October 31, 2007
Just in case you were starting to feel optimistic about the human race, the following post will quickly dispel those feelings. Conspiracy theorists have long produced their paranoid exposés about global domination by some nefarious organization, be it the oil industry or, of course, the Jews. The internet has provided them with a convenient forum, and conspiracy theorists develop a synergy with one another, feeding off other paranoid individuals.
This post deals with one such conspiracy theory. (hat tip: lgude) If it had stayed in the perverse little universe of anti-globalization and anti-Semitic blogs, I would not waste my or your time on the issue. However, the theory, though it is inconceivable to the point of being ridiculous, has made its way into two major media outlets. Their adoption of the theory is another example of their ideology leading them away from what can be considered even remotely respectable journalism. But that makes the theory dangerous.
The conspiracy theory in question answers, in its proponents minds, questions about the 2004 tsunami that killed over 200,000 people, primarily in Indonesia and India. The theory has its usual villains- George Bush, Dick Cheney, the CIA…and the Zionists. It goes along these lines — George Bush, primarily because he is evil, but also to aid his war effort in Iraq, ordered U.S. forces to detonate a nuclear device in the Sumatra trench in the Indian Ocean as a catalyst for the tsunami. Each theorist has his/her own variation. Let us take a journey to the twilight zone that is the paranoid left’s blogosphere:
On his blog, “24 Hours to Live“, Sarge writes-
Here’s an interesting scenario to nibble on: The Bush junta is tired of explaining itself to the media. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice are sick of the liberals in this country pointing out how many American lives are being lost in Iraq… so……Bush and his cronies devise a cunning and dastardly plan. In order to take people’s minds off of Iraq why not create a natural disaster? We’ve done underwater nuclear weapons tests before (see Bikini Atoll) and they have a significant seismic effect. Is it then possible that the Bush regime detonated a large nuclear device on the ocean floor off the coast of Indonesia? After all, a natural disaster of these proportions certainly takes your mind off Iraq…
With Bush and his cronies calling the shots anything is possible…
I see…Bush (whose powers rival God’s, apparently) created a natural disaster to distract us from Iraq. Since the tsunami took peoples’ minds off Iraq, then it is within the realm of possibility. I accidentally whacked my thumb with a hammer while banging a nail into a board last week, and for a few minutes of excruciating pain, I definitely was not thinking about Iraq. Were Bush and his cronies behind it? Anything is possible…
Joe Vialls introduces the anti-Semitic element that was so lacking on Sarge’s blog. Vialls theory blames ‘New York’, specifically Wall Street. They control John Howard, he says, which he presumes to be able to prove based on Howard’s actions.
Only Little Johnny knew, and of course his trusty crystal ball in New York. To hell with Sri Lanka, his bosses wanted a main base for the huge reconstruction contracts in Asia, designed to replace the failed oil theft and reconstruction in Iraq, and keep poor old Zion on its tottering New York legs for a few more weeks or months.
In the end, what the hell did it matter how many Goyim had to die? And, hey, on the credit side they’d already managed to kill more than 100,00 Muslims in Sumatra with a single tidal wave, which was partial payback for their own resounding defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq..For the Zionist Cabal, obtaining a thermonuclear weapon in America is no great trick, especially when we have the precedent of 100 small ‘decommissioned’ air-to-air atomic warheads being smuggled out the Pentagon’s (civilian) back door, to form the core of the Jewish State’s current nuclear arsenal. Once a weapon system is out date and out of service, loyal uniformed US military personnel can no longer track it.
India Daily introduces the next prerequisite for a good conspiracy theory, UFOs-
Recent alien contacts have been reported with the South Asian Governments especially India. UFO sightings have been rampant over the region affected. Some in Nicobar Island say that it was an experiment conducted by the alien extra-terrestrial entities to correct the wobbly rotation of the earth. And some of the Indian scientists are actually seeing that wobbly rotation of the earth has been corrected since the massive underwater earthquake and tsunami.
The Pagan Prattle has compiled an archive of tsunami conspiracy links.
Ok, we’ve had our fun. Lonely bloggers typing up drivel in their mothers’ basements should cause us to shake our heads sadly, nothing more. We understand how ridiculous the theory is, but it should not surprise us that it exists.
What also might not surprise, but should definitely alarm, is the echoing of these theories in Arab media. This is no longer a joking matter. Are they really that out of touch with reality? Or will they use any chance to smear America, Israel, and the West in order to incite the Arab public against them? Cybercast News Service reports:
The Egyptian nationalist weekly Al-Usbu’ accused the U.S., Israel and India of carrying out nuclear testing that may have cased the tsunami. Those nations were testing “how to liquidate humanity,” the newspaper said.
“Was [the earthquake] caused by American, Israeli, and Indian nuclear testing on ‘the day of horror?’ Why did the ‘Ring of Fire’ explode?” Mahmoud Bakri asked in his “investigative” piece published in the weekly on January 1.
“According to researchers’ estimates, there are two possible [explanations] for what happened. The first is a natural, divine move, because the region is in the ‘Ring of Fire,’ a region subject to this destructive type of earthquakes,” Bakri wrote according to a translation of the article provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute on Friday.
“The second possibility is that it was some kind of human intervention that destabilized the tectonic plates, an intervention that is caused only in nuclear experiments and explosions,” he said…
Al-Jazeera.com reports that many point the “finger of blame,” not at Mother nature, but at “government cover-ups, top secret military testing in the waters of the Indian Ocean and even aliens attempting to correct Earth’s ‘wobbly’ rotation.”
But the most popular theory, it says, is that the Indian and U.S. military are the “main cause of the disaster by testing eco-weapons, which use electromagnetic waves, thus triggering off earthquakes.”
That is the Arab media. They operate under different rules than the Western media, and they have reported on more fanciful theories. Major Western media networks would not treat such a theory seriously. Or would they?
The BBC treats the issue as worthy of serious debate:
Why did US base escape tsunami?
Following the tsunami, conspiracy rumours have been circulating on the internet of how the US base at Diego Garcia managed to avoid casualties while other islands suffered huge losses.
The US Navy’s official Diego Garcia website said the island wasn’t hit by the devastating tsunami because it is surrounded by deep waters and the grade of its shores does not allow for tsunamis to build before hitting land.
The site said the earthquake generated a tidal surge on the island estimated at six feet.
Is America a power for good or ill in the world? Was there a malign hand at work, or has America’s role in the crisis in fact been a model of humanitarian leadership.
Let us know what you think. Is this just anti-US sentiment on the web or something more worrying?
It is something more worrying. It is profoundly worrying that the BBC even asks the question. But, alas, it is not terribly surprising.
October 29, 2007
The following article, from Worldnet Daily, gives us a picture of the world that Islamic fundamentalists envision. While some might not mourn the removal of Madonna and Britney Spears from the airwaves, Islamist zeal and eagerness to resort to violence to ‘protect’ Islam brings us into another world where, when in doubt about how to protect decency… try murder.
Interestingly, celebrity gossip site TMZ.com published an article on the same topic on September 11th. TMZ readers failed to catch the moral precision displayed by the website in providing an approachable example of the same ideology that brought about the attacks on 9/11. Many remarked that it was cheap and inappropriate to cover this on 9/11. And some readers thought that it was a joke, a sort of 9/11 prank by TMZ. Apparently folks who spend a lot of time reading gossip about the glitterati cannot comprehend that there are people in the world who believe in such violence. Unfortunately, such naïveté has some potentially disastrous, and definitely not comic, consequences.
Terrorists: We’ll cut off head of ‘prostitute’ Britney Spears
Madonna also targeted by jihad leaders who warn of ’spreading satanic culture’
Muslim terrorist leaders threatened to forcibly convert Britney Spears and Madonna to Islam and warned if they resist, their heads would be cut off for “spreading Satanic culture,” according to a new book released today.
Britney Spears and Madonna in their famous 2003 kiss
The threats, recorded on audio, come as Madonna is due to arrive in Israel Wednesday to celebrate the Jewish new year with fellow Kabbalah practitioners.
“If I meet these whores I will have the honor – I repeat, I will have the honor – to be the first one to cut the heads off Madonna and Britney Spears if they will keep spreading their satanic culture against Islam,” said Muhammad Abdel-Al, spokesman and senior leader of the Popular Resistance Committees terror organization.
The Committees, largely based in the Gaza Strip, has carried out thousands of rocket attacks against Jewish population centers and scores of shootings and bombings. It is suspected of bombing a U.S. convoy in Gaza in 2003 and took credit for a rocket attack yesterday that hit an Israeli military base wounding 69 – the largest casualty number of any Palestinian rocket attack.
Abdel-Al and other terror leaders were quoted threatening Madonna and Spears in Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans – to a Jew!, by author and WND Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein.
Audio of their threats was played today by TMZ.com’s new national entertainment television show and its website.
In “Schmoozing,” the jihadist leaders were petitioned to describe what life would be like if the terrorists took over the U.S. and imposed Islamic Sharia law.
They were asked what they thought of specific American cultural icons and personalities, but many state they never heard of scores of notorious U.S. celebrities they were asked about.
According to Klein, many terrorists interviewed were familiar with two U.S. celebrities – Madonna and Spears.
“Unfortunately, I heard the names of Madonna and Spears on [Arab] television when parents complain that their children neglect their studies and their values because they are influenced by your cheap American music that you call culture,” explained Sheikh Abu Saqer, a founder of the Sword of Islam terror group.
The Sword of Islam has taken responsibility in Gaza for bombings of Internet cafes, pool halls and secular music stores, and is suspected of attacking a United Nations–funded school in Gaza accused of allowing girls and boys to play sports together.
Abu Abdullah, a senior member of Hamas’ so-called “military wing” is quoted in “Schmoozing” describing what his group would do with Madonna and Spears if jihad groups took over the U.S.: “At the beginning, we will try to convince Madonna and Britney Spears to follow Allah’s way.”
But I honestly don’t think they will follow. If they persist with their whoring music, we will prevent them by force. I don’t think that I can be in the same place with these singers. They might be killed if they do not respect our laws.”
The Committees’ Abdel-Al accused Madonna and Spears of “spreading this culture by the Americans as part of the war against Islam.”
“If these two prostitutes [Madonna and Spears] keep doing what they are doing, we of course will punish them. First we will call them to join Islam.
This is the Dawah, meaning ’summons’ or ‘call’. In the Koran, Sura An-Nahl 16:125 states “Invite (all) to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious.” This must be done before using force against infidels. When Bin Laden calls on Americans to convert, he is using Dawah as a prerequisite to Jihadi violence.
But if they keep what they are doing … we can stone them or even we can kill them if they keep … tempting men in order to put them far from Islam. … A prostitute woman must be stoned or must be eighty times hit with a belt.”
Abdel-Al said even before Islam takes over America he would personally kill Madonna and Spears if he ran into them. He boasted he would “be the first one to cut the heads of Madonna and Britney Spears.”
I guess that’s what you call the iron fist in the velvet glove… the proverbial offer you can’t refuse. Hello out there, Paul Krugman, are you listening?
While this site does not support a particular presidential candidate, the following article from National Review Online is an interesting insight into the manner in which proponents of Jihadi totalitarianism relate to American democracy. They try to manipulate it to serve their own goals, often through our media. Here, it seems that they are under the impression that their comments will help their candidate of choice. The absurd reality that is created in the dysfunctional conjunction between the terrorist leaders and liberal democracy is elucidated when they speak of harming a presidential candidate whose views they do not share.
Terrorists Prefer Hillary
And they’d rather see Rudy dead than president.
By Deroy Murdock
Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is gaining fans, even on the West Bank.
“I hope Hillary is elected in order to have the occasion to carry out all the promises she is giving regarding Iraq,” said Ala Senakreh, West Bank chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian terror group. “I hope also she will maintain her husband’s policies regarding Palestine and even develop that policy. President Clinton wanted to give the Palestinians 98 percent of the West Bank territories. I hope Hillary will move a step forward and will give the Palestinians all their rights. She has the chance to save the American nation and the Americans’ life.”
Senakreh and other top Islamo-fascists want Hillary in the Oval Office. These mass murders also have “gone negative.” They want GOP contender Rudy Giuliani dead.
“We see Hillary and other candidates are competing on who will withdraw from Iraq and who is guilty of supporting the Iraqi invasion,” said Abu Jihad, an Al Aqsa leader in Nablus. “This is a moment of glory for the revolutionary movements in the Arab world in general and for the Iraqi resistance movement specifically.”
Al Aqsa’s man in the northern West Bank, Nasser Abu Aziz, considered it “very good” that there are “voices like Hillary and others who are now attacking the Iraq invasion.”
Islamic Jihad’s Abu Ayman felt “emboldened” by Clinton’s demands that America retreat from Iraq. He said: “It is clear that it is the resistance operations of the mujahideen that have brought about these calls for withdrawal.”
“All Americans must vote Democrat,” insisted Jihad Jaara, an exiled Al Aqsa agent who commanded 2002’s siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.
Since 1995, these terrorists’ organizations have killed an estimated 162 and wounded 368 others in Israel. Aaron Klein, an Orthodox Jew who is WorldNetDaily.com’s Jerusalem bureau chief, interviewed some three dozen leading Muslim fanatics, including those quoted here. His new book, Schmoozing with Terrorists, details these chilling encounters with violent Islamic extremists in Israel’s Palestinian territories.
Klein boldly goes where few journalists have gone before. For one typical interview, he traverses an Israeli border checkpoint, takes a local Palestinian taxi to central Jenin, then waits for a white Ford Escort without license plates to whisk him to an apartment complex at the end of an alley. He then meets Islamic Jihad’s Abu Ahmed. After several minutes, Klein asks: “So, if after today’s meeting, you saw me in a café in Jerusalem that you were sent to attack, you’d still try to blow it up?”
“I will not hesitate to blow you up,” Ahmed responds. “Meanwhile, and before I drive you to Hell in an operation, enjoy your tea and our hospitality.”
Why do these hardened butchers have a soft spot for Hillary Clinton? Perhaps because the New York Democrat is soft on terrorism.
These terrorists’ love for Hillary mirrors their hatred for her leading GOP rival, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
“If I had the occasion to meet him I would hurt him,” said Ramadan Adassi, a West Bank Al Aqsa leader. “For the sake of the American people, Giuliani shouldn’t be elected. He is a disgusting guy, and I think Americans must think very hard about their future and their soldiers who will be killed when they come to elect their leaders.”
“Giuliani doesn’t deserve to live or even to be mentioned,” said Al Aqsa’s Ala Senakreh. “He hates Palestinians and we hate him.”
Al Aqsa’s Abu Hamed said Giuliani “can hate Arafat and the Palestinians, but he knows that nobody is hated in the world more than his leadership, his party, his president, and his Zionist friends.”
Why the hard feelings? Perhaps because Giuliani has snipped terrorists’ bomb wires for 31 years. “I don’t believe Americans should base their votes entirely on what the terrorists think,” Aaron Klein says from Jerusalem, “but it’s certainly telling that our enemies are rooting for the Democrats, particularly Hillary.” He adds: “The theme from all those interviewed in the book, about 35, and those I have talked with for my reporting the past few years, which adds many more, is the same: They favor the Democrats and believe the liberal ideology is their road to victory.”
As the War on Terror continues, Americans should study our foes’ political preferences — and then pull the lever the other way.
Closing comment by RL:
Well, I wouldn’t be so blunt. But it would be worthwhile if people who are voting democratic to get us out of Iraq would pause a few moments to think about why these folks are rooting for the Democrats. Is that, at heart, they’re true progressives and want a kind leader for America so they can finally respond in kind? Or is it because
This is a moment of glory for the revolutionary movements in the Arab world in general and for the Iraqi resistance movement specifically.”
Which means, leave Iraq, and they’ll follow you home.
As requested by Anat, here is Sophia’s comment to my post on the Oxford Untion, turned into a post. Her comments in bold, mine in italics.
Why isn’t this just the same old Europe, with its apparently endless and irrational problem with Jews? It’s wearing a new face now, is all.
As the French say, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Not only do we have a Europe reveling in Judeophobia, but one that seems determined to destroy its civilization. Apparently WWI and II (or, the “Thirty Years’ War”) were not enough to figure out that Europeans, for all their vaunted “maturity” can’t take care of themselves. Only this time, I doubt the US will come to their aid. At least the last two times they let war-mongering and fascism take over, they didn’t accompany their folly with furious anti-Americanism.
And, how many problems in the Middle East are directly related to antisemitic European propaganda that began filtering into the East in 1920 at the latest?
Don’t forget the 1840 Damascus blood libel. But don’t get carried away in this vein. The Middle East has been a deeply troubled region long before the Jews arrived: Hama rules were not invented recently.
Mein Kampf is still a best seller there and so are “The Protocols.” That they’ve found a willing audience there is tragic but they did originate in Europe; how much of the strife between Arabs and Jews has been incited by interested parties in the West, parties who realize a calm, united Middle East might actually become a rich and powerful international group and therefore a threat?
I actually don’t think the Europeans fear that. It wouldn’t occur to them. (I may be wrong.) I think the European mischief in the Middle East is largely the product of the appeal of Arabs as proxy anti-Semites in a post-Holocaust world where it’s not politically correct for Europeans to express those sentiments openly. Ironically, the Palestinians constantly complain that they’ve been forced to pay for the Europeans’ sins of the Holocaust, when they are primarily the victims of their (willing) seduction into the role of the carriers of the deadly virus of anti-Semitism. Like the Spanish in the 16th century, they kicked out their Jews, and the wealth they have has washed through their societies leaving the people impoverished and the elites immeasurably corrupt.
On the other hand, that may be too kind. As Andrew Boston argues cogently and with much material to support his case (contra Bernard Lewis), Islamic anti-Semitism has its own autonomous sources.
And how much of the conflict in the Middle East is driven by industrialist/nationalist desire to keep oil prices high? I’d bet a lot; Gary Kasparov, who is running against Putin in Russia, makes the same point in relation to Putin’s otherwise absurd defense of the indefensible - Ahmadijenad. Similarly the Soviets sought a Middle Eastern partner in Egypt, Libya, Syria and PLO and the people there got trapped in the middle. One of the biggest assets Russia has are its oil resources; combine that with a huge footprint in the Middle East and Central Asia and the global balance of power shifts dramatically; it’s the Great Game in Action, 2007 version, and Israel, with its futuristic, multicultural voice and independence, and its possibility of leading a modern Middle East, is obviously a challenge. Middle Eastern warfare and conflict, though, maintains the status quo.
It’s maddening, in the fact of looming environmental disaster, that this should be so. One of the few countries in the world that has shown what can be done in a difficult environment is Israel; it’s cutting edge - yet one British politician blamed Israel for deflecting attention from global warming due to “the occupation!”
What’s the link to this? What a great case of… I don’t think we have a word yet for this kind of idiocy. First you (the Brits, the French, the “left,” etc) become obsessed with “the occupation” to the point where you can’t even see the tragedies that are really happening, and then you blame Israel for distracting you.
And, have any of you read some of the English intellectuals from the 1930’s? Even brilliant artists like Lawrence Durrell were viciously antisemitic. It was usual; it was the voice of the British upper classes and her intelligentsia - when he and Henry Miller couldn’t find a publisher for their work, though, they turned to a Jew - whom they continued to denigrate for his identity even as he put them on the international map.
Sartre did the same thing with his Jewish admirers (and lovers) when the Nazis came. It’s similar to the way Europeans treat the US today.
The role of the British in the Middle East, the Palestine Mandate and during the 1947-1948 wars and the Wars of Attrition, up until the Suez Crisis, is abominable and little understood. We in America think of Britain in glowing, idealistic and almost patriotic terms but a closer reading of modern history, certainly vis a vis “The Great Game” in Central Asia, even WWI in Turkey and definitely in relation to the Jews both in the Yishuv and those trying to flee the Holocaust, and Europe in the wake of the Holocaust, will show a different face - the face of the Britain our national forefathers fought to escape.
So the English, like the French with their behavior in Algeria and Indochina, have much to repent for, indeed good reason to be highly self-critical of their own culture. And yet their way of handling that guilt is to a) welcome Muslims to prove they’re no longer the racist, imperialists they once were, and b) dump on Israel for reminding them of their colonial past. Will there be historians in the mid-twentieth century to wonder at this folly, or merely triumphant Islamists presiding over a ruined world?
Britain didn’t even recognize Eretz Israel for nine months, drew the disastrous borders of the modern M.E. including the catastrophically divided Iraq, gave “Jordan” to a Hashemite prince and, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, recognized and endorsed the annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Jordan in the wake of the war with Israel. This of course included the complete and deliberate expulsion of the Jewish people from those regions as it extinguished the hopes of Palestinian nationalists - and also placed the holiest sites in Jewish history beyond even the reach even of worshippers.
It’s hard to be a Chosen People wannabe when the real Chosen People are still around.
October 28, 2007
I have argued repeatedly that Antizionism acts in the 21st century as a form of cultural auto-immune deficiency syndrome. By appealing to the moral Schadenfreude that anti-Zionism seems to offer (especially) to the Europeans, it makes it virtually impossible for the consumer of this discourse to identify and defend against their real enemy: global Jihad. It’s so much fun to see the Israelis as cruel colonizing oppressors of a plucky Palestinian national liberation movement (PCP2), that acknowledging the forces of global Jihad behind the secular (Marxist) facade, would just spoil the fun.
After all, if you admit that the Israelis are fighting a monstrous and implacable enemy that has genocidal intentions, how could you dump on them so vigorously for defending themselves? Definitely no fun.
So, like a fat man with a (bad) cholesterol count of over 300, Europeans, addicted to their anti-Zionist bacon cheeseburgers and their anti-American truffles, just keep wolfing down the poison cause it feels so good. In the meantime, they deligitimize the very discourse that could enable them to deal with the real threat they face.
Now, from Alan Dershowitz,we have evidence that, rather than “growing up” and learning to discipline themselves, the Oxford can’t stop. Indeed, (to paraphrase Richard Burton/Henry VIII’s line from Anne of a Thousand Days), “all the world is an anti-Zionist trough and we eat from one end to the other.” Alas poor Europe, I knew it well… or thought I did.
October 21 2007; 09:10AM
Double Standard Watch: Oxford Union is dead
Posted by Alan Dershowitz | Comments: 50
This is an obituary for the Oxford Union, which claims to be one of the most famous and distinguished debating societies in the world. The reality is that it is no longer a debating society at all; it has become a propaganda platform for extremist views, primarily of the hard-left. It has now stopped even pretending to present both sides of controversial issues. To be sure, it puts forward a façade of balance, by presenting speakers who purport to represent both sides of an issue. But the Oxford Union has become a Potemkin village where a façade of fairness serves as a cover for the reality of bias. Consider for example a debate that is scheduled to take place at the Oxford Union on October, 23 2007 at 8:30pm. The proposition before the house is as follows: “This house believes that One State is the Only Solution to the Israel-Palestine Conflict”
Every rational person knows that the so-called one-state solution is simply a way of achieving by demography what the Arab world has failed to achieve by military attacks: namely the destruction of Israel as a democratic, secular, Jewish state. A one-state solution would produce yet another Islamic fundamentalist state in place of the secular democracy that is now Israel. The resolution is simply another way of presenting an anti-Israel side (the one-state solution) and a pro-Israel side (the two-state solution). Not surprisingly, the three debaters on the anti-Israel side are three well-known anti-Israel extremists. No problem there, because the one state side is the anti-Israel side. As Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of the new republic put it: “A bi-national state is not the alternative for Israel. It is an alternative to Israel.”
Now let’s turn to the pro-Israel side. One of three speakers on the pro-Israel side is Peter Tatchell who is a member of the gay rights group called Out Rage! and of the extreme left-wing of the green party. He too is virulently anti-Israel and favors boycotts of the “the oppressive Israel state.” Yet the Oxford Union picked him to represent the pro Israel side, probably because he once opposed boycotting a gay rights march in Israel. I couldn’t find any record of Tatchell proposing boycotts of “oppressive” Muslim states, even those that execute gays. And he’s the pro-Israel advocate!
Yet compared to the next debater for the pro Israel side, Tatchell sounds like David Ben Gurion. Readers of this article will probably not believe it when I tell them who else was picked to represent the pro-Israel side by the benighted Oxford Union (after I turned down an invitation because of the “when did you stop beating your wife” terms of the debate and my proposed teammates). The pro-Israel debater is none other than the notorious Norman Finkelstein, an anti-Semitic bigot who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, saying “[I] can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison with the Gestapo.” This failed academic, who was fired from several universities for sub-standard scholarship, emotional instability and abusing students who disagreed with his extreme anti-Israel views, was recently denied tenure and fired by DePaul University. Finkelstein is beloved by Neo-Nazis such as Ernst Zundel, who credits Finkelstein for helping to promote Holocaust denial. Finkelstein is also an open supporter of Hizbullah, which advocates the destruction of Israel. He has called Israeli supporters, including me, “war criminals”
Yet by the standards of the Oxford Union, Norman Finkelstein is regarded as a pro-Israel “scholar” – at least in this debate. Just last May, the same Finkelstein was selected to debate the anti-Israel side of the proposition: “This House believes the pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel’s action.” Considering the locus of the debate – and its sponsor (the Arab nation of Qatar) – it is not surprising that the proposition won overwhelmingly, despite its demonstrable falsehood. Truth plays little role in Oxford Union debates.
Will Oxford’s next debate be on whether the Holocaust occurred? And will they select as their debater in favor of the occurrence of the Holocaust the notorious Holocaust denier, David Irving? That would not be surprising since Norman Finkelstein and David Irving are cut from the same cloth and Finkelstein admires the Hitler-loving Irving. Wait! The Oxford Union just announced that David Irving has been invited to participate in a future debate. Recently Irving said that Jews were responsible for what happened to them during WWII (though he has denied that anything really bad happened to them) and that the “Jewish problem” was at the root of most of the wars of the last 100 years. That – plus his total dis-creditation as a scholar – would seem to qualify him, by Oxford standards, for defending the Holocaust. Perhaps his debate partner will be David Duke.
The Oxford Union: may it rest in peace, alongside Pravda and other departed purveyors of “truths,” Stalin-style.
It’s hard to figure out which plays more, whether they can’t stand another point of view, or whether they’re so addicted to hearing nasty things about the Zionists, that they just can’t gobble down enough? It’s like having the New England Patriots have the ball the whole game — who’s that insecure?
In either case, such indulgence spells catastrophe for a group of self-congratulating “intellectuals” who think this is just brilliant — and moral!
A friend sent me a funny list of dogs’ complaints, of which this struck me as particularly funny, I’m not sure why. (Hat tip YK)
The sleight of hand, fake fetch throw.
You fooled a dog! Whoooo Hoooooooo what
a proud moment for the top of the food chain.
The following article, in today’s Independent, was written by Gabrielle Rifkind, a specialist in conflict resolution (i.e., in positive-sum, win-win, negotiations). While war should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, Rifkind’s solutions — hot lines, shuttle diplomacy, and regional summit — seem to be written from a stance of ‘avoid war at all cost’, instead of’ ‘keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons at all cost’. Once Iran understands that the West will not go to war against it, they are even more unlikely to give up their aspirations of regional dominance. Without the credible threat of military force, the U.S. would have to give Iran a free hand in Iraq in order to get them to surrender their nuclear ambitions. (Si pacem vis, para bellum.)
Rifkind also constantly draws parallels between ‘hardliners on both sides,’ which fails to understand the radical asymmetry of the role of the belligerents/peace makers on ‘both sides.’
She does make the very important point that we must understand Iran’s motivation, something we in the West have not done well. Much of what she describes as driving Iran is the manifestation of Iranian Honor/Shame. However, if the West ever fully comprehends Iran’s motivation, the result will not be the one Rifkind is advocating.
Gabrielle Rifkind, a specialist in conflict resolution, is a consultant to the Oxford Research Group
Further reading ‘Making Terrorism History, Scilla Elworthy and Gabrielle Rifkind (Random House, £3.99)
Prefatory remarks by Lazar, inter-textual remarks by rlandes.
Gabrielle Rifkind: This dialogue of the deaf is making war more likely
Only the hardliners in the US and Iran are helped by their mutual mistrust – but they are winning
28 October 2007
Sabre rattling and ratcheting up tensions is the dominant discourse between Iran and the US. The BBC was yesterday full of talk of whether war had become inevitable. A US attack could make problems in Iraq look like a sideshow. There are plenty of hardliners on both sides who would welcome such an attack, as it would strengthen their positions. It could lead to the declaration of an emergency government in the country that could keep the hardliners in power for a decade.
Of course, there are other outcomes as well. This sounds like an echo of “War is not the answer,” which only makes sense when both sides want positive-sum outcomes.
Diplomacy is currently framed around carrot and stick. There is some engagement, but there is also a process of demonisation on both sides. The US has designated the foreign wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation. The Iranian parliament for its part has voted that both the US military and the CIA are terrorist organisations. This is not the climate in which deep political differences are accommodated.
Here we see clearly the catastrophe of adopting the “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” approach, one that our media — BBC in the forefront — have taken as policy. The problem here is, is the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization? Do they support, help, and deploy people who target civilians as a matter of policy? If so, then it’s not demonization to call them terrorists. The other side does not cease from its demonization (on a much grander — cosmic — scale), and the author is working from a place in which maybe, if we stop “demonizing them” (i.e., identifying the centrality of their most radical elements), then maybe the people we have ceased to demonize will return the favor.
But on the battlefield of information warfare — something Rifkind seems unaware exists — our move merely disguises the radical nature of our foe, and fills us with a false hope that our concessions will produce counter-concessions rather than proof of our suicidal combination of stupidity and weakness. Think aliens in Mars Attacks laughing themselves silly over the President’s message of peace.
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The following is an article published in the latest issue of Israel Affairs, Volume 13: 4 (October 2007), pp. 844 - 858. I have not put the endnote numbers in the text (sorry for my lack of sophistication in these matters of formatting), but will try to in the near future. The final version of the article with numbered footnotes is available for more than a book should cost at the Routledge website. It is part of a collection of articles entitled, Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israel Conflict. Many worthwhile articles.
Edward Said and the Culture of Honor and Shame: Orientalism and our Misperceptions of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Richard Landes
Boston University
In his renown book, Orientalism, Edward Saïd has few and dismissive words to say about the issue of honor and shame in Arabic culture. He aims his clearest barbs at Harold Glidden.
The article itself purports to uncover “the inner workings of Arab behavior,” which from our point of view is “aberrant” but for Arabs “is normal.” After this auspicious start, we are told that Arabs stress conformity; that Arabs inhabit a shame culture whose “prestige system” involves the ability to attract followers and clients …; that Arabs can function only in conflict situations; that prestige is based solely on the ability to dominate others; that a shame culture – and therefore Islam itself – makes a virtue of revenge…; that if, from a Western point of view “the only rational thing for the Arabs to do is make peace… for the Arabs the situation is not governed by this kind of logic, for objectivity is not a native value in the Arab system.”
This, for those who have not savored it recently, is vintage Saïd. Sneering summaries of another man’s thoughts, presented to an audience of bien-pensants who know how much nonsense this all is. Anyone with the temerity to suggest that either Glidden’s observations, while perhaps expressed too categorically, may have some grains of truth… or even that Glidden’s work may express these observations with considerably more subtlety, sympathy, and empirical base than Saïd’s dismissive asides [which I have cut] might suggest, can only belong to the bigoted, the racist, the imperialistic Western voice whose discourse inscribes and controls subaltern culture with its authorial voice. Who would dare try and stand up to the hue and cry of the critical audience, whose progressive sensibilities had been offended by the mere suggestion that “they” are not like “us,” and worse still, that they are less evolved, less morally developed than we are.
But what if, Arabs do grow up in an honor-shame culture in which face is regained through the shedding of another’s blood… what if this logic of belligerence does characterize Arab culture, perhaps not for all time, but certainly and with some distinction, right now? What if the intractable nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict derives not from a calculus of rights and wrongs that can be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians of good will – land for peace – but rather from a calculus of honor and shame that must be resolved in victory over the humiliating enemy, and a mind-set of suspicion that views everything as zero-sum maneuvers (I win, you lose), and interprets all concessions as acts of weakness not generosity? What if these might not be “essential” traits of Arab culture, but nevertheless dominant traits?
There is a widespread belief that Saïd’s book criticizes Western Orientalists for their inability to understand their subjects, for their projection of their own problems onto this strange culture, which they therefore cannot understand… that Westerners are incapable of understanding so foreign a culture. Actually, the thrust of the argument is quite different. Saïd’s underlying point is that all cultures are essentially the same, and if anyone presents the Arabs (his major concern) as significantly different (even in a positive [e.g. Romantic] light), then that is a form of racism. Hence his particular disdain for discussions of honor and shame culture applied to the Arab world.
Such an analysis appeals specifically to a liberal/progressive approach that assumes what Saïd would have us accept as an unnamed axiom – that people are basically the same everywhere; that it is unacceptable to generalize about the “otherness” of anyone else. Any generalizations about the Orient are unacceptable. (Indeed, a close reading of Saïd finds that, despite the impression he gives with his own generalizations, Western specialists of Arab culture have a remarkably wide range of views, positive and negative about the “Orient.”) As Saïd himself puts it at the end of Orientalism, in a paeon of praise to human freedom and scholarly self-criticism in which the moral dimension of knowledge takes pride of place:
At all costs the, the goal of Orientalizing the Orient [what post-colonialists more generally call “othering” someone, RL] again and again is to be avoided, with consequences that cannot help but refine knowledge and reduce the scholar’s conceit. Without “the Orient” there would be scholars, critics, intellectuals, human beings, for whom the racial, ethnic, and national distinctions [NB: no mention of religion] were less important that the common enterprise in promoting human community. (p. 328)
These are noble sentiments, the very drivers of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. But is “promoting this enterprise” the scholar’s task?
Saïd does warn against excess: “Yet an openly polemical and right-minded ‘progressive’ scholarship can very easily degenerate into dogmatic slumber, a prospect that is not edifying either.” And that, under Saïd’s approving guardianship, is precisely what happened as a result of this remarkable book to the field of Middle Eastern Studies over the past 25 years. The more bizarre and strangely Arabs have behaved by Western “rational standards,” the more dramatically self-destructive and self-impoverishing their political and social behavior, the more astounding the levels of violence and hatred their culture has generated in word and deed, then the more determined our post-Orientalist scholars become to “read” this dramatically different culture as an expression of the same forces that shape ours. The key elements in their behavior, according to this kind of analysis, are not triumphalist, theocratic religion, frustrated imperialist ambitions, need for honor, horror at humiliation, clan loyalties, self-help justice, thirst for revenge… but the familiar Western categories of social and economic forces, nationalism, rationality.
Such efforts entail what psychologists call “cognitive egocentrism”, or the projection of one’s own mentality onto others. Bernard Lewis, in a simile that Saïd mocks, aptly compares the effort of “liberal opinion” to explain Islamic and Arabic culture in the acceptable “language of left-wing and right-wing, progressive and conservative, and the rest of the Western [political] terminology,” as “about as accurate and enlightening as an account of a cricket match by a baseball correspondent.” And if this were only a cricket match, the damage might not be that great. But if this is a clash of cultures – as certainly some on the “other” side seem to think with a ferocity we like to think we have, in our search of a common humanity, left behind – then misreading badly the motives of that “other” may be very costly.
One of the many resulting consequences of the victory of post-colonial studies is the stunting of the field of honor-shame studies. Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the importance of honor and shame, especially in Arab culture, that topic has largely been confined gender studies. Its use to understand political culture, despite the obvious connections, remains largely untouched by Middle East specialists, political scientists and International Relations scholars to this day. Quite the contrary, nothing but scorn accompanies the very mention of the current neo-conservatives’ attraction to so “essentialist” a book as Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind. “Its best use is as a doorstop.”
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October 27, 2007
There’s a post at Daily Kos that LGF noted. I’m trying to figure out if the writer is just kidding, offering his version of Swift’s A Modest Proposal. I detect nothing to indicate that he is aware of how fatuous his suggestion is, nor can I imagine how so self-critical a satire would make it on to Daily Kos. Is this guy Daily Kos’ version of Colbert?
This does not compute, except as an extraordinary illustration of how “liberal cognitive egocentrism” is incapable of understanding what’s going on. (The comments at Daily Kos suggest that even when they disagree, commenters take this proposal seriously. What are these folks accustomed to taking seriously enough to argue about?)
I invite my readers — some of whom may be moved to do some research on this fellow, and to read the comments both at Daily Kos and at LGF — to weigh in.
A Simple Way to End the War on Terror
by Yacka Jah Yacka
Tue Oct 23, 2007 at 09:03:20 PM PDT
While it appears from more than one point of view that the War in Iraq and the War on Terror are situations from which we may never be able to extricate ourselves, from the mountains of Pakistan comes a very simple solution: convert to Islam.
Before we reject this out of hand, lets seriously consider it for a moment: Osama Bin Laden promised the wars would be over if Americans convert to Islam.
This may sound like a lot to ask from the most religious country in the industrialized world. But of all the Christians in America today who profess to be religious, how many of us are seriously devout?
How many of us are really just religious lightweights, happy to simply go to church every Sunday, attend church socials, knock back a drink or two every Christmas and not worry ourselves about the deeper implications of our faith?
Given the way most of us pay any real attention to the tenets of our faith, life really wouldn’t be that different if we were to exchange one faith for another. The prayers would be different, but we would recite them just as mindlessly as we do today. The sermons would in all likelihood be exactly the same, and we’d continue to snore through them.
Sure, there are a few people here and there who take religion seriously, but they are in such a small minority that their protests can be easily ignored.
All in all, converting to Islam would be a small price to pay for an end to the killing and maiming of our sons and daughters, not to mention the billions of dollars we could put to better use than fighting this perpetual war.
So let’s do away with our religious pretences, adopt Islam as our new faith, add a few extra holidays to our calendar, and get down to the real business at hand: pumping oil.
Poll
Will you convert to Islam in order to stop the terrorist threat?
Yes, I will convert to Islam
| 270 votes | Results
Note how there’s no option to vote no. Come on, this has to be self satire. It can’t be that ludicrous.
October 25, 2007
The first in what I hoe will be many posts from Lazar Berman on articles in the media.
“America’s War without End”
Simon Tisdall, The Guardian. October 23, 2007
Planned US spending on the “global war on terror” is set to rise sharply in the coming year, despite claims from the president, George Bush, that al-Qaida is on the run in Iraq.
A funding request sent to Congress this week seeks $196.4bn (£96bn) for counter-terrorism in 2007-8, $25bn up on this year. The Pentagon’s separate budget request amounts to an additional $481.4bn.
Justifying these whopping increases, Mr Bush repeats a favourite mantra, that “America is safer but not yet safe“, implying that absolute safety is attainable at some point in the future. In a speech this week, his vice-president, Dick Cheney, was franker: he said the US was engaged in an ideological struggle amounting to war without end.
So an ideological struggle is necessarily a war without end? World War II was an ideological struggle, and after much death and hardship, came to an end.
Details of the spending request reveal how the war, by lumping together numerous disparate challenges, is steadily expanding in terms of aims and geography. Iraq and Afghanistan apart, counter-terror funds are earmarked for US allies in Pakistan and Palestine, for de-nuclearising North Korea, and for fighting drug cartels in Mexico and Central America.
Further escalation came this year with the Pentagon’s creation of Africa Command, tasked with tracking down militant Islamists from Somalia to the Maghreb and the Sahel. Mr Cheney says the threat is ubiquitous and pressing. “The extremists in the Middle East … are trying to seize power by force, keep power by intimidation, and build an empire of fear.”
Critics say fear is also being used to keep US citizens and taxpayers in line. Unveiling the updated national strategy for homeland security this month, the White House claimed, without producing new evidence, that al-Qaida was actively trying to infiltrate the US.
“Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the US with ties to al-Qaida senior leadership, the group likely will intensify its efforts to place operatives here in the homeland,” the report said. It even warned that Lebanon’s Hizbullah might launch attacks on US territory.
The assessment appeared at odds with statements by US commanders and Pentagon planners that the al-Qaida network had been “significantly degraded” in Iraq and elsewhere. But fearfulness is catching. Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, warned Britons this month that the number and scale of terrorist conspiracies and conspirators was increasing, even though fewer cases were actually under investigation.
To Tisdall, any report of increased risk of terror attacks stems from ‘fearfulness’.
Experts in international security law, such as Professor Philip Bobbitt of Columbia law school, deny suggestions the global threat is being exaggerated and conflated for political and geo-strategic ends.
Speaking in London, Prof Bobbitt said three overlapping, truly global wars on terror were being waged. One was the fight against “21st-century, networked terror”; the second was a war to prevent rogue regimes or terror groups obtaining weapons of mass destruction; the third was against genocide and ethnic cleansing, as in Darfur.
But other influential voices in the US and beyond are increasingly questioning both the purpose and the conduct of terrorism policy, suggesting it will not outlive the Bush era.
Syndicated columnist William Pfaff wrote recently that fear generated by the 9/11 attacks had been externalised, with official and rightwing media connivance, “into paranoid fantasy of foreign enemies”. Terrorism had become almost anything the Bush administration said it was.
And in an interview with Guardian America today, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, suggests Mr Bush’s for-us-or-agin-us approach was self-defeating.
“We’ve got to do a better job of clarifying what are the motivations of terrorists,” Ms Clinton said. “I think one of our mistakes has been painting with such a broad brush, which has not been particularly helpful in understanding what it is we were up against.”
Senator Clinton is correct here. We must clarify what the motivations of terrorists are. But when we do, much to Mr. Tisdall’s chagrin, we will be more aware of the danger, not more complacent.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, of King’s College London, said Mr Bush had consistently failed to define what he meant by the “global war on terror”. There were many forms of terrorist, including jihadis, Hamas and the IRA, as well as state terrorism of the kind practised by Stalin or Burma’s generals, he said in a recent discussion.
US presidents were over-fond of declaring war on phenomena such as drugs or poverty, and now terror. “An enemy can surrender but phenomena cannot,” Prof Freedman said. Mr Bush should spend more time “thinking about who we’re fighting and why”.
Very apt. Terrorism is a tactic, Jihadism is the ideology.
In a new book published in the US, Less Safe, Less Free: Why America is Losing the War on Terror, David Cole and Jules Lobel deliver a less forgiving verdict. They argue that Mr Bush’s catch-all, bulldozer approach has increased worldwide hostility to the US and its citizens, dismayed minority communities at home, alienated America’s friends and emboldened its enemies.
While the military gained bumper budgets, the American nation forfeited moral legitimacy, Cole and Lobel say. “The resentment provoked by these measures is the greatest threat to our national security and the most likely source of the next attack.” For that reason, if no other, any Bush successor would have to change tack.
Comments
Two big points worth reflecting upon.
1) Moral legitimacy- According to Tisdall and his colleagues, the West only retains moral legitimacy if they are either involved in diplomatic solutions, or, if they must fight, the fighting takes several weeks at most, and is clean and sterile.
2) Cole and Lobel’s argument is a clever one. If the United States is attacked again, they reason, it is because of ‘resentment’ towards Bush’s broad definition of terror and his runaway military spending. This takes the blame off the Islamists and puts it firmly in the lap of the West. But a moment’s reflection on the argument reveals its flaws. In Cole and Lobel’s mind, a Jihadist terrorist will be prompted to attack and kill Americans because he resents how Bush defines terrorism. Or, because he thinks that Bush is over-spending on defense. They and Tisdall ignore, and will always choose to ignore, the overwhelming degree to which the motivation for Jihadi terror comes from the society out of which the terrorists emerge, and not from the actions of the West.
I haven’t been paying much attention lately, so it came as (only something) of a surprise to find out that there’s rioting in Amsterdam and Brussels which have not (another sur