Pilfered Scholarship
October 31, 2007
So the uniformed courtesan, David Patraeus actually lifted much of his celebrated counterinsurgency manual from other people’s work. ‘Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus’s Counterinsurgency Manual’, reports David Price in a Counterpunch special investigation.
If I could sum up the book in just a few words, it would be: “Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill.”
–John Nagl, The Daily Show.
Last December, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps published a new Counterinsurgency Field Manual (No. 3-24). In policy circles, the Manual became an artifact of hope, signifying the move away from the crude logic of “shock and awe” toward calculations that rifle-toting soldiers can win the hearts and minds of occupied Iraq through a new appreciation of cultural nuance.
Attacking Iran for Israel?
October 31, 2007
While the so called antiwar movement is busy conjuring up a way it could link the latest US escalation against Iran to an oil motive, it is paleoconservatives like Ray McGovern who bring much needed light to the question of factors shaping US Middle-East policy.
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is at her mushroom-cloud hyperbolic best, and this time Iran is the target. Her claim last week that “the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around the world” is simply too much of a stretch.
To gauge someone’s reliability, one depends largely on prior experience. Sadly, Rice’s credibility suffers in comparison with Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Basing his judgment on the findings of IAEA inspectors in Iran, ElBaradei reports that there is no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program there.
Blair’s True Colours
October 30, 2007
The real reason Blair was seconded to the Quartet — liquidating Palestinian resistance to occupation — appears ever more clear, writes Saleh Al-Naami
Rabbi Benny Elon, president of the right-wing Israeli National Union Party, was unable to conceal his relief last Thursday when a Hebrew radio news programme presenter asked him about his evaluation of the recent plan devised by Quartet envoy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “Finally, even Blair agrees with us on two primary points,” Benny Elon said. “These are uprooting the Palestinian terrorist organisations and solving the problem of the refugees without holding Israel any responsibility for it.”
Revealed the previous day, Blair’s plan for the reform of Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions left resounding reverberations in the Palestinian arena. Factions, elites and the Palestinian public alike were shocked when it became clear that “reform” of PA institutions, as Blair sees it, means ensuring conditions that allow for a tightening grip on Palestinian resistance movements, particularly in the West Bank. The plan draws no tie between this and decreasing attacks on Palestinians by Israel’s occupation army and settlers.
The American Police State
October 30, 2007
Chris Hedges on the rise of the US police state.
A Dallas jury, a week ago, caused a mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest Islamic charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of American democracy.
If we lived in a state where due process and the rule of law could curb the despotism of the Bush administration, this mistrial might be counted a victory. But we do not. The jury may have rejected the federal government’s claim that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development funneled millions of dollars to Middle Eastern terrorists. It may have acquitted Mohammad el-Mezain, the former chairman of the foundation, of virtually all criminal charges related to funding terrorism (the jury deadlocked on one of the 32 charges against el-Mezain), and it may have deadlocked on the charges that had been lodged against four other former leaders of the charity, but don’t be fooled. This mistrial will do nothing to impede the administration’s ongoing contempt for the rule of law. It will do nothing to stop the curtailment of our civil liberties and rights. The grim march toward a police state continues.
The Manchurian President
October 29, 2007
Reality no doubt is stranger than fiction. In the Manchurian Candidate, the Soviet mole never makes it to the White House. However, Gamal Nkrumah quoting Le Figaro reveals that the Israeli mole, Nikolas Sarkozy, has successfully installed himself as the President of France.
As if his marital challenges were not enough cause for concern, “Sarco the Sayan” has suddenly emerged as the most infamous accolade of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The influential French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the French leader once worked for — and perhaps still does, it hinted — Israeli intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper), one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the katsas (Mossad case-officers).
Engaging Hamas and Hizballah
October 29, 2007
Ali Abunimah remains one of the most effective and astute analysts of the I-P conflict. He is also immensely effective in his media appearances and debates. Here he looks at a problem that I had discussed earlier in a different post, how ‘colonial feminists’ and other liberals undermine the Palestinian cause.
Nothing could be easier in the present atmosphere than to accuse anyone who calls for recognition of and dialogue with Hamas, Hizballah and other Islamist movements of being closet supporters of reactionary “extremism” or naive fellow travelers of “terrorists.” This tactic is not surprising coming from neoconservatives and Zionists. What is novel is to see it expressed in supposedly progressive quarters.
Arun Kundnani has written about a “new breed of liberal” whose outlook “regards Muslims as uniquely problematic and in need of forceful integration into what it views as the inherently superior values of the West.” The target of these former leftists, Kundnani argues, “is not so much Islamism as the appeasing attitudes they detect among [other] liberals.” [1]
The New McCarthyism
October 26, 2007
More from Larry Cohler-Esses on the Israel Lobby’s intellectual terrorism.
Meet Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj, a notorious Barnard College professor now up for tenure who:
§ claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a “pure political fabrication,”
§ denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews,
§ does not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise,
§ is so ignorant of her topic that she quotes one archaeologist on how a dig might have damaged the ancient palaces of Solomon–oblivious to the fact that those palaces, if they existed, were far from the site in question.
None of these charges are true. You could look it up. I did, in El-Haj’s book Facts on the Ground, about which these charges are made. The statements for which a network of right-wing critics assail her book are not there.
Israel Lobby On the Thames
October 26, 2007
Intellectual terrorism: Ghada Karmi on the Israel lobby’s machinations to prevent Norman Finkelstein appearing on a panel at the Oxford Union debating the one-state solution. The lobby’s actions are predictable; what surprises more is that Norman Finkelstein should agree to appear next to the execrable propagandist Peter Tatchell.
The newest and least attractive import from America, following on behind Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Friends, is the pro-Israel lobby. The latest target of this US-style campaign is the august Oxford Union.
This week, two Israeli colleagues and I were due to appear at the union to participate in an important debate on the one-state solution in Israel-Palestine. Also invited was the American Jewish scholar and outspoken critic of Israel, Norman Finkelstein. At the last minute, however, the union withdrew its invitation to him, apparently intimidated by threats from various pro-Israel groups.
Iranian Nuclear Threat?
October 26, 2007
It has become customary for politicians and pundits in parts of Europe and America to mouth off on the existential threat posed by Iran’s alleged nuclear program to Israel. Last night again Francis Maude, the Tory MP, and some hack from Murdoch shit-rag News of the World made a point of repeating t on BBC’s Question Time (Oct 25). In this instance, however, George Galloway was there to give them a well deserved tongue lashing. But unfortunately not ever iteration of this nonsense faces similar challenge.
But how real is this threat anyway? Since it is the threat posed to Israel that these intrepid souls are bristling at, surely Israel must have a good estimation of the threat. Here is what Ha’aretz reports: “Livni behind closed doors: Iranian nuclear arms pose little threat to Israel“.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel, Haaretz magazine reveals in an article on Livni to be published tomorrow.
Iran, Turkey and Napoleon’s Egypt
October 26, 2007
Juan Cole on Democracy Now presenting an excellent roundup of developments in the Middle East.
