Daniel Pipes On Iraqi Civil War

This is from the April 11, 2006 WorldSocialist Web Site, the most widely read Socialist site on the internet.

Daniel Pipes, the director of the neo-conservative Middle East Forum and a vociferous supporter of the invasion of Iraq, is not an inconsequential figure in the American political establishment. His writings consistently articulate and refine the views of the extreme right in the United States, a layer that exerts considerable influence over the policies of the Bush administration. It is therefore noteworthy when such an individual begins publicly arguing that a sectarian civil war in Iraq would be to the strategic advantage of US imperialism. One can conclude that similar views are prevalent in Washington’s corridors of power.

Pipes first presented what he views as the advantages of an Iraqi civil war in an article published by the New York Sun on February 28—six days after the destruction of the Shiite Muslim Al-Askariya mosque by suspected Sunni Muslim extremists and amid the reports that Shiite militias were carrying out revenge killings of Sunnis. He expanded on the theme during a visit to Australia in March, in interviews given to Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television and radio current affairs programs.

The core of Pipes’ argument is that a fratricidal conflict between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis, whatever the death toll and however tragic for the Iraqi people, would have definite benefits for American strategic, economic and military interests in the Middle East.

Pipes’ calculations are completely ruthless. The US and its allies invaded Iraq on false pretexts, including that of establishing “democracy”. Yet Pipes rejects completely that the United States has any obligations toward the population. “Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West,” he wrote in the New York Sun.

Instead, the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq could have positive consequences, according to Pipes. In the short term, he asserts that a civil war would “reduce coalition casualties” as Iraqis “fight each other”. Pipes also argues that there would be fewer terrorist attacks on US and allied targets outside Iraq as networks like Al Qaeda—which is based on Sunni extremism—would focus their attention on a sectarian war against Shiites. He wrote: “When Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt.”

More importantly for Pipes, however, civil war in Iraq would end what he views as the dangerous talk of establishing democracy in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East. As far as Pipes is concerned, the masses of the region should not and cannot have democratic rights because they will not necessarily vote for the preferred candidates of Washington. To the extent that elections in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere have given the population the chance to express their sentiments, large numbers of people have given their support to Islamic fundamentalist movements opposed to the American presence in the region—organisations that Pipes refers to as the “extreme enemies” of US interests.

Before the war, Pipes was indistinguishable from other neo-conservative ideologues who were justifying a US invasion of Iraq on the grounds it would inspire a democratic “revolution” in the Middle East. In an article published by the New York Post on February 11, 2003, Pipes argued that an American victory and the “successful rehabilitation” of the country “will bring liberals out of the woodwork and generally move the region toward democracy”.

Within a matter of months, as resistance to the US occupation developed, he had abandoned such talk. Pipes’ argued last month that Iraq is in “no position... to develop advanced institutions of democracy and capitalism”. By implication, the type of regime advocated by Pipes in Iraq is a pro-US dictatorship no less brutal than that of Saddam Hussein—after many hundreds of thousands more Iraqis have lost their lives in a sectarian bloodbath.

Elsewhere in the region, Pipes asserts that it will take “decades” before the people of the Middle East are ready to elect their own governments. A fervent defender of the Zionist state in Israel, Pipes is particularly outraged by the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. While he rhetorically declares that democracy is a long-term goal, Pipes articulates the view of the US ruling class that no regime can be allowed that is not compliant with American interests.

From this standpoint, Pipes argues that a civil war in Iraq could be advantageous by providing a pretext for US military action against Iran and Syria. Open warfare between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites, he wrote in the New York Sun, would most likely “invite Syrian and Iranian participation... hastening the possibility of an American confrontation with those states, with which tensions are already high”.

The American neo-conservatives make no secret of their ambitions for “regime-change” in Iran and Syria, which are currently regarded as obstacles to untrammeled US domination over the Middle East. An incredulous ABC radio journalist asked: “America can’t afford to take them on in open warfare, can it?” And Pipes bluntly replied: “America’s good at open warfare. It’s just not good at occupying countries.”

While Pipes repeats ad nauseum that a civil war in Iraq would be a tragedy, the obvious conclusion is that he believes the US has no interest in preventing one. The fact that such a figure can callously speak of the advantages of a sectarian bloodbath points to the possibility that agencies of the US government that share his views may have been involved in encouraging communal conflict. Numerous highly suspicious provocations, murders and bombings have occurred at particularly opportune times for the US occupation and the Bush administration.

More generally, American policy since the occupation of Iraq began has been to foment tensions between the country’s various religious and ethnic groups in order to weaken resistance to the US presence. A classic “divide and rule” strategy has been pursued.

Kurdish nationalist and Shiite fundamentalist organisations were promoted into positions of privilege and authority at the expense of the largely Sunni Arab elite that dominated under the Hussein regime. Almost as soon as the war was over, shadowy Sunni organisations began carrying out murderous and indiscriminate attacks on Shiite civilians. Thousands of Shiites have been killed. The Shiite fundamentalist parties have used the carnage to justify their collaboration with the US forces.

A considerable proportion of the US-recruited Iraqi military were members of Kurdish or Shiite militias. The Sunni population is deeply fearful of these sectarian formations, which fight alongside American troops against the largely Sunni-based resistance. The Shiite fundamentalist parties have used their control over security forces to unleash death squads against Sunni communities, to wipe out opponents and terrorise the population. Hundreds of Sunnis have been murdered after being detained by police.

Alongside the killings, there are now reports of ethnic cleansing. Thousands of people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds are being forced either by direct threats or the general escalation of violence to leave their homes in mixed neighbourhoods to find protection elsewhere.

The response of Pipes to this catastrophe in Iraq underscores the predatory and criminal nature of US foreign policy. The American ruling elite as a whole does not have one iota of concern for the lives, well-being or democratic rights of the masses in the Middle East or anywhere else. It is desperately seeking to establish US dominance over key strategic territory and crucial energy resources and markets for the benefit of American corporations and financial conglomerates.

Significantly, Pipes’ neo-fascist speculation on the benefits of barbarism in Iraq has produced hardly a word of comment, let alone criticism, in the American and Australian press or political establishment.
RENEGADE EYE

Kurdish unrest stirs again in Turkey

On Turkish television Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, announced Turkey has received pledges of support in its struggle against the Kurdish "Marxist" group PKK (Turkey's Kurdish Workers Party) from Damascus and Tehran.

The PKK revolt centered in the Turkish city of Diyarbakir started in 1984. Since that time 37,000 people have perished in the fighting. The most recent fighting is unique, is that Turkey has received the support of neighboring countries. They plan to also negotiate with the Baghdad.

Syria and Iran also face the possibility of revolt of their Kurdish populations. They also harbor dreams of a united Kurdistan. The Kurdish population in Northern Iraq, actually have some degree of autonomy. They have been aiding the Kurdish in Turkey, financially, and by giving refuge to PKK fighters.

If Kurdistan became independant; it would carve up borders in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and the Caucasus State. It would be greater than any of the "color revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia. Energy agreements would have to be renegotiated. It could inspire other national groups to revolt.

Ankara has been making serious military alliances, particularly since Kurdish in Northern Iraq, negotiated an oil deal with Norway, independant of Baghdad.

Islamic units fighting against Kurdish independance, can provide a diversion from their fighting the West, Russia or Israel. Allies may convince the Kurdish, that independance is reachable.

Recently US intelligence and Turkey, have been working against the PKK in Turkey. It is geared to eliminating the PKK's influence in Northern Iraq.
RENEGADE EYE

Hitchens On The Third Anniversary of the Iraq War And Occupation

Reason Magazine and Slate, had opinions by Christopher Hitchens, on the third anniversary of the Iraq occupation.

ReasonOnline at 03/17/06, asked several conservative and libertarian writers, if they changed their mind about the Iraqi occupation. They were all asked the same three questions. This is Hitchens response:

1. Did you support the invasion of Iraq?


Yes: I was an advocate before the fact, not a supporter.

2. Have you changed your position?


Not in the least: I wish only that Saddam had not been able to rely upon Russian and French protection and the influence of oil-for-food racketeers and other political scum.

3. What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?


The United States and its allies should continue to stand for federal democracy, while making Iraq a killing-field for jihadists and fascists and a training ground for an army that will need to intervene again in other failed state/rogue state contexts.

As for the second point, I have some memory of a third party, that had something to do with the oil for food program. Iraqi people are facing more hardship, now that the oil for food program is being discontinued.

My reaction to the third point, is to tell Hitchens, the joke is on you. I believe some neocons and Bush, authentically entered this situation with a sense of idealism. Days after the invasion of Iraq, the idealism ended. The neocons were heard from less. The world view of Cheney and Rumsfeld prevailed. The US's best friends are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Israel. All US imperialism wants to do is contain Islamism. Islamism is similar to imperialism, as both based on profit and reaction.

The March 20th Slate, has Hitch again telling us about Iraq.

Up until now, I have resisted all urges to assume the mantle of generalship and to describe how I personally would have waged a campaign to liberate Iraq.

Not quite true. I can live with that statement.

This commitment doesn't override truth, and I know that a lot of people feel that they were cheated or even lied into the war. It seems amazing to me that so many people have adopted the "Saddam Hussein? No problem!" view before the documents captured from his regime have even been translated, let alone analyzed. I am sure that when this task has been completed, history will make fools of those who believed that he was no threat, had no terror connections, was "in his box," and so forth. A couple of recent disclosures lend some point to my view. The first are the findings published in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, and the second is the steady work of Stephen Hayes, over at the Weekly Standard, aimed at getting some of the captured documents declassified.

Things changed from Saddam had WMD, to he had intentions, to we have documents that say something.

Well, if everyone else is allowed to rewind the tape and replay it, so can I. We could have been living in a different world, and so could the people of Iraq, and I shall go on keeping score about this until the last phony pacifist has been strangled with the entrails of the last suicide-murderer.

What the hell is that supposed to mean?? Maybe he means,“Mankind will not be free until the last king is stranged with the entrails of the last priest"- Diderot.

Hitchens announced he is part of the ACLU lawsuit against wiretaps. He announced it at Huffington's blog. Why not announce it in The Wall Street Journal or Reason? Shouldn't the Huff and Puff people be strangled?

This post represents an obvious direction change. The process of blogging, not only changes readers of blog, it changes writers. My initial support of the Iraq invasion, wasn't based on support of the invasion, as much as not being able to identify with the stupid arguments brought by the Democratic Party.

I like Maryam Namazie's blog. Her party with branches in Iraq and Iran, are unequivocally against both Islamism and occupation. I love Edie's blog Annotated Life. Read her articles about the history of neoconservativism and Islamism.
RENEGADE EYE

Wishing Tina's Baby All The Best

Tina from the blog fuzzy and blue --political musings by a proud Democrat baby girl, is having a major eye surgery on Wednesday. If you read her blog, you'll find she is a person of substance. I always tell her, the Democratic Party, doesn't deserve having her. Go to her blog, and write her a note.RENEGADE EYE

Target Cuba and Venezuela: US Military Exercises in the Caribbean

According to a press release by US Southern Command, on March 27, 2006; a US Navy Carrier Strike Group, will deploy from the US east coast to the Caribbean Sea from early April to late May 2006. It will consist of four ships, with 60 fighter planes, and 6,500 troops.

The stated reasons are; "enhancing military-to-military relationships with regional partner nations, improving operational readiness, and fostering good will." By "fostering good will" what is meant is sending a strong message to Venezuela and Cuba. The commander of the US Southcom General Bantz Craddock, has on many occasions attacked Venezuela. Two weeks ago to the US Senate, he called Venezuela, "a destabilizing force".

The US is bogged down in Iraq, and has no immediate plans to invade Venezuela, it certainly is on the table for future plans.

SEE: In Defense of Marxism
RENEGADE EYE

I WAS TAGGED AGAIN

The Blogworld as I know it changed this evening... I've been tagged! It was inevitable... you blog... you become friends with fellow bloggers.... and ZONK!!! they get you when you're not looking.
El Patro's Tijuana Tortilla did it to me... So now I'm obligated to tag four others....
But first I have to answer the following questions... then I'll name the four I'm tagging. They will have to answer the same questions... and tag four other bloggers. This should be done on their own site... but link me to it when you do...
So... here goes... the questions; I chose to rewrite the questions El Patro sent, due to I was tagged just recently.

1) What are your guilty pleasures??
Professional wrestling and romantic comedy movies.

2) What song is your theme song?
"Ring of Fire"

3) You receive $20.00 change in a retail store. The correct change is
$1.00. What do you do?
I already gave back the 20.

4) You know your friend's husband has another lover. Tell wifey?
No, I'll end up with two enemies.

5) Who do you admire, that would surprise others?
I think Clint Eastwood is one of the greatest artists in history.

OK, so time to tag 4 other people. Well, here goes, and everyone check these blogs out, they’re all great..

Blurred Clarity

CLAY CANE

Folk Rock Girl (FRoG BLoG)

jaebrysonblog

SUPPORT PAKISTANI BLOGGERS

As you all know that the Pakistani govt. banned all blogs hosted on
blogspot through its internet gateway. An action group was formed by the
Pakistani bloggers to voice their concerns to the media regarding this
issue (http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP). As of 27th Feb, all web
logs having an address with .http://name.blogspot.com went offline in
Pakistan.An alternative to the current blogspot ban is to access you blogs
by http://www.pkblogs.com/

Dr. Awab Alvi (a blogger from Karachi) started a campaign "Dont Block the
Blog" which offers website banners to protest the ban.
(http://help-pakistan.com/main/dont-block-the-blog/)

Additionally, many bloggers have also gathered at various fronts to
protest the ban by sending group petitions to the government and raising
the issue with the media.

Sign the petition.
Reprinted from the Pakistani blog My Red Diary.
RENEGADE EYE

Maryam Namazie: Freedom of Expression: No ifs and buts

The above was Maryam Namazie's speech at a free speech march in Trafalgar Square in London on March 25, 2006.

* In Iran, Tehran bus workers demanding their rights have been arrested, including their wives and children, and some tortured.
* In Afghanistan, teachers defending the right of girls to an education are threatened with death.
* In Iraq, women's rights activists are threatened for demanding equality and freedom.
* In Iran, journalists who published a satirical article comparing the advent of Khomeini to AIDS are languishing in prison...
* In Yemen, Mohammad Al Asadi, an editor, is facing execution for recounting how Mohammad approved of the killing of a woman who had insulted him.

The list is endless...

Too many more nameless, faceless human beings across the globe are maimed, threatened, killed, bound and gagged for speaking out and expressing themselves.

And it's not just 'over there', but right here...

* A website in Sweden publishing the Mohammad caricatures is shut down.
* Editors are fired in France.
* The Behzti play is shut down after Sikhs are offended by it.
* A Scottish cancer charity is intimidated into not accepting money raised by Jerry Springer the Opera.
* Writers living and writing here, including myself, are threatened to death on threads of umma.net.
* People are arrested and summoned to court for carrying placards or flyers with the Mohammad caricatures on them [in fact Reza Moradi was told he will be summoned to court for 'offending' someone because he carried a placard with the Mohammad caricatures at the March 25 free speech rally - more on this later].

Clearly, free speech and expression are not luxuries or western values. They are essential for people everywhere.

And what more and more people are standing up and saying after government upon government and organisation upon organisation demanded apologies for the Mohammad caricatures and gave them on all our behalves is that they are not up for sale.

We know better.

Any limits on free speech & expression are really attempts by those in power or vying for power to limit our rights and the rights of the population at large.

Don't be duped into thinking otherwise.

And that is why the defence of free speech and expression are so intrinsically linked to the defence of other rights. You cannot defend one without the others. You cannot defend one without also defending the right to asylum, the right to strike and organisation, labour rights, women's and children's rights, the right to live in a secular society, the right to equality and freedom, universal rights, the right to religion and atheism and belief as a private matter, the right to live lives worthy of 21st century humanity and of course vice versa. You cannot defend humanity without defending its right to speak and express itself...

For this, nothing can be deemed sacred except the human being.

Defining certain expressions and speech as sacred is merely a tool for the suppression of society; saying speech and expression offends is in fact an attempt to restrict it.

And of course what is held most sacred and deemed to offend the most especially in this New World Order is criticism and ridiculing of religion and its representatives of earth.

Why do it if it offends? Because it must be done.

Because ridiculing is a form of criticism, is a form of resistance, is a serious form of opposing reaction!

Whilst we may all be sometimes offended by some things, it is religion and the religious that are offended all of the time. They alone seem to have a monopoly on being offended, saying their beliefs are a no go area, and silencing all those who offend.

And don't think this reactionary rightwing political Islamic movement is only offended by a criticism of Islam or Mohammad. [I am focusing on this because it is a movement in power.] It is offended if you hold hands on the streets, have sex outside of marriage; it is offended if you are unveiled or improperly veiled; it is offended if you listen to certain music or if you teach evolution and science or if you dare to teach girls; it is offended if you are gay; if you are a woman; – many of which are by the way punishable by death or at the very least flogging and imprisonment in many countries under the rule of Islam....

It is interesting how the political Islamic movement kills, it maims, it humiliates - with Islam as its banner - and we are not even allowed to ridicule and criticise it.

Religion considers a woman as worth half a man, gays as perversions, sex outside of marriage as sinful, and so on and so forth but it is a few caricatures that are offensive!

Offensive or not, sacred or not - religion and superstition – Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Scientology and so on - must be open to all forms of criticism and ridicule.

It must be first and foremost because religion is not something from eras past but because it is as a political movement wreaking havoc across the world. Not a second passes without some atrocity being committed by it. It hangs people from cranes and lamp posts, it stones people to death – in the 21 century – with the law even specifying the size of the stone to be used, it amputates and decapitates.

It must be criticised and ridiculed because that is how throughout history reaction was pushed back.

That is how throughout history society has managed to advance and progress.

Why this should be seen as an attack on Muslims or Christians or Sikhs or Scientologists per se is beyond me. Is an attack on the belief and practice of Female Genital Mutilation an attack on girls who have been mutilated? Is the criticism of Israeli state terrorism an attack on Jews? Is an attack on the BNP that promotes Christian culture or the Christian Council of Britain it has recently established, or the ridiculing of Jesus racism against Christians? No of course not. And the same applies to the Muslim Council of Britain, Hamas, the Islamic Regime in Iran and the Mohammad caricatures.

Islamophobia - and now by the way the Church has asked that Christianity-phobia also be included in UN rights terminology – none are racism because criticisms of a religion, idea, a belief and even the practices that result from beliefs – even a phobia and hatred against beliefs have nothing to do with racism against real live human beings.

Saying it is so is merely part of the effort to make it such in order to silence criticism of religion and the political movement that holds it up as its banner.

The world is today threatened and taken hostage by two poles of terrorism. The state terrorism led by the United States on the one hand and the political Islamic movement on the other share a lot more than they let on. After all they were former friends and many of them still are. Both use religion to attack the gains made by humanity in centuries past. Both defend religion and use it.

Freedom of speech and expression are one of the few means at the disposal of many to resist this terrorism and its attack on universal values and norms.

We must defend it unconditionally. There can be no ifs and buts.

See: Maryam Namazie. Maryam Namazie is a producer of TV International English, a member of the Central Council of the Organisation for Women's Liberation and Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran's International Relations Committee. She is also co-editor of WPI Briefing.
RENEGADE EYE

France: Protest Job Bill

After a weekend of protest, where 1.5 million people took to the streets. The labor unions have called a general strike to protest what they call, a new dangerous law.
The law would allow employers to fire people under age 26 without cause within two years of being hired.

Read Jerome a Paris's Blog in The European Tribune. It refutes the neoliberal arguments, found in the international press. The press portrays the government and big business as forward thinking, while portraying the victims as protectionist and selfish.

Thank you Histologian. Please visit this well written Greek leftist blog.
RENEGADE EYE

Afghanistan:Christian convert faces death penalty in Afghanistan

UNDER TALIBAN

The leader of Afghanistan's puritanical Taliban militia has issued an edict imposing the death penalty on any Afghan Muslim who converts to Christianity or Judaism, an official radio report said Monday.

The decree from Taliban Supreme Leader Mulla Mohammad Omar also said anyone caught selling "anti-Islamic literature" would be sentenced to five years jail, according to state-run Radio Shariat.
AFP, Jan.8, 2001

Abdul Rahman, 41, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told Associated Press. The accused was charged with rejecting Islam.

He admitted to converting to Christianity 16 years ago, while working as a medical aide in a Christian relief group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The prosecutor is willing to drop the charges, if Rahman converts back to Islam.

Shariah law states that any Muslim who rejects Islam should be sentenced to death, according to Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Repeated attempts to impose a jail sentence were barred.

For information see: Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan RENEGADE EYE

Maryam Namazie: Not Another Iraq

On the anniversary of the war on Iraq, we watch on our TV screens with complete disbelief and horror at the abyss that was once a country albeit a dictatorship. Though we always said this would happen, it is still so hard to believe that things can actually always get so much worse than we had allowed ourselves to imagine.

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says that terrorists in Iraq are attempting to stoke sectarian tension and spark civil war. What else did he really expect when all they have done is divide and compartmentalise the country into ethnic and religious blocks via their own form of state terrorism?

The current situation is a direct result of the USA's war and policies on Iraq. Of course Islamic terrorists are taking advantage of the situation to gain access to power – though some have already been mainstreamed into the Iraqi government, thanks to the USA. They too have turned Iraq into their killing fields.

As every day goes by, it becomes painfully clear for all that neither the Islamist herds, nor the ethnocentric gangs and thugs let loose on society, nor the US-led 'liberators' can bring about a humane and 21st century solution to this swamp that was once called Iraq. They are in fact themselves the problem.

And in all this tragedy and chaos, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says he wants to help the Iranian people have a freer and more prosperous future – that the Iranian people deserve better! Isn't that what they said about the people of Iraq and Afghanistan! And we have seen the prosperity they have brought for them!

To Jack Straw and Donald Rumsfeld: Please, if anyone is going to and can bring freedom, equality and prosperity, it is not you but the revolutionary movement fighting for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Your alternative is no alternative at all but more of the same.

Stand back and let us show you how it's done.

See: Maryam Namazie. Maryam Namazie is a producer of TV International English, a member of the Central Council of the Organisation for Women's Liberation and Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran's International Relations Committee. She is also co-editor of WPI Briefing.

Spike Lee On George Clooney's Oscar Statement

Director SPIKE LEE has criticised GEORGE CLOONEY for highlighting GONE WITH THE WIND actress HATTIE McDANIEL's 1940 Oscar triumph as an example of Hollywood's "forward-thinking".
While accepting his Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor earlier this month (05MAR06), Clooney fired back at critics who claim Hollywood is out of touch by citing McDaniel's win.
Lee says, "To use that as an example of how progressive Hollywood is is ridiculous. Hattie McDaniel played MAMMY in Gone With the Wind.
"That film was basically saying that the wrong side won the Civil War and that black people should still be enslaved.
"C'mon! I like George a lot. I'm not hating on him. But I don't think he really thought it out.
"How many years was it between Hattie McDaniel and HALLE BERRY (winning an acting Oscar)? Sixty-some-odd? C'mon!"
RENEGADE EYE

Sistani On Gays

The moderating force in Iraqi Islam, the major leader of the Shiite majority, on what should be the fate of gays and lesbians:

"The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing."

See: The Advocate.
RENEGADE EYE

Free Up H5N1 Avian Flu Data

At this point 200 million birds have died or have been killed due to H5N1 Avian Flu, and 97 human beings died.

A leading scientist in the field of genetic sequencing, wants data on the disease, at tax payer financed Center for Disease Control (CDC) and The National Institutes of Health, to place virus sequencing data on an open open database. Steven Sulzberg believes if the US made such a move, other governments would follow.

The leading scientists have lived with in a "publish or perish" enviroment. That is ok for an abstract scientific study. Several thousand people die yearly from normal flu. This could be a pandemic catastrophe.

Even the World Health Organization keeps its data closed. A lone Italian researcher has cast a harsh spotlight on the WHO's system, suggesting that it places academic pride over public health - and snubbing it by posting prized bird-flu data in plain view.
RENEGADE EYE

MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism

MANIFESTO:

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject "cultural relativism," which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia," an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq
Presentations:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, from somilian origin, is member of Dutch parliement, member of the liberal party VVD. Writter of the film Submission which caused the assasination of Theo Van Gogh by an islamist in november 2004, she lives under police protection.
Chahla Chafiq
Chahla Chafiq, writer from iranian origin, exiled in France is a novelist and an essayist. She’s the author of "Le nouvel homme islamiste , la prison politique en Iran " (2002). She also wrote novels such as "Chemins et brouillard" (2005).
Caroline Fourest
Essayist, editor in chief of Prochoix (a review who defend liberties against dogmatic and integrist ideologies), author of several reference books on « laicité » and fanatism : Tirs Croisés : la laïcité à l’épreuve des intégrismes juif, chrétien et musulman (with Fiammetta Venner), Frère Tariq : discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan, et la Tentation obscurantiste (Grasset, 2005). She receieved the National prize of laicité in 2005.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
French philosoph, born in Algeria, engaged against all the XXth century « ism » (Fascism, antisemitism, totalitarism, terrorism), he is the author of La Barbarie à visage humain, L’Idéologie française, La Pureté dangereuse, and more recently American Vertigo.
Irshad Manji
Irshad Manji is a Fellow at Yale University and the internationally best-selling author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith" (en francais: "Musulmane Mais Libre"). She speaks out for free expression based on the Koran itself. Née en Ouganda, elle a fui ce pays avec sa famille musulmane d’origine indienne à l’âge de quatre ans et vit maintenant au Canada, où ses émissions et ses livres connaissent un énorme succès.
Mehdi Mozaffari
Mehdi Mozaffari, professor from iranian origin and exiled in Denmark, is the author of several articles and books on islam and islamism such as : Authority in Islam: From Muhammad to Khomeini, Fatwa: Violence and Discourtesy and Glaobalization and Civilizations.
Maryam Namazie
Writer, TV International English producer; Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran’s International Relations; and 2005 winner of the National Secular Society’s Secularist of the Year award.
Taslima Nasreen
Taslima Nasreen is born in Bangladesh. Doctor, her positions defending women and minorities brought her in trouble with a comittee of integrist called « Destroy Taslima » and to be persecuted as « apostate »
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is the author of nine novels, including Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and, most recently, Shalimar the Clown. He has received many literary awards, including the Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, Germany’s Author of the Year Award, the European Union’s Aristeion Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, the Premio Mantova, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. He is a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T., and the president of PEN American Center. His books have been translated into over 40 languages.
Philippe Val
Director of publication of Charlie Hebdo (Leftwing french newspaper who have republished the cartoons on the prophet Muhammad by solidarity with the danish citizens targeted by islamists).
Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq , author notably of Why I am Not a Muslim ; Leaving Islam : Apostates Speak Out ; and The Origins of the Koran , is at present Research Fellow at a New York Institute conducting philological and historical research into the Origins of Islam and its Holy Book.
Antoine Sfeir
Born in Lebanon, christian, Antoine Sfeir choosed french nationality to live in an universalist and « laïc » (real secular) country. He is the director of Les cahiers de l’Orient and has published several reference books on islamism such as Les réseaux d’Allah (2001) et Liberté, égalité, Islam : la République face au communautarisme (2005).

For more information see: Maryam Namazie. Feel free to reproduce this statement. Renegade Eye

Ali Farka Touré: 1939-2006

His name may be known for a grammy winning album with Ry Cooder called Talking Timbuktu. He could have recorded in any location he desired; New York, Paris, London etc. He recorded his guitar work, that gave him the title of the "Johnny Lee Hooker of Africa", in Mali. The recording equiptment was sometimes primitive, compared to what could be found in Los Angeles or New York.

When he played guitar, he got sounds out of it like you never heard before. You were transported to his village.

There is a theory, that American blues, was influenced by Muslim slaves in West Africa. An example is the "Muslim Call To Prayer" compared to "Levee Camp Holler". That theory is strengthened by his music.

Touré used his money to better his people in the town of Niafunké, where he was mayor. He also helped young African musicians succeed.

Kudos to Musings of a (Fairly) Young Contrarian.RENEGADE EYE

March 08th International Women's Day: For Secularism, Equality and Freedom!

International Women's day has grown from its beginnings in 1908, by a women's suffrage caucus in the Socialist Party. On March 08th, 1908; Branch 03 of the New York Socialist Party, held a mass meeting on women's rights.

I'm reprinting a statement from the Iraqi left. This is a statement from The Organization of Women's Freedom (Iraq). This group is based in Northern Iraq.

A statement by organization of Women’s freedom in Iraq – abroad representative on International Women’s Day (8 March)

Make it a day to say No! To Islamic Sharia law in Iraq!

For secularism, equality and freedom!

The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) sends its greetings for this historic day to women activists all over the world. For centuries women have been struggling for their rights and for equality and liberation in all parts of the world. Major changes have been won, but nowhere do we have real equality, and in many parts of the world the oppression and exploitation of women are still striking. Iraq is one of those places.

The US-UK occupation has pushed Iraqi society back into a medieval world in which “honour killings”, beheadings, forced veiling and seclusion and sexual servitude are now a part of everyday life.

Now the reactionary, tribalist and sectarian government the US has installed in Iraq wants to go further by institutionalizing the oppression of Iraqi women. The outcome of a war and occupation which was sold to the world as bringing “liberation” and “democracy” has been a hand-picked group of political hacks and tribal elder imposed on Iraqi society through a pseudo-parliament and a constitution that makes women second class citizens.

For the last three years Iraqi women have stood up against not only the occupation but against political Islamist groups who are fighting to establish an Iranian or Saudi Arabian-type regime of gender apartheid, with all marital and family matters regulated by Islamic Sharia law.

OWFI is fighting to mobilize Iraqi women and their supporters across the world against the occupation and Islamisation of Iraq. The USA and its allies claim that in facilitating our subjugation they are respecting “Islamic culture” and “Arab culture”.

We say that this viewpoint, permanently relegating people in the so-called Muslim world to barbarism, borders on racism. We oppose politicized religion and demand a secular and egalitarian constitution for Iraq!

They want to divide people along lines of religion, ethnicity and gender. We are demanding equality for all Iraqis regardless of their origin! Women in Iraq need your support more than ever. OWFI has been able to maintain and continue its work because of international support and solidarity, because of solidarity from women’s, progressive and workers’ organizations all over the world helping us to stand firm for our lives and our liberties.

We call upon you to join with us this International Women’s Day (8 March) to say No to religious law in Iraq and yes to equality and freedom.

No to Islamic Sharia Law in Iraq!

Long Live International Women’s Day! Long live freedom, equality, and secularism!

Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq- Representative abroad

February 2006


For further information please contact Houzan Mahmoud:

houzan73@yahoo.co.uk

Tel: +44 79 56 88 3001

Equality in Iraq

RENEGADE EYE

Tony Blair and Trotsky

According to "The Independent" on Friday March 03, 2006, British prime minister Tony Blair revealed at The Commonwealth Club's World Book Day launch, that he was influenced to get involved in politics, after reading Isaac Deutscher's trilogy about the life of Leon Trotsky. According to Tony Blair, "There were people who got me very involved in politics. But then there was also a book. It was a trilogy, a biography of Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher, which made a very deep impression on me and gave me a love of political biography for the rest of my life."

Thank you Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism . RENEGADE EYE

Barney Ross: The Saga Of The Tough Jew

This is reprinted from easily one of the best leftist blogs Unrepentant Marxist. Louis Proyect's story is similar to mine. My Jewish father grew up in a Mexican community in St.Paul, MN and joined a Mexican street gang in the 1930s. He also had a similar military background as Louis's father. Both Louis and I, received our political education from the Socialist Workers Party.

If you visit Unrepentant Marxist, see his hilarious David Horowitz post.

In the mid-1950s, my family lived in an apartment above the Kentucky Club, a nightclub catering to NY Jews who stayed at bungalow colonies and small hotels during the summer. Most of the acts were veterans of the Jewish stage like Molly Picon or Moishe Oysher but the biggest draw was the Jewelbox Revue, a group of men who performed in drag. One day I came home to find one of the performers in our living-room, where my mom was sewing some sequins on his costume as a favor. She nonchalantly introduced this charming Black man as "Miss Peggy", as he preferred to be called.

The Kentucky Club had hired famed ex-boxing champion Barney Ross as a "greeter" one summer, which one I can't exactly remember. But I do have vivid memories of spending time with him on the street corner in the evenings as he took a break from his duties. Resplendent in a tuxedo and puffing on a cigarette beneath a streetlamp, he cut a dashing figure. He was always happy to chat with me, as were many of the people at the Kentucky Club who treated me like their mascot.

Since that time, I have learned few details about Ross's life, other than the obvious fact that he was a Jewish boxer and that he had kicked a morphine addiction developed as a way of suppressing the pain of wounds suffered at Guadalcanal. His struggle was dramatized in the 1957 biopic "Monkey on My Back."

When I learned that a new biography of Ross by Douglas Century had been published, I would have bought it even if it were nothing but a standard sports biography. I was really curious about who Barney Ross was and how he compared to the image of him that lingered with me all these years.

"Barney Ross" is the third volume in a joint project of Schocken and Nextbook publishers called "Jewish Encounters" that seeks to promote Jewish literature, culture, and ideas. Although a biography of Barney Ross might be the last thing to expect in the same series of already released studies of King David and Maimonides (Moses, Spinoza and others to follow), Century does achieve a kind of monumentality. Century connects Ross not only to legendary figures that preceded him, like Daniel Mendoza the British Jew who was the champion of the London Prize Ring in 1792, but to a host of important cultural and political figures such as Saul Bellow, who came out of the same hardscrabble Chicago streets. Additionally, Century draws out all the interesting political and social implications of Barney Ross's amazing tendency to cross paths with controversial Jewish personalities from Irgunist Peter Bergson to Jack Ruby.

Beyond the interest that is sustained in Barney Ross as an individual, Century also addresses a phenomenon that is the subject of two earlier works by other writers, namely the "tough Jew." In considering Barney Ross and the Jewish boxer in general as an example of this phenomenon, Century contributes to a debate on the "Jewish Question" that will remain unresolved until contradictions between Jews and their ostensible antagonists are resolved on a higher level.

Dov Ber Raskofsky, who would assume the name Barney Ross after launching a career as a boxer, was born to Itchik and Sarah Rasofsky on the Lower East Side on December 23, 1909. Although his father had taught Hebrew back in Brest-Litovsk, he made a living as a small grocer. This was a trade he would continue once he arrived in the USA, following his departure in the aftermath of state-sanctioned pogroms in 1903.

Within two years of his birth, Ross and his family would depart for Chicago to take over a grocery store in the Maxwell Street ghetto, also the home of bandleader Benny Goodman, future Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, actor Paul Muni and William Paley, who would one day run CBS.

Maxwell Street was a poverty-stricken rat's nest that was a breeding ground for pneumonia, TB and diphtheria. It also bred many Jewish criminals, who, like the Jewish boxers of the time, were considered "tough Jews." This included Jacob Guzik, who was Al Capone's financial adviser and Samuel "Nails" Morton, who provided protection to Jewish businessmen against marauding gangs from other ethnic groups. In 1917 Morton was arrested for nearly beating to death several members of a Polish gang.

Barney Ross began running with young Jewish hoodlums at an early age and soon gained a reputation for being an effective street fighter despite his small size--his nickname was "Runt."

In 1923, Itchik Rasofsky was shot and killed by robbers in his store. Shortly afterwards, Barney Ross dropped out of high school and started hustling on the street. His younger two brothers and sister were put into an orphanage. Two years later, at the age of fifteen, he began hanging out at Kid Cross's gym where Jackie Fields (born Jacob Finkelstein) trained. Fields would win the gold medal at the Paris Olympic in 1924 before turning pro. In this period, it is estimated that 30 percent of all professional fighters were Jewish. Despite the deep prejudice against sports in general and especially fighting in the Jewish community, many men became boxers for the same reasons that Irish, Italian and Blacks would: to escape poverty. But other nationalities would not have to overcome the psychological hurdle created by a millennium of Jewish traditions. Century writes:

The Hungarian-born historian and sociologist George Eisen, who boxed as a young man in Budapest, has written of the "imperative to acknowledge that in the hierarchy of Jewish religious values, feats of physical prowess were invariably relegated to the 'secular' and the 'mundane.' There has always been a strong aversion in Jewish culture and tradition toward violent or blood sports that often were the hallmarks of neighboring tribes, societies and cultures." The antipathetic attitude toward sport goes back at least as far as the conquest of Judea by Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C.E., when Jews were first exposed to the sports of boxing and wrestling. One of the more overt signs of Hellenization was the establishment in 174 B.C.E. of a gymnasium in Jerusalem where athletes engaged in sporting activities in the nude. According to the First Book of Maccabees, some Jewish participants even underwent medical procedures to conceal the fact that they were circumcised. The fact that all Greek games were dedicated to cults deemed idolatrous to Jews--gifts and sacrifices were made to the god Heracles in particular--exacerbated the sense that, for the observant Jew, sport was inextricably linked to the threat of a foreign, pagan culture.

Ross began training at Kid Cross's gym himself and also began to fight in Golden Glove tournaments, where he beat all opponents with ease. After turning pro, he fought a series of classic battles in the light and welterweight divisions against Tony Canzoneri and Jimmy McLarnin. Ross prevailed over these and lesser opponents until 1938 when he was defeated by Henry Armstrong, an African-American.

Fighting as a professional allowed Ross to get his siblings out of the orphanage and to buy a home for his mother. But in an all too familiar pattern, the rest of the money was pissed away on the kind of wastrel life-style that other champion boxers, including Mike Tyson, succumb to. Ross was the quintessential party guy who could be seen at popular nightspots every night of the week buying drinks for the house. Most of the money, however, went to feed what can only be called a gambling addiction. Ross was a permanent feature at the racetrack where he had an uncanny ability to bet on losing horses. His friend Al Jolson, also a big racing fan, once told him not to sit near him: "Stay away from me--I don't want to catch your poison." After beating Bobby Pacho on March 27, 1934, Ross blew his entire purse in a single day of betting.

Ross made no effort to hide the fact that he was an observant Jew but was uncomfortable with how the promoters turned every bout into a kind of ethnic rivalry. Along with Detroit Tiger baseball player Hank Greenberg, Ross was now the most famous Jewish athlete in the country. In the bout with Armstrong, sportswriters tried to exploit the fact that Ross's father's killers were Black and turn it into a race war. The articles angered Ross who had one of the writers booted out of his training camp at Grossinger's hotel in the Catskills, not far from my village.

For his part, Armstrong once commented "You can't Jim Crow a left hook." Long before Mohammed Ali, Armstrong was also writing poems. "In Contemplation of May 26" (the night of the fight) contained these lines:

Two fighters of oppressed races fighting each other
just like that
It doesn't seem exactly sensible or right
We're not mad at each other; we're just fighting for
the things we need
It comes right back, the same old thing--to live, man
must fight

After losing to Armstrong in a completely one-sided bout, Ross retired. He couldn't adjust to life outside the ring, however. He continued to piss money away on the horses and on nightlife but no longer had money coming in from fighting. His show business connections and fighting past made it easy for him to audition for a role as lead in Clifford Odets's "Golden Boy," a leftist play about a Jewish youth who has to choose between a career in boxing or playing the violin. He soon realized that even if this part was not far from his own life experience, delivering lines on the stage was more difficult than warding off Henry Armstrong's blows.

At the age of 33, Barney Ross inexplicably enlisted in the Marines. He needed special permission to join since he was far over the age limit, as well as being out of shape. Douglas Century believes this was motivated as much by Ross's lack of direction than by a gung-ho desire to fight. He ended up on Guadalcanal and in the midst of some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific. On November 19, 1942, Ross was involved in a bloody battle that convinced him--according to an Esquire article he wrote later on--that "fighting wasn't a game." Century recounts the action that would lead to Ross being a decorated war hero and ultimately to morphine addiction:

He calculated the range of a Japanese machine-gunner. He didn't dare rise, so, lying flat on his belly, he lobbed three grenades in fast succession. The machine-gun fire halted. He crawled over to the trench in which Heavy Atkins and Freeman lay bleeding. He unhooked the grenades from their belts. As he crawled forward again, a mortar shell burst and shrapnel tore into his side, arm, and leg. In the darkness, he did his best to dress his own shrapnel wounds.

The low-hanging leaves began to patter with a hard rain. He gathered the rainwater and did his best to give Monak, Atkins, and Freeman a few drops to drink. The Japanese infantrymen were setting up at closer range, no more than thirty yards away. One of the infantrymen was struck again. A slug tore through Barney's left ankle and, screaming, he had to cut his boot away with his knife.

The pain was so intense that he felt himself losing consciousness. Delirious, feverish, shaking--he didn't yet realize he was suffering from the malaria that would plague him for years to come--he was convinced that if he blacked out he'd never awaken. He had twenty-two grenades--in some versions of the firefight it is twenty-one--and threw all except one, which he planned to hold in reserve should the Japanese soldiers storm into the foxhole, ready to die like Eliezar, baring his blade under the lead war elephant in 1 Maccabees.

Barney lay in the foxhole for some thirteen hours--a cruel "lifetime," he would later call it--watching over the wounded Marines and infantrymen. "I never expected to get out. I was crying, and praying, and shooting, and throwing grenades, and half the time, I guess, I was out of my head." Throughout the night he had comforted himself by repeating the Sh'ma Yisroel--"Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One." He prayed for himself, the wounded Marines and infantrymen, and "anybody else who was ready to die." In his delirium he saw the visage of a living dead man, bearded, in soiled apron, surrounded by paper sacks in the nameless grocery on Jefferson Street. "You have no idea how I talked to Pa throughout that night," Barney later told his brother George.

Ross would be treated with morphine in a military hospital. His misery was compounded by recurring bouts of malaria. Later he wrote in a memoir that "The morphine lifted me out of the snake pit and let me climb into the clouds." After returning to civilian life, he discovered that he could not do without it. He began to spend whatever money he had left after the gambling fiascos of years past on drugs. He later recalled, "I spent $250,000 on drugs in four years. Some of it was for buying silence. I paid through the nose." When he wasn't prowling around for his next fix, he was being feted at banquets as a war hero. In November 1944, he met with FDR for a Rose Garden ceremony. The President cited him for "his great personal courage and sincere devotion to his comrades."

Despite the battle he was fighting to kick the habit, Ross was still able to become active in something called the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, which was led by Peter Bergson (née Hillel Kook). The committee sponsored a pageant titled "We Shall Never Die" at Madison Square Garden on March 9, 1943 that would go on to tour the country. The culmination was an all-star "Show of Shows" once again at the Garden that featured Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, Paul Robeson, the Count Basie Orchestra and others. Ross bought tickets for 150 servicemen.

Despite his tireless work or perhaps because of it, Bergson became 'persona non grata' in official Jewish circles, if not considered a fascist. Since Bergson was affiliated with Jabotinsky's Irgun, this charge was not so far-fetched. According to George Raskofsky, Ross's younger brother who supplied valuable information to Douglas Century before his own death, Ross was involved in running guns to the Irgun. One time he discovered a cache of machine guns in his brother's closet and was told to look the other way.

Since rightwing Zionism of the sort associated with Jabotinsky has such a well-deserved bad reputation on the left, it might come as a surprise to discover that Peter Bergson comes off fairly well in chapter 24 of Lenni Brenner's "Zionism in the Age of Dictators". Unlike the Jewish establishment, Bergson was not afraid to rock the boat. Brenner quotes the December 12, 1942 issue of the Militant newspaper to explain why so little was done to resist the Holocaust:

"Truth to tell, these organisations, like the Joint Distribution Board and the Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Labor Committee, feared to make themselves heard because they were afraid of arousing a wave of anti-Semitism here as a result. They feared for their own hides too much to fight for the lives of millions abroad."

Yesterday I received the following from Lenni Brenner in reply to my query as to his view of Bergson's legacy:

Only one Zionist group understood that rescue had to be their priority during the Holocaust. Irgunist Peter Bergson realized that the US announcement of the gassing meant that they had to push Roosevelt to act. Ben Hecht, author and script-writer of Front Page, the classic 30s newspaper-man book and film, wrote a pageant, We Shall Never Die, bringing it into a full Madison Square Garden, March 9, 1943, and toured it to California.

Kurt Weill orchestrated the musical accompaniment. Edward G. Robinson and other film stars worked on it. A Trotskyist journalist complained that it was too pious and memorial. Indeed recordings of it sound ponderous to later ears. But that was the state of show biz political consciousness at the time. They did the best they could think of.

"The WZO forces were forced to organize a Garden event, to head off their rivals. Instead of uniting with Bergson, they pressured auditoriums in Pittsburg and other cities, who refused to rent to the pageant. Purblind hostility culminated in Nahum Goldmann of the World Jewish Congress, the international equivalent of Wise's AJCongress, going to Washington to demand action - against Bergson, not Hitler.

The WZO element did nothing to pressure Roosevelt to loosen rules restricting 30s German-Jewish immigration, and were incapable of self-starting in the time of castastrophe. The Irgunists, as terrorists, understood, at least for a time, that they had to act, in this case, to mobilize public opinion, or Roosevelt would do nothing.

In his later years, Bergson broke with Zionism, becoming a major voice in the chorus of its Israeli critics, and a vital source of information on America during the Holocaust. Goldmann never broke with Zionism, but his remorse for his role in that era is recorded in a later document.

(Brenner's observations were made in connection with a State Department memo about Bergson and his rivals.)

Throughout his life, Barney Ross would not allow public opinion to dictate who would be his friend or ally. If Peter Bergson was doing the right thing to agitate for the survival of European Jewry, he didn't care whether or not Bergson was on the a-list of prestigious Jewish organizations.

He felt the same way about Jack Ruby, a life-long friend he met during his hustling days on Maxwell Street. Ruby, of course, would eventually move down to Dallas and open up a strip club. Shortly after the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, Ruby entered Dallas Police Headquarters and shot Oswald to death. Ruby's mob connections have always suggested to some that the original plot against JFK was orchestrated by the Mafia rather than the CIA, let alone Soviet or Cuban spy agencies.

Ross was a character witness at Ruby's trial in what amounted to a lost cause. Another character witness, Hyman Rubinstein, Ruby's Warsaw-born older brother, testified that Jack had "hung around Barney Ross all his life. He liked Barney Ross. Everybody liked Barney Ross."



* * * * *


When Ross was undergoing detoxification at Lexington Hospital (more of a prison), he was crushed to discover that Hollywood had cancelled plans to make a movie based on his life. While it was one thing to make a rags-to-riches tale about a Jewish boxer who then becomes a war hero, drug addiction was still a taboo to depict on the silver screen. They did go on to make a movie based loosely on his life called "Body and Soul." There were so many obvious connections to the Barney Ross story that the studios were forced to cough up $60,000 to the boxer for what amount copyright infringements.

Since this was a film written, directed and starring a number of figures who would eventually be blacklisted in the 1950s and since it is regarded as a 'noir' classic, I watched it shortly after finishing Douglas Century's biography for comparison's sake.

The film was written by Abraham Polonsky, who was one of the Hollywood Ten and one of the industry's finest writers. In teaming up with director Robert Rossen, it was clear that two of the major talents on the left were joining forces. In his biography of Polonsky titled "A Very Dangerous Citizen," Paul Buhle describes Rossen's impressive past:

Rossen came with considerable personal as well as artistic baggage, the grandson of a rabbi and the nephew of a Hebrew poet, this sometime amateur boxer was raised on New York's Lower East Side. He began his theatrical career there, writing and directing a number of uccessful political plays in the thirties (including, in 1932, "Steel," produced by the Daily Worker as a fund-raiser) before coming to Hollywood. Rossen's script-writing high points included They Won't Forget (1937), a courtroom drama about a false accusation of murder in he South, with Lana Turner in her first dramatic role; Blues in the Night (1940), a musicians' saga with an extraordinarily strong and independent-minded woman played by Priscilla Lane; Sea Wolf {1941), arguably he best Jack London adaptation ever done, with Garfield as the proletarian, Ida Lupino as the hardened girl, and Edward G. Robinson as the totalitarian ship's captain (now noticeably fascist); Out of the Fog (1941), a proletarian saga from an Irwin Shaw play with Garfield as a hoodlum who nearly destroys the lives of a Brooklyn family (including Ida Lupino as the daughter, Garfield's sometime girlfriend trying to break away from her slum life) before fate gives them a second chance; Edge of Darkness (1943), a classic antifascist film marking Norwegian resistance against Nazi occupation; A Walk in the Sun (1946), perhaps the most realistic major war film to that time; and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), a taut postwar drama with Barbara Stanwyck as a factory owner hiding an old secret, Van Heflin as the childhood pal who comes back to wreck her, and Kirk Douglas, in his starring debut, as Stanwyck's weakling partner-in-crime.

John Garfield was born to play the role of boxer Charlie Davis. Like Rossen, Garfield (née Jacob Garfinkel) was a denizen of the Lower East Side who was an amateur boxer in youth and an early convert to the radical movement (although he would deny membership in the CPUSA when the witch-hunt was in full blast.) Like Ross, the character Charlie Davis is a Jew whose grocer father is killed in a stickup. Also, like Ross, he begins to piss away all his money once he becomes champion. Unlike Ross (but more like Jake LaMotta), Charlie Davis is tempted to take a dive in order to pay off debts and comply with the demands of Roberts, his crooked promoter. (Roberts is played by Lloyd Gough, who would be blacklisted. He eventually returned to work in the 1960s and played the role of a blacklisted writer in "The Front.")

Although "Body and Soul" incorporates many plot elements that at this point seem shopworn now (keep in mind that this film was one of the first to depict the rotten cash nexus that underlay professional boxing), Polonsky's writing will always remain fresh. In one memorable scene, the promoter offers a handout to Ben Chaplin, Charlie Davis's cornerman.

Chaplin is a Black boxer (played by blacklistee Canada Lee) who Davis had wrested the championship from and nearly killed in the process. Roberts had set up a bout between the two men despite knowing that Chaplin had a blood clot that might lead to a fatality in the ring. Not long after Chaplin is on the skids, Davis invites him to go to work in his corner.

When Chaplin declines Roberts's handout, the promoter throws the bills on the gym floor. After Roberts leaves, Davis picks up the bills and hands them to Chaplin with these words: "Go ahead and take it. It's only money. It doesn't think. It has no memory. It's not people." In these few words, Polonsky says more than a thousand leaflets. No wonder the redbaiters were anxious to throw such people out of work.

In 1952, columnist Ed Sullivan, who would go on to host the famous TV variety show that premiered Elvis and the Beatles and who started out writing for NY's socialist daily "Leader," identified "Body and Soul" as a threat to the burgeoning television industry. It set "the pattern that the Commies and their sympathizers in TV networks, agencies, and theatrical unions would like to fasten on the medium."

Charlie Davis's mom is played by Ann Revere, who would also be blacklisted. In a minor but crucial role, blacklistee Shimen Ruskin plays Shimen the grocer who drops in on Charlie and his mom shortly before the climactic fight of the movie, in which Charlie has agreed to take a dive. Shimen tells Charlie that he is so proud to see a Jew defending his title when it is such a dark time for his brethren in Europe. After Shimen leaves, Charlie complains that he isn't fighting for anybody any more and is only interested in a big payoff, even if that means taking a dive. Once the thirteenth round arrives, Charlie has a change of heart, fights like a lion and defends his title successfully. The film ends with the clear message that it is possible to withstand the cash nexus.

Despite the efforts of people Ronald Radosh (Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance With The Left), there is little evidence of any sort of monolithism at work in the production of this film despite the fact that the principals were Communists. Rossen favored a tragic entry with Roberts having Charlie rubbed out as punishment for not taking a dive. Polonsky insisted on a happy ending. There were filmed versions of each ending, but Polonsky's was used. Buhle describes the artistic and political differences between the two:

The prospect of this Hollywood happy ending left director Rossen dissatisfied. He wanted Charley to be killed in revenge for betraying the boxing mob, and his version called for a final shot of Charley lying in an alley with his head in a garbage can. Both endings were shot. But in the collaborative atmosphere of Enterprise, where nearly all of the film workers on both sides of the camera were leftist comrades or sympathizers, the writer's view could prevail over the director's, at least if he had the artistic respect of both the producer and the star. Polonsky got his way.

Polonsky's insistence on using the closing scene of Body and Soul as he had written it, despite its superficially happy ending, was emphatically political. Charley's recognition of the need for a sense of decency in human affairs begins with the unmistakable suggestion that the boxing business had lynched Ben. Narratively and politically, Polonsky's need for a defiant ending with a shout of hope derives in part from the social context of Charley's awakening at the moment of Ben's "lynching" as expressed metaphorically in the swinging body bag.

With Rossen's ending, the only meaning in Charley's awakening is personal: Charley glimpses his likely future as a discarded fighter who dies penniless in the ring. His awakening is the American individualist's realization that it is time, in the lingo of another genre, to strap on his guns and clean up the gang that has taken over the boxing business. For Charley to die in a hail of bullets is entirely logical from that view. But that would be mere naturalism, little more than an inverted happy ending suited to the weary wisdom of the postwar audience, a knowing noir grimace.

*************************


When my father was a young man, people used to tell him that he looked like John Garfield. As I began looking deeper and deeper into Barney Ross, the movie based loosely on his life starring John Garfield, the more their images and lives began to blur with my father's.


Like Barney Ross and John Garfield, my father was the son of Yiddish speaking parents who came out of poverty. My father drove a truck in the late 1930s and joined the army for the same reasons that many men and women join today. It was a step up.

My father was also involved in combat during the Battle of the Bulge and received a Bronze Star for carrying an officer to safety while under attack by Nazi fire. He was also a heavy gambler, mostly poker, who was forced by my mother to quit. In their rocky 25 years of marriage, I sometimes wonder if he would have been better off if he had stayed in the army where he seemed right at home.

I was born when my father was off in Belgium dodging German bullets. When he returned, I was nearly six months old. Like many fathers whose children are born when they were overseas in the service, he never really bonded with me. As I grew older into a combination of Woody Allen and Stephen Dedalus, he grew even more remote. As a "tough Jew," he had trouble relating to somebody so different and perhaps effete.

In his Afterword, Douglas Century reflects on the "tough Jews" in his own family:

From 1940 through the late 1960s, my mother's family was in the restaurant business. They owned a popular twenty-four-hour delicatessen called S&L--for my grandfather, Willie (Velvel) Smith, and my uncle, Abe Levy--located on Kedzie and Lawrence avenues in Albany Park. By the time I was old enough to visit Chicago, the family had sold the "store" and all that remained were a few black-and-white photographs, receipts for corned beef sandwiches and 10-cent chocolate phosphates, and Uncle Abe's stories of obsessive gamblers, cops on the take, and young draftees bound for combat in Europe and the Pacific.

They were the characters from Barney Ross's world, and my uncle--born one year after Barney, in 1910, on Manhattan's Lower East Side--could summon them like smoke-shrouded genies in his den in West Rogers Park. He told me about Jewish gangland characters who had dressed in police uniforms--procured by a certain Captain Shapiro at the Albany Park precinct--in order to go pick up a visiting Nazi official who was coming to Chicago to address the Bund; the Jewish police "escort" met the Nazi at the train station, drove him to a secluded street, beat him half-dead with pipes and baseball bats and sent him back to Germany. He told me about one pathetic gambler who won a small fortune with the bookies across the street from the restaurant, wooed and wed the sexiest woman in Albany Park, and promptly lost everything--his gleaming car, furnished apartment, and glamorous wife--when his lucky streak deserted him.

By the mid-seventies, when I was a boy, my uncle was out of the restaurant business and had returned to his original career--for which he'd been trained in the 1920s in Staten Island--as a pharmacist. His den was filled with mementos from his stint as a pharmacist in the United States Army during the second world war, his staff sergeant's stripes, Asiatic-Pacific campaign ribbon with four bronze campaign stars denoting service in New Guinea, Leyte, Luzon, and Hollandia, and the Philippine Liberation Ribbon. There were photos of Abe and his buddies posed in the jungle of Corregidor, my uncle holding a bazooka and a friend hanging from the barrel of the largest artillery gun I'd ever seen.

To Century's credit, he does not take the conventional approach to answering the question of where all the "tough Jews" have gone. Obviously, there are no professional boxers today, except for a smattering of Russian immigrants who differed very little from their gentile counterparts in the former Soviet Union. Nor are there are Jewish gangsters, although there are a whole slew of crooks from Jack Abramoff to the neoconservatives who broke international law in the course of invading Iraq.

This, of course, leads to an examination of the role of Israel in creating a new "tough Jew" archetype based on figures such as Moshe Dayan or Ariel Sharon. Israeli paratroopers are certainly as brutal as any Chicago gangster, although the turf they are protecting has less to do with protecting meek shopkeepers than it does in building a sub-empire in Arab homelands.

There are two books with "tough Jew" in the title. Paul Breines's "Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewery" appeared in 1990 and Rich Cohen's "Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams" appeared 8 years later.

In a review of Breines's book that appeared in the Washington Post on September 23, Edward W. Said wrote:

In this remarkably interesting and suggestive essay in cultural analysis, Paul Breines shows how after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War the image of the Jew in American popular culture as a gentle, meek and even saintly figure changed dramatically. The new image to emerge was that of a tough and lethal fighter, one prepared to do battle with hostile non-Jews -- Arabs usually -- who are equated with Nazism and anti-Semitism. Breines connects this change directly with the politics of Israel and Zionism, arguing subtly that the new image was addressed paradoxically to non-Jews who had rejected anti-Semitism; the tough Jew image foreclosed the options culturally available to outsiders who were now to be confronted almost exclusively with the Jew as a savage macho fighter. This figure's origins in the 20th century were to be found in people like Vladimir Jabotinsky, patriarch of the Revisionist Zionism that has lately brought Menachem Begin and Itzhak Shamir to unchallenged prominence in contemporary Israel.

Breines claims that the change in image derives from a change in attitudes to the body, once conceived of as weak and unimportant, now transformed by history and fantasy into an all-encompassing and threatening muscularity. The irony, says Breines, is that the tough Jew now peopling the novels of Leon Uris, Ken Follett, Howard Hunt, John Fredman, Marge Piercy and others (not an impressive roster of talents) is connected exclusively to Israeli tough guys: in a compact chapter, "From Massada to Mossad," he presents an alternative historical record of Jews as warriors, gangster and the like. "In reality," he says, "Jewish Americans did not need Zionism and Palestine to demonstrate Jewish toughness in the period before 1948." Jews were historically tough and gentle, depending on the circumstances.

Cohen's book is more narrowly focused. He is exclusively interested in Jewish gangsters like Bennie "Bugsy" Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Dutch Schultz. In a July 8, 1998 Washington Post review, Jonathan Groner writes:

But Cohen wants to tell us about the Jewish gangsters, not the Jewish intellectuals or the Jewish businessmen, and is he ever proud of those gangs. To him, the criminals -- notorious national figures like Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky and Louis Lepke, as well as countless anonymous street-corner thugs -- were role models of a sort, symbols of the notion that the People of the Book can be doers, not just thinkers. Never mind what kind of actions they took: They were men of action, to be admired, at least for that.

"As bad as the gangsters were, as far outside the law as they lived, they thought they were, in some way, more in touch with Jewish experience than uptown Jews like the Schiffs," Cohen writes presumptuously. Or: "The fact that they were gangsters, that they operated beyond the law, past what is acceptable, gave them a kind of legitimacy, the instant credibility of the outsider."

As difficult as it would have been for someone like me to have made a career as a boxer or a professional hit-man, there is still a way to maintain some kind of connection with the best traditions of the "tough Jew." As a long-time radical, I too know what it means to feel outside the law. During World War Two, the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party were sent to prison for violations of the Smith Act. At Sandstone Prison, party leader James P. Cannon would get into conversations with other prisoners who were mystified why these men were in prison. If you were going to end up behind bars they argued, you might as well do something that at least has a payoff worth the risk--like robbing a bank. Cannon's response went along the lines that the socialists weren't interested in a bank or two. They wanted the whole thing! I always chuckle when I think about that response. Deep in my heart, I believe that being a revolutionary in the USA makes you the biggest criminal that ever lived. Bigger than Robin Hood even. That's the kind of toughness that this Jew at least wants to embrace.








RENEGADE EYE

Sectarian violence engulfs Iraq following mosque bombing

“Riverbend”, a young Sunni secular woman in Baghdad, wrote yesterday: Tensions...

Things are not good in Baghdad.

There was an explosion this morning in a mosque in Samarra, a largely Sunni town. While the mosque is sacred to both Sunnis and Shia, it is considered one of the most important Shia visiting places in Iraq. Samarra is considered a sacred city by many Muslims and historians because it was made the capital of the Abassid Empire, after Baghdad, by the Abassid Caliph Al-Mu’tasim.

The name “Samarra” is actually derived from the phrase in Arabic “Sarre men ra’a” which translates to “A joy for all who see”. This is what the city was named by Al-Mu’tasim when he laid the plans for a city that was to compete with the greatest cities of the time- it was to be a joy for all who saw it. It remained the capital of the Abassid Empire for nearly sixty years and even after the capital was Baghdad once again, Samarra flourished under the care of various Caliphs.

The mosque damaged with explosives today is the “Askari Mosque” which is important because it is believed to be the burial place of two of the 12 Shia Imams- Ali Al-Hadi and Hassan Al-Askari (father and son) who lived and died in Samarra. The site of the mosque is believed to be where Ali Al-Hadi and Hassan Al-Askari lived and were buried. Many Shia believe Al-Mahdi ‘al muntadhar’ will also be resurrected or will reappear from this mosque.

I remember visiting the mosque several years ago- before the war. We visited Samarra to have a look at the famous “Malwiya” tower and someone suggested we also visit the Askari mosque. I was reluctant as I wasn’t dressed properly at the time- jeans and a t-shirt are not considered mosque garb. We stopped by a small shop in the city and purchased a few inexpensive black abbayas for us women and drove to the mosque.

We got there just as the sun was setting and I remember pausing outside the mosque to admire the golden dome and the intricate minarets. It was shimmering in the sunset and there seemed to be a million colors- orange, gold, white- it was almost glowing. The view was incredible and the environment was so peaceful and calm. There was none of the bustle and noise usually surrounding religious sites- we had come at a perfect time. The inside of the mosque didn’t disappoint either- elaborate Arabic script and more gold and this feeling of utter peace… I’m grateful we decided to visit it.

We woke up this morning to news that men wearing Iraqi security uniforms walked in and detonated explosives, damaging the mosque almost beyond repair. It’s heart-breaking and terrifying. There has been gunfire all over Baghdad since morning. The streets near our neighborhood were eerily empty and calm but there was a tension that had us all sitting on edge. We heard about problems in areas like Baladiyat where there was some rioting and vandalism, etc. and several mosques in Baghdad were attacked. I think what has everyone most disturbed is the fact that the reaction was so swift, like it was just waiting to happen.

All morning we’ve been hearing/watching both Shia and Sunni religious figures speak out against the explosions and emphasise that this is what is wanted by the enemies of Iraq- this is what they would like to achieve- divide and conquer. Extreme Shia are blaming extreme Sunnis and Iraq seems to be falling apart at the seams under foreign occupiers and local fanatics.

No one went to work today as the streets were mostly closed. The situation isn’t good at all. I don’t think I remember things being this tense- everyone is just watching and waiting quietly. There’s so much talk of civil war and yet, with the people I know- Sunnis and Shia alike- I can hardly believe it is a possibility. Educated, sophisticated Iraqis are horrified with the idea of turning against each other, and even not-so-educated Iraqis seem very aware that this is a small part of a bigger, more ominous plan…

Several mosques have been taken over by the Mahdi militia and the Badir people seem to be everywhere. Tomorrow no one is going to work or college or anywhere.

People are scared and watchful. We can only pray.

See: Baghdad Burning

RENEGADE EYE

Tag: I'm It.

The Blogworld as I know it changed this evening... I've been tagged! It was inevitable... you blog... you become friends with fellow bloggers.... and ZONK!!! they get you when you're not looking.
DesertPeace did it to me... So now I'm obligated to tag four others....
But first I have to answer the following questions... then I'll name the four I'm tagging. They will have to answer the same questions... and tag four other bloggers. This should be done on their own site... but link me to it when you do...
So... here goes... the questions;

1: Black and White or Color; how do you prefer your movies?
Color because black and white is for newsprint.

2: What is the one single subject that bores you to near-death?
Nothing bores me.

3: MP3s, CDs, Tapes or Records: what is your favorite medium
for prerecorded music?
CD's

4: You are handed one first class trip plane ticket to anywhere in the world and ten million dollars cash. All of this is yours provided that you leave and not tell anyone where you are going … Ever. This includes family, friends, everyone. Would you take the money and ticket and run?
I'm off to Argentina.

5: Seriously, what do you consider the world’s most pressing issue now?
The clash for resources.

6: How would you rectify the world’s most pressing issue?
Permanent revolution.

7: You are given the chance to go back and change one thing in your life; what would that be?
I would have learned to play a trumpet.

8: You are given the chance to go back and change one event in world history, what would that be?
Too many choices to answer.

9: A night at the opera, or a night at the Grand Ole’ Opry –Which do you choose?
Give me Carmen.

10: What is the one great unsolved crime of all time you’d like to solve?,
Who killed Marilyn Monroe (suicide?).

11: One famous author can come to dinner with you. Who would that be, and what would you serve for the meal?
Isabel Allende; fresh fish, brown rice and Chili salad.

12: You discover that John Lennon was right, that there is no hell below us, and above us there is only sky — what’s the first immoral thing you might do to celebrate this fact?
Anything I wouldn't get caught for.

OK, so time to tag 4 other people. Well, here goes, and everyone check these blogs out, they’re all great..

Molara Wood

the beatroot

Annotated Life

fuzzy and blue --political musings by a proud Democrat

RENEGADE EYE

Tulsa OK 1921: US Government Bombs US City

National Guard troops patrolling the streets armed. Thousands of black people held in a convention center. Hundreds of black dead, with bodies piled like wood. That was not New Orleans, that was Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June 1921.

On May 30, 1921 a young black man named Dick Rowland, stumbled into a white woman, while entering an elevator. He was accused of assault, and arrested the next day. Newly rich from oil Tulsa, was a Ku Klux Klan town. Rowland was sentenced to be hanged. The Tulsa Tribune called for a "Negro lynching tonight."

The white mob was surprised when they were met by several dozen armed black men, dressed in their World War I uniforms. This led to a racist three day destruction of the black neighborhood of Greenwood. The Red Cross reported 300 mostly dead black people.

Greenwood called "Little Africa," was a relatively wealthy community. White mobs, many deputized, destroyed every house, store, church or school. The mob met resistance from an armed black population. Governor Robertson declared martial law. The National Guard arrived with machine gun mounted trucks, and airplanes hovering over Greenwood. It was the first time an American city was bombed from the air, by the US government.

Over 6,000 black people, were round up and held in the convention center and fairgrounds, as long as eight days. The homeless were shuttled into a tent city, where typhoid and malnutrition took over. Blacks were allowed out of the convention center, with a tag, with an employers name. Thosands fled the city.

Attempts to turn Greenwood into an industrial zone were unsuccessful. For several years, it was deprived of paved streets, running water, and garbage collection.

See: Tulsa Reparations Coalition and thank you to Internationalist Group for presenting this story in your newspaper.
RENEGADE EYE

A Jessica and Ashlee Simpson Moment of Diversion

"They're everything wrong with culture, and
everything wrong with art." - David LaChapelle,
on Jessica and Ashlee Simpson.

A moment away from torture pictures and racist cartoons.RENEGADE EYE

New Abu Ghraib Photos Surface

These new pictures were released by an Australian TV show on SBS, Wednesday February 15th. The tone of the show was as, "These are the pictures the US doesn't want you to see."

Around the blogosphere, the discussion is about the timing. Another provocation against Muslims?

The best that can come from these photos, is pressure for indictments at higher levels.

I posted these pictures, but not the cartoons. I supported the freedom of the press to print both. I made a value judgement.

Hitchins is right that Abu Ghraib's better now than when under Saddam. I said that before it is repeated to me. That said on with the discussion.

Pentagon Planning Military Scourge Against Iranian Nuclear Sites

Strategists at the Pentagon, are planning bombings of Iran's nuclear sites, followed by submarine launched missile attacks, if diplomacy fails to stop Iran gaining an atomic bomb. This was uncovered in an article in the UK Telegraph.

I think both the US and Iran are using exactly the same strategy. It was done by Richard Nixon, during negotiations during the Vietnamese war. Make your opposition believe they are dealing with one crazy SOB, who'll use any tactic. This is a strategy to get concessions.

The US doesn't have the support of the UK on this. Prime Minister Tony Blair believes it would increase Islamic discontent around the world, and destroy any chance of diplomacy. The Oxford Research group in a study called Iran: Consequences of a War concluded, "A military response to the current crisis is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further. Alternative approaches must be sought, however difficult these may be." The fighting of a ground war after the bombing would require an additional 100,000 troops. The fighting would involve Israel, Lebanon and various Gulf States. The report predicted 10,000 Iranian scientists and technicians would die in the bombings.

In a similar briefing before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Oxford group predicted that Saddam Hussein's regime could easily be overwhelmed but that the country would become a hotbed of insurgency.

al-Sadr, a powerful Iraqi Shiite leader, with his own militia, was in Iran last week to express solidarity against a US or Israeli invasion.

This policy is not only a Rumsfield plan. It has bipartisan support.
RENEGADE EYE

The Message (1976): A backdoor discussion.

There never was a Muslim equivalent to a movie as The Greatest Story Ever Told, or even an Islamic Mel Gibson. Syrian Born movie director Muslim American Moustapha Akkad, in 1976 tried to fill the void.

Mohammad was never visible on screen. The camera was his eyes. A biopic starring The Invisible Man. It was rumored in the Islamist world, Anthony Quinn was playing Mohammad.

In March, 1977, Black Muslims in the US took 149 people hostage and demanded that The Message be banned. The siege ended with one reporter dead and loads of hostages beaten, stabbed or shot.

Quotes
Abu Sofyan: Mohammed, there is still doubt in my heart.
Khalid: If we were to cut off your head, it would remove all your doubts.

The movie was nominated for an Academy Award for its soundtrack.

The bottom line is we must defend free speech. George Bush's recent criticism of the Danish cartoons, rather than defending artistic and journalistic freedom, shows his priorities. No compromise on the right to print unpopular opinion.

Hat trick to great Polish blog the beatroot. It is a great read.




RENEGADE EYE

Rene Garcia Preval favored in Haiti's Election.

A CID-Gallup poll from December 2005, shows Rene Garcia Preval, the former prime minister for six months under Aristide's first administration before a brutal military coup in September 1991. An agronomist educated in Europe, he is also a former president of Haiti whose term ran from 1996 to 2001. He is ahead with 37% of the vote. His nearest competitor is with 10% of the vote is Charles Henry Baker,a wealthy sweatshop owner and a co-founder of the Group 184, a so-called civil society organization that helped to overthrow Aristide and was heavily funded by the United States, France and Canada through an intriguing web of foreign non-governmental organizations (NGO's). There are over 30 candidates running for the presidency.

The supporters of Preval, come from the same base that supported the ouster of Jean Bertrand Aristide. A study conducted by Aristide opposition National Organization for the Advancement of Haiti (NOAH), shows 51% of the population, would welcome Aristide as a private citizen. The CID-Gallup election poll, inadvertantly, showed the support of Aristide's ouster was an illusion. Aristide had the support of the rural poor and city slum dwellers.

The main reason for stagnation in Haiti is not government spending, or inflation. It was lack of assistance. After Aristide refused to privatize state-owned enterprises, the US cut off assistance.

Under Aristide Haiti for the first time developed universal schooling. The budget went from 68% to 72%. More schools were built from 1994-2000, then between 1804-1994. A literacy program was developed.

More money went for healthcare than any previous government. It developed a lauded AIDS education program. The country received health professionals from Cuba.

I can go on and on with statistics, to show a progressive government was overthrown.

The US called for Aristide to privatize the telephone company, electricity company, three banks, a cement factory and a flour mill. He only privatized the last two on the list.

Voting booths are almost non-existent in the slum areas, making voting hard for several hundred most likely supporters of Preval. I believe you need over 51% of the vote in Haiti, or face runoff. Expect the anti-Preval forces, with US and French support, try to influence the election through NGOs.

I enjoy kiskeyAcity a blog that covers Haitian and Caribbean cultural issues. I hope you'll visit it. See also HaitiAction.

Note: This post is written before the election results are tallied.RENEGADE EYE