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Like most horror stories, this one begins with an everyday setting where the familiar gradually gives way to the sinister.

The first harbinger of the pain to come, not recognised at the time, was a letter sent out to me and millions of other Australians on July 20 by Ramon Gregory, ''Executive Director, Customer Sales and Service'', at Telstra, Australia's largest service company. This places Gregory at the centre of an enormous commercial machine, with huge databases, thousands of operators in call centres, and billions of customer inquiries recorded with Orwellian efficiency.

A study of the conditions in call centres conducted by Ruth Barton of RMIT University, released last week, found high stress levels and oppressive management control, as call centres field an average of 16 million calls a day.

Ramon Gregory's letter was also oppressive. It announced that people who paid their Telstra bill by return mail, or in person, or by credit card, would in future be charged a $2.20 ''payment administration fee''. He suggested various ways to avoid the fee, which actually did not avoid the fee at all. The letter was so infuriating and so poorly drafted that Telstra customers made their displeasure known in an outbreak of spontaneous combustion. Telstra rescinded the fee earlier this month.

But the company's latent aggression remains. Last Wednesday, my internet service was cut off by Telstra even though I have paid my bills on time, year-in, year-out, with a Telstra home phone account, and a Telstra cable account, and a Foxtel account. My bank statement shows Telstra banked my latest cheque on October 19. I had assumed I would be treated as a valued customer and notified before any drastic, summary action took place. How naive.

Telstra has shown, repeatedly, that it does not grasp the concept of political and consumer blowback. That's why the Rudd Government is destroying Telstra's market value, and why I have the Telstra support number, 133 933, programmed into my mobile phone, because losing service is part of the Telstra experience.

When I called Telstra's inquiry number at 9am last Wednesday, I got a ''consultant'' called Craig. When he turned out to be a drama queen, I began taking notes.

When I suggested that Telstra should have contacted me before taking such draconian action, given my long history of reliability, Craig threw a tantrum.

''You can't expect us to send out 50,000 notices to people,'' he said.

Yes, I do. It's part of the service.

''You have to step up to the plate!'' Craig replied. ''It's your responsibility!'' I asked him why he was treating me like a retard. He directed me to ''credit management''.

I called credit management and got a message: ''All our operators are busy. You have been placed in a queue.'' I was not surprised.

A heavily-accented young man came on the line and gave his name as ''Matt''. I realised I had been directed to a call centre in India when Matt insisted my name was not Sheehan. After he had called me ''Mr Goodhope'' three times I hung up.

The next operator was ''Beau''. He, too, was Indian, and simply not coherent. I politely abandoned the call and tried again.

Next on the line was ''Chari'', another Indian. He was the first person I could describe as pleasant and competent that day. He set up a direct debit payment system for future bills, took care of the small outstanding amount, and thanked me for the call, the first of the five Telstra operators to do so. He said my service would be quickly restored.

It was not. It was still blocked the next day. And so the merry-go-round resumed. I was directed to technical support, because the billing department said there was no problem. A technician told me to switch off my modem and then try again. That did not work.

I called the original number again. Another heavily accented operator eventually responded. Her name was ''Marie''. ''Are you in Australia?'' I asked. ''No,'' she replied.

She told me I could not have my service restored because my account had not been paid. ''You need to speak to the billing department.''

I told her I had spoken to the billing department at great length. She was adamant.

I called the billing department and Kirsty came on the line. She was working from a call centre on the Gold Coast. When I explained that she was the eighth person I had spoken to in two days, and my account was fully paid, she put me on hold and got someone further up the food chain. When she came back, she said the problem was a ''shadow'' payment system, which was showing my account to be inoperative. Kirsty was a pleasure to deal with, and restored my service.

The real problem was not the shadow payment system. It was the incompetent Indian call centre operators, and it was Telstra's attitude towards its customers. Nothing of my experience will show up on Telstra's key performance indicators.

And Ramon Gregory, it turns out, is yet another American brought in to run Australia's service giant. That explains his tin ear. I received another letter from him on Friday: ''Telstra is reinventing the home phone,'' he proclaimed. He was selling an upgrade called the Telstra T-Hub. I'm interested in going in exactly the opposite direction - getting rid of the Telstra fixed line altogether. And that's just the start.

By the standards of global telco giants, Telstra is an efficient, productive enterprise, but you have to ask at what cost to us, the people who used to own the company, and are now the company's serfs?

Iraqi child abduction called 'new form of terror'

Iraqi children are becoming prominent targets of terrorist attacks in the form of kidnappings, rape and murder, Iraqi officials say.

An official at the Iraqi Interior Ministry said there were several cases where organized gangs were carrying out these crimes, but added that many of the criminals had been arrested and brought to justice, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper.

Safia a-Suheil, an Iraqi MP, said, "Recently the practice of targeting children by killing, kidnapping and raping them has mushroomed."

These kidnappings constituted a "new terrorism tactic" since it was undermining the country as a whole, she said.

In many cases, children are abducted and the kidnappers demand a ransom in exchange for their safe return.  "It's been going on since the beginning of the war," an international aid worker in Iraq told The Media Line. "But it's been getting a lot more attention lately." Penalties for such cases include the death sentence.

"There's an obvious failure to tackle issues related to children in Iraq," Suheil said. "There are several practices which have spread in Iraqi society and that need to be addressed and tackled, including child labor, which has become one of the most dangerous forms of violence that children are facing.  "A high number of Iraqi children look for work on the streets and in markets because of difficult living conditions, which is partially a result of terrorism suffered by those looking after them," she said. "That shouldn't prevent a search for new and alternative means, including allocating part of the Iraqi state budget to provide for them and their families."

Suheil recommended that a special unit be set up in the Interior Ministry's division for combating terrorism, to tackle this problem by increasing security around schools and public parks, which have become popular spots for families since the security situation began to improve.

The cat's still away ... by Spengler

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is the Mephistopheles of the Barack Obama administration - not because of his gift for intrigue, which is slender, but because of his capacity to personify non-being. "Everything that arises goes rightly to its ruin," said Goethe's devil to Faust, "so it would be better for nothing to arise."

In his November 20 keynote speech to the German Marshall Fund's (GMF's) International Security Forum on Friday in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Gates portrayed the man who wasn't there. That is the secret of his longevity in public office.

Several hundred attendees, including defense ministers and other senior officials of two dozen countries, waited for a hint about the Obama administration's intentions towards Afghanistan. But the previous week, Obama chose "none of the above" from a list of options assembled by the permanent bureaucracy, so Gates spoke about such pressing matters as a US$45 million grant for Caribbean security, Canada's counter-terrorism training program in Jamaica, and Guatemala's interception of a cocaine-laden submersible craft - in short, about nothing.

Nothing is what American and allied officials had to say about items to which the GMF event held public sessions - Iran's nuclear program, piracy, and the future role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Cabinet officials, parliamentarians and senior military officers went through the motions of discussing policies to which they had no connection, like drones flying patrol after their beehive was burned. The US government lives in Obama's BlackBerry. When it goes silent, the orphan drones of the foreign policy establishment fly in aimless patterns.

As a showcase for the foreign-policy thinking of Western governments, the GMF event looked like a Leonid Brezhnev-era butcher shop. There wasn't much in the glass cases, and what there was, did not seem especially appetizing. That is not the fault of GMF, one of the premier venues for policy vetting, but of its suppliers, the NATO governments. The GMF focuses on Atlantic issues (it is funded by the German government as a token of gratitude for America's Marshall Plan economic aid after World WarII), but it reaches out to every part of the world that touches on Atlantic interests. A rough gauge of the declining prestige of American policy is theabsence of Chinese (as well as Indian and Russian) officials. The conference organizers tried for months, without success, to persuade the Chinese government to send an official.

The trouble is that "nothing" is not mere non-being. What stands against "this something, this cloddish world" is not emptiness, as Mephistopheles explained; it is chaos and corruption, rather, the will to pervert and destroy. When America removes itself from the world scene, chaos creeps back in, and it comes in the guise of corruption. For all its flaws, America is the only world power capable of real altruism. In the absence of American leadership, the rest of the world waits dispiritedly for disaster, making sure to look out for the main chance.

A case in point is the problem of piracy, the subject of an on-the-record session featuring the Defense Minister of the Netherlands, Eimert van Middelkoop. Piracy is a business and it is about money, Van Middelkoop allowed, not worth shooting about. Isn't piracy a vehicle for funding international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda as well as a terrorist capability?, a questioner asked. "That is not how I present the problem," the Dutch minister grunted.

Piracy has deep connections to terrorism, in the estimate of every intelligence agency in the NATO sphere, but it is inconvenient to speak of it. A shipping company executive explained why: security for a container ship requires a four-man team and costs $1 million a year per ship. With a thousand ships afloat, his firm would pay $1 billion a year to protect them. It doesn't help that it is already losing more than $1 billion a year due to the global contraction of world trade, which shows no sign of recovery. Ransom costs about $2 million per hijacking, a tiny fraction of the cost of protection. Were the military to provide guards, it would need to deploy 40,000 soldiers for his company alone, at a time when personnel resources already are overstretched.

"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," went the American slogan during the 1805 campaign against the Barbary pirates. Tribute today seems the better part of valor: when Vladimir Lenin said that capitalists would sell him the rope with which to hang them, he could not have imagined quite so literal an example as Western governments encouraging shipowners to bribe prospective terrorists. At best, banana republic style blackmail, at worst, support for terrorism.

Corruption is the unstated obstacle in the Israel-Palestine problem. With American arms and training, an Arab official said on a background session, the Palestinian Authority "is in full control of the West Bank". It only remains for Israel to return to the 1967 borders with minor land swaps to accommodate a portion of the 450,000 West Bank settlers, cede East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, and allow a token contingent of Palestinian refugees to resettle in Israel, in order to end the conflict. Hamas will be incorporated into a democratic Palestine, the official insisted.
The problem is that Hamas killed the Palestine Authority's (PA's) soldiers and seized their newly-issued American weapons in Gaza in June 2007, in Israel's view: If Israel hands the West Bank over to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, before long they will face a Hamas regime with thousands of Iranian missiles, just as they do in Gaza. Why doesn't the PA return the favor to Hamas, and liquidate some Hamas fighters?, the Arab official was asked. "You are inviting Palestinian civil war!," he shot back. The trouble is that there already is Palestinian civil war, but only one side is fighting. All the training and arms in the world will not persuade the leaders of the Palestine Authority to fight, because they are extremely wealthy men who live in luxury anywhere in the world. Ahmed al-Meghami, then the PA's attorney general, estimated in 2006 that billions of dollars may have been stolen by Palestinian officials. Men with London townhouses and villas in the south of France don't risk their lives. Their Hamas counterparts are quite willing to die and in any case have nowhere to go except safe houses in Damascus. That explains why only one side
fights.

Western donors to the PA know this perfectly well; they also know that the putative refugee population is inflated by as many as 1.3 million non-existent souls in order to inflate foreign aid requirements, as I reported on August 18(Palestine problem hopeless, but not serious). But it is easier to keep the charade going than to admit failure. Cupidity and inertia have produced a criminal enterprise in the guise of a proto-state, vulnerable to liquidation by hard men who are willing to die for what they believe. That is why the Palestinian civil war is a one-sided affair; the other side has no reason to fight.

Turkey, meanwhile, has drifted out of the NATO orbit. Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Iran on October 27 and denounced as "hearsay" claims that Iran intended to develop nuclear weapons and pronounced its nuclear program "peaceful". The chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Turkish parliament, asked whether he shared that assessment, told the GMF event, "I am neutral on the subject." Obama chose Turkey last April to announce that "America is not at war with the Muslim world", and his administration portrays Turkey as a model of a modern Muslim polity. Turkey's gesture of Islamist solidarity with the Iranian regime humiliates Washington.

What makes Obama's reliance on moderate Turkish Islam all the less credible is the attempts of the Erdogan government to eradicate the country's secular politicians through extra-legal means. The Turkish government is staging one of the most outrageous show trials of political opponents since the Joseph Stalin frame-ups of the 1930s, charging several hundred members of the secular elite with a vast and improbable plot to overthrow the government. Barry Rubin of the conservative American Enterprise Institute think-tank, Gareth Jenkins of Johns Hopkins University and this writer among many others have been warning about an Islamist coup for months (Turkey in the throes of Islamist revolution? Asia Times Online, July 22, 2008.)

The case broke into the mainstream American media on November 21, when the New York Times wrote, "Since 2007, 300 people have been detained during the investigation of an underground group known as Ergenekon, including a writer of erotic novels, four-star generals and other military officers, professors, editors and underworld figures - some of whom appear to have committed no offense greater than speaking in favor of Turkey as a secular state."

The belated Times account quotes Professor Jenkins of Johns Hopkins as saying that Ergenekon "represents a major step, not, as its proponents maintain, towards the consolidation of pluralistic democracy in Turkey, but towards an authoritarian one-party state". Not once during the numerous panel discussions on human rights and the rule of law did the Ergenekon putsch come up.

Turkey, in short, is becoming a pro-Iranian Islamist dictatorship - just as this writer among others warned many months ago - yet the foreign policy establishment is required to continue pretending that Turkey remains the eastern pillar of NATO. Like the case of Palestine, absurdity seems more palatable than the admission of defeat.

With Turkey's bid for membership in the European Union stalled, a Turkish academic offered, the balance of business has shifted to the Persian Gulf, and with it the balance of political power has tilted towards the Islamists.

Turkey's Islamists, in particular the influential Fetallah Guelen organization, are proselytizing among Turks throughout Central Asia and even in Russia - although Russia banned the Muslim organization in 2006. "The Russians shut down the Guelen organization in St Petersburg but not in Moscow," a Turkish attendee explained. "Almost anything in Russia can be bought." Money from the Gulf is not the only factor in Turkey's swing away from the West, to be sure. The old secular leadership strata, which styled itself after its European counterparts, is just as exhausted and infertile as the secular Europeans. A great migration of peasants to Turkish cities out of the backward Anatolian hinterland, meanwhile, has swelled the constituency of the Islamist parties. Money helps a great deal, though, and the Erdogan government has used its edge to place government monopolies in Islamist hands. Iran uses oil and trade to infiltrate Turkey, and Turkey uses the coffers of Islamist organizations to buy into Russia.

With the cat in semi-retirement, the mice are not only playing, but growing to cat-like stature. Obama's fecklessness has allowed the unimaginable to occur: Russia's influence in the Middle East rivals that of the United States.
David Samuels wrote on November 13 in Slate magazine [1] about "the elegant and brutal way that the Russians have leveraged their position as the arms supplier of last resort to Iran and Syria". Russia feints towards Iran by offering to sell Tehran a top-of-the-line air-defense system, the S-300. It then extorts concessions from the West (or Israel) in return for delaying shipment of the system. One result of Russia's rocket diplomacy, Samuels observes, is a three-way alliance between Russia, India and Israel to develop high-tech weapons, including a so-called fifth-generation fighter that may be able to challenge America's F-35.

If Israel does attempt an air strike against Iran's nuclear program, it will do so in response to the visible failure of American diplomacy, and with the tacit permission of Russia - which has the capacity to veto such a strike by giving Iran anti-aircraft missiles of sufficient capability (or by not giving Israel the key to the counter-measures, for Russia never sells a weapons system to another country that it cannot neutralize).

Obama's foreign policy in every manifestation - Iran, Turkey, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia - has come to grief, and the White House so far has shown no reaction except lockjaw. The great decisions of the world are being taken outside Washington. Too many things have gone wrong to secure the outcome. The game now is in the hands of the spoilers, the players who draw strength from chaos, and first among them is Russia. That creates positive feedback, for the powers who thrive on uncertainty will do their best to generate more of it.

Note
1. See Follow the Rockets

Catholic teachers find themselves intensely immersed in Jewish history

The challah was blessed, the Manischewitz wine was poured, the candles were lighted. It could have been any Shabbat dinner in Los Angeles, were it not for the fact that it took place midweek and the room was full of Catholic schoolteachers.

The 34 teachers were participants in Bearing Witness, a seminar designed for educators in Catholic schools learning to teach about anti-Semitism and the history of the relationship between Jews and Catholics. Created in 1996 by the Anti-Defamation League, the seminars are now conducted across the United States.

The ADL's Los Angeles office is in its seventh year of running an annual Bearing Witness program.

The itinerary of the three-day course can include a discussion about the Holocaust, a synagogue tour or a lecture about Judaism in the period between the Old and New testaments.

Tuesday's schedule ended with a Shabbat-like dinner at the ADL building, where many ate their first knish.

"I've been taking notes furiously, and I keep saying, 'Oh, I didn't realize that,' " said Katherine Dzida as she dug into her Kosher meal of baked chicken and vegetables. "My understanding has been so enriched, and I can share that with my students."

The curious case of Jewish anti-Semitism

While it afflicts an inordinately loud minority of Jews, it carries a disproportionate weight in secular society. Some of their adherents are so emotionally twisted that they consider everything Israel does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape or terrorist attack committed by their enemies fills their hearts with awe.

They espouse a rejection of Israel's identity as a Jewish state and a dismissal of its right to defend itself. Friedman and his ilk inflate Israeli sins, real or imagined, while rationalising Palestinian anti-Semitism.

There has been a lot of research in seeking an explanation of this occurrence. Michael Welner, a psychiatrist at New York University, suggests that Jewish anti-Semitism is akin to a personality disorder, enabling a person to "derive some psychological benefit from this pathological thinking".

Harvard psychiatrist Kenneth Levin cites the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, where "population segments under chronic siege commonly embrace the world view of their besiegers, however bigoted and outrageous", as well as "the psychodynamics of abused children who blame themselves for their situation and believe they could mollify their tormenters if they were 'good' ".

Julie Ancis, a psychology professor at Georgia State University, says that it isn't "uncommon for a minority group with a history of oppression and persecution to possess internalised self-hatred regarding their cultural/religious identity".

That Jews tend to exhibit more sensitivity to another group's pain is a sign of humanitarianism, but embracing the goals of people openly committed to one's destruction is a form of madness. As Haaretz journalist Uzi Silber points out: "Being more sensitive to pain suffered by members of a group other than (one's) own metastasises into a malignant emotional and moral identification with people committed to (one's) annihilation."

Rivlin pledges solutions for Gaza evacuees

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin addressed the plight of those forced to leave their homes during the 2005 Gaza disengagement, at a conference held at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya on Thursday. "We cannot disavow the Gush Katif problem. The government simply has to take care of it," said Rivlin. "We will not rest until we find a real and just solution to the problem and take steps toward healing the suffering of the people who paid the price of the national trauma that we all experienced."

In September, an investigation committee charged with examining the government's treatment of the evacuees came out with an interim report, which stated that the government was responsible for a series of mishandlings that had served to extend the suffering of those evacuated in the unilateral disengagement.  The committee criticized the government institutions for their lack of urgency on the matter and called to reinvigorate efforts to find permanent solutions for the evacuated communities.

"The State of Israel suffered a national trauma, but those who paid for it most dearly were the ones who accepted the decisions of the majority, even as they spread ashes on their heads and mourned their loss," said Rivlin.  He added that though many thought the disengagement was wrong to begin with, it was now time to see how to reimburse those who had suffered -and in the fastest and most efficient way possible - so as to avoid the continued suffering of those expelled, who have faced high unemployment, lack of permanent housing, and family corrosion.

Kadima MK Ze'ev Bielski said that in his former position as head of the Jewish Agency, he had toured the world and proudly spoken about Israel's accomplishments. "But along with those achievements, we've built a mountain of bureaucracy that we cannot overcome," said Bielski, noting that the evacuees' honorable restraint placed a moral debt on the Jewish people.  "It places the onus on us to at least return to them the dignity that was taken from them," he said.

Rabbi Yigal Kaminetzky, the representative of the Gush Katif evacuees, warned that their treatment was a symptom of the loss of solidarity among Israelis, and that society had to return to the values of mutual accountability.  "That, together with our faith, is what has protected us as a people," said Kaminetzky.

Why I Murdered 13 American Soldiers at Fort Hood: Nidal Hassan Explains It All

How do we know that the attack at Fort Hood was an act of Islamist terrorism? Simple, Major Nidal Hassan told us so. You’ve seen reports of a long list of things he did and said along these lines. But what’s most amazing of all is this:

Hassan is the first terrorist in history to give an academic lecture explaining why he was about to attack. Yet that still isn’t enough for too many people—including the president of the United States--to understand that the murderous assault at Fort Hood was a Jihad attack.

It was reported that the audience was shocked and frightened by his lecture. He was supposed to speak on some medical topic yet instead talked on the topic: “The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.” All you have to do is look at the 50 Power Point slides and they tell you everything you need to know.

It is quite a good talk. He’s logical and presents his evidence. This is clearly not the work of a mad man or a fool, though there’s still a note of ambiguity in it. He's still working out what to do in his own mind and is trying to figure out if he has a way out other than in effect deserting the U.S. army and becoming a Jihad warrior. Ultimately, he concluded that he could not be a proper Muslim without killing American soldiers. Obviously, other Muslims could reach different conclusions but Hassan strongly grounds himself in Islamic texts.

In a sense, Hassan's lecture was a cry for help: Can anyone show me another way out? Can anyone refute my interpretation of Islam? One Muslim in the audience reportedly tried to do so. But unless these issues are openly discussed and debated--rather than swept under the rug--more people will die.

In fact, I’d recommend that teachers use this lecture in teaching classes on both Islam and Islamist politics. .

Follow along with me and you’ll understand everything.

Hassan deals with three topics: What Islam teaches Muslims, how Muslims view the wars in Afghanistan and Iran, how this might affect Muslims in the U.S. military. [Slide 2] Hassan defines Jihad, showing how silly are the claims that it only means a personal struggle to behave better. It also signifies holy war, of course. [Slide 5].

Now here’s Hassan’s central theme. Muslims cannot fight in an infidel army against other Muslims. And Hassan himself says that it’s getting hard for Muslims in the U.S. military to justify doing so. [Slide 11] Obviously, Hassan was deciding that he couldn’t do so.

He then quotes the Koran extensively to prove the point. Allah will punish anyone who kills a Muslim [Slide 12]. Hassan then gives four examples of Muslim soldiers who broke under the strain. One who killed fellow American soldiers (which Hassan would himself do), one accused of espionage (but was acquitted), one who deserted, and one who refused deployment to Iraq. [Slide 13]

Quoting the Koran, Hassan next provides a number of quotations to show that the believer must obey Allah. If they do, they will enjoy great delights (though he left out the 72 virgins, there’s one quote hinting at pederasty), and if they don’t they will suffer torments of Hell.

Finally, he gets into the heavy stuff. Hassan introduces the concept of “defensive Jihad” which is a core element in radical Islamist thinking and has especially been promoted by Usama bin Ladin and al-Qaida. [Slides 37-39]. If others attack and oppress Muslims, then it is the duty of all Muslims to fight them. September 11 was justified by its perpetrators by saying that the United States had attacked Muslims and therefore it was mandatory to kill Americans in return.

And here is the crux of the matter: Verse 60:08, “Allah forbids you…from dealing kindly and justly” with those who fight Muslims.” [Slide 40]

If Nidal Hassan believed this and would follow it, he must—to be a proper Muslim in his eyes—pick up a gun and join the Jihad, Muslim side. He was not shooting Americans because he caught battle fatigue from American soldiers he treated. Think about it. To have done so, Hassan would have had to sympathize with them, thinking about what it would be like for him if he’d been fighting…Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that was precisely his problem. He sympathized with the other side.

Being ordered to ship out to one of these countries, Hassan now had to decide: which side are you on? Would he choose the side of Allah and the Muslims, to be rewarded in Heaven? Or would he join with the infidels, to be punished with Hell and to betray his religion? He made his decision.

It is interesting that no Muslim debate has developed over a very simple issue: What if two groups of Muslims are fighting, cannot one side with one group, even if it has non-Muslim allies? After all, Americans are not going to Iraq or Afghanistan simply to “kill Muslims” but to defend Muslims from being killed. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Egyptians had no problem with using Western troops to save them from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991, for example. The Iraqi and Afghan governments, made up of pious Muslims, do the same thing.

Arab nationalists who are Muslims can take this position more easily. But for Islamists the problem is not some abstraction but knowledge that they are fighting a battle to seize control of all Muslim-majority states and indeed perhaps of the entire world.

The true problem, then, is not that some Muslims help infidels kill Muslims, but that some Muslims help infidels kill Islamists. But Hassan never considered this point, which could be quite persuasive to other Muslims in Western militaries.

So, in his thinking, how might Hassan have escaped from that stark choice? Hassan answers that question. Quoting the Koran, he indicated that if the Americans ended the wars, then that would be okay and no killing would be necessary. [Slide 42]

Another alternative is if the Americans accepted Islam or agreed to become subservient to Muslim rulers (dhimmis) and paid a special tax [Slide 43-44].

The third alternative would be if the Muslim Messiah came, destroyed Christianity as a false religion and set off the post-history utopia. [Slide 45]. He didn’t mention another part of this description, which was the murder of all Jews.

A digression is appropriate here. Hassan, although a Palestinian, has never been quoted as attacking Israel or the Jews. This is one more reminder that this struggle isn’t all just about Israel. But it also tells something important about Hassan which also applies to many Muslim radicals in Europe. Hassan is an American. As such he has no other nationality, neither Palestinian nor Arab. He doesn’t support Hamas or Fatah. But he has a religion that directs his thinking. That’s why he is an Islamist and why he supports a generalized Islamist revolutionary movement, al-Qaida.

As one moderate Muslim from Canada pointed out, the clothes he wore the day before committing his Jihad attack was not (as some sources put it in a silly manner) some martyr or even Arab garb but the clothing of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is an al-Qaida Jihadi, having changed sides in the War on Terror.

Hassan was no fool or blind fanatic. Indeed, he presents a sophisticated view. For example, he quotes contradictory Quranic verses, one suggesting that all religions can enter Heaven; another that all non-Muslims will go to Hell [Slide 47].

His conclusion takes on tremendous significance in light of what would happen at Fort Hood. He writes:

“If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the `infidels’; i.e., the enemies of Islam, then Muslims can become a potent adversary ie: suicide bombing, etc.”

And of course, these groups did so convince Hassan. [Slide 48]

Why? Hassan tells us:

“God expects full loyalty. Promises heaven and threatens with Hell. Muslims may seem moderate (compromising) but God is not.” [Slide 49]

And at the very end, he proposes what might have been his own escape route:

"Recommendation: Department of Defense should allow Muslim soldiers the option of being released as `Conscientious objectors’ to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.” [Slide 50]

If that had existed for Hassan, I think, he would not have killed people. This proposal is worth debating, though it has negative implications too, of course. But then he had other options. He could have resigned his commission, deserted, or refused deployment as a conscientious objector and gone to prison. In fact, Hassan himself cited individuals who had done the last two.

Consequently, Hassan's lecture also tells us why Muslims can choose not to be Jihadists, though this requires ignoring or rationalizing clear, religiously binding commandments in their religion or by being basically secular people of Muslim background. This is the kind of solution found in Christianity and Judaism, of course.

Hassan was too pious and consistent to take this way out. The answer to his personal behavior must be found in a mix of psychological factors and political-religious beliefs. The fact  is, however, that he clearly did see himself as a Jihad warrior in the end. The existence of psycological factors in no way negates the importance of religious considerations.

All terrorists have some psychological forces working to make them follow such a path. Yet if not for ideological--and in the case of Islamists, religious--beliefs they never would have become terrorists. In contrast, criminals have psychological factors plus material goals, while mentally ill people who commit crimes are compelled by purely psychogical factors. Hassan does not fit either of those two categories.

Equally, his action cannot be attributed to a "misreading" or "heretical" interpretation of Islam. To read this lecture is to understand how carefully and self-critically he approached the issues. Anything so obviously false or deviant from mainstream Islam would simply not appeal to so many Muslims. Hassan was looking for a way out in the texts and listed the "loopholes" he did find: either the United States must not fight anyone who was a Muslim or it must let him out of the military.

What Hassan neglected was an explanation that lay outside what his strict reading of the Muslim texts would allow him to say: the United States must fight, in general, because the Islamists have been the aggressors. And the United States is actually fighting as allies with one group of (more moderate) Muslims against another (of radical Islamists). Yet the texts always deal with the Muslim community as a united whole (the umma), an interpretation that just doesn't correspond with reality. Indeed and ironically, this view enables Islamists to themselves kill thousands of Muslims all over the world!

The fact that Hassan’s lecture has not been the centerpiece of the whole post-massacre debate is a true example of how impoverished are the “experts,” journalists, and politicians at dealing with these issues. Of course, without exploring the Islamic factor, they're wasting everyone's time. They're also going to be wasting quite a few lives.

Israel deserves respect in global forums

HOW ironic that the report by former South African judge Richard Goldstone and others, accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, was presented to the UN at the same session that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again denied the Holocaust while proclaiming that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map.

While Iran is building a nuclear bomb to use against Israel, the UN does nothing, thus guaranteeing Israel must act to ensure its survival. When it does the world will rush to condemn.

It is more than 60 years since Israel's founding and we are no closer to peace in the Middle East.

Take the recent Gaza conflict. Israel, it was said, would never surrender Gaza while Ariel Sharon was prime minister. When he did, he was attacked for doing it unilaterally. Hamas's response was to slaughter its fellow Arabs in Fatah and pour thousands of rockets into Israel. There was a strange silence from the Western media.

After 10,000 rockets, Israel decided enough was enough. In the resulting war, about 1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died. The media's response: the rockets weren't accurate, they didn't kill many Israelis and Israel's response was disproportionate.

When asked by an interviewer whether that was the case, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied, "Would you prefer more Israelis had died?" None raised the proportionality of the Allies during the London Blitz, when 76,000 British civilians died.

Arthur "Bomber" Harris, commander-in -chief of bomber command , "proportionately" flattened German cities, killing more than 600,000 Germans. In the Pacific War, 1700 US civilians were killed, mostly at Pearl Harbor, while Australia lost 700 in Darwin. The response was to "proportionately" bomb Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 580,000 Japanese perished.

Political pursuit of religion

PEOPLE, and churches, are free to believe what they like, but not to do as they like.

Xenophon is calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the Scientologists and their tax-exempt status.

He told the Senate: "I also believe the activities of this organisation should be scrutinised by parliament because Australian taxpayers are, in effect, supporting Scientology through its tax-exempt status. I say to all Australians: as you fill in your tax return next July or August, ask yourself how you feel knowing that you are paying tax and yet this criminal organisation is not.

"Do you want Australian tax exemptions to be supporting an organisation that coerces its followers into having abortions? Do you want to be supporting an organisation that defrauds, that blackmails, that falsely imprisons? Because, on the balance of evidence provided by victims of Scientology, you probably are."

The next day Kevin Rudd intervened, saying: "These are grave allegations he is making. Many people in Australia have real concerns about Scientology. I share some of those concerns.

"But let us proceed carefully and look carefully at the material he has provided before we make a decision on further parliamentary action."

The Prime Minister's intervention raised my eyebrows. So I revisited the 1983 judgment of the High Court in Church of the New Faith v Commissioner of Payroll Tax (Victoria).

The question as to whether Scientology is a religion was settled in the 1983 case. Scientology is a religion and its practice is protected under section 116 of the Constitution. The Church of Scientology is entitled to the same tax exemptions enjoyed by all religions, not the least Rudd's Anglicans and my Lutherans.

There is nothing the government or the parliament can do to withdraw the Church of Scientology's status as a religion. Under our constitutional structure, it is the High Court that has the function of ruling whether Scientology is a religion and this it has done.

In their joint judgment, former chief justices Anthony Mason and Gerard Brennan made clear the inappropriateness of political leaders interfering with religious freedom: "Under our law, the state has no prophetic role in relation to religious belief; the state can neither declare supernatural truth nor determine the paths through which the human mind must search in a quest for supernatural truth."

As to whether the teachings of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard make for a compelling religion or not, justices Mason and Brennan were clearly not credulous while maintaining a scrupulous objectivity, when they explained: "Yet charlatanism is a necessary price of religious freedom, and if a self-proclaimed teacher persuades others to believe in a religion which he propounds, lack of sincerity or integrity on his part is not incompatible with the religious character of the beliefs, practices and observances accepted by his followers."

If the allegations made by those who have petitioned Xenophon have substance, then we have a full array of authorities that are charged with responsibilities in relation to offences under the criminal law, of corporate misconduct and other potential breaches of laws and regulations. Of course the appropriate body to deal with the allegations publicised by Xenophon is the police. If the Church of Scientology or its members have engaged in criminal conduct, then these should be pursued under the criminal laws of our country.

Whether or not it is appropriate for individual politicians to use the privileges of parliament to publicise allegations of this sort is debatable.

What I do not think is debatable is whether politicians should be able to harness the committees of parliament to pursue a religion in the way proposed by Xenophon. This would amount to persecution and an illiberal denial of religious freedom.

Whatever motivations Rudd may have to ally himself with Xenophon on this issue, he should give no succour to the proposal for a parliamentary inquiry.

The only solution to the senator's concerns about taxation treatment is for the High Court decision to be revisited, for the Constitution to be amended to enable discriminatory treatment of religions, or for taxation exemptions to be withdrawn from religious organisations. If tax and any other exemptions are to be withdrawn from the Church of Scientology, then the same will need to be done to all the other religions that enjoy these amenities.

Xenophon closed his speech to the Senate saying, "In the past, Scientology has claimed that those who question their organisation are attacking the group's religious freedom. It is twisted logic, to say the least.

"Religious freedom did not mean the Catholic or Anglican churches were not held accountable for crimes and abuses committed by their priests, nuns and officials, albeit belatedly. Ultimately, this is not about religious freedom. In Australia there are no limits on what you can believe. But there are limits on how you can behave. It is called the law, and no one is above it."

The good senator should pause and reflect on his closing statement: our elected representatives are not above the law and they have no right to use parliament to pursue religious organisations contrary to section 116 of the Australian Constitution.

Jerusalem Is a “Settlement”

Asked by Fox News in China what he thought of Israel’s plans to build 900 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in southeastern Jerusalem, President Obama responded:

“The situation in the Middle East is very difficult, and I’ve said repeatedly and I’ll say again, Israel’s security is a vital national interest to the United States, and we will make sure they are secure. I think that additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel’s security. I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors. I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous.”

To most Israeli ears the statement is discordant. The avowal of commitment to Israel’s security doesn’t jibe with describing building in Gilo as “dangerously embittering” the Palestinians. Gilo, now a neighborhood of 40,000, was annexed by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 war as part of the reunification of Jerusalem. Gilo is a fact; ordinary Israelis live in it, and calling them settlers would be laughable.
Not that Obama was breaking new ground in calling a Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood a settlement. Less than two years ago then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of another such neighborhood, Har Homa, that “Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning” and that the United States “doesn’t make a distinction” between settlement activity in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Har Homa, however, only goes back to the 1990s and is a good deal smaller than Gilo. “Gilo” and “settlement” sounds even more jarring.

Violence mars 'all' Qld indigenous areas

Every Queensland indigenous community has a substantial violence problem, and a new approach is needed to tackle the mayhem, a landmark report says.  The Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) on Friday released a 469-page report into policing in indigenous communities. The report was triggered by two events - the unrest after the death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee on Palm Island and the Aurukun riots in January 2007.

Queensland has 17 Aboriginal communities, with a total population of about 14,800 people, and there are 20 Torres Strait Islander communities with a population of about 8,500.  "There is no indigenous community that does not have a substantial violence problem," the report said.  Sydney Morning Herald, 20 Nov 2009

Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy

In the media, the Guardian newspaper has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the extent that the paper's flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day. The BBC continues to use its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group's virulent hatred of Jews or its adherence to a "Protocols of Zion"-style belief in world-wide Jewish conspiracies.
Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished critical opinions of Israel from the public domain.
Such charges have been aired to mass critical acclaim this week in a landmark  documentary, "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby," on Channel 4—the same outlet that offered Iran's Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an uninterrupted, seven-minute propaganda slot on Christmas Day last year.

Antisemitism and the reported world

Apparently, according to Channel 4's Dispatches programme on Monday night, there are some wealthy Jews out there bent on influencing British government policy on Israel. What a shocking finding. I wonder what they will uncover next? Lobbyists trying to influence government health policy, perhaps? Pressure groups seeking to change government policy on the war in Iraq? Business leaders trying to alter government thinking on economic policy?

Aside from the shoddy research and the barely concealed antisemitic undertones (the idea of a shady, morally repugnant "cabal" of Jews seeking to control the world is a classic antisemitic myth), it was this lack of context that was most disturbing about the programme. As David Cesarani argued in his comment on the programme, there are numerous lobbying groups working with government and the media, trying to influence policy and opinion on a wide range of issues. Some of these even try to represent the Palestinian cause.

There are also numerous Jewish leaders and philanthropists who support and invest in Palestinian Israeli causes, including the single largest pro-Israel charity in the UK and – according to the Jewish Chronicle – the single most influential philanthropist in the British Jewish community. Jewish leaders differ on how best to support Israel, and the opinions range from unquestioning support to intense criticism. But Channel 4 failed to include such contextual framing in its hour-long documentary, presumably because that might have undermined its highly spurious argument.

But then, context is always the problem. There was no effort throughout the programme to contextualise Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. There was no mention of the Israeli government's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and the fact that, subsequently, Hamas had used the territory to launch countless randomly targeted missile attacks on Israeli towns and villages. In its analysis of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, it failed to mention the thousands of missiles Hezbollah had assembled with Iranian and Syrian support on Israel's northern border, which it used with great effect to terrorise the Israeli population.

Perhaps most important, it failed to mention in any detail why some Jewish leaders may feel compelled to support Israel. Leaving aside the politics of the region, the notion that Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, or that Israel is the only nation state in the world in which Judaism is mainstream, Jewish culture is the norm and the Hebrew language is widely spoken and celebrated, were all ignored.

But it is, apparently, much easier to trot out the old antisemitic myth. After all, the public deserves to know what these nasty, rich Jews are up to. And what could possibly be wrong in uncovering the truth? There cannot conceivably be a connection between the way Israel and Jews are presented in the media and antisemitism on the streets of Britain.

Or so Alan Rusbridger would have us believe. In the documentary, he maintained that he found it "difficult to believe" that any journalistic coverage of events in Israel could result in acts of violence against Jews on the streets of Britain.

Well, allow me to present myself as exhibit A. In April 2002, at the height of the Palestinian intifada, media reports began circulating that a massacre had been committed by the Israel Defence Force in Jenin, in the West Bank. Rumours circulated that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed. The BBC suggested 150. Saeb Erekat, interviewed on CNN, claimed 500. Yasser Abed Rabbo intimated 900. The overarching impression was that the IDF had committed a horrific atrocity.

On the following Saturday, I was walking to synagogue, wearing my kippah (skull cap) in the north London suburb of Finchley. On the way, I was punched in the face by a young man. It was an entirely unprovoked assault. We were simply crossing paths when he delivered a sudden, forceful, right hook. Taken aback, my first response was to ask why he had done it. "That's what happens to Jews," he responded, "when they behave like that."

That is the only time in my life that I have been a victim of an antisemitic assault. It is possible, I suppose, that it had nothing to do with the events in Jenin, but I find that very difficult to believe. My attacker saw me as a legitimate target directly linked to the so-called "massacre".

In the final analysis, it was established that no such massacre took place in Jenin. The United Nations report into the fighting concluded that, in fact, 52 Palestinians were killed, at least half of whom were militants; 23 Israeli soldiers were also killed. Of course, any loss of life – on either side of the conflict – is tragic, and serious mistakes have been made by both Palestinian and Israeli leaders over the years.

But the way in which the conflict is reported and analysed has a direct bearing on levels of antisemitism. And, thanks to Channel 4 and Dispatches, I wouldn't be surprised to see those levels rise yet again.

Israel feels tarnished as critics apply apartheid tag

On the other hand, Goldstone found that "Palestinian armed groups were present in urban areas during the military operations and launched rockets from urban areas", and that "it may be that the Palestinian combatants did not at all times adequately distinguish themselves from the civilian population".
This was the whole point of the Hamas strategy. By deliberately positioning themselves in residential areas, the Hamas fighters were goading Israel to shoot back at civilians' homes. While Hamas is a political movement, it is also, after all, an Islamic terrorist group banned by the US, the EU and Australia, among others.
The UN resolution? The countries of the UN's General Assembly voted in overwhelming numbers two weeks ago to demand that Israel and Hamas conduct independent investigations into their own conduct.

Populism trumps policy as Rudd plays catch-up on refugees

THE debate over Australia's response to asylum seekers who attempt to come to this country by boat continues to be defined by the ascendancy of politics over policy and populism over perspective.
To win the political contest, the imperative is to couch every contribution in terms of having a tough border protection policy and sending an uncompromising message to the people smugglers. Honesty, transparency and context are secondary concerns. The plight of those on the boats runs a distant last.
A typical example came last Friday, when two political heavyweights, one past, one present, took to the airwaves to comment on the situation of the 78 Sri Lankans who had been rescued by an Australian customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking, and taken to an Indonesian port. Alexander Downer, the veteran foreign minister of the Howard years, went first, telling Fran Kelly on Radio National that the offer made to encourage the 78 to disembark and have their claims processed in Indonesia would be an incentive for others to pay people smugglers and follow.

Richard Fernandez: Anything goes

When is religion indistinguishable from politics? When is politics indistinguishable from religion? An article in the Daily Mail describes an environmentalist who believes that his Green Views are indistinguishable from traditional religious beliefs. Tim Nicholson argued that his dismissal from a government position was tantamount to religious persecution.

If he wins he could be entitled to an unlimited compensation payout.
Mr Nicholson was dismissed from his job as head of sustainability at Grainger, the UK’s biggest residential landlord, which manages 27,000 properties worth £3billion.
He claims he was unfairly made redundant in July 2008, after two years’ service, for criticising senior management … His criticisms included accusations that executives failed to live up to their own green policies to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, including driving ‘the most polluting cars on the road’.
The Equality and Employment (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 were brought in to stop employees being sacked on the grounds of their religion.
But after lobbying by secular groups, philosophical beliefs were also included. To qualify for protection, a philosophical belief must be ‘genuinely held’, be about a ‘weighty and substantial aspect of human life’, and have ’seriousness, cohesion and importance and be ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’. …
However, Andrea Williams, of the Christian Legal Centre, condemned the ruling. … ‘Christians are being discriminated against for holding orthodox views that have been protected in law over many centuries …  in Britain. We have 45 cases where Christians have found themselves discriminated against.’
These include several highprofile cases involving the Employment Appeal Tribunal.  Former registrar Lilian Ladele is challenging the tribunal’s ruling in support of Islington Council’s decision to discipline her for refusing to carry out civil partnerships on the grounds of her Christian beliefs.

What is the difference between a Christian who refuses to carry out an abortion on the basis of a religious belief and an environmentalist who refuses to follow management on the basis of his adherence to Gaia? What is the difference between either of these and a Muslim who believes his fundamental duty is to the Ummah and not the United States of America? And can a multicultural country so constituted survive?  Or will it dissolve into Balkanized enclaves? The Christian Science Monitor argues that blasphemy laws now being pushed by the United Nations will effectively shut down free speech. There may come a time when you can’t even raise this subject for discussion.

the Organization of the Islamic Council. Under the leadership of Pakistan, the 57-nation OIC wants to give the religious antidefamation idea legal teeth by making it part of an international convention, or legally binding treaty. Members of the UN Human Rights Council are passionately debating that idea in Geneva this week.
The United States under Barack Obama recently joined the UNHRC, maligned for years as the mouthpiece for countries that are themselves flagrant human rights abusers. A “new” council formed in 2006. President Obama’s hope is that as an engaged member, the US can further reform – and its own interests. This case will test his theory.

Lincoln believed that a country could not remain simultaneously divided and united. The presupposition was that there was an overarching and shared set of values to which everyone owed a primary duty.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.  We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.

Can there be such a thing as treason in a multicultural society or is that so yesterday? If so, Lincoln was wrong: a house divided against itself can stand. In a heap about an inch high perhaps, but maybe that’s cool. And cool in the end may best describe a house with no walls. Maybe Cole Porter got it right after all. Anything goes.

Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity

Once again, US President Barack Obama has demonstrated his intention of "putting light" between America and Israel. His hostility toward Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during the latter's visit to Washington this week was breathtaking.

It isn't every day that you can see an American president leaving the prime minister of an allied government twisting in the wind for weeks before deciding to grant him an audience at the White House.
It isn't every day that a visiting leader from a strategically vital US ally is brought into the White House in an unmarked van in the middle of the night rather than greeted like a friend at the front door; is forbidden to have his picture taken with the president; is forced to leave the White House alone, through a side exit; and is ordered to keep the contents of his meeting with the president secret.

Ahead of Obama's meeting with Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal reported that Obama was effectively attempting to blackmail the Israeli premier by conditioning the meeting on Netanyahu's willingness to make tangible concessions to the Palestinians during his speech before the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.

Although the report was denied by the Obama administration, if it was true, such a move by the White House would be without precedent in the history of US relations with Israel. And if untrue, the very fact that the story rings true is indicative of the wretched state of US relations with Israel since Obama entered office.
Obama's hostility was evident as well during his meeting with 50 Jewish leaders at the White House this week. In an obvious bid to split American Jewry away from Israel, Obama refused to discuss Israel or Iran with the concerned American Jewish leaders. As far as Obama was concerned, all they deserved from him was a primer on the brilliance of his economic policies and the worthiness of his plan to socialize the American healthcare industry. His foreign policy is none of their business.


Obama's meeting with American Jewish leaders was supposed to be a consolation prize for American Jews after Obama canceled his first public address to American Jews since taking office.The White House claimed that he canceled the speech because his visit to the Fort Hood memorial service made it impossible for him to attend. But then the conference was a three-day affair. The organizers would probably have been happy to reschedule.

Instead, as Iran races to the nuclear finish line, America's Jewish leaders were forced to sit through White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel's kitschy Borscht Belt schmooze about his bar mitzva.
The ironic thing about Obama's nastiness toward Netanyahu and his arrogant treatment of the American Jewish community is that while it has made him the first US president to have no credibility among Israelis and has caused a 14 percent drop in his support among American Jews, it has failed utterly to earn him the trust of the Muslim world.

Obama to name envoy to combat anti-Semitism

The US administration is slated to name a new special envoy for combating global anti-Semitism. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was expected to announce the appointment at the Jewish Federations of North America's annual General Assembly this week, but assessments are that the announcement will come later in the week.


The top candidate for the position is Attorney Hannah Rosenthal, former head of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and former executive director of the Chicago Foundation for Women. Washington sources noted that the background check necessary for authorizing her to work with in the government is not yet completed, thus the delay in announcing her new role.


The Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism (SEAS) was established in 2004 under George W. Bush's administration as part of the State Department. The SEAS drafts an annual report on global anti-Semitism, including a section on human rights and freedom of worship throughout the world.


A first hint at the appointment of a new special envoy came as Jewish leaders visited the White House last week, during which President Obama spoke with the leaders.

Revolutions are a serious business

Revolutions require zeal, energy and fervor - all of which need to be maintained. For the past 30 years, Iran's Islamic regime has struggled to keep its revolution alive. The latest round of the nuclear deal is no different. It is already presented as another revolutionary victory, and it might strengthen the hold of the fragile government in Teheran that is desperately seeking legitimacy since its controversial elections in June.

But legitimacy, we should note, is no longer in the hands of the International Atomic Energy Agency or the international community; it is in the hands of the Iranian people.

Take last week for example. November 4 was the official day of commemorating the seizure of the American Embassy in Teheran 30 years ago. It was intended to be a day of anti-American protests. But this year hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured intothe streets to protest something else. Despite the Islamic regime's repeated warnings that any deviation from the official demonstration line would be met severely by the security forces, Iranians came out in defiance and again, just as they had for the past five months, shouted "Death to the dictator."

And just as in the past five months, video clips of these demonstrations circulated on the Internet. In one, young Iranians cheer and jump into the air as one of them tears down a huge banner of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the clip, they throw the picture on the ground and walk on it. As Judith Miller wrote in her opinion piece on Fox Forum: "The Iranian government is now loathed by most of its people."

The demonstrations on November 4 were no surprise, especially after the last round just weeks ago on al-Quds Day.

International Quds Day is a day of Muslim solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and is scheduled for the last Friday of Ramadan. Traditionally - and ever since it was initiated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - this was one of the strongest rallies, orchestrated as a show of support for the revolution. Defying the supreme leader, who had warned not to use that day for anything except its intended purpose of solidarity with the Palestinians and opposition to Israel, millions of Iranians poured into the streets to do the exact opposite. They cheered another revolution on the streets of Teheran. They cheered the March of Liberty.

Before the demonstrations were even over, video clips were posted on the Internet. Masses of Iranians could be seen walking in the streets of Teheran, Shiraz, Isfahan and Tabriz with their green colors. Even more telling were the clips of official cheerleaders on the back of pickup trucks trying desperately to get people to chant "Death to America" - to which people would respond: "Death to Russia." Frustrated, the cheerleaders would shout, "Death to Israel" and people would shout back, "No to Gaza. No to Lebanon. We give our lives for Iran."  

K Rudd 24/7

Rudd has voiced his support for an independent public service in the Westminster tradition. While in the past that would have meant supporting the status quo, now it requires substantial reform. In a process that began with the Hawke government placing so-called permanent heads of departments on contracts, the balance gradually has shifted from a bureaucracy immune from dismissal and in which frank and fearless advice were bywords, to one much more responsive to the government's wishes. Increasingly, responsiveness has become a euphemism for doing the government's political bidding.

Podger says he is pleased with Rudd government initiatives -- many introduced while John Faulkner was special minister of state responsible for the public service -- for all new appointments to be for five years (the Howard government had shortened some to three years), abolition of performance pay for departmental heads, a code of conduct for ministerial advisers, limits on government advertising and a merit-based process for appointing the heads of government agencies.

But independence has its limits, even for governments preaching its virtues. Making appointments on merit with the help of independent advice does not apply to the most important positions -- heads of departments, which remain under the Prime Minister's control, with advice from Moran.

Gradually, the public service is being refashioned in Labor's image. Moran, also known as "the cardinal" after his Irish Catholic background and personal style, has worked for Whitlam government health minister Doug Everingham, Victorian Labor premier John Cain and as director-general of education in the Goss government.

That is not to say he is a strong Labor partisan so much as that he is culturally attuned to Labor governments. Prior to his present job, he was head of the Victorian Premier's Department and a driving force behind the federal-state reform agenda pushed by Steve Bracks and John Brumby and taken up by Howard and, more enthusiastically, by Rudd. Moran has recruited former lieutenants from Victoria, as well as departmental heads from NSW who, like him, are used to working with Labor governments.

Judging by past comments, he also is a traditionalist. "It's inappropriate to have a public profile of any sort: our democracy works best when ministers are the source of public comment and the public service gets on with the job," Moran said in a rare interview.

These days, he does deliver public speeches but more sparingly and more narrowly focused than his Canberra colleague, Treasury secretary Ken Henry, who has no qualms about expressing his personal views on a wide range of issues.

A sign of how far the debate has shifted came when shadow treasurer Joe Hockey recently described Henry as part of the government, as he had been part of the Howard government. "I would not regard the head of any department as an independent person," Hockey told the ABC's Lateline. It is a view that once would have been seen as heresy but passed largely unremarked.

Rudd's most persistent criticism of the public service is its lack of policy innovation. In a recent speech, he talked of the need for a bureaucracy which was more creative, not just reactive.

"Public servants should not shy away from big ideas or be afraid to be bold," he said. "We cannot afford a culture where the public service only tells the government what it wants to hear."

It suggests a more open-minded approach than Howard's but also one with a less determined view about where he wants to take the nation.

Moran says more public servants need to work on high-level strategic policy with long-term implications for Australia in areas including the economy, social policy, the environment and international relations.

Emeritus professor at the Australian and New Zealand School of Government's Institute for Governance Meredith Edwards, who is a former deputy secretary of the Prime Minister's Department, says the government is relying too much on external consultants to fill the policy gap. She argues we should follow the British example and bring experts into the public service from outside to work on strategic policy.

The reduced emphasis on ideas and original thinking has accompanied the priority placed on a responsive public service.

"Under the Howard government, they were told what the ideas were they wanted to implement ;they weren't always asked for ideas," Edwards says.

"Sometimes it was a case of we want this policy, find the evidence for it."

Public servants also are less inclined to disagree with bad policy ideas. "I think the environment is much tougher now in terms of saying you should not do that because." Edwards says.

"If you do that, you are seen as not having ideas, not being responsive. In the past, if you had the trust of the minister's office and particularly the minister, then you could say what about so and so and get the proposal refined. If you don't have that trust, and that is what I am sensing, you are less likely to come forward with what you really think."