Middle East Bog - editorial Washington Post december 27th

One month after the Annapolis conference, Israeli-Palestinian talks are stalled


IT'S BEEN one month since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met in Annapolis to launch the first Middle East peace negotiations in seven years. When they meet again today, they will have cause to reflect on how much can go wrong when the world's most notoriously difficult "peace process" is taken over by official negotiators, government bureaucrats and military commanders. Far from beginning to hammer out the two-state settlement that Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas committed themselves to, Israeli and Palestinian officials have managed to create a somewhat artificial "crisis" that the two leaders must try to untangle.
The trouble began within days of the Annapolis meeting, when Israel's Housing Ministry made the first of a series of gratuitous and provocative announcements about construction in Jewish settlements beyond Israel's internationally recognized border. The most tangible of these was a tender for the construction of 307 homes in Har Homa, a controversial Jerusalem neighborhood that is wedged between Palestinian areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Palestinian negotiators -- several of whom were closer to former president Yasser Arafat than they are to Mr. Abbas -- seized on the action as a violation of Mr. Olmert's commitment to "immediately" implement the first phase of a 2003 U.S.-sponsored "road map" that calls for a freeze on all settlement construction.
Israeli ministers, including a couple who oppose the peace talks, rushed to tour Har Homa and to make the point that, in Israel's view, it is part of Jerusalem and thus not subject to the building restriction. The European Union, the United Nations and, somewhat surprisingly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized the Housing Ministry action. When Egypt joined the chorus, Israel's defense minister said the real problem was not settlement-building but Cairo's allowance of massive weapons-smuggling to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. A low-grade war between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants in Gaza has escalated in the past month, putting further pressure on the talks.

The most hopeful aspect of the new peace process has been the recognition by Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas in their private meetings, and occasionally in their public statements, that issues such as the construction in Har Homa are marginal to a two-state settlement. Both recognize that Israel will annex small parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank that are heavily populated by Jews, probably as part of territorial swaps. The "crisis" they are facing is not one of Israeli settlement expansion but of their own failure to impose their priorities on the bureaucracies and competing politicians around them. If the Annapolis process is to survive, Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas -- perhaps with an assist from President Bush, when he visits the Middle East next month -- will need to begin asserting themselves.

Benazir Bhutto shot down

On 27 December 2007, Bhutto was killed while leaving a political rally for the PPP at Liaquat National Bagh. She had just given a campaign address to party supporters in the run-up to the January 2008 parliamentary elections. After getting into her bulletproof vehicle, Bhutto stood up through the sunroof of the vehicle to wave to the crowds. A Lashkar i Jhangvi assassin on a motorcycle took this opportunity to shoot at her with a pistol. The assassin then detonated explosives on his body, killing about 20 others.



Yesterday shall be remembered as the day where the symbol of democracy in Pakistan was murdered. I pay my respects to Bhutto and her fearless striving for true democracy in Pakistan.
I truly hope that Pakistan finds a response to this atrocity that is as adequate as it is democratic.

Demonstration against higher education reform plan

Some pictures of the 6 december demonstration against the plan VDB in Brussels. It's taken me a while, but I've finally found a fairly easy way (Photobucket, thank you!) to link pictures to my blog.

Holiday nostalgia

I love these songs at the moment:



Tim Vanhamel - Until I find you



Beirut - Nantes

Nostalgia, loss and yet hope; reflecting my sentiments these days...

Amnesty Film Shows Agony of US Detention Techniques by Terri Judd

This post has been somewhat delayed, sorry guys but it has been such a hectic week.

Forced on to the balls of his feet, bent double with his hands handcuffed behind his back, the near-naked man shook violently. From beneath the hood, muted moans were audible. It seemed obscene to stare at this apparently frail, vulnerable man, caught in a stress position reminiscent of the images of Iraqi prisoners being interrogated by US soldiers at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Yet this was not torture. It was art.

In an attempt to draw attention to human rights abuses, Amnesty International has filmed a dancer in the positions captives have been forced to adopt by US troops. The resulting film makes shocking viewing. During a break in filming, Jiva Parthipan, a Sri Lankan performance artist, appeared relieved as he rubbed his limbs, which were aching after just a couple of minutes in a position that suspects in President George Bush’s “war on terror” are expected to endure for hours.

The star of the Amnesty International film, which is being released online next month to highlight the agony of such interrogation techniques, said he found the experience painful, both physically and psychologically. In secret jails across the world, Amnesty insists, captives in the fight against terrorism are expected to maintain these poses. They are not considered torture, simply “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Alfred McCoy, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argued recently that the photographs from Abu Ghraib reflected standard CIA torture techniques of ” stress positions, sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation”.

In August, President Bush issued an order decreeing that Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention - which prohibits the humiliating or degrading treatment of prisoners of war - should apply to the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme. But Amnesty believes the order does not go far enough in specifying what constitutes degrading treatment.
It is calling for an end to all secret detentions, as well as for detainees to be given access to lawyers, medical care and monitors. It wants all allegations of enforced disappearance, torture and ill treatment levelled at the CIA to be investigated independently.

Barack Obama, Drawing the Big Crowds by Anne E. Kornblut

MILFORD, N.H., Sept. 3 -- As Sen. Barack Obama led a rowdy mob down the street here during a Labor Day parade, an organizer wearing a Mitt Romney pin stood on the sidewalk and stared in astonishment.
"It's going to be tough to beat that guy," he said, shaking his head, to another man with a Romney sign.
Or will it?

Obama (D-Ill.) has not picked up measurable steam in the national polls since he announced his candidacy more than six months ago. His most obvious strength has been seen in the money he has raised and in the jaw-dropping sizes of the crowds he draws -- a sign of what his campaign says is its solid ground organization.

With the unofficial start of the primary season this weekend, Obama sought to sharpen the distinctions between his campaign and that of

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the Democratic front-runner, taking swipes at the Washington establishment and the "cynical math" that he implied other candidates are using to calculate a narrow victory rather than a broad consensus.

"There are those who tout their experience working the system in Washington -- but the problem is that the system in Washington isn't working for us, and hasn't for a long time," Obama said in a speech in Manchester before marching in the parade here and attending an ice cream social. "Think about it. We've been talking about the health-care crisis in this country for decades. Yet through Democratic and Republican administrations we've failed to act. And you know why -- because the drug and insurance industries have spent over a billion dollars on lobbying in the past 10 years alone to block reform."

If the Milford parade several hours later was a snapshot of how Obama is faring, it bodes well. He drew by far the loudest and most boisterous group of supporters, who became so enthusiastic about marching that they started down the road ahead of schedule -- and were then banished by organizers to the back of the parade line. (The second-largest group was an orderly bunch of Romney backers, followed by a loud cadre carrying signs for Sen. Christopher J. Dodd -- though Dodd's group included many members of his family.)
The Obama crowd, with drums and brass instruments, yelled out: "Obama-oh-eight. Be a part of something great!"

A Rich Man's World by Jeremy Seabrook

The most puzzling aspect of the official response to social evils in rich societies is its superficiality. “Remedies” proposed for under-age drinking are a characteristic expression of this: raise the drinking age, make drinking more expensive, prevent the sale of cheap drink in supermarkets and petrol stations. Similarly, in reaction to knife crime, gun crime and to teenagers terrorising the streets (a war on terror at home might be a useful initiative), government ministers say: “parents must take responsibility” or “stringent laws are already in place” to deal with these things. David Cameron, with rival vacuity, speaks of “making families and communities feel safe.”
There is, of course, a good reason for the silence over a more searching analysis of what is wrong with “our” society. For all social ills are supposed to be remedied by economic success. And the economy has “performed” extremely well for the past 15 years. It is inconceivable that consistent growth, continuous expansion, and an uninterrupted rise in disposable income are compatible with the levels of violence, addiction, fear and social ill-being that we see all around us.

The government is bound to deny any connection with the health of the economy and the sickness of society. That these may be intimately linked, not only at times of insufficiency and misery, but at times of prodigious wealth-creation and excess, is the taboo which prevents a more rigorous examination of that most lasting of relationships, the one between economy and society.
This is why the Thatcher legacy, largely unmolested by her New Labour successors, has been so malignant. The proponents of economic liberalisation speak as though deregulation brought with it no social or moral consequences. Deregulation, they claim, is a good in itself. Removing obstacles to growth and expansion must deliver the desired outcomes of affluence, contentment and social peace. Government intervention, red tape, rules and directives that inhibit enterprise are equated with a denial of freedom. These stern defenders of the real world actually live in a hermetic world of fantasy, in which “pure” economics of a kind unknown on the planet will magically waft whole populations into a realm of peace and plenty.

John Redwood’s even more maniacal vision of an ultra-competitive Britain is part of this effort by true liberals to unfetter the creativity of the people by turning us all into entrepreneurs in a world of universal business. This utopia is as bizarre and unreachable as anything ever devised by the vain dreamings of the left; but while the illusions of the left have long been discredited, the experiments of the social alchemists of the right are regarded with benign indulgence. Their most exaggerated thinking of the unthinkable is destined to become the orthodoxy of tomorrow.

The society of abundance requires a different kind of sensibility from that which served the old machinery of production: the deregulation of human wants, needs, demand and desire have been a necessary accompaniment of the profound economic changes we have experienced. Economic “success” in this context takes on another complexion. The removal of industrial disciplines also does away with restraint, self-control, limits on what we may and may not have in this world. It also uncovers some distinctly undesirable desires - instant rage and jealousy, an inability to tolerate being thwarted, a morbid desire for the unattainable.The economy does not exist in a separate sphere from society, morality, the wellbeing of the spirit and heart. But it has been allowed to encroach upon areas of human experience that should be shielded form its violent incursions. Only when we are prepared to acknowledge that, and to act upon our knowledge, will lives cease to be forfeited to its savage hunger for human sacrifice.

If you're interested in the complete article follow this link.

The German Terrorist Plot by Left I on the News

Today Left I on the News analysed the German Terrorist Plot.

Don't get me wrong - there are terrorists, and the people just arrested in Germany quite likely are the real thing, with real murder of innocent civilians in mind. But that doesn't justify false reporting and hyping, starting with this incredibly misleading headline: "Germany foils 'massive' attack on US citizens."

First of all, the headline implies at attack was practically in progress. The facts (as I'll come to in a minute) are hardly that. And the alleged targets were Frankfurt airport, hardly a place where an attack would be focussed on "U.S. citizens," and the US military base in Ramstein, which seems highly unlikely to be penetrated by people using a suicide car bomb.

But about those targets? German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung asserted that the threat had been "imminent". But the same article informs us that Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning told journalists that "there were no concrete targets," without which it seems rather unlikely that any attack was "imminent." And that business about Frankfurt airport? That's pure speculation by the German police, according to Hanning.

Unlike other recent terrorist scares, this group actually had amassed explosives, and was clearly hoping to do something, somewhere. But a "massive," "imminent" attack on "US citizens"? Hardly.

Update: An AP article sheds further light on that "imminent" attack:
As a token of the intense surveillance by German police, prosecutors said that during the investigation they were able to replace the dangerous peroxide in the containers with a harmless solution without the knowledge of the suspects.So that "attack" was not only not imminent, it would also have been a complete dud.

What I Bought

Yesterday I decided to make a little trip to Antwerp and sell some old crap books from when I was young and get myself some more interesting reading material.

Let's start my story from the beginning. I got to Antwerp after I discovered between my books, some really really embarrassing stuff. Anyone remember those Goosebumps novels? Well, apparently I had like about 15 of them.. They used to be cool, you know? Who am I kidding?! They NEVER were cool! Anyway, I sold them and they got me about €8,5. So I was in the shop and decided to "just take a look around". I ended up buying these books:

Pro Justitia by Renaat Landuyt €5

The Belgian Social-democratic law specialist/minister has some interesting views on the Belgian legal system.

10 Years of Political Campaigns by Wim Schamp €5

A Belgian political spin doctor describes his methods.

No Logo by Naomi Klein €7

Famous anti-globalist Naomi Klein's magnum opus. A must have if you're

interested in a progressive view/manifest on globalisation.

Multitude by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri €16

Although I don't expect to agree with Hardt and Negri's semi-Marxist views, it should provide an unknown view on a global state by two of today's most reknown political theorists

Because I was in town and the comics store was on my way I figured: "What the hell, let's get me some must have paperbacks." And what is bigger a gap in your comics collection or what is more Must Have than everything Alan Moore? The best thing for me to describe Alan Moore is to quote another site to do him justice.

"without a doubt, the name that would reside at the top many readers' and professionals' short list of THE BEST WRITERS IN COMICS, would be that of ALAN MOORE. Quite simply, Alan was the first modern writer to approach the medium of comics with the same intent and thoughtfulness that is expected of any successful novel, screenplay or theatrical production."

I'm planning to (eventually some day in time) get myself his entire bibliography. But for now I satisfied myself with the following:

V for Vendetta €21

The movie brought me into this whole Alan Moore frenzy I got going on. Apparently Moore disapprove's the movie (which to me was probably the best non-indie movie of last year) and I can't wait to find out why!

Watchmen €20

The only graphic novel that made it in Time Magazine's top 100 novels of all time. Enough said, isn't it?

I hope to provide you with a more in depth review of some books soon

Total Damage: €68,5

Call to Halt EU Trade with Israel by David Cronin

BRUSSELS - Trade between the European Union and Israel should be halted in protest at human rights violations in the Palestinian territories, a United Nations conference has heard.
Under a so-called association agreement, Israel currently enjoys free trade in industrial goods, and preferential treatment of farm produce entering the European Union. Luisa Morgantini, a vice-president of the European Parliament, said that her institution has called for this agreement to be suspended. So far, however, these calls have been rejected by EU governments and by the Union’s executive, the European Commission.
This is despite how article 2 of the agreement, which entered into force in 2000, commits both sides to respect human rights.
Morgantini was speaking at a UN conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Brussels (Aug. 30-31).
She argued that the EU has made “a lot of mistakes” in its handling of relations with the Middle East, particularly over the last year.
It was wrong, she said, for the Union to suspend direct aid to the Palestinian Authority in 2006, when the Islamist party Hamas swept to victory in parliamentary elections that the Union officially considered as fair and democratic.



Murray called on the Union to rethink the willingness it has shown to repair civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, destroyed by Israel.
The European Commission has estimated that 44 million euros (60 million dollars) worth of damage has been done by Israel to EU-funded projects in the Palestinian territories.
“The EU has picked up the tab for Israel,” he said. “The EU has paid for reconstruction and never asked for a penny back. It has allowed Israel to ignore its responsibilities under international law.”
Richard Kuper, London-based spokesman for European Jews for a Just Peace, alleged that Israel has carried out “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention; agreed in 1949, it sets out the rights of people under foreign occupation.
He contended that Israel has been singled out for ’special treatment’ by both the EU and the U.S. Unlike other countries in the surrounding region, Israel has been allowed to develop nuclear weapons and has not been held to account for ignoring UN Security Council resolutions.


This was just an excerpt of the press release, if you’re interested in the whole article follow this link.

Iran says IAEA Atom Report Shows Us Charges Wrong

VIENNA - Iran’s uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity and is far from producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts, according to a confidential U.N. nuclear watchdog report obtained by Reuters.

A senior Iranian nuclear official said the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report showed U.S. suspicions about Tehran’s nuclear intentions were baseless. Officials familiar with the report said the IAEA could open future inquiries into Iran’s atomic activity if new suspicions arose, even after Tehran answers questions about the program under a transparency deal reached this month.

Western leaders suspect Iran wants to build atom bombs, not generate electricity, and were alarmed when Tehran said in April it had reached “industrial capacity” to enrich uranium. But the IAEA report said Tehran remained far short of that threshold. Iran had just under 2,000 centrifuges divided into 12 cascades, or interlinked units, of 164 machines each refining uranium at its underground Natanz plant as of August 19, it said. A 13th cascade was being run test-run empty, another was stationary undergoing tests under vacuum and two more cascades were being assembled, said the report, sent to the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors and U.N. Security Council members. “Iran made a fast start but then there was a leveling off,” said a senior U.N. official versed in the IAEA’s findings. “We don’t know the reasons, but the slow pace continues.” The report’s detail on new Iranian cooperation with inspectors and Tehran’s lack of significant enrichment progress are likely to blunt Washington’s push for painful sanctions.

The rest of the press release by Reuters at the following link.

On Poverty, Maybe We're All Wrong by Steven Pearlstein

This week in the Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein had a very interesting view on poverty.

"It is more than a bit disingenuous for liberals to push for worthwhile programs like food stamps, housing vouchers, child tax credits and the earned income tax credit -- and then to constantly cite official income and poverty statistics that do not include the impact of food stamps, housing vouchers, child tax credits and the earned income tax credit. At the same time, these revisions help put the lie to the right-wing conceit that government tax and transfer policies only make poverty worse.
Conservatives are left to fall back on the argument that government handouts and social insurance programs, while appearing to lift some out of poverty, have created a permanent underclass by discouraging work and thrift and fostering a culture of dependence. Much better, conservatives say, to do away with all those patronizing and inefficient social welfare schemes that create perverse incentives and "empower" the poor to act in their own best interest using the same traditional market mechanisms as everyone else.

The best refutation of this argument that I've seen in a long time is contained in a new book, "The Persistence of Poverty," by a friend of mine, Charles "Buddy" Karelis, a professor at George Washington University. Karelis isn't an economist or social welfare expert but a philosopher by profession with wide-ranging curiosity, a dry wit and a weakness for unconventional wisdom. And after doing lots of reading and giving it extensive thought, Karelis concluded that the reason some people are perpetually poor is that they don't have enough money.
Let me say that this isn't as self-evident, or tautological, a truth as it might appear. Rather, the argument goes something like this: The reason the poor are poor is that they are more likely to not finish school, not work, not save, and get hooked on drugs and alcohol and run afoul of the law.

Liberals tend to blame it on history (slavery) or lack of opportunity (poor schools, discrimination), while conservatives blame government (welfare) and personal failings (lack of discipline), but both sides agree that these behaviors are so contrary to self-interest that they must be irrational. After all, the reason we study, work, save and generally behave ourselves is that these behaviors allow us to earn more money, and more money will improve our lives.
And, by logic, that must be particularly true of the poor, for whom each extra dollar to be earned or saved for a rainy day is surely more valuable than it is for, say, Bill Gates. In economics, this insight -- that the fifth ice cream sundae is less valuable than the first one -- is enshrined in the law of diminishing marginal utility.

But what if this iron law of economics is wrong? What if it doesn't apply at every point along the income scale? If you and everyone around you are desperately poor, maybe it's perfectly rational to think that an extra dollar or two won't make much of a difference in reducing your misery. Or that you won't be able to "study" your way out of the ghetto. Or that if you find a $100 bill on the street, maybe it's logical to blow it on one great night on the town rather than portion it out a dollar a day for 100 days."

This is only a partial citing of Pearlstein's article. For the rest of the article follow this link.

Book review: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Card is an author that has worked in many genres. Card started in the science fiction genre (Capitol and the Ender saga) and moved on later to the fantasy genre. He remains best known for the seminal “Ender’s game”, which has been among the most popular sci-fi novels ever since its publication in 1986. “Ender’s Game” and its sequel “Speaker for the dead” were awarded both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author ever to win both of sci-fi's top prizes in consecutive years.

Ender is the youngest in a family of two boys and one girl. This is strange in a world where the government allows most people to have only one. The reason this family was allowed to have 3 children was that Peter (the older brother) was far too cruel, while Valentine (the older sister) was the sum mum of altruism. Ender is in the middle of this carrying the best elements of both of them. He has both Peter's ability to lack mercy when forced to as well as Valentine's ability to feel empathy with every other living being. The government was established in order to withhold a possible third invasion of the 'buggers' (an alien race that almost succeeded in annihilating the human race in earlier invasions). This government selects the most appropriate children in order to create a commander that could live up to Mazor Rackham, the most capable and ruthless commander in human history. As they believe that with Ender they achieved their goal, Ender is taken to the battle school when he’s seven.

The rest of the novel follows Ender’s stay in the battle school, each and every time his capabilities stretched to the maximum and then some. It’s a novel from the point of view of a little child that is suddenly forced to use his capabilities in order to stay up in a miniature ‘survival of the fittest’ society, brought to perspective by the need for ruthlessness in a real life ‘survival of the fittest’ race against the buggers.

As you probably have already figured out by now, I'm a big fan of 'Ender's game'. What attracted me in this book is that the reader feels so related to Ender. You read about his struggle, his doubt and his despair. This and terrific yet disturbing inventions like the war game, creating analogies with ‘Lord of the Flies’, make Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game a classic in the Science fiction genre! This novel to me definitely deserves a 10 out of 10.