31.10.07
The Madrid Bombing Sentences
Can someone tell me why this man was acquitted ?
Other Links on Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed:
NYTimes, February, 15th, 2007
Washington Post, November 14th, 2004, 'Suspect moved freely in Europe'
Other Links on Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed:
NYTimes, February, 15th, 2007
Washington Post, November 14th, 2004, 'Suspect moved freely in Europe'
30.10.07
Humanitarian work should be saved from 'Save Darfur'
Humanitarian work tainted by political motives harms the cause it claims it defends. That has been the case of some organisations claiming to work to stop a genocide in Darfur. Numbers of those who were killed in Darfur were inflated by the 'Save Darfur' campaign, from 200000 to 400000. Not that the fact diminishes the crime but it definitely lays a discredit on the cause.
The recent imprisonment in Chad of French 'humanitarian workers' from 'L'arche de Zoé' under suspicions of child kidnapping is a perfect example of how ideological and political manipulation of the Darfur cause has subverted the humanitarian label, despite France's foreign affairs minister Bernard Kouchner, the champion of armed humanitarian intervention who has been outspoken on the 'Darfur genocide', breaking his silence and embarrassement to condemn Arche de Zoé's actions, and despite France's government denying its involvement, contrary to declarations form the imprisoned 'humanitarian workers'.
"In April, Zoe's Ark announced a campaign to evacuate 10,000 orphans from Darfur alongside other French charities including Sauver le Darfour (Save Darfur).
It said it wanted to place orphaned Darfuri children aged under five in foster care with French families, invoking its right to do so under international law.
But the charity has been accused of child trafficking in the case of the 103 children it attempted to fly out of Chad.
UN officials say many of the children are from Chad, not Sudan, and there is no evidence that they are orphans."
Today, on a French radio, RTL, Rony Braumann, founder of 'Médecins Sans Frontières', accused directly Bernard Kouchner and French zionist Bernard Henri Lévy of bearing direct responsibility in overdramatizing the Darfur crisis causing the ensuing diplomatic deadlock that is going to hinder real humanitarian work, but not political agitation.
Look for example at the political contorsions and extortions found in an article Bernard Henri-Lévy wrote on March, 13, 2007 in Le Monde under the title 'Choses vues au Darfour' (Things seen in Darfur, article archived now):
"I tell myself while listening to him (a chief from the rebels whom BHL met in Chad), that I saw very few Mosques in devastated Darfur. I saw very few veiled women. I think of the school in ruins I have seen in Deissa, where the girls classes were next to the boys'. And the idea comes to me that, after all, another aspect of this war - which is at the same time another reason for us to mobilize: radical Islam against moderate Islam; the Sudanese regime which, at the end of the 90s, gave asylum to Bin Laden, to intimidate Muslim populations who refuse Islamism; in the heart of Africa, in the darkness of what may become, if we do nothing, the first genocide of the XXIst century, there is another scene for the clash of civilisations, the only clash that really count, the one between the two Islams."
Zionists like BHL have seized the Darfur issue as the example of the struggle within Islam, as the example of the 'barbarity' of Arabs against dark skinned Africans, as a way of distracting attention from what is going on in Iraq and Palestine, while bigger tragedies can be found everywhere, some of them on the same continent as Darfur, in Congo. None of the main claims of 'Save Darfur' campaign are true. Both sides in the conflict have committed atrocities and both sides in the conflict are dark skinned, from the same religion and the same race. Yet, distortions are made in order to substantiate an offensive humanitarian intervention paving the way for a more firendly regime change in Sudan opening access to its oil reserves.
The zionist narrative for Darfur has joined the western colonialist narrative where in every military campaign the main claim is to protect and civilize.
"Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them."
Ken Silverstein's Facts and Darfur (Harper's Magazine).
Update November 1st: Children not orphans and not from Darfur says UN. They were living in communities and were lured from their village with sweets.
Darfur Groupies. Do-gooders gone bad.
Update November, 30, 2007: Ten reasons to suspect 'Save Darfur' is a PR scam.
The recent imprisonment in Chad of French 'humanitarian workers' from 'L'arche de Zoé' under suspicions of child kidnapping is a perfect example of how ideological and political manipulation of the Darfur cause has subverted the humanitarian label, despite France's foreign affairs minister Bernard Kouchner, the champion of armed humanitarian intervention who has been outspoken on the 'Darfur genocide', breaking his silence and embarrassement to condemn Arche de Zoé's actions, and despite France's government denying its involvement, contrary to declarations form the imprisoned 'humanitarian workers'.
"In April, Zoe's Ark announced a campaign to evacuate 10,000 orphans from Darfur alongside other French charities including Sauver le Darfour (Save Darfur).
It said it wanted to place orphaned Darfuri children aged under five in foster care with French families, invoking its right to do so under international law.
But the charity has been accused of child trafficking in the case of the 103 children it attempted to fly out of Chad.
UN officials say many of the children are from Chad, not Sudan, and there is no evidence that they are orphans."
Today, on a French radio, RTL, Rony Braumann, founder of 'Médecins Sans Frontières', accused directly Bernard Kouchner and French zionist Bernard Henri Lévy of bearing direct responsibility in overdramatizing the Darfur crisis causing the ensuing diplomatic deadlock that is going to hinder real humanitarian work, but not political agitation.
Look for example at the political contorsions and extortions found in an article Bernard Henri-Lévy wrote on March, 13, 2007 in Le Monde under the title 'Choses vues au Darfour' (Things seen in Darfur, article archived now):
"I tell myself while listening to him (a chief from the rebels whom BHL met in Chad), that I saw very few Mosques in devastated Darfur. I saw very few veiled women. I think of the school in ruins I have seen in Deissa, where the girls classes were next to the boys'. And the idea comes to me that, after all, another aspect of this war - which is at the same time another reason for us to mobilize: radical Islam against moderate Islam; the Sudanese regime which, at the end of the 90s, gave asylum to Bin Laden, to intimidate Muslim populations who refuse Islamism; in the heart of Africa, in the darkness of what may become, if we do nothing, the first genocide of the XXIst century, there is another scene for the clash of civilisations, the only clash that really count, the one between the two Islams."
Zionists like BHL have seized the Darfur issue as the example of the struggle within Islam, as the example of the 'barbarity' of Arabs against dark skinned Africans, as a way of distracting attention from what is going on in Iraq and Palestine, while bigger tragedies can be found everywhere, some of them on the same continent as Darfur, in Congo. None of the main claims of 'Save Darfur' campaign are true. Both sides in the conflict have committed atrocities and both sides in the conflict are dark skinned, from the same religion and the same race. Yet, distortions are made in order to substantiate an offensive humanitarian intervention paving the way for a more firendly regime change in Sudan opening access to its oil reserves.
The zionist narrative for Darfur has joined the western colonialist narrative where in every military campaign the main claim is to protect and civilize.
"Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them."
Ken Silverstein's Facts and Darfur (Harper's Magazine).
Update November 1st: Children not orphans and not from Darfur says UN. They were living in communities and were lured from their village with sweets.
Darfur Groupies. Do-gooders gone bad.
Update November, 30, 2007: Ten reasons to suspect 'Save Darfur' is a PR scam.
Rony Brauman : "Une responsabilité morale très lourde pèse sur Bernard Kouchner"
LEMONDE.FR | 31.10.07
LEMONDE.FR | 31.10.07
© 
Un intermédiaire soudanais reconnaît avoir fourni des enfants à L'Arche de Zoé
LEMONDE.FR | 22.12.07
LEMONDE.FR | 22.12.07
©
28.10.07
The War On Terror and The Terror Inside
The meaning of words is also in their history. We should be reminded that the War On Terror is meant, first and foremost, not against those whom we call terrorists, but against internal political opponents and internal dissent. We should recognise that it is on the internal front that the the war on terror has produced results up to now. Bin Laden and his acolytes are roaming free and producing more terrorists while we, citizens of the free world, are paying a high price for Bush's and the Neo-Cons war on terror; restriction of civil liberties, banalisation of torture, marginalisation of honest dissent, criminalisation of the innocents, absence of a people friendly social agenda, neglect of the social agenda alltogether. Thanks to François Furstenberg for reminding us of our homegrown terror inspired, not by Bin Laden, but by Bush's and the Neo-Cons' policies.
"If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty.” Saint-Just’s pithy phrase (like President Bush’s variant, “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself”) could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.
On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.
Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term “terrorist” has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hate freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to “Islamofascism.”
A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur. "
Paul Krugman's 'Fearing Fear Itself'
"If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty.” Saint-Just’s pithy phrase (like President Bush’s variant, “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself”) could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.
On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.
Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term “terrorist” has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hate freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to “Islamofascism.”
A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur. "
Paul Krugman's 'Fearing Fear Itself'
25.10.07
A note to my readers
I have a severe pain in the right arm and the neck preventing me from spending enough time on my blog and in front of the computer in general. The situation is so critical that a simple click on the mouse is directly correlated to an immediate increase of the pain in my neck and my right arm.
I am going through agressive physical therapy right now and will do my best to keep this blog active. My next long posting and commentary will be on Quebec's immigration talk, from the commission on reasonable accommodations for immigrants , to the recent law drafted by the Parti Québécois restricting individual rights for some immigrants, to the province's talk on racism and how the Canadian charter of human rights is seen by many French speaking Quebecers as a threat to their Christian Catholic heritage in the context of a multicultural society. Clearly, Quebecers who agree with Hérouxville's city council are uncomfortable recognising the cultural diversity in their province and uncomfortabkle with the idea of giving cultural minorities some rights pertaining to their culture and beliefs.
This talk on racism and reasonable accomodations for cultural minorities, started with the Hérouxville story, a small municipality in rural Québec whose council drafted a code of life which was seen by many as racist and anti-Muslim. This small municipality which doesn't have one Muslim resident, opened a Pandora's box in the province. Many Quebecers started confessing their racism. Many other Quebecers were schocked by this racist talk.
Listening to the consultations of the Commission on reasonable accomodations was torture for me. My personal story comparing two immigrations persuaded me that total integration, the one I had to go through in France, is possible, but it has its downside, the estrangement of one's own culture. What I loved and still love in Quebec and Canada is the fact that, absent the pressure on complete integration, I was able to retrieve my native cultural roots, while assimilating slowly the local culture. Forced integration has something that one could relate to psychological violence, a violence consented by those who receive it and those who exert it. Living in Quebec and Canada made me reevaluate multiculturalism from my previous French experience of total integration. I thought that, although it had its flaws, Multiculturalism is the only way a globalised world and globalised society can achieve understanding and a good living together amidst diversity.
I am surprised to realise that, although the moment is dark now for multiculturalism, there are Quebecers who think like me. I am most comforted by the intervention of the young mayor of Huntingdon, Quebec, political commentator and radio host,Stéphane Gendron, at the commission for reasonable accommodations. He forcefully argued that multiculturalism is well and alive in Quebec. Drawing on Huntingdon's history, he loathed the province's government for launching a consultation on reasonable accommodations as a way to escape its responsibilities and assume the multiculturalism of the province. I asked him to forward me the text of his memo and he did so instantly and kindly.
I am going through the text now. I would like to expose and compare some interesting views on multiculturalism including Gendron's, Quebec human rights lawyer's, Julius Grey, and philosopher Charles Taylor's position on the subject as glanced at from his book on the self (The sources of the Self, the building of the modern identity). These different but mostly pro-multiculturalist views and positions can help us give a dimension to a phenomenon I hold dear in my heart, from my personal history and experience, and which is under attack from both the right and the liberal left in many parts of the world creating social tensions and feeding the whole flawed concept of the 'clash of civilisations' and 'the war on terror'.
I am going through agressive physical therapy right now and will do my best to keep this blog active. My next long posting and commentary will be on Quebec's immigration talk, from the commission on reasonable accommodations for immigrants , to the recent law drafted by the Parti Québécois restricting individual rights for some immigrants, to the province's talk on racism and how the Canadian charter of human rights is seen by many French speaking Quebecers as a threat to their Christian Catholic heritage in the context of a multicultural society. Clearly, Quebecers who agree with Hérouxville's city council are uncomfortable recognising the cultural diversity in their province and uncomfortabkle with the idea of giving cultural minorities some rights pertaining to their culture and beliefs.
This talk on racism and reasonable accomodations for cultural minorities, started with the Hérouxville story, a small municipality in rural Québec whose council drafted a code of life which was seen by many as racist and anti-Muslim. This small municipality which doesn't have one Muslim resident, opened a Pandora's box in the province. Many Quebecers started confessing their racism. Many other Quebecers were schocked by this racist talk.
Listening to the consultations of the Commission on reasonable accomodations was torture for me. My personal story comparing two immigrations persuaded me that total integration, the one I had to go through in France, is possible, but it has its downside, the estrangement of one's own culture. What I loved and still love in Quebec and Canada is the fact that, absent the pressure on complete integration, I was able to retrieve my native cultural roots, while assimilating slowly the local culture. Forced integration has something that one could relate to psychological violence, a violence consented by those who receive it and those who exert it. Living in Quebec and Canada made me reevaluate multiculturalism from my previous French experience of total integration. I thought that, although it had its flaws, Multiculturalism is the only way a globalised world and globalised society can achieve understanding and a good living together amidst diversity.
I am surprised to realise that, although the moment is dark now for multiculturalism, there are Quebecers who think like me. I am most comforted by the intervention of the young mayor of Huntingdon, Quebec, political commentator and radio host,Stéphane Gendron, at the commission for reasonable accommodations. He forcefully argued that multiculturalism is well and alive in Quebec. Drawing on Huntingdon's history, he loathed the province's government for launching a consultation on reasonable accommodations as a way to escape its responsibilities and assume the multiculturalism of the province. I asked him to forward me the text of his memo and he did so instantly and kindly.
I am going through the text now. I would like to expose and compare some interesting views on multiculturalism including Gendron's, Quebec human rights lawyer's, Julius Grey, and philosopher Charles Taylor's position on the subject as glanced at from his book on the self (The sources of the Self, the building of the modern identity). These different but mostly pro-multiculturalist views and positions can help us give a dimension to a phenomenon I hold dear in my heart, from my personal history and experience, and which is under attack from both the right and the liberal left in many parts of the world creating social tensions and feeding the whole flawed concept of the 'clash of civilisations' and 'the war on terror'.
Evaluating the Risk of a War on Iran
"Cheney derives much of his support from hawks outside the administration who fear their days are as numbered as the President's. "The neocons see Iran as their last chance to prove something," says analyst Riedel. This aim is reflected in their tone. Conservative columnist Norman Podhoretz, for example -- a father figure to all neocons -- wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he "hopes and prays" that Bush will finally bomb Iran. Podhoretz sees the United States engaged in a global war against "Islamofascism," a conflict he defines as World War IV, and he likens Iran to Nazi Germany. "Is it 1938 again?" he asks in a speech he repeats regularly at conferences.
Podhoretz is by no means an eccentric outsider. He now serves as a senior foreign-policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani. President Bush has also met with Podhoretz at the White House to hear his opinions." MORE
Podhoretz is by no means an eccentric outsider. He now serves as a senior foreign-policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani. President Bush has also met with Podhoretz at the White House to hear his opinions." MORE
The Science of Pilgrimage
A stunning story on the dangers of the crowd at Mecca and how Science helps make pilgrimage safer. I hope 'enlightened' Hirsi Ali would agree...
24.10.07
Forgetting Gaza
This is a link to a special page on Gaza from The Guardian.
Under external pressure from Israel and the international community, and internal pressure from Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas who adopted the international community's coercive position against Hamas to get rid of it as Fatah's main political competitor for power, Palestinians in Gaza are suffocating.
Gaza is looking more and more like the Warsaw Ghetto, no electricity, no food, no medical care, and violence is rising. If you look at the video titled 'medical Emergency', part 1 of a three parts series on Gaza by Clancy Chassay for The Guardian, you will see at one point the camera focusing on a child while adults are screaming of despair.
I wouldn't like being in Gaza right now, let alone being a child there.
Under external pressure from Israel and the international community, and internal pressure from Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas who adopted the international community's coercive position against Hamas to get rid of it as Fatah's main political competitor for power, Palestinians in Gaza are suffocating.
Gaza is looking more and more like the Warsaw Ghetto, no electricity, no food, no medical care, and violence is rising. If you look at the video titled 'medical Emergency', part 1 of a three parts series on Gaza by Clancy Chassay for The Guardian, you will see at one point the camera focusing on a child while adults are screaming of despair.
I wouldn't like being in Gaza right now, let alone being a child there.
20.10.07
Vandals of the Truth: Convenient Lies and Inconvenient Truth
A Lebanese man, a "self confessed sniper instructor", "languishing in a Minnesota jail for the past three years", and "convicted last year of immigration fraud" while "still facing outstanding charges of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation", has given a testimony considered 'pivotal' in the US decision to maintain Canadian Maher Arar on the no-fly list despite Arar's clearing of any wrongdoing by the Canadian government and his 10 millions compensation, the Globe and Mail learned from US sources.
There is no doubt that, according to US standards in 'fighting terrorism', the life of honest people hangs, not only on the US government ability to hide the truth, but to give convenient lies priority over an inconvenient truth; that bearded Muslim terrorists are only few among all bearded Muslim men. And why is this latter truth inconvenient ? Because it refutes the core ideology of the 'War On Terror'. I always thought that the whole War On Terror business lacks basic Logic, and so do those who support it.
'I know what I believe' said once Tony Blair. Sadly, this could be extended to all those who are fighting in our names an unefficient war on terror. It could be extended to our media who are doing very little of investigative journalism and publishing press releases from our governments, unaltered . It could be extended to the siprit of our times and western civilisation which glorifies a liar and an extremist like Hirsi Ali as the ultimate liberal fighter and a 'Black Voltaire'.
Ali Eteraz: US double-speak on terrorism.
There is no doubt that, according to US standards in 'fighting terrorism', the life of honest people hangs, not only on the US government ability to hide the truth, but to give convenient lies priority over an inconvenient truth; that bearded Muslim terrorists are only few among all bearded Muslim men. And why is this latter truth inconvenient ? Because it refutes the core ideology of the 'War On Terror'. I always thought that the whole War On Terror business lacks basic Logic, and so do those who support it.
'I know what I believe' said once Tony Blair. Sadly, this could be extended to all those who are fighting in our names an unefficient war on terror. It could be extended to our media who are doing very little of investigative journalism and publishing press releases from our governments, unaltered . It could be extended to the siprit of our times and western civilisation which glorifies a liar and an extremist like Hirsi Ali as the ultimate liberal fighter and a 'Black Voltaire'.
Ali Eteraz: US double-speak on terrorism.
19.10.07
The Israel Lobby in the US and the Israeli Agression on Lebanon
I am reading Walt and Mearsheimer's book 'The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy'.
As I am familiar with their article of the same title published in the LRB before the Israeli agression on Lebanon in July 2006, and with the debate that followed, I started the book by reading the last chapter on the lobby and the July 2006 Israel's war on Lebanon.
I will account for the reading of this chapter soon but up to now what I can tell is that the chapter gives a precise account of the maneouvers preceding the war, of the results of the war itself on civilian populations, on Israel's actions, and a chilling portrait of the Lobby in full spin. Leaders of top Human Rights organisations (Amnesty and HRW) accused of Anti-semitism and smeared in public for voicing criticism of Israel's actions, US senators having to aoplogize to the Lobby, chastised and sent to Israel on an 'educational' trip for asking to spare Lebanese civilians, Bush admonished for voicing concern for the implications of the actions of Israel during the war on Sanyura's government, and so on...
There is no denying that Walt and Mearsheimer have become a reference on the lobby and at the same time a useful Watch chronicling the lobby.
There is no way out for the lobby because the more it surveys and smears Politicians and organisations for criticising Israel and the more it will confirm Walt and Mearsheimer's thesis. I think the process has attained a critical point. What will come after depends on the mindset of the few people who manage the lobby. Either they are pragmatic and the lobby will mutate into something else more respectable and more credible, at least on the surface, or they are not pragmatic, and this is likely to be the scheme, most of them being extreme ideologues greedy for what they want for Israel and sure to obtain it, and the lobby will push for more radicalisation of public opinions worldwide against Islam and Arabs, hoping to hide Israel's and the lobby's misdeeds.
As I am familiar with their article of the same title published in the LRB before the Israeli agression on Lebanon in July 2006, and with the debate that followed, I started the book by reading the last chapter on the lobby and the July 2006 Israel's war on Lebanon.
I will account for the reading of this chapter soon but up to now what I can tell is that the chapter gives a precise account of the maneouvers preceding the war, of the results of the war itself on civilian populations, on Israel's actions, and a chilling portrait of the Lobby in full spin. Leaders of top Human Rights organisations (Amnesty and HRW) accused of Anti-semitism and smeared in public for voicing criticism of Israel's actions, US senators having to aoplogize to the Lobby, chastised and sent to Israel on an 'educational' trip for asking to spare Lebanese civilians, Bush admonished for voicing concern for the implications of the actions of Israel during the war on Sanyura's government, and so on...
There is no denying that Walt and Mearsheimer have become a reference on the lobby and at the same time a useful Watch chronicling the lobby.
There is no way out for the lobby because the more it surveys and smears Politicians and organisations for criticising Israel and the more it will confirm Walt and Mearsheimer's thesis. I think the process has attained a critical point. What will come after depends on the mindset of the few people who manage the lobby. Either they are pragmatic and the lobby will mutate into something else more respectable and more credible, at least on the surface, or they are not pragmatic, and this is likely to be the scheme, most of them being extreme ideologues greedy for what they want for Israel and sure to obtain it, and the lobby will push for more radicalisation of public opinions worldwide against Islam and Arabs, hoping to hide Israel's and the lobby's misdeeds.
17.10.07
Carnival of Hypocrisy
The Dalai Lama was honored today by the US congress in the presence of George Bush who lended him his arm to walk him before the congress.
All eyes are truned on Beijing who, it is said, is furious at the US giving this honor and credibility to the exiled political and spiritual leader of Tibetans.
I say, the Chinese must not be upset. For it is the Dalai Lama who is lending credibility to the man who destructed Iraq, killed nearly a million of its civilians, many of them children, and displaced another four million making them refugees in their own country, and put its population in a state of famine.
Oh yeh, the Chinese must not be upset because the Dalai Lama, a man fighting for the right of his people to get some political autonomy from an occupier, was honored by Elie Wiesel, the man who refuses, not only a political autonomy for the Palestinians opressed and occupied by Israel, but the very existence of the Palestinian people alltogether.
And during this carnival of hypocrisy, even the house speaker Nancy Pelosi's genuine wish that the Dalai Lama's visit bring peace to the congress, sounded unauthentic. For the man who is supposed to bring peace is helping Bush's diplomatic war at China and Wiesel's and the zionists' pathetic search for respectability.
16.10.07
Formalizing Apartheid packaged as peace initiative
"Political maneuvers can be spun to sound good if the details are kept vague, but when held to scrutiny it becomes obvious that the upcoming Israeli offer is not so generous. Like the Oslo Accords and the "disengagement" from Gaza, the peace process being cooked now is a move to consolidate Israeli control of all of historic Palestine while taking a large portion of the Palestinian population off Israel's hands. The devil is in the details that follow."
14.10.07
Blog Action Day: At Earth's Bedside
I promised to write a post for Blog Action Day 2007 because this is a wonderful initiative uniting people, who in essence are very individualistic, on a matter that requires a collective will.
So here is my contribution, centered on collective will, and illustrated with a picture of the gulf of Korinthos, Greece.
My daughter inspired the title of this post. When she brilliantly finished college and didn't know what to do next, my husband, who is a doctor, and myself, a scientist, convinced her to study Medecine. You've got what it takes to become a doctor, we said to her, a passion for science, a passion for people, a passion for Human Rights, and compassion. After one year in medical school, my daughter showed no interest in a medical career. Instead, with our guidance, she started a bachelor in Biology.
During her three years study in Biology she was interested in everything related to the environment: Ecology, Climate change, Biodiversity, etc...After finishing her bachelor, she applied for law school with the goal of working in the new emerging field of environment and the law. At the same time, she applied for a one year master program in European studies focused on Science and Society, including learning to communicate Science and make risk assessments. She was accepted in both but choose to do her master first because she saw in it an opportunity to study how Science affects us in both ways, for the bad and the good, how it might be our only chance to save our planet from a large scale looming catastrophe, and how technological progress can be socially and responsibly monitored.
The looming catastrophe for future generations
When I compare my daughter's generation to mine I see a shift. Most advocay groups from my generation have been preoccupied by the health and the wealth of Humanity, by peace and war, by social struggles. My daughter's generation is preoccupied by the health of the planet. But it is not only a question of generation, it is a question of structure and substance. Despite technical and ethical progress, the moves forward and backward, there is some constancy in Humanity. But what about the earth, I asked myself when I started exchanging on a daily basis with my daughter on the matter since she started her master, will it ever be the same for us, humans, across generations ?
Every indicator, up to now, is telling us that the changes introduced by human activity and march toward progress in the earth's structure and substance are probably irreversible. The problem is serious and requires urgent thinking and urgent solutions.
For the advocates of piecemeal technological solutions and economic measures, like changing light bulbs, driving electric cars, a Carbon Dioxide stock market, and so on...I am frankly afraid that, despite the good will and the fact that such measures have tremendoudly helped environmental awareness among the public, time is running out.
For the advocates of Geoengineering, an engineering made on the scale of the planet inlcuding such radical measures as: "1) underground storage of carbon dioxide, 2) wind scrubbers to filter carbon dioxide from the air, 3) ‘fertilization’ of oceans with iron to encourage growth of plankton, 4) petrification of carbon dioxide, 5) deflection of sunlight from the earth through the use of a giant space mirror ‘spanning 600,000 square miles’" , I am afraid that, not only time is maybe running out too here, but that the solution, even though more radical and having a wider impact, will be more challenging than the actual problem.
Although, if we are to compare the earth to a living organism, but an ill organism on its death bed that will not be cured with few local interventions, large scale solutions might well resemble a Frankenstein approach.
Neoliberalism, collective will and the decentering of our social selves to meet our biological needs as a species.
We need collective will. Humans in the 21st century sadly lack this collective will because Capitalism, and especially its new form, Neoliberalism, have championed competition, and artificially suppressed our biological ability for solidarity by negating the existence of humans as a collectivity, a homogenous species, substituting it by the notion of the self centered individual consumer. The self-centered individual consumer on which neoliberalism thrives is a social construction based on an overinterpretation of Darwinian theory as applied to the social sphere, a biological theory itself inspired by the social theories of early Capitalism. Capitalism created differences in ecological niche construction between one individual and another, and inside the species, leading to the building of many special and individual interests, and eclipsing the interest of the species.
The main challenge facing advocates of the environment is this gap among individuals and countries, in our species' ecological niche, created by Capitalism and Neoliberalism. Is it normal that at a time we face a major catastrophe in our ecological system resulting from an over exploitation of resources that a small part of humanity have slandered and squandered these resources for its progress and wealth while the rest, the many, are still looking for their fare share of this progress and wealth, and probably won't have it ?
At Earth's bedside, we need to unite in one voice, one humanity, one species, one family near the ailing mother. The earth is an organism, a whole, a habitat on which depend our lives and the survival of our species. Our generation is witnessing the beginning of the catastrophe, my daughter's generation and her children and future generations will witness the convulsions and maybe the end. More than piecemeal measures, more than global measures, we need to accept the fact that what counts for us as one humanity and one species, is our habitat. We all depend on the earth and we depend on each other. We need to leave our egos and to unite, rich and poor, to developp solidarity with other human beings, and between human beings and the earth.
Maybe my daughter is right. Maybe we need to be at the earth's bedside before everything else, because by doing so, we will be rebuilding our species long lost ability for cooperation and solidarity from its roots. If we succeed by doing so, we will be able to feel the same solidarity for others and reverse the logic of Neoliberalism. For this is the ultimate test for globalised Neoliberalism, will it be able to adapt from the inside, change its concepts, work on different assumptions, and save humanity, or will it sink us alltogether ? Because if we follow socio-Neodarwinian logic in Neoliberalism, maybe the few wealthy will make it, on the expenses of others, and that's what most people think of what is behind the inaction of our governments, but then Neoliberalism will have defeated itself anyway. It won't be able to profit from wars, toxic toys, toxic food, cheap goods, and cheap labour. During our planet convulsions, it will surely profit from these convulsions with no concern for the grim future that is awaiting everyone of us. Neoliberalism is ahistorical and where there is no history, there is no future.
As much as individual freedoms and individual concerns were the Achille heel that led to the fall of communism, collective freedoms, the freedom to act together, and collective will for solidarity with each other, and with our habitat and species, to save our planet, will be the Achille heel that will eventually lead to our demise, the demise of our planet, and the demise of the major obstacle to save our planet now, our unchallenged burden, Neoliberalism itself.
Dave Lucas has an excellent post as well as a round-up of the blogosphere who celebrated Al Gore on this Blog Action Day for the environment.
The Two Wolves has a superb post on climate change and the copntroversy surrounding the data presented in Gore's Inconvenient Truth, with eclectic links and an interesting take on the subject.
So here is my contribution, centered on collective will, and illustrated with a picture of the gulf of Korinthos, Greece.
My daughter inspired the title of this post. When she brilliantly finished college and didn't know what to do next, my husband, who is a doctor, and myself, a scientist, convinced her to study Medecine. You've got what it takes to become a doctor, we said to her, a passion for science, a passion for people, a passion for Human Rights, and compassion. After one year in medical school, my daughter showed no interest in a medical career. Instead, with our guidance, she started a bachelor in Biology.
During her three years study in Biology she was interested in everything related to the environment: Ecology, Climate change, Biodiversity, etc...After finishing her bachelor, she applied for law school with the goal of working in the new emerging field of environment and the law. At the same time, she applied for a one year master program in European studies focused on Science and Society, including learning to communicate Science and make risk assessments. She was accepted in both but choose to do her master first because she saw in it an opportunity to study how Science affects us in both ways, for the bad and the good, how it might be our only chance to save our planet from a large scale looming catastrophe, and how technological progress can be socially and responsibly monitored.
The looming catastrophe for future generations
When I compare my daughter's generation to mine I see a shift. Most advocay groups from my generation have been preoccupied by the health and the wealth of Humanity, by peace and war, by social struggles. My daughter's generation is preoccupied by the health of the planet. But it is not only a question of generation, it is a question of structure and substance. Despite technical and ethical progress, the moves forward and backward, there is some constancy in Humanity. But what about the earth, I asked myself when I started exchanging on a daily basis with my daughter on the matter since she started her master, will it ever be the same for us, humans, across generations ?
Every indicator, up to now, is telling us that the changes introduced by human activity and march toward progress in the earth's structure and substance are probably irreversible. The problem is serious and requires urgent thinking and urgent solutions.
For the advocates of piecemeal technological solutions and economic measures, like changing light bulbs, driving electric cars, a Carbon Dioxide stock market, and so on...I am frankly afraid that, despite the good will and the fact that such measures have tremendoudly helped environmental awareness among the public, time is running out.
For the advocates of Geoengineering, an engineering made on the scale of the planet inlcuding such radical measures as: "1) underground storage of carbon dioxide, 2) wind scrubbers to filter carbon dioxide from the air, 3) ‘fertilization’ of oceans with iron to encourage growth of plankton, 4) petrification of carbon dioxide, 5) deflection of sunlight from the earth through the use of a giant space mirror ‘spanning 600,000 square miles’" , I am afraid that, not only time is maybe running out too here, but that the solution, even though more radical and having a wider impact, will be more challenging than the actual problem.
Although, if we are to compare the earth to a living organism, but an ill organism on its death bed that will not be cured with few local interventions, large scale solutions might well resemble a Frankenstein approach.
Neoliberalism, collective will and the decentering of our social selves to meet our biological needs as a species.
We need collective will. Humans in the 21st century sadly lack this collective will because Capitalism, and especially its new form, Neoliberalism, have championed competition, and artificially suppressed our biological ability for solidarity by negating the existence of humans as a collectivity, a homogenous species, substituting it by the notion of the self centered individual consumer. The self-centered individual consumer on which neoliberalism thrives is a social construction based on an overinterpretation of Darwinian theory as applied to the social sphere, a biological theory itself inspired by the social theories of early Capitalism. Capitalism created differences in ecological niche construction between one individual and another, and inside the species, leading to the building of many special and individual interests, and eclipsing the interest of the species.
The main challenge facing advocates of the environment is this gap among individuals and countries, in our species' ecological niche, created by Capitalism and Neoliberalism. Is it normal that at a time we face a major catastrophe in our ecological system resulting from an over exploitation of resources that a small part of humanity have slandered and squandered these resources for its progress and wealth while the rest, the many, are still looking for their fare share of this progress and wealth, and probably won't have it ?
At Earth's bedside, we need to unite in one voice, one humanity, one species, one family near the ailing mother. The earth is an organism, a whole, a habitat on which depend our lives and the survival of our species. Our generation is witnessing the beginning of the catastrophe, my daughter's generation and her children and future generations will witness the convulsions and maybe the end. More than piecemeal measures, more than global measures, we need to accept the fact that what counts for us as one humanity and one species, is our habitat. We all depend on the earth and we depend on each other. We need to leave our egos and to unite, rich and poor, to developp solidarity with other human beings, and between human beings and the earth.
Maybe my daughter is right. Maybe we need to be at the earth's bedside before everything else, because by doing so, we will be rebuilding our species long lost ability for cooperation and solidarity from its roots. If we succeed by doing so, we will be able to feel the same solidarity for others and reverse the logic of Neoliberalism. For this is the ultimate test for globalised Neoliberalism, will it be able to adapt from the inside, change its concepts, work on different assumptions, and save humanity, or will it sink us alltogether ? Because if we follow socio-Neodarwinian logic in Neoliberalism, maybe the few wealthy will make it, on the expenses of others, and that's what most people think of what is behind the inaction of our governments, but then Neoliberalism will have defeated itself anyway. It won't be able to profit from wars, toxic toys, toxic food, cheap goods, and cheap labour. During our planet convulsions, it will surely profit from these convulsions with no concern for the grim future that is awaiting everyone of us. Neoliberalism is ahistorical and where there is no history, there is no future.
As much as individual freedoms and individual concerns were the Achille heel that led to the fall of communism, collective freedoms, the freedom to act together, and collective will for solidarity with each other, and with our habitat and species, to save our planet, will be the Achille heel that will eventually lead to our demise, the demise of our planet, and the demise of the major obstacle to save our planet now, our unchallenged burden, Neoliberalism itself.
Dave Lucas has an excellent post as well as a round-up of the blogosphere who celebrated Al Gore on this Blog Action Day for the environment.
The Two Wolves has a superb post on climate change and the copntroversy surrounding the data presented in Gore's Inconvenient Truth, with eclectic links and an interesting take on the subject.
13.10.07
Trouble With Technorati
I have had some serious trouble with Technorati. I joined Technorati long after I opened this blog, about a year after, in August 2006, as a way of tracking links to my blog.
I noticed that sometimes, Technorati would not show some of the links to my blog. However, since the beginning of this summer, things derailed when suddenly Technorati cut in the total number of my links, more than 50, and later 200, links disappeared, while continuing to miss many of the important links to my blog. I wrote them four times and received the same unhelpful automatic answer over and over again. So I decided I don't need Technorati but I haven't been able to unsubscribe.
Do you have any alternative to suggest to me ? Or at least how to unsubscribe ?
Thanks.
I noticed that sometimes, Technorati would not show some of the links to my blog. However, since the beginning of this summer, things derailed when suddenly Technorati cut in the total number of my links, more than 50, and later 200, links disappeared, while continuing to miss many of the important links to my blog. I wrote them four times and received the same unhelpful automatic answer over and over again. So I decided I don't need Technorati but I haven't been able to unsubscribe.
Do you have any alternative to suggest to me ? Or at least how to unsubscribe ?
Thanks.
12.10.07
11.10.07
Amis, Pipes, and Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week
You cannot make a satire of something that is already a satire !
The Bad satire, with memorable quotes from famous people
-"The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children..." (Martin Amis, English writer)
- "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene." (Daniel Pipes)
- "Individuals may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers... This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims." (Daniel Pipes)
The quotes from Daniel Pipes, who is among the organisers of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IFAW) with a special theme this first year on Muslim women, have now vanished from the web. At the time I published them they were still available. By the way, Lebanon's highest shiite authority has condemned recently honor killings but you will not see this anywhere during this IFAW.
Now the satire that, because of the bad satire, isn't a satire anymore.
And I will leave the conclusion to Ali Eteraz.
- "An ex-senator that opposes individual rights of women; a pundit that calls people "faggots" and considers Islam a "cult"; a Christian scholar who is considered a "polemicist" and an "Islamophobe" by conservative Christians themselves; and an intellectual who has received millions from "far right" organizations since 2001, are rising up for the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities in the Muslim world. This laughable spectacle is called the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. It will be coming to a university near you on October 22 - 26."
Also: Stef's Shiny Happy People and Rory's European Race Hate.
UPDATE: Amis wrote on October 12th to the Guardian denying that what he said were measures he condoned for Muslims. In his defence, he wrote:
"And my remarks were preceded by the following: "What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There's a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say that the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children......"
Well I am glad Amis does not advocate such measures, but as a writer knowing the weight of words and his own status in the UK, he must know that his words mean something. This correction doesn't make him any better. It makes him appear as a man unable to control his racist 'urge' and who spits hate at other human beings.
The Bad satire, with memorable quotes from famous people
-"The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children..." (Martin Amis, English writer)
- "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene." (Daniel Pipes)
- "Individuals may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers... This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims." (Daniel Pipes)
The quotes from Daniel Pipes, who is among the organisers of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IFAW) with a special theme this first year on Muslim women, have now vanished from the web. At the time I published them they were still available. By the way, Lebanon's highest shiite authority has condemned recently honor killings but you will not see this anywhere during this IFAW.
Now the satire that, because of the bad satire, isn't a satire anymore.
And I will leave the conclusion to Ali Eteraz.- "An ex-senator that opposes individual rights of women; a pundit that calls people "faggots" and considers Islam a "cult"; a Christian scholar who is considered a "polemicist" and an "Islamophobe" by conservative Christians themselves; and an intellectual who has received millions from "far right" organizations since 2001, are rising up for the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities in the Muslim world. This laughable spectacle is called the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. It will be coming to a university near you on October 22 - 26."
Also: Stef's Shiny Happy People and Rory's European Race Hate.
UPDATE: Amis wrote on October 12th to the Guardian denying that what he said were measures he condoned for Muslims. In his defence, he wrote:
"And my remarks were preceded by the following: "What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There's a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say that the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children......"
Well I am glad Amis does not advocate such measures, but as a writer knowing the weight of words and his own status in the UK, he must know that his words mean something. This correction doesn't make him any better. It makes him appear as a man unable to control his racist 'urge' and who spits hate at other human beings.
9.10.07
Bin Laden's Last September Message: Secrets, Lies, and Videotapes
Dave Lucas posted this interesting entry about the latest Bin laden video aired on the occasion of September 11th.
According to the source article, a small private intelligence company that monitors Islamist terrorist groups was able to obtain the Bin Laden video on september 7th, before its official release by Al-Qaeda. The company "notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition." It sent a link to the video that was on a private page on its website to "two senior officials on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release."
"Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide."
It is evident from this story that the Bush administration favors the political use of Al-Qaida videos, over other considerations, mainly security, since the company and the intelligence community judged the early diffusion of the video as alerting Al-Qaida to the anomaly and maybe cutting an important link to Al-Qaida. The white house rushed to reassure the intelligence community that the move does not affect its intelligence operations against Al-qaida.
My question however is how a small security company headed by a 44 year old "Iraqi-born Israeli citizen whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein in the 1960s", and who "has made the investigation of terrorist groups a passionate quest"...since only 2002, can actually have access to this kind of material and by which means ? Her competitors are asking the same question.
All this private security business and premonitions about terrorists are making me ask questions. And of course the citizenship of the company's director, her connection to Iraq where both terror and security businesses are thriving, and her sudden passion for tracking terrorist groups in 2002, and only the Islamist ones, are none of my business and yours.
You can see the lady's picture here.
Read here on who is thought to be behind the latest Bin Laden Video.
According to the source article, a small private intelligence company that monitors Islamist terrorist groups was able to obtain the Bin Laden video on september 7th, before its official release by Al-Qaeda. The company "notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition." It sent a link to the video that was on a private page on its website to "two senior officials on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release."
"Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide."
It is evident from this story that the Bush administration favors the political use of Al-Qaida videos, over other considerations, mainly security, since the company and the intelligence community judged the early diffusion of the video as alerting Al-Qaida to the anomaly and maybe cutting an important link to Al-Qaida. The white house rushed to reassure the intelligence community that the move does not affect its intelligence operations against Al-qaida.
My question however is how a small security company headed by a 44 year old "Iraqi-born Israeli citizen whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein in the 1960s", and who "has made the investigation of terrorist groups a passionate quest"...since only 2002, can actually have access to this kind of material and by which means ? Her competitors are asking the same question.
All this private security business and premonitions about terrorists are making me ask questions. And of course the citizenship of the company's director, her connection to Iraq where both terror and security businesses are thriving, and her sudden passion for tracking terrorist groups in 2002, and only the Islamist ones, are none of my business and yours.
You can see the lady's picture here.
Read here on who is thought to be behind the latest Bin Laden Video.
7.10.07
Swimming against the current: Emmanuel Todd on Islam and the West
In his new book 'Le Rendez-vous des civilisations', French demographist, sociologist, historian and political scientist Emmnanuel Todd, with fellow scientist Youssef Courbage, prove, with scientific data based on demographics, birth rates, education, and some other factors studied by demographists, that Islam is a religion moving toward secularisation, as other religions did before.
This is an excerpt from an interview with Todd published in the French magazine Marianne, and translated in Truth.org.
"Iran worries some observers more than Iraq did before the American intervention.
The question of Iran presents itself in the form of a stream of images and facts difficult to interpret as seen from France. There are the absurd statements of President Ahmadinejad, images of women covered in black and the ambient Islamophobia. All that masks the deep reality of Iran: a society in the midst of rapid cultural development, in which there are more women than men enrolled in university, a country in which the demographic revolution has reduced the number of children per woman to two, as in France or the United States. Iran is in the process of giving birth to a pluralistic democracy. It's a country where, certainly, not everyone can stand for election, but where people vote regularly and where swings in opinion and majority are frequent. Like France, England and the United States, Iran has lived through a revolution that is stabilizing itself and where a democratic temperament is blossoming.
All that must be related to a religious matrix in which the Shiite variation of Islam values interpretation, debate and, ultimately, revolt.
For a simple Western observer, the similarity between Shiism and Protestantism is not particularly obvious.
It would be ridiculous to push this comparison to the extreme. But it is clear that - just as Protestantism was an accelerator of progress in European history and Catholicism was a break - Shiism today brings a positive contribution to development, notably in the domain of birth control: Azerbaijan, certainly post-Communist, but also Shiite, has a 1.7 fertility rate, while the Shiite Alawite regions of Syria have completed their demographic transition, unlike the majority-Sunni regions. In Lebanon, the Shiite community, Hezbollah's social base, was behind on the educational and social levels, but is in the process of catching up with the other communities, as one sees in the development of fertility rates.
Iran is also a very big nation that demonstrates a realistic awareness of its strategic interest in a region where most of its neighbors possess the nuclear weapon: Pakistan, (and, via the presence of the American Army) Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel. In that context, the reasonable European attitude would be to accompany Iran in its liberal and democratic transition and to understand its security preoccupations.
In your book, you make the altogether surprising hypothesis of a possible secularization of Muslim societies.
To the extent that within the Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Buddhist worlds, the drop in fertility has always been preceded by a weakening of religious practice, one must wonder whether the Muslim countries in which the number of children per woman is equal to or less than two are not also in the process of experiencing, unknown to us - and perhaps also unknown to their leaders - a process of secularization. That's the case of Iran."
MORE
Also: Secularism and Islamism in the Arab World (thanks Issam)
This is an excerpt from an interview with Todd published in the French magazine Marianne, and translated in Truth.org.
"Iran worries some observers more than Iraq did before the American intervention.
The question of Iran presents itself in the form of a stream of images and facts difficult to interpret as seen from France. There are the absurd statements of President Ahmadinejad, images of women covered in black and the ambient Islamophobia. All that masks the deep reality of Iran: a society in the midst of rapid cultural development, in which there are more women than men enrolled in university, a country in which the demographic revolution has reduced the number of children per woman to two, as in France or the United States. Iran is in the process of giving birth to a pluralistic democracy. It's a country where, certainly, not everyone can stand for election, but where people vote regularly and where swings in opinion and majority are frequent. Like France, England and the United States, Iran has lived through a revolution that is stabilizing itself and where a democratic temperament is blossoming.
All that must be related to a religious matrix in which the Shiite variation of Islam values interpretation, debate and, ultimately, revolt.
For a simple Western observer, the similarity between Shiism and Protestantism is not particularly obvious.
It would be ridiculous to push this comparison to the extreme. But it is clear that - just as Protestantism was an accelerator of progress in European history and Catholicism was a break - Shiism today brings a positive contribution to development, notably in the domain of birth control: Azerbaijan, certainly post-Communist, but also Shiite, has a 1.7 fertility rate, while the Shiite Alawite regions of Syria have completed their demographic transition, unlike the majority-Sunni regions. In Lebanon, the Shiite community, Hezbollah's social base, was behind on the educational and social levels, but is in the process of catching up with the other communities, as one sees in the development of fertility rates.
Iran is also a very big nation that demonstrates a realistic awareness of its strategic interest in a region where most of its neighbors possess the nuclear weapon: Pakistan, (and, via the presence of the American Army) Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel. In that context, the reasonable European attitude would be to accompany Iran in its liberal and democratic transition and to understand its security preoccupations.
In your book, you make the altogether surprising hypothesis of a possible secularization of Muslim societies.
To the extent that within the Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Buddhist worlds, the drop in fertility has always been preceded by a weakening of religious practice, one must wonder whether the Muslim countries in which the number of children per woman is equal to or less than two are not also in the process of experiencing, unknown to us - and perhaps also unknown to their leaders - a process of secularization. That's the case of Iran."
MORE
Also: Secularism and Islamism in the Arab World (thanks Issam)
6.10.07
Shattered Lives In Lebanon
From UrShalim
-The story of Ayn-El-Hayat, a young German Lebanese woman.
-The story of Charles Chikhani.
Both saw their future in Lebanon. Both were killed in the last bombing in lebanon .
Then six year old Ali, who did not even have time to see a future for himself, he was still at the joyful age of play. Ali was killed by an Israeli bomblet left from the 2006 July Israeli agression on Lebanon.
Please read the comment section to Ali's story on UrShalim's and read the logic of the anonymous who posted there. Lebanese blogs are a primary target for cyberzionists. They are obsessed with Lebanese who are the only ones to defeat Israel twice...
-The story of Ayn-El-Hayat, a young German Lebanese woman.
-The story of Charles Chikhani.
Both saw their future in Lebanon. Both were killed in the last bombing in lebanon .
Then six year old Ali, who did not even have time to see a future for himself, he was still at the joyful age of play. Ali was killed by an Israeli bomblet left from the 2006 July Israeli agression on Lebanon.
Please read the comment section to Ali's story on UrShalim's and read the logic of the anonymous who posted there. Lebanese blogs are a primary target for cyberzionists. They are obsessed with Lebanese who are the only ones to defeat Israel twice...
4.10.07
Foiling Terror Plots: It Is Either Minority Report Or Conspiracy
And of course, none of the above is democratically acceptable in a free open society.
Despite all the talk and wars on Terror, can somebody tell me how many terrorists have been publicly tried up to now ? That's a legitimate question since we, citizens, are spending our tax money on these wars on terror, and we are renouncing our fundamental freedoms and rights because of the whole WOT business.
When reading the latest terror report from Germany, I stumbled upon a text full of hypothetical terms to describe the latest raid of the German police on the alleged perpetrators. So, with particular attention to the highlighted text in what follows, I was struck by the higly hypothetical feature of the plot. I also realised that this highly hypothetical feature was present in all foiled terror plots since 9/11. Indeed, most terror plots since 9/11 have the following in common:
- They are at the stage of 'possible' intentions;
- They are foiled even before reaching the stage of active planning;
- They are 'creative', at least in the minds of those who discover them;
- They are full of western converts to Islam, and most often alleged ex Mossad agents Jews who converted to Islam. These converts appear to be more and more playing the role of the psychics pre-cogs in Minority Report;
- Once they are publicized, they disappear from the public eye and we don't know what happens to their possible perpetrators;
- And every demand for a public and open investigation about these terror operations is either ignored by our governments, or staged, or treated with contempt via a media campaign aimed at labelling those who ask for the Truth as conspiracy theorists.
Now enjoy the reading:
"Three terror suspects have been arrested in Germany. They are thought to have been plotting bomb attacks on Frankfurt Airport and the US military base at Ramstein.
The US air base at Ramstein was one of the possible targets of the three suspects.
Three Islamist terror suspects have been arrested in Germany, under suspicion of plotting bomb attacks on Frankfurt Airport and the US military air base at Ramstein.
The three men were arrested in Medebach-Oberschledorn in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia on Tuesday afternoon. Around 20 police were involved in the arrests, and there are reports that shots were fired. According to the Associated Press, the three men were staying in a vacation apartment. Local newspaper Hessische-Niedersächsische Allgemeine reported that police from Germany's elite GSG-9 unit had stormed the flat. Raids also later took place in other federal states, according to media reports.
According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the three men were Daniel S. from the state of Saarland and Fritz G. from Neu-Ulm in Bavaria, both of whom are German converts to Islam, as well as Adem Y., who is believed to be from Turkey. The three, who had apparently founded a terrorist cell, have been under intensive investigation for several months. All three men were considered radical Islamists and had contact with Islamist groups in Germany and Pakistan.
The investigators spontaneously made the arrests on Tuesday afternoon after the men were observed moving chemicals that could be used to make bombs from one storage location to another. Police believe that the men wanted to experiment in the coming days and weeks with the chemicals and possibly start building a bomb. They were, however, far away from making a bomb that could be detonated.
The choice of targets was also not yet fixed. As well as Frankfurt Airport and Ramstein Air Base, the men had apparently also discussed other locations, such as a nightclub. The preparations for the attacks were, however, at an early stage.
The group was treated very seriously by German investigators right from the beginning. US authorities were also informed about the threat and raised the security level at their facilities as a result.
A spokesman for the Office of the Federal Prosecutor confirmed the arrests to SPIEGEL ONLINE early Wednesday morning. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung also confirmed the arrests in remarks to the German broadcaster ARD. "There was an immediate threat," he said, without going into details.
The suspects are due to appear before the Federal Court of Justice later on Wednesday."
And of course we will know very little what will happen after next wednesday.
Despite all the talk and wars on Terror, can somebody tell me how many terrorists have been publicly tried up to now ? That's a legitimate question since we, citizens, are spending our tax money on these wars on terror, and we are renouncing our fundamental freedoms and rights because of the whole WOT business.
When reading the latest terror report from Germany, I stumbled upon a text full of hypothetical terms to describe the latest raid of the German police on the alleged perpetrators. So, with particular attention to the highlighted text in what follows, I was struck by the higly hypothetical feature of the plot. I also realised that this highly hypothetical feature was present in all foiled terror plots since 9/11. Indeed, most terror plots since 9/11 have the following in common:
- They are at the stage of 'possible' intentions;
- They are foiled even before reaching the stage of active planning;
- They are 'creative', at least in the minds of those who discover them;
- They are full of western converts to Islam, and most often alleged ex Mossad agents Jews who converted to Islam. These converts appear to be more and more playing the role of the psychics pre-cogs in Minority Report;
- Once they are publicized, they disappear from the public eye and we don't know what happens to their possible perpetrators;
- And every demand for a public and open investigation about these terror operations is either ignored by our governments, or staged, or treated with contempt via a media campaign aimed at labelling those who ask for the Truth as conspiracy theorists.
Now enjoy the reading:
"Three terror suspects have been arrested in Germany. They are thought to have been plotting bomb attacks on Frankfurt Airport and the US military base at Ramstein.
The US air base at Ramstein was one of the possible targets of the three suspects.
Three Islamist terror suspects have been arrested in Germany, under suspicion of plotting bomb attacks on Frankfurt Airport and the US military air base at Ramstein.
The three men were arrested in Medebach-Oberschledorn in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia on Tuesday afternoon. Around 20 police were involved in the arrests, and there are reports that shots were fired. According to the Associated Press, the three men were staying in a vacation apartment. Local newspaper Hessische-Niedersächsische Allgemeine reported that police from Germany's elite GSG-9 unit had stormed the flat. Raids also later took place in other federal states, according to media reports.
According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the three men were Daniel S. from the state of Saarland and Fritz G. from Neu-Ulm in Bavaria, both of whom are German converts to Islam, as well as Adem Y., who is believed to be from Turkey. The three, who had apparently founded a terrorist cell, have been under intensive investigation for several months. All three men were considered radical Islamists and had contact with Islamist groups in Germany and Pakistan.
The investigators spontaneously made the arrests on Tuesday afternoon after the men were observed moving chemicals that could be used to make bombs from one storage location to another. Police believe that the men wanted to experiment in the coming days and weeks with the chemicals and possibly start building a bomb. They were, however, far away from making a bomb that could be detonated.
The choice of targets was also not yet fixed. As well as Frankfurt Airport and Ramstein Air Base, the men had apparently also discussed other locations, such as a nightclub. The preparations for the attacks were, however, at an early stage.
The group was treated very seriously by German investigators right from the beginning. US authorities were also informed about the threat and raised the security level at their facilities as a result.
A spokesman for the Office of the Federal Prosecutor confirmed the arrests to SPIEGEL ONLINE early Wednesday morning. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung also confirmed the arrests in remarks to the German broadcaster ARD. "There was an immediate threat," he said, without going into details.
The suspects are due to appear before the Federal Court of Justice later on Wednesday."
And of course we will know very little what will happen after next wednesday.
2.10.07
Is The Partition of Iraq The First Step In A Zionist Project For Partitioning The Entire Middle East ?
For UrShalim, it is Sykes-Picot all over again, partitioning the Middle East under spheres of western influence 'protecting' different ethnicities. And for Nidal, who is commenting on UrShalim, westerners are discarding the Arab perception of USrael's policies in the Middle East as 'conspiracy theories'. However, if they look carefully at the history of the region and at what is happening now they will discover that there is a troubling similarity between these so-called conspiracy theories and what the US and Israel are planning for Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Moussa Bashir at UrShalim and Nidal at Loubnan Ya Loubnan, have recently pointed to this important news item, published only as an AFP newswire which went unnoticed; the US senate voted to partition Iraq. In the first lines of his post, Nidal highlights the contradiction in this short title. It is not the Iraqi people who voted to partition their country but a foreign power, the US senate.
What follows is an extract translated from Nidal's article.
The proposal voted in the US senate is what is called the Biden Bill, by the name of senator Joe Biden. Nidal features the whole text of the bill:
SEC. 1535. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON FEDERALISM IN IRAQ.
(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Iraq continues to experience a self-sustaining cycle of sectarian violence.
(2) The ongoing sectarian violence presents a threat to regional and world peace, and the longterm security interests of the United States are best served by an Iraq that is stable, not a haven for terrorists, and not a threat to its neighbors.
(3) A central focus of al Qaeda in Iraq has been to turn sectarian divisions in Iraq into sectarian violence through a concentrated series of attacks, the most significant being the destruction of the Golden Dome of the Shia al-Askariyah Mosque in Samarra in February 2006.
(4) Iraqis must reach a comprehensive and sustainable political settlement in order to achieve stability, and the failure of the Iraqis to reach such a settlement is a primary cause of violence in Iraq.
(5) Article One of the Constitution of Iraq declares Iraq to be a ``single, independent federal state''.
(6) Section Five of the Constitution of Iraq declares that the ``federal system in the Republic of Iraq is made up of a decentralized capital, regions, and governorates, and local administrations'' and enumerates the expansive powers of regions and the limited powers of the central government and establishes the mechanisms for the creation of new federal regions.
(7) The federal system created by the Constitution of Iraq would give Iraqis local control over their police and certain laws, including those related to employment, education, religion, and marriage.
(8) The Constitution of Iraq recognizes the administrative role of the Kurdistan Regional Government in 3 northern Iraqi provinces, known also as the Kurdistan Region.
(9) The Kurdistan region, recognized by the Constitution of Iraq, is largely stable and peaceful.
(10) The Iraqi Parliament approved a federalism law on October 11th, 2006, which establishes procedures for the creation of new federal regions and will go into effect 18 months after approval.
(11) Iraqis recognize Baghdad as the capital of Iraq, and the Constitution of Iraq stipulates that Baghdad may not merge with any federal region.
(12) Despite their differences, Iraq's sectarian and ethnic groups support the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq.
(13) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated on November 27, 2006, ``[t]he crisis is political, and the ones who can stop the cycle of aggravation and bloodletting of innocents are the politicians''.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the United States should actively support a political settlement in Iraq based on the final provisions of the Constitution of Iraq that create a federal system of government and allow for the creation of federal regions, consistent with the wishes of the Iraqi people and their elected leaders;
(2) the active support referred to in paragraph (1) should include--
(A) calling on the international community, including countries with troops in Iraq, the permanent 5 members of the United Nations Security Council, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and Iraq's neighbors--
(i) to support an Iraqi political settlement based on federalism;
(ii) to acknowledge the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq; and
(iii) to fulfill commitments for the urgent delivery of significant assistance and debt relief to Iraq, especially those made by the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council;
(B) further calling on Iraq's neighbors to pledge not to intervene in or destabilize Iraq and to agree to related verification mechanisms; and
(C) convening a conference for Iraqis to reach an agreement on a comprehensive political settlement based on the federalism law approved by the Iraqi Parliament on October 11, 2006;
(3) the United States should urge the Government of Iraq to quickly agree upon and implement a law providing for the equitable distribution of oil revenues, which is a critical component of a comprehensive political settlement based upon federalism;
(4) the steps described in paragraphs (1), (2), and (3) could lead to an Iraq that is stable, not a haven for terrorists, and not a threat to its neighbors; and
(5) nothing in this Act should be construed in any way to infringe on the sovereign rights of the nation of Iraq.
In his article, Nidal links to a 2006 article that Biden cosigned with Leslie H. Gelb in the New York Times on the subject, whish he considers more explicit than the actual text of the bill. He considers the text of the bill as a masterpiece in Hypocrisy. First because the text has taken the Iraqi constitution as a premise for justifying the partition plan without concern for the fact that the constitution was voted in October 2005 under US occupation and largely criticized at the time in the Arab world as opening the door to partition. The hypocrisy is also in the last paragraph of the amendment stipulating that such an amendment must not interfere with the sovereignty of Iraq.
"Let's imagine that, last wednesday, the US senate voted to express its 'sentiment' in favor of partitioning France. Or, let's have a bit fun and imagine that the US senate voted to partition Israel along ethnic and religious lines. What could have been the reaction of the news ? Unfortunately, there is a prevailing 'logic' today which, if applied in these two possible cases, no media would judge it interesting to reproduce and comment this information.
The opposition between republicans and democrats in the US senate is artificial. Iraqis will have to hang on either of these two positions: Republicans refusing the partition of Iraq and promising more war until the (final victory my addition), or democrats refusing war but promising partition along ethno-religious lines, meaning ethnic cleanesing.
Iraq's prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki says he is opposed to such a 'catastrophic' scenario but the latest news from the US are that Maliki does not seem to count too much despite his puppet stance toward the occupation. A leaked memo from December 2006 shows Stephen Hadley accusing Maliki of consolidating Shia Power in Baghdad.
The Missing Links blog notes that the Iraqi vice president launches the same day the Biden amendment is voted the Iraqi National Pact supporting the principle of a federal Iraq. Received in the white house by GW Bush in December 2006, at the time Maliki was criticized in Washington, he is the first high profile Sunni politician supporting federalism. It is strange to realize that while the news are mumm about the text of the Biden amendment and the text of the Iraqi National Pact, they are flooding us with information about the 'Progress' of the National Pact as promoted by Tariq El-Hashemi.
As our media have never layed out the historic context coloring the perception of citizens in the ME of such a move, except when they denounce Arabs' love for conspiracy theories, the European reader can never imagine the disturbing particular logic in which the US senate vote can be seen by Arabs (let alone the much less informed US reader, addition by Sophia).
For UrShalim the vote is simply the repetition of the Sykes-Picot agreements partitioning the Middle East under spheres of western influence 'protecting' different ethnicities.
In one of my first posts on this blog I reminded readers how political analysis, showing the Middle East, this craddle of human civilisation, as the victim of continuous ethno-religious confrontations, is dangerous and preposterous.
In another article, 'Political Coup in Lebanon', I reminded readers how the ambitions of a regional power, close to the US, is to partition the Arab and Muslim Middle East. (Nidal is referring here also to the text of Oded Yinon, addition by Sophia).
If we look at the Iraq war from this perspective it becomes evident that the invasion of Iraq was the sinister project of Zionists and Neoconservatives to destruct all Israel's neighbours in small ethno-religious entities similar to Israel. My Arab friends are convinced that that was the chief objective in invading Iraq and remodeling the ME.
The western reader has evidently never heard of the analysis and opinions of Arabs, notably Iraqis, who see in the invasion of Iraq the realization of the Zionist project through Neoconservatives. Westerners have but contempt for the Arab view on what is happening to them, they discard these views by labelling them as conspiracy theories. It is therefore unnecessary to inform the western reader about these views as it is unnecessary to inform him about the mercenaries whose only role in Iraq is to inflame sectarian tensions and provoke confrontations resulting in the partition of the country. This belief is particularly present among Iraqi refugees. It is also unnecessary to watch this movie aired on the website of the Nation showing how Blackwater has actively participated in the sectarian wars in Iraq. Better not to see those things, better to lower our head, and most importantly not to make any link between what is happening to Iraq and Arab 'conspiracy' theories."
UrShalim comments the US senate vote to partition Iraq this way: "You may still call it a conspiracy theory but I now call it strategic planning.
But we are not the planners of course."
"We can approve of UrShalim's opinion here or disapprove of it but there is one thing we cannot disregard: the importance of such perceptions which are at the heart of regional politics and individual discussions. Because if we are to look at a certain coherence in all what is happening now in the Middle East we are forced to adopt UrShalim's conclusion: "If the US succeeds in dividing Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon and others will be next. It is just a matter of years.""
Moussa Bashir at UrShalim and Nidal at Loubnan Ya Loubnan, have recently pointed to this important news item, published only as an AFP newswire which went unnoticed; the US senate voted to partition Iraq. In the first lines of his post, Nidal highlights the contradiction in this short title. It is not the Iraqi people who voted to partition their country but a foreign power, the US senate.
What follows is an extract translated from Nidal's article.
The proposal voted in the US senate is what is called the Biden Bill, by the name of senator Joe Biden. Nidal features the whole text of the bill:
SEC. 1535. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON FEDERALISM IN IRAQ.
(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Iraq continues to experience a self-sustaining cycle of sectarian violence.
(2) The ongoing sectarian violence presents a threat to regional and world peace, and the longterm security interests of the United States are best served by an Iraq that is stable, not a haven for terrorists, and not a threat to its neighbors.
(3) A central focus of al Qaeda in Iraq has been to turn sectarian divisions in Iraq into sectarian violence through a concentrated series of attacks, the most significant being the destruction of the Golden Dome of the Shia al-Askariyah Mosque in Samarra in February 2006.
(4) Iraqis must reach a comprehensive and sustainable political settlement in order to achieve stability, and the failure of the Iraqis to reach such a settlement is a primary cause of violence in Iraq.
(5) Article One of the Constitution of Iraq declares Iraq to be a ``single, independent federal state''.
(6) Section Five of the Constitution of Iraq declares that the ``federal system in the Republic of Iraq is made up of a decentralized capital, regions, and governorates, and local administrations'' and enumerates the expansive powers of regions and the limited powers of the central government and establishes the mechanisms for the creation of new federal regions.
(7) The federal system created by the Constitution of Iraq would give Iraqis local control over their police and certain laws, including those related to employment, education, religion, and marriage.
(8) The Constitution of Iraq recognizes the administrative role of the Kurdistan Regional Government in 3 northern Iraqi provinces, known also as the Kurdistan Region.
(9) The Kurdistan region, recognized by the Constitution of Iraq, is largely stable and peaceful.
(10) The Iraqi Parliament approved a federalism law on October 11th, 2006, which establishes procedures for the creation of new federal regions and will go into effect 18 months after approval.
(11) Iraqis recognize Baghdad as the capital of Iraq, and the Constitution of Iraq stipulates that Baghdad may not merge with any federal region.
(12) Despite their differences, Iraq's sectarian and ethnic groups support the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq.
(13) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated on November 27, 2006, ``[t]he crisis is political, and the ones who can stop the cycle of aggravation and bloodletting of innocents are the politicians''.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the United States should actively support a political settlement in Iraq based on the final provisions of the Constitution of Iraq that create a federal system of government and allow for the creation of federal regions, consistent with the wishes of the Iraqi people and their elected leaders;
(2) the active support referred to in paragraph (1) should include--
(A) calling on the international community, including countries with troops in Iraq, the permanent 5 members of the United Nations Security Council, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and Iraq's neighbors--
(i) to support an Iraqi political settlement based on federalism;
(ii) to acknowledge the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq; and
(iii) to fulfill commitments for the urgent delivery of significant assistance and debt relief to Iraq, especially those made by the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council;
(B) further calling on Iraq's neighbors to pledge not to intervene in or destabilize Iraq and to agree to related verification mechanisms; and
(C) convening a conference for Iraqis to reach an agreement on a comprehensive political settlement based on the federalism law approved by the Iraqi Parliament on October 11, 2006;
(3) the United States should urge the Government of Iraq to quickly agree upon and implement a law providing for the equitable distribution of oil revenues, which is a critical component of a comprehensive political settlement based upon federalism;
(4) the steps described in paragraphs (1), (2), and (3) could lead to an Iraq that is stable, not a haven for terrorists, and not a threat to its neighbors; and
(5) nothing in this Act should be construed in any way to infringe on the sovereign rights of the nation of Iraq.
In his article, Nidal links to a 2006 article that Biden cosigned with Leslie H. Gelb in the New York Times on the subject, whish he considers more explicit than the actual text of the bill. He considers the text of the bill as a masterpiece in Hypocrisy. First because the text has taken the Iraqi constitution as a premise for justifying the partition plan without concern for the fact that the constitution was voted in October 2005 under US occupation and largely criticized at the time in the Arab world as opening the door to partition. The hypocrisy is also in the last paragraph of the amendment stipulating that such an amendment must not interfere with the sovereignty of Iraq.
"Let's imagine that, last wednesday, the US senate voted to express its 'sentiment' in favor of partitioning France. Or, let's have a bit fun and imagine that the US senate voted to partition Israel along ethnic and religious lines. What could have been the reaction of the news ? Unfortunately, there is a prevailing 'logic' today which, if applied in these two possible cases, no media would judge it interesting to reproduce and comment this information.
The opposition between republicans and democrats in the US senate is artificial. Iraqis will have to hang on either of these two positions: Republicans refusing the partition of Iraq and promising more war until the (final victory my addition), or democrats refusing war but promising partition along ethno-religious lines, meaning ethnic cleanesing.
Iraq's prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki says he is opposed to such a 'catastrophic' scenario but the latest news from the US are that Maliki does not seem to count too much despite his puppet stance toward the occupation. A leaked memo from December 2006 shows Stephen Hadley accusing Maliki of consolidating Shia Power in Baghdad.
The Missing Links blog notes that the Iraqi vice president launches the same day the Biden amendment is voted the Iraqi National Pact supporting the principle of a federal Iraq. Received in the white house by GW Bush in December 2006, at the time Maliki was criticized in Washington, he is the first high profile Sunni politician supporting federalism. It is strange to realize that while the news are mumm about the text of the Biden amendment and the text of the Iraqi National Pact, they are flooding us with information about the 'Progress' of the National Pact as promoted by Tariq El-Hashemi.
As our media have never layed out the historic context coloring the perception of citizens in the ME of such a move, except when they denounce Arabs' love for conspiracy theories, the European reader can never imagine the disturbing particular logic in which the US senate vote can be seen by Arabs (let alone the much less informed US reader, addition by Sophia).
For UrShalim the vote is simply the repetition of the Sykes-Picot agreements partitioning the Middle East under spheres of western influence 'protecting' different ethnicities.
In one of my first posts on this blog I reminded readers how political analysis, showing the Middle East, this craddle of human civilisation, as the victim of continuous ethno-religious confrontations, is dangerous and preposterous.
In another article, 'Political Coup in Lebanon', I reminded readers how the ambitions of a regional power, close to the US, is to partition the Arab and Muslim Middle East. (Nidal is referring here also to the text of Oded Yinon, addition by Sophia).
If we look at the Iraq war from this perspective it becomes evident that the invasion of Iraq was the sinister project of Zionists and Neoconservatives to destruct all Israel's neighbours in small ethno-religious entities similar to Israel. My Arab friends are convinced that that was the chief objective in invading Iraq and remodeling the ME.
The western reader has evidently never heard of the analysis and opinions of Arabs, notably Iraqis, who see in the invasion of Iraq the realization of the Zionist project through Neoconservatives. Westerners have but contempt for the Arab view on what is happening to them, they discard these views by labelling them as conspiracy theories. It is therefore unnecessary to inform the western reader about these views as it is unnecessary to inform him about the mercenaries whose only role in Iraq is to inflame sectarian tensions and provoke confrontations resulting in the partition of the country. This belief is particularly present among Iraqi refugees. It is also unnecessary to watch this movie aired on the website of the Nation showing how Blackwater has actively participated in the sectarian wars in Iraq. Better not to see those things, better to lower our head, and most importantly not to make any link between what is happening to Iraq and Arab 'conspiracy' theories."
UrShalim comments the US senate vote to partition Iraq this way: "You may still call it a conspiracy theory but I now call it strategic planning.
But we are not the planners of course."
"We can approve of UrShalim's opinion here or disapprove of it but there is one thing we cannot disregard: the importance of such perceptions which are at the heart of regional politics and individual discussions. Because if we are to look at a certain coherence in all what is happening now in the Middle East we are forced to adopt UrShalim's conclusion: "If the US succeeds in dividing Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon and others will be next. It is just a matter of years.""
Israel, Israel Army Radio, and Haaretz: Spinning the threat of a nuclear war in the ME
Few days ago, I wrote that Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, has become the mouthpiece of the Israeli government in what looks like an attempt at spinning a nuclear war in the ME while coming out safely, in terms of the impact on public opinion, on Israel's military nuclear program. Now that's official. The Haaretz article below, published yesterday, wrongly cites a Canadian poll commissioned by the Canadian
Institute for Strategic Studies (CISS) revealing a massive support of Israeli public opinion for a nuclear strike on Iran. In the Haaretz article there is no link to the source of the poll. Haaretz's only source is the Israel army radio. On the CISS's website, there is no mention of the poll.
I called the CISS. They said someone called them from Reuters Jerusalem asking them about the poll. The CISS answered that it is not theirs and they know nothing about it. They did not order or commission the poll. They suggested maybe another Institute, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) commissioned the poll, and Haaretz might have mixed the names. I called the IISS. The IISS is not the source of such a poll.
Now either Haaretz is not verifying such a crucial information, or they are consciously reporting the propaganda of the Israel Army Radio. It is clear by now, as I wrote few days earlier, that Israel is manipulating middle eastern and international public opinions about a nuclear war in the ME. This propaganda could not have as a result a halt to Iran's nuclear enrichment neither a push toward consensus between Iran and the international community. The only result of this propaganda is to increase tension and rally Iran around its contested leader in accelerating its nuclear enrichment activity.
Here is an example of a short spin sequence:
October 1st, 2007. This information, published by Haaretz, has been verified by the author of this blog and proved false or, at best, unsourced.
"72% of Israelis back use of nuclear arms. The poll also showed that 75 percent of Israelis would feel safer if they knew with certainty that Israel has atomic weapons Israel has maintained an official veil of secrecy on rumors that it has in its possession nuclear weapons."
September 26, 2007. Israel lobbying to import nuclear material.
Read here my opinion about this piece of information.
May 19th, 2007. "71% of Israelis want U.S. to strike Iran if talks fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program, according to a new poll. The survey, commissioned by Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center and the Anti-Defamation League, found that 59 percent of Israelis still believe the war in Iraq was justified, while 36 percent take the opposite view."
And from Naj: "To add to the repository of Zionist lies"
Haaretz has been recently publishing, about the nuclear threat, either false polls or internal Israeli polls whose objectivity we can doubt if Haaretz, Israel, and the Israel army Radio, have been handling internal opinion polls the way they handled this last unsourced information. Not that I have any doubt about Israel's public opinion going in this direction. This is a country obsessed by its own security and strategic status in the region in total disregard for the ME and the rest of the world. But how are we to interpret the rush to elevate such a propaganda to the level of mainstream information in the present context ?
I have come to the conclusion that, at this stage, Israel is pushing Iran toward acquiring a military nuclear program. In a second stage, which may come before we realize that Iran,s nuclear capabilities are far from representing a threat to any country other than Iran and before we realize that the first propaganda stage was just lies, Israel will strike whatever Iran does or does not have as nuclear facilities, citing national defence worries. A rehearsal of this scenario was realized by the Israeli army on Syria earlier last September. In the meantime, the propaganda serves another purpose, legitimizing Israel's hidden military nuclear program in the context of an alleged Iranian nuclear threat on Israel.
UPDATE: On the day I published this post, I sent a comment to Haaretz on the unsourced article, follwed by another one the day after. They did not publish my comments as of October 4th, thursday, 8.pm, local time, and I bet they won't, but they published other comments since. Among other readers' earlier comments they published one which caught particularly my attention: it is from Petra in the USA, comment number 20.
"Title: Bomb Terhan and Mecca Let God sort them out
Name: Petra
City: State: usa
It worked for the USA against Japan. Now, Japan LOVES US!"
Institute for Strategic Studies (CISS) revealing a massive support of Israeli public opinion for a nuclear strike on Iran. In the Haaretz article there is no link to the source of the poll. Haaretz's only source is the Israel army radio. On the CISS's website, there is no mention of the poll.
I called the CISS. They said someone called them from Reuters Jerusalem asking them about the poll. The CISS answered that it is not theirs and they know nothing about it. They did not order or commission the poll. They suggested maybe another Institute, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) commissioned the poll, and Haaretz might have mixed the names. I called the IISS. The IISS is not the source of such a poll.
Now either Haaretz is not verifying such a crucial information, or they are consciously reporting the propaganda of the Israel Army Radio. It is clear by now, as I wrote few days earlier, that Israel is manipulating middle eastern and international public opinions about a nuclear war in the ME. This propaganda could not have as a result a halt to Iran's nuclear enrichment neither a push toward consensus between Iran and the international community. The only result of this propaganda is to increase tension and rally Iran around its contested leader in accelerating its nuclear enrichment activity.
Here is an example of a short spin sequence:
October 1st, 2007. This information, published by Haaretz, has been verified by the author of this blog and proved false or, at best, unsourced.
"72% of Israelis back use of nuclear arms. The poll also showed that 75 percent of Israelis would feel safer if they knew with certainty that Israel has atomic weapons Israel has maintained an official veil of secrecy on rumors that it has in its possession nuclear weapons."
September 26, 2007. Israel lobbying to import nuclear material.
Read here my opinion about this piece of information.
May 19th, 2007. "71% of Israelis want U.S. to strike Iran if talks fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program, according to a new poll. The survey, commissioned by Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center and the Anti-Defamation League, found that 59 percent of Israelis still believe the war in Iraq was justified, while 36 percent take the opposite view."
And from Naj: "To add to the repository of Zionist lies"
Haaretz has been recently publishing, about the nuclear threat, either false polls or internal Israeli polls whose objectivity we can doubt if Haaretz, Israel, and the Israel army Radio, have been handling internal opinion polls the way they handled this last unsourced information. Not that I have any doubt about Israel's public opinion going in this direction. This is a country obsessed by its own security and strategic status in the region in total disregard for the ME and the rest of the world. But how are we to interpret the rush to elevate such a propaganda to the level of mainstream information in the present context ?
I have come to the conclusion that, at this stage, Israel is pushing Iran toward acquiring a military nuclear program. In a second stage, which may come before we realize that Iran,s nuclear capabilities are far from representing a threat to any country other than Iran and before we realize that the first propaganda stage was just lies, Israel will strike whatever Iran does or does not have as nuclear facilities, citing national defence worries. A rehearsal of this scenario was realized by the Israeli army on Syria earlier last September. In the meantime, the propaganda serves another purpose, legitimizing Israel's hidden military nuclear program in the context of an alleged Iranian nuclear threat on Israel.
UPDATE: On the day I published this post, I sent a comment to Haaretz on the unsourced article, follwed by another one the day after. They did not publish my comments as of October 4th, thursday, 8.pm, local time, and I bet they won't, but they published other comments since. Among other readers' earlier comments they published one which caught particularly my attention: it is from Petra in the USA, comment number 20.
"Title: Bomb Terhan and Mecca Let God sort them out
Name: Petra
City: State: usa
It worked for the USA against Japan. Now, Japan LOVES US!"
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