Sunday, February 13, 2011
Maureen Dowd on Rummy
Maureen Dowd is an op/ed columnist for the NY Times. In her latest column - Simply the Worst, she discussed Rumsfeld's book. It is a good reading.
Kristof on Egypt - an essential reading for American policy makers
Nick Kristof writes on a variety of issues of our world. In the Sunday issue of the New York Times, he had an excellent article on lessons to learn from the Egyptian revolution: What Egypt can teach America.
The Fall of the Egyptian Tyrant
Last Friday, a grim-looking Omar Suleiman announced, “In these grave circumstances that the country is passing through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave his position as president of the republic.” The Vice President continued, “He has mandated the Armed Forces Supreme Council to run the state. God is our protector and succor.” With those much expected words the 30-year reign of Mubarak crumbled. It was the right thing to do, and probably the only rational thing to do for the 82-year autocrat who had by then exhausted all his tricks to cling into power. The previous night in his speech to the nation, he sounded defiant and non-quitting.
Mubarak was a man of the barracks who as an air force pilot had fought in the wars of 1967 and 1973. Despite his peasant background he had earned the trust of his predecessor – the cigar-smoking Anwar Sadat to rise to the post of vice president. He was a survivor. On the day of assassination of President Sadat in 1981, he was sitting next to him and could easily have been killed by Lt. Khalid al-Islambouli, the assassin, if the latter had wanted it to happen. Wounded, Mubarak was spared by Lt. Khalid, who walked past him, saying, “Get out of my way. I only want to kill this son of a dog.”
After being sworn in as the President, Mubarak put together an intricate police state that was no less monstrous than those of Hafez al-Asad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Stability became the watchword of his presidency, with emergency law - which prevented gatherings of more than five people - lasting throughout the 30 years of his rule. Some 1.7 million people worked for his Ministry of Interior. Everyone was spied upon. No one knew whom to trust and share frustration with his tyrannical regime that tolerated no opposition. He suspended what few civil liberties 80 million Egyptians had under its well-trampled constitution. Severe limits on freedom of expression and civil society were imposed. Newspapers and websites faced occasional shut down and bloggers prosecution. Some 10,000 to 15,000 political prisoners, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood — which has been portrayed as the Islamist bogeyman, rotted in his prisons.
It was a depressing history! A land long known for its ancient civilization, high quality education, superb hospitality, melodious songs and marvelous literature, sly humor and nonstop gossips became hopeless, surly and silent, if not dull or dead.
My Egyptian friends that had returned to their homeland (in contrast to many students that chose not to return) in the 1980s after completing their graduate studies in North America to teach in some of the best universities in the region were not above suspicion from the Mukhabarat. They had every reason to be frightened and entreated me not to write to them because they felt vulnerable and monitored and their letters opened before being delivered. It was a Republic of Fear that Mubarak ran whose stranglehold only grew stronger and suffocating with time.
It was his torture cells that produced the individuals like Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, born of aristocracy and yet feeling dejected and humiliated in a state -- crafted by Mubarak and his henchmen. These latter-day radicals, revolutionaries or terrorists had nothing to lose, but an implausible and somewhat naïve urge to get even with their native tormentors and foreign sponsors.
With absolute power came insatiable greed and unfathomed corruption. Mubarak’s family became filthy rich and powerful. In contrast to his more famous predecessors Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, Mubarak entertained dynastic aspirations for his son Gamal. He grew oblivious of Egypt’s history of short outbursts of revolution after long periods of calmly submission.
Consequently, when the first pro-democracy demonstrations started on January 25 – the Day of Rage, Mubarak was dismissive of its innate and culminating revolutionary strength drawn from decades of tyranny. He did not want to read the blood-stained writings on the walls. Taking cues from the Pharaoh of the old, he acted arrogant and behaved blind, deaf and dumb. He was unprepared for a revolution and so were his patrons and beneficiaries. One by one the protesters withstood each weapon in his arsenal of autocracy — first the heavily armed riot police, then a ruling party militia and finally the state’s powerful propaganda machine.
When all the draconian measures to quell the protests, including the murder of some 300 Egyptian protesters and injury of another thousand, let alone the shutting down of the internet, failed and his own military chose not to kill its own people in this single most important challenge to his hateful regime, Mubarak was already a dead dictator walking.
After Mubarak’s defiant speech was heard on Thursday night more than 1,000 activists besieged the state TV and radio building in Cairo, in an attempt to end its broadcast of round-the-clock pro-Mubarak propaganda. Tahrir Square was crammed with a crowd that rivaled the quarter-million figure of the biggest protests over the past 18 days. Some 100,000 people gathered in the main square of Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city. The protesters staged rallies outside the president’s many palaces. With his presidential palace surrounded in Cairo by thousands of protesters on Thursday night, Mubarak managed to flee to his resort home in Sharm-el-Sheikh, probably taking advantage of the cover of the night.
Friday, February 11, saw the largest gathering of the pro-democracy revolutionaries. They came from everywhere. There were young and old people, women in hijabs protesting alongside men with yuppie beards, toddlers on the shoulders of their parents, jean-clad youths alongside homeless people, religious next to secular, Christians and Muslims alike. The labor and trade unions joined in the revolution, and so did the lawyers and doctors. The message from the crowd was loud and clear: Mubarak must leave. Much in common with many other hated dictators of the past, including Marcos of the Philippines, in the last days of his despotic rule, Mubarak felt abandoned or betrayed by his own masters -- the USA and the EU.
Just after the nightfall the much awaited announcement on Mubarak’s resignation came from his hand-picked Vice President. Several hundred thousand protesters, massed in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, exploded into joy, waving Egyptian flags, and car horns and celebratory shots in the air were heard around the city of 18 million in joy. They chanted, “Egypt is free, Egypt is free,” as the historic announcement was made.
It was a Berlin Wall moment for the Egyptians who after 18 days of protests succeeded in toppling one of the most repressive regimes to ever rule the Muslim world. The message was clear that the Egyptian people, esp. its Muslim population, are not a violent people and they can topple a tyrant without resorting to violence. Well, there were deaths and injuries; however, such were all because of the violence unleashed by the Mubarak regime.
For all these 30 years Mubarak has been able to sell his propaganda. Probably, too well! He presented himself as a bulwark against the so-called Islamists, namely the Society of the Muslim Brothers, stating disingenuously that if he lifted the emergency rule and allowed true freedom and fair election, his regime would fall and the west would have no other choice but to deal with its so-called mortal enemy, and that the treaty with Israel would be annulled. He crushed his opposition and put their leaders behind the bar. The western intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, knew better. But who cared! Lies were swallowed like life-saving elixir. They were too eager and happy to reward Mubarak for his zealotry against the ‘Islamists.’ They surely can afford to be hypocritical when it comes to the Muslim world. Regional hegemony, national security and stability meant more than a hollow ideology!
And Mubarak delivered perfectly in that strategy up-keeping the Israeli-American-European Union interest. So complete was his servility to all interests foreign – everything except the interest of his own poor Egyptians – these outside powers, including donors, ignored his undemocratic ways, brutality and human rights abuses. He secured the Gaza and Sinai borders for Israel and stopped the flow of humanitarian aid to reach the stranded Gazans. With Mubarak in Cairo, Israel could afford to commit all its war crimes against the Palestinian people without feeling ire of the regime to the south. Mubarak collaborated with GW Bush administration in its so-called War on Terror that saw his prisons mimicking the excesses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. He worked with the Obama administration and the corrupt and puppet Arab monarchs to curtail Iranian influence in the region.
Truly, Mubarak was no reluctant partner but a zealous one, bought by some $1.5 billion aid yearly from the USA whose majority share - $1.3 billion (to be precise) last year - was spent for military cause. The economic aid of $200 last year meant too little, if at all, for ordinary Egyptians – a share of measly $2.50 per capita -- mostly pocketed by the cronies and family members of the ruling party. With no wars in the horizon, it was only the security apparatus and all those connected with the regime that benefited from such disingenuous aid.
And yet all these cooperation and collaborations with foreign powers did not and could not save Mubarak’s regime. Not even his hated agents of the Internal Security, led by Suleiman, could stop his downfall.
Very few of us could dream of witnessing history. Fewer still is the likelihood of witnessing the downfall of a dictator – protected and nourished by the powerful few and hated by the powerless many. And slimmest still is the probability of witnessing a downfall that is brought about by the unarmed civilians when the odds of success were so little. The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 is surely one of those rare moments in history. Hosni Mubarak was thrust by violence into the leadership of the Arab world’s most populous country, and has been forced out by a wave of popular non-violent protest. It’s a momentous event in our lifetime. Like most of us who crave for freedom and human rights for all, Nobel Peace laureate and pro-democracy campaigner Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei was ecstatic with the outcome. He said it was the “greatest” day of his life. “The country has been liberated after decades of repression,” the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said. He said he hoped for a “beautiful” transfer of power.
Even the U.S. President Obama welcomed the change. Initially, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary Clinton had said that the regime of Mubarak was stable. Then for the next two weeks, the Obama administration walked a very fine line: it was careful in not upsetting the Mubarak regime, while avoiding to appear hypocritical with the legitimate aspirations of the Egyptian people. The influence of the Israeli lobby runs too deep inside Washington D.C. The lobby obviously did not want to see the fall of their favorite guy and tried everything possible to change the course of popular discourse within the country and to steer policy discussions that would require protecting the regime at any cost. But at the end, sanity prevailed in the White House. It was a reality check that meant willing to let bygones be bygones and minimize damage!
Speaking from the Grand Foyer of the White House the president said, “The people of Egypt have spoken. Their voices have been heard. And Egypt will never be the same.”
Interestingly, the fall of the Mubarak regime coincided with the day 21 years ago when Nelson Mandela of South Africa – once declared a terrorist and now a much venerated personality -- was released from prison after 27 years behind the bar. More importantly, this was also the day 32 years ago when the Shah’s despotic regime in Iran fell.
The next few days will be defining moments for Egypt. After all, the old guards of the hated regime are still in charge. The ruling military council is comprised of people that were picked up by Mubarak and his cronies. They can have agenda of their own that are at odds with the rightful aspirations of the Egyptian people. Thus far, fortunately, the military has acted very professionally and announced on state television that the regime’s much hated emergency law will be lifted when the security situation allows. Much to the relief of Tel Aviv and Washington D.C., the ruling council also declared that it would honor all its treaty obligations.
Obviously, the Obama administration and its pro-Israeli friends in Washington D.C. would like the new regime to continue its previous courses on foreign policy, defense and security matters. Fearful of a free election that may bring the Muslim Brotherhood into power, they may even try to sabotage the hard-earned victory of the Egyptian people that could prolong the temporary rule of the military beyond September. Egypt had enough with crypto-military rule – from the days of Naser to Mubarak – no matter under what mask it appeared.
The Egyptian people should be extra vigilant so that their hard-earned victory is not hijacked by others whose loyalty lies to foreign masters. They should not forget the betrayal of 1952 when their dreams to live freely in a dignified way were soiled in the months following the ouster of King Farouq, a corrupt British puppet, when the Free Officers Movement took full control of the country while the Brothers and many of those nationalists who had actively participated in the revolution were put behind the prison walls. Since that time, all of Egypt’s post-1952 leaders have been military officers, and both serving and retired generals are sprinkled throughout the various arms of government.
On its part, Israel should understand that it is in her long-term interest to have a democratic Egypt as a neighbor. Fear-mongering against the Muslim Brothers will not endear her amongst the new generation of Egyptians who have learned to defeat fear. They ought to know that the Society is not what it used to be in the days of Hasan al-Banna and Syed Qutb. A treaty signed between nations is more enduring than between two statesmen. It is also prudent for Israeli leaders to acknowledge the legitimate interests of the Palestinians and to grant them their own state.
In his speech, President Obama said, “As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, ‘There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.’ Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.”
Mr. Obama is right. It would be immensely gratifying for all to see that during his administration a free Palestine has emerged. After all, the Palestinian people have been crying too long from behind the apartheid walls of Israel. Their children deserve the same freedom enjoyed by others. Is Mr. Obama ready to stand up to this challenge to right the historical wrong done against this unfortunate people?
Mubarak was a man of the barracks who as an air force pilot had fought in the wars of 1967 and 1973. Despite his peasant background he had earned the trust of his predecessor – the cigar-smoking Anwar Sadat to rise to the post of vice president. He was a survivor. On the day of assassination of President Sadat in 1981, he was sitting next to him and could easily have been killed by Lt. Khalid al-Islambouli, the assassin, if the latter had wanted it to happen. Wounded, Mubarak was spared by Lt. Khalid, who walked past him, saying, “Get out of my way. I only want to kill this son of a dog.”
After being sworn in as the President, Mubarak put together an intricate police state that was no less monstrous than those of Hafez al-Asad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Stability became the watchword of his presidency, with emergency law - which prevented gatherings of more than five people - lasting throughout the 30 years of his rule. Some 1.7 million people worked for his Ministry of Interior. Everyone was spied upon. No one knew whom to trust and share frustration with his tyrannical regime that tolerated no opposition. He suspended what few civil liberties 80 million Egyptians had under its well-trampled constitution. Severe limits on freedom of expression and civil society were imposed. Newspapers and websites faced occasional shut down and bloggers prosecution. Some 10,000 to 15,000 political prisoners, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood — which has been portrayed as the Islamist bogeyman, rotted in his prisons.
It was a depressing history! A land long known for its ancient civilization, high quality education, superb hospitality, melodious songs and marvelous literature, sly humor and nonstop gossips became hopeless, surly and silent, if not dull or dead.
My Egyptian friends that had returned to their homeland (in contrast to many students that chose not to return) in the 1980s after completing their graduate studies in North America to teach in some of the best universities in the region were not above suspicion from the Mukhabarat. They had every reason to be frightened and entreated me not to write to them because they felt vulnerable and monitored and their letters opened before being delivered. It was a Republic of Fear that Mubarak ran whose stranglehold only grew stronger and suffocating with time.
It was his torture cells that produced the individuals like Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, born of aristocracy and yet feeling dejected and humiliated in a state -- crafted by Mubarak and his henchmen. These latter-day radicals, revolutionaries or terrorists had nothing to lose, but an implausible and somewhat naïve urge to get even with their native tormentors and foreign sponsors.
With absolute power came insatiable greed and unfathomed corruption. Mubarak’s family became filthy rich and powerful. In contrast to his more famous predecessors Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, Mubarak entertained dynastic aspirations for his son Gamal. He grew oblivious of Egypt’s history of short outbursts of revolution after long periods of calmly submission.
Consequently, when the first pro-democracy demonstrations started on January 25 – the Day of Rage, Mubarak was dismissive of its innate and culminating revolutionary strength drawn from decades of tyranny. He did not want to read the blood-stained writings on the walls. Taking cues from the Pharaoh of the old, he acted arrogant and behaved blind, deaf and dumb. He was unprepared for a revolution and so were his patrons and beneficiaries. One by one the protesters withstood each weapon in his arsenal of autocracy — first the heavily armed riot police, then a ruling party militia and finally the state’s powerful propaganda machine.
When all the draconian measures to quell the protests, including the murder of some 300 Egyptian protesters and injury of another thousand, let alone the shutting down of the internet, failed and his own military chose not to kill its own people in this single most important challenge to his hateful regime, Mubarak was already a dead dictator walking.
After Mubarak’s defiant speech was heard on Thursday night more than 1,000 activists besieged the state TV and radio building in Cairo, in an attempt to end its broadcast of round-the-clock pro-Mubarak propaganda. Tahrir Square was crammed with a crowd that rivaled the quarter-million figure of the biggest protests over the past 18 days. Some 100,000 people gathered in the main square of Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city. The protesters staged rallies outside the president’s many palaces. With his presidential palace surrounded in Cairo by thousands of protesters on Thursday night, Mubarak managed to flee to his resort home in Sharm-el-Sheikh, probably taking advantage of the cover of the night.
Friday, February 11, saw the largest gathering of the pro-democracy revolutionaries. They came from everywhere. There were young and old people, women in hijabs protesting alongside men with yuppie beards, toddlers on the shoulders of their parents, jean-clad youths alongside homeless people, religious next to secular, Christians and Muslims alike. The labor and trade unions joined in the revolution, and so did the lawyers and doctors. The message from the crowd was loud and clear: Mubarak must leave. Much in common with many other hated dictators of the past, including Marcos of the Philippines, in the last days of his despotic rule, Mubarak felt abandoned or betrayed by his own masters -- the USA and the EU.
Just after the nightfall the much awaited announcement on Mubarak’s resignation came from his hand-picked Vice President. Several hundred thousand protesters, massed in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, exploded into joy, waving Egyptian flags, and car horns and celebratory shots in the air were heard around the city of 18 million in joy. They chanted, “Egypt is free, Egypt is free,” as the historic announcement was made.
It was a Berlin Wall moment for the Egyptians who after 18 days of protests succeeded in toppling one of the most repressive regimes to ever rule the Muslim world. The message was clear that the Egyptian people, esp. its Muslim population, are not a violent people and they can topple a tyrant without resorting to violence. Well, there were deaths and injuries; however, such were all because of the violence unleashed by the Mubarak regime.
For all these 30 years Mubarak has been able to sell his propaganda. Probably, too well! He presented himself as a bulwark against the so-called Islamists, namely the Society of the Muslim Brothers, stating disingenuously that if he lifted the emergency rule and allowed true freedom and fair election, his regime would fall and the west would have no other choice but to deal with its so-called mortal enemy, and that the treaty with Israel would be annulled. He crushed his opposition and put their leaders behind the bar. The western intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, knew better. But who cared! Lies were swallowed like life-saving elixir. They were too eager and happy to reward Mubarak for his zealotry against the ‘Islamists.’ They surely can afford to be hypocritical when it comes to the Muslim world. Regional hegemony, national security and stability meant more than a hollow ideology!
And Mubarak delivered perfectly in that strategy up-keeping the Israeli-American-European Union interest. So complete was his servility to all interests foreign – everything except the interest of his own poor Egyptians – these outside powers, including donors, ignored his undemocratic ways, brutality and human rights abuses. He secured the Gaza and Sinai borders for Israel and stopped the flow of humanitarian aid to reach the stranded Gazans. With Mubarak in Cairo, Israel could afford to commit all its war crimes against the Palestinian people without feeling ire of the regime to the south. Mubarak collaborated with GW Bush administration in its so-called War on Terror that saw his prisons mimicking the excesses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. He worked with the Obama administration and the corrupt and puppet Arab monarchs to curtail Iranian influence in the region.
Truly, Mubarak was no reluctant partner but a zealous one, bought by some $1.5 billion aid yearly from the USA whose majority share - $1.3 billion (to be precise) last year - was spent for military cause. The economic aid of $200 last year meant too little, if at all, for ordinary Egyptians – a share of measly $2.50 per capita -- mostly pocketed by the cronies and family members of the ruling party. With no wars in the horizon, it was only the security apparatus and all those connected with the regime that benefited from such disingenuous aid.
And yet all these cooperation and collaborations with foreign powers did not and could not save Mubarak’s regime. Not even his hated agents of the Internal Security, led by Suleiman, could stop his downfall.
Very few of us could dream of witnessing history. Fewer still is the likelihood of witnessing the downfall of a dictator – protected and nourished by the powerful few and hated by the powerless many. And slimmest still is the probability of witnessing a downfall that is brought about by the unarmed civilians when the odds of success were so little. The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 is surely one of those rare moments in history. Hosni Mubarak was thrust by violence into the leadership of the Arab world’s most populous country, and has been forced out by a wave of popular non-violent protest. It’s a momentous event in our lifetime. Like most of us who crave for freedom and human rights for all, Nobel Peace laureate and pro-democracy campaigner Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei was ecstatic with the outcome. He said it was the “greatest” day of his life. “The country has been liberated after decades of repression,” the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said. He said he hoped for a “beautiful” transfer of power.
Even the U.S. President Obama welcomed the change. Initially, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary Clinton had said that the regime of Mubarak was stable. Then for the next two weeks, the Obama administration walked a very fine line: it was careful in not upsetting the Mubarak regime, while avoiding to appear hypocritical with the legitimate aspirations of the Egyptian people. The influence of the Israeli lobby runs too deep inside Washington D.C. The lobby obviously did not want to see the fall of their favorite guy and tried everything possible to change the course of popular discourse within the country and to steer policy discussions that would require protecting the regime at any cost. But at the end, sanity prevailed in the White House. It was a reality check that meant willing to let bygones be bygones and minimize damage!
Speaking from the Grand Foyer of the White House the president said, “The people of Egypt have spoken. Their voices have been heard. And Egypt will never be the same.”
Interestingly, the fall of the Mubarak regime coincided with the day 21 years ago when Nelson Mandela of South Africa – once declared a terrorist and now a much venerated personality -- was released from prison after 27 years behind the bar. More importantly, this was also the day 32 years ago when the Shah’s despotic regime in Iran fell.
The next few days will be defining moments for Egypt. After all, the old guards of the hated regime are still in charge. The ruling military council is comprised of people that were picked up by Mubarak and his cronies. They can have agenda of their own that are at odds with the rightful aspirations of the Egyptian people. Thus far, fortunately, the military has acted very professionally and announced on state television that the regime’s much hated emergency law will be lifted when the security situation allows. Much to the relief of Tel Aviv and Washington D.C., the ruling council also declared that it would honor all its treaty obligations.
Obviously, the Obama administration and its pro-Israeli friends in Washington D.C. would like the new regime to continue its previous courses on foreign policy, defense and security matters. Fearful of a free election that may bring the Muslim Brotherhood into power, they may even try to sabotage the hard-earned victory of the Egyptian people that could prolong the temporary rule of the military beyond September. Egypt had enough with crypto-military rule – from the days of Naser to Mubarak – no matter under what mask it appeared.
The Egyptian people should be extra vigilant so that their hard-earned victory is not hijacked by others whose loyalty lies to foreign masters. They should not forget the betrayal of 1952 when their dreams to live freely in a dignified way were soiled in the months following the ouster of King Farouq, a corrupt British puppet, when the Free Officers Movement took full control of the country while the Brothers and many of those nationalists who had actively participated in the revolution were put behind the prison walls. Since that time, all of Egypt’s post-1952 leaders have been military officers, and both serving and retired generals are sprinkled throughout the various arms of government.
On its part, Israel should understand that it is in her long-term interest to have a democratic Egypt as a neighbor. Fear-mongering against the Muslim Brothers will not endear her amongst the new generation of Egyptians who have learned to defeat fear. They ought to know that the Society is not what it used to be in the days of Hasan al-Banna and Syed Qutb. A treaty signed between nations is more enduring than between two statesmen. It is also prudent for Israeli leaders to acknowledge the legitimate interests of the Palestinians and to grant them their own state.
In his speech, President Obama said, “As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, ‘There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.’ Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.”
Mr. Obama is right. It would be immensely gratifying for all to see that during his administration a free Palestine has emerged. After all, the Palestinian people have been crying too long from behind the apartheid walls of Israel. Their children deserve the same freedom enjoyed by others. Is Mr. Obama ready to stand up to this challenge to right the historical wrong done against this unfortunate people?
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The Insanity with Security Gadgets Must End
These days traveling is no fun, especially if one is an airplane passenger traveling inside the USA. Last week I was in Pasadena, outside Houston on a business trip. On Tuesday morning the weather was furious with rain and wind blowing so strong that I could not reach my rental car from the lobby of the hotel without an umbrella. However, before I could reach my car the wind had tore apart the umbrella. Then there were the rolling black-outs that followed throughout the day disrupting people’s regular work schedules. Many offices, schools and colleges had an earlier than usual shut down. The remainder of the week also felt too cold with pipelines freezing and bursting.
The weather forecast for Friday when I was scheduled to fly out was bad. Houston expected some snow, worse enough to form an inch or two of ‘black ice’, which’s very dangerous for commuters. To my surprise and utter dismay I found that the Continental Airlines had cancelled my morning flight and instead automatically bumped me out for a Sunday morning flight. It took several calls to my American Express travel agent and the airlines office before I could find a seating assignment for the Friday afternoon flight out of George Bush International Airport.
Houston is in the south-eastern side of Texas where the weather during this time of the year is usually not severely cold. Naturally, its commuters are not used to driving under icy road conditions. So, all the schools and most offices chose not to open on Friday. When I got up in the morning I discovered only a very thin layer of ice on my car windshields. The local TV stations showed shots of several freeways and roads. There were some car and truck accidents, especially in the above-the-ground highways which with bridges can become dangerously slippery. Obviously, the city administration was ill-equipped for the slippery roads and had not made enough preparation to salting the roads and highways.
After reports of accidents on the highways, some of the highways, including the Sam Houston Toll-way, were closed down. I left early for the airport so that I won’t miss my flight. I had to ride on the feeder roads that go parallel to the major toll-way that leads to the airport. With very few cars and trucks moving, it was an easy commute.
All the passengers must of course go through a thorough body-scan, after they take out their shoes, jackets, coins, belts, computers and liquid gels/lotions, including toothpaste that weigh more than 3 oz. All these items must then go through scanners which supposedly are capable of detecting any harmful devices or ingredients that can ignite or explode. We are told that every day millions of bags are screened for explosives and other dangerous items at over 7,000 baggage screening locations and at over 450 airports nationwide. Interestingly, so flawed are these scanners, as demonstrated by some incidents, new full-body scan machines (Advanced Imaging Technology) have been installed in many major airports that provide security screeners of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) with essentially nude images of travelers. To ensure privacy, faces are blurred and the images are deleted once the TSA officer determines that the passenger is not a threat. These full-body scan machines have been highly criticized by many passengers for invasion of individual privacy and/or of being pornographic entertainment to the TSA. The Allied Pilots Association, a union representing 11,000 American Airlines pilots, called the measure a ‘demeaning’ and an ‘unacceptable’ experience. One privacy watchdog group had gone so far as to file a lawsuit in a federal court, seeking to have the machines removed from airports.
But more problematic is the pat-down searches, where a TSA personnel puts his/her hands in and around all body parts and cavities, including the breast and the groin area to check for explosives or other harmful objects. These new searches have appropriately been decried as "sexual molestation" or "sexual assault." I know firsthand why it is so objectionable and humiliating. After much criticism, most airports now do a random pat-down on passengers, i.e., all the passengers are no longer subjected to this pat down searches.
Last Friday, after arriving at the airport, I stood in the check-in line for security check. I took out my laptop computer from the carry-on bag; I also took out my shoes, jacket, etc. Then I stepped in through the body scan area. As expected, no beeping sound was heard, which would warrant a pat-down search. When I was about to collect my carry-on belongings from the conveyor belt, the mean-spirited TSA (Transportation Security Administration) personnel standing near the scan machine whispered something into the ears of a TSA colleague, who pulled me out for a pat-down search. I felt humiliated. Minutes later, I saw another south Asian also pulled for a thorough search. No other persons were randomly checked for such a humiliating experience. After the search was over, I could not avoid stating that it was a clear case of discriminatory racial profiling.
The government agency – TSA - was created in the post-9/11 days to ensure that certain items and persons prohibited from flying don’t board commercial airliners. Even when some nine million Americans are unemployed the TSA continues to hire people. According to its official website, some 43,000 trained and certified Transportation Security Officers are currently stationed at over 450 airports across the country. Combined with over 1,000 credentialed security inspectors, these professionals screen over two million passengers daily. While the government finds it difficult to balance its budget, the TSA and its parent organization – Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - continue to grow with men and machines.
Many of the TSA advisers are former agents of Israel’s Shin Bet and Mossad. In the post-9/11 era, many Israeli firms have made tons of money selling their security services, including scanning machines.
Rapiscan Systems, a manufacturer of body-scan technology, is a client of Michael Chertoff’s (Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary and co-author of the Patriot Act) security consulting firm, the Chertoff Group. It is worth noting that Chertoff (of dual Israeli nationality) played an important role in letting the detained suspected Israeli agents go back to Israel without any trial, immediately after 9/11. Chertoff is not alone in promoting companies like the Rapiscan Systems that make the airport nudie-scanners; many former congressmen are also involved. Lobbyists for Rapiscan (whose contract is worth $173 million) include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) who’s coincidentally chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. They claim that such machines are a leap ahead of the metal detectors used in most airports, and are necessary to keep up with the plans of potential terrorists.
As we know better, such claims are absurd. If these latest full-body-scanners were that effective in detecting harmful objects, the travelers could have been spared of the extra pat-down searches.
The Homeland Security Department and other government agencies have been reviewing the Homeland Security Advisory System's usefulness for more than a year. The five-tiered, color-coded terror warning system, created after the Sept. 11 attacks, was one of the Bush administration's most visible anti-terrorism programs. Criticized as too vague to be useful in communicating the terror threat to the public, it quickly became the butt of late-night talk show jokes.
In the middle of 2009 Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered a 60-day review of the color code. Last week, 566 days later, she decided to phase out the colors and go with another system -- the National Terrorism Advisory System, or NTAS. By the end of April, terror threats to the U.S. will no longer be described in shades of green, blue, yellow, orange and red. The new plan calls for notifying specific audiences about specific threats. In some cases, it might be a one-page threat description sent to law enforcement officials describing the threat, what law enforcement needs to do about it and what the federal government is doing.
It is high time for Secretary Napolitano’s office to stop the insanity with scan machines which serve no purpose other than costing American government and its people billions of dollars. Surely, if a terrorist wants to carry out its deadly attack, the gathering places of the passengers for security check-ups are easier targets. He/she need not even go through the scan machine to commit the heinous crime. So whom are we fooling with expensive gadgets that do nothing other than fattening the coffer of the vested interest?
The weather forecast for Friday when I was scheduled to fly out was bad. Houston expected some snow, worse enough to form an inch or two of ‘black ice’, which’s very dangerous for commuters. To my surprise and utter dismay I found that the Continental Airlines had cancelled my morning flight and instead automatically bumped me out for a Sunday morning flight. It took several calls to my American Express travel agent and the airlines office before I could find a seating assignment for the Friday afternoon flight out of George Bush International Airport.
Houston is in the south-eastern side of Texas where the weather during this time of the year is usually not severely cold. Naturally, its commuters are not used to driving under icy road conditions. So, all the schools and most offices chose not to open on Friday. When I got up in the morning I discovered only a very thin layer of ice on my car windshields. The local TV stations showed shots of several freeways and roads. There were some car and truck accidents, especially in the above-the-ground highways which with bridges can become dangerously slippery. Obviously, the city administration was ill-equipped for the slippery roads and had not made enough preparation to salting the roads and highways.
After reports of accidents on the highways, some of the highways, including the Sam Houston Toll-way, were closed down. I left early for the airport so that I won’t miss my flight. I had to ride on the feeder roads that go parallel to the major toll-way that leads to the airport. With very few cars and trucks moving, it was an easy commute.
All the passengers must of course go through a thorough body-scan, after they take out their shoes, jackets, coins, belts, computers and liquid gels/lotions, including toothpaste that weigh more than 3 oz. All these items must then go through scanners which supposedly are capable of detecting any harmful devices or ingredients that can ignite or explode. We are told that every day millions of bags are screened for explosives and other dangerous items at over 7,000 baggage screening locations and at over 450 airports nationwide. Interestingly, so flawed are these scanners, as demonstrated by some incidents, new full-body scan machines (Advanced Imaging Technology) have been installed in many major airports that provide security screeners of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) with essentially nude images of travelers. To ensure privacy, faces are blurred and the images are deleted once the TSA officer determines that the passenger is not a threat. These full-body scan machines have been highly criticized by many passengers for invasion of individual privacy and/or of being pornographic entertainment to the TSA. The Allied Pilots Association, a union representing 11,000 American Airlines pilots, called the measure a ‘demeaning’ and an ‘unacceptable’ experience. One privacy watchdog group had gone so far as to file a lawsuit in a federal court, seeking to have the machines removed from airports.
But more problematic is the pat-down searches, where a TSA personnel puts his/her hands in and around all body parts and cavities, including the breast and the groin area to check for explosives or other harmful objects. These new searches have appropriately been decried as "sexual molestation" or "sexual assault." I know firsthand why it is so objectionable and humiliating. After much criticism, most airports now do a random pat-down on passengers, i.e., all the passengers are no longer subjected to this pat down searches.
Last Friday, after arriving at the airport, I stood in the check-in line for security check. I took out my laptop computer from the carry-on bag; I also took out my shoes, jacket, etc. Then I stepped in through the body scan area. As expected, no beeping sound was heard, which would warrant a pat-down search. When I was about to collect my carry-on belongings from the conveyor belt, the mean-spirited TSA (Transportation Security Administration) personnel standing near the scan machine whispered something into the ears of a TSA colleague, who pulled me out for a pat-down search. I felt humiliated. Minutes later, I saw another south Asian also pulled for a thorough search. No other persons were randomly checked for such a humiliating experience. After the search was over, I could not avoid stating that it was a clear case of discriminatory racial profiling.
The government agency – TSA - was created in the post-9/11 days to ensure that certain items and persons prohibited from flying don’t board commercial airliners. Even when some nine million Americans are unemployed the TSA continues to hire people. According to its official website, some 43,000 trained and certified Transportation Security Officers are currently stationed at over 450 airports across the country. Combined with over 1,000 credentialed security inspectors, these professionals screen over two million passengers daily. While the government finds it difficult to balance its budget, the TSA and its parent organization – Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - continue to grow with men and machines.
Many of the TSA advisers are former agents of Israel’s Shin Bet and Mossad. In the post-9/11 era, many Israeli firms have made tons of money selling their security services, including scanning machines.
Rapiscan Systems, a manufacturer of body-scan technology, is a client of Michael Chertoff’s (Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary and co-author of the Patriot Act) security consulting firm, the Chertoff Group. It is worth noting that Chertoff (of dual Israeli nationality) played an important role in letting the detained suspected Israeli agents go back to Israel without any trial, immediately after 9/11. Chertoff is not alone in promoting companies like the Rapiscan Systems that make the airport nudie-scanners; many former congressmen are also involved. Lobbyists for Rapiscan (whose contract is worth $173 million) include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) who’s coincidentally chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. They claim that such machines are a leap ahead of the metal detectors used in most airports, and are necessary to keep up with the plans of potential terrorists.
As we know better, such claims are absurd. If these latest full-body-scanners were that effective in detecting harmful objects, the travelers could have been spared of the extra pat-down searches.
The Homeland Security Department and other government agencies have been reviewing the Homeland Security Advisory System's usefulness for more than a year. The five-tiered, color-coded terror warning system, created after the Sept. 11 attacks, was one of the Bush administration's most visible anti-terrorism programs. Criticized as too vague to be useful in communicating the terror threat to the public, it quickly became the butt of late-night talk show jokes.
In the middle of 2009 Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered a 60-day review of the color code. Last week, 566 days later, she decided to phase out the colors and go with another system -- the National Terrorism Advisory System, or NTAS. By the end of April, terror threats to the U.S. will no longer be described in shades of green, blue, yellow, orange and red. The new plan calls for notifying specific audiences about specific threats. In some cases, it might be a one-page threat description sent to law enforcement officials describing the threat, what law enforcement needs to do about it and what the federal government is doing.
It is high time for Secretary Napolitano’s office to stop the insanity with scan machines which serve no purpose other than costing American government and its people billions of dollars. Surely, if a terrorist wants to carry out its deadly attack, the gathering places of the passengers for security check-ups are easier targets. He/she need not even go through the scan machine to commit the heinous crime. So whom are we fooling with expensive gadgets that do nothing other than fattening the coffer of the vested interest?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Will Mubarak’s Regime Survive?
Old order changeth yielding place to the new. Are there changes in the horizon across the Arab world? Two weeks ago, Tunisian strongman Zine el-Abidine ben Ali fled the country following weeks of street protests.
For the last few days, demonstrators in Egypt, the most populous Arab country, have held signs that declared “Pharaoh no more,” an obvious reference to their distaste of President Hosni Mubarak who have been ruling the country with an iron hand for the past three decades since his predecessor was gunned down by a member of his own army during a military parade. Inspired by events in Tunisia, they have filled the streets in Cairo and Alexandria demanding that Mubarak should step down.
In Yemen, about 100 marchers descended on the Egyptian Embassy to show solidarity with the swelling protests. In Iran students demonstrated in front of the Egyptian interest section office in Tehran to show their support for the protesters in Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab countries. In New York City and Washington D.C., hundreds gathered in a peaceful demonstration over the weekend in front of the United Nations Building and the Egyptian Embassy, respectively, showing their solidarity with the protesters in Egypt. They demanded that the Obama Administration stands with the people and not with the dictator.
In the post-Sadat days, American presidents – Democrats and Republicans alike – have been some of the staunchest allies of the unpopular Mubarak regime. This support, in spite of the fact that his was one of the most autocratic, undemocratic and corrupt regimes with some of the worst records of human rights abuses. Sham presidential elections were routinely held that guaranteed re-election of Mubarak with approximately 99% support. The opposition party members had little or no rights, both inside and outside the parliament. Even the Khatibs (that led Friday prayer services) that criticized the regime for any of its plethora of failures were not safe from Mubarak’s prisons. Many would be picked up by the police days before Jumu’a and returned later, if at all. Others would rot and/or die under mysterious circumstances within the prison cells. Mubarak’s internal security forces had mastered the art of torture -- from electric shocks to sodomy and rape. Nothing was off-limits to these two-legged monsters, responsible for upholding the Mubarak regime at any cost. It was Mubarak’s prisons that produced the Arab rebels like Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now a close ally of Osama Bin Laden. One may argue that had it not been for these Egyptian torture cells, there probably would never have been a 9/11.
Hours after the countrywide protests had begun the Egyptian interior ministry issued a statement blaming the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's technically banned but largest opposition party, for fomenting the unrest. But the Brotherhood denied the accusation. Truly, these protests, if we can still call these as such, are spontaneous reactions to decades of Mubarak’s tyranny and utter failure to improve the people’s lot. These outbursts of public anger have very little to do with any particular opposition party. Millions of Egyptians are unemployed today. Many are forced to do multiple jobs to support their family members. Every ordinary Egyptian -- from a sweeper in the cities to the shopkeepers in the bazaars of the major cities, from cab drivers in cities like Cairo - many with Ph.D. degrees - to college and university professors, from a farmer in the Nile Delta to a firefighter in Alexandria -- is tired of poverty, unemployment, government corruption and authoritarian rule.
The Egyptian people want Mubarak out. They are tired of a dictatorship draped in the cloth of democracy. Afraid of losing control, the government imposed curfew, which however has been defied by the protesters. According to state-run TV, at least 100 people have died in the unrest, including 10 members of security forces. For most part the police have backed off from confrontations in most areas of the capital, thus allowing tens of thousands of demonstrators free rein through the Cairo city center. Sporadic lootings of shops have also taken place in certain parts of the major cities. However, the protests across Egypt have not turned ugly yet, and continue to be quite peaceful. [It should be noted that the despised regime may be behind such lawlessness to prevail, thus, justifying a military crackdown where Mubarak or his chosen successor stays in power without a real change taking root in political landscape of Egypt.]
Like most despotic rulers, President Hosni Mubarak refuses to see the obvious and step down. In a televised address last week, the embattled leader tried to deflect blame for the nation's rising anger by announcing that he would form a new government. On the fifth day of growing unrest by demonstrators he named a vice president for the first time in his 30-year reign, a sign that he would continue to resist the popular uprising's call for his resignation. He swore in Omar Suleiman, 76, chief of Egyptian intelligence, as his vice-president. It is obvious that the latter, a shadowy figure with close ties with the popular Egyptian military, has the blessings of the U.S. and Israel. These countries would approve an orderly transition that would maintain Egypt's international commitments.
But such announcements of government shakeup, including naming of a new prime minister, have not been able to sway the Egyptian public. In Cairo and Alexandria, tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets to demand that Mubarak leave power immediately. Angry crowds were chanting, "Down, down with Mubarak!" and "Mr. Mubarak, wake up -- today is your final day in power!"
Tanks were also in position at Tahrir Square in Cairo, raising questions about how the military would respond. The army's lower-ranking officers and soldiers come from the nation's heartland and feel a bond with the people, but higher up the chain of command the officers' loyalty is to the president. However, the military in general has grown disillusioned with the government policies and wisely, thus far, has avoided any confrontation with the protesters.
Egypt has been a key to American influence in the Middle East for more than 30 years. It has been a partner with the United States in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. It has fought alongside the U.S. administration against Iraq during the Gulf War I. It has been a trusted ally in George W. Bush’s so-called global war on terror. It continues to work with the Obama administration to curb Iranian influence in the Arab world.
Since the days of late president Anwar Sadat, billions of dollars of U.S. aid have been poured into Egypt. Ignored there is the fact that most of the aid ($1.3 billion annually) was meant for military use. The U.S. economic aid in 2009 was cut to $200 million. That is, the per capita share was a meager $2.60 in a country with a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) of $5,400 in 2008. Nonetheless such paltry aids, which did very little to better the lives of ordinary Egyptians, were often exploited by the powerful in either side to show and demand Egyptian indebtedness to the U.S. government. Unmentioned there is also the fact that aid given to Egypt provides the United States with political, strategic, and sometimes economic benefits that far exceed the value of what Egypt has received. According to the IMF Trade Statistics Trends Yearbook, during the 1983–2007 period, Egypt’s total accumulated trade deficit with the United States was $45.1 billion. This sum is far greater than the total size of American economic aid to Egypt to date.
The Obama administration is worried about the continuing unrest in Egypt. It is facing a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" choice. They prefer a peaceful change of old guards without any ripple effect. The fall of Mubarak government could intensify pressures on some neighbors, potentially setting off a tsunami that topples other despotic governments and reshapes the political and security balance throughout the region. The rise of a less friendly government could set off alarms in Israel, and calls for the U.S. to step up its defense of its closest ally -- Israel.
In his Cairo speech in 2009, President Obama said the United States supported the aspirations for greater freedom of Arabs. Yet his administration has continued in many ways the old policies of past U.S. governments. It continues to support the region's authoritarian regimes. It is against popular movements in Lebanon and Gaza. Many Arab activists say they preferred the more sharp-edged message of President G.W. Bush, who pushed a "freedom agenda" than President Obama’s forked-tongue message of freedom.
So far, the official response from the Obama administration has been a measured one recommending that the Mubarak regime needs to change its course and listen to people’s grievances. It would do better by demanding that President Mubarak steps down, and lets the Egyptian people have the freedom to elect their legitimate leaders in a free election. Nothing short of it will allow the Obama administration to be taken seriously by the Arab population, especially its young generation that has been craving for change. Any effort by the Obama administration which undermines people’s aspirations for freedom would be counterproductive. On their part, the Egyptian people ought to be extra careful that their revolution is not hijacked by some opportunists within the armed forces, or by stage-managed actors whose loyalty is more for their foreign masters than to their own people.
For the last few days, demonstrators in Egypt, the most populous Arab country, have held signs that declared “Pharaoh no more,” an obvious reference to their distaste of President Hosni Mubarak who have been ruling the country with an iron hand for the past three decades since his predecessor was gunned down by a member of his own army during a military parade. Inspired by events in Tunisia, they have filled the streets in Cairo and Alexandria demanding that Mubarak should step down.
In Yemen, about 100 marchers descended on the Egyptian Embassy to show solidarity with the swelling protests. In Iran students demonstrated in front of the Egyptian interest section office in Tehran to show their support for the protesters in Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab countries. In New York City and Washington D.C., hundreds gathered in a peaceful demonstration over the weekend in front of the United Nations Building and the Egyptian Embassy, respectively, showing their solidarity with the protesters in Egypt. They demanded that the Obama Administration stands with the people and not with the dictator.
In the post-Sadat days, American presidents – Democrats and Republicans alike – have been some of the staunchest allies of the unpopular Mubarak regime. This support, in spite of the fact that his was one of the most autocratic, undemocratic and corrupt regimes with some of the worst records of human rights abuses. Sham presidential elections were routinely held that guaranteed re-election of Mubarak with approximately 99% support. The opposition party members had little or no rights, both inside and outside the parliament. Even the Khatibs (that led Friday prayer services) that criticized the regime for any of its plethora of failures were not safe from Mubarak’s prisons. Many would be picked up by the police days before Jumu’a and returned later, if at all. Others would rot and/or die under mysterious circumstances within the prison cells. Mubarak’s internal security forces had mastered the art of torture -- from electric shocks to sodomy and rape. Nothing was off-limits to these two-legged monsters, responsible for upholding the Mubarak regime at any cost. It was Mubarak’s prisons that produced the Arab rebels like Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now a close ally of Osama Bin Laden. One may argue that had it not been for these Egyptian torture cells, there probably would never have been a 9/11.
Hours after the countrywide protests had begun the Egyptian interior ministry issued a statement blaming the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's technically banned but largest opposition party, for fomenting the unrest. But the Brotherhood denied the accusation. Truly, these protests, if we can still call these as such, are spontaneous reactions to decades of Mubarak’s tyranny and utter failure to improve the people’s lot. These outbursts of public anger have very little to do with any particular opposition party. Millions of Egyptians are unemployed today. Many are forced to do multiple jobs to support their family members. Every ordinary Egyptian -- from a sweeper in the cities to the shopkeepers in the bazaars of the major cities, from cab drivers in cities like Cairo - many with Ph.D. degrees - to college and university professors, from a farmer in the Nile Delta to a firefighter in Alexandria -- is tired of poverty, unemployment, government corruption and authoritarian rule.
The Egyptian people want Mubarak out. They are tired of a dictatorship draped in the cloth of democracy. Afraid of losing control, the government imposed curfew, which however has been defied by the protesters. According to state-run TV, at least 100 people have died in the unrest, including 10 members of security forces. For most part the police have backed off from confrontations in most areas of the capital, thus allowing tens of thousands of demonstrators free rein through the Cairo city center. Sporadic lootings of shops have also taken place in certain parts of the major cities. However, the protests across Egypt have not turned ugly yet, and continue to be quite peaceful. [It should be noted that the despised regime may be behind such lawlessness to prevail, thus, justifying a military crackdown where Mubarak or his chosen successor stays in power without a real change taking root in political landscape of Egypt.]
Like most despotic rulers, President Hosni Mubarak refuses to see the obvious and step down. In a televised address last week, the embattled leader tried to deflect blame for the nation's rising anger by announcing that he would form a new government. On the fifth day of growing unrest by demonstrators he named a vice president for the first time in his 30-year reign, a sign that he would continue to resist the popular uprising's call for his resignation. He swore in Omar Suleiman, 76, chief of Egyptian intelligence, as his vice-president. It is obvious that the latter, a shadowy figure with close ties with the popular Egyptian military, has the blessings of the U.S. and Israel. These countries would approve an orderly transition that would maintain Egypt's international commitments.
But such announcements of government shakeup, including naming of a new prime minister, have not been able to sway the Egyptian public. In Cairo and Alexandria, tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets to demand that Mubarak leave power immediately. Angry crowds were chanting, "Down, down with Mubarak!" and "Mr. Mubarak, wake up -- today is your final day in power!"
Tanks were also in position at Tahrir Square in Cairo, raising questions about how the military would respond. The army's lower-ranking officers and soldiers come from the nation's heartland and feel a bond with the people, but higher up the chain of command the officers' loyalty is to the president. However, the military in general has grown disillusioned with the government policies and wisely, thus far, has avoided any confrontation with the protesters.
Egypt has been a key to American influence in the Middle East for more than 30 years. It has been a partner with the United States in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. It has fought alongside the U.S. administration against Iraq during the Gulf War I. It has been a trusted ally in George W. Bush’s so-called global war on terror. It continues to work with the Obama administration to curb Iranian influence in the Arab world.
Since the days of late president Anwar Sadat, billions of dollars of U.S. aid have been poured into Egypt. Ignored there is the fact that most of the aid ($1.3 billion annually) was meant for military use. The U.S. economic aid in 2009 was cut to $200 million. That is, the per capita share was a meager $2.60 in a country with a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) of $5,400 in 2008. Nonetheless such paltry aids, which did very little to better the lives of ordinary Egyptians, were often exploited by the powerful in either side to show and demand Egyptian indebtedness to the U.S. government. Unmentioned there is also the fact that aid given to Egypt provides the United States with political, strategic, and sometimes economic benefits that far exceed the value of what Egypt has received. According to the IMF Trade Statistics Trends Yearbook, during the 1983–2007 period, Egypt’s total accumulated trade deficit with the United States was $45.1 billion. This sum is far greater than the total size of American economic aid to Egypt to date.
The Obama administration is worried about the continuing unrest in Egypt. It is facing a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" choice. They prefer a peaceful change of old guards without any ripple effect. The fall of Mubarak government could intensify pressures on some neighbors, potentially setting off a tsunami that topples other despotic governments and reshapes the political and security balance throughout the region. The rise of a less friendly government could set off alarms in Israel, and calls for the U.S. to step up its defense of its closest ally -- Israel.
In his Cairo speech in 2009, President Obama said the United States supported the aspirations for greater freedom of Arabs. Yet his administration has continued in many ways the old policies of past U.S. governments. It continues to support the region's authoritarian regimes. It is against popular movements in Lebanon and Gaza. Many Arab activists say they preferred the more sharp-edged message of President G.W. Bush, who pushed a "freedom agenda" than President Obama’s forked-tongue message of freedom.
So far, the official response from the Obama administration has been a measured one recommending that the Mubarak regime needs to change its course and listen to people’s grievances. It would do better by demanding that President Mubarak steps down, and lets the Egyptian people have the freedom to elect their legitimate leaders in a free election. Nothing short of it will allow the Obama administration to be taken seriously by the Arab population, especially its young generation that has been craving for change. Any effort by the Obama administration which undermines people’s aspirations for freedom would be counterproductive. On their part, the Egyptian people ought to be extra careful that their revolution is not hijacked by some opportunists within the armed forces, or by stage-managed actors whose loyalty is more for their foreign masters than to their own people.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Hu’s Visit to the USA – It’s Economics, Stupid!
China's human rights record is bad with abuses ranging from censorship to illegal detention of dissidents to executions without due process. Its treatment of ethnic minorities, especially the Uyghur Muslims, is simply horrendous and has no parallel inside China. In July 2009, China’s oil-rich and ethnically sensitive far-western province of Xinjiang experienced violence between the indigenous Uyghurs and the settler Han Chinese in the provincial capital, Urumqi. This resulted in the death of more than 100 people and injury of some 800 individuals, mostly Uyghurs in both counts. The disturbances occurred after a year of rising tensions between the dominant Han Chinese authorities and the Uyghur ethnic minority - the historical ethnic majority in Xinjiang - that have been socially, politically and economically marginalized by Beijing's policies that introduce Chinesization of the region. China’s heavy handed policy of repression inside Tibet has also drawn much condemnation from outside.
But none of these matters of grave concern has put a dent in bilateral economic relationship that China enjoys with the western world, especially the USA. Much to the credit of the late President Nixon’s ground-breaking Ping Pong Diplomacy, the relationship has only become stronger with time. China remains one of the largest trading partners of the USA. There is hardly a major U.S. corporation that does not have a business outlet today in places like Shanghai and Beijing. While millions of jobs have been lost inside the American soil because of outsourcing of those job functions to China, the official U.S. records show that its exports to China are growing nearly twice as fast as its exports to the rest of the world.
According to the Obama administration, the U.S.A. is exporting more than $100 billion a year in goods and services to China, which supports more than half a million American jobs. According to the Chinese official record, some 3 million people travel between the USA and China every year. In other words, on every single day, approximately 7,000 to 8,000 people travel between the two countries. Nevertheless, the widening trade gap between the two countries and the loss of jobs inside the U.S. soil has not softened the attitude of many American politicians towards China.
Last week, President Hu Jintao of China visited the USA and held a joint press conference with President Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House. In a packed news conference President Obama was asked how the United States could keep good relations with a country with such a horrible record on human rights, and whether he had any confidence that as a result of this visit that would change.
In his reply Mr. Obama said the two leaders had talked about the issue a number of times and that he had made it clear to President Hu that Americans have some core views “about the universality of certain rights -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly -- that we think are very important and that transcend cultures. I have been very candid with President Hu about these issues. Occasionally, they are a source of tension between our two governments.”
When President Hu was pressed to defend his country's treatment of its people he initially did not answer, saying he never heard the question translated. When prodded a second time, Mr. Hu defended his country's promotion of human rights. He said, “China is always committed to the protection and promotion of human rights. And in the course of human rights, China has also made enormous progress, recognized widely in the world. China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights. And at the same time, we do believe that we also need to take into account the different and national circumstances when it comes to the universal value of human rights. China is a developing country with a huge population, and also a developing country in a crucial stage of reform. In this context, China still faces many challenges in economic and social development. And a lot still needs to be done in China, in terms of human rights.” He continued, “We will continue our efforts to improve the lives of the Chinese people, and we will continue our efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law in our country. At the same time, we are also willing to continue to have exchanges and dialogue with other countries in terms of human rights, and we are also willing to learn from each other in terms of the good practices. As President Obama rightly put it just now, though there are disagreements between China and the United States on the issue of human rights, China is willing to engage in dialogue and exchanges with the United States on the basis of mutual respect and the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. In this way, we’ll be able to further increase our mutual understanding, reduce our disagreements, and expand our common ground.”
And as expected, with such a diplomatic response from Mr. Hu, the matter of grievous human rights violations inside China was shelved. No questions were asked about Liu Xiaobo - the Nobel Peace Prize winner (2010), who is in the second year of an 11-year prison sentence for ‘subversion’. (Beijing has denounced the award as "a desecration" and maintained that the honor should have gone to someone focused on promoting international friendship and disarmament.)
Interestingly, Mr. Hu’s visit to the U.S.A. this year coincided with President Obama’s end of the second year in office. All those presidential promises made two years ago about closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison, which continues to hold hundreds of Muslim prisoners (mostly innocent victims who still remain uncharged of any crime after ten years) under gross inhuman conditions, are now conveniently forgotten. Mr. Obama’s promises about making our world less war-prone and more peaceful are also seemingly lost from his agenda. His administration has not only failed to stop Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s settlement policy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories but has actually rewarded Israel more handsomely than ever before in spite of its repeated violations of international laws.
More disturbingly, the Obama administration has engaged in covert war against Iran. The fingerprint of the CIA-Mossad collaboration in the targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists Majid Shahriari and Ferrydoun Abbasi Davani on the morning rush-hours of November 29, 2010 is all too visible for everyone to see. Reportedly there has also been a computer virus attack (Stuxnet) to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. As noted by the Newsweek, rarely has a covert war been so obvious.
Will the next two years be any better? Probably not, when it comes to international affairs! America’s foreign policy is increasingly showing the obvious signs of being manipulated by the military industrial complex, forewarned half a century ago by the outgoing president Eisenhower. As alleged last week in a speech by the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh at the Doha campus of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar that key branches of the U.S. military are being led by Christian fundamentalist ‘crusaders’ who are determined to ‘turn mosques into cathedrals.’ This crusading attitude "pervades" a large portion of the Joint Special Operations Command, which is part of the military's Special Forces branch.
On the domestic front, employment or job security and healthcare will continue to dominate the public agenda. Here, the future may look brighter. Although the American economy is still weak, less people are now unemployed compared to the last two years of George W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Obama’s favorable rating has also become better. In a Rasmussen poll taken last Saturday, overall, 50% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president Obama's performance; forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove. This is the first time in a month that the president’s overall rating has reached 50%. The Gallup daily poll also confirms the latest trend in approval rating for the president.
So, during the joint press conference with Mr. Hu, Mr. Obama could grin while mentioning that China has completed dozens of deals that would increase U.S. exports by more than $45 billion and also increase China’s investment in the United States by several billion dollars. Mr. Obama said, “From machinery to software, from aviation to agriculture, these deals will support some 235,000 American jobs. And that includes many manufacturing jobs. So this is great news for America’s workers.”
These trade deals speak voluminously about the world we live in, as hypocritically scripted by our world leaders. Long gone are the days of ideology and human rights! It is economics, stupid! And not human rights that matters!
But none of these matters of grave concern has put a dent in bilateral economic relationship that China enjoys with the western world, especially the USA. Much to the credit of the late President Nixon’s ground-breaking Ping Pong Diplomacy, the relationship has only become stronger with time. China remains one of the largest trading partners of the USA. There is hardly a major U.S. corporation that does not have a business outlet today in places like Shanghai and Beijing. While millions of jobs have been lost inside the American soil because of outsourcing of those job functions to China, the official U.S. records show that its exports to China are growing nearly twice as fast as its exports to the rest of the world.
According to the Obama administration, the U.S.A. is exporting more than $100 billion a year in goods and services to China, which supports more than half a million American jobs. According to the Chinese official record, some 3 million people travel between the USA and China every year. In other words, on every single day, approximately 7,000 to 8,000 people travel between the two countries. Nevertheless, the widening trade gap between the two countries and the loss of jobs inside the U.S. soil has not softened the attitude of many American politicians towards China.
Last week, President Hu Jintao of China visited the USA and held a joint press conference with President Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House. In a packed news conference President Obama was asked how the United States could keep good relations with a country with such a horrible record on human rights, and whether he had any confidence that as a result of this visit that would change.
In his reply Mr. Obama said the two leaders had talked about the issue a number of times and that he had made it clear to President Hu that Americans have some core views “about the universality of certain rights -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly -- that we think are very important and that transcend cultures. I have been very candid with President Hu about these issues. Occasionally, they are a source of tension between our two governments.”
When President Hu was pressed to defend his country's treatment of its people he initially did not answer, saying he never heard the question translated. When prodded a second time, Mr. Hu defended his country's promotion of human rights. He said, “China is always committed to the protection and promotion of human rights. And in the course of human rights, China has also made enormous progress, recognized widely in the world. China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights. And at the same time, we do believe that we also need to take into account the different and national circumstances when it comes to the universal value of human rights. China is a developing country with a huge population, and also a developing country in a crucial stage of reform. In this context, China still faces many challenges in economic and social development. And a lot still needs to be done in China, in terms of human rights.” He continued, “We will continue our efforts to improve the lives of the Chinese people, and we will continue our efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law in our country. At the same time, we are also willing to continue to have exchanges and dialogue with other countries in terms of human rights, and we are also willing to learn from each other in terms of the good practices. As President Obama rightly put it just now, though there are disagreements between China and the United States on the issue of human rights, China is willing to engage in dialogue and exchanges with the United States on the basis of mutual respect and the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. In this way, we’ll be able to further increase our mutual understanding, reduce our disagreements, and expand our common ground.”
And as expected, with such a diplomatic response from Mr. Hu, the matter of grievous human rights violations inside China was shelved. No questions were asked about Liu Xiaobo - the Nobel Peace Prize winner (2010), who is in the second year of an 11-year prison sentence for ‘subversion’. (Beijing has denounced the award as "a desecration" and maintained that the honor should have gone to someone focused on promoting international friendship and disarmament.)
Interestingly, Mr. Hu’s visit to the U.S.A. this year coincided with President Obama’s end of the second year in office. All those presidential promises made two years ago about closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison, which continues to hold hundreds of Muslim prisoners (mostly innocent victims who still remain uncharged of any crime after ten years) under gross inhuman conditions, are now conveniently forgotten. Mr. Obama’s promises about making our world less war-prone and more peaceful are also seemingly lost from his agenda. His administration has not only failed to stop Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s settlement policy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories but has actually rewarded Israel more handsomely than ever before in spite of its repeated violations of international laws.
More disturbingly, the Obama administration has engaged in covert war against Iran. The fingerprint of the CIA-Mossad collaboration in the targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists Majid Shahriari and Ferrydoun Abbasi Davani on the morning rush-hours of November 29, 2010 is all too visible for everyone to see. Reportedly there has also been a computer virus attack (Stuxnet) to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. As noted by the Newsweek, rarely has a covert war been so obvious.
Will the next two years be any better? Probably not, when it comes to international affairs! America’s foreign policy is increasingly showing the obvious signs of being manipulated by the military industrial complex, forewarned half a century ago by the outgoing president Eisenhower. As alleged last week in a speech by the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh at the Doha campus of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar that key branches of the U.S. military are being led by Christian fundamentalist ‘crusaders’ who are determined to ‘turn mosques into cathedrals.’ This crusading attitude "pervades" a large portion of the Joint Special Operations Command, which is part of the military's Special Forces branch.
On the domestic front, employment or job security and healthcare will continue to dominate the public agenda. Here, the future may look brighter. Although the American economy is still weak, less people are now unemployed compared to the last two years of George W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Obama’s favorable rating has also become better. In a Rasmussen poll taken last Saturday, overall, 50% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president Obama's performance; forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove. This is the first time in a month that the president’s overall rating has reached 50%. The Gallup daily poll also confirms the latest trend in approval rating for the president.
So, during the joint press conference with Mr. Hu, Mr. Obama could grin while mentioning that China has completed dozens of deals that would increase U.S. exports by more than $45 billion and also increase China’s investment in the United States by several billion dollars. Mr. Obama said, “From machinery to software, from aviation to agriculture, these deals will support some 235,000 American jobs. And that includes many manufacturing jobs. So this is great news for America’s workers.”
These trade deals speak voluminously about the world we live in, as hypocritically scripted by our world leaders. Long gone are the days of ideology and human rights! It is economics, stupid! And not human rights that matters!
Thursday, January 13, 2011
The Climate of Hate – Arizona Shooting
United States is a nation prone to political violence. Nine presidents have been the targets of assassination, along with one president-elect and three presidential candidates. In addition, some eight governors, seven U.S. Senators, 10 Representatives, 11 mayors and 17 state legislators have been violently attacked. No other Western country with a population over 50 million has as high a number.
As to the reasons behind such attacks, Columbia University History Professor Steven Mintz says, “Political assassinations have tended to occur during periods of civil strife and intense partisanship. The first presidential assassination attempt — against Andrew Jackson in 1835 — coincided with a sharp upsurge in anti-abolitionist and ethnic violence… Between 1865 and 1877, 34 political officials were attacked, 24 of them fatally. These included a U.S. senator, two Congressional representatives, three governors, 10 state legislators, eight judges and 10 other officeholders. The 20th century saw three peak periods of political violence: at the turn of the century, the 1920s and 1930s, and 1963 to 1981. Each coincided with periods of civil unrest and bitter partisanship.”
When John F. Kennedy went to Dallas on November 22, 1963, conservative protesters were everywhere. One activist handed out 5,000 handbills about Kennedy modeled after police ‘most wanted’ circulars. “This man is wanted for treason,” the handbills read, for “turning the sovereignty of the U.S. over to the communist controlled United Nations” and for having been “WRONG on innumerable issues affecting the security of the U.S.”
We see similar accusations against the sitting President these days. As noted by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman of the Princeton University in a recent article in the New York Times, something very ugly has been taking shape on the political scene since at least the time of 2008 presidential election campaign. As Senator John McCain’s chances faded, the crowds at his rallies were, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage. It was not just a mob phenomenon — it was visible in the right-wing media, and in the speeches of McCain and his running mate – Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
With an Afro-American President in the White House -- the first ever, who happens to have a Muslim-sounding name -- courtesy of his Kenyan roots, there is undeniably a climate of hate today. The diatribes are increasingly nastier and dangerous. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence. Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by a whopping 300 percent. We are told that a number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness. But there is no doubt that something about the current state of America has been causing far more ‘psychos’ than ever before to act out their ‘illness’ by engaging in political violence.
In a healthy liberal democracy there is no room for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary. But that is what has been happening in the USA, thanks to the Republican politicians like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, and talk show hosts like Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly. As bluntly noted by a neocon -- David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, when asked by the ABC TV’s Ted Moran in March 22 of 2010 if the conservative talk show hosts had hijacked the Republican party, “Republicans originally thought that Fox (owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch) worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”
It was not too long ago that Rush Limbaugh said, “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus--li¬ving fossils--s¬o we we’ll never forget what these people stood for.” Ann Coulter, another bigot and provocateur, said, “My only regret with Tim McVeigh (responsible for the Oklahoma Federal building blast and terrorism) is that he did not go to the New York Times building.” Glen Beck said, “Hang on, let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore (an award-winning political commentator and documentary movie producer), and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could.”
It was only a few months ago that Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-endorsed candidate who failed to unseat Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in last year’s midterm election, had said, “If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking towards those Second Amendment remedies.” The statement makes reference to the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms as a defense against an intrusive or oppressive government. And then there is Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who in 2009 said, “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back.” She also said, “Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing. And the people - we the people - are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.”
With the passage of health care reform last year, there has been increasingly violent language coming from opponents of the legislation, along with vandalism directed at Democratic members of Congress. Sarah Palin did her part to raise the rhetorical intensity, telling her Twitter followers in March of the last year, “Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: ‘Don’t Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!’”
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot last week during a public event in Tucson on January 8, was among 20 other members of Congress who were on a so-called hit list published by Sarah Palin. Jesse Kelly, Giffords’s Republican opponent in the 2010 mid-term elections, similarly employed guns in a campaign event. He staged an event in July asking supporters to ‘get on target’ and ‘remove Gabrielle Giffords from office’ -- all while shooting ‘a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.’
Consider also the fact that one out of every five Americans is likely to have psychiatric problems. A small fraction of this population (some 40,000) is extremely vulnerable to what it sees and hears and is capable of committing terrorism.
So this latest massacre in Tucson in which 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl, were murdered and Representative Giffords severely wounded should not come as a surprise, especially in the state of Arizona where gun laws stand out as among the most permissive in the country. Last year, Arizona became only the third state that does not require a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The state also enacted another measure that allowed workers to take their guns to work, even if their workplaces banned firearms, as long as they kept them in their locked vehicles. In 2009, a law went into effect allowing people with concealed-weapons permits to take their guns into restaurants and bars. In the last two weeks, two bills were introduced relating to the right to carry guns on college campuses, one allowing professors to carry concealed weapons and one allowing anybody who can legally carry a gun to do so.
Mainstream news organizations linked the attack to Sarah Palin and the offensive target map issued by her political action committee that included crosshairs over Rep. Giffords’s district (among others). The Huffington Post erupted, with former Senator Gary Hart emphatically stating that the killings were the result of angry political rhetoric. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC demanded a Palin-repudiation and Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos, wrote on Twitter: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Others argued that the killing was encouraged by a political climate of hate.
These accusations — that political actors in a liberal democracy contributed to the murder of 6 people — are extremely serious. The Republicans obviously don’t like such charges laid on their dirty hands. In a statement read out on Wednesday, Palin called herself the victim of ‘blood libel’ (by journalists and pundits) — the original term for blaming Jews for the (so-called) crucifixion of Jesus and an anti-Semitic rallying call that led to countless deaths of Jews, primarily in Europe and Russia. Many rabbis called her remarks insensitive, ill-chosen and offensive to Holocaust survivors and other victims of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, said Palin's own words — that violent political language can endanger people — are ‘affirming exactly what her critics charge.’
Whatever may be the excuses now put forth by the messengers of hatred, fact remains that the crazies and terrorists don’t kill in a vacuum, and the vilest of American political leaders and commentators deserve to be called to account for their demagoguery and the danger that comes with it. They cannot have separate rules for Muslim loonies while being too forgiving for breeding their own homegrown terrorists and assassins. Evidence seized from the assassin’s (Loughner’s) home, about five miles from the shooting, indicated that he had planned to kill Rep. Giffords, according to documents filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix. His was not a random act of violence.
According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, more than a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were killed. The New York Times reports that eight children and teenagers are killed a day in the USA due to gun violence. More than 150,000 Americans have been murdered since the beginning of the 21st century. This incessantly thriving procession of death that does not spare women or children ought to make us question seriously the plague of gun culture. Forgotten also is the fact that the states with more guns have more deaths resulting from gun violence. Unfortunately, Americans will take absolutely no steps, none whatsoever, to prevent a similar tragedy in the future.
In the aftermath of this latest murderous orgy, the most we will hear about is gun control. Public support for stricter gun control, however, has dropped significantly over the last couple of decades, and there is little evidence to suggest that mass shootings change opinions. And if the comedian Jon Stewart is to be believed, the sale of automatic guns has actually increased after the assassination attempt on Giffords.
Some 37 years ago when Black Muslim leader Malcolm X (Malik Shabazz) was asked to comment about the assassination of President Kennedy, he wisely said, “chickens coming home to roost.” The sad fact is unless American public is serious about reining in its addiction to gun, war and violence, the horror prompted by the attack in Tucson last week will pass, the outrage will fade, and the murders will continue. It’ll be all over again with new targets, and new Columbine and new Tucson killing fields!
===========
See also the NY Times article here.
As to the reasons behind such attacks, Columbia University History Professor Steven Mintz says, “Political assassinations have tended to occur during periods of civil strife and intense partisanship. The first presidential assassination attempt — against Andrew Jackson in 1835 — coincided with a sharp upsurge in anti-abolitionist and ethnic violence… Between 1865 and 1877, 34 political officials were attacked, 24 of them fatally. These included a U.S. senator, two Congressional representatives, three governors, 10 state legislators, eight judges and 10 other officeholders. The 20th century saw three peak periods of political violence: at the turn of the century, the 1920s and 1930s, and 1963 to 1981. Each coincided with periods of civil unrest and bitter partisanship.”
When John F. Kennedy went to Dallas on November 22, 1963, conservative protesters were everywhere. One activist handed out 5,000 handbills about Kennedy modeled after police ‘most wanted’ circulars. “This man is wanted for treason,” the handbills read, for “turning the sovereignty of the U.S. over to the communist controlled United Nations” and for having been “WRONG on innumerable issues affecting the security of the U.S.”
We see similar accusations against the sitting President these days. As noted by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman of the Princeton University in a recent article in the New York Times, something very ugly has been taking shape on the political scene since at least the time of 2008 presidential election campaign. As Senator John McCain’s chances faded, the crowds at his rallies were, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage. It was not just a mob phenomenon — it was visible in the right-wing media, and in the speeches of McCain and his running mate – Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
With an Afro-American President in the White House -- the first ever, who happens to have a Muslim-sounding name -- courtesy of his Kenyan roots, there is undeniably a climate of hate today. The diatribes are increasingly nastier and dangerous. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence. Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by a whopping 300 percent. We are told that a number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness. But there is no doubt that something about the current state of America has been causing far more ‘psychos’ than ever before to act out their ‘illness’ by engaging in political violence.
In a healthy liberal democracy there is no room for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary. But that is what has been happening in the USA, thanks to the Republican politicians like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, and talk show hosts like Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly. As bluntly noted by a neocon -- David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, when asked by the ABC TV’s Ted Moran in March 22 of 2010 if the conservative talk show hosts had hijacked the Republican party, “Republicans originally thought that Fox (owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch) worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”
It was not too long ago that Rush Limbaugh said, “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus--li¬ving fossils--s¬o we we’ll never forget what these people stood for.” Ann Coulter, another bigot and provocateur, said, “My only regret with Tim McVeigh (responsible for the Oklahoma Federal building blast and terrorism) is that he did not go to the New York Times building.” Glen Beck said, “Hang on, let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore (an award-winning political commentator and documentary movie producer), and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could.”
It was only a few months ago that Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-endorsed candidate who failed to unseat Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in last year’s midterm election, had said, “If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking towards those Second Amendment remedies.” The statement makes reference to the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms as a defense against an intrusive or oppressive government. And then there is Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who in 2009 said, “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back.” She also said, “Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing. And the people - we the people - are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.”
With the passage of health care reform last year, there has been increasingly violent language coming from opponents of the legislation, along with vandalism directed at Democratic members of Congress. Sarah Palin did her part to raise the rhetorical intensity, telling her Twitter followers in March of the last year, “Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: ‘Don’t Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!’”
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot last week during a public event in Tucson on January 8, was among 20 other members of Congress who were on a so-called hit list published by Sarah Palin. Jesse Kelly, Giffords’s Republican opponent in the 2010 mid-term elections, similarly employed guns in a campaign event. He staged an event in July asking supporters to ‘get on target’ and ‘remove Gabrielle Giffords from office’ -- all while shooting ‘a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.’
Consider also the fact that one out of every five Americans is likely to have psychiatric problems. A small fraction of this population (some 40,000) is extremely vulnerable to what it sees and hears and is capable of committing terrorism.
So this latest massacre in Tucson in which 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl, were murdered and Representative Giffords severely wounded should not come as a surprise, especially in the state of Arizona where gun laws stand out as among the most permissive in the country. Last year, Arizona became only the third state that does not require a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The state also enacted another measure that allowed workers to take their guns to work, even if their workplaces banned firearms, as long as they kept them in their locked vehicles. In 2009, a law went into effect allowing people with concealed-weapons permits to take their guns into restaurants and bars. In the last two weeks, two bills were introduced relating to the right to carry guns on college campuses, one allowing professors to carry concealed weapons and one allowing anybody who can legally carry a gun to do so.
Mainstream news organizations linked the attack to Sarah Palin and the offensive target map issued by her political action committee that included crosshairs over Rep. Giffords’s district (among others). The Huffington Post erupted, with former Senator Gary Hart emphatically stating that the killings were the result of angry political rhetoric. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC demanded a Palin-repudiation and Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos, wrote on Twitter: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Others argued that the killing was encouraged by a political climate of hate.
These accusations — that political actors in a liberal democracy contributed to the murder of 6 people — are extremely serious. The Republicans obviously don’t like such charges laid on their dirty hands. In a statement read out on Wednesday, Palin called herself the victim of ‘blood libel’ (by journalists and pundits) — the original term for blaming Jews for the (so-called) crucifixion of Jesus and an anti-Semitic rallying call that led to countless deaths of Jews, primarily in Europe and Russia. Many rabbis called her remarks insensitive, ill-chosen and offensive to Holocaust survivors and other victims of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, said Palin's own words — that violent political language can endanger people — are ‘affirming exactly what her critics charge.’
Whatever may be the excuses now put forth by the messengers of hatred, fact remains that the crazies and terrorists don’t kill in a vacuum, and the vilest of American political leaders and commentators deserve to be called to account for their demagoguery and the danger that comes with it. They cannot have separate rules for Muslim loonies while being too forgiving for breeding their own homegrown terrorists and assassins. Evidence seized from the assassin’s (Loughner’s) home, about five miles from the shooting, indicated that he had planned to kill Rep. Giffords, according to documents filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix. His was not a random act of violence.
According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, more than a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were killed. The New York Times reports that eight children and teenagers are killed a day in the USA due to gun violence. More than 150,000 Americans have been murdered since the beginning of the 21st century. This incessantly thriving procession of death that does not spare women or children ought to make us question seriously the plague of gun culture. Forgotten also is the fact that the states with more guns have more deaths resulting from gun violence. Unfortunately, Americans will take absolutely no steps, none whatsoever, to prevent a similar tragedy in the future.
In the aftermath of this latest murderous orgy, the most we will hear about is gun control. Public support for stricter gun control, however, has dropped significantly over the last couple of decades, and there is little evidence to suggest that mass shootings change opinions. And if the comedian Jon Stewart is to be believed, the sale of automatic guns has actually increased after the assassination attempt on Giffords.
Some 37 years ago when Black Muslim leader Malcolm X (Malik Shabazz) was asked to comment about the assassination of President Kennedy, he wisely said, “chickens coming home to roost.” The sad fact is unless American public is serious about reining in its addiction to gun, war and violence, the horror prompted by the attack in Tucson last week will pass, the outrage will fade, and the murders will continue. It’ll be all over again with new targets, and new Columbine and new Tucson killing fields!
===========
See also the NY Times article here.
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