The Situation in Malaysia

There have been some tensions in Malaysia due to a recent High Court ruling allowing the Roman Catholic newspaper, The Herald, to continue using the word Allah instead of the English-language God, which the Malaysia government would prefer The Herald to use. (Note: The High Court has issued a temporary injunction against The Herald until the Court of Appeals has judged the case.)

Some people, such as Juan Cole, are puzzled by the Malay response in West Malaysia (various protests and six churches either burned down or attempted to be burned down), noting correctly that in most other parts of the world, God and Allah are used interchangeably; for example, Arab Christians refer to God as Allah. However, this linguistic analysis, as correct as it may be, is not the point. The issue at hand is something completely different:

With all due respect to Dr. Cole, I do believe he is missing the point. His linguistic analysis of the word Allah is correct; however, that is not the issue at play in Malaysia.

The real issue at hand is with respect to conversion to Christianity. The Malaysian newspaper in question, The Herald, is published by the Catholic Church. That newspaper is published in several different languages, but the paper written in Bahasa Melayu, the Malay language, is only distributed to the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. The problem as Malays in West Malaysia (the Malayan peninsula) see it is that the Malays and aboriginal people in East Malaysia are less educated, who lead simpler lives*, and they might become confused in reading a Christian newspaper that prints the word Allah, thinking that The Herald is a Muslim newspaper when it is not. This is a valid concern. IMO, the arguments made by The Herald are smoke screens, trying to hide the newspaper's ulterior motive which, indeed, is to convert people to Catholicism. This is what is making some people so angry that they are committing arson against various churches. As a Muslim, I don't condone this behavior, and I think the Malaysian government and political parties have responded properly to this situation. However, I do think the Catholic Church in Malaysia is being provocative and somewhat disingenuous. IMO, they share some of the blame for what has gone on so far.

* In all fairness, the same argument (not well educated, simpler people) applies to many Malays in West Malaysia as well; however, between the two sides of the country, West Malaysia is more advanced.

International Politics Links (15 June 2009)

Almost all of the significant stories this past week in international politics focused on the Iranian election. Juan Cole wrote a number of blog posts throughout the week about that election, with the more recent posts up top. Moon of Alabama doesn't buy Dr. Cole's ideas about the election results. I hate to use this particular slogan, but "We report, you decide," seems to be appropriate in this instance. ;) There are a couple of other stories on Afghanistan, the recent Lebanon election, and North Korea.


Middle East:
Afghanistan: Northern Supply Lines Under Attack (Moon of Alabama)

Former GITMO Detainee Speaks Out! YES! I WAS TORTURED! (Crooks & Liars)

Biden: 'Real doubt' about Iran's presidential election (Crooks & Liars)

TYT: Neocons Rooting For Ahmadinejad To Win (Crooks & Liars)

Reza Aslan Takes Chris Matthews to Task for Fear Mongering on Iran's Nuclear Program (Crooks & Liars)

Clashes, Claims of Election Fraud in Iran (Informed Comment)

Terror Free Tomorrow Poll Did not Predict Ahmadinejad Win (Informed Comment)

Post-Election Demonstrations, Violence, Arrests (Informed Comment)

Class v. Culture Wars in Iranian Elections: Rejecting Charges of a North Tehran Fallacy (Informed Comment)

Stealing the Iranian Election (Informed Comment)

Rafsanjani Blasts Ahmadinejad as a Counter-Revolutionary ; Charismatic Rahnevard Attracts Crowds for her Husband Mousavi (Informed Comment)

Ahmadinejad Defends Himself on Iranian Television (Informed Comment)

Tens of Thousands Rally for Mousavi in Tehran (Informed Comment)

Some Dots You May Want To Connect (Moon of Alabama)

More on the Iran Election (Moon of Alabama)

March 14 Faction Wins in Lebanon (Informed Comment)


Asia:
North Korea: We Will Weaponize Nuclear Stockpiles (Crooks & Liars)

As Tensions Between North Korea and U.S. Rise, Clinton Hints At Weapons Interdiction (Crooks & Liars)


Other:
Joe Scarborough Blames Obama's Cairo Speech for Ayatollahs Rigging Iranian Election--But That's a Good Thing ("Joe Scarborough seems to think the ayotollahs [sic] rigged the election because Obama's Cairo speech scared them into over reaching and making sure he didn't get credit for the reformers winning in Iran, but if they did, it's a good thing in the long run for the United States. ... If they rigged the election Joe, it's likely for the same reasons the Republicans have rigged elections in the United States...to stay in power. Not because they're worried about American politics.") (Crooks & Liars)

Links for 10 May 2009

Happy Mothers Day!

Politics:
Texas is charging rape victims who cooperate with the police. (Absolutely ridiculous. "CNN reports that Texas hospitals are charging women who have been raped thousands of dollars for their rape kits that are collected by police as part of their investigations. According to CNN, Texas’s crime victim compensation fund consistently has a surplus and could likely cover these expenses.")

U.S. soldiers, attacked, kill a 12-year-old Iraqi boy (Absolutely ridiculous. The boy is found with the equivalent of less than US$9 in his hands, and the US military concludes that "...insurgents are paying children to conduct these attacks or assist the attackers in some capacity, undoubtedly placing the children in harm's way." Eyewitnesses, however, say that the boy "...was standing by the side of the road selling fruit juice - a common practice in Iraq -- and had nothing to do with the attack. Good job, US Army! Shoot first, ask questions later! Child killers!)


Economics:
Oil Prices

Three Pictures from the April Employment Situation (Menzie Chinn on April's employment statistics.)


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
Islamophobia (David Sanger's review of Juan Cole's book, Engaging the Muslim World, in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Generally speaking, a positive review; however, Sanger stumbles badly when he says that the US has troops around the Afghan/Pakistan border "to stop radical groups from taking over either state." What? The Taliban wasn't a radical group?)

Lest You Forgot... (This is one of the newer blogs in my RSS reader; the posting is done erratically, but the writing is well worth reading.)

Scaremongering over Muslim demographics (Indigo Jo on the Muslim Demographics video; I must say I was a little surprised he didn't link my post to his essay.)


Miscellaneous:
The American Indian Give-Away (Very nice diary over at Street Prophets about the Native American Indian practice of "give-aways." Very much worth reading.)

Luann (The comic strip.)

Dilbert (The end of capitalism.)

Links for 6 May 2009

Politics:
The Daily Show: Republicans, the Lost Party

Countdown's Worst Person: Laura Ingraham

US Airstrike Kills Dozens; Christian Proselytizing in Muslim Afghanistan (Juan Cole has a number of links to the continuing controversy over American troops passing out Bibles as "gifts" in Afghanistan; moreover, that one of the soldiers had pulled the same stunt in Iraq.)

The Georgian Mutiny That Wasn't

You’re only a whore if you show nipple (This is one reason why I'm glad I don't live in the U.S., where the masses and the media obsess over truly trivial people.)

Limbaugh Mocks Recession During Speech To Wealthy Right-Wing Donors

Dodd: Torture investigations may need to go as high as Cheney’s office.

Q: Even if it goes up as high as — A lot of this stuff seems to point toward Cheney’s office.

DODD: You gotta go where you gotta go.

Business:
20 resumes and 40 business cards FREE from Staples (For everyone in the US unemployed during this recession, now might be a good time to go visit Staples.)

Branding: The Psychology of Color


Economics:
You Are Here (That second graph puts the whole stock market into perspective, doesn't it?)

James Galbraith remarks (A similar post about Galbraith's speech was posted on Economist's View on May 2nd.)

There is a difference between then and now?

What a shame we let ourselves be talked into the “creative destruction” of the rail system, an asset that represents $3.3 trillion dollars in unskilled wages. That's a lot of labor just gone. It represents a relative share of GDP bigger than our actual current GDP! It makes you think about who has managed their wealth better; the US? or Europe who did not creatively destroy their original investment, but built upon it and thus saved themselves from having to generate as much income as we have had to in order to have our now killing us (war for oil?, pollution, resource waste, etc), personal transportation system. I guess that is why we don't get to have 6 weeks vacation for all, we have to work to rebuild what we had.

Islam/Muslim Blogs:
What do you get (Naeem's amusing account about being on "The Road to Mecca." :) There's an interesting overhead photo of al-Masjid al-Haram from his hotel window.)


Miscellaneous:
Cosmos/The Matrix Mashup (Someone with too much time on their hands has overdubbed "Agent Smith" with Carl Sagan's voice from "Cosmos" in a scene from the first Matrix movie.)

Actor, comedian Dom DeLuise dies at 75 (Below, Dom in Mel Brook's "Blazing Saddles" - The French Mistake:)

Juan Cole on The Colbert Report

Juan Cole of Informed Comment has been on a tear over the past few days, talking to a lot of the media about his new book, Engaging the Muslim World. Dr. Cole was recently on The Colbert Report, and I've embedded the video clip for the interview below. Be sure to read his post, Blogging Colbert, about what it's like to be on the show; it's quite an interesting read.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Juan Cole
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

China Beating the US in the Global Oil Game

A very interesting article at Money Morning about how China is beating the United States in the global oil game. (Actually, The Economist tackled the larger issue of China's thirst for natural resources and how they're going about getting them, particularly in Africa, in a noteworthy special report back in March.) Below are some of the article's highlights:

While this deal, on its face, appears to be just another global oil-services contract, it’s actually a very significant development in the hunt for long-term energy supplies. In fact, it actually demonstrates that – when it comes to nailing down those long-term oil supplies – China is an expert, and is playing a very deep game. And the outcome of that game will certainly have substantial long-term implications for consumers and investors both here in the United States, and in markets abroad. Here’s why:

With estimated reserves of 115 billion barrels, Iraq is tied with Iran for the world’s No. 2 position, trailing Saudi Arabia, which has estimated reserves of 264 billion barrels, according to estimates from the Energy Information Administration .

In a country where electricity is in short supply, the oil produced from the Ahdab Oil Field will help fuel a planned power plant that would be one of the largest in Iraq. By helping Iraq with this key initiative, China can expect to gain a solid foothold in one of the most oil-rich nations in the world, analysts say.

At the end of the day, the deal clearly highlights something that most U.S. investors haven’t focused on yet – namely that the eventual winners in this game may not be such well-known giants as Chevron Corp. (CVX), ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), or other household names. Deals like this one and the host of others that are undoubtedly close behind suggest that tomorrow’s winners may have names most English-speaking investors can’t pronounce, since they’ll be distinctly Arabic or Chinese in nature.

...

While China won’t participate in the profits from the oil it helps pump, it is shrewd enough to realize there will be long-term benefits. Analysts who see the bigger picture here agree with our view.

“There are some political profits for China,” Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, a former Iraqi oil minister, told The Times. “They need access to Iraq, and when they need oil, at least the Iraqi people will feel that China has done something for them.”

...

By invading Iraq, the United States dealt China’s central planning commission an embarrassing wakeup call when the second Gulf War summarily wiped out China’s oil interests in Iraq.

When that happened, China’s central planners realized two things:

The status quo in the global oil game had changed.

And China’s double-digit economic miracle could not be sustained with only a few oil suppliers.

What China fears most is that there will not be enough oil to go around in the very near future and that a U.S.-dominated supply chain could effectively “strangle” China’s growth.

So, it has done what the United States and other great powers have done at other times in history and gone on a buying spree from Darfur to Peru that’s turned heads and ruffled feathers all across the world.

What’s been especially frustrating for hapless Western leaders who do not understand that their actions caused this in the first place, is that China’s not afraid to do business with rogue nations like Iran, Sudan and Burma. It has even gotten chummy with Venezuela and Russia – much to the consternation of our present administration.

It’s a virtual certainty that China will maintain this policy going forward. My contacts in China and Africa have told me point blank that China’s leaders “don’t care about human rights or nukes or hostile governments. What matters is anyone who provides oil to China no matter what the rest of the world thinks.”

So, in as much as the U.S. media has dismissed this deal as only one in a long string of recent Chinese oil purchases, it’s arguably the most important deal yet. The reason: It suggests that China will go to extraordinary lengths to obtain the oil it wants and needs.

To add to its stable of captive oil suppliers, China will pay far more money, endure limitless criticism for ignoring human-rights issues and endure harsher business conditions than our companies can or will undertake. While U.S. firms must worry about sanctions, bad publicity or simply security, China worries about one thing, and one thing only – getting oil.

HT: Informed Comment

John Gray: A Shattering Moment in America's Fall From Power

I thought I'd take a few minutes to write up some commentary about John Gray's essay that I posted a few days ago.

In fact, if there is any period of history that recent American history reminds me of, it is that of Louis XIV:

Louis' numerous wars effectively bankrupted the State (though it must also be said that France was able to recover in a matter of years), forcing him to incur large State debts from various financiers and to levy higher taxes on the peasants as the nobility and clergy had exemption from paying these taxes and contributing to public funds. Yet, it must be emphasized that it was the State and not the country which was impoverished.

When John McCain said on September 14th that "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," there is some small truth to that. The ability of the American economy to rebound, pay off its debts, repair its infrastructure, and put its people back to work is strong. But as John Gray points out in his essay, the United States' ability to influence other governments has weakened dramatically. A creditor nation holding the debt of a debtor nation is like a leash on a dog: the creditor nation limits the ability of the debtor nation to do what it wants. The U.S. has long practiced this tactic to its own benefits over the decades (I wrote about this in a term paper when I was working on my MBA), but now a number of nations either have the potential to use the leash on the U.S. (e.g., China and Russia) or feel emboldened to thumb their noses at America (e.g., Venezuela).

The only way out of this situation is for America to pay their debts through lower government spending and (much) higher taxes, and to reverse its current accounts balance from a negative into a positive. "Declaring bankruptcy" by defaulting on its debt is not an option. That, in fact, would be a death sentence for the Republic. America must humble itself by reforming the government and financial sectors away from its predator state greed. This "humbling" is going to be extremely painful economically and politically, but it must be done; the alternative - other nations leading the U.S. where they want America to go - will be even more painful.

From The Guardian:

Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.

You can see it in the way America's dominion has slipped away in its own backyard, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taunting and ridiculing the superpower with impunity. Yet the setback of America's standing at the global level is even more striking. With the nationalization of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.

Ever since the end of the Cold War, successive American administrations have lectured other countries on the necessity of sound finance. Indonesia, Thailand, Argentina and several African states endured severe cuts in spending and deep recessions as the price of aid from the International Monetary Fund, which enforced the American orthodoxy. China in particular was hectored relentlessly on the weakness of its banking system. But China's success has been based on its consistent contempt for Western advice and it is not Chinese banks that are currently going bust. How symbolic yesterday that Chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees.

Despite incessantly urging other countries to adopt its way of doing business, America has always had one economic policy for itself and another for the rest of the world. Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future.

Which version of the bail out of American financial institutions cobbled up by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is finally adopted is less important than what the bail out means for America's position in the world. The populist rant about greedy banks that is being loudly ventilated in Congress is a distraction from the true causes of the crisis. The dire condition of America's financial markets is the result of American banks operating in a free-for-all environment that these same American legislators created. It is America's political class that, by embracing the dangerously simplistic ideology of deregulation, has responsibility for the present mess.

In present circumstances, an unprecedented expansion of government is the only means of averting a market catastrophe. The consequence, however, will be that America will be even more starkly dependent on the world's new rising powers. The federal government is racking up even larger borrowings, which its creditors may rightly fear will never be repaid. It may well be tempted to inflate these debts away in a surge of inflation that would leave foreign investors with hefty losses. In these circumstances, will the governments of countries that buy large quantities of American bonds, China, the Gulf States and Russia, for example, be ready to continue supporting the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency? Or will these countries see this as an opportunity to tilt the balance of economic power further in their favor? Either way, the control of events is no longer in American hands.

The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan's technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars program were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different. The Iraq War and the credit bubble have fatally undermined America's economic primacy. The US will continue to be the world's largest economy for a while longer, but it will be the new rising powers that, once the crisis is over, buy up what remains intact in the wreckage of America's financial system.

There has been a good deal of talk in recent weeks about imminent economic armageddon. In fact, this is far from being the end of capitalism. The frantic scrambling that is going on in Washington marks the passing of only one type of capitalism - the peculiar and highly unstable variety that has existed in America over the last 20 years. This experiment in financial laissez-faire has imploded.While the impact of the collapse will be felt everywhere, the market economies that resisted American-style deregulation will best weather the storm. Britain, which has turned itself into a gigantic hedge fund, but of a kind that lacks the ability to profit from a downturn, is likely to be especially badly hit.

The irony of the post-Cold War period is that the fall of communism was followed by the rise of another utopian ideology. In American and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot. Like the Soviet collapse, it will have large geopolitical repercussions. An enfeebled economy cannot support America's over-extended military commitments for much longer. Retrenchment is inevitable and it is unlikely to be gradual or well planned.

Meltdowns on the scale we are seeing are not slow-motion events. They are swift and chaotic, with rapidly spreading side-effects. Consider Iraq. The success of the surge, which has been achieved by bribing the Sunnis, while acquiescing in ongoing ethnic cleansing, has produced a condition of relative peace in parts of the country. How long will this last, given that America's current level of expenditure on the war can no longer be sustained?

An American retreat from Iraq will leave Iran the regional victor. How will Saudi Arabia respond? Will military action to forestall Iran acquiring nuclear weapons be less or more likely? China's rulers have so far been silent during the unfolding crisis. Will America's weakness embolden them to assert China's power or will China continue its cautious policy of 'peaceful rise'? At present, none of these questions can be answered with any confidence. What is evident is that power is leaking from the US at an accelerating rate. Georgia showed Russia redrawing the geopolitical map, with America an impotent spectator.

Outside the US, most people have long accepted that the development of new economies that goes with globalization will undermine America's central position in the world. They imagined that this would be a change in America's comparative standing, taking place incrementally over several decades or generations. Today, that looks an increasingly unrealistic assumption.

Having created the conditions that produced history's biggest bubble, America's political leaders appear unable to grasp the magnitude of the dangers the country now faces. Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.

HT: Juan Cole

Update: How Much Oil Does America Import?

Currently, my most popular blog post by far is How Much Oil Does America Import?, written back in May 2006, two years ago. I thought it was time to update the figures and see how the U.S. is doing since I first wrote that post.

The U.S. gets its oil from two sources: either it pumps its own oil, called "Field Production" by the Department of Energy, or it imports oil from other countries around the world. In 2000, American commercial field production made up 38.69% of the total supply of crude oil, while imports made up 60.28%. In 2005, when I wrote the last post, those same percentages were 33.67% and 65.84%, respectively. (These numbers are different from what I wrote back in 2006 as adjustments have been made to the official statistics; these types of revisions are normal for economic statistics.) In 2007 (the most recent year), the percentages were 33.72% and 66.19%, respectively. While there has been an extremely slight increase in the amount of oil pumped domestically (0.05%), imports have also increased as well. (The reason why both numbers can increase is because a third number, "supply adjustments," fell.)

In 2007, the U.S. imported a total of 3,656,170 thousand barrels. Of those 3.66 billion barrles, the U.S. imported from a total of 46 different countries. The top 5 importing countries were: Canada (18.61%), Saudi Arabia (14.50%), Mexico (14.07%), Venezuela (11.48%), and Nigeria (10.80%), for a total of 69.47% of all American imports. In contrast, imports from countries six through ten (Angola, Iraq, Algeria, Ecuador, and Kuwait) made up only 17.95% of the total; countries 11 through 46 made up the remaining 12.58%.

Looking at petroleum imports in two other ways...

In 2007, imports from OPEC countries* made up 53.85% of all U.S. imports, compared to the 46.15% from non-OPEC countries. However, this is the exception rather than the rule. Since 1993, when the Energy Information Agency (EIA) started breaking out the statistics, non-OPEC countries have been the dominant exporters ten years out of the past fifteen. The year 2007 was the first time since 2001 that OPEC countries had sold more petroleum to the U.S. than non-OPEC countries.

With respect to the Persian Gulf, those countries** only made up 21.19% of the total imports. This is down slightly, one-half percent, from my 2006 analysis. Note that the U.S. imports no oil from Iran.

Conclusions/Predictions:
Two years ago, I made four points as to how I thought things would go with respect to American oil imports and consumption. We'll look at how good or bad those predictions were:

1. American field production will probably go below 25% of its total annual supply within the next five years.

I think we can write this prediction off; I don't foresee this happening within the next three years (or perhaps even the next ten).

2. In that same time frame, imports will probably be in the high 50s percentage (perhaps 58-59%).

On the other hand, I think this prediction is very much a lock at this time. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this number goes back up again, remaining in the 60-65% range.

3. America will continue to seek the majority of its oil from non-OPEC countries, such as Canada and Mexico, if only to avoid being as dependent on OPEC countries as they have been in the past. However, this will probably turn out to be a pipe dream in the long run unless Canadian oil reserve estimates turn out to be near the high end. (Estimates for Canada's proven oil reserves ranges from 4.7 billion barrels (World Oil) to 14.803 billion barrels (BP Statistical Review) to 178.792 billion barrels (Oil & Gas Journal). Obviously, this extremely wide range of guesses shows that no one truly knows how much oil Canada has.)

Since I wrote this, I've gotten a better understanding with respect to Canada's oil reserves. The problem with the Canadian oil sands is that it is made up of a very dense and viscous type of petroleum called bitumen. Bitumen is like molasses at room temperature, and needs heating just to flow. (The tar that we pave roads with is bitumen.) Oil refineries are set up to process certain types of crude oils, and bitumen is normally not one of them. So, while Canada has a lot of proved oil reserves, most of it is not in the form the refineries need to produce products like gasoline. In this respect, the lower reserve amount mentioned above is probably closer to the amount of crude oil Canada actually has. In time, more refineries may convert to take advantage of the Canadian oil sands, but that will probably be a gradual process.

4. Persian Gulf oil, which has ranged between 19.81% and 28.56% of all U.S. imports since 1996, will probably continue to hover in the high teens-low 20s, despite President Bush's goal to cut American consumption of Middle Eastern oil by 75% by 2025, per the latest State of the Union address.

I don't see this forecast changing at all. What President Bush said in 2006 about cutting the amount of Middle Eastern oil America consumes was complete and utter bullshit (and shame on you if you believed him). BTW, shame on you again if you believe either McCain or Cheney that drilling for oil offshore or up in Alaska will make a significant difference. Two reasons: "drop in the bucket" and "long-term projects," neither of which will lower your gas prices. I may post on this in the near future, insha'allah, but in the meantime I recommend that you read John McCain's Oil Scam over at Informed Comment (Juan Cole), and Drilling Our Way to... by Menzie Chinn over at Econbrowser.


References:
US Crude Oil Supply and Disposition (DoE)
US Crude Oil Imports by Country of Origin (DoE)

Notes:
* OPEC countries include Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Venezuela.
** Persian Gulf countries include Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. However, Iran and Qatar export no oil to the U.S.

Who Controls the Middle East?

Juan Cole has an interesting blog post today featuring an animated map of the Middle East. The map shows who has controlled the Middle East since 3000 BCE. As Juan wrote:

I'd have added a couple of phases at the end, including the Cold War divisions of states by their alliances with the US and the Soviet Union, and then the new US empire in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus bases in some of the Stans of Central Asia and Qatar and Kuwait.

Update: Ijtema has highlighted this post on their blog (thanks, iMuslim!), and she made a really good observation by comparing this video to the following Qur'anic ayah:

Do they not travel through the earth and see what was the End of those before them? They were more numerous than these and superior in strength and in the traces (they have left) in the land: Yet all that they accomplished was of no profit to them. (40:82)

So true!

Juan Cole on the Iraq War, Chretien, Bush and Afghanistan

Juan Cole at Informed Comment has an important post today that bears repeating. The first half of the post reads:

Whoever is responsible for this disgusting travesty is an automatic candidate for Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World." My guess is that the trail will lead back to Donald "its not a guerrilla war" Rumsfeld and Richard Bruce "most prominent traitor in American history" Cheney. Gregg Zoroya of USA Today reports that 20,000 US troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffered brain injuries were never classified as wounded by the Pentagon and are not included in the official statistics for the wounded issued by the Department of Defense. Although some of the under-reporting of this condition could be inadvertent, the scale of it strongly suggests an underlying policy.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien says that it was among the great victories in his life that he stood against US pressure to join in the Iraq War.

Uh, the purpose of a wise and mature US foreign policy is to avoid close allies ending up speaking like that. Bush has destroyed half a century of good will among NATO allies, most of whom now think they are better off not following Washington's lead. Leaders who threw in with Bush, like Aznar of Spain and Berlusconi of Italy, have been ushered off the political stage by enraged publics. As someone who grew up when the US (and its currency) was respected by most Europeans and other North Americans, I am sad to see the way W. has debased our position and humiliated our country.

Among the biggest irritants in NATO countries against the US now is the mission in Afghanistan, which seems both open-ended and ultimately fruitless. Canada did not dodge that bullet, and has lost dozens of soldiers there, though you would not know it from reading US newspapers. On Friday, Pushtun guerrillas killed an Australian soldier in Uruzgan province (Mulla Omar's birthplace), and others killed 3 civilians, attacked a police checkpoint and killed 7 officers and kidnapped 6 others. (What is the mission? If the mission is to get Pushtuns to stop worrying about Islam and start welcoming foreign troops in their country, I wouldn't hold my breath).

How to Create an Angry American

A very good video concentrating on the various lies of the Bush administration. As one of the opening clips says (courtesy of Donald Rumsfeld), "There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it." And I'm ashamed of those of my fellow Americans (especially those in Congress) who lack the spine to stop those people who lie. (HT: Juan Cole)

Good job, Mika!

Umm Zaid has a new post about one of her pet peeves, "...our tendency to make every little event seem like something of historical importance. ‘People’ magazine came in the mail today. The cover story is Paris’ time in the jailhouse. Give me a break. In 50 years, who will remember her? In 200?"

Then, ironically, I read Juan Cole's latest post, about how MS-NBC journalist Mika Brzezinski didn't want to start off a broadcast with a story on Paris Hilton; she didn't think it was as high a priority of story in comparison to, say, oh, the Iraq War?

In fact, she got so upset with the story (and her producer) that she first tried to light on fire the paper the story was written on, then ripped up that copy instead and shredded another copy in a shredder behind her. Hysterical.

She told viewers: "I hate it and I don't think it should be our lead. "I just don't believe in covering that story, at least not as the lead story on the newscast, when we have a day like today."

Earlier Hilton, 26, had given her first interview after leaving prison to CNN's Larry King Live show telling him that she wanted to help her former inmates, do more work for charities, and said that partying would no longer be the "mainstay" of her life.

I agree with UZ. To be honest, the fluff news (like the story on Paris or those dealing with Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith, JonBenet Ramsey, or any other moronic celebrity) seem to be mostly an American phenomenon. Asian news will cover some of these stories, but only give them a minute at the most, buried deep within the broadcast. It just isn't newsworthy. But what would you expect from a country that prides itself on its stupidity?

The BIG Lie

A couple days ago, I wrote that "Smaller countries make for better media." In particular, I showed (via some posts at bsalert.com here and here) that the American media sometimes dumbs down the message for the American public while giving the rest of the world straight talk about what's going on. Part of a post by Juan Cole today reinforces that message:

What is important about what Gore is saying is his focus on how the pollution of America's information environment by 1) corporate media consolidation (all television news is brought to Americans by five private corporations, the CEOs of which all vote Republican) and 2) government propaganda (i.e. lies purveyed to Americans using the money and resources of Americans).

Polling shows that the percentage of Americans who view Iran as the number one threat to the United States has risen to 27 percent now. I think it was only 20 percent in December 2006. First of all, how in the world can a developing country with about a fourth of the population of the US, about a $2000 per capita income (in real terms, not local purchasing power), with no intercontinental ballistic missiles, with no weapons of mass destruction (and no proof positive it is trying to get them), with a small army and a small military budget-- how is such a country a "threat" to the United States of America? Iranian leaders don't like the US, and they talk dirty about the US, and they do attempt to thwart US interests. The same is true of Venezuela under Chavez. But Tehran is a minor player on the world stage, and trying to build it up to replace the Soviet Union is just the worst sort of fear-mongering, and it is being done on behalf of the US military industrial complex, which wants to do to Iran what it did to Iraq. It is propaganda, and significant numbers of Americans (a 7 percent increase would be like 21 million people!) are buying it.

Why have those poll numbers gone up? Because the Bush administration is trying to hang the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq on Iran (and even trying to hang the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan on Iran). The message of administration and military spokesmen is that Iran is deliberately killing US troops and is a major source of insurgency in Iraq. No convincing evidence has ever been presented for either allegation, nor is it reasonable to assume that Iran plays a significant role in funding hyper-Sunni, Shiite-killing death squads to deliberately destabilize its client governments in Baghdad (al-Maliki) and Kabul (Karzai). Yet the New York Times and even the Guardian put this b.s. on the front page, and of course it is all over CNN, Fox Cable News, MSNBC, etc. Are US journalists trapped in the the dictates of the military-industrial complex by virtue of working for these mega corporations? We know that Roger Ailes at Fox Cable News orders his employees how to spin the day's news (he is a former high Republican Party official). Has any of the journalists counted up how many of the 127 US troops killed in Iraq in May was killed in Sunni Arab areas and how many in Shiite neighborhoods? Has any of them actually read the translated communiques on World News Connection of the Sunni Arab guerrillas and what they say about Iran and Shiites? Has any demanded air tight proof and non-anonymous sources before printing this garbage?

No.

It is this sort of thing that Gore is alarmed about. He is a man of enormous experience in public life, and he is saying that he sees a sea change for the worse in this regard. I concur.

My fellow Americans, do us all a simple favor and THINK! Engorged on a diet of frivolous LCD (lowest common denominator) TV, celebrity gossip and Islamophobia (along with several tons of Cheetoz™), you've allowed your head to be filled literally with shit. You can't think critically, nor do you seem to want to. You're swallowing the BIG LIE once more. Just as you swallowed the big lie with regard to Iraq, now you're swallowing it with regard to Iran.

Let us be perfectly clear: Iran is not a threat to the U.S. To be honest, I don't believe it's even a threat to Israel. Even if Iran is developing nuclear weapons, they are almost certainly being developed as a defensive weapon. Assuming that Tehran seriously wanted to nuke Israel, the Israeli government would almost certainly strike back with a much larger nuclear arsenal. As Jacques Chirac recently said (as quoted by the New York Times), “Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed.”

No, Tehran, if it is developing nuclear weapons, would be developing them to protect themselves and their oil fields from the rapacious West. Tattoo this on your brain: OIL. That's the only reason why we're in Iraq, that's the only reason why Cheney is trying to start a war in Iran:

"Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

"This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an 'end run strategy’ around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument. The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles)." (Source)

My fellow Americans, stop being manipulated by using that forgotten organ of yours called a brain. Reject the propaganda that's being pile-driven into your head (turn off the f***ing TV set if you have to), and wake up before it's too late!

Virginia Tech, In Perspective

Juan Cole has kept the Virginia Tech tragedy in perspective:

I keep hearing from US politicians and the US mass media that the "situation is improving" in Iraq. The profound sorrow and alarm produced in the American public by the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech should give us a baseline for what the Iraqis are actually living through. They have two Virginia Tech-style attacks every single day. Virginia Tech will be gone from the headlines and the air waves by next week this time in the US, though the families of the victims will grieve for a lifetime. But next Tuesday I will come out here and report to you that 64 Iraqis have been killed in political violence. And those will mainly be the ones killed by bombs and mortars. They are only 13% of the total; most Iraqis killed violently, perhaps 500 a day throughout the country if you count criminal and tribal violence, are just shot down. Shot down, like the college students and professors at Blacksburg. We Americans can so easily, with a shudder, imagine the college student trying to barricade himself behind a door against the armed madman without. But can we put ourselves in the place of Iraqi students?

I wrote on February 26,

'A suicide bomber with a bomb belt got into the lobby of the School of Administration and Economy of Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and managed to set it off despite being spotted at the last minute by university security guards. The blast killed 41 and wounded a similar number according to late reports, with body parts everywhere and big pools of blood in the foyer as students were shredded by the high explosives.'

That isn't "slow progress" or just "progress," the way the weasels in Washington keep proclaiming. It is the most massive manmade human tragedy of the young century.

Iraq and Counterinsurgency

This is a very good article that gives you the bad news straight: There's never been an insurgency that wasn't put down in less than ten years. The author, William Tucker, has worked in Iraq as an embedded reporter with the US Army. Instead of comparing the American occupation of Iraq to colonial occupations (such as the British in Sudan), Tucker looks at the American occupation of the Philippines that began in 1898 and only ended after WW2. However, Tucker is pessimistic that the "successful" occupation of the Philippines can be repeated in Iraq due to a number of significant differences in the conditions then and now.

I've cut out the first four paragraphs of the article to go straight to the meat of the issue.

(HT: Juan Cole)


Ask military leaders how long this is going to go on and they will give you the same response. "We've done a lot of studies of insurgencies. There's never been one that was put down in less than ten years. The 1920s insurgency in the Philippines, the British experience in Sudan in the 19th century -- all of them weren't quelled in less than a decade. Iraq is going to take the same amount of time. We just hope the people back home have the patience to see it through."

The problem with this analysis is that all the examples are from colonial experiences, both Europe's and ours. The British are often held up as the gold standard -- as in Max Boot's neoconservative manifesto, The Savage Wars of Peace. Since the Philippines is our own experience and in many ways the best analogy to Iraq, let's take a long look at what happened.


AMERICA INHERITED THE PHILIPPINES from Spain in 1898 after winning the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. We were anti-colonialists -- the war, after all, was fought under the Monroe Doctrine -- and our general public declaration was that we would soon grant the Philippines its independence.

Once in possession of the Islands, however, people began to have second thoughts. Were the Philippines really capable of governing themselves? Didn't they need some political experience? Wouldn't they benefit from the tutelage of an advanced country like the United States? Maybe we should hang on to them awhile.

President William McKinley was firmly in favor while his 1896 Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan led the opposition. Meanwhile, sentiment in Congress was mixed, with Thomas Reed, the powerful Republican Speaker of the House, in the opposition camp.

In the midst of the Congressional debate, Rudyard Kipling, England's most famous writer and a product of British India, sent a poem to his friend Theodore Roosevelt, then the Governor of New York, urging America to live up to its colonial responsibilities. Within a year it had appeared in McClure's and -- in an era when poetry mattered -- became a centerpiece of the debate.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to naught.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: --
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

The Treaty of Paris, which confirmed American ownership of the Philippines, passed the Senate by only one vote. In The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman recounts Speaker Reed's reaction: "We have bought 10 million Filipinos at $2 a head, unpicked. And nobody knows what it will cost to pick them."

The "insurgency" broke out a year later when two American privates on patrol killed three Filipino soldiers in San Juan, a suburb of Manila. While Admiral Perry had not suffered a single casualty in the Battle of Manila Bay and the whole Spanish-American War only produced 332 deaths, the counterinsurgency was much costlier.

Over the next fifteen years, 126,000 American soldiers were engaged in the conflict. A total of 4,234 died, along with 16,000 Filipino insurgents. The poorly equipped Filipinos were easily overpowered by American troops in open combat but mounted a formidable guerrilla campaign. Atrocities were committed by both sides. Estimates of civilian deaths, largely from famine and disease, ranged between 250,000 and 1,000,000.

The insurgency lasted fifteen years, on and off, even as we tried to establish civilian institutions. Future President William Howard Taft served as the first American Governor-General of the Philippines Commission, replacing military governor Arthur MacArthur (the father of General Douglas MacArthur). Taft's Commission oversaw the creation of a national as well as many local governments but retained most executive and legislative powers. A Philippine Constabulary was also organized to deal with the remnants of the insurgency, gradually shifting responsibility away from the United States Army.

Still, the insurgency did not abate until 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson started a drive toward independence. Over the next three decades, the Filipino Legislature and the powers in Washington went through many stops and starts, with the Philippines Independence Act finally passing in 1933 over President Herbert Hoover's veto. The treaty was subsequently rejected by the Filipino Senate, however, because it retained American naval bases.

We were still in possession of the Islands when the Japanese invaded on December 8, 1941, chasing General Douglas MacArthur to Australia and initiating the Bataan Death March. Complete independence was not granted until after World War II.


IT COULD BE ARGUED that the American colonial occupation of the Philippines was basically a success. The Islands have become a fairly stable democracy and their English-knowledgeable populace is rapidly entering the world information economy. But all this was bought at the cost of decades of conflict and 4,000 American lives.

Can we accomplish anything resembling the same thing in Iraq? It is very doubtful. The Philippines were an isolated country on the other side of the world while Iraq is a cauldron of ethnic and sectarian conflict smack in the middle of the most volatile sector of the planet. Moreover, all this is taking place not in a world knit together by the telegraph lines but in the age of easy travel and instant communication, where every conflict is soon internationalized.

When I was embedded in Iraq, I told the soldiers that I considered it my duty to report to the people back home as precisely as I could what is going on in Iraq. But I also consider it my duty to inform the military leadership in Iraq of the mood of the people back home.

After hearing their arguments for staying the course for a decade or more, my message is simply this: "The American public is not going to put up with daily death tolls for ten years or even another six years. If things haven't changed significantly by 2008, the candidate who wins the Presidency is going to be the one who campaigns on the slogan, 'Bring the troops home now.'"

Juan Cole on Global Warming, Oil and American Politics/Militarism

Juan Cole, who's at his best when he writes analysis, has done a very good piece on the intersection of global warming, oil, and American politics and militarism. The second sentence of the second paragraph is incorrect, IMO, but otherwise an excellent discussion on these various, interrelated topics.

Only by a Manhattan Project-scale government effort to develop green energy can we hope to avert the worst consequences of global warming, which is likely to raise sea levels at least a foot, and possibly 7 feet over the next century or century and a half. (That would put a lot of cities on both coasts under water). The arctic and antarctic ice shelfs are already falling into the ocean at rates that have astonished climate scientists. The arctic alone lost perennial ice cover the size of Texas in 2004-2005! Warm water takes up more space than cold water and the loss of white ice cover is bad because it radiates a lot of sunlight back out to space. So it is a double whammy.

But the other problem with petroleum and gas as sources of energy is that they are getting scarcer. No big new fields have been found for some time. And in one recent year China generated 40% of new demand for petroleum. If a billion Chinese and a billion Indians adopt the American lifestyle and all want 1.5 automobiles and superhighways to crawl along on, the existing stocks of oil will become objects of fierce competition. This process has already begun, and there is a sea change from the mid-1990s, when oil was still cheap and competition for it limited.

Iraq is an Oil War in the mind of politicians like Dick Cheney. It was necessary to deny it to China and other rivals thirty to fifty years in the future. It was necessary to open its vast petroleum fields up for exploration and cast aside anti-American Baath socialism.

Likewise, the religious rigidity of the Pushtun peoples of Helmand province is not the real reason for the US insistence on occupying Afghanistan. It is the vast Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan gas fields that Cheney has his eye on. It was the US hope to use a pipeline from Turkmenistan to supply Pakistan and India, and so forestall a deal by those two countries with Iran. The inability of the Bush administration to calm things down in Afghanistan sufficiently for anyone to dream of putting in such a pipeline and having it avoid routine sabotage has made it likely that Iran will break out of the Bush boycott toward the East.

Hunger for future rights to petroleum and positioning the US to remain a superpower in a world of hydrocarbon scarcity is also driving the campaign to get up a war against Iran. Why can Pakistan have a nuclear weapon, and that is all right, but Iran cannot? Pakistan has very little petroleum. Iran has a lot, and maybe 750 trillion cubic feet of gas in the southwest. If it gets a bomb, regime change becomes impossible, and if Iran wants to tie its supplies up in proprietary contracts with China and India, locking out the United States, it will be able to do so.

Continued heavy dependence on gas and oil therefore not only turns the world into a hothouse, with rising seas, ever more destructive hurricanes, and possibly disastrous shifts in the ocean currents, but it also drives the United States to more and more wars.

And, note that the wars are not even successful in allowing a practical oil grab of the sort Cheney and Lee Raymond dreamed of.

Indeed, you could now, in retrospect, turn their whole argument around on them. US militarism cannot secure petroleum and gas supplies from places such as Iraq, because the pipelines are so easily sabotaged and local nationalisms and religious activism make it impossible for people to accept that kind of US hegemony.

Since the Pentagon cannot practically speaking hope to safeguard US petroleum supplies from the Gulf, national security requires a massive and rapid research and development program of green energy. A lot of green technology, especially solar, would come down in price rapidly if enough government money were thrown at it. We need to press Congress on this, and maybe Californians can craft some of their famous referendum items. That would be one way to promote a new generation of electric cars.

Green energy -- wind, thermal, solar, maybe ultimately fusion, etc. -- is what would allow the US to retain its autonomy and independence into the next century, and what would allow it to avoid losing more cities the way Bush and Cheney lost New Orleans. Oil and War will, in contrast, ruin us all.

Those Darn Founding Fathers!

How were we to know that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Locke were really "Islamofascists" in disguise?

George Washington asked in a March 24, 1784, letter to his aide Tench Tilghman that some craftsmen be hired for him: "If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia, [sic] Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, [Muslims] Jews, or Christian of any Sect - or they may be Atheists ..."

John Locke had already advocated civil rights for non-Christians in his Letter on Toleration: "Thus if solemn assemblies, observations of festivals, public worship be permitted to any one sort of professors [adherents], all these things ought to be permitted to the Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Arminians, Quakers, and others, with the same liberty. Nay, if we may openly speak the truth, and as becomes one man to another, neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion. The Gospel commands no such thing."

(Both quotations from Juan Cole.)

For more, see Late Nite FDL: Thomas Jefferson, Islamofascist.

("Sheikh Thomas Jefferson" graphic courtesy of darkblack.)

Juan Cole on Pope Benedict's Erroneous Speech About Islam

I came across some excerpts from Pope Benedict's recent speech a few days ago, primarily on red blogs that were cheering the Pope's statements about Islam, neither (the Pope and the bloggers) knowing that what the Pope had said was, in fact, erroneous. I hadn't had the time to write about these errors, but I've found that Professor Cole at Informed Comment has already done so. What follows is his entire post on the matter; he has done a very good job in correcting the Pope's errors. So much for papal infallibility. ;)


Pope Benedict's speech at Regensburg University, which mentioned Islam and jihad, has provoked a firestorm of controversy.

The address is more complex and subtle than the press on it represents. But let me just signal that what is most troubling of all is that the Pope gets several things about Islam wrong, just as a matter of fact.

He notes that the text he discusses, a polemic against Islam by a Byzantine emperor, cites Qur'an 2:256: "There is no compulsion in religion." Benedict maintains that this is an early verse, when Muhammad was without power.

His allegation is incorrect. Surah 2 is a Medinan surah revealed when Muhammad was already established as the leader of the city of Yathrib (later known as Medina or "the city" of the Prophet). The pope imagines that a young Muhammad in Mecca before 622 (lacking power) permitted freedom of conscience, but later in life ordered that his religion be spread by the sword. But since Surah 2 is in fact from the Medina period when Muhammad was in power, that theory does not hold water.

In fact, the Qur'an at no point urges that religious faith be imposed on anyone by force. This is what it says about the religions:

' [2:62] Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians-- any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.'

See my comments On the Quran and peace.

The idea of holy war or jihad (which is about defending the community or at most about establishing rule by Muslims, not about imposing the faith on individuals by force) is also not a Quranic doctrine. The doctrine was elaborated much later, on the Umayyad-Byzantine frontier, long after the Prophet's death. In fact, in early Islam it was hard to join, and Christians who asked to become Muslim were routinely turned away. The tyrannical governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj, was notorious for this rejection of applicants, because he got higher taxes on non-Muslims. Arab Muslims had conquered Iraq, which was then largely pagan, Zoroastrian, Christian and Jewish. But they weren't seeking converts and certainly weren't imposing their religion.

The pope was trying to make the point that coercion of conscience is incompatible with genuine, reasoned faith. He used Islam as a symbol of the coercive demand for unreasoned faith.

But he has been misled by the medieval polemic on which he depended.

In fact, the Quran also urges reasoned faith and also forbids coercion in religion. The only violence urged in the Quran is in self-defense of the Muslim community against the attempts of the pagan Meccans to wipe it out.

The pope says that in Islam, God is so transcendant that he is beyond reason and therefore cannot be expected to act reasonably. He contrasts this conception of God with that of the Gospel of John, where God is the Logos, the Reason inherent in the universe.

But there have been many schools of Islamic theology and philosophy. The Mu'tazilite school maintained exactly what the Pope is saying, that God must act in accordance with reason and the good as humans know them. The Mu'tazilite approach is still popular in Zaidism and in Twelver Shiism of the Iraqi and Iranian sort. The Ash'ari school, in contrast, insisted that God was beyond human reason and therefore could not be judged rationally. (I think the Pope would find that Tertullian and perhaps also John Calvin would be more sympathetic to this view within Christianity than he is).

As for the Quran, it constantly appeals to reason in knowing God, and in refuting idolatry and paganism, and asks, "do you not reason?" "do you not understand?" (a fala ta`qilun?)

Of course, Christianity itself has a long history of imposing coerced faith on people, including on pagans in the late Roman Empire, who were forcibly converted. And then there were the episodes of the Crusades.

Another irony is that reasoned, scholastic Christianity has an important heritage drom Islam itself. In the 10th century, there was little scholasticism in Christian theology. The influence of Muslim thinkers such as Averroes and Ibn Rushd reemphasized the use of Aristotle and Plato in Christian theology. Indeed, there was a point where Christian theologians in Paris had divided into partisans of Averroes or of Ibn Rushd, and they conducted vigorous polemics with one another.

Finally, that Byzantine emperor that the Pope quoted, Manuel II? The Byzantines had been weakened by Latin predations during the fourth Crusade, so it was in a way Rome that had sought coercion first. And, he ended his days as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.

The Pope was wrong on the facts. He should apologize to the Muslims and get better advisers on Christian-Muslim relations.

Juan Cole on the Misnomer of "Islamic Fascism"

Juan Cole, whom you should read if you don't already, has been on a roll since the crisis in Lebanon began. His latest post, Bush, Islamic Fascism and the Christians of Jounieh, has a very good passage about how Bush's reference to "Islamic fascism" is both incorrect and offensive. First, some background:

Bush is on vacation, his favorite place to be during a major crisis. The August retreat is the only open admission he makes that Cheney and Rumsfeld are actually running the country, and he just doesn't need to be in his office. The only difference between his stonewalling of Lebanon and the way he let New Orleans drown is that he has put away the banjo this summer, at least in public view. He had someone tie a necktie on him and stopped manically clearing brush for long enough to come out with Condi and hold a press conference. He lied, saying that no one wants to see the violence continue. He wants to see the violence continue. Otherwise he would insist on a ceasefire. You see, if you don't have a ceasefire, the violence continues. If you oppose a ceasefire, you are saying you want the violence to continue. He does.

Then he tried to explain the war in Lebanon by saying this,

'They try to spread their jihadist message -- a message I call, it's totalitarian in nature -- Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism, they try to spread it as well by taking the attack to those of us who love freedom.'

...

...[T]here are other problems with what Bush said. He contrasted "Islamic fascism" to "democracy," presumably a reference to the Lebanese Hizbullah.

This point is incorrect and offensive for many reasons.

It is a misuse of the word "Islamic." "Islamic" has to do with the ideals and achievements of the Muslims and the Muslim religion. Thus, we speak of Islamic art. We speak of Islamic ethics.

There can be Muslim fascists, just as there can be Christian fascists (and were, in Spain, Italy and Germany, and parts of Central and South America; the Spanish fascists and the Argentinian ones, e.g., were adopted by the United States government as close allies.)

But there cannot be "Islamic" fascists, because the Islamic religion enshrines values that are incompatible with fascism.

Fascism is not even a very good description of the ideology of most Muslim fundamentalists. Most fascism in the Middle East has been secular in character, as with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Fascism involves extreme nationalism and most often racism. Muslim fundamentalist movements reject the nation-state as their primary loyalty and reject race as a basis for political action or social discrimination. Fascists exalt the state above individual rights or the rule of law. Muslim fundamentalists exalt Islamic law above the utilitarian interests of the state. Fascism exalts youth and a master race above the old and the "inferior" races. Muslim fundamentalists would never speak this way. Fascism glorifies "war as an end in itself and victory as the determinant of truth and worthiness." Muslim fundamentalists view holy war as a ritual with precise conditions and laws governing its conduct. It is not considered an end in itself.

Another excellent post by Dr. Cole is One Ring to Rule Them All, in which he speculates that the US-Israeli war on Lebanon is merely phase I of a larger strategy to deprive Asian economies (China and India in particular) of access to middle eastern oil in favor of the American economy:

Destroy Lebanon, and destroy Hizbullah, and you reduce Iran's strategic depth. Destroy the Iranian nuclear program and you leave it helpless and vulnerable to having done to it what the Israelis did to Lebanon. You leave it vulnerable to regime change, and a dragooning of Iran back into the US sphere of influence, denying it to China and assuring its 500 tcf of natural gas to US corporations. You also politically reorient the entire Gulf, with both Saddam and Khamenei gone, toward the United States. Voila, you avoid peak oil problems in the US until a technological fix can be found, and you avoid a situation where China and India have special access to Iran and the Gulf.

This one little paragraph is only a tiny bit of the larger argument; I suggest you read the entire post. (The whole post has created 81 comments to date - some of which have their own excellent analyses - which is about 3-4 times the number that Dr. Cole normally receives on any given post that he writes.)

Peace and Love in the Qur'an

Dr. Juan Cole, over at Informed Comment, normally blogs about modern Middle Eastern politics and current events. However, he's recently written up some very good explanations (tafsir) regarding five (so far) Qur'anic ayat, under the general heading, Peace and Love in the Qur'an. The five ayat are:

4:90

4:94

5:82

25:63

28:55

Check it out.