Category: Politics & Society

At present this includes posts on history of Zionism and modern Israel and Palestine as well as current events. Continue this setup? What of other histories? Adjust name of category? Currently includes Islamism (distinct from Islam) as an ideology of terrorism. Also currently includes Islamophobia and hostile denunciations of Islam — but see the question on Islam in Religion and Atheism.

2008-05-25

Burma after Nargis: $$$ the junta DOES NOT need

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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The Burmese junta has just requested $11.5 billion for rebuilding after Cyclone Nargis.

On a recent Late Night Live interview Sean Turnell, Associate Professor at Macquarie University and co-founder of Burma Economic Watch, presented the following:

  1. The Burmese regime is “flush with funds” at the moment
  2. Over the last 5 years it is earning $150,000,000 US from exports of natural gas to Thailand
  3. It has $4 billion stashed away, none of which goes into the government’s public account
  4. The incoming money is recorded at the official exchange rate which is 200 times undervalued

The Burmese regime is thus deliberately starving the public account of funds

The podcast for this interview, which also includes input from Aung Zaw, an exiled Burmese journalist and editor of The Irrawaddy Magazine; and with Gary Woodward, former ambassador to Burma, is well worth a listen.

Guided by astrology? It also emerges in the LNL interview the possibility that the reason the military junta went ahead with their referendum on the constitution in the midst of the chaos was to follow through on the predictions of their astrologers that that was the most favourable day for it.

The Irrawaddy Magazine is also of special interest, with 2 of its current story headings about cyclone victims being forcibly evicted from their places of refuge and about poorly paid military looting in some of the cyclone areas.

2008-05-22

Religion in Public Life — 2 bad arguments by Professor Roger Trigg

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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Roger Trigg

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, Roger Trigg, was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s Religion Report this week (see the transcript — and the podcast if you’re quick enough — here) and 2 of his arguments in favour of keeping religious debate in the public political arena struck me as very bad.

Bad argument #1:

Addressing the controversy Prime Minister Tony Blair raised when he publicly declared that God would judge him on his decision to invade Iraq, Professor Trigg said that he thought people would like the idea that their leaders felt they were accountable to someone above them as opposed to thinking they themselves had the last say.

Why bad Continue reading “Religion in Public Life — 2 bad arguments by Professor Roger Trigg”

2008-05-20

Iranian bloggers write letters to Jesus Christ

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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Global Voices has published a post by Hamid Tehrani alerting us to several Iranian bloggers writing letters to Jesus Christ on their blogs.

I won’t spoil any surprises by saying any more. Check out Iranian bloggers write letters to Christ for yourself.

2008-05-18

“Archaeology has become a weapon of dispossession” — Israeli archaeologist

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Archaeology, Biblical Studies, Old Testament, Politics & Society
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I found the following linked on the JAO-Sydney (Jews Against the Occupation) site:

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle Review (April 25 2008 edition), an article by Yigal Bronner and Neve Gordon:

Beneath the Surface
Are Jerusalem digs designed to displace Palestinians?

“Archaeology has become a weapon of dispossession,” Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist, said in a recent telephone interview with us. He was referring to the way archaeology is being used in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in the oldest part of Jerusalem, where, we believe, archaeological digs are being carried out as part of a concerted campaign to expel Palestinians from their ancestral home.

That effort is orchestrated by an Israeli settler organization called Elad, a name formed from Hebrew letters that stand for “to the City of David.” For several years, Elad has used a variety of means to evict East Jerusalem Palestinians from their homes and replace them with Jewish settlers. Today Silwan is dotted with about a dozen such outposts. Moreover, practically all the green areas in the densely populated neighborhood have been transformed into new archaeological sites, which have then been fenced and posted with armed guards. On two of these new archaeological sites, Jewish homes have already been built. . . . . . . .

The full article can be accessed here.

2008-05-17

Macro and Micro religious extremism

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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It is easy to identify and deplore the micro religious extremists, those who believe in chopping off heads and limbs and whipping the flesh in between those extremities or just stoning the whole lot because that’s what some ancient holy book requires.

If we think of decapitations as the working out of a micro fundamentalist/extremist vision, then I submit that a people who believes in the complete displacement by one race with another race (whom they regard as “the chosen people”) in a land because of what some ancient holy book requires is macro religious extremism.

If we are dismayed over a Wahabi court in Saudi Arabia making life and death distinctions by applying ancient religious injunctions over who persons were allowed to have sex with, then presumably we will be also dismayed over a governments and whole peoples justifying ethnic cleansing and displacement, and declaring one race as especially chosen with rights to do this, because of their devotion to an ancient holy text of theirs.

So we have the president of the United States pronouncing that his nation is fully on the side of macro religious extremism. Let’s call it racial religious extremism, justifying the displacement of one people with another on the grounds that the winners are “the chosen people”. As reported in Haaretz [Haaretz link removed; Now found in White House archives or The Wall Street Journal:

“Israel’s population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you,” Bush said.

“You have raised a modern society in the Promised Land, a light unto the nations that preserves the legacy of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And you have built a mighty democracy that will endure forever and can always count on America to stand at its side.”

He noted that Israel’s Declaration of Independence “was the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham, Moses, and David – a homeland for the chosen people in Eretz Yisrael.”

And the original inhabitants? As with the Biblical Canaanites, they are not worthy of humanizing. They are only defined as “terrorists” or “havens for terrorists”. And the society created by the chosen people in this ethnically cleansed land will be reserved for one race only, despite the few token exceptions of Arabs who are allowed to remain as citizens, with equal rights at least on paper:

“Israel will be celebrating its 120th anniversary as one of the world’s great democracies, a secure and flourishing homeland for the Jewish people.”

“America stands with you in breaking up terrorist networks and denying the extremists sanctuary.

The President might also have reminded his world audience that contrary to his professed past visions of a Palestinian state, the government he was backing as 307 million strong on the grounds of his own macro religious extremism is by its own charter implacably opposed to any such state. The illegal settlements in the occupied territories will continue until a Greater Israel is restored fully to the territories worthy of a Chosen People and in full accord with an ancient religious text.

If it is worth going to war, paying the price of state-sanctioned killing, in order to liberate women from Wahabi extremism and end barbarous legal and social customs among the micro religious extremists, is it really justifiable to stand up for macro religious extremism?

I have attempted to do my little bit to help inform a wider audience of the realities on the ground in Palestine and Israel with two new pages on this blog: Palestinian news sources and Replies to ADL propaganda.

2008-05-14

Answering Zionist propaganda of the Anti-Defamation League

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Facts and statistics can be spun in a way to tell lies and lying propaganda can consist of an overload of fineprint factual reports. The mass of factual detail can be so overwhelming that readers are numbed from any feeling of hope that they could possibly find the time or resources to personally investigate each claim. (Jacques Ellul, Propaganda)

The ADL has published one such list of facts that in fact is a source of ignorant lies and racial prejudice. It is a list of multiple scores of terrorist attacks on Israelis in an effort to demonstrate that there is a Palestinian genocidal campaign to drive Israeli Jews into the sea.

Since this list appears to be widely circulated on the net, and since it made its appearance in a comment on one of my blog posts, I decided I had the time to begin a detailed point by point response to each of the facts on this list. I do not dispute the facts presented, but when only half the facts are presented then we all know that a half truth can be as good as an outright lie. I have in each case begun to cite the facts missing from the ADL report, most of them sourced by mainstream western (US, UK, Israeli) media reports.

I’ve also included links for a “Palestinian right of reply” to some of the common charges levelled against Palestinians and Arabs generally by the ADL.

And since it received 1352 hits within just 24 hours of this lil newbie blog posting the page and bringing it to the attention of one and two other blogs, maybe it will be of some use to a few here too . . . .

Replies to ADL propaganda

2008-05-11

Projects working for peace among Arabs and Israelis

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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I was about to do a search for a list of these when I see the work has already been done! Fantastic! I have had the good fortune to have met Jews from some of these organizations and we have organized local community public dinners where they can speak and demonstrate what they are doing in Israel and Palestine.

What they are doing is hard, very hard, with incredible obstacles, which makes them all the more modern day heroes.

Please check out this Wikipedia site. It is really a fantastic breath of hope in a very dark beast:


Projects working for peace among Arabs and Israelis

Responding to Israel’s critics

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Independent.co.uk

Johann Hari: The loathsome smearing of Israel’s critics

Thursday, 8 May 2008

In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors.

My own case isn’t especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me “a Jew-lover”, “a Zionist-homo pig” and more.

Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn’t controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes.

The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile “pro-Israel” writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked. Continue reading “Responding to Israel’s critics”

2008-05-06

A Palestinian Christian’s perspective on the Israeli occupation and suicide bombing

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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It is ironical that so many western Christians support or excuse the state of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians when there are both Christian Israelis and Christian Palestinians who do not. Indeed, the use of the Hebrew Bible by both Zionists and their Christian supporters to justify Zionism, illegal settlements, land confiscations, defiance of international law, humiliation and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, has been said to have turned the Old Testament almost into a current-day Mein Kampf.

Dr. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Christian and theologian, has compared the current Israeli state to Herod. He sees “Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him”.

He has posted an article reflecting on 40 years of Israeli occupation and discussing what Palestinians, particularly Palestinian Christians, must do. It is part of a special edition of Cornerstone [link downloads 2 MB PDF file], titled The Great Deception: What must Palestinians do? Cornerstone is a publication of the Sabeel, the Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center.

Download (PDF, 1.99MB)

(from https://www.fosna.org/)

An earlier article of his take, as a Palestinian Christian, on Suicide Bombers is also worth reading.

2008-04-27

Tibet protests over China Olympics: hope for Diego Garcians by 2012?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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I wish the thought didn’t sound so fanciful, but if there can be such a world-wide clout against China over Tibet at the Olympics, can the people who were forcibly deported by the UK in the 1960s and ’70s find any hope for international support in their wish to be repatriated?

Or does a Creole speaking black African Chagossian ethnicity simply not compare with the image of serene Tibetan Buddhists and Shangri-La up there in nirvana-high mountains?

Or does an atavistic enemy of Chinese barbarians evoke more visceral response than anything that could possibly be done, however “misguidedly” and “undoubtedly well-intentioned”, by a white English speaking nation?

See the contrasting images in a Spiked-Online article by Brendon O’Neill:- example …..

The UK decided they had the power and therefore the right to deport the entire population (mirroring the population deportation practices that we first see practised among the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians and Persians and that were thought to be the modern day preserve of the Nazis and Soviets) of Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia was then turned into a military base cum (torture?) prison for extraordinary rendition prisoners.

Much of the population of Diego Garcia, demonstrating human propensities we normally associate with whites (and non-Chinese Tibetans), still wants to return.

After the China Olympics it might be a good idea to turn attentions to requiring the UK government to make full amends for its perpetration of what was at the Nuremberg Trials declared a crime against humanity.

2008-04-18

Israel’s God of War — against both Arab and (secular) Jew

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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The ultra-orthodox religionists (the Haredim/Charedim) of Israel now make up 10% of the population and are a critical support for the Olmert government.

For the Haredim the very existence of Israel cannot be justified without God and the Abrahamic promises in the Bible, which require the expulsion of the Palestinians from all that they believe God has given them. Haredi/Charedi prayers even call for the destruction of the secular state of Israel. Today these Haredim are a minority, “only” 10% of the population. But they make no secret of how they would enforce changes on Israel if ever they feel the muscle to do so.

They are the direct counterpart of Moslem extremists. Haredim claim to follow the Halachi [link downloads a 400 KB PDF file] rules as forever binding. The Halachi gives licence to kill secular Jews, to show no kindness to them. It also relegates women to being the property of their fathers and husbands, and forbids them to testify in legal proceedings. In another ironic twist in the minds no doubt for some western observers, some Jewish Haredi/Charedi women in Israel today are volunteering to wear the hijab. This is just one of their practices that actually demonstrates their claim to be reliving a past tradition that may never have existed: where there are doubts about interpretation of Halachi directives, they will err on the side of over-doing them.

Harmless nuts? A passing fad?

A Jewish site dedicated to “Enlightenment, education and freedom from religion”, Daat Emet, publishes online the reasons they believe non religious Jews and others should not dismiss the ultra-orthodox as harmless cranks.

There have always been religious extremists among orthodox Jews, and back in the 1960’s we were reading of sects who were apparently plotting the destruction of the Moslem Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the reinstitution of sacrifices. It appears that Jewish extremism is currently finding a growing support base within Israel itself.

Background Briefing (on Australia’s ABC Radio National) put together a well researched (though perhaps hastily edited) program on these ultra-orthodox Jews who are already having a serious impact on Israeli politics, not to mention the lives of other Jews and Arabs who come within their orbit. It is titled Israel: selling out secularism? From their site one can download the podcast of the program, listen to live-streaming, or read the transcript.

Background Briefing lists the following bibliography — of all readily accessible online articles — discussing more academically the background to the growth of the Haredi in Israel. I’ve read most of them, and recommend them to anyone wanting to seriously understand the social and psychological background to the rise of this social and political group today, and to explore some of the details of the fluctuations of their political strength over the past decade.

Iannaccone and Berman’s article (listed first) argues that safety lies in religious pluralism. Danger follows where States attempt to suppress certain militant religious movements. The United States is, perhaps paradoxically, held up as a model. Maybe so. The future is impossible to know. But thank the Enlightenment for the secularists, the educators, the peace activists in the meantime.

Title: ‘Religious Extremism, the good, the bad and the deadly’ in Public Choice 2006
Author: Laurence R. Iannaccone and Eli Berman
URL: http://econ.ucsd.edu/~elib/rex.pdf

Title: ‘Haredi Violence in Contemporary Israeli Society’ in Jew and Violence, Image, Ideologies, Realities
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Haredi-Violence.pdf

Title: Sect, subsidy and Sacrifice: An economist’s view of ultra-orthodox Jews
Author: Eli Berman
Publisher: Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000
URL: http://econ.ucsd.edu/~elib/sns.pdf

Title: ‘Rupture and Reconstruction: The transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy’ in Tradition 1994
Author: Haym Soloveitchik
URL: http://www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm

Title: ‘The Haredim and Israeli Society’ in Whither Israel – The Domestic Challenges
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Ultra-Orthodox.pdf

Title: ‘The State of Israel as a theological dilemma’ in The Israeli State and Society, Boundaries and Frontiers
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1989
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Theological-Dilemma.pdf

Title: ‘Haredim confront the modern city’ in Studies in Contemporary Jewry II
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: Indiana University Press 1986
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Haredim-Modern_City.pdf

Israel’s birthday and God’s gift from the Nile to the Euphrates

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Manifest Destiny?

12/04/08
By Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom
Copied with permission from the Israeli peace activist site Gush Shalom (my links no longer default to new windows!)

NEXT MONTH, Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary. The government is working feverishly to make this day into an occasion of joy and jubilation. While serious problems are crying out for funds, some 40 million dollars have been allocated to this aim.

But the nation is in no mood for celebrations. It is gloomy. Continue reading “Israel’s birthday and God’s gift from the Nile to the Euphrates”

2008-04-14

Information Clearing House

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Information Clearing House is about the best collation I know of both major and alternative media articles about topics related to world issues in which Western powers have major impact, and therefore in which general populations within those western powers have some potential to influence policy. If you wonder what the news is behind the general gumpf you see repeated on Fox, CNN, BBC, et al ad nauseum, do click and scroll down the link Information Clearing House to see what I mean.

For more, see What and Who is Information Clearing House.

But the reason for posting about this here on Vridar is because . . . . . Continue reading “Information Clearing House”

2008-04-10

Human rights in China

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by Neil Godfrey

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The Tibetan separatist movement is a red herring (post 1, post 2). Human rights issues in China deserve a far more comprehensive and incisive response from westerners.

For a more comprehensive picture see the 2007 Amnesty International Report on China for details of abuses:

  • against human rights defenders
  • against journalists and internet users
  • against rural migrants
  • against women
  • against spiritual and religious groups
  • use of death penalty against 68 offences, including non-violent ones
  • use of torture, arbitrary detention and unfair trials

not forgetting specific abuses and applications of the above in relation to:

  • Uighurs
  • Tibetans
  • North Korean refugees
  • refusal to apply the UN Refugee Convention to Hong Kong

Supporting, or failing to distinguish, separatist movements that are contrary to international law is doing a disservice to the thousands whose lives are destroyed and ruined throughout China through human rights abuses.