Saturday, June 30, 2007

Sex and family values - A male view

Some timely advice by Sheik Muhammad al-Munajid on Saudi TV, passed on by Eric at Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War.



The basic message is pretty straightforward: "a wife needs to comply with her husband's desires in bed". No ifs, ands, or buts.

However, the Sheik goes on to note with concern, "The wife in the West is not obliged to do so. [....] They claim she must be willing. They claim she must want it. [....] Therefore, the wife doesn't submit to the man whenever he wants. [....] Moreover, a wife can be raped by her husband there. They claim that if he has sex with her against her will -- this is rape!" (Etc.) No wonder we're going to the dogs over here.

Clearly, anyone who believes that Saudi Arabia is more sexually repressive than western societies has it backward (at least, as far as husbands are concerned).

=> Also some useful advice on why female masturbation is riskier than male masturbation: You might tear your hymen--which could cause your relatives to murder you. Of course, that would be wrong ... you should only be flogged. But the moral is clear: Save yourself for your husband.

--Jeff Weintraub

(P.S. And in case you leave the house, here's some further advice.)

Politics, words, ideas, and their possibilities - A roundup

The force of arguments meets the argument of force. From Lorenzo at Linkage:
Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa on the corruptions of dictatorship and the power of words. A (murdered) Russian journalist and an African and (murdered) Turkish writer are honoured with (pdf) International Publisher Associations awards.

On the career and posthumous post-modernist triumphs of Mikhail Bakhtin. (Though I wish Terry Eagleton would stop using that wank term late capitalism: we have no idea how far into the history of capitalism we are. A term which, in various incarnations, has been around for 160 years or so, it is getting really tired.)
[....]
Reminiscences and retrospectives on philosopher Richard Rorty.
--Jeff Weintraub

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Tom Cushman reviews Markovits on European anti-Americanism

Back in February I posted a few items about Andy Markovits's book on European anti-Americanism, Uncouth Nation. As I said at the time:
My good friend Andy Markovits has written an important, engaging, and eye-opening book on the complex and tricky subject of European anti-Americanism. The main focus is on its current forms and transformations, but he also puts these in a larger historical perspective.

This book first appeared in Germany, where Markovits has a significant presence as a public intellectual, with the title Amerika, dich haßt sich's besser. A revised English-language version has now been published as Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America. The book is valuable and illuminating as well as absorbing (and highly readable), and I recommend it to everyone.

Markovits's arguments are also likely to be controversial--but many of the reasons only help to explain why this is a book that needed to be written. [....]
Sure enough, the book provoked some apoplectic reactions and snotty dismissals. But it's also generated some serious discussion and received a good deal of favorable attention and appreciation, including enthusiastic jacket blurbs from the likes of Joschka Fischer, Michael Walzer, and Ira Katznelson and some first-rate positive reviews by Jeffrey Kopstein, Sasha Abramsky, and others. (Even the reviewer for the New Statesman--a publication that often displays precisely the kinds of pathologies analyzed by Markovits--was forced to concede that "Markovits's research is wide-ranging and deep, and he writes with clarity, precision and insight.")

Now we can add to that list a thoughtful, intelligent, and engagingly opinionated review essay by Thomas Cushman that appeared in the latest issue of Democratiya.

--Jeff Weintraub
====================
Democratiya
Summer 2007

REVIEW OF:
Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America
by Andrei Markovits
Princeton University Press, 2007,275 pp.

Thomas Cushman

Introduction
Most Americans who have traveled to Europe, regardless of their political sympathies, race, class or gender, will be all too familiar with the topic of this wonderfully readable, sociologically powerful, and courageous new book by Andrei Markovits. The following scenario might be familiar to some readers: you are at a conference in Europe and you are sitting in a café with your European colleagues. The topic of America comes up. It could be politics, or culture, the behavior of the Bush administration or the recent successes of a string of very bad movies. Or, it could be praise of someone or something, a political leader or a very bad movie which is critical of the United States. Based on past experience, you sense beneath the veneer of civility what is to come. You preemptively opine that you don't speak for all Americans and that in general you most likely share the perspective of your liberal-minded interlocutors.

To no avail, though. Soon the delivery of the questions ramps up, each member of the group sustaining and supporting each other member's lines of attack. Why is your president prosecuting a foolish war? Why won't the US sign the Treaty of Rome? Why does America not realise the dangers of global warming and sign the Kyoto protocols? Why does America consider itself exceptional and resist civilised European ideas of cosmopolitan citizenship? Soon, such seemingly reasonable questions descend into more general and even essentialist forms: why are Americans so violent? Why does America insist on war when the rest of the 'world community' dreams of perpetual peace? Why are Americans so stupid so as to elect George Bush as president not once but twice? A German whose father was an SS officer, a Frenchman whose uncle was a Nazi collaborator, or a Briton whose grandfather massacred Boers in South Africa might ask these questions, incidentally. And they might be asked on European soil, of which George Orwell once said that not one grain was unstained by blood.

Soon, you feel as if you are on trial, and you have become, despite all efforts to the contrary, the totem of your 'people' around which those present have now become a collective 'other', united if even for a brief moment by the evil spirits they have conjured for the occasion. You either profusely apologise to your colleagues for being an American and express shame, regret or self-loathing and in this case you may maintain some of your standing among them. Or you just go quiet and hope that the whole set of issues will just go away, in which case you are guilty of complicity qui tacit consentit - 'he who is silent consents.' Or you fight back, acknowledging the criticisms of your country, but defending other aspects of your own society. And if you choose this latter course, you will invariably be labeled as that which your European interlocutors need for their own sense of self-identity more than anything else: an ugly, uncouth American.

Anti-Americanism, with its infinitude of ethnographic mutations, is omnipresent in Europe: in the high halls of academia, in the corridors of power, on the channels of the mass media, street and marketplace, cafes and barrooms, and in the home. As Markovits notes, it is 'a generalized and comprehensive normative dislike of America and things American that often lacks distinct reasons or concrete causes. Anti-Americanism has all the tropes of a classic prejudice.' (p. 17). What is most important about anti-Americanism, for Markovits, is that it is an undifferentiated feeling (or what Todd Gitlin refers to as 'an emotion masquerading as an analysis') which may be related in some vague way to what America does, but is actually quite independent of that: it is an essentialist discourse which, at its very core, seeks to fix the meaning of 'America' and its society and culture in a negative way. Although Markovits doesn't exactly put it this way, it might be said that, conceptually, America is a kind of vessel which is engorged with socially constructed myths of evil. And it is this shared appreciation of these myths of American evil – its impurity and dangerousness - which acts as a cultural integument holding Europeans together in spite of their quite radical differences and their savage and bloody past.

This is the underlying theme of this important new book. Markovits provides us with an in-depth examination of this most enduring and important cultural phenomenon. While it is a global phenomenon, Markovits focuses primarily on anti-Americanism in the countries of Western Europe, in particular in Great Britain, Germany, and France. His task is a contrarian one, since most intellectuals and scholars share a certain proclivity toward anti-Americanism, ranging from a weak form of distaste for America and its culture to a hatred which is unequivocally and unabashedly essentialist and even racist. Among global liberal elites, an attitude of disdain of America is de rigueur and even necessary for admission to the status groups of the cultural elite. And so to write critically of anti-Americanism is, in a sense, at least from the standpoint of the intellectuals, subversive. In this light, Markovits's book is a welcome breath of fresh air, for rather than subject himself to the stultifying and conformist force of anti-Americanism, a force which leads many American anti-Americans into a position of isolated self-loathing and cynical bitterness, Markovits goes on the offensive. The result is a powerful critical historical analysis of Europe's most deep-seated prejudice.

America: The Antonymous Other
In an opening chapter, Markovits explores the history of European anti-Americanism and notes that 'an era never existed [in European history] in which European intellectuals and European elites – viewed the United States without a solid base of resentment or better, ressentiment. Accompanying this resentment, one will usually find envy, jealousy, hatred, denigration, as well as a sense of impotence and repressed revenge. Add to this the ingredient of schadenfreude, and this resentment becomes part of a potent mixture of simultaneous feelings of inferiority and superiority.' (p. 18-19). The value of Markovits's account is that he demonstrates an unbroken line of anti-Americanism which has existed since the colonisation of America, intensified during and after the foundation of the republic, and reached its current apogee with the development of the global American empire. From the very beginning, especially among the cultural elites of the countries which were carving up the new continent, America was constructed as a dark and savage place – in Markovits's terms, an 'antonymous other' used as a constant measure of European cultural superiority. Markovits is keen to show us throughout the book that America has constantly served the function of the cultural 'other', the profane force against which a sacred and superior ideology of Europeanism was hammered out.

Markovits skillfully excavates the historical discourse of anti-Americanism and shows convincingly that a sense of America as savage, barbaric, vapid, hollow, degenerate and completely lacking in virtue was a fundamental staple of the most prominent European intellectuals and spilled over into European societies at large. Markovits's archaeology of European anti-Americanism is indispensable to understanding contemporary patterns of anti-Americanism. Sociologically, the data which Markovits presents make an excellent case for taking cultural continuities seriously. Cultures, especially those as strong as the culture of anti-Americanism, persist over the longue duree of history, embedded even within rapidly changing societies, providing the tools which people use to forge and legitimate their own projects and agendas. One would imagine that the almost atavistic tribalism of Europeans, crystallised in an ideology of 'Europeanism', ought to have dissipated with the advent of modernity and the recognition that, despite their differences, Western liberal democracies were united by a common culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. Long after the fascists were defeated, anti-Americanism remains alive and well - a deep vein of sentiment and an extremely powerful independent force shaping social outcomes.

Run! The Americans are Coming!
Perhaps the most interesting chapter in the book is Chapter Three, provocatively entitled 'The Perceived "Americanization" of All Aspects of European Lives: A Discourse of Irritation and Condescension.' In this chapter, Markovits notes that anti-Americanism is not in any meaningful sense an analytical discourse but an independent force which 'serves the purpose of confirming and mobilising pre-existing [European] prejudices'. While American actions can bring about spikes in the expression of anti-Americanism, what Markovits wants us to know is that these actions do less to produce anti-Americanism than to mobilise a deep-seated and obdurate cultural discourse which is latent within European culture and which functions to forge the very cultural dispositions of Europeans themselves.

In this chapter, Markovits outlines the discourse of the threat of Americanization in Europe. He notes that the term 'Americanization', throughout western Europe, is always a negative one, to use a German word, a 'Schimpfort (swear word), used frequently by the Right, Left, Center in economics, politics, culture, the social world…' (p. 85). This chapter brilliantly illustrates just how pervasive negative sentiments about America are in the countries of Western Europe. With his intimate knowledge of European affairs, Markovits is able to extract out the best and most telling examples. My personal favorite, not in the book, is Harold Pinter's 'poem', God Bless America.

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.

The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

Pinter, presumably not on the strength of this effort, was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature and his Nobel Lecture was nothing but a prolonged and vicious attack on the US and the UK. The most telling thing about this sordid political spectacle is not to be found in the ramblings of Pinter himself, but in his selection as the Nobel Laureate by the Nobel Committee, the crème de la crème of the European cultural elite. It was a deliberate act of resistance against the 'evil' empire and its crassness was only matched by the sheer banality of Pinter's utterances.

There is no sphere of society that European cultural elites have not identified as being overtly threatened by the insidious process of Americanization. Markovits focuses on such spheres as language, sports, law, crime, mass media and shows how cultural elites define a 'European' identity for these spheres not by celebrating the positive European qualities which would inflect these spheres with 'European-ness', but by stressing the negative American qualities which have an almost magical power to pollute and destroy authentic European values and ways of life. In each case, whether it be the purity of the French language or the integrity of British soccer (excuse me, football), the quality of the workplace in Germany, or the value of higher education, American culture is an omnipresent and omnipotent force which possesses the capability to rend asunder anything that it comes into contact with. As an American, I found myself quite impressed by my nation's power to wreak havoc on the world. Nothing is safe from us, it seems. Markovits notes that when he was in Europe in the summer of 2003 there was a great heat wave. He heard constantly that the hot weather was a result of the American refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol. So, he notes, even the weather is corrupted by American culture.

Twin Brothers: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism
One of the most welcome chapters in the book is Chapter 5, in which Markovits discusses the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. This is an especially important chapter given the present demonisation of Jews and specific actions against Jews in Europe, especially in France. Markovits concurs with Andre Glucksmann that the two cultural forces are actually 'twin brothers.' Anti-Semitism has a much longer history that anti-Americanism, but what it shares is its quality as a powerful cultural force which remains latent within cultures, waiting, as we see with anti-Americanism, to be activated for a variety of purposes. This argument, which gives culture its due as a causative force in history, is reminiscent of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's argument about the power of eliminationist anti-Semitism in German culture which drove Germans to commit mass murder of the Jews.

Markovits outlines the long and sordid history of anti-Semitism in Europe, and one comes away from this sophisticated and original chapter (perhaps the most original chapter in the book) with the knowledge that Europe – the supposed guardian of the Enlightenment and civility – has more often than not served up the most violent and hateful episodes in human history. Later on in the book, Markovits presciently observers that the history of European hate, violence, squalor, injustice, and genocide is rendered invisible to the anti-American ideologists of Europeanism by transposing that very history on America and Americans. Thus, anti-Americanism involves not just a deceptive social construction of the other, but a self-deceptive social construction of European identity and self-hood as well. While anti-Americanism has certainly not had the same outcomes in terms of suffering and mass death as anti-Semitism, Markovits convincingly demonstrates that there is an enduring linkage between the two. The durability and intensity of these 'twin brothers' is an indication that one of Europe's great flaws is its ability to hate and to hate unequivocally and absolutely. Ironically, I can think of no corollary sentiment in America toward Europe: with the exception of the occasional 'Fuck France' bumper sticker from the early days of the Iraq war, my ethnographic sense tells me that Americans are more or less indifferent to Europe, and if anything rather well disposed to travel there and celebrate its charms. This indifference, of course, most likely serves to fuel further anti-Americanism, for nothing breeds resentment so much as when the most powerful pay little attention to those who think they are the most important.

European Totem and Civic Religion
Markovits primary explanation for the deep and enduring anti-Americanism he has uncovered is that it provides a basis for a common identity among a diverse group of nations which constitute Europe. While anti-Americanism always existed in individual countries, it is now even more useful as Europe seeks to define itself as a supranational entity. America is, in Markovits's terms, Europe's 'antonymous other' which is absolutely crucial for the formation of a European 'self'. Interestingly enough, those Europeans who define their societies and their selves in relation to it, notes Markovits, rely on the same kind of logic displayed by Samuel Huntington in his clash of civilisations theory (and they do this at the same time that they decry the latter for its lack of complexity, say, in understanding relations between the West and Islam). In the last chapter, Markovits draws on Hannah Arendt's powerful critique of the dangers of post-war pan-European nationalism, which she quite rightly predicted would rely on the development of 'Europeanism' built to a large extent on a socially constructed edifice of anti-Americanism. Arendt, according to Markovits, very early on in the post-war period recognised that European identity would come at the expense of America.

In the last chapter, Markovits offers a functionalist explanation of anti-Americanism, and it is, indeed, worthwhile to think of this phenomenon in Durkheimian terms as a kind of 'civil religion' with its own myths, rituals, high priests and worshippers. Markovits astutely notes that the mass demonstrations in Europe which took place in the days preceeding the Iraq war were mass rituals of a new identity, a European identity. These collective rituals took place, however, within a Europe in which most heads of European states supported the coalition war in spite of, and in direct contradiction to, the wishes of their people. In Western Europe, only the leaders of France, Germany, Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg opposed the war, a fact which, when told, generally flummoxes those who insist that the entire 'world community' was against the war and, therefore, against America. Interestingly enough, only Jose Maria Aznar of Spain could be said to have lost his job over the war and the same people who had been part of the collective apoplexy over the war regularly returned their pro-American leader-poodles to power in popular votes. So while it is right to specify, as Markovits does, that anti-Americanism is a kind of 'independent variable' which affects and shapes social outcomes, one has to be a bit wary about attributing it more power than it actually has.

Markovits's functional theory of anti-Americanism is an excellent starting point, but does not exhaust the theoretical possibilities for thinking about why anti-Americanism persists as it does in the modern world. This is not a criticism, per se, since the book opens the way for a wide range of new interpretations and future research. Among the most important questions that are not raised, but ought to be explored in future works are: how is anti-Americanism transmitted across time and space in Europe seemingly outside of the influence of any specific historical events (that is, how does it reproduce itself as a cultural discourse)? While it is tempting to rely on the most parsimonious explanation, the kind of functionalist explanation offered by Markovits, one of the most striking characteristics of anti-Americanism appears to be its 'autopoietic' quality. At times, it appears as a self-reproducing, self-contained cultural system of myths, values, and ideas which does not rely on the specific actions of individuals or historical events, but is, rather, a juggernaut-like Ding an Sich to which even those Europeans who revel in it are ultimately held hostage. Also, one of the most curious aspects of anti-Americanism is not addressed by Markovits, that is the coexistence of negative anti-American sentiment with positive pro-American sentiment. It appears that most of the world is not strictly anti-American (although the negative sentiment may win out), but has a kind of schizoid relationship to America, sometimes hating it, sometimes loving it, but in any case conflicted about it. Everyone likes to bash America, but everyone wants to go there as well. Everyone disdains the influence of American culture, but only the most puritanical of Europeanists can actually resist its charms. It is vitally necessary to understand this dualistic love-hate relationship of the rest of the world with America.

Markovits' stellar, finely researched and written account will take its place in the emergent canon of important works by other prominent intellectuals on the phenomenon of anti-Americanism. It is on par with the path-breaking works by Russell Berman, professor at Stanford University and editor of Telos, and Paul Hollander, the Hungarian émigré scholar who has devoted his entire life to the study of the fundamentally irrational forces of political pieties and whose foundational works on anti-Americanism have become classics in that subject. Markovits deserves praise and support for daring to take on the topic of anti-Americanism, for challenging the orthodoxy of anti-Americanism and exposing its irrationality, cultural essentialism, and raw reductionisms. Like other dissidents on the left who criticise the left, Markovits will be labeled an 'American apologist' (even though he takes pains to distinguish a rational critique of certain aspects of American culture and politics from an irrational one) and will be accused of 'moving to the right' for daring to expose the vicissitudes of this most elemental of left-wing pieties. Yet, such outcomes are the price of challenging orthodoxy, and the real value of Markovits book lies not in its appeal to traditional, conservative, patriotic American critics of Europe, but in its appeal to thinking and reflective people who have generally considered themselves left of center, but who no longer wish to hide their own prejudices, biases, and hypocrisy from themselves.

Thomas Cushman is an advisory editor of Democratiya. He is Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College, and Editor of The Journal of Human Rights. His book, A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq (University California Press, 2005), was reviewed in Democratiya 1.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Historic photos from Magnum

Magnum: Photos That Changed the World. Four of them are below. Click HERE for the rest.

(Robert Capa - death of a Republican soldier in the Spanish Civil War, 1936.)

(Segregation in the pre-1960s US South.)

(New York City, September 11, 2001.)


Thanks for the tip from Shaun Mullen at Kiko's House:
[T]he legendary Magnum Photo agency is celebrating its 60th anniversary. Slate has a terrific slide show of the finest of Magnum's finest, including this historic Stuart Franklin photograph of a man confronting Chinese Army tanks in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.
--Jeff Weintraub

Monday, June 25, 2007

UN "Human Rights Travesty" (Irwin Cotler)

This powerful piece by Irwin Cotler follows up one aspect of the UN "Human Rights" update I posted earlier.
The UN Human Rights Council has concluded its year-long session by singling out one member state -- Israel -- for permanent indictment on the council agenda.

This discriminatory treatment is not only prejudicial to Israel, but it is a breach of the United Nations Charter's foundational principle of "equality for all nations, large and small," and it concluded a week -- and year -- of unprecedented discriminatory conduct. [....]

It is not only one state that is under assault. The bell is tolling for the UN Human Rights Council itself. It is time to sound the alarm and return the council to its founding principles and ideals.
Irwin Cotler, a Canadian Member of Parliament and former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, is a major figure in international human rights law. As his Wikipedia mini-bio indicates, his record includes serving as counsel
to former prisoners of conscience Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Jacobo Timerman in Latin America, Muchtar Pakpahan in Asia, as well as other well known political prisoners and dissidents. Cotler represented Natan Sharansky, who was imprisoned in the Soviet gulag for Jewish activism. [....]

Saad Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy activist imprisoned by the Egyptian government, was represented by Cotler and acquitted in 2003. He acted as counsel to Maher Arar during part of Arar's imprisonment and supported demands for a public inquiry. He has also defended both Palestinians and Israelis against their own governments, and participated in a minor role in the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
And so on. Cotler's deep and abiding commitment to the principles of human rights and international law helps to explain the genuine anguish expressed in he piece below, which is worth reading in full.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Boston Globe
June 23, 2007
Human Rights Travesty

By Irwin Cotler

GENEVA. The UN Human Rights Council has concluded its year-long session by singling out one member state -- Israel -- for permanent indictment on the council agenda.

This discriminatory treatment is not only prejudicial to Israel, but it is a breach of the United Nations Charter's foundational principle of "equality for all nations, large and small," and it concluded a week -- and year -- of unprecedented discriminatory conduct.

The week began with Archbishop Desmond Tutu reporting to the UN Human Rights Council on the fact-finding mission to investigate the Israeli "willful killing of Palestinian civilians" in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, in November 2006. He received a standing ovation, an extraordinary reaction by a body that frowns even upon applause.

I suspect the appreciation was as much for the man as anything else. For the mandate that authorized the mission was a sham. It made a mockery of the council's own founding principles and procedures. Accordingly, when I addressed the council that same morning, I made public that I had been invited by the council president last November to join the mission but declined to do so, and I explained why.

I could not accept the mandate because its terms of reference made a mockery of Kofi Annan's vision for the new council and of its founding principles of universality, equality, and fairness.

First, I could not accept a mandate to hear only one side of a dispute. The terms of reference deliberately ignored the Palestinian rocket attacks on the Israeli city of Sderot that preceded Israel's actions. How could one participate in a mandate that denied a member state the right to a fair hearing and fundamental due process?

Second, the mandate also violated the presumption of innocence. The resolution establishing this fact-finding mission began by condemning "the Israeli willful killing of Palestinian civilians." The 19 Palestinian dead were a tragedy. But how could one participate in a fact-finding mission where the facts and the verdict were determined in advance?

It is not surprising, therefore, that the council members that most consistently support the human rights mechanisms of this body -- including Canada -- all refused to support this mandate.

Regrettably, this discriminatory and one-sided approach has become the norm. Council sessions of the past year reflected not only the same contempt for the rule of law, but the systematic singling out of a member state for selective and discriminatory treatment, while granting the major violators exculpatory immunity.

For example, there have been nine resolutions condemning one member state only -- Israel -- but none of any of the other 191 members of the international community, including, for example, no condemnation of the genocide in Darfur nor of the public and direct incitement to genocide and massive human rights violations in Iran.

Indeed, in a world where human rights has emerged as the new secular religion of our time, Israel, portrayed as a meta-human rights violator, emerges as the new anti-Christ of the international arena.

And as if this were not enough, the council has now institutionalized forever the Alice in Wonderland condemnatory process, and the corresponding drumbeats of indictment.

First, the council has now institutionalized the condemnation of Israel as a standing item on the council agenda -- the permanent singling out of a member state for differential and discriminatory treatment.

Second, it has not institutionalized the mandate of the special investigator on "Israeli violations of the principles and bases of international law" in the Palestinian territories -- the only indefinite, open-ended, and one-sided investigative mandate.

The tragedy in all this is not only that it fuels the ongoing delegitimization, if not the demonization, of a member state of the United Nations. Or that it provides succor and assistance to those, like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who envision "a world without Israel," as well as those who target Israel alone as the object of boycotts and sanctions.

Rather, the tragedy is that all of this takes place under the protective cover of the United Nations, with the presumed imprimatur of international law, and the halo banner of human rights.

It is not only one state that is under assault. The bell is tolling for the UN Human Rights Council itself. It is time to sound the alarm and return the council to its founding principles and ideals.

Irwin Cotler is a Canadian member of Parliament and a former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada.

UN "Human Rights" update - The more things change ...

Over the years, all serious observers recognized that the UN's so-called Commission on Human Rights was becoming an increasingly sick joke. Governments with the worst records of human rights abuse were often the most eager to get seats on the Commission (for roughly the same reason that industries in the US try to colonize the federal bureaucracies supposedly in charge of regulating them), and they had little trouble doing so.

For example, in 2003 the African bloc in the UN, whose turn it was to pick the country heading the Human Rights Commission, chose Libya. Then in 2004, just as the campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Darfur was reaching a crescendo, the government of Sudan was given a seat on the Human Rights Commission. And so on

Unsurprisingly, the Commission did fairly little to defend human rights or to condemn most governments guilty of repression or mass atrocities. Its permanent staff sometimes wrote useful reports on cases of crimes against humanity, but these reports often tended to get buried or ignored. However, it's not as though the Commission had nothing to do, since it did steadily churn out resolutions condemning one particular country, Israel. (Routinely, year after year, more than a quarter of all country-specific resolutions condemned Israel--which might seem a little disproportionate for one relatively tiny country in a world where human rights violations are unfortunately not scarce.)

In 2005-2006 a major effort was made to reform, renovate, and reorganize this body and its procedures, and at the beginning of 2006 it was reborn as the UN Human Rights Council. This reform was greeted with skepticism in some quarters and hope in others. What do the results look like so far?

=> The record of its first year was not promising. Here's a snippet from one check-up in August 2006 (UN "Human Rights" Council - Business as usual)
The UN created the 47-member Human Rights Council this year because the former 53-member Human Rights Commission had become virtually controlled by countries with poor human rights records that wanted to short-circuit criticism of their records.

Muslim countries and their backers also used their voting majority to disproportionately single out Israel for condemnation leading the council's architects to say the new body should refrain from staging sessions devoted to attacking one country.

Yet the council's only "country-specific" session so far last month saw member states vote 29-11 to deplore Israel's military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
At the end of 2006, Peggy Hicks of Human Rights Watch offered an overall assessment whose tone is nicely captured by its title: "Don't Write It Off Yet"
The United Nations Human Rights Council was former Secretary General Kofi Annan’s dream child: a new, stronger institution to replace the much-maligned Commission on Human Rights, where human rights would be treated as the UN’s “third pillar” along with security and development.

But the new council has had a rocky first year [....] In its first year, the council shied away from taking action on most human rights crises, dropped its scrutiny of Iran and Uzbekistan, and managed to condemn Israel’s human rights record without addressing violations by Hezbollah and Palestinian armed groups.

That disappointing record, however, should spur concerned governments into greater engagement rather than to write the council off. [....]

The council has the potential to be far more effective than the commission – if governments that care about human rights do all they can to make it so. The council’s failings can be blamed not only on the minority of members with troubling records, but also the poor performance of a broader group of states with a professed commitment to human rights. [....]

The Human Rights Council has a long way to go before it fulfills the promise that led to its creation, but that should inspire stronger action, not more hand-wringing.
=>So now we are a little more than half-way through the Council's second year. Has there been any improvement? Nothing noticeable.

In fact, remarkably enough, things seem to be getting even worse in some respects than they were with the old, unreformed Human Rights Commission. A report by Jackson Diehl in today's Washington Post (also cited by David Hirsh at Engage) pulls together some of the bad news. Some highlights:
Where does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it's grown sick and cynical -- partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values.

At a session in Geneva last week, the council -- established a year ago in an attempt to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission -- listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both "rapporteurs" in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a "consensus" in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord.

While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the "human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories." In other words, Israel (or "Palestine," in the council's terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. [JW: Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon felt compelled to criticize this decision "to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world"--though he was too diplomatic to actually mention the word "Israel".] That's in keeping with the record of the council's first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government. [....]

The old human rights commission, which was disparaged by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan for casting "a shadow on the United Nations system as a whole," frequently issued unbalanced condemnations of Israel but also typically adopted half a dozen resolutions a year aimed at the worst human rights abusers. For the new council, Israel is the only target. Eighteen of the 19 states dubbed "the worst of the worst" by the monitoring group Freedom House (Israel is not on the list) were ignored by the council in its first year. One mission was dispatched to examine the situation in Darfur. When it returned with a report criticizing the Sudanese government, the council refused to endorse it or accept its recommendations. [Etc.]
I think a few of Diehl's comments about Human Rights Watch toward the end of his piece may be a little too harsh, since that's a fine and principled organization trying to deal with a bad situation as constructively as it can. And, fortunately, "the global human rights movement" goes well beyond the UN Human Rights Council. But the basic picture presented here is, alas, all too clear. When it comes to "human rights" at the UN, the more things change, the more they stay the same--or get worse.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Washington Post
Monday, June 25, 2007 (Page A19)
A Shadow on the Human Rights Movement
By Jackson Diehl

Where does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it's grown sick and cynical -- partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values.

At a session in Geneva last week, the council -- established a year ago in an attempt to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission -- listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both "rapporteurs" in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a "consensus" in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord.

While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the "human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories." In other words, Israel (or "Palestine," in the council's terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That's in keeping with the record of the council's first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government.

Genocide in Sudan, child slavery and religious persecution in China, mass repression in Zimbabwe and Burma, state-sponsored murder in Syria and Russia -- and, for that matter, suicide bombings by Arab terrorist movements -- will not receive systematic attention from the world body charged with monitoring human rights. That is reserved only for Israel, a democratic country that has been guilty of human rights violations but also has been under sustained assault from terrorists and governments openly committed to its extinction.

The old human rights commission, which was disparaged by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan for casting "a shadow on the United Nations system as a whole," frequently issued unbalanced condemnations of Israel but also typically adopted half a dozen resolutions a year aimed at the worst human rights abusers. For the new council, Israel is the only target. Eighteen of the 19 states dubbed "the worst of the worst" by the monitoring group Freedom House (Israel is not on the list) were ignored by the council in its first year. One mission was dispatched to examine the situation in Darfur. When it returned with a report criticizing the Sudanese government, the council refused to endorse it or accept its recommendations.

The regime of Gen. Omar al-Bashir, which is responsible for at least 200,000 deaths in Darfur, didn't just escape any censure. Sudan was a co-sponsor on behalf of the Arab League of the latest condemnations of Israel, adopted last week.

This record is far darker than Kofi Annan's "shadow." You'd think it would be intolerable to the democratic states that sit on the council. Sadly, it's not. Several of them -- India, South Africa, Indonesia -- have regularly supported the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement in their assaults on Israel and defense of Cuba, Belarus and Sudan. The council's chairman, who rammed through last week's decisions without a vote, is a diplomat from Mexico.

The European Union includes countries holding eight of the council's 47 seats. It has made no serious effort to focus the council's attention on the world's worst human rights violators. According to a report by the independent group UN Watch, the European Union "has for the most part abandoned initiating any country-specific resolutions." At one point before last week's meeting, the European Union threatened to quit the council, effectively killing it. Yet when the meeting ended, Europe's representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, said that while the package of procedural decisions singling out Israel "is certainly not ideal . . . we have a basis we can work with."

What about Western human rights groups -- surely they cannot accept such a travesty of human rights advocacy? In fact, they can. While critical of the council, New York-based Human Rights Watch said its procedural decisions "lay a foundation for its future work." Global advocacy director Peggy Hicks told me that the council's focus on Israel was in part appropriate, because of last year's war in Lebanon, and was in part caused by Israel itself, because of its refusal to cooperate with missions the council dispatched. (Sudan also refused to cooperate but was not rebuked.) Hicks said she counted only nine condemnations, not 11.

Never mind how you count them: Is there a point at which a vicious and unfounded campaign to delegitimize one country -- which happens to be populated mostly by Jews -- makes it unconscionable to collaborate with the body that conducts it? "That could happen, but I don't think we're anywhere near there," Hicks said.

That's the human rights movement, seven years into a century that's off to a bad start.

Irshad Manji suggests that intolerance, hysteria, oppression, hypocrisy, & moral cowardice are the real problem - not Rushdie

What's really "offensive" about the Rushdie affair? The irrepressible Canadian Muslim feminist and liberal Irshad Manji asks her fellow-Muslims to get their priorities straight.

She is responding
to the news that Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses and ten other works of fiction, will be knighted by the Queen of England. On Monday, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister said that in light of how Rushdie has blasphemed Islam with provocative literature, it is understandable why angry Muslims would commit suicide bombings over his knighthood.

Members of Parliament, as well as the Pakistani government, amplified the condemnation of Britain, feeding cries of offense to Muslim sensibilities from Europe to Asia.

As a Muslim, you better believe I am offended – by these absurd reactions.

I am offended that it is not the first time honours from the West have met with vitriol and violence. [....] I am offended that every year, there are more women killed in Pakistan for allegedly violating their family’s honour than there are detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Muslims have rightly denounced the mistreatment of Guantanamo prisoners. But where is our outrage over the murder of many more Muslims at the hands of our own?

I am offended that in April, mullahs at an extreme mosque in Pakistan issued a fatwa against hugging. [....] I am offended by their fatwa proclaiming that women should stay at home and remain covered at all times. I am offended that they have bullied music store owners and video vendors into closing shop. I am offended that the government tiptoes around their craziness because these clerics threaten suicide attacks if confronted.

I am offended that on Sunday, at least 35 Muslims in Kabul were blown to bits by other Muslims and on Tuesday, 87 more in Baghdad by Islamic “insurgents”, with no official statement from Pakistan to deplore these assaults on fellow believers. I am offended that amid the internecine carnage, a professed atheist named Salman Rushdie tops the to-do list.

Above all, I am offended that so many other Muslims are not offended enough to demonstrate widely against God’s self-appointed ambassadors. We complain to the world that Islam is being exploited by fundamentalists, yet when reckoning with the opportunity to resist their clamour en masse, we fall curiously silent. In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?
Good question. Read the rest.

--Jeff Weintraub

(P.S. The titles of newspaper articles and op-eds are usually written by editors, not the authors, and the results are often misleading or worse. One reprinted version of this piece by Manji, which has been picked up by a lot of websites, changed the title to "Islam the problem"--which is not Manji's position at all. Like many religious reformers, she argues that the problems lie in misuse and misunderstanding of Islam by its adherents, and are not inherent in the religion itself.)

=========================
The Times (London)
June 21, 2007
Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are.
In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?

By Irshad Manji

A Senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy, Irshad Manji is creator of the new documentary Faith Without Fear and author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change

Growing up in Vancouver, I attended an Islamic school every Saturday. There, I learned that Jews cannot be trusted because they worship “moolah, not Allah,” meaning money, not God. According to my teacher, every last Jew is consumed with business.

But looking around my neighbourhood, I noticed that most of the new business signs featured Asian languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Punjabi and plenty of Urdu. Not Hebrew. Urdu, which is spoken throughout Pakistan.

That reality check made me ask: What if my religious school is not educating me? What if it is indoctrinating me?

I am reminded of this question thanks to the news that Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses and ten other works of fiction, will be knighted by the Queen of England. On Monday, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister said that in light of how Rushdie has blasphemed Islam with provocative literature, it is understandable why angry Muslims would commit suicide bombings over his knighthood.

Members of Parliament, as well as the Pakistani government, amplified the condemnation of Britain, feeding cries of offense to Muslim sensibilities from Europe to Asia.

As a Muslim, you better believe I am offended – by these absurd reactions.

I am offended that it is not the first time honours from the West have met with vitriol and violence. In 1979, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam became the first Muslim to win the Nobel Prize in science. He began his acceptance speech with a verse from the Quran.

Salam’s country ought to have celebrated him. Instead, rioters tried to prevent him from re-entering the country. Parliament even declared him a “non-Muslim” because he belonged to a religious minority. His name continues to be controversial, invoked by state authorities in hushed tones.

I am offended that every year, there are more women killed in Pakistan for allegedly violating their family’s honour than there are detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Muslims have rightly denounced the mistreatment of Guantanamo prisoners. But where is our outrage over the murder of many more Muslims at the hands of our own?

I am offended that in April, mullahs at an extreme mosque in Pakistan issued a fatwa against hugging. The country’s female tourism minister had embraced – or, depending on the account you follow, accepted a congratulatory pat from – her skydiving instructor after she successfully jumped in a French fundraiser for the victims of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. Clerics announced her act of touching another man to be “a great sin.” They demanded she be fired.

I am offended by their fatwa proclaiming that women should stay at home and remain covered at all times. I am offended that they have bullied music store owners and video vendors into closing shop. I am offended that the government tiptoes around their craziness because these clerics threaten suicide attacks if confronted.

I am offended that on Sunday, at least 35 Muslims in Kabul were blown to bits by other Muslims and on Tuesday, 87 more in Baghdad by Islamic “insurgents”, with no official statement from Pakistan to deplore these assaults on fellow believers. I am offended that amid the internecine carnage, a professed atheist named Salman Rushdie tops the to-do list.

Above all, I am offended that so many other Muslims are not offended enough to demonstrate widely against God’s self-appointed ambassadors. We complain to the world that Islam is being exploited by fundamentalists, yet when reckoning with the opportunity to resist their clamour en masse, we fall curiously silent. In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?

I am not saying that standing up to intimidation is easy. This past spring, the Muslim world made it that much more difficult. A 56-member council of Islamic countries pushed the UN Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution against the “defamation of religion”. Pakistan led the charge. Focused on Islam rather than on faith in general, the resolution allows repressive regimes to squelch freedom of conscience further – and to do so in the guise of international law.

On occasion, though, the people of Pakistan show that they do not have to be muzzled by clerics and politicians. Last year, civil society groups vocally challenged a set of anti-female laws, three decades old and supposedly based on the Quran. Their religiously respectful approach prompted even mullahs to hint that these laws are man-made, not God-given.

This month, too, Pakistanis forced their government to lift restrictions on the press. No wonder my own book, translated into Urdu and posted on my website, is being downloaded in droves. Religious authorities will not let it be sold in the markets. But they cannot stop Pakistanis – or other Muslims – from satiating a genuine hunger for ideas.

In that spirit, it is high time to “ban” hypocrisy under the banner of Islam. Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are.

After all, the very first bounty on Rushdie's head was worth £1 million. It increased to £1.25 million; then higher. The chief benefactor, Iran's government, claimed to have profitably invested the principal. Hence the rising value of the reward. Looks like Jews are not the only people handy at business.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

What's going on in Iran? (contd.)

As I noted a few days ago, discussing a Washington Post report on the intensified campaign of political repression in Iran:
It's increasingly clear that the recent arrests of several Iranian-Americans holding dual citizenship (discussed here & here & here) are part of a wider campaign of intensified political repression by the Iranian regime aimed at crushing internal dissent and, in the process, cutting off Iranians from outside contact and support.
A front-page story in today's New York Times elaborates this picture further. It's apparent that a sweeping campaign of stepped-up repression is going on in Iran. What is less clear right now is precisely what it means and what its implications are.

One of the useful features of this NYTimes article is precisely that it brings out the complexity, unpredictability, and frequent opacity of the political dynamics in Iran. They're unfolding against a background of widespread economic and social discontent and a long-term situation in which the regime is deeply unpopular and long ago lost its legitimacy with much, probably most, of Iranian society.
Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women’s rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks.

The shift is occurring against the backdrop of an economy so stressed that although Iran is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, it is on the verge of rationing gasoline. At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new sanctions.

The hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, analysts say, faces rising pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. It has been using American support for a change in government as well as a possible military attack as a pretext to hound his opposition and its sympathizers.

Some analysts describe it as a “cultural revolution,” an attempt to roll back the clock to the time of the 1979 revolution, when the newly formed Islamic Republic combined religious zeal and anti-imperialist rhetoric to try to assert itself as a regional leader. [....]

Analysts trace the broadening crackdown to a March speech by Ayatollah Khamenei, whose pronouncements carry the weight of law. He warned that no one should damage national unity when the West was waging psychological war on Iran. [....]

The country’s police chief boasted that 150,000 people — a number far larger than usual — were detained in the annual spring sweep against any clothing considered not Islamic. More than 30 women’s rights advocates were arrested in one day in March, according to Human Rights Watch, five of whom have since been sentenced to prison terms of up to four years. They were charged with endangering national security for organizing an Internet campaign to collect more than a million signatures supporting the removal of all laws that discriminate against women.

Eight student leaders at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, the site of one of the few public protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad, disappeared into Evin Prison starting in early May. Student newspapers had published articles suggesting that no humans were infallible, including the Prophet Muhammad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The National Security Council sent a stern three-page warning to all the country’s newspaper editors detailing banned topics, including the rise in gasoline prices or other economic woes like possible new international sanctions, negotiations with the United States over the future of Iraq, civil society movements and the Iranian-American arrests. [....]

The three Iranian-Americans are being held in the notorious Section 209 of Evin Prison, the wing controlled by the Intelligence Ministry, and have been denied visits by their lawyers or relatives. Iran recognizes only their Iranian nationality and has dismissed any diplomatic efforts to intervene. A rally to demand their release is set for Wednesday outside the [Etc.]

So what's going on? Is this simply the latest phase in the hard-liners' long-term campaign to crush reformist, democratic, and other independent forces in Iranian society--a campaign that included installing Ahmadinejad as President in 2005? Or is this repressive witch-hunt a short-term reaction to increasing popular discontent over economic troubles and other grievances, which would make it a sign of anxiety and weakness rather than of strength and self-confidence? Or is this internal tightening-up an opportunistic attempt to take advantage of heightened international tensions and/or a panicky response to them? Hard to say ... and all these elements could be involved.
The entire campaign is “a strong message by Ahmadinejad’s government, security and intelligence forces that they are in control of the domestic situation,” said Hadi Ghaemi, an Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch. “But it’s really a sign of weakness and insecurity.”
That's looking at the bright side--and, from a long-term perspective, it's probably correct. In the meantime, though, this witch-hunt is harming a lot of people and terrorizing more.
At least three prominent nongovernment organizations that pushed for broader legal rights or civil society have been shuttered outright, while hundreds more have been forced underground. A recent article on the Baztab Web site said that about 8,000 nongovernment organizations were in jeopardy, forced to prove their innocence, basically because the government suspects all of them of being potential conduits for some $75 million the United States has earmarked to promote a change in government.

Professors have been warned against attending overseas conferences or having any contact with foreign governments, lest they be recruited as spies. [....] “People don’t want to come to conferences, they don’t even want to talk on the phone,” said Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian studies program at
Stanford University. “The regime has created an atmosphere of absolute terror.”
=> The increasingly bitter political infighting between different factions within the Iranian regime also plays a significant role (as Trudy Rubin and others have argued). These different hard-line factions shared an interest in suppressing the democratic and reformist tendencies that flourished in Iranian politics and society from 1997-2005 during the initially promising but ultimately failed presidency of Mohammad Khatami (who seems to have played the historical role of an Iranian Dubcek) But since the decisive defeat of the reformists was sealed by rigging the elections in 2004 and 2005, these factions have been at each other's throats.

The stakes in these power struggles are heightened by the fact that some of the less radical tendencies within the ruling clerico-kleptocratic elite, epitomized by former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (who thought the 2005 presidential election was supposed to be fixed for him), clearly regard Ahmadinejad and his policies as a disaster not just for themselves but for the long-term interests of the theocratic regime. (This antagonism helps to explain why a lot of foreign commentators gullibly describe Rafsanjani and his faction as "moderates" or even "reformers," which is ludicrous. The label of "pragmatist" does fit them to some extent, at least by comparison with Ahmadinejad-style fanatics.) Rafsanjani and others like him are alarmed enough that they've even been willing to reach out to some of the more establishmentarian elements in the reformist camp, including Khatami himself.
Most ascribe Mr. Ahmadinejad’s motives to blocking what could become a formidable alliance between the camps of Mr. Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani, both former presidents. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for early next year, and the next presidential vote in 2009.

“Having to face a single pragmatic conservative and reform block is extremely threatening,” Nasr said, hence the intimidation of all possible supporters.
=> As this last point reminds us, these political struggles are not confined to factions within the ruling hard-line elites. The Iranian regime has a curious hybrid structure with an elected as well as a non-elected component (headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei). And although the second component monopolizes most hard state power (including the armed forces and the security services, the judiciary, foreign policy, and so on), it has to pay some attention to the former.

Ahmadinejad's election as President in 2005 owed a good deal to manipulation of the electoral process by the so-called Council of Guardians (who eliminated a number of prominent reformist candidates as insufficiently Islamic) and a certain amount of outright vote fraud in the second-round run-off between Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad (in which elements of the Revolutionary Guards played a role). But the municipal elections of December 2006 seem to have been less fixed, and candidates from Ahmadinejad's faction were heavily outvoted. So the Ahmadinejad forces have good reason to worry about the outcome of the next national elections, especially if other factions can coalesce against them.

=> Furthermore, despite intensified repression, the independent political society that emerged during the opening-up period under reformist President Mohammad Khatami from 1997-2005 has not been entirely suppressed, and it continues to show signs of life and push back.
Not that everyone has been intimidated. More than 50 leading economists published a harshly worded, open letter to the president saying his policies were bringing economic ruin. High unemployment persists, there has been little foreign investment and inflation is galloping, with gasoline alone jumping 25 percent this spring.

Gasoline rationing is expected within a month, with consumers so anxious about it, reported the Web site Ruz, financed by the Dutch government, that skirmishes broke out in long lines at some pumps on June 17.

Iran can prove a difficult country to separate into black and white. Amid all the recent oppression, for example, last week the public stoning of a couple — the punishment for adultery — was called off. Women’s rights advocates had been agitating against it.
=> And the more fanatical hard-line theocratic elements centered on Ahmadinejad have some genuine popular support, too.
To the political crackdown, Mr. Ahmadinejad adds a messianic fervor, Mr. Milani noted, telling students in Qom this month that the Muslim savior would soon return.

The appeal of such a message may be limited, however. Iran’s sophisticated middle class wants to be connected to the world, and grumbles that the country’s only friends are Syria, Belarus, Venezuela and Cuba. But it might play well with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main constituency.

“They are the poor, the rural,” said Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations. “They don’t travel abroad, they don’t go to conferences. He is trying to undermine the social and political position of his rivals in order to consolidate his own people.”
=> All this adds up to a genuinely dynamic and unpredictable political situation. The short-term results could include a further escalation of repression by the hard-liners, perhaps accompanied by more foreign-policy adventurism and crisis-mongering to help create diversions from internal discontents; or possibly a political alliance against the Ahmadinejad forces by more "pragmatic" elements in the clerico-kleptocratic elite and some Khatami-style reformists; or some sort of genuine political crisis ... or maybe a successful damping-down and demoralization of oppositional tendencies. Stay tuned ...

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
New York Times
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Iran Cracks Down on Dissent
By Neil MacFarquhar

Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women’s rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks.

The shift is occurring against the backdrop of an economy so stressed that although Iran is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, it is on the verge of rationing gasoline. At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new sanctions.

The hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, analysts say, faces rising pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. It has been using American support for a change in government as well as a possible military attack as a pretext to hound his opposition and its sympathizers.

Some analysts describe it as a “cultural revolution,” an attempt to roll back the clock to the time of the 1979 revolution, when the newly formed Islamic Republic combined religious zeal and anti-imperialist rhetoric to try to assert itself as a regional leader.

Equally noteworthy is how little has been permitted to be discussed in the Iranian news media. Instead, attention has been strategically focused on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political enemies, like the former president, Mohammad Khatami, and the controversy over whether he violated Islamic morals by deliberately shaking hands with an unfamiliar woman after he gave a speech in Rome.

Mr. Khatami, the lost hope of Iran’s reform movement, felt compelled to rebut the accusation because such a handshake is religiously suspect, but contended that the crowd seeking to congratulate him for his speech was so tumultuous that he could not distinguish between the hands of men and women. Naturally a video clip emerged, showing the cleric in his typical gregarious style bounding over to the first woman who addressed him on the orderly sidewalk, shaking her hand and chatting amicably.

The dispute over the handshake occurred during a particularly fierce round of the factional fighting that has hamstrung the country since the 1979 revolution. Far more harsh examples abound.

The country’s police chief boasted that 150,000 people — a number far larger than usual — were detained in the annual spring sweep against any clothing considered not Islamic. More than 30 women’s rights advocates were arrested in one day in March, according to Human Rights Watch, five of whom have since been sentenced to prison terms of up to four years. They were charged with endangering national security for organizing an Internet campaign to collect more than a million signatures supporting the removal of all laws that discriminate against women.

Eight student leaders at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, the site of one of the few public protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad, disappeared into Evin Prison starting in early May. Student newspapers had published articles suggesting that no humans were infallible, including the Prophet Muhammad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The National Security Council sent a stern three-page warning to all the country’s newspaper editors detailing banned topics, including the rise in gasoline prices or other economic woes like possible new international sanctions, negotiations with the United States over the future of Iraq, civil society movements and the Iranian-American arrests.

The entire campaign is “a strong message by Ahmadinejad’s government, security and intelligence forces that they are in control of the domestic situation,” said Hadi Ghaemi, an Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch. “But it’s really a sign of weakness and insecurity.”

At least three prominent nongovernment organizations that pushed for broader legal rights or civil society have been shuttered outright, while hundreds more have been forced underground. A recent article on the Baztab Web site said that about 8,000 nongovernment organizations were in jeopardy, forced to prove their innocence, basically because the government suspects all of them of being potential conduits for some $75 million the United States has earmarked to promote a change in government.

Professors have been warned against attending overseas conferences or having any contact with foreign governments, lest they be recruited as spies. The Iranian-Americans are all being detained basically on the grounds that they were either recruiting or somehow abetting an American attempt to achieve a “velvet revolution” in Iran.

Analysts trace the broadening crackdown to a March speech by Ayatollah Khamenei, whose pronouncements carry the weight of law. He warned that no one should damage national unity when the West was waging psychological war on Iran. The country has been under fire, particularly from the United States, which accuses it of trying to develop nuclear weapons and fomenting violence in Iraq.

President Ahmadinejad and other senior officials have dismissed all the criticism as carping. The president blames the previous administration for inflation or calls it media exaggeration, while Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Said Mortazavi, said Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic look for an excuse to criticize it.

After a meeting of senior police and judiciary officials in Tehran on June 19 to review what was described as “the public security drive,” the Iranian Labor News Agency quoted Mr. Mortazavi as saying that if the state did not protect public security, then “louts” and criminals “would be safe in society.

The three Iranian-Americans are being held in the notorious Section 209 of Evin Prison, the wing controlled by the Intelligence Ministry, and have been denied visits by their lawyers or relatives. Iran recognizes only their Iranian nationality and has dismissed any diplomatic efforts to intervene. A rally to demand their release is set for Wednesday outside the United Nations.

The three are Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine. A fourth, Parnaz Azima, a journalist who works for Radio Farda, an American-financed station based in Europe, has been barred from leaving the country.

“People don’t want to come to conferences, they don’t even want to talk on the phone,” said Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University. “The regime has created an atmosphere of absolute terror.”

To the political crackdown, Mr. Ahmadinejad adds a messianic fervor, Mr. Milani noted, telling students in Qom this month that the Muslim savior would soon return.

The appeal of such a message may be limited, however. Iran’s sophisticated middle class wants to be connected to the world, and grumbles that the country’s only friends are Syria, Belarus, Venezuela and Cuba. But it might play well with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main constituency.

“They are the poor, the rural,” said Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations. “They don’t travel abroad, they don’t go to conferences. He is trying to undermine the social and political position of his rivals in order to consolidate his own people.”

Most ascribe Mr. Ahmadinejad’s motives to blocking what could become a formidable alliance between the camps of Mr. Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani, both former presidents. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for early next year, and the next presidential vote in 2009.

“Having to face a single pragmatic conservative and reform block is extremely threatening,” Mr. Nasr said, hence the intimidation of all possible supporters.

Not that everyone has been intimidated. More than 50 leading economists published a harshly worded, open letter to the president saying his policies were bringing economic ruin. High unemployment persists, there has been little foreign investment and inflation is galloping, with gasoline alone jumping 25 percent this spring.

Gasoline rationing is expected within a month, with consumers so anxious about it, reported the Web site Ruz, financed by the Dutch government, that skirmishes broke out in long lines at some pumps on June 17.

Iran can prove a difficult country to separate into black and white. Amid all the recent oppression, for example, last week the public stoning of a couple — the punishment for adultery — was called off. Women’s rights advocates had been agitating against it.

Also, two recent movies touched off controversy as too racy. One depicted an extramarital affair, and the hero of the second was an abortion doctor who drank and gambled, and yet was so beloved of the patients he had seduced that they sent him bouquets on his wedding night.

In an attempt to deflect criticism that its standards had grown loose, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which vets all books, movies and gallery exhibits, issued a statement noting that both scripts had been approved under the former administration of Mr. Khatami.

"Nobody saw it coming" (Condoleezza Rice)

A number of people have noticed this little gem by George Will from a pundit roundtable on the ABC TV show "This Week with George Stephanopoulos":
When, against the urgings of the Israelis, we pressed for the elections that overthrew Fatah, who we were backing and put in Hamas, Condoleezza Rice said nobody saw it coming. Those four words are the epitaph of this administration.
Too true. Other people may see disasters coming up, but they never do.

=> On the other hand, before we start getting too enthralled with George Will's perspicacity, it's only fair to mention that he also said some pretty absurd things in that discussion. For example:
Elections haven't gone well in Lebanon, where it produced Hezbollah.
If George Will really believes that "elections" are what "produced Hezbollah," then he is quite ignorant of the past quarter-century of Lebanese history. Actually, I doubt he's that stupid or uninformed. I suspect that he simply got so carried away with sneering at the idea that "elections" and promoting "democracy" are a good thing that he couldn't resist tossing in Hezbollah as part of his case.

=> But even George Will is on target sometimes. As he says, the repeated claim that "nobody saw it coming" captures a lot about the whole record of this catastrophically incompetent and irresponsible administration.

--Jeff Weintraub

Friday, June 22, 2007

Amnesty International vigil at UN to support human rights in Iran and the release of imprisoned Iranian-Americans

People in or near New York City may be especially interested in news of this action, which will happen on Wednesday, June 27 from noon - 1 p.m. at the United Nations. (And even if you're not in the NYC area yourself, you might want to pass this along to other people who are.) It is organized by Amnesty International and co-sponsored by the American Islamic Congress, Human Rights Watch, and The Near Eastern Studies Department of Princeton University. The announcement from Amnesty International, with further information, is HERE.

I heard about this from Stephen Retherford, who blogs as Sisyphus. (see below). His post also refers to a more detailed announcement by Juan Cole, which begins:
Amnesty International is hosting a vigil in New York next week for three detained intellectuals, including my friend Haleh Esfandiari. I urge everyone who can attend, to do so, and make a special plea to fellow bloggers to publicize this event. (The bigger it is, the more successful it will be; a small showing is dangerous). Details below. [Etc.]
For some further background, see here & here & here.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Stephen Retherford (Sisyphus)
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Virgil in New York next Wednesday to support human rights in Iran and call for release of detained Iranian-Americans

Four Iranian-Americans have found themselves caught in middle of worsening relations between Iran and the United States. All four are being detained by the conservative Iranian government as it extends a crack-down on its own citizens and has made many Iranian-Americans fearful of traveling back to Iran. According to an Amnesty International press release:
In May 2007 the government of Iran arrested four Iranian-Americans: prominent U.S. scholars Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, journalist Parnaz Azima and activist Ali Shakeri. Esfandiari, Tajbakhsh and Shakeri remain in detention without being able to see family, lawyers, or the International Committee of the Red Cross. All four face serious charges stemming from their efforts to promote an Iranian-American dialogue and scholarly work and could be sentenced to long prison terms.
A vigil will take place next Wednesday, June 27th between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m. at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (1st Avenue and 47th Street across from the United Nations Plaza) in New York City. If you are in New York on the 27th go to the vigil. The point Juan Cole makes that a large turnout is important is well taken.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Intensified campaign of political repression in Iran

It's increasingly clear that the recent arrests of several Iranian-Americans holding dual citizenship (discussed here & here & here) are part of a wider campaign of intensified political repression by the Iranian regime aimed at crushing internal dissent and, in the process, cutting off Iranians from outside contact and support.

Robin Wright's story in the Washington Post suggests that this crackdown is partly a response to increasingly widespread and vocal discontent driven by economic distress and other grievances. But it would be misleading to see this campaign as purely reactive. Ahmadinejad and the hard-line tendencies associated with him are no doubt also seizing the opportunity to implement a long-term agenda they intended to pursue from the start--to 'revitalize' the theocratic regime by tightening up ideological controls, taking the country back to what they fondly remember as the intensely and monolithically committed early days of the Khomeinist revolution, and closing down the cultural and political openings of the past decade.

Whether or not they can succeed is another question. Some Iranian and outside analysts are reminded of Mao's Cultural Revolution, and some parallels are there, though so far what's going on in Iran looks rather mild and limited by comparison with that cataclysm. How far this effort will go, and how successful it will be, remain to be seen. Meanwhile, in the ongoing political infighting within the Iranian ruling elites, the more fanatical elements seem to be on the offensive, and it's probably safe to predict that repression will continue to escalate in the near future. Stay tuned....

[Update 6/24/2007: For some further elaboration, see HERE.]

--Jeff Weintraub
====================
Washington Post
Saturday, June 16, 2007 - Page A10
Iran Curtails Freedom In Throwback to 1979
Repression Seen as Cultural Revolution

By Robin Wright

Iran is in the midst of a sweeping crackdown that both Iranians and U.S. analysts compare to a cultural revolution in its attempt to steer the oil-rich theocracy back to the rigid strictures of the 1979 revolution.

The recent detentions of Iranian American dual nationals are only a small part of a campaign that includes arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a top Iranian official, according to Iranian and international human rights groups.

The move has quashed or forced underground many independent civil society groups, silenced protests over issues including women's rights and pay rates, quelled academic debate, and sparked society-wide fear about several aspects of daily life, the sources said.

Few feel safe, especially after the April arrest of Hossein Mousavian, a former top nuclear negotiator and ambassador to Germany, on charges of espionage and endangering national security.

The widespread purges and arrests are expected to have an impact on parliamentary elections next year and the presidential contest in 2009, either discouraging or preventing reformers from running against the current crop of hard-liners who dominate all branches of government, Iranian and U.S. analysts say. The elections are one of several motives behind the crackdowns, they add.

Public signs of discontent -- such as students booing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a campus last December, teacher protests in March over low wages and workers demonstrating on May Day -- are also behind the detentions, according to Iranian sources.

"The current crackdown is a way to instill fear in the population in order to discourage them from future political agitation as the economic situation begins to deteriorate," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "You're going to think twice about taking to the streets to protest the hike in gasoline prices if you know the regime's paramilitary forces have been on a head-cracking spree the last few weeks."

Despite promises to use Iran's oil revenue to aid the poor, Ahmadinejad's economic policies have backfired, triggering 20 percent inflation over the past year, increased poverty and a 25 percent rise in the price of gas last month. More than 50 of the country's leading economists wrote an open letter to Ahmadinejad this week warning that he is ignoring basic economics and endangering the country's future.

Universities have been particularly hard hit by faculty purges and student detentions since late last year, according to Iranian analysts and international human rights groups. Professors still on campus have been warned by Iran's intelligence ministry about developing relationships with their foreign counterparts, who may try to recruit them as spies.

"Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated his goal of purging Iranian society of secular thought. This is taking shape as a cultural revolution, particularly on university campuses, where persecution and prosecution of students and faculty are intensifying with each passing day," said Hadi Ghaemi, the Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch.

In recent weeks, the government has also tried to dissolve student unions and replace them with allies from the Basij -- a young, volunteer paramilitary body, human rights groups say. Between April 30 and June 6, eight student leaders involved in the elections at Amirkabir University -- where Ahmadinejad was reportedly jeered as students set his pictures on fire -- have been jailed in Evin Prison.

The campus purges have been mirrored in virtually all government-funded organizations, as hard-liners have been slotted into positions in the civil service, security apparatus, financial institutions and public services in the two years since Ahmadinejad took office, Iranian analysts said.

Leaders of groups defying the new strictures -- such as bus drivers trying to unionize, teachers protesting pay rates below the poverty line and women's activists trying to gather 1 million signatures to demand reform of Iran's family law -- have been arrested, human rights groups said. Others have been summoned for interrogations by the intelligence ministry.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council last month also laid out new censorship rules in a letter to news outlets, instructing them to refrain from writing about public security, oil price increases, new international economic sanctions, inflation, civil society movements, or negotiations with the United States on the future of Iraq, according to Iranian journalists.

"Censorship has got much worse recently," Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi told the BBC in Tehran this week. "Iran's government doesn't like . . . events inside the country to be reflected in the outside world."

One of the biggest crackdowns has been the campaign against "immoral behavior" launched this spring. Iran's police chief said in April that 150,000 people had been detained, but few were referred for trial. The rest were asked to sign "letters of commitment" to honor public behavior and dress codes. An additional 17,000 were detained at Iranian airports in May, the airport security chief told Iranian news agencies.

The Bush administration's $75 million fund to promote democracy in Iran is the key reason for the recent arrest of several dual U.S.-Iranian citizens in Iran, including D.C. area scholar Haleh Esfandiari. Iranian analysts contend that the U.S. funds have also made civil society movements targets because of government suspicions that they are conspiring to foster a "velvet revolution" against the regime.