"You don't get news stories by trying to change perceptions, you get them by reinforcing stereotypes..." (From a leaked email from Malcolm Turnbull's office: Dig dirt, Turnbull office urges, Matthew Franklin, The Australian, 27/10/09)
Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian has just returned from the wilds of Eurabia. He's talked to all the right people there, and come away ever so reluctantly shocked - shocked! - to find that the Muslim - Muslim! - hordes have all but taken over and that, unless we get it right, we are next in line:
"Uncontrolled Muslim immigration into Europe has been a public policy failure, if not an outright disaster. This is the view of most Europeans, as measured by opinion polls, and of a large number of European officials and politicians. Having just spent a month in Europe, talking to dozens of officials, politicians and immigrants, it is a view I reluctantly [!!!] share. This is given sharp relief by the illegal immigration crisis Australia is experiencing to its north." (Europe looks Down Under for answers on immigration, 24/10/09)
Just cop a load of this:
"The spike now in boat arrivals involves Sri Lankans, but this is primarily a route that would be used by Muslim illegal immigrants. There is nothing wrong with Muslim immigration. It goes without saying that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants are good Australians and perfectly law-abiding citizens. However, it is simply denying reality to pretend that the cultural distinctiveness and assertiveness of Islam, and of the propensity for a small but distinctively substantial minority to be attracted to extremism, does not pose problems." (ibid)
What steaming pile of Islamophobic poo is this? Leaving aside the patent idiocy of the first sentence, in which he's actually said that the Muslim hordes will be embarking in Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka! for God's sake - for an invasion of Australia, there's the hoary old 'I'm-not-a-racist-but...' construction: there's nothing wrong with Muslim immigration, but... (some carry the 'Muslim' virus of extremism). Note too the dog-whistling of illegal immigrants, and the impossible logic of a small but substantial minority.
As if this weren't bad enough, 5 days later the bugger deposited another load of same: "A few weeks ago in London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told me that 75% of the terrorist plots aimed at Britain originated in the... tribal areas of Pakistan. Some 800,000 Pakistanis live in Britain. The vast majority, it goes without saying, are law-abiding citizens. But... " (Uncontrolled Muslim influx a terror threat, 29/10/09)
"It is extremely difficult to talk honestly about Muslim immigration. All generalisations about it are subject to countless exceptions. Muslims are very different from each other. Most are reasonably successful. But a much bigger minority end up with social, political, extremist or other problems resulting from a lack of integration than is the case with any other cohort of immigrants in Western societies." (ibid)
There it is again: most Muslims are reasonably [He just had to add a qualifier, didn't he?] successful, but... Plus more of that impossible logic: Most Muslims are... but a much bigger minority are... And all of it typically, merely asserted.
There's nothing wrong with Muslim immigration, but.../Muslims are law-abiding citizens, but.../Muslims are successful, but...: this is Islamophobia posing as reasoned comment.
Sheridan cites his authority as US "journalist" Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, and claims that it is "[t]he most enlightening book you could possibly read on [Muslim immigration]." You are, of course, expected to believe that Sheridan, prior to reading Caldwell, had an open mind on the subject, but you'd be wrong. Sheridan only bothers to reference that which caters to his prejudices and obsessions. Take the Islamophobic obsession with 'Muslim' demographics, for example. Here's Sheridan: "The demographic figures [Caldwell] cites are familiar but still shocking. Native Europeans won't have babies at anything like replacement level while the fertility of Muslim immigrants does not decline through time, as is the case with other immigrants. Religion is the strongest predictor of fertility in Europe." (ibid) And here he is back in February: "In 1950, there were about 240,000 Gazans. Now there are about 1.5 million. By 2040 there will be 3 million. Eventually, they believe, they will swamp Israel with sheer numbers." (There may be the will but not necessarily the way, The Australian, 8/2/09)
In a recent Guardian Weekly essay, The new intolerance, on the current crop of anti-Muslim immigrant jeremiads (by Niall Ferguson, Bruce Bawer, Mark Steyn and Christopher Caldwell), Indian writer Pankaj Mishra has made the following salutory comments: "Surveys and opinion polls repeatedly reveal the average European Muslim to be poor, socially conservative, unhappy about discrimination, but generally content, hopeful about their children - who attend non-religious schools - and eager, like their non-Muslim peers, to get on with their lives. Initially high, birthrates among Muslim communities across Europe are falling as more men and women become literate. Exposure to secular modernity has also weaned many of the immigrants away from traditional faith: only 5% of Muslims in France regularly attend mosques, and elsewhere, too, non-observant 'cultural Muslims' predominate." (4/9/09)
"Ordinary Muslims in Europe, who suffer from the demoralisation caused by living as perennial objects of suspicion and contempt, are far from thinking of themselves as a politically powerful or cohesive community, not to speak of conquerors of Europe. So what explains the rash of bestsellers with histrionic titles - While Europe Slept, America Alone, The Last Days of Europe? None of their mostly neocon American authors was previously known for their knowledge of Muslim societies. Certainly, the idea of a monolithic 'Islam' in Europe appears especially pitiable when you regard the varying national origins, linguistic and legal backgrounds, and cultural and religious practices of European Muslims. Unemployment and discrimination make young Muslims in Europe vulnerable to globalised forms of political Islam, many of whose militant versions vend political aphrodisiacs of a restored Islamic community to powerless individuals. But it is a tiny minority [Note Sheridan's distinctively substantial minority] that is attracted to or is ready to condone terrorist violence. Not surprisingly, most of these Muslims live in Britain, the European country most tainted by the calamitous 'war on terror' that David Miliband, as well as Barack Obama, now concedes was possible to see as a war on Muslims." (ibid)
"... Eurabia-mongers from America seem as determined as tabloid hacks to strike terror among white Europeans about their local newsagent or curry-house owner. 'If the spread of Pakistani cuisine', Caldwell writes, 'is the single greatest improvement in British public life over the past half-century, it is also worth noting that bombs used for the failed London transport attacks of 21 July, 2005, were made from a mix of hydrogen peroxide and chapatti flour'. [I can't believe I'm reading this!] Most south Asian cuisine consumed on British high streets hails from India or Bangladesh rather than Pakistan. Caldwell, however, won't let facts get in the way of the many eagerly consumed chapattis rising up his white British reader's gorge. Remarkably, Caldwell, who is a senior editor with the neoconservative Weekly Standard, also does not appear to know that Edmund Burke, from whom he derives his book title, had a rather exaggerated reverence for 'Muhammadan law'."
"In actuality, the everyday choices of most Muslims in Europe are dictated more by their experience of globalised economies and cultures than their readings in the Qur'an or sharia. Along with thei Hindu or Sikh peers, many Muslims in Europe suffer from the usual pathologies of traditional rural communities transitioning to urban secular cultures: the encounter with social and economic individualism inevitably provokes a crisis of control in nuclear families, as well as such ills as forced marriage, the poor treatment of women and militant sectarianism. However, in practice, millions of Muslims, many of them with bitter experiences of authoritarian states, coexist frictionlessly and gratefully with regimes committed to democracy, freedom of religion and equality before the law."
But back to Sheridan. I will conclude with the inimitatable Mike Carlton's recent skewering of the bugger. The subject of Carlton's Sydney Morning Herald column was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama: "A recent emission from The Australian 's foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, crystallised this idiocy. After a few tortured paragraphs wondering whether Obama wanted to be The Fonz or Richie Cunningham from Happy Days - a metaphor so creaky you could see the kapok stuffing bursting from the seams - he offered up this startling sentence: 'At some point, Obama is going to have to do something seriously unpleasant to someone'. Shameless, unrepentant, nothing learnt and nothing forgotten, there is the neo-con world view in a nutshell: the US gains respect only when the cruise missiles and F/A 18s are thundering from the decks of a carrier battle group to wreak death and destruction on the villains du jour. That George Bush tried this endlessly and failed so disastrously troubles them not a jot." (All hail the shameless neo-cons, 17/10/09)
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Jewish People?
There's really no pleasing some people: "The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD) has asked for the immediate withdrawal of a book that schools use as an HSC text, which it says contains anti-Semitic slurs." (School textbook 'fuels anti-Semitism', Anna Patty, Sydney Morning Herald, 28/10/09)
The book, Cambridge Studies of Religion Stage 6, apparently contains the following 'offending' sentence: "Much modern conflict in the world is related to the reactions of other groups to the Jewish people." According to the JBOD, "this statement has the potential to incite racial hatred because it 'directly blames Jews for the existence of much of the conflict in the world'."
I would have thought that the JBOD Zionists would at least derive some satisfaction from the fact that the author has referred not to Jews, but to the Jewish people, a key tenet of political Zionism if ever there was one. Prior to the existence of political Zionism, things were relatively simple: a Jew was just that, a follower of Judaism, one of the three Abrahamic faiths. Zionism, however, has muddied the waters by inventing an ethnographic entity it calls the Jewish people.
My guess is that the textbook's author really means political Zionism, as in 'Much conflict in the world is related to the reactions of other groups to Zionism'. Even better (because more precise) would be: 'Much conflict in the Middle East today stems from the dispossession of the Palestinian people by a colonial-settler movement known as Zionism, which established a Jewish state in the land of Palestine predicated on their expulsion and occupation'. But then, given Zionism's habit of conflating Judaism, the faith, and Zionism, the political ideology (and therefore Jews and Zionists), one can perhaps understand the author's confusion. The point should also be made that by conflating Judaism and Zionism, Zionists expose Jews qua Jews, wherever they happen to be living and whatever their position on Israel, to unwarranted suspicion (and even possible attack) arising out of Israeli behaviour. [See my 17/5/09 post Sheridan in Love 4]
Given the constant reiteration by Zionists of the term the Jewish people (not to mention the Jewish state), and their constant blurring, in the minds of the general public, of the simple distinction between Jews and Judaism on the one hand and Zionists and Israel on the other, it often falls to those Jews who refuse to allow the state of Israel to speak and act in their name to assert this crucial distinction. One such was the great anti-Zionist Moshe Menuhin who unequivocally condemned the corrupting effect of political Zionism (or 'Jewish' nationalism as he calls it) on Judaism. The following passage is taken from the introduction to his 1965 classic, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time:
"For two generations now, the din emitted by oppressed, frustrated and despondent Jewish leadership, which first emanated from the tortured ghettos of Czarist Russia, Poland and Hapsburg Vienna, has gathered momentum and spread epidemically throughout the pathetic, amorphous and unsophisticated Jewish world. It has declared that the Jews of the world, wherever they may be and no matter what their legal citizenship and nationality, form one transnational ethnic and political entity. With the advent of the state of Israel, this 'entity' has graduated into an 'internationally recognized Jewish nation', whose sovereign state and homeland is Israel. All this in spite of a two-thousand-year-old history of Judaism testifying to its overwhelming evolutionary development along spiritual, universal and nonpolitical lines; in spite of the radical and vital changes in the soul of civilised man everywhere after two world wars; in spite of the new advanced conception of free individual citizenship, of equal privilieges and obligations in a new fully integrated and harmonious civilised human community. To stultify, brainwash and inoculate the amorphous body of world Jewry with the virus of secular, rampant 'Jewish' political nationalism, Jewish education for Aliyah ('ingathering of the exiles' through immigration into Israel) under the pretense of spiritual and religious immunity or liberty has been instituted everywhere. This, in turn, has been undoing the normal and natural processes of the integration and evolution of the Jew into the new order of universalism and brotherhood. Cultural isolation, hiding behind the much abused expression 'cultural pluralism', has been self-segregating the Jew from the Gentile in America, England, France and elsewhere in the free world, to prepare him for Aliyah. 'Let the Book give place to the Sword, and the Prophet to the fair beast!" is how the great Hebrew writer and philosopher Ahad Ha-'Am... characterised 'Jewish' political nationalism (political Zionism) from the very beginning, when he attacked Dr. Theodor Herzl, the father and founder of political Zionism. Today, in our new one-world, pretexts for action based on Blood, Soil, Manifest Destiny, Redemption, Gloire and Grandeur, the Chosen People and the White Man's Burden are well recognized and fully rejected, with a sense of shame and compunction, by intelligent and awakened Europeans. Nevertheless, persistent, stagnant, decadent and anachronistic 'Jewish' nationalism still preaches, now more than ever, these time-worn and degenerate ideas of 'collective Sacro Egoismo', as Professor Martin Buber calls them. In its own way, it has already brought much misery to a million uprooted innocent Palestinian Arabs who were exiled from their homes and homeland, and to hundreds of thousands of uprooted Jews, particularly in the Arab lands. Advancing, evolving, universal and spiritual Judaism, which was the core of the Judeo-Christian code of ethics, is now becoming the tool, the handmaiden, of 'Jewish' nationalism, so that the ethical injunctions Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet have been transformed into the unethical, primitive and tribalistic 'Covenant of the Chosen People' and 'Israel First'. So much so, that Israelis regard themselves today as Israelis only, an elite, and not, God forbid, as Jews, who in their eyes are a lower breed of humans, traitors to the sacred cause of 'Jewish' nationalism unless they emigrate to the 'sacred-secular Jewish Homeland'." (pp xii-xiii)
Now wouldn't that give the JBOD something to chew on?
The book, Cambridge Studies of Religion Stage 6, apparently contains the following 'offending' sentence: "Much modern conflict in the world is related to the reactions of other groups to the Jewish people." According to the JBOD, "this statement has the potential to incite racial hatred because it 'directly blames Jews for the existence of much of the conflict in the world'."
I would have thought that the JBOD Zionists would at least derive some satisfaction from the fact that the author has referred not to Jews, but to the Jewish people, a key tenet of political Zionism if ever there was one. Prior to the existence of political Zionism, things were relatively simple: a Jew was just that, a follower of Judaism, one of the three Abrahamic faiths. Zionism, however, has muddied the waters by inventing an ethnographic entity it calls the Jewish people.
My guess is that the textbook's author really means political Zionism, as in 'Much conflict in the world is related to the reactions of other groups to Zionism'. Even better (because more precise) would be: 'Much conflict in the Middle East today stems from the dispossession of the Palestinian people by a colonial-settler movement known as Zionism, which established a Jewish state in the land of Palestine predicated on their expulsion and occupation'. But then, given Zionism's habit of conflating Judaism, the faith, and Zionism, the political ideology (and therefore Jews and Zionists), one can perhaps understand the author's confusion. The point should also be made that by conflating Judaism and Zionism, Zionists expose Jews qua Jews, wherever they happen to be living and whatever their position on Israel, to unwarranted suspicion (and even possible attack) arising out of Israeli behaviour. [See my 17/5/09 post Sheridan in Love 4]
Given the constant reiteration by Zionists of the term the Jewish people (not to mention the Jewish state), and their constant blurring, in the minds of the general public, of the simple distinction between Jews and Judaism on the one hand and Zionists and Israel on the other, it often falls to those Jews who refuse to allow the state of Israel to speak and act in their name to assert this crucial distinction. One such was the great anti-Zionist Moshe Menuhin who unequivocally condemned the corrupting effect of political Zionism (or 'Jewish' nationalism as he calls it) on Judaism. The following passage is taken from the introduction to his 1965 classic, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time:
"For two generations now, the din emitted by oppressed, frustrated and despondent Jewish leadership, which first emanated from the tortured ghettos of Czarist Russia, Poland and Hapsburg Vienna, has gathered momentum and spread epidemically throughout the pathetic, amorphous and unsophisticated Jewish world. It has declared that the Jews of the world, wherever they may be and no matter what their legal citizenship and nationality, form one transnational ethnic and political entity. With the advent of the state of Israel, this 'entity' has graduated into an 'internationally recognized Jewish nation', whose sovereign state and homeland is Israel. All this in spite of a two-thousand-year-old history of Judaism testifying to its overwhelming evolutionary development along spiritual, universal and nonpolitical lines; in spite of the radical and vital changes in the soul of civilised man everywhere after two world wars; in spite of the new advanced conception of free individual citizenship, of equal privilieges and obligations in a new fully integrated and harmonious civilised human community. To stultify, brainwash and inoculate the amorphous body of world Jewry with the virus of secular, rampant 'Jewish' political nationalism, Jewish education for Aliyah ('ingathering of the exiles' through immigration into Israel) under the pretense of spiritual and religious immunity or liberty has been instituted everywhere. This, in turn, has been undoing the normal and natural processes of the integration and evolution of the Jew into the new order of universalism and brotherhood. Cultural isolation, hiding behind the much abused expression 'cultural pluralism', has been self-segregating the Jew from the Gentile in America, England, France and elsewhere in the free world, to prepare him for Aliyah. 'Let the Book give place to the Sword, and the Prophet to the fair beast!" is how the great Hebrew writer and philosopher Ahad Ha-'Am... characterised 'Jewish' political nationalism (political Zionism) from the very beginning, when he attacked Dr. Theodor Herzl, the father and founder of political Zionism. Today, in our new one-world, pretexts for action based on Blood, Soil, Manifest Destiny, Redemption, Gloire and Grandeur, the Chosen People and the White Man's Burden are well recognized and fully rejected, with a sense of shame and compunction, by intelligent and awakened Europeans. Nevertheless, persistent, stagnant, decadent and anachronistic 'Jewish' nationalism still preaches, now more than ever, these time-worn and degenerate ideas of 'collective Sacro Egoismo', as Professor Martin Buber calls them. In its own way, it has already brought much misery to a million uprooted innocent Palestinian Arabs who were exiled from their homes and homeland, and to hundreds of thousands of uprooted Jews, particularly in the Arab lands. Advancing, evolving, universal and spiritual Judaism, which was the core of the Judeo-Christian code of ethics, is now becoming the tool, the handmaiden, of 'Jewish' nationalism, so that the ethical injunctions Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet have been transformed into the unethical, primitive and tribalistic 'Covenant of the Chosen People' and 'Israel First'. So much so, that Israelis regard themselves today as Israelis only, an elite, and not, God forbid, as Jews, who in their eyes are a lower breed of humans, traitors to the sacred cause of 'Jewish' nationalism unless they emigrate to the 'sacred-secular Jewish Homeland'." (pp xii-xiii)
Now wouldn't that give the JBOD something to chew on?
Monday, October 26, 2009
When Bibi Met Kevi
"Israel's international spokesman, Australian Mark Regev..." (Regev upbeat on Mid-East peace, Rowan Callick, Sydney Morning Herald, 15/10/09)
Oh, so he's Israel's international spokesman and Australian too? Isn't that nice? If you're Mark Regev, you can have your cake and eat it too. Even though you were born and raised here as Mark Freiberg, you can take advantage of that amaaazing little Israeli Law of Return, which grants Israeli citizenship to anyone, anywhere, providing he's got a Jewish mother, while retaining your prior citizenship. But, if you're a Palestinian, and you're unfortunate enough to have a Muslim or a Christian mother, even with the weight of international law on your side (in the form of the right of all refugees to return to their homes), you're going nowhere. No, Israel (occupied Palestine) is reserved exclusively for those with the right bio-theological connections - people like Mark Freiberg/Regev.
"Back home in Melbourne..." (ibid) That's right, two homes! Pretty neat, eh? And it looks like it's a working holiday because he's had his back scratched by Philip Adams* and he's talking non-stop to anyone who'll listen about - you guessed it - Iran.
[*"He started his brilliant career as a student at Mt Scopus, Melbourne, and when I lived in Melbourne I used to do fundraising for Mt Scopus and clearly Mark has been a beneficiary. Mark, how does a bright young fella from Mt Scopus finish up in this lofty position?" LNL, 14/10/09]
"We think multilateral action is required on Iran. Its leadership should be given a crystal clear instruction: you can't have business as usual and a nuclear program at the same time." (ibid)
Really? Surely if the country for which you officially spruik can have both business as usual and a few hundred nukes, why can't Iran have a nuclear program? As our Kev might say, in any other context, fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate!
Now did the bright young fella from Mt Scopus say multilateral action? Meaning? Well, let him finish: "'But if it proves impossible to get a UN Security Council resolution with enough teeth to make a difference' he raised the prospect of enlisting 'enough countries which do agree, who are important players in the world, to do so'." (ibid)
Whoa! Run that past me again. If the Security Council doesn't do it for Israel, then Israel's going to whistle up its mates and get them to give Iran a right thumping. Right. And just who might these mates of Israel be? Brace yourself: "During a recent visit to New York for the UN General Assembly, Mr Netanyahu held meetings with just 4 other government heads besides the US and Palestinian leaders; those of France, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Kevin Rudd, he said, made a favourable impression, with his firm grasp of the Middle East." (ibid)
OK, could the lingering effects of Bibi's heady pheromones be the cause of Kevi's current flexing of his rhetorical pecs on the subject of asylum seekers? You know - all that jazz about being tough and hard-nosed? And that firm grasp of the Middle East? Eww! Is it, like... by the throat? Anyhow, you can be sure something was passing between those two in New York in September. After all, Kevi and New York go back a long way. Strange urges overtake him there. The last (?) time he was there, in 2003, wasn't he kicked out of a nightclub called Scores - Scores for Kevin's sake! - for laying hands on the dancers?
OK, steady on, MERC, keep it under control, let's stick to Rumsfeld's known unknowns, shall we? Now we all know that Rudd is a genetically-engineered organism, OK? (Well he did once say that support for Israel was in his DNA, didn't he?) So how could he not have attended Bibi's award-winning performance at the UN, right? Maybe that's it then, it was probably one of the ripping yarns (penned by the bright young fella from Mt Scopus?) with which Bibi regaled his American, French, Canadian, and Australian audience, that did it for Kevi.
Could it have been this one perhaps?: "The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie. Last month I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie? A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler's deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie? This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie? And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by Nazis. Is that also a lie? Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries. But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually end up engulfing many others."
Or this one?: "This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past 30 years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times. Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays* or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against the fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilisation against civilisation. It pits civilisation against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death."
[*"Gays and lesbians are sick people. It's definitely a disease. They haven't invented a cure for it yet, but I hope they will." Eli Yishai, Deputy Israeli PM, quoted in Eli Yishai is just Jean-Marie Le Pen with a beard, Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 26/10/09]
Perhaps this one?: "The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom? Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism? Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world? The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?"
Or the whole damn kit and kaboodle? Hey, what's not to like if support for Israel has been spliced into your DNA?
But maybe Bibi's rippers were really just the softening-up process. Maybe, just maybe, it was more up close and personal than that. Maybe it really was down to those irresistable Israeli pheromones I've already alluded to. After all, as ABC Radio National's Sabra Lane reported at the time, "this afternoon [Rudd]... also... had a chat with Benjamin Netanyahu... And it's quite funny during the stage the cameras were allowed in to capture images of the two leaders talking, Benjamin Netanyahu sort of had a little bit of fun with the Prime Minister saying that either Australia had to move or the UN had to move. He was sort of making fun how far and distant Australia is from New York." (Rudd takes place on world stage, The World Today, abc.net.au, 24/9/09)
Hm... That "either Australia had to move or the UN had to move" line that Sabra Lane thought was just Bibi making fun, I reckon she got it all wrong! You know what? I reckon Bibi was telling Kevi that either he or the UN had to move... on Iran.
Dinkum!
Oh, so he's Israel's international spokesman and Australian too? Isn't that nice? If you're Mark Regev, you can have your cake and eat it too. Even though you were born and raised here as Mark Freiberg, you can take advantage of that amaaazing little Israeli Law of Return, which grants Israeli citizenship to anyone, anywhere, providing he's got a Jewish mother, while retaining your prior citizenship. But, if you're a Palestinian, and you're unfortunate enough to have a Muslim or a Christian mother, even with the weight of international law on your side (in the form of the right of all refugees to return to their homes), you're going nowhere. No, Israel (occupied Palestine) is reserved exclusively for those with the right bio-theological connections - people like Mark Freiberg/Regev.
"Back home in Melbourne..." (ibid) That's right, two homes! Pretty neat, eh? And it looks like it's a working holiday because he's had his back scratched by Philip Adams* and he's talking non-stop to anyone who'll listen about - you guessed it - Iran.
[*"He started his brilliant career as a student at Mt Scopus, Melbourne, and when I lived in Melbourne I used to do fundraising for Mt Scopus and clearly Mark has been a beneficiary. Mark, how does a bright young fella from Mt Scopus finish up in this lofty position?" LNL, 14/10/09]
"We think multilateral action is required on Iran. Its leadership should be given a crystal clear instruction: you can't have business as usual and a nuclear program at the same time." (ibid)
Really? Surely if the country for which you officially spruik can have both business as usual and a few hundred nukes, why can't Iran have a nuclear program? As our Kev might say, in any other context, fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate!
Now did the bright young fella from Mt Scopus say multilateral action? Meaning? Well, let him finish: "'But if it proves impossible to get a UN Security Council resolution with enough teeth to make a difference' he raised the prospect of enlisting 'enough countries which do agree, who are important players in the world, to do so'." (ibid)
Whoa! Run that past me again. If the Security Council doesn't do it for Israel, then Israel's going to whistle up its mates and get them to give Iran a right thumping. Right. And just who might these mates of Israel be? Brace yourself: "During a recent visit to New York for the UN General Assembly, Mr Netanyahu held meetings with just 4 other government heads besides the US and Palestinian leaders; those of France, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Kevin Rudd, he said, made a favourable impression, with his firm grasp of the Middle East." (ibid)
OK, could the lingering effects of Bibi's heady pheromones be the cause of Kevi's current flexing of his rhetorical pecs on the subject of asylum seekers? You know - all that jazz about being tough and hard-nosed? And that firm grasp of the Middle East? Eww! Is it, like... by the throat? Anyhow, you can be sure something was passing between those two in New York in September. After all, Kevi and New York go back a long way. Strange urges overtake him there. The last (?) time he was there, in 2003, wasn't he kicked out of a nightclub called Scores - Scores for Kevin's sake! - for laying hands on the dancers?
OK, steady on, MERC, keep it under control, let's stick to Rumsfeld's known unknowns, shall we? Now we all know that Rudd is a genetically-engineered organism, OK? (Well he did once say that support for Israel was in his DNA, didn't he?) So how could he not have attended Bibi's award-winning performance at the UN, right? Maybe that's it then, it was probably one of the ripping yarns (penned by the bright young fella from Mt Scopus?) with which Bibi regaled his American, French, Canadian, and Australian audience, that did it for Kevi.
Could it have been this one perhaps?: "The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie. Last month I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie? A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler's deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie? This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie? And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by Nazis. Is that also a lie? Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries. But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually end up engulfing many others."
Or this one?: "This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past 30 years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times. Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays* or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against the fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilisation against civilisation. It pits civilisation against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death."
[*"Gays and lesbians are sick people. It's definitely a disease. They haven't invented a cure for it yet, but I hope they will." Eli Yishai, Deputy Israeli PM, quoted in Eli Yishai is just Jean-Marie Le Pen with a beard, Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 26/10/09]
Perhaps this one?: "The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom? Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism? Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world? The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?"
Or the whole damn kit and kaboodle? Hey, what's not to like if support for Israel has been spliced into your DNA?
But maybe Bibi's rippers were really just the softening-up process. Maybe, just maybe, it was more up close and personal than that. Maybe it really was down to those irresistable Israeli pheromones I've already alluded to. After all, as ABC Radio National's Sabra Lane reported at the time, "this afternoon [Rudd]... also... had a chat with Benjamin Netanyahu... And it's quite funny during the stage the cameras were allowed in to capture images of the two leaders talking, Benjamin Netanyahu sort of had a little bit of fun with the Prime Minister saying that either Australia had to move or the UN had to move. He was sort of making fun how far and distant Australia is from New York." (Rudd takes place on world stage, The World Today, abc.net.au, 24/9/09)
Hm... That "either Australia had to move or the UN had to move" line that Sabra Lane thought was just Bibi making fun, I reckon she got it all wrong! You know what? I reckon Bibi was telling Kevi that either he or the UN had to move... on Iran.
Dinkum!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Treat 'Em Mean...
"A committee of Israeli lawmakers voted Tuesday to allow German Chancellor Angela Merkel to address the Knesset in German during her visit next week to mark Israel's 60th anniversary The decision bends a rule which says only 'presidents, heads of state, and kings' - but not explicitly chancellors - may speak to Israel's parliament. The Knesset House Committee's 7-2 decision to let Merkel give a speech ends a legal squabble. But protests lodged by the two nay-voting members make the ruling more than just a technicality. 'I can't hear German in the Knesset plenum', said Arieh Eldad, a member of the right-wing NRP-National Union Party... 'It's the language my grandfather and grandmother were killed in. I will get up and leave." (Merkel allowed to address the Knesset auf Deutsch, spiegel.de, 11/3/08)
"Germany, Merkel said [in the Knesset], would 'never abandon Israel, but instead will remain a loyal partner and friend'. As in the past, Merkel's speech contained only homeopathic doses of criticism of Israel's occupation policy and its hesitation to commit itself to the peace process. 'One must also have the strength to make painful concessions', the chancellor hinted, only to quickly dilute what had sounded like the beginnings of a rebuke. 'In order to be a realist you must believe in miracles', she said, quoting David Ben-Gurion the founder and first prime minister of the state of Israel." ('We would never abandon Israel', Ulrike Putz, spiegelonline, 18/3/08)
"'The terror of Hamas cannot be accepted', said Merkel in her [2009] New Year's address. According to her spokesman... she said in a conversation with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that the responsibility for the [Gaza] conflict lies 'clearly and exclusively' with Hamas. Merkel demanded that Hamas 'immediately and permanently' stop its rocket attacks on Israel." (Merkel: The terror of Hamas cannot be accepted, Benjamin Weinthal, The Jerusalem Post, 4/1/09)
"Israel has asked Germany to supply it with two warships free of charge, a German newspaper reported Friday. The Israeli state hopes Germany would help strengthen its defence forces by financing the costs for the two state-of-the-art corvettes. The pair would cost hundreds of millions of euros... The ships, which are hard to detect by radar, are reportedly to be built by Hamburg's Blohm & Voss shipyard, while the weapons are to be provided by the US. Israel reportedly wanted a sea-based missile defence system. Germany has previously helped equip the Israeli navy, and delivered 3 submarines in the years 1999-2000. Two further submarines are currently being built in Kiel, costing at least 500 million euros apiece, of which Germany is to pay a third." (Israel asks Germany for two warships: report, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, monstersandcritics.com, 23/10/09)
... keep 'em keen.
"Germany, Merkel said [in the Knesset], would 'never abandon Israel, but instead will remain a loyal partner and friend'. As in the past, Merkel's speech contained only homeopathic doses of criticism of Israel's occupation policy and its hesitation to commit itself to the peace process. 'One must also have the strength to make painful concessions', the chancellor hinted, only to quickly dilute what had sounded like the beginnings of a rebuke. 'In order to be a realist you must believe in miracles', she said, quoting David Ben-Gurion the founder and first prime minister of the state of Israel." ('We would never abandon Israel', Ulrike Putz, spiegelonline, 18/3/08)
"'The terror of Hamas cannot be accepted', said Merkel in her [2009] New Year's address. According to her spokesman... she said in a conversation with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that the responsibility for the [Gaza] conflict lies 'clearly and exclusively' with Hamas. Merkel demanded that Hamas 'immediately and permanently' stop its rocket attacks on Israel." (Merkel: The terror of Hamas cannot be accepted, Benjamin Weinthal, The Jerusalem Post, 4/1/09)
"Israel has asked Germany to supply it with two warships free of charge, a German newspaper reported Friday. The Israeli state hopes Germany would help strengthen its defence forces by financing the costs for the two state-of-the-art corvettes. The pair would cost hundreds of millions of euros... The ships, which are hard to detect by radar, are reportedly to be built by Hamburg's Blohm & Voss shipyard, while the weapons are to be provided by the US. Israel reportedly wanted a sea-based missile defence system. Germany has previously helped equip the Israeli navy, and delivered 3 submarines in the years 1999-2000. Two further submarines are currently being built in Kiel, costing at least 500 million euros apiece, of which Germany is to pay a third." (Israel asks Germany for two warships: report, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, monstersandcritics.com, 23/10/09)
... keep 'em keen.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Afghanistan: Narco-State
One of the mainstream media's greatest drawbacks is that its 'news' is almost never contextualised. It is as though the situation reported has always been that way. Take the subject of Afghan drugs for example:
"Afghan opium kills more people than any other drug on the planet, claiming up to 100,000 lives every year... [Afghanistan] produces 90% of the world's opium, which a new UN report says now threatens to cause havoc in much of Central Asia... In addition to drug-related deaths, Afghan opium and heroin pay for weapons that kill Western troops... The UN Office on Drugs & Crime [UNODC] estimates 15 million people take the drug each year and it contributes to the spread of HIV and AIDS... The UN's findings sounded a strong warning about the Central Asian opium-trafficking route, which has become a virtual conveyor belt for heroin between Afghanistan and Russia, referring to it as the 'most sinister development yet'. 'The perfect storm of drugs, crime, and insurgency that has swirled around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border for years is heading to Central Asia', Mr [Antonio Maria] Costa [the executive director of the UNODC] says... Russia is now the world's largest consumer of heroin, according to the UN report... The number of addicts in Russia has multiplied tenfold during the past decade, and there are now 30,000 to 40,000 Russian drug-related deaths each year, according to Russian government figures cited by the report. Official Russian news services have said up to 30,000 of those deaths are due to Afghan heroin." (Afghan opium kills 100,000 people a year, The Australian, 23/10/09)
Afghanistan has always been a leading narco-state, right? Wrong. It took the CIA to transform it into one:
"Prior to the [US-sponsored] Afghan Jihad [1979-1992], there was no local production of heroin in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. The production there was of opium, a very different drug, which was directed to small, rural, regional markets. By the end of the Afghan Jihad, the picture had changed drastically: the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's leading producers of both opium and processed heroin, the source of '75 percent of the world's opium, worth multi-billion dollars in revenue'. In a report released in early 2001, the United Nations International Drug Control Program traced the rapid expansion of Afghan opium production to exactly 1979, the year the U.S.-sponsored jihad began: 'It is no coincidence that Afghanistan began to emerge as a significant producer of illicit opium in precisely the period of protracted war that began in 1979, and still persists'. The big push came after 1985. Accounting for less than 5 percent of global opium production in 1980, the region accounted for 71 percent of it by 1990, according to this same report. The fate of Afghanistan resembled that of Burma, another Asian mountainous region that had been the site of CIA intervention at the beginning of the Cold War. 'Just as CIA support for Nationalist Chinese (KMT) troops in the Shan states had increased Burma's opium crop in the 1950s', concluded Alfred McCoy, 'so the agency's aid to the mujahideen guerrillas in the 1980s expanded opium production in Afghanistan and linked Pakistan's nearby heroin laboratories to the world market'. The heroin economy literally poisoned Afghani and Pakistani life. The figures who thrived in this cesspool [such as Gulbuddin Hikmatyar] had been hailed by Ronald Reagan as 'moral equivalents of America's founding fathers'." (Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War & the Roots of Terror, Mahmood Mamdani, 2004, p 143, quoting Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin)*
But it wouldn't be in the interest of promoting current US involvement in Afghanistan to remind the reader of that quite inconvenient fact now, would it?
In the case of Afghanistan, contextless reporting is invariably accompanied, most particularly in the Murdoch media, by strident calls for more boots on the ground, and a hyping of the threat posed by the chosen 'enemy': "While an improved strategy is as important as more soldiers, it is time for NATO to make more than a token commitment to the campaign. The alternative is almost too appalling to contemplate. The Taliban is a movement of religious fanatics who believe they have divine sanction to slaughter all those who do not share their beliefs. But it is also a gangster organisation committed to making money. While critics correctly point to corruption in the Western-backed Karzai government, a second Taliban state would be infinitely worse. If allowed, the Taliban would turn Afghanistan into a narco-state, where it controlled opium exports but imposed a fundamental interpretation of the Koran. And what would be a catastrophe for Afghanistan would be a disaster for the rest of the world. The last time the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, it harbored Osama bin Laden. It seems certain a second Taliban state would be a safe haven from which to launch terror attacks across the globe, including Europe. Mr Obama and Mr Rudd say they always understand the dangers of Taliban rule. It is time they convinced the Europeans that they have no choice but to join the US, Australia and Britain in taking the terrorists seriously." (Editorial, Taking on the Taliban, The Australian, 23/9/09)
And sure enough (and this is mandatory for the Murdoch press), there'll be a simple-minded, fire-breathing pundit to take the hype to new heights:
"The allegation [that the SAS has needlessly killed Afghan civilians] is utterly baseless and contemptuous. The allegation is made by the Taliban, which ranks with Al-Qa'ida, the nazis and the communists as one of the most extreme, brutal and inhuman political movements of the past 100 years. What is very disturbing in the SAS's experience... is the ongoing strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its associated drug traffickers and criminals. This makes it clear that Afghanistan will need outside help for some years to come." (It's time to salute our Special Forces, Greg Sheridan Blog, The Australian, 28/9/09)
It is interesting to note that, while The Australian's editorialist seems to be familiar with the work of investigative journalist and author Gretchen Peters (Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban & Al Qaeda), he's simply ignored her downplaying of the Taliban as an Islamist threat and only grudgingly conceded her key finding that the Taliban (or rather Talibans) is primarily a "gangster organisation committed to making money": "When people in the west [including The Australian's foreign editor] imagine the Taliban, most think of bearded fanatics, battling from caves under the flag of radical Islam. Having studied their day-to-day activities for more than 5 years, when I think of the Taliban I think of Tony Soprano and his gang. I am not suggesting that Mullah Omar has developed a taste for Chianti, or opened a branch of the Bada Bing at his hideout in Pakistan. As a fighting force, the Taliban remain as determined as ever to drive western forces from Afghanistan, as proven by the rising NATO casualty figures. But examine how the Taliban fund themselves, and how they interact with the local community, and they start to look more like mafiosi than mujahidin. It is hard to make sweeping generalisations about the post-2001 Taliban. There are 3 distinct factions of the movement on the Afghan side of the border, and a far more fractious set of local and regional extremist groups in Pakistan. However, there are broad similarities in the way these various organisations are structured and how criminal proceeds filter up the chains of command. The manner in which they interact parallels the often tumultuous relations between Mafia crime families... Sometimes they collaborate; sometimes they battle against each other. Whether fighting or conspiring, it is virtually always about making money. Western military officials believe that as little as 5% of the insurgents are 'true believers' in their cause. Most of the fighters are in it just to make a quick buck." (Afghanster's paradise, newstatesman.com, 3/9/09)
By asserting, too, that the Taliban "would turn Afghanistan into a narco-state," the editorialist ignores Peters' evidence (as well as that of the UNODC report) that it is already, under the Karzai puppet regime, a narco-state: "As thousands of US Marines and British troops push into the Helmand River Valley, part of the new counterinsurgency strategy, they are discovering the uncomfortable reality that the Afghan National Police (ANP) in that region are more feared than the Taliban themselves. Appalling stories of ANP corruption and brutality are emerging from Helmand. They range from stories of police abusing drugs and extorting shopkeepers and truck drivers, to tales of cops threatening villagers, and even abducting and raping their children. In this atmosphere, it's easy to understand why the Taliban were welcomed back as liberators, despite the horrifying reign of terror they too have imposed... It is critical that international forces bring stability to Helmand, since the fertile province produces more than half of Afghanistan's $4 billion poppy crop. That drug money has not only corrupted state actors, including the ANP and top officials in the provincial and federal governments. It also provides the Afghan Taliban most, if not all, of their operational budget, and helps fund Al-Qaeda as well." (Send in the cops, thecrimereport.org, 3/8/09)
A terrifying thought: Rudd takes his cues on Afghanistan directly from the war propaganda of the Murdoch press.
[*See also my posts American Jihad (9/9/08) and Narco-Terrorists Allege Narco-Terrorism (24/10/09)]
"Afghan opium kills more people than any other drug on the planet, claiming up to 100,000 lives every year... [Afghanistan] produces 90% of the world's opium, which a new UN report says now threatens to cause havoc in much of Central Asia... In addition to drug-related deaths, Afghan opium and heroin pay for weapons that kill Western troops... The UN Office on Drugs & Crime [UNODC] estimates 15 million people take the drug each year and it contributes to the spread of HIV and AIDS... The UN's findings sounded a strong warning about the Central Asian opium-trafficking route, which has become a virtual conveyor belt for heroin between Afghanistan and Russia, referring to it as the 'most sinister development yet'. 'The perfect storm of drugs, crime, and insurgency that has swirled around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border for years is heading to Central Asia', Mr [Antonio Maria] Costa [the executive director of the UNODC] says... Russia is now the world's largest consumer of heroin, according to the UN report... The number of addicts in Russia has multiplied tenfold during the past decade, and there are now 30,000 to 40,000 Russian drug-related deaths each year, according to Russian government figures cited by the report. Official Russian news services have said up to 30,000 of those deaths are due to Afghan heroin." (Afghan opium kills 100,000 people a year, The Australian, 23/10/09)
Afghanistan has always been a leading narco-state, right? Wrong. It took the CIA to transform it into one:
"Prior to the [US-sponsored] Afghan Jihad [1979-1992], there was no local production of heroin in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. The production there was of opium, a very different drug, which was directed to small, rural, regional markets. By the end of the Afghan Jihad, the picture had changed drastically: the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's leading producers of both opium and processed heroin, the source of '75 percent of the world's opium, worth multi-billion dollars in revenue'. In a report released in early 2001, the United Nations International Drug Control Program traced the rapid expansion of Afghan opium production to exactly 1979, the year the U.S.-sponsored jihad began: 'It is no coincidence that Afghanistan began to emerge as a significant producer of illicit opium in precisely the period of protracted war that began in 1979, and still persists'. The big push came after 1985. Accounting for less than 5 percent of global opium production in 1980, the region accounted for 71 percent of it by 1990, according to this same report. The fate of Afghanistan resembled that of Burma, another Asian mountainous region that had been the site of CIA intervention at the beginning of the Cold War. 'Just as CIA support for Nationalist Chinese (KMT) troops in the Shan states had increased Burma's opium crop in the 1950s', concluded Alfred McCoy, 'so the agency's aid to the mujahideen guerrillas in the 1980s expanded opium production in Afghanistan and linked Pakistan's nearby heroin laboratories to the world market'. The heroin economy literally poisoned Afghani and Pakistani life. The figures who thrived in this cesspool [such as Gulbuddin Hikmatyar] had been hailed by Ronald Reagan as 'moral equivalents of America's founding fathers'." (Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War & the Roots of Terror, Mahmood Mamdani, 2004, p 143, quoting Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin)*
But it wouldn't be in the interest of promoting current US involvement in Afghanistan to remind the reader of that quite inconvenient fact now, would it?
In the case of Afghanistan, contextless reporting is invariably accompanied, most particularly in the Murdoch media, by strident calls for more boots on the ground, and a hyping of the threat posed by the chosen 'enemy': "While an improved strategy is as important as more soldiers, it is time for NATO to make more than a token commitment to the campaign. The alternative is almost too appalling to contemplate. The Taliban is a movement of religious fanatics who believe they have divine sanction to slaughter all those who do not share their beliefs. But it is also a gangster organisation committed to making money. While critics correctly point to corruption in the Western-backed Karzai government, a second Taliban state would be infinitely worse. If allowed, the Taliban would turn Afghanistan into a narco-state, where it controlled opium exports but imposed a fundamental interpretation of the Koran. And what would be a catastrophe for Afghanistan would be a disaster for the rest of the world. The last time the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, it harbored Osama bin Laden. It seems certain a second Taliban state would be a safe haven from which to launch terror attacks across the globe, including Europe. Mr Obama and Mr Rudd say they always understand the dangers of Taliban rule. It is time they convinced the Europeans that they have no choice but to join the US, Australia and Britain in taking the terrorists seriously." (Editorial, Taking on the Taliban, The Australian, 23/9/09)
And sure enough (and this is mandatory for the Murdoch press), there'll be a simple-minded, fire-breathing pundit to take the hype to new heights:
"The allegation [that the SAS has needlessly killed Afghan civilians] is utterly baseless and contemptuous. The allegation is made by the Taliban, which ranks with Al-Qa'ida, the nazis and the communists as one of the most extreme, brutal and inhuman political movements of the past 100 years. What is very disturbing in the SAS's experience... is the ongoing strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its associated drug traffickers and criminals. This makes it clear that Afghanistan will need outside help for some years to come." (It's time to salute our Special Forces, Greg Sheridan Blog, The Australian, 28/9/09)
It is interesting to note that, while The Australian's editorialist seems to be familiar with the work of investigative journalist and author Gretchen Peters (Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban & Al Qaeda), he's simply ignored her downplaying of the Taliban as an Islamist threat and only grudgingly conceded her key finding that the Taliban (or rather Talibans) is primarily a "gangster organisation committed to making money": "When people in the west [including The Australian's foreign editor] imagine the Taliban, most think of bearded fanatics, battling from caves under the flag of radical Islam. Having studied their day-to-day activities for more than 5 years, when I think of the Taliban I think of Tony Soprano and his gang. I am not suggesting that Mullah Omar has developed a taste for Chianti, or opened a branch of the Bada Bing at his hideout in Pakistan. As a fighting force, the Taliban remain as determined as ever to drive western forces from Afghanistan, as proven by the rising NATO casualty figures. But examine how the Taliban fund themselves, and how they interact with the local community, and they start to look more like mafiosi than mujahidin. It is hard to make sweeping generalisations about the post-2001 Taliban. There are 3 distinct factions of the movement on the Afghan side of the border, and a far more fractious set of local and regional extremist groups in Pakistan. However, there are broad similarities in the way these various organisations are structured and how criminal proceeds filter up the chains of command. The manner in which they interact parallels the often tumultuous relations between Mafia crime families... Sometimes they collaborate; sometimes they battle against each other. Whether fighting or conspiring, it is virtually always about making money. Western military officials believe that as little as 5% of the insurgents are 'true believers' in their cause. Most of the fighters are in it just to make a quick buck." (Afghanster's paradise, newstatesman.com, 3/9/09)
By asserting, too, that the Taliban "would turn Afghanistan into a narco-state," the editorialist ignores Peters' evidence (as well as that of the UNODC report) that it is already, under the Karzai puppet regime, a narco-state: "As thousands of US Marines and British troops push into the Helmand River Valley, part of the new counterinsurgency strategy, they are discovering the uncomfortable reality that the Afghan National Police (ANP) in that region are more feared than the Taliban themselves. Appalling stories of ANP corruption and brutality are emerging from Helmand. They range from stories of police abusing drugs and extorting shopkeepers and truck drivers, to tales of cops threatening villagers, and even abducting and raping their children. In this atmosphere, it's easy to understand why the Taliban were welcomed back as liberators, despite the horrifying reign of terror they too have imposed... It is critical that international forces bring stability to Helmand, since the fertile province produces more than half of Afghanistan's $4 billion poppy crop. That drug money has not only corrupted state actors, including the ANP and top officials in the provincial and federal governments. It also provides the Afghan Taliban most, if not all, of their operational budget, and helps fund Al-Qaeda as well." (Send in the cops, thecrimereport.org, 3/8/09)
A terrifying thought: Rudd takes his cues on Afghanistan directly from the war propaganda of the Murdoch press.
[*See also my posts American Jihad (9/9/08) and Narco-Terrorists Allege Narco-Terrorism (24/10/09)]
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Exporting Zionism 2
"What Israel has been exporting to the Third World is not just a technology of domination, but a worldview that undergirds that technology. In every situation of oppression and domination, the logic of the oppressed is pitted against the logic of the oppressor. What Israel has been exporting is the logic of the oppressor, the way of seeing the world that is tied to successful domination. What is exported is not just technology, armaments, and experience, not just expertise, but a certain frame of mind, a feeling that the Third World can be controlled and dominated, that radical movements in the Third World can be stopped, that modern Crusaders still have a future." (The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms & Why, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, 1987, p 248)
"They defeated the Tigers earlier this year but is the Sri Lankan government's war with the Tamils really all over? This week on Dateline, Amos Roberts investigates the mysterious disappearance of Kumaran Pathmanathan, or 'KP' as he is known, who became the leader of the Tamil Tigers after the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran in May. For more than 2 decades KP had been the Tiger's chief arms smuggler and money launderer... Now it appears that in a clandestine operation 2 months ago KP was snatched from a budget hotel in Malaysia and whisked back to Sri Lanka." (The Tiger Trap, SBS Television, 18/10/09)
Dateline's report on KP's illegal rendition was dominated by terrorism 'expert' Rohan Gunaratna of Singapore's International Center for Political Violence & Terrorism Research. Gunaratna, a Sinhalese whose pre-9/11 'expertise' was largely devoted to tracking the Tamil Tigers, was described as "close to Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary, who's credited with masterminding KP's rendition."
New Zealand academic and human rights advocate Dr David Small has called Gunaratna a "self-styled expert on Islamic groups and terrorism" and noted that his post-9/11 "impact in Australia was to heighten people's sense of fear and suspicion, particularly in relation to Islamic groups and migrant communities," as well as to contribute to "the justifications for laws that undermined hard-won human rights and civil liberties." "Gunaratna's current project to establish a data base of Asian terrorist groups," observed Small, "has been said to blur the line between freedom of academic research and intelligence-gathering for governments. [He] tends to rely on what he claims are inside contacts within intelligence networks. By their very nature, however, no claims based on these sorts of sources can be independently tested. To the extent that they can be investigated, there are many instances where they have been found to be questionable." (Terrorism expertise of Rohan Gunaratna questioned, scoop.co.nz, 24/8/04) [See also Analyse this, Gary Hughes, The Age, 20/7/03]
I was particularly struck by Gunaratna's tendency to gloat ("KP was taken directly from Malaysia on board a Sri Lankan flight. He flew on business class to Sri Lanka - in style!"), and by the following two statements:
"Previously, the Americans, the Israelis did this kind of rendition operation. By bringing KP home, Sri Lanka demonstrated that it will not spare any Tamil Tiger, or any other terrorist, who is going to harm Sri Lanka's national security interest." IOW, if the USraelis can do it, why not Sri Lanka? [See my 13/5/09 post Exporting Zionism for John Pilger's penetrating rumination on Sri Lanka's Gaza model.]
"I can share with you that the Sri Lankan government is already planning to bring a number of other people home... There are a number of professionals who are living in Australia and they have supported a terrorist group by providing them with funds, by distributing their propaganda, by advocating violence, and by supporting a group that conducted violence, and I believe that they should be prosecuted." And if these Australian citizens should resist in any way, well then, the Buddhist state can always take another leaf out of the book of the Jewish state: "Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, said former Israeli intelligence officials in interviews with UPI." (UPI's intelligence correspondent Richard Sale, quoted in Watch your back, Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, 17/1/03)
But there's more. In an interview with Gunaratna (Making peace more challenging than making war, nation.lk, 15/10/09), it comes as no surprise to learn that, in addition to his current 'work' in Singapore, Gunaratna is also "a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for Counter Terrorism, Israel." And given that both Sri Lanka and Israel have major image problems connected with their penchant for slaughtering civilians, is it any wonder that they play the same dubious numbers game by way of damage control? Here's Gunaratna in the nation.lk interview: "The US, in particular, has realised that no civilians were deliberately killed in Sri Lanka, and civilian fatalities and injuries in Sri Lanka are much lower compared with the numbers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan." And here's local Zionist advocate Peter Wertheim (Executive Director, Executive Council of Australian Jewry) in a letter to The Australian: "In Gaza, either two combatants were killed for each civilian (Israel's version) or the reverse (the Palestinian version). In the 1991 Gulf war, a lawful war authorised by the UN, the ratio was 2,125 civilian deaths for each enemy combatant killed. In the 2003 Iraq war it was 4.5 civilians per enemy combatant. In attacks by drone aircraft in Afghanistan, 10 civilians have died for each enemy combatant." killed." (20/10/09)
"They defeated the Tigers earlier this year but is the Sri Lankan government's war with the Tamils really all over? This week on Dateline, Amos Roberts investigates the mysterious disappearance of Kumaran Pathmanathan, or 'KP' as he is known, who became the leader of the Tamil Tigers after the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran in May. For more than 2 decades KP had been the Tiger's chief arms smuggler and money launderer... Now it appears that in a clandestine operation 2 months ago KP was snatched from a budget hotel in Malaysia and whisked back to Sri Lanka." (The Tiger Trap, SBS Television, 18/10/09)
Dateline's report on KP's illegal rendition was dominated by terrorism 'expert' Rohan Gunaratna of Singapore's International Center for Political Violence & Terrorism Research. Gunaratna, a Sinhalese whose pre-9/11 'expertise' was largely devoted to tracking the Tamil Tigers, was described as "close to Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary, who's credited with masterminding KP's rendition."
New Zealand academic and human rights advocate Dr David Small has called Gunaratna a "self-styled expert on Islamic groups and terrorism" and noted that his post-9/11 "impact in Australia was to heighten people's sense of fear and suspicion, particularly in relation to Islamic groups and migrant communities," as well as to contribute to "the justifications for laws that undermined hard-won human rights and civil liberties." "Gunaratna's current project to establish a data base of Asian terrorist groups," observed Small, "has been said to blur the line between freedom of academic research and intelligence-gathering for governments. [He] tends to rely on what he claims are inside contacts within intelligence networks. By their very nature, however, no claims based on these sorts of sources can be independently tested. To the extent that they can be investigated, there are many instances where they have been found to be questionable." (Terrorism expertise of Rohan Gunaratna questioned, scoop.co.nz, 24/8/04) [See also Analyse this, Gary Hughes, The Age, 20/7/03]
I was particularly struck by Gunaratna's tendency to gloat ("KP was taken directly from Malaysia on board a Sri Lankan flight. He flew on business class to Sri Lanka - in style!"), and by the following two statements:
"Previously, the Americans, the Israelis did this kind of rendition operation. By bringing KP home, Sri Lanka demonstrated that it will not spare any Tamil Tiger, or any other terrorist, who is going to harm Sri Lanka's national security interest." IOW, if the USraelis can do it, why not Sri Lanka? [See my 13/5/09 post Exporting Zionism for John Pilger's penetrating rumination on Sri Lanka's Gaza model.]
"I can share with you that the Sri Lankan government is already planning to bring a number of other people home... There are a number of professionals who are living in Australia and they have supported a terrorist group by providing them with funds, by distributing their propaganda, by advocating violence, and by supporting a group that conducted violence, and I believe that they should be prosecuted." And if these Australian citizens should resist in any way, well then, the Buddhist state can always take another leaf out of the book of the Jewish state: "Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, said former Israeli intelligence officials in interviews with UPI." (UPI's intelligence correspondent Richard Sale, quoted in Watch your back, Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, 17/1/03)
But there's more. In an interview with Gunaratna (Making peace more challenging than making war, nation.lk, 15/10/09), it comes as no surprise to learn that, in addition to his current 'work' in Singapore, Gunaratna is also "a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for Counter Terrorism, Israel." And given that both Sri Lanka and Israel have major image problems connected with their penchant for slaughtering civilians, is it any wonder that they play the same dubious numbers game by way of damage control? Here's Gunaratna in the nation.lk interview: "The US, in particular, has realised that no civilians were deliberately killed in Sri Lanka, and civilian fatalities and injuries in Sri Lanka are much lower compared with the numbers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan." And here's local Zionist advocate Peter Wertheim (Executive Director, Executive Council of Australian Jewry) in a letter to The Australian: "In Gaza, either two combatants were killed for each civilian (Israel's version) or the reverse (the Palestinian version). In the 1991 Gulf war, a lawful war authorised by the UN, the ratio was 2,125 civilian deaths for each enemy combatant killed. In the 2003 Iraq war it was 4.5 civilians per enemy combatant. In attacks by drone aircraft in Afghanistan, 10 civilians have died for each enemy combatant." killed." (20/10/09)
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Lowy's Elephantine Agenda
"[Frank Lowy] is a man who has deliberately sought to be under the radar here [in Israel]... It may not bear his name, but the Israeli version of Sydney's Lowy Institute for International Policy - the Institute for National Security Studies, attached to the University of Tel Aviv - is equally his creation." (The quiet benefactor: Lowy's close ties with Israel, Jason Koutsoukis, SMH, 29/9/08)
"It was my birthday this week (yes, another year older) and how did I spend my day? Well I had lunch with Frank Lowy, for starters! Yes I was sitting just 2 seats from Frank Lowy at The Lowy Institute's Wednesday lunch. The Lowy Institute is an independent international policy think tank based in Sydney - but apart from the Wednesday lunches on site, everyone can access a huge array of podcasts, research papers and an extensive video library of its presentations via the website. The objective of The Lowy Institute is to generate new ideas and dialogue on international developments and Australia's role in the world. Its mandate is broad. It ranges across all the dimensions of international policy debate in Australia - economic, political and strategic - and it is not limited to a particular geographic region. Most of the events at The Lowy Institute are free to attend but they book out fast so my friend Sue Jackson at Westpac Women's Markets suggested we join The Lowy Institute's Wednesday lunch club - to get advance notification of the free lunchtime lectures every week. So along I went to hear about Post-Election Iran from a visiting Israeli Professor and sure enough - at my very first turnout - I met Frank Lowy!" (Lunch with Frank Lowy & tap into the resources of the Lowy Institute, Jen Dalitz, The SheEO Blog, sphinxx.com.au, 21/8/09)
Hmm... Sounds like The Lowy Institute's running a bit of an agenda here. But just how much of an agenda? Well, if its Australia & The World: Public Opinion & Foreign Policy polls from 2007 to 2009 are anything to go by, its agenda could be described as positively elephantine.
Let's deal first with The Lowy Institute's elephant-in-the-room - Israel. In its 2007 poll, just over 1,000 Australians were asked to rank 15 foreign countries on the basis of their feelings towards them. The higher the %, the more favorably those polled felt towards these countries. Of the three Middle Eastern nations included, Israel scored 50%, while Iraq and Iran scored 36% and 34% respectively. Perhaps the 50% rating for Israel came as something of a blow to Frank, and so may explain Israel's omission in the 2008 and 2009 polls. Such a pity. It would have been most interesting to see Israel's post-Gaza approval rating in the just-released 2009 poll, but alas we're afforded no such opportunity. Out of sight, out of mind.
Given, then, that the institute's elephant-in-the-room is Israel, its current agenda could only be... Iran:
In the 2007 poll, we find the following thoroughly loaded and decidedly Israel-centric question: "Iran has recently announced that it has successfully enriched uranium. Do you think that Iran is producing enriched uranium strictly to fuel its energy needs or do you think it is trying to develop nuclear weapons?" While 62% of respondents plumped for the latter, and 19% guessed the former, only 19% had the humility to say they simply didn't know. In the same poll, we find the following question (without, it should be noted, being told whether only the above 62% were asked): "You said you think that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. In your opinion what is the best response?" It seems that 62% opted for a combo of economic and diplomatic efforts, 22% for diplomatic efforts, and just 9% for military force. (Total:93%)
In the 2008 poll, by contrast, Iran (and Iraq - but not, as I've already indicated, Israel) cropped up only in the 'rate your feelings towards the following (17) countries' section, scoring 38%, a 4% improvement on the 2007 poll's rating.
The 2009 poll, however, gave Iran a prominent place, chiming in with the wider USraeli-Murdoch media war on that country as a diversion from the fallout of Israel's rampage in Gaza and a softening-up of public opinion for a similar Israeli rampage in Iran. Iran again featured in the 'rate your feelings' section, gaining another 38% rating. It also cropped up when those polled were asked to 'rate your trust in other countries to act responsibly', coming in with the largest negative rating at 75% (in contrast to the US's positive rating of 83%!). As well, Iran even got its own heading with the following commentary: "Iran's nuclear program has attracted considerable media attention since our last poll. To test Australia's preferred way of approaching Iran's continued obstructionism [Note the spin and the assumption that we have to do something], we asked people whether they would be in favour of or against the use of military means, economic sanctions, and diplomatic negotiations to deal with Iran developing nuclear weapons. [Note the assumption that this is what Iran is actually doing] The most favoured response was 'diplomatic negotiations', with 85% of respondents supporting these. A large majority (69%) also supported 'economic sanctions', while just a third (32%) were in favour of 'military means'." That 23% increase over the 9% warmonger finding of the 2007 poll must have been gratifying!
Now here's a question I'd like to see in a Lowy Institute poll: While Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program has attracted considerable media attention, Israel's actual possession of 200+ nuclear weapons has not. Is this because a) Australia's mainstream media is biased in favour of Israel; b) Israel is harping on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program to divert attention from its own nuclear weapons stockpile; c) Israel is more than ever in need of a diversion following the exposure of its war crimes in Gaza; d) Israel needs to deflect attention away from its colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem; e) Israel is always in need of an external threat, whether real or not, to justify its aggression towards its neighbours; f) All of the above?
"It was my birthday this week (yes, another year older) and how did I spend my day? Well I had lunch with Frank Lowy, for starters! Yes I was sitting just 2 seats from Frank Lowy at The Lowy Institute's Wednesday lunch. The Lowy Institute is an independent international policy think tank based in Sydney - but apart from the Wednesday lunches on site, everyone can access a huge array of podcasts, research papers and an extensive video library of its presentations via the website. The objective of The Lowy Institute is to generate new ideas and dialogue on international developments and Australia's role in the world. Its mandate is broad. It ranges across all the dimensions of international policy debate in Australia - economic, political and strategic - and it is not limited to a particular geographic region. Most of the events at The Lowy Institute are free to attend but they book out fast so my friend Sue Jackson at Westpac Women's Markets suggested we join The Lowy Institute's Wednesday lunch club - to get advance notification of the free lunchtime lectures every week. So along I went to hear about Post-Election Iran from a visiting Israeli Professor and sure enough - at my very first turnout - I met Frank Lowy!" (Lunch with Frank Lowy & tap into the resources of the Lowy Institute, Jen Dalitz, The SheEO Blog, sphinxx.com.au, 21/8/09)
Hmm... Sounds like The Lowy Institute's running a bit of an agenda here. But just how much of an agenda? Well, if its Australia & The World: Public Opinion & Foreign Policy polls from 2007 to 2009 are anything to go by, its agenda could be described as positively elephantine.
Let's deal first with The Lowy Institute's elephant-in-the-room - Israel. In its 2007 poll, just over 1,000 Australians were asked to rank 15 foreign countries on the basis of their feelings towards them. The higher the %, the more favorably those polled felt towards these countries. Of the three Middle Eastern nations included, Israel scored 50%, while Iraq and Iran scored 36% and 34% respectively. Perhaps the 50% rating for Israel came as something of a blow to Frank, and so may explain Israel's omission in the 2008 and 2009 polls. Such a pity. It would have been most interesting to see Israel's post-Gaza approval rating in the just-released 2009 poll, but alas we're afforded no such opportunity. Out of sight, out of mind.
Given, then, that the institute's elephant-in-the-room is Israel, its current agenda could only be... Iran:
In the 2007 poll, we find the following thoroughly loaded and decidedly Israel-centric question: "Iran has recently announced that it has successfully enriched uranium. Do you think that Iran is producing enriched uranium strictly to fuel its energy needs or do you think it is trying to develop nuclear weapons?" While 62% of respondents plumped for the latter, and 19% guessed the former, only 19% had the humility to say they simply didn't know. In the same poll, we find the following question (without, it should be noted, being told whether only the above 62% were asked): "You said you think that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. In your opinion what is the best response?" It seems that 62% opted for a combo of economic and diplomatic efforts, 22% for diplomatic efforts, and just 9% for military force. (Total:93%)
In the 2008 poll, by contrast, Iran (and Iraq - but not, as I've already indicated, Israel) cropped up only in the 'rate your feelings towards the following (17) countries' section, scoring 38%, a 4% improvement on the 2007 poll's rating.
The 2009 poll, however, gave Iran a prominent place, chiming in with the wider USraeli-Murdoch media war on that country as a diversion from the fallout of Israel's rampage in Gaza and a softening-up of public opinion for a similar Israeli rampage in Iran. Iran again featured in the 'rate your feelings' section, gaining another 38% rating. It also cropped up when those polled were asked to 'rate your trust in other countries to act responsibly', coming in with the largest negative rating at 75% (in contrast to the US's positive rating of 83%!). As well, Iran even got its own heading with the following commentary: "Iran's nuclear program has attracted considerable media attention since our last poll. To test Australia's preferred way of approaching Iran's continued obstructionism [Note the spin and the assumption that we have to do something], we asked people whether they would be in favour of or against the use of military means, economic sanctions, and diplomatic negotiations to deal with Iran developing nuclear weapons. [Note the assumption that this is what Iran is actually doing] The most favoured response was 'diplomatic negotiations', with 85% of respondents supporting these. A large majority (69%) also supported 'economic sanctions', while just a third (32%) were in favour of 'military means'." That 23% increase over the 9% warmonger finding of the 2007 poll must have been gratifying!
Now here's a question I'd like to see in a Lowy Institute poll: While Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program has attracted considerable media attention, Israel's actual possession of 200+ nuclear weapons has not. Is this because a) Australia's mainstream media is biased in favour of Israel; b) Israel is harping on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program to divert attention from its own nuclear weapons stockpile; c) Israel is more than ever in need of a diversion following the exposure of its war crimes in Gaza; d) Israel needs to deflect attention away from its colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem; e) Israel is always in need of an external threat, whether real or not, to justify its aggression towards its neighbours; f) All of the above?
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