Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Comment Trail Wednesday:

The real history of Iran-US relationship


TNR: Accusing Judge Goldstone

TNR: Lessons for Obama

TNR: The Israeli Prime Minister

TNR: Notes from the Cuckoo's Nest:

Norm Geras of Normblog profile has a weekly Friday morning feature, in which a blogger is given a set of questions to answer. One of the questions asked is:

What would you do with the UN?

Here is just a sampling of the answers provided to this question:

I'm opposed to the attempts being made in the UN Human Rights Council to outlaw religious defamation.

I would replace it with a League of Democracies.

Have the UN Human Rights Council disbanded and replaced with representatives from countries vetted by a group like Amnesty International on the basis of their perceived respect for such things.

Expand Security Council membership and end the unilateral veto; but domestic political change in China would do more to change the UN than any institutional reform.

Move them to Sierra Leone or Rwanda.

I'd appoint Susan Rice as US ambassador - strike that, wish also granted.

Rename it as the Nearly League of Nations.

Reform it to reflect a non-Post-War era, perhaps better reflecting population trends right now, rather than who won the Second World War.

Make it rent its offices in downtrodden areas of town, and generally make it more of a humble organization. I'd like to decrease its bureaucracy by about 95 per cent, but don't know how to go about that.

I think the UN should be dealt with in the spirit immortalized in the words of former UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick's deputy Charles Lichenstein. Shortly after the Soviets shot down KAL 007, murdering all those people, legislatures in New York and New Jersey denied Soviet aircraft landing rights. Some at the UN raised the question of whether that body should remove from the United States. And Lichenstein, fed up and in no mood for 'diplomacy', said, 'We will put no impediment in your way. The members of the US mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset.'

Scrap it. It's an obscenity. Saudi Arabia on the Human Rights Committee? I ask you! It once served a purpose, I suppose, but the majority of UN representatives do not even speak for the people of their own countries, let alone articulate their interests.

Send them all packing and turn the building into condos.

Shrink it and keep it in a snow globe.

Turn it in to an international talking shop. Er... wait...

The biggest criticism of the UN, that it doesn't get things done, that it's useless, is false because it's committing a category error. The UN isn't an actor on its own behalf in world affairs, it is merely a forum through which actual actors (countries and the like) can co-operate if they choose to do so. So I'd leave the UN alone. It may be that there's a case for making a new club that only democratic countries can join. (But who counts as democratic?)

I would convert its headquarters into New York's most striking shopping mall. The murderers and thieves who rule over many of the countries represented there should be dressed in ridiculous costumes (I mean more ridiculous than their current ones) and made to stand behind a display glass. The oppressed people of their nations should then be flown into town to point at them and spend the contents of the human mannequins' Swiss bank accounts under their noses

Mick Hartley: Pure, Unblemished, Menstruation-free..

_________

And now, for something completely different:

Dubai Jazz (hearts) Holocaust-Denying Cartoonist Latuff
:

It appears that Arabs have hard time recalling that there was history before they had come to a place and proclaimed it their own. Thus they are shocked when they realize that the world largely knows the Persian Gulf as the Persian Gulf and not the Arabian Gulf, which they had renamed after they subjugated the heathen Persians. Thus they believe they have a claim to Al-Andalus, or Palestine, or Chechnya, or Hertzgovia, or Kashmir ...


In a typical reversal of logic, Buj and DJ refuse to accept that the territory better known by the world as "The West Bank" also has a history of being known as Judea and Samaria, which is fully acknowledged in history books and even by the world.


On another thread I provided appropriate sources from which to learn these shocking facts. Their

response came in the shape of cartoons designed by a Holocaust-denying cartoonist.


There is something very strange about talking to you, guys. It's like stepping into a world where the rules of logic and knowledge no longer apply. A bit like Bizarro Superman:


" Superman's exact opposite, who lives in the backwards bizarro world. Up is Down. Down is Up. He says "Hello" when he leaves, "Good bye" when he arrives."


Here is a history of the Arabs in Spain, an example of how Arabs like to imagine their history to be:

http://www.villa.spain-property-costa-blanca.com/archives/2003/12/03/the-history-of-arabs-in-spain/

Update: Dubai Jazz is filtering comments, too.

Too bad. Both these UAE bloggers are so afraid of verifiable historical records, names, records. It's as if their Dream Palace will come crashing down all around them if they actually faced up to the truths of history rather than continue to nourish their myths and illusions.

11 Comments:

At 11:28 PM EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

so we have to take whatever the romans and greek said about the world as the same wait as the names that god taught adam?

romans and greek named it persian and we arabs feel it doesnt suit us. simply and easily we call it the arabian gulf. persians ca call i the persian

but i will only accept the persian guld from an iranian if he bows to god and recite the quran in arabic in his prayers as commanded by the islam!


as to the rest of the world they can put the roman naming of the persian gulf as their source of naming things. their problem



as to the west bank.....whatever the name is the most important is that no people are imported from other contries because. i am more than happy to call it judia and samaria as it was once called when there was genti

arabian

 
At 11:33 PM EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

by the way the persian gulf is a piece of water. so the name doesnt really makes a political diffrence.

the naming of judia and samari which is right at "one" moment of history is also right. but unlike the persian gulf issue.........there is no ajenda behind the naming. i heard even the humus is jewish in the roman book of cooking lol

arabian

 
At 12:00 AM EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

i dont know ajami but he clearly is the kind of arabs that used to exist in egypt and the levenant in the 1960s. going behind every faild ideology!
onc they are communist then nationalist after saddam(and he is against un help against iraq )then he is a democratic with the western waive.

why read for him when the book is clear from the title.

simply egypt was a land of salvs that built unuseful things for the pharoh and farmers that were politicaly stable because they accepted slavery

you are a people elevated by islam and if you seek other means of elevation youl fail.

 
At 8:51 AM EDT, Blogger The Contentious Centrist said...

Ajami is a Lebanese Shiite.

What does it mean "you are a people elevated by islam"? In what way does Islam elevate people? And to what end?

 
At 10:37 AM EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh so he is a lebanese shite , .. tht makes things clearer.


i meant that all arabs were elevated by islam and without submiting to islam and working for the people in the way god commanded arabs will fail forever. its a saying by umar ibn alkhattam the second muslim calipha. sorry i say it agianst any arab intellectuall
'like' ajami who try to blame islam or the islamic
'awakning' that happend in the 80s for arab problems.


so do you think the pesian gulf shuld be called persian because you prefare persians on arabs or because thats what you studied in college...and because the romans who had a certain capacity of khnowledge called it that therfore .

i don whan to go in technical issues...but 90 % of people living along the arabian gulf shores are arabs...even on the iranian soil, they are called ahwazi arabs.! so i think its clear .
maybe because persian has a zorastanian ring to its tone ;)


whats the reason?


if you want to call it persian then do but i think yu cant critsize arabs for calling it arabian.

 
At 11:07 AM EDT, Blogger The Contentious Centrist said...

"even on the iranian soil, they are
called ahwazi arabs.!"

Oh, how so? Do you mean there are Arabs occupied by Iran and no one gives a damn about it?

You did not answer my question:

What does it mean "you are a people elevated by islam"? In what way does Islam elevate people? And to what end?

 
At 11:08 AM EDT, Blogger The Contentious Centrist said...

"oh so he is a lebanese shite , .. tht makes things clearer."

In what way?

 
At 2:14 PM EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

arab before islam were nothing and after islam the bacame a naytion that is respected. so ummar ibn al khattb who lived before islam and after islam saw the diffrence and concluded this . and its true because whoever puts his trust in god will be elevated.!

as to why him bieng a shite lebaneese makes things clearer........its because i have a certain way in classifying people based on their religous roots and sects to understand how thier political views are shaped. in ajami case he is agianst the un help to saudia and the gulf in the gulf war..............and basically he is agianst anything saudi and gulf. (because he is a shite miniority).

so why are you fiercly against arabs calling the arabian gulf arabian? is it because u hate anything arab or because you only take greek and latin sources. ?

 
At 2:23 PM EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

as to ahwazi arabs...... the live on the

'persian gulf coast of iran. they are arabs .
i mentioned that to tell u that arabs live on both sides of the gulf as a technical thing to show that calling it persian gulf is not really true technicaly.

the have a website www.al-ahwaz.com

i am not implying anything about them bieng occupiedbut all i know is that ahwaziees are our arab brothers and wish them the best. although historically which i just heard they were indeed an arab nation connected to baghdad

 
At 7:42 AM EDT, Blogger SnoopyTheGoon said...

Whats' that fascination with Dubai bloggers, Noga? I grok that some of them (or even all of them) are well heeled folks, but still. I mean... whatever.

 
At 8:45 AM EDT, Blogger The Contentious Centrist said...

Do I really have to spell it out for you? It's like looking at an alternative universe where the rules as I know them simply do not apply. One wants to understand how deep does the alternative ethics go.

Anyway, Arabian has followed my here from Solomonia. He told us once he is a young Arab who tries to improve his English.

 

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