Why Eliot Spitzer was Bushwhacked
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Mar 20, 2008
Why Spitzer was Bushwhacked
By F William Engdahl
The spectacular and bizarre release of secret FBI wiretap data to the New York Times exposing the tryst of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, the now-infamous client "No 9", with an upmarket call-girl had relatively little to do with the George W Bush administration’s pursuit of high moral standards for public servants. Spitzer was likely the target of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks operation to silence one of the most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.
A useful rule of thumb in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures is to ask who might want to eliminate that person. In the case of former governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, it is clear that the spectacular "leak" of the government's FBI wiretap records showing that Spitzer paid a high-cost prostitute US$4,300 for what amounted to about an hour’s personal entertainment, was politically motivated.
The press has almost solely focused on the salacious aspects of the affair, not least the hefty fee Spitzer apparently paid. Why the scandal breaks now is the more interesting question.
Spitzer became governor of New York following a high-profile record as a relentless state attorney general going after financial crimes such as the Enron fraud, and corruption by Wall Street investment banks during the 2002 dotcom bubble era. Spitzer made powerful enemies by all accounts. The former head of the large AIG insurance group, Hank Greenburg, was among his detractors. He was bitterly hated on Wall Street. He had made his political career on being ruthless against financial corruption.
Most recently, from his position as governor of the nation’s second largest state, home to its financial industry, Spitzer had begun making high-profile attacks on the complicity of the Bush administration in covertly arranging bailouts of its Wall Street friends at the expense of ordinary homeowners and citizens, all paid for by taxpayer funds.
Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006, defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70% of the vote, has not been charged with any crime. However, the day the scandal broke, New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial were he to refuse to resign. Spitzer could be asked to testify in any trial involving the Emperors Club prostitution ring. But so far he hasn’t been charged with a crime.
Prostitution is illegal in most US states, but clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names usually leaked in a case in process. The Spitzer case is in the hands of Washington and not state authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of the Spitzer "Watergate".
The New York Times said Spitzer was an individual identified as Client 9 in court papers filed last week. Client 9 arranged to meet with "Kristen", a prostitute who officially charged $1,000 an hour, on February 13 in a Washington hotel. Whatever transpired, Spitzer paid her $4,300, according to the official documents. The case is clearly political when compared with more egregious recent cases involving Republicans. Republican Mark Foley was exposed propositioning male interns in Congress and Rudolph Giuliani was discovered cheating on his wife, but no or few Republican calls for resignations were heard.
Why the attack now?
Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush administration for the nation’s current financial and economic disaster. He testified in Washington in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee on the problems in New York-based specialized insurance companies, known as "monoline" insurers. In a national CNBC TV interview the same day, he laid blame for the crisis and its broader economic fallout on the Bush administration.
Spitzer recalled that several years ago the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) went to court and blocked New York State efforts to investigate the mortgage activities of national banks. Spitzer argued that the OCC did not put a stop to questionable loan marketing practices or uphold higher underwriting standards.
"This could have been avoided if the OCC had done its job," Spitzer said in the interview. "The OCC did nothing. The Bush administration let the housing bubble inflate and now that it's deflating we're dealing with the consequences. The real failure, the genesis, the germ that has spread, was the subprime scandal," Spitzer said.
Fraudulent marketing and very low "teaser" mortgage rates that later ballooned higher, were practices that should have been stopped, he argued. "When mortgages are being marketed, there is a marketplace obligation to ensure the borrower can afford to pay back the debt," he said.
That TV interview was only one instance of Spitzer laying blame on the Bush Republicans. On February 14, Spitzer published a signed article in the influential Washington Post titled, "Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers."
That article, laying clear blame on the administration for the development of the subprime crisis, appeared the day after his ill-fated tryst with the prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel. Just a coincidence? Spitzer wrote, "In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act pre-empting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks."
In his article, Spitzer charged, "Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."
Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the "predator lenders' partner in crime". The president, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet. Spitzer wrote, "When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably."
With that article, Spitzer may well have signed his own political death warrant.
F William Engdahl is author of the book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, about to be released by Global Research Publishing, and of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press. He may be reached via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
(Copyright 2007 F William Engdahl.)
Monday, March 24, 2008
Daily Star - Lebanon - Christian - ASSORTED ARTICLES - America is spending too much on the wrong weapons
Daily Star – Lebanon – Christian - ASSORTED ARTICLES - America is spending too much on the wrong weapons
The Daily Star wishes for its readers a Happy Easter.
We will resume publishing on Tuesday, March 25.
America is spending too much on the wrong weapons
By Pascal Boniface
Commentary by
Thursday, March 20, 2008
As the United States and the world mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, debates are raging about the consequences - for Iraq, the Middle East, and America's standing in the world. But the Iraq war's domestic impact - the Pentagon's ever mushrooming budget and its long-term influence on the US economy - may turn out to be its most lasting consequence.
The US Defense Department's request for $515.4 billion in the 2009 fiscal year dwarfs every other military budget in the world. And this huge sum - a 5 percent increase over the 2008 military budget - is to be spent only on the US military's normal operations, thus excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since he took office in 2001, President George W. BushMBA-Presidents Sep-07 has increased America's regular military budget by 30 percent, again not taking into account the cost of the wars he launched. Last year, America's entire military and counterterrorism expenditures topped $600 billion. One can assume that next year's total spending on military affairs will be even bigger. Adjusted for inflation, US military spending has reached its highest level since World War II.
Is there any limit to this spending boom? The US is allocating more money for defense today than it did during the war against Hitler or the Cold War. The Bush administration seems to think that today's military threats are graver. Talk about the so-called "peace dividend" that was supposed to come with the fall of the Berlin Wall has been silenced.
Of course, because the US economy has grown faster than military spending, the share of GDP dedicated to military expenditures has fallen over the years. The US spent 14 percent of its GDP on the military during the Korean War (1950-1953, the Cold War's peak), 9 percent during the Vietnam War, and spends only 4 percent nowadays.
Yet, given the sheer scale of military spending today, one can wonder if it is rational. The US economy is probably in recession, clouds are gathering over its pension and health-care systems, and its military budget may not make sense even in strategic terms. America alone accounts for around 50 percent of the world's military expenditures, which is historically unprecedented for a single country. Most other countries don't come anywhere close.
Indeed, the second-ranked country in terms of total annual military spending, the United Kingdom, lags far behind, at $55 billion, followed by France ($45 billion), Japan ($41 billion), and Germany ($35 billion). China and Russia, which can be considered strategic rivals of the US, spend $35 billion and $24 billion respectively (though these figures probably underestimate expenditure, the true amount is certainly still far below the US level). Iran, depicted by the Bush administration as a major threat, is a military dwarf, spending $6.6 billion on its military.
Some voices in America are calling for even bigger increases. Indeed, the Pentagon wants to enlarge the Marine Corps and Special Operations forces. Since it is increasingly difficult to recruit and retain soldiers, to do so will probably require raising their wages and improving their quality of life. Disabled soldiers also will cost a lot of money, even if the Pentagon won't automatically pay everything for them.
But fulfilling the ostensible rationale for this seemingly interminable spending orgy - success in the so-called "war on terror" - does not seem anywhere within reach. Mike McConnell, America's Director of National Intelligence, recently admitted to a US Senate panel that Al-Qaeda was gaining strength and steadily improving its ability to recruit, train and even attack the US.
That assessment is stunning, yet few American leaders - Democrats and Republicans alike - appear to be wondering if military power is the best answer to security issues. Indeed, by relying mainly on military solutions to political problems, the US does not seem to be increasing rather than reducing the threats it faces.
After all, the dangers that America faces today do not come from nation states, but from non-states actors against whom nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers are useless. It would be less expensive and more fruitful for America to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, return to a multilateral approach, and respect the moral principles that it recommends to others. Likewise, only by adopting such a strategy can the US start to compress the Pentagon's inflated budget and begin to address its many domestic woes.
Pascal Boniface is director of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris (IRIS). His most recent book is "Football et Mondialisation" (Football and Globalization). THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate (c) (www.project-syndicate.org).
Forcibly re-secularizing Turkey will only backfire
By Alfred Stepan
Commentary by
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The chief prosecutor of Turkey's High Court of Appeals recently recommended to the country's Constitutional Court that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) be permanently banned. Only last July, the AKP was overwhelmingly re-elected in free and fair elections to lead the government. The chief prosecutor also formally recommended that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul, and 69 other leading politicians be banned from politics for five years.
Clearly, banning the AKP would trigger a political crisis that would end Turkey's efforts to join the European Union in the foreseeable future and threaten its recent strong economic growthTrillion-Dollar-Experiment . So the chief prosecutor's threat should not be taken lightly - all the more so given that the Constitutional Court has banned 18 political parties since the current constitution was introduced in 1982. Indeed, the recent call to ban the AKP is directly related to its efforts to change Turkey's constitution.
The underlying charge in the chief prosecutor's indictment is that the AKP has been eroding secularism. But the origins of the current constitution, and its definition of secularism, are highly suspect. Turkey's existing constitution was adopted in 1982 as a direct product of the Turkish military coup of 1980. The five senior generals who led the coup appointed, directly or indirectly, all 160 members of the Consultative Assembly that drafted the new constitution, and they retained veto power over the final document. In the national ratification referendum that followed, citizens were allowed to vote against the military-sponsored draft, but not to argue against it publicly.
As a result, the 1982 constitution has weaker democratic origins than any in the EU. Its democratic content was also much weaker, assigning, for example, enormous power (and a military majority) to the National Security Council. While the AKP has moderated this authoritarian feature, it is difficult to democratize such a constitution fully, and official EU reports on Turkey's prospects for accession repeatedly call for a new constitution, not merely an amended one.
With public opinion polls indicating that the AKP's draft constitution, prepared by an academic committee, would be accepted through normal democratic procedures, the chief prosecutor acted to uphold the type of secularism enshrined in the 1982 constitution, which many commentators liken to French secularism. Yet the comparison with what the French call laicitŽ is misleading.
Certainly, both French laicitŽ and Turkish secularism (established by modern Turkey's founder, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk) began with a similar hostility toward religion. But now they are quite different. In Turkey, the only religious education that is tolerated is under the strict control of the state, whereas in France a wide variety of privately supported religious education establishments is allowed, and since 1959 the state has paid for much of the Catholic Church's primary school costs. In Turkey, Friday prayers are written by civil servants in the 70,000-member State Directorate of Religious Affairs, and all Turkish imams also must be civil servants. No similar controls exist in France.
Similarly, until the AKP came to power and began to loosen restrictions, it was virtually impossible in Turkey to create a new church or synagogue, or to create a Jewish or Christian foundation. This may be why the Armenian patriarch urged ethnic Armenians in Turkey to vote for the AKP in last July's elections. Here, too, no such restrictions exist in France.
The differences between French and Turkish secularism can be put in even sharper comparative perspective. In the widely cited "Fox" index measuring state control of majority and minority religions - in which zero represents the least state control, and figures in the thirties represent the greatest degree of control - all but two current EU member states get scores that are in the zero to six range. France is at the high end of the EU norm, with a score of six. Turkey, however, scores 24, worse even than Tunisia's authoritarian secular regime. Is this the type of secularism that needs to be perpetuated by the Turkish chief prosecutor's not so-soft constitutional coup?
What really worries some democratic secularists in Turkey and elsewhere is that the AKP's efforts at constitutional reform might be simply a first step toward introducing Islamic law, or sharia. If the constitutional court will not stop a potential AKP-led imposition of sharia, who will?
There are two responses to this question. First, the AKP insists that it opposes creating a sharia state, and experts say that there is no "smoking gun" in the chief prosecutor's indictment showing that the AKP has moved toward such a goal. Second, support for sharia, never high in Turkey, has actually declined since the AKP came to power, from 19 percent in 1996 to 8 percent in 2007.
Given that the AKP's true power base is its support in democratic elections, any attempt to impose sharia would risk alienating many of its own voters. Given this constraint, there is no reason for anyone, except for "secular fundamentalists," to support banning the AKP, Erdogan, or Gul; and every reason for Turkey to continue on its democratic path. Only that course will enable Turkey to construct a better constitution than it has now.
Alfred Stepan is a professor of government and director of the Center for Democracy,
Toleration and Religion at Columbia University in New York. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration Project Syndicate (c) (www.project-syndicate.org).
We're in for a frightening tumble until the markets clear
By David Ignatius
Daily Star staff
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Federal Reserve decided last weekend in the inferno of the financial crisis that Wall Street's major players - even a smallish and brutish one, Bear StearnsBear-Stearns-Troubles Nov-07 <> class="snap_preview_icon" v:shapes="_x0000_i1036">- are too big to fail. So the Fed is pumping all-but-unlimited amounts of all-but-free money into the financial system to keep it operating despite the Wall StreetWall-Street-Layoffs bank run.
But is the Fed itself too big to fail? And what institution would step in as the buyer of last, last resort - if the buyer of last resort should prove insufficient to the challenge?
Our instinctive response is to say that this scenario is implausible. The Federal Reserve reflects "the full faith and credit" of the United States, in the time-honored phrase. The very idea that the Fed couldn't meet its obligations is unthinkable. So, not surprisingly, Wall Street's reaction to the Fed's rescue mission has been a shout of joy.
But let's think for a moment about the unthinkable. Given the Fed's failure over the past nine months to stem the mounting fear in the market, and given the enormity of the housing market correction that's still ahead, you have to ask what's next if this week's rescue measures aren't successful.
What makes the danger acute is that the financial crisis is moving from Wall Street to Main Street. So far, the panic has been confined to people in the financial world who understood the exotic securities that were imploding, and knew just how bad the credit crisis was. Now we're entering a new phase, where Mom and Pop will be losing their homes, and maybe their jobs, too - and the public will be getting plenty scared.
We speak about the current meltdown as the "subprime crisisMassive-Bailout-Planned-for-Banks ," as if it were simply the product of imprudent loans by greedy financial concerns - and certainly there's been a lot of that. But the larger dynamic is that the bubble in the housing market has burst. That's why subprime loans became worthless, and why the daisy chain of mortgage-backed securities has unraveled.
Alan GreenspanAlan-Greenspan-Age-of-Turbulence Oct-07 class="snap_preview_icon" v:shapes="snap_com_shot_engage_icon_3"> , the former Fed chairman whom many blame for the housing bubbleTrillion-Dollar-Experiment <> class="snap_preview_icon" v:shapes="snap_com_shot_engage_icon_4">, made this point in a stunningly unapologetic article in Monday's Financial Times. After predicting that the financial crisis will be "the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War," he warned that it won't end until home prices stabilize.
A prominent investment banker offers a helpful, if also somewhat terrifying, explanation of what may be ahead. The Fed has pledged itself to a rescue package whose ultimate scope is unknown, but which will put at risk the nation's most precious asset, which is the Fed's credibility. How much bad debt will the Fed have to assume? Nobody knows. Estimates of the subprime portion range up to $400 billion, but that's just the beginning. The consensus among analysts is that losses in credit markets will total at least $600 billion, but suppose it proves to be double that, or triple?
"It's not a liquidity crisis, but a solvency crisis," says my banker friend. "Can the Fed really take on $1 trillion of impaired securities? $2 trillion? More?"
The takeover of the savings-and-loan industry by the Resolution Trust Corp. in the early 1990s was relatively small by comparison, a mere $250 billion in current dollars, and the assets acquired by the RTC were easily quantifiable, unlike today's mess of sliced-and-diced securitized mortgages.
The reality check here is to think about what's ahead as the housing bubble continues to contract. How big a drain will that be? The US residential mortgage market is currently about
$12 trillion, and the overall value of the housing market is about $20 trillion. Many analysts predict that this market will fall another 20 percent before it bottoms out. That would be a loss of $4 trillion in value, in an economy whose overall GDP last year was about $14.1 trillion.
In this post-bubble economy, we would see waves of panic selling - not by Wall Street fat cats, but by frightened homeowners trying to repay crushing mortgage debt, by angry workers who have lost their jobs, by people desperate to pay their bills.
The Fed, in my view, had no choice but to step in decisively this week and try to stop the Wall Street bank run. But when the panic hits Main Street, the Fed will have to be even more creative - in fashioning a package that restores confidence but also allows real estate prices to fall and the market to clear.
Coping with the worst financial
crisis since the Great Depression will require the best financial minds since the Depression. What we have is a lame-duck president, election-year politicking and a Fed that has been bold and innovative, but whose reach may have exceeded its grasp.
Syndicated columnist David Ignatius is published regularly by THE DAILY STAR.
Lavrov slams Gaza Strip blockade, Jewish settlements
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank: Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday criticized Israeli settlement activity in the Occupied West Bank and called for an end to the Jewish state's "unacceptable" blockade of the Gaza Strip. Following talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Lavrov also said Russia would soon set a date for a proposed peace conference which Moscow wants to host and which he is promoting on his Middle East tour.
"We are worried by the Israeli settlement activity and urge Israel to end it," Lavrov said.
Israel had pledged at a US-sponsored conference in November to abide by the 2003 international peace roadmap, which calls for a freeze of settlement activity.
Lavrov also called on Israel to lift the crippling sanctions it imposed on Hamas-run Gaza in January in a bid to end rocket fire from the impoverished Palestinian enclave. "The blockade imposed against Gaza is unacceptable and it must be ended so the Palestinian people can live normally," he said.
Lavrov, who earlier traveled to Syria and Israel, has revived proposals for a Moscow gathering as a follow-up to the US November conference in Annapolis, Maryland. A date for the conference "will be fixed in the near future," he said in Ramallah.
Abbas welcomed the announcement. "We insisted on the need to organize this follow-up in Moscow as soon as possible."
A senior Israeli official expressed reservations over the proposal."Out of diplomatic courtesy, we didn't reject the plan, but the truth is, we are not enthusiastic," the official said, asking not to be identified. "There have been enough international conferences. What is needed is to move forward in direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority."
In Washington, a spokesman for Condoleezza Rice confirmed the US secretary of state had discussed Russia's proposal during her visit to Moscow this week.
"The main objective is to help the ongoing talks to create a positive atmosphere that will allow the peace process to reach a conclusion," Lavrov said.
He also expressed support for Yemeni efforts to heal the deep rift between Abbas' Fatah faction and Hamas, which routed Fatah from Gaza in June.
Abbas initially said his representatives were heading back after Hamas refused the Yemeni initiative, but made it clear at the news conference they would remain in Sanaa until Saturday.
"We don't want to talk of a failure, and prefer to wait and see what happens tomorrow," Abbas said.
The initiative, sponsored by Yemen, calls for a return to the political status quo that existed before Hamas seized control of the impoverished strip in June.
In Damascus, Lavrov had met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and stressed Palestinian reconciliation as key to solving the Middle East conflict. - AFP
Israel warns citizens abroad could face revenge attacks
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel on Friday warned its citizens of what it termed a high risk of being kidnapped when traveling outside the country following the assassination in February of senior Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh. "The Counter-Terrorism Bureau warns over kidnappings of Israelis abroad, particularly businessmen and above all those who work with Arabs or Muslims," the agency said on its Web site, urging Israelis not to travel abroad in organized tours to avoid being targeted.
"It is a high risk," the warning states, saying the threat would particularly high after the conclusion Saturday of the traditional 40-day mourning period following the assassination of Mughniyeh.
Hizbullah has accused Israel of carrying out the February 12 car-bomb assassination in Damascus. Authorities in the Jewish state have denied any involvement but welcomed the killing of Mughniyeh, who was wanted for a string of attacks in the 1980s and 1990s on US and Israeli targets.
"Hizbullah continues to blame Israel for the death of Mughniyeh, which increases the risk of attacks conducted by Hizbullah on Israeli targets," the Internet site says.
"Hizbullah would have liked to kidnap or assassinate former Israeli senior military officials, or target a tour group," General Nitzan Nuriel, who heads the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, told armed forces radio on Friday.
The mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot daily said Israelis travelling to the island nation of Cyprus faced particularly high risks of being attacked or kidnapped. - AFP
The Daily Star wishes for its readers a Happy Easter.
We will resume publishing on Tuesday, March 25.
America is spending too much on the wrong weapons
By Pascal Boniface
Commentary by
Thursday, March 20, 2008
As the United States and the world mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, debates are raging about the consequences - for Iraq, the Middle East, and America's standing in the world. But the Iraq war's domestic impact - the Pentagon's ever mushrooming budget and its long-term influence on the US economy - may turn out to be its most lasting consequence.
The US Defense Department's request for $515.4 billion in the 2009 fiscal year dwarfs every other military budget in the world. And this huge sum - a 5 percent increase over the 2008 military budget - is to be spent only on the US military's normal operations, thus excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since he took office in 2001, President George W. BushMBA-Presidents Sep-07 has increased America's regular military budget by 30 percent, again not taking into account the cost of the wars he launched. Last year, America's entire military and counterterrorism expenditures topped $600 billion. One can assume that next year's total spending on military affairs will be even bigger. Adjusted for inflation, US military spending has reached its highest level since World War II.
Is there any limit to this spending boom? The US is allocating more money for defense today than it did during the war against Hitler or the Cold War. The Bush administration seems to think that today's military threats are graver. Talk about the so-called "peace dividend" that was supposed to come with the fall of the Berlin Wall has been silenced.
Of course, because the US economy has grown faster than military spending, the share of GDP dedicated to military expenditures has fallen over the years. The US spent 14 percent of its GDP on the military during the Korean War (1950-1953, the Cold War's peak), 9 percent during the Vietnam War, and spends only 4 percent nowadays.
Yet, given the sheer scale of military spending today, one can wonder if it is rational. The US economy is probably in recession, clouds are gathering over its pension and health-care systems, and its military budget may not make sense even in strategic terms. America alone accounts for around 50 percent of the world's military expenditures, which is historically unprecedented for a single country. Most other countries don't come anywhere close.
Indeed, the second-ranked country in terms of total annual military spending, the United Kingdom, lags far behind, at $55 billion, followed by France ($45 billion), Japan ($41 billion), and Germany ($35 billion). China and Russia, which can be considered strategic rivals of the US, spend $35 billion and $24 billion respectively (though these figures probably underestimate expenditure, the true amount is certainly still far below the US level). Iran, depicted by the Bush administration as a major threat, is a military dwarf, spending $6.6 billion on its military.
Some voices in America are calling for even bigger increases. Indeed, the Pentagon wants to enlarge the Marine Corps and Special Operations forces. Since it is increasingly difficult to recruit and retain soldiers, to do so will probably require raising their wages and improving their quality of life. Disabled soldiers also will cost a lot of money, even if the Pentagon won't automatically pay everything for them.
But fulfilling the ostensible rationale for this seemingly interminable spending orgy - success in the so-called "war on terror" - does not seem anywhere within reach. Mike McConnell, America's Director of National Intelligence, recently admitted to a US Senate panel that Al-Qaeda was gaining strength and steadily improving its ability to recruit, train and even attack the US.
That assessment is stunning, yet few American leaders - Democrats and Republicans alike - appear to be wondering if military power is the best answer to security issues. Indeed, by relying mainly on military solutions to political problems, the US does not seem to be increasing rather than reducing the threats it faces.
After all, the dangers that America faces today do not come from nation states, but from non-states actors against whom nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers are useless. It would be less expensive and more fruitful for America to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, return to a multilateral approach, and respect the moral principles that it recommends to others. Likewise, only by adopting such a strategy can the US start to compress the Pentagon's inflated budget and begin to address its many domestic woes.
Pascal Boniface is director of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris (IRIS). His most recent book is "Football et Mondialisation" (Football and Globalization). THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate (c) (www.project-syndicate.org).
Forcibly re-secularizing Turkey will only backfire
By Alfred Stepan
Commentary by
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The chief prosecutor of Turkey's High Court of Appeals recently recommended to the country's Constitutional Court that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) be permanently banned. Only last July, the AKP was overwhelmingly re-elected in free and fair elections to lead the government. The chief prosecutor also formally recommended that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul, and 69 other leading politicians be banned from politics for five years.
Clearly, banning the AKP would trigger a political crisis that would end Turkey's efforts to join the European Union in the foreseeable future and threaten its recent strong economic growthTrillion-Dollar-Experiment . So the chief prosecutor's threat should not be taken lightly - all the more so given that the Constitutional Court has banned 18 political parties since the current constitution was introduced in 1982. Indeed, the recent call to ban the AKP is directly related to its efforts to change Turkey's constitution.
The underlying charge in the chief prosecutor's indictment is that the AKP has been eroding secularism. But the origins of the current constitution, and its definition of secularism, are highly suspect. Turkey's existing constitution was adopted in 1982 as a direct product of the Turkish military coup of 1980. The five senior generals who led the coup appointed, directly or indirectly, all 160 members of the Consultative Assembly that drafted the new constitution, and they retained veto power over the final document. In the national ratification referendum that followed, citizens were allowed to vote against the military-sponsored draft, but not to argue against it publicly.
As a result, the 1982 constitution has weaker democratic origins than any in the EU. Its democratic content was also much weaker, assigning, for example, enormous power (and a military majority) to the National Security Council. While the AKP has moderated this authoritarian feature, it is difficult to democratize such a constitution fully, and official EU reports on Turkey's prospects for accession repeatedly call for a new constitution, not merely an amended one.
With public opinion polls indicating that the AKP's draft constitution, prepared by an academic committee, would be accepted through normal democratic procedures, the chief prosecutor acted to uphold the type of secularism enshrined in the 1982 constitution, which many commentators liken to French secularism. Yet the comparison with what the French call laicitŽ is misleading.
Certainly, both French laicitŽ and Turkish secularism (established by modern Turkey's founder, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk) began with a similar hostility toward religion. But now they are quite different. In Turkey, the only religious education that is tolerated is under the strict control of the state, whereas in France a wide variety of privately supported religious education establishments is allowed, and since 1959 the state has paid for much of the Catholic Church's primary school costs. In Turkey, Friday prayers are written by civil servants in the 70,000-member State Directorate of Religious Affairs, and all Turkish imams also must be civil servants. No similar controls exist in France.
Similarly, until the AKP came to power and began to loosen restrictions, it was virtually impossible in Turkey to create a new church or synagogue, or to create a Jewish or Christian foundation. This may be why the Armenian patriarch urged ethnic Armenians in Turkey to vote for the AKP in last July's elections. Here, too, no such restrictions exist in France.
The differences between French and Turkish secularism can be put in even sharper comparative perspective. In the widely cited "Fox" index measuring state control of majority and minority religions - in which zero represents the least state control, and figures in the thirties represent the greatest degree of control - all but two current EU member states get scores that are in the zero to six range. France is at the high end of the EU norm, with a score of six. Turkey, however, scores 24, worse even than Tunisia's authoritarian secular regime. Is this the type of secularism that needs to be perpetuated by the Turkish chief prosecutor's not so-soft constitutional coup?
What really worries some democratic secularists in Turkey and elsewhere is that the AKP's efforts at constitutional reform might be simply a first step toward introducing Islamic law, or sharia. If the constitutional court will not stop a potential AKP-led imposition of sharia, who will?
There are two responses to this question. First, the AKP insists that it opposes creating a sharia state, and experts say that there is no "smoking gun" in the chief prosecutor's indictment showing that the AKP has moved toward such a goal. Second, support for sharia, never high in Turkey, has actually declined since the AKP came to power, from 19 percent in 1996 to 8 percent in 2007.
Given that the AKP's true power base is its support in democratic elections, any attempt to impose sharia would risk alienating many of its own voters. Given this constraint, there is no reason for anyone, except for "secular fundamentalists," to support banning the AKP, Erdogan, or Gul; and every reason for Turkey to continue on its democratic path. Only that course will enable Turkey to construct a better constitution than it has now.
Alfred Stepan is a professor of government and director of the Center for Democracy,
Toleration and Religion at Columbia University in New York. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration Project Syndicate (c) (www.project-syndicate.org).
We're in for a frightening tumble until the markets clear
By David Ignatius
Daily Star staff
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Federal Reserve decided last weekend in the inferno of the financial crisis that Wall Street's major players - even a smallish and brutish one, Bear StearnsBear-Stearns-Troubles Nov-07 <> class="snap_preview_icon" v:shapes="_x0000_i1036">- are too big to fail. So the Fed is pumping all-but-unlimited amounts of all-but-free money into the financial system to keep it operating despite the Wall StreetWall-Street-Layoffs bank run.
But is the Fed itself too big to fail? And what institution would step in as the buyer of last, last resort - if the buyer of last resort should prove insufficient to the challenge?
Our instinctive response is to say that this scenario is implausible. The Federal Reserve reflects "the full faith and credit" of the United States, in the time-honored phrase. The very idea that the Fed couldn't meet its obligations is unthinkable. So, not surprisingly, Wall Street's reaction to the Fed's rescue mission has been a shout of joy.
But let's think for a moment about the unthinkable. Given the Fed's failure over the past nine months to stem the mounting fear in the market, and given the enormity of the housing market correction that's still ahead, you have to ask what's next if this week's rescue measures aren't successful.
What makes the danger acute is that the financial crisis is moving from Wall Street to Main Street. So far, the panic has been confined to people in the financial world who understood the exotic securities that were imploding, and knew just how bad the credit crisis was. Now we're entering a new phase, where Mom and Pop will be losing their homes, and maybe their jobs, too - and the public will be getting plenty scared.
We speak about the current meltdown as the "subprime crisisMassive-Bailout-Planned-for-Banks ," as if it were simply the product of imprudent loans by greedy financial concerns - and certainly there's been a lot of that. But the larger dynamic is that the bubble in the housing market has burst. That's why subprime loans became worthless, and why the daisy chain of mortgage-backed securities has unraveled.
Alan GreenspanAlan-Greenspan-Age-of-Turbulence Oct-07 class="snap_preview_icon" v:shapes="snap_com_shot_engage_icon_3"> , the former Fed chairman whom many blame for the housing bubbleTrillion-Dollar-Experiment <> class="snap_preview_icon" v:shapes="snap_com_shot_engage_icon_4">, made this point in a stunningly unapologetic article in Monday's Financial Times. After predicting that the financial crisis will be "the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War," he warned that it won't end until home prices stabilize.
A prominent investment banker offers a helpful, if also somewhat terrifying, explanation of what may be ahead. The Fed has pledged itself to a rescue package whose ultimate scope is unknown, but which will put at risk the nation's most precious asset, which is the Fed's credibility. How much bad debt will the Fed have to assume? Nobody knows. Estimates of the subprime portion range up to $400 billion, but that's just the beginning. The consensus among analysts is that losses in credit markets will total at least $600 billion, but suppose it proves to be double that, or triple?
"It's not a liquidity crisis, but a solvency crisis," says my banker friend. "Can the Fed really take on $1 trillion of impaired securities? $2 trillion? More?"
The takeover of the savings-and-loan industry by the Resolution Trust Corp. in the early 1990s was relatively small by comparison, a mere $250 billion in current dollars, and the assets acquired by the RTC were easily quantifiable, unlike today's mess of sliced-and-diced securitized mortgages.
The reality check here is to think about what's ahead as the housing bubble continues to contract. How big a drain will that be? The US residential mortgage market is currently about
$12 trillion, and the overall value of the housing market is about $20 trillion. Many analysts predict that this market will fall another 20 percent before it bottoms out. That would be a loss of $4 trillion in value, in an economy whose overall GDP last year was about $14.1 trillion.
In this post-bubble economy, we would see waves of panic selling - not by Wall Street fat cats, but by frightened homeowners trying to repay crushing mortgage debt, by angry workers who have lost their jobs, by people desperate to pay their bills.
The Fed, in my view, had no choice but to step in decisively this week and try to stop the Wall Street bank run. But when the panic hits Main Street, the Fed will have to be even more creative - in fashioning a package that restores confidence but also allows real estate prices to fall and the market to clear.
Coping with the worst financial
crisis since the Great Depression will require the best financial minds since the Depression. What we have is a lame-duck president, election-year politicking and a Fed that has been bold and innovative, but whose reach may have exceeded its grasp.
Syndicated columnist David Ignatius is published regularly by THE DAILY STAR.
Lavrov slams Gaza Strip blockade, Jewish settlements
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank: Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday criticized Israeli settlement activity in the Occupied West Bank and called for an end to the Jewish state's "unacceptable" blockade of the Gaza Strip. Following talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Lavrov also said Russia would soon set a date for a proposed peace conference which Moscow wants to host and which he is promoting on his Middle East tour.
"We are worried by the Israeli settlement activity and urge Israel to end it," Lavrov said.
Israel had pledged at a US-sponsored conference in November to abide by the 2003 international peace roadmap, which calls for a freeze of settlement activity.
Lavrov also called on Israel to lift the crippling sanctions it imposed on Hamas-run Gaza in January in a bid to end rocket fire from the impoverished Palestinian enclave. "The blockade imposed against Gaza is unacceptable and it must be ended so the Palestinian people can live normally," he said.
Lavrov, who earlier traveled to Syria and Israel, has revived proposals for a Moscow gathering as a follow-up to the US November conference in Annapolis, Maryland. A date for the conference "will be fixed in the near future," he said in Ramallah.
Abbas welcomed the announcement. "We insisted on the need to organize this follow-up in Moscow as soon as possible."
A senior Israeli official expressed reservations over the proposal."Out of diplomatic courtesy, we didn't reject the plan, but the truth is, we are not enthusiastic," the official said, asking not to be identified. "There have been enough international conferences. What is needed is to move forward in direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority."
In Washington, a spokesman for Condoleezza Rice confirmed the US secretary of state had discussed Russia's proposal during her visit to Moscow this week.
"The main objective is to help the ongoing talks to create a positive atmosphere that will allow the peace process to reach a conclusion," Lavrov said.
He also expressed support for Yemeni efforts to heal the deep rift between Abbas' Fatah faction and Hamas, which routed Fatah from Gaza in June.
Abbas initially said his representatives were heading back after Hamas refused the Yemeni initiative, but made it clear at the news conference they would remain in Sanaa until Saturday.
"We don't want to talk of a failure, and prefer to wait and see what happens tomorrow," Abbas said.
The initiative, sponsored by Yemen, calls for a return to the political status quo that existed before Hamas seized control of the impoverished strip in June.
In Damascus, Lavrov had met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and stressed Palestinian reconciliation as key to solving the Middle East conflict. - AFP
Israel warns citizens abroad could face revenge attacks
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel on Friday warned its citizens of what it termed a high risk of being kidnapped when traveling outside the country following the assassination in February of senior Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh. "The Counter-Terrorism Bureau warns over kidnappings of Israelis abroad, particularly businessmen and above all those who work with Arabs or Muslims," the agency said on its Web site, urging Israelis not to travel abroad in organized tours to avoid being targeted.
"It is a high risk," the warning states, saying the threat would particularly high after the conclusion Saturday of the traditional 40-day mourning period following the assassination of Mughniyeh.
Hizbullah has accused Israel of carrying out the February 12 car-bomb assassination in Damascus. Authorities in the Jewish state have denied any involvement but welcomed the killing of Mughniyeh, who was wanted for a string of attacks in the 1980s and 1990s on US and Israeli targets.
"Hizbullah continues to blame Israel for the death of Mughniyeh, which increases the risk of attacks conducted by Hizbullah on Israeli targets," the Internet site says.
"Hizbullah would have liked to kidnap or assassinate former Israeli senior military officials, or target a tour group," General Nitzan Nuriel, who heads the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, told armed forces radio on Friday.
The mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot daily said Israelis travelling to the island nation of Cyprus faced particularly high risks of being attacked or kidnapped. - AFP
IRAQ - The War Endures, but Where's the Media?
IRAQ - The War Endures, but Where’s the Media?
The New York Times
March 24, 2008
The War Endures, but Where’s the Media?
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet.
Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The drop in coverage parallels — and may be explained by — a decline in public interest. Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that more than 50 percent of Americans said they followed events in Iraq “very closely” in the months just before and after the war began, but that slid to an average of 40 percent in 2006, and has been running below 30 percent since last fall.
Experts offer many other explanations for the declining media focus, like the danger and expense in covering Iraq, and shrinking newsroom budgets. In the last year, a flagging economy and the most competitive presidential campaign in memory have diverted attention and resources.
“Vietnam held the media’s attention a lot better because it was a war with a draft that touched a lot more people; people were sent against their will, and many more Americans were killed,” said Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard.
“In a conventional war, like World War II, there’s dramatic change, a moving front line, a compelling narrative,” he said. But after the triumphal first months, Iraq became a war of insurgents vs. counterinsurgents, harder to make sense of, “with more of the same grim news, day after day.”
The three broadcast networks’ nightly newscasts devoted more than 4,100 minutes to Iraq in 2003 and 3,000 in 2004, before leveling off at about 2,000 a year, according to Andrew Tyndall, who monitors the broadcasts and posts detailed breakdowns at tyndallreport.com. And by the last months of 2007, he said, the broadcasts were spending half as much time on Iraq as earlier in the year.
Since the start of last year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a part of the nonprofit Pew Research Center, has tracked reporting by several dozen major newspapers, cable stations, broadcast television networks, Web sites and radio programs. Iraq accounted for 18 percent of their prominent news coverage in the first nine months of 2007, but only 9 percent in the following three months, and 3 percent so far this year.
The policy debate in Washington that dominated last year’s Iraq coverage has almost disappeared from the news. And reporting on events in Iraq has fallen by more than two-thirds from a year ago.
The drop accelerated with a sharp decline in violence in Iraq that began at the end of last summer. The last six months have been safer for American troops than any comparable period since the war began, with about 33 killed each month, compared with about 91 a month over the previous year.
“The available news hole got so much smaller because election and economic news took up so much of the space,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center.
There are no authoritative figures for most media coverage before 2007. But a check of several large and midsize newspapers’ archives shows a year-by-year decline in articles about Iraq, and an increase in the proportion supplied by wire services. Experts who follow the coverage say there is no doubt about the trend.
“I was getting on average three to five calls a day for interviews about the war” in the first years, said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow on national security at the Brookings Institution. “Now it’s less than one a day.”
He argued that Americans who support the war might not have wanted to follow the news when it was bad, and that Americans against the war are less interested now that the news is better. And the presidential candidates, he said, have shown “surprisingly little interest in discussing it in detail.”
Many news organizations have fewer people in Iraq than they once did, though no definitive numbers are available. Coalition officials have said that although there were several hundred reporters embedded with military units early in the war, the number has been measured in tens in recent months.
Violence against journalists makes reporting on Iraq costly and difficult; executives of The New York Times have said that the newspaper is spending more than $3 million a year to cover Iraq. The risks have forced news organizations to hire private security forces and Iraqi employees who can go places that Westerners cannot safely explore.
From the start of the war through 2005, journalists and their support workers were killed in Iraq at a rate of one every 12 days, according to tallies kept by the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2006 and 2007, the rate was one every eight days. Most of those killed have been Iraqis.
“Danger and the expense are gigantic factors,” Mr. Jones said. “The news media have to constantly revisit how much money and risk to expend.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 24, 2008
The War Endures, but Where’s the Media?
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet.
Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The drop in coverage parallels — and may be explained by — a decline in public interest. Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that more than 50 percent of Americans said they followed events in Iraq “very closely” in the months just before and after the war began, but that slid to an average of 40 percent in 2006, and has been running below 30 percent since last fall.
Experts offer many other explanations for the declining media focus, like the danger and expense in covering Iraq, and shrinking newsroom budgets. In the last year, a flagging economy and the most competitive presidential campaign in memory have diverted attention and resources.
“Vietnam held the media’s attention a lot better because it was a war with a draft that touched a lot more people; people were sent against their will, and many more Americans were killed,” said Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard.
“In a conventional war, like World War II, there’s dramatic change, a moving front line, a compelling narrative,” he said. But after the triumphal first months, Iraq became a war of insurgents vs. counterinsurgents, harder to make sense of, “with more of the same grim news, day after day.”
The three broadcast networks’ nightly newscasts devoted more than 4,100 minutes to Iraq in 2003 and 3,000 in 2004, before leveling off at about 2,000 a year, according to Andrew Tyndall, who monitors the broadcasts and posts detailed breakdowns at tyndallreport.com. And by the last months of 2007, he said, the broadcasts were spending half as much time on Iraq as earlier in the year.
Since the start of last year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a part of the nonprofit Pew Research Center, has tracked reporting by several dozen major newspapers, cable stations, broadcast television networks, Web sites and radio programs. Iraq accounted for 18 percent of their prominent news coverage in the first nine months of 2007, but only 9 percent in the following three months, and 3 percent so far this year.
The policy debate in Washington that dominated last year’s Iraq coverage has almost disappeared from the news. And reporting on events in Iraq has fallen by more than two-thirds from a year ago.
The drop accelerated with a sharp decline in violence in Iraq that began at the end of last summer. The last six months have been safer for American troops than any comparable period since the war began, with about 33 killed each month, compared with about 91 a month over the previous year.
“The available news hole got so much smaller because election and economic news took up so much of the space,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center.
There are no authoritative figures for most media coverage before 2007. But a check of several large and midsize newspapers’ archives shows a year-by-year decline in articles about Iraq, and an increase in the proportion supplied by wire services. Experts who follow the coverage say there is no doubt about the trend.
“I was getting on average three to five calls a day for interviews about the war” in the first years, said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow on national security at the Brookings Institution. “Now it’s less than one a day.”
He argued that Americans who support the war might not have wanted to follow the news when it was bad, and that Americans against the war are less interested now that the news is better. And the presidential candidates, he said, have shown “surprisingly little interest in discussing it in detail.”
Many news organizations have fewer people in Iraq than they once did, though no definitive numbers are available. Coalition officials have said that although there were several hundred reporters embedded with military units early in the war, the number has been measured in tens in recent months.
Violence against journalists makes reporting on Iraq costly and difficult; executives of The New York Times have said that the newspaper is spending more than $3 million a year to cover Iraq. The risks have forced news organizations to hire private security forces and Iraqi employees who can go places that Westerners cannot safely explore.
From the start of the war through 2005, journalists and their support workers were killed in Iraq at a rate of one every 12 days, according to tallies kept by the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2006 and 2007, the rate was one every eight days. Most of those killed have been Iraqis.
“Danger and the expense are gigantic factors,” Mr. Jones said. “The news media have to constantly revisit how much money and risk to expend.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
China and India: Oh to be different
China and India: Oh to be different
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Greater China
Mar 19, 2008
China and India: Oh to be different
By Pallavi Aiyar
China had it all planned out. Or so it seemed. With the Beijing Summer Olympic Games only a few months away, the flashy sports stadiums, the world's biggest airport and kilometers of extended subway lines combined to serve as gleaming testaments to the country's dramatic material progress. Efforts had even been made to transform Beijingers themselves for their Olympic debut, from surly communists suspicious of foreign barbarians into smiling, service-oriented folk welcoming "foreign friends" to their city in English.
But as the events of the past few days have shown with protests against Chinese rule of Tibet spreading from Lhasa to parts of Gansu and Sichuan provinces, Beijing has been caught unprepared in its ability to deal with dissent. It is this inability, moreover, that will prove to be the country's greatest vulnerability going forward; its Achilles' heel as it strives for great power status.
As Beijing desires the Olympics to demonstrate, much in China has changed in recent years, often at a dizzying pace. The successes in poverty reduction are an awesome achievement. Beijing in 2008, with its slew of vertiginous skyscrapers, flood of fancy cars and array of malls boasting the most luxurious of luxury brands, is a far cry from the capital city of Mao Zedong suits and bicycles in the not so distant past.
However, while much has changed, China's response to the events in Tibet is also indicative of how much remains unchanged. The official response to the protests in Lhasa and elsewhere, the most serious in two decades, do not indicate the discovery by Beijing of "Olympic-new" savvy ways of crisis control. Instead, the Chinese people and the world have only been subjected to the same old tired responses officialdom resorts to given any sign of discontentment among the Tibetan population.
This is a response that essentially amounts to a denial of any fundamental problem. The elements are familiar: a scapegoating and vilification of the Dalai Lama, a refusal to grant any legitimacy to Tibetan disaffection and an insistence on the myth of elemental "harmony" among all "Chinese" people, including Tibetans.
This denial of legitimate differences is ultimately the greatest difference between China and Asia's other major rising power, India.
Indians who visit Chinese cities are invariably awestruck by the infrastructure. They look at the silken-smooth multi-lane highways with barely concealed envy, no doubt comparing them to the pot-holed clumps of tar more familiar as roads back home. They marvel at the relatively orderly flow of traffic on the broad avenues, unobstructed by stray cows. They remark on the absence of slums and beggars on the streets.
China has not only built cities that are almost impossibly modern from an Indian point of view, it has also provided jobs and opportunities for upward mobility for millions of migrant workers from the countryside.
China's economic achievement over the past 30-odd years has in fact been unparalleled historically. However, a point usually unrecognized by Indians impressed by China's glitter is the fact that so is India's political feat.
China's southern neighbor's democracy is almost unique among post-colonial states not simply for its existence but its existence against all odds in a country held together not by geography, language or ethnicity but by an idea. This is an idea that asserts, even celebrates, the possibility of multiple identities. In India, you can and are expected to be both many things and one thing simultaneously.
Your correspondent is thus a Delhite, an English speaker, half a Brahmin, half a Tamilian, a Hindu culturally, an atheist by choice, a Muslim by heritage. But the identity that threads these multiplicities together is at once the most powerful and most amorphous: she is an Indian.
India's great political achievement is thus in its having developed mechanisms for negotiating large-scale diversity along with the inescapable corollary of frequent and aggressive disagreement. The guiding and perhaps lone consensus that forms the bedrock of that mechanism is that in a democracy you don't really need to agree - except on the ground rules of how you will disagree.
In direct contradistinction to China, India's polity has flourished precisely because of its ability to acknowledge difference. The very survival of India as a country, given the scope of its bewildering diversity, has been dependent on the possibility of dissent.
India is a country of 22 official languages and over 200 recorded mother tongues. In this "Hindu" country, there are more Muslims than in all of Pakistan. The country's cultural inheritance includes fire-worshiping Zorastrians and Tohra-reciting Jews. With no single language, ethnicity, religion or food, India is quite simply, implausible; yet marvelously, it isn't. It is a country without a language, without a center, lacking singularity except in being singularly diverse.
In China, regular lip service is also paid to the country's own, considerable diversity. During the National People's Congress' annual session, for example, delegates representing China's multiplicity of minorities swish around the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in their "ethnic" dresses. Beijing regularly talks of the religious freedoms enjoyed by the country's Buddhists, Christians and Muslims.
But in fact, the fundamental tenet of China's political philosophy is not diversity but uniformity. This homogeneity does not only extend itself to the tangible, such as architecture or the system of writing alone, but also to thought.
Even in the modern China of the 21st century where there are more Internet users than even in the United States, those who disagree with mainstream, officially sanctioned views outside of the parameters set by mainstream officially sanctioned debate, more often than not find themselves branded as dissidents - suspect, hunted, under threat.
The insistence on "harmony" as the only reality and inability to admit genuine differences in interest and opinions between the peoples of a country of the size and complexity of China is ultimately the country's greatest weakness.
Talk of political reform in China continues to be bound by the "harmonious" parameters set by Hu Jintao, the president. The idea is that everyone's interests and opinions are to be balanced and resolved without conflict.
Oppositional politics with the clash of argument remain anathema. Consensus for the good of the whole nation is the way forward, we are told.
To imagine that these pious prescriptions will be adequate to address growing tensions within Chinese society as it evolves and changes is foolhardy. The interests of the laid-off worker and multinational executive are divergent, as are those of the real estate developer and the city-dweller about to have her home destroyed to make way for a mall.
These are conflicts that need to be acknowledged so that effective mechanisms for their resolution can then be identified.
As the recent protests have demonstrated, despite over 50 years of suppression and "patriotic education", a strong strain of resentment against Beijing's rule continues to simmer in Tibet. During this time period the region's economy has benefited from Chinese-developed infrastructure, literacy rates are also on the up and health care has improved. Nonetheless, large swathes of dissatisfaction with Beijing's policies persist.
For China's authorities to simply deny the reality of the problem, blame all tension on an exiled leader and insist that the majority of Tibetans couldn't be happier with the Communist Party's harmonious policies, is self-defeating.
Given this stance whether or not the Chinese authorities react with "leniency" towards the protesters, the damage to their reputation internationally is assured.
Looking ahead to the Olympics and beyond, China would in fact do well to look to India, the neighbor it usually scorns as poor and chaotic, to understand the strength that acknowledging differences can provide.
Harmony is a laudable goal, but sometimes a little dissent is the mark of a truly healthy society.
Pallavi Aiyar is the author of the forthcoming book, Smoke and Mirrors: China Through Indian Eyes, (Harper Collins, April 2008.)
(Copyright 2008 Pallavi Aiyar.)
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Greater China
Mar 19, 2008
China and India: Oh to be different
By Pallavi Aiyar
China had it all planned out. Or so it seemed. With the Beijing Summer Olympic Games only a few months away, the flashy sports stadiums, the world's biggest airport and kilometers of extended subway lines combined to serve as gleaming testaments to the country's dramatic material progress. Efforts had even been made to transform Beijingers themselves for their Olympic debut, from surly communists suspicious of foreign barbarians into smiling, service-oriented folk welcoming "foreign friends" to their city in English.
But as the events of the past few days have shown with protests against Chinese rule of Tibet spreading from Lhasa to parts of Gansu and Sichuan provinces, Beijing has been caught unprepared in its ability to deal with dissent. It is this inability, moreover, that will prove to be the country's greatest vulnerability going forward; its Achilles' heel as it strives for great power status.
As Beijing desires the Olympics to demonstrate, much in China has changed in recent years, often at a dizzying pace. The successes in poverty reduction are an awesome achievement. Beijing in 2008, with its slew of vertiginous skyscrapers, flood of fancy cars and array of malls boasting the most luxurious of luxury brands, is a far cry from the capital city of Mao Zedong suits and bicycles in the not so distant past.
However, while much has changed, China's response to the events in Tibet is also indicative of how much remains unchanged. The official response to the protests in Lhasa and elsewhere, the most serious in two decades, do not indicate the discovery by Beijing of "Olympic-new" savvy ways of crisis control. Instead, the Chinese people and the world have only been subjected to the same old tired responses officialdom resorts to given any sign of discontentment among the Tibetan population.
This is a response that essentially amounts to a denial of any fundamental problem. The elements are familiar: a scapegoating and vilification of the Dalai Lama, a refusal to grant any legitimacy to Tibetan disaffection and an insistence on the myth of elemental "harmony" among all "Chinese" people, including Tibetans.
This denial of legitimate differences is ultimately the greatest difference between China and Asia's other major rising power, India.
Indians who visit Chinese cities are invariably awestruck by the infrastructure. They look at the silken-smooth multi-lane highways with barely concealed envy, no doubt comparing them to the pot-holed clumps of tar more familiar as roads back home. They marvel at the relatively orderly flow of traffic on the broad avenues, unobstructed by stray cows. They remark on the absence of slums and beggars on the streets.
China has not only built cities that are almost impossibly modern from an Indian point of view, it has also provided jobs and opportunities for upward mobility for millions of migrant workers from the countryside.
China's economic achievement over the past 30-odd years has in fact been unparalleled historically. However, a point usually unrecognized by Indians impressed by China's glitter is the fact that so is India's political feat.
China's southern neighbor's democracy is almost unique among post-colonial states not simply for its existence but its existence against all odds in a country held together not by geography, language or ethnicity but by an idea. This is an idea that asserts, even celebrates, the possibility of multiple identities. In India, you can and are expected to be both many things and one thing simultaneously.
Your correspondent is thus a Delhite, an English speaker, half a Brahmin, half a Tamilian, a Hindu culturally, an atheist by choice, a Muslim by heritage. But the identity that threads these multiplicities together is at once the most powerful and most amorphous: she is an Indian.
India's great political achievement is thus in its having developed mechanisms for negotiating large-scale diversity along with the inescapable corollary of frequent and aggressive disagreement. The guiding and perhaps lone consensus that forms the bedrock of that mechanism is that in a democracy you don't really need to agree - except on the ground rules of how you will disagree.
In direct contradistinction to China, India's polity has flourished precisely because of its ability to acknowledge difference. The very survival of India as a country, given the scope of its bewildering diversity, has been dependent on the possibility of dissent.
India is a country of 22 official languages and over 200 recorded mother tongues. In this "Hindu" country, there are more Muslims than in all of Pakistan. The country's cultural inheritance includes fire-worshiping Zorastrians and Tohra-reciting Jews. With no single language, ethnicity, religion or food, India is quite simply, implausible; yet marvelously, it isn't. It is a country without a language, without a center, lacking singularity except in being singularly diverse.
In China, regular lip service is also paid to the country's own, considerable diversity. During the National People's Congress' annual session, for example, delegates representing China's multiplicity of minorities swish around the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in their "ethnic" dresses. Beijing regularly talks of the religious freedoms enjoyed by the country's Buddhists, Christians and Muslims.
But in fact, the fundamental tenet of China's political philosophy is not diversity but uniformity. This homogeneity does not only extend itself to the tangible, such as architecture or the system of writing alone, but also to thought.
Even in the modern China of the 21st century where there are more Internet users than even in the United States, those who disagree with mainstream, officially sanctioned views outside of the parameters set by mainstream officially sanctioned debate, more often than not find themselves branded as dissidents - suspect, hunted, under threat.
The insistence on "harmony" as the only reality and inability to admit genuine differences in interest and opinions between the peoples of a country of the size and complexity of China is ultimately the country's greatest weakness.
Talk of political reform in China continues to be bound by the "harmonious" parameters set by Hu Jintao, the president. The idea is that everyone's interests and opinions are to be balanced and resolved without conflict.
Oppositional politics with the clash of argument remain anathema. Consensus for the good of the whole nation is the way forward, we are told.
To imagine that these pious prescriptions will be adequate to address growing tensions within Chinese society as it evolves and changes is foolhardy. The interests of the laid-off worker and multinational executive are divergent, as are those of the real estate developer and the city-dweller about to have her home destroyed to make way for a mall.
These are conflicts that need to be acknowledged so that effective mechanisms for their resolution can then be identified.
As the recent protests have demonstrated, despite over 50 years of suppression and "patriotic education", a strong strain of resentment against Beijing's rule continues to simmer in Tibet. During this time period the region's economy has benefited from Chinese-developed infrastructure, literacy rates are also on the up and health care has improved. Nonetheless, large swathes of dissatisfaction with Beijing's policies persist.
For China's authorities to simply deny the reality of the problem, blame all tension on an exiled leader and insist that the majority of Tibetans couldn't be happier with the Communist Party's harmonious policies, is self-defeating.
Given this stance whether or not the Chinese authorities react with "leniency" towards the protesters, the damage to their reputation internationally is assured.
Looking ahead to the Olympics and beyond, China would in fact do well to look to India, the neighbor it usually scorns as poor and chaotic, to understand the strength that acknowledging differences can provide.
Harmony is a laudable goal, but sometimes a little dissent is the mark of a truly healthy society.
Pallavi Aiyar is the author of the forthcoming book, Smoke and Mirrors: China Through Indian Eyes, (Harper Collins, April 2008.)
(Copyright 2008 Pallavi Aiyar.)
Already counting to six - IRAQ WAR
!!!!-Already counting to six - IRAQ WAR
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Middle East
Mar 20, 2008
DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
Already counting to six
By Tom Engelhardt
Please don't write in with a correction. I know just as well as you do that we're approaching the fifth, not the sixth, anniversary of the moment when, on March 19, 2003, George W Bush told the American people:
My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger ... My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.
At that moment, of course, the cruise missiles meant to "decapitate" Saddam Hussein's regime, but that killed only Iraqi civilians, were on their way to Baghdad. I'm perfectly aware that articles galore will be looking back on the five years since that day. This is not one of them.
Think of this piece as in the spirit of Senator John McCain's recent request that Americans not obsess about the origins of the Iraq War, but look forward. "On the issue of my differences with Senator [Barack] Obama on Iraq," he typically said, "I want to make it very clear: This is not about decisions that were made in the past. This is about decisions that a president will have to make about the future in Iraq. And a decision to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq will lead to chaos."
The future, not the past, is the mantra, which is why I'm skipping the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War entirely. Now, let me ask you a future-oriented question: What's wrong with these sentences?
On March 19, 2009, the date of the sixth anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq, as surely as the sun rises in the East, I'll be sitting here and we will still have many tens of thousands of troops, a string of major bases, and massive air power in that country. In the intervening year, more Americans will have been wounded or killed; many more Iraqis will have been wounded or killed; more chaos and conflict will have ensued; many more bombs will have been dropped and missiles launched; many more suicide bombs will have gone off. Iraq will still be a hell on Earth.
Prediction is, of course, a risky business. Otherwise I'd now be commuting via jet pack through spire cities (as the futuristic articles of my youth so regularly predicted). If you were to punch holes in the above sentences, you would certainly have to note that it's risky for a man of 63 years, or of any age, to suggest that he'll be sitting anywhere in a year; riskier yet if you happen to live in those lands extending from North Africa to Central Asia that Bush administration officials used to call the "arc of instability" - essentially the oil heartlands of the planet - before they turned them into one.
It's always possible that I won't be sitting here (or anywhere else, for that matter) on March 19, 2009. Unfortunately, when it comes to the American position in Iraq, short of an act of God, the sixth anniversary of Bush's war of choice is going to dawn much like the fifth one.
As a start, you can write off the next 10 months of our lives, right up to January 20, 2009, inauguration day for the next president. We know that, last autumn, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was considering bringing American troop strength in Iraq down to 100,000 by the end of Bush's second term. However, that was, as they evidently love to say in Washington, just a "best-case scenario". Since then, the administration has signaled an end-of-July drawdown "pause" of unknown duration after American troop strength in Iraq, now at 157,000, hits about 142,000.
The president is clearly dragging his feet on removing even modest numbers of American troops. As he leaves office, it seems likely that there will be at least 130,000 US troops in the country, about the same number as there were before, in February 2007, the president's "surge" strategy kicked in. In addition, in the past year, US air power has "surged" in Iraq - and continues to do so - while US mega-bases in that country continue to be built up. As far as we know, there are no plans to reverse either of these developments by January 20, 2009. No presidential candidate is even discussing them.
Any official "best-case" scenario for drawdowns or withdrawals assumes, by the way, that the version of Iraq created during the "surge" months - at best, an unstable combination of Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurdish and American plans and desires - remains in place and that Iraqi carnage stays off the front pages of American papers. This is anything but a given, as British journalist Patrick Cockburn reported recently in a piece headlined, "Why Iraq Could Blow Up in John McCain's Face." Indeed it could.
Best-case scenarios
If McCain were elected president, the American position in Iraq on March 19, 2009, will certainly be as described above - and, if he has anything to say about it, for many anniversaries thereafter. But, when it comes to the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War, the truth is that it probably doesn't matter much who is elected president in November.
Take Hillary Clinton, she's said that she'll task the joint chiefs, the new secretary of defense and her National Security Council with having a plan for (partial) withdrawal in place within 60 days of coming into office. Since inauguration day is January 20, that means ... March 21, or two days after the sixth anniversary; by which time, of course, nothing would have changed substantially.
Obama has promised to remove US "combat" troops at a one-to-two-brigades-a-month pace over a 16-month period. So it's possible that troop levels could drop marginally before March 19, 2009, in an Obama presidency, but again there is no reason to believe that anything essential would have happened to change that "anniversary".
In addition, the stated plans of both Democratic candidates, vague and limited as they may be, might not turn out to be their actual plans. Note the recent comments of Obama foreign policy advisor Samantha Powers, who resigned after calling Clinton a "monster" in an interview with the Scotsman during a book tour. Since name-calling will always trump substantive policy matters in American politics, less noted were her comments in an interview with the BBC on her candidate's Iraq withdrawal policy. "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a US senator," Powers said and then she referred to Obama's plan as nothing more than a - you guessed it - "best-case scenario".
Similarly, a Clinton sometime-advisor on military matters, retired General Jack Keane, also one of the authors of Bush's "surge" strategy, told the New York Sun that, in the Oval Office, "he is convinced [Hillary Clinton] would hold off on authorizing a large-scale immediate withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq". And Clinton herself, though less directly, has certainly hinted at a similar willingness to reconsider her policy promises in the light of an Oval Office morning.
So let's face it, barring an Iraqi surprise, the next year in that country may be nothing but a wash (and the lubricant, as in past years, is likely to be blood). It will be - best-case scenario - a holding action on the road to nowhere, another woefully lost year in what has now become something like a ghost country.
The children of war
To put this in more human terms: imagine that a child born on March 19, 2003, just as Baghdad was being shock-and-awed, will be of an age to enter first grade when the sixth anniversary of Bush's war hits. He or she will have gone from babbling to talking, crawling to walking, and will by then possibly be beginning to read and write.
Of course, an Iraqi child born on that day, who managed to live to see his or her sixth birthday, might be among the 2 million-plus Iraqis in exile in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East, or among the millions of internal refugees driven from their homes in recent years and not in school at all. (Similarly, a child born on October 7, 2001, when the president first dispatched American bombers to strike Afghanistan, will be in second grade in March 2009; of course, seven-and-a-half years after being "liberated", an Afghan child, especially one now living in the southern part of that failed narco-state, is unlikely to be in school at all. As with Iraq, we could take some educated guesses about the situation in Afghanistan a year from now and they would be grim beyond words.)
For those children, the real inheritors of the Bush war era that is not yet faintly over, the Iraq War has essentially been the equivalent of an open-ended prison sentence with little hope of parole; for some Americans and many Iraqis, including children, it is a death sentence without hope of pardon. All this for a country which, even by the standards of the Bush administration, never presented the slightest national security threat to the United States of America.
Only last week, an "exhaustive" Pentagon-sponsored study of 600,000 captured Iraqi documents confirmed, yet again, that there were no operational links whatsoever between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda.
With those children in mind, here's what's so depressing: in mainstream Washington, hardly anyone has taken a step outside the box of conventional, inside-the-Beltway thinking about Iraq, which is why it's possible to imagine March 19, 2009, with some confidence. For them, the Washington consensus, such as it is, is the only acceptable one and the disagreements within it, the only ones worth having. And here are its eight fundamentals:
· A belief that effective US power must invariably be based on the threat of, or use of, dominant force, and so must centrally involve the US military.
· A belief that all answers of any value are to be found in Washington among the serried ranks of officials, advisors, former officials, pundits, think-tank operators and other inside-the-Beltway movers and shakers, who have been tested over the years and found never to have a surprise in them. Most of them are notable mainly for having been wrong so often. This is called "experience".
· A belief that the critics of Washington policy outside Washington and its consensus are, at best, gadflies, never worth seriously consulting on anything.
· A belief that the American people, though endlessly praised in political campaigns, are know-nothings who couldn't think their way out of a proverbial paper bag when it comes to the supposedly arcane science of foreign policy, and so would certainly not be worth consulting on "national security" matters or issues involving the sacred "national interest", which is, in any case, the property of Washington. Like Iraqis and Afghans, the American people need good (or even not so good) shepherds in the national capital to answer that middle-of-the-night ringing phone and rescue them from impending harm. (The very foolishness of Americans can be measured by opinion polls which indicated that a majority of them had decided by 2005 that all American troops should be brought home from Iraq at a reasonable speed and that the US should not have permanent military bases in that country.)
· A belief that no other countries (or individuals elsewhere) have anything significant or original to offer when it comes to solving problems like the situation in Iraq (unless, of course, they agree with us). They are to be ignored, insists the Bush administration, or, say leading Democrats, "talked to" and essentially corralled into signing onto, and carrying out, the solutions the US considers reasonable.
· A belief that local peoples are incapable of solving their own problems without the intercession of, or the guiding hand (or Hellfire missile) of, Washington, which means, of course, of the US military.
· A belief that the US - whatever the problem - must be an essential part of the solution, not part of the problem itself.
· And finally, a belief (though no one would ever say this) that the lives of those children of Bush's wars of choice, already of an age to be given their first lessons in global "realism", don't truly matter, not when the great game of geopolitics and energy is at stake.
Of course, the most recent Washington solution, involving the endless military occupation (by whatever name) of alien lands, can "solve" nothing. The possibilities of genuine improvement in Iraq or Afghanistan under the ministrations of the US military are probably nil. And yet, because the only solutions entertained are variations of the above, little better lurks in our future at this moment.
Who would want to speculate on just how old those children of March 19, 2003, will actually be before the Iraq War is ended? So here's my next question: What's wrong with this sentence?
On March 19, 2010, the date of the seventh anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq, as surely as the sun rises in the East I'll be sitting here and we will still have ...
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
(Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt.)
(Used by permission Tomdispatch)
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Middle East
Mar 20, 2008
THE ROVING EYE: IRAQ FIVE YEARS ON
Shocked, awed and left to rot
By Pepe Escobar
Future non-biased historians may well regard March 19, 2003, as a crucial mark in the annals of Western imperial arrogance. Five years later, the pre-emptive war celebratory fireworks have turned to dust. For months now Iraq has been an invisible American war. It's seldom on TV. It does not "sell". Thus, it does not exist. US Vice President Dick Cheney, one of its key architects, has just been to a whirlwind Baghdad tour. He said he sensed "phenomenal changes" since his last whirlwind tour 10 months ago. He praised security progress as "dramatic".
The "dramatic" progress was celebrated in style by a Sunni Arab female suicide bomber who managed to detonate her payload under her black abaya near the ultra-protected Imam Hussein shrine in holy Karbala, killing at least 42 Shi'ites and wounding 73.
Cheney did not see the real Baghdad, drowning in sewage, desperate for water and plunged in the dark - lacking 3,000 megawatts of electricity (it may take as many as 10 years before the city gets power 24 hours a day; so much for "reconstruction"). As no US official was suicidal enough to take Cheney, for instance, to a real life suicide bomber-targeted vegetable market in Sadr City - or to Imam Hussein's shrine in Karbala for that matter - these "phenomenal changes" warrant examination.
Cheney seems not to be very fond of the humongous Pentagon study based on more than 600,000 Iraqi documents which proved that there was no link whatsoever between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. In a curiously sedate propaganda effort, the report will not be posted online and will not be e-mailed by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia; any reporter who wants it will have to ask it to be sent via CD in the mail. That's quite a "phenomenal change" with regard to the George W Bush administration's hyped 2002 build up towards war.
British agency Oxford Research Business has recently updated its estimate of "additional deaths" caused by the war to 1.3 million Iraqis - not including the top killing fields, the provinces of al-Anbar (Sunni) and Karbala (Shi'ite). At least 4 million Iraqis have been internally displaced or become refugees, mostly in overburdened Syria and Jordan, now desperately running out of money and resources. As for any Sunni or Shi'ite proud of his historical memory, the US occupation has been regarded as more devastating than the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. Talk about a historical "phenomenal change".
Baghdad - following the strategy of counterinsurgency ace General David Petraeus - has been reduced to a rotten, amorphous, bloody and dangerous stockpile of blast-wall ghettos controlled by local warlords and militias. This "strategy" is being financed by US taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars a month.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes, in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, estimate that by 2017, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion. Republican presidential contender John McCain wants this to last indefinitely as millions of Americans finally realize this avalanche of funds could instead provide them with better public schools, better health insurance and better projects to repair crumbling US infrastructure.
Petraeus' "surge" is gone - replaced by a "pause", defined by the general to the Army Times as "sensible" and "prudent". Recently resigned Admiral William Fallon, the CENTCOM commander, was dead set against Petraeus' "pause". He wanted to start drawing down troops - immediately. The Bush administration evicted him.
Up to the US presidential election, for political reasons, many would be led to believe nothing moves on the US front. At least nothing visible. Because in Kuwait, the Pentagon is busy building, in virtual secret, a mammoth permanent command structure to project "full spectrum dominance" not only in Iraq but all over the arc from the Middle East to Southwest Asia. Lieutenant General James J Lovelace minced no words to the Middle East edition of Stars and Stripes. It will be a "permanent presence" - of course compounded with all those extra permanent bases in Qatar, Bahrain the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Be it under pro-withdrawal Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or pro-"surge" McCain, the "war" in and on Iraq will go on - supported from Kuwait and the Gulf petro-monarchies.
It's alright Ma, I'm only dyin'
Baghdad is not only the 21st century heart of darkness. It is Fear Central - a desert sand nightmare frozen in fear, a direct consequence of the soggy mix of Petraeus' "surge" profiting from the uneasy Shi'ite Mahdi Army truce and the proliferation of the 80,000-strong anti-al-Qaeda movement dominated by Sunnis, Sahwa (Awakening).
As middle class Shi'ite professionals tell Asia Times Online, rape and pillage and widespread killing is down (65 Iraqis killed daily in August 2007, 26 killed daily in February 2008) because most neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed. Baghdad is only "safer" - as the current official mantra in Washington goes - if compared to horrific post-February 2006 after the bombing of the Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, during the battle of Baghdad, when as many as 3,000 people were being killed every single month.
The inept Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad knows little of what's really going on - as it drags on in imperial seclusion behind the Green Zone, defended by valiant mercenaries from Georgia, Peru and Uganda. If Maliki and his entourage decide to go for an armored convoy stroll in formerly bustling al-Mansur neighborhood, for instance, the area has to be extensively searched as if this was a US presidential visit.
No matter what Washington decides or spins, it won't alter two major facts on the ground. Of all the major overlapping wars in Iraq, the Sunni Arab resistance has for all practical purposes stalemated the US occupation to the edge of defeat. And on a sectarian level, the Shi'ites have defeated the Sunnis as a whole - as they now control, allied with the Kurds, the government, Parliament, the army (13 divisions, half of them militias aligned with Iran) and the police.
The anti-al-Qaeda Sahwa, which the Americans dubbed "Concerned Local Citizens" and then "Sons of Iraq", are the same old Sunni Arab guerrillas, many of them former Saddam army officers who former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld described as "remnants of the old regime" who were killing Americans before they decided to rake some cash ($300 a month, an excellent salary in 70% unemployment Iraq) and do their own version of a "pause".
After all, they could not fight the US Army, al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government at the same time and believe they would win it. They are, of course, anti-majority Shi'ite Iraqi government (although the American public relations machine would never let this cat out of the bag). They're still one more militia in a cornucopia of militias - the US Army itself being nothing more than a heavily armed militia.
In a sense, the old imperial divide and rule tactic has worked - as Sunnis and Shi'ites are more deadly polarized against each other than against the occupiers. But at the same time they all unite on the key issue: occupation out. The answer as to why no Iraqi militia organizes a Tet-style anti-American onslaught is political positioning.
Everyone's got militias - the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Mahdi Army, the Badr Organization, the Sahwa. Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army's objective is to conquer political power in the next legislative elections. The Kurdish Peshmerga worry about defending Kirkuk after a referendum that could see it incorporated into the Kurdish north. Badr does not want to lose the government power it already enjoys; Hadi al-Amri, the dreaded leader of Badr, says he will respect the truce with the Mahdi Army. And Sahwa is just waiting to pounce against the Shi'ites. In this lethal cobweb, the Americans are just marginal, puzzled onlookers.
Stuck inside of Baghdad
This country is no more. This is an ex-country. It has gone to meet its maker (the Sumerians, presumably). The "surge" is a public relations-created illusion - as ghostly as those abandoned, burned out Iraqi tanks littering Baghdad's empty, dirty boulevards in April 2003; after all there was no war to speak of, the Iraqi army having preferred to flee.
The Turkish army, for its part, has just proved its point; Ankara can invade Iraqi Kurdistan any time it sees fit - as if it was Gaza. And this is nothing compared to what may happen after the endlessly postponed Kirkuk referendum, when Iraqi Kurds will finally have full control over their oil wealth and rekindle their independentist dreams. If East Timor and Kosovo can do it, why not us?
Muqtada has - literally - vanished, after lamenting an Iraq "characterized by social turmoil". He disappeared just like the 12th Imam, Imam Mahdi - and that's a really huge thing for pious Iraqi Shi'ites, not to mention a masterful political ploy. Muqtada has transferred to the US Marines the task of carrying a pogrom of the Mahdi Army. He's aiming at the polls - he wants the Sadrists to take over the Shi'ite provincial governments in the south in the next election. Sooner or later "anti-American" occult Muqtada will be the lord of what remains of Iraq - and there's nothing Washington can do about it.
As an internal US issue, neither Clinton nor Obama has provided any concrete evidence they want to totally scrap the US "mission" in Iraq - or at least roll back the worldwide empire of military bases still heavily supported by Cheney and an array of corporate/industrial-military interests.
As a global issue, millions of Iraqis lost their homes, their jobs, their families, their dreams and in countless cases their own lives because of a pre-emptive war (or "successful endeavor") built on lies. Shocked, awed and utterly destroyed, their ancestral land beheaded like a stray dog, Iraqis deserve at least the world's respect in their hour of darkness.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge . He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Middle East
Mar 20, 2008
DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
Already counting to six
By Tom Engelhardt
Please don't write in with a correction. I know just as well as you do that we're approaching the fifth, not the sixth, anniversary of the moment when, on March 19, 2003, George W Bush told the American people:
My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger ... My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.
At that moment, of course, the cruise missiles meant to "decapitate" Saddam Hussein's regime, but that killed only Iraqi civilians, were on their way to Baghdad. I'm perfectly aware that articles galore will be looking back on the five years since that day. This is not one of them.
Think of this piece as in the spirit of Senator John McCain's recent request that Americans not obsess about the origins of the Iraq War, but look forward. "On the issue of my differences with Senator [Barack] Obama on Iraq," he typically said, "I want to make it very clear: This is not about decisions that were made in the past. This is about decisions that a president will have to make about the future in Iraq. And a decision to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq will lead to chaos."
The future, not the past, is the mantra, which is why I'm skipping the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War entirely. Now, let me ask you a future-oriented question: What's wrong with these sentences?
On March 19, 2009, the date of the sixth anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq, as surely as the sun rises in the East, I'll be sitting here and we will still have many tens of thousands of troops, a string of major bases, and massive air power in that country. In the intervening year, more Americans will have been wounded or killed; many more Iraqis will have been wounded or killed; more chaos and conflict will have ensued; many more bombs will have been dropped and missiles launched; many more suicide bombs will have gone off. Iraq will still be a hell on Earth.
Prediction is, of course, a risky business. Otherwise I'd now be commuting via jet pack through spire cities (as the futuristic articles of my youth so regularly predicted). If you were to punch holes in the above sentences, you would certainly have to note that it's risky for a man of 63 years, or of any age, to suggest that he'll be sitting anywhere in a year; riskier yet if you happen to live in those lands extending from North Africa to Central Asia that Bush administration officials used to call the "arc of instability" - essentially the oil heartlands of the planet - before they turned them into one.
It's always possible that I won't be sitting here (or anywhere else, for that matter) on March 19, 2009. Unfortunately, when it comes to the American position in Iraq, short of an act of God, the sixth anniversary of Bush's war of choice is going to dawn much like the fifth one.
As a start, you can write off the next 10 months of our lives, right up to January 20, 2009, inauguration day for the next president. We know that, last autumn, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was considering bringing American troop strength in Iraq down to 100,000 by the end of Bush's second term. However, that was, as they evidently love to say in Washington, just a "best-case scenario". Since then, the administration has signaled an end-of-July drawdown "pause" of unknown duration after American troop strength in Iraq, now at 157,000, hits about 142,000.
The president is clearly dragging his feet on removing even modest numbers of American troops. As he leaves office, it seems likely that there will be at least 130,000 US troops in the country, about the same number as there were before, in February 2007, the president's "surge" strategy kicked in. In addition, in the past year, US air power has "surged" in Iraq - and continues to do so - while US mega-bases in that country continue to be built up. As far as we know, there are no plans to reverse either of these developments by January 20, 2009. No presidential candidate is even discussing them.
Any official "best-case" scenario for drawdowns or withdrawals assumes, by the way, that the version of Iraq created during the "surge" months - at best, an unstable combination of Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurdish and American plans and desires - remains in place and that Iraqi carnage stays off the front pages of American papers. This is anything but a given, as British journalist Patrick Cockburn reported recently in a piece headlined, "Why Iraq Could Blow Up in John McCain's Face." Indeed it could.
Best-case scenarios
If McCain were elected president, the American position in Iraq on March 19, 2009, will certainly be as described above - and, if he has anything to say about it, for many anniversaries thereafter. But, when it comes to the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War, the truth is that it probably doesn't matter much who is elected president in November.
Take Hillary Clinton, she's said that she'll task the joint chiefs, the new secretary of defense and her National Security Council with having a plan for (partial) withdrawal in place within 60 days of coming into office. Since inauguration day is January 20, that means ... March 21, or two days after the sixth anniversary; by which time, of course, nothing would have changed substantially.
Obama has promised to remove US "combat" troops at a one-to-two-brigades-a-month pace over a 16-month period. So it's possible that troop levels could drop marginally before March 19, 2009, in an Obama presidency, but again there is no reason to believe that anything essential would have happened to change that "anniversary".
In addition, the stated plans of both Democratic candidates, vague and limited as they may be, might not turn out to be their actual plans. Note the recent comments of Obama foreign policy advisor Samantha Powers, who resigned after calling Clinton a "monster" in an interview with the Scotsman during a book tour. Since name-calling will always trump substantive policy matters in American politics, less noted were her comments in an interview with the BBC on her candidate's Iraq withdrawal policy. "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a US senator," Powers said and then she referred to Obama's plan as nothing more than a - you guessed it - "best-case scenario".
Similarly, a Clinton sometime-advisor on military matters, retired General Jack Keane, also one of the authors of Bush's "surge" strategy, told the New York Sun that, in the Oval Office, "he is convinced [Hillary Clinton] would hold off on authorizing a large-scale immediate withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq". And Clinton herself, though less directly, has certainly hinted at a similar willingness to reconsider her policy promises in the light of an Oval Office morning.
So let's face it, barring an Iraqi surprise, the next year in that country may be nothing but a wash (and the lubricant, as in past years, is likely to be blood). It will be - best-case scenario - a holding action on the road to nowhere, another woefully lost year in what has now become something like a ghost country.
The children of war
To put this in more human terms: imagine that a child born on March 19, 2003, just as Baghdad was being shock-and-awed, will be of an age to enter first grade when the sixth anniversary of Bush's war hits. He or she will have gone from babbling to talking, crawling to walking, and will by then possibly be beginning to read and write.
Of course, an Iraqi child born on that day, who managed to live to see his or her sixth birthday, might be among the 2 million-plus Iraqis in exile in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East, or among the millions of internal refugees driven from their homes in recent years and not in school at all. (Similarly, a child born on October 7, 2001, when the president first dispatched American bombers to strike Afghanistan, will be in second grade in March 2009; of course, seven-and-a-half years after being "liberated", an Afghan child, especially one now living in the southern part of that failed narco-state, is unlikely to be in school at all. As with Iraq, we could take some educated guesses about the situation in Afghanistan a year from now and they would be grim beyond words.)
For those children, the real inheritors of the Bush war era that is not yet faintly over, the Iraq War has essentially been the equivalent of an open-ended prison sentence with little hope of parole; for some Americans and many Iraqis, including children, it is a death sentence without hope of pardon. All this for a country which, even by the standards of the Bush administration, never presented the slightest national security threat to the United States of America.
Only last week, an "exhaustive" Pentagon-sponsored study of 600,000 captured Iraqi documents confirmed, yet again, that there were no operational links whatsoever between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda.
With those children in mind, here's what's so depressing: in mainstream Washington, hardly anyone has taken a step outside the box of conventional, inside-the-Beltway thinking about Iraq, which is why it's possible to imagine March 19, 2009, with some confidence. For them, the Washington consensus, such as it is, is the only acceptable one and the disagreements within it, the only ones worth having. And here are its eight fundamentals:
· A belief that effective US power must invariably be based on the threat of, or use of, dominant force, and so must centrally involve the US military.
· A belief that all answers of any value are to be found in Washington among the serried ranks of officials, advisors, former officials, pundits, think-tank operators and other inside-the-Beltway movers and shakers, who have been tested over the years and found never to have a surprise in them. Most of them are notable mainly for having been wrong so often. This is called "experience".
· A belief that the critics of Washington policy outside Washington and its consensus are, at best, gadflies, never worth seriously consulting on anything.
· A belief that the American people, though endlessly praised in political campaigns, are know-nothings who couldn't think their way out of a proverbial paper bag when it comes to the supposedly arcane science of foreign policy, and so would certainly not be worth consulting on "national security" matters or issues involving the sacred "national interest", which is, in any case, the property of Washington. Like Iraqis and Afghans, the American people need good (or even not so good) shepherds in the national capital to answer that middle-of-the-night ringing phone and rescue them from impending harm. (The very foolishness of Americans can be measured by opinion polls which indicated that a majority of them had decided by 2005 that all American troops should be brought home from Iraq at a reasonable speed and that the US should not have permanent military bases in that country.)
· A belief that no other countries (or individuals elsewhere) have anything significant or original to offer when it comes to solving problems like the situation in Iraq (unless, of course, they agree with us). They are to be ignored, insists the Bush administration, or, say leading Democrats, "talked to" and essentially corralled into signing onto, and carrying out, the solutions the US considers reasonable.
· A belief that local peoples are incapable of solving their own problems without the intercession of, or the guiding hand (or Hellfire missile) of, Washington, which means, of course, of the US military.
· A belief that the US - whatever the problem - must be an essential part of the solution, not part of the problem itself.
· And finally, a belief (though no one would ever say this) that the lives of those children of Bush's wars of choice, already of an age to be given their first lessons in global "realism", don't truly matter, not when the great game of geopolitics and energy is at stake.
Of course, the most recent Washington solution, involving the endless military occupation (by whatever name) of alien lands, can "solve" nothing. The possibilities of genuine improvement in Iraq or Afghanistan under the ministrations of the US military are probably nil. And yet, because the only solutions entertained are variations of the above, little better lurks in our future at this moment.
Who would want to speculate on just how old those children of March 19, 2003, will actually be before the Iraq War is ended? So here's my next question: What's wrong with this sentence?
On March 19, 2010, the date of the seventh anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq, as surely as the sun rises in the East I'll be sitting here and we will still have ...
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
(Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt.)
(Used by permission Tomdispatch)
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Middle East
Mar 20, 2008
THE ROVING EYE: IRAQ FIVE YEARS ON
Shocked, awed and left to rot
By Pepe Escobar
Future non-biased historians may well regard March 19, 2003, as a crucial mark in the annals of Western imperial arrogance. Five years later, the pre-emptive war celebratory fireworks have turned to dust. For months now Iraq has been an invisible American war. It's seldom on TV. It does not "sell". Thus, it does not exist. US Vice President Dick Cheney, one of its key architects, has just been to a whirlwind Baghdad tour. He said he sensed "phenomenal changes" since his last whirlwind tour 10 months ago. He praised security progress as "dramatic".
The "dramatic" progress was celebrated in style by a Sunni Arab female suicide bomber who managed to detonate her payload under her black abaya near the ultra-protected Imam Hussein shrine in holy Karbala, killing at least 42 Shi'ites and wounding 73.
Cheney did not see the real Baghdad, drowning in sewage, desperate for water and plunged in the dark - lacking 3,000 megawatts of electricity (it may take as many as 10 years before the city gets power 24 hours a day; so much for "reconstruction"). As no US official was suicidal enough to take Cheney, for instance, to a real life suicide bomber-targeted vegetable market in Sadr City - or to Imam Hussein's shrine in Karbala for that matter - these "phenomenal changes" warrant examination.
Cheney seems not to be very fond of the humongous Pentagon study based on more than 600,000 Iraqi documents which proved that there was no link whatsoever between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. In a curiously sedate propaganda effort, the report will not be posted online and will not be e-mailed by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia; any reporter who wants it will have to ask it to be sent via CD in the mail. That's quite a "phenomenal change" with regard to the George W Bush administration's hyped 2002 build up towards war.
British agency Oxford Research Business has recently updated its estimate of "additional deaths" caused by the war to 1.3 million Iraqis - not including the top killing fields, the provinces of al-Anbar (Sunni) and Karbala (Shi'ite). At least 4 million Iraqis have been internally displaced or become refugees, mostly in overburdened Syria and Jordan, now desperately running out of money and resources. As for any Sunni or Shi'ite proud of his historical memory, the US occupation has been regarded as more devastating than the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. Talk about a historical "phenomenal change".
Baghdad - following the strategy of counterinsurgency ace General David Petraeus - has been reduced to a rotten, amorphous, bloody and dangerous stockpile of blast-wall ghettos controlled by local warlords and militias. This "strategy" is being financed by US taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars a month.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes, in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, estimate that by 2017, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion. Republican presidential contender John McCain wants this to last indefinitely as millions of Americans finally realize this avalanche of funds could instead provide them with better public schools, better health insurance and better projects to repair crumbling US infrastructure.
Petraeus' "surge" is gone - replaced by a "pause", defined by the general to the Army Times as "sensible" and "prudent". Recently resigned Admiral William Fallon, the CENTCOM commander, was dead set against Petraeus' "pause". He wanted to start drawing down troops - immediately. The Bush administration evicted him.
Up to the US presidential election, for political reasons, many would be led to believe nothing moves on the US front. At least nothing visible. Because in Kuwait, the Pentagon is busy building, in virtual secret, a mammoth permanent command structure to project "full spectrum dominance" not only in Iraq but all over the arc from the Middle East to Southwest Asia. Lieutenant General James J Lovelace minced no words to the Middle East edition of Stars and Stripes. It will be a "permanent presence" - of course compounded with all those extra permanent bases in Qatar, Bahrain the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Be it under pro-withdrawal Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or pro-"surge" McCain, the "war" in and on Iraq will go on - supported from Kuwait and the Gulf petro-monarchies.
It's alright Ma, I'm only dyin'
Baghdad is not only the 21st century heart of darkness. It is Fear Central - a desert sand nightmare frozen in fear, a direct consequence of the soggy mix of Petraeus' "surge" profiting from the uneasy Shi'ite Mahdi Army truce and the proliferation of the 80,000-strong anti-al-Qaeda movement dominated by Sunnis, Sahwa (Awakening).
As middle class Shi'ite professionals tell Asia Times Online, rape and pillage and widespread killing is down (65 Iraqis killed daily in August 2007, 26 killed daily in February 2008) because most neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed. Baghdad is only "safer" - as the current official mantra in Washington goes - if compared to horrific post-February 2006 after the bombing of the Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, during the battle of Baghdad, when as many as 3,000 people were being killed every single month.
The inept Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad knows little of what's really going on - as it drags on in imperial seclusion behind the Green Zone, defended by valiant mercenaries from Georgia, Peru and Uganda. If Maliki and his entourage decide to go for an armored convoy stroll in formerly bustling al-Mansur neighborhood, for instance, the area has to be extensively searched as if this was a US presidential visit.
No matter what Washington decides or spins, it won't alter two major facts on the ground. Of all the major overlapping wars in Iraq, the Sunni Arab resistance has for all practical purposes stalemated the US occupation to the edge of defeat. And on a sectarian level, the Shi'ites have defeated the Sunnis as a whole - as they now control, allied with the Kurds, the government, Parliament, the army (13 divisions, half of them militias aligned with Iran) and the police.
The anti-al-Qaeda Sahwa, which the Americans dubbed "Concerned Local Citizens" and then "Sons of Iraq", are the same old Sunni Arab guerrillas, many of them former Saddam army officers who former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld described as "remnants of the old regime" who were killing Americans before they decided to rake some cash ($300 a month, an excellent salary in 70% unemployment Iraq) and do their own version of a "pause".
After all, they could not fight the US Army, al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government at the same time and believe they would win it. They are, of course, anti-majority Shi'ite Iraqi government (although the American public relations machine would never let this cat out of the bag). They're still one more militia in a cornucopia of militias - the US Army itself being nothing more than a heavily armed militia.
In a sense, the old imperial divide and rule tactic has worked - as Sunnis and Shi'ites are more deadly polarized against each other than against the occupiers. But at the same time they all unite on the key issue: occupation out. The answer as to why no Iraqi militia organizes a Tet-style anti-American onslaught is political positioning.
Everyone's got militias - the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Mahdi Army, the Badr Organization, the Sahwa. Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army's objective is to conquer political power in the next legislative elections. The Kurdish Peshmerga worry about defending Kirkuk after a referendum that could see it incorporated into the Kurdish north. Badr does not want to lose the government power it already enjoys; Hadi al-Amri, the dreaded leader of Badr, says he will respect the truce with the Mahdi Army. And Sahwa is just waiting to pounce against the Shi'ites. In this lethal cobweb, the Americans are just marginal, puzzled onlookers.
Stuck inside of Baghdad
This country is no more. This is an ex-country. It has gone to meet its maker (the Sumerians, presumably). The "surge" is a public relations-created illusion - as ghostly as those abandoned, burned out Iraqi tanks littering Baghdad's empty, dirty boulevards in April 2003; after all there was no war to speak of, the Iraqi army having preferred to flee.
The Turkish army, for its part, has just proved its point; Ankara can invade Iraqi Kurdistan any time it sees fit - as if it was Gaza. And this is nothing compared to what may happen after the endlessly postponed Kirkuk referendum, when Iraqi Kurds will finally have full control over their oil wealth and rekindle their independentist dreams. If East Timor and Kosovo can do it, why not us?
Muqtada has - literally - vanished, after lamenting an Iraq "characterized by social turmoil". He disappeared just like the 12th Imam, Imam Mahdi - and that's a really huge thing for pious Iraqi Shi'ites, not to mention a masterful political ploy. Muqtada has transferred to the US Marines the task of carrying a pogrom of the Mahdi Army. He's aiming at the polls - he wants the Sadrists to take over the Shi'ite provincial governments in the south in the next election. Sooner or later "anti-American" occult Muqtada will be the lord of what remains of Iraq - and there's nothing Washington can do about it.
As an internal US issue, neither Clinton nor Obama has provided any concrete evidence they want to totally scrap the US "mission" in Iraq - or at least roll back the worldwide empire of military bases still heavily supported by Cheney and an array of corporate/industrial-military interests.
As a global issue, millions of Iraqis lost their homes, their jobs, their families, their dreams and in countless cases their own lives because of a pre-emptive war (or "successful endeavor") built on lies. Shocked, awed and utterly destroyed, their ancestral land beheaded like a stray dog, Iraqis deserve at least the world's respect in their hour of darkness.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge . He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
The peculiar theology of black liberation, by Spengler - Senator Barack Obama
!!!!-The peculiar theology of black liberation, by Spengler - Senator Barack Obama
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Front Page
Mar 18, 2008
SPENGLER
The peculiar theology of black liberation
By Spengler
Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.
What played out last week on America's television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of "black liberation theology" and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.
One of the strangest dialogues in American political history ensued on March 15 when Fox News interviewed Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago's Trinity Church. Wright asserted the authority of the "black liberation" theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins:
Wright: How many of Cone's books have you read? How many of Cone's book have you read?
Sean Hannity: Reverend, Reverend?
(crosstalk)
Wright: How many books of Cone's have you head?
Hannity: I'm going to ask you this question ...
Wright: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read?
Hannity: You're very angry and defensive. I'm just trying to ask a question here.
Wright: You haven't answered - you haven't answered my question.
Hopkins is a full professor at the University of Chicago's Divinity School; Cone is now distinguished professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary. They promote a "black power" reading of Christianity, to which liberal academic establishment condescends.
Obama referred to this when he asserted in a March 14 statement, "I knew Reverend Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago." But the fact the liberal academy condescends to sponsor black liberation theology does not make it less peculiar to mainstream American Christians. Obama wants to talk about what Wright is, rather than what he says. But that way lies apolitical quicksand.
Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the "Chosen People" of God - French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.
During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:
Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.
Theologically, Cone's argument is as silly as the "Aryan Christianity" popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people". Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.
Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God's purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1]
In the black liberation theology taught by Wright, Cone and Hopkins, Jesus Christ is not for all men, but only for the oppressed:
In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors ... Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not [Cone].
In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a "drop of the bucket" and "dust on the scales", in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the "Chosen People".
That is the "biblical scholarship" to which Obama referred in his March 14 defense of Wright and his academic prominence. In his response to Hannity, Wright genuinely seemed to believe that the authority of Cone and Hopkins, who now hold important posts at liberal theological seminaries, was sufficient to make the issue go away. His faith in the white establishment is touching; he honestly cannot understand why the white reporters at Fox News are bothering him when the University of Chicago and the Union Theological Seminary have put their stamp of approval on black liberation theology.
Many things that the liberal academy has adopted, though, will horrify most Americans, and not only "black liberation theology" (Queer Studies comes to mind, among other things). It cannot be in Obama's best interests to appeal to the authority of Cone, whose unapologetic racism must be repugnant to the great majority of Americans, including the majority of black Americans, who for the most part belong to Christian churches that preach mainstream Christian doctrine. Christianity teaches unconditional love for a God whose love for humankind is absolute; it does not teach the repudiation of a God who does not destroy our enemies on the spot.
Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago's black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church.
Obama views Wright rather at arm's length: as the New York Times reported on April 30, 2007:
Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through," Mr Obama said. "He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality.
Obama holds his own views close. But it seems unlikely that he would identify with the ideological fits of the black-power movement of the 1960s. Obama does not come to the matter with the perspective of an American black, but of the child of a left-wing anthropologist raised in the Third World, as I wrote elsewhere (Obama's women reveal his secret , Asia Times Online, February 26, 2008). It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.
Note
1. See William R Jones, "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Front Page
Mar 18, 2008
SPENGLER
The peculiar theology of black liberation
By Spengler
Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.
What played out last week on America's television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of "black liberation theology" and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.
One of the strangest dialogues in American political history ensued on March 15 when Fox News interviewed Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago's Trinity Church. Wright asserted the authority of the "black liberation" theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins:
Wright: How many of Cone's books have you read? How many of Cone's book have you read?
Sean Hannity: Reverend, Reverend?
(crosstalk)
Wright: How many books of Cone's have you head?
Hannity: I'm going to ask you this question ...
Wright: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read?
Hannity: You're very angry and defensive. I'm just trying to ask a question here.
Wright: You haven't answered - you haven't answered my question.
Hopkins is a full professor at the University of Chicago's Divinity School; Cone is now distinguished professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary. They promote a "black power" reading of Christianity, to which liberal academic establishment condescends.
Obama referred to this when he asserted in a March 14 statement, "I knew Reverend Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago." But the fact the liberal academy condescends to sponsor black liberation theology does not make it less peculiar to mainstream American Christians. Obama wants to talk about what Wright is, rather than what he says. But that way lies apolitical quicksand.
Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the "Chosen People" of God - French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.
During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:
Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.
Theologically, Cone's argument is as silly as the "Aryan Christianity" popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people". Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.
Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God's purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1]
In the black liberation theology taught by Wright, Cone and Hopkins, Jesus Christ is not for all men, but only for the oppressed:
In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors ... Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not [Cone].
In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a "drop of the bucket" and "dust on the scales", in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the "Chosen People".
That is the "biblical scholarship" to which Obama referred in his March 14 defense of Wright and his academic prominence. In his response to Hannity, Wright genuinely seemed to believe that the authority of Cone and Hopkins, who now hold important posts at liberal theological seminaries, was sufficient to make the issue go away. His faith in the white establishment is touching; he honestly cannot understand why the white reporters at Fox News are bothering him when the University of Chicago and the Union Theological Seminary have put their stamp of approval on black liberation theology.
Many things that the liberal academy has adopted, though, will horrify most Americans, and not only "black liberation theology" (Queer Studies comes to mind, among other things). It cannot be in Obama's best interests to appeal to the authority of Cone, whose unapologetic racism must be repugnant to the great majority of Americans, including the majority of black Americans, who for the most part belong to Christian churches that preach mainstream Christian doctrine. Christianity teaches unconditional love for a God whose love for humankind is absolute; it does not teach the repudiation of a God who does not destroy our enemies on the spot.
Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago's black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church.
Obama views Wright rather at arm's length: as the New York Times reported on April 30, 2007:
Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through," Mr Obama said. "He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality.
Obama holds his own views close. But it seems unlikely that he would identify with the ideological fits of the black-power movement of the 1960s. Obama does not come to the matter with the perspective of an American black, but of the child of a left-wing anthropologist raised in the Third World, as I wrote elsewhere (Obama's women reveal his secret , Asia Times Online, February 26, 2008). It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.
Note
1. See William R Jones, "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
An inflation reality check - ZIMBABWE AND WORLDWIDE
An inflation reality check - ZIMBABWE AND WORLDWIDE
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Mar 20, 2008
An inflation reality check
By Kenneth Rogoff
As inflation continues to soar everywhere, maybe the world's central bankers need a jolt to awaken them from complacency. How about holding one of their bi-monthly meetings in hyperinflationary Zimbabwe? It might not be comfortable, but it would be educational.
According to Zimbabwe's official statistical agency, inflation topped 66,000% in 2007, which looks more like Weimar Germany than modern-day Africa. While no one is quite certain how the government managed to estimate prices, given that there is virtually nothing for sale in the shops, most indicators suggest that Zimbabwe does have a good shot at breaking world records for inflation.
Of course, curious as they might be, central bankers could decide that meeting in Harare would be too inconvenient and politically unpalatable. Fortunately, there are lots of other nice - albeit less spectacular - inflation destinations. Inflation in Russia, Vietnam, Argentina and Venezuela is solidly in double digits, to name just a few possibilities.
Indeed, except for deflation-ridden Japan, central bankers could meet just about anywhere and see high and rising inflation. Chinese authorities are so worried by their country's 7% inflation they are copying India and imposing price controls on food. Even the United States had inflation at 4% last year, though the Federal Reserve is somehow convinced that most people won't notice.
Many central bankers and economists argue that today's rising global inflation is just a temporary aberration, driven by soaring prices for food, fuel, and other commodities. True, prices for many key commodities are up 25 to 50% since the start of the year. But if central bankers think that today's inflation is simply the product of short-term resource scarcities as opposed to lax monetary policy, they are mistaken. The fact is that around most of the world, inflation - and eventually inflation expectations - will keep climbing unless central banks start tightening their monetary policies.
The United States is now ground zero for global inflation. Faced with a vicious combination of collapsing housing prices and imploding credit markets, the Fed has been aggressively cutting interest rates to try to stave off a recession. But even if the Fed does not admit it in its forecasts, the price of this "insurance policy" will almost certainly be higher inflation down the road, and perhaps for several years.
America's inflation would be contained but for the fact that so many countries, from the Middle East to Asia, effectively tie their currencies to the dollar. Others, such as Russia and Argentina, do not literally peg to the dollar but nevertheless try to smooth movements. As a result, whenever the Fed cuts interest rates, it puts pressure on the whole "dollar bloc" to follow suit, lest their currencies appreciate as investors seek higher yields.
Looser US monetary policy has thus set the tempo for inflation in a significant chunk - perhaps as much as 60% - of the global economy. But, with most economies in the Middle East and Asia in much stronger shape than the United States and inflation already climbing sharply in most emerging-market countries, aggressive monetary stimulus is the last thing they need right now.
The European Central Bank (ECB)is staying calm for the moment, but it, too, is probably holding back on interest-rate hikes partly out of fear of driving the euro, already at record levels, even higher. And the ECB worries that if the US recession proves contagious, it may have to turn around and start slashing rates anyway.
So what happens next? If the United States tips from mild recession into deep recession, the global deflationary implications will cancel out some of the inflationary pressures the world is facing. Global commodity prices will collapse, and prices for many goods and services will stop rising so quickly as unemployment and excess capacity grow.
Of course, a US recession will also bring further Fed interest-rate cuts, which will exacerbate problems later. But inflation pressures will be even worse if the US recession remains mild and global growth remains solid. In that case, inflation could easily rise to 1980s (if not quite 1970s) levels throughout much of the world.
Until now, most investors have thought that they would rather risk high inflation for a couple of years than accept even a short and shallow recession. But they too easily forget the costs of high inflation, and how difficult it is to squeeze it out of the system. Maybe they, too, should try holding a few conferences in Zimbabwe, and get a reality check of their own.
Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University, and was formerly chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.
(Copyright 2008 Project Syndicate.)
(Published with permission of the Global Policy Innovations program at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
Asia Time Online - Daily News
Mar 20, 2008
An inflation reality check
By Kenneth Rogoff
As inflation continues to soar everywhere, maybe the world's central bankers need a jolt to awaken them from complacency. How about holding one of their bi-monthly meetings in hyperinflationary Zimbabwe? It might not be comfortable, but it would be educational.
According to Zimbabwe's official statistical agency, inflation topped 66,000% in 2007, which looks more like Weimar Germany than modern-day Africa. While no one is quite certain how the government managed to estimate prices, given that there is virtually nothing for sale in the shops, most indicators suggest that Zimbabwe does have a good shot at breaking world records for inflation.
Of course, curious as they might be, central bankers could decide that meeting in Harare would be too inconvenient and politically unpalatable. Fortunately, there are lots of other nice - albeit less spectacular - inflation destinations. Inflation in Russia, Vietnam, Argentina and Venezuela is solidly in double digits, to name just a few possibilities.
Indeed, except for deflation-ridden Japan, central bankers could meet just about anywhere and see high and rising inflation. Chinese authorities are so worried by their country's 7% inflation they are copying India and imposing price controls on food. Even the United States had inflation at 4% last year, though the Federal Reserve is somehow convinced that most people won't notice.
Many central bankers and economists argue that today's rising global inflation is just a temporary aberration, driven by soaring prices for food, fuel, and other commodities. True, prices for many key commodities are up 25 to 50% since the start of the year. But if central bankers think that today's inflation is simply the product of short-term resource scarcities as opposed to lax monetary policy, they are mistaken. The fact is that around most of the world, inflation - and eventually inflation expectations - will keep climbing unless central banks start tightening their monetary policies.
The United States is now ground zero for global inflation. Faced with a vicious combination of collapsing housing prices and imploding credit markets, the Fed has been aggressively cutting interest rates to try to stave off a recession. But even if the Fed does not admit it in its forecasts, the price of this "insurance policy" will almost certainly be higher inflation down the road, and perhaps for several years.
America's inflation would be contained but for the fact that so many countries, from the Middle East to Asia, effectively tie their currencies to the dollar. Others, such as Russia and Argentina, do not literally peg to the dollar but nevertheless try to smooth movements. As a result, whenever the Fed cuts interest rates, it puts pressure on the whole "dollar bloc" to follow suit, lest their currencies appreciate as investors seek higher yields.
Looser US monetary policy has thus set the tempo for inflation in a significant chunk - perhaps as much as 60% - of the global economy. But, with most economies in the Middle East and Asia in much stronger shape than the United States and inflation already climbing sharply in most emerging-market countries, aggressive monetary stimulus is the last thing they need right now.
The European Central Bank (ECB)is staying calm for the moment, but it, too, is probably holding back on interest-rate hikes partly out of fear of driving the euro, already at record levels, even higher. And the ECB worries that if the US recession proves contagious, it may have to turn around and start slashing rates anyway.
So what happens next? If the United States tips from mild recession into deep recession, the global deflationary implications will cancel out some of the inflationary pressures the world is facing. Global commodity prices will collapse, and prices for many goods and services will stop rising so quickly as unemployment and excess capacity grow.
Of course, a US recession will also bring further Fed interest-rate cuts, which will exacerbate problems later. But inflation pressures will be even worse if the US recession remains mild and global growth remains solid. In that case, inflation could easily rise to 1980s (if not quite 1970s) levels throughout much of the world.
Until now, most investors have thought that they would rather risk high inflation for a couple of years than accept even a short and shallow recession. But they too easily forget the costs of high inflation, and how difficult it is to squeeze it out of the system. Maybe they, too, should try holding a few conferences in Zimbabwe, and get a reality check of their own.
Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University, and was formerly chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.
(Copyright 2008 Project Syndicate.)
(Published with permission of the Global Policy Innovations program at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
!!!!!-Iraqi Christians scorn West’s offer of help
!!!!!-Iraqi Christians scorn West’s offer of help
NOTE FROM TGR: TGR does not bother with this topic on a daily basis. That said, fresh articles concerning the ethnic cleansing being constantly directed against this community are available on a daily basis.
These articles are normally not available in the American media, nor are these incidents apparently discussed in American churches.
[The Lyon of Babylon]
uruknet.info
اوروكنت.إنفو
informazione dall'iraq occupato
information from occupied iraq
أخبار من العراق المحتل
Iraqi Christians scorn West’s offer of help
Azzaman
6_iraq_christians_hmed_8a.hmedium.jpg
March 22, 2008
The pledge by France to provide refuge for 500 Iraqi Christians is merely for 'propaganda purposes’ and does nothing to alleviate Iraqi Christians’ suffering, said Iraqi church leaders.
The leaders, refusing to be named, said their followers were paying for the West’s mistakes and blunders in dealing with the Muslim world.
"It is the second time in history we are being persecuted and paying dearly for what the Christian West does," said one of them.
He was referring to the Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages during which European states mobilized huge armies and invaded Palestine, parts of Syrian and Lebanon.
"Those crusades were carried out in the name of Christianity and many in the Muslim world thought we were accomplices because we shared the same religion," he added.
One another leader said the religious rhetoric of the current U.S. administration which has armies in two Muslim countries and supports Israel blindly mainly on religious grounds has again infuriated Muslim populations who see us as "brothers in faith."
U.S. troops practices at the start of the war, and the attempts by some U.S. churches to proselytize Muslims by handing out free copies of the Bible in Arabic, made many Muslims think that the invasion was yet another "crusade", said the cleric.
U.S. troops would decorate vehicles, particularly at the start of the war, with Christian symbols and U.S. Christian denominations began building or establishing new churches in Baghdad and other major cities.
"We keep telling everyone that we as Christians are different. We have got nothing to do with such practices but it seems they provided the fuel for the calamity we suffer from now," said one church source.
Until nearly the 11 century Christians were reported to be the majority in Iraq. The numbers started dwindling with the arrival of non-Arab Muslim invaders who took over most of the Middle East.
Even under Saddam Hussein, who the West had demonized, Iraqi Christians had the right to build churches, teach their traditional language, Aramaic, and give religious courses to their members inside their churches.
Monasteries and seminaries flourished despite the sweeping U.N. trade sanctions imposed in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
For example, there were 25 priests and 17 monks in the Chaldean order called the Hormozite. Chaldean nuns numbered more than 100 and run schools in Kuwait and the Untied Arab Emirates.
The monasteries and seminaries of Baghdad are all but deserted. And many churches almost empty due to the massive flight of Christians either to northern Iraq or to neighboring countries.
The hardships Iraqi Christians pass through now are unprecedented in modern history and started with the coming of the 'Christian’ Americans and Brits to Iraq.
One church source described France’s bid to offer asylum for 500 Iraqi Christians as "a joke."
He said there were nearly 1 million Christians most of them now on the run. "Who is going to save them? These statements are merely for propaganda purposes. We have seen nothing tangible on the ground."
:: Article nr. 42302 sent on 22-mar-2008 22:08 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=42302
Link: www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news%5C2008-03-22%5Ckurd.htm
:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Uruknet .
The Free Lance-Star
The cost of faith
In Iraq: An archbishop is found dead; a Christian minority is persecuted
Date published: 3/23/2008
THE BODY of Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, 65, of Mosul, Iraq, was found recently in a shallow grave, two weeks after he'd been kidnapped--just the latest example of the persecution plaguing Christians in that predominantly Muslim country.
There were nearly a million followers of Christ in Iraq before the war began. Today, half have fled or been killed or kidnapped. Those who remain are frequently subjected to "convert or die" diktats from Muslim clerics. Their women may be forced to don burqas. Yet they persist.
Indeed, the pressure seems to be getting worse. In January, bombs went off outside three Chaldean and Assyrian Christian churches in Mosul, two churches in Kirkuk, and four in Baghdad. Other clerics have been kidnapped for ransom or killed.
The Rev. Canon Andrew White of St. George's Anglican Church in Baghdad, told the Episcopal News Service: "Despite the fact that the Christian community here is one of the most ancient in the world, my parishioners have been threatened and intimidated out of their homes and businesses. Those who are left are usually either poor or widowed--or both."
For Iraqi Christians, the decision to attend church involves so much more than what to wear. It's a matter of life and death--and faith.
Date published: 3/23/2008
BosNewsLife
http://www.bosnewslife.com/middle-east/iraq/3510-iraq-christians-dont-celebrate-5th-anniversar
Iraq Christians Don’t Celebrate 5th Anniversary Of US-Led Invasion
Fresh Reports Of Massive Killings
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
By BosNewsLife News Center
President George W. Bush says war can be won. Via VOA News
BAGHDAD, IRAQ (BosNewsLife)-- United President George W. Bush said Wednesday, March 19, that the war in Iraq is worth fighting and winning, but Iraqi Christians had no reason to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the US-led invasion amid reports of massive killings.
"Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," said Bush, a self declared evangelical Christian. "The answers are clear to me. Removing [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision - and this is a fight America can and must win," he told an audience at the Defense Department in Washington.
Yet, five years on, Iraqi Christians are caught in the crossfire of violence - and even targeted - more than ever before, stressed Open Doors, an international organization providing aid to Christians who it says are persecuted for their faith.
"Some say that in the past few years almost 500 Iraqi Christians, including pastors and priests, have been murdered because of their faith. Even more Christians have been killed in attacks, in fighting or kidnappings for money, Open Doors said
In one of the latest publicized cases, the body of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop kidnapped in Iraq in February was found outside the northern city of Mosul.
COMPANIONS KILLED
Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was seized by gunmen in Mosul soon after he left Mass on February. 29. Three of his companions were killed, the latest in what church members called a series of attacks against Iraq's dwindling Christian community by Islamic extremists.
The violence is a far cry from what Iraqi Christians had anticipated, Open Doors stressed.
"Initially, the minority Christian population in Iraq was mostly elated with the fall of Saddam Hussein. They envisioned the coming of peace, safe places to work and live and complete freedom to worship." Many have now fled the country.
There were 750,000 Christians when the invasion began in Iraq, according to several church groups, although Open Doors put that figure at 550,000. Since 2003 however, at least 75,000 fled to neighboring countries or to the West, while another 75,000 are now in northern Iraq, the group added.
"That means less than 400,000 Christians remain in mainland Iraq. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has estimated that at least two million Iraqis have fled the country since 2003 and another two million are displaced inside the country.”
URGING PRAYERS
In a statement, Open Doors USA President Carl Moeller said his organization had urged supporters to pray for what he called "marginalized people of Iraq" and to “pray that 2008 will be the year when the violence will decrease and Christians will not be killed and kidnapped simply for their belief in Christ."
He said, "The situation continues to grow grimmer for the targeted minority Christian community in Iraq."
Despite the violence, Open Doors is one of the major providers of Bibles and Christian materials in Iraq, while also helping displaced Christians in northern Iraq, Syria and Jordan with housing, food, clothing and water. Iraqi Christians are no exception.
Some 200 million Christians worldwide, "suffer interrogation, arrest and even death for their faith in Christ, with another 200 to 400 million facing discrimination and alienation," Open Doors said, figures backed up by other rights organizations. (With BosNewsLife's Stefan J. Bos).
BBC News
Last Updated: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 19:08 GMT
Christians besieged in Iraq
By Frances Harrison
Religious affairs correspondent
Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho at the Vatican, November 2007
The archbishop was abducted minutes after leading prayers
Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho is thought to be the highest-ranking Chaldean Catholic clergyman to be killed in the violence in Iraq.
He was the Archbishop of Mosul which, along with Baghdad, has been one of the worst places for attacks on Christians.
For the Christians still remaining in Mosul the reaction may very well be that this death is neither the first nor likely to be the last.
The Barnabas Fund, a charity in the UK that has tried to help Iraqi Christians, says there have been some very nasty cases of Christians being abducted, tortured and then killed and it says many Christians in Iraq are now deadened to the violence.
Bombs
But on the other hand the Archbishop was very high-profile and that will have a shock value.
What might make a difference to the reaction to this news is whether the Archbishop, who was elderly, just died of the stress of being kidnapped or was actively tortured and murdered. He was reported to be on medication for heart problems. Exactly how he died is not clear yet.
But his death is the latest in a string of attacks on churches, priests and lay Christians.
In January, bombs exploded outside three Chaldean and Assyrian churches in Mosul, two churches in Kirkuk and four in Baghdad.
The attacks seem to have been co-ordinated all over the country to occur at roughly the same time. And this was not the first time violence had come close to Archbishop Rahho.
Iraqi refugees waiting for aid in Syria, 11 February 2008
Christian refugees may now be more reluctant to return to Iraq
Last June, his secretary, a priest called Ragheed Ganni, was shot dead in his church along with three of his companions.
In 2005 the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Basile Georges Casmoussa, was kidnapped but released.
And in 2006, an Orthodox priest, Boulos Iskander, was snatched off the streets of Mosul by a group that demanded a ransom. Even though it was paid by his family they still beheaded him. Worse still, when his body was found, the priest's arms and legs had also been cut off.
Money motive
In many cases the motivation behind attacks on Christians is religious - to drive the minority out of Iraq. But very often criminal groups or bandits pretend to belong to a jihadist group in order to mask their true motive - which is money.
Christians are regarded as having money and they are known to sacrifice everything to pay ransom demands - partly because, unlike Shia or Sunni, they do not have powerful tribal or militia links to protect them, so they are a soft target.
It's thought about half the Christian population of Iraq has moved - the majority to Syria, fewer to Jordan and some to northern Iraq
In the university of Mosul, there are reports of Christian students being targeted - with notices being put up warning the girls to wear a hijab and giving Christians a choice between dying, converting to Islam or leaving the town.
A year ago there were also reports of a push to drive Christians out of the historically Christian suburb of Dora in southern Baghdad, with some Muslims accusing the Christians of being allies of the Americans.
Exodus
The charity Barnabas says one of its partners in Iraq conducted research into 250 Iraqi Christians displaced to the north of the country a year ago and found nearly half had witnessed attacks on churches or Christians, or been personally targeted by violence.
Nobody knows how many of Iraq's Christians have now fled. Before the war there were estimated to be about 800,000 and Chaldeans were the largest Christian community in Iraq.
It is thought about half the Christian population of Iraq has moved - the majority to Syria, fewer to Jordan and some to northern Iraq.
Of the 1.5m Iraqi refugees in Syria it is assumed around 20% are Christian, but firm figures are hard to come by.
That means, as a proportion, Christians are massively over-represented in the Iraqi refugee population.
Syrian churches have been helping the refugees and say they speak of being forced to convert to Islam or flee, women being told to wear Islamic dress and those who sell alcohol for communion being beaten.
The killing of the archbishop of Mosul and the spate of bomb blasts against churches in January may well put off those Christian refugees in Syria who were contemplating returning to their country, even if it does not trigger a new exodus from Iraq.
NOTE FROM TGR: TGR does not bother with this topic on a daily basis. That said, fresh articles concerning the ethnic cleansing being constantly directed against this community are available on a daily basis.
These articles are normally not available in the American media, nor are these incidents apparently discussed in American churches.
[The Lyon of Babylon]
uruknet.info
اوروكنت.إنفو
informazione dall'iraq occupato
information from occupied iraq
أخبار من العراق المحتل
Iraqi Christians scorn West’s offer of help
Azzaman
6_iraq_christians_hmed_8a.hmedium.jpg
March 22, 2008
The pledge by France to provide refuge for 500 Iraqi Christians is merely for 'propaganda purposes’ and does nothing to alleviate Iraqi Christians’ suffering, said Iraqi church leaders.
The leaders, refusing to be named, said their followers were paying for the West’s mistakes and blunders in dealing with the Muslim world.
"It is the second time in history we are being persecuted and paying dearly for what the Christian West does," said one of them.
He was referring to the Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages during which European states mobilized huge armies and invaded Palestine, parts of Syrian and Lebanon.
"Those crusades were carried out in the name of Christianity and many in the Muslim world thought we were accomplices because we shared the same religion," he added.
One another leader said the religious rhetoric of the current U.S. administration which has armies in two Muslim countries and supports Israel blindly mainly on religious grounds has again infuriated Muslim populations who see us as "brothers in faith."
U.S. troops practices at the start of the war, and the attempts by some U.S. churches to proselytize Muslims by handing out free copies of the Bible in Arabic, made many Muslims think that the invasion was yet another "crusade", said the cleric.
U.S. troops would decorate vehicles, particularly at the start of the war, with Christian symbols and U.S. Christian denominations began building or establishing new churches in Baghdad and other major cities.
"We keep telling everyone that we as Christians are different. We have got nothing to do with such practices but it seems they provided the fuel for the calamity we suffer from now," said one church source.
Until nearly the 11 century Christians were reported to be the majority in Iraq. The numbers started dwindling with the arrival of non-Arab Muslim invaders who took over most of the Middle East.
Even under Saddam Hussein, who the West had demonized, Iraqi Christians had the right to build churches, teach their traditional language, Aramaic, and give religious courses to their members inside their churches.
Monasteries and seminaries flourished despite the sweeping U.N. trade sanctions imposed in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
For example, there were 25 priests and 17 monks in the Chaldean order called the Hormozite. Chaldean nuns numbered more than 100 and run schools in Kuwait and the Untied Arab Emirates.
The monasteries and seminaries of Baghdad are all but deserted. And many churches almost empty due to the massive flight of Christians either to northern Iraq or to neighboring countries.
The hardships Iraqi Christians pass through now are unprecedented in modern history and started with the coming of the 'Christian’ Americans and Brits to Iraq.
One church source described France’s bid to offer asylum for 500 Iraqi Christians as "a joke."
He said there were nearly 1 million Christians most of them now on the run. "Who is going to save them? These statements are merely for propaganda purposes. We have seen nothing tangible on the ground."
:: Article nr. 42302 sent on 22-mar-2008 22:08 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=42302
Link: www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news%5C2008-03-22%5Ckurd.htm
:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Uruknet .
The Free Lance-Star
The cost of faith
In Iraq: An archbishop is found dead; a Christian minority is persecuted
Date published: 3/23/2008
THE BODY of Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, 65, of Mosul, Iraq, was found recently in a shallow grave, two weeks after he'd been kidnapped--just the latest example of the persecution plaguing Christians in that predominantly Muslim country.
There were nearly a million followers of Christ in Iraq before the war began. Today, half have fled or been killed or kidnapped. Those who remain are frequently subjected to "convert or die" diktats from Muslim clerics. Their women may be forced to don burqas. Yet they persist.
Indeed, the pressure seems to be getting worse. In January, bombs went off outside three Chaldean and Assyrian Christian churches in Mosul, two churches in Kirkuk, and four in Baghdad. Other clerics have been kidnapped for ransom or killed.
The Rev. Canon Andrew White of St. George's Anglican Church in Baghdad, told the Episcopal News Service: "Despite the fact that the Christian community here is one of the most ancient in the world, my parishioners have been threatened and intimidated out of their homes and businesses. Those who are left are usually either poor or widowed--or both."
For Iraqi Christians, the decision to attend church involves so much more than what to wear. It's a matter of life and death--and faith.
Date published: 3/23/2008
BosNewsLife
http://www.bosnewslife.com/middle-east/iraq/3510-iraq-christians-dont-celebrate-5th-anniversar
Iraq Christians Don’t Celebrate 5th Anniversary Of US-Led Invasion
Fresh Reports Of Massive Killings
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
By BosNewsLife News Center
President George W. Bush says war can be won. Via VOA News
BAGHDAD, IRAQ (BosNewsLife)-- United President George W. Bush said Wednesday, March 19, that the war in Iraq is worth fighting and winning, but Iraqi Christians had no reason to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the US-led invasion amid reports of massive killings.
"Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," said Bush, a self declared evangelical Christian. "The answers are clear to me. Removing [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision - and this is a fight America can and must win," he told an audience at the Defense Department in Washington.
Yet, five years on, Iraqi Christians are caught in the crossfire of violence - and even targeted - more than ever before, stressed Open Doors, an international organization providing aid to Christians who it says are persecuted for their faith.
"Some say that in the past few years almost 500 Iraqi Christians, including pastors and priests, have been murdered because of their faith. Even more Christians have been killed in attacks, in fighting or kidnappings for money, Open Doors said
In one of the latest publicized cases, the body of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop kidnapped in Iraq in February was found outside the northern city of Mosul.
COMPANIONS KILLED
Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was seized by gunmen in Mosul soon after he left Mass on February. 29. Three of his companions were killed, the latest in what church members called a series of attacks against Iraq's dwindling Christian community by Islamic extremists.
The violence is a far cry from what Iraqi Christians had anticipated, Open Doors stressed.
"Initially, the minority Christian population in Iraq was mostly elated with the fall of Saddam Hussein. They envisioned the coming of peace, safe places to work and live and complete freedom to worship." Many have now fled the country.
There were 750,000 Christians when the invasion began in Iraq, according to several church groups, although Open Doors put that figure at 550,000. Since 2003 however, at least 75,000 fled to neighboring countries or to the West, while another 75,000 are now in northern Iraq, the group added.
"That means less than 400,000 Christians remain in mainland Iraq. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has estimated that at least two million Iraqis have fled the country since 2003 and another two million are displaced inside the country.”
URGING PRAYERS
In a statement, Open Doors USA President Carl Moeller said his organization had urged supporters to pray for what he called "marginalized people of Iraq" and to “pray that 2008 will be the year when the violence will decrease and Christians will not be killed and kidnapped simply for their belief in Christ."
He said, "The situation continues to grow grimmer for the targeted minority Christian community in Iraq."
Despite the violence, Open Doors is one of the major providers of Bibles and Christian materials in Iraq, while also helping displaced Christians in northern Iraq, Syria and Jordan with housing, food, clothing and water. Iraqi Christians are no exception.
Some 200 million Christians worldwide, "suffer interrogation, arrest and even death for their faith in Christ, with another 200 to 400 million facing discrimination and alienation," Open Doors said, figures backed up by other rights organizations. (With BosNewsLife's Stefan J. Bos).
BBC News
Last Updated: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 19:08 GMT
Christians besieged in Iraq
By Frances Harrison
Religious affairs correspondent
Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho at the Vatican, November 2007
The archbishop was abducted minutes after leading prayers
Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho is thought to be the highest-ranking Chaldean Catholic clergyman to be killed in the violence in Iraq.
He was the Archbishop of Mosul which, along with Baghdad, has been one of the worst places for attacks on Christians.
For the Christians still remaining in Mosul the reaction may very well be that this death is neither the first nor likely to be the last.
The Barnabas Fund, a charity in the UK that has tried to help Iraqi Christians, says there have been some very nasty cases of Christians being abducted, tortured and then killed and it says many Christians in Iraq are now deadened to the violence.
Bombs
But on the other hand the Archbishop was very high-profile and that will have a shock value.
What might make a difference to the reaction to this news is whether the Archbishop, who was elderly, just died of the stress of being kidnapped or was actively tortured and murdered. He was reported to be on medication for heart problems. Exactly how he died is not clear yet.
But his death is the latest in a string of attacks on churches, priests and lay Christians.
In January, bombs exploded outside three Chaldean and Assyrian churches in Mosul, two churches in Kirkuk and four in Baghdad.
The attacks seem to have been co-ordinated all over the country to occur at roughly the same time. And this was not the first time violence had come close to Archbishop Rahho.
Iraqi refugees waiting for aid in Syria, 11 February 2008
Christian refugees may now be more reluctant to return to Iraq
Last June, his secretary, a priest called Ragheed Ganni, was shot dead in his church along with three of his companions.
In 2005 the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Basile Georges Casmoussa, was kidnapped but released.
And in 2006, an Orthodox priest, Boulos Iskander, was snatched off the streets of Mosul by a group that demanded a ransom. Even though it was paid by his family they still beheaded him. Worse still, when his body was found, the priest's arms and legs had also been cut off.
Money motive
In many cases the motivation behind attacks on Christians is religious - to drive the minority out of Iraq. But very often criminal groups or bandits pretend to belong to a jihadist group in order to mask their true motive - which is money.
Christians are regarded as having money and they are known to sacrifice everything to pay ransom demands - partly because, unlike Shia or Sunni, they do not have powerful tribal or militia links to protect them, so they are a soft target.
It's thought about half the Christian population of Iraq has moved - the majority to Syria, fewer to Jordan and some to northern Iraq
In the university of Mosul, there are reports of Christian students being targeted - with notices being put up warning the girls to wear a hijab and giving Christians a choice between dying, converting to Islam or leaving the town.
A year ago there were also reports of a push to drive Christians out of the historically Christian suburb of Dora in southern Baghdad, with some Muslims accusing the Christians of being allies of the Americans.
Exodus
The charity Barnabas says one of its partners in Iraq conducted research into 250 Iraqi Christians displaced to the north of the country a year ago and found nearly half had witnessed attacks on churches or Christians, or been personally targeted by violence.
Nobody knows how many of Iraq's Christians have now fled. Before the war there were estimated to be about 800,000 and Chaldeans were the largest Christian community in Iraq.
It is thought about half the Christian population of Iraq has moved - the majority to Syria, fewer to Jordan and some to northern Iraq.
Of the 1.5m Iraqi refugees in Syria it is assumed around 20% are Christian, but firm figures are hard to come by.
That means, as a proportion, Christians are massively over-represented in the Iraqi refugee population.
Syrian churches have been helping the refugees and say they speak of being forced to convert to Islam or flee, women being told to wear Islamic dress and those who sell alcohol for communion being beaten.
The killing of the archbishop of Mosul and the spate of bomb blasts against churches in January may well put off those Christian refugees in Syria who were contemplating returning to their country, even if it does not trigger a new exodus from Iraq.
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A Guide to the French. Handle With Care.
The New York Times
March 23, 2008
Ideas & Trends
A Guide to the French. Handle With Care.
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Nigel Dickinson for The New York Times
A FRIEND, INDEED A good butcher is a must. One, Monsieur Yvon, in Paris, applies a personal touch that can be rare among French proprietors.
PARIS — “Every man has two countries, his own and France,” says a character in a play by the 19th- century poet and playwright Henri de Bornier. In five and a half years living in Paris as an American correspondent, I have tried to make the country my own, knowing that I never will completely fit in, but always will be fascinated. So as I finish my stint as Paris bureau chief and move on to a new beat here, it seems a good moment to offer eight lessons learned.
1: Look in the Rear-View Mirror
To begin to understand France, you have to look back. The French are obsessed with history. Part of this feeling is a genuine affinity for the past, part a desire to cling to lost glory, part an insecurity that comes with a tepid economy and the struggle to integrate a growing Arab and African population.
Marie-Antoinette regularly makes the covers of magazines. So does Napoleon Bonaparte.
No anniversary is too minor to celebrate. In my time here, France has marked the 20th anniversary of France’s sinking of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, the 200th anniversary of the high school baccalaureate diploma, the 60th anniversary of the bikini and the 100th anniversary of the brassiere.
For the 100th anniversary of her birth in January, Simone de Beauvoir was celebrated with half a dozen biographies, a DVD series, a three-day scholarly symposium and a cover of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur with a nude photo of her from the back.
2: An Interview Is Sometimes Not an Interview
Their love of history doesn’t mean the French always render it accurately. It has long been common practice for journalists in France to allow their interview subjects to edit their words. “Read and corrected,” the system is called.
I once took part in an interview with Jacques Chirac, when he was president, in which he said it would not be all that dangerous for Iran to have a nuclear weapon or two. That certainly was not French policy. So the official Élysée Palace transcript left out the line and replaced it with this: “I do not see what type of scenario could justify Iran’s recourse to an atomic bomb.”
The practice of doctoring the transcript has continued under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Last month, the president lost his temper when a bystander refused to shake his hand at the annual agricultural fair. (A polite translation of what he said would be, “Get lost, you stupid jerk!”) The incident, captured on video, was seen by millions on the Internet.
According to the daily Le Parisien the next day, Mr. Sarkozy later expressed regret in an interview, saying, “It would have been better if I had not responded to him.” But the paper’s editor soon confessed that the words of regret were “never uttered.” They had been edited into the transcript by the Élysée Palace.
3: The Customer Is Always Wrong
It is hard for French merchants to admit they are wrong, and seemingly impossible for them to apologize. Instead, the trick is to somehow get the offended party to feel the mistake was his or her own. I’m convinced the practice was learned in the strict French educational system, in which teachers are allowed to tell pupils they are “zeros” in front of the entire class.
A doctor I know told me he once bought a coat at a small men’s boutique only to discover that it had a rip in the fabric. When he tried to return it, the shopkeeper gave him the address of a tailor who could repair it — for a large fee. They argued, and the doctor reminded the shopkeeper of the French saying, “The customer is king.”
“Sir,” the shopkeeper replied, “We no longer have a king in France.”
4: Make Friends With a Good Butcher
With food as important as it is here, one of the most important men in your life should be your butcher. Mine, Monsieur Yvon, is more than a cutter of meat. He is a playful spirit in a rather sober neighborhood — and the exception to the customer-is-always-wrong rule.
In his tiny shop on the Rue de Varenne, between the Luxembourg Gardens and Les Invalides in the Seventh Arrondissement, Monsieur Yvon has donned a necklace of his homemade sausages to get a conversation going. At Christmas, he and his team of butchers put on elves’ hats with blinking lights. He offers passers-by free charcuterie and glasses of Beaujolais nouveau every fall. He is so deeply trusted that when avian flu struck France, his poultry sales went up, not down.
Monsieur Yvon has cooked my Thanksgiving turkey when it was too big for my oven and taught me how to make the perfect pot-au-feu. I have watched him lovingly choose just the right pair of center-cut lamb chops for an elderly client. Were they to be cooked today or tomorrow? Grilled or sautéed?
Even when he bears bad news, his explanations are delicious. Once I ordered a 16-pound turkey and got an 11-pound bird instead.
“It was the fault of the foxes,” he said gravely.
“The foxes?” I asked.
“Yes, the foxes.” It seemed that the electric fence surrounding the turkey pen had shorted out and the foxes had had a field day.
“They only ate the big turkeys,” he explained.
5: Kiss, but Be Careful Whom You Hug
The French need no excuse to kiss. The first time I was kissed by a Frenchman was on July 20, 1969, the day a man landed on the moon. I was a student with a backpack, arriving at the Gare de Lyon. The newspaper seller kissed me on both cheeks because I was an American.
The ritual double “bisou” — the two-cheek kiss — takes some getting used to. There is nothing sexy about it, but it can be awkward, especially for my adolescent daughters when they are required to kiss strange men.
Mr. Chirac never seemed to relish the formal, jerky air kisses. He is more of a hand-kisser. He knows how to cradle a woman’s hand in his, raise the hand to chest level, bend over to meet it halfway and savor its feel and scent.
Mr. Sarkozy is unpredictable. When he’s in a bad mood, he might offer a curt “Bonjour” and a cold handshake. With those he likes, he gets really close and hugs. They sometimes hug back, as did Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, during a visit this month to the Élysée. But the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has made it clear through her aides that she is not a hugger and needs her space.
6: Don’t Wear Jogging Clothes to Buy a Pound of Butter
Rules govern even the smallest activities. I was making chocolate chip cookies one Saturday afternoon and ran out of butter. Dusted with flour, still in my morning jogging clothes, I dashed out to the convenience store up the street. The problem was that it is not just any street. It’s the Rue du Bac, one of the most chic places to see and be seen on Saturdays. I heard my name called and turned to face a senior Foreign Ministry official, dressed in pressed jeans and a soft-as-butter leather jacket, wearing an amused look, and carrying a small Nespresso shopping bag.
We went to a corner cafe for a drink. The Swedish ambassador and his wife stopped as they were riding by on their bikes. Both were in tailored tweed blazers, slim pants and loafers. Then Robert M. Kimmitt, the deputy treasury secretary, walked by.
He and my foreign ministry friend joked that my style didn’t match the setting. I made the point that it was my neighborhood and I could dress however I wanted. But as my French women friends told me afterward, jogging clothes (shoes included) are to be removed as soon as one’s exercise is over.
7: Feeling Sexy Is a State of Mind, or: Buy Good Lingerie
In her close-fitting sweaters and pants and tailored leather jackets, Eliane Victor is both stylish and alluring. The retired author and journalist is in her late 80s.
For French women, being sexy has nothing to do with age and everything to do with attitude. Arielle Dombasle, the actress and cabaret singer married to the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, dared to expose her breasts on the cover of Paris Match and took off her clothes in a song-and-dance revue at Crazy Horse in Paris. Some people feel she tries too hard. But give the lady some credit. She’s turning 50 and has a Barbie-doll body.
A 600-page sociological study of sexuality in France released this month concluded that 9 out of 10 women over 50 are sexually active. The sexiest French women seem naturally skilled in the art of moving, smiling and flirting.
Chic French women prefer to peel and polish rather than paint their faces. Too much makeup, they say, makes a woman seem older, or worse, “vulgaire.” “The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion,” Yves Saint Laurent once said. “But cosmetics are easier to buy.”
French women spend close to 20 percent of their clothing budgets on lingerie. But you also have to know how to wear it. When the Galeries Lafayette department store inaugurated its 28,000-square-foot lingerie shop in 2003, it offered free half-hour lessons by professional striptease artists.
8: When It Comes to Politesse, There Is No End to the Lessons
Never use the word “toilette” when asking a host for directions to the powder room; try to avoid going there at all. Never say “Bon appétit” at the start of a meal. Don’t talk loudly. Never discuss your religion or your money at dinner. Eat hamburgers, pizza, foie gras and sorbet with a fork. Always say “bonjour” to the bus driver, and to fellow passengers on elevators. “Pas mal” doesn’t necessarily mean “Not bad.” It can mean “Great!”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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TGR(A Guide to the French. Handle With Care. )--03/23/08--TRuth
From: Ruth, Mr. Thomas (Retired Faculty) (TRUTH@thehill.org)
Sent: Sun 3/23/08 5:08 AM
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A Guide to the French. Handle With Care.
The New York Times
March 23, 2008
Ideas & Trends
A Guide to the French. Handle With Care.
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Nigel Dickinson for The New York Times
A FRIEND, INDEED A good butcher is a must. One, Monsieur Yvon, in Paris, applies a personal touch that can be rare among French proprietors.
PARIS — “Every man has two countries, his own and France,” says a character in a play by the 19th- century poet and playwright Henri de Bornier. In five and a half years living in Paris as an American correspondent, I have tried to make the country my own, knowing that I never will completely fit in, but always will be fascinated. So as I finish my stint as Paris bureau chief and move on to a new beat here, it seems a good moment to offer eight lessons learned.
1: Look in the Rear-View Mirror
To begin to understand France, you have to look back. The French are obsessed with history. Part of this feeling is a genuine affinity for the past, part a desire to cling to lost glory, part an insecurity that comes with a tepid economy and the struggle to integrate a growing Arab and African population.
Marie-Antoinette regularly makes the covers of magazines. So does Napoleon Bonaparte.
No anniversary is too minor to celebrate. In my time here, France has marked the 20th anniversary of France’s sinking of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, the 200th anniversary of the high school baccalaureate diploma, the 60th anniversary of the bikini and the 100th anniversary of the brassiere.
For the 100th anniversary of her birth in January, Simone de Beauvoir was celebrated with half a dozen biographies, a DVD series, a three-day scholarly symposium and a cover of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur with a nude photo of her from the back.
2: An Interview Is Sometimes Not an Interview
Their love of history doesn’t mean the French always render it accurately. It has long been common practice for journalists in France to allow their interview subjects to edit their words. “Read and corrected,” the system is called.
I once took part in an interview with Jacques Chirac, when he was president, in which he said it would not be all that dangerous for Iran to have a nuclear weapon or two. That certainly was not French policy. So the official Élysée Palace transcript left out the line and replaced it with this: “I do not see what type of scenario could justify Iran’s recourse to an atomic bomb.”
The practice of doctoring the transcript has continued under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Last month, the president lost his temper when a bystander refused to shake his hand at the annual agricultural fair. (A polite translation of what he said would be, “Get lost, you stupid jerk!”) The incident, captured on video, was seen by millions on the Internet.
According to the daily Le Parisien the next day, Mr. Sarkozy later expressed regret in an interview, saying, “It would have been better if I had not responded to him.” But the paper’s editor soon confessed that the words of regret were “never uttered.” They had been edited into the transcript by the Élysée Palace.
3: The Customer Is Always Wrong
It is hard for French merchants to admit they are wrong, and seemingly impossible for them to apologize. Instead, the trick is to somehow get the offended party to feel the mistake was his or her own. I’m convinced the practice was learned in the strict French educational system, in which teachers are allowed to tell pupils they are “zeros” in front of the entire class.
A doctor I know told me he once bought a coat at a small men’s boutique only to discover that it had a rip in the fabric. When he tried to return it, the shopkeeper gave him the address of a tailor who could repair it — for a large fee. They argued, and the doctor reminded the shopkeeper of the French saying, “The customer is king.”
“Sir,” the shopkeeper replied, “We no longer have a king in France.”
4: Make Friends With a Good Butcher
With food as important as it is here, one of the most important men in your life should be your butcher. Mine, Monsieur Yvon, is more than a cutter of meat. He is a playful spirit in a rather sober neighborhood — and the exception to the customer-is-always-wrong rule.
In his tiny shop on the Rue de Varenne, between the Luxembourg Gardens and Les Invalides in the Seventh Arrondissement, Monsieur Yvon has donned a necklace of his homemade sausages to get a conversation going. At Christmas, he and his team of butchers put on elves’ hats with blinking lights. He offers passers-by free charcuterie and glasses of Beaujolais nouveau every fall. He is so deeply trusted that when avian flu struck France, his poultry sales went up, not down.
Monsieur Yvon has cooked my Thanksgiving turkey when it was too big for my oven and taught me how to make the perfect pot-au-feu. I have watched him lovingly choose just the right pair of center-cut lamb chops for an elderly client. Were they to be cooked today or tomorrow? Grilled or sautéed?
Even when he bears bad news, his explanations are delicious. Once I ordered a 16-pound turkey and got an 11-pound bird instead.
“It was the fault of the foxes,” he said gravely.
“The foxes?” I asked.
“Yes, the foxes.” It seemed that the electric fence surrounding the turkey pen had shorted out and the foxes had had a field day.
“They only ate the big turkeys,” he explained.
5: Kiss, but Be Careful Whom You Hug
The French need no excuse to kiss. The first time I was kissed by a Frenchman was on July 20, 1969, the day a man landed on the moon. I was a student with a backpack, arriving at the Gare de Lyon. The newspaper seller kissed me on both cheeks because I was an American.
The ritual double “bisou” — the two-cheek kiss — takes some getting used to. There is nothing sexy about it, but it can be awkward, especially for my adolescent daughters when they are required to kiss strange men.
Mr. Chirac never seemed to relish the formal, jerky air kisses. He is more of a hand-kisser. He knows how to cradle a woman’s hand in his, raise the hand to chest level, bend over to meet it halfway and savor its feel and scent.
Mr. Sarkozy is unpredictable. When he’s in a bad mood, he might offer a curt “Bonjour” and a cold handshake. With those he likes, he gets really close and hugs. They sometimes hug back, as did Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, during a visit this month to the Élysée. But the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has made it clear through her aides that she is not a hugger and needs her space.
6: Don’t Wear Jogging Clothes to Buy a Pound of Butter
Rules govern even the smallest activities. I was making chocolate chip cookies one Saturday afternoon and ran out of butter. Dusted with flour, still in my morning jogging clothes, I dashed out to the convenience store up the street. The problem was that it is not just any street. It’s the Rue du Bac, one of the most chic places to see and be seen on Saturdays. I heard my name called and turned to face a senior Foreign Ministry official, dressed in pressed jeans and a soft-as-butter leather jacket, wearing an amused look, and carrying a small Nespresso shopping bag.
We went to a corner cafe for a drink. The Swedish ambassador and his wife stopped as they were riding by on their bikes. Both were in tailored tweed blazers, slim pants and loafers. Then Robert M. Kimmitt, the deputy treasury secretary, walked by.
He and my foreign ministry friend joked that my style didn’t match the setting. I made the point that it was my neighborhood and I could dress however I wanted. But as my French women friends told me afterward, jogging clothes (shoes included) are to be removed as soon as one’s exercise is over.
7: Feeling Sexy Is a State of Mind, or: Buy Good Lingerie
In her close-fitting sweaters and pants and tailored leather jackets, Eliane Victor is both stylish and alluring. The retired author and journalist is in her late 80s.
For French women, being sexy has nothing to do with age and everything to do with attitude. Arielle Dombasle, the actress and cabaret singer married to the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, dared to expose her breasts on the cover of Paris Match and took off her clothes in a song-and-dance revue at Crazy Horse in Paris. Some people feel she tries too hard. But give the lady some credit. She’s turning 50 and has a Barbie-doll body.
A 600-page sociological study of sexuality in France released this month concluded that 9 out of 10 women over 50 are sexually active. The sexiest French women seem naturally skilled in the art of moving, smiling and flirting.
Chic French women prefer to peel and polish rather than paint their faces. Too much makeup, they say, makes a woman seem older, or worse, “vulgaire.” “The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion,” Yves Saint Laurent once said. “But cosmetics are easier to buy.”
French women spend close to 20 percent of their clothing budgets on lingerie. But you also have to know how to wear it. When the Galeries Lafayette department store inaugurated its 28,000-square-foot lingerie shop in 2003, it offered free half-hour lessons by professional striptease artists.
8: When It Comes to Politesse, There Is No End to the Lessons
Never use the word “toilette” when asking a host for directions to the powder room; try to avoid going there at all. Never say “Bon appétit” at the start of a meal. Don’t talk loudly. Never discuss your religion or your money at dinner. Eat hamburgers, pizza, foie gras and sorbet with a fork. Always say “bonjour” to the bus driver, and to fellow passengers on elevators. “Pas mal” doesn’t necessarily mean “Not bad.” It can mean “Great!”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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