Terra Incognita
Issue 49
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
August 20th, 2008
1) Perversion of history: The recent BBC series, The Story of India, includes numerous references to the wonders of Indian civilization. Special praise is meted out to those Indian empires who were ‘diverse’ and ‘multi-cultural’ and ‘tolerance’, especially the Buddhist empires. This view of history, where praiseworthy cultures of the past must evoke those values we love today is a perversion. Gone are the references to any cultures where the people were patriotic and nationalistic. But one wonders about these ‘tolerance’ empires such as the Kushans. They were so tolerant that they succumbed easily to outsiders who practiced lesser forms of tolerance.
2) The culture lie: It is more and more common for people to commit indecency in places and then claim that it is because of ‘culture’. The recent story of an American diplomat convicted of having sex with teenage girls and videotaping his ‘encounters’ in the Congo includes the diplomats claim that in Africa it is ‘cultural’ to enjoy 13 year old girls. But then why did he videotape it? Is that also African culture or is it a man enjoying his perversion?
3) Where was the 'Free Gaza Boat' for the Jews? With the arrival of 40 European and ‘international’ activists in Gaza and their ‘free Gaza boat’ one is reminded of the fact that these international activists were not there to help the Jews during the Holocaust. One is also reminded of the fact that Europeans do not look kindly on all the boats full of African immigrants arriving illegally on Europe’s shores. Why is it that European and American ‘activists’ feel they don’t have to obey the same laws that they expect others to? After all, one can’t simply sail up and dock in Europe unopposed under the guise of being part of a ‘Free the Basques’ movement.
Perversion of history
August 24th, 2008
Seth J. Frantzman
In 2007 the BBC put out a documentary mini-series entitled The Story of India narrated by Michael Wood. In many ways it is a very well presented documentary that follows the narrator throughout South Asia and Central Asia searching for themes in India's past. Its best attribute is the fact that it spends more time on the history of India and Indians and less time on the history of Islam in India. Most books on Indian history, including John Kaey's India: A History which spends from page 180 to page 348 on the Islamic history of the subcontinent, seem to telescope Indian history, ignoring its Hindu and Buddhist past, and turning the Mughal Islamic age of India into a 'golden age'. This perversion of history means that in most bookstores the books on history deal only with the Muslim aspect of that country's history, including such recent books as The Mughal Throne: the Saga of India's great emperors and The Last Mughal: the Fall of a dynasty, Delhi 1857. Michael Woods, surprisingly for a British narrator, has done some justice to India's past by focusing only one of the 6 series on the Islamic history of India. But in doing justice to the Buddhist and Hindu past he has, unfortunately, also created a perversion of history.
It seems that westerners, especially the educated lot, are able to connect with Indian history on only two levels. The first, and most common, is the level of the 'exotic' world of the Mughal court and its legions of concubines, slaves, spices and 'dancing girls'. This lush world of emperors and consorts appeals to the western imagination. It is no different than the love of the Arab world found in the westerner who romanticizes the Arab as a Bedouin chief and, although condemning the 'Orientalist discourse' is himself taken up by the love of the 'other'.
If the Westerner disabuses himself of a love for Mughal emperors and slavery he immediately finds himself caught up in the history of India as the 'diverse' utopia of Hinduism and Buddhism. Whether it is the Beatles embracing Hari Krishna or the Jewbus (Jewish Buddhists) the westerner embraces an India that appeals to his imagination as some sort of post-modern anything goes utopia of gender-bending and tolerance, sort of like San Francisco and South Miami Beach but on a greater scale. This is the famed 'India of tolerance'. This is the India of 'multi-culturalism'. This is the India of the Kama Sutra. This India, so we are told, has all the liberalistic western notions of the open society and love for the other and tolerance and 'religions that come in peace.' It is the west the way we wish it could be.
Michael Wood is seduced by this India. Every single monarch and empire he comes to love is supposedly one built on this peace-coexistence utopia of diversity. One of these empires is the Kushan empire of the 1-3rd centuries. Wikipedia even describes this empire as a 'multi-cultural empire'. This bogus description belies what should be obvious: all empires are 'multi-culture' by virtue of the fact that they conquer other peoples. But 'multi-cultural empire' is a misnomer. In the modern parlance of the west 'multi-cultural' equals 'good'. But mutli-culturalism is a scam. It was a scam in 100 A.D when the Kushans extended their empire, through force of arms mind you, into India from Central Asia, and it is a scam today. Just because something has lots of cultures in it doesn't necessarily make it positive. Rome was 'multi-cultural'. It also reserved citizenship, until the late Roman period, for Romans which is to say Italians. It spent much of its time destroying those who opposed it, massacring untold numbers of Jews, Carthaginians and Germans, not to mention the peoples completely destroyed and utterly forgotten because of their opposition to Rome. So Rome was 'multi-cultural'. So were the concentration camps of Nazism; they included Gypsies, Jews, gays, Hungarians, Slavs and all manner of riff raff from throughout Europe.
The Kushans are certainly attractive because they do blend so many odd things into one large mess. They were first Zoroastrian and then Buddhist. They were close with the Chinese and used the Greek alphabet. Who couldn't love a 'Greco-Buddhist' empire with all the sodomy and nirvana rolled into one? They weren't the only strange cultural combination to inhabit the area of the Hindu Kush in what now comprises Pakistan and Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia. Before them came the Indo-Greek Kingdoms. In general what Michael Wood mistakes for a hyper modern multi-cultural diverse kingdom practicing a religion of peace and tolerance is merely a fascinating period in Central Asia, one that contrasts starkly with today's central Asia which is a Hobbesian world of poverty, savagery and religious extremism.
But perhaps Mr. Wood has missed this central problem: the decline of his lovable Kushan kingdom is directly linked to its peaceful coexistence and tolerance. The Indo Greek Kingdoms had come about after the decline of Alexander's empire left islands of Greek speakers, and soldiers, in the area. The last Indo-Greek king was Strato II who ruled from 25 B.C to 10 A.D. His rule was replaced by the Indo-Scythian kingdom which in turn was replaced briefly by the Indo-Parthians and then by the Kushans around 100 A.D. It declined in 250 A.D. and was replaced by the Sassanid Persian empire (Indo-Sassanids) which itself was briefly replaced in the area by the Indo-Hephthalites in the 5th century A.D. But just so it is clear, all this was washed away by invasions of the 'White Huns' in the 6th century A.D. and, so we are completely clear, by Islamic invasions beginning in 664 A.D with the invasion of India by Al Muhalleb ibn Abi Suffrah. We are told that Al Muhalleb's invasion was not aimed at conquest, he "returned with wealth and prisoners of war." In Islamic terminology 'prisoners of war' means female and male slaves.
Michael Wood and his western audience have an inability to understand the past except through the projection of their own prejudices in the present onto that past. This has long been a recognized phenomenon. Take for instance John Wilkes Booth who shouted 'Sic Semper Tyrannis' when he shot Abraham Lincoln. This was the phrase reputed to have been said by Brutus when he assassinated Julius Caesar. Booth was an admirer of Brutus. The State Seal of Virginia carries the slogan on it and shows a Roman Senator standing over a dead tyrant, apparently Caesar. But our judgment of the role of Brutus has shifted from a negative to positive portrayal over time, adjusting with our own perception of Caesar and whether friendship should be overruled by loyalty to the republic. The view of the Spartans and Athenians in history has often changed. Today's good leftist views the Spartans as a 'proto-fascist' state, a precursor to Nazism. It is no surprise therefore that in many western schools the Athenians are portrayed as the 'good' side in the war between Athens and Sparta, all the more during the Cold War when the machine like Sparta seemed closer to the Soviet model than the free wheeling Athenian democracy. The English, a naval power, certainly could identify more with the Athenians than with the Spartan land based empire. So we find in history those things we aspire to ourselves. The fact, therefore, that Michael Wood finds 'diversity', 'Globalization', 'multi-culturalism' and 'imperialism' in Indian history is no surprise. He is merely places the burden of our modern taste onto the past, changing the past to fit our own model.
But Mr. Wood cannot see the true path of his multi-cultural utopia. He briefly touches upon the fact that the Bamiyan Buddhas and all the other references to Buddhism have been blasted, literally, from the hills of Afghanistan. He mentions those that did it: the Taliban. But this name, Taliban, obscures the real obliterator of Buddhism in Afghanistan: Islam. How did Islam defeat Buddhism? It defeated it because Buddhism was a pacifist multi-cultural religion that could not come to terms with a religion whose only objective was the destruction of all other religions. How does 'multi-culturalism' confront its opposite? It does not. It dies. There cannot be the famous lovely utopian multi-culturalism when it is faced with those which hate all things, except their own.
Thus the fall of India to Islam was quick. The multi-cultural diversity loving utopia of India fell quickly, its women sold into slavery and its temples burned and looted. Such was the fate of the multi-cultural civilization. There were pockets of Indian resistance. The Arab Muslim invaders of India were rudely surprised at the Battle of Rajasthan in 738 B.C when they were defeated by a Hindu army of Rajputs, an alliance of traditional Hindu warrior clans. This tradition of resistance to Islamic conquest continued down to the time of Pratap Singh the Maharana of Mewar. We are told by one Indian chronicler that "during a dark chapter of Hindu history, Pratap alone stood firmly for his honour and dignity; he never compromised. He died a free man." But he was no multi-culturalist. His was a life of hardship, or resistance, and of watching his nation enslaved and destroyed by the likes of Akbar, that Mughal king so loved by multi-culturalists and westerners. His was a life of watching other Hindus give their daughters over as concubines and slaves to the Mughals so as to appease Islam and serving in the Mughal army, fighting the wars of Islam so that Muslims wouldn't have to, similar in many ways to the Ottoman use of Christian soldiers in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman custom of abducting young Christian women from Greece and Georgia for the imperial harem. But our modern day sentiments are with the Ottoman 'multi-cultural' empire, Islamic Spain's 'multi-cultural' empire, and Mughal India's 'multi-cultural' empire. Our predilection towards multi-culturalism under an Islamic ruler shows the degree to which our intellectuals in the west have already accepted the Islamic interpretation of world history and have already subjugated themselves to it.
Those who might show more historical interest in such national leaders as Pratap Singh or Karageorge Petrovitch of Serbia or John Garang or even Vlad Dracula (whose opposition to the Ottoman Turkish invasion of Romania gained him a reputation for such brutality that he has come down to us as Dracula) are condemned as racist nationalist, interested only in the homogenous intolerant state. But is it better to adhere to tolerance when one knows that this tolerant multi-cultural dream is doomed to failure, much the way the multi-cultural tolerant Weimer republic fell to Nazism? If one had a chance to go back and steel the hearts of the Wiemer rulers with honor and give them the tools to preserve their nation without succumbing to Nazism would one not suggest that the multi-cultural immoral festivities of Weimer Germany be toned down or in the pursuit of the here and now in our present world is it more important to enjoy as much as possible, to suck the blood of society as much as possible, leaving it flaccid and empty, so that it is unable to oppose tyranny? Barry Goldwater reminds us of this very problem when he noted that "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" But a less known enjoinder of his; "Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism."
The culture lie
Seth J. Frantzman
August 24th, 2008
Gons Nachman was a U.S diplomat in the Congo and Brazil. On August 23rd, 2008 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. His crime? While he was working for the U.S state department he had caroused with teenage girls, had sex with them and videotaped the 'encounters'. When he was finally brought to justice he argued that "cultural differences in those countries made sex with teenage girls more acceptable." This is the essence of the cultural differences theory. When Roman Polanski, the famous Polish director, was caught having sex with a thirteen year old girl in the United States in 1978 he fled to France and argued that having sex with young, in some cases pre-pubescent girls, was part of his 'Polish' culture. When Saudi and Gulf Arab Muslim men come to the West and visit strip clubs and frequent prostitutes they make the argument that they are merely taking advantage of 'western culture', one that allows for promiscuity and immorality.
Its always the culture excuse. But here is the rub. The culture excuse seems to always come up when it benefits someone. In this sense it always seems to come up primarily when someone, usually a male, is getting something out of it, usually sex with little girls or promiscuous sex with prostitutes. Of course it doesn't go both ways. When western women go to Africa or Egypt or the Gulf and sleep with Muslim men they don't suddenly shout 'wait a sec, you are violating your culture'. The view of culture and the lie of culture always seems to be there to be bended so that the person getting what they want is involved in 'culture' whether its using another culture to their advantage or exporting their 'culture' to another country, for their advantage. Oddly enough it doesn't always work out for the best. When culture negatively affects someone we all have to shed tears over it. Thus the book 'Not without my daughter' chronicles the typical story of the hapless white woman forced to submit to the chauvinist Islamic Iranian regime and how she 'heroically' fights to get her daughters out of the clutches of her 'exotic' Muslim husband turned wife-beater. But he was only living his culture. Why didn't she submit? When an American was ordered to be whipped (or caned) in Singapore for vandalizing cars he complained that the punishment was overly harsh. But why didn't he respect the Singaporean culture where they don't appreciate American brats and thugs destroying their private property? Culture always goes one way. Its always the excuse.
Mr. Gons Nachman wanted to enjoy the 'culture' of the Congo. He wanted the teenage girls that he couldn't have in the U.S. But there is a problem here. If he was only experiencing 'Congolese culture' then why did he videotape the 'encounters'. Is that also part of African Congolese culture? Making pornographic movies with two or more teenage girls? Is this part of their culture Mr. Nachman? When Roman Polanski was raping a thirteen year old girl where was his cultural respect for American law? When the Saudi man is having sex with half a dozen Russian prostitutes in Paris where is his decision to respect his own culture?
The culture excuse is bunk. Those who love culture so much should keep it to themselves. If you come from a fascist religious culture and expect your women to cover their 'offensive' faces and hair and won't allow them to drive or travel then you, as a Muslim Saudi male, should not come to our countries to have sex with our women. You love your culture so much? Then live in it. Live in your cesspool. We live in our cesspool of prostitution and immorality, you can have your cesspool of chauvinist fascism. Mr. Polanski wants to be a good Catholic Polish man and have sex with thirteen year olds because "in Poland women mature at a younger age." Then he should have sex with Catholic Polish thirteen year old girls. Don't subject our women, who apparently do not mature at the age of six, to your immorality. Keep the immorality at home, in Poland. And Mr. Nachman. You are an American. You worked for the American government and you used that power to rape and videotape little African girls having sex with you. That’s not culture: that’s 20 years in an American federal penitentiary. And that’s called American culture.
Where was the 'Free Gaza Boat' for the Jews?
Seth J. Frantzman
August 21st, 2008
As dozens of left-wing anti-Israel activists prepare to sail two boats to 'break the Israeli blockade' of Gaza one is struck by the fact that an 84 year old Holocaust survivor is among those taking part. Undoubtedly he has joined the activists under the banner of 'as a Jew one must have a heightened degree of empathy for those who suffer discrimination'. The spokesperson for the activists is aptly named Greta Berlin. Between the Holocaust survivor and the name Berlin one cannot help but be reminded of the fact that in the dark days of 1942 there was no 'free Gaza boat' for the Jews. When 800 Jews had attempted to flee Europe in the summer of 1939 aboard the SS St. Louis they were denied entry at Cuba and the U.S and forced to return to Europe where most died at the hands of the Nazis. In February of 1942 the Struma, a ship chartered by Jews in Romania, set sail for British mandatory Palestine with 769 Jews on board, some of whome had expired visas for entry to Palestine. When the British made it clear they would refuse the ship entry it was towed, by Turkish authorities, into the Black Sea where it sunk. Only one man survived. Lord Wedgwood noted in Britain's House of Lords in June of 1942 that "I hope yet to live to see those who sent the Struma cargo back to the Nazis hung as high as Haman cheek by jowl with their prototype and Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler."
During the Holocaust when the European run Red Cross was given access to the concentration camps it did its best to white wash the activities of the Nazi regime. In June of 1944 the Red Cross toured the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The Red Cross gave its stamp of approval to the Nazi camp and was so close with the Nazi regime that in May of 1945 when the Nazis abandoned the camp they turned it over to the Red Cross who proceeded to run the camp, not allowing Jews to leave, for an additional 18 days before it was liberated by the Red Army. The irony cannot be escaped: the Soviet Red Army had to liberate the Jews from the clutches of the Red Cross.
There were no 'free Gaza boats' for the Jews between 1938 and 1945. After 1945 when Jews attempted to flee Europe, their graveyard, for Palestine, they were repeatedly prevented from doing so. The British army in Germany after the war originally classified German and Italian Jews as 'enemy nationals' and they were put in camps, with barbed wire, along with those Germans and Italians who had persecuted them. Such was the tragedy of the post-war world that while civilian Germans were allowed home the Jewish refugees were kept in Displaced Persons camps for an additional three to seven years, only being freed in some cases because of the establishment of Israel in 1948. There was, needless to say, no 'free Gaza boat' for them.
Those who are taking part in the 'Free Gaza boat' initiative no doubt tell themselves that they are fighting in the spirit of 'never again'. They have 'learned the lessons' of the Holocaust. It is an irony that the main message of the Holocaust seems to be that European activists feel the need to only help those groups of people and those governments who oppose the existence of Israel. There is no 'Free Gaza boat' for the Sudan. Perhaps more poignant is the fact that there is no 'free Gaza boat' arranged to help bring African refugees to Europe. Every week thousands of these refugees set sail from West and North Africa with the hopes of reaching Europe. Some die en route. Those that survive are herded into camps for illegal immigrants. It seems European activists are more adept at breaking international laws when it comes to Israel than when it comes to the EU and their own country. Moreover in Europe today there are hundreds of thousands of victims of human trafficking, women from all over the world imprisoned in brothels and used as sex slaves. There is, needless to say, no 'Free Gaza boat' for them. There was no help for the Jews during the Holocaust. There were no activists and there was no International Solidarity Movement. The ease with which people focus their attention as 'human rights activists' on Israel is most concerning given the history of hypocrisy, contradiction and abandonment of the rights of others.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Terra Incognita 48 Russia, Georgia and betrayal
Terra Incognita
Issue 48
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
August 19th, 2008
1) Witness to Betrayal and Cowardice: The EU and the Georgian war: The most fascinating aspect of the Georgian war has been the European hypocrisy and betrayal of Georgia. Georgia put her faith in the West and her president evoked Hitlers assault on Czechslovakia in 1938 as a comparison. Perhaps Georgia forgets history. The Europeans abandoned the Czechs in 1938. They abandoned the Georgians in 2008. In seventy years very little has changed.
Witness to Betrayal and Cowardice: The EU and the Georgian war
Seth J. Frantzman
August 19th, 2008
When Whittaker Chambers published Witness in 1952 he believed that he was publishing the Epitaph of Western Civilization. Having been an activist in the Communist party in the 1930s he had 'witnessed' the corruption of the Wasp Anglo elites and the subversion of them to Communism and he had witnessed the degree to which intellectual society was unable to confront this threat. Whittaker Chambers was wrong. His book helped influence many people to stand astride history and fight against the linear timeline of Communism.
But when I found myself in a hotel room in Tunisia watching the BBC report from South Ossetia in Georgia I felt a similar feeling as must have overcome Mr. Chambers. Yet today we speak not of the fall of Western Civilization, for there is no longer such a thing, but we speak of the cowardice and betrayal of the Europeans.
As usual when dealing with modernity and the response of the West and its media and people one deals with two separate issues. First there is the issue of the thing itself. Thus there is the evil of terrorism and Islamism. Thus there is the issue, in Georgia, of a small semi-democratic state attempting to assert its control over its own country and the 'breakaway' region of South Ossetia. There is the 'reaction' of Russia and the subsequent invasion and bombing of Georgia by the Russian army. When one deals with the aggressive response of the Russian army or Islamism one admits that indeed these things are natural. Islam is naturally a chauvinistic religion and the outcome of religious Islam is war, intolerance, the suppression of women and terror. But since it is natural it is not hypocrisy. It is genuine. Thus it is not palatable but it is understandable and it is easier to fight. With the Russian bombing of Georgia one can understand the Russian mentality, the desire to assert Russian power and embarrass the West. The Russians tongue-in-cheek use of words such as 'ethnic-cleansing' to describe the situation in South Ossetia was a brilliant ploy to poke a finger in the eyes of the West and reveal the hypocrisy of the Kosovo adventure whereby bullying Western states had pried away Kosovo from Serbia. Thus Russia was playing at the game of the Westerner in her 'humanitarian intervention'. Bombing Gori and Tblisi was no different than the Nato bombing of Belgrade. One understands the Russian.
But the second issue that always pops up whenever one deals with modernity is the issue of the western elitist leftist reaction. This is always encapsulated in the reporting of the BBC and the reactions of the Western European. These reactions are not genuine or 'authentic'. They are 'critical' and 'thought provoking' and always the opposite of what logic might dictate.
Thus while the BBC described the Israeli bombing of Lebanon as 'disproportionate' the Russian bombing of Georgia was described as Russia's reaction to a 'gamble' carried out by Mikhail Saakashvili in South Ossetia. The BBC continues its legacy of reporting the Lebanon conflict by having reporters amidst the propaganda. Thus BBC reporters had Hizbullah minders in Lebanon and in South Ossetia they dutifully follow around the Russian army and meet the 'right' Ossetians and see the 'dead children' and the 'old women'. It is the classic presentation that one is used to from the Middle East: the weeping old woman and the crying children. Men are, as a rule, excluded from pictures and media reports by white European westerners because the male, especially the 20-40 year old male is not a sympathetic character in the West. The classic statements of propaganda are reiterated by the BBC: 1,600 dead civilians. "We want to be with Russia". The BBC usually finds it can do best in reporting propaganda by sending a female reporter. Its reporter in South Ossetia who is 'escorted by the Russian military' is Sarah Rainsford. The European women reports accurately her role in the propaganda: "we met no Georgians at all on this trip." This is the way of the European. It is the way of the Western media. The idea of journalism, once something that prided itself on sending western reporters to combat regions in order to find out the truth through observation by westerners, now prides itself on sending western reporters to conflict areas to find out what the authorities on one side of the conflict will tell the reporter. It is a fascinating digression of the logic of reporting. If one is going to report only one side and quote only one side and be shown around by minders then why not just let the Russian Ministry of Information provide the details since the BBC is only parroting those details and passing it off as 'journalism'. Perhaps the reason to have the BBC along is to provide the editorial at the end, the Western viewpoint of "This conflict has already destroyed any trust between Georgian and Ossetians. It now looks like any chance there was of reconciliation is burning along with the houses." One can understand when a Russian provides his view of the conflict, what one cannot understand is the way in which the European becomes a propaganda piece for the Russian government.
The reason for the European reaction is cowardice and the classic European act of betrayal. Mikhail Saakashvili compared the situation of his country today, after Russia began bombing it on August 10th 2008 to that of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Like Czechoslovakia both countries have ethnic-minorities. In Czech it was the Sudetenland Germans who agitated for German intervention to 'protect' them. Hitler complied. The West, led by the appeaser Neville Chamberlain relented and granted the West 'peace in our time'. Hitler got Czechoslovakia and the West received 'peace'. It was to prove to be an Islamic peace. Saakashvili evidently used the comparison because he believed the Europeans were of the 'never again' mindset. But Saakashvili obviously has not been paying attention to European history in the 20th century. Europeans have never defended their allies. The European way is to abandon small states to their fate. The European way is to mince words and ignore genocide. Thus it was in 1938 and nothing changed after. The threat of Communism and Soviet imperialism didn't steel the hearts of Europeans. They mostly appeased Communism and expected the U.S to protect them. Elites in many European countries joined Communist terror gangs such as the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction (Baarder-Meinhof gang). Some of England's most well bred men spied for the KGB. Charles De Gaulle was no champion of freedom against Communism and set France on a 'separate path' while Willy Brandt reconciled with the East German regimes. All the while the 'arsenal of democracy' in the U.S had to protect the European so that his economy could grow and he could sip his latte and work his 35 hour work week and enjoy his 'social justice' welfare system. The EU economy of today was primarily founded on the back of the American taxpayer. But when Europe was rebuilt and it once again had armies it never used them to prevent genocide. It always hid behind America so that when America succeeded the Europeans could take credit and when America failed, as in Vietnam, the Europeans could protest and scoff. When 800,000 Tutsi tribesmen in Rwanda were hacked to death in 1994 with French supplied machetes the Europeans did nothing and then accused the Americans of 'lacking leadership'. Evidently the 500 million people of the EU could not have done anything themselves. Thus Mr. Saakashvili was walking a foolish road when he compared himself to Czechoslovakia. Most people do not even recall the president of Czechoslovakia in 1938. His name was Edvard Benes. Why would Saakashvili inadvertently compare himself to such an unmemorable person. Did Saakashvili forget what Czechs call the Munich agreement of 1938 which destroyed their country? They call it was the 'Western betrayal' (zrada spojenců or Mnichov Mnichovská zrada-Munich Betrayal).
The nature of the Betrayal is quite deep. The West courted the various former Soviet Socialist Republics after 1991. Some of them, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were allowed into the EU and NATO. Georgia was one of the foremost candidates for the next round of expansion. It was seen as a bulwark of western decency in the Caucuses. On April 9th, 1991 Georgia had declared independence from the U.S.S.R. Zviad Gamsakhurdia became its first president. After being forced into exile by a coup he died during a bloody Civil War in 1993 that pitted him against the former Soviet Foreign Minister, western media darling and Russian supported Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze served as president until 2003 at which time the 'Rose Revolution' brought Saakashvili to power. During this chaos a number of separatist movements sprouted up in Georgia demanding independence for ethnic minorities including the Abkhaz (94,000 people), Ossetians (65,000) and Ajarians (Adjaria 376,000). Russia has worked since the 1990s to absorb the two northern enclaves, Ossetia and Abkhazia, sending Russian 'peacekeepers' into the areas (much as Nato did in Kosovo) and giving Russian citizenship to the locals. Thus when Saakashvili sent his army to crush the Ossetians in August of 2008 he was attacking 'Russian' citizens and when a few Russian 'peacekeepers' were fired upon the Casus Belli was upon the Georgians. Saakashvili played the game badly. He was not, as the Godfather notes, a 'Wartime Consigliere'. He was an emotional wreck within twenty-four hours of realizing that his gambit had provoked the hungry Russian bear on August 9th. Unlike Henry V at Agincourt he behaved more like Stalin, who was also Georgian, after the Nazi invasion of 1941 (Stalin had a breakdown, seems to have resigned and hid in his room for several days). Saakashvili seems to have rarely slept, perhaps not a surprise given the situation, and he made the strange decision to withdraw the Georgian armed forces from Ossetia and order them to stand down in or around August 13th (an earlier ceasefire declared by him on August 7th before the Russian intervention had not stopped the fighting in South Ossetia). This allowed Russian soldiers to enter Georgia unopposed, takeover the Georgian city of Gori (Stalin's birthplace, the city was subsequently looted by Ossetians) and move towards the Georgian capital. Perhaps this is the Georgian way of fighting. Despite stories of Georgian 'knights' and an ancient history one is all too aware that for many centuries Georgia was the main supplier of slave women to the Ottoman sultan's harem and slave raiders targeted the country annually to reap the latest harvest of young Georgian girls up until the 19th century. Perhaps years of enslavement turned the nation into one of passionate men who, although calculating, clannish and temperamental, are not really the warriors they make themselves out to be). Whatever the case of Saakashvili's inability to carry through with his boastful words, his nation caved in the face of aggression much the way the Czechs caved in 1938. The western betrayal affected Saakashvili so deeply that he was unable to fight.
When the EU president Nicolas Sarkozy, who one might suppose would be a 'wartime Consigliere' given his tough stance against Muslim 'youth' rioters in Paris 2005, in fact signed the death warrant of Georgia. The 'six point peace plan' outlined by the EU ordered the Georgian army to return to its military basis while the Russian army would remain in Georgia under the ambiguous clause "Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities. While awaiting an international mechanism, Russian peacekeeping forces will implement additional security measures." This is the European way of peace. It is the peace of Petain. Petain signed a similar treaty with Hitler in a railroad carriage in 1940, giving the Nazis access to most of France and setting up a Vichy regime which would actively collaborate. But Georgians are not Frenchmen. They are not collaborators.
In truth the Georgians have learned the hard way what many peoples have had to learn in the 20th century. Having a European friend is meaningless in the hard world of Realpolitic and war. European allies are not a guarantee of military aid. Europeans do not guarantee anything. Europeans offer two things: Cowardice and betrayal. Such is the epitaph of European civilization. To be sure, it was a civilization that produced much guts and bravery. It was not always this way.
But the modern European culture is the culture of critique and protest. It is the culture of the coffee-house intellectual, the poverty tourist and the protest tourist. Thus Europeans will be extremely violent after a football match, they will protest violently against the WTO and globalization. They will even throw rock and assault Chinese Olympians running with the Olympic torch in Paris. This is European bravado at its best: attacking things that cannot fight back. A European will sail on a 'free Gaza boat' from Cyprus to the Gaza strip, know Israel won't hurt his lily white skin, but a European will not go to Darfur. A European will protest China in Paris, but not in China. When ITN China coorespondent Nick Ray was covering a small protest by Chinese people during the Olympics he was pushed around by the police " the journalist's shoes were scuffed, his trousers and shirt dirty and some bruising was visible on his hand." "This was an assault in my mind. I am incredibly angry about this," he told AFP. This is the European mentality. Some scoffed shoes and a dirty shirt is a 'human rights violation', perhaps even an 'act of genocide' if it happens to a European. An entire country invaded, bombed and humiliated, such as Georgia. That is just something to call an unfortunate incident.
European Civilization is dead. It is not something to be fought for and passionate about. There is no strength of vitality in Europe. There is no faith or honor. There is betrayal and cowardice. The Georgian people were deceived and sold a bill of goods over democracy and free markets. They should have learned that democracy, despite the European talk, does not truly wrench he hearts of the European. Crying grandmothers, military minders, terrorism and crying children, and women in veils, that is what wrenches the European mind. A note to Georgia: If you want sympathy import some little black children, convert to Islam and then maybe you will get some sympathy. But you still won't get the military support you need. You are a small little unique country, like Israel and Serbia, and you therefore get the other end of the stick, the one that is useless, flaccid and rotten. You are on your own. It is unfortunate that Mr. Saakashvili does not seem up to the task of defending your country and he has instead put his faith in those who fled the Nazis and those who collaborated.
Issue 48
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
August 19th, 2008
1) Witness to Betrayal and Cowardice: The EU and the Georgian war: The most fascinating aspect of the Georgian war has been the European hypocrisy and betrayal of Georgia. Georgia put her faith in the West and her president evoked Hitlers assault on Czechslovakia in 1938 as a comparison. Perhaps Georgia forgets history. The Europeans abandoned the Czechs in 1938. They abandoned the Georgians in 2008. In seventy years very little has changed.
Witness to Betrayal and Cowardice: The EU and the Georgian war
Seth J. Frantzman
August 19th, 2008
When Whittaker Chambers published Witness in 1952 he believed that he was publishing the Epitaph of Western Civilization. Having been an activist in the Communist party in the 1930s he had 'witnessed' the corruption of the Wasp Anglo elites and the subversion of them to Communism and he had witnessed the degree to which intellectual society was unable to confront this threat. Whittaker Chambers was wrong. His book helped influence many people to stand astride history and fight against the linear timeline of Communism.
But when I found myself in a hotel room in Tunisia watching the BBC report from South Ossetia in Georgia I felt a similar feeling as must have overcome Mr. Chambers. Yet today we speak not of the fall of Western Civilization, for there is no longer such a thing, but we speak of the cowardice and betrayal of the Europeans.
As usual when dealing with modernity and the response of the West and its media and people one deals with two separate issues. First there is the issue of the thing itself. Thus there is the evil of terrorism and Islamism. Thus there is the issue, in Georgia, of a small semi-democratic state attempting to assert its control over its own country and the 'breakaway' region of South Ossetia. There is the 'reaction' of Russia and the subsequent invasion and bombing of Georgia by the Russian army. When one deals with the aggressive response of the Russian army or Islamism one admits that indeed these things are natural. Islam is naturally a chauvinistic religion and the outcome of religious Islam is war, intolerance, the suppression of women and terror. But since it is natural it is not hypocrisy. It is genuine. Thus it is not palatable but it is understandable and it is easier to fight. With the Russian bombing of Georgia one can understand the Russian mentality, the desire to assert Russian power and embarrass the West. The Russians tongue-in-cheek use of words such as 'ethnic-cleansing' to describe the situation in South Ossetia was a brilliant ploy to poke a finger in the eyes of the West and reveal the hypocrisy of the Kosovo adventure whereby bullying Western states had pried away Kosovo from Serbia. Thus Russia was playing at the game of the Westerner in her 'humanitarian intervention'. Bombing Gori and Tblisi was no different than the Nato bombing of Belgrade. One understands the Russian.
But the second issue that always pops up whenever one deals with modernity is the issue of the western elitist leftist reaction. This is always encapsulated in the reporting of the BBC and the reactions of the Western European. These reactions are not genuine or 'authentic'. They are 'critical' and 'thought provoking' and always the opposite of what logic might dictate.
Thus while the BBC described the Israeli bombing of Lebanon as 'disproportionate' the Russian bombing of Georgia was described as Russia's reaction to a 'gamble' carried out by Mikhail Saakashvili in South Ossetia. The BBC continues its legacy of reporting the Lebanon conflict by having reporters amidst the propaganda. Thus BBC reporters had Hizbullah minders in Lebanon and in South Ossetia they dutifully follow around the Russian army and meet the 'right' Ossetians and see the 'dead children' and the 'old women'. It is the classic presentation that one is used to from the Middle East: the weeping old woman and the crying children. Men are, as a rule, excluded from pictures and media reports by white European westerners because the male, especially the 20-40 year old male is not a sympathetic character in the West. The classic statements of propaganda are reiterated by the BBC: 1,600 dead civilians. "We want to be with Russia". The BBC usually finds it can do best in reporting propaganda by sending a female reporter. Its reporter in South Ossetia who is 'escorted by the Russian military' is Sarah Rainsford. The European women reports accurately her role in the propaganda: "we met no Georgians at all on this trip." This is the way of the European. It is the way of the Western media. The idea of journalism, once something that prided itself on sending western reporters to combat regions in order to find out the truth through observation by westerners, now prides itself on sending western reporters to conflict areas to find out what the authorities on one side of the conflict will tell the reporter. It is a fascinating digression of the logic of reporting. If one is going to report only one side and quote only one side and be shown around by minders then why not just let the Russian Ministry of Information provide the details since the BBC is only parroting those details and passing it off as 'journalism'. Perhaps the reason to have the BBC along is to provide the editorial at the end, the Western viewpoint of "This conflict has already destroyed any trust between Georgian and Ossetians. It now looks like any chance there was of reconciliation is burning along with the houses." One can understand when a Russian provides his view of the conflict, what one cannot understand is the way in which the European becomes a propaganda piece for the Russian government.
The reason for the European reaction is cowardice and the classic European act of betrayal. Mikhail Saakashvili compared the situation of his country today, after Russia began bombing it on August 10th 2008 to that of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Like Czechoslovakia both countries have ethnic-minorities. In Czech it was the Sudetenland Germans who agitated for German intervention to 'protect' them. Hitler complied. The West, led by the appeaser Neville Chamberlain relented and granted the West 'peace in our time'. Hitler got Czechoslovakia and the West received 'peace'. It was to prove to be an Islamic peace. Saakashvili evidently used the comparison because he believed the Europeans were of the 'never again' mindset. But Saakashvili obviously has not been paying attention to European history in the 20th century. Europeans have never defended their allies. The European way is to abandon small states to their fate. The European way is to mince words and ignore genocide. Thus it was in 1938 and nothing changed after. The threat of Communism and Soviet imperialism didn't steel the hearts of Europeans. They mostly appeased Communism and expected the U.S to protect them. Elites in many European countries joined Communist terror gangs such as the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction (Baarder-Meinhof gang). Some of England's most well bred men spied for the KGB. Charles De Gaulle was no champion of freedom against Communism and set France on a 'separate path' while Willy Brandt reconciled with the East German regimes. All the while the 'arsenal of democracy' in the U.S had to protect the European so that his economy could grow and he could sip his latte and work his 35 hour work week and enjoy his 'social justice' welfare system. The EU economy of today was primarily founded on the back of the American taxpayer. But when Europe was rebuilt and it once again had armies it never used them to prevent genocide. It always hid behind America so that when America succeeded the Europeans could take credit and when America failed, as in Vietnam, the Europeans could protest and scoff. When 800,000 Tutsi tribesmen in Rwanda were hacked to death in 1994 with French supplied machetes the Europeans did nothing and then accused the Americans of 'lacking leadership'. Evidently the 500 million people of the EU could not have done anything themselves. Thus Mr. Saakashvili was walking a foolish road when he compared himself to Czechoslovakia. Most people do not even recall the president of Czechoslovakia in 1938. His name was Edvard Benes. Why would Saakashvili inadvertently compare himself to such an unmemorable person. Did Saakashvili forget what Czechs call the Munich agreement of 1938 which destroyed their country? They call it was the 'Western betrayal' (zrada spojenců or Mnichov Mnichovská zrada-Munich Betrayal).
The nature of the Betrayal is quite deep. The West courted the various former Soviet Socialist Republics after 1991. Some of them, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were allowed into the EU and NATO. Georgia was one of the foremost candidates for the next round of expansion. It was seen as a bulwark of western decency in the Caucuses. On April 9th, 1991 Georgia had declared independence from the U.S.S.R. Zviad Gamsakhurdia became its first president. After being forced into exile by a coup he died during a bloody Civil War in 1993 that pitted him against the former Soviet Foreign Minister, western media darling and Russian supported Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze served as president until 2003 at which time the 'Rose Revolution' brought Saakashvili to power. During this chaos a number of separatist movements sprouted up in Georgia demanding independence for ethnic minorities including the Abkhaz (94,000 people), Ossetians (65,000) and Ajarians (Adjaria 376,000). Russia has worked since the 1990s to absorb the two northern enclaves, Ossetia and Abkhazia, sending Russian 'peacekeepers' into the areas (much as Nato did in Kosovo) and giving Russian citizenship to the locals. Thus when Saakashvili sent his army to crush the Ossetians in August of 2008 he was attacking 'Russian' citizens and when a few Russian 'peacekeepers' were fired upon the Casus Belli was upon the Georgians. Saakashvili played the game badly. He was not, as the Godfather notes, a 'Wartime Consigliere'. He was an emotional wreck within twenty-four hours of realizing that his gambit had provoked the hungry Russian bear on August 9th. Unlike Henry V at Agincourt he behaved more like Stalin, who was also Georgian, after the Nazi invasion of 1941 (Stalin had a breakdown, seems to have resigned and hid in his room for several days). Saakashvili seems to have rarely slept, perhaps not a surprise given the situation, and he made the strange decision to withdraw the Georgian armed forces from Ossetia and order them to stand down in or around August 13th (an earlier ceasefire declared by him on August 7th before the Russian intervention had not stopped the fighting in South Ossetia). This allowed Russian soldiers to enter Georgia unopposed, takeover the Georgian city of Gori (Stalin's birthplace, the city was subsequently looted by Ossetians) and move towards the Georgian capital. Perhaps this is the Georgian way of fighting. Despite stories of Georgian 'knights' and an ancient history one is all too aware that for many centuries Georgia was the main supplier of slave women to the Ottoman sultan's harem and slave raiders targeted the country annually to reap the latest harvest of young Georgian girls up until the 19th century. Perhaps years of enslavement turned the nation into one of passionate men who, although calculating, clannish and temperamental, are not really the warriors they make themselves out to be). Whatever the case of Saakashvili's inability to carry through with his boastful words, his nation caved in the face of aggression much the way the Czechs caved in 1938. The western betrayal affected Saakashvili so deeply that he was unable to fight.
When the EU president Nicolas Sarkozy, who one might suppose would be a 'wartime Consigliere' given his tough stance against Muslim 'youth' rioters in Paris 2005, in fact signed the death warrant of Georgia. The 'six point peace plan' outlined by the EU ordered the Georgian army to return to its military basis while the Russian army would remain in Georgia under the ambiguous clause "Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities. While awaiting an international mechanism, Russian peacekeeping forces will implement additional security measures." This is the European way of peace. It is the peace of Petain. Petain signed a similar treaty with Hitler in a railroad carriage in 1940, giving the Nazis access to most of France and setting up a Vichy regime which would actively collaborate. But Georgians are not Frenchmen. They are not collaborators.
In truth the Georgians have learned the hard way what many peoples have had to learn in the 20th century. Having a European friend is meaningless in the hard world of Realpolitic and war. European allies are not a guarantee of military aid. Europeans do not guarantee anything. Europeans offer two things: Cowardice and betrayal. Such is the epitaph of European civilization. To be sure, it was a civilization that produced much guts and bravery. It was not always this way.
But the modern European culture is the culture of critique and protest. It is the culture of the coffee-house intellectual, the poverty tourist and the protest tourist. Thus Europeans will be extremely violent after a football match, they will protest violently against the WTO and globalization. They will even throw rock and assault Chinese Olympians running with the Olympic torch in Paris. This is European bravado at its best: attacking things that cannot fight back. A European will sail on a 'free Gaza boat' from Cyprus to the Gaza strip, know Israel won't hurt his lily white skin, but a European will not go to Darfur. A European will protest China in Paris, but not in China. When ITN China coorespondent Nick Ray was covering a small protest by Chinese people during the Olympics he was pushed around by the police " the journalist's shoes were scuffed, his trousers and shirt dirty and some bruising was visible on his hand." "This was an assault in my mind. I am incredibly angry about this," he told AFP. This is the European mentality. Some scoffed shoes and a dirty shirt is a 'human rights violation', perhaps even an 'act of genocide' if it happens to a European. An entire country invaded, bombed and humiliated, such as Georgia. That is just something to call an unfortunate incident.
European Civilization is dead. It is not something to be fought for and passionate about. There is no strength of vitality in Europe. There is no faith or honor. There is betrayal and cowardice. The Georgian people were deceived and sold a bill of goods over democracy and free markets. They should have learned that democracy, despite the European talk, does not truly wrench he hearts of the European. Crying grandmothers, military minders, terrorism and crying children, and women in veils, that is what wrenches the European mind. A note to Georgia: If you want sympathy import some little black children, convert to Islam and then maybe you will get some sympathy. But you still won't get the military support you need. You are a small little unique country, like Israel and Serbia, and you therefore get the other end of the stick, the one that is useless, flaccid and rotten. You are on your own. It is unfortunate that Mr. Saakashvili does not seem up to the task of defending your country and he has instead put his faith in those who fled the Nazis and those who collaborated.
Terra Incognita Genocide, Nader and Gaza boat
Terra Incognita
Issue 47
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
August 11th, 2008
1) Genocide, complicity, the UN and human rights double standards: In August of 2008 two Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang province of China drove a truck into a group of jogging policemen and then proceeded to stab a number of them to death. If it had happened in London we would call it terrorism but as the media informs us, ‘scholars’ in the West see it more as an act of ‘vengeance’. Hypocrisy when it comes to terrorism and genocide is rife and no more so than among intellectuals, NGOs and the UN.
2) Ralph Nader, Obama and racism: Ralpd Nader recently claimed that his friend were telling him about Obama; “look what would happen if we had an African-American president.'" What is interesting is that Nader then added 'it doesn't look like its going to be what we all thought it would be.” He felt that it was logical to expect great things based solely on a man’s skin color. Many Americans who support Obama feel the same way. They should heed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Judge Mr. Obama based on his content, his ‘I am African-American’ charade is a myth.
3) The Free Gaza Boat and human rights hypocrisy: A group called the International Solidarity Movement claims they have purchased two boats with which they will sail to Gaza from Cyprus to break the Israeli blockade. They claim their lives are in danger. But all this senseless bravado just shows what peace movements, protests and NGOs have become: a search for publicity with the knowledge that the government being protested will not harm the protesters. The ‘Free Gaza’ people should try sailing to Sudan and protesting the genocide there. But European and wealthy leftist western protestors don’t like the idea that they might actually be harmed and not have cameras around to record it.
Genocide, complicity, the UN and human rights double standards
Seth J. Frantzman
August 7th, 2008
Not long ago Lithuanian Police came to the door of Rachel Margolis in Lithuania. They were on the trail of a war criminal who they claimed had perpetrated a massacre during the Second World War in Lithuania. This 90 year old suspect was no elderly Nazi but a Jewish partisan. Lithuania, it turns out, has re-written its history so that the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the Nazis and their collaborators, have become the victims while the victims have become the human rights violators. This case might seem surprising and many people in the West are aghast to hear of how justice has been turned on its head. But we shouldn't be surprised. What has happened in Lithuania is not unique. It seems to happen on an even greater scale throughout Europe and the West almost daily.
On August 3rd, 2008, two men, both Uighurs, a Turkish Muslim group in China, drove a stolen truck into a group of police officers who were out jogging. They then tossed explosives and stabbed the victims, killing 16. If this were a western state, say England where a group of Muslim doctors had attempted a similar thing at the Glasgow airport in June, 2007, it would be considered an act of terror. But as the International Herald Tribune informs us, "scholars raised doubts that the attack was terrorism." Dru Gladney, of Pamona College, was quoted as saying that the attack was made by 'disgruntled individuals' and might have been an act of 'vengeance'. It is China's integrity that is thus called into question and the "viability of Chinese policy in Xinjiang", the province where the terror took place. When terrorists struck in Glasgow there was, oddly, no discussion of the 'viability' of the U.K's policy in Scotland.
Reports recently came out that the U.K's embassy in Tel Aviv will no longer allow Jewish 'settlers' to come to events. Conservative British MP Crispin Blunt, a joint chairman of Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), complained about the presence of settlers at the Queen's birthday party in June, 2008. These 'settlers' were elected officials of the Judea and Samaria council (Yesha). It is odd that the U.K doesn't seem capable of banning the genocidal officials of the Sudan from its embassies or the Saudis, whose regime has separate roads for Muslims that non-Muslims may not drive on. Furthermore the U.K doesn't seem capable of barring its own Protestant settlers in Northern Ireland from official events.
In a recent attempt by a Dutch lawyer to sue the United Nations on behalf of victims of Srebrenica, which the U.N had promised to protect, a court said the U.N was immune was prosecution and that it could not be sued under any law, local or international. The U.N is the same organization whose soldiers have been implicated recently in countless acts of rape and smuggling in the Congo. The message is clear: if a UN worker rapes you there is no recompense to justice. But the U.N does not seem to face the same problem when setting up special tribunals in Cambodia or the Hague to try 'war criminals' such as Radovan Karadzic, who ironically is accused of perpetrating the Srebrenica massacre. This seems to send the message that the only people capable of dispensing justice are Europeans who work for the U.N, but when it is they who are implicated in war crimes there can be no prosecution.
The most blatant act of such double-standards is the recent case whereby the Rwandan Justice Ministry has accused former government officials in France, including Francois Mitterrand, of complicity in the Rwandan genocide. The 500 page report details how France knowingly supplied weapons to the genocide regime up through 1994. France's response has been to call the report 'unacceptable'. France has enlisted none other than Kenneth Roth and the Human Rights Watch. Roth has claimed that "at a moment when international pressure to pursue the RPF [the rebel movement whose members were victims of the genocide] trials is at its height, this is an effort to change the subject and put the international community on the defensive."
This 'international community' is the same one that failed the Jews during the Holocaust and failed people like Rachel Margolis. Roth is playing the part of the Lithuanian authorities. While the international community sat by and did nothing during the Rwandan genocide, it is now trying to prosecute the victims of the genocide and the rebel movement, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, that drove the Hutu genocidal regime from power. Roth and France are clear in their assertion that it is 'unacceptable' to accuse the 'international community' of wrongdoing. Perhaps if the international community stopped its hypocrisy and had the same standards for Europeans, UN workers and others as it does for Jews, Chinese and Rwandans then it wouldn't have to be accused of complicity in genocide. Unfortunately the track record speaks for itself. In substance, the decision by the Lithuanians to accuse former partisans of 'war crimes' is the same as claiming that an act of terror in China is just 'disgruntled individuals', that 'settlers' may not attend U.K functions and that the victims of the Rwandan genocide are the perpetrators.
Ralph Nader, Obama and racism
Seth J. Frantzman
August 7th, 2008
As Barack Obama has taken on the media spotlight it has become clear that there are many people who support him primarily out of sense of feeling that 'it is time' to have
an African-American in the white house. These are the people who cheer wildly when shown clips of Obama saying that he doesn't 'look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills'. Even for those who vehemently deny that race has played any role in the Obama campaign they cannot deny that in many circles, primarily among college educated Americans on the political left, there is a great deal of excitement over the Obama ticket not because of his youth, not because of his upbringing, not because of his policies, not because of his accomplishments, but because of his skin color.
Ralph Nader encapsulated this line of thinking best when he noted in April, 2008 that "People who have fought the Civil Rights battle would often talk about 'look what would happen if we had an African-American president.'" What is interesting is that Nader then added 'it doesn't look like its going to be what we all thought it would be." This characterization is becoming more and more widespread. There is an increasing awareness that irrespective of the fact that Obama doesn't 'look' like the other presidents he will probably end up acting just like them. In fact Nader himself has acknowledged as much by making comments such as "Obama talks white."
These feelings regarding Obama, on the one hand that he will should be supported primarily because of his skin color and that he is somehow betraying all hopes for him by 'acting white' point to a very disturbing trend in the American conception of race, especially among those who claim to be progressive. The idea of race in society has taken a very different turn than many of those who originally campaigned for Civil Rights would have imagined. Nader harkens back to the 'Civil Rights battle' and admits that those who support civil rights seem to think that skin color is what the fight over civil rights was all about. They thus make statements such as 'look what would happen if we had an African-American president'. They assume that skin color thus determines how one acts and is the most important characteristic of a person. This is a very odd thing for someone who champions 'civil rights' to say. It seems they have forgotten what 'civil rights' was all about. They seem to have even forgotten the most famous enjoinder of the most famous civil rights leader of the 20th century.
During his 'I have Dream' speech, Martin Luther King said "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The Civil Rights movement was originally about tearing down the barriers in society that were based on race. These were the barriers that judged men different based solely on the color of their skin.
What has become of this? Barack Obama is not being judged based on the content of his character but rather based on the color of his skin. Moreover he is being judged this way not by the unenlightened but rather by those who claim to believe in civil rights and those who are educated. The fact that the most intellectual people in society cannot see passed the color of a person's skin, some 40 years after Dr. King's speech, speaks to what has not been learned about race in the aftermath of the Civil Rights era. Racism has been turned upside down. Rather than abolish the notion that people are different because of their skin color we have decided that people are inherently different based on their skin color and that some skin colors are inherently better and more interesting. Evidently few people took away from Dr. King's speech the central thesis of it. It will be an unfortunate election day in the United States when millions of Americans vote for someone based good intentions which mask a virulent racism, choosing a candidate based only on the color of his skin and not the content of his character. The likes of Ralph Nader and his friends should be ashamed.
The Free Gaza Boat and human rights hypocrisy
Seth J. Frantzman
August 3rd, 2008
In the first week of August, 2008 dozens of left-wing anti-Israel activists began converging on Piraeus in Greece and Larnaca in Cyprus where they plan to board two boats (the 62 foot Free Gaza and the 54 foot Liberty) destined to sail for the Gaza strip on or around August 5th, 2008. They include, supposedly, “Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans, Africans and Asians. There will be rabbis, imams, Christian and Buddhist clerics, British MPs, entertainment celebrities, and internationally known journalists. Nakba and Holocaust survivors.”
The movement is called the Free Gaza Boat Movement of August. Some $300,000 has reportedly been raised to fund the venture. Paul Larudee of El Cerrito, California is one the organizers as is the International Solidarity Movement, a protest group founded during the Second Intifada to protest Israel's actions in the Gaza strip and West Bank (the group became famous when one of its members, Rachel Corrie was accidentally run over by an Israeli bulldozer). The primary goal of the campaign is to be intercepted by Israeli authorities so that a protest and an incident can result in which balloons will be let off from the boats and protestors can have their pictures taken beside 100 hearing aids they claim to be carrying for Palestinian children. The only attempt to stop the boat so far has been made by Sherut HaDin, an pro-Israel group, which has accused it of violating the U.S Nuetrality act by raising funds in the U.S which forbids raising funds for military and naval expeditions abroad.
This is not the first time the ISM has attempted a stunt like this. In July of 2005 a hundred and thirty ISM activists were prevented from entering Israel from Jordan as part of their 'Caravan for Palestine'. Although the ISM has repeatedly claimed to be struggling using whatever non-violent means are necessary, Paul Larudee has also noted, in an interview with Al-Jazeera, that “we recognize that violence is necessary and it is permissible for oppressed and occupied people to use armed resistance and we recognize their right to do so.” Towards this end the movement seems to anticipate that weapons will be aboard the ship “Israel wishes to harm our mission, we expect them to try to plant arms on board…we will not allow Israeli authorities to perform inspections.” An attorney and piano tuner by trade Paul Larudee is also the former supervisor of a Ford Foundation project in Lebanon, a Fulbright-Hays lecturer to Lebanon and a contract U.S. government advisor to Saudi Arabia. He claims to have been one of seven volunteers of the International Solidarity Movement wounded by Israeli gunfire on April 1,2002.
What the Gaza boat initiative shows is not merely the use of stunts to gain media attention for the Palestinians but also illustrates the moral failing of protest movements in general. The fact that the ISM and other European volunteers are willing to spend their money to purchase a boat and sale it to the Gaza strip is because of their knowledge that no harm will come to them. No similar protest movement has ever attempted such a stunt in response to actual genocides, such as that taking place in the Sudan. This means that protests disproportionately target those countries where law and order, democracy and human rights are respected. This problem was first noticed in the 1970s when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was serving as U.S ambassador to the United Nations. During the 'Zionism is Racism' debate at the U.N Moynihan noticed that “the amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.” This has come down through history as ‘Moynihan's law.’ This understanding of how human rights campaigning works serves as an illustration of why there will be no Free Darfur protest boat landing on the coast of Sudan anytime soon. Human rights campaigners seem to prefer easy targets where the most that will happen to them is they will be temporarily detained and released. Israel is therefore the prime target for such charades and grandstanding as this Free Gaza boat campaign. The ISM and its former Ford Foundation leader will get the media spotlight. In order to receive the spotlight the campaign has determined that it is not enough to sail to Gaza but will needlessly challenge Israel's exclusion zone around the strip so as to provoke Israel to respond. In his blog Dr. Bill Dienst, a 'rural family and emergency room physician from Omak, Washington, claims he will be aboard as the ship's doctor and that “It is possible that many of us could be killed and injured all at once; or over several attacks.” This needless bravado is part of the charade. If Mr. Dienst truly wanted to risk his life he would be in Darfur giving aid to actual starving and dying people.
Israel faces two good options. It can allow the boat to reach Gaza un-opposed, thus not providing the protestors with an ‘Exodus-like’ standoff where the media will surely photograph them. It can also board the boat after dark, which is possible because the voyage from Cyprus will take more than a date, and remove the protestors and deport them through Ben-Gurion or another border crossing. Furthermore the Israeli government could then turn over any of the humanitarian contents of the boat to the Palestinian Authority, showing that Israel is not interested in interdicting humanitarian aid, merely preventing grandstanding by wealthy protestors out to create a spectacle.
Issue 47
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
August 11th, 2008
1) Genocide, complicity, the UN and human rights double standards: In August of 2008 two Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang province of China drove a truck into a group of jogging policemen and then proceeded to stab a number of them to death. If it had happened in London we would call it terrorism but as the media informs us, ‘scholars’ in the West see it more as an act of ‘vengeance’. Hypocrisy when it comes to terrorism and genocide is rife and no more so than among intellectuals, NGOs and the UN.
2) Ralph Nader, Obama and racism: Ralpd Nader recently claimed that his friend were telling him about Obama; “look what would happen if we had an African-American president.'" What is interesting is that Nader then added 'it doesn't look like its going to be what we all thought it would be.” He felt that it was logical to expect great things based solely on a man’s skin color. Many Americans who support Obama feel the same way. They should heed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Judge Mr. Obama based on his content, his ‘I am African-American’ charade is a myth.
3) The Free Gaza Boat and human rights hypocrisy: A group called the International Solidarity Movement claims they have purchased two boats with which they will sail to Gaza from Cyprus to break the Israeli blockade. They claim their lives are in danger. But all this senseless bravado just shows what peace movements, protests and NGOs have become: a search for publicity with the knowledge that the government being protested will not harm the protesters. The ‘Free Gaza’ people should try sailing to Sudan and protesting the genocide there. But European and wealthy leftist western protestors don’t like the idea that they might actually be harmed and not have cameras around to record it.
Genocide, complicity, the UN and human rights double standards
Seth J. Frantzman
August 7th, 2008
Not long ago Lithuanian Police came to the door of Rachel Margolis in Lithuania. They were on the trail of a war criminal who they claimed had perpetrated a massacre during the Second World War in Lithuania. This 90 year old suspect was no elderly Nazi but a Jewish partisan. Lithuania, it turns out, has re-written its history so that the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the Nazis and their collaborators, have become the victims while the victims have become the human rights violators. This case might seem surprising and many people in the West are aghast to hear of how justice has been turned on its head. But we shouldn't be surprised. What has happened in Lithuania is not unique. It seems to happen on an even greater scale throughout Europe and the West almost daily.
On August 3rd, 2008, two men, both Uighurs, a Turkish Muslim group in China, drove a stolen truck into a group of police officers who were out jogging. They then tossed explosives and stabbed the victims, killing 16. If this were a western state, say England where a group of Muslim doctors had attempted a similar thing at the Glasgow airport in June, 2007, it would be considered an act of terror. But as the International Herald Tribune informs us, "scholars raised doubts that the attack was terrorism." Dru Gladney, of Pamona College, was quoted as saying that the attack was made by 'disgruntled individuals' and might have been an act of 'vengeance'. It is China's integrity that is thus called into question and the "viability of Chinese policy in Xinjiang", the province where the terror took place. When terrorists struck in Glasgow there was, oddly, no discussion of the 'viability' of the U.K's policy in Scotland.
Reports recently came out that the U.K's embassy in Tel Aviv will no longer allow Jewish 'settlers' to come to events. Conservative British MP Crispin Blunt, a joint chairman of Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), complained about the presence of settlers at the Queen's birthday party in June, 2008. These 'settlers' were elected officials of the Judea and Samaria council (Yesha). It is odd that the U.K doesn't seem capable of banning the genocidal officials of the Sudan from its embassies or the Saudis, whose regime has separate roads for Muslims that non-Muslims may not drive on. Furthermore the U.K doesn't seem capable of barring its own Protestant settlers in Northern Ireland from official events.
In a recent attempt by a Dutch lawyer to sue the United Nations on behalf of victims of Srebrenica, which the U.N had promised to protect, a court said the U.N was immune was prosecution and that it could not be sued under any law, local or international. The U.N is the same organization whose soldiers have been implicated recently in countless acts of rape and smuggling in the Congo. The message is clear: if a UN worker rapes you there is no recompense to justice. But the U.N does not seem to face the same problem when setting up special tribunals in Cambodia or the Hague to try 'war criminals' such as Radovan Karadzic, who ironically is accused of perpetrating the Srebrenica massacre. This seems to send the message that the only people capable of dispensing justice are Europeans who work for the U.N, but when it is they who are implicated in war crimes there can be no prosecution.
The most blatant act of such double-standards is the recent case whereby the Rwandan Justice Ministry has accused former government officials in France, including Francois Mitterrand, of complicity in the Rwandan genocide. The 500 page report details how France knowingly supplied weapons to the genocide regime up through 1994. France's response has been to call the report 'unacceptable'. France has enlisted none other than Kenneth Roth and the Human Rights Watch. Roth has claimed that "at a moment when international pressure to pursue the RPF [the rebel movement whose members were victims of the genocide] trials is at its height, this is an effort to change the subject and put the international community on the defensive."
This 'international community' is the same one that failed the Jews during the Holocaust and failed people like Rachel Margolis. Roth is playing the part of the Lithuanian authorities. While the international community sat by and did nothing during the Rwandan genocide, it is now trying to prosecute the victims of the genocide and the rebel movement, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, that drove the Hutu genocidal regime from power. Roth and France are clear in their assertion that it is 'unacceptable' to accuse the 'international community' of wrongdoing. Perhaps if the international community stopped its hypocrisy and had the same standards for Europeans, UN workers and others as it does for Jews, Chinese and Rwandans then it wouldn't have to be accused of complicity in genocide. Unfortunately the track record speaks for itself. In substance, the decision by the Lithuanians to accuse former partisans of 'war crimes' is the same as claiming that an act of terror in China is just 'disgruntled individuals', that 'settlers' may not attend U.K functions and that the victims of the Rwandan genocide are the perpetrators.
Ralph Nader, Obama and racism
Seth J. Frantzman
August 7th, 2008
As Barack Obama has taken on the media spotlight it has become clear that there are many people who support him primarily out of sense of feeling that 'it is time' to have
an African-American in the white house. These are the people who cheer wildly when shown clips of Obama saying that he doesn't 'look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills'. Even for those who vehemently deny that race has played any role in the Obama campaign they cannot deny that in many circles, primarily among college educated Americans on the political left, there is a great deal of excitement over the Obama ticket not because of his youth, not because of his upbringing, not because of his policies, not because of his accomplishments, but because of his skin color.
Ralph Nader encapsulated this line of thinking best when he noted in April, 2008 that "People who have fought the Civil Rights battle would often talk about 'look what would happen if we had an African-American president.'" What is interesting is that Nader then added 'it doesn't look like its going to be what we all thought it would be." This characterization is becoming more and more widespread. There is an increasing awareness that irrespective of the fact that Obama doesn't 'look' like the other presidents he will probably end up acting just like them. In fact Nader himself has acknowledged as much by making comments such as "Obama talks white."
These feelings regarding Obama, on the one hand that he will should be supported primarily because of his skin color and that he is somehow betraying all hopes for him by 'acting white' point to a very disturbing trend in the American conception of race, especially among those who claim to be progressive. The idea of race in society has taken a very different turn than many of those who originally campaigned for Civil Rights would have imagined. Nader harkens back to the 'Civil Rights battle' and admits that those who support civil rights seem to think that skin color is what the fight over civil rights was all about. They thus make statements such as 'look what would happen if we had an African-American president'. They assume that skin color thus determines how one acts and is the most important characteristic of a person. This is a very odd thing for someone who champions 'civil rights' to say. It seems they have forgotten what 'civil rights' was all about. They seem to have even forgotten the most famous enjoinder of the most famous civil rights leader of the 20th century.
During his 'I have Dream' speech, Martin Luther King said "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The Civil Rights movement was originally about tearing down the barriers in society that were based on race. These were the barriers that judged men different based solely on the color of their skin.
What has become of this? Barack Obama is not being judged based on the content of his character but rather based on the color of his skin. Moreover he is being judged this way not by the unenlightened but rather by those who claim to believe in civil rights and those who are educated. The fact that the most intellectual people in society cannot see passed the color of a person's skin, some 40 years after Dr. King's speech, speaks to what has not been learned about race in the aftermath of the Civil Rights era. Racism has been turned upside down. Rather than abolish the notion that people are different because of their skin color we have decided that people are inherently different based on their skin color and that some skin colors are inherently better and more interesting. Evidently few people took away from Dr. King's speech the central thesis of it. It will be an unfortunate election day in the United States when millions of Americans vote for someone based good intentions which mask a virulent racism, choosing a candidate based only on the color of his skin and not the content of his character. The likes of Ralph Nader and his friends should be ashamed.
The Free Gaza Boat and human rights hypocrisy
Seth J. Frantzman
August 3rd, 2008
In the first week of August, 2008 dozens of left-wing anti-Israel activists began converging on Piraeus in Greece and Larnaca in Cyprus where they plan to board two boats (the 62 foot Free Gaza and the 54 foot Liberty) destined to sail for the Gaza strip on or around August 5th, 2008. They include, supposedly, “Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans, Africans and Asians. There will be rabbis, imams, Christian and Buddhist clerics, British MPs, entertainment celebrities, and internationally known journalists. Nakba and Holocaust survivors.”
The movement is called the Free Gaza Boat Movement of August. Some $300,000 has reportedly been raised to fund the venture. Paul Larudee of El Cerrito, California is one the organizers as is the International Solidarity Movement, a protest group founded during the Second Intifada to protest Israel's actions in the Gaza strip and West Bank (the group became famous when one of its members, Rachel Corrie was accidentally run over by an Israeli bulldozer). The primary goal of the campaign is to be intercepted by Israeli authorities so that a protest and an incident can result in which balloons will be let off from the boats and protestors can have their pictures taken beside 100 hearing aids they claim to be carrying for Palestinian children. The only attempt to stop the boat so far has been made by Sherut HaDin, an pro-Israel group, which has accused it of violating the U.S Nuetrality act by raising funds in the U.S which forbids raising funds for military and naval expeditions abroad.
This is not the first time the ISM has attempted a stunt like this. In July of 2005 a hundred and thirty ISM activists were prevented from entering Israel from Jordan as part of their 'Caravan for Palestine'. Although the ISM has repeatedly claimed to be struggling using whatever non-violent means are necessary, Paul Larudee has also noted, in an interview with Al-Jazeera, that “we recognize that violence is necessary and it is permissible for oppressed and occupied people to use armed resistance and we recognize their right to do so.” Towards this end the movement seems to anticipate that weapons will be aboard the ship “Israel wishes to harm our mission, we expect them to try to plant arms on board…we will not allow Israeli authorities to perform inspections.” An attorney and piano tuner by trade Paul Larudee is also the former supervisor of a Ford Foundation project in Lebanon, a Fulbright-Hays lecturer to Lebanon and a contract U.S. government advisor to Saudi Arabia. He claims to have been one of seven volunteers of the International Solidarity Movement wounded by Israeli gunfire on April 1,2002.
What the Gaza boat initiative shows is not merely the use of stunts to gain media attention for the Palestinians but also illustrates the moral failing of protest movements in general. The fact that the ISM and other European volunteers are willing to spend their money to purchase a boat and sale it to the Gaza strip is because of their knowledge that no harm will come to them. No similar protest movement has ever attempted such a stunt in response to actual genocides, such as that taking place in the Sudan. This means that protests disproportionately target those countries where law and order, democracy and human rights are respected. This problem was first noticed in the 1970s when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was serving as U.S ambassador to the United Nations. During the 'Zionism is Racism' debate at the U.N Moynihan noticed that “the amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.” This has come down through history as ‘Moynihan's law.’ This understanding of how human rights campaigning works serves as an illustration of why there will be no Free Darfur protest boat landing on the coast of Sudan anytime soon. Human rights campaigners seem to prefer easy targets where the most that will happen to them is they will be temporarily detained and released. Israel is therefore the prime target for such charades and grandstanding as this Free Gaza boat campaign. The ISM and its former Ford Foundation leader will get the media spotlight. In order to receive the spotlight the campaign has determined that it is not enough to sail to Gaza but will needlessly challenge Israel's exclusion zone around the strip so as to provoke Israel to respond. In his blog Dr. Bill Dienst, a 'rural family and emergency room physician from Omak, Washington, claims he will be aboard as the ship's doctor and that “It is possible that many of us could be killed and injured all at once; or over several attacks.” This needless bravado is part of the charade. If Mr. Dienst truly wanted to risk his life he would be in Darfur giving aid to actual starving and dying people.
Israel faces two good options. It can allow the boat to reach Gaza un-opposed, thus not providing the protestors with an ‘Exodus-like’ standoff where the media will surely photograph them. It can also board the boat after dark, which is possible because the voyage from Cyprus will take more than a date, and remove the protestors and deport them through Ben-Gurion or another border crossing. Furthermore the Israeli government could then turn over any of the humanitarian contents of the boat to the Palestinian Authority, showing that Israel is not interested in interdicting humanitarian aid, merely preventing grandstanding by wealthy protestors out to create a spectacle.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Terra Incognita 46 Africa's leadership, terror and rape
Terra Incognita
Issue 46
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
August 5th, 2008
1) Africa's third generation: The first generation of Africa’s leadership was dominated by ‘national resistance’ leaders who were larger than life. The second generation was dominated by coup leaders and thugs. Now, with the third generation of leaders we can see that there are very real currents of strength and far sighted leadership in Africa. Ironically those strengths have had to grow up in the shadow of increasing dependence on international aid, Islamism and genocide. But a common thread runs through many of these leaders. They all met while they were young men in Tanzania and they are united the personality of Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.
2) Because it Exists: With the recent terrorist bombings in India it turns out the death toll in that country is second only to Iraq. When one considers all the people who would be alive today were it not for the cowardly acts of terrorists one realizes that one things unites this disease that targets civilians: Islam. This is apparent, but it is worthwhile to remember and steel ourselves based on this fact.
3) Coerced sex, the IDF and the dark side of feminism: Recent allegations against a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of Sociology and Anthropology tell of a man who harassed, preyed and raped female doctoral students that he was supposed to be advising. Furthermore this intellectual was an outspoken critic of the Israeli army and its ‘militarization’ of Israeli society. One of his students even wrote a thesis on the absence of military rape in the Israeli army and how this means the Israeli army is ‘racist’ because it rarely rapes Arab women. It appears as if this thesis was written to justify the professors sexual deviancy and that the student was insinuating that rape was some sort of positive act. But there is more to this. A recent book by The Feminist Press tells a romantic tale of a young girl being sexually assaulted by her female teacher. Perhaps there is more rotten in feminism and sociology than just this lone professor.
Africa's third generation
Seth J. Frantzman
July 31st, 2008
Yoweri Museveni, Morgan Tsvangirai, Laurent Kabila, Paul Kagame, John Garang, Jonas Savimbi, and Meles Zenawi represent the third generation of African leadership since independence. They not only represent this third generation but they also represent the best of this generation. In contrast to them are the genocidal and thuggish likes of Robert Mugabe, Omar Hassan al Bashir (who is an Arab and not actually African) and Jacob Zuma. Their decency has been matched by their failures and untimely deaths. Whereas Kagame, Zenawi and Museveni have all found their way to power, Savimbi and Garang are dead and the future of Tsvangirai remains uncertain. While earlier generations of African leaders built their power based on opposition to colonialism or the establishment of elaborate Kleptocracies and while other African leaders have lived at the foot of international 'aid' workers and the UN these men have time and again shown not only their independence but their desire to put their nations before themselves and before the likes of 'international' organizations. Yet these men remain uncelebrated and un-recognized. With the exception of a few books, such as Emma's War and The Land of a Thousand Wars, these men barely figure in any stories on Africa. Except for every five years when Zimbabwe elections feature the head bashing and corruption we have come to expect from Zimbabwe we do not hear the name Tsvangirai.
Why are these men the 'third generation'? Jonas Savimbi was born in 1934 while Kagame was born in 1957. What unites these men is that they were not recognized as being part of the hagiographic generation of Kwame Nkrumah (born 1909) Leopold Senghor (born 1906), Sekou Toure (Guinea), Jomo Kenyatta (born 1894), Kenneth Kaunda (born 1924), Julius Nyerere (born 1922), Patrice Lumumba (born 1925) or Haile Selassie (born 1892) who came of age in time to lead their countries to independence in or around 1960 (except Ethiopia, which was already independent). This was the first generation of African leadership. It was known for having won independence from Europe and for its brotherly affections. It was the generation of the 'African Unity' speeches and it laid the foundations for African countries where non-intervention would be the name of the game and party politics would play little role. The second generation of African leadership was the generation of the coups and dictatorships. These 'big men' of Africa, such as Mobutu Sese Seko (Congo), Idi Amin (Uganda), Milton Obote (Uganda), Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Gafar Nimeiry (Sudan), Jerry Rawlings (Ghana), Omar Bongo (Gabon), Muhammad Siad Barre (Somalia), Samuel Doe (Liberia), Charles Taylor (Liberia), Olesugun Obasanjo (Nigeria), Moussa Traore (Mali), France-Albert Rene (Comorros), Juvenal Habyarimana (Rwanda), Gnassingbe Eyadema (Togo) and Teodora Nguema (Equatorial Guinea) were known for their brutality, longevity and murderous instincts. The 'era of the coup' between 1963 and 1981 saw no less than thirty coups. Some were run by mercenaries such as 'Mad' Mike Hoare and Bob Denard (who led four such coups in the Comoros, his last in 1995). Jerry Rawlings led Ghana at three separate occasions.
Jonas Savimbi deserved to be honored for his long struggle against Communism in Angola. His career began quite differently. In the 1960s he was an anti-Portuguese guerilla fighter in Angola. While he first found favor with the Marxist MPLA in his struggle against colonial rule he eventually realized that his Ovimbundu tribe which dominated the central plateau of the country would lose out to the Marxists and northern tribes that would come to dominate the post-colonial government. Realizing that the Communists would roll over his tiny guerilla force he sought help wherever he could find it, in South Africa, where the Vorster administration supported him, to the U.S where Ronald Reagan, Jack Abramoff and the Heritage foundation became his benefactors. A man of extraordinary intelligence, he spoke seven languages, he was never able to achieve power in his native country. His base in central Angola became a mecca for anti-communism where he hosted Adolfo Colero, the anti-Sandinista fighter in Nicaragua, and Abdurahim Wardak of Afghanistan. But the late 80s saw his financing dry up and with the fall of communism he was no longer a right wing cause celebre. He lost a run-off election for president (that he claimed was rigged) in 1992 after a cease fire. Ten years later he was killed in action by Angolan troops and, some claim, by his former allies, South African and Israeli mercenaries. Whatever the case he was killed and buried in his home town of Moxico. His message, " I am against nationalization; it is a disease which saps the strength of a national economy" should ring throughout Africa where socialism and international aid have sapped the life of one country after another. What is most remarkable is that he spent 42 years in the bush fighting the Portuguese, Cubans and the Angolan government.
Laurent Kabila was also not cut from a capitalist mold. He was born to the Luba tribe in the Congo and left early in life to study political philosophy in France. He was a chief minister for a short time in Katanga, the former breakaway province that had been led by Moise Tshombe. In 1965 he crossed into Tanzania with a rebel group of former Lumumbist communist fighters and was joined by Che Guevara who had been exiled from the Cuban revolution by Fidel. The two attempted, along with a number of dark skinned Cubans, specially selected for their black skin so they wouldn't give themselves away, to invade Congo and fight Mobutu Sese Seko. The 'revolution' was a failure and Kabila was portrayed by Che as a laggard and a drunk out for money and diamonds. But Kabila didn't give in and for almost thirty years he hung on in the province of South Kivu, fighting Mobuto's dictatorship. Over the years he befriended Yoweri Museveni in Uganda where he also met Paul Kagame. In 1988 Kabila disappeared and many believed he was dead until he re-surfaced in 1996 leading a band of Tutsis fighting against Hutu genocidaires who had fled to Congo in the wake of their failed genocide in Rwanda. The spillover from Rwanda ignited a full scale war where Kabili allied himself with Kagame's Rwanda and together they overthrew Mobutu. Oddly enough this most be one of the few examples in history of one of the smallest countries in the world overthrowing one of the largest (Alexander of Macedon destroying Persia is the other example). In 2001, after having run the Congo during a time of crises and continuing war he was shot by one of his own assistants and his son took charge of the country. Kabila, like Savimbi, deserves consideration because he was friends with other eminent African leaders of the period and because of his tenacity in the face of dictatorship.
John Garang was born to a poor family of Dinka tribesman in south Sudan. An orphan he almost became a child soldier in 1962 during the First Sudanese Civil War. In 1969 he earned a B.A from Grinnel college in Iowa. Like Kabila he found himself in Tanzania as a student and made the acquaintance of Yoweri Museveni. In the 1970s Garang became a Sudanese soldier in an amalgamated Sudanese army that included southerners and northerners. He was sent to Fort Benning where he completed an infantry officers training course. Later he received a Phd at Iowa State. By 1983 he had become the head of the Sudanese army's staff college at Omdurman. In 1983 Garang went to South Sudan to mediate between rebels and the army and, in a premeditated move, deserted the army with some of his closest lieutenants and went over the rebel army. He traveled to Ethiopia where he was able to built his force into the Sudanese People's Liberation Army which opposed the Islamification of the country. Soon support was pouring in from Ethiopia and Uganda, run by Garang's allies Museveni and Ethiopia. He fought the Islamist government to a standstill, using tactics and organization no doubt learned in the U.S at Fort Benning. By 2005 he had succeeded in winning his southern Sudanese people, mostly Christian African tribesman, the rights to a referendum and he allowed to join the government where he was sworn in as vice-president. In July of that year, returning from a meeting with his friend Museveni, his helicopter crashed and he died. His widow vowed to continue his struggle to free his countrymen from Islamist Arab domination; "In our culture we say, if you kill the lion, you see what the lioness will do."
Paul Kagame was born to a Tutsi family in Rwanda. Two years after his birth a Hutu rebellion led to the deaths of 150,000 people, mostly Tutsis and his family was forced to flee to Uganda. In 1979 he joined the Ugandan National Resistance Army under Yoweri Museveni which was fighting to overthrow the dictator, Milton Obote. In 1986 when Museveni finally took control of Uganda, Kagame became a founder of the Rwandan patriotic Front (RPF). In 1990 he went to the U.S for advanced military training at Fort Leavenworth and in that same year the RPF invaded Rwanda to liberate it from Hutu domination. When the leader of the RPF was killed in battle Kagame assumed leadership of the rebellion. In 1994 the Rwandan genocide began and it was only the existence and intervention of Kagame's rebels that saved the Tutsis from total annihilation. But over the years Kagame had run afoul of the French who had been propping up the genocidal Hutu regime. Because a white Frenchman had died aboard a plane carrying the president of Rwanda, Juvanel Habyarimana, the incident that set the genocide in motion, the French government attempted to indict Kagame, accusing him of ordering the downing of the plane. But Kagame has stood firmly against this 'international' arrest warrant issued by the French (whose government, it must be recalled, supported the genocide in Rwanda). For standing up to genocide and the French Kagame must be recognized a great leader.
Meles Zenawi was born in the Tigray province of Ethiopia and after completing school at the prestigious General Wingate school in Addis Ababa he joined the Tigrayan Peoples' liberation army. His rebel army fought against the Communist dictatorship of Mengitsu Haile Miriam until Miriam's Derg regime was overthrown in 1991. When Zenawi's EPRDF, an amalgamation of anti-Communist forces, came to power in 1995 he was supported by the U.S and the State Departments chief of African affairs, Herman Cohen. Since coming to power Zenawi's problems have focused on ethnic-insurgencies (Ogaden, Gambella), a long war with Eritrea and language policy (he has championed language federalism so that each tribe is educated in its mother-tongue). In December of 2006 an Islamist rebellion in Somalia declared a Jihad against Christian Orthodox Ethiopia. Muslim volunteers poured into Somalia with the hopes of raping and murdering their way through Ethiopian villages. They were met instead by Zenawi's decision to send the Ethiopian army, one of Africa's largest, against them. In a week of fighting the Islamic Courts Union, the Islamist party, was swept from Somalia. Zenawi was been a champion of non-Muslim rights elsewhere, such as in Sudan and he is the only pillar standing in the way of Islam in the horn of Africa. When Saudi Arabia demanded that a Mosque be built in a traditional Christian holy city in Ethiopia the Ethiopians responded that a church must first be built in Mecca. For fighting Islamism and preserving an ancient civilization Zenawi must be considered one of Africa's greatest modern day leaders.
Morgan Tsvangarai was the eldest of nine children born to a Shona family in Zimbabwe. His father was a carpenter. At a young age he was a supporter of the Zanu-PF, Robert Mugabe's party. He eventually became involved in the trade union movement, rising to leadership in the mine workers union and Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. As a Trade Union man he expected the Mugabe's socialism would bring benefits to the working people but he found that year after year Zimbabwe was sinking lower and lower and inflation was rising and a country that had been an exporter of food under Ian Douglass Smith's white regime was now a net importer living on constant shortages. When he distanced his union movement from the government Mugabe responded by sending men to Tsvangarai's house with orders to throw him from the window. Tsvangarai's ample weight apparently prevented them from doing so and he survived. He became even more disgusted by the Gukurahundi operations carried out in Matabeleland in the 1980s in which tens of thousands of Joshua Nkomo's supporters were killed. In 1991 he founded the Movement for Democratic Change under which he has campaigned ever since. For opposing the government he was arrested in 2000, 2003 and 2007. In 2007 he was severely beaten. When campaigning for the presidency in 2008 he was arrested again. When hundreds of his followers were killed in run off elections in 2008 he quit the election fearing that worse violence would follow. For his decency and standing up to a ruthless dictatorship Tsvangirai deserves great respect.
For his role in supporting and influencing Kabila, Garang and Kagame, Yoweri Museveni must be considered one of the most important leaders in Africa since the 1980s. He is largely unrecognized and unknown. Museveni was born in western Uganda to the Nyankole tribe. His name means 'son of a man from the seventh' a reference to being related to men who served in the Seventh Battalion of the King's African Rifles, a British formation. He became a born again Christian at a young age and in Tanzania at school he became a 'revolutionary'. He traveled to Mozambique where he received training from the FRELIMO movement. He was a great devotee of the ideas of Franz Fanon. Museveni returned to Uganda to serve as an intelligence officer for the government Milton Obote until it was overthrown by Idi Amin in 1971. He supported an invasion of Uganda by Lango and Acholi tribesmen (who were suppressed by Amin) allied with Obote in 1972 but the invasion crumbled. Soon after Museveni formed FRONASA or the Front for National Salvation. After Amin invaded Tanzania in 1978 Museveni joined with other rebels and the Tanzanian army to overthrow Africa's most brutal dictator in 1979. But there was a falling out with Obote when he returned to power and Museveni went to southern Ugandan and began a rebellion among the Bantu speakers of that part of the country. By 1985 some 100,000-300,000 people had been killed by the Obote regime which was racking up a genocide rate close to that of Amin. In 1986 Mobuto and allies of Idi Amin sent trainers to help the Ugandan army, now led by Tito Okelli, against Museveni. But the alliance of murderers and dictators could not prevent the fall of Uganda's capital in 1986. Museveni set himself to playing power politics in the region. He supported Kagame and helped end the genocide in Rwanda and then helped end the dictatorship of Mobutu. In the Sudan he supported the south's liberation from Islamism (in retaliation Sudan supported the Lord's Resistance Army, an Acholi supported extremist movement whose leader Joseph Kony believes himself to be gods messenger on earth. Tito Okelli had been an Acholi). Museveni's most successful battle was not against Islamism or Kleptocracy but against AIDS. In the 1980s Uganda had one of the highest infection rates in Africa. Museveni's solution was to support the ABC program of Abstinance, Be faithful and use Condoms.
Museveni is the most important African leader of today and yet, oddly, he is neither well known nor respected outside the circles who know him. This is not a surprise in a world where the heroes of the youth are Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, the one a rich argentinian who viewed revolution as tourism and the other a dictator who created a family run country in Cuba. The leftists cheered Lumumba and Nkrumah. They have forgotten about Africa's leaders today in their zeal to return to Africa through aid programs that attempt to re-colonize the continent through dependency. If Africa were able to produce more Savimbis and Garangs there is no doubt it would be a far more self-sufficient place. But the plague or thuggishness, Islamism and foreign aid workers holds back Africa, killing its soul slowly. Everyday more beautiful African women don the headscarf, wrapping their faces tightly lest men be offended by their hair and everyday more Africans are lined up to take their handouts from the likes of 'Save the Childen' under the moniker that African's certainly can't grow anything themselves. What unites Savimbi, Garang and the others mentioned here is their relentless drive for self improvement and self sacrifice. Foreign aid did not touch these men. When they wanted to meet foreigners it was on their own terms, while studying at Fort Benning or elsewhere.
One cannot know the future of Africa but one can see in the failed aid paradigms that liberalism has planned for Africa a paradigm that many would like to wish upon us all; poverty for the majority and wealth for a small elite that tells everyone else how to live. We must all fight against such soul-destroying policies in our own country with the same degree of self-sacrifice that these profiles in courage fought.
Because it Exists
Seth J. Frantzman
August 1, 2008
Between January 2004 and Mmarch 2007 a total of 3,674 people died from terrorism in India. Why were these thousands of lives snuffed out? The existence of Muslims is the answer. In the book, Because They Hate, Brigitte Gabriele, a Lebanese Christian, described how Islamic terrorism ruined Lebanon. The simple fact is that everywhere in the world terrorism is due to the existence of Muslims. If you were to rank countries by the percentage of Muslims in them you would find that the amount of terrorism increases as the percent increases until that percent reaches 60% and then, with Muslims controlling the country, there is no need for terrorism. Than the gears of Islamification began to turn. First the genocide begins, as we have seen in Sudan. Once the non-Muslims are genocides and ethnically cleansed (as was the case with the birth of Pakistan when all the Sikhs and most of the Hindus were forced to leave the country) the remaining minorities are allowed to remain in the cities, discrminated against and marginalized they are allowed to exist as slaves to the state. They become then like the Copts in Egypt or the Jews of Iran, people who are forced, by fear of retaliation, to become nationalists and preach love for their nation. Slowly they dwindle and die out and whenever war comes to the cocuntry they are used as scapegoats and thi extermination is completed, as was the case in Iraq with the Assyrian Christians in the 1930s and the Chaldean Christians after 2003.
The existence of Islam is what causes terrorism and murder. Nations that do not have Muslims, such as Iceland or New Zealand or Uruguay, do not have terrorism. Historically this has not always been the case. Communists were terrorists. The Irish and the Tamils were terrorists. But there is a difference between the isolated acts of Hindu Tamil terrorism and Irish terrorism. These ethnic-terrorist movements, like the Basques, were isolated. Irish people were not terrorists everywhere, only in Northern Ireland. Basques only live in Spain and France. Tamils only live in southern India and Sri Lanka. The Communist terror and Anarachist terror that swept the world from the late 19th century to the late 20th century is the closest thing we have as a comparison with the existence of Islam. Communism plagued the entire world and wherever there were communists there was terrorism. As with Islam the progression of Communism followed similar patterns. It began with terrorism by upper class ‘revolutionaries’. Once Communism was able to take control of the state the terrorism ended and the genocide and ‘class war’ began until the enitre country was communist. Thus Communism and Islam was linked in this way. However Communism was an ideology. Islam is a religion. Communism was easily defeated once it petrefied into the state system. The defeat of Communist states led immediately to the freedom of the people and thir drifting away from Communism. But Islam is not like this. Destroying Muslim governments doesn’t change the ideology of the people. In fact Islam is at its most dangerous, murderous and vibrant outside of Islamic countries.
How can a world exist with Muslims in it? How can countries be forced to tolerate the existence of Islam? Why must people live with Islam? This is a question that few dare ask but it is an important question. If Islam had no existed in Indai there would have be 3,600 more people alive in India. There would be tens of thousands more alive in New York, the Phillipines, Israel, England and Spain. In the Sudan more than 150,000 people would be alive.
Coerced sex, the IDF and the dark side of feminism
Seth J. Frantzman
August 1, 2008
On July 30th, 2008 it was revealed that Israeli police had opened an investigation of Eyal Ben-Ari a professor of Sociology and Anthropology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It turned out this profeesor was alleged to have been forcing his female doctoral students who he was advising to have sex with him over a fifteen year period. In addition he is accused of misappropriating funds for research to buy these students gifts, including, allegedly, a vibrator. Those students that kept their honor and did not comply with this predator’s wishes were denied funding and “treated miserably and quickly dropped as advisees.” But what is most jarring about this case is that Mr. Eyal Ben-Ari was a respected feminist, a known critic of the ‘militarization’ of Israeli society and a harsh critic of the IDF. He was also the advisor for Tal Nitzan, a graduate student in anthropology who wrote a thesis six months ago that received high marks and awards from the department. In her thesis entitled ‘Controlled occupation: the rarity of Military Rape in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict’, Nitzan claimed that the absence of ‘military rape’ in the IDF reflected Israel society’s racism because Israelis were conditioned to view Arab women as so inhuman that they refused even to rape them while on duty in the Palestinian territories. Hebrew University’s Shaine Center listed the thesis among its top works as a Shaine Working Paper no. 12. There is no evidence that Nitzan was one of the many female victims of the predator, Ben-Ari, but if she were it might lead to an interesting conclusion. If Nitsan was being sexually assaulted by her advisor, Ben-Ari, then she may have reasoned that this represented his acknowledgement of her ‘humanity’ because he had ‘selected her’ as being pretty enough to rape. This may have led to the conclusion that because Israeli soldiers did not behave as Ben-Ari did, raping their way through the territories, that they were thus not recognizing the humanity of the Arab women. Using the Nitsan thesis one might also conclude that because Ben-Ari is only accused of sexually abusing his female Jewish students that he is a racist because he didn’t also assault Arab women.
But the most disturbing part of the entire story is the way Feminism hangs over it. Ben-Ari and Nitsan were believers in the fact that the Israeli military, and military in general, is a patriarchal, chauvinistic negative culture. This culture is in direct contrast to the enlightened and progressive culture found at the university. Yet it turns out that raping and sexual assault were not taking place in the barracks but in the very hallowed halls of the ivory tower, right at the center of feminism, sociology and anthropology at Hebrew University. Further more the rumors were there. According to the Jerusalem Post, “Sociology Department chair Prof. Zali Gurevitch told The Jerusalem Post Thursday that the first rumors had reached his ears some time ago.” This is the same Zali Gurevitch that defended the thesis of Nitsan in January of 2008. Now here we see that while the pashas of feminism at Hebrew University were busy critiquing the military they were ignoring the stench of sexual depravity and indecency under their very noses where legions of women were being subjected to the most degrading and disgusting predatory male lurking in the halls of the academy and wrapping himself in the mantle of feminism and progressive thought. The best female minds in sociology and anthropology were being subjected to gratuitous sexual perversion by those same people who dared preach about the immoral chauvinism and ‘militarism’ that supposedly infected Israeli society.
This is not a coincidence. The fact that Ben-Ari was a leading light in the critique of the IDF and that one of his students claimed the IDF’s lack of rape meant it was racist while all the while the real raping and sexual harrasment was taking place at the universty in an open manner where many were aware of it is not a coincidence. It points to the heart of a disturbing feature of modern feminism. A recently published book, Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love by Judith Katzir, tells the story of Rivi and her love affair with Michaela. According to a review by Rifka Dzodin “Katzir galmorizes the student-teacher affair…[it] seems more like some sort of sodt-core porn male fantasy than a tale worthy of being published by The Feminist Press.” The Feminist Press is located at the City Univeristy of New York. The connection between the Ben-Ari case, Tal Nitsan’s thesis and Katzir’s book is very real. It points to a disturbing trend in feminism that seems to have romantisized and at the very least tolerates the subjugation of women in a sexual manner, especially between teacher and students or between soldiers and civilians.
How did this happen? How did Feminism and the university come to tolerate the most inappropriate of behaviors and the assault on female students. How did we come to the point where our best and brightest female students are subjected to forced sexual intercourse by those preaching that society is being ‘militarized’? Society that has abandoned the ‘old’ moralities seesm to not understand right and wrong. Such a society then fosters a university environment where, absent of the notion of right and wrong, turns a blind eye to rape and harrassment of the most vile nature. Such a society finds it can be seduced by the idea that ‘absence of rape’ is evidence of racism. This is a tragedy, not only for the university environment but for feminism as well. The fact that Ben-Ari was not ferretted out of his office of immorality sooner points to a moral failure. Sociologists and feminists have much soul searching to do. At the very least this should cast doubt on extremist work such as Nitsan’s ‘rarity of military rape’ thesis.
Issue 46
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”
A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel
Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
August 5th, 2008
1) Africa's third generation: The first generation of Africa’s leadership was dominated by ‘national resistance’ leaders who were larger than life. The second generation was dominated by coup leaders and thugs. Now, with the third generation of leaders we can see that there are very real currents of strength and far sighted leadership in Africa. Ironically those strengths have had to grow up in the shadow of increasing dependence on international aid, Islamism and genocide. But a common thread runs through many of these leaders. They all met while they were young men in Tanzania and they are united the personality of Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.
2) Because it Exists: With the recent terrorist bombings in India it turns out the death toll in that country is second only to Iraq. When one considers all the people who would be alive today were it not for the cowardly acts of terrorists one realizes that one things unites this disease that targets civilians: Islam. This is apparent, but it is worthwhile to remember and steel ourselves based on this fact.
3) Coerced sex, the IDF and the dark side of feminism: Recent allegations against a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of Sociology and Anthropology tell of a man who harassed, preyed and raped female doctoral students that he was supposed to be advising. Furthermore this intellectual was an outspoken critic of the Israeli army and its ‘militarization’ of Israeli society. One of his students even wrote a thesis on the absence of military rape in the Israeli army and how this means the Israeli army is ‘racist’ because it rarely rapes Arab women. It appears as if this thesis was written to justify the professors sexual deviancy and that the student was insinuating that rape was some sort of positive act. But there is more to this. A recent book by The Feminist Press tells a romantic tale of a young girl being sexually assaulted by her female teacher. Perhaps there is more rotten in feminism and sociology than just this lone professor.
Africa's third generation
Seth J. Frantzman
July 31st, 2008
Yoweri Museveni, Morgan Tsvangirai, Laurent Kabila, Paul Kagame, John Garang, Jonas Savimbi, and Meles Zenawi represent the third generation of African leadership since independence. They not only represent this third generation but they also represent the best of this generation. In contrast to them are the genocidal and thuggish likes of Robert Mugabe, Omar Hassan al Bashir (who is an Arab and not actually African) and Jacob Zuma. Their decency has been matched by their failures and untimely deaths. Whereas Kagame, Zenawi and Museveni have all found their way to power, Savimbi and Garang are dead and the future of Tsvangirai remains uncertain. While earlier generations of African leaders built their power based on opposition to colonialism or the establishment of elaborate Kleptocracies and while other African leaders have lived at the foot of international 'aid' workers and the UN these men have time and again shown not only their independence but their desire to put their nations before themselves and before the likes of 'international' organizations. Yet these men remain uncelebrated and un-recognized. With the exception of a few books, such as Emma's War and The Land of a Thousand Wars, these men barely figure in any stories on Africa. Except for every five years when Zimbabwe elections feature the head bashing and corruption we have come to expect from Zimbabwe we do not hear the name Tsvangirai.
Why are these men the 'third generation'? Jonas Savimbi was born in 1934 while Kagame was born in 1957. What unites these men is that they were not recognized as being part of the hagiographic generation of Kwame Nkrumah (born 1909) Leopold Senghor (born 1906), Sekou Toure (Guinea), Jomo Kenyatta (born 1894), Kenneth Kaunda (born 1924), Julius Nyerere (born 1922), Patrice Lumumba (born 1925) or Haile Selassie (born 1892) who came of age in time to lead their countries to independence in or around 1960 (except Ethiopia, which was already independent). This was the first generation of African leadership. It was known for having won independence from Europe and for its brotherly affections. It was the generation of the 'African Unity' speeches and it laid the foundations for African countries where non-intervention would be the name of the game and party politics would play little role. The second generation of African leadership was the generation of the coups and dictatorships. These 'big men' of Africa, such as Mobutu Sese Seko (Congo), Idi Amin (Uganda), Milton Obote (Uganda), Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Gafar Nimeiry (Sudan), Jerry Rawlings (Ghana), Omar Bongo (Gabon), Muhammad Siad Barre (Somalia), Samuel Doe (Liberia), Charles Taylor (Liberia), Olesugun Obasanjo (Nigeria), Moussa Traore (Mali), France-Albert Rene (Comorros), Juvenal Habyarimana (Rwanda), Gnassingbe Eyadema (Togo) and Teodora Nguema (Equatorial Guinea) were known for their brutality, longevity and murderous instincts. The 'era of the coup' between 1963 and 1981 saw no less than thirty coups. Some were run by mercenaries such as 'Mad' Mike Hoare and Bob Denard (who led four such coups in the Comoros, his last in 1995). Jerry Rawlings led Ghana at three separate occasions.
Jonas Savimbi deserved to be honored for his long struggle against Communism in Angola. His career began quite differently. In the 1960s he was an anti-Portuguese guerilla fighter in Angola. While he first found favor with the Marxist MPLA in his struggle against colonial rule he eventually realized that his Ovimbundu tribe which dominated the central plateau of the country would lose out to the Marxists and northern tribes that would come to dominate the post-colonial government. Realizing that the Communists would roll over his tiny guerilla force he sought help wherever he could find it, in South Africa, where the Vorster administration supported him, to the U.S where Ronald Reagan, Jack Abramoff and the Heritage foundation became his benefactors. A man of extraordinary intelligence, he spoke seven languages, he was never able to achieve power in his native country. His base in central Angola became a mecca for anti-communism where he hosted Adolfo Colero, the anti-Sandinista fighter in Nicaragua, and Abdurahim Wardak of Afghanistan. But the late 80s saw his financing dry up and with the fall of communism he was no longer a right wing cause celebre. He lost a run-off election for president (that he claimed was rigged) in 1992 after a cease fire. Ten years later he was killed in action by Angolan troops and, some claim, by his former allies, South African and Israeli mercenaries. Whatever the case he was killed and buried in his home town of Moxico. His message, " I am against nationalization; it is a disease which saps the strength of a national economy" should ring throughout Africa where socialism and international aid have sapped the life of one country after another. What is most remarkable is that he spent 42 years in the bush fighting the Portuguese, Cubans and the Angolan government.
Laurent Kabila was also not cut from a capitalist mold. He was born to the Luba tribe in the Congo and left early in life to study political philosophy in France. He was a chief minister for a short time in Katanga, the former breakaway province that had been led by Moise Tshombe. In 1965 he crossed into Tanzania with a rebel group of former Lumumbist communist fighters and was joined by Che Guevara who had been exiled from the Cuban revolution by Fidel. The two attempted, along with a number of dark skinned Cubans, specially selected for their black skin so they wouldn't give themselves away, to invade Congo and fight Mobutu Sese Seko. The 'revolution' was a failure and Kabila was portrayed by Che as a laggard and a drunk out for money and diamonds. But Kabila didn't give in and for almost thirty years he hung on in the province of South Kivu, fighting Mobuto's dictatorship. Over the years he befriended Yoweri Museveni in Uganda where he also met Paul Kagame. In 1988 Kabila disappeared and many believed he was dead until he re-surfaced in 1996 leading a band of Tutsis fighting against Hutu genocidaires who had fled to Congo in the wake of their failed genocide in Rwanda. The spillover from Rwanda ignited a full scale war where Kabili allied himself with Kagame's Rwanda and together they overthrew Mobutu. Oddly enough this most be one of the few examples in history of one of the smallest countries in the world overthrowing one of the largest (Alexander of Macedon destroying Persia is the other example). In 2001, after having run the Congo during a time of crises and continuing war he was shot by one of his own assistants and his son took charge of the country. Kabila, like Savimbi, deserves consideration because he was friends with other eminent African leaders of the period and because of his tenacity in the face of dictatorship.
John Garang was born to a poor family of Dinka tribesman in south Sudan. An orphan he almost became a child soldier in 1962 during the First Sudanese Civil War. In 1969 he earned a B.A from Grinnel college in Iowa. Like Kabila he found himself in Tanzania as a student and made the acquaintance of Yoweri Museveni. In the 1970s Garang became a Sudanese soldier in an amalgamated Sudanese army that included southerners and northerners. He was sent to Fort Benning where he completed an infantry officers training course. Later he received a Phd at Iowa State. By 1983 he had become the head of the Sudanese army's staff college at Omdurman. In 1983 Garang went to South Sudan to mediate between rebels and the army and, in a premeditated move, deserted the army with some of his closest lieutenants and went over the rebel army. He traveled to Ethiopia where he was able to built his force into the Sudanese People's Liberation Army which opposed the Islamification of the country. Soon support was pouring in from Ethiopia and Uganda, run by Garang's allies Museveni and Ethiopia. He fought the Islamist government to a standstill, using tactics and organization no doubt learned in the U.S at Fort Benning. By 2005 he had succeeded in winning his southern Sudanese people, mostly Christian African tribesman, the rights to a referendum and he allowed to join the government where he was sworn in as vice-president. In July of that year, returning from a meeting with his friend Museveni, his helicopter crashed and he died. His widow vowed to continue his struggle to free his countrymen from Islamist Arab domination; "In our culture we say, if you kill the lion, you see what the lioness will do."
Paul Kagame was born to a Tutsi family in Rwanda. Two years after his birth a Hutu rebellion led to the deaths of 150,000 people, mostly Tutsis and his family was forced to flee to Uganda. In 1979 he joined the Ugandan National Resistance Army under Yoweri Museveni which was fighting to overthrow the dictator, Milton Obote. In 1986 when Museveni finally took control of Uganda, Kagame became a founder of the Rwandan patriotic Front (RPF). In 1990 he went to the U.S for advanced military training at Fort Leavenworth and in that same year the RPF invaded Rwanda to liberate it from Hutu domination. When the leader of the RPF was killed in battle Kagame assumed leadership of the rebellion. In 1994 the Rwandan genocide began and it was only the existence and intervention of Kagame's rebels that saved the Tutsis from total annihilation. But over the years Kagame had run afoul of the French who had been propping up the genocidal Hutu regime. Because a white Frenchman had died aboard a plane carrying the president of Rwanda, Juvanel Habyarimana, the incident that set the genocide in motion, the French government attempted to indict Kagame, accusing him of ordering the downing of the plane. But Kagame has stood firmly against this 'international' arrest warrant issued by the French (whose government, it must be recalled, supported the genocide in Rwanda). For standing up to genocide and the French Kagame must be recognized a great leader.
Meles Zenawi was born in the Tigray province of Ethiopia and after completing school at the prestigious General Wingate school in Addis Ababa he joined the Tigrayan Peoples' liberation army. His rebel army fought against the Communist dictatorship of Mengitsu Haile Miriam until Miriam's Derg regime was overthrown in 1991. When Zenawi's EPRDF, an amalgamation of anti-Communist forces, came to power in 1995 he was supported by the U.S and the State Departments chief of African affairs, Herman Cohen. Since coming to power Zenawi's problems have focused on ethnic-insurgencies (Ogaden, Gambella), a long war with Eritrea and language policy (he has championed language federalism so that each tribe is educated in its mother-tongue). In December of 2006 an Islamist rebellion in Somalia declared a Jihad against Christian Orthodox Ethiopia. Muslim volunteers poured into Somalia with the hopes of raping and murdering their way through Ethiopian villages. They were met instead by Zenawi's decision to send the Ethiopian army, one of Africa's largest, against them. In a week of fighting the Islamic Courts Union, the Islamist party, was swept from Somalia. Zenawi was been a champion of non-Muslim rights elsewhere, such as in Sudan and he is the only pillar standing in the way of Islam in the horn of Africa. When Saudi Arabia demanded that a Mosque be built in a traditional Christian holy city in Ethiopia the Ethiopians responded that a church must first be built in Mecca. For fighting Islamism and preserving an ancient civilization Zenawi must be considered one of Africa's greatest modern day leaders.
Morgan Tsvangarai was the eldest of nine children born to a Shona family in Zimbabwe. His father was a carpenter. At a young age he was a supporter of the Zanu-PF, Robert Mugabe's party. He eventually became involved in the trade union movement, rising to leadership in the mine workers union and Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. As a Trade Union man he expected the Mugabe's socialism would bring benefits to the working people but he found that year after year Zimbabwe was sinking lower and lower and inflation was rising and a country that had been an exporter of food under Ian Douglass Smith's white regime was now a net importer living on constant shortages. When he distanced his union movement from the government Mugabe responded by sending men to Tsvangarai's house with orders to throw him from the window. Tsvangarai's ample weight apparently prevented them from doing so and he survived. He became even more disgusted by the Gukurahundi operations carried out in Matabeleland in the 1980s in which tens of thousands of Joshua Nkomo's supporters were killed. In 1991 he founded the Movement for Democratic Change under which he has campaigned ever since. For opposing the government he was arrested in 2000, 2003 and 2007. In 2007 he was severely beaten. When campaigning for the presidency in 2008 he was arrested again. When hundreds of his followers were killed in run off elections in 2008 he quit the election fearing that worse violence would follow. For his decency and standing up to a ruthless dictatorship Tsvangirai deserves great respect.
For his role in supporting and influencing Kabila, Garang and Kagame, Yoweri Museveni must be considered one of the most important leaders in Africa since the 1980s. He is largely unrecognized and unknown. Museveni was born in western Uganda to the Nyankole tribe. His name means 'son of a man from the seventh' a reference to being related to men who served in the Seventh Battalion of the King's African Rifles, a British formation. He became a born again Christian at a young age and in Tanzania at school he became a 'revolutionary'. He traveled to Mozambique where he received training from the FRELIMO movement. He was a great devotee of the ideas of Franz Fanon. Museveni returned to Uganda to serve as an intelligence officer for the government Milton Obote until it was overthrown by Idi Amin in 1971. He supported an invasion of Uganda by Lango and Acholi tribesmen (who were suppressed by Amin) allied with Obote in 1972 but the invasion crumbled. Soon after Museveni formed FRONASA or the Front for National Salvation. After Amin invaded Tanzania in 1978 Museveni joined with other rebels and the Tanzanian army to overthrow Africa's most brutal dictator in 1979. But there was a falling out with Obote when he returned to power and Museveni went to southern Ugandan and began a rebellion among the Bantu speakers of that part of the country. By 1985 some 100,000-300,000 people had been killed by the Obote regime which was racking up a genocide rate close to that of Amin. In 1986 Mobuto and allies of Idi Amin sent trainers to help the Ugandan army, now led by Tito Okelli, against Museveni. But the alliance of murderers and dictators could not prevent the fall of Uganda's capital in 1986. Museveni set himself to playing power politics in the region. He supported Kagame and helped end the genocide in Rwanda and then helped end the dictatorship of Mobutu. In the Sudan he supported the south's liberation from Islamism (in retaliation Sudan supported the Lord's Resistance Army, an Acholi supported extremist movement whose leader Joseph Kony believes himself to be gods messenger on earth. Tito Okelli had been an Acholi). Museveni's most successful battle was not against Islamism or Kleptocracy but against AIDS. In the 1980s Uganda had one of the highest infection rates in Africa. Museveni's solution was to support the ABC program of Abstinance, Be faithful and use Condoms.
Museveni is the most important African leader of today and yet, oddly, he is neither well known nor respected outside the circles who know him. This is not a surprise in a world where the heroes of the youth are Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, the one a rich argentinian who viewed revolution as tourism and the other a dictator who created a family run country in Cuba. The leftists cheered Lumumba and Nkrumah. They have forgotten about Africa's leaders today in their zeal to return to Africa through aid programs that attempt to re-colonize the continent through dependency. If Africa were able to produce more Savimbis and Garangs there is no doubt it would be a far more self-sufficient place. But the plague or thuggishness, Islamism and foreign aid workers holds back Africa, killing its soul slowly. Everyday more beautiful African women don the headscarf, wrapping their faces tightly lest men be offended by their hair and everyday more Africans are lined up to take their handouts from the likes of 'Save the Childen' under the moniker that African's certainly can't grow anything themselves. What unites Savimbi, Garang and the others mentioned here is their relentless drive for self improvement and self sacrifice. Foreign aid did not touch these men. When they wanted to meet foreigners it was on their own terms, while studying at Fort Benning or elsewhere.
One cannot know the future of Africa but one can see in the failed aid paradigms that liberalism has planned for Africa a paradigm that many would like to wish upon us all; poverty for the majority and wealth for a small elite that tells everyone else how to live. We must all fight against such soul-destroying policies in our own country with the same degree of self-sacrifice that these profiles in courage fought.
Because it Exists
Seth J. Frantzman
August 1, 2008
Between January 2004 and Mmarch 2007 a total of 3,674 people died from terrorism in India. Why were these thousands of lives snuffed out? The existence of Muslims is the answer. In the book, Because They Hate, Brigitte Gabriele, a Lebanese Christian, described how Islamic terrorism ruined Lebanon. The simple fact is that everywhere in the world terrorism is due to the existence of Muslims. If you were to rank countries by the percentage of Muslims in them you would find that the amount of terrorism increases as the percent increases until that percent reaches 60% and then, with Muslims controlling the country, there is no need for terrorism. Than the gears of Islamification began to turn. First the genocide begins, as we have seen in Sudan. Once the non-Muslims are genocides and ethnically cleansed (as was the case with the birth of Pakistan when all the Sikhs and most of the Hindus were forced to leave the country) the remaining minorities are allowed to remain in the cities, discrminated against and marginalized they are allowed to exist as slaves to the state. They become then like the Copts in Egypt or the Jews of Iran, people who are forced, by fear of retaliation, to become nationalists and preach love for their nation. Slowly they dwindle and die out and whenever war comes to the cocuntry they are used as scapegoats and thi extermination is completed, as was the case in Iraq with the Assyrian Christians in the 1930s and the Chaldean Christians after 2003.
The existence of Islam is what causes terrorism and murder. Nations that do not have Muslims, such as Iceland or New Zealand or Uruguay, do not have terrorism. Historically this has not always been the case. Communists were terrorists. The Irish and the Tamils were terrorists. But there is a difference between the isolated acts of Hindu Tamil terrorism and Irish terrorism. These ethnic-terrorist movements, like the Basques, were isolated. Irish people were not terrorists everywhere, only in Northern Ireland. Basques only live in Spain and France. Tamils only live in southern India and Sri Lanka. The Communist terror and Anarachist terror that swept the world from the late 19th century to the late 20th century is the closest thing we have as a comparison with the existence of Islam. Communism plagued the entire world and wherever there were communists there was terrorism. As with Islam the progression of Communism followed similar patterns. It began with terrorism by upper class ‘revolutionaries’. Once Communism was able to take control of the state the terrorism ended and the genocide and ‘class war’ began until the enitre country was communist. Thus Communism and Islam was linked in this way. However Communism was an ideology. Islam is a religion. Communism was easily defeated once it petrefied into the state system. The defeat of Communist states led immediately to the freedom of the people and thir drifting away from Communism. But Islam is not like this. Destroying Muslim governments doesn’t change the ideology of the people. In fact Islam is at its most dangerous, murderous and vibrant outside of Islamic countries.
How can a world exist with Muslims in it? How can countries be forced to tolerate the existence of Islam? Why must people live with Islam? This is a question that few dare ask but it is an important question. If Islam had no existed in Indai there would have be 3,600 more people alive in India. There would be tens of thousands more alive in New York, the Phillipines, Israel, England and Spain. In the Sudan more than 150,000 people would be alive.
Coerced sex, the IDF and the dark side of feminism
Seth J. Frantzman
August 1, 2008
On July 30th, 2008 it was revealed that Israeli police had opened an investigation of Eyal Ben-Ari a professor of Sociology and Anthropology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It turned out this profeesor was alleged to have been forcing his female doctoral students who he was advising to have sex with him over a fifteen year period. In addition he is accused of misappropriating funds for research to buy these students gifts, including, allegedly, a vibrator. Those students that kept their honor and did not comply with this predator’s wishes were denied funding and “treated miserably and quickly dropped as advisees.” But what is most jarring about this case is that Mr. Eyal Ben-Ari was a respected feminist, a known critic of the ‘militarization’ of Israeli society and a harsh critic of the IDF. He was also the advisor for Tal Nitzan, a graduate student in anthropology who wrote a thesis six months ago that received high marks and awards from the department. In her thesis entitled ‘Controlled occupation: the rarity of Military Rape in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict’, Nitzan claimed that the absence of ‘military rape’ in the IDF reflected Israel society’s racism because Israelis were conditioned to view Arab women as so inhuman that they refused even to rape them while on duty in the Palestinian territories. Hebrew University’s Shaine Center listed the thesis among its top works as a Shaine Working Paper no. 12. There is no evidence that Nitzan was one of the many female victims of the predator, Ben-Ari, but if she were it might lead to an interesting conclusion. If Nitsan was being sexually assaulted by her advisor, Ben-Ari, then she may have reasoned that this represented his acknowledgement of her ‘humanity’ because he had ‘selected her’ as being pretty enough to rape. This may have led to the conclusion that because Israeli soldiers did not behave as Ben-Ari did, raping their way through the territories, that they were thus not recognizing the humanity of the Arab women. Using the Nitsan thesis one might also conclude that because Ben-Ari is only accused of sexually abusing his female Jewish students that he is a racist because he didn’t also assault Arab women.
But the most disturbing part of the entire story is the way Feminism hangs over it. Ben-Ari and Nitsan were believers in the fact that the Israeli military, and military in general, is a patriarchal, chauvinistic negative culture. This culture is in direct contrast to the enlightened and progressive culture found at the university. Yet it turns out that raping and sexual assault were not taking place in the barracks but in the very hallowed halls of the ivory tower, right at the center of feminism, sociology and anthropology at Hebrew University. Further more the rumors were there. According to the Jerusalem Post, “Sociology Department chair Prof. Zali Gurevitch told The Jerusalem Post Thursday that the first rumors had reached his ears some time ago.” This is the same Zali Gurevitch that defended the thesis of Nitsan in January of 2008. Now here we see that while the pashas of feminism at Hebrew University were busy critiquing the military they were ignoring the stench of sexual depravity and indecency under their very noses where legions of women were being subjected to the most degrading and disgusting predatory male lurking in the halls of the academy and wrapping himself in the mantle of feminism and progressive thought. The best female minds in sociology and anthropology were being subjected to gratuitous sexual perversion by those same people who dared preach about the immoral chauvinism and ‘militarism’ that supposedly infected Israeli society.
This is not a coincidence. The fact that Ben-Ari was a leading light in the critique of the IDF and that one of his students claimed the IDF’s lack of rape meant it was racist while all the while the real raping and sexual harrasment was taking place at the universty in an open manner where many were aware of it is not a coincidence. It points to the heart of a disturbing feature of modern feminism. A recently published book, Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love by Judith Katzir, tells the story of Rivi and her love affair with Michaela. According to a review by Rifka Dzodin “Katzir galmorizes the student-teacher affair…[it] seems more like some sort of sodt-core porn male fantasy than a tale worthy of being published by The Feminist Press.” The Feminist Press is located at the City Univeristy of New York. The connection between the Ben-Ari case, Tal Nitsan’s thesis and Katzir’s book is very real. It points to a disturbing trend in feminism that seems to have romantisized and at the very least tolerates the subjugation of women in a sexual manner, especially between teacher and students or between soldiers and civilians.
How did this happen? How did Feminism and the university come to tolerate the most inappropriate of behaviors and the assault on female students. How did we come to the point where our best and brightest female students are subjected to forced sexual intercourse by those preaching that society is being ‘militarized’? Society that has abandoned the ‘old’ moralities seesm to not understand right and wrong. Such a society then fosters a university environment where, absent of the notion of right and wrong, turns a blind eye to rape and harrassment of the most vile nature. Such a society finds it can be seduced by the idea that ‘absence of rape’ is evidence of racism. This is a tragedy, not only for the university environment but for feminism as well. The fact that Ben-Ari was not ferretted out of his office of immorality sooner points to a moral failure. Sociologists and feminists have much soul searching to do. At the very least this should cast doubt on extremist work such as Nitsan’s ‘rarity of military rape’ thesis.
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