The Dish

"[T]he Maoists [in India] are fighting on two fronts. One is that they are fighting a feudal society, their feudal landlords. You have, you know, the whole caste system which is arranged against the indigenous people and the Dalits, who are the untouchable caste. And they are fighting against this whole corporatization. But they are also very poor people, you know, barefoot with old rusty weapons. And, you know, what we – say someone like myself, watching what is happening in Kashmir, where – or in the northeast, where exactly what America is doing in Iraq, you know, where you’re fostering a kind of civil war and then saying, ‘Oh, if we pull out, these people just will massacre each other.’

But the longer you stay, the more you’re enforcing these tribal differences and creating a resistance, which obviously, on the one hand, someone like me does support; on the other hand, you support the resistance, but you may not support the vision that they are fighting for. And I keep saying, you know, I’m doomed to fight on the side of people that have no space for me in their social imagination, and I would probably be the first person that was strung up if they won. But the point is that they are the ones that are resisting on the ground, and they have to be supported, because what is happening is unbelievable." – Arundhati Roy, backing resistance movements that would "string her up" if they succeed. Robert Fisk has a new ally.

Another take – mine is below – from Oliver Kamm in the Times of London:

At Auschwitz, of all places, Benedict might have referred to the biblical and Catholic roots of European anti-Semitism. He preferred to concentrate on the heroism of Catholic witnesses against Nazism. The picture he gave was thereby highly misleading.

The Pope prayed in the cell where a Polish Franciscan, Maximillian Kolbe, was starved and incarcerated before being murdered by the Nazis. Kolbe was canonised by Pope John Paul II. Yet Kolbe’s writings evince a firm belief in the veracity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the existence of a Masonic-Jewish conspiracy. John Paul’s canonisation of Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who became a nun and died at Auschwitz, caused still more trouble. The Church’s celebration of martyrs against Nazi barbarism is unerringly partial. It decries the blasphemous claims of authority, while sparing few words for the integrity of Jewish history.

A Bavarian pope had a unique opportunity to reflect on the role the Church played in providing two millennia of religious anti-Semitism which paved the way for the atheistic, racist anti-Semitism of Nazism. Benedict punted. History will remember that. More criticism here.

Blogger Jon Swift has a bad case. One cure is denial. It has worked for many.

The best discussion I’ve yet read is, as so often on these matters, at Jeff Jarvis’s site.

It’s now a year since vice-president Dick Cheney recklessly insisted that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes." Money quote:

"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Greg Djerejian does the math and finds the opposite to be the case. If you also take into acount that the U.S. military has essentially withdrawn from large areas of Iraq, now controlled by Jihadists and insurgents or name-less face-less sectarian militias, you could easily argue that the insurgency, combined with Shiite death squads, has never been as strong. Baghdad remains unsecured, over three years after the invasion. Ramadi is controlled by al Qaeda, something that was not the case before the U.S. invasion. Again, you can debate whether Cheney knowingly lied or whether once again, he simply had no idea what he was talking about. But neither option is very reassuring.

The Spiegel interview headlined by Drudge is a fascinating one. It’s fascinating because it really does give us a glimpse into the worldview of a fanatical anti-Semite. This man doubts the fact of the Holocaust; and describes the defeat of Hitler as a national humiliation for the German people. Here’s a riveting exchange:

Ahmadinejad: I’m wondering why you’re adopting and fanatically defending the stance of the European politicians. You’re a magazine, not a government. Saying that we should accept the world as it is would mean that the winners of World War II would remain the victorious powers for another 1,000 years and that the German people would be humiliated for another 1,000 years. Do you think that is the correct logic?

SPIEGEL: No, that’s not the right logic, nor is it true. The Germans have played a modest, but important role in post-war developments. They do not feel as though they have been humiliated and dishonored since 1945. We are too self-confident for that.

The Germans were humiliated and remain humiliated by their 1945 defeat? Ahmadinejad’s worldview is that international Zionists controlled the alliance powers in the Second World War, invented the Holocaust and then used that to create the state of Israel. Ahamdinejad is a neo-Nazi, who also believes the world is soon coming to an end. And he is eagerly seeking a nuclear bomb. Whatever policy we adopt, it needs to be based on a very clear grasp of what we’re dealing with.

(Photo: Lynsey Addario/Corbis.)

More evidence of the remarkable attempt by Dick Cheney and his henchman, David Addington, to use the war on Islamist terrorism to remove all obstacles to the exercize of untrammeled, extra-legal executive power.

I was unimpressed by his speech. It was a function of resilient denial – denial that the German people had en masse backed Nazism long after its true nature had become known; and denial of the criminal silence and acquiescence of the Vatican hierarchy during that period of time. Money quote about the Germans:

"It is a duty before the truth and the just due of all who suffered here, a duty before God, for me to come here as the successor of Pope John Paul II and as a son of the German people — a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honor, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power…"

The Germans abused by the Nazis?? They created, empowered and were the Nazis. Then this:

Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?

How about a simpler and more accountable question: where was the Church hierarchy? Where was the Pope? That is neither rhetorical nor unanswerable. And where is the expiation of the original sin of Christianity – anti-Semitism – that played a part in preparing the way for Nazism? Why was Benedict silent? Even today?

"The willingness to send others off to die for a misguided war because you wet your pants after 9/11 is called "cowardice" not courage," – Atrios, classy as ever.