What is “Double Standard” in Arabic?

A true test of whether one’s position is based on sound principles or is simply the product of a bias is to switch the givens of a situation.

For example, if a person sides with Group A over Group B in a given situation based on a principle, then that same person should also side with Group B if the roles were reversed because the principle remains the same.

In an earlier post, I showed how a member of the Supreme Court of the United States switched principles depending on who was making the argument. Let me now expand on this idea to the world at large.

As a Jew, I take the situation regarding the existence of Israel rather personally.

In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to implement a partition plan that would have created two states: one Palestinian and one Jewish.

When the British Mandate over Palestine ended on May 14, 1948, David ben Gurion declared Israel to be an independent state. The following day, neighboring Arab states invaded the Jewish State in what is now known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Shockingly, and against all the odds, Israel won.

Almost two decades later, in 1967, war broke out again. As Egyptian forces crossed UN lines and massed on Israel’s southern borders, the Israeli Air Force launched a surprise attack against Egypt starting the Six-Day War. At the end of that conflict, Israel had taken over the Sinai Peninsula (from Egypt), the West Bank (Jordan), the Gaza Strip (Egypt), and the Golan Heights (Syria).

In 1979, as part of the Camp David Accords, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. In 1993, as part of the Oslo Accords, some portions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were placed under the control of the newly created Palestinian Authority. In 2005, Israeli forces left the Gaza Strip. However, to this day, the Jewish State has maintained control over portions of the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

This Israeli control over these lands once held by Arabs has not sat well with the Arab world and with the international community. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC), with its Resolution 497, calls on Israel to rescind its annexation of the Golan Heights. Reactions from the Arab street are negative when Israel builds settlements in the West Bank

So what would be the mood of the “Arab Street” (whatever that phrase means) if an Arab country annexed land belonging to a neighbor. If the Arab states were adhering to the principle that annexation, in any form, was bad, then it would be obvious that leaders from Libya to Egypt to Syria would demand that their Arab brothers return said land.

But why imagine when I can bring you a real-world case study.

Allow me to introduce you to the African area of land known as Western Sahara.

A colony of Spain in the late 19th century, the Western Sahara is bordered by Morocco to its north, Algeria on its extreme northeast, Mauritania to its east and south, and its western border is the Atlantic Ocean.

Morocco had claimed the land bound by the Western Sahara as its own since 1957. In 1975, Spain relinquished control of its colony to a joint administration run by Morocco and Mauritania. Mauritania withdrew from the joint administration in 1979 and Morocco took full control of the territory.

However, the people who originally lived in Western Sahara were not too pleased to be under anyone’s rule and the Sahrawi national liberation movement (also known as the Polisario Front) was created and it proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in the area known as Western Sahara.

So here you have a portion of land once run by a European party which walks away and a neighboring country takes de facto control of the land and its people. To make the comparison even more obvious, the annexing country builds a wall to contain the original inhabitants.

(For comparison, the Moroccan Wall in Western Sahara is 2,700 kilometers in length where as the Israeli West Bank wall is 700 km in length.)

So what has been the international response to this annexation by an Arab country? Has there been a UNSC resolution asking Morocco to immediately give up its claim?

Of course not.

Among the UNSC resolutions that have been adopted, there has been a resolution asking for a cease-fire to the conflict between Moroccan forces and the Polisario Front (UNSC Resolution 690) and there has been one asking for a referendum so that the people could decide (UNSC Resolution 995).

I’d like to link to any negative commentary from an Arabic news service about the annexation by Morocco of the Western Sahara, but I can’t seem to find any. If you come across any, please let me know.

So while the international news community files story after story after story after story about today being the Palestinian commemoration of Nakba (The Day of Catastrophe…otherwise known as the day Israel declared its independence in 1948), don’t expect a similar rush to criticize the conquering power when the anniversary of the annexation of the Western Sahara by Morocco comes around.

Why?

Because of الازدواجية …which is “double standard” in Arabic.

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A Bad Metaphor From 1 to 2 to…

There is a metaphor that has been floating around that I wish would wither and die.

Most recently with the news out of Cleveland of the three rescued kidnapped girls, the dreaded metaphor is making itself known.

It raised its head after the bombings at the Boston Marathon with the likes of CNN and Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC) to Linda Chavez all using the same cliché.

This disdainful trope fully came into its own when folks gathered around their keyboards to discuss the failures of the intelligence communities in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. (Un)Fine examples can be seen here and here and here.

I speak, of course, of the “connect-the-dots” metaphor.

The problem with the knee-jerk criticism of “Why couldn’t XYZ connect the dots?” is that the critic has the advantage of hindsight. After the fact (e.g., attack, crime, malfeasance, etc.), it is always easy to see the clues hiding in plain sight.

Before the event, it is nearly impossible to connect the dots. The reason for this is due to the number of dots. In a true connect-the-dots picture, the dots are clearly labelled in an easy sequential order and there are no extraneous dots. As with the example below, it is child’s play to even guess the mystery image before the pencil even hits Dot#1.

Find the farm equipment

However, law enforcement and intelligence officials – those most often criticized for failing to connect the dots – do not have the luxury of numbers dots with no extra material. What those people have to deal with is more analagous to the nighttime sky.

The better metaphor that you should have in your mind the next time you read some pundit cry and wail about some police force not connecting the dots is that of the constellations. Instead of the simple kiddie connect-the-dots above, what is below is a more accurate (albeit simplified) picture.

Now find the tractor

Look at all those dots in the simplified starchart above and multiply those dots by 100. Now try to find the picture of the tractor.

That’s what the police and people who work in agencies with three-letter acronyms have to contend with. Given that situation, the surprise is not that the legal system misses events, but that it actually does manage to find the signal in the noise.

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Boston Tidbits

Random thoughts about the news coverage regarding the bombings at the Boston Marathon

Lawbreakers Lawbreaking?

I have written before about my desire for journalists to delete the anonymous source from their reporting.

This article from the Los Angeles Times has following three paragraphs:

The CIA shared all the information provided by the foreign government including two possible dates of birth, his name and a possible name variant as well, an official said

FBI and Russian security services have been conducting interviews separately in the Dagestan area since the Tsarnaev brothers became suspects in the bombings last week, according to a federal law enforcement official.

The officials asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.

Read those paragraphs again and you will learn that these unnamed officials are providing information to outside sources when they have not been authorized to disseminate such data.

What other federal officials have provided information to outsiders when they weren’t authorized to do it?

Bradley Manning who currently sits in jail…
John Kiriakou who was sentenced to thirty months…
Thomas Drake who had charges against him dropped…

Notice that the above troika were all charged with crimes.

Why is it that none of the unnamed officials in the Times story have to worry about being hauled in front of a judicial proceedings? Why is it okay for an anonymous federal official to blab to Times staff about what the CIA, FBI, and Russian security services knows but it was not okay for PFC Manning to give his material to WikiLeaks?

Is Dick Van Dyke His Role Model?

On a lighter note…

This article from The New York Times has this sentence (on page 2 of the online article)…

Mike Doucette, 27, a chimney sweep who lives on the street, described seeing one brother shot and fall to the ground.

What the Dickens?!? In the second decade of the 21st Century, there are still chimney sweeps? Not only that, but there are  chimney sweeps in the United States of America?

Who knew?

And does Mr. Doucette sing “Chim Chim Chir-ee“?

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J’Accuse

Here’s a question for you.

What’s the difference between the FBI and reddit?

When reddit accuses a person of a heinous crime and gets it wrong, an apology follows.

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An Addition to Loss and Remembrance Week

A pair of years ago, I postulated the creation of Loss and Remembrance Week – a time set aside to reflect “…on the harm, loss, and tragedy that anger has done to our country and its citizens.”

I chose the time period of April 16 through 22 because of a collection of events that happened during that time frame in various years. My initial quartet of events for Loss and Remembrance Week were…

…the shootings at Virginia Tech (April 16, 2007);
…the siege at Waco (April 19, 1993);
…the bombing in Oklahoma City (April 19, 1995), and;
…the shootings at Columbine High School (April 20, 1999)

To this foursome, I would now like to add the following event that also transpired during this seven-day period.

On April 18, 1983, the United States Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, was attacked by a suicide bomber. The explosion killed 63 people including 17 Americans.

As I wrote two years ago, “We can’t bring them back, but we can remember.”

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Massive Thought

I’m no physicist so I am fairly sure that the following is gobbldeygook, but the doodles I created when coming up with these thoughts kept me entertained during an extremely dull meeting.

Newton’s Second Law of Motion gives us the equation F=ma. This equation states that the force exerted on an object is the sum of the object’s mass times the object’s acceleration.

Einstein’s equation for mass-energy equivalence is E=mc². This equation states that the energy of a body at rest is the sum of its mass times the speed of light (denoted by c) squared.

Notice that both Newton’s equation and Einstein’s equation have mass in them.

Using some simple math (mainly by dividing both sides of each equation by m), one can modify both equation so that the mass part is all alone. Doing this gives us…

m = F / a : The mass of an object is equal to the force exerted on it divided by its acceleration
and
m = E / c² : The mass of an object is equal to the energy of that object divided by the speed of light squared.

Since m=m, I can substitute F/a (which is equal to m) in the second equation to give us…

F / a = E / c²

Now, when two fractions are equal, it follows that the denominator of the right-hand fraction can be multiplied by the numerator of the left-hand fraction. This sum is equal to the sum of the denominator of the left-hand fraction times the numerator of the right-hand fraction. In other words…

If a / b = y / z, then az = by.

With the above equation being true, then it follows that if F / a = E / c², then…

Fc² = Ea

What the above means is that the energy of an object times the acceleration of that object is equal to the speed of light squared times the force exerted upon that object.

I have no idea what that means, but it sure does sound cool.

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Subsidizing Cultural Influencers

The controversy has been out of the news of late – Mitt Romney hasn’t been talking about firing Big Bird and National Public Radio hasn’t fired anyone for their views – but I wanted to write about federal funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB).

First, though, some givens that I want to set up front for this piece. According to this October 2012 article from ProPublica, the CPB was set to $445 million over two years. For simplicity sake, I will cut that number in half and assert that the CPB was scheduled to receive $222.5 million for a fiscal year.

Second, funding cuts both ways. When the government hands out money – as in the case with CPB or any other organization or agency, it can be said to be funding that entity. Likewise, if the government grants a tax break to an organization or agency, it is in essence funding that entity also because the government is letting that group keep money that it would have paid out. If the feds grant me a tax credit or exemption of $100 on for IRS 1040 form, it is the same as if they had given me $100. So, the federal government can subsidize something by giving it money or by not taking away money that other groups have to pay.

While doing a bit of research for this post, I came across this piece by David McElroy. One part of his argument about government funding for CPB is “…the problem would be that government is funding a mechanism that influences our culture.”

Okay, so the feds should be out the business of funding those groups that influence culture. Check.

Another line of reasoning follows the thread that federal funding should not go towards groups and organizations that espouse views different from the author’s. Mostly this thread comes from conservative or right-wing writers who see National Public Radio and other CPB outlets as having a leftist or liberal bias (here and here and here).

Okay, so the feds should be out the business of funding organizations with an obvious bias and holds views that I do not believe in. Check.

With the above “checks” in mind, let me propose a fair swap of funding subsidies.

I will gladly trade CPB’s annual $222.5 million and I will do by utmost to pick up the tab for the programs I enjoy (Marketplace, Studio 360, Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me, etc.)…

…if you agree that the federal government should stop subsidizing religion to the tune of $71 billion (yes, with a “B”) per year as determined by this study. The federal government funds religious organizations by giving them tax credits in the form of deductions for charitable donations and for exemptions from paying property taxes.

Religion influences culture. Check.
Religion – especially the non-Jewish ones – have a bias and hold views different from my own. Check.

Religion fits both criteria above as held by those authors who want the federal government to stop funding CPB.

I realize this means that my synagogue will have to come up with some extra funds, but just like NPR’s Morning Edition, I will be there to help them out during their annual pledge drives.

If you don’t think this plan would work, you should have more faith.

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Missed the Free Trip to Cuba

While the United States State Department lists a multitude of requirements for residents of the Nifty Fifty who wish to visit Cuba and this website claims that Washington “…has essentially limited sanctioned travel to journalists, academics, government officials, those with immediate family members living on the island…”, there is one arm of the United States government that was offering free trips to the island nation just south of Florida.

That arm is the Department of Defense.

Last month, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) issued a press advisory that the American military was allocating seats on chartered aircraft for a trip starting from the Old Line State of Maryland to the beautiful sunny climes of Guantanamo Bay. To be more specific, travel terminates at the United States Naval Station there.

The reason for this not-quite-all-expenses-paid journey to Cuba is to watch the military commissions for Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Abdu Al-Nashiri, scheduled for January 15-17, and for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (and four others), scheduled for January 28-31.

I wouldn’t be surprised or shocked if you had said, “Who?” when you first read those two names.

To recap, Al-Nashiri is accused of being the brains behind the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and Mohammed is accused of being the mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Getting back to the plane to Cuba, not just anyone can claim a ticket. The press advisory states that people requesting seats on the chartered planes had to be members of the media that meet some of the following criteria:

…Media outlets that consistently reach a large audience;
…Media outlets that have a history of reporting on the Department of Defense, Guantanamo Bay, military commissions, or closely related topics;
…Outlets that represent a mix of mediums;
…Outlets that include both domestic and international news media; and
…Media that represent regional markets with a specific nexus to these commission proceedings.

So, sadly, not any blogger with the desire to visit the southern shores of Cuba could hitch a ride.

Sadly-squared is the additional fact that the deadline to reserve your seat and view the fruits of the Military Commission Act of 2009 was January 3.

Guess I’ll just have to watch the trials…er, military commissions courtesy of my local television news outfit.

Or not according to this article.

Well, I can always read about it in such mainstream outlets like ABCNews, CNN, Reuters, Lawfare, and The World Socialist Web Site.

I would so love to know how many of those Department of Defense-issued plane tickets were actually snapped up.

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Gander Sauce Preparation

On this day, the day after American Thanksgiving, is a day to move away from the turkey recipes and to discuss goose and ganders.

To all the Americans protesting the Israeli’s government use of automated lethal weaponry against the self-governing enclave of the Gaza Strip…

…I look forward to your protests against the United States government use of automated lethal weaponry against the sovereign nation of Pakistan.

To all the Americans protesting the deaths of children in Israeli’s military activities in the Gaza Strip…

…I look forward to your protest against the death of children in Afghanistan at the hands of the American military.

To all the Americans protesting the settlements created by the Israeli government on land seized after wars…

…I look forward to your protests demanding that the United States return California and New Mexico.

To all the Americans protesting the Israeli’s government ignoring resolutions from the United Nations…

…I look forward to your protests against the government of the United States ignoring resolutions from the UN.

After all, the protest-sauce that is good for the goose is good for the gander.

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When I Rule the World (The Internet Edition)…

…the following edicts, hereforeafter known as the “Citation Needed” Rules, would be implemented.

If any blogger, pundit, or commenter, etc., described President Barack Obama as a “socialist”, that person must also cite the specific text in Das Kapital (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1867) that the President is allegedly adhering to (extra points will be awarded if the citation can be done in the original German).

If any blogger, pundit, or commenter, etc., describes any member of the Republican Party as a “fascist”, that person must also cite – in specific detail – how that member of the GOP is a proponent of “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”

If any blogger, pundit, or commenter, etc., uses the Bible to support any position, that person must also cite the quote that supports their statement. In addition, all available translation of the Bible must be used so that the blogger, pundit, commenter, etc., cannot be accused of cherry-picking their source (extra points will be awarded if the citation can be done in the original Aramaic).

If any blogger, pundit, or commenter, etc., accuses Governor Mitt Romney of being part of a tax amnesty program in 2009, that person must also cite actual proof.

If any blogger, pundit, or commenter, etc. accuses the Democratic Party of deploying an army of illegal aliens to assist in the 2012 election, that person must also cite actual proof (extra points will be awarded if such proof comes in the form of a video; points will be taken away if the person behind the video is James O’Keefe).

Any blogger, pundit, commenter, etc., who ignores these rules will receive a “Citation citation” and be banned from posting for a period no shorter than ninety (90) days but no greater than one hundred and eight (180) days.

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