The Dish

Your blog is a wonderful resource, perhaps especially for straight neocons like me. I check in intermittently, but always with the expectation — nearly always satisfied — that I’ll learn something I didn’t know before.

But you do your readers a disservice by simply linking to the gay UK blog from which you apparently learned of these hangings last week. First, in doing so you risk allowing your readers to treat a crime against two gay youngsters as simply that: A very public and barbarous crime against two gay men. I’d be surprised if I’m the only opponent of the Iranian regime who has often felt that the feelings we’ve long maintained against it were longer in theory than in experience. Just for example, it’s one thing for the State Department to forever keep Iran tops on its list of sponsors of terror; it’s another thing altogether to witness so vividly the revolting impulses that animate this and every radical Muslim opponent of civilization.

Second, there’s a third photograph on the official Iranian website of the two young men moments before their deaths, being interviewed — yes, interviewed — presumably by somebody with official Iranian press credentials. This photograph, on a state-sanctioned website, of two clearly devastated human beings being hounded by a caricature of a Western-style press is among the most wretched and haunting images I’ve seen. Moreover, we see in this photograph not two young gay men, but two men, simply, facing death at the hands of a regime that, it turns out, is really quite deserving of civilized loathing.

That so few of us today truly hate the Iranian government — hate it reflexively and without reservation — speaks perhaps to the easy-going nature of our easy-going western lives. But please, let us never forget that while the Iranian regime is certainly anti-gay — and you are right to emphasize this truth — it is also, and even more significantly, anti-human. And this is the deeper truth to which the photographs of these young men’s deaths bear witness. Peter Greenman
posted by Judith

Andrew is kind enough to let me read your emails. Keep them coming. But if you wish to have your comment automatically posted and even debated, you can do so on my History News Network blog .
posted by Judith.

CAFTA needs to be ratified and we hear again about the danger of America losing more manufacturing jobs and getting stuck with only poorly paid service ones. So, it’s time to focus attention on some surprising statistics found in Dan Smith’s State of the World Atlas. It’s a highly recommended resource.

It has a chart comparing regional GDP per person of countries dominated by agriculture, industry and services (2000 of the latest available data). The numbers speak for themselves:

Africa: Tanzania-agriculture-$523. Niger-industry-$746. Kenya-services-$1022.

Central Am.: Nicaragua-industry-$2366. El Salvador-services-$4497.

East. Europe: Ukraine-agriculture-$3816. Macedonia-industry-$5086. Poland-services-$9051.

SE Asia: Indonesia-agriculture-$3043. Brunei-industry-$16779. Malaysia-services-$9068.

Brunei has few people and lots of oil.

posted by Judith

First comes the news that:

“Pope Benedict XVI will become the second pontiff in history to enter a synagogue when he visits his native Germany next month.

In a sign of his determination to mend fences with Judaism and other world religions, the Pope has announced that he will visit the Jewish place of worship in Cologne, which was destroyed by the Nazis but rebuilt after the Second World War.

Then comes the implication that Jewish blood is still different:

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday deplored attacks in “countries including Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Britain”.

Israel said he had failed to mention a 12 July suicide bombing in Netanya that killed five Israelis.

The foreign ministry said it would be interpreted as “granting legitimacy to… terrorist attacks against Jews”.

posted by Judith.

1. Amnesty international warns that terrorists, sorry “armed groups”, “like other parties to the conflict in Iraq, are required to comply strictly with international law in all their acts and remain accountable for their actions.”

2. Last night former CIA agent Michael Scheuer told Jim Lehrer that he was tired of hearing Al Qaeda members described as haters. “They are not haters,” he said empathetically, “they are lovers . . . .” Jim stared. So Scheuer added: “of their religion.”

Now I know that any CIA agent can go native. Is that the reason the American and British intelligence services are so clueless when it comes to these Jihadists – they actually fell under their spell? Another case of the Cambridge five?

3. Bad Neo-cons (including Havel have the gall to rally to the cause of jailed ex-Revolutionary Guard, argues Paul Harris.

That’s only because Bush prefers a dead Ganji, answers Iranian Blogger Hossien Deraghshan. (Thanks Frieda for the info).
posted by Judith.

“Absolutely heartbreaking”is the correct description. Just look at these pictures and you will know what I mean.
posted by Judith.

No. I do not believe that war with China is around the corner or even the block. It is true that China and the US have traded sharp words recently. Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu told reporters that “China would aim nuclear weapons at American cities if U.S. forces intervened in a Chinese assault to prevent Taiwan from turning its de-facto separation from China into formal independence.”

The old general was spouting the Mao doctrine of the 60’s. Mao argued that given the size of her population, China can afford to absorb an American nuclear strike. When I read that General Zhu added that in such a case all of the Chinese East coast would be obliterated, I immediately remembered how Mao spent a fortune moving essential Chinese facilities Westward.

The US responded sharply, and not only with words, as it extended its strategic alliance with India to the nuclear field. Congress remembered the trade deficit.

The Chinese government announced it would stick to its no first nuclear strike policy, adjusted its currency and got its evil younger sister, North Korea to the negotiating table.

I suspect that sharp words were also exchanged between the Chinese government and the army. Why? Because some years ago when I raised in private the issue of Taiwanese independence with a senior advisor to the Chinese government on relations with Taiwan, he responded by taking a paper and drawing a map of the Chinese coast and Taiwan. He sought to demonstrate that an independent Taiwan would mean the encirclement of China. “The army will never stand for it,” he said excitedly, “everything will be lost.”

He, apparently, knew what he was talking about and so should all the militant advocates of a formally independent Taiwan.
posted by Judith.

Well, it is not difficult to understand how 64% of 1500 adult Russians surveyed last week by the Moscow-based Bashkirova & Partners pollster agree with the opinion that British authorities have created favorable conditions for terrorist attacks by hosting individuals accused of having links to terrorists, such as Chechen
activist Ahmed Zakayev.”

The truth is that serious action against Jihadist Imams such as Omar Bakri and Abu Qatada have yet to be taken. Blair promises action in October! The Germans courts find EU anti-terror laws unconstitutional and keep releasing Al Qaeda members while the Italians seek to arrest CIA agents for kidnapping terrorists.

I know, I know, the rule of law is non-negotiable. But laws must be adapted to reality. Maybe, just maybe, with better legal tools, police may not have to resort to a “shoot to kill” policy.
posted by Judith.

Former Kuwaiti Education Minister: All of Al-Qaida’s Terrorism Started from the Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood:

“The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has its own justifications for violence. In a statement by the movement, in which it ‘condemned’ the Sharm Al-Sheikh crime, it laid out its justification for the crime. The statement said: ‘the colonialist policies that the world’s strong countries pursue, as well as the aggression against the peoples – they are what engender the culture of violence.’

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s problem is that it has no shame. The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology of takfir [accusing other Muslims of apostasy]. Sayyid Qutb’s [2] book Milestones was the inspiration and the guide for all of the takfir movements that came afterwards.

“The founders of the violent groups were raised on the Muslim Brotherhood, and those who worked with Bin Laden and Al-Qa’ida went out under the mantle of the Muslim Brotherhood.the rest is here.

posted by Judith.

Andrew is kind enough to let me read your emails. Keep them coming. But if you wish to have your comment automatically posted and even debated, you can do so on my History News Network blog .
posted by Judith.