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Category: Middle-East (Page 2 of 2)

Lost causes

22.10.2017 /

There are at least two interesting aspects of Naomi Alderman’s what-if novel The Power. One is that if women, somehow or other, miraculously gain the upper hand and get used to calling the shots, they will be no better, though possibly not much worse, than men are now.

The other is that this novel is generally referred to as a “speculative fiction dystopia”. But, as the author writes in a Guardian article  “Nothing happens to men in the novel – I explain carefully to interviewers – that is not happening to a woman in our world today. So is it dystopian? Well. Only if you’re a man.”

In other words: since it is currently happening to women, we are living in a dystopia.

True, it does not happen to all women, and obviously it does not happen to Stephen Pinker. But it does happen to many more women than we care to think of. Moreover, it happens to children. In fact, it happens to just about everyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I want a certain tract of land, and you just happen to have been living there since you were born, but I am rich and/or powerful, whereas you are just somebody’s lost cause, you’d better scuttle away as fast as you can.

Lost causes are scattered over the landscape like the innumerable heaps of dead bodies we see on the news. Even if Stephen Pinker appears undeterred in his faith in humanity and progress, the number of displaced persons is the highest ever recorded and rising, according to the UN. Being displaced means, more often than not, living in a squalid desert refugee camp, courtesy of some recalcitrant donor. Mind you: Living there for years. No hope.

Personally, I suspect that Mr Pinker must have been suffering from attacks of temporary insanity when he wrote his feel-good nonsense. His line of thinking has annoyed me immensely over the years and has caused no end of harm, I believe. As a psychologist, he is of course entitled to try to help his clients feel better, but that is no excuse for telling the general public that there is no need to worry. Just sit back, relax, be happy.

Yes, I am very familiar with the statistics of the UNDP, according to which “absolute poverty” has declined dramatically, as has infant mortality. Please note, however, that the UNDP term “absolute poverty” is defined as roughly < 1 USD. I ask you: try to live on 10 USD a day or even 20 USD a day, and see what you think of it.

Back to the bag of lost causes, which Mr Pinker seems to have forgotten: In it, we find most of the population of Yemen, most of the population of Afghanistan, most of the population of Syria, the entire population of Palestine, both Sudans, most of the people still trying to eke out a living in Chad and Mali which are becoming increasingly uninhabitable, … I could go on, of course, interminably. But out of respect for the author of The Power, I wish to specifically mention the countless women in India and elsewhere who are subjected to acid attacks or gang rape.

The thought of such senseless cruelty to defenseless women lights up my very worst visceral instincts and reminds me that if I had power, the kind of power possessed by the women in Naomi Alderman’s novel, I would indeed use and abuse it.

That is what happens when you hand out weapons to a flock of tattered, dejected rebels. They will use and abuse them. Here, there or anywhere, inflamed and outraged by the injustice they and their people have been subjected to, they will suddenly feel, like a rush of adrenalin, like divine intervention, a surge of power in their veins. And they will kill without remorse. As would I, if I were where they are.

But I am not. I am safe and sound, far away from it all. But even people like me or like Stephen Pinker, sometimes cross the line: The leaders of ISIS (now defeated, or so they say) were once wealthy, educated and basically law-abiding men. What hit them was rage against the injustice of it all. With money and financial contacts, they could purchase arms and that, alone, gave them immense power.

In addition to those who abuse power because they have a just, lost cause to pursue, there are a lot of psychopaths, so, Mr Pinker, I see no reason to just relax and be happy.

The rat is out of the hole

28.06.2017 /

You may have heard – and then again, you may not have – that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt have issued an ultimatum against Qatar, the 13 so-called “demands” the country must meet within ten days, “or else”.

If Qatar meets the demands, it will have ceased to be a state: It will merely be a vassal of Saudi Arabia, since what is demanded is in reality that the country surrenders its sovereignty.

It all started with an economic and diplomatic blockade launched in the wake of the US emperor’s visit to Saudi Arabia, and since the Saudis evidently feel confident about US support, goodness knows where it will end. For that very same reason – i.e. US support – nobody even mentions this issue around here. In Europe you don’t talk back to the US! Not in this country, not in any European country, least of all in the UK.

Now I was brought up with the BBC. I feel warmth and gratitude to the BBC. I know the names of many of their foreign correspondents. I download BBC podcasts and listen to them. But let us not delude ourselves: BBC is a British broadcasting company, and Britain is very cosy with the USA. As for the USA, well, need I remind you …? No, I won’t remind you, because that would require not a website but many tomes of modern history. However, take a look at Reporters without borders. If you click the map you will see that the USA ranks no higher than 43 out of 180 states as far as freedom of the press is concerned.

My country is also uncomfortably cosy with the USA, if not quite as cosy as the UK, but certainly cosy enough for its national broadcasting company to refrain from ever quoting Al Jazeera. Yet, I suspect that all good foreign correspondents – be they from my country or from the BBC – consult Al Jazeera more than almost any other outlet, at least about Middle East issues. Why? Because Al Jazeera is good, very good! And they are not bound by the US Patriot Act.

One of the 13 “demands” is that Qatar close down Al Jazeera. Now I don’t know whether you watch Al Jazeera, but what I do know is that whether you do or don’t, the news outlet will have considerable impact on what is revealed to you about world affairs. If it were not for Al Jazeera, the US and the UK could tell their side of the story, and nobody would know the difference.

I wish to quote another Guardian article of today (also quoted, by the way, by Al Jazeera):  Asked whether the closure of al-Jazeera was a reasonable demand, the UAE envoy said:

We do not claim to have press freedom. We do not promote the idea of press freedom. What we talk about is responsibility in speech.

I ask you, could any quote be clearer?

Good guys?

07.08.2016 /

Once, very many years ago, I had the temerity to argue a point of law with a public prosecutor. I say ‘temerity’, for one thing because he was a prominent public prosecutor whom I held in awe. More importantly, though, I knew nothing of law, and was arguing merely on the basis of what I thought was ‘just’. I thought, back then, that I knew the difference between justice and injustice.

He kindly listened to me for a few minutes and then suddenly flared: “Do you really imagine that any of this is about ‘justice’!”

I shall never forget that, not least since I have since learnt that my interlocutor was a man with an acute sense of justice.

For some years now, the world has been watching the painstaking deletion of what was once a proud and highly civilised nation: Syria. We have witnessed in dismay (or looked away ) as Syrians were starved, executed, tortured, poisoned or exterminated in other ways day after day, month after month, year after year. How many years has this been going on now?

Where are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? Do you see the dividing line between justice and injustice in this particular picture? I don’t.

Let’s say that Assad is a callous dictator. There is certainly no doubt that the Syrian authorities cracked down viciously on peaceful demonstrators back when it all started. The viciousness stunned us all, whereas the demonstrators insisted in going to their death unarmed.

I remember how, reading the paper over a coffee break at work, I felt tears welling to my eyes and, looking up, met the equally tearful eye of my colleague, who said – and I nodded – “surely, the Syrians must be the bravest people on earth!”

Do you remember? Demonstrating was suicidal in Syria, yet thousands and thousands did. Why? Why did they insist on demonstrating knowing that they would be shot at and that no demonstrating could force the authorities to satisfy their demands. What was their strategy?

Of course I don’t know, but maybe in a decade or four, we will learn that indications had been given to opposition leaders that certain governments would be interested in intervening, directly or indirectly, in the event of a Syrian debacle.

Meanwhile, let us look at the opposition. Assad is the press’s pet hate these days. Assad’s forces have engaged in chlorine warfare, we read, and there is every reason to suspect that the past Sarin massacres were perpetrated by ‘him’. I repeat: I have no sympathy with Assad, but what on earth can you say in the defence of the “opposition forces” who are holding the population hostage?! Do you really imagine that they want ‘democracy’? Do you really think, still, after all these years, that these guys are the good guys? Grow up: It’s not as though with Assad gone, the good guys will have their day.

However, that does not mean that there are not millions of honest and, not least, kind, brave and generous Syrians out there, most of them homeless, of course, like the Jews of old, and more recently, the Palestinians.

God help us for the mess we have all made of the Middle East!

The kids

25.07.2016 /

And now they are blowing up Germans!

When western kids are frustrated, they tend to go on drugs or destroy themselves some other way. The past couple of weeks’ young killers in Germany seem to be of a different metal.

Having somehow survived the ordeal of getting to Europe, partly by sea, trekking through woods, crossing fences, evading border guards and paranoid police officers lurking at every turn of the road, with little or no money, being told everywhere, “we don’t want you here!” must have been almost like escaping from a Nazi concentration camp, the difference being that there is no “home” waiting for them if they make it through the barbed wire.

No “welcome!”, no celebration of their heroic survival awaits them. They have made the desperate journey only to find that they will be put on a plane back to their starting point, which for most of them is just another concentration camp, at least in practical terms.

Far from condoning their massacres, for which I blame the ISIS, regardless of whether ISIS actually orchestrated the acts, I cannot help understanding the power of their despair. Look at them! They are hardly more than kids. Until war blocked out the sun over Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, to all appearances for ever, these kids watched western TV series about happy families in pretty towns where “poverty” meant not owning the latest four-wheel-drive sedan. No wonder they were sure that with hard work, they would do well here.

How could they possibly understand what we think is obvious: If you have a passport from a Schengen country, fine, you may try your luck here. If not, tough luck, rules are rules, and we all have to follow the rules, don’t we. Next.

I know how much effort it cost us all, last winter, to dismiss thoughts of the thousands and thousands of refugees from the Middle East who had sold and/or left everything and who were shivering under a bush somewhere in the dark outskirts of the Schengen area.

Most of them do not kill! Those who do, still do not kill a fraction of all the people who get killed in traffic accidents. But the situation is indeed serious and tragic for us all.

I would like to add that the number of European victims of terrorism is only a infinitessimal fraction of Middle Eastern victims of terrorism. So if we feel traumatised, how do they feel?

Even in Israel

17.04.2016 /

I would like to stress that only 57 percent of the respondents of an Israeli survey found that it was OK to shoot and kill an incapacitated Palestinian lying on the ground. The other 43 per cent found that it was not OK at all, and that the soldier who did the killing, the executing, I should say, should be punished, even though the Palestinian in question had actually attacked him with an axe.

Moreover, it has come to my attention that there are even some Israeli soldiers who have taken the brave step of publishing, anonymously, of course, what they think of such actions in Breaking the Silence.

I also happen to know for certain that not all Israelis think it is OK to forcibly evict people from East Jerusalem, by literally dragging them out of their houses, just because they happen to belong to a different “race”. Not all Israelis think it’s OK to base political geography on 2000 year old legend, or even on vindictiveness (understandable as  rancour may be) not least since the victim, the Palestinians, had nothing to do with the injustice Jews have had to endure in Europe for centuries.

Had we all insisted on our country’s retaking the land it had at any given point of time (presumably when our country was at it’s apogee, which might not coincide with the apogee of other countries) none of us would be where we are – assuming we had been anywhere at all; we would probably all have killed each other off a long time ago.

Maybe that would have been for the best, and even pleasing to the fierce Jewish God, because then there would have been no desperate poverty, and no bands of heavily armed barbarians shattering cities and kidnapping schools of little girls, and then we wouldn’t have managed to exterminate so many other other species.

But again I repeat: Not all Israelis condone what I consider a still ongoing genocide. Certainly, all American Jews don’t either. In fact, I believe only a minority of American Jews condone Israel’s barbaric treatment of Palestinians. I think it is very important to bear this in mind, not least now when so many people (not least many Palestinians) are losing faith in the feasibility of a two-state solution.

Bedtime story

17.11.2015 /

Once upon a time, dear Reader, when your grandparents were still in diapers, there was a gigantic monster with three heads. He lived far, far away in a land where the sun never rises and the sky is always pink. When he was at home, he would mostly lie on his back, scratching his stomach, but when he was hungry, he would go off and find a pretty maiden to eat.

He lived so far away that your grandparents would never have heard of him at all, if it were not for the fact that every once in a while, when he ran out of pretty maidens to eat, he would cross the oceans, mountains and valleys and stride into one of the villages where the blue people lived. (He particularly liked blue maidens.) And he would start picking off pretty maidens there.

Naturally, the villagers were not pleased and the maidens would even threaten to run away. Something had to be done. So eventually, valiant farmer’s sons and bricklayers and cooks and blacksmiths rallied forth with all their axes and trowels and filleting knives and hammers and what-have-you-s and somehow they were able to topple the monster and cut his heads off. Yes, every single head.

You can imagine how they danced for joy, how they revelled! There was only one small problem: While they were dancing and laughing and singing, the monster got up and went to join them. You see, for every head they had cut off, he had grown three. Moreover, as you can imagine, he was very angry.

At the time, a skinny wisp of a computer nerd was living in the village. Yes, they had computers back then, and nerds, too. Anyway, this nerd suggested to the terrified revellers that they should serve the monster lots of their cakes and ice-cream, and banana-splits and coconut shake and all the other delicious things people used to enjoy until they decided they would rather look young till they died.

The terrified revellers were so terrified they forgot, for a moment, to be valiant, so they did exactly what the nerd suggested. And the nerd let the monster play World of Warcraft on his shale tablet.

Let me tell you: The monster particularly liked the coconut shake. And he absolutely loved World of Warcraft. So he sat there, eating and eating, never for a moment thinking about pretty maidens, playing World of Warcraft till all the revellers had fallen asleep.

I wish I could tell you that he burst in the end, like the astronomer Tycho Brahe. But he didn’t. As far as I know, he is still there, with his nine oversized heads all eating coconut shake and angel cake. But at least the pretty maidens need not fear him any more, and eventually, I expect, arteriosclerosis will get the better of him.

With that, I ask you to please remember to brush your teeth.

 

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