The Ultimate Normblog Profile

For several years now, one of the regular features that Norman Geras--political theorist, public intellectual, cricket enthusiast, and born-again Alpha Blogger--has run on his weblog (Normblog) is a series of on-line interviews with other bloggers. More specifically, he sends out a questionnaire with 50 questions and asks the subject to respond to 30 of them.

(I had the honor of being inducted into this club myself back in June 2006. My Normblog Profile is HERE.)

=> As one might imagine, these profiles have covered a wide and diverse assortment of characters. But now Norm has profiled an especially interesting subject ... Norman Geras. Have a look:

The Normblog Profile #200: Norman Geras

=>Anyone interested in more extensive political, intellectual, and personal reflection from Norm can also read Marxism, the Holocaust and September 11: An Interview with Norman Geras (2002) & hear his radio interview on Little Atoms (2005).

--Jeff Weintraub

China's global economic reach and backlashes against it - Some updates

In my post yesterday discussing Suicide bombings in Pakistan ... and what they might mean, I ended by wondering about one aspect of these attacks that might (or might not) deserve more attention:

Third, on a somewhat different note, I find it interesting that at least one of these recent suicide-bombing attacks was aimed at Chinese working in Pakistan. Some of the attacks carried out earlier by the fanatics based in the Red Mosque were also aimed at Chinese citizens, and analysts have suggested that the abduction of some Chinese citizens may have been the straw that broke the back of the government's patience. For a half-century, China has been one of Pakistan's closest and most important allies, so attacking Chinese nationals is really playing with fire.

Given that background, I can't help wondering whether something more than coincidence is at work here. Are there really that many Chinese in Pakistan (which would be news to me), and might these attacks reflect some degree of hostility against their presence--on the part of Islamists and/or of the general population? Perhaps not, but I can't help being intrigued.

=> There does indeed seem to be something more behind this. Today's London Times has an article discussing these and other attacks on Chinese nationals that puts them into a broader context ("Suicide bomb attack jolts China into realising the risks of global ambition") . Some highlights:

China was reminded of the harsh realities of its newly acquired status as a global power yesterday when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of its workers in Pakistan.

At least 30 people were killed when a vehicle laden with explosives was detonated as the convoy carrying 60 Chinese rumbled through a market town near Karachi. [....] Pakistani security forces said they were certain that the Chinese were the targets of the attack, and Chinese in Pakistan were urged to be on their guard against more violence. The suicide bombing was the second attack on Chinese nationals in Pakistan in less than a month. Suspected Islamic militants killed three Chinese engineers near the northwestern city of Peshawar earlier this month.

The attacks will come as a stark reminder to Beijing of the risks inherent in China’s bolder approach to the extension of its interests and influence beyond its borders, particularly in Asia and Africa. More than four million Chinese now work overseas.

Pakistani security forces have stepped up protection for the 3,000 Chinese working on development projects across the country since the siege and assault on Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque.

The violent end to the siege was triggered by the kidnapping of a group of Chinese women by women students from a seminary linked to the Red Mosque. Leaders of the mosque, who modelled themselves on the Taleban, accused the six Chinese of working as prostitutes in a massage parlour. [....]

The antagonism ranges from rage felt by Islamic radicals in Pakistan over China’s policies to suppress pro-independence Muslim movements, to resentment among small merchants and tribesmen in Kenya who see their jobs and businesses being taken over by Chinese contractors.

Ahmed Rashid, a political analyst in Pakistan, said that anger was simmering over perceptions that the Chinese were stealing their livelihoods. [....] Chinese contractors bring in many of their own engineers and labour.

They live in tight-knit communities that operate in a virtual vacuum inside whichever country they have been assigned. That breeds resentment among locals who fear for their livelihoods and are suspicious of outsiders.

In April nine Chinese workers and 65 Ethiopians were killed when guerrillas attacked an oil installation near the Somali border. Rebels abducted a Chinese mining executive searching for uranium in the Sahara, adding Niger to the list of states where China’s hunger for minerals has led its nationals into trouble. [Etc.]

=> I had heard about these kinds of anti-Chinese resentments in various African countries (where the culturally insensitive 'Ugly Chinese' is becoming a more viscerally disliked figure than the old 'Ugly American'), but I didn't realize that this sort of thing was happening in places like Pakistan, too.

Of course, there is a long, ugly, and often violent history of racist resentment against overseas ethnic Chinese immigrant communities in Southeast Asia and elsewhere--including, let us not forget, North America. That's an old story. But this seems to be a new and different phenomenon.

=> Update 7/23/2007: For a useful overview of China's economic activities in Africa--mostly aimed at access to oil and other natural resources--and some of their political repercussions, see the piece below.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Power and Interest News Report (PINR)
July 23, 2007
China Invests in Somalia Despite Instability

he Financial Times reported on July 13 that the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (C.N.O.O.C.) has signed a deal with Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf to explore the northern Puntland region for oil. The initial agreement was signed last May, and it was endorsed at the China-Africa summit held in Beijing last November. [See: "Upcoming Summit Highlights Africa's Importance to China"]

A meeting between C.N.O.O.C. and Somali officials was held on June 24 to finalize the deal. The terms indicate that the Somali government would retain 51 percent of the oil revenues under a production-sharing arrangement. Further reporting from the Financial Times, however, revealed that Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was not aware of the contract, suggesting that the oil deal remains vulnerable to political infighting.

China's willingness to invest in Somalia -- before the Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) completes work on a national oil law and as the security situation continues to deteriorate -- shows that Beijing has not been deterred by the growing backlash across Africa at Chinese policies and remains willing to take on political risks that Western firms will not tolerate.

Threats to China in Africa

Chinese investments have come under attack in recent months, and a general wariness about closer ties with Beijing has become part of the political dialogue in most African countries where China does business. Days after the June meeting in Somalia, a Chinese mining executive was kidnapped in Niger. The incident followed the killing of nine Chinese workers in Ethiopia, near the border with Somalia, in April. Chinese workers have also come under attack in Nigeria in recent months.

Politically, Chinese investments have become a touchy subject. Michael Sata's opposition campaign in Zambia received strong backing after he attacked Chinese investments and threatened to renew ties with Taiwan. He ultimately failed in his bid for the presidency, however, after China threatened retaliatory measures if he was elected. Similar complaints have been raised in Nigeria and South Africa.

China began to address the growing unease in Africa toward its investments earlier this year. Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Zambia and South Africa in February where he pledged further investments and a greater focus on community development plans. China has also publicly used its leverage in Sudan to press Khartoum to accept the terms of last year's U.N. Security Council resolution on the Darfur crisis [JW: or, rather, it has publicly pretended to]. [See: "China Adjusts its Approach in Africa" and "China Claims Success on Darfur"]

Nevertheless, China's fundamental goals in Africa have not changed. In Africa, China is looking to secure access to the natural resources it needs to keep its economic expansion humming, as well as support for its policies at the United Nations. The C.N.O.O.C. deal in Somalia is evidence that China's risk appetite has not decreased as it pursues these goals in Africa.

Investing in Somalia

Somalia has no proven oil reserves, and only 200 billion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves. Companies including Agip, Shell (Pecten), Conoco and Phillips (now merged), and Amoco (now part of BP) spent over US$150 million on onshore exploration in the 1980s and early 1990s, but no oil reserves were discovered. Still Range Resources, a small Australian-based oil firm with close contacts to the government in Puntland, estimates that the region could hold 5 to 10 billion barrels of oil based on an analysis of the previous exploration reports.

The Puntland province claims autonomy from the government in Mogadishu, but not independence like Somaliland. The region has been relatively calm compared to central and southern Somalia since 1991, but the political situation remains uncertain. President Yusuf was certainly involved in the negotiations with the Chinese firm, as he hails from the Puntland province and maintains close ties with the local leadership, but the prime minister of the T.F.G. was left out of the loop.

The fact that Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was kept out of the negotiations suggests that the terms of the deal are not beneficial to the T.F.G. or Somalia's other provinces. This could exacerbate already strained ties between the prime minister and the president. [See: "Somalia Continues its Political Collapse"]

The prime minister appears to have led an effort within the T.F.G. to pass a national oil law that would allow Western firms to return to Somalia under production-sharing agreements, which require oil firms to share their production with the government after initial costs are covered. He told the Dow Jones Newswire in April that a national oil law would be passed within two months, a deadline that has slipped. The oil law in question seems to be similar to the one pushed in Iraq by the United States, which has also not been passed. China may have wished to sign the deal for exploration rights in Puntland before the law was passed, in order to avoid competition with Western majors, but the emergence of a national oil law could threaten the investment. [See: "Sectarian Fighting Overshadows Oil Law Debate in Iraq"]

The fact that China would enter into an agreement in such an uncertain legal and political environment, to say nothing of the security concerns, shows that it is still willing to take on risks that the Western oil majors cannot tolerate. This remains the main competitive advantage for China in the race to secure natural resources around the world -- while Chinese firms do not have the technology to drill in some of the conditions that Western firms can, they do not have the same political and financial constraints that prevent them from investing in regions considered off limits to Western firms.

Last month, for example, China National Petroleum Corporation (C.N.P.C.) signed a deal to co-develop an offshore block in Sudan, where China has been the dominant player in the oil sector after sanctions caused Western firms to suspend their operations or pull out completely. Sudan now supplies up to ten percent of China's oil imports. In Angola, China provided $2 billion in soft loans to the government that allowed it to avoid implementing reforms requested by Western donors. In return, Angola ensured that it would provide continuous oil supplies to Beijing. [See: "China and Angola Strengthen Bilateral Relationship"]

C.N.O.O.C. said earlier this year that it would boost output to 78 million tons from 40.3 million tons last year. In order to maintain growth rates near this level, Beijing will need to continue to help its oil companies invest in regions where Western firms cannot. This means that China will fund infrastructure projects in countries under Western sanctions, such as Sudan, or where security concerns dissuade Western firms from investing more, such as Nigeria.

The decision to invest in Somalia's Puntland region is part of this strategy. Only a small firm, such as Range Resources, would be able to take on a similar risk level, and that firm has spent several years courting the local government officials there. With the financial and political backing of the Chinese government, C.N.O.O.C. and C.N.P.C. have a distinct advantage over the smaller Western firms.

Conclusion

China's move into Somalia's oil industry is a further example of its strategy for securing access to natural resources around the world. Rather than purchasing oil on the global markets, as the United States does for the most part, China prefers to secure control of the resources it needs at the source. However, because China's oil firms lack the technical capabilities and political clout of the Western majors, Beijing prefers to deal with regions that are out of reach to the competition.

This practice has sparked a growing backlash across Africa to China's policies. Many locals see Beijing's actions as protecting corrupt and often dictatorial leaders. Beijing has attempted to counter this perception recently by investing in infrastructure projects in regions where the backlash is strongest, leaking reports of its unhappiness with the most controversial leaders, and granting local businesses better access to China's markets in some industries.

The investment in Somalia's Puntland province still looks risky, even by Chinese standards. The deal appears to have been struck with the local officials in the province that claims autonomy from the transitional, central government. However, the president of the T.F.G., who is from the region, was involved in the deal. The prime minister of the T.F.G. appears to prefer another model to attract investments, passing a national oil law that will clarify the legal questions that prevent Western firms from returning to Somalia. The Chinese deal may well fall victim to the political infighting that is likely to follow.

Still, the T.F.G.'s claim to control Puntland appears to be weakening as the central government remains frozen in a state of political collapse. Two days after the Financial Times first reported about the Chinese oil deal, the much awaited national reconciliation conference had to be delayed because security for the meeting could not be guaranteed in Mogadishu. Given the T.F.G.'s uncertainty, Beijing's decision to work with the local representatives in Puntland may well prove to be enough, and China could soon be pumping Somali oil, if it even exists.

Report Drafted By: Adam Wolfe

Fox Poll: Hillary Would Do A Better Job Handling Iraq Than Rudy

Some intriguing factoids from the latest Fox News poll, reported by Greg Sargent (bio) at TPM Café's Election Central .

Rudy [Giuliani] may be running for President on the "national security credentials" he allegedly earned by being Mayor on 9/11, but a new poll finds that people think he'd do a worse job than two of his chief rivals handling our most pressing foreign policy problem: Iraq.

The new Fox News poll, released today, finds that more people (45%) think Hillary would do a better job handling the Iraq situation than think Rudy would (40%).

Why might that be?

This probably isn't terribly surprising, since Hillary says she'll do what the majority wants (end the war) while Rudy suggests he supports the policies supported by an ever-dwindling minority (continue the surge).

That may strike Sargent as a plausible and satisfying interpretation, but it's almost certainly off-base ... for reasons that his next several points actually make clear.

Interesting side note: John McCain, who's a more vocal backer of the surge, is also comfortably ahead of Rudy on this question. [41% vs. 32%]

(McCain scores higher on this question among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--and that's true even though, overall, Republican voters prefer Giuliani over McCain as a nominee.)

Another interesting side note: When asked to choose between Hillary and Barack Obama on the same question, more people choose Hillary to do a better job handling Iraq, 35%-27%.

In short, so far Clinton seems to have been pretty successful at establishing her credibility in this matter.

Oh, and President Bush's approval rating has bounced all the way up to 32%.

A few more factoids (but remember that there is still a year and a quarter to go before the 2008 election):

Among the candidates in the Democratic primary, Clinton is very clearly ahead of the rest of the pack--she leads Obama comfortably, by slightly increasing margins, and leaves the rest way behind.

When potential Republican candidates are matched against the two strongest Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, either Clinton or Obama beats any of the Republican candidates. The Republicans with the strongest showings in such a match-up are Giuliani and McCain--who, perhaps surprisingly, get about the same percentages. On the other hand, a solid plurality of Democratic respondents (49%) and 34% of Republicans think that McCain's candidacy is already dead.

Make of all this what you will. There are still almost 16 months to go....

--Jeff Weintraub

Suicide bombings in Pakistan ... and what they might mean

The bloody end of the siege of the "Red Mosque" in Islamabad has touched off a violent reaction in peripheral parts of Pakistan where radical Islamists are strong, including several suicide bombings.

Three suicide bomb attacks have killed at least 52 people in Pakistan, as a militant backlash intensified following the army's storming of a radical mosque in Islamabad.

A wave of bomb attacks has swept across Pakistan, killing more than 160, since the assault nine days ago on the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque complex, a militant stronghold.

At least 30 people were killed on Thursday when a car bomber, apparently targeting a vehicle carrying Chinese workers involved in mining activities, rammed into a police van escorting them in the southern town of Hub.

The Chinese were unhurt but all seven policemen in the van and 23 bystanders were killed. Twenty-eight people were wounded.

Another seven people, including policemen, were killed by a car bomb in the far northwestern city of Hangu on Thursday.

The third attack killed at least 15, including two children, at a mosque in an army training centre at a military cantonment area of Kohat, according to officer Mohammad Riaz at the police control room in the North West Frontier Province town.

"The explosion occurred as people were about to offer evening prayers, it was apparently a suicide bombing," he said.[....]

It remains to be seen how this aftermath plays out. In the meantime, here are a few quick observations.

First, this wave of suicide bombings highlights the extent to which suicide bombing is getting established as a 'normal' tactic of violent political conflict throughout much of the Islamic world. These kinds of "martyrdom" operations are not exclusive to the world of Islam--the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, for example, have long used them to devastating effect--but the tactic of suicide bombing is becoming more characteristically Islamist (not unlike beheading) and more pervasively Islamist as well.

Second, I hope people will stop repeating the pseudo-sophisticated myth that suicide bombing is always, or almost always, a response to foreign occupation (real or alleged). The few grains of truth in this thesis were always exaggerated, but it seems clear that they are becoming even less plausible as time goes on and this tactic becomes routinized.

Third, on a somewhat different note, I find it interesting that at least one of these recent suicide-bombing attacks was aimed at Chinese working in Pakistan. Some of the attacks carried out earlier by the fanatics based in the Red Mosque were also aimed at Chinese citizens, and analysts have suggested that the abduction of some Chinese citizens may have been the straw that broke the back of the government's patience. For a half-century, China has been one of Pakistan's closest and most important allies, so attacking Chinese nationals is really playing with fire.

Given that background, I can't help wondering whether something more than coincidence is at work here. Are there really that many Chinese in Pakistan (which would be news to me), and might these attacks reflect some degree of hostility against their presence--on the part of Islamists and/or of the general population? Perhaps not, but I can't help being intrigued.

--Jeff Weintraub

Update 7/20/2007: Yes, it seems that these and other attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan do fit into a broader pattern of anti-Chinese resentments. For some discussion of these issues that puts them into a wider international context, see this London Times article. Some highlights:

China was reminded of the harsh realities of its newly acquired status as a global power yesterday when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of its workers in Pakistan.

At least 30 people were killed when a vehicle laden with explosives was detonated as the convoy carrying 60 Chinese rumbled through a market town near Karachi. [....] Pakistani security forces said they were certain that the Chinese were the targets of the attack, and Chinese in Pakistan were urged to be on their guard against more violence. The suicide bombing was the second attack on Chinese nationals in Pakistan in less than a month. Suspected Islamic militants killed three Chinese engineers near the northwestern city of Peshawar earlier this month.

The attacks will come as a stark reminder to Beijing of the risks inherent in China’s bolder approach to the extension of its interests and influence beyond its borders, particularly in Asia and Africa. More than four million Chinese now work overseas. [....]

The antagonism ranges from rage felt by Islamic radicals in Pakistan over China’s policies to suppress pro-independence Muslim movements, to resentment among small merchants and tribesmen in Kenya who see their jobs and businesses being taken over by Chinese contractors.

Ahmed Rashid, a political analyst in Pakistan, said that anger was simmering over perceptions that the Chinese were stealing their livelihoods. [....] Chinese contractors bring in many of their own engineers and labour.

They live in tight-knit communities that operate in a virtual vacuum inside whichever country they have been assigned. That breeds resentment among locals who fear for their livelihoods and are suspicious of outsiders.

In April nine Chinese workers and 65 Ethiopians were killed when guerrillas attacked an oil installation near the Somali border. Rebels abducted a Chinese mining executive searching for uranium in the Sahara, adding Niger to the list of states where China’s hunger for minerals has led its nationals into trouble. [Etc.]

I had heard about these kinds of anti-Chinese resentments in various African countries (where the culturally insensitive 'Ugly Chinese' is becoming a more viscerally disliked figure than the old 'Ugly American'), but I didn't realize that this sort of thing was happening in places like Pakistan, too.

(Of course, there is a long, ugly, and often violent history of racist resentment against overseas ethnic Chinese immigrant communities in Southeast Asia and elsewhere--including, let us not forget, North America. That's an old story. But this seems to be a new and different phenomenon.)

=========================
One News (TV New Zealand)
July 20, 2007
Pakistan violence intensifies

Three suicide bomb attacks have killed at least 52 people in Pakistan, as a militant backlash intensified following the army's storming of a radical mosque in Islamabad.

A wave of bomb attacks has swept across Pakistan, killing more than 160, since the assault nine days ago on the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque complex, a militant stronghold.

At least 30 people were killed on Thursday when a car bomber, apparently targeting a vehicle carrying Chinese workers involved in mining activities, rammed into a police van escorting them in the southern town of Hub.

The Chinese were unhurt but all seven policemen in the van and 23 bystanders were killed. Twenty-eight people were wounded.

Another seven people, including policemen, were killed by a car bomb in the far northwestern city of Hangu on Thursday.

The third attack killed at least 15, including two children, at a mosque in an army training centre at a military cantonment area of Kohat, according to officer Mohammad Riaz at the police control room in the North West Frontier Province town.

"The explosion occurred as people were about to offer evening prayers, it was apparently a suicide bombing," he said.

The attack in Hub, at the border of Baluchistan and Sindh provinces, was the biggest of the latest wave of violence and the first in southern Pakistan.

"I saw flames all around me after a big bang. It appeared as if cars were flying in the air," Mohammad Raheem, 17, a labourer injured in the blast, said in a Karachi hospital.

"There were cries and screams all around. After that I don't know what happened. I just fainted."

Chinese workers have been targeted in the same region by Baluch separatists in the past, but police suspect the latest attack was more to do with the storming of the mosque.

"We believe it is part of the recent attacks carried out by Islamist militants," Tariq Masood Khosa, police chief of Baluchistan, said.

President Pervez Musharraf said on Wednesday he had no intention of declaring a state of emergency to counter the growing insecurity, and gave assurances that elections due later this year would go ahead as planned.

Stocks down

Karachi's stock market had gained almost 40% since the beginning of 2007, but the escalating violence has lopped close to 6% off the main index in the past two days.

A cleric in the southern city voiced fears of civil war if Musharraf stepped up his fight on militants in the northwest.

"Musharraf has chosen a dangerous path," said Mufti Muhammad Naeem of Karachi's largest Islamic school.

"I think this situation could blow up in an all-out civil war."

The government said 102 people had been killed in the storming of the Lal Masjid. Many victims came from the northwest and were followers of clerical brothers advocating a militant brand of Islam reminiscent of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The car bomber who blew himself up at a police training centre in the northwestern city of Hangu timed his attack to coincide with the arrival of a group of young recruits.

"The attacker tried to crash through the gate. He blew himself up as security guards at the gate tried to stop him," said Fakhr-e-Alam, top administration official of the city.

Hangu, which itself has a history of sectarian violence, is close to the lawless tribal regions on the Afghan border, known to be hotbeds of support for al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Many al Qaeda fighters fled to Pakistan's tribal areas after United States-led forces toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

The World's Stupidest Fatwas (Foreign Policy)

From Foreign Policy
Posted July 2007 (Web Exclusive)
The List: The World’s Stupidest Fatwas

No central authority controls doctrine in Islam, one of the world’s great religions. The result? A proliferation of bizarre religious edicts against targets ranging from Salman Rushdie to polio vaccinations. FP collects some of the worst examples here.

[N.B.: Of course, Islam is not the only major religion that produces stupid and/or pernicious rulings by clerics and other interpreters of religious law. I suppose that should be obvious, but given current sensitivities and polemics, it might be worth noting it explicitly. Nor is it only in Islam that religiously-inspired edicts are used as incitements to murder and mass atrocity--though Islamic examples have become increasingly conspicuous in recent decades, and it is understandable that this has made some people nervous when they hear the word "fatwa". But as this FP roundup makes clear, some of the most notorious fatwas of the past three decades range all the way from murderous to merely silly. --Jeff Weintraub]

PAULA BRONSTEIN/Getty Images News

Salman Rushdie

Who: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran

What: A fatwa is simply a religious ruling in Islam—most often, it seems, fatwas are about sexual matters—but Westerners usually associate the term with the notorious 1989 death sentence against British author Salman Rushdie. At the time, Khomeini was seeking to distract his followers from the pointless slaughter of the recently ended Iran-Iraq war, during which hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed and wounded. Rushdie had just authored The Satanic Verses, an edgy novel about the origins of the Koran, and thus proved the perfect foil for Khomeini’s designs. Thousands of irate Muslims around the world protested the book as an insult to Islam. For a decade, Rushdie lived in hiding, fearing assassination for his “apostasy.” [JW: Rushdie was successfully protected, but the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was murdered, there were serious attacks on the Norwegian and Italian translators, and the offices of Rushdie's American publisher received regular bomb threats.] More recently, when Queen Elizabeth II knighted the author for his literary achievements, al Qaeda called for retaliation against Britain. And Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, reversed his earlier position and said that the original 1989 fatwa remains in force.

---

KHALIL MAZRAAWI/Getty Images News

Unclothed sex

Who: Rashad Hassan Khalil, former dean of Islamic law at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt

What: When Khalil ruled in January 2006 that for married couples, “being completely naked during the act of coitus annuls the marriage,” liberal Egyptians howled with derision. Other scholars rejected Khalil’s logic on the grounds that everything but “sodomy” is halal in a marriage. Absorbing the criticism but seeking to appease religious conservatives, Abdullah Megawar, the fatwa committee chairman at al-Azhar, reached for an awkward compromise. Sure, he said, a husband and wife could see one other naked, but should not look at each other’s genitals. And they should probably have sex under a blanket, he added for good measure.

---

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

Pokémon

Who: Saudi Arabia’s Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law

What: Denouncing the lovable Japanese cartoon characters as having “possessed the minds” of Saudi youngsters, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority banned Pokémon video games and cards in the spring of 2001. Not only do Saudi scholars believe that Pokémon encourages gambling, which is forbidden in Islam, but it is apparently a front for Israel as well. The fatwa’s authors claimed that Pokémon games include, “the Star of David, which everyone knows is connected to international Zionism and is Israel’s national emblem.” Religious authorities in the United Arab Emirates joined in, condemning the games for promoting evolution, “a Jewish-Darwinist theory that conflicts with the truth about humans and with Islamic principles,” but didn’t ban them outright. Even the Catholic Church in Mexico got into the act, calling Pokémon video games “demonic.”

---

TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images

Polio vaccine

Who: Local mullahs in rural Pakistan

What: Pakistan’s largest Islamist umbrella group, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), issued a fatwa in January 2007 endorsing the provincial government’s efforts to immunize children from polio in the country’s Northwest Frontier Province. But even though health workers carried copies of the ruling with them as they trudged across the province, The Guardian reported in February 2007 that the parents of some 24,000 children had refused to allow the workers to administer polio drops. It turns out that influential antistate clerics had been issuing their own fatwas denouncing the campaign as a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. Although Pakistan only saw 39 cases of polio last year and most children have now been immunized, a similar religiously motivated firestorm against polio drops in Nigeria in 2003 allowed the eradicable disease to spread to 12 new countries in just 18 months.

---

iStockphoto.com

Breast-feeding

Who: Ezzat Atiya, a lecturer at Cairo’s al-Azhar University

What: Many Muslims believe that unmarried men and women should not work alone together—a stricture that can pose problems in today’s global economy. So one Islamic scholar came up with a novel solution: If a woman were to breast-feed her male colleague five times, the two could safely be alone together. “A woman at work can take off the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breast-fed,” he wrote in an opinion issued in May 2007. He based his reasoning—which was quickly and widely derided in the Egyptian press, in the parliament, and on Arabic-language talk shows—on stories from the Prophet Mohammed’s time in which, Atiya maintained, the practice occurred. Although Atiya headed the department dealing with the Prophet’s sayings, al-Azhar University’s higher authorities were not impressed. They suspended the iconoclastic scholar, and he subsequently recanted his ruling as a “bad interpretation of a particular case.”

Darfur, China, and the 2008 Olympics - The idea is to USE the Olympics, NOT to boycott them

As I mentioned in a previous post back in April, "Why targeting Beijing's 'Genocide Olympics' can help Darfur":

An activist campaign to target China through its "Genocide Olympics" has been coming together. I recommend reading an important appeal by Eric Reeves, "On China and the 2008 Olympic Games" (and for further information, see HERE.)

To avoid any possible misunderstanding, for most of these activists the idea is not to urge a boycott of the 2008 Olympics, an effort that would almost certainly fail. Instead, the point is to use the spotlight provided by the Olympics to put China on trial in the arena of international public opinion for its complicity with genocidal mass murder in Darfur.

That last point apparently needs to be underlined, since there does seem to be widespread misunderstanding about it that is often expressed and abetted by inaccurate news reports. A coalition of several activist groups working to end the Darfur atrocity have issued a media advisory statement (below) to set the record straight. (For further information, see also the Dream for Darfur website.)

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Media advisory (not for publication): No call for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics regarding Darfur

To: JOURNALISTS COVERING THE OLYMPICS AND CHINA’S ROLE IN DARFUR
From:
American Jewish World Service: Ruth Messinger, President, 212-792-2874 / rmessinger@ajws.org
Dream for Darfur: Jill Savitt, 646-823-2419 /Jill.Savitt@DreamforDarfur.org
Enough: Anita Sharma, 202-481-8120 / ahsarma@enoughproject.org
Fidelity Out of Sudan: Susan Morgan, 617-797-0451 /susanmorgan@gmail.com
Genocide Intervention Network: Sam Bell, 202-481-8220 / Bell@GenocideIntervention.net
Save Darfur Coalition: Colleen Connors, 202-478-6147/ colleen@savedarfur.org
STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition: Scott Warren, 908-279-3287/ scott@standnow.org

Re: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT:
There is no call for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Regarding Darfur

Date: July 5, 2007
_________________________________________________

Dear Journalists

We want to alert news organizations to a widespread error in news coverage that is of great concern to the Darfur advocacy community.

News stories concerning China, the 2008 Summer Olympics, and Darfur regularly refer to a “boycott“ campaign on the part of Darfur activists.

We represent leading Darfur advocacy organizations – and have surveyed other major Darfur and anti-genocide organizations: there is no call for a boycott from within our community. Yet, media coverage regularly states that “critics” and “human rights groups” are calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympics regarding Darfur. We do not know of any credible groups working on Darfur that are calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympics.

When asked about a boycott, as they often are by reporters, the Chinese government says such an effort is "doomed to fail" and would hurt the Olympics. We agree. Unfortunately, by asking about a boycott threat and reporting the government’s response, reporters have in effect created a phantom “boycott” movement.

Our recommendation:
Please do not report on a boycott unless you can cite a credible source organizing one.

Here are three recent examples of this common error:

Associated Press, June 25, 2007:
“China again came out against sanctions and argued against appeals by some critics for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to force China to get tough with Khartoum.” [This wire story was widely picked up – in print and on the web.]

BBC, May 18, 2007:
“Human Rights groups and some European and US politicians have called for the 2008 games to be boycotted because China continues to sell arms to Sudan.” [It is true that a French politician called for a boycott and a few US Democratic presidential candidates said they would consider it, but there is no energy behind those calls.]

Voice of America, June 24, 2007
"The major advocacy groups around the Darfur issue are already recruiting high-profile Africans to mobilize ahead of a possible official call on the international community – including athletes and sponsors – for a full-scale global boycott."

What We Are Doing and Why We Don’t Support a Boycott

There are many reasons we do not support a boycott. A boycott is inconsistent with the Olympic spirit -- the idea of international cooperation we seek to promote. Boycotts are divisive; they punish athletes, sporting communities, spectators, and companies around the world.

Dream for Darfur, an effort comprised of leading Darfur advocacy groups, is using the occasion of the Olympics to urge intensive leadership on the part of the Chinese government, as Olympic host and close partner of Sudan, to end the conflict in Darfur.

Our collective efforts focus on engagement – and we are pursuing several avenues to urge the Chinese government to intercede with leaders in Sudan: we are organizing symbolic "Olympic Torch Relays” (international and around the US), advertising campaigns, coordinated student organizing, and private advocacy with individuals and groups associated with the Olympics.

We will become a major force as the Games approach, urging China to "Bring the Olympic Dream to Darfur." If China is unable to influence Khartoum in the short term, and the genocide threatens to be ongoing during the games, we will shift our campaign to focus even more intensively on the Olympics: we will "Bring Darfur to the Olympic Dream" by attending the Games (via news and other media who go to Beijing, athletes, and spectators from around the world who will show their respectful support for Darfur at the Games). In fact, the spotlight of the Olympics and China’s role in Darfur is exactly what the Darfur situation needs to take its message to the world.

Iranian government TV will broadcast "confessions" by two imprisoned Iranian-Americans

Iran's state-run TV has announced that it will broadcast Stalinist-style "confessions" by two imprisoned Iranian-Americans intellectuals charged with espionage, promoting democracy, and other alleged crimes: Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the Middle East Center at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and Kian Tajbakhsh, a New York-based social scientist associated with George Soros's Open Society Institute.

Some previews were shown Tuesday. As reported by Robin Wright in Tuesday's Washington Post:

Iranian television aired images of two imprisoned Americans yesterday for the first time and said it will show more video tomorrow that includes confessions by scholar Haleh Esfandiari of Potomac and New York-based social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh.

The clips included apparent excerpts from the larger TV effort, titled "In the Name of Democracy," in which both make statements about their activities. Tehran maintains their work is designed to undermine Iran's security and foment nonviolent revolution.

Esfandiari, the director of Middle East programs at the Smithsonian's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is quoted as saying her work was "in the name of dialogue, in the name of women's rights, in the name of democracy." The 67-year-old grandmother was pictured wearing a black head scarf and a coat in a setting outside Evin Prison's Ward 209, where she has been held in solitary confinement since she was detained May 8.

The trailer to the footage charged that Esfandiari was an agent for the 2003 "velvet revolution" in Georgia, which led to the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze.

Tajbakhsh, a consultant for George Soros's Open Society Institute who was arrested May 11, was quoted as saying that the role of "the Soros center after the collapse of communism was to focus on the Islamic world." He was pictured holding notes.

Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh hold dual U.S. and Iranian citizenship.

Shaul Bakhash, Esfandiari's husband, charged that the Iranian government had resorted to televised fabricated "confessions," KGB-style.

"Haleh is shown saying she brought speakers and Iranian academics to the Wilson Center. Only a paranoid would suggest this amounts to criminal activity," he said in an interview.

The implication that Esfandiari was associated with Georgia's political upheaval is "ridiculous," because she has never been to Georgia or engaged in any way with the country, said Bakhash, a professor at George Mason University.

Esfandiari's daughter, Haleh Bakhash, a Washington lawyer, said her mother looked "pale and thin" after 10 weeks in prison and four months under house arrest. "She has lost weight and has aged at least 10 years since I last saw her," she said. [....]

For some further background, see here & here & here & here. The Woodrow Wilson Center has issued a pre-emptive response to Esfandiari's televised pseudo-confession (see below).

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Release No. 62-07
July 16, 2007
Woodrow Wilson Center Responds to Iran’s Announcement that It Will Broadcast Apparent Confessions by Haleh Esfandiari

WASHINGTON — The Woodrow Wilson Center announced today that any “confessions” by Haleh Esfandiari which Iranian state-run television says it will air on Wednesday and Thursday have no legitimacy. Esfandiari, director of the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, has been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since May 8^th on charges of acting against Iran’s national security.

Haleh is in her 71^st day of solitary confinement in Evin Prison. She has seen no one from outside the prison during this time: not her mother, not her family, not her lawyer, and not the ICRC or any independent international body. Any statements she may make without having had access to her lawyer would be coerced and have no legitimacy or standing,” said Lee H. Hamilton, president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "This reprehensible pattern of activity by interrogators in Iran has occurred before: jailing innocent people, confining them, and then producing a framed or cobbled statement or confession. This is not a fair judicial process at work."

"The reported charges against Haleh are ludicrous," said Hamilton. "Haleh is a scholar who has tried only to promote dialogue and understanding between the U.S. and the Middle East region, to include Iran . We are extremely concerned about Haleh and her mental and physical well-being. I again ask the Iranian government to end this ordeal and stop making totally false allegations against Haleh. Let Haleh and the other detained Iranian-Americans return safely to their families."

For up-to-date information regarding the situation of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, please visit the Wilson Center’s media update center at www.wilsoncenter.org/halehnews. To get involved in the campaign to free Haleh, go to www.freehaleh.org. Media with questions may reach Sharon McCarter at (202) 691-4016 or sharon.mccarter@wilsoncenter.org.

International calls for the release of Haleh Esfandiari

There has been increasing international protest against the continuing imprisonment of the Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari in Tehran. An overview can be found on the website Free Haleh, but here are two significant recent examples.

=> The Nobel Women's Initiative is a group of 6 women from around the world who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, including the Iranian Shirin Ibadi, who has been trying to serve as a defense attorney for Haleh Esfandiari but has not been allowed to meet with her. On July 17 the Nobel Women's Initiative issued a statement that

calls on the Government of Iran to immediately release Haleh Esfandiari from Evin Prison, to drop all charges against her, and to free her to return to her home and family.

Read the rest HERE. (Incidentally, it was quite courageous for Ebadi to sign a statement of this sort right now The current escalation of political repression in Iran has succeeded in silencing or intimidating a lot of independent and opposition voices, and it's not certain that even Ebadi's high international profile would necessarily protect her.)

=> And the June 28, 2007 issue of the New York Review of Books published a hard-hitting letter of protest signed by 141 prominent intellectuals of varying political persuasions (including important Middle East scholars and a number of expatriate Iranians, among others). As this statement correctly emphasizes, the recent arrests of several Iranian-American scholars and journalists with dual Iranian and US citizenship are part of a broader campaign of intensified political repression in Iran (see also here & here & here).

The arbitrary detention and confinement of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, a prominent Iranian-American scholar and the director of the Middle East program at the nonpartisan Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., is the latest distressing episode in an ongoing crackdown by the Islamic Republic against those who, directly or indirectly, strive to bolster the foundations of civil society and promote human rights in Iran. Over the past year and a half, this onslaught has targeted prominent women's rights activists, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, student and teacher associations, and labor unions. [....]

We find Dr. Esfandiari's case particularly disturbing because it is tinged with invidious anti-Semitic rhetoric and conspiratorial worldviews. The egregious charges leveled against her by the semi-official daily Kayhan make Dr. Esfandiari the latest victim in the Iranian government's repeated and escalating attempts to intimidate and silence human rights activists and promoters of civil society, as well as those who advocate the path of dialogue and moderation in Iran's foreign policy. [....]

We call upon all international organizations, academic and professional associations, and other groups and individuals devoted to the promotion and defense of human rights to strongly protest and condemn the arbitrary detention of Dr. Esfandiari, to call for her immediate and unconditional release, and to urge the officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran to respect, guarantee, and implement the provisions and principles of human rights as specified in international conventions and treaties to which Iran has long been a signatory.

Read the whole statement below--and also this letter on the related case of Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
New York Review of Books
Volume 54, Number 11 · June 28, 2007
RELEASE HALEH ESFANDIARI

Letter by 141 writers, including scholars of Iran and the Middle East, and others
STATEMENT PROTESTING THE DETENTION OF DR. HALEH ESFANDIARI BY THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT

To the Editors:

The arbitrary detention and confinement of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, a prominent Iranian-American scholar and the director of the Middle East program at the nonpartisan Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., is the latest distressing episode in an ongoing crackdown by the Islamic Republic against those who, directly or indirectly, strive to bolster the foundations of civil society and promote human rights in Iran. Over the past year and a half, this onslaught has targeted prominent women's rights activists, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, student and teacher associations, and labor unions.

In recent weeks, scores of women's rights activists have been harassed, physically attacked, and detained for no greater a crime than demonstrating peacefully and circulating petitions calling for the elimination of discriminatory laws and practices. University students across the country have faced expulsion, arrest, and imprisonment for peacefully protesting the erosion of the administrative and academic independence of their universities.

It is in this context that the months-long harassment, extrajudicial arrest, and incarceration of Dr. Esfandiari—which was admitted belatedly by the Iranian government on May 13, 2007 (The New York Times, May 14, 2007)—exemplify the relentless campaign by the leaders of the Islamic Republic against the most basic principles of human rights. We find Dr. Esfandiari's case particularly disturbing because it is tinged with invidious anti-Semitic rhetoric and conspiratorial worldviews. The egregious charges leveled against her by the semi-official daily Kayhan make Dr. Esfandiari the latest victim in the Iranian government's repeated and escalating attempts to intimidate and silence human rights activists and promoters of civil society, as well as those who advocate the path of dialogue and moderation in Iran's foreign policy. In her capacity as the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Dr. Esfandiari has been a staunch advocate of peaceful dialogue between Tehran and Washington in resolving their disputes.

We believe that, despite certain internal disagreements among members of its ruling elite, the Islamic Republic of Iran—as any other member of the United Nations—should be held fully accountable for its actions. Only through a clear and united stand against the many breaches of human rights and civil liberties in Iran can one hope to encourage those elements within the Islamic Republic who recognize the importance of human rights for Iran's standing within the international community.

We call upon all international organizations, academic and professional associations, and other groups and individuals devoted to the promotion and defense of human rights to strongly protest and condemn the arbitrary detention of Dr. Esfandiari, to call for her immediate and unconditional release, and to urge the officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran to respect, guarantee, and implement the provisions and principles of human rights as specified in international conventions and treaties to which Iran has long been a signatory.

Ervand Abrahamian, City University of New York
Janet Afary, Purdue University
Gholam Reza Afkhami, Foundation for Iranian Studies
Mahnaz Afkhami, Women's Learning Partnership
Reza Afshari, Pace University
Shahrough Akhavi, University of South Carolina
Kazem Alamdari, California State University
Abbas Amanat, Yale University
Hooshang Amirahmadi, Rutgers University
Jahangir Amuzegar, independent scholar
Ahmad Ashraf, Columbia University
Muriel Atkin, George Washington University
Bahman Baktiari, University of Maine
Kathryn Babayan, University of Michigan
Robert Badinter, Sénateur des Hauts-de-Seine, France
Ali Banuazizi, Boston College
Sohrab Behdad, Denison University
Nasser Behnegar, Boston College
Maziar Behrooz, San Francisco State University
Sheila Blair, Boston College and Virginia Commonwealth University
Jonathan Bloom, Boston College and Virginia Commonwealth University
Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Syracuse University
Laurie A. Brand, University of Southern California
L. Carl Brown, Princeton University
Nathan Brown, George Washington University
Daniel Brumberg, Georgetown University
Ian Buruma, Bard College
Charles E. Butterworth, University of Maryland
Houchang-Esfandiar Chehabi, Boston University
Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Shahram Chubin, Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Juan R. Cole, University of Michigan
Miriam Cooke, Duke University
Kamran Dadkhah, Northeastern University
Mark Danner, University of California, Berkeley, and Bard College
Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto
Ronald Dworkin, New York University
Sadreddin Elahi, independent scholar
John L. Esposito, Georgetown University
Farideh Farhi, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Ali Ferdowsi, Notre Dame de Namur University
Willem Floor, independent scholar
John Foran, University of California, Santa Barbara
Francis Fukuyama, Johns Hopkins University
Amir Hossein Gandjbakhche, National Institutes of Health
Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford University
Mark Gasiorowski, Louisiana State University
M.R. Ghanoonparvar, University of Texas at Austin
Ahmad Ghoreishi, Naval Postgraduate School
Jürgen Habermas
Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, Harvard University
Sondra Hale, University of California, Los Angeles
Hormoz Hekmat, Editor, Iran-Nameh
Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard University
Kashi Javaherian, Harvard University
Suad Joseph, University of California, Davis
Tony Judt, New York University
Mehran Kamrava, California State University, Northridge
Mehrangiz Kar, Harvard University
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, University of Maryland
Farhad Kazemi, New York University
Nikki Keddie, University of California, Los Angeles
Laleh Khalili, SOAS, University of London
Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami, New York University
Dina Rizk Khoury, George Washington University
Azadeh Kian, University of Paris
Hans Küng, University of Tübingen
Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina
Stephen N. Lambden, Ohio University
Anthony Lewis
Robert J. Lifton, Harvard University
Mark Lilla, University of Chicago
Zachary Lockman, New York University
Margaret MacMillan, Oxford University
Ali Akbar Mahdi, Ohio Wesleyan University
Irshad Manji, European Foundation for Democracy
Lenore G. Martin, Emmanuel College and Harvard University
Rudi Matthee, University of Delaware
Ann Elizabeth Mayer, The Wharton School
Tadeusz Mazowiecki, former prime minister of Poland
Adam Michnik, Editor, Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw
Abbas Milani, Stanford University
Farzaneh Milani, University of Virginia
Ziba Mir-Hosseini, SOAS, University of London
Valentine Moghadam, Purdue University
Haideh Moghissi, York University
Roy P. Mottahedeh, Harvard University
Azar Nafisi, Johns Hopkins University
Rasool Nafisi, Strayer University
Vali Nasr, Naval Postgraduate School
Aryeh Neier, Open Society Institute
Farhad Nomani, The American University of Paris
Augustus Richard Norton, Boston University
Saeed Paivandi, University of Paris (VI)
Misagh Parsa, Dartmouth College
Samantha Power, Harvard University
William B. Quandt, University of Virginia
Sholeh A. Quinn, Ohio University
Nasrin Rahimieh, University of California, Irvine
Ali Rahnema, The American University of Paris
Saeed Rahnema, York University
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tariq Ramadan, Oxford University
Eugene Rogan, Oxford University
Elizabeth Rubin, The New York Times Magazine
Sharon Stanton Russell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Robert M. Russell, Tufts University
Ahmad Sadri, Lake Forest College
Mahmoud Sadri, Texas Woman's University
Tagi Sagafi-nejad, Texas A&M International University
Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Ali Schirazi, The Free University of Berlin
May Seikaly, Wayne State University
Avi Shlaim, Oxford University
Sussan Siavoshi, Trinity University
Stephen Spector, Stony Brook University
Ray Takeyh, Council on Foreign Relations
Kamran Talattof, University of Arizona
Richard Tapper, SOAS, University of London
Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, University of Toronto
Charles Taylor, Northwestern University
Majid Tehranian, Toda Institute for Global Peace
Mark Tessler, University of Michigan
Mary Ann Tetreault, Trinity University, San Antonio
Nathan Thrall, The Jerusalem Post
Chris Toensing, Editor, Middle East Report
Nayereh Tohidi, California State University, Northridge
A.L. Udovitch, Princeton University
Farzin Vahdat, Vassar College
Sanam Vakil, Johns Hopkins University
Lucette Valensi, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Stephen Van Evera, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Stephen M. Walt, Harvard University
John Waterbury, American University of Beirut
Lawrence Weschler, New York University
Jenny White, Boston University
Judith S. Yaphe, George Washington University
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
Said Yousef, University of Chicago
Hossein Ziai, University of California, Los Angeles
Marvin Zonis, University of Chicago

The latest news from Iran - A partial roundup

Iranian Police Beat Up and Arrest 15 Student Activists on University Campus
Report of stoning in Iran | Stoning in Iran confirmed
And some troubling new developments in the case of imprisoned Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, reported by the Woodrow Wilson Center

--Jeff Weintraub
====================
Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog:
July 9, 2007
Iranian Police Beat Up and Arrest 15 Student Activists on University Campus

Fifteen student activists and the mother of one of them were arrested today in Tehran on the eighth anniversary of a bloody attack by police officers and vigilantes on a university dormitory in the Iranian capital. According to the Associated Press, six students were attacked, beaten up, and detained by the police and plainclothes security agents as they staged a sit-in at the main entrance to Amir Kabir University, a leading technology institution. They were protesting the imprisonment since May of eight student leaders from the university, including three editors of student newspapers.

Nine other students and the mother were attacked and detained later today after government agents broke windows and forced their way into the downtown offices of the leading pro-democracy student organization, the Office for Fostering Unity. Today’s arrests were the latest in a simmering confrontation between pro-reform students and the government of Iran’s hardline president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

The arrests were part of a repression of dissent that was ushered in by the election of Mr. Ahmadinejad, in 2005, and that intensified more recently with the arrest of other student leaders and the imprisonment of prominent Iranian-American scholars on spying charges. —Burton Bollag

----------------------
Normblog:

July 9, 2007
Report of stoning in Iran

Last month Amnesty International appealed to the head of the Iranian judiciary to stop the execution of two people by public stoning - this for the crime of adultery. Human Rights Watch made the same appeal and reported in an update that the stoning had been halted. A press release from this Iranian website, the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign, has now issued a press release saying:

Jafar Kiani was stoned in Aghche-kand, a small village near Takistan, Ghazvin, on Thursday July 5th. His partner, Mokarrameh Ebrahimi, could have a similar fate if we do not act now!
.....
According to the Iranian law, the judge who has issued the sentence would have to be present in person to throw the first stone. Some unofficial sources have reported that only a few of the villagers participated in the stoning and the sentence was mostly carried out by the officials and the related service men.

The judiciary officials have so far neither confirmed nor denied the stoning of Jafar Kiani. Silence seems to be the current policy of some judiciary officials, including Hassan Ghasemi, the Head of Judiciary Office in Ghazvin, who has told the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign activists to contact Alireza Jamshidi, the official Iranian judiciary spokesman, for answers to their questions.

The Stop Stoning Forever Campaign is asking all citizens of the world to raise their opposition to stoning and try to save the life of Mokarrameh Ebrahimi from stoning.

See here for the rest.

July 10, 2007
Stoning in Iran confirmed

Further to this post, the United Nations High Commissioner Louise Arbour has issued a press release on the reported stoning in Iran. She says, among other things:

Stoning is in clear violation of international law, which also limits the death penalty to only the most serious, violent crimes.

According to these reports, the Iranian judiciary has confirmed that the execution has now taken place. From the second of them:

Under the punishment of stoning, a male convict is buried up to his waist with his hands tied behind his back, while a female offender is buried up to her neck with her hands also buried.

There have been protests by Amnesty International and the Norwegian Government.

---------------
And some troubling new developments in the case of imprisoned Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, reported by the Woodrow Wilson Center:

Woodrow Wilson Center Responds to Iran’s Announcement That It Has Uncovered New Evidence Against Haleh Esfandiari

WASHINGTON —The Wilson Center today rejected as totally without merit the suggestion that Iran has discovered new evidence that Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Center’s Middle East Program, acted against Iran’s national security.

Esfandiari was arrested by the Iranian government on May 8, and has been held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for over two months. She continues to be denied access to her family, her lawyers, the Swiss government, and international organizations like the Red Cross.

“We are deeply disturbed by these new reports from Iran, and by the fact that Haleh remains in Evin prison despite not one shred of truth to any of the charges brought against her,” said Lee H. Hamilton, president and director of the Wilson Center. “We are gravely concerned about Haleh’s physical and mental state. We have been unable to get anyone in to see Haleh, and to report to us on the state of her health and well-being. The reports we have received are that Haleh has lost weight and that she is not getting the medical attention or the medicines she needs. I ask the Iranian government to end this nightmare for Haleh and the other imprisoned Iranian-Americans. As I have said countless times before, Haleh is a scholar. She is not a spy. Let Haleh go.”

Shaul Bakhash, Haleh’s husband and professor of history at George Mason University, has likewise dismissed the legitimacy of Iran’s recent actions. “It is obvious that the Ministry of Intelligence, lacking any real cause or evidence to keep my wife…is trying to drag things out by claiming continuing ‘investigations,’” he stated in an interview with The Washington Post this morning. “After hundreds of hours of interrogation and so-called investigation, what is left to investigate? The aim of the security authorities is clearly to coerce a false confession; or, out of sheer meanness, they intend to keep Haleh in Evin Prison as long as they can. It is astonishing that Iran's political leaders allow this charade to continue.” (To read the full Post article, go here.)

On July 4, Haleh’s lawyer, Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, spoke to the prosecutor working on Haleh’s case. To date, Ms. Ebadi has been prevented from communicating with her client. When she inquired again about the possibility of meeting with Haleh, the prosecutor responded by saying that Ms. Ebadi must submit a written request to the court. Ms. Ebadi has submitted this request, along with a request for Haleh's release from Evin prison, at least on bail. The court promised an answer by this week, though Ms. Ebadi is not sure whether the court will keep its promise.

For up-to-date information regarding the situation of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, please visit the Wilson Center’s media update center at www.wilsoncenter.org/halehnews. To get involved in the campaign to free Haleh, go to www.freehaleh.org. Media with questions may reach Sharon McCarter at (202) 691-4016 or sharon.mccarter@wilsoncenter.org

A call to oppose academic blacklists & express solidarity with Israeli academics

In Britain, for some reason, academic blacklist season seems to kick off predictably every spring--in 2005, then in 2006, and now again in 2007.

The statement below (circulated by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East) is a response to the latest proposed boycott of Israeli academics by the Universities & College Union (UCU) in Britain. (For further information, see here & here & here & here.) More generally, it takes a strong and unequivocal stand for the basic principles of academic freedom and open intellectual exchange.

I have signed it, and I urge all "academics, scholars, researchers, and other professionals"--along with writers, artists, and intellectuals of all sorts--to consider signing on as well. Also, please pass along this petition to your friends and colleagues.

--Jeff Weintraub

====================
An International Call To Academics and Professionals From Nobel Laureates and University Presidents To Stand In Solidarity With Our Israeli Academic and Professional Colleagues

To: Academic and Professional Colleagues

Please Join Us By Signing and Circulating the Following Solidarity Statement With Our Israeli Academic and Professional Colleagues

We are academics, scholars, researchers and professionals of differing religious and political perspectives. We all agree that singling out Israelis for an academic boycott is wrong. To show our solidarity with our Israeli academics in this matter, we, the undersigned, hereby declare ourselves to be Israeli academics for purposes of any academic boycott. We will regard ourselves as Israeli academics and decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

(A partial list of signatories follows. Please sign with both first and last names, as well as identifying your professional title and institutional affiliation. Incomplete signatures may be deleted.)

Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov
Nobel Prize - Physics
Distinguished Scientist
Argonne National Laboratory, USA

Kenneth Arrow
Nobel Prize - Economics
Stanford University

S. Bacow
President
Tufts University

David Baltimore
Nobel Prize Physiology or Medicine
Past President,
California Institute of Technology

Esther Barazzone
President
Chatham University

Henry S. Bienen
President
Northwestern University

William R. Brody
President
Johns Hopkins University

Robert Brown
President
Boston University

Nancy Cantor
Chancellor and President
Syracuse University

Robert Carothers
President
University of Rhode Island

Gerhard Casper
President Emeritus
Stanford University

David Clary
President
Magdalen College
Oxford University

Claude Cohen- Tannoudji
Nobel Prize- Physics
Laboratoire de Physique de L'Ecole Normale Superieure
Paris, France

Jared Cohon
President
Carnegie-Mellon University

Scott Cowen
President
Tulane University

Michael Crow
President
Arizona State University

Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte
President Emeritus and Professor
Florida State University

Alan Dershowitz
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
Harvard University

Stanley Deser
Dirac Medal
Ancell Professor of Physics
Brandeis University

Gail Dinter-Gottlieb
President and Vice Chancellor
Arcadia University
Canada

Allen K. Easley
President and Dean
William Mitchell College of Law

Alfred Ebenbauer
Former Rector,
University of Vienna, Austria

Robert F. Engle
Nobel Prize - Economics
New York University

Jerome Friedman
Nobel Prize-Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sheldon Lee Glashow
Nobel Prize-Physics
Boston University

Donald A. Glaser
Nobel Prize Physics
University of California at Berkeley

Clive W.J. Granger
Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics
University of California, San Diego

David Gross
Nobel Prize Physics
Director,Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics
University of California at Santa Barbara

Herbert A. Hauptman
Nobel Prize- Chemistry
Medical Foundation of Buffalo

James J. Heckman
Nobel Prize Economics
University of Chicago

Alan Heeger
Nobel Prize-Chemistry
University of California-Santa Barbara

John L. Hennessy
President
Stanford University

Richard Herman
Chancellor
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Dudley R. Herschbach
Nobel Prize Chemistry
Harvard University

Avram Hershko
Nobel Prize Chemistry
Distinguished Professor at the Unit of Biochemistry
Rappaport Faculty of Medicine
Technion
(Israel Institute of Technology)

Roald Hoffmann
Frant H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters
Conell University

Tim Hunt
Nobel Prize - Physiology/Medicine
Cell Cycle Control Laboratory
London Research Institute
Clare Hall Laboratories

Elfriede Jelinek
Nobel Prize Literature
Austria

Richard M. Joel
President
Yeshiva University

Daniel Kahneman
Nobel Prize - Economics
Professor of Psychology
Princeton University

Eric R. Kandel
Nobel Prize - Medicine
University Professor
Columbia University

Steven Knapp
President-Elect
George Washington University

Walter Kohn
Nobel Prize Physics
University of California-Santa Barbara

Helmut Konrad
Former Rector, University of Graz
Graz, Austria

Roger Kornberg
Nobel Prize - Chemistry
Professor of Structural Biology
Stanford University

Arthur Kornberg
Nobel Prize - Medicine
Emeritus Pfeiffer Merner Professor of Biochemistry
Stanford University School of Medicine

Leon Lederman
Nobel Prize - Physics
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
University of Chicago

James Moeser
Chancellor
University of North Carolina

C.D. Mote Jr.
President
University of Maryland

Marshall W. Nirenberg
Nobel Prize - Medicine
Biochemical Genetics
National Institutes of Health

Ross Paul
President
University of Windsor

David Politzer
Nobel Prize - Physics
California Institute of Technology

G. David Pollick
President
Birmingham Southern College

Rajendra Prasad
Rector
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi

Jehuda Rheinharz
President
Brandeis University

Richard J. Roberts
Nobel Prize - Physiology/Medicine
New England Biolabs

Richard L. Rubenstein
President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Religion
University of Bridgeport

Donna Shalala
President
University of Miami

Ralph Snyderman
Chancellor Emeritus
Duke University

Graham Spanier
President
Penn State University

Shirley Strum Kenny
President
Stony Brook University
State University of New York

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
President
The George Washington University

Harold Varmus
Nobel Laureate - Physiology/Medicine
President
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Leslie Wagner
Chancellor
University of Derby, UK

Steven Weinberg
Nobel Prize-Physics
Josey Regental Professor of Science
University of Texas, Austin

Elie Wiesel
Nobel Peace Prize
Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities
Boston University

Frank Wilczek
Nobel Prize-Physics
Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kevin Wildes, S.J.
President
Loyola University
New Orleans

Robert E. Witt
President
University of Alabama

Daniel Zajfman
President and Professor of Physics
Weizmann Institute of Science

Vladimir Zakharov
Dirac Medal in Theoretical Physics
Regent Professor of Mathematics
University of Arizona

--------------------
As an added security measure for signers of this petition to reduce the need to void anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic remarks that have been posted, as well as reducing the number of fraudulent signature postings, the authors might consider necessary to verify the authenticity of signatures. Unfortunately there are significant numbers of individuals who would like to sabotage the credibility and impact of this important precedent-setting petition. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Edward S. Beck, President, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Thank you for your understanding, support and patience.

"Neocons," "very liberal Communists," and other scare-words

As Patrick Porter correctly points out, "neocon" (or "neoconservative") is expanding into an all-purpose term of abuse without much concrete content, historical specificity, or political substance. (The degree of seriousness or plausibility involved is often not that different from Ann Coulter's use of "faggot" as a political insult.)

This increasingly promiscuous use of the increasingly elastic scare-word "neocon" reminds one of the equally promiscuous way many right-wingers used to call anyone they didn't like a "communist" (or at least, in the old 1950s lingo, a "comsymp"). Once, of course, there actually were real Communists (just as there have been real neo-conservatives), which allowed for spreading around some guilt-by-conflation. Now that the international Communist movement has pretty much disappeared, along with the former Evil Empire, the word "liberal" often serves a similar function in some right-wing circles ...

... though that's not entirely new, either. Back in 1973 Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon's Attorney-General John Mitchell, said that her husband often warned against the threat posed by the "very liberal Communists" (the worst kind) who were demonstrating against the Vietnam War.

Stalinists, for their part, used to call anyone they didn't like either a "Trotskyite" or a "fascist"--and sometimes both. Well, history moves on. Nowadays, people who want to abuse other people by calling them "neocons" sometimes accuse them of being "Trotskyites" (or ex-Trotskyites), too.

(Historically, comrades, the correct term is "Trotskyist." "Trotskyite" was a derogatory slur, with conspiratorial overtones, used only by Stalinists and their fellow-traveling dupes--more or less the way Republicans in the US like to talk about the "Democrat Party" instead of the "Democratic Party.")

As for the word "fascist" ... let's not even get started on that one. Even kindergarten kids can use that one now (and a lot of adults who toss it around haven't gone much beyond the kindergarten level in their grasp of what it means).

Yours for a higher level of political abuse,
Jeff Weintraub

Toward a post-literate society?

A sampling of "some startling statistics" (From Robyn Jackson, via Erma Bombeck, via Andrew Sullivan). I can't vouch for their accuracy, but they sound generally plausible:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. [....]
Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.

Etc. Interesting, if true.

Nevertheless ...

About 120,000 books are published each year in the U.S. [....]

(more like 170,000 books, according to the original source), and I assume most of those are purchased rather than eventually pulped, so someone out there must be reading them. (Of course, the US population is now around 300 million.)

Rates of book publication and book reading in different western societies vary considerably. (The rates reported for Britain and Scandinavia, for example, are a lot higher than for the US, dropping off sharply in countries like Italy, Greece, and Portugal--though even in Sweden one study found that 30 per cent of adults hadn't read a book during the previous year.) But there seems to be an overall trend toward fewer people reading fewer books over time. Maybe they're reading stuff on the Internet instead?

=> The Italian writer Alberto Moravia once remarked that, over the centuries, the proportion of illiterates in the population has remained constant, but nowadays the illiterates know how to read. ("Il rapporto fra alfabetismo e analfabetismo è costante, ma al giorno d'oggi gli analfabeti sanno leggere.") Maybe, maybe not.

--Jeff Weintraub

P.S. The friend who first told me about that Moravia quotation added that the last point--i.e., nowadays the illiterates can read--struck him as a bit optimistic. Did Moravia, he wondered, ever have much experience with large-scale undergraduate teaching? Just a joke, I'm sure ...

France's complicity in the Rwandan genocide - An update from Paris

People who have soured on the idea that humanitarian intervention might ever make sense in response to genocidal mass murder or other large-scale atrocities, and who have confirmed or renewed their enthusiasm for the wisdom of realpolitik, might remind themselves of the consequences that so-called foreign-policy "realism" had for Rwanda in 1994.

Roméo Dallaire, a former Canadian general, was in charge of the UN "peacekeeping" troops in Rwanda at the time of the 1994 genocide, in which over 800,000 people were murdered in about three months. He repeatedly warned his superiors that a massacre was coming, and remains convinced that, with very small reinforcements and an authorization to act forcefully, he could have prevented the genocide or nipped it in the bud. Instead, the "world community"--including the US, it is important to emphasize--turned its back on Rwanda.

France went one step further, and actively aided the génocidaires. The French government had long armed, supported, and advised the Hutu-supremacist regime that carried out the genocide, and when the crunch came, they did not abandon their clients. When it became clear that their clients were being defeated, and that the country was being overrun by the Rwanda Patriotic Front, the French military intervened directly in southwest Rwanda (in "Operation Turquoise") to save them, helped a number of them escape over the border into Zaire (now Congo) ... and then, for several years, continued to arm, train, and support these same génocidaire militias as they took over the Hutu refugee camps and continued to launch raids into Rwanda ... a policy that came to an end only when the Rwandan army intervened in the Congolese civil war and overran the camps.

None of this is at all esoteric, hypothetical, or even controversial (among serious people). The main outlines of this shameful story were established some time ago by Philip Gourevitch and others.

But new details continue to come out ... including these illuminating tidbits just reported from Paris. These appear to deal mostly with the motivations driving French policy in the the period leading up to the 1994 genocide:

The former French president François Mitterrand supported the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide despite clear warnings that mass killings of the Tutsi population were being orchestrated, according to declassified French documents.

The publication of the documents in today's Le Monde for the first time confirms long-held suspicions against France. The previously secret diplomatic telegrams and government memos also suggest the late French president was obsessed with the danger of "Anglo-Saxon" influence gripping Rwanda. [....]

The documents, obtained by lawyers for six Tutsi survivors who are bringing a case against France for "complicity with genocide" at the Paris Army Tribunal, suggest the late President Mitterrand's support for the Hutus was informed by an obsession with maintaining a French foothold in the region. One of the lawyers, Antoine Compte, said France was aware of the potential danger of its support for the pre-genocide Rwandan government. "Massacres on an ethnic basis were going on and we have evidence that France knew this from at least January 1993. The French military executed the orders of French politicians. The motivation was an obsession with the idea of an Anglo-Saxon plot to oust France from the region." [....]

Even though Rwanda was Belgian for most of the colonial era, France took a strong interest in the country after independence, seeing it as a bulwark against the powerful influences of English-speaking Uganda and Kenya. [....]

"It emerges quite clearly from the documents that diplomats, the French secret services, military figures and Mr Joxe [the Defense Minister] wanted France to disengage from Rwanda, or at least to act differently. But the president was obsessed," said Mr Compte. [....]

So far, these sound like potentially contestable interpretations rather than confirmed facts, and some elements in the article strike me as a bit odd or unclear. But taken in conjunction with other things we know, the basic picture of French policy and its motivations presented here rings true. Read the whole thing (below).

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
The Independent (London)
July 3, 2007
Mitterrand's role revealed in Rwandan genocide warning
By Alex Duval Smith in Paris

The former French president François Mitterrand supported the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide despite clear warnings that mass killings of the Tutsi population were being orchestrated, according to declassified French documents.

The publication of the documents in today's Le Monde for the first time confirms long-held suspicions against France. The previously secret diplomatic telegrams and government memos also suggest the late French president was obsessed with the danger of "Anglo-Saxon" influence gripping Rwanda. In three months from April 1994, at least a million Rwandans - mainly Tutsis - were systematically slaughtered in killings engineered by the Hutu regime to exterminate its ethnic rivals and repel the Uganda-trained Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

The documents, obtained by lawyers for six Tutsi survivors who are bringing a case against France for "complicity with genocide" at the Paris Army Tribunal, suggest the late President Mitterrand's support for the Hutus was informed by an obsession with maintaining a French foothold in the region. One of the lawyers, Antoine Compte, said France was aware of the potential danger of its support for the pre-genocide Rwandan government. "Massacres on an ethnic basis were going on and we have evidence that France knew this from at least January 1993. The French military executed the orders of French politicians. The motivation was an obsession with the idea of an Anglo-Saxon plot to oust France from the region."

Mr Compte said the file of diplomatic messages and initialled presidential memos, obtained from the François Mitterrand Foundation, provided evidence that the French military in Rwanda were under direct instruction from the Elysée Palace. The lawyer yesterday called on the investigating judge at the Paris Army Tribunal to interview senior French political figures, including military figures, diplomats, the former defence minister, Pierre Joxe and former prime minister, Alain Juppé.

"It emerges quite clearly from the documents that diplomats, the French secret services, military figures and Mr Joxe wanted France to disengage from Rwanda, or at least to act differently. But the president was obsessed," said Mr Compte.

Among the evidence to suggest France was informed of the mounting genocide is a diplomatic telegram from October 1990 in which the French defence attaché in the Rwandan capital Kigali alerts Paris of the "growing number of arbitrary arrests of Tutsis or people close to them". The cable adds: "It is to be feared that [it could] degenerate into an ethnic war."

Another diplomatic memo, sent by French ambassador Georges Martres on 19 January 1993, quotes a Rwandan informant as saying that the president of the country, Juvenal Habyarimana, had suggested "proceeding with a systematic genocide using, if necessary, the army".

Habyarimana was killed on 6 April 1994 - the date that marks the start of the genocide - when his plane was shot down over Kigali.

Even though Rwanda was Belgian for most of the colonial era, France took a strong interest in the country after independence, seeing it as a bulwark against the powerful influences of English-speaking Uganda and Kenya.

In the 1980s, French involvement in Rwanda was limited to two dozen military advisers. But when the Uganda-based RPF began launching attacks against President Habyarimana's regime in 1990, France sent arms and troops. Critics claim French troops stood by and watched as Rwandan Hutu soldiers massacred Tutsi civilians.

France claims its military involvement was aimed at aiding Hutu-Tutsi power-sharing. Last year, a French investigating magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière alleged the RPF shot down Habyarimana's aircraft and issued arrest warrants against nine high-ranking officials in the current Rwandan government.