia.

He proposes a “league of democracies”, in which nations committed to what might be termed “the Western system” would come together and use their joint power to try to advance more enlightened forms of governance. It wouldn’t be an alternative to the UN. But it would tackle some of the problems which vetoes from the tyrannies on the security council ensure that the UN cannot.

There are many difficulties with turning McCain’s vision into reality. Yet the failure of the UN, like the impotence of the G8, which was also on display last week, requires serious debate on how to remedy the ineffectiveness of global institutions