Archive for the 'Middle East' Category

Save Israel from its friends

Published
by
Paul Norton
11 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Environment, Federal Elections, Foreign policy, Howardia, Middle East and Palestine
. 27 Comments

What is, objectively, the greatest threat to Israel’s right to exist?

If you answered Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, Syria, Iran, Tanya Plibersek, Julia Irwin or Trotskyist students, you are wrong. According to Israel Jewish environmentalists and scientists, the correct answer is global warming.

Recognition of this reality casts an interesting light on a report in the latest edition of the Bulletin quoting prominent figures in Australia’s Jewish community expressing concern at supposed anti-Israel sentiment in the Federal ALP and heaping praise on the Federal Coalition government.
Continue reading ‘Save Israel from its friends’

No honour in “honour killings”

Published
by
Darlene
11 months, 2 weeks ago
in Crime, Middle East and Women
. 25 Comments

 

Photo: “Honour killing” victim Banaz Mahmood

Forbidden Lie$ has opened to justifiably rave reviews. It’s a very entertaining film and should have audiences debating over their coffees for a long time to come.  Hopefully, the movie will inspire people to find out more about “honour killings” in Jordan, and elsewhere.  However, the use of the term “honour killings” makes these acts of violence seem almost alien to Westerners, which is patently false.  The religion might be different, but there are many ways perpetrators can feel their “honour” has been slighted.  At least violence against women is (mostly) condemned and punished in this country. What follows are some reports about “honour killings” in Jordan”:

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Culture is not destiny

Published
by
Shaun Cronin
11 months, 3 weeks ago
in Foreign policy, Middle East and Terrorism
. 55 Comments

Samuel Huntington’s 1993 essay, The Clash of Civilizations, is often cited as the current paradigm through which to view international politics especially the so called clash with Islam. Huntington’s article was an attempt to provide a framework by which to understand and anticipate post Cold-War conflict. While the idea of a clash of civilizations seems to be self evident on a cursory examination, the idea that there is a “clash of civilizations” starts to falter upon a closer inspection. The flaws in Huntington’s original conception show the concept to have no utility is describing current patters of conflict.

The Clash of the Civilizations would occur as Western military and economic power grew. There would be resistance to the spread of Western ideals from the other civilizations. Western concepts (such as democracy, liberalism, human rights and liberty for example) to be fundamentally different from the values held by the other civilizations. Efforts to promote such ideals would be met with strong resistance as they would encroach on cultural identity. Huntington also regarded the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations as an enduring and obvious flash point for future conflict.

Huntington’s concept of civilizations is the fulcrum on which his thesis rests. Huntington claimed that:

the great division among humankind and dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nations states will remain the most powerful actors on world affairs, but the principle conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.

Continue reading ‘Culture is not destiny’

This is going to end well

Published
by
Shaun Cronin
1 year ago
in Iran, Middle East, USA and War
. 74 Comments

Crazy president No 1 with plans to extend sphere of influence in the Middle East:

Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere, and the United States is rallying friends and allies to isolate Iran’s regime to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late

Crazy president No 2 with plans to extend sphere of influence in the Middle East:

They know that any action against the Iranian nation would be faced with a proper response

Dangerous provocative act by crazy president No 1’s armed forces:

The Iranian embassy in Baghdad says U.S. troops have freed seven Iranians hours after detaining them at a hotel in the Iraqi capital

An embassy official said the men were handed over to Iraqi authorities early Wednesday morning.

American troops raided Baghdad’s Sheraton hotel late Tuesday and seized the Iranians. Video footage also showed soldiers leaving the hotel with what appeared to be luggage and a laptop computer bag

Of course, crazy president No 2 has already had a go at dangerous provocation.

This is going to end well.

Note: The numerical designations of the crazy presidents is arbitrary. This is not to be taken as an indication of rank presidential craziness as, to be frank, they both seem equally insane.

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War is hell, occupation is worse

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 1 month ago
in Iraq, Middle East, Terrorism and War
. 13 Comments

The Nation brings us a long, detailed investigation of the other war - the effect of the US military’s occupation on the people of Iraq.

It’s not a pretty picture - a combination of jumpy GIs, a fair sprinkling of racists and sadists in the military’s ranks, and the attitude of command that Iraqi deaths were of little concern, it’s impossible not to draw analogies with Apocalypse Now.

Given the anecdotal basis of the report, the self-selection bias of the interviewees, and the presumed motivation of the authors (it’s hard to imagine Laila Al-Irian is keen to give the Bush administration an even break) it’s hard to know how reflective of the overall situation it is. Nevertheless, it’s both disturbing and plausible.

Leaving Iraq The Middle East

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 2 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, History, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Palestine, Politics, USA and War
. 43 Comments

I’ve just finished reading Gwynne Dyer’s The Mess They Made: The Middle East after Iraq:

As Gwynne Dyer argues in The Mess They Made, the Middle East is about to change fundamentally, and everything is now up for grabs: regimes, ethnic pecking-orders within states, even national borders themselves are liable to change without notice. Five years from now there could be an Islamic Republic of Arabia, an independent Kurdistan, a Muslim cold war between Sunnis and Shias, almost anything you care to imagine.

Dyer’s book is important because it’s one of the few books on the topic I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) to really make the effort to place the current conflicts in their long term historical perspective, and to speculate on a future beyond the immediate political and strategic context (although he nevertheless documents the now familiar litany of disasters that has characterised the Iraq War). He does, however, extrapolate from that context to a conclusion which I think is becoming inescapable - much as the Democrats, either through lack of courage or political calculation, might be prepared to maintain US forces in Iraq until the 2008 election, it’s almost certain that the “implosion of public support” for the war will see troops leave when a new President, of either party, is sworn in. Dyer adds his voice to those scholars and analysts who’ve seen the US war in Iraq as a monument to its decline, not a sign of its growing power. Further, he argues that it’s likely that the US will walk away from the Middle East in toto, and he suggests that may not be an undesirable outcome.

Continue reading ‘Leaving Iraq The Middle East’

Sometimes, sarcasm is the only possible response

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 2 months ago
in Disasters, Iraq and Middle East
. 18 Comments

This news headline - Iraq now ranked second among world’s failed states - seems to have left many in the blogosphere lost for words. But as Amanda Marcotte points out, if we don’t talk it up, it can be spun as people not really caring that the whole venture in Iraq is a clusterf*ck.

The Shrub can’t do anything right, can he? As of today, we’ve spent $436,458,000,000 on this adventure war, and still Bush failed to make Iraq the #1 most fucked-up country on the planet. Sudan skidded into first, and I guarantee you, they did it at a fraction of the cost.

Harsh but fair.

Updated: original Failed States report at Foreign Policy.

More bones to pick

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 3 months ago
in Activism, Culture, Developing world, Feminism, Foreign policy, Middle East, Politics, Religion and War
. 333 Comments

I am somewhat aghast that Ayaan Hirsan Ali came to town and our old friend Pamela Bone failed to mention her in her column yesterday. Instead, local Eustonista Bone stuck to a Blairite standard - the wonders of liberal interventionism (soon to be rendered moot, no doubt, as Gordon Brown takes quite a different approach to foreign policy).

Still, the specture of Ali’s work is obviously never far from Bone’s horizon. Ali has been giving interviews in Australia:

“Islam was founded in an Arab desert culture,” she says. “The role that women had at that time in the 7th century was tribal in context. She was there only to reproduce. Women were viewed almost like camels, or perhaps, just as reproductive organs for the tribe.

Bone writes:

To many it is shockingly impolite to suggest that some countries - Western liberal democracies, for example - are better than countries that still operate under rules more appropriate to 7th-century century Arabia.

The biggest two arguments against liberal interventionism are that war is not necessarily a humanitarian intervention, and inevitably has dire consequences for many even if missions “succeed” and that the calls for humanitarian intervention to save people in the name of “universal values” (which are, as Bone concedes, actually Western) are invariably selective. Contrast for instance the current moves in regard to Darfur with the total indifference shown to the Congo where the UN has estimated four million civilian deaths. Writing in The Guardian, Roger Howard hits the nail on the head.

Continue reading ‘More bones to pick’

Blair’s journey

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 3 months ago
in Developing world, Foreign policy, International, Iraq, Middle East, Palestine, Politics, Religion and War
. 15 Comments

Following up on suz’ post about Blair’s retirement intentions.

The Times is reporting that Tony Blair will establish an interfaith foundation. Sounds like he’s trying to put just a bit of distance between him and what Bill Clinton does, while reserving the right to do what Bill does. Anyway, no doubt it’s a worthier project than going to work for Murdoch.

Blair’s often been compared to Gladstone as a liberal internationalist. That’s a bit unfair on Gladstone, who hated war and also laid down some of the earliest markers for international humanitarian law. Blair seems to be the reverse, though with a fair bit of rhetoric laden on to claim otherwise. The commonality, actually, is probably the zealous Christian “civilising mission” attitude - in Blair’s case a very British disease quite unlike Bush’s crazed manicheanism.

Continue reading ‘Blair’s journey’

Ain’t gonna study war no more

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Middle East, Politics, USA and War
. 16 Comments

Very interesting take from Glenn Greenwald on the Israeli commission into the Lebanon war. He doesn’t take the predictable angle of writing about the geostrategic implications of the war, or even what it says for the future of the Olmert government and the broader Middle East. Rather, his concern is with the difference between a society which can subject its own government’s actions to searching criticism during and after a war, and societies where governments routinely lie, deny, and obstruct any such probing, at the very least, when they’re not denouncing it as treasonous and “giving comfort to the enemy”. I think he’s right to suggest that Israel’s attitude to war is far more mature and far more democratic (at least as instanced through this series of events) than that of America or, indeed, Australia. But perhaps that’s because the vast majority of Israelis live with war, as compared to societies where, recently, war is either something that is metaphysical, largely a matter of partisan politics, and only to be fought by volunteer forces largely drawn from socio-economically disadvantaged citizens.

What sacrifices have we, in the West, been asked to make in the cause of wars which we’ve been told are matters of our “existential” future? Precious little, perhaps only our liberties. Certainly the Bush message of “spend and enjoy your tax cuts” after s11 doesn’t connote any sort of national sacrifice. And, to be truthful, most of us white middle class folks know that it’s not our liberties that suffer, and we’ve been reminded of this in hundreds of subtle and not so subtle ways over the last six years.

With sacrifice comes responsibility. As it should accompany danger. We’ve seen, rather, irresponsibility on a grand scale.

Ruddock wants to ban Star Wars

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 4 months ago
in Crime, Howardia, Law, Middle East, Religion and Sydney
. 42 Comments

Well, possibly. HeathG at Catallaxy links to media reports of a new thought bubble from Emperor Palpatine…er…Ruddock to ban material that “advocates terrorist acts”.

In the wake of stories in the Daily Terrorgraph about various Muslim clerics circulating rather inflammatory DVD sermons, it seems Ruddock wants to be seen Doing Something About It. From a doorstop given by Ruddock:

The Commonwealth in its paper outlined how it might proceed to amend the Classification Act. In the discussions today, the State Attorneys have agreed that officers should now – and I might use the words from the actual agreed text –“Ministers agreed to request officers to report back by July on amendments to the Code and Guidelines – that’s the cooperative measure – that could be made to ensure that material that advocates terrorist acts is adequately captured.�
I will put off consideration as to whether there should be any Commonwealth legislation to give officers the opportunity to deal with those issues by incorporating in the Code and if necessary in the Guidelines, provisions that will require the classification body and the Review Board to take into account advocacy. That should be advocacy that deals with, direct and indirect, encouragement of people to carry out terrorist acts.

Let’s see now. As a commenter at Catallaxy points out, V for Vendetta was widely described as “glorifying terrorists”. But there’s plenty more where that came from. Star Wars is a six-movie saga largely devoted to glorifying terrorists. And it’s not just science fiction. How about Michael Collins. For that matter, what about every single American movie about their independence, given that that was arguably viewed as terrorism by the British at the time?

Continue reading ‘Ruddock wants to ban Star Wars’

Iran’s nuclear program “goes industrial” - or not?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 4 months ago
in Foreign policy, Iran, Middle East and Nuclear
. 25 Comments

Prepare for all manner of frothing at the mouth from wingnuts about Iran’s “industrial scale” enrichment program.

Just as a quick primer: like many elements, there are multiple types - isotopes - of uranium. From a chemistry perspective, they all behave identically. However, they weigh slightly different amounts, and of the two that occur naturally (uranium-235 and uranium-238) only the less common uranium-235 can be used directly in a nuclear weapon (uranium-238 can be made into plutonium in a nuclear reactor, though). Enrichment is the process of separating out the uranium-235 for one of two purposes - to make a mix of roughly 5% U-235 and 95% U-238 for use in a nuclear power reactor, or a mix of roughly 90% U-235 and 10% U-238 to make a nuclear bomb. Depending on the sophistication of the design, somewhere between 20 and 60 kilograms of this mix would be required for a bomb.

Because they behave essentially identically in chemical reactions, the main way to separate them is to take advantage of the slight difference in mass, and the standard method of doing so is to atomise the stuff (by making it into a gas) and spinning it in a centrifuge, a little like panning for gold. Iran has been trying to master this very difficult task for some time now, and the guts of their current announcement is that they now have 1,000 of their centrifuge designs going at once, and plan to go to 2 or 3000 soon.

So does this mean that Iran will be making nuclear weapons any time soon? Continue reading ‘Iran’s nuclear program “goes industrial” - or not?’

Provocation

Published
by
suz
1 year, 4 months ago
in Iran, Iraq, Middle East, USA and War
. 56 Comments

I can’t be the only one who thought ‘Sarajevo’ when I first heard of the capture of British sailors by Iran. It had ‘casus belli’ written all over it. But that’s not how things have turned out … so far.

It’s hard to work out the truth about the capture and subsequent release of the sailors. It’s widely assumed in the west that they were manipulated into making their televised apologies while in captivity. Now the Iranians say their retrospective accounts of what happened in Iran have been dictated to them by their military superiors.

It’s no surprise to learn that the US offered to take military action on behalf of Britain in response to the capture - if it had been US sailors, there’d probably be an all-out war now.

That the British wanted the Americans to stay out of it and asked for GWB not to inflame things is notable. No doubt Blair realises that there is no heart in Britain for a war with Iran - as there is no heart for the war in Iraq.

Why then, within a day of the sailors’ release, does Blair make a provocative statement about Iran? Six British soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the past week. Commenting on the death rate, Blair said:

Now it is far too early to say the particular terrorist act that killed our forces was an act committed by terrorists who were backed by any elements of the Iranian regime, so I make no allegation in respect of that particular incident.

“But the general picture, as I said before, is that there are elements, at least, of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming, supporting terrorism in Iraq…

Maybe this is a statement of appeasement towards the Americans, like throwing a bone to a dog. Or maybe Blair is right there with the Americans, chowing down on that Iran-war bone too?

Noam Chomsky has written about Iran in the context of the sharp disconnect between foreign policy as it is pursued by the elite in power in the USA and the wishes of the majority of the population. It’s increasingly clear - if it ever weren’t clear - that what we citizens of western democracies think and want is irrelevant to what our ‘leaders’ are doing in the middle east. It’s impossible to tell what’s gone on behind the scenes in this latest incident and it’s impossible to tell what might eventuate between the US and Iran in the coming weeks.

A bone to pick

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Activism, Feminism, Film, TV, Video etc, Foreign policy, Industrial Relations, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Politics, Religion and War
. 220 Comments

I was tempted to write a riposte to Pamela Bone’s schtick about the alleged betrayal of Islamic women by Western feminists the other day, but in the end I was pretty busy with work and I also decided that I didn’t want to give her the time of (International Women’s) day. It’s probably significant that when a lot could be said about the declining position of women in the workforce here in Australia, the increasing difficulty of finding childcare, and a whole lot of other issues (many of which were covered in tigtog’s Blog against sexism post and the comments thread) that the only thing the Australian found worth publishing on IWD was a left-bashing rant. Shaun took Bone on in a post linking to tigtog’s previous refutation of similar claims by number one feminist of convenience Janet Albrechtsen. But the whole thing was niggling at me. There are two obvious counters to claims (which I think are in fundamentally bad faith, but more on that later) by people like Bone that:

I don’t hold much hope on this International Women’s Day of seeing big protests in Australian cities against female genital mutilation; or against honour killings, stonings, child marriages, forced seclusion or any of the other persecutions to which women are still subjected. The fire of Western feminism has quietly died away, first as a victim of its success, lately as a victim of cultural relativism, of anti-Americanism and reluctance to be seen to be condemning the enemies of the enemy.

The first is that “big protests” tend to be directed at domestic issues. The Iraq War is not an exception - what was at issue was Australian participation. This canard is identical in logic to the slur made by other RWDB columnists - that anti-war Australians didn’t march to protest about Saddam’s human rights abuses. Aside from the fact that neither did any of those columnists or all of the chicken hawks in the blogosphere who like to shriek loudly about this, the claim that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are fought for human rights reasons is just risible. And of course, for those who want to make that claim (and the feminist of convenience argument is rarely made these days about Iraq where women’s rights are under sustained attack), there’s an obligation to reflect on the degree to which military and civil violence against civilians (including many women) advances human rights. As I’m suggesting, women in Australia have a lot on our plate here at home. But I also suspected that the claim that women in the West gave no support to Islamic feminism was a complete furphy. My guess was that about ten minutes’ worth of research in the blogosphere would refute that (op/edders are apparently exempt from the requirement to test their ops against facts). And so it proved to be. Over the fold.

Continue reading ‘A bone to pick’

Unspeakable horrors

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Iraq, Media, Middle East, Palestine, Politics and War
. 18 Comments

There was a very good, but also very disturbing doco on sbs tonight, essentially following the journey of a British reporter through the middle east seeking some answers to what influence warporn propaganda videos made by Jihadists had. Not very much, he found, with many young people in countries like Syria using the net more for cyberdating than consuming the hateful snuff films of Al Qaeda and a host of other Jihadist sects and groups. There was much to reflect on, not least the parallel that the production values and style of the warporn mirrors some of the triumphalist warporn that first started showing on CNN in Gulf War I, and the ubiquity of the use of the technological standards of the intertube generation, Microsoft software and YouTube, for intentions far removed from the utopian dreams of those for whom “information wants to be free”. But the show concluded that it was more the constants of death and destruction on the satellite tv stations rather than the efforts of Jihadists which reinforce the implication of war and everyday life and culture in the middle east. There again there were mirror effects - people ranting and raving at each other on Al-Jazeera in a format straight out of Fox News. Perhaps most confronting were the images of war and children shown on a Syrian satellite tv’s kids program. It’s as if Play School were reporting from the front. But, then, the death of children is a reality in places like Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. One other theme was the diversity of opinion that the interviewees had. All within a particular frame, but then, what else would you expect?

Continue reading ‘Unspeakable horrors’