Roger L. Simon and his comrades are in NYC to open their new business--which they call Open Source Media.
It started out as Pyjamas Media, which was irreverent, funny, and something I was interested in -- for a while. It became clear pretty quickly that some compromises were being made, I didn't know the reasons, and I decided not to participate. I'd been down that road before in an internet venture with someone I knew, and although it had a happy ending, there were too many problems in the middle. Never again.
Even so, I'd been following the venture with interest. And what I've seen so far doesn't look good. The personal and snappy sites belonging to people like Simon and Charles Johnson now have the dullest and most corporate looking portal since "Tech Central Station" and perhaps the second worst name.
Anonymous, technical, and impersonal. In other words--a good, gray, Republican site. The life has been wrung out of it, perhaps by their funders, who knows?
Will it succeed? I dunno. But remember, Google and Yahoo! pride themselves on quirky and creative interfaces. So far, Open Source Media looks like the web design may have been contracted out to someone from the Republican National Committee. Oh, I forgot, they actually have someone on their board who used to run the press operation for the RNC under Jim Nicholson...his name is Cliff May.
Go back to the drawing board guys: take off your suits and get back in those PJs!
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
B. Raman: Hizb-ut-Tahrir Involved in Paris Riots
Writing in OutlookIndia, the former Indian government official names Hizb-ut-Tahrir
Interesting that Raman mentions connections to Uzbekistan and the US in his article about Paris...
The outbreak initially was spontaneous following the electrocution of two Muslim youth as they were fleeing away from a random identity papers check by the Police. The violence continued to be spontaneous, with no external instigation, for three days. In the meanwhile, it is reported by reliable sources, the headquarters of the HT in London saw the agitprop potential of the developments in Paris and sent some of their experts, who had participated in instigating the violence earlier this year in Afghanistan over the alleged desecration of the Holy Koran by the US guards at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, and in Uzbekistan over the allegedly autocratic ways of the local Government, to Paris to stoke the anger of the youth and exploit it for their purpose.
With the help of the sleeper cells, which the HT has already established in Paris and other parts of France for some months, they drew up plans for keeping the violence sustained in order to further radicalise and mobilise the youth against the French government. For this purpose, they exploited the already prevalent anger in the Muslim community of France over the ban on the wearing of head scarves by Muslim girls in public schools and over the ruthless action taken by the Police in the past against suspected radicals. The intemperate and insensitive language used by the French Interior Minister, which is perceived as an insult to Islam and the Muslim youth, facilitated the task of the HT.
Interesting that Raman mentions connections to Uzbekistan and the US in his article about Paris...
What Really Happened in Andijan?
According to the BBC, Andrea Berg of Human Rights Watch was among those who called the conviction and sentencing of 15 people involved in the Andijan violence a "show trial." But condemnation was not limited to NGOs and the European Union (which has now blacklisted Uzbek officials). The US State Department issued a condemnation as well:
"We believe that these convictions are based on evidence that isn't credible and a trial that isn't fair," Adam Ereli, the State Department's deputy spokesman, said.Show trial it may have been, but I'm still interested to know what happened, and don't think we need an "international investigation" to find out (that's just another layer of bureaucracy and opportunity for buck-passing and coverup). There were plenty of US NGOs active in Uzbekistan, as well as RFE/RL "independent journalists" paid by the US taxpayers-- and some were in touch with the suspected attackers and their leaders. Parpiev was interviewed by RFE/RL shortly after the attack. The US government also aided the escape of some 400 refugees wanted by the Uzbeks in connection with Andijan, and no doubt has information from their debriefings and interviews. And on the other side, there were American organizations in touch with the police and security services as part of the Uzbek-American cooperation in the war on terror. So the US government has sources on both sides of the Andijan tragedy, and is perfectly capable of issuing its own report based on US-funded people, organizations, and information sources. As Fred Starr said, the CIA must have satellite photos, as well. Yet, the US has not released its own account of Andijan: Why not?
Curious about America's role, I recently emailed Dr. Andrea Berg of Human Righs Watch to remind her that when we met in Washington, she promised me she would look into Uzbekistan's allegations that the US Government and/or NGOs may have been supportive of the Akriyama guerrilla attacks in Andijan.
However, so far Dr. Berg has not answered my email. Likewise, no Western reporters in Tashkent--at least none that I know of--have explored the Uzbek government's allegations.
There is at least some evidence that the Uzbek government may not be lying about everything in their show trial. Specifically, the Islamist connection in the Andijan attacks. After the Paris riots, such connections would be even more important to explore. Is creating civil disorder a new tactic for Islamists in their war on "Crusaders and Jews?" It seems worth looking into. And Andijan is a good test case.
For example,
Monica Whitlock's recent BBC report on Andijan contained this possible evidence of a link between Islamism and Andijan:
There is a recording we made from Andijan so chilling that people cannot speak while it is playing.Why is Whitlock's report significant? Because I heard an eyewitness give testimony to the CSCE in a US Capitol hearing that he never heard anyone say "Allah Akbar." I don't know if it was sworn, or not, but it was supposed to have been true.
It is an open line to the mobile phone of one of the demonstrators. You can
hear a wall of automatic gunfire, like siege fire, and among it people muttering their last prayers: "Allah-u Akbar, Allah-u Akbar - God is great."
As the shooting grows louder and louder, the voices become thinner until, after more than an hour there is a click, and silence.
The man with the phone was killed.
On June 29, 2005, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Marcus Bensmann, identified as a corrrespondent for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting claimed in officialtestimony:
Thousands of people were unarmed, and they were not forced by rebels to stay on the place. Everybody, whom we speak to, came to theYet at the time Bensmann was misleading Congressmen and Senators, Whitlock obviously had a BBC recording of just such a chant of "Allahu Akbar."
square by own will, either only to look or to protest. It wasn't an Islamic uprising. I didn't hear any "Allahu Akbar" outcries or any demands to build Islamic state. People demanded justice, human rights, economical, and social, and political reforms. [emphasis mine]
It calls into question not only the testimony of Bensmann, the honesty of IWPR and the BBC (both supported by the British government), but also the truthfulness of American denials of Uzbek allegations of support for the Andijan guerillas.
If the Uzbek allegations are false, the US government and NGOs have an obligation to refute them with solid evidence, rather than vague denials. And Dr. Andrea Berg has an oustanding promise to answer this question.
Because genuine support for human rights cannot be based on a foundation of lies--whether from the Uzbek government, Western governments, or NGOs.
UPDATE: Human Rights Watch official Allison Gill told Ferghana.ru that her organization may be the only Western human rights group permitted to operate in Uzbekistan, which is threatening to close Freedom House (IMHO, since they forced out Mjusa Sever, I don't think there has been much freedom in Freedom House).
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
The Human Stain
Nicole Kidman is wrong for her part (Debra Winger would have seemed tougher, even Julia Roberts), but Anthony Hopkins does a great job as Coleman Silk, a professor of Classics at a New England college who quits his job rather than go through a racial harrassment hearing. His secret: he's an African-American passing for Jewish. He confronts redneck America--and dies.Philip Roth's novel was recommended to me many years ago, by my college roommate, a Roth fan--but it sounded a little grim. Then, the film came out in 2003, while we were in Uzbekistan. So I missed it. Yet, somehow, it crossed my Netfilx list, and arrived in my mailbox. And since in the meantime I had taught a course in Greek Mythology, and could finally understand the Achilles references as a result of my cramming to stay a week ahead of my students. And so I had also read Black Athena by Martin Bernal. And since I had read the story of New Yorker literary critic Anatole Broyard--the film was very interesting.
Of course, I have no idea how accurate it was about African-American life, or the phenomenon of "passing." But the human stain, the original sin, the secret that cannot be told, somehow it seemed rather Philip Roth, rather Portnoy-esque, rather more about being Jewish among Gentiles than about being secretly black. That's the "Maguffin"--the real story is about the psycho redneck who kills Kidman and Silk. Ed Harris does a great job playing him. He's the flip side of the University faculty, staff and administration that persecuted Silk and drove him from his job.
A thought-provoking, if not completely successful film...
Russian Prosecutors Confirm Ex-Guantanamo Prisoner Arrest - MOSNEWS.COM
Kudayev was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in Afghanistan and linked to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a terror group with alleged ties to al-Qaida.Apparently the US released Kudayev, rather than return him to Uzbekistan. He is accused of participation in the recent Nalchik attack on October 13th.
RIA Novosti : Tashkent makes its geopolitical choice
RIA Novosti - Opinion & analysis - Alliance with Moscow: Tashkent makes its geopolitical choice:
Such an 'advanced' treaty obviously has a special role to fulfill: it was adopted at a time when Tashkent has faced strong pressure from the West, which is increasingly stigmatizing the Karimov regime as another rogue state. A group of American Congressmen has demanded sanctions against Uzbekistan and for Islam Karimov to be brought to trial at the International Criminal Court. EU governments have prohibited arms supplies to Uzbekistan and clamped a one-year ban on visas to 12 members of the Uzbek authorities.
So the best option for Tashkent is to look for friendship with Moscow, which is vital for Karimov. Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can veto any resolution imposing sanctions against Uzbekistan. As for the West's negative reaction, Russia does not consider it a big problem. First, the time when the country depended on Western credits is gone never to return. Second, more substantial reasons exist for 'a showdown' (for example, a presidential ballot in Belarus next year). Finally (and most importantly), the Western philosophy is nothing if not pragmatic, and gas cooperation means to many European politicians more than events in Central Asia so far removed from Berlin or Paris.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Omar Khayyam Does Dallas
A new film about the legendary Persian poet Omar Khayyam, directed by Kayvan Mashayek, has opened in Dallas. The Keeper was shot in Uzbekistan--one of our friends, Emelia Asadova, worked on the production, and seemed to like it. Here's an excerpt from the Denton Record-Chronicle's account:
Khayyam’s story is told through flashbacks as a contemporary 12-year-old Houston boy (Adam Echahly) becomes intrigued when researching his heritage, and specifically the Iranian tradition of passing along stories between generations. It tracks Khayyam through his early years, when his romance with a woman separates him from a childhood friend who later becomes a powerful sultan.
The idea was inspired in part by Mashayekh’s late father. When he was 11, Mashayekh emigrated from Iran to Houston with his family, where he eventually became a lawyer before turning to filmmaking. In the meantime, he said he lost touch with his cultural roots.
“I was trying to be as American as possible. I was trying to divorce myself from my ethnicity. My father was really troubled by that,” he said. “When my father passed away, I realized all the wisdom behind the things he told me.”
The ambitious production was no less challenging. The Keeper was shot in five cities and three continents during a total of 37 days spread out over almost an entire year.
About 80 percent of the film, including all of the flashback sequences involving Khayyam, was shot in rural Uzbekistan, where Khayyam himself once studied. The director said much of the third-world architecture there still resembles that from 900 years ago.
However, military conflict in neighboring Iraq during 2003 forced the production to shut down for eight months because of insurance concerns. The sets were only about 200 miles from the Afghanistan border. Yet Mashayekh persevered in a quest for authenticity.
“You can still go in some areas and see the same brickwork that’s exactly from that time period. It’s very rustic,” Mashayekh said. “There was a staple of architecture that we were trying to maintain, and the closest thing that we could find to it was in Uzbekistan.”
The Keeper is now playing at the Inwood in Dallas and Rave Motion Pictures 16 in Hickory Creek.
Khodorkovsky's Left Turn
Writing from prison, Khodorkovsky calls for an end to "parasitic" capitalism in Russia:A new social elite should take over the country when Putin leaves (at the legal time, not a day sooner and not an hour later), one that comprehend power as long-term and maybe ignoble (at first) construction and not as wholesale division and redistribution. In that elite, the dominant question will not be “What do you need that for?” We don't need that, kind sirs, the country does. Otherwise it will ever become a modern developed and respected state, but more likely fall apart within our generation, and we, citizens of Russia, cannot reconcile ourselves to the ruin of our state, and we don't want to and we don't plan to.You can read the full text of Khodorkovsky's manifesto in this Kommersant article.
But, to solve the terrible problems listed and one not listed here, a traditional mobilization of the people is needed. And not penal mobilization but creative mobilization, using the intellectual resources of the tens of millions of our fellow countrymen based on a single national idea. The people are used to the authorities being endless far from them, that they are not answerable for anything, that the so-called elites needn't give a damn about them but they should again feel that Russia is our common country that thinks about and cares for everyone who lives in it and for which they are answerable. That leads first of all to qualitative changes in state and social policy, a rebirth of democratic methods of ruling the country, including state paternalism as an instrument for the unification of the state and people, as an acknowledgment of the fact that the state and economy exist for the people.
Yes, democracy prohibits the implementation of the ideal liberal model of everyone for himself. Yes, the voter will demand a concession of part of the oil riches falling from heaven for the use of those who, because of their health, education, age or other reasons cannot attain personal success by themselves in modern society without its (society's) help.
That is why a left turn is also necessary. To breach the pathological, existential alienation between the elites and the people, the authorities and those they rule. And not, as some theoreticians of “Putin's stability” suggest, so that the opposition, winning the parliamentary elections, would let Khodorkovsky out of prison. Without a breach of that alienation, no single national idea is possible, and without a national idea, there will be no salvation and rebirth of the country. If someone doesn't like the word “left,” let him find another word. The essence of the turn does not change because of it.
In addition, a left turn is unavoidable because a new “left” cycle in Russian national politics started long ago.
French Rioters Target Jews
Especially Interior Minister Sarkozy, according to EURSOC:
More from IsraPundit:
Censorship even extends to selective hearing. Rantburg reports that Canal Plus showed "youths" chanting insults about interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. According to Canal Plus' handy subtitles, the youths were chanting "Sarkozy, fascist."
Viewers, however, have keener hearing than Canal Plus' reporters: Contributors to many French web forums claim that the rioters were actually chanting "Sarkozy, sale juif" ("Sarkozy, dirty jew!").
More from IsraPundit:
"Walter H," who lives in France, stated that the violence against Jews has been country-wide. "In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed [as] were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles [and] a Jewish school in Creteil," he wrote in an e-mail...
The Australian on the French Riots
The so-called Paris intifada is not an invention of a gloating foreign press corps, thrilled that France with its deep sense of cultural superiority is getting its comeuppance.
The images of the nightly violence speak for themselves -- and the weekend's attack in central Lyon shows the country's worst case of civil unrest since World War II, or at least May 1968, is not over yet.
Hillary is Running...
Traditionally, New York politicians visit the three "I's"--Ireland, Italy, and Israel--when running for office. Senator Hillary Clinton is obviously no exception. While Bush fiddles as Paris burns, hijacks Veteran's Day commemoration ceremonies for partisan political purposes, and attempts to justify secret prisons while fighting against torture bans like some Saudi prince--Hillary and Bill Clinton have been in Israel, paying tribute to Yitzhak Rabin and meeting with Ariel Sharon. Here's the Haaretz coverage. BTW: When's the last time Bush visited Jerusalem?(AP photo on Haaretz website)
Friday, November 11, 2005
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