Peter Oborne

Empires can collapse in the course of a generation. At the end of the 16th century, the Spanish looked dominant. Twenty-five years later, they were on their knees, over-extended, bankrupt, and incapable of coping with the emergent maritime powers of Britain and Holland. The British empire reached its fullest extent in 1930. Twenty years later, it was all over.

Today, it is reasonable to ask whether the United States, seemingly invincible a decade ago, will follow the same trajectory. America has suffered two convulsive blows in the last three years. The first was the financial crisis of 2008, whose consequences are yet to be properly felt. Although the immediate cause was the debacle in the mortgage market, the underlying problem was chronic imbalance in the economy.

For a number of years, America has been incapable of funding its domestic programmes and overseas commitments without resorting to massive help from China, its global rival. China has a pressing motive to assist: it needs to sustain US demand in order to provide a market for its exports and thus avert an economic crisis of its own. This situation is the contemporary equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the doctrine which prevented nuclear war breaking out between America and Russia.

Unlike MAD, this pact is unsustainable. But Barack Obama has not sought to address the problem. Instead, he responded to the crisis with the same failed policies that caused the trouble in the first place: easy credit and yet more debt. It is certain that America will, in due course, be forced into a massive adjustment both to its living standards at home and its commitments abroad.

This matters because, following the second convulsive blow, America’s global interests are under threat on a scale never before seen. Since 1956, when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles pulled the plug on Britain and France over Suez, the Arab world has been a US domain. At first, there were promises that it would tolerate independence and self-determination. But this did not last long; America chose to govern through brutal and corrupt dictators, supplied with arms, military training and advice from Washington.

The momentous importance of the last few weeks is that this profitable, though morally bankrupt, arrangement appears to be coming to an end. One of the choicest ironies of the bloody and macabre death throes of the regime in Libya is that Colonel Gaddafi would have been wiser to have stayed out of the US sphere of influence. When he joined forces with George Bush and Tony Blair five years ago, the ageing dictator was leaping on to a bandwagon that was about to grind to a halt.

In Washington, President Obama has not been stressing this aspect of affairs. Instead, after hesitation, he has presented the recent uprisings as democratic and even pro-American, indeed a triumph for the latest methods of Western communication such as Twitter and Facebook. Many sympathetic commentators have therefore claimed that the Arab revolutions bear comparison with the 1989 uprising of the peoples of Eastern Europe against Soviet tyranny.

I would guess that the analogy is apt. Just as 1989 saw the collapse of the Russian empire in Eastern Europe, so it now looks as if 2011 will mark the removal of many of America’s client regimes in the Arab world. It is highly unlikely, however, that events will thereafter take the tidy path the White House would prefer. Far from being inspired by Twitter, a great many of Arab people who have driven the sensational events of recent weeks are illiterate. They have been impelled into action by mass poverty and unemployment, allied to a sense of disgust at vast divergences of wealth and grotesque corruption. It is too early to chart the future course of events with confidence, but it seems unlikely that these liberated peoples will look to Washington and New York as their political or economic model.

The great question is whether America will take its diminished status gracefully, or whether it will lash out, as empires in trouble are historically prone to do. Here the White House response gives cause for concern. American insensitivity is well demonstrated in the case of Raymond Davis, the CIA man who shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore. Hillary Clinton is trying to bully Pakistan into awarding Davis diplomatic immunity. This is incredible behaviour, which shows that the US continues to regard itself as above the law. Were President Zardari, already seen by his fellow countrymen as a pro-American stooge, to comply, his government would almost certainly fall.

Or take President Obama’s decision last week to veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Even America itself accepts that these settlements are illegal. At a time when the Middle East is already mutinous, this course of action looks mad.

The biggest problem is that America wants democracy, but only on its own terms. A very good example of this concerns the election of a Hamas government in Gaza in 2006. This should have been a hopeful moment for the Middle East peace process: the election of a government with the legitimacy and power to end violence. But America refused to engage with Hamas, just as it has refused to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or to acknowledge the well-founded regional aspirations of Iran.

The history of the Arab world since the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate in 1922 can be divided schematically into two periods: open colonial rule under the British and French, followed by America’s invisible empire after the Second World War. Now we are entering a third epoch, when Arab nations, and in due course others, will assert their independence. It is highly unlikely that all of them will choose a path that the Americans want. From the evidence available, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are muddled and incapable of grasping the nature of current events.

This is where the British, who have deep historical connections with the region, and whose own loss of empire is still within living memory, ought to be able to offer wise and practical advice. So far the Prime Minister, a neophyte in foreign affairs, has not done so. His regional tour of Middle Eastern capitals with a caravan of arms dealers made sense only in terms of the broken settlement of the last 50 years. His speeches might have been scripted by Tony Blair a decade ago, with the identical evasions and hypocrisies. There was no acknowledgment of the great paradigm shift in global politics.

The links between the US and British defence, security and foreign policy establishments are so close that perhaps it is no longer possible for any British government to act independently. When challenged, our ministers always say that we use our influence “behind the scenes” with American allies, rather than challenge them in the open. But this, too, is a failed tactic. I am told, for example, that William Hague tried hard to persuade Hillary Clinton not to veto last week’s Security Council resolution, but was ignored. It is time we became a much more candid friend, because the world is changing faster than we know.

Peter Oborne is the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100077625/how-will-america-handle-the-fall-of-its-middle-east-empire/

A Mobile Phone Love Story

And this is Dewsbury in England

Baffling, isn’t it?!

Officials rejected a candidate for a news broadcasters post
since his voice was not fit for a news broadcaster.

He was also told that with his obnoxiously long name,
he would never be famous. He is
Amitabh Bachchan.
———— ——— ——— ——— —-
In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca Recording Company.
The executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of musicians, one executive said, “We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.”
The group was called
The Beatles.
———— ——— ——— ——— —–
In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modeling Agency told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker,
“You’d better learn secretarial work or else get married”.
She went on and became
Marilyn Monroe.
———— ——— ——— ——— ——-
In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry,
fired a singer after one performance. He told him,
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck”. He went on to become
Elvis Presley.
– – ———— ——— ——— ——— —–
A small boy–the fifth amongst seven siblings of a poor father, was selling newspapers in a small village to earn his living. He was not exceptionally smart at school but was
fascinated by
religion and rockets.
The first rocket he built crashed. A missile that he built crashed multiple times
and he was made a butt of ridicule.
He is the person to have scripted the Space
Odyssey of India
single-handedly. He is
Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. President of India.
———— ——— ——— ——— —-
When
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876,
it did not ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to see one of them?” ———— ——— ——— ——— —-
When
Thomas Edison invented the light bulb,
he tried over 2000 experiments before he got it to work.
A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, “I never failed once. I invented the light bulb.
It just happened to be a 2000-step process”.
———— ——— ——— ——— —-
In the 1940s, another young inventor named
Chester Carlson
took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country.
They all turned him down. In 1947, after 7 long years of rejections, he finally got a tiny company in Rochester, NY, the Haloid Company, to purchase the rights to his invention–an electrostatic
paper-copying process.
Haloid became
Xerox Corporation.
———— ——— ——— ——— —
A little girl–the 20th of 22 children,
was born prematurely and her survival was doubtful. When she was 4 years old, she contracted double pneumonia and scarlet fever,
which left her with aparalyzed left leg.
At age 9, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began to
walk without it. By 13 she had developed a rhythmic walk,
which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She entered a race and came in last. For the next few years every race she entered,
she came in last.
Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running. One day she actually won a race.
And then another. From then on she won every race she entered. Eventually this little girl–
Wilma Rudolph, went on to win three Olympic gold medals.
———— ——— ——— ——— -
A schoolteacher scolded a boy for not paying attention to
his mathematics
and for not being able to solve simple problems.
She told him that you would not become anybody in life.
The boy was
Albert Einstein
–
“To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did”

• IslamToday / Agencies
• Wed, 02/23/2011

23 February 2010

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday urged government bodies to “give the widest support to Islam” in Russia in order to win what he calls “an ideological battle against radical” Islamists.

Speaking at a meeting in the volatile North Caucasus in Russia, he said: “We must educate (people) and give the widest support to Islam” in Russia, he said at the meeting in Vladikavkaz (southeast), devoted to counterterrorism measures.

The meeting was attended by the heads of special services and security agencies, a number of federal ministers, Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoys to the Federal Districts, regional governors of the North Caucasus Federal District and the heads of the region’s law enforcement agencies.

Emphasizing Islam’s position as part of Russian society, he said:

For centuries, Islam has developed in Russia as one of our traditional religions, but the injections of extremism and radical movements have appeared only recently and they are extremely dangerous. It is not for state officials to deal with this or, in any case, not only for state officials. This, above all, is a job for the clergy, because this problem exists throughout the Muslim world.

Muslim clerics, imams and muftis often behave like heroes. Yesterday I presented state awards to relatives of the clerics who had been killed. Their lives are an example of service to the Motherland, the Russian Federation, and an example of service to their faith, to Islam. They are the true martyrs for their faith, and not those bastards who blow up children.

He also emphasised the importance of economic development in the Northern Caucasus, saying: “Only the creation of new jobs can bring hope to young people, who have no jobs and who are first recruited and then brainwashed by the extremists. The fight against unemployment, job creation, educational programmes, tours of cultural institutions in the North Caucasus, tours of various performance artists – all of this is very important. People who live in the North Caucasus live in Russia and must feel like its full-fledged citizens.”

Sources

“Kremlin – Dmitry Medvedev held a meeting of the National Antiterrorism Committee in Vladikavkaz” Kremlin News February 22, 2011

“Medvedev pour “le soutien le plus large à l’islam” en Russie” AFP February 22, 2011

• IslamToday / Agencies
• Sat, 02/19/2011

19 February 2011

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has set his sights on the role of Islam in a secular France, which looks set to become a major theme ahead of the 2012 presidential elections.

Sarkozy said Tuesday that he wants to launch a debate in April on the role and influence of religion in France, and particularly the country’s second-largest religion Islam.

Sarkozy went on to set a deadline for a final decision on what role religion should play in France: “We need to formalise our position on the role of religions in France once and for all, and I want this to be achieved in 2011.”

The call for a discussion on Islam follows comments Sarkozy made last week that “multiculturalism is not working” and is seen as a bid to win back voters from the far-right National Front party.

“There is a growing gulf between the media portrayal of Islam and the preoccupations of the French people,” Sarkozy told members of his conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party at a dinner he hosted this week.

Sarkozy told his UMP dinner guests that a refusal to address Islam’s role would lead France down the wrong path. “In the 1980s we were careless about immigration because it was a taboo subject – and now we are paying the price for it,” Sarkozy told the party members dining at the Elysée presidential palace. “The same thing is happening with Islam in France right now.”

“We need to have a debate on prayer meetings in the streets,” Sarkozy told his UMP party faithful, echoing the concerns of the far right. “In a secular country, we cannot tolerate having a public call to prayer.”

“It is out of the question that French society should be influenced by Islam. This is a secular country.”

Secularism in France, a country with Catholic roots but a deep-rooted suspicion of religion, has been enforced by law for over a century.

“The Republic does not officially recognise, pay salaries for, nor subsidise any religion,” states a December 1905 law on the separation between church and state.

The law adds: “It is henceforth forbidden to erect or display any religious signs or emblems publicly, and political meetings may not take place in places of worship.”

Legislation in 2004 reinforced this position, by outlawing the display of religious symbols in schools – such as headscarves and crucifixes – as well as the ban introduced last autumn on the wearing of the full Islamic veil in public places.

The law also bans religious processions but does not address prayer meetings in the city streets (some mosques in France have overcrowding issues, thus leading to an overspill into the streets), which is a particular point of contenntion raised by the extreme right-wing National Front.

If this debate is a ploy for Sarcozy to win back votes from the far right, it may backfire. France’s far-right National Front said on Friday that the planned national debate on Islam and secularism would boost its support and improve its chances in the presidential election next year.

National Front Party leader Marine Le Pen, who took over last month from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, mocked the planned debate as a new opinion poll showed she could score a strong 20 percent in the first round of the presidential vote.

However, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government says it wants the debate to discuss whether France’s five-million-strong Muslim minority supports the official separation of church and state.

Le Pen said it could end up backfiring on Sarkozy and his ally Jean-Francois Cope, the UMP party leader who announced on Wednesday that the debate would start in April.

“The last time (Sarkozy) used that, there was a debate about national identity and the National Front scored 15 percent in the regional elections,” she told France Info radio.

“So keep it up, Mr Cope — a little debate here, a little blah-blah about Islam and secularism there, and I think we’ll end up winning 25 percent in the presidential election.”

Critics said Sarkozy’s previous government-sponsored debate on national identity in 2009-2010, which led to a ban on full face veils in public, turned into a public forum to air complaints about Muslims and make the minority feel stigmatised.

Sources:

Tony Todd, “Sarkozy sets sights on role of Islam in secular France” France24 February 18, 2011

Tom Heneghan, “French far-right sees boost from planned Islam debate” Reuters India February 18, 2011