IsraelAmerica

Dozens hurt as Christian march attacked in Cairo

michaelblackburnsr — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:36:43 +0000

Hundreds of Coptic Christians marching in Cairo on Thursday came under attack by assailants throwing stones and bottles and 25 people were lightly injured in subsequent clashes, a security official said.
They were marching to demand justice for the Christian victims of a clash with soldiers in October that left at least 25 people dead, most of them Christians.
The official said the Copts were attacked in the northern Shoubra neighbourhood with stones and bottles, and that some among them responded in kind.
He said supporters of an Islamist candidate for upcoming parliamentary election joined in the attack on the Copts.
An AFP correspondent on the scene said hundreds of riot police were deployed to the area and that the clashes had eventually subsided.
Copts, who make up roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people, complain of discrimination in the Muslim-majority country.
There has been a spike in sectarian clashes since a popular uprising ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February.
The deadliest took place on October 9, when thousands of Christians protesting an attack on a church clashed with soldiers.
Witnesses said the soldiers fired on the demonstrators and ran them over with military vehicles, which the military denies.
The military said a number its soldiers were killed in the clash.

Q&A: Edward Luttwak

michaelblackburnsr — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:43:58 +0000

Edward Luttwak is a rare bird whose peripatetic life and work are the envy of academics and spies alike. A well-built man who looks like he is in his mid-50s (he turns 70 next year), Luttwak—who was born in 1942 to a wealthy Jewish family in Arad, Romania, and educated in Italy and England—speaks with a resonant European accent that conveys equal measures of authority, curiosity, egomania, bluster, impatience, and good humor. He is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University, and he published his first book, Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, at the age of 26. Over the past 40 years, he has made provocative and often deeply original contributions to multiple academic fields, including military strategy, Roman history, Byzantine history, and economics. He owns a large eco-friendly ranch in Bolivia and can recite poetry and talk politics in eight languages, a skill that he displayed during a recent four-hour conversation at his house, located on a quiet street in Chevy Chase, Md., by taking phone calls in Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese, during which I wandered off to the porch, where I sat and talked with his lovely Israeli-born wife, Dalya Luttwak, a sculptor.

The walls of Luttwak’s donnish study—which is by far the nicest room in the Luttwaks’ house, with the best view, and might otherwise have served as the dining room, if Edward and Dalya were more like their neighbors—are lined with bookshelves containing the Roman classics, biographies of Winston Churchill, works on military history and strategy, intelligence gathering, Byzantine art, old atlases, and decorations and plaques from foreign governments. Luttwak’s work as a high-level strategic and intelligence consultant for the U.S. Defense Department, the National Security Council, the State Department, the Japanese government, and the defense departments and intelligence services of other countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East (he appears to be spending a lot of time in South Korea and China) is also augmented by a parallel life as an “operator,” about which he is both secretive and obviously proud.

While the details of Luttwak’s life as a private intelligence operative are sketchy, he has been actively involved in military and paramilitary operations sponsored by the U.S. government, foreign governments, and various private entities. By his own admission, he has been directly involved in attacks on physical targets, interdiction efforts, and the capture and interrogation of wanted persons—although “admission” is clearly the wrong word here, since he is almost boyishly eager for visitors to understand his familiarity with the nuts and bolts of special ops and cites his own field experience to support his estimations of people like Gen. David Petraeus, whose reputation as a counter-insurgency genius he dismisses as a fraud. He is also careful to state that his activities have never violated U.S. law. The Walter Mitty-ish component of Luttwak’s enthusiasm for his other life—academic by day, special operator by night—seems less significant in his psyche than a driving appetite for physical risk that has helped him understand military strategy and related policy questions in a way that the current generation of Western policymakers often does not.

Loved and loathed, and capable of living multiple lives, any one of which would quickly tire out a less intellectually and physically robust man, Luttwak glories in the undeniable fact that he is not the usual Washington think-tank product. His instinctive tendency to reject common wisdom as idiotic, combined with his need to prove that he is the smartest person in every room, has deprived him of the chance to shape events in the way that every policy intellectual not-so-secretly craves. Yet his first allegiance is clearly to the habits of mind that have made him one of the most brilliant strategic thinkers in America, capable of understanding the psychological and practical necessities that drive human action in a highly original, insightful and counterintuitive way.

We met last month, at the height of a rainstorm. What follows are selectively edited portions of the transcript of our interview, during which I made a point of not asking him about his childhood experience as a Jewish refugee in Europe, which seemed like a subject for a different conversation.

I think that if America had been able to tolerate a second Henry Kissinger, that person would have been you.

Kissinger at 88 is writing brochures for Kissinger Associates. His last book on China is one such work written by the staff at Kissinger Associates. It is designed to curry favor with the Chinese authorities and nothing else.

I know him personally very well, but he is such a deceptive person; he’s a habitual liar and dissembler. Although I’ve spent a lot of time talking to him, I have no insight on him at all. His book ends with a paean to U.S.-Chinese friendship and how every other country has to fit in. I have to review it for the TLS, but I’ve been delaying it by weeks because I don’t know whether it is a case of senility or utter corruption.

There are two differing interpretations of the events of the Arab Spring. The dominant one is: “Here is this marvelous wave of popular revolutions where everyone uses Facebook and Twitter to spread democratic ideas.” The other is that “Rickety state structures held together by repressive police and state apparatus are now collapsing into tribal bloodshed.”

Well, any dictatorship creates an unnatural environment, analogous to that of taking peasants from the field and putting them in an army, where they get uniforms and are drilled and disciplined. Dictatorships attempt to turn entire populations into well-drilled regiments. The North Korean regime takes it to the logical extreme of actually having the entire population drilled in regiments. The Ben Ali and Mubarak dictatorships were attempting to regiment their populations by having state structures imposed on them. Both of them, for example, were able to create loyal police forces.

Once the regiment dissolves, then the people are released and they revert to their natural order. They stop wearing uniforms, they put on the clothes they want, and they manifest the proclivities that they have. A few Egyptians are Westernized, hence they have exited Islam whatever their personal beliefs may be. But otherwise, there is no room for civilization in Egypt other than Islam, and the number of extremists that you need to make life impossible for the average Westernized or slightly Westernized Egyptian who wants to have a beer, for example, is very small. The number you need to close all the bars in Egypt is maybe 15 percent of the population.

Do you think stepping away from Mubarak was a mistake or it made no difference?

I think it made no difference. The regime was senile. Literally.

How much of a role do you think the so-called “democracy promotion” efforts of the United States under President George W. Bush, including the invasion of Iraq, played in the increasing instability of the Arab regimes, and how much of their collapse was the result of their own senility?

I will pretend that this is an easy question; it’s not. The easy answer is that Bush and the Bush Administration for a brief period of less than two years were on a democracy-promotion binge. They used a pickax and attacked a wall, seemingly making an impression, and perhaps they caused some structural damage. The Iraq War, with the defeat, humbling, and execution of a dictator, was a big blow with a pickax. On the other hand, when the regime becomes sufficiently involuted as to become hereditary, which is what happened in Syria and appeared to be happening in Egypt, then you are dealing with senility of the regime embodied: “The dictator is old.” So, both answers are true.

There have been many different explanations given over the past 10 years for the strength of the American-Israeli relationship, ranging from the idea that Israel has the best and most immediately deployable army in the Middle East, to the idea that a small cabal of wealthy and influential Jews has hijacked American foreign policy.

You mean the Z.O.G.? The Zionist Occupied Government?

Yes.

Personally, from an emotional point of view, myself, as me, I prefer the Z.O.G. explanation above all others. I love the idea that the Zionists have sufficient power to actually occupy America, and through America to basically run the world. I love the idea of being a member of a secretive and powerful cabal. If you put my name Luttwak together with Perle and Wolfowitz and you search the Internet, you will get this little list of people who run the American government and the world, and I’m on it. I love that.

Anytime you need an added jolt of ego gratification, you open your laptop and confirm the fact that you rule the world.

In Pakistan, there are millions of people who go to schools where they are taught that I am the ruler of the universe. So, emotionally speaking, I would explain everything that happens by referring to the Z.O.G., the Zionist Occupied Government, which is run by a small cabal of people, and that I am one of them.

Now, if I’m forced to actually think about this question, I would say that the cleanest analytical way of understanding the American-Israeli relationship is to say that the post-1945 career of the United States as a world-meddling, imperialist power has forced Americans to be very foreign-oriented. Many American families have had their sons killed overseas, and many other Americans have become foreign-oriented for many reasons. Among them there is a group of Christians who read the Bible, who believe in the Bible to some degree as a document that registers God’s will. For them, Israel is the proof of the truth of the Bible. Hence, the notion that the United States should be supporting rather than opposing Israel has now become expected, which was absolutely not true in 1948 when the United States did every possible thing to prevent the existence of Israel by systematically intercepting arms flows to the Jews.

Therefore, if we in the Z.O.G. didn’t really run everything, and there was no Zionist influence, then this solid mass of foreign-aware Americans, who also happen to be Bible-believers—we’re talking 50 million people—to them, the only foreign policy that counts is America’s support for Israel. Period.

Many American Jews are viscerally uncomfortable with this kind of support. They say, “Oh, look at these Bible-thumping Christians who want to make us kiss Jesus. The only reason they like Israel is so they can turn it into a landing strip for their God.”

You are now invoking a second constant—

Why are so many Jews so stupid about politics?

They have not had a state for 2,000 years, they have had no power or responsibility and it will take centuries before they catch up with the instinctive political understanding that any ordinary Englishman has. They don’t understand politics, and of course they confuse their friends and their enemies, and that is the ultimate political proof of imbecility.

When you look at the current conduct of American policy in the Middle East, do you see any coherent policy or strategy?

Obama is no different than most previous administrations that come into office with ready-made solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Jimmy Carter was the first one, and his plan was redacted by Zbigniew Brzezinski. It led to Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem because his brilliant idea was to subject Egyptians and Israelis to a Soviet-American condominium, which was a terrible idea, and so Sadat created his own reality. It was really one of the funnier moments in history. The national security adviser officials, and I believe Brzezinski himself, came out with a lot of negative statements when Sadat first made his announcement because he was ruining their policy scheme, which was, of course, impossible.

Obama is in that tradition. He came in with an impossible policy scheme, which is first you get Israelis to stop agreeing to settlements, and then you proceed. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense. When you draw a border that is what matters. The Israelis removed all the settlements from Sinai without any American involvement in two minutes after the agreement was made with Egypt.

[The phone rings. Luttwak breaks into impossibly perfect Italian. I wander out onto the porch to talk to Dalya and return 20 minutes later, as he is finishing up the call.]

There’s nobody involved who is anti-Israeli like there were in the past, when there was a strong Arabist position in the State Department. The people in the Obama Administration read the New York Times and they don’t know Arabic, and therefore they are operating systematically with false categories. The fundamental error with regard to settlements is a very simple one: When borders are established, borders are established, and settlements are neither here nor there. This notion that when some faction of Israelis puts a camper on a hilltop that this changes anything is a fantasy.

A fantasy both on the part of the people who put the campers on the ground and also American policymakers.

They’re both equally deluded.

Do you anticipate violence this fall between the Israelis and the Palestinians?

I don’t anticipate violence this fall. War leads to peace. Peace leads to war. So, now logically we should have war. And the Iranians, of course, would love to pay for one. But the moment there is an intifada, the Palestinian regiment collapses and gangsters take over. So, the moment the violence escalates they stop fighting and they start talking peace. The moment the talking appears to be approaching an actual peace, they start an intifada.

Do you think the cost of the violence and other social ills that come out of the stalemate you are describing is something Israeli society can easily afford, or do you think there is any alternative to it?

I’m not sure it’s a cost.

Because the strategic depth that it affords and the control over those borders is more important?

Listen, my wife is a very good cook. And we have a housekeeper, who is an even better cook. It’s a weird situation, but I think my housekeeper is a better cook than any restaurant in Washington. She is a simple woman with no education, from Chile, and she just happens to have a superhuman talent. She being such a good cook, she achieves wonderful effects with very strange ingredients, and strange combinations of ingredients. Israel’s success as a state has been made possible by Arab threats of different kinds. Arab violence or threats of violence are part of the Israeli soup. There are certain levels of violence that are so high that they’re damaging, and there are also levels that are so low they are damaging. There is an optimum level of the Arab threat. I would say for about nine days of the 1973 war, the level of violence was much too high. Even when Israelis were successful, the level of violence was destroying the tissue of the state. Most of the time, the violence is positive.

When you say that the effects of Arab violence are positive, you mean that they generate social cohesion inside Israel?

Lenin taught, “Power is mass multiplied by cohesion.” Arab violence generates Jewish cohesion. Cohesion turns mass into power. Israel has had very small mass, very high cohesion. If only the Palestinians understood that, they would have attacked the Jews with flowers.

Shimon Peres says, “Iran is a decaying corpse of a country and the idea that they are any long-term threat to anybody, based on demographics and based on the rickety state of their economy, is a joke. So yes, it would be terrible if they ended up with an atomic bomb, but otherwise, Iran is not a long-term strategic threat to anybody.”

I think to get a good view on Iran you have to put yourself in the shoes of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is wholly dependent on Iran. Without Iran, Hezbollah is just a band of hotheads with a few thousand highly trained men. So, view Iran from Hezbollah’s point of view. What do you see? It’s a regime that has been around since 1979 in one way or the other. Is it consolidated? Is it functioning better and better and getting more and more support? It’s not. Is it getting more dependent on police repression or less? The answer is more. So, from the Hezbollah point of view, you realize that your days are counted because the regime is in a downward spiral.

There is a good measure of social control in Iran, and that is the price of genuine imported Scotch whiskey in Tehran, because it’s a) forbidden, and b) has to be smuggled in for practical purposes from Dubai, and the only way it can come from Dubai is with the cooperation of the Revolutionary Guard. The price of whiskey has been declining for years, and you go to a party in north Tehran now and you get lots of whiskey. And it’s only slightly more expensive than in Northwest Washington.

But on the other hand, the regime is doing something for which they will have my undying gratitude—that is, they have been manufacturing the one and only post-Islamic society. They created a situation in which Iranians in general, worldwide, not only in Iran, are disaffiliated. They are converting Muslim Iranians into post-Muslim Iranians.

What do you make of the Obama Administration’s increasingly close diplomatic alliance with Turkey? There seems to be this effort to build up the Turks as an alternative hegemon to Iran in the region, even as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, is trying his best to create an Islamic one-party state.

Hillary Clinton and her staff are not fools. Therefore, they must know that the Turkish foreign minister is a fool. I know him personally. The man is an idiot. Hillary Clinton and her advisers are not idiots. No advantage would be served for the United States to recognize where Erdogon is really going. It’s much better to pretend that he’s a member of NATO and North Atlantic Alliance and all the rest of it.

One way to look at the place of Israel in this landscape is “Wow, you have a functioning neo-liberal state with a tech economy second to Silicon Valley amidst the rubble of all these failed Arab states. Imagine the Syrian army trying to attack anybody. Egypt’s army is incapable of doing anything despite $10 billion worth of American weapons, Iran is falling to pieces, Lebanon is still a mess, Jordan is a joke of a country with a Palestinian majority.” On the other hand, you could look at it and say, “Israel is a tiny country in a chaotic neighborhood where it will always get sucked into conflicts with its neighbors and will never have a moment of peace.”

Yes, everything you say is correct, but there is a third element you are omitting. The very innermost circle of Israeli security is actually within the 1967 borders. And there you have almost 1.5 million Arabs, some Christian, some Muslim. The current situation is helping consolidate their loyalty to the Israeli state. If you ask them, “Are you loyal to the Israeli state?” They will say, “Oh no, we hate them all.” Are they involved in terror plots? The answer is that out of the 1.5 million, the ones involved in terror plots or even plain criminality of any sort, they could all sleep in my house. Or if not, they could sleep in a motel.

But there is even a more fundamental issue within Israel, which is the functioning of the Israeli economy and its impact on Israeli society. What’s happened, as you know from these latest demonstrations, is that the Israeli economy has become so successful that it has generated big numbers of millionaires, which means that four-room apartments in Tel Aviv cost as much as they do in New York. Israel is becoming Aspen, Colo., where normal people have to travel 20 miles to go to sleep because they can’t live anywhere within Aspen proper.

Are strategic minds nurtured through upbringing and education, or is the ability to think strategically an inborn gift, like mathematics?

It’s a gift like mathematics. The paradoxical logic of strategy contradicts the logic of everyday life, it goes against all normal definitions of intelligence we have. It only makes sense if you understand the dialectic. If you want peace, prepare for war. If you actively want war, disarm yourself, and then you’ll get war. Virile and martial elites understand that kind of thinking instinctively.

Here’s an easily falsifiable statement, but there’s something in it that interests me and I want you to pick it apart. I would start with the moment when George W. Bush met Vladimir Putin and said, “I looked into his eyes and saw this was a man I could really trust.” So, my thesis is this: If you’re Vladimir Putin, and you rise to the top of this chaotic and brutal society after going through the KGB, you must be some kind of strategic genius with amazing survival skills, because the penalty for failure may be torture or death. This kind of Darwinian set-up exists in many countries around the world. What does it mean to be head of the security services in Egypt? It means that you had to betray your friends but only at the right time, and you had to survive many vicious predators who would have loved to kill you or torture you, or otherwise derail your career. By the time you become Vladimir Putin or Omar Suleiman, your ability to think ahead and analyze threats has been adequately tested.

By contrast, what does it take to become a U.S. Senator? You have to eat rubber chicken dinners, you have to impress some rich people who are generally pretty stupid about politics, and smile in TV commercials. The penalties for failure are hardly so dire. And so, American leadership generally sucks, and America is perennially in the position of being the sucker in the global poker game. That’s the thesis. So, tell me why it’s wrong.

Even if your analysis is totally correct, your conclusion is wrong. Think about what it means to work for a Putin, whose natural approach to any problem is deception. For example, he had an affair with this athlete, a gymnast, and he went through two phases. Phase one: He concealed it from his wife. Phase two: He launched a public campaign showing himself to be a macho man. He had photographs of him shooting a rifle, and as a Judo champion, and therefore had the news leaked that he was having an affair. Not only an affair with a young woman, but a gymnast, an athlete. Obviously such a person is much more wily and cunning and able to handle conflict than his American counterpart. But when such a person is the head of a department, the whole department is actually paralyzed and they are all reduced to serfs and valets. Therefore, what gets applied to a problem is only the wisdom of the aforementioned wily head of the department. All the other talent is wasted, all the other knowledge is wasted.

Now you have a choice: You can have a non-wily head of a department and the collective knowledge and wisdom of the whole department, or else you can have a wily head and zero functioning. And that is how the Russian government is currently working. Putin and Medvedev have very little control of the Russian bureaucracy. When you want to deal with them, and I dealt with them this morning, they act in very uncooperative, cagey, and deceptive ways because they are first of all trying to protect their security and stability and benefits from their boss. They have to deceive you because they are deceiving their boss before he even shows up to work. And they are all running little games. So, that’s the alternative. You can have a wily Putin and a stupid government. Or an intelligent government and an innocent head. There’s always is a trade-off. A Putin cannot be an inspiring leader.

One final question. When I heard the Bin Laden news and you look at the circumstances surrounding his place of residence, and the length of his stay there, it seems clear that he was sold to the U.S. by somebody inside the Pakistani security apparatus, no?

I don’t believe that at all.

You think that the CIA independently developed this information?

First of all, it was not the CIA because the CIA doesn’t run interrogations in Guantanamo.

You believe the story about the courier?

I believe it and I believe it categorically. Look, the Pakistanis had been sheltering Bin Laden. But in these matters, the only way to proceed is to develop thoughts that are based only on uncontroversial facts. Any analysis of the Bin Laden story tells you that there was active Pakistani complicity simply because people cannot go to Abbottabad and live in a compound without somebody asking questions. For one thing, Pakistan has this system where foreign citizens have to obtain the residence permits and renew them, and there are foreigners including Arabs living there, and they would be asked to show their papers. Pakistani complicity is certain. That’s point one. Point two: The guy uses couriers. Therefore, if you’re going to find him, you had to find the courier. The courier story is not the cover story.

The proof of this is that if they got the information from some Pakistani guy, if one of the protectors of Osama decided to sell out, they would have known what was in the compound, and if they had known what was in the compound, they would not have attacked it the way they did. The attack against the compound reflected the central fact they did not know what they would find inside. The only thing that they hoped to find was Osama Bin Laden, among other objects, furniture, walls, people. Had a Pakistani provided the information, they would have provided two pieces of information, not just one. One is that Osama Bin Laden is there and two, a platoon is not there.

You understand the thing that keeps bothering me.

Now you are entering an area that is highly technical, and I’m not at liberty to speak because I’m in this line of business myself so there are limits to what I can tell you. But tell me what bothers you?

What bothers me is that you have a secret that was obviously known by more than one person. Let’s say that only three people in the ISI knew that Bin Laden was there.

The people who knew that he was in Abbottabad were a minimum number of some 12 people, and the reason is that you had to keep telling the police not to enter, you had to communicate with the other parts of the Pakistani state. But I repeat, but if American information had come from inside Pakistan, and there was knowledge of what was in the compound, they would have not attacked the compound in this way.

If 12 people know a secret, then there are also many people surrounding those 12 people who might also have access to some part of that information.

So, in other words, there are fragments of that secret.

With that many people knowing a big secret over that long a period of time, something must have leaked.

I know the courier information would tell you that Osama Bin Laden is in that space and nothing else. And the military operation that was mounted reflects that fact. Whoever designed that military operation had the kind of information that is consistent with the courier and is not consistent with any other story.

If I am in the receipt of information about Bin Laden’s whereabouts from a source in the ISI who wanted to submarine his boss, or gain the support of America, or pay off his mistress, I might design an operation that would match my cover story about the courier, who definitely existed, but might not have led anyone back to Bin Laden’s house.

No, no, no. It’s a very technical thing. It has to do with how you attack a target when you know that there are maximum of two people who will shoot at you or three people who will shoot at you, neither of the three being trained gunmen, versus how you design an attack on a target when you think there might be 25 people shooting at you. That’s all. The official word is that there was a courier, and I’m inclined to believe it. Because when somebody tells you how something happened, operationally speaking, do not disbelieve it until you have evidence that tells you that it’s wrong. Then you can pursue some other theory. All the information I have is consistent with the courier story because the courier story would tell you that there’s the bad guy in the space but nothing else.

Why kill him?

They were under orders to kill him.

Wouldn’t Osama Bin Laden be a source of useful intelligence? Alternately, one good reason to kill him is that you have a deal with the Pakistanis—“we’re gonna get rid of this problem”—then you need to kill him, because otherwise he might start talking about who protected him for the past 10 years.

There was no deal with the Pakistanis. There’s no institutional integrity. Therefore you cannot make deals with the Pakistani system. They would betray each other. There was no deal.

They killed Bin Laden simply because of the inconvenience of a trial?

They killed him because of the fact that if we captured Bin Laden, every Jihadist in the world would have been duty-bound to kidnap any American citizen anywhere and exchange him for Bin Laden.

David Samuels is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.

If any fingers need to be pointed, they should be at the Palestinian leadership

michaelblackburnsr — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:18:12 +0000

From a letter to the NYTIMES byMichael Berenhaus

Michael wrote this responseto a NY Times columnist Roger Cohen:

Roger Cohen says Jews should know better: “The lesson is clear: Jews, with their history, cannot become the systematic oppressors of another people.” His reference to the plight of the Palestinians is offensive: blaming Israel. He should know better!

In 1993, Israel gave the Palestinians a chance to have their own country with the Oslo Accords. The Palestinians responded with suicide bombings and terror. Israel followed with offers in 2000 and 2008. Palestinians walked away without a counteroffer.

Since Israel won the West Bank from Jordan, the Palestinians’ life expectancy has increased, their infant mortality has been reduced, and their economy has prospered. If any fingers need to be pointed, they should be at the Palestinian leadership.

Terrorists Kidnap Children

michaelblackburnsr — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 11:39:24 +0000

Saturday, September 3, 2011
Pakistani Taliban claim kidnapping up to 25 boys

By Sahibzada Bahauddin
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters)- Pakistani Taliban on Saturday claimed responsibility for holding up to 25 boys hostage as punishment for tribesmen who supported the military in the country’s troubled northwest.
Pakistani officials said Friday militants in Afghanistan kidnapped the boys after they mistakenly crossed the border while on an outing in the border tribal region of Bajaur on Wednesday.
A Pakistani Taliban spokesman said they held the boys, and their fate would be decided by the militants from Bajaur.
“We have kidnapped them as their parents and tribal elders are helping the government and are fighting against us,” spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters from an undisclosed location.
He said they held between 20 to 25 boys, but did not say where they have been kept. Bajaur’s top government administrator, Islam Zeb, said 25 boys were missing.
A group of around 60 boys took part in the outing but about 20 below ten years old were allowed to return to Pakistan, while up to 40 others between 12 to 14 years old were held, officials said earlier.
Ehsan said they had a plan of mass-scale kidnappings and expected people in large number to visit the border region on Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holy festival that was celebrated this week, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
Security officials said they learned of the kidnappings when the parents of the children, members of a tribe that inhabits the frontier area, informed them of the abductions on Friday.
A Pakistani cabinet minister said the interior ministry was in contact with the Afghan officials on the issue.
“The incident happened on their side and, as per law, it is responsibility of the Afghan government to ensure their safe return to Pakistan,” Shaukat Ullah, federal minister for States and Frontier Regions, told Reuters.
The boys belonged to tribesmen from Mamoun who are opposed to al Qaeda and the Taliban and have raised militias to fight them, angering militants who often hit back with bombings and shooting attacks.
Bajaur is opposite the eastern Afghan province of Kunar and has long been an infiltration route for militants entering Afghanistan to fight U.S.-led forces there.
HundSaturday, September 3, 2011
Pakistani Taliban claim kidnapping up to 25 boys

By Sahibzada Bahauddin
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters)- Pakistani Taliban on Saturday claimed responsibility for holding up to 25 boys hostage as punishment for tribesmen who supported the military in the country’s troubled northwest.
Pakistani officials said Friday militants in Afghanistan kidnapped the boys after they mistakenly crossed the border while on an outing in the border tribal region of Bajaur on Wednesday.
A Pakistani Taliban spokesman said they held the boys, and their fate would be decided by the militants from Bajaur.
“We have kidnapped them as their parents and tribal elders are helping the government and are fighting against us,” spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters from an undisclosed location.
He said they held between 20 to 25 boys, but did not say where they have been kept. Bajaur’s top government administrator, Islam Zeb, said 25 boys were missing.
A group of around 60 boys took part in the outing but about 20 below ten years old were allowed to return to Pakistan, while up to 40 others between 12 to 14 years old were held, officials said earlier.
Ehsan said they had a plan of mass-scale kidnappings and expected people in large number to visit the border region on Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holy festival that was celebrated this week, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
Security officials said they learned of the kidnappings when the parents of the children, members of a tribe that inhabits the frontier area, informed them of the abductions on Friday.
A Pakistani cabinet minister said the interior ministry was in contact with the Afghan officials on the issue.
“The incident happened on their side and, as per law, it is responsibility of the Afghan government to ensure their safe return to Pakistan,” Shaukat Ullah, federal minister for States and Frontier Regions, told Reuters.
The boys belonged to tribesmen from Mamoun who are opposed to al Qaeda and the Taliban and have raised militias to fight them, angering militants who often hit back with bombings and shooting attacks.
Bajaur is opposite the eastern Afghan province of Kunar and has long been an infiltration route for militants entering Afghanistan to fight U.S.-led forces there.
Hundreds of Pakistani militants fled to Kunar in the face of Pakistani military offensives in Bajaur, officials say.
(Additional reporting and writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Ed Lane)
© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved.

Middle East Terrorist Scams and the Western Naivete that Empowers Them

michaelblackburnsr — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 12:15:02 +0000

By Barry Rubin

Rockets from the Gaza Strip continue to pound Israel. And much of the Western media blames: Israel. I want to explain again how this system works.

What follows is a seven-point pattern that goes something like this: Someone shoots at your spouse, you punch the attacker, h yells, “Ceasefire!” then kicks you in the groin and takes some more shots at your spouse. You try to defend yourself. The police stand by doing nothing and then declare you to be the aggressor for breaking the ceasefire.

If this sounds like an exaggeration, I sincerely wish that it was! (Scholarly disclaimer: Of course many politicians and media outlets do see through this but the pattern discussed below is a very widespread one.)

1. Terrorist group attacks Israeli civilians.

2. As Israel seeks to retaliate, the group declares a ceasefire.

3. Western media announce ceasefire.

4. But rockets continue to be fired into Israel against civilian targets. Responsibility is usually taken by smaller groups allied with Hamas, like Islamic Jihad. This allows Hamas–and Western media–to deny that Hamas has any responsibility and thus there is no need to take actions against it. Nobody notes that Hamas is now allied with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the latter does not condemn the attacks but only condemns Israel.

(Note: Western media only report it when the PA condemns a terrorist attack and that at times gets more coverage than the attack and the Israeli victims.)

(Additional note: In late 2008, Hamas launched a war of rockets, missiles, mortars, and attempted cross-border attacks on Israel, breaking an existing ceasefire. When Israel retaliated, many accused Israel of aggression.)

(Another additional note: It is generally forgotten that because of Israel’s self-defense against the Hamas attacks the PA broke off negotiations with Israel and three years later, despite constant missreporting that the lack of talks is Israel’s fault, that policy continues.)

5. Israel retaliates against rocket-firing teams, weapons’ workshops, arms-smuggling tunnels, rocket storage places, and leaders of groups firing rockets. Some civilians are killed and this becomes the main point of Western media stories. Since the numbers and identities come from Hamas, they maximize numbers and civilians, concealing terrorists’ being killed and at times reclassifying terrorists as civilians. Note that when civilians are killed by Western airstrikes, as in Afghanistan or Libya, it is emphasized that these are regrettable accidents. With Israel it is implied that such action is purposeful or at least careless.

6. Western media report that Israel “broke” the “ceasefire.”

7. Continued attacks on Israel are thus blamed on Israeli action.

Think that’s an exaggeration? Here’s the Washington Post:

“A tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip was punctured Wednesday by a deadly Israeli airstrike that triggered rocket and mortar fire at Israel.”

Political result:

Anti-Israel politicians, media, and experts blame Israel for being aggressive and using “disproportionate force,” a phrase
that only seems to be applied to Israel in the world.

More moderate politicians, media, and experts decry the cycle of violence for which both sides are responsible.

Coming soon to a UN Near You: The September UN Scam! Here’s a wonderful indication of what’s going on:

A pro-Palestinian Oxford University law professor has warned the Palestinian leadership that it must do the unilateral independence declaration at the UN properly so it can claim all of Israel later.

Should Israel Embrace Glenn Beck?

michaelblackburnsr — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:00:20 +0000

Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011 11:08 AM

By Alan Dershowitz

All decent people, whether on the left or the right, should support Israel’s right to exist as the democratic nation state of the Jewish people.

All decent people should support Israel’s right to defend its civilians from terrorist attacks. All reasonable people should favor a just peace that assures Israel’s ability to thrive in a dangerous neighborhood and to defend its borders.

These issues should not divide decent people along ideological or political lines. Israel’s existence and right to defend itself should be bipartisan issues, not only in the United States, but in all democratic countries of the world.

The reality, however, is very different. The Jewish state is demonized by the hard left in America, by virtually the entire left in much of Europe, and by most of the left and right in Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. Its right to exist is denied by a high proportion of Arabs and Muslims, and most of the Arab and Muslim nations do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

In many circles, anti-Zionism easily morphs into anti-Semitism, and in some countries Jews are afraid to walk the streets wearing any clothing or symbols that identify them as Jewish.

The general assembly of the United Nations has become the world’s new Der Sturmer, whose podium hosts, and many of whose audience members cheer, virulent anti-Semites such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Defenders of Israel, even those critical of some of Israel’s policies, are banned from speaking at universities, are attacked personally by the hard-left media and are treated as pariahs by their academic colleagues.

It is against this sad and increasingly dangerous background that one must evaluate Glenn Beck’s visit to Israel. I disagree with much of Beck’s politics and with virtually all of his conspiracy theorizing. Yet I admire his courage in putting his body in the line of fire. I believe him when he says:

If the world goes down the road of dehumanizing Jews again, “then count me a Jew and come for me first.”

At a time when old friends and allies who should be supporting the Jewish state are abandoning it in droves, Beck’s willingness to stand up for Israel must be accepted with gratitude. I, for one, do not question his motives. I believe they are genuine.

One need not accept all of Beck’s positions on Israel — and I certainly do not — in order to agree with him that support of Israel is one of the great moral issues of the 21st century.

Those who thoughtlessly attack Israel no matter what it does and thoughtlessly defend Israel’s enemies regardless of what they do, are making peace far more difficult. They incentivize terrorism by Israel’s enemies and disincentivize compromise on all sides.

I will wait to hear precisely what Glenn Beck says during his visit to Israel before I evaluate it. Just as I feel free to criticize the Israeli government when I think it is wrong, I certainly feel free to criticize defenders of Israel when I think they are wrong. But I will not prejudge Beck until he is given a full opportunity to express his views.

I certainly admire Beck’s decision to go to Israel far more than the decision of so many so-called artists and intellectuals who call for a boycott against the Jewish state without even bothering to go there and see for themselves.

I welcome the support of religious Christians who love Israel for religious reasons. I abhor the ignorant and misguided efforts of other Christians, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, who misuse their faith against the Jewish state.

I hope that more Christians will follow in Beck’s footsteps and take the time to visit Israel. They will see Christianity thriving in Israel while at the same time being dismantled and destroyed in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Egypt, and in other areas in which Islamic fundamentalists have taken over.

Christian religious sites are preserved in Jerusalem and other areas under Israeli control. When the Jordanian government controlled parts of Jerusalem, it destroyed many historic religious sites sacred to both Jews and Christians.

Nation states are entitled to engage in Realpolitik so long as they do so within the limits of acceptable morality. Realpolitik requires accepting support from, and sometimes giving support to, nations and people who are not in complete agreement over policies.

Consider Nelson Mandela’s alliances with some of most brutal dictatorships (Libya, Cuba, Syria) and supporters of terrorism (P.L.O., Iran) while he was engaged in his just struggle against the evils of apartheid.

I do not recall the left condemning Mandela for doing what he had to do. But the same left was unforgiving in Israel when it was forced to make some strategic military deals with South Africa, while strongly opposing its apartheid policies.

I do not mean to compare dictatorial, terrorist, or apartheid regimes with Glenn Beck, only to make the point that the Jewish state is often subjected to a double standard when it comes to the support it receives or gives.

Many Israelis will welcome Glenn Beck’s support. Some will oppose it. Others will wish his views were more consistent with their own. This is as it should be in a democracy.

The fact is that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that would allow Glenn Beck to express his views, without censoring them or even knowing in advance what he was going to say. This too is as it should be in a democracy.

Ghadafi is Finished

michaelblackburnsr — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 23:24:56 +0000

Today it appears that Ghadafi is finished as the Grand wizard of Libya.

In the ‘70’s he emulated Castro, he talked about liberation and promoted an African Union.

While, like any politician, he kept some views from the “conservatives” to incorporate into his political philosophy, he intended, like Saddam, to drag Arabia and maybe the Africans into the 20th century.

The West, represented by the U.S. hated him because of the concern over his leftist pronouncements, and his confiscation of property.

The Arabs hated him because he wasn’t an Islamist.

The perfect storm was being brewed.

Several things are at play, one, the Arabs rioting across the Middle-East are not freedom fighters.

At the most optimistic, they are being controlled by radical Islamists.

It seems that there is a somewhat moderate Muslim here and there.

However, when the “nation building” starts, they are nowhere to be seen.

The Islamists are taking power in all of the “Arab Spring” events.

They hate Jews.

They hate Americans.

Another significant factor in the “Arab Spring” tumult is the fact that the dictators, who are really tough, ruthless, very bad guys, are not able to stop the rebels.

In the religious schools in Arabia, the children are taught from an early age to hate Jews first, and almost everyone else, too.

They are taught the glories of violence and mayhem and death, on behalf of Islam, Palestine, and so on.

By the time they are adolescents they are primed for murder and suicide, so many volunteer for suicide missions that terrorist groups have to turn them away.

Historically Arabs have always had a xenophobic outlook and a superiority complex.

Millions of Arabs have come to realize that they can topple their “infidel” governments.

How can they be stopped?

They can’t, as Ghadafi and Mubarak and others are learning.

They were successfully trained NOT to fear death.

The replacements for Mubarak and Ghadafi are going to be worse for everyone than they were.

By the way, there are protests going on in Israel at the same time as Ghadafi is fleeing for his life and Arabs are firing shoulder held rocket launchers into the air in celebration of their victory over the government. “Allah Akbar” they scream.

The Jewish unrest is nothing like the Arab Spring, of course.

Good news out of Eretz Yisrael.

michaelblackburnsr — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:14:17 +0000

Good news out of Eretz Yisrael.

Especially for supporters of a Greater Israel.

G-d Bless PM Netanyahu! (Michael)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel announced Monday approval for building 277 homes in a West Bank settlement, despite U.S. and international pressure to curb expansion on occupied land and as Palestinians prepare for a statehood bid at the United Nations.

Four days after a final go-ahead for a plan to build 1,600 settler homes in East Jerusalem drew U.S. and European condemnation, Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s office said he had signed off on new housing in the major settlement of Ariel.

Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman told Reuters the project was the largest approved by the government in the settlement for years.

“No more than 50 apartments have been built here in the past seven years,” Nachman said.

Ariel, which has some 18,000 inhabitants, is one of the largest settlements Israel has built in the West Bank, territory captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians want back along with the Gaza Strip for a future state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has named Ariel as one of the large settlements that Israel intends to keep in any peace deal with the Palestinians.

U.S.-brokered peace talks have been frozen since the Palestinians walked out in September over Israeli settlement building.

Fish Carries Flag for U.S. And Faces Djokovic

michaelblackburnsr — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 01:58:43 +0000

Published: August 13, 2011

By GREG BISHOP

MONTREAL — The best American tennis player at the moment, the highest ranked, the most consistent, is not Andy Roddick, John Isner or either of the Williams sisters. It is a 29-year-old journeyman who once nearly ate himself into early retirement.

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Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

Mardy Fish, now the highest-ranked U.S. tennis player.

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The best American tennis player at the moment is Mardy Fish.

On Saturday at the Rogers Cup, Fish advanced to his third straight tournament final, at the expense of the Serbian Janko Tipsarevic, another tennis reclamation project who will climb into the top 20 next week. The two have much in common. Both showed promise as juniors. Both failed to meet perhaps unrealistic expectations. And both have played the best tennis of their lives this hardcourt season.

Fish dispatched Tipsarevic in short order, 6-3, 6-4, to advance to Sunday’s final, where he will face Novak Djokovic. The top-ranked Djokovic improved to 52-1 this season and positioned himself to become the first man to win five Masters 1000 tournaments in a season by defeating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who trailed, 6-4, 3-0, when he retired because of an arm injury.

Fish battered Tipsarevic with the varied game that marked his rise to a career-high No. 8 ranking, with an old-school serve-and-volley style, with stinging backhands and flat, low returns. Now one win from his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 triumph — the highest level other than the Grand Slams — Fish has impressed analysts, his coach, the crowd at Uniprix Stadium and, perhaps most of all, himself.

“I had one hiccup, one bad game,” he said. “Obviously, over all, I was extremely pleased with the way I played.”

For David Nainkin, Fish’s South African-born coach, this summer in general and this tournament in particular represent the culmination of a two-year transformation project. In 2009, Fish weighed 203 pounds, heavy by tennis standards. Pizza, he said this week, ranked among his greatest weaknesses.

The weight led to knee surgery, which led to changes in diet and lifestyle, which led to 30 pounds vanishing. The slimmer Fish, Nainkin said, could run faster and for longer stretches, could at once better ground out marathon points and attack the net with more aggression. “I saw his commitment, the way he changed his attitude, his work ethic,” Nainkin said, and he meant starting in 2009. “He changed the whole program. That, coupled with his talent, he was too good not to be in the top 10.”

Fish won this year in Atlanta, made the final in Los Angeles, even advanced to the Wimbledon quarterfinals. Here, the tournament opened wide for him, with fourth-ranked Andy Murray and second-ranked Rafael Nadal losing early on the same side of the draw. Fish’s performance Saturday looked, to the coach and ESPN analyst Darren Cahill, like the Fish everyone expected in 2003. Beyond the weight loss, Cahill said Fish showcased more strategy in recent weeks: a better ability to solve problems and a game suited perfectly for a hardcourt season in which Fish captured 11 of his last 12 matches.

“Maybe a little bit of success came easy for him,” Cahill said. “When you get around a 15-to-30-or-40 ranking, you’re making a pretty good living, everything is good, and you don’t want to rock the boat.”

The more Fish wins, the higher he rises in the rankings, the more he must assume the mantle as the best American player in professional tennis, at least right now. He will be the highest-seeded American when the United States Open begins this month.

Is Hamas Forcing Gilad To Fast For Ramadan?

michaelblackburnsr — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 00:46:31 +0000

Being aware of the fact that Hamas is a criminal syndicate, we should assume that everything they say is a lie or propaganda, and so it is with this release from the criminal syndicate.

Hamas media: Shalit ‘fasting’ during holy month

Published Wednesday 03/08/2011 (updated) 04/08/2011 17:54

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Hamas affiliated Ar-Risala website reported Wednesday that captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has decided to fast during Ramadan.The report comes as talks have stalled between Hamas and Israel over the possible exchange of hundreds of prisoners for Shalit, who was captured in a 2006 raid.

The report seemed to be intended to increase pressure on the Israeli government, whose prime minister has faced criticism over his perceived failure to prioritize reaching a deal with Hamas.

“A popular proverb goes that if one lives in a community for more 40 days, he becomes one of them. This seems to have come true in the Gaza Strip,” the report in Ar-Risala said.

After years in Gaza, Shalit has become “embarrassed to ask for food during Ramadan despite the fact that his captors do not deny him that right,” the report, in Arabic, continued.

Shalit thinks the government “lost interest,” it said, and he “abandoned Jewish traditions to mimic Muslims after the good treatment he received from his captors, even while they are fasting.”

The Israeli government, added Ar-Risala, is too busy with the demonstrations and protests in Tel Aviv, and so Shalit could not hear recently on Israel’s Channel 1 TV station any news about him.

The report claims Shalit noticed that the protests against housing problems became big, and that caused him “depression and disappointment. He lost hope of any prisoner swap deal that can secure his freedom.”

He seems to be saying, “Shalit wants to topple the regime,” the report claimed.

Shalit was captured by Hamas and other Palestinian factions on June 25, 2006 in a cross-border raid by Palestinian fighters near the Kerem Shalom crossing east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

He has remained captive through two governments and a devastating war on Gaza. Efforts have been exerted by Egyptian, German and Western mediators to try and finalize a prisoner swap.

Israel decided recently to toughen imprisonment conditions of Palestinian inmates in an attempt to put pressure on Hamas to give up on some of the conditions they stipulated for a prisoner swap.

The Red Cross has criticized Hamas’ refusal to allow Shalit visitors and other rights typically afforded to prisoners of war. Hamas says agreeing to these requests would compromise the soldier’s location.