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[ by Charles Cameron — shall we say, not a great enthusiast for war? ]
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This image of Winston Churchill in the bombed out ruins of Coventry Cathedral is almost a self-referential paradox in itself, if you still believe the canard that he knew the Germans were going to bomb Coventry that night, and did nothing about it to avoid divulging allied knowledge of the German ENIGMA code.

It it walks like a canard and quacks like a canard…

For a rebuttal of the suggestion that Churchill knew Coventry would be the target that night, see Sir Martin Gilbert, Coventry: What Really Happened [pdf, pp. 32-3] — the post-literate can listen to this Angry History podcast instead.

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As an aside, I wonder what Churchill had in mind when he coined his celebrated mot about Russia:

It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.

According to Wikipedia, the Poles had delivered their early Enigma-breaking theories, tools and sample cryptologic bombs to British military intelligence in Warsaw on 25 July 1939. Churchill’s broadcast, The Russian Enigma, was given on 1st October 1939.

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And another aside, while we’re here — just to note that conspiracy theories are often among the gaseous components of a fog of war…

On the other hand, conspiracy theories can often be revealing of popular and or archetypal hopes and fears. In the present case, the anxiety revolves around situations such as that invoked by Caiaphas’ claim “It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people“.

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Coming at the destruction of Coventry Cathedral from another angle…

I have mourned before the losses at Bamiyan and Monte Cassino:

Here’s what’s happened to the Green Mosque or Mazjid Sabz, famous for its dome (upper panel only, lower panel h/t Bilal Sarwary), in the course of fighting in Afghanistan — the country whose oldest mosque it is:

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And yet prayer continues:

FWIW, the lower panel image (above) is from a Christian Science Monitor article titled Israeli settlers respond to mosque burning allegations — the caption reads in part:

Palestinian men pray Monday near a burnt part of the carpet in a mosque that was damaged in the West Bank village of Beit Fajjar near Bethlehem. Palestinians accused Jewish settlers of setting fire to the West Bank mosque on Monday

The upper panel image, as far as I can determine, shows the continuing celebration of Mass in a German church after Allied bombardment in World War II.

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It is at least worth pondering the words of these Trappist sisters in Azeir, Syria…

They came to Azeir to continue in spirit the work of the monks of Tibhirine, about whom I wrote, giving extensive background and the entire text of Fr. de Chergé‘s great, final testament here. The sisters write:

Today we have no words, except those of the Psalms that the liturgical prayer puts onto our lips in these days:

Rebuke the Beast of the Reeds, that herd of bulls, that people of calves…oh God, scatter the people who delight in war…Yahweh has leaned down from the heights of his sanctuary, has looked down from heaven to earth to listen to the sighing of the captive, and set free those condemned to death…Listen, God, to my voice as I plead, protect my life from fear of the enemy; hide me from the league of the wicked, from the gang of evil-doers. They sharpen their tongues like a sword, aim their arrow of poisonous abuse…They support each other in their evil designs, they discuss how to lay their snares. “Who will see us?” they say. He will do that, he who penetrates human nature to its depths, the depths of the heart…Break into song for my God, to the tambourine, sing in honor of the Lord, to the cymbal, let psalm and canticle mingle for him, extol his name, invoke it…For the Lord is a God who breaks battle-lines! … Lord, you are great, you are glorious, wonderfully strong, unconquerable.

We look at the people around us, our day workers who are all here as if suspended, stunned: “They’ve decided to attack us.” Today we went to Tartous…we felt the anger, the helplessness, the inability to formulate a sense to all this: the people trying their best to work and to live normally. You see the farmers watering their land, parents buying notebooks for the schools that are about to begin, unknowing children asking for a toy or an ice cream…you see the poor, so many of them, trying to scrape together a few coins. The streets are full of the “inner” refugees of Syria, who have come from all over to the only area left that is still relatively liveable…. You see the beauty of these hills, the smile on people’s faces, the good-natured gaze of a boy who is about to join the army and gives us the two or three peanuts he has in his pocket as a token of “togetherness”…. And then you remember that they have decided to bomb us tomorrow. … Just like that. Because “it’s time to do something,” as it is worded in the statements of the important men, who will be sipping their tea tomorrow as they watch TV to see how effective their humanitarian intervention will be….

[ by Charles Cameron — notes towards a pattern language of conflict and conflict resolution: bridging divides in Baghdad 2013, Netherlands 1888 and the Germanies 1961 ]
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I’ll be collecting examples of “dualities and the non-dual” here, because they give us a chance to consider the pattern that underlies “conflict and conflict resolution” and much else besides. This post picks up on an earlier post on the same topic: I’ll begin with three tweets that came across my bows this last week…

First, a vivid glimpse of sectarianism in today’s Iraq:

"Two safe zones were set up west of Baghdad… where Sunni drivers can hand goods over to Shiite counterparts safely" http://t.co/ApOY8nAdRE

— Akiko Yoshioka (@Akiko_Yoshioka) July 30, 2013

Second: sectarianism in the Netherlands, 1888:

Graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband, who were not allowed to be buried together. Roermond, NL, 1888 pic.twitter.com/cF9mCAnjGN

— Historical Pictures (@HistoricalPics) July 26, 2013

And last, unexpected but charming, the divided Berlin of 1961:

East German soldier helping a boy cross the new Berlin Wall, to reunite with his family. 1961 pic.twitter.com/g6i8V28kKt

— Historical Pictures (@HistoricalPics) July 30, 2013

It’s obvious once you think about it — thought we don’t always remember, such is the mind’s propensity to distinguish, divide, and argue from just one half of the whole — that human nature embraces both conflict and conflict resolution.

[ by Charles Cameron — a poorly subtitled movie, the ease of misreading & need for mindfulness in information gathering, a real world problem example, full quotation of one verse from the Qur’an, and changes in teaching the concept of jihad in Saudi ]
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I know, I know: it’s only a movie.

But it also offers us a glimpse into how easily we humans misread or mishear what’s in front of us. In this case, the film — about the cell in Hamburg that brought us Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Ziad Jarrah — gets the soundtrack right, but is misheard by whoever is doing the subtitles. And so the words “our Prophet, Muhammad Ibn Abdullah” are confused by the subtitle writer with the name of the 9/11 facilitator who is being introduced in white text at that point in the film — giving the seriously mangled transcription “our Prophet, Mohammed bin al-Shibh”…

Just a minute or two earlier in the film, the Qur’anic verse (9.5, spoken in the Yusuf Ali translation):

… fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)…

had been clearly enunciated on the soundtrack, and became:

Seize them, believe in them, and lie in wait for them, this is strategy in war.

in the subtitles. Believe in the pagans? Really? In the Qur’an? Or does beleaguer them make just a little more sense?

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I know, I know: it’s only a movie.

But do you remember the incident I mentioned in January, in a piece on the (needless) bombing of the (historic, not to mention consecrated) Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino?

The bombing appears to have been authorized on the basis of a mistranslation. An intelligence intercept of the question “Ist Abt in Kloster?” — “is the Abbot in the Monastery” — was translated by the US as though Abt was short for Abteil, “Is the HQ in the Abbey?” The recorder answer “Ja” then led to the bombing.

As it turned out later, “Until the moment of the destruction of the Monte Cassino abbey there was within the area … neither a German soldier, nor any German weapon, nor any German military installation.”

So here’s my main point:

It takes extraordinary human diligence to give oneself a decent chance to avoid human error…

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But I’m not done yet.

For what it is worth, the Qur’anic verse 9.5 cited above begins with a qualification that’s applicable only to the world of the Prophet’s time, in which certain months were considered sacred, and warfare prohibited — not only by the Prophet and his Companions, but by all the surrounding tribes.

A literal reading of the text, therefore, gives quite a different and more historically focused and geographically circumscribed impression to the one given by the jihadist instructor in the film:

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.

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It’s worth noting that Saudi Arabia is about to introduce the concept of jihad, properly understood, to younger (“intermediate level”) school children. The article in Arab News today discussing this change is headed:

Concept of jihad to be made clear to younger students

and begins:

In a move likely to be welcomed by parents and educationists, the Ministry of Education has decided to introduce the concept of jihad in Islamic jurisprudence textbooks at the intermediate school level.

Abdullah Al-Dukhaini, a spokesman for the Education Ministry, told Arab News that the ministry decided to move the teaching of jihad from the high school level to intermediate school because intermediate students are prepared to learn the “correct concept of jihad” before “erroneous concepts” reach them.

One has to read almost of the bottom of the longish piece, though, to find out what this “correct concept of jihad” might be — here’s their version:

Al-Dukhaini said the ministry wants to teach students that jihad is only permissible when defending against aggressors, and with the approval of the country’s ruler and parents.

Textbooks include a warning to pupils that the only one entitled to “raising the banner of Jihad” is the ruler and no one else. No individual Muslim or a Muslim group is permitted to do so.

Once the appropriate textbooks have been published, it will be interesting to see the various translations offered for the relevant passages and the kinds of interpretation they call forth from different points of the compass…

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h/t for the Saudi education pointer, John Burgess at Crossroads Arabia.

There is an understandable buzz when a historical event as well known and deeply investigated as  the Holocaust has suddenly been found to have been underestimated by an order of magnitude.

From The New York Times:

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking 

….As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler’s reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis’ needs, the researchers have found.

The biggest site identified is the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, which held about 500,000 people at its height. But as few as a dozen prisoners worked at one of the smallest camps, the München-Schwabing site in Germany. Small groups of prisoners were sent there from the Dachau concentration camp under armed guard. They were reportedly whipped and ordered to do manual labor at the home of a fervent Nazi patron known as “Sister Pia,” cleaning her house, tending her garden and even building children’s toys for her.

When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.

The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, “Germanizing” prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.

In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.

….The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. 

Read the rest here.

Perhaps some of you will recall the controversy in the late 1990’s surrounding the release of Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen where Goldhagen argued that Nazi genocide was only possible with the widespread complicity and often enthusiastic participation of “ordinary Germans” who were not themselves Gestapo agents or Nazi fanatics.  One of the primary charges against Goldhagen by academic historians was his generalizing indictment of a generation of Germans for Nazi policy that was, for all intents and purposes, officially a state secret.  After all, the closest thing to a “public” discussion in the Third Reich of the Final Solution was a terrifying speech by SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler at the Posen Conference to an assembly of Gauleiters  and Reichsleiters who constituted the aristocracy of the Nazi Party.

The sheer geographic density and social ubiquity of the Nazi machinery of repression and genocide documented by researchers severely undermines the critics of Goldhagen. While it is well documented that most Germans, unless they were political opponent or social misfits, did not personally feel the heavy hand of the Gestapo in the way Soviet citizens experienced the NKVD, Germans during the war years irrefutably lived cheek by jowl with the miserably wretched slaves of the Reich.

Some of the shock produced by this investigation is due to an artificial “parsing of genocide” by historians into distinct categories of death-dealing instead of looking at Nazi democide as a whole cloth or continuum.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, there was little interest beyond the Nuremberg  Tribunal in delving into the depths of Nazi crimes. Reconstruction of Europe and “getting on with life” or the exigencies of the Cold War and the ominous threat of the Soviets took far greater precedence. Even among Holocaust survivors themselves, there was initially an effort to “move on” from the unimaginable, or to make a anguished pretense of so doing, as expressed in the critically acclaimed Rod Steiger film, The Pawnbroker. When historians began more serious examinations of Nazi crimes in the 1960’s and 1970’s, there was a tendency to separate the Holocaust from related or similar atrocities due in part to the overriding ideological emphasis the most extreme Nazis placed upon the total and absolute elimination of all Jews – every last one – at all costs,. Even over and above winning the war.

However, that genocidal crusade by the SS against the Jews also facilitated the deaths of millions of others – including the Gypsies (marked for nearly complete extermination), the “useless eaters“, some 700,000 Serbs to please the Ustase puppet regime, political opponents who disappeared into the Night and Fog, and a vast democide of Slavic peoples to feed the Third Reich’s inexhaustible need for slave labor. Albert Speer wrote that Himmler coldly planned a further massive reduction of the Russian and Ukranian populations west of the Urals to build a post-war Nazi racial empire in vanquished Russia.

The scale of murder by totalitarian governments in the 20th century approaches the mythic, a phenomena for which the Holocaust has become a totem.

[ by Charles Cameron — fast cars, bumper stickers — and no mention of loose women ]
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The sentence that drives my title is this one, from How BMW Became A Terrorist Icon In The 1970s (And How It Made Them Cool) on Jalopnik:

police would set up roadblocks and stop only BMWs in an attempt to root out the gang members from the general population.

That’s profiling for you, eh?

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Here’s a longer excerpt, so you see where this comes from — and how it turned out, at least for as the makers of BMWs:

In the early 1970s, the extreme left wing Baader-Meinhof Gang terrorized the people of West Germany with a campaign of bombings and assassinations aimed at dismantling a capitalist system they considered no better than the Third Reich.

The terrorists’ ride of choice? BMW New Class sedans and coupes, according to this documentary from historian Richard Huffman, an expert on the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Huffman says cars became so strongly associated with the group’s acts of terror that police would set up roadblocks and stop only BMWs in an attempt to root out the gang members from the general population.

People even started saying that “Bavarian Motor Works” actually stood for “Baader-Meinhof Wagen.” Some BMW drivers even had to slap bumper stickers on their cars specifying that they weren’t terrorists.

You might expect this to have been a major PR crisis for BMW, then a small and nascent regional automaker nowhere near as prominent as it is today. But it wasn’t. That’s because the Baader-Meinhof Gang, later known as the Red Army Faction, enjoyed a surprising amount of support from people in West Germany, especially among young people and members of the left-leaning counterculture. This went a long way toward making the car seem hip in German youth culture.

Then the gang stopped being theoretical revolutionaries and actually started murdering Germans and U.S. soldiers. When the body count began to rise, public support evaporated. As for BMW, they emerged unscathed from the crisis, and started growing into the luxury giant they are today.

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Now, what kind of analytic model would predict a series of twists and turns and hairpin bends like that?