Ralph Nader on why Words Matter
January 18th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Ironic fact: in US society, where nationalism runs as fervently through the veins of the people as it does in a country like Turkey, Ralph Nader is sidelined and even ridiculed for refusing to negotiate his principles and dedicating his entire being to improving the quality of life for ordinary Americans.
Is there any other major US political representative with a record like Nader’s? What about US Presidents? (To get a sense of Nader’s extraordinary career which has also been his life, watch An Unreasonable Man)
While reading over some news articles today I was reminded of Nader’s 2009 essay on the way in which corporate and government sanctioned words permeate news reports. Writes Nader:
What is remarkable about the constant use of these words is that they permeate the language even if those who stand against the policies of those who first coin these euphemisms.
I am sure I’m guilty too…
Addicted to Risk
January 18th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
“How else to describe this, but as a form of mass insanity. Just when we know we need to be learning to live on the surface of our planet, off the power of sun, wind and waves; we are frantically digging to get at the dirtiest, highest emitting stuff imaginable…”
The brilliant Naomi Klein delivered this TED talk at on December 8, 2010, in Washington, DC. (A transcript of her speech is to be found below the fold).
Coffee With Hezbollah: A Review
January 18th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
by Tom Chartier
Lately, in the last few years… like since Richard Milhous Nixon assumed the coveted title of POTUS… I have had trouble falling asleep at night. Sound familiar? You betcha! The stresses and anxiety of the days have a tendency to beat us to death, and relaxation is tough to find.
How to switch off the horrors of tomorrow’s deadlines, tomorrow’s exams, and tomorrow’s humiliations at the TSA pat-down and peep show? Tough questions indeed.
To make matters worse, I also have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. Not only do I live in complete terror of… well, terror… I also live in terror of saying the wrong thing. Look at all the trouble that dude Assange has caused with his little website, wikileaks.com! My God! State secrets, plots, skullduggery and shenanigans are being exposed! Is there no decency left in America?
God… or State… forbid the First Amendment and Free Speech should actually be upheld. We have our national paranoia to protect!
But… I have veered from the path of the straight and narrow and my purpose. Let me return to the subject of stress relief.
A Different Kind of Dominoes
January 18th, 2011 § 3 Comments
AFP photo
I ended my last post like this:
“Perhaps in six months’ time non-Arab commentators will decide that the Tunisian revolution was a mere anomaly in an eternally stagnant Arab world. But they’ll be wrong. The revolution will exert a long-term pervasiveness throughout Arab culture, as the Iranian revolution did before it. It will change the air the Arabs breathe and the dreams the Arabs dream.”
Well, it seems I was wrong on the timescale. I should have said six minutes. Today several commentators are indeed arguing that the Tunisian revolution is anomalous. Robert Fisk is pessimistic, contending that the Tunisian people are no match for the combined forces of the Tunisian elite and Western imperialism. Perhaps events will prove him right. Steve Walt fears that those expecting immediate regime change from the Ocean to the Gulf will be rapidly disappointed.
His point is a good one. In the frontline states with Israel, foreign policy issues increase in importance because they have the potential to immediately translate into security issues. The Syrian regime, for instance, may be unpopular for its corruption, bureaucracy, and stifling of dissent, but its foreign policy is broadly in line with Syrian opinion – and in Syria this matters a great deal. The Western clients are more vulnerable to protest, not least because they’re more linked into the ‘globalised’ economy and are thus more vulnerable to dramatic fluctuations in the price of essential goods. Yet even in Jordan legitimate fears of an Israeli intervention (perhaps an attempt to fulfill the Jordan-is-Palestine fantasy) could damp down effervescence. The public in many countries seems too split by sect, ethnicity or tribe to coordinate unified protest. And of course the regimes will now be battening down for fear of Tunisian contagion.
Avi Shlaim on the Neoconservative Middle East War Agenda
January 18th, 2011 § 3 Comments
by Stephen J. Sniegoski
A friend, Phil Collier, an avid student of and sometime writer on Middle East affairs (and a National Master in chess), recently informed me that Avi Shlaim, in his recent book, Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations, has one chapter, “Palestine and Iraq,” that presents a thesis almost identical to what I have written in The Transparent Cabal. This naturally encouraged me to obtain the book, and Collier’s description turns out to be correct.
This similarity is quite significant since what I have written on the neocons regarding their strong influence on U. S. Middle East policy and their connection to Israel is taboo in the American mainstream, with even numerous antiwar individuals (especially those with higher status) and publications shying away from my work. But Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford, is a recognized scholar, with such notable books on Israel and its neighbors as The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2001). And he is also Jewish and an Israeli citizen, who served in the Israeli Defense Forces. His works cannot be ignored, nor can he be accused of anti-Semitism. His book was honored as a Kirkus Best Book for 2009.
Now, in his ten-page chapter on this subject, Shlaim could only present a much-abbreviated version of the major themes that I elaborate on at length in my 447 page book. The following are some poignant examples from Shlaim’s work, with my commentary drawing comparisons to The Transparent Cabal.
Protests Continue in Tunisia
January 17th, 2011 § 1 Comment
The Tunisian Prime Minister has announced a new coalition government, but as Jonathan Rugman from Channel4 News reports, protesters are demanding the complete removal of the ruling party amid a “lynch-mob atmosphere”.
Amira Hass on the Israeli Policy of Separate Development
January 17th, 2011 § 1 Comment
The great Amira Hass’s full Burke Lecture at UCSD from November 2010.
Changing the Air
January 17th, 2011 § 4 Comments
Zein al-Abdine Ben Ali is in Abha, Saudi Arabia. France wouldn’t have him. (Despots, note the speed with which a sponsor drops a client who has outlived his usefulness.) Arab activists are calling for protests outside Saudi embassies.
In Tunisia, the extent of the people’s sacrifice over the last month is becoming clearer. Reports describe Ben Ali’s police terrorising rural areas with punitive rapes and random murders.
And the terror continues. Since Ben Ali’s fall, Tunis and other cities have been plagued by violence. Some of it, such as attacks on Ben Ali family businesses, can be classed as revolutionary. Some more of it is the natural result of taking the lid off after so long; a mix of exuberance, criminality, and what Gazmend Kapplani calls an ‘orphan complex’:
Tyrants are merciless beasts, precisely because they leave behind distorted societies worn down by oppression and above all suffering from an orphan complex. Those who give themselves over to indiscriminate looting and destruction the minute the statues come down are like orphaned children robbing the corpse of a false and terrifying father.
But the most terrifying violence appears to be organised by Ben Ali’s militiamen. Tunisians report battles between army forces on the one hand and ‘police’ and other highly-trained, well-armed gangs on the other. Some of these gangs have been driving through residential areas shooting randomly at people and buildings.
A Case of Exploding Absurdities
January 16th, 2011 § 2 Comments
Christopher Lydon of the excellent Radio Open Source interviews Mohammed Hanif, the acclaimed author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes on the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the murder of Salman Taseer and the sociology of extremism.
Erdoğan’s Report Card
January 15th, 2011 § 5 Comments
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited the town of Fethiye on the southwestern coast of Turkey this afternoon for the mass inauguration ceremony of 34 new regional institutions, ranging from elementary schools to health facilities. The ceremony took place at Republic Square in the center of Fethiye, home to the town’s primary Atatürk statue. An estimated 20,000 people were in attendance, including myself.
Attendees were relieved of pens, loose change, fruit, and other dual-use items by police on the way into the square. I am including a photograph below of one of the piles of spoils in case the Israeli Foreign Ministry would like to add the image to its Flickr photo series “Weapons found on Mavi Marmara”—published following the 31 May 2010 attack by IDF commandos on the humanitarian aid flotilla en route to Gaza. (The attack resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists, who obviously deserved to die given that they were hoarding weapons such as kitchen knives, a bucket, and a Palestinian scarf; as Flickr specifies that the Foreign Ministry’s photos were taken between 7 February 2006 and 7 June 2010, I doubt the ministry would deem 15 January 2011 to be out of range.)
