From the New York Times to the White House, US media and government are making a big deal about the video that was leaked of US troops urinating on what are claimed to be the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. The outrage appears to be over the lack of respect shown to the corpses.
US (and Canadian) troops crossed two oceans to kill these men.
How is it that urinating on their corpses is the obscenity that everyone is wringing their hands about?
I'm almost done reading William Darymple's The Last Mughal , a history of the city of Delhi in 1857, during the tragically self-defeating mutiny against the British East India Company by its native soldiers. Having not read much at all about the place or the period, I can't say much about the accuracy of Darymple's account, but damn, the man can write. If this book were a Hollywood movie, it could easily be a blockbuster.
(To those to whom I have promised to read other books, I'm sorry, but this recommendation came from a source I couldn't refuse).
Central to Darymple's narrative is the tragic figure of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the title character, who by the end of the book is locked up in the dungeon of his own palace, and put on trial by the British for masterminding a rebellion that he never wanted. His prosecutors alleged that Zafar, a syncretic Sufi Muslim emperor who participated - and believed in - Hindu rituals and festivals, was a participant in a vast conspiracy stretching from Turkey through Persia and into India to unseat the enlightened British Empire. To quote the chief prosecutor:
"The known restless spirit of Mahommedan fanaticism has been the first aggressor, the vindictive intolerance of that peculiar faith has been struggling for mastery, seditious conspiracy has been its means, the prisoner [Zafar] its active accomplice, and every possible crime its frightful result . . . The bitter zeal of Mahommedanism meets us everywhere . . . perfectly demonic in its actions. . . "As Darymple points out, however, 65-85% of the rebel army that joined the soldiers who first rushed into Zafar's pristine audience hall with their horses and muddy boots were, in fact, Hindus.
The only Israel journalist who actually lives in the territory that it is her job to report on:
Palestinians must say no to negotiations with Israel
The Palestinians' application for membership in the United Nations was welcomed, even by critics of the Palestinian Authority, because it was understood as the close, albeit belated, of an overly long chapter. This was the chapter in which the Palestinian leadership, in exchange for dubious guarantees and slivers of privilege for a small group, took part in a charade of negotiations, while in reality, the area intended for the realization of the Palestinians' right to self-determination kept being reduced and fragmented. This chapter exposed the fact that the parties in Israel's various coalition governments disagree on only one thing: the number and size of the Palestinian Bantustans in Israel's master plan.
Hat tip to an associate of mine stranded in the US of A, who found this gem in the NYT:
Making the Land of Israel whole
The Palestinians had better not declare independence, or else we're gonna occupy them.
Bibi, I've figured it out!
So the die is now cast. The UNSC has voted, and it has voted for war against Gaddafi - that is, after all, what this is. This isn't a "no-fly" zone - as the resolution itself says, it's an authorization to use military force to protect civilians; and if a few civilians get killed along the way, so be it. Allied forces are claiming that there have been no civilian casualties from all the missile strikes and bombings. I don't believe them.
Some intelligent arguments have been made over the last 2 days by people who are less than thrilled about this. They argue that the motivations of those involved in the airstrikes (the usual suspects) are less than pure, and that very similar action against Saddam Hussein in 1991 led to a 12-year stalemate in which millions of civilians were killed, and the relative strength of the regime against its opponents on the ground provided one of the myriad excuses for the 2003 invasion and occupation of the country.
These are not baseless arguments. The Americans, British, French, Italians, and yes, Canadians too, likely do not have purely humanitarian concerns at heart. The question is, exactly who does? The argument that Western governments will be condemned no matter what they do isn't entirely hollow - if America had sat by and let Benghazi fall, I know lots of people who would have said it was because they privileged Libya's oil supplies over its people.
The missing question in all this debate is "Where are the Arabs?" For sure, most of their leaders actually have no interest in seeing the rebellion against Gaddafi succeed - as current events in Bahrain demontrate (another place where you won't see the Americans leaping to the defence of civilians, despite having a base on the island). It was heartening for sure to see the Arab league demanding action to reign in one of their own colleagues. It was equally disheartening to see them doing absolutely nothing about him themselves.
The ever-plaintiff Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, was among the first to complain when the bombs and missiles started hitting Libya, as if he had expected something different. Moussa, an Egyptian, is himself now a favourite to win Egyptian presidential elections, and a former Egyptian foreign minister.
And where has Egypt been all these days, exactly? One might imagine that post-Mubarak Egypt migh have a bit more interest in helping to - at the very least - stabilise the situation in neighbouring Libya. It certainly has the wherewithal: Egypts armed forces are, after the IDF, the most well-armed in the Middle East, receiving $1.3 billion in military aid from Washington each year, and with an army and air force that are more technologically advanced than anything Libya has to put on the field.
Yet Egypt sits on its hands, it's leaders pining away (at least, publicly) for London, Paris, and Washington to come and save the Arabs from one another.
And so the Arabs continue to receive the treatment reserved for those who cannot take care of themselves - to be continually taken advantage of by those with the means to forward their own interests. This situation will not change until the Arabs choose to change it. That process started in January with the people of Tunisia. Time will tell whether they succeed. Western intervention in Libya is, however, another example of the Arab failure to resist.
January was a historic month for Egypt and her neighbours. On the far side of Libya, Ben-Ali was tossed out by the popular uprising that inspired Egypt's own. To the south, Sudan may finally know a lasting peace. All the while, the monarchs of the Arab world and the Israelis are watching nervously, seeing their cherished stability unravel in the face of popular sentiment that loathes the injustice necessitated by that stability.
We in the West are used to thinking of Muslims, and particularly the Arabs, as the objects of history. They are like surgery patients, lying paralysed on the operating table, waiting for people with power to do various things to them - usually without anaesthetic. They may have opinions, but they do not matter, because those opinions are rarely rational, and generally dangerous. Edward Said only wounded Orientalism. He did not kill it.
As many have pointed out, including a few of the Middle East's wiser observers and denizens, the danger remains that it will be the Egyptian military leadership, and not the people of Egypt, who will determine the nature of the new order. As the formidable Robert Fisk wrote:
. . . the future body politic of Egypt lies with up to a hundred officers, their old fidelity to Mubarak – sorely tested by Thursday's appalling speech, let alone the revolution on the streets – has now been totally abandoned. A military communiqué yesterday morning called for "free and fair elections", adding that Egyptian armed forces were "committed to the demands of the people" who should "resume a normal way of life". Translated into civilian-speak, this means that the revolutionaries should pack up while a coterie of generals divide up the ministries of a new government. In some countries, this is called a "coup d'etat".Fisk, however, for all his decades of experience living and working in the Arab world, didn't predict the uprising to begin with - to my knowledge, no one did - and so we can hold out some hope that his grimmer instincts may yet prove wrong.
Mohammed Bouazizi, 1984-2011I have had a lot of thoughts about what happened recently in Tunisia, and people who are familiar with the politics of the Arab world all wondering aloud "Will this spread?" Maybe, but not soon, is my guess. At any rate, Maher Arar wrote this very insightful piece for the Globe and Mail. While I'm mildly upset at the title, and the linguistic trap it perpetuates, it's still worth a read.
. . . The White House remained quiet about the situation in Tunisia almost until the end, although police had by then killed dozens of peaceful protesters. It wasn’t until Mr. Ben Ali was over the Mediterranean that Mr. Obama applauded “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people.” This face-saving statement came just two days after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that Washington was not taking sides.
The French position was similar, although with the twist that Nicolas Sarkozy’s government offered to send anti-riot police to help crush the uprising. After learning that Mr. Ben Ali had fled, Mr. Sarkozy had a change of heart, refusing French residency to the dictator. . . .
The comparison just got harder to ignore. From the Guardian:
Barak: make peace with Palestinians or face apartheid'If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state' – Ehud Barak Photograph: JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, last night delivered an unusually blunt warning to his country that a failure to make peace with the Palestinians would leave either a state with no Jewish majority or an "apartheid" regime.
His stark language and the South African analogy might have been unthinkable for a senior Israeli figure only a few years ago and is a rare admission of the gravity of the deadlocked peace process.
There have been no formal negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in more than a year, but Barak was speaking at a rare joint event with the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, as part of an annual national security conference in the Israeli city of Herzliya. The pair shook hands and both were warmly applauded.
Barak, a former general and Israel's most decorated soldier, sought to appeal to Israelis on both right and left by saying a peace agreement with the Palestinians was the only way to secure Israel's future as a "Zionist, Jewish, democratic state".
"As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic," Barak said. "If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."
He described Israel and the Palestinian territories as the historic "land of Israel" to which Israelis had a right.
"We have to demarcate a border within the land of Israel," he said.
"We have a linkage, we have a right, but the reality of standing on the stage of history in realistic terms requires us to pay attention to international constraints." Barak is in a delicate political position. He leads the Labour party, supposedly a centre-left movement, but accepted a position in a rightwing coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu, a decision that split his party.
Though Barak articulates a willingness for peace talks, he represents a government that has defied US and Palestinian calls for a full settlement freeze as a prelude to any negotiations. He was also defence minister during last year's Gaza war in which nearly 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
The Herzliya conference has echoed Israeli concerns about growing international criticism, particularly in the year since Gaza. Barak himself alluded to the danger that Israel might lose legitimacy if no peace deal was forthcoming. "The pendulum of legitimacy is going to move gradually towards the other pole," he said.
He acknowledged that Washington was pushing the two sides towards "proximity talks" but said this was "only an initial stage" before any return to full negotiations.
Fayyad, who has a limited political following among Palestinians, called on Israel to stop settlement building in the occupied territories and to halt military incursions in Palestinian cities as a sign of seriousness about negotiations.
"Things have to begin to happen in order to give the suggestion that this occupation is going to end," he said. "That Palestinian state is supposed to emerge precisely where settlements are expanding." Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has refused to start fresh negotiations with Israel unless settlement construction stops, in line with the 2003 US road map. Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, even though settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.
"How confident can we all be that once relaunched that political process is going to be able to deliver that which needs to be delivered, the permanent status issues and the key question of ending the occupation?" Fayyad asked.It's been a while since I posted a Robert Fisk article, but I'm going through his hefty tome on his travails in Lebanon from 1976 onwards, and have been struck by the sheer volume of field experience that the man has. This recent Independent article is worth a read. I'm seriously considering a subscription to the print edition.
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Prince al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia is quite a man.
He says he doesn't want to be the prime minister of Lebanon – everyone who wants to be the prime minister of Lebanon says that – but he is immensely wealthy. True, his bank balance has sunk from $23.7bn to a mere $13.3bn since 2005 (thus sayeth Forbes magazine). But he's just announced that he wants to construct the world's tallest building – a 1km-high goliath which will dwarf his neighbour emir in Dubai who last month opened the paltry 25,000ft Burj Khalifa amid the sand dunes of his bankrupt creditors. The nephew of King Abdullah, al-Waleed understandably calls his company Kingdom Holdings. He also happens to be a major shareholder in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp – which is why you won't be reading these words in The Times. Long live Kingdom Holdings, I suppose.
Because yesterday morning, I was taking an al-Jazeera television crew around the repulsive, obscene, outrageous, filthy, stinking slums of the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps not far from my home in Beirut, a place of such squalor that the gorge rises that human beings even live there. Sabra and Chatila – yes, the site of that infamous massacre in 1982 when Lebanese Christian militiamen allied to Israel slaughtered up to 1,700 Palestinian civilians while the Israeli army surrounded the camps, watched the killings – and did nothing. They were the survivors of the great exodus or ethnic cleansing of 1948 – or their sons or grandsons – who fled Galilee for the "temporary" safety of Lebanon and, like the visa applicants of the movie Casablanca, wait and wait – and wait – to go home. Which they will never do. "I am very positive," Prince al-Waleed said when he announced his new priapic tower, to be constructed in the Red Sea port of Jeddah. "We are always looking for new investments."
Now I know that there are a lot of fine philanthropists in the Gulf, Prince al-Waleed among them, but what is one to make of all this? Afghanistan is collapsing in blood; Iraq remains a state of semi-civil war; the Israelis continue to thieve land for Jews and Jews only from the Arabs who hold the title deeds to that property – and Prince al-Waled wants to build a tower reaching a kilometre into the sky. Do the Saudis – who gave so much largesse to the Taliban (we have to forget this, of course, along with the fact that the Saudis provided most of the murderers of 9/11, which is why we bombed Kabul rather than Riyadh) – not have the slightest idea of what is going on around them?
For example, we all know that the Americans maintain stocks of weapons among their allies. They keep munitions in South Korea and, indeed, in the Arab Gulf (aka Saudi Arabia). But very quietly this week, they agreed to double their munitions supplies in Israel from $400m of weapons to $800m. Of course, Washington's gift of $9bn to Israel up to 2012 – never, of course, to be spent on those illegal colonies which are built against international law on Arab land but which Barack Obama now pusillanimously ignores – has nothing to do with this. But don't imagine that – in the event of a new "preventive" war – Israel cannot draw on these supplies for its own army and air force. After all, it was a missile taken to Saudi Arabia by the US marines for use against Iraq in 1991 that ended up in the hands of the Israeli air force as part of a quid pro quo for not joining in the war against Baghad - and which was subsequently used to kill civilians in a Lebanese ambulance in 1996.
But these days, Arab compliance reaches new heights every day. Now, for example, we have the Egyptian government – and its ever popular president (see the American-approved presidential election results which are way above 90 per cent) – building a wall around Rafah, part of the vast mass of poverty which constitutes Gaza, thus preventing food, gasoline (and, no doubt, weapons) from reaching the trapped Palestinians of this prison camp. A camp, one has to add, which meets with the full approval of Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara, whose honourable involvement in the invasion of Iraq has now been outdone by is extraordinary success as peace envoy to the Middle East.
Egypt's intelligence boss (a certain Mr Sulieman who might be the next president of Egypt were it not for his pattern of heart attacks) approves of this wall, which is a very definite assistance to Israel and which will yet further impoverish the Palestinians of Gaza to the point at which the inhabitants of Sabra and Chatila might actually feel themselves lucky they don't live in "Palestine".
In Israel itself, the deputy foreign minister humiliates the Turkish ambassador – while complaining about an anti-Semitic series on Turkish television – by forcing the diplomat to sit on a low sofa, refusing to shake hands and addressing him, with two colleagues, from higher chairs. The foreign minister himself, our dear friend Mr Lieberman, has now acquired the habit – every time poor old (and I mean old) US envoy George Mitchell raises the question of Jerusalem – of walking out of the room. That's what Obama's point man is worth. Israel's crazies – Netanyahu is a moderate chap by comparison – now prove that Israel can be just as much a banana Raj as the rest of the Middle East.
But fear not. The princes and the emirs and the caliphs and the presidents will be able to outbid each other in towers and hotels. I have a bigger painting set than yours. I have a sharper pencil, more crayons, a larger train set (Qatar, please note), a bigger bear than yours. And the world will watch this tragedy and marvel at the toy boxes now being opened in the Middle East. And, by the way, how many crayons do the children of Sabra and Chatila have?
Fantastic opinion piece in the often-obtuse Grope and Flail.
. . . This is the perennial underside of charity and generosity: a chance to feel simultaneously kind and morally superior while reinforcing the relations between those who have power and those who don't. Plus a component of taking vicarious pleasure, in a quasi porn-like way, in the misery of others. I'm thinking here of the insatiable news programming and the repeated requests by interviewers to “Tell us how you feel. . . "
So it turns out that you can do a lot of things if you're the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
Konservative Immigration minister Jason Kenney has been having a blast this last month. The first thing he did in early March was to proudly announce that he was going to terminate language-training contracts with the Canadian Arab Federation because they publicly opposed his political views.
"Here we have in Canada, someone who, until the end of this month at least, was receiving public subsidies from my department, who says ... these organizations that are essentially anti-Semitic and seek the destruction of Israel ... should be able to operate in Canada," Kenney said.Actually, the CAF was not recieving any "subsidy" but a contract from Citizenship and Immigration to offer language training to newcomers - many of whom are not Arabs. Kenney's decision, however, is strangely coincidental with some harsh criticism he received from the CAF's president, but never mind that. I have no information that the CAF supports any policy regarding what organizations should or should not be allowed to operate in Canada, but even if they did, so what?
George Galloway, the pro-terrorist MP from the United Kingdom, has been denied entry to Canada on security grounds. I suspect it has to do with his track record of providing financial assistance to terrorist groups like Hamas, which is listed as a criminal organization in Canada. It would not surprise me if CSIS determined that Galloway's visit would have had fundraising or recruiting spin-offs for Hamas or other terrorist groups. I'm sure Galloway himself would boast of those activities. (UPDATE: I am advised that, in fact, his planned speaking engagement at a Toronto church was to raise funds for Hamas.)Aha! So it was a Hamas fundraiser! Hosted by a Church, no less! Well where is this church?! Let's close that place down too! Obviously it is breaking the law no less than Mr. Galloway.
Following my previous post on why NATO is having trouble crushing the "Taliban" (which seems to have become a catchword for anybody who resists NATO or the Karzai regime), I posed the question to a couple of new acquaintances of mine who have spent time in Afghanistan working with NATO outreach programmes.
According to them, there were several reasons why NATO, with its massive advantages, is still not able to vanquish the Taliban.
1. The Taliban know the terrain by heart. NATO forces don't
2. They kill and terrorize anybody suspected of collaborating with NATO. Consequently, it's hard to find allies on the ground. (Which, ostensibly, NATO would never do to people cooperating with the Taliban . . .)
3. They are good at using the Internet to communicate and call up support rapidly.
4. They currently control major ground supply routes, so while NATO has more resources, it also costs more for NATO to do anything.
5. They move in small groups, whereas NATO moves in large ones. They know where NATO is going and when it's leaving, whereas NATO lacks that information on the Taliban.
6. The population often distrusts foreign forces, particularly Westerners, remembering experiences with the British and the Soviets, as well as recalling how America forgot them once the Soviets were routed. They don't understand that this time, we really ARE trying to help them.
I can't help but snicker a little at that last one.
