… to the “news” from the State Department about the “media note from George Mitchell that we have begun indirect talks and that he will be returning to the region next week.”
Nothing to add, that is, to what I wrote here last week, that with all this business of “proximity talks” it looks as if we are rushing forward helter-skelter… to 1949.
Tags: Just World News
I’ve had a wonderful time, these past few days, hanging out at home with Bill the spouse, doing a bunch of work on my (soon to be disclosed) Next Big Project, getting my blogging voice back here on JWN, etc. But it hasn’t been all work…
We’ve hung out with several good friends. I did a couple of sewing projects that really needed doing–altering two pairs of rather tricky tailored trousers that I bought a couple of years ago and that never fit me well until yesterday. I finished crocheting a dress for the Best Grandbaby in the World, and now I’m knitting a pair of socks according to a slightly complex pattern my daughter Leila urged on me… I’ve done a few cooking projects, and some yardwork. Bill and I have been playing our favorite One-Minute Perquackey (word-game) in person, rather than by videophone. I’ve been wrestling with some demonic Ken-Kens. And today I spent a lot of time Quakering. Our monthly Meeting for Worship with a concern for Business was today: It feels good to once again be fully present in and with the Meeting.
All of which makes me aware of how incredibly blessed I am. I love doing just about everything that I do these days! I get real pleasure out of all of it. Well-fitting trousers? Yay!!!! And I made them that way, after doing a bunch of intricate hand-sewing down the center-back of both the main fabric and the lining… Yardwork? Yay!!! I revel in my body’s strength at doing it, and am delighted at the daffodils that can now grow straight and true after I cleared the weight of old, packed ice and snow off them… Working on my new work project?? Yay!!!
… All this also makes me really grateful for the excellent education I received. My parents sent me to two private, all-girls schools back in England. We really did receive a good, well-rounded education… including in art, needlework, carpentry (an elective I rushed to take), cookery, music, dance, and sport– as well as in Latin, Greek, French, complex mathematics, the sciences, and all the other usual subjects. So okay, a long time ago I left the art, music, sport, and classical languages behind. But I got basic skills in all those areas, and had the experience of doing some substantial work in them; so now I get to choose which of any of those areas I can go back to, at any point.
I’m afraid the formal curriculum in the schools my kids went to here in the US weren’t anywhere near as rich as mine. Even though two of my kids went to the famed “Sidwell Friends School” in Washington DC… But Sidwell, I concluded along the way, was much more of an academic forcing-house than it was a truly Quaker educational environment…. My son actually got a far better-rounded curriculum when he went to a non-Quaker boarding school up in Maine, than he ever did at Sidwell. And my daughter Lorna, who went to public (government) schools all along, had a generally fine school experience.
None of them ever had needlework classes in school, though. What a pity!
… Now, my daughter Leila is a fourth-grade teacher in a New York City public school in Manhattan. From what she says, it seems like a good school. They have “clubs” after the formal school-day ends each day, and each teacher gets to lead the clubs of her or his choice in six-week sessions. So far this year Leila’s led a couple of clubs in knitting, and one in felting. With the knitting ones, she had the kids start out by making their own needles from dowels, and doing a little carding and spinning of sheep’s wool, so they could understand the whole process (which is what Waldorf schools do, I believe.)
So anyway, I really am very blessed. I have three amazing children, a fabulous, supportive spouse, work that I love, a whole range of different right-brainy things I can do when I need to unwind… and the immense privilege and pleasure of being able to make real choices about how I spend my time. (But then, being a Quaker means that when you have a privilege you also have this nagging feeling that you have a big responsibility to use it wisely…. Ah well, that’s okay… Did I tell you I love being a Quaker, too?)
Have a great week, everyone!
Tags: Just World News
Go read the stirring op-ed that Avraham Burg, former Knesset speaker and former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, published in Haaretz today.
The title is Once justice dwelled in Jerusalem, now settlers do.
Burg, who is an orthodox Jew (and the son of a key leader of the National religious Party), writes:
And no one utters a word, but for a few patriots. People of truth and morals who refuse to stand idly by while the state of Jewish refugees repeatedly throws Palestinian families into the street and hands their miserable homes over to bearded, blaspheming thugs.
These people of integrity are the leftists of Jerusalem… They know only too well the city’s ugly truth, its terrible teens, and will no longer look the other way. They are committed to stopping with their body the torch-bearing brutes who seek to set it on fire.
No one leads the city now, nor will salvation for it come from the country’s elected leader. Sheikh Jarrah is beyond the cognizance of Mayor Nir Barkat and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as though the commotion has nothing to do with them, as though it is happening in Sudan or Tehran. And in the absence of leadership of the state, and the peace bloc, our children have taken on the responsibility, shaken off indifference and despair and brought us here. The circle is expanding and it is full of life, rage and hope. Israeli humanism has been reborn in East Jerusalem. We are there in the summer heat and the winter rains, shouting and calling on others to gather round, seeking both Shabbat and peace. We will not recoil from violent police officers or hotheaded harassers. We stand and pledge: We shall not be silent when Ahmad and Aysha are sleeping in the street outside their home, which has become the settlers’ domain. Is that justice? Not ours! Is that law? No, it is iniquity.
… How long, Mr. Prime Minister and Mr. Mayor? And why do you, judges of Israel, cooperate with the evil that threatens to destroy us? Come with us, return to the Judaism of “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not murder.” Leave Sheikh Jarrah now!
Wow. An amazingly powerful piece.
Tags: Just World News
Further to what I blogged here (and here) yesterday about the ever-shifting dynamics within the Middle East, Rob Malley and Peter Harling have an elegant op-ed in the WaPo today that picks up on many of the same themes.
Malley and Harling are both M.E. analysts for the International Crisis Group– Malley being in charge of their M.E. division and Harling their analyst for Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
They start off with this:
So far, so– generally– good. But I think they’re too kind to the Obama-ites (and their predecessors) by saying “there is some truth to this construct.”
Where, really, is there any “truth” in it?
The main problem with the way Malley and Harling describe the “bipolar” frame that just about all of official Washington applies to its analysis of the Middle East is that they do not mention the role of Israel and its entire, unquestioning cheering section inside the U.S., who between them are the main ideological enforcers of this frame. “Moderates”, within this frame, is nearly always code for “does not challenge Israel on anything, whether through inclination or by being in thrall to the power of U.S. Congress’s purse”, while “militants” is code for “is sometimes willing to criticize Israeli policies.”
Really, the way these issues are discussed, and largely “understood” (or more accurately, mis-understood) among members of the Washington power elite is that, for Middle Eastern governments or other actors to be thought of as “pro-American” (i.e. “moderate”) they must not openly challenge Israel openly on anything. Therefore, when an actor, such as, for example, the Turkish or Saudi government, starts to criticize an Israeli policy they are immediately vilifed within the Washington DC Beltway as being irredeemably “anti-Israeli” and very often “anti-Semitic” to boot… But either way, no longer “moderate”.
And that is the extent of what passes for “analysis” in nearly all of Washington.
Malley and Harling are right to note that the strictly bipolar “moderates versus militants” frame is no longer useful. But they fail to spell out:
2. That this frame never has been useful, either analytically or as a guide to wise policy. The “fluidity” and political dynamism they describe as being “new” within the M.E. regional system has always been there. Use of the bipolar frame has always been an obstacle to sound understanding and sound policy.
3. That you can’t truly understand the way the bipolar frame “works”, politically, unless you make clear that, when applied at the regional level (as opposed to, for example, within Iraq), it really is all about Israel; and it has almost nothing to do with whether the actors in question are “pro-American” in the content of their policies, or not. Once again, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are key examples. Turkey, for goodness sake, is a member of NATO and has troops risking their lives alongside the U.S. troops in Afghanistan (unlike many other NATO members; and completely unlike Israel!) So how come Turkey nowadays gets labeled by many in DC as problematic and “possibly anti-American”? Answer: It is all about Israel. Malley and Harling fail to make that clear.
I think I also disagree to some extent with their description of the way they see the “relevant” competition in the region today.
This, they say,
The first thing I note here is that the regional visions promulgated by the governments of Turkey and Iran are not as diametrically opposed as Malley and Harling make them out to be. Turkey certainly “speaks to the region’s thirst for dignity”, just as much as Iran does; and Iran “values economic integration”, and “highlights diplomacy” just as much as Turkey does– though many of its attempts to act on these precepts have, of course, been intentionally stymied by the U.S.
Also, Turkey and Iran have excellent working relations with each other. So if there is some “competition” between the visions promulgated by these two governments– as I believe there is– still, this “competition” is very far from being the kind of manichean, “with us or against us” form of competition that too many Americans lazily think is the only kind of competition there is.
In fact, there seem to me to be to be only two significant respects in which the policies of the two governments differ: (1) the way that each of them tries to push forward its explicitly Islamist agenda in domestic affairs– “softly” in the case of Turkey’s AK Party, and “harshly”, in the case of Tehran; and (2) the way that each of them chooses to deal with Israel– again, “softly” vs. “harshly.”
Now I recognize that, for citizens of a majority-Muslim country in the region like Syria, Jordan, or Iraq, the domestic agendas pursued by Ankara and Tehran provide two very different models of modernization, and that having those two different models is valuable and important. But note that, in international affairs, it is really only regarding Israel that these two governments have deep differences… So there, once again, if there is “competition”, it is all about Israel.
I wish Malley and Harling had spelled that out, too.
Look, I have huge respect for both Rob Malley and Peter Harling, both of whom I am proud to think of as my friends. But I don’t think they do the American public whom, presumably, they were hoping to address in this op-ed much good if they pussy-foot around the big Israeli elephant in the “room” of Middle Eastern regional dynamics, and of U.S. policy within the region, in the way they have in this article.
Yes, they’re quite right to argue that the “moderates vs. militants” frame used in Washington is analytically empty of content, inaccurate, and useless… and diplomatically counter-productive, as well. But if they want to provide a frame that is more useful, both analytically and as a guide to policy, then they need to clearly identify the highly politicized source of the vacuity of the “moderates vs. militants” frame that is currently in use in Washington; and by identifying that source spell out that Israel itself (along with its many acolytes in Washington) is a major player that has a strong effect on the politics of the region.
A more useful “frame”, it seems to me, would therefore be one one that places the ruling elite of Israel (of all parties) and their allies in Washington at one pole of the region’s dynamics, and the government of Iran at the other, and then arrays the region’s many other actors in the multi-dimensional space between them– that is, not simply on a unidimensional straight line. This frame should also make explicit the fact that many of the other actors in the region, including Turkey, some European powers, other P-5 member states, and Saudi Arabia, also have varying amounts of power to attract other actors towards them, as well…
Bottom line: the region is not now (and never has been) simply “bipolar”, but is multi-dimensional. And though there are two largely competing “super-poles” of influence within it, these are not “Iran and the United States”, and not “Iran and Turkey”, but rather, “Israel and Iran”. (And note that under both the Malley/Harling schema and mine, the U.S. administration gets reduced to the role of something of a secondary actor.)
Tags: Just World News
Mar 5
Posted by Helena in Contributors | Comments off
As’ad AbuKhalil has an excellent piece on the Al-Jazeera English website, in which he examines all the hasbara-fueled myth-making around the alleged prowess of Israel’s Mossad.
As I noted in this reflection on the recent Dubai affair, Israel’s spymasters and policymakers made the two fatal mistakes therein of underestimating both the capabilities and the intentions/commitment of the leadership of Dubai’s police authorities. It seems to me that this under-estimation could well have resulted from the Israeli leaders having drunk too much of their own KoolAid about the alleged “invincibility” of the Mossad.
After the debacle he presided over in Amman in 1997, current Israeli PM B. Netanyahu should have been well aware that Mossad can and does make some serious mistakes! But no, since he and his key security advisers hang out only with people, including many Americans and other westerners, who worship the ground the Mossad stands on, he had evidently forgotten that inconvenient fact.
It’s a pity that in his piece, As’ad didn’t include the Amman affair in the list of Mossad debacles he presents. To be quite fair in his use of evidence, I think he should have referred, too, to the killing in Damascus two years ago of longtime Hizbullah strategist Imad Mughniyeh, which was almost certainly organized by the Mossad. But even if you put all Mossad’s claimed “successes” in their practice of the arts of violence, subterfuge, and cruelty into the hopper along with their many evident failures, it is still clear that the Mossad is very, very far from being the “all-knowing, always very smart” spying and secret-ops outfit that its many propagandists paint it as.
At the root of everything, though, is the serious misjudgment, made by so many colonial administrations in the past, that their side and their people are so smart, and all members of the indigenous majority so basically dumb and ineducable, that the use of subterfuge, alleged “smarts”, and prestidigitation will always enable to the “smart, colonial minority” to outwit and prevail over the indigenous majority.
That hasn’t worked anywhere since the 19th century. Back then, the ability of colonial administrations to monopolize the flow of information meant they were almost completely unhampered in their implementation of large-scale extermination projects in locations far from the bastions of their home “civilization”. And they were therefore able–and nearly always oh, so willing– to kill and oppress the indigenes on a massive scale in pursuit of their colonialist projects, and also to twist, divide, and manipulate the indigenes without anyone back home being easily able to “report on”, or really understand those dreadful facts.
But guess what, Israel! We are no longer in the 19th century! Within the region of which you’re a part, you may dominate everyone else on all the steps on the ladder of military escalation, right up to, of course, very advanced nuclear weapons… But military might on its own is of no use in the 21st century. And meanwhile, other actors in the region have considerable amounts of strategic, civilizational, and tactical smarts– and they have access to all modern means of communication.
In fact, these days, the myths you continue to propagate about the alleged superiority of everything Israeli, including the capacities of your Mossad, clearly stand in the way of you being able to make realistic judgments about the capabilities and intentions of your neighbors in the region, and therefore about the true balance of forces there. By continuing to try to rely on force, coercion, and manipulation rather than genuine peacemaking and seeking viable, sustainable ways to become integrated into the region as a Jewish state within it, you are in fact just making the failure of the whole “Jewish state” project even more probable. So carry on drinking the KoolAid of your own alleged “superiority”, if that is what you want to do… But don’t be surprised if increasing numbers of people around the world refuse to drink it with you.
Tags: Just World News
The Israel Ballet, which reportedly receives around $1 million annually in funding from the Israeli government, gave a performance Saturday in suburban Washington DC that was panned by influential WaPo dance critic Sarah Kaufman.
She wrote,
If so, they were not alone.
About the performance itself, she wrote,
It is quite possible that the dancers’ ‘distraction’ came from the sheer weight of distinctly political expectations that have been laid upon their current US tour. It’s the company’s first US tour in 25 years, and it’s been aggressively marketed, e.g. here, by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as part of its “Rebrand Israel” campaign.
I’ve seen no reports that the performance at Montgomery College was greeted with any protests. But protesters were out in force during earlier appearances in Brooklyn, NY, and Burlington, Vermont. In Brooklyn, the always inventive protesters organized by Adalah-NY had a small troupe of women dancers in blue-and-white tutus, and people handing out mock ‘programs’ to ballet-goers as they went in. (Scroll down here.)
I guess the intention of the hosts at Montgomery College was to try to make sue the ballet company felt warmly welcomed at the college… by making the numerous lengthy speeches that, according to ballet critic Kaufman, took up a full hour before the first pointe shoe hit the stage. The speechifying seemed to rile a good portion of the ballet-lovers who had turned up– including, apparently, Kaufman herself.
She wrote,
The greater lack of sugar was on the program…
Ouch. It really seems the lengthy ‘welcoming’ backfired, doesn’t it.
Tags: Just World News
Feb 27
Posted by Helena in Contributors | Comments off
Speculation is reportedly rife among Washington insiders over why, a couple of weeks ago, the Iranian authorities moved nearly all their stockpile of low-enriched uranium from its previous, deep-underground bunker to a very vulnerable-looking above-ground facility.
But here’s one possible explanation for the move that immediately occurred to me, and which was not among those listed in that article from Washington by the NYT’s David Sanger.
In moving the uranium to its new, very vulnerable position, perhaps the Iranian authorities are not so much “inviting” an Israeli attack, which is one of the possible explanations Sanger mentions (with the cynical goal that the attack might then strengthen the mullahs’ own political position inside Iran)… as calling out the political blackmail the Israelis and their supporters have been using worldwide, around the argument that “if the world’s governments don’t support much tighter sanctions on Iran, then it might be impossible to hold Israel back from attacking Iran’s nuclear stockpile.”
It seems entirely possible to me that, by trundling their stockpile up into its new position– which they did under the ever-present and watchful eyes of the IAEA inspectors who, lest we forget, have been monitoring Iran’s nuclear-tech programs from the get-go, unlike Israel’s– the Iranians may in effect be saying: “Okay, here it is. Go ahead, Israel!”
But with the aim, not as Sanger posits of quite cynically hoping that that attack take place, but of demonstrating to the world that when push comes to shove Israel does not actually dare do it.
Enlisting the aid of the relevant authorities is nearly always the best way to deal with blackmailers, in any realm of human activity. Iran undertook its move to greater physical “vulnerability” under the full protection of international legitimacy.
So does Israel dare attack now?
I very much doubt it.
And now, it can no longer so easily hide its decision not to attack behind “logistical” excuses such as “Well, it’s a very tricky thing to do, but we’re working very hard to find a way…” while its spokesmen and apologists worldwide also continuing saying, “but when we decide the time is right– which will be soon!– you’ll have to hold us back very hard and give us many additional benefits etc, plus step up those sanctions on Iran quite considerably, in order to prevent us from going ahead… ”
If this is indeed the thinking behind the Iranian move, then it looks very smart. It’s an excellent way to deflate all the rhetoric that’s been going around, internationally, to the effect that “If the Security Council members don’t adopt even more draconian sanctions against Iran, then no-one can predict what the Israelis might decide to do!”
… Your move, Israel.
Tags: Just World News
Israeli citizens living quite illegally in the settlement of “Ateret” in the occupied West Bank are now protesting the Palestinian Authority’s pursuit of a project to build the first-ever Palestinian “new town” just a few miles north of Ramallah.
The new town, to be named Rawabi, will have around 5,000 housing units, for a total population of around 25,000 people.
This is the first planned new town development the West Bank’s 2.6 million Palestinians have been allowed to build in 43 years of living under Israel’s foreign military occupation. During those years, their numbers have just about doubled.
And in those 43 years, successive Israeli governments have worked hard to implant more than 500,000 settlers, quite illegally, into the West Bank (including East Jerusalem.)
And now, some of those settlers have the chutzpah to complain that the new town will “be a burden on the environment” of the West Bank… that it will contribute to traffic congestion… that its effluents might flow into West Bank valleys… and even that it “will will only benefit Palestinian elites.”
Are we supposed to be touched by the concern these settlers show for the interests of the West Bank’s environment and of those Palestinians who not members of the elite???
Nah. I am not touched. Let them all go home.
Tags: Just World News
Today, the WaPo had an editorial filled with inaccuracies about Syria’s record and just oozing pure venom for the Syrian government.
The title is, “Don’t expect progress from talking to Syria.”
I’m still trying to figure out why editorial page editor Fred Hiatt feels obliged to publish such hate-filled, inaccurate, and incendiary garbage.
Here are just a few of the notable inaccuracies in this screed:
The truth here:
(1) No-one has yet been able to substantiate the many accusations that hostile forces have made against Pres. Bashar al-Asad regarding the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri. This, despite the involvement of scores of highly-paid international investigators in the commission that was jointly established by the UN and the Lebanese government to investigate the affair and the Hague-based Special tribunal that was the successor to the commission. Last April, in fact, the Hague tribunal ordered that four pro-Syrian figures who had been high-ranking officers in the Lebanese security forces pup until the assassination should be freed from jail, given the paucity of evidence against them.
(2) Meanwhile, in response to the demands that rose loudly in Lebanon after the Hariri killing that Syria should withdraw the security forces it had kept in Lebanon since 1976 (when they went in at the behest of Washington), Asad did indeed withdraw all Syria’s troops from Lebanon within the couple of months right after the killing. Then, in October 2008, Syria formally recognized Lebanon’s independence for the first time ever. (All previous Syrian governments, including the most pro-western of them, had always, ever since Syria was established as a separate country in the 1920s, claimed that Lebanon was a part of it.) After Syria’s recognition of Lebanon’s independence, the two countries exchanged ambassadors.
(3) Last December, Lebanese PM Saad al-Hariri made a state visit to Damascus, where he held talks with Asad. Hariri is a very pro-western politician, and the son of the slain former premier. Haaretz reported that Hariri told a press conference held in the Lebanese embassy in Damascus that,
Ah, but Fred Hiatt claims he “knows better” about the state of Syrian-Lebanese relations than Hariri does??
… More Hiatt:
Where to begin with all this nonsense?
(1) Lebanon is a sovereign country that has the right to defend itself against Israel’s daily continuing incursions and provocations in the way it judges best. Thus far, its government has decided to do so in conjunction with Hizbullah’s paramilitary capabilities. If someone wants to prevent another war between Israel and Lebanon, wouldn’t they be advised to call on Israel to stop its incessant violations of the border between the two countries? Ah, but not Hiatt…
(2) Hamas’s over-all leadership is indeed headquartered in Damascus. But all who study the organization carefully (though not Fred Hiatt) recognize that the Damascus-based leaders range from the middle to the more flexible end of the (anyway narrow) spectrum of opinion in the organization’s leading ranks. They are a moderating influence within Hamas– and very, very far from being “the most hard-line elements.”
(3) On the accusations about Damascus’s policies with respect to Iraq– where is the evidence for the claims Hiatt makes?? In the talks I had with officials in Damascus last year, it was clear that cooperation with Washington against the threat they judged that they both jointly faced from any renewed descent into chaos in Iraq was the single greatest motivator the Syrian government had for improving its relations with Washington. What evidence does Hiatt have that might outweigh the evidence I and numerous others have gathered on this question?
… So why do I even both spending time trying to correct the many gross inaccuracies included in this text? Because despite its many, many shortcomings, the WaPo is still a very influential newspaper in Washington DC, and in political circles throughout this country. Most people in the U.S. political elite don’t have the time to study carefully the actions and record of this or that foreign country… So they might well be inclined to “take the word” of a WaPo editorial regarding whether engagement with the current Syrian government is a worthwhile venture or not.
But why has the WaPo departed so hugely from the standards of accuracy and truth-telling that it once used to uphold?
That, I don’t feel qualified to answer. But the paper should certainly be held to account for these inaccuracies– and for the escalatory, war-mongering kind of atmosphere that they tend to feed.
Tags: Just World News
There’s been quite a bit of talk in the conference here about the way that George Mitchell has either been sidelined or has for other reasons faded from the scene. Of course, it’s not just Mitchell that has been sidelined, it’s the whole justice-based and vigorous U.S. pursuit of peace that his appointment back in January 2009 seemed to promise.
So today the NYT tells us that Sec. Clinton and three of her top aides are fanning out to the Middle East in a concerted campaign to–
…make a push for Palestinian-Israeli peace? No!
Rather, they’re trekking out to try to line regional leaders up behind the latest step in the (AIPAC- and Likud-driven) campaign to ratchet the pressure up inexorably against Iran.
And who are these envoys?
Well, there’s Hillary herself, who’s going to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Then, there’s her Under-Secretary for political affairs, Bill Burns, who’s going to Syria.
And there are her two Deputy Secretaries, for Policy and Administration… James Steinberg (Policy) will be going to Israel, and Jacob Lew (Administration) will be going to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.
And when was the last time we heard any major news about George Mitchell? (Yawn.)
Tags: Just World News
The BBC’s nightly, half-hour TV newscast here in the US (“and elsewhere around the world”) still has much to commend it. Tonight’s footage of Elizabeth Wilmshurst at the Chilcott Enquiry, lambasting the (il-)legal basis of the Blair government’s decision to back the invasion of Iraq was wonderful for us here in America to behold.
However… The Beeb does still bring a breathtakingly provincial and ethnocentric sensibility to its coverage of various “foreign” disasters. I just watched their footage of the after-effects of the massive floods in the Peruvian Andes. The reporter led off with the fairly minor trials and tribulations of the (let’s face it, mostly somewhat wealthy) western tourists in the region… and only some minutes into the report did he note that “local people” (i.e., the people formerly known as “natives”) “have also been affected.”
Who knew?
Who knew that Peruvian citizens, who have lost homes, businesses, livelihoods, and even lives due to the floods, should “also” be mentioned, as an afterthought, in a news bulletin that claims to be “international”???
This was an echo of the Beeb’s shockingly ethnocentric, or perhaps we should say whitefolks-centric, early coverage of the earthquake in Haiti two weeks ago.
Where on earth does the BBC find all these white-centric reporters and editors?
Time to retire or re-educate the lot of them, I think.
Tags: Just World News
Every so often I get back to reading my Google Reader…. Just now I saw this great post by Matthew Yglesias.
So the USA is still not #1 worldwide in average speed of the available internet. We’re, um, #18, as of the third quarter of 2009. Amazingly, too, of all the countries Yglesias lists, the US is the only one that saw a Year-on-year drop in speeds. I suppose one possible explanation for that is that a lot of new users got connected, but at lower speeds. Either that, or someone is, whatever, sitting inside the Intertubes someplace blocking all the traffic as it goes past. (Could that be the NSA?)
But then, look at the city-by-city listing. Charlottesville is right up there among the global leaders, at #8! Go, Charlottesville!
I don’t know why Yglesias has to be sniffy and make a point of noting that, like the other “fast” US city listed there, Charlottesville is, um, pretty darn small by world standards.
Tags: Just World News
I have a contribution in this latest Boston Review forum on Afghanistan. The forum is built around a great piece of reporting by Nir Rosen.
I wish I’d had more time to work on my contribution. But given the time constraints I was under, I’m pretty happy about it.
There are some other good contributions there, too. I haven’t read them all yet; but I looked at Andy Bacevich’s and it’s filled with his usual good sense.
Fwiw, my life has been extremely busy since I took on this job at CNI two months ago. The job has involved a ton more administration than I’d envisaged, and has left just about zero time or energy to do anything else. In fact, this BR contribution is the only non-CNI work I’ve done since October 20.
My very first contribution to BR, back in 2001, was this contribution to a forum they were running on the one-state project in Palestine/Israel. At that time, I was against it, mainly because of its political unfeasibility. As I have noted elsewhere about this piece, “My views later evolved.”
Hey, maybe my views on the unwinnability of the US’s war in Afghanistan might “evolve”, too. At this point, though, I am not expecting that they will…
And here, obviously, is something else very sad about my work load. I haven’t had time to do any JWN blogging… Boo-hoo…
Anyway, if anyone’s reading this, Have a Great Christmas/Holiday time!
Tags: Just World News
Just a reminder to all readers to check out my/our new blog, “Fair Policy, Fair Discussion”, which now has five or six posts that are quick takes on what we’ve been doing on our CNI study tour (“political pilgrimage”) around the Middle/Near East.
We’ve now had all the meetings and formal activities of the tour, and it’s been tremendous. We have a group of ten people, self included; and we’ve spent the past 16 days traveling to: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Palestine again (Gaza), and back to Egypt.
I’ve never been a tour director before. This one’s been a lot of hard work but also really rewarding.
Expect a lot more blogging about the tour, over there at FPFD, over the next couple of weeks. Thus far, I’ve had no opportunity to give justice to the immense richness of the experiences and personal encounters that we had.
We had with us a great young videographer, Dominic Musacchio, who’s taken many tens of hours of what looks like great footage. He’ll be making cuts of that over the coming days that we’ll post, or at least link to, on FPFD. We also have still photos that we’ll get up.
One of the focuses of the trip has been, of course, Gaza. Another has been Jerusalem, and the ever-explosive situation there. Another, that emerged over time and was sparked in particular by Dominic’s enthusiasm and the help of our last-minute Jerusalem volunteer Kate Gould, has been getting the views of young people. Dominic has what I think is some great footage from talking with and hanging out with young people in Jordan, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
So anyway, head on over there as soon as you can…
Tags: Just World News
In some countries, mine included, today is remembered as “Veterans’ Day” or “Armistice Day.” Juan Cole sensibly wrote earlier today that “The most patriotic way to honor future veterans of foreign wars is not to create any unnecessarily.”
Fellow “Wahoo” and good friend Barin Kayaoglu, writing in the Turkish Weekly, goes a step deeper in considering the state of US-Iran nuclear negotiations.
Barin neatly anticipates the standard arguments from partisans on both sides, accusations of intransigence vs. bullying, terrorism vs. imperialism, then arguments over what to do, of all the reasons to be hard-headed, to fight the “necessary war.”
Barin trumps such verbal combat by considering the stakes from a very different vantage point, that of the grave. He takes us to the two sprawling national cemeteries of America and Iran, Arlington and Behesht-e Zahra. I’ve been to both; somber places where the two nations, where families, mourn their losses, the lives cut short. Barin concludes:
“The graves of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters at these places are somber reminders of the real price of war.
So before Iranian and American policy-makers make up their mind about the next step, it would be humane for them to spend some time at Behesht-e Zahra and Arlington. Nothing can bring back the dead. But there is no good reason to start another Middle East war that would create new ones.”
Well said Barin. Amen.
Tags: Just World News
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