New article in Danish: "Fra Christian Identity til Aryan Jihad - om amerikansk terrorismes baggrund i højreekstremisme", i Den Jyske Historiker: Terror-ismer, Nr. 115, April 2007, s. 111-126

Summary of the article: "From Christian Identity to Aryan Jihad. American Terrorism's Origins in Rightwing Extremism". This essay takes its point of departure in the execution of Timothy McVeigh in 2001, the man who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. It describes his background in the extreme right wing ideology which is seen founded in British Israelism. The historical roots are traced back to the transformation of the American society during the time of Ronald Reagan and are related to agricultural crisis at the time as well as globalization. At the end, the essay discuss the strange convergence between right wing extremism and jidadism after 9/11, expressed by the concept Aryan Jihad.

Maybe some will find my analysis on the Danish
Cartoon Affair and the Middle Eastern Context "Freedom of Speech,
Battle over Values, and the Political Symbolism of the Muhammad Drawings" interesting.

Sikkerhedspolitik og retspolitik
Sommarsession: Call For Papers

Inlagd i mars 2007

CALL FOR PAPERS
ESTABLISHING POWER, LAW, AND ORDER
July 22-29 2007, in the Castle of Vik outside Stockholm in Sweden

DEALINE FOR ABSTRACTS May 1, 2007
Nordic network for academics / Nordic Summer University (NSU) organizes a symposium on current developments in the relationship between power, law and order in international and global politics. Papers within the area of political theory, law, philosophy and other disciplines are welcome.

Special guests this year include:

Professor Pasquale Pasquino, New York University, Department of Politics http://as.nyu.edu/object/aboutas.globalprofessor.PasqualePasquino

Professor Nick Rengger, St. Andrews University, School of International Relations http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/intrel/staff/nr.html

The seminar is included as study group 6 in the Nordic Summer University session of 2007. See also http://www.nsuweb.net/wb/pages/information/briefly-in-english.php

The book Innocence Lost is now available at www.universitypress.dk.Review copies can be ordered here.

Who's Manipulating? On Blüdnikow, Richard Perle and The Jerusalem Post

Bent Blüdnikow, editor and critic with Denmark's second-biggest newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, has repeatedly, in said newspaper as well as in the journal Udenrigs (published by Danish Foreign Policy Society) accused me of manipulating data, because I, in an article in Nyhedsmagasinet Ræson in 2002 pointed out the fact that Richard Perle was on the board of the Israeli newspaper (a point which I reiterated in my book Den Amerikanske Orden (The American Order) in 2003). According to Bent Blüdnikow, my claim is a lie and a mere reflection of my "anti-Americanism". A few quick Google searches will yield numerous links to newspaper and journal articles which confirm my contention. But because these are newspapers such as The Guardian and The New York Times, which are critical of the Middle East policy of the George W. Bush administration, Bent Blüdnikow would likely dismiss them as unreliable on the basis of their anti-American bias. The truth of my claim is, however, confirmed by the website belonging to Hollinger, the company which, via its subsidiary Hollinger Digital, owned The Jerusalem Post up until 2004, at which time it was sold in the wake of a corruption scandal in which Mr. Perle incidentally happened to be involved. Richard Perle was on the Hollinger board, and it was presumably in this capacity that he, from 1993 and until Hollinger sold the newspaper, was a member of the The Jerusalem Post board of directors. The following can be found on Hollinger's website, Internet Archives, from 1998:

Richard Perle, chairman and CEO. Mr. Perle has been a director and member of the Executive Committee of Hollinger International and the Jerusalem Post Publications since 1993. From 1981 to 1987 he was assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security. Mr. Perle is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and serves as a non-executive director of Morgan Crucible, PLC (UK) and Geobiotics, Inc. (US).

The address of the website:

http://web.archive.org/web/19981206084144/www.hollingerdigital.com/mgt.html

The Washington Post on the corruption scandal:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50704-2004Aug31.html

Likewise, The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/business/media/06perle.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5090&en=5bb2e60f28eab009&ex=1252123200&partner=rssuserland

and Israel News Agency

http://www.israelnewsagency.com/jerusalempost.html

and on Hollinger's sale of The Jerusalem Post, see e.g. Times Online:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article391943.ece

It seems odd that Bent Blüdnikow, when it happens to be fairly easy to find confirmation of Richards Perle's longstanding, close connections to The Jerusalem Post, persists in accusing me of manipulation for having passed on this piece of information. Either Bent Blüdnikow neglects to check his own sources, or he acts in bad faith, thereby committing the very infraction of which he would accuse me, namely the manipulation of data in the service of political purposes.


Nye Kolde Krige (New Cold Wars) reviewed:

Bent Blüdnikow in Berlingske Tidende, April 3, 2007:

Otherwise, Lars Erslev Andersen tries for a fairly moderated tone, lapsing only when he briefly refers to the Israeli lobby in the United States as "arrogant". But he has targeted this group before - even using the incorrect story that former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle simultaneously served as a board member of an Israeli newspaper. As mentioned before, the anthology contains two other articles in which Morten Valbjørn and Søren Hove both predict a new Arab Cold war, which will see an increase in differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and steadily increasing popular support for Islamic forces. A very bleak vision of the future indeed. This country has only a very few experts on the Middle east, and these are recycled by the Danish media to the extent that it has become a problem. Happily, as a fruitful development, not least DR2's "Deadline" [news program] has begun to invite international experts into these discussions. This serves to benefit pluralism.
Translated from Danish by Lea Pedersen

See the review in its entirety in Berlingske Tidende, April 3, 2007.

Comments on the review:

Since Berlingske Tidende for years now has consistently chosen not to review my books, I am both happy and grateful that it has made an exception for Nye Kolde Krige i Mellemøsten (New Cold Wars in the Middle East). Thank you for that! The reviewer certainly dislikes the book. That is well within his right. He certainly also dislikes me as a person; in fact he seems to be emphatically idiosyncratic in my regard. This surely is his own business. I do not know why Bent Blüdnikow is so angry with me. I am, however, under the impression that it is due to the fact that I, in 2002 (and in the book Den Amerikanske Orden (The American Order) in 2003) wrote, that Richard Perle was connected to the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post, as a member of its Board of Directors - a position of which I in fact believe Perle to be proud. But according to Blüdnikow, this information is untrue, and results from my resorting even to the manipulation of facts in my eagerness to express "anti-American sentiment" (of which I am indeed not myself aware). This is the third time (to my knowledge) that Blüdnikow has presented this accusation. The information that Richard Perle was affiliated with The Jerusalem Post as a member of its board of directors derived from sources such as The Guardian, and it is also available on Wikipedia. However, as I am loath to pass on false information, I, in 2002, wrote to The Jerusalem Post, which, in an e-mail, confirmed the information. I am therefore puzzled by the fact that Bent Blüdnikow, in Berlingske Tidende as well as in the journal Udenrigs writes that my information is a product of manipulation. But, as the e-mail from The Jerusalem Post (from 2002) is no longer in my possession, I am in the process of investigating the matter which, at least for Bent Blüdnikow, seems to be of the utmost importance. If it should transpire that the information carried by international newspapers and The Jerusalem Post was erroneous, I will of course correct it henceforth. But in that case, I do wonder why The Jerusalem Post in 2002 would have confirmed the information - so perhaps one might safely assume that it's for real?

Bent Blüdnikow concludes his review by saying that Denmark has too few experts on the Middle East - and here he is surely right! He says that the ones we do have are recycled overly much - on this, too, he is surely right (personally, I have for almost a year, from May of 2006 until the publication of Nye Kolde Krige (New Cold Wars) made a spirited effort at keeping out of the media). Finally, Bent Blüdnikow writes that it is a fortunate development that e.g. Deadline increasingly includes international commentators. I, too, think this is great! Just as I rejoice in the possibilities offered by the Internet in terms of reading foreign newspapers, as the commentators who have become fixtures in Danish newspapers can at times seem rather tired. But they of course do get rather more exposure than, say, Middle East experts.

Information's Middle East correspondent, Hans Henrik Fafner, reviews the book in Information, April 2, 2007:

Three Danish scholars provide a qualified approach to understanding the complicated conditions in the Middle East The expectations of democracy which many in the spring of 2005 held for Iraq and the rest of the region have, after the war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, been reduced quite considerably. Taking this as their point of departure, three eloquent scholars, in a freshly published book from Syddansk Universitetsforlag (The University Pres of Southern Denmark) embark on a highly topical and relevant description of the situation in the Middle East. The election in Iraq in 2005 was meant to point towards what the Americans were calling "the democratic spring in the Middle East", and the coinciding Lebanese Cedar Revolution seemed to promise something of a parallel nature. Developments in Lebanon, however, resulted in last year's war. We are well acquainted with the chaos in Iraq, which bears no relation with democracy, just as we, as newspaper readers, believe ourselves quite knowledgeable concerning the Middle East's being mired in a tangle of internal conflicts. But while the surface of matters is gleaned through our customary reading, many lesser known aspects of these developments are uncovered here by our three scholars as aspects of the internal Middle Eastern conflicts. The antagonistic relationships between the regimes and the Islamic forces constitute only one of these, and, taken together, it all adds up to what the authors term "the new Cold Wars in the Middle East".
Translated from Danish by Lea Pedersen