| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
09 Aug 2006 03:54:42 AM |
| Object: |
OT: A symbolic scalp |
A symbolic scalp
Gary Younge
August 9, 2006 09:30 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/gary_younge/2006/08/a_symbolic_scalp.html
There will be many outlandish claims made regarding Ned Lamont's narrow
victory against Joseph Lieberman over the next few weeks. Key among
them will be that this was a substantial win for the left. The right
will push this to suggest that the Democratic party has now been taken
over by an extremist rump in the tradition of McGovern.
The trouble with this claim is that according to every national poll
Lamont's views on Iraq echo the view of mainstream America. By a narrow
majority most Americans think the war was a bad idea, want the troops
out either now or soon, and believe Bush has handled the whole affair
badly. Lamont is not radical. He is moderate.
Making a mess of things
Conor Foley
August 8, 2006 05:07 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2006/08/post_289.html
When Tony Blair's political obituary is finally written, the words
"Iraq" and now "Lebanon" are sure to feature prominently in the
descriptions of his demise. I hope that Kosovo also gets a mention,
though, as a lot of Blair's subsequent foreign policy failures can be
traced back to that adventure.
Supporters of the Kosovo intervention in 1999 primarily relied on the
"just war" theory, which boils down to an assessment about whether the
use of force will do more harm than good. This is not the same as
international law, which outlaws the threat or use of force in all but
two circumstances: self-defence, and where it has been authorised by
the UN security council. These are much narrower grounds, and both
during and after the Kosovo conflict Blair has argued that the
"international community" should adopt a more interventionist approach.
'We are all Hizbullah now.' Really?
Harold Evans
August 8, 2006 05:04 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/harold_evans/2006/08/we_are_all_hizbullah_now_reall.html
"We are all Hizbullah now," proclaimed one of the banners at the Stop
the War coalition's London march. Really? Is it possible that more than
one person has taken leave of their senses?
It was a sign either of profound ignorance or a depraved indifference
to human life. Either way, the moral idiocy of the sentiment betrayed
the higher purpose of the march.
The Gulfies are coming
Faisal al Yafai
August 8, 2006 04:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/faisal_al_yafai/2006/08/the_gulfies_are_coming.html
Pity the Damascenes. It's the summer of refugees in Damascus; having
absorbed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their offspring over
the years since Israel was formed, around half a million Iraqis since
the war began next door, and 300,000 Lebanese in the last few weeks,
now the Gulfies are really coming. The city is so packed, traffic slows
to a sweltering crawl several times a day.
"Gulfies" is Arab slang for, rather obviously, people from the oil-rich
Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar.
With summer temperatures in those countries hitting 42C (108F), those
able to afford it are escaping abroad, either to Europe, America or the
Levantine Arab countries. (Someone told me Shanghai is now the hot
destination for well-heeled Saudis - a sign of the times.) There are
always a lot of Gulfies in Syria and Lebanon. Now, as missiles still
rain over Beirut, those next door have driven their SUVs down the
pockmarked road to Damascus. If an oversized SUV with tinted windows
cuts you off downtown, you can guarantee the licence plate will say
Qatar or Saudi Arabia.
A recurring nightmare
Dilip Hiro
August 8, 2006 03:29 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dilip_hiro/2006/08/a_recurring_nightmare.html
Those familiar with the recent history of the Middle East detect a
recurring pattern in the behaviour of Israel towards its Arab
neighbours.
The San Francisco Chronicle's report of off-the-record briefings to
American and other diplomats, think tanks and journalists by a senior
Israeli army officer over the past year, outlining the military plan
starting with aerial bombing and graduating to ground invasion of
Lebanon, is revelatory. It fits the Israeli action in June 1982 when it
invaded Lebanon.
Tears for Lebanon
Brian Whitaker
August 8, 2006 02:51 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_whitaker/2006/08/tears_for_lebanon.html
It's OK for women, but you would never have caught Saddam Hussein doing
it in public. Arab men don't cry. They're supposed to be strong,
stoical and in full control of themselves.
Europe's apartheid
Clive Baldwin
August 8, 2006 02:08 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/clive_baldwin/2006/08/clive_baldwin.html
Remember Bosnia and Kosovo? A decade ago dozens of countries, led, we
were proudly told, by the UK, announced they would end ethnic cleansing
in former Yugoslavia with their military, money and management. This
year the world seems poised to declare "mission accomplished" and end
its administration of both places. But it will leave behind societies
that, far from resolving their conflicts, are officially divided in a
way not seen since apartheid under South Africa. The political,
education, justice and even health systems are rigidly and legally
divided by ethnicity similar to what was once called "petty apartheid".
Many minorities, such as Roma, are officially subject to second-class
status.
It was all supposed to be rather different. The international community
sent a peacekeeping force into Bosnia in 1995, followed by a series of
"high representatives" (including Paddy Ashdown) who have been the real
rulers of Bosnia. In Kosovo, the supposedly successful NATO bombing to
protect minorities in 1999 led to the imposition of another
international peacekeeping force, and another international
administration, this time directly run by the UN itself.
The end of the beginning
Dan Plesch
August 8, 2006 01:28 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dan_plesch/2006/08/post_288.html
US forces are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in the Middle East
in a few hours. US readiness for more war is just one indicator that
the present war is likely to spread and intensify in the coming months.
Unnoticed amidst coverage of the war, Iran has rejected a UN resolution
demanding it halt uranium enrichment. Condoleezza Rice anticipates that
on the nuclear issue: "when the Iranians get past this August 31
deadline, I think they're going to see sanctions from the international
system that are going to start to make life pretty miserable." Ehud
Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, stated back in April that the
decisive point in Iran's development of nuclear arms would come in
months.
With extreme prejudice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1840133,00.html
The neocon claim that Jack Straw was dismissed because he is influenced
by Muslims is terrifying
John Williams
Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian
One of the most interesting things I did as Jack Straw's press
secretary was to arrange the meeting between some of his Muslim
constituents and Condoleezza Rice. That day in Blackburn last March
came to mind when I saw the extraordinary suggestion that Straw might
have been removed from the Foreign Office because the US administration
thought he was too influenced by Muslim opinion in the town.
I say "extraordinary" not because I think it's inaccurate but because
it takes extreme mental gymnastics to conceive how anyone could believe
it to be a bad thing to listen to and understand Muslim points of view.
I've no idea whether the story is true. Under our unwritten
constitution, nobody tells you why your competent, creative, diligent,
honest, thoughtful boss of five years has suddenly been defenestrated.
The pundits' platitudes do nothing to solve this crisis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1839984,00.html
Western commentators are having a bad war. It is appalling to watch
them goad leaders into another disastrous intervention
Simon Jenkins
Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian
If the first casualty of war is truth, the second is comment. While
soldiers fight, diplomats struggle and civilians die, the commentariat
is having a poor Middle East conflict. "Solutionists" dribble out their
six-point plans for peace and interventionists behave as if all the
world were fools and only they wise. I almost prefer the propagandists.
The format is familiar. It starts with an eye-catching list of
atrocities attributed equally to the Israelis and Hizbullah, followed
by nuanced sympathy for each in turn. Having thus established his
impartiality, the writer continues with a dollop of historical bromide
in which the west is to blame, as prelude to a "proposal" as pat as it
is implausible. Last comes a thunderous demand that all show various
abstract qualities "if peace is to return" - and the west's moral
supremacy made evident.
Israeli force can stop the rockets, but for how long?
The disproportionate response has increased Arab hatred, alienated the
world, and brought criticism from many Jews
David Goldberg
Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian
In one of the tractates of the Talmud - that vast repository of
rabbinic law and lore - there is a discussion about the difference
between killing in self-defence and murder. A man came before the
eminent Babylonian sage Raba and said that he had been ordered by the
governor of his town to kill a third party in order to save his own
life. Was he permitted to do so? No, ruled Raba, the principle that if
someone intends to kill then you kill him first only applies if thereby
the life of the intended victim is spared. Otherwise, "Say not that
your blood is redder than his; perhaps his blood is redder than yours."
Even in extreme circumstances we should comply with certain rules of
moral conduct that enable societies to function and sovereign states to
maintain relations with each other.
War, too, has its own rules of limitation and restraint, enshrined in
just-war theory, the Geneva conventions and international law.
Prominent among them is the doctrine of proportionality: that the
response to aggression should be commensurate with the act.
War in Lebanon becomes propaganda tool in Iran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldbriefing/0,,1324846,00.html
Simon Tisdall in Tehran
Tuesday August 8, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
A charity event in Tehran for the "children of the resistance" is but
one of many ways in which Iran's government is using the Lebanon crisis
to rally domestic support and advance its regional agenda. Highlighting
the "ongoing war of aggression against the defenceless and oppressed
Palestinian and Lebanese nations", the event featured supportive
messages and drawings from Iranian schoolchildren and a 25-metre
"solidarity scroll".
Iran profited greatly from the US-directed toppling of its enemies in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the Islamic Republic is once again the
accidental beneficiary of American and Israeli miscalculations on the
Middle East abacus - and, at the risk of becoming an even bigger target
for regime change, it is busily exploiting the opening.
'We are ready to fight, we are ready to die'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1840060,00.html
Clancy Chassay in Beirut
Wednesday August 9, 2006
The Guardian
Eleven-year-old Zahra sits on a desk in a crowded corridor of a west
Beirut school and explains eloquently why she believes in the need for
resistance.
"All children now want to grow up to fight Israel. It's shameful how we
are being treated. What have we as children ever done to them? Nobody
cares what happens to us, nobody will do anything if we don't defend
ourselves."
Her friend Howra, also 11 and also a refugee from southern Lebanon now
living in the school in Zarif, joins in. "Even if a thousand of our
fighters are killed we will remain strong. Even with the Israeli
technology, we are not afraid of them; we have the strongest fighters
in the world."
Robert Fisk: What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the
rubble?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1217826.ece
Published: 09 August 2006
There were bulldozers turning over the tons of rubble, a cloud of dust
and smoke a mile high over the smashed slums of Beirut's southern
suburbs and a tall man in a grey T-shirt - a Brooklyn taxi driver, no
less - standing on the verge of tears, staring at what may well be the
grave of his grandfather, his uncle and aunt. Half the family home had
been torn away and the entire block of civilian apartments next door
had been smashed to the ground a few hours earlier by the two missiles
that exploded in Asaad al-Assad Street.
What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble? The
last corpse had been a man whose face appeared etched in dust before
the muck was removed and he turned out to be paper-thin - so perfectly
had the falling concrete crushed him. Mohamed al-Husseini had left New
York for a holiday with his young wife and infant child - they were
safe in the centre of Beirut - because he wanted to see his family home
and talk to the relatives he grew up with.
Pro-war Lieberman loses to anti-Iraq war challenger
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1217906.ece
By Robert Tanner, AP
Published: 09 August 2006
Senator Joe Lieberman, the Democrats' most senior and outspoken
supporter of President George Bush's Iraq policy, fell to anti-Iraq war
challenger Ned Lamont today in Connecticut's Democratic primary
election.
The race was seen as a harbinger of sentiment over a conflict that has
claimed the lives of more than 2,500 US troops.
Robert Fisk: Israel's promise of humanitarian corridors is exposed as a
sham
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1217827.ece
Published: 09 August 2006
So much for Ehud Olmert's "humanitarian corridors". Two weeks after the
Israeli Prime Minister's comforting assertion - which no one in Lebanon
believed - the Israeli air force has blown up the last bridge across
the Litani river, in effect ending all humanitarian convoys between
Beirut and southern Lebanon. Requests from humanitarian organisations
for clearance from the Israelis are now being refused. Even the Red
Cross admits there is now, in effect, a blockade on a vast area along
the Lebanese border where thousands of civilians are still cowering in
their homes.
David Shearer, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Lebanon, has
pleaded with the Israelis to end their attacks against the country's
infrastructure and end all activities which threaten the transport of
humanitarian aid to the displaced. But convoys since have been
cancelled or forced to make long detours across the country and along
the edge of the Lebanese-Syrian border. Truck drivers are frightened to
risk their lives under Israeli air attack. I myself was on a Red Cross
field trip from Qlaya to Jezzine when, close to the village of Arab
Selim, an Israeli jet dropped a bomb on the road 80 metres in front of
us. On the Litani river, north of Tyre, the main road bridge had been
blasted away but the Lebanese army had constructed a temporary bridge
over the water to the west. Now that, too, has been ripped to pieces by
Israeli bombs.
The Lieberman Lesson
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/opinion/09scheiber.html?pagewanted=all
By NOAM SCHEIBER
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman's problem wasn't so much the war in
Iraq as the perception that he's a less than reliable partisan.
Revenge of the Irate Moderates
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/opinion/09wed1.html
The defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman at the hands of a Connecticut
businessman is bound to send a message to politicians of both parties
that voters are angry over the war in Iraq.
Anti-U.S. Feeling Leaves Arab Reformers Isolated
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/world/middleeast/09arabs.html?ref=world&pagewanted=all
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Moderate Arab reformers say that U.S. support for Israel's battle
with Hezbollah has put them on the defensive.
Left or Right, Israelis Are Pro-War
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/world/middleeast/09israel.html?ref=world&pagewanted=all
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The harder the war with Hezbollah becomes, the more the Israeli public
wants it to proceed, and with greater force.
In 'Amajuba,' Method Acting of a Brutal Sort
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/theater/08amaj.html?ref=africa&pagewanted=all
By FELICIA R. LEE
"Amajuba: Like Doves We Rise" is a vivid rendition of how political
realities, like racial oppression or war, are composed of countless
personal tragedies.
War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080801276_pf.html
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 9, 2006; A01
The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that
would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA
officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war
prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.
Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the
mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set
of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The
conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading
treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those
terms mean.
Cooling Off About Keeping Up
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080800942.html
What's 'Competitiveness'?
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, August 9, 2006; Page A17
A prominent journalist wrote in 1947: "The basic power determinant of
any country is its steel production, and what makes this a great nation
above all is the fact that it can roll over 90 million tons of steel
ingots a year, more than Great Britain, prewar Germany, Japan, France,
and the Soviet Union combined ." Well, that was then. In 2005 the
United States ranked third in raw steel production. Its output (95
million metric tons) was behind Japan's (113 million tons) and less
than a third of China's (349 million). So?
We are experiencing another competitiveness panic. These occur every 15
or 20 years. There's an outpouring of worried reports and articles.
After Sputnik in 1957 -- the first artificial Earth satellite -- we
were supposedly doomed to be overtaken by the Soviet Union. In the late
1970s and 1980s, it was Germany and then Japan. Lately, China and India
have been the threats. Through it all, the United States has remained
the dominant global economy, representing about one-fifth of the
world's total output.
Israel Shuffles Command of Lebanon Offensive
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080800734_pf.html
Move Is Seen to Signal Dissatisfaction; Deadly Clashes Continue Along
Border
By Jonathan Finer and Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 9, 2006; A10
KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel, Aug. 8 -- Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters
waged deadly clashes in several border towns Tuesday and exchanged air
and rocket attacks as the Israeli army sent a new commander to oversee
its offensive, a move widely believed to reflect dissatisfaction with
the way the war is proceeding.
The command change came as Israel's top security officials were set to
meet Wednesday to consider an expansion of the ground offensive in
Lebanon, a move called for by several commanders.
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