Saddam Hussein is gone. What now?

Saddam Hussein is gone! Speculation is on whether this will translate into a worsening of violence in Iraq. Probably yes. At least temporarily so.

Iraq was literally squeezed in Hussein's fist for 35 years. As a child I experienced the Stalinist era in Eastern Europe. Parents were scared to speak openly in front of their children lest those utter questionable remarks somewhere in public inadvertently, which then would bring tragedy onto the heads of the parents. As a result those children (myself included) grew up completely under the influence of the political slogans of the time. When Stalin died, we children shed genuine tears, not knowing any better. Of course Russian politics quickly took care of Stalin's memory, opening up our eyes in the process, making us less susceptible for further hero worship.

In Iraq this process did not have a chance to occur "naturally". Saddam was toppled by foreign forces, forces which were painted in very unfavourable colours previously, forces that gained an even more negative image as time passed. Iraq has a very large segment of the population that isn't very well educated, at least not from the point of view of world politics. or maybe I should say: they have been very well educated by the Saddamist propaganda machine. They grew up on in an artifical political environment, in a virtual glass bowl. They tend to gravitate towards any center of power, at the same time fearing it while looking for its safety, entering voluntarily under its umbrella. It will probably take a whole generation to shed the effects of the Stalinist style Saddam era.

This new generation will have the task of sifting through all the data of the past, straightening out the facts, finding the truth and laying down the grounds for an open society. Can the Iraquis do it quickly? I hope so. Things are definitely changing at a rapid pace in the Middle East. Every day there are surprising little news items, things developing in directions that one would not have thought possible just days earlier. Mahmoud Abbas calling new elections, Syria expressing willingness to make peace with Israel. Even Libya seems to be changing, prompting the US to improve its relations with the Qadhafi regime.

A lot of credit must be given to the Al Jazeera network for impacting the flow of information in the Arab world. I have been watching them occasionally, and my impression is that they are trying very hard to be fair and impartial. Do they always succed? Of course not. But show me one media outlet that could claim to be truly successful from this point of view. It is an impossible task, even for such veterans as the BBC or CNN. News reporting is a very hectic business. News items are pouring in incessantly, and reports are always representative of the reporters personal views. Decisions must be made then by the news editors about the validity of these reports on the spot, again filtering these through their own prejudices. And then here WE are, sifting through all the information and trying to form our opinions.

The most important thing is that we have all these differing views available to us. Al Jazeera's English program, although not carried by any American network as yet, is available on the internet. It is interesting to note that one of the countries where Al Jazeera is carried by local cable is Israel, while dropping BBC World, which has been accused of anti-Israel/anti-American bias in the past. Could Al Jazeera be less biased than the BBC? The Israeli action seems to indicate that they think so there.

Warriors of Jesus

Last night I wrote about concerns I have regarding Iran's political-religious aspirations and the apocalyptic ideology behind it. By the funny quirks of synchronicity, nay, "by the grace of God", I was shown signs of some dangerous developments occurring right here in our own backyard.

As an odd coincidence, I had a chance today to watch the documentary "Jesus Camp" (see the ABC News report on it, and watch their news clip on video). If I was worried about the rise of Islamism, or about Muslim children being groomed to become warriors of Allah, now I am even more worried. Worried, because the indoctrination of American children does not only mean creating good soldiers for the US army. These children may one day become OUR enemy! Don't forget, they are taught: "You are either with God/us or against us."

One of the exercises at the camp is that each child is given a hammer and is allowed to smash a mug which has GOVERNMENT written across its side. It is a powerful and empowering exercise. These children will feel that it is their God given right to fight their own government, to bring it down and replace it with their own brand of governance: ban abortion, ban gays, ban the teaching of evolution in schools. We can't even fathom just yet what else will they ban and enforce if the movement is allowed to grow and gain power over the country.

Karl Rove spoke at the annual dinner pf Hillsdale College three days ago (on Dec. 4). Responding to a question he said, "Moderate Muslims are waiting for the outcome." Bernard Lewis is right, according to Rove, when he says, "The center of gravity will be determined by the outcome."

Now, I wonder how the moderates of this continent view the developments that threaten our own society? Will we also be sitting on our hands, waiting for the outcome? Or maybe we will be able to find a solution. Maybe by doing so we can act as examples for Muslim moderates, inspiring them how to deal with the problems in their own backyards.

Maybe...

Ignore Iran at your own peril!

The news and all the media stories are like ever changing cloud formations. If you lie on your back and your eyes are on the clouds, they barely seem to move. When you take your glance away and do not look for a while, the sky looks entirely different when you lift your face towards the sky again. A week or two of ailing made me notice trends in the news that I may have not seen if I followed it daily.

Our news media, just like the clouds in the sky, is an ever changing kaleidoscope of news items. Even the great disasters enter and fade out of our consciousness in a matter of days. Going beyond the surface of the stories is the job of documentary makers. But even they tend to choose the more visually fascinating topics, after all they are movies. So we have documentaries galore on 9/11, approaching it from different directions, some even subscribing to conspiracy theories, trying to prove that it was the American government itself that blew all those people to smithereens, just so they can go and have some fun in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jokes aside, some topics get over-explored, others never catch anyone's fancy. One such largely ignored issue is Ahmadinejad's repeated public remarks regarding America, Israel, and generally the West. In his famous Open Letter to President Bush he claims ( = threatens) that Islam will replace democracy. People tend to laugh it off, considering him to be just an eccentric, half-educated small time teacher, who somehow ended up in his present position by mistake and porbably will not last long. I think this stance is wrong, we ought to monitor him more closely.

President Ahmadinajad did not get where he is by chance. He is the figure head of a larger organization, he was actually helped into the presidential seat. Therefor he is the mouthpiece of that organization, of their world view. Yet, in spite of the belligerent position of Iran, the media does not seem to be interested in that world view. Well, I am! That world view is shaped by religious fanaticism, a religious movement in Islam with apocalyptic tendencies. They fervently anticipate the arrival of the "Hidden Imam" who, they believe, will make the whole world accept Islam. For a while they even thought that the Ayatollah Khomeini might be the Promised One. In the above mentioned letter Ahmadinejad writes: "Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems." (bottom of the page). Doesn't that send shivers up your spine? It should!

If you look into this belief system you find some very interesting ( = alarming) ideas. One such idea is that one can bring the end of times, and the arrival of the Twelfth Imam (al-Muntazar), closer by creating cataclysmic events. Ahmadinejad seems to be among those who espoused this idea. So why do we brush it off? Why do world leader and the media not react to Ahmadinejad's remarks and threats?

There seem to be several factors. For one thing he manages to continually bullwinkle the West by insisting that Iran has the right to peaceful nuclear technology, and that it wants peace. At the same time he secures the (sometimes reluctant) support of the Arab world by constantly attacking (verbally, for the time being) the "Zionist entity", even promising its elimination. But the real problem for the Western media is the acceptance of the idea that it is actually the Muslim world that is the victim of bullying, the perpetrator being the agressor USA. Let's face it, we like to be on the side of the underdog ( = the strong is wrong and the weak is right).

Psychological warfare usually precedes the physical. Yet, with adequate response to such verbal sabre rattling one might be able to avert escalation of events. I believe that Ronald Reagan's courageous and articulate verbal war with the Soviet regime contributed greatly to the peaceful dissolution of communism. I believe that the world would be different today had world leaders stood up to Hitler's deceiving demagoguery instead of negotiating with him and making concessions to him. As today, the media then, too, "tried to be objective", instead of drawing world attention to the narcissistic mass hysteria of Nazism. Islamism is growing, and I have no intention here to discuss the growth of its influence in the Western world, I am only talking about countries like Syria, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia. If things go according to their plans, Hezbollah will overtake Lebanon soon. The number of Islamist regimes is growing step by step, just as European countries were gradually overtaken by fascist regimes, who then sided with Hitler and helped WWII come to happen. Shouldn't we at least pressure the present Iranian regime by increased media attention asking them to explain their stance, and then try to understand what is really behind the oddly disturbing statements?

New faces at the top in Canada and at the UN

Interesting developments while I was sick: a new general secretary at the UN, Ban Ki-Moon from South Korea, and a new Liberal leader here in Canada, Stéphane Dion.

The UN nomination and appointment was not a surprise. Mr Ban has a strong track record, and it is very important in the present political climate to have someone from the Far East at the helm. Particularly so in light of the situation regarding North Korea. Maybe Mr Ban will be able to help diffuse tensions and maybe even precipitate some changes.

As for Stéphane Dion, his victory came as a shocking surprise. Nobody thought much of the bookish little university professor from Quebec who used to be the environment minister in Paul Martin's government. Dion was fourth when he entered the leadership race, meaning that fewer than one in five members were supporting him. The bets were placed on the two main contenders, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae. Then things started to go funny. He placed third in the first two ballots, but then Gerard Kennedy handed his supporters over to him after the second ballot, and Bob Rae dropped off after the third. This allowed Dion to leap ahead of Ignatieff in the fourth.

Stéphane Dion was sort of a "background noise" in the past: we heard his name occasionally but did not know much about him. Yet, he is not a stupid guy apparently. He has a BA and MA in political science from Laval University, and a doctorate from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. He first entered politics by running in a 1996 byelection in the Quebec riding of Saint-Laurent-Cartierville. He won the seat and has held it for 10 years. Dion was minister for intergovernmental affairs for seven years under Jean Chretien, then environment minister in Paul Martin's government.

Can we picture him as Canada's next prime minister? Hmmm... He has a few things working against him. For one thing, he peaks English with a heavy French accent, and Canadians are a bit tired after all those funny jokes regarding Chretien and his accent. Then, there are those scandals, those favoured French businesses from Quebec during Chretien's reign. Lots of people in the predominantly English-speaking areas of Canada are eyeing him with a certain amount of skeptic caution. French Quebec separatists also dislike him because of his efforts to make it harder for them to hold a successful referendum on whether Quebec should break away from the rest of Canada. A definite positive point (for us, staunch supporters of a united Canada) is that he seems to be a strong federalist.

All in all, the eyes of the country are focused on him right now. He has a lot of work waiting for him, - il doit faire une chose ou deux à ne gagner notre coeurs.

Teach Kids Peace!

I would like to revisit one of my earlier topics, the one that deals with the indoctrination of children. Having grown up under communist rule, hence experiencing all manner of (attempts :) of indoctrination, I find this phenomenon particularly disturbing. Yet, the Middle East cannot expect to achieve peace as long as they raise their children by teaching them hatred towards their neighbours, or by drilling them to become Martyrs of God.

I am eager to support any attempt at fighting this practice. Today I was very happy to discover a site that is trying to make an actual step in the right direction: Teach Kids Peace!

Please, make sure you visit their site, and join their efforts if you can!

Hungary: Communism vs Fascism??

The situation in Eastern Europe is a tricky one. They do not have time honoured political traditions, only vague memories thereof in some countries, not even that in others. The process of transition seems to be painful in all the former Eastern Bloc countries. Right now Hungary is the most turbulent. The unfortunate side of this turbulence is that a well-meaning, or maybe intentionally s*#t-stirring, person leaked a very short quote from a long speech of the prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, a speech that was meant to be kept behind closed doors, to be heard only by the prime minister's cabinet.

The present leadership is basically a left wing party that came to power some two years ago, promising a lot of liberal measures, improvements in all areas of life. Isn't that what the population is expecting now that they joined the United Europe? The problem is that when communism collapsed in these countries they were literally bancrupt. Any government that is elected there has two choices: either they keep some or all of their electoral promises and get the country into a deeper and deeper finaincial quagmire, or they apply temporary austerity measures until the country's financial standing improves and they are truly able to afford social improvements.

But to return to the present situation in Hungary let's see what happened there at the end of September. The leaked speech was made sometime in the summer, after a long session of discussions, plan proposals, etc., In his speech Gyurcsany decided to face his colleagues with an impassioned message saying: "Look guys, in the first two years of our power we basically lied to the people, lying to them day and night, leading them by the nose, promising them heaven with all its stars. We know it is impossible to go on like this. We have to get our act together, tighten the purse strings, do things right." So on and so on. The speech was about 20 minutes long. The quote that hit the media was this short section: "...we basically lied to the people, lying to them day and night, leading them by the nose...", end of quote! So what could all decent people do? They got upset, some of them taking to the street, demanding the immediate dissolution of the government and new elections. Unfortunately, as things often happen in such situations, things snowballed, unsavoury elements joined the demonstrations, causing all kinds of material damage, basically trying to create a good imitation of a popular uprising, a revolution. Except that such a thing is totally unwarranted in this instance.

The blame first of all lies with the person who fed the media the unfairly trunkated quote. We are all familiar with the power of first impressions in the media. People form an initial opinion and after that, no matter how many discussions take place with proper clarifications, dissections of the issue, most people will feel reluctant to rethink their original gut reaction and change their position. Not to speak of those who do not have the time or the educational wherewithal to really understand the whole issue.

Being very aware of this, the Hungarian opposition gleefully uses the opportunity to try and topple the government, hoping that they then can have a clean grab at the seats of power. Hungary's right has a charismatic populist leader in Viktor Orban. Good speaker, who can play the heartstrings of the simple people, who promises great reforms, prosperity. As the original street protests unfolded, he rose to the occasion, organized the proceedings, and as a result the almost daily demonstrations continue to this day, with the police force applying sometimes too little, sometimes too much force to keep the crowd under control, resulting in even more outrage from the part of the demonstrators.

So what would be a good solution? The government, including the acting opposition and all the other parties, acted according to the prevailing laws, and after assessing the situation they called for a vote of confidence> As a result, Gyurcsany was reinforced in his position. No new elections called, a move that the European community acknowledged with a sigh of relief. Why? Because constant elections and re-elections do not do a country any good. Let's just think of the case of Italy where changes of government have been so common in the last half a century that by now they are a yawn. But for them it is OK, the country goes about their business no matter what. It is another matter in these new democracies where institutions are not supported by a long history of routine procedures. In these countries people are inordinately suspicious of politicians, the average voter has no good methods yet of weighing the true merits of all the different parties, let alone the individual candidates (not as if the situation was so much better in the West). Hungary is not alone in the area as far as political problems are concerned. They have all kinds of problems in several of the neighbouring countries. In Poland they bent to the will of the people, they held new elections, which resulted in a wobbly coalition government that doesn't have the power to do nearly anything because of all the bickering. In the Czech Republic they also went ahead with new elections. The result: no government to speak of for months now.

Let us have a look at the possibilty of new elections in Hungary. The present ruling party and Gyurcsany, representing The Left, are in a way the heirs of the communist party of old. In spite of winning at the last election (because of those infamous promises) they have been eyed by the populace with a certain degree of suspicion from the start. Gyurcsany himself is under scrutiny for having become a wealthy man in a relatively short time, even though, as they say, "he has a communist past". This last remark, though, always makes me smile. Why? Well! He is fortyish. Communism fell 17 years ago. Do they accuse him for being a member of the communist youth organization? Who wasn't? Anyone who wanted to become a somebody, to have a good chance to get into university, had to be a member. That was the case all over in the Eastern Bloc countries, that is the case still today in Cuba, Dominican Republic, or any other country still under communist rule. I used to be a member! Does that mean that I was a communist? Are you kidding? Communism would not have toppled so easily if all those "party members" were actual communists. Plus, this party in Hungary absorbed the more moderate left wing Liberal movement, also.

Viktor Orban, as the other major contender in an eventual election, is not exactly the most savoury character a decent voter could vote for in good conscience. He is the representative of The Right, with its own baggage of irredentist historic idealogy. Not that there could be a danger of any ontoward action from the part of such a government within the European community, but even insensitive remarks can potentially cause problems.

So what would happen as a result of a new election? They could reelect Gyurcsany, whose government now has admitted to the planned austerity measures, like having to pay for medical services, drugs, university. On the other hand, the Right, if elected and then really sticking to their promises to the electorate, would just create a vicious cycle by further increasing the deficit.

There has been a tendency, specially so in the last week, to compare the events of today to the revolution in 1956. It is happening in the media, because it is a convenient parallel to draw while commemorating the 50th anniversary of that event. In the streets, people see it as an extension of the symbolism of those times. Yet, whatever is happening in that country right now is not a revolution, no matter how some people there would like us, and themselves, to believe that. The role of a revolution is to change the entire political system. The present system itself in Hungary is not in need to be changed, even the demosntrators in the streets would agree to that. Unfortunately those in the street do not realize that there are now other ways and places where situations like this can and should be resolved. Definitely not by confrontations with the police which is out there simply to restore order, to make sure that life is not upset in the capital to the point of an economic paralysis. Yet, the political right does not seem to be willing to give up this "street show" that seems to play so nicely into their court. Could they win in the end? Who knows... But it certainly would not be in interest of the country right now.

Hamas-Fatah standoff

Something is brewing in the Palestinian territories. For months we have been witnessing confrontations between the old guard, Fatah, and the acting Hamas government. What we see is just the top layer. There are major differences between the two movements. From here afar it is hard to tell them apart, yet for a long time analysts were talking about even a possible civil war between them.

President Mahmoud Abbas was in Jordan for the past week, trying to call an emergency meeting of the Fatah central committee, the goal of which would have been to find a solution for the standoff between Fatah and Hamas. Unfortunately news leaked somehow from Washingtom that the US allegedly pledged 42 million dollars for opponents of the Hamas regime. The timing made the meeting by Fatah suspect. They were technically forced to give up on it and return home. Whether the committee will have another go at it is to be seen. With or without the meeting, there are two options for Abbas: call an early election, or simply dissolve the government and form a temporary one until the next election.

Naturally, Hamas and their followers have been incensed by the leak. If Abbas makes the expected move and removes them from power, that would make them return to terrorism. This time, though, they would not only target Israel but American interests in the region, also. Jihadist tones are taking over in public speeches, in the mosques, in the streets. The Hamas movement has the following options: hit back and fight Fatah, which could mean civil war, or turn their anger against Israel and the West, in particular against the US.

Video tapes of 9/11 terrorists

A week ago UK's Sunday Times released five video tapes, altogether lasting about an hour, that were made at Al Qaeda headquarters. The most important aspect of these tapes is that one of them shows Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah, two of the 9/11 highjackers together in Afghanistan, and at one point apparently reading their martyrdom messages. The problem is that the tapes are silent and lip readers were unsuccessful to dicipher yet what was being said on them. But the two terrorists' mere presence is a chilling proof of their Al Qaeda connections.

Ahmadinejad’s absurd theory on the Jewish presence in Israel

Here is an article written by Bertrand Ramas-Muhlbach that uses a somewhat twisted tongue-in-cheek logic at the end but one that is definitely thought provoking. :)

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Ahmadinejad’s absurd theory on the Jewish presence in Israel
By Bertrand Ramas-Muhlbach

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to increase his comments about the illegitimacy of the State of Israel and the invention of the Holocaust as the reason for the pillage of Muslim territory. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presentation demonstrates perfect sophism, (I) but the Iranian president ought perhaps to mistrust his own logic because, taken at face value, it could justify an eviction (actually impossible) of the totality of the non Jewish population presently settled in Israel (II).

I ) The classic theme developed by fundamentalist Islamists is that of the need to rid itself of the Jewish “enclave implanted” on Muslim territory.

Thus, at the conference held in Teheran on October 26th, 2005, on the subject « A world rid of Zionism », Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called « wise » the proposal by Imam Khomeini who said (speaking of Israel) that « the regime of occupation should be wiped off the map».

To demonstrate the illegitimacy of the Jewish presence in Palestine, the Iranian president postulates that the arrival of the Jews to Palestine is based on a « lie » about an « imaginary massacre” of the Jews perpetrated during World War II.

This argument was repeated in his speech in November 2005 on the margin of the Summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OCI) in Mecca when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reaffirmed that the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis was a « legend ».

This declaration naturally earned him a condemnation from the United Nations Security Council.

Notwithstanding, the thesis was further developed on December 14th 2005 in Zahedan when he said that «The Westerners have invented the myth of the massacre of the Jews and are placing it above God, religions and prophets. ».

With this address, the Iranian president demonstrated his talents as a perfect orator.

To begin with, he subtly positioned his theory on religious grounds by alleging that the Western infidels had placed the lie above their highest transcendental values:

« If someone in their country insults God, no one says anything to him ; but if someone denies the myth massacre of the Jews, the Zionist spokespeople and the governments on the Zionist payroll begin to vociferate».

In doing so he comforts his audience, acquired from Islam, because in Western society, which he judges to be decadent and dehumanized, it is possible to doubt the existence of God but not the « lie of the Zionists about the massacre of the Jews from 1939-1945 “.

Furthermore, the sequence of the concepts predicated demonstrates not only that the Jews are "liars and traitors", but also begs the question « why the Palestinians have to pay the price for the imaginary massacre of the Jews »:

«If you say that you have massacred and burned six million Jews during World War II, if you have really committed this massacre, why is it the Palestinians who have to pay the price? Why create a false Zionist government ?».

The Iranian president can then make proposals about an acceptable settlement of Jews in another part of the world.

«Our proposal is the following: give them a piece of your land in Europe, in the United States, Canada or Alaska so that the Jews can create their state. And be sure that is you do this, the Iranian people will no longer protest against you and will support your decision», (declaration made on 14/12/2005)

These statements became a lament of Holocaust denial in February 2006 in the Karlsruhe federal park (punishable in Germany with 5 years imprisonment) and since then, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not stopped outdoing himself.

Thus, at the time of the war fought by Israel against Hezbollah in July 2006, he compared Israel to Nazi Germany : "Their methods are like those of Hitler. When Hitler wanted to launch an attack, he also invented an excuse» before concluding: «the Zionists say they were Hitler’s victims, but they are of the same nature as him».

And it is once again this intellectual construction (in ever more subtle nuances) which was again picked up by the Iranian president at the UN General Assembly on September 19, 2006, when he said once again that :
- Palestine was conquered with the pretext of sheltering part of the survivors of World War II,
- Afterwards, many people who had not been affected by the war were taken to Palestine (the Zionists)
- this occupation of Palestine is a tragedy that constitutes a threat to the Middle East
- and that this tragedy has not been solved by the creation of a regime on land that belongs to others.

The Iranian president, brilliant orator, nevertheless naively asked the UN General Assembly «why the Holocaust is used by the Jews as a justification for the occupation of Palestine ».

This evidences a lack of sophistry, but Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ought to mistrust the principle according to which an illegitimate conqueror must leave the land it has taken.

In fact, this principle could justify a departure from Israel for all the non-Jewish population there, since they are the descendants of foreign invaders.

II ) THE PRINCIPLE OF THE ILLEGITIMATE FOREIGN CONQUEROR

For Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the reasoning is simple, the Jews are only occupiers without title, who came to steal the land of the Palestinians who must, because of their states as conquerors, return towards another part of the word that the international community would choose for them.

The statements of the Iranian president have naturally sparked off anxiety, stupefaction, indignation and disgust, but it might be of interest to pay attention to the arguments he uses.

If, in fact, the Iranian president were right, this would mean that a population, by the mere fact of its conquering status (or as descendants of conquerors) should leave the country upon which it has established itself.

The solution could be, finally found for Israel and for the Palestinian problem in the measure that the populations of Palestinian origin that remain in Israel or, more broadly, in the Middle East, should immediately leave their places of residence due to their situation as «descendants of foreign invaders ».

First of all, the name of « Palestinians » which the Palestinians give themselves, justifies their eviction because it was given to the region by the Roman Emperor (and invader) Hadrian in 135 of the Common Era.

If the Palestinians recognize themselves through the name of this Roman invader, they are perhaps direct descendants.

If such should be the case, and following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s logic, surely it would make sense to send the parties to Italy.

Their origin may, however, be more recent.

If they are the descendants of the Arab invaders who, after taking Damascus in 635, saw themselves took over Syria and Palestine in 636, it would make more sense to send them to Saudi Arabia.

It is also possible that the Palestinians are the descendants of Crusaders who in 1099 came to establish the Latin Kingdom in Jerusalem in 1100. In that case, the conditions of their return are slightly complicated in so far as, before their departure, one would have to study their genealogy in order to get to know the probable European provenance of their ancestors.

In so far as they are « Palestinians » whose ancestors trace their origins to 1516, date of the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey could well be their next destination.

Finally, for those Palestinians who settled during the time of the British Mandate, a return to the United Kingdom could be highly recommended.

Will there be any cases of Palestinians for whom one cannot find the origin of « conquering invaders » implying that their ancestors were really born in this part of the world?

For these last, the solution is to be found thanks to the thesis of Tsvi Misinai who, in his work « Incredible but True », has highlighted that a section of the Palestinians come from the Jewish people, descendants of the Hebrew tribes and the Moabites and Edomites converted to Judaism by King David before being converted by force to Islam.

For these last, and taking into account their Jewish origins before their forced conversion to Islam, it would be possible to envision a conversion to Judaism which would constitute not a geographic return, but a veritable “teshuva”, that is, a spiritual return.

Thanks to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Palestinian problem would be finally solved because in this part of the world, there would only remain descendants of 2,000 year old Jewish populations which would have remained on this territory.

These last could, with the authorization of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invite the members of their families dispersed throughout the world for the past 2,000 years to join them and the Iranian president would never again be considered a menace to Israel but rather as one of the greatest Zionists of all times, earning eternal recognition from the Jewish people who had never imagined such an opportunity.

We are not there yet, but, while we wait, let us admit that by wanting to erase Israel from the map, the Iranian president joins the ranks of those rare Arab heads of state who recognize that Israel is fine on the world map.

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It is an interesting idea but at the same time a totally impossible one, since by Islamic law one is not allowed to convert AWAY from Islam. If you do so, you are an open target for anyone to eliminate you. Which then again would allow all Muslims to go after all those "returning Jews"...

Putin's attempt to intimidate Georgia

Interesting developments in a spy story!

Tensions developed between Russia and Georgia when four Russian soldiers were arrested for allegedly spying on the Georgian military. Russia's reaction was swift and draconian. They recalled the ambassador from Tbilisi. This was followed by an economical embargo on Georgia, and even military action was hinted at. Georgian owned restaurants, a casino and entertainment complex in Moscow were shut down, claiming that the owners were "criminal bosses". Residents in some parts of Moscow were ordered to report to the police. Even the Georgian cultural centre was searched.

Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili was quick to respond with conciliatory words, even releasing the soldiers on Monday. Yet the anti-Georgian campaign continues. Russian parliament is considering limiting bank transfers to Georgia, people with double citizenship may not work in state service any more, and Georgian children will not be allowed any more in schools set up for and by the Russian military in Georgia.

Is there something more behind the tensions than just the "spies"? Or it is just a scapegoating reaction to an act viewed as public humiliation, since Saakashvili turned to the West diplomatically instead of towards Moscow. Russia's reactions are disproportionately insane, though, and it would be appropriate for the other G-8 coutries to let them know so!

Islamic intimidation

On September 19, 2006, a French professor of philosophy, Robert Redeker, wrote an article about the growing number of threats and violence perpetrated by Muslims in France and all over Europe. The title of the article is: "In the face of Islamic intimidations, what should the free world do?" In it he accused Islam of “exalting violence.” The response was the kind of response that we are starting to get used to: "How dare anyone accuse Islam of being violent? Off with their heads!"

Although a good topic for a cartoon, this is no laughing matter. Robert Redeker has a fatwa on his head, he has received death threats, is now in hiding, under constant police protection. The chief editor of Le Figaro had to appear on Al Jazeera, publicly apologizing for the article, just to save his own head. And all this because of a newspaper article written by a Frenchman is his own country, now hunted in his own country...

And Muslim outrage goes on! Do you remember the Pope's speech at the University of Regensburg, with the quotation from the Byzantine emperor Manual II Paleologus? He also caved in to the Islamists and made an apology... well, sort of... It was not enough. An elderly Catholic nun, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, helping the poor in Mogadishu, was murdered in response to the war cries that gushed forth from the Muslim media.

The Chavez-Ahmadinejad affair

Since the incident with Khrushchev and the shoe, I haven't seen such an amuzing scene at the UN like the one with Chavez yesterday, when he crossed himself (I thought he was an atheist Communist) and complained of smelling sulfur.

My god, is he ever a comedian...! Certainly not statesmanlike behaviour! I am thankful right now that I am not a Venezuelan. I can sympathise with the embarrassment of most of the intellectuals there that they surely must feel now.

And the company that he keeps...! Not that they do not match. I saw Ahmadinejad's interview also, with Anderson from CNN. He wasn't too bad at the UN, he did not fulfill the fears of Jafarzadeh, but he made up for it during the interview. I am sad to say but he came across as a rather uneducated person. Ahmadinejad may be the proud owner of a civil engineering diploma but he certainly is lacking in other areas. Because of my age and European background I see certain things in him that I find quite alarming, so I feel compelled to share those thoughts here.

We know that his coming to power was not exactly "kosher", that is - it was greatly influenced by the gentle persuasive powers of the Basijs. Now he starts to show signs of a growing sense of supreme omnipotence. He is educationally speaking "half-baked", AND he is short! Does that remind you of somebody from the past? They even share the overwhelming hatred for Jews. Of course, just like his historic counterpart, he starts to enjoy a growing popularity among simple people, who see in him the shining knight who is ready to turn Iran into a nuclear "superpower", and who is able and willing to stand up, and even talk threateningly, against the great political giant, the USA. As an individual he seems to be obsessed by success, is arrogant, agressive, with a ruthlessly strong will.

If left to go ahead unchecked, I predict that soon there will be heads rolling in Iran, those of his previous supporters and allies, who now will have to be eliminated so he will not feel the burden of owing them so much. Then he will step up the militarization of Iran, will support with all means possible the inner strife in Iraq, until all foreigners will be forced out, after which we can expect a friendly Shia "Anschluss" between the two countries. Once that is done, the Middle East is his! (Please, see also my August 29 entry), "Iran prepares its school children to fight the West",.

*** I have another pet theory about Ahmadinejad. He is doing everything so "fly-in-your-face" wrong, and hence playing so openly into the hands of the US, that I sometimes get the odd feeling that he is actually a CIA agent who is instructed to do everything possible to make a Western invasion of Iran look legit.... or so it seems. :)

The passing of Naguib Mahfouz (August 30, 2006)

Naguib Mahfouz (1911 - 2006) was considered the greatest Egyptian intellect of our times. Nobel prize laurate, writer, long time civil servant, he was one of the few Egyptians who dared stand up in support of Anwar Sadat's peace treaty with Israel.


He gained a lot of enemies for his stance, as well as his ideals. His novel Children of Gebelawi (1959) was considered blasphemous enough to be banned in most of the Arab world and, altough there was no murderous fatwah ever declared agains him, in 1994 Islamic extremists attacked Mahfouz, stabbed him in the neck, severely damaging the nerves to his right hand. At the beginning of this year the book has finally been published in Egypt, too.

Yes, we all mourn his death. He was a great storyteller, a great painter of the human condition. (If you are interested in 20th Century Egypt you should read his Cairo Trilogy, a most entertaining saga.) Yet I have also read some comments which imply that his death means a point of no return, the downfall of an ideal. I don't think so! His life and work left glowing embers behind. Those sparks will inevitably find their way into the hearts and minds of present and future intellectuals, fertile ground for ideas of peace, cooperation, a pursuit of mankind's common goals.

It is our duty, yours and mine, too, to keep those embers alive, nesting them in our palms, to blow on them every once in a while and let a small shower of sparks find new homes...

Core of today's Israel actually purchased and paid for!

Since I got involved in the topic of Israel and the Middle East during the Lebanon war, every day I find more and more interesting factoids.

Here is one that should enter public consciousness, and used as proof against hate-mongering propaganda. Even is we ignore the fact that there was accountable Jewish presence at all times throughout the last two millenia, during the British Mandate fervent zionists with a dream about re-establishing their homeland kept purchasing land there. By 1948 most of the core of the present day country was in their hands. If the Holocaust did not happen, eventually all of present day's Israel would have been bought up anyway. But the urgency created by the tragedy pushed the international community to speed up the creation of a haven for the displaced and the orphans of the concentration camps.

Hezb'lah-Jugend...

This is becoming worse than a nightmare... Children! The children of fallen Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon are taken into special training camps and their natural grief for their parent(s)turned into hatred, to be trained and prepared for martyrdom! "Just when you thought Hezbollah couldn't sink any lower."

Please, read Russell Berman's article, Cradle to Grave: Hezbollah Children as it appeared on Saturday, September 2, 2006, in TELOS:

In the debates during and after the recent war in Lebanon, supporters of Hezbollah have tried to represent it as a deliverer of social welfare and not as a terrorist organization. Let us leave aside the question as to why a social welfare organization would be armed to the teeth and dwell for a moment in order to consider the claim itself and its theoretical/political implications. The utopia of the social welfare state has been phrased for a more than a century in terms of providing benefits to its client-citizens "from cradle to grave." In other words, the whole life course would become an object of state administrative practices. This bureaucratic apparatus logically necessitates some level of intrusion by the state into the private sphere of family life: care-taking, starting with the cradle, means a politicization of the nursery, and so forth. Hence Hayek's anxieties that even a modest social state would not stay modest for long and set out on a "road to serfdom."

To talk about Hezbollah as only a welfare state is an apologistic misrepresentation, akin to discussing Hitler in terms of managing unemployment and building the Autobahn (the way the press praises Hezbollah for its Iran-bankrolled big-spending in the Lebanese reconstruction). Hezbollah is however like a "welfare state" in the Hayekian sense: leveraging its resources and political clout to extend a tyrannical control over the private sphere. This is nowhere more evident than in the fate of the Hezbollah children.

The intrusion of Nazi ideology into nascent pan-Arabism in the 1930s in fact included the establishment of youth movements modeled on the Hitler jugend, and the lynchpin in this connection was none other than Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Nazi youth program. This sort of fascist politicization of youth therefore has a long history, but Hezbollah has taken it to new heights. Its message to the Lebanese is evidently this: the price for the social welfare benefits is sacrificing your children. The content of Hezbollah's welfare state practice is to accelerate the itinerary from cradle to grave: straight from the cradle, into the grave.

The Egyptian weekly Roz al-Yusuf published an article on August 18 by Mirfat al-Hakim on "Hezbollah's Children Militia." Some excerpts:

Hizbullah Recruits Children Barely 10 Years Old
- "Hizbullah has recruited over 2,000 innocent children aged 10-15 to form armed militias. Before the recent war with Israel, these children appeared only in the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations, and were referred to as the 'December 14 Units,' but today they are called is tishhadiyun ['martyrs'] . . . "
- "Hizbullah has customarily recruited youths and children and trained them to fight from a very early age. These are children barely 10 years old, who wear camouflage uniforms, cover their faces with black [camouflage] paint, swear to wage jihad, and join the Mahdi Scouts [youth organization] . . .
- "The children are selected by Hizbullah recruitment [officers] based on one criterion only: They must be willing to become martyrs."
The Children Train to Become Martyrs
- "The children are educated from an early age to become martyrs in their youth, like their fathers, and their training is carried out by the Mahdi Scouts youth organization. . . . [This organization], which is affiliated with Hizbullah, teaches the children the basic principles of Shi'ite ideology and of Hizbullah's ideology. . . . The first lesson that the children are taught by Hizbullah is 'The Disappearance of Israel,' and it is always an important part of the [training] program. . . .
- "The Mahdi Scouts organization was founded in Lebanon on May 5, 1985. . . . According to the organization's website, the number of [scouts] who had undergone training by the end of 2004 was 1,491, and the number of scout groups which had joined [the organization] was 449, with a membership of 41,960. According to the organization's most recent statistics, since 2004, 120 of its members have been ready to become martyrs.
- "The organization's goal is to train an exemplary generation of Muslims based on the [principle of] 'the rule of the jurisprudent' [a founding principle of the Islamic Revolution in Iran], and to prepare for the coming of the Imam Mahdi [the Shi'ite messiah]. Its members, including the children, undertake to obey their commanders, to bring honor to the [Muslim] nation, and to prepare themselves for helping the Mahdi [when he comes]."
(Source: The Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series - No. 1276, Sept. 1, 2006. Link.)

"A Nation With Child-Martyrs Will Be Victorious"
According to the article, Na'im Qasim, deputy to Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview on Radio Canada: "A nation with child-martyrs will be victorious, no matter what difficulties lie in its path. Israel cannot conquer us or violate our territories, because we have martyr sons who will purge the land of the Zionist filth... This will be done through the blood of the martyrs, until we eventually achieve our goals."

You can also find this article, together with related material on the subject, on the site of the Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council.

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Actually Hezbollah is not the only entity doing this. The new Hamas regime in Gaza is gearing up very much to follow suit. I have been aware of special summer camps there, where similar indoctrination is happening, but I don't think they reached Hezbollah's level yet. In my photos the kids seem to be still only play-acting. I am very curious whether this phenomenon can be found elsewhere. If you know about any similar "children's camps", please, I would very much like to know about them.







Muslim mothers! How can you stand by and allow this to happen? Surely there are aberrations like "Umm Nidal" who, by her own admission, is ready to offer ALL her children to the Cause. She wants them all to become suicide bombers against Israel. I know that most of you are different and not supportive of such ideology. I know because many of you have become friends of mine over the years, we shared our hopes and sorrows. But by keeping silent and idle, you are in effect accomplices, whether you like the notion or not. You allow it to happen!

"What can I, a powerless woman, do against a terrorist organization like Hezbollah?" - you ask. Lots! First of all gather around you all the likeminded women of your community. You don't even have to write articles or lobby, although do it if you can! Just discuss matters among the women you know, point out anything that happens in your local Muslim community that you think does not serve the true interest of that community. Make those ideas gently flow, back into the consciousness of your family and friends in your mother country. As you become more active, the ideas will come. Most importantly, though, raise your children in such a way that they themselves cannot be swayed by harmful propaganda. By protecting their minds you will save their lives!

Forcible conversion to Islam

Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were held hostage in Gaza for three weeks. They were released on Sunday, August 27, 2006. During their captivity their were converted to Islam by gunpoint. They announced their conversion on TV, complete with anti-Western slogans.

After their release they (understandably) talked nicely about their captors and Islam itself. After all they rightfully fear for their safety. The danger still exists that those captors' revenge can reach them anywhere if they malign them. They do carry the memory of those first hand experiences.

I will also watch them closely in the coming months to see whether they will actually start practicing their "new religion". You may raise an eyebrow and think to yourself: Why on Earth would they do that? I say they most probably will! Why? Because once you are a Muslim, there is no way out!!! If you try to convert to something else, or return to your old religion, you will be declared an apostate and, as such, condemned to death - any Muslim has the right to eliminate you.

BlogDay 2006

I made this discovery today and I think it is a great idea. Unfortunately the official date of BlogDay 2006 was August 31, so I am a bit late. But better late than never! Being the master of my own space, I declare BlogDay still on, and I hereby present you with my chosen five "newly discovered" great politico blogs.

Since recent political events made our attention focus on the Middle East, and I followed the general trend in my postings, I continue in the same vein by offering you links to blogs that are either maintained by bloggers in the Middle East, or deal with events in that area.

1. Editor: Myself. The ultimate Iranian blog by fellow Torontonian, Hossein Derakhshan.

2. Iraq: the model. "New points of view about the future of Iraq."

3. The Listless Lawyer. Although not an outright "political" blog, he does touch upon political issues often. What connects him to the general topic of my BlogDay quotes is his wonderful series on Islamic Democracy and the Sovereignty of God.

4. The Mesopotamian - trying to bring one more Iraqi voice of the silent majority to the attention of the world.

5. Pedestrian Infidel. Great teamwork of five: two from the States, one from the UK, Anti-Jihadist from Malaysia, Avenging Apostate from the UAE, and the sole female of the team, European Kafir - GO GIRL, GO!!!

Lebanon demands disarmament of Palestinians

According to this article in jpost.com the Lebanese government tries to enforce UN Security Council resolution 1701 and disarm the militants in the Litani area refugee camps. Their Fatah leader, Monir Al-Makdah, rejects the resolution altogether and refuses disarmament. They consider the resolution illegal because it does not include the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Hmmm...

As far as I understand, sooner or later independent Palestine will become reality. I find it fascinating though, that so many of the refugees want to return to their old homes inside Israel, seemingly vieing for Israeli citizenship!

Unless, of course, they have something else in mind...

Hezbollywood?

Just when you thought Hezbollah couldn't sink any lower. (Quote from Mr Bagel.).

An Australian journalist made a really funny discovery. On a Hezbollah website that is used for major boasting about their successes, one of their picture is this one here, I borrowed it from them. It is supposed to depict a scene of Hezbollah fighters exploding an Israeli ship. Well, as per Andrew Bolt's discovery, Hezbollah also borrowed the photo -- from an Australian army site where the photo (posted 15-Nov-2005) shows the 1998 distruction of one of their decomissioned destroyer-escort, HMAS Torrens, off the coast of Western Australia. I wonder how many more of Hezbollah's photos are "borrowed material"...

Iran prepares its school children to fight the West(!?)

While researching analyses of school textbooks in the Middle East I found this interesting report on findings in the Iranian curriculum.

Palestinian refugees

From my earlier stance it must be obvious that in my mind the Middle East crisis, as a crisis, has been created (yes, I stand by my opinion) and fueled by the Arab countries of the area. Don't get me wrong, I do not say that those Arabs from British Palestine, who for one reason or another were forced to leave their properties behind and became refugees, were not wronged during the creation of Israel. What I cannot digest is the fact that they are still there in the refugee camps. Sixty years have past! Around the world there were horrendous hot spots, with horribly traumatised refugees who barely escaped with their lives, in numbers vastly greater than those of the Palestinians. Yet, they managed to move on, immigrated to different countries and rebuilt their lives.

To present you with my own personal perspective: I am a formal refugee from Eastern Europe, my family has lost everything one horrible night, down to the smallest personal items and, although we did not lose our lives like the Jews did, we accepted history's quirks and moved on. It would not have even occurred to us to stay in those Viennese refugee camps and orchestrate suicide bombings into our old countries. But then again nobody encouraged us to do so, nobody fed us fairy tales, nobody promised us that soon the lands behind the Iron Courtain will be reconquered and everybody will get back their lands and lost property. Because that is what the Palestinian refugees (if we can still call that the children and grandchildren of those who originally fled) are being promised, to this day, as they are kept isolated from the rest of the host countries, kept in poverty, while the rest of the Arab world enjoys the benefits of the wealth generated by the rising oil prices.

Recent political events, the fact that the majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas, an organization openly talking about the eventual distruction of Israel, have proven what I personally was aware of for a long time now, that Russian Communist propaganda egged on the majority of the Palestinians (as well as the rest of the Arab world) to keep on fighting towards Israel's total elimination (see my August 24 entry). This generation of refugees grew up using school books written in some cases as long ago as Nasser's regime in the fifties. What can you expect when children as young as 3-4 years old parrot words like: "Jews are apes and pigs". The girl in this clip is in Egypt, the interview was shown in Saudi Arabia, on Iqra TV on May 7, 2002.

My renewed efforts

For a while I felt that I was not informed enough to present ideas of my own on world events, in face of the very heated Middle Eastern confrontation, just to find later that they were not quite right. Instead I read feverishly and chose writings that I felt were closest to what I perceive as the true state of matters.

Today I decided to resume my own politicking because things are somewhat slower and so I do get a chance to formulate some (hopefully logical) conclusions. Not that my interests do not go beyond the Middle East, but events there were so much in the forefront of media focus that none of us got much chance to hear about goings-on in any other corner of the world. I will therefor start with my views on the present conditions there, to branch out later as I catch up with other issues that I will feel the urge to comment on. I also hope to have some time to add to my other blogs of general musings and the more ladylike home related postings (like recipes and stuff...).

If you happen to chance on these pages, please, drop me a few incouraging words so I will know my voice is not just a whisper in the wilderness. :)

The Undeclared World War III

An amazingly concise, clear and wise analysis of the current world situation, and the role of the Middle East.

Attack on Israel was a mistake, Hezbollah leader says

Hmmm...? Says I...


The leader of the militant group Hezbollah says that if he had it to do all over again, he wouldn't order the capture of Israeli soldiers that ignited the war in Lebanon.
27/08/2006 CBC News

"You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not," Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with Lebanon's New TV station broadcast Sunday.

"He more or less admitted that he miscalculated," CBC Radio's Mike Hornbrook reported.

The war devastated Lebanon, where at least 850 militants and civilians died in Israeli bombardments and land attacks, while Hezbollah rockets and fighters killed at least 157 Israeli civilians and soldiers. Estimates of the cost of repairing damage to Lebanese buildings, roads and infrastructure run into the billions of dollars.

Hezbollah fighters crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel on July 12, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two more. Israel responded with attacks that lasted until a UN-organized ceasefire took effect on Aug. 14.

"We did not think, even one per cent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Nasrallah said.

While Nasrallah claimed victory over Israel when the ceasefire took hold, he apologized in the interview for the suffering of the Lebanese people.

What does Moscow have to do with the recent war in Lebanon?

Russian Footprints
What does Moscow have to do with the recent war in Lebanon?

National Review, August 24, 2006




By Ion Mihai Pacepa

The Kremlin may be the main winner in the Lebanon war. Israel has been attacked with soviet Kalashnikovs and Katyushas, Russian Fajr-1 and Fajr-3 rockets, Russian AT-5 Spandrel antitank missiles and Kornet antitank rockets. Russia’s outmoded weapons are now all the rage with terrorists everywhere in the world, and the bad guys know exactly where to get them. The weapons cases abandoned by Hezbollah were marked: “Customer: Ministry of Defense of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”

Today’s international terrorism was conceived at the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the KGB, in the aftermath of the1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East. I witnessed its birth in my other life, as a Communist general. Israel humiliated Egypt and Syria, whose bellicose governments were being run by Soviet razvedka (Russian for “foreign intelligence”) advisers, whereupon the Kremlin decided to arm Israel’s enemy neighbors, the Palestinians, and draw them into a terrorist war against Israel.

General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, who created Communist Romania’s intelligence structure and then rose to head up all of Soviet Russia’s foreign intelligence, often lectured me: “In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”

Between 1968 and 1978, when I broke with Communism, the security forces of Romania alone sent two cargo planes full of military goodies every week to Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. Since the fall of Communism the East German Stasi archives have revealed that, in 1983 alone, its foreign intelligence service sent $1,877,600 worth of AK-47 ammunition to Lebanon. According to Vaclav Havel, Communist Czechoslovakia shipped 1,000 tons of the odorless explosive Semtex-H (which can’t be detected by sniffer dogs) to Islamic terrorists — enough for 150 years.

The terrorist war per se came into action at the end of 1968, when the KGB transformed airplane hijacking — that weapon of choice for September 11, 2001 — into an instrument of terror. In 1969 alone there were 82 hijackings of planes worldwide, carried out by the KGB-financed PLO. In 1971, when I was visiting Sakharovsky at his Lubyanka office, he called my attention to a sea of red flags pinned onto a world map hanging on the wall. Each flag represented a captured plane. “Airplane hijacking is my own invention,” he claimed.

The political “success” occasioned by hijacking Israeli airplanes prompted the KGB’s 13th Department, known in our intelligence jargon as the “Department for Wet Affairs” (wet being a euphemism for bloody), to expand into organizing “public executions” of Jews in airports, train stations, and other public places. In 1969 Dr. George Habash, a KGB puppet, explained: “Killing one Jew far away from the field of battle is more effective than killing a hundred Jews on the field of battle, because it attracts more attention.”

By the end of the 1960s, the KGB was deeply involved in mass terrorism against Jews, carried out by various Palestinian client organizations. Here are some terrorist actions for which the KGB took credit while I was still in Romania: November 1969, armed attack on the El Al office in Athens, leaving 1 dead and 14 wounded; May 30, 1972, Ben Gurion Airport attack, leaving 22 dead and 76 wounded; December 1974, Tel Aviv movie theater bomb, leaving 2 dead and 66 wounded; March 1975, attack on a Tel Aviv hotel, leaving 25 dead and 6 wounded; May 1975, Jerusalem bomb, leaving 1 dead and 3 wounded; July 4, 1975, bomb in Zion Square, Jerusalem, leaving 15 dead and 62 wounded; April 1978, Brussels airport attack, leaving 12 wounded; May 1978, attack on an El Al plane in Paris, leaving 12 wounded.

In 1971, the KGB launched operation Tayfun (Russian for “typhoon”), aimed at destabilizing Western Europe. The Baader-Meinhof, the Red Army Faction (RAF), and other KGB-sponsored Marxist organizations unleashed a wave of anti-American terrorism that shook Western Europe. Richard Welsh, the CIA station chief in Athens, was shot to death in Greece on December 23, 1975. General Alexander Haig, commander of NATO in Brussels was injured in a bomb attack that damaged his armored Mercedes beyond repair in June 1979. General Frederick J. Kroesen, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, barely survived a rocket attack in September 1981. Alfred Herrhausen, the pro-American chairman of Deutsche Bank, was killed during a grenade attack in November 1989. Hans Neusel, a pro-American state secretary in the West Germaninterior ministry, was wounded during an assassination attempt in July 1990.

In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.

According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch.

Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor, Andropov sermonized. We had only to keep repeating our themes — that the United States and Israel were “fascist, imperial-Zionist countries” bankrolled by rich Jews. Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidels’ occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the U.S. Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom.

The codename of this operation was “SIG” (Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or “Zionist Governments”), and was within my Romanian service’s “sphere of influence,” for it embraced Libya, Lebanon, and Syria. SIG was a large party/state operation. We created joint ventures to build hospitals, houses, and roads in these countries, and there we sent thousands of doctors, engineers, technicians, professors, and even dance instructors. All had the task of portraying the United States as an arrogant and haughty Jewish fiefdom financed by Jewish money and run by Jewish politicians, whose aim was to subordinate the entire Islamic world.

In the mid 1970s, the KGB ordered my service, the DIE — along with other East European sister services — to scour the country for trusted party activists belonging to various Islamic ethnic groups, train them in disinformation and terrorist operations, and infiltrate them into the countries of our “sphere of influence.” Their task was to export a rabid, demented hatred for American Zionism by manipulating the ancestral abhorrence for Jews felt by the people in that part of the world. Before I left Romania for good, in 1978, my DIE had dispatched around 500 such undercover agents to Islamic countries. According to a rough estimate received from Moscow, by 1978 the whole Soviet-bloc intelligence community had sent some 4,000 such agents of influence into the Islamic world.

In the mid-1970s we also started showering the Islamic world with an Arabic translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a tsarist Russian forgery that had been used by Hitler as the foundation for his anti-Semitic philosophy. We also disseminated a KGB-fabricated “documentary” paper in Arabic alleging that Israel and its main supporter, the United States, were Zionist countries dedicated to converting the Islamic world into a Jewish colony.

We in the Soviet bloc tried to conquer minds, because we knew we could not win any military battles. It is hard to say what exactly are the lasting effects of operation SIG. But the cumulative effect of disseminating hundreds of thousands of Protocols in the Islamic world and portraying Israel and the United States as Islam’s deadly enemies was surely not constructive.

Post-Soviet Russia has been transformed in unprecedented ways, but the widely popular belief that the nefarious Soviet legacy was rooted out at the end of the Cold War the same way that Nazism was rooted out with the conclusion of World War II, is not yet correct.

In the 1950s, when I was chief of Romania’s foreign intelligence station in West Germany, I witnessed how Hitler’s Third Reich had been demolished, its war criminals put on trial, its military and police forces disbanded, and the Nazis removed from public office. None of these things has happened in the former Soviet Union. No individual has been put on trial, although the Soviet Union’s Communist regime killed over a hundred million people. Most Soviet institutions have been left in place, having simply been given new names, and are now run by many of the same people who guided the Communist state. In 2000, former officers of the KGB and the Soviet Red Army took over the Kremlin and Russia’s government.

Germany would have never become a democracy with Gestapo and SS officers running the show.

On September 11, 2001, President Vladimir Putin became the first leader of a foreign country to express sympathy to President George W. Bush for what he called “these terrible tragedies of the terrorist attacks.” Soon, however, Putin began moving his country back into the terrorist business. In March 2002, he quietly reinstituted sales of weapons to Iran’s terrorist dictator, Ayatollah Khamenei, and engaged Russia in the construction of a 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor at Bushehr, with a uranium conversion facility able to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. Hundreds of Russian technicians also started helping the government of Iran to develop the Shahab-4 missile, with a range of over 1,250 miles, which can carry a nuclear or germ warhead anywhere in the Middle East and Europe.

Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had already announced that nothing could stop his country from building nuclear weapons, and he stated that Israel was a “disgraceful stain [on] the Islamic world” that would be eliminated. During World War II, 405,399 Americans died to eradicate Nazism and its anti-Semitic terrorism. Now we are facing Islamic fascism and nuclear anti-Semitic terrorism. The United Nations can offer no hope. It has not yet even been able to define terrorism.

A proverb says that one fire drives out another. The Kremlin may be our best hope. In May 2002, the NATO foreign ministers approved a partnership with Russia, the alliance’s former enemy. The rest of the world said that the Cold War was over and done with. Kaput. Now Russia wants to be admitted to the World Trade Organization. For that to happen, the Kremlin should be firmly told first to get out of the terrorism business.

We should also help the Russians realize that it is in their own interest to make President Ahmadinejad renounce nuclear weapons. He is an unpredictable tyrant who may also consider Russia an enemy at some point in time. “If Iran gets weapons of mass destruction, deliverable by a missile, that’s going to be a problem,” President Bush correctly stated. “That’s going to be a problem for all of us, including Russia.”



—Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. His book Red Horizons has been republished in 27 countries.

Historic opportunity

SUNDAY, AUGUST 20, 2006
There is a very clear-sighted commentary on the World Peace Herald website written by Arnaud de Borchgrave, UPI Editor at large: The Middle East's silver lining. According to the commentary, this would be a golden opportunity for resolving, or at least for making major headway towards a solution in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"The current crisis in Lebanon, says Gen. Scowcroft, "provides a historic opportunity to achieve what has seemed impossible." It's now up to the United States, he adds, which alone can mobilize the international community and Israel and the Arab states for the task that has defeated all previous administrations."

Open and fair

SUNDAY, AUGUST 13, 2006
Watch the following and see what it means to be a true Arab:

Israel's reality

Michael Coren, National Post
Published: Thursday, August 03, 2006

Two weeks in Israel in the middle of the war in Lebanon. Stories that should never be forgotten and scenes that I wish could be expunged from my mind. But if one aspect of this entire tragedy pounds away, it is the manner in which the reality of Israel in crisis is so dramatically different from its portrayal in the foreign media. Israelis tend to shrug their shoulders and explain how they are used to the distortion by now. That is sad. Because a lasting peace can only be achieved after a lasting truth.

From the opening days of the latest conflict, the assembled media corps in Israel dwelt on the number and plight of the refugees from Lebanon. Their suffering is generally beyond question and every Israeli I met was devastated by the civilian victims of the war.

But why, they asked, were these same reporters not broadcasting and writing about the hundreds of thousands of Israeli refugees from the north of the country who were fleeing to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem? Around half-a-million Israeli Jews and Arabs have left Haifa, Tiberias and neighbouring towns and thousands more are living each day in underground shelters.

Particularly bitter is the experience of a number of Lebanese who fled their home country six years ago when Hezbollah took over their villages and towns, torturing and raping and killing. They were given residence and often citizenship in Israel and usually live in those areas now being hit so hard by the plague of Katyusha rockets.

Lebanese people fleeing to Syria, on the other hand, receive endless media attention. This is particularly ironic as there are still Lebanese activists in Syrian prisons; and the former prime minister of Lebanon, a man who was helping to transform the nation and was courageously critical of Syrian behaviour, was murdered by a Syrian army of occupation last year.

When it comes to the game of numbers and perception, there is another screaming fallacy in the coverage of the issues. Until just a day or two ago, the foreign media announced every Lebanese fatality as a civilian death. This would mean that the Israeli military is so incompetent and so evil that it had failed to kill a single Hezbollah fighter.

The truth, of course, is that heavily armed Jihadists were being eliminated from the first day of combat. Unlike Israeli soldiers, however, they often wear no uniform and normally have no rank, papers or official status.

In one attack on a bunker in Tyre, more than 30 people were killed by an Israeli aircraft. The official line, weakly replicated by the Western press, was that all of the dead were civilian. It was later revealed that half of them were Hezbollah militia and were found with their weapons.

The question surely is whether we should blame Israel for attacking people who are firing rockets and missiles into their country or blame the people who fire those rockets and missiles and then purposely hide among civilians. If anyone doubts the authenticity of this policy they should spend some time with Lebanese Christians whose homes have been used with special glee by Hezbollah soldiers when firing on Israel.

It is vital to remember one thing about all this. Very few Lebanese people who we see interviewed on television will openly criticize Hezbollah. They know how the organization works and that even if they escape, their families might not be as fortunate. Journalists are regularly questioned about the nature of their story and the line they are taking and often intimidated and threatened.

Pressure is one thing, sheer failure to report the truth quite another. After the Israeli Arab town of Nazareth was shelled and two young boys killed, some journalists ran with the news that because this was an Arab town the Israeli government had removed it from the siren alert system. We saw footage of locals condemning Israeli discrimination and apathy.

It is true that there were no alarms sounded and that Nazareth had been removed from the national alarm grid -- because officials in Nazareth had demanded it. Being part of this system means that the sirens operate for two minutes during Independence Day and Memorial Day, to the memory of fallen soldiers. The political leaders of Nazareth insisted that they wanted no part of these Zionist ceremonies and, when warned that removal might be dangerous, laughingly said in a television interview that their brothers in Lebanon would never attack them.

Another Israeli shrug. The same again when the foreign media refuses to say that Haifa, the hardest hit of the cities in Israel, has a university that is almost 40% Arab and that in every survey that has asked them if they would prefer any Arab citizenship to Israeli citizenship, the overwhelming majority laugh, or cry, at the very idea of Arab citizenship.













Then there are the apparently unacceptable questions. Why, for example, do we see so many pictures of horribly wounded and even dying Arabs but so few of Israelis who have been smashed apart by rockets filled with ball bearings? The answer is that Israeli officials shield the wounded and vulnerable and protect them from indignity. Hezbollah and Hamas operatives, on the other hand, positively welcome often appallingly intimate shots of their wounded.

Politically unacceptable to say but still nauseatingly true. As is the fact that behind the rocket batteries in the Tyre banana plantations are civilians and that beside the Hezbollah killing machines in Beirut are innocent people. Israel pleads with the harmless to flee but still they sometimes die. Only the biased and the naive would blame Israel rather than Iran, Syria and Hezbollah for this.

Tragically, there are many of both among those who claim to be explaining the story. And another Israeli shrugs.

- Michael Coren is a writer and broadcaster. http://www.michaelcoren.com

The media war against the Jews

FRIDAY, AUGUST 04, 2006
As a person with German ancestry I do feel the obligation to point out an alarming trend, which reminds us of days gone and seemingly forgotten. Let us not repeat the sins of our fathers!!!

Please, read and ponder the following:
The media war against the Jews
The media aims its missiles
European Media and Anti-Israel Bias
Qana in context
The Chicago Tribune as a Provocateur
What Media Bias?
Why Is the Press So Anti-Israel?
Israel and Bias in the American Press

Hezbollah and civilians

THURSDAY, AUGUST 03, 2006

I have seen several times now Ms Carla Jazzar, First Secretary at the Lebanese Embassy in Wasgington, speak on TV, saying that the fact that Hezbollah fighters shoot their rockets from civilian areas is all a pack of lies. Could someone, please, forward to her this photo here, plus he following material: article with photos in the Australian Herald Sun, video on YouTube, the article Christians Fleeing Lebanon Denounce Hezbollah (with photos) in The New York Times, July 28, 2006 (registration is necessary to view any archived material),

It is a different issue whether it is all right for the Israelis to "make mistakes", like the Qana air strike, which was since revised to 28 dead. We DO have visible proof that they are at least trying to hit only legitimate military targets. Hezbollah on the other hand send their rockets off towards civilian areas, packed with pellets and nails, with the specific goal toharm human targets. The only reason they produce less victims is that the rockets have to travel relatively long distances and the early warning system in Israel makes it possible for people to run for cover. Had the Israeli offensive not push Hezbollah back farther, the damage would have been way bigger.

But all these are just details. The more burning issue is that Hezbollah exists in the first place, and that in its present form now is a well trained, properly brainwashed proxy army of Iran's Islamic regime, which uses it for its own purposes in trying to increase its regional dominance. Until the Shia Lebanese recongnize this themselves and realize that they are double victims, that they themselves had no valid reasons for the massive arms build-up and the actual picking of fights with their southern neighbours, there is no hope...

Islam and democracy

THURSDAY, AUGUST 03, 2006
I was talking to a friend yesterday, discussing the prospects of a peaceful, democratic Middle East. His opinion was expressed with this concise proverb: "We can lead a horse to water, but we cannot make it drink..." The picture that forms in my mind, also, after years of watching how things unfold, is more and more that of people who simply do not want true democracy. I know, I know, some of my Muslim friends argue vehemently that they do want democracy but "not a Western style one". OK, I am ready to listen and hear the principles of a specific Middle Eastern style democracy. I have yet to hear any convincing ones.

The three shura principles should promote equality and justice, right? But I question whether that coincides with the secular concepts. Religious laws, specially those that are based on the Qur'an, have precedence over true observance of individual freedom, "mas'uliyah jama'iyyah", that is, collective responsibility, comes first. Unfortunately collective views are more often than not guided (imposed) by religious authority. Often those views may seem correct in the religious context, yet they can be very limiting, infringing on individual freedom. "Khilafah, which means God's delegation of authority to the ummah - (means that) every individual member of the ummah is legally obligated to ensure the proper execution of the delegated authority".* Who decides what is "proper"? Each individual? Or there are religious guidelines (ijma), ultimately interpreted and upheld by the clergy? To me that does not sound very promising.

In my opinion true democracy cannot be attained based on religious principles, be that Muslim, Christian or any other belief system, simply because it necessitates interpretation of scriptural edicts that are often fuzzy, open to opposing ways of understanding them. Exactly these opposing views can get in the way when it comes to peaceful coexistence. These opposing views are the basis of the Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq. Don't misunderstand me, I am aware that the situation there is much more complex than just the religious sectarianism. But it doesn't change the fact that the sectarian differences enabled the original historic separation, allowing the development of the present conflict.

The power of pictures and media

SUNDAY, JULY 30, 2006
Yes, pictures and media reporting can be very powerful. And it can be very revealing, even when the reporters themselves are not aware of what they are revealing.

When I opened the TV today and heard about the Qana tragedy, I felt horror stricken. It sounded like there was a deliberate direct hit on a building that housed those refugees. Then I started to dig for details. I found out that it is not THAT building that got hit but another one next to it, which "happened" to be used by Hezbollah rocket launchers. The deaths are the result of the concrete roof of the shelter collapsing. Hmmm... Do you think, maybe, just maybe, those Hezbollah fighters were not aware that there were people in the shelter next door...? I heard that Israel is going to release the video showing exactly how it happened, where the Hezbollah rockets were launched from. Until then here is an older video, taken on July 26, showing a similar situation. There the next door building luckily stayed intact.

Now the world is outraged at Israel for commiting such a heinous crime. Can we realistically expect from Israel to have known that there were civilians in the basement next door? Or that this next door building would not withstand the blast? Supposing they knew it, could you realistically expect Israel not to target that rocket launcher BECAUSE its proximity to those civilians? They did so in the past, and the Hezbollah operators obviously counted on it. For them either way is good:
a) if Israel does not shoot, they saved themselves.
b) if Israel does shoot, they die a martyr's death and the civilian casualties will work in Hezbollah's favour in the international arena.

This takes me to my main point. I just saw the "reaction" of a mob of 5000 in Beirut attacking the UN headquarters, "in protest" to what happened. Of course it was really impressively violent, very subconsciously scary for the average viewer. One could not stop wondering: if this kind of violence could potentially get unleashed in London, Paris, New York, in our backyards, maybe we SHOULD stop the Israelis before Arab emotions really get out of hand. Well, my reaction was slightly different, a reaction that may have been somewhat similar to some of the UN personel inside that building: "Oh, God! Couldn't we just carpet bomb this crowd...?"

And here I am, struggling with these emotions. Because at the same time I am aware of the fact that these Southern Muslim Lebanese are actually hostages. Hezbollah may have been a grassroot force, truly Lebanese, at birth. Although I do question even that because of their famous attack on the American peacekeepers in 1982. But Hezbollah definitely lost all its raison d'etre after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon. That is why I questioned in an earlier post that how come there was a lack of similar military reaction to the Syrian presence, even though they stayed way longer in Lebanon, interfering left, right and centre.

By now it should be clearly visible to all that the whole of Southern Lebanon are used as miserable puppets by some other forces who want to use them as the actual front in the fight against Israel. If they were purely of Lebanese interest, what do they have against Israel right now? The Shebaa Farms? I mean, come on...!!! Does that (Syrian!) little piece of land warrant all the military build-up, with 10 000 rockets pointing at Israel and thousands off well trained and armed troops ready for ground combat? Or would "brotherly feelings" towards the Palestinians, against whom they actually faught in the past, warrant for jeopardising their own lives and the lives of their families by fighting for and instead of them? I am sure this propaganda slogan makes the Palestinians feel all warm and fuzzy inside, except that it is not exactly true. I found a very good analysis here yesterday that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if all of it is true. It does make a lot of the puzzle pieces fall into place, but I will have to look into all the details to make up my mind. Because if it is true, it is very, VERY SCARY!!!

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I just watched our beloved CBC showing the anti-Israel demonstration in Montreal. All those empassioned cries for the "innocent lives lost". Yes, true! But how come everybody so quickly forgot the images of the leaflets the Israelis have distributed all over the would-be front line, warning all the civilians to leave? The images of men and women spitefully tearing them up for the benefit of the cameras? And did these Canadian viewers now react in a knee-jerk way to the interviewed villagers saying to the journalists that "those people were too poor to afford the fees they needed to flee", taking it at face value? I would not be surprised to find that some of those interviewees were the very same people who gave rich(er) villagers a ride - "for an appropriate fee", of course. My God, 60 or so people...! Looking down in the military videos on those trucks that carried the rocketlaunchers, I realised that just two of those would have been sufficient to cart everybody away to safety, and still have time to return for the good fight they were wishing for. If Hezbollah was such a socially generous and responsible entity over the decades, how come they couldn't provide this service for the safety of the villagers - FOR FREE? And if any of those grieved villagers interviewed on CNN were actual Hezbollah fighters, would you have been able to tell...?

But Hezbollah thought it was better for those people to stay. Hezbollah thought it was all right to launch rockets right next door from them. Yet so many people all over the world don't seem to think about these things. Where is the anger against Hezbollah? Or Syria and Iran, who are behind Hezbollah? Why only against Israel or the United Nations? How is it that I see all this and so many people don't? When, tell me when, at what point in history, will people realize the extant at which those poor South Lebanese were intellectually hijacked and used?