inebriantia

"Have a memory longer than 4 weeks, please!"

George Galloway kicks arse:

Gays flee Iraq as Shia death squads find a new target

from The Observer:

Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the 'immorals' - homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.

There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused. The threat has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of Iraqi homosexuals now seeking asylum in the UK because it has become impossible for them to live safely in their own country.

...

Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.

'The government will do nothing to tackle this issue. It's really desperate when people get to the stage they're trading their children for money. They have no alternatives because there are no jobs,' Hili says.

Freedom is on the march!

Hubba Bubba

from Reuters:

A U.S. military court in Baghdad heard graphic testimony on Monday of how three U.S. soldiers took turns raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl before murdering her and her family.

At the hearing into whether four U.S. soldiers should be court-martialled for rape and murder, a special agent described what took place in Mahmudiya in March, based on an interview he had with one of the men, Specialist James Barker.

Special Agent Benjamin Bierce recalled that Barker described to him how they put a couple and their six-year-old daughter into a bedroom of their home, but kept the teenage girl in the living room, where Barker held her hands while Sergeant Paul Cortez raped her or tried to rape her.

Barker then switched positions with Cortez and attempted to rape the girl but said he was not sure if he had done so, Bierce told the hearing.

Barker also told the special agent he heard shots from the bedroom and shortly afterwards Private Steven Green emerged from the room, put down an AK-47 assault rifle and raped the girl while Cortez held her down.

Barker told Bierce that Green then picked up the weapon and shot her once, paused, and shot her several more times.

Again it isn't just the attrocities, it is the surreality that surrounds them:

Defense Attorney Captain Jimmie Culp was blowing chewing gum bubbles while Yribe, sitting to his left, began sucking on a red lollipop during the testimony.

Green said he wanted to go to a house and kill some Iraqis, Barker wrote in his sworn statement. After the rape and murders, he wrote that he began to grill chicken wings.

Oops

Was surfing semi-randomly, researching the upcoming trip to Paris and I came across the website of the famous cafe The Deux Magots. On the history page was this:

By the middle of 2006, "Les Deux Magots" will have been opened in one of the most prestigious areas of central Beirut

I wonder how that's going for them...

Iran Bamboozler Still Hyping

from TPMmuckraker:

Ever since neocon Amir Taheri was caught red-handed fabricating a story about an Iranian law that forced Jews to wear a yellow stripe, we vowed to keep an eye on him. Sure enough, just two weeks after his bamboozle was revealed, he visited the White House with other Middle East "experts" to advise the President.

And lo! If you happened to peruse the pages of The London Times yesterday, under a headline alarmingly titled "God's Army Has Plans To Run the Whole Middle East," you would have found Taheri proclaiming that "The mini war that is taking place between Israel and Hezbollah is, in fact, a proxy war in which Iran’s vision for the Middle East clashes with the administration in Washington."

"The real issue," Taheri wants us to know, "is who will set the agenda for the Middle East: Iran or America?"

As James Wolcott points out, Taheri's column was promptly picked up by the National Review Online and other conservative high traffic sites. Missing in those enthusiastic posts, however, was any mention of the column's author.

Hammer, meet wasp's nest.

From William Gibson's Blog:

'I'm not sure I really get why the US and Israel haven't yet come to terms with the fact that this fourth generation war cannot be won with classic military action. I suspect it is the neocon influence which, throughout many decades, never gave a passing thought to terrorism or assymetrical warfare. They have been stuck in a cold war mindset (a mindset that was wrong about the cold war too) and have consistently seen the world through the prism of rogue totalitarian states. This is why, in spite of the fact that everything is going to hell in a handbasket in a hundred different ways, they persist in focusing on Iran (formerly Iraq) and ignoring all the moving parts that make their aggressive plans to "confront" these regimes simpleminded and doomed to failure.'

--Digby

Myself, I keep going back to my no doubt sloppy and imperfect understanding of Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions. If the theory of "fourth generation war" is viewed as a new paradigm (and it seems to me to meet the criteria) then this is more than a failure of perception on the part of neoconservatives.

Consider the following, from the Wikipedia entry on SSR:

'According to Kuhn, the scientific paradigms before and after a paradigm shift are so different that their theories are incomparable. The paradigm shift does not just change a single theory, it changes the way that words are defined, the way that the scientists look at their subject and, perhaps most importantly, the questions that are considered valid and the rules used to determine the truth of a particular theory. Kuhn observes that they are incommensurable — literally, lacking comparison, untranslatable. New theories were not, as they had thought of before, simply extensions of old theories, but radically new worldviews. This incommensurability applies not just before and after a paradigm shift, but between conflicting paradigms. It is simply not possible, according to Kuhn, to construct an impartial language that can be used to perform a neutral comparison between conflicting paradigms, because the very terms used belong within the paradigm and are therefore different in different paradigms. Advocates of mutually exclusive paradigms are in an insidious position: "Though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing science and its problems, neither may hope to prove his case. The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proof." (SSR, p. 148).'

This would explain, it seems to me, the apparently literal impossibility of explaining the fundamentally counterproductive nature of the United State's invasion of Iraq, or of what's currently going on in Lebanon, to those who disagree. Or, literally, vice versa. If you're behind the curve on the paradigm shift, if I'm reading Kuhn at all correctly, you're literally incapable of getting it. Or vice versa. "It is simply not possible, according to Kuhn, to construct an impartial language that can be used to perform a neutral comparison between conflicting paradigms, because the very terms used belong within the paradigm and are therefore different in different paradigms."

The bad news is that the policy-makers of the United States and Israel apparently (still) don't get the new paradigm, and the bad news is that Hezbollah (et al, and by their very nature) do. Though that's only bad (or double-plus-ungood) if you accept, as I do, that the new paradigm allows for a more effective understanding of reality. So if you still like to pause to appreciate the action of phlogiston when you strike a match, you may well be okay with current events. So many, God help us, evidently are.

I've heard that Kuhn fiercely lamented the application of SSR to anything other than the structure of scientific revolutions, but that's how it usually is, when the street finds its own uses for things.

COINTELPRO lives

SFGate.com:

Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence the demonstration, documents released Thursday show.

 

10 for 1

It may seem that I have it in for Israel. All of the stories below are focused on the excesses of Israel's part in this current mess but it's not just the disproportion of force that I am trying to highlight here. More so that the traditional "good guy" is taking a unusually even handed beating in the public press. I mean this is from the Jerusalem Post:

A high-ranking IAF officer caused a storm on Monday in an off-record briefing during which he told reporters that IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut in retaliation to every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa.

The officer said that the equation was created by Halutz and that every rocket strike on Haifa would be answered by IAF missile strikes on 10 12-story buildings in the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiya, a Hizbullah stronghold. Since the beginning of Operation Change of Direction, launched on July 12 following the abduction of two soldiers during a Hizbullah cross-border attack, over 80 buildings in the neighborhood have been destroyed.

After the officer's remarks were published on The Jerusalem Post website as well as other Israeli news sites, the IDF Spokesperson's Office released a statement insinuating that reporters had misquoted the senior officer and claimed that the publications were false and that Halutz had never issued such a directive.

The IDF Spokesperson's Office later retracted its accusation that reporters had misquoted the officer and issued a second statement claiming that the high-ranking officer had made a mistake and was wrong in claiming that Halutz had issued such a directive.

What is the weirdest part of that story? That Israel has such a policy? No. It's that an armed forces spokesperson thought it would be a good idea to tell reporters about it. Did they really think that it would "spin" well for them in global media? That Hezbollah would back off if they knew this?

And they are handling this issue badly as well:

Lebanese medical workers say evidence is mounting that Israel may be using weapons forbidden under international law. Media in Lebanon claimed last week that Israel had been using bombs containing white phosphorous, a substance which can cause organ failure if ingested. The Spanish news agency EFE says several doctors from hospitals in southern Lebanon have been treating victims with what they called "very strange wounds" which they have not seen before.

In an interview with Portuguese television, one Lebanese doctor said his team had carried out many organ transplants since the start of the conflict, and that this was consistent with use of white phosphorous bombs. Lebanese medical authorities have decided to seek independent verification of the claims from foreign experts.

Israel is also being accused of using cluster bombs and anti-personnel mines in southern Lebanon. The NGO Handicap International says the long term consequences of using of such weapons, which are legal, could be disastrous for civilians.

From HuffPo:

Under hard questioning by CNN's Paula Zahn, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman descended into double-talk about the use of phosporous weapons burning the flesh of Lebanese children, as shown on footage from Beirut hospitals.

The Israeli repeatedly refused to answer Zahn's clear question - does Israel use phosporous weapons? Instead he claimed that Israeli weaponry is consistent with accepted standards.

As with the American use of phosporous in Falluja, the implication is that phosphorous if intended as a smoke-causing agent is legal. But the televised image of the burned baby overpowered the dissembling answers.

 

Is so-called freedom fighting simply terrorism plus time?

by Guy Rundle on Crikey:

It's tough being a newspaper editor – though, not, I concede as tough as being a Lebanese civilian. There you are, all ready to roll tens of thousands of words about the fiftieth anniversary of Suez, and you're gazumped by not so much a new war, as a cover version of the old one. Cue desperate scrambling for breakouts detailing "Then and Now", "A New Suez Crisis?" etc etc.

In the rush a more important anniversary is being ignored – that of a hot night in Jerusalem sixty years ago when the King David Hotel, HQ of the British Palestinian Mandate, was destroyed by bombs planted by Menachim Begin's terrorist group, the Irgun, killing 91 people – British, Arabs, Jews and others. The Irgun was asked to do this by the main Zionist group, the Haganah, but successive governments are understandably reluctant to celebrate it.

The Irgun's defenders have always claimed that a warning was called in prior to the explosion. Police records suggest it was no more than a few minutes. The best a recently unveiled plaque celebrating the attack can say is:

For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated, and after 25 minutes, the bombs exploded, and to the Irgun's regret and dismay, 91 persons were killed.

In other words, even the official, set-in-stone, spin puts the founding fathers of Israel on a moral level with the Provisional IRA.

One thing is remarkable about this – the Irgun are routinely called "freedom fighters" these days but at the time they were described as terrorists not only by their enemies – but by themselves. Indeed at the time Irgun supporters took out a full page congratulatory ad in the New York Times offering praise TO THE JEWISH TERRORISTS.

But here's the real rub – it is not because incidents such as the King David Hotel, or the Stern Gang's kidnap and murder of two British soldiers (sound familiar?) were wanton terrorist acts that Israel's government shies away from them, but because they weren't – they were legitimate, if ruthless, actions against military targets in a declared guerrilla war (the massacre of Arab villages is another matter).

Yet to acknowledge that would be to concede that urban guerrilla action can shade into terrorism. It would inevitably lead people to make similar distinctions between a suicide bomb attack on a restaurant, and the same on a military checkpoint. And the last thing wanted is that sort of symmetry, which might suggest that freedom fighting is terrorism plus time.

Still, it's an ill-wind. Maybe some sympathetic group could be persuaded to put up a replica plaque in Australia. Then we can test the government's commitment to its "glorification of terror" legislation…

Who were the first Middle East terrorists?

Found this image of a plaque on an Iraqi resistance website. Apparently its recent installation has incensed a few people, especially the British:

Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”

In particular they demanded the removal of the plaque that pays tribute to the Irgun, the Jewish resistance branch headed by Menachem Begin, the future Prime Minister, which carried out the attack on July 22, 1946.

The plaque presents as fact the Irgun’s claim that people died because the British ignored warning calls. “For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated,” it states.

Mr McDonald and Dr Jenkins denied that the British had been warned, adding that even if they had “this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths”. On Monday city officials agreed to remove the language deemed offensive from the blue sign hanging on the hotel’s gates, though that had not been done shortly before it was unveiled last night.

The controversy over the plaque and the two-day celebration of the bombing, sponsored by Irgun veterans and the right-wing Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, goes to the heart of the debate over the use of political violence in the Middle East. Yesterday Mr Netanyahu argued in a speech celebrating the attack that the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas.

What bollocks.