The American Errorist

If you read one article this week

2006-02-22T10:51:00.000-05:00

The article by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker about the concerted efforts of the Bush administration (especially those with Rumsfeld/Cheney connections) to make torture an available option for U.S. interrogators and to sideline and silence any critics of this policy is a chilling read.

Joe Sacco on the Danish Cartoon Controversy

2006-02-17T10:01:00.000-05:00

From the Nation:

Frankly, I don't give a damn about these Danish cartoons. In the end, yes, there is a principle about the freedom of expression that concerns me, but I'm always sorry to have to rush to the defense of idiots.

Democracy in action?

2006-02-16T10:14:00.000-05:00

According to today's Ha'aretz, the Likud party is pushing to ban the United Arab List from participating in the upcoming Israeli elections. And why? Because they are the wrong religion. You see, while any Jewish party can run on a religious platform, the Israeli right-wing can't possibly allow Muslims in Israel to do the same. And of course the excuse is that it is antithetical to Israel's "democratic Jewish nature." But of course, that's misleading. Because it's certainly not antithetical to Israel's democratic nature. What's antithetical to Israel's democratic nature (although it seems pretty ridiculous to talk about the "nature" of a government, but leaving this aside for now) would be banning parties because they talk about the wrong religion. Now perhaps you could argue that it undermines the Jewishness of the Israeli state. But of course, this isn't exactly an open and shut case, considering the very small number of seats that the UAL is going to win in the elections; they won 5 seats in the 1999 election and 2 in the 2003 election out of a total of 120, hardly enough to be considered a credible threat to the "Jewishness" of Israel. So though not at all a threat to the "democratic" part, and barely a threat to the "Jewish" part, the right-wing in Israel (and their supporters in the U.S.) feel that they are justified under the slogan of "Jewish and democratic" to try to eliminate any means of democratic expression available to the Palestinians inside Israel (as the article mentions, "in the last Knesset elections, the [central elections] committee voted to disqualify the Arab party Balad under the leadership of MK Azmi Bashara, but the High Court ruled against this decision). Three cheers for democracy!

A Museum on Top of a Grave (perhaps it is Irony's)

2006-02-10T14:58:00.000-05:00

Donald Macintyre reports in the Independent about the plans for the Simon Wiesenthal Center (based in L.A.) to build a museum of "tolerance" on a Palestinian cemetary in Jerusalem. Yes another death knell for irony, but also for shame. I think even Orwell would gasp at this affront, yet another symbolic blow to the Palestinians and the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, in the name of "tolerance" so that Arnold Schwarzenegger can come talk about "tolerance" and shout down anti-Semitism. Are you kidding me?

(Thanks, Maha, for sending this article to me)

Arabs treated differently than Jews by Shin Bet

2006-02-06T17:38:00.000-05:00

Yes, a shocker, I know (I do hope, dear reader, that you were sitting down before you read that astounding news). In a talk at a West Bank Jewish settlement, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin announced the racist treatment of Palestinians by the Shin Bet in an attempt to fend off accusations that the Shin Bet was treating extremist Jewish settlers unfairly.

"If I had arrested a terrorist from Nablus and Eden Nathan Zada," Diskin said, referring to the Jewish terrorist who gunned down four Israeli Arabs last August in a bid to hamper the Gaza disengagement, "they wouldn't have received similar treatment in interrogation or court."

"A Jewish detainee and one from [the Israeli-Arab town of] Umm al-Fahm, would not be treated equally by the judicial system," Channel 10 news quoted the Shin Bet chief as telling a group of teenagers in the West Bank settlement of Eli.

"If we're talking about discrimination, you would find out that the discrimination leans much more in favor of Jews than Arabs."

Of course, Zionists will tell you that Israel should be immune from the charge or racism, and that the Palestinians of Umm al-Fahm should be praising Israel to the heavens, because it allows them to vote in the Knesset. That some might not is only evidence of typical Arab ingratitude.

The "Right" to Spit on Those Below You

2006-02-02T09:36:00.000-05:00

In a display of anti-Muslim sentiment couched in terms of "free speech," newspapers across Europe reprinted a series of cartoons that originally appeared in the Danish press, that depicted the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist (doubly offensive to Muslims, as Islam considers any depiction of the prophet Muhammad blasphemous).

[France Soir]'s front-page headline declared: "Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God"...

Now here's the question: who was trying to take away that right? The Danish government did not censor the original cartoons (which were published in September). So where exactly is this "threat" to free speech coming from? Where in Europe has it become impossible to ridicule Muslims? This concept that somehow it is the duty of other European newspapers to reprint this absolutely offensive crap out of a show of solidarity is ridiculous. What if a Danish newspaper had printed an anti-Semitic cartoon? Would it then be the responsibility of other newspapers around the world to reprint it? If they didn't, would free speech be in peril? It's just such a bogus pretense.

Really, I think, it is simply evidence of the commonplace anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe. It wasn't that there were governments trying to quash free speech. Rather, it seemed that the Muslims were getting a bit too "uppity." What, they think that we shouldn't print cartoons that mock their religious beliefs? Well, we'll show them! And I guess some did... and gave free speech a bad name in the process.

Don't be fooled by Richard Cohen

2006-02-01T10:52:00.000-05:00

It looks like it took Richard Cohen, the smarmy, pompous Washington Post columnist, to get me writing in this blog again. Today Richard Cohen has a brilliant analysis of the Hamas victory in the latest Palestinian parliamentary elections: Here come the Nazis!

History speaks on this matter. If you asked a random German in, say, 1932 whether by voting for the Nazis he was voting for the murder of Jews and a destructive European war of unimaginable scope and horror, he would have said, "Nein!" What he really wanted was an end to the brawling in the streets, a robust foreign policy and a big thumbs-up to traditional German culture -- no more of this smutty modern art and filthy plays: "Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome." Not any more. The cabaret is closed!

I saved for this paragraph any reference to Hitler himself so as to postpone the reflexive outburst of "Nothing can be compared to the Nazis!"

But surely Cohen knows that nothing can be compared to the Nazis, except for Arabs (especially Palestinians), and so he is treading on safe ground. A simple google search of "Hitler" and "Arafat" or "Palestinian" and "Nazi" will show that the comparison is commonplace among the virulent right-wing and pro-Israel crowd in the U.S. and in Israel as well (in fact, one of the first news stories you might find would be Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel, comparing the rise of Hamas to the rise of the Nazis). Demonizing Palestinians is nothing uncommon, so stop trying to knock down that straw man Richard!

Cohen then tries to sell us the same old song and dance about the destruction of Israel. I mean, let's be honest, for all these years of people being committed to the destruction of Israel, it sure hasn't happened... oh wait, probably because Israel is a massive military power occupying Palestine, and not the other way around.

Cohen decides that for all Fatah's faults, at least it wasn't Hamas -- you know, it was a "modern" movement, like Zionism. If Cohen had bothered to do a little research, he might have noticed that Fatah grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, the same Muslim Brotherhood whose role as the foundation of Hamas is "medieval." He also forgets that back in the day, it was a little too modern, a little too friendly with the Soviets, had a few too many members talking about "Popular Fronts" and things of that nature. And of course, instead of understanding it as a reaction to the Palestinians' dispossession of their land and their subjugation under Israeli military rule, it was simply part of the vanguard of the latest international threat (at that time it was communism, now it's Islamofascism, in case you forgot).

Meanwhile, Cohen writes:

The mistake of the Bush administration is to think, based on not much thinking to begin with, that people are people -- pretty much the same the world over. This is why the president extols democracy. It must be what everyone wants because it is what everyone here wants. To denigrate this kind of talk suggests racism -- You mean we are not all the same? -- or a musty neocolonialism. But the hard truth is that culture and religion matter, and we should not expect moderation just because that's how we would react. Toto knows the truth. The Middle East is not Kansas.

So first of all, to have ideas that do not essentialize and demonize Arabs and Muslims is suddenly to be associated with the Bush administration. Sorry, Richie, you're not going to fit this square peg into that round hole. And just because you take down the straw men of racism and neocolonialism doesn't mean that you aren't a racist, a bigot, and a neocolonialist. Because, by all means, you are all three. Christianity (note the reference to Kansas) and Judaism are simply strong faiths, part of our progressive, modern Judeo-Christian heritage. Islam, on the other hand, is "medeival." Sharon can change. Hamas cannot. Settler fanatics are "virtually" racist, but certainly don't approve of killing innocents (from an old op-ed of his), but Hamas is the Third Reich reincarnate! Richard Cohen is almost a charicature of the Arab-loathing Orientalist and yet he takes the ideas of FrontPageMag and other flagrantly racist websites, blogs, and magazines, and sells them to the broader public in the Washington Post, telling them not to be "fooled."

Happy New Year: A look back at Iraq in 2005; What, is Tulkarm in Israel now?

2005-12-30T11:43:00.000-05:00

Yes, I haven't written anything in a long time. I've been busy.

But now that the New Year is approaching, perhaps its time to take a look back at 2005. And that's what Eliot Weinberger did with regards to Iraq in the most recent issue of the London Review of Books. I definitely recommend reading it -- personally, all these things we hear about Iraq tend to blur together: you can't remember what was said two years ago or two weeks ago. So it's interesting to look back and see the kind of trajectory of the war in Iraq over the past year, as well as the trajectory of the Bush administration's talking points vis-a-vis Iraq.

Also, on a totally unrelated topic, I am a bit frustrated with the Guardian today. Usually their coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict (and of things in general) is quite good. However, they currently have a headline and link from the World News page that read "Suicide Attack in Israel" and "Three killed in Israel suicide attack," respectively. Now that's all well and good except for the small fact that the bombing actually took place inside the West Bank at a checkpoint near the Palestinian town of Tulkarm. So what, is Tulkarm part of Israel now? I know there are some people that think it is, but I should hope the Guardian wouldn't fall into this group. Why not: "Three killed in West Bank suicide attack";
"Suicide Attack in West Bank"? Anyhow, I fired off a letter to the editor and if anybody else would like to, here's the email address: letters@guardian.co.uk.

So cheers, and a Happy New Year to all!

Buying Good Press (And Not Just In Iraq)

2005-12-15T10:17:00.000-05:00

From a story in the Guardian about Bush's "accepting responsibility" (whatever that means) for the invasion of Iraq and the bad intelligence preceding it:

It was revealed yesterday, on the eve of elections in Iraq, that the Pentagon had set up a $300m (£170m) psychological warfare operation that involves placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets across the world, including those of its allies, without disclosing the US government as the source.

One of the military officials in charge of the programme told USA Today the campaign was designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. It will target newspapers, websites, radio and television.

Rev up the propaganda machine! It's interesting to note that "counter[ing] terrorist ideology" and "sway[ing] foreign audiences to support American policies" are seen as flip sides of the same coin here. Could it be that we're quickly approaching the point where "terrorist ideology" is defined as that which does not "support American policies"? (Though of course to some extent we're already there.)

Guilty Plea for Borf

2005-12-13T09:51:00.000-05:00

From a sign above the Roosevelt Bridge to the building above a Connecticut Avenue Cosi, Borf struck with greater frequency and more splash than anyone since the prolific Cool Disco Dan in the 1980s, authorities said.

"He was very good at what he did," said Dennis Butler, the D.C. public works official in charge of abating such nuisances, "but it was unwanted art."

Unwanted by whom?

Foreign Fighters in Iraq

2005-12-09T10:14:00.000-05:00

No, not al-Qa`ida. Aegis. Remember how we all thought it would be a great idea to have thousands of foreign armed mercenaries in a war zone with no kind of military oversight? Yeah, that's working out great, especially for Iraqi civilians who get shot at while driving, then videotaped and posted on the internet for some asshole's chuckles.

Arian not guilty, NYT bummed

2005-12-07T12:14:00.000-05:00

No wonder the Bush administration doesn't want terror supsects or "unlawful combatants" to have access to the due process of the American judicial system. You see, if that were the case you need what legal experts call "evidence." And despite an admitted 10-year campaign to indict Sami al-Arian on terrorism charges, and despite the PATRIOT Act that allowed them, finally, to push ahead with those charges, what the U.S. government didn't have much of was evidence. And so the Arian trial came to an end yesterday with the defendent being found not guilty.

You see, here's the type of "evidence" that the U.S. had:

In bringing the case against Mr. Arian in 2003, the department relied on the easing of legal restrictions under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act to present years of wiretaps on the defendants in a criminal context.

In the conversations cited by prosecutors, Mr. Arian was heard raising money for Palestinian causes, hailing recently completed attacks against Israel with associates overseas, calling suicide bombers "martyrs" and referring to Jews as "monkeys and swine" who would be "damned" by Allah.

But much of the conversation and activity used by prosecutors predated the 1995 designation by the United States of Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a terrorist group, a designation that prohibited Americans from supporting it.

You see, some people still believe that to be guilty, you must commit a crime. Not just support unpopular political positions (or unpopular moral positions). I don't think anybody could quote me calling suicide bombers "martyrs" or referring to Jews as "monkeys and swine" (certainly, I find this second example extremely disgusting). But that doesn't mean that I think that anybody who says this kind of thing should be shipped off to prison as a terrorist. I think that's a freedom of speech issue, and I think that the first amendment, which happens to protect free speech, is a pretty damn good thing about America, and that upholding it, even in the case of a person whose speech and views are politically unpopular, pushes America further toward the ideals that it claims to stand for. The New York Times, on the other hand, seems to disagree. Because their headline for the story of the Arian verdict is as follows: "Not Guilty Verdicts in Florida Terror Trial Are Setback for U.S." Not a setback for the Bush administration. Not a blow to the PATRIOT Act. No sir, a "setback for the U.S." Damngumbit, these jurors must just hate America, they want to set it back so far. Yknow, maybe jury trials in general for "accused terrorists" are just setting us back. Just ship 'em off to Gitmo, right?

And now for a poem...

2005-12-05T14:09:00.000-05:00

Read the story at the Guardian. This poem is really too funny.

The leader

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to accept every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real,
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn't conform to the usual mold,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do
Never back down when he sees what is true
Tells it all straight, and means it all too

Bracing for war, but praying for peace
Using his power so evil will cease:
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must

Shimon + Arik

2005-12-01T10:25:00.000-05:00

So I guess I read too much into those early reports that Shimon Peres was going to stick with Labor. He isn't. And, as Daniel Ben Simon writes in his op-ed savaging Peres in Ha'aretz, he's Sharon's problem now. Ben Simon writes this about the great Nobel laureate:

One has to admire the political maturity the Israeli voters have shown when it comes to Shimon Peres. With their sharp senses, they picked up on what colleagues, individuals with vested interests and benefactors tried to cover up for years. The aforesaid always marketed Peres as someone who is driven by peace and the good of thecountry, and as a man of the world who could bestow honor on the state. But the simple folk, those who have it tough, those with morals and a conscience who truly have the good of the country at the forefront of their concerns, have always seen him as an incorrigible opportunist, a politician lacking in qualities, a power-hungry individual who became addicted to the pleasures of the government.

Good riddance for Labor -- the only problem is that the same people who are convinced that Peres was the ultimate "warrior for peace" think the same thing of Sharon now. The two coming together has cemented their collective identity as the grizzled old warriors with hearts of gold. Ugh.

Homophobia in UAE

2005-11-30T12:55:00.000-05:00

From the Guardian:

More than two dozen men arrested at an allegedly gay party could face compulsory hormone treatment, officials in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, said yesterday.

Police, who raided the party earlier this month in Abu Dhabi, said some of the men had been wearing women's clothes and makeup.

The men are also expected to face trial on charges relating to adultery and prostitution which could result in jail sentences and flogging.

The US state department called on the authorities to "comply with the standards of international law" and stop any hormone treatment.

Yes, and you know what, perhaps the jail sentences and flogging are unwarranted as well.

Land for peace? Sharon says no deal.

2005-11-23T10:34:00.000-05:00

Relating this back to what I wrote yesterday, Sharon is not interested in a "land for peace" type of deal with the Palestinians. No, as one of his close advisors, Eyal Arad, admits:

Since 1967, almost the entire international community and at least half the public in Israel assumed the conflict would be solved based on the formula of territories for peace.... This formula is both false philosophically and naive politically.... The territorial problem was not the root cause of the conflict ... What the Palestinians sought was not really territories that they could control and run in the form of the Camp David proposal. What they really sought was independence.

That is, the Israelis don't need to deal with issues of borders or land or viability or Jerusalem or a resolution to the refugee situation — just announce that the Palestinians have a state and these problems are solved. In fact, this is exactly what Azmi Bishara said at the annual conference of the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, this past weekend. As Bishara explains (pdf):

When people like Sharon and Bush suggest a Palestinian state, they take it from the final status language, although in Oslo there is no mentioning of a Palestinian state — there is mention of solving these four issues [refugees, Jerusalem, borders, and settlements] whereby a Palestinian state would be a logical result, if Israel gives up Jerusalem — East Jerusalem — and withdraws to the border of June 4, 1967, and if the right of return is recognized and settlements are dismantled. Of course in that case there would be a free Palestinian state, but the logic of Bush and Sharon is to give the Palestinians a Palestinian state instead of all that.

Their logic is as follows: if you had a Palestinian partner for a Palestinian state without solving these four issues, whether the state is a final status solution or a transition period for 20 or 30 years, the four issues will be dissolved and will vanish. Take for example the refugees — if you had a Palestinian state without giving them the right of return, they would be citizens of the Palestinian state abroad. Instead of refugees they would be immigrants. They would be guests in Lebanon, etc., and would have Palestinian passports which would solve the problem of their settlements in foreign countries. They would no longer be a demographic threat in Lebanon because they have a nationality and a passport, yet at the same time they would not be given the right of return.... Their problem will remain, but they — as problems for others — would be solved just by these magic words, “statehood” and “passport.” Thus the refugees issue will become one of expatriates — they have their state, they can go back to their state if they like.

On Jerusalem and borders, the belief is that Palestinians won’t have to sign giving up Jerusalem and borders so that nobody will be called a traitor, and if they had a state — even if it is on 40 percent of the West Bank, as Mr. Sharon wants and as Mr. Bush agreed to [in Bush's letter of assurances to Sharon of April 2004] — this occupation and colonial issue will disappear magically by changing expressions and the word from one of occupation to a dispute between two states. You will have a Palestinian state and you have Israel. Between them, instead of the issue of occupation, you will have a “territorial dispute.”

Do you know how many territorial disputes there are in the world, even between Arab countries? So, the urgency of the Palestinian national issue as a colonial issue, and the sting, will be taken away. The Palestinian issue will be given its size, like Israel wants it to be given, as a trivial territorial dispute between two states. As you know, states have monopolizing power over violence, and the Palestinian state will be asked to monopolize violence, to monopolize arms, and to prevent struggle against Israel. It will be a struggle of two states, not a national liberation movement of resistance. It will be a territorial dispute between two states that has to be solved in a peaceful way, and an armed struggle has to be neutralized — for there is no place for it. Why? Because there is a Palestinian state now, and [armed struggle] is not contradicting Israel but it is contradicting the legitimacy of the Palestinian state. It will be thus a problem of the Palestinians, and no longer the problem of Israel. You see it is all very interesting.

On the issue of settlements, what will a Palestinian state do for the settlements? Settlements inside the areas of the Palestinian state, which are called the (illegitimate) “outposts,” along with some of the settlements deep inside of the 40 percent of the land for the Palestinian state, will probably be taken out. However, all the rest — which make up 60 percent of the West Bank and which are called “Area C” according to the language of Oslo — will be expanded. Actually, there will be an apartheid system called “two states,” with cantons, etc. The system in itself will involve privileged settlers — owners of the place, sovereigns who have the right to move freely, who consider the land historically theirs — and cantons in which the Palestinians live, called a “state.”

This is the logical result of the thinking of Sharon and of Eyal Arad. The Palestinians don't need land. They don't need an end to occupation. They don't need any of these things that Israel doesn't want to give up. However, giving them a "state" (if it comes with none of these things) does no harm to Israel — it merely changes the terminology of the conflict — and indeed puts it in a much more advantageous situation vis-a-vis the international community, the Arab world, and so on, by changing the conflict from one of occupation and resistance (with much symbolic importance) to just another dispute between states.

Come on now, Prof. Cole

2005-11-22T10:36:00.000-05:00

Juan Cole is happy that Sharon left the Likud. Yes, it's always nice to see unpleasant coalitions fall apart. But did Cole not notice all the Likudniks following Sharon over to his new party? It's not that Sharon's renounced Likudnik political thought -- he just got sick of hearing dissent from within his own party. But Cole seems to think that Sharon is simply a "security hawk" who isn't interested in the "expansionist, colonizing and fascistic" politics of the Likud. That "continuing to steal Palestinian land" and "never trading land for peace" are the kinds of crazy Likud ideas that Sharon could no longer tolerate. You wouldn't be surprised to hear Cole calling Sharon a "man of peace" in the next sentence.

Sharon is still about stealing Palestinian land. He just knows that its much easier to do with the approval of the international community. Please tell me where Sharon is offering land for peace, except only in the most perverted sense that Sharon thinks that Israel should get peace and the Palestinians might get to keep a few dunums of land -- with walls and checkpoints and settlements and settler roads, of course.

Is Cole so mesmerized by the Gaza withdrawal that he can't see what's happening in the West Bank, in Jerusalem? Did he buy into the hype?

Cole suggests that Israelis rally around Amir Peretz, who recently approved of the upcoming publishing of 350 tenders for new homes in the Ma'ale Adumim settlement in the West Bank. (You see, that's how land for peace works. Take the land, then offer back some part of it for peace.) And of course, if the Palestinians aren't so pleased about this, it only makes them rejectionists.

Indeed, Cole foresees a lack of "real progress on Arab-Israeli peace any time soon" because there is no strong Palestinian leader (and because Sharon isn't interested in talking to the current leaders) and laments the fact that "You can't declare peace unilaterally, the way you can war." Especially if the "peace" you are declaring is simply a rearranged form of domination and occupation. Perhaps one could unilaterally end the occupation, though? Does Cole really believe that the Palestinians should be forced to negotiate a partial withdrawal of the occupation and have it called "peace"?

Meanwhile, Yossi Sarid has one of the better comments on the Sharon situation that I have had the chance to read so far. His analysis is not limited to Israeli politics, and in my opinion critiques rather well the American Democratic party. It is very much a comment on the talk of the political "center" and of "moderates."

I've never understood what is meant by this "political center" that everyone fawns over. What's the secret of its charm that makes everyone rush to it, crowd around it, so that its suffocating crowdedness overflows. But it is possible the secret is not so deep, and is actually quite evident to the eye and easy to decipher.

The name of the secret is opportunism. Instead of adopting a clear position, this way or that, it is a lot easier and certain to adopt two positions at once, even if both don't suit one another, even if they are partially or totally contradictory. The political center is the playground of the seesaws - they sit there seesawing to their pleasure, this way and that, this way and its opposite. First they find out what the public mostly wants, and according to that ephemeral desire, they have fun. Constantly looking for "the middle ground," as if these knights of public opinion are saying to themselves "tell me where the Archimedes point is and I'll tell you where I am."

The people of the center are considered responsible. They are not, heaven forbid, extremists. Their approach is seemingly thoughtful and measured. They are people for all seasons, every situation, every person, even if they usually don't give a real answer to any situation.

Absolutely.

Egyptian Elections

2005-11-21T16:45:00.000-05:00

The Los Angeles Times reports widespread violence in Egypt as that country held a second round of parliamentary elections.

CNN yesterday was running a program called "Egypt: A Test Case for Democracy." Of course, the unstated is that it's a "test case" for "democracy" in the Middle East or the Arab world or the Muslim world. After all, if Egypt were none of these things (Arab, Muslim, located in the Middle East), this would not be the kind of language being used. Describing Egypt as a "test case" implies (1) that "democracy" is previously unknown in the generally undefined Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern world and that (2) the outcome there can generally be used to predict the path ahead for "democracy" elsewhere in the generally undefined Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern world. That is, if things go well in Egypt, perhaps other Arabs/Muslims/Middle Easterners should be permitted to vote; if not, "democracy" over there might be something we should be scared of.

And watch out, warns CNN, because: "the first flush of freedom [could] trigger an explosion leading to Washington's worst nightmare: Islamic extremists in power in Cairo, on the border with Israel". And I guess we better be really really worried because these clashes between opposition supporters and the government could well be the "explosion" that they're talking about.

Which just goes to show you that these Arabs/Muslims/Middle Easterns just keep failing their "tests." I mean, they can't seem to handle the "freedom" we gave them in Iraq. And even after we gave them lots of "democracy" and purple ink for their fingers, they still can't get along. They went to France, where democracy was practically invented (not to say that we don't do it better here in the good ol' U.S. of A.), and they couldn't seem to get along there. I mean, how many more tests do these people have to fail before we all get the point. They are just simply incompatible with democracy, culturally/religiously/regionally, or whatever. And so that means it's okay to kill them. In the name of democracy, of course.

Sharon's new party

2005-11-21T12:36:00.000-05:00

So I'm still trying to figure out how Sharon leaving the Likud is going to play out. Obviously, it hurts the Likud. I mean, when the incumbent prime minister quits your party, that's not a good thing. And Sharon has taken 14 Likud MKs with him, which means he gets some Likud money for his "National Responsibility" party -- another blow to Likud.

But Likud is not disappearing. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Benjamin Netanyahu will vie for the leadership. Bibi is a fanatic, but he is a former prime minister of Israel. That ain't nothing. And Shaul Mofaz, the Likud defense minister who Sharon would like to come join his new party, it seems will throw his hat into the ring for the leadership of Likud.

And although Yossi Beilin thinks this is a victory for the "peace camp" (whatever that means these days in Israel), that doesn't seem to be the case. It remains to be seen how Labor will do under the leadership fo Amir Peretz, but I would guess that the two most powerful parties will be the Likud (the incumbent party) and Sharon's new party (the party of the incumbent prime minister). This appears to be a shift to the right (in theory if not practice).

I think it's quite possible the big loser here will be Shinui. Shinui presented itself as the "moderate" or "concervative" option to those folks who thought that Labor was either ideologically bankrupt or too far to the left but didn't want to get into bed with the religious far-right.

Or it could be that Labor keeps slipping. Either way, any true peace camp remains totally marginalized. Somehow Beilin still gets his name in the paper, despite his belief that Sharon and the 14 Likud MKs are part of the "peace camp." What a joke.

Oh, and speaking of people you're tired of hearing from or about, the Washington Post hints that Peres may soon join Sharon's party. However, Ha'aretz reports that the word from Peres's camp is that he's going to stick with Labor (for now).

In other news, every public school student in Israel today will spend an hour learning about Jonathan Pollard.

Today, for the first time since he was incarcerated over 20 years ago for spying for Israel, a local government authority is seeking to express what it sees as the broad public support here for "Pollard's contribution to the State of Israel."

In accordance with a directive by Education Minister Limor Livnat, all schools will spend one hour tomorrow learning about Pollard's case. Teachers will recall the events leading to his imprisonment in the United States, and they have been instructed to discuss the obligations of Israel toward him with their students.

Ugh. It's good to know that your closest allies can celebrate somebody imprisoned for spying against you! That's what friends are for, right?

Torture in Iraq

2005-11-16T11:25:00.000-05:00

So I'm always about an issue and a half behind on my reading of the New Yorker. Which means I just read Jane Mayer's intensely depressing and upsetting article about the death of Manadil al-Jamadi at the hands of the CIA in Abu Ghraib. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest that you do. There is no doubt in my mind that the US is torturing detainees in Iraq and Romania and Thailand and wherever else. And there's no accountability -- and will be none under this administration, McCain amendment or no McCain amendment. Furthermore, as the Guardian reports yesterday:

More than 35,000 Iraqis have been detained by American troops since the invasion of the country but only a tiny fraction have been convicted of wrongdoing....

About 21,000 have been released without ever being charged or tried. Of the 1,300 who have been charged, only half have been found guilty.

Some 13,500 Iraqis are still being detained, more than double last year's total, according to official American figures.

This means, even for those advocates of torture (and I am not one -- if every single person detained were guilty of some charge I would be against torturing any of them), that we're probably abusing a good number of innocent Iraqis.

"The president already decided."

2005-11-16T11:18:00.000-05:00

I came across a transcript of a 2 November presentation at the Council on Foreign Relations featuring Uzi Dayan, former security adviser to Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, and there is an interesting little tidbit on the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

Look, first of all, the whole situation -- it's a good one for Israel. We are not [sic] the enemy of Iraq. Iraq took part, participated in all the wars against Israel from '48.

And we don't have a common border with Iraq. We don't have a joint border. We don't have conflict of interest. And the same time, Iraq was kind of a bitter enemy against Israel.

So making this change in Iraq is very good from the Israeli strategic point of view. And actually, all the main enemies of Israel are on a kind of -- on what is called the elephant trail of this war. I'm talking about Iraq, I'm talking about Iran, talking about Syria, about Libya. So I think that for Israel it's a good move....

And I was in charge those time [2001 and 2002] on the strategic relations between Jerusalem and Washington. And it was the first time that I could come to Washington and ask what I was always been -- would ask here: "What is your strategy?" So I said phase two is going to be Iraq. And I said, "What's going to be the trigger to this war?" And the officials that I talked to said, "What do you mean by trigger?"

I said, "This is a war that you -- you have to set up a strategic goal, and then, not less important, derived achievable missions in order that the generals' and the politicians' statement will have a common language. Well, what are we going to achieve? It's not enough to set a strategic goal. You have to derive from it achievable missions. And then you need a trigger."

And the answer that I got here was, "We don't need a trigger. The president already decided," which is a very interesting response.

Not that this is shocking news at this point, of course, but it's also interesting to note the level of involvement of the Israelis in the lead-up to the war.

Solidarity with Murad and Munir

2005-11-08T11:01:00.000-05:00

Dror Mishani has an excellent op-ed in Ha'aretz today discussing the way the riots in France have been spun by those trying to advance an anti-Muslim and anti-Arab agenda. (He writes specifically about this phenomenon in Israel, but it is certainly not limited to Israel.) In its closing he writes:

This is a fateful time of trial for this left and for the values it represents. As opposed to the riots of May 1968, this time the struggle is not being led by students of philosophy and literature, and it is not taking place at the attractive square of the Sorbonne. This time those taking to the streets are young men named Murad and Munir, and the struggle is taking place in the gloomy suburbs around Paris, Marseilles and Rouen. And if the old French left will know how to reject the great hatred and fear of Muslims and Islam (the United States, of course, rushed to warn its citizens not to go to the "battle areas"), will recognize the fact that this struggle is not about Muslim occupation of Europe, but about economic and social equal rights, and will once again demonstrate its famous solidarity, these riots could be the beginning of new hope for all the leftist movements - hope for a truly multicultural Europe. If not, not only France, but the entire world, will remain only with the realm of values represented by U.S. President George W. Bush, and with our big talkers, who know that "that's what happens when there are too many Muslims."

Newsweek coverage of French Riots

2005-11-07T13:57:00.000-05:00

Angry Arab provides a link to a Newsweek story on the Paris riots asking "will the riots swell the ranks of jihadists in Europe?" Christopher Dickey, the author of the piece and Newsweek's Paris bureau chief, writes:

The first and most obvious casualty was the reputation of French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

Hmmm... it would seem to me that the first and most obvious casualties were the two boys who were electrocuted. And perhaps then the poor suburb dwellers who have lost businesses or property in the riots. You know, like, actual casualties. Not some asshole's reputation.

French Riots and Islam

2005-11-07T11:21:00.000-05:00

It's interesting to see the attempts to tie the riots in France to Islam, as the Washington Times did with it's Friday lead headline "Muslim Youths Battle Paris Police." Similarly, I was listening to NPR yesterday and they were bringing on Fuad Ajami to talk about the French unrest. Ask yourselves why one would want the opinion of Fuad Ajami (whose scholarship is on Lebanon, especially the Shia of Lebanon, and who on his website lists the following as areas of expertise: Middle East; Persian Gulf; Iran; Iraq; OPEC; international relations; Islamic religion, culture and law) on what is going on IN FRANCE!!! Would it not be useful to have somebody who knows very well the situation in France, who is knowledgable on the social and economic conditions of the Parisian suburbs, of the tensions between the residents of the housing projects and the police, between these residents and the government, the issues specific to immigrant communities in France. And yet, because many of the immigrants living in the housing projects happen to be Muslim, NPR can ask anybody who bills themselves as a "Middle East" expert, and he or she can make some generalizations, and it is reinforced that there is some fundamental character of Islamic culture that leads to violence, and so on.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports:

The country's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organisation, the Union for Islamic Organisations of France, issued a fatwa forbidding those "who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others".

And yet the rioting continues? But I thought all we had to do was ask Muslim organizations to condemn something and that would be that (or so I gathered from reading Tom Friedman's drivel). Perhaps this isn't about Islam after all. Perhaps it has something to do with the inequitable treatment of immigrants in France (and Europe more generally).

"These are young people who are generally resigned, they face discrimination everywhere, for housing and work, and their malaise gets expressed in violence," said Ahmed Touabi, principal of an elementary school in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil. The troublemakers "feel rejected by France, and they want to spit on France."

Hmmm... I wonder how being called "scum" by a major political figure would lead one to feel rejected? One scary thing is that this isn't limited to France, and indeed there were incidents in Brussels and Berlin over the weekend.

Heartbreaking

2005-11-07T11:04:00.000-05:00

While 12-year-old Ahmed al-Khatib's parents were forced to make the decision to donate his organs so that others might live, the IDF was busy circulating photos to show how realistic his toy rifle was.

Viva Saddam!

2005-11-04T09:33:00.000-05:00

Apparently the mayor of Las Vegas has some fresh new ideas on crime fighting, especially how to deal with the "heinous crime" of graffiti writing.

"You know, we have a beautiful highway landscaping redevelopment in our downtown. We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it.

"I'm saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb," the mayor added. "That may be the right thing to do."

Sounds familiar to me.

Parents: Freedom Haters?

2005-11-01T11:05:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting article in the Washington Post about parents organizing to limit the presence of military recruiters in high schools. Let's hope this is just the tip of an antiwar iceberg looming in this country. Please please please.

welcome to liberated gaza

2005-11-01T10:58:00.000-05:00

There may be a few thousand less settlers, but please don't tell me that Israel has ended the occupation of Gaza. From the Guardian:

The Israeli defence ministry has barred foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip in an apparent attempt to limit reporting on the killing of Palestinian civilians, the firing of artillery shells and the use of "sonic bombs" to terrify the local population.

Is that the sound of freedom I hear? Oh no, just another sonic boom.

Has Madonna completely lost it?

2005-11-01T10:38:00.000-05:00

So here's the story. The Kabbalah Center, a religious center in Tel Aviv that hosted Madonna when she visited Israel, has been charged with criminal fraud for asking for "donations" in order to "cure" a woman who had cancer. The full story is here, but here's the gyst of it:

Leah Zonis was told by staff at the Kabbalah Centre that if she paid them large sums of money she would be cured of cancer, her husband Boris told the Guardian yesterday....

[Then director of the center Moshe] Rosenberg suggested that a donation would lead to a full recovery. "I immediately offered 5,000 shekels [£600] but he said that the donation had to be painful and suggested $30,000 [£17,000]," said Mr Zonis. "I though this was stupid and these people were crooks but my wife was so desperate and so ill that I agreed."

Members of the centre would pray for her, Mrs Zonis was told, and she could increase her chances of recovery by drinking branded water at £4 a bottle.

By 2002 Mrs Zonis's condition further deteriorated and she approached Mr Youdkevitch, who had become director since Mr Rosenberg's departure to the US. According to Mr Zonis, Mr Youdkevitch was aware of the previous donation and told them that it had not been enough to cure Mrs Zonis. He suggested that they donate a further $25,000 (£14,000).

Mrs Zonis borrowed the money but her health continued to decline and she died at the age of 50. By the time of her death she realised she had been conned and asked her husband to go to the police, according to Mr Zonis.

Really its a tragic story and the behavior of the Kabbalah Center and its officials is quite deplorable. Of course, the story comes back to Madonna, who was asked to defend her belief in Kabbalah and her association with the Kaballah Center. Madonna's response?

"It would be less controversial if I joined the Nazi Party," she said. "It's not hurting anybody."

Excuse me? The Nazi Party? It seems that Madonna is out of her bloody mind.

The Islamofascist Threat Exposed

2005-10-27T18:25:00.000-04:00

Thomas Jones's Short Cuts contribution in one of the latest issues of the London Review of Books takes on Bat Ye'or, darling of the fervently pro-Israel, anti-Europe neocon crowd (and others who throw about the term "Islamofascist"), and her recent book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.

In a move that would surely make Abraham Foxman shit his pants, Jones compares the sort of conspiracy theory hogwash promoted by Ye'or (and others) about a "Euro-Arab Axis" to none other than the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Jones writes:

Martin Gilbert praises Eurabia as ‘a warning to Europe not to allow the anti-American and anti-Israel pressures of Islam to subvert Europe’s true values: vibrant democracy, humanitarian free thinking and social fair dealing’. Tell that to the Muslim detainees in Belmarsh Prison. Daniel Pipes says that ‘Bat Ye’or has traced a nearly secret history of Europe over the past thirty years, convincingly showing how the Euro-Arab Dialogue has blossomed from a minor discussion group into the engine for the continent’s Islamisation.’ You may never have heard of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, but that only goes to show how powerful it is. And according to Niall Ferguson, ‘future historians will one day regard her coinage of the term “Eurabia” as prophetic. Those who wish to live in a free society must be eternally vigilant. Bat Ye’or’s vigilance is unrivalled.’

Western Europe is in danger from Islamic extremism, as was demonstrated in London on 7 July this year, and in Madrid on 11 March 2004. But if there’s a threat to our freedom and democracy, it is posed not by the suicide bombers but by government reaction to the bombings: the summary public execution of Jean Charles de Menezes; the proposal to extend the legal period of detention without trial for terrorist suspects from 14 days to three months. The ‘Islamisation’ of Europe seems a very distant prospect to me. Ye’or would probably put my denial down to ‘dhimmitude’. In a review of Ye’or’s previous book, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilisations Collide (2002), Melanie Phillips said that ‘there are . . . alarming signs of attempts in the West to shut down such discussions on spurious grounds of prejudice. This is, of course, itself a prime example of the condition of “dhimmitude” which Bat Ye’or so graphically describes.’

The second rule to bear in mind when putting together a conspiracy theory is that in order to hold water it needs to be circular, or rather spiral, so that any criticism can be sucked in and turned into evidence in its favour.

"Where is the light?"

2005-10-21T13:08:00.000-04:00

Graham Usher writes in this week's al-Ahram from Muzaffarabad in Kashmir to report in the wake of the recent earthquake there. There's no breaking news here, only a devastating portrait of a horrible situation. Here's a snippet.

We weave through the city on the back of Mohamed's 250 cc motorbike ("It's not mine. I found it on the street. That's how you survive here. You find things on the street"). He points out places that were landmarks. "That was the main military hospital," he says, nodding towards a row of barracks that have tipped, like a snow drift, into the river. "At least 200 officers perished there". He nods again towards a flattened wreck of bricks, windows and mortar, with a floor overhanging a roof. "That was the university. There are 300 bodies still trapped there".

After a while I lose the body count as well as the names of the places. But I doubt Mohamed is exaggerating. The dark crater that was once the heart of Muzaffarabad is consumed with the acrid smell of death. Everyone wears -- or tries to wear -- surgical facemasks. Some cram tissues into their mouths, in a futile attempt to ward off disease. It adds a sense of muffled silence --as though one of the punishments of hell is that you cannot speak. Emotion is left to eyes, darting frantically back and forth above gagged mouths.

Iran and IAEA

2005-10-18T13:19:00.000-04:00

Dan Plesch has an article in the Guardian about Iran's status in the crosshairs of the US, the UK, and Israel. I think that Plesch overstates the possibility of an imminent attack on Iran (for example, Plesch argues that attacking Iran would draw attention away from Iraq -- I think that unless people are already distracted from Iraq, say if they are convinced that the constitutional process has calmed matters in Iraq and Americans are no longer on the front lines there, attacking Iran would simply inflame anti-Iraq-war sentiments). Also, I don't care what Bob Woodward says, I can't imagine Dick Cheney being president. Especially now, I think he is better suited (from a Republican perspective) for behind-the-scenes work. In any case, though, the US and British manipulation of the IAEA is interesting.

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have found that Iran has not, so far, broken its commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, although it has concealed activities before.

It appears that the UK and US have decided to raise the stakes in the confrontation with Iran. The two countries persuaded the IAEA board - including India - to overrule its inspectors, declare Iran in breach of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and say that Iran's activities could be examined by the UN security council. Critics of this political process point to the fact that India itself has developed nuclear weapons and refused to join the NPT, but has still voted that Iran is acting illegitimately.

Whether an attack is on the horizon or not, you certainly couldn't argue that the US is taking steps to open up dialogue and understanding with Iran. Or to strengthen international institutions and law and order.

What an opposition!

2005-10-14T09:58:00.000-04:00

From Ha'aretz:

[A]ccording to a Dialog poll for Haaretz published on Friday.... a large majority of Labor Party members want Sharon to head their party list in the next elections. Sharon enjoys in the poll the suppport of 39 percent who would like him to be the next prime minister, while Labor chairman Shimon Peres inches ahead with a meagre 43 percent of poll participants who think he should be the next prime minister.

The representative sample of 575 out of the approximately 98,000 members also showed that 76.5 percent support Peres' position that the Labor Party should remain in the coalition until the 2006 elections. Only 15.8 percent support the view of the chairman's rival for heading the party, Histadrut labor federation chairman MK Amir Peretz, that the party should leave the government immediately.

And Peres even thinks Sharon could very well have a Nobel prize in his future.

Meanwhile, what are the successes that have propelled Sharon to the leadership of the Likud and Labor? Let's take a look at the main findings of the Peace Index survey that was conducted on September 27-28, 2005, shall we.

At year's end, the public's balance sheet shows Israel faring worse compared to the previous year in nine of 10 main areas of society and the state. The change is especially negative regarding violence and crime (82.5 percent think the situation has deteriorated, 13 percent that it did not change, and 1 percent that it improved) and regarding the gap between rich and poor (82 percent - worsened, 12 percent - did not change, 3 percent - improved).

In third place in the negative ranking is the functioning of the government and the political system, with an assessment of 59 percent, 25 percent and 7 percent, respectively, and after that the economic situation (52 percent, 21 percent and 24 percent). The assessment of change was also negative, in this order, for Jewish-Arab and religious-secular relations, the internal strength of Israeli society, personal economic situation, and the chances of ending the conflict with the Palestinians. Only two issues showed an improvement: Israel's international status (12 percent - changed for the worse, 21 percent - stayed the same, 59 percent - changed for the better) and its security situation (21 percent -changed for the worse, 36 percent - stayed the same and 38 percent - changed for the better). It appears, then, that in the public's eyes Israel's situation deteriorated, to one extent or another, in all the domestic areas that we checked, whereas on foreign and security issues it was only regarding the chances of peace with the Palestinians that things got worse this year, though to a relatively moderate extent (33.5 percent - the situation worsened, 26 percent - no change and 23.5 percent - the situation improved).

And that's the reason there's no need for an opposition party? Did I miss something?

Interview with a Camp X-Ray Detainee

2005-10-13T16:27:00.000-04:00

Al-Ahram carries a story this week based on an interview with Sami El-Leithi, an Egyptian national who had been taken prisoner by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and taken to Guantanamo Bay. El-Leithi had gone to a university in Pakistan and had taught in Pakistan for ten years.

In 1996, the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan refused to renew his passport. Unable, thus, to renew his Pakistani visa, El-Leithi says he then "traveled to Afghanistan, and succeeded in obtaining a new passport from our embassy in Kabul." There, El-Leithi worked as a professor of English and Arabic languages at Kabul University's Faculty of Arts.

Speaking in classical Arabic, El-Leithi looked frail as he recalled that, "all the problems started" after the 11 September 2001 attacks. During the subsequent US raid on Afghanistan, El-Leithi suffered a head injury and was transferred to a Kabul hospital with several other injured Afghanis. Hearing that the US was also targeting hospitals, El-Leithi and the others sought refuge in the city of Khost, 150 kilometres south of Kabul. "Some Afghanis told us that members of the Taliban had fled to Khost, and that the US forces would soon be searching for them there, so we fled to the mountains."

Although he was still severely injured, El-Leithi continued to flee the air raids, until he arrived at the Pakistani border via car. "At the border, the Pakistani forces arrested me and the Afghani who had transported me. We were cuffed and deported to a jail where there were many others. We were asked to change into blue overalls, and our heads were covered with blue plastic bags so that we were unable to see what was going on around us," he said. El-Leithi said he remained there for one week, during which US officers interrogated him.

He was then transferred to the Afghani city of Kandahar, where all the detainees were moved onto a plane. Once on board, the detainees' hands and legs were cuffed to the backs of their chairs, their ears covered with rubber blocks, and their eyes shielded by a cloth wrapped around their heads. "We arrived at an air base, and were ordered by an American officer to change into orange overalls. Our heads were covered with orange plastic bags with air holes," El-Leithi recalled. They were then jammed into a truck and transported to a jail. "Only when we heard the soldiers repeating the word Guantanamo, did we know where we were being taken," he said.

El-Leithi described the infamous detention centre where he spent nearly four years of his life; every detail is still very clear in his mind. Divided into four categories from A to D -- A being the section "where detainees were tortured the least, and D the most" -- El-Leithi was given an "A-grade" cell, with three meals a day. The cell included a bed, blanket, small sink and toilet; its metal doors would only open when an officer brought El-Leithi his food, or when the prisoner was taken out for interrogation. Prisoners were also forced, on a daily basis, to walk in a courtyard for 30 minutes with their legs, hands and waists shackled with metal cuffs.

During the interrogations, El-Leithi said, "different shades of bright light were pointed at me as I was asked questions, and if I tried to close my eyes, I was beaten. They asked me the same questions over and over: who I was; details about my relatives; why I was in Afghanistan; and what my opinion was regarding US policy in Afghanistan."

During one of these sessions, El-Leithi said interrogators stomped on his back, dropped him on the floor and repeatedly forced his neck forward, which resulted in two broken vertebrae and his confinement to a wheel chair. He said he was then denied the necessary treatment and operation that would have saved him from permanent paralysis.

For nearly four years, this was El-Leithi's life, day in, day out. In May 2005, his case finally came before a US military tribunal, which ruled that he was not an enemy combatant. Although found innocent, El-Leithi remained in Guantanamo for the next six months, where officers continued to subject him to "physical and emotional pressure". On 29 September, he was finally moved to a hospital in the US, and from there to the plane that brought him to Cairo, where he was met by Egyptian security officials, who sent him to Cairo's Qasr Al-Aini Hospital.

El-Leithi said that when he was taken to the US hospital after his release, he was examined and given false medical records that claimed his spinal injury was sustained "before his arrival at Guantanamo, as a result of an automobile accident, and that the damage progressed over time".

Ironically, US officials had expressed their concern -- prior to his return to Egypt -- that El-Leithi would not be treated humanely at home; that he might be tortured or subjected to persecution by Egyptian interrogators. Human rights groups have documented many cases of maltreatment of political detainees in Egyptian prisons.

El-Leithi denied that he had any qualms about returning to Egypt, telling Al-Ahram Weekly that he "desperately wanted to see his mother and brother". He was also hopeful that the government would "fund my spinal chord surgery, so I am able to function normally again".

In El-Leithy's opinion, even though the "US claims to be the land of democracy, everything I experienced assures me they know nothing of humanity and decency. I worry about the Arabs and Egyptians that I know are still in Guantanamo."

Washington Monument Evacuated

2005-10-07T15:56:00.000-04:00

So not only did they pull that stunt with the NY subway, now this from NBC4 in DC:

U.S. Park Police have evacuated the Washington Monument.

Police received a telephone threat to the Washington Monument. The National Mall area near the monument has been evacuated. A source said that the threat has limited credibility.

Constitution and Independence avenues have been closed, as well as 15th and 17th streets.

I mean come on, is this really possible that we're having all these threats the day after Bush made his speech about al-Qa`ida being out to get us and so we need to kill them in Iraq? I mean, sure it's possible, but all I know is that it's raining really hard right now here in DC and I'd be mighty pissed if I had to be standing in the rain around the Mall somewhere because of this. But that's just me.

(Thanks, Amanda, for the alert and the link)

Hamas

2005-10-07T11:47:00.000-04:00

Khalid Amayreh and Graham Usher both have articles in al-Ahram about the ascendancy of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the implications of this in the upcoming elections (including the U.S. and Israeli rhetoric and actions to shape the outcome of these elections). Usher notes that:

Israel renewed its policy of assassinating militants, bombing civilian infrastructure and arresting Palestinians in mass sweeps, all methods tried and tested throughout the Intifada. For the first time since the 1967 War, it used artillery to clear entire regions in Gaza and flew F-16s to trigger sonic booms at a rate of one every two hours.

The aim of the onslaught was two-fold. In Gaza it was intended to sow fear among the civilian population, creating a popular groundswell for the PA to "act" against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the West Bank the purpose was to wreck Hamas as an electoral force. Of the 415 Palestinians Israel arrested last week, 250 were Hamas members, most of them civilian cadre, including 14 local government candidates and 15 campaign managers. The sweep also netted political leaders Hassan Youssef, Mohamed Ghazzal and Ahmed Haj Ali, all three driving forces behind the turn to elections in the movement.

The rain brought its harvest. By 24 September, Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, announced an end to all military operations from the Strip. And on 27 September instructions were issued to Gaza's Palestinian police to "arrest any person" not in uniform [sic]. Both decisions were taken unilaterally, without consultation and in response to the Israeli attacks. And both lay the seeds for confrontation.

Confrontation erupted, with the flashpoint being a skirmish between Muhammad al-Rantisi (son of `Abd al-`Aziz al-Rantisi, the assassinated Hamas leader) and PA police forces. Amayreh writes:

The clashes continued until midnight, when Egyptian mediators reportedly pressed the two sides to stand down.

Hamas and the PA had been exchanging accusations and recriminations since the Jabalya refugee camp incident of 23 September. "There is a faction of the PA trying to eradicate Hamas, and that plans widespread conflict in the West Bank," said Hamas representative in Lebanon Muhammed Nazzal in interview with the Associated Press on Sunday. "The hands of this faction -- backed by Washington and London -- are stained with Palestinian blood, and Hamas will confront it, even at the price of civil war," Nazzal said. Talk of civil war was received with disbelief in the occupied territories. Even Hamas leaders sought to distance themselves from it.

This notwithstanding, the relationship between the PA and Fatah on the one side and Hamas on the other is rapidly deteriorating.

Furthermore, if the PA decides to postpone the elections, or if it decides to acquiesce in the U.S. and Israeli desire to disarm Hamas before allowing it to participate, the divide between the two groups will widen. And Fatah/the PA will continue to lose ground, I think, to Hamas, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. In the meantime, Sharon and the Israeli right (as well as the anti-Palestinian right in the U.S.) can point to the Gaza Strip and say "You see, we give them a chance and this is what they do with it -- do you really think we can afford to do the same thing with the West Bank? With East Jerusalem? No no no, my friends, the Palestinians once again blew their chance."

Cervical Cancer Vaccine

2005-10-07T09:45:00.000-04:00

There is some pretty uplifting news in the world of medical research, as a vaccine against HPV (the primary cause of cervical cancer in women) has shown to be 100 percent effective in the short term. But that's not all.

A second analysis, including hundreds more women participating in the ongoing study, showed that after just one dose the vaccine was 97 percent effective. That analysis found only one of the 5,736 women who got the vaccine developed cervical cancer or precancerous lesions, compared with 36 among the 5,766 who got dummy shots.

Barr said the 97 percent rate was more "real world," given that patients sometimes miss or delay follow-up shots or tests.

To have 97 percent be your more "real world" figure is pretty amazing. So what's the most effective way of getting this out there and making sure that cervical cancer is something that women will no longer have to fear?

"You have to get students in grammar school, middle school, high school (vaccinated) before they become sexually active," [Dr. Gloria Bachmann, director of The Women's Health Institute at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick] said.

So let's get on that, right? And the sooner the better! Well, not so fast. The Christian right isn't so pleased about this whole thing. As Katha Pollitt wrote in May in the Nation:

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex." Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they've probably never heard of.

I remember when people rolled their eyeballs if you suggested that opposition to abortion was less about "life" than about sex, especially sex for women. You have to admit that thesis is looking pretty solid these days. No matter what the consequences of sex--pregnancy, disease, death--abstinence for singles is the only answer. Just as it's better for gays to get AIDS than use condoms, it's better for a woman to get cancer than have sex before marriage. It's honor killing on the installment plan.

Are we really going to play this game again?

2005-10-07T09:33:00.000-04:00

So there are no color codes being bandied about. But, amazingly enough, the day the president gives a speech to rally support for the war in Iraq and in which he mentions that the U.S. has foiled no less than ten al-Qa`ida plots against it, is the same day that a threat on the NYC subway system gets big play in the headlines. Now, I'm not saying that the threat against the NY subway isn't 100% valid. No, a Bush administration official admitted as much.

But a Bush administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details of the investigation are classified, said "recent operations abroad" determined that the threats were dubious.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said, "The intelligence community has concluded that this information is of doubtful credibility."

Maybe I'm too much of a conspiracy theorist over here, but it just seems too perfect that a threat of "doubtful credibility" is on the front page right next to Bush's speech on Iraq and al-Qa`ida.

2005-09-26T14:46:00.000-04:00

Cork trees and cows, Sardinia (photo by my dad)

2005-09-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

Sheep in the road (photo by my dad)

At what price Fatah

2005-09-26T13:10:00.000-04:00

Danny Rubinstein has an article in Ha'aretz arguing that the release of Marwan Barghouti from Israeli prison is the only way to strengthen Fatah against Hamas in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Rubinstein writes:

There is no doubt that Barghouti is the most popular Fatah figure on the Palestinian street. Ever since he was jailed and sentenced to five life terms plus 40 years, he has received the most support in public opinion polls following Abbas. Even Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar receives less support: In a June 2004 survey, support for Barghouti was twice as high as Zahar's. In a May 2005 survey, support for Barghouti declined, because he had withdrawn his candidacy against Abbas in the elections, but even then, his supporters outnumbered Zahar's.

On the other hand, with Barghouti free, what does Israel really stand to gain by having a Barghouti-led Fatah more powerful than Hamas? Barghouti has consistently challenged the idea that the Palestinians should give up violence as a precondition for negotiations with Israel. He demands a full end to the occupation of 1967. Personally, I think I would see eye-to-eye with Marwan Barghouti much more than I would the leadership of Hamas, especially on the role of religion in society and government, the role of women, etc. But these are not issues that seem to be of much importance to the current Israeli administration or most likely the one that will follow, which are more interested in a Palestinian who will crack down on Hamas and provide security for Israel, as Israel continues to take steps toward retaining large West Bank settlements, etc. I don't think Barghouti will help them in this matter. It's that Sharon or Likud or even Labor care all that much for Fatah, but rather that they found in Fatah (or rather, in Arafat, who dragged Fatah with him) a party willing to attempt to take on Israel's security in the occupied territories in return for a seat at the negotiating table. If Barghouti won't make the same deal (and the fact that he seems unlikely to do so is key to his popularity), then his party affiliation is pretty irrelevant.

In any case, given that Sharon and Netanyahu are duking it out in Likud right now, neither one of them is going to release Barghouti. Instead, Sharon is going to bombard Gaza to prove that he didn't give in to terrorism, thus driving even more Gazans away from Fatah, which can seem to provide it with neither good governance nor security. (I don't mean to imply that Rubinstein doesn't acknowledges this, as he does: "Given Israel's current circumstances, his release is nearly impossible due to power struggles at the top of the Israeli pyramid that will prevent ministers from supporting such a proposal.")

Elections in Afghanistan

2005-09-23T09:51:00.000-04:00

There is an article by Declan Walsh in the Guardian on the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan last weekend. Turnout numbers released yesterday indicated that turnout was low (36% in Kabul, the capital, and about 53% nationally) and down from around 70% turnout for the Afghani presidential elections. Walsh indicates that whatever the explanation for the low turnout (and there are several, ranging from threat of violence to the simple fact that one might expect better turnout for a presidential election than a parliamentary one), it could spell bad news for the future of Afghanistan.

But there are also greatly worrying reasons why Mr Karzai should be concerned about the fall in turnout. After just one year of democratic rule, there are signs of rapidly swelling disenchantment.

In a country awash with weapons, corrupted by drug money and threatened by a resurgent Taliban, this is a dangerous development.

The inclusion of dozens of warlords and militia commanders on the ticket disgusted voters who thought Mr Karzai and his US allies had come to usher the gunmen out of the door, not hand them the keys to the house.

The crawling pace of reconstruction is also brewing trouble. After making a string of heroic promises in late 2001, the west is letting Afghanistan down. Only around $10bn (£5.5bn) has so far been spent on reconstruction, according to most estimates.

Furthermore, even successful elections do not necessarily result in smooth governance (as one can see in Iraq also).

The provisional election results are due on October 3. Analysts are predicting mayhem in the early months of parliament, particularly because of the lack of political parties. Nobody is quite sure how Mr Karzai will build alliances, pass new laws or run the country.

We'll see. Karzai is also trying to maneuver the path or the role of the U.S. occupying forces in the country, surely something that is going to effect his relations with differing parliamentary factions. Meanwhile, there is an article in the Washington Post about Iran having the world's highest rate of addiction to opium. And, gee, whaddayaknow, it's right next to Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium. So there's no doubt that the U.S. is not the only country with interest in what goes on in Afghanistan (of course).

India and Iran

2005-09-22T10:16:00.000-04:00

There is an interesting article in the Guardian today by Randeep Ramesh about the close relationship between India and Iran. I am no expert on this -- far from it -- so I suggest you go read the article.

Rudy G.: Sharon is like Babe Ruth

2005-09-22T09:58:00.000-04:00

I'm reading in Ha'aretz today that Rudy Giuliani thinks that Ariel Sharon is like Babe Ruth. What? Other than the fact that they are both men of, shall we say, large appetites, I am failing to see the connection here.

UPDATE [26 Sept.]: Many thanks to Mike Odetalla for allowing me to reprint his essay, Desecrating the Memory of Babe Ruth. Here it is:

I was appalled to read that, while on a speaking tour in Israel, Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said Sharon reminds him of baseball legend Babe Ruth. How Mr. Giuliani arrived at the conclusion of comparing Ariel “the butcher of Beirut” Sharon and Babe “the sultan of swat” Ruth, is beyond even my wildest imagination.

Although I was born In Palestine and came to America at the age of 8 in 1969, soon afterwards, I discovered the game of baseball and grew to love the game with all of its subtle nuances, idiosyncrasies, and especially its rich and wonderful history.

As a youngster, I learned how to play baseball in the youth league, which was named after baseball legend Babe Ruth (the Babe Ruth League). It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the game, and as I became better at it, the more I wanted to learn of its history, reading as many books as I could find in our small school library about the sport and the many colorful and gifted players that played it.

In 5th Grade, we were assigned to do a report on our favorite athlete or personality. Although I was a huge Detroit Tigers fan, I skipped past legends Ty Cobb, Al Kaline, Mickey Cochrane, and decided to do my report on George Herman Ruth Jr., “the Babe”, The Great "Bambino".

I checked a couple of books about Babe Ruth and the great New York Yankee teams of the 20’s and 30’s, a period where the Yankees dominated all of baseball, especially the 1929 team, which is still widely regarded as the greatest baseball team of all time.

For a period of more than 20 years, Babe Ruth was the most famous athlete in America as he tore through the record books with his superhuman exploits on the field. Children were naturally attracted to the larger than life Babe, and he to them, spending much of his time in their company.

By the time he retired in 1935, Babe Ruth, through his feats on the baseball diamond and lifestyle, had achieved legendary status not just in New York, but the entire country. In 1936, he was among the first 5 baseball players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Babe Ruth's popularity and fame were so widespread that even America's enemies knew of him. Almost a decade after he had bashed his last home run, his presence still was felt.

Babe Ruth's record of 60 homers in 1927 stood up for 34 years.

During World War II, when Japanese soldiers charged American troops, they would sometimes scream, "To hell with Babe Ruth." Not "to hell with FDR" or "to hell with Douglas MacArthur," but "to hell with Babe Ruth."

What bigger compliment could an American receive?

Ruth was a man of mythic proportions. He became even more than the ultimate American sports celebrity. He was "a unique figure in the social history of the United States," wrote Robert Creamer in Babe: The Legend Comes to Life. "For more than any other man, Babe Ruth transcended sports, moved far beyond the artificial limits of baselines and outfield fences and sports pages."

After doing my report and presenting it to the whole class in a Yankee Jersey with the number 3 stitched on the back, signifying the number that he wore on his Yankee uniform, I was instantly transformed into a fan of the Great Bambino, a fascination that is still with me today.

How Rudy Giuliani could ever compare the war criminal Ariel Sharon, a man whose hands are soaked with the blood of thousands of innocent men, women, and children to the loveable, smiling Yankee giant, is sacrilegious.

The only thing that Babe Ruth ever destroyed was baseballs and records, unlike Ariel Sharon, who also known as the "bulldozer" for his penchant for wreaking havoc and destruction on the Palestinian people, their property, and rights.

There are many photographs of Babe Ruth, smiling, playing, and signing autographs while surrounded by large groups of smiling little children. On the other hand, there are many gruesome photographs of dead and horrified little Palestinian children in the wake of a "visit" by Ariel Sharon.

Babe Ruth used to stop in the middle of residential neighborhoods and throw the ball to little children as he played catch with them, while Ariel Sharon and his infamous and brutal Unit 101 were documented throwing hand grenades throw the windows of Palestinian homes where little children were cowering in fear with their parents.

Looking at the 1930's era watch, with the smiling mug of the Great Babe Ruth on the dial that is prominently displayed on my office desk, I know of no two human beings could more different from each other than the Babe and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

I guess in the world of "political prostitution", whereby Rudy Giuliani resides and is hoping to capitalize by cuddling up to Ariel Sharon and his Zionist constituency in the hope that they will help him in his eventual bid to becoming the next president of the United States, desecrating the name and memory of an American icon by comparing him to a war criminal is "acceptable", but not to this longtime fan of the Babe and the concept of justice.

Chaos in Basra

2005-09-20T10:48:00.000-04:00

The British occupation of Basra in the south of Iraq has often been presented in the American media as being a much more controlled situation than the rest of Iraq (other than perhaps the Kurdish areas of the north). This was attributed to a more competent British occupation, a region that was dominated by the Shia Iraqis who were politically, religiously, and in some cases militarily organized (and also pleased to see Saddam Hussein out of power), and so on. In any case, whatever order existed there seems to be in serious danger of falling apart following the arrest by Iraqi authorities of two British soldiers and the ensuing British prison raid to free the two. Helen McCormack of the Independent writes:

In the rioting that ensued, British control of the city, in the Shia-dominated south of Iraq, began to look seriously under threat. Two Iraqis were reported dead in the rioting, with 15 Iraqis reported injured, along with three British soldiers....

As an uneasy peace was maintained in the city last night, all the indications were that yesterday's violence could be repeated today.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has only a small link on its front page with the headline "British Stage Prison Rescue of 2 Soldiers," which seems to me to hardly be the main story here. The prison rescue is hardly newsworthy compared to the rioting and anger that have surfaced in Basra in its wake. I'm heading over to Juan Cole's site to read more about this (he has quite a bit on the differing accounts of what led to the arrest of the two British soldiers, how the British reacted, what happened after that, etc.).

UPDATE [11:08 am]: Looks like the firebrand cleric is up to it again. That's right, Muqtada al-Sadr and his movement seems to be heavily wrapped up in the anti-British antagonism and anger in Basra. Go read Juan Cole, for real. He's got a much better handle of what forces are at play here.

2005-09-19T10:59:00.001-04:00

Villa Gregoriana, a view of the waterfall. (photo by my dad)

2005-09-19T10:59:00.000-04:00

Tivoli, view from the bridge over the Aniene River, Temple of the Sibyl and the Sibella Restaurant. (photo by my dad)

2005-09-19T10:58:00.000-04:00

Tusculum, the Roman site above Frascati, view over the Colle Albani (photo by my dad)

Hubbub over Arafat's Cause of Death

2005-09-16T10:45:00.000-04:00

Last week, there were a number of high profile articles in Ha'aretz about the release of Yasir Arafat's medical records to two Israeli journalists, Amos Harel and Avi Isacharoff, and, subsequently, speculation as to the cause of his death (an excerpt from Harel and Isacharoff's forthcoming book was published in the Friday magazine section of Ha'aretz). The articles sparked conversation given allegations that Arafat was either poisoned or suffered from AIDS, or even both (Arafat's personal physician posits a theory that Arafat was poisoned but that the AIDS virus was introduced into his blood to cover up the poison). Interestingly enough, the New York Times ran a more sober story on the medical records, giving no credence of the AIDS theories (headline: Medical Records Say Arafat Died from a Stroke), causing debate as to whether Ha'aretz had been overly sensational in their claims or whether the Times had ignored important evidence. The Times ran a correction, stating that the paragraphs dealing with the AIDS speculation had been cut because of space. Two of the paragraphs that were cut read:

"The records make no mention of an AIDS test, an omission the experts found bizarre. An Israeli infectious disease specialist said he would have performed the test, if only to be thorough and to refute the rumors that surrounded the case.

"He said news accounts during Arafat's illness made him strongly suspect that Arafat had AIDS. But after studying the records, he said that was improbable, given the sudden onset of the intestinal troubles."

Hardly sensational stuff. Ha'aretz ran an article by Harel with the headline "NY Times and Haaretz - why the different stories?" And why? Harel wrote:

How did Haaretz and The New York Times come to such different conclusions, based on the same report? A copy of the report was first obtained during research for the book, "The Seventh War," written by Amos Harel and Avi Isacharoff. The copy was presented by the authors to a Times reporter who was present at the meetings with Israeli experts.

The experts posited three principal causes of death: poison, infection or AIDS, with each doctor assigning a different probability to each option.

The Times, after consulting with its own medical reporters, decided to rule out almost completely the probability of poisoning or AIDS. The Israeli doctors, and Haaretz in their footsteps, thought differently.

Finally, after all the back and forth between an Israeli and an American newspaper, Khaled Amayreh in al-Ahram Weekly writes on the Palestinian perspective, both on the medical records and the reporting on them in Israel and the U.S. The concencus?

For the vast majority of ordinary Palestinians, and also for most PA officials, the widespread belief among Palestinians that Israel killed Arafat has not translated into any serious preoccupation with the affair. In other words, the Palestinian nation as a whole is not very enthusiastic about -- or even interested in -- unravelling the mystery of Arafat's death. Part of this apathy is probably related to the quiet realisation on the part of most Palestinians that it really wouldn't make a big difference if it were proven that Israel killed Arafat.

One Palestinian schoolteacher scoffed at the media fanfare regarding the released medical records. "I can't understand why people are so excited about the possibility that Israel killed Arafat. Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of political leaders. Israel is our enemy and our gravedigger. Why wouldn't they kill him?"

Mosques in Israel

2005-09-16T10:26:00.000-04:00

Meron Rapoport of Ha'aretz writes a great article today, in which he visits the sites of several mosques in Israel that have been converted into synagogues or were abandoned following 1948. Quite a history lesson. One example (from the section on the Wadi Hunayn mosque, now the Geulat Israel synagogue in Nes Tziona):

Based on its Oriental facade, it is no different from other buildings that were built in the same style in the colonies of that era, even in Tel Aviv. It is therefore difficult to notice it was originally a mosque. "Those who are not old-timers here don't know there used to be an Arab neighborhood here, and a mosque, which essentially threatened the existence of the colony," writes [Avner] Kahanov. "The mosque was converted into a synagogue in which people pray for peace."

Kahanov mentions the mosque minaret, which no longer exists. One veteran Nes Tziona resident offers a simple explanation to this mystery. "On May 15, 1948," he recounts, "the entire colony gathered around the mosque. On the following evening, the Arabs disappeared from the center of the colony. We got up in the morning and they had left without a trace. We stood around the mosque, a few Palmachniks climbed up to the minaret, tied a rope around it, gave a vocal 'heave-ho,' and the minaret fell down." The man, who is well-known in Nes Tziona, says even then he felt shame at what he saw. But he is not prepared to speak out. The sensitivity is still too great.

Where's the trust?

2005-09-15T12:33:00.000-04:00

Though we know that freedom is on the march (or so I've heard), there seems to be a global lack of confidence in politicians and governments. The Guardian reports:

Commissioned by the BBC World Service, Gallup interviewed more than 50,000 people in 68 countries, representative of the views of 1.3 billion people worldwide. The main exclusions were China and most of the Middle East, where government restrictions make polling difficult or impossible. Overall, slightly less than half of those surveyed (47%) felt that elections in their country were free and fair. Confidence in elections was highest in Scandinavia (82%) and South Africa (76%), and lowest in West Africa (24%) and the former Soviet Union (25%).

Worldwide, politicians represent the least trusted occupation in the survey, scoring only 13%. Religious leaders are the most trusted (33%), followed by military/police leaders (26%), journalists (26%) and business leaders (19%).

Asked which types of people they would like to give more power to, 35% favoured "intellectuals" (writers and academics), followed by religious leaders on 25%.

And you'd have to imagine that if China and the Middle East were included we wouldn't be seeing a huge leap in the numbers for politicians. But seriously, folks, let's hear if for writers and academics.

Bush to Sharon: We are real men!

2005-09-15T10:23:00.000-04:00

This is enough to make you gag:

"All over the world, people want strong leaders. That's how I won the last elections despite the media's belief that I would lose. And I'm sure that you will also win," President George W. Bush told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a meeting yesterday at United Nations headquarters in New York....

Bush appeared in jovial spirits during the meeting, smiling and joking a lot, despite his difficult situation in the public opinion polls.

Forget the polls, how about the fucking disaster in Louisiana and the Gulf coast, not to mention the fucking disaster in Iraq.

2005-09-14T12:40:00.000-04:00

A Sardinian Wedding (Photo by my dad)

Abbas aide says PA head will disarm resistance groups

2005-09-14T10:56:00.000-04:00

Al-Jazeera reports that Rafiq Husseini, an aide to Mahmud Abbas, said that the PA President will be looking to disarm the militant groups in the Gaza Strip, starting with Fatah-affiliated groups and then including Hamas (and presumably others) after the January parliamentary elections.

"The groups within Fatah will be required to disarm and join the security services, or we will have to treat them as if they have violated the law," Husseini was quoted as saying by the Israeli daily, Haaretz.

"There is no longer an Israeli presence in Gaza, so bearing arms in the streets and the existence of militias are not justified. After January, Hamas will no longer need its weapons either," Husseini added.

Although it's not clear whether Husseini was referring only to Gaza and not the West Bank, it seems that if Abbas does attempt this, he will probably start in Gaza (it would probably be easier to justify to his own constituency, and he is also tasked by the U.S. and Israel with imposing sufficient order in Gaza to justify Israel considering pulling out of some areas of the West Bank). It's hard for me to imagine this actually happening. First of all, notice that this isn't Abbas talking, it's one of his aides. It would seem that Abbas may be testing out the waters to see what the public response is to this, but it would surely not help Fatah, especially leading up to January elections, and may well split it even further. As Arnon Regular notes in the Ha'aretz article, even starting with "Fatah-affiliated" groups will not be an easy task:

There are dozens of armed groups operating in the Gaza Strip under the name of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, in addition to groups such as the Popular Resistance Committees and the Abu Rish Brigades, which claim they operate under the Fatah umbrella.

Leaving aside the fact that I personally don't think that the PRC claims to operate under the Fatah umbrella or views itself as a "Fatah" group, trying to negotiate with all these groups to disarm is going to be very difficult. None of these groups wants to feel singled out, forced to disarm as other groups maintain their arms, seeing defections to other groups that remain armed or resist disarming (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PRCs, etc). Abbas is really in a bad spot here, as he risks doing serious damage to an already hobbled Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip on the one hand, and doing serious damage to an already hobbled PA if he does not win some concessions from the U.S. and Israel on the other (and disarming Gaza militants is obviously in part an attempt to appeal to the U.S. and Israel).

Again, though, some comments from an aide are a far cry from concrete actions. Surely there will be a statement in response from Hamas and possibly some al-Aqsas Martyrs Brigades folks, but at this stage it's just words.

Cosmetic Surgery in the UK

2005-09-14T10:30:00.000-04:00

There is an article in the Guardian today by Decca Aitkenhead about the steep rise in cosmetic surgeries in the UK. The article gives some pretty surprising (maybe just to me, though, as the whole concept seems so bizarre -- obviously not a mainstream view) statistics.

[Transform Medical Group] has seen an annual growth rate of 10-20% through the 90s rocket recently to twice as much or more, and this is reflected across the industry as a whole. Cosmetic operations in Bupa [British United Provident Association] hospitals were up by 32% last year, male patient numbers more than doubled, and operations by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (Baaps) rose by 50%. In the absence of a formal national record, the true number of cosmetic operations today is unknowable. Bupa puts it at around 75,000 a year, with another 50,000 non-surgical procedures such as Botox. By the end of last year the British market had been valued at more than £250m.

Whatever the precise magnitude of the explosion, its impact on us has been overwhelming. A practice widely regarded not a decade ago as physically risky, morally doubtful, prohibitively expensive and socially embarrassing has been rebranded as something so innocuous and sensible as to be mundane. A survey this summer for Grazia magazine found that more than half of women now expect to have surgery. A quarter of teenage boys polled in May thought they might too, while more than 40% of teenage girls said they had considered it....

In the Grazia survey this summer, two thirds of women under 25 said "celebrities influence them into wanting surgery".

The article goes on at length about the role of the media (especially reality television) and what role, if any, "feminism" has to play.

The State of D.C. Housing

2005-09-13T11:56:00.000-04:00

As somebody who moved into the city one year ago and am moving from one apartment to another at the end of the month, I can certainly attest to the veracity of this article by Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post: Number of D.C. Affordable Housing Units Plunge. According to the article:

In a single year, the median rent in the District jumped by 9 percent -- from $734 to $799 -- while the median home value soared by 32 percent -- from $252,930 to $334,702, according to a report released yesterday by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.

These trends (of disappearing affordable housing and growing unaffordable housing), according to the report, contribute to the disappearance of a middle-class presence in the city and also of mixed-income and mixed-race neighborhoods.

To reverse these trends, the task force recommends dedicating a greater portion of the tax revenue generated by the real estate boom to housing programs. City officials should encourage construction of 55,000 units over the next 15 years, the report says, and adopt policies aimed at building "mixed-income and mixed-race neighborhoods."

"We're talking about a substantial increase, perhaps doubling what the city now spends on affordable housing," said task force co-chairman Adrian Washington, president of the Neighborhood Development Co., which specializes in urban redevelopment. "If we don't, we're going to have a city that's even more divided along the lines of race and class."

2005-09-09T09:30:00.000-04:00

Friday is cacti blogging? Did I get that right? (photo by Amanda)

Bibi vs. Arik

2005-09-08T13:23:00.000-04:00

The ever-reliable Graham Usher has an article ("The Soul of Likud," al-Ahram Weekly) on the upcoming battle between Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon for control of the Likud and, more broadly speaking, the State of Israel and its policies. It's not long so go read the whole thing, why don't you.

Egyptian Elections II

2005-09-08T09:51:00.000-04:00

Gihan Shahine of al-Ahram Weekly writes on the situation of polling monitors in the Egyptian elections, who were at first banned by the government from entering polling places and then allowed (officially, but not necessarily in practice) in a last-minute decision.

Rights groups told Al-Ahram Weekly that only a few judges had actually received the commission's last-minute decision and that most monitors were blocked from entering polling stations in cities across the country including Cairo, Aswan, Minya and Qena.

There were numerous charges of fraud, including allegations of the government bussing civil servants to polling places, of the ruling National Democratic party (NDP) paying poor Egyptians to vote, of the indelible ink being diluted in some places so that it could be washed off allowing some people to cast multiple votes, and of people arriving at the polls only to find that a vote had already been cast in their names. Given these allegations and the refusal to allow monitors, there was obviously some displeasure with the process expressed.

Mohamed Zarie, director of the Egyptian Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRAAP) and the coordinator of the National Campaign for the Monitoring of Elections (NCME), was equally sceptical. "There is no reason why the government should not allow local observers unless it is up to something," he said matter-of-factly. "The ruling National Democratic Party is seizing authority by force. These elections cannot be legitimate."

Brian Whitaker of the Guardian writes that the Mubarak machine "put on an overwhelming display of organisational strength" during yesterday's elections. This display included the following:

The president's National Democratic party had set up a "guidance" stall near the entrance which was decorated with pro-Mubarak posters. Staff checked voters' names before issuing them with a slip carrying the president's photograph and indicating where they should vote. A party official said the system, which had also been set up at other polling stations, was "to ease the flow of voters".

Ease them right into voting for Mubarak. Also, Whitaker writes:

Although Mr Mubarak is expected to win by a huge margin, initial reports from witnesses suggested the turnout was relatively low.

This sentence is misleading to me. I hardly think that turnout was low although Mubarak was expected to win big. I would argue that turnout was low because there seemed to be no chance of Mubarak being denied another term. Why bother voting when you know who is going to win? Voter apathy works the same everywhere -- the less one feels his or her vote will make a difference, the harder it is to motivate that person to vote.

Egyptian "Democracy"

2005-09-07T09:54:00.000-04:00

Today marks yet another victory for George W. Bush in his crusade to spread democracy in the Middle East. After elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon (all thanks to the U.S. and leading to peaceful, stable, prosperous, and harmonious democratically governed states, of course), Bush can now add Egypt to the list. As Egyptians vote today, al-Jazeera reports of low voter turnout:

In the first half-hour of voting, only four young women showed up to vote [at one Cairo polling station] - but there were no locks on the ballot boxes, so polling officials refused to allow any votes to be cast....

Some organisations tracking the elections issued initial reports stating that no voters or judges had shown up in at least two electoral committees in the new Egypt neighbourhood, the correspondent reported.

There were also some allegations against the government regarding poor voting practices:

Aljazeera has learned that the national party hired buses to transfer citizens to polling centres to support Mubarak....

Aljazeera's office in Cairo has also received reports that al-Ghad and al-Wafd parties in Port Said and Giza have submitted complaints that electoral officers did not apply indelible ink on the fingers of voters....

The two parties have also complained that the ink used could be easily removed from voters' fingers in some areas...

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz reports that pro-government thugs forcibly broke up a protest organized by the opposition.

The men chased and beat up some of the several hundred demonstrators and ripped apart banners calling for a boycott of Wednesday's election, Victoria Hazou, a photographer who witnessed the scene, said.

"They [the men] were chasing after [the demonstrators]. When they got people alone they beat them up," she told Reuters.

The protest was organized by the Kefaya movement, which has this year held a series of demonstrations calling for an end to the rule of longtime leader Mubarak, who is widely expected to win the election.

Update [5:52 pm]: Within Juan Cole's article on Salon refuting Christopher Hitchens's 10 reasons to be proud of the Iraq war (personally, I don't know that Hitchens deserves this much of Cole's attention or this much space devoted to attacking him on Salon, but that's a different matter), Cole is clear about how much "democracy" in Egypt the Bush administration can take credit for:

Hitchens has not shown that the Iraq war has encouraged democratic and civil society movements in Egypt. Bush's war did encourage 100,000 Muslim Brothers to come out to protest it, and it therefore reinvigorated the fortunes of political Islam in Egypt. The Mubarak government, however, refuses to recognize the Brotherhood as a legitimate political party, despite its popularity. Democratic and civil society movements in Egypt are of old standing, and they did not need an American imperial boot print in Iraq to jump-start them. Hosni Mubarak has agreed to allow a small number of officially recognized parties to field candidates against him in the presidential elections, but this change is window-dressing. Does Hitchens seriously believe Mubarak will lose?

Of course not.

Window of Opportunity

2005-09-06T09:53:00.000-04:00

You hear the words "window of opportunity" connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so frequently they have lost much meaning in and of themselves (if they ever had any to begin with). Most recently, we were besieged by media reports that the "historic" Gaza withdrawal would result in a "window of opportunity" in the Middle East. So now we finally get down to what the "window of opportunity" really meant; that is, whose opportunity and for what.

Education Minister Limor Livnat said Tuesday that Israel should use what she termed a "window of opportunity" afforded by the disengagement, in order to build up West Bank settlement blocs, even over the objections of the nation's closest ally, the United States. (Ha'aretz)

Yep, that's the opportunity folks. Can you hear it knocking? In another quote from this article:

"Whoever thinks the disengagement from Gaza will continue with disengagement from the large settlement blocs is very wrong. We will see to it this does not happen," [Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev] Boim said.

And you just know that the Palestinians aren't going to be thankful for this opportunity. Ingrates.

2005-09-06T09:36:00.000-04:00

a Roman bridge on via Claudio, Blera (photo by my dad)

2005-09-06T09:32:00.000-04:00

Scilla autumnalis and a honey bee (photo by my dad)

Gives me the creeps

2005-09-02T11:53:00.000-04:00

From the Guardian:

A series of explosions were reported at a chemical plant in New Orleans today as hundreds of US troops with orders to shoot-to-kill looters and gunmen were sent to the flooded city.

Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, said: "They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill ... they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."...

... Mr Bush said he approved the "zero tolerance" policy towards looters.

Katrina

2005-09-01T10:44:00.000-04:00

This report from New Orleans by Julian Borger of the Guardian is brutal reading.

Most people had heard that there was a plan to bring buses into New Orleans and evacuate people from the Superdome, the huge arena whose badly tarnished gold roof loomed over the intersection. Salvation seemed so close. It was only a hundred yards away, but surrounded, like some brooding castle, by its own moat of deep floodwater.

Elisha James had spent the night in the lobby of a rundown block of flats calling itself the Plaza Towers. Along with her boyfriend and his seven-year-old daughter, they had been trying to get to the Superdome since 5am, but were turned back by police manning checkpoints, who told them it was too dangerous.

"The police said you were on your own," Ms James said. "If you're not in the Superdome, you're on your own."

After sitting out Hurricane Katrina, she and her small family had fled from her mother's house when the waters began to rise on Tuesday evening. They had no water and little food left.

Ms James, like most of the people left on the streets, felt she had been forsaken by whoever was in charge. There was talk of rescue efforts, but no one had come for her. "We made a fire in the night so they could see us, but they went past us several times," she complained. "We saw seven or eight trucks, and most had no one on them."

A SWAT team drives past flood victims waiting for rescue in New Orleans. (AP)

As if to illustrate her point, a convoy of six military lorries drove by at that moment, their drivers looking straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge the entreaties of those left on the pavement. They were empty, apart from some cardboard boxes of water bottles. Their high, thick wheels kicked up water on both sides.

"There are people who've been sleeping here for two nights now," she said, pointing to a Greyhound bus station that had become a makeshift shelter for the desperate.

Then she pointed up to a multi-storey carpark and cried: "A lady went into labour up there and no one came. We could hear the screams."

She and her small knot of dependants moved on as the day got hotter and stickier. A police helicopter had landed on a dry car park nearby and a murmur went round that perhaps something was about to happen. But it took off again and the Superdome looked as far away as ever.

You know, having read about the Great Depression and the Hoovervilles of refugees, I don't think I could ever comprehend it until now. This isn't some prediction that the Katrina refugees are going to move up to Washington -- please don't mistake this for that. On the other hand, the three lead headlines on the Washington Post website yesterday were about (1) the Katrina disaster (2) the awful deadly stampede in Iraq and (3) Bush's approval numbers being at the lowest they've ever been. There are tens of thousands of people who will not be able to return to their homes for months. There are probably thousands who have nothing to speak of to return to. This is quite literally unlike anything that's happened in the U.S. in my lifetime. Furthermore it's happened at a time of increased political and economic tension. So the idea of shanty-towns on the Potomac no longer seems inconceivable to me.

Class Warfare and Aunt Deb on the Internets

2005-08-31T11:46:00.000-04:00

Aunt Deb wrote me an email today titled "What I learned on the internets today" -- here it is:

Number of articles touting the Bush Boom found on Nationalreview.com:
44

Change in median income 2001-2004: -$673

Change in number of Americans in poverty: +4.1 million

Change in number of Americans without health insurance: +4.6 million

Boom on!!

She also sent me an article on this report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economic on the ratio of CEO pay to average non-management worker pay. Can you guess what that ratio might be? Well, I'll give it away:

The ratio of average CEO pay (now $11.8 million) to worker pay (now $27,460) spiked up from 301-to-1 in 2003 to 431-to-1 in 2004.

If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers in the US would be earning $23.03 an hour today, not $5.15 an hour.

The report found that CEOs are individually profiting from the Iraq War, with huge average raises at the biggest defense contractors.

At the 34 publicly traded US corporations among the 2004 top 100 defense contractors with 10% or more of their revenues from defense contracts – companies such as United Technologies, Textron, and General Dynamics – average CEO pay increased 200% from 2001 to 2004, versus 7% for all CEOs.

I also watched The Corporation last night (well, the parts of it that I didn't fall asleep during -- hey, I was tired, give me a break). So seriously, I'm all jazzed up now: where do I sign up for the workers' revolution?

[Update: For those that can't be troubled to read comments, Aunt Deb points out that proper attribution should be given to Brendan Nyhan via Brad deLong for the stats.]

Taysir el-Heyb

2005-08-29T17:02:00.000-04:00

There is a long article in Ha'aretz on the background of Taysir el-Heyb, the IDF soldier who shot and killed Tom Hurndall. It is illuminating on the relationship of the Bedouin to the State of Israel, and the role of the IDF in that relationship.

On the living conditions of the Heyb family:

Taysir el-Heyb, the oldest of six children, was born in July 1983 and lived most of his life in a small, rickety hut with no bathroom. The Israel Lands Administration (ILA) recently razed the hut, saying it had been built without a permit. His father worked as a day worker in agricultural jobs until he became ill, first physically and then mentally, and became unable to support the family. His mother worked cleaning homes in Moshav Migdal, whose luxurious homes are just a few hundred meters away from the Wadi Hamam huts that are on the brink of collapsing. A few years ago, she also became ill sick and, like her husband, had to stop working....

The ground floor [of the house in which the family now lives] still has exposed concrete walls. On the second floor, where they now live, the walls were covered in whitewash, long since peeled, the windows are broken and there are hastily improvised electrical wires hanging exposed and dangerous. Most of the rooms do not have finished floors. Apart from few plastic chairs and an old and empty refrigerator, there is no furniture in the house - no beds, no tables and no closets.

The family sleeps on mattresses on the floor and the few clothes they have are piled in cardboard boxes. The father, whose illness has cut him off from reality and is therefore unaware that his son has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term, roams the rooms all day long, staring at the walls and windows.

The three younger children in the family, who are 14, 16 and 18, have never been to school. "I never had money to buy them books or notebooks," their mother says, adding that the State of Israel's welfare authorities have never asked her why her children are not in school. Taysir did go to school. "Until seventh grade, he went to the school in the village," says Mahmoud Wahib, his uncle, "but it's impossible to say that he learned anything there. He never had books and he never had supplies. Today he barely knows how to read and write in Arabic and he doesn't know how to read and write in Hebrew at all."

These conditions are not unheard of in the Bedouin village in which the family lives. Nor is it uncommon to find the young men of the village enlisting in the IDF -- it seems logical that this would constitute some attempt to escape the conditions in which they'd lived, to establish a connection with the state that had to this point neglected to build any connection, in hopes of a brighter future. In fact, "approximately 40 percent of the young men in Wadi Hamam, a village afflicted by unemployment, neglect and poverty, volunteer for the IDF or Border Police." However, Taysir el-Heyb seems to have been particularly unsuited for the situation in which the IDF put him.

The psychological tests determined that his skills were very close to the lower limit, the cutoff below which potential enlistees are not eligible for military service: Colonel Aviram made sure to write in his verdict that el-Heyb "was given a psycho-technical rating of 10 (on a scale of 10 to 90) and was rated 43 in the quality group (on a scale of 42 to 65)." Despite these figures, the IDF agreed to induct him and to send him to serve as a fighter in the desert patrol brigade, known as the Bedouin brigade."

In his first year of service, which he spent mostly in training camps, el-Heyb managed to be absent without leave twice - once for 22 days and once for 34 days - and to serve four short terms in military jail - one of them for "inserting a cartridge into his gun, cocking it and releasing the safety, contrary to orders." Later in the year, he again used his weapon contrary to orders, this time while on vacation in Wadi Hamam, and was sentenced to 12 days in jail and a three-month suspended sentence. In July 2002, when he was already serving in the Termite post on the Philadelphi route, he was sentenced to seven months in jail for "using a dangerous drug in serious operational circumstances."

Despite all this, the army subsequently decided to promote him to the rank of sergeant, appoint him commander of the post and post him there armed and alone, in a position on the edge of Rafah, facing a large civilian population.

Despite the state's failure to sufficiently provide for Taysir el-Heyb, both before he enlisted and after, it has elided this responsibility and has instead made him a convenient scapegoat -- the whipping boy to prove Israel's willingness to "crack down" on the IDF. This is certainly the impression that has been left on those from Heyb's village:

"If it had been a Jewish soldier," says Mahmoud Wahib, Taysir's uncle, "he wouldn't even have gotten a one-year sentence."

"If the deceased had been a Palestinian and not a Briton," adds Yassin el-Heyb, a neighbor and distant relative of Taysir, "no one would have been interested in the incident and it's doubtful whether they would have even investigated it. The Druze officer who fired an entire magazine at a girl in Rafah came out totally clean. Why? Because the girl was Palestinian and not British. But in this case, the family of the deceased made a fuss in the media, the British government submitted protests and Israel decided to prove to the world, at poor Taysir's expense, how much are army is concerned about human life.

"If this is how the army treats a guy like Taysir, " he concludes, "who had nothing on his mind other than dreams of a military career and circulated in the village and convinced people to enlist, then it's clear that no Arab need enlist in the army anymore."

Ilan Bombach, Taysir el-Heyb's attorney, offers compelling argument that this is indeed the case.

In his arguments before the court, Bombach stressed that el-Heyb was the first soldier to be tried for manslaughter since the outbreak of the current intifada and the first since the 1980s to be sent to jail for a lengthy term as a result of an intifada-related shooting incident.

U.S. Forces Shoot Reuters Soundman in Iraq

2005-08-29T10:50:00.000-04:00

From Reuters:

A Reuters Television soundman [Waleed Khaled] was shot dead in Baghdad on Sunday and a cameraman who was wounded was still being questioned by U.S. troops 12 hours later.

Iraqi police said the two, both Iraqis, were shot by U.S. forces. A U.S. military spokesman said the incident was being investigated.

Aside from simply being a reflection of the very sad state of affairs generally in Iraq, the story is faily illustrative in how these types of events are being handled by the U.S. forces in Iraq.

Cameraman [Haider] Kadhem, 24, who was wounded in the back, told colleagues at the scene: "I heard shooting, looked up and saw an American sniper on the roof of the shopping center."

The only known witness, he was later detained by the U.S. troops. For 10 hours, U.S. officers said they could not trace Kadhem. Finally a spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Whetstone, said he was being held at an unspecified location. His "superficial" wound had been treated "on location," he said.

He declined to specify any suspicions or accusations against the cameraman, who was based in the southern city of Samawa and had been in Baghdad only two days on a brief assignment....

Two Iraqi colleagues who arrived on the scene minutes after the shooting were briefly detained and released: "They treated us like dogs. They made us ... including Khaled [sic] who was wounded and asking for water, sit in the sun on the road," one said...

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media rights group, called it "extremely disturbing" and said the Reuters soundman was the 66th journalist or assistant killed in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, three more than died in 20 years in Vietnam.

"Our outrage is compounded by the fact that they arrested Kadhem, the only eyewitness, who was himself injured," it said....

As Waleed's tearful relatives inspected the body at the scene, a U.S. soldier said: "Don't bother. It's not worth it."...

Two Reuters cameramen have been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003. A third was shot dead by a sniper in Ramadi last November in circumstances for which Reuters is still seeking an explanation from U.S. forces.

Reuters' cameraman in the city of Ramadi, Ali al-Mashhadani was arrested by U.S. forces three weeks ago and is being held without charge in Abu Ghraib prison. U.S. military officials say he will face a judicial hearing as soon as Monday but have still given no access to the journalist or said what he is accused of.

Thanks to Aunt Deb for sending this to me. You really have to wonder how often this happens but, because it doesn't happen to a person in the international press, it goes unreported.

Goodbye, Walter Reed.

2005-08-26T11:22:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post has a number of articles about the decision to shut down Walter Reed Army Hospital (among other base and facility closures), including: Panel Votes to Close Walter Reed Hospital; Walter Reed Hospital Has Storied Past; News of Hospital Closing Hits Hard; and a Walter Reed Photo Gallery. Why do I care about this, you might ask? Well, I was born in Walter Reed hospital. It's true. So shed a little tear as you drive by on Georgia Avenue (or 16th Street, if that's your thing) -- I know I will. Goodbye, Walter Reed, thanks for the memories. Actually, there aren't too many memories (since I don't actually remember being born), but still -- good times, man ... good times. You're my boy, Blue!

Shomei Tomatsu

2005-08-26T11:08:00.000-04:00

I went to see the Shomei Tomatsu exhibit at the Corcoran before it leaves next week, and it was fabulous. Here are some photos from the exhibit.

Untitled from the series The Pencil of the Sun
sor:hand;width: 400px;" src="http://www.artcritical.com/garwood/images/Tom_red.e.jpg" border="0" alt="" />Japan World Exposition, Osaka 1970
Uragami Church, 600 meters from blast, Nagasaki, 1961
Chewing Gum and Chocolates, Yokosuka, 1959
A Bottle that Was Melted by Heat Wave and Fires, Nagasaki, 1961
Some more photos are here (Thanks Amanda).

Say It Ain't So

2005-08-24T12:21:00.000-04:00

Maradona admits "hand of God." The best part?

"Never did I regret having scored in that way," said Maradona, because he said that compensated for the loss of Malvinas (Falkland) Islands to the English in the 1982 war between Argentina and Great Britain.

Yeah, I guess life has a way of evening things out like that.

"Everything will be B'sader"

2005-08-24T10:09:00.000-04:00

Michael Crowley, filling in over at Talking Points Memo, is doing his best to unravel the Jack Abramoff-Tom DeLay tangle of corruption, particularly looking into the role of NaftaSib. Crowley writes:

NaftaSib is a Russian oil and gas company which apparently underwrote a six-day "fact-finding" trip to Moscow that DeLay took with Abramoff in 1997, during which the two met with NaftaSib executives for reasons that remain unknown. The trip and DeLay's meeting with NaftaSib officials was widely reported earlier this year. What I never saw was any follow-up on additional evidence released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on June 22 that shed some additional light on Abramoff's relationship with NaftaSib, and on the company's true nature.

That evidence included an eye-popping 2001 email between Abramoff and a Russian man named Vadim. The email concerned the purchase of paramilitary equipment, apparently including night vision goggles, that Abramoff intended to send to his Israeli West Bank settler friends.

Crowley provides a link to the actual text of the email (p. 79 of this pdf), and reading it really shows how nutty these folks are. Abramoff's nutty settler friend Schmuel Ben Zvi, the one purchasing high powered military thermal visors from shady Russian corporations, writes the following about passages from the Zohar [all spelling/capitalization/grammar errors are in original]:

About the pasages,
1) Daf vav in the hagdama of the Zohar mentions Beladin.
2) And parchas Balak in the Zohar says that before Moshiach comes three towers will burn in the gate of Rome (edom), I freaked out when I saw how the schematic drawing in newsweek refered to the smaller (45 story) world trade center building is refered to as the "third tower"

Ok, so I would trust this guy to write for the Weekly World News -- I'm not so comfortable with him buying military equipment for settlers in the West Bank. The fact that he has close ties to a high-powered lobbyist/fundraiser/DC mover-and-shaker is quite illustrative, I think, of how fucked we all are. Seriously, one of the leading fund-raisers for the president of the United States is setting up shady deals for military equipment going to a settler in the West Bank who is talking about 9/11 being a sign of the coming of the Messiah. As they say, something ain't b'sader about all that.

(Thanks to Aunt Deb for sending me to TPM)

This anti-disengagement protest brought to you by . . .

2005-08-22T09:24:00.000-04:00

From Ha'aretz:

The eyes of the world will be trained on the settlement of Sa-Nur, where hardliners were holding out against Israeli evacuation forces. So says a young couple purporting to own a house in Sa-Nur, who are offering to sell advertising space on their home on eBay.

"Put your ad on West Bank Settlers Fortress!" blares their ad on the auctions website. The starting bid: $40,000....

The couple explains it plans to hole up with "hundreds" more to fight the evacuation forces.

What company wouldn't want to be associated with a bunch of religious nuts holed up in a settlement slated for destruction? Sounds like a wise investment to me.

Secrets of the Morgue

2005-08-18T15:22:00.000-04:00

Robert Fisk has written on his experiences at the Baghdad morgue. He writes:

While Saddam's regime visited death by official execution upon its opponents, the scale of anarchy now existing in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and other cities is unprecedented. "The July figures are the largest ever recorded in the history of the Baghdad Medical Institute," a senior member of the management told The Independent.

It is clear that death squads are roaming the streets of a city which is supposed to be under the control of the US military and the American-supported, elected government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Never in recent history has such anarchy been let loose on the civilians of this city - yet the Western and Iraqi authorities show no interest in disclosing the details. The writing of the new constitution - or the failure to complete it - now occupies the time of Western diplomats and journalists. The dead, it seems, do not count.

But they should. Most are between 15 and 44 - the youth of Iraq - and, if extrapolated across the country, Baghdad's 1,100 dead of last month must bring Iraq's minimum monthly casualty toll in July alone to 3,000 - perhaps 4,000. Over a year, this must reach a minimum of 36,000, a figure which puts the supposedly controversial statistic of 100,000 dead since the invasion into a much more realistic perspective.

There is no way of distinguishing the reasons for these thousands of violent deaths. Some men and women were shot at US checkpoints, others murdered, no doubt, by insurgents or thieves. A few listed as killed by "blunt instruments" might have been the dead of traffic accidents. Some of the women were probably the victims of "honour" killings - because male relatives suspected them of having illicit relations with the wrong man. Still others may have been murdered as collaborators. Doctors have been told that bodies brought to the mortuary by US forces should not be given post-mortem examinations (on the odd ground that the Americans will have already performed this function).

The Voice of a Gazan

2005-08-18T15:03:00.000-04:00

I must give credit to Yedi'ot Aharanot and to Ali Waked, who give us an opportunity to read what one Palestinian (given, it's only one voice, but it's better than none) from Gaza has to say about the ongoing disengagement process. Hashem al-Ara, 51, was from a family that owned 70 dunams (17.5 acres) of land that was taken and used to build the settlement of Neve Dekalim.

You stand for 20 years, looking at the land you had slowly disappearing while things are built upon it, but not for us. It’s a sight I don’t wish on anybody. So I understand that it is painful for the settlers that they are forced to leave. Particularly those that were born here. Not their parents who came and stole our land. But thanks to Allah, land always returns to its owners.

I remember that most of the land was covered with apple orchards. There were many palm trees as well, dates, and all sorts of species. Palm trees as high as 20 meters, some of them 70 years and older, that my father planted. There were some vegetables and also some guava. But mostly apples, amazing apples. Green American apples that were slightly tart and delicious. I remember the size of the apples. I can still feel and taste them in my mouth. A simple life that in an instant was destroyed.

Until today, when I look in the direction of Neve Dekalim and see the gate I remember the apples that are buried there underneath it.

If you go to the western gate of Neve Dekalim, before the square there’s a large water well there. Right next to it is the trunk of a tree. That tree is about 70 years old. My father’s cousin planted that tree.

Actually, I happen to be of the opinion that land hardly ever returns to its owners (thanks or no thanks to Allah) -- and of course, then you get into the whole sticky business of land ownership itself. But I suppose that's a different matter altogether.

Sadr City

2005-08-18T14:36:00.000-04:00

On Electronic Iraq there is a photo essay and a brief report from Peggy Gish on the conditions in Sadr City, the Baghdad slum. I honestly think that it's impossible for a good many Americans to even imagine, much less comprehend, conditions like this.

The Media and the Disengagement

2005-08-18T10:52:00.000-04:00

There is an article in Ha'aretz by Ehud Asheri on Israeli media coverage of the disengagement in which he claims that "the settlers are losing on the ground, but they're winning on television." Asheri writes:

[T]he real battle being waged in the Gaza Strip [is] the battle over the disengagement narrative.

So what's the story with the disengagement? Is it a story about disaster and destruction or about rehabilitation and recovery? A story about the triumph of the settler spirit or its defeat? The impression from the first three days of the broadcast is that the settlers' disaster narrative of destruction and victimization is the winner. They are few against many, weak against strong, idealists against "followers of orders," determination versus ambivalence.

Obviously their spirit grabs the screen. The images they have to offer are far more attractive. Viewers watch and weep. The quest for the human drama leads the cameras over and over again to the wailing evacuees and to the soldiers, especially women soldiers, who join in their tears. They document the children as they come out of their homes in Kerem Atzmona with their hands up, crying and wearing orange Stars of David (sure it's "in poor taste," but that only proves how much they hurt). They stay focused on the man dangling a helpless baby out a second-story window (sure it's dangerous, but what can you do, he's desperate). They caress the groups of worshipers and reciters of Psalms. The pain, the anguish and the prayers makes for terrific footage.

It's interesting that the Palestinian narrative doesn't even get a mention in the battle of narratives. It's the Israeli military versus the Israeli settlers. Really, I wonder if there even is a battle of narratives going on here. Aren't both these stories really part of the same narrative? I think that's certainly the case here in the United States, where any nuance separating the stoic soldier from the pained settler is completely blurred. Both figures fit into the "painful concessions" narrative of sacrifice on the part of Israel, on Israel's perpetual victimhood.

Update [1:00 pm]:
Jennifer Loewenstein has a commentary on Counterpunch in which she expresses her outrage at the coverage in the United States of the Gaza disengagement. She writes:

On ABC's Nightline Monday night, a reporter interviewed a young, sympathetic Israeli woman from the largest Gaza settlement, Neve Dekalim - a girl with sincerity in her voice, holding back tears. She doesn't view the soldiers as her enemy, she says, and doesn't want violence. She will leave even though to do so is causing her great pain. She talked about the tree she planted in front of her home with her brother when she was three; about growing up in the house they were now leaving, the memories, and knowing she could never return; that even if she did, everything she knew would be gone from the scene. The camera then panned to her elderly parents sitting somberly amid boxed-up goods, surveying the scene, looking forlorn and resigned. Her mother was a kindergarten teacher, we are told. She knew just about all of the children who grew up here near the sea.

In the 5 years of Israel's brutal suppression of the Palestinian uprising against the occupation, I never once saw or heard a segment as long and with as much sentimental, human detail as I did here; never once remember a reporter allowing a sympathetic young Palestinian woman, whose home was just bulldozed and who lost everything she owned, tell of her pain and sorrow, of her memories and her family's memories; never got to listen to her reflect on where she would go now and how she would live. And yet in Gaza alone more than 23,000 people have lost their homes to Israeli bulldozers and bombs since September 2000 -- often at a moment's notice on the grounds that they "threatened Israel's security." . . .

On Tuesday, 16 August, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that more than 900 journalists from Israel and around the world are covering the events in Gaza, and that hundreds of others are in cities and towns in Israel to cover local reactions. Were there ever that many journalists in one place during the past 5 years to cover the Palestinian Intifada?

And so on.

Sir Ian Blair

2005-08-18T10:49:00.000-04:00

The Guardian reports that Sir Ian Blair, Scotland Yard commissioner, "attempted to stop an independent external investigation into the shooting of a young Brazilian mistaken for a suicide bomber, it emerged yesterday." One way or another this man should be looking for new work tomorrow.

UK cover-up in shooting of Brazilian starts to fall apart

2005-08-17T10:07:00.000-04:00

This story just turned from bad to worse. Or from awful to horrifying maybe. The poor Brazilian guy who got shot on the London tube turns out not only to have been completely innocent of any wrongdoing (as seemed to be well known from the start), but now even the stories about "suspicious" (if explainable) behavior (running from the police, wearing a padded coat, he had a large bag/backpack, etc.) turn out to have been completely fabricated. In two stories from the Guardian, the truth emerges and the bereaved family's representation asks exactly what role the police had in promulgating these false stories. From the first story, regarding leaked information from the investigation of the shooting:

It has now emerged that Mr de Menezes:

· was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving his home;

· was unaware he was being followed;

· was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time suggested;

· never ran from the police;

· and did not jump the ticket barrier.

But the revelation that will prove most uncomfortable for Scotland Yard was that the 27-year-old electrician had already been restrained by a surveillance officer before being shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

So if all this was the case, where, then, did the "alternate" story -- the one we all heard from the time of the shooting and came to be accepted as true in the news media -- come from? Why is it that, when much of this would have been clarified by looking at the CCTV tapes from the tube station, the family of de Menezes was told that the CCTV cameras in that station weren't working?

His family's solicitor, Harriet Wistrich, claimed the police must be "partly responsible" for the accounts.

Asked by the BBC about the Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair's position over the initial version of events, she said: "There are certainly questions arising about how this false and misleading information was released in the first place.

"The police must have been partly responsible for that because it was the information that was given to the pathologist who performed the postmortem examination."

Apparently there's word that Sir Ian Blair is considering resigning. I would say that's the least he could do.

Global warming? What global warming?

2005-08-11T09:54:00.000-04:00

Evidence that global warming is real and that it's serious continues to mount, despite the best efforts of the administration and oil company lobbyists to cover their ears with their hands and yell "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO" at the tops of their lungs. The latest news is that Siberia is melting away. The Guardian reports:

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today....

The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across.

Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.

Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.

And then we start talking about methane gas and permafrost and carbon in the atmosphere and NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

But at least we got that highway bill signed, right? Whew.

United States: Motel 6 for Terrorists?

2005-08-10T10:08:00.000-04:00

So let's say, hypothetically, that a country that is friendly to the U.S. and is in fact one of its lead allies in the "war on terror" has apprehended an activist in a group designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. And perhaps this country wanted this person out of the way for a while, during a potentially politically tumultuous time (e.g. an election, a major religious holiday, what have you), but didn't want to cause too much stir. So this country decides that it will deport this person to the United States, but only for forty days, at the end of which the person will be allowed to return to the U.S. ally and resume his activities.

Not bloody likely, you'll say. After all, we wouldn't let Tariq Ramadan come teach here. We wouldn't even let in Cat Stevens. But yet this is the plan for Sa'adia Hershkopf, a Kach activist that Israel has decided it doesn't want around during the heat of the Gaza disengagement. So despite the fact that Kach is on the State Department's list of bad guys, the plan is to hold onto Hershkopf for a few weeks and then release him back into the wild? Way to ruthlessly execute the "war on terror" guys. Is this what W meant by "bring 'em on"?

More on Banksy and the Wall

2005-08-09T12:58:00.000-04:00

I have quite a few disagreements with Dana Gilerman's article in Ha'aretz on art on Israel's wall through the West Bank. Gilerman attempts to write about the conflict and tension that exists between protesting and hating the wall and turning it into art, between Palestinians living with the wall and outsiders who come to paint it, and so on. However, what could have been a very interesting article is instead shallow and disingenuous. Gilerman introduces us to this tension (after some intro about the wall's increasing presence in the art world), writing:

But one can now see pastoral scenes painted on the separation fence by Banksy, whom The Guardian has called "Britain's most celebrated graffiti artist." There are green trees on a seashore, scenes of Switzerland, the face of a horse looking through a window in its stall, a girl holding a bundle of ballons, and a boy playing with a pail against a blue sky.

A Ramallah resident approached the painter while he was working on these scenes and said, "You are painting the wall and making it beautiful."

"Thank you," the artist replied.

"We don't want it to be beautiful. We hate this wall. Go home."

Embellishment of the separation fence can be interpreted as implicit approval of its existence compared with the numerous demonstrations organized to bring it down - as a conflict between residents who suffer from the fence's existence and foreigners who view the fence as an opportunity to leave their mark and their worldview behind. While Banksy says that the fence is "illegal under international law and essentially turns Palestine into the world's [sic] largest open prison," on his Web site (www.banksy.co.uk), it is hard to sense protest in the handsome, narrative scenes he has painted, even if he intended them to express yearning for freedom.

First of all, the quote to which Gilerman refers is taken from Banksy's website. By refusing to disclose this fact, Gilerman is not only a bad journalist (telling a story as if she were there, rather than attributing it to its source), but refuses to acknowledge that Banksy himself is drawing attention to the contradiction of his art. Furthermore, it seems quite easy to me to sense protest in the scenes that Banksy painted on the wall. A girl tries to float over the wall with a handful of balloons. A hole in the wall reveals children playing on a beach. In most of the pieces, the very explicit theme is that of freedom, of the possibilities of freedom, the innocence and playfulness of children, and the juxtaposition of these images against the antithesis of these ideas, the wall, results in what I think could easily be seen as protest art. To see it as anything else, I think, is to miss the point.

This doesn't mean, however, that the contradictions and tensions that are illustrated in the back and forth between Banksy and the Palestinian do not exist. However, instead of plagiarizing from Banksy's website, Gilerman would have been better off talking to Palestinians so that we might get to hear some of what they think of Banksy's protest art. What do they think of using the wall as a canvas in general. Does art, even protest art, that "beautifies" the wall inherintly a bad thing? I would be interested to hear the varied responses.

West Banksy

2005-08-05T15:53:00.000-04:00

From the BBC:

Secretive "guerrilla" artist Banksy has decorated Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side.

The nine paintings were created on the Palestinian side of the barrier.

One depicts a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side....

Banksy painting on Israel's security barrier
Banksy said he was threatened by Israeli security forces
Another picture shows the head of a white horse appearing to poke through, while he has also painted a ladder going over the wall.

(more Banksy at his website here)

Further London Fallout

2005-08-05T10:05:00.000-04:00

I must say that I am reading the text of Tony Blair's statement on anti-terror measures and I feel distinctly uncomfortable. It's discomforting not only for the effect that Blair is seeking to have on England, but also in the way that the "British example" (so lauded in this country as sober and responsible in the wake of the 7 July bombings in London) may serve to justify measures in this country -- measures either ongoing or in the future. Allow me to go through Blair's statement and explain.

Here are the measures either being taken now, immediately, or under urgent examination.

1. The home secretary today publishes new grounds for deportation and exclusion. Deportation is a decision taken by the home secretary under statute. The new grounds will include fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs or justifying or validating such violence.

Ok, well how are we going to define "justifying or validating" "violence to further a person's beliefs"? How about if I said this: the Iraq war was the right thing to do to spread democracy in the Middle East. Am I not justifying or validating violence (a war) to further a person's beliefs (my belief that democracy is the best form of government)? Or are we only talking about religious belief? What if I say that the creation of the state of Israel (resulting in the death and displacement of a number of Palestinians, i.e. violence) is justified because of my religious belief in Israel as the land of the Jews. All I am saying is that when you talk about deporting people for "justifying" or "validating" violence, what violence in particular are we talking about? Because that's the real issue, isn't it? Let's move on.

Up to now, the concern has been that orders for deportation will be struck down as contrary to article 3 of the ECHR [European convention on human rights], as interpreted by the European Court in the Chahal case in 1996; and indeed have had such cases struck down.

However, the circumstances of our national security have now self-evidently changed and we believe we can get the necessary assurances from the countries to which we will return the deportees, against their being subject to torture or ill-treatment contrary to article 3.

Ahhh, necessary assurances. Given the "circumstances of our national security," how necessary are those assurances going to be? Who's going to be checking on those assurances and how hard are they going to be checking? Can anybody say "extraordinary rendition"?

2. As has been stated already, there will be new anti-terrorism legislation in the autumn. This will include an offence of condoning or glorifying terrorism. The sort of remarks made in recent days should be covered by such laws. But this will also be applied to justifying or glorifying terrorism anywhere, not just in the UK.

Again, we are back to what constitutes "terrorism" and what constitutes "justifying or glorifying" terrorism? At some point there needs to be a serious debate, an open discussion about what constitutes terrorism, about the validity of violence or armed struggle or terrorism or whatever you want to call it, about the roots of terrorism, about the causes that motivate terrorists, about all these things and it needs to include people who feel many different ways about all these isses. This is only possible with freedom of speech, in an evironment in which even terrible things can be said, in which even terrorism can be justified. This is the essential issue, I think -- what violence can we talk about, what violence can we justify, what violence and we glorify, and what violence can we be deported or arrested for talking about or justifying or glorifying? The following excerpts raise these same questions, so instead of writing the same thing after each I'll just use italics to bring out those parts that trouble me down in the gut area [and maybe a comment or two in brackets].

3. Anyone who has participated in terrorism or has anything to do with it anywhere will automatically be refused asylum. [anything to do with it? what does that mean?]

4. We have already powers to strip citizenship from those individuals with British or dual nationality who act in a way that is contrary to the interests of this country. We will now consult on extending these powers, applying them to naturalised citizens engaged in extremism and making the procedures simpler and more effective. [drip ... drip ... drip ... can you hear Alberto Gonzales drooling?]

[...]

6. We are already examining a new court procedure which would allow a pre-trial process. We will also examine whether the necessary procedure can be brought about to give us a way of meeting the police and security service request that detention pre-charge of terrorist suspects be significantly extended. [Gitmo, anybody?]

7. For those who are British nationals and who cannot be deported, we will extend the use of control orders. Any breach can mean imprisonment.

And on and on . . .

Scientists: George W. Bush has a small penis (maybe?)

2005-08-05T09:29:00.000-04:00

Now I tend to refrain from leveling such personal attacks against political figures, even those I disagree with, but I can't argue with science. Read here how "Men whose masculinity is challenged become more inclined to support war or buy an SUV, a new study finds."

Cornell University researcher Robb Willer used a survey to sample undergraduates. Participants were randomly assigned feedback that indicated their responses were either masculine of feminine.

The women had no discernable reaction to either type of feedback in a follow-up survey. But the guys' reactions were "strongly affected," Willer said today.

"I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq war more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle," said Willer said. "There were no increases [in desire] for other types of cars."

Like I said, you can't fuck with science.

Stiff Upper Lip?

2005-08-03T10:21:00.000-04:00

So all we heard about after the July 7 bombings in the London subway and bus system was how stoic the response was by Londoners, the stiff upper lip and "life must go on" attitude and all that. Well, that wasn't the only response of course.

Figures released by London police on Tuesday showed crimes motivated by religious hatred had increased by nearly 600 percent since the July 7 London bombings.

Metropolitan Police said they had received 269 reports of religious hatred crimes - including verbal and physical attacks and criminal damage to property including mosques - since the bombings which killed 52 in London on July 7.

This was compared to 40 similar crimes in the same three and a half week period last year.

In the three days immediately after the attacks, which are believed to have been carried out by three young Britons from Muslim Pakistani families and a fourth man who moved from Jamaica as a child, there were 68 religious hate crimes reported in London, compared to none in the same period last year.

Good job, England. Of course, Tom Friedman would have us believe it's because not enough British Muslims spoke out to condemn terrorism.

The revolution will be televised (and copyrighted)

2005-08-03T09:52:00.000-04:00

It's a business plan par excellence. U.S. pseudo-NGOs invest in the marketing or a revolution. The revolution takes off. The son of the leader of the revolution copyrights the revolutionary symbols. Everybody wins, right? (some just win more than others)

The symbols of Ukraine's orange revolution last year have been registered as profitable trademarks in the name of the eldest son of the revolution's leader, Viktor Yushchenko.

Crowds protesting over the fraudulent presidential elections of November last year were decorated with a series of opposition logos, including the Tak! logo (Yes! in Ukrainian) and a downward-facing horseshoe. The logos were predominantly on backgrounds of orange - the colour of the opposition.

Mykola Katerinchuk, a former legal adviser to the Yushchenko campaign and now a senior tax official, said he had personally transferred the copyright to Andriy Yushchenko, the president's 19-year-old son, after the third and final round of elections in December. Questions are now being asked as to how much money these highly popular logos have generated for the Yushchenko family.

If somebody somewhere casts a ballot, that's democracy, though, right? Viva la revolucion!
[Adriy Yushchenko counts his money]

On the architecture and logic of Separation

2005-07-28T10:18:00.000-04:00

Esther Zangberg writes in Ha'aretz on an architectural exhibition that is focusing on the phenomenon of "separation" -- the most notable symbol of which is the Israeli separation wall through the West Bank, but whose logic has taken root within Israel as well. The answer to problems becomes not to solve them but to "separate" from them -- that is, to erect a structure that makes it easier to ignore them.

There are the apartheid walls between Caesarea and Jisr al-Zarka and between Nir Zvi and the Arab neighborhood of Pardes Snir in Lod; the architectural monstrosity of the Carmel Beach Towers in Haifa, which stick up like a raised fist opposite the distressed neighborhood of Neveh David; the threatening wall surrounding the luxury residential Holyland neighborhood in Jerusalem; and several other sites.

Separation seems to have spread everywhere. It is as if it builds itself and has become part of Israel's urban and rural landscape, and is even decorated with aesthetic camouflage - whether in Haifa, Arsuf, Jaffa, Modi'in, Lod, Ramle, Be'er Sheva, in the closed and secured residential neighborhoods of the wealthy, in mixed cities, in distressed neighborhoods that are sometimes turned into closed ghettos, or education buildings and other public buildings protecting themselves from strangers.

The separation plague has even attacked the already separate Tel Aviv bubble. Although Tel Aviv is not participating in the exhibition, it is impossible not to wonder at the fences being built around the green stretches along the city's boulevards and the expropriation of another chunk of public space and the semblance of urban normalcy.

Certainly one could not venture to say that this is a phenomenon unique to Israel. But one can hardly dismiss the fact that the top political levels of Israel have decided that the most complex and important conflict facing the state (that would be the occupation of the Palestinian territories) should be solved by building walls and fences, behind which those "problems" can "solve themselves."

WaPo, Blogosphere, Hillary, Monsoon, etc.

2005-07-27T09:31:00.000-04:00

I am reading on the Washington Post website that the liberal blogosphere erupted after Hillary Clinton gave some speech where she called for an "ideological cease-fire" (quoting the Post as I don't have the speech text and can't be bothered to look it up). Seriously, if anybody thought that Hillary Clinton was some savior of the left in this country I think they were asking to be disappointed.

Meanwhile, the Guardian world section leads with over 100 deaths resulting from a monsoon in India. The article doesn't merit a mention on the Washington Post site (as of 9:30 am), neither the front page nor the World News section. Good job Washington Post.

On the London Bombings

2005-07-08T10:12:00.000-04:00

There is a piece by James Meek in the Guardian. It's not about how the civilized world can better combat terrorism. It's not about attacks on "our way of life" or "our values." It's just a thoughtful look at a tragic event. And for that, I appreciate it more than anything else. Here's the link.

Also, I'll be going to Rome next week and the beginning of the week after that, so I won't be doing any blogging.

The "Demographic Threat"

2005-07-06T13:18:00.000-04:00

It's always nice when somebody with a good head on his or her shoulders says something reasonable about the "demographic situation" in Israel/Palestine (a topic that is too often dominated by loud-mouth racists or those who cannot seem to break out of the racist construct that frames the discussion). Salim Tamari is that somebody and his short essay on the Bitter Lemons website is that reasonable statement. Tamari writes:

The fact is that high fertility, despite appearances, has little to do with nationalism or ideological struggles. Only in the literary imagination of zealots do people procreate for the nation. High fertility is rather rooted in the perception of children as an economic and social asset, especially in agrarian societies. Demographic nationalism is often added later as an explanation for such mundane factors. Conversely the two main factors leading to dramatic falls in fertility have been women's education and female employment outside the household.

Adding:

The assumption, held by many Palestinians, that eventually "we will overwhelm them with numbers" could be a self-defeating strategy. Except for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have made a dubious dent in the demographic balance, the high fertility of Palestinian families is more of a threat to Palestinians than to Israelis, since it contributes to large undereducated households, keeps women in conditions of virtual servitude, and contributes to poverty and ignorance.

Let's face it -- whether the population from the river and the sea (as they like to say) is 49% Jewish and 51% or Arab or the opposite should make no difference if we are to accept universal human and civil rights. The majority has no more right to subjugate and oppress the minority than does the minority to treat the majority similarly.

(Thanks, Amanda, for alerting me to this essay.)

2005-07-05T09:29:00.001-04:00

Italian landscape, July, Monterotondo. (photo by my dad)

2005-07-05T09:29:00.000-04:00

Sedum hispanicum, butterfly. (photo by my dad)

L.A. 8 in L.A. Times

2005-06-30T10:25:00.000-04:00

There is a very interesting two-part article about the so-called "L.A. 8" by Peter H. King in the Los Angeles Times. From part one:

Shehadeh was told that he belonged to a terrorist organization and was under arrest. They handcuffed him and led him outside. A police helicopter wheeled low over the house, and that is when the thought clicked: He had witnessed this scene before.

"The raid on my house in Long Beach," he said, "looked exactly like the raids in the West Bank: early-morning raids, with helicopters and guns and police and uniforms. Taken away in a hazy dawn, you know. Except this was happening in America."

From part two:

"An alien unlawfully in this country," [U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia] declared, "has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation." Moreover, the government "should not have to disclose its 'real' reasons for deeming nationals of a particular country a special threat — or indeed for simply wishing to antagonize a particular foreign country by focusing on that country's nationals."

In the aftermath of 9/11, this has meant that federal investigators can target specific immigrant communities, detaining or deporting anyone found to have overstayed a visa or otherwise run afoul of immigration fine print — without fear of facing a selective-prosecution challenge in court. "As a result," warns David D. Cole, another L.A. 8 lawyer who came to the case, pro bono, through the Center for Constitutional Rights, "Arab and Muslim foreign nationals with any possible immigration problem are well advised to do nothing — such as speaking out, demonstrating or joining political associations — that might bring them to the attention of the federal government."

2005-06-27T09:26:00.000-04:00

A veiled lady in marble, Palazzo Barberini, Rome. (photo by my dad)

A perfect parking space for the peace process

2005-06-24T10:03:00.000-04:00

Daniel Levy has a depressing, but accurate in my view, take on the Gaza disengagement plan in today's Ha'aretz. He calls his piece "after Gaza, more Gaza" -- basically illustrating the way in which the refusal to deal with any of the serious issues stemming from the Gaza disengagement (some previously mentioned here) by Sharon has set up an opportunity for the "disengagement" to continue ad infinitum even after the settlers have been evacuated.

The Gaza and northern West Bank disengagement is complicated, very complicated. It throws up a host of issues that are only now being addressed and coordinated with the Palestinian Authority, despite the 18 months of lead time. These are weighty and important issues: ensuring the free flow of goods between Gaza and external markets, Gaza and the West Bank, and Gaza and Israel; arrangements for the border crossings between Gaza and Egypt, the Philadelphi route, as well as the territorial link between Gaza and the West Bank; defining the legal status of post-withdrawal Gaza; access of Gazan laborers to Israel - and the list goes on.

Having started (intentionally?) dealing with these issues so late, they will never be resolved in the 53 remaining days. A committee is needed, and not just one committee but a steering committee with many sub-committees. Its work can take weeks, months, perhaps even years. You want a peace process after Gaza, you got it. Israelis and Palestinians will meet, in hotels, in European capitals, over hummus, over croissants. "After Gaza, more Gaza."

The tactic is politically convenient. It can provide the glue for maintaining the governing coalition and avoid elections; it muzzles any prospective Israeli opposition and public debate on what comes next; it defers more concerted international engagement, and may even catch the Palestinian leadership off balance. A perfect parking space for the peace process. The tactic gives Sharon his desired time-out from any serious political process or the need to tackle the difficult questions for which he either has no answers or risks being exposed as the unreasonable naysayer.

It fits perfectly with Sharon's history of manipulating the "peace process" to avoid dealing with both the Palestinian question and with domestic considerations. You can't bail on him in the middle of a crisis can you? And what is more of a crisis than the Gaza disengagement, which involves the Palestinians, the settlers, border issues, etc. And so the Palestinian fears of "Gaza first and Gaza last" may be replaced with "Gaza first and Gaza forever." And the U.S., of course, will insist that it can't rush Israel in the process of making painful concessions. And the longer it takes, the more Gaza becomes a powderkeg, the more attacks from Palestinians there will be, the more the Israeli and U.S. governments and right-wing echo chambers will clamor about how "this is what happens when you give the Palestinians anything (land, territorial control, etc.), when you try to appease terrorists" and on and on and all the same old bullshit.

Supreme Court Decision and Radio Show

2005-06-23T13:28:00.000-04:00

I must say I'm a bit taken aback by the Supreme Court decision allowing local governments to seize people's homes so that the property can be used as part of private development initiatives. It just seems so ... (dare I say it?)... un-American! Ha! No, rather, I just think that it seems absolutely an affront to private property rights. I am a bit suspicious to begin with of the government being able to take private property for use in state projects, but that's something I'm willing to live with. But this just seems so purely and simply against the individual property owner. Sandra Day O'Conner put it nicely in her dissenting opinion.

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

Once again The Man steps all over the little guy.

In other news, you might want to listen to the radio show that I do with my friend David tonight, 10 pm to 12 midnight (EST), on WMUC. You can tune in here, view previous playlists here, and even download the show and listen to it after the fact here (click or download the files titled "Terrapin_Sexxxpress_2200.mp3" and "Terrapin_Sexxxpress_2300.mp3" -- you can listen to last week's show if you click on those same files before the show tonight)

Avi Shlaim in the Guardian

2005-06-22T10:13:00.000-04:00

Oxford historian Avi Shlaim holds back no scorn in his op-ed in the Guardian regarding Condoleezza Rice's visit to the Middle East, specifically with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here's how he starts off:

Condoleezza Rice hailed the understanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the need to destroy the homes of the 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza as a historic step on the road to peace. This is a fatuous statement by one of the most vacuous US secretaries of state of the postwar era.

Tell us how you really feel, Avi! Definitely a spirited read. I love it.

HRW Report

2005-06-22T10:02:00.000-04:00

Here is the link, as promised, to the Human Rights Watch report on Israeli military "investigations" (and the lack thereof).

Global warming and Bush

2005-06-21T14:42:00.000-04:00

I must say that I really enjoyed reading the recent three-part series on climate change in the New Yorker over the past couple months (unfortunately the articles aren't up online -- they may have been at one time when the articles first came out, but the New Yorkers certainly arrives faster than I can read it, so who knows). The articles reiterated the scientific evidence for human involvement in climate change and convinced me at least that global warming is a serious problem and we better start taking it seriously (as a nation, seeing as how the U.S. is by far the greatest producer in the world of greenhouse emissions) and very soon if we want to avoid potentially disastrous climate changes in the future. Here is an online interview with Elizabeth Kolbert, the author of the three articles, on the New Yorker website. Here also is an article from the Christian Science Monitor regarding a leaked document that is illustrative of the Bush administration's refusal to let science stand in the way of business.

The documents show that Washington officials:

# Removed all reference to the fact that climate change is a 'serious threat to human health and to ecosystems';

# Deleted any suggestion that global warming has already started;

# Expunged any suggestion that human activity was to blame for climate change.

Among the sentences removed was the following: 'Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans.'

But wait, you'll say, this may just indicate a reasonable skepticism of the science on the part of the Bush administration, that has absolutely nothing to do with business, so why did you bring that up?

News of the leaked documents comes the week after Exxon Mobil announced that Peter Cooney, chief of staff of the Bush administration's Council on Environmental Quality, would soon resign his position with the White House and work for Exxon.

Although Mr. Cooney said the move had been long planned, it came to light two days after The New York Times and the Government Accountability Project reported that he had "made changes [during final editing] in several government climate change reports that were issued in 2002 and 2003." The changes "consistently played down the certainty of the science surrounding climate change."

And so the refrain of the Bush administration ("Fuck your kids, fuck your future, we're going to make some money now so just sit down and shut up") is sung out once again, loud and clear in a belting tenor.