“The American president could hardly have envisaged a more unfavorable climate for his Middle East tour. Expected this morning in Jerusalem to participate in celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, George W. Bush will have few other reasons to rejoice during a tour that will also take him to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and which is likely to illustrate the failure of his policies in the region. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is on the brink of collapse. In Lebanon, the pro-Western government of Fouad Siniora is suffering a Hezbullah onslaught, while the Shiite movement is supported by the two black beasts of U.S. policy in the region, Iran and Syria.”
By Patrick Saint-Paul, correspondent in Jerusalem
Translated By Sandrine Agoerges
May 13, 2008
France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)
The American president arrives in Israel in midst of political uncertainty and with the peace process is at a standstill.
The American president could hardly have envisaged a more unfavorable climate for his Middle East tour. Expected this morning in Jerusalem to participate in celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, George W. Bush will have few other reasons to rejoice during a tour that will also take him to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and which is likely to illustrate the failure of his policies in the region. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is on the brink of collapse. In Lebanon, the pro-Western government of Fouad Siniora is suffering a Hezbullah onslaught, while the Shiite movement is supported by the two black beasts of U.S. policy in the region, Iran and Syria.
For his second visit to Jerusalem since last January, Bush will be forced to note that since he undertook to revive peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians at Annapolis in late 2007, no progress has been made. “Unless he has a rabbit in his hat, this will be the third time in the past half year that the U.S. president shows the Palestinians and the entire Arab world that they are wasting their time by trying to end the occupation by peaceful means.” says Akiva Eldar in an editorial entitled Bush should stay home .
The hope of the American President to see an agreement before the end of the year seems illusory. According to his entourage, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, told Bush during his visit to Washington last month that upon discovering the positions of Israeli negotiators, he thought it was a joke - so far where they from the parameters set by Bill Clinton at the time of the previous talks.
According to the Palestinians, Israeli negotiators sought to retain, in addition to large areas with Jewish settlements, the Jordan Valley up to the outskirts of Nablus - amounting to about 10 percent more territory. In Jerusalem, there would be no question of splitting the old city - home to the sacred sites, nor the restoration of the Arab districts that border it. Israel merely proposed Palestinian control over an “Esplanade of Mosques” and some of the suburbs surrounding East Jerusalem. The talks were jeopardized by programs to enlarge Israeli settlements in the West Bank and violence in Gaza strip, where missiles launched by Hamas activists have led to an Israeli military response.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing foreign press coverage of President Bush’s trip to the Middle East.
Now that the pro-Western government in Lebanon has been “put in its place” by Hezbollah - and by extension Iran and Syria - what is Israel up against - and what narrative will the Islamists use to heal the wounds and consolidate their victory?
Explaining why Lebanon’s Pro-West Sunni government is afraid of Hezbullah and Iran, Zaatera writes:
“The people of the Umma [the Muslim Nation] and in particular the Sunnis, are as captive as they are perplexed. On the one hand, they know that what’s happening in Lebanon is an integral part of the battle that the Americans and Israelis are waging against forces of resistance and opposition in the region. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s a dance going on between Syria and Israel over the resumption of peace talks. It’s a jig that’s complicated by the various military maneuvers of each side, the resistance of the Bush administration, and the demands of the Olmert government. Ultimately, peace overtures are likely to fall short – at least for the time being.
First, some background. Israel invaded the Golan Heights, a very fertile and beautiful part of Syria, back in 1967. They have yet to give it up, and Syria considers it the defining issue of contention in their frosty relationship [left: a photo I took in Damascus that reads: “The Golan is Syrian land.”] Now, some 20,000 Jewish settlers and a roughly similar number of Arabs live in the Israeli-occupied territory. Under the 1974 ceasefire agreement brokered by Henry Kissinger, a demilitarized separation barrier has been created between the two countries, now patrolled by 1,000 UN blue helmets. The strip of land fluctuates between several miles and just a few hundred yards in width.
There have been several attempts to normalize relations and negotiate an agreement over the future of the Golan. As a result of the discussions started at the 1991 Madrid Conference, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin engaged in several years of discussions, but no deal was reached. There were then talks during Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure, continuing into the premiership of Israel’s Ehud Barak. In 1999-2000, the most vigorous attempt was made to end the longstanding dispute. With Clinton acting as the mediator, Assad and Barak failed to reach a deal – but they came extremely close. Directly after the Hezbollah-Israeli war of 2006, Hafez’s son and now the current president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, offered to engage with Israel again in a renewed effort to reach a final agreement. As the International Crisis Group recalls [PDF], “In a series of interviews with leading international media organisations [in 2006], he offered a vision of Israel and Syria living ’side-by-side in peace’. Negotiations could resume without preconditions, a deal could be concluded within six months, normalisation under the terms of the Arab League (Beirut) initiative would result, he said. In an interview with Der Spiegel – which some Israelis hailed as ‘remarkable’ – Syria distanced itself from Iran and its president’s call for Israel’s destruction.”
April 15th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
With its perpetually (and historically) rocky relationship, the Arab and European worlds have seldom met in a peaceful manner (or without suspicion) during the past half a millenium ever since the downfall of the Moorish civilization in Spain. In this context the on-going London Book Fair, with the “Arab World” as guest of honour and Arab writers present in force, provides yet another opportunity to build a bridge between the two worlds.
The Independent writes: “Imperial bureaucrats, soldiers and scholars on one side; radical nationalists, pious militants and oil-rich oligarchs on the other – all have had their various axes to grind, and to wield. Now, perhaps, the writers of the Arab world can begin to find a voice in the West again. It’s always easier to love distant stars when they can shine, plainly and legibly, on the page in front of us.
“The (London) fair will be the culmination of a long-term plan, steered by the British Council, to forge firmer cultural bonds. And, although he comes from far beyond the Arab world (and writes in English), the Afghan author Khaled Hosseini’s double coup in topping the UK charts both with The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns has helped to put a spring in the step of everyone who wants to widen the readership for literature from the Middle East and North Africa.
(The Kite Runner novel was the third best-seller for 2005 in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan. It’s been published in 38 countries, translated into 42 languages, turned into an Oscar-nominated movie – and sold more than 10 million copies — one of the publishing industry’s greatest success stories. Now the search is on for the next big thing to come from the East. The Kite Runner is a 2007 Academy Award-nominated film directed by Marc Forster based on the novel of the same name by Khaled Hosseini (click here for more…)
“In the Gulf, lavishly funded new competitions such as the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the ‘Arab Booker’) and the Sheikh Zayed Awards have signalled the intention of the emirate of Abu Dhabi to build up its name as a global centre of culture. Not to be outdone, and fretting perhaps at its current reputation as the world capital of bling, neighbouring Dubai begins a new literary festival next year. Also in Abu Dhabi, the Kalima translation project has launched an ambitious, state-financed programme to bring, at the rate of 100 per year, classic and contemporary books from around the world into Arabic for the first time and to distribute them across the region. ” More here…
I lived in London during the mid-1970s. I extensively covered there a major “World of Islam Festival” for The Statesman newspaper in India. The festival was opened by Queen Elizabeth II. “As far as anyone can remember, such an attempt had never been made before—and probably could not have been. It is only recently that one civilization has been capable of looking at another civilization objectively, rather than as a potential rival or convert. Read the rest of this entry »
We just posted at WORLDMEETS.US something that anyone interested in global affairs simply must watch.
Nearly every year at the annual Arab Summit, Libyan despot Muammar Qadhafi gives a speech to the collected rulers of the Arab world who in stony-faced silence, sit and listen to him. Invariably - it is absolutely priceless.
Just last night I left this comment on this TMV post about wanting peace for children of Israel and Palestine:
I don’t see anyone acknowledging what it would take for people who live in the occupied territories to believe that their children can live in peace and what it would take for people who live in the state of Israel to believe that their children can live in peace.
What exactly might that be?
One element is trust - trust that this is what both populations want.
How do you build trust? Through learning and coming to an understanding about common perspectives and common issues, as well as different perspectives and difference issues. Without knowledge about one another, there can never be a stable sense of trust because everything is based on hearsay and speculation.
Today, the Jerusalem Post (here) and Ha’aretz (here) have published articles about how Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah wants to “convene a meeting between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious communities.”
From the JPost article:
“I invite representatives of all the monotheistic religions to meet with their brothers in faith,” the king was quoted as saying. The theme of the expected conference was reported to be “respect among the religions.”
The news agency reported that senior Muslim leaders authorized the idea and consultations would be made with Islamic religious authorities from other countries. The king went on to say that “with God’s help we will meet our brethren from other religions, including those who believe in the Torah and in the Gospel, in order to find ways to defend humanity.”
This, he said, comes after humanity has lost its morality, sincerity and steadfastness. Also, the religions were confronted by challenges such as dealing with the disintegration of the family and ever-expanding Atheism, he said.
Why this hasn’t been done before, or at least to my memory, I can’t say though I’m sure there are many good reasons. However, the fact is that the Saudi King is under great pressure in his own country to modernize and Westernize, in terms of women’s rights and religious diversity and tolerance. His would not be the first time an ostensible leader of one religion seeks information and possibly advice from another religion to understand how religions manage under such pressures.
What might the meeting offer as an outcome? Impossible to say, but given the nature of intolerance in the region right now, even within countries, let alone between them, it’s hard to imagine the meeting making things worse. (I know - never say that!)
Studying in Damascus in 2005-6, I was struck by the Syrian obsession with the Golan Heights. Since the Israelis took the fertile territory back in 1967, the Syrians have made its reacquisition a central goal of their foreign policy. They tried unsuccessfully to retake the land in 1973, and they now jealously guard a UN-staffed ceasefire line.
The Syrian town along the border, Qunetra, is a wasteland. No one lives there. Instead, the Syrians have largely left it untouched since the Israelis destroyed it in 1967. Houses are down, buildings have huge holes in them, and the place is eerily quiet. When I requested to visit the city, I was treated with intense suspicion and only able to proceed when accompanied by nervous-looking Syrian police. The city appeared much like I imagine it looked after the Six-Day War - in fact, the Syrians have deliberately left it this way as a propaganda tool against the Israelis. The Qunetra hospital (click to see photo), torn apart by Israeli military might, is one of the most shocking monuments of the 1967 war and a walk inside the complex shows that the piles of rubble (see photo) have yet to be removed. A sign in badly-worded English makes the message clear: “Destroyed by Zionists and changed it to firing target!”
It would be a mistake to underestimate the extent to which the Syrian government is obsessed with the Golan Heights. In fact, some analysts have argued that retaking the Golan, even more than hanging on to Lebanon, is the defining goal of Bashar al-Assad’s foreign policy agenda. His support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and his alliance with Iran, then, is primarily a way of keeping pressure on Israel and maintaining bargaining chips to be traded away when the time is right. Interestingly, several articles that I’ve read recently have bolstered that theory, and have also raised my hopes that a possible long-term peace deal is not out of the question. Read the rest of this entry »
The German Daily, Die Zeit, benefits from having regular commentary by Germany’s former Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer. I am always inclined to read pieces by former players on the world stage more closely than others, since where journalists have, in the final analysis, to guess about the dynamics of global politics, these players draw on an internalized knowledge of the way things really work - after all the processes that happen away from our eyes, and the eyes of newspapers reporters and pundits, have played out.
From Iran’s and Syria’s point of view, the past years have strengthened and not weakened their position… Today, Iran is the most influential power in Iraq
The stakes,
Whoever wins control over Iraq and the Persian Gulf will sooner or later claim absolute dominance and hegemony in the entire region
The future,
Iran[’s] dangerousness may not be underestimated…. No American president will be able to simply withdraw their troops from Iraq. A fallback without political resolution would be an unprecedented disaster for the interests and the prestige of the world power of the USA. … Out of self-interest, the new American government, if in a Democratic or Republican form, will pursue a politic of involvement and direct negotiations with Iran and Syria.
Syria is engaged in a renewed crackdown on political dissent, culminating with the recent detention of Riad Seif (left), a prominent opposition leader. This won’t be the first time that Seif’s been in jail - in 2001, he and several other pro-democracy advocates were thrown into prison for five-year terms, effectively ending a period of political openness known as the “Damascus Spring.” No doubt to bolster its reputation in the wake of the Hariri assassination, Bashar al-Assad’s government briefly released a number of political dissidents (including Mr. Seif) in January of 2006.
But such an action has brought dangers of its own for Assad’s beleaguered regime. Seif is well-respected in Syria, and is “known on the streets of Damascus as an honest businessman who treats employees with unusual generosity.” His presence is a unifying one for many disgruntled Syrians and his message of political openness rings true with much of the struggling middle-class. Seif’s image is, to a significant extent, magnified by the perceived corruption and unreliability of the alternative National Salvation Front, an opposition political force in-exile led by a bizarre alliance between former vice president, Abdel Halim Khaddam, and prominent members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. (A strange coalition indeed, given that Khaddam was part of the Assad administration when the infamous Hama massacre occurred.)
Washington, for its part, doesn’t seem to have done anything about the decision to re-detain Mr. Seif. Not dissimilar to the way that Ayman Nour has been left to fend for himself in Egypt’s prison system, there has not been even a simple request of Damascus for more information. Disappointingly, as journalist Joe Macaron reports, “so far the U.S. Chargé d’Affairs in Syria reportedly has not broached the topic with the sole Syrian official with whom he meets, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Faisal al-Mikdad.”
While America’s political capital vis-a-vis Syria is undoubtedly low, it doesn’t take much ingenuity to realize that there are still levers that could be pulled to discourage this latest crackdown. Washington has numerous carrots that it can offer — trade ties, most prominently — and a range of sticks. Unfortunately, by failing to even maintain a dialogue with Damascus (there has not been an American ambassador in the Syrian capitol for several years), we’ve badly undercut our ability to influence events. Now, rather than standing up for the cause of pro-democracy activists, the Bush administration is restricted to merely watching from afar.
January 25th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
A police intelligence officer looking into assassinations in Lebanon was killed in a targeted bomb attack — continuing the cycle of politically motivated murders.
One question now being asked: was Al Qaeda behind the killing? Or could it really be Syria? Or is there a convergence of bloody interests at play there?
A car bomb killed a police intelligence officer involved in the investigation of assassinations in Lebanon, in an attack in a Christian suburb of Beirut on Friday.
Police chief Brigadier-General Ashraf Rifi named the officer targeted in the blast while on his way to work as Captain Wisam Eid. A bodyguard and two other people were also killed.
Major hattip to TMV co-blogger, Holly in Cincinnati/Holly Robinson for the heads up that someone’s persuaded Canada that the U.S. and Israel are not countries that might potentially torture or abuse prisoners. The original TMV post on the topic is here.
Canada’s foreign ministry, responding to pressure from close allies, said on Saturday it would remove the United States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured.
Both nations expressed unhappiness after it emerged that they had been listed in a document that formed part of a training course manual on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats.
Of course, the factual questions still remain: what methods of interrogation are used and do they or don’t they constitute torture or abuse? As most people know, in regard to pretty much anything - poverty, education, quality of life - being on a list often has no real meaning beyond the very specific methodologies used by the list-maker.
Do you agree with the inclusion or the exclusion of the U.S. and/or Israel from the Canadian Foreign Ministry’s torture awareness manual?
A training manual for Canadian diplomats lists the United States among countries that potentially torture or abuse prisoners.
The manual is an internal document of the Department of Foreign Affairs. A spokesman for the foreign minister confirmed the contents of the manual after news reports about it circulated on Thursday.
[snip]
The manual, in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, is used for training diplomats in how to protect Canadians detained by foreign governments from torture and how to handle suspicions that inmates are abused.
Any guesses on how long it will be before the PowerPoint slides make it onto the Internet?
According to the Times, other countries on the list include Israel, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and China. Strange bedfellows.
So - should we or shouldn’t we be on such a list? Well, according to this BBC report, the document includes, “forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and the blindfolding of prisoners under the ‘definition of torture.’”
While I can chide and say that, as an overachieving multi-tasker, I don’t see isolation as torture for me, in the context of how one country treats its POWs? I’m sure we’re not talking the same kind of isolation offered or achieved.
Where do we draw the line? Are we allowed to be hypocrites in the name of security?
Here’s more context as to why the Canadian Foreign Ministry felt compelled to produce the manual and training in the first place.
From a distance, here are impressionistic views of an American citizen on how American presidential candidates stack up on foreign policy. These views are impressionistic because they represent not the unknowable substance of the candidates’ real foreign policy knowledge and positions, but only what they may show us in their Web sites and public foreign policy statements, filleted through my own faulty perception of those views. If these impressions are incorrect, I hope that readers will hasten to correct them.
The Iowa caucus results may not mean much. It is hard to believe that Mike Huckabee, for example, can really become a national candidate based on those results, or that Rudy Giuliani is really finished as a presidential candidate. But these non-binding popularity contests give us a sense of what Americans want and what is important to them.
He continues:
All the major U.S. candidates are against terrorism. Don’t laugh. In a free election in the Middle East, that unanimity could not be taken for granted, and that stance would not necessarily be popular. In Iran or the Palestinian territories, it would not be a viable political stance. However, most of the candidates seem to be unaware of how woefully unprepared the United States is to fight terrorism, or what has to be done to correct the problem. Nobody gets into the problem of where all the billions went in Iraq, or why US forces never seem to be able to prevent terror attacks there.
All the major Democratic candidates promise to withdraw from Iraq no matter what, and all the Republican candidates promise that US troops will stay in Iraq no matter what and fight to victory. They must all be intelligent enough to realize that arising contingencies may force them to pursue different policies, but in a democracy, you need to tell the people what you think they want to hear in order to win elections.
He ends with:
The soundest foreign policy statement of any of the candidates is just horse sense. In just about a year, one of these people is going to be running the United States, and effectively, the world. Scary, isn’t it?
Watching Americais collecting the commentary out of the Middle East on Bush’s upcoming tour there.
Many Arabs are exhibiting a kind of exasperated “Don’t bother coming; you’ve done enough damage already”. It seems the situation on the ground, for which they hold Bush largely responsible, speaks more loudly than Bush will when he arrives.
• In Iraq, 568 people were killed in the last months of 2007.
• In the Somali capital of Mogadishu, 6,500 civilians were killed last year, with more than 8,500 wounded. In the same vein, some 1.5 million people were displaced from the capital that is lost in its myriad of weapons.
• In the latest clashes between “Fatah” and “Hamas” in Gaza on New Year’s Eve, seven Palestinians were killed, while Israel came through 2007 with only one suicide attack …And on the first day of the new year, 30 Iraqis were killed by a suicide bomber who attacked people offering condolences.
This particular writer concludes that the Arabs can envy the Americans, who at least are now counting down the days to Bush’s departure.
Another writer from Lebanon notes that Bush’s tour will be dominated by the capitals that he refuses to visit - Damascus and Tehran, indicating that others in the Middle East (and remember here the Persian-Arab tensions which are every bit as important geopolitically as the Israeli-Arab ones) are reasonably nervous at the ambiguity of the U.S.’s recent statements and actions toward Iran, especially given how historically Mr Bush’s interlocutors have suffered when U.S. policy toward the region shifts abruptly.
…Most governments trying to keep the lid on their turbulent societies are increasingly resorting to tighter forms of authoritarianism. Policemen, armed forces personnel and undercover security agents are now the most common representations on the street of governments in the region. In some places - central Cairo, parts of Beirut, much of Jerusalem - uniformed men with guns define the public sphere.
Consequently, as Bush visits the Middle East again, the welcoming party is a regional landscape of conflict, killing and suffering, orchestrated by local and foreign political leaders who seem totally baffled by the mess they have created.This situation has worsened in the past four and a half years since Bush visited Egypt and Jordan, in what turned out to be a failed - perhaps an originally insincere - bid to foster Palestinian-Israeli peace.
And the author’s advice for Bush?
With all due respect, Bush might do the region and the entire world a favor by staying home - if he plans to visit the Middle East only to speed up the same American policy of blindly supporting Israel, sending arms and money to Arab authoritarian regimes, opposing mainstream Islamist groups that enjoy widespread popular legitimacy, ignoring realistic democratic transitions, and actively pressuring governments and movements that defy the United States.
November 25th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Venue: Annapolis, Maryland. Subject: Middle East Peace Conference.
Major Participants: The USA, the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Syrians, and the Saudis.
This week, beginning Tuesday, will see President George Bush make his first, and almost certainly his only, major attempt to bring an end to the world’s most intractable conflict, reports The Independent.
How will President Bush fare in a belated attempt to play peacemaker? “The reasons propelling the various parties to attend the conference are well known. They include the common domestic weaknesses of Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, and Mr Bush himself. For all three, a genuine and concerted push for peace would improve their standing at home.
“For Mr Bush especially, and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, major progress in their remaining year or so in office would put a positive gloss on a ‘legacy’ that now consists primarily of the debacle in Iraq, and the huge strategic victory the 2003 invasion presented to Iran. Indeed, Tehran’s growing power in the region, feared by Israel and moderate Sunni Arab states alike, is a main reason why the gathering is taking place.
“At the same time, US negotiators hope that the very number of Arab countries attending (16 in all as well as the Arab League) will be seen by Israel as an assurance that any deal with the Palestinians that does ultimately emerge from the process initiated at Annapolis will have broad Arab backing – hastening final acceptance in the region of the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
“But if the moment is unusually propitious for negotiation, never have the obstacles to a peace deal been higher. It was not clear yesterday whether even a joint document would be agreed. The Saudi foreign minister is refusing to shake hands with the Israelis…
“Belatedly, the Bush mindset seems to be changing. Moreover Ms Rice, who has visited the region repeatedly to urge a visible ‘horizon,’ not empty promises, for Palestinian aspirations, has more clout in the Oval Office than her hapless predecessor Colin Powell, whose efforts to push Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts were always thwarted by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Mr Rumsfeld may be gone, the vice-President remains, even more unpopular than his boss, but still vastly influential…”
The Guardian says: “”Confirmation that President Bashar al-Assad (of Syria) is sending his deputy foreign minister means that the Maryland meeting will be the best-attended Middle Eastern summit since the Madrid conference in 1991 - although the stakes are higher and expectations far lower.
President George Bush and his team is working overtime to achieve success by meeting in advance both Israeli and Palestine leaders, and others. “President Bush said last night that the broad attendance ‘demonstrates the international resolve to seize this important opportunity to advance freedom and peace in the Middle East’.
“The question is, what can happen beyond tomorrow’s ritual speeches? Both leaders face powerful opposition - Abbas from Hamas and Olmert from coalition partners and opposition parties against concessions on settlements, Jerusalem and easing restrictions in the West Bank…”
Is the U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference next month geared toward cheating the Palestinians, rather than finding an equitable solution to the region’s woes? According to this op-ed article from Syria’s state-run Teshreen newspaper, beyond cheating the Palestinians, the conference is intended to absorb some of the global resentment that has intensified toward President Bush and American foreign policy.
By Gaazi Aldada
Translated By James Jacobson
October 16, 2007
Syria - Teshreen - Home Page (Arabic)
In one of her previous visits to the region, American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice declared frankly, “I have come to the region with an empty suitcase.â€
Perhaps her current visit will be in keeping with the obscurity of her past visits - without apparent clear-cut objectives or stated goals. But this doesn’t mean this is simply a courtesy call. She has arrived with real objectives, although the real goals can only be seen but under the table between Rice and the Israelis.
This obscurity that surrounds Rice, her President and all of her colleagues in the American administration isn’t the result of a lack of clarity in their outlook or thinking. The reverse is true, since the Americans know precisely what they are doing, what they’re thinking and what their plans are for the region. This is deliberate obscurity, the primary goal of which is to keep the door partly open so as to wash their hands of any specific commitments, ideas or proposals that American officials have made before.
It’s easy to see that at the very moment they decided to convene their “Peace Conference,†the American discourse maintained the usual level of obscurity, since the event is sometimes called a “conference†and sometimes it’s called a “meeting,” with the intent of reducing the level of expectation. Even its stated timing, goals and invitations are unclear, nor is Rice using her current visit to alleviate any of this lack of clarity, which is in keeping with her usual rule.
It’s no leap of faith to believe that the real objectives of this conference will be to cheat the Palestinians of the rights that have been denied them, in fact reducing them to the lowest possible level. In addition, the conference will be used as a kind of sponge to absorb some of the resentment that has intensified toward American foreign policy around the world and to show that President George Bush is not just a man of war who has done nothing for peace.
September 21st, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Insurance companies might consider dropping life insurance to politicians in Lebanon who are known critics of Syria. Yet another one has violently bit the dust:
Antoine Ghanem, the Christian MP murdered in a Beirut car-bomb attack, was a member of the anti-Syrian March 14 block which forms the backbone of the Western-supported Lebanese Government. His death has reduced the number of seats held by the block in the 128-member parliament to 68 — only three more than the Opposition, led by the militant Shia Hezbollah.
Government figures have blamed Syria for Mr Ghanem’s murder, a charge denied strongly by Damascus.
Damascus has been doing a lot of denying as the body count has been piling up:
Boutros Harb, a presidential candidate from the March 14 block, said “This is an attack aimed at sabotaging all efforts to reach a solution to the current political crisis. You cannot separate this killing from the presidential election.â€
The block’s surviving MPs are scheduled to convene on Tuesday to elect a new president to replace Emile Lahoud, a close ally of Syria whose term ends on November 24. But security fears have complicated even further a gruelling political stalemate over the identity of the next head of state.
Some 40 MPs belonging to the March 14 block have sought refuge in a wing of the heavily guarded Phoenicia Hotel — one of Beirut’ s grandest, more accustomed to hosting millionaire holidaymakers from the Gulf states. Since the beginning of the year, Fouad Siniora, the Prime Minister, and most of his Cabinet have been working and sleeping in the Grand Serail, a hill-top Ottoman-era army barracks that houses the Government’s offices.
On the two key issues for 2008, Dennis Kucinich seems to be in tune with Democratic voters. He wants to get us out of Iraq, and he favors a single-payer not-for-profit health care plan.
But his campaign is stuck in the second tier of candidates in single digits. Why? Is he too short? Is his name too hard to pronounce and spell? Does he make voters uneasy by unconventional moves such as his recent visit to Syria? Do they tune out because his solemn air makes them uncomfortable?
Amid all the talk about a woman or Afro-American in the White House, there seems to be a resistance to taking Kucinich seriously because, in some way, he is not stereotypically presidential–too ethnic, too working-class, too head-on in confronting issues without softening the edges.
He voted against the Iraq war and, in 2004, paid his dues by earning double-digit percentages of the vote in the Maine, Minnesota, Hawaii and Oregon primaries. But this time, he comes off as a “tweener,†not as slick as John Edwards or eccentric enough like Mike Gravel to show up on a Bill Maher panel.
If we were living in a Frank Capra movie, he might have a chance. Growing up so poor that his family was often homeless, fighting his way up in Cleveland politics and slipping back so far that in 1982 he reported $38 on his tax return, coming back to win a seat in Congress and the heart of a beautiful, idealistic young woman, Dennis Kucinich is an exemplar of what used to be the American Dream.
But these days, Frank Capra movies seem to be appropriate only for Christmas, not Election Day.
The news that Israel conducted a flyover of Syrian territory has caused something of a diplomatic incident between the two countries. Syria has expressed strong outrage that its sovereignty was violated, and proudly claims that it effectively retaliated by hitting one of the invading planes with anti-aircraft weaponry. Israel, meanwhile, has not been forthcoming with an explanation, so rumors are rife as to what exactly the flyover was meant to accomplish.
July 30th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
The best diagnostic clues may come from the Freedom of Information Act. I have been reading de-classified documents from the CIA about Iraq this week. The docs reach back to before the time Saddam murdered his way into power…
…so far back in fact that Saddam’s name is spelled Hussyn, and so far back that the writer of some of the documents called him Saddam Tikriti, Tikriti used as his surname, the writer seeming not to realize Tikriti was the name of both Saddam’s tribal affiliation and home place; and as such, is attached at the end of everyone’s name who is from that tribe, sort of as if after our surnames, also was tacked on the name, “Usa.”
Nonetheless, it was breathtaking to see that Iraq was in the 20th century a constitutional republic that was hijacked, that Britain had once occupied the entire area and still had an interest in Iraq via Tony Blair, that this was not a new and sudden interest, but an old exploitative one of memory
… and that in the old moldering war between Iraq and Iran, the USA took up with Iraq, befriended Saddam, even though the CIA records from that time clearly provided more than one report that Saddam was vicious and unreliable and had closed out, exiled or murdered any who didn’t agree with him or threatened him. A template of a dictator…
According to the CIA top secret reports now declassified, still with some blobs of black Magic Marker purporting to shield names… although any person who can draw a psychological “complete-this-picture-test” can, more than half the time guess what lies under the black blot. It is clear from the documents that the USA has an 8 decade long, at least, history of sleeping around in the mideast, first this side, then the other, with thus far, no lasting fealty.
Then we come to the present, to one of the strangest CIA documents declassified that tells in some detail, if one were so inclined, how to smuggle any number of things and people and parts through in port containers. It is right there in black and soiled white on the page
… and so also, are continuous reports on Syria, Saudi Arabia, and other mideast countries, reports that say in essence, not about the most often good citizens per se, but about those in power over the citizens… ‘unstable,’ ‘unreliable processes,’ ‘old religious avengings expected to go on yet for decades,’ ‘egregious harm to large numbers of minorities,’ ‘known terrorism groups’ in each country..;. and one wonders how George Bush could ever have considered selling management of US ports to mideast interests. Doesn’t anyone read the CIA documentations to him, those clear documents that advise, have advised for decades now, to the exact contrary?
What is the psychology of a President who doesn’t read his own Intelligence arm’s classified or declassified documents about the very country he is waging war on/for… Why doesn’t he have an astute reader who reads for him? What is his psychology anyway?
