Jerusalem News (4 May, 2015, 15 Iyar, 5775)
Contents:
1. From the Archives: Academic: IDF dehumanizes Palestinians by not raping them!
2. The Seven Great Powers by WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
3. Ukrainian regime rehabilitates Nazi collaborationists, bans communism by Alex Lantier and Stefan Steinberg
===============================
===============================
1. From the Archives: Academic: IDF dehumanizes Palestinians by not raping them!
From the Archives.
This is NOT a hoax!
Academic: IDF dehumanizes Palestinians by not raping them! (December 27, 2007).
http://fresnozionism.org/2007/12/academic-idf-dehumanizes-palestinians-by-not-raping-them/
What I am about to discuss is simply unbelievable. So maybe it's made up, intended as a satire on leftist academics. You decide.
(IsraelNN.com) A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers' committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.
The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that 'the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals.'
The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: 'In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences, Â just as organized military rape would have done.'
The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.
Nitzan's paper did, however, give much space to the explanation that the Israeli soldiers refrained from rape out of demographic considerations. She explained at length how fearful the Jewish population is of the growing Arab population, and how in cases of wartime rape, the baby is generally assumed to be of the mother.s nationality.
===============================
===============================
2. The Seven Great Powers by WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/04/the-seven-great-powers/
Extracts:
What follows is a highly subjective ranking of the G-7, the seven great powers that can rock the world. We've ranked them by their ability to shape both their regional environments and the international system as a whole; among all the world's countries these are the ones with the most ability to affect global politics by their choices.
1) USA
The United States has been the most powerful country in the world for close to a century; not surprisingly, 2014 saw no change. If anything, despite renewed geopolitical challenges from countries like Russia and Iran, and the continuing economic development of China, America's place at the top of the global pecking order seems more secure at the end of 2014 than at the beginning.
In 2014, American power grew despite some foreign policy errors. There is nothing unusual about that. The ultimate sources of American power, Â the economic dynamism of its culture, the pro-business tilt of its political system, its secure geographical location, its rich natural resource base and its profound constitutional stability, don't depend on the whims of political leaders. Thankfully, the American system is often smarter and more capable than the people in office at any given time.
In 2014, America continued to power out of the recession faster than either Japan or the EU, while the fracking boom had a growing impact on the world's economic and geopolitical balances. A newly assertive Japan and its growing relationship with India helped check China's bid for regional supremacy, and falling oil prices in the last quarter of the year undermined the Iranian and Russian economies.
2) Germany
Not since the 1940s has Germany played such an important role in world politics. The rift between Russia and the West gave Germany the ability to determine the West's response and gave it the decisive voice in the shaping of a new European security order. At the same time, Germany continued to benefit from its pivotal position within the European Union. It holds the balance between north and south and east and west in Europe, giving it a place in the European order that no other country can challenge.
That Germany has achieved this position without nuclear weapons, without spending much money on defense and without cripplingly large bailouts for its troubled European neighbors says much for the country's ability to benefit from the logic of events and its geographic position.
3) China
That China ranks third in the global power ranking while many Chinese nationalists passionately believe it ought to rank first is a source of much disquiet in Beijing, where the limits of China's international position seem to be more fully understood than among the general public. Despite China's immense accomplishments and extraordinary strengths, it punches and is likely for some time to punch well below its weight in international affairs.
...While China sees itself as a world power, regional rivals like Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Australia and Indonesia are intent on blocking its emergence as a regional hegemon and enjoy U.S. backing in this effort. As long as China is embroiled in controversy over its boundaries and as long as a network of neighboring states work to limit its influence, China simply cannot emerge as the global superpower it would like to become. Certainly Germany today enjoys more influence in its home region than China has in East Asia.
The second problem stems from the nature of China's economic model and the facts of geography. As a manufacturing power, China depends on access to both raw materials and markets around the world. Critically, this includes a dependency on oil and gas from the Middle East. For the foreseeable future China is unable to protect the sea routes on which its economy depends; if it were to embark on building the kind of aggressive long range naval and aviation capacities necessary to control sea routes across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, it would strengthen the U.S./Asian coalition against it and provoke an arms race that even China's mighty economy could not win. For the foreseeable future, China simply cannot guarantee the flow of necessary resources on which its economy depends; this reality limits the flexibility and freedom of Chinese policymakers.
Moreover, China's very success as an exporting economy ties its fortunes to access to markets. If China could not sell to the Americas and to Europe, its factories could not pay their workers and its financial system would collapse. China's strength and progress depends on the security of a world order largely designed by the United States, and there are no easy ways to get around the limits this places on China's foreign policy choices.
4) Japan
Japan continues to be the most underrated country in conventional thinking. Economically stagnant, saddled with a U.S.-imposed pacifist constitution, falling under the shadow of a rising China and long accustomed to low key diplomacy, Japan is sometimes seen as an insignificant and fading power.
That perception is wrong; Japan remains a great power and thanks to a newly assertive and clever foreign policy, its weight in world affairs is actually growing. It has the world's third largest economy, and while it just entered a recession, Japan's level of technological sophistication and its global trade and production networks make it an extremely formidable force. ... It (unsurprisingly) has a very technologically advanced military, and following an end to a decades old ban on arms exports it has begun to compete effectively in the global arms market, notably selling some sophisticated submarines to Australia.
5) Russia
Russia is a nation in decline, but it has not yet finished declining and it by no means reconciled to the prospect. This makes it extremely dangerous. It may be failing at some of the most important tasks of a great power, but it still has nukes; plentiful natural resources; effective (and often underrated) intel, infowar and cyber capacities; and is currently led by a tactically canny president who punches above his weight. Were these ratings a ranking of willingness to use power, Russia would come in much higher on the list; the invasion of Ukraine this year left no one under any illusions as to what Vladimir Putin will do to bolster Russia's place in the world, and to reverse, as best he can, what he sees as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century: the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The case for Russian weakness is well known and often repeated in the West. Russia's population is in decline; it has failed to develop an effective post-Soviet economy. There is great tension between ethnic Russians and the various Muslim minorities in the Federation. Politically, Russia is a house built on sand. Putin has fearsome power over his people, including the oligarchs, but his position is much more vulnerable than that of a president in an established democracy or even a hereditary monarch. Now, the oil collapse (aggravated by sanctions) has undercut Russia's economy and its international heft at just the time sanctions are beginning to bite.
But Russia enjoys compensating advantages that make Putin's quest for at least a partial restoration of the Soviet behemoth something other than a madman's folly.
6) India
India has long had the potential for success in the modern world, Â a large, population with more English speakers than any country except for the United States, a strong network of elite educational institutions, a booming high tech sector and an established democracy. Though India has long surprised foreigners by its ability to underperform....
7) Saudi Arabia
2014 was the second year running in which Saudi Arabia shook the world. In 2013 the Saudis helped the Egyptian military overthrow the Morsi government in a move that threw the Obama administration's Middle East policy into thorough disarray. In 2014 the Saudis engineered an oil price collapse that upended international politics. Great power reveals itself in the accomplishment of big things; many countries with larger populations, more powerful military forces and more sophisticated technological foundations than Saudi Arabia lack the desert kingdom's ability to revolutionize the geopolitical balance and reset the global economy.
Regionally as well as globally, the Saudis are getting more done than many great powers achieve in their regions. Alarmed by Iran's threats, the Saudis have assembled a strong coalition that includes both Sunni stalwarts like Egypt and the UAE as well as, improbably, Israel. The Saudis have continued to squeeze Qatar into abandoning its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and joining the Saudi coalition; that effort seems to be slowly bearing fruit. Saudi backing helped Egypt and Israel defy U.S. (and Turkish and Qatari pressure) to cut Hamas some slack in the most recent war.
As the world's swing oil producer that can alter the trajectory of the international economy and upend the budgets of a dozen states, as the leading ideological force in the Islamic world, and as the currently undisputed leader of the Sunni world in the religious conflict in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia deserves a place at the table among the world's greatest powers.
===============================
===============================
3. Ukrainian regime rehabilitates Nazi collaborationists, bans communism
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/16/nazi-a16.html
By Alex Lantier and Stefan Steinberg
16 April 2015
Extracts:
On April 9, the NATO-backed regime in Ukraine passed laws rehabilitating Nazi collaborationist forces that carried out ethnic mass murder during World War II, while banning all communist symbols in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic.
The law, titled 'On the legal status and commemoration of 20th century fighters for Ukrainian independence,' officially legitimizes dozens of nationalist groups, including the Nazi-collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). It requires that state and local governments provide social benefits to members of these organizations and to their families.
The law also makes any public criticism of organizations on this list a criminal offense, stating: 'Public denunciation of the role of OUN-UPA in restoring the independence of Ukraine is illegal.'
Also on April 9, a law was passed banning all communist symbols in Ukraine, in line with Justice Minister Pavel Petrenko's pledge to prepare the 'de-communization' of Ukraine before the May 9 celebration of the 70th anniversary of the USSR's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Announcing the measures on national television last week, Petrenko said that banning public symbols of communism  'is something we should have done 20 years ago.'
Ukrainian officials cynically noted that both the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the USSR and the Nazi swastika were illegal under the de-communization law. However, the target of the Ukrainian legislature is clearly not fascism, but socialism and the legacy of the USSR.
The ban on the swastika will not inconvenience the fascistic groups that support the Kiev regime, such as the Right Sector or Aidar militias or the Svoboda Party, many of which adopted the wolf's head rune or other fascist symbols as less nakedly pro-Nazi alternatives to the swastika. Indeed, insofar as the bill prevents these groups from sporting swastika symbols, this aids the Kiev regime by hiding its political coloration to workers internationally.
These odious legislative acts expose the criminal role of the Kiev regime and of the imperialist powers, led by Washington and Berlin, that installed it in power through a putsch led by the Right Sector in February of last year. The Kiev government then plunged the more pro-Russian east Ukraine into civil war, backed by the NATO powers, in what now threatens to escalate into all-out war between NATO and Russia.
Ukraine and its imperialist backers are reacting to its recent defeat at the hands of Russian-backed separatists in the east by relying even more directly on fascist forces. It fears growing opposition among workers throughout Ukraine to austerity measures and, above all, to draft orders. Amidst widespread opposition to the draft in the west, the Right Sector militia has been granted official status as an associate of the Ukrainian armed forces, which Washington and its European allies plan to arm and train against pro-Russian forces.
The passage of the laws also expose the Western media's attempt to dismiss reports of fascist involvement in the Kiev putsch as Russian propaganda. Claims of fascist involvement in the Kiev regime were attacked as 'empty' (the New York Times ), 'a fancy' (the Guardian ), or 'the supreme lie' ( Le Monde ). Now, however, the Kiev regime itself is broadcasting its fascist sympathies.
The forces Kiev is rehabilitating are directly implicated in the commission of the most horrific crimes of European fascism: the Holocaust that killed over 6 million Jews and the Nazi invasion of the USSR, which led to the death of 27 million Soviet citizens.
The OUN was founded in 1929 as an anti-communist organization fighting for Ukrainian independence. The leader of its largest faction during World War II, Stepan Bandera, fought for an independent Ukraine ethnically cleansed of all other nationalities.
After the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941, the OUN offered itself up as an auxiliary force to the Nazi Wehrmacht to fight the Soviet Union, assisting in the Nazi massacre of 200,000 Jews in the Volhynia region in 1942. It launched its own campaign of mass murder against Polish villages in Volhynia and Galicia in 1943, murdering between 60,000 and 100,000 Poles. It also attacked pro-Soviet partisans fighting the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.
After the Soviet defeat of the Nazis and the end of World War II, the CIA established relations with the OUN to carry out covert actions targeting the Soviet Union.
The descendants of these fascist criminals are now being mobilized in an attempt to stabilize the unpopular regime in Kiev, escalate war against Russia and terrorize widespread domestic opposition. The law rehabilitating the OUN was drafted and introduced by Yuri Shuhevych, a Radical Party legislator whose father, Roman, led the OUN-linked Nightingale Battalion ( Bataillon Ukrainische Gruppe Nachtigall ) that operated under Nazi orders.