Middle East

The regional French newspaper, L'est Republicain has published a report from the DGSE (France's intelligence agency), claiming Saudi intelligence have reason to believe Osama died of typhoid. Of course, Jacques Chirac scrambled to disallow the report ( he says other agencies have not been able to corroborate the Saudi sources ) and the pile on of disallowals and denials were echoed in Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and the US.

'No evidence' of Bin Laden death

Is Bin Laden Dead?

Why death rumours dog Laden?

France to probe bin Laden memo

Officials Doubt Report Of Bin Laden's Death

Bin Laden may feel lure to disprove his "death"

When 51% of the US population believe the war was wrong and 3,000 Iraqis demand the return of Saddam Hussein, what will happen to Bush's warmongering if Osama is indeed dead?

I love Scott Addam's Dilbert comic strip, for his pathologically flematic view of all things wrong with corporate America. It's for his morbid detachment from his subjects and his eye for detail that I found curious the following post.

From The Dilbert Blog: Another Run at the Nobel Peace Prize:

The Crazy-Ass Backwards plan doesn't work if you hold the common and somewhat racist U.S. view, that the people "over there" only understand brute force. In that case, any flexibility on the part of the U.S. looks like weakness and an invitation to be kicked some more.

But from what I gather about pride, it's a substitute for power in the Middle East. If you give people pride, they don't feel so much need to kill you. Is that true? Beats me. I have no pride myself so I confess to not understanding it. But I know that brute force isn't working, at least at the puny level we are willing to apply it.

As many of you will gleefully point out, I'm no expert on the Middle East. This thought experiment is only intended to make you think different about a so-far unsolvable problem. Sometimes that's useful.

Marc Perkel is one of those old school bloggers a lot of people have not heard of but should. I've been a daily reader of his stuff now for ages; especially since he was able to create and incorporate the very real and legal Church of Reality.

His take on religion and politics is quite refreshing because it's a lot of the time incendiary. I would call his style as not so much neo-atheism as more like un-religioning with a sledgehammer. Which is why his following post ought to create a lot of controversy.
[via Marc Perkel Rantz: The Jewish State Experiment is a Failure]

When I listen to what the country of Israel is saying they have no regrets about the number of Lebanese they kill and these other people are in the way of Israel's goals. Israel complains about kidnapping of it's people but when they kidnap 1/3 of the Palestinian Parlament they call them "detainees". Like Islamic terrorists Israel has its own death squads that hunts down and kills people who don't support their agenda, including their own leaders like Yitzhak Rabin.

The problem isn't with Judaism itself as much as it is with the idea of having a society with a superior class and an inferior class. It creates the illusion that they are actually better people and it create an imbalance that tends to lead to war as the oppressed rise up against the oppressors.

It's one of those quiet Sundays; the oppressive heat has broken, we have friends in town, now despatched to SoHomo for a glamour fix. So I have some free time to bang my head against the wall at the catatonic stupidity that is our policy in Iraq. Words are beginning to fail me at the extent of this colossal military and moral disaster; what is it? A quagmire? A morass? Mere turmoil at the bloody borders of the empire? Or a fetid sewer into which the nation has cast, in a season of madness, our blood, our treasure, our power and our honor?

Case in point: the Washington Post has a long article today titled simply "In Iraq, Military forgot lessons of Vietnam", well worth a read. It details in exquisitie detail how exactly we tumbled over this abyss, once the war had been won and this country, under leadership at once staggeringly inept and profoundly criminal, proceeded to lose the peace.

On the morning of Aug. 14, 2003, Capt. William Ponce, an officer in the "Human Intelligence Effects Coordination Cell" at the top U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, sent a memo to subordinate commands asking what interrogation techniques they would like to use."The gloves are coming off regarding these detainees," he told them. His e-mail, and the responses it provoked from members of the Army intelligence community across Iraq, are illustrative of the mind-set of the U.S. military during this period.

The current situation in the Middle East is one formed over many years by the oppression of its peoples, including colonization and manipulation by countries far from the Middle East. The unthinking attempts to solve a problem by hurting the other side with enough death and damage that they will accept one's position cannot work, but is now being played out, yet again.

Fresh thinking is needed to find solutions to the real problems that exist, not the repetition of old, failed and unworkable policies on all sides, not terrorism nor mass retaliation nor oppression. Such actions simply lead to a reinforcement of the existing difficulties, make it ever more difficult to find a real, just, and workable solution, and must be abandoned.

Any real solutions cannot be enforced by one side on another, nor by outside forces manipulating the peoples of the Middle East, or those will not ever be real solutions, just another set of enforced inequities that will foster more violence, death, and destruction in the future.

All peoples involved in the present conflict are good humans who have been oppressed and hurt, and none should be blamed for the distressed actions of their governments or other groups operating in their territories. The fears we all feel at the situation should not be used to justify our giving in to any pull to act oppressively at any people.

Cowboy diplomacy

Some points about these comments :

1. Bush does not know the correct use of the term 'ironic'.

2. He talks about Condoleeza Rice as if she knows exactly what do : You don't know if he talks about her as an expert in diplomacy or the woman that cleans after he's done crapping all over the world.

3. Bush believes the fighting will be over if Syria tells Hezbollah to stop picking fights with Israel?!?!?

4. Tony Blair is actually trying to have a dicussion about policy and diplomacy with Bush?

Oy.

[via YouTube - war]:

I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor, where it has stubbornly remained since I watched Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press this morning. Check out the link, it has video.

Gingrich called for the United States to join the current war in Lebanon - yes, it's a war, not a 'crisis' - using the rationale that the current 'war on terror' - the one republicans are fighting by selling our ports to one of two governments to recognize the Taliban, cutting funding for actual terror targets and promoting amnesty for insurgents in Iraqi jails - is actually World War III.

What Gingrich did not mention are two pertinent facts: one, that he is making this argument out of concern over the November mid-terms, and two, that U.S. involvement would be an egregiously bad idea for several reasons.

On Newt's first omission, I confess to a certain speechlessness. This man is calling for a shooting war (for which we are not prepared, and the strategic objectives of which would be murky at best) so the republicans can hold on to Congress. How many dead GIs is a House seat worth? How about the Senate? My next question would be how this kind of argument differs substantially from treason; but he's a republican, meaning the media will as usual just chuckle excitedly about his bold visions instead of excoriating this kind of talk as the treacherous bile that it is.

A lifetime ago, when I was a young and relatively carefree college student, I had an International Politics professor at New York University who non-chalantly declared that in 20 years time the United States would be fighting World War III and that it would not be in Europe and against Russia but in the heat of the dessert and against guerrillas in the Middle East.

I am notoriously bad with names --I guess because, if he had any, I didn't read any of books. Bertell Ollman's Alienation was a must given I was still a Marxist; but this guy (Silverman? Silverstein?) I blocked out of my mind but for his prediction. In a classroom filled with no neck jocks** that gushed over Ronald Reagan's hairdo, those words stuck with me like glue. The Berlin wall was 3 years away from being torn down, so the idea that a war of that magnitude could be waged in the Middle East and, even more incredibly, spearheaded by Israel .... well, let's just say I was young and naive.

It's happening.

When I was ready to publish this post, 24 hours ago, three major incidents had happened. In an alleged attempt to snuff out a senior Hamas activist (whatever that means), Israel dropped a missile in the middle of a residential area, killing 6 people, including 2 children. 48 hours before that report, Israel not only had bombed the residential area but they bombed Lebanon's airport by midnight EST and now, at 3:45 EST reports are coming in that they've also bombed the Palestinian foreign ministry in Gaza City.