Middle East

Pope Snubs Bush Administration

Seems the Pope, conservative though he is, is not too happy with the Bush Administration. Seems when Condaleezza Rice recently requested a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the Middle East, her request was turned down. Officially it is all a matter of protocol. The Pope doesnt "normally" receive politicians while on vacation. But the move has widely been seen as a snub. Why would a quite conservative Pope snubs the Bush Administration? Two reasons are being put forward. From BBC News:

First, it was Ms Rice who just before the outbreak of the Iraq war in March 2003 made it clear to a special papal envoy sent from Rome, Cardinal Pio Laghi, that the Bush administration was not interested in the views of the late Pope on the immorality of launching its planned military offensive.

Secondly, the US has responded in a manner considered unacceptable at the Vatican to the protection of the rights of Iraqi Christians under the new Iraqi constitution.

The Bush administration has told the Vatican that as coalition forces have not succeeded in securing the whole territory of Iraq, they are unable to protect non-Muslims.

Instead of meeting the Pope, Ms Rice had to make do with a telephone conversation with the Vatican's number two, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was visiting the US during August on other business.

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Global Warming Solutions, Economic Stability and Peace

Some years back I read Jared Diamond's excellent book Collapse. It covers a wide range of issues and locations in its analysis of the collapse of civilizations and draws parallels with modern soceity and past societies with the intent of finding ways in which our society can survive rather than collapse.

One of the most important points to me in the book was the critical role of forests in ANY society's economic well being and long term stability. A contrast between Haiti and the Dominican Republic dramatically showed the difference between a nation that was nearly completely deforested and one that preserved its forests. Preserving forests maintained soil productivity as well as protected fisheries that were downstream.

Global warming gives us added reason to be tree huggers. Trees are the most effective long term way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. Nothing else can do so much at such low cost. Combine their protection of the soil, water resources, downstream fisheries, etc. with their ability to sequester carbon, and preservation of forests and tree planting are about the best thing any of us can do to stabilize human society in the face of current challenges.

An area where this is most critical is one that is dear to my heart: the Middle East. I am a pro-Israel Jew. I am also pro-Palestine. But having read a great deal of history, I know that the existance of a Jewish nation is very important to me and to my children. Even the most welcoming of nations has turned anti-Semitic in the past, and so the well being of Israel seems to me kind of like an insurance policy for all Jews. It gives us a place where we can go if and when the nations that hold the diaspora turn on us...again.

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Jack Chirac May Have Urged Israel to Attack Syria

I try to get my news from several sources, and that can lead to some interesting discoveries. It seems that in the early days of Israel's attack on Lebanon, Jacques Chirac wanted Israel to go into Syria as well. This is from Guysen Israel News:

Jacques Chirac had urged Israel to attack Syria in the first few days of the war in Lebanon. According to the army radio Galei Tsahal, the French president sent a message to Jerusalem, via a secret channel. He proposed that Israel launch an offensive against Damas and bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad in exchange for total French support in the war. According to the message from Paris, Syria was held responsible for sparking the war on the northern border and encouraged Hizbollah to act. (Guysen.Isra×›l.News)

I have found no confirmation of this. Most of the coverage of Chirac's view of Israel's attack on Lebanaon is of his condemnation of Israel's "disproportionate actions," as in here:

President Jacques Chirac said Friday that Israel's military offensive against Lebanon is "totally disproportionate" and asked whether destroying Lebanon was not the ultimate goal.

However, he also said that rockets fired on Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas are "inadmissible, unacceptable and irresponsible."

Chirac implicitly suggested that Syria and Iran might be playing a role in the expanding crisis in the Middle East which, along with the Iranian nuclear issue, creates "a truly dangerous situation in which we must be very, very careful."

» read more | mole333's blog | add new comment | email this blog | 855 reads

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Words to live by

These new-found tensions which are present at all stages in the real nature of colonialism have their repercussions on the cultural plane. In literature, for example, there is relative over-production. From being a reply on a minor scale to the dominating power, the literature produced by natives becomes differentiated and makes itself into a will to particularism. The intelligentsia, which during the period of repression was essentially a consuming public, now themselves become producers. This literature at first chooses to confine itself to the tragic and poetic style; but later on novels, short stories and essays are attempted. It is as if a kind of internal organisation or law of expression existed which wills that poetic expression become less frequent in proportion as the objectives and the methods of the struggle for liberation become more precise. Themes are completely altered; in fact, we find less and less of bitter, hopeless recrimination and less also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which on the whole serves to reassure the occupying power. The colonialists have in former times encouraged these modes of expression and made their existence possible. Stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing conditions and passions which find their outlet in expression are in fact assimilated by the occupying power in a cathartic process. To aid such processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatisation and to clear the atmosphere. But such a situation can only be transitory. In fact, the progress of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual. The continued cohesion of the people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go farther than his cry of protest. The lament first makes the indictment; then it makes an appeal. In the period that follows, the words of command are heard. The crystallisation of the national consciousness will both disrupt literary styles and themes, and also create a completely new public. While at the beginning the native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor, whether with the intention of charming him or of denouncing him through ethnical or subjectivist means, now the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own people.