WHO IS 2007'S ''PERSON OF THE YEAR?

It's that time of the year again, i.e. New Year's. 2008 is upon us and some people like to use this period as an opportunity to look forward to the next twelve months (resolutions, plans, etc) while others prefer to take a moment to look back on the ups and downs of the previous year.

Time magazine has been handing out it's annual 'Person of the Year' award in late December for seventy years now, since first conferring it upon American aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927. This year, the big journalistic brains at Time decided 2007's main man to be Russian president Vladimir Putin - a truly corrupt, authoritarian and odious individual who has also been recently revealed to be Europe's richest man.

I haven't quite understood the logic of giving the title to a man who is on his way out (of office, if not power) and who has had very little discernible impact on global affairs (as opposed to Russian and regional affairs) over the past twelve months.

So, who do you, the readers of this blog, think is 2007's 'Person of the Year'?

Justin Raimondo of the excellent Antiwar.com nominates Thomas Fingar - the US government analyst in overall charge of drafting the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's (lack of) nuclear weapons and who may have single-handedly prevented the United States from going to war with Iran in the coming months. (I myself have written about the NIE here and here).

Fingar is a fine choice for person of the Year. My own choice, however, would have to be the CEO of Al Qaeda, Mr. Osama Bin Laden. Not because I have any affection or admiration for his particular brand of nasty, narrow-minded Islam and vicious, violent militancy but because of the fact remains that he remains free, at large, uncaptured and alive, as the world's finest armed forces and intelligence agencies focus much of the planet's resources and attention on prosecuting a pointless 'War on Terror' which has failed to disrupt, deter or destroy him or his network of terrorists. Instead he is busy issuing videos from whichever cave or pass in Afghanistan (or Pakistan) that he happens to be hiding out in, mocking the West for our "burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes".

So, 2007's Person of the Year, for me, is Bin Laden. And, frustratingly, it'll have to be him every year until this ridiculous so-called 'War on Terror' ends.

Do you agree? Disagree? Do you have a better candidate? Go to the comments section of this blog (below) and get in your nominations now, before we enter 2008...

R.I.P. BENAZIR, R.I.P. PAKISTAN

So, Pakistan's various militant factions made good on their numerous threats and managed to assassinate former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto in a typically audacious Al-Qaeda-style-bomb-and-bullet combo killing, with random civilian casualties thrown in for good measure.

While Bhutto herself was no "martyr" for her country - despite her party spokesman's protestations to the contrary - and used her two stints in power to enrich herself, support the Taliban and even perhaps murder her own brother, her assassination is nonetheless a truly cowardly and despicable act carried out by cold-blooded killers whose understanding of Islamic law and morality once again seems non-existent.

Her death will also have massive repercussions for Pakistan and its political future. As the veteran Pakistani journalist (and Taliban-watcher) Ahmed Rashid points out in the Washington Post today:

"The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has left a huge political vacuum at the heart of this nuclear-armed state, which appears to be slipping into an abyss of violence and Islamic extremism. The question of what happens next is almost impossible to answer, especially at a moment when Bhutto herself seemed to be the only answer.

"...Bhutto's death leaves the largest possible vacuum at the core of Pakistan's shaky and blood-stained political system."

Read the full piece here.

Today's bloodshed only reinforces my own long-held (and, admittedly, Indian-tinged) conviction that Pakistan (like Israel) should never have been created in the first place. And, although such views have traditionally been heretical amongst Pakistanis, and even amongst Brits of Pakistani origin, it is truly a sign of the times that this view is now spreading amongst the expat and second-generation communities - as writer Sarfaraz Manzoor pointed out in the Guardian back in August:

"Without Jinnah, there would not be a Pakistan, but comparing how India and Pakistan have fared during the past 60 years also made me wonder whether partition had perhaps been a mistake. The human cost of dividing India and Pakistan was huge, with the greatest migration in history and one million people killed in the months leading up to partition.

"Sixty years on and today's India is sexy, forward-looking and economically powerful; Pakistan, on the other hand, remains trapped by the contradictions which led to its creation and in the grip of the mullahs and the military.

"....In his novel Shame, Salman Rushdie described Pakistan as a "place insufficiently imagined"; when one considers its troubled history, perhaps it is not heretical to confess some sadness that it was ever imagined at all."

P.S. On a side note, while the world obsesses over the Benazir assassination and its fallout, repercussions, consequences, etc, the Washington Post also has a (rather underreported) scoop from its defence analyst William Arkin, concerning the impending deployment of US troops inside of Pakistan, in 2008:

"Beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning.

"These Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the U.S. military and for U.S. Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the U.S. used Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the U.S. deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at Bagram, north of Kabul, U.S. forces left Pakistan almost entirely. Since then, Pakistan has restricted U.S. involvement in cross-border military operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil.

"But the Pentagon has been frustrated by the inability of Pakistani national forces to control the borders or the frontier area. And Pakistan's political instability has heightened U.S. concern about Islamic extremists there."

So, not content with invading Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, the United States now wants to provide yet another recruiting sergeant for the fanatics of Al Qaeda and the rest of its militant ilk by setting up shop, militarily, inside another unstable and radicalised Muslim nation - this time, Pakistan. You couldn't make this up.

TOP 5 CHRISTMAS MYTHS

Christmas is upon us and, remarkably, the leader of Britain’s established (Protestant) church, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, has decided this year to debunk some of the myths surrounding the ‘Nativity Story’ (in an interview with BBC Five Live’s Simon Mayo). So, in the spirit of Christmas and in the spirit of historical debate and theological discussion, as well as for the sheer intellectual fun of it, I thought I’d do a list of my own ‘top five’ Christmas myths.

Myth #1: “All Christians celebrate Christmas on December 25th.”

Actually, they don’t. It is true to say that in most places around the world Christmas Day is celebrated on December 25th (and thus Christmas Eve is the preceding day, December 24th). However, the Armenian Apostolic Church observes Christmas on January 6th. Eastern Orthodox Churches that still use the Julian Calendar celebrate Christmas on the Julian version of December 25th, which is January 7th (!) on the more widely used Gregorian calendar, because the two calendars are now 13 days apart. So December 25th; January 6th; January 7th. They are all ‘Christmas days’!

Myth #2: “Jesus was born on December 25th.”

December 25th existed as a religious holiday for the pagans prior to being appropriated by the early Christians as the ‘birthday’ for Jesus Christ. The date December 25th was particularly important in the cult of Mithras, a popular pagan god in the early Roman Empire. The Christian writer Robert Myers, in his book ‘Celebrations’ (a history of holidays), admits:

"Prior to the celebration of Christmas, December 25th in the Roman world was the Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun. This feast, which took place just after the winter solstice of the Julian calendar, was in honor of the Sun God, Mithras, originally a Persian deity whose cult penetrated the Roman world in the first century B.C. ... Besides the Mithraic influence, other pagan forces were at work. From the seventeenth of December until the twenty-third, Romans celebrated the ancient feast of the Saturnalia. ... It was commemorative of the Golden Age of Saturn, the god of sowing and husbandry."

In order to make Christianity more palatable and appealing to the heathens and pagans in the Roman Empire, the church leaders simply took Saturnalia, adopted it into Christianity, and then eventually many of the associated pagan symbols, forms, customs, and traditions were reinterpreted (i.e., "Christianized") in ways acceptable to Christian faith and practice. (In fact, in 375 A.D., the Church of Rome under Pope Julius I merely announced that the birth date of Christ had been "discovered" to be December 25th, and was accepted as such by the "faithful." The festival of Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithras could now be celebrated as the birthday of Christ!)

Myth #3: “Jesus was born in Bethlehem”

The idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem is preposterous, illogical and ahistorical. Why? First and foremost, what husband would take a nine-month pregnant woman on a ninety-mile trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem – which took around a week in those days! - at a time when only heads of households were obligated to register for a census and when the census would have been stretched out over a period of weeks or even months? And even if, for some strange reason, he did, why did he not take better precautions for the birth? Why not take Mary to her relative Elizabeth’s home just a few miles away from Bethlehem for the birth of her baby?

The fact is that there was no need for Joseph and Mary to even travel to Bethlehem – not only because the censuses carried out by the Romans did not expect people to return to towns occupied by their ancestors thousands of years earlier (42 generations separated Joseph from his forefather David) but for the plain and simple historical fact that there was no universal census at the time of Jesus' birth. As has long pointed out by historians, the only census conducted by the Romans during that era was conducted in A.D. 6-7, which was twelve or more years after the birth of Jesus in around 5 or 6 B.C.

In addition, Jesus never refers to himself in the Gospels as a “Bethlehemite” or to his birthplace as Bethlehem. Instead, he is referred to in the Gospels only as “Jesus the Nazarene” or even Jesus “of Galilee”. And, interestingly, neither the Gospel of Mark nor the Gospel of John makes any reference to Bethlehem, and even ‘St’ Paul – who could be described as the real founder of Christianity - is silent on the subject throughout his epistles and other Biblical writings. In fact, outside the (isolated) Gospels of Luke and Matthew there is no evidence whatsoever to support the contention that Bethlehem was the birthplace of Jesus. According to the Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox:

“Luke’s story is historically impossible and internally incoherent…Luke’s errors and contradictions are easily explained. Early Christian tradition did not remember, or perhaps ever know, exactly where and when Jesus had been born. People were much more interested in his death and consequences. After the crucifixion and the belief in the resurrection, people wondered all the more deeply about Jesus’ birthplace. Bethlehem, home of King David, was a natural choice for the new messiah. There was even a prophecy in support of the claim which the ‘little town’ has maintained so profitably to this day…a higher truth was served by an impossible fiction.”

Myth #4: “Three Wise Men attended the birth of Jesus.”

This is one of those myths that has been pushed down all our throats since we were performing in nativity plays back in primary school – i.e. that there were three wise kings, bearing gifts, travelling on camels to visit the infant Jesus as he lay in the manger. Yet the Gospel of Matthew (2:1) tells us: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem…" That is the extent of it – no more, no less. There is no mention, for example, of “three” wise men, or even of “kings”, and no mention of “camels”. Also, the Bible (in Matthew, 2:11) states: "After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him.” Note: this verse refers to a child in a house, rather than a baby in a manger – so the visit of the wise men did not even occur during the birth of Jesus but was, in fact, a post-birth event; a post-Christmas event.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury himself admits in his recent radio interview, "Matthew's Gospel doesn't tell us there were three of them, doesn't tell us they were kings, doesn't tell us where they came from. It says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that's all we're really told."

So perhaps school nativity plays can now start casting more than three kids to play the (semi-mythical) “wise men”?

Myth #5: “Christmas trees are Christian.”

The most annoying question I’m asked by Christians during this period is: “So, are you not celebrating Christmas? Not even a tree?” No, I reply, not even a tree! In fact, of all the associated holiday paraphernalia, the ‘tree’ has the least relevance, the least connection, to Christmas and Christianity.

The tradition of cutting down and decorating evergreen trees is a pagan tradition, borrowed from the pagans by Christian leaders in Germany around four hundred years ago. In fact, in the Old Testament, God goes out of His way to condemn the pagans for this particular custom and warns the believers not to ape them:

"Thus saith the Lord: Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (Jeremiah 10: 2-4)

So, folks, those are my ‘top five’ Christmas myths. Do you have any you want to add? If so, then head for the comments section of this blog. Oh, and here’s one last holiday factoid (if not a ‘myth’) to leave you with: eating a turkey lunch on Christmas day is not actually an integral, authentic or historic part of the Christmas tradition. As Luke Honey writes on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog:

“Up until the 1890’s, most English families if they were lucky, ate goose; turkey was a luxury only enjoyed by the few. The Anglo-American Christmas, as we know and love it today, is really a Victorian invention: influenced by the sentiment of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, Prince Albert’s cosy family celebrations at Windsor; and in the last century, the schmaltz of Hollywood movies such as Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Merry Christmas! (Or perhaps: "Bah, humbug!")

HELP! THE TERRORISTS ARE COMING! (OR ARE THEY?)

Four days till Christmas, and the US government’s national threat level is already at Yellow (i.e. “Elevated”) while the threat level for all domestic and international flights is Orange (i.e. “High). Here in the UK, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has warned that the threat of terrorist attacks in public places, including from radioactive dirty bombs (!), is “growing” and has asked the public “to remain vigilant over the Christmas period”.

In the press, New Labour lackeys and laptop bombardiers like Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian and David Aaronovitch in the Times have railed this week in their columns against those who would dare suggest that “terrorism isn't that big a threat”. But – rhetorical sweeps, emotive language and instinctive reactions aside – how big is the terrorist threat to all of us ordinary folks, minding our own business, on the streets of London and Birmingham (or, for that matter, on the streets of New York and Los Angeles)?

Here are some facts and figures – often so overlooked and/or misunderstood by our political and journalistic classes who tend to avoid facts and figures, especially those which don’t fit into their pre-conceived view of the world – courtesy of the very brilliant American academic, John Mueller, Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and author of the excellent book, ‘Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them’:

“Those adept at hyperbole like to proclaim that we live in "the age of terror." However…the number of people worldwide who die as a result of international terrorism by this definition is generally a few hundred a year. In fact, until 2001 far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning. Moreover, except for 2001, virtually none of these terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Indeed, outside of 2001, fewer people have died in America from international terrorism than have drowned in toilets.

“Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, however, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism over the period is not a great deal more than the number killed by lightning--or by accident-causing deer or by severe allergic reactions to peanuts over the same period. In almost all years the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States--some 300-400.

“Americans worry intensely about "another 9/11," but if one of these were to occur every three months for the next five years, the chance of being killed in one of them is two one-hundredths of one percent: the posited attacks would kill 60,000 which is about .02 percent of 300,000,000. This would be, of course, an extended and major tragedy, but an individual's chances of being killed, while no longer microscopic, would still remain small even under this extreme scenario.

“Another assessment comes from astronomer Alan Harris. Using State Department figures, he assumes a worldwide death rate from international terrorism of 1000 per year--that is, he assumes in his estimate that there would be another 9/11 somewhere in the world every several years. Over an 80 year period under those conditions some 80,000 deaths would occur which would mean that the lifetime probability that a resident of the globe will die at the hands of international terrorists is about one in 75,000 (6 billion divided by 80,000). This, he points out, is about the same likelihood that one would die over the same interval from the impact on the earth of an especially ill-directed asteroid or comet. If there are no repeats of 9/11, the lifetime probability of being killed by an international terrorist becomes about one in 120,000.”

To summarize Mueller: more people drown in bathtubs than are killed by international terrorists, and we are more likely to be killed by an asteroid, Hollywood-style a la Armageddon or Deep Impact, than we are to die at the hands of Osama and co.

Over to you, David and Tim…

ISLAMOPHOBIA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The Guardian’s resident-far-left columnist (and associate editor) Seumas Milne has an(other) excellent article in today’s Guardian, this time focusing his ire on the “neocon attack dogs” at hard-right thinktanks like Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion who seem to take perverse pleasure in fanning the flames of anti-Muslim, anti-Islam hatred here in the UK and whose agenda seeks to (mis)inform people that “jihadist terror attacks in Britain are fuelled not by outrage at western violence and support for tyranny in the Muslim world, but by hatred of western culture and freedoms”. (I have written about Policy Exchange’s fraudulent and fabricated research here.)

Milne has devoted numerous columns in recent months to drawing attention to the casual and often crude Islamophobia that has gripped much of our journalistic and political luminaries, on both sides of the Atlantic – a subject I plan to expand upon myself, here on this blog, in the not-too-distant future – and the right-wing, anti-immigrant, fear-mongering, war-mongering political agenda which underlies much of it.

Here is Milne, at the start of today's column:

“Last Saturday, Ahmed Hassan, a 17-year-old Muslim student, was stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack by a gang of white youths at Dewsbury railway station in west Yorkshire. Two have now been charged with his murder, and police say they are investigating whether there was a racial or religious motivation. In the Muslim communities in Dewsbury and neighbouring Batley, where Hassan lived, there's little doubt about it. In the run-up to today's Eid festival, Hassan's family issued a statement saying they hoped their loss would help "unite the community and all faiths.

“But divisions run deep in the area. The far-right British National party, which has increasingly turned its racist venom against Muslims in recent years, won over 5,000 votes in Dewsbury in the last general election, its highest tally in the country. Its leader, Nick Griffin, has argued that his party must capitalise on the "growing wave of public hostility to Islam currently being whipped up by the mass media". It's not hard to see why he sees an opportunity. Since the July 2005 bombings in London, there has been a stream of sensationalised and poisonous stories about Britain's Muslims.

“This media onslaught - often based on research by apparently reliable thinktanks - has clearly fed anti-Muslim prejudice. Combined with hyped terror-plot reports, the point has now been reached where Britons are found in polls to be more suspicious of Muslims than are Americans or citizens of any other major European state. For many Muslims, that heightens a sense of intimidation and alienation. For a minority, it translates into Islamophobic violence on the streets: Asian people are now twice as likely to be stabbed to death as a decade ago, and four out of five convictions for religiously aggravated offences last year involved attacks on Muslims."

Bravo Seumas! Keep it up!

CHEERLEADERS FOR INTERNMENT

The government has announced plans to extend the period that terrorism suspects can be held without charge from 28 days to 42 days – the equivalent of a six-week prison sentence for someone only suspected (not convicted, not even charged) of planning or committing an act of terrorism. If passed, such a law would be the latest in a long, dark and dismal line of relentless New Labour attacks on our once-cherished civil liberties.

The move has been met with opposition from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, criticism from the press and – thankfully – scepticism from the British public. So now, right on cue, the government’s media acolytes have been given the nod to start defending the indefensible, employing rhetorical red herrings and scare-crow arguments.

First out of the starting blocks was Blair biographer (hagiographer?) and New Labour cheerleader, John Rentoul in the Independent, who described the controversial 42-day proposal as “perfectly sensible” and drew attention to comments by Lord Carlile, the ‘independent’ reviewer of the government’s anti-terrorism legislation, decrying the use of the word “internment” to describe the 42-day upper limit.

Then, yesterday, New Labour apologist David Aaronovitch chose to devote his entire column in the Times to debunking the claim by human-rights group Liberty that Britain had, in effect, “the most draconian detention laws in the Western world”. Spain and Italy, claims Aaronovitch, are far worse.

Yet, conveniently, neither Aaronovitch nor Rentoul bother to address the substance of the arguments put forward by opponents of the 42-day proposal. For example, what about the sheer arbitrariness of the number 42? Why 42? Not 52? Or 38? Or 49? As columnist Seamas Milne has written in the Guardian:

“What started a generation ago as a two-day limit on detention without charge, as exists for American citizens in the US, was fixed at seven days in 2000; ratcheted up to 14 in 2003; raised again to 28 in 2006; and is now heading for two months of effective internment. The arbitrariness of this ratcheting-up is obvious: in spite of the fact that we're talking about the country's most basic civil liberties, it has clearly been a matter of think of a number and double it.”

And, since the pre-charge detention period was outrageously increased to 28 over a year ago, have the police had to hold any terror suspect for longer than 28 days? Have any of their investigations been undermined by the current 28-day upper limit? The answer, as the Home Office itself concedes, is no.

What do Aaronovitch and Rentoul have to say about all of this? Nothing. Not even 28 words.

In fact, while lazily focusing their rhetorical guns on the ‘usual suspects’ at campaigning organizations like Liberty, they choose to ignore substantive and widespread opposition to the proposed 42-day detention limit from the more credible likes of Sir Ken MacDonald QC, Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS); Jonathan Evans, the head of the Security Service (MI5); the Home Affairs Select Committee; Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General; and – belatedly – Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.

Who should we trust on this? MI5 and the CPS, or Aaronovitch and Rentoul?

WHERE IS GOD IN TIMES OF SUFFERING?

Over the weekend, my wife and I were confronted with some shocking news. My sister-in-law’s aunt and her three daughters were tragically killed in a car accident in Carmel, Indiana. Her uncle, out of town on a business trip, returned home on Sunday to find his entire family dead. Gone. Wiped out. In one, single, dark night.

Here is MSNBC, reporting on the story:

“Witnesses say the van crashed into a pond at the Lincolnshire subdivision at 141st Street and Towne Road around 9:30 pm, trapping a woman and her three daughters inside. Police say the driver, 47-year-old Batul Abbus, called 911 to report they were half-submerged and needed help.

“Carmel Police say help arrived within six minutes, and divers went into the water and removed the victims from the car. They were transported to the hospital where all four, including Abbas' children, 18-year-old Shazreh, 14-year-old Shaail, and 8-year-old Azmeh, eventually died from their injuries. The family was just minutes from home when the accident occurred.”

Not only were they just minutes from their home in Carmel – where they had only recently moved – but they had been out visiting, and comforting, a family friend whose brother had died. Poignant and deeply ironic details like these simply add to the overall and overwhelming sense of tragedy, despair and distress – the kind of heart-breaking human tragedy that we always assume happens only to ‘others’, ‘on the news’, or in fictional TV dramas or movies. For it to happen so close to home is mind-boggling and heart-numbing. I cannot quite begin to understand how my brother-in-law is coping with the sudden loss of three cousins he grew up with – if indeed he is able to cope at all. And I cannot even imagine what it must be like for a man to return home to find the four people at the centre of his world – his wife, and his three young daughters – to have departed from his world, from his life, leaving him all alone. To grieve. To mourn. To try and ‘move on’, if such a thing is at all even possible. My heart breaks and, as I ask God to have mercy on their souls and to strengthen the resolve of the grieving husband and father, I cannot help but also turn to God and ask the inevitable and perhaps unanswerable ‘question of questions’ (to quote the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks): “Why did this happen? Why did you let this happen? Why did you not prevent this from happening?” Indeed, a cousin of mine emails to add:

“I know we are supposed to always believe that Allah knows best…but, seriously, at this moment, I really wish I could have a one on one [with Him].”

It’s a classic (and recurring) problem within the theology of all religions, but especially the monotheistic, Abrahamic faiths: how can the existence of evil, pain and suffering be reconciled with a God who is supposed to be all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful? How can Islam (or for that matter Christianity or Judaism) explain, if at all, the deaths of innocent families in totally random, seemingly meaningless and entirely preventable ‘accidents’, such as the car crash in Indiana?

As someone who has always believed in God, has spent years trying to spread the ‘word’ of God and has debated publicly and privately with atheists and agnostics over the existence of God, this particular theological problem has always struck me as the biggest single obstacle in the path from non-belief to belief and the single biggest reason I have ever had – and I say this, in a public forum, with regret and reluctance - for doubting, on occasion, my own belief in (or, at least, my own understanding of) God.

Of course, religious scholars, and religious texts, do offer some explanations for human tragedies and for the suffering and death that we all are confronted with throughout our lives. For example, in Islam, our entire existence on earth is seen as part of one big test, an exam set by the divine examiner, Allah; and dying and death are simply viewed as components of this existential examination. Our patience, our forbearance and, above all, our faith is tested by our reaction to personal tragedies and to immediate suffering. For example, the Quran declares in a famous trio of verses (or ‘ayaat’):

“Be sure we shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives or the fruits (of your toil), but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere, who say, when afflicted with calamity: "To Allah We belong, and to Him is our return". They are those on whom (descend) blessings from Allah, and Mercy, and they are the ones that receive guidance.” (Quran, Surah 2, Verses 155-157)

In other chapters (or ‘surahs’), the Quran makes it clear that it is our patience (or ‘sabr’) that is being tested, strengthened and exhibited in cases of personal tragedy and it is our God-give yet human quality of patience which will enable us to overcome our suffering and pain and find hope and guidance in the long run:

“O you who believe! Persevere in patience and constancy; vie in such perseverance; strengthen each other; and fear Allah; [so] that you may prosper.” (Surah 3, Verse 200)

“And be steadfast in patience; for verily Allah will not suffer the reward of the righteous to perish.” (Surah 11, Verse 115)

Islam, like Christianity, also teaches that suffering – in the form of, say, a personal tragedy – can be deeply, if painfully, instructive for the individual, reminding each of us that life is not easy, and good (and bad) times do come and go, but nonetheless we have to hold on to what we know to be true and genuine: Allah and the mercy of Allah. The Quran points out,

“So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief. Verily, with every difficulty there is relief.” (Surah 94, Verses 5-6)

Yet these stock answers – and the associated self-confident assertions of scholars, preachers and clerics regarding God’s role (or lack of) in our personal tragedies – only go so far. As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, pointed out in the wake of the Asian tsunami, “every single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up with comfort and ready answers.” He went on to rather astutely note, “If some religious genius did come up with an explanation of exactly why all these deaths made sense, would we feel happier or safer or more confident in God?”

In fact, despite having spent years proudly proclaiming to atheists and agnostics (as well as Christians and Jews) that my Islamic faith is built on reason and logic and science, I have in recent months come to accept and acknowledge that perhaps there is no rational and all-embracing ‘explanation’ for the existence of evil and suffering in a world created and sustained by a just, merciful and compassionate God. And, despite my own rationalist proclivities, I cannot now help but sympathize with the argument advanced by Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood, who has perhaps done more than any other Muslim writer to honestly and frankly confront issues of evil, suffering and death in Islam:

“It is not wrong to ask questions. Human beings are creatures with minds and rational faculties. If God had wanted automatons with no minds, He would have created us that way. It is all right for us to ask for the reasons; but we cannot demand an answer. Sometimes we get an answer, if God deems it necessary for us to know. At other times we simply have to accept that although there is an answer, God has not given it, and since His dealings with us are always loving and for our ultimate good, we can leave the matter there. This is where faith comes in.

“How does Islam affect Muslims? A life free from guilt? Possibly, if they try hard. A life free from the fear of death? Possibly, if they have enough faith. A life that can be lived differently from that of non-believers? True, with God’s help. A life free from sorrow, problems and difficulties? Sadly, no.

“Being a Muslim does not protect anyone from the reality of suffering. Belief is not some kind of spiritual inoculation which will provide immunity from all that is difficult and painful. We love Allah—but doesn’t He care when we suffer? In times of crisis, it is so easy to feel that He is far away and cannot hear our cries-but this is not so. He is closer than our own neck vein; or, as the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) touchingly put it, closer than the neck of our own camel. His love will never desert us or let us down, even in our darkest hour.”

This is almost exactly where my own intellectual and theological journey has brought me to, in recent months. I accept Allah is, in some sense, present in every action, every event, every tragedy (as well as every euphoria), yet I also now accept, reluctantly and belatedly, that nowhere does Allah say that I will go through life without experiencing tragedies, without experiencing disasters, without experiencing suffering and pain and hardship. Yet at the same time, I also acknowledge that I will always have my hope, my patience, my faith to fall back on and I continue to accept and to believe that Allah will never forsake me, and never stop guiding and supporting me in every step, especially in times of adversity and when the outcome – as in Indiana - seems unbearably and irredeemably bleak.

I hope that such an approach, such an outlook, may help us begin to cope in tragic times like this, and may help us continue to maintain our faith in Allah. I hope we never give up faith in Him, no matter how much pain we may be in, no matter how confused or depressed we may become.

So, I welcome especially your comments on this particular post. Your views and your insights – and, above all, your prayers. May Allah have mercy on the souls of Batul Abbas, Shazreh Abbas, Shaail Abbas and Azmeh Abbas and may Allah strengthen the patience, forbearance and faith of Hadi Abbas.

"Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un."

"To Allah we belong, and to Him is our return.” (Surah 2, Verse 156)

BBC EXPOSES “FABRICATED” MOSQUE REPORT

In October, the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange published a report into the selling of “extremist literature” – including books allegedly glorifying terorism and hatred of Jews – on the premises of Britain’s leading mosques. The thinktank, which pretends to be “committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development," described its controversial report in grandiose terms as "the most comprehensive academic survey of its kind ever produced in the UK ... based on a year-long investigation by several teams of specialist researchers."

Predictably, given the Islam-obsessed, jihad-focused media environment we all now inhabit, the report dominated the headlines upon its release. “Lessons in hate found at leading mosque”, declared the front page of the Times. “Hate literature easily found at UK mosques,” proclaimed the front page of the Telegraph.

This week, however, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, accused Policy Exchange of "fabricating" its survey of mosque bookshops after an in-depth investigation of the evidence by its correspondent Richard Watson. Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron, takes up the story on his blog:

"Policy Exchange had given us the receipts to corroborate their claim that a quarter of the 100 mosques their researchers had visited were selling hate literature.

"On the planned day of broadcast our reporter Richard Watson came to me and said he had a problem. He had put the claim and shown a receipt to one of the mosques mentioned in the report - The Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in London. They had immediately denied selling the book and said the receipt was not theirs.

"We decided to look at the rest of the receipts and quickly identified five of the 25 which looked suspicious. They appeared to have been created on a home computer, rather than printed professionally as you would expect. The printed names and addresses of some of the mosques contained simple errors and two of the receipts purportedly from different mosques appeared to have been written by the same hand. I spoke to Policy Exchange to try to clear up these discrepancies but in the end I decided not to run the report."

The actual Newsnight report which aired this week on Wednesday night – and which can be seen via Barron's blog – includes expert testimony from a forensic scientist disputing the authenticity of the receipts provided by Policy Exchange. (It is also worth watching the heated exchange afterwards between the Beeb’s rottweiler, Jeremy Paxman, and the red-faced Policy Exchange research director, Dean Godson).

The Newsnight investigation is a rare tribute to the power of public-service current-affairs broadcasting at its best and, dare I say it, the BBC at its very best. I was cheering in front of the television screen. (Let us hope and pray that Newsnight’s budget remains unaffected by BBC budget cuts).

One final point: aside from the Muslim Council of Britain’s Sir Iqbal Sacranie, few have been willing to question Policy Exchange’s undeniably Islamophobic motivations. Its director, former Times journalist Anthony Browne, has claimed in the past that “Islam really does want to conquer the world”. And not a single newspaper or broadcaster, in its coverage of the original Policy Exchange report in October, mentioned this rather pertinent quote from the ‘academic’ chosen by Policy Exchange to write their report, Dr Denis MacEoin:

“I do not hold a brief for Islam. On the contrary, I have very negative feelings about it…”

So, fraudulent evidence and Islamophobic authors. Is it any wonder why British Muslims are so disillusioned, and so disillusioned with the media in particular?

THE CENTRAL MYTH OF ‘JOURNALISM’

We journalists like to arrogantly pretend that ours is an exclusive profession, with a special set of skills and a unique commitment to truthseeking and muckraking. In a recent interview, however, Rolling Stone magazine's roving political reporter Matt Taibbi bluntly and graphically skewers this central myth that underpins so much of the media-generated universe:

“If you have no real knowledge or skill set and you’re lazy and full of shit but you want to make a decent wage, then journalism’s not a bad career option. The great thing about it is that you don’t need to know anything. I mean this whole notion of journalism school—I can’t believe people actually go to journalism school. You can learn the entire thing in like three days.”

Three days? Some people seem to have ‘learned’ it in less.

Taibbi has (hilarious) form on this subject. In 2004, he also happened to write this devastatingly true statement:

“I've been around journalists my entire life, since I was a little kid, and I haven't met more than five in three-plus decades who wouldn't literally shit from shame before daring to say that their job had anything to do with truth or informing the public. Everyone in the commercial media…knows what his real job is: feeding the monkey. We are professional space-fillers, frivolously tossing content-pebbles in an ever-widening canyon of demand, cranking out one silly pack-mule after another for toothpaste and sneaker ads to ride on straight into the brains of the stupefied public.”

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE WE KILLING IN IRAQ?

Of the many moral outrages associated with the unprovoked, illegal and unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq, perhaps the most egregious and unforgivable is our continuing failure to take responsibility for the ongoing carnage and loss of lives there. From the very outset of the conflict, Anglo-American commanders on the ground paid little attention to the so-called ‘collateral damage’ inflicted on the Iraqi civilian populace by their invading forces. The infamous declaration by US general Tommy Franks – "We don't do body counts" – set the cold-blooded tone for things to come.

In fact, earlier this year, an internal army investigation by Major General Eldon Bargewell – commissioned in the wake of the notorious Haditha massacre - was scathing in its criticisms of the US Marine Corps in Iraq and, in particular, the deliberate indifference by Marines to the massive loss of innocent Iraqi lives resulting from their trigger-happy actions. From the Washington Post's report:

"All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics," Bargewell wrote. He condemned that approach because it could desensitize Marines to the welfare of noncombatants. "Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get 'the job done' no matter what it takes."

It is this casual indifference to the spilling of innocent blood, this view of civilian deaths as routine and natural, this primacy on the value of American lives over Iraqi lives – all testified to by a senior US general – which reminds those of us who opposed the war that we were right to do so and are right to continue to oppose the subsequent and ongoing occupation. One such anti-war protestor, who has managed to both become a moral beacon as well as sharp thorn in the side of our warmongering government, is Brian Haw, who has (literally) been camped outside of Parliament for over six years now, single-handedly manning his 24-hour vigil there in opposition to the militaristic foreign policies of our elected politicians.

On Sunday, however, so-called ‘liberal hawk’ (and ex-left-winger) Nick Cohen, chose to use his Observer column to excoriate, defame and patronize Haw, while deliberately distorting the situation vis a vis killings in Iraq. Cohen claims:

“Like so many others, Haw can't ask who is killing whom in Iraq. There are no slogans expressing his disgust at the death squads of the Baathists and Iranian-backed Shia militias, nor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq…The best justification for Haw's morality is that if British and American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot guarantee order, they are indirectly responsible for atrocities committed by their opponents."

Notice here the key planks in Cohen’s non-argument. 1) Blame everyone else. He spits out the names of the usual suspects – Baathists, militias, Al Qaeda, etc – without recognizing the rather obvious and straightforward point that the fact that terrorists, insurgents and criminals are nowadays responsible for the bulk of the bloodshed in Iraq does not mean that we (the British, the Americans, the ‘allies’) are not also responsible for some share in that same bloodshed. After all, their killing of innocents do not preclude our own killing of innocents. 2) Assume only indirect responsibility. Cohen is willing to accept only that the occupying troops should be doing more to stem the violence (of others), rather than acknowledge our pro-active role in spreading violence, and his solution is for US and UK troops to inflict even more violence in the name of ‘counter-insurgency’, although he pretends that our violence has no consequences for the innocents of Iraq, no ‘collateral damage’ to apologize or be ashamed for.

As the massacres in Haditha and elsewhere reveal, however, the reality on the ground is a far cry from the distorted, deceptive and dishonest vision of Iraq promulgated by liberal hawks like Cohen.

Of course, Cohen is only the latest in a long line of pro-war liberal pundits (think Aaronovitch, think Hitchens, think Hari) who cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the fact that civilian deaths in Iraq are not simply the ‘indirect’ responsibility of the ‘benign’ occupying forces (i.e. the Americans and the Brits) but, in hundreds, nay thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of cases, the direct moral responsibility of the marauding militaries of the United States and United Kingdom.

Take the report from the leading epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, published late last year in the renowned British medical journal the Lancet. It estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. According to the study, of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes. Crucially, out of those violent deaths, Iraqi households attributed 31 percent of the deaths to coalition forces – i.e. American and British troops, our troops, the ‘liberators’ of Iraq, have the blood of around 186,000 innocent Iraqi civilians on their hands.

There is simply no avoiding this fact. You can try and question the credibility of this report. You can try. But you’ll fail. One of the first to do so was George W. Bush, who said at the time: "Six-hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just... it's not credible." Of course, it is difficult to take lessons in credibility, science or statistics from a man who is virtually illiterate and innumerate and who has publicly described the inhabitants of Athens as "Grecians". It is especially difficult in light of the fact that the epidemiologists at John Hopkins University are amongst the finest in the world and their study was peer-reviewed before being published in the world-renowned Lancet to the widespread acclaim and approval of their academic colleagues – Professor Ronald Waldman, for example, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have." And despite the British government’s own pathetic public attempts to cast doubt on the report’s findings, the Ministry of Defence’s own chief scientific advisor said in an internal memo that the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study was "robust".

So that’s 655,000 excess deaths in Iraq, for which we are indirectly responsible. And 186,000 for which we are directly responsible. Yet, tragically, depressingly, we, the great British public, the great American public, the inhabitants of the self-proclaimed free world remain – like those Marines castigated for Haditha by General Bargewell in April – almost totally indifferent to and unmoved by the death and destruction that we have inflicted on the poor people of that castrated and defenceless nation.

Madeleine Bunting wrote in the Guardian in November:

“Can we claim innocence of the chaotic violence of Iraq now normalised into the background of our lives? …We’re numbed to the atrocities; except for some stalwarts, the initial anti-war activism has been crowded out by other responsibilities. Life goes on, even if in Baghdad it frequently doesn’t."

We are indeed numbed. Apathetic even. Uncaring and seemingly blind to the suffering we have caused. The responsibility for 186,000 deaths lies squarely at our own doorstep. Imagine: the equivalent of the entire population of Portsmouth or Luton wiped out by members of the US and UK armed forces in Iraq in less than four years. Should that not bother us? Should that not shame us? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is understandably difficult to envisage and fathom – after all, in the notorious words of Joseph Stalin “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.”

So let us consider an individual incident. Not a faceless statistic, but the real story of real deaths. The latest edition of the New York Review of Books includes an essay by the brilliant Michael Massing, in which he casts a light on a whole host of new books that he hopes will "impress on Americans the terrible human costs of the invasion". Massing quotes from one such book – House to House: An Epic Memoir of War – at the start of his essay, in which the author, Staff Sergeant David Bellavia, a gung-ho supporter of the war, casually recounts how in 2004, while his platoon was on just its second patrol in Iraq,

“…a civilian candy truck tried to merge with a column of our armored vehicles, only to get run over and squashed. The occupants were smashed beyond recognition. Our first sight of death was a man and his wife both ripped open and dismembered, their intestines strewn across shattered boxes of candy bars. The entire platoon hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours. We stopped, and as we stood guard around the wreckage, we grew increasingly hungry. Finally, I stole a few nibbles from one of the cleaner candy bars. Others wiped away the gore and fuel from the wrappers and joined me.”

Shocked? You should be. It’s not for no reason that the fiercely independent US journalist, Dahr Jamail, has written that “if the people of the United States had the real story about what their government has done in Iraq, the occupation would already have ended”. Of course, it has become the ideologically-charged job of pro-war, pro-government flacks like Nick Cohen in the Observer to prevent us from getting to grips with the truth of this “real story”; of death, destruction and destitution on a countrywide scale. In fact, how people like him sleep at night, I’ll never know.

Ironically, Cohen concludes Sunday’s article with this gem of a line: “I don't think the moral blindness of the intelligentsia can last much longer. Obviously, some who have lost their bearings after Iraq will never find them again and stagger around bellowing for the rest of their days…”

Thanks Nick - I couldn’t possibly have written a better description of you and your liberal, hawkish friends myself.

ISRAEL: 'MILITARY CONFRONTATION WITH IRAN IS INEVITABLE'

One final point worth considering on Iran and the prospects for war: the Israel factor. Since the US government's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iranian nuclear ambitions (or lack of) was published on Monday, Israel - also known as America's 51st state - has been at the forefront of the campaign to discredit the NIE's seemingly dove-ish conclusions.

Speaking shortly after the NIE came out, Israeli defence minister (and former prime minister) Ehud Barak said he believed US intelligence had got it wrong and that his intelligence reports suggested Tehran is still trying to develop a nuclear weapon:

"It's apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear program for a time. But in our opinion, since then it has apparently continued that program. There are differences in the assessments of different organizations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right....We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend.''

The new Israeli ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, went further than Barak in an interview on Thursday with the Daily Telegraph's uber-hawk Con Coughlin: "It should be made clear that if Iran does not co-operate then military confrontation is inevitable. It is either co-operation or confrontation."

And Friday's Guardian has this report: "Israel considering strike on Iran despite US intelligence report."

(Plus, Iran expert Trita Parsi, writing for antiwar.com, claims: "Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh referred to the report as a lie at a recent breakfast in New York, and Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer reportedly "doesn't buy" its findings.")

The Israelis have always refused to believe the Iranian civil nuclear programme is anything other than a covert military programme that poses a so-called 'existential threat' to the Jewish state. They have spent years issuing dire and bellicose warnings, claiming again and again that Iran is just a few years away from the bomb - yet, as Israel's own former deputy national security adviser Shlomo Brom once noted, rather sarcastically: "Remember, the Iranians are always five to seven years from the bomb. Time passes, but they're always five to seven years from the bomb."

The reality is that the Israeli defence establishment has long harboured a desire to carry out a re-run - against Iran - of the country's unilateral (and infamous) air strikes on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. And as the Guardian report points out, "they may have been been heartened by the lack of international censure over its bombing raid in northern Syria in September, which may or may not have targeted a Syrian nuclear installation." (It never ceases to amaze me how the Middle East's only nuclear weapons state - Israel - can arrogate to itself the right to attack those of its neighbours who have no nuclear weapons on the pretext that it is protecting the region from nuclear weapons. We truly inhabit an upside-down, back-to-front, black-is-white-and-white-is-black gepolitical universe - one in which double standards seem to be the only standards.)

It is not only hawks in Israel who long for Osirak the Sequel. The neoconservative hawks within the Bush administration in Washington are equally keen for Israel to flex its muscles against Iran, to strike the first blow and to provoke a military conflict in the region which the American can then join (or claim to be 'dragged into'). In September, Washington insider Steve Clemons reported the following development:

"One member of Cheney's national security staff, David Wurmser, worried out loud that Cheney felt that his wing was "losing the policy argument on Iran" inside the administration -- and that they might need to "end run" the president with scenarios that may narrow his choices. The option that Wurmser allegedly discussed was nudging Israel to launch a low-yield cruise missile strike against the Natanz nuclear reactor in Iran, thus "hopefully" prompting a military reaction by Tehran against U.S. forces in Iraq and the Gulf."

"Hopefully"? It never ceases to amaze me how supposedly educated, intelligent, worldly and rational strategic thinkers, at the highest levels of their governments, in self-proclaimed democracies like Israel and the United States, can continue to agitate for an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, which will undoubtedly make Iraq look "like a leisurely stroll in the park on a balmy Sunday afternoon."

IS IRAN STILL GOING TO GET BOMBED?

One point I failed to consider fully in my first post on this week’s publication of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran is how its publication affects the prospects for military action. Much of the commentariat, both on the left and the right, seem certain now, as Slate’s foreign affairs specialist Fred Kaplan puts it, "If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero." Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan's conclusion upon reading the NIE is equally optimistic: “I do think it removes all likelihood of this administration launching a new war in the next year.” Adrian Hamilton's latest column in the Independent is entitled: “Forget any idea of a military strike on Iran”. And Ray Takeyh, author of the recent book ‘Hidden Iran’ and a self-proclaimed expert on the region at the influential Council of Foreign Relations in New York, says that the report “essentially removes the possibility of a military confrontation between the United States and Iran over the nuclear issue…the military option at this point is not on the table.”

Really Ray?

The miserable record of the past seven years suggests that President Bush and his acolytes have never let anything as insignificant as facts or figures get in the way of their policies and prejudices. As one senior Bush aide told the New York Times Magazine in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

It is only in this context – of an irrational and arrogant administration which prefers fantasy over reality, and ill-conceived and unilateral actions over reasoned deliberation and empirical evidence – that we can truly understand how and why it is that George Bush is able to stand up, in front of the White House press corps, on the day after the NIE is released (the very same NIE which declares Iran has (i) no nuclear weapons, (ii) no nuclear weapons programme and (iii) no foreseeable plans to launch a nuclear weapons programme) and proclaim, “I still feel strongly that Iran is a danger…I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace. My opinion hasn't changed.” What?!?! (I am reminded here of comedian Stephen Colbert's hilarious and sarcastic denunciation of Bush, standing only a few feet away from the President and the First Lady at the White House Press Corespondents Dinner last year: “The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.”)

So, Bush feels no differently about Iran. Nor do the media’s most influential neoconservatives (Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, Norman Podhoretz). In fact, one of their number, the Washington Post’s Robert Kagan, gave the game away this week:

“The Bush administration cannot take military action against Iran during its remaining time in office, or credibly threaten to do so, unless it is in response to an extremely provocative Iranian action. A military strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities was always fraught with risk. For the Bush administration, that option is gone.”

Notice the crucial part of this statement – no, not the “option is gone” part or the “fraught with risk” part. Notice the key caveat: “The Bush administration cannot take military action against Iran…unless it is in response to an extremely provocative Iranian action.”

So the military option is still on the table, says Bush, and – forget the nukes! - it will be used in response to provocations by the Iranians, say his neocon supporters. It all makes perfect sense. But, what if the Iranians refuse to play ball and ‘provoke’ the Americans, either in Iraq or Lebanon or elsewhere? Simple – the Americans will then do the provoking.

In fact, earlier this year, in February, a former Bush administration official actually suggested that the US government is using the backdrop of sectarian violence in Iraq to deliberately provoke a military conflict with the Iranians. Speaking on CNN, Hillary Mann, the former director for Iranian and Persian Gulf Affairs on the National Security Council, warned that the hawks in the Pentagon were “trying to push a provocative, accidental conflict”. She added that the administration hopes to goad the Iranians into an overreaction so that it would then have the justification to carry out “limited strikes” against nuclear infrastructure and Revolutionary Guards buildings inside of Iran.

In the same month, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter and one of Washington’s leading foreign policy ‘grandees’, went even further than Mann. Most stunning and shocking was his description of what he called a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran.” It would, he suggested, involve “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

As Barry Grey – one of the few journalists present on Capitol Hill to actually record and report Brzezinski’s damning comments – points out, “this was an unmistakable warning to the US Congress, replete with quotation marks to discount the “defensive” nature of such military action, that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext for an attack on Iran. Although he did not explicitly say so, Brzezinski came close to suggesting that the White House was capable of manufacturing a provocation—including a possible terrorist attack within the US—to provide the casus belli for war.”

It is a view shared by (among others) long-time neocon watchers, Jim Lobe of the IPS news agency and Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com, as well as the award-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who wrote in the New Yorker only two months ago:

“This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.”

“Counterterrorism”? Hallelujah! God bless 9/11. Everything ultimately comes back to the good old ‘War on Terror’. So, even if Iran has no nukes, and the American intelligence admits they have no nukes, the American government still has a backdoor route (excuse? ruse? pretext?) to launching an attack on the Iranians. If they do, God help us all – because even George W. Bush himself has described a potential conflict with Iran as "World War III."

NAMING AND SHAMING THE IRAN HAWKS

For several months now, I have been planning to start blogging. One of my early ideas was to devote the entire focus of this blog (all the postings, all the links, even the name!) to the growing crisis in the West’s relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the seeming build-up to a catastrophic Anglo-American war with the Iranians. Until this week, I was one of those who firmly and devoutly believed that Messrs Bush and Cheney would not vacate the White House in January 2008 without first taking some form of military action against the regime in Tehran. Yet on Monday, unexpectedly, like millions around the globe, I breathed a sigh of relief as the United States government released a new National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) on Iran. Reflecting the assessments made by sixteen different US spy agencies – chief amongst them, the CIA – it bluntly concluded: "We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." It went on to say, "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005." It further said, "Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs." With this announcement, the dynamics of US-Iranian relations, post-war Iraq and the entire Middle Eastern region shifted dramatically. For one thing, the probability of a unilateral strike against Iranian nuclear targets has drastically reduced. A number of commentators are now certain that, as Slate's Fred Kaplan puts it, "If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero."

So, what has the press fallout from this unexpected NIE report been? In the United States, media critics have begun offering up all sorts of reminders of the near-fatal claims by many in the press relating to alleged Iranian nukes – chief among them, Salon's Glenn Greenwald and Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell. But where have similar acts of reminding and accounting appeared in our own British press? Can we now expect an apology, or even a retraction, from the ‘Iran hawks’ who have come to dominate so many of the news and comment pages of our national papers? (Don’t hold your breath!)

Take the so-called ‘paper of record’, the Times. How have its writers covered the Iranian story over the past few years? Chief Foreign Commentator Bronwen Maddox declared, “Time is on Iran’s side as it hurtles towards nuclear weapons barrier.” Assistant Editor Gerard Baker described Iran’s “pursuit of an epoch-altering Bomb.” Blairite columnist and pro-war pundit David Aaronovitch decided Iran “is probably developing a nuclear weapon capacity.”

But the highly-paid stars of the Times are not alone in their misjudgements and misreporting on Iran. Writing in the Daily Mail, columnist Melanie Phillips, or ‘Mad Mel’ as she is lovingly known by her critics, accused Tehran of “racing to develop nuclear weapons with which it threatens to wipe Israel off the map and with which it would hold us to ransom.” Writing in the Sun, the then political editor Trevor Kavanagh proclaimed “nothing - apart from unimaginable military action - can stop the mullahs acquiring nuclear power and then nuclear weapons.” Even the so-called ‘liberal press’ succumbed to the nuclear falsehoods and untruths. The normally reasonable Polly Toynbee, writing in the Guardian, asked: “Now the mad mullahs of Iran will soon have nuclear bombs, are we all doomed?” Her fellow Guardian columnist - and Iraq war critic - Sir Max Hastings concluded “Iran is doing its utmost to build nuclear weapons.” The Independent’s young war-hawk-in-chief, Johann Hari, spoke of “Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons.”

Yet the Glenn Greenwald award for “serial fabricators, fear-mongerers and hysterics” has to go to bloviators at the Telegraph. At the height of the Israeli assault on Lebanon, in the summer of 2006, executive foreign editor Con Coughlin – the man who previously peddled innumerable false claims about Iraq’s WMDs, which included linking Saddam’s regime to Al Qaeda – penned a column entitled: "Meanwhile, Iran gets on with its bomb". The paper’s ‘media don’, Professor Niall Ferguson, described President Ahmadinejad’s decision to “accelerate Iran's nuclear weapons programme.” The then diplomatic editor, Anton La Guardia, decided there were “good reasons to fear that the mullahs, behind the guise of a civil nuclear power programme, are secretly trying to build an atomic bomb.” The paper’s pro-war, pro-Bush Canadian columnist Mark Steyn described the (European) view that Iran was three or four years away from having deliverable nuclear weapons as “laughably optimistic.” (No surprise then that some bloggers have now invented the word, "Steynwalling" - defined as a “failure to respond to repeated demonstrations of error”).

The list of misjudgements, errors, inaccuracies, exaggerations, falsehoods, untruths and, basically, lies is – sadly, depressingly, frustratingly – endless.

Yet the purpose of accumulating these quotes, and poring over the past columns and contributions of Fleet Street’s finest, is not simply to mock, point and belittle (amusing and worthwhile as that may be) but to highlight the repeated failure by our media elites, our pundit classes, our own self-proclaimed 'Serious Foreign Policy Geniuses', to convey an accurate, truthful and balanced view of the alleged ‘threat’ from Iran’s nuclear programme. Over the past four years, too many in the media, on both sides of the Atlantic, seem to have failed to learn the lessons of the Iraqi WMD intelligence failure – and the concurrent propaganda efforts by the US and UK governments – and instead have been repeating it vis a vis Iran. It is tragic and deeply depressing that the British public should have to rely on the various and secretive intelligence agencies of the United States government for the truth about Iran and its (lack of) nuclear weapons, rather than our own well-paid and well-read journalists, correspondents and columnists; the so-called ‘Fourth Estate’, which has become "the agency of power, not people". Perhaps this week’s (rare) burst of honesty from America’s spooks will help mark the start of a new chapter in our media’s coverage of Iran. We can only hope.