Total number of comments: 1542 (since 2013-04-13 18:28:29)
Juan Cole
is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page
Website: http://juancole.com
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You are confused because you are not very good at reading texts.
I did not say that the protesters have as their goal a coup; I said that Erdogan mistakenly believes in this paranoid theory.
I am the one who said Erdogan's rule differs starkly from that in Iran.
I did not say or imply that his subordination of the military was unfortunate.
Right to assemble and freedom of the press are not observed by the Erdogan government, which detracts from its democratic credentials; elections aren't everything.
Oh, sorry I misunderstood; internet opaque to irony. & thanks!
Thank you, Mr. NSA, for your smear, thus confirming my post.
That's not actually true. Hong Kong still has an amazing amount of autonomy. I was surprised when I visited. Beijing is trying to become influential, but doesn't always succeed and seems not to just be able to order people around.
Yes.
But they are not fundamentalist about both, which is what I am pointing out.
Wikileaks shows that the Yemeni government wants the US operations there.
I did link to Foust.
The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) supports al-Assad.
Since Erdogan has a clear majority in parliament he is in no danger of losing a vote of no confidence or of seeing his government fall, at least for now. He will likely run for president next year.
The items are not chosen on the basis of macro numbers but as indications of change. Nuclear is not insignificant but it doesn't present the scalable and grassroots opportunities that solar increasingly does, and it is doomed to be phased out over the next half-century. There aren't going to be any nuclear plants in Haiti, but there could end up being quite a lot of small scale solar kits and arrays, which will have a big impact on people's lives.
Solar and wind in many markets are already at or below grid parity, and it will be fun to watch the market do the rest.
Unfortunately it won't be fast enough to avoid a destabilized climate.
First of all, you can't wriggle out of the French example by saying that Hollande is president. His prime minister could be made to resign over the roughing up of the right wing anti-gay rights protesters, too. The question I posed is whether you think the police crackdown on the Catholic Right in the middle of Paris, which did result in injuries, should have that effect.
That the national prime minister should resign over municipal police actions seems to me a non-starter. Please name a time when a French or British prime minister stepped down not because of a loss in internal party deliberations or for fear of losing a vote of no-confidence in parliament but because of street protests.
The long and the short of it is that democracy cannot work if a small minority can thwart the results of the ballot box simply by coming out into the streets. They should be allowed to, and the police authorities in Turkey have behaved shamefully. But the right way for AK to be judged as political actors is at the ballot box, given that international observers find Turkish elections relatively free and fair.
A few thousand was what is was when I was writing.
Small and large are relative terms. When I was writing late Friday, moreover, the Istiqlal crowds were in fact small. They may grow, no one knows.
In parliamentary systems the government typically resigns when it can't muster 51% of votes in parliament, not because a few thousand people demand it. The French ultramontane Catholics have been holding fairly large demonstrations in Paris against gay marriage and have demanded President Hollande's resignation, as well. Do you think he should step down on that basis?
Moreover, when the government falls in a parliamentary system, there are snap elections for parliament. Were Mr. Erdogan to call for new elections, his party would almost certainly win them. CHP is disorganized and not all that popular in most of the country.
I didn't say anything dismissive; it was just dispassionate analysis from afar.
I've been going to Turkey since the mid-1970s, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the economy has grown just enormously. Infrastructure, buildings, everything shows signs of dynamism and upkeep. This is distinctly *not* the case in Tunis or Cairo.
There isn't any serious doubt that AKP has been being legitimately elected. Kemalists are sore losers.
http://en.trend.az/news/politics/1890596.html
The Alevis liked Kemalism for its secularism, but their cemaathanes were targeted in Kemalist legislation as 'sectarian,' just as Sufi tekiyes were. Alevis are not Alawis and while they may have some sympathy, it is like Mormon sympathy for Ekankar members.
Kenan Evren started that Imam Hatip stuff.
I say in the article that CHP opposes AKP on Syria policy, and even went to see al-Assad.
What I meant was that I doubt Syria policy is implicated in the Gezi Park protests.
The secular government in the 1980s was far, far more repressive and had lots more dissenters in jail.
Well Erdogan is likely going to run for president, so voters will have a chance to hold him accountable if they like.
I don't disagree that Erdogan has a 'tyranny of the majority' mindset and is crowding people in the public arena, which is why this is happening.
But the idea that Turkey had a free press or other liberties under the Kemalists that have now declined is risible.
Alevis in Turkey are a completely different thing than Alawites in Syria.
There isn't any evidence that Syria played into these events one way or another.
Most appear to be sentenced to community service or the like, but it is a very expensive way to get volunteers!
Of course there is a racial bias! The prohibition on pot was all about race!
http://reason.com/blog/2013/04/23/91-of-dc-pot-charges-are-filed-against-b
It isn't your water that is at issue, it is damming up the Blue Nile for electricity.
It is your electricity that is at stake, and it isn't Ethiopians who are being asked to die for it, it is Egyptians.
If you want more electricity, put in wind turbines, solar panels and geothermal installations the way Kenya is doing. You don't need to water-starve your northern neighbors to get your lights turned on at night or to run air conditioners.
But it's population is not like that of Egypt or Bangladesh
Ethiopia signed agreements not to do this. And, water flowing through your country to somewhere else is not your exclusive property.
I am also critical of what the US has done to the Colorado River that used to flow into Mexico.
I discussed all this in the Truthdig article to which I linked.
It is more about making a stand on Russian spheres of influence, reassertion as great power.
Eastern Orthodox church not irrelevant.
Well, Bill, the rhetoric is very heated and they seem to be on a collision course. People sometimes fall into crisis without intending to. You wouldn't have thought Israel would attack a Turkish ship, either.
Yes
Oh, they are heavily invested all around the region.
In international law, as of 1945, you can't just attack a country that hasn't attacked you and isn't a present and immediate danger to international order as designated by the UNSC. It was an illegal war.
No, the soldiers in 2003 were honorable. I have gotten in a lot of trouble for having said so on the day of the invasion. But the war was illegal and a shame to the political class that sent them there. I don't know very many soldiers or Marines who disagree with me about this, by the way.
Alright, Sheen. Your homework assignment is to assemble the exact numbers.
Let's start in the relatively small country of Algeria. Estimated dead in French invasion, occupation, putting down of rebellions and famine caused by maladministration in the 19th century is 800,000. Then repressing the Algerian war for independence 1954-1962 was at least half a million directly killed by France, and you could arguably blame all million deaths on the French colonial authorities' resisting independence. So that's 1.8 million just in Algeria.
Russia and then the Soviet Union killed a similar number of Muslims in Central Asia.
3.6.
Let's consider the millions killed in what is now Bangladesh just by the British mismanagement of the Bengal famine in the 1940s.
You want to go into the Dutch East Indies?
You could get to 20 million with a fraction of this list.
1798 is when most historians date the beginning of the modern Middle East. It isn't arbitrary-- there is a reason for it.
If the Muslims haven't been dangerous for the past 200 years, as you admit, why hype them on Sunday talk shows as now the biggest threat since the Mongols?
Thanks for weighing in, Larry!
Alas, I don't know the answers to your good questions. But, I think the Museum is more than half open.
that kind of thing already does get translated. It is the tradition of American political thought and social and cultural history that is absent in most Middle Eastern languages.
Iran's ayatollahs are not elected by anybody; some do serve on councils but they are appointed either by parliament or the Supreme Leader.
Your view of Iran is too static. Think back to 2002 and the 2nd of Khordad movement.
Thanks so much for your informed comment, Jerry!
Your elected representatives voted against lending a helping hand to New York and New Jersey, and you don't want that brought up.
Your elected representatives are imposing policies on our country that will produce more weather disasters and you don't want that brought up.
Since Inhofe and Coburn spoke openly in derision about wasteful aid for the East Coast during the Sandy disaster, they haven't treated the rest of the country the way you want to be treated.
Got it?
Apparently one size doesn't fit all. Some of the policies that helped make Turkey successful destroyed Argentina; Turkey obviously did some other things right. There is a set of intervening variables between success and neoliberalism tout court that Friedmanesque economists clearly don't understand.
By the way, the rules are neutral as to big public sector or big private sector. China did fine.
Ooops, keyboard omitted Indonesia
Yes, of course. Totalitarianism is much better.
It's a big place, Mark. Highly unlikely that a base would be hit that way. But, space is dangerous.
You can do $5 trades at lots of online stock sites. Besides, you could wait a few weeks to make the first trade without deeply damaging your lifetime earnings.
A majority of Americans has saved very little because they aren't paid anything.
Conservatives always want to take the spotlight off social *outcomes* (inequality, food insecurity, etc) and put the spotlight on individual character.
The outcomes are important and they are more often produced by law and policy than by character (which anyway can't be measured; your assertions that the poor are spendthrift are just a bias.)
If an attempt was being deliberately made to provoke violence against US embassy personnel, that would fall well within clear and present danger, material support for terrorism, accomplice to murder, etc.
Your leader Rand Paul expressed discomfort at the Civil Rights Act of 1965 forcing restaurants to stop discriminating against African-Americans. Because, you know, government regulation is always bad.
Your philosophy is that we don't have to organize a government to curb the sociopaths in the corporations because of the Magic Hand. I'm just pointing out that in real world situations of weak or lax governance, the Magic Hand that turns corporations into angels is not in evidence.
Yes, and you promised us that without government oversight corporations would never do things like that. Weak government as in Belize is very much like no government, so is a good testing ground for your incorrect theory.
Never is a long time. You assume solar panels' efficiency cannot be dramatically improved. It will prove to be an incorrect assumption.
If 19 white people had been shot at a New York parade, it would have been news.
It isn't a matter of scale.
The article was clearly talking about television coverage.
I actually don't agree. Sandy Hook.
thanks. No, it was just a week.
Putting the entirety of AP under telephone surveillance secretly for one leak seems a little disproportionate, no?
Your comment is meaningless.
There is going to be a government no matter who wins the election, and as Max Weber pointed out, there is an iron law of bureaucracy.
If you think government is going to disappear, you are naive.
If you think the hard line attitude in this administration toward whistleblowers means that everything the administration does is bad, they you lack a sense of proportion.
Your comment just has no semantic content of any significance.
You are leaving out the cost of climate change; it is a trick not to count against coal all the public health and environmental damage it causes.
Solar and wind are now at grid parity, so coal could be banned without much cost except building the new power plants, which would help jump-start the economy.
Yeah, like immigrants don't do poorly paid hard jobs and there are no native-born Dutch on the dole. You do realize you are in public?
You do understand that this is an ad hominem argument, and so a logical fallacy, and that you haven't actually said anything at all but to reveal some prejudices?
First of all, there is no reason Muslims shouldn't be allowed to be distinctive. Second, you lead a sheltered life if you really think unveiled women in Cairo cause riots. Third, 10% of Israelis are Haredim--it isn't aeprchaic, it is fast-growing and dynamic. You get an F.
thanks, Meir.
But there is already an arms race, impelled by Israel's stockpile (Iraq in the 1980s, and maybe aspects of Iran, are in response to that).
Iran hasn't threatened to annihilate Israel! It has a no first strike policy.
Bravo!
What is the earlist manuscript extant containing such texts? Why should I believe your faith-based assurance that the reports are early? Prove it.
So who's acknowledging?
Israel has lines into sections of the Syrian opposition. You can't go by what people say publicly.
Saudi Wahhabism is pro-monarchy, pro status quo, but very puritanical.
The Nusra Front is anti-status quo, pro-al-Qaeda and very puritanical.
Saudis have for some time preferred secularists to political Islam of a radical sort. They prefer the PLO to Hamas, preferred Mubarak to Muslim Brotherhood, etc.
You cleverly sidestep all the millions dead from Christian colonialism, WW I, etc. And, most of the people who fought in WW II were Christians, regardless of their leaders; and most Germans serving in the Nationalist Socialist period were Christians. This way of excusing what your civilization has done by othering all the atrocities your coreligionists have committed is precisely my point.
Maher makes a logical error. There are some things that upset Muslims and cause riots that seem to us innocuous. But there are things that upset everyone in every culture and can cause riots.
Maher should try performing at the Apollo in Harlem in blackface, liberally using the N word, and ridiculing Martin Luther King.
Or, let him play south India dressed as Lord Siva and make fun of him and the other gods. Boo hoo, you're really torn up by the story of Ganesha. Really? an elephant head?
I really don't think he'd get out of the theater alive.
We know the rules of subcultures in the US and we don't typically cross certain lines (and if we do there is trouble). We don't know the rules for other cultures, and they therefore seem uniquely touchy to us.
The couple of specific events I mentioned don't account for the entire 2 million I estimated. Adding this one wouldn't change the point of the piece.
The Iran-Iraq War killed about 250,000, the Afghanistan War 1 million, so there's room for other things in the original estimate. But if it was 3 million it would not change my point.
Really? We have to be mercury-poisoned and cooked because 100,000 might have to change jobs? Capitalist America shifts people from job to job all the time. How many people now work in Blockbuster Video stores?
Being secular doesn't mean you are an atheist. Most Western secular countries are led by believers in religion. The word has a wide semantic range, but I think using it to describe a mindset that rejects theocracy is perfectly legitimate.
No evidence these guys are core al-Qaeda.
Yeah but we're not at war with Russia (Chechnya) or Kyrgyzstan.
The aunt also says 2002. He must have been early teens.
The argument is that he was part of the Kadyrov group that made peace with Putin instead of joining the jihadis in the later 1990s; he can still be a Chechen nationalist.
People who advocate violence against non-combatant civilians are radical, and we know which preachers do. Prayer is not a sign of radicalism in itself, but was part of a pattern here and therefore worth noting in the context of the argument that the family's traditions were typical ex-Soviet secular.
Yeah, the connection isn't direct. But the US did pressure Turki al-Faisal, Saudi minister of intelligence, to find people who would help with the effort, and he asked Bin Laden to do fundraising and there you go...
The Sovietologists I respect insist that it was internal and had to do with the way the system wasn't working for people any more.
The Soviet collapse had nothing to do with Afghanistan. Defense spending was flat in the previous decade.
Thanks so much for this insightful comment, Jim, and the kind words!
Read the text! There is nothing about the past in it.
The article is not about later commentaries. It is about scriptural values. As a Qur'an scholar myself, I stand by what I wrote.
The posting isn't entitled 'what illiterate Muslims believe'; it is about scriptural ideals. The verse is quite clear and uncontradicted elsewhere in the Qur'an, and just because people like to use their scripture to reinforce their own bigotries by using it selectively is no reason to ignore what the scripture plainly says.
Uh, I dunno. Maybe because they have a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies?
The apostasy thing is not in the Qur'an, Bill.
So have Christians. So what? The post is about the scriptural ideals of the religion.
Frank means mass media, i.e., television
Oh, the Muslim Brotherhood is all for the destruction of al-Qaeda, a hated rival.
You understand that Iran did not in fact threaten to wipe Israel off the map, and that its leaders have repeatedly stated a no first strike policy, i.e. they haven't threatened anyone at all. Your post is a good support for the article.
Somehow I don't think she's kidding around.
When Bonaparte invaded Palestine in 1799 he found 3000 jews there
tough room.
Most Jews had probably converted to Christianity by 400 AD or so, and many of those later converted to Islam. That is, for most of the past 2000 years there were hardly any Jews in the sense of followers of the Judaic religion in Palestine. As for people of Jewish/Canaanite biological heritage, most people now alive probably have some, and more Palestinians do than do Ashkenazi Jews.
If you look back through the archives you'll find lots of humor and satire. Not competing with anyone; am many things, including a humorist in my own right.
You seem to have missed the word 'murderous.' And, you haven't dealt with whether the proposed solution is plausible.
You guys can't be unserious even for a second can you? As for Zionism, no one took it seriously till the rise of the Nazis and they are they main justification you now get from Zionists. But you are rather missing the point of the satire, which is the implausibility of the whole thing.
Oh, come on, take a joke.
you did read the heading, right?
Yeah, that's an old dictionary that I'm gradually having students expand and correct.