Politicians' funeral pyre

So yesterday we heard that:

An open letter published Friday in Britain's The Independent newspaper and signed by former British Cabinet ministers and ambassadors urged Blair to help broker a swift cease-fire...The letter was also signed by musicians Damon Albarn, Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno.

It is more than clear to me that Gabriel and Eno miscalculated by not inviting their pal Robert Fripp to co-sign.

Blair was a big fan of Fripp's band King Crimson, especially their seminal 1969 track "21st Century Schizoid Man":

Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
21st century schizoid man

Say what you want about the British Prime Minister - he's a rocker.
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"All politics is local", especially in Lebanon

Last week, I participated in a conference call with a Republican Congressman, whom I respect, concerning the situation in Lebanon. I very much appreciate his efforts to understand the political reality, and to solicit advice from concerned citizens familiar with the region. During the call, he mentioned to us that he had given much thought to the words of Congressman Ron Paul, a fellow Republican, who said on the floor of the House during debate on this issue the previous evening:

"It is very easy to criticize the Government of Lebanon for not doing more about Hezbollah. I object to terrorism committed by Hezbollah because I am a strong opponent to all violence on all sides. But I also object to the unreasonable accusations that the Government of Lebanon has not done enough, when we realize that Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years and was not able to neutralize Hezbollah."

Congressman Paul closed with the words of Ronald Reagan:

"The irrationality of Middle Eastern politics forced us to rethink our policy there."

He makes a good point, but we cannot simply write off the "irrationality" of the region - to do so is in some ways a lazy approach. Anyway, after the call, I offered words of advice to the staff of the Congressman with whom I and my colleagues conferenced, reflected by the following:

Politics in the Middle East may be practiced differently and structured differently, but the concepts are the same.

To understand the internal situation in Lebanon, we have to remember the old adage: "All politics is local". [The Congressman] understands this, that's why he comes home from DC on the weekends, attends events and GOP club meetings, and holds conference calls with concerned citizens like he did with us this week.

That's why he gets re-elected. If suddenly he never came home, ran around the USA campaigning for other candidates and took international trips constantly, it wouldn't take long for a challenger to offer the people in [the district] a better alternative.

Unfortunately, some leaders of the recently-elected Lebanese parliament have failed to understand this concept. Instead, they have seemed more interested in elitist soirées in foreign captials and listening to flattering words of praise from heads of state, than in spending time on the ground in Lebanon trying to forge a national consensus and confront Hezbollah about trading its military prowess for a larger political stake in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah's leaders, despite their bellicose and troubling objectives, have been on the ground building up popular support for their agenda, whether we like it or not.

It is unfortunate that the kind of leaders that we hope would prosper in the Arab world tend to be ineffective and lack credibility. In the future we need to evaluate them more carefully and seek better intelligence on their ongoing capabilities.

Finally, if we want the Lebanese government to succeed in marginalizing Hezbollah we have to remember: ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL.

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Lieberman always wants it both ways

I have never much cared for Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman. He's a Democrat and I'm a Republican, so I usually stand in opposition to his views on most domestic issues. And whereas I voice caution and disagreement with my fellow Republicans about their willingness in recent years to jump headlong into ill-advised wars, Lieberman always seems to be one of the leading hawks.

Although I should mention that Lieberman did have the courage to stand up and castigate former President Bill Clinton during the impeachment proceedings back in the late 90s.

This year, 2006, finds Lieberman facing the fight of his political life to hang on to his Senate seat, facing a Democrat Primary against businessman Ned Lamont, who has taken Lieberman to task for his unflinching support of the Iraq War. Lieberman finds himself trailing in the polls, and likely to get dumped by his party in the primary next month by a base fed up with war.

But the tactics that Lieberman has employed to deal with this crisis have eroded my respect for the man even further. As an insurance policy for his probable loss in the primary, Lieberman has also filed to run in the general election as an independent candidate, where he hopes that his many years of service to the people of Connecticut will win him another term, even if running without the Democrat Party's support.

To me, this shows a lack of principles and allegiance to his party. Lieberman always wants it both ways, reminding me of the 2000 Presidential contest, in which he was Al Gore's running mate. Though on the ballot for Vice President, he kept his name on the ballot for Senate, so that he'd still be part of the Washington power game if Gore failed to win the White House. His actions in both situations, though they display a certain amount of חוצפה, are a bit self-serving and insulting to voters, in my view.

In any case, this is one example where, politically speaking, New Jersey may actually serve as a role model for other states, believe it or not. Here in the Garden State, a candidate seeking a major-party nomination in the primary is forbidden from also filing as an independent candidate in the General Election. So this self-serving Liebermanesque manipulation of the nomination process is prohibited as a matter of statute.

"Wally Edge" at politicsnj points out that Lieberman's predecessor, Republican Lowell Weicker, won the seat from Thomas Dodd, father of Lieberman's current Senatorial colleague Christopher Dodd, who also filed as an independent candidate to hedge his Democrat Primary loss - mirroring Lieberman's current approach.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Alan Schlesinger, has said with respect to Iraq that he wants "50% of the troops withdrawn within 12 months of Election Day."
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Zulima Farber should not be paid for "spin" time

Several weeks ago, NJ Attorney General Zulima Farber raced to the rescue of her boyfriend who had gotten stopped by police in Bergen County for driving an unregistered minivan with an invalid license, only to subsequently duck out of the public spotlight until this week. According to a very unflattering article on by Mitch Maddux and Shawn Boburg in The Record:

Farber's appearance Friday was the first step in an apparently coordinated public relations campaign, following three weeks of silence, no public appearances and other efforts to skirt the issue. The attorney general also has hired a Princeton-based media consultant, Mickey Faigen. Farber also has scheduled individual interviews with reporters today.

To be clear: With the state still in financial ruin, AG Farber should not be paid for any time she spends doing interviews to give her spin on actions she herself admitted were "inappropriate". And I would further like to know if her spin-meister will be paid from her own personal funds, or will the NJ taxpayers have to bear that burden as well?

Farber's actions do not surprise me at all, because I have seen her "prowess" before, back in February when I testified before the Homeland Security committee of the NJ Legislature at the request of Republican State Chair Tom Wilson, along with Sherine el-Abd, co-Chair of the NJ Arab-American Republican Caucus (to listen to my testimony, click here) regarding the Dubai Ports deal. Farber made a bumbling statement before the committee, full of the same unsophisticated rhetoric the Democrats were racing to the microphone to proclaim.

But Republican committee member Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole, who is also the Essex County Republican Chairman, made a fool out of Farber during his questioning. He pushed her as to why the State Director of Homeland Security was not present - she did not seem to know who held that position and if it even fell under her jurisdiction. I literally had to look at the floor to stop myself from bursting out laughing. O'Toole was that good.

And all the reporters covering that hearing saw Farber in action as well, including Mitch Maddux, who co-wrote today's piece.
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"polite but long discourses on Greater Syria"

At the most recent White House press briefing, Press Secretary Tony Snow described as "blazingly pointless" past American diplomacy with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, which includes the negotiations during the George HW Bush Administration that resulted in Syrian and American troops fighting side by side to expel Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait during the first Gulf War.

Hence, Snow's rationale for avoiding diplomacy with Syria:

Because the track record stinks. I don't know if you remember all the old pictures of diplomats...sitting around there drinking tea with Hafez al-Assad, the father, having to sit there for five, six, ten hours, listening to polite but long discourses on Greater Syria, and at the end of that, having gotten nothing.

Well, here is my advice to anyone who finds himself in this predicament:

1) keep Greater Syria lectures to 90 minutes or less

2) serve arak instead of tea

That might improve the results.
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The Lowe-down on Passaic County

Tonight, the County Committee of the Passaic County Republican Party will endorse Erik Lowe as a candidate for the office of Freeholder, standing beside Jonathan Soto and Ken Del Vecchio in the November election, up against incumbent Democrats James Gallagher, Sonia Rosado, and newly-appointed Tahesha Way.

Lowe, a friend of mine, takes the place of former County Clerk Ronni Nochimson, who was chosen by the Executive Committee under the previous regime before Scott Rumana ascended to the Chairmanship. Lowe had "screened" (presented his credentials) before the former County Committee in the Spring, but was not chosen.

Lowe, a 38-year-old bank manager and father who lives in the multi-ethnic 6th Ward of Paterson, ran unsuccessfully on 3 past occasions for the Paterson School Board. Lowe's candidacy will be important as an outreach to the black community, a prominent demographic in Passaic County that has traditionally been the hardest nut for the Republican Party to crack.

I look forward to supporting him enthusiastically.
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Sfeir's itinerary

Interestingly, Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir (not to be confused with another Lebanese power-broker, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah) has been in the United States during the entire time that his home nation of Lebanon has been under Israeli bombardment.

In fact, Sfeir has been in the US since June 29, according to an article in The Arab American News, published by Osama Siblani in the Arab-American stronghold of Dearborn, Michigan. The article quoted Sfeir as saying:

"We are against all aggression wherever it comes from. We condemn Israel's recent retaliations against Lebanon's people and infrastructure. We also hope that Hizbullah will finally lay down its arms and join the other citizens of Lebanon in reaching political solutions to all of the Lebanese problems."

Today, in stark contrast to a snub from the Bush Administration during a March 2001 visit to Washington, Sfeir was scheduled to meet at the White House with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (Sfeir also met with President Bush last year). This is according to the Catholic News Service, which also said that Sfeir would leave the US for Cyprus, hoping that the UN would assist him in returning to Lebanon.

Of course, Sfeir could fly to Damascus, which would be a symbolic recognition of the tens of thousands of Maronites who live in the Syrian Arab Republic, and return to Lebanon through there.

In 2000, when Pope John Paul II himself visited Damascus, Sfeir by choice did not join the festivities and instead stayed at home in Bkerke, Lebanon.

In any case, I wish the Patriarch a swift and safe journey home to be with his people at this urgent time.
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State Department on the Lebanon debacle

On Thursday afternoon, I had the opportunity, as a member of the National Policy Council of the Arab American Institute (AAI), to take part in a conference call with Alberto Fernandez, Director of Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department. Fernandez is obviously no freshman, he speaks Arabic fluently and has a great deal of experience in the region. He is also quite a "straight-shooter". Though some of his remarks were met with an understandable sense of frustration on the part of the call's participants, I am sure I speak for my colleagues when I express my thanks to Mr. Fernandez for taking the time to consider the group's opinions.

Since he was kind enough to make his remarks "on the record", here are some of Fernandez's quotes from the call. To me, the 2 biggest revelations were, first, that despite horribly strained relations, the US has still been using Syrian intermediaries to negotiate an end to the Hamas crisis in Gaza.

The second was Fernandez rebuking Israel's position toward the Lebanese government. He specifically said:

"If it gets me in trouble, it gets me in trouble. I don't care. The Israeli Government has said 'we hold the Lebanese government responsible.' The US Government has not said that, and we don't believe that."

His quote with respect to Syrian mediation on Hamas was:

"This is the result of a cynical ploy by Hamas, by a wing of Hamas or a part of Hamas to provoke a reaction on the regional stage. Hamas has been intransigent - we do not talk to Hamas ourselves, but we are in contact with a wide range of partners from the Syrians to the Turks, the Qataris."

Clearly Mr. Fernandez was also mirroring President Bush's attempts to continue to express verbal support for the Lebanese government under Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. He added:

"We have been cognizant of the efforts of the Lebanese Cabinet to be responsible and to act in a mature and serious way. This is one of the best governments Lebanon ever had, it's a serious government, and the result of a democratic process. They have made it clear that they do not endorse the actions Hezbollah took...They recalled their ambassador, who publicly took the Hezbollah position vs. The official Lebanese Government position."

Contrarily, Fernandez reserved the blame for the recent flare-ups almost exclusively for Hezbollah, saying:

"Nasrallah (note: political leader of Hezbollah) practices an incredibly cynical reality. He provoked this reaction by the Israelis at the beginning of tourist season which was expected to bring $4.4 Billion into the Lebanese economy, and [many thousands] employed in the tourism sector. Hezbollah should have realized what would happen...killing Israeli soldiers in Israel and shelling Israeli towns meets the definition of escalation...innocent people in Lebanon are paying the price for Hezbollah's adventurism."

Fernandez described the reaction of Hezbollah supporters using the Arabic word shamata,(شماتة) meaning: deriving pleasure or comfort at the discomfort of enemies. He then got a bit annoyed when pushed further discuss Hezbollah, saying:

"Oh come on, the 'Lebanese Resistance', if I may use that term sarcastically, didn't know the Shebaa Farms was occupied until the Syrians told them so. That is just ridiculous."

Other than his very clear critique of their anti-Lebanon policy, Fernandez gave almost a blanket endorsement to Israel's current actions, describing them as "a response to a coldly planned provocation by Hezbollah." With respect to the harm caused to civilian targets in Lebanon, Fernandez agreed that the best Israeli response would be to directly target Nasrallah only - "ideally, that is what would happen."

Many of the participants took umbrage with Fernandez's attitude toward the civilian casualties. He explained his disagreement with their critique that Israel's response was disproportionate by saying:

"I find it surprising, kind of illogical, that if someone provokes me, I'm supposed to respond as they want me to respond. Maybe that is a moral issue or a Christian issue."

Fernandez also drew a parallel between the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in response to the soldier captures and the American invasion of Afghanistan in response to September 11. He said:

"When you have innocent people, there is a visceral, natural reaction, and people don't look at the root causes...Some of the rhetoric here reminds me of overthrowing the Taliban - 'you are killing innocent Afghans' as if we were not responding to a terrorist attack on our county."

Jim Zogby, head of the AAI, closed out the call by expressing his view that "at the end of the day, collective punishment is being used against an entire civilian population." He also suggested a cessation of American support for the current Israeli operation as matter of US law, specifically the US Arms Export Control Act, which forbids the export of US weapons for use against civilians. Zogby cited the precedent of Ronald Reagan's suspension of weapons shipments to Israel in 1982.
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How NOT to manage your Google Adwords account

While digesting more of the depressing news coming from the Middle East today, I came across this randomly-generated text ad from Google, shown below.


It says:

Cheap Flights to Lebanon
Get Free Airfare Quotes for your cheap flights from US to Lebanon

Sadly, I don't expect this ad to get many click-throughs for quite a while, because Lebanon currently has no runways upon which flights can land. So for the advertiser's sake, I hope they are not paying per impression.
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Dress code of the revolution, Iran-style

It always struck me as a bit odd that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly wears a sport coat or a suit, but never with a tie, even in a very formal environment. For example, the picture to the left was taken during his speech to the UN General Assembly, in front of other heads of state. No tie.

So I wondered if this was a personal choice on his part or symptomatic of a larger Iranian political trend. I asked a very savvy Iranian source about it, and here is his fascinating analysis:

This issue goes back to the immediate aftermath of the 1979 Revolution. Before the revolution, all public figures in Iran and all officials wore ties, both domestically and when on visits abroad. Shortly after the revolution however, the tie itself began being associated with "Western imperialism", especially after
Ayatollah Khomeini branded a large group of intellectuals (who were less religiously zealous than he would have liked) as "tie-wearing cronies of the West" and essentially branded anyone wearing a tie as being Western influenced. As such, no Iranian official since that time wears a tie, whether in Iran or when on official trips abroad. In fact, for many years after the revolution, the site of a regular person wearing a tie in Iran was so rare that heads would turn on the street and funny comments would be made if someone wore a tie outside. Many people still wore them to parties and weddings and things, but it was very "taboo" during the 1980s.

Gradually, as Khomeini's legacy became a bit less overbearing, regular people stopped caring and the rhetorical plays on people who wear ties as "imperialist cronies" were no longer made, meaning that at least ordinary people now wore ties on a regular basis. I myself for example, always wore tie at work in Tehran, as did many of my colleagues. I would actually make a point of wearing a tie outside as much as possible, to do my bit in making sure that people got used to seeing other people in ties.

On the official side however, wearing a tie is still a no-no and it would be unthinkable for Ahmadinejad, who claims to be one of the "true disciples of Khomeini" to sport a neck-tie under any circumstances.

Interestingly however, many of the children of regime officials wear ties in addition to having outlandish dress and hairstyles in general (which are often criticised by the hardliner newspapers), without their parents having any real control over it.

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Los mercados libres - me encanta!

Americans continue to debate the importance of embracing English as a unifying language. But what about an embrace of free market principles?

A controversy erupted in Bogota, New Jersey this week in response to a McDonald's advertising campaign featuring Spanish billboards, as discussed by Brian Aberback in The Record:

Mayor Steve Lonegan said the McDonald's billboard on River Road near Elm Avenue and the railroad overpass is offensive because it sends the message that Spanish speakers and immigrants do not need to learn how to speak English.

"English is the language that binds us as a community and as a country," Lonegan said Thursday. "This billboard says, 'You Hispanics can't learn English, so we're going to put up this sign.' It's really sending the wrong message" ... Lonegan said he is not racist and would demand that the billboard be removed if it was in Italian, German or any language other than English.

"Demand that the billboard be removed?" That is definitely not the position of a free market advocate. It certainly does not reflect Republican ideology, which is largely supportive of laissez-faire policies and limited government intervention in markets. I am surprised that Mayor Lonegan, who heads the NJ chapter of Americans for Prosperity, an organization "committed to educating citizens about economic policy", did not make the following analysis:

McDonald's, a profit making corporation providing jobs to over 100,000 Americans and possessing a market capitalization of over $41 Billion, acts first and foremost with the interests of its shareholders in mind. Recognizing that Bogota has a 21% Hispanic population, McDonald's obviously