Friday, July 21, 2006

Peace

For me, the ultimate peace is the peace of mind, inner contentment. To have it, I have to piece together all kinds of peace. Peace within my family, peace within my neighborhood, pace within my town, peace within my country, peace within my culture, and then peace with all. Prozac couldn’t give me a peace of mind.

We all want peace. But, what kind of peace? I found a possible answer: a Righteous peace.

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
Theodore Roosevelt
An Autobiography. 1913.

There can be no nobler cause for which to work than the peace of righteousness; and high honor is due those serene and lofty souls who with wisdom and courage, with high idealism tempered by sane facing of the actual facts of life, have striven to bring nearer the day when armed strife between nation and nation, between class and class, between man and man shall end throughout the world. Because all this is true, it is also true that there are no men more ignoble or more foolish, no men whose actions are fraught with greater possibility of mischief to their country and to mankind, than those who exalt unrighteous peace as better than righteous war. The men who have stood highest in our history, as in the history of all countries, are those who scorned injustice, who were incapable of oppressing the weak, or of permitting their country, with their consent, to oppress the weak, but who did not hesitate to draw the sword when to leave it undrawn meant inability to arrest triumphant wrong. Read the rest at Bartleby.

An Address Delivered Before the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, December 17, 1910
Jean Jules Jusserand
With Americans of Past and Present Days. 1916

Does peace mean progress? Is the disappearance of war a sign of improvement or of decay? At a yet recent date learned men, their eyes to their microscopes, were teaching us that among the various kinds of living creatures they had studied, war was the rule; that where struggle ceased, life ceased; and that, since more beings came into the world than the world could feed, the destruction of the weakest was both a necessity and a condition of progress. Struggle, war, violence meant development; peace meant decay. And a bold generalization applied to reasoning man the fate and conditions of unreasoning vermin. Since it was fate, why resist the inevitable and what could be the good of peace debates?

But the stumbling-block that Science had placed on the road to better days has been removed by Science herself. The sweeping conclusions attributed to that great man Darwin by pupils less great have been scrutinized; other experiments, such as he would have conducted himself had he been living, were tried, and their results added to our book of knowledge. Great results, indeed, and notable ones; it turned out that the explanation of transformism, of progress, of survival, was not to be found in a ceaseless war insuring the predominance of the fittest, but in quiet and peaceful adaptation to environment, to climate, and to circumstances. And we French are excusably proud to see that, for having unfolded those truths years before Darwin wrote, due honor is now rendered almost everywhere, and especially in America, to Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, author of the long obscure and now famous Philosophie Zoologique, 1809.

As for the undue multiplication of individuals, statistics unknown to Darwin have since shown that, whatever may be the case with beetles or fishes (and let them work out their own problems according to their own laws), there is, for man at least, no need of self-destruction to ward off such a peril: the general decrease of the rate of reproduction, so striking throughout the world, is all that is wanted, and in some cases is even more than is wanted.

War, therefore, is not our unavoidable fate, and that much of the road has been cleared: a long road followed amid terrible sufferings by mankind through centuries. The chief danger in times past, and partly still in our own, does not result from an ineluctable fate, but from the private disposition of men and of their leaders. And we know what for ages those dispositions were. Former-day chroniclers are wont to mention, as a matter of course, that “the king went to the wars in the season,” as he would have gone a-fishing. People at large saw not only beauty in war (as there is in a just war, and of the highest order, exactly as there is in every duty fulfilled), but they saw in it an unmixed beauty. Men and nations would take pride in their mercilessness, and they were apt to find in the sufferings of an enemy an unalloyed pleasure. Read the rest at Bartleby

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Dissociations

I don’t want to choose between mourning the dead and awaiting their call. I don’t want to fake a smile as I walk down the isle to buy my steak. Can I sleep as they battle the thunders of war? Can I shine my shoes as they march a dirt road? Can I turn my AC on and play with my son? Can I kiss my wife goodbye? Can I be the hunter and the prey? Can I be the victor and the loser? Can I be an American if my mother lives in Beirut?

Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land

Bathsheba Ratzkoff & Sut Jhally
www.rys2sense.com
By Google


Watch video

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported. Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one. The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Arabic Editorials on The Israel-Hezbollah Conflict

The Coup Attempt That Started a War

Payvand's Iran News
7/18/06 By
Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar


As Israeli planes pound the Lebanese infrastructure to sunder, as the Palestinians spend their days and nights in inhumane conditions and under siege, as people in 20 Israeli towns sleep in bomb shelters, Israel threatened to widen the conflict by attacking Syria. According to Baztab.com, an Iranian online newspaper, the Israeli government has given Syria 72 hours to handover the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah or face the consequences. Iran already has declared that any attack on Syria will be considered an attack on the Muslim world (i.e. Iran and others). If Israel attacks Syria, Iran will enter the fray, which will bring in the US, which will involve Iraq and the Persian Gulf countries. In other words any attack on Syria may start a regional war that may engulf the whole region, sending the price of the crude oil to unimaginable levels. Is it possible that a small border skirmish turn into a regional war? The answer is yes.

Read the full article

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Homs, Syria
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Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Dear Mr. Schorr

Dear Mr. Schorr

I was quite surprised by your commentary on NPR yesterday. You seemed puzzled by the death of the peace process and concerned that extremists have hijacked the Middle East. Your analysis shows typical optimism and shortsightedness.

The peace process was born dead. As you know, multiple UN resolutions have clearly defined the goals and guideline for the resolution of the conflict in the Middle East, self determination, establishment of an independent state for Palestinians, return of dispossessed refugees and Jerusalem, and the removal of the Jewish settlements. Israel is in violation of most of these UN resolutions and the peace process was its way of out blame. Israel was able to build a complex web of agreements and structures that made any peace impossible. What is wrong with giving back all of the occupied land for an ever lasting peace.

As for the second item on your bewilderment list, the rising power of Hamas and Hizb Allah, you should probably read The Nation’s online editorial posted on July 14. The two organizations have risen to fill power gaps. These gaps are the result of American and Israeli policies that weakened the Palestinian authority and the Lebanese government, both were democratically elected .

Yours truely

Monday, July 17, 2006

Grownup

My son has recently become concerned with the definition of a grownup. He does no associate it with a particular age; instead, he associates it with certain items. I am not sure how he got these ideas because we have never associated these items with growing up.

My son is fond of music, so we try to let him listen to as much music as possible. The best tool for such an adventure was my iPod which he leaned to use on his own. Few weeks ago, he came to me and said “dad, when I grow up you should get me an iPod and make sure it is a black one.” My iPod is white!

The second item on his list of becoming a grownup is the car, and that was a bit surprising because he is more into trains than cars. So two weeks ago and as he was mounting his car seat, he called on me and had this serious look on his face and said “dad, I want a car.” I responded reminding him that he had lots of car but he did not like that “dad, I mean a car like yours. When I grow up, you should get me a car and an iPod, a black one.”

Yesterday noon, he discovered his third grownup item, the grill. As I prepared food for our guests, he sat out there on the patio under the hot son watching every move I made. Once I finished he said “dad, when I grow up you should get me a grill, a car, and an iPod, and make sure it is black.”

My son is curretly four years old.

Checkmate Iran

No one would argue that the United States would like to solely control the world’s resources of petroleum and its routes of transportation. Saudi Arabia has had the largest known oil reserves in the world and happens to be friendly with the US. This long-term friendship has guaranteed an uninterrupted flow of oil to the US and allowed the kingdom to afford large expensive contracts with US companies.

After securing the kingdom and probably due to rumors of a possible drop in its oil production, the US became aware of the importance of securing other sources of oil. Canada has the second largest oil reserve in the world and probably has no interest in antagonizing the US. The fourth oil reserve is Iraq and is currently pumping under US occupation 2.5 million barrels per day. The third oil reserve and the jewel of the oil crown is Iran with 133 gigabarrels of oil and an averages 1.5 gigabarrels per year, 25% of that during the shah's rule of Iran. Accordingly, taking over Iran would be the next big thing for any oil hungry nation.

Hizb Allah in southern Lebanon and Syria are the main obstacles for the US in taking over Iran. Any attack on Iran would result in a major assault on Israel. Such an attack would mobilize the hibernating Arab World and could lead to a disastrous war. Therefore, is seems logical that before attacking Iran, the US has to reduce these threats of Israel’s neighbors.

How can that happen?

The first move was UN resolution 1559 on September 2, 2004. It called upon Syria to end its military presence in Lebanon and upon all Lebanese militia to disband. This resolution angered the Syrian government. The Lebanese politician and journalists motivated by their nationalism played into the American plot and kept attacking Syria at every occasion.

Nothing much happened until the assassination of Lebanon's beloved former Prime Minister Rafik Al Hariri. Major anti-Syrian demonstrations ereupted and the international community applied massive pressure on Syria to leave Lebanon. The Syrian troops were out of Lebanon by September 26, 2005. By that, the US concluded the second move and it had three major consequence: Hizb Allah does not have the direct physical support of Syria (weaker), Syria cannot restrain Hizb Allah if it needs to (loose), and Lebanon is in violation of UN resolution 1559.

The third move is to disarm Hizb Allah. It is clear from the current conflict that Israel has been preparing for a massive attack on Lebanon. Israel’s purposes are punishing the Lebanese for violating resolution 1559 and implementing that resolution! It is very interesting to note that the current government in Lebanon was democratically elected and was supported by the US and France, that aren't doing much to stop the slaughter of innocents.

Move four will be pressuring Syria to cave in once Hizb Allah is disarmed. The last political cards in Syria’s hand are the fledgling radical Palestinian groups, a stock of chemical weapons, and the instability of Iraq. We should also remember that Syria is still the main suspect in the assassination of Hariri and that investigation is not closed yet. Its outcome will definitely play into the crushing of Damascus’s will.

This gradual pealing of all the layer of power that Iran has built over time will leave her naked for Uncle Sam to consume, the checkmate.