石原慎太郎による在日韓国人差別

東京新聞　『筆洗』　2010.04.20

http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/column/hissen/CK2010042002000065.html

『河信基の深読み』

http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/lifeartinstitute/41263565.html

Dobrynin Passed at Age 90

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/world/europe/09dobrynin.html?ref=global-home

American Killing of Reuters Photographer

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/middleeast/06baghdad.html?ref=global-home

http://wikileaks.org/

WASHINGTON — The Web site WikiLeaks.org released a graphic video on Monday showing an American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver in a July 2007 attack in Baghdad.

Reuters had long pressed for the release of the video, which consists of 17 minutes of black-and-white aerial video and conversations between pilots in two Apache helicopters as they open fire on people on a street in Baghdad. The attack killed 12,among them the Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and the driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

At a news conference at the National Press Club, WikiLeaks said it had acquired the video from whistle-blowers in the military and was able to view it after breaking the encryption code.

David Schlesinger, the editor in chief of Reuters news, said in a statement that the video was “graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result.”

On the day of the attack, United States military officials in Baghdad said that the helicopters had been called in to help American troops who had been exposed to small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades during a raid. “There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad, said at the time.

But the video does not show hostile action. Instead, it begins with a group of people milling around on a street, among them, according to WikiLeaks, Mr. Noor-Eldeen and Mr. Chmagh. The pilots believe them to be insurgents, and mistake Mr. Noor-Eldeen’s camera for a weapon. They aim and fire at the group, then revel in their kills.

“Look at those dead bastards,” one pilot says. “Nice,” the other responds.

A wounded man can be seen crawling and the pilots impatiently hope that he will try to fire at them so that under the rules of engagement they can shoot him again. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” one pilot says.

A short time later a van arrives to pick up the wounded and the pilots open fire on it, wounding two children inside. “Well, it’s their fault for bring their kids into a battle,” one pilot says.

At another point, an American armored vehicle arrives and appears to roll over one of the dead. “I think they just drove over a body,” one of the pilots says, chuckling a little.

Reuters said at the time that the two men had been working on a report about weightlifting when they heard about a military raid in the neighborhood, and decided to drive there to check it out.

“There had been reports of clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents in the area but there was no fighting on the streets in which Namir was moving about with a group of men,” Reuters wrote in 2008. “It is believed two or three of these men may have been carrying weapons, although witnesses said none were assuming a hostile posture at the time.”

The American military in Baghdad investigated the episode and concluded that the forces involved had no reason to know that there were Reuters employees in the group. No disciplinary action was taken.

Late Monday, the United States Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, released the redacted report on the case, which provided some more detail.

The report showed pictures of what it said were machine guns and grenades found near the bodies of those killed. It also stated that the Reuters employees “made no effort to visibly display their status as press or media representatives and their familiar behavior with, and close proximity to, the armed insurgents and their furtive attempts to photograph the coalition ground forces made them appear as hostile combatants to the Apaches that engaged them.”

JP Morgan 'chase' Story in UK

JP Morgan 'chase' Story in UK

A London Trader Walks the CFTC through a Silver Manipulation in Advance

Editorial: Health Care Reform, At Last

Health Care Reform, at Last

Fear Strikes Out by Paul Krugman

Fear Strikes Out

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: March 21, 2010

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made ... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

I’d argue that Mr. Gingrich is wrong about that: proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect — Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom — but always popular once enacted.

But that’s not the point I want to make today. Instead, I want you to consider the contrast: on one side, the closing argument was an appeal to our better angels, urging politicians to do what is right, even if it hurts their careers; on the other side, callous cynicism. Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality? (Actually, we know who: the people at the Tea Party protest who hurled racial epithets at Democratic members of Congress on the eve of the vote.)

And that cynicism has been the hallmark of the whole campaign against reform.

Yes, a few conservative policy intellectuals, after making a show of thinking hard about the issues, claimed to be disturbed by reform’s fiscal implications (but were strangely unmoved by the clean bill of fiscal health from the Congressional Budget Office) or to want stronger action on costs (even though this reform does more to tackle health care costs than any previous legislation). For the most part, however, opponents of reform didn’t even pretend to engage with the reality either of the existing health care system or of the moderate, centrist plan — very close in outline to the reform Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts — that Democrats were proposing.

Instead, the emotional core of opposition to reform was blatant fear-mongering, unconstrained either by the facts or by any sense of decency.

It wasn’t just the death panel smear. It was racial hate-mongering, like a piece in Investor’s Business Daily declaring that health reform is “affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color.” It was wild claims about abortion funding. It was the insistence that there is something tyrannical about giving young working Americans the assurance that health care will be available when they need it, an assurance that older Americans have enjoyed ever since Lyndon Johnson — whom Mr. Gingrich considers a failed president — pushed Medicare through over the howls of conservatives.

And let’s be clear: the campaign of fear hasn’t been carried out by a radical fringe, unconnected to the Republican establishment. On the contrary, that establishment has been involved and approving all the way. Politicians like Sarah Palin — who was, let us remember, the G.O.P.’s vice-presidential candidate — eagerly spread the death panel lie, and supposedly reasonable, moderate politicians like Senator Chuck Grassley refused to say that it was untrue. On the eve of the big vote, Republican members of Congress warned that “freedom dies a little bit today” and accused Democrats of “totalitarian tactics,” which I believe means the process known as “voting.”

Without question, the campaign of fear was effective: health reform went from being highly popular to wide disapproval, although the numbers have been improving lately. But the question was, would it actually be enough to block reform?

And the answer is no. The Democrats have done it. The House has passed the Senate version of health reform, and an improved version will be achieved through reconciliation.

This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out.

Editors' Note:
This column quotes Newt Gingrich as saying that “Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation, a quotation that originally appeared in The Washington Post. After this column was published, The Post reported that Mr. Gingrich said his comment referred to Johnson’s Great Society policies, not to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

To All the Hysteric Whale Lovers

Misguided Emotions by Phililp Bowring

By PHILIP BOWRING

Published: February 23, 2010

HONG KONG — It must count as one of the more bizarre bits of diplomacy in recent times. Last week, on the eve of a visit by Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia threatened to take Japan to the International Court of Justice if it did not stop whaling in the Southern Ocean, the part of the Indian Ocean south of Australia.

One may dismiss this as a politician’s gesture aimed at a domestic audience that has taken to emotional “save the whales” campaigns. Though whale oil and bone had once been Australia’s biggest export, the nation had no tradition of eating whale meat, and a shortage of whales caused the closure of its last whaling station in 1978.

But such outbursts in favor of one member of the mammal kingdom by a major exporter of red meat is likely to do more damage to Australia’s image than to Japan’s. Most of Australia’s Asian neighbors — other than Japan — may not care much one way or the other about whaling. But the tone of moral superiority adopted by Australia — its apparent belief that it is the guardian of the Southern Ocean from Asian depredation — grates on many Asians who also resent environment lessons from a top carbon polluter.

From an Australian perspective it may seem reasonable that the largest, most advanced country in the Southern Ocean should assume some responsibility for it. But such assumptions of its rights and duties in international waters can easily keep alive lingering Asian resentments of Western colonialism — European expansionism that gave a small new nation with a population only a little bigger than Shanghai control over a vast, mineral rich landmass. Does Australia want to control the ocean too, some ask?

There may be scientific arguments about whether Japan’s harvesting of several hundred whales per year is endangering the stock in the Southern Ocean. But Australia’s “crusade” seems more couched in emotional than scientific terms. We see this also in the heroic status accorded the Australian and New Zealand campaigners who have harassed Japan’s whaling vessels.

Japan may be pushing the limits of the “scientific research” allowed by the International Whaling Commission in the “whale sanctuary” it declared in the Southern Ocean. But at least Japan still belongs to that body. Norway always refused to accept I.W.C. restrictions. Iceland walked out of the I.W.C. in 1992 (it returned in 2002 but largely on its own terms). Canada left earlier and has not returned.

Meanwhile, other countries with whaling traditions turn a blind eye to the organization. For example, whale hunting is illegal in South Korea but the meat of whales caught in nets or killed accidentally is sold freely. There is pressure to make hunting legal again. Other countries, including Russia and Denmark, allow it for “traditional” communities, which take hundreds of whales a year.

Even making allowances for all the unofficial catch it is still small compared with the numbers killed by ship collisions and nets.

In short, though the world needs properly regulated management of the oceans, Mr. Rudd’s antics discourage whaling countries from cooperating with the I.W.C. and make others reluctant to accept controls on fishing in international waters to stabilize rapidly depleting fish stocks.

Harpooning whales may be cruel and does excite emotions even among those who regularly eat red meat. But Australia is in scant position to complain when it shoots upward of 3 million wild kangaroos a year to protect crops and grazing for sheep and cattle. It recently announced a mass shooting of troublesome wild camels.

The kangaroo and camel culls may be justified. But local emotions are confused. Shooting kangaroos by licensed hunters has long been common in Australia’s outback. But a plan for a culling of the national symbol near the national capital raised a storm of protest to “save Skippy” (the pet kangaroo in a famous children’s TV program).

There is of course nothing unusual in battles between the heart and the head when it comes to attitudes to animals. For example, there is emotion, not reason, behind those in the West who are horrified with the consumption of dog in the East. In fact, there is no reason to treat whales differently from horses, which are still a table meat in some European countries.

Australia’s elevation of its selective emotion into a diplomatic feud with its major Asian ally is nothing short of ridiculous.

Justice in Gaza by Richard Goldstone

Justice in Gaza

I ACCEPTED with hesitation my United Nations mandate to investigate alleged violations of the laws of war and international human rights during Israel’s three-week war in Gaza last winter. The issue is deeply charged and politically loaded. I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed Palestinian groups. I accepted because my fellow commissioners are professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation.

But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.

In the fighting in Gaza, all sides flouted that fundamental principle. Many civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt. In Israel, three civilians were killed and hundreds wounded by rockets from Gaza fired by Hamas and other groups. Two Palestinian girls also lost their lives when these rockets misfired.

In Gaza, hundreds of civilians died. They died from disproportionate attacks on legitimate military targets and from attacks on hospitals and other civilian structures. They died from precision weapons like missiles from aerial drones as well as from heavy artillery. Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.

Israel is correct that identifying combatants in a heavily populated area is difficult, and that Hamas fighters at times mixed and mingled with civilians. But that reality did not lift Israel’s obligation to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.

Our fact-finding team found that in many cases Israel could have done much more to spare civilians without sacrificing its stated and legitimate military aims. It should have refrained from attacking clearly civilian buildings, and from actions that might have resulted in a military advantage but at the cost of too many civilian lives. In these cases, Israel must investigate, and Hamas is obliged to do the same. They must examine what happened and appropriately punish any soldier or commander found to have violated the law.

Unfortunately, both Israel and Hamas have dismal records of investigating their own forces. I am unaware of any case where a Hamas fighter was punished for deliberately shooting a rocket into a civilian area in Israel — on the contrary, Hamas leaders repeatedly praise such acts. While Israel has begun investigations into alleged violations by its forces in the Gaza conflict, they are unlikely to be serious and objective.

Absent credible local investigations, the international community has a role to play. If justice for civilian victims cannot be obtained through local authorities, then foreign governments must act. There are various mechanisms through which to pursue international justice. The International Criminal Court and the exercise of universal jurisdiction by other countries against violators of the Geneva Conventions are among them. But they all share one overarching aim: to hold accountable those who violate the laws of war. They are built on the premise that abusive fighters and their commanders can face justice, even if their government or ruling authority is not willing to take that step.

Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state.

Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy. As a service to the hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account.

Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for war-crime tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, is the head of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.

Estemirova's Death

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/world/europe/17chechnya.html?ref=global-home

Op-Ed by Philip Bowring: Islam's Diversity

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/opinion/10iht-edbowring.html?ref=global

HONG KONG — It would be churlish to criticize President Obama’s Cairo address to the Muslim world. It was finely crafted and typically well-delivered. It had the impact that was intended, even if actions to back the words will be difficult.

However, the speech suggested that the Muslim/non-Muslim divide is greater than it actually is. There was an implicit lack of recognition of the sheer diversity of Islam, a religion that like Christianity has shaped, and been shaped by, the societies to which it has attached itself.

That diversity is not primarily reflected in the division between Sunni and Shiite but in the actual practices of the Muslims — almost all Sunni — in South and Southeast Asia, Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These non-Arab Muslims constitute by far the largest part of global Muslim community.

Diversity is also not sufficiently recognized by many in the Islamic world. The result is that one orthodoxy is imposed as vigorously as Catholic countries once discriminated against other interpretations of Christianity.

It was said, supposedly by Voltaire, that England had 60 religions but only once sauce, France one religion but innumerable sauces.

The multiple religions were, of course, all branches of Christianity. The issue for society was acceptance of diversity and the separation of church and state. America achieved that with its Constitution, while in France anti-clericalism became a defining political force against the secular claims of the one religion.

Obama recognized that America, despite its pluralism and a Muslim community almost as large as its Jewish one, had much healing to do in its relationship with the Islamic world. He also aimed to push the Middle East peace process by showing even handedness toward Israelis and Palestinians. But those objectives, while they partly overlap, are far from identical. Sympathy for the Palestinian situation is common in developing countries formerly ruled by Europeans.

On the other hand, the farther Muslims are from Jerusalem the less they are emotionally involved in what is more of a struggle between nations than religions.

Indeed, the failure of the Muslim community in the United States to have much influence on Middle East policy is partly a result of the sheer diversity of its origins and interests. Arabs are a minority among American Muslims as in the rest of the Muslim world.

Yet both Arabs and the U.S. — indeed the West more generally — see Islam through the prism of Middle East politics, Al Qaeda and Iraq. That is a natural outcome of recent events but has also played to the Arab sense of being the guardian of Islam. By speaking to the Muslim world from Cairo, Obama may have fortified such perception.

That could be a misfortune. Oil money has added to the influence of narrow Arabian interpretations of Islam even as most social and economic progress in the Muslim world has been found in non-Arab countries — Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, for example. Even Pakistan, for all its troubles, displays a diversity of interpretations of Islam, some with strong liberal and individualistic leanings that helps sustain democratic debate and keep alive the notion that it is a “state for Muslims” not an “Islamic state.”

Acceptance of diversity within Islam, as well as tolerance of Christians and Hindus, is perhaps most marked in Indonesia. There, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and India, not to mention Bosnia and the Central Asian republics, the social mores of Muslims are often almost identical to those of Christians and nonbelievers.

The problem is often not so much between Muslims and non-Muslims but the efforts of state controlled religion to deny Muslims the diversity of interpretation that should be their birthright. Thus, non-Muslims in Malaysia face only modest obstacles. Even in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Christians are free to drink alcohol as well as worship. Yet in both countries Muslims themselves are the ones denied freedom by state religious authorities trampling on centuries of local traditions to impose their orthodoxy.

Obama has a background in two countries where Islam and Christianity co-exist and where politics is mostly not about religious affiliation — Kenya and Indonesia. Perhaps when he has a chance to visit either of them he could emphasize — to his home audience as well as his hosts — the diversity of Islamic traditions and the importance of their separation of church and state as the keystones of the freedom and pluralism that define America’s success.

The battle is not between Islam and others, it is between the open society and its enemies.

America's hypocrisy

田中宇は近頃 NYTimes を痛烈に批判しているが、今日の editorial にも疑問を感じる。
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/opinion/08mon1.html

以下の箇所は目を疑う

Last week, The Times reported on the initial conclusions of a Pentagon investigation, citing significant errors by military personnel that contributed to the high civilian death toll. These included ignoring a rule against bombing high-density residential areas in the absence of imminent threat and failing to reconfirm a target after a bombing delay.

Such mistakes are costly, not just in civilian lives but in broader support for the presence of American troops and the military campaign against the Taliban.

表面ではアフガンの人々に同情するかの様な内容。しかし文体から滲み出るのはあくまで、富んだ国から見た遠い異国の他人事である。

これが本当のアメリカのタチの悪さである。一人一人の犠牲者、生活の痛みに対する生きた実感はない。 "civilian lives" という collective な単語で、この感情は既に昇華されてしまっている。

本当に政治的な視点から、或いは単純で独善的な視点から、アフガン人はあくまで異国人である、アメリカ人ではない、アメリカの国益の為にアフガニスタンでのアメリカ軍をもっと統制するべきである、というのならまだ良い。残念ながらあたかもアフガニスタン人の側に立つような皮相的な感情に酔いながら、実は自分の中に巣食う優越感、虐げられた人々への蔑視に気づかない。

皮相な親切、自己の短絡的な emotion を満足させるためだけの同情程相手にとって迷惑なものは無い。世界中の国々、人々の間のギャップはまだまだ計り知れない程深い。アメリカは若すぎる。本当にアメリカが痛めつけられアメリカ人が傷付くまでアメリカという国が良くなる事はない。

田中宇のガザ紛争 分析

Isreal's War Crimes

On Wall Street Journal by George Bisharat http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123154826952369919.html

Jimmy Carter http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=98899

The confinement of the Samouni clan / possible use of uranium depleted shells / phosphorus shells / Killing in a UN school by Manjit Singh http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/content/weekly_forecasts/2009-01-12/israels-losing-pr-war-january-12-2009/

Accusation on Hamas for the usage of phosphorus shells on Israel NN http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/129433

Killing in the UN school http://news.antiwar.com/2009/01/11/israels-re-revised-story-attack-on-un-school-was-a-malfunction/



ツィピ・リブニとエフード・バラクの政争に因って起きた戦争なのではないかという分析
やや甘い様にも思える。パレスチナ市民が手放しでハマスを支持している様に書いているが、
そんな事はないだろう。

Barak が、Olmert が退陣する2ヶ月前に戦争を引き起こしたとする分析 on Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050437.html

Labor Party: Ehud Barak

"I Wish You Were Here" by Bob Herbert

NY Times Editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/opinion/20herbert.html?_r=1

田中宇

中道派になるオバマ：組閣の裏側

『オバマは超党派の中道政権を作ろうとしている』

『パレスチナ人は米・イスラエルの傀儡でしかないアッバスを嫌っており、１月８日の任期後に選挙をしたらファタハ惨敗・ハマス圧勝となり、米・イスラエルが満足できる和平交渉ができるファタハが消えてしまう』

Brent Scowcroft

James Jones in charge of Palestine-Israel peace deal

Emanuel - Zionist connection