Thomas Friedman is an Op/Ed columnist for the New York Times. He writes on a variety of subjects, including the Muslim world. In a recent article “Letter From Istanbul,” he wrote about the much visited city in Turkey. In his June 15 column, he wrote, “I like the people, the culture, the food and, most of all, the idea of modern Turkey — the idea of a country at the hinge of Europe and the Middle East that manages to be at once modern, secular, Muslim, democratic, and has good relations with the Arabs, Israel and the West.”
Yes, a Turkey that has looked westward, often discarding and ridiculing its rich past since the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire, should appear endearing to anyone who is insensitive and, worse still, hostile to Turkey’s Islamic heritage. Not to be forgotten in this context is the opposition of Sultan Abdul Hamid, the last of the Muslim Caliphs to rule this once great empire, to the very idea of Zionism. When the Zionists offered to give him 150 million pounds of gold to buy up and then turn over the Ottoman debt to the Sultan's government in return for an Imperial Charter for the Colonization of Palestine by the Jewish people, the Sultan told them, “If you offer me gold of the world adding it to your 150 man, I won’t agree to give you the land. I have served Islam and the people of Muhammad (S) for more than 30 years, and I won’t cloud the Islamic history, the history of my fathers and grand fathers – Ottoman Sultans and caliphs.”
It is no secret that the Sultan’s uncompromising opposition to the Zionists and Freemasons, who by the early 20th century, have taken effective control of the Young Turks and the Committee of Unity and Progress, paved the path for his overthrow and the ultimate abolishment of the Ottoman Caliphate. They insisted on his agreement to form a national Jewish state in the sacred land of Palestine. But in spite of their obstinacy he strongly refused them. [For details, see this writer’s article: The Case of Jerusalem - The Holy City Between Zionist Claims and Justification of Apartheid, Palestine Media Center (2005).]
This part of the Ottoman history, although unfamiliar to many students of history, is not unknown to most Zionists, including Friedman. What happened to Turkey over the next hundred years since the fall of the Ottomans is actually a matter of celebration for them. Not only the modern and secular Turkey was able to disrobe its Ottoman heritage, ban Islamic dresses in public places, pass laws that were hostile to its Muslim population, and distance itself from its co-religionist neighbors to the south and the east, it became one of the most ardent supporters of the Jewish state. The way things turned around, the Sultan probably would have been better off relenting to the Zionists!
As a pro-Israeli Zionist, the cause of Israel has always been central to Friedman’s writings. In his praise or censure of a country or culture, he has a simple litmus test: is it for or against Israel? Thus, it is not difficult to understand his rather cynical comment “it is quite shocking to come back today and find Turkey’s Islamist government seemingly focused not on joining the European Union but the Arab League — no, scratch that, on joining the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran resistance front against Israel.” Tom is fully aware of his exaggerated claims and concerns, and thus admits swiftly that Turkey’s eastward tend in recent days owes in part to the failure of the European Union (E.U.) to embrace the Muslim country.
Nearly five years and a half ago, in an article -- “What’s next for Turkey: the Marathon?” -- I pointed out Christian overtone of the E.U., “The decision by the European commission shows that Europe is still not ready for pluralism and is worried about inclusion of a Muslim majority country. They can preach about the wisdom behind secularism, but religion still matters. So, the Turkish constitution can be the most secular on earth, and upheld doggedly by its military to the extent of even unseating its elected government, but is no guarantee for admission into the E.U. Pure and simple!” (Media Monitors Network, January 5, 2005)
Such clear cut E.U. hypocrisy, visible to any keen observer of modern Europe, was conveniently ignored by western pundits like Friedman. Now after all these years, Friedman admits that the E.U.’s rejection of Turkey was a hugely bad move, which has been a key factor prompting Turkey to move closer to Iran and the Arab world. He wrote, “After a decade of telling the Turks that if they wanted E.U. membership they had to reform their laws, economy, minority rights and civilian-military relations — which the Erdogan government systematically did — the E.U. leadership has now said to Turkey: ‘Oh, you mean nobody told you? We’re a Christian club. No Muslims allowed.’”
I believe if it were not for Turkey’s criticism of Israel in recent months, beginning with Prime Minister Erdogan’s lambasting Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, over the Israeli military’s brutal tactics in the Gaza campaign and the IDF’s cold-blooded murderous orgy of Turkish activists in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and dissenting vote against the Iran-sanction in the UN Security Council, we probably would not have seen Friedman’s remarks in the New York Times. He now bemoans Turkey’s south and eastward drift to patch up relationship with the Muslim world. However, as usual, he belittles Israel’s savagery or its accountability to souring relationship with the secular Turkey, and instead blames the latter for, what he calls, “loudly bashing Israel over its occupation and praising Hamas.” He is troubled by the fact that Mr. Erdogan has decried Israelis as killers. To him, the killers can only be the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, and not the Zionists, even though they have been committing worse crimes since the establishment of the Jewish state.
Such reactions from one of the most vociferous supporters of the rogue state of Israel should not surprise anyone.
In his second part of the ‘Letter from Istanbul’ (June 18), Friedman is upset about Prime Minister Erdogan’s accusations that the Israelis are behind the PKK terrorism inside Turkey. If he is serious to unearth the truth, Tom would learn that Israel has been financing the Kurdish separatist groups, not only inside Turkey but also inside Iraq, for many years. It is all part of a very calculated strategy on the part of the rogue state to better position itself as the only trusted friend of the USA in the region, let alone to weaken those Muslim majority countries with internal strife.
It was all part of this scheme of doing things which led to the 9/11 when, as many credible analysts have shown, the Israeli leaders did not share intelligence information with their American counterparts. They knew the plan and the planners, and yet to extract maximum gains out of evolving situation in the aftermath of 9/11 chose not to share such critical information with the USA.
Friedman believes that the ruling party (AKP) is getting unpopular inside Turkey. His observations belie ground realities inside Turkey. Under Erdogan’s leadership, the Turkish nation has been able to clearly see what has been so obvious to many outside observers in that it need not run the extra miles on Marathon to prove its case for joining the E.U. It is better off today than ever before in its Republican history. Turkey is now a vibrant, competitive democracy with an economy that would rank as the sixth largest in Europe. It has become the center of its economic space, stretching from southern Russia, all through the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and down through Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Middle East. In 1980, Turkey’s total exports were worth $3 billion. In 2008, they were $132 billion. There are now 250 industrial zones throughout Anatolia. Turkey’s cell phone users have gone from virtually none in the 1990s to 64 million in 2008. If that is not an economic success story, what is?
While Friedman is all agog to find faults with the Turkish Prime Minister today, he should know that like most Turkish leaders of the past, Mr. Erdogan was not unfriendly to Israel either when he began his official duty as the prime minister. He encouraged closer ties with Israel, and even took a planeload of businessmen to Tel Aviv in 2005. The first sign of unease probably can be attributed to the reign of Ehud Olmert, then Israel’s prime minister. Mr. Erdogan was mediating talks between Israel and Syria when Israel began without warning the bombing of Gaza. This was seen by many analysts as a sign of Israeli arrogance that cares less about its benefactors just as it did a few months ago with vice president Biden’s visit to Israel. The flotilla attack was another such scheme by the Israeli policy makers to test America’s unwavering allegiance to the pariah state and breed tension and uneasy relationship between the USA and Turkey. As the UN debate later revealed, the Obama administration was not willing to chastise Israel for her heinous crimes. No punitive measures will be taken against Israel! To president Obama and secretary Clinton, Israel is once again more important than Turkey, a NATO partner.
In my 2005 article on Turkey, I asked, “Wouldn’t it be better for them [the Turks] to look south and eastward and reclaim their leadership position as they once held?” I am glad to report that from its bitter experience on failed membership in the E.U. and American and Israeli insensitivity towards Turkish lives, Turkey is learning its lessons fast. It has learned that its true identity cannot be an imported, fake and imposed one by its enemies. Just as 70 years of Soviet communism could not wipe out Russian Orthodox Christianity, the Kemalist experiment with hardcore secularism minus Islam is rejected by the vast majority of Turks. The modern Turkey is comfortable with its Islamic heritage that values human rights, dignity, progress and pluralism.
Turkey is finding its footing in its own backyard, a troubled region that has been in turmoil for years, in part as a result of American policy making and the Israeli factor. Turkey is no longer comfortable with its puppet role in the world scene. It has become forthright honest about things it likes and dislikes. Thus, it is not shy of telling Israel that she has been committing heinous crimes against the Palestinians living in Gaza. Nor is Turkey shy of saying that the UNSC voting sanctioning further harsh measures against Iran suggest that the USA has not gone beyond its cold-war mentality. This new vigor may come as a surprise, and even irritation, to the likes of Freidman, but not to most Turks who are tired of clearing up the mess left in the region by the USA and her regional partner in crime - Israel.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The resignation of Helen Thomas – People’s Journalist
This past week was a sad week in American journalism. In the face of mounting pressure and criticism, Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House press corps, decided to resign. She was one of the bravest, no-nonsense, journalists of our time. For the past fifty years dating from the Kennedy era she has been dutifully performing her duty by asking tough questions that few journalists dared to ask the White House. Her career demise came with a simple politically incorrect answer to a sly question from a Jewish rabbi -- David Nesenoff of Long Island, New York, who was at the White House for a Jewish heritage celebration on May 27. He asked the Hearst Newspapers Op/Ed columnist Ms. Thomas, “Any comments on Israel?” Her response that Israeli Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Germany, Poland and America – where they came from to occupy Palestine triggered a wave of denunciations that a narrowly worded apology did little to quell.
As expected at the forefront of such criticism against the 89-year old Ms. Thomas this time are guys like Ari Fleischer (GW Bush’s first press secretary) with dual nationality of Israel and the USA. In 2002, Thomas asked Fleischer: “Does the president think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of brutal military occupation and suppression?” Four years later, she told Tony Snow, Fleischer’s successor, that the United States “could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon” by Israel, but instead had “gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine.” Snow tartly thanked her for “the Hezbollah view.”
Through her grilling questions, Thomas had earned respect from many within the anti-war community but befriended none within the White House. One may recall her questioning of President George W. Bush in 2006 after he finally ended a long boycott of Thomas questions. “Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis,” she began. “Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true.” It was a gutsy criticism of the most powerful man on earth!
Remember the post-9/11 era of embedded journalism when every American journalist of name and fame seemed more like a brain-dead reporter parroting the Washington position than being objective? Very few dared to challenge the official explanation about the justification of Bush’s crusade against the Muslim world a.k.a. Global War on Terror, e.g., finding the so-called WMDs. Helen Thomas was an exception to that sad saga of American journalism in the 21st century. She proved bold, courageous and refreshing in a profession that had ceased to remain honest, truthful and objective, away from the damning influence and interest of the powerful lobbies and big corporations.
Thomas advised Bush not to “keep threatening war every day.” She berated Bush at a press conference in July 2007, “Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don’t you understand, you brought the al-Qaeda into Iraq?” She challenged President Obama three weeks ago: “When are you going to get out of Afghanistan?” “Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don’t give us this Bushism, ‘If we don’t go there, they’ll all come here.’” Then there was her questioning of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “What’s the difference between your foreign policy and Bush’s?” “We go in to kill and maim and send drones -- is that Christianity?”
As a keen and objective analyst of world affairs, and with roots in the Middle East, Thomas knew very well that Israel has been the cause for ‘99 percent of all this (Middle-East centric) terrorism.’ Unlike most others in her profession working in the USA who are sadly mortgaged to the Israel lobby, she was not willing to duck or hide such unkind and ugly assessment of the rogue state. She likened Palestinian protesters resisting the “tyrannical occupation” by Israel to “those who resisted the Nazi occupation.” During White House press briefings, she asked such tough questions like: “Why are we killing people in Iraq? Men, women, and children are being killed there. . . . It’s outrageous.”
Obviously, Ms. Thomas’s pointed questions were embarrassing to the war party. She earned enmity not only from those merchants of war but also from many Jewish and Christian-Zionist colleagues whose allegiance remained more to the Zionist state than the USA. They despised her criticism of Israel and wanted her to die or disappear. Not surprisingly, her harsh remarks about Israel on May 27 were videotaped and later posted in Nesenoff’s RabbiLIVE.com website by the rabbi’s son. Over the next few days, the pro-Israel lobby, politicians and journalists savaged Thomas over her candid statement repudiating Israel. They called her anti-Semite, a Jew-hater, offering the ‘official Hamas and Hizbullah position,’ and so on and so forth. Robert Gibbs denounce her remarks, and the White House Correspondents’ Association announced that it was considering whether to revoke her privileged seat in the front row of the White house briefing room. That meeting will no longer be necessary. She resigned.
Helen Thomas stood out for truth and honesty in journalism away from the overwhelming dehumanizing influence of the Israel-firsters in Washington. In a pro-Israel, Zionist dominated media world, expressing views that are perceived to be hostile to the interest of the pariah state of Israel can be journalistically suicidal. It was, thus, not a question of why but when that final curtain would be drawn on Helen Thomas’s glorious journalist career. And that’s what happened last week in Washington.
Helen Thomas will be deeply missed by millions of her admirers who have learned to expect that she would never betray their public trust. With her pointed interrogations and politically incorrect and candid remarks, she showed the best in journalism and earned their respect and admiration. Now that Helen Thomas is gone, there is more need than ever before for others in the White House press briefing room to fulfill that noble role and share her courage and opinion. Every one standing on that podium should be regarded with skepticism and must face tough interrogations, and not soft-balls, so that nothing but the truth comes out. As Thomas famously remarked last year of the White House, “What the hell do they think we are, puppets? . . . They are our public servants. We pay them.”
Will the next Helen Thomas emerge in the White House press briefing room?
As expected at the forefront of such criticism against the 89-year old Ms. Thomas this time are guys like Ari Fleischer (GW Bush’s first press secretary) with dual nationality of Israel and the USA. In 2002, Thomas asked Fleischer: “Does the president think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of brutal military occupation and suppression?” Four years later, she told Tony Snow, Fleischer’s successor, that the United States “could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon” by Israel, but instead had “gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine.” Snow tartly thanked her for “the Hezbollah view.”
Through her grilling questions, Thomas had earned respect from many within the anti-war community but befriended none within the White House. One may recall her questioning of President George W. Bush in 2006 after he finally ended a long boycott of Thomas questions. “Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis,” she began. “Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true.” It was a gutsy criticism of the most powerful man on earth!
Remember the post-9/11 era of embedded journalism when every American journalist of name and fame seemed more like a brain-dead reporter parroting the Washington position than being objective? Very few dared to challenge the official explanation about the justification of Bush’s crusade against the Muslim world a.k.a. Global War on Terror, e.g., finding the so-called WMDs. Helen Thomas was an exception to that sad saga of American journalism in the 21st century. She proved bold, courageous and refreshing in a profession that had ceased to remain honest, truthful and objective, away from the damning influence and interest of the powerful lobbies and big corporations.
Thomas advised Bush not to “keep threatening war every day.” She berated Bush at a press conference in July 2007, “Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don’t you understand, you brought the al-Qaeda into Iraq?” She challenged President Obama three weeks ago: “When are you going to get out of Afghanistan?” “Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don’t give us this Bushism, ‘If we don’t go there, they’ll all come here.’” Then there was her questioning of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “What’s the difference between your foreign policy and Bush’s?” “We go in to kill and maim and send drones -- is that Christianity?”
As a keen and objective analyst of world affairs, and with roots in the Middle East, Thomas knew very well that Israel has been the cause for ‘99 percent of all this (Middle-East centric) terrorism.’ Unlike most others in her profession working in the USA who are sadly mortgaged to the Israel lobby, she was not willing to duck or hide such unkind and ugly assessment of the rogue state. She likened Palestinian protesters resisting the “tyrannical occupation” by Israel to “those who resisted the Nazi occupation.” During White House press briefings, she asked such tough questions like: “Why are we killing people in Iraq? Men, women, and children are being killed there. . . . It’s outrageous.”
Obviously, Ms. Thomas’s pointed questions were embarrassing to the war party. She earned enmity not only from those merchants of war but also from many Jewish and Christian-Zionist colleagues whose allegiance remained more to the Zionist state than the USA. They despised her criticism of Israel and wanted her to die or disappear. Not surprisingly, her harsh remarks about Israel on May 27 were videotaped and later posted in Nesenoff’s RabbiLIVE.com website by the rabbi’s son. Over the next few days, the pro-Israel lobby, politicians and journalists savaged Thomas over her candid statement repudiating Israel. They called her anti-Semite, a Jew-hater, offering the ‘official Hamas and Hizbullah position,’ and so on and so forth. Robert Gibbs denounce her remarks, and the White House Correspondents’ Association announced that it was considering whether to revoke her privileged seat in the front row of the White house briefing room. That meeting will no longer be necessary. She resigned.
Helen Thomas stood out for truth and honesty in journalism away from the overwhelming dehumanizing influence of the Israel-firsters in Washington. In a pro-Israel, Zionist dominated media world, expressing views that are perceived to be hostile to the interest of the pariah state of Israel can be journalistically suicidal. It was, thus, not a question of why but when that final curtain would be drawn on Helen Thomas’s glorious journalist career. And that’s what happened last week in Washington.
Helen Thomas will be deeply missed by millions of her admirers who have learned to expect that she would never betray their public trust. With her pointed interrogations and politically incorrect and candid remarks, she showed the best in journalism and earned their respect and admiration. Now that Helen Thomas is gone, there is more need than ever before for others in the White House press briefing room to fulfill that noble role and share her courage and opinion. Every one standing on that podium should be regarded with skepticism and must face tough interrogations, and not soft-balls, so that nothing but the truth comes out. As Thomas famously remarked last year of the White House, “What the hell do they think we are, puppets? . . . They are our public servants. We pay them.”
Will the next Helen Thomas emerge in the White House press briefing room?
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The Flotilla Attack Proves Israel is a Pariah State
There is something absolutely rotten and hideous about the Government of Israel (GOI) and its supporters. On May 30 Israeli forces boarded an unarmed ship with an unarmed crew, carrying no munitions or weapons, 65 miles in the sea at 2 a.m. The Turkish ship Mavi Marmara was in the international water carrying only food, medicines and materials to build pre-fabricated homes for the blockaded people of Gaza when it was raided by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which can be best termed as the pirates of the Mediterranean Sea. The Israeli action was an act of piracy by any account. Lest we forget under article 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process. Israel has violated the Article. In other words, the Israeli killers are no different, actually worse, than the Somali pirates. They cannot attack a ship and then claim self-defense if the people on board resist the unlawful use of violence. As rightly noted by Patrick Buchanan, the nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and the author of six books including the recent bestseller, The Death of the West, what the Israeli commandos got is what any armed hijacker should expect who tries to steal a car from a driver who keeps a tire iron under the front seat.
And yet, the criminal government of Netanyahu and its many Jewish and Christian Zionist supporters are claiming that the Israeli murderous actions were all justified and in self-defense. In an editorial the Jerusalem Post reiterated that it was the ‘premeditated refusal’ of those aboard the ship to cave into IDF demand that triggered the violence. On June 3, an Israeli supporter from Michigan wrote in the USA Today that the Israelis brought ‘paintball guns.’ Any American kid playing in the woods or neighborhood parks would tell you that paintball guns don’t kill people, while the Israeli action in the ship killed nine unarmed passengers and injured scores of others. The weapons used by the IDF were no paintball guns.
For years, Israel and her cheerleaders have been saying that the Gaza blockade was solely to prevent the arming of the Hamas, which has been ruling Gaza for the last three years. Forgotten in this preposterous claim is the fact that there has been a partial blockade of Gaza since at least 2005 before Hamas came to power. With Hamas in power, GOI’s stranglehold over the Palestinians living inside the Gaza Strip of the Occupied Palestinian Territories has simply tightened. As repeatedly condemned by all human rights groups, including the UNRWA and the Red Cross, Israel’s blockade of Gaza is simply criminal and unparallel in today’s world putting its savage practices at par with those of the hated SPDC regime of Myanmar in its inhuman treatment of the Rohingya Muslims. Under the name of denying Hamas legitimacy, Israel has imposed a blockade that is one of the worst the world has ever seen in the post-World War II era. Even the Palestinian fishermen are denied their freedom to catch fish in the open sea.
The unemployment rate in Gaza, forced by the GOI as part of the collective punishment, is near 50 percent. According to Eyad al-Saraj, the founder of the International Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza, “The World Bank has stated that 90% of water in Gaza is not suitable for human consumption, 80% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, and 70% depend on charity for food supplies. Chronic malnutrition affects 15% of Gaza’s children.”
A major goal of the Israeli blockade of Gaza is to break the morale of the Palestinian people and force them to give up their legitimate struggle to live as a free nation much like any other nation on earth. What it has achieved instead is to reveal the immoral and criminal side of the Apartheid state. What the Israelis are doing is an act of war against unarmed civilians, which in itself is a violation of international laws.
Tired of western complacency approving Israel’s criminal actions, for months the human rights activists around the world have been trying to break the Israeli blockade. The Freedom Flotilla was the last such attempt to draw attention to Israel’s inhuman blockade that had barred essential humanitarian aids, life-saving drugs and foods, to reach Gaza to relieve the sufferings of its people. By killing nine unarmed activists in the dead of the night, Israel has again proven that she is a pariah state whose means and methods remain savage and criminal to the core.
Israel’s murderous activity has soured her relationship with Turkey. Last Thursday tens of thousands of mourners hailed activists killed by the Israelis as martyrs. People chanted slogans of “Damn Israel.” President Abdullah Gul said that “Turkey will never forget this attack.” Prime Minister Mr. Erdogan said, “The bloody massacre of Israel, brought against the ships bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza is a massacre deserving of any kind of curse and condemnation. This is openly an attack against international law, against the heart of humanity, against world peace, I say against the heart of humanity, for, on those ships were people from all nations, all religions. People alone and they only were bringing humanitarian aid to those under blockade, embargo, to the people in Gaza. The ships, before they left openly declared to the entire world their cargo, their intention, their mission. As witness to this openly humanitarian aid from the world and our country 60 journalists have entered the ships as well. In international waters, in open sea, this armed attack against 600 people and 6 ships which were carrying aid to oppressed people, poor people, to starved people, to people whose homes were destroyed - this was openly an attack against the basic philosophy of the United Nations.”
The UN has called for an international probe of the killings. The US, controlled by the pro-Israeli Jewish Lobby, has not joined these calls. With each passing day, the Obama administration seems without a moral compass. It is more willing to accept Israel’s explanations that her criminal actions were provoked by the Freedom Flotilla than accept the fact that Israel’s actions were a clear violation of international law.
There is no doubt that every good deed from the Prophetic declaration of monotheism in a world of idolatry to the call of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s for civil rights and plurality, let alone the freedom marches, was a provocation to those in power. It requires a moral compass to distinguish between a noble provocation that is aimed at uplifting human values and a flawed one that is criminal, immoral and hypocritical.
If the sane voices of people like Pat Buchanan and Uri Avnery are deemed too revolutionary for the Obama administration to listen to, how about those from the Ha’aretz? In a recent editorial, the Israeli newspaper stated, “When a regular well-armed, well-trained army goes to war against a ‘Freedom Flotilla’ of civilian vessels laden with civilians, food and medication, the outcome is foretold – and it doesn’t matter whether the confrontation achieved its goals and prevented the flotilla from reaching Gaza… There is no way to convince Israel’s citizens and its friends around the world that Israel regrets the confrontation and its results, and is learning from its errors...”
American silence to condemn Israel’s criminal actions against a NATO ally Turkey is hypocritical and inexcusable. As the hyper power of our time, the USA has a moral obligation to get out of her self-imposed slavish attitude to the criminals of Zion. She cannot afford to appear either condoning or be silent on such gross Israeli violations of international laws. Israel, a serial abuser and violator of human rights and international laws, cannot be allowed to behave like a Mafia Don that has no accountability for its horrendous crimes. When her crimes are worse than those of the Somali pirates, she must at least be treated the same way those pirates are treated. We ought to ask, as journalist Yvonne Ridley has done: if a group of Somali pirates had forced their way onto half a dozen humanitarian aid ships from the USA, killing a dozen or so people and injuring scores more what would have been our reaction?
And yet, the criminal government of Netanyahu and its many Jewish and Christian Zionist supporters are claiming that the Israeli murderous actions were all justified and in self-defense. In an editorial the Jerusalem Post reiterated that it was the ‘premeditated refusal’ of those aboard the ship to cave into IDF demand that triggered the violence. On June 3, an Israeli supporter from Michigan wrote in the USA Today that the Israelis brought ‘paintball guns.’ Any American kid playing in the woods or neighborhood parks would tell you that paintball guns don’t kill people, while the Israeli action in the ship killed nine unarmed passengers and injured scores of others. The weapons used by the IDF were no paintball guns.
For years, Israel and her cheerleaders have been saying that the Gaza blockade was solely to prevent the arming of the Hamas, which has been ruling Gaza for the last three years. Forgotten in this preposterous claim is the fact that there has been a partial blockade of Gaza since at least 2005 before Hamas came to power. With Hamas in power, GOI’s stranglehold over the Palestinians living inside the Gaza Strip of the Occupied Palestinian Territories has simply tightened. As repeatedly condemned by all human rights groups, including the UNRWA and the Red Cross, Israel’s blockade of Gaza is simply criminal and unparallel in today’s world putting its savage practices at par with those of the hated SPDC regime of Myanmar in its inhuman treatment of the Rohingya Muslims. Under the name of denying Hamas legitimacy, Israel has imposed a blockade that is one of the worst the world has ever seen in the post-World War II era. Even the Palestinian fishermen are denied their freedom to catch fish in the open sea.
The unemployment rate in Gaza, forced by the GOI as part of the collective punishment, is near 50 percent. According to Eyad al-Saraj, the founder of the International Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza, “The World Bank has stated that 90% of water in Gaza is not suitable for human consumption, 80% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, and 70% depend on charity for food supplies. Chronic malnutrition affects 15% of Gaza’s children.”
A major goal of the Israeli blockade of Gaza is to break the morale of the Palestinian people and force them to give up their legitimate struggle to live as a free nation much like any other nation on earth. What it has achieved instead is to reveal the immoral and criminal side of the Apartheid state. What the Israelis are doing is an act of war against unarmed civilians, which in itself is a violation of international laws.
Tired of western complacency approving Israel’s criminal actions, for months the human rights activists around the world have been trying to break the Israeli blockade. The Freedom Flotilla was the last such attempt to draw attention to Israel’s inhuman blockade that had barred essential humanitarian aids, life-saving drugs and foods, to reach Gaza to relieve the sufferings of its people. By killing nine unarmed activists in the dead of the night, Israel has again proven that she is a pariah state whose means and methods remain savage and criminal to the core.
Israel’s murderous activity has soured her relationship with Turkey. Last Thursday tens of thousands of mourners hailed activists killed by the Israelis as martyrs. People chanted slogans of “Damn Israel.” President Abdullah Gul said that “Turkey will never forget this attack.” Prime Minister Mr. Erdogan said, “The bloody massacre of Israel, brought against the ships bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza is a massacre deserving of any kind of curse and condemnation. This is openly an attack against international law, against the heart of humanity, against world peace, I say against the heart of humanity, for, on those ships were people from all nations, all religions. People alone and they only were bringing humanitarian aid to those under blockade, embargo, to the people in Gaza. The ships, before they left openly declared to the entire world their cargo, their intention, their mission. As witness to this openly humanitarian aid from the world and our country 60 journalists have entered the ships as well. In international waters, in open sea, this armed attack against 600 people and 6 ships which were carrying aid to oppressed people, poor people, to starved people, to people whose homes were destroyed - this was openly an attack against the basic philosophy of the United Nations.”
The UN has called for an international probe of the killings. The US, controlled by the pro-Israeli Jewish Lobby, has not joined these calls. With each passing day, the Obama administration seems without a moral compass. It is more willing to accept Israel’s explanations that her criminal actions were provoked by the Freedom Flotilla than accept the fact that Israel’s actions were a clear violation of international law.
There is no doubt that every good deed from the Prophetic declaration of monotheism in a world of idolatry to the call of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s for civil rights and plurality, let alone the freedom marches, was a provocation to those in power. It requires a moral compass to distinguish between a noble provocation that is aimed at uplifting human values and a flawed one that is criminal, immoral and hypocritical.
If the sane voices of people like Pat Buchanan and Uri Avnery are deemed too revolutionary for the Obama administration to listen to, how about those from the Ha’aretz? In a recent editorial, the Israeli newspaper stated, “When a regular well-armed, well-trained army goes to war against a ‘Freedom Flotilla’ of civilian vessels laden with civilians, food and medication, the outcome is foretold – and it doesn’t matter whether the confrontation achieved its goals and prevented the flotilla from reaching Gaza… There is no way to convince Israel’s citizens and its friends around the world that Israel regrets the confrontation and its results, and is learning from its errors...”
American silence to condemn Israel’s criminal actions against a NATO ally Turkey is hypocritical and inexcusable. As the hyper power of our time, the USA has a moral obligation to get out of her self-imposed slavish attitude to the criminals of Zion. She cannot afford to appear either condoning or be silent on such gross Israeli violations of international laws. Israel, a serial abuser and violator of human rights and international laws, cannot be allowed to behave like a Mafia Don that has no accountability for its horrendous crimes. When her crimes are worse than those of the Somali pirates, she must at least be treated the same way those pirates are treated. We ought to ask, as journalist Yvonne Ridley has done: if a group of Somali pirates had forced their way onto half a dozen humanitarian aid ships from the USA, killing a dozen or so people and injuring scores more what would have been our reaction?
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Energy Sector's Unnatural Disasters
It has been more than a month since the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people. At the time of this write-up, British Petroleum made little headway with its much touted ‘top kill’ method to ‘kill’ or plug the leaking well from gushing oil. The method began on May 26 (only to be suspended for nearly a 16-hour period after the first ten hour of operation) with remote control submersibles pumping ‘drilling mud’ – a mixture of synthetic petroleum and clays – into the renegade well. BP engineers temporarily shutdown the ‘top kill’ operation when they saw that too much of the drilling fluid was escaping along with the oil.
To overcome the high pressure of the gushing oil and gas from the well, the mud will have to be pumped countercurrent not only at a higher pressure but also at a higher flow rate. Under 30,000 horsepower of hydraulic pressure, the mud is expected to push into the leaking drill hole, stopping it up. Once the leaking stops with the mud, BP can follow up with cement to plug the broken pipe permanently. BP restarted the ‘top kill’ maneuver on May 27 saying that some of the drilling mud had successfully forced down the well bore where most of the oil was gushing. However, undersea pictures confirm that a lot of oil continued to leak through leaking pipes connected to the well. BP engineers are trying to plug the hole using different weights of mud and sizes of debris like golf balls and tires, and then watching and waiting hoping for miracles. The efficacy of such measures is unknown to this author. BP plans to continue with the process into Sunday, May 30, before giving up and considering other options, including another containment dome to try to capture the oil.
The Gulf oil spill accident was originally claimed by BP to have been sending 210,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico each day. No one believes those numbers any more. Recently, the U.S. Geological Survey said that between 504,000 to 798,000 gallons a day had been billowing out of the broken pipe. That means 20 million to 32 million gallons have spilled in the first 40 days of the disaster. This disaster is America’s worst man-made disaster dwarfing the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which resulted in 11-million-gallon spill in Prince William Sound blackening 1,500 miles of Alaska's coastline. According to SkyTruth, an environment advocacy group, the oil-slick has grown to about 29,000 square miles, roughly half the size of Bangladesh. More than 70 miles of Louisiana coastline are affected by the spill and nearly 54,000 square miles of sea area are closed to fishing by the Federal government, thereby disrupting the fishing industry there, let alone denying hundreds of thousands of beach-goers from spending their summer days on the Louisiana shoreline.
BP’s failure to promptly stop the leakage some 5,000 feet underwater shows that it has been avoiding to consider prudent methods and technologies that other industries have been using in recent years to eliminate such accidents from happening, e.g., six sigma tools like the FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis). Over the years, with tens of billions of dollars of quarterly earnings and the “cozy and sometimes corrupt” relationship it enjoyed with the regulators at the Minerals Management Service, the oil industry has become so insular and arrogant that it started believing that it is untouchable by any agency and need not adapt itself with modern technological advances in science and engineering. It has failed to invest adequately on R&D and hire smart engineers to help it get out of the pre-1989 engineering doldrums.
More unforgiving is BP’s outmoded clean-up efforts for oil spills; its technology has remained largely the same since the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989.
Shortly after the leak was discovered, BP tried using remote-controlled submarine devices to stop it. That didn't work. Then it tried two other techniques. The first was a huge containment dome weighing 98 tons that would have captured the oil so it could be siphoned off to a waiting tanker. But ice crystals formed when escaping gas mixed with water, thwarting that effort. BP was also pumping 120-degree water and methanol into the long pipe to prevent the formation of crystals of gas hydrates. (Those hydrates -- combinations of natural gas and sea water at high pressures and low temperatures -- form slush-like crystals that can block pipelines or even lift heavy objects off the seafloor.) Then, BP announced it was employing a similar, but smaller device called a "Top Hat." The crews tried to position a 5-foot structure weighing nearly 2 tons over the leak. It didn’t work. BP said it had yet another plan -- sending a "junk shot" -- loads of shredded rubber tires and golf balls, to clog the leak at the source. The junk shot technique was used successfully in the Kuwaiti oilfields in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But those wells were on land and, even in harsh desert conditions, could be repaired by people, not by robots working in extremely cold water 5,000 feet under sea at a pressure of 2,300 pounds per square inch (psi).
All these failed attempts show that it had no clue as to how to adapt fundamentals of fluid mechanics, reservoir engineering and instability phenomena like the countercurrent flow limitations to design fail-proof systems in such accidents with the drill pipe and had virtually left it to nature to dictate such disaster scenarios.
After all those initial fiascos, BP engineers inserted a four-inch-wide pipe into the broken section known as the riser, from which the majority of the oil has been leaking, and began siphoning some of the oil to a drilling rig at the surface. The deep-sea plumbing did not do anything to close the well, and a substantial amount of oil continued to leak at the bottom of the gulf.
From the latest testimonies of the rig operators it seems that there were problems with the blowout preventer before the accident. One of the control pods wasn't functioning as it should have weeks earlier. BP said in congressional testimony that it found one of the pods had a dead battery. The crew was also supposed to pump enough seawater into the well to move the fluid away from smaller pipes on the seafloor. However, records showed that they pumped only half as much as was required, leaving the more viscous fluid where it could block pipes and distort pressures. That could explain why some of the pressure readings showed that the cement had capped the well, thus providing erroneous information to the crew on the rig. Transocean, which owns the rig, said that BP did not plan to conduct a pressure test before sealing the well closed.
Unnatural or man-made disasters in the energy sector are not uncommon or unexpected. On May 27, Turkish rescue teams found 28 dead in a coal mine in the northern Black Sea province of Zonguldak, three days after an underground explosion caused the mine to collapse. Some 40 miners were reported to have been working in two separate areas of the pit at a depth of about 540 meters when the explosion occurred on May 24. Turkey has lost 60 miners in recent months. An explosion at a mine in Anshun in southwest China's Guizhou province killed 21 workers on May 13. When the Wangjialing mine flooded this past March, 153 workers were trapped underground in a much-publicized event. One hundred fifteen of the workers were eventually rescued. But accidents will happen in a country that gets about 70 percent of its enormous energy supply from coal mining. China's vast coal mining industry is notoriously accident-prone, with about 2,600 people killed last year due mainly to lax regulation, corruption and inefficiency. In April Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia killed 29 miners. This was the highest death toll in an American mine since a 1970 explosion killed 38 at Finley Coal Company in Hyden, Kentucky.
Most accidents in the offshore rigs happen because of the poor design of the drilling pipes and equipment and shortchanging safety requirements. Most accidents in coalmines happen because of the presence of methane, often in explosive concentrations. The only question is how diligently miners and mining companies will work to avoid explosions by proper ventilation to remove methane. Two other major problems with the regulatory agencies are that often times their laws don’t go far enough and that they are not enforced strongly. Only a small fine is levied on repeat offenders.
These disasters have shown that most powerful energy companies do not have the best interests of the people in mind when they are closing in on the kinds of profits that ancient kingdoms could only dream about. Even if the Deepwater leak is stopped in a week or so, America will need a long-term recovery and restoration effort costing billions of dollars. The Gulf of Mexico and West Virginia tragedies have also highlighted the need for much stronger oversight and accountability of energy companies working either offshore or onshore. The idea of relying on the assurances of these corporate predators that they are looking out for the safety of their workers and the health of surrounding communities and the environment is oxymoron. They need to be tamed, closely monitored and regulated, and constrained in ways that no longer allow them to trample the best interests of our people.
To overcome the high pressure of the gushing oil and gas from the well, the mud will have to be pumped countercurrent not only at a higher pressure but also at a higher flow rate. Under 30,000 horsepower of hydraulic pressure, the mud is expected to push into the leaking drill hole, stopping it up. Once the leaking stops with the mud, BP can follow up with cement to plug the broken pipe permanently. BP restarted the ‘top kill’ maneuver on May 27 saying that some of the drilling mud had successfully forced down the well bore where most of the oil was gushing. However, undersea pictures confirm that a lot of oil continued to leak through leaking pipes connected to the well. BP engineers are trying to plug the hole using different weights of mud and sizes of debris like golf balls and tires, and then watching and waiting hoping for miracles. The efficacy of such measures is unknown to this author. BP plans to continue with the process into Sunday, May 30, before giving up and considering other options, including another containment dome to try to capture the oil.
The Gulf oil spill accident was originally claimed by BP to have been sending 210,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico each day. No one believes those numbers any more. Recently, the U.S. Geological Survey said that between 504,000 to 798,000 gallons a day had been billowing out of the broken pipe. That means 20 million to 32 million gallons have spilled in the first 40 days of the disaster. This disaster is America’s worst man-made disaster dwarfing the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which resulted in 11-million-gallon spill in Prince William Sound blackening 1,500 miles of Alaska's coastline. According to SkyTruth, an environment advocacy group, the oil-slick has grown to about 29,000 square miles, roughly half the size of Bangladesh. More than 70 miles of Louisiana coastline are affected by the spill and nearly 54,000 square miles of sea area are closed to fishing by the Federal government, thereby disrupting the fishing industry there, let alone denying hundreds of thousands of beach-goers from spending their summer days on the Louisiana shoreline.
BP’s failure to promptly stop the leakage some 5,000 feet underwater shows that it has been avoiding to consider prudent methods and technologies that other industries have been using in recent years to eliminate such accidents from happening, e.g., six sigma tools like the FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis). Over the years, with tens of billions of dollars of quarterly earnings and the “cozy and sometimes corrupt” relationship it enjoyed with the regulators at the Minerals Management Service, the oil industry has become so insular and arrogant that it started believing that it is untouchable by any agency and need not adapt itself with modern technological advances in science and engineering. It has failed to invest adequately on R&D and hire smart engineers to help it get out of the pre-1989 engineering doldrums.
More unforgiving is BP’s outmoded clean-up efforts for oil spills; its technology has remained largely the same since the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989.
Shortly after the leak was discovered, BP tried using remote-controlled submarine devices to stop it. That didn't work. Then it tried two other techniques. The first was a huge containment dome weighing 98 tons that would have captured the oil so it could be siphoned off to a waiting tanker. But ice crystals formed when escaping gas mixed with water, thwarting that effort. BP was also pumping 120-degree water and methanol into the long pipe to prevent the formation of crystals of gas hydrates. (Those hydrates -- combinations of natural gas and sea water at high pressures and low temperatures -- form slush-like crystals that can block pipelines or even lift heavy objects off the seafloor.) Then, BP announced it was employing a similar, but smaller device called a "Top Hat." The crews tried to position a 5-foot structure weighing nearly 2 tons over the leak. It didn’t work. BP said it had yet another plan -- sending a "junk shot" -- loads of shredded rubber tires and golf balls, to clog the leak at the source. The junk shot technique was used successfully in the Kuwaiti oilfields in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But those wells were on land and, even in harsh desert conditions, could be repaired by people, not by robots working in extremely cold water 5,000 feet under sea at a pressure of 2,300 pounds per square inch (psi).
All these failed attempts show that it had no clue as to how to adapt fundamentals of fluid mechanics, reservoir engineering and instability phenomena like the countercurrent flow limitations to design fail-proof systems in such accidents with the drill pipe and had virtually left it to nature to dictate such disaster scenarios.
After all those initial fiascos, BP engineers inserted a four-inch-wide pipe into the broken section known as the riser, from which the majority of the oil has been leaking, and began siphoning some of the oil to a drilling rig at the surface. The deep-sea plumbing did not do anything to close the well, and a substantial amount of oil continued to leak at the bottom of the gulf.
From the latest testimonies of the rig operators it seems that there were problems with the blowout preventer before the accident. One of the control pods wasn't functioning as it should have weeks earlier. BP said in congressional testimony that it found one of the pods had a dead battery. The crew was also supposed to pump enough seawater into the well to move the fluid away from smaller pipes on the seafloor. However, records showed that they pumped only half as much as was required, leaving the more viscous fluid where it could block pipes and distort pressures. That could explain why some of the pressure readings showed that the cement had capped the well, thus providing erroneous information to the crew on the rig. Transocean, which owns the rig, said that BP did not plan to conduct a pressure test before sealing the well closed.
Unnatural or man-made disasters in the energy sector are not uncommon or unexpected. On May 27, Turkish rescue teams found 28 dead in a coal mine in the northern Black Sea province of Zonguldak, three days after an underground explosion caused the mine to collapse. Some 40 miners were reported to have been working in two separate areas of the pit at a depth of about 540 meters when the explosion occurred on May 24. Turkey has lost 60 miners in recent months. An explosion at a mine in Anshun in southwest China's Guizhou province killed 21 workers on May 13. When the Wangjialing mine flooded this past March, 153 workers were trapped underground in a much-publicized event. One hundred fifteen of the workers were eventually rescued. But accidents will happen in a country that gets about 70 percent of its enormous energy supply from coal mining. China's vast coal mining industry is notoriously accident-prone, with about 2,600 people killed last year due mainly to lax regulation, corruption and inefficiency. In April Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia killed 29 miners. This was the highest death toll in an American mine since a 1970 explosion killed 38 at Finley Coal Company in Hyden, Kentucky.
Most accidents in the offshore rigs happen because of the poor design of the drilling pipes and equipment and shortchanging safety requirements. Most accidents in coalmines happen because of the presence of methane, often in explosive concentrations. The only question is how diligently miners and mining companies will work to avoid explosions by proper ventilation to remove methane. Two other major problems with the regulatory agencies are that often times their laws don’t go far enough and that they are not enforced strongly. Only a small fine is levied on repeat offenders.
These disasters have shown that most powerful energy companies do not have the best interests of the people in mind when they are closing in on the kinds of profits that ancient kingdoms could only dream about. Even if the Deepwater leak is stopped in a week or so, America will need a long-term recovery and restoration effort costing billions of dollars. The Gulf of Mexico and West Virginia tragedies have also highlighted the need for much stronger oversight and accountability of energy companies working either offshore or onshore. The idea of relying on the assurances of these corporate predators that they are looking out for the safety of their workers and the health of surrounding communities and the environment is oxymoron. They need to be tamed, closely monitored and regulated, and constrained in ways that no longer allow them to trample the best interests of our people.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Senator Arlen Specter
Last Tuesday, the Democrats in the Pennsylvania buried Senator Arlen Specter's hopes to compete as a Democratic Senator for his reelection bid in November, 2010. By many counts the 80 year-old senator was a Houdini of Pennsylvania politics. He was twice a survivor of cancer and twice a survivor of such close political calls. His senatorial career began in the flush of the Reagan Revolution in 1980 and will come to a close after three decades in the Tea Party era. He has been a relentless interrogator of prospective judges and justices, a force for medical research, and a champion earmarker for his state. He promoted plurality and is considered responsible for an influx of women into the upper chamber.
In his long senatorial career (before switching to the Democratic Party in 2009 in the Obama era), a glorious one, which I must add, he came at odds with his conservative Republican party. He was more conservative than an average Democrat but more liberal and moderate than most Republicans. Thus, when it came to voting, he was unpredictable; he was not an ideological demagogue voting on the party line. His prosecutorial grilling of Robert Bork, whom Ronald Reagan nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987, was key to Bork's defeat. Four years later, Specter defended Clarence Thomas -- nominated by another Republican president, George H.W. Bush -- as fiercely as he had fought Bork. He shifted his alignments depending on the issue and his analysis of it. His neutral stance, away from nasty party-line politics, was able to gravitate many Democrats and independents who had always considered him liberal and independent enough to vote for and send to the Capitol House. In the post-9/11 era, Specter examined Bush's warrantless wiretapping program in hearings and championed limits on executive power.
Many voters may not know that Specter started as a registered Democrat who ran for Philadelphia district attorney as a Republican in 1964, and came full circle back to the Democratic Party in 2009. In 2009, when he reinforced his new Democratic credentials, he voted 96 percent of the time with President Barack Obama. However, between 2001 and 2005, as a Republican senator he was very loyal to George W. Bush, voting with him 85 percent to 89 percent of the time.
Specter was a brilliant lawyer who graduated from the Ivy League school U Penn in 1951, majoring in International Relations. During the Korean War, he served as an Air Force officer. In 1956, he graduated from the Yale Law School and joined the Pennsylvania Bar. Later he became an aide to the Warren Commission in the 1960s, investing JFK's assassination. He came up with the single-bullet theory -- that a lone gunman had killed President John F. Kennedy. In 1976, Specter ran in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat from Pennsylvania and was defeated by John Heinz. In 1978, he was defeated in the primary for Governor of Pennsylvania by Dick Thornburgh. In 1980, he ran for the Senatorial election, and won, representing the state of Pennsylvania, a privilege and honor that he proudly and dutifully held for the next 30 years by winning four more times (1986, 1992, 1998 and 2004).
Senator Specter served longer than any U.S. senator in Pennsylvania history, probably delivering more money to more organizations in 30 years than any human being from this state. He was a senior ranking member in the Senate. No matter who wins the November senator race between Congressman Joe Sestak (Democrat) and Pat Toomey (Republican), the winner would be a junior Senator on the Senate floor. Thus, Senator Specter's loss in the Democratic senate primary is a loss to the state of Pennsylvania. For a foreseeable future, no Senator from the state of Pennsylvania would be able to do what Senator Specter had done for the state. He will be sorely missed by most Pennsylvanians. As he retires from the Senate at the end of this year, I wish him all the best.
In his long senatorial career (before switching to the Democratic Party in 2009 in the Obama era), a glorious one, which I must add, he came at odds with his conservative Republican party. He was more conservative than an average Democrat but more liberal and moderate than most Republicans. Thus, when it came to voting, he was unpredictable; he was not an ideological demagogue voting on the party line. His prosecutorial grilling of Robert Bork, whom Ronald Reagan nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987, was key to Bork's defeat. Four years later, Specter defended Clarence Thomas -- nominated by another Republican president, George H.W. Bush -- as fiercely as he had fought Bork. He shifted his alignments depending on the issue and his analysis of it. His neutral stance, away from nasty party-line politics, was able to gravitate many Democrats and independents who had always considered him liberal and independent enough to vote for and send to the Capitol House. In the post-9/11 era, Specter examined Bush's warrantless wiretapping program in hearings and championed limits on executive power.
Many voters may not know that Specter started as a registered Democrat who ran for Philadelphia district attorney as a Republican in 1964, and came full circle back to the Democratic Party in 2009. In 2009, when he reinforced his new Democratic credentials, he voted 96 percent of the time with President Barack Obama. However, between 2001 and 2005, as a Republican senator he was very loyal to George W. Bush, voting with him 85 percent to 89 percent of the time.
Specter was a brilliant lawyer who graduated from the Ivy League school U Penn in 1951, majoring in International Relations. During the Korean War, he served as an Air Force officer. In 1956, he graduated from the Yale Law School and joined the Pennsylvania Bar. Later he became an aide to the Warren Commission in the 1960s, investing JFK's assassination. He came up with the single-bullet theory -- that a lone gunman had killed President John F. Kennedy. In 1976, Specter ran in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat from Pennsylvania and was defeated by John Heinz. In 1978, he was defeated in the primary for Governor of Pennsylvania by Dick Thornburgh. In 1980, he ran for the Senatorial election, and won, representing the state of Pennsylvania, a privilege and honor that he proudly and dutifully held for the next 30 years by winning four more times (1986, 1992, 1998 and 2004).
Senator Specter served longer than any U.S. senator in Pennsylvania history, probably delivering more money to more organizations in 30 years than any human being from this state. He was a senior ranking member in the Senate. No matter who wins the November senator race between Congressman Joe Sestak (Democrat) and Pat Toomey (Republican), the winner would be a junior Senator on the Senate floor. Thus, Senator Specter's loss in the Democratic senate primary is a loss to the state of Pennsylvania. For a foreseeable future, no Senator from the state of Pennsylvania would be able to do what Senator Specter had done for the state. He will be sorely missed by most Pennsylvanians. As he retires from the Senate at the end of this year, I wish him all the best.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Book Review: Inside the Revolution
Book Review: Inside the revolution: how the followers of Jihad, Jefferson & Jesus are battling to dominate the Middle East and transform the world by Joel C. Rosenberg, Tyndale (2009)
Joel Rosenberg, son of a Jewish father and a gentile mother, is an evangelical Christian who studied at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He is popular amongst the Christian extremist talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. As expected, his book – Inside the Revolution – is swamped with evangelical and Christian Zionist overtones. People interviewed to writing the book include: Peter Goss, director, CIA (1997-2004)), Lt. Gen. (retd.) William Jerry Boykin, Deputy undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Special Warfighting (2003-07), L. Paul Bremer III, presidential envoy and first U.S. Administrator to Iraq (2003-04), Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, General Moshe Ya’alon, Chief of Staff, Israeli Defense Forces (2002-05), Dore Gold, Israeli Ambassador to the UN (1997-1999) and dissidents from Arab and Iran. From the list of ‘experts’ cited it is not difficult to understand where the author’s motivation and sources of ‘information’ came from to writing this book with a bloated title.
The book talks about three groups of Muslims: radicals, reformers and revivalists. The book starts with a meeting that Rosenberg had with Jerry Boykin on February 2007. Lest we forget, Boykin is a Christian Zionist, who belongs to the millennium nuts that essentially see themselves as initiators for the Armageddon, fighting on the side of their lord Jesus Christ that will purify the world of disbelievers and all half-hearted Christians. While working for President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, he made some highly insulting and provocative remarks about Islam in the days following 9/11. Truly, he is not the kind of guy a serious researcher or writer of history or an analyst of the current events would lean on to learn about the changing political and intellectual landscape of the Muslim world. That interview with and quotations from a bigot are enough to discredit Rosenberg’s work.
Iran’s nuclear ambition, albeit a civilian one, is not acceptable to the Zionists and Christian neo-crusaders of any kind. For many years they have been sharing (thanks to Mossad-feeding and CIA-devouring) and drawing upon the same recycled and unsubstantiated intelligence information to exaggerate Iran’s and Iraq’s capabilities while ensuring rather unabashedly Israel’s troublesome and unjustifiable absolute military and nuclear monopoly, control and dominance that remain unthreatened or unchallenged in the Middle East. These warmongers have been proven wrong in Iraq, and are blameworthy of triggering the American recession and national debt in the last few years. But that kind of faulty claims and exaggerations have not sidelined the Zionist jihadists. We are, therefore, not surprised to learn about Boykin’s pro-Israeli views about Iran. He thinks that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapon to annihilate western civilization -- a view similarly shared and propagated by eliminationist Jews everywhere. Like any extremist Zionist, Boykin is against any negotiation with Iran and calls such “inane.” (p. 13) To his kind, elimination of Iran is the solution.
It is no-brainer that the Israeli general Ya’alon, a war criminal himself, supports Boykin’s exaggerated and unfounded claims and faulty opinions about Iran. Ya’alon is quoted to even say that Iran would have military nuclear capability within a couple of months or maximum couple of years (from March 2007, when the interview was held). (p. 18) Well, as we know by now, none of these claims and opinions has come to be true. Iran is no closer to any nuclear arsenal today than it was assumed back in 2007.
Rosenberg also cites Netanyahu, the current Israeli prime minister, who like Boykin, says that Iran, if unchecked, will create a second Holocaust in Israel and “proceed on their idea of building a global empire.” (p. 19) Only a brain-dead idiot, uninformed about the world it lives in, can swallow such unsubstantiated claims and exaggerations about Iran’s ‘global aspirations’ unquestioning!
As I have pointed out elsewhere Israel -- the last of the apartheid states in our century -- with her backers and promoters in the western world, military and economy power of its allies and co-religionists remains the greatest threat to our generation. Israel is in the business of exploiting holocaust to extract maximum concessions and benefits for its ever-expansionist plans and eliminationist politics. With the Hollywood film-makers and media moguls on their sides, Israeli leaders like Netanyahu have been able to sell their poisonous pill to many unsuspected folks. Thus, rather than challenging the obvious Israeli possession of nuclear weapons, her marauding aggression, history of war and preemptive strikes against all her neighbors and annexation of land, dispossession of original inhabitants, striking civilian targets with the intent to incur maximum casualty, her criminal refusal to sign the nuclear NPT and rejection of outside inspection of her nuclear sites and scenes of war crimes, the debate is cynically forced upon a pretender – a potential threat. The rogue state has thus remained opposed to making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Surely, we could have all benefited from such a life-saving and peaceful agenda, a call made for years by all the Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, by eliminating Israeli nuclear threat first before suspecting the absurd about others.
As to the views of the so-called radicals, Joel Rosenberg quotes Iran’s late spiritual leader Ayatullah Khomeini from his speeches of 1979-81, Osama Bin Laden and Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris, a cleric in Gaza (2005) who is little known outside Gaza. He also cherry picks words from Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani, and Lebanon’s Hasan Nasrallah. As to what these aforementioned ‘radicals’ believe Rosenberg quotes certain verses from the Qur’an (2:216, 5:33, 4:52, 5:51, 9:5, 9:12, 9:29-30, 22:19, 25:52, 47:4, 60:9, 66:9) which had a historical context. By misapplying their contextual framework, as if those verses are universally applicable for any Muslim, he does a terrible thing to the sacred text.
As I have pointed out many times before, if the hateful bigots like Rosenberg are looking for violent verses in the scripture, they need not go beyond their own Bible to find scores of such verses.
Rosenberg quotes statement from Walid Shoebat, a Palestinian convert to Christianity, to show martyrdom motivates Jihadists. Shoebat has long been found an unreliable and highly prejudicial narrator of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Rather than criticizing the motivation of the dead he should do us all a great favor by explaining what made those stone-throwing Palestinians of yesteryears to put on the suicide jacket today.
The author mentions the failed US Embassy rescue mission in Iran in the post-revolutionary days in which Colonel Charlie Beckwith, Delta force’s creator, and Jerry Boykin led the operation. Christian undertone is vividly clear among the mission leaders: “God has called us to lead fifty-three Americans out of bondage and back to freedom.” (p. 76). What is interesting in this detail narrative of the mission is that it disclosed how unreliable American contractors have been to the Muslim world. Even a ‘trusted’ puppet like the Shah of Iran could not be trusted. America deliberately sold faulty coastal radar system to Shah’s Iran so that American special forces could penetrate Iranian airspace undetected. (p. 77) Even then the mission to rescue American ‘spies’ or ‘hostages’ was a total fiasco with 8 US servicemen dead, 7 American helicopters lost, along with a C-130.
More disturbing is Rosenberg’s thesis that since a Pew poll in 2007 revealed that 5% of all Muslims in America had a favorable view of al Qaeda that there could be more than 100,000 radical Muslims living within the USA (p. 144). He goes on to extrapolate, much like his mentor Pipes, this number to include another 600,000 or more “Radical Muslims or Radical-leaning Muslims or sympathizers inside the country.” (p. 144) He then cites polling results in Europe conducted amongst Muslims which showed that some 15% Muslims in UK, Spain and France (and 7% in Germany) believed that suicide bombings against civilian targets were sometimes justified. Next, Joel takes the case for Muslims worldwide and finds that 7% would be classified as Radicals, which equals to some 91 million people (p. 149). Well, one can clearly see the fallacy of such arguments. A greater percentage of hateful bigots can be found in the non-Muslim world. The poll results, drawn from small samples of any given population, do not necessarily translate into actions. Thus, one can take a sigh of relief away from Rosenberg’s sinister conclusions by remembering that no serious attack has threatened the USA since 9/11. This, in spite of the fact that the country has been at war for nearly nine years (longer than the World War II) in the Muslim world in which more than a million unarmed Muslim civilians were killed by the USA and NATO allies.
As to the so-called reformers, Rosenberg fondly mentions the Moroccan model, which amongst other things, includes: reaching out to evangelical Christians in the West. By letting these Christian evangelists to operate freely, Morocco’s goal, according to Rosenberg, is to present a more pro-western image to the west. His Christian missionary zeal is unmistakable in this narrative. He reminds us that while such proselytizers are frowned upon in the non-Christian world, Morocco is a fertile ground for proselytism with thousands of converts to Christianity. I hope Morocco is not foolish or oblivious of the missionary ploys that once colonized the entire African continent while those soul-snatchers came for more than just the ‘heathen’ lost souls.
The most ludicrous part of the book is with the ‘revivalists’ when the author brings the story of someone named Tass Saada who is presented as one-time Yaser Arafat’s driver and bodyguard, unverified by the PLO. As expected, Taas, like Walid, has become a follower of Jesus by believing in the triune God (p. 365). Of course, he is “no longer a Radical – he is a Revivalist.” According to the author, “He no longer believes that Islam is the answer. He no longer believes jihad is the way. He believes that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no one – Jew or Gentile, Radical or Reformer – can have a personal relationship with God without accepting that Jesus is the Messiah, just as the Bible teaches in John 14:6.” (p. 368) This narrative is so evangelical Christian that it insults one’s intelligence to rationalize Rosenberg’s categorization of an ex-Muslim as a revivalist in the Muslim world. This is like saying that a convert from Christianity to any other faith is a revivalist to Christianity!
Rosenberg believes that a Christian surge is taking place across the Middle East. According to senior Christian pastors and ministry leaders in Egypt, Rosenberg reminds us, there are now 2.5 million followers of Jesus in their country. A growing number of these are Muslim converts, whom he calls the MBBs (Muslim background believers in Christ). (p. 389) According to him, before 9/11 there were fewer than a hundred MBBs; by 2006 the estimate is 10,000 MBBs, which, by the way, represent less than half a percent of the total Christian population in Egypt. He says that these ‘revivalists’ are now using TV and radio to reach Muslims with the gospel. If these claims are true, they should put to rest the negative propaganda against Muslim societies that they are against religious freedom.
Rosenberg is typical of the cynical anti-Muslim, pen-pushing hawks whose voluminous work of 552 pages is not worth the paper it was written on. It offers very little to understand the mindset of the so-called Muslim Jihadists. Instead, it goes on to reveal not only hostile Christian missionary activities in the Muslim world but also the author’s own bias, zealotry and deplorable intolerance against Islam and Muslims. His book is similar to many post-9/11 era books that are written to keep alive the perceived “threat” of Islam before our eyes, while not only shielding western eliminationist campaigns against the Muslim world but also guaranteeing themselves profitable fees, consultancies, recurrent appearances in TV and lucrative book contracts.
It is said that falsehood oft repeated achieves the veneer of truth and some are sure to swallow it. Rosenberg’s book is a typical example of such an attempt at disseminating falsehood with Christian evangelical zeal that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition, and led to the colonization of vast non-Christian territories of Asia, Africa and Latin America. A collection of lies and half-truths, quite a few unreliable sources and a plethora of false interpretation form the nucleus material for the above work. His repeated use of comments from anti-Muslim jihadists, bigots and racists, and ex-Muslims — whose motivation is nothing honorable either -- hardly carry any conviction.
For accounts of jihadist movements around the Middle East, a serious researcher or reader may find Professor Fawaz Gerges’s authoritative, deeply-researched books like – The Far Enemy: Why Jihad went Global (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (Harcourt Press, 2006) – much more useful.
Joel Rosenberg, son of a Jewish father and a gentile mother, is an evangelical Christian who studied at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He is popular amongst the Christian extremist talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. As expected, his book – Inside the Revolution – is swamped with evangelical and Christian Zionist overtones. People interviewed to writing the book include: Peter Goss, director, CIA (1997-2004)), Lt. Gen. (retd.) William Jerry Boykin, Deputy undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Special Warfighting (2003-07), L. Paul Bremer III, presidential envoy and first U.S. Administrator to Iraq (2003-04), Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, General Moshe Ya’alon, Chief of Staff, Israeli Defense Forces (2002-05), Dore Gold, Israeli Ambassador to the UN (1997-1999) and dissidents from Arab and Iran. From the list of ‘experts’ cited it is not difficult to understand where the author’s motivation and sources of ‘information’ came from to writing this book with a bloated title.
The book talks about three groups of Muslims: radicals, reformers and revivalists. The book starts with a meeting that Rosenberg had with Jerry Boykin on February 2007. Lest we forget, Boykin is a Christian Zionist, who belongs to the millennium nuts that essentially see themselves as initiators for the Armageddon, fighting on the side of their lord Jesus Christ that will purify the world of disbelievers and all half-hearted Christians. While working for President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, he made some highly insulting and provocative remarks about Islam in the days following 9/11. Truly, he is not the kind of guy a serious researcher or writer of history or an analyst of the current events would lean on to learn about the changing political and intellectual landscape of the Muslim world. That interview with and quotations from a bigot are enough to discredit Rosenberg’s work.
Iran’s nuclear ambition, albeit a civilian one, is not acceptable to the Zionists and Christian neo-crusaders of any kind. For many years they have been sharing (thanks to Mossad-feeding and CIA-devouring) and drawing upon the same recycled and unsubstantiated intelligence information to exaggerate Iran’s and Iraq’s capabilities while ensuring rather unabashedly Israel’s troublesome and unjustifiable absolute military and nuclear monopoly, control and dominance that remain unthreatened or unchallenged in the Middle East. These warmongers have been proven wrong in Iraq, and are blameworthy of triggering the American recession and national debt in the last few years. But that kind of faulty claims and exaggerations have not sidelined the Zionist jihadists. We are, therefore, not surprised to learn about Boykin’s pro-Israeli views about Iran. He thinks that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapon to annihilate western civilization -- a view similarly shared and propagated by eliminationist Jews everywhere. Like any extremist Zionist, Boykin is against any negotiation with Iran and calls such “inane.” (p. 13) To his kind, elimination of Iran is the solution.
It is no-brainer that the Israeli general Ya’alon, a war criminal himself, supports Boykin’s exaggerated and unfounded claims and faulty opinions about Iran. Ya’alon is quoted to even say that Iran would have military nuclear capability within a couple of months or maximum couple of years (from March 2007, when the interview was held). (p. 18) Well, as we know by now, none of these claims and opinions has come to be true. Iran is no closer to any nuclear arsenal today than it was assumed back in 2007.
Rosenberg also cites Netanyahu, the current Israeli prime minister, who like Boykin, says that Iran, if unchecked, will create a second Holocaust in Israel and “proceed on their idea of building a global empire.” (p. 19) Only a brain-dead idiot, uninformed about the world it lives in, can swallow such unsubstantiated claims and exaggerations about Iran’s ‘global aspirations’ unquestioning!
As I have pointed out elsewhere Israel -- the last of the apartheid states in our century -- with her backers and promoters in the western world, military and economy power of its allies and co-religionists remains the greatest threat to our generation. Israel is in the business of exploiting holocaust to extract maximum concessions and benefits for its ever-expansionist plans and eliminationist politics. With the Hollywood film-makers and media moguls on their sides, Israeli leaders like Netanyahu have been able to sell their poisonous pill to many unsuspected folks. Thus, rather than challenging the obvious Israeli possession of nuclear weapons, her marauding aggression, history of war and preemptive strikes against all her neighbors and annexation of land, dispossession of original inhabitants, striking civilian targets with the intent to incur maximum casualty, her criminal refusal to sign the nuclear NPT and rejection of outside inspection of her nuclear sites and scenes of war crimes, the debate is cynically forced upon a pretender – a potential threat. The rogue state has thus remained opposed to making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Surely, we could have all benefited from such a life-saving and peaceful agenda, a call made for years by all the Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, by eliminating Israeli nuclear threat first before suspecting the absurd about others.
As to the views of the so-called radicals, Joel Rosenberg quotes Iran’s late spiritual leader Ayatullah Khomeini from his speeches of 1979-81, Osama Bin Laden and Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris, a cleric in Gaza (2005) who is little known outside Gaza. He also cherry picks words from Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani, and Lebanon’s Hasan Nasrallah. As to what these aforementioned ‘radicals’ believe Rosenberg quotes certain verses from the Qur’an (2:216, 5:33, 4:52, 5:51, 9:5, 9:12, 9:29-30, 22:19, 25:52, 47:4, 60:9, 66:9) which had a historical context. By misapplying their contextual framework, as if those verses are universally applicable for any Muslim, he does a terrible thing to the sacred text.
As I have pointed out many times before, if the hateful bigots like Rosenberg are looking for violent verses in the scripture, they need not go beyond their own Bible to find scores of such verses.
Rosenberg quotes statement from Walid Shoebat, a Palestinian convert to Christianity, to show martyrdom motivates Jihadists. Shoebat has long been found an unreliable and highly prejudicial narrator of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Rather than criticizing the motivation of the dead he should do us all a great favor by explaining what made those stone-throwing Palestinians of yesteryears to put on the suicide jacket today.
The author mentions the failed US Embassy rescue mission in Iran in the post-revolutionary days in which Colonel Charlie Beckwith, Delta force’s creator, and Jerry Boykin led the operation. Christian undertone is vividly clear among the mission leaders: “God has called us to lead fifty-three Americans out of bondage and back to freedom.” (p. 76). What is interesting in this detail narrative of the mission is that it disclosed how unreliable American contractors have been to the Muslim world. Even a ‘trusted’ puppet like the Shah of Iran could not be trusted. America deliberately sold faulty coastal radar system to Shah’s Iran so that American special forces could penetrate Iranian airspace undetected. (p. 77) Even then the mission to rescue American ‘spies’ or ‘hostages’ was a total fiasco with 8 US servicemen dead, 7 American helicopters lost, along with a C-130.
More disturbing is Rosenberg’s thesis that since a Pew poll in 2007 revealed that 5% of all Muslims in America had a favorable view of al Qaeda that there could be more than 100,000 radical Muslims living within the USA (p. 144). He goes on to extrapolate, much like his mentor Pipes, this number to include another 600,000 or more “Radical Muslims or Radical-leaning Muslims or sympathizers inside the country.” (p. 144) He then cites polling results in Europe conducted amongst Muslims which showed that some 15% Muslims in UK, Spain and France (and 7% in Germany) believed that suicide bombings against civilian targets were sometimes justified. Next, Joel takes the case for Muslims worldwide and finds that 7% would be classified as Radicals, which equals to some 91 million people (p. 149). Well, one can clearly see the fallacy of such arguments. A greater percentage of hateful bigots can be found in the non-Muslim world. The poll results, drawn from small samples of any given population, do not necessarily translate into actions. Thus, one can take a sigh of relief away from Rosenberg’s sinister conclusions by remembering that no serious attack has threatened the USA since 9/11. This, in spite of the fact that the country has been at war for nearly nine years (longer than the World War II) in the Muslim world in which more than a million unarmed Muslim civilians were killed by the USA and NATO allies.
As to the so-called reformers, Rosenberg fondly mentions the Moroccan model, which amongst other things, includes: reaching out to evangelical Christians in the West. By letting these Christian evangelists to operate freely, Morocco’s goal, according to Rosenberg, is to present a more pro-western image to the west. His Christian missionary zeal is unmistakable in this narrative. He reminds us that while such proselytizers are frowned upon in the non-Christian world, Morocco is a fertile ground for proselytism with thousands of converts to Christianity. I hope Morocco is not foolish or oblivious of the missionary ploys that once colonized the entire African continent while those soul-snatchers came for more than just the ‘heathen’ lost souls.
The most ludicrous part of the book is with the ‘revivalists’ when the author brings the story of someone named Tass Saada who is presented as one-time Yaser Arafat’s driver and bodyguard, unverified by the PLO. As expected, Taas, like Walid, has become a follower of Jesus by believing in the triune God (p. 365). Of course, he is “no longer a Radical – he is a Revivalist.” According to the author, “He no longer believes that Islam is the answer. He no longer believes jihad is the way. He believes that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no one – Jew or Gentile, Radical or Reformer – can have a personal relationship with God without accepting that Jesus is the Messiah, just as the Bible teaches in John 14:6.” (p. 368) This narrative is so evangelical Christian that it insults one’s intelligence to rationalize Rosenberg’s categorization of an ex-Muslim as a revivalist in the Muslim world. This is like saying that a convert from Christianity to any other faith is a revivalist to Christianity!
Rosenberg believes that a Christian surge is taking place across the Middle East. According to senior Christian pastors and ministry leaders in Egypt, Rosenberg reminds us, there are now 2.5 million followers of Jesus in their country. A growing number of these are Muslim converts, whom he calls the MBBs (Muslim background believers in Christ). (p. 389) According to him, before 9/11 there were fewer than a hundred MBBs; by 2006 the estimate is 10,000 MBBs, which, by the way, represent less than half a percent of the total Christian population in Egypt. He says that these ‘revivalists’ are now using TV and radio to reach Muslims with the gospel. If these claims are true, they should put to rest the negative propaganda against Muslim societies that they are against religious freedom.
Rosenberg is typical of the cynical anti-Muslim, pen-pushing hawks whose voluminous work of 552 pages is not worth the paper it was written on. It offers very little to understand the mindset of the so-called Muslim Jihadists. Instead, it goes on to reveal not only hostile Christian missionary activities in the Muslim world but also the author’s own bias, zealotry and deplorable intolerance against Islam and Muslims. His book is similar to many post-9/11 era books that are written to keep alive the perceived “threat” of Islam before our eyes, while not only shielding western eliminationist campaigns against the Muslim world but also guaranteeing themselves profitable fees, consultancies, recurrent appearances in TV and lucrative book contracts.
It is said that falsehood oft repeated achieves the veneer of truth and some are sure to swallow it. Rosenberg’s book is a typical example of such an attempt at disseminating falsehood with Christian evangelical zeal that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition, and led to the colonization of vast non-Christian territories of Asia, Africa and Latin America. A collection of lies and half-truths, quite a few unreliable sources and a plethora of false interpretation form the nucleus material for the above work. His repeated use of comments from anti-Muslim jihadists, bigots and racists, and ex-Muslims — whose motivation is nothing honorable either -- hardly carry any conviction.
For accounts of jihadist movements around the Middle East, a serious researcher or reader may find Professor Fawaz Gerges’s authoritative, deeply-researched books like – The Far Enemy: Why Jihad went Global (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (Harcourt Press, 2006) – much more useful.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
The Conservative South and the US Politics
For the past two weeks I have been on the road and air. The first week, I took a plane from Philadelphia to Greenville, South Carolina and stayed near Seneca, close to the campus of the Clemson University. I returned on Friday only to take another plane last Monday to fly to Cleveland, Ohio. I stayed in North Olmsted in the outskirts of the city, returning again to my home on Friday.
Geographically speaking, in the context of the huge size of the USA, South Carolina is actually not too far from Ohio. The two towns are only about 650 miles apart – almost on the same longitude (82-83 degree West). But beyond the commonalities, there are some striking differences in ways Americans in these two regions view things and act. Southerners appear to be a friendlier, hospitable and relaxing kind of people who are serious about life-work balance. They are not easily pushed to compromise their easy-going lifestyle for extra dollar. This healthy attitude is often missing in the north where people are willing to work long hours, even on the weekends, provided they can make some extra money.
This is not the first time that I have been to the south. In the last three decades I had the privilege to visit many parts of this huge country. In my trips to the south, I have briefly stayed in many places of Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama – the so-called Bible-Belt states. Their southern accent is very pleasing to the ears also. They are honest about their feelings and are willing to both express such views and stand for those. That is, they are less hypocritical than their counterparts to the north. They also seem to favor hot spicy foods. The abundance of churches in close proximity to their homes and businesses would remind any visitor from the north that he or she is in the south where people take religion seriously.
The drive from Greenville to Seneca takes about an hour; it is nearly sixty miles long. When I turned on the radio in the rental car, I heard the voice of Rush Limbaugh. Apparently, the previous renter was listening to that radio station. I have never been a fan of Rush, considering him more like a bigot and racist than an intelligent person. Not surprisingly, he was discussing the oil rig disaster as if it was a Godsend to him and his audience. I tried to scan other stations, but did not have much luck in finding either the NPR or some other channels away from the nasty polarizing talk show hosts. There is little doubt that such neo-conservative talk show hosts have had much to do with the changing political landscape of the south, making those states more pro-Republican than pro-Democrat.
The 2010 mid-term election is less than six months away. There is little doubt that some Democrats will lose their seats to more energized Republicans who see a ray of hope to their political comeback. After all, while the economy is recovering, not everyone is happy with the performance of the Congress. The Capitol Hill needs a change in both membership and leadership. A much coveted seat is the senatorial seat held by the Democrat -- Barbara Boxer of California. To many of her constituents she has been a dismal failure on many counts; Californians are tired of her and want a change. However, the in-fighting amongst the Republicans, especially the undue influence of the pro-Israeli lobby, has not made it any easy to find a stronger candidate to unseat the unpopular senator.
Since her election fiasco two years ago when she ran for the vice president ticket under John McCain, Sarah Palin has been claiming to speak for the Republican Party members and dissidents who are tired of career politicians. It is good to see that she has become wiser these days. She has endorsed Carly Fiorina, the Ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard for the Senate seat in California. From the past remarks of Fiorina on the 2008 campaign trail that she could not imagine Palin would be qualified to be the CEO of a company like the H-P, she definitely wasn’t a natural pick to receive Sarah Palin's support. This endorsement of Fiorina is definitely a bold move by Palin given the fact that many of her supporters in the Tea Party movement favor another Republican candidate, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. Palin's endorsement of Fiorina in the Republican primary is a pragmatic one. She entreated voters recently: “Please consider that Carly is the conservative who has the potential to beat California's liberal senator, Barbara Boxer, in November.” She is absolutely right there.
Given the wide support she enjoys not just amongst many Republicans, but also within many Democrats and independents, no one within the California Republicans has a better chance than Fiorina to unseat Boxer. Now it is all up to the California Republicans to nominate Fiorina for the real contest.
Geographically speaking, in the context of the huge size of the USA, South Carolina is actually not too far from Ohio. The two towns are only about 650 miles apart – almost on the same longitude (82-83 degree West). But beyond the commonalities, there are some striking differences in ways Americans in these two regions view things and act. Southerners appear to be a friendlier, hospitable and relaxing kind of people who are serious about life-work balance. They are not easily pushed to compromise their easy-going lifestyle for extra dollar. This healthy attitude is often missing in the north where people are willing to work long hours, even on the weekends, provided they can make some extra money.
This is not the first time that I have been to the south. In the last three decades I had the privilege to visit many parts of this huge country. In my trips to the south, I have briefly stayed in many places of Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama – the so-called Bible-Belt states. Their southern accent is very pleasing to the ears also. They are honest about their feelings and are willing to both express such views and stand for those. That is, they are less hypocritical than their counterparts to the north. They also seem to favor hot spicy foods. The abundance of churches in close proximity to their homes and businesses would remind any visitor from the north that he or she is in the south where people take religion seriously.
The drive from Greenville to Seneca takes about an hour; it is nearly sixty miles long. When I turned on the radio in the rental car, I heard the voice of Rush Limbaugh. Apparently, the previous renter was listening to that radio station. I have never been a fan of Rush, considering him more like a bigot and racist than an intelligent person. Not surprisingly, he was discussing the oil rig disaster as if it was a Godsend to him and his audience. I tried to scan other stations, but did not have much luck in finding either the NPR or some other channels away from the nasty polarizing talk show hosts. There is little doubt that such neo-conservative talk show hosts have had much to do with the changing political landscape of the south, making those states more pro-Republican than pro-Democrat.
The 2010 mid-term election is less than six months away. There is little doubt that some Democrats will lose their seats to more energized Republicans who see a ray of hope to their political comeback. After all, while the economy is recovering, not everyone is happy with the performance of the Congress. The Capitol Hill needs a change in both membership and leadership. A much coveted seat is the senatorial seat held by the Democrat -- Barbara Boxer of California. To many of her constituents she has been a dismal failure on many counts; Californians are tired of her and want a change. However, the in-fighting amongst the Republicans, especially the undue influence of the pro-Israeli lobby, has not made it any easy to find a stronger candidate to unseat the unpopular senator.
Since her election fiasco two years ago when she ran for the vice president ticket under John McCain, Sarah Palin has been claiming to speak for the Republican Party members and dissidents who are tired of career politicians. It is good to see that she has become wiser these days. She has endorsed Carly Fiorina, the Ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard for the Senate seat in California. From the past remarks of Fiorina on the 2008 campaign trail that she could not imagine Palin would be qualified to be the CEO of a company like the H-P, she definitely wasn’t a natural pick to receive Sarah Palin's support. This endorsement of Fiorina is definitely a bold move by Palin given the fact that many of her supporters in the Tea Party movement favor another Republican candidate, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. Palin's endorsement of Fiorina in the Republican primary is a pragmatic one. She entreated voters recently: “Please consider that Carly is the conservative who has the potential to beat California's liberal senator, Barbara Boxer, in November.” She is absolutely right there.
Given the wide support she enjoys not just amongst many Republicans, but also within many Democrats and independents, no one within the California Republicans has a better chance than Fiorina to unseat Boxer. Now it is all up to the California Republicans to nominate Fiorina for the real contest.
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