Came across this 2003 article on Pipes by Christopher Hitchens. I find myself in agreement with the general thrust of his arguement.
Decide for yourself...
Pipes the Propagandist
Bush's nominee doesn't belong at the U.S. Institute for Peace.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 11, 2003, at 11:23 AM ET
When I read that Daniel Pipes had been nominated to the board of the United States Institute of Peace (a federally funded body whose members are proposed by the president and confirmed by the Senate), my first reaction was one of bafflement. Why did Pipes want the nomination? After all, USIP, a somewhat mild organization, is devoted to the peaceful resolution of conflict. For Pipes, this notion is a contradiction in terms.
I am not myself a pacifist, and I believe that Islamic nihilism has to be combated with every weapon, intellectual and moral as well as military, which we possess or can acquire. But that is a position shared by a very wide spectrum of people. Pipes, however, uses this consensus to take a position somewhat to the right of Ariel Sharon, concerning a matter (the Israel-Palestine dispute) that actually can be settled by negotiation. And he employs the fears and insecurities created by Islamic extremism to slander or misrepresent those who disagree with him.
This makes him a poor if not useless ally in the wider battle. Let me give two illustrations from personal experience. One of the most frontal challenges from Islamic theocracy came in February 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a sentence of death upon Salman Rushdie. There then followed a long campaign by writers and scholars and diplomats, culminating in September 1998 in a formal repudiation of the fatwa by the Iranian regime. Good cause for celebration, one might think. But not to Pipes, who weighed in with a sour, sophomoric article arguing that nothing whatsoever had changed and that the Iranian authorities were as committed to Rushdie's elimination as ever. His "sources" were a few clips from the Iranian press and a few stray statements from extremists. That was five years ago. Today, Salman Rushdie lives in New York without body guards and travels freely, and there are leading Shiite voices raised in Iran in favor of the coalition's successful demolition of the Iraqi Baath Party. To put it bluntly, I suspect that Pipes is so consumed by dislike that he will not recognize good news from the Islamic world even when it arrives. And this makes him dangerous and unreliable.
Then, I heard recently, Pipes has maintained that professor Edward Said of Columbia University is not really a Palestinian and never lost his family home in Jerusalem in the fighting of 1947-48. I have my own disagreements with Said, but this is a much-discredited libel that undermines the credibility of anybody circulating it. Professor Said is deservedly respected for his long advocacy of mutual recognition between Israelis and Palestinians; yet, once again, Pipes spits and curses at anything short of his own highly emotional agenda. In the February 2003 issue of Commentary magazine, he wrote an attack on the "road map" proposals, which included the words "the so-called Palestinian refugees," and which by other crude tricks of language insinuated that there had been no Palestinian dispossession in the first place. In which case, there is obviously nothing to negotiate about, is there? It's one thing to argue, as many Palestinians are prepared to do, that not every refugee can expect "the right of return." It's quite another to deny history and to assert that there is no refugee problem to begin with.
By coincidence, that same issue of Commentary contained several columns of letters from aggrieved scholars, complaining at the way in which Pipes had misrepresented their work. Pipes himself was forced to concede grudgingly that he had been in error when he described professor John Kelsay of Princeton and professor James Turner Johnson of Rutgers as having denied that the term "jihad" had any military meaning. I admire those who admit their mistakes, especially under the pressure of fact. But Pipes hasn't just been engaged in a dispute in print with other academics. He is the founder of Campus Watch, a Web-site crusade that purports to expose heretical or subversive teachers in America. It's not pleasant to think of such an organization being run by somebody who won't, or who can't, read the published work of more distinguished colleagues.
On more than one occasion, Pipes has called for the extension of Israel's already ruthless policy of collective punishment, arguing that leveling Palestinian villages is justifiable if attacks are launched from among their inhabitants. It seems to me from observing his style that he came to this conclusion with rather more relish than regret. And, invited recently to comment on the wartime internment of the Japanese—as a comparison case to his own call for the profiling and surveillance of Muslim and Arab-Americans—he declined on the grounds that he didn't know enough about the subject. One isn't necessarily obliged to know the history of discrimination as it has been applied to American security policy—unless, that is, one is proposing a new form of it. To be uninformed at that point is to disqualify oneself, as the Senate should disqualify Pipes.
The board of USIP already contains enough people to make sure that the hawkish viewpoint does not go unrepresented. It includes Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense, and Harriet Zimmerman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The objection to Pipes is not, in any case, strictly a political one. It is an objection to a person who confuses scholarship with propaganda and who pursues petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Chinese Geopolitics and the Significance of Tibet
A fascinating and informative analysis of what Tibet means to China, and why they can't and won't give it up. If our national press were any good, it's the kind of 2000 word discursive essay you'd read over your scrambled eggs.
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Chinese Geopolitics and the Significance of Tibet
Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly
April 15, 2008
By George Friedman
China is an island. We do not mean it is surrounded by water; we mean China is surrounded by territory that is difficult to traverse. Therefore, China is hard to invade; given its size and population, it is even harder to occupy. This also makes it hard for the Chinese to invade others; not utterly impossible, but quite difficult. Containing a fifth of the world’s population, China can wall itself off from the world, as it did prior to the United Kingdom’s forced entry in the 19th century and under Mao Zedong. All of this means China is a great power, but one that has to behave very differently than other great powers.
ANALYZING CHINESE GEOGRAPHY
Let’s begin simply by analyzing Chinese geography, looking at two maps. The first represents the physical geography of China.
The second shows the population density not only of China, but also of the surrounding countries.
China’s geography is roughly divided into two parts: a mountainous, arid western part and a coastal plain that becomes hilly at its westward end. The overwhelming majority of China’s population is concentrated in that coastal plain. The majority of China’s territory — the area west of this coastal plain — is lightly inhabited, however. This eastern region is the Chinese heartland that must be defended at all cost.
China as island is surrounded by impassable barriers — barriers that are difficult to pass or areas that essentially are wastelands with minimal population. To the east is the Pacific Ocean. To the north and northwest are the Siberian and Mongolian regions, sparsely populated and difficult to move through. To the south, there are the hills, mountains and jungles that separate China from Southeast Asia; to visualize this terrain, just remember the incredible effort that went into building the Burma Road during World War II. To the southwest lie the Himalayas. In the northwest are Kazakhstan and the vast steppes of Central Asia. Only in the far northeast, with the Russian maritime provinces and the Yalu River separating China from Korea, are there traversable points of contacts. But the balance of military power is heavily in China’s favor at these points.
Strategically, China has two problems, both pivoting around the question of defending the coastal region. First, China must prevent attacks from the sea. This is what the Japanese did in the 1930s, first invading Manchuria in the northeast and then moving south into the heart of China. It is also what the British and other European powers did on a lesser scale in the 19th century. China’s defense against such attacks is size and population. It draws invaders in and then wears them out, with China suffering massive casualties and economic losses in the process.
The second threat to China comes from powers moving in through the underpopulated portion of the west, establishing bases and moving east, or coming out of the underpopulated regions around China and invading. This is what happened during the Mongol invasion from the northwest. But that invasion was aided by tremendous Chinese disunity, as were the European and Japanese incursions.
BEIJING’S THREE IMPERATIVES
Beijing therefore has three geopolitical imperatives:
We see Beijing struggling to maintain control over China. Its vast security apparatus and interlocking economic system are intended to achieve that. We see Beijing building coastal defenses in the Pacific, including missiles that can reach deep into the Pacific, in the long run trying to force the U.S. Navy on the defensive. And we see Beijing working to retain control over two key regions: Xinjiang and Tibet.
Xinjiang is Muslim. This means at one point it was invaded by Islamic forces. It also means that it can be invaded and become a highway into the Chinese heartland. Defense of the Chinese heartland therefore begins in Xinjiang. So long as Xinjiang is Chinese, Beijing will enjoy a 1,500-mile, inhospitable buffer between Lanzhou — the westernmost major Chinese city and its oil center — and the border of Kazakhstan. The Chinese thus will hold Xinjiang regardless of Muslim secessionists.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TIBET TO CHINA
Now look at Tibet on the population density and terrain maps. On the terrain map one sees the high mountain passes of the Himalayas. Running from the Hindu Kush on the border with Pakistan to the Myanmar border, small groups can traverse this terrain, but no major army is going to thrust across this border in either direction. Supplying a major force through these mountains is impossible. From a military point of view, it is a solid wall.
Note that running along the frontier directly south of this border is one of the largest population concentrations in the world. If China were to withdraw from Tibet, and there were no military hindrance to population movement, Beijing fears this population could migrate into Tibet. If there were such a migration, Tibet could turn into an extension of India and, over time, become a potential beachhead for Indian power. If that were to happen, India’s strategic frontier would directly abut Sichuan and Yunnan — the Chinese heartland.
The Chinese have a fundamental national interest in retaining Tibet, because Tibet is the Chinese anchor in the Himalayas. If that were open, or if Xinjiang became independent, the vast buffers between China and the rest of Eurasia would break down. The Chinese can’t predict the evolution of Indian, Islamic or Russian power in such a circumstance, and they certainly don’t intend to find out. They will hold both of these provinces, particularly Tibet.
The Chinese note that the Dalai Lama has been in India ever since China invaded Tibet. The Chinese regard him as an Indian puppet. They see the latest unrest in Tibet as instigated by the Indian government, which uses the Dalai Lama to try to destabilize the Chinese hold on Tibet and open the door to Indian expansion. To put it differently, their view is that the Indians could shut the Dalai Lama down if they wanted to, and that they don’t signals Indian complicity.
It should be added that the Chinese see the American hand behind this as well. Apart from public statements of support, the Americans and Indians have formed a strategic partnership since 2001. The Chinese view the United States — which is primarily focused on the Islamic world — as encouraging India and the Dalai Lama to probe the Chinese, partly to embarrass them over the Olympics and partly to increase the stress on the central government. The central government is stretched in maintaining Chinese security as the Olympics approach. The Chinese are distracted. Beijing also notes the similarities between what is happening in Tibet and the “color” revolutions the United States supported and helped stimulate in the former Soviet Union.
It is critical to understand that whatever the issues might be to the West, the Chinese see Tibet as a matter of fundamental national security, and they view pro-Tibetan agitation in the West as an attempt to strike at the heart of Chinese national security. The Chinese are therefore trapped. They are staging the Olympics in order to demonstrate Chinese cohesion and progress. But they must hold on to Tibet for national security reasons, and therefore their public relations strategy is collapsing. Neither India nor the United States is particularly upset that the Europeans are thinking about canceling attendance at various ceremonies.
A LACK OF COUNTERMOVES
China has few countermoves to this pressure over Tibet. There is always talk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That is not going to happen — not because China doesn’t want to, but because it does not have the naval capability of seizing control of the Taiwan Straits or seizing air superiority, certainly not if the United States doesn’t want it (and we note that the United States has two carrier battle groups in the Taiwan region at the moment). Beijing thus could bombard Taiwan, but not without enormous cost to itself and its own defensive capabilities. It does not have the capability to surge forces across the strait, much less to sustain operations there in anything short of a completely permissive threat environment. The Chinese could fire missiles at Taiwan, but that risks counterstrikes from American missiles. And, of course, Beijing could go nuclear, but that is not likely given the stakes. The most likely Chinese counter here would be trying to isolate Taiwan from shipping by firing missiles. But that again assumes the United States would not respond — something Beijing can’t count on.
While China thus lacks politico-military options to counter the Tibet pressure, it also lacks economic options. It is highly dependent for its economic well-being on exports to the United States and other countries; drawing money out of U.S. financial markets would require Beijing to put it somewhere else. If the Chinese invested in Europe, European interest rates would go down and U.S. rates would go up, and European money would pour into the United States. The long-held fear of the Chinese withdrawing their money from U.S. markets is therefore illusory: The Chinese are trapped economically. Far more than the United States, they can’t afford a confrontation.
That leaves the pressure on Tibet, and China struggling to contain it. Note that Beijing’s first imperative is to maintain China’s internal coherence. China’s great danger is always a weakening of the central government and the development of regionalism. Beijing is far from losing control, but recently we have observed a set of interesting breakdowns. The inability to control events in Tibet is one. Significant shortages of diesel fuel is a second. Shortages of rice and other grains is a third. These are small things, but they are things that should not be happening in a country as well-heeled in terms of cash as China is, and as accustomed as it is to managing security threats.
China must hold Tibet, and it will. The really interesting question is whether the stresses building up on China’s central administration are beginning to degrade its ability to control and manage events. It is easy to understand China’s obsession with Tibet. The next step is to watch China trying to pick up the pieces on a series of administrative miscues. That will give us a sense of the state of Chinese affairs.
---------------------
Chinese Geopolitics and the Significance of Tibet
Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly
April 15, 2008
By George Friedman
China is an island. We do not mean it is surrounded by water; we mean China is surrounded by territory that is difficult to traverse. Therefore, China is hard to invade; given its size and population, it is even harder to occupy. This also makes it hard for the Chinese to invade others; not utterly impossible, but quite difficult. Containing a fifth of the world’s population, China can wall itself off from the world, as it did prior to the United Kingdom’s forced entry in the 19th century and under Mao Zedong. All of this means China is a great power, but one that has to behave very differently than other great powers.
ANALYZING CHINESE GEOGRAPHY
Let’s begin simply by analyzing Chinese geography, looking at two maps. The first represents the physical geography of China.
The second shows the population density not only of China, but also of the surrounding countries.
China’s geography is roughly divided into two parts: a mountainous, arid western part and a coastal plain that becomes hilly at its westward end. The overwhelming majority of China’s population is concentrated in that coastal plain. The majority of China’s territory — the area west of this coastal plain — is lightly inhabited, however. This eastern region is the Chinese heartland that must be defended at all cost.
China as island is surrounded by impassable barriers — barriers that are difficult to pass or areas that essentially are wastelands with minimal population. To the east is the Pacific Ocean. To the north and northwest are the Siberian and Mongolian regions, sparsely populated and difficult to move through. To the south, there are the hills, mountains and jungles that separate China from Southeast Asia; to visualize this terrain, just remember the incredible effort that went into building the Burma Road during World War II. To the southwest lie the Himalayas. In the northwest are Kazakhstan and the vast steppes of Central Asia. Only in the far northeast, with the Russian maritime provinces and the Yalu River separating China from Korea, are there traversable points of contacts. But the balance of military power is heavily in China’s favor at these points.
Strategically, China has two problems, both pivoting around the question of defending the coastal region. First, China must prevent attacks from the sea. This is what the Japanese did in the 1930s, first invading Manchuria in the northeast and then moving south into the heart of China. It is also what the British and other European powers did on a lesser scale in the 19th century. China’s defense against such attacks is size and population. It draws invaders in and then wears them out, with China suffering massive casualties and economic losses in the process.
The second threat to China comes from powers moving in through the underpopulated portion of the west, establishing bases and moving east, or coming out of the underpopulated regions around China and invading. This is what happened during the Mongol invasion from the northwest. But that invasion was aided by tremendous Chinese disunity, as were the European and Japanese incursions.
BEIJING’S THREE IMPERATIVES
Beijing therefore has three geopolitical imperatives:
- Maintain internal unity so that far powers can’t weaken the ability of the central government to defend China.
- Maintain a strong coastal defense to prevent an incursion from the Pacific.
- Secure China’s periphery by anchoring the country’s frontiers on impassable geographical features; in other words, hold its current borders.
We see Beijing struggling to maintain control over China. Its vast security apparatus and interlocking economic system are intended to achieve that. We see Beijing building coastal defenses in the Pacific, including missiles that can reach deep into the Pacific, in the long run trying to force the U.S. Navy on the defensive. And we see Beijing working to retain control over two key regions: Xinjiang and Tibet.
Xinjiang is Muslim. This means at one point it was invaded by Islamic forces. It also means that it can be invaded and become a highway into the Chinese heartland. Defense of the Chinese heartland therefore begins in Xinjiang. So long as Xinjiang is Chinese, Beijing will enjoy a 1,500-mile, inhospitable buffer between Lanzhou — the westernmost major Chinese city and its oil center — and the border of Kazakhstan. The Chinese thus will hold Xinjiang regardless of Muslim secessionists.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TIBET TO CHINA
Now look at Tibet on the population density and terrain maps. On the terrain map one sees the high mountain passes of the Himalayas. Running from the Hindu Kush on the border with Pakistan to the Myanmar border, small groups can traverse this terrain, but no major army is going to thrust across this border in either direction. Supplying a major force through these mountains is impossible. From a military point of view, it is a solid wall.
Note that running along the frontier directly south of this border is one of the largest population concentrations in the world. If China were to withdraw from Tibet, and there were no military hindrance to population movement, Beijing fears this population could migrate into Tibet. If there were such a migration, Tibet could turn into an extension of India and, over time, become a potential beachhead for Indian power. If that were to happen, India’s strategic frontier would directly abut Sichuan and Yunnan — the Chinese heartland.
The Chinese have a fundamental national interest in retaining Tibet, because Tibet is the Chinese anchor in the Himalayas. If that were open, or if Xinjiang became independent, the vast buffers between China and the rest of Eurasia would break down. The Chinese can’t predict the evolution of Indian, Islamic or Russian power in such a circumstance, and they certainly don’t intend to find out. They will hold both of these provinces, particularly Tibet.
The Chinese note that the Dalai Lama has been in India ever since China invaded Tibet. The Chinese regard him as an Indian puppet. They see the latest unrest in Tibet as instigated by the Indian government, which uses the Dalai Lama to try to destabilize the Chinese hold on Tibet and open the door to Indian expansion. To put it differently, their view is that the Indians could shut the Dalai Lama down if they wanted to, and that they don’t signals Indian complicity.
It should be added that the Chinese see the American hand behind this as well. Apart from public statements of support, the Americans and Indians have formed a strategic partnership since 2001. The Chinese view the United States — which is primarily focused on the Islamic world — as encouraging India and the Dalai Lama to probe the Chinese, partly to embarrass them over the Olympics and partly to increase the stress on the central government. The central government is stretched in maintaining Chinese security as the Olympics approach. The Chinese are distracted. Beijing also notes the similarities between what is happening in Tibet and the “color” revolutions the United States supported and helped stimulate in the former Soviet Union.
It is critical to understand that whatever the issues might be to the West, the Chinese see Tibet as a matter of fundamental national security, and they view pro-Tibetan agitation in the West as an attempt to strike at the heart of Chinese national security. The Chinese are therefore trapped. They are staging the Olympics in order to demonstrate Chinese cohesion and progress. But they must hold on to Tibet for national security reasons, and therefore their public relations strategy is collapsing. Neither India nor the United States is particularly upset that the Europeans are thinking about canceling attendance at various ceremonies.
A LACK OF COUNTERMOVES
China has few countermoves to this pressure over Tibet. There is always talk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That is not going to happen — not because China doesn’t want to, but because it does not have the naval capability of seizing control of the Taiwan Straits or seizing air superiority, certainly not if the United States doesn’t want it (and we note that the United States has two carrier battle groups in the Taiwan region at the moment). Beijing thus could bombard Taiwan, but not without enormous cost to itself and its own defensive capabilities. It does not have the capability to surge forces across the strait, much less to sustain operations there in anything short of a completely permissive threat environment. The Chinese could fire missiles at Taiwan, but that risks counterstrikes from American missiles. And, of course, Beijing could go nuclear, but that is not likely given the stakes. The most likely Chinese counter here would be trying to isolate Taiwan from shipping by firing missiles. But that again assumes the United States would not respond — something Beijing can’t count on.
While China thus lacks politico-military options to counter the Tibet pressure, it also lacks economic options. It is highly dependent for its economic well-being on exports to the United States and other countries; drawing money out of U.S. financial markets would require Beijing to put it somewhere else. If the Chinese invested in Europe, European interest rates would go down and U.S. rates would go up, and European money would pour into the United States. The long-held fear of the Chinese withdrawing their money from U.S. markets is therefore illusory: The Chinese are trapped economically. Far more than the United States, they can’t afford a confrontation.
That leaves the pressure on Tibet, and China struggling to contain it. Note that Beijing’s first imperative is to maintain China’s internal coherence. China’s great danger is always a weakening of the central government and the development of regionalism. Beijing is far from losing control, but recently we have observed a set of interesting breakdowns. The inability to control events in Tibet is one. Significant shortages of diesel fuel is a second. Shortages of rice and other grains is a third. These are small things, but they are things that should not be happening in a country as well-heeled in terms of cash as China is, and as accustomed as it is to managing security threats.
China must hold Tibet, and it will. The really interesting question is whether the stresses building up on China’s central administration are beginning to degrade its ability to control and manage events. It is easy to understand China’s obsession with Tibet. The next step is to watch China trying to pick up the pieces on a series of administrative miscues. That will give us a sense of the state of Chinese affairs.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
My Little Hitler...
The Adolf Hitler doll which comes with a change of clothes - and a spare head with a kind face
An action-man style doll of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler has gone on sale in the Ukraine, with saleswomen comparing the doll to Barbie.
Supermarkets in the capital Kiev are stocking the 40 centimetre high figure of the fuhrer, complete with jackboots, leather trench-coat and swastika armband.
The £100 figure has a spare head "with a kind expression on it," glasses and several changes of clothes.
Read on...Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
That's some fucked up shit
 Mr Taylor is accused of funding Sierra Leone's former rebels |
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sunday, March 09, 2008
English Auschwitz survivor dies
Any English jew will be both proud and disgusted at reading this. My italics.
English Auschwitz survivor dies
BBC News
Saturday, 8 March 2008
An Englishman who survived the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, and dedicated his life to telling the story of the Holocaust, has died aged 97. Leon Greenman was living in Holland with his Dutch wife Esther, and their son, when they were rounded up in 1943 and sent to the death camp in Poland.
His wife and three-year-old son Barney died there but London-born Mr Greenman survived six different death camps. Mr Greenman was freed when Buchenwald was liberated by the Americans in 1945.
Mr Greenman later said he had promised God if he lived, he would let the world know what happened during the war.
His first public speech took place in 1946 and in 1995 a permanent gallery telling his story was established at the Jewish Museum in north London. Three years later, he received an OBE for services against racism. Mr Greenman never remarried and spent his final years in Ilford, east London.
BBC Jerusalem correspondent Tim Franks, who interviewed Mr Greenman in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, said he literally lived behind bars there - with bars on the windows and his letterbox sealed - as he had been targeted by neo-Nazis.
But this did not stop him from doing his work or dim his determination, our correspondent said.
English Auschwitz survivor dies
BBC News
Saturday, 8 March 2008
An Englishman who survived the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, and dedicated his life to telling the story of the Holocaust, has died aged 97. Leon Greenman was living in Holland with his Dutch wife Esther, and their son, when they were rounded up in 1943 and sent to the death camp in Poland.
His wife and three-year-old son Barney died there but London-born Mr Greenman survived six different death camps. Mr Greenman was freed when Buchenwald was liberated by the Americans in 1945.
Mr Greenman later said he had promised God if he lived, he would let the world know what happened during the war.
His first public speech took place in 1946 and in 1995 a permanent gallery telling his story was established at the Jewish Museum in north London. Three years later, he received an OBE for services against racism. Mr Greenman never remarried and spent his final years in Ilford, east London.
BBC Jerusalem correspondent Tim Franks, who interviewed Mr Greenman in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, said he literally lived behind bars there - with bars on the windows and his letterbox sealed - as he had been targeted by neo-Nazis.
But this did not stop him from doing his work or dim his determination, our correspondent said.
Poland to welcome expelled Jews
I didn't know about this expulsion but I can't say I'm that surprised.
Poland to welcome expelled Jews
Saturday, 8 March 2008,
BBC News
Poland's president has promised to restore citizenship to thousands of Jews who were expelled from the country by the communists in 1968. Lech Kaczynski described the decision to kick out about 15,000 Jews - many Holocaust survivors - as "shameful".
The purge followed nationwide student protests that began after a decision to close down a patriotic play. People of Jewish origin were blamed, stripped of Polish citizenship and ordered out of the country.
Police violently broke up a student demonstration at Warsaw University 40 years ago. It had been caused by the communist authorities' decision to close down a patriotic play by Poland's national poet, Adam Mickiewicz. The protests quickly spread across the country before being crushed with considerable violence.
Many of the students and professors were of Jewish origin and the communist party used that fact to purge Jews from public life. An estimated 15,000 people - half the country's Jewish population - were given a one-way ticket out of the country and stripped of their citizenship.
more...
Poland to welcome expelled Jews
Saturday, 8 March 2008,
BBC News
Poland's president has promised to restore citizenship to thousands of Jews who were expelled from the country by the communists in 1968. Lech Kaczynski described the decision to kick out about 15,000 Jews - many Holocaust survivors - as "shameful".
The purge followed nationwide student protests that began after a decision to close down a patriotic play. People of Jewish origin were blamed, stripped of Polish citizenship and ordered out of the country.
Police violently broke up a student demonstration at Warsaw University 40 years ago. It had been caused by the communist authorities' decision to close down a patriotic play by Poland's national poet, Adam Mickiewicz. The protests quickly spread across the country before being crushed with considerable violence.
Many of the students and professors were of Jewish origin and the communist party used that fact to purge Jews from public life. An estimated 15,000 people - half the country's Jewish population - were given a one-way ticket out of the country and stripped of their citizenship.
more...
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Quote of The Day
"there's something horrible and undefeatable about people who have no life except the worship of power . . . people who don't want the meeting to end, the people who just are unstoppable, who only have one focus, no humanity, no character, nothing but the worship of money and power. They win in the end."
Christopher Hitchens on Hillary Clinton
Christopher Hitchens on Hillary Clinton
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Rape conviction rates in the UK
Quite frequently the issue of low rape conviction rates crops up in the papers, the article below being typical (though not particularly recent) in its condemnation of this obvious 'problem'. I blog this now because of the big "hear, hear" due Mr Curnow, whose letter to the Guardian I also print below, and whose statement seems to me to be the most obvious common sense.
Rape conviction rates remain near record low
guardian.co.uk,
Friday July 20 2007
Rape conviction rates remain close to an all-time low despite efforts by the government, police and prosecutors to improve performance, according to Home Office research published today. The study into attrition rates for rape cases sampled 676 complaints from 2003-4 and found that 6% resulted in an offender being convicted. The report said the conviction rate in England and Wales rose to 13% when taking into account lesser offences such as indecent assault. But in rape cases there was virtually no change from the record low conviction rate of 5.5% reported two years ago by the Home Office. That compares to conviction rates of up to 32% in the 1970s.
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Guardian Letters 05/03/08
It's not surprising conviction rates for rape are low. The nature of the offence means trials are often a case of one person's word against another's. Physical evidence is rarely conclusive in establishing the absence of consent, which is the key issue. Under such circumstances, the requirement that the prosecution prove its case beyond reasonable doubt tends to produce a high acquittal rate.
Trevor Curnow
University of Cumbria
Rape conviction rates remain near record low
guardian.co.uk,
Friday July 20 2007
Rape conviction rates remain close to an all-time low despite efforts by the government, police and prosecutors to improve performance, according to Home Office research published today. The study into attrition rates for rape cases sampled 676 complaints from 2003-4 and found that 6% resulted in an offender being convicted. The report said the conviction rate in England and Wales rose to 13% when taking into account lesser offences such as indecent assault. But in rape cases there was virtually no change from the record low conviction rate of 5.5% reported two years ago by the Home Office. That compares to conviction rates of up to 32% in the 1970s.
-------------
Guardian Letters 05/03/08
It's not surprising conviction rates for rape are low. The nature of the offence means trials are often a case of one person's word against another's. Physical evidence is rarely conclusive in establishing the absence of consent, which is the key issue. Under such circumstances, the requirement that the prosecution prove its case beyond reasonable doubt tends to produce a high acquittal rate.
Trevor Curnow
University of Cumbria
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
'Fidel Castro - Hero of the Left or dangerous authoritarian dictator?'
This question was put to Labour MP Harriet Harman and her answer was 'Hero of the Left but time for Cuba to move on'. Now my most generous interpretation of her answer is that it is simply a statement of fact that much of the 'Left' (Ken Livingston, Galloway) regard Castro as a hero, but that he is not necessarily Harman's own personal hero. However, I fear that she meant he is a hero to all of the Left including herself.
This has wound up a number of Conservative and Liberal writers who see Castro as an authoritarian dictator who has been given a free pass by the Left.
For instance, Daniel Finkelstein writes an article in The Times about Harriet Harman's comment:
'I had a strange idea yesterday. I had the idea of inviting Harriet Harman home for dinner. This isn't a thought that occurs to me often, but I suddenly felt it might be fun.
I'd invite my Dad too. And then, when we'd given Harriet a nice meal (what do you think she likes to eat?), my father could tell her his story.
He could tell her how the Soviets and the Nazis closed in on his home town of Lvov in September 1939 and how the town council chose the Soviets to surrender to. Then he might tell her how the fathers of his friends were taken to the woods at Katyn and shot by the communists.
Background
He might recount the story of his father's arrest as an antisocial element, of Adolf Finkelstein's repeated interrogations leading to a trial in his absence and a jail sentence of 15 years' hard labour. Then Dad could tell the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party about his own experience as a child, exiled to a remote Siberian village. And how he and his mother and his father never saw their home again.
And, when he'd finished, he could let Harriet speak. And she could explain to Dad why she thinks that Fidel Castro is a hero.'
And on his blog Comment Central Daniel Finkelstein lists the reasons why Castro isn't a Hero to the Left:
'In an extraordinary statement Harriet Harman, Deputy leader of the Labour Party, says that she believes Fidel Castro to be a "hero of the left".
Here are the top ten reasons why she is wrong.
1. Hero of the left? In the 1960s, Cuba sent homosexuals to forced labour camps. Raul Castro was particularly active in this policy, reputedly because he looked effeminate at the time and wanted to seem more macho
2. Hero of the left? In 2003, Castro oversaw the execution of three men who had hijacked a ferry in a bid to escape from the island. Sounds pretty left wing to me.
3. Hero of the left? During the Cuban missile crisis, Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike on the American mainland. This is never mentioned by the anti-war campaigners who admire Castro.
4. Hero of the left? According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, in 2006 there were 316 political prisoners in Cuba.
5. Hero of the left? Independent labour unions are illegal in Cuba. Has Harriet told Jack Dromey?
6. Hero of the left? On January 19, 2003, an election was held for the Cuban National Assembly. There were 609 candidates —all supported by the regime— vying for 609 seats.
7. Hero of the left? The purchase of computers and access to the internet is severely restricted with many citizens using black market sources.
8. Hero of the left? In 2003, state security forces raided 22 independent libraries and sent 14 librarians to jail with terms of up to 26 years.
9. Hero of the left? Castro personally has been one of the most conservative forces in the Cuban government. Castro was fiercely opposed to economic reforms of Gorbachev. At the 4th Cuban Communist Party Congress in 1991, there was a movement for modest liberalisation of the economy - allowing limited market in agricultural products. Fidel immediately scotched any suggestion of it.
10. Hero of the left? Castro’s admirers talk about how the deployment of troops to Angola in 1975 helped defeat apartheid in South Africa. But they don’t discuss the other aspects of his Africa adventures. Notably, how he supported the despicable Mengistu in Ethiopia, which cost enormous number of lives during the war with Somalia.
Harriet Harman has made a dreadful error. She should apologise.'
This has wound up a number of Conservative and Liberal writers who see Castro as an authoritarian dictator who has been given a free pass by the Left.
For instance, Daniel Finkelstein writes an article in The Times about Harriet Harman's comment:
'I had a strange idea yesterday. I had the idea of inviting Harriet Harman home for dinner. This isn't a thought that occurs to me often, but I suddenly felt it might be fun.
I'd invite my Dad too. And then, when we'd given Harriet a nice meal (what do you think she likes to eat?), my father could tell her his story.
He could tell her how the Soviets and the Nazis closed in on his home town of Lvov in September 1939 and how the town council chose the Soviets to surrender to. Then he might tell her how the fathers of his friends were taken to the woods at Katyn and shot by the communists.
Background
He might recount the story of his father's arrest as an antisocial element, of Adolf Finkelstein's repeated interrogations leading to a trial in his absence and a jail sentence of 15 years' hard labour. Then Dad could tell the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party about his own experience as a child, exiled to a remote Siberian village. And how he and his mother and his father never saw their home again.
And, when he'd finished, he could let Harriet speak. And she could explain to Dad why she thinks that Fidel Castro is a hero.'
And on his blog Comment Central Daniel Finkelstein lists the reasons why Castro isn't a Hero to the Left:
'In an extraordinary statement Harriet Harman, Deputy leader of the Labour Party, says that she believes Fidel Castro to be a "hero of the left".
Here are the top ten reasons why she is wrong.
1. Hero of the left? In the 1960s, Cuba sent homosexuals to forced labour camps. Raul Castro was particularly active in this policy, reputedly because he looked effeminate at the time and wanted to seem more macho
2. Hero of the left? In 2003, Castro oversaw the execution of three men who had hijacked a ferry in a bid to escape from the island. Sounds pretty left wing to me.
3. Hero of the left? During the Cuban missile crisis, Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike on the American mainland. This is never mentioned by the anti-war campaigners who admire Castro.
4. Hero of the left? According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, in 2006 there were 316 political prisoners in Cuba.
5. Hero of the left? Independent labour unions are illegal in Cuba. Has Harriet told Jack Dromey?
6. Hero of the left? On January 19, 2003, an election was held for the Cuban National Assembly. There were 609 candidates —all supported by the regime— vying for 609 seats.
7. Hero of the left? The purchase of computers and access to the internet is severely restricted with many citizens using black market sources.
8. Hero of the left? In 2003, state security forces raided 22 independent libraries and sent 14 librarians to jail with terms of up to 26 years.
9. Hero of the left? Castro personally has been one of the most conservative forces in the Cuban government. Castro was fiercely opposed to economic reforms of Gorbachev. At the 4th Cuban Communist Party Congress in 1991, there was a movement for modest liberalisation of the economy - allowing limited market in agricultural products. Fidel immediately scotched any suggestion of it.
10. Hero of the left? Castro’s admirers talk about how the deployment of troops to Angola in 1975 helped defeat apartheid in South Africa. But they don’t discuss the other aspects of his Africa adventures. Notably, how he supported the despicable Mengistu in Ethiopia, which cost enormous number of lives during the war with Somalia.
Harriet Harman has made a dreadful error. She should apologise.'
Friday, February 22, 2008
Iraqi TV Debate: Is the Earth Flat?
Found by SG. Unbelievable. Watch to the end.
Best to watch it here:
Video - Iraqi TV Debate: Is the Earth Flat?
A debate between an Iraqi "Researcher on Astronomy" and a physicist on Iraqi television. Apparently, this is an important question in the Islamic world...
-From the transcript-
Interviewer: Lunar and solar eclipses, sunset and sunrise, and the changing of seasons -- how would you explain all these phenomena, if the Earth is not round, as you claim?
Fadhel Al-Sa'd: The sun circles the Earth because it is smaller than the Earth, as is evident in Koranic verses.
Have you ever seen how the sun moves? I have seen the sun moving. The sun makes one move every 24 hours.
What I say is based on Koranic science. He bases his arguments on the kind of science that I reject categorically -- the modern science that they teach in schools. This science is a heretic innovation that has no confirmation in the Koran. No verse in the Koran indicates that the Earth is round or that it rotates. Anything that has no indication in the Koran is false.
Comes from here originally:
Iraqi Researcher Defies Scientific Axioms: The Earth Is Flat and Much Larger than the Sun (Which Is Also Flat)
Memri
October 31, 2007
Best to watch it here:
Video - Iraqi TV Debate: Is the Earth Flat?
A debate between an Iraqi "Researcher on Astronomy" and a physicist on Iraqi television. Apparently, this is an important question in the Islamic world...
-From the transcript-
Interviewer: Lunar and solar eclipses, sunset and sunrise, and the changing of seasons -- how would you explain all these phenomena, if the Earth is not round, as you claim?
Fadhel Al-Sa'd: The sun circles the Earth because it is smaller than the Earth, as is evident in Koranic verses.
Have you ever seen how the sun moves? I have seen the sun moving. The sun makes one move every 24 hours.
What I say is based on Koranic science. He bases his arguments on the kind of science that I reject categorically -- the modern science that they teach in schools. This science is a heretic innovation that has no confirmation in the Koran. No verse in the Koran indicates that the Earth is round or that it rotates. Anything that has no indication in the Koran is false.
Comes from here originally:
Iraqi Researcher Defies Scientific Axioms: The Earth Is Flat and Much Larger than the Sun (Which Is Also Flat)
Memri
October 31, 2007
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The appalling neglect of Britain's armed forces
Difficult to see how even the most ardent Labour fan (Wembley?) can defend the appalling neglect of our armed forces.
Coroner: MoD guilty of unforgivable betrayal
Telegraph
15/02/2008
A coroner has accused the Government of causing an “unforgivable and inexcusable breach of trust” with the Armed Forces by sending soldiers into combat with “totally inadequate” equipment. Troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan were not defeated by terrorists but “by the lack of basic equipment,” Coroner Andrew Walker told the hearing into the death of the first British soldier to be killed in Helmand province.
Capt James Philippson and colleagues had been sent to fight the Taliban without night vision goggles (NVGs) and without adequate machine guns or grenade launchers which led to them being “outgunned by a bunch of renegades,” the inquest heard.
Oxford Coroners Court also heard that while the small British force in Sangin town had been equipped with .50 calibre heavy machine guns there was no device to mount the weapons on vehicles. Capt Philippson was killed in a firefight in which it was conceded that the British soldiers were “totally outgunned” by a smaller force of Taliban as they went to rescue ambushed colleagues on June 11 2006.
Major Jonathon Bristow, the commander of the 20 man patrol, said he had just three NVGs to go round his men whereas a small attached American unit had all the equipment they needed. He conceded that they could not adequately defend their base from attack and although he had requested eight general purpose machine guns the unit still only had three.
The coroner asked Major Bristow if they had been supplied with Minimi machine guns and under-slung grenade launchers, they would have been a match for their attackers. "It would have made a hell of a difference," he said. Asked if he had the right equipment if things might have turned out differently Major Bristow said: “We lost the initiative through a lack of firepower and thus the Taliban had a greater weight of firepower.”
Capt Philippson was killed in the opening salvo of the fight as the patrol stumbled on a dozen well-armed Taliban in the darkness around 10pm.It was conceded that “bad luck” played a major part in his death.
Outside the court Tony Philippson, the soldier's father, said it was a disgrace that troops had been sent to fight terrorists without sufficient kit. "I hold the MoD responsible for my son's death but in turn they were starved of cash". He accused the then “parsimonious” Chancellor Gordon Brown of not spending money and “risking soldiers' lives”.
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said the Coroner's findings were “a damning indictment on Labour's treatment of our Armed Forces”. "The Government were willing to do the one thing which is unforgivable which is to commit troops to battle without due protection," he said. The coroner recorded a verdict of unlawful killing with a single AK47 gunshot wound to the head the cause of death.
--------
Navy to cut its fleet by half
Telegraph
05/01/2007
Royal Navy commanders were in uproar yesterday after it was revealed that almost half of the Fleet's 44 warships are to be mothballed as part of a Ministry of Defence cost-cutting measure. Sailors standing on the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible, which may never go to sea again. Senior officers have said the plans will turn Britain's once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defence force.
Coroner: MoD guilty of unforgivable betrayal
Telegraph
15/02/2008
A coroner has accused the Government of causing an “unforgivable and inexcusable breach of trust” with the Armed Forces by sending soldiers into combat with “totally inadequate” equipment. Troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan were not defeated by terrorists but “by the lack of basic equipment,” Coroner Andrew Walker told the hearing into the death of the first British soldier to be killed in Helmand province.
Capt James Philippson and colleagues had been sent to fight the Taliban without night vision goggles (NVGs) and without adequate machine guns or grenade launchers which led to them being “outgunned by a bunch of renegades,” the inquest heard.
Oxford Coroners Court also heard that while the small British force in Sangin town had been equipped with .50 calibre heavy machine guns there was no device to mount the weapons on vehicles. Capt Philippson was killed in a firefight in which it was conceded that the British soldiers were “totally outgunned” by a smaller force of Taliban as they went to rescue ambushed colleagues on June 11 2006.
Major Jonathon Bristow, the commander of the 20 man patrol, said he had just three NVGs to go round his men whereas a small attached American unit had all the equipment they needed. He conceded that they could not adequately defend their base from attack and although he had requested eight general purpose machine guns the unit still only had three.
The coroner asked Major Bristow if they had been supplied with Minimi machine guns and under-slung grenade launchers, they would have been a match for their attackers. "It would have made a hell of a difference," he said. Asked if he had the right equipment if things might have turned out differently Major Bristow said: “We lost the initiative through a lack of firepower and thus the Taliban had a greater weight of firepower.”
Capt Philippson was killed in the opening salvo of the fight as the patrol stumbled on a dozen well-armed Taliban in the darkness around 10pm.It was conceded that “bad luck” played a major part in his death.
Outside the court Tony Philippson, the soldier's father, said it was a disgrace that troops had been sent to fight terrorists without sufficient kit. "I hold the MoD responsible for my son's death but in turn they were starved of cash". He accused the then “parsimonious” Chancellor Gordon Brown of not spending money and “risking soldiers' lives”.
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said the Coroner's findings were “a damning indictment on Labour's treatment of our Armed Forces”. "The Government were willing to do the one thing which is unforgivable which is to commit troops to battle without due protection," he said. The coroner recorded a verdict of unlawful killing with a single AK47 gunshot wound to the head the cause of death.
--------
Navy to cut its fleet by half
Telegraph
05/01/2007
Royal Navy commanders were in uproar yesterday after it was revealed that almost half of the Fleet's 44 warships are to be mothballed as part of a Ministry of Defence cost-cutting measure. Sailors standing on the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible, which may never go to sea again. Senior officers have said the plans will turn Britain's once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defence force.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Minister warns of ‘inbred’ Muslims
Minister warns of ‘inbred’ Muslims
The Sunday Times
February 10, 2008
A government minister has warned that inbreeding among immigrants is causing a surge in birth defects - comments likely to spark a new row over the place of Muslims in British society.
Phil Woolas, an environment minister, said the culture of arranged marriages between first cousins was the “elephant in the room”. Woolas, a former race relations minister, said: “If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there’ll be a genetic problem.”
The minister, whose views were supported by medical experts this weekend, said: “The issue we need to debate is first cousin marriages, whereby a lot of arranged marriages are with first cousins, and that produces lots of genetic problems in terms of disability [in children].”
Woolas emphasised the practice did not extend to all Muslim communities but was confined mainly to families originating from rural Pakistan. However, up to half of all marriages within these communities are estimated to involve first cousins.
Medical research suggests that while British Pakistanis are responsible for 3% of all births, they account for one in three British children born with genetic illnesses.
The Sunday Times
February 10, 2008
A government minister has warned that inbreeding among immigrants is causing a surge in birth defects - comments likely to spark a new row over the place of Muslims in British society.
Phil Woolas, an environment minister, said the culture of arranged marriages between first cousins was the “elephant in the room”. Woolas, a former race relations minister, said: “If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there’ll be a genetic problem.”
The minister, whose views were supported by medical experts this weekend, said: “The issue we need to debate is first cousin marriages, whereby a lot of arranged marriages are with first cousins, and that produces lots of genetic problems in terms of disability [in children].”
Woolas emphasised the practice did not extend to all Muslim communities but was confined mainly to families originating from rural Pakistan. However, up to half of all marriages within these communities are estimated to involve first cousins.
Medical research suggests that while British Pakistanis are responsible for 3% of all births, they account for one in three British children born with genetic illnesses.
Archbishop: Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'
Have decided to create a separate thread for this, as it's a big story, so am gonna try to move stuff from the original thread.
-----------------
Originally posted: February 07, 2008
Dan drew my attention to this story, and his pithy comment - what a fucking cock - is, for me, unimprovable.
Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'
BBC News
07/02/08
The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable". Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion. For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court. He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".
...
He stresses that "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".
But Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said "there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts - I think that's a bit of a danger".
-----------------
Originally posted: February 07, 2008
Dan drew my attention to this story, and his pithy comment - what a fucking cock - is, for me, unimprovable.
Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'
BBC News
07/02/08
The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable". Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion. For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court. He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".
...
He stresses that "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".
But Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said "there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts - I think that's a bit of a danger".
Monday, February 11, 2008
Red is banned till Friday
The following article has been published in The Saudi Gazette. It is absolutely fascinating that this is not a paragraph from some literary piece but actually taking place now, here, on this planet.
Red is Banned till Fri
By Suzan Zawawi
Saudi Gazette
11/01/08
RIYADH - Agents of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice visited flower and gift shops in the capital Saturday night to instruct them to remove all red items - from red roses and wrapping paper to boxes and teddy bears - from their shelves, shop workers said.
"They visited us last night," said a couple of florists Sunday morning.
"They gave us warnings and this morning we packed up all the red itmes and displays."The florists asked not to be identified.
Sunday was the last day people could buy red roses in Riyadh, until Valentine's Day on Feb. 14 passes.
Every year, Commission agents visit flower shops a couple of days before Feb. 14 to issue warnings. On the eve of Valentine's Day, they start their raids and confiscate any red items that are symbols of love, florists here said.
But as a result of the ban, there's a black market in red roses.
"A single rose costs around SR5-7 but today the same rose costs SR10 a piece and the price will go up to SR20-30 on Valentine's Day," said a florist who caters to customers on Valentine's Day from his apartment.
Loyal customers place orders with the florist days and sometimes weeks before Feb. 14. "Sometimes we deliver the bouquets in the middle of the night or early morning, to avoid suspicion," said the florist.
Islamic scholars around the Kingdom such as Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari preach that celebrating Valentine's Day and other non-Islamic celebrations is a sin. "As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women," Dossari, a scholar in Islamic Studies and the Shariah, said.
However, many young hearts are planning to celebrate in their own way, whether in secret, abroad or on the Web.
"I send e-cards to all my special friends online," said Famita Hakeem, a young Saudi university student.
"We are planning on going to Dubai Wednesday night to celebrate Valentine's Day as a couple," said Hannan Radi, a Saudi wife and teacher.
With Valentine's Day coinciding with the mid-term break, some Saudis have already left the Kingdom. With Bahrain so close to Al-Khobar, many Saudis who cannot travel further are planning on driving to Manama this weekend.
"I expect the bridge to be packed full," said Mahmood Naseeb, a Khobar resident.
"This happens every year on Valentine's Day but this year it might be worse because many people are on vacation."
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore - Christopher Hitchens
Andy just lent me a Christopher Hitchens book, Love, Poverty and War. It contains amongst other essays this blistering attack on Michael Moore.
Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore
By Christopher Hitchens
Slate
June 21, 2004
...
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
...
Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:
1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.
2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.
3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.
4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.
5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.
6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)
It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.
...
A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.
The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.
But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)
more
Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore
By Christopher Hitchens
Slate
June 21, 2004
...
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
...
Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:
1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.
2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.
3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.
4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.
5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.
6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)
It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.
...
A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.
The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.
But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)
more
Thursday, January 24, 2008
George Soros on the market crisis
The worst market crisis in 60 years
By George Soros --- Published: January 23 2008
The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.
However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.
Boom-bust processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive, circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more complicated case.
Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.
Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared.
The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility.
Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks' commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever befor e. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.
Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an en d.
Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.
The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.
The writer is chairman of Soros Fund Management
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Carla Bruni, aka Mrs Sarkozy
Here's Sarko's new bride. To be honest, she doesn't sound like ideal marriage material.
Profile: Carla Bruni
BBC News
15/1/08
French media are carrying reports that President Nicolas Sarkozy might have married his girlfriend, Carla Bruni, in secret. The BBC's Henri Astier profiles the glamorous French-Italian celebrity.
...
While still in her teens, Carla Bruni began modelling for top fashion houses. By 1990, she was among the world's highest-paid models. She went on to date a string of rock stars, actors and sundry glitterati.
Her list of former lovers is said to include Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Kevin Costner, Vincent Perez, Donald Trump and former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. She told Le Figaro Madame magazine last year that she became easily "bored with monogamy", adding: "Love lasts a long time, but burning desire - two to three weeks."
------------------
On the other hand, there are compensations.
Profile: Carla Bruni
BBC News
15/1/08
French media are carrying reports that President Nicolas Sarkozy might have married his girlfriend, Carla Bruni, in secret. The BBC's Henri Astier profiles the glamorous French-Italian celebrity.
...
While still in her teens, Carla Bruni began modelling for top fashion houses. By 1990, she was among the world's highest-paid models. She went on to date a string of rock stars, actors and sundry glitterati.
Her list of former lovers is said to include Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Kevin Costner, Vincent Perez, Donald Trump and former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. She told Le Figaro Madame magazine last year that she became easily "bored with monogamy", adding: "Love lasts a long time, but burning desire - two to three weeks."
------------------
On the other hand, there are compensations.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Iraq: Mosul Dam catastrophe looms
Saddam's Damn Dam
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
November 7, 2007
The surge of U.S. troops in Baghdad is succeeding but deeper structural problems continue to plague the American presence in Iraq. The country's largest dam, 40 kilometers northwest of Mosul, near the Turkish border, spectacularly symbolizes this predicament.
Just after occupying Iraq in April 2003, a report found that Mosul Dam's foundation was "leaking like a sieve and ready to collapse." A more recent, still-classified report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concludes that "The dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability." More explicitly, the corps finds the current probability of failure to be "exceptionally high." A senior aid worker calls the dam "a time bomb waiting to go off."
Mosul Dam, formerly known as Saddam Dam (Arabic: Sadd Saddam) is in danger of collapse. That's because the dam was built on unstable bedrock of gypsum that requires a constant infusion of grout to prevent the foundation from eroding and the giant earthen wall from collapsing. Over the years, engineers have pumped into the foundation more than 50,000 tons of a bentonite, cement, water, and air mixture. As the Washington Post explains, "Twenty-four clanging machines churn 24 hours a day to pump grout deep into the dam's base. And sinkholes form periodically as the gypsum dissolves beneath the structure."
Despite these efforts, the dam's condition continues to deteriorate, raising the prospect of its complete collapse. Were this to happen with a reservoir full of water, predicts Engineering News--Record, "as much as 12.5 billion cubic meters of water pooled behind the 3.2-km-long earth-filled impoundment [would go] thundering down the Tigris River Valley toward Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. The wave behind the 110-meter-high crest would take about two hours to reach the city of 1.7 million." In addition, parts of Baghdad (population 7 million) would come under 5 meters of water.
The Army Corps estimates the flood would kill a half-million people immediately, while the aftershocks, such as power outage and drought, would kill many more. (Not coincidentally, Iraq was the site of Noah's Ark.) It would likely be the largest human-induced single loss of life in history.
more...
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
November 7, 2007
The surge of U.S. troops in Baghdad is succeeding but deeper structural problems continue to plague the American presence in Iraq. The country's largest dam, 40 kilometers northwest of Mosul, near the Turkish border, spectacularly symbolizes this predicament.
Just after occupying Iraq in April 2003, a report found that Mosul Dam's foundation was "leaking like a sieve and ready to collapse." A more recent, still-classified report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concludes that "The dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability." More explicitly, the corps finds the current probability of failure to be "exceptionally high." A senior aid worker calls the dam "a time bomb waiting to go off."
Mosul Dam, formerly known as Saddam Dam (Arabic: Sadd Saddam) is in danger of collapse. That's because the dam was built on unstable bedrock of gypsum that requires a constant infusion of grout to prevent the foundation from eroding and the giant earthen wall from collapsing. Over the years, engineers have pumped into the foundation more than 50,000 tons of a bentonite, cement, water, and air mixture. As the Washington Post explains, "Twenty-four clanging machines churn 24 hours a day to pump grout deep into the dam's base. And sinkholes form periodically as the gypsum dissolves beneath the structure."
Despite these efforts, the dam's condition continues to deteriorate, raising the prospect of its complete collapse. Were this to happen with a reservoir full of water, predicts Engineering News--Record, "as much as 12.5 billion cubic meters of water pooled behind the 3.2-km-long earth-filled impoundment [would go] thundering down the Tigris River Valley toward Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. The wave behind the 110-meter-high crest would take about two hours to reach the city of 1.7 million." In addition, parts of Baghdad (population 7 million) would come under 5 meters of water.
The Army Corps estimates the flood would kill a half-million people immediately, while the aftershocks, such as power outage and drought, would kill many more. (Not coincidentally, Iraq was the site of Noah's Ark.) It would likely be the largest human-induced single loss of life in history.
more...
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Independence for Scotland - how would it work?
A Scottish divorce... who gets the kids?
6/12/07
BBC
It's the divorce settlement from hell. With no pre-nuptial agreement in place, exactly how would Scotland withdraw from the UK, asks Chris Bowlby.
With the Scottish National Party in power in the Edinburgh devolved parliament, talk of independence is back on the agenda. Some remain sceptical that Scottish voters would back such a plan, but the SNP believes it will happen within a decade. From carving up the family property to whose head appears on Scottish stamps, how might it work?
DIVIDING UP THE FAMILY PROPERTY
Oil matters hugely to Scottish nationalists, and most experts assume that, with the North Sea oil fields in Scottish waters, Scotland would get up to 95% of UK oil reserves, and nearer half of the gas. Natural resources would stay where they lie, but all other property is usually divided in these circumstances - as it was when the Czech Republic and Slovakia split in 1992 - according to population share.
That would mean Scotland laying claim to 8 or 9% of all the UK's assets, but valuable shared institutions - such as the security services - are physically sited almost exclusively in England. Most of the UK's wealth can't simply be carted off north of the border so a compensation deal would need to be thrashed out.
Moveable property would need allocating. The Czechs and Slovaks haggled over everything from state airline aircraft to works of art to the contents of every Czechoslovak embassy abroad. What would be Scotland's share of, say, the prestigious British embassy buildings and furnishings in Paris or Washington? And the BBC?
more...
6/12/07
BBC
It's the divorce settlement from hell. With no pre-nuptial agreement in place, exactly how would Scotland withdraw from the UK, asks Chris Bowlby.
With the Scottish National Party in power in the Edinburgh devolved parliament, talk of independence is back on the agenda. Some remain sceptical that Scottish voters would back such a plan, but the SNP believes it will happen within a decade. From carving up the family property to whose head appears on Scottish stamps, how might it work?
DIVIDING UP THE FAMILY PROPERTY
Oil matters hugely to Scottish nationalists, and most experts assume that, with the North Sea oil fields in Scottish waters, Scotland would get up to 95% of UK oil reserves, and nearer half of the gas. Natural resources would stay where they lie, but all other property is usually divided in these circumstances - as it was when the Czech Republic and Slovakia split in 1992 - according to population share.
That would mean Scotland laying claim to 8 or 9% of all the UK's assets, but valuable shared institutions - such as the security services - are physically sited almost exclusively in England. Most of the UK's wealth can't simply be carted off north of the border so a compensation deal would need to be thrashed out.
Moveable property would need allocating. The Czechs and Slovaks haggled over everything from state airline aircraft to works of art to the contents of every Czechoslovak embassy abroad. What would be Scotland's share of, say, the prestigious British embassy buildings and furnishings in Paris or Washington? And the BBC?
more...
Monday, November 12, 2007
'Che never met God'
The libertian blog Samizdata quotes a funny story from the Times about what happened when Che Guevara's children celebrated their father's anniversary in Iran:
A glorious culture clash took place in Iran recently that made me laugh out loud. The children of Che Guevara, the revolutionary pin-up, had been invited to Tehran University to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their father’s death and celebrate the growing solidarity between "the left and revolutionary Islam" at a conference partly paid for by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.
There were fraternal greetings and smiles all round as America's "earth-devouring ambitions" were denounced. But then one of the speakers, Hajj Saeed Qassemi, the co-ordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom (who presumably remains selflessly alive for the cause), revealed that Che was a "truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union".
Che's daughter Aleida wondered if something might have been lost in translation. "My father never mentioned God," she said, to the consternation of the audience. "He never met God." During the commotion, Aleida and her brother were led swiftly out of the hall and escorted back to their hotel. "By the end of the day, the two Guevaras had become non-persons. The state-controlled media suddenly forgot their existence," the Iranian writer Amir Taheri noted.
After their departure, Qassemi went on to claim that Fidel Castro, the "supreme guide" of Guevara, was also a man of God. "The Soviet Union is gone," he affirmed. "The leadership of the downtrodden has passed to our Islamic republic. Those who wish to destroy America must understand the reality and not be clever with words."
Don't say you haven't been warned, comrade, when you flirt with "revolutionary Islam" as if it were a mild form of liberation theology. ...
A glorious culture clash took place in Iran recently that made me laugh out loud. The children of Che Guevara, the revolutionary pin-up, had been invited to Tehran University to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their father’s death and celebrate the growing solidarity between "the left and revolutionary Islam" at a conference partly paid for by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.
There were fraternal greetings and smiles all round as America's "earth-devouring ambitions" were denounced. But then one of the speakers, Hajj Saeed Qassemi, the co-ordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom (who presumably remains selflessly alive for the cause), revealed that Che was a "truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union".
Che's daughter Aleida wondered if something might have been lost in translation. "My father never mentioned God," she said, to the consternation of the audience. "He never met God." During the commotion, Aleida and her brother were led swiftly out of the hall and escorted back to their hotel. "By the end of the day, the two Guevaras had become non-persons. The state-controlled media suddenly forgot their existence," the Iranian writer Amir Taheri noted.
After their departure, Qassemi went on to claim that Fidel Castro, the "supreme guide" of Guevara, was also a man of God. "The Soviet Union is gone," he affirmed. "The leadership of the downtrodden has passed to our Islamic republic. Those who wish to destroy America must understand the reality and not be clever with words."
Don't say you haven't been warned, comrade, when you flirt with "revolutionary Islam" as if it were a mild form of liberation theology. ...
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The Israel Lobby in U.S. Strategy
Essential reading:
The Israel Lobby in U.S. Strategy
By George Friedman
Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report
04/09/07
U.S. President George W. Bush made an appearance in Iraq's restive Anbar province on Sept. 3 -- in part to tout the success of the military surge there ahead of the presentation in Washington of the Petraeus report. For the next month or two, the battle over Iraq will be waged in Washington -- and one country will come up over and over again, from any number of directions: Israel. Israel will be invoked as an ally in the war on terrorism -- the reason the United States is in the war in the first place. Some will say that Israel maneuvered the United States into Iraq to serve its own purposes. Some will say it orchestrated 9/11 for its own ends. Others will say that, had the United States supported Israel more resolutely, there would not have been a 9/11.
There is probably no relationship on which people have more diverging views than on that between the United States and Israel. Therefore, since it is going to be invoked in the coming weeks -- and Bush is taking a fairly irrelevant pause at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Australia -- this is an opportune time to consider the geopolitics of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Let's begin with some obvious political points. There is a relatively small Jewish community in the United States, though its political influence is magnified by its strategic location in critical states such as New York and the fact that it is more actively involved in politics than some other ethnic groups.
The Jewish community, as tends to be the case with groups, is deeply divided on many issues. It tends to be united on one issue -- Israel -- but not with the same intensity as in the past, nor with even a semblance of agreement on the specifics. The American Jewish community is as divided as the Israeli Jewish community, with a large segment of people who don't much care thrown in. At the same time, this community donates large sums of money to American and Israeli organizations, including groups that lobby on behalf of Israeli issues in Washington. These lobbying entities lean toward the right wing of Israel's political spectrum, in large part because the Israeli right has tended to govern in the past generation and these groups tend to follow the dominant Israeli strand. It also is because American Jews who contribute to Israel lobby organizations lean right in both Israeli and American politics.
The Israel lobby, which has a great deal of money and experience, is extremely influential in Washington. For decades now, it has done a good job of ensuring that Israeli interests are attended to in Washington, and certainly on some issues it has skewed U.S. policy on the Middle East. There are Jews who practice being shocked at this assertion, but they must not be taken seriously. They know better, which is why they donate money. Others pretend to be shocked at the idea of a lobbyist influencing U.S. policy on the Middle East, but they also need not be taken seriously, because they are trying to influence Washington as well, though they are not as successful. Obviously there is an influential Israel lobby in Washington.
There are, however, two important questions. The first is whether this is in any way unique. Is a strong Israel lobby an unprecedented intrusion into foreign policy? The key question, though, is whether Israeli interests diverge from U.S. interests to the extent that the Israel lobby is taking U.S. foreign policy in directions it wouldn't go otherwise, in directions that counter the U.S. national interest.
Begin with the first question. Prior to both World wars there was extensive debate on whether the United States should intervene in the war. In both cases, the British government lobbied extensively for U.S. intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom. The British made two arguments. The first was that the United States shared a heritage with England -- code for the idea that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants should stand with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The second was that there was a fundamental political affinity between British and U.S. democracy and that it was in the U.S. interest to protect British democracy from German authoritarianism.
Many Americans, including President Franklin Roosevelt, believed both arguments. The British lobby was quite powerful. There was a German lobby as well, but it lacked the numbers, the money and the traditions to draw on.
From a geopolitical point of view, both arguments were weak. The United States and the United Kingdom not only were separate countries, they had fought some bitter wars over the question. As for political institutions, geopolitics, as a method, is fairly insensitive to the moral claims of regimes. It works on the basis of interest. On that basis, an intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom in both wars made sense because it provided a relatively low-cost way of preventing Germany from dominating Europe and challenging American sea power. In the end, it wasn't the lobbying interest, massive though it was, but geopolitical necessity that drove U.S. intervention.
The second question, then, is: Has the Israel lobby caused the United States to act in ways that contravene U.S. interests? For example, by getting the United States to support Israel, did it turn the Arab world against the Americans? Did it support Israeli repression of Palestinians, and thereby generate an Islamist radicalism that led to 9/11? Did it manipulate U.S. policy on Iraq so that the United States invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel? These allegations have all been made. If true, they are very serious charges.
It is important to remember that U.S.-Israeli ties were not extraordinarily close prior to 1967. President Harry Truman recognized Israel, but the United States had not provided major military aid and support. Israel, always in need of an outside supply of weapons, first depended on the Soviet Union, which shipped weapons to Israel via Czechoslovakia. When the Soviets realized that Israeli socialists were anti-Soviet as well, they dropped Israel. Israel's next patron was France. France was fighting to hold on to Algeria and maintain its influence in Lebanon and Syria, both former French protectorates. The French saw Israel as a natural ally. It was France that really created the Israeli air force and provided the first technology for Israeli nuclear weapons.
The United States was actively hostile to Israel during this period. In 1956, following Gamal Abdul Nasser's seizure of power in Egypt, Cairo nationalized the Suez Canal. Without the canal, the British Empire was finished, and ultimately the French were as well. The United Kingdom and France worked secretly with Israel, and Israel invaded the Sinai. Then, in order to protect the Suez Canal from an Israeli-Egyptian war, a Franco-British force parachuted in to seize the canal. President Dwight Eisenhower forced the British and French to withdraw -- as well as the Israelis. U.S.-Israeli relations remained chilly for quite a while.
The break point with France came in 1967. The Israelis, under pressure from Egypt, decided to invade Egypt, Jordan and Syria -- ignoring French President Charles de Gaulle's demand that they not do so. As a result, France broke its alignment with Israel. This was the critical moment in U.S.-Israeli relations. Israel needed a source of weaponry as its national security needs vastly outstripped its industrial base. It was at this point that the Israel lobby in the United States became critical. Israel wanted a relationship with the United States and the Israel lobby brought tremendous pressure to bear, picturing Israel as a heroic, embattled democracy, surrounded by bloodthirsty neighbors, badly needing U.S. help. President Lyndon B. Johnson, bogged down in Vietnam and wanting to shore up his base, saw a popular cause in Israel and tilted toward it.
But there were critical strategic issues as well. Syria and Iraq had both shifted into the pro-Soviet camp, as had Egypt. Some have argued that, had the United States not supported Israel, this would not have happened. This, however, runs in the face of history. It was the United States that forced the Israelis out of the Sinai in 1956, but the Egyptians moved into the Soviet camp anyway. The argument that it was uncritical support for Israel that caused anti-Americanism in the Arab world doesn't hold water. The Egyptians became anti-American in spite of an essentially anti-Israeli position in 1956. By 1957 Egypt was a Soviet ally.
The Americans ultimately tilted toward Israel because of this, not the other way around. Egypt was not only providing the Soviets with naval and air bases, but also was running covert operations in the Arabian Peninsula to bring down the conservative sheikhdoms there, including Saudi Arabia's. The Soviets were seen as using Egypt as a base of operations against the United States. Syria was seen as another dangerous radical power, along with Iraq. The defense of the Arabian Peninsula from radical, pro-Soviet Arab movements, as well as the defense of Jordan, became a central interest of the United States.
Israel was seen as contributing by threatening the security of both Egypt and Syria. The Saudi fear of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was palpable. Riyadh saw the Soviet-inspired liberation movements as threatening Saudi Arabia's survival. Israel was engaged in a covert war against the PLO and related groups, and that was exactly what the Saudis wanted from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. Israel's covert capability against the PLO, coupled with its overt military power against Egypt and Syria, was very much in the American interest and that of its Arab allies. It was a low-cost solution to some very difficult strategic problems at a time when the United States was either in Vietnam or recovering from the war.
The occupation of the Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights in 1967 was not in the U.S. interest. The United States wanted Israel to carry out its mission against Soviet-backed paramilitaries and tie down Egypt and Syria, but the occupation was not seen as part of that mission. The Israelis initially expected to convert their occupation of the territories into a peace treaty, but that only happened, much later, with Egypt. At the Khartoum summit in 1967, the Arabs delivered the famous three noes: No negotiation. No recognition. No peace. Israel became an occupying power. It has never found its balance.
The claim has been made that if the United States forced the Israelis out of the West Bank and Gaza, then it would receive credit and peace would follow. There are three problems with that theory. First, the Israelis did not occupy these areas prior to 1967 and there was no peace. Second, groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have said that a withdrawal would not end the state of war with Israel. And therefore, third, the withdrawal would create friction with Israel without any clear payoff from the Arabs.
It must be remembered that Egypt and Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel and seem not to care one whit about the Palestinians. The Saudis have never risked a thing for the Palestinians, nor have the Iranians. The Syrians have, but they are far more interested in investing in Beirut hotels than in invading Israel. No Arab state is interested in the Palestinians, except for those that are actively hostile. There is Arab and Islamic public opinion and nonstate organizations, but none would be satisfied with Israeli withdrawal. They want Israel destroyed. Even if the United States withdrew all support for Israel, however, Israel would not be destroyed. The radical Arabs do not want withdrawal; they want destruction. And the moderate Arabs don't care about the Palestinians beyond rhetoric.
Now we get to the heart of the matter. If the United States broke ties with Israel, would the U.S. geopolitical position be improved? In other words, if it broke with Israel, would Iran or al Qaeda come to view the United States in a different way? Critics of the Israel lobby argue that, except for U.S. support for Israel, the United States would have better relations in the Muslim world, and would not be targeted by al Qaeda or threatened by Iran. In other words, except for the Israel lobby's influence, the United States would be much more secure.
Al Qaeda does not see Israel by itself as its central problem. Its goal is the resurrection of the caliphate -- and it sees U.S. support for Muslim regimes as the central problem. If the United States abandoned Israel, al Qaeda would still confront U.S. support for countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. For al Qaeda, Israel is an important issue, but for the United States to soothe al Qaeda, it would have to abandon not only Israel, but its non-Islamist allies in the Middle East.
As for Iran, the Iranian rhetoric, as we have said, has never been matched by action. During the Iran-Iraq War, the Iranian military purchased weapons and parts from the Israelis. It was more delighted than anyone when Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. Iran's problem with the United States is its presence in Iraq, its naval presence in the Persian Gulf and its support for the Kurds. If Israel disappeared from the face of the Earth, Iran's problems would remain the same.
It has been said that the Israelis inspired the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There is no doubt that Israel was pleased when, after 9/11, the United States saw itself as an anti-Islamist power. Let us remind our more creative readers, however, that benefiting from something does not mean you caused it. However, it has never been clear that the Israelis were all that enthusiastic about invading Iraq. Neoconservative Jews like Paul Wolfowitz were enthusiastic, as were non-Jews like Dick Cheney. But the Israeli view of a U.S. invasion of Iraq was at most mixed, and to some extent dubious. The Israelis liked the Iran-Iraq balance of power and were close allies of Turkey, which certainly opposed the invasion. The claim that Israel supported the invasion comes from those who mistake neoconservatives, many of whom are Jews who support Israel, with Israeli foreign policy, which was much more nuanced than the neoconservatives. The Israelis were not at all clear about what the Americans were doing in Iraq, but they were in no position to complain.
Israeli-U.S. relations have gone through three phases. From 1948 to 1967, the United States supported Israel's right to exist but was not its patron. In the 1967-1991 period, the Israelis were a key American asset in the Cold War. From 1991 to the present, the relationship has remained close but it is not pivotal to either country. Washington cannot help Israel with Hezbollah or Hamas. The Israelis cannot help the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan. If the relationship were severed, it would have remarkably little impact on either country -- though keeping the relationship is more valuable than severing it.
To sum up: There is a powerful Jewish, pro-Israel lobby in Washington, though it was not very successful in the first 20 years or so of Israel's history. When U.S. policy toward Israel swung in 1967 it had far more to do with geopolitical interests than with lobbying. The United States needed help with Egypt and Syria and Israel could provide it. Lobbying appeared to be the key, but it wasn't; geopolitical necessity was. Egypt was anti-American even when the United States was anti-Israeli. Al Qaeda would be anti-American even if the United States were anti-Israel. Rhetoric aside, Iran has never taken direct action against Israel and has much more important things on its plate.
Portraying the Israel lobby as super-powerful behooves two groups: Critics of U.S. Middle Eastern policy and the Israel lobby itself. Critics get to say the U.S. relationship with Israel is the result of manipulation and corruption. Thus, they get to avoid discussing the actual history of Israel, the United States and the Middle East. The lobby benefits from having robust power because one of its jobs is to raise funds -- and the image of a killer lobby opens a lot more pocketbooks than does the idea that both Israel and the United States are simply pursuing their geopolitical interests and that things would go on pretty much the same even without slick lobbying.
The great irony is that the critics of U.S. policy and the Israel lobby both want to believe in the same myth -- that great powers can be manipulated to harm themselves by crafty politicians. The British didn't get the United States into the world wars, and the Israelis aren't maneuvering the Americans into being pro-Israel. Beyond its ability to exert itself on small things, the Israel lobby is powerful in influencing Washington to do what it is going to do anyway. What happens next in Iraq is not up to the Israel lobby -- though it and the Saudi Embassy have a different story.
The Israel Lobby in U.S. Strategy
By George Friedman
Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report
04/09/07
U.S. President George W. Bush made an appearance in Iraq's restive Anbar province on Sept. 3 -- in part to tout the success of the military surge there ahead of the presentation in Washington of the Petraeus report. For the next month or two, the battle over Iraq will be waged in Washington -- and one country will come up over and over again, from any number of directions: Israel. Israel will be invoked as an ally in the war on terrorism -- the reason the United States is in the war in the first place. Some will say that Israel maneuvered the United States into Iraq to serve its own purposes. Some will say it orchestrated 9/11 for its own ends. Others will say that, had the United States supported Israel more resolutely, there would not have been a 9/11.
There is probably no relationship on which people have more diverging views than on that between the United States and Israel. Therefore, since it is going to be invoked in the coming weeks -- and Bush is taking a fairly irrelevant pause at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Australia -- this is an opportune time to consider the geopolitics of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Let's begin with some obvious political points. There is a relatively small Jewish community in the United States, though its political influence is magnified by its strategic location in critical states such as New York and the fact that it is more actively involved in politics than some other ethnic groups.
The Jewish community, as tends to be the case with groups, is deeply divided on many issues. It tends to be united on one issue -- Israel -- but not with the same intensity as in the past, nor with even a semblance of agreement on the specifics. The American Jewish community is as divided as the Israeli Jewish community, with a large segment of people who don't much care thrown in. At the same time, this community donates large sums of money to American and Israeli organizations, including groups that lobby on behalf of Israeli issues in Washington. These lobbying entities lean toward the right wing of Israel's political spectrum, in large part because the Israeli right has tended to govern in the past generation and these groups tend to follow the dominant Israeli strand. It also is because American Jews who contribute to Israel lobby organizations lean right in both Israeli and American politics.
The Israel lobby, which has a great deal of money and experience, is extremely influential in Washington. For decades now, it has done a good job of ensuring that Israeli interests are attended to in Washington, and certainly on some issues it has skewed U.S. policy on the Middle East. There are Jews who practice being shocked at this assertion, but they must not be taken seriously. They know better, which is why they donate money. Others pretend to be shocked at the idea of a lobbyist influencing U.S. policy on the Middle East, but they also need not be taken seriously, because they are trying to influence Washington as well, though they are not as successful. Obviously there is an influential Israel lobby in Washington.
There are, however, two important questions. The first is whether this is in any way unique. Is a strong Israel lobby an unprecedented intrusion into foreign policy? The key question, though, is whether Israeli interests diverge from U.S. interests to the extent that the Israel lobby is taking U.S. foreign policy in directions it wouldn't go otherwise, in directions that counter the U.S. national interest.
Begin with the first question. Prior to both World wars there was extensive debate on whether the United States should intervene in the war. In both cases, the British government lobbied extensively for U.S. intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom. The British made two arguments. The first was that the United States shared a heritage with England -- code for the idea that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants should stand with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The second was that there was a fundamental political affinity between British and U.S. democracy and that it was in the U.S. interest to protect British democracy from German authoritarianism.
Many Americans, including President Franklin Roosevelt, believed both arguments. The British lobby was quite powerful. There was a German lobby as well, but it lacked the numbers, the money and the traditions to draw on.
From a geopolitical point of view, both arguments were weak. The United States and the United Kingdom not only were separate countries, they had fought some bitter wars over the question. As for political institutions, geopolitics, as a method, is fairly insensitive to the moral claims of regimes. It works on the basis of interest. On that basis, an intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom in both wars made sense because it provided a relatively low-cost way of preventing Germany from dominating Europe and challenging American sea power. In the end, it wasn't the lobbying interest, massive though it was, but geopolitical necessity that drove U.S. intervention.
The second question, then, is: Has the Israel lobby caused the United States to act in ways that contravene U.S. interests? For example, by getting the United States to support Israel, did it turn the Arab world against the Americans? Did it support Israeli repression of Palestinians, and thereby generate an Islamist radicalism that led to 9/11? Did it manipulate U.S. policy on Iraq so that the United States invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel? These allegations have all been made. If true, they are very serious charges.
It is important to remember that U.S.-Israeli ties were not extraordinarily close prior to 1967. President Harry Truman recognized Israel, but the United States had not provided major military aid and support. Israel, always in need of an outside supply of weapons, first depended on the Soviet Union, which shipped weapons to Israel via Czechoslovakia. When the Soviets realized that Israeli socialists were anti-Soviet as well, they dropped Israel. Israel's next patron was France. France was fighting to hold on to Algeria and maintain its influence in Lebanon and Syria, both former French protectorates. The French saw Israel as a natural ally. It was France that really created the Israeli air force and provided the first technology for Israeli nuclear weapons.
The United States was actively hostile to Israel during this period. In 1956, following Gamal Abdul Nasser's seizure of power in Egypt, Cairo nationalized the Suez Canal. Without the canal, the British Empire was finished, and ultimately the French were as well. The United Kingdom and France worked secretly with Israel, and Israel invaded the Sinai. Then, in order to protect the Suez Canal from an Israeli-Egyptian war, a Franco-British force parachuted in to seize the canal. President Dwight Eisenhower forced the British and French to withdraw -- as well as the Israelis. U.S.-Israeli relations remained chilly for quite a while.
The break point with France came in 1967. The Israelis, under pressure from Egypt, decided to invade Egypt, Jordan and Syria -- ignoring French President Charles de Gaulle's demand that they not do so. As a result, France broke its alignment with Israel. This was the critical moment in U.S.-Israeli relations. Israel needed a source of weaponry as its national security needs vastly outstripped its industrial base. It was at this point that the Israel lobby in the United States became critical. Israel wanted a relationship with the United States and the Israel lobby brought tremendous pressure to bear, picturing Israel as a heroic, embattled democracy, surrounded by bloodthirsty neighbors, badly needing U.S. help. President Lyndon B. Johnson, bogged down in Vietnam and wanting to shore up his base, saw a popular cause in Israel and tilted toward it.
But there were critical strategic issues as well. Syria and Iraq had both shifted into the pro-Soviet camp, as had Egypt. Some have argued that, had the United States not supported Israel, this would not have happened. This, however, runs in the face of history. It was the United States that forced the Israelis out of the Sinai in 1956, but the Egyptians moved into the Soviet camp anyway. The argument that it was uncritical support for Israel that caused anti-Americanism in the Arab world doesn't hold water. The Egyptians became anti-American in spite of an essentially anti-Israeli position in 1956. By 1957 Egypt was a Soviet ally.
The Americans ultimately tilted toward Israel because of this, not the other way around. Egypt was not only providing the Soviets with naval and air bases, but also was running covert operations in the Arabian Peninsula to bring down the conservative sheikhdoms there, including Saudi Arabia's. The Soviets were seen as using Egypt as a base of operations against the United States. Syria was seen as another dangerous radical power, along with Iraq. The defense of the Arabian Peninsula from radical, pro-Soviet Arab movements, as well as the defense of Jordan, became a central interest of the United States.
Israel was seen as contributing by threatening the security of both Egypt and Syria. The Saudi fear of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was palpable. Riyadh saw the Soviet-inspired liberation movements as threatening Saudi Arabia's survival. Israel was engaged in a covert war against the PLO and related groups, and that was exactly what the Saudis wanted from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. Israel's covert capability against the PLO, coupled with its overt military power against Egypt and Syria, was very much in the American interest and that of its Arab allies. It was a low-cost solution to some very difficult strategic problems at a time when the United States was either in Vietnam or recovering from the war.
The occupation of the Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights in 1967 was not in the U.S. interest. The United States wanted Israel to carry out its mission against Soviet-backed paramilitaries and tie down Egypt and Syria, but the occupation was not seen as part of that mission. The Israelis initially expected to convert their occupation of the territories into a peace treaty, but that only happened, much later, with Egypt. At the Khartoum summit in 1967, the Arabs delivered the famous three noes: No negotiation. No recognition. No peace. Israel became an occupying power. It has never found its balance.
The claim has been made that if the United States forced the Israelis out of the West Bank and Gaza, then it would receive credit and peace would follow. There are three problems with that theory. First, the Israelis did not occupy these areas prior to 1967 and there was no peace. Second, groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have said that a withdrawal would not end the state of war with Israel. And therefore, third, the withdrawal would create friction with Israel without any clear payoff from the Arabs.
It must be remembered that Egypt and Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel and seem not to care one whit about the Palestinians. The Saudis have never risked a thing for the Palestinians, nor have the Iranians. The Syrians have, but they are far more interested in investing in Beirut hotels than in invading Israel. No Arab state is interested in the Palestinians, except for those that are actively hostile. There is Arab and Islamic public opinion and nonstate organizations, but none would be satisfied with Israeli withdrawal. They want Israel destroyed. Even if the United States withdrew all support for Israel, however, Israel would not be destroyed. The radical Arabs do not want withdrawal; they want destruction. And the moderate Arabs don't care about the Palestinians beyond rhetoric.
Now we get to the heart of the matter. If the United States broke ties with Israel, would the U.S. geopolitical position be improved? In other words, if it broke with Israel, would Iran or al Qaeda come to view the United States in a different way? Critics of the Israel lobby argue that, except for U.S. support for Israel, the United States would have better relations in the Muslim world, and would not be targeted by al Qaeda or threatened by Iran. In other words, except for the Israel lobby's influence, the United States would be much more secure.
Al Qaeda does not see Israel by itself as its central problem. Its goal is the resurrection of the caliphate -- and it sees U.S. support for Muslim regimes as the central problem. If the United States abandoned Israel, al Qaeda would still confront U.S. support for countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. For al Qaeda, Israel is an important issue, but for the United States to soothe al Qaeda, it would have to abandon not only Israel, but its non-Islamist allies in the Middle East.
As for Iran, the Iranian rhetoric, as we have said, has never been matched by action. During the Iran-Iraq War, the Iranian military purchased weapons and parts from the Israelis. It was more delighted than anyone when Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. Iran's problem with the United States is its presence in Iraq, its naval presence in the Persian Gulf and its support for the Kurds. If Israel disappeared from the face of the Earth, Iran's problems would remain the same.
It has been said that the Israelis inspired the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There is no doubt that Israel was pleased when, after 9/11, the United States saw itself as an anti-Islamist power. Let us remind our more creative readers, however, that benefiting from something does not mean you caused it. However, it has never been clear that the Israelis were all that enthusiastic about invading Iraq. Neoconservative Jews like Paul Wolfowitz were enthusiastic, as were non-Jews like Dick Cheney. But the Israeli view of a U.S. invasion of Iraq was at most mixed, and to some extent dubious. The Israelis liked the Iran-Iraq balance of power and were close allies of Turkey, which certainly opposed the invasion. The claim that Israel supported the invasion comes from those who mistake neoconservatives, many of whom are Jews who support Israel, with Israeli foreign policy, which was much more nuanced than the neoconservatives. The Israelis were not at all clear about what the Americans were doing in Iraq, but they were in no position to complain.
Israeli-U.S. relations have gone through three phases. From 1948 to 1967, the United States supported Israel's right to exist but was not its patron. In the 1967-1991 period, the Israelis were a key American asset in the Cold War. From 1991 to the present, the relationship has remained close but it is not pivotal to either country. Washington cannot help Israel with Hezbollah or Hamas. The Israelis cannot help the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan. If the relationship were severed, it would have remarkably little impact on either country -- though keeping the relationship is more valuable than severing it.
To sum up: There is a powerful Jewish, pro-Israel lobby in Washington, though it was not very successful in the first 20 years or so of Israel's history. When U.S. policy toward Israel swung in 1967 it had far more to do with geopolitical interests than with lobbying. The United States needed help with Egypt and Syria and Israel could provide it. Lobbying appeared to be the key, but it wasn't; geopolitical necessity was. Egypt was anti-American even when the United States was anti-Israeli. Al Qaeda would be anti-American even if the United States were anti-Israel. Rhetoric aside, Iran has never taken direct action against Israel and has much more important things on its plate.
Portraying the Israel lobby as super-powerful behooves two groups: Critics of U.S. Middle Eastern policy and the Israel lobby itself. Critics get to say the U.S. relationship with Israel is the result of manipulation and corruption. Thus, they get to avoid discussing the actual history of Israel, the United States and the Middle East. The lobby benefits from having robust power because one of its jobs is to raise funds -- and the image of a killer lobby opens a lot more pocketbooks than does the idea that both Israel and the United States are simply pursuing their geopolitical interests and that things would go on pretty much the same even without slick lobbying.
The great irony is that the critics of U.S. policy and the Israel lobby both want to believe in the same myth -- that great powers can be manipulated to harm themselves by crafty politicians. The British didn't get the United States into the world wars, and the Israelis aren't maneuvering the Americans into being pro-Israel. Beyond its ability to exert itself on small things, the Israel lobby is powerful in influencing Washington to do what it is going to do anyway. What happens next in Iraq is not up to the Israel lobby -- though it and the Saudi Embassy have a different story.
Monday, October 22, 2007
72 virgins?
The lure of the 72 virgins supposedly awaiting Islamic matyrs should not be underestimated when we try to fathom the causes of these murderous cults. Anyone who doubts the extreme sexual frustration prevalent in Arab society might want to read Infidel, or The Islamist.
Yet what if they were not to receive the full quote of pliant women at all, but instead a packet of Sunmaid?
Virgins? What virgins?
Ibn Warraq
Saturday January 12, 2002
The Guardian
In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: "I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness." Wardeh was in fact shortchanging his recruits since the rewards in Paradise for martyrs was 72 virgins. But I am running ahead of things .
Since September 11, news stories have repeated the story of suicide bombers and their heavenly rewards, and equally Muslim scholars and Western apologists of Islam have repeated that suicide is forbidden in Islam. Suicide (qatlu nafsi-hi) is not referred to in the Koran but is indeed forbidden in the Traditions (Hadith in Arabic), which are the collected sayings and doings attributed to the Prophet and traced back to him through a series of putatively trustworthy witnesses. They include what was done in his presence that he did not forbid, and even the authoritative sayings and doings of his companions.
But the Hamas spokesman correctly uses the word martyr (shahid) and not suicide bomber, since those who blow themselves up almost daily in Israel and those who died on September 11 were dying in the noblest of all causes, Jihad, which is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Koran and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined for the purpose of advancing Islam. While suicide is forbidden, martyrdom is everywhere praised, welcomed, and urged: "By the Being in Whose Hand is my life, I love that I should be killed in the way of Allah; then I should be brought back to life and be killed again in His way..."; "The Prophet said, 'Nobody who enters Paradise will ever like to return to this world even if he were offered everything, except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed 10 times for the sake of the great honour that has been bestowed upon him'." [Sahih Muslim, chapters 781, 782, The Merit of Jihad and the Merit of Martyrdom.]
What of the rewards in paradise? The Islamic paradise is described in great sensual detail in the Koran and the Traditions; for instance, Koran sura 56 verses 12 -40 ; sura 55 verses 54-56 ; sura 76 verses 12-22. I shall quote the celebrated Penguin translation by NJ Dawood of sura 56 verses 12- 39: "They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds... We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand..."
One should note that most translations, even those by Muslims themselves such as A Yusuf Ali, and the British Muslim Marmaduke Pickthall, translate the Arabic (plural) word Abkarun as virgins, as do well-known lexicons such the one by John Penrice. I emphasise this fact since many pudic and embarrassed Muslims claim there has been a mistranslation, that "virgins" should be replaced by "angels". In sura 55 verses 72-74, Dawood translates the Arabic word " hur " as "virgins", and the context makes clear that virgin is the appropriate translation: "Dark-eyed virgins sheltered in their tents (which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?) whom neither man nor jinnee will have touched before." The word hur occurs four times in the Koran and is usually translated as a "maiden with dark eyes".
Two points need to be noted. First, there is no mention anywhere in the Koran of the actual number of virgins available in paradise, and second, the dark-eyed damsels are available for all Muslims, not just martyrs. It is in the Islamic Traditions that we find the 72 virgins in heaven specified: in a Hadith (Islamic Tradition) collected by Al-Tirmidhi (died 892 CE [common era*]) in the Book of Sunan (volume IV, chapters on The Features of Paradise as described by the Messenger of Allah [Prophet Muhammad], chapter 21, About the Smallest Reward for the People of Paradise, (Hadith 2687). The same hadith is also quoted by Ibn Kathir (died 1373 CE ) in his Koranic commentary (Tafsir) of Surah Al-Rahman (55), verse 72: "The Prophet Muhammad was heard saying: 'The smallest reward for the people of paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana'a [Yemen]'."
Modern apologists of Islam try to downplay the evident materialism and sexual implications of such descriptions, but, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, even orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash'ari (died 935 CE) have "admitted sensual pleasures into paradise". The sensual pleasures are graphically elaborated by Al-Suyuti (died 1505 ), Koranic commentator and polymath. He wrote: "Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [ie Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas."
One of the reasons Nietzsche hated Christianity was that it "made something unclean out of sexuality", whereas Islam, many would argue, was sex-positive. One cannot imagine any of the Church fathers writing ecstatically of heavenly sex as al-Suyuti did, with the possible exception of St Augustine before his conversion. But surely to call Islam sex-positive is to insult all Muslim women, for sex is seen entirely from the male point of view; women's sexuality is admitted but seen as something to be feared, repressed, and a work of the devil.
Scholars have long pointed out that these images are clearly drawn pictures and must have been inspired by the art of painting. Muhammad, or whoever is responsible for the descriptions, may well have seen Christian miniatures or mosaics representing the gardens of paradise and has interpreted the figures of angels rather literally as those of young men and young women. A further textual influence on the imagery found in the Koran is the work of Ephrem the Syrian [306-373 CE], Hymns on Paradise, written in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect and the language of Eastern Christianity, and a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew and Arabic.
This naturally leads to the most fascinating book ever written on the language of the Koran, and if proved to be correct in its main thesis, probably the most important book ever written on the Koran. Christoph Luxenberg's book, Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran, available only in German, came out just over a year ago, but has already had an enthusiastic reception, particularly among those scholars with a knowledge of several Semitic languages at Princeton, Yale, Berlin, Potsdam, Erlangen, Aix-en-Provence, and the Oriental Institute in Beirut.
Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. We cannot go into the technical details of his methodology but it allows Luxenberg, to the probable horror of all Muslim males dreaming of sexual bliss in the Muslim hereafter, to conjure away the wide-eyed houris promised to the faithful in suras XLIV.54; LII.20, LV.72, and LVI.22. Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offered, and not unsullied maidens or houris.
In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning white, with the word "raisin" understood implicitly. Similarly, the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as LXXVI.19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning chilled raisins (or drinks) that the just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the boiling drinks promised the unfaithful and damned.
As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next.
· Common era is an alternative to Christian era as a method of historical dating
Yet what if they were not to receive the full quote of pliant women at all, but instead a packet of Sunmaid?
Virgins? What virgins?
Ibn Warraq
Saturday January 12, 2002
The Guardian
In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: "I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness." Wardeh was in fact shortchanging his recruits since the rewards in Paradise for martyrs was 72 virgins. But I am running ahead of things .
Since September 11, news stories have repeated the story of suicide bombers and their heavenly rewards, and equally Muslim scholars and Western apologists of Islam have repeated that suicide is forbidden in Islam. Suicide (qatlu nafsi-hi) is not referred to in the Koran but is indeed forbidden in the Traditions (Hadith in Arabic), which are the collected sayings and doings attributed to the Prophet and traced back to him through a series of putatively trustworthy witnesses. They include what was done in his presence that he did not forbid, and even the authoritative sayings and doings of his companions.
But the Hamas spokesman correctly uses the word martyr (shahid) and not suicide bomber, since those who blow themselves up almost daily in Israel and those who died on September 11 were dying in the noblest of all causes, Jihad, which is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Koran and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined for the purpose of advancing Islam. While suicide is forbidden, martyrdom is everywhere praised, welcomed, and urged: "By the Being in Whose Hand is my life, I love that I should be killed in the way of Allah; then I should be brought back to life and be killed again in His way..."; "The Prophet said, 'Nobody who enters Paradise will ever like to return to this world even if he were offered everything, except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed 10 times for the sake of the great honour that has been bestowed upon him'." [Sahih Muslim, chapters 781, 782, The Merit of Jihad and the Merit of Martyrdom.]
What of the rewards in paradise? The Islamic paradise is described in great sensual detail in the Koran and the Traditions; for instance, Koran sura 56 verses 12 -40 ; sura 55 verses 54-56 ; sura 76 verses 12-22. I shall quote the celebrated Penguin translation by NJ Dawood of sura 56 verses 12- 39: "They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds... We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand..."
One should note that most translations, even those by Muslims themselves such as A Yusuf Ali, and the British Muslim Marmaduke Pickthall, translate the Arabic (plural) word Abkarun as virgins, as do well-known lexicons such the one by John Penrice. I emphasise this fact since many pudic and embarrassed Muslims claim there has been a mistranslation, that "virgins" should be replaced by "angels". In sura 55 verses 72-74, Dawood translates the Arabic word " hur " as "virgins", and the context makes clear that virgin is the appropriate translation: "Dark-eyed virgins sheltered in their tents (which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?) whom neither man nor jinnee will have touched before." The word hur occurs four times in the Koran and is usually translated as a "maiden with dark eyes".
Two points need to be noted. First, there is no mention anywhere in the Koran of the actual number of virgins available in paradise, and second, the dark-eyed damsels are available for all Muslims, not just martyrs. It is in the Islamic Traditions that we find the 72 virgins in heaven specified: in a Hadith (Islamic Tradition) collected by Al-Tirmidhi (died 892 CE [common era*]) in the Book of Sunan (volume IV, chapters on The Features of Paradise as described by the Messenger of Allah [Prophet Muhammad], chapter 21, About the Smallest Reward for the People of Paradise, (Hadith 2687). The same hadith is also quoted by Ibn Kathir (died 1373 CE ) in his Koranic commentary (Tafsir) of Surah Al-Rahman (55), verse 72: "The Prophet Muhammad was heard saying: 'The smallest reward for the people of paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana'a [Yemen]'."
Modern apologists of Islam try to downplay the evident materialism and sexual implications of such descriptions, but, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, even orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash'ari (died 935 CE) have "admitted sensual pleasures into paradise". The sensual pleasures are graphically elaborated by Al-Suyuti (died 1505 ), Koranic commentator and polymath. He wrote: "Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [ie Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas."
One of the reasons Nietzsche hated Christianity was that it "made something unclean out of sexuality", whereas Islam, many would argue, was sex-positive. One cannot imagine any of the Church fathers writing ecstatically of heavenly sex as al-Suyuti did, with the possible exception of St Augustine before his conversion. But surely to call Islam sex-positive is to insult all Muslim women, for sex is seen entirely from the male point of view; women's sexuality is admitted but seen as something to be feared, repressed, and a work of the devil.
Scholars have long pointed out that these images are clearly drawn pictures and must have been inspired by the art of painting. Muhammad, or whoever is responsible for the descriptions, may well have seen Christian miniatures or mosaics representing the gardens of paradise and has interpreted the figures of angels rather literally as those of young men and young women. A further textual influence on the imagery found in the Koran is the work of Ephrem the Syrian [306-373 CE], Hymns on Paradise, written in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect and the language of Eastern Christianity, and a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew and Arabic.
This naturally leads to the most fascinating book ever written on the language of the Koran, and if proved to be correct in its main thesis, probably the most important book ever written on the Koran. Christoph Luxenberg's book, Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran, available only in German, came out just over a year ago, but has already had an enthusiastic reception, particularly among those scholars with a knowledge of several Semitic languages at Princeton, Yale, Berlin, Potsdam, Erlangen, Aix-en-Provence, and the Oriental Institute in Beirut.
Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. We cannot go into the technical details of his methodology but it allows Luxenberg, to the probable horror of all Muslim males dreaming of sexual bliss in the Muslim hereafter, to conjure away the wide-eyed houris promised to the faithful in suras XLIV.54; LII.20, LV.72, and LVI.22. Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offered, and not unsullied maidens or houris.
In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning white, with the word "raisin" understood implicitly. Similarly, the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as LXXVI.19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning chilled raisins (or drinks) that the just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the boiling drinks promised the unfaithful and damned.
As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next.
· Common era is an alternative to Christian era as a method of historical dating
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Israel v Arabs - the 49th most deadly conflict since WW2
Arab-Israeli Fatalities Rank 49th
by Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
October 8, 2007
The Arab-Israeli conflict is often said, not just by extremists, to be the world's most dangerous conflict – and, accordingly, Israel is judged the world's most belligerent country.
For example, British prime minister Tony Blair told the U.S. Congress in July 2003 that "Terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel." This viewpoint leads many Europeans, among others, to see Israel as the most menacing country on earth.
But is this true? It flies in the face of the well-known pattern that liberal democracies do not aggress; plus, it assumes, wrongly, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is among the most costly in terms of lives lost.
To place the Arab-Israeli fatalities in their proper context, one of the two co-authors, Gunnar Heinsohn, has compiled statistics to rank conflicts since 1950 by the number of human deaths incurred. Note how far down the list is the entry in bold type.
Conflicts since 1950 with over 10,000 Fatalities*
1 40,000,000 Red China, 1949-76 (outright killing, manmade famine, Gulag)
2 10,000,000 Soviet Bloc: late Stalinism, 1950-53; post-Stalinism, to 1987 (mostly Gulag)
3 4,000,000 Ethiopia, 1962-92: Communists, artificial hunger, genocides
4 3,800,000 Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa): 1967-68; 1977-78; 1992-95; 1998-present
5 2,800,000 Korean war, 1950-53
6 1,900,000 Sudan, 1955-72; 1983-2006 (civil wars, genocides)
7 1,870,000 Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975-79; civil war 1978-91
8 1,800,000 Vietnam War, 1954-75
9 1,800,000 Afghanistan: Soviet and internecine killings, Taliban 1980-2001
10 1,250,000 West Pakistan massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh 1971)
11 1,100,000 Nigeria, 1966-79 (Biafra); 1993-present
12 1,100,000 Mozambique, 1964-70 (30,000) + after retreat of Portugal 1976-92
13 1,000,000 Iran-Iraq-War, 1980-88
14 900,000 Rwanda genocide, 1994
15 875,000 Algeria: against France 1954-62 (675,000); between Islamists and the government 1991-2006 (200,000)
16 850,000 Uganda, 1971-79; 1981-85; 1994-present
17 650,000 Indonesia: Marxists 1965-66 (450,000); East Timor, Papua, Aceh etc, 1969-present (200,000)
18 580,000 Angola: war against Portugal 1961-72 (80,000); after Portugal's retreat (1972-2002)
19 500,000 Brazil against its Indians, up to 1999
20 430,000 Vietnam, after the war ended in 1975 (own people; boat refugees)
21 400,000 Indochina: against France, 1945-54
22 400,000 Burundi, 1959-present (Tutsi/Hutu)
23 400,000 Somalia, 1991-present
24 400,000 North Korea up to 2006 (own people)
25 300,000 Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, 1980s-1990s
26 300,000 Iraq, 1970-2003 (Saddam against minorities)
27 240,000 Columbia, 1946-58; 1964-present
28 200,000 Yugoslavia, Tito regime, 1944-80
29 200,000 Guatemala, 1960-96
30 190,000 Laos, 1975-90
31 175,000 Serbia against Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, 1991-1999
32 150,000 Romania, 1949-99 (own people)
33 150,000 Liberia, 1989-97
34 140,000 Russia against Chechnya, 1994-present
35 150,000 Lebanon civil war, 1975-90
36 140,000 Kuwait War, 1990-91
37 130,000 Philippines: 1946-54 (10,000); 1972-present (120,000)
38 130,000 Burma/Myanmar, 1948-present
39 100,000 North Yemen, 1962-70
40 100,000 Sierra Leone, 1991-present
41 100,000 Albania, 1945-91 (own people)
42 80,000 Iran, 1978-79 (revolution)
43 75,000 Iraq, 2003-present (domestic)
44 75,000 El Salvador, 1975-92
45 70,000 Eritrea against Ethiopia, 1998-2000
46 68,000 Sri Lanka, 1997-present
47 60,000 Zimbabwe, 1966-79; 1980-present
48 60,000 Nicaragua, 1972-91 (Marxists/natives etc,)
49 51,000 Arab-Israeli conflict 1950-present
50 50,000 North Vietnam, 1954-75 (own people)
51 50,000 Tajikistan, 1992-96 (secularists against Islamists)
52 50,000 Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79
53 50,000 Peru, 1980-2000
54 50,000 Guinea, 1958-84
55 40,000 Chad, 1982-90
56 30,000 Bulgaria, 1948-89 (own people)
57 30,000 Rhodesia, 1972-79
58 30,000 Argentina, 1976-83 (own people)
59 27,000 Hungary, 1948-89 (own people)
60 26,000 Kashmir independence, 1989-present
61 25,000 Jordan government vs. Palestinians, 1970-71 (Black September)
62 22,000 Poland, 1948-89 (own people)
63 20,000 Syria, 1982 (against Islamists in Hama)
64 20,000 Chinese-Vietnamese war, 1979
65 19,000 Morocco: war against France, 1953-56 (3,000) and in Western Sahara, 1975-present (16,000)
66 18,000 Congo Republic, 1997-99
67 10,000 South Yemen, 1986 (civil war)
*All figures rounded. Sources: Brzezinski, Z., Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, 1993; Courtois, S., Le Livre Noir du Communism, 1997; Heinsohn, G., Lexikon der Völkermorde, 1999, 2nd ed.; Heinsohn, G., Söhne und Weltmacht, 2006, 8th ed.; Rummel. R., Death by Government, 1994; Small, M. and Singer, J.D., Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816-1980, 1982; White, M., "Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century," 2003.
This grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1950 numbering about 85,000,000. Of that sum, the deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 include 32,000 deaths due to Arab state attacks and 19,000 due to Palestinian attacks, or 51,000 in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.
These figures mean that deaths Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period. More graphically, only 1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting.
(Adding the 11,000 killed in the Israeli war of independence, 1947-49, made up of 5,000 Arabs and 6,000 Israeli Jews, does not significantly alter these figures.)
In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.
Comments: (1) Despite the relative non-lethality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its renown, notoriety, complexity, and diplomatic centrality will probably give it continued out-sized importance in the global imagination. And Israel's reputation will continue to pay the price. (2) Still, it helps to point out the 1-in-1,700 statistic as a corrective, in the hope that one day, this reality will register, permitting the Arab-Israeli conflict to subside to its rightful, lesser place in world politics.
by Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
October 8, 2007
The Arab-Israeli conflict is often said, not just by extremists, to be the world's most dangerous conflict – and, accordingly, Israel is judged the world's most belligerent country.
For example, British prime minister Tony Blair told the U.S. Congress in July 2003 that "Terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel." This viewpoint leads many Europeans, among others, to see Israel as the most menacing country on earth.
But is this true? It flies in the face of the well-known pattern that liberal democracies do not aggress; plus, it assumes, wrongly, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is among the most costly in terms of lives lost.
To place the Arab-Israeli fatalities in their proper context, one of the two co-authors, Gunnar Heinsohn, has compiled statistics to rank conflicts since 1950 by the number of human deaths incurred. Note how far down the list is the entry in bold type.
Conflicts since 1950 with over 10,000 Fatalities*
1 40,000,000 Red China, 1949-76 (outright killing, manmade famine, Gulag)
2 10,000,000 Soviet Bloc: late Stalinism, 1950-53; post-Stalinism, to 1987 (mostly Gulag)
3 4,000,000 Ethiopia, 1962-92: Communists, artificial hunger, genocides
4 3,800,000 Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa): 1967-68; 1977-78; 1992-95; 1998-present
5 2,800,000 Korean war, 1950-53
6 1,900,000 Sudan, 1955-72; 1983-2006 (civil wars, genocides)
7 1,870,000 Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975-79; civil war 1978-91
8 1,800,000 Vietnam War, 1954-75
9 1,800,000 Afghanistan: Soviet and internecine killings, Taliban 1980-2001
10 1,250,000 West Pakistan massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh 1971)
11 1,100,000 Nigeria, 1966-79 (Biafra); 1993-present
12 1,100,000 Mozambique, 1964-70 (30,000) + after retreat of Portugal 1976-92
13 1,000,000 Iran-Iraq-War, 1980-88
14 900,000 Rwanda genocide, 1994
15 875,000 Algeria: against France 1954-62 (675,000); between Islamists and the government 1991-2006 (200,000)
16 850,000 Uganda, 1971-79; 1981-85; 1994-present
17 650,000 Indonesia: Marxists 1965-66 (450,000); East Timor, Papua, Aceh etc, 1969-present (200,000)
18 580,000 Angola: war against Portugal 1961-72 (80,000); after Portugal's retreat (1972-2002)
19 500,000 Brazil against its Indians, up to 1999
20 430,000 Vietnam, after the war ended in 1975 (own people; boat refugees)
21 400,000 Indochina: against France, 1945-54
22 400,000 Burundi, 1959-present (Tutsi/Hutu)
23 400,000 Somalia, 1991-present
24 400,000 North Korea up to 2006 (own people)
25 300,000 Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, 1980s-1990s
26 300,000 Iraq, 1970-2003 (Saddam against minorities)
27 240,000 Columbia, 1946-58; 1964-present
28 200,000 Yugoslavia, Tito regime, 1944-80
29 200,000 Guatemala, 1960-96
30 190,000 Laos, 1975-90
31 175,000 Serbia against Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, 1991-1999
32 150,000 Romania, 1949-99 (own people)
33 150,000 Liberia, 1989-97
34 140,000 Russia against Chechnya, 1994-present
35 150,000 Lebanon civil war, 1975-90
36 140,000 Kuwait War, 1990-91
37 130,000 Philippines: 1946-54 (10,000); 1972-present (120,000)
38 130,000 Burma/Myanmar, 1948-present
39 100,000 North Yemen, 1962-70
40 100,000 Sierra Leone, 1991-present
41 100,000 Albania, 1945-91 (own people)
42 80,000 Iran, 1978-79 (revolution)
43 75,000 Iraq, 2003-present (domestic)
44 75,000 El Salvador, 1975-92
45 70,000 Eritrea against Ethiopia, 1998-2000
46 68,000 Sri Lanka, 1997-present
47 60,000 Zimbabwe, 1966-79; 1980-present
48 60,000 Nicaragua, 1972-91 (Marxists/natives etc,)
49 51,000 Arab-Israeli conflict 1950-present
50 50,000 North Vietnam, 1954-75 (own people)
51 50,000 Tajikistan, 1992-96 (secularists against Islamists)
52 50,000 Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79
53 50,000 Peru, 1980-2000
54 50,000 Guinea, 1958-84
55 40,000 Chad, 1982-90
56 30,000 Bulgaria, 1948-89 (own people)
57 30,000 Rhodesia, 1972-79
58 30,000 Argentina, 1976-83 (own people)
59 27,000 Hungary, 1948-89 (own people)
60 26,000 Kashmir independence, 1989-present
61 25,000 Jordan government vs. Palestinians, 1970-71 (Black September)
62 22,000 Poland, 1948-89 (own people)
63 20,000 Syria, 1982 (against Islamists in Hama)
64 20,000 Chinese-Vietnamese war, 1979
65 19,000 Morocco: war against France, 1953-56 (3,000) and in Western Sahara, 1975-present (16,000)
66 18,000 Congo Republic, 1997-99
67 10,000 South Yemen, 1986 (civil war)
*All figures rounded. Sources: Brzezinski, Z., Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, 1993; Courtois, S., Le Livre Noir du Communism, 1997; Heinsohn, G., Lexikon der Völkermorde, 1999, 2nd ed.; Heinsohn, G., Söhne und Weltmacht, 2006, 8th ed.; Rummel. R., Death by Government, 1994; Small, M. and Singer, J.D., Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816-1980, 1982; White, M., "Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century," 2003.
This grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1950 numbering about 85,000,000. Of that sum, the deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 include 32,000 deaths due to Arab state attacks and 19,000 due to Palestinian attacks, or 51,000 in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.
These figures mean that deaths Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period. More graphically, only 1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting.
(Adding the 11,000 killed in the Israeli war of independence, 1947-49, made up of 5,000 Arabs and 6,000 Israeli Jews, does not significantly alter these figures.)
In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.
Comments: (1) Despite the relative non-lethality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its renown, notoriety, complexity, and diplomatic centrality will probably give it continued out-sized importance in the global imagination. And Israel's reputation will continue to pay the price. (2) Still, it helps to point out the 1-in-1,700 statistic as a corrective, in the hope that one day, this reality will register, permitting the Arab-Israeli conflict to subside to its rightful, lesser place in world politics.
Monday, October 08, 2007
The Oxford Research Group and Metro
This was the front page story in the excrable Metro, a big circulation free London paper. I've blogged before about their editorial excesses, in the Bigley case. This one immediately aroused my suspicions, as 'Oxford Research Group' rang a bell.
Two phrases particularly draw attention from the article, my emphasis added:
* Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs
* Removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was a major boost for al-Qaeda
The first is clearly just ridiculous (what if the cost was another war that would take more lives), as for the second, I'd love someone to try to explain that one to me.
Al-Qaeda ‘winner of war on terror'
Sunday, October 7, 2007
The 'war on terror' has been a disaster and British forces should be withdrawn from Iraq immediately, a respected think-tank says. Britain's aggressive foreign policy has played into the hands of al- Qaeda and other militant groups, says the Oxford Research Group. It calls for Britain and America to withdraw from Iraq, scale back operations in Afghanistan and halt 'antagonistic practices' such as holding terror suspects without trial.
But, even if such measures were adopted, it would still take 'at least ten years to make up for the mistakes made since 9/11', the group says. 'Failure to make the necessary changes could result in the war on terror lasting decades,' it adds. The think-tank's recommendations are contained in a 148-page report, Towards Sustainable Security – Alternatives To The War On Terror.
Removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was a major boost for al-Qaeda and the invasion of Iraq has turned the country into a training ground for violent jihadists, it says. Report author Paul Rogers said: 'Every aspect of the war on terror has been counterproductive, from the loss of civilian life through to mass detentions without trial. In short, it has been a disaster.
'Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs – the mistakes already made will be completely overshadowed by the consequences of a war with Iran.' Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Michael Moore MP said: 'The concept of the “war on terror” is now wholly discredited.'
Two phrases particularly draw attention from the article, my emphasis added:
* Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs
* Removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was a major boost for al-Qaeda
The first is clearly just ridiculous (what if the cost was another war that would take more lives), as for the second, I'd love someone to try to explain that one to me.
Al-Qaeda ‘winner of war on terror'
Sunday, October 7, 2007
The 'war on terror' has been a disaster and British forces should be withdrawn from Iraq immediately, a respected think-tank says. Britain's aggressive foreign policy has played into the hands of al- Qaeda and other militant groups, says the Oxford Research Group. It calls for Britain and America to withdraw from Iraq, scale back operations in Afghanistan and halt 'antagonistic practices' such as holding terror suspects without trial.
But, even if such measures were adopted, it would still take 'at least ten years to make up for the mistakes made since 9/11', the group says. 'Failure to make the necessary changes could result in the war on terror lasting decades,' it adds. The think-tank's recommendations are contained in a 148-page report, Towards Sustainable Security – Alternatives To The War On Terror.
Removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was a major boost for al-Qaeda and the invasion of Iraq has turned the country into a training ground for violent jihadists, it says. Report author Paul Rogers said: 'Every aspect of the war on terror has been counterproductive, from the loss of civilian life through to mass detentions without trial. In short, it has been a disaster.
'Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs – the mistakes already made will be completely overshadowed by the consequences of a war with Iran.' Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Michael Moore MP said: 'The concept of the “war on terror” is now wholly discredited.'
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