Badiou on Corporate Media

French philosopher Alain Badiou gave an interview to Rue89 few days ago. Badiou has been all his life a staunch marxist. He thinks that some of the things implied in the idea of communism like egalitarianism and the common good will never die. In his refelctions on the corporate owned media he highlights a simple fact:

"Un journal qui appartient à de riches managers n’a pas à être lu par quelqu’un qui n’est ni manager ni riche."

"A newspaper that is owned by rich managers shouldn't be read by someone who is neither rich nor manager (i.e. a worker)"

And he considers this as a pivotal point for the refoundation of the left.
When I read this I thought that the masses are daily fed of news fabricated, digested and prepared for them by people who don't have the same objectives, interests, needs, etc... Pure wisdom...

The Last of the Mohicans: As'ad Abukhlalil's obituary of Georges Habash

Abukhalil maintains a blog on the ME at Angry Arab. Read here the obituary at EI.
Excerpts from Abukhalil's text:

...If there is a world revolutionary symbol for the second half of the 20th century, it should be George Habash. He may not be widely known in 2008, but anybody who read a newspaper prior to the rise of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, when Islamism eclipsed the Arab Left, would know him. Habash is one of the main makers of Arab contemporary history and one of the handful of names who changed the course of the Palestinian political struggle.
...The PFLP argued that the liberation of Palestine would be impossible without the liberation of Arab countries from the regimes imposed by the West and Israel. Looking to Vietnam, Habash called for Arab "Hanois," and stated that the liberation of Palestine passed through every Arab capital. "Armed struggle" was the major path to liberation.
....George Habash lived his life for Palestine -- every minute of it. He represented a model of revolutionary struggle that is exemplary in its dedication and asceticism, no matter what one thinks of the PFLP or its long political and military experience. One should not hesitate from rendering a harsh judgment against the PFLP; ultimately it failed politically and militarily. And any evaluation of Palestinian political violence must be made in the context of Zionist mass violence that for decades had set out to destroy Palestinian society and resistance and replace it with its own exclusivist vision. But whatever that judgment it should not detract from an appreciation of the profound influence of the PFLP's founder who helped shape the politics and worldview of a generation. The present political scene is devoid of any leaders of such character.

David Hirst's obituary in The Guardian.

From Time/CNN:

What led Habash, a Christian physician — hence his nickname al-Hakim or the doctor — into such a life, of revolution, of killing? The son of a well-to-do merchant, he was trained at the American University of Beirut, the most liberal university in the Middle East then as now. His background was almost identical to that of his best friend, Wadia Haddad, the No. 2 in the PFLP and the operational genius and passionate proponent of the group's terrorist acts. When I asked Habash that question during a series of interviews many years ago, he simply told me about his personal experiences when his family lost its home during Israel's 1948 War of Independence, what the Palestinians call the Catastrophe.

Habash's mother insisted he stay in Lebanon for his studies. He told me he "respected her very much. She was praying all the time. She influenced me to be merciful, kind to people, to love people, etc." When war broke out in 1948, he returned to Lydda. In July, Israeli forces led by Moshe Dayan entered Lydda and its population emptied. Israeli accounts long portrayed the Palestinians as having "fled." But Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote in 1999 that Israeli forces killed at least 250 townspeople, including young men massacred in a mosque. "Immediately after this, with [Israeli Prime Minister] Ben Gurion's authorization, the troops expelled the inhabitants of Lydda and Ramle and drove them toward the [Arab] Legion lines to the east," according to Morris.

That was the horror Habash recollected as well, compounded for him by a personal tragedy: the same night, one of his sisters died in the town. Although she succumbed to typhoid, the clan blamed the Israeli onslaught for preventing her from receiving proper care. He buried the sister in the backyard, took her small children by the hand and followed the orders of the Israeli soldiers to leave. "The soldiers would say, 'All of you, out! In this direction!'" Habash recalled. "I remember asking one of the soldiers where we were supposed to go." Habash told me he rejected Christianity then. "I was all the time imagining myself as a good Christian, serving the poor. When my land was occupied, I had no time to think about religion."

And here is Abukhalil's last thought on the death of Habash.

McCain, Lieberman, and Poor US

Here, a democratic US senator, campaigning on behalf of a republican US presdiential candidate, among Jewish voters, not on the basis of his economic agenda, not on the basis of his domestic agenda, not on the basis of his general foreign policy agenda, but on the basis of his support for Israel and his will to bomb Iran when time will come...Bomb bomb Iran !

"UN Declares as “Arbitrary” the Detention of Four Officers and Four Civilians in Hariri Case"

From the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) website.

The information is clouded in mystery. It is also posted on the website of Réseau Voltaire.
I don't know who the EMHRN are. They have posted two links to the full french version of the UN document but the links are not accessible to non members as it seems. I was able to obtain from the site of their foundation the list of representatives on the foundation...I wouldn't be surprised if the UN report isn't easily accessible but we still need the original document in order to confirm this information...

UPDATE: Now the French version mentioned for the document can be accessed from what it seems to be the official blog (?) of the Lebanese center for Human Rights (CLDH) but there are no names on it. We still don't know who produced this document. The Universal Human Rights Index of United Nations Documents, which lists all UN documents concerning violations of Human Rights by country, has entries for Lebanon (scroll the page until the end), but only for violation of the rights of foreign domestic workers. There is no mention of the document at the website page of the University of Pittsburg's school of law devoted to all legal documents concerning the Hariri tribunal. It is becoming pretty much clear to me that those who published the information must come up with clear sources and names, even though one might believe that the UN might hold back such negative documents on the working of one of its commissions. Otherwise, what follows should only be considered as a rumor, for the time being.

Almost a year ago, the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH)with the support of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) submitted a formal request to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – a group of independent experts – for its opinion on the detention of eight individuals in the Hariri case.

The answer of the UN Working Group is unambiguous: This is an instance of a Category III arbitrary detention. Once again, the Lebanese judiciary and government have been repudiated.

“The deprivation of freedom of Jamil El Sayed, Moustapha Hamdane, Raymond Azar, Ali El Haj, Ayman Tarabay, Moustapha Talal Mesto, Ahmad Abdel Aa l et Mahmoud Abdel Aal is arbitrary in that it contravenes the provisions of Articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Lebanon is a party, and it falls under Category III among those categories that are applicable to the consideration of cases submitted to the Working Group.
Having expressed this opinion, the Working Group urges the government to take the necessary measures to remedy the situation of these individuals in accordance with the norms and principles set forth in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

CLDH is dismayed at the prolonged inaction by the Lebanese judiciary insofar as the individuals who are the subject of the UN Working Group’s opinion remain in detention.

Israel: Liberty, Democracy, Brutality

Stating the obvious.

Qu'est-ce que la barbarie contemporaine ?

Réponse abrégée et illustrée du philosophe français Alain Badiou.

Entretien Alain Badiou (2)
envoyé par rue89

"Sarkozy peut se réclamer de tout finalement, sauf de la civilisation. A mes yeux, c'est un barbare..."

Sarkoland of Vulgarity

"I live my life," he says, "and I couldn't care less about the comments of others. During the last 12 years, people became accustomed to seeing grandpa and grandma in the Élysée. I have a new style. The whole world will have to get used to it. Now the French have a real man in the Élysée, a man who has something between his legs and uses it."

The Latest News From The Gaza Ghetto: Total Darkness

Picture: AFP/MAHMUD HAMS

Children marching in Gaza after Israel enforced a total, 100%, fuel blockade.

From The Guardian, Gaza's darkness in pictures.

Ali Abunimah: Where does it end ?

The Guardian, in pictures: Palestinians flood Egypt looking for food and fuel after militants blew up part of the border wall at Rafah.

Mark Tran: All Eyes on Egypt's treatment of the Gaza Blockade.

Robert Malley: "Defusing the Gaza Time Bomb".

The German Press: "Hamas is not going to disappear into thin air"

Karen Koning AbuZayd: This brutal siege of Gaza can only breed violence.

As the head of a humanitarian and human development agency for Palestinian refugees, I am deeply concerned by the stark inhumanity of Gaza's closure. I am disturbed by the seeming indifference of much of the world as hundreds and thousands of Palestinians are harshly penalised for acts in which they have no part.

Chroniques de Palestine: A Photoblog on Gaza and the occupied territories.

The blockade isn't new, Israel has been slowly asphyxiating the occupied territory, well before.

The General Of The Dead Army

Hezbollah says they have in their possession body parts of Israeli soldiers dead during the July 2006 agression on Lebanon and abandoned on the battlefield by the Israeli army. (Reuters 19.01.08. 22h30 by Yara Bayoumy,)

I read this yesterday and asked myself what is the point of Israeli soldiers' body parts thrown in the middle of a speech on 'Achoura day ? 'Achoura for the Shias designates the tenth day of the first month of the Muslim year during which the community commemorates the killing on year 680, at the orders of the Umayyad Caliph, of Imam Husayn, son of Imam Ali, and grand'son of the prophet. It is a day of atonement, remembrance and mourning.

"O zionists, your army has been lying to you. Parts of your dead soldiers' bodies were left behind in our fields and in our orchards", Nasrallah declared to a crowd of hundred thousands gathered for the commemoration of 'Achoura.
"Our moudjahidins are used to fight these zionists, to kill them and to keep whatever left of their bodies (...) I am telling Israelis, We have your soldiers heads, we have their hands, we have their legs", added Nasrallah, who was speaking on a rare appearance. He has not been seen in a public appearance since months.

The 34 days of the Israeli agression on Lebanon left Israel with 157 deaths, most of them soldiers, while there were more than 1200 victims on the Lebanese side, mostly civilians.
"We even possess an entire body, we also have half bodies or more, from the head to the chest", insisited the head of Hezbollah.

Israel condemned the speech as a disregard for elementary humanitarian principles and even the religious principles of Islam. Some in Israel were of the opinion to ignore the speech as not to give importance to Nasrallah. Some analysts believe that Nasrallah's speech is meant to pressure Israel into releasing Lebanese prisoners in exchange of the two Israeli soldiers detained by Hezbollah and whose kidnapping officially started the 34 days Israeli agression on Lebanon. Twice this month, Israel detained temporarily for interrogation, from Lebanese territory, two Lebanese shepherds. Israel continues also to violate Lebanon's airspace almost daily.

"We believe that Israeli attacks against civilians on the border are humiliations for the lebanese nation and its people. We cannot stay silent in the face of these attacks and we must confront them one day, if God's willing." Threatened Nasrallah.

The head of Hezbollah doubted the capacity of the political and military leadership of Israel to launch another war on Lebanon. But he added that if this were to happen, "We promise them a war that will change the destiny of the region."

Despite the fact that it was delivered to a civil audience, and on a religious occasion, Nasrallah's speech is 100% military speech, destined in the first place to Israel's implicit Lebanese allies, Sanyura, Hariri, and March 14th. Everybody knows that an army that respects itself doesn't leave bodies of soldiers behind or, if it leaves them, it tries to have them back by time of peace either through negotiations or through war. Israel has been ignoring this fact and doing neither, probably becuse it neither wants negotiations nor another defeat.

The theme of dead soldiers' bodies and armies' honor has inspired poets and novelists. One of the most interesting novels on the subject was written by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, "The General Of The Dead Army".

Twenty years after World War II, an Italian general, armed with maps, measurements, and dental records, and accompanied by a priest, is sent to Albania to recover the remains of his country’s fallen soldiers. In addition to the brutal weather, they have to be wary of the hostility of the Albanians working for them. This may be an errand of mercy for the general, but the chance to humiliate their one-time conquerors offers the Albanians a welcome vengeance. But there is an escalation, at a wedding, the Italian general must answer for the crimes of his country and all countries that have invaded this 'land of eagles', seeking to destroy its people.

Beside the fact that Nasrallah is emulating Imam Ali's speeches, this speech is clearly a challenge for Israel to revisit the battlefield where it was defeated because an army that leaves its soldiers behind is an army without honor. Some may think that Nasrallah has gone mad. Why provoke Israel ? To receive the same reply as in July 2006? But we are now in 2008, and, through Israel and its defeat in 2006, Nasrallah is sending a signal to his opponents in Lebanon who are refusing any compromise. We know that Sanyura and March 14th were hoping for a swift Israeli victory over Hezbollah in 2006. Nasrallah is now taunting them. He is showing them how not even Israel wants to visit its battlefield with Hezbollah once again.

Lebanon is going through its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war, and negotiations between the Hezbollah led oppostion and the government on a consensus presidential candidate are stalling to the point many are evoking the risk of a new civil war. Nasrallah has stated on many occasions that Hezbollah will never use its military power against other Lebanese, as he has never done so in the past, an act from which Hezbollah takes pride and popularity. Nasrallah was conciliatory to a maximum with the government and March 14th who are showing no will to talk to his powerful alliance, betting on the inability of Hezbollah to engage in internal warfare and risk losing its popularity. And so Nasrallah is sending a signal to the Sanyura government telling them that Hezbollah can engage at any time in hostilities against Israel, recreating the kind of consensus around him that emerged spontaneously during the Israeli agression on Lebanon. This might be Sanyura's and March 14th's worst nightmare. They would rather prefer a civil war in which they receive US and Israeli support to terminate Hezbollah. But Nasrallah is fully aware of this and aware that this is exactly what is behind the stalling of the negotiations on the future president while the country is without a president since the end of August. So if one party is determined not to engage in a civil war when it had many chances to do so during the last two years, there won't be a civil war, despite the many efforts made by Saudi paid Sunni extremists, renegades from the Iraqi insurgency, to throw chaos in Lebanon leading to a new civil war.

Then the only way this is going to end is, most probably, and if Hezbollah has the means, by a new war with Israel. And don't expect Israel to listen to Sanyura or any other anti-Hezbollah politician in Lebanon, but it will do so only when feels the time is right. Now, fresh from ist defeat, the time isn't right for Israel to launch another war on Lebanon. Hence, Nasrallah,s taunting of Israel about its dead soldiers left behind. Recently, the web has been buzzing with reports from military strategists reflecting on the Israeli debacle against Hezbollah in July 2006 and on future prospects.

And so it seems that Nasrallah's mention of Israel's dead soldiers held by Hezbollah is just a reminder to the lousy politicians in Lebanon that an agreement is unescapable.

UPDATE ON february 16th: Sanyura warns Hezbollah that an open war against israel is bad for Arabs and Muslims.
Le Hezbollah affirme détenir des "restes" de soldats israéliens.

Canada's Harper government is an embarrassment

The Harper government is behaving submissively toward the Bush administration and toward what it represents in terms of ideological commitments. Or maybe the Harper ideology is just Bush's applied with much zeal and disregard for everything else. It is indeed the extreme of an extreme, of what Bush has embodied on the world stage for the last seven years.

Teh Harper government refused to ask for a ceasefire in Lebanon in July 2006 when Israel was bombing Lebanon and Lebanese so madly, despite Canada's large Arab, lebanese and Muslim communities. Recently, Harper went to the Bali conference on climate change with only representatives from major Canadian oil companies. Last week Canada was the only country to excuse and explain US's secretary of defense arrogant statement about Nato forces not knowing how to fight in Afghanistan.

And today, after a Canadaian foreign minstry document cited the US and Israel on a torture list, as countries that torture, it withdrew them, just like that, with excuses, because...they are allies.

Watch Harper and his government closely, they are the épitome of bad taste when it comes to foreign policy and Human rights, but, most of all, they follow so closely Bush's ideology that they have become its caricature...

More: Torture manual to be rewritten...as not to offend Israel and the US

Everything Quite On The Lebanese Front ?

According to Nir Rosen, it may well be the calm before the tempest. Read his article: "Al Qaeda in Lebanon, The Iraq War Spreads"
And every tempering with a solution to the present deadlock in Lebanon is a step toward chaos. The kind of chaos we saw and still see in Iraq.

Canadian troops must leave Afghanistan now and MacKay must resign

Our men and women in the military are dying in Afghanistan. Canada has lost 77 of its troops since 2002. For what ? To support the druglords who run the Karzai government. The Talibans are gaining ground every day and now extending their terror operations to Pakistan. Afghanistan was the US's battleground against the other 'evil', the soviet union. And to battle on this ground, the US fertilised it with terrorists and withdrew from there, not even looking to wage a serious war against the very source of the terror that struck it in its heart on september 11th, preferring to invest the oil fields of Iraq. But the US left this mess in the hands of Nato to clean it up. Nato has been unable so far to clean this mess. Part of the problem is US's policy toward the Afghan puppet government, the Pakistani puppet government, the Saudi puppet government, and every Muslim and Arab dictatorial and corrupt puppet government the US is supporting, along with a very bellicose rethoric about Islam. This combination is breeding submissive regimes in Muslim and Arab countries and fueling hatred of the US and the west.

Meanwhile, our men and women in the military are dying for the US to be able to perpetuate tragic errors and to cast them as 'War on Terror'.

The arrogance of the US doesn't stop there. Not only are they able to cast their own tragic failure in Iraq as a success but they are unable to recognise the hard work of small countries investing huge amounts of money and human flesh in a war they did not start, unable to recognise that the failure of these countries in Afghanistan is due to the local and global policies of the US in the 'War on Terror'.

Today, secretary of defense Robert Gates criticised Nato for not 'knowing how to fight a guerilla insurgency'. The comment was judged 'outrageous' even by conservative commentators in Canada. Holland and the UK are asking for apologies. But our own conservative Bushminded government and defense minister are trying to excuse Mr Gates by saying that Gates did not criticise the work of Canadian troops in particular. I find Mr. MacKay's answer very disturbing when Canadian troops are dying for the US's mistakes and when Canada's participation in a war that could not be won is hugely largely condemned and decried by Canadian citizens.

More Here: Shaming Nato over Afghanistan

EI: Volvo equiment used in illegal activities by Israel in occupied Palestine

Want another Bushism? Bush says official intelligence on Iran doesn't reflect his views!

"But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views""
I can't resist. I am posting too much Steve Bell cartoons these days but the man has captured the essence of Bush's visit to the ME more than any journalist, columnist, analyst, etc...

Cartoon from Steve Bell, The Guardian

More on the Filipino Monkey

Things you won't read in the western press about Bush's ME visit

Photo The Guardian
Of course, there are these pictures of Palestinian militants in Gaza who protest Bush's visit. But the western press and the Saudi controlled Arab press agree that Gaza is not part of the Arab world, it is not part of any world, it is somewhere between the axis of evil and nowhere, as far as Bush and Olmert are concerned.

So the western press and the Saudi controlled Arab press will not tell you that ordinary Arab citizens, as well as ordinary Arab columnists in a small portion of the press not controlled by Saudi media, can also protest Bush's visit. But this will become too complexe for the western mind used to the rethoric of Evil versus Good, of Islam versus the West, of ballot box democracy, consumer civilisation, and life loving culture, versus barbaric Arabs.

To illustrate its article on Bush's visit to Israel and the ME, Lebanon's Al-Safir chooses to show a Palestinian child from Qalqilya sleeping near a curtain dotted with Israeli bullets.

In Al-Quds Al 'Arabi, columnist 'Abd-El-Bari 'Atwan takes on Bush's illogic and asks how Bush can tie the end of 'illegal' settlements* to the end of the launching of rockets on these same settlements when the rocket launchers are in Gaza and when the only Palestinian 'authority' Bush recognises and meet is in Ramallah and has nothing to do with Gaza ? How Bush can promise Abbas peace when he ties the peace process to the end of the rockets coming from a territory Abbas does not control ?**

'Atwan writes that not only Abbas does not control Gaza but he does not control Ramallah, for to enter Ramallah or to leave it he needs the approval of Israeli authorities. He cannot even smuggle a baby to or from Ramallah without the approval of Israeli authorities. 'Atwan doubts that Bush's intention in this visit is peace because if this is so he shouldn't have left peace for the last year of his two term presidency.
'Atwan ironically finishes his column by reminding the reader that his wife is not Iranian, his mother is not a Shia Muslim, and that he is an Arab to the bone, in case anybody reading his column might perceive his critique of Bush as motivated by the love of Iran. This kind of sectarian thinking is also symptomatic of the Arab press owned by the Saudi royal family and very submissive to it...The kind of freedom of expression and democracy Bush promotes in the Arab world...

Lebanese blogger Mustapha, close to March 14th, Bush's favourite political movement in the ME, explains why Bush is not welcome in Lebanon.

Todo sobre mi madre:Lebanese blogger Jamal's sweet peaceful and politically apathic mother is mad angry about Bush visiting Lebanon and has prepared some rotten eggs for him.

*A zionist oxymore since all settlements are illegal.
**In my opinion, this can only be understood as a call for civil war among Palestinians until the end of all Palestinians, or at least that's how peace efforts of the Bush presidency can be caracterised.

But what the western press won't tell you about Bush's visit to the ME, it will tell in cartoons. Saudi media definitely won't.
Here is my preferred cartoonist Steve Bell on Bush's visit:

UPDATE, January 16th: From Spiegel, a round-up of the Arab press on the visit.
Gideon Levy on Bush's visit

'Can Hillary cry her way back to the White House ?'

I really have a hard time liking any of the presidential hopefuls in the US. I believe US citizen deserve better.
Between political correctness and gender thinking, Maureen Dowd gives us here a witty comment on Hillary's tears in NH before the vote.

US Democratic primaries and the power of nightmares

The tone in Berlin is completely different from what one reads in the US press.
..."The candidate is nevertheless unsettling because he remains strangely intangible, elastic and hollow".
"George W. Bush played the nice guy too. And look what happened."

However, everyone agrees that Hillary hasn't got political talent.
One explanation I offered on a smart article about the Iowa victory was that US citizens were probably overcoming years of fear and finally domesticating their fears by electing a black man with a Muslim father.

In the wake of Obama’s early breakthrough in the primaries I let my imagination wander and I had this intuition: what if the fear mongering against Blacks and Muslims, added to an old culture of fear in the US, is producing exactly the contrary of what it is meant to produce; people getting tired from being fearful, and getting tired from hearing stories about this different mystified other, will elect a nice version of this other to lead them ? That’s a powerful antidote to fear. O.K. I am only being intuitive and irrational here…but today’s politics in the US is all about irrationality and in irrationality there is unpredictability of behaviour…For now, I like to think that this is what motivated the voters in Iowa.

Reading the press from Berlin, I still think that Obama's choice is irrational, not because he is Black but because he is unexperienced and charming. And I think we should not underestimate the power of irrational choices in Politics when campaign are led by a one word slogan and thirty seconds commercials. Another irrational factor might be the power of self-congratulation to lift up the spirits of a nation defeated outside and inside by an immoral war, an immoral leadership and poor economic perspectives.

Obama's double magic

NH Primary: Fear of recession boosting Obama and Edwards.

The Imperial History of the ME in Ninety Seconds

Map generated by Maps of War.

My New Year

Many thanks to readers and friends who left their wishes for Christmas and the new year, especially the last ones because it took me some time to publish them in the comment section.

I started the new year with a very bad flu, strong fever, muscle and joint pain, as well as a terrible headache. I haven't been sick like this before. I only experienced such extreme symptoms some sixteen years ago when an irresponsible dentist extracted an infected wisdom tooth without giving me antibiotics and I had a sceptic choc. I survived only because I had a very good health and I was young.

For this new year I should have suspected that something was wrong but I wasn't listening enough to my body. This was the first time I didn't really enjoy the chain of dinners and gatherings with family and friends between the 24th and the 31st. I was feeling weak all along and when my son's anniversary came on the 29th we went out for dinner. Usually I like to cook on these occasions. It was the end of a very stressful fall season for me, starting in September, and my body surrendered to infections. When stress and cortisol levels are high, they help the body fight infections, but when the stress level goes down abruptly or eventually when the stress is so chronic that the body stops producing the needed amount of cortisol out of exhaustion, the immune system becomes vulnerable.

Since January 1st 2008, I have been 100% of time in bed, but I am feeling better this morning. Thanks to all, and my best wishes for a good health for 2008, and beyond.