A World Of Progress TeamZine ~ International

Heard it All Before

2009-06-07T05:11:00.001-04:00

The embarrassing praise and adoration that the media is pouring on Obama after his “speech to the Muslim world” in Cairo is proof that liberals no longer have a voice in public policy.

Instead, we are left with a pseudo-debate between the right and the center, with spin doctors trying to convince Americans (and even the Arab press) that what Obama said in Cairo was somehow different from what George W. Bush ever said.

Obama made several key points – most notably about the Israeli/Palestinian issue, the notion of an American “War on Islam,” and Iran’s nuclear program.

But there was nothing new. Nothing that the world hasn’t already heard from Bush.

When Bush made his speeches, some of the media – and certainly the rest of the world outside of the U.S. – screamed and hollered about human rights, fascism, imperialism, and hypocrisy.

Why the sudden change of heart with Obama? Is it our president’s skin color? His family’s religious history? His tone? The fact that our new president hasn’t started any new wars – just continued the old ones?

Or is it the hope that a new president symbolizes in a world being torn apart by polarized ideologies and hatred?

Because Obama’s speech clearly showed that policy hasn’t changed. Just the messenger.

Consider the comparisons…

On the “War against Islam”:

OBAMA: …America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security – because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children.

BUSH: Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith. But ours is a war against individuals who absolutely hate what America stands for…we must work together to defend ourselves. And by remaining strong and united and tough, we'll prevail.
(November 20, 2002 press conference in Prague, Czech Republic)

On permanent military bases and withdrawal of troops:

OBAMA: Now, make no mistake: We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan…we seek no military bases there…We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case…

BUSH: We won't have permanent bases.
(February 10, 2008 interview at Camp David, Maryland with FOX News)

BUSH: And setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would vindicate the terrorist tactics of beheadings and suicide bombings and mass murder and invite new attacks on America…We will not permit Al Qaeda…a safe haven for terrorism and a launching pad for attacks on America…We will not turn that country over to the terrorists and put the American people at risk.
(November 30, 2005 speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland)

On U.S.-Israel ties:

OBAMA: America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

BUSH: And the United States will keep its commitment to the security of Israel as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people.
(November 27, 2007 speech at the Annapolis Conference in Maryland)

BUSH: …America is proud to be Israel's closest ally and best friend in the world. The alliance between our governments is unbreakable, yet the source of our friendship runs deeper than any treaty. It is grounded in the shared spirit of our people, the bonds of the Book, the ties of the soul.
(May 15, 2008 speech to the Israeli Knesset)

On the situation in Palestine:

OBAMA: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.

BUSH: It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation.
(June 24, 2002 speech in the Rose Garden at the White House)

On a two-state solution:

OBAMA: The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

BUSH: My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security.
(June 24, 2002 speech in the Rose Garden at the White House)

BUSH: We meet to lay the foundation for the establishment of a new nation, a democratic Palestinian state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and security.
(November 27, 2007 speech at the Annapolis Conference in Maryland)

On the Road Map and responsibilities:

OBAMA: The obligations that the parties have agreed to under the road map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them – and all of us – to live up to our responsibilities.

BUSH: [W]e reaffirm the path to peace set out in the road map… The success of these efforts will require that all parties show patience and flexibility and meet their responsibilities.
(November 27, 2007 speech at the Annapolis Conference in Maryland)

On Palestinian violence:

OBAMA: Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed.

BUSH: A Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built through reform.
(June 24, 2002 speech in the Rose Garden at the White House)

BUSH: …the terror and violence preached by Palestinian extremists is the greatest obstacle to a Palestinian state.
(November 27, 2007 speech at the Annapolis Conference in Maryland)

On the role of Hamas:

OBAMA: Hamas…have to recognize they have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist.

BUSH: And we will continue to deliver a firm message to Hamas...you must reject violence, and recognize Israel's right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements between the parties.
(July 16, 2007 speech at the White House)

On Israeli settlements in the West Bank:

OBAMA: The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

BUSH: And consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop.
(June 24, 2002 speech in the Rose Garden at the White House)

BUSH: Israel must demonstrate its support for the creation of a prosperous and successful Palestinian state by removing unauthorized outposts, ending settlement expansion…
(November 27, 2007 speech at the Annapolis Conference in Maryland)

On threats to Israel’s security:

OBAMA: [T]he continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be a critical part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.

BUSH: Permanent occupation threatens Israel's identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for. So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state.
(June 24, 2002 speech in the Rose Garden at the White House)

On Arab states’ normalization with Israel:

OBAMA: [T]he Arab states must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict…must be a cause for action…to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.

BUSH: And as we move toward a peaceful solution, Arab states will be expected to build closer ties of diplomacy and commerce with Israel, leading to full normalization of relations between Israel and the entire Arab world.
(June 24, 2002 speech in the Rose Garden at the White House)

BUSH: Arab states should also reach out to Israel, work toward the normalization of relations and demonstrate in both word and deed that they believe that Israel and its people have a permanent home in the Middle East.
(November 27, 2007 speech at the Annapolis Conference in Maryland)

On U.S.-imposed peace:

OBAMA: America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and we will say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. We cannot impose peace.

BUSH: America will do everything in our power to support [the Arabs/Israelis] quest for peace, but we cannot achieve it for them.
(November 27, 2007 speech at the Annapolis Conference in Maryland)

On Iran’s nuclear program:

OBAMA: And any nation – including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

BUSH: Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions…[however] we have no objection to Iran's pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program.
(September 19, 2006 speech to the U.N. General Assembly)

Meanwhile, despite the rhetoric being exactly the same, some media are attacking Obama as insufficiently supportive of Israel (read: anti-Semitic) by skewing facts and using selective memory. They accuse Obama of “alienating” Israel, of making concessions, or of unfairly blaming one side over another.

Essentially, after repeating almost verbatim what George W. Bush said for eight years, the only criticism of Obama is that he’s not conservative enough.

The lack of a liberal critique in the media – and the complete acceptance of whatever Obama says regardless of content - is an indication of the of malignant conservatism that has taken root in the American foreign policy debate. A true debate – beginning with real journalism – would stimulate discussions about why America is continuing with a foreign policy that has obviously and very publicly failed over the past decade.

It was just a speech – not action – and no doubt it will take more than words to heal the rift between East and West, Christian and Muslim.

But we will never begin the healing as long as the same failed policies and empty rhetoric remain.

Wil Robinson
AWOP International Consulting Editor
Author of International Political Will Blog

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Iranian Paranoia or Lessons of Recent History?

2009-06-02T23:27:00.004-04:00

After the May 29th bombing that killed 25 at a Shiite mosque in Zahedan, Iran, Press TV (an Iranian-funded news outlet) ran the headline:

Iran mosque blast bears ‘US, Israel thumbprints’

Of course, the two Iranian officials quoted in the brief story didn’t offer any evidence – merely that the attack was “at the behest of the United States and its allies.”

So I guess one could assume it’s just the Iranians being paranoid and blaming that “Zionist entity” that they claim is responsible for so many of the world’s ills.

Others might write this off as just the latest finger-pointing from the same country whose president denies the Holocaust (as well as the existence of homosexuals within his country).

Surely there are plenty of neoconservatives who will just dismiss this claim as ranting from the second act of the Axis of Evil.

Stories from other respectable media outlets were notably less conspiratorial. Jundallah, a Balochi militant group of Sunni separatists from the southeast of the country, claimed responsibility for the bombing. Within two days, three men (apparently suspects?) were executed for the terrorist act.

Balochistan is a region with a reputation; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (he of the 183 waterboardings fame and alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) hails from the region, as did Ramzi Yousef, the extremist charged with bombing the World Trade Center in 1993.

Jundallah has caused problems for the Shiite regime in the past: in 2006, more than 20 people were killed by suspected Jundallah militants in an attack.

In February 2007, Jundallah admitted bombing a bus and killing at least 11 members of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Yet in September 2007, then-Senators Obama and Clinton voted to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. I would have thought the perpetrators – not the victims – of a terrorist act would have been designated “terrorists.”

Maybe the future President and Secretary of State were only “creating their own reality,” to use a term coined by the previous administration. After an April, 2007 ABC News story reported on possible CIA-Jundallah links (along with adamant government denials), someone evidently decided a clear definition was needed for the American public as to who was the good guy and who was the bad guy.

A year later, in June 2008, Seymour Hersh wrote extensively about U.S. covert operations to fund, support, and perhaps even arm ethnic-minority insurgent groups inside Iran to weaken the clerical regime. Among Hersh’s sources was former CIA agent Robert Baer, who specifically named Jundallah among three groups allegedly receiving U.S. support.

Strangely enough, Jundallah is not included on the U.S. State Department’s list of “foreign designated terrorist groups.” Probably makes it easier for the CIA to get approval for operations in the behind-the-door meetings with congressional members.

But that’s assuming any support for Jundallah goes through official channels. It’s just as likely that support could be indirect and funneled through Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or other Sunni sympathizers (that, conveniently, are our “allies”).

Is there any truth to Iran’s claims of U.S involvement in the mosque bombing?

One could dismiss Hersh’s story (after all, he was so wrong about that whole My Lai thing…).

Skeptics could question Baer’s credibility, given that he now writes books about the subject that have been turned into Hollywood blockbusters (i.e., Syriana). But the U.S. government never denied supporting the two other insurgent groups Baer also named.

Patriotic Neocons will likely point out that after the initial ABC News story broke, Pakistan publicly denied supporting Jundallah at the behest of the U.S. (of course, at the time Pakistan was run by an unelected, U.S.-supported dictator).

Realists might simply require evidence from the Iranian regime about their claims of U.S. involvement.

Or one could look to the past.

During the 1980s, the U.S. funded Sunni fundamentalists in the region using Pakistan as a surrogate ATM machine. Many of the same elements that form the Taliban and Al Qaeda today were once “allies.” Saudi Arabia was actively encouraged to funnel money to extremist militant groups that the U.S. couldn’t be seen with in public.

Is it really that far-fetched to think that we might be doing the same again?

Wil Robinson
AWOP International Contributing Editor
www.internationalpoliticalwill.com

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Imaginary Lines in the Himalayas

2009-05-27T18:26:00.001-04:00

At 12,000 feet in the eastern Himalayas, where dirt roads and the occasional jeep gives way to precipitous rocky trails and yak caravans, the notion of an international border assumes a much different meaning.

[...Kangchenjunga is the world's third highest mountain at 28,169 feet...]

Trudging along through the mist and the towering purple and red rhododendron trees, the clouds have blocked my view of Mt. Everest to the west, as well as Kangchenjunga, which at sunrise loomed over the steep ridges and deep valleys. I push on toward the small wooden hut just a few more yards above me, eager to dump the weight of my backpack. Ducking through an open doorway, I see a small family sitting around an open cooking fire, chatting amid the heavy smoke.

[...my trekking guide, Milan, warms himself next to the kitchen fire...]

A weathered older man and a young boy arrive and drop a squawking sack of chickens on the floor. They exchange a few words, leave the chickens, and take a couple liters of kerosene in trade.

I don’t know if I’m still in India or have, once again, crossed over into Nepal.

The family doesn’t care. They know they are Gorkha, they speak Nepalese, yaks are better at this altitude than cows, you can make liquor from rhododendron blossoms, and that the foreigner who just walked into their crude kitchen will pay them 5 rupees for a cup of hot milk tea.

What do they care about an arbitrary, colonial-era line on a map?

[...on a 12,000-foot peak, prayer flags and a shrine overlooks Nepal and Mt. Everest to the west...]

This is a place too remote for politicians to argue over, where short of building a wall, no one will recognize any externally-imposed boundary. There are no barbed-wire fences. There is no agricultural inspection checkpoint. No metal detectors, no heat-sensitive machines to monitor for Swine Flu, no visa checks. There are no vigilante militias watching the border for illegal aliens.

The only sign of the border are the small Indian army outposts every 10 miles or so, manned by a soldier bundled in camouflage fatigues with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, who is only interested in glancing at the passports of white foreigners who may pass by on the trail. Anyone else (non-whites) move between the outposts with little more than a wave.

The entire area is inhabited by Ghorkhas (or Gurkhas), and culture, language, and traditions are shared across international borders. It’s only the British colonial legacy that left divisions between people, from an age when Europeans deemed themselves most apt to create imaginary lines on a map based on the balance of power in the West.

But people here only care about the lines they can see.

While the Indian state of West Bengal shares an international border with Nepal in the northwest, it is their northern domestic border with the state of Sikkim where the difference is noticeable. This internal border marks whether roads are paved or not, and whether there is electricity or not. This line is not imaginary.

In West Bengal, a small (and dangerous) dirt road, rife with potholes, landslides, sinkholes, and hairpin turns, drops 6,000 feet from Darjeeling to the Sikkim checkpoint in a Himalayan valley on the banks of the Rangeet River. The short distance takes more than two white-knuckle, vertigo-inducing hours in an over-crowded Tata-wanna-be-LandRover.

Yet instantly upon crossing the river into the state of Sikkim, I find myself on a paved road – one of the best I’ve seen in India. Another 34 miles north (and back up 7,000 feet), the road is still paved – and wide enough to allow two jeeps to pass. At night, the steep hills of Sikkim – geographically identical to the same hills of West Bengal just to the south – are littered with electric lights from the small villages and homes. Plastic bags are banned, propane tanks are regularly refilled and distributed along accessible roads, hydroelectric projects are under construction, and public historical parks are well-maintained.

The former Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim initially refused to accede to the Indian republic at partition in 1947, and was named a protectorate until 1975 when they decided to join India as a separate state. China’s unwillingness to relinquish claim to the small piece of land (tucked between Bhutan, China-occupied Tibet, and Nepal) meant New Delhi had an interest in earning Sikkimese loyalty. The small state (India’s least populous) is tax-exempt, but receives an over-abundance of help via infrastructure projects and development assistance.

Meanwhile, back in West Bengal, the hills are black at night, and Darjeeling’s 100,000+ inhabitants experience regular power cuts, despite being a popular tourist destination for Bengalis from Calcutta. Roads are in poor shape, and many are so narrow only pedestrians can use them. Many villages are completely cut off from modern transportation, with all food supplies and building materials brought in via horseback, yak, or humped in on the backs of villagers.

[...despite being one of the better sections of Himalayan road in West Bengal, our jeep got a flat...]

West Bengal’s ethnic majority – Bengalis (perhaps as many as 60-70 million) – may be the reason for the central government’s partiality. During elections, Calcutta’s 10+ million people easily outmaneuver the mountainous Gorkha community of 1.5 million.

This year, the Indian right-wing political party, the BJP, declared their support for the long-sought after Gorkhaland, a proposed state in carved out of northern Bengal that would allow the minority Gorkhas to gain some political sway in Delhi. Despite widespread support in Darjeeling and other Ghorka areas, the BJP did not win a single West Bengal parliamentary seat in last month’s national elections.

Calls for Gorkhaland did not subside after the elections. Nearly every storefront in Darjeeling is plastered with the sign GORKHALAND or the emblematic Gorkha logo of two crossed khukuri swords.

A rally last week in Darjeeling called for the community to take their demands for autonomy to the ruling Congress party. Yet despite setbacks and disappointment, there is no move toward outright independence, much less violent resistance. In fact, many speakers at the rally followed their calls of Jai Gorkha, Jai Gorkhaland! (Victory to Ghorkas, Victory to Ghorkaland!) with Jai Hind! (Victory to India!).

The Gorkhas in West Bengal have seen the benefits of political favoritism in the neighboring state of Sikkim, and now wonder why they are left with dilapidated roads and daily power cuts. They share culture and traditions more with their ethnic brethren in Nepal than with fellow Indian citizens in Calcutta. If their peaceful calls for Gorkhaland – as a part of India – are not heard now, India risks violent demands for an independent Gorkhaland in the future.

Contemporary India is a country created by 19th century colonialism and the era’s arbitrarily drawn lines and imaginary borders. The major task for India since independence in 1947 has been to reverse the divisions that Britain left behind. But reversing arbitrary divisions doesn’t always mean enforcing arbitrary unity. Sixty years after independence, India is left with the unfinished and difficult task of redrawing those lines with regards to race, religion, ethnicity, democracy, and common sense.

Yet in spite of the tragedy that followed Partition in 1947, a tragedy largely caused by imaginary borders, India is repeating the mistake and drawing new lines of division – this time within its own country.

Back at 12,000 feet, on grassy ridges where chickens and kerosene can act as currency, there is little that divides India and Nepal. On both sides of the ridge that supposedly mark the border, the same lush, forested mountains soar between warm valleys. In both regions, meat is scarce, but eggs, peas, and potatoes are plentiful. People from both countries happily give up seats next to the cooking fire for a stranger coming in from the cold.

Warming my numb fingers next to the coals, I contemplate how long places like this in the world can last, where the influence of politics, power, and technology have yet to impact society.

My thoughts are interrupted by the ringing of a cell phone in a dark corner of the wooden hut and the subsequent Nepalese chatter of a young man with his girlfriend.

I’m still wondering which side of the mountain he was talking to.

Wil Robinson
AWOP International Contributing Editor
Author of International Political Will Blog

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Anything But The Real Story

2009-05-05T04:50:00.000-04:00

They’re starting them off young.

During an elementary school visit on Sunday, a fourth-grader came up with a question for former NSA/Sec of State Condoleezza Rice. And it wasn’t just any question. In fact, it was the kind of question that should have put so-called “journalists” to shame.

The student, Misha Lerner, wanted to ask: “If you would work for Obama’s administration, would you push for torture?”

But he wasn’t allowed to ask that question.

Because using the word “torture” is a no-no, and any kid with this much promise of one day being a real journalist has to be stopped now before it’s too late and he ends up with…I dunno, ethics?

Lerner’s teacher – supposedly one of those people that shape young minds and challenge their students to reach new heights – “rephrased” the question, omitting the dirty little word.

So instead, Rice was asked: “What did [she] think about the things President Obama’s administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?”

Sounds like the kind of dribble that the mainstream media would regurgitate – still so stuck on 9/11 talking points that they can’t think for themselves.

Poor kid. Only 10 years old, and already he’s been told to drink the Kool-Aid.

But I guess you have to learn sometime. Journalism isn’t about the truth – it’s about distracting people with a shiny object. When it comes to focusing instead on something that divides, isolates, or generates fear, if the media doesn’t do it – our schools will.

Meanwhile, NBC Nightly News was hard at work covering their mess. Monday night’s headline story about the Swine Flu noted that “it may be milder than the regular seasonal flu…” and then referred to it as a “strange” virus.

It’s not strange, you idiots. Just because it turns out (as many said but were ignored) that this isn’t the apocalyptic Ebola-style virus outbreak that the sensationalistic media hoped it would be, doesn’t mean you can now label it “strange.” How about just labeling it what it is – the fucking flu.

But of course, as The News Writer pointed out last week, now that the torture question (oops, sorry, the “methods used to get information from detainees”) is off the radar, the media doesn’t have to own up to yet another failure to actually report the truth.

Even the allegedly “lefty” media – the print media – are in on the “anything but the real story” act. Because if the story isn’t divisive enough to distort on the US networks, the print media will jump in.

A pregnant 20-year-old British woman, Samantha Orobator, faces the firing squad in Laos for drug smuggling. She was arrested last August (that’s 8 months ago – keep it in mind) for possession of 1.5 pounds of heroin. Of course, she denies the drugs are hers.

Human rights activists are all over this one. A pregnant British citizen, being held without access to a lawyer, facing the death penalty?

So story after story is churned out, all of them noting the horrible possibility of a pregnant woman being executed. Or about how she’s been denied a lawyer.

Despicable violations of human rights, no doubt.

But where is the outrage over Orobator’s pregnancy itself? After all, she didn’t get pregnant until December – 4 months after her arrest.

I didn’t know Laos prisons had conjugal visits. Or, I guess, another explanation is that she was raped.

But no, rape is no human rights violation. I mean, she probably asked for it, right? Or maybe it was that prison outfit she was wearing so provocatively. Or perhaps she tricked one of the guards into impregnating her in a ruse to generate sympathy for her release.

The BBC did quote a human rights lawyer in last Friday’s story who duly noted that “nothing that happens in that prison is voluntary.” But this angle was conveniently edited out by the time Monday’s version was published.

Unfortunately, our “journalists” are busy falling over each other to report the sensational aspect of a non-white, non-Christian foreign country attempting to execute a pregnant woman.

So the human rights issue of how she got pregnant in the first place isn’t newsworthy.

Of course, if Orobator was Anglo-Saxon, the story of her being raped in prison by Third-World “Orientals” would be too much to pass up.

Wil Robinson
AWOP International Contributing Editor
Author of International Political Will Blog

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Incitement

2009-04-21T23:57:00.000-04:00

A story about a women’s shelter in Afghanistan should be an opportunity to showcase what can really drive progress. It could be a chance to commend those handling the day-to-day operations. It might be an

opening to demonstrate what role Islam plays in women’s lives who, although they have been victims of a brutal misogynist tradition, have not abandoned their faith. It can be a chance to show that, despite our preconceptions, within every women’s group are religious Afghan men.

Instead, NBC Nightly News ignored all these opportunities and simply reverted to western stereo types and fears.

Anchor Brian Williams introduced the “In Depth” story:

“[I]n Afghanistan today, 300 women came together in

a protest march, something just about unheard of there. They were demanding the repeal of a new law imposing harsh restrictions on women’s rights.

But then the marchers were set upon by about 1,000 men, yelling insults, terrible insults, and threats.”

(Sadly, MSNBC.com had an AP internet story the same day about the Afghan men who joined the pro-women march – but this wasn’t worthy of being included in the TV broadcast. After all, Afghan men protesting side-by-side with Afghan women don’t fit our Western narrative of a Muslim male out to oppress women and decapitate the infidel.)

“Though things got better there briefly, women’s rights are again under fire in Afghanistan by Muslim extremists, but some women are fighting back at great personal risk.

The story you are about to see is a tough one, and fair warning, what follows is not suitable if you have little ones in the room.

But we agreed with our chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, that the story needed to be told…”

Thus, in the introduction, NBC has framed the story against a backdrop of Western fear and hatred of Islam. (And if you are a “little one,” the seed has been planted: all you saw was a burqa and heard was that it had something to do with “Afghanistan,” “women,” and “Muslim extremists” before you were promptly sent to your room.)

Engel’s story itself detailed the horrors – the beatings, the forced prostitution, the abandonment of children. He makes one woman hyperventilate after asking about her sons she left with her homicidal husband (he says he “regretted” asking, but kept the shot in the final cut – he couldn’t have regretted it too much).

He even finds one “modern” spokeswoman (with a western accent) from the Women for Afghan Women center who addresses the camera without so much as a headscarf, reinforcing the idea that women’s rights are all about the veil.

Thus, NBC’s “In Depth” was far from deep – it had only two truly Afghan voices, both edited to support the premise that Afghan men are evil and abuse women (unspoken, yet insinuated, is that Islam is the reason).

And of course, there was the obligatory blurb from an Afghan ex-pat that grew up in the U.S. telling us “how it really is in Afghanistan,” because we don’t really believe those people until we hear it from one of our own. That’s how Orientalism works, isn’t it?

Am I to believe that none of these women – when asked “How do you cope?” – ever mentioned their faith? None of them once uttered “I trust in Allah to take care of me?” Even American Idol has gratuitous sound bytes of the winner proclaiming they “just put their trust in God.” But apparently these Afghan women are so secular that they put their trust in…what…? Democracy?

And where are the men? Are we to believe there were NO men at this center? No guards? No lawyers? No assistants? None? Nada? Zip?

I call bullshit.

I’ve spent time with Afghans working for women’s rights. They aren’t secular feminists ready to join the Western tirade against all things Islam. On the contrary, it is precisely their religion that motivates them.

Every women’s center, NGO, and educational group that I visited in Kabul and surrounding provinces relied on men. I asked these men the same question: Why do you risk your life for women’s rights?

All of them immediately gave me the same answer:

Islam demands it.

These Afghans that see Islam as the foundation of social justice aren’t an aberration. I heard it from young teachers, office administrators, lawyers, sharia scholars, and even a mufti. I listened to the same message from students, security guards, and drivers.

Which is why it is impossible for someone to do a story about women’s rights in Afghanistan and not hear the same thing.

Matthew Fisher of Canwest News Services heard them:

The nearly unanimous view on the campus — arguably the most progressive institution in Afghanistan — was that the West should not involve itself in the country’s cultural and religious affairs.

“This is not a good law. Women should be allowed to do what they want,” said Hamida Hasani, 18, a [female] architecture student at Kabul University…“But we do not want total freedom. We wanted it to be limited and to be within Islam.”

…“[Westerners] don’t know anything about us and our problems,” [Hasani] said. “If they faced what we have faced with hunger and war, they’d realize what is most important to fight for here. Before they come here they should . . . experience our difficulties.”

…“There is change in Afghanistan today,” Riosi [an 18-year-old female student of literature] said. “There is respect for us if we are educated or if we work.

“But westerners want to change Afghanistan for their benefit, not for ours. They have a bad view of our culture. Some of our women imitate their clothes and their ways. Our freedom must come within Islam.”

While loyal readers of the Vancouver Sun can actually be proud that their small media outlet has the ethics to print truth, the media conglomerates of the U.S. continue their propaganda battle.

For NBC to run a story about women’s rights and not have one person referring to their faith as a guiding force for good, or omit any men who defend women’s rights because of their religion, can only be deliberate.

To tell the viewing audience about 300 women protesters without acknowledging that some Afghan men were in their midst is a calculated choice.

To publish an internet article “Key to women’s rights in Afghanistan: men” and not once mention Islam or religion is premeditated.

NBC’s story wasn’t intended to promote more shelters, encourage donations from wealthy viewers, and certainly not to show what role Afghan men, much less religion, could play in Afghanistan’s future. It appears the only purpose was to incite more hatred of Muslims.

Which brings me back to NBC’s claim:

“This is a story that needed to be told…”

What, exactly, is that “story?” Because the only story that NBC ran was propaganda aimed at stirring up anger, hatred, and violence toward “others” that think, live, and believe differently than ourselves. Is that what “needed to be told?” Was the country running low on Islamophobia?

NBC’s “story” about Afghan women served no useful purpose other than to darken the lenses that Americans use to see the “other.”

Misguided and false perceptions of Muslims have persisted for centuries. In a globalized world, where information is exchanged freely and we interact with people from opposite sides of the world, can we afford to continue to be so ignorant?

Wil Robinson
AWOP International Contributing Editor
Author of International Political Will Blog

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Pirates, Fishermen, and Mercenaries

2009-04-14T05:54:00.000-04:00

I thought the U.S. military was funded by American taxpayers for the purpose of protecting our population (yes, rescuing an American hostage from pirates falls under “protection”).

But there is a difference between rescuing a kidnapped American citizen and providing routine sea patrols outside of U.S. jurisdiction – something that sounds more like corporate security at taxpayer expense. Yet a cacophony of voices is calling for the military to begin enforcing its rule over the one million square miles of open sea near Eastern Africa to ward off piracy.

It’s no surprise that commercial shipping companies want free military aid. The civilians that run the U.S. Department of Defense have made it quite clear that our superior military force is only to be used when corporate profits are threatened. The Iraq invasion sent a message to the world that the U.S. military acts at the behest of giant conglomerates like Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, and Exxon Mobil.

So now everyone wants in on the free security services. Commercial shipping companies – who spend most of their time outside of U.S. jurisdiction – now believe they are entitled to military protection.

If ever there was a job for Blackwater and the private mercenary armies that our perpetual state of war have encouraged, this is it. The cost of protecting commercial shipping should be born by the companies doing the shipping – not by U.S. taxpayers.

Hiring mercenaries like Blackwater would do four things:

It would create occupational openings for mercenary firms and draw them away from theaters of war like Iraq and Afghanistan. Providing a job alternative for these private armies would fade the image America currently projects abroad with tattooed, gun-happy, testosterone-filled private contractors fighting wars in sovereign nations.
It would relieve the U.S. military from the “responsibility” of protecting the one-million square miles of open sea that commercial shipping companies fear (and would thus avoid cost to American taxpayers). An already-stretched U.S. military cannot afford to be spread even thinner.
Consider the rules of open sea: for all practical purposes, there are none. Throughout history, pirates have not enjoyed any rights or privileges. They live without rules and, thus, die without rules. Fight fire with fire – mercenaries are the perfect answer to modern-day piracy.
It would be nearly impossible for trigger-happy Blackwater contractors to shoot unarmed civilians in one million square miles of open sea.

Problem solved.

Or at least the security problem would be solved. The root of the piracy issue still needs to be addressed, though few people other than Katie Stuhldreher seem interested.

Stuhldreher notes that when Somalia collapsed in the early 1990s, the rich fishing coastline was left with no state control. Foreign commercial fishing operations moved in and pushed out the locals. The first “pirates” were actually local Somali fisherman seeking “compensation” from foreign fishing companies that were profiting at the expense of Somalia.

Stuhldreher goes on:

“The success of these early raids in the mid-1990s persuaded many young men to hang up their nets in favor of AK-47s. Making the coastal areas lucrative for local fishermen again could encourage pirates to return to legitimate livelihoods.”

(Or at least encourage would-be pirates to consider another line of work…)

Stuhldreher’s solution? Fishery protection – either through the African Union, the United Nations, or a coalition of states.

Yet it’s important to separate “fishery protection” from “counter-piracy.” While commercial shipping companies would be responsible for their own private security (via firms like Blackwater), an international body would be responsible for monitoring fishing rights off the Somali coast, allowing locals to return to a profitable business.

There’s no doubt that a rescue operation, like the one that occurred over Easter weekend, requires highly-trained U.S. Navy Seals or Special Forces. But with heavily armed, muscle-bound mercenary guards on commercial vessels, the pirate’s chances of successfully boarding a ship in the first place would be next to impossible. Hostage situations would become far less frequent, local Somali fishermen could return to their livelihoods, and best of all – private mercenaries would have a safe place to operate without ruining America’s reputation abroad.

Any move by the U.S. military to assume the role of corporate security guard in the world’s oceans is a backward step for President Obama and our military.

It’s time for America to move away from the corporate warfare that assures industry profits are placed before human lives. It’s time for the U.S. to start addressing the root of problems instead of playing firefighter. It’s time for new, innovative ideas that create a better world instead of trying to return to an idealized past that has been whitewashed by a fuzzy memory.

How America moves forward on the piracy issue – a centuries-old problem – will determine whether we are moving into a new future, or retaining the failed policies of the past.

Wil Robinson
AWOP International Editor
Author of International Political Will Blog

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The Heavily-Armed Elephant in the Room

2009-04-07T04:35:00.000-04:00

After the shooting rampage in Binghamton that left 13 people dead, the city’s police chief – the man charged with protecting the citizenry – said in a moment of stupidity:

“If some crazy lunatic decides to pick up a gun and go someplace and start shooting people, I really don’t have the answer how…[to] prevent anything like that.”

Really? Because the answer seems pretty self-evident to me:

Stop letting people just “pick up a gun” like they’re picking up milk and eggs from the supermarket.

The Binghamton massacre was just the latest (and, as of this writing, no longer the most recent) in a spate of firearm homicides. Over the last month in the U.S., 53 people have been killed in mass shootings (that doesn’t include the firearm homicides with only one victim).

There were the four Oakland Police officers who were gunned down by a convicted felon.

There was the Indian techie in Santa Clara that slaughtered his family, his relatives, and then turned the gun on himself. Good thing he was able to purchase two semi-automatic handguns to “protect” his family two weeks before the murders (in a neighborhood that had recently disbanded the Neighborhood Watch because there was no crime…).

There were the three Pittsburgh police officers that were ambushed by a gun-nut who thought Obama was going to take his AK-47 (which had previously been illegal until former President Bush decided that automatic machine guns were guaranteed by a 235-year-old constitutional amendment and let the assault weapon ban lapse).

There was a man outside of Tacoma, Washington, that shot his family of five because his wife was allegedly going to leave him… the list goes on.

Gun violence has become such a part of American life that I think we forget just how absurd the idea of arming citizens really is. Nor do we realize the effect this has on our collective psyche.

A couple of weeks ago, I was inside a DVD-rental store in my neighborhood of Mumbai. As I gazed through the lack-luster selection of titles, a heated argument broke out between a service clerk and a customer. The customer was shouting irately, berating the clerk for God-knows-what (it was all in angry Hindi).

My first instinct was to move away – part of my subconscious was even considering where to duck if he pulled a gun.

And then I realized that my reaction was a product of growing up in America where gun violence is commonplace. We Americans are so used to shootings that when a fight breaks out, our first instinct is to protect ourselves because “who knows who’s carrying a gun.” None of the Indians in the store were worried; in fact, they got closer to watch the argument. Why?

Because you can’t just “pick up a gun” in Mumbai.

Allowing Americans to “pick up a gun” has created a dangerous society – one more dangerous than many of the locations in the world that our own government tells us to avoid with their color-coded terror warnings.

Metropolitan Mumbai has about 20 million people, comprised of all kinds of races and religions. In 2007, Mumbai experienced 228 homicides.

The San Francisco Bay Area, which includes more than a dozen large cities, has about 7 million people. There were 358 murders in the Bay Area in 2007.

That means that Mumbai had approximately one murder for every 100,000 people in 2007. The SF Bay Area had one homicide for every 20,000. Five times higher.

What is the cause? Are Americans simply more violent? More aggressive? Are we, by nature, more murderous than other people of the world? Doubtful.

The simplest explanation is also the most likely: America is dangerous because we have flooded our country with guns – not only at Big 5 Sporting Goods, but in our movies, TV shows, and popular culture. Watch an American action movie and keep an eye out – we revere guns so much that they get a solo close-up in movies so that we can admire them without things like actors getting in the way.

While the U.S. government warns Americans that terrorism is a threat to their way of life, they have effectively distracted us from the real threat. Sadly, we have accepted these mass shootings as a “way of life.” Columbine, Virginia Tech, Binghamton, and so many countless others that we have already forgotten.

When we are so good at destroying ourselves, why would any terrorist even bother trying to attack us?

Then again, maybe the terrorists have already figured this out. After the Binghamton attack, Pakistani Taliban leader Baituallah Mehsud publicly claimed he had ordered the shooting in retribution for US drone attacks. It’s not a good sign when Taliban terrorists are eager to claim responsibility for our own actions.

We are killing ourselves, and we’re only able to inflict such mass casualties because of guns.

It’s not like we are seeing a rash of mass stabbings (yet there are plenty of knives available). There aren’t any epidemics of mass strangulations (everyone has hands). Americans aren’t walking into their places of work and covertly mass poisoning co-workers (yet dozens of cheap household chemicals are available). But with guns, death has never been more efficient - or acceptable.

And yet our leaders look us in the eye and say “If some crazy lunatic decides to pick up a gun and go someplace and start shooting people, I really don’t have the answer how…[to] prevent anything like that.”

Binghamton’s police chief knows the answer. But in America's culture of guns and violence, it’s just not politically acceptable to say it.

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Distortions Of Progress

2009-03-30T03:00:00.000-04:00

All too frequently, the media sensationalizes non-stories as they attempt to whip up anti-Islamic fervor in the name of ratings. FOX News ran a story headline Sunday: “Islamic Law’s Influence in America a Growing Concern.”

What exactly is the concern? Apparently, some taxi drivers in the U.S. decided not to carry passengers with alcohol, a university installed taps for Muslim worshippers to wash their feet before prayer, and a company decided to give their employees a holiday on Eid.

Yeah – real issues to worry about – I don’t know what our free country is coming too when taxi drivers can choose their passengers, a public school helps guarantee freedom of worship, and a corporation acknowledges all religions. That certainly isn’t why our Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights.

This perception of Islam has distorted what the American public views as progress. The media has over-simplified our goals, presenting the idea of a Muslim woman who removes her veil as “progress.” That’s not progress. That’s just a different culture.

I was once propositioned by a woman under a powder-blue burqa on the streets of Kabul. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the veil that was keeping her in a state of prostitution.

Progress would be if that woman had access to affordable medical care. Progress would be if her children had access to free schools. Progress would be if both she and her husband could earn a living wage. Progress would be if their villages weren’t in danger of being bombed by U.S. drones or held hostage by Taliban insurgents.

Progress would be growth. Progress would be peace. Progress would be a future. Who gives a shit about a veil?

President Obama’s “new” Afghan/Pakistan strategy has the same simplistic view and lacks any fresh ideas as to how we can combat the roots of extremism. Instead, his “new” strategy is simply super-sizing the mistakes of the past 8 years and attempting to reframe the issue with new euphemisms.

The so-called “war on terror” (now renamed, in true Orwellian fashion, the “Overseas Contingency Operation”) continues to view civilian deaths – collateral damage – as acceptable. We continue to fund Pakistan’s military despite knowing that elements of Pakistan’s intelligence forces are supporting Taliban insurgents.

Meanwhile, America keeps trying to convince Afghans, Pakistanis, and other Muslims in developing countries (or occupied territories) that we are just trying to help; yet we refuse to let them help themselves. Islam is always seen as part of the problem – not part of the solution. For nearly a decade, we have attempted to justify our own failures and distract those working for global development by pointing a finger at Islamic piety.

And this is where we have doomed ourselves to failure.

There are so many partners that could help with real progress, but too many of them have been labeled as “too Islamic” and thus a potential enemy. Islam is (like all major religions) built on charity, and there are institutions within many Muslim societies that can act as a partner if given the chance. Unfortunately, our fear has kept us from trusting anything that looks, talks, smells, or even hints at being “Islamic.”

The Indian state of Gujarat is an example of what Islamic organizations can provide if given the opportunity. The city of Ahmedabad was torn apart in 2002 by ethnic and religious riots. (I won’t get into who started it, because like so many other conflicts, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that a small event escalated and thousands of people were affected.)

After the riots, some of the Muslim population in Ahmedabad was left without homes. Islamic charities stepped in to help. Even orthodox political institutions, like Jamaat-i-Islami, the Pakistani Islamic party with links to militant groups, came to the rescue of the displaced community. They helped reconstruct old homes, set up new schools, and built new communal housing for resettlement. The underlying fear in the Indian government was that the Islamic influence would filter down and create a more conservative, rigid community.

Seven years on, Jawaharlal Nehru University anthropologist Dipankar Gupta writes that fears about rising Islamic fundamentalism have proved to be unfounded. The Islamic institutions have not tried to implement their brand of fundamental religion, but have simply worked to better the lives of Gujarati Muslims.

“Did the [Islamists]…place conditions of a religious nature before they let people into these [resettlement] colonies? None, as far as the residents could recall…[N]obody was tested for orthodoxy before they were allowed in…

The truth is that neither Jamaat-i-Islami nor [other Islamic institutions are] keen on advocating fundamentalist lifestyles. They have no interest in sponsoring madrassas that teach only Arabic and the Quran. Instead they have set up schools that provide secular education…These schools are not a ruse for Islamic organizations, or clerics, to pump religious fervor into Muslim kids.

On the contrary, these Muslim institutions are clear that they want the boys and girls in their care to learn secular sciences and skills and heave themselves out of parental poverty. The curricula in these schools are so designed that they conform to the requirements of the state education board. There would be some religious instructions in these institutions, but they would be on the side, and a minor matter…

The accent is on turning out successful Muslims who can negotiate confidently in a secular world…

Where then is that fundamentalism that is supposedly breeding in the smoldering slums of Ahmedabad? In fact, if anything, it is just the reverse…”

The Obama administration has similar ready-made partners for reconstruction in Afghanistan and Pakistan. America (or NATO) cannot do it alone – and nor should they. Afghans and Pakistanis – and the religious values that are a part of them – need to be integrated into the very institutions that are seeking to help. We need to heed a lesson from the reconstruction of Ahmedabad and stop being afraid of utilizing Islam in development.

But gaining support for such an idea first requires something from the media. We need a media that focuses on true progress instead of culture. We need the anti-Islamic fear-mongering to stop.

We need a media that presents Islam for what it is and what it should be – part of the solution.

Now that would be a truly new strategy for the “Overseas Contingency Operation.”

Moving Obama Forward

2009-03-19T22:03:00.000-04:00

I’m still tentatively problamistic about President Obama – not optimistic, not pessimistic - just assuming the most probable outcome. I won’t say I’ve become disillusioned yet, but Obama is definitely not bringing the kind of change we voted for, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

Obama’s policy on Iraq is virtually identical to what Bush’s was at the end of his term last year: we’re gonna keep some troops, we’re gonna secure our “interests” (read: oil), and we’re never really gonna leave entirely.

But it is in Afghanistan that Obama has really screwed himself. And it seems only now is everyone beginning to realize it. The decision to keep raining airstrikes on Afghanistan and Pakistan in hopes that we can bomb an insurgency into submission is finally being questioned (although many pundits seem to be questioning only “Obama’s decision” to bomb – seeming to ignore the 7 years that Bush first decided it was a good idea). But let bygones be bygones. We’re talking about now – the future – and the way forward.

I first said our policy of airstrikes on villages was doomed for failure last October. Then again here. And here. And also here. Professor Juan Cole alluded to the problem on January 26, just days after the inauguration. Newsweek opined on the issue in late January. The Scholar’s Stage analyzed the issue as well. And a former Pakistan CIA case officer wrote an op-ed for the New York Times last week saying the same thing.

Is anyone in the Obama Administration listening?

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the progressive spiritual magazine Tikkun (check out Tikkun’s wonderful piece on the positive role of Islam in Afghanistan), appears to have some constructive ideas about how we can get Obama’s attention (reprinted in part from an email and available in the March/April 2009 issue).

…[Obama’s] decision to double U.S. troops in Afghanistan is a moral and political disaster. He has neither clearly articulated goals nor a plausible exit strategy, he continues the intellectually incoherent and morally perverse “war or terror,” and he guarantees the death of innocents…
Yet how do we [criticize Obama]?
…[F]or some the answer simply is: “keep quiet, be patient, and in his own time he’ll do all the good things liberals want.”
But that is not how Obama works. It’s obvious from his appointments and his policies that Obama responds more to those outside his camp who make a ruckus of criticism than to those whose support he takes for granted.
To be politically relevant, spiritual progressives have to become visible critics where that criticism is morally required. Yet we must do so in a language that embodies our genuine respect for Obama and our genuine belief that he can be called back to his own highest values.
Our task is to use this extraordinary moment in history…to provide a detailed vision of an alternative…Without that vision of an alternative, progressives and liberals are forced back into the old ways of thinking…
The “something new” is already there…in our religious and spiritual wisdom, but today it must be fleshed out and applied…to build a new global system. That is our challenge, and that is our major project in the months ahead.

There is no question that the United States is a thousand times better off with Obama than his criminal predecessors (one of whom seems unwilling to let go of the fear…ehem, I’m talking about you, Darth Cheney).

We made a huge step forward last November when we elected a person like Obama. Unfortunately, the last eight years left us little room for mistakes. We can no longer afford two steps forward and one step back.

So the question we are left with is: What is the most probable outcome? Will Obama suddenly shift to a new foreign policy paradigm that advances international coexistence between East and West, between Muslim, Christian, and Jew, between rich and poor?

Or will Obama continue his drift toward hypocrisy, appeasement of the conservative right, and repetition of the failures of the past?

Progressives like Rabbi Lerner believe our duty as citizens only began last November. The future is up to us.

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¡Viva la Depredador Aviones!

2009-03-12T22:27:00.000-04:00

Why aren’t we bombing Mexico with unmanned Predator drones?

If the Obama administration truly believes that dropping bombs from remote-controlled aircraft onto villages on the Afghan-Pakistani border is a good idea to combat the Taliban, why not do the same to fight the drug cartels in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez?

It seems that Mexico - where the drug war killed three times as many civilians in 2008 than a real war did in Afghanistan - is a perfect candidate for expanding Project Predator.

There are a number of similarities between the two regions:

Both the northern Mexican states and Pakistan are perilously close to becoming failed states, rife with corruption and lacking any entity that can enforce the rule of law.

Both countries are fueled by narco-terrorism and violence as they each try to export their illegal drugs to Western markets.

Both countries routinely see decapitations used as a method of terror, like these unfortunate Mexican police sans heads.

The threat of kidnapping is prevalent in both countries.

Neither Mexico nor Afghanistan/Pakistan attacked America on September 11, 2001.

There is actually more evidence to support the bombing of Mexico rather than Pakistan:

More people were killed in Mexico in 2008 (6,000+) in drug-related violence than died in Afghanistan (2,100+).

Unlike Afghanistan/Pakistan, the violence in Mexico actually is spilling over directly into American cities.

Phoenix is the kidnapping-for-ransom capital of the U.S., with 366 incidents in 2008 (police estimate twice as many may not be reported). Phoenix also has a murder rate that is twice the national average (unless it’s all those senior snowbirds that are responsible for the homicides).

The southern New Mexico town of Columbus has seen a trend of drug lords from south of the border moving into their small neighborhood:

“Several residents of Palomas [across the border in Mexico near Juarez] have bought property in Columbus recently, paying cash…new Cadillac Escalades, and cars with thousand-dollar chrome rims, have appeared suddenly, in a town without a single traffic light.”

More than 200 American citizens (15 of them minors) have been killed in Mexico since 2004, largely in border cities like Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and Nuevo Laredo. Another 75 Americans are still missing. Most of these cases are unsolved.

In fact, despite what the politicians and their mainstream media lapdogs attempt to convince us of, drug violence in northern Mexico is a bigger threat to American security than any Taliban insurgents. Though we have effectively scared Americans with color-coded fear factors and visions of wild-eyed Mohammedans who want to kill us for our freedom, it isn’t the reality. Americans are much more likely to die in drug-related violence – directly tied to the northern Mexico smuggling routes and cartels – rather than at the hands of a Muslim suicide bomber.

Given the facts, I can’t understand why we aren’t already using Predator drones south of the border. It seems to me that drug lords would be pretty easy to locate in their lush villas, and then we can just drop a bomb or two via remote control – their families be damned. We don’t care about collateral damage in Pakistan – why should we care about it in Tijuana?

If we aren’t worried about addressing the root of Afghanistan’s problems with any real infrastructure or reconstruction, why are we even bothering to try to solve the underlying drug problem in the U.S.? Forget social programs and rehab centers, stop funding the Narcotics Anonymous meetings and anti-drug programs in schools, eliminate that wasteful spending on the DEA. If we can just bomb our way out of a problem, why bother with all that bleeding-heart liberal nonsense?

And if Pakistan’s sovereignty doesn’t deter us from crossing the border and bombing villages, why should Mexico’s sovereignty be any different?

Of course, there is that one underlying factor that makes our politicians think twice when taking a human life – religion. Those drug lords in Mexico are, after all, Catholic (as in, not Muslim).

But we get no help from the Catholic Church. The Vatican can’t even decide whether or not they should excommunicate these drug lords (yet we complain about Muslim leaders not doing enough to speak out against terrorism). Though the Catholic Church seems to be quick to deny communion to politicians who support a woman’s right to her own body. And at least they take a tough stand on real crimes against humanity, like being gay.

President Obama decided – within hours of taking office – that having a robot kill people (thus removing the human conscience from the equation entirely) was a good way to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

Now he thinks he can reach out to “moderate” Taliban insurgents. How can we possibly know who is moderate and who is extreme when our only contact is through an infrared camera attached to a remote-control plane thousands of feet above the ground?

However, Obama is the commander-in-chief, so I’ll assume he’s is correct in killing 15 civilians in hopes that one of them is a mid-level Taliban leader (who will be replaced before the sun sets).

But if we’re going to use this new sophisticated technology, I want to go all in. I want Predator drones used in any situation where they might be remotely possible (pun intended) to help us protect our country. I know it’s only a matter of time before we are using Predators against our own people (Great Britain already is considering it).

Let the bombing of Mexico begin.

Will Robinson
AWOP International Contributing Editor
Author of International Political Will

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An Educated Tragedy

2009-03-04T20:50:00.000-05:00

There is a joke that circulates among ex-pat teachers of English in Japan (though Japanese never found it funny):

On the Titanic, moments before it sank, there were special announcements.

“Attention all British citizens. Women and children first. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.” And all the British men replied with “here, here,” and “I say, cheerio, good chap.”

Then another: “Attention all American citizens. Women and children first. Be a hero.” And all the American men replied with “Hell yes, damn right, USA! USA!”

And another: “Attention all German citizens. Women and children first. Your fuhrer demands it.” And all the German men saluted and marched.

And finally: “Attention all Japanese citizens. Women and children first. It’s what everyone else is doing.”

I suppose it’s a stereotype to say that Japanese people are all the same – a nation of followers. But I say with confidence, experience, and evidence:

Japan is wasting its educated, affluent population by suppressing ingenuity and training a nation of 100 million followers to think collectively and robotically.

I pay (most) of my bills reading and grading an average of 20 English essays a week – all written by Japanese, most post-graduate professionals looking to improve their English for job opportunities or to enter graduate school in the US or Britain. (Before that, I spent more than a year teaching Japanese students conversational English in the southern prefecture of Fukuoka.)

The essay prompts are similar for all students:

What country would you visit for a two-week vacation?
What will the 20th century be remembered for?
Create your own holiday to honor or celebrate a person or event.
What is the most endangered resource and how can we protect it?
How can Japan address its aging population?
Etc., etc.

And miraculously, for the past year, I have received virtually the same answers from dozens of students:

They only want to go on vacation to a country they have already been to. Going somewhere new is entirely out of the question.
The 20th century will be remembered for technology. Then follow three body paragraphs about how “technology” is good (though I never get an actual definition or example of what kind of technology…)
Everyone wants to create a holiday “for relax.” No real reason, no person or event to honor, and no creativity. Just “for relax.” Isn’t that what a Sunday is?
The most endangered resource is our forests. Of course, “protecting them” just means having international conferences – you know, that Kyoto thing. That Japan is responsible for a fair portion of the Amazon deforestation to make hardwood furniture has never come up. Neither have the millions of disposable wooden chopsticks the country runs through every day.
And always, without fail, Japan needs to address its aging population with “government measures.” No clue as to what those “measures” might be…

So to sum up what the basic values and ethics the Japanese education system teaches, based on their essays:

Stay in your comfort zone, technology is good, recognizing individual achievements with a holiday is unnecessary, international conferences without action will solve global problems, and government measures are best left to the bureaucrats to figure out.

These monotonous ideas and expressions are coming from one of the richest, most educated, and affluent populations on earth. Japanese have one of the highest life expectancies and most comfortable living standards in the modern world. They have a quasi-socialist state that assures everyone receives a great education, a healthy diet that has virtually eliminated obesity, mega-cities where random acts of violence and crime are almost non-existent, and a culture of alcohol that knows how to enjoy a beer (usually several) without getting “angry drunk.”

Yet with all these advantages, Japan can’t produce people that can think for themselves.

One student, after being repeatedly advised that they needed to take a clear position in issue essays and express their opinion with evidence, actually replied with: “You mean I should express my own opinion?”

I have been debating with co-workers where this collective “don’t abandon a sinking ship, just let everyone drown quietly” mentality comes from. We considered the geographical isolation that comes with being an island nation, Confucian traditions that demand respect for the elderly, and the same ethic that led the nation to blindly follow their emperor to the kamikaze ending of World War II. Too often, I think, we incorrectly chalked it up to “the Japanese (and perhaps East Asian) Way.”

Masaru Tamamoto wrote an interesting op-ed in the New York Times yesterday that has a different take. Not willing to accept notions that assume “to be Japanese is to be a follower,” Tamamoto thinks the post-World War II reconstruction of Japan built the bureaucratic wall that has stymied progress.

[W]hat most people don’t recognize is that [Japan’s] crisis is not political, but psychological. After our aggression — and subsequent defeat — in World War II, safety and predictability became society’s goals. Bureaucrats rose to control the details of everyday life. We became a…large middle-class population in which people are equal and alike.

Conservative pundits here like to speak of this equality and sameness as being cornerstones of “Japanese” tradition. Nonsense…

[O]ur economic success has relied on the availability of outside models from which to choose…Japan’s rise to economic greatness was basically a game of catch-up with the advanced West.

So what happened once we caught up? Over the past two decades, the answer has largely been paralysis. Japan’s ability to imitate outside models was mistaken for progress. But if progress is defined by pursuing a vision of a desirable future, then the Japanese never progressed. What we had was a concept of order and placement, which is essentially stasis…

Japan desperately needs change, and this will require risk. Risk-taking is not common among the bureaucratically controlled. You won’t find many signs on Japanese beaches saying, “Swim at your own risk. No lifeguard on duty.” If that sign were to appear, many Japanese would likely ask the authorities to tell them if it is safe to swim. This same risk aversion translates into protectionism and insularity…There is not nearly enough critical thinking and dissent in the Japanese news media…

Japan’s passiveness today is in large measure a calculated and reasonable reaction to its behavior during the Second World War. But today, this emphasis on safety and security is long [outdated]…

Japan needs more critical thinkers like Tamamoto, and they need them in their education system, where they can stimulate debate among the next generation of leaders instead of churning out more followers.

Otherwise, Japan faces a future of vague, theoretical sameness, and solutions that do little to move their people forward. A stagnant Japan will offer little to the rest of the world. For an educated country with such potential, maintaining the status quo is tantamount to failure.

And, incidentally, why can’t I, just once, have a student that thinks like Tamamoto?

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Poppies and Pomegranates

2009-03-02T01:21:00.000-05:00

There is yet another obscure way our government is trying to fight the so-called “war on terror” (besides actually stopping it).

Pomegranates.

Apparently these delicious (but ridiculously hard-to-peel) fruits are the key to fighting terror in Afghanistan and thwarting the Taliban. Unable to keep local Afghan farmers from growing the lucrative opium poppies, the U.S. government is now trying to convince them to switch to the [slow-growing and less lucrative] pomegranate crop to export to world markets.

Following U.S. Government logic, this would deprive the Taliban of their illicit drug trade – and without funds the insurgency would disappear (because, you know, the only reason they are terrorists is because they have illegal drug money…I mean, it’s not like there is a religiously extreme, petro-dictatorship like Saudi Arabia out there with a history of supporting the Taliban that could step in and keep the money flowing…).

As a matter of agricultural development policy, I fully support Afghans growing pomegranates and making a buck. It is a critical component of an integrated strategy for success and reconstruction.

But it can’t be in isolation. As long as we’re dropping bombs from 30,000 feet and are willing to accept “collateral damage” that Afghan and Pakistani villagers are not, buying every last pomegranate in Kandahar won’t matter.

First we must put aside the obvious economics behind supply and demand, principles of free trade, and international competition that would drive pomegranate prices down should a massive influx on world markets take place. There is also the fact that the trees only produce one crop a year (poppies produce two).

But more importantly, pomegranate trees take 4-5 years to mature before you can harvest anything. That’s a long-term investment in the future. What about America’s half-assed, infrastructure-lacking, non-reconstruction fund-having, short-sighted, ex-pat alcohol-drinking aid worker, undersized military force and their window-dressing, Euro-centrist, photo-op development projects would make Afghans think we have any intention on supporting something long-term?

The only reason we’re still stuck in a war in central Asia 7 years on is because Bush and his neo-con “do it on the cheap” CEOs-turned-War Cabinet ignored the Afghanistan problem, hoping it would just go away.

But what really pisses me off is that NBC News is regurgitating another Pentagon stunt about “how to fight terror” in isolation – a stunt whose sole purpose is to misdirect the American public’s attention from a comprehensive plan that can really win the war.

Let’s review the many ways our government has told us we can fight terrorism:

Go shopping

Surrender privacy rights

Shred the U.S. Constitution

Throw out habeas corpus

Rewrite the Geneva Conventions

Torture

Promote democracy and then actively sabotage it when you don’t like the result (see: Hamas)

Fund military despots around the world (see: Egypt, Pakistan, et. al.)

Veto United Nations Security Council Resolutions calling for Israel to respect human rights and international law

Rendition

Take off our shoes and go thirsty when traveling on a plane

Deploy a mercenary army with no accountability

Invade countries that didn’t attack us

Continue to placate the one that did (see: Saudi Arabia)

Lower the price of oil by “drilling now”

Refer to the enemy as “homicide bombers” but our own bombs as “smart”

Issue travel warnings to reduce cultural interaction

Color-code fear

Entrapment (see: Hamid Hayat, the Lodi “terrorist”)

Blame Al Jazeera and/or free speech for showing photos of people we killed

Build walls (in Israel or on the Mexican border)

Spend a trillion dollars on an unnecessary war instead of domestic development

Send more troops

Blame religion

Drop bombs on villages from remote-controlled airplanes

And now…Buy pomegranates

It seems we have tried just about everything – except the most obvious:

Stop killing non-white, impoverished Muslims.

With President Obama reshaping the US strategy in Afghanistan, I expected new ideas. Instead, he seems to be hoping that doubling-down on Bush’s failed tactics will suddenly and miraculously succeed. In his first three days in office, Obama decided to continue the policy of dropping bombs on Afghan and Pakistani villages from unmanned drones – a policy that has led to hundreds of civilian deaths and recruited thousands more for the Taliban’s cause. Obama has actually increased the frequency and number of drone attacks over the last month.

The media last week reported on Obama’s plan to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan as risky, noting for the historical written record that Obama was now making it “his war.” It’s hard to see how, after only one month, a guy can be responsible for a war after his predecessor fucked it up for 7 years…but I guess that must be the “liberal media” up to their usual tricks.

We’ve seen this tactic used against insurgencies before. Nixon didn’t start the Vietnam War – he just inherited it. But he was the one who decided that expanding the carpet bombing of civilians into Laos and Cambodia would win hearts and minds. Now Nixon is the man remembered for losing a war at the cost of thousands of American and millions of Southeast Asian lives.

The new American president needs more than pomegranates to win hearts and minds, much less a war. If Obama’s answer to the problem in Afghanistan is to drop more bombs and to try to crush an insurgency with military strength, it will be his legacy of failure. Not his war, perhaps, but definitely his shame.

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Camels & Christians

2009-02-19T22:21:00.000-05:00

Due to an extremely busy week, I have been unable to spend any quality creative time on blogging. So let me take you back to December 2007...

If there is a city in the Arab world that would seem to be safe for Americans, it is Dubai.

The events over the past decade have made many Americans uneasy about traveling in the Middle East. Much of this fear is based on media propaganda that needs to demonize the “other” in the so-called “war on terror.” But the less communication and contact that the Middle East and West has with each other, the more stereotypes fester and grow, and the more media plays on people’s fears. The image of the “Muslim terrorist” is ingrained in many Westerners’ subconscious; conversely, many Middle Easterners only know the image of a materialistic and war-mongering American.

Yet there are places in the world where interactions between cultures are breaking down these barriers.

Dubai is a city of immigrants. Nearly 4 out of 5 people on the street hail from other countries - primarily South Asia and North Africa. The few Emiratis you see are usually cruising in their plush Toyota SUVs that match their white gutrah headdress and long flowing thoub, with a Middle Eastern beat thumping through dark tinted windows. Wealthy tourists from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Kuwait, Iran, and other countries in the region come to Dubai for vacation; it is known as the Las Vegas of the Middle East.

Yet despite the immigrant nature of the city, Dubai (and the United Arab Emirates) is visibly Muslim. Five times a day, the uncountable muezzins call out for the city’s faithful to pray. On Fridays, stores are shuttered and the streets teem with laborers and construction workers enjoying their day off. Alcohol is forbidden; yet the five-star resort hotels skirt the law to serve their foreign clientele, an arrangement of convenience between law enforcement, businesses, and the Sheik.

The “news” in the UAE is centered on the Sheiks; who they visited with, what they said, what events they hosted, and what words of praise other world leaders had for them. Any notion of a “free press” is only a facade. Pictures of Sheik Mohammad bin Rashid al Maktoum, the UAE’s prime minister, vice president and Dubai’s ruler, adorn buildings, lobbies, and every business. A taxi driver originally from southern India brags about “seeing the Sheik walking this very street once.” The Sheik enjoys more than celebrity status; he is, well…king.

It is the Sheik’s rule that demands tolerance in the name of economic growth. The meeting of cultures and religions in one place is possible, in part, because of the Sheik’s desire to make Dubai a world-class city.

Yet Dubai is an exception on the Arabian Peninsula. How far into the desert does the tolerance and respect that all people are afforded extend?

Beyond the glitz and glamour of Dubai is desert, and eventually, the oasis city of Al Ain on the border with Oman. The 90-minute trip follows a first-class, two-lane paved highway surrounded by sand as far as the eye can see. The only plant life visible is the lush palms and bushes that line both shoulders and the median. A sprinkler system of tubes and hoses keep the roadside vegetation lush - literally “greening the desert.” Electricity is no problem for the oil-rich state, either; street lights illuminate the highway at night, geometrically placed along the median every few hundred feet.

Still largely functioning on immigrant labor, Al Ain feels more conservative and obviously doesn’t see as many foreign tourists. Not only a physical oasis of trees and water in the middle of the Arabian Desert, it seems an refuge for Emiratis seeking to escape the bustle of Dubai or the nearby financial and business hub, Abu Dhabi.

It is in this noticeably more conservative city of Al Ain that I admit to harboring doubts about how I will be treated as a westerner - more specifically, as an American.

We find a jovial Pakistani taxi driver who tells us in very broken English, when he’s not spitting rust-colored betel juice out the window, that he can take us to the Camel Souq, or market. A twenty minute drive away from town takes us back into the desert. In the middle of nowhere, pens of dozens of camels are arranged in the sun, with SUVs parked haphazardly between.

We are immediately surrounded by the camel traders. Their dress and skin color suggests many different nationalities - Sudanese, Egyptian, Saudi. They are excited to see westerners at their camel souq and greet us with gratuitous “A salaam Alaykums.”

Each one wants to show us his camels (as if I look like I’m going to buy one). They want us to touch them, pet them, feel their “strong legs.” I’m wary; it’s the first time I’ve seen camels in their native environment and I don’t know if they are going to bite, spit, or shit.

We walk along the stalls, and one camel trader appears to have “won” the competition - he has managed to secure our undivided attention and we walk off to see “his” camels. Dressed in a long robe and sandals with a weathered kaffiyeh wrapped loosely around his neck, he keeps his arm around my shoulder. As we walk, he asks one of the questions I had been dreading.

“Where are you from?”

“California. America,” I say. I had briefly considered lying and saying I was Canadian.

“Ah. America.” Then comes an even more uncomfortable question. “You Muslim?”

It is one thing to consider denying your country. It’s another to deny your faith. Though I don’t consider myself part of the organized Christian religion, I was raised Christian and my belief system today is based on the teachings of Jesus. I will always identify myself with Christianity.

So I answer truthfully. “Christian.”

I hold my breath and await the fury of the Muslim terrorist who will likely behead me for being an infidel, or torture me and hold me hostage, sending videos of me in an orange jumpsuit over the internet demanding that Americans accept Allah and ride a camel to work or I will be killed.

In the past, I have often heard a saying that many people “don’t hate Americans, they hate American foreign policy.” Based on experiences in the UAE, Afghanistan, and India, this still holds true.

But I wonder for how long we can continue claiming an inability to control our own country’s foreign policy? How long will we enjoy the goodwill and hospitality that the rest of the world is still willing to offer us?

The camel trader in the desert smiles and squeezes my shoulder.

“Ah. Christian. Good Christian. Come, see my camels.”

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Guest Voice: News Writer analyzes Jim David Atkisson's terrorist manifesto

2009-02-12T20:56:00.001-05:00

I'd like everyone to meet News Writer, a journalist with an excellent blog Stop the Press. With an inside track to last summer's terrorist attack at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee, News Writer draws some chilling conclusions about hate speech, incitement to violence, and the role of right-wing media.

To Whom it May Concern
by News Writer

Jim David Atkisson's manifesto:

I guess you’re wondering why I did this. Well, let me explain in detail.

Over the years I’ve had some good jobs, but I always got laid off. Now I’m 58 years old & I can’t get a decent job. I’m told I’m ‘overqualified,’ which is a code word for ‘too damned old.’ Like I’m expected to age gracefully into poverty. No thanks! I’m done!

I’ve always wondered why I was put on the earth. For years I thought I was put here to die as cannon fodder in VietNam but somehow cheated the devil out of it. Lately I’ve been feeling helpess in our war on Terrorizm. But I realized I could engage the terrorists allies here in America. The best allies they’ve got

The Democrats! The democrats have done everything they can do to tie our hands in this War on Terror. They’re all a bunch of traitors. They want America to loose this war for reasons I can not understand. It makes me soooo mad!

In a parallel train of thought: It saddens me to think back on all the bad things that Liberalism has done to this country. The worst problem America faces today is Liberalism. They have dumbed down education. They have defined deviancy down. Liberals have attacked every major institution that made America great. From the Boy Scouts to the military, from education to Religion. The major news outlets have become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they’re Marxist, socialist, communists.

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Don’t let the word church mislead you. This isn’t a church, it’s a cult. They don’t even believe in God. They worship the God of Secularizm. These sick people aren’t Liberals, they’re Ultra-Liberals. This is a collection of sicko’s, weirdo’s, & homo’s. The UU church is the fountainhead, the veritable wellspring of anti-American organizations like Moveon.org, Code Pink, and other un-American groups.

These people are absolute Hypocrits. They embrace every pervert that comes down the pike, but if they find out your a conservative, they absolutely hate you.

I know. I experienced it.

I can’t for the life of me understand why these people would embrace Marxism like they do.

I’d like someone to do an expose on this church, it’s a den of un-American Vipers.

They call themselves ‘Progressive.’ How is a white woman having a niger baby progress? How is a man sticking his dick up another man’s ass progress?

It’s an abomination.

It takes a warped mind to hate America.

It makes me so angry. I can’t live with it anymore!

The environmental nuts have to be stopped.

Know This If Nothing Else

I. This was a hate crime:

I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them.

II. This was a Political Protest:

I’m protesting the liberal Supreme Court Justices for give the terrorists at GITMO constitutional rights. I’m protesting the major News outlets, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS for being the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party. It’s criminal what they’re getting away with. They’re traitors! They must be stopped!

I’m protesting the DNC running such a radical leftist candidate, Osama Hussein OBama, yo Mama. No experience, no brains, a joke. Dangerous to America. Hell, he looks like Curious George!

III. This was a symbolic killing.

Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the Mainstream Media. But I knew these people were inaccessible to me. I couldn’t get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chicken shit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It’s the only way we can rid America of this cancer, this pestilence.

In Conclusion:

No one gets out of this world alive so I’ve chosen to skip the bad years of poverty. I know my life is going downhill fast from here. The future looks bleak. I’m sick & tired of being sick & tired. I’m absolutely fed up.

So I thought I’d do something good for this Country. Kill Democrats til the cops kill me.

If decent patriotic Americans could vote 3 times in every election we couldn’t stem this tide of liberalism that’s destroying America.

Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them. Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather.

I’d like to encourage like-minded people to do what I’ve done. If life ain’t worth living anymore, don’t just kill yourself, do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.

Tell the cop that killed me that I said, ‘Thanks, I needed that.’

I have no next of kin, no living relatives. If you would take my sorry carcass to the body farm or donate it to science, or just throw me in the Tennessee River.

Sincerely

Jim David Atkisson

On July 28, 2008, after he wrote that, Jim David Atkisson went to the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church near Knoxville, where a children’s performance was taking place. He shot seven people, killing two. But instead of being killed by police, the East Tennesseans at the church took him down themselves, without weapons. They did break his arm. but they took him down, got the children out of the hall and called police.

On Monday, Jim David Adkisson pleaded guilty to the murders of Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger and was sentenced to life in prison.

Yesterday, I spoke briefly with one of the four people who were in critical condition after the shooting. She told me she is doing much better than anyone thought, considering she took five bullets to the head. But she can see, speak, walk, and do nearly everything she could do before.

But she is angry, angry because the local newspaper chose to focus on Adkisson’s manifesto — it was released yesterday — instead of on the healing that has taken place in the church.

I can understand that. But I also think it’s important that we read Jim David Atkisson’s words very carefully and taken them to heart. Because I’m angry too.

Jim David Atkisson didn’t just get up one day and decide gee, I’m having a bad day. Think I’ll go kill me some liberals. He didn’t just suddenly decide the liberals at the TVUUC were his enemies. He was told repeatedly, for years, that they were his enemies. That all liberals are his enemies. That all Democrats are his enemies. That they are traitors. That they are unpatriotic. That they hate America. That they are socialists. That they are allies of terrorists.

That they don’t deserve a place at any table.

Now, where would he have an idea like that?

Limbaugh. Malkin. Goldberg. Coulter. Savage. Hannity. O’Reilly. Not to mention Bush. Cheney. McConnell. Kyl. Cornyn. Cantor. Boehner.

Actually, there’s far too many to name here.

Right wing radio talkers incited a man to commit an act of terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, aided and abetted by the previous administration and Republicans in Congress.

It’s no wonder they’re terrified the Fairness Doctrine may return (although Barack Obama has said he doesn’t support that).

But if I were them, I’d be much more worried about what might happen if the Obama administration decides to crack down hard on terrorism and those who fuel its flames.

Inciting acts of terrorism sounds like a valid crime to me.

Stop by Stop the Press for more. Many thanks to News Writer for contributing this guest voice at AWOP TeamZine.

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Drones, Shoes, and Modern Art

2009-02-04T20:58:00.001-05:00

There may be a new administration in the U.S., but tell that to Iraqis, Afghans, or Pakistanis.

Even China’s Prime Minister Wen Jaibao is paying for Bush’s eight years of failure.

Less than three days after taking office, President Obama has continued the failed U.S. policy of dropping bombs from unmanned drones to fight the so-called “war on terror.” He ordered two airstrikes in Pakistan that killed 22 – only 8 of which were militants. Neither Obama nor his press secretary would even acknowledge the strikes, much less the collateral damage it caused or future militants it recruited.

And last weekend, Obama praised elections in Iraq as “millions of Iraqi citizens from every ethnic and religious group went peacefully to the polls across the country.”

I guess the three Sunni candidates assassinated on Thursday don’t count as marring the peace because that wasn’t actually on Election Day.

But if the president of the United States said it, it must be true – and should be repeated verbatim, without any context, background, or substance. And if he refuses to say anything, so will the media.

Not having learned their lesson, mainstream news outlets continue reporting with the same ignorance of democratic responsibility that they did during the 2002 Iraqi WMD hype or the 18-month-long Israeli “defensive” embargo of Gaza’s freely-elected government.

When Muntadhir al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist-turned-shoe-hurler, assaulted President Bush in December, the media and pundits jumped in. We were placated by the notion that had such an event taken place in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the perpetrator would have faced certain torture and death.

But we liberated Iraq and this was a sign of democracy. According to Bush, “that’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves.”

Apparently, in a free society people are also hauled off to prison without a hearing, much less a trial. Since he was beaten and dragged from the room on December 12, al-Zaidi has been in Iraqi custody inside the Green Zone. He was last visited by a family member on December 21 (who made allegations that al-Zaidi was tortured), and has not been seen or heard from since.

It leaves one wondering just exactly how different this treatment is compared to what Saddam Hussein’s regime would have meted out.

To be sure, throwing footwear at a presiding head of state goes beyond freedom of speech and warrants a stiff penalty. But I had assumed that a free and democratic Iraq would have used the rule of law to implement punishment – not simply attempt to “disappear” dissent.

Unfortunately, it seems notions of freedom and democracy only apply to those who don’t question the existing regime. Which doesn’t sound much different from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Last week, an orphanage in Tikrit erected a huge copper-plated shoe sculpture in honor of al-Zaidi’s protest. But this isn’t guaranteed under freedom of speech, either. Within one day, Iraq’s central government forcibly removed the monument.

Too bad, because the U.S. architects of the Iraq invasion have been dreaming about a day when a Iraq could express their feelings openly and publicly. But freedom has limits dictated by those with power.

Former Pentagon official Richard Pearle spent much of 2002 spreading misinformation in the media about Iraq’s alleged WMDs and link to 9/11. In September 2003, with the occupation of Iraq just getting underway and the smell of all that oil percolating into the noses of Washington D.C. elites, Pearle spoke to the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent think tank:

“And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush.”

I guess those Iraqi orphans just erected the wrong kind of monument.

There may be a new president, but U.S. foreign policy hasn’t changed. The government still thinks it can create its own reality by merely repeating what it wishes were true.

And our nation continues to contradict its grandiose ideals when it comes to freedom or democracy for non-white, non-Christian people.

Wil Robinson
International Political Will

Millionaires of Mumbai

2009-01-30T03:01:00.000-05:00

There is one scene in Slumdog Millionaire – perhaps only 3 or 4 seconds long – where a man on the street looks directly at the camera and utters “no filming.”

I’m not sure why the director kept the shot in the final cut, but the scene demonstrates just how real the visuals are. The movie was not filmed on sound stages or deliberately constructed sets. It was shot in Mumbai, and is an accurate depiction of a city I see everyday.

Some of the more affluent in India (who, outside of Americans, are probably the target audience) are angry at the dark portrayal of their city. Yet even one of the movie’s own Bollywood stars – Irrfan Khan – knows you can’t hide the truth.

“It's the reality. Why should it be swept under the carpet? ...Danny [Boyle the director] saw a good dramatic story on Mumbai. He came and shot that story.”

Most Bollywood movies set in Mumbai are staged. Streets are cleaned, people cordoned off, beggars sent away and camera angles conveniently block the ever-present slums. Big-budget movies show a city that never quite matches the truth.

Not so with Slumdog Millionaire. While the plotline obviously involves some characters in the city that are not always visible, elements like the beggar mafia and blinded orphans do exist. The realities of a city of 18 million are on display in raw form – both the evils of poverty and the inspiration of human ingenuity.

However, the movie is receiving mixed reviews in Mumbai for two reasons: socioeconomics and culture.

First, the few wealthy elite in Mumbai criticizing the movie don’t want to acknowledge, accept, deal with, or exhibit the poverty in their city.

Keep in mind that of the 18 million people that call Mumbai home, more than 10 million live in slums. Of the remaining 8 million, a fair amount live in dilapidated buildings that many Americans might mistakenly also classify as “slums.”

Given these figures, living in the city without encountering the mass of slums, poverty, and trash is impossible – unless one lives in a secluded neighborhood with Bollywood stars and real estate prices that exceed those in Manhattan.

The affluent minority criticizing Slumdog Millionaire appear to be vestiges of the caste system, angry that those “below” them are contaminating their country’s reputation. It’s the same reason that in Mumbai businesses, many employees won’t converse with the “help” who sweep their floors or the office “boys” that make photocopies and chai between running errands.

Yet somehow the mainstream media focuses on the criticism coming from a minor fraction of Mumbai society. Time Magazine managed to find – and quote – two:

“We see all this every day,” says Shikha Goyal, a Mumbai-based public relations executive who left halfway through the film. “You can't live in Mumbai without seeing children begging at traffic lights and passing by slums on your way to work. But I don't want to be reminded of that on a Saturday evening…”

“O.K., so there's filth and crime in India, but there's so much more too,” says Jaspreet Dua, a New Delhi–based business manager with an international luxury brand. “What they've shown is not reality.”

True, there is so much more to India – but what the movie shows is reality for a majority. A “public relations executive” (who didn’t even see the whole movie) and a “business manager with an international luxury brand” aren’t exactly representative of most Mumbaikars.

Most Indians are not living in secluded bubbles of cocktail parties and weekends in Dubai. And even among Mumbai’s affluent, there are many working to change the poverty in the city (sadly, not the movie's producers or director, though they seem to have suddenly changed their tune).

But the main reason that Slumdog Millionaire will fail at the Indian box office has less to do with politics and more to do with culture.

Bollywood seems to revolve around movies that transport audiences into another world. There aren’t many “hard looks” at serious social issues and few directors who “tackle” something controversial. These subjects are covered extensively by India’s vast print and television media.

Bollywood is about fantasy, song, dance, and escape.

Indians (of all classes and castes) flock to see Shahrukh Khan strutting to hard bass lines and swooning beautiful women in colorful love ballads. They revel in epics about the Mughal Empire with impeccable costumes or comedies that pit their favorite stars in wild situations.

Slumdog Millionaire was made with an American audience in mind.

Still, that won’t stop most Mumbaikars (especially the 10 million slumdwellers) from relating to the movie’s message: that intelligence and love isn’t the exclusive privilege of only the wealthy and privately educated.

But anyone from the slums already knows that. They are already aware of the ingenuity, entrepreneurial skills and family bonds that each of them relies on to thrive under conditions that would break most of us.

It’s Mumbai’s elite minority, aloof from the problems facing 55% of the city, that need to hear the movie’s message. Unfortunately, they’re in no mood to have their Saturday evenings ruined by a dose of reality.

Wil Robinson
International Political Will

Context is the Antidote to Propaganda

2009-01-22T03:01:00.000-05:00

Last week, the New York Times published an article headlined “Why the Arabs Splinter Over Gaza” that was anything but a description of “why.” The story was actually just another example of observations disconnected from context that masquerades as news.

Three Arab countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan) refused to attend an Arab League summit on the Gaza crisis. The NY Times explained “why the Arabs splinter”:

Most Arab regimes are terrified of Islamist movements like Hamas, which represent the greatest threat to their legitimacy. Many, including Egypt and Jordan, face challenges at home from their own popular versions of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s ideological parent. Most Arab leaders are also reluctant to provoke the United States and Israel (with which Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties).

The story accepted this simple observation and moved on to quotes from academics and diplomats.

The article never connected the observation to context, background or history.

There was no mention that Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid (approximately $1.5 billion per year, behind Israel’s $2.5 billion) and that Jordan ranks near the top ($500 million annually).

Nor did the article refer to the marriage of petroleum convenience between the monarchy in Saudi Arabia and the American government.

Seems to me that an article headlined “Why the Arabs Splinter Over Gaza” should have identified interests shared by those countries that “splintered.” Shared interests, after all, are usually the basis of a conspiracy – or at least collaboration. The NY Times didn’t even mention that the three Arab countries are all dictatorships.

In reality, it’s only the autocratic regimes – not the public – of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan that are unwilling to unite against Israeli aggression. The NY Times apparently thinks dictators represent their people…which kind of flies in the face of everything we know about authoritarianism.

The NY Times article claims groups like Hamas represent a threat to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan’s legitimacy…but provides no specifics. Readers are left to infer that Muslim Brotherhood groups – being the wild-eyed, sharia-ruling Muslims that we’ve been told they are – must be a threat because they want to kill all the infidels and institute a global theocracy.

The real reason why the Muslim Brotherhood is considered a threat is because Mubarak, King Abdullah, and the Saudi royal family don’t want freedom. As undesirable as Western media may have portrayed political entities like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, they represent choice: the first step toward political freedom.

Mubarak has been ruling Egypt since Sadat’s assassination in 1981 – and the country has remained in a state of emergency since. The emergency decree lets Mubarak imprison anyone he wishes, for any reason, for any amount of time. It has allowed Mubarak keep the Muslim Brotherhood off the ballot, assuring the dictator’s “reelection” with 90% of the vote (because he jails opposition candidates), while he ignores real reform.

Yet Mubarak has extracted more than $18 billion in U.S. foreign aid since 1999 (two-thirds used for the military). The U.S. continues to support a dictator because he’s willing to suppress an Islamic-nationalist movement (just as the U.S. sabotaged Nasser’s pan-Arabism, which similarly would have united Muslims in an oil-rich region).

Jordan, in contrast to its reputation as moderate, is ruled by a monarch. Despite his Western education and love of Star Trek, King Abdullah continues to rule his country without any sign of democratic reform.

The $500 million annual U.S. foreign aid guarantees an ally in the so-called “war on terror” and space in Jordanian prisons for rendition and torture.

And Saudi Arabia…protector of Islam’s holiest site (except when it was seized by a Muslim Brotherhood-related group in 1979 who railed against the corruption of the Saudi royal family, forcing the Sauds to hire French commandos to recapture
Mecca). Saudi Arabia is ruled by a king and
sharia law, and their record on human rights ranks near the bottom of the heap.

The Saudi Kingdom is the single biggest financier of thousands of Wahhabi madrassas across the Muslim world, responsible for turning out jihadi terrorists to fight anywhere from Mumbai to Kabul to London to New York (all initially funded by oil sales to the U.S.).

Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are a threat – not to Saudi Arabia’s philanthropy, Egypt’s freedom, or Jordan’s moderation – but to authoritarian regimes. These groups are a threat because they are a popular movement - people that seek representation, a voice, and power that is currently monopolized by a dictator.

Given the recent history of these three countries, and the effort they have made to suppress popular movements, I have to wonder why the NY Times referred to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan as “moderate.” What interest does a large media outlet have in misinforming Americans about U.S. foreign policy?

An observation is not necessarily news. To prevent propaganda from being disseminated, journalists must put observations into historical context. Context is what empowers and informs citizens.

Once the NY Times story has historical context, it becomes clear that it’s not the “Arabs” that are splintered over the war to suppress Palestinian democracy.

Rather, the Arab street is united behind Gaza (as even the NY Times’ photo seems to suggest). The only splinter is between the Arab public and their autocratic rulers.

Wil Robinson
International Political Will

Preemptive Diplomacy - Everyone Can Play

2009-01-16T03:01:00.001-05:00

There are a few things in life that have proved true over time:

HDTV is not a good thing when watching news anchors that have had too much plastic surgery.

Permanently wearing a blue-tooth earpiece does not make you richer, more professional, or more respected. It just makes you look like you wish you were a part of the Borg’s collective consciousness.

Our most treasured gifts are not the most expensive, but are the ones that have a person behind them.

When it comes to foreign aid, we must remember that without a human face, human sweat, and human relationships, free money can become an obstacle.

Greg Mortenson, of Three Cups of Tea and the Central Asia Institute, is successful working as an American in the least likely of places for one reason: he understands money is not enough. His work building schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan has impacted thousands of lives only because of the personal relationships he has forged.

Anyone can dump money on a problem and hope it goes away. But without personal interaction, often the money is spent unwisely, used to feed corruption, or enhances the power of despots and dictators.

Often the change we seek is only possible through human relationships. Money is the essential starting ingredient, but without a human heart behind development aid, the original sacrifice is lost. And the original intention – generating goodwill toward our nation – is lost with it.

Mortenson spent years showing – not telling – the people of northern Pakistan what his intentions were. There were no radio shows regurgitating talking points to convince the people of his values; there were no fliers dropped from airplanes with illustrations to show his objective; there was no generic building erected with a signboard in front bearing his insignia or nation’s flag.

There was only Mortenson – an American visiting, living, respecting, learning and talking with the very people he aspired to help.

As events over the last 8 years have shown, America ignores the rest of the world to the detriment of its own security. Our future foreign policy needs to revolve around development assistance. Foreign aid – if handled appropriately – can act as preemptive diplomacy. Yet just as we would never appoint a bag of money as an ambassador, how can shipping suitcases of cash with only a sender’s address hold any meaning for the people we aim to help?

By successfully combining these two agents of change in American society – those people that can donate money, and those people that can donate time – we can create a new era of American foreign policy that truly will make our world more secure. We have spent the last 8 years sending money abroad as a sign of our good intentions, but have accompanied that aid with soldiers, guns, torture, and air strikes.

We need to stop sending conflicting messages and show the world a human face to go with our human charity. We have to stop sending our military out on diplomatic errands to deliver briefcases of cash without knowing the names, lives, trials, and needs of the people we claim to be helping.

In the slums of Mumbai, Akanksha, an Indian-based NGO, organizes classes of young teenagers for two-and-a-half hours each afternoon to help with their studies.

[...inside an Akanksha classroom in Mumbai...]

Akanksha students stand out from their peers, and not just because they do better in school. Akanksha children have high self-esteem, are not afraid to practice their broken English, are less likely to acknowledge religious differences with their friends, and even stay healthier and cleaner (though some still refuse to wear shoes).

Akanksha has many donors, foreign and domestic (but as with any non-profit – not enough). They also have dozens of teachers who devote their time – some of them Westerners, some of them Indians with experience living in the U.S.: wealthy housewives who teach an after-school class everyday; under-grads from the U.S. that volunteer their spring break; mothers in the slums that find paying jobs at the centers, thereby earning respect in their communities; Indian engineering graduates who spend months tutoring math before starting a career.

I have seen firsthand the impact that personal relationships can have between the first and third worlds. I have seen the smiles that make you want to cry, the hope that grows with each sign of friendship, the confidence that builds with each word of praise, and the future that brightens with each passing day.

As we set out in 2009 with a new president – and hopefully a new foreign policy – we have the necessary resources to succeed in preemptive diplomacy. There is no shortage of Americans who want to be the face on the front line, and neither is there a shortage of those who want to donate money or supplies. At some point, we must separate war from diplomacy; we need to distinguish between real humanitarian aid and bribes.

To really have an impact, we must focus on establishing personal relationships alongside monetary donations – relationships between different cultures, religions, and people. We need to make sure we have American faces on the ground to devote the time, energy, and love necessary to show – not tell – the rest of the world what real American values are.

There are those Americans that volunteer their time. And those Americans that volunteer their hard-earned money. It’s a team effort. If the two are linked so that development aid recipients can see this connection, we’ve already done more for world peace than any armed “liberation” ever could.

Anyone interested in Akanksha (or who would like to donate), they have a New York office website at www.akanksha.org. I can personally vouch for the great work Akanksha does, and even the smallest donations go a long way in India.

Let It Begin...

2009-01-16T03:01:00.000-05:00

My (unofficial) slogan is "Advocating change in a globalized world,” and it means exactly that. Not fighting the irresistible force of globalization, but embracing it in all its aspects.

Globalization doesn’t simply mean economic ties between all corners of the earth as a means to increase personal wealth, but international connections like the world has never seen. If we truly are to be global neighbors, than we must communicate with our neighbors and treat them as equals. Antiquated ideas about colonialism or economic advantages based on force cannot survive in such a world.

There are solutions, but they lie between opposing poles. Gathering together liberal-thinkers angry with contemporary imperial foreign policy perpetrated by their government will not provide an answer. Conversely, groups of religious right-wing hawks will equally fail to present workable solutions. There needs to be a unification of opposing ideas - not agreement that one is wrong and the other is right - but finding an answer in the middle. One side will never be able to impose their ideas on the other, and as such, compromise and negotiation is the best way to move forward.

Therefore, this international section hopes to engage people from all walks of life in intelligent discussion and conversation. The site endeavors to generate provocative questions and answers; and needs detailed explanations of what logical basis views are held. I will opine, and I will offend. Yet I attempt to make no accusations that cannot be supported by fact. Opinions are valuable, but only if reasons are given. To simply voice your opinion without support is to ignore the power that the individual possesses. So voice your opinion. Disagree or agree. Have passion, anger and hope. But always say why.

Wil Robinson
International Political Will