Author :: to be determined
Both, either Republicans or Democrat are same as far as the Third World is concerned.
My reply would be in two Parts:
1 - Republicans [Grand Old Party - GOP]:
US Government is in the hands of Zionists and i.e. 100%
For example one must not overlook a fact that John Kerry [Democart voted in favour of US War on Iraq like John Kerry [Democrat].
Political Activist type of Mullahs e.g. Qazi Hussain Ahmed/Jamat-e-Islami often raise hue and cry against the so-called Imperialism of the US. I call it the connivance of MMA-Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Jamat-e-Islami to support General Musharraf Martial Law Regime [basically US Republican War Machine] from 2002-2007 particularly in reference with 17 th Constitutional Amendment i.e. LFO to offer Musharraf a complete free hand through this notorious and illegal constitutional amendment rather tampering.
A key member of MMA [Alliance of Religious Parties of Pakistan which supported General Musharraf] Akram Khan Durrani [the then Chief Minister of NWFP - 2002 - 2007] visited the USA-PENTAGONE- US DEFENCE DEPTT, for discussing what Propblem of Muslim Ummah? Read
Let me tell you about Zionists lobby i.e. basically Neocons lest you foget history which is second nature of nowadays Ummah while completely forgetting the facts during Afghan War of Independence 1979-1989 the very same Zionist lobby i.e. Neo-Cons in US were the ones who helped Afghans through Pakistan. Many of the present Neo-Cons [also Zionists] were very young while serving Ronald Reagan's Jihad in Afghanistan e.g. Armitage, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and countless others. [Do check US State Deptt. website]
Under this doctrine, known as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, the Reagan administration initially tolerated leaders such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and General Ziaul Haq in Pakistan. As the 1980's wore on, however, younger, second-generation neoconservatives, such as Elliot Abrams, pushed for a clear policy of supporting democracy against both left and right wing dictators.
Thus, while U.S. support for Marcos continued until and even after the fraudulent Philippine election of February 7, 1986, there was debate within the administration regarding how and when to oppose Marcos. In the days that followed, with the widespread popular refusal to accept Marcos as the purported winner, turmoil in the Philippines grew.
I am amazed at selective and compartmentalized approach of Islamists and Pakistanists of Pakistan which condmens Asif Ali Zardair but absolves General Zia and Jamat-e-Islami. Even during the of Musharraf, his allies in NWFP and Baluchistan [i.e. MMA Alliance of Religio Political Parties] visited the USA and even if that was not enough they were welcomed in Pentagon and US Defence Department.
Under the very nose of US Republican Party and George Bush, the Radical Islamic Fundamentalist were allies [MMA an alliance of religio political party were partners in power with Musharraf in NWFP AND Baluchistan 2002-2007].
The amazing thing is that a key leader of this Radical Islamic Fundamentalist Group met with several highups of US Department of Defence and Pentagon and leading US Power Brokers and guess what MMA leader were given a detailed tour of Pentagon under this very George W Bush and his "War on Terror".
As per news reports in 2005 [GEO TV and Daily Dawn reference is at the end] the then Chief Minister NWFP [Pakistan] Akram Khan Durrani's [member of Religious Parties Alliance]US Visit where he met senior policy advisor on South Asia Jonah Blank and Senator Sanatorium at Capital Hill. Earlier, Mr Durrani met Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Peter Floury at Pentagon where he visited various sections. During his meetings with US authorities, Mr Durrani explained policies of the MMA government. Addressing members of Brooking Institution , he said that a government of the people was in place in the NWFP. He said that common man had easy access to MMA government and minorities and women were being given special
care.
As per Mr. Shaheen Sehbai [A correspondent in The News International in Pakistan had written]
"QUOTE"
As the guest of a Christian organization which calls itself “a Think Tank with Legs”, the Chief Minister of Pakistan’s North-western Province, NWFP, Akram Khan Durrani, has used the legs of the think tank to reach the Pentagon and Washington’s thinking elite. And the Opposition religious coalition, Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA), leader has been preaching the US
decision-makers a word or two about the controversial Hasba Act, the recently passed law which, critics say, means Talibanization of Pakistan. It is being introduced by the Provincial Government to appeal to its conservative constituency in the backward province before the Local Government elections later this month.
It is the Law against which the Federal Government of General Pervez Musharraf has petitioned the Supreme Court of Pakistan claiming it was against the Constitution and should be declared null and void. The MMA says it will contest forcibly in the SC. “Yes I visited the Pentagon and gave them a copy of the Hasba Act,” Durrani (above) told the South Asia Tribune on Saturday night, explaining that it was not at all odd that he was trying to convince Washington that the Act was not meant to Talibanize the Pakistani society. Durrani has been in Washington from July 9-19 as guest of Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) which, according to its web site, was “created to develop sustainable environments for religious freedom worldwide, and to inspire and equip emerging leaders with faith-based methodologies of engagement.”
Founded by Robert A. Seiple, the first-ever US Ambassador-at- Large for International Religious Freedom, “IGE uniquely combines strategic analysis with an operational component that seeks solutions to complex political and religious problems in difficult parts of the world.” “In this age of widespread religious conflict, pluralism, and change, finding such solutions requires a deep understanding of geopolitical realities as well as an approach that is "shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves," the web site of IGE says.
To meet this challenge, IGE partners with governments, religious organizations, scholars, practitioners, and international advocacy groups to take on innovative projects that strike at the root of religious intolerance and educate emerging leaders to take religion seriously in their consideration of international affairs. “We're a "think tank with legs," or if you're feeling less poetic, a "think-and-do- tank." What does that mean? We recognize that thinking is simply our initial step. We're also committed to praying and acting on the basis of our thought and research,” the IGE web site explains.
Chief Minister Durrani has been in Washington with his three sons, one Principal Officer and an Interpreter, all hosted by IGE for 11 days in the US capital and New York. “I had a wonderful trip, my children also saw America and we had good meetings with National Security Council and Pentagon officials. I gave every one a copy of the Hasba Act,” Durrani told the South Asia Tribune. The religious leader from the radically Islamized province has been trying in all his meetings to convince the Americans that his party was not as radical as perceived and they could do business with the Americans on the same terms as any one else. But as a slip of his tongue in one of the TV interviews, Durrani claimed that after he explained the provisions of the Hasba Act to Pentagon officials, they almost approved it and gave a green light to go ahead. But he quickly stopped making the remark to other media channels and when he was specifically asked by South Asia Tribune whether he was able to convince the Pentagon, he was non-committal and said it was for Pentagon to give their opinion.
He was asked whether the Hasba Act, now in the Supreme Court of Pakistan after it was challenged by the Federal Government as violative of the Constitution, would still be pursued if the Court ruled against the MMA, and whether MMA would accept the Court decision, Durrani was a little uncomfortable answering the question saying “Let us think positively as our legal brains have studied the Act in detail and they can successfully argue that it does not come into conflict with the Constitution.” Durrani was, however, almost sure after his round of meetings with think tanks and NSC/Pentagon officials in Washington that his Government in NWFP would not be dismissed by General Musharraf because of the Hasba Act. “I did say that we will wreak havoc if Governor’s Rule was imposed, but I am sure that stage would never be reached as we have worked with the Center on many sensitive issues in the past and reached a mutually acceptable solution,” he said. But Durrani could not convincingly respond to the question that by bringing up the Hasba issue at this stage, the Opposition MMA had actually played into the hands of the Musharraf Government and diverted the focus of national politics from the up-coming unity talks and a possible alliance between the MMA, PPP and PML-N on the more basic issue of getting rid of a military dictator. “We are talking to the Opposition parties for a joint struggle at the Federal level but provinces can legislate and opposition to local laws does not mean we would stop talking to each other at all levels,” he said.
Yet the fact is that MMA has hijacked the national agenda by introducing and passing the Hasba Act in a hurry which prompted other major parties including PPP to sharply attack the MMA and condemn it. No one would have been happier than General Musharraf with this political move. And MMA itself is almost in a win-win situation because if the Hasba Act is enforced, they will have a new Islamic Police at their command which can ultimately be used politically against the Center and other political opponents. On the other hand, if the Act is not allowed by the Supreme Court or if the NWFP Assembly is dismissed, MMA would emerge as “martyrs of Islam” and would be able to recruit more supporters for its hardline policies.
"UNQUOTE"
On one hand these Mullahs particularly of Jamat-e-Islami talk against the West particularly the USA, Secularism, Democracy, Liberalism and on the other hand they had sought from the same quarter as NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, who visited USA, and met US Senator Mr Biden in Washington.
Addressing members of Brooking Institution [According to Islamist Mullahs/Pakistanists every Think Tank is CIA backed and Zionist in nature], he said that a government of the people was in place in the NWFP. He said that common man had easy access to MMA government and minorities and women were being given special care. Since last many decades these numskulls Mullah declare anybody an agent of Zionists, USA, and CIA, if he/she belongs to MQM, PPP, PML-N and they since 9/11 declaring Musharraf and Co an agents of Zionists, I wonder what was in the mind of Pro Taliban Mullah Chief Minister NWFP when he was 'briefing' the brains and strategists in the US Defence department which as per a news article overwhelmingly Zionist.
The Israeli lobby has many "thinktanks" that provide future advisors to the various administrations, both Republican and Democrat. During the Clinton Administration, the Israeli lobby provided officials from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy like Martin Indyk. During the Bush Jr Administration, many of the officials the Israeli lobby provided are from their Republican "thinktanks, " like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
1). Richard Perle----One of Bush's foreign policy advisors, he is the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. A very likely Israeli government agent, Perle was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's after the National Security Agency (NSA) caught him passing Highly-Classified (National Security) documents to the Israeli Embassy. He later worked for the Israeli weapons firm, Soltam. Perle came from one the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktanks, the AEI. Perle is one of the leading pro-Israeli fanatics leading this Iraq war mongering within the administration and now in the media.
2). Paul Wolfowitz--- -Deputy Defense Secretary, and member of Perle's Defense Policy Board, in the Pentagon. Wolfowitz is a close associate of Perle, and reportedly has close ties to the Israeli military. His sister lives in Israel. Wolfowitz came from the above mentioned Jewish thinktank, JINSA. Wolfowitz is the number two leader within the administration behind this Iraq war mongering.
3). Douglas Feith----Under Secretary of Defense and Policy Advisor at the Pentagon. He is a close associate of Perle and served as his Special Counsel. Like Perle and the others, Feith is a pro-Israel extremist, who has advocated anti-Arab policies in the past. He is closely associated with the extremist group, the Zionist Organization of America, which even attacks Jews that don't agree with its extremist views. Feith frequently speaks at ZOA conferences. Feith runs a small law firm, Feith and Zell, which only has one International office, in Israel. The majority of their legal work is representing Israeli interests. His firm's own website stated, prior to his appointment, that Feith "represents Israeli Armaments Manufacturer. " Feith basically represents the Israeli War Machine. Feith also came from the Jewish thinktank JINSA. Feith, like Perle and Wolfowitz, are campaigning hard for this Israeli proxy war against
Iraq.
4). Edward Luttwak----Member of the National Security Study Group of the Department of Defence at the Pentagon. Luttwak is reportedly an Israeli citizen and has taught in Israel. He frequently writes for Israeli and pro-Israeli newspapers and journals. Luttwak is an Israeli extremist whose main theme in many of his articles is the necessity of the U.S. waging war
against Iraq.
5). Henry Kissinger--- --One of many Pentagon Advisors, Kissinger sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle. For detailed information about Kissinger's evil past, read Seymour Hersh's book (Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House). Kissinger likely had a part in the Watergate crimes, Southeast Asia mass murders (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos),
Installing Chilean mass murdering dictator Pinochet, Operation Condor's mass killings in South America, and more recently served as Serbia's Ex-Dictator Slobodan Milosevic's Advisor. He consistently advocates going to war against Iraq. Kissinger is the Ariel Sharon of the U.S. Unfortunately, President Bush nominated Kissinger as chairman of the September 11 investigating commission. It's like picking a bank robber to investigate a fraud scandal.
6). Dov Zakheim----Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller, and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the Department of Defense. He is an ordained rabbi and reportedly holds Israeli citizenship. Zakheim attended attended Jew's College in London and became an ordained Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in 1973. He was adjunct professor at New York's Jewish Yeshiva University.
Zakheim is close to the Israeli lobby.
7). Kenneth Adelman----- One of many Pentagon Advisors, Adelman also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle, and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supports going to war against Iraq. Adelman frequently is a guest on Fox News, and often expresses extremist and often ridiculus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. Through his hatred or stupidity, he actually called Arabs "anti-Semitic" on Fox News (11/28/2001) , when he could have looked it up in the dictionary to find out that Arabs by definition are Semites.
8). I. Lewis Libby -----Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. The chief pro-Israel Jewish advisor to Cheney, it helps explains why Cheney is so gun-ho to invade Iraq. Libby is longtime associate of Wolfowitz. Libby was also a lawyer for convicted felon and Israeli spy Mark Rich, whom Clinton pardoned, in his last days as president.
9). Robert Satloff----U. S. National Security Council Advisor, Satloff was the executive director of the Israeli lobby's "think tank," Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Many of the Israeli lobby's "experts" come from this front group, like Martin Indyk.
10). Elliott Abrams-----National Security Council Advisor. He previously worked at Washington-based "Think Tank" Ethics and Public Policy Center. During the Reagan Adminstration, Abrams was the Assistant Secretary of State, handling, for the most part, Latin American affairs. He played an important role in the Iran-Contra Scandal, which involved illegally selling U.S. weapons to Iran to fight Iraq, and illegally funding the contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. He also actively deceived three congressional committees about his involvement and thereby faced felony charges based on his testimony. Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service. A year later, former President Bush (Senior) granted Abrams a full pardon. He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Reagan Administration' s State Department.
11). Marc Grossman---- -Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He was Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources at the Department of State. Grossman is one of many of the pro-Israel Jewish officials from the Clinton Administration that Bush has promoted to higher posts.
12). Richard Haass-----Director of Policy Planning at the State Department and Ambassador at large. He is also Director of National Security Programs and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the first Bush (Sr) Administration who sat on the National Security Council, and who consistently advocates going
to war against Iraq. Haass is also a member of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.
13). Robert Zoellick---- -U.S. Trade Representative, a cabinet-level position. He is also one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Bush (Jr) Administration who advocated invading Iraq and occupying a portion of the country in order to set up setting up a Vichy-style puppet government. He consistently advocates going to war against Iraq.
14). Ari Fleischer--- -Official White House Spokesman for the Bush (Jr) Administration. Prominent in the Jewish community, some reports state that he holds Israeli citizenship. Fleischer is closely connected to the extremist Jewish group called the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidics, who follow the Qabala, and hold very extremist and insulting views of non-Jews. Fleischer was the co-president of Chabad's Capitol Jewish Forum. He received the Young Leadership Award from the American Friends of Lubavitch in October, 2001.
15). James Schlesinger- ----One of many Pentagon Advisors, Schlesinger also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supports going to war against Iraq. Schlesinger is also a commissioner of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.
16). David Frum-----White House speechwriter behind the "Axis of Evil" label. He lumps together all the lies and accusations against Iraq for Bush to justify the war.
17). Joshua Bolten----White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Bolten was previously a banker, former legislative aide, and prominent in the Jewish community.
18). John Bolton----Under- Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Bolton is also a Senior Advisor to President Bush. Prior to this position, Bolton was Senior Vice President of the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktank, AEI. He recently (October 2002) accused Syria of having a nuclear program, so that they can attack Syria after Iraq. He must have forgotten that Israel has 400 nuclear warheads, some of which are thermonuclear weapons (according to a recent U.S. Air Force report).
19). David Wurmser----Special Assistant to John Bolton (above), the under-secretary for arms control and international security. Wurmser also worked at the AEI with Perle and Bolton. His wife, Meyrav Wurmser, along with Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, co-founded the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri),a Washington-based
Israeli outfit which distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light.
20). Eliot Cohen-----Member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor. Like Adelman, he often expresses extremist and often ridiculus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. More recently, he wrote an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal openly admitting his rascist hatred of Islam claiming that Islam should
be the enemy, not terrorism.
21). Mel Sembler----- President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. A Prominent Jewish Republican and Former National Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Export-Import Bank facilitates trade relationships between U.S. businesses and foreign countries, specifically those with financial problems.
22). Michael Chertoff ----Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, at the Justice Department.
23). Steve Goldsmith--- -Senior Advisor to the President, and Bush's Jewish domestic policy advisor. He also serves as liaison in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (White House OFBCI) within the Executive Office of the President. He was the former mayor of Indianapolis. He is also friends with Israeli Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and often visits Israel to coach mayors on privatization initiatives.
24). Adam Goldman----- White House's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community.
25). Joseph Gildenhorn-- ---Bush Campaign's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community. He was the DC finance chairman for the Bush campaign, as well as campaign coordinator, and former ambassador to Switzerland.
26). Christopher Gersten----- Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families at HHS. Gersten was the former Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Husband of Labor Secretary, Linda Chavez, and reportedly very pro-Israel. Their children are being raised Jewish.
27). Mark Weinberger-- ---Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy.
28). Samuel Bodman-----Deputy Secretary of Commerce. He was the Chairman and CEO of Cabot Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts.
29). Bonnie Cohen-----Under Secretary of State for Management.
30). Ruth Davis-----Director of Foreign Service Institute, who reports to the Office of Under Secretary for Management. This Office is responsible
for training all Department of State staff (including ambassadors) .
31). Lincoln Bloomfield-- ---Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs.
32). Jay Lefkowitz--- --General Counsel of the Office of Budget and Management.
33). Ken Melman-----White House Political Director.
34). Brad Blakeman---- --White House Director of Scheduling.
NOTES:
The Proposed Hasba Bill at a Glance Tahseen Ullah Khan
NRDF, Peshawar
http://www.khyber.org/articles/2005/TheProposedHasbaBillataGlance.shtml
Durrani meets US senator Bureau Report
July 16, 2005 Saturday Jumadi-us-Sani 8, 1426
http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/16/nat38.htm
Life under the Hasba law By Iqbal Haider
http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/30/op.htm#3
Towards a shackled society, perhaps By Omar R. Quraishi
http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/19/op.htm#5
What's wrong with the Hasba Bill Iqbal Haider
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2005-daily/30-07-2005/oped/o4.htm
Zionist Influence On The US War Machine
http://www.rense.com/general36/zinf.htm
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Georgia, Russia, Neocons and America
No community or a nation can have undue advantages over others. Such benefits are temporary and deleterious to lasting peace.We have to maintain a healthy balance within our communities and with all nations, what is good for America, has got to be good for the world and vice versa. Sadly, our foreign policy is run by short-sighted men who do not understand the concept of Justice.
I am looking forward to the end of Bush-Cheney-Rice era and hope for a bright future for America with Obama. We still have extremists controlling the media and our administration who are intolerant to another point of view. We need to restore America to what it stood for; democracy and respect for international law.
I have a dream, a dream to strengthen the pluralistic values of America, and the desire to encourage the community of nations to review our values of Liberty, Justice and co-existence as catalysts for prosperity.
We should consciously abandon the fear mongering Neocons, whose policies have done nothing but destruction of us and other nations. Every thing they have proposed was out of the fear and they have miserably failed America, and it is time to ask them work from the angle of live and let live or simply take a vacation and relax and come back to a better world.
A few article on the Georgia-Russia conflict are listed below
Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker and a Writer. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. He is the founding president of World Muslim Congress with a simple theme: Good for Muslims and good for the world. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com
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Who Restarted the Cold War
Pat Buchanan
"Putin's Hostile Course," the lead editorial in The Washington Times of Oct. 18, began thus:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin's invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Moscow is just the latest sign that, more than 16 years after the collapse of Soviet communism, Moscow is gravitating toward Cold War behavior. The old Soviet obsession – fighting American imperialism – remains undiluted. ...
"(A)t virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests."
The Times pointed to Putin's snub of Robert Gates and Condi Rice by having them cool their heels for 40 minutes before a meeting. Then came a press briefing where Putin implied Russia may renounce the Reagan-Gorbachev INF treaty, which removed all U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles from Europe, and threatened to pull out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, whereby Russia moved its tanks and troops far from the borders of Eastern Europe.
On and on the Times indictment went. Russia was blocking new sanctions on Iran. Russia was selling anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Russia was selling weapons to Syria that found their way to Hezbollah and Hamas. Russia and Iran were talking up an OPEC-style natural gas cartel. All this, said the Times, calls to mind "Soviet-era behavior."
Missing from the prosecution's case, however, was the motive. Why has Putin's Russia turned hostile? Why is Putin mending fences with China, Iran and Syria? Why is Putin sending Bear bombers to the edge of American airspace? Why has Russia turned against America? For Putin's approval rating is three times that of George Bush. Who restarted the Cold War?
To answer that question, let us go back those 16 years.
What happened in 1991 and 1992?
Well, Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down and its satellite states be voted or thrown out of power across Eastern Europe. Russia agreed to pull the Red Army all the way back inside its border. Russia agreed to let the Soviet Union dissolve into 15 nations. The Communist Party agreed to share power and let itself be voted out. Russia embraced freedom and American-style capitalism, and invited Americans in to show them how it was done.
Russia did not use its veto in the Security Council to block the U.S. war to drive Saddam Hussein, an ally, out of Kuwait. When 9-11 struck, Putin gave his blessing to U.S. troops using former republics as bases for the U.S. invasion.
What was Moscow's reward for its pro-America policy?
The United States began moving NATO into Eastern Europe and then into former Soviet republics. Six ex-Warsaw Pact nations are now NATO allies, as are three ex-republics of the Soviet Union. NATO expansionists have not given up on bringing Ukraine, united to Russia for centuries, or Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, into NATO.
In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia, which has long looked to Mother Russia for protection, for 78 days, though the Serbs' sole crime was to fight to hold their cradle province of Kosovo, as President Lincoln fought to hold onto the American South. Now America is supporting the severing of Kosovo from Serbia and creation of a new Islamic state in the Balkans, over Moscow's protest.
While Moscow removed its military bases from Cuba and all over the Third World, we have sought permanent military bases in Russia's backyard of Central Asia.
We dissolved the Nixon-Brezhnev ABM treaty and announced we would put a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Under presidents Clinton and Bush, the United States financed a pipeline for Caspian Sea oil to transit Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.
With the end of the Cold War, the KGB was abolished and the Comintern disappeared. But the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other Cold War agencies, funded with tens of millions in tax-exempt and tax dollars, engineered the ouster of pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, and sought the ouster of the regime in Minsk.
At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred.
We blew it.
Who Restarted the Cold War
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Premen Addy
Georgia learns a brutal lesson
The anniversary of Indian independence was to have been the event of my week, evoking remembrance of things past, reflections on time present, with perhaps a cursory glance at mysterious runic shapes for clues to the future. That, alas, was a not to be. Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvilli decided to strut his hour upon the stage, little realising that the exercise would release bolts of lightning accompanied by claps of thunder, which have begun to reverberate across the globe. An adventurer by instinct, a huckster in search of a role, Mr Saakashvilli was primed and programmed by his American mentors and put through his paces at the Harvard University Law School with a State Department scholarship. He returned to his native Georgia, with an American spouse in tow, and ignited the 'Rose Revolution' whose force lifted him to the seat of power.
Not cut from the cloth of Brutus or Mark Antony, Mr Saakashvilli is invariably his inimitable self, much given to incontinent perorations on his democratic and human rights credentials and Russia's sins of commission and omission down the ages. He is a case study of creatures great and small trapped in a great game in which they are at best hapless pawns.
The mainstream and creationist American view of America is not far removed from Catholicism's immaculate conception. The systematic extermination of the Indian peoples of the North American plain, the long years of Black slavery, the use of atom bombs on Japan when the country's rulers were suing for peace, the massacre of the Vietnamese and Indo-Chinese peoples through carpet bombing and defoliation and the deceitful war on Iraq (without the discovery of the weapons of mass destruction, which were its alleged justification) are conspicuously absent from mainstream American political discourse. Its commanding heights are dominated increasingly by dipsomaniac disquisition on the threat to world order from the Professor Moriarty of modern crime, Mr Vladimir Putin himself.
America is a great country with a multitude of wonderful accomplishments but its self-serving theology of unblemished virtue and rectitude is in danger of taking all humanity over the abyss. The United States is deep in the constructing of empire: American exceptionalism through Calvinistic grace makes the exercise credible in many American eyes. The dissolution of the Soviet Union constituted an opportunity for a divinely ordained enterprise; the vast expanses of Eurasia and its natural wealth to be dominated and exploited by American decree.
Nato's noose is drawn ever tighter round the Russian neck. American military and missile bases are already ensconced in Romania and Bulgaria -- two states once in harness with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and the invading Nazi legions into the USSR -- in a bid to strangle the possible emergence of a rival centre of power in the Black Sea. Mr Saakashvilli, a midget in a grand design, was instrument in the baiting of the Russian bear. His troops and tanks, guns blazing, entered the rebellious Georgian enclave of South Ossetia to subdue its recalcitrant Russian-speaking population. He and his Anglo-American handlers calculated wrongly that a quiescent Kremlin, absorbed by the glittering opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympiad, would take the blow in humiliated silence.
It was delusional fantasy. The Georgian President has received a salutary and brutal lesson, and the US and Europe have been put on notice that Russia's era of passive accommodation is now closed. The Sunday Telegraph -- the haw-haw voice of Toryism -- produced an inebriating leader threatening Russia with combat based on the West's superior economy and military technology. Nazi Germany was similarly convinced of a triumph that never was, as was Napoleon a century earlier.
The US-led coalition of the willing hasn't covered itself in glory in either Iraq or Afghanistan, with Britain engaged in an urgent recruitment drive in Jamaica to replenish the diminishing manpower of its armed forces, particularly its under-strength Army. Nato may not have the stomach for a replay of Stalingrad.
The Independent's Mark Siegal, reporting from the border town of Vladikavkaz, Russia's old Caucasian staging post, tells of young Russians streaming in from all parts of this huge nation to volunteer for action. Muscular 30-year-old Nikolai from Stavropol, the birthplace of Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, had "left his job, jumped into the car and driven 600 miles through the night to sign up to defend the Russian cause". Another young compatriot barked, "This war is absolutely a war between Russia and America. The biggest mistake was in underestimating us. Now you'll see what happens."
A pity that American neocons are not much given to reading, let alone understanding, history. Having taken repeated provocations from Imperial Japan's forces along the Mongolian-Manchurian border in the summer of 1939, Marshal Zhukov was despatched to the frontier to sort out the problem -- which he did to such telling effect that Tokyo's military turned southwards and attacked the European colonial presence in South-East Asia rather than try conclusions again with the Red Army. Marshal Zhukov, the conqueror of Berlin, had saved his country the hazards of a possible two-front war in the aftermath of the Nazi assault. Appropriate force projection in pursuance of a political goal was thus vindicated. Thirty years later, in 1969, along their common frontier on the giant Amur river, the Soviet response to an unprovoked Chinese assault, which resulted in 61 Russian dead, left China's territory looking like a moonscape.
Mr Gorbachev, poor man, had wound up the Cold War (much to his credit) without precautionary insurance against Western bad faith. Western leaders made false promises on Nato non-expansion eastwards. Realpolitik, not pie-in-the-sky bromides on peace and brotherhood, is still the surest guarantor of peace and security.
A perusal of Barbara Crossette's report in the New York Times, at the commencement of the Pakistan-incubated Islamist insurgency in Kashmir in January 1990, will reveal the prognostication of an unnamed Islamabad-based Western diplomat, that the world was about to witness a permanent shift in the Sub-continental balance of power. The prediction mercifully was as still-born as the Nixon Administration's hope of similar geopolitical change in the wake of its support for the Pakistani military dictatorship in its war with India in December 1971.
India's public discourse on foreign and strategic policy is prone to mix political metaphors: The organising principles of a yogic ashram have no place in the fundamentals of statecraft. Force in the defence of dharma, as Krishna expostulated to Arjuna, is morally justified. It was so more than two millennia ago; it is as true today.
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I am looking forward to the end of Bush-Cheney-Rice era and hope for a bright future for America with Obama. We still have extremists controlling the media and our administration who are intolerant to another point of view. We need to restore America to what it stood for; democracy and respect for international law.
I have a dream, a dream to strengthen the pluralistic values of America, and the desire to encourage the community of nations to review our values of Liberty, Justice and co-existence as catalysts for prosperity.
We should consciously abandon the fear mongering Neocons, whose policies have done nothing but destruction of us and other nations. Every thing they have proposed was out of the fear and they have miserably failed America, and it is time to ask them work from the angle of live and let live or simply take a vacation and relax and come back to a better world.
A few article on the Georgia-Russia conflict are listed below
Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker and a Writer. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. He is the founding president of World Muslim Congress with a simple theme: Good for Muslims and good for the world. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com
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Who Restarted the Cold War
Pat Buchanan
"Putin's Hostile Course," the lead editorial in The Washington Times of Oct. 18, began thus:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin's invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Moscow is just the latest sign that, more than 16 years after the collapse of Soviet communism, Moscow is gravitating toward Cold War behavior. The old Soviet obsession – fighting American imperialism – remains undiluted. ...
"(A)t virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests."
The Times pointed to Putin's snub of Robert Gates and Condi Rice by having them cool their heels for 40 minutes before a meeting. Then came a press briefing where Putin implied Russia may renounce the Reagan-Gorbachev INF treaty, which removed all U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles from Europe, and threatened to pull out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, whereby Russia moved its tanks and troops far from the borders of Eastern Europe.
On and on the Times indictment went. Russia was blocking new sanctions on Iran. Russia was selling anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Russia was selling weapons to Syria that found their way to Hezbollah and Hamas. Russia and Iran were talking up an OPEC-style natural gas cartel. All this, said the Times, calls to mind "Soviet-era behavior."
Missing from the prosecution's case, however, was the motive. Why has Putin's Russia turned hostile? Why is Putin mending fences with China, Iran and Syria? Why is Putin sending Bear bombers to the edge of American airspace? Why has Russia turned against America? For Putin's approval rating is three times that of George Bush. Who restarted the Cold War?
To answer that question, let us go back those 16 years.
What happened in 1991 and 1992?
Well, Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down and its satellite states be voted or thrown out of power across Eastern Europe. Russia agreed to pull the Red Army all the way back inside its border. Russia agreed to let the Soviet Union dissolve into 15 nations. The Communist Party agreed to share power and let itself be voted out. Russia embraced freedom and American-style capitalism, and invited Americans in to show them how it was done.
Russia did not use its veto in the Security Council to block the U.S. war to drive Saddam Hussein, an ally, out of Kuwait. When 9-11 struck, Putin gave his blessing to U.S. troops using former republics as bases for the U.S. invasion.
What was Moscow's reward for its pro-America policy?
The United States began moving NATO into Eastern Europe and then into former Soviet republics. Six ex-Warsaw Pact nations are now NATO allies, as are three ex-republics of the Soviet Union. NATO expansionists have not given up on bringing Ukraine, united to Russia for centuries, or Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, into NATO.
In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia, which has long looked to Mother Russia for protection, for 78 days, though the Serbs' sole crime was to fight to hold their cradle province of Kosovo, as President Lincoln fought to hold onto the American South. Now America is supporting the severing of Kosovo from Serbia and creation of a new Islamic state in the Balkans, over Moscow's protest.
While Moscow removed its military bases from Cuba and all over the Third World, we have sought permanent military bases in Russia's backyard of Central Asia.
We dissolved the Nixon-Brezhnev ABM treaty and announced we would put a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Under presidents Clinton and Bush, the United States financed a pipeline for Caspian Sea oil to transit Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.
With the end of the Cold War, the KGB was abolished and the Comintern disappeared. But the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other Cold War agencies, funded with tens of millions in tax-exempt and tax dollars, engineered the ouster of pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, and sought the ouster of the regime in Minsk.
At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred.
We blew it.
Who Restarted the Cold War
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Premen Addy
Georgia learns a brutal lesson
The anniversary of Indian independence was to have been the event of my week, evoking remembrance of things past, reflections on time present, with perhaps a cursory glance at mysterious runic shapes for clues to the future. That, alas, was a not to be. Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvilli decided to strut his hour upon the stage, little realising that the exercise would release bolts of lightning accompanied by claps of thunder, which have begun to reverberate across the globe. An adventurer by instinct, a huckster in search of a role, Mr Saakashvilli was primed and programmed by his American mentors and put through his paces at the Harvard University Law School with a State Department scholarship. He returned to his native Georgia, with an American spouse in tow, and ignited the 'Rose Revolution' whose force lifted him to the seat of power.
Not cut from the cloth of Brutus or Mark Antony, Mr Saakashvilli is invariably his inimitable self, much given to incontinent perorations on his democratic and human rights credentials and Russia's sins of commission and omission down the ages. He is a case study of creatures great and small trapped in a great game in which they are at best hapless pawns.
The mainstream and creationist American view of America is not far removed from Catholicism's immaculate conception. The systematic extermination of the Indian peoples of the North American plain, the long years of Black slavery, the use of atom bombs on Japan when the country's rulers were suing for peace, the massacre of the Vietnamese and Indo-Chinese peoples through carpet bombing and defoliation and the deceitful war on Iraq (without the discovery of the weapons of mass destruction, which were its alleged justification) are conspicuously absent from mainstream American political discourse. Its commanding heights are dominated increasingly by dipsomaniac disquisition on the threat to world order from the Professor Moriarty of modern crime, Mr Vladimir Putin himself.
America is a great country with a multitude of wonderful accomplishments but its self-serving theology of unblemished virtue and rectitude is in danger of taking all humanity over the abyss. The United States is deep in the constructing of empire: American exceptionalism through Calvinistic grace makes the exercise credible in many American eyes. The dissolution of the Soviet Union constituted an opportunity for a divinely ordained enterprise; the vast expanses of Eurasia and its natural wealth to be dominated and exploited by American decree.
Nato's noose is drawn ever tighter round the Russian neck. American military and missile bases are already ensconced in Romania and Bulgaria -- two states once in harness with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and the invading Nazi legions into the USSR -- in a bid to strangle the possible emergence of a rival centre of power in the Black Sea. Mr Saakashvilli, a midget in a grand design, was instrument in the baiting of the Russian bear. His troops and tanks, guns blazing, entered the rebellious Georgian enclave of South Ossetia to subdue its recalcitrant Russian-speaking population. He and his Anglo-American handlers calculated wrongly that a quiescent Kremlin, absorbed by the glittering opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympiad, would take the blow in humiliated silence.
It was delusional fantasy. The Georgian President has received a salutary and brutal lesson, and the US and Europe have been put on notice that Russia's era of passive accommodation is now closed. The Sunday Telegraph -- the haw-haw voice of Toryism -- produced an inebriating leader threatening Russia with combat based on the West's superior economy and military technology. Nazi Germany was similarly convinced of a triumph that never was, as was Napoleon a century earlier.
The US-led coalition of the willing hasn't covered itself in glory in either Iraq or Afghanistan, with Britain engaged in an urgent recruitment drive in Jamaica to replenish the diminishing manpower of its armed forces, particularly its under-strength Army. Nato may not have the stomach for a replay of Stalingrad.
The Independent's Mark Siegal, reporting from the border town of Vladikavkaz, Russia's old Caucasian staging post, tells of young Russians streaming in from all parts of this huge nation to volunteer for action. Muscular 30-year-old Nikolai from Stavropol, the birthplace of Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, had "left his job, jumped into the car and driven 600 miles through the night to sign up to defend the Russian cause". Another young compatriot barked, "This war is absolutely a war between Russia and America. The biggest mistake was in underestimating us. Now you'll see what happens."
A pity that American neocons are not much given to reading, let alone understanding, history. Having taken repeated provocations from Imperial Japan's forces along the Mongolian-Manchurian border in the summer of 1939, Marshal Zhukov was despatched to the frontier to sort out the problem -- which he did to such telling effect that Tokyo's military turned southwards and attacked the European colonial presence in South-East Asia rather than try conclusions again with the Red Army. Marshal Zhukov, the conqueror of Berlin, had saved his country the hazards of a possible two-front war in the aftermath of the Nazi assault. Appropriate force projection in pursuance of a political goal was thus vindicated. Thirty years later, in 1969, along their common frontier on the giant Amur river, the Soviet response to an unprovoked Chinese assault, which resulted in 61 Russian dead, left China's territory looking like a moonscape.
Mr Gorbachev, poor man, had wound up the Cold War (much to his credit) without precautionary insurance against Western bad faith. Western leaders made false promises on Nato non-expansion eastwards. Realpolitik, not pie-in-the-sky bromides on peace and brotherhood, is still the surest guarantor of peace and security.
A perusal of Barbara Crossette's report in the New York Times, at the commencement of the Pakistan-incubated Islamist insurgency in Kashmir in January 1990, will reveal the prognostication of an unnamed Islamabad-based Western diplomat, that the world was about to witness a permanent shift in the Sub-continental balance of power. The prediction mercifully was as still-born as the Nixon Administration's hope of similar geopolitical change in the wake of its support for the Pakistani military dictatorship in its war with India in December 1971.
India's public discourse on foreign and strategic policy is prone to mix political metaphors: The organising principles of a yogic ashram have no place in the fundamentals of statecraft. Force in the defence of dharma, as Krishna expostulated to Arjuna, is morally justified. It was so more than two millennia ago; it is as true today.
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Saturday, July 26, 2008
McCain would start WWIV
Would John McCain start WWIV?
Mike Ghouse
Most Americans understand the message of Jesus, where he says, even if you are slapped, work on mitigating the conflict rather than slapping back and continuing the slap cycles to eternity.
Cheney, Bush, McCain, Lieberman and Giuliani do not get that message, they are either insecure and want to keep fighting an imaginary enemy cooked by them or simply they don't understand that if by aggravating the conflicts, the opposite of what they imagine happens; insecurity to one an all. If others are not secure, we cannot be safe either.
We become a great nation by earning the respect from the community of nations, by being just and fair to the parties where there is conflict. We have to earn our name back as a nation that gives and cares where help was needed.
From a business point of view, the gang is downright stupid. Had we invested half of that money we blew in Iraq and Afghanistan on education, jobs, friendship and exchange programs, we would have had greater returns, we would have fewer enemies and the world would have been a safe place for us Americans as well as the people of the world. I am sure some one will come out with the statistics. Do we have more people frustrated at us American now, than before Bush’s misadventure. Brzezinski speaks sense, when he says, McCain could start the WWIV.
It is time to have leaders who reflect the sentiments of Americans, and make sure our democracy remains, government of the people, by the people for the people.
Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker and a Writer. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website http://www.mikeghouse.net/. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com
Brzezinski: McCain would start WWIV
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:26:50
Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
Former White House national security adviser says if John McCain becomes the next US president the world will move toward World War IV.
Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized US officials in Senator McCain's camp for pushing the presumptive Republican nominee toward a radical foreign policy on issues such as Iran.
Brzezinski described McCain's presidency as an 'appalling concept' as it would lead to the World War IV, arguing that from the viewpoint of figures surrounding the Arizona senator the Cold War counted as World War III.
"Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV that they have been both favoring and predicting," Brzezinski cautioned.
Earlier in October 2007, President George W. Bush, who has endorsed John McCain, warned of the eruption of World War III should Iran continue uranium enrichment.
CS/HGH
Mike Ghouse
Most Americans understand the message of Jesus, where he says, even if you are slapped, work on mitigating the conflict rather than slapping back and continuing the slap cycles to eternity.
Cheney, Bush, McCain, Lieberman and Giuliani do not get that message, they are either insecure and want to keep fighting an imaginary enemy cooked by them or simply they don't understand that if by aggravating the conflicts, the opposite of what they imagine happens; insecurity to one an all. If others are not secure, we cannot be safe either.
We become a great nation by earning the respect from the community of nations, by being just and fair to the parties where there is conflict. We have to earn our name back as a nation that gives and cares where help was needed.
From a business point of view, the gang is downright stupid. Had we invested half of that money we blew in Iraq and Afghanistan on education, jobs, friendship and exchange programs, we would have had greater returns, we would have fewer enemies and the world would have been a safe place for us Americans as well as the people of the world. I am sure some one will come out with the statistics. Do we have more people frustrated at us American now, than before Bush’s misadventure. Brzezinski speaks sense, when he says, McCain could start the WWIV.
It is time to have leaders who reflect the sentiments of Americans, and make sure our democracy remains, government of the people, by the people for the people.
Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker and a Writer. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website http://www.mikeghouse.net/. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com
Brzezinski: McCain would start WWIV
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:26:50
Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
Former White House national security adviser says if John McCain becomes the next US president the world will move toward World War IV.
Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized US officials in Senator McCain's camp for pushing the presumptive Republican nominee toward a radical foreign policy on issues such as Iran.
Brzezinski described McCain's presidency as an 'appalling concept' as it would lead to the World War IV, arguing that from the viewpoint of figures surrounding the Arizona senator the Cold War counted as World War III.
"Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV that they have been both favoring and predicting," Brzezinski cautioned.
Earlier in October 2007, President George W. Bush, who has endorsed John McCain, warned of the eruption of World War III should Iran continue uranium enrichment.
CS/HGH
Pro-Israel or Pro-Palestine are divise words
http://internationalconflicts.blogspot.com/2008/07/pro-israel-or-pro-palestine-are-divise.html
My comments are followed by the article "Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva" and I do hope, we look at humans without a branding them with a label.
The idea of pro-Israel or pro-Palestine in itself is a divise, we ought to consider looking at the issue in terms of Justice, peace and security for the people of the area understood as Israel and Palestine.
It is human to crave for Justice and every faith is designed to deliever that to the people. Justice is the only thing that sustains peace and security for the people. The simple truth is that neither the Palestinians, nor the Israelis will have peace for themselves, unless they want the peace for the other and take steps to achieve it. Security will not come to either party, if other party is not in the equation.
Gun power is short lived, neither the Palestinians were able to succeed with it in the last sixty years, nor the history has oppressed the Jewish people in the three thousand years of their history.
What do the real people want? Not the Media not the Administration nor the hawks who believe in gun powder and all of them combined are a tiny minority.
Take a look at our own country. For the last seven years that will come to a conclusion in January 2008, our Administration and their policies did not represent the will of the people, the media failed to focus on it, instead they became the mouth pieces of the administration like they do in the non-democratic nations. Is Israel going through the same?
Justice must be the corner stone of any governance. The idea of partitioning the grops as Pro-Palestine and Pro-Israel is wrong, they should rather look at the issue from a human rights perspective.
Mike Ghouse
http://www.mikeghouse.net/
Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva
By Michael J. Jordan Published Yesterday Cover Story
http://www.jstandard.com/articles/4550/1/Durban-redux%3F-Vitriol-may-follow-Israel-to-Geneva
Michael J. Jordan
View all articles by Michael J. Jordan GENEVA – In less than a year, the United Nations will try again to tackle the thorny questions of racism around the world. Its effort in 2001 devolved into a virulent attack on Israel and Jews.
While it’s too early to tell which groups hostile to Israel will show up at the follow-up conference in April, at least two hint at what treatment awaits the Jewish state.
The Ford Foundation, the powerful philanthropy whose money fueled much of the anti-Israel activity at the anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, has opted out of the event in this Swiss city.
The New York headquarters of the Ford Foundation, which following JTA’s 2003 investigative series "Funding Hate," published stringent new guidelines on its grantees. JTA Photo
Indeed, Durban reportedly has become something of a dreaded "D word" in some diplomatic circles, prompting widespread concern that the follow-up could be a repeat of the anti-Israel extravaganza seven years ago.
At least two Palestinian organizations have declared publicly their intent to carry the crusade launched in Durban to Geneva.
That crusade paints Israel as an "apartheid state" like the South Africa of old to be similarly crippled through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. And by most accounts, even more pro-Palestinian groups are sure to arrive in Geneva to trumpet their cause célebre.
At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, the rabid activism of numerous anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, virtually drowned out much of the world’s other ills.
Last month in Brazil, at the first regional meeting to determine the substance of next year’s conference, one group hinted at what to expect.
BADIL: The Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (www.badil.org) issued an open letter (www.badil.org/Publications/Press/2008/press481-08.htm) to the "Latin American people, its governments, movements and organizations."
The letter stated: "The world’s imperial powers, with the United States and Israel at the forefront, are putting pressure on states" to "silence the principled voices of the victims of racism."
Latin America should resist, the letter said, because "the struggle against Israel’s colonial apartheid regime is one of the cornerstones of the struggle against state-sponsored racism and ongoing colonial policies worldwide."
BADIL was not present in Durban.
A second group created since Durban recently sought and gained accreditation to the Geneva conference. The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, (www.stopthewall.org) is at the forefront of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel.
It’s too soon to know which funding agencies will help send NGOs such as BADIL and the Wall Campaign to Geneva, but one watchdog suggests European money will likely be involved.
"European aid agencies give tens of millions of euros per year to very political, in some cases radical, anti-Israel NGOs, and these groups are the most active in the Durban process," said Gerald Steinberg, the executive director of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, which recently detailed these links in its report "Europe’s Hidden Hand".
"There are many officials in those agencies who come from an anti-colonialist, anti-American, anti-Israel political ideology," Steinberg said, "and they have almost no supervision, almost no open discussions in their parliaments over these budgets."
European Union officials told JTA that none of its grants are explicitly for NGOs to attend conferences, like the Durban follow-up, but rather are directed toward specific projects.
Beyond the Durban process, the EU officials say a grantee’s words — like branding Israel as apartheid or endorsing boycotts — are the "sole responsibility" of the grantee and do not reflect EU positions.
Brussels "cannot be held responsible" for these statements, nor can it "oblige them to refrain" from making them, said David Kriss, a spokesman for the European Commission delegation to Israel.
"The Commission is respectful of freedom of expression as a key feature of a democratic society," Kriss wrote in an e-mail from his office in Ramat Gan, Israel. "An open debate over political issues is indispensable on the way towards better mutual understanding.
"At the same time, the Commission is firmly committed to the fight against incitement to hatred between ethnic or religious groups as well as to the expressions of racism, xenophobia, discrimination, anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia, and will continue fighting these deplorable phenomena."
The 2009 Durban follow-up will likely cost "several million dollars," according to a U.N. official in Geneva, with U.N. member-states expected to foot the entire bill.
Few, however, have ponied up so far. Some $750,000 left over from the 2001 event is now being used, said the U.N. official, with Russia recently adding a contribution of $250,000 and China another $20,000.
Other countries have pledged funds but not yet delivered, which is typical among member-states that sometimes promise money but are slow to act.
Meanwhile, the United States, Israel, Canada, and France have threatened to boycott the event, saying it should focus on racism and discrimination generally, not stir the Middle East conflict.
To urge fellow NGOs and U.N. member-states to rise above at Geneva, the Magenta Foundation of Holland, the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights and Human Rights First have circulated a petition with five "core principles" (www.magenta.nl/coreprinciples.html) that would reject any effort to "foment hateful stereotyping in the name of human rights" and instead "uphold language and behavior that unites rather than divides."
The New Israel Fund, a group that promotes human rights and pluralism in Israel, is one of 96 signatories pushing for a more productive conference. But NIF told JTA it will not allocate funds for any of its grantees to attend the event. In 2001, the fund provided $50,000 for such participation through a Ford grant it had received.
There is no contradiction, said an NIF spokeswoman, nor does it indicate a lack of trust that its own grantees — some of whom were most active in Durban — would adhere to these higher standards.
"Basically, NIF was outraged at the misuse" of the Durban forum and was concerned about "a possible repetition" of the tone and substance, said the spokeswoman, Naomi Paiss.
"We are a family of organizations representing a range of opinions," she said. "As strongly as we feel about Durban, this is not a question of forbidding another group from attending. We are saying we will not fund it."
One NIF and Ford grantee that played a prominent role in Durban — Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (www.adalah.org/eng/index.php) — says it has yet to decide whether to attend.
"Adalah will deal with the follow-up issues regarding Durban at the relevant time, not now," Eva Mousa, the group’s media director, told JTA. "At that time, Adalah will speak about it and discuss it with our donors, including Ford and NIF."
The United Nations, meanwhile, stung by criticism of the 2001 event, is taking steps to prevent a repetition.
In late May, member-states decided to host the event on the serene, secure U.N. campus in Geneva. In Durban, with thousands of activists milling about inside tents and on the streets, Jewish activists say the atmosphere often grew tense — even intimidating— punctured by anti-Semitic incidents.
The world body also is expected to eliminate a separate NGO Forum, which in Durban was the source of the harshest anti-Israel rhetoric (www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/NGO_WCAR.htm). At the forum, the Jewish state was accused of such human rights crimes as genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Startled by the protest walkout of the American and Israeli delegations — and the discredit it brought upon the conference — the member-states that remained settled on two rather benign references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the government declaration (www.unhchr.ch/pdf/Durban.pdf).
At this point, it’s "very likely" that NGO participation in Geneva will be restricted and woven into the governmental gathering, said a U.N. official who asked not to be identified because there was no authorization to speak on the record.
NGOs instead will probably be encouraged to attend, but at most official U.N. meetings will have to request an opportunity to address the gathering beforehand. Each will be allotted three minutes to speak.
None of the 775 NGOs that attended Durban saw their accreditation revoked for their actions there, so they remain accredited and free to attend April’s event, according to the U.N. official.
"The NGO issue is a highly political issue here," the official said.
This format may mean less Israel-bashing, but also less criticism of U.N. member-states that rank at the bottom of most global surveys of racism and other forms of discrimination. After all, few governments choose to freely chastise themselves.
This is left to the NGOs.
Still, three minutes available every day at a four- or five-day conference – the world’s largest in the sphere of human rights — is enough time to sling arrows, hammer home a message to the media and have it documented for eternity in U.N. archives.
That’s why some Jewish observers were taken aback by the conference accreditation granted to the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.
The group, according to its Website, was formed one year after Durban, in October 2002, by one of the more extremist NGOs that did attend Durban — the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network.
The Wall Campaign partnered with another prominent Israel basher at Durban, the Palestinian NGO Network, or PNGO, to hold the First Palestinian Conference for the Boycott of Israel (BDS) on Nov. 18, 2007. At the time of Durban, PNGO was a Ford grantee, but is no longer.
In addition, the Wall Campaign and PNGO are two members of the National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba, the Arab term for catastrophe used to depict Israel’s creation as a state.
On its Website, the Wall Campaign links to BADIL, the group based in Bethlehem, on the west bank, which declared its intent in Brazil last month to bang the apartheid drum against Israel in Geneva.
This link refers to BADIL’s role in leading the current "Nakba 60 campaign," an international effort aimed at countering Israel at 60 celebrations.
At the April planning conference for the Durban follow-up, the Wall Campaign won accreditation without debate. More public attention in Geneva was devoted to Iran’s intervention to deny a Canadian Jewish group accreditation to attend the event next year. The group, the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, citing bureaucratic and political hurdles, eventually withdrew its application.
BADIL’s home page in July announced a new Website, "It Is Apartheid," with a "viral, guerrilla marketing" campaign that includes tips on how to propagandize neighbors, co-workers and strangers (www.itisapartheid.org/itisapartheid.org).
The group’s presence in Brasilia and its lobbying of Latin American delegations was another harbinger for Jewish observers who warn the Geneva event may follow in the politicized footsteps of Durban.
The Geneva-based UN Watch declared that the current working paper (http://blog.unwatch.org/?p=168), in U.N. lingo known as a "non-paper," already "breaches red lines" as laid out by the Europeans: It singles out the Palestinians for sympathy, implicitly criticizing Israel.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which sent two observers to Brasilia, described the event as a "lost opportunity" to underscore those red lines.
Latin Americans "have failed to stand up and be counted," Shimon Samuels, Wiesenthal’s director for international relations, told JTA.
Meanwhile, with the Ford Foundation announcing that it won’t pay to send any grantee to the Geneva conference — both because of its prospects for failure and potential to become another anti-Israel festival — and with other donors, governmental and nongovernmental, reportedly wavering, Samuels says that some have found a target to blame in case the Durban follow-up disintegrates.
Samuels said that in Brasilia, he discussed how to prevent a pro-Palestinian "hijacking of the agenda" with an Afro-American group lobbying for slavery compensation.
The fellow activist agreed, he said, but "blew my mind with a vehement accusation of Jewish control of the Durban boycott movement" and "attacked me for stopping foundation funding of their participation in Geneva and destroying possibilities for a NGO Forum."
JTA
Article Series
This article is part 4 of a 5 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
Durban’s descendants
Linking to South Africa
Questions raised about actions of some New Israel Fund grantees
Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva
Ford funding to Jewish groups
My comments are followed by the article "Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva" and I do hope, we look at humans without a branding them with a label.
The idea of pro-Israel or pro-Palestine in itself is a divise, we ought to consider looking at the issue in terms of Justice, peace and security for the people of the area understood as Israel and Palestine.
It is human to crave for Justice and every faith is designed to deliever that to the people. Justice is the only thing that sustains peace and security for the people. The simple truth is that neither the Palestinians, nor the Israelis will have peace for themselves, unless they want the peace for the other and take steps to achieve it. Security will not come to either party, if other party is not in the equation.
Gun power is short lived, neither the Palestinians were able to succeed with it in the last sixty years, nor the history has oppressed the Jewish people in the three thousand years of their history.
What do the real people want? Not the Media not the Administration nor the hawks who believe in gun powder and all of them combined are a tiny minority.
Take a look at our own country. For the last seven years that will come to a conclusion in January 2008, our Administration and their policies did not represent the will of the people, the media failed to focus on it, instead they became the mouth pieces of the administration like they do in the non-democratic nations. Is Israel going through the same?
Justice must be the corner stone of any governance. The idea of partitioning the grops as Pro-Palestine and Pro-Israel is wrong, they should rather look at the issue from a human rights perspective.
Mike Ghouse
http://www.mikeghouse.net/
Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva
By Michael J. Jordan Published Yesterday Cover Story
http://www.jstandard.com/articles/4550/1/Durban-redux%3F-Vitriol-may-follow-Israel-to-Geneva
Michael J. Jordan
View all articles by Michael J. Jordan GENEVA – In less than a year, the United Nations will try again to tackle the thorny questions of racism around the world. Its effort in 2001 devolved into a virulent attack on Israel and Jews.
While it’s too early to tell which groups hostile to Israel will show up at the follow-up conference in April, at least two hint at what treatment awaits the Jewish state.
The Ford Foundation, the powerful philanthropy whose money fueled much of the anti-Israel activity at the anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, has opted out of the event in this Swiss city.
The New York headquarters of the Ford Foundation, which following JTA’s 2003 investigative series "Funding Hate," published stringent new guidelines on its grantees. JTA Photo
Indeed, Durban reportedly has become something of a dreaded "D word" in some diplomatic circles, prompting widespread concern that the follow-up could be a repeat of the anti-Israel extravaganza seven years ago.
At least two Palestinian organizations have declared publicly their intent to carry the crusade launched in Durban to Geneva.
That crusade paints Israel as an "apartheid state" like the South Africa of old to be similarly crippled through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. And by most accounts, even more pro-Palestinian groups are sure to arrive in Geneva to trumpet their cause célebre.
At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, the rabid activism of numerous anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, virtually drowned out much of the world’s other ills.
Last month in Brazil, at the first regional meeting to determine the substance of next year’s conference, one group hinted at what to expect.
BADIL: The Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (www.badil.org) issued an open letter (www.badil.org/Publications/Press/2008/press481-08.htm) to the "Latin American people, its governments, movements and organizations."
The letter stated: "The world’s imperial powers, with the United States and Israel at the forefront, are putting pressure on states" to "silence the principled voices of the victims of racism."
Latin America should resist, the letter said, because "the struggle against Israel’s colonial apartheid regime is one of the cornerstones of the struggle against state-sponsored racism and ongoing colonial policies worldwide."
BADIL was not present in Durban.
A second group created since Durban recently sought and gained accreditation to the Geneva conference. The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, (www.stopthewall.org) is at the forefront of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel.
It’s too soon to know which funding agencies will help send NGOs such as BADIL and the Wall Campaign to Geneva, but one watchdog suggests European money will likely be involved.
"European aid agencies give tens of millions of euros per year to very political, in some cases radical, anti-Israel NGOs, and these groups are the most active in the Durban process," said Gerald Steinberg, the executive director of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, which recently detailed these links in its report "Europe’s Hidden Hand".
"There are many officials in those agencies who come from an anti-colonialist, anti-American, anti-Israel political ideology," Steinberg said, "and they have almost no supervision, almost no open discussions in their parliaments over these budgets."
European Union officials told JTA that none of its grants are explicitly for NGOs to attend conferences, like the Durban follow-up, but rather are directed toward specific projects.
Beyond the Durban process, the EU officials say a grantee’s words — like branding Israel as apartheid or endorsing boycotts — are the "sole responsibility" of the grantee and do not reflect EU positions.
Brussels "cannot be held responsible" for these statements, nor can it "oblige them to refrain" from making them, said David Kriss, a spokesman for the European Commission delegation to Israel.
"The Commission is respectful of freedom of expression as a key feature of a democratic society," Kriss wrote in an e-mail from his office in Ramat Gan, Israel. "An open debate over political issues is indispensable on the way towards better mutual understanding.
"At the same time, the Commission is firmly committed to the fight against incitement to hatred between ethnic or religious groups as well as to the expressions of racism, xenophobia, discrimination, anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia, and will continue fighting these deplorable phenomena."
The 2009 Durban follow-up will likely cost "several million dollars," according to a U.N. official in Geneva, with U.N. member-states expected to foot the entire bill.
Few, however, have ponied up so far. Some $750,000 left over from the 2001 event is now being used, said the U.N. official, with Russia recently adding a contribution of $250,000 and China another $20,000.
Other countries have pledged funds but not yet delivered, which is typical among member-states that sometimes promise money but are slow to act.
Meanwhile, the United States, Israel, Canada, and France have threatened to boycott the event, saying it should focus on racism and discrimination generally, not stir the Middle East conflict.
To urge fellow NGOs and U.N. member-states to rise above at Geneva, the Magenta Foundation of Holland, the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights and Human Rights First have circulated a petition with five "core principles" (www.magenta.nl/coreprinciples.html) that would reject any effort to "foment hateful stereotyping in the name of human rights" and instead "uphold language and behavior that unites rather than divides."
The New Israel Fund, a group that promotes human rights and pluralism in Israel, is one of 96 signatories pushing for a more productive conference. But NIF told JTA it will not allocate funds for any of its grantees to attend the event. In 2001, the fund provided $50,000 for such participation through a Ford grant it had received.
There is no contradiction, said an NIF spokeswoman, nor does it indicate a lack of trust that its own grantees — some of whom were most active in Durban — would adhere to these higher standards.
"Basically, NIF was outraged at the misuse" of the Durban forum and was concerned about "a possible repetition" of the tone and substance, said the spokeswoman, Naomi Paiss.
"We are a family of organizations representing a range of opinions," she said. "As strongly as we feel about Durban, this is not a question of forbidding another group from attending. We are saying we will not fund it."
One NIF and Ford grantee that played a prominent role in Durban — Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (www.adalah.org/eng/index.php) — says it has yet to decide whether to attend.
"Adalah will deal with the follow-up issues regarding Durban at the relevant time, not now," Eva Mousa, the group’s media director, told JTA. "At that time, Adalah will speak about it and discuss it with our donors, including Ford and NIF."
The United Nations, meanwhile, stung by criticism of the 2001 event, is taking steps to prevent a repetition.
In late May, member-states decided to host the event on the serene, secure U.N. campus in Geneva. In Durban, with thousands of activists milling about inside tents and on the streets, Jewish activists say the atmosphere often grew tense — even intimidating— punctured by anti-Semitic incidents.
The world body also is expected to eliminate a separate NGO Forum, which in Durban was the source of the harshest anti-Israel rhetoric (www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/NGO_WCAR.htm). At the forum, the Jewish state was accused of such human rights crimes as genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Startled by the protest walkout of the American and Israeli delegations — and the discredit it brought upon the conference — the member-states that remained settled on two rather benign references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the government declaration (www.unhchr.ch/pdf/Durban.pdf).
At this point, it’s "very likely" that NGO participation in Geneva will be restricted and woven into the governmental gathering, said a U.N. official who asked not to be identified because there was no authorization to speak on the record.
NGOs instead will probably be encouraged to attend, but at most official U.N. meetings will have to request an opportunity to address the gathering beforehand. Each will be allotted three minutes to speak.
None of the 775 NGOs that attended Durban saw their accreditation revoked for their actions there, so they remain accredited and free to attend April’s event, according to the U.N. official.
"The NGO issue is a highly political issue here," the official said.
This format may mean less Israel-bashing, but also less criticism of U.N. member-states that rank at the bottom of most global surveys of racism and other forms of discrimination. After all, few governments choose to freely chastise themselves.
This is left to the NGOs.
Still, three minutes available every day at a four- or five-day conference – the world’s largest in the sphere of human rights — is enough time to sling arrows, hammer home a message to the media and have it documented for eternity in U.N. archives.
That’s why some Jewish observers were taken aback by the conference accreditation granted to the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.
The group, according to its Website, was formed one year after Durban, in October 2002, by one of the more extremist NGOs that did attend Durban — the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network.
The Wall Campaign partnered with another prominent Israel basher at Durban, the Palestinian NGO Network, or PNGO, to hold the First Palestinian Conference for the Boycott of Israel (BDS) on Nov. 18, 2007. At the time of Durban, PNGO was a Ford grantee, but is no longer.
In addition, the Wall Campaign and PNGO are two members of the National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba, the Arab term for catastrophe used to depict Israel’s creation as a state.
On its Website, the Wall Campaign links to BADIL, the group based in Bethlehem, on the west bank, which declared its intent in Brazil last month to bang the apartheid drum against Israel in Geneva.
This link refers to BADIL’s role in leading the current "Nakba 60 campaign," an international effort aimed at countering Israel at 60 celebrations.
At the April planning conference for the Durban follow-up, the Wall Campaign won accreditation without debate. More public attention in Geneva was devoted to Iran’s intervention to deny a Canadian Jewish group accreditation to attend the event next year. The group, the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, citing bureaucratic and political hurdles, eventually withdrew its application.
BADIL’s home page in July announced a new Website, "It Is Apartheid," with a "viral, guerrilla marketing" campaign that includes tips on how to propagandize neighbors, co-workers and strangers (www.itisapartheid.org/itisapartheid.org).
The group’s presence in Brasilia and its lobbying of Latin American delegations was another harbinger for Jewish observers who warn the Geneva event may follow in the politicized footsteps of Durban.
The Geneva-based UN Watch declared that the current working paper (http://blog.unwatch.org/?p=168), in U.N. lingo known as a "non-paper," already "breaches red lines" as laid out by the Europeans: It singles out the Palestinians for sympathy, implicitly criticizing Israel.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which sent two observers to Brasilia, described the event as a "lost opportunity" to underscore those red lines.
Latin Americans "have failed to stand up and be counted," Shimon Samuels, Wiesenthal’s director for international relations, told JTA.
Meanwhile, with the Ford Foundation announcing that it won’t pay to send any grantee to the Geneva conference — both because of its prospects for failure and potential to become another anti-Israel festival — and with other donors, governmental and nongovernmental, reportedly wavering, Samuels says that some have found a target to blame in case the Durban follow-up disintegrates.
Samuels said that in Brasilia, he discussed how to prevent a pro-Palestinian "hijacking of the agenda" with an Afro-American group lobbying for slavery compensation.
The fellow activist agreed, he said, but "blew my mind with a vehement accusation of Jewish control of the Durban boycott movement" and "attacked me for stopping foundation funding of their participation in Geneva and destroying possibilities for a NGO Forum."
JTA
Article Series
This article is part 4 of a 5 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
Durban’s descendants
Linking to South Africa
Questions raised about actions of some New Israel Fund grantees
Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva
Ford funding to Jewish groups
Monday, May 5, 2008
Clinton stoking anti-semitism
According to a new report from the US State department, Anti-Semitism is on rise.Nick Mackenzie writes in the religious intelligence report. "Today, more than 60 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is not just a fact of history, it is a current event," the report, presented to Congress on March 13, read. "The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Israeli policy that whether intentionally or unintentionally has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel's perceived faults to its Jewish character," the report stated.
The anti-Semitic attacks continue to occur in Europe and the United States. Just recently two Jewish commuters were beaten up in the subway for wishing happy Hanukkah. A few years ago a council person referred to the other as “you people” in the Dallas City Hall referring to “Jewish people” as though they were cause of a discrepancy. What is the point in throwing in religion in a civic transaction, unless it anti-Semitism?
Every now and then I read disgusting anti-Semitic comments in stray emails I get from groups all across the world; oddly it is not from Muslims but everyone else. I continue to speak out against such acts and point out the unrighteousness of it. There is a growing perception that Israeli Lobby buys and manipulates our law makers to do things that are detrimental to American as well as the Israeli interests.
Equally disgusting are McCain and Clinton’s comments; one wants to bomb, bomb and bomb Iran and the other wants to “obliterate it’. Give two minutes to John McCain on the TV, he shoots the Anti-Islam rhetoric. I have not seen McCain’s mouth spew out anything but hate and war. Give the same two minutes to Clinton; she wants to be the commander in Chief from day one. It sounds downright stupid to the community of nations that a Democratic America talks about Commander in Chief’s as though we are a dictatorship. Most Americans realize the cheap gimmick to gain votes.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” said Edmund Burke. It is time for the moderate majority of Americans of all hues to speak out and discourage the rhetoric of Clinton and McCain.
With friends like Clinton, Jews don’t need enemies. Her words fuel the anti-Semitic repressed sentiments among average Americans and certainly evoke anger in the Middle East; where as McCain’s Islamophobic attitude fuels terrorist outfits like Al-Qaeda. Do we need these two to run our nation down?
To be fair in the media, Clinton’s Obliteration and McCain’s bombing should be looped 24 hours on CNN and Fox like the Wright sound bites.
We need our President who talks and brings peace to the community of nations that is true leadership. We certainly don’t want an eager beaver to sacrifice our men and women and bent on destruction of others.
Mike Ghouse is a writer, speaker, moderator, pluralist and a peace thinker based in Dallas. The list of his Blogs and websites are listed at www.MikeGhouse.net and he can be reached at MikeGhouse@aol.com
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Sarkozy is Wrong About Turkey
The root cause of conflicts begins in the exclusive ideologies, where there is no reason or rationality. Sarkozy is a trouble maker and a neocon and we have to watch him.
Mike Ghouse
# # #
Amir Taheri was born in Iran and educated in Tehran, London and Paris. Between 1980 and 1984 he was Middle East editor for the London Sunday Times. Taheri has been a contributor to the International Herald Tribune since 1980. He has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Taheri has published nine books some of which have been translated into 20 languages, and In 1988 Publishers'' Weekly in New York chose his study of Islamist terrorism, "Holy Terror", as one of The Best Books of The Year. He has been a columnist Asharq Alawsat since 1987
Sarkozy is Wrong About Turkey
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=12615 02/05/2008
Amir Taheri
“I am no ideologue,” insists French President Nicolas Sarkozy at every opportunity. He was doing so the other evening during a 90-minute long live television exposé marking the first anniversary of his election victory. By saying he is no ideologue, the French leader tries to present himself as a pragmatic politician, open to argument and ready to admit errors. This was what he did during his TV marathon. On at least six occasions, referring to various aspects of his policies, he said: I admit
I made an error!
There was, however, one issue on which Sarkozy sounded like an ideologue: Turkey’s application for membership of the European Union. Sarkozy has opposed Turkish membership for years, a position he emphasised during his campaign last year.
Hoping that Sarkozy is open to argument, let us see if we could persuade him to change his mind for to shut Turkey out of the EU is harmful to both.
Sarkozy’s key argument is based on geography. He insists that Turkey is not “in Europe”. However, the EU is an economic and political club, not a geographical one. Geographically, Switzerland is in the heart of Europe but not in the EU. Norway and Iceland are also European in terms of geography but neither wishes to join the EU. Albania, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine are all geographically in Europe and wish to join the EU but cannot because membership requires something more than geography. Belarus is in Europe but the EU would not touch it with a bargepole because it lacks the minimum political qualifications.
As far as the conventional geographical description of Europe is concerned, only five per cent of Turkish territory is European. But Europe is not always defined in such narrow terms. Turkey is a founding member of the Council of Europe, a body that includes countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Kazakhstan that have no geographical connection with the continent.
Should the fact that a part of a country’s territory falls outside the traditional geographical limits of Europe automatically exclude it from EU membership?
There is no such rule in any of the treaties that have produced the EU since 1949. If such a rule were to be established, Russia, most of whose territory is geographically in Asia, could never consider joining the EU. Denmark would also be excluded because its vast possessions in Greenland are far away from the continent. France itself has quite a few overseas possessions in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia.
When France, in association with West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries, was building the future EU it still regarded Algeria as two if its provinces. That meant that only a quarter of French territory was actually located in Europe at the time.
Turkey has strong geographical links with Europe.
It has land and sea borders with five European nations: Russia, Ukraine, Moldova Romania, Bulgaria and Greece (the last three are members of the EU).
Turkey controls the vital link between two key European waters: the Black Sea and the Aegean, and occupies a strategic position on the Mediterranean, the heart of European civilisation.
Turkey’s historic ties with Europe are even stronger.
Several of the earliest European states, including those of the Hittites and the Greeks, were located in Anatolia. For many centuries, the Ottoman Empire, based on present-day Turkey, was a major European power with a leading role in the Balkans. In the 19th century, when Western Europeans called the Ottoman Empire “the sick man of Europe”, they never questioned its place in the continent.
Furthermore, ethnically, Turkey is predominantly European. The majority of the population are from Lydian, Hittite, Greek, and Thracian stock with addition from Slavs, Armenians, Caucasian nations, and, of course, Turkic peoples from central Asia. If Turks were “Asiatic” as Sarkozy implies, they would look like Kazakhs, Uzbeks or Koreans rather than southern Europeans.
Sarkozy might point out that the Turkish language is not European.
That is true. Turkish belongs to the Altaic family of languages while all but three European languages come from the Indo-European family. The EU, however, is not a linguistic club either. If it were, Finland and Hungary, whose national languages are not Indo-Europeans, would be excluded. France itself, along with Spain, is home to the Basque language that is also “alien” because it is not related to any European linguistic family.
In any case, there are already more Turkish speakers within the current EU than there are Bulgarian, Catalonian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Gallic, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Portuguese, Swedish, or Slovenian speakers.
Turkish is already a major EU language thanks to the presence of an estimated 12 million Turkish immigrants. Only seven of the EU’s 25 recognised languages, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Romanian, are spoken in its present boundaries by a larger number of people.
There is one other factor that Sarkozy takes into account, albeit without giving it headline treatment: Turkey is a majority Muslim nation.
However, that factor, too, need not exclude Turkey.
Islam is already the second religion of the EU in terms of the number of its adepts. France itself is home to some six million Muslims. In 22 of the 27 current EU members, Muslims represent the largest religious minority. Islam may also be the fastest growing faith in EU in terms of demography. Some scholars project Islam to become a majority faith in Europe within the current century.
However, the EU is not a Christian club either. If it were it would have to exclude its 2.5 million Jews as well as its 20 million Muslims, not to mention millions who practice no faith at all. Should Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Muslims form majorities, never become EU members? Both have already started the preliminary stages of applying for membership.
If there are no objective reasons to keep Turkey out of the EU, there are many reasons to support its candidacy.
The EU is Turkey’s largest trading partner. It is also the biggest foreign investor in the Turkish economy. Some 80 per cent of visitors to Turkey come from the EU while the EU is the number-one destination for Turks doing business, receiving education or holidaying abroad.
It is not only by adopting the Latin alphabet that Turkey has tried to draw closer to Europe. It has adopted the democratic system, is building a secular republic and promoting a culture of pluralism. Trying to meet EU conditions, Turkey has reformed its cultural, social, and economic policies, and judicial system (the process is known as mise-a-niveau or bringing up to standard). Today, Turkey is closer to EU standards than many of the current members.
As already mentioned, Turkey is a founding member of the Council of Europe. But it is also a founding ember of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and provides its second largest army. No so long ago, Turkey led NATO’s efforts to stabilise post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Sarkozy is wrong on Turkey, and the sooner he admits it the better for all concerned.
Mike Ghouse
# # #
Amir Taheri was born in Iran and educated in Tehran, London and Paris. Between 1980 and 1984 he was Middle East editor for the London Sunday Times. Taheri has been a contributor to the International Herald Tribune since 1980. He has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Taheri has published nine books some of which have been translated into 20 languages, and In 1988 Publishers'' Weekly in New York chose his study of Islamist terrorism, "Holy Terror", as one of The Best Books of The Year. He has been a columnist Asharq Alawsat since 1987
Sarkozy is Wrong About Turkey
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=12615 02/05/2008
Amir Taheri
“I am no ideologue,” insists French President Nicolas Sarkozy at every opportunity. He was doing so the other evening during a 90-minute long live television exposé marking the first anniversary of his election victory. By saying he is no ideologue, the French leader tries to present himself as a pragmatic politician, open to argument and ready to admit errors. This was what he did during his TV marathon. On at least six occasions, referring to various aspects of his policies, he said: I admit
I made an error!
There was, however, one issue on which Sarkozy sounded like an ideologue: Turkey’s application for membership of the European Union. Sarkozy has opposed Turkish membership for years, a position he emphasised during his campaign last year.
Hoping that Sarkozy is open to argument, let us see if we could persuade him to change his mind for to shut Turkey out of the EU is harmful to both.
Sarkozy’s key argument is based on geography. He insists that Turkey is not “in Europe”. However, the EU is an economic and political club, not a geographical one. Geographically, Switzerland is in the heart of Europe but not in the EU. Norway and Iceland are also European in terms of geography but neither wishes to join the EU. Albania, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine are all geographically in Europe and wish to join the EU but cannot because membership requires something more than geography. Belarus is in Europe but the EU would not touch it with a bargepole because it lacks the minimum political qualifications.
As far as the conventional geographical description of Europe is concerned, only five per cent of Turkish territory is European. But Europe is not always defined in such narrow terms. Turkey is a founding member of the Council of Europe, a body that includes countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Kazakhstan that have no geographical connection with the continent.
Should the fact that a part of a country’s territory falls outside the traditional geographical limits of Europe automatically exclude it from EU membership?
There is no such rule in any of the treaties that have produced the EU since 1949. If such a rule were to be established, Russia, most of whose territory is geographically in Asia, could never consider joining the EU. Denmark would also be excluded because its vast possessions in Greenland are far away from the continent. France itself has quite a few overseas possessions in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia.
When France, in association with West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries, was building the future EU it still regarded Algeria as two if its provinces. That meant that only a quarter of French territory was actually located in Europe at the time.
Turkey has strong geographical links with Europe.
It has land and sea borders with five European nations: Russia, Ukraine, Moldova Romania, Bulgaria and Greece (the last three are members of the EU).
Turkey controls the vital link between two key European waters: the Black Sea and the Aegean, and occupies a strategic position on the Mediterranean, the heart of European civilisation.
Turkey’s historic ties with Europe are even stronger.
Several of the earliest European states, including those of the Hittites and the Greeks, were located in Anatolia. For many centuries, the Ottoman Empire, based on present-day Turkey, was a major European power with a leading role in the Balkans. In the 19th century, when Western Europeans called the Ottoman Empire “the sick man of Europe”, they never questioned its place in the continent.
Furthermore, ethnically, Turkey is predominantly European. The majority of the population are from Lydian, Hittite, Greek, and Thracian stock with addition from Slavs, Armenians, Caucasian nations, and, of course, Turkic peoples from central Asia. If Turks were “Asiatic” as Sarkozy implies, they would look like Kazakhs, Uzbeks or Koreans rather than southern Europeans.
Sarkozy might point out that the Turkish language is not European.
That is true. Turkish belongs to the Altaic family of languages while all but three European languages come from the Indo-European family. The EU, however, is not a linguistic club either. If it were, Finland and Hungary, whose national languages are not Indo-Europeans, would be excluded. France itself, along with Spain, is home to the Basque language that is also “alien” because it is not related to any European linguistic family.
In any case, there are already more Turkish speakers within the current EU than there are Bulgarian, Catalonian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Gallic, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Portuguese, Swedish, or Slovenian speakers.
Turkish is already a major EU language thanks to the presence of an estimated 12 million Turkish immigrants. Only seven of the EU’s 25 recognised languages, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Romanian, are spoken in its present boundaries by a larger number of people.
There is one other factor that Sarkozy takes into account, albeit without giving it headline treatment: Turkey is a majority Muslim nation.
However, that factor, too, need not exclude Turkey.
Islam is already the second religion of the EU in terms of the number of its adepts. France itself is home to some six million Muslims. In 22 of the 27 current EU members, Muslims represent the largest religious minority. Islam may also be the fastest growing faith in EU in terms of demography. Some scholars project Islam to become a majority faith in Europe within the current century.
However, the EU is not a Christian club either. If it were it would have to exclude its 2.5 million Jews as well as its 20 million Muslims, not to mention millions who practice no faith at all. Should Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Muslims form majorities, never become EU members? Both have already started the preliminary stages of applying for membership.
If there are no objective reasons to keep Turkey out of the EU, there are many reasons to support its candidacy.
The EU is Turkey’s largest trading partner. It is also the biggest foreign investor in the Turkish economy. Some 80 per cent of visitors to Turkey come from the EU while the EU is the number-one destination for Turks doing business, receiving education or holidaying abroad.
It is not only by adopting the Latin alphabet that Turkey has tried to draw closer to Europe. It has adopted the democratic system, is building a secular republic and promoting a culture of pluralism. Trying to meet EU conditions, Turkey has reformed its cultural, social, and economic policies, and judicial system (the process is known as mise-a-niveau or bringing up to standard). Today, Turkey is closer to EU standards than many of the current members.
As already mentioned, Turkey is a founding member of the Council of Europe. But it is also a founding ember of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and provides its second largest army. No so long ago, Turkey led NATO’s efforts to stabilise post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Sarkozy is wrong on Turkey, and the sooner he admits it the better for all concerned.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
1.25 Million sign Tibet petition
Over 1.25 million sign online petition for Tibet dialogue
http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/India/20080411/929552.html
Dharamsala April 11, 2008 9:45:06 AM IST
In what could be the fastest growing online petition, people across the world - from Rio de Janeiro to Rome and New York to New Delhi - have signed up to mount pressure on China for a dialogue with Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tibet.
The online petition campaign launched by a global advocacy network - www.avaaz.org - has so far obtained over 1.25 million signatures to force China to discuss Tibet with the Dalai Lama.
"One million signatures in seven days is unprecedented. We believe it is the largest global online petition in history and the fastest growing internet petition ever - obtaining over a million signatures in just seven days," Avaaz campaign director Ben Wikler told IANS.
"If all the signatories of this petition joined hands in a line, it would stretch from London to Rome."
Hard copies of the petition - addressed to Chinese President Hu Jintao and carrying all the 1.25 million signatures - will now be stacked up outside Chinese embassies in most countries across the globe.
"As citizens around the world, we call on you to show restraint and respect for human rights in your response to the protests in Tibet, and to address the concerns of all Tibetans by opening meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Only dialogue and reform will bring lasting stability. China's brightest future, and its most positive relationship with the world, lies in harmonious development, dialogue and respect," the petition says.
"The petition is online, and it has been signed by citizens of every country on earth, as well as every inhabited, dependent territory. The only exception is Antarctica, where scientists are not allowed to participate in political activity.
"As of this moment, the petition has been signed by 13,159 people in India, as well as more than 100,000 each in the US and UK, and nearly a million in mainland Europe," Wikler pointed out.
Avaaz - which means 'voice' in several languages - itself exists as a virtual organisation on the internet and its staff reside in London, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, New York City, Geneva, and Manama. It is legally incorporated as an NGO in the state of New York in the United States, Wikler said.
The idea for an online petition started last month following the violence and protests inside Tibet against Chinese rule there.
The Tibetan government-in-exile based in this Himalayan abode of the Dalai Lama in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh is excited with the response to the petition and the overall reaction of people to the Tibet issue.
"This gives a lot of support to our cause. We are hoping that China too will see reason," a top Tibetan exiled government official, requesting anonymity, told IANS here.
"This is a clear message to the Chinese government that the Tibetan people have a vast amount of support around the world. The popularity of the 'Made in China' brand and the Olympics will be significantly affected by how China deals with Tibetan grievances," said Ricken Patel, executive director of Avaaz.
The greatest response to the petition has come from France, where 376,568 people have signed the petition. That's six per 1,000 French citizens and more than one percent of all internet users there, Wikler pointed out.
As a fraction of the population, the response is even greater in Switzerland, where nine per 1,000 Swiss citizens have signed, he added.
-Indo-Asian News Service
http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/India/20080411/929552.html
Dharamsala April 11, 2008 9:45:06 AM IST
In what could be the fastest growing online petition, people across the world - from Rio de Janeiro to Rome and New York to New Delhi - have signed up to mount pressure on China for a dialogue with Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tibet.
The online petition campaign launched by a global advocacy network - www.avaaz.org - has so far obtained over 1.25 million signatures to force China to discuss Tibet with the Dalai Lama.
"One million signatures in seven days is unprecedented. We believe it is the largest global online petition in history and the fastest growing internet petition ever - obtaining over a million signatures in just seven days," Avaaz campaign director Ben Wikler told IANS.
"If all the signatories of this petition joined hands in a line, it would stretch from London to Rome."
Hard copies of the petition - addressed to Chinese President Hu Jintao and carrying all the 1.25 million signatures - will now be stacked up outside Chinese embassies in most countries across the globe.
"As citizens around the world, we call on you to show restraint and respect for human rights in your response to the protests in Tibet, and to address the concerns of all Tibetans by opening meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Only dialogue and reform will bring lasting stability. China's brightest future, and its most positive relationship with the world, lies in harmonious development, dialogue and respect," the petition says.
"The petition is online, and it has been signed by citizens of every country on earth, as well as every inhabited, dependent territory. The only exception is Antarctica, where scientists are not allowed to participate in political activity.
"As of this moment, the petition has been signed by 13,159 people in India, as well as more than 100,000 each in the US and UK, and nearly a million in mainland Europe," Wikler pointed out.
Avaaz - which means 'voice' in several languages - itself exists as a virtual organisation on the internet and its staff reside in London, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, New York City, Geneva, and Manama. It is legally incorporated as an NGO in the state of New York in the United States, Wikler said.
The idea for an online petition started last month following the violence and protests inside Tibet against Chinese rule there.
The Tibetan government-in-exile based in this Himalayan abode of the Dalai Lama in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh is excited with the response to the petition and the overall reaction of people to the Tibet issue.
"This gives a lot of support to our cause. We are hoping that China too will see reason," a top Tibetan exiled government official, requesting anonymity, told IANS here.
"This is a clear message to the Chinese government that the Tibetan people have a vast amount of support around the world. The popularity of the 'Made in China' brand and the Olympics will be significantly affected by how China deals with Tibetan grievances," said Ricken Patel, executive director of Avaaz.
The greatest response to the petition has come from France, where 376,568 people have signed the petition. That's six per 1,000 French citizens and more than one percent of all internet users there, Wikler pointed out.
As a fraction of the population, the response is even greater in Switzerland, where nine per 1,000 Swiss citizens have signed, he added.
-Indo-Asian News Service
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