Meticulous Clarity!

BBC The World Tonight Panel at Chatham House

2011-03-27T09:38:00.000+01:00

Listen here: http://cr2p.info/Davis140311WorldTonight.mp3

BBC 1 The Big Questions

2011-03-27T09:36:00.001+01:00

Watch here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/zv37p/

Frontline Panel on The Middle East Revolutions

2011-03-27T09:34:00.001+01:00

Israel and the New British Government

2010-05-30T00:41:00.001+01:00

From the Algemeiner.

“The only way it may get better is if a Conservative government comes into power”.

Sitting in a Tel-Aviv café with one of Israel’s leading political journalists last year, rehashing the by now usual laments over Britain’s role as a hub for anti-Israel agitation, I was quick to disabuse him of this popular notion formed from afar.

Britain’s problem with Israel – perhaps more accurately defined as a problem with Zionism – is nestled deeply within pockets of civil society, where imported grievances mingle with ancient prejudices and very (post) modern ideas in a heady and increasingly dangerous mix that touches almost every raw nerve today’s fierce geopolitical climate exposes. As with my Israeli friend’s judgement though, this issue often looks very different from afar than it does up close. Above all, its complexities are mostly immune to government intervention.

Still, though the academics may tangle over the exact extent of the ‘State’ in the age of the NGO, Parliament does of course matter a great deal. It retains the monopoly on diplomacy and has immense power to amplify voices in the domestic debate regarding Israel.

The many column inches that filled the UK Sunday papers after the first full week of our surreal new political reality belie the fact that it is not yet possible to tell how the sudden harmony between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties will play out. What is clear, on account of the UK’s dire fiscal position, is that the economy will dominate politics for the foreseeable future - to the detriment of everything but the most pressing foreign policy crises.

That said, with Iran’s nuclear programme marching steady ahead, Syria transferring rockets to Hizballah with impunity and Hamas rule in Gaza, it is unfortunately highly likely that Israel will be a central player in some of the diplomatic – or worse – crises the new government will have to take a position or even play a role in.

So what are the attitudes of the new coalition to Israel?

There are many Conservative MPs who truly understand Israel’s plight, not least in the constellation of British foreign policy challenges in the twenty first century, and this is likely to manifest itself most prominently when it comes to policy on Iran – which as expected looks immediately sound.

That said, there are persistent murmurs about long standing advisers around the new Foreign Secretary William Hague lacking an appreciation for Israel’s dilemmas, not helped by his famously declaring her 2006 war with Lebanon as “disproportionate”. Whether this characterisation of the new Foreign Secretary and his team is fair or not remains to be seen, but one would hope that when he trots out the now tired line of the ‘critical friend’ he really does place the emphasis on the latter.

One key test of Parliamentary attitudes to Israel will come with renewed efforts to revise the law on universal jurisdiction under which former IDF staff and Israeli politicians have been prevented from visiting the UK for fear of arrest. Conservatives sympathetic to Israel have indicated that this will indeed be accomplished, but the proof is in the pudding.

Alas, here we come to the influence the Liberal Democrat coalition partners could bear. Many of their members are openly hostile to the Jewish state on a platform apparently borrowed from some of the less nuanced NGOs. Coupled to occasional sentiments expressed in private and in public bordering on - or in some prominent cases clearly constituting - antisemitism, there is ample scope for friction on the issue of Israel. Expect strong words from the Lib Dem benches, though it remains to be seen how much scope for action they will have. Early indications are that foreign policy has seen few concessions from Conservative principles in the frantic negotiations towards a coalition. In light of the Lib Dems' track record this will give comfort to Israeli diplomats.

Israel, right or wrong, remains at the heart of the preeminent global foreign policy faultline. From that perspective, it is clear that the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem will rightly count 10 Downing street as a good friend. But don't expect there to be much time, or in some cases love, for Israel when looking out from the Palace of Westminster onto voters at home and troops abroad.

My Op-Ed Debut

2010-02-14T17:29:00.001+01:00

...I give you my debut. Short and sharp, some things are just straight forward. The kinds of things where mincing your words doesn't so much reveal sophistication but at best misguidedness and at worst a desire for abdication. Where people espouse the popular, feel-good notions not because they will protect us from evil, but as a way of fudging responsibility to confront it. The Mullahs must go. And y'all should rejoice in the fact that you live somewhere where you are free to use Blogger to say so! So many people don't.

Published at Standpoint, reprinted below:

ONLINE ONLY: Regime Change. Nothing Else
DAVIS LEWIN
January/February 2010

U.S. Iran policy under Barack Obama has been a predictable, costly failure in strategic terms - and indefensible in moral ones: To see the President of the United States of America - the beacon of freedom and its defence in international affairs - stand at the podium during the initial post-election unrest and make equivocating noises in the face of Iran's modern-day blackshirts on motorbikes was very, very bitter.

If American values were not sufficiently compelling, if moral clarity had become obscured by sheer hope, perhaps the sight of the Iranian people literally shouting from the rooftops should have been enough to give rousing support to the ‘greens' taking to the streets in their thousands - fully aware that they face beatings, rape and murder. President Obama has the world on the end of a microphone, yet his soaring rhetoric suddenly eluded him: This was the red telephone ringing, not at 3am but in broad daylight. And he failed to pick up.

Let it be clear then that there must be no more illusions about the Mullahs. It is not good enough for Richard Haass to change his mind now, not good enough for the administration to sharpen its tongue so late. Regime change has always been the only solution to the crisis - a 30 year crisis brought on by all that the murderous, dictatorial Iranian theocratic elite stands for.

To call for regime change is neither simplistic nor imperial. For those of us blessed with freedom, it is a mere resignation to hard truth in the face of oppressive evil. For those Iranians with their throats under the boot of the Basij - the mothers, fathers and children choking on Khomeini's self-serving fantasies - it is bravery beyond what we could know.

No deal must be struck with the Mullahs. The Islamic regime's hegemonic desires will not be allayed by treaty, and the West must never betray the people of Iran by legitimising the very leaders they are - in too many cases literally - dying to shake off.

A question remains only over the means, not the necessity. Regime change is the only option to deliver the change the Iranian people both desire and deserve.

Iran needs America's help to achieve change its sons and daughters can believe in.

Davis Lewin is a Senior Resident Fellow at The Henry Jackson Society (www.henryjacksonsociety.org)

Frontline Panel: Barack Obama's Foreign Policy One Year On (Hint: Awful!)

2010-01-24T23:04:00.001+01:00

Israeli Rowing Team?

2010-01-19T22:51:00.000+01:00

A Little Musical Interlude...

2009-04-15T00:34:00.001+01:00

Who is behind the Mumbai attacks?

2008-11-30T18:48:00.005+01:00

So far, from initial reports, it appears that despite their denial, Lashkar-e-Taiba may be behind the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The group is well known and considered one of the most potent operating from Pakistan controlled Kashmir. At least one of the London bombers of 7/7 had trained with them, and they were responsible for a previous bomb attack on the Indian Parliament.

Crucial in the coming days, to the extent that this has the potential for serious escalation, will be the extent to which the known cooperation, or at least acquiescence, between elements of Pakistan's notorious ISI security service and the terrorist group has been in carrying out this atrocity. It is no secret that such cooperation exists, and it is certainly, given the scale of terror, a casus belli for India. Mark Mazzeti for the New York times is reliable and as usual has an excellent piece on the state of affairs.

More on Lashkar-e-Taiba can be found here: At the BBC for a general overview, and at the South Asia Terrorism Portal for an Indian view.

Posted below is a brief description from the ADL:

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistani-based Islamic terrorist organization, seeks to drive out Indian security forces from the disputed Jammu and Kashmir regions of South Asia and establish an Islamic caliphate. Various intelligence services consider LET to be one of the most dangerous Islamic militant groups operating in Kashmir. Known for its expertise in suicide bombing and conventional assault tactics, LET has carried out many deadly attacks, including a raid on the Indian Parliament in 2002, which killed 14. Although the organization stopped claiming responsibility for attacks after it was ostensibly banned by Pakistan in 2002, Indian authorities have arrested many LET operatives in connection with attacks in the region. The group was founded in the late 1980’s with the help of the Pakistani government (which also opposes the Indian presence in Kashmir) as the armed wing of the Markaz al-Dawa wa al-Irshad, an Islamic social welfare group. LET, which was also inspired by Osama bin Laden, continues to maintain close ties with Al Qaeda. Intelligence services have discovered that, before its camps were destroyed by the United States in 2001, Al Qaeda frequently hosted and trained LET operatives. Conversely, since the destruction of those camps, LET has hosted Al Qaeda trainees and other Islamic militants, including Shahzad Tanweer, one of the suicide bombers in the July 7, 2005 London Underground attack, according to British authorities. Additionally, senior Al Qaeda leaders, such as Abu Zubeida have been arrested at LET compounds.

Office Bloopers - Pure Hilarity

2008-11-29T23:52:00.000+01:00

Mithal Al-Alusi Acquitted!

2008-11-24T17:33:00.003+01:00

Mithal Al-Alusi, whom I had the pleasure of looking after on a lightning visit to the UK last week, is nothing less than exhilarating in his calm but unshakable defense of the forces of sanity and conciliation in the face of a brutal totalitarianism in the name of Islam that has claimed two of his sons. I shall write more on him just as soon as I get some time. In the meantime, he was confident he would win, and he did. A small but highly significant gain in the struggle over the new Iraq. And an ominous warning in heeding the danger emanating from the Islamic regime in Tehran.

Iraqi MP acquitted for Israel trip

Nov. 24, 2008
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST

An Iraqi MP prosecuted for visiting Israel where he attended a conference at the International Institute for Counterterrorism was acquitted on Monday.

In September, Mithal al-Alusi's fellow lawmakers had voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for visiting an enemy state - a crime punishable by death under a 1950s-era law.

Nevertheless, an Iraqi court ruled that there was no explicit law against visiting Israel.

"There is no law preventing any Iraqi from traveling to any country," Alusi's lawyer Tariq Harb told Reuters. "Alusi will regain all his rights."

Because he had visited Israel, many Iraqis assume Alusi was the real target of assassins who killed his sons in 2005, while he escaped unharmed.

Alusi has a German passport, allowing him to travel without visa restrictions imposed on other Iraqis. Lawmakers accused him of humiliating the nation with a trip to the 'enemy' state.

He said he went to Israel to seek international support for Iraq as it struggles against terrorism, and insisted that the outcry reflects Iranian meddling in Iraq's internal affairs - an accusation often leveled by Sunnis like himself against Iraq's mostly Shi'ite neighbor.

Alusi, 55, has a long history of clashes with authority and has spent half his life in exile.
He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1976 - he was studying in Cairo at the time - for allegedly trying to undermine Saddam Hussein. He went to Syria and Germany, returning in 2003 after the dictator was overthrown.

Even in exile, he caused a commotion, leading a group that stormed the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin in 2002 to protest against Saddam's regime. A German court convicted him of hostage-taking and other charges, but he appealed and never served his full sentence of three years.

In 2004, he was expelled from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress for his earlier visit to Israel, also for a terrorism conference.

In February 2005 came the ambush. Asad Kamal al- Hashimi, a former culture minister in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death last month on charges he planned it. Hashimi remains a fugitive.

After his expulsion from the Iraqi National Congress, Alusi formed the Iraqi Nation Party, which he has described as a "liberal, secular and democratic party" with 12,000 members.

Amir Oren on an Obama ME policy

2008-11-23T14:38:00.003+01:00

I had the pleasure of being hosted by Amir at his house when I was in Israel last. He is one of the most salient commentators in Israel, and I suspect as far as it is possible to discern during the interregnum, he is correct. Click here to read his article on Haaretz.com.

Peres at Oxford

2008-11-23T12:49:00.001+01:00

Commentary from Flesh is Grass and the JC.

Joseph Joffe on an Obama Middle East envoy

2008-11-23T10:52:00.006+01:00

As ever, Joffe is a cut above. As part of a discussion on the Harvard Middle East Strategy blog on persons who may qualify as a new Middle East envoy, he says:

First, forget the usual suspects like Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright or the likes of James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. The only American of weight who understands the duplicities and obsessions of the Middle East is Henry Kissinger. The handicap of his age can be turned into an advantage. Tell the players to come to New York, since Henry can’t shuttle as he used to in 1974. They’ll behave better than in Ramallah or Jerusalem.

But is it wise to appoint an envoy? The Middle East is like Detroit and General Motors: There is no solution, but any American administration has to act as if there were, as if yet another bout of shuttling or another $25 billion will make GM competitive with Toyota. And so with the Middle East.

First of all, the so-called core of the problem, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has never been less at center-stage than it is now. It is dwarfed by the struggle for hegemony that pits Iranian ambitions (with Hamas and Hezbollah in tow) against the United States, Israel and the Sunni regimes. This is the central strategic issue. This is where, short of war, coalitions must be harnessed and containment strategies be organized. This is where regional conflict threatens to spill into the global arena. On that enlarged stage, extending from the Levant to Tehran, the Israeli-Palestinian issue has shrunk to almost negligible dimensions, which do not require the bulk of America’s attention and resources.

Moreover, there is no two-state solution at hand because neither party actually wants one. Why such a counter-intuitive judgement? Israel has learned that it cannot relinquish strategic control over the West Bank, given the sorry aftermath of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. It is “never again,” even if a deal could be struck with Mahmoud Abbas, as it could not with Hamas. No imaginable Palestinian Authority can at this point assure a no-threat West Bank; hence, Israel cannot leave.

Nor does Abu Mazen have an interest in seeing the Israelis leave. For it is the IDF that guarantees not only his political, but his physical survival. This is a heartening irony—Israel protecting a Palestinian president. But there is no Palestinian state in this surprising twist of history.

Perhaps one day, Marwan Barghouti, currently in an Israeli jail for multiple murders, could acquire the leadership status that would allow him to prevail against Hamas and rule the West Bank, perhaps even Gaza, with an iron hand. But the time scale is askew here. “Envoy time” is measured in months, the evolution toward a new and stable political order in the lands of the Palestinian Authority should be measured in years—many years.

Spot on.

Declinism, The Box Set

2008-11-05T01:39:00.006+01:00

A fantastic essay from the current edition of the highly recommended World Affairs Journa l

Is America finished? Respected public intellectuals, think tank theorists, and members of the media elite seem to think so. The scare headline in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story by Parag Khanna titled “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony” asks, “Who Shrunk the Superpower?” Almost daily, learned authors proclaim The End of the American Era, as the title of a 2002 book by Charles Kupchan put it, and instruct us that the rise of China and India, the reawakening of Putin’s Russia, and the expansion of the European Union signal a profound shift in geopolitical power that will retire once and for all the burden of American Exceptionalism. America has become an “enfeebled” superpower, according to Fareed Zakaria in his book, The Post-American World, which concedes that, while the U.S. will not recede from the world stage anytime soon, “Just as the rest of the world is opening up, America is closing down.” With barely contained satisfaction, a French foreign minister says of America’s standing, “The magic is over . . . It will never be as it was before.”

The United States does contend with serious problems at home and abroad, but these prophecies of doom, which spread like a computer virus, hardly reflect a rational appraisal of where we stand. Moreover, it is not too difficult to see the ghosts of declinism past in the current rush to pen America’s epitaph. Gloomsayers have been with us, after all, since this country’s founding.

Click here for the full article

The IDF on Facebook

2008-04-24T10:04:00.003+01:00

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Israeli jailed for Facebook photo

Quite right too!! As an Iranian at the very top of that evil regime told me not long ago: we had the agricultural civilisation, then the industrial one, and now the digital one...

So let's get with the programme (pun intended).

Don't these kids know that Hizballah and Hamas are online?? (The terrorist rocketeers are particularly fond of Google Earth...)

Sounds silly, but just as the Iranians got the picture, and are putting the money where the bytes are, several of the most militant Palestinians I know are getting or have degrees in computer science.

Alas, let's all remember who the macdaddy of the intel chip, IBM storage solution and countless other 'digital civilization' stuff is. That's right. Where do you think all those guys in Israel's 'Silicon Wadi' learnt their skills? Not all the soldiers are guarding the fence...

Throw away your computer!!! It supports the occupation!!!!

Oh, and naturally Ahmadinejad was mistranslated...

PS: Note the misleading headline. "Israeli Jailed for Facebook Photo" reads like "Syria blocks Facebook (if not worse - jailed for Facebook!!??), yet, you couldn't get online for all the bandwidth in the world in Damascus, whilst in Israel you are evidently so free to do it as to be able to jeopardise National Security...

When Government branding goes wrong...

2008-04-24T09:51:00.000+01:00

HERE - (Daniel Finkelstein's Times Online Blog)

The re-launched World Affairs Journal

2008-04-16T08:53:00.002+01:00

The re-launched World Affairs journal is shaping up to be very promising. Of the many articles I could have chosen, this one from the launch issue resonates particularly strongly. Highly recommended. I'll write more about it soon. Be sure to click through to the homepage.

Bush and Iran, Again

2008-04-16T08:46:00.001+01:00

April 15, 2008; Page A18 - The Wall Street Journal

The Bush Administration is once again pointing to Iran as the source of trouble in Iraq, and rightly so judging by all the evidence. Note to the White House: The Iranians aren't likely to stop unless the U.S. starts doing something about it.

Iran has long funneled men and materiel to insurgents and provided safe havens across the border. But now the Administration is saying that Tehran's "malign" influence has reached a new level. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus told Congress last week that Iranian-supplied rockets have attacked the Green Zone in Baghdad, while Iranian-armed Shiites battled the Iraqi government in the Basra offensive. As General Petraeus put it, this Iranian meddling is a danger to U.S. troops and "the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq."
[David Petraeus]

At a Friday press conference, Mr. Crocker added that Tehran is also developing "proxy" militias in Iraq that "are really instruments of the Iranian government" by way of the Revolutionary Guard. General Petraeus described these "special groups" as "funded, trained, armed and directed by" Iran. He testified that the U.S. has uncovered weapons caches from Iran and detained "senior leaders" of Iranian-supported groups who described how they "move to and from Iran, where they are trained, indoctrinated, how they're funded, [and] how they bring weapons and so forth into the country."

And don't take only their word for it. In a recent interview with a newspaper in Qatar, an Iraqi Sunni insurgent vented about Iran's support for al Qaeda in Iraq. "We found Iranian [currency] at an al Qaeda headquarters that we uncovered," Ahmad Salal al-Din told Al-Arab, as translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. "We have also captured Iranian weapons, not to mention audio and video recordings containing announcements by al Qaeda fighters that they had received training in Iranian military camps and that al Qaeda wounded were being transported to Iran for medical treatment."

These tactics will be familiar to anyone who has followed Iran's history in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, backed by Iran, is trying to bring down the elected government. Or in Gaza, where Iran's Revolutionary Guard trains and equips Hamas. "Iran is pursuing, as it were, a 'Lebanonization' strategy," Mr. Crocker told Congress, "using the same techniques they used in Lebanon, to co-opt elements of the local Shia community and use them as basically instruments of Iranian force."

This is all remarkable enough – a mountain of evidence that Iran is waging a proxy war against U.S. troops and our allies in Iraq. Still more remarkable, and depressing, is that most of Washington has reacted with a collective "So what?" It's as if it's understood that the mullahs can kill Americans and get away with it. Part of the fault here lies with the Bush Administration, which has previously spoken up about Iran only to shrink from doing anything about it.

Meanwhile, last week Tehran announced it has begun installing another 6,000 centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment complex. After five years of deferring to Europe and the United Nations to keep Iran from going nuclear, President Bush's diplomacy has reached an embarrassing dead end.

So: Iran is contributing to the death of GIs, is arming our enemies in Iraq, and is proceeding to ignore the world by enriching uranium for a nuclear weapon. Is the Bush Administration merely going to slink out of office with that legacy?

Deadly Cowards

2008-04-11T09:00:00.003+01:00

...a lecture worth of material for your lefty Media Studies tutor right here!!

Appaling Swiss

2008-04-04T16:12:00.004+01:00

Somebody Stop Calmy-Rey

By ROGER KÖPPEL (From today's Wall Street Journal Europe)April 4, 2008

ZURICH

Switzerland is seen as harmless and boring, at best a site for conferences, banking and skiing. The Confederation, as its founders intended, is supposed to keep out of big-time politics. This neutrality has not always been heroic, but generally wise and proper for a small country.

Since taking office nearly six years ago, Social Democratic Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has preached and practiced a break with this past. What critics at first dismissed as the annoying activism of a naive self-promoter has become a threat to Swiss interests.

The embarrassing low point in a chain of clumsy gestures and mistakes was Ms. Calmy-Rey's recent appearance in Tehran, where she was photographed, smiling and wearing a headscarf, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The photo was gratefully registered by the mullahs as a propaganda coup for the ostracized theocracy. Although Ms. Calmy-Rey claims she harshly criticized the president for his policies, such as stoning adulterers, the prevailing impression was that she let herself be manipulated as a useful idiot by a brutal regime.

What's more, Ms. Calmy-Rey was in Iran for the signing of a $20 billion gas deal, which rightly caused displeasure in the U.S. Washington requested a copy of the contract. The agreements might violate the U.S. Iran Sanctions Act and the United Nations' sanctions against Tehran. If so, this would be a diplomatic embarrassment for Switzerland, to say the least.

It is wrong to see the minister's lapses as the result of a clever master plan. The reality is more banal and more dangerous. Ms. Calmy-Rey acts by instinct, erratically, emotionally, without any strategic framework. What she argues today with the greatest sincerity is no longer of interest tomorrow. The aim is not lasting effectiveness, but media effect.

In 2003, the camera-hungry Social Democrat walked across the North Korean border in red sneakers to make a statement that no one understood. In the same year at the Davos World Economic Forum, she almost violently thrust herself upon then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to read him the riot act about the impending Iraq war. Her foreign policy actions are reminiscent of the student movement's agit-prop methods: much moral indignation and narcissism, little realism. Ms. Calmy-Rey calls it "active neutrality." Critics speak of "finger wagging" and "emotion diplomacy."

Ms. Calmy-Rey wants to turn Switzerland into a moral superpower. It is a morality, however, that is firmly anchored in the left-liberal mainstream that seems to have lost its moral compass. She shares the aversion of Europe's general public toward the U.S. and Israel. There is an emotional resentment of globalization and a belief against all evidence that, in the end, only broad-based development aid can improve the lives of the poor.

It was only logical then that Ms. Calmy-Rey would recommend the old socialist Jean Ziegler, of all people, as a human rights adviser to the United Nations. The controversial co-founder of the "Moammar Gadhafi Human Rights Prize" is a friend of Fidel Castro and an advocate of Hugo Chávez and naturally an unmerciful critic of "American imperialism" and Israel. Switzerland was also the only European country to vote in favor of last month's one-sided anti-Israel resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Ms. Calmy-Rey has a natural talent for alienating Switzerland's most reliable partners.

It is a miracle that her most disastrous act so far went almost unnoticed. In December 2006, she received an Iranian delegation for talks on the nuclear program. To the horror of her closest colleagues, she came up with the idea of improving relations by holding a "seminar on differing perceptions of the Holocaust." One must understand the enormity of this: Ms. Calmy-Rey suggested a debate in Switzerland with Iranian Holocaust deniers on whether the murder of six million Jews actually happened. Fortunately, nothing came of this idea. It would not only have been outrageous, but also illegal, since genocide denial is a crime in Switzerland. She is isolated in the government, and her colleagues seem to grow more skeptical. But they do not speak out openly against her.

To avoid any misunderstanding, Ms. Calmy-Rey is no Holocaust denier, and is undoubtedly against Iran's nuclear weapons program. But the episode makes clear the carelessness with which the foreign minister risks her country's reputation for the sake of public appeal. Her "active neutrality" threatens to destroy neutrality through sheer, usually misguided, activism.

Most important, it's counterproductive. The point of the talks with Iran was to convince the mullahs to make their nuclear plans transparent. Instead, the regime in Tehran gained time and a positive image through the contact. The problem is that Ms. Calmy-Rey is forcing a foreign policy role on Switzerland that the small country cannot and should not play. This new, wrong-headed visibility harms Switzerland and causes international confusion. The very fact that Swiss foreign policy has become an issue at all is evidence enough that Ms. Calmy-Rey must be stopped.

Mr. Köppel is owner and chief editor of the Swiss weekly "Die Weltwoche." Belinda Cooper translated this essay from the original German.

Iran being Iran...

2008-03-24T17:06:00.001+01:00

Here and Here

Evil is not neutral

2008-03-23T16:56:00.001+01:00

Haaretz Editorial

Two of the most prominent personages today in the global arena, who visited Israel last week, spoke clearly and lucidly against the Iranian danger. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential frontrunner, agree that the Islamic Republic in Tehran is a genuine threat to the security of Israel, the Middle East and even beyond.

Through its attempts to procure nuclear weapons and its declared ambition to destroy Israel, its active support of Hezbollah and Hamas and its incitement of American forces in Iraq, Iran has proved to be a power that is actively undermining worldwide stability. The international community is obligated to work to stop Iran before it causes a major conflagration.

Even those who warn against Iran agree that the use of military force against it should be a last resort. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, have made it clear to Tehran that it will not succeed in driving a wedge between them - despite Chinese and Russian reservations about a military operation. They have also signaled to Iran that a diplomatic failure will only serve to strengthen those calling for an offensive.

Merkel, perhaps the most prominent European leader today, is initiating an international conference to discuss the issue. McCain, who will be running in November against the Democratic Party candidate, has dropped signals that should cause Iran's leaders to lose sleep at night: Although President George W. Bush is about to retire, it is quite possible that the next administration will maintain a policy of continuity on the issue of Iran.

In recent months the Bush administration scored two own goals in the complex game against Iran: the National Intelligence Estimate, which determined that Iran had ceased its nuclear planning in 2003, and the public rift with Admiral William Fallon, the commander of Centcom, who objected to Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney's "saber rattling." Of no avail were all the belated excuses of the intelligence report's authors, who claimed it was not their intention to make light of the Iranian danger, but only to point out that external pressure influences decisions in Iran, and that in the two most important channels - the production of nuclear material for warheads and the development of ground-to-ground missiles meant to carry them - Iran is growing stronger.

Fallon, who was forced to resign, depicted Bush and Cheney as warmongers and weakened their standing, although his main intention was internal: a warning that the U.S. Army is stretched to the limit because of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new situation created in the wake of the intelligence report and Fallon's statements prepared the ground for negative developments, such as Switzerland's wooing of Iran ahead of a gas deal. Switzerland's behavior is disgraceful. This country, which boasts of its neutrality, stood on the sidelines when the continent on which it is located was torn apart in a world war between Adolf Hitler's forces of darkness and Winston Churchill's forces of light. Now it is exercising its neutrality in the struggle between Iran - which openly favors the destruction of Jews in their own country - and Israel and the free world, which are trying to foil the plot.

Sixty years after the establishment of the State of Israel, Switzerland is closing its eyes to what is so clear to Merkel and McCain. The Swiss have to be aware: Evil is not neutral, and there can be no neutrality exercised toward it. Anyone who is not against it is perforce in favor of it.

Switzerland's Broken Moral Compass

2008-03-21T15:12:00.001+01:00

UN Watch - its outstanding other work aside - has consistently exposed Jean Ziegler's appaling record - which, frankly, speaks for itself.

The Swiss nomination of Ziegler, coupled to its recently signed 20 billion euro deal with Iran, is an indication that the country's respectful image, which has given it a seat at the heart of international diplomatic activity, is undeserved in light of a continually flawed moral compass in its own policy making.

Firefox 3 Beta 4

2008-03-19T09:42:00.003+01:00

If you like browsing the web fast - and I mean fast - download this. Whilst it is a beta - and admittedly one of the few pages it doesn't render correctly is my blog - it is hands down and by some way the fastest browser I have ever used. Unbelievable difference. I used to only go with Opera, especially since Firefox got so bloated and started playing up. But this is really quite something. I hate waiting for pagers to render. Now it's like I upgraded my connection...

Nice! Try it...

Lessing is ace...

2008-03-19T09:33:00.002+01:00

"Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born."
-- Doris Lessing
"The Golden Notebook"

READ THIS!

Hillel Neuer of UN Watch on Darfur

2008-03-19T09:17:00.001+01:00

This is as excellent as I've come to expect...

Irresolution on Iran

2008-03-07T13:28:00.000+01:00

March 7, 2008; Page A14 - The Wall Street Journal

The Bush Administration is hailing as a diplomatic triumph Monday's 14-0 Security Council resolution further sanctioning Iran for its nuclear programs. For its part, Tehran calls the U.N. action "worthless," and unfortunately the Iranians are closer to the mark.

For a resolution in the making for a year, it turns out to be an astonishingly hollow document. It adds a handful of names to the list of Iranians who are subject to travel bans and asset freezes. It calls on states to exercise "vigilance" in dealing with two Iranian banks -- Melli and Saderat -- implicated in Iran's nuclear programs, but falls short of sanctioning them. And it allows states to inspect Iranian-bound cargoes suspected of transporting prohibited items, but only if those cargoes are being moved by Iran's national air and shipping lines. Good luck enforcing that.

This is all the more remarkable given what the U.N.'s own inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are saying about Iran -- that is, the evidence on which the Security Council based its decision. In a report released late last month, the IAEA focuses on what it calls "alleged studies" Iran conducted on nuclear weapons development. For example, it notes Iranian studies of the "schematic layout of the contents of the inner cone of a re-entry vehicle," which the IAEA assesses "as quite likely to be able to accommodate a nuclear device."

Elsewhere, the report states that "during the meetings of 3-5 February 2008, the Agency made available documents for examination by Iran and provided additional technical information related to: the testing of high voltage detonator firing equipment; the development of an exploding bridgewire detonator (EBW); the simultaneous firing of multiple EBW detonators; and the identification of an explosive testing arrangement that involved the use of a 400 [meter] shaft and a firing capability remote from the shaft by a distance of 10 km, all of which the Agency believes would be relevant to nuclear weapon R&D."

Iran insists the documents are "fabricated," presumably by the Zionist conspiracy. Yet last week, IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen gave a technical briefing to IAEA member states in which he noted that the information on Iran "came from multiple member states and covered a wide range of activities," according to a U.S. official familiar with the briefing. The official added that Iran "was first confronted with questions on these weaponization activities in 2005, thus putting the lie to Iranian claims that it did not have sufficient time or opportunity to respond to the IAEA's inquiries."

Meanwhile, Iran continues to flout the Security Council's chief demand that it suspend its uranium enrichment program. The production of sufficient quantities of fissile material is one of three key components in any nuclear weapons program, a fact that was relegated to a footnote in December's U.S. National Intelligence Estimate claiming Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003.

Nor did that NIE make any mention of Iran's ongoing ballistic missile programs, the second key component. Instead, its chief claim was that Iran had suspended work on weaponization, which by all expert accounts is the least challenging part of a nuclear-weapons program. The IAEA report does not make clear if its own information corroborates the NIE claim about the suspension of this work. But it is a fresh reminder that Iran almost certainly lied about its previous weapons work, and continues to lie today.

That alone ought to be reason for stepped up pressure on the Islamic Republic. Instead, the weakness of this week's resolution, though masked by the show of unanimity, demonstrates that the "international community" has reached the outer limit of what it is prepared to do to stop Iran from becoming the world's 10th nuclear-weapons state. There is no more juice to be squeezed out of this lemon.

It has now been nearly five years since the Bush Administration began pursuing a multilateral track on Iran, a course it has followed patiently nearly to the end of its term. That hasn't done much to assuage its usual critics, and it didn't prevent its own intelligence bureaucracy from torpedoing that diplomacy with the December NIE.

What it has done is give Iran vital time to develop its nuclear knowhow and technical skill, perhaps to a point of no return. For President Bush, whose signature promise has been that he would not allow the world's most dangerous weapons to fall into the hands of the most dangerous regimes, this is not a record to be proud of.

Ottolenghi on Iran after the NIE

2008-02-05T10:55:00.000+01:00

...doesn't get much better than this

2008-01-19T19:22:00.000+01:00

R.I.P. OSCAR

2007-12-25T16:14:00.000+01:00

I don't think it's hyperbole to say that one of the greatest musicians to have ever been blessed with their talents left us today. The man was untouchable and brought tears to my eyes many, many times... RIP Oscar

Obituary from AP:

CHICAGO: In the second half of the 20th century, no jazz pianist could touch Oscar Peterson when it came to sheer mastery of the instrument

The technical brilliance, unprecedented speed and hard-driving swing of Peterson's best work inspired generations of artists. But it also drove them to despair, for they knew Peterson's feats could not be matched, much less topped.

Moreover, no place on earth forged a closer musical link to Peterson than Chicago, for the pianist was a fixture at the long-gone London House in the 1950s and a headliner in the city's better jazz rooms and concert halls ever since.

Peterson, a Canadian, who died at the weekend at home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga at age 82, of kidney failure, considered Chicago his musical anchor. The seminal trio he led from 1953 to 1958 with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis was practically in residence there.

To Peterson, Chicago - with its history of jazz pianism dating back to Jelly Roll Morton in the Roaring 20s - was a constant source of musical inspiration. The London House Sessions, a boxed set documenting the trio's work at the celebrated downtown showroom, stands as a pinnacle for the art of small-group jazz.

To jazz pianists, Peterson exemplified a level of virtuosity encountered only once before in the history of the instrument: in the work of an earlier piano god, Art Tatum, whose particular brand of pyrotechnics also proved inimitable.

Yet many observers chafed at Peterson's keyboard wizardry, concluding that the high sheen of his technique somehow diminished the jazz authenticity of his playing. In the 1960s, a Paris critic called Peterson's art "music for Pavlov's dogs". And Miles Davis was withering. "Oscar makes me sick because he copies everybody. He even had to learn how to play the blues," he said in an interview. The passage of time eventually rendered Davis's view the minority position.

Born into a poor, working-class family in Montreal, Peterson wore patched-up pants to school and suffered beatings from his father, a railroad porter, who applied a belt when the young pianist had not mastered his music lessons.

As Peterson's keyboard prowess grew, his father cut him down to size by playing for him a recording of Tatum, the icon to whom Peterson most often has been compared. Peterson's father put on a recording of Tatum performing "Tiger Rag," a tour de force. "And, truthfully, I gave up the piano for two solid months," said Peterson, "and I had crying fits at night."

Peterson came back to the piano and flourished, however, developing a technique that was almost equal in stature to Tatum's but stylistically quite different from it.

In the late 1940s, Duke Ellington and impresario Norman Granz travelled to Montreal to hear the jazz wunderkind, and Peterson's career was launched. Starting in 1950, Granz featured the pianist in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts that toured the world.

The partnership between Peterson and Granz, whom the pianist called "my closest friend in jazz", enabled Peterson to record with the greatest stars of the era, from trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie to singers Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.

That Peterson flourished despite an almost lifelong battle with arthritis, which afflicted his hands and knees, underscores his achievement.

Peterson suffered a stroke in 1993 that weakened his left hand, but within a year he was back on tour, recording Side By Side with Itzhak Perlman. As he grew older, Peterson kept touring, despite worsening arthritis.

"A jazz player is an instant composer," Peterson once said in an interview, while conceding jazz did not have the mass appeal of other musical genres. "You have to think about it; it's an intellectual form," he said.

He is survived by his fourth wife, Kelly Ann Green, and seven children.

The Missing Peace

2007-12-24T13:36:00.000+01:00

This gentleman's engrossing book ('The missing Peace'), which deals with his time as the top US official in charge of the Clinton era Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, is one of the most interesting books I have ever read, and marked a kind of starting point to my engagment with the issues at a much more serious level. Here's what he has to say today (forward to about 30 mins in).

Good Luck, Doug...

2007-11-28T23:20:00.000+01:00

"It's Monday afternoon, and Doug Morris, chair and CEO of Universal Music Group, is eating lunch in his private dining room at the company's Manhattan headquarters."

Morris goes on to rail against criminal-minded college students and low-life punks who steal the music that his artists work so hard to create. He admits to being fairly ignorant about technology and insists that his job is to nurture the creative side of the business — work that's being threatened by all of this other nonsense. (This is a quote from further down the article, not me writing!)

This article was already making waves before it was available online. And it seems warranted to diss Morris for being clueless. Lefsetz spends his life taunting Morris, Bronfman, Levy and co to get with the programme. And everyone knows that they are in the way of progress, because their perks are in trouble in view of the new realities.

But isn't it obvious? Every first year Politics student knows the rules. You look after number one. It's human nature. Enjoy the spoills, Doug. You've done well. But you and your mates' empire is in decline.

Like others, there are some albums for which i would pay $200 happily in whatever form. But don't pretend you haven't been screwing children, including this one. You boys are still doing it! Trying to get me to buy The Song Remains The Same again, for six extra tracks?  Go to hell, even if it is Zeppelin.
I've paid. and I would pay again, but not when you try to screw me. And then complain that I am criminally minded. When my favourite browser comes with the torrent tool already built in, Doug!!!

If you had always suspected it, but want it confirmed, just watch these guys in this segment (click on "Mr Morris' Video Clip"). Morris' profession that it is all about the love of the music really says it all. . Maybe it was once when you were young. Maybe. but if it was today, how would you live without YouTube? Private dining room, my ass. If it was about the music, you'd be sitting in front of YouTube, eating up all the stuff you couldn't get your hands on before the current era. Do you know what I would have paid for a tape of the MTV broadcast of GnR at the Ritz in '88? But these days, I got it on my own blog. For free. Hope you enjoy your lunch.

Gentlemen, you've only got yourselves to blame.  Now, Doug, why not seek some more advice from your grandson? Hell, make him a board member!

The nature of the ME Conflict

2007-11-26T22:07:00.001+01:00

This characteristically lucid piece should form the primary intellectual building block to any analysis of the Middle East conflict. Lewis is utterly correct.

---------------------------

On the Jewish Question
By BERNARD LEWIS
November 26, 2007 Wall Street Journal

Herewith some thoughts about tomorrow's Annapolis peace conference, and the larger problem of how to approach the Israel-Palestine conflict. The first question (one might think it is obvious but apparently not) is, "What is the conflict about?" There are basically two possibilities: that it is about the size of Israel, or about its existence.

If the issue is about the size of Israel, then we have a straightforward border problem, like Alsace-Lorraine or Texas. That is to say, not easy, but possible to solve in the long run, and to live with in the meantime.

If, on the other hand, the issue is the existence of Israel, then clearly it is insoluble by negotiation. There is no compromise position between existing and not existing, and no conceivable government of Israel is going to negotiate on whether that country should or should not exist.

PLO and other Palestinian spokesmen have, from time to time, given formal indications of recognition of Israel in their diplomatic discourse in foreign languages. But that's not the message delivered at home in Arabic, in everything from primary school textbooks to political speeches and religious sermons. Here the terms used in Arabic denote, not the end of hostilities, but an armistice or truce, until such time that the war against Israel can be resumed with better prospects for success. Without genuine acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State, as the more than 20 members of the Arab League exist as Arab States, or the much larger number of members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference exist as Islamic states, peace cannot be negotiated.

A good example of how this problem affects negotiation is the much-discussed refugee question. During the fighting in 1947-1948, about three-fourths of a million Arabs fled or were driven (both are true in different places) from Israel and found refuge in the neighboring Arab countries. In the same period and after, a slightly greater number of Jews fled or were driven from Arab countries, first from the Arab-controlled part of mandatory Palestine (where not a single Jew was permitted to remain), then from the Arab countries where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries, or in some places for millennia. Most Jewish refugees found their way to Israel.

What happened was thus, in effect, an exchange of populations not unlike that which took place in the Indian subcontinent in the previous year, when British India was split into India and Pakistan. Millions of refugees fled or were driven both ways -- Hindus and others from Pakistan to India, Muslims from India to Pakistan. Another example was Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, when the Soviets annexed a large piece of eastern Poland and compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany. This too led to a massive refugee movement -- Poles fled or were driven from the Soviet Union into Poland, Germans fled or were driven from Poland into Germany.

The Poles and the Germans, the Hindus and the Muslims, the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, all were resettled in their new homes and accorded the normal rights of citizenship. More remarkably, this was done without international aid. The one exception was the Palestinian Arabs in neighboring Arab countries.

The government of Jordan granted Palestinian Arabs a form of citizenship, but kept them in refugee camps. In the other Arab countries, they were and remained stateless aliens without rights or opportunities, maintained by U.N. funding. Paradoxically, if a Palestinian fled to Britain or America, he was eligible for naturalization after five years, and his locally-born children were citizens by birth. If he went to Syria, Lebanon or Iraq, he and his descendants remained stateless, now entering the fourth or fifth generation.

The reason for this has been stated by various Arab spokesmen. It is the need to preserve the Palestinians as a separate entity until the time when they will return and reclaim the whole of Palestine; that is to say, all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demand for the "return" of the refugees, in other words, means the destruction of Israel. This is highly unlikely to be approved by any Israeli government.

There are signs of change in some Arab circles, of a willingness to accept Israel and even to see the possibility of a positive Israeli contribution to the public life of the region. But such opinions are only furtively expressed. Sometimes, those who dare to express them are jailed or worse. These opinions have as yet little or no impact on the leadership.

Which brings us back to the Annapolis summit. If the issue is not the size of Israel, but its existence, negotiations are foredoomed. And in light of the past record, it is clear that is and will remain the issue, until the Arab leadership either achieves or renounces its purpose -- to destroy Israel. Both seem equally unlikely for the time being.

Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).

The eePC and Linux

2007-11-20T20:31:00.000+01:00

This could be it... I played with the eeepc recently, and it rules. Soon it will be possible to make it as cheap as it is now, with a screen taking up the whole lid (it currently is only a box in the middle, with a huge black 'frame'). The interesting thing is though how easy Linux is on it. It is the simplest PC I have ever used. Forget Apple. Even my mother could work this out. And it works very well. Eat's Blackberry alive. But then you'd actually have to chat with whomever you're sitting at dinner with...

And again, we grow together...

2007-11-20T19:31:00.000+01:00

One of the first posts on my blog details how Slash is the reason I know how to use a guitar...

Having long since come to appreciate that Rockstardom may not be all it is cracked up to be - would you want to sit in a tourbus with Axl? - and grown up some, I am glad to see Slash follows suit. Having cleaned himself up - and the whole thing was even more atrocious than you already suspected (see here ) I am amazed to come across the below video. The WSJ is the best newspaper in the world, period. It's editorial page is a haven of sanity in an extremely dangerous world, and I happen to think that the paper being purchased by NewsCorp - a troubling name for a company if ever there was one, but still - is a blessing for it. Anyway, so Slash has cleaned himself up and made it into the WSJ office! The interviewer is hilarious. Especially right at the end. He's clearly never heard a GnR album in his life!! Hahaha.

But it get's better... The inimitable Lefsetz is on the case too, though we clearly disagree on
the politics, commenting on today's editorial on the Eagles new CD he writes:
"What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where the editorial page of the "Wall Street Journal" is hipper than Gene Simmons? I don't read the editorial page of the WSJ. It's against my religion. I get the physical paper, I subscribe to the Website, but I refuse to read the right wing rantings of the ideologues who compose this stuff. But now we live in the Internet age. And if anything is written worth reading, it's forwarded to me." (Read the rest here - the story is based on Bob agreeing with the WSJ about the new paradigms in the Music Industry..._)

What can I say? It's hip to be square...

And btw, far too many people who know what they're talking about still underrate Slash... With guitarists, it is really quite simple: There are a few, very few, whom you can instantly recognise. And then there's all the rest. Slash is absolutely outstanding, and like all of the best, he's firmly rooted in the blues... see below!

Wanna be in a Band? This is how it's done!

2007-11-12T21:18:00.000+01:00

(You can't see the videos on Facebook)

Enough said. Out of Control and Untouchable. Show me one band today (with the possible exception of the Gossip who make a good attempt live, but still fall far short) that could lay claim to this crown. Though judging by Slash's book and the Axl biography by Mick Wall (the one from 'Get in the Ring', for those of you paying attention...), you might wanna reconsider the career choice... Anyway, this rules. Enjoy.

On Iran

2007-11-11T16:41:00.000+01:00

There is an excellent three part series on Iran by Salar Abdoh in Guernica Magazine. I reprint the first few paragraphs below, but it is worth reading all three pieces in the series.

Often when I talk to my friends about the times, I refer to 'sitting in Starbucks', as a way of trying to illustrate my view on many of the atrocious general paradigms that have taken hold. So here, starting with sitting in Starbucks, to all the ignorant fools who consider themselves enlightened progressives, who think Iran's regime has a point, that it is an 'Israel Lobby' that is pushing for regime change, who know nothing about the things that go on inside Iran, offer no solutions, but, well, sit in Starbucks somewhere in the West, thinking they got it all worked out, here goes.

There are no easy answers, but understanding the
nature of what you are looking at is a prerequesite
to coming up with the very difficult, finely balanced ones.

Moving Violations
by Salar Abdoh
Part one in a series on Iran

On one of the last days of the month of April, 2007, you happen to be sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop in Chelsea looking out of the window, laptop open. A Sunday morning in New York City, with an hour to go before yoga class - the class a weekly ritual of your life in the States for the past several years. Your cell phone does a jig, a call from a friend back home in Iran. She is calling from somewhere on high, in the mountains that overlook the Caspian Sea. She tells you that yesterday she was walking in the woods with a mutual friend and was stopped by the morality police. She tells you a lot of things - the inane questioning that somehow always smacks of the screeching sexual frustrations of the questioners, the night in jail, the stinking cell, the incessant weeping of the twenty-year-old girl, her cellmate, who was hauled in for something similar - like daring to smile in public or singing in the rain or whatever else it is they haul you in for during their periodic campaigns to enforce the codes of modesty.

So your friend, who has been freed on bail and has to appear in front of a cleric in the morning, tells you that there are a couple of possibilities for the two of them: they either have to cough up some money or get a few good whacks. There is no question of innocence. This is just the way it is. Another 24 hours will pass before you find out that your friend actually opted for the beating. When she calls again she tells you that it wasn't too hard; in fact the folks with the rubber hoses did not really have the heart to deliver the blows. You see, she says, the revolution is on auto-pilot and no one believes in it any more, not even the whack-givers.

But what of the indignity of it? you think. A woman and a man in their late-thirties having to pay fines or be lashed with a garden hose just because the weather was nice and they wanted to take a walk together, up there in the forests above the once lovely and now obscenely polluted Caspian Sea.

CONTINUE READING

Spot On

2007-11-11T14:25:00.000+01:00

Dennis Macshane should be called Dennis Mac Sane. Ok, stupid and trite, I admit, but this article is really rather excellent. One wonders, with the departure of its editor Roger Alton, said to have been forced out for political reasons, whether the paper - one of the three or four best in the World - will continue to be as good. The GMG makes so much of not being owned by anyone and hence apparently being unbiased. My ass. Most of the journalists at the Guardian, as much respect as I have for them and as much as I like some of them personally, fit the ideological bill in much the same way as how the Foreign Office selects its drones...

More Guardian Media Groupthink than GMG.... Here goes:

Blair isn't to blame for Islamist terror

Denis MacShane
Sunday November 11, 2007
The Observer

Ten years ago, in November 1997, 50 Swiss tourists rose early to visit the Valley of the Kings across the Nile from Luxor in Egypt. Suddenly from the hills came a group of Islamists. They shot, disembowelled and decapitated the tourists.

It was just one of the many forerunners of 9/11 in 2001 in New York, 7/7 in 2005 in London or 11/M as the Spanish call the train bombings in Madrid in 2004. Today, as the killing in the name of extremist political Islamist ideology increases in tempo and intelligence agencies struggle to disarm those promised a passage to heaven if they blow themselves and others up, the earlier wave of militant Islamist killing can be overlooked.

One of the constant lies of the current debate over terrorism is that it is all the fault of George Bush and Tony Blair. The best-known Swiss in Britain today is Tariq Ramadan, the most interesting of Europe's political Islamists. He wrote recently that the 'invasion of Iraq, blind support for the insane policies of George Bush, British silence on the oppression of the Palestinians have a direct bearing on the deep discontent shared by many Muslims towards the West in general, and towards Britain in particular'.

Ramadan's views are standard tropes for many on the liberal-left in Europe. Not just the left. The new centre-right government in Poland wants to leave Iraq and David Cameron said that Britain should not drop the idea of intervention. But as the families of those killed a decade ago remember those dreadful murders on the Nile, can Bush and Blair be blamed as the inspirers of the killing of Swiss tourists? Or what in 1995 inspired the Paris Metro bombing which killed eight? The 1995 Islamist campaign of violence in France was financed from London by the Algerian Islamist fundamentalist Rachid Ramda. British ministers, lawyers and judges protected Ramda from French justice for a full decade. Finally in 2005, Ramda was sent back to face the justice he was long protected from. He has just been sentenced to life.

Then comes the argument that Osama bin Laden was, as London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, puts it 'a simple businessman until he met the CIA' which encouraged him to launch jihad in Afghanistan against the dying Soviet empire. But this does not explain why Islamists killed, in cold blood, Anwar Sadat, the courageous Egyptian president who went to the Knesset to talk peace with Israel long before Blair was in Parliament and before the Soviets arrived in Kabul.

So if we follow history's thread back we have to leave the contemporisation of the debate. Something deeper is going on. To discuss this in religious terms is repugnant for many. But history is full of faiths sanctioning political murders to advance a cause.

The violence of faith takes many forms. A university report has just been published on the material available in British mosques, Muslim schools and bookshops. It reveals a violent brew of anti-semitism, misogyny and homophobia which inculcates a loathing for fellow citizens who do not conform to the rules of Islamist ideologues.

The report scrupulously quotes extracts from books and pamphlets widely available in mosque bookshops. The response of the Muslim Council of Britain was to attack the research. Instead of calling on mosques to empty themselves of such hate material, the MCB called for the report to be ignored. This arrogant dismissal does no service to Muslims.

Some are trying to move forward. As a young militant, Tariq Ramadan made statements on Jews, gays and women which do not read well today. But at a recent debate he supported Israel's right to exist. Citing the example of Turkey's ruling Law and Development party which has its roots in political Islam, Ramadan held up the tantalising prospect of Islamist politics leaving behind its support for words and acts that have caused so much damage to Muslims over the past century.

It is not too late. Ramadan's language is elusive, debating with him is like trying to pick up mercury with a fork. At an Oxford University seminar he is the acceptable face of Islamism. But until the hate material is removed from sale and democratically accountable Muslim leaders emerge to contest the theologians of terrorism, anti-semitism, misogyny and homophobia in Riyadh, Cairo, Qatar and Tehran, the birth of democratic European Islamist politics is unlikely.

· Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham

Axl's got issues...

2007-11-11T13:45:00.000+01:00

They'll probably remove this soon... In the meantime, enjoy. Ahahahahaha. Still. Don't diss Axl. One of the greatest. Occasionally...

Chris Rock on the Music Business...

2007-11-09T19:53:00.000+01:00

This quote via the inimitable Lefsetz:

Chris Rock: Music kind of sucks. Nobody's into being a musician. Everybody's getting their mogul on. You've been so infiltrated by this corporate mentality that all the time you'd spend getting great songs together, you're busy doing nine other things that have nothing to do with art. You know how shitty Stevie Wonder's songs would have been if he had to run a fuckin' clothing company and a cologne line? RollingStone: Plenty of rappers say, "I'm not a rapper, I'm a businessman." Chris Rock: That's why rap sucks, for the most part. Not all rap, but as an art form it's just not at its best moment. Sammy the Bull would have made a shitty album. And I don't really have a desire to hear Warren Buffett's album - or the new CD by Paul Allen. That's what everybody's aspiring to be. We live in a weird time. No one knows who's smart - we just know who makes money. "Hey, somebody invented Viagra! We don't know their name, but we know Pfizer, because they make the money." That guy made a pill that keeps your dick hard, and nobody knows who the fuck he is. The pharmaceutical companies are like fuckin' record companies. There's literally the Bo Diddley of medicine walking around, not getting his royalties. He signed all his fucking pill publishing away. ("Rolling Stone", Issue 1039, November 15, 2007, page 157)

Brilliant

2007-11-01T15:33:00.000+01:00

Tariq Ramadan

2007-10-21T11:39:00.000+01:00

I will leave it to the outstanding - without a shadow of a doubt one of the very finest intellectuals alive today - Paul Berman to explain the problem:

HERE

(Free registration required)

Why Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' really deserves attention

2007-10-21T11:32:00.000+01:00

From the WSJ:

If the most interesting aspect of a new album by a great band is how it's distributed and priced, we've got a problem. Luckily for us, "In Rainbows," Radiohead's new album that's available only via download at the band's site www.inrainbows.com, is terrific. It'd be terrific even if we had to walk into a store to buy it, which we'll be able to do early next year. But when you hear it, you'll want it now.

Downloading an album is old hat, and so is a rock band's desire to have greater control over how its music is distributed. What seems new about the British band's gimmick for "In Rainbows" is that you pay what you want for it. For the 10-song single disc available since Oct. 10, I paid £7, which translates to about $14 -- less than a CD but more than we pay for most albums on iTunes. (Eight more songs will be available in early December. You can lock in your purchase now at the price you choose.) If quantity is your measure of value, know that the 10-song "In Rainbows" clocks in at under 43 minutes, which is much less music than in your average CD. If quality matters most, a question: How much would you have paid for 1997's "OK Computer" (Capitol), the band's third release and one of the greatest recordings in rock history? A final factor to bear in mind: Versions of nine of the disc's 10 songs have been up on YouTube for a while now, where they're free.

The band's seventh and latest studio album isn't "OK Computer," nor is it as gnawingly interesting as Radiohead's sixth release, 2003's "Hail to the Thief," an insistent, highly textured disc that married the band's gift for melody and its need to experiment with sound. But it has many of the hallmarks of those two albums, most notably fearless musicianship and a distinctive approach to song. For all its use of crunching, synthesized percussion and otherworldly sounds, Radiohead has as its foundation a tight, traditional rock lineup with a killer rhythm section featuring Phil Selway on drums and Colin Greenwood on bass; two guitarists who double on keyboards in Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien; and Thom Yorke, a charismatic singer and multi-instrumentalist who writes lyrics unlike anyone else's. Producer Nigel Godrich has been with the band since "The Bends" in 1995.

But tradition can surrender quickly to the new when everybody in the band plays many instruments and easily switches or shares roles. Radiohead's music achieves its distinctive sense of disorientation through a marriage of chaos and beauty. No matter how much the band endeavors to disrupt the customary experience of listening to pop music, its members' superb musicianship makes their music familiar and accessible as well as thoroughly surprising.
"In Rainbows" contains some of the band's most memorable ballads, including the spry, disquieting "House of Cards," which arises from open chording on electric guitars, and "All I Need," a somber and gorgeous song built on a dark underpinnings mitigated by chimes and, as it unfolds, piano and a splash cymbal. A droning piano and a haunting chorus of male voices provide the platform for "Videotape," the album's finale.

Another trait of the band is its sense of grandeur. The lovely "Nude," which the band originally developed during the "OK Computer" sessions, finds its tension on waves of strings. In "Reckoner," vivid percussion and gently picked guitars under Mr. Yorke's falsetto belie the song's majesty until strings enter at its unsettling midsection.

Had the Beatles recorded the so-called "White Album" in 2007, they might've come up with tracks like "Faust Arp," a folk tune enriched by a taste of cello and viola, and "Bodysnatchers,"in which three chugging guitars all but swallow Mr. Yorke's careening vocal before peeling back into a quavering sheet of sound. "15 Steps," "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" remind us the band has been playing some of the songs on stage since at least mid-2006: At their cores are confident, straight-ahead modern rock performances enriched by modest studio tweakery. For all the synths and noise-making software, it's the sound of the slinky, crackling guitars and Mr. Selway's drums that drives the songs.

Underrated as a pure pop vocalist, Mr. Yorke sings with an unsettling blend of passion and detachment. His oddly disassociated lyrics reinforce the band's sense of intense impassiveness, and a curious mechanical phrase here and there disrupts and enhances revelation. In "House of Cards," he sings: "The infrastructure will collapse/Voltage spikes/Throw your keys in the bowl/Kiss your husband goodnight." Beautiful as "All I Need" is, Mr. Yorke offers this as its opening lyric: "I'm the next act waiting in the wings/I'm an animal trapped in your hot car/I am all the days that you choose to ignore." "Videotape" may very well be about making a visual recording to be played after the narrator's death by his own hand: "This is my way of saying goodbye/Because I can't do it face-to-face . . . /No matter what happens next/You shouldn't be afraid/Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen." Mr. Yorke has been fine-tuning those words for more than a year. I don't see how he can make them any more penetrating than they are now. In context with the music, they devastate.

The hubbub around how "In Rainbows" is distributed and at what price detracts from its wonder. It's a great album by rock's best band. What else could matter once that's said? If the music is this smart and this good, I'll take it any way they can get it to me and let the band name the price.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop critic.

Danny Devito, Jason Alexander: OneVoice Oct 18!

2007-10-12T10:31:00.001+01:00

Join us in London on October 18th at the Friends Meeting House in Euston, from 7 pm, when we will be screening live our People's Summits in Jericho Stadium and Hayarkon Park.

This will be the first time in the history of the Middle East when the Palestinian and Israeli mainstreams will simultaneously go out to demand the same vision – that their leaders should return to the negotiation table in order to deliver the Two-State solution that the majority of people on both sides want to see. If we’re successful we will re-invigorate the peace process from the grassroots and give energy and momentum where currently there is none.

www.onemillionvoices.org

World Cup 2018 - Do your bit on Oct 18

2007-10-12T10:29:00.001+01:00

Palestinians and Israelis are taking to the streets to call for a viable two-state solution.

From London, you can be by their side.

Join us to watch events live from Jericho and Tel Aviv via satellite at:

The Friends Meeting House
173 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BJ
Date: Thursday 18th October, 2007
Time: 19:00 – 20:30
Contact: 0208 099 2423
RSVP: Europe@onevoicemovement.org

For more information please visit our website www.onemillionvoices.org

The Patraeus / Crocker Hearings

2007-09-11T21:00:00.000+01:00

For those of you who deal with these things on an ongoing basis - and I find that more and more of my friends are - you'll know the importance of these hearings.

[If you want to watch, HERE is the live stream.]

I am not even close to making up my mind as to what it means that I can watch this from my desk (as can the Iranians...). But if Politics is the continuation of war by other means, then this is the continuation of the revolution in military affairs by other means... I for one am riveted by this. History in the making in real time!!??

But then you could just watch Big Brother...

The Conservatives

2007-09-07T13:34:00.001+01:00

(There is some filthy swearing in this post and I apologise, but I just can't be fucked to sort it out just yet)

Ok, I just saw a banner ad for the Conservative party at the top of the Goxxip's MySpace... The Gossip rules, and i don't say that lightly. I've been waiting for someone to come along and do this. I see this fat cow - and she is revolting - on magazine covers and think it's sick, not refreshing. But then it happened. I saw an interview, and she was so cool! Herself. That's virtually non-existent today, and they wonder why they can't sell cd's. That cunt from the Killers, who is quoted in the vapid Sunday Times Style magazine, saying: 'the first thing we did when we heard we got onto the Live Aid bill' (there was a great bit in the making of live-aid documentary, where Geldof and Goldsmith have it out over whether it's possible to accomodate the band) WAS TO THINK ABOUT WHAT WE WOULD WEAR'. Um, dude, where do I start? Like, you're trying to rock me and you're worried about what to wear? No eyeliner might be a start. twat.
But Beth? Well, after the interview I catch the end of her Glasto set, and finally, finally I get what I need! I've been saying to everyone who'll listen that almost all the new bands are shit. The yardstick is still Guns n' fuckin Roses in a small club in LA, playing to sell beer and being monumental (I know, I know, I was still in diapers, but I got the bootlegs!!)
So Beth comes out and delivers. Standing in the way of control. And she was easily GnR '87. Easily. Fucking Rocked (NB to the Killers: She didn't think long about her Blue PVC dress, and it was absolutely spot on. You twats). Beth Ditto and the Gossip rule.

So today I visit their MySpace. And there it is. Atop their page, a banner ad promoting the Conservatives. With their new tree-hugging logo, a picture of Cameron looking down (at some important papers, contemplating Britains future no doubt...), and their slogan: It's time for a change. Is it?

Let me just, before I rant for or against the conservatives, do a double-take at this most odd experience of seeing this add on the Gossip MySpace. We have been hearing chatter for a while now about the YouTube election. Politicians have had their careers ended by YouTube clips and the website has teamed up with CNN to present the (heavily scripted / moderated) YouTube debates. Obama and all others have their own channel on the site, and everyone and their (kept for electoral-gains impact) dogs are on MySpace, Facebook. Some politicians even Twitter. Many of you may well not know what that is. But the point here is all about this extreme paradigm shift. Politics is really changing as a result of the internet, just as the Music and publishing industries are seeing a revolution on a Guthenbergian scale... And that is noteworthy. Long-Tail, VOD, DRM, iPod. Today I saw a banner add for the Conservatives on the Gossip MySpace. Noteworthy, i feel, and it does feel wrong. Beth Ditto does not vote Conservative.

But you may. So a few words about that party then. My relationship with the Conservatives started when I came to England as a 12 year old and sometime later a friend told me he hated Maggie Thatcher for taking away his free Milk in School. Since I still got free milk (and I wasn't yet up to speed on the tiered school system...), I didn't really care.

I did care however, when about three years ago one of the Brighter students on my course approached me to ask for help in setting up a young Conservatives chapter at Sussex. Sick to death of answer-less, in-search-of-identity lefties with ridiculous notions and meaningless keffyehs, I considered it. Until the following Conversation:

Me:' I hear you were in Spain, building your family's house. So you're emigrating? (Lame attempt at humoring the rather dry kid)
Him, in exasperation: 'Well, what do you mean. It's not really like that. I mean you know, like Golder's Green with all the Jews, I mean I shouldn't really say this, but Birmingham is basically Pakistan these days!'
Me: [Shocked] Yeah...? Bye.

Naturally, I never spoke to him again and word got out. There was no Conservative association and very few friends...

It certainly put me off the Conservatives for life. All my prejudices confirmed.

Later, Nicholas Soames tells Phillip Green: 'So this is how you people do business...' I am not surprised. I saw him in Memories of China once, and the fat fuck is just about the perfect picture of the kind of Conservative described here.

So I am sitting at a conference in the house of lords, next to a conservative candidate for somewhere (Kennsington). he tells me there is a big 'Jewish council estate' (???) that lost him the election. I recount the above, and he dismisses them as the 'nutters'. But that isn't good enough. Can anyone shake the feeling that the rank and file share those kinds of views?

later yet, I'm chatting to an aquaintance who may be working for the conservative friends of Israel by now. he tells me Cameron will win. I laugh. He tells me the electoral engineering is neccessary. I fume.

Cameron spends the night with a Muslim family and says we need to stop talking about Islamist Terror. As one of the prominent Muslim journalists I know says: The problem is, sir, the murderers use every opportunity to make sure we know they are Islamic.
Cameron then appears in the Jewish press. Oh I love the Jews, my values are jewish values.

My ass is small.

But according to my aquaintance, they are the 'natural party of government' Puke.

So, he begins to get attacked by his own people, and not just the rebels. They want him to return to core Conservative values, to visit flood-stricken areas instead of Rwandan children. But he says he'll stick the course. The polls have started to look good for him again. And politics is a strange game. he may yet make it.

But I hope babyface will not be prime minister. Believe in something and stand for it, for fuck's sake. I am a swing voter (with German nationality in any case...), and I would not rule out supporting the conservatives. My natural sympathies in some areas lie with them. But Cameron's Conservatives are pussies, afraid of their own shadows, now that they've realised - eight years later - that they are not the 'natural party of government'. Not by a long shot.

I do love Boris and want him to be mayor!

As for the top man. Look at Blair (shut up at the back). I will say it again and again - howl all you like. The man had integrity, vision and continues to be absolutely right in his understanding of current realities.

Cameron is a vacant vote-whore. An incontinent one at that.

Rant over.

Weed

2007-08-09T15:46:00.000+01:00

So, it's back in the News. Classification goes down, classification goes up. It causes Psychosis or it's just that nutters like weed. I'd have a lot to say, from experience to conversation in the Lords, and there are some interesting items in the press right now, as a backdrop to the renewed debate. But for now, not an endorsment as such, but absolutely hilarious... ..and political...(If you're reading on FBook you need the original post to see...)

Girls of the IDF

2007-06-26T21:51:00.000+01:00
(If you're reading this on Facebook - and I know who you are!! - click to go to the original so you can see the pics...)

Well well well, It's finally out. Haven't got the magazine just yet but the website will do for now.
This is the latest in Hasbarah... the (unfortunately neccessary) advocacy of the state of Israel, instigated by the ever active Israeli Consulate in New York, I give you: Girls of the IDF
Yes they do wear uniforms. Yes they'll beat the crap out of you. (Unless you're MC Tim - you may just hold your own. But you'd be drooling, so not sure... Hohoho)
Actually, I don't really get the whole uniform thing. I get lot's of other things (or not) and we shall not talk of that, but suffice to say that those of you who know me well (and if you're reading, then you're one of my two friends...), know I'm not all that into lads' mags. They're over anyway. In the UK Maxim is down 30% year on year - selling about 130.000 (for those of you that care :-) Having said that, check out monkeymag (don't sign up, just click to see the latest issue). Even dumber and more naked, but a glimpse into the future perhaps.
But the virtues or vices of Lads' Mags aside, this has caused some debate. Sexy or sexist? (- don't worry, I stole that naff line from a Zionist Federation circulation)
Blah / Blah / Blah
Here are the other girls, and below is a nice and pointless video of the girl above left (and can I just say, she's going to law school. Shoot, Sue, Sexy Time... and you're learning how to cook?? - ok, that was awful. I'm still leaving it in though.) being interviewed at the launch party. Can't hear her 'cause of some terrible music, but it's worth it just for the press backdrop - The Israeli consulate's emblem next to Maxim's. Interesting. Below she talks. Hasbara definitely works better in print. But I'm sorry, I'll declare. I'd be the first to claim credit for chiding my friends who fall short of my exacting standards vis-a-vis respect for the delicious sex. But this works. I know the guys - those that couldn't give two shits if it's not true that Israel is occupying Timbuktu, and are wondering what all the fuss is about. They'll dig this. And so I do to.

The Jihadism of Fools

2007-05-28T23:09:00.000+01:00
This piece by Fred Halliday from the Winter 2007 issue of Dissent magazine is an absolute must read.

Over the last few years, and especially since the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, there have been indications across the world of a growing convergence between the forces of Islamist militancy, on the one hand, and the “anti-imperialist” left on the other. Leaving aside widespread, if usually unarticulated, sympathy for the attacks of September 11, 2001, justified on the grounds that “the Americans deserved it,” we have seen since 2003 an overt coincidence of policies, with considerable support for the Iraqi “resistance,” which includes strong Islamist elements, and, more recently and even more explicitly, support for Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the Middle East itself, and on parts of the European far left, an overt alliance with Islamists has been established, going back at least to the mass demonstrations in early 2003 that preceded the Iraq War, but also including a convergence of slogans on Palestine—supporting suicide bombings and denying the legitimacy of the Israeli state. Last year, for example, radical Basque demonstrators were preceded by a militant waving a Hezbollah flag. Moreover, since most of those who oppose the U.S. action in Iraq of 2003 also opposed the war in Afghanistan in 2001, this leads, whether clearly recognized or not, to support for the anti-Western Taliban, armed groups now active across that country.

At the same time, some far left-wing politicians in Europe have sought, on issues of “anti-imperialism” and of social exclusion within the West, to find common cause with representatives of Islamist parties. An example of this is the welcome given by the British left, including the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, to the Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. More important, of course, and separate from support for Islamist guerrilla groups, has been alignment at the state level: Iran, for example, has received increasing support from Venezuela. Hugo Chávez has been to Tehran no less than five times. This partnership has been made all the easier by the shift noticeable over the past two decades whereby solidarity based, at least formally, on class or socialist grounds has been replaced by identity politics as the basis for political activism. Inchoately perhaps, a new international united front is being created.

This relationship of the radical left to political Islam has a long history, one that should give pause to those who now seek to form an alliance, however “tactical,” with Islamist movements and states. The early Bolsheviks tried to establish just such an alliance: faced with the blocking of the proletarian revolution in Europe after 1917, they turned to the anti-imperialist and sometimes Islamic forces then active in Asia. The first state in the world to recognize the Bolshevik Revolution was the monarchy of Afghanistan, then locked in a conflict with the British. As a result, Lenin gave instructions that Soviet Russia must always pay “particular attention” to the needs of the Afghan people, a piece of advice that was to have ironic, but momentous, consequences in 1979, when the Soviet leadership, against the better judgment of many of its experts and leading members, sent a military force to protect the embattled Afghan regime of the People’s Democratic Party.

Even in the years after 1945, Soviet strategists sought to find a “national democratic” content in Islam, interpreting its stress on equality, charity, sharing of property and, not least, struggle, that is, jihad, as early forms of communism. While some Soviet orientalists portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as the agent of commercial capitalism, other Marxist writers, notably the French specialist Maxime Rodinson, drew a more positive portrait, even if he later admitted that his admiration for Muhammad derived, in part, from the similarities he saw between the prophet and Stalin. Soviet foreign policy presented the Soviet Muslim republics of Central Asia as a model for third world development, including in this the promotion of women’s education and participation in public life and the teaching in schools of a socialist interpretation of Islam. These practices were held up as a model when third world Muslim countries, particularly Afghanistan and South Yemen (the erstwhile People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen), were under Soviet influence.

This sympathy and search for tactical alliances were, however, long overshadowed by another trend, that of confrontation and struggle between communism and socialism, on the one side, and Islamism and organized Islam, on the other. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Bolsheviks found themselves facing widespread religious and tribal opposition in Central Asia and sought to destroy the social bases of organized religion, above all by emancipating women, whom they saw, in this social context, as a revolutionary alternative to the largely absent working class (see the marvelous book by Gregory Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat). The term used to denounce the Islamist rebels in the 1920s, basmachi, was later recycled to refer to the mujahidin in the Afghan War of the 1980s. From the other side, the nationalist/fascist insurgents in Spain recruited tens of thousands of Arab soldiers, claiming that Catholicism and Islam were equally threatened by the “godless” forces of the Republic.

In the early 1960s, faced with the rise of “Arab socialism” in Egypt, and with the publication in May 1962 of an Arab “National Charter,” the Saudis (supported by the United States) replied with their own “Islamic Charter,” in which they denounced “false nationalism based on atheistic doctrine” and, with the offer of Saudi money, called on Arabs and Muslims to reject the message emanating from Cairo. In 1965, Saudi Arabia established its own antisocialist international organization, the World Islamic League, through which it financed and guided groups across the world. The League is still active, not least among Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, and, symptomatically perhaps, maintains a large building in the center of Brussels.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood came into increasing confrontation with the Nasserist regime, and its leader, Sayyid Qutb, later to be the intellectual inspiration of Osama bin Laden, was executed in 1966. In all of this, one of the oldest tropes of European anti-Semitism, that socialism and Bolshevism were really the work of the Jews, was vigorously replayed, as evident in a statement in January 1964, by King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, linking the struggle against the Jews in Palestine to that against communism: “It is our duty, our brothers, to move today . . . to save our holy places and to drive out our enemies, and to [stand] against all the doctrines founded by the Zionists—the corrupt doctrines, the atheistic communist doctrines, which seek to deny the existence of God and to deviate from . . . our religion of Islam.”

The increasing opposition of secular left and Islamist forces was exploited by a number of Middle Eastern states within the context of the cold war. Thus in Turkey the military promoted Islamist groups against the far left in the 1970s. In Syria, opponents of the Baathist regime encouraged a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in 1982. In Algeria, the rise of the Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS, in the 1980s, was encouraged by a faction of the ruling National Liberation Front, the FLN—hence the observation that the FIS was the son, in French, le fils, of the FLN. Even in Israel, the occupation authorities in the 1970s, seeking to undermine the secular institutions of al-Fatah, allowed Islamist groups, including those that later founded Hamas, to open educational centers and universities, and permitted funds to be transferred from the World Islamic League.

Elsewhere, Islamists took matters into their own hands, as in Morocco, where, in December 1975, radical Islamists killed the leader of the socialist party, the USFP. Those associated with the killing are now working within the Party of Justice and Development, the legal Islamist organization that is expected to score a major advance in the elections scheduled for this spring. Even more relevant to the situation today is the early record of Hezbollah, which, in its bid to establish itself as the dominant force within the Lebanese Shiite community, not only engaged in a fierce attack on a rival, more moderate group, Amal, but also assassinated a number of left-wing Lebanese politicians and writers who stood in its way.

The campaign against the left was accompanied by one against writers of a liberal, secular, or simply independent-minded stamp. In Egypt, Islamists launched a wave of terror against intellectuals accused of betraying Islam: the secularist academic Faraj Fuda was killed in 1992; the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfuz, accused of having criticized Islam in a novel written years before, was badly beaten up in 1994; and the historian and literary critic Nasir Abu Zeid was forced to leave the country in 1995 and seek refuge in Holland, where he still lives. Most famously of all, of course, was the death sentence and the general incitement to murder pronounced in February 1989 by the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini against the writer Salman Rushdie, a move that certainly encouraged the murderers of Egypt, but was also replicated in a campaign in Bangladesh against the writer Taslim Nasrin, after which she was forced to leave the country. We can only guess at how many others were forced into silence and into exile, internal or external, by this climate of fear.

The mobilization of Islamism against the left was, however, most evident in four other countries. In Sudan, the advent of the National Islamic Front, a remote branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, to power in 1989 led to widespread use of imprisonment, torture, and execution against secular and left opponents. The NIF indeed modeled itself on a Leninist party and sought, while crushing the communists in Sudan, to follow the revolutionary policy of exporting revolution, to Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Eritrea, among other places. In this it was assisted, from 1990 to 1996, by its distinguished internationalist guest, Osama bin Laden. In Indonesia, an even greater repression took place when, in 1965, the army turned against the Communist Party, then the largest in the noncommunist world. In massacres across Java and other islands, Islamist groups, notably Nahdat ul-Ulema, which has recently come into prominence again, joined forces with the army and with people settling local quarrels to kill up to a million people.

In the Iranian revolution, too, a strong anti-American rhetoric was combined with increasing hostility to the left, culminating in 1981–1983 in the wholesale suppression of communist and left-wing groups. A spate of executions, rigged trials, and theatrical show trials followed, leading up to the slaughter of thousands of opponents in jail in 1988, in the aftermath of the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when the regime feared a popular backlash against its conduct of that conflict. Graphically illustrated in the work of Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, this purge was orchestrated by the Revolutionary Guards, the organization from which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his close associates have recently emerged. As an associate if not perpetrator of state-backed mass murder, albeit on a smaller scale, it is little wonder that Ahmadinejad feels comfortable denying the even larger administrative massacres committed by the Nazis.

The most spectacular and consequential alliance between the West and Islamism was, of course, in Afghanistan. Here, in the largest covert operation ever run by the CIA, the United States, with help from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, mobilized Islamist forces throughout the 1980s against the government of the People’s Democratic Party and the Soviet forces that came to rescue it in December 1979. It was in Afghanistan that bin Laden organized his army of militant jihadis from around the world and developed the ideology of international struggle that later came to fruition on September 11, 2001. Those who backed the Afghan Islamists in the 1980s seem to have been totally insouciant as to the later consequences of their actions. Yet the Afghan War was to the world of the twenty-first century what the Spanish Civil War was to the Second World War—the devil’s kitchen in which all the brews that later poisoned the globe were first prepared.

To this history of jihad against the left, over many decades, must be added one further fact, namely the deep differences that should separate any conceivable program of the radical left from that of Islamist parties. Whether on the rights of women, on secularism, or on free speech, the two political currents are radically opposed; they espouse what should be incompatible positions. So too are they opposed on another issue: the complete absence from the Islamist program of any inclusive internationalism. Instead, while appealing to the community or umma of Muslims, the Islamists, be they al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, appeal only to particular communities and pour out the venom of an unrelenting chauvinism toward nonbelievers, Jews, and even toward Muslims of a different sect than their own. Their rhetoric against Jews far exceeds anything of which the earlier generation of secular Palestinian nationalists was capable. Few today seem to recall the remark of the German socialist leader August Bebel, that anti-Semitism “is the socialism of fools.” Presumably those on the left today who ally with Islamists do so by reference to some concept of false consciousness. It is open to question, however, whose consciousness is the most mistaken.

Fred Halliday teaches international relations at the London School of Economics and at IBEI, Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals. His book 100 Myths About the Middle East was published by University of California Press in 2005. An earlier version of this article appeared on openDemocracy.com in September 2006.

South Park - The one where Family Guy 'shows' Muhammad

2007-05-27T23:39:00.000+01:00
Topical indeed. Comedy Central did censor it. (Background)

Family Guy - The 'Antisemitic' One

2007-05-27T15:18:00.000+01:00
Peter, not every Jewish person is good with money - only availiable on DVD... or my blog...

Iraq

2007-05-15T23:57:00.000+01:00

My (super)smart Synagogue buddy (unfortunately - but deservedly - he's now at Oxford) posted this on facebook. I couldn't help chime in... He says:
To be honest I don’t have an opinion on the war. I used to, but I can’t quite remember what it was or why I held it. Nevertheless, I was reading something by John Sweeney, currently in the news for his tête á tête with the Church of $cientology, today that reminded me of something my memory had almost jettisoned:
“Uday's lust is famous in Baghdad. He wanted a woman who played tennis at Baghdad's Sports Club, so he and Ali went to the club. As Uday was turning into the car park, a tennis ball came over the fence and bounced against the car of the woman he desired. The tennis player came into the car park to retrieve the ball and apologized to the woman. Maybe there was a bit of flirting - that does happen at tennis courts, even in England. From his car Uday watched the two of them. Enraged, he took out a wooden cosh and beat the tennis player's brains out. And then - get this - a few days later, the dead man's relatives apologised to Uday for the distress their son had caused him.
“http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/2162011.stm
Now, things post-Saddam have obviously not gone as well as well meaning people had hoped and it’s pretty indisputable that mistakes were made. The largest, it seems to me, was to allow a terrorist network to be built up in Fallujah on the grounds that military force would antagonise the natives and then smash it up, as was inevitable, anyway after it was too late - ‘If you are merciful to the cruel, you will end up being cruel to the merciful’ – but there were many more that do not fit so comfortably into my peculiar persuasions.
I also have no problem with the suggestion that the entire neo-con project was misconceived, that Jeffersonian Democracy is simply not as easy to implement as Wolfowitz said it was and that the consequences of failure far more terrible. Quite possibly, the only responsible plan after the conquest was to implement an authoritarian regime that would adhere to civilized norms and pursue enlightened (i.e. free market) economic policies, though, for various reasons few of which do us any credit, this couldn’t have been sold to the western public.
However, it is does not follow that Ba’athism was somehow necessary to keep Iraq in check, appropriate to Iraq or (as I have sometimes in my lower moments thought) what Iraqis deserve. Plainly, it had plumbed depths of immorality and barbarism that are never necessary for the maintenance of order and that, as Burckhardt wrote of Borgia, must undermine rational political objectives and become goals in themselves. Before the 20th century the elevation of orgiastic wickedness into a political system was relatively rare, seen only in a Mannaseh or Dionysius, a Vlad or Ivan; relatively speaking, it is so again. The fact that such a monstrosity was allowed to exist in Iraq for seconds let alone decades is not just one of those things, but a profound disgrace to all mankind and, whatever other factors may come into play, I don’t see that any satisfactory position vis á vis Iraq can fail to recognise this.
I’m not sure I really have a point, but for what it’s worth I can at least make one preliminary conclusion. Anyone who says something along the lines of ‘at least Iraq before the war was stable’ is either a moral cretin or doesn’t have a fucking clue what they are talking about. In either case their opinions should be ignored.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have no time but I should say:
You have a point, and your post - given that you are deducing these things sort of 'off the top of your head' - is a testament to your fine mind.
There are a number of things to pick up on. Your line of reasoning carries significance way beyond what you're positing. It is one of the central steps in one of the central arguments of our time.
And it is important to make it.To that end though, you are far too kind in selecting the target. Uday's story is a drop in an ocean in regard to the point you are illustrating.
It is also worth repeating again (and again) that whatever you think of British and American foreign policies, the blame for the atrocities (and the word is inadequate) committed by the 'insurgents' (and the word is problematic) lies with those committing the attacks. Firmly (...and before G-d).
Further, you're not alone. There is a movement afoot on the left (and I wish I could go into the politics of it, but I've got to write other emails...), perhaps best described as revolving around the Euston manifesto and Nick Cohen's (absolute must read) book 'What's Left?' that essentially is an extremely forceful and salient exposition of your argument. I'll go into detail some other time.
As regards your points, briefly:
Forget Fallujah, the war after the 'major combat' phase is an utter disaster of unforgivable incompetence in strategy and execution on all levels. This is already clear as a picture begins to emerge from the various players that are publishing their partisan books. They are not denying those facts of incompetence; they're simply denying their respective bit parts in it - so the literature would seem, as a first draft of history, to lead to that conclusion.
As regards the Neo-Conservative ideology, you actually pick up on a very central point in it at this time. Neo-Conservatism is a coherent set of ideas, of utmost intellectual rigorousness, and in my opinion validity. Again, I have no time now, but the central problem as regards Iraq is relatively simple. Neo-Conservatism requires steps from the original thinkers behind it via secondary thinkers that use the philosophical heritage to turn them into policy prescriptions. Francis Fukuyama - who I'm sure you know - in his book 'After the Neo-Cons' felt it necessary to publicly break with the movement, since he was against the Iraq war as a point of principle - in terms of the philospophy behind the Neo-Cons (and there is no Neo-Con project. It's a worldview, not a conspiracy). Essentially, as far as International Relations go, neo-cons believe - unlike realists - that the internal makeup of a state in the international system is of consequence.
This stems, in a complicated way, from the moral philosophy at the heart of neo-conservatism. From this, you lead eventually to something similar (but again, there are lots and lots of caveats here) to what Blair describes as 'Liberal Interventionism' - he readily states that as his foreign policy.
The problem is, neo-conservatism - and that is why it is so attractive, has an inbuilt anti-totalitarian strain that says - loud and clear - 'stay away from any large scale social engineering. And its key thinkers do so in a way that is in a different league to - for example Popper (whom I nevertheless love deeply). Hence, Fukuyama asks what on earth happened to this central tenet when the Bush doctrine was formulated. It is questionable if it is neo-con in character, never mind that some key Bush people studied under Wohlstetter - who was one of those key philosophy-to-policy enablers.
Last, your alternative prescription doesn't fly. You call liberal markets 'enlightened'. I agree, with some reservations. However, most of the faculty at my University would argue strongly (to viciously differing extents) that the mode of action you are describing is Imperial and illegitimate. It would of course also be immensely hypocritical under the 'Liberal Interventionism' guise in which the war came. But that does not detract from your central point. Which is a a fundamental one far beyond facebook.
I hope you're we'll and are back soon so we can chat!!
Oh, and PS:Scientology is evil (now go take some vitamins!!)

Ahahaha, now I will kill the President and kill Salma Hayek

2007-05-11T00:38:00.000+01:00

2r3y307
Uploaded by 2r3y

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

2007-05-03T17:30:00.000+01:00

Catherine Bennett in today's Guardian (of all papers!):
Why should we have to justify ourselves to the people who want to bomb us?
There are calls for self-examination, as if we brought the stash of weedkiller on ourselves

Catherine Bennett
Thursday May 3, 2007
The Guardian

Although we shall never know how the Prophet would have received a plan to blow up "slags" in a London nightclub, there is no avoiding the feeling that for some of today's more respectable non-Muslims, this particular target might appear more . . . how shall we say - understandable? - than others. People who would not countenance the Iraq war as an adequate pretext for domestic jihad seem strikingly open to the idea that a pure-minded revulsion from our filthy western ways might, in some cases, prompt extreme disaffection leading to social exclusion followed by the emergence of individuals such as the thwarted terrorist Jawad Akbar who fantasised thus about slaughter on the Ministry of Sound dance floor: "No one can turn around and say, 'Oh, they were innocent', those slags dancing around. Do you understand what I mean?"
Some people do. Ed Husain, author of a revealing and alarming account of his experiences inside radical Islam, said of the "slags" comment: "That was me, man. That's classic Hizb-ut-Tahrir rhetoric." In his new book, The Islamist, Husain identifies a professed horror of western decadence as the next, infinitely promising excuse for Islamist murder. "When the political pretexts of Palestine and Iraq have been dealt with," he writes, "Wahhabi-inspired militants will turn to other social grievances. Drinking alcohol, 'impropriety', gambling, cohabitation, inappropriate dress - these and a host of miscellaneous others will become excuses for jihad, for martyrdom, feeding the tumour of Islamist domination which grows in the Wahhabi and Islamist mind."
Since - as Husain suggests - there can never be enough modesty, celibacy and sobriety to placate Islamist critics of our national slaggishness, you might consider their complaints on this score no more worthy of investigation than the precise adjustments that might make our free and easy voting system more acceptable to paternalist fundamentalists, or the amount of tweaking that would bring the British legal system into line with that of, say, Saudi Arabia.
But where Islamist complaints about immorality and women's sexual behaviour are concerned, there are calls for self-examination, for all the world as if we brought the stash of weedkiller on ourselves. On the Today programme yesterday, Patrick Mercer, formerly the Tory homeland security spokesman, said: "We have got to understand why we look offensive to those who choose to suborn our society." Why have we got to? It's like an innocent woman asking what she did to incite her rapist. Was it the short skirt?
We heard it before, after 7/7. "I feel a growing sympathy for so-called 'radical' Muslims who reject western civilisation," Norman Lebrecht wrote in the London Evening Standard that summer. "It does not take much to see where things have gone wrong. Binge drinking is accepted as a teenage norm, promiscuity as preferable to chastity, and wealth as something to be flaunted in the face of the poor." Around the same time, Bel Mooney, displeased by a bikini advertisement, sought a kind of enlightenment from the acts of sociopathic Islamist fundamentalists (who would certainly have disapproved of her having any views at all). "Surely," she wrote in the Mail on Sunday, "it would be useful if we could use the current crisis to train a searchlight on the way we live now."
Leave aside the disgustingness of taking moral instruction from the advocates of mass murder, or those from the Saudi Arabian school of sexual etiquette, and there is still a problem with their qualifications. For some reason their very outrage seems to confer authority. Writers whose suspicions would be instantly aroused by, say, a smarmy TV evangelist who seemed obsessively interested in fornication, or a politician who relied on divine inspiration as a justification for war, seem to have no difficulty listening to the strictures of angry young men whose primary moral interest appears to be in telling women what to wear on their heads.
In The Islamist, Ed Husain confirms what you might suspect: his former colleagues included sexual hypocrites, as well as offenders, thugs and homophobes. Many preferred ranting to prayer. The same activists who banned discos and western music at his London college, and who bullied homosexuals and Brick Lane's prostitutes and inadequately covered female students ("Hijab - put up or shut up"), would decide, having thoroughly reviewed the theology, that pornography was acceptable. And concubines. "I prefer blondes from the Balkans, personally," announced one hammer of western decadence.
Following a period in modestly dressed, porn-loving Saudi Arabia, Husain concluded that the Islamists' depiction of the west as morally inferior was nothing more than "Islamist propaganda, designed to undermine the west and inject false confidence in Muslim minds". And whether through accident or design, the propaganda is working brilliantly, as it coincides with an epidemic of binge drinking, super casinos and intermittent moral panic.
Even if it does not want them to be killed, the Daily Mail is very upset about women who enjoy ending their evenings with their knickers showing, being sick in the gutter. Even if they don't want to wear one themselves, many liberal feminists are happy to make believe that the male-enforced hijab is a modest, feminine response to a materialist, oversexualised society that judges women by their appearance. And of course, like lots of things in this decadent society, that is not very nice. Many of us share the Crawley terrorists' dislike of Bluewater. But that is not to say we have any interest in their plans to improve it.

The one and only...

2007-04-24T11:57:00.000+01:00

Show your appreciation (4)

2007-04-11T13:15:00.000+01:00
Dear Mr Binyon,

Please forgive me for clogging up your inbox any more than necessary, but I wanted to drop you another line to express my appreciation for Tuesday's Times leader regarding the fiasco that has been the handling of the British sailors released by Iran. Libby Purves point opposite was a welcome addition, and the news story regarding Ahmadinejad's latest claims a reminder of the utmost seriousness of this issue.

It is usually my habit to seek out and engage points of view contrary to my own. In the case of Iran though, whatever one's view on all sorts of interrelated geopolitical realities, the lack of a sober threat assessment - by an uncomfortably large section of the intelligentsia and by extension the general public - of what it would mean to live in a world with a nuclear armed Iran in its current form is acutely frightening. As indeed is the astonishing adeptness with which Ahmadinejad is executing his menacing PR. In view of this, the leader page of the Times has become a distinguished and reassuring arena of reason and hard truth. Many thanks.

With best wishes,

Davis Lewin

Show your appreciation (3)

2007-04-08T12:11:00.000+01:00

Dear Sir / Madame,
I'd like to congratulate the Observer (and Mitchell Prothero in particular) on the excellent piece on the Daghmash family of Gaza ('Feuding clan holds key to kidnapp riddle', World, today). It shows a depth of understanding of the realities in the Palestinian administered areas that is lacking in most analyses in the media. An excellent piece of journalism, it is indeed at this juncture the 'only story in town'. Good on you for picking it up so eloquently.

As regards Richard Carter's letter (Letters, today) he speaks about 'patronising idiots' when referring to a former intelligence officer's assessment that dealing with Iran 'is like talking to a hypersensitive adolescent with anger mangagement issues who is building a bomb in his bedroom'. In my limited experience of diplomacy vis-a-vis Iran, I can only say that this way of putting it is by far the best I have read anywhere, I wish I'd coined this succinct description myself. If I had, I would have changed it only slightly to 'a Holocaust-denying hypersensitive adolescent with anger management issues who is building a nuclear bomb in his bedroom'.

The Observer remains (strange that, given your bitter sister) the best Newspaper in the UK.

Sincerely Yours,

Davis Lewin

Show your appreciation... (2)

2007-03-27T00:24:00.002+01:00
Here is an email to Stephen Crabb MP (Conservative). It refers to a letter he wrote in response to a filthy, antisemitic piece in the Guardian by Geoffrey Wheatcroft. I will post more about the broader worrying picture this article is situated in in due time.

Dear Mr Crabb,
I wanted to thank you for your letter in today's Guardian.
The issues at stake are of utmost seriousness and consequence, and unfortunately I have little time now to fully formulate my (considered) views. It is reassuring to see your letter reclaim sense on behalf of your party.
I feel bound to add to your expert response the important point that Mr Wheatcroft clearly posesses an irrational and age old view of the relationship between Jews and foreign policies. That is to say, his article trots out pretty much every classic antisemitic theme going...
Modern antisemites would claim that I am seeking to 'stiffle' his point with accusations of this kind. The truth though, is in reverse. Wheatcroft shows why Israel's supporters are often fully justified in claiming to detect antisemitism amongst those that talk about her actions in the international.
Your point is important - good friends are critical - but Israel is more than open to criticism. Every day I get an email from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It lists the editorials of that day, often extremely critical. And sent by the Government itself. Alistair Campbell in his hayday may well have had a heart attack.
You will likely be familiar with this though, given that you have visited the country. And conceivably this visit will feature in a few other responses to your letter - in a considerably different context.
Many people have not realised the seriousness of our age just yet. Policy debates are vital. But one has to worry when they are conducted in the irrational realm - and when in the UK today this raises few eyebrows if it appears in a national newspaper...
I wish you all the best,
Davis Lewin

Killer King!!!

2007-03-26T20:00:00.000+01:00
Being so desperately behind with my Dissertations, I shouldn't even be reading / posting, but this guy is my hero of the month. I give you Hillel Neuer of UN Watch telling the oxymoronic joke that is the UN Human Rights Council some truth. His composed and sharp delivery is impressive to say the least... this is an important and difficult statement to make, and the reaction of the president tells you all you need to know. Most kids are watching TV. They wouldn't know the significance of these things if you'd hit them over the head with it. But this stuff really does matter immensely. Hillel Neuer, you're the man!!

Show your appreciation...

2007-01-14T02:06:00.000+01:00

Not that good a letter... in response to this article.
Mr Baker,

I hadn’t gotten round to it, and I am sure your email inbox is currently enjoying the ‘participatory age’ and all the abuse it allows for.
So I just wanted to say thanks for your recent piece on the liberal establishment and Blair. More please.

When the saner of the liberals (i.e. the ‘original’ neo-cons…!!) ‘get it’, or, in case they don’t, are removed by the force of the seriousness of our times, they will all retrospectively point to Blair. He’s not perfect, but he ‘get’s it’. The ‘arch of moderation’ concept went under in our cynical and hypocritical times. And yet such an arch may well lose, which is something so scary as to be not an option. And a large section of the self-righteous liberal elite has declared ‘the West’ at fault. You know what will happen? The people have base instincts and not a lot of time for this. Nick Griffin may yet get his crisis. But then I do have faith in the British to suddenly wake up, choose wisely, and stand to be counted. But why are they always so late???

Thanks again,

D. Lewin

Preliminary post on how beneath it all something remains the same

2007-01-12T01:01:00.000+01:00
One of the problems shaping up to be central in my pretentious intellectual endeavors is the idea that there is a constant throughout history - call it human nature for now - which despite that thing called 'progress' (which does exist but is dangerously overrated) - remains the same. Allow me as a wholly inadequate beginning to try and illustrate with an excerpt from this story:

El Al and rabbis reach deal after 5 weeks...
...In the agreement, signed in the offices of attorney Ya'akov Weinrot, who represents the rabbis, El Al promises to keep the sabbath, as it has since 1982. In addition, if the carrier has to operate flights on Shabbat, like it did five weeks ago because of a strike at the airport, it would first have to consult with Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar. If the rabbi is not convinced there is an emergency situation that justifies the violation of Shabbat, and the airline chooses to proceed with the flights, this action will be perceived as a violation of the agreement.

If such a violation should occur, the airline will not reimburse ticket holders who choose to cancel their travel plans with El Al (as the committee first demanded), but the money will be transferred to the state medical basket, a compromise proposal put forth by the representative of the Admor of Gur on the committee.

It does have something of Bashevis Singer's stories about the Stettl about it. Yet it is all to do with these huge and fascinating machines called aeroplanes that travel huge distances in no time. But the argument, the way it was conducted (for which you'd need a little bit more background than the excerpt) and this compromise - maybe I am the only one who sees it like this, but to me it illustrates why you should be careful to think that things change. Underneath it all they could be talking about what happens to some Donkey on some Shabbat somewhere in Eastern Europe...

2007-01-04T01:31:00.000+01:00
NB: This is a draft post and needs serious editing, for it makes a serious point. I apologise for all the swearing, it should not be in there.

Ok, now, this guy Lefsetz,
ohhh wait, first I'll have to rant a bit...

Anybody seen La Haine? Well, let me not get into the marketing of the 10th Anniversary 'ultimate' (framed by the two cesar flower thingies they use around film prizes on DVD covers...) metal-cased edition, that includes a 'making of documentary, and Kassovitz's blog post on the '05 French riots - including Sarkozy's response...

Now Sarkozy made some infamous comments at the time, which many say inflamed the tensions. And Kassovitz is not the first to show up a cultural problem in the French model that leads to disaffection and violence, but first things first.

LaHaine, though I like it a lot, is not that great a movie. Now to the cool kids that may well be blasphemy, but you can all go and fuck yourselves, cause you were stoned as little chinese munchkins when you watched it, cause it is sooo cool, and just the kind of movie where you gotta smoke dope, hell, even the characters can't wait to be passed the Spliff.

Oh and before I forget, I swear the new subtitles have been toned down lots. In the documentary, you see some scenes from the film with the original subtitles still in place - far far dirtier, can't look it up now, but it's true.

But the reason it is not that great is simple. The rawness and realistic nature of the portrayal of the characters interaction is fantastic. It feels very familiar, and I've been hanging out with kids like these long enough to spot the accuracy even across cultural boundaries - tough life on an estate in Paris does breed some of the same attributes in the Kids, as that on an estate in Bristol.

But the film does not do what it so pompously claims. Sit down and watch it, not stoned. What do you see? 3 fucking arseholes, who when you meet them on the train, you'd be happy to be with your Tyson mate, so he'd put them in their place. That's what they are. Three fucking arseholes. Now, I understand the whole thing is supposed to be to do with the 'product of environment' strand of thought, but where exactly does Kassovitz show this? Ok, I hated the police with a passion in the torture scene, and at the end Kassovitz manages to include a real-life occurence of the accidental shooting (albeit in a fictional setting), but throughout the film, where exactly are all the references that serve to explain why the three are such anti-social arseholes? They're not there. It is presented as a given that we understand that this is to do with the neglect and discrimination etc. Ey, don't get me wrong, there are complex and important points here about the inequalities of the French model - and the benefits - and about thug life and why it comes about, but LaHaine, as far as I am concerned, doesn't serve to explain any of these, but just glorifies three assholes.

The docu's good though. Kudos to Kasso and crew for going to live on the estate and slotting in amongst its complex and threatening society. Makes it all the more sad that they did not make a better movie. I mean don't get me wrong, it's a great movie in that middle class, window into a world I wish I was tough enough for way, but it falls short, for me at a crucial, crux in fact, aspect of its seeming mission.

Let me insert a disclaimer here though... I realise that this may be a superfluous critique, since the movie may at the time have served as the wrench to open the debate and take it where it had not been, and therefore deserve respect in that, and even deserve the tag 'achieved its aim'.

The reason why I bought it? Actually, all to do with politics. See, in my mind politics and the moving image, the filmmakers and international or domestic relations, well, they don't sit easily. Of course there's the Michael Moore problem, the George Clooney and Sean Penn (in ascending order of ridiculousness) problems, but I am thinking more of much wider things. Cinema as it is made today is so new, and so unbelievably much has changed so quickly recently, from the silent film and the news reels, Riefenstahl, etc to now, that it is kind of hard to claim to know what is going on.

Therefore the blurb on the 'ultimate' (fuck you mr marketing wanker) DVD:

'includes Kasso's post about the '05 riots on his blog and Sarkozy's response',

immediatelly caught my eye, as a possible significant pointer in the struggle to understand, or at the very least as noteworthy. Here is the feted filmmaker of the foremost film on the subject, produced nearly a decade prior to the most recent riots (and they are part of an ongoing series, for neither Kasso nor Sarkozy have managed to offer workable fixes, make no mistake) in 'new media' conversation with the minister responsible.

A must buy cultural artefact.

I returned the DVD. I would have kept it, like I say, it is a great movie despite my misgivings, and as I pompously say, a cultural artefact, in my admittedly odd world, but I just couldn't possibly give Kasso any of my (parental) money.

Here's why:

I haven't got the booklet anymore, obviously, and in any case would not have the patience to type out exact extracts (it's not available on his website in English, I wonder why mr marketing wanker), but here's the problem.

On the first page, there is a comment from Kasso on the '05 riots. This is a cogent, densely and almost poetically argued tract, CRUCIALLY followed at the bottom by a note that 'This is an edited extract of the Comments placed by Kasso on his blog of the crisis'

Sarkozy's reply immediately makes reference to 'ignoring the rather personal slurs and insults to tackle the broader social issues at stake', and continues in a lengthy exposition to accuse Kassovitz amongst other things of siding with the law-breakers (a charge that may well stick, given Kasso's 'radical' attitude as a whole but the relevant bits were not reprinted in the edited version of his original post. Needless to say neither were the slurs Sarkozy refers to.

Kasso then features a lengthy reply, aloof and pointless, almost childish in the same way Thom Yorke (Radiohead - you should really know that...) refused to meet Tony Blair on climate change - cause he's the problem. He may be the problem, but he happens to be sitting in the chair that has the buttons to act attached, you fucking twat. You sulking at home will save our world, won't it??

Anyway, Kasso is the same, in all his righteousness, he forgoes this opportunity and basically has a wank.

And the audacity of accusing Sarkozy of misrepresenting him, in a leaflet (the booklet in the DVD, as I see it, is essentially a political leaflet), which starts with him editing out his statement to suit himself. Not admissable, particularly in a world of untruths and deleted blogs.

BUT IT GET'S SO SO SO MUCH WORSE...

Having recently been involved in the organisation of a conference on Dissinformation and Xenophobia, with some top people from Academia, Government and the media (both Western and Middle Eastern), I will say this. I was involved in organising it, because I already saw the writing on the wall for a long time. Yet even I was astonished at some of the things I heard. And we are talking about the world authorities. It is unbelievable, and universally the conclusion was that it will get worse.

The minutes are available, but I cannot link to them here as they are on a confidential site, so email if you care...,

In any case, I would have left it as chiding Kasso for this 'bad practice'.

But then I visited his (beautiful) website. And there in his (french) blog, the idiot (and it will become apparent why he deserves this title), writes (I loosely translate):

There is a new phenomenon, free from the censor, citizen journalism, important for documentaries, like on you tube. One of the most important ('plus marquant') examples of this new phenomenon is the documentary 'Loose Change'.

Fucking Twat. Do you know what loose change is?? It's an internet docu (viewed over 10million times), about how the US gov did 9/11.

Read about it here And BTW, if the US gov had perpetrated 9/11, and I can't believe I am actually gracing this with my time, somebody would have said something. Oh but yeah, they've all been killed before they could, right??

Fuck me, Kasso, you endorse this? This is your hope for the future, for democracy??

This is the problem you moron!! This is why the internet is dangerous, this is why we gotta watch the fuck out! But you are not alone... And I will write a much more respectable post about this issue, one I can refer people too, but fuck, Kasso, I can't believe you are so fucking stupid. Hereafter, your word counts for nothing, man... conversation with the interior minister or not...

Anyway, after this long rant I get to my point, and a nice one it is!!!

So Lefsetz... He's a perfect example of the real power, the positive power of the the blogosphere. This guy (mostly) get's it right in terms of music industry analysis. He has a huge mailing list, but the revolutionary thing is that here you have some guy, albeit with established respect, posting on the net for everybody to see, and he regularly get's comments from the top movers and shakers who feature in the posts. That's exciting. That's new media. that's pretty cool. When Ahmet Ertegun died, Lefsetz's post became practically a eulogy board for those who had met the legendary founder of Atlantic (Your older siblings Led Zeppelin vinyl anyone? AC/DC?).

And now it get's exciting. Side story. Stevie Ray Vaughn, one of the greatest guitarists to ever have graced this earth, used to play with a band called double trouble. When he died they became Jimmy D Lane's band. Jimmy is the son of Muddy Waters' legendary guitarist. If you don't know who Muddy Waters is, stop reading right now and enjoy the fact that you are about to have a 'virgin discovery' of the music that inspired everyone from Hendrix, the Stones to me... and then repent, fucker... anyway, so this is the guy who's dad played guitar for muddy waters, and who himself is a mean guitarist and now plays with Stevie Ray Vaughn's old band. AND HE LEFT MY BAND PROPS: POPA WOULD'VE BEEN PROUD. So naturally I had to get a fuckin MySpace account, if that is what happens. Here it is. Here is my bands. Here is Jimmy D Lane. Why do I say this. Well, obviously, because it is cool, but also, he has a picture of him and Ahmet up there...

But anyway, now, after over an hour of giving up smoking insomnia induced ranting... the point:

Lefsetz knows what he's talking about and here is an excerpt from his 2007 prediction post:
27. The blues
Blues rock is coming back. Maybe not this year, but within three. After all, all those kids listening to Zeppelin, they want something NEW to hang their knit caps on. And those acts you hate, Nickelback and Hinder, they’re closer to what’s coming than Justin Timberlake.
Really? You're probably right. I always thought we would never make any money with this shit, but then people keep coming up to me at gigs, overjoyed when they hear a kick -ass rocky blues band, so you may just be right. I am unsure about the music business as a career, to say the least, but let's see what happens. Here is a (pretty average, but only one I can get now) performance of ours (minus rhythm guitarist)...

Blues Takin' Over

Let's hope you're right, Mr Lefsetz!!!

Excellent post...

2006-12-14T18:10:00.000+01:00
which is a good contribution towards a beginning of understanding
the currents of antisemitism coming our way.

HERE

Lefsetz analysis

2006-12-13T21:25:00.000+01:00
Interesting - a lot of this chides with my own views... (making it fantastically easy for myself, I know)

HERE

MPACUK

2006-12-10T12:51:00.000+01:00
Must read from Oliver Kamm's Blog.

MPAC and Irving

Check it out...

2006-12-10T12:35:00.000+01:00
Thanks to J-Roc...

Letter to the Editor - Prospect Magazine

2006-12-10T12:27:00.002+01:00
My first published letter to the editor, published in Prospect magazine in April '05
-----------------------
Islamophobia

17th February 2005

It is rich of Abdul Wahid (Letters, March) to speak about hostility towards Muslims. Wahid is a leading member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. I quote from one of its publications, widely available: "Palestine… was the graveyard of the crusaders and Tartars, and it will be so as well to the Jews, the enemies of Allah, by his will." Wahid, a north London GP, supports this blatant antisemitism; indeed it is central to his organisation's worldview. And you give him and his organisation a voice.

Davis Lewin

Jewish Society, Univ of Sussex

The Simpsons

2006-07-15T23:51:00.000+01:00
I know we all love the Simpsons. I know we all need therapy. Some more than others. Enough said.

Correspondence with 'dazed' on their latest issue

2006-06-28T22:46:00.000+01:00

Below is an email tree containing correspondence with the editor of 'dazed' magazine, regarding their 'Human Rights' issue (Vol II #39):
---------------------------------------------------------------

From: davis lewin <davislewin@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:24:52 +0100
To: <nicki@confused.co.uk>, ,
Subject: Vol II #39

Guys,

I have written to you before about my love for Dazed. And, despite the fact that you tried to sell me Gucci loafers in the last issue – the kind of shoe which Middle Eastern boys who dream of their friend’s older brother’s Ferrari / girlfriend wear, the fashion, film and – hear, hear – product placement, are as fresh as ever. It’s just that you have done the whole human rights malarkey in the classic ‘dazed get’s political way’; namely, total bullshit. I’m sorry. Really. But guys, gather round – leave your amnesty t-shirts at your macs for just a sec. The diplomatic foundation I work for is in the advanced planning stage for a delegation of senior journalists / editors to Darfur. I can ask if there is space for three fashion / film / music / whatever / iCuttingEdge journos. Perhaps then the centrepiece piece of your next human rights issue will not be Pilger going on about American Fascism. American F A S C I S M. He’s useless– and I know, I know he says the term fascism get’s abused; I know he says he is offering this not as rethoric, but he talks shit, constantly, with a conviction in his righteousness usually found only in fasc.... Aha, and Chavez is fantastic, ISN’T HE?

I so hope you are just misguided.

Once more: Human Rights issue centrefold was Pilger ranting about what? Darfur? China? Ohhh, you know where this is going. You see, in politics, if you want to be dazed, cool, so funky it popps – you’ll get caught up with idiots like Pilger. You guys need a political editor. Preferably not Pilger/Fisk/Galloway. May I suggest Nick Cohen? Now here’s a man on the left talking sense… Of course, by the looks of it, you’ve already asked Chomsky – coming to think of it, even he is slightly preferable to Pilger. Fuck, dazed, why do you have to hurt me? With this bullshit, can’t you just stick to making a good apolitical read??

Sort it out!!!

Davis

------------------------------------------------------------

From: Rod Stanley [rod@confused.co.uk]
Date: Wed 28/06/2006 18:26
To: davislewin@hotmail.com <nicki@confused.co.uk>, ,
Subject: Vol II #39

Hi Davis

Thanks for your comments on the issue. Your preference for the politics of Nick Cohen is of course entirely up to you, but incidentally, The Guardian, where Nick Cohen is of course a columnist, recently also ran a sizeable extract from John Pilger’s book, and in a review of the book, said: “The array of interviews with the voiceless and abused provides an indispensable corrective to the litany of disinformation we are fed by the media, and for this achievement Pilger is surely the most outstanding journalist in the world today.”

I hope you continue to enjoy the magazine.

kind regards

Rod Stanley
Editor

----------------------------------------------------------------
From: davis lewin <davislewin@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:24:52 +0100
To: <nicki@confused.co.uk>, ,
Subject: Vol II #39
Dear Rod,
It is with great pleasure that I received your reply. You are no doubt busy preparing another copy of dazed filled with all the cool stuff you guys do so fantastically well - though of course I personally would like to think that I don’t need a magazine to tell me what’s hip, yet you guys on occasion surprise with stuff that has slipped under my radar. And on a commercial note, there is simply nobody who does product integration / advertorial as good as dazed. A bit like a media whore (got a product? Want cool? Hook up with dazed…), but full respect, considering how good the package you can offer is, I bet the much discussed current advertising downturn is not affecting dazed…
On the political issues though, whilst I wish again to offer thanks for your time, you will have to raise your game if you wish to counter my – admittedly hurriedly ranted – arguments against the editorial decision to focus a ‘human rights’ edition on a piece by Pilger decrying US ‘fascism’
First, Nick Cohen does not write for The Guardian, he writes for the Evening Standard and The Observer. The latter is admittedly The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, but there is a world of difference between them. The Observer is far less preachy and biased on certain key issues, somewhat younger, fresher and less frustrated, and it steers clear of some of the more ridiculous commentary its sister offers (although, naturally, I read The Guardian religiously as well…). More importantly, Nick Cohen was merely a suggestion, as it is clear that dazed feels more comfortable on the left (as indeed I do – though surely those terms cannot be far from defunct), and he is one of a new breed of political commentators who are finally calling all the outrageous bullshit of much of that ‘left’ today by its name.
Hence, this non-existent - or at best far removed - association does not give your reply any intellectual credibility.
More importantly though, your reply is telling for its second point. Let me try and briefly explain why the review of Pilger’s work you cite is far from satisfactory as an argument in his defence, and why it is actually a ‘hip’ publication (such as dazed), which makes the US central to its highlighting of human rights abuses, that is part of what we could term ‘intellectually misguided’ information in the media.
I know most of the staff at the Guardian, a few key people personally through work, and a few others as acquaintances resulting from the diplomatic / media / business circuit. Ewen MacAskill (the diplomatic editor) and Duncan Campbell would be a good median of views at the paper, which would consider a lot of what Pilger says over the top, but with some truth in it. There are others for whom Pilger’s crap is probably not far enough – such as Seaumes Milne, editor of the comments page. But I am not trying to put words into people’s mouths, I am simply saying: ‘of course The Guardian gives props to Pilger – they fucking would!!!’
So, to address your second point, to cite The Guardian as proof of Pilger’s relevance is somewhat akin to citing you as proof of Nicki Bidder’s excellent editing skills.
I do not wish to impose on your day any longer, and respectfully thank you for reading all this, just one last point of my own now:
Jon Pilger’s website (here) states that the central focus of his forthcoming book, an excerpt from which formed the centrepiece of the dazed issue we are discussing here, will focus on his ‘reporting’ from Palestine. Last week, in the New Statesman, his latest piece on that contentious issue – a cover piece no less, compared Israel to the Nazis.
Much of my work in diplomatic / media related areas focuses on this intractable conflict, as well as Iraq, Iran, Syria and Sudan. If I may say so: believe me, dude, I know my shit, and I have seen, read and heard more than most at my age.
Anybody who stoops this low, and the Israel / Nazi comparison is so misplaced as to lead me to decline to grace it with a rebuff, on one issue, who let’s his warped vitriol lead him to fit reality into such an abhorrent view on one issue, is not to be trusted on any other.
This is not about Israel (though he places it at the centre of his book, and as so often it serves as a perfect microcosmic example), this is about a world view that sees a top magazine make the US the target of its scorn in its human rights edition. A world view which John Pilger personifies more than most, and which is of such warped morality, intellectual muddle and yet wrapped in rigid righteousness, that it is increasingly hard to counter vis-à-vis all the sheep baahing it. Yet, whilst dangerous from the start, as the world becomes a more dangerous place, so the danger from intellectual misguidance increases.
To leave you in peace: Thanks for taking time to write back and read this far, but just once more, ask yourself: If you look at the world today, and you see all that is taking place, and you write about Human Rights, can it possibly be someone worth listening to, who tells you that the US – despite its short comings including Guantanmo Bay – is to be the focus of your concern. Bullshit. Pilger is a fuckwit, who’s misguided crap is not helping anybody. What’s published is published, and as you say, your preference in politics is entirely your choice. But as I wrote to Callum (in a stern message which he nevertheless graciously received - for which he commands my respect despite the fact I’ve never met him) when he was editing dazed: the magazine is great, but when you stray into politically hot territory such as this, expect to be taken to task for it.
I trust you understand the respectful nature of my message and do not consider it a personal attack on you or your views.
All the best,
Davis
-----------------------------------------------
From: Rod Stanley [rod@confused.co.uk]
Date: Wed 28/06/2006 18:26
To: davislewin@hotmail.com <nicki@confused.co.uk>, ,
Subject: Vol II #39

Dear Davis

Thanks again for your comments. Briefly: we still feel that Pilger’s piece is relevant to the issue and the debate. His essay is a key part of this issue but not the only part; elsewhere in the 40-page section, you will find ten pages given to an eye-witness report from the Congo and the campaign for an International Arms Trade Treaty, and a number of other human rights stories from around the world.

I mentioned the Guardian not as “proof” of Pilger’s relevance, but to demonstrate that we are far from alone in choosing to publish his work, as I am sure you are aware (and yes, Cohen does write for the Observer – my mistake).

Again, your comments are appreciated and I hope you continue to enjoy the magazine.

respectfully,
Rod Stanley
-----------------------------------------------

From: davis lewin <davislewin@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:24:52 +0100
To: <nicki@confused.co.uk>, ,
Subject: Vol II #39

Dear Rod (ain’t that trite…),
Both your points are indeed valid and, once again, thanks for taking the time to respond. Though it saddens me that you should consider the warped world view Pilger stands for ‘relevant to the issue and the debate’, it is true – you are not alone. And of course there are several good and interesting other items in the issue. May I say, as kind of an obligatory parting shot, that I hope you will at least consider my points as part of that debate. For I am not alone in making them either and – as is apparently obvious from our exchange – consider it vital they be made.
I shall certainly continue to read dazed. With great pleasure (mostly…)
Yours,
Davis

The reason I know how to use a guitar

2006-06-09T23:19:00.000+01:00

I don't think it's possible to overestimate the impact the performance in this video has had on my life.

The first CD I ever bought with my own money - I must've been very young, maybe ten or eleven at most, was the Knocking on Heaven's Door single. One benefit was that it taught me how to spell 'Knocking'. I also distinctly remember getting a fault in an English exam in school for inserting an apostrophy (because of heaven-'s-) where there should not have been one.

All of which pales in comparison with the real impact the video - which was the reason I bought the CD, as the clip from this performance - with the intro always and the audience participation bit almost always edited out - was what the band used as the music video for the song - hours of waiting for MTV to show it. If only there had been YouTube then..., anyway, the real impact of the video was to change my life.

Many, many years later I read in a credible but unremembered interview that the band considered this performance (Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert at the old Wembley Stadium) to be its collective high point. For more videos from this fantastic gig click here. Having just seen GnR's current pathetic formation at the Hammersmith Apollo, I feel like I've been jilted by the only girl I ever truly loved (sorry Zeppelin, but you were just too old - actually, GnR could never touch your musicianship, but then they were Guns N Fucking Roses - say no more!!! It's like you won a Pullitzer, but they know how to suck cock...sorry mum.Hihi). Granted, Axl's voice is on top form, but come on: all true GNR nutters know it's fake at the first solo...

But at the time of this performance... Name me anybody else who could have stepped into these shoes. Click here and wait until the middle bit ends. Axl Rose at the peak of his powers.

Well, I could go on for hours. Trust me, I really could. But all I want to say is

Slash

Despite all the growing up and parallel reservations I've developed since those days, make no mistake, I saw this video and I remember always lying on the floor in my house in Munich, inches from the screen, glued, and it just being so mind-blowingly obvious that this is what I wanted to do when I grow up.

And it hasn't lost one bit. I was once chided at Guitar school for saying: Who needs a girlfriend when you've got a guitar??? The rest of the class booed (but they all knew that the school princess thought I was by far the best... just saying, you know...) anyway, look at it. I still can't help be unsure if it is not just a tad cooler even than the girls...

...so the reason why I know how to play guitar - if I may say, relatively well even - is the second solo in the above clip. No doubt about it and enough said!!

Ahmadinejad in 'Der Spiegel'

2006-06-01T20:20:00.000+01:00
Sent this to Jewschool two days ago. They posted it today. Check them out, it's a fantastic site, leading the (so-called) Jewish progressive online revolution, from a truly open-minded and wide-ranging starting point. Unlike a lot of 'progressives' these days. More on that when I feel like it...:
---------------------------------------------------------------

Ahmadinejad in ‘Der Spiegel’
I thought I’d send this unsolicited contribution. Originally from Munich, Germany – a place heavy with bitter history for our people if ever there was one – I found myself standing open-mouthed over my copy of ‘Der Spiegel’ in the middle of the street in London today. If Mobius kindly offers me more space in the future, I shall explain a little about my own first-hand experience of the diplomatic process vis-à-vis Iran so far. But for now, one thing will suffice. Whoever is trying to tell you that Ahmadinejad is just a crackpot, or anything about the constraints on his power due to the workings of Iran’s system of governance – say thank you nicely and look for someone else to explain the world to you. Now, I’ve been told by Iranians who most definitely know what they are talking about that even some ardent conservatives joke that 60% of Iran’s foreign policy problems are due to Ahmadinejad’s not keeping shtumm, but all of this should not matter one bit to us Jews. What matters to us is this.

A few quotes from the interview:

Ahmadinejad: …there are two opinions on this in Europe. One group of scholars or persons, most of them politically motivated, say the Holocaust occurred. Then there is the group of scholars who represent the opposite position and have therefore been imprisoned for the most part. Hence, an impartial group has to come together to investigate and to render an opinion on this very important subject, because the clarification of this issue will contribute to the solution of global problems. Under the pretext of the Holocaust, a very strong polarization has taken place in the world and fronts have been formed…

…if the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and that it is not Palestine that should pay the price for it. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. I believe that the German people today are also prisoners of the Holocaust. Sixty million people died in the Second World War. World War II was a gigantic crime. We condemn it all. We are against bloodshed, regardless of whether a crime was committed against a Muslim or against a Christian or a Jew. But the question is: Why among these 60 million victims are only the Jews the center of attention?

…Why should they [the Germans] have feelings of guilt toward Zionists? Why should the costs of the Zionists be paid out of their pockets? If people committed crimes in the past, then they would have to have been tried 60 years ago. End of story! Why must the German people be humiliated today because a group of people committed crimes in the name of the Germans during the course of history?

...I'm wondering why you're adopting and fanatically defending the stance of the European politicians. You're a magazine, not a government. Saying that we should accept the world as it is would mean that the winners of World War II would remain the victorious powers for another 1,000 years and that the German people would be humiliated for another 1,000 years. Do you think that is the correct logic?

The article is already causing a stir, not least on the magazine’s own website. Many feel that the reporters were unduly soft on Ahmadinejad. The mag’s by-line for the online translation reads harmlessly: 'In an interview with SPIEGEL, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discusses the Holocaust, the future of the state of Israel, mistakes made by the United States in Iraq and Tehran's nuclear dispute with the West. ' I have not yet been able to speak directly to my contacts at the magazine, but I understand some consider the article’s publication a mistake on the grounds that even a sixteenth of Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric would land him in jail in Germany.

We are almost used to, even jaded by, Ahmadinejad’s seemingly continuously antisemitic rhetoric. Yet, these are not ‘outbursts’, nor are they irrational hatred. They are calculated. And this latest one, delivered in a manner as any reasonable person might offer an argument, is the well established antisemitic construct that issues from his lips regularly. It will have consolidated his place as the hero of the (not nearly far enough) far-Right and neo-Nazis across Europe and elsewhere, and there are millions of Arabs and Muslims who will agree with Ahmadinehad’s utterings. Here is the head of a state with just over 68 million people (whose right to dislike him is being curtailed even as I write) – a state that sees itself as the ‘rightful regional superpower’ (their phrase), a state that is in the advanced stages of a nuclear programme, with masses and masses of evidence of technological experimentation with no application outside of nuclear weapons technology (heard the list from a British Government source myself). And this leader is amalgamating the German neo-Nazi narrative about ‘Zionist war guilt’ with the extreme ‘send the Jews back to where they came from’ Arab / Muslim camp. Nice. And only one facet of an anxious picture for wellpoisoners the world over …

Just a little heads up to my beautiful sisters and fantastic brothers… crackpot he ain’t. Watch Out.

On Postmodernism

2006-05-23T21:06:00.000+01:00
This post, on postmodern philosophy and its abuse, is somewhat heavy and may be too pretentious for the cooler ones amongst you. Please feel free to ignore it and read some other stuff by scrolling down the page instead!!

IMHO the Observer is the best paper in Britain today. It is young and yet mature (I know someone else who is... ahhh great minds love each other), full colour and has a far superior 'leftie' tone than its preachy sister-paper, the Guardian [whose Comment page editor (Seaumes Milne), Diplomatic editor (Ewen MacAskill) and Jerusalem corespondent (Chris McGreal) are all strong detractors of Israel - which shows in its heavily biased coverage of the MEPP (Middle East Peace Process or more like the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict at the moment). Frequently it descends into an outright attempt to paint Israel black, with Milne commissioning some outrageous stuff ...but I digress]. So, in the best paper in Britain's crowded newspaper market, the best columnist is a guy called Nick Cohen. He is fantastic, and I shall write more about his work soon.

To stick with this post though, here is an extract from a piece he wrote last Sunday about animal rights extremists in the UK. I will only reproduce the section that is important for us, click his name above if you wish to read the entire story:

'The postmodern theorists who have dominated much of academic life for the past 30 years are at last having their justifications for superstition taken apart almost daily. The latest salvos for rationality to invigorate intellectual life are Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed by Simon Blackburn, professor of philosophy at Cambridge University, and Why Truth Matters by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom.
It is worth reading both, if only because they tell you why sentiments you always suspected were silly when you heard them on Radio 4 are even more dunderheaded than you first thought. Unlike the postmodern obscurantists, they write for the lay reader, but their styles could not be more different.

Blackburn feels like the ideal stranger to meet in a bar as he guides you through the mess of postmodern relativism with intelligence and courtesy. Benson and Stangroom are more sharp-tongued and far more willing to invite the most revered names in postmodern academe to step outside for a well-deserved slap.

Both books complain about wishful thinking: believing that what you would like to be true is true because the world would be better if it were. I don’t want to discourage the philosophers when I say that fighting wishful thinking is like fighting the weather, but just because a battle can’t be won, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be joined. If you wanted to take on daydreamers whose make-believe world urgently needs dissecting, the animal rights movement would be this week’s obvious choice.'

Next, here is an extract from Roger Scruton's Modern Philosophy . His more recent take on the 'war on terror' (now the 'long war') is somewhat questionable, but this is a good, if full on, book. Though he goes on to state how vital it is for Philosophy today to be defended from 'vulgar' relativism and reductionism, and how these have been in vogue in Universities since the 70's, he singles out postmodernism in the introduction already. Afterall, it has been abused with both. In this passage he singles out Foucault, though probably only using him as one of the most prominent examples for purposes of brevity:

'...the French philosopher Michel Foucault repeatedly argues as though the 'truth' of an epoch has no authority outside the power-structure that endorses it. There is no trans-historical truth about the human condition. But... we should ask ourselves whether that statement is true: for if it is, it is false. There has arisen among [post]modernist philosophers a certain paradoxism which has served to put them out of communication with those of their contemporaries who are merely modern. A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative', is asking you not to believe him. So don't.'

And I cannot help but include this, my favourite ever bullshit exposure example (though see for an important clarification below):

The excellent 'Very Short Introduction' series (Oxford University Press)has a book on Poststructuralism (I know it's not quite the same, bear with me, it's just too good to miss...) from which I would like you to read the following, fantastic passage. Enjoy:

'Now that the [Berlin]Wall had fallen, what would unite the Free West in defence of shared values? Various candidates are currently on offer. There is the threat of violence from terrorism in general and 'Islamic fundamentalism' in particular. Alternatively, foir the truly credulous, there are aliens. Not unlike the old-style communist bogey, aliens tend to act by subversion and counter-espionage. They penetrate human culture and take possession of individual bodies, substituting a repulsive viscous substance for free minds, so that the possessed will involuntarily play a part in destabilizing our world. Or they abduct us and return us to earth transformed and incapable of defending our freedom.'

Is she (Catherine Belsey) for real? WTF??? I rest my case.

Well, not quite. Actually, not by a long way...

Above, I wrote that I am well aware that Poststructuralism and Postmodernism are not the same. So I respect that the above example may serve more as a mark against the former rather than the latter. However, Butler's book in the same series on Postmodernism is scathing, and yet ultimately saying something similar as I will in a minute.

The first Amazon (UK) reviewer get's it pretty much spot on in his last paragraph, when he says:

'Some reviewers of this text have noted a bias against postmodernism in Butler, which is probably a bit misplaced. Butler is biased against some of the outcomes of postmodernist thinking, and goes a bit further in this Very Short Introduction that perhaps is best in describing what might be the outcome of the logical extreme. Still, this is a very good introduction to the underlying principles of postmodernist thought, with some of the applications in various disciplines of the underlying framework.'

Note what the next reviewer says about this book :-)

'Though this is accessible, it is much more useful as an introductory account of Butler's own views (incidentally, highly critical of "postmodernism") than of so-called postmodern thought itself. It might be more advisable, then, to read a more sympathetic introduction (say Catherine Belsey's excellent [Alien Stylie...] "Poststructuralism" in the same series) before moving on to the more hostile views of Butler, Eagleton, et al.'

So, it seems (and please leave a comment if I'm misinterpreting / missing something about the timing / intellectual currents etc. this sentence clearly conveys my underlying ignorance), that finally the tide is turning more rapidly and people are coming to their senses. There definitely exists a backlash, which I've noted with relief at least since Richard J Evans (one of the best historians alive today, particularly noteworthy for his work on Nazi Germany) excellent book defending History from postmodernists - but I am still anxious, for my own experience shows that the number of false prophets out there is vast, and it will take more than a generation, I fear, to unravel some of the more sophisticated fallacies.

But hang on, let me categorically state a few things. Postmodernism, as a philosophy, an idea, a way of looking at the world must be treated with immense respect. For if used wisely, it offers a brilliant additional tool to our intellectual armoury, one that makes everything (but not absolutely everything) look different, in ways which I have not got the stomach to try and examine yet and here.

Just let me say this:

Though I dislike Foucault, his sheer knowledge and resulting sweep are immense. If you have your head in the right place as regards his wider relativism, some of his writings will expand your grasp of a considerable number of modern institutions, for example (institutions stands here in the wider sense).

Derrida - though almost impossible to read without the aid of secondary literature, has been a huge help to me personally, in allowing (through the concept of deconstruction - which is often mistaken as something one does, but actually is something that is constantly ongoing) my understanding of my own experience in the world to become considerably less constrained by those constraints which are so granted that they can be very difficult to spot, nevermind avoid. I am very fond of him for that, as I am to Chomsky in this same vein, despite the fact that I deplore his reactionary bullshit, especially his pathological hatred of Israel and the Faurisson episode, which is absolutely (in the real meaning of the term) never to be excused. But he has helped, in a far narrower way than Derrida, nevertheless.

So, it is an important intellectual current that has been sorely abused. DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON UNIVERSITY LECTURERS IN THIS REGARD. I'm knackered, so I will leave it, but I could tell you some fantastic stories, and I worry about all those kids that have been misled... I think I've said enough for today, and if you've read this all th way, thanks for sticking it out and please forgive me...

Letter to 'Prospect'

2006-05-21T23:28:00.000+01:00
Ahhh... here we go. Letters to the Editor - a small yet vital part of my activism. This most recent example is unusual because it is not intended for publication, and hence rather long. It's by far not one of my best - slightly rambling and convoluted sentences. But I was rushed for time and, hey, sometimes you rock and simetimes not. Also, this is merely the tip of the iceberg as regards my thoughts on the issue discussed. More will no doubt follow on the blog...

I got an acknowledgement, saying they had passed it to the Editor (Goodhart).

Let's see if he writes back...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sir / Madame,

Prospect is a formidable intellectual force; cited recently in the Guardian as evidence of the health of Britain’s intellectual efforts, and I can only agree. As I’ve come to expect from you on current affairs, the article in the current issue on Iraq is insightful, sensible and timely, though there are strong forces acting against a federal solution in this theatre of war. I write though, as regards a much smaller yet grating piece in the current issue.

Mathew Parris, writing in the Times, has complained about the damage supporters of Israel do at times to Journalists’ goodwill for their cause. I could be guilty on that account, though only one incident is particularly regrettable. I like to think of myself as part of what Jonathan Freedland has termed the ‘sane’ supporters of Israel.

Regaling the diplomatic editor of the Telegraph at length about a piece he’d written in the New Statesman which included the sentence: ‘It is a remarkable achievement for [Israel] to lever the political might of a superpower for its own ends’ and my concerns about the connotations of this sentence in light of the current form of antisemitism was retrospectively an overreaction, likely to fall into Parris’ category.

Yet in light of recent developments an understandable one, I would argue.

If anybody in your editorial office reads the widely distributed hard-left Adbusters magazine, they will be aware of a piece in the March/April issue written by two former senior CIA officials. The piece entitled ‘Israeli interests are determining US foreign policy’ is a conspiratorial diatribe that must be read to be believed (no pun intended). The gist - that Israeli ‘Likudniks’ have hijacked US foreign policy, and attacked Iraq on Israel’s behalf, for which a plethora of institutions are cited and ‘exposed’, is well established in certain not-so-intellectual currents, as some commentators have finally acknowledged in their reaction to the Euston Manifesto.

Of course the Adbusters article uncovers ‘Jewish Neoconservatives’ as well.

If you read Irwin Stelzer’s introduction to his book on Neo-conservatism, already on page six you will encounter a first summary of the incredible ‘Jewish cabal’ accusations that have persisted as regards that loosely defined ideology. A few, including senior, British correspondents and a considerable and rising number of ‘intellectuals’ are bitterly indicted in this matter. Naturally, it is all a question of degree.

Mearsheimer and Walt, whom you congratulate in a rather smug prose, are at the most respectable end of this problem.

Frankly, the myth of disproportionate Jewish influence in Washington – which you propagate – is antisemitism in an almost entirely classic format.

This is a complicated and multi-facetted issue though, and there is no space to tackle it in any great depth here. In any case, the Harvard study has been shown to be intellectually dishonest by far more esteemed persons than myself, columnists and academics. Benny Morris, whose work was cited prominently in the study, has gone on the record to complain of wilful misrepresentation.
The editors of the London Review of Books – though to their credit they did print many excellent rebuttals - essentially contrasted ‘nasty remarks about Arabs’ and ‘accusations of anti-Semitism, as Mearsheimer and Walt predicted, with ‘a huge number of positive responses’, which is also somewhat of a misrepresentation of the reaction.

Mearsheimer and Walt’s assertion that they would be accused of antisemitism would be more valid if it was not the case that one facet of the current antisemitism accuses anything and everything labelled by –in reality extremely sensitive and careful with the term -Jewish intellectuals as antisemitic of ‘(ab)using antisemitism to intimidate and stifle debate’. Those with a tendency to promote their irrational dislike of Jews and their homeland love this argument… and it is an argument that is gaining momentum slowly but steadily. To Mearsheimer and Walt’s credit, they did steer clear of this explicitly, but have utilised it to mask the real reasons for the criticism – namely, the weakness of their ‘study’.

Let me give Messrs Mearsheimer and Walt the benefit of the doubt though, evidently you hold them dear, and International Relations academia certainly does / did.

The ‘Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy’ which is made up of esteemed International Relations scholars in the Realist tradition, had posted their own ad in the Economist long before the Harvard study, and in their haste to urge an abandonment of Israel, had forgone to mention that Jerusalem is the single holiest site towards which Judaism is orientated. They only marked the city as the third holiest site in Islam.

Alistair Crooke– for whose views you have provided ample platform – also essentially urges the abandonment of Israel and a recalibration towards a more Arab orientated British foreign policy (he would no doubt dispute this statement somewhat…). Whilst I would fiercely challenge these arguments, nowhere have I yet seen them stray into this irrational ‘Lobby’ realm. It must be because of intimate acquaintance with the realities of policy-making as regards the Middle East.

Nevertheless, you can read advertisements about ‘wrestling US foreign policy control from Israel’ in the New York Times these days.

This is not about defending Israel at all costs. It is about where legitimate debate is turned into intellectually dishonest territory in order to propagate a view. Many people who share the CfRFP and Mr Crooke’s view would be only to happy to cite a ‘respected scholarly study’ in an effort to prove that the only reason why their solution (abandon Israel – all will be well) is not being implemented.

Mearsheimer and Walt have delivered a sloppy polemic which will be utilised by the many detractors of Israel – and, make no mistake, against Jewry everywhere. This is already taking place from the extreme such as the Ku Klux to the political in the form of the PLO and moderate Arab Journalists.
Needless to say, Mearsheimer and Walt’s published rebuttal cut little ice, and was a disappointment. They could have made a better go of defending the indefensible in my humble opinion.

To keep with the subject in relation to Prospect though:

You write that you get ‘grief’, as you put it, for writing about this subject ‘even in a calm and responsible way’ Mearsheimer and Walt’s study was not responsible, and those that still believe the libels vis-à-vis the Washington Jewish Lobby should acquaint themselves with the realities of policy making as it actually happens on Capitol Hill and in the White House. Which reminds me, didn’t the measured and thorough rebuttal, which you had the grace to print, of Lind’s article (which matches the Harvard study in its misguided argument) talk about just that, and the ‘half-bricks’ people throw?
And the decidedly angry, irrational ranting style Lind’s writing voice took on in the space you offered him to respond to that rebuttal tells you all you need to know.

Many thanks for printing my letter months back as regards Abdul Wahib. Interesting to note that you ran an interview with him in a later edition. (Is there a pattern here? Jews defending themselves from antisemitism, Prospect offering a renewed platform to the perpetrator? Last I heard Dr. Wahib was still prominent in Hizb…but hey, I don’t see a conspiracy, just having fun with it, Prospect…)

I started this letter by saying what a formidable intellectual force Prospect is. I finish with an appeal to you to attach the same intellectual rigour to your position on the ‘Jewish Lobby’, a thorough reassessment of which is required, lest you should apply a different standard to this matter in comparison to others.

Your Iraq coverage shows how capable you are of a broad intellectual conceptualisation of current affairs. In a world undergoing a media revolution similar to Gutenberg’s in the effect likely to be felt, magazines such as yours serve to bring a dependable, normative intellectual voice to the high volume debate.

As a proud and concerned Jew, I feel I must convey what I consider to be a justified uneasiness with your position on this extremely serious matter.

I could write far more, but I thank you for your patience this far and trust you will consider my points.

With best wishes,

Davis Lewin

May I ask that you kindly acknowledge my letter and, as briefly as time permits, send a reply.

NB: The spelling of ‘antisemitism’ is more correct to its original form and idea than ‘anti-Semitism’, as only a small number of historians of Nazi Germany seem to acknowledge in the British discourse on the subject.

Update: After getting me all excited by asking for more info on my location etc, they dropped me a line which said that they were grateful for my comments but could unfortunately not print them...

Clapton

2006-05-21T23:08:00.000+01:00
EDIT: Unfortunately the original video does not work anymore, as it seems to have been removed from YouTube... this one doesn't sound quite as good, but still...

Clapton is most definitely NOT G-D. However, he is FANTASTIC. Can't touch SRV, but then nobody could, and still - Eric is one of the best.

This is actually a rather average performance. The later - at times lacklustre - Clapton 'well oiled machine'. The singing and solo are BY HIS STANDARDS alright... no more no less (his standard is pretty massively high...)

However, the guitar tone, with this strat fitted with Lace Sensors, is topnotch. Even on a YouTube feed through laptop speakers...

Hear for yourselves:

Let's start with 'blog'

2006-05-19T10:34:00.000+01:00
Having hogged my domain name for some years now, I am going to take to building my online presence very slowly. This temporary home will serve as an easy platform in the beginning.

Much has been written about such ideas as the 'New Media', the 'blogsphere' and 'web 2.0'. I can only agree with the Economist which argues in its April 22nd 'survey of New Media':

'...society is in the early phases of what appears to be a media revolution on the scale of that launched by Gutenberg in 1448.'

One of the guiding principles for my blog, and my intellectual activity generally, is borrowed - with thanks, respect and a slight worry about its current state/ future - from Commentary magazine: 'General, yet Jewish'
The Jewish aspect must feature as a steady, prominent thread through the prism with which I attempt to impose intellectual order on my experience.
In this vein, let me immediately begin to do so, by pointing towards the challenge, a potentially immense one, contained for the Jewish People in this revolution. I shall hold forth on this theme regularly here, as well as in other fora. This will neccessarily be an incomplete representation of the issues as I see them, at least until a sizeable portion has been written up.
I can continue quoting the Economist survey: '...the big thinkers about today's media revolution tend to veer towards extremes of optimism or pessimism (NB: Applies to most of the Globalisation theorists as well - ed.)'
The paragraph goes on to quote an early spotter of Yahoo and Google saying: '[It] amplifies the internet soapbox... ...[in] 1931 in Munich, how easy would it have been to broadcast the message; I think the Nazis would have got power quicker.'
As my online presence expands - eventually into a different format - I will explore this 'dark side' of the 'revolution' that is the 'New Media' extensively. Prepare to be shocked, hopefully into action...
But, really what this is, is my online scrapbook. It will veer from regular posting to deadness, from intense focus to ludicrous pretentious mispelt ramblings. And I love it!!

Sooner or Later...

2006-05-19T10:30:00.000+01:00
Yes, Luindi's online presence has now become dynamic!

Let me start with a mission statement:

It's all about working out what on earth is going on. Quite literally.

Sooner or Later...

2006-05-17T10:50:00.000+01:00
This will become my blog...