Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Is Anti-Immigrant, Islamophobic Campaign Rhetoric fomenting Antisemitism in France?

Posted on 03/20/2012 by Juan

As French police launch a massive manhunt for the person who shot down a rabbi, his two children, and another child outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, the modus operandi of the killer raises a chilling prospect. There had been similar shootings of French soldiers in the area, but the troops, three of whom were shot dead by a similar weapon by a motorcyclist, were of North African or Caribbean origin. Police are looking both at a the French far-right and at Muslim extremists as possible perpetrators. In the former case, the French political atmosphere would be implicated.

Immigrants and especially Muslims have been frequent targets of racism and racist rhetoric in French politics. President Nicolas Sarkozy was behind in the polls recently when he made up some ground with some strident rhetoric about too-free immigration inside the European Union. There are, he thundered, “too many foreigners in France.” (Hint: French antisemites view Jews as foreigners). Sarkozy has been accused of legitimating the National Front of his far-right rival Marine Le Pen by essentially stealing some of her anti-immigrant rhetoric. Indeed, he seems to be attracting her supporters.

It is in this hothouse atmosphere where it is being alleged that some French (non-Catholics, non-Gaulois) are less French than others, and are, indeed, undesirables within the French body politic, that the brutal murders of Jews outside Ozar ha-Torah in Toulouse took place.

Those on the Zionist far right who deliberately and systematically attempt to foment hatred of Muslims, are always in danger of at the same time promoting antisemitism. The same resentments, the same sordid politics and racist rhetoric, come into play for both. Sarkozy, by dirtying the Gaullist tradition with Le-Pen-iste rhetoric, is creating an atmosphere of intolerance in France that may not be entirely unrelated to the murders of innocent children and a man of God in Toulouse.

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2010 Hottest Year Yet, 70 ft. Sea Rise Virtually Assured

Posted on 03/20/2012 by Juan

The hottest year on record is 2010, not 1998, according to new calculations of the major British climate study unit.

The findings have just been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, which means that they have been subjected to searching scrutiny by other climate specialists. The UK Meteorological Office’s Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit (Cru) at the University of East Anglia was able to recalculate climate change data so as to incorporate large numbers of observations from the arctic, which had earlier been sparsely recorded.

Since 1900, the average surface temperature of the earth has increased by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, about .75 degrees C., because of the enormous amount of carbon dioxide and soot that industrial society is spewing into the atmosphere. Because of increasing carbon emissions, the earth is likely headed toward a 3-5 degree C. increase (5-7 degrees F.), which will over centuries melt all the surface ice, produce tropical conditions over the entire planet, and cause a sea level rise of dozens of meters/ yards. In the worst case scenario, a third of all land will be submerged.

New research on the Pliocine era has shown that even a 2 degree C. increase will likely cause a sea level rise of as much as 60-70 feet (20-23 meters). That would affect 70% of the earth’s inhabitants, hundreds of years down the road. Typically in past geologic eras, a 1 degree increase in average surface temperature produces a sea level rise of 10-20 meters (roughly 30-60 feet). But note that in the Pliocene, a couple of million years ago, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was only what it is presently (about 390 parts per million), whereas we are moving rapidly toward much higher levels before emissions level off.

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Damascus sees first signs of Guerrilla War

Posted on 03/20/2012 by Juan

Syrian opposition forces fought the fiercest battle with government loyalist troops yet on Monday, in the tony El Mezze district of Damascus.

Damascus, the capital, has not seen huge demonstrations. This violence is the severest form of opposition that the capital has witnessed.

The Free Syrian Army, made up largely of defectors, has suffered major setbacks in the Baba Amr district of Homs and in Idlib in recent days. It made the mistake, as a guerrilla force, of trying to take and hold territory. Monday’s engagement in Damascus was better planned, as an operation showing the other Syrians that the oppositionists have hardly disappeared. The revolutionaries got off a rocket propelled grenade attack on the mansion of an officer. The building from which they fought sustained major damage from regime attacks.

Euronews has video: