Saturday, September 29, 2007

9/11 Is Over

Published: September 30, 2007

Not long ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran a fake news story that began like this:


Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

“At a well-attended rally in front of his new ground zero headquarters Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11. ‘My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise,’ said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. ‘As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all.’ If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.”

Like all good satire, the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.

What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

It is not that I thought we had new enemies that day and now I don’t. Yes, in the wake of 9/11, we need new precautions, new barriers. But we also need our old habits and sense of openness. For me, the candidate of 9/12 is the one who will not only understand who our enemies are, but who we are.

Before 9/11, the world thought America’s slogan was: “Where anything is possible for anybody.” But that is not our global brand anymore. Our government has been exporting fear, not hope: “Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints.”

You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.

Roger Dow, president of the Travel Industry Association, told me that the United States has lost millions of overseas visitors since 9/11 — even though the dollar is weak and America is on sale. “Only the U.S. is losing traveler volume among major countries, which is unheard of in today’s world,” Mr. Dow said.

Total business arrivals to the United States fell by 10 percent over the 2004-5 period alone, while the number of business visitors to Europe grew by 8 percent in that time. The travel industry’s recent Discover America Partnership study concluded that “the U.S. entry process has created a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers and hurting America’s image abroad.” Those who don’t visit us, don’t know us.

I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.

Look at our infrastructure. It’s not just the bridge that fell in my hometown, Minneapolis. Fly from Zurich’s ultramodern airport to La Guardia’s dump. It is like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. I still can’t get uninterrupted cellphone service between my home in Bethesda and my office in D.C. But I recently bought a pocket cellphone at the Beijing airport and immediately called my wife in Bethesda — crystal clear.

I just attended the China clean car conference, where Chinese automakers were boasting that their 2008 cars will meet “Euro 4” — European Union — emissions standards. We used to be the gold standard. We aren’t anymore. Last July, Microsoft, fed up with American restrictions on importing brain talent, opened its newest software development center in Vancouver. That’s in Canada, folks. If Disney World can remain an open, welcoming place, with increased but invisible security, why can’t America?

We can’t afford to keep being this stupid! We have got to get our groove back. We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy. Al Qaeda is about 9/11. We are about 9/12, we are about the Fourth of July — which is why I hope that anyone who runs on the 9/11 platform gets trounced.

Lead, Follow or Move Aside

By Thomas L. Friedman

Getting our national climate regulations in order is necessary, but it will not be sufficient to move China.

China today is entering a really delicate phase on the climate-energy issue - the phase I like to call "The Wal-Mart environmental moment." I wish the same could be said of America and President Bush.

The "Wal-Mart environmental moment" starts with the C.E.O. adopting a green branding strategy as a purely defensive, public relations, marketing move. Then an accident happens - someone in the shipping department takes it seriously and comes up with a new way to package the latest product and saves $100,000. This gets the attention of the C.E.O., who turns to his P.R. adviser and says, "Well, isn't that interesting? Get me a sustainability expert. Let's do this some more."

The company then hires a sustainability officer, and he starts showing how green design, manufacturing and materials can save money in other areas. Then the really smart C.E.O.'s realize they have to become their own C.E.O. - chief energy officer - and they start demanding that energy efficiency become core to everything the company does, from how its employees travel to how its products are manufactured.

That is the transition that Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's C.E.O., has presided over in the past few years.

Last July, Mr. Scott was visiting a Wal-Mart in Las Vegas on a day when the temperature was more than 100 degrees. He happened to notice that a Wal-Mart staple - inexpensive Styrofoam coolers - were not being promoted by the store's associates. As Andrew Ruben, Wal-Mart's vice president for sustainability, told me: "Lee walked into the store and said, 'It's 105 degrees. Why aren't we selling any coolers?' The associates said, 'We don't want to sell Styrofoam coolers because of their impact on the environment.' So Lee called us afterwards and said: 'We're going to have to figure this out.' By that he meant innovation of a different kind of cooler" that doesn't come from petroleum-based Styrofoam, which is not biodegradable and usually not recycled.

Wal-Mart on Monday also announced a partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project (C.D.P.) to measure the amount of energy used to create products throughout its supply chain - many of which come from China.

Said C.D.P. Chief Executive Paul Dickinson: "Wal-Mart will encourage its suppliers to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately reduce the total carbon footprint of Wal-Mart's indirect emissions. We look forward to other global corporations following Wal-Mart's lead."

China's leadership is not where Lee Scott is yet. Chinese officials still put their highest priority on growing G.D.P. - their bottom line. But for the first time, the costs of this breakneck growth are becoming so obvious on China's air, glaciers and rivers that the leadership asked for briefings on global warming. Many Chinese mayors are looking to get clean-technology industries - like wind turbines and solar - started in their cities.

At such a key time, if the U.S. government adopted a real carbon-reducing strategy, as California and Wal-Mart have, rather than the obfuscations of the Bush team, it would have a huge impact on China and only trigger more innovation in America.

Mr. Bush will be convening his climate photo op - oops, I mean "conference" - in Washington tomorrow, which will include Chinese and Indian officials. But, as Rob Watson, the C.E.O. of EcoTech International, which works on environmental issues in China put it: "The Chinese are not going to take anything we say seriously if we don't set an example ourselves."

avid Moskovitz, who directs the Regulatory Assistance Project, a nonprofit that helps promote green policies in China, was even more blunt: "The most frequent and difficult question we get in China with every policy initiative we put forward is: 'If it is so good, why aren't you doing it?' It's hard to answer - and somewhat embarrassing. So we point to good examples that some American states, or cities, or companies are implementing - but not to the federal government. We can't point to America."

Too bad. "It was America which put environmentalism on the world's agenda in the 1970s and

'80s," recalled Glenn Prickett, a senior vice president for Conservation International. "But since then, somehow, the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet has gone to the back of the line."

Leadership is about "follow me" not "after you." Getting our national climate regulations in order is necessary, but it will not be sufficient to move China. We have to show them what Wal-Mart is showing its competitors - that green is not just right for the world, it is better, more profitable, more healthy, more innovative, more efficient, more successful. If Wal-Mart can lead, and California can lead, why can't America?

The Threat to Israel's Existence

By Beila Rabinowitz and William Mayer

September 23, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Dr. Daniel Pipes, Director of the Middle East Forum, delivered the inaugural lecture to the "Jewish Learning Academy" at the Lubavitch Center of Bucks County PA on September 12th. The talk was entitled, "The Threat to Israel's Existence - Why it's back what it means."

Pipes began his talk by referring to the signing of the Oslo Accords 14 years ago, of the sense that Israel had been accepted by its Arab neighbors and as a result, the war was ending.

He continued, saying that now voices "from far and near are now coming out against the existence of Israel" and that the opposition takes "two forms, the crude and the polite." He defined the crude as "the more obvious" such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's calls for the elimination of the Jewish state which he observed was " perhaps unprecedented…[that]…a head of state actually call for the destruction of another country."

According to Dr. Pipes it was the "polite ones," despite their rhetoric, which set in play a process which includes "declaring jihad to liberate Jerusalem as Arafat did…Maps that do not show Israel…demands of the Palestinian right of return…[and]…The one state solution i.e. no more Zionism."

Dr. Pipes also noted that "such calls were not limited to Arabs and Muslims" and cited London Mayor Ken Livingstone's comment that "the creation of Israel was a mistake" as but one example. He emphasized that partisan differences were irrelevant in this debate, declaring that those, "who believed in the continued existence of the state of Israel" were essentially on the same side.

He also reiterated his belief that deterrence was the most prudent policy for Israel to follow and that the decision to pursue other means of peacemaking – namely negotiation - had been a strategic mistake.

He gave a short history of how Israel had spent 45 years convincing the enemy that they had lost and that the country was "here to stay." He summed this up as "Don't you dare attack me because I will hit you ten times harder - stay away, give up, don't bother me."

Pipes said that as Israel "tired" of this policy, it had in 1993 embarked upon a campaign of appeasement, giving its enemies money and land while making concessions in the mistaken hope they would be satisfied and give up their desire to destroy the Jewish State.

Dr. Pipes criticized the Oslo Accords, the "Road Map" to peace and the Quartet approach [the U.S., UN, EU and Russia as brokers] as "follies," explaining that "it was a war and each side had war goals" and the only way for Israel to win and defeat the Palestinians was for "their will to be crushed."

Dr. Pipes concluded that if the Palestinian issue is definitively and militarily decided by Israel, the entire region will benefit; with the Palestinians then being forced to turn to constructive endeavors, others in the region would then give up their attempts to eliminate Israel as well.

©1999-2007 PipeLineNews.org LLC, Beila Rabinowitz, William Mayer, all rights reserved.

The folly of 'Islamic economics

Though few in the West have noticed the phenomenon, a significant and rapidly growing amount of money is now being managed in accord with Islamic law, the Shariah. According to one study, "by the end of 2005, more than 300 institutions in over 65 jurisdictions were managing assets worth around US$700-billion to US$1-trillion in a Shariah compatible manner."

Islamic economics increasingly has become a force to contend with burgeoning portfolios of oil exporters and multiplying Islamic financial instruments (such as interest-free mortgages and profit-sharing sukuk bonds). But what does it all amount to? Can Shariah-compliant instruments challenge the existing international financial order? Would an Islamic economic regime, as one enthusiast claims, really help end injustice by ensuring "the state's provision for the well-being of all people"?

To understand this system, the ideal place to start is Islam and Mammon, a brilliant book by Timur Kuran, written when he held the Saudi-sponsored position of King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California.

Now teaching at Duke University, Kuran finds that Islamic economics does not go back to the time of Muhammad, but is in fact an "invented tradition" that emerged in the 1940s in India. The notion of an economics discipline "that is distinctly and selfconsciously Islamic is very new." Even the most learned Muslims a century ago would have been dumbfounded by the "Islamic economics."

The idea was primarily the brainchild of a South Asian Islamist intellectual, Abul-Ala Mawdudi (1903-79), for whom Islamic economics served as a mechanism to achieve many goals: to minimize relations with non-Muslims, strengthen the collective sense of Muslim identity, extend Islam into a new area of human activity, and modernize without Westernizing.

As an academic discipline, Islamic economics took off during the mid-1960s; it acquired institutional heft during the oil boom of the 1970s, when the Saudis and other Muslim oil exporters, for the first time possessing substantial sums of money, signed on to the project.

Proponents of Islamic economics assert that the prevailing capitalist order has failed and that Islam offers the remedy. To assess the latter assertion, Kuran scrutinizes the actual functioning of Islamic economics, focusing on its three main claims: that it has abolished interest on money, achieved economic equality, and established a superior business ethic. On all three counts, he finds it a total failure.

"Nowhere has interest been purged from economic transactions, and nowhere does economic Islamization enjoy mass support," he writes. Exotic and complex profit-loss sharing techniques such as ijara, mudaraba, murabaha and musharaka all involve thinly disguised payments of interest. Banks claiming to be Islamic in fact "look more like other modern financial institutions than like anything in Islam's heritage."

In brief, there is almost nothing Islamic about Islamic banking-- which goes far to explain how Citibank and other major Western financial institutions host far larger ostensibly Islam-compliant deposits than do specifically Islamic banks.

"Nowhere," Kuran writes, has the goal of reducing inequality by imposition of the zakat tax (a form of tithing) succeeded. Indeed, the author finds this tax "does not necessarily transfer resources to the poor; it may transfer resources away from them." Worse, in Malaysia, zakat taxation, supposedly intended to help the poor, instead appears to serve as "a convenient pretext for advancing broad Islamic objectives and for lining the pockets of religious officials."

In the final analysis, Kuran dismisses the whole concept of Islamic economics. "There is no distinctly Islamic way to build a ship, or defend a territory, or cure an epidemic, or forecast the weather," so why money? He concludes that the significance of Islamic economics lies not in the economy but in identity and religion. The scheme "has promoted the spread of anti-modern ? currents of thought all across the Islamic world. It has also fostered an environment conducive to Islamist militancy."

Indeed, the conceit behind Islamic economics possibly contributes to global economic instability by "hindering institutional social reforms necessary for healthy economic development." In particular, were Muslims truly forbidden not to pay or charge interest, they would be relegated "to the fringes of the international economy."

In short, Islamic economics has trivial economic import, but poses a substantial political danger.

- Daniel Pipes

Sadie Belly Dance

sweet belly dance preformed by Arabs

Habibi Ya Ainy-Fatima Serin

Afghan troops killed in bus bomb

Aid workers freed in Afghanistan




An ICRC staff member, right, stands with the Taliban as he is being released in Wardak province [Reuters]

Four employees of the Red Cross have been freed in Afghanistan, after being captured four days ago.
The four - two Afghans, one from Myanmar and one from Macedonia - are back in Kabul, according to an AFP photographer at the office of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) in the capital.




They were freed "after being seized by an armed group in Wardak province," the ICRC had said in a statement that made no reference to the Taliban.
However, a Taliban spokesman had confirmed earlier on Saturday that they had "mistakenly" kidnapped the aid workers.







Franz Rauchenstein, deputy head of the ICRC delegation in Kabul, said: "The unconditional release of our four colleagues is a great relief to us and their families."

Suicide attack

Meanwhile, at least 31 people have died after a bomb tore through a bus carrying Afghan soldiers in the country's capital, Kabul.

The explosion on Saturday morning, carried out by a suicide bomber in army uniform, split the bus in two.

The Taliban said it carried out the attack, and told Al Jazeera it was carried out by a 28-year-old suicide bomber.
The health and defence ministries have said that most of the dead were military personnel, going to work at the defence ministry, but several civilians were also killed.

The blast shattered nearby shop windows in the residential suburb.

Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatemi, the public health minister, said: "At this time I can tell you that 31, almost all of them military personnel, have been martyred."

In video

Watch Farid Barsoum's report on the Taliban's combat weaponry

Fatemi also said that 17 of the wounded were in a critical condition.

Easy target

The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body as he approached the bus, the ministry said in a statement.

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher in Kabul reported that the blast was so loud it could be heard across the city.

Fisher said: "This was a very busy intersection. The bus was travelling through the town, picking up army personnel from a number of checkpoints."

He also said that the Taliban targets the Afghan army and police because it is easier to reach them than foreign forces operating in the country. The Taliban says it will continue to target them.

Hamid Karzai, the president, called for "stronger vigour" worldwide after this latest bombing.

Karzai said: "It was an act of extreme cowardice on the part of those that committed it. The person who did this was against humanity, and against Islam."

The attack is the deadliest in Kabul since an explosion on a police bus in June that killed as many as 35 people.

Carnage

Mohammad Azim, a police officer at the scene, said: "For 10 or 15 seconds, it was like an atom bomb - fire, smoke and dust everywhere," Azim said.
People gather at the blast site
as a clear up operation starts [Reuters]
Sulahdin, an army officer at the scene who goes by one name, said there were more than 50 people on the bus at the time of the explosion.

One witness, Ahmad Jaweed, told Al Jazeera that he saw several corpses belonging to military personnel being removed from the site, along with local residents.

Television pictures had also showed soldiers being pulled from the wreckage.

Some of the dead were still in their seats.

Month of 'operations'

Zabihullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman, said the attack was part of Operation Nasrat (Triumph), a military campaign launched during the holy month of Ramadan.

There have been more than 100 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, many blamed on the Taliban.

While most attacks occur in remote areas in the south and east of Afghanistan, there have been a series of blasts inside Kabul this year.

This attack was the first inside the heavily patrolled capital since a suicide bomb struck a Nato armoured vehicle on September 21, killing a French soldier and wounding several Afghans


Source: Al Jazeera and Agencies

Morocco grants official status to relief agency

That means in addition to private funds, ADRA Morocco can also receive public funding.

With the financial boost, ADRA Morocco officials plan to expand preexisting literacy, health and education projects in the country, as well as strengthen regional economic development and emergency response efforts.

"ADRA's work will change completely now," said Michael Reich, country director for ADRA Morocco. "This will allow us to become a strong partner for development and humanitarian aid in this country with so many underestimated needs."

"Having the registration officially confirmed and documented is an important step forward in making ADRA Morocco a fully professional and well governed partner in the ADRA network," said Joerg Fehr, director for ADRA's Euro-Africa regional office in Switzerland.

Fehr added that full partnership among regional ADRA offices was essential to the success of development and relief projects in Morocco.

ADRA's presence in Morocco began in the mid-1980s. Today, the country is among 125 around the world where the agency provides community development and emergency management.

-Alarabonline-