In Israel, the US is supproting the very unpopular Olmert government and rewrading its failed 2006 agression on Lebanon with an increase in its massive aid.
For the most backward and authoritarian regime in the region, a regime that opresses women, minorities, religions, and everybody else except the ruling family, the US has approved a massive arms sale. Israel understands.
In Iraq, the US is arming sunni militia 'against Al Qaida' they say, but these sunni militia are also fighting shias in a civil war that is ravaging Iraq and which the US don't want to name or to recognise.
In Lebanon, the US is not only supporting the weak Islamist Sanyura government but is also intervening to stop any national dialogue between the government and the strong opposition in order to increase the number of ministers from the opposition oin the government and form a national unity government. This last demand was formulated by the opposition after the crisis that ensued the July 2006 Israeli agression on Lebanon in which Israel and the US, and silently their Lebanese allies tried to crush the opposition.
In Iran, the US is financing terror operations conducted by Iranian minorities since 2004.
In Palestine, the US was working with the collaborationnist movement Fatah, until they left Gaza recently, to undermine the security, the economy, and the well being, of the fragile Palestinian society.
Well it appears to me that what the US is doing in the middle east is undermining democracy. This is a conspiracy against civil society, not only in the middle east, but also in the countries contributing to the covert for this consipracy that is 'the war on Terror', in which rulers and political parties have heavy responsibilties in the damage that is being done to their countries and their civil societies. They should be made accountable for it.
Brian Whitaker: "A Green Light To Opression"
The US is pouring oil on fire with Middle East arm sale
31.7.07
28.7.07
Dialogue not Provocation: German Writer Wants to Discuss 'Satanic Verses' with Muslims
Günter Wallraff is a German writer, undercover and investigative journalist, known for his advocacy for immigrant Muslims since the publication of his explosive and very critical book towards Germany and the German society, Lowest of the low, relating his experience of two years taking on the fictional identity of a Muslim immigrant in Germany.
This is why his proposal of discussing Rushdie's Satanic Verses, in the text, on the site of a future Mosque in Cologne, is met with politeness and 'patience' by the Turkish Muslim community in Germany. I was however surprised that most of the criticism and caution about the proposal come from people who advocate freedom of expression vehemently every time Muslims protest some negative expression or representation of their religion by non Muslims.
Henryk M. Broder, a columnist with DER SPIEGEL, criticized Wallraff's idea as "actionism" saying: "The issue isn't about whether you can read 'The Satanic Verses' in a mosque or not. After all, it would never occur to anyone to serve non-kosher food in a synagogue or pork meat in a Catholic church on Good Friday."
There is a profound logical contradiction in this caution because on one hand, freedom of expression advocates in Europe and the West want to be able to say, not only negative things about Islam, but to protect provocateurs, self declared ennemies of this religion like Hirsi Ali. On the other hand, they don't seem to encourage self criticism in Islam when it is done without provocation, with a good spirit, with the will of initiating a friendly dialogue by proxy with the west through someone who is respected by the Muslim community in Germany.
I wish the event could take place. I wish Wallraff will be able to initiate this dialogue. It is a very original idea. Nobody can initiate a dialogue with a provocation and nobody can engage in a dialogue when they feel threatened. Dialogue is only possible with good intentions, knowledge and openness about the other.
Wallraff's initiative should be taken very seriously and encouraged. It is the way of the future, if we want this future to happen and not enlist ourselves in the present war of religion that is going on in the West against Islam. Even though Wallraff's initiative is propably motivated by his close relationship with Salman Rushdie, I can only wish him success and salute his courage.
Read here my article criticising Hirsi Ali, a famous Mulsim Basher.
This is why his proposal of discussing Rushdie's Satanic Verses, in the text, on the site of a future Mosque in Cologne, is met with politeness and 'patience' by the Turkish Muslim community in Germany. I was however surprised that most of the criticism and caution about the proposal come from people who advocate freedom of expression vehemently every time Muslims protest some negative expression or representation of their religion by non Muslims.
Henryk M. Broder, a columnist with DER SPIEGEL, criticized Wallraff's idea as "actionism" saying: "The issue isn't about whether you can read 'The Satanic Verses' in a mosque or not. After all, it would never occur to anyone to serve non-kosher food in a synagogue or pork meat in a Catholic church on Good Friday."
There is a profound logical contradiction in this caution because on one hand, freedom of expression advocates in Europe and the West want to be able to say, not only negative things about Islam, but to protect provocateurs, self declared ennemies of this religion like Hirsi Ali. On the other hand, they don't seem to encourage self criticism in Islam when it is done without provocation, with a good spirit, with the will of initiating a friendly dialogue by proxy with the west through someone who is respected by the Muslim community in Germany.
I wish the event could take place. I wish Wallraff will be able to initiate this dialogue. It is a very original idea. Nobody can initiate a dialogue with a provocation and nobody can engage in a dialogue when they feel threatened. Dialogue is only possible with good intentions, knowledge and openness about the other.
Wallraff's initiative should be taken very seriously and encouraged. It is the way of the future, if we want this future to happen and not enlist ourselves in the present war of religion that is going on in the West against Islam. Even though Wallraff's initiative is propably motivated by his close relationship with Salman Rushdie, I can only wish him success and salute his courage.
Read here my article criticising Hirsi Ali, a famous Mulsim Basher.
27.7.07
Conspiracies against civil society: What the 'Zodiac' and Bin Laden have in common ?
Yesterday I watched the 'Zodiac', a movie by David Fincher on one of the most notorious serial killers in the US. This is Fincher's best movie so far. Factual, meticulous, with attention to details, even though it is based on a one man account written by Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist working for the SFC at the time.
The Killer who terrorised San Francisco and area was never found with certainty. The main suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen was questioned by the police who was unable to charge him - despite a huge amount of coïncidence between him and what the police 'knew' about the killer (technically considered as circumstancial evidence) - because of the graphological expertise. This is where the story became puzzling for me. Most of the evidence the police possessed at the time were the letters and ciphers the Zodiac wrote to the press, the police, and anybody who would gove him media presence and keep him in the public eye. The graphological expertise did however change over time, over more than 10 years, and its changes led the police and the journalist working on the story to suspect different people, taking suspicion away from Leigh Allen, only to focus on Leigh later. It was amazing how the struggle of the police turned around letters and graphology, a very uncertain evidence, if we judge the standards of graphology at the time. It was somehow a doomed trail.
And this was not the only obstacle in the Zodiac story.
The absence of a clear pattern in the killings, except their savagery, absence of motive, and the will to inflict terror on the population by calling the police and sending ciphers and letters;
The dispersion of the killings on different administrative police areas and different jurisdictions;
Their duration over a ten month period, which is a long period if we judge by the weight of the threat at the time (the killer was thretening to kill a whole load of a schoolbus), during which the killer identification was made increasingly difficult;
The duration of the police investigation extending, under partial information, in both directions, to connect the murders to past unresolved killings, and present and future threats from the Zodiac which went on until mid 70s,
The despair of the police who weregoing from one piste to another without being able to dig deep in the investigation...
Something in this story made me think of l'affaire des 'tueurs fous du Brabant' who terrorised Nivelles and the region of the Brabant in Belgium between 1982 and 1985. Les tueurs du Brabant was a larger scale crime and terror operation involving disgruntled members of the police (gendarmerie) as well as Neo nazi and extreme right groups. The killers were never found and identified but there is police evidence that they were more than one, at least three, and they had links to various groups. But the more consistent interpretation of such an operation came from Le Monde Diplomatique in 2001. According to Le Monde Diplomatique, it was probably an operation to destabilise the weak Belgian government.
A small scale terror operation like the Zodiac killings could not be meant to destabilise the US, but to keep the population in a state of terror, definitely yes. One of the obstacles to the investigation about the Zodiac killings is that the police never assumed the theory of more than one killer operating under an umbrella group and I think this might have been the case in the Zodiac killings. This is an irony because for the 9/11 attacks, the US government rushed to conceptualise the foundations of Al-Qaida as a terror group or network, while we know that Al_Qaida networks operate loosely and 'by inspiration'. However, serial killings like the Zodiac's were clearly orchestrated to strike the imagination and provoke terror and the fact that there were many serious suspects in the investigation should have led to a conspiration done by a group, mainly against civil society in the US, because civils were the main target.
I think the most accurate interpretation of the Zodiac killings comes, in this regard, from Spike Lee in his movie 'Summer of Sam'. Spike Lee insists in his movie, not on the trail followed by the police and not on the affair itself but on the results of such a terror climate on the population in a special neighbourhood, and on the psychology of some of the movie's characters. I find that Spike Lee's 'Summer of Sam' is a good complement to Fincher's movie if you were to watch the 'Zodiac' on video.
Reflecting on this story, I found many similarities between the US's main serial killings operations and the present climate of terror. Major serial killings in the US, including killings of officials, were never resolved, and their main results were the production of a climate of terror. Thanks to Bin Laden, the US does not need its serial killers now. One has to consider Bin Laden as a super Zodiac with a wide media international coverage and much more people terrorised day and night by the idea of him.
Conspiarcy theorists beware !
Fellow blogger Conspiraloon Stef has posted an interesting article recently on the subject of Terror and its relation to major state conspiracies against their own civil societies.
Listen to the talk mentioned by Stef in his post. It was given by Nafeez Ahmed recently in London. There are many interesting parallels that Ahmed draws between the present security-political climate and WWII known archives, in terms of public opinion manipulation.
The Killer who terrorised San Francisco and area was never found with certainty. The main suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen was questioned by the police who was unable to charge him - despite a huge amount of coïncidence between him and what the police 'knew' about the killer (technically considered as circumstancial evidence) - because of the graphological expertise. This is where the story became puzzling for me. Most of the evidence the police possessed at the time were the letters and ciphers the Zodiac wrote to the press, the police, and anybody who would gove him media presence and keep him in the public eye. The graphological expertise did however change over time, over more than 10 years, and its changes led the police and the journalist working on the story to suspect different people, taking suspicion away from Leigh Allen, only to focus on Leigh later. It was amazing how the struggle of the police turned around letters and graphology, a very uncertain evidence, if we judge the standards of graphology at the time. It was somehow a doomed trail.
And this was not the only obstacle in the Zodiac story.
The absence of a clear pattern in the killings, except their savagery, absence of motive, and the will to inflict terror on the population by calling the police and sending ciphers and letters;
The dispersion of the killings on different administrative police areas and different jurisdictions;
Their duration over a ten month period, which is a long period if we judge by the weight of the threat at the time (the killer was thretening to kill a whole load of a schoolbus), during which the killer identification was made increasingly difficult;
The duration of the police investigation extending, under partial information, in both directions, to connect the murders to past unresolved killings, and present and future threats from the Zodiac which went on until mid 70s,
The despair of the police who weregoing from one piste to another without being able to dig deep in the investigation...
Something in this story made me think of l'affaire des 'tueurs fous du Brabant' who terrorised Nivelles and the region of the Brabant in Belgium between 1982 and 1985. Les tueurs du Brabant was a larger scale crime and terror operation involving disgruntled members of the police (gendarmerie) as well as Neo nazi and extreme right groups. The killers were never found and identified but there is police evidence that they were more than one, at least three, and they had links to various groups. But the more consistent interpretation of such an operation came from Le Monde Diplomatique in 2001. According to Le Monde Diplomatique, it was probably an operation to destabilise the weak Belgian government.
A small scale terror operation like the Zodiac killings could not be meant to destabilise the US, but to keep the population in a state of terror, definitely yes. One of the obstacles to the investigation about the Zodiac killings is that the police never assumed the theory of more than one killer operating under an umbrella group and I think this might have been the case in the Zodiac killings. This is an irony because for the 9/11 attacks, the US government rushed to conceptualise the foundations of Al-Qaida as a terror group or network, while we know that Al_Qaida networks operate loosely and 'by inspiration'. However, serial killings like the Zodiac's were clearly orchestrated to strike the imagination and provoke terror and the fact that there were many serious suspects in the investigation should have led to a conspiration done by a group, mainly against civil society in the US, because civils were the main target.
I think the most accurate interpretation of the Zodiac killings comes, in this regard, from Spike Lee in his movie 'Summer of Sam'. Spike Lee insists in his movie, not on the trail followed by the police and not on the affair itself but on the results of such a terror climate on the population in a special neighbourhood, and on the psychology of some of the movie's characters. I find that Spike Lee's 'Summer of Sam' is a good complement to Fincher's movie if you were to watch the 'Zodiac' on video.
Reflecting on this story, I found many similarities between the US's main serial killings operations and the present climate of terror. Major serial killings in the US, including killings of officials, were never resolved, and their main results were the production of a climate of terror. Thanks to Bin Laden, the US does not need its serial killers now. One has to consider Bin Laden as a super Zodiac with a wide media international coverage and much more people terrorised day and night by the idea of him.
Conspiarcy theorists beware !
Fellow blogger Conspiraloon Stef has posted an interesting article recently on the subject of Terror and its relation to major state conspiracies against their own civil societies.
Listen to the talk mentioned by Stef in his post. It was given by Nafeez Ahmed recently in London. There are many interesting parallels that Ahmed draws between the present security-political climate and WWII known archives, in terms of public opinion manipulation.
26.7.07
USrael: Rapture Ready
Max Blumenthal on The End of Times and the Christians United for Israel annual Convention.
Activate the video once you are on the main page and watch it until the end.
Activate the video once you are on the main page and watch it until the end.
25.7.07
Vote for an Academic Boycott of Israel
The British Medical Journal has featured two opinions on the subject, one for and one against, and is allowing its readers online, either academics or members of the public, to vote.
If you are for a boycott, please participate, because the Giyus, Israel's largest cyber support network, is already in, if we judge from the poll results as of today.
UPDATE: The survey is closed.
Read here my opinion for a Boycott.
More information from Sabbah's
If you are for a boycott, please participate, because the Giyus, Israel's largest cyber support network, is already in, if we judge from the poll results as of today.
UPDATE: The survey is closed.
Read here my opinion for a Boycott.
More information from Sabbah's
24.7.07
Sarkozy's Arrogance ou le show politique en continu
The word 'Arrogance' was used to describe France's foreign policy going its own way against Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. It was 'arrogance' to the extent France was seen as opposing the empire. It was 'arrogance' to the extent the use of the word spoke about how the US and people in the US perceived France, a waning international power player. But in fact, France's Chirac and its industry, having made a long way with the Iraqi president and the Baathist Iraqi regime, were only following France's interests, its standing in the Middle East, and Chirac's longtime personal friendship with Sunni Arab leaders.
But the real meaning to Arrogance, its objective meaning, is not when a small scale country goes its own way in face of an empire. The real objective meaning for Arrogance is when a country goes its own way because it simply wants to go its own way, in disregard for others. In Diplomatic terms, this is called unilateralism and Bush has been practicing it at lenght, in all occasions. Arrogance is another word to define unilateralism in Politics. Still, one can argue that unilateralism might be O.K. if the unilateralist does not need others to accomplish his goals. France's president Nicolas Sarkozy has proved to be a bad unilateralist, exactly like GW Bush, they both disregard other states and need and manipulate other states to accomplish their goals. Not only Sarkozy is a unilateralist at home where he manages to be omnipresent in the media and where the whole state apparatus around him seems to be a pale extension of his persona, but he is starting to apply his method at the level of EU foreign diplomacy.
The moment EU diplomacy started to move positively on the dossier of the Bulgarian nurses, Sarkozy sent his wife on a mission to Lybia, without consulting with the country who led the negociations for the EU on this dossier, Germany. And when the death sentence was commuted to life sentence, and very shortly after to extradition, for the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor, Sarkozy sent his wife again to fly the nurses back home. And with him, the French Press, attributing the merit to the French president and the EU, one can be sure that Sarkozy has taken French arrogance and disregard for others in foreign policy to new highs. The French press is cheering. Under the rubrique "Facts", Le Monde titles: 'The Élysées and the EU have liberated the Bulgarian nurses'. Sarkozy stepped in the dossier very recently, and the whole affair looks like Magic, but nobody seems to notice this !
But we all know by now that what Le Monde calls 'Facts' has become Spin under the good auspices of Alain Minc, Jean Marie Colombani, and Sarkozy. Of course, JMC is gone but the culture of Spin when it comes to Sarkozy seems to be present, or is it pure stupid nationalism and chauvinism ?
I looked today for another source on the facts surrounding the liberation of the Bulgarian nurses. The english edition of Der Spiegel online has a totally different story, so different that one wonders if the French press did not just published the official version given to it by the Élysées. Reading the English edition of Der Spiegel online today, not only I was ashamed of Le Monde because it gave us a doctored and unchecked story, and you have to read the German version of the events that led to the liberation of the Bulgarian nurses, but I was ashamed of being a French citizen. From a German perspective, Sarkozy has become the bully of Europe, bested only by Poland. He is running France's Foreign Policy in Europe and on the world stage unilaterally, looking for a showdown à deux with European and world leaders as a way to boost his image outside France. And our good press seems to be following, if we judge from the Bulgarian nurses story in Le Monde. Ironically, I read the same day that Rama Yade, Sarkozy's secrétaire d'État (junior minister) for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights wants to end France's arrogance on the world stage ? My advice to her is that she should start with her boss.
However, the biggest irritation for the European negotiators has been caused not by the tricksters in Tripoli, but rather by a close ally. The hyperactive French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to blow the entire deal with his unstoppable urge to get involved in the affair.
New to international diplomacy, he first sent his wife Cecilia on a conciliatory visit to the nurses and infected children -- in her official capacity as a "mother." Then he offered to mediate matters himself and announced a trip to Libya to meet with Gadhafi. It was a perfect opportunity for the Libyans to ask for more: How about the offer from France's "première dame" to modernize another hospital in Benghazi?
Steinmeier felt as if the overzealous French were jeopardizing his efforts and so he went directly to his negotiating partner Saif al-Islam. The German told him the deal was already done and dusted and there was nothing left to do. Other support could only be discussed within the context of future EU development projects.
But diplomats in Sofia and Berlin will only be able to breathe easy once the hyper French president returns from Tripoli. His wife Cecilia -- who was accompanied by Ferrero-Waldner -- made her second trip to Tripoli in two weeks over the weekend, paying a visit to Gadhafi. And Nicolas Sarkozy himself is expected in Libya on Wednesday.
...Nerves in Berlin are so frayed at the moment that even the surprise trip Sarkozy's wife Cecilia made to Libya last week caused a commotion. Élysée Palace announced she was visiting the five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for supposedly infecting 426 children with AIDS in her capacity as a "mother." Foreign Minister Steinmeier has been working doggedly behind the scenes to secure the release of the women, who are widely considered to be victims of a show trial. Officials in Berlin assumed that Sarkozy was trying to commandeer the whole process -- and take credit for it -- now that the nurses might be on the verge of being pardoned.
But one leading German foreign policy expert has advised officials in Berlin to remain calm in the storm of Sarkozy's provocations. Former foreign minister Joschka Fischer has pointed out that Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac took office in 1995 in far more explosive fashion -- with a nuclear bomb test in the South Pacific.
According to Bulgarian authorities, more than a dozen security services helped free the 5 Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor from Lybia. Even the Mossad is taking credit.
UPDATE: French Posturing Over Bulgarian Nurses: Why Did Cecilia Sarkozy Go to Tripoli ?
France, ummm...Sarkozy... to build Nuclear reactor in Lybia
Sarkozy's Lybia Nuclear deal: 'A European Disgrace'
From Qantara.de: A Lesson In Ruthless Special Interests Politics
Un portrait de Sarkozy dans Der Spiegel: Pas très flatteur
French's fascination with the Sarkozys
But the real meaning to Arrogance, its objective meaning, is not when a small scale country goes its own way in face of an empire. The real objective meaning for Arrogance is when a country goes its own way because it simply wants to go its own way, in disregard for others. In Diplomatic terms, this is called unilateralism and Bush has been practicing it at lenght, in all occasions. Arrogance is another word to define unilateralism in Politics. Still, one can argue that unilateralism might be O.K. if the unilateralist does not need others to accomplish his goals. France's president Nicolas Sarkozy has proved to be a bad unilateralist, exactly like GW Bush, they both disregard other states and need and manipulate other states to accomplish their goals. Not only Sarkozy is a unilateralist at home where he manages to be omnipresent in the media and where the whole state apparatus around him seems to be a pale extension of his persona, but he is starting to apply his method at the level of EU foreign diplomacy.
The moment EU diplomacy started to move positively on the dossier of the Bulgarian nurses, Sarkozy sent his wife on a mission to Lybia, without consulting with the country who led the negociations for the EU on this dossier, Germany. And when the death sentence was commuted to life sentence, and very shortly after to extradition, for the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor, Sarkozy sent his wife again to fly the nurses back home. And with him, the French Press, attributing the merit to the French president and the EU, one can be sure that Sarkozy has taken French arrogance and disregard for others in foreign policy to new highs. The French press is cheering. Under the rubrique "Facts", Le Monde titles: 'The Élysées and the EU have liberated the Bulgarian nurses'. Sarkozy stepped in the dossier very recently, and the whole affair looks like Magic, but nobody seems to notice this !
But we all know by now that what Le Monde calls 'Facts' has become Spin under the good auspices of Alain Minc, Jean Marie Colombani, and Sarkozy. Of course, JMC is gone but the culture of Spin when it comes to Sarkozy seems to be present, or is it pure stupid nationalism and chauvinism ?
I looked today for another source on the facts surrounding the liberation of the Bulgarian nurses. The english edition of Der Spiegel online has a totally different story, so different that one wonders if the French press did not just published the official version given to it by the Élysées. Reading the English edition of Der Spiegel online today, not only I was ashamed of Le Monde because it gave us a doctored and unchecked story, and you have to read the German version of the events that led to the liberation of the Bulgarian nurses, but I was ashamed of being a French citizen. From a German perspective, Sarkozy has become the bully of Europe, bested only by Poland. He is running France's Foreign Policy in Europe and on the world stage unilaterally, looking for a showdown à deux with European and world leaders as a way to boost his image outside France. And our good press seems to be following, if we judge from the Bulgarian nurses story in Le Monde. Ironically, I read the same day that Rama Yade, Sarkozy's secrétaire d'État (junior minister) for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights wants to end France's arrogance on the world stage ? My advice to her is that she should start with her boss.
However, the biggest irritation for the European negotiators has been caused not by the tricksters in Tripoli, but rather by a close ally. The hyperactive French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to blow the entire deal with his unstoppable urge to get involved in the affair.
New to international diplomacy, he first sent his wife Cecilia on a conciliatory visit to the nurses and infected children -- in her official capacity as a "mother." Then he offered to mediate matters himself and announced a trip to Libya to meet with Gadhafi. It was a perfect opportunity for the Libyans to ask for more: How about the offer from France's "première dame" to modernize another hospital in Benghazi?
Steinmeier felt as if the overzealous French were jeopardizing his efforts and so he went directly to his negotiating partner Saif al-Islam. The German told him the deal was already done and dusted and there was nothing left to do. Other support could only be discussed within the context of future EU development projects.
But diplomats in Sofia and Berlin will only be able to breathe easy once the hyper French president returns from Tripoli. His wife Cecilia -- who was accompanied by Ferrero-Waldner -- made her second trip to Tripoli in two weeks over the weekend, paying a visit to Gadhafi. And Nicolas Sarkozy himself is expected in Libya on Wednesday.
...Nerves in Berlin are so frayed at the moment that even the surprise trip Sarkozy's wife Cecilia made to Libya last week caused a commotion. Élysée Palace announced she was visiting the five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for supposedly infecting 426 children with AIDS in her capacity as a "mother." Foreign Minister Steinmeier has been working doggedly behind the scenes to secure the release of the women, who are widely considered to be victims of a show trial. Officials in Berlin assumed that Sarkozy was trying to commandeer the whole process -- and take credit for it -- now that the nurses might be on the verge of being pardoned.
But one leading German foreign policy expert has advised officials in Berlin to remain calm in the storm of Sarkozy's provocations. Former foreign minister Joschka Fischer has pointed out that Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac took office in 1995 in far more explosive fashion -- with a nuclear bomb test in the South Pacific.
According to Bulgarian authorities, more than a dozen security services helped free the 5 Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor from Lybia. Even the Mossad is taking credit.
UPDATE: French Posturing Over Bulgarian Nurses: Why Did Cecilia Sarkozy Go to Tripoli ?
France, ummm...Sarkozy... to build Nuclear reactor in Lybia
Sarkozy's Lybia Nuclear deal: 'A European Disgrace'
From Qantara.de: A Lesson In Ruthless Special Interests Politics
Un portrait de Sarkozy dans Der Spiegel: Pas très flatteur
French's fascination with the Sarkozys
22.7.07
Outrageaous Neo-Con scenarios for Turkey
The neo-con Hudson institute is preparing some Outrageous scenarios for Turkey.
Terrifying scenarios discussed at US think tank
A Washington-based think tank is reported to have had participants at a closed-door meeting, including Turkish military officials (those same ones who threatened the democratically elected Erdogan government with a coup in April, my emphasis) and civilian experts, discuss various crisis scenarios for Turkey in a brainstorming session.
Assassination of the recently retired chief of Turkey’s Constitutional Court, Tülay Tuğcu; a plot where 50 people would lose their lives in a terrorist act claimed by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in İstanbul’s Beyoğlu district; and a cross-border operation by the Turkish military into Iraq were among the possible scenarios discussed at the Hudson Institute, known for its anti-Islam discourse and neocon stance, both favored at the time of the US invasion of Iraq. Sources close to the think tank said that a significant number of the participants from the US objected to the scenarios floated during the session, asserting that they were too “unrealistic,” and refrained from making comments on the possibilities mentioned. About 20 participants attended the conference, which lasted a couple of hours, the same sources said.
At least one of the Turkish participants opposed a scenario in which terrorist leaders in northern Iraq were captured by US authorities and handed over to Turkish authorities, according to sources. This opposition was based on the reasoning that such a move would be perceived as US support for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) ahead of the general elections on July 22. The suggestion that the AK Party would benefit if the US supported Turkey in its war against northern Iraq-based terrorism is not new in Washington. In a report written last month by Soner Çağatay and Yüksel Sezgin, associates of the Washington Institute, the authors argued: “Can the AK Party sustain its latest strategy? Assuming that its apparent tactic of political polarization works, other variables could have an impact on the party’s public support. For instance, terrorist attacks by the PKK would hurt the AK Party significantly. Alternatively, the party’s popularity would be boosted if the United States pressured Iraqi Kurds to extradite into Turkish custody those PKK leaders currently based in northern Iraq.” US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza said the scenarios being spoken of in the Hudson Institute were “insane,” according to a Turkish translation of his remark. Bryza also said that the US had no concern about the outcome of the general elections in Turkey, as long as the government is democratically elected. He added that Turkey’s democratic structure was most important for Turkey.
A group of AK Party deputies visiting Washington described the incident as “disgusting,” and said it would spell “treason” if Turkish participants really argued that PKK leaders should not be handed over to Turkey due to domestic political reasons.
Officials at the Turkish Embassy in Washington said they had heard that a meeting would be held at the Hudson Institute, but they had not been invited. No Turkish diplomat participated in the meeting, the same officials underlined.
Brig. Gen. Süha Tanyeri, director of the General Staff’s Strategic Research and Study Center (SAREM), Brig. Gen. Bertan Nogaylaroğlu, Turkey’s defense attaché in Washington, and Zeyno Baran, director of the Center for Eurasian Policy and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, are rumored to have been among the meeting’s participants.
The scenarios discussed at the Hudson Institute dominated a press conference held on Thursday at the Turkish Embassy by AK Party deputies, led by İstanbul deputy Egemen Bağış, who is also a senior advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Saying that a brainstorming exercise based on the question “What will happen in Turkey if the head of Turkey’s Constitutional Court is assassinated?” had been held during a closed-door meeting at a US think tank, journalist Hasan Mesut Hazar asked Bağış as well as two other AK Party deputies, Reha Denemeç and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, about their reactions.
“I condemn all kinds of efforts that accept killing of any Turkish citizen, be it a senior judge or not, as the starting point or as part of a scenario. These are really shameful. I also condemn those who attempt to do such a thing in a country that alleges to be a democracy,” Bağış said.
“Certain quarters set to become engineers of social projects designed in Turkey or certain quarters who try to determine the course of politics in Turkey from abroad do not have the right to say a word about Turkey’s national unity and Turkey’s national security,” he added.
Journalist Yasemin Çongar said “certain experts and officials argued at the meeting that the capture of PKK leaders by the US at this stage and their being handed over to Turkey would be unfavorable for political reasons,” and asked the deputies visiting Washington for their reaction.
“I find it disgusting that those persons who are from those lands assume an approach, saying, ‘Let’s wait for a while, let losses of people continue for a while’, just because of their political expectations concerning Turkey, while our commanders, conscripts and civilians are losing their lives. I harshly condemn it. These are approaches beyond politics that are equal to treason,” Bağış said.
“If there are certain persons who favor increasing the number of soldiers being martyred by the PKK because they believe that this will have an impact on the political life in Turkey, I say that they are traitors,” he added.
When journalist Yılmaz Polat asked whether the said discussion was the one held at the Hudson Institute, and hence organized by Zeyno Baran, Bağış said, “I don’t know that.” Facing insistent questions from journalists, Bağış, Denemeç and Çavuşoğlu said they didn’t have any information regarding those behind the controversial remarks and whether there were Turkish officials at the meeting. “I say that it is disgusting if the allegations are true,” Bağış said.
Meanwhile the hypothetical scenarios were described as being simply “too stupid” to have any credibility, by the former co-chair of the joint Turkish-EU Parliamentary Commission, Bülent Akarcalı. “These are simply too stupid to be credible. The US government has always been close to independent think tanks. So even if this is not an organization that is part of the US State Department, the US government should make a statement. In addition it is also important to know how much of these comments are adopted by the US administration. I believe the Turkish representatives that attended the meeting must have been there to prevent any mistakes that might have been made.”...
From Der Spiegel on the victory of the AKP: 'Islamic pragmatists triumph in Turkey'
It wasn't just headscarf-clad women and devout moustached men who voted for the Justice and Development Party (AKP), as cliché would have it. Polling analysts said more than half its support came from people with a secular background who wanted Turkey to keep on reforming, to remain business-friendly and to continue to open itself up to Europe -- goals shared by many religious voters as well. Erdogan's AKP has done more in this regard than any of its predecessor governments, however secular.
Mosque and State: Interview with Seyla Benhabib on Turkey's recent election, the AK Party, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali
From Qantara.de: Turkey between Islamism and Kemalism
The Conservative Christian Zionist: 'Islam Gains in Turkish Elections'.
21.7.07
Countdown To War On Iran
Probably many of you have already seen this article and read it but It is worth mentioning again for its clarity, objectivity, and Fact-Truth content. From Alain Gresh, Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2007.
Excerpts
Us foments unrest and spurns overtures
Faced with more US troops, many armed Iraqi groups have gone to ground for the moment. Others manipulate US troops to do their dirty work for them. The US has failed to create a political settlement and appears to be blind to its own lack of progress
Silently, stealthily, unseen by cameras, the war on Iran has already begun. Many sources confirm that the United States, bent on destabilising the Islamic Republic, has increased its aid to armed movements among the Azeri, Baluchi, Arab and Kurdish ethnic minorities that make up about 40% of the Iranian population. ABC News reported in April that the US had secretly assisted the Baluchi group Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), responsible for a recent attack in which some 20 members of the Revolutionary Guard were killed. According to an American Foundation report (1), US commandos have operated inside Iran since 2004...
President George Bush categorised Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, as the “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address in January 2002. Then in June 2003 he said the US and its allies should make it clear that they “would not tolerate” the construction of a nuclear weapon in Iran.
It is worth recalling the context in which these statements were made. President Mohammed Khatami had repeatedly called for “dialogue among civilisations”. Tehran had actively supported the US in Afghanistan, providing many contacts that Washington had used to facilitate the overthrow of the Taliban regime. At a meeting in Geneva on 2 May 2003 between Javad Zaraf, the Iranian ambassador, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan, the Tehran government submitted a proposal to the White House for general negotiations on weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and security, and economic cooperation (2). The Islamic Republic said it was ready to support the Arab peace initiative tabled at the Beirut summit in 2002 and help to transform the Lebanese Hizbullah into a political party. Tehran signed the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty on 18 December 2003, which considerably strengthens the supervisory powers of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) but which only a few countries have ratified.
The US administration swept all these overtures aside since its only objective is to overthrow the mullahs. To create the conditions for military intervention, it constantly brandishes “the nuclear threat”. Year after year US administrations have produced alarmist reports, always proved wrong. In January 1995 the director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said Iran could have the bomb by 2003, while the US defence secretary, William Perry, predicted it would have the bomb by 2000. These forecasts were repeated by Israel’s Shimon Peres a year later. Yet last month, despite Iran’s progress in uranium enrichment, the IAEA considered that it would be four to six years before Tehran had the capability to produce the bomb.
What is the truth? Since the 1960s, long before the Islamic revolution, Iran has sought to develop nuclear power in preparation for the post-oil era. Technological developments have made it easier to pass from civil to military applications once the processes have been mastered. Have Tehran’s leaders decided to do so? There is no evidence that they have. Is there a risk that they may? Yes, there is, for obvious reasons.
During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein’s regime, in breach of every international treaty, used chemical weapons against Iran, but there was no outcry in the US, or in France, against these weapons of mass destruction, which had a traumatic effect on the Iranian people. US troops are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran is surrounded by a network of foreign military bases. Two neighbouring countries, Pakistan and Israel, have nuclear weapons. No Iranian political leader could fail to be aware of this situation.
How to prevent escalation?
...Contrary to common assumptions, the main obstacle is not Tehran’s determination to enrich uranium. Iran has a right to do so under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty but it has always said it was prepared to impose voluntary restrictions on that right and to agree to increased IAEA inspections to prevent any possible use of enriched uranium for military purposes.
The Islamic Republic’s fundamental concern lies elsewhere. Witness the agreement signed on 14 November 2004 with France, Britain and Germany, under which Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment temporarily on the understanding that a long-term agreement would “provide firm commitments on security issues”. Washington refused to give any such commitments and Iran resumed its enrichment programme.
The European Union chose not to pursue an independent line but to follow Washington’s lead. The new proposals produced by the five members of the Security Council and Germany in June 2006 contained no guarantee of non-intervention in Iranian affairs. In Tehran’s reply to the proposals, delivered in August, it again “suggest[ed] that the western parties who want to participate in the negotiation team announce on behalf of their own and other European countries, to set aside the policy of intimidation, pressure and sanctions against Iran”. Only if such a commitment was made could negotiations be resumed.
If not, escalation is inevitable. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as president in June 2005 has not made dialogue any easier, given his taste for provocative statements, particularly about the Holocaust and Israel. But Iran is a big country rich in history and there is more to it than its president. There is much tension within the government and Ahmadinejad had severe setbacks both in the local elections and in elections to the Assembly of Experts in December 2006. There are substantial challenges, economic and social, and forceful demands for more freedom, especially among women and young people. Iranians refuse to be regimented and the only strong card the regime has to win their loyalty is nationalism, a refusal to accept the kind of foreign interference suffered throughout the 20th century.
Despite the disaster in Iraq, there is no indication that Bush has given up the idea of attacking Iran. This is part of his vision of a “third world war” against “Islamic fascism”, an ideological war that can end only in complete victory...
Archives:
Ali Akbar Velayati: 'Iran Strives Only for Security'
Excerpts
Us foments unrest and spurns overtures
Faced with more US troops, many armed Iraqi groups have gone to ground for the moment. Others manipulate US troops to do their dirty work for them. The US has failed to create a political settlement and appears to be blind to its own lack of progress
Silently, stealthily, unseen by cameras, the war on Iran has already begun. Many sources confirm that the United States, bent on destabilising the Islamic Republic, has increased its aid to armed movements among the Azeri, Baluchi, Arab and Kurdish ethnic minorities that make up about 40% of the Iranian population. ABC News reported in April that the US had secretly assisted the Baluchi group Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), responsible for a recent attack in which some 20 members of the Revolutionary Guard were killed. According to an American Foundation report (1), US commandos have operated inside Iran since 2004...
President George Bush categorised Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, as the “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address in January 2002. Then in June 2003 he said the US and its allies should make it clear that they “would not tolerate” the construction of a nuclear weapon in Iran.
It is worth recalling the context in which these statements were made. President Mohammed Khatami had repeatedly called for “dialogue among civilisations”. Tehran had actively supported the US in Afghanistan, providing many contacts that Washington had used to facilitate the overthrow of the Taliban regime. At a meeting in Geneva on 2 May 2003 between Javad Zaraf, the Iranian ambassador, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan, the Tehran government submitted a proposal to the White House for general negotiations on weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and security, and economic cooperation (2). The Islamic Republic said it was ready to support the Arab peace initiative tabled at the Beirut summit in 2002 and help to transform the Lebanese Hizbullah into a political party. Tehran signed the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty on 18 December 2003, which considerably strengthens the supervisory powers of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) but which only a few countries have ratified.
The US administration swept all these overtures aside since its only objective is to overthrow the mullahs. To create the conditions for military intervention, it constantly brandishes “the nuclear threat”. Year after year US administrations have produced alarmist reports, always proved wrong. In January 1995 the director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said Iran could have the bomb by 2003, while the US defence secretary, William Perry, predicted it would have the bomb by 2000. These forecasts were repeated by Israel’s Shimon Peres a year later. Yet last month, despite Iran’s progress in uranium enrichment, the IAEA considered that it would be four to six years before Tehran had the capability to produce the bomb.
What is the truth? Since the 1960s, long before the Islamic revolution, Iran has sought to develop nuclear power in preparation for the post-oil era. Technological developments have made it easier to pass from civil to military applications once the processes have been mastered. Have Tehran’s leaders decided to do so? There is no evidence that they have. Is there a risk that they may? Yes, there is, for obvious reasons.
During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein’s regime, in breach of every international treaty, used chemical weapons against Iran, but there was no outcry in the US, or in France, against these weapons of mass destruction, which had a traumatic effect on the Iranian people. US troops are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran is surrounded by a network of foreign military bases. Two neighbouring countries, Pakistan and Israel, have nuclear weapons. No Iranian political leader could fail to be aware of this situation.
How to prevent escalation?
...Contrary to common assumptions, the main obstacle is not Tehran’s determination to enrich uranium. Iran has a right to do so under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty but it has always said it was prepared to impose voluntary restrictions on that right and to agree to increased IAEA inspections to prevent any possible use of enriched uranium for military purposes.
The Islamic Republic’s fundamental concern lies elsewhere. Witness the agreement signed on 14 November 2004 with France, Britain and Germany, under which Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment temporarily on the understanding that a long-term agreement would “provide firm commitments on security issues”. Washington refused to give any such commitments and Iran resumed its enrichment programme.
The European Union chose not to pursue an independent line but to follow Washington’s lead. The new proposals produced by the five members of the Security Council and Germany in June 2006 contained no guarantee of non-intervention in Iranian affairs. In Tehran’s reply to the proposals, delivered in August, it again “suggest[ed] that the western parties who want to participate in the negotiation team announce on behalf of their own and other European countries, to set aside the policy of intimidation, pressure and sanctions against Iran”. Only if such a commitment was made could negotiations be resumed.
If not, escalation is inevitable. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as president in June 2005 has not made dialogue any easier, given his taste for provocative statements, particularly about the Holocaust and Israel. But Iran is a big country rich in history and there is more to it than its president. There is much tension within the government and Ahmadinejad had severe setbacks both in the local elections and in elections to the Assembly of Experts in December 2006. There are substantial challenges, economic and social, and forceful demands for more freedom, especially among women and young people. Iranians refuse to be regimented and the only strong card the regime has to win their loyalty is nationalism, a refusal to accept the kind of foreign interference suffered throughout the 20th century.
Despite the disaster in Iraq, there is no indication that Bush has given up the idea of attacking Iran. This is part of his vision of a “third world war” against “Islamic fascism”, an ideological war that can end only in complete victory...
Archives:
Ali Akbar Velayati: 'Iran Strives Only for Security'
20.7.07
On Kindness or This Is Mutlicultural Montreal
Many people believe that a multicultural society is an utopia. I have been living this utopia since 1991 in Montreal, Quebec. Quebec is the province where multiculturalism is the most vivacious. British Colombia and Ontario for example have much more immigration but it is mainly from east and south Asia while in Quebec, and Montreal which is the recipient of the majority of immigrants, the mosaic is richer, there is no dominant community from immigration.
Of course, many things are difficult for an immigrant here in Quebec, as compared to the rest of Canada, especially when it comes to professional integration and dealing with the nationalistic aspirations of the Québécois who, in their majority, are proud of their distinctive ethnic character and their past, but it is not difficult to coexist with other immigrants from other countries with radically different cultures.
Yesterday, I went to the Eco center of my neighbourhood to get rid of some home painting material. But the Eco center had moved and I found myself carrying a heavy load from one place to another and out from the car and in the car again. After I finished, I went shopping for some grocery. At the cashier, I realised I was tired of carrying heavy bags and I asked the clerk if I could leave my bags near the door for about five minutes, the time I needed to drive the car and park it at the level of the store. A man behind me, a complete stranger, asked at that point where was my car, and I told him. He said: 'I would like to offer my help'. I was pleasantly surprised and accepted immediately while thanking him. We shared the load and walked outside. It was raining. He opened his umbrella for me. He spoke a litterary French, not the local dialect. I asked from which origin he was. He said that he has been living in Montreal since long but that he comes from Russia. I said that I was originally from Lebanon. I was affected by his curteous kindness and kept thanking him. He said: 'don't worry, this is Montreal, and after all, I am sure you would have done the same'.
I thought that it was so easy to be kind with others, even the distant other, that it should be the natural state of intersubjectivity; assuming kindness in others and acting under this assumption.
Update with a significant comment on this post from The Two Wolves blog:
Is it an example of multiculturalism though? Is it really true that even Quebec is really multicultural?
Definitely multi-ethnic but that's something different. Observe that you conversed in a tertiary language and that you were impressed by his mastery of that language. Also observe that you had to ask him where he originally came from, that it wasn't obvious to you. Isn't that an example of his, and your success in integration into a tertiary Franco-culture?
It is necessary to be mult-ethnic to be multicultural but it is not necessary to be multicultural in a multi-ethnic society, in fact I would argue that Canada has escaped the suspicions and privations evident in the US because its immigrants have more readily absorbed a Francophile culture. I think your story underlines that.
Of course, many things are difficult for an immigrant here in Quebec, as compared to the rest of Canada, especially when it comes to professional integration and dealing with the nationalistic aspirations of the Québécois who, in their majority, are proud of their distinctive ethnic character and their past, but it is not difficult to coexist with other immigrants from other countries with radically different cultures.
Yesterday, I went to the Eco center of my neighbourhood to get rid of some home painting material. But the Eco center had moved and I found myself carrying a heavy load from one place to another and out from the car and in the car again. After I finished, I went shopping for some grocery. At the cashier, I realised I was tired of carrying heavy bags and I asked the clerk if I could leave my bags near the door for about five minutes, the time I needed to drive the car and park it at the level of the store. A man behind me, a complete stranger, asked at that point where was my car, and I told him. He said: 'I would like to offer my help'. I was pleasantly surprised and accepted immediately while thanking him. We shared the load and walked outside. It was raining. He opened his umbrella for me. He spoke a litterary French, not the local dialect. I asked from which origin he was. He said that he has been living in Montreal since long but that he comes from Russia. I said that I was originally from Lebanon. I was affected by his curteous kindness and kept thanking him. He said: 'don't worry, this is Montreal, and after all, I am sure you would have done the same'.
I thought that it was so easy to be kind with others, even the distant other, that it should be the natural state of intersubjectivity; assuming kindness in others and acting under this assumption.
Update with a significant comment on this post from The Two Wolves blog:
Is it an example of multiculturalism though? Is it really true that even Quebec is really multicultural?
Definitely multi-ethnic but that's something different. Observe that you conversed in a tertiary language and that you were impressed by his mastery of that language. Also observe that you had to ask him where he originally came from, that it wasn't obvious to you. Isn't that an example of his, and your success in integration into a tertiary Franco-culture?
It is necessary to be mult-ethnic to be multicultural but it is not necessary to be multicultural in a multi-ethnic society, in fact I would argue that Canada has escaped the suspicions and privations evident in the US because its immigrants have more readily absorbed a Francophile culture. I think your story underlines that.
17.7.07
On Nationalism, Sarkozysm, Zionism, Leftism, the European Memory of the Shoah, and the Legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish only state
French philosopher Alain Badiou gave this interview to Le Monde last week. The original title was about the crisis of the intellectual Left. While the first two questions focused on why the unreformed present day French Left is defending Sarkozysm (the latter being anti-left, combining the most brutal forms of neoliberalism and populism), most of the interview was about the particularisms lying at the foundations of Israel as a Jewish only state.
Le Monde: How do you interpret the recent political and electoral changes in France ?
Alain Badiou: We are witnessing the end of French Politics as it emerged from the second world war: a Left-Right, Gaullo-Communist system that endorsed a common assessment of the second world war; Pétainism (France's Pétain collaborated with the Nazis) on one hand, and resistance on the other. Chirac was the Brejnev of Gaullism, the guardian of a crumbling party, whose cautiousness dictated immobilism. The election of Sarkozy, and the fact that some from the left have joined his government, mark the end of the political system that was born after the war. Meanwhile, one can ask who is this new Right in France ? Not Gaullist but successful among the extreme Right voters. Let's say what is evidence by now: This new Right is a decomplexified Capitalism reinstating Nationalism in an artificial and agressive manner .
The 'reactions' we hear today about this new capitalism or Sarkozysm are taken from old adages like "It is perfectly O.K. to be rich" or "We want the poor to work more and to obey us". Any other content or positive significance in Sarkozysm are still uncertain while its negative content is certain and well known:
Persecution of foreigners, especially if they are workers and/or poor;
Special ministry "to deal with" these immigrant workers;
Repressive clamp down on lower classes' youth;
The real campaigning Sarkozy has done to woo France's voters wasn't through his election campaign but rather through his actions as interior minister. His law on immigrants which is criminal and little known to the public, his open support for a police control of the French society and his boasting about it, have officialised Lepénism (Le Pen is the leader of the extreme right party le Front National) as a policy for the state and buried the "French exception". Therefore we are witnessing the total collapse of the left, and the extreme left, who are still holding on to the old political scheme built in France after the second world war.
Le Monde: What are the consequences of these changes on intellectuals and their work ?
Alain Badiou: The rallying of some intellectuals to Sarkozy symbolises the possibility for these intellectuals and philosophers to become some sort of traditional reactionnaries "without hesitation nor complaint", as in military rule. With this rallying comes the mingling with the Rich and Powerful, the xenophobia against poor and ordinary people, and the adoration of US Politics. Being an intellectual from the Right used to bear some sort of embarrassment in France. Even Raymond Aron (a famous French political philosopher) was embarrassed to declare himself an intellectual from the political Right ! The after war context in France was tailored to intellectuals from the Left. We are going to witness- and I am awaiting this moment- the demise of the leftist intellectual who will go down with the whole Left, before coming back to life again from its ashes like the phoenix ! This renewal of the Left will be possible only as an opposition to the actual reactionnary rallying of the Left to Sarkozy or any other extreme Right political movement disguised as the new Right. There will not be a middle of the road option for the Left, it will have to choose between a new radicalism in Politic or a reactionnary rallying to the new Right.
On Israel, Zionism and the Memory of the Shoah
Le Monde: You are, since the publication of Circonstance 3, Portées du mot "Juif" (The Uses of the word "Jew"), at the heart of an intellectual controversy because of your position on Israel, a position some believe is favourable to the disappearance of Israel as a state. What is your opinion on this ?
Alain Badiou: I believe this controversy, if taken at its highest and most coherent level, is about the existence of universals. What is the relation between the word "Jew", in its entire extension, its historical and intellectual resonance, and the liberating and emancipating effect of Universalism (Badiou means by Universalism the universal truth) ? Universalism is attacked from the Right, which maintains that we should return to the values of Nations, Traditions, Religion, Family values, etc. Universalism is also under attack from the Left which maintains that abstract Universalism is a form of intellectual Imperialism or an abstraction of the global market (or global economy) against which sexual, racial, and communautarian identities should be defended. In this debate, I stand in the middle, even if I am considered as a radical. I oppose the traditionalist defence of moral, national, and religious identities, but I oppose the modernist position on this matter which pretends to defend identities by making them the center and the principal player in the political opposition to international Capitalism. It is in this context that I consider the word "Jew".
Le Monde: Why reduce the whole question to a word ? Isn't a reality ?
Alain Badiou: Certainly ! It is the same with the word "French"... However "being French" does not prevent me from being from a Moroccan origin, or a hereditary aristocrat, or half German, having this or this idea about my country, inheriting the French revolution or on the contrary a fetichistic vision of the land... Under a word, of variable value, we can find an infinite multiplicity. My problem is that I am against those who think that "Jew" is a name, and not a word, those who insist that this word forms a homogenous and unified assembly non reductible to something else. In my opinion, their position can only be tenable in the case of divine transcendance. In this case, and in this case alone, we can argue that "Jew" is a name and not a word, because it is bound to an elective space: "Jew" is the name of the alliance. I argue, as Lévinas did before me in a coherent way, that it is impossible to maintain this nominal exception without the support of religion.
My target in this critique is not Zionism, neither the existence of Israel, not even a certain type of relation between the identity and the state. My target is the ideological manipulation of the word "Jew" in the intellectual controversy you mentioned, especially in France where it serves some goals linked to the reactionary wave in which we have been immersed for about thirty years now.
It would be terrible for the Jews, this living multiplicity, to let the word that defines them - which has a close relationship, going on for so many years before, with the formidable question of the universals and the adventures of universalism - to become the symbol of modernised Capitalism, anti-Arab or anti-African xenophobia, and US wars. I notice, with a real sorrow, that many people to whom I was close, sometimes dear friends, who in the 70s used to gravitate around revolutionary Maoism (he is talking probably about André Glucksman, staunch supporter now of Sarkozy), have started slowly using the reference to the word "Jew" and to Israel as a support for something politically and intellectually more large, that can be identified as an attempt to reintegrate the West. By "West" I mean the group of developped and "democratic" countries, their power, their way of life, which are judged superior. The unprecedented trauma that was the extermination of Europe's Jews in the Nazis gaz chambers has rendered this manipulation powerful and fearsome because it strikes the thought and immobilises it in a conservative memory.
Le Monde: You are accused of attacking the memory of the Shoah, or at least its usage. Is it because it served the itinerary you just denounced ?
Alain Badiou: I think that the promotion of massacres and victims as the only interesting contents to History is linked to a profound process of depolitisation. To examine all historical situations exclusively through moral categories results in political impotence. On the other hand, I don't think memory is a good category if we want the non repetition of disasters, because the non repetition assumes a rational judgement about what happened. An emotional memory based on horror and its images is ambivalent. Discerning between what follows from a repulsive emotion and an emotion of fascination is very difficult. Yes, I mistrust memory, the memory of colonial atrocities, or the memory of Stalinism, as much as the memory of Nazism. Political and historical knowledge should universally become the alternatives for doubtful memory that is a designated prey for propaganda.
le Monde: Is it in this same vein that you suggest in Circonstances 3 that we forget the Holocaust ?
Alain Badiou: This sentence, which appeared in an interview I gave to Haaretz, was, as you may suspect, a carefully designed imprudence: it cannot be understood outside the context specific to the conditions of a possible dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. My next sentence, that you don't cite here, made it clear that the forgetting is, in fact, impossible.
Le Monde: Isn't Israel's legitimacy, at least in the West, tied to the memory of the Shoah ?
Alain Badiou: Things must be clear. I never thought that the destiny of Israelis is to be pushed into the sea. Moreover, I don't think that the question of Israel's frontiers is at the heart of the problem. From the internal perspective of an assumed de facto situation, in other words, the settlement of hundred thousands of Jews in this place being irreversible, I still think that the regulating idea for a future for the region cannot be anything else than a common life and destiny for Palestinians and Jews on the same land. I always thought that the formula of a "Jewish state" is perilous. Today, the politic of emancipation dictate that national identities and states should not be defined exclusively in terms referring to identity and race. We should have a minimal requirement here, the land right against the blood right. Israel will have to deal with the prospect of universalism retaking the places where particularisms used to strive, if it has to deal with its own future.
Le Monde: Does this contribute to put into question the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state ?
Alain Badiou: You see, I have certainly written things against France which are more violent than things I have written against Israel! Zionism can be listed both in the colonialist and the revolutionary dimensions. It combines these two aspects and that what makes it a rare and singular phenomenon. That some people inside European communities who used to designate themselves as a particular minority with a national characteristic - the Jewish minority - wanted a place to achieve their identity, in a territorial way, under the form of a state, is a historic reality that, like any other reality of the sort, is neither legitimate nor illegitimate. But I believe it unreasonable to consider this adventure as an exception, somehow different from other nationalistic adventures.
Comment:
I personally agree with Badiou's assessment on the French Left but not necessarily with his suggestion for a 'radical' turn as a solution. We are witnessing a very radical Right emerge from the old Right, opposing a radical Left to this new Right is not a solution in my opinion because the international stage is set for this new Right which is not perceived as radical, and Badiou recognises this fact. As Politic is also about perceptions, I don't think the rebirth of the Left should be made with radical ideas set specifically against the political scene created by the new Right. On the contrary, it should be made with ideas that can assemble rather than confront to potentially help rebuild what the new Right is destroying and to emancipate from the framework set for the rest of the world by the new Right.
As for Israel, Badiou is stating the obvious and Israel must confront the obvious if it has to build a future for its citizens, unless international zionism (neoconism)continues to reshape reality to the extent every one of us will forget in the future what truth and facts mean.
P.S. Cross posted in a slightly different content at Sabbah's. Both posts at Sabbah's and Les Politiques can be linked to but not reproduced entirely without the permission of the author.
Le Monde: How do you interpret the recent political and electoral changes in France ?
Alain Badiou: We are witnessing the end of French Politics as it emerged from the second world war: a Left-Right, Gaullo-Communist system that endorsed a common assessment of the second world war; Pétainism (France's Pétain collaborated with the Nazis) on one hand, and resistance on the other. Chirac was the Brejnev of Gaullism, the guardian of a crumbling party, whose cautiousness dictated immobilism. The election of Sarkozy, and the fact that some from the left have joined his government, mark the end of the political system that was born after the war. Meanwhile, one can ask who is this new Right in France ? Not Gaullist but successful among the extreme Right voters. Let's say what is evidence by now: This new Right is a decomplexified Capitalism reinstating Nationalism in an artificial and agressive manner .
The 'reactions' we hear today about this new capitalism or Sarkozysm are taken from old adages like "It is perfectly O.K. to be rich" or "We want the poor to work more and to obey us". Any other content or positive significance in Sarkozysm are still uncertain while its negative content is certain and well known:
Persecution of foreigners, especially if they are workers and/or poor;
Special ministry "to deal with" these immigrant workers;
Repressive clamp down on lower classes' youth;
The real campaigning Sarkozy has done to woo France's voters wasn't through his election campaign but rather through his actions as interior minister. His law on immigrants which is criminal and little known to the public, his open support for a police control of the French society and his boasting about it, have officialised Lepénism (Le Pen is the leader of the extreme right party le Front National) as a policy for the state and buried the "French exception". Therefore we are witnessing the total collapse of the left, and the extreme left, who are still holding on to the old political scheme built in France after the second world war.
Le Monde: What are the consequences of these changes on intellectuals and their work ?
Alain Badiou: The rallying of some intellectuals to Sarkozy symbolises the possibility for these intellectuals and philosophers to become some sort of traditional reactionnaries "without hesitation nor complaint", as in military rule. With this rallying comes the mingling with the Rich and Powerful, the xenophobia against poor and ordinary people, and the adoration of US Politics. Being an intellectual from the Right used to bear some sort of embarrassment in France. Even Raymond Aron (a famous French political philosopher) was embarrassed to declare himself an intellectual from the political Right ! The after war context in France was tailored to intellectuals from the Left. We are going to witness- and I am awaiting this moment- the demise of the leftist intellectual who will go down with the whole Left, before coming back to life again from its ashes like the phoenix ! This renewal of the Left will be possible only as an opposition to the actual reactionnary rallying of the Left to Sarkozy or any other extreme Right political movement disguised as the new Right. There will not be a middle of the road option for the Left, it will have to choose between a new radicalism in Politic or a reactionnary rallying to the new Right.
On Israel, Zionism and the Memory of the Shoah
Le Monde: You are, since the publication of Circonstance 3, Portées du mot "Juif" (The Uses of the word "Jew"), at the heart of an intellectual controversy because of your position on Israel, a position some believe is favourable to the disappearance of Israel as a state. What is your opinion on this ?
Alain Badiou: I believe this controversy, if taken at its highest and most coherent level, is about the existence of universals. What is the relation between the word "Jew", in its entire extension, its historical and intellectual resonance, and the liberating and emancipating effect of Universalism (Badiou means by Universalism the universal truth) ? Universalism is attacked from the Right, which maintains that we should return to the values of Nations, Traditions, Religion, Family values, etc. Universalism is also under attack from the Left which maintains that abstract Universalism is a form of intellectual Imperialism or an abstraction of the global market (or global economy) against which sexual, racial, and communautarian identities should be defended. In this debate, I stand in the middle, even if I am considered as a radical. I oppose the traditionalist defence of moral, national, and religious identities, but I oppose the modernist position on this matter which pretends to defend identities by making them the center and the principal player in the political opposition to international Capitalism. It is in this context that I consider the word "Jew".
Le Monde: Why reduce the whole question to a word ? Isn't a reality ?
Alain Badiou: Certainly ! It is the same with the word "French"... However "being French" does not prevent me from being from a Moroccan origin, or a hereditary aristocrat, or half German, having this or this idea about my country, inheriting the French revolution or on the contrary a fetichistic vision of the land... Under a word, of variable value, we can find an infinite multiplicity. My problem is that I am against those who think that "Jew" is a name, and not a word, those who insist that this word forms a homogenous and unified assembly non reductible to something else. In my opinion, their position can only be tenable in the case of divine transcendance. In this case, and in this case alone, we can argue that "Jew" is a name and not a word, because it is bound to an elective space: "Jew" is the name of the alliance. I argue, as Lévinas did before me in a coherent way, that it is impossible to maintain this nominal exception without the support of religion.
My target in this critique is not Zionism, neither the existence of Israel, not even a certain type of relation between the identity and the state. My target is the ideological manipulation of the word "Jew" in the intellectual controversy you mentioned, especially in France where it serves some goals linked to the reactionary wave in which we have been immersed for about thirty years now.
It would be terrible for the Jews, this living multiplicity, to let the word that defines them - which has a close relationship, going on for so many years before, with the formidable question of the universals and the adventures of universalism - to become the symbol of modernised Capitalism, anti-Arab or anti-African xenophobia, and US wars. I notice, with a real sorrow, that many people to whom I was close, sometimes dear friends, who in the 70s used to gravitate around revolutionary Maoism (he is talking probably about André Glucksman, staunch supporter now of Sarkozy), have started slowly using the reference to the word "Jew" and to Israel as a support for something politically and intellectually more large, that can be identified as an attempt to reintegrate the West. By "West" I mean the group of developped and "democratic" countries, their power, their way of life, which are judged superior. The unprecedented trauma that was the extermination of Europe's Jews in the Nazis gaz chambers has rendered this manipulation powerful and fearsome because it strikes the thought and immobilises it in a conservative memory.
Le Monde: You are accused of attacking the memory of the Shoah, or at least its usage. Is it because it served the itinerary you just denounced ?
Alain Badiou: I think that the promotion of massacres and victims as the only interesting contents to History is linked to a profound process of depolitisation. To examine all historical situations exclusively through moral categories results in political impotence. On the other hand, I don't think memory is a good category if we want the non repetition of disasters, because the non repetition assumes a rational judgement about what happened. An emotional memory based on horror and its images is ambivalent. Discerning between what follows from a repulsive emotion and an emotion of fascination is very difficult. Yes, I mistrust memory, the memory of colonial atrocities, or the memory of Stalinism, as much as the memory of Nazism. Political and historical knowledge should universally become the alternatives for doubtful memory that is a designated prey for propaganda.
le Monde: Is it in this same vein that you suggest in Circonstances 3 that we forget the Holocaust ?
Alain Badiou: This sentence, which appeared in an interview I gave to Haaretz, was, as you may suspect, a carefully designed imprudence: it cannot be understood outside the context specific to the conditions of a possible dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. My next sentence, that you don't cite here, made it clear that the forgetting is, in fact, impossible.
Le Monde: Isn't Israel's legitimacy, at least in the West, tied to the memory of the Shoah ?
Alain Badiou: Things must be clear. I never thought that the destiny of Israelis is to be pushed into the sea. Moreover, I don't think that the question of Israel's frontiers is at the heart of the problem. From the internal perspective of an assumed de facto situation, in other words, the settlement of hundred thousands of Jews in this place being irreversible, I still think that the regulating idea for a future for the region cannot be anything else than a common life and destiny for Palestinians and Jews on the same land. I always thought that the formula of a "Jewish state" is perilous. Today, the politic of emancipation dictate that national identities and states should not be defined exclusively in terms referring to identity and race. We should have a minimal requirement here, the land right against the blood right. Israel will have to deal with the prospect of universalism retaking the places where particularisms used to strive, if it has to deal with its own future.
Le Monde: Does this contribute to put into question the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state ?
Alain Badiou: You see, I have certainly written things against France which are more violent than things I have written against Israel! Zionism can be listed both in the colonialist and the revolutionary dimensions. It combines these two aspects and that what makes it a rare and singular phenomenon. That some people inside European communities who used to designate themselves as a particular minority with a national characteristic - the Jewish minority - wanted a place to achieve their identity, in a territorial way, under the form of a state, is a historic reality that, like any other reality of the sort, is neither legitimate nor illegitimate. But I believe it unreasonable to consider this adventure as an exception, somehow different from other nationalistic adventures.
Comment:
I personally agree with Badiou's assessment on the French Left but not necessarily with his suggestion for a 'radical' turn as a solution. We are witnessing a very radical Right emerge from the old Right, opposing a radical Left to this new Right is not a solution in my opinion because the international stage is set for this new Right which is not perceived as radical, and Badiou recognises this fact. As Politic is also about perceptions, I don't think the rebirth of the Left should be made with radical ideas set specifically against the political scene created by the new Right. On the contrary, it should be made with ideas that can assemble rather than confront to potentially help rebuild what the new Right is destroying and to emancipate from the framework set for the rest of the world by the new Right.
As for Israel, Badiou is stating the obvious and Israel must confront the obvious if it has to build a future for its citizens, unless international zionism (neoconism)continues to reshape reality to the extent every one of us will forget in the future what truth and facts mean.
P.S. Cross posted in a slightly different content at Sabbah's. Both posts at Sabbah's and Les Politiques can be linked to but not reproduced entirely without the permission of the author.
12.7.07
Lebanon: Elusive Peace and Despair
Next year, I will be 50. I was born the year Fouad Chehab ended the pro-western pro-US Chamoun presidency to rally all sects in Lebanon around a certain idea of neutrality between pro-western (mostly Christian tribal leaders at the time) and Pan Arabist (mostly sunni tribal leaders at the time) elements in the Lebanese society. I have a clear memory from my childhood, that of soldiers appearing around our village house while my younger brother and I were playing outside. I was terrified. My brother started crying loud and my mother came out. The soldiers explained they were looking for fugitives. And then from their pockets, they pulled some sweets and gave them to my brother. That was enough to calm him down.
Long after, I will learn from my parents that the incident happened in 1962, few months after a failed coup was attempted in early 1962 by members of the Syrian Nationalist Party on the presidency of Fouad Chehab.
With this childhood memory, another one is still vivid. It is about a dream I would make repetitively. I always wonder if I had started making this dream before this encounter with the soldiers or after. In my dream, I would wake up during the night while my parents and the whole village were sleeping. I would go to my grand'parents' and walk past their house in the empty street as if expecting something. And suddenly the road before me would open, a riffle would rise ripping off the asphalt. At this sight, I would run to our house, voiceless and breathless, and wake up in my bed sweating and crying.
Nearly more than a decade after this dream started to haunt my nights, I witnessed the ugliness of the civil war as a teenager within my own community and the savagery applied on other rival communities and sects during seven whole years between 1975 and 1982. I left Lebanon, not before loosing my mother to illness and depression and seeing the rest of my family shattered on three continents. I had my own family and children, forgot about Lebanon, only on the surface. I couldn't for example listen to Arabic music, Fayrouz, or any other music I used to listen to when I was a young person growing up in Lebanon, without breaking into tears. I was always postponing a visit to Lebanon after the country was pacified, inventing excuses to my husband and grown up children who are from another country and had never visited. Until 2005. The events that unfolded in 2005 led me to think that the fragile equilibrium that was prevailing in the country was going to be shattered again. I opened up to my husband and told him about my fears and at the same time about what I thought was maybe our last chance to visit the country with the children in 'normal' times. He was kind enough to suggest approaching Lebanon from a distance, slowly, and with a perspective. We visited that summer Cyprus for one week, Syria for another week, before arriving to Baalbeck in the Bekaa and witnessing the 5kms stretch of trucks delayed at the border between Syria and Lebanon. We stayed the first night awake on the roof of the Palmyra hotel in Baalbeck admiring the Roman ruins by night. The hotel concierge told me that Fayrouz used to stay on the roof admiring the ruins the night before performing at the Baalbeck festival.
I was welcome in Syria. While the Syrian workers were persecuted in Lebanon, the Syrian people, wherever I went, gave me a warm welcome. While visiting the Omeyyade Mosque in Damascus, the man at the door who lends 'abayas to women to cover themselves in the mosque asked from where I come. I answered worried: 'I am from Lebanon but I live in Canada'. And he kindly said: 'welcome our sister' and refused that I pay the price paid by foreign tourists for the 'abayas. In comparison, at Beyrouth airport, when leaving, the woman at the flight registration desk remarked with an air of disgust that we had been to Syria before Lebanon.
In 12 days, we drove Lebanon from north to south, from Bcharré to Qana and the southern border, taking all the small roads and totalling some 6000 kms in a country of 200kms long and 80 kms, at most, large. I arrived to my village unannounced. I walked to my grand'parents'. The door was open, as in most village houses. My aunt came to the door and asked who we were. I said: I am your niece. We embraced while my husband and children were behind, crying. I visited our empty house in the village, gathered some old pictures, talked with neighbours and old friends, took a walk to the olive orchards, trecked deep in the Qadisha valley, drove among crazy Lebanese drivers, bathed in the sea near Tyre, sampled baklavas at major Lebanese pastry stores in Tripoli and Saida, ate Falafel in Saida's souk, slept on the sound of the nearby prayer of the muezzin, walked one day in the ugly Beyrouth downtown, ultrarenovated as to erase the memory of any past or future wars.
The visit was like a therapy for me. But when I returned I started to be obsessed with the security situation in Lebanon, not being able to pass a day without looking at the news from there. And as the news from there were becoming more and more alarming, culminating in the 2006 Israeli agression on the country, I started to despair, and I am still in this mood. And while the lebanese army is pounding now in the north a Palestinian camp emptied of half of its inhabitants and 'equipped' by the Hariri family with some few hundred islamist militants, on orders of the Sanyura government trying to distract from crucial issues in Lebanon, exactly as Al-Qaida serves as a useful distractor for the internal political goals of western governments in power, not in a war of attrition, but in a divisive war of rallying and regrouping different communities around resentment, like what is happening in Iraq, Lebanon is commemorating the 'Second Israeli War' and the second major Israeli agression which rallied its citizens for the duration of the agression across the sectarian divide.
For the time being, and this time seems to last forever, I have adopted a substitute to Lebanon. I went vacationing in Turkey (and partly in Greece) this summer, and will do so often, until of course Turkey also will be reached by the neo-con destabilising and debilitating enterprise for a new middle east and a new century.
There is only one word to describe my hopes for Lebanon and what I think of its political tribal elite and their followers: Despair. And I apologise before my Lebanese friends and parents for my pessimism.
Fear and fragile peace
A son waits to join Hizbullah to avenge shattered family
Bint Jbeil in pictures one year later.
Some background on the Israeli invasions of south Lebanon. The article dates from 1999 but gives a perspective much needed since everything today has been formatted within the new 9/11 explanation framework while dismissing the rest, the rest is history for the US and Israel and much of the western world, but history matters when we need to analyse conflicts.
Olmert, Peretz, and their generals, would have benefited from reading this article published in 2004 in the Daily Star, before launching the 2006 agression against Lebanon.
Long after, I will learn from my parents that the incident happened in 1962, few months after a failed coup was attempted in early 1962 by members of the Syrian Nationalist Party on the presidency of Fouad Chehab.
With this childhood memory, another one is still vivid. It is about a dream I would make repetitively. I always wonder if I had started making this dream before this encounter with the soldiers or after. In my dream, I would wake up during the night while my parents and the whole village were sleeping. I would go to my grand'parents' and walk past their house in the empty street as if expecting something. And suddenly the road before me would open, a riffle would rise ripping off the asphalt. At this sight, I would run to our house, voiceless and breathless, and wake up in my bed sweating and crying.
Nearly more than a decade after this dream started to haunt my nights, I witnessed the ugliness of the civil war as a teenager within my own community and the savagery applied on other rival communities and sects during seven whole years between 1975 and 1982. I left Lebanon, not before loosing my mother to illness and depression and seeing the rest of my family shattered on three continents. I had my own family and children, forgot about Lebanon, only on the surface. I couldn't for example listen to Arabic music, Fayrouz, or any other music I used to listen to when I was a young person growing up in Lebanon, without breaking into tears. I was always postponing a visit to Lebanon after the country was pacified, inventing excuses to my husband and grown up children who are from another country and had never visited. Until 2005. The events that unfolded in 2005 led me to think that the fragile equilibrium that was prevailing in the country was going to be shattered again. I opened up to my husband and told him about my fears and at the same time about what I thought was maybe our last chance to visit the country with the children in 'normal' times. He was kind enough to suggest approaching Lebanon from a distance, slowly, and with a perspective. We visited that summer Cyprus for one week, Syria for another week, before arriving to Baalbeck in the Bekaa and witnessing the 5kms stretch of trucks delayed at the border between Syria and Lebanon. We stayed the first night awake on the roof of the Palmyra hotel in Baalbeck admiring the Roman ruins by night. The hotel concierge told me that Fayrouz used to stay on the roof admiring the ruins the night before performing at the Baalbeck festival.
I was welcome in Syria. While the Syrian workers were persecuted in Lebanon, the Syrian people, wherever I went, gave me a warm welcome. While visiting the Omeyyade Mosque in Damascus, the man at the door who lends 'abayas to women to cover themselves in the mosque asked from where I come. I answered worried: 'I am from Lebanon but I live in Canada'. And he kindly said: 'welcome our sister' and refused that I pay the price paid by foreign tourists for the 'abayas. In comparison, at Beyrouth airport, when leaving, the woman at the flight registration desk remarked with an air of disgust that we had been to Syria before Lebanon.
In 12 days, we drove Lebanon from north to south, from Bcharré to Qana and the southern border, taking all the small roads and totalling some 6000 kms in a country of 200kms long and 80 kms, at most, large. I arrived to my village unannounced. I walked to my grand'parents'. The door was open, as in most village houses. My aunt came to the door and asked who we were. I said: I am your niece. We embraced while my husband and children were behind, crying. I visited our empty house in the village, gathered some old pictures, talked with neighbours and old friends, took a walk to the olive orchards, trecked deep in the Qadisha valley, drove among crazy Lebanese drivers, bathed in the sea near Tyre, sampled baklavas at major Lebanese pastry stores in Tripoli and Saida, ate Falafel in Saida's souk, slept on the sound of the nearby prayer of the muezzin, walked one day in the ugly Beyrouth downtown, ultrarenovated as to erase the memory of any past or future wars.
The visit was like a therapy for me. But when I returned I started to be obsessed with the security situation in Lebanon, not being able to pass a day without looking at the news from there. And as the news from there were becoming more and more alarming, culminating in the 2006 Israeli agression on the country, I started to despair, and I am still in this mood. And while the lebanese army is pounding now in the north a Palestinian camp emptied of half of its inhabitants and 'equipped' by the Hariri family with some few hundred islamist militants, on orders of the Sanyura government trying to distract from crucial issues in Lebanon, exactly as Al-Qaida serves as a useful distractor for the internal political goals of western governments in power, not in a war of attrition, but in a divisive war of rallying and regrouping different communities around resentment, like what is happening in Iraq, Lebanon is commemorating the 'Second Israeli War' and the second major Israeli agression which rallied its citizens for the duration of the agression across the sectarian divide.
For the time being, and this time seems to last forever, I have adopted a substitute to Lebanon. I went vacationing in Turkey (and partly in Greece) this summer, and will do so often, until of course Turkey also will be reached by the neo-con destabilising and debilitating enterprise for a new middle east and a new century.
There is only one word to describe my hopes for Lebanon and what I think of its political tribal elite and their followers: Despair. And I apologise before my Lebanese friends and parents for my pessimism.
Fear and fragile peace
A son waits to join Hizbullah to avenge shattered family
Bint Jbeil in pictures one year later.
Some background on the Israeli invasions of south Lebanon. The article dates from 1999 but gives a perspective much needed since everything today has been formatted within the new 9/11 explanation framework while dismissing the rest, the rest is history for the US and Israel and much of the western world, but history matters when we need to analyse conflicts.
Olmert, Peretz, and their generals, would have benefited from reading this article published in 2004 in the Daily Star, before launching the 2006 agression against Lebanon.
10.7.07
Il hurle avec les loups
Alain Gresh sur de récents commentaires de Georges Frêche . Ou comment un socialiste Français, raciste et anti-sémite notoire, fait amende honorable auprès des Juifs, mais sur le dos des Arabes et des Libanais.
Video sur Dailymotion
Video sur Dailymotion
De la perversité en politique
J'ai lu les journaux Français ce matin dans le train et c'est à partir du train que j'écris en ce moment. Une envie irrésistible de commenter l'actualité politique en France, que la compagnie Canadienne de trains, tous équipés maintenant de Wifi, m'en offre la possibilité.
Tout d'abord, l'analyse politique dans le journal Le Monde que Daniel Vernet fait de la proposition de Nicolas Sarkozy pour une 'Union Méditterrannéenne', Le Monde qui me semble retrouver peu à peu ses esprits et sa vitalité après le départ de JMC. Vernet n'hésite pas à l'appeler 'une chimère'. Arrivant en Algérie avec son attitude néocolonialiste et son refus de la repentance, Sarkozy met sur la table une carotte pour les pays sous-développés de la Méditterrannée; un espace commun avec les pays Européens. Par cette offre 'généreuse', Sarkozy espère se débarrasser une fois pour toutes de la question de l'intégration de la Turquie à l'union Européenne, intégration à laquelle il est fortement opposé pour des raisons idéologiques. L'union de la Méditterrannée' n'est en définitive qu'un expédient, de l''amitié' sans traité d'amitié.
Dans le même journal, les affaires du nouveau président Français roulent comme prévu. Le nettoyage politique à droite comme à gauche est en marche. Alors que l'appui de Sarkozy à la possible nomination de Dominique Strauss Kahn à la tête du FMI relève d'une volonté politique de laminage de la gauche, les perquisitions à répétition chez Villepin relèvent de la volonté politique de Sarkozy de laminer la droite, ou plutôt la vieille droite, celle qui l'a élu. L'infortune de Juppé n'est pas accidentelle, et celle récente de Boutin sur l'affaire du 11 septembre non plus. Sarkozy veut aller vite, il veut nettoyer tout l'espace politique autour de lui pour ne garder que les soumis.
Mais attention, soumission ne veut pas dire fidélité. Sarkozy n'est pas un homme qui suscite des fidélités comme François Mitterrand, à commencer par sa femme...
Et pour mettre cette actualité en perspective je vous relate une petite conversation que j'ai eue hier avec un juif Français. Je le rencontre chez des amis pour la première fois. Il me parle tout de suite de Sarkozy. 'Admirable', 'Coup de génie', me dit-il de la nomination de la Sarkozette Rachida Dati et de Fadela Amara. Mais 'J'ai voté Ségolène' me précise-t-il. Je ne le crois pas une seconde. Tous ceux qui font l'éloge de Sarkozy et précisent qu'ils ont voté pour Ségolène ont en fait honte d'avoir voté pour Sarkozy, beaucoup de juifs anciens gauchistes font partie de cette catgorie à cause du support inconditionnel de Sarkozy pour Israel.
Je dis alors à ce monsieur: Je ne suis pas d'accord avec vous, ce n'est pas de l'habileté, c'est de la perversité en Politique. Nommer une femme de l'immigration comme ministre de la justice pour défendre des lois qui criminalisent les mineurs récidivistes, tout en sachant que ces lois vont s'appliquer majoritairement sur les immigrants qui protestent contre les politiques de Sarkozy et son mépris pour eux, c'est pervers. J'imagine que Sarkozy doit prendre plaisir à voir Dati accomplir son dessein à lui. Nommer une femme présidente de 'ni putes ni soumises' comme secrétaire d'état d'une ministre ultracatholique, c'est annuler les deux tout en faisant semblant de leur donner de l'importance.
Avec Sarkozy, la perversité revient en Politique. Mais pour la première fois en France, et l'une des rares fois dans le monde, elle fait partie du 'processus démocratique' adroitement 'géré' par les média vendus à Sarkozy. Elle utilise la rhétorique pour flatter avant de persuader. Elle n'est pas censée résoudre des problèmes, elle est censée les annuler par un coup de baguette magique. En soignant les égos, elle centre les préoccupations de la Politique sur les Soi siliconés de la Politique, y compris celui de Sarkozy, en les décentrant par rapport au réel. Ces égos enflés et ces Soi siliconés seront naturellement aussi coupables que Sarkozy dans l'effritement du tissu social et du champ politique que Sarkozy prépare pour la France. Le réveil sera dur mes amis...
Tout d'abord, l'analyse politique dans le journal Le Monde que Daniel Vernet fait de la proposition de Nicolas Sarkozy pour une 'Union Méditterrannéenne', Le Monde qui me semble retrouver peu à peu ses esprits et sa vitalité après le départ de JMC. Vernet n'hésite pas à l'appeler 'une chimère'. Arrivant en Algérie avec son attitude néocolonialiste et son refus de la repentance, Sarkozy met sur la table une carotte pour les pays sous-développés de la Méditterrannée; un espace commun avec les pays Européens. Par cette offre 'généreuse', Sarkozy espère se débarrasser une fois pour toutes de la question de l'intégration de la Turquie à l'union Européenne, intégration à laquelle il est fortement opposé pour des raisons idéologiques. L'union de la Méditterrannée' n'est en définitive qu'un expédient, de l''amitié' sans traité d'amitié.
Dans le même journal, les affaires du nouveau président Français roulent comme prévu. Le nettoyage politique à droite comme à gauche est en marche. Alors que l'appui de Sarkozy à la possible nomination de Dominique Strauss Kahn à la tête du FMI relève d'une volonté politique de laminage de la gauche, les perquisitions à répétition chez Villepin relèvent de la volonté politique de Sarkozy de laminer la droite, ou plutôt la vieille droite, celle qui l'a élu. L'infortune de Juppé n'est pas accidentelle, et celle récente de Boutin sur l'affaire du 11 septembre non plus. Sarkozy veut aller vite, il veut nettoyer tout l'espace politique autour de lui pour ne garder que les soumis.
Mais attention, soumission ne veut pas dire fidélité. Sarkozy n'est pas un homme qui suscite des fidélités comme François Mitterrand, à commencer par sa femme...
Et pour mettre cette actualité en perspective je vous relate une petite conversation que j'ai eue hier avec un juif Français. Je le rencontre chez des amis pour la première fois. Il me parle tout de suite de Sarkozy. 'Admirable', 'Coup de génie', me dit-il de la nomination de la Sarkozette Rachida Dati et de Fadela Amara. Mais 'J'ai voté Ségolène' me précise-t-il. Je ne le crois pas une seconde. Tous ceux qui font l'éloge de Sarkozy et précisent qu'ils ont voté pour Ségolène ont en fait honte d'avoir voté pour Sarkozy, beaucoup de juifs anciens gauchistes font partie de cette catgorie à cause du support inconditionnel de Sarkozy pour Israel.
Je dis alors à ce monsieur: Je ne suis pas d'accord avec vous, ce n'est pas de l'habileté, c'est de la perversité en Politique. Nommer une femme de l'immigration comme ministre de la justice pour défendre des lois qui criminalisent les mineurs récidivistes, tout en sachant que ces lois vont s'appliquer majoritairement sur les immigrants qui protestent contre les politiques de Sarkozy et son mépris pour eux, c'est pervers. J'imagine que Sarkozy doit prendre plaisir à voir Dati accomplir son dessein à lui. Nommer une femme présidente de 'ni putes ni soumises' comme secrétaire d'état d'une ministre ultracatholique, c'est annuler les deux tout en faisant semblant de leur donner de l'importance.
Avec Sarkozy, la perversité revient en Politique. Mais pour la première fois en France, et l'une des rares fois dans le monde, elle fait partie du 'processus démocratique' adroitement 'géré' par les média vendus à Sarkozy. Elle utilise la rhétorique pour flatter avant de persuader. Elle n'est pas censée résoudre des problèmes, elle est censée les annuler par un coup de baguette magique. En soignant les égos, elle centre les préoccupations de la Politique sur les Soi siliconés de la Politique, y compris celui de Sarkozy, en les décentrant par rapport au réel. Ces égos enflés et ces Soi siliconés seront naturellement aussi coupables que Sarkozy dans l'effritement du tissu social et du champ politique que Sarkozy prépare pour la France. Le réveil sera dur mes amis...
5.7.07
The Movies and Music of Angelopoulos and Karaindrou
I love Music. All sorts. But I have a special relationship to music. I tend to listen compulsively to music when I am emotional as a kind of therapy. The rest of the time I can stay for days without it.
Recently I was in Greece and Turkey and had the occasion to listen to some beautiful music. Yesterday I was trying to post some popular Greek songs on my blog and did not succeed. I have the files on my windows media player and on itunes but I don't know how to transform the files. I looked for some links to Greek music to embed in my blog and I disovered this tribute to Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysse's Gaze, a man looking for his roots and the roots of his people in today's broken, and sometimes bleeding, nations of the former Ottoman empire.
The movie is a masterpiece and it is served well by the beautiful music of Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou. Some of the themes of Ulysse's Gaze music can be found in the soundtrack to another Angelopoulos Masterpiece interpreted by Bruno Ganz, Eternity and a Day. It is about a lonely aged man who travels from one place to another, and from one memory to another, in order to find a family or a carer for his dog before he dies and becomes unable to take care of him, and who is given a new sense to his life's end by an immigrant little boy living in the streets.
Ulysse's Gaze
Another scene from Ulysse's Gaze with a demoted statue of Lenin traveling the Danube between Constanza and Vienna to end up in some German rich collectionneur's property.
Eternity and a Day
Recently I was in Greece and Turkey and had the occasion to listen to some beautiful music. Yesterday I was trying to post some popular Greek songs on my blog and did not succeed. I have the files on my windows media player and on itunes but I don't know how to transform the files. I looked for some links to Greek music to embed in my blog and I disovered this tribute to Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysse's Gaze, a man looking for his roots and the roots of his people in today's broken, and sometimes bleeding, nations of the former Ottoman empire.
The movie is a masterpiece and it is served well by the beautiful music of Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou. Some of the themes of Ulysse's Gaze music can be found in the soundtrack to another Angelopoulos Masterpiece interpreted by Bruno Ganz, Eternity and a Day. It is about a lonely aged man who travels from one place to another, and from one memory to another, in order to find a family or a carer for his dog before he dies and becomes unable to take care of him, and who is given a new sense to his life's end by an immigrant little boy living in the streets.
Ulysse's Gaze
Another scene from Ulysse's Gaze with a demoted statue of Lenin traveling the Danube between Constanza and Vienna to end up in some German rich collectionneur's property.
Eternity and a Day
4.7.07
Law and Order in Gaza, thanks to Hamas
Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondant held by a radical Djihadist group, is freed today by the efforts of Hamas, two weeks only since Hamas took control of the Gaza strip.
Israeli collaborators from Fatah are bitter and angry. There may be some Logic beyond Politics, according to The Guardian account of Johnston's liberation. Israel and Fatah, encouraged by the international community, planted chaos and anarchy in Gaza in order to undermine the image of the Hamas government. But the anarchy went to such lenght that Hamas did not have a choice but to get rid of collaborationnist elements in the Gaza strip.
Now that they control Gaza, Hamas can prove what they are capable of. Johnston's liberation is a good sign.
For Moïn Rabbani, expert on Palestinian Politics for the International Crisis Group, Johnston's liberation is a ''major accomplishment for Hamas''. ''It is a success, even in the eyes of Palestinians themselves whose major everyday concern is security. Hamas has shown the public opinion it is more apt to bring security and order to the people.'' Mr. Rabbani doubts however that these news will affect in any way the stance of the international community towards Hamas. ''The international community and the Quartet have only one objective: Get rid of Hamas even though they are able to bring security to the Palestinian people.''
Fatah, already irrelevant to the Palestinian people, may become irrelevant also for Israel and the international community. This day will come...but this day, the international community, if it pursues its isolation of Hamas, will have also transformed Hamas into another irrelevant Palestinian organisation, and the Palestinian people will have nobody to speak for them...
Other links on the story
Extensive reporting and background on the clan who kidnapped Johnston from der Spiegel
Here is an account on his blog of the atmosphere prevailing before the release at Hamas quarters in Gaza from journalist Charles Levinson.
Comment: Khalid Mish'aal
Read how Dahlan, resigned only in July 2007 from the post of the responsible for security for Fatah in Gaza, talked to Israelis about slaughtering Arafat. The documents were found in Gaza by Hamas after Fatah lost the war against Hamas and had to flee.
Dahlan, a Fatah Washington and Israel's ally, seems to have prolonged Alan Johnston's captivity.
Read the story of Said El-Atabeh the most veteran of Palestinian prisoners in Israel's jails, imprisoned since 1977.
3.7.07
De Soto's End of Mission Report on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Thanks to Loubnan Ya Loubnan, I found this interesting document written by Alvaro de Soto at the end of his mission as special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process between May 2005 and May 2007, and before Tony Blair took up the task.
It is interesting to read this report leaked by The Guardian, which is very critical of all the parties in the conflict, especially Israel. It will be in my permanent links now in the right side bar. I can't wait to ompare it to what Tony Blair will have to tell us about the same mission, the kind of blabla he uttered two days ago, just before the attempted bombings in Glascow, about Muslims having false grievances (thanks Stef for the picture).
Israel's nuclear wistleblower to return to prison
Mordechai vanunu, the man whom Israel kidnapped from the UK in 1986 for revealing Israel's nuclear program to a British newspaper, and who has been living, since he finished his 18 year prison sentence in 2004, under extremely restrictive conditions to his personal freedom, has been sentenced yesterday by an Israeli court to a six month prison for violating the terms of his parole (i.e. speaking about Israel's nuclear program).
And while this is taking place, a near total silence is observed by most western news media about the matter. On the other hand, the US, UK, and the new UN secretary general are very worried about Iran's nuclear potential. This matter is not only getting full coverage but also the usual buzz and spin in mainstream western media.
Profile of Mordechai Vanunu published upon his first release from jail in The Guardian in April 2004.
And while this is taking place, a near total silence is observed by most western news media about the matter. On the other hand, the US, UK, and the new UN secretary general are very worried about Iran's nuclear potential. This matter is not only getting full coverage but also the usual buzz and spin in mainstream western media.
Profile of Mordechai Vanunu published upon his first release from jail in The Guardian in April 2004.
1.7.07
The Bush-Blair Era: synonymous of the slowly irreversible agony of the peace process in the ME
From Le Monde. A poll of their readers (12550 polled) shows that more than 60% think that the nomination of Tony Blair as special envoy of the quartet to the ME will not help reinvigorate the negociations process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Let alone the peace process. Le Monde's readers are center left and moderates.
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Since March 29th 2006
