Mick Hartley

The Iranian Charade

Melanie Phillips has a couple of posts on the Iranian Charade, the "disgusting abdication of moral responsibility being displayed by Europe over Iran's race to acquire nuclear weapons" (doesn't mince her words, Melanie). After quoting Michael Ledeen and his contemptuous dismissal of European "appeasement", she concludes:

But what way might Bush actually find? Ledeen reiterates the need to help defeat the mullocracy in Tehran. But that might well take too long -- if it ever happens anyway. So if Bush isn't going to wait for Iran to present him with the bomb tied up in blue ribbon, what's he going to do? Does he actually have a strategy? Or is he, like Europe, just waiting for something to turn up?

So what does she propose as an alternative to this disgusting abdication of moral responsibility? An invasion, on the lines of Iraq, to overthrow the mullahs? No one thinks that would be anything less than disastrous. Surgical strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities? It's been often enough pointed out that this is almost certainly not possible: for a start it's inconceivable that the Iranians will not have anticipated this and spread their facilities accordingly. Ledeen believes that the craven Europeans are quite prepared for Iran to join the nuclear club. So, as it happens, are some Israelis. The only other option is to press for sanctions, via a Security Council resolution, but that wouldn't make it past Russia or new friend China.

For the moment the way it's being played, with the European three playing good cops to the American bad cop, is about as promising an approach as we can hope for. For sure Iran is being cynical about the negotiations, but that doesn't mean we should stop talking to them.

Update: it's gratifying to see the level of maturity that the Iranians are demonstrating in their diplomacy:

A top Iranian official has claimed a "great victory" over the US after the UN said it would not punish Iran's nuclear activities with sanctions.

Hassan Rohani said Iran would never give up its right to nuclear power.

He stressed its freeze in uranium enrichment was only temporary during talks with European countries.

The UN atomic agency IAEA has welcomed Iran's offer to freeze enrichment in a statement on Monday that did not mention any threat of future sanctions.

Washington had been pushing for Iran to be censured by the UN Security Council.

Mr Rohani said the "whole world had turned down America's calls".

"We have proved that, in an international institution, we are capable of isolating the US. And that is a great victory," Mr Rohani said.

He added that the US representative at the IAEA meeting in Vienna "was enraged and in tears, and everybody said that the Americans had failed and we had won".

The Next Ceausescu

According to this article in Newsweek, dear leader Kim Jong-Il is obsessed by the possibility that he'll meet the same fate as Ceausescu (via The Marmot's Hole):

For a full week in early 1990, Kim forced North Korean officials to watch multiple video showings of Ceausescu's bloody death at the hands of an angry mob and warned his colleagues of the dangers of losing control. One defector told Hagiwara that he recalled Kim obsessively repeating, "We will be killed by the people." [...]

For Kim, the next few months could be critical. Domestically, he must deal with the short-term fallout from the limited economic reforms he introduced two years ago. A recent report by the World Food Program states that they've caused even more problems for North Korea's people. By cutting state subsidies and freeing prices, Kim has sent inflation through the roof—making basic foodstuffs catastrophically expensive. Says one recent North Korean defector: "One third of the population can eat rice and meat soup. One third can manage to eat corn. And one third is waiting to die with water-thin porridge."

Electoral Fraud

The Telegraph has some details from Ukraine:

It was 5.30pm on election day in Ukraine when the thugs in masks arrived armed with rubber truncheons.

Vitaly Kizima, an election monitor at Zhovtneve in Ukraine's Sumy region, watched in horror as 30 men in tracksuits stormed into the village polling station.

"They started to beat voters and election officials, trying to push through towards the ballot boxes," he told The Telegraph.

"People's faces were cut from blows to the head. There was blood all over."

The thugs - believed to be loyal to the pro-Russian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich from his stronghold, Donetsk - were repulsed only when locals pushed them back and a policeman fired warning shots.

The catalogue of abuses in the contest between Mr Yanukovich, the prime minister, and his opponent, the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, is growing longer by the day. [...]

Maya Syta, a journalist working at polling station 73 in a Kiev suburb, witnessed ballot papers destroyed with acid poured into a ballot box. "The officials were taking them out of the box and they couldn't understand why they were wet," she said.

"Then I saw they started to blacken and disintegrate as if they were burning. Two ballots were wrapped up into a tube with a yellow liquid inside. After a few moments they were completely eaten up."

In her polling station, 26 ballots were destroyed and had to be invalidated. Six other cases were recorded of ballots destroyed by acid.

The most common trick was "carousel" voting, in which busloads of Yanukovich supporters simply drove from one polling station to another casting multiple false absentee ballots.

In another brazen fraud recorded by observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, voters were given pens filled with ink that disappeared, leaving ballots unmarked and invalid. [...]

Diana Dutsyk, a member of Mr Yushchenko's campaign team, claimed that "dead souls" - late citizens' ballots used by imposters - were also used to augment his opponent's share of the vote.

And late last week Mr Yushchenko's headquarters released an audio recording in which senior members of Mr Yanukovich's campaign team were allegedly caught red-handed discussing how to fix the election result.

In the telephone conversation, a member of the team can be heard saying that he ordered a local election commission to disqualify votes. [...]

"The openness and cynicism of the manipulation was unprecedented," said Olexander Chernenko of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU), an American-funded organisation that has monitored elections for more than a decade.

About 11,000 complaints have been lodged so far with regional courts.

Arab Supremacism

James Smith of the Aegis Trust argues that the crisis in Darfur has its roots in racism; an Arab supremacist ideology going back decades.

Since independence from the British, a minority of Sudan’s three elite Arab tribes have ruled by excluding other groups — institutional racism on a grand scale that today is driving unimaginable destruction. Aerial support for the marauding hordes has been a hallmark of the crisis. More than half of the refugees I met told me this now familiar story.

“First the Antonovs bombed our villages. As we fled, the Janjawid arrived on horseback and started shooting. They were backed up by government soldiers in motor vehicles.”

Countless women had been raped listening to racist insults. The tears in their eyes and the orphaned children with their torn limbs haunt me. UN officials argue that to intervene may make matters worse. Maybe they are right, but why does the international community drag its feet so slowly and reluctantly over Darfur?

On November 9 the Sudanese Government signed the “Abuja Protocols” with the Darfur rebels. This recommitted all parties to the ceasefire of April 8, and demanded that the Government end “hostile flights” over Darfur. Before the end of the month helicopter gunships were flattening villages and villagers were being gunned down.

On November 19 the UN Security Council had a chance to show its anger and stop this impunity. Instead, in its latest resolution on Sudan it reduced itself to expressions of “serious concern”. Contrast that with the French and UN response to the conflict in the Ivory Coast. Nine French peacekeepers were killed in a bombing raid by the Ivory Coast’s air force. The same day the French destroyed the entire Ivorian air force on the tarmac. The French then tabled a resolution passed unanimously at the UN that would impose an immediate arms embargo on the Ivory Coast.

All of which demonstrates that Lt-Gen Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian former head of the UN peacekeeping force, was right. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he said, calling on the UN for a mandate to stop genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

As with Rwanda, though, the will does not seem to extend to Darfur, where so far 100,000 black Africans have been killed in the genocide. The death toll may even be as high as 250,000, and still there is no protection for the vulnerable.

“The Sudanese Government knows it’s off the hook,” a representative of the rebels informs me. “Their officials told me ‘the international community is just not interested in Darfur any more’.”

Fully Formed

I wouldn't want this normblog post about a John Prine song to pass without mentioning what a brilliant debut Prine made with his first eponymous album. In an era when Country music was a bastion of reaction against the counter-culture and all things un-American, Prine was a welcome voice from the left-liberal side. In fact he was bracketed into the singer/songwriter category at first - even as the new Dylan - but gradually eased himself into the area of quirky left-field Country. Or maybe the definition of Country just got broader. Whatever, his first effort was his best. Not that he ever produced rubbish (this is good), but he was one of those artists who arrived fully formed, and produced a masterpiece at the start of his career which he never improved on.

There's a whole world of artists like that floating round the edges of Country music. Guy Clark with Old #1: Jesse Winchester: JJ Cale . Minor artists I'd suppose you'd call them. The history of American music's full of 'em.

Freedomism

In an instructive article in the Observer, Frances Stonor Saunders (author of "Who Paid the Piper", about the cultural cold war) wonders what use intellectuals are:

Last week came an announcement from the University of London's Birkbeck College that it intends to establish a centre for public intellectuals. Its international director is to be Professor Slavoj Zizek. In case you haven't heard of this 'world-renowned public intellectual', Zizek has published more than 50 books 'on topics ranging from philosophy and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, to theology, film, opera and politics'.

He was also a candidate for the presidency of his native Slovenia in the first democratic elections after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1990. 'Political issues are too serious to be left only to politicians,' says Zizek. 'We need intellectuals - not to make decisions, but to make clear what the issues are about.'

We need intellectuals to do no such thing. Saunders looks back at the congress held in Paris in 1935 at which a selection of leading intellectuals led by Malraux, Gide, and Aragon, declaimed on the glories of Soviet communism. She concludes:

In many ways, we are still living out the battles of the Thirties. Fascism and communism have been replaced by Islamic fundamentalism and American freedomism (with America the less plausible enemy). Will Birkbeck's future generation of public intellectuals, once they have got over Derrida, want to explain to us which barricades to mount? Will their interventions yield a more positive legacy than their predecessors? Or should they, perhaps, stick to Derrida after all?

Still living out the battles of the thirties is all too true as far as Zizek is concerned: he's still celebrating the glories of Leninist freedom over the false consciousness of bourgeois freedom. American freedomism though? Hmm.....sounds grim.

Afghan Treasures

From AFP via the Lebanon Daily Star:

Ivory statues, Buddhist carvings, gold coins and thousands of other precious objects from the Kabul Museum feared stolen or destroyed under Soviet occupation and Taliban rule have been found, an American archaeologist said last week.

Packed in toilet paper and sawdust in iron safes and tin boxes, the treasure trove of 5,000 years of Afghan history had been hidden 25 years ago by museum staff in the Kabul presidential palace and other places, said National Geographic fellow Fredrik Hiebert.

"The majority of the items that were on display in the old Kabul Museum -- and that is the masterpieces -- are preserved," Hiebert told AFP by telephone from Philadelphia, where he holds a research position at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Most of the Kabul Museum's collection, which included Silk Road artifacts from China, Egypt, India, Greece and Rome besides ancient Afghanistan, disappeared following the 1979 Soviet invasion and the years of civil war that followed the 1989 Soviet withdrawal.

Statues and other artifacts considered "un-Islamic," were smashed by the Taliban after the fundamentalist Islamic militia took power in 1996.

But a total of 22,596 objects, including 2,000-year-old Bactrian gold jewelry and ornaments, ivory statues of water goddesses and Buddhist terra cotta sculptures and carvings, have been recovered in the Kabul stash.

Living with a Nuclear Iran

From Haaretz, an acceptance that despite all the bluster, and the talk of a quick strike, there's really not a lot that can be done about the prospect of a nuclear Iran except to press for regime change:

[E]ven if Israel and the U.S. had the latest and most precise intelligence, it is doubtful they could take advantage of it to mount an efficient military operation that would destroy Iran's nuclear program.

First of all, Iran's nuclear facilities are decentralized, so one air strike in the style of Israel's attack on Iraq in 1981 would not suffice. Secondly, Iran is not Iraq. It will seek its revenge; perhaps by launching missiles at Israeli population centers in an attempt to hit the nuclear reactor at Dimona, or at American bases in the Middle East, or through international terror carried out by its proxies.

It is no coincidence, therefore, that those in the U.S. who believe in the military option have stopped talking about "destroying" the Iranian nuclear program, and have begun to talk about bringing down the regime. They also know that a one-punch knock-out military option against Iran's nuclear facilities is unrealistic.

Accordingly, along with the Sisyphean attempts of European diplomacy to delay Iran's nuclear development, preparations must be made for the eventuality that within two years Iran will have nuclear capabilities. Public debate should be encouraged on the ramifications of such a development. Beyond prestige and national pride, will Iran make any real gains from its nuclear weapons?

In all likelihood, the only damage to Israel will be to its nuclear monopoly. Iran would never dare attack Israel with nuclear weapons, both because it would involve Israeli Arab and Palestinian casualties, and because according to foreign reports, Israel already has submarines with second-strike nuclear capabilities. [...]

Still, nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran will be a precedent-setting threat to international stability. It will start a chain reaction. Saudi Arabia will want them, and other countries will say that what is permitted to Iran (and North Korea) should also be permitted to them. The danger is that one day nuclear technology and fission materials may "leak" into the hands of terrorists.

Lacking intelligence information and a realistic military option (alongside Israel's refusal to discuss a nuclear-free Middle East), and in the face of American difficulty in creating an international consensus for sanctions, European diplomacy of delay is the only real chance to stop the dangerous drift.

Rhyming Sheep

Sheep at a Northumberland farm will have words sprayed on them, and will then compose poetry by, um, wandering around (via Blog of a Bookslut).

The New Iron Curtain

Anne Applebaum draws a historical parallel (via ALDaily):

Before the election, the government mobilized groups of thugs to harass voters. On the day of the election, police prevented thousands of opposition activists from voting at all. Nevertheless, when the votes were counted, it was clear that the opposition had won by a large margin. As a result, the ruling party decided to falsify the result, and declared victory. Immediately, the Russians sent their fraternal congratulations.

No, that was not a description of the presidential election that took place last Sunday in Ukraine. It was a description of the referendum that took place in Soviet-occupied communist Poland in June 1946. Although blatantly falsified, that referendum provided the spurious legitimacy that allowed Poland's Soviet-backed communist leadership to remain in power for the subsequent half-century.

But although that infamous Polish election took place nearly 60 years ago, there are good reasons why descriptions make it sound so much like last weekend in Ukraine. According to the Committee of Civic Voters, a volunteer group with branches all over Ukraine, the techniques haven't changed much in 60 years. In the Sumy region, they record, a member of the electoral commission was beaten up by unidentified thugs. At one polling station, "criminals" disrupted the voting and destroyed the ballot boxes with clubs. In Cherkassy, a polling site inspector was found dead. More "criminals" broke polling station windows and destroyed ballot boxes. In the Zaporozhye region and in Kharkov, observers saw buses transporting voters from one polling station to the next.