It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Not only is there a tenth planet; it has bloggers.

Crossposted from European Tribune.

If Saudi Arabia is the economic and religious center of the Middle East, Egypt is the cultural, intellectual, and in many ways, political one. It is also the closest US ally among Arab states and next to Israel, the prime recipient of US aid. Thus, when President Hosni Mubarak (77) announced yesterday that he would scrap the emergency laws that have curbed opposition for nearly 25 years if elected to a fifth six-year term in power, it was hardly unrelated to US pressure. The same goes for September’s presidential election - the first to feature more than one candidate.

There is just one little catch, however.

AP:

It certainly is, especially since Mubarak’s ironically named National Democratic Party controls some 90 percent of the seats in either house. This and other restrictions on the nomination of candidates have made most other parties refuse to field any.

Who is this tenacious nimrod? With a tenure to match the ancient pharaos, Hosni Mubarak is Egypt’s longest-serving leader since the late 19th century. Like all Egyptian heads of state after the army toppled the monarchy in 1952, he is also a military man. As air force commander in the 1973 war he was lionized for seeing through an Israeli trap involving an apparent radar gap; the Soviets, insisting on sending their own pilots on a bombing mission through the ‘hole,’ promptly lost all five. Rising to Vice President in 1974, Mubarak narrowly dogded the bullets undoing President Anwar Al Sadat in the 1981 hit by radical Islamists, whereupon he became President. Despite - or perhaps rather, due to - having survived a possible world record of at least six more assassination attempts, Mubarak has ignored the constitutional clause obliging him to pick a Vice President. After nearly a quarter century he claims to not yet having found the right guy for the job.

He has also run unopposed in four referendums, always with support rates above 90 percent. While none would dream of calling these polls free and fair, Mubarak is relatively popular with religious moderates for his pragmatism and championship of salaam - peace. And in a fine diplomatic balancing act he has been able to remain a US client to the tune of an annual $2,1 billion whilst overcoming the isolation of Egypt in the Arab world after its separate peace with Israel in 1979. Though economically liberal in a fashion, he has however been unable to effectively slash the bloated bureaucracy and huge unemployment. As things now stand, shrinking one would be likely to just further boost the other.

He is assuredly no liberal when it comes to political dissent. And here we are not only talking about the radical Islamists whose continuing insurgency has made Middle Egypt a no-go zone for tourists, or the various detainees his security services interrogate for the USA. He has also had human rights activists and democracy advocates jailed indefinetely.

One man allegedly harrassed by his regime is the reformer Ayman Nour, leader of the Tomorrow party (Al-Ghad), who earlier this year spent months in jail on charges of having falsified signatures for his party documents. Nour, a lawyer with a rather checkered past rife with accusations of fraud, is Washington’s darling and the only oppositional with sufficient name recognition to give Mubarak a run for his money in a free and fair election. His Tomorrow party calls for sweeping constitutional reform in favor of a parliamentary system of government. It also stresses secularism and the empowerment of women, who constitute 37 per cent of the founders, and even has a woman as secretary-general. Though sometimes billed as a center-right party, Tomorrow’s professed main concern is combating poverty, of which there is plenty in a country whose Arabic name, by a fitting coincidence, sounds a lot like ‘misery.’

But there are also other sharks plying the waters. The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon), which took part in the 1981 assassination of Sadat and of which al-Qaeda, Hamas and other radical organizations are offshoots, is the dark horse - and principal bugbear - of Egyptian politics. Though banned from official activity, it dominates Egypt’s civil society, including the professional associations, and has a powerful grassroot organization.

The Brotherhood declares that the ultimate haram (forbidden thing) is the non-application of the shari’a. Its symbol is a qur’an and crossed swords representing jihad against the kafir (infidel) armies; a hardline minority also support violence against civilians. All this according to their FAQ.

For now, the Muslim Brotherhood is not thought to be strong enough to field a successful presidential candidate even if allowed to; but that could change. If enabled to run in free elections, the Brotherhood would do well, and the parliamentary system championed by Tomorrow might give them quite some sway. Even Nour shies away from criticizing them, citing their popular appeal with approval.

Thus the Egyptian dilemma is the same as in the Arab world at large. The preference order, as seen from a Western-oriented viewpoint, is this:

Liberal democracy > Quasi-secular dictatorship > Islamist theocracy.

Sadly, however, attempts to move from the status quo - quasi-secular dictorship - to the ideal scenario risk ending up at the nadir of Islamist theocracy instead. And to be sure, an even more dismal outcome is thinkable. Many Iraqis can attest to the truth of the old Arab saying, attributed to Ibn Khaldoun, that one day of anarchy is worse than a thousand years of tyranny.

Crossposted from European Tribune.

Part of the EU’s democratic deficit is the almost total absence of a European public sphere. What is it; why is it lacking; and what does that imply?

The public sphere is central to civil society, i.e. the set of institutions mediating between the private and the governmental. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas once defined it as “a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body.” According to another German, the leading political scientist Thomas Risse, it is the core requirement of a functioning democracy.

Historically, the practices we call the public sphere developed during the Enlightenment, with which Kant identified them. Emerging in the late Restoration London of the 1680s with its salons, lodges, coffee houses, taverns, and theaters, they were linked to the spread of print culture and the formation of reading publics. During the 19th century they became increasingly political and entrenched in European constitutions as a check on government.

If the EU is to get rid of its infamous democratic deficit, transferring power to the Parliament at the expense of Commissioners and Ministers, this growth process must continue at a pan-European level. But there remains a long way to go. As it is, the representatives of each country, including EU Parliamentarians, address themselves primarily to their own electorates. Other opinion leaders are usually based in national organizations, unions, academic institutions, think tanks and so on, and also address their respective national audiences.

Importantly, there are no pan-European media; pioneering efforts such as The European have so far failed. The few publications widely read throughout Europe, notably financial outlets like The Economist and Financial Times, are slanted toward an Anglosaxon - and accordingly, rather Euroskeptical - perspective. Besides, they are elite; a public sphere requires media with a broader mass appeal. Numerous studies find that even in the national media, ‘European’ issues have low salience. When they do appear, they are often event-specific (’Chirac visits London’) and rarely framed from a pan-European point of view but rather in terms of the national interest. The European identity remains weak, which no doubt is both a cause and an effect of the poverty of the European public sphere.

A prosaic yet most fundamental hurdle must somehow be overcome for this to change: the language barrier. Again speaking historically, the evolution of standardized national languages from a fray of local dialects was key to the establishment of mass democracy. The US, having inherited one of these, could assimiliate generations of immigrants from all over the world into this linguistic fold.

If the United States of Europe is to have a contemporary lingua franca, English is the only game in town here too, la resistánce notwithstanding. However, this inevitably favors native anglophones to such an extent that it arguably becomes a democratic problem. Anyhow, for the overseeable future most people will want to consume and produce discourse in their mother tongue, so the question may be chiefly academic.

As far as print media are concerned, the most promising approach so far is parallel translation to and publication in many languages, as in Le Monde Diplomatique and the now defunct journal Liber. But to what extent will this be feasible outside of rarefied periodicals? And how could it possibly work in the broadcast media, swiftly gaining ground vis-a-vis the newspapers? One can imagine Dutch tackling Spaniards and Brits confronting French on political TV talkshows with simultaneous translation; it is somewhat harder to see this becoming a hit with TV viewers, though one never knows.

The Internet, for all its participatory potential, remains a marginal locus of political debate. Moreover, language barriers exist here too; a point perhaps obscured by the self-selecting sample now found on the English language European blogs. And native anglophones can rest assured that those of us for whom English is a foreign language spend considerable effort getting it right, let alone idiomatic and tolerably eloquent. Automatic translation is, and may well remain, workable only when the ideas to be put over are so simple that it is unnecessary in the first place. As to posting in other languages on a site like European Tribune, it might just break up the discourse into national categories, with Italians discussing Italy and so on.

So what to do? Perhaps the beginning of wisdom is relaxed ambitions. Sebastian Kurpas argues that the national public spheres should not “be viewed as obstacles to be overcome, but rather as the building blocks of a European public sphere”:

In a similar vein, Thomas Risse and Marianne Van de Steeg suggest (pdf) that a viable European public sphere would emerge:

The latter point implies that a full-fledged European identity isn’t a must for an effective public sphere at the transnational level.

Which makes sense; but none of this solves the language barrier problem. European federalists must hope that either breakthroughs in translation technology or strides in the English skills of future generations of continental Europeans will take care of that. Until then, however, it is a reason to proceed with caution when it comes to the further federalization of Europe.

Just came across this quote:

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill

In that sense, the ‘War on Terror’ is a triumph for the ages.

Crossposted from European Tribune and My Left Wing.

Next door to Sinai where tonight’s devastating terror strikes took place is the Gaza Strip, where thousands of Israeli settlers are protesting their imminent eviction.

Below is my translation of an op-ed by Morten Strøksnes, my favorite Norwegian print journalist and a capacity on the Middle East. He puts the evacuations into perspective by describing, in no uncertain terms, what life has been like for Palestinians in the giant outdoors prison known as the Gaza Strip.

Last week Mohammed came to visit. He is a twenty years old Palestinian from an overcrowded refugee camp in Gaza. The heat in Oslo was oppressive even for Mohammed. We went for a bath in Hverven Bay.

It was slightly over half a year ago I first met Mohammed in Gaza. The Israeli army had recently demolished many hundred Palestinian houses. The procedure is as follows: Monstrous bulldozers, about three times the normal size, come rolling at night when everybody is at  sleep. With Apache helicopters hanging in the sky above and tank guns sweeping the terrain from strategic locations, the destruction begins. No warnings are given. No Israeli soldiers make themselves known. The deafening machines, armored and chock-full of high technology, get the job done. In the ensuing panic, people have more than enough saving their lives. They cannot save anything else. Many are trapped like rats, dying inside the houses under demolition. The next morning, when it is all over, children, adults and the old sit around in the ruins with nowhere to go.

In a recently demolished home I met an elderly man. He owned the house and had cleared away rocks and crafted a provisional roof over one small room. At the top of the wall a piece of human flesh was melted into the fabric. The man told me it had belonged to his son. He intended to leave it there to remind God and humans of a great crime.

Mohammed grew up a few hundred meters from the sea. But the beach has always been off-limits to him. For the entire beach line in Rafah has been occupied by Jewish settlers since before he was born. Charlie don’t surf. Mohammed don’t swim.

So we waded around and talked. That Hverven Bay and Gaza are part of the same planet was hard to fathom for Mohammed. The beach was filled with people, yet he felt surrounded by infinite space. Strangest of all was to be around people just exuding mindless joy. One of his brothers was shot and killed as a child. Another brother has been shot four times by Israeli soldiers, the first time at the age of six. A bullet is stuck in his spine, making him freeze in the winter however many rugs he is given. His kneecap is also ruined. Mohammed’s father has spent twelve years in Israeli prisons for threatening an employer who for three months refused to pay him.

Gush Katif, between the refugee camps of Rafah and the sea, is where most of the settlers presently to be evacuated live. A few thousand settlers are surrounded by some hundred thousand Palestinians. The latter are crammed together in dusty slums while the settlers dwell in something resembling American suburbs. Green lawns enclose big, white-painted villas. Here are swimming pools and irrigated fields, whereas Palestinians must ration the water. The Palestinians are subjected to weeks long curfews and risk being shot by snipers when looking for food. The settlers drive on dedicated roads out of Gaza whenever they please - perhaps to vacation in New York, where many of them are from and belong.

Strategically placed on hilltops and claiming the best soil as well as much of the water, the Gaza settlements harbor the most rabid faction of the Israeli settler movement.

Well armed, the settlers behave exactly like a master race is supposed to. They commit wanton destruction of property, violence, and theft against their Palestinian neighbors. When they feel like stealing more Palestinian land, they do. If the farmers object, they beat them up. At worst they shoot somebody. Should any questions be asked, they can always say it was for “security reasons” or that the farmer was a terrorist. These religious racists have been in Gaza with the financial and ideological blessing of the Israeli government and the backing of the Israeli war machine.

It is completely impossible to sympathize with the settlers. The homes they have to leave do not belong to them, but to other people. At the same time, the reason for their evacuation is depressing. Everything done by the Jewish state in the occupied territories has but one purpose: To make Jews gain and Palestinians lose. Sharon, the ideological father of the settlers, still favors a Greater Israel. To maximize this, he has negotiated a peace plan with himself. The small and costly settlements on the Gaza Strip will be abandoned as a prelude to a permanent annexation of large portions of the West Bank.

Mohammed shows no sign of rejoicing at the evacuation from Gaza. He thinks the Israelis are going to harass him for as long as he lives. I agree. Every time I have been to Gaza, I have thought the same thing. It is the world’s most suffocating place. If the USA had wished to create peace and prosperity in the Middle East, they should have started here. For the Palestinians endure one of the longest and most brutal occupations in modern times. They are no better off than the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein. Both peoples now live under occupation while the occupants, having a talent for brass, talk loudly about democracy. If this is not double standards, the concept has no meaning.

By Morten Strøksnes 2005. Translation by Sirocco.

Here’s what I think some people miss: The abortion issue stands to the relationship between the plutocrats who run the GOP and the redneck fundie base much as the Palestine issue stands to that between Middle Eastern rulers and their populations.

In both cases the elite seeks to keep the masses fighting mad about a perpetual diversion while it screws them over and robs them blind. They don’t want the issue settled, lest more of the anger comes their way.

Sure, in the US case there are also other ‘worthy’ causes like school prayer, creationism in the classroom, and the constitutional ban on gay marriage to exploit in skilled demagogy. But none of these has the same emotional appeal as that red cape non plus ultra: Roe vs. Wade.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Roberts will not help overturn the verdict once appointed. Perhaps he will. But it is unlikely that the White House has handpicked him with that in mind, if Karl had his say.

More generally, I suspect Thomas Frank may have some valid points.

Crossposted from European Tribune and My Left Wing.

Yet another post on Iraq. But Iraq is, well, important. And aside from the tragedy of the civil war, certain aspects of this story are like a John Le Carré novel writ large - albeit more implausible.

One such is aptly expressed by the title of Juan Cole’s formidable new essay on Salon: ‘The Iraq war is over, and the winner is… Iran.’ His conclusion:

It is hard to read that passage without noting how it answers Cicero’s question at the trial of Sextus Roscius: Cui bono?

Now, a certain kind of speculative mentality - the one which dreams up conspiracies at the drop of a hat - tends to leave me cold. That is because it generally ignores the hurdles of implementing a complex Master Plan in a world ruled by odd contingency, and preserving secrecy to boot. Yet we know that grand geopolitical stratagems do occur in international relations. There are specialized agencies designed to carry them out.

Which brings us back to the known double agent for Iran whose operation received north of $4 million a year from the US Defense Intelligence Agency; who sat adjacent to Laura Bush at the 2004 State of the Union Address; and who is the serving Deputy PM of Iraq. That’s right: Ahmad Chalabi, still wanted for banking fraud by Jordan - though he is no longer, or at least not officially, the chief source of information on Iraq for the neocons. The question has been raised before, not least in CIA circles; but considering the status quo as described by Juan Cole, it now returns with greater urgency:

What if the whole WMD bill of goods which Chalabi sold the neocons was bait designed to make the US clear the table for a Tehran-dominated Iraq?

Deep infiltration: Ahmad Chalabi seated behind the First Lady at the 2004 State of the Union Address.

Bafflingly, one of the best expositions of this theory stems from a senior figure at the conservative Cato Institute, Ted Galen Carpenter (I resist the tempation to quip about the juxtaposition of Cicero, Cato, and Galen) and was published by the nearly as conservative Fox News about a year ago:

Moreover, pigs should have wings.

I’ll round off by pointing out another reason to be skeptical about this theory, notwithstanding its explanatory force. Tehran, to attempt such a ploy, must have been able to foresee the US Government’s abject failure to find its own behind with both hands, a map, a compass, and GPS.

And if it was capable of that, one arguably might have to consider the possibility that it does, after all, have a hotline to Higher Powers.

Then again, maybe not. Maybe all it takes is being a close observer of one’s enemy - an art it appears the United States has forgotten.

My only question is, where’s Chalabi in this?

While doubts are being raised as to the al-Qaeda affiliation of the biochemist arrested in Egypt, Reuters reminds us that in Mess-opotamia, 7/7 would be just another day:

I submit it’s about time we start belling this cat. There is already a civil war raging in Iraq, because Iraqis are blowing each other up on a scale we can only call warlike. In fact, the fatalities caused directly by violence are probably higher than in many areas, including northern Uganda and the eastern DRC, where noone denies that civil war is taking place.

And corporate profits aside, what benefit has been reaped for stirring up this civil war? From an interview in Morgenbladet with terrorism expert Brynjar Lie at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (my translation):

Hm, I wonder if some of us haven’t been suggesting that for quite some time.

In this light, is it anything less than a scandal that Bush and Blair remain in power? Indeed, does it not cast a disconcerting shadow over the notion that democracy, which is above all an error-correcting mechanism, is actually working in the UK and the US?

Crossposted from European Tribune.

Yes, I know that online polls of any kind shouldn’t be taken all that seriously. Still it is amusing, as well as a little depressing, that Karl Marx has been voted the greatest philosopher in history on the website of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time. He got 27,93 percent of the votes, well ahead of the runner-up David Hume at 12,63 percent, and the bronze medal winner Ludwig Wittgenstein at 6,80.

Though it’s uplifting that the voters obviously have seen past the horrific mockery of Marx’s ideas made by 20th century dictatorships - a cruelly ironic fate for one of the least statist and most anti-authoritarian thinkers ever - the ranking is patently ridiculous. True, Marx is without question a towering intellectual figure whose highly original output fills a hundred thick volumes and straddles a range of disciplines from history through sociology to economics. But only a fraction of it is usefully called philosophy and even the parts that are, like his thesis of self-realization through work, are heavily indebted to indefinetely more deserving nominees. Aristotle, anyone? He finished ninth.

As to the other top contenders, I personally don’t mind that the underrated David Hume smashed the anally-retentive Kant, who came sixth, but let’s face it: He isn’t the second greatest philosopher of the ages. The inscrutable Wittgenstein is an equally mysterious choice for #3.

On the face of it there is national chauvinism at play, inasmuch as all three highest-ranked thinkers either were British (Hume) or produced some of their most influential work in Britain (Marx and Wittgenstein). With all three of them living in the last three centuries and Plato - to whose thought all of Western philosophy has been called mere footnotes - clocking in fifth after Nietzsche, there is also a measure of time dilation involved. The end result reminds me a little of another British poll a few years ago which determined the greatest composer of all time to be Robbie Williams.

For those who want to brush up on good ol’ Karl’s philosophy on the occasion of his new status, I recommend this encyclopedia article by Jonathan Wolff. Those who want even more can do far worse than seeking out a scintillating monograph by my countryman Jon Elster: Making Sense of Marx.

A smug, know-it-all right-wing politician turned gentleman and national sage? Not to mention a fierce critic of unbridled capitalism, Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and the ‘Global War on Terror’? Unlikely as it sounds, that is the story of Kaare Willoch (1928 -), the former Norwegian Conservative Prime Minister.

Trained as an economist, Willoch was an MP for 32 years, leader of the Conservatives, and minister in two governments. From 1981 to -86 he served as Norway’s Prime Minister before rounding off as a county governor from 1989 to his retirement in 1998. During most of this long career he was respected for his intelligence, but not, it’s fair to say, for his wisdom. Nor was he well liked. In the usually collegial atmosphere of Norwegian politics he came across as cocky, arrogant and overbearing, with a juvenile need to put down his opponents and have the last word. “I have learned many things from Willoch, among them how not to treat others,” wrote his old nemesis, the former Labor Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland - whom he had a special flair for infuriating - in her 1997 memoirs. As to the substance of his policies, this was widely perceived as attacking the social-democratic welfare state on behalf of commercial interests.

So Willoch’s public persona has undergone quite a transformation when he now polls as the most admired man in the country (Brundtland, incidentally, being the most admired woman). Part of the reason is clearly that his style has mellowed to that of a charming, even loveable, elderly gentleman - no longer a model of misbehavior. But that does not fully explain the new sagely status he enjoys across much of the political spectrum, let alone his lionization by a new generation of young leftists. Thus another part of the story is that he seems to have broadened and deepened his outlook to the point where the ‘wisdom’ does indeed come to mind - or at any rate, to a progressive such.

For example, Willoch has become an outspoken advocate of environmentalism: “We are speeding towards the abyss. And we enjoy the fact that the journey - for the rich societies’ part - proceeds at increasing comfort.” Furthermore, the former champion of free enterprise now cautions against ‘predatory capitalism,’ accusing today’s Conservatives of forgetting that wealth carries responsibility: “The West is developing an overclass where many approach the lords of the feudal era in their greed for an ever growing share of society’s wealth.”

The area where his realignment is most evident, however, is the Israel/Palestine question. Willoch started his political career in the 1950s with a staunchly pro-Israel stance, but a Parliamentary visit to the Middle East in 1977 triggered a gradual rethinking. Two decades later he was an impassioned spokesman for the Palestinian cause. Thus began the living hell of Norway’s small but vocal and fundie-heavy pro-Israel lobby, accustomed to facing anti-establishment radicals on the talkshow circuit. Now they were up against a distinguished senior statesman rebutting their talking points with mild-mannered calm and unmatched rhetorical prowess.

Unsurprisingly, Willoch was soon branded as an ‘anti-semite’; to the Israeli MP and former Oslo Rabbi Michael Melchior, his attitude is “worse than that of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.” But his argument is simply that Israel must withdraw to its 1967 borders and allow Palestinian statehood before an end to terrorism can be expected, since no people under foreign occupation has ever instilled its armed struggle before receiving guarantees of effective self-determination. In May last year he made another visit to Israel and the occupied territories. “In your situation I’d be even angrier than you are,” he assured a displaced family living in a tent in Gaza town after Israel had demolished their home.

Willoch does not hold back when it comes to the ‘Global War on Terror’ either. “It’s a misfortune for the world that the USA - as the leading Western power - does not show more respect for the feelings and rights of non-white peoples and non-Christian religions. The fight against terrorism can only be won through a policy which eliminates oppression, for instance in Palestine,” he declares, sounding more like an MP for the Socialist Left Party than as a man who in 1988 was close to becoming the Secretary-General of NATO.

Willoch denies having altered his outlook, insisting that it is the world, not he, that has changed. (The exception is the Israel/Palestine question, but even there he considers his views firmly rooted in the traditional conservative defense of national self-determination.) Many disagree, but I for one am prepared to laud Willoch as a conservative in the truest sense: one who seeks change in order to conserve. For example, as a supporter of the monarchy, he in 1987 proposed constitutional reform enabling females to inherit the throne, as Princess Ingrid Alexandra is now in line to do. And in hindsight, his economic reforms during the 1980s appear a lot more innocuous and sound. He professes to still unhesitatingly vote Conservative.

Below is an excerpt of one of Willoch’s legio newspaper op-eds. Called ‘The Misguided War on Terrorism,’ it was written in 2003 but might as well, with minor changes, have been published today.

Read the rest here.

Mohammed Bouyeri, charged with the murder of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, regrets that the cops didn’t kill him and that there is no execution ahead, reports the BBC:

When you think about it, isn’t this in fact a powerful new argument against capital punishment? People like Bouyeri crave ‘martyrdom,’ which according to their beliefs would instantly whisk them off to Paradise and the advertised 72 virgins, whereas everyone else must wait for the Day of Judgment to even have a chance of joining that club. So it is quite a bummer from their point of view to rot in prison for the duration of their natural lives, knowing they will thereafter be put on hold like any old non-combatant. Hence, by completely abolishing the death penalty, one makes it less attractive for terrorists to strike.

An idea for our American friends to develop further?

That I don’t mind at all. However, while some of my critics made valid points, I still believe it would be a good idea for the British Muslim community to be seen collectively denouncing the tainting of their faith by terrorism.

In an ideal world, such demonstrations would be happily superfluous, since racism, xenophobia, and the ascription of collective guilt would not exist. But then, neither would tube bombs or the need to evacuate 30,000 people from Birmingham on a Saturday night. In this vale of tears it isn’t always enough to oppose what is being done in one’s name in order not to be looked askance upon. One sometimes must go out of one’s way to show such opposition.

For instance, countless US citizens traveling the world these days endure resentment and suspicion on the basis of their nationality. And, tacitly or explicity, they are expected to denounce certain crimes conducted in their name. The analogy is imperfect, inasmuch as the Bush administration is legally (re)elected by their nation, while terrorists and their ideological enablers are self-appointed. What is not disanalogous is the sense in which a dearth of US mass protest against the epic list of crimes and scandals in the ‘war on terra’ has been duly noted in the world at large, and is being visited on individual Americans in an unfair manner. I don’t see anyone balking at the notion that progressive Americans should make an effort to show the world how, in their view, the founding values of the USA are being twisted and distorted in their name, and that they should do so, at least in part, for their own sake.

Now, why is that?

One commenter asked: “Why do you insist to make it the job of Muslims to destroy our paranoid preconceptions?” Well, I don’t, strictly speaking, insist on anything at all. I’m just making a suggestion. But here is a story.

In January 2001, a 14 year old black kid was stabbed to death in Oslo by neo-Nazis. This prompted a spontaneous torchlit demonstration with at least 40,000 participants including the Prime Minister. The vast majority were pale-skinned ethnic Norwegians. Now, according to the logic of my critics, calls for this demonstration were misplaced, since after all, only a vanishingly small minority of white ethnic Norwegians have any sympathy for neo-Nazis. So why should it be their job to prove for all the world that the few bad apples who profess to fight on their behalf are, on the contrary, inverting and abusing the values of Norwegian society? Those 40,000 marched anyway, ‘their job’ or no.

A closer analogy is this one. On March 12 2004, in the capital of the Basque Country, Vitoria - a city of 225,000 - an estimated 150,000 people protested terrorism at a time when ETA was the official chief suspect of the Madrid bombings, much as al-Qaeda is now. True, the Spanish majority marched as well, under such paroles as “Yes to Basques, no to ETA.” But somehow I sense the Basques would have turned out in great numbers anyway, out of sheer disgust with ETA, and without any need for someone else to suggest it.

When 46 percent of Brits now think that Islam as such poses a threat to Western liberal democracy, I continue to think that something needs to be done. Not just by British Muslims, to be sure. But in the nature of the case, those with knowledge must teach the ignorant, not the other way around.

If that is unacceptably politically incorrect, I could hardly care less.

There is now fear of a popular backlash against Muslims in Britain. While this may be exaggerated, British Muslims and their various organizations have an option available to them which might quell at least some of the Islamophobia.

After 9/11 there was little by way of Muslims demonstrating against terrorism, either in the US or elsewhere. Apparently many disbelieved at first that their co-believers were involved. And maybe similar doubts explain why - at least as far as I recall - they didn’t fill the streets after 3/11 either.

But whatever the reasons for the failure to stand up in suitably impressive numbers, said failure has been noted. Countless times have I heard it said that Muslims silently condone Islamistic terrorism, since they are nowhere to be seen mass rallying for its demise.

True, there have been harsh condemnations by heads of Islamic organizations as well as statesmen from virtually every Muslim country on earth. But after all, most people regard the words of outgroup leaders as cheap. For instance, in spite of Dubya’s endless disclaimers, 8 of 10 British Muslims hold that the ‘war on terror’ really is a war on Islam.

More disturbingly, according to the same source:

There are 1,6 million Muslims in Britain, including over 600 000 in London. Now here is an idea.

They should take the streets in the hundreds of thousands, making clear that Islam, as indeed it is, is incompatible with the butchery of innocent civilians. Not because they have a duty to declare their objection to senseless slaughter; they could reasonably argue that this should be a matter of course. But with each new al-Qaeda attack, it becomes decreasingly so to many ordinary non-Muslims who get more exposure to snuff films from Iraq than to the Koranic prohibition of murder. Hence they should march, not out of obligation, but of self-interest.

If, contrary to indications, 7/7 turns out to be the work of groups unrelated to Islam, then they will still have won a lot of goodwill. And far better to march once too much than once too little. Besides, we all know that al-Qaeda will strike again.

Such an effort would be more effective than any number of oppressive laws designed to stifle speech about religious populations. Of course, it won’t persuade the wingers, because nothing will. I have in mind the politically passive majority of non-Muslim Brits and other ethnic westerners, who the civilized majority of Muslims in Europe and the US would definetely want on their side.

I submit that this is a reductio ad absurdum of cultural relativism as a meta-ethical position.

Yes Virginia, some cultural traditions just are completely pathological.

Or less delicately: fucking sick.

Crossposted from European Tribune.

Israel has for the second time turned down a Polish request for the extradition of the 87-year old former labor camp commander Solomon Morel, wanted for genocide and crimes against humanity. An investigation by a Polish war crimes authority suggests that Morel is responsible for about 1,538 deaths at Świętochłowice-Zgoda, a sub-camp at Auschwitz. Himself an Auschwitz survivor who had lost more than 30 relatives, Morel was placed in charge of the camp by the Soviets in February 1945. The detainees were ethnic Germans. Some of them had been active Nazis, but many were only guilty of having German ancestry.

Eye-witnesses have alleged that Morel, in his craving for revenge, oversaw and indulged in acts of cruelty equal to the Nazis’ darkest deeds.

Morel fled to Israel in 1993 as Polish justice authorities launched a criminal investigation against him. At the same time his story was brought to light by journalist and fellow Jew John Sack in the book An Eye for An Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945. Solomon Morel now lives in hiding in Tel Aviv.

The Telegraph reported on the case back in February:

Świętochłowice-Zgoda was one of the some 40 sub-camps in the gigantic Auschwitz complex. During Morel’s tenure from February to November 1945, the about 6,000 inmates were tortured, degraded, starved, and used as slave labor in mines and metallurgical works (he later submitted an MA thesis to Wrocław University called Inmate Labor and its Significance). According to the affidavits of survivors, he took delight in smashing skulls. His guards would force detainees to jump on each other’s spines and train dogs to bite off men’s genitals on command. People were immersed in freezing water until they died. Starvation drove the inmates to eat grass. Morel also allowed an outbreak of typhoid fever which claimed more than 100 lives a month.

From the very first day, Morel made it clear that his business was revenge. This motivation was shared with many colleagues in the Office of State Security, a political police agency formed by Stalin in 1945, whose officers corps was initially stacked with ethnic Jews. Some 200,000 ethnic Germans were detained in the 1,255 ‘de-Nazification’ camps; up to 80,000 are believed to have perished under the frequently grisly conditions.

It may seem pointless to now punish Solomon Morel, considering his age and the mitigating factors, but there is no sensible reason not to try him. That Israel brushes the charges aside with a staple insinuation of anti-semitism is regrettable. Anti-semitism is indeed on the march; but here was a chance to demonstrate an impartial commitment to justice which could only strike a blow to such execrable sentiment. And after all, as the late John Sack said to 60 Minutes in 1993, the lesson of this forgotten history is surely that:

Appropriate as it would be to try this man, we might as well keep in mind that the perpetrators of equally unspeakable - and far more recent - crimes are walking free among us here in Europe. They include not just the guards but also the masterminds of a concentration camp known as Omarska.

Bye bye, Interamhamwe. Time for a bit more action on the part of the UN; a bit more monopoly of violence in the Congo; and a bit more criminal proceedings against you guys.

A shame that the comments are even more depressing than the post itself.

BBC News:

A German documentary film from last year makes a persuasive case that Karadzic has been under clandestine protection all this time. In this ‘Holbrooke deal,’ supposedly struck around the Dayton negotiations of 1995, Karadzic got a free pass in return for retreating from public life, as he did the year after.

His former Foreign Minister, Aleksa Buha, claims to have been present in the room when the offer was made. For what it’s worth however, The New York Times reported on May 24 1996 that Washington had rejected a suggestion by Milosevic to this effect.

According to another source, UN High Representative Carl Bildt has said publicly that he was the one who made the deal with Karadzic.

Whatever is the case: Perhaps, at long last, the snails are catching up with the poet?