Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Paris division, goes into a frenzy over the essay by Jostein Gaarder:

Shimon Samuels and his “center” — in fact a huge international lobby group — are a disgrace. In the name of millions of murdered Jews they shy no means, short of violence, to bully, intimidate and vilify anyone who points out the dark underbelly of Israel, or what I have called the Spartan side of Israeli society.

One example out of many is how they have led a campaign to have the UN recognize any objection to Zionism (the nationalist ideology underpinning Israel as a specifically Jewish nation-state) as racism worthy of censure and censorship:

In other words, far from being in a position to criticize Gaarder’s highly problematic conflation of Judaism with the state of Israel, Samuels has lobbied for having the UN recognize that very same conflation. The only difference is that Samuels extols the package solution and condemns anyone who doesn’t as evil or deranged.

Samuels’ previous communiques on matters Norwegian are marked by the same sense of unhinged dishonesty. In a recent open letter to the Prime Minister he claims that Norway has donated $100 million to Hamas since January 2006, whereas the actual amount is $0 (all support being channeled to President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, whose office even the US doesn’t mind funding). He also conveniently ignores the reason why one government party is proposing to slash tax deductibility for donations to certain Zionist institutions: these are financing settlement expansion on the occupied West Bank, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which Israel refuses to ratify on these very grounds.

Last year, in another open letter to PM Jens Stoltenberg, he held the national government responsible for a provincial council’s boycott of Israeli products, which he called a return to Quisling. I don’t know, Mr. Samuels. The motivation for the provincial council’s decision is the similarities between Israeli occupational practices and the apartheid regime of South Africa, which that council was the first in Norway to boycott. The similarities are confirmed by people like Ronnie Kasrils, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela; are they Nazis too?

Perhaps in your mind, Israelis and they alone are a priori immune from such comparisons, judging by your misplaced complaint to Norway’s ambassador in Washington about a newspaper caricature of Ehud Olmert?

This is how the Israel lobby operates.

Anyone who sincerely wants to restore Israel’s standing in the eyes of the world are better advised to engage in honest dialogue with those of us who find pictures such as this more obscene than any cartoon or essay:

Manal Husseini, killed in Israel’s war of choice. R.I.P.

P.S. The English version of Gaarder’s piece accompanying Samuels’ letter is largely based on my translation. It is instructive to note, however, that Samuels & co have tried to get a better fit with traditional anti-Semitic myths. For instance, my accurate translation of the term ‘barnemordere‘, ‘child murderers’, has been altered to the incorrect ‘baby killers’. Nice job.

Jostein Gaarder, the author of the global literary phenomenon Sophie’s World (printed in 26m copies in 53 languages), launches a scorching attack on Israel in Aftenposten, Norway’s paper of record. Gaarder, a historian of ideas, describes himself as a friend of the Jewish people but doubts whether Israel truly is the same. Suffice it to say that this will not appear in the New York Times anytime soon.

The form of Gaarder’s condemnation is inspired by Amos, the first Judaic prophet whose message is preserved in scroll (ca. 750 B.C.). Quoting Wikipedia: “The central idea of the book of Amos according to most scholars is that Yahweh puts his people on the same level as the nations that surround it — Yahweh expects the same morality of them all.”

Please note: the below is an unofficial translation with no connection to Jostein Gaarder. Any errors are mine alone. On the other hand, I do not endorse all the views expressed: see my postscript.

There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.

We do not believe in the notion of God’s chosen people. We laugh at this people’s fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.

Limits to tolerance

There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.

We call child murderers ‘child murderers’ and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!

Unscrupulous art of war

We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe’s deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flouted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.

We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.

Without defense, without skin

May spirit and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel. The state of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy on the civilian population. For it is not civilian individuals at whom our doomsaying is directed.

We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but well, but we reserve the right not to eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste foul and are poisonous. It was endurable to live some years without the blue grapes of apartheid.

They celebrate their triumphs

We do not believe that Israel mourns forty killed Lebanese children more than it for over three thousand years has lamented forty years in the desert. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as “fitting punishment” for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord, God of Israel, appears as an insatiable sadist.) We query whether most Israelis think that one Israeli life is worth more than forty Palestinian or Lebanese lives.

For we have seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the bombs to be dropped on the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at death and torment across the fronts.

The retribution of blood vengeance

We do not recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance with “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” We do not recognize the principle of one or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population-wide diets as political weapons. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

He said: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We do not recognize a state founded on antihumanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic national and war religion. Or as Albert Schweitzer expressed it: “Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.”

Compassion and forgiveness

We do not recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of David, but that the Kingdom of God is within us and among us. The Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness.

Two thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and humanized the old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the first Zionist terrorists were operating.

Israel does not listen

For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel does not listen. It was not the Pharisee that helped the man who lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say, a Palestinian. For we are human first of all — then Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: “And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?” We do not accept the abduction of soldiers. But nor do we accept the deportation of whole populations or the abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government ministers.

We recognize the state of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize, respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want, with God’s assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians have so many other countries, certain Israeli politicians have argued; we have only one.

The USA or the world?

Or as the highest protector of the state of Israel puts it: “May God continue to bless America.” A little child took note of that. She turned to her mother, saying: “Why does the President always end his speeches with ‘God bless America’? Why not, ‘God bless the world’?”

Then there was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the heart: “Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?” It was he that wrote so beautifully of the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of God’s chosen people. He personally liked to call himself a Muhammedan.

Calm and mercy

We do not recognize the state of Israel. Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the entire Israeli nation should fall to its own devices and parts of the population have to flee the occupied areas into another diaspora, then we say: May the surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is forever a crime without mitigation to lay hand on refugees and stateless people.

Peace and free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a state. Fire not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now like snails without shells, vulnerable like slow caravans of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless like women and children and the old in Qana, Gaza, Sabra, and Chatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!

Let not one Israeli child be deprived of life. Far too many children and civilians have already been murdered.

Postscript by Sirocco: I am quite ambivalent about this piece because of how it seems to lay the crimes of Israel at the feet of Judaism, implying that the Jewish religion has failed to absorb the humanism and universalism of Christianity. I think a more apt perspective is the following.

Yet its blind patronage may not last forever. And without it, Israel will reap the whirlwind.

Update: Here is my translation of Gaarder’s follow-up article, wherein he clarifies his stance.

Israel’s ambassador to Norway, the disagreeable Miryam Shomrat, continues her campaign to stir up outrage over a satirical cartoon in the Oslo tabloid Dagbladet. As I noted in a previous post, she has filed a complaint with the Norwegian Press Trade Committee, claiming that the cartoon — which portrays Ehud Olmert as a smiling Amon Göth from Schindler’s List — exceeds the limits of free speech. Now the ambassador makes her case in the New York Sun:

Is it a crime for a European paper to be critical of Israel? Did Der Stürmer come out in 1956? And lastly, who is now making tasteless comparisons?

Israel’s objection to freedom of expression in another country is nothing like the Muhammed protest because Israel is fighting a war? Since the New York Sun can hardly be suspected of anti-Israel bias, presumably the ambassador is accurately quoted. And it boggles the mind.

Israel used to be adept at propaganda as well as war. What went wrong?

What sort of country revels in murder and oppression but cries to high heavens about cartoons?

Saudi Arabia? Check. Syria? Check. Libya? Check. Iran? Check.

Israel? Check:

Here is the intolerable doodle in need of repression:

The allusion to Schindler’s List is clear. Now here’s another list:

1. Anwar Isma’el Atallah, 12 years old
2. Saleh Sleman Al Jemasi, 16 years old
3. Ruwan Fareed Hajjaj, 5 years old
4. Khalid Nidal Abed Al Karim Wahbeh, 1 year old
5. Mahfouth Farid Nasseer, 15 years old
6. Ahmad Ghaleb Abu Amshah, 16 years old
7. Ahmed Fathi Odah Shabat, 16 years old
8. Waleed Mahmoud Al Zinati, 12 years old
9. Salah Adeen Hammad Abu Maktuma, 17 years old
10. Ibrahim Ali Khatoush, 15 years old
11. Mahmoud Muhammad Al Asar, 15 years old
12. Ibrahim Ali Al Nabaheen, 15 years old
13. Ahmad Abdil Mina’m Abu Hajaj, 16 years old
14. Nasrallah Nabil Abu Selmieh, 5 years old
15. Aya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 7 years old
16. Iman Nabil Abu Selmieh, 11 years old
17. Yahya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 9 years old
18. Huda Nabil Abu Selmieh, 13 years old
19. Basma Nabil Abu Selmieh, 15 years old
20. Sumaia Nabil Abu Selmieh, 16 years old
21. Raji Omar Deif Alla, 16 years old
22. Muhanna Sa’ed Mesleh, 16 years old
23. Ahmad Rawhee Abdo, 13 years old
24. Ali Kamil Al Najar, 13 years old
25. Fadwa Faisel al ‘Urouqi, 13 years old
26. Mohammad Awad Muhra, 17 years old
27. Khitam Muhammad Tayeh, 11 years old
28. Nadee Habib Al Ataar, 11 years old
29. Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 13 years old
30. Bashir Abdullah Awad Abu Thaher, 12 years old
31. Sabrine Naser Habib, 3 years old

The above are children killed by the IDF in Gaza alone since June 26, according to Defence for Children International.

Two questions come to mind: 1. How far off is the cartoon in light of this list? 2. To the extent that it misses the mark, which is more unacceptable? The cartoon, or the list?

A few more examples of Finn Graff’s fine penmanship in this previous post.

So let’s see if I have this right. According to the world’s most powerful man, the below is a picture of murdered children:

Embryonic stem cell research at UWI, Madison

…while this is not:

Incinerated children at Rumaylah, Lebanon

When, oh when will stem cell research offer a cure for absolute, total, and utter moral perversity?

Crossposted from European Tribune.

It’s that time again. Today the International Whaling Commission (IWC) opens its annual session on St. Kitts. Among the close to 70 member states whose delegates fill the halls, only 3 — Norway, Iceland, and Japan — have whalers in their ranks. Yet the so-called pro-whaling wing will for the first time in decades match the anti-whaling wing this year; the English-language press has for weeks been fretting about the prospect of a narrow pro-whaling majority. The Washington Post recently intoned under the stirring headline ‘Save the Whales’:

A couple of facts about this “ban” might be helpful right off the bat. First, the IWC passed the “ban” without the recommendation of its own Scientific Committee, which did not consider it necessary. Second, said “ban” was a temporary moratorium, to be reviewed in 1990 “at the latest” with an eye to fixing new, sustainable quotas. The treaty document states:

This “comprehensive assessment” has been stubbornly blocked by the anti-whalers, even though, as the Economist noted in a well-balanced article of 2003:

The IWC’s actual mandate is not to suppress the hunt. It is to implement the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, whose “explicit objectives were, and remain, to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and the orderly development of the whaling industry.” Source: the IWC.

Iceland, taking this at face value, was lured into accepting the moratorium; when it got the wiser, it left the IWC in 1992. Ten years hence it rejoined with an objection to the moratorium, exempting it from the latter under the Convention. Japan and Norway both reserved themselves at the outset by filing objections and so were entitled to commercial whaling seasons.

For Norway’s part this remains the case. It nonetheless voluntarily suspended hunting until 1993, when it was clear that the anti-whaling majority would not allow the overdue assessment to take place. (From a legal point of view it can, in fact, be argued that the moratorium expired wholesale in 1990, but let’s leave that aside.) Norway’s whaling season is openly commercial — though by no means industrial or large-scale — so it is incorrect when the Observer, in a not exactly unbiased article entitled ‘The shadow of slaughter hangs over whales’, accuses Norway of hiding behind a scientific pretext.

Japan, on the other hand, withdrew its reservation under US pressure. The Japanese side of this story deserves a hearing:

It’s a fair guess that this sense of having been double-crossed helps explain Japan’s insistence on exploiting a loophole permitting whaling for research.

Returning to the WaPo:

Norway and Iceland never stopped hunting? For Norway’s case, see above. As to Iceland, it suspended activity from 1989 to 1993, when it reintroduced a scientific quoata of 38 minke in order to “have a better understanding of all the factors that might impact fish stocks - including whales.”

As to the meeting in St. Kitts, the WaPo is concerned:

Not so fast. First, noone is ‘flouting the ban’. The hunting carried out today is unquestionably legal, however else one feels about it, and implying otherwise is simply dishonest. It is not, however, uncommon: Reuters claims that Norway “openly defies the ban.” The Independent called Norway’s hunt ‘illegal’ on June 11, demonstrating that it’s not above a “noble” lie, much like veracity-challenged organizations such as Greenpeace.

Second, Japan has indeed been recruiting allies, even using foreign aid as an incentive. However, the strategy of involving countries with no horse in the race is one that leading anti-whaling members have pursued for a generation. The IWC was established in 1946 by the world’s 14 main whaling nations. Between 1979 and 1982, 19 new countries joined; ten attended their first IWC-meeting in 1982. Thus, for instance, landlocked Switzerland helped pass the moratorium. This April, Israel, which has hitherto had bigger fish to fry than whaling, saw fit to join. Since when has one the few countries rejecting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty favored multilateral regimes? According to the Haaretz, since the US ambassador made a personal appeal to the Israeli Foreign Minister on the matter.

Third, the pro-whaling High North Alliance notes that the theoretical pro-whaling majority may not manifest itself in votes in the chaotic bargaining circus that is an IWC session. In any case, the pro-whalers will not be able to raise the 3/4 majority required to scrap the moratorium. The “considerable boost,” which the Independent decries as a “Great Betrayal,” is unlikely to amount to much in practice.

But the bullying of the anti-whaling countries, spurred by organizations like Greenpeace for which the issue is an effective fundraiser, isn’t doing so either. If anything, the Economist notes, this Ahab-like zeal is prone to backfire:

Can someone please explain this to, say, the ambassadors from 12 countries who recently, in an unusual diplomatic move reminiscent of the Muhammed madness, saw fit to impugn the integrity of Norway’s marine researchers? These researchers are independent, leading in their field, and applying the method devised by the IWC Scientific Committee to set sustainable catch quotas for the North Atlantic minke whale.

And what will it take to make anti-whaling governments realize that, if they doubt the resource management of whaling nations, they should let the IWC itself perform that role in accordance with its mandate?

If demand for whale meat is indeed dwindling in the whaling countries, as they claim, then surely that is the way to let the whaling business die a natural death, while in the meantime making whaling nations more receptive to legitimate questions of animal welfare?

Or is the endless whaling brouhaha just too convenient as a diversion from truly grave environmental challenges like global warming, the depletion of fish stocks, and the pollution of the seas?

For more on the facts and ethics of Norwegian minke whale hunting, see my previous post, Why I had whale steak for dinner today.

Stalking Horse-Face, otherwise known as Ann Coulter the Soulless Ghoul, mocks the 9/11 widows on NBC:

For her part, Coulter has become rich by saying precisely such despicable things (Muslims should be converted to Christianity at gunpoint; the New York Times building should be bombed with its staff inside; liberals should be handled with baseball bats; a Supreme Court justice she disapproves of should be poisoned, and so on). The American right, while benefitting from this moving of the goalposts, never denounces her. Actually I suspect that Coulter is only in it for the money and that the less openly histrionic “conservatives” are more likely to agree with her maniacal ramblings than she is. Her latest ones are no exception, I am sure. Quoting Coulter:

For the right, 9/11 was never about human agony. This is what it is for.

Crossposted from Daily Kos.

Citing “serious and systematic” abuse of human and labor rights, Norway’s Finance Ministry today banned Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer and employer, from the $250 bn Norwegian Government Pension Fund - Global.
This investment fund, where much of Norway’s soaring petroleum revenue is stashed away for future generations, is one of the largest in the world. In addition to a policy of ethical corporate governance, its investments are subject to ethical guidelines issued by Parliament and applied by the Finance Ministry based on advice from an independent Ethics Council. For instance, companies can be blacklisted for environmental offenses or involvement in the production or maintenance of landmines, cluster bombs, or nuclear weapons.

In Wal-Mart’s case, the Ethics Council found “an extensive body of material” suggesting it had employed minors against international rules, condoned dangerous working conditions among its suppliers, and suppressed unions. Norway’s Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen (picture) of the Socialist Left Party explained:

When given a chance to answer these charges, Wal-Mart responded with silence, she added.

Where Wal-Mart does choose to be vocal is in its support of the GOP. It is known for its major campaign contributions, 85 percent of which have gone to Republicans. During the 2004 campaign cycle, wherein Wal-Mart was the #2 donor, Dick Cheney lavished glowing praise upon the corporation:

For once, there is no reason to doubt his sincerity.

US troops will be sent to ethics class in the wake of the Haditha massacre and other “incidents” such as the shooting dead of a pregnant woman on her way to hospital, reports the BBC.

Who’s going to teach it? At this point I have to recommend Riverbend:

The Belfast Telegraph reports on a Pope in rough weather:

What’s up? For one thing, Benedict XVI, a.k.a. Joseph Ratzinger, glossed over the shameful silence of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, and he deserves rebuke for that. But there is more:

It is amusing to see secular intellectuals acting shocked, shocked that the Pope interprets the Holocaust in metaphysical terms. Whatever did they expect? He is the Holy Father, not an editor at Die Zeit.

In Catholic doctrine, evil is not a principle unto itself but privatio boni, a lack of good. Yet it does exist as an active force, personified by the Devil, whom God holds morally accountable (Matt. 25:41). This is obviously paradoxical, but Christianity was never known for its logical coherence, a fact which theology is the attempt to conceal by unintelligible jargon.

Now, to the point. If Nazism is indeed an expression of absolute evil, then it must be of the Devil. If it is indeed of the Devil, then its objective must be to drive a wedge between God and his creation. Hence, indeed “the true, intended victim of the genocide of the Jews was not actually the Jews but Christianity.” Q.E.D.

Those who think this conclusion ridiculous, as I do, might consider simply shrugging at the elaborate creed in question. More distasteful to my mind at least are the operators who, by symbol-heavy obfuscation, try to weld the Holocaust into a kitsch spirituality of its own.

The writ against Ratzinger continues:

Is it not true that the Germans were themselves also victims of a criminal ring? The sanctimonious efforts to deny this are predicated upon the false dilemma that one cannot simultaneously be victim and perpetrator. But of course one can. It’s called the human condition.

If the hysterical hate-monger Daniel Goldhagen now corners the market on historiographic validity, I think that’s more disconcerting than the news that the Pope is Catholic.

The Independent:

Careful there, George. The real Big Brother is watching.

Besides, you’re being incoherent. Pray tell, how can the act in question both be “morally justified” and “morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq”? And if it were indeed the latter, how would it be of “a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7″?

Much more could be said about this hogwash, but life is too short. Suffice it to conclude that the insect-brained imbecile is as far removed from reason and decency as a certain “drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay.”

It has come to my attention that Richard Perle, in a keynote address to the American Enterprise Institute on September 22 2003, had this to say about the convicted conman and alleged Iranian agent, Ahmad Chalabi:

“I can’t imagine a leader who more fully embodies the values that caused the Americans to believe we should liberate Iraq.”

Neither can I.

The description also lends itself well to other colorful characters who have been pushing for this tragic disaster. Substitute “writer” for “leader” in the quote, and it fits Chris Hitchens — that duplicitous fellow-traveler of the American warmongering far right — like Scotch fits into a glass.

At this point, Hitchens has more in common with Chalabi than with his own professed greatest hero; a man whose name I won’t besmirch by even mentioning alongside those of such disgraceful frauds.

News from America: in the world’s supposedly leading nation, whose fine constitution is founded entirely on Enlightenment values, the tiny atheist minority are pariah, a study finds.

While I knew that declared atheists are unelectable for office above county level in the USA, I naïvely thought George Bush sr. went out on a limb when he opined (and yes, he really did) that atheists shouldn’t be regarded as citizens. Apparently he was expressing common sense.

Salman Rushdie — himself not unacquainted with the zealous mindset — sums up the attitude in question:

I wonder what blinkers such faithful bigots don to sustain their delusion of superiority. Aside from the philosophical hollowness of deriving ethics from the command of supernatural beings — exposed in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro some 2,400 years ago — the idea sits rather poorly with the facts. Let us briefly consider the evidence.

The 1994 Rwandan genocide, wherein 800,000 men, women and children were slashed to pieces with machetes (or, if babies, bashed SS-style against the trees) took place in a devoutly Catholic country. The faith was introduced by the same Belgian colonialists who, moved by a mix of race theory and divide et impera, did such a splendid job of setting the Tutsis up against the Hutus, after their impeccably Catholic king had transformed the neighboring Congo basin into Hell. The US President who literally spent more time at the office pushing cigars up his intern’s vagina than stopping the butchery — though the latter was within his powers — is a Southern Baptist whose speeches brim with spiritual uplift. In Sudan another genocide is in its fourth year, conducted at the hands of glowing theists, who, rather like the Hutus, find the work fulfilling. Sudan’s 21-year, two million-victims civil war wasn’t waged by atheists either. And in northern Uganda “the Lord’s Resistance Army” has spent two decades turning children into monsters. Joseph Kony, its sadistic, child-raping leader, communes with the Holy Spirit; his political platform is the Ten Commandments. While true, it is beside the point that he makes a mockery of Christian doctrine. The point is his well-documented innocence of atheism — and of little else.

In Algeria a few years ago, some 70,000 civilians were slaughtered by insurgents of the kind that enjoys playing football with human heads. If these gentlemen were atheists, it is news to me.

Tony Blair, a passionate Evangelical who sees everything as a struggle against wickedness, thinks God will judge his effort to throw Iraq into civil war; and presumably, give it rave reviews. His American partner in war crime was born again with televangelist Billy Graham as a busy midwife. Graham, whom Bill Clinton has called “the man I love,” prayed with US Presidents before just about every commencement of hostilities from Vietnam to Iraq and will surely do so again when God instructs Bush the Lesser to smite Iran.

Ah yes, Iran. This safely non-atheist country — the only one besides the Vatican to be run by clergy — executes sexually active 16 year old girls and homosexuals by slow asphyxiation. As Pascal, who lived through the most horrific wars of religion in Europe, observed: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” I recently forced myself to watch this movie of a stoning to death in the mullah’s paradise. Swaying back and forth in agony, the victims’ heads are mashed into bloody pulp to enthusiastic cries of Allahu akbar (”God is greater”). Well, if an allmighty sky-god exists — which I doubt even more after watching this savagery — I should hope he is greater than that.

Thirty years ago today there was a military coup in Argentina, upon which at least 10,000 people were murdered, often after rape and torture. Not noted for their atheism, the coupmakers spent most of the preceding day with Argentina’s leading bishops, who gave their blessings. And though some priests later joined the resistance, the Church condoned the regime, as it had those of Mussolini and Franco.

A woman to be stoned by confirmed non-atheists

Of course, none of this suggests that moral behavior necessarily goes with the absence of belief in deities. The two most prolific mass murderers of all time, Stalin and Mao — probably also Hitler, the bronze medal winner — are enough to invalidate that notion.

It does suggest, however, that indulgence in revealed religion is pretty useless as a bulwark against evil. The bigots among the believers, then, can take their smug condemnation of us godless people and stick it.

Update: My favorite blogger, Digby, tackles the subject here and here.

To mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has launched events worldwide. The poster chosen is this:

To link such a slogan with a famous Danish invention suspiciously resembles, well, an ethnic slur.

Racism takes many shapes, indeed.

As noted in the last post, there is global outcry over the publication in a Danish and a Norwegian newspaper of satirical cartoons on the Prophet Muhammed Mustafa. Everybody who’s anybody in the Islamic world, from Chechen rebel leader Sjamil Basajev via the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to the Indonesian foreign ministry, is jumping on the bandwagon. Even the offically secular Syria has recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen.

On Tuesday, seventeen Arab interior ministers demanded that Danish authorities punish those who drew the cartoons, as well as ensure it doesn’t happen again. The limits of their jurisdictions seem to have eluded these dignitaries. Have they perchance bought into US wingnut blather about “Eurabia”?

And isn’t it faintly incongruous to have countries like Saudi Arabia, where owning a Bible can relieve you of your head, bidding to school Scandinavia in “being respectful of other religions”?

Now, here’s an idea that needs to be voiced more often: too much pious lip-service is paid the supposed obligation to respect the beliefs of others. From the canonical liberal viewpoint, there is no such thing. Instead, there is a duty to respect the right of others to believe what they damn well please and to observe those beliefs unless demonstrably harmful to others. With H.L. Mencken, “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”

No doubt, westerners easily fail to realize how offensive to Muslim sensibilities is any caricature — let alone a mean-spirited such — of the Prophet. In Sunni tradition he is not to be depicted at all, to avoid idolatry; in no strand of the religion can he be insulted, either in words or imagery. True, we non-Muslims have no religious reason to honor these strictures. But we have a secular reason to do so: the virtue of plain old-fashioned civility.

Then again, a virtue does not a duty make. I have no duty to withhold my dim view of the other fellow’s family, especially not in my own home. If he insists otherwise, I may be tempted to speak my mind just to make the point that I’m entitled to it. If he backs up his demands with threats of violence, the temptation will grow.

Which, by rough analogy, is how this saga began half a year ago. In light of the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, and an assault on a History professor in Copenhagen, the author of an illustrated children’s book on the life of Muhammed couldn’t find an illustrator willing to work under his or her own name. The Danish quality daily Jyllands-Posten got wind of this and, to provoke debate about potential erosion of the freedom of expression, commissioned drawings of Muhammed from a number of cartoonists, printing the ones it received on September 30.

On October 19, ambassadors from eleven predominantly Muslim countries requested a meeting with the Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen, seeking an official condemnation of the incident. The cocky Fogh Rasmussen refused to meet with them, confident — mistakenly, as it turned out — that the principle of freedom of the press was “crystal clear.” Subsequently a delegation of Danish Islamic leaders toured the Middle East, telling the tale to all who would listen. Many would.

Finally, on January 10, a small evangelical journal in Norway fanned the flames by reproducing the material for reasons ostensibly similar to Jyllands-Posten’s. Upon this the uproar has swept the Islamic world like wildfire, following denunciations by its foremost religious authorities such as Saudi top cleric Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh and the leading Egyptian scholar Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi.

It has lately turned violent. Employees of a Danish dairy company were beaten up in Riyadh; Scandinavian aid workers have been chased out of Gaza; bomb threats are being phoned in against Danish embassies and Jyllands-posten; terrorist websites call for strikes against Denmark and Norway.

In defiance of such intimidation tactics, newspapers across Europe have now published the cartoons. Among them is the France Soir, whose Egyptian owner promptly fired the editor and apologized to muslims everywhere. The soon-to-be-jobless editor declared on the front page of the February 1 edition: “Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God.”

That headline returns us to the core of the matter: the distinction between the commendable and the permissible. Insulting the other fellow’s family to his face may not be the former; it does fall within the wider scope of the latter. And, when the principle of free expression is challenged, speech acts may become commendable that would otherwise be merely permissible.

In that spirit, below are three of the by now notorious cartoons — which, as it happens, strike me as neither profound nor funny. If this ticks off higher powers, they know where to find me.

Anyone else will have to blame himself for scrolling down.

All drawings available here.

Crossposted from European Tribune; Booman Tribune; and My Left Wing.

According to a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), fetuses cannot feel pain until the last few weeks of a pregnancy, reports the BBC.

I find the latter assertion untenable. In philosophy, there are two rival conceptions of what a ‘right’ is. On one analysis it is a norm protecting some rational agent’s opportunity to choose in some specific respect. Clearly, this is out as far as fetuses are concerned, inasmuch as they are not yet rational agents. On the other, more inclusive analysis, a right is a norm protecting a certain interest of some being, whether a rational agent or not. This is more promising for a rights-based pro-life position, since it could be argued that a fetus does have interests worth protecting.

But which are the minimum conditions for having an interest? One such, it seems to me, must be the capacity to have experiences. There must be a way in which events in the world can impinge on your consciousness for better or for worse. Thus a cat, for instance, has interests, but a tree does not, because only the former (as far as we know) has any mental states at all.

Now, the most primitive experience conceivable is the experience of pain. If a nervous system can’t even support that, it’s reasonable to infer that it can’t support any experience. And since having experiences is a necessary condition for having interests, which in turn is a necessary condition for having rights, the fetus cannot have any rights, including the right to life, until its brain is more developed. If the current findings hold up, that is not until the 23rd week of pregnancy.

To be sure, it is wise to err on the side of caution, so one might want to subtract a few weeks from that. But this is incidental to my point.

Also note that, in my view, it will not do to argue that the fetus, if left alone in the womb, would later develop the neural wiring for sustaining experiences. Rights are not assigned retroactively. Suppose you learn that some tree in your garden will develop mental states within three weeks if you don’t cut it down. Does that imply that the plant has a “right to life” now? Surely not.

There are of course other ways than the rights-based one to argue for a ban on abortion. I believe they fail too; but that is for another day.

My defense of dining on whale, also posted elsewhere, gave rise to this e-mail from an American save-the-whales’er:

Now, I did find this is a little rude, so I fired back (quote in bold):

Response:

I’m not signed up for your forum, so I can’t answer in public, although I would have been glad to do so. You’re right, I didn’t read through the entire diary, though I will now. I find it next to impossible though, to justify the eating of whale, no matter how nutricious. And, by posting of your feast in public, you will encourage others to do so as well. I’m not sure what is behind all of this. It is difficult for me to fathom the desire to eat of such an intelligent, endangered animal. Frankly, it isn’t my concern that you take me seriously. I hope though, that you received info from others that might encourage you to reconsider. The whale is an endangered species. Yes, I know you ate one of the types that is not endangered. In my view, this personal advertisement of your meal will not aid efforts to protect the species as a whole. That is my view. There are many ways to obtain the nutrition through other types of food and suplements. Seaweed is an excellent source of all that is needed from the ocean. Please reconsider…

elizabeth

I replied:

This retort, it seems, exasperated my correspondent:

Why, thanks! My parting words:

Yet she just might have a point about my personality. If this (rather crude) blogger personality test is to be believed, I am the INTP (Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving) type:

Well then; I guess it’s in my nature to choose the whale steak over the seaweed. Sorry, Liz.

Crossposted from European Tribune and My Left Wing.

A confession: I had whale steak for dinner today. And it was delicious, too. Served with potatoes, fresh vegetables, mountain cranberries, and a good Merlot, the meat - a staple food in my childhood - was reminiscent of moose but even tastier. No doubt some international readers will take strong exception to my choice of dinner and the practice which makes it possible. Below is my apologia.

I shall limit my defense to the Norwegian hunt of minke whales - the only avowedly commercial whaling season at present. Thus I do not necessarily endorse, say, the Japanese hunt of various species that arguably are endangered, though some of the ethical arguments apply to whaling generally.

For starters, a few facts.

* Of the about 80 known species of whale, the only one hunted by Norwegians is the minke. This is the smallest of the baleen whales and one of the smallest overall, with a typical adult weight of 4-5 tons. Written sources confirm that minke whales have been hunted in Norwegian waters for at least 1,200 years, but the practice may well be significantly older.

* This notwithstanding, there are no indications that the minke whale has ever been endangered. Certainly it isn’t now: By the latest estimate from the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) - the intergovernmental body for regulating whaling, more on which below - there are 112,000 specimens in the North East Atlantic alone. The Norwegian government sets annual quotas by an internationally uncontroversial, conservative method for calculating sustainable harvests. The latter is applied by the country’s own maritime researchers, who are leading in the field and operate independently of the government and commercial interests. This year’s season, to close on August 31, has a total quota of 797.

* Contrary to myth among certain activists, the Norwegian hunt is consistent with international law. The reason is that Norway lodged an objection to the moratorium on commercial whaling passed by the IWC in 1982, which exempts it from the ban under existing rules. Norway objected because the ban ignored the advice of the Scientific Committee and so contradicts the IWC’s express purpose: not to abolish whaling, but “to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and the orderly development of the whaling industry.” Nevertheless, the hunt was not resumed until 1993, after the IWC repeatedly refused to evaluate the effects of the ban with an eye to establish new quotas as the agreement schedules for 1990 “at the latest.” The then PM, Gro Harlem Brundtland - formerly chair of the World Commission of Environment and Development - asked rhetorically upon announcing the decision in 1992:

* Though whaling is of no national economic importance, it fills a need for supplemental income during the summer on the part of many local fishing communities, especially in the far north. Proceeds from the sale of meat allow people to carve out a living in a region where agriculture and manufacturing are not viable alternatives. The small coastal vessels used, typically family owned, are converted fishing boats between 50 and 80 feet long, staffed by the owner along with a crew of two to seven. Only modern grenade harpoons are used, and only by governmentally licensed hunters who must pass an annual proficiency test.

* The hunt enjoys solid popular support across the political spectrum. Most Norwegians regard it as a natural and sensible harvesting of marine resources conducted as a matter of national sovereignty, and view the protest as so much irrational, sentimental clap-trap. There is no domestic anti-whaling movement; all the leading environmentalist groups support the hunt. Even the local branch of Greenpeace declined to set sail this season: The whaling brouhaha, it explained, distracts from real environmental issues like the pollution of the seas. As to the international protest, this has been subsiding lately to the extent that a DC lobbyist on the Norwegian government’s payroll since 1995 was laid off this year.

And now for the ethical arguments. Assuming that the Norwegian hunt is indeed sustainable, I will consider two main objections to same. The first one has three subdivisions.

1. Some claim it is inherently wrong to kill whales for food, regardless of whether this is sustainable or not. I will not argue here that they are necessarily mistaken. However, I will argue that their claim, to have any merit, must at least be consistently applied to all animals unless relevant ethical distinctions can be made. After all, the farm animals most of us eat on a weekly or daily basis are also killed prematurely, indeed, often in infancy; without a chance to avoid this fate; and frequently in violation of their trust in human beings. How exactly is whaling any more problematic than this? Why is the production of a whale burger (see photo) any more objectionable than that of a Whopper?

a) A common reply centers on the ’special beauty’ of cetaceans. But really that is hopeless on so many levels. First, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For instance, the foremost anti-whaling nation happens to be Australia, where kangaroos are legally slaughtered by the millions every year for meat and hides. Apparently the ‘cuteness’ of the kangaroo, which has made it the world’s most readily recognized symbol next to the Statue of Liberty, is insufficient in Australian eyes to end this practice. Second, to measure moral worth by visual appeal obviously leads down a dismal ethical road. Are the lives of physically attractive people more worth than others, for example? Surely not.

b) Somewhat more promising are arguments from whale intelligence, since most would agree that a high level of awareness is one quality that counts against the slaughter of any creature. Thus opponents of whaling note that certain cetaceans, specifically dolphins, score well on animal IQ tests. This, they suggest, boosts the likelihood that their relatives such as the minke whale have rich inner lives that should not be ended. There are several problems here, however. For one thing, while dolphins are undoubtedly among the smartest animals around, their cognitive capacity has proven extremely difficult to gauge. Apparently, all that can be said with certainty is that they are at least as smart as canines, although they tend to score lower than ferrets on tests of set inference. Secondly, bulkier whales - and especially the minke, a solitary species - do not exhibit the signs of intelligence found in certain species of dolphins. At present there is no scientific basis for ascribing to these a significantly higher intelligence than say, that of cattle, routinely butchered everywhere except in India. There is certainly nothing to indicate that minke whales are smarter than pigs, who are sometimes claimed, like dolphins, to have the intelligence of human toddlers.

Arguably, no complex animals should be killed, to be on the safe side. But a global moratorium on this has yet to be proposed; and absent that, a special prohibition of whaling is double standards.

c) At this point, anti-whalers often take refuge in an argument from redundancy. Whaling for meat, they maintain, is especially bad because ‘unnecessary’ to feed human beings. It is true that whaling is unnecessary in this respect, but so is all meat production under modern conditions. Plainly, since a vegetarian lifestyle is now easy to pursue, no meat is a necessary commodity in developed countries: Lamb chops and pork, no less than whale steak, are conveniences. And a whale kill provides more meat than does the slaying of other animals. Going vegan on ethical grounds may be admirable, but non-vegans are in no obvious position to condemn sustainable whaling, while even vegans should have no more of a beef with this than with other ways of obtaining flesh.

Especially not if they count themselves environmentalists: Whaling burns less fuel per unit meat produced than other kinds of meat production. In fact, producing a kilo of beef requires 30 times more energy than the harvest of a kilo of minke whale meat. Besides, the latter does not pollute the ground, erode the soil, or release methane into the atmosphere.

2. The other line of argument is concerned not with the killing of whales per se but with the suffering inflicted in the process. Undeniably, the putting to death of a whale involves a measure of suffering, and the question of whether this measure is acceptable is a serious one. In the Norwegian season of 2002/3, where inspectors clocked the time to death for every animal, an estimated 80 percent died instantaneously; the average time to death was about two minutes. Acceptable, or inhumane?

There may be no objective answer to that. What is clear, though, is that the methods of Norwegian whaling are at least as humane as those employed in other forms of big game hunting with respect to both death times and accidental maiming. So far I have heard of no international movement against, say, the Norwegian moose hunt (and how about those Australian kangaroos?).

Most importantly, compared to the standard way of meat production in the developed world - factory farming, whereby animals are locked up in concentration camps for their entire lives and denied basic natural behavior - whaling seems vastly superior in terms of animal welfare. As the philosopher Peter Sandøe, leader of the Danish Ethical Council concerning Animals, told the Danish newspaper Politiken on November 7 1993, in connection with the resumption of Norwegian whaling:

In Norway, I might add, there are severe restrictions on the industrial keeping of livestock, including limits on how much milk any cow can produce and an effective ban on the intensive confinement of sows. Now, it is of course possible that whaling and factory farming are both reprehensible practices which a more enlightened posterity will contemplate with horror. If so, the wrongness of the one does not justify the other. But there remain, after all, those wise words in Matthew 7 about the moat in one’s brother’s eye versus the beam in one’s own. The calls in such countries as Australia and the USA, both of which produce most of their meat in brutal factories, to impose sanctions on Norway over its harvest of minke whales do have an air of surreality about them. From an environmentalist perspective, furthermore, one feels that both should first get around to signing the Kyoto Agreement before lecturing others on green values.

In conclusion, while I am open to debate and may conceivably change my mind, I submit, with suitable trepidation, that my choice of dinner was legitimate as well as tasty.

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.