Author: Mick Hartley

Ahmed Elzobier, in the Sudan Tribune, on the Zionist conspiracy theories peddled by Sudanese leader Omar Al-Bashir (via ALDaily):

To consolidate the Jewish conspiracy theory claims, the infamous document of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” [is] adopted as a gospel truth. Although after the World War 2, and the holocaust most of the world has generally rejected claims that these protocols could represent factual evidence of a real Jewish conspiracy. The exception to this is the Middle East, where large numbers of Arabs and Muslims regimes and leaders have endorsed them as authentic. […]

Sudan current political leaders and their supporters have followed blindly this particular brand of conspiracy theory that, “Jews is behind every thing”. In case of Darfur “Where Muslim government is killing their fellow Muslims” they have used desperate strategy to shift responsibly [sic] and divert blames. In New York Sudan leader displayed all the symptoms that have made this country a laughing stock of the world. Speaking in the annual U.N. General Assembly debate, Al-Bashir claimed that Zionist groups wanted to weaken Sudan and that Jewish organizations were behind dozens of recent rallies. He said Israel was spreading a lie that Sudanese Arabs are killing Sudanese Africans. According to Al-Bashir increasingly paranoid mind the UN wants to colonize Sudan as if the UN is a country; also he accused protesting organizations as plotters and schemers against Sudan.

Maybe he gets his ideas from reading some of the comments at the Guardian’s CiF.

Today’s the 70th anniversary of the legendary Battle of Cable Street. This excellent post (apart from mis-spelling Mosley as Moseley) at Metafilter has all the links.

Much of Cable Street today is in George Galloway’s constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow. Some kind of irony, perhaps.

From an essay by Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) on John Carey’s latest, “What Good are the Arts?“:

It is an elementary mistake to demand too much precision of a word and then conclude that, because all definitions of it are fuzzy, it has no meaning at all.

‘s the answer then?

Tibi: Muslims have to give up three things if they want to become Europeans: They have to bid farewell to the idea of converting others, and renounce the Jihad. The Jihad is not just a way of testing yourself but also means using violence to spread Islam. The third thing they need to give up is the Shariah, which is the Islamic legal system. This is incompatible with the German constitution. There are also two things they need to redefine.

SPIEGEL: Which are?

Tibi: Pluralism and tolerance are pillars of modern society. That has to be accepted. But pluralism doesn’t just mean diversity. It means that we share the same rules and values, and are still nevertheless different. Islam doesn’t have this idea. And Islam also has no tradition of tolerance. In Islam tolerance means that Christians and Jews are allowed to live under the protection of Muslims but never as citizens with the same rights. What Muslims call tolerance is nothing other than discrimination.

SPIEGEL: How many of the 3 million Muslims living in Germany would agree to these demands?

Tibi: A few thousand perhaps.

c Society, whose director said that referring to autism as a means of conveying criticism of someone’s personal skills risked stigmatising the 535,000 people in Britain on the autistic spectrum.

Carol Evans, a director of the society, said: “Any pejorative use of terms relating to autism can cause deep distress and hurt to people affected by the condition. We as a charity are keen to raise awareness in order that these terms are not used lightly by commentators. To use such terms as a criticism of someone’s social skills only perpetuates the confusion that surrounds the condition.”

Nick Hornby, the best-selling writer whose 13-year-old son, Danny, has autism, joined the attack on Mr Osborne, saying that it was not acceptable to taunt an opponent as autistic.

Mr Hornby, who helped to found TreeHouse, an educational charity for children with autism, said: “George Osborne doesn’t seem to have noticed that most people over the age of 8 no longer use serious and distressing disabilities as a way of taunting people.”

There’s no story here: this is manufactured outrage. Osborne didn’t even introduce the word autistic – it was Mary Ann Sieghart who suggested that the term might apply to Osborne himself, who then, quite adroitly, turned it against Gordon Brown.

Anyway, the term is not inappropriate. It’s a problem of social interaction (not “learning difficulties”, as the article states) which goes all the way from full-blown autism, through Asperger’s Syndrome, to a general social incompetence. It’s a useful shorthand for that whole, particularly male, anorak mentality. In the circumstances it was an effective gibe for a Tory politician to make against Brown.

And should a charity dedicated to autism be promoting the idea that to call someone “autistic” is insulting? Will we be expected from now on to say “socially challenged” instead?

Via Solomonia, an Amnesty report on seven Iranian women who face death by stoning:

Parisa was arrested in April 2004, while working as a prostitute in the city of Shiraz in southern Iran. She confessed to the charge of adultery during the preliminary investigations, claiming that she had been forced into prostitution by her husband due to the family’s poverty. Her trial took place in June 2004, during which Parisa retracted her confession. Nevertheless, on 21 June 2004, Branch 5 of Fars province Criminal Court sentenced her to death by stoning for adultery. The sentence was upheld by Branch 32 of the Supreme Court on 15 November 2005. Her case is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court. Parisa is detained in Adelabad prison in Shiraz.

Shamameh Ghorbani (also known as Malek), arrested in June 2005, was sentenced to execution by stoning for adultery by a court in Oromieh in June 2006. She is reportedly held in Oromieh prison. Her brothers and husband reportedly murdered a man that they found in her house, and she too was nearly killed after they stabbed her with a knife. Shamameh Ghorbani’s case is reportedly being re-examined.

Kobra Najjar, who is detained in Tabriz prison in northwestern Iran, is at imminent risk of execution. She was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for being an accomplice to the murder of her husband, and execution by stoning for adultery. She was scheduled to be executed after serving her prison sentence, which was finished two years ago. She has reportedly written to the Judicial Commission for Amnesty to ask for her sentence of execution by stoning to be commuted, and is awaiting a reply. Kobra Najjar was allegedly forced into prostitution by her husband, a heroin addict who was violent towards her. In 1995, after a severe beating by her husband, she told one of her regular customers that she wanted to kill her husband. The customer allegedly murdered her husband after Kobra Najjar took him to an arranged meeting place. He was sentenced to death, but he was pardoned by the victim’s family, to whom he paid diyeh (blood money).

Meanwhile, apparently with no trace of irony:

Iran has selected a movie defending women’s rights to represent the Islamic Republic at the Academy Awards next year in the best foreign film category, media reported on Sunday. “Cafe Transit” by Kambosia Partovi tells the story of a recently widowed woman who decides to run her husband’s truck-stop restaurant near a border village while fending off solicitations of her brother-in-law, who according to tradition has to marry her as a second wife.

Any guesses as to which sport has taken off in Iran to such an extent that the national association can now boast 600,000 members, after just two years’ existence?

Dressed in the compulsory Islamic headscarf and a knee-length coat modestly adorned with the stripes of the national colors of Iran, Sahar Zohouri, 20, is Iran’s top female player.

She shows off her class – which took her to a silver medal earlier this month at the Asia Pacific Cup women’s singles in Kuala Lumpur – by elegantly […] with ruthless ease.

“When I started playing […] I wanted to be the best in Iran. Then I wanted to become one of the best in Asia. Now I’m thinking about the world and I want a top three in the world championships,” she said.

Check it out here.

Baraka Mohamed, 56, lawyer:

What is happening in Darfur is a result of many years of persecution against specific tribes in the province.

These tribes are viewed with contempt such as my tribe, the Fur. When I was at school, I was beaten if I didn’t speak Arabic even though my tribe has its own language. This and other forms of “forced Arabisation” suggests the disrespect with which we are viewed.

This attitude is not confined to the Sudanese government – other Arab and Muslim countries are included.

Has a single Arab or Muslim country condemned what is happening in Darfur?

From my experience as a Sudanese member of parliament (2001 – 2005) for Darfur, I can confirm that what is going on is genocide….

I support the deployment of international forces because the 7,000-strong African Union (AU) forces are incapable of protecting themselves, never mind the people of Darfur. They have been repeatedly attacked in the past.

The international forces will be empowered to stop the attacks and put pressure on the government, unlike the AU which does nothing but write reports whenever an attack occurs.

I find the attitudes of those who claim that the deployment of international forces would only bring colonial forces to Sudan odd.

Why don’t they think of hundreds of thousands of Darfuris who were either killed or driven from their homes? Aren’t they human beings who deserve protection?

rse atrocities in the course of ending them. From Rwanda, many people drew the lesson that failure to intervene is the worse option. The Iraq war may be the first step in unlearning this lesson. If not, an intervention in Darfur surely will be.

But Darfur isn’t like Iraq. The plan is for UN forces to police the vast area of Darfur where the killings are taking place, not to overthrow the regime in Khartoum. That the Sudanese government has reacted so vehemently against the idea should be no surprise, and is a fairly good indication of their future plans.

It’s interesting that Posner argues his case only with relation to Iraq, and refers to Rwanda only in passing, and not at all to Bosnia. The case for humanitarian intervention in both these latter cases was overwhelming – as Adam Le Bor shows in his Times article today, where he presents a strong case against Kofi Annan’s leadership of an increasingly ineffective UN.

The truth is, of course, that each case needs to be taken on its merits. About Darfur, I don’t know: maybe Posner’s right. If UN intervention is taken as an act of war by the Khartoum regime, and is greeted by the familiar Arab rhetoric that a new crusade is being launched by the West against Islam, then the outlook would, most definitely, not be good. On the other hand the threat of intervention surely needs to be maintained, to keep the pressure on the government to enter into further talks.

I don’t know Eric Posner’s politics, or whether he considers himself to be of the left, but this certainly isn’t the usual right-wing argument against intervention: More Africans killing each other? What else is new? It seems a particularly bleak conclusion for someone who professes humanitarian concern for others, that when sections of humanity are being slaughtered, they shouldn’t look to the rest of the world for help.

ld Russian incompetence provide an unexpected way out of the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program?

The question is seriously raised in both Tehran and the major Western capitals as both sides seek a way to prevent the total collapse of the negotiating process. The man who brought up the question is none other than Assistant to the President and Director of the Islamic Republic’s Nuclear Program Ghulam-Reza Aqazadeh. He was in Moscow last week, trying to get “some clear answers” about the fate of Iran’s first and so far only nuclear power plant at Bushehr. […]

When it came to revealing what he really felt about the Russian contractors, Aqazadeh minced no words.

Here is what he said in Moscow last Monday: “The Russians had no experience building nuclear plants outside their own country, especially in difficult terrain such as the one in Bushehr. The Russian Atom Stroy Export Company suffered from many weaknesses, in scientific, technological, financial and managerial fields. Had I been present when the decision was made, I would certainly not have signed the contract with them.” […]

So, if Iran does not have any nuclear power plant and is unlikely to have one working for another year or so, what is the point of picking a quarrel with the United Nations over uranium enrichment?

The Islamic republic could easily suspend uranium procession and enrichment pending the completion of its first nuclear power plant. The picture portrayed by Aqazadeh of Russian incompetence lends credence to Ahmadinejad’s assertion that the Islamic republic cannot depend on the Russian promise of providing uranium fuel for the Bushehr plant for the first 10 years of its existence. Nevertheless, it is clear that Iran does not need any uranium fuel for at least another year.

It is, therefore, possible for Tehran to announce a voluntary decision to suspend uranium enrichment for at least six months in order to allow talks to begin with the 5 permanent members of the Un Security Council plus Germany. If the talks go well, Iran could always buy uranium fuel from the 5+1 group or seek their technological support in developing Iran’s domestic processing and enrichment program. And if the projected talks develop in a way that Tehran does not like, it could always walk out and resume uranium enrichment.

The core of the current crisis consists of the suspicion that the Islamic republic is not really interested in nuclear energy and is engaged in a clandestine operation to build atomic weapons. Tehran’s behavior, insisting to go to the edge of war in order to enrich uranium for a nuclear power plant that does not exist, is bound to encourage such suspicion. Aqazadeh has shown a degree of courage rare in despotic regimes. He has exposed a project that has been mismanaged from the start and caused huge political problems without any providing any significant advantages in scientific or commercial terms. His subtext is simple: It is folly to push the nation toward war in the name of what is, after all, a piece of technological junk. He says he would not have signed the contract for what many in Iran already labeled as Chernobyl on the Gulf.