Israeli labor laws will apply to workers in Palestinian territories, the High Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday, accepting the petition of West Bank Palestinians against their Israeli employers.

Will gets it right.

So. Two steps  forward. And one step back: A West Bank peace concert for supporters of a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel has been called off because of security concerns, the organizer said late Thursday.

Is still one step forward.

Since Amis has been discussed on this blog, I should point you to his letter to Alibhai-Brown:

When you write that I am “with the beasts” on Islamic questions, it is because you’ve been listening, rather dreamily perhaps, to Professor Terry Eagleton. Now Eagleton, Yasmin, has a chair at Manchester University, where I have recently taken up an enjoyable post, and he is a man of a redundant but familiar type: an ideological relict, unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx. More remarkably, he combines a cruising hostility with an almost neurotic indifference to truth; on the matter of checking his facts, he is, to be frank, an embarrassment to the academic profession. But his human need is simple enough: he wants attention to be paid to his self-righteousness – righteousness being his particular brand of vanity.

It is a dull business, correcting Eagleton’s distortions, but this is the work he is obliging me to do. The anti-Muslim measures he says I “advocated” I merely adumbrated, not “in an essay” (”he wrote”, “wrote Amis” – each of these is an untruth), but in a long interview with the press. It was a thought experiment, or a mood experiment, and the remarks were preceded by the following: “There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say… [etc, etc].” I felt that urge, for a day or two. My mood, I admit, was bleak – how I longed, Yasmin, for your soothing hand on my brow! It was, in its way, one of the bitterest moments, one of the moments of wormwood, in the strange tale that began five years earlier, in September 2001.

The press interview took place in the immediate aftermath of the foiled plot (August 2006) to obliterate 10 commercial jets with explosives put together in transit. Which would have resulted in the deaths of another 3,000 random Westerners, the majority of them women and children (these were summer flights across the North Atlantic). Human beings, born of women, caressed such thoughts in their minds.

There were two additional depressants. At least one of the alleged would-be mass murderers had taken the trouble to convert to Islam, suggesting that the exterminatory virus was about to mutate, like bird flu. And I’m sure you remember, Yasmin, that passengers on this route were suddenly forbidden to take books on the eight-hour flight – a resonant symbolic victory for the forces of ignorance, humourlessness, literalism, boredom and misery.

Anyway, the mood, the retaliatory “urge” soon evaporated, and I went back to feeling that we must, of course, build all the bridges we can between ourselves and the Muslim majority, which we know to be moderate. Moderate, and mute. The quietism is perhaps no mystery. In 15th-century Spain, not many people, I imagine, were proclaiming that the Inquisition had gone too far. The extremists, for now, have the monopoly of violence, intimidation, and self-righteousness. Meanwhile, I don’t want to stripsearch you, Yasmin, or do anything else that would trouble or even momentarily surprise your dignity, or that of any other eirenic Muslim.

Via comment by the T of the G

Not a Nobel Peace Prize winner…

Stompin Tom Connors

Comment is premature, perhaps, because unlike Johann Hari, I haven’t read Naomi Klien’s “The Shock Doctrine” yet so I can’t tell whether this following paragraph from his review is an accurate reflection of what she has written or if it is his elaboration of a thesis he is in fundamental agreement with. Regardless of which, the analysis of the ’shock doctrine’ in relation to post-Apartheid South Africa was, well, pretty shocking:

“As the people of South Africa were fighting the last battles against Apartheid, the successor ANC was forced to haggle with the IMF and World Bank for their loans. The conditions? Ditch all the social protections included in your Freedom Charter, and leave the economic structures of Apartheid in place.”

It was this last expression that annoyed me because I think it’s intended to sound vaguely Marxist but it’s anything but, as far as one can tell from the analysis put forth here. For instance, by the ‘economic structures of Apartheid’ do Klein/Hari mean simply capitalism? If so, there’s two points here:

1) South Africa was certainly capitalist - and it also practiced Apartheid. But not only can the two not be fused together in this lazy-assed way, describing a basically capitalist system in this fashion ignores the manner in which Apartheid radically circumscribed two basic elements essential to the operation of any properly-functioning capitalist economy - trade and the free movement of labour. Any analysis of the collapse of apartheid should take surely take account of this? At least it should if it is an analysis that has any roots in Marxism.

2) A reading of the section of the Freedom Charter that deals with economics reveals an essentially Old Labourish, Clause Four sort of doctrine. The Soviet model, in other words. Post-apartheid it was obvious to anyone who had been paying attention that this was never going to serve as an economic model for the new South Africa. This, as anyone with any sense of economic history understands, was due to the (then very recent) collapse of the Soviet model.

It is certainly not my purpose to defend the IMF. The policy of ’shock therapy’ fails to take account of an elementary fact of economic history, which is that the Western powers, whilst able to withstand the pressures of international competition as matured industrial economies, enjoyed a period of protection whilst they were still developing. But if neither Klein or Hari can rise above this lazy stuff about how sinister the IMF is with this vague yet all-inclusive condemnation of ‘neo-liberalism’, I was left wondering if Chris Dillow might have a point when he argued that this is the state the left gets itself into when it abandons Marxism. No alternatives, no understanding of capitalism as a system that governs the lives of both workers and bosses and politicians - just a vague lament that the reason Bad Things happen is because Bad People are in charge.

Jura thinks Gore’s win is bollocks but he’s more troubled by the following:

In yesterday’s Guardian, David Adam reported on a court case brought by political activist and Kent school governor Stewart Dimmock, who objects to the government’s plan to show Gore’s film in secondary schools. The judge, Mr Justice Barton, refused to block the move, but criticised the film, and demanded that when it is presented in schools, the Department of Children, Schools and Families should make it clear that the film is not an impartial analysis of climate science. My own view is that An Inconvenient Truth is based largely on scientific fact, but this is embellished and distorted in the service of a personal political agenda. In the past I’ve objected to taxpayers’ money being spent on feeding this propaganda to British school students. I now accept that this battle is lost, and advocate that the film be accompanied by teacher-produced discussion notes that put Al Gore’s contribution to the climate change debate into political context.

The judge, I think, was right. But what text or film peddled by tax-funded schools to whatever nation’s children is not equally dubious? Try reading a U.S. high school civics book sometime and see if you don’t come away feeling that milk-and-cookies propaganda is not what it amounts to. P.J. O’Rourke, in his funny years, memorably flipped through one: “What U.S. president overcame a handicap to bravely lead our nation through one of its darkest hours?” P.J.: “Surprisingly, the answer wasn’t Ronald Reagan, his handicap being Nancy.”

Also, what Nobel laureate hasn’t overdone things a bit in light of a “personal political agenda”? A campaign undertaken with enough monomaniacal passion to qualify as a “crusade” — which is what Oslo typically honors — is surely driven by a personal political agenda. The 1997 Peace Prize recipient was a woman named Jody Williams. She won it for her relentless efforts to get land mines banned internationally. Question: Is a woman who devotes her life singularly to seeing a devastating and outmoded weapon enter the dustbin of history not putting top priority on something that is arguably not the most urgent crisis facing humanity? (AIDS kills more people per annum than land mines do.) Of course she is. Do I think global warming is a greater threat than the collected forces of theocratic fascism? No, I don’t.

But nor do I think that anyone who agrees with me in waging as merciless a war against Al Qaeda and company gives a good damn about a public relations bauble tied to “awareness” and “consciousness-raising.” Gore did what Nobel clearly prefers, so why not let him have his prize? Given the committee’s track record, can’t you think of other possible winners who would have made once again a complete farce of the whole proceeding?

You’ve no doubt heard that the former next president of the United States has been awarded a half share in this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The other recipient is the entire UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

I congratulate Rajendra Pachauri and his IPCC colleagues on this well-deserved recognition of their invaluable work. I hope that the award of the Nobel peace prize emboldens the panel, and helps them overcome political interference in their work from those who would water down their recommendations and prevent scientists from airing issues such as polar ice dynamics.

But Al Gore? A Nobel Prize? I do hope this doesn’t presage a return to the days when politicians such as Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter won the peace prize for services to war and gross political incompetence.

In recent years the recipients of the Nobel peace prize have been truly worthy of the honour. With laureates such as Muhammad Yunus and the Graneen Bank, Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency, Wangari Maathai, Shirin Ebadi and others, the peace prize looked to be salvaging some credibility.

It didn’t last long.

Christopher Hitchens was partially right:

“On Oct. 12, we shall hear again from Oslo, and I will be very surprised indeed if the peace prize is not awarded to Albert Gore Jr. (Don’t ask what a campaign against global warming has done for “peace”; that would be like asking what Mother Teresa or Henry Kissinger had ever done to reduce global conflict. The impression is the main thing.)

So, and if I am right, the former vice president will then complete a year in which An Inconvenient Truth has been awarded an Oscar and he has authored a best seller. Roll it round your tongue again: an Oscar, a best seller, and a Nobel Prize in the space of 12 months or so. Not bad.”

When Hitchens writes in brackets, it often means that he hasn’t thought through the sentence in question, and in this case fails to see the connection between environmental degradation and conflict over natural resources. But I agree with him that in our celebrity age impression is the main thing. Substance is secondary.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee says that Gore is “… probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.” This statement is almost as hyperbolic as Gore’s film. One cannot deny that Gore has raised the profile of climate change, but in the view of many – and not only climate-change denying flat earthers – the way in which he has presented the subject is inimical to rational debate.

Gore’s film may contain a number of scientific errors and exaggerations, but the man is passionate about the environment, and so that makes it all right, say many environmentalists. Well, no it isn’t, actually. This is not a rhetorical debate about ultimately inconsequential political matters. To treat it as such is an insult to the intelligence of the general public, and the legion of scientists working on climate change and its consequences.

In yesterday’s Guardian, David Adam reported on a court case brought by political activist and Kent school governor Stewart Dimmock, who objects to the government’s plan to show Gore’s film in secondary schools. The judge, Mr Justice Barton, refused to block the move, but criticised the film, and demanded that when it is presented in schools, the Department of Children, Schools and Families should make it clear that the film is not an impartial analysis of climate science.

My own view is that An Inconvenient Truth is based largely on scientific fact, but this is embellished and distorted in the service of a personal political agenda. In the past I’ve objected to taxpayers’ money being spent on feeding this propaganda to British school students. I now accept that this battle is lost, and advocate that the film be accompanied by teacher-produced discussion notes that put Al Gore’s contribution to the climate change debate into political context.

China joins UN censure of Burmese regime

…but…methinks the military-industrial complex may have the Olympics in mind… still, could be the beginning of the beginning of the end for the client junta.

So… Hitchens was correct.

See. 

Comrade Weiss contemplates the “macabre allure” of that queen of crazy, evil bitches, that cabaret act gone awry, that drag queen impersonating a fascist, the anti-matter of sensationalism herself, Anne Coulter:  “She could elope with John Walker Lindh in Vegas and bomb an abortion clinic on the way home and the public outrage would only ever register as the idiom of the brain-dead sitcom: That’s our Ann!”

Which see.  And which see.

Nicholas von Hoffman will probably go to his grave still known as the journalist who predicted in 2001 a complete rout in Afghanistan — by the Taliban. To borrow Trotsky’s animadversion on Dwight Macdonald, everyone has the right to be stupid, by von Hoffman abuses the privilege.

His latest Nation column, “Whose Genocide Counts?“, is more like a sub-literate raspberry directed at the congressmen of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who yesterday voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide:

What’s next? A resolution condemning Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and the slaughter visited on the Egyptians at the Battle of the Pyramids? And how about a little legislative attention for the Romans killed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Better look into that one, too, guys. Do you think that the House Foreign Affairs Committee might, after it has righted any number of ancient wrongs, look into what the Sam Hill is going on now? This very committee has a direct responsibility for the death of 600,000 Iraqis and the flight of some 2 million more from their homes. Does that bear a little looking into? While they are putting the genocide label on others, would the gentlemen and gentleladies of the committee consider putting some sort of label on themselves?

More interesting questions: Does France today make it a crime to acknowledge or publish works about Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt? Is there a massive state-funded project underway attempting to get classicists to airbrush Hannibal’s depredations from the historical record?

Since von Hoffman segues so effortlessly from Bonaparte to Baghdad, it’s worth pointing out that the Left’s favorite Mideast historian is Juan Cole, lately the author of Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East, which parlays the French general’s 19th century adventurism into a cautionary tale about U.S. efforts in Iraq.

And what of those efforts? According to the above, the same committee that now censures the vanished Ottoman Empire bears a “direct responsibility for the death of 600,000 Iraqis and the flight of some 2 million more.” If only Al Qaeda or the Mahdi Army had thundered and grumbled about the Tehcir Law, then perhaps The Nation might lay some direct responsibility at their feet!

Of course, we’re now told of another dread “lobby” that has wielded its undue influence to get cynical congressmen to alienate Turkey: “Many persons of Armenian extraction live in vote-rich California,” writes von Hoffman, “which explains why these politicians have flung themselves into the study of bygone events. Once again the pander bear stalks the land.”

There are exactly 10 California representatives on the committee, and the resolution was passed 27-21, leaving the other 17 either big fans of System of a Down or hostages to conscience.

And consider von Hoffman’s citation of Committee chairman Tom Lantos, who:

hit it on the head when he said, “We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people…against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price.

Von Hoffman is concerned for the U.S. troops fighting, in an all-volunteer military, a war commissioned by the very politicos said to be directly responsible for a human catastrophe. Left to the imagination is what von Hoffman thinks of the responsibility borne by those troops he suddenly can’t bear to see put in harm’s way for so many dead and displaced Iraqis. But the moral logic here is as simple as it is bankrupt: Turkey might now assault our soldiers and this is all the fault of rich Armenians and incumbents! Von Hoffman could teach Bashar al-Assad’s correspondence course in propaganda.

Just out of curiosity, and because a Turkish invasion of Kurdistan seems imminent, what responsibility would the rogue Kemalist military bear for killing Kurds under the pretext of hunting the PKK? What responsibility does Abdullah Gul bear for imprisoning the son of murdered journalist Hrant Drink for the crime of re-publishing his father’s articles about the Armenian Genocide?

Looks like Armenian-Jewish solidarity is stronger than ever. We’ve both got evil, heaving lobbies in Washington responsible for all the trouble in the world.

Gaining ground in the first. Slowly winning the second. Losing the third.

Michael Den Tandt explains why. Elaboration here.