A modest proposal

Strategist Edward Luttwak has a plan for the Middle East: ignore it, the middle east, to paraphrase a certain president, would benefit from a policy of benign neglect:

 

....

The operational mistake that middle east experts keep making is the failure to recognise that backward societies must be left alone, as the French now wisely leave Corsica to its own devices, as the Italians quietly learned to do in Sicily, once they recognised that maxi-trials merely handed over control to a newer and smarter mafia of doctors and lawyers. With neither invasions nor friendly engagements, the peoples of the middle east should finally be allowed to have their own history—the one thing that middle east experts of all stripes seem determined to deny them.

 

That brings us to the mistake that the rest of us make. We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens. But Saudi Arabia's 27m inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them, leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and labourers: even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.

 

Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand-farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years. Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5m barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia's 8m, yet oil still accounts for 80 per cent of Iran's exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.

 

The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment. According to the UN's 2004 Arab human development report, the region boasts the second lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63 per cent. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17 per cent of exports, compared to a global average of 78 per cent. Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire middle east generated under 4 per cent of global GDP in 2006—less than Germany.

 

Unless compelled by immediate danger, we should therefore focus on the old and new lands of creation in Europe and America, in India and east Asia—places where hard-working populations are looking ahead instead of dreaming of the past.

 

If you ignore Iranian nuclear weapons and 9-11, it might be a plan. Then again...

 

British Journalists' Union Should Focus on "Issues That Matter"

The writer is correct that by focusing on issues that matter to only a few people, the union marginalizes many people who feel differently, and damage the union as a whole. I hope her voice is heard, and the action overturned as quickly as possible.
--Wendy Leibowitz

The NUJ should focus on the issues that matter
The union's call for a boycott of Israeli goods, and for sanctions to be imposed by the UK and UN, is not just divisive, it could seriously damage its reputation

Francis Beckett
Monday April 30, 2007

Guardian

I am a freelance journalist. Not long ago, a contract publishing firm decided it could get away without paying what it owed me. They were wrong. The National Union of Journalists squeezed £5,000 out of them. I could not have done it by myself.

That is an intro I never thought I would get into a newspaper. I can only do it because the NUJ's annual conference has narrowly voted to call for a boycott of Israeli goods, and to "demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations".

This decision - unlike the NUJ's firm intervention on my behalf - won't have the smallest effect on what happens in the world. Anyone who wanted to boycott Israeli goods will do so without the NUJ's encouragement, and no one who was not going to boycott them will feel inclined to do so because it is NUJ policy. Neither the government nor the UN will be stirred into action.

But there is an iron rule in NUJ politics. The amount of time and energy given to an issue is in inverse relation to its effectiveness. I think this is partly because one-issue campaigns tend to target trade unions (though not as much as they used to when the unions were powerful). And it is partly because NUJ members are journalists, a trade in which "interesting" often counts for more than "important".

When I was NUJ president, we voted to support abortion on demand. Pro- and anti-abortion campaigners, most of whom were never heard from on union issues, lined up at annual conferences to fight the battle over and over again. The pros, mostly young and intense, considered anyone who voted against to be advocating Victorian enslavement of women, and any young man wanting a sexual adventure at the conference was careful how he voted. The antis, mostly caricatures of Christian evangelists, considered their opponents to be murderers, and one of them held aloft an aborted foetus she happened to have about her person.

I am sure that not a single mind was changed by our decision. It damaged the union, though, just as the Israel decision will damage it. There will be a few resignations over Israel - not many, but the few who resign will go as noisily as they can, doing as much damage as possible on the way out.

Folk who loathe trade unions are always looking for a chance to say the NUJ attacks free speech and fair reporting, and though this motion does nothing of the kind, it will be presented as though it does.

[snippet]

But the serious damage will not be among the hysterics who foam and froth whenever anyone questions the wisdom and decency of the Israeli government. The real damage will be among thoughtful members who take a different view, and feel strongly about it.

As president, I had to try to defuse the harm that our abortion stand did us among religious folk, despite my support for abortion and my vigorous atheism. It was easy simply to be angry with the parade of priestly self-righteousness I had to listen to, but then a Catholic union activist said to me quietly: "It makes us feel unwelcome and unwanted in our own union."

The NUJ must understand that about Israel too - that there are good union members who feel passionately that Israel is the wronged party in the Middle East. And - to paraphrase John Stuart Mill - those of us who feel differently have no more right to capture our union for our view than they would have the right, if they had the votes, to capture it for theirs.

It is going to require something the NUJ is not famous for: a sense of proportion on both sides.

[snippet]
The motion, apparently, went through with hardly any opposition. The leadership seems to have been asleep; it said nothing, when it should have told delegates that they were about to do something that would harm the union without even helping their cause. If they had done this, the narrow majority in favour would probably have been a majority against. So why not do what members do with other, far more important decisions: go to next year's conference and get the stupid thing reversed.

[snippet]

· Francis Beckett was NUJ president from 1980 to 1981
Read the whole thing at:

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2068243,00.html

Campaign trail

· The NUJ urged members last year to boycott Peugeot Citroën products in an attempt to stop the French car manufacturer from closing its Ryton plant near Coventry. It didn't help and the factory was shut six months early in December with the loss of more than 2,300 jobs.

· The NUJ advises members to avoid Yahoo! in protest at the US internet search company's "repeated collusion" with the Chinese authorities. Yahoo! provided information that helped identify and prosecute several journalists, including Shi Tao, who received a 10-year prison sentence in 2005.

· At its annual delegate meeting, held earlier this month, the NUJ condemned the government's decision to press ahead with a replacement for Trident and instructed its national executive to campaign against any proposals to build nuclear power stations in Britain.

Is a Gaza incursion inevitable? Or even feasible?

IDF Chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi says a Gaza incursion is inevitable. I don't think it will happen. What doesn't happen is not inevitable for sure. Here is what the article states:

 

The only solution to continued Palestinian rocket fire into the western
Negev is to implement a ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, said IDF Chief
of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenzani during Sunday's weekly cabinet
meeting.

But Ashkenazi forgot perhaps, that the Qassam rocket fire started when the IDF was still in Gaza, and that it could not be conrolled then either! Suppose that there is a bloody ground incursion (bloody in both senses) and then 3 months later the Qassam rockets start again? Do we stay in Gaza? What will that look like? Won't we then have the same Qassam rockets we had before, perhaps in larger numbers, plus the same problems of occupation we had before? Qassam rockets can kill, but IDF incursions into Gaza are certainly going to result in a lot more deaths of Israelis. Unless we have the backing of the world for this, those deaths will be in vain. At most they will result in legitimation of the Hamas and Israel will be faced with an angry world that supports the Hamas, no? A smaller "military solution" will only net a few more UN condemnations of Israel.

 

See also: Israel's strategy: Gaza and beyond

 

Ami Isseroff

 

 

 

Syria infliltrating Iraqi Defense Ministry

This is unsurprising if true, but dismaying nonetheless.

Syrian Infiltration of Iraqi Defense Ministry

Washington DC, April 29, 2007/RPS News/ -- Elaph reported today of an impending investigation at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense due to an infiltration of one of its most sensitive divisions dealing with names and addresses of ministry personnel in addition to ministry logistics.

A young blonde lady by the fake name of Shayma'a Mohammad was hired at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense without any background check after she presented her credentials, which included letters of recommendations by known officers working at the ministry. It was not until another ministry official who recognized her from previous experience and who questioned her hiring did the matter explode in public.

Although, Elaph's story does not implicate Syria directly but rather refers to Shyama'a working for the intelligence services of a neighboring country, it reported that Shayma'a and one of the officers who recommended her for the job and who carries a dual citizenship escaped to Syria just before the ministry was able to nab them. The investigation into the full scope of the damage continues because of the sensitivity of the information that Shayma'a was able to have access to, which included amongst other things logistical and operational plans of the Iraqi armed forces.

The Assad regime has been accused on several occasions by the Iraqi and American governments of implicitly supporting the terrorists in the western provinces of Iraq, which have become safe havens for al-Qaeda and Iraqi Ba'athists.

Copyrights © 2003-2007 - Reform Party of Syria (RPS) except where otherwise noted - all rights reserved.

Islamists try to shout down the majority

From Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury in Bangladesh:

Intolerant are the Islamist radicals. They don't want anyone to raise voice and say -enough to the increasing trend of spreading religious hatred and provoking people with the false interpretations of Koran, saying "Jews and Christians are your enemies, go for jihad (holy war) against them". When the Islamofascist clerics openly give sermons saying, "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people", Islamic scholars like Imam Sheikh Abdul Haadi Palazzi, terming the interpretation of this verse of Koran said, "This quotation is based on a false translation, since the word "Awliya'", does not mean "friends", but rather "tutors". A correct translation is "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for tutors. They are respectively tutors to each other. And whoso among you takes them for tutors is indeed one of them. Verily Allah guides not the unjust people".

The verse refers to a time when Islam was developing, and is an appeal to avoid considering it as a sort of sub-sect depending on Judaism or Christianity. "Do not take as tutors" means "Do not depend on them for your understanding of religion, for guidance in theology and ethics, etc." Apart from this, Islam surely does not forbid friendship between Muslims and non-Muslims, to the point that a Muslim man can take a Jewish or a Christian woman as his wife and mother of his children.

Continued here

Lebanon: We know who murdered Ziyad Qabalan and Ziyad Ghandour

The Murderers' Address is Known: Inside Lebanon's Militia Safe Havens and Mini-States
By: Elias Bejjani
LCCC Chairman

27 April/207

The hands of crime and hate that today killed in Lebanon the young men Ziyad Qabalan and Ziyad Ghandour are the hands of treachery, fundamentalism and terrorism. The same hands that are drenched in the blood of the innocent, the proud and the believers in sovereignty among our people. The same hands which, over the decades of the wars of others on Lebanon, targeted all our martyrs among the politicians, journalists, activists and free citizens and members of the clergy.

May the two martyrs rest in peace in the company of those who preceded them, and we ask the Almighty to grant their families and friends all the virtues of patience and consolation and faith. Lebanon and all its honourable and free men were the target of this barbaric and savage crime which, if anything, shows the degree of abjectness and baseness to which the planners and perpetrators and those behind them have sunken.

The purpose behind this massacre crime is clear: To sow the seed of strife among the Lebanese communities and disseminate a state of security anarchy in the country, in order to obstruct the rise of a strong, unified, and legitimate State, a free, sovereign and independent State that is self-reliant on its own institutions and armed forces, and the elimination of the authority, weapons and influence of the militias and their mini-states and security zones, as well as their culture of hatred and violence, the rejection of others and their fundamentalism.

The responsibility for this crime and any ramifications that may ensue lies squarely on the leaders and politicians of the militias who are trying by force, blackmail and threats to prevent the State from spreading its legitimate authority with its own armed forces over every inch of Lebanese soil. They are the same ones who stand today in the way of implementing the international resolutions and the control of the borders with Syria to deny the smuggling of weapons and infiltrators into Lebanon.

We urge everyone to display patience and have faith, to remain committed to the Lebanese State and its legitimate institutions, and not be dragged into the trappings of internecine strife and infighting. We call on the security forces of the army and police to shoulder their responsibilities and uncover the criminals and hand them over to justice. We from the Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council (LCCC) strongly condemn this crime and join our voice to those who rely on the Almighty to guide us on the right path.

*Elias Bejjani
Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC)
Human Rights activist, journalist & political commentator.
Spokesman for the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF)
E.Mail phoenicia@hotmail.com
LCCC Web Site http://www.10452lccc.com

CLHRF Website http://www.clhrf.com

 

Al-Jazeerza Confab Draws a Minyan of Jews

It's a shame that no Israeli journalists were invited, or chose to attend, the Al-Jazeera forum. (Though imagine the fun for an Israeli to try to get a visa to Doha.) Still, the presence of Jewish journalists is at least a start towards ending the anti-Jewish diatribes that fill, say, much of the official Palestinian media. I did not know that Al-Jazeera's English version had so many subscribers in English!--Wendy in Washington

Doha, Qatar - Some participants at the third-annual forum of the Arab satellite network Al Jazeera were sorry they didn't bring matzo with them — had they known how many fellow Jews were attending the media conference, they would have made a Passover Seder.

[snippet]
Ethan Zuckerman, whose wife is a Reform rabbi, said that he had originally planned to hold a Seder in Doha. "I told my wife, and she wrote me a two-page Haggadah," he said, shortly after speaking on a panel on Internet and the media. "But I didn't bring the matzo."

The Jewish participants were by no means relegated to the sidelines.

[snippet]

The relatively high number of Jewish academics, journalists and media experts who attended the event stood in stark contrast to the view in some circles that the network is anti-Jewish and anti-Western. Some critics have gone so far to brand it "Osama Bin-Laden's TV Network," a name which Al Jazeera executives say comes from the Bush administration and conservative American television commentators.

The general atmosphere at the event was open and friendly among Arab and Western participants. "If there is any antisemitism lurking around here, it hasn't been directed at me," said Danny Schechter in a heavy New York accent. "They make a distinction between U.S. or Israeli policy and religion."

Schechter, vice president of Globalvision, a documentary film production company, said that he attended the event because "in the post-9/11 world it is imperative to understand what people think and this forum provides the opportunity to mingle, discuss and even to get into arguments."

Like many other participants, his main criticisms were that few women participated and panel discussions were not engaging enough. Indeed, whether dressed in sharp suits and ties or starched white floor-length dishdashas and white head coverings, the well-heeled forum panelists mostly agreed with each other. If anything, it appeared that some of the Al Jazeera moderators were avoiding conflict.
[snippet]

Several of the top employees at the network's English operation are Jewish: [David] Marash and his wife Amy work in the Washington bureau with an Israeli-American producer, and former BBC journalist Tim Sebastian moderates the televised monthly Doha Debates.

Al Jazeera has been harshly criticized in the West for providing airtime to terrorists like Osama bin Laden, but it notes that American networks borrowed that material. It was also the first Arabic network to give Israelis air time. "Al Jazeera was seriously attacked by Arabs — Islamist, nationalist, and even governments like Saudi Arabia — for inviting Israeli journalists and government officials to present their point of view," Atwan said.

Despite the network's declared dedication to openness, not one member of the Israeli media was present at the forum, even though the Israeli YES satellite carrier pushed BBC Prime off air to make room for Al Jazeera English, which already boasts of having 500,000 homes viewing in Israel. The absence of Israelis was particularly noticeable given the theme of this year's event: "Media and the Middle East, Beyond the Headlines."

"I don't know the reasons no Israeli journalists attended, but I think there is a general attitude of talking about peace with Israel but not talking to Israel," said Yoav Stern, the Arab Affairs correspondent of the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

"I think it's a pity," said Stern, who is frequently interviewed in Arabic on Al Jazeera. "I know that Al Jazeera specifically can make pioneering decisions in this regard, because it has credibility and trust from its viewers."

Full text in the Forward, at: http://www.forward.com/articles/al-jazeera-gathering-draws-a-full-minyan-to-heart/