Back to the USSR

Not really Middle Eastern, but I’ve always been fascinated by Russia and this Figaro article about how Putin is rehabilitating the Soviet version of Russian history is very troubling:

UN VENT révisionniste souffle sur la Russie poutinienne et son rapport à l’histoire communiste. Preuve que, comme disait Orwell, « rien n’est plus imprévisible que le passé ». Lors d’une rencontre avec des spécialistes de sciences humaines en juin, Vladimir Poutine a jugé que l’histoire de l’URSS avait eu « moins de pages noires que celle des États-Unis » et que les répressions staliniennes avaient été « moins terribles » que la guerre au Vietnam ou le nazisme. « Nous n’avons pas utilisé d’armes nucléaires contre la population civile », a-t-il dit en allusion au bombardement d’Hiroshima par les Américains, ajoutant que la Russie n’avait « pas arrosé d’agents chimiques des milliers de kilomètres carrés » comme ce fut le cas au Vietnam. « Nos pages noires n’étaient pas si terribles… », a insisté le président qui, au nom d’un étrange relativisme historique, prône une approche « patriotique » de l’histoire.

Le message est clair. Plus question de condamner le totalitarisme communiste et ses millions de morts, comme le souhaitait son prédécesseur Boris Eltsine qui avait rêvé d’un procès de Nuremberg du communisme, avant d’y renoncer fin 1992 sous la pression de la nomenklatura ex-soviétique. Loin de vouloir exorciser les démons totalitaires, la Russie de Poutine semble au contraire tentée de puiser dans le passé communiste une forme de légitimité et de continuité, au risque d’en perpétuer les méthodes criminelles.

Most worryingly, independent efforts to document the millions of victims of the Soviet system are under threat.

Hizbullah’s House of Spiders

Charles Levinson visits a Hizbullah exhibition on last summer’s war:

The first exhibits are two reconstructed Hezbollah bunkers. One looks like some sort of command post. There is a manikin dressed like a Hezbollah fighter in fatigues with an AK47 slung over his shoulder. He’s eyeing a wall map of “Occupied Palestine”. There’s a desk with a laptop computer, a walkie talkie, a phone and two korans. On the other side of the passage way there is another reconstructed bunker, this one made to resemble the rooms where Hezbollah fighters sleep. There are two manikins here, one kneeling in prayer, the other relaxing on a mattress on the floor, a koran in his right hand, his left resting casually on an AK47. A radio blasts old Al Manar news reports from the front lines of last summers war, mixed with martial anthems.

Visitor move on and enter the main hall of the exhibit. The first display is a series of six foot tall portraits of US and Israeli leaders with quotes from last summer’s war underneath each picture.

A picture of Rumsfield has the quote in Arabic and English: “Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire.”

Condi’s picture is accompanied by the quote: “This war is part of the birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

The picture of Bush shows him clutching a Thanksgiving turkey, presumably before the traditional holiday pardon. His quote: “Our nation is wasting no time in helping the people of Lebanon.”

Egypt poet refuses to pay court fine

Egypt poet refuses to pay court fine:

A renowned Egyptian poet, Abdel Moati Hegazi, has refused to pay a court fine of US $3,500 following his conviction for insulting a religious extremist, Yusuf al Badari, depicting him as an enemy of freedom of thought, expression and thought.

His colleagues at the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (Hrinfo) salute him for standing firm on his principles. They also call on all advocates of free speech in Egypt to extend solidarity to Hegazi and at the same time resist actions by the likes of Badari.

Following his refusal to pay the fine, a court in southern Cairo set aside 8 August as the date when Hegazi’s home furniture will be sold.

The renowned poet’s case is among a string of insult lawsuits brought against writers, thinkers and poets by al Badari. Ironically, the religious extremist would sometimes sue people for insulting God.

If there is any kind of collection to help out Abdel Moati Hegazi pay his fine (or replace his furniture), I would like to donate to it and publicize it. And if there is a fund to get lawyers to go after al-Badari in any way possible, or simply make his life a living hell, I would like to donate to that, too.

I am not sure what Hegazi called al-Badari, but surely a public figure like al-Badari is exempt from the protection given ordinary people. Or is that not the case in Egypt?

Neocon think-tankers running Iraq war

Arm chair generals help shape surge in Iraq – Examiner.com:

WASHINGTON – When it comes to the troop surge in Iraq, a bunch of arm chair generals in Washington are influencing the Bush Administration as much as the Joint Chiefs or theater commanders.

A group of military experts at the American Enterprise Institute, concerned that the U.S. was on the verge of a calamitous failure in Iraq, almost single handedly convinced the White House to change its strategy.

They banded together at AEI headquarters in downtown Washington early last December and hammered out the surge plan during a weekend session. It called for two major initiatives to defeat the insurgency: reinforcing the troops and restoring security to Iraqi neighborhoods. Then came trips to the White House by AEI military historian Frederick Kagan, retired Army Gen. John Keane and other surge proponents.

More and more officials began attending the sessions. Even Vice President Dick Cheney came. “We took the results of our planning session immediately to people in the administration,” said AEI analyst Thomas Donnelly, a surge planner. “It became sort of a magnet for movers and shakers in the White House.” Donnelly said the AEI approach won out over plans from the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command. The two Army generals then in charge of Iraq had opposed a troop increase.

Quite aside from whether the surge is working or not (I have no idea, although the continuing death tolls in Iraq would suggest it hasn’t done much outside of a few areas), should think-tankers trump generals in planning wars? Isn’t this what you always learn is a bad thing for military performance — like Hitler taking over war-planning from the Wehrmacht? (Obviously I am not comparing the AEI to the Nazi Party, trolls.)

John Gray on liberal interventionism

The death of this crackpot creed is nothing to mourn:

The liberal interventionism that took root in the aftermath of the cold war was never much more than a combination of post-imperial nostalgia with crackpot geopolitics. It was an absurd and repugnant mixture, and one whose passing there is no reason to regret. What the world needs from western governments is not another nonsensical crusade. It is a dose of realism and a little humility.

Amen.

BBC radio documentary on US 1930s coup plot

Very interesting BBC Radio Four documentary on a coup by wealthy Americans to overthrow Roosevelt in the 1930s:

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

There are some (occasionally forced) parallels with the current situation in American — the role of the uber-wealthy and the New Gilded Age, Cheney’s powerful and shadowy vice-presidency, etc.

Nasty Iran, Persepolis

Activists’ parents accuse Tehran of torturing their sons:

Fears that Iran is systematically mistreating political prisoners and dissidents have been further fuelled after the parents of three detained student activists claimed their sons had been tortured.
In a letter to the country’s judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the parents alleged that the students have suffered a catalogue of physical and psychological abuses since being incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin prison in May.

Two weeks ago I got to see the animated feature version of Persepolis. One of the things I drives home very effectively is that the fundamentalist regime in Iran has been much, much worse in terms of human rights and torture (never mind personal freedoms) than the old Shah regime, with its notorious CIA-trained SAVAK security service, ever was. Even more so, the film makes a very effective point in showing how fundamentally retarded that government was, much like any government that seeks to police the private moral life of its citizens — in other words, an extreme version of what the “secular” regimes in many Arab countries have resorted to. Think of Egypt, and those trials to forcibly divorce public figures judged to be apostates, or the current contradictory statements of the Mufti, or among the opposition of the ridiculous moral crusades regularly brought out by the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the PJD and its supporters (such as at-tajdid newspaper) in Morocco.

Azmi Bishara profile

The Guardian profiles former Israeli Arab lawmaker Azmi Bishara and looks at the rising self-assertion of non-Jewish Israeli citizens:

Before his resignation, his Balad party held only four seats in the Knesset in a country where many Arab Israelis still tend to vote for the mainstream political parties, particularly Labour – now part of the ruling coalition. Even Bishara admits there is not widespread public support for his ideas among his own community. One opinion poll earlier this year found that three-quarters of Arab Israelis would support a constitution describing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

However, in recent months, that has begun to change. For a start, racism against Arabs in Israel is rising, according to at least one recent poll. In a survey for the Centre Against Racism, a poll of Jewish Israelis found that more than half believed it was treason for a Jewish woman to marry an Arab man; 40% said Arabs should no longer have the right to vote in parliamentary elections; and 75% opposed apartment blocks being shared by Jews and Arabs.

At the same time, more and more prominent Arab Israelis are adopting ideas similar to Bishara’s and proposing a fundamental challenge to the Jewish nature of the state. Four separate documents have emerged since December, each making a similar case. Adalah, a human rights group, issued a draft constitution that said Israel should be defined not as a Jewish state but as a “democratic, bilingual and multicultural state”. It called for an end to the Law of Return, which gives automatic citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, and it called on Israel to “recognise its responsibility for past injustices suffered by the Palestinian people”.

Mobilizing the Arab population of Israel is perhaps the best way left to force a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – it’s pretty clear that most Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, ghettoized and radicalized over 40 years of abuse, are not able to do it.

Israeli textbook states Arab view – but not for Jews

Israeli textbook states Arab view:

The Israeli government has approved a school textbook that for the first time presents the Palestinian denunciation of the creation of Israel in 1948.

The book, to be used only in Israeli Arab schools, notes that Palestinians describe the event as a “catastrophe”.

“Both the Israeli and Palestinian versions have to be presented,” education minister Yuli Tamir said.

The book was condemned by right-wing politicians but hailed by Arab Israelis who say all schools should use it.

Separate schools, separate schoolbooks. But don’t call it an apartheid state. (Why on earth the spin on this article, notably the headline, is positive is beyond me.)