{"id":1690,"date":"2006-10-19T09:10:38","date_gmt":"2006-10-19T09:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=1690"},"modified":"2006-10-19T09:10:38","modified_gmt":"2006-10-19T09:10:38","slug":"2006-10-19-a-plague-upon-them-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=1690","title":{"rendered":"a plague upon them"},"content":{"rendered":"
One of the little devices that helps me get through the month is ticking up how many stories in the Atlantic Monthly annoy me. When I hit a certain number (yet to be determined), I’m going to cancel my subscription.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> scored a tick.<\/p>\n

Headlined \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Carriers of conflict\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd it outlines one of the unpleasant side effects of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most recent military adventure: the mass movement of people out of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Now, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some interesting factoids in the piece. 700,000 Iraqi refugees now in Jordan? A quick Google doesn’t make it clear where this number comes from. UNHCR? Right. A year ago apparently they had recognized 800<\/a>. Last year the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants put the number at 450,000<\/a> and noted the inflow was increasing. But anyway, there’s a hell of a lot of them.<\/p>\n

The annoying part comes in the intro, where authors Dan Byman and Ken Pollack pontificate on the root cause of instability and violence in the Middle East:<\/p>\n

where large numbers of refugees go, instability and war closely follow… Palestinian refugees, who with their descendants number in the millions, have been a source of regional violence and regime change for decades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ouch! According to the Byman and Pollock, these wanton troublemakers:<\/p>\n

helped provoke the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars [then] turned against their hosts and catalyzed a civil war in Jordan (1970\u00e2\u20ac\u201c71) and in Lebanon (1975\u00e2\u20ac\u201c90) [and, like that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough shit disturbing] \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 contributed to coups by militant Arab nationalists in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow. Busy little pests those Palestinians. I think they caused the plumbing in my building to get all gummed up last week as well.<\/p>\n

Oddly, Israel is mentioned only once in the discussion of Palestinian refugees (as a victim of Palestinian aggression!) and the US is never mentioned at all in the discussion of Iraqi refugees.<\/p>\n

But on second thought, it’s not really<\/em> odd is it?<\/p>\n

Make that two ticks.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the little devices that helps me get through the month is ticking up how many stories in the Atlantic Monthly annoy me. When I hit a certain number (yet to be determined), I’m going to cancel my subscription.
\nThis piece<\/a> scored a tick.
\nHeadlined \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Carriers of conflict\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd it outlines one of the unpleasant side effects of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most recent military adventure: the mass movement of people out of Iraq.
\nNow, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some interesting factoids in the piece. 700,000 Iraqi refugees now in Jordan? A quick Google doesn’t make it clear where this number comes from. UNHCR? Right. A year ago apparently they had recognized 800<\/a>. Last year the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants put the number at 450,000<\/a> and noted the inflow was increasing. But anyway, there’s a hell of a lot of them.
\nThe annoying part comes in the intro, where authors Dan Byman and Ken Pollack pontificate on the root cause of instability and violence in the Middle East:<\/p>\n

where large numbers of refugees go, instability and war closely follow… Palestinian refugees, who with their descendants number in the millions, have been a source of regional violence and regime change for decades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ouch! According to the Byman and Pollock, these wanton troublemakers:<\/p>\n

helped provoke the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars [then] turned against their hosts and catalyzed a civil war in Jordan (1970\u00e2\u20ac\u201c71) and in Lebanon (1975\u00e2\u20ac\u201c90) [and, like that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough shit disturbing] \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 contributed to coups by militant Arab nationalists in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow. Busy little pests those Palestinians. I think they caused the plumbing in my building to get all gummed up last week as well.
\nOddly, Israel is mentioned only once in the discussion of Palestinian refugees (as a victim of Palestinian aggression!) and the US is never mentioned at all in the discussion of Iraqi refugees.
\nBut on second thought, it’s not really<\/em> odd is it?
\nMake that two ticks.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[26,224],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}