Politblogo

Spitting in eyes

I was going to write my own post on the Danish matters, but a number of other bloggers have written posts that are better than mine, despite their relative distance (relative to me) from the focus of the conflict.  In particular, Steve Gilliard's view:

Refusing to meet with the Arab ambassadors was a serious mistake. The Syrians showed how seriously

I have been amazed at the way people, first, refuse to understand that depicting Muhammad in any form is a grave insult, second, this was done by a right wing newspaper to piss people off, and third, how shocked Europeans are at the way Muslims feel about a grave insult to their religion.

Now, the Europeans play the innocent party, and people suggest that Muslims should leave if they don't like being insulted in the West.

I am somewhat uncomfortable with the occasional bit of American triumphalism that creeps into the rest of his post, but by and large he is correct---perhaps even including European models of social integration of immigrants.  His coblogger Jen intercedes with some of the shallower criticisms of the riots, but he deals with them quite effectively.

Now, as a Muslim myself, I am perhaps somewhat closer to the focus of this conflict, as I said above. It's clear that the Danish paper was intending to slap people when they were down.  But a lot of Muslim negative reaction to Western media has a history with which Western commentators are often totally unwilling to deal: Israel.  Namely, saying certain things about Israel are rightly or wrongly considered taboo in the West, but saying analogous things about the reasons for opposing Israeli policy (and, frankly, the legitimacy of the Israeli state) are not.  Rightly or wrongly.  This is considered a cosmic double standard, because Israel is quite frankly the prism through which most of the Muslim world sees global politics.  To make use of the Prophet Muhammad himself in this double standard would widely be considered one too many injuries to bear.

(And, of course, some people are suggesting that certain interested second-and-a-half parties are actually instigating this.  We'll see if such suggestions pan out.)

Defeat of a common Israeli theory

Continuing on the Mideast theme...

Akiva Eldar is one of the better Israeli commentators.  He's sort of like the Israeli Chantal Hébert---you can't really place where he sits on the ideological spectra, though he's probably a dove.  Anyway, here are his perceptive remarks on the aspects of Israeli policy that led to the victory of Hamas. We shall overlook some of the loaded language.

Haaretz - Israel News - The price of a villa in the jungle: It was to this alienation that Ehud Barak was referring when he compared us to a villa in the jungle. The animals of the jungle understand only strength. Negotiations are not conducted with savages. The only way to survive in a hostile environment is to erect barriers, shut yourself up in your house - and to hell with the neighbors. For our part, let them kill each other, let them die of starvation, some sooner and some later. We have "woken up" from Yasser Arafat, Oslo, Camp David and a negotiated settlement altogether. The Hamas victory symbolizes the defeat of this perception of power, which was eloquently expressed in an article by Ari Shavit, in summing up the Jewish year 5764 (2003-2004). "The impression emerges that the struggle between Israeli and Palestinian society has been determined," wrote Shavit. He attributed this "historic" achievement to the head of the Shin Bet security service at the time, Avi Dichter, and to the former chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alaon - calling it "an achievement that paves the way back to the diplomatic track by a dramatic military victory, the likes of which Israel has not achieved since 1967" (Haaretz Hebrew edition, Sept. 15, 2004). They promised to sear into the Palestinians' consciousness the fact that violence does not pay - and got a terror organization in the parliament and in the government. The rise of the Hamas is the price of the illusion of "we will take our fate into our own hands."

Negotiating partners: a brief Mideast interlude

We take a break today from Québecblogging, something I only started really engaging in earnest when I suddenly realized during/before the election that the anglo media and blogosphere's coverage of such was, not to sound too fussy, rather poor, scruffy, and waifish.

Instead, I'd like to make a brief comment about the current situation in the Middle East given the election of Hamas.  I keep hearing these things about "not negotiating with terrorists," yadda yadda yadda, as though the current situation didn't come about by meeting with the PLO!  And we all know what the Israeli state once called the PLO!

But, more importantly, it strikes me that Hamas, if anything, is precisely the correct negotiating partner.  You only negotiate with an adversary---by definition, otherwise it wouldn't be a negotiation---and Hamas is, well, an adversary, if not the adversary.  It certainly is the largest one, and it has the backing of the Palestinian people as expressed via the ballot box, and as everyone knows, anything expressed via the ballot box is an expression of the highest form of democracy...

This all, of course, is predicated on the idea that negotiation is actually what is desired.  The entire point of the Gaza pullout was to demonstrate that Israel can and will exit from strategically expensive and untenable positions (which was exactly what Gaza was) without negotiating.  It established the principle that all pullouts will be on Israel's terms, and not motivated by any concept of fairness associated with the concept of negotiation.

But none of this is at all new, and in an informed world I wouldn't even have to say it.

But let us return, for a moment, to the matter of Québec.  Or at least Québec media. A cartoon from today's Le Devoir:

This just in: God smushes NOLA because Gush Katif evacuated

Oh. My. God.  I haven't come this close to actually swearing in a while.

israelinsider: Views: Katrina and Katif: some connections to consider. 1) The obvious: 'Katrina' sounds very similar to 'Katif'.

So does "Catholic" and "Catherine."  Maybe God was punishing a Catholic named Catherine.  There are Catholics in Nouvelle-Orléans and some of them have got to be called Kathy!

2) According to a Russian friend of mine, 'Katrina' in Russian is equivalent to 'Katyusha'. A katyusha is the name of a rocket that has been fired frequently at Israeli towns and villages, one of which just recently hit Israel's port city of Eilat, near its airport. This katyusha rocket was fired against Israel at the same time when Jews were being expelled from Gush Katif.

...OK, wow.  She actually does it.  God destroyed New Orleans because Catherine is like Katif!

3) Bush pushed for the abandonment of Israel's southern coastal region, and America's southern coastal region is now in ruins as well.

Maybe ALL the devastated Southern coastlines in the history of humanity (and there are many!) were intended to warn us about this.  Because all of history revolves around obnoxious ultra-Zionists in Gaza.  Oh, right, that's precisely what she believes.

4) President Bush is from Texas, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is from Alabama. Together, they pressured Israel to uproot Gush Katif. Hurricane Katrina hit the states in between Texas and Alabama where Bush and Rice are from (Louisiana and Mississippi).

Bush ain't from Texas, ma'm.  Besides, why Bush and Condi.  Why not Bush and Cheney?  Maybe it happened because Bush and Condi are in cahoots with the Catholic named Catherine and even maybe her cats.

5) Many believe that U.S. President George Bush is selling out Israel to control the price of oil and keep it cheaper for Americans. Perhaps Bush thought that he could set the price for oil by appeasing the Arabs. Yet, this hurricane hit right at the oil refineries in America's Gulf Coast states, temporarily closing down these refineries, which brought UP the price of gasoline. Is G-d telling us that He, not Bush, controls the price of oil?

I won't even begin to unravel the ignorance about how oil prices are set.

And, by the way, I'm religious too.  And: get this!  I actually believe that God does indeed cause bad things to happen to good people! Even further, this doesn't actually cause me philosophical disturbance like it does other people.  But I don't believes that God plays lame, lame word games or that this woman has a special divine word-game decoder.  Yeesh.

 

Very different conditions

[Note: Today is Pandagon's Blog Like A Conservative Day.  I am participating. I don't really know if "liberal" is the right word to attach to me, but it's de rigeur in American circles for use on anything less conservative than Richard Lion-Heart, so whatever. Improv is fun. Sometimes]

David at Sivacracy demonstrates how nuanced and understanding he can be compared to the one-sided thoughtless ranting that happens on the conservative blogosphere:

SIVACRACY.NET: Since I pooh-poohed it earlier...: I'm not trying to knock the constitution that will develop, though as someone who prizes secular reign, I worry about basing too much of the constitution on the Koran just as I do continuing American efforts to make the Bible a stronger part of civic life. But I do think that the extended deadlines, behind-the-scenes deals, and the like, ought not distract us from the crucial issue: Iraq is a badly divided society with virtually non-existent state capacity except in the form of an occupying power. Having a constitution would certainly be a step in the right direction, but this is a very long road, and I'm skeptical that the path will be a smooth one for Iraqis or a sustainable one for the American presence. Glib references to the difficulty of America's democratic development or to Japanese acceptance of the 1947 constitution barely camouflage the fact that this is a different country facing very different conditions.

A different country facing very different conditions.  Indeed.

Without his daughter

Most people who even vaguely follow Middle East politics will know of the movie Not Without My Daughter, based on a book by the same name by Betty Mahmoody and a helper.  The book recounts the story of how Betty escaped from just-post-revolutionary Iran with her daughter, when her husband tricked her into going to Iran and would have trapped her there or, worse, made her leave Iran without her child, who would then be raised in a horrible fundamentalist Islamic country. 

Anyway, I came by this book in a public library, and my curiosity was piqued.  So I picked it up and skimmed it.  And by "skim", I mean to say that I spent a good hour on it at least.  (I lose track of time in public libraries...)  The book was detailed and personal, and I was elated at the happy conclusion: Betty and daughter Mahtob escape, passing through extreme peril, to achieve a prosperous life once again in America. 

But, as is so often the case, the story seemed incomplete to me.  Because while Betty had her daughter, somewhere in Iran, a father, the villain Moody (Dr. Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody), came back to an empty house, having never had the chance to say goodbye to his child.  And Betty had little knowledge of or interest in telling us what happened on the Iran end after that.  So we had an incomplete picture of the villain.

Google to the rescue then!  I find out that, much more recently, Moody's story has indeed been told.  It was told in a Finnish film called Ilman Tytärtäni (Without My Daughter).  I excerpt a review below: 

Variety - Without My Daughter: Alice Sharif, an American in Tehran who's married to an Iranian, and whose daughter Samira played with Mahtob, says the American women in her circle were outraged by the flagrant lies in Betty's book - such as the alleged Iranian habit of bathing only once a year. Sharif & Co. contend such fabrications were tailored to feed anti-Iranian sentiment in the U.S. She adds there was never a hint of Betty being beaten (as she claimed in her book), and she seriously doubts whether Betty and Mahtob could have crossed the mountains in winter without special gear. Sharif's husband says they could have left the country "the normal way."

Having visited (and having family) in similar parts of the world, I also have to wonder about the "bathing once a year" thing.  If by "bath," Betty means a luxurious 5-star hotel deal with expensive salts and designer bath robes, then yes, I imagine it unlikely that the average Iranian has even one a year.  In Pakistan, at least, people pour buckets of water over their head while standing ina bathtub fairly regularly---those that don't live in a more modern home with an actual shower.  Of course people conserve water and try to use what they can afford to use (there are an unimaginably large number of poor people)...but Muslim countries put great value on cleaning with water regularly.  She even acknowledges this when she notes that Moody wanted to shower after sex as a matter of religious custom.  And somehow I doubt that most Iranians have sex only once a year.

But this is trivial.  More importantly, I found a lot of places where Betty paints the behaviour and Moody's family and Iranian culture in a negative light, but I could just as easily see how the same incident could be taken as confirmation of the Ugly American stereotype.  For instance, she recounts how she attempted to make an American meal for Moody's family, and how her sister-in-law complained about the fact that she used beef.  She acknowledges that, apparently, in Iranian culture, beef is looked down upon as a lower-class meat.  But at the same time, she takes her sister-in-law's behaviour as a rejection of herself.  I put this in the context of other incidents where she paints her in-laws as mocking her, when it could just as easily have been indulgence of arrogant tantrums...  (Other criticisms appear on the IMDB message boards.)

Of course, you could accuse me of being too charitable to Moody.  After all, alternative interpretations of the events that Betty describes could be just plain wrong.  This accusation is quite valid.  Moody could very well be a jerk.  Quite likely, there was something wrong with both of them---first of all, it is quite likely that he believed he had told her that they would be leaving permanently for Iran (this is what he claims), and quite likely that she had another interpretation in mind. The problem is that we have a bit of a role reversal here: Betty, by virtue of being an American woman with a dramatic story, has the power to paint an easily-hated post-revolutionary Iran as the abode of monsters, and there is nothing Moody can do about it.  So we'll never know whose side of the story is the real one, and whose is the media creation/self-pitying lie.

What we do know, though, is that Betty allowed her story to become the very emblem of the popular American conception of Iran, and indeed seems still to be making money from it. That time was an opportune time indeed to take Iranian society out of its entire context and demonize it and the revolution.  And we cannot entirely blame them, since it is the Iranian revolution itself that gives frequent opportunities for demonization.  But removing the entire context of the Shah, Western power, and so on and replacing it entirely with symbols like this did a disservice to the world, particularly in the context of a possible attack on Iran.

And what we do know, also, is that Moody has not seen his daughter in many years, and if there's any truth to the notion that Betty's version is not entirely fair, but instead the partly the product of American power and privilege, then Moody's discovey of an empty house is an injustice.  That this context exists means, unfortunately, the Betty's claims have to be viewed in that light of her privilege as an American.  Moody has had story told about him in the world that he can never counter.  Well, with this video, apparently he has had some small opportunity, but this will never be a Hollywood production

But even if he is at fault to some extent, which he may very well be, I can wish him a second chance with his daughter in the future.  A second chance is something I can wish for almost anyone.

A poignant plea on Ha'aretz

I haven't read Ha'aretz for a while, because the Israel/Palestine endless crisis started to get repetitive for me, though I believe that it is still the most important issue in the Middle East, though totally overshadowed by Iraq, which is spectacular but transient beside the deep-rooted wound of the Holy Land. Anyway, I came across the following article:

Haaretz - Something for everyone - to hate: The left, still arrogant, still innocent, still rudderless and toothless and mute, quietly resents Sharon and questions his intentions. The left gazes from the side as Sharon dismantles settlements in Gaza - something the left could never bring itself to do. It clucks in reservation as Sharon cements Israel's hold on West Bank settlements the left, in theory, wants to cede - and which, in practice, the left for decades only built up.

The left needs to look at itself with honesty. For once.

The right, which in its modern version was invented by Sharon, the right
that once looked to him as Israel's Caesar, has now recast him as its
treacherous Cassius.

The right needs to look at its heritage with honesty. For once.

It's an introspective article about looking honestly at the actual behaviours of the different aspects of the Israeli political spectrum.  I don't totally buy some of the assumptions.  But that's not why I'm linking to it.

Ha'aretz has developed this user forum thing that it attaches to some of its articles.  And there you find a lot of interesting writing (as well as repetitive flamewars) from people who are living it, as opposed to wars between lobbyists like we have on North American boards that discuss the Mideast problems. And this discussion took an interesting turn as it was observed that this entire article---about the pullout---managed never to mention the objects of the endeavour, the Palestinians.  It became a discussion over the very personhood of Palestinians, and Israelis' inability to perceive it.

And so because some of the writing is transient (Ha'aretz articles have a tendency to vanish), I'd like to save a particularly poignant post (this link might expire, but hopefully it won't) by a Palestinian in East Jerusalem named Noor in response to an Israeli named Ronnie:

"Yes we learn different things,and also I can apprciate there can be honour in death,but to take a child give him or her explosives and blow up children,this is not honour,you have been sold something that is the most unreligious thing?????????"

Ronnie, I don`t know a single Palestinian who believes such a thing. We respect all life. There are extremists on both sides, and we consider all to be guilty of murder when they kill innocent Palestinians or Israelis.

No Palestinian mother wants to lose her child, whether at the hands of an Israeli or as a suicide bomber. I too have children and they don`t always listen to what I tell them. If one of them died as a victim of Israeli violence I would be devastated, and if by their own hand I would grieve for my own child and for all the victims of his action. I don`t know a single Palestinian mother or father who feels differently, even though many of them live in the Occupied Territories and have suffered far more than I myself have. I can understand, as I`m sure you can, how it must feel to lose a child or a parent and to feel defenseless and afraid every time your other child goes to school or out to play.

Believe me I`m not justifying anyone who attacks civilians inside Israel, but I wish more Israelis could really understand what it is like to live under such an occupation. Despair can drive people to do terrible things.

Israel always seems to believe it is the victim, because of suicide bombings which I would give anything to have never happened. But in truth Palestinians suffer such violence and more every single day. Israel seems to think revenge is acceptable for them but never for us. I myself don`t believe in revenge for anybody.

When a parent loses a child in war it is rare that they will condemn their child`s actions in public. When an Israeli soldier dies in Palestine, or an American soldier dies in Iraq, all we hear from the parent is pride in their child`s decision to go to war. Perhaps it`s because they need to believe their child died for something. I don`t condone suicide (or homicide) attacks on civilians, but we believe that every killing of a Palestinian by an Israeli soldier or an Israeli settler is an act of terrorism. We don`t understand how anybody can justify violence by Israelis, even when children are targetted, while blaming Palestinians for every violent act they commit.

All we know is that many many more of our children have died from Israeli violence (we call it terrorism) than the other way around.

So we aren`t sold anything. We hear rhetoric, as you hear rhetoric. I have already read quite a bit of zionist rhetoric right here which shows me that many Israelis don`t even recognize our right to live. It is difficult for me to understand that kind of hatred. But I do believe that most Israelis -- most Jews -- are basically the same as most Palestinians. We just want peace for everybody.

Al-Jazeera = Al-Hurra?

Abu Aardvark discusses the proposed new al-Jazeera channel that is supposed to be an equivalent to CSPAN (or CPAC for Canadian readers).  However, he makes an interesting side-comment about al-Jazeera English Version, apparently to be rolled out later this year, although he seems to doubt that:

Abu Aardvark: AJ-Span: I'll be eager to see how this develops - it's far more interesting (to me) than the English-language al Jazeera supposedly coming later this year, which I expect to be as much of a costly failure as al Hurra is for the US.

He seems to be setting up an equivalency here.  I wonder why he thinks that.  Everyone in the Middle East knows what the US is going to say; that's why al-Hurra is a failure, it's so transparent as to be silly.  But not everyone in the West has access to an Arab perspective, and I think that there is actually some curiosity there.  So it may be easier to attract viewers and advertisers.  We'll see.

Poverty, Policy, and Fanaticism

My admiration grows for the Quixotic Ones as Ian Welsh gets it almost exactly right on agricultural and trade advice given to less developed countries:

Tilting at Windmills - Agricultural Commoditization: And what the Western economists tell you is this - "you sir, have a comparative advantage in certain cash crops." It doesn't matter what those are - they could be bananas, coffee, oranges, sugar or a number of others.

But theres a problem with cash crops - with very few exceptions you can't produce large quantities of them with small, subsistence or near subsistence farms. You need larger farms with capital intensive investment. Especially if you want to take advantage of western high yield agricultural techniques. That means kicking those farmers off their land and since the new techniques need many less people, most of them will have to run to the cities.

So - you're not a complete idiot. You ask, "how am I going to feed all those people? How am I going to find them jobs?" And your advisors say, "you have a comparative advantage in these forms of agriculture. Although you won't be producing enough food, you'll be able to import enough from other countries. In fact, based on current prices of the commodities, you'll make enough money to reinvest in your economy, grow it, and give some of the displaced farmers new jobs."

...

Third - the net loss to the economy is more than you gain, in almost all cases. Oh sure, you've got that coveted hard currency, but you've lost net jobs, often most are never recovered. The new work produces very little in multiplier effect - the equipment isn't bought in country, the food isn't sold in country, it isn't shipped by companies who have most of their employees in country, the fertilizer probably comes from overseas and so do the seeds. Any improvements to the land are done at the instruction of foreigners, so the best jobs are often not for locals.

In the meantime you've destroyed the livelihood not only of all the farmers, but the middlemen who distributed the food, those who sold the food, those who sold goods to the farmers and the local villages which depended on trade from the local farmers.

Ian's only gotten better with time (and I'm not just saying this to return his compliment in his comments section a few days ago), but I have to quibble with this:

Fourth - the urban poor become a huge source of political instability and a drain on your cities. In many cases the slums that ring third world cities are as large or larger than the city proper and suffer from endemic violence, disease and malnutrition. And they still breed as fast as they ever did - but now they can't really support their children. Without any chance of a good life in this world many turn to religion, in which they find their salvation and the religion many of them turn to is fundamentalist Islam and while they don't become terrorists they do form a support network for terrorism.

I'm really not convinced that Muslim fanatics have a support network that is mostly explained by poverty. To me, this is a cop out.  And I'm not just saying this in the conventional, mainstream way: to presume that the only valid grievances are strictly poverty, and to deny that there is an underlying grievance in the Muslim world with nontrivial justification (even as it--obligatory disclaimer--doesn't justify random violence). 

The support network of Muslim fanatics doesn't come from the poor because they are poor.  It comes from the oppressed.  The oppressed often act in ways that are immoral, but that doesn't make them any less oppressed.  Under the right conditions, a highly developed country can be quite brutal.  A seeming democracy, a sham.

This doesn't detract from Ian's main point.  But I dislike seeing this frequent misconception repeated.