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Issandr El Amrani Contact him here
Egypt follows EU line on GM Egypt has unexpectedly rescinded its support for a lawsuit filed by the US against the European Union... 'Baghdad' -- music to Arabs' earsFor Mamdouh, the music that comes out of his creaky radio is one of the few respites from the dense, noisy Cairo traffic... All hell breaks loose in CairoDemonstrators riot and try to close the U.S. Embassy in a country where protest has been mostly banned for 20 years... Mirror of a movementThe word "ebullient" seems barely adequate to describe the atmosphere in the austere Cairo courtroom... Arab League faces uncertain futureOfficials at the Arab League's Cairo HQ - an unassuming building in the city's central square that blends modernist and Islamic architecture - wear long faces these days.
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~ A history of Iraq by Charles Tripp 
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~ Apres l'empire by Emmanuel Todd 
~ Scoop by Evelyn Waugh |
Fri, 03 Oct 2003
Russia adopts pre-emptive strike doctrine
Oh, great. Russia’s top brass just adopted a new military doctrine that allows pre-emptive strike, refers to the UN as useless, has them eyeing Pakistan and Afghanistan as targets and makes the use of WMDs easier. Now who could have ever given them these ideas? Wed, 01 Oct 2003
Clark on “doctrinaire” Bush administration
If there is a Pulitzer prize for blogs, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo should get it. Take a look at his must-read exclusive interview with Wesley Clark, which unlike all of the stupid profiles I’ve read on him lets you know something about what the man thinks. I had worried that Clark, while an appealing candidate, would be weak on domestic policy and burn a little too fast in the primaries to still excite people after them. Although this interview deals mostly with foreign policy, it shows that Clark a sophisticated and thoughtful person. That might not make a winner, but it certainly makes for a real contender. The following paragraph struck me for several reasons: If you read this in the context of the entire interview, you get the sense that Clark believes that the real problems in the Middle East aren’t Iran, Iraq and Syria as the Bush administration would have you believe, but Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. (He only mentions Egypt here, and I’m not sure in what sense.) Unfortunately, two years after 9/11 the Bushies have managed to convince many people (and have been endorse by heavyweight media figures like Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman) that the problem is something about the general nature of the Arab world. I’ve always thought that while there are certainly serious problems of governance and democracy in the Arab world, these have little to do with 9/11. These terrorist attacks —if you accept that they were carried out by Al Qaeda and not some other fundamentalist group — were conducted by a bunch of zealots that had for the most part broken off contact with the Arab world for a good decade, were trained by the Afghan war, hosted by the Taliban, funded by the Saudis, backed at least logistically by the Pakistanis and were at least tolerated (perhaps more) by the United States. Look for the responsibility there before you ask “Why do they hate us?” as if it was the question that explained it all. In any case, it’ll be interesting to see what will become of these ideas if Clark becomes the next president. And there’s a decent chance that will happen. While you’re reading the interview, scroll down and take a gander at Marshall’s excellent work on the CIA/White House scandal. He put it on the table, forced the media to discuss it, and is now fighting off the right-wing press machine’s agitprop faster than they can spin it. What a sorry bunch us journalists are… Sun, 28 Sep 2003
The 7-step plan
According to Wesley Clark, Bush has a list of seven nations he wants to attack: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. If this is true, notice that it leaves out North Korea, despite it being on the “axis of evil.” Kinda strantge considering it is the only one that is actually close or has just developed nuclear weapons, and is by far the most totalitarian of that bunch. But it seems we’ve kind of forgotten about the North Koreans anyway, with the Iranians now hurrying to get a bomb before that get attacked… Thu, 25 Sep 2003
Berlusconi toasted by ADL
As if we needed any more confirmation of the moral vacuum in the American Jewish right, the Anti-Defamation League — an organization that poses as a defender of human rights and dignity but mostly seems to serve as an attack dog against those critical of Israel — has awarded Sylvio Berlusconi its Òdistinguished statesman award this week. The Forward reports: The “holiday” that he sent people to included places such as Auschwitz. Perhaps the most famous Italian to survive Auschwitz is Primo Levi, who wrote some of the most moving literature and poetry on the Holocaust. In addition to Jews and political prisoners that were sent to death camps, many were imprisoned and tortured during his reign. But ADL head Abraham Foxman (one of the most shameless men I’ve had the displeasure of interviewing) defended his toasting of Berlusconi with these sickening words: His and the ADL’s agenda is tarnishing the reputation of anyone who is critical of Israel or of US foreign policy in thhe Middle East as anti-semitic. This is the kind of people who go apoplexic when Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean suggests that US policy in the region should be more “even-handed.” Organizations like this are corrupting the political fabric of the country through slander and intimidation. But when it’s convenient for them, they have so problems celebrating one of the most corrupt and racist politicians in Europe. I simply don’t understand why so many American Jews let these opportunists speak in their name. Mon, 15 Sep 2003
“It’s plus ça change all over again”
A great Maureen Dowd column: Guess who’s she talking about? Fri, 12 Sep 2003 I was too struck by the Haaretz story below to write anything about it — it all seems so obvious anyway — but I was glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks so. Juan Cole has a post about it that’s appropriately scathing towards Lieberman, as does Abu Aardvark. It just seems unbelievable to me that Dean would actually get heat for suggesting that the US should be more even-handed in Israel/Palestine. It just shows how the political consensus on this issue has gotten hijacked by extremists who will do anything to paint those who disagree with them as radicals.
Mon, 01 Sep 2003 Irving Kristol, considered by many as the godfather of neo-conservatism, has provided a long sought-after definition in the Weekly Standard, the neo-con magazine run by his son and owned by Rupert Murdoch. The definition he gives is a surprisingly social-democratic one — albeit with a few caveats — confirming the generally accepted notion that neocons are by and large former liberals that became disillusioned by the perceived “moral decadence” of the 1970s. They’ve read Trotsky and company, but are reinterpreting it in a radical-conservative way much like the neo-realist school of international relations theory took old ideas about power and realpolitik and added a fiercely anti-communist, normative streak to them. But aside from a distinct ideological history, neo-conservatism as defined here really seems quite eclectic, and in certain respects rather shallow. Take their fiscal attitude:
Doesn’t the casual hope that tax cuts will lead in more prosperity for everyone seem rather weak, especially considering that the recent tax cuts passed by the Republican-dominated Congress and the White House mostly benefit the richest taxpayers? And there is a certain degree of recklessness with the idea the deficits will be “temporary, one hopes.” As for the idea that “political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness,” well, that kinda seems ironic, doesn’t it. Finally, the last sentence about “egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals” vs. “economic reckoning” is incredibly dismissive of the fundamental idea behind what constitutes a just society as not being simply a question of how to create the most economically efficient society. This kind of reductionism (also found in free-trade fanatics, for whom the idea of a perfectly free economic system is the most desirable without regards to human consequences) makes you wonder whatever happened to ideas of justice inherent to the American system — it’s “pursuit of happiness,” remember, not “pursuit of maximum profits no matter what.” Since Kristol’s article came out, there’s been a few critiques and reviews of it — two interesting ones I’ve come across are at The Agonist and Strike The Root. Both are well worth reading, and pore through Kristol’s every statement, which I’m not really interested in doing. All this talk of neo-conservatism made me want to look into more expanded histories of the neo-conservative movement, and focus on one particular aspect that few like to focus on: their unconditional support of Israel, or to be more precise, a certain kind of Israel. One great, if simple, resource on neo-conservatism is the Christian Science Monitor’s Empire Builders special, which looks at the neo-cons from different angles. It’s well worth reading the compiled articles and interviews there, and there’s a great quiz you can take too to find out if you are a neo-con too. (I scored liberal on it, but I think I’m more somewhere between liberal and realist…) Much more exhaustive, and for my needs much more interesting, is this long, two-part article by Jihad Al Khazen that originally appeared al Al Hayat in June and has been reproduced and translated on Philosophy Notes (part one, part two.) Jihad Al Khazen is a senior editor at Al Hayat and one of the newspaper’s top editorialists. That does not make him popular in some circles — see what Michael Levitt, a “senior fellow in terrorism studies” at the pro-Israel, neo-con leaning Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has to say about him in an article subtitled “Arab journalists and intellectuals are apologists for terror” and published by the arch-conservative National Review:
It’s incredible the lengths some of Israel’s American supporters go to discredit anyone who disagrees with them or poses a threat — Levitt even goes to the extent for asking that Al Khazen be barred from entering the United States. For his part, Al Khazen had this to say on suicide bombing in a recent column:
Judge for yourselves, take a look at Al Khazen’s article — it contains nothing that cannot be verified from many other sources. Or take a look at his excellent column in today’s Al Hayat where he draws parallels between the situation in Iraq and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Doesn’t sound like a fanatic, does it? Anyway, the article looks specifically at the Israel connection among the neo-cons. Although the use of terms such as “Israel’s gang in the current administration” may cause some eyebrows to raise, the general tone is not conspiratorial and certainly not anti-Semitic. Instead, it’s a persuasive and exhaustive list of all the different institutions that make up or play host to the neo-conservative movement, with an eye for their positions towards Israel. Much of this information is already well-known (indeed a lot is culled from articles in the US press, such as Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker), but seeing it here collected makes a powerful impact. The section on A Clean Break, the policy recommendations put together by neo-con luminaries headed by Richard Perle is particularly enlightening:
Spooky, isn’t it? I think that one of the questions that the rise of the neo-conservatives in American politics bring up is not just where to place them on the political spectrum. It’s also — particularly since they have no clear constituency in America like traditional conservatives or liberals but make alliances with certain established movements like fundamentalist Christians — what is their agenda? Who are they defending? Whose interests do they want to further? After all, all of the other movements are trying to push for somebody’s interests, whether it’s the labor unions, big business, anti-abortionists or whoever else. I don’t think that the whole of the answer is that the neo-cons are acting on behalf of Israel. They do have other causes, as explained in the Kristol article. But Israel certainly seems to be unusually close to their heart. My guess is that they are defending a certain idea of Israel, and a certain group within Israel whose rise can be placed either in the 1970s with the emergence of Likud or in the 1990s with the Likud taking a more “pro-business” approach under the likes of Benyamin Netanyahu. These ideas are not just anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian or maximalist a la Eretz Israel. They are also anti-Labor. Just go read the document. It may not be politically correct to be thinking about these things these days, but it makes one wonder. Sat, 23 Aug 2003 If you want to know what’s wrong with contemporary American politics, read this. Sun, 17 Aug 2003 MSNBC’s The Scoop reports that President Bush turned to fundamentalist Christian Jack Van Impe for doomsday advice:
When they asked the administration about it, this is what they got:
This Van Impe guy is an interesting character. A tele- and radio-evangelist, he shares the belief increasingly common among fundamentalist Christians in America that the world is about to end, and that only the pious will be saved, or “raptured,” by God before Judgement Day. What bring said apocalypse, of course, is an evil alliance of the European Union and corporations. See what he told a reader of his “Internet Prophecy Portal Website” who asked him about the mark of the beast:
For more fundie craziness, look no further than the Presidential Prayer Team, an association devoted to providing daily prayers to the head honcho at the White House (That’s Dubya, not Dick Cheney in case you weren’t sure). The PPT claims to be
This fiercely independent, nonpartisan organization offered the following prayer on 15 August: Well, as long as they’re not trying to push a particular point of view… Just when you thought he’d disappeared into irrelevance, Al Gore springs back out of nowhere with what is probably the best speech on the Bush administration of any senior Democrat since 2000. Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right. Yup. The speech is really worth reading and rereading, and makes you think about why Gore’s fellow New Dems are crying wolf about those presidential candidates, such as Howard Dean and John Kerry, that are saying the same things in their campaign. That should be the central message of the party, and they are harming their own chance in the next presidential elections if they don’t dare to take a stance. If Gore, a centrist moderate and consummate Beltway insider if there ever was one, can say it, then so should they. As the NYT Op-editorialist Bob Herbert puts it: That says a lot about us and the direction we’re headed in as a nation. You can agree with Mr. Gore’s politics or not, but some of the points he’s raising, especially with regard to President Bush’s credibility on such crucial issues as war and terror and the troubled economy, deserve much closer attention.Incidentally, Bob Herbert is really worth reading religiously (and what a great picture!) He may not have the panache of Maureen Dowd (but then again he doesn’t have her ego) or Paul Krugman’s relentlessly aggressive stance, but makes some pretty powerful points. In an earlier column about a meeting of top Bushie economic policymakers, he repeats what Krugman has been saying for months: It’s too bad George Akerlof wasn’t at the meeting. Mr. Akerlof, a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, bluntly declared on Tuesday that “the Bush fiscal policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years.” Speaking at a press conference arranged by the Economic Policy Institute, Mr. Akerlof, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said, “Within 10 years, we’re going to pay a serious price for such irresponsibility.”It may not be new, but it’s nice to hear someone else say it. Sat, 16 Aug 2003 Of all the ink spilled on California’s insane elections, this was my favorite story. Not only does it put things into perspective, but it shows that if “the world’s largest democracy” can handle actors-turned-politicians, then California also can. It’ll survive. And if Californians really want to show that they are serious, then the answer is not to not vote for action movie stars, have-been child actors, pornographers, porn stars or socialite columnists, but do the right thing in the first place by keeping Gray David in his job until the next real election. Maybe there’ll be some real candidates. Mon, 07 Jul 2003 Nixon in purgatory, Safire in hell I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. William Safire’s Op-Ed in today’s NYT is so over the top ridiculous that one wonders if he’s actually sane. First, of course, there’s the concept of writing an interview with Nixon, which is cute at best and gimmick at worst. Perhaps he’s spending too much time with Thomas Friedman these days, which is a shame because for all his faults Safire is a better writer — he just masters the English language much more fluently, as his columns on linguistics show. And I think talking to Nixon is completely valid even if he’s vilified by many people. Hell even the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm thinks Nixon an “able” US president. And at least it’s not as sycophantic as his phone calls to his good friend Arik Sharon. What is outrageous, though, is that the reason Nixon is in purgatory is not Watergate or Vietnam, but “his sin of imposing wage and price controls.” Is he looking for a fight? Then he goes on to explain that Bush’s approval rating is still high despite economic problems because he’s focusing on the war on terror and the war on Iraq — “keeping his eye on the ball in center court.” As if Bush is some kind of Mr. Smith man of the people defending freedom from sinister elites, he adds: “The more the elites here and in Europe holler, the solider the Bush support gets.” Because of course Bush is not the elitist son of an elite family brought to power by elite, Beltway-insider politicians and elite corporate power. Noooooo. Not our W!
Then, he explains, Bush is “moving to the center” with his token spending increases, aid to Africa, and support for the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. Never mind all of the other programs he slashed, the future cuts that will be the necessary outcome of an unbalanced budget, and all the pandering to a tiny minority of extremely wealthy people and companies. Virtually every paragraph is either a celebration of the lack of accountability that the Bush administration has shown in its three years in power (such as not holding formal press conferences where the “fourth branch of government” could ask tough questions to the president) or a cynical endorsement of manipulative politicking. I wish I had the time and energy to debunk it in full, but is it really worth it? One last thing to point out is singling out Dean as the looniest of Democratic candidates for the presidency (the other have problems like smiling too much, not enough, or not having eyebrows). This is a common refrain in right-wing circles, arguing that Dean would be a “Godsend” because he’s such an extreme liberal — a communist, really. But of course, Dean is a loony liberal who supports the death penalty (but responsibly), has a clear track record of being pro-business (particularly small businesses) and shows every sign of being a moderate. But the problem is more that the designation “liberal”, which Dean most certainly is in the finest of ways, has become synonymous with Trotskyist. For more outrage at this go here. And to see what Dean really stands for, go to his excellent site. It’s not that I particularly support him, but the way he’s portrayed as a loony is simply surreal. William Safire, you’re going to hell for this.Mon, 16 Jun 2003 The Democrats are trying to outdo the Republicans in being pro-Israel. If the presidential election is going to be fought on these kinds of issues — on trying to be tougher than the Republicans — then we’re stuck with W. until 2008. Great. And after that, Hillary? Sat, 10 May 2003 Beslusconi’s delusions of grandeur Poor Silvio. Those nasty communists are trying to put him in jail and he doesn’t get to use his yacht very often. For the full hilarious interview see here, but in the meantime here are some choice morsels.
Thu, 08 May 2003 An interesting James Atlas article in the NYT — and a few days later by the New Yorker’s inimitable Seymour Hersh — points out the common intellectual heritage of many neo-cons: Leo Strauss, a political philosopher from the University of Chicago who seems to essentially be a kind of hardcore Platonist. His ideas seem sophisticated — if sinister and elitist — and may go a long way to explain the neo-conservatives intellectual dexterity and cohesion. My question is, where are the Aristotelians? |
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