Politicking...

New York Times article by Judge R. Goldstone

2011-11-12T22:40:00.000-08:00

Richard J. Goldstone, a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court, led the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2008-9. At the time he focused mainly on Gaza, which then resulted in the infamous 500-page U.N. report that bears his name: the accusation that Israeli leaders deliberately targeted civilians during the 2009 war with Hamas. In April this year Judge Goldstone publicly retracted the core charge of the report in an article published in the Washington Post. That article, as well as this new one which I post here in its entirety, resulted in vicious personal attacks from certain members of the U.N. Human Rights Council, a fact that further proves their terribly biased position. Let us hope that a lot of people who will read this article will have the moral fortitude to accept the actual truth.

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Israel and the Apartheid Slander

Nov. 1, 2011

By RICHARD J. GOLDSTONE

THE Palestinian Authority’s request for full United Nations membership has put hope for any two-state solution under increasing pressure. The need for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians has never been greater. So it is important to separate legitimate criticism of Israel from assaults that aim to isolate, demonize and delegitimize it.

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is going to be one-sided and the members of the “jury” are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.

While “apartheid” can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.

I know all too well the cruelty of South Africa’s abhorrent apartheid system, under which human beings characterized as black had no rights to vote, hold political office, use “white” toilets or beaches, marry whites, live in whites-only areas or even be there without a “pass.” Blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death if there was no “black” ambulance to rush them to a “black” hospital. “White” hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives.

In assessing the accusation that Israel pursues apartheid policies, which are by definition primarily about race or ethnicity, it is important first to distinguish between the situations in Israel, where Arabs are citizens, and in West Bank areas that remain under Israeli control in the absence of a peace agreement.

In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s population — vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.

To be sure, there is more de facto separation between Jewish and Arab populations than Israelis should accept. Much of it is chosen by the communities themselves. Some results from discrimination. But it is not apartheid, which consciously enshrines separation as an ideal. In Israel, equal rights are the law, the aspiration and the ideal; inequities are often successfully challenged in court.

The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here too there is no intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” This is a critical distinction, even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there. South Africa’s enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority, to the detriment of other races. By contrast, Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.

But until there is a two-state peace, or at least as long as Israel’s citizens remain under threat of attacks from the West Bank and Gaza, Israel will see roadblocks and similar measures as necessary for self-defense, even as Palestinians feel oppressed. As things stand, attacks from one side are met by counterattacks from the other. And the deep disputes, claims and counterclaims are only hardened when the offensive analogy of “apartheid” is invoked.

Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an “apartheid wall” and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While such images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it is disingenuous to use them to distort the reality. The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks; while it has inflicted great hardship in places, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the state in many cases to reroute it to minimize unreasonable hardship. Road restrictions get more intrusive after violent attacks and are ameliorated when the threat is reduced.

Of course, the Palestinian people have national aspirations and human rights that all must respect. But those who conflate the situations in Israel and the West Bank and liken both to the old South Africa do a disservice to all who hope for justice and peace.

Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and the West Bank cannot be simplified to a narrative of Jewish discrimination. There is hostility and suspicion on both sides. Israel, unique among democracies, has been in a state of war with many of its neighbors who refuse to accept its existence. Even some Israeli Arabs, because they are citizens of Israel, have at times come under suspicion from other Arabs as a result of that longstanding enmity.

The mutual recognition and protection of the human dignity of all people is indispensable to bringing an end to hatred and anger. The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony.

Alternate Human Rights Summit in New York

2011-09-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

Read this powerful op-ed below by human rights hero Yang Jianli, appearing in the Sept. 19 edition of the New York Daily News. It explains why UN Watch and 20 partner groups are holding a major human rights summit this week in New York. For more information, visit www.ngosummit.org.

The UN's red carpet for tyrants: We're hosting our own assembly where repression isn't welcome.

BY YANG JIANLI

Monday, September 19th 2011

United Nations General Assembly, held annually in New York, is a permanent fixture of the diplomatic calendar. Just as inevitably, in the year that passes between each session, the world undergoes changes on a scale from the significant to the enormous.

This Wednesday, when President Obama opens the general debate of the Assembly's 66th session, those changes will impact most visibly upon the roster of world leaders not in attendance.

Few, for example, will forget Libyan Col. Moammar Khadafy's 2009 appearance, when he delivered a rambling, 1-1/2-hour speech, tossed aside a copy of the UN charter and called the Security Council a "terror council."

In 2011, Khadafy's regime will be invisible. His key UN diplomats already defected in February.

Similarly, thanks to the political convulsions across the Middle East, other repressive regimes - from Egypt, from Tunisia - will be absent this year, never to return.

Even so, for every collapsed tyrannical regime, there are several more that have retained power. And they, too, will be represented in New York, and treated with all the respect we afford duly elected leaders of constitutional, multiparty democracies.

From the Middle East, their number includes Syria, Sudan and Iran - whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be attending the Assembly for the seventh year in a row.

More broadly, this club of tyrannies includes Zimbabwe, Cuba and, of course, my own country, China, a Security Council member.

This depressing reality underlines the greatest challenge of the UN system, which has never distinguished between democracies and dictatorships - despite the fact that the UN is sworn to universally uphold the same human rights for all peoples, regardless of where they live.

Given this paradox, how is meaningful action possible on urgent human rights violations, such as China's brutal crackdown this year on citizens who dared to peacefully gather for walks around Chinese cities?

The GA's prearranged agenda precludes such discussions. When the world body does make the news, it's about the outrageous theatrics of its participants: Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust, say, or Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez suggesting that former President George W. Bush was Satan.

The UN's bloc of authoritarian states are all too powerful to prevent the democratic impulses sweeping the world from surfacing in the world body. Back in March, after Libya was finally suspended from the UN's Human Rights Council, I had occasion to address that body. Recalling the case of Liu Xiaobo, a writer serving an 11-year jail sentence for advocating freedom, I asked how China's Communist regime, whose victims run into the millions, could remain as a member. I was interrupted by China and Cuba and never received an answer.

That is one of the many reasons why I will be joining an international coalition of dissidents and human rights organizations in New York this week. Led by UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that works the UN's corridors on behalf of human rights victims across the world, we will hold a parallel summit to combat discrimination and persecution. It'll take place within a stone's throw of the UN's headquarters on the banks of the East River.

Like me, many of the summit's participants are dissidents who were imprisoned for the sole crime of promoting democracy.

Rebiya Kadeer, the voice of China's oppressed Uyghur minority, was jailed for five years, two of them in solitary confinement. Ahmad Batebi, an icon of Iran's student democracy movement, was tortured for eight years in an Iranian prison. The mullahs never forgave the July 17, 1999, cover of The Economist, showing a photo of Batebi with the bloodied T-shirt of his friend, shot at a peaceful rally. Grace Kwinjeh, the Zimbabwean dissident and journalist, was tortured in prison by President Robert Mugabe's thugs. Now in exile, she fights the regime's victimization of women.

These and other participants, like Berta Antunes of Cuba and Jacqueline Kasha of Uganda, took extraordinary risks for the causes they represent.

Together, we will produce a series of proposed human rights resolutions for the UN to adopt, based upon a common principle: The use of fear as an instrument of government must be banished forever.

Freedom from fear was promised by the UN in the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rest assured that until this basic freedom is taken seriously in those halls, our voices will ring loud.

Jianli is a leading Chinese human rights advocate. An eyewitness to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, he now lives in the United States, where he founded Initiatives for China, a pro-democracy organization.

Link to New York Daily News

The case of Liu Xiaobo vs. the case of Hossein Derakshan

2010-10-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

It was a courageous act that the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee was ready to jeopardize their country's relations with China by standing up for and honouring Liu Xiaobo. I noted with satisfaction that the Canadian government issued a statement way back in December 2005 deploring Liu Xiaobo's 11 year prison sentence, in spite of the fact that Mr Liu is not a Canadian citizen. But it saddens me to compare his case with that of Hossein Derakshan, who IS a Canadian citizen, and who was recently sentenced to 19.5 years in Iran. His crime? He was blogging, in Canada, posting critical writings about the present Iranian leadership.

Both are dissidents, both expressed critical opinions on matters of human rights. Surely Liu Xiaobo's political activities are of a heavier weight, culminating in this year's Nobel Peace Prize, while Hossein Derakshan only contributed to freedom of expression for Iranians by being instrumental in developing the use of Persian script on the internet, as well as then using this tool to voice his own opinions later. Liu Xiaobo's 11 year sentence elicited an immediate reaction from the Canadian government, yet seemingly not much reaction came from them when the news of Hossein Derakshan's possible death sentence, which later was downgraded to a 19.5 years(!) prison sentence, hit the news stands.

Wouldn't he deserve at least an official notice, not to speak maybe help from his own government?

Ahmadinejad's UN speech

2010-09-23T23:17:00.001-07:00

Mr Ahmadinejad has done it again. This is already beyond comprehension!

I am thinking of two possible explanations. Either he is what he appears to be, but then it puzzles me why Iran's political forces behind him still uphold him in his present position; or there is some rhyme and reason behind the apparent madness, maybe it is a very calculated modus operandi. But then, of course, that begs the question: to what aim?

In either case, after discussions today with some of my Iranian-Canadian friends and acquaintances, a rather embarrassing and painful period in Iranian history is unfolding in front of our eyes...

PS. By the way, as immediate proof of his lack of information / lies / machinations (pick one at your discretion) as far as his assumptions go regarding world opinion about the 9/11 attacks on the US, please read the survey conducted by World Public Opinion.org on opinions in different corners of the world as to who people think is really behind those attacks.

Hossein threatened by the death penalty

2010-09-22T23:46:00.000-07:00

This is a disgrace! How low can a country, or rather its leadership, sink? Not enough that our Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was imprisoned and "accidentally" killed in 2003, not enough that the ensuing murder trial was handled with "flagrant denial of due process", as observed by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, Bill Graham. Now we have to receive news of Canadian blogger Hossein Derakshan being in danger of execution. He is accused of "collaborating with enemy states (sic?), creating propaganda against the Islamic regime, insulting religious sanctity, and creating propaganda for anti-revolutionary groups". In simpler terms: exercising his right as a Canadian, while within Canada, to free speech.

We cannot let this happen! If anything, it is Iran that is insulting us now. For how long will we allow this regime to repeatedly throw filth in the face of the international community? What do they want to achieve by these rogue actions? If it goes on like this, it will be embarrassing for any Iranian when outside their country to admit to being Iranian... Shame!

The Jews of Libya

2010-08-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting page on the history of the Jews of Libya, pages maintained by the UofC in Berkley on the history of Libya.

Jews had a history of over 2000 years in that North African country, not unlike the old communities of Iraq, Tunisia, Yemen, or Egypt. Like everywhere else, the 20th century was fatal to these communities. When the Germans occupied Benghazi, they deported more than 2000 Jews from there into the desert, a fifth of whom perished there. The effects of German propaganda and ideology persisted after the war (as it does to this day!), there were several deadly pogroms in the following years. And so, after Israel was born, most of Lybia's remaining Jews, over 30,000 of them, fled there. During the next couple of decades anti Jewish sentiments kept growing as a result of the Arab-Israeli wars and the growing Pan-Arabist ideology. In 1969 Qaddafi confiscated the property of all the remaining Jews and ordered them to leave.

The ethnic cleansing was successful, there are no Jews left in Libya today, just as there are hardly any Jews left in any of the other Arab countries. The plight of these Jewish refugees is ignored by the rest of the world in spite of the fact that they were fleeing from systematic, open persecution. Today more than half of Israel's population consists of the descendants of these Middle Eastern refugees. Yet we, the rest of the world, still choose to be blind to it, many of us feverishly supporting Gaza, shouting "apartheid" even though there is no Jewish presence there either any more, ignoring the rocket attacks that were and are the cause of the blockade on Gaza in the first place, ignoring the fate of Gilad Shalit.

Ignoring the fact that Arab children today everywhere are taught that there was never a country called Israel in the past, denying the fact that there was Jewish presence throughout the centuries in Byzantine/Arab/Turkish/British Palestine, raising an ignorant generation of Arabs who are indignantly claiming the illegitimacy of the country of the Jews. Such is the power of misinformation. I just hope that at least some of them (us?) will be able to calm ourselves just enough so we can look around with a clear mind, research the history books without prejudice, and rise above all the BS and hatred.

Home-grown hatred in North America

2010-04-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

And the trend continues... Practially at the same time there were two terrorist threats in the news in North America.

One here in Canada, in the Sikh community. The well known and well liked (I can only speak for non-Sikhs) PM from Vancouver, Ujjal Dosanjh was threatened on a Sher-I-Punjab radio show because he criticized the fact that portraits of know Sikh terrorists were carried in their parade, thereby giving validity to violence. Of course, the RCMP takes the threat very seriously. I, as a Canadian, believe that once we become Canadian citizens we don't have the right to bring our political squabbles into this country, no matter what is behind us in our history.

But I am also very happy to see that on the Facebook website Ujjal Dosanjh is a Sikh Traitor he has a lot of support expressed both from the part of Sikhs and non-Sikhs.

The other recent event is the threat against Matt Stone and Trey Parker of the South Park cartoon fame, known for their irreverent satires, poking fun in the past even at Jesus and God. But now they dared touch The Prophet (peace be upon him)...!!!

In this instance the threat comes from Zachary Adam Chesser, aka Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, a self-proclaimed American Jihadist. To quote: "... Trey and Matt has to be sliced ... inshallah." And the result is...? Comedy Central bleeped the "offending" parts. This, of course, means that the Jihadists won, at least in this case.

What I find disturbing is that in both cases the people who uttered these threats were born here and educated here. Are we becoming too lax and complacent...?

Antisemitism in Ottawa.

2010-04-09T23:21:00.000-07:00

This past Tuesday there was an anti-semitic attack in Ottawa that involved several machete wielding young Arabic speaking individuals. The focus of their attack was two young Carleton students perceived by them to be Jews. Yet one of them wasn't even Jewish, he is the vice-president of the Carleton University Students' Association, but who happens to be openly sympathetic to Jews and Israel.

As someone with some Armenian ancestry in my family tree, I am very sensitive to the cause of both Armenians and Jews, both peoples from the Middle East, who both had to face premeditated genocide. As a child I grew up with horror stories, the Jewish experience still very fresh at the time. I did make a decision then and there that I will do whatever I can to support both nations in their efforts to re-establish themselves in their homelands. Israel became a Jewish country again in 1949, Armenia regained its freedom in 1991. Yet peace is still elusive in both cases. Armenians still have to iron out their differences with the Azeris, Israel still has to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and to at all gain the acceptance of a large part of the world.

Ideologies, memes do not die easily. Antisemitism survived under the ashes, particularly in Eastern Europe where the whole issue was swept under the carpet and not dealt with ever since WWII. In spite of some feeble efforts from the part of the state, young people there still get the old ideology instilled in them by their parents, by people around them who still believe the Nazi propaganda of Jews being responsible for all the ills of the World. As for the Muslim world...? That has even more issues piled on top of their inherited ones.

The events of the last few years make me really concerned. I keep meeting otherwise educated people, even university professors, who do not take the necessary effort to check the verity of what they read and hear. Very dangerous! We cannot allow baseless raw hatred to take hold of people's minds. We cannot sit around idly while the displaced Palestinians are still kept in squalid refugee camps, after 60 years(!), in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, even in the West Bank! Not accepted, even exploited by their Muslim brothers, who instead fill their heads and hearts with hateful propaganda, using them as living bombs against a country that they also refuse to accept.

I watch Israel with growing concern, a country that accommodated waves and waves of refugees, including those who had to flee from their ancient homelands in Muslim countries, and whose numbers were pretty much the same as the original Palestinian refugees, making up now roughly half of the country's present population. Who also lost everything when they fled, yet who never got any UN help. Israel feels more and more pushed in a corner, and as a result its despairing population chooses to elect more radical right-wing leadership, a fact which then whips the flames of antisemitism into an ever growing frenzy in the rest of the world. Very dangerous!

And now to have to read about incidents like what happened in Ottawa! Imagine a scenario in which Muslim students would get attacked in a similar manner. Wouldn't we react with utmost indignation? We cannot allow incidents like this to occur here in Canada! We cannot allow our streets to become battlegrounds! We cannot allow hatred of any kind to take hold of Canadian minds!

Religious violence world-wide

2010-04-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

I celebrated Easter with a heavy heart. Religious tensions are growing world-wide and our coreligionists in particular are under attack at an increasing rate. In Iraq bombings and sectarian strife are a daily occurrence, but lately there were personal attacks on known Christian families. A bomb was placed next to the house of Ramzy Balbole, a painter. His wife and three children got seriously injured as a result, their three year old eventually succumbing to his injuries in the hospital. In the past few years several Chaldo-Assyrian priests were murdered and, although during Hussein's time only 5% of the population was Christian, today they make up 40% of the refugees now living in the neighbouring countries.

This past month over 500 people, mostly women and children, were killed near the city of Jos in Nigeria, although truth be told, there were prior clashes in which 150 Muslim villager got killed, so this was a revenge attack.

It is estimated that in Sudan over 1.5 million Christians have been killed in the civil wars since 1984 by the Janjaweed (the Arab Muslim militia). Also, over 200 000 people were taken into slavery, mostly of the Dinka people, about 75% of whom are Christian.

Last August in Pakistan six people, one man, four women and a child, were burnt alive in Gojra by Muslim militant. They were Christian and they were accused of desecrating the Qur'an.

The number of attacks on Coptic Christians (the earliest of Christian sects) has been increasing in Egypt in the last few decades. One year ago two men were shot dead and several injured in Southern Egypt during an Easter vigil. In September a Muslim man beheaded a Christian man in Bagour and injured two others in other villages.

This year, in January, three Muslim men in a car opened fire on a crowd of celebrating Copts near a church, killing 8 people. Unknown number of girls have been kidnapped, raped, and/or forced to convert, or marry Muslim men with the resulting children automatically considered Muslims.

In Saudi Arabia, if anyone is known to have converted to Christianity, they can be executed -- by law.

Sometimes I can't help remembering the Communist teachings of my childhood that said that "religions are the root of all evil". Could they have been right...?

Islamic conquest of Rome...?

2010-03-31T23:47:00.000-07:00

Ten days from today there will be a presentation taking place in London, England, on the topic of Islam in Italy. No, it is not an anti-Muslim presentation that wishes to warn us about Islam planning on conquering Europe. It is organized by the Association of Italian Muslim Sisters UK, raising funds in support of the growing Muslim community in Rome.

But if you scroll down a bit, you will find the following text:

"Imam Ahmad reports in his Musnad that Abdullah bin Amr bin Al-'As (ra) mentioned: "Whilst we were around the Prophet (saw) writing he was asked, 'Which of the two cities will be opened first, Constantinople or Rome?' He (the Prophet Muhammad) answered, 'The city of Heraclius will be opened first!'

The Great Ottoman, Sultan Muhammad Fatih (rh) fulfilled the first part of this prophecy by conquering Constantinople. Thus, remains the second part. Having been forced out of Andalusia, and more recently, dispersed across the Balkan states, the city of Gaius Julius Caesar (Rome) remains. So let the da'wah (call, summon) begin ..."

Lucky they ARE Muslims, otherwise we might call them Islamophobes hallucinating about some nonexistent Muslim plans of conquest...

International reactions to the suspension of Parliament in Canada

2010-01-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

When I first heard that Mr Harper decided to suspend Parliament for two whole months, I was not amused. I was even less amused when I heard his interview (on CTV - if I remember well) where he said "the Canadian public doesn't really care, anyway". Huh...? He even cited the Winter Olympics as an excuse. Hmmm...really? To me this long "vacation" says something else. It says that the Conservatives are jittery about something and need time to sort things out without the annoyance of having to deal with the opposition.

This whole thing reminds me very much of last year's prorogue, which was actually only one month long, but which was surrounded by a cloud of quite nasty TV ads attacking Mr Ignatieff, even though the idea of an election was only a vague possibility. Yet, even though a lot of Canadians found those ads disgusting and made them weary of Conservative political tactics, it did prove to be effective in hoodwinking a large enough part of the rest of the electorate to make the party actually rise in the polls. A fact that proves the power of media and the political shallowness of the general public. (Sad, but true...)

Today I became aware of the editorial in The Economist, and it made me embarrassed... The Economist is a British magazine with a large international readership. In their editorial of the latest print edition they harshly criticize our prime minister. They point out that such a long recess will mean that "all government bills will die, no matter how close they are to approval"; and that Mr Harper apparently thinks that this extra break "would not bother Canadians much". Well, it does bother a good many of us! One of my sons goes as far as calling Mr Harper a "dictator", and he very much supports the letter signed by 132 political scientists in which they are calling for an electoral reform. Apparently "finance Minister Jim Flaherty and others in cabinet will be 'meeting with and hearing from Canadian families, homeowners, workers, business-owners and industries from across the country.'" My family and I would be delighted if called upon!

Up to now Canadian prime ministers always asked the governor general (the Queen's representative in Canada) to be allowed to prorogue Parliament, and did so only after all unfinished business was dealt with. This time there were a whole bunch of bills still on the table, these will have to be re-introduced, all committees will get disbanded, a lot of effort will be wasted. The question arises: is this all because of the issue of the Afghan detainees? That does not seem to be such a hefty threat to the government as last year's situation, when Mr Harper clearly used his powers to dodge a confidence vote which could have triggered a new election. So what is behind this prorogation, then? For one thing we know that the Conservatives are planning to appoint a good number of Conservative senators, something that could not be done without Parliament's approval if it was in session, but can be done now. I wonder what else is up Mr Harper's sleeves...?

The conservatives cited several previous long historic prorogations, but I can imagine that in earlier times winter conditions were harsh enough to interfere with travels of MPs to and from Ottawa, thus interfering with proper functioning of Parliament and making long winter breaks almost necessary. Not that some prime ministers couldn't have ulterior motives, I am sure. But Mr Harper's political frolics are becoming too obvious. AND dangerous! We cannot create such precedence which would allow future prime ministers to suspend Parliament at any which whim. We, the Canadian public, have to let our prime minister know that we are not "complacent". Demographics are changing, the number of ice-hockey fans are not as numerous and not as fanatically devoted as Mr Harper is hoping for. We do pay attention, specially when issues start taking up international proportions. If the turn of events will necessitate a political "revolution", we are ready to ignore the Olympics in favour of straightening out our country's governmental meanderings.

Islam liberates Europeans from their lives of stupidity...

2009-12-19T00:24:00.000-08:00

...or so says Azzam Tamimi, an Islamic scholar who lives in London, England.

See here the interview he gave to Al Jazeera, broadcast on December 8.

Jewish settlers in the future Palestine

2009-11-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

In the English language Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star, columnist Bill Glucroft has written about a possible arrangement regarding Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The article, Settlers: a Jewish minority in Palestine?, touches on the issue of the fate of those settlers after the declaration of the new Palestinian independent state. The idea is a very logical one, as a matter of fact it has been floating around for a while now, and I always believed that the solution will be along those lines. What are we talking about, then?

The simplest and most logical solution is that the settlers will become citizens of the new country, actually having double citizenship by retaining their Israeli citizenship, also, but technically living as a minority in Palestine. As long as the new Palestine will be a democracy, this arrangement would benefit both countries. Of course the settlers would run the risk of being attacked by fanatics, should Hamas-indoctrinated Palestinians manage to gain any power. But this would be a double edged occurrence because in such an event Israel would retaliate, even invade, which no right minded Palestinian would want to chance.

On the other hand, in case of properly normalized relations between the two countries, the conditions of the Israeli Arabs would be linked with the conditions for Palestinian Jews, as proposed by Gershon Baskin, which then would prevent any discrimination in either of the two countries.

Of course, there are a lot of wrinkles in this idea that will need to be ironed out before a working arrangement is reached, but adopting it could be a good basis for the progress of the peace process.

Mass executions in Iran

2009-07-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

There has been a sudden increase in the number of executions by hanging in Iran. Today they hung 20 people in the Rajai-Shahr Prison close to Tehran. Although officially the charges were drug trafficking, there are fears that a lot of these were bogus charges, something that apparently happens routinely in Iran whenever they want to silence dissent. A few days earlier, on Wednesday July 1, six people were hanged in Tehran's EvinPrison, all of them charged with murder.

Although Western media has no means to report on further developments in Iran, we know that since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rallied behind Ahmadinejad demonstrators started to direct their protests against the whole clerical establishment, going as far as calling "death to Khamenei". Khamenei took a risk by supporting Ahmadinejad, loosing face both in and out of Iran. In his support he stands not only against Moussavi but also Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the founding fathers of the revolution.

Where all this will lead, we can't know. What is certain, though, is that there is no turning back. Any surface normalization will be just that. Like a precariously balancing lid on a boiling pot of stew.

PS If you want to have a closer look at the methods the Iranian regime uses to control its citizens, please, visit the website Holy Crime.

Ahmadinejad and Photoshop

2009-06-17T22:57:00.001-07:00

I love this:

They needed to beef up the image a bit to make the crowd look bigger. After all they have to compete with the other ongoing rallies in Tehran - if not in real life at least virtually... :)

(The picture is from the Daily Kos website.)

Death penalty for bloggers

2009-06-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

I feel we must act before it is too late. The Iranian government is thinking of introducing capital punishment for blogging offenses, a notion open to interpretation. I found this report on YouTube, in it there is a reference to Hossein Derakshan's arrest.

I am doing what I can, but no news yet of Hossein...

Victory for Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Revolution

2009-06-13T23:32:00.000-07:00

Ahmadinejad's "landslide victory" created sad flashbacks in my mind of all those inevitable landslide victories of communist leaders in Eastern Europe during my youth. Just as leaders like Fidel Castro or Bashar al-Assad, who still win by landslide in every election. There will also be a de rigeur celebration party tomorrow, where, I am sure, employees of entire institutions will be ordered to appear (under threat of loosing their jobs if they didn't) at Vali Asr Square in support of the newly elected beloved leader.

Media reports showed mathematically near-impossible consistent hourly breakdown in the incoming election results, which is very suspect given the demographic diversity of Iran. During the election text messaging services were jammed, news and social networking websites were blocked. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the results "divine assessment". The divinity, of course, flows through the divinely inspired religious leadership of the Islamic Republic.

During the elections Ahmadinejad talked about alleged "treasonous elements". We can expect purges now aiming to clear the country of a sizable part of the opposition to the regime. The purges can mean lengthy jail time for dissenters, or even the death penalty. Not good news for people in similar situation as our Hoder...

Update 2 on Hossein

2009-04-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

Something is not in order when it comes to Hoder's case. It just doesn't feel right... The more I ponder about it, the more things appear to me as odd, different from other cases.

First of all there is the matter of his sudden change of tone in the recent past, so much so that it turned a lot of us away from him in disgust. Then there is the fact that he did go to Iran, when it was more than obvious that after the Israel trip he will not be welcome there as long as this regime was in power. It also hit me that we know the whereabouts of most, if not all, of the other detainees, their families and lawyers are in touch with them. Hossein is mysteriously invisible. So here are my speculative arguments.

a) For one, he could be in real danger, all being the way it looks from the outside, they just consider his case a special one and for some reason handle it differently,
b) he may have been/may still be in the process of being "debriefed" on his Israeli trip, either voluntarily or under threat, digging up all the minutiae of his trip, making him describe locales, buildings, people to the tiniest details,
c) he may be simply under house arrest somewhere in a secret location, while his absence is used for "jumping the rabbit from the bush", that is, to create a good buzz in the Iranian blogging community, and then have enough ground for arrests, prosecution and the shutting down of the more vociferous supporters.

As a matter of fact, I have second thoughts about the online petition, also. It is known that such petitions do not carry too much weight. They may help raise some marginal awareness in US and Canadian government circles, but that's about it, not much more. Instead, it creates an accessible list of people, a list that can potentially be used by the Iranian government to filter out the names that they could be "interested in".

My suggestion is that it is better if we contact our local government representatives in person and apply the necessary pressure to make them inquire about the case, to see whether our government is or isn't looking into the matter at all and, if necessary, to raise the issue in parliament.

Update on Hossein

2009-04-15T00:07:00.000-07:00

I feel at odds with myself about the past month. Although I was among those who rejected Hossein when his tone changed a while back, the news of his arrest really shocked me. During his early blogging career I emotionally "adopted" him. I loved his dare-devil attitude, but not the least, I liked the fact that he shared my concern about the state of Israel, which is slowly strangled politically by a mix of well moneyed propaganda and still prevailing old fashioned anti-semitic attitudes. He, like me, was ready to find things out for himself, in person.

When his writings started to exhibit an oddly different attitude, I also got annoyed and dropped him from my blog roll list. Yet, I soon started to wonder what may have brought the change about. My guesses were that he may have been intimidated by Iran (hard to believe), or that the harassment of a family member may have been used as an "incentive" for a change of tone. The change was too sharp for me to accept as a natural change of heart.

And then came the news of his arrest. To this day I don't know what to think. First of all I do not understand why he dared make that visit to Iran. He knew full well that his Israeli trip put him in a very precarious position. But putting that together with his cloak turning, my humble guess is that he may have been given reassurances from somewhere high up in Iran that if he "repents" in public and becomes more supportive of the present Iranian regime, things would be forgiven. Although this presumption sounds plausible, I still cannot believe Hossein could have been naive enough to fall for it.

So why did he go? Was he that stupidly daring to actually want to be arrested, so as to become a "cause célèbre" as a challenge? There must be something else...

In this past month, since I found out about his arrest, there was hardly a day that he wasn't on my mind. I imagined him being tortured, fearing that he might "confess" to spying for Israel like Ali Ashtari, the innocent electronics salesman, who was then publicly hanged last November. I imagined the anguish of his family! And then I fussed about my own choices, of never "having the time" to further my research on this matter, for accepting my daily life issues as more important than lobbying for a captive fellow Canadian. Hossein, if you ever get the chance to read this, know that I feel embarrassed, and that I apologize for myself and in the name of the many other procrastinators. I promise to do better from now on!

Luckily others have not been so slack. Here is a petition that can be signed.

Of course, Hossein is not the only one in this situation. There is the case of the journalist Roxana Saberi, also half Canadian who, according to the latest news, faces "life in prison". And then there are who knows how many people in Iran facing or already serving similar jail sentences. Students from the Amir Kabir University, or the 19 year old Alireza Firouzi, we even know of one who died recently while serving a 30 month sentence: Omidreza Mirsayafi.

Iran is not the only country repressing blogging, although it holds the title of being the worst. There is a long list of countries that do the same. We do need to raise awareness of these attacks on free speech. Let us start then with freeing Hossein Derakshan!

We must stand up for Hossein!

2009-03-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

Hossein Derakhshan has been arrested over three months ago already in Iran, as I just found out. This piece of information was confirmed by a Toronto's Globe and Mail article on November 12. Hossein's blog was at the top of my Blogroll list until his website was taken down by his server due to a libel suit filed against him by Mehdi Khalaji. A few days ago, while doing my regular home page cleanup, it occurred to me to look around and see whether he did start a new blog in the meantime. To my dismay I discovered what happened.

Frankly, I am very concerned, as all of us should be. Surely he was often like a little dagfly, buzzing annoyingly around Iranian politics, more so in the beginning of his blogging career. As of late he toned down a lot, not unlikely because of intimidation, to the point that he even started to seemingly support Ahmadinejad's policies and Iran's military aspirations. It looks like that was not sufficient.

I do not understand it: why did he enter Iran in the first place? He was aware, as he expressed it many times, that he cannot even visit Iran because of his historical trip to Israel in 2006. Yet he did so. Why...?

A lot of his fellow Iranian bloggers right now are angry with him for his about face that he exhibited in the last couple of years. Yet now he stands accused of being a spy for Israel. Is he...? Is that at all possible? You can read a translated "confession" in Brian Whittaker's article in The Guardian, as it apparently appeared on the Tehran news website, Fahan News, on November 18, 2008. Brian is wondering whether this is a signal to Iranian bloggers to "cool it".

My concern is not worth too much, I am just a female senior citizen in Canada and my blog is not visited much. I wish I could be of help, though, because I always admired his spunk, even when he expressed opinions not exactly in line with mine. Therefor, if you happen to chance this way, I urge you to go to the "Free Hossein Derakhshan" site on Facebook. I don't know how successful they are in their endeavour, I will try to follow them from now on and contribute my efforts if and when possible.

Mubarak: Hamas invited Israeli offensive

2009-02-07T23:43:00.000-08:00

Finally we can see Arab countries standing up and saying as it is, instead of continuing the knee-jerk anti-Israeli propaganda slogans inherited from the Nasser era. If you are too young to remember that, Gamal Abdel Nasser was someone who embraced the old ideology, that of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, who had aspirations for re-establishing a pan-Arab united empire, encouraging the emergence of "Nasserist" political parties in other countries dedicated to Arab unity. The easiest way to work towards a desirable sense of unity was to rally the Arab world against "a common enemy". What could have been better for that than the newly formed Israel?

As a result the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was born on Egyptian soil in 1964, and in spite of the fact that the PLO eventually came around and was ready to accept the two state solution, the original anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes and propaganda opened a Pandora's box of venom which, mixed with the remnants of Western anti-Semitism, created the present mixed, often violent attitudes against Israel.

Since long I have been trying to do my own little share in trying to dispel some of these deeply embedded memes. I made sure not to form opinions without seeing things for myself. I have been in Israel, I have been in the West Bank, though not in Gaza which was not a problem area at the time. And I find it hard to take when people say it with conviction that "Israel is an apartheid country", when they say with righteous indignation that Israel should do nothing in face of the barrage of rockets to the tune of 10 to 40 a day. What other country could stand it for as long as Israel did (does right now)?

The US economic blockade of Cuba is 46 years old. Yet, there are no rockets flying from there into the US. And if even a single one did, what do you think the reaction would be? The fact that the Gazan rockets do not cause large number of casualties is because Israel is full of bunkers to protect their civilians. With an advanced alarm system they can warn people who then scurry into the nearest shelter, even next to supermarkets and souks. How come there are no similar structures in Gaza when the PLO amassed such an enormous wealth over the decades?

But could you imagine yourself living like this, when you have to run for your life up to 40 times a day? Are you surprised that Israel keeps Gaza under blockade trying to prevent the influx of rockets? Yet, they keep coming, through secret tunnels, via the sea on fishing vessels, sometimes hidden in UN relief shipments. The fact of the matter is that Hamas is a horribly anti-semitic organization, to the core. Its agenda is the eventual total destruction of Israel, openly so. And the neighbouring Arab countries start realizing that this is not good for them, either. Specially so because Hamas is backed by Iran (who have their own agenda of pan-something-or-another) and the Hezbollah (which is literally taking over Lebanon as we speak).

So the eventual change in the attitudes of the Arab countries towards Israel is albeit slow in coming but inevitable. I was happy to see signs of this change in the official recognition by Egypt that Hamas's reckless politics has something to do with Israels blockade and eventual attack. Here is the short article on the topic as it appeared in the Times of Malta:

Monday, 19th January 2009
Mubarak: Hamas invited Israeli offensive

Egypt's President accused Hamas today of inviting Israel's three-week offensive against Gaza by not extending their ceasefire when it expired last month.

"You all know that efforts Egypt had undertaken to extend the ceasefire and our warnings that a refusal by factions to extend it was an open invitation to Israeli aggression," Hosni Mubarak told a summit of Arab leaders in Kuwait.

He said Egypt would continue its efforts to achieve a reconciliation between Palestinians. "Without it (Palestinian unity) no stability will be realised for Gaza and no rebuilding and no end for its embargo," Mubarak said.

Hamas, the Islamist militant group which won 2006 parliamentary elections, has ruled Gaza since ousting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction in 2007. Fatah still holds sway in the occupied West Bank.

The Arab summit in Kuwait, initially meant to focus on the economy, has been overshadowed by Israel's offensive against Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and was suspended on Sunday.

"We will make every possible attempt (but) if the factions do not respond to our efforts, then we tell them God helps those who help themselves," Mubarak said.

Mubarak said that resisting occupation, while legitimate, should also take into account both gains and losses.

Why are we so indifferent about countries like Sudan?

2009-01-22T15:43:00.000-08:00

I have pondered about this earlier, wondering why the world is so selective about what and whom we care about. Why is it that the UN, a body that is supposed to care about every country, every human being, focuses almost exclusively on Israel? Why are only the Gaza events "unacceptable"?

Do you remember hearing much about Sudan in the last several years now (15 years, to be exact)? Do you know that by now close to 3 million people got slowly "eliminated" there? Do you know that the children of the victims are often "spared" only to be sold into slavery? Yes, you are reading it right! Slavery is alive and well in the Muslim world. From Philippine maids in the rich Arab states whose passports are taken away and then the women made to work without pay, to actual slaves who have been bought and sold as children, and then most of them kept in slavery for the rest of their lives. And then there are the kidnapped children who are expected to be bought back by their families from the slave traders.

I urge you to listen to a former slave, Simon Deng, snatched away as a child and given as a "gift" to someone, then bought back by his family later. He is in America now and does what he can to raise awareness of the plight of the people of Southern Sudan.

In today's day and age it really is unacceptable for us to sit by idly, and accept and parrot whatever meager information the media provides us. They are human, too, they will not go to the really dangerous areas, they prefer the comfier missions, like reporting from Israel, where they can wait in air-conditioned hotels to report on the plight of the "innocent" Gazans.

There are people who try to do something, like the Baroness Caroline Cox, or our Canadian Reverend Cal Bombay who is still fighting the slave trade in Sudan (see bottom of his web page). But such individuals are scarce and their methods are questionable. I, for one, do not agree with the practice of "re-purchasing" of slaves because in my opinion this practice actually creates a supply and demand situation, further encouraging slave trade. But then we all do whatever we think of as a possible solution. One thing is sure: we have to find solutions!

Children of Gaza are given new lease on life in Israel

2009-01-04T22:35:00.000-08:00

In spite of the present state of war between Israel and Gaza, the lifesaving work of the Save a Child's Heart foundation goes on. This is a project run in the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, where children from around the world are operated on for major heart problems entirely free of charge. The little patients come mostly from underdeveloped countries where they would not have any chance for this kind of life saving treatment. There are children from Iraq, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and quite often from Gaza. The doctors there have a good working relationship with the Israeli doctors, and all it takes is a phone call to have their little patients admitted to the Wolfson Center. And this service is not, cannot be stopped by any military crisis, they get the necessary help no matter what.

The medical team is headed by Dr. Amran Cohen, and the the project is mostly funded by Iraqi born Israeli philanthropist, Sami Shamoon, although its needs for further donations is growing by the day as the number of children in need of help is growing. Hillary Clinton is also a supporter of the project which gets a lot of praise around the world, including Al Jazeera TV. Let us hope that the SACH project will prove to spread the message of its intended goodwill far and wide. To quote one of the doctors, "What I hope is that when a healthy child returns home, the effect of it will be greater than the work of 1000 diplomats."

Gaza or Darfur?

2009-01-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

I am confused. For a long time now I have been agonizing over the crises in Sudan. The warfare claimed 2 million lives there in the last 15 years, 300 000 in Darfur in this last conflict alone. And what about the Zimbabwe humanitarian crisis? Did/do we hear much about either of them? Not much.

But here comes the Gaza crisis - do we hear about it? You bet! Around the clock CNN coverage, pro and con demonstrations, fiery pro and con reports and commentaries, "the works".

The only explanation I can come up with for this unbalanced media attention is that in Israel journalists camp out in air conditioned comfy hotels, literally just a few kilometres from the war zone, so it is very easy for them to be at interesting spots within minutes, to put together literally a flood of visually compelling, technically perfect reports. They could not possibly do the same in Sudan. After all, it is "too dangerous" there. Better just ignore it...

But what is the result of this unbalanced reporting? Unbalanced response from the public, of course! Do media people ever think of such things? I wonder. Most people do not consciously seek out all the necessary information that would allow them to have a good overall view of the World at any given time. Most people are satisfied to follow the headlines and adjust their "emotion du jour" accordingly.

Media people keep forgetting the essence of their work in all this rush for making a living by digging up the hottest morsels the easiest way possible. They not only influence the general public, their reports, together with the public opinion, have tremendous influence on politicians, also, and this way they impact and to a certain degree shape history. They are the ones who tell us what is important in the world at any given moment. Unfortunately the impression is that Africans are considered by far less important than Palestinians and/or Israelis.

Arabs for Israel(!?)

2008-08-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

What a refreshing discovery! A website maintained by moderate Arabs and Muslims that promotes peace between the Arab World and Israel. Could we hope that this trend might flourish?

Update: Today I did a quick research and I was proud to discover that the founder is a fellow woman, Nonie Darwish. I also found out about Brigitte Gabriel, a journalist from Lebanon, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia, raised in Saudi Arabia, now Dutch MP, leader of a political party. These women all dare to raise their voices against the direction the Islamic world is taking. They actually risk their very lives in doing so, yet they feel strongly enough to do it.

It dois make me a bit uneasy at first that the above women are actually apostates, that is they are Christian converts, a fact which may be viewed as a contributor to a potentially biased approach to the issue. But then I remembered Wafa Sultan and Irshad Manji, both Muslim women strongly critical of present day Islam. And then there are men, too, like Kamal Nawash of the Free Muslims Coalition, or Hussein Abdulwaheed Amin of the Muslims against Terrorism.

As I continue my search on the net, I will add to this list of my discoveries. I find the phenomenon very encouraging. Muslims of this type may still be a minority, but I very much hope that their number will one day grow to the point of being able to have an influence on the political scene.

Fuel-casts and Tory party politics

2008-06-08T22:40:00.000-07:00

There is a greenhouse gas emission policy the Liberals are working on, as we have been hearing for a while now, nothing final, not even a touchable proposal on the table yet. Now out of the blue we are bombarded by this expensive ad campaign, not only on the radio but so called "fuelcasts" played on the little screens at gas stations. All funded by the Conservative Party of Canada, or should I say: us, the taxpayers...? The ads warn us about the Liberals', or as the the website claims, Stephan Dion's personal plans of "taxing Canadians to pay for his reckless spending promises." How about this reckless spending on silly ads? Couldn't the Tories at least wait until there is an actual presentation of that alleged tax proposal? I, and the average citizen, have no idea what exactly that proposal will look like until we see it. Then we can make our minds up whether we endorse it or not. We don't need pre-emptive Tory propaganda to guide us in a "desirable" direction. At least I myself don't like to be guided. Instead, I will remember this silly political maneuvering at the polls next time, and I will shun any gas station that endorses it by running the fuelcasts while pocketing MY tax money that they are paid for the service. (Even better: I will avoid all gas stations with fuelcasts...)

Freedom of expression in danger!

2008-04-02T00:38:00.000-07:00

The United Nations was created with noble goals in mind, one of them being the safeguarding of freedom of expression worldwide. Freedom of expression is one of the most important human rights. During the mandate of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan the old Commission on Human Rights had been replaced by the Human Rights Council, a new body that was supposed to support and defend the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That was the theory anyway. Things did not develop that way. Ever since its inception the Human Rights Council has been acting in a most bizarre fashion. It is common knowledge that there are enormous human rights problems in many corners of the world. Sudan, Byelorussia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, just to name a few. The new council turned a blind eye to all of them, instead it repeatedly condemned Israel, and Israel alone.

This phenomenon, though, was just a warning sign of what was coming. There has been a great shift in the balance of power in the UN. For eleven years now the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that represents the 57 Islamic States in the world, has been undermining the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On 28 March 2008 they finally killed it.

On that fateful day the OIC, with the support of Russia, China and Cuba, forced through an amendment to a resolution on Freedom of Expression which in effect will place a muzzle on a lot of our rights that we have taken for granted until now.

The Human Rights Council has a Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, a position Canada supported, fighting hard for the renewal of its mandate. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur requires that information be gathered from governments, NGOs and others on the discrimination, violence or harassment of persons, including professionals, in the exercise of their right of freedom of opinion and expression.[*] At first glance the amendment to the resolution to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression may even sound reasonable. It says that the Special Rapporteur is "to report on instances in which the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination …"
But let us just stop and think for a moment of its ramifications.

The amendment requires the Special Rapporteur to report on such "abuses" as someone writing critically about Sharia law, a law which requires gays to be hanged, women to be stoned to death if accused of adultery, or if someone speaks out against such practices as female circumcision, or young girls being married off at the age of 9-10. By doing so the Special Rapporteur will not be a defender of freedom of expression any more, it will become a policing entity.

The passing of this amendment on April 28 was a bitter blow for Canada. Even earlier it's position was that "If this amendment is adopted, Canada will withdraw its sponsorship from the main resolution." This stance was supported by other delegates, such as India, the European Union, the United Kingdom, who also spoke for Australia and the United States, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala and Switzerland. They all withdrew their sponsorship of the main resolution when the amendment was passed. Altogether more than 20 of the original 53 co-sponsors of the resolution withdrew their support.

The Sri Lankan delegate put it in word correctly when he explained his reasons for supporting the amendment. He said: ".. if we regulate certain things 'minimally' we may be able to prevent them from being enacted violently on the streets of our towns and cities." He was referring, of course, to the Danish cartoons incident. But let us think a bit about this. According to the Council we must limit one of our basic human rights in fear of violent reactions. So it is not the violence that needs to be regulated but the cartoonists. Does this mean that Theo van Gogh was actually responsible for his own death...?

If we do not have complete freedom of expression, we open the door for tyranny, we bind our hands in our fight against corruption, injustice and oppression. Nobody knows this more than those who live under the tyranny of Islamic law, in the very countries that pressed through this amendment. There is a brave little group from the Islamic States that issued a statement before the amendment was passed, urging the delegates to oppose it. In spite of all opposition, the amendment was voted in, amid chaotic proceedings, with 27 for and 15 against, and three abstentions.

The gossamer sham of an international consensus on the promotion and protection of human rights is now exposed for what it really was. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is now dead. Instead, there is a proposed Islamic Charter on Human Rights with plans to create a parallel Islamic Council on Human Rights. What is this if not a fragmentation of human rights?

Roy W Brown, the British-born Humanist and human rights activist, urges all delegates who are genuinely concerned with human rights to immediately withdraw from the Council until it proves itself to be accountable and honouring their pledges. Failing this -- they should consider creating an alternative organization...

New elections in Canada?

2008-01-22T22:03:00.000-08:00

I like to regularly peruse The Hill Times, an online Canadian politics and government newsweekly. In yesterday's edition they draw our attention to the fact that both the Conservatives and the Liberals started to run training sessions for their party workers, seemingly in preparation for imminent new elections. What is more: "In preparation for the strong possibility of the next federal election to be called in the next two months, some of the electoral district associations have started to hold their nomination meetings.

Really? Are they up there on Parliament Hill out of their minds? In my personal opinion, and according to my personal observation, Canadians are not exactly enthusiastic about the prospect of having to face another election any time soon. We see both parties and their leadership as still relatively inexperienced (sorry, Mr Harper). Neither of them are convincing enough to make people strongly rally in their support. There are no distinct favourites at this point.

If an election was called, as the rumors make us believe, the result will be yet another minority government whichever side wins. The way things stand, it is anybody's guess which party that might be. The results most probably would be dictated by the whim du jour of the electorate. And don't you think that the people will be influenced much by the "printed material" that is apparently already in preparation right now. Our mail boxes are overpopulated by spam mail as is, both virtual and paper based. Today's electorate is more sensitive to factual news items from TV, radio, general media. We are able to follow, analyze and criticize, the daily actions of our politicians - or at least what is visible for the benefit of the general public.

So what would really be the point of calling an election now? I suppose both parties hope that they can sway public opinion in their favour. But, as I said above, even if enough voters could get fired up enough just to drag their behinds to the nearest polling station, the results will most probably be another government much the same as the present one.

And besides, why on earth would they want to try and make us pay attention to Canadian political battles when it is so much more interesting right now to watch the American elections unfold? I mean, really...!

Annapolis and the refugee question

2007-11-28T00:39:00.000-08:00

We are witnessing another attempt at trying to find viable solution for the troubles in the Middle East. Whether it will be more successful than previous ones is yet to be seen.

Sifting through the blogosphere to see the general pulse of the reactions to today's events I found an interesting link on The Washington Note, a link to a letter that was addressed to President Bush and Secretary Rice, and is signed by an impressive list of heavyweight politicians, academicians, and other important personages. They present there a list od recommendations, like the creation of the two states, the redivision of Jerusalem, and so on. But one item in particular caught my attention:
* A solution to the refugee problem that is consistent with the two-state solution, addresses the Palestinian refugees' deep sense of injustice, as well as provides them with meaningful financial compensation and resettlement assistance."

I was always puzzled by this issue in the past. How can it be possible that there are Palestinian refugees, even actual refugee camps, still in existence 60 years after the creation of Israel and the flight of the original refugees? The majority of those people are not even alive any more, we are talking about second and third generation "refugees" - and I won't even get here into the issue of having people there from other Middle Eastern countries who voluntarily joined these refugees, to live with them and support them in their goals, whatever those may be. This happens to be a unique phenomenon in the world, and it would be a worthwhile project to thoroughly analyze it and look for the reasons behind it.

I cannot help comparing these Palestinians refugee issues to all the others I have observed throughout my life. I also consider myself a (former) refugee. My grandparents and parents in Eastern Europe were stripped of their wealth by the Communist regime, my grandparents actually physically deported one night with only the clothes on their backs, and so we, the younger ones, fled at the first opportunity to North America where we resettled and built a new life for ourselves. Over the decades I saw similar fates unfold, from Korea, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, Somalia. My mother for years volunteered to help these newcomers to Canada resettle, sharing with them her experiences and expertise in coping with the new life. I remember our former Prime Minister Jean Chretien publicly announcing on TV that Canada will open its gates to such and such number of Palestinian refugees. Why did so few of them answer that call? I always wondered...

I always wondered why Jordan failed to resettle those who initially took refuge within its borders in 1948, after all roughly 50% of the Jordanian population is considered to be "Palestinians" with close family ties to people west of the Jordan river. What is more, I still cannot fully understand the reasons behind the events of "Black September", and the expulsion of said refugees from Jordan. Or the inability of Lebanon to accept and absorb some of those refugees, instead having massive refugee camps to this day, way up in the north of the country, like the Nahr el-Bared camp where those intense fights occurred earlier this year between the refugees and the Lebanese army. And why is it that all over in the rich Arab world, instead of taking these Palestinian refugees in, absorb them and resettle them, they exploit them, using them as cheap labour, making them live in squalor amidst the sparkle and abundance, and then send them back into those artificially maintained "refugee camps" when they tire of them.

And finally, how can you call people "refugees", whose parents already were born where they are now? It would not even occur to me to consider my children or my grandchildren who were born here in Canada "refugees". What an odd situation where second and third generations of people still need to be considered for resettlement.

But let us return to this issue that was touched upon in the open letter:
* A solution to the refugee problem that is consistent with the two-state solution, addresses the Palestinian refugees' deep sense of injustice, as well as provides them with meaningful financial compensation and resettlement assistance."

Refugees in all corners of the world feel a "deep sense of injustice", including myself. Yet I made sure that I did not poison my children's soul with it. The world has seen much worse tragedies than my family's or of those Palestinians fleeing out of possible harm's way in 1948. What about the refugees of Rwanda or present day's Darfur, who not only lost everything but also witnessed their families being butchered? Rest assured, they were and will be taken care of, resettled, building a new life for themselves somewhere, while the Palestinian refugee camps will see a fourth generation being born and raised as "refugees". I wonder why...?

The above excerpt from the open letter asks for both financial compensation and resettlement assistance. It is not clear who does it mean to be targeted for this task. Should it be entirely the responsibility of Israel to step up to it? Then what about the Jewish refugees, and I don't mean the victims of the European Holocaust, but the close to a million refugees who fled from their ancestral lands all over the Islamic Middle East, often literally fleeing for their lives? To quote: "As a matter of law and equity, no just, comprehensive Middle East peace can be reached without recognition of and redress for the uprooting, under Islamic regimes, of centuries-old Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa." Israel, having already the experience in absorbing and resettling the survivors of the Holocaust, absorbed and resettled these refugees from Arab lands in a matter of fact way, without much fanfare. Yet, aren't they entitled to redress and compensation the same way as the Palestinian refugees are? Why is there no mention of them in the open letter?

There are, of course, answers for the above questions, just that they are hidden in the murky cesspools of politics and ideological warfare. One thing is sure, blame lies somewhere for those still flourishing Palestinian refugee camps, for the generations of refugees kept in poverty by their fabulously rich brethren, raised on a steady diet of hatred, used as cannon fodder, or more accurately live bombs, in a blind war against "The Jews". When things will settle and the victims of this decades old injustice will recuperate their senses enough so they can look around, no longer blinded by the propaganda that keeps shaking the red flag of "Zionism" in front of them, they will realize that it is not "the Jews" who are the true cause of their plight. I wonder what social upheavals will ensue when that happens. I wonder...

The final goal of the Al Qaeda Jihad, spelled out...

2007-11-15T00:17:00.000-08:00

Wow!!! I just chanced on a video in which Al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya Al-Liby explains in crystal clear words the true reason for their Jihad.
---

Al Gore, the environment, and the presidency

2007-11-02T19:30:00.000-07:00

Interesting controversy surrounds 2008 US presidential candidate, Al Gore. True, he was awarded this year's Nobel prize based on his work in raising awareness on global warming. But, boy, is that topic controversial! I am not talking about the opinions of average citizen facing average citizen. Top scientists are questioning the accuracy of the data in his presentations and the movie "An Inconvenient Truth", and criticize the choice of Gore for the prize. (Well, the Nobel prize committee can be criticized for a number of their previous blund..., ahem, choices.)

By now most everybody is aware of the fact that the film became subject of legal action in the UK. The courts then found that the film was indeed misleading, pockmarked by inaccuracies, some provable, others questionable, and decided that it carried a fair amount of political propaganda.

If you are one of those who is still itching to read what those inaccuracies they found in the film are, here they are. I lifted them off of the website of the UK New Party, you can visit their site and see the full original article there.

* The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
* The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
* The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
* The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
* The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
* The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
* The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
* The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
* The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

Now, to return to my own opining again, it does seem rather suspect that all this hoopla arose so conveniently just before Mr Gore's announcement of his entering the electoral race. After all, good publicity or bad, it doesn't really matter. Any publicity is GOOD for the long run (think of Paris Hilton...). I am just wondering whether publicity of this sort is befitting someone who vies for one of the most influential positions in the Western world. If people will turn a blind eye to the inaccuracies and praise (venerate) him for what he represents in the present day cult of "Human Made Environmental Disaster", then what differentiates the environmentalists from the religious?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to create the impression that I reject the idea of man's negative impact on the environment. I am totally for continuing the efforts to clean up our act and clean up the world. Up to now I did not have any intention to question (openly, that is) any claims the environmental movement presented regarding the urgency of the situation, even when observing their political gains and growing clout in some countries. After all, it doesn't hurt to become as clean as possible, as soon as possible. Stepping up the efforts to develop clean, cheap sources of energy, finding solutions to our garbage issues, etc., can only benefit all of us. And if the world will still keep on getting warmer after that, at least we know that it is not our fault. But I do not like to see the issue being hijacked for personal gain.

I am sure Al Gore is not the only one to have resorted to such practices, people are human after all. I am certain that there were other mis-uses anywhere where Green Parties made gains. But his position is too visible. Past US presidents and/or candidates were scrutinized and chastised for things like the smoking of an occasional joint in their distant reckless youth. Shouldn't people scrutinize the methods presidential candidates use to gain people's sympathy and support? And if irregularities are found, shouldn't they be responsible for them?

I cannot help making a small parallel between this case and a news item I read a couple of days ago about an applicant for Canadian citizenship, Parminder Singh Saini, who in his youth hijacked an airplane, was convicted, served 10 years in jail, eventually gaining full pardon for his past actions. Thirteen years ago he claimed refugee status in Canada and was accepted. He apparently is a "model citizen" now, a lawyer about to pass his bar exam, by all accounts a person who could do a lot of good work in and for Canada. The problem is that he came here under an assumed name, hiding his past. If anyone asked my modest little person to pass judgment over him, I would say that he must be held responsible for the means he used in order to gain entry into Canada. He has to be rejected now, and advised that he should go back to India and apply under his real name. Past can be forgiven, people can redeem themselves by proving their present worth. But the old Jesuit motto, "goals justify the means by which they are attained", does not, should not hold anymore.

Where do I see any connection between his case and the Gore case, you ask? Mr Gore IS a model citizen, he does not have a spotty past in need of redemption. But political candidates must be also scrutinized for the means they use to get where they want to be!

Throne Speech reverb...

2007-10-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

I heard an interesting comment by political analyst Tom Flanagan on CTV's Mike Duffy Live: "This is an unprecedented situation. Usually in a minority government, the opposition is trying to bring the government down, but here it's reversed. I think for the first time in Canadian history, we have a government which wouldn't mind being defeated, but it can't seem to get the opposition to come out against it."

Proof: after Stephane Dion assured the House of Commons that his party has no intentions to bring down the government, Harper went on to say that he would treat an upcoming justice bill as a confidence vote, and would accept no amendments.

Although the Liberals still have a few more days to make a final decision, it is more likely than not that they will pussyfoot their way out of a full confrontation. After all, Harper offered enough goodies to the public by promising tax cuts, increased funding for cities, more help for seniors, etc. that it would make anyone look bad if they tried to object to any of it. There are lots who think that the tax cuts, or even a reduction of the GST, is not exactly the best idea, but these are pure ear candy for the average citizen. And who could object to the grandiose statements of "strengthening Canada's sovereignty in the world, providing economic leadership", not to speak of "tackling crime"?

It is definitely interesting to watch the reactions of different party leaders, and we are still not sure which way the winds will blow in the long run. The crucial vote will take place next Wednesday. So it is yet to be seen whether we will have an election or not...

Throne Speech 2007 or The Fate of Harper and Dion

2007-10-15T13:15:00.001-07:00

During a long drawn out illness in the family that kept me rather busy I did not have much time to follow up on our politicians. Only the most obvious blunders have reached my little pool of attention. Now, of course, I try to catch up on the events of the last half a year, and it seems that whatever caught my attention during that hermit stage, making me form opinions in one direction or another, were not that off. Both of our top political figures, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and opposition leader Stephane Dion, are somewhat less than "charismatic". At least that is the general opinion discovered by a recently conducted poll. The questions are:
- Is their image a result of their actions?
- Are their actions weightier than their image?
In our media-heavy times I am always weary of opinions based on image. Just think, wouldn't have Albert Einstein come across as a blundering idiot occasionally in today's strong limelight? But then again, he was an academe, not a politician. And therein lies, for example, Stephane Dion's main problem.

As a matter of fact, tomorrow will be a crucial day for these two men. For one, it is an opportunity to prove the country that Mr Harper and his team will be able to create a viable roadmap for the next few years ahead of us. Let us pay close attention to how comprehensive the Conservative stance is on federal issues, the issue of Canadian deployment in Afghanistan, the environmental clean-up issue and their plans for the country's economic development.

And then I will be watching with interest what the Liberal reaction will be. Will it be knee-jerk attacks, or thoughtful opinions with measured criticism and honest support where it is due?

As for the Bloc, I could more or less predict their position, unless they have some things of their own up their sleeves.

Canadian presence at the Tehran Holocaust conference

2007-01-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

A month has passed from the time of the infamous Tehran conference on the Holocaust, or rather the denial thereof. Yet only now did I become aware of the shameful fact that there was a Canadian among the speakers there. His name is Shiraz Dossa. On their program they identified him as being a professor at the University of Toronto, while in fact he has been part of the staff at St. Francis Xavier University in Antagonish, Nova Scotia, since 1988 - as his webpage there states. He claimed during an interview that he "did not know" the planned conference would be antisemitic. Nooo...! Really?

Judged by his writings he subscribes to some rather interesting points of view. He certainly makes sure that noone will mistake him for a liberal thinker. He believes that multiculturalism is just "liberal posturing", he professes, alongside Peter Fitzpatrick, that "liberalism is bound by its genealogy and its sense of history to debase the culturally Other"... and so on and on. He chalks up every ill that befell the world, ills which were perpetrated by self-proclaimed liberals of the times, to their being liberals and not to the fact that they were fallible human beings despite their supposed liberalism, claiming that they did wrong because of their liberalism not in spite of it.

But whatever his views, he is a Canadian, and he is entitled to have his views. These rights are accorded to him by the Canadian Charter of Rights, a document which holds up a liberal ideal for us, an ideal that for now isn't/cannot possibly be adhered to in its fullest, but is to be strived for. A liberal ideal that gives us the hope that one day in the future Canadian society may actually fulfill its lofty proposals. Yes, in spite of his opinion about us, he is being tolerated. We do seem to tolerate the intolerant.

What bothers me, though, that his presence in Tehran was ignored by the Canadian media, that there was no public outcry, only a polite acknowledgement, that we were not made aware more widely and more forcefully of his shameful presence there. Granted, he did not travel there on Canadian taxpayers' money. He was luxuriously wined and dined on Iranian government funds. But we, Liberal Canadians, cannot pass it off with a shrug when someone like Dossa takes it upon himself to represent us at an event which singles out another cultural minority present in our Canadian society, questioning and ridiculing its painful past. This constitutes a silent endorsement!

As will be the university's position if Shiraz Dossa will still be on their staff next year...

------------------------------

While sifting through Iranian blogs that commented on the Holocaust conference, I found an entry by fellow Canadian blogger, Hoder, in which he expresses concern about the way Ahmadinejad seems to be "consolidating his power inside the system gradually, carefully and quite intelligently." This reminds me of an earlier entry of my own from way back in September, in which I made some semi-serious predictions about the directions Ahmadinejad's presidency may take if left unchecked...

Walid Salem, a Palestinian voice of reason

2007-01-04T22:30:00.000-08:00

Today I discovered a remarkable Palestinian voice of reason in the ugly cacophony of animosity and violence. The article I found is Walid Salem's response to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's viciously anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli position - Mahmoud Ahmadinijad: Questions of Strategy. In it he questions the wisdom of Iran's quest for nuclear weapons and their calls for the annihilation of Israel, he questions the general strategy of the Arab world towards Israel and the Palestinians, and he calls on moderate Arabs to raise their voices.

The article becomes even more remarkable when we consider that Walid Salem spent altogether five years in Israeli prisons and yet, instead of harbouring anger in his heart and seeking revenge, he realised that the road to peace is not via violence but by reaching out to the Israelis from the streets, to build peace from the base and not from above between political leaders only. He is the director of Panorama, an organization dedicated to spreading democracy in Palestinian society, promoting cooperation between groups from both sides that support peace.

Saddam Hussein is gone. What now?

2006-12-30T00:07:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-07T20:21:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-12-06T01:19:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-05T00:34:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-11-06T23:02:00.000-08:00

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??

2006-10-29T22:41:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-17T00:18:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-09T19:44:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-09T00:28:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-02T23:56:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-09-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-09-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-09-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-05T00:40:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-08-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

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(!?)

2006-08-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

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

Palestinian refugees

2006-08-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-27T22:23:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-08-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-23T23:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

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

Israel's reality

2006-08-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-23T23:18:00.000-07:00

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!!!

-----------

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?

Lebanon

2006-08-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

TUESDAY, JULY 25, 2006
Here we go...! Politics! With a capital P.
I am not a particularly political person but today I heard a caller on the radio commenting on the present Israel-Hezbollah war, and I heard the unsatisfactory answer of the talkshow host - which then triggered a train of thoughts as to how would I have liked that call-in to be answered. This is what I would have liked to unfold on that radio show.

The caller was an obvious Hezbollah sympathyzer and he defended Hezbollah after a previous caller said that Hezbollah was a terrorist organization. The caller emphasized that Hezbollah was a guerilla organization the mandate of which was to fight the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. The host replied that he considers Hezbollah terrorist organization because it wants the distruction of all of Israel. To which every pro-Hezbollah' listener surely just nods their head, "Dah...! But of course! After all isn't Israel the great aggressor, the great Satan?"

Now I would have liked the following reply:If Hezbollah was created to push out all the Israelis from Lebanon, how come it is still there six years after Israel left? How come there were over 10 000 rockets amassed at Israel's northern border, ready to strike at any time? Does the caller know where the financial and military support came from which built up that sizeable military infrastructure?

Also think about the fact, that Israel was not the only occupier force in Lebanon. While all those years that Israel maintained only a buffer zone along its borders, Syria was in there, too, - all the way in! As a matter of fact they left barely a year ago, after much international pressure. How come there was no anti-Syrian resistance guerilla army, fighting the Syrians? We all know that the Syrians weren't white lilies, either, when it comes to aggression and killings. Do you think Syria would have exercised utmost restraint if there was a Western backed guerilla army along its Lebanese borders, with tens of thousands of rockets pointing in their direction, an army whose expressed mandate would be to wipe Syria off the face of the Earth? Should this army have killed eight Syrian soldiers and kidnapped two, on Syrian soil(!), do you think they would not have responded? And do you think they would not have used the opportunity to try and destroy that growing and threatening military entity along their borders - the rest of Lebanon be damned...?

The caller also tried to defend Hezbollah as being more than just an army, but a social umbrella that brought great amount of help to the people in the south of Lebanon. Sure...! Sounds to me very much like the modus operandi of the Christian missionaries over the ages. Help, with strings attached. Come, come, we provide you with financial aid, medical service, schools, etc. All we want from you is to commit yourself to Shiite principles, live a clean life, and develop an exalted spirit that will help you join us in the fight of our great enemy, the "Zionist pigs"! They definitely were committed to raise the youth of South Lebanon on these ideas in their schools. All these may sound wonderful for the insider, but for the outsider it very much looks like whoever financed all these had the goal to buy the souls of the Southern Lebanese people with some proverbial loaves of bread. Why? So that when they fight Israel it should look like it is only a small Lebanese guerilla group fighting the big bad wolf of Zionist Israel. Yet, by their own (very recent!) admission they are actually fighting the fight of all of the Muslim world. See and hear it for yourself, from the mouth of Nasrallah, as he spoke on Al Manar TV on July 16 ( click on #1194). Knowing this, doesn't that make you wonder: to what extent those poor Southern Lebanese have been duped? Don't you feel sorry for them?