Author: Mick Hartley

t only when defined in fat volumes and not delivered as a meaningless sound-bite. Packer uses this dynamic between the grandly abstract and the hard facts to develop the tension in his book, contrasting the slippery, often fantastical process of thinking that led to Iraq’s invasion with the disaster that followed.

I wonder how many Iraqis would agree with Beaumont’s contemptuous dismissal of freedom in Iraq as an abstraction, a meaningless sound-bite. Easy to say, no doubt, for someone who’s never lived under a terror regime, never had to monitor every word in case a casual comment resulted in a visit by the Secret Police and perhaps the chance to watch your daughter being raped and tortured. But, unthinkable as it may be for some in the West, there are countries where the idea of freedom isn’t taken for granted, just as there was a time when it wasn’t taken for granted here. Heck, some people even fought and died for it.

As for the contention that US operations in Iraq “have never served any political goal that could be realised”, well, there are no doubt many criticisms to be made of the way the invasion and occupation have been conducted, but it takes a special effort of will to ignore the fact that the major purpose of the invasion, to overthrow Saddam’s regime, was, to judge from the fact that Saddam is now on trial, completely successful. As for establishing the groundwork for a new democratic Iraq, it may for Beaumont be a complete waste of time, but millions of Iraqis didn’t seem to think so when they went out to vote, and it seems a pity, to say the least, to condemn their efforts with sneers.

So far so poor then, but this is plain nasty:

Packer [author of “The Assassins’ Gate”, one of the books under review] uses the device of following the progress of a single figure as a motif of the book. That figure is Kanan Makiya, a friend of Packer and author of Republic of Fear, a reconstruction of the brutality of Saddam’s regime, who emerges as a vain, egotistical figure with little knowledge of his own country, whose personality disintegrates in the face of the challenging realities of postwar Iraq.

Nothing like an ad hominem attack when you have no arguments, though Makiya has had plenty of opportunity to get used to this kind of stuff: Edward Said wrote about “Cruelty and Silence“, ‘Most of what Makiya wrote in the book was, in my opinion, revolting, based as it was on cowardly innuendo and false interpretation, but the book, of course, enjoyed a popular moment or two since it confirmed the view in the West that Arabs were villainous and shabby conformists’, and Makiya talks about the character assassination he underwent at the time in his interview with Alan Johnson in the latest Democratiya – an interview, it should be noted, where he doesn’t exactly come across as someone whose personality has disintegrated.

Interestingly in Christopher Hitchens’ (positive) review of The Assassins’ Gate (scroll down, “from Publishers Weekly”) he mentions “the impressive exile Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya”. Hmm.

gainst a tree and pawing the earth. The narrator says they are fighting over a piece of fish. They attack each other with bites to the neck in an enclosure with vertical steel bars. Then the film is spliced and the viewer sees two foxes with wet fur in a different cage built of fine-mesh chicken wire. After a few violent seconds, the scene instantly cuts back to the cage of vertical bars and the scene ends when one fox locks into the other with a death bite.

In another scene, a lioness and a tiger are trapped in what appears to be a zoo cage. The background is of iron bars and fake rocks made of poured concrete. The animals growl. Though there is no explanation of why the two are poised to fight, it is assumed the battle is between two territorial animals being forced to share a small cage. The two tear into each other, with the lioness often fighting from her back.

From this brief scene, the narrator posits that the lioness is cowardly and the tiger is the more powerful of these alpha-predators, hinting at animistic nationalism, in the sense that “our native beast is stronger than the foreign beast”. The North Korean army chose the tiger as its symbolic mascot, named Hokuk-i, the “nation-defending tiger”. Similarly, the tiger is used in numerous symbols in South Korea. Yet in the past neither country has protected the cherished icon.

Korea’s Siberian tiger is is one of the most endangered large animals in the world. In pre-industrial Korea the tiger ranged throughout the peninsula, but the last confirmed sighting in South Korea was in 1946 in the Sorak mountain range. A few are thought to exist in the Baekdu Mountain region, but the lack of field evidence puts this in doubt. […]

But the tigers are not the only endangered species from the peninsula featured in the film. A lioness is matched with an Asiatic black bear, called by Koreans a half-moon bear because of the white crescent on its chest. The destruction of the native population of half-moon bears is a dark chapter in Korea. […]

With chronic shortages of all supplies and the country on the edge of famine, questions about the care of animals in a North Korean zoo would be natural. This film does little to provide assurances that Pyongyang Central Zoo animals are being properly looked after.

tside world condemned them,’ he said. ‘But the Communist party has taken the lives of 80 million people, 13 times more than the death toll among the Jews, yet the world says nothing.’

Gao’s comments are particularly remarkable because he still lives in Beijing, where he is vulnerable to retribution. He says his phone is bugged, his 12-year-old daughter is followed to school and more than 30 agents monitor his every move. Last month, his law firm’s licence was revoked and last week he was warned he faces arrest. Ten days ago an unmarked car attempted to run him down. But he is defiant.

Already one of the most prominent lawyers of his generation, Gao, 41 has taken a public stand – via the internet – in favour of the most oppressed groups in China: democracy campaigners, victims of religious persecution, mine accident widows and peasants who have had their land seized by the authorities: ‘The Communist party has done too many evil and cruel things. So I must fight them.’ […]

Many in the outside world argue that political liberalisation will follow automatically with increased affluence. One is Tony Blair, who said there was ‘unstoppable momentum’ towards greater political freedom. Gao said such an argument was just an excuse for the west to trade with a human rights violator.

But he reserved his fiercest criticism for the two European countries that have done most to build close relations with Beijing: ‘Many Chinese people think the governments of France and Germany are as terrible as ours. They are only acting in their self-interest and making a fortune out of the misery of the Chinese people. There will be a price to pay one day for the so-called civilised foreign governments who are honeymooning with the Communist party. I want people in the outside world to understand the situation in China. We face a party with millions of troops. I have dozens of plainclothes police around my home. It is hard to use words like understanding and forgiveness with them.’

The fact that Gao is still free is perhaps the government’s best defence against the lawyer’s most strident accusations. Twenty years ago, such an anti-government tirade would have quickly resulted in imprisonment or death. Gao believes he has been left at semi-liberty because the authorities are worried about domestic protests and an international outcry if he is arrested.

‘They threaten to arrest me and I say, “Go ahead,”‘ he says. ‘I am a warrior who does not care whether I live or die. Such a sacrifice will be nothing to me if it speeds the death of this dictatorship.’

From the Scotsman, “World leaders join to remember Holocaust”:

In Turkey, the foreign ministry said: “We respectfully commemorate the deaths of all people who died in the Holocaust. We hope all humanity will learn the necessary lessons of this horrifying period with no match in history, so that similar events will not be repeated.”

Turkish Sultan Beyazid II let Jews into the Ottoman Empire after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Turkey also aided Jews fleeing the Holocaust.

“The Jewish academics who took refuge in our country took positions at universities and made important contributions to the education of our children,” the statement said.

The Armenians weren’t quite so fortunate.

David Wallechinsky, the man behind the World’s Worst Dictators list, is interviewed in the Washington Post (via):

Q. Any potential “hot” dictators we should keep an eye on for next year’s rankings?

A. Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia [No. 18]. He keeps getting worse. If his police keep arresting and shooting people, he’s definitely gonna be someone to watch.

Q. Do dictators ever call to complain about their rankings?

A. A lot of these governments have PR firms, so I hear from them. I always get letters from Saudi and Chinese apologists. […]

Q. Do you have a daughter?

A. No.

Q. If you did, which dictator would you least want her to marry?

A. King Abdullah [Saudi Arabia, No. 7]. Do you know how they treat women in that country?

And this:

The majority of the complaints I get is that I didn’t include George Bush on the list. I’m not a supporter of George Bush, but he’s not a dictator. If he canceled the 2008 election, then he’d be a dictator.

His recent secretive trip to Southern China suggests that the Great Leader is thinking of taking his country down the same capitalist road the Chinese have embarked on – or is being pressured in that direction by the Chinese leadership. But North Korea isn’t China:

In his latest trip, Mr. Kim’s entourage included many economic officials presumably raring to replicate Chinese-style reforms at home.

This time, he visited special economic zones and singled them out in a speech at a banquet organized in his honor by President Hu Jintao, raising expectations that a new round of economic liberalization would entail the creation of similar capitalist enclaves. In addition to expanding two zones just north of the demilitarized zone, analysts said, the North might resurrect two dormant ones along its borders with China and Russia.

The one bordering China, in the northwest city of Sinuiju, was made a special economic zone in 2002. But the man North Korea designated as its chief executive officer, a Dutch-Chinese businessman, was arrested by the Chinese authorities for fraud and bribery before the zone could open.

In China, the special zones allowed Beijing to largely confine the side effects of free markets to the southern coast, while maintaining its grip politically. But the social transformations of rapid growth are likely to be felt far more acutely in a smaller country like North Korea, whose leadership has yet to show any hint of political openness.

“The reforms have been done in a halting manner because Kim Jong Il seems to want the benefits of economic reforms but none of the risks,” said Bruce Klingner, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy. “His overriding concern is his regime’s hold on power. In China, Deng Xiaoping had to fight his own senior leadership. He was clearly the driving force behind the economic reforms.”

Economists cite other crucial differences that may curb North Korea’s efforts to pull off Chinese-style market reforms. While China used its large agricultural sector to expand its industrial base, the North’s economy is already largely industrialized, albeit with hulking, Stalinist factories that are all but useless.

This (via Barcepundit) is interesting:

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”

Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”

Chokri Mahassine observes, “The Netherlands have developed from a dictatorship of tolerance to a dictatorship of intolerance. This is an unworthy proposal for a democracy. It is nobody’s business what language I speak in the street.”

Some tasteful rhetoric from the Iranian Defence Minister:

“Zionists should know that if they do anything evil against Iran, the response of Iran’s armed forces will be so firm that it will send them into eternal coma, like Sharon,” Gen. Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said.

And now, improbably, the UK gets accused:

Iran has accused the UK of co-operating with bombers who killed eight people in attacks in the restive south-western city of Ahwaz on Tuesday.

“Britain must respond to the doubts of Iranians concerning the events,” said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

Mr Mottaki said the masterminds of the bombing “or people of their mind” had been photographed with UK officials….

A little-known ethnic Arab separatist group has said it was behind the blasts inside a private bank and state environmental agency on Tuesday.

“Our heroes… in the military wing of The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz attacked and destroyed the dens of the occupying enemy,” a statement posted on a website said.

The latest addition to French cuisine. From the BBC:

Charity groups with far-right links serving pork soup to homeless people face a crackdown by French officials.

Protesters have accused the groups of deliberate discrimination against Jews and Muslims, who do not eat the meat.

Strasbourg officials have banned the hand-outs and police in Paris have closed soup kitchens in an effort to avert racial tension.

The charities have defended offering what they call traditional cuisine to French and European homeless people.

The groups, operating in cities across France and neighbouring Belgium, are not formally linked but are associated with a small far-right organisation called Bloc Identitaire.