صلح Pax سلام שלום Pace Hasîtî Barış 和平 Мир Peace Mir Friede Paix
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Isfahan is a short animated film inspired by stunning Persian architecture and created by Etérea Studios. H/T to friend and inspiration Ressentiment. For a great Persian culture fix (and much else besides) see also Reclaiming Space’s Iranian sister city blog Forever Under Construction, and also check out NeoResistance. The clip may need a few seconds to load.
“Nobody can impose terms on us, or commit us to anything we do not believe in. Let me be clear: Israel won’t get through politics what it didn’t get through war, even if the UN resolution gave this to Israel. What they couldn’t do through war, they want to do by peaceful means? It doesn’t work like that.”
—Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem, Al-Manar television, 15 August 2006
Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr (”just call me Joe–anything but Sue” as he does his Johnny Cash imitation) Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and twice Presidential Candidate, is a friendly, loquacious, decent and knowledgeable fellow. Having served on that Committee for nearly a quarter century and traveled widely, Biden thinks of himself as someone who can be confronted with ‘deal breakers’ at the negotiation table and work out mutually acceptable solutions. “I’m the real deal bridge builder!”, he sometimes kids with his devoted staff, as he shadow boxes and mimics his favorite boxer, Evander “the real deal” Holyfield. Read the rest of this entry »
“These fools do not learn from their past mistakes. When they withdrew from Lebanon, they continued to occupy the Shebaa Farms and kept our brothers in custody. Had they released them when they left Lebanon, there would not now be a ‘prisoner issue’ between Lebanon and the enemy. They opened the door for us.”
– Hassan Nasrallah, January 2004, during a welcome home ceremony for Lebanese and Arab detainees as a result of a Hezbollah-Israel swap.
As discussed below, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the Bush administration is prepared to concede that Hezbollah keep its weapons. Even though it encourages its marionettes to foment this issue, and does so itself publicly, the Bush Administration knows that Hezbollah is not going to disarm until the Question of Palestine is settled to the satisfaction of the Palestinians. Yet it feels that focusing on Hezbollah’s militia is still a good pre-negotiation bargaining chip. Read the rest of this entry »
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“The Bush administration parking a flotilla from its US 6th fleet off the coast of Lebanon was made necessary, it claims, to demonstrate Washington’s ‘commitment to stability in the region’. This provocation, aimed at Hezbollah and also Syria, is the equivalent of a Sicilian fish wrapped in newspaper with a white rose—left on a doorstep: “This is business. It is not personal. Here is an offer you cannot refuse“.
– Italian officer seconded to UNIFIL outside his Tebnine HQ, South Lebanon
Recent US back channel feelers to Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah’s decision makers are sometimes present, reflect US calculations that given current trends in the Middle East, Hezbollah will play a major regional role.
According to US Senate Intelligence Committee sources, the efforts to date have run tepid and less ‘qualitative’ than informal Iran-USA contacts. US diplomat Thomas Pickering has revealed that he has been a participant in secret Iran-US ‘back channel’ discussions for the past five years. The subjects discussed include Iran’s nuclear program, the broader relationship between the two and US relations with Hezbollah. Other participants include former US diplomat William Luers and MIT nuclear expert Jim Walsh. While “unofficial”, the discussions, organized by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the UN Association of the USA, are thought to be useful.
Dismissive of Republican Presidential candidate John McCain’s pledge to “drive Hezbollah out of Lebanon”, serious US officials want to engage the Lebanese Resistance partly because they are concerned with Israel remaining a Jewish state in the region. Read the rest of this entry »
Having a good sense of humour is not a prerequisite for being Lebanese or living and visiting this simultaneously magical and troubled country, but it sure helps. (Fortunately, ordinary Lebanese, if not always their elected representatives, seem to be blessed with an abundance of good humour.) Marc J. Sirois demonstrates this nicely by mapping out a few keywords for a tongue-in-cheek introduction to Lebanese politics. Sirois is managing editor of The Daily Star, from whence this is excerpted (25 Feb).
Bekaa Valley: Fertile region nestled between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges. Known for amazing Roman ruins and all manner of high-quality produce, some of which make the ruins even more amazing.
“Birth pangs of the new Middle East:” How US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described the summer 2006 war in which the Israeli military killed 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians. Clear indicator that Dr. Rice is confused about the order in which the reproductive cycle takes place.
Beirut: Centre of the universe.
Civil disobedience: What do-gooding Westerners have been telling Arabs and Muslims to adopt for a generation or two.
Coup d’etat: What Western governments have called it when Lebanon’s opposition uses civil disobedience.
Left: 1) A political movement defined by claims to represent the interests of the common man. Virtually extinct in Lebanon since being subsumed by big money; 2) What Lebanese have historically done - and are doing now - to escape the consequences of their politicians’ serial shenanigans. Read the rest of this entry »
Though choosing and upholding a single piece from all of last year would be too difficult from such a fertile field of good writing, I recently revisited this short article penned by author, historian and travel writer William Dalrymple in October, ‘A lesson in humility for the smug West’, one of my picks from 2007. This piece represents one of the central themes and messages of his work, that of fruitful cross-fertilisation and interdependency between ‘civilisations.’
A list of selected articles from Dalrymple is appended.
A lesson in humility for the smug WestWilliam Dalrymple | The Times | 14 October 2007
About 100 miles south of Delhi, where I live, lie the ruins of the Mughal capital, Fateh-pur Sikri. This was built by the Emperor Akbar at the end of the 16th century. Here Akbar would listen carefully as philosophers, mystics and holy men of different faiths debated the merits of their different beliefs in what is the earliest known experiment in formal inter-religious dialogue.
Representatives of Muslims (Sunni and Shi’ite as well as Sufi), Hindus (followers of Shiva and Vishnu as well as Hindu atheists), Christians, Jains, Jews, Buddhists and Zoroastrians came together to discuss where they differed and how they could live together. Read the rest of this entry »
Did anyone else notice that Iran got some welcome good press in the New York Times (which offers too few reasons to read it regularly other than good columnists like Dowd). It was in the travel section: Iran made it into the Top 20 of their 53 Places To Go In 2008, with this citation:
18. IRAN
What Axis of Evil? Upscale tour operators are tiptoeing into Iran next year, offering trips that explore the ancient country’s Persian treasures and olive-green desert plains. Next spring, the luxury cruise liner Silversea will make stops in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas on its Dubai to Dubai cruise. And California-based Distant Horizons (www.distant-horizons.com) is organizing two 18-day trips that start in Tehran and then weave through the once-forbidden countryside, including stops in Shiraz and Isfahan. Prices start at $5,390 per person.
From We Are Change (10:49). H/t: Agent 99
And in other news, the self-appointed crusaders against “Islamofascism” ain’t doing so well: David Horowitz Bombs on Opening Night
Back in the press and making news again is speculation about the possible US airbase in northern Lebanon, renewed by the Lebanese daily As-Safir (Arabic). Only this time, there’s more. In English, the idea was best enunciated by Franklin Lamb in Its The Airbase, Stupid (see also ‘Does “Loving” Lebanon Mean the Bush Administration Never Has To Say Its Sorry?’), and he is cited again in the article from Al-Manar below.
The Daily Star also carries an article on the issue, and how this week’s visit to Lebanon by US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman has renewed speculation that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government has plans to turn the country into a forward base from which the Pentagon can counter what it sees as resurgent Russian influence in Syria, as claimed in Y-Net. Is the Cold War making a comeback?
All this would involve a string of bases in Lebanon: one in the Christian region of Bsharri; one in the Bekaa; and one in the plains of Damour south of Beirut. This would be in addition to the airstrip at Kleiaat being used as an airbase, two naval bases near Tripoli, and a wish-list for radar stations in Qornet Sawda, Barouk and Dahr al-Baidar. This is denied by US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman. What we can be more sure of is that what is being pushed for is a less neutral stance towards the resistance (namely, Hezbollah) and Syria — and a reassessment of Lebanese relations towards Israel—that’s right, let’s forget the willful invasion and nefarious destruction of the country by Israel’s hafrada regime last year ever happened.
See also Iran’s Press TV; Israel’s Ha’aretz carries AP’s Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army and the International Herald Tribune also carries the AP piece: US to build “strategic partnership” with Lebanese army, says Pentagon official. In the blogosphere have a look at Zentor’s In the Middle of the East blog with The Mother of all Sparks and Mustapha’s Beirut Spring blog with A US Military Base in Lebanon? On a different but related topic, see Robert Fisk’s Secret armies pose sinister new threat to Lebanon.
Mohamad Shmaysani
18 Oct 2007 Al Manar
The issue of building a US airbase in northern Lebanon has resurfaced. Senior US political and military officials have been flocking into Lebanon since the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, the last of whom is Eric Edelman, the US Undersecretary of Defense for policy, heading a Pentagon delegation. The Lebanese daily Assafir raised speculations of a likelihood to build US military bases in Lebanon and alter the Lebanese army’s creed. “It is perceived that the US is focusing on the army’s directive which includes the fundamental national policy adopted by the army, particularly article five which stresses on the brotherly and special ties between Lebanon and Syria and article eight which underscores supporting the resistance,” Assafir said.In the report which the daily said is based on “reliable sources”, the Eric Edelman delegation met with the head of the unconstitutional government Fouad Saniora, Defense Minister Elias el-Murr and Army General Michel Suleiman and tackled four issues: the military situation in Lebanon, security and intelligence, the situation of the Lebanese Army and Lebanese state policy.
US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman, who reportedly attended the Pentagon delegation meeting dismissed Assafir daily report as insulting to the Lebanese army. Sources closed to Saniora’s unconstitutional government brushed aside as fabricated reports that the US had proposed building military bases.
Earlier reports revealed that a US airbase in the north of Lebanon would be built in the model of El-Udeid base in Qatar, for covert operations against the Syrian regime and to safeguard the oil pipelines of Baku-Tiflis-Ceyhan and Mosul-Kirkuk-Ceyhan. Read the rest of this entry »
More refreshing plain-speaking from Paul Craig Roberts (excerpted):
… Bush’s private Waffen SS known as Blackwater has taken to gunning Iraqi civilians down in the streets. How do Blackwater and Custer Battles killers escape the “unlawful combatant” designation?
One can only marvel at the insouciance of the US Congress to the current Iraqi Genocide while condemning Turkey for one that happened 90 years ago.
People seldom see the beam in their own eye, only the mote in the eyes of others. Every member of the Bush Regime is busily at work denouncing Iran for causing instability in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the US has invaded two countries, throwing them into total chaos, while beating the drums for war with Iran and conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and to attack Syria.
The indisputable facts are that the US and Israel have attacked four Middle East countries and are determined to attack a fifth. Yet, it is peaceful Iran, at war with no one, that Bush and Israel blame for causing instability in the Middle East.
Not content with its many wars in the Middle East, the Bush Regime is sponsoring wars in Africa and is setting up an African Command. The US government has been bombing and attacking other countries ever since the cold war ended. Instead of peace, the gang in Washington DC chose war.
Other than the Israel Lobby, the greatest supporters of Bush’s wars are Christian evangelicals, specifically the “rapture evangelicals” and the “Christian Zionists.”
I remember when Christianity was about saving one’s soul. Today it is about bringing on Armageddon. While the various evangelical Christians preach war in the Middle East, they condemn Islam for being a “warlike religion.” Read the rest of this entry »
A great satirical piece by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams (caution: language). 
by Scott Adams
I was happy to hear that NYC didn’t allow Iranian President Ahmadinejad to place a wreath at the WTC site. And I was happy that Columbia University is rescinding the offer to let him speak. If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom of speech.
I hate Ahmadinejad for all the same reasons you do. For one thing, he said he wants to “wipe Israel off the map.” Scholars tell us the correct translation is more along the lines of wanting a change in Israel’s government toward something more democratic, with less gerrymandering. What an ass-muncher!
Ahmadinejad also called the holocaust a “myth.” F*ck him! A myth is something a society uses to frame their understanding of their world, and act accordingly. It’s not as if the world created a whole new country because of holocaust guilt and gives it a free pass no matter what it does. That’s Iranian crazy talk. Ahmadinejad can [bleep] me. Read the rest of this entry »
Mondoweiss, via the Fanonite, is calling it the Walt and Mearsheimer perestroika — some overdue restructuring coming about in tandem with greater glasnost about the flagrantly hawkish role and financial clout wielded by a group of unrepresentative American Jews, as crystallised in key Lobby groups. In this case the “openness” comes from Sy Hersh in a comment made in the last seconds of a Democracy Now interview this week (see video clips below). Philip Weiss writes:
This is a significant moment. Hersh is a wild man, wild and brilliant. Yet in all his anti-Bush and -Cheney interviews about Iraq over the last few years, I’ve heard him talk code on this issue. He’s attacked the neoconservatives as a crazy band of thinkers; but he’s never put the blame fully where it belongs–on a broader segment of the Jewish community that has immunized the neocons from blame for the war, on the Israel lobby, which includes many Democrats too. Now he’s done so (though apparently not in the New Yorker, which regards Walt and Mearsheimer as fueling hysteria).
This is a beautiful moment, too. Hersh is a progressive Jew. Now he is turning on other Jews. “New York Jewish money,” he says. The soulsearching that I have called for within the Jewish community has begun …
This is what the cause for applause is: after being showed a clip of Hillary Clinton being told off by fellow Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel comes Hersh’s admission that her hawkish position on Iran is shaped by New York Jewish money — something Wesley Clark got into trouble last year when he told Arianna Huffington that “You just have to read what’s in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided, but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office-seekers.”
AMY GOODMAN: [after short clip] That was Hillary Clinton laughing. Fifteen seconds, Seymour Hersh. Your response?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Money. A lot of the Jewish money from New York. Come on, let’s not kid about it. A significant percentage of Jewish money, and many leading American Jews support the Israeli position that Iran is an existential threat. And I think it’s as simple as that. When you’re from New York and from New York City, you take the view of — right now, when you’re running a campaign, you follow that line. And there’s no other explanation for it, because she’s smart enough to know the downside.
Read in full. Read the rest of this entry »
I present Hersh’s latest New Yorker article in full here not because I treat his articles as gospel — one should always treat every piece, especially those who purport to have insider knowledge, critically — but because of the salient facts and administration ‘mood’ gleaned from the following.
In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran.
“Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”
The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.
The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »
From the Fars News Agency, via Global Research, seven chancellors and presidents of Iranian universities and research centres have sent a letter addressed to their counterpart at Colombia University, Lee Bollinger, inviting him to provide responses to 10 questions by Iranian academics and intellectuals.
Perhaps we can add a few questions of our own for Mr Bollinger.
I’ve added the visuals –click on thumbnails to view the full-size.
The following is the full text of the letter:
Mr. Lee Bollinger
Columbia University PresidentWe, the professors and heads of universities and research institutions in Tehran, hereby announce our displeasure and protest at your impolite remarks prior to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent speech at Columbia University.
We would like to inform you that President Ahmadinejad was elected directly by the Iranian people through an enthusiastic two-round poll in which almost all of the country’s political parties and groups participated. To assess the quality and nature of these elections you may refer to US news reports on the poll dated June 2005.
Your insult, in a scholarly atmosphere, to the president of a country with a population of 72 million and a recorded history of 7,000 years of civilization and culture is deeply shameful.
Your comments, filled with hate and disgust, may well have been influenced by extreme pressure from the media, but it is regrettable that media policy-makers can determine the stance a university president adopts in his speech.
Your remarks about our country included unsubstantiated accusations that were the product of guesswork as well as media propaganda. Some of your claims result from misunderstandings that can be clarified through dialogue and further research.
During his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad answered a number of your questions and those of students. We are prepared to answer any remaining questions in a scientific, open and direct debate.
You asked the president approximately ten questions. Allow us to ask you ten of our own questions in the hope that your response will help clear the atmosphere of misunderstanding
and distrust between our two countries and reveal the truth.
1- Why did the US media put you under so much pressure to prevent Mr. Ahmadinejad from delivering his speech at Columbia University? And why have American TV networks been broadcasting hours of news reports insulting our president while refusing to allow him the opportunity to respond? Is this not against the principle of freedom of speech?
2- Why, in 1953, did the US administration overthrow Iran’s national government under Dr Mohammad Mosaddegh and go on to support the Shah’s dictatorship?
3- Why did the US support the blood-thirsty dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraqi-imposed war on Iran, considering his reckless use of chemical weapons against Iranian
soldiers defending their land and even against his own people?
4- Why is the US putting pressure on the government elected by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza instead of officially recognizing it? And why does it oppose Iran’s proposal to resolve the 60-year-old Palestinian issue through a general referendum?
5- Why has the US military failed to find Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden even with all its advanced
equipment? How do you justify the old friendship between the Bush and Bin Laden families and their cooperation on oil deals? How can you justify the Bush administration’s efforts to disrupt investigations concerning the September 11 attacks?
