Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Stern report: the key points

Hilary Osborne
Monday October 30, 2006
Guardian Unlimited



The dangers

• All countries will be affected by climate change, but the poorest countries will suffer earliest and most.

• Average temperatures could rise by 5C from pre-industrial levels if climate change goes unchecked.

• Warming of 3 or 4C will result in many millions more people being flooded. By the middle of the century 200 million may be permanently displaced due to rising sea levels, heavier floods and drought.

• Warming of 4C or more is likely to seriously affect global food production.

• Warming of 2C could leave 15-40% species facing extinction.

• Before the industrial revolution level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm) CO2 equivalent (CO2e); the current level is 430ppm CO2e. The level should be limited to 450-550ppm CO2.

• Anything higher would substantially increase risks of very harmful impacts. Anything lower would impose very high adjustment costs in the near term and might not even be feasible.

• Deforestation is responsible for more emissions than the transport sector.

• Climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.

Recommended actions

• Three elements of policy are required for an effective response: carbon pricing, technology policy and energy efficiency.

• Carbon pricing, through taxation, emissions trading or regulation, will show people the full social costs of their actions. The aim should be a global carbon price across countries and sectors.

• Emissions trading schemes, like that operating across the EU, should be expanded and linked.

• Technology policy should drive the large-scale development and use of a range of low-carbon and high-efficiency products.

• Globally, support for energy research and development should at least double; support for the deployment of low-carbon technologies should be increased my up to five times.

• International product standards could be introduced.

• Large-scale international pilot programmes to explore the best ways to curb deforestation should be started very quickly.

• Climate change should be fully integrated into development policy, and rich countries should honour pledges to increase support through overseas development assistance.

• International funding should support improved regional information on climate change impacts.

• International funding should go into researching new crop varieties that will be more resilient to drought and flood.

Economic impacts

• The benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs.

• Unabated climate change could cost the world at least 5% of GDP each year; if more dramatic predictions come to pass, the cost could be more than 20% of GDP.

• The cost of reducing emissions could be limited to around 1% of global GDP; people could be charged more for carbon-intensive goods.

• Each tonne of CO2 we emit causes damages worth at least $85, but emissions can be cut at a cost of less than $25 a tonne.

• Shifting the world onto a low-carbon path could eventually benefit the economy by $2.5 trillion a year.

• By 2050, markets for low-carbon technologies could be worth at least $500bn.

• What we do now can have only a limited effect on the climate over the next 40 or 50 years, but what we do in the next 10-20 years can have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century.

Read the Stern review here.

Monday, October 30, 2006

More Pamelisms...

Look, it's only fair: we've made room for some Coulterisms, now we should give the floor to Ann's wannabe, Pamela from Atlas Wept. Don't forget to watch the vlog, it's truly priceless. Via FireDogLake.com...


Hooray for those rapscallions at Sadly, No! Such bad boys. They managed to scare up (operative word, "scare") Pam from Atlas Shrugs’s latest contribution to the brave new world of vlogging. (For some reason, embedding has been disabled. Why, Pam, why?! This is your best vlog yet!)

Oh, Pamela. What would we do without you? Whenever we need proof that right-wingers are batshit insane, you’re right there. Whenever I need someone to point to as an illustration that Pox News viewers have all the intellectual acuity of a box of (low-salt, slightly stale) Saltines, you come through! What a treasure you are! You’re the gift that keeps on giving. The only more useful idiot for our side is possibly Jeff Goldstein, and even his agonized, frantic struggles to reconcile himself to his hidden homosexual yearnings aren’t as fun as watching your wee, addled brain melt and run out of your ears when there’s a camera trained on you. It’s loads of schadenfreudian fun. For the whole family!

Tonight’s vlog entry provides us with a veritable cornucopia of malapropisms, incoherent ravings, bizarre facial contortions, and the added plus of seeing her mocked in real time by an eleven-year-old. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover with this one, kids, so get comfortable. The Princess of the Pajamas Media team has gifted us with quite a giant steaming video-turd to deconstruct. Break out your biohazard gear, a clothespin for your nose, and wade on in with me! Come on, don’t be scared! It’s okay, I’ve done this before. It’s fun.

Let’s get started!

Pam introduces this entry by telling us she’s been getting lots of letters asking for "video". And you made this, Pam? I don’t think that’s what those heavy-breathing, one-hand-typists who write to you have in mind. I think they’re thinking more along the lines of BOW-chikka-wow-wow videos, like, you making zitti in nothing but a string of pearls and a feather boa, you know what I mean?

But for our purposes, this’ll work.

Mistress Pam introduces us to her special guest today, Margot, an eleven-year-old girl whom we can only assume that Pam has included in order to get John Derbyshire’s attention. I don’t think that’s Pam’s kid (who would ever let her have kids?). Maybe a niece? A neighbor? An unsuspecting village girl lured in by Pam’s house made entirely out of gingerbread and candy?

And why bring a child who hasn’t even scraped the lower rungs of puberty into the rough and tumble world of video blogging? To talk about George Clooney, of course. (Or, as Pam says, "JAW-idge cah-LOOO-neeee".) She asks little Margot what she thinks of George Clooney talking about Darfour, but before the wee girlie has even opined beyond, "I think…", Pam interjects, "Lemme tell ya what she thinks! This is what she thinks! She thinks he’s an idiot!" and she’s off to the races!

And here’s where she descends into that peculiar form of logorrhea (look it up) and disjointed ranting that seems to be her default state. Did you know that the whole problem in Darfour is actually a result of "black on black crime"? It’s "MUZZ-lum fahndamentuh-lists killing MAH-derite MUZZ-lims". And what’s her problem with Clooney here? "He can’t say ‘jee-HAHD’, fifteen minutes with Sam Shepherd…!"

"Shepherd Smith," interjects our camera operator, who sounds like she’s about the same age as Margot.

"Sheppitt Smith, whoevah, I don’t particularly care for him," Pam says. She never quite explains why Clooney was remiss in not saying "jihad". Was he on Wheel of Fortune and trying to solve the round? Was it what the voices in her head said he should say? Was it Pee-Wee’s Secret Word of the day?

Well, ours is not to question why, right?

And then the clip starts to get really priceless. Pam begins to sing the praises of Big Oil, and how it’s good for the economy, and it appears that little Margot has about had it with the Ranting Crazy Lady. As Pam gathers steam and prepares to blast off on a one-way trip to What-the-Fuckistan, Margot begins to ape Pamela’s over-the-top gesticulations and mantis-like head movements. And this alone is Pure Vlogging Gold.

Pam, honey, even eleven-year-olds think you’re a whack-job. Take a hint, lady!

I could turn off the video and go home satisfied right there, but, being utterly shameless, and possessing all the self-awareness of a toilet-brush, Pam gives us a couple more money shots on the way out.

"WHEYAH," she demands of Congressional Republicans, "ah you-ah co-YO-nees, yeh TEST-uh-cles, yeh BAWLLS?!" Then, remembering there are children in the room, she says, "Sorry, girls.", mimes biting her nails, and decides that perhaps she’s said enough for one post.

BUT! Not before she mentions that the "ee-LEEE-gal AY-lienz" are asking the "MUSS-lims" to march with them. "Aztlan!" she cries, "Aztlan, you wanna maaahch wit’ us?"

Clearly, Margot is confused what the lion from the Narnia movie has to do with this. Her eyes are starting to glaze over.

Before the frame goes black, though, Pam has one last bit of wisdom to share with us.

"You can’t have a really evil group," she says, "unless yew-ah hatin’ the JOOOZ. What’s wit’ dat?"

"Mental illness!" she intones, answering her own question, and then gives us the biggest gift of all. Her, doing crazy-fingers at her temples (see illustration at the top of this post), and then cork-popping her finger in her mouth. Mutliple times.

"See ya!" she chirps, "Would-ent wanna BE ya!"

Oh, Pam, you don’t know how mutual that feeling is on my part. You just don’t know.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

More Coulterisms...

Ann Coulter and Indian Politics , Via secessionist.us/blog [ahem]

Ann -"Indians are a great warrior people, like Southerners. Their courage is admired by all real Americans."

Well so long as these "warriors" stay on the reservation, enlist in the military in disproportionate numbers and follow the rules (up to the point that the Federal government changes the rules and then the warriors better adapt).

The British Empire was built upon the bones of the Scots - Southerners have filled this roles as have the American Indian. Once conquered both of these people served and continue to serve the nation that conquered them.


Ann - "The Apaches and Iroquois were brutal mothers -- not only to the White Man, but to other Indians."

Brutal by what standard? Who set this standard? What is brutality when a people are invaded by a technological and numerically superior force?

The Apaches are the epitome of a people determined to retain their freedom -their's is a story all people wishing to remain free ought to tell around "campfires".


Ann - "Republicans have a good record on Indians because we admire fighters."

How paternalistic and hypocritical. She attempts to make the point in the paragraphs proceeding that the only administration to really abuse Indians what Andrew Jackson's and she points out twice that he was a Democrat. (yes Jackson's treatment of the Cherokee was horrible)

She forgets that it was Republican administrations, seven of them, that conducted the great Plains Indian Wars from 1865 to 1890. In fact it was Union (Republican) generals that conducted these wars at the direction of Republican presidents. Come on Ann, don't feed anyone this nonsense that Republicans have been good to Indians.


Ann - "It was Democrats like Andrew Jackson who were vicious racists toward the Indians. All true right-wingers are big Indian fans."

The thing about ideologues is that they cannot see the truth for their bias. Jackson was bad in his treatment of the Cherokee but the tyranny (the killing part of the tyranny) visited upon the Indian nations by Republicans began in 1862 (when five nations joined the Confederacy) and did not end until 1890. Both parties have something to be ashamed of.

Ann (when asked about the reservation system) - "Yes, the White Man was happy with reservation system when they couldn't imagine why anyone would want to live on them, but as soon as oil was discovered some White Men -- we call them "Democrats" -- reneged on the deal. Add this to your list of reasons why a Democrat should never sit in the Oval Office.

I like the idea of Indian reservations as tax-free zones and support the preservation of Indian reservations as a salute to a brave culture. But ridiculous court rulings have made reservations havens for gambling, which is a real sickness. I'm against that."

Here again she shows her deficiencies in real knowledge of history. Most of the treaties broken occurred between 1865-1890 (not a Democrat issue). This is a straw-man argument - Democrats do not deserve the Oval office for many reasons but neither do the Republicans.

What a silly statement in the second part of her response. The Indian nations that signed treaties with the US government retained sovereignty over internal affairs. I do not like the idea of casinos either but that is an Indian issue, it is for each nation to decide - not the federal courts or Ann Coulter and company.

Olbermann on Rumsfeld's Omniscience...

Keith Olbermann's speech on Rumsfeld's delusions, watch the clip, via CrooksandLiars.com

Partial transcript:

But back to today’s Omniscient Ones.

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this:

This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such,

all voices count - not just his. Had he or his president perhaps

proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin

Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago

- about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago - we all might be able to

swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful

recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own

arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or

intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to

Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelope this

nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently

or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up in public, and question the morality and

the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the

Emporer’s New Clothes.


Now we know what we know, why is Blair still in office?

As more evidence of his role in the Iraq debacle emerges, it beggars belief that the Prime Minister hasn't been impeached

Henry Porter
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer



Over the course of little more than a week, we have learned that civilian casualties so far in the Iraq war may be more than 600,000; that Britain's Chief of the General Staff believes the conflict could break the army apart; that a federal solution to the growing chaos involving the effective dismemberment of the country is being openly discussed in America; that the US Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican grandee James Baker, is recommending that the US military withdraws to bases outside Iraq and seeks Iranian and Syrian help; and that Britain is now the number one al-Qaeda target, partly, it seems clear, as a consequence of events in Iraq.

There should be at least one universal response to this in Britain. Why is Tony Blair still Prime Minister after leading his country into such a disastrous war? Any large company would by now have got rid of a managing director guilty of a mistake on that scale. Any institution you care to name would have done the same. Why is Blair immune from the normal requirements of high office?

Why, instead of being allowed by the cabinet to establish six new policy committees designed to entrench his legacy, has he not been impeached and thrown out of office? Even if his Iraq policy was formed in good faith, the scale of the error surely requires us to ask him and all those concerned with this disaster to leave.

It doesn't matter now whether you were pro-war, strongly opposed to it or somewhere in between, the policy in the Middle East has been an unmitigated failure, an outcome that was built into the earliest planning for the enterprise. People's views four years ago don't count now because Britain is at the heart of a world-changing catastrophe and as far as our interests go, there has not been a single advantage, not even the one of keeping the special relationship alive.

How did we get here? The answer is still not entirely clear. We think we know that Blair manipulated the situation, but we still don't have all the evidence. What is needed is for people to come forward and for the past to be examined more intensively than before.

For instance, it is well worth returning to a memo written by a young diplomat named Matthew Rycroft, which is still significantly undervalued as evidence of the Prime Minister's drive to war and of the innate negligence of American planning for the period after the invasion.

Rycroft is now safely tucked away in Sarajevo as British ambassador to Bosnia. But in the summer of 2002, aged 34, he was Tony Blair's private secretary for foreign affairs. In this capacity, he attended a secret meeting at Downing Street which included Tony Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, and Blair's military chiefs and the sofa cabinet - Alastair Campbell, Sally Morgan and Jonathan Powell. He then wrote a memo to his boss, Sir David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser.

It is really a minute of the meeting. The crucial passage reads: 'C [Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [the US National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.'

The Downing Street Memo, as it became known, was published in the Sunday Times on 1 May 2005, five days before the general election. It certainly made an impact but by the end of that week, it had been washed away with the rest of the pre-election clamour. Blair had won a third term and his mysterious hold over the British electorate managed even to vanquish these revelations about British and American thinking eight months before the war.

It took a while for it to surface in the press in the US although its consequence was immediately grasped in the blogosphere. In Britain, the memo became part of the inconclusive miasma of the Hutton report into David Kelly's death and of the Butler review of intelligence on WMD; and it decomposed in the public's understanding at roughly the same rate. Indeed, one often wonders if Blair has been saved by the amount of material produced by public inquiries (Hutton is 740 pages; Butler 192). The more that is published, the more the issues blur.

But the memo is the goods. It establishes Bush's resolve to find a pretext for war, regardless of the facts on WMD and Saddam's links to terrorism. It further makes plain that there was little or no thinking about the postwar period, an error that now must be regarded as equal to or greater than the invasion. No surprise is expressed in Rycroft's account of the meeting about what was going on in America, which leads one to assume that among a very small group, the idea of invasion was a fully fledged possibility, even though Blair was assuring the public and cabinet colleagues outside the inner circle that nothing had been decided.

There was much more in the original Sunday Times report on the meeting. Jack Straw and Lord Goldsmith had doubts about the legal case for war, while Blair was committed from the outset to supporting US plans for regime change. At the time, no one seems to have remembered what Tony Blair had said in his evidence to Lord Butler's report into the intelligence on WMD, published eight months before the memo came to light. Blair said: 'I remember that during the course of July and August, I was increasingly getting messages saying, "Are you about to go to war?" and I was thinking, "This is ridiculous" and so I remember towards the end of the holiday actually phoning Bush and saying we have got to put this right straight away... we've not decided on military action.'

If not a direct lie, it is hardly the truth.

On the September dossier, Tony Blair said: 'The purpose of the dossier was simply to say, "This is why we think there is intelligence that means that this is not fanciful view on our part."'

It is clear now that he knew the Americans were fixing their intelligence for war and that he had to get his act together. In all the emails that emerged during Lord Hutton's inquiry, the pressure to make this case is clear. Here is one from young Rycroft: 'Part of the answer of "why now?" is that the threat will only get worse if we don't act now - the threat that Saddam will use WMD, but also the threat that Iraq's WMD will somehow get into the hands of terrorists.' Rycroft was helping to build the dishonest case he knew was being forged on the other side of the Atlantic.

There is a lot still to be discovered. I believe we need to know exactly what happened in 2002 in order to decide what we are going to do now. The collapse of allied purpose is clear, Iraq is in free fall, yet we still have not found out exactly how a small group of politicians and officials hijacked policy and took us to war against the clear wishes of the nation.

As the situation deteriorates in Iraq, Britain's need to distance itself from Blair's policy increases by the day. We need more answers. The call on the political establishment outside Number 10 is urgent. The House of Commons must show it is not been entirely debauched by party politics and bring the government to account and that includes Labour members.

In the meantime, my mailbox is open all hours for the slightest information that may cast light on the path to war.

Now we know what we know, why is Blair still in office?

As more evidence of his role in the Iraq debacle emerges, it beggars belief that the Prime Minister hasn't been impeached

Henry Porter
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer



Over the course of little more than a week, we have learned that civilian casualties so far in the Iraq war may be more than 600,000; that Britain's Chief of the General Staff believes the conflict could break the army apart; that a federal solution to the growing chaos involving the effective dismemberment of the country is being openly discussed in America; that the US Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican grandee James Baker, is recommending that the US military withdraws to bases outside Iraq and seeks Iranian and Syrian help; and that Britain is now the number one al-Qaeda target, partly, it seems clear, as a consequence of events in Iraq.

There should be at least one universal response to this in Britain. Why is Tony Blair still Prime Minister after leading his country into such a disastrous war? Any large company would by now have got rid of a managing director guilty of a mistake on that scale. Any institution you care to name would have done the same. Why is Blair immune from the normal requirements of high office?

Why, instead of being allowed by the cabinet to establish six new policy committees designed to entrench his legacy, has he not been impeached and thrown out of office? Even if his Iraq policy was formed in good faith, the scale of the error surely requires us to ask him and all those concerned with this disaster to leave.

It doesn't matter now whether you were pro-war, strongly opposed to it or somewhere in between, the policy in the Middle East has been an unmitigated failure, an outcome that was built into the earliest planning for the enterprise. People's views four years ago don't count now because Britain is at the heart of a world-changing catastrophe and as far as our interests go, there has not been a single advantage, not even the one of keeping the special relationship alive.

How did we get here? The answer is still not entirely clear. We think we know that Blair manipulated the situation, but we still don't have all the evidence. What is needed is for people to come forward and for the past to be examined more intensively than before.

For instance, it is well worth returning to a memo written by a young diplomat named Matthew Rycroft, which is still significantly undervalued as evidence of the Prime Minister's drive to war and of the innate negligence of American planning for the period after the invasion.

Rycroft is now safely tucked away in Sarajevo as British ambassador to Bosnia. But in the summer of 2002, aged 34, he was Tony Blair's private secretary for foreign affairs. In this capacity, he attended a secret meeting at Downing Street which included Tony Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, and Blair's military chiefs and the sofa cabinet - Alastair Campbell, Sally Morgan and Jonathan Powell. He then wrote a memo to his boss, Sir David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser.

It is really a minute of the meeting. The crucial passage reads: 'C [Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [the US National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.'

The Downing Street Memo, as it became known, was published in the Sunday Times on 1 May 2005, five days before the general election. It certainly made an impact but by the end of that week, it had been washed away with the rest of the pre-election clamour. Blair had won a third term and his mysterious hold over the British electorate managed even to vanquish these revelations about British and American thinking eight months before the war.

It took a while for it to surface in the press in the US although its consequence was immediately grasped in the blogosphere. In Britain, the memo became part of the inconclusive miasma of the Hutton report into David Kelly's death and of the Butler review of intelligence on WMD; and it decomposed in the public's understanding at roughly the same rate. Indeed, one often wonders if Blair has been saved by the amount of material produced by public inquiries (Hutton is 740 pages; Butler 192). The more that is published, the more the issues blur.

But the memo is the goods. It establishes Bush's resolve to find a pretext for war, regardless of the facts on WMD and Saddam's links to terrorism. It further makes plain that there was little or no thinking about the postwar period, an error that now must be regarded as equal to or greater than the invasion. No surprise is expressed in Rycroft's account of the meeting about what was going on in America, which leads one to assume that among a very small group, the idea of invasion was a fully fledged possibility, even though Blair was assuring the public and cabinet colleagues outside the inner circle that nothing had been decided.

There was much more in the original Sunday Times report on the meeting. Jack Straw and Lord Goldsmith had doubts about the legal case for war, while Blair was committed from the outset to supporting US plans for regime change. At the time, no one seems to have remembered what Tony Blair had said in his evidence to Lord Butler's report into the intelligence on WMD, published eight months before the memo came to light. Blair said: 'I remember that during the course of July and August, I was increasingly getting messages saying, "Are you about to go to war?" and I was thinking, "This is ridiculous" and so I remember towards the end of the holiday actually phoning Bush and saying we have got to put this right straight away... we've not decided on military action.'

If not a direct lie, it is hardly the truth.

On the September dossier, Tony Blair said: 'The purpose of the dossier was simply to say, "This is why we think there is intelligence that means that this is not fanciful view on our part."'

It is clear now that he knew the Americans were fixing their intelligence for war and that he had to get his act together. In all the emails that emerged during Lord Hutton's inquiry, the pressure to make this case is clear. Here is one from young Rycroft: 'Part of the answer of "why now?" is that the threat will only get worse if we don't act now - the threat that Saddam will use WMD, but also the threat that Iraq's WMD will somehow get into the hands of terrorists.' Rycroft was helping to build the dishonest case he knew was being forged on the other side of the Atlantic.

There is a lot still to be discovered. I believe we need to know exactly what happened in 2002 in order to decide what we are going to do now. The collapse of allied purpose is clear, Iraq is in free fall, yet we still have not found out exactly how a small group of politicians and officials hijacked policy and took us to war against the clear wishes of the nation.

As the situation deteriorates in Iraq, Britain's need to distance itself from Blair's policy increases by the day. We need more answers. The call on the political establishment outside Number 10 is urgent. The House of Commons must show it is not been entirely debauched by party politics and bring the government to account and that includes Labour members.

In the meantime, my mailbox is open all hours for the slightest information that may cast light on the path to war.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

My years in a habit taught me the paradox of veiling

If ministers really want a proper debate, they must learn that where the veil is forbidden, women hasten to wear it

Karen Armstrong
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian



I spent seven years of my girlhood heavily veiled - not in a Muslim niqab but in a nun's habit. We wore voluminous black robes, large rosaries and crucifixes, and an elaborate headdress: you could see a small slice of my face from the front, but from the side I was entirely shielded from view. We must have looked very odd indeed, walking dourly through the colourful carnival of London during the swinging 60s, but nobody ever asked us to exchange our habits for more conventional attire.

When my order was founded in the 1840s, not long after Catholic emancipation, people were so enraged to see nuns brazenly wearing their habits in the streets that they pelted them with rotten fruit and horse dung. Nuns had been banned from Britain since the Reformation; their return seemed to herald the resurgence of barbarism. Two hundred and fifty years after the gunpowder plot, Catholicism was still feared as unassimilable, irredeemably alien to the British ethos, fanatically opposed to democracy and freedom, and a fifth column allied to dangerous enemies abroad.

Today the veiled Muslim woman appears to symbolise the perceived Islamic threat, as nuns once epitomised the evils of popery. She seems a barbaric affront to hard-won values that are essential to our cultural identity: gender equality, freedom, transparency and openness. But in the Muslim world the veil has also acquired a new symbolism. If government ministers really want to debate the issue fruitfully, they must become familiar with the bitterly ironic history of veiling during the last hundred years.

Until the late 19th century, veiling was neither a central nor a universal practice in the Islamic world. The Qur'an does not command all women to cover their heads; the full hijab was traditionally worn only by aristocratic women, as a mark of status. In Egypt, under Muhammad Ali's leadership (1805-48), the lot of women improved dramatically, and many were abandoning the veil and moving more freely in society.

But after the British occupied Egypt in 1882, the consul general, Lord Cromer, ignored this development. He argued that veiling was the "fatal obstacle" that prevented Egyptians from participating fully in western civilisation. Until it was abolished, Egypt would need the benevolent supervision of the colonialists. But Cromer had cynically exploited feminist ideas to advance the colonial project. Egyptian women lost many of their new educational and professional opportunities under the British, and Cromer was co-founder in London of the Anti-Women's Suffrage League.

When Egyptian pundits sycophantically supported Cromer, veiling became a hot issue. In 1899 Qassim Amin published Tahrir al-Mara - The Liberation of Women - which obsequiously praised the nobility of European culture, arguing that the veil symbolised everything that was wrong with Islam and Egypt. It was no feminist tract: Egyptian women, according to Amin, were dirty, ignorant and hopelessly inadequate parents. The book created a furore, and the ensuing debate made the veil a symbol of resistance to colonialism.

The problem was compounded in other parts of the Muslim world by reformers who wanted their countries to look modern, even though most of the population had no real understanding of secular institutions. When Ataturk secularised Turkey, men and women were forced into European costumes that felt like fancy dress. In Iran, the shahs' soldiers used to march through the streets with their bayonets at the ready, tearing off the women's veils and ripping them to pieces. In 1935, Shah Reza Pahlavi ordered the army to shoot at unarmed demonstrators who were protesting against obligatory western dress. Hundreds of Iranians died that day.

Many women, whose mothers had happily discarded the veil, adopted the hijab in order to dissociate themselves from aggressively secular regimes. This happened in Egypt under President Anwar Sadat and it continues under Hosni Mubarak. When the shah banned the chador, during the Iranian revolution, women wore it as a matter of principle - even those who usually wore western clothes. Today in the US, more and more Muslim women are wearing the hijab to distance themselves from the foreign policy of the Bush administration; something similar may well be happening in Britain.

In the patriarchal society of Victorian Britain, nuns offended by tacitly proclaiming that they had no need of men. I found my habit liberating: for seven years I never had to give a thought to my clothes, makeup and hair - all the rubbish that clutters the minds of the most liberated women. In the same way, Muslim women feel that the veil frees them from the constraints of some uncongenial aspects of western modernity.

They argue that you do not have to look western to be modern. The veiled woman defies the sexual mores of the west, with its strange compulsion to "reveal all". Where western men and women display their expensive clothes and flaunt their finely honed bodies as a mark of privilege, the uniformity of traditional Muslim dress stresses the egalitarian and communal ethos of Islam.

Muslims feel embattled at present, and at such times the bodies of women often symbolise the beleaguered community. Because of its complex history, Jack Straw and his supporters must realise that many Muslims now suspect such western interventions about the veil as having a hidden agenda. Instead of improving relations, they usually make matters worse. Lord Cromer made the originally marginal practice of veiling problematic in the first place. When women are forbidden to wear the veil, they hasten in ever greater numbers to put it on.

In Victorian Britain, nuns believed that until they could appear in public fully veiled, Catholics would never be accepted in this country. But Britain got over its visceral dread of popery. In the late 1960s, shortly before I left my order, we decided to give up the full habit. This decision expressed, among other things, our new confidence, but had it been forced upon us, our deeply ingrained fears of persecution would have revived.

But Muslims today do not feel similarly empowered. The unfolding tragedy of the Middle East has convinced some that the west is bent on the destruction of Islam. The demand that they abandon the veil will exacerbate these fears, and make some women cling more fiercely to the garment that now symbolises their resistance to oppression.

• Karen Armstrong is the author of Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

A short note from Palestine (Gershon Baskrin)

Alex Stein, FalseDichotomies.com

In the face of the continued stale-mate between Hamas and Fatah, both sides are weighing their options. This has been widely reported so I will not elaborate. One development, not reported at all, is that some senior personalities in Hamas have begun to develop some new ideas for a political process with Israel. The main idea being developed is a plan that would separate the 1967 issues from the 1948 ones, meaning a negotiation for the end of the occupation of the 1967 lands and then a much longer period of time to negotiate the issues concerning other final status issues and the end of conflict. The proposal being developed relates to the use of the Islamic notion of hudna – ceasefire – a short-term hudna for negotiating the end of the occupation and then a second longer-term hudna to immediately follow in order to negotiate over a long period of time issues concerning peace. These are very interesting developments within Hamas and warrant close observation as they unfold.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Settlements grow on Arab land, despite promises made to U.S.

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

A secret, two year investigation by the defense establishment shows that there has been rampant illegal construction in dozens of settlements and in many cases involving privately owned Palestinian properties.

The information in the study was presented to two defense ministers, Amir Peretz and his predecessor Shaul Mofaz, but was not released in public and a number of people participating in the investigations were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

According to security sources familiar with the study, the material is "political and diplomatic dynamite."

In conversations with Haaretz, the sources maintained that the report is not being made public in order to avoid a crisis with the U.S. government.

Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, assistant to the Defense Minister, retired earlier this month. Spiegel was also in charge of the various issues relating to the territories, which Dov Weisglass, chief of staff in prime minister Ariel Sharon's office, promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in writing that Israel would deal with. These commitments included illegal settlement building, improvements in the conditions of Palestinian civilians, and a closer oversight over the conduct of soldiers at IDF roadblocks.

One of Spiegel's tasks was to update the data base on settlement activities. During talks with American officials and non-government organizations such as Peace Now, it emerged that the defense establishment lacked up to date information on the settlements, which was mostly based on data provided by the Civil Administration in the territories.

The lack of updated information stemmed from the fact that the defense establishment preferred not to know what was going on, but was also linked to a number of key officials in the Civil Administration actively deleting information from the data base out of ideological allegiance with the settlers.

Spiegel and his team compared the data available from the Civil Administration to that of the Americans, and carried out dozens of overflights of the territories, using private aircraft at great expense, in order to complete the data base.

The findings of the study, security sources say, show an amazing discrepancy between the Civil Administration's data and the reality on the ground. The data in Spiegel's investigation served as the basis for the report on the illegal outposts prepared by attorney Talya Sasson and made public in March 2005.

"Everyone is talking about the 107 outposts," said a source familiar with the data, "but that is small change. The really big picture is the older settlements, the 'legal' ones. The construction there has been ongoing for years, in blatant violation of the law and the regulations of proper governance."

Three years ago, in talks with the Americans, Israel promised that all new construction in the older settlements would take place near existing neighborhoods. The idea was that construction would be limited to meeting the needs of the settlements' natural growth, and bringing to an end the out-of-control expansion over territory.

In practice, the data shows that Israel failed to meet its commitments: many new neighborhoods were systematically built on the edge of areas of the settlement's jurisdiction, which is a much larger territory than the actual planning charts account for.

The data also shows that in many cases the construction was carried out on private Palestinian land. In the masterplans, more often than not, Palestinian properties were included in the construction planned for the future. These included Palestinian properties to which the state had promised access.

However, exploiting the intifada and arguing that the settlers should not be exposed to security risks, Palestinian farmers were prevented access to their properties that were annexed by Israeli settlements.

In many settlements, including Ofra and Mevo Horon, homes have been constructed on private Palestinian land.

"The media is busy with the outposts, but how many of these are really large settlements like Migron? In most cases, it's a matter of a few mobile homes. Spiegel's study shows the real situation in the settlements themselves - and it is a lot more serious than what we knew to date," one of the sources said.

A senior security official expressed concern that with Spiegel's retirement, the data base will not be updated and the data will be lost.

"The [defense] establishment does not necessarily have an interest in preserving this information. It may cause diplomatic embarrassment vis-a-vis the Americans and cause a political scandal. It is not unlikely that there will be those who will seek to destroy the data," the senior officer says.

Other relevant sources said it is necessary for an objective, external source, like the State Comptroller's office, to intervene in this matter.

A statement issued by the Defense Minister's office in response said that "the matter is being examined internally and staff work will be completed soon, and the parts of the report that can be published will be made available. The Defense Minister will discuss the matter with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert."

Meanwhile, construction in the new outposts has intensified. Sources in the Yesha Council say that since the Lebanon War, "Junior officers on the ground are in our favor and in many instances turn a blind eye regarding mobile homes in place."

Monday, October 23, 2006

Oh, why can't the Guardian be more like a US newspaper? Start by giving those mucky facts a good wash right now

Jane Bussmann
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian


I moved to Los Angeles to get away from the Guardian and its British take on the "facts". Here in America, our facts have two showers a day and use beard trimmers all over. However, every time I come home to do a comedy show about child-snatching Ugandan warlords, I notice that the British are still buying this newspaper. It makes me so mad, I took time out from shooting fox cubs to give your news a good wash. Here are some current news stories, from the Guardian and other mucky UK sources, translated for Americans and brought up to American veracity standards.

In Guardian: Blair - troops may quit Iraq in 10-16 months

In the US: No U-turn from Blair on war

Britain's prime minister confirmed the 2007 withdrawal was planned all along and in no way a reaction to General Sir Richard Dannatt's calls for troops to pull out. Blair insisted he "agreed with every word" of Dannatt's announcement: "What sounded like him saying my entire plan for Iraq was totally fucked up and suicidal was just joshing between friends," said the prime minister. "I'm best mates with whatsisname. We often share a lager beer. Anyway, I'm not worried because he's off to Iraq so he'll probably be dead soon."

In Guardian: US troops face trial over abuse and murder claims

In the US: Marines foil insurgent origami warplane plot

Three marines are accused of abducting Hashim Ibrahim Awad, shooting him and tampering with his body. The Marine Corps' commander acknowledged that placing an AK-47 and a spade near the corpse to make it appear as if he had been shot while preparing to set a roadside bomb may have looked to observers like a clumsy attempt to frame an innocent civilian, but explained that this was only because the wind had blown away the pile of origami cranes Awad had been making with the intention of flying a crane-borne missile into the green zone.

In Guardian: Bush issues doctrine for US control of space

In the US: Oilfields found on the moon

President Bush has promised the Man in the Moon will be freed by 2008. "It is America's duty to liberate him from the tyranny of ... of ... Tony, help me on this," the president explained. A search of CIA doodle archives later established beyond doubt that a space dictator, probably looking something like a bear, had gassed 100,000 lovely little Moomintrolls.

In Guardian: Tycoon rips £75m Picasso

In the US: Elbow hole in old painting really no big deal

And this is not the first time billionaire hotelier Steve Wynn's art collection has made headlines. Last summer, Wynn's wife shrunk the Bayeux tapestry. Wynn was reportedly furious as he regularly urged his spouse to indicate she wished to reuse it by putting it back on the rails.

In Guardian: Britain now No 1 al-Qaida target

In the US: It's Britain's turn to stand up to terror

Al-Qaida hates Britain and everything it stands for. The only way for Brits to fight back is using enormous quantities of petrol to keep America strong. Al-Qaida are apparently terrified of cars, especially really big SUVs which are mentioned in the Qur'an as the utility vehicle of the infidel. The best method of ensuring your family's safety from terrorists is to sit in your car with the engine running until 2010.

In Guardian: No magic bullet to solve crisis, Bush adviser warns

In the US: Rumsfeld plans to carry on kissing lucky stone installed in Oval Office through 2007

In Guardian: US stops Venezuela planes deal

In the US: US trade analysts inform Spain that Venezuela smells of poo

Furthermore, America warns Venezuela to return its Power Rangers. Venezuela is urged to wait downstairs for its mum to collect it because America is not coming out of its bedroom.

In Guardian: Oliver Stone plans film on Afghanistan invasion

In the US: Taliban begs director to make other warlords look boring instead

Stone announces Farrell, Jolie to headline incomprehensible three-hour saga featuring long nude scene with a python that wishes it was dead.

In Guardian: America has finally taken on the grim reality of Iraq

In the US: Pentagon no longer using the term amputee

Injured veterans will now be referred to as Owners of Bonus Socks.

In Guardian: North Korea sanctions agreed

In the US: US and UK agree not to attack North Korea

"But if this carries on, we may liberate them" - Blair

In Guardian: Madonna defends Malawi adoption

In the US: Baby loses one national identity, gains four

The singer's representative stated: "The baby will be raised at Guy and Madonna's British home and will therefore speak a mixture of Trustafarian patois and mid-Atlantic mockney." Both adoptive parents have predicted a career in showbusiness for their new infant. Critics agreed, noting that the baby would be successful and popular with audiences, since it wasn't produced by Guy Ritchie.

On FemaleFirst.co.uk: Britney's yummy mummy diet

In the US: Pop star adopts 40 abandoned cheeseburgers

In Hello! magazine: Bono's wife Alison holds charity T-shirt launch

In the US: World healed: official

This landmark fashion and politics summit, added to the release of special Bono-edition Nike trainers with red bits, signals to Africans the length of the oldest continent that it's time to quit whining and get over it.

On bbc.co.uk: Michael rapped for smoking drugs

In the US: George Michael rapped for smoking drug, claims: "This stuff keeps me sane and happy"

Singer claims marijuana medically necessary, cures old-man wang addiction for literally minutes at a time.

• This week Jane read The complete texts of US politician Mark Foley to his teenage congressional pages: "Should be available in schools; would end all human intercourse overnight." Jane watched Green Wing series two: "But as luck would have it, I was already running a bath, and always travel with a boxcutter. Soon I won't remember a thing."

Who needs elections?

By Akiva Eldar

Thank God, or better yet, thank Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has an agenda. The convergence plan died along with unilateralism. The Palestinians, who elected Hamas, are no partners. Bashar Assad is not a candidate because of his refusal to cut off his ties with Iran, responding to Olmert's statement that as long as he is prime minister "the Golan will remain forever a part of the state of Israel." Amos Yaron, who is coordinating the recovery efforts in the Galilee, announced last week that this task is also coming to an end. What is missing now is for Iran to pull back at the last minute and accept the American compromise offer.

What kind of goods would the Olmert-Peretz government bring out from its strategic emergency stores if that happens? More raids into the Gaza Strip? More assassinations of Palestinian militants? A fence against missiles? For a fighting agenda of this sort, the Israeli public does not need Kadima or the Labor Party, which failed in the second Lebanon war. Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman (perhaps with the help of Shaul Mofaz, who will once more find himself in the ranks of Likud) are a much better match with a chief of staff who only feels a small bump on the wing when he drops a hundred kilos of explosives on a house. Then-prime minister Netanyahu was making use of the Iranian threat at a time when then-Jerusalem mayor Olmert was still busy building mikvehs [Jewish ritual purification baths].

Netanyahu argued that the unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip will be interpreted by Hamas as a reward, many months before Olmert canceled the unilateral pullout plan from the West Bank for the same reason. Netanyahu also says that if the Palestinians change regime and cease terrorist activity, he will not be opposed to a Palestinian state with extensive powers. As for the Golan Heights, with all due respect to Olmert's declarations of loyalty, the opponents of a withdrawal from the Golan will feel a lot more secure if Avigdor Lieberman were defense minister in a Netanyahu government, than with Amir Peretz in the defense chair in the Olmert government.

When the ruling parties relinquish their agendas, it should come as no wonder that their rivals on the right are getting ready to take over. The head of the Labor faction, Ephraim Sneh, is recommending a new blend, comprising Labor, Kadima and the Pensioners' Party. Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik of Kadima, and formerly of Labor, went a step further and called for an "emergency government" that includes Netanyahu. All that is left to do is convince Lieberman to respond to Olmert's wooing, and at the same time push forward the idea of MK Avshalom Vilan of Meretz-Yahad, to merge the leftist party with Labor. How warm and pleasant it will then be around the government table.

America's Democratic Party learned the hard way that the cost of conceding basic principles and values in favor of a turn to the right and ephemeral popular views is high. George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley who also heads the Democratic-affiliated think tank, the Rockridge Institute, attributes the Republican's victories to the Democrats' failure to offer the public a platform of values that can compete with the family values and emotions of patriotism espoused by the conservatives. The fact that George Bush is affiliated with the extreme wing of the right did not prevent the American center from electing him and Arnold Schwartzenegger, even though they did not move to the center or soften their ideology.

The left in Israel managed to influence the daily agenda when it presented clear positions, and was pushed to the sidelines every time it sought to appeal to the public. This is what happened during the first weeks of the second Lebanon war, when the leadership of Meretz-Yahad stood to the right of the government and even denounced its faction leader, Zahava Gal-On, who was the only one who said that the Lebanese proposal for a cease-fire should be accepted. The result: since the war proved not to have been a success story, the right appears to be the only alternative to a government that has failed.

The new fashion, to take advantage of "existential" fears to rally behind a common, hollow, "patriotic" denominator, while distorting principles and breaking down party lines, threatens democracy more than any system of governance. If everyone is the same, who needs elections?

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Supporting Israel to Death

M.J.Rosenberg in Israel Policy Forum

The other day I read excerpts from a speech given in Israel by Professor Robert Aumann -- an Israeli who emigrated from the United States -- and who won last year's Nobel Prize in economics.

The thrust of Aumann's speech was that he doubted that Israel would survive another half century because it lacks the strength to withstand the worsening regional situation. He specifically criticized Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for having said -- at last year’s Israel Policy Forum dinner -- that Israel is tired of wars and sacrifices. Aumann views Israelis as simply too weary to make it in the long term.

"Fatigue, in the State of Israel's situation, will lead to death, as occurs with mountain climbing," said Aumann. "If a mountain climber is caught on the side of a mountain and it starts to snow, if he falls asleep, he will die. He must remain alert."

Moving to the specific, Aumann chastised Israelis for being so upset by their losses in the recent Lebanon war. "We are too sensitive to our losses, and also to the losses of the other side," he said. "In the Yom Kippur War, 3,000 soldiers were killed. It sounds terrible, but that's small change."

Aumann, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who lost a son in the 1982 Lebanon war, believes Israelis need to toughen themselves so that they can sustain more losses, without losing faith in the Zionist mission.

Of course, the Zionist mission was to establish a state where Jewish young people would be safe, not one in which a certain percentage of 18-year old kids would die in battle in each generation.

Aumann's upside-down Zionist vision -- a Jewish state perpetually at war -- would neither have inspired Jews to build a state nor would it have sustained it.

Fortunately, few Israelis share Aumann's views. The widespread reaction to his cavalier remarks about losing soldiers was that he should stick to economics.

To Israel’s credit, there has always been a deep resistance to sending young people off to war unless it is considered absolutely necessary. That is why a clear majority of Israelis are more than ready to get out of the West Bank.

They find it intolerable that their sons would die to defend the occupation and settlements unless their sacrifice is directly tied to the defense of Israel itself.

Aumann's views are deeply offensive but it is just as well that we know that people like him exist. Anytime one wonders how the world became such a bloody place, we can remember Aumann who, with all his brilliance, believes that the ticket to survival is, of all things, killing and being killed.

But there is a certain logic, brutal as it may be, to Aumann's position. He is a self-proclaimed hardliner on Israel. He fiercely opposed last year's Gaza withdrawal and any land-for-peace deals. For him, every last inch belongs to Israel and any suggestion that it does not is anti-Jewish.

But Aumann also understands that the only way his Greater Israel vision can be sustained is at a high cost in Israeli lives.

Give him credit for honesty.

This week in Ha'aretz, Danny Rubinstein, the West Bank-Gaza correspondent, wrote that the situation in Gaza is deteriorating rapidly and that a Third Intifada is likely to break out soon. “The collision course is clear. It is not going to come as a surprise."

And what are we all going to do in the meantime? Sit back and wait for the collision? Or for Professor Aumann's “Apocalypse Soon”?

The other night I had dinner with an Israeli who bemoaned the world's lack of interest in helping to bring Israelis and Palestinians to an agreement.

He said that it angered him that virtually every international conflict is resolved with international involvement but not the one that threatens his family. He cited the EU’s role in Cyprus, US mediation in Northern Ireland, US and EU involvement in Yugoslavia and South Africa. “In every other conflict, there seems to be an understanding that the parties can't do it alone. The US and the Europeans come in, not to dictate a settlement but to make sure one happens. But, for whatever reason, we Israelis are left to fend for ourselves."

I asked him what he wanted to see happen. He said that he wanted the Bush administration to bring Israelis and Palestinians together “and not quit until there is an agreement.”

He said that is what the United States did in the late 1970’s to achieve the Egypt-Israeli treaty. “I wonder how many of my friends are alive today who would be dead if the United States had just allowed Begin and Sadat to leave Camp David without an agreement."

I told him that unfortunately the politics that surround the Arab-Israeli issue in the United States make it unlikely that our government will take the lead in the way he suggests.

"I know the politics," he said. "But somebody needs to think about real people like me who want to have a life in Israel. Someone needs to tell your Congress that not encouraging President Bush to take action to end this conflict is not pro-Israel. As far as I am concerned, it’s anti-Israel. Because this conflict very likely will end up destroying everything we have built here. Those who claim to support Israel but oppose a strong US role will have contributed to our destruction."

Hopefully, we still have time to prevent that catastrophe. The Bush administration enters the last two years of its term in January but, in fact, it was during the last two years of their terms that former Presidents Bush and Clinton made their most significant contributions to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Those two Presidents essentially left behind a blueprint for an agreement that would end the conflict once and for all.

George W. Bush will probably not be able to solve the national health crisis in two years. Or end nuclear proliferation. Or put social security on a permanently sound financial footing.

But he can produce a peace agreement. After all, as my Israeli friend asks: Why do Israelis and Palestinians deserve less than the Irish, the Cypriots, the Serbs, the Bosnians or the South Africans?

Why indeed?

Is the Jewish left ready for commitment?

Shmuel Rosner - Chief U.S. Correspondent for Haaretz

This week, an Israeli well-versed in the intricate ways of American politics wanted to explain how difficult it is to set up an efficient Washington lobby, one that would exert considerable influence. Jewish leaders are interested in establishing such an organization. To show just how complicated this goal is, he chose to use the following joke: The chicken and the pig decided to give the farmer a present for his birthday. They were trying to figure out what to bring when the chicken had an idea: "Why don't we make him breakfast? What do you say about bacon and eggs?" No way, answered the pig, and he had his reasons: "Bacon and eggs might be a contribution for you, but for me it's a commitment."

And here is the story's summary: Leaders from several organizations and movements are trying to raise funds and resources for the establishment of a new, strong and efficient body that would lobby the U.S. Congress and government to increase their involvement in solving the Arab-Israeli conflict peacefully.

The details of their initiative are still vague: It might be based on a new body or an existing one, such as the Israel Policy Forum, but it clearly would aim to advance political negotiations with America as a mediator. Some in the nascent group believe it is necessary to talk with Hamas. Many also believe sanctions against the Palestinian Authority serve no purpose, and that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was wrong to promote them in Congress.

They say they are not trying to compete with AIPAC, and anyone who wants to believe that may do so. The truth is more complicated: Many of the people involved in the new initiative are not happy with AIPAC or other organizations whose pro-Israel activities tend to be too hawkish for them. The new group wants to present a clear and strong voice in favor of immediate peace negotiations. They believe this is vital for both Israel and the United States.

In any case, this might pose new problems for Israel. The new lobby would flank the Israeli government on the left. Its stances would occasionally be seen as a call for U.S. pressure on Israel. The founders - idealists, Zionists, supporters of Israel beyond reproach - believe this is all to ensure Israel's survival. "Like a scout forcefully helping an old lady across the street?" I asked one of them two days ago. "Perhaps," he said. "Before she's hit by a truck."

Friction between Rabin's government and AIPAC - which dragged its feet defiantly because some of its leaders opposed the Oslo Accords - is a well-rehearsed routine. AIPAC learned a lesson or two from this, but some believe the lesson was not enough: The complaints arose again when it refused to show sufficient enthusiasm about the Gaza disengagement plan.

Yet one must admit to a basic fact of life: An Israeli government - assuming its leaders prefer to work under less pressure and no dictates - will always feel more comfortable with an American-Jewish lobby operating slightly to its right, rather than a lobby operating slightly to its left. It faces no danger of being asked to set up more settlements or to assassinate more Hamas operatives, but it certainly may be asked to make unwanted concessions, withdrawals and compromises.

The new lobby will try to promote a known "political recipe": It will back Israeli policies when they promote the lobby's agenda, but in other cases it will try to sabotage them. The distinction some of the founders make between supporting the values of the "Israeli public" and those of the "Israeli government" is not reasonable. The public is represented by its government. They may decide not to support it, but they are well advised to avoid a righteous facade that does not respect the voters and their decisions.

In that sense, the new lobby will be different from AIPAC, which, while its leaders have occasionally lapsed into frivolous head-butting with governments that suddenly have veered to the left, usually stays reasonably in line with Israeli policy. "We treat Israel as a responsible adult," they say at AIPAC, meaning they are not pulling old ladies by the arm. But the establishment of a new lobby also testifies to their failure: While they stay in line with Israel, they have fallen out of line with a major part of their American constituency, which is now looking for a new home.

In any case, this initiative also has a positive aspect, which must be recognized by those who do not support the political ground it lies on: Many American Jews who cannot identify with the existing pro-Israeli bodies have chosen to give up, disengage and alienate themselves. A new lobby, reflecting their worldview, would provide them with a convenient channel to express their sympathy for Israel. This is assuming, of course, that they are ready for the commitment.

As always with Rosner's Blog, the comments are also very worthwhile reading.

Rice: 'N Korea escalating crisis'

BBC

Ms Rice is on a four-day regional tour for talks on the crisis.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has accused North Korea of wanting to escalate international tensions over its nuclear weapons programme.

Mr Rice said she doubts claims that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il agreed not to carry out a second nuclear test or that he regretted the first.

Her comments follow media reports that Mr Kim made the pledge to Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan when he visited Pyongyang.

She is in Moscow for talks expected to focus on the North Korea crisis.

Ms Rice is on a regional tour, meeting leaders in Japan, South Korea, China and Russia.

International threat?

The secretary of state was in Beijing on Friday, but she said the Chinese made no mention of Mr Kim agreeing to halt nuclear tests, despite giving her a "thorough" briefing on Mr Tang's visit to Pyongyang.

"I don't know whether or not Kim Jong-il said any such thing," Ms Rice told journalists accompanying her on a flight from Beijing to Moscow.

"Tang did not tell me that Kim Jong-il either apologised for the test or said that he would not ever test again," Ms Rice added.

Though it is not confirmed, we have obtained information that... the country won't conduct a second nuclear test

"The North Koreans, I think, would like to see an escalation of the tension."

Mr Tang, a former Chinese foreign minister, was sent to North Korea on Thursday to deliver a personal message from President Hu Jintao.

Mr Tang did not set out what took place during his meeting with Mr Kim, but said afterwards that the visit had "not been in vain".

More

Friday, October 20, 2006

Targeting Muslims - the new Inquisition

By Bradley Burston

Were I a Muslim living in the West, I'd be mad as hell. Not to mention terrified.

Were I a Muslim living in the West, I'd begin to believe that a new Inquisition had begun. An inquisition aimed at no one but Muslims.

Were I a Muslim living in the West, my wife, or my sister, or my daughter might well decide to wear a headscarf or a veil when she went out in public.

Perhaps it would be because she was tired of men and boys ogling her, objectifying her. Perhaps it would be because she felt she was entitled to her dignity. Perhaps she simply might prefer modesty and privacy to fashion slavery.

Perhaps she just thought it was a free country.

And perhaps, on that last point, she would have been mistaken.

For years, and especially since 9/11, law-abiding Muslims have been verbally and physically attacked across North America and Europe. They are scorned for their faith, shunned for their piety, falsely condemned for dual-loyalty, blamed for the crimes of terrorists they abhor.

Of late, however, there has been a disturbing new trend, particularly in Europe, where cabinet ministers and influential lawmakers have increasingly made it their mission to combat, of all things, the head scarf and veil worn by growing numbers of Muslim women and girls.

In Germany, the states of Baden-Wurttenberg and Bavaria recently introduced legislation to outlaw the wearing of head scarves in schools.

Bavarian Education Monika Hohlmeier said the head scarf was increasingly being used as a political symbol. To the understandable ire of Muslims, Hohlmeier went on to say that it was acceptable to wear Christian crosses or Jewish symbols.

In Spain, home to the original Inquisition, Minister for Social Affairs Juan Carlos Aparicio was quoted as having said that the Muslim veil was "not a religious sign but a form of discrimination against women," and having compared it to genital mutilation.

In Britain, the government minister for race and faith relations, Phil Woolas, was quoted this week as demanding that Muslim teaching assistant Aisha Azmi, 24, who refused to remove her veil at work, be fired for that reason.

"She should be sacked," Woolas was quoted as telling the Sunday Mirror. "She has put herself in a position where she can't do her job."

Azmi worked at the Headfield Church of England junior school in Dewsbury, which took pains to state that her suspension had nothing to do with religion.

The scarf issue had already taken center stage when former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, now an MP and Leader of the House of Commons, voiced public objections to the wearing of the niqab, a full-face veil, at face-to-face meetings with his constituents.

The national debate has since widened, with David Davis, a top Conservative Party official, taking the anti-veil stance to a new level.

''What Jack touched on was the fundamental issue of whether in Britain we are developing a divided society,'' Davis said. ''Whether we are inadvertently encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid.''

The anti-veil arguments dovetail with a parallel campaign, which takes as its premise the concept that Islam itself renders its adherents incapable of integrating into Western societies.

"If you are going to have Islamic schools, the question is whether they are going to embrace Western values," Patrick Sookhdeo, a Pakistan-born Anglican priest in England who converted from Islam, told the New York Times this month.

"I would argue that Islamic values are not compatible with Western values," he said.

And what Western values might these be? Are they the time-honored Western values of intolerance for people of color, suspicion and marginalization of non-Christians, fear and loathing of non-Whites? Exploitation of and contempt for the residents of former imperial possessions and colonies?

At this point, there will be a pause for the springloaded Islamophobes among us to suggest that it is any society's right and duty to protect itself against elements that may foment terrorism. There will be those who will argue that the veil may both mask and encourage extremism.

Perhaps it is time for us in the Western world to declare that Islam has a right to exist.

Perhaps it is time for us to recognize that non-violent, non-Judeo-Christian religious observance is a right, not an act of war.

Scarves don't explode. Veils do not kill. The niqab does not incite.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Clinton official tells of monitoring Korea nuclear centers

Behind Enemy Reactors – by JON B. WOLFSTHAL

I CELEBRATED New Year’s in 1996 by drinking cheap sparkling wine at the Yongbyon nuclear center, where North Korea produced the plutonium for its first nuclear test. Like dozens of dedicated civil servants, I served as an “on-site monitor” under the 1994 United States-North Korean nuclear agreement known as the Agreed Framework.

Those of us who served as monitors are proud of what we accomplished. I am not alone in being concerned that many commentators and government officials are trying to lay the blame for at least some of the current nuclear crisis at the feet of the previous administration’s efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear program. These allegations have little bearing on the facts and minimize the contribution of the Americans who served their country in dangerous circumstances.

In 1994, the situation with North Korea had become so fraught that the Clinton administration was considering military strikes to prevent North Korea from extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel at Yongbyon. At the time, North Korea might have had enough plutonium, produced in 1989, to build one or two nuclear devices. The fuel being discharged contained enough plutonium for five to six additional weapons.

Last-ditch talks between former President Jimmy Carter and President Kim Il-sung of North Korea defused the crisis and led to the framework. The deal, which helped us avoid a military conflict that could have destroyed Seoul, froze Pyongyang’s plutonium program; eventually, it could have led to North Korea abandoning its nuclear efforts in exchange for diplomatic recognition by the United States and economic incentives.

In 2002, however, American intelligence agencies confirmed that North Korea was trying to acquire a uranium enrichment program in violation of the deal. But instead of working within the framework to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear efforts, the Bush administration terminated the agreement altogether. It also began arguing for regime change.

In jettisoning the framework, the administration jettisoned something of great diplomatic value. A key part of the agreement was the willingness of North Korea to let Americans — with whom they were legally at war — into their nuclear center to secure plutonium-bearing fuel rods for internationally monitored storage. In other words, the framework put Americans behind enemy lines.

As you might imagine, the daily circumstances were nothing short of insane. Assigned to North Korea for a month or so at a time, we were put up in a hastily constructed cement “guest house” a half-mile from the most secret nuclear site in North Korea. The 10 people on each rotation were watched by armed guards; our rooms were monitored at all times. No phone calls home or outside communication was possible. When I was there in the winter of 1996, temperatures at night hit 30 below. To get to work every day, we would pass through no fewer than four police and military checkpoints, some with machine-gun nests. The site itself was highly unsafe and radioactive and would have been shut down by safety officials in seconds had it operated in the United States.

Those who took the assignment left families and friends behind and bounced between acute stress and extreme boredom. Some read to escape the monotony, some played cards. I “borrowed” an International Atomic Energy Agency VCR to watch movies. We all knew that at any moment, should the political winds change, we would be hostages deep in hostile territory with no American embassy to protect us. But we took the job to make our country more secure and to pursue an end to North Korea’s nuclear program.

Now that North Korea claims to have tested a nuclear device, administration supporters and commentators are seeking to blame the framework for all our problems.

They should look elsewhere. Without the framework’s freeze, North Korea would have immediately acquired enough plutonium to produce more nuclear weapons and would have completed construction of two much larger weapon production reactors. By now, North Korea would have been capable of producing 20 nuclear weapons per year.

The prolonged freeze on North Korea’s production and nuclear construction delayed the acquisition of nuclear materials — and it appears to have prevented North Korea from completing the larger reactors. The testing of a nuclear device by Pyongyang was pushed back at least a decade.

Those of us who served in North Korea risked our personal safety and comfort for our country. We protected America from danger and our efforts delayed the onset of the nuclear crisis we now face. To argue otherwise is to play politics with history.

(Jon B. Wolfsthal, who monitored North Korea’s nuclear program for the United States, is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.)

Hamas spokesman questions if violence is Palestinian 'disease'

By Reuters

Ghazi Hamad, a senior figure in Hamas and spokesman for the Hamas-led government, published an article on Tuesday condemning internal violence and questioning whether it has become a "Palestinian disease".

Hamad he was disturbed by growing factionalism in the Palestinian territories, including recent deadly clashes between rival political movements.

"Has violence become a culture implanted in our bodies and our flesh?" he asked in the sharply worded article, published in the widely read Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam.

"We have surrendered to it until it has become the master and is obeyed everywhere - in the house, the neighborhood, the family, the clan, the faction, and the university."

It was the second time in recent months that Hamad, who is based in Gaza, had written an opinion piece in al-Ayyam critical of Palestinian in-fighting.

In August, he criticized Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel, saying they were not doing the cause of Palestinian independence any good by launching attacks at moments when it appeared progress was being made.

In the article published on Tuesday, Hamad said the presence of armed men on almost every street, and their attendance at every rally, whether political or not, had created an atmosphere of guns and violence that damaged prospects for calm.

It also meant that television pictures of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict broadcast around the world too often showed armed men and images of violence, casting the
Palestinian struggle in a poor light, he suggested.

He wrote that violence "has taken away the language of brotherhood and replaced it with arms ... It has stolen our unity and divided us into two camps, or three, or ten."

"Shouldn't we be ashamed of this ugly behavior which scandalizes us before our people and before the world?" he asked.

Hamad's article follows a period of intense in-fighting, with some of the worst intra-Palestinian violence since the formation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.

Earlier this month, at least 15 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in clashes between armed members of Hamas and gunmen from the rival Fatah movement, prompting fear of an impending civil war.

Hamad wrote that 175 Palestinians had been killed by "Palestinian gunfire" since the beginning of the year.

Recently launched talks on forming a unity government have so far failed.

"Are we all responsible? Yes. Do we all participate in this great sin? Yes," wrote Hamad. "All of us have the desire not to see arms in the streets except with policemen."

"We want to disown this disease, this cancer, which has damaged our brains and paralysed our hearts," he said.

"Have mercy on your people. Let us walk in peace, sit in peace, have a dialogue in peace and sleep in calm," he added.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Israel's spokesman, Israel's enemy: Danny Seaman strikes again

By Bradley Burston
Or take Danny Seaman, director of the Government Press Office, whose job it is to help journalists, especially foreign correspondents, cover Israel and have access to Israel's point of view.

Seaman was asked to comment on a case in which veteran Israel-based foreign correspondent Joerg Bremer of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, may be disallowed re-entry into Israel after he challenged seemingly arbitrary - and perhaps politically slanted - practices of granting work visas to journalists.

Irked that the German government agreed to help Bremer in his fight, Seaman responded, "I feel like screwing him over just because of this. What kind of gall is this, for the German government to interfere in Israel's internal affairs? How are journalists different from any other foreign workers?"

Told that Bremer maintained that the visa difficulties were politically based, Seaman's reply was nothing if not direct. "I maintain that he's an idiot. That's ridiculous. If I issued press cards according to content, no one at Haaretz would get a card."

Seaman wasn't through yet. Bremen had quoted Seaman as saying that the visa situation suited the GPO chief, effectively granting Seaman control over journalists. Seaman, hearing this, went on the defensive, telling Haaretz:

"I told him something like that? He's a piece of shit. When there were discussions [over a solution], I said I wasn't willing for the GPO to be the one that decides, so no one could say that there was any scheming. He's just a miserable liar. He's a piece of shit."

This is the same Danny Seaman:
"The way the BBC is trying to portray Israel competes with the worst of Nazi propaganda," the Israeli government's press office head, Danny Seaman, told Reuters.

No, Danny, this here BBC viewer hasn't forgotten yet...

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Eugenetics in the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea?

From the Times comes this harrowing story of racial purity and infanticide. This story requires corroboration but prima facie evidence is nonetheless impossible to ignore. Not for the faint of heart...

Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent

‘Racially impure’ children killed

THE North Korean regime’s obsession with racial purity has led to the killing of disabled infants and forced abortions for women suspected of conceiving their babies by Chinese fathers, according to a growing body of testimony from defectors.
The latest description of Kim Jong-il’s policy of state eugenics came from a North Korean doctor, Ri Kwang-chol, who escaped last year and told a forum in Seoul that babies with deformities were killed soon after birth.

“There are no people with physical defects in North Korea,” Ri said. Such babies were put to death by medical staff and buried quickly, he claimed. He denied ever committing the act himself.

Exiles in Seoul said Ri was now keeping a low profile, fearing retaliation by North Korean agents, who have assassinated foes in the South Korean capital before. But his account added to the evidence that the Kim family dictatorship is founded on mystical notions of Korean racial superiority rather than Marxism — a reality that explains its deepening estrangement from China.

Along the 850-mile border, North Korean women refugees have emerged with stories that speak of the regime’s preoccupation with “deviant” sexual relations and its predisposition to violence in dealing with them.

One such account came from a 30-year-old woman who calls herself Han Myong-suk. She escaped twice and reached a safe haven in an undisclosed third country within the past year thanks to Helping Hands Korea, an American Christian group.

She said she was sold by traffickers to a Chinese farmer near the Great Wall, and was five months pregnant by him when she was caught by the Chinese police and deported back to North Korea.

There she was held in one of three female detention centres, which have been identified in the towns of Sinuju, Onsong and Chongin. Her account was taken down by Tim Peters, an American Christian activist who founded the group.

“I defied the order to abort the foetus the prison authorities contemptuously called a ‘Chinese Chink’ and was badly beaten and kicked in my belly by a guard. His name was Hwang Myong-dong,” she said.

One week later, said Han, she was led to a prison clinic “where in a most blunt manner they extracted the dead child from my body”.

Han survived the depraved conditions of a labour camp for several years before her release and eventual second escape. Her story represented important corroboration of a practice that was first detailed in a report in 2003 for the pressure group

US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea that was compiled by David Hawk, a human rights investigator.

Hawk found “extreme phenomena of repression . . . unique to North Korea” and concluded that its regime practised “ethnic infanticide”. He traced eight female witnesses who gave distressing accounts of child murder. One took place at the women’s detention centre in Sinuju, a border zone visible across the Yalu River from the Chinese city of Dandong.

Choi Yong-hwa, 28, described how she was made to accompany a heavily pregnant woman, who had also been returned across the bridge from China, to a clinic where doctors induced labour. After the infant was born, Choi said she and other women stood by in disbelief as it was suffocated with a wet towel. The mother passed out.

A 66-year-old grandmother also testified to witnessing the deaths of babies at Sinuiju, two of them healthy boys born at full term. The first belonged to a 28-year-old woman called Lim. The witness was holding the newborn in a blanket when a guard grabbed him by a leg and threw him into a large box lined with plastic.

Read all of this article

Saturday, October 14, 2006

The sorrows of young Itai

By Aviva Lori

It was a matter of friendship, says Eva Schwartz. Too many friendships and personal relations between the army and the settlers led to disaster. Colonel Yuval Bazak, who recently completed his term as commander of the Samaria Brigade, takes the same view. "Many times, the army, in the name of such friendship, did not fully carry out its responsibilities, such as in the case of the illegal settler outposts," he said in an interview with the Ynet Internet site.

"Too many times, we turned a blind eye. It was convenient not to deal with issues having to do with law and order. The evacuation of Amona was the peak, the radicalization of the fringes, which expanded. This is the most dangerous phenomenon. We saw many cases of breaches of order and of violence that we did not see previously, certainly not with this intensity and this frequency."

The name Amona and the events surrounding the army's evacuation of the illegal Samaria outpost last February will always draw a reaction of outrage from Eva Schwartz. Just thinking about it is enough to set her on edge. She responded furiously to the interview with Bazak: "My son was a soldier in Nahal," she wrote in talkback number 172. "His company took part in the evacuation of the access road to Amona the night before. There was an extremely violent clash between the soldiers and the settlers. My son underwent atrocities, a terrible trauma, because of the settlers. They spat on his beard and called him a Nazi. A kid who is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. They cursed him, beat him, knocked him down. The word atrocity can hardly convey what he went through there. The settlers and that battle, which was really a civil war, generated a mental collapse from which he never recovered.

"A month and a half later he killed himself on his base in Samaria. In the note he left he said that he saw the hatred in their eyes. He did not want to be in this kind of world, in which brothers trade blows. Because of those settlers I do not have a son today. I will never forgive them. Accursed may they be. You think that you can do whatever you want. For how long?"

Read the rest of this truly harrowing story

Friday, October 13, 2006

Knowing your Richter Scale from your Kilotons...

Here's an excellent article that pours some cold water on the North Korean nuclear test hysteria: North Korea Nuclear Test: Failure or Hoax?

Book reveals White House contempt for religious right

By Mark Tran / Midterms 2006/ USA 05:20pm

With the Republicans on Capitol Hill on the defensive over the scandal involving former congressman Mark Foley, they could have done without a new book called Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.

Set to go on sale on Monday, the book by a former White House official says George Bush's top political advisors privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as "nuts" and "goofy" while buttering them up in public. Even though the book appears in the shops, MSNBC has ensured that it will make waves.

David Kuo, who was a deputy director of the White House office of faith-based and community initiatives in Mr Bush's first term, writes:

"Sadly, the political affairs folks complained most often and most loudly about how boorish many politically involved Christians were.... National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous' and 'out of control.' ''

The LA Times reports that Republican strategists have been rattled by Mr Kuo's book, appearing just weeks before the midterm elections.

Mr Kuo has written about his disappointment with the White House's faith-based initiatives to help the poor before - part of the president's "compassionate conservatism" approach. In a column for Beliefnet, a website for Christians, last year, he bemoaned the lack of progress in channelling money to faith-based groups to help drug addicts and teenage mothers.

He blamed "snoring indifference" among Republicans and "knee-jerk" opposition among Democrats. But Mr Kuo's barbs appear to have grown sharper since then, particularly where the White House - if not Mr Bush himself - is concerned. Mr Kuo contends that the White House office of faith-based initiatives, promoted as a non-political effort, was used to mobilise religious voters who would most likely favour Republican candidates.

It is difficult to tell whether the book will have any real impact on the Republican party's base - the religious right. Religious conservatives have been none too pleased by the Foley scandal and now they are being told that they were treated like fools. Bloggers have seized on a purported quote from Karl Rove, Mr Bush's political strategist, in the book.

When asked by a White House official how the faith-based initiative could be rolled out without an office or any staff, Mr Rove said: "I don't know. Just get me a fucking faith-based thing. Got it?"

One pollster, Rasmussen Reports, has reported no erosion of support for the Republicans from evangelical Christians from the Foley scandal. Could this be the straw that breaks the camel's back?

For Rice, it's time for Palestine

By Shmuel Rosner (Washington) and Aluf Benn (Jerusalem)

Palestine. A speech

The American Task Force on Palestine made history this week. On a foggy evening, over goblets of white wine and even before dinner, the organization hosted U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "It wasn't easy to get her," said Ziad Asali, the president and founder of the organization, a bit tense before she arrived. They had asked way back in April, and only now did they get a positive answer. Asali was implying that this would be a significant speech - but also one that should not be interpreted in too exaggerated a way. "Symbolism is sometimes more important than content at this kind of event," he said.

And now Rice, who really did arrive, is talking about Palestine. Here is a sure sign that time is passing: Like president Bill Clinton in his day, for Rice, too, the volume increases as the term approaches its end. Suddenly the Palestinian issue is becoming a key aim, almost an exalted one. This, apparently, is its chimerical nature - after all, it always looks as though a solution is close enough to touch. Such a simple diplomatic achievement, so very simple. Is it possible that Rice too has fallen into the trap?

Although she is thoroughly familiar with the end of Clinton's profound commitment to a solution to the conflict, she is not perturbed. "I promise you my personal commitment to that goal," she says. "There could be no greater legacy for America."

But is this indeed the case? Last July, opinion pollsters asked the American public whether the United States "has a responsibility to try to resolve the conflict between Israel and other countries in the Middle East, or is that not the U.S.'s business?" The answer was different from Rice's. Only 33 percent of the respondents thought that this is America's responsibility; 58 percent said it is none of America's business.

Read more...