Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Economics: Congressonal elections 2006: Big Three made-in-USA auto companies put pressure on GOP

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Reporter Charles Hurt, "GOP told to ignore Detroit at its peril" (Aug25,2k6) Washington Times analyzes the tension between historically-American carmakers headquartered in Detroit and the Republican Party in Michigan, with a Senate seat as well as governorship being hotly contested. Big Biz is supposed to support the GOP, according to conventional wiz. Apparently not so, this election year.

DETROIT -- Republicans here say that their national party's dismissive attitude toward the Big Three automakers could doom the party's hopes of capturing the governor's mansion and Senate seat in a large blue state this November.
North America > USA
Republicans in Congress have belittled Detroit's woes in recent weeks, and President Bush has been less than sympathetic to their plight, saying that they should focus on building more "relevant" vehicles.

But no slight has been more insulting here than the much-delayed meeting between Mr. Bush and the heads of Detroit's automakers to discuss U.S. trade policies and domestic issues such as health care costs, expensive pensions and other obligations to the federally protected autoworker unions.

"The administration is wrong on this issue," said Republican Dick DeVos, a longtime Bush supporter who has a good shot at unseating Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, who was a superstar among Democrats just two years ago. Since the summer, polls have shown the two swapping leads by a handful of points.

Principium Consumers Hub:
"The president needs to meet with the Big Three, and it must happen soon," Mr. DeVos told reporters this week. "29,000 people in Michigan lost jobs last month."

The state's unemployment rate is at 7 percent, which has given Republicans unusual openings in a state dominated by Democrats. It's been 18 years since a Republican won Michigan in a presidential election.

But is the job-bleed the fawlt of the guv? or is it simply the price of gas? Or could it be that at least a contributing factor is consumer dissatisfaction with the Big Three's product? If some brilliant economist could quantify the marginal factor of some Americans (how many?) getting sick of gas-guzzling pollution-engined autos, we mite be able to judge whether Prez Bush's attitude (if reported correctly by Hurst) is a positive moment in laissez-faire or whether the Fed govt should once again bail out these "heritage" megacapitalist corporations -- wastemakers and polluters in their own r+t, but also held up by union wage and benefit demands that are now sinking the ship that feeds them.

-- Owlb

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Politics: Netherlands: Dutch lead in helping poor countries, active in war for democracy Afghanistan

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The Dutch govt website featured an article recently reporting on the country's standing in contributions of relief, aid, and devlopment funding for the world's poor countries. Under the title, "Netherlands heads index on poverty reduction" (Aug14,2k6), the site reported:

This year the Netherlands heads the index of countries whose aid does the most to foster poor countries' development. This Commitment to Development Index rates 21 rich countries on policy areas that affect poverty reduction.

The independent Centre for Global Development and the magazine Foreign Policy, which issue the annual Commitment to Development Index, announced the result on 13 August.

The Commitment to Development Index rates 21 rich countries on seven policy areas that affect poverty reduction in developing countries: aid, trade, foreign investment, migration, environment, security and technology.
Europe > Netherlands
The Netherlands earned a high score particularly for the extent and quality of its aid, its promotion of investment in developing countries, its environmental policy and its participation in UN peace operations.

Development minister Agnes van Ardenne was pleased with the Netherlands' first place. 'This index shows that the efforts of the whole government for poverty reduction and development have gained the international appreciation they deserve,' she said.

Immediately following the Netherlands on the 2006 Commitment to Development Index are Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Today, the website ran a feature on the journey of the Netherlands' Prime Minister, Jan Pieter Balkenende, making a brief state visit on Aug26 with Afghanistan's President Karzai, and bringing tribute and encouragement from home to the 1,000 Dutch troops in Afganistan as part of the NATO Forces there.

Prime Minister Balkenende is party leader for Christian Democratic Appeal, uniting most of the Catholics and Protestants who vote confessionally in national elections. The party does not form a majority, but governs with coalition partners. Since the election which put CDA first, there have been conflicts in regard to two different parties in the origiinal coalition. Both times, the issues involved led to the resignation of the cabinet and the necessity of forming a new one, but not another general election. The present cabinet, following Dutch custom, is called Balkenende III. In the Netherlands, the cabinet members from the different parties of the governing coalition have considerable power, so the Prime Minister as head of the cabinet does not have to call an election, and can only shuffle the cabinet thru a process of inter-party negotiations of the members of the coalition the PM leads.

Altho some important officers and members of the CDA are sympathetic to the political philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd and the Protestant political ethics of M. D. Stafleu, there have been criticisms from reformational members of the party that its cabinet is not fully on course in regard the needs of Dutch society at the present time. The Balkenende cabinets I-III have restricted govt welfare outlays to some extent (altho they are still considered generous in some quarters). The govt also has had steer clear of the featherbedding labour policy that has brawt Germany and especially France into noncompetitive economic situations that have resulted in shrinkage of industry and h+ unemployment. Overall, Balkenende has steered the Netherlands between the Scylla and Charybdis of the present period in Europe.

-- Politicarp

As a Special Feature, refWrite page 3 includes remarks of Drs. Jet Weigand-Timmer, an active member of the CDA who writes for us from the social-reformational Christian viewpoint.

Politics: Mexican elections: No winner declared yet, but Mexico's Election Court dismisses Left claims

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The Mexican election, which has been contested by the Left by means of mass demonstrations that brawt Mexico City's business life, shopping, and culture above the street level all to a halt for over a month, has been adjudicated. The Leftist claims have been turned aside by the country's special Election Tribunal. Chris Aspin, reporting for Reuters via Washington Post, "Mexico court rejects claims of vote fraud" (Aug29,2k6), says:

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's top electoral court yesterday threw out leftists' claims of massive fraud in last month's presidential election, almost certainly handing victory to conservative candidate Felipe Calderon.

The seven judges voted unanimously to reject most of the legal complaints by left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he was robbed of victory in the July 2 vote.

The judges, whose rulings are final and cannot be appealed, must declare a president-elect by Sept. 6.

Mr. Lopez Obrador reacted in outrage, calling on supporters to reject Mr. Calderon as president.
North America > Mexico
"Never more will we accept that an illegal and illegitimate government is installed in our country," he told thousands gathered in Mexico City's central plaza, the Associated Press reported.

Mr. Lopez Obrador's supporters have paralyzed Mexico City with protests this month, and he has vowed to make the country ungovernable if the court declares Mr. Calderon the winner of the most bitterly contested election in Mexico's modern history.

Mr. Calderon said he would not be rattled by protests. "I will assume my role as president if that's what the court decides," he said during an event for businesswomen. "I won't let something that's been decided by all the citizens be undermined by a few in a violent way."
The content of Mr Aspin's dispatch shows that the Leftists will not be satisfied no matter what the Election Tribunal decides, and apparently want to create mischief perhaps fuelled by revolutionary fantasies that certain activist networks in Mexico entertain. However, what's more likely to happen as a result is that the Mexican economy will worsen, unemployment will not be ameliorted, and the pressure to join the millions of illegals in crossing the norther border will continue apace.

Mexico's only positive choice would be to buld the economy toward full employment, taking advantage of a lower wage-base than obtains with its northern neighbour and, thus, better positioned economically to market Mexican goods and foodstuffs both to the north and worldwide. Apparently, no such luck.

-- Politicarp

Monday, August 28, 2006

Canada: Latest political polls: Conservative standings in two SES polls

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Nik Nanos, the well-known pollster who runs SES Research and one of whose clients is Canadian political-news TV channel CPAC has published two polls in recent days. The first results were emailed Aug25,2k6. The second results were sentout on Aug27,2k6, "Comfort with a Federal Tory Majority." First, here's the first, "Federal support mirrors last election." Pollster Nanos informs us:

Although we did see some positive movement for the Tories [across Canada] when they focused on their five priorities – [but] the new focus on foreign policy (code – Middle East) has effectively changed the channel away from domestic issues. Remember - the last election was won by the Harper Tories on a platform of change, cleaning up government and fiscal issues. Apart from the Middle East issue, the political environment in the Fall will likely feature some sort of revisitation of the same sex marriage issue and the Liberal leadership process.

Of note is the fact that since the last quarterly poll the Conservatives are down nine points in Quebec (down from 35% to 26%). The Bloc Québécois are up five points to 42% and the Liberals are up three points to 22%. The softening of support in Quebec this quarter should be worrisome for the Tories.

As the numbers from our latest national survey came in Wednesday evening, this pollster had a serious case of déjà vu – pretty well exactly the same numbers as the last federal election [in January 2005].

-----------

Decided Canadian Voters
(N=886, MoE ± 3.3%, 19 times out of 20)


Conservatives 36% (-2)
Liberals 30% (+2)
NDP 18% (-1)
Bloc Quebecois 11% (+2)
Green 5% (-1)

Undecided 12% (+4)

The detailed tables with the regional sub-tabs and methodology are posted on our website at: http://www.sesresearch.com, and are available there in PDF format for download.

Any use of the poll should identify the source as the SES Research National Survey.

North America > Canada

In the second poll being cited, emailed today by SES, Nanos explores the growth of "comfort," short of support to the same extent, for a Conservative majority.

Comfort with a Federal Tory Majority

SES surveyed Canadians on their level of comfort with a Federal Tory majority. Overall, Canadians are divided. On a measure such as this, however, the Conservatives realistically only need a minority – the target threshold for the Conservatives should be about 40% comfortable (not there yet). Of note, four of ten committed Liberal voters are comfortable or somewhat comfortable with the prospect of a majority Conservative government.

Another factor in the equation is that 50% of committed NDP supporters are uncomfortable with the idea of a Conservative majority. This may be a precursor to future strategic voting in favour of the Liberals [on the part of some otherwise NDP voters]. Also of note, 46% of Canadians believe that the Harper-led Conservative government met expectations (11% exceeded expectations, 34% not met expectations).

--------------

Decided Canadian Voters
(N=1003, MoE ± 3.1%, 19 times out of 20)


Question: As you may know, the Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper is a minority government. Based on what you know and have seen about Stephen Harper and the Conservative government record so far, would you be comfortable, somewhat comfortable, somewhat uncomfortable or uncomfortable with the Stephen Harper-led Conservatives potentially winning the next election and forming a majority government?

Comfortable (33%) – (19% of Liberals are comfortable)
Somewhat comfortable (19%) – (21% of Liberals are somewhat comfortable)
Somewhat uncomfortable (16%)
Uncomfortable (29%) – (50% of New Democrats are uncomfortable)
Unsure (4%)

Question: Would you say that the Stephen Harper- led Conservative government has exceeded your expectations, met your expectations or not met your expectations?

Exceeded Expectations (11%)
Met Expectations (46%)
Not met expectations (34%) – (45% of Quebecers say the Conservatives have not met expectations)
Unsure (9%)

The detailed tables with the regional sub-tabs and methodology are posted on our website at: http://www.sesresearch.com [PDF available at site].

Any use of the poll should identify the source as the SES Research National Survey.

Other sources inform us that Jack Layton's leadership of the NDP is out of favour with the old class-warfare NDP-left, plus some peacenickies, as well as being out of favour with that other house of refuge for disaffected previous NDP supporters, the newly-aggressive Green Party. These two elements must be added to what Nanos pinpoints as probable NDP desertions to the Libs in the name of "strategic voting." With the Nanos Effect, that's already three problems for the NDP, but there's yet a doubled-edged fourth which may bring some former Liberal Jews to the NDP, while sending even more Jews from the Liberal Party toward the Conservatives, according to the Leclerc Effect of shifts of voting patterns and political-party of support of Jews dissatisfied with their previous memberships in the Liberal Party, unhappy due to the Libs' weak stance toward Israel (at the same time, Conservatives stand to lose some of the Arab and Muslim vote, says Leclerc, suggesting there's a trade-off of votes that all parties must consider on foreign-policy stances). All these factors combined could spell trouble for Layton's efforts to maintain the present size of his caucus in Parliament, altho the old lefties (including former labour-union partisans) nickies may feel they have no other place to go.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Disasters: Whew!: Looks like New Orleans will 'take a pass' on Ernesto

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According to the latest report I've seen (Russell McCulley, "New Orleans hopes for miss as Ernesto nears," Scotsman):

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Storm-weary New Orleans residents were relieved to hear Tropical Storm Ernesto was likely to give the jazz city a miss but prepared for the worst on Sunday just in case it turned towards them just a year after Hurricane Katrina hit.

"I have strong faith that it's not going to come here," said Jose Awill, purchasing supplies at a hardware store.

"That devastation we went through last year, I believe, was once in a lifetime," he said. "But if they tell us to go, there's not much I can do but pack up my truck and go."

Forecasters said Ernesto could become a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of nearly 100 mph (160 kph) in the Gulf, and its most likely path would take it ashore on Florida's west coast south of Tampa midweek.

But the storm cast a shadow over events commemorating the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast August 29, 2005, killing about 1,500 and stranding thousands more in flood waters in New Orleans.
North America > USA

In the providenc of God, however, Cuba has had more than its fair share of hurricanes, and now seems likely to get the full force of Ernesto (last name "Guevarra"?). Still in New Orleans, there was an anxiety-driven pre-'cane tension reaching all the way up to the Federal admin vs the Army Engineers. The latter said the Levees were the best they could be under the circumstances but not reliable were the hurricane force to reach Level 3, like last year. Associated Press via Wired reports:

NEW ORLEANS -- The head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conceded Saturday that despite aggressive efforts to repair the levee system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, it was unclear whether it could hold up to a sizable hurricane this year.

Lt. General Carl Strock, the commander of the Corps, said the agency was carefully tracking Tropical Storm Ernesto, which was spinning in the Caribbean and projected to reach hurricane strength by Tuesday.

He was confident the Corps had done all it could to repair and reinforce 220 miles of levee walls, but he conceded he couldn't be sure whether the system would withstand Ernesto if reached Category 3 status and struck near New Orleans, as Katrina did Aug. 29, 2005.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who appeared at a news conference with Strock, said her office was carefully watching the storm and would order evacuations it they became necessary.

She said that although she is not happy with the current strength of the levee system, she believes as much work as possible was done in the year since Katrina.
But a different approach dominates the report in John Heilprin's equally AP article via Lycos News, tho perhaps more easily discreditable due to its source in the US Federal admin.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal emergency officials claim the New Orleans levee system is ready for another major hurricane, despite the less-optimistic views of other political leaders and engineers.

"I think we're in good shape," Don Powell, the Bush administration's coordinator of Gulf Coast rebuilding, said Sunday. "There's no question in my mind, we're ready."

The levees failed after Hurricane Katrina, a Category 4 storm, roared ashore a year ago, flooding the city of New Orleans. The levees were built to withstand a Category 3 storm; the highest level is a Category 5.

Whether the city is ready or not could be tested soon by Hurricane Ernesto, the first of the Atlantic season, with winds of 75 mph that could grow into a Category 3 hurricane by Thursday. The storm was projected to make landfall in Haiti on Sunday and to bring rain and wind to southern Florida by early Tuesday.
Whatever the case may be, there's no excuse for the pork-barrell approach to rebuilding New Orleans. Taxpayers should never have been called upon to restore the city to its former "pristine" glory. The Engineers are probably entirely correct, and it may not be only a "once in a life time" event that New Orleans will have to cope with again next year or the year after (no, I don't have the gift of prophecy, at least as far as I know). I already expressed my views on rebuiliding New Orleans, and haven't changed them since. But my first take was a response to Kanye West's racist televised racist attack on President Bush.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Winds: Change: A conspiracy of good news, or Politicarp's wishful thinking 8-)=

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China half-releases underground Catholic Archbishop (BBC)
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Israel seeks UN troops in Lebanon from select Muslim nations (ABC
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Hamas expects good news regarding captured Fox journalists in Gaza (USA Today)
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Ahmadi-Nejad now says Iran no threat to Israel, wants only peaceful nuclear (Haaretz

Friday, August 25, 2006

Terrorism: Hostages: Jill Carroll held captive 82 days in Iraq - CSM's 10-part series

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Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story

A first-person account by Jill Carroll (J.C.)
with contextual narrative by Peter Grier (P.G.)

and related articles. Complete today, except for the Epilogue.


Editorial: What Jill Carroll's ordeal revealed - CSM (Aug14,2k6)

Intro: Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story = CSM (Aug14,2k6)

Hostage (1) The kidnapping - CSM (Aug14,2k6) An interview with an Iraqi politician turns deadly.

Hostage (2) A spy with a homing device - CSM (Aug15,2k6) US soldiers come so close on the first night that Jill's captors accuse her of hiding a homing device.

Hostage (3) The first video - CSM (Aug16,2k6) Jill meets Ink Eyes, her chief captor, and makes a video seeking the release of Iraqi women.

Related: Statements made on Jill Carroll's behalf - CSM (Aug17,2k6)

Hostage (4) A mother as suicide bomber - CSM (Aug17,2k6) As Jill's parents make a televised plea, she learns of the zeal of women and children in the Iraqi insurgency.

Hostage (5) Mujahideen movies - CSM (Aug18,2k6) Jill discovers these are hardcore Islamic militants who follow Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Hostage (6) Reciting Koranic verse - CSM (Aug20,2k6) Jill agrees to study Islam, but realizes it's a mistake. She hatches a plan to escape.

Related: Jill Carroll's captor claims to be insurgency chief - CSM (Aug20,2k6)

Hostage (7) False hopes - CSM (Aug22,2k6) How the insurgency operates and views the world. Five Iraqi women are released but Jill must make another video.

Hostage (8) A new enemy - CSM (Aug23,2k6) After the Feb. 22 shrine bombing in Samarra, killing Shiites became more important than killing Americans - or guarding Jill.

Hostage (9) The Muj brothrs - CSM (Aug24,2k6) Jill's two guards watch cartoons and the Koran channel. But tension grows as she becomes more desperate.

Hostage (10) Freedom - CSM (Aug25,2k6) Make another video, Jill is told, and you'll be let go. But she doesn't believe it until they give her a gold necklace and eight $100 bills.

Related: Ransom claims abound in Carroll case - CSM (Aug25,2k6)

Epilogue: forthcoming

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Politics: Iran: Ahmadi-Nejad's regime steams & nukes its way toward world domination via Islamofascist religious ideology

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The deadline Iran gave itself to make a major announcement on its nuke project in the l+t of the UN Security Council's Resolution, has come and gone. Iran has produced only a 20-page technical document of non-compliance to the UN requirement that it stop processing unranium. UNSC member countries say they will study the item further but see no breakthru offered. Thus, the UN now proceeds to its own deadline for compliance, Aug31,2k6. But don't expect much from Iran, UN, US, or UK.

In regard to this development, Christian Science Monistor in an editorial attempts to deal sagaciously with the inevitably doubts arising in regard to Iran's intentions on nukes (in the backgournd now, however, there's always the full stark evidence of the Iranian imperialistic goal to establish itself as a new Muslim caliphate–-this time, not Ottoman Sunni, but Shi'ite and mullocratic--with Iran at the hub. The nukes under development will underwrite Iran's first outr+t colony in Hizbullite Lebanon, and will undermine the development of a democratic order there.

Sadly, CSM shrinks into timidity and fails to make the link between Iran's nuclear development and Iran's imperial establishment of its first outr+t colony. Washington Times also fails to make the connection, trying to keep the two simultaneous developments in separate mental compartments.

It must be added, while Iran spends millions in Lebanon, it is squeezing its own poor and clamping down on Iran's own dissident voices, a clampdown that includes a new campaign against bloggers. The goal is total control over information and opinion within the country.

MidEast > Iran:

While many Iranians want the regime overthrown, there are those dissidents or former dissidents who caution that anti-regime action will only make the represssion more totalitarian. Such is the view brawt in recent days to the USA by Iranian dissident and former Revolutionary Guard, Akbar Ganji on his visit to "Irangeles," saying US intervention would bring more oppression to Iranian people. But some Iran exiles and Iranian Americans in California suspect that Ganji has reverted and is now peddlingt disinformation. That's the impression that emerges from the reports by Teresa Watanabe in Los Angeles Times (Aug13,2k6).



With the prospect of Iran playing the games of diplomatic discouse at the UNSC, the full unveiling of its colony for what it is, snugly embedded in Lebanon among that country's Shi'ites, blocking its own populace from communicating outside the regime's purview, capable of sending agents into Canada among returning dual citizens from Southern Lebanon and into the USA itself, and now giving the appearance of responding to the appeal of its client (oil) and ally (diplomacy, munitions) China (AP, Aug16,2k6). Indeed, on the same day, mullahs at the top gathered themselves to respond to the Chinese appeal that they return to the bargaining table, and announced Iran 'will discuss nuclear halt' (BBC; Aug16,2k6). Noting the seamlessness of this stagecraft, we should also note the date Aug16,2k6, and its correspondence to other dates regarding Iranian shipments to its colony (below).

Undoubtedly, we are witnessing the first of many protracted steps of blather on Iran's stealthy way toward nuclearization, steps that very, very likely will lead nowhere new on the nukes-for-Iran question. Certainly, China does not want Iran preoccupied with the exhausting fronts of its campaign for a New Persian Empire of Shia Islamic provenance; that would endanger the contracts Iran is expected to fulfill in pumping and shipping oil along a vulnerable trade route thru seas, an ocean, and some straits to the Far East. For that reason alone and also to shift now to covering its activities in Hizbullah-land, Iran would do well for its own purposes to make a great show of possibly coming around to the position of the UN Resolution on its project of uranium enrichment, but in the end deliver nothing but palaver.

Previously Iran used the Hizbullah War for 34 days to distract the world from its nuclear project, now it will use the UNSC talks on uranium and nukes to distract the world from its aggressive activities to rebuild, refortify and re-weaponize the Hizbullah colonials. Consider these reports:

Aug13,2k6: Turks force plane to land, full of Iranian Revolutionary Guards headed to Lebanon. Earlier a similar plane full of mid-range missiles was forced to return to Iran. Ardeshird (Aug13,2k6) Hat Tip: RCI .

Aug14,2k6: David A. Fulghum and Douglas Barrie, "Iranian Advisers Influence Course of Lebanon/Israel Conflict," Aviation week and Space Technology (Aug14,2k6). HT: RCI.

Aug17,2k6: Iranian planes grounded in Turkey for weapons search - Turkish Daily Press (Aug17,2k6); HT: RCI.

ANKARA - Turkey has grounded two Syria-bound Iranian planes over the past month to search for weapons following Israeli intelligence that Iran is supplying rockets to Hezbollah, officials and media reports said Thursday.

Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Namik Tan said two Iranian cargo planes were forced to land in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir "in line with international rules" to search for rockets and other military equipment.

"It was a routine procedure," Tan told a press conference.

He was commenting on a report in the mass-circulation Hurriyet daily, which said that two Iranian planes flying to Syria were forced to land in Diyarbakir on July 27 and August 8 following an Israeli tip-off that they were carrying rockets destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

No military equipment was discovered in either of the aircraft, the newspaper said.

Ankara sought to keep the incidents secret out of concern that diplomatic relations with Iran might suffer, it added.

Turkey is one of Israel's few Muslim friends in the region. But it also has close ties with the Palestinians and Lebanon and has in recent years significantly mended fences with one-time foes Iran and Syria.


Altho there's no knowing how long he will last, in public at least, the man at the helm of Iran gives a public-face to the apocalypticism unique to Persian Shia Islam which may be playing a key role in the multifront campaign to gain the leadership of Muslims worldwide and establish Iran at the hub of a new world empire. The man, whose name in English is widely rendered Ahmadinejad, should better be spelled Ahmadi-Nejad to bring out the crucial term "Ahmadi" which plays a large role in the Presidenct's apocalypticism. I'll stick to latter orthography. Patrick Pool, writing in FrontPage Magazine, "Ahmadinejad’s Apocalyptic Faith," (August 17,2k6) gives some details. Poole's point of departure for his piece is dissatisfaction with the interview Ahmadi-Nejad gave to Mike Wallace on CBS's news show 60 Minutes, the 6-page text of which Poole has examined. Says analyst Poole:
[Wallace and Ahmadi-Nejad] talked about Hezbollah, nuclear weapons, Israel and President Bush, but the one question that ties all of these together in Ahmadinejad’s mind is his religious faith. It is the prism through which he views all of these other policy issues, which is why it is of singular importance to understand the ideology that drives this man. This was apparently lost on Mike Wallace.

No one can accuse Ahmadinejad of being circumspect about the religious views that shape his worldview. He speaks on those views quite frequently, but they are a taboo subject for Westerners unaccustomed to thinking that is self-consciously religious. The reactionary response is to dismiss it as mental instability or label it as “fundamentalist”, but facing the reality of a nuclear Iran, such a reaction is not only short-sighted and narrow minded, but possibly suicidal.

Ahmadinejad’s worldview is shaped by the radical Hojjatieh Shiism that is best represented by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the Iranian President’s ideological mentor and marja-e taqlid (object of emulation), of the popular Haqqani religious school located in Qom. The affection seems to be mutual: in the 2k5 Iranian presidential campaign, Ayatollah Yazdi issued a fatwa calling on his supporters to vote for Ahmadinejad.

The Hojjatieh movement is considered to be so radical that it was banned in 1983 by the Ayatollah Khomeini and is still opposed by the majority of the Iranian clerics, including the Supreme Leader of the Supreme National Security Council, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei. That should be telling in and of itself. That opposition notwithstanding, it is believed that several adherents of the Hojjatieh sect are in Cabinet-level positions in Ahmadinejad’s government.

Most Shiites await the return of the 12th Shiite Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan, the last direct male descendent of the Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali, who disappeared in 874AD and is believed to be in an invisible, deathless state of existene, or “occultation”, awaiting his return. Though it is discounted even by the most extremist clerics, a popular belief in Iran holds that the 12th Imam, also called the Mahdi or the sahib-e zaman (“the Ruler of Time”), lives at the bottom of a well in Jamkaran, just outside of Qom. Devotees drop written requests into the well to communicate with the Mahdi. His reappearance will usher in a new era of peace as Islam vanquishes all of its enemies. The Sunnis, who reject the successors of Ali, believe that the Mahdi has yet to be born.

But rooted in the Shiite ideology of martyrdom and violence, the Hojjatieh sect adds messianic and apocalyptic elements to an already volatile theology. They believe that chaos and bloodshed must precede the return of the 12th Imam, called the Mahdi. But unlike the biblical apocalypse, where the return of Jesus is preceded by waves of divinely decreed natural disasters, the summoning of the Mahdi through chaos and violence is wholly in the realm of human action. The Hojjatieh faith puts inordinate stress on the human ability to direct divinely appointed events. By creating the apocalyptic chaos, the Hojjatiehs believe it is entirely in the power of believers to affect the Mahdi’s reappearance, the institution of Islamic government worldwide, and the destruction of all competing faiths.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has clearly indicated that he is a true believer in this faith. It has been reported that he has told confidants that he anticipates the immanent return of the Mahdi. When he previously served as Mayor of Tehran, he advocated for widening the roads to accommodate the Mahdi’s triumphal entry into the city. One of his first acts of office as President was to dedicate approximately $20 million to the restoration and improvement of the mosque at Jamkaran, where the Mahdi is claimed to dwell.

This personal belief directs his official policies as President. He has publicly said, “Our revolution’s main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi. We should define our economic, cultural and political policies on the policy of the Imam Mahdi’s return.”

However, Ahmadinejad’s messianism doesn’t stop with the Mahdi. In fact, he has made it clear that he believes he has personally received a divine appointment to herald the imminent arrival of the Mahdi, tacitly acknowledging his own role in setting aright the problems of the world.

His belief in a personal divine appointment was best confirmed after his speech to the United Nations last September, which was laden with references to the Mahdi. Upon his return to Iran, he met with Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli, where the two discussed an alleged paranormal occurrence while Ahmadinejad spoke.... (Radio free Europe (Nov29,2k5)


Poole's entire article is very much worth reading in its entirety in order to understand events in the Middle East and at the UN in the last two months and the last few days. [All the underscores and bolds in the quotation from poole is mine. - P] It stresses the role of the pisteutic factor in the Iranian President's belief system, while it recurringly points out how that important movitation is not utterly in control of Iranian policy and action.

An article even more detailed as to the non-pisteutic factor in Ahmadi-Neb's motivation comes from Oxford Analytica via Forebes.

Iran's President Likely To Lose Favor (Aug17,2k6).

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad on Aug15,2k6 said his country would not back down on the nuclear issue and praised Hezbollah's resistance to Israel. His popular support comes from his appeals to social justice and Iranian nationalism. It also reflects working-class anger at the corruption of the administration of Akbar Hasemi Rafsanjani, president from 1989 to 1997, and disillusionment with the culturally elitist administration of Mohammed Khatami, president from 1997 to 2005.

Ahmadi-Nejad's appeal thus depends on his ability to portray himself as the defender of the Iranian nation against the West in the nuclear dispute, and on his administration's ability to create economic opportunities for underprivileged Iranians.

Ahmadi-Nejad was elected president in Jun2k5. One year into his presidency, his popularity is still high, based on a combination of appealing to Iranians' nationalist sentiments in the field of foreign policy, while promising massive government expenditure to provide economic opportunities for Iran's young population.

Ahmadi-Nejad has portrayed himself as the straight-talking champion of economically disadvantaged Iranians. He has set out to spend Iran's burgeoning oil revenues on its poorer provinces. In March, Iran's parliament, the Majlis, approved his budget for 2006-07, which saw a 25% increase in expenditure.

However, the economic news since his election has largely been bad:

--The stock market went into freefall following the elections.

--In a bid to increase investment, Ahmadi-Nejad reduced interest rates in April, causing Iranian investors to withdraw their deposits from Iranian banks and buy gold coins.

--Despite an announcement by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in July that 80% of shares in state-owned companies would be privatized, investor confidence remains low, and the privatization program continues to struggle.

In the nuclear confrontation with the West, Ahmadi-Nejad has carefully cultivated his image as the champion of Iran's "inalienable right" to enrichment technology, which the United States and the West are seeking to deny.

His declaration in October that Israel should be "wiped off the map" was aimed not only at bolstering his support among conservatives in Tehran, but also assuaging Arab fears of rising Iranian power:

--By portraying Iran as the champion of the Muslim world against Israel, he sought to address anxiety among Iran's Arab Sunni neighbors about growing Iranian/Shia power by rallying them behind Iran against Israel.

--Another manifestation of this policy was his letter to U.S. President George W. Bush in May, in which he portrayed himself as the global advocate of the rights of Palestinians and the entire developing world. [Poole adds the ins+t that the letter to Bush fulfilled the obligation ofinviting an infidel to convert to Islam before destoying him.]

In the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, Ahmadi-Nejad and the entire Iranian leadership have stood firmly behind Hezbollah. However, the Iranian public seems wary of a confrontation with Israel and is questioning the wisdom of spending the nation's oil revenues in Lebanon when they are needed at home. Should Iran become embroiled in a further outbreak of fighting, Lebanon may become a domestic political liability.

Ahmadi-Nejad's populist domestic and foreign policies have won him few friends among Iran's political and intellectual elites:

--He has come up against opposition from the conservative-dominated Majlis.

--He is resented by pragmatists because of his leftist economic policies and reformists for his right-wing political agenda.

--Both oppose his radical foreign policy.

--He has purged the state apparatus.

Ahmadi-Nejad's popularity is likely to decline in 2007:

--Increases in government expenditures will ensure that inflation continues to hover in the high double-digits. Underprivileged Iranians will become increasingly disillusioned by the disparity between their income and rising consumer prices.

--It seems unlikely that the nuclear standoff with the West will lead to either military action or punitive sanctions against Iran in the near future because of divisions within the United Nations Security Council. Unproductive diplomatic skirmishing or possibly substantive negotiations are more likely. In either case, Ahmadi-Nejad's ability to exploit the issue for domestic political gain is likely to diminish.

--Furthermore, he is likely to be increasingly marginalized in the foreign policy arena.

In the shorter term, Ahmadi-Nejad's declining popularity may affect the outcome of the elections for the Assembly of Experts, slated for November. Support for far-right candidates among his supporters may weaken at the expense of candidates critical of the president.

If the nuclear confrontation with the West does not escalate, Ahmadi-Nejad's ability to project himself as Iran's national champion will diminish. His populist economic policies are unlikely to reduce inflation and unemployment, and they could make life more difficult for the working-class Iranians he claims to represent. He may increasingly be seen as a liability by Khamenei, who may move to sideline him.
To read an extended version of this article, log on to Oxford Analytica's Web site. Oxford Analytica is an independent strategic-consulting firm drawing on a network of more than 1,000 scholar experts at Oxford and other leading universities and research institutions around the world.
Now we must turn to what has transpired among the state leaderships of the world's Sunni Muslim-dominated societies in the last while of effort to establish the Hizbullah colony under Iran, and Israel's anti-Hizbullah War. However much the Hizbullah War may have stirred temporarily Arab and Muslim rejoicing among the masses, Sunni-dominated Arab states instead saw threates to civic order and societal instablity in the Hizbullah adventurism.

The best way perhaps to introduce this counterpoint to the Hizbullah-land colony of Iran is to follow MEMRI's translations from the Arab press in recent weeks -- Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London UK), Al Ahram (Egypt), Al-Gumhuriyya (Egypt), Al-Ayyam (Palestine), Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), Arab Times (Kuwait), Teshreen (Syria), Al-Thawra (Syria).

I can only provide the intro to the translations here.

The war between Israel and Hizbullah has revealed profound disagreement in the Arab world between countries that support Hizbullah and those that oppose it, headed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The disagreement was reflected in the Arab media, which published articles supporting Hizbullah along with harsh criticism and accusations against it.

One of the accusations leveled against Hizbullah was that the organization does not serve the interests of the Lebanese people, but acts in the service of Syria and Iran, thereby jeopardizing Arab interests. Many articles argued that Syria and Iran had manufactured the crisis in order to draw world attention away from the Iranian nuclear issue and away from the results of the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Al-Hariri. It was also claimed that Iran was working to destroy the Arab countries from within by encouraging armed militias to rebel against the Arab regimes.

Supporters of Hizbullah in Syria and Lebanon rejected the claim that Hizbullah was serving Syrian and Iranian agendas. They countered that it is Israel that is acting in the service of the West, which aims to redraw the map of the Middle East.
Needless to say, this statement of Sunni Muslim views could not satisfy Lebanese minorities like Christians, Druze, and Baha'is. Indeed, a different but equally strong view was articulated by Nasrollah Safir, Archbishop of Lebanon's Maronite Christians: Today, despite the Israeli bombing, the chief threat to Lebanon comes from Hizbullah - Regime Change Iran (Aug15,2k6).

The resistance to Hizbullah comes not just from Sunni states and press, from a prominent Lebanese Arab Christian archbishop and his laity, but also from some Shi'a clerics and laity in Iraq who see past Iran's machinations to their root in imperialist lust, a lust that would kill of Iraq's Sunnis and make a Shia-dominated Iraq another colony of Iran.(See: Amit R. Paley and Saad al-Izzi, "Two of Iraq's Shiite Parties Denounce Iran -- Allegations Reveal Divisions Within Sect Usually Aligned With Powerful Neighbor," WaPo, Aug19,2k6).


Regime Change Iran carries an important article from Dow Jones Newswires (not afterword accessible), "Arab Nations Pushing For New Peace Process with Israel" (Aug19,2k6).

Worried the Lebanon war has given a boost to Iran and militants in the region, three U.S. allies in the Mideast are spearheading an Arab effort to present a plan for reviving the stalled peace process and talks with Israel.

Details remain sketchy, and already Israel has expressed skepticism, saying it doubts any plan the countries put forward would take into account its security needs. But the decision by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to make the commitment now is a clear sign of how worried the countries are by current tensions and especially by Iran's new influence.

So far, the U.S. hasn't talked about a wider peace effort in the wake of the Lebanon crisis, instead focusing its efforts on ensuring the Iranian and Syrian- backed Hezbollah is reined in.

But leaders of the three moderate Arab governments want to seize the opportunity in the war's ashes to restart negotiations with Israel for peace on the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese fronts.

Even before the cease-fire took effect Monday, the three nations along with Arab League chief Amr Moussa warned that the fighting could permanently kill chances for any peace plan and fuel militants across the Middle East.

Hesham Youseef, Moussa's top aide, told Associated Press on Thursday that the Arab countries are putting together a peace plan to present to the UN Security Council next month because they believe "we should build on the international concerns on what is going on in the whole area."

"Big crises sometimes create opportunities to find comprehensive solutions for difficult problems," he said, noting that the 1991 Gulf war led to Arabs and Israelis launching the Madrid peace talks, months after the war that expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

"The war in 1973 also led to peace," he said, referring to diplomacy after that Arab-Israeli conflict that eventually resulted in the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Arab foreign ministers are to gather in Cairo on Sunday to pave the way for an Arab summit in Saudia Arabia planned for later this month. A new peace initiative will likely be high on the agenda, along with a Saudi plan to gather money to help rebuild Lebanon - and counter a flood of money from Iran to Hezbollah to finance reconstruction projects.

In meetings with Israeli and Lebanese officials last weekend, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana spoke of the need to consolidate the Lebanon cease- fire, then work toward a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement.

Solana's "feeling is that we now need a big push, otherwise we shall see more fires breaking out in the future," a EU official told Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to make statements to the press.

Israel's defense minister, Amir Peretz, said last week that resumption of a dialogue with Syria and the Palestinians was possible. "Every war creates an opportunity for a new political process," he said.

But the chances of any real movement remain unclear.

Israel's UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman said Friday he had serious doubts that any Arab initiative "has a great chance of being a fair one that would take Israel's security concerns into consideration."

He said the 2003 road map plan put forward by the Bush administration remained "the only viable option."


The road map calls for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though it has been stalled, with both sides failing to take steps to implement it.

Before anything else can happen, Israel says the international community must execute the terms of the cease-fire outlined in UN resolution 1701, to ensure that Hezbollah is disarmed and that the flow of Syrian and Iranian arms and equipment to the guerrillas is halted.

"We think that anything that would take attention away from 1701 would play into the hands of Iran and Syria," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.

The Bush administration, highly critical of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, is also likely to push for full implementation of the cease-fire deal before anything else. And that process is tricky and could be lengthy.

It is still not known how a new Arab peace effort would differ from past ones. In 2001, Saudi Arabia put forward a plan that would call for peace between Israel and all Arab nations once it returns the Golan Heights, West Bank and other Arab lands seized in past wars. The Arab League endorsed the plan, but Israel rejected it.

Youssef said the new Arab peace effort would build on both the road map and the 2001 plan. "We will not start from scratch. We just want to refocus on the real issue - a just and comprehensive peace," he said.

The Arab countries' motivation is clear: With Hezbollah and its backers Syria and Iran declaring victory in the nearly month-long war that left most of south Lebanon in ruins, many see a looming struggle over the future of the Middle East.

Moderate Arab nations fear that letting the situation stagnate without restarting the peace process could increase the appeal of radical Muslim groups and allow Iran and Syria to keep using Hezbollah in proxy wars, in turn breeding more militancy.

The split between Syria and other Arab states has only grown deeper since the Lebanon cease-fire. Syrian President Bashar Assad jabbed fellow Arabs with a speech on Tuesday, saying the war had revealed the "half men" in the region - prompting sizzling denunciations of Assad in Arab media.

"We are facing a new reality established by the Israeli war on Lebanon. It is an aftershock, but probably even more powerful than the earthquake itself and even more painful," Abdul-Rahman al-Rashid, who is close to the Saudi royal family, wrote Wednesday in the Saudi-owned Asharq Al Awsat.
What, incredibly, this entire article lacks is any sense of the inter-relationship between the threat in the Iranian colony, the threat of Iranian nuclear weaponization, and the Iranian imperialist ideology which threatens even without the glosses of the Hojjatieh sect and Iranian President Ahmadi-Neejad's personal sense of an apocalyptic vocatio.n. I feel all these matters matter to the Sunni royals and other political leaders.

-- Politicarp

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Politics: Canada: Update: War against Hizbullah leading to a 'regression from democracy' in Canada?

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Under the title, La politique confessionnelle (Confessional Politics in Canada), Jean-Claude Leclerc wrote a significant article in the French-language daily LeDevoir (Sunday,Aug6,2k6). That article is rendered in a free tranlation into English, with the help of Apple's Sherlock 3 app and SYSTRAN, by Albert Gedraitis. The article deserves a critical-textual analysis because it substitutes a sentimentalist approach, for the Canadian policy against terrorism (never once does Leclerc mention that Hizbullah is present in Canada too), an approach that slips and slides between terms with no crisp definitions. Be that as it may, there is also much to ponder in the underlying trends that Leclerc sees. -- Politicarp

Nowadays in Lebanon, long fragmented between religious groups, one finally seems to find a certain unity between Christians and Muslims; ...
So Leclerc begins, blithely suppressing the historic fact that some Christians have for several decades been in armed political alliance with some Muslims in Lebanon. In contrast, the Sunni Muslim layman, rebuilder, and politician of reconstruction Rafik Hariri, assassinated by Syria, was in alliance with another set of Christians, but not those like the resuscitated Gen Michel Aoun who now is allied with Hizbullah Shi'ites. Further, the Shi'ites in the Palestinian refugee camps are present in Lebanon not because they fled there from Israel, but because they left their homes at Syria's call only to be expelled from Syria when it lost that war against Israel. When Syria no longer found useful these Palestinian refugees it had created, they were expelled by Syria, forcing them into Lebanon where they were equally unwanted, and unassimilated ever since. Leclerc puts an obscene construction on the present mood which he reads ahistorically as inter-confessional "unity." I doubt many Christians will stay allied to the Shia-Hizbullah fanatics once they gain yet more power within Lebanon itself. Leclerc grasps onto a mere chimera, a glimmer not based on hope but resentment.
[Leclerc continues:] but will the war over there, overflowing politically to Canada, break a coexistence in many specific connections between our Jewish and Muslim communities? Nothing is broken yet, some of the committees for cooperative relations are activated, but there are also signs of tearing now in view.

Businessman Gerry Schwartz, chief of the Onex empire, an adviser of former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, spoke in praise of Stephen Harper for his pro-Israel position on the conflict in the Middle East.

That parties like the federal Liberal Party in Québec and the federal Bloc Québécois denounce Conservative leader Stephen Harper, because of his pro-Israel position – yet themselves are not embarrassed to adopt views no less unilateral, only confirms the failure of Canadian political thawt on the Middle East. Will any crisis, if serious, not thus encourage these politicians to suspend their electoral tactics? The ethnoreligious communities themselves, however, should have the wisdom not to yield to it.
North America > Canada
Admittedly, the Jewish community of our country supports Israel, even the war in Lebanon; whereas the communities of Arab origin along with the whole of the Muslims of Canada reject the action taken by the Israeli Defense Forces at the expense of the civilian population of Lebanon.
The sweeping generalization enlisting "[Canada's] communities of Arab origin and the whole of the Muslims of Canada" is more than questionable. It is prescientific in the worst sense, lacking any analytic value. For instance, Nedim Shehadi in openDemocracy, "Riviera vs Citadel: the battle for Lebanon" (Aug22,2k6) says something quite different about tendencies we mite also find among Muslims and more narrowly Arabs of Canada - whether Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Druze, Maronite Christians or others:
For the past two decades, since the latter years of the 1975-90 civil war, two competing projects have been running in parallel in Lebanon. One aims at building a Riviera, a Monaco of the eastern Mediterranean; the other a Citadel or bunker, at the frontline of confrontation with Israel and the United States.

Each of these projects has both a local and a regional dimension [and, to include Canada, a global dimension - P], drawing a different lesson from the civil war while connecting Lebanon to one or other of its neighbours in particular ways. Each has adherents from all strands of Lebanese society, and neither is purely sectarian. Each has a different vision of how to rebuild the state and ensure the security and prosperity of the citizen. In the regional aspect, Saudi Arabia has been the main investor in the Riviera, and Iran the principal stakeholder in the Citadel.
Some questions for Leclerc: Are Canadian Muslims who have been tortured by the Iranian regime, or have relatives exterminated by it, rooting for Hizbullah in Lebanon? Are Sunni Muslims in Lebanon all rooting for Hizbullah? Are all the Shia Muslims in Lebanon rooting for Hizbullah? Leclerc's shellgame is so ill-informed about the crisscross of currents in the MidEast, particularly in Lebanon, that he is making erroneous assumptions about Canada's Muslims in the process. Contrary to the ins+ts of Shehadi and Archbishop Nasrollah Safir, Leclerc continues to pretend there is no Iranian War against Israel with Iranian commanders, specialists, and weaponry in Lebanon. Myopically, he dwells on the supine Canadian media.
The two camps find very strong support expressed in the Canadian media. One can consider that these mobilizations and these expressions of opinion are a democratic sign of health, but such alignments are also worrying.

Initially, for those Jews who are opposed to the warmongering policy of Israel or opposed even to the support that their community provides to Israel, it becomes very difficult to give a contrary opinion publicly. Rare also are the voices which, in the other camp, rejecting the acts of terror of even a legitimate resistance, express their protest. Will Jews who formerly fled persecution in Europe or Muslims who have found for many years in Canada a freedom that they did not have in their Muslim homelands, will these citizens have to keep silent again in our country?

Moreover, if Jewish voters, often close to the Liberal Party or New Democratic Party, desert them to support the Conservative Party, because of international political stances taken by the Tories, not motivated by [domestic] needs here, but instead by their concern for Israel – [a foreign concern] which will undergo the anger of voters in the event of re-election of an already-rejected [Tory] cabinet? On the opposite side, if the voters of Arab origin or Muslim culture, vote en masse for the federal Liberals, helping to bring to power people who are unworthy of office, won't those voters be accused of ignoring the interests of Canadians?
Again, this off-the-cuff attempt to exploit by means of a binomialist-confessionalist argument "Jews vs Muslims", while constructed to fite confessionalism gone amuck, is at the same time to endorse an anti-pluralist approach to faith-communities in the richness of their diversity of both confession and politics. It never occurs to Leclerc that numerous Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, listen attentively when a fellow Christian like the Archbishop of Maronite Christians in Lebanon states clearly that "the greatest threat comes from the regime in Tehran," Regime Change Iran (Aug15,2k6) trans by Banafesh Zand-Bonazzi from Farsi in Iran Press News.

[Continuing with the translation of Leclerc from LeDevoir:]
Jewish community

Admittedly, a bit before the demonstration yesterday [Sunday, Aug6,2k6] in Montreal, the Quebec-Israel Committee published a message of the Jewish Community of Quebec and Friends of Israel addressed to the leaders of the Quebec federal Liberals, the Bloc Québécois, Québec Solidaire and the Québec Federation of Labour. This declaration, written with respect and moderation, invites [the pro-Hizbullah side addressed] to consider aspects of the crisis which deserve to be discussed in all the media. One cannot speak [ill] of it as of many other interventions of Jewish leaders of Canada.
Quel hauteur! What arrogance, what an attitude of condescension to public statements of Jewish leaders of Canada -- except of course the one seleced for commendation, selected because of what Leclerc regards as its extreme rarity among Jewish leaders. Immediately after this snottiness, Leclerc pirouttes to claim "the public" is a monolith that condemns Israel in Lebanon and the Harper govt. That may be so regarding a narrow regional "public" in a march on a street in Montreal, with Bloc and NDP poseurs in the mix, but hardly representative of Canadian public opinion.
[Leclerc:] Whereas the public rejects more and more the action of Israel in Lebanon and the pro-Israel position of the Harper government, some of the personalities of the Jewish community lean from now on towards the Conservatives. Liberals certainly support Israel, but the Liberal parliamentary caucus is divided. Some are ill at ease regarding remarks of the Liberals' temporary leader, Bill Graham, former Foreign Minister, who [wants Canada] to hold to a so-called "balanced" position in the Middle East.
Leclerc is either naïve or disingenuous if he thinks "balance" should keep Israel from stopping arms smuggling from Syria and Iran into Hizbullah-run Lebanon during the ceasefire. Those who want Hizbullah and Hamas terrorism stopped, while wishing and praying for the best for all non-terrorist Muslims too, are going to gravitate to support of Israel and feel they can count only on Israel's enforcement of the ceasefire by actions that Leclerc and the Lebanese govt of Fouad Sinoria would disapprove. (Sinoria is the successor who's brawt shame to the cause of the assassinated fellow-Sunni Rafik Hariri.)

Yet the picture of Liberal disunity cannot be attractive to Jews, Muslims, or anyone else after the festering sores contracted during the fedLibs' Chrétien-Martin era have now been dragged into the l+t by the Auditor General and others. As Maisonneuve (perhaps the snottiest-of-all leftwing newletters in Canada) noted a month ago (Jul19,2k6):
...[I]nterim Liberal leader Bill Graham ... suggested that Harper’s position on the current Middle East crisis has sacrificed Canada’s traditional role as an 'honest broker' capable of mediating disputes between nations. Liberal leadership hopefuls have also jumped into the fray, according to Globe & Mail. But with each candidate offering their own prescription for how to end the violence between Israel and Lebanon, the party appears unable to muster even the semblance of unity. While campaigning in Quebec, Bob Rae forwarded the idea of UN peacekeepers patrolling the Israeli-Lebanese border, invoking the memory of Lester B. Pearson. Scott Brison, on the campaign trail in Toronto, dismissed Rae’s proposal, endorsing instead a platform similar to the [Conserv] government’s, much to the chagrin of many old-time Liberals. Indeed, Brison’s comments enraged Lloyd Axeworthy to such an extent that the former foreign affairs minister cuttingly remarked that Brison, an ex-Tory, was so new to the party that he “doesn't really understand what Liberal foreign policy is about.” For his part, supposed front-runner Michael Ignatieff stayed away from controversy. According to a spokesperson, Ignatieff was spending time with his family and would not comment" at that time.
So, those Jews formerly adherent to the Liberal Party who leave over the next six months, already had sufficient reason to re-examine their political moorings. Many may have been looking a long time perhaps for a big push, from the standpoint of the value-ensemble of each such Lib member, to go elsewhere--but where? For some, the move would be to the NDP, if support for the Jewish state of Israel doesn't matter much to that individual. For others.... One can't expect diehards to re-examine their political-party allegiance, Lib diehards like former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (Montreal - where he's unlikely to get either Arab or Jewish votes in the next round of elections), unlikely to waver even the sl+test bit. But, quite aside from Cottler clones, numerous Jews, despite Leclerc's alarmism, will stay with the Libs--if for no other reason than to prevent the fedLibs from swinging over to an outr+t pro-Hizbullah pro-Hamas pro-Iran position.
[Leclerc:] Where the Liberal Senator, Jerry Grafstein, organizer and important member of the party, tried to put forward a position clearly pro-Israel [for party consideration], other eminent personalities of the Jewish community, up to now very near to the Liberals, broke [with the Liberal Party entirely over the Graham approach]. Thus the businessman Gerry Schwartz, chief of the Onex empire, [formerly] an adviser of [Liberal] ex-PrimeMinister Paul Martin, [now] speaks in praise of Stephen Harper. He and other people signed an advertisement in a Cornwall [Ontario] newspaper -- where the Conservative caucus was meeting -- congratulating the Prime Minister on his position on the Middle East.

His wife, Heather Reisman, owner of the Indigo [Books & Music chain of] stores, and a leading Liberal in the Trudeau years, closed out her Liberal Party membership with finality. Her change of allegiance, she wrote to close relations, is "total and unambiguous." Her husband had already said he was extremely impressed by the "courage" that the Conservative chief had shown -- before the war in Lebanon -- while refusing to accept the election of Hamas [to lead the Palestinian Authority].

Admittedly, the Jewish voters are relatively very few in Canada.
Somewhere between 351,000 total population and, at a stretch, possibly as many as 400,000, according to Wikipedia. - P] It should be added here the current statistics for Muslims: "There is no official estimate for Muslims in Canada. The unofficial estimate is about 600,000; about 300,000 of whom live in Southwestern Ontario."
[Leclerc:] But businesspeople of [Canada's Jewish] community, if not its Community organizations, generally gave their support to the Liberals. A massive displacement towards the Conservatives in the ridings acquired by the FedLibs in Toronto and Montreal would have the double effect of weakening the FedLibs and reinforcing the Conservatives [in Parliament]. Already the crisis of the Middle East sows the squabble among the candidates vying to lead the FedLib Party.

Not only Liberal Member of Parliament Jim Karyagiannis, organizer of Joe Volpe's party-leadership campaign [now defunct - P], resigned this post because of the support of the ex-Minister of Immigration for the policy of Israel, but some other candidates to succeed Paul Martin note a surge of citizens of Muslim culture into the ranks of the party. Tho the Muslims of Canada come from different countries and policy currents, they are nevertheless strongly linked in their rejection of support for Israel.
Again, this is quite superficial because many cross-currents both of confession and politics disturb this complacent binomialist conjunctivitis expressed by Leclerc. Au contraire, for instance, Shi'ites in Iraq and elsewhere are divided between a politics pro- and contra-Iran, with many who waver back and forth, and usually are found somewhere waiting in between for new turns of events. In Iraq, one of two contra-Iran Shi'ite parties not only resents Iran's imperialistic pressures on Iraqi parties, politics, and religion but also points to the class-basis of the Iranian mullocracy, speaking in Iraq for a class-exploited stream in Iran itself where that stream had once helped elect Ahmadi-Nejab to the Presidency; but a stream where the poor are reportedly now extremely disppointed with his failure to deliver, as economic conditions there worsen for them under the President and the mullocrats who treasure dreams of themselves heading a new Caliphate.

All these factors feed back also into North America, and into Canada, among both Arab and non-Arab Muslims alike. What Leclerc's whole attitude takes as its premise is that these communities will regard the necessary bombing by Israel of Hizbullah infrastructure in South Lebanon, and the extreme hurt it did to some civilians among whom the terrorists were embedded, is for Leclerc obviously and overwhelmingly more important than a free democratic Lebanon and a resistance to Iranian mullocratic imperialism and class-favouritism. Leclerc imagines that Arabs and Muslims have very short, immediate horizons--only! Almost as short as his own. [Returning to Jean-Claud Leclerc's article, "Confessional Politics in Canada" :]
An old story

The political alignment of communities according to different if not opposite beliefs would not be a precedent in Canada. For a long time in the past, Catholics especially supported the Liberals, while Protestants supported especially the Conservatives [and New Democrats - P]. At an early period, the one side opposed persecutions of French-speaking Catholics attributed to the Orangemen [Northern Ireland origins], while the other side opposed the people from France or from Ireland, regarding them as marked by an irremediable "papism."
This reading of confessionally - linked politics in Canada is again extremely binomial, but also false to the kernel of truth the situation reported by Leclerc had contained. Papal and Jesuit dominance in those days exploited the Magisterium to keep the francophone population of Québec on the signeuries and then the farms, resisting industrializations. Skilled tradesmen from Northern Ireland tried to protect their hegemony in the various trades, keeping Catholics out of the apprenticeships wherever possible. So, confessionalization was not then nor was it ever nor is it now "pure confessionalism," because of the multi-factoral realities that impinge on even the most dogmatic of churchly-ideologists. As a matter of fact, the most confessionalistic configuration in Canadian politics today is that of the established secularist ideology which prevents confessional groupings with a unique philosophy of education from forming and running competent schools with tax-support. In Ontario we have two established confessions entrenched in tax-supported schooling: the secularist Humanist (atheist) and the Catholic. All others are excluded. Québec has struggled for some time with the process of deconfesionalization / secularization of tax-supported schools--but some exceptions seem to escape this de facto atheization (that is, an unstated reconfessionalization--"unstated" because no one admits what's going on). The truth is that secularistic Humanism is the dominant confession in Canada in most societal spheres above the level of family--that is true whether or not those in (minority) govt power are Conservatives (including some atheists of course and including some Christians with widely differing views of the relation of faith-confession to political responsiblities).

Indeed, on this issue, many Jews and Muslims are on the same side in being opposed together to confessional schools with tax-support; while others of both communities are on the other side being in favour of tax-support for diverse confessional schools willing to support a peaceful and dialogical pluralist society. What does that phenomenon do to Leclerc's hypthothesis, besides demonstrating the logical incoherence of his hypothesis and its foundation in sentiment? ... at best. That's why Leclerc has nothing interesting to say about the confessional political expressions of the past in Canada. What he does say is so simplistic that it exposes his streak of spiritual arrogance quite nakedly:
[Leclerc:] One makes fun of [Canada's past confessional politics] now, but these politico-religious appartenances delayed the advent of the democracy which prevails nowadays.
Again, Leclerc is so superficial and monofactoral that he is the one about whom one begins to laff. The Ulstermen, for instance, may have been largely anti-Catholic, but in the other direction they were also radically democratic among themselves in establishing, accrediting, and democratically-governing their own Presbyterian churches and Orange lodges. Others of the British stock likewise knew the practice of democracy and of dissent in the political arena from churchly experiences first of all. They also put strong stress on civil order, duty, and work. That's how democracy came to Canada, and that's from where the Catholics of Québec grudgingly first encountered it. But, thank God for British Catholic historian Lord Acton, John Dahlberg-Acton (1834-1902) and the establishment of a Catholic democratic tradition of the laity in the Canadian milieu, which had to fite churchly-hierarchism all the way, beginning the struggle for the redefinition of the social doctrine of subsidiarity, under the older version of which Québec groaned.

One can be very thankful indeed also to all the other human intermediaries in Canada, human instruments who advanced the democratic vision of the country and brawt it to a measure, not a fulfillment (much is still lacking), but a temporarily adequate measure of democratic thawt and practice--albeit now based one-sidedly on secularistic Humanism, with no doctrine of subsidiarity at all, and nothing like the emerging Protestant social doctrine of sphere-specificity, with each sphere relatively sovereign. The learning of a deeper pluralism remains ahead, and it mite just as well begin with Leclerc as he clears his head of his mockery, monofactoralism, and superfical binomial constructs.
[Leclerc:] The Liberals admittedly knew how to benefit from the Catholic feelings which prevailed then in Québec and in the French-speaking minorities elsewhere within the country. Later, the Liberals widened their urban bases to other minority communities, mostly immigrants. Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, great multicultural agglomerations, made it possible more recently for the FedLibs to escape from Conservative advances [in parliamentary elections].
By now, the Protestants, already reduced by Leclerc to the worst current in Ulster Presbyterianism, have completely disappeared from the journalism professor's reportorial discourse. An erasure to be sure. Nor does he acknowledge the long haul forward in Christian ecumenism (something much more than a churchly affair), thus he cannot grasp that at the moment many informed Christians, both Protestants and Catholics, are taking quite seriously Archbishop Safir's warning that the main problem in Lebanon is not Israel, no matter how unbearable the bombings were for civilians among whom Iran's Hizbullah is embedded. Far worse is Hizbullah, the colonialist vanguard of the dream of a new Persian Empire of mullocratic confession.
[Leclerc:] However, the PC minority govt of Stephen Harper appears well determined to make openings in these Liberal ridings.
True enuff!
Today Palestine opposes Jews to Muslims,
Not true enuff. The missiles of Iran thru Hizbullah that destroyed Muslim Israeli villages give the lie to this statement, tho Leclerc is sufficiently crafty to shift here from Lebanon to Palestine, without mentioning the terrorists of the Hamas govt. And what of the Christian villagers on both sides of the border, some on the Lebanon side aligned with Hizbullah thru Gen Aoun; some not, and quite aware of their Archbishop's dread of the Iranian puppeteers behind the terrorists.
[Leclerc:] tomorrow Kashmir opposes Muslims to Hindus,
Kashmir has been torn between its Muslim majority and its mostly Hindu minority which favours remaining part of India, the arrangement that has held since the partition of British India into Pakistan and modernday India. Pakistan couldn't hold itself together on the basis of a general Muslim confessionalism, and broke apart into modernday Pakistan and Bangladesh. India still embraces millions of Muslims who didn't join the Muslim exodus at the time of partition. India has a longstanding confessional-political problem that will last at least another century. At present at least five states of India have passed anti-conversion laws sponsored by fantical groupings of ultra-Hindus alarmed at uncoerced conversions from Hinduism to Buddhism and Christianity. Marxist parties (outfront confessional atheist political formations to be sure) in India often support these anti-conversion laws.
or other places which see Christians and Muslims in conflict.
Indonesia and Nigeria are two places where these two groupings have come into conflict, and in certain places Christians have fawt back to prevent the imposition Sharia (Muslim) law. Fite back: that's remarkable, especially in Indonesia, where overall Christians are a small and vulnerable minority often terrorized by Islamofascists. Was it wrong for some Jews in the Warsaw ghettoes to f+t back against the Nazis?

Lebanese Christians, Pakistani Christians, Indonesian Christians, Nigerian Christians--these are all people for whom many Canadian Christians and our friends, including some atheists, have concerns for survival in genuinely pluralist democratic civil orders--and largely we extend this concern to Israeli Christians, Jews, Muslims, and atheists. But not to terrorists, no matter to whatever religion they may claim allegiance. But also, in all these cases, there are multi-factoral contexts; both in Indonesia and Nigeria, for instance again, demographics play a part (h+ birthrates, inadequate economic infrastructure). Regarding Nigeria, a Muslim scholar of that country has said that the conflict between the two broad confessional communities there arose from the failure of complacent Islamic politicians to maintain the agricultural base of the Muslim-majority North, necessitating the exflux of multitudes of Muslims displaced by Muslims to Christian and animist areas of the country.
[Leclerc:] One can't miss abroad how [a number of] crises will have repercussions in the various communities established in Canada.
Yes, indeed, they will. But this Leclerckian remark teaches us nothing new, nor anything we didn't already know. Indeed, the implicit presuppositions of Leclerc here are: that we didn't see it coming, that we can divert it, that there is nothing good about it or that come from the dynamic around the actual faith-comfessions involved, that amelioration of extremes in confessionalisms presently gone a muck is no goal worth considering, and that these implicits form the basis of the following false conclusion of Leclerc:
The country will experience a serious democratic regression if parties put their international political choices in place of votes in Canada, or if communities put their own historical interests before the interests of the whole of the country.
Here we see at point-blank, the utter tendentiousness of Leclerc's entire hypothesis. That there is some magic "internal voting-interest" in which no confessional concerns of any kind can have a legitimate role (except the silent actually-dominant confession in Canada of pseudo-neutrality, agnosticism, and atheism), a pure internal voting-interest that can be opposed to all "foreign" (confessionally-tainted) considerations is a bizarre conceptualization at best. But when Leclerc uses as governing metaphor in what follows, the impasse at Québec's Concordia University a while back, one begins to think he is so myopic that he fails to consider that the Jewish-students-vs-Muslim-students conflagration as, first of all, an exhibition of what both sides had learned from the at-hand Québec politics which they, their parents, and their community's leaders had lived thru in Québec's own internal politics. Confrontation, confrontation, confrontation. Québec politics from the FLQ to PQ leader Parizeau's outr+t antisemitism, and on, all this had tawt the students nothing else than violent confrontation of deed and word.
[Leclerc:] Rather than cutting themselves off into opposed camps, as did certain Jewish and Muslim students of Concordia University sometime in the past, the communities related to the peoples of the Middle East would be better inspired if they favoured, in a land of welcome which does not threaten them, the rapprochements that injustice, fear and resentment make so difficult in their fatherland of origin.
There is no internal injustice, fear and resentment in Canada, at least none of which immigrants are aware?

A view further to the left of Leclerc, extremist in tone and mindset, constantly deploying the term "racist," etc., against all of organized Jewry in Canada and against all policy enacted by the Conservative govt of Canada, constantly deploying "Bush" to found a guilt-by-association argument, can be found exposited by Dan Freeman-Maloy at great length at Znet, Public Contempt for Palestinians and Lebanese: Israeli aggression receives official Canadian endorsement" (Aug16,2k6).

– Politicarp

Canadian Jewish Liberals a casuality to Hisbullah
Gen Michel Aoun since return to Lebanon from exile
Grassroots Lebanese Christians want Hizbullah disarmed

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Politics: US foreign policy China e-Lobby endorses 2 incumbents, plus 2 newcomers for US Senate

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An important source for foreign-policy news and analysis regarding everything China has just announced its endorsements for US Senator in four state contests heading toward a vote in November. China e-Lobby has selected the first four of its endorsements:

U.S. Senate - Connecticut: Senator Joseph Lieberman (I/D)

While the race in Connecticut has been dominated by the Iraq issue, Senator Lieberman has long been a strong voice for the island democracy of Taiwan. Ming-chi Wu, President of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, noted that Lieberman "is a long time friend of Taiwan" who "pioneered the introduction of Senate legislation in 1992 in support of UN membership for Taiwan." The Senator is also a member of the Senate Taiwan Caucus, and a supporter of the Schumer-Graham tariff to counteract Communist China's deliberately devalued currency (roll call vote). Neither of Lieberman's other opponents (Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger) have even discussed Taiwan - or the tariff

U.S. Senate - Ohio: Congressman Sherrod Brown (D)

To be fair, it should be noted the Brown's opponent, Senator Mike DeWine (R) is a co-sponsor of the aorementioned currency-corrective tariff. However, what separates these candidates is their positions on Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR). DeWine supported it (roll call vote); Brown did not. In fact, Brown has not only been a consistent anti-Communist vote in the House of Representatives, but also an anti-Communist voice; there have been few in Washington who have been as strong on this issue as Brown.

U.S. Senate - Vermont: Congressman Bernie Sanders (I)

It just so happens that one of those voices louder than Brown is running for Senator in Vermont. Not only did Bernie Sanders oppose PNTR in 2000; he is still sponsoring House legislation to repeal it six years later. Like most anti-Communists from the political left (Sanders was a Socialist - Capital "S," party label and all - as Mayor of Burlington), he has expressed his outrage at Communist China's human and labor rights abuses. Unlike the rest of them, he expanded his left-wing anti-Communist to include national security and the Taiwan issue. Should Sanders win his election (as is widely expected) he could become a one-man Anti-Communist Left in the Senate - unless Brown also wins, and makes it a political partnership. Sanders win will certainly breathe new life, literally, into the ACL, which has been virutally non-existent since the death of Paul Wellstone (RIP).

U.S. Senate - Virginia: Senator George Allen (R)

For a time, this race seemed a difficult one to call. The Democratic nominee - Secretary James Webb - was one of the very few pundits who took seriously Communist China's dangerous behavior in the Middle East. Sadly, he seemed to have forgotten most of that with his recent call for negotiations with CCP proxy Syria (see Ignorant Comment of the Day). Senator Allen, by contrast, is the co-founder of the Senate Taiwan Caucus, and like Lieberman, he voted for the currency-corrective tariff. Thus, the Senator who looked good enough for the White House has proven to be superior to a man who sounded far more intelligent as a writer than as a candidate.
Endorsements early in the campaigns (after the primaries) allows supporters of a future democratic China can join in the work to elect the endorsees in their home states.

– Politicarp

Politics: Canada: Update: War against Hizbullah leading to a 'regression from democracy' in Canada?

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Under the title, La politique confessionnelle (Confessional Politics in Canada), Jean-Claude Leclerc wrote a significant article in the French-language daily LeDevoir (Sunday,Aug6,2k6). That article is rendered in a free tranlation into English, with the help of Apple's Sherlock 3 app and SYSTRAN, by Albert Gedraitis, publisher of refWrite with interspersed comments and links by our political analyst Politicarp.

North America > Canada

Authored by a professor of journalism, the Leclerc article expecially deserves a critical-textual analysis because its text substitutes a sentimentalist approach, for the Canadian policy against terrorism (never once does Leclerc mention that Hizbullah is present in Canada too); his approach is one that slips and slides between terms with no crisp definitions. Be that as it may, there is also much to ponder in the underlying trends that Leclerc sees. The blog-entry was updated at this location under this date, but since has been much further updated and moved. -- Politicarp

See the drastically updated version posted Wednesday, Aug23,2k6).

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Palestine: Ceasefire: Palestinian Authority's Abbas announces ceasefire

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In a major article of breaking news, Arthur Bright, "Abbas announces Palestiniain ceasefire," Christian Science Monitor (Aug18,2k6) posted a quoteful overview of this new development citing Ha'aretz (Israeli lib intellectuals), Jerusalem Post (Israeli mainstream, Reuters (shy on using word "terrorist"), and New York Times (grey grand-dame with prevaricating offspring). The result is journalistic excellence on a story that cawt me entirely by surprise, with thoro analysis of the latest twists-and-turns of possibilities and realities for a second peace-front for Israel. What is Iran up to?

"The temporary cease-fire deal does not include Islamic Jihad or breakaway Fatah factions now operating in Gaza under the influence of Hezbollah." (Ha-aretz).

-- Politicarp

Friday, August 18, 2006

War: Media bias: CNN, BBC notably biased reportage in favour of Hizbullah, says analyst

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Foreign media sidelines Haifa


by Yaakov Lappin
In a video newsletter from Ynet News via Forward Highlights, Yaakov Lappin shows the world the kinds of scenes omitted by sections of the international media, scenes of bombed out Haifa; the same media also remain aloof to anti-Hizbullah voices in Lebanon. Yaakov Lappin > VIDEO - Heavy smoke rose from the rocket stricken city of Haifa on Sunday afternoon, following intense bombardment by Hizbullah's long-range missiles, but much of the international media turned a blind eye to the scenes, omitting them from their coverage of the war.
War damage in Israel

The foreign press, which has flooded the world with images of damage in Beirut, seems to have largely sidelined pictures of war damage in Israel, despite the thousands of missiles and rockets that have rained down on northern Israel, causing wide scale destruction to buildings, vehicles, and the burning down of hundreds of thousands of trees.

As a tentative ceasefire appeared to take hold, CNN [see refWrite backpage] reported on the "thousands of refugees (who) poured back into southern Lebanon, trying to return home." There was, however, no coverage given in the report to the thousands of displaced Israelis in central and southern Israel, who are waiting to go back to their own homes in northern Israel, some of which have been destroyed.

In contrast, Associated Press did report on the situation in the north: "Northern Israel remained virtually empty in comparison. The streets of Haifa, Israel's third-largest town, which has been peppered by Hizbullah missiles, were quieter than normal… More than half the 22,000 residents of the border town of Kiryat Shmona had fled in the fighting, and those who remained stayed holed up in their homes."

The BBC website, following a previous trend, dedicated just one image, out of a succession of eight photographs to the experiences of Israeli civilians in the north.

The other photographs in the series focused on the IDF fighting in Lebanon, and Lebanese civilians caught up in the war. There were no images of Hizbullah members engaged in fighting.

"Air strikes were launched against targets in various parts of Lebanon, causing several deaths and injuries," a caption read under an image of an injured Lebanese child.

The selection of images and accompanying captions strongly suggested that the BBC believes Hizbullah was "responding" to Israeli actions: "Hizbullah responded with more rockets fired at northern Israel, forcing people to seek safety in shelters," the British media outlet said.

On Hizbullah's terms

During its television coverage of the war in Lebanon on Sunday, CNN chose the word "resistance" to describe Hizbullah's actions in Lebanon – a term used by Hizbullah - as well as Hamas, and Iraqi jihadis - to describe their own attacks. 'Resistance' is however a value laden term, which implicitly argues that armed jihad organizations are 'resisting' and defending against aggression, rather than initiating it.

CNN also twice described Israeli leaflets dropped over Lebanon as "propaganda." While it has done the same with American army leaflets dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan, CNN appears to shy away from describing leaflets issued by jihadi and terror organizations as "propaganda," using instead terms like "urge" and "called on" to describe leaflets issued by Hamas in Gaza or the Taliban in Afghanista.

The inconsistencies seem to point to a wider assumption: Western democracies issue "propaganda," but jihad organizations 'urge,' 'warn,' and advance their points of view.

Dissention in Lebanon ignored

Meanwhile, voices emerging from Lebanon blasting the use of their country as a launch pad from which to attack Israel have been virtually ignored.

A notable exception was an article published in the American magazine, the New Republic by Lebanese journalist Michael Béhé.

"The politicians, journalists and intellectuals of Lebanon have, of late, been experiencing the shock of their lives. They knew full well that Hizbullah had created an independent state in our country, a state including all the ministers and parallel institutions, duplicating those of Lebanon. What they did not know – and are discovering with this war, and what has petrified them with surprise and terror – is the extent of this phagocytosis," wrote Béhé, who also said his country has "become an extension of Iran."

A glimpse though much of the international media shows scant attention has been paid to such dissenting voices in Lebanon. In contrast, the BBC website prominently features an article describing small anti-war activities in Israel.