Under The Same Sun

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May 31, 2004

A Life Lived and a Memorial Day Movie: “Dreams and Nightmares”

What would you call people who had abandoned their homes, risked their lives and traveled across the ocean to fight the threat of fascism that was to engulf Europe and leave millions dead in its wake?

“Premature anti-fascists.” That’s what the U.S. army called them when the survivors tried to sign up to fight the Nazis after they had returned from fighting fascism in Spain. Their files marked them as “premature anti-fascists” and in many cases held them back from the front.

So it was with Abe Osheroff, one of the last survivors of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the under-equipped, under-fed, rag-tag group of Americans who joined the 50,000 men, and a few women, who gathered from around the world to die for freedom in Spain. After returning from Spain, with half his comrades dead, he volunteered to fight in World War II -- as had done almost all the able-bodied veterans of Spain. Because he was a “premature anti-fascist,” the army wouldn’t deploy him to the front even after his unit was shipped off there -- and he had to first fight the Army in order to be sent to fight the Nazis, which he eventually did.

Unfortunately, freedom lost in Spain as the great powers of the day, Britain, France and the United States, secretly and sometimes not-so-secretly hoped. Well, they didn't just hope, they tried to move things along in that direction sometimes by impeding those that would help the anti-fascist forces and sometimes by directly and indirectly aiding the fascist forces. But it turned out that the beast you nourish may turn around bite you too. How surprising.

But I’m not going to recount all that history. Grab a copy of Abe Osheroff’s award winning documentary, “Dreams and Nightmares.” Not only is the movie amazing, it features pretty rare footage ingeniously finagled out of the CIA and Pentagon by Abe. Amazing how much they’ll cough up if you tell them you’re making a film called "The Shield Against Communism: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization."

I’m thinking about Abe today, amidst all the pompous celebration of war thinly disguised as "memorial day." You know the name’s a misnomer because a true memorial day would almost necessarily be anti-war. Veterans are both perpetrators and victims of war and, as first-hand witnesses, would play a crucial role in a true national accounting and soul-searching about war and what it really means, why it was really fought, who paid the price and who benefited from the oft-accompanying plunder. Consequently, veterans are perhaps the most-managed constituency: barraged by speeches, crocodile tears, ugly monuments, garish parades and what-not.

Abe is one of those people who should have already died in about 83 different incidents. His ship to Spain was sunk by fascists two miles from shore -- so he swam to Spain. “I was baptized,” he says of the incident. His life is a history of just causes and near-deaths. His car was firebombed in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Carpenter by trade, he went to Nicaragua in the 1980s to build houses for the poor while their elected government, the Sandinistas, battled terrorists funded by us.

But, miraculously, Abe Osheroff is now 89 years old and very much alive. I met him a few years ago. To say that it was a moving experience would be quite an understatement. There was the movie which I can’t recount -- you really just have to watch it. Anyway, I bawl through it every time I try to watch it from beginning to end so any review by me would probably be incomplete. No matter how many things one reads, it’s sometimes hard to believe that Spain in 1937 existed. The international effort for Spanish freedom was one of the most noble and most tragic moments in modern history and the generation that rallied around Spain may well be the greatest generation. And here was a flesh and blood person talking about it, as he saw it and felt it. You know, maybe it did all happen, maybe it is true and not just some embellished myth.

And let me say clearly, I do now about the sordid side of that history -- the sectarian fratricide, the short-sighted and sometimes criminal stupidity of some who fought on the Republican side, the leaders who sought to use “la causa” to entrench themselves further in power. None of that changes the awesomeness of the realization that tens of thousands of people around the world voluntarily left behind their homes, their families and their lives to bleed and to die for freedom in a far away country. Not for a flag or a medal, not for the promise of glory or plunder and not to kill heathens and go to heaven.

Perhaps the most wonderful part of meeting Abe all was that I found myself vehemently disagreeing with his take on the left’s response to 9-11. Abe’s no old furniture to be occasionally dusted and annually memorialized. The man is the epitome of alive. He’s not just going to tell you some cool stories from the past, instead he has strong opinions about the world around him -- as he always did.

He meant to live and he still does. When he talks to the younger generation, he never blabbers about “sacrifice” -- instead he talks about the incredible rewarding life of a social activist that he led.

Thus marches on Abe Osheroff, a humble Jewish carpenter with the strength to die for his beliefs.

Posted by zeynep at 04:23 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

The New York Times reports on the counseling and advice provided to soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan:

Colonel McClure, now an Army chaplain, is here to warn the hundreds of soldiers before him who had returned five days earlier from Iraq, their uniforms still mildewed from the months away, that whatever they think right now, coming home may not be as easy as it seems. After the first embraces with cameras clicking, the homecoming parties, life may get complicated in unimagined ways.

...

And you will surely get "dumb question No. 3" from those who never set a boot in Iraq: Did you shoot anyone over there?

Colonel McClure, who did two combat tours in Vietnam, shares his own crass retort: "I don't know. I never went to look." But as laughter seeps through the rows, he turns sensitive again. Never answer the shooting question, he advises, because it will only prompt another: How did it feel?

"Don't let them get to that follow-up question," he warns the soldiers, now silent. "That one hurts."

Of course not. Hurt is to be avoided at all costs. In fact, one should take pre-emptive measures to try to avoid any real conversation:

Instead, they are counseled to take their spouses on dates, to buy ice cream and go on outings to Chuck E. Cheese's with their children, to come home with unexpected bouquets (corsages work, too), and to talk with their mates, but without telling "all of what you saw over there."

Posted by zeynep at 01:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 30, 2004

WWF politics

All this talk about how the Iraqi Governing Council is in a confrontation with Bremer over the choice of the presidency of the Interim Government smacks of pro-wrestling to me. A typical story reads like this one:

A council member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer, and special UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi were exerting “massive pressure” to choose former Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi.

However, the council member said most of the 22 members favoured the current head of the council, civil engineer Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer. Both are Sunni Arab Muslims.

Mr. Bremer and U.S. President George W. Bush's special envoy, Robert Blackwill, attended part of a five-hour council session Sunday and urged the members not to vote on the presidency choice, according to one council member.

The Americans threatened not to recognize the council's choice, the member said on condition of anonymity.

The presidency is largely ceremonial. Iyad Allawi has been appointed to the prime ministry by the Americans with the help of the IGC. As the same story points out later "Council sources said agreement has been reached on several of the 26 Cabinet posts." Most news organizations understand the "sovereignty" is mostly joke but continue to pretend otherwise in the way they report the story. Note the phrase "take power":

Iraqi leaders wrangled Sunday over who should succeed Saddam Hussein as president, after agreeing on other key posts in the government that will take power next month from the U.S. occupation authority.

So, now, we gotta have some showdown, some show of spine before the audience pelts the performers and demands their money back. So enjoy the "choke slam" moment and please empty the stadium in an orderly fashion.

Posted by zeynep at 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 28, 2004

Who chose this man?

So, the Iraqi Governing Council which was hand-picked by the U.S. decides to hand-pick Iyad Allawi for the post of prime minister of the transitional "fully sovereign" government. Bremer attended the session of the GC that picked Allawi and congratulated him.

Chief U.N. spokesperson, Fred Eckhard, says that the U.N. is surprised but "respects" the choice but "it's not how we expected it to happen." Eckhard also said that, "In the end, it's the Governing Council and the (U.S.-led coalition) that will make the decision."

"Mr. Brahimi respects the decision and is prepared to work with this person on the selection of the other posts in this interim government," Eckhard told reporters, adding that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) also respected the choice and the word "respects" had been "a carefully chosen word."

"I assume this choice will hold, but the process isn't over yet," he said. "Let wait to see what the Iraqi street has to say about this name."

Powell, on the other hand denies that they chose Allawi and says they are waiting to hear from Brahimi:

Asked if he could confirm Allawi would be the new prime minister, Powell told reporters, "We have no position on any candidate at this moment because we are waiting to hear from Ambassador Brahimi and he needs time to complete his work."

Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials in Baghdad were apparently concerned that the Governing Council, which is supposed to have picked him, would learn of "their" pick through the media:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The momentum for a vote by the Iraqi Governing Council on the newly designated prime minister came about in the last 24 hours after it became clear that Iyad Allawi enjoyed a "strong groundswell" of support, a senior U.S. official in Baghdad said.

Officials also feared his name would be leaked to the news media -- that the council might learn the selection "from CNN," said the official, who was intricately familiar with the process.

An earlier story from Reuters quotes a senior Bush administration official in Baghdad as confirming the choice:

"He will be the prime minister when the interim government is set up in the next two or three days," the official told reporters in a conference telephone call. "We thought he would be an excellent prime minister. ... I think that this is going to work."

George Bush, on the other hand, continued to publicly insist that it was Brahimi who was picking the interim government:

In a joint appearance with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who sent some 500 soldiers to help US efforts in Iraq, Bush later made clear that his guest had pushed for giving the interim Iraqi government full powers.

"I told the prime minister that our government and our coalition will transfer full sovereignty, complete and full sovereignty to an Iraqi government" picked by special UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the president said.

The White House heaped praise on Allawi. White House spokeperson Scott McLellan said, "He is certainly a fine and capable leader who appears to have broad support among the Iraqi people," and we all know that the White House is the best source for learning who the people in Iraq support.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the street interviews with the pesky natives seemed to be a bit lackluster about this broad support they are supposed to be showing:

But Iraqis in central Baghdad said they knew little about the man with long-time links to the CIA....

"I heard he used to play sports. I think he should really go back to playing sports," said Seif Gharib, a 20-year-old security guard at Iraq's Ministry of Defense. "Who is Iyad Allawi?

Hassan Ali, a policeman, was also dismissive.

"I reject him," he said. "Where was he when we suffered under Saddam? Besides I do not recognize the Governing Council."

Links to CIA? Hand-picked by the body hand-picked by Bremer who was hand-picked by Bush? Current bogeyman Chalabi's blood relative? No political support within the country? Responsible for the infamous "WMDs operational within 45 minutes" claim?

No, no, no. Here's the correct description of the process, coming from the same official who was worried that the choice would leak prematurely to the Governing Council:

"It is a historic moment," this official said. "This has been a process of full-blown democratic politics."

Posted by zeynep at 09:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Reclaiming Our Sanity

After I wrote phrase "the better [the site] will become" in the previous post, I started wondering what I meant by "better." Better written, better known, more widely read? Well, sure, but something else.

It's a world where an insidious form of immorality is pretty much the reigning norm, it’s hard not to feel insane of sorts. To effect change in such a world thus requires a double-bootstrapping: one has to regain one’s sense of self and one has to find ways to come together with others.

On the one hand, I think we have to start with individual moral agency -- if for nothing else, as humans, we are individuals in separate minds and bodies. I'm not a transnational entity, neither are you. On the other hand, no matter what one does, as long as the "I" in the "what can I do" isn't pooled into something larger than each of us, there is no good answer -- if for no reason other than the simple fact that forces arrayed against us are so large. Not that there is a nice, easy answer in collectivity but there is a distinction between choosing the most moral path open to an individual and achieving effectiveness. And effectiveness does require some form of collectivity. And morality without effectiveness can, and often does, induce despair, hopelessness and inaction.

So, where do we go from there? Faced with massive forces, seemingly impossible odds and made to doubt our sanity, our basic moral truths?

First and foremost, I think that we have to believe in our understanding of the world. In spite of all this massive ideological onslaught, we have to accept that, in this world, under these conditions, these are the sane positions, these are the moral considerations. It is sane and moral to be centered in this way. The greatest success of the ideology disseminated by the current power structures is in the way they make us feel uncentered, weird, a little loony, corny, pretentious or well-meaning but stupid for feeling this way.

I’m not saying we have a monopoly on immutable and transcendent truths. But not all moral beliefs are equally thorny and complicated. One can start somewhere while conceding a lack of full and comprehensive answers to everything.

Here's a few. It is simply wrong, wrong, wrong to have almost a billion malnourished people while a part of the world is drowning in almost obscene levels of cornucopia. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong to have millions die of easily curable or controllable diseases when the global luxury retail market alone is upwards of $100 billion. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong to be the five percent of the planet’s population while consuming from 25 to 40 percent of its resources -- and going to war under these set of circumstances in the heart of the region producing the most strategic resource in the world.

That's all wrong and I think we all know it. And most everything in the modern, affluent lifestyle and cultural climate that surrounds us is designed anesthetize us to that knowledge. We have to take back our own hearts and minds before worrying about who else’s we’re losing or winning.

What to do about it all may not be simple but it has to start with reclaiming what we do know as that which what we do know. (And, no, I don’t mean that as a tautological statement. It might be one for a machine but it’s not one for us humans who often hold multiple levels of beliefs filtered through inconsistent ideologies.)

As a friend of mine once put it, it's like there is this evil person/machine throwing kids to a raging river. Do you go try to save one? What about all the others? If you decide it's more important to stop him for once and for all, what about all those kids who drown while we gnaw at his ankle, relatively unnoticed? And why not just give up rather than take responsibility, confront difficult choices -- and pretend not to have noticed?

And, yes, there are many thorny issues beyond that. But how does one even start thinking, start doing something about it all before being able to stand on some ground that feels like it’s there -- rather than in our loony heads?

I think the way out is the way we know anything else in this world: we reference our minds with other people’s minds. That’s almost how one can define insanity: it’s that state when your reality is so distinct, so incommunicable to others that you become trapped in your own mind. In the same way, being able to share the reality reflected in your mind with kindred souls is how people achieve that state of mind called sanity.

So, in many ways, that what the effort in this site is about; it’s not just about writing and it’s not just about being read. It’s about reclaiming both a sense sanity and a knowledge of that moral center -- mine, yours and ours. The more we get there, the better it is.

Posted by zeynep at 01:03 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Colors, Pictures

As you might have noticed, the site recently went through a visual makeover. I know a few of you liked the bright, blinding orange that it used to be, and asked me to keep it. Unfortunately for you, and fortunately for the rest of you who wrote in to complain, the webmaster or this site and I couldn't find a way to make the text readable in all the pages against that background...

Same with the semi-transparency. I liked the idea of having those school kids from Wamale, Ghana as the background but we couldn't make it work for all the browsers and all the platforms that are in use out there today. Well, specifically, it wouldn't work on MS Explorer so there went that idea...

Last, but not least, thanks much to all of you who wrote or posted encouragement, comments and criticism. This site is very much a work-in-progress and I believe the more collective --and reflective-- that work, the better it will become.

Posted by zeynep at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Correction to Rumsfeld Bans Digital Cameras story

A reader has pointed out the "Rumsfeld bans digital cameras" story may not have been true. I had checked it out and traced it to both an UPI and AFP story -- but turns out both of them had used the same source so it wasn't multi-sourced. As far as I can tell, the story is not true.

The Department of Defense has issued a denial of sorts but it's not clear whether they are just saying that there is no new ban on cameras or that there are already existing guidelines that govern their usage -- which may ban them:

The Department of Defense denied adopting a policy against camera phones, saying imaging devices are already covered by guidelines for wireless communications by the military and the Geneva Convention’s treatment of prisoners of war. ... “As to cameras in prisons,” added McClellan, “Gen. [John] Abizaid or his commanders and lawyers may be looking at the risk those devices caused, but that would be a totally separate discussion.”

I think Rumsfeld's outburst during the testimony, quoted in the post about the camera banning, shows that he would certainly liked to not have them around.

My apologies for not checking the story out further before posting it and thanks to Alan for bringing it to all of our attention.

Posted by zeynep at 11:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 27, 2004

War is Peace and Occupation is Sovereignty

Let me follow up with some more detail on the offical rhetoric surrounding the draft UN Security Council resolution. Not only is it vitally important, it provides a striking example of how the administration has perfected the art of saying one thing while implementing a plan for its opposite. The draft is full of fuzzy and sweet catch phrases - “sovereignty,” “freedom,” “recognizing the importance of the consent of the sovereign government of Iraq for the presence of the multinational force”- while clearly spelling out mechanisms of domination and occupation.

For example, the draft says it’s providing the “sovereign Interim Government of Iraq” with “governing authority by 30 June 2004.” It’s a funny kind of sovereign “governing authority”, however, if you read a few paragraphs down: “the multinational force shall have authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq including by preventing and deterring terrorism.”

Both the American and the British officials have perfected this double speak. They talk about consent and cooperation all the time. U.K. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry says:

“All sovereignty will be returned to the Iraqis,” said. “There will be a multinational force, but that force will operate with the consent, in consultation and in partnership with Iraqis.”

“All” sovereignty. All? All. All? All. You got that?

Same language from John Negroponte, who is about to end up as “ambassador” to Iraq (how are you an ambassador when your country has total control over the military forces occupying the country?):

"We think that we've put down a very solid resolution in terms of its conveying the exercise of sovereignty...There's just no question that we are going to operate ... with the consent and approval of the authorities in Iraq," Negroponte said. "We don't think this is a resolution that needs to be re-written."

Lest you are thinking this is just the Bush administration, be assured that Blair’s got game too:

We are both absolutely agreed that there should be full sovereignty transferred to the Iraq people, and the multinational force should remain under American command.

No, there is no contradiction between the two parts of that sentence, “transferring full sovereignty” and “multinational force under American command” because “we,” as in “George W. Bush and I,” absolutely agree. Got that too?

Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, it seems that everyone in Iraq, including the current U.S.-handpicked Governing Council, naturally wants to be able to ask foreign troops to leave. Here’s the statement by Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, current head of the governing council:

[We] want to have the right to ask that these forces leave if we deem that to be in the best interests of the country.

Back at the UNSC, the four other veto-wielding powers have a radical suggestion:

France, Germany, Russia and China insisted Wednesday that Iraq's new interim leaders be allowed to participate in Security Council negotiations on the terms of a U.S. and British resolution on the country's political transition, potentially delaying plans to put the text to a vote as early as next week

Chinese ambassador suggested that: “As far as the contents in the present draft, this has to be discussed with those guys who are being selected.” The French ambassador to the UN proposed waiting a few weeks after the naming of the Interim government before the Security Council vote to see how the people of Iraq react to those named and to ensure “that the government has broad support among Iraqis.”

Whaddya mean consult with the Iraqis? We’re transferring sovereignty as soon as possible, dammit! All this consulting with them will only delay the transfer of “sovereignty.” We’re transferring sovereignty one way or another and we sure won’t let some pesky natives get in the way.

No, serious. That’s what Negroponte said:

But Negroponte dismissed the suggestion.

"That just gets you up much too close to the time for the actual transfer of sovereignty," he said. "I assume our French colleague wants the resolution passed before the transfer actually takes place."

Posted by zeynep at 11:36 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

May 26, 2004

Rumsfeld Bans Digital Cameras

Justin Podur of the wonderfully informative The Killing Train blog points out that Rumsfeld has banned all digital cameras from U.S. military installations in Iraq and a "total ban throughout the U.S. military is in the works."

How surprising. Here's Rumsfeld ranting during his May 7th testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee about having to run a war in the information age:

We're functioning in a -- with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a war-time situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.

The solution is to roll back the information age, of course. No pictures, no outrage since who'd believe those Iraqis anyway?

Posted by zeynep at 04:46 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

you know you're "fully" sovereign when...

You know you're "fully" sovereign when the U.S. and the U.K. bicker amongst themselves on whether or not you'll have any bit of say over military operations carried out against your own citizens, on your own soil, by foreign occupation troops that are not subject to your laws.

The icing on your sovereignty comes when you're told these unlimited extraterritorial powers are granted to the occupation troops, the departure of which you are not allowed to demand, because they are, well, acting in self-defense.

Posted by zeynep at 02:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 25, 2004

Fox to Guard Henhouse; Decision Subject to Peridic Review by the Fox

According to the current U.S.-UK draft Security Council resolution, the U.S.-led occupation forces cannot be asked to leave Iraq unless the U.S. agrees to leave.

The draft calls for a “review” of the status of the troops at the end of 12 months -- or at anytime at the request of the “Transitional Government of Iraq.” What it does not say is that this so-called review is meaningless since the review is to be conducted by the UN Security Council.

Because, of course, ::drumrolls:: U.S. has a veto over all Security Council Resolutions.

In other words, the reviewer is the reviewee.

It’s not like the U.S. is denying this state of affairs, even if the media is not emphasizing this point:

Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham acknowledged there was no authority for Iraq to ask foreign troops to leave. But, quoting earlier remarks from Secretary of State Colin Powell, he said, "The United States has said we will leave if there is a request by the Iraqi government to leave."

In other words, just trust us, except we won’t recognize your right not to.

Here’s the relevant passage:

6. Reaffirms the authorization for the multinational force under unified command established under resolution 1511 (2003), having regard to the letter referred to in preambular paragraph 10 above, decides that the multinational force shall have authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq including by preventing and deterring terrorism, so that inter alia the United Nations can fulfill its role in assisting the Iraqi people as outlined in paragraph five above and the Iraqi people can implement freely and without intimidation the timetable and program for the political process and benefit from reconstruction and rehabilitation activities, and decides further that the mandate for the multinational force shall be reviewed 12 months from the date of this resolution or at the request of the Transitional Government of Iraq;

Note that, not so incidentally, these forces have the “authority to take all necessary measures” for whatever they define as security and stability in Iraq. This authority includes measures aimed at deterring terrorism, which is such an undefined concept that one could plausibly charaterize anything under that heading.

Yeay, full sovereignty.

Posted by zeynep at 02:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 24, 2004

you're in the wrong country when...

You know you're in the wrong country when you consider all "military age male"s to be a threat.

Think about it. It means that you are not in your own country and that the population of the country is against you.

Here's what commander of the 1st Marine division said about the wedding party that was attacked by American planes, killing up to 45 people.

"These were more than two dozen military-age males," scoffed Maj-Gen James Mattis, commander of the US 1st Marine Division. "Let's not be naive."

Let's take that statement at its bone chilling face value. If you think the most likely reason for any two dozen males to get together is to attack, or plan attacking, your forces what more evidence do you need to know you are an unwelcome occupation force?

It's almost like a litmus test for a wrong war. The United States Armed Forces defending the United States against aggression within its own soil would not shoot and kill any gathering of "military age males." If a peacekeeping force was deployed in some country, it would not have to attack all males if it was actually there for "peacekeeping" -- in such a scenario, at least some of the population would welcome its presence (otherwise, again, you shouldn't be there if nobody wants you there.)

Here's a little excerpt from Colin Powell's bio, talking about the Vietnam War:

If a helo [helicopter]spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM [military age male] the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. (An American Journey, p.140).

In the wrong country? Definitely so.

It's also shameful how anyone can still dispute it was a wedding party. After a wedding video, with some of the participants in the video confirmed as having been killed in the attack, countless eyewitness accounts from people, some of whom confirmed to be the people in the video, pictures of dead babies and women taken by a variety of news organizations at the scene shortly after the attack, plus lack of any evidence to the contrary that it was anything but a wedding party should be enough. We'd never call something "alleged" after that much evidence if it involved Americans and Europeans as victims.

Yet the denials continue:

What about the video footage? Maj-Gen Mattis said he had not seen it, but added: "Bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men." Although an investigation has been promised, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, said in Washington: "We feel at this point very confident that this was a legitimate target, probably foreign fighters."

Posted by zeynep at 06:03 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 23, 2004

Sunday Song: Guantanamera

I've been thinking a lot about that song this week. Not just because May 19th was the anniversary of the death of Jose Marti, who wrote the poem, and not just because that bay at Guantanamo is now etched in history as a prison without any reasonable definition of justice (like the right to due process, the right to be charged with a crime, habeas corpus.) I've been thinking about it because I've been thinking about Jose Marti's "Manifesto of Montecristi" which he wrote and published on 1895 along with Maximo Gomez.

I couldn't find the text online but basically, they proclaimed the equality of all races, proclaimed Cuban independence, declared that white people were welcome, and indeed invited, to join the struggle for independence and equality (even though they materially benefited from the slavery and colonialism) but also that black people's participation in this movement was crucial since it was largely their freedom and liberaton on the line.

I'm sure we'd find many complications and subtleties if we dug into the history of the Cuban independence movement and I'm sure people can point out how I'm oversimplifying things.

But it just all seems so different, so much more crisp and clear than today's world.

Here we have a democracy at home, however imperfect it may be, but we also have world's most powerful military deployed in more than a hundred countries around the world engaged in occupation and imperial force projection. On the other hand, you have an adversary that is willing to kill thousands indiscriminately and, seemingly, without remorse.

Where is the side that is moral but also serious and powerful? Can moral, reasonable people everywhere escape this straitjacket -- this straitjacket of being limited to attempting to curb the violence inflicted by powers on "their side"?

By the way, I hate that song. I've been thinking about it, not listening to it. I heard it so many times in so many pretentious settings that I just cannot stand it. Sorry Jose.

Maybe we'll have some good new songs when we have a good new movement.

Posted by zeynep at 07:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 22, 2004

A Rainbow by Any Other Name

Israel's military incursion into the Rafah refugee camp, during which 41 Palestinians have been killed and thousands of already destitute people left homeless, is called "Operation Rainbow." The latest casualty was a three year old child.

Operation Rainbow.

To be followed by Operation Fluffy Pillows and Operation Cuddly Puppies? Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens?

Here's what I think all this sweet talk means: the “Global Public” is indeed the only remaining force that can stand against any unjust military machine or any oppressive institution. Words matter this much to them because what we, as the people of the earth, think matters.

It’s a recognition of the awesome power of legitimacy.

Yes, I understand the-powers-that-be are getting away with their Orwellian twisting of language. Still, it's one arena we should be better equipped to fight back because we have truth, justice and morality on our side and they don't.

Unfortunately, they are very good at this and we need take it a lot more seriously. They had us so totally confused before the occupation that we were arguing whether or not a "pre-emptive" war should ever be carried out --when there was nothing to pre-empt and thus no pre-emptive war to evaluate. During the past two years I saw lots of references to "Bush's pre-emptive war" among anti-war critics, which I thought was not only wrong, but politically self-destructive because for most people if it's "pre-emptive" it's justified since "better them than us."

We should have emphasized this was not a pre-emptive war, by any stretch of any definition, and exposed this ideological wool over the eyes of the American public. That is not to defend pre-emptive wars; it’s just that so as far as this war was concerned, that would have been a totally inappropriate discussion.

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May 21, 2004

Ignore at your own peril

A Salon reporter attended a public appearance by the professional raving racist Michael Savage. In case you are thinking who cares about that lunatic, think again. Apparently, his is the third most popular radio program in the nation, with 6 million listeners. The enlightened ravings include gems like calling for nuking a randomly picked Arab country -any one will do it seems- sodomizing prisoners with dynamite *and* throwing them off planes -- and such fiscally wasteful suggestions. Yes, the third most popular radio show in the nation.

Las year, on the anniversary of 9-11, I gave a talk at an anti-war forum where I argued that the most important clash was not between civilizations but within this civilization. I think this man's popularity shows how grave the problem is. He is speaking to, and being listened approvingly by, millions of our neighbors.

Let me quote the reporter's account directly, this stuff is hard to paraphrase:

Just a few days before the Uncensored event, he'd been ranting on the radio about dropping fiery death on civilians throughout Iraq and the Middle East. "I don't give a damn if they hide behind their women's skirts," he foamed. "Wipe the women out with them! Because it's our women who got killed on 9/11! And it's our women who are gonna get killed tomorrow unless we get rid of the bugs who are destroying us!" Tonight, Savage continued to elaborate on this disturbing vision of how to win the war in Iraq. He said he fantasized of being woken up by the sound of B-1 and B-52 bombers flying over his house on their way to the Middle East. Imagining bombers overhead at 4 a.m., he gushed about these nocturnal missions, "It's better than an orgasm -- it is an orgasm!"

Here's what he had said on the air before:

I think there should be no mercy shown to these sub-humans. I believe that a thousand of them should be killed tomorrow. I think a thousand of them held in the Iraqi prison should be given 24 hour[s] -- a trial and executed.... Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices and they should be dropped from airplanes.... They should put dynamite in their behinds and drop them from 35,000 feet, the whole pack of scum out of that jail."

He suggests that we nuke an Arab country, any Arab country:

"Right now, even people sitting on the fence would like George Bush to drop a nuclear weapon on an Arab country. They don't even care which one it would be. I can guarantee you -- I don't need to go to Mr. Schmuck [pollster John] Zogby and ask him his opinion ... The most -- I tell you right now -- the largest percentage of Americans would like to see a nuclear weapon dropped on a major Arab capital. They don't even care which one..."

The only salvation is to be converted to Savage's version of Christianity:

"I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity ... It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings."

I can accept that ye have the raving racist lunatics with you always, but this is much more than that. This is the zeitgeist for millions of people in this country.

When Savage blurted out, "Does anyone in this crowd give a shit about the Iraqis?" he was answered with a deafening "NO!"

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May 20, 2004

the toothpaste commerical

This man died under custody in Abu Ghraib " during intensive questioning in the shower" where he was "shackled to the wall." The claim is that he came to Abu Ghraib with a sandbag over his head and the guards were told not to remove the hood. They "questioned him" for about an hour and when he collapsed, they removed the sandbag and saw severe head wounds that were not treated.

Is that a defense? We don't even look at the faces of people we torture or kill?

Lynndie England says the "The pictures were shown to anyone who wanted to see them. Cpl. [Charles] Graner told me he showed them to his platoon sergeant and platoon leader."

The article is at Los Angeles Times:

England told investigators that guards forced detainees to crawl on their hands and knees on broken glass, threw a Nerf football at handcuffed prisoners and forced male detainees to wear women's "maxi pads."

...

England, interviewed May 5 at Ft. Bragg, N.C., said that she did not believe the guards went too far in punishing detainees and that much of what happened in the prison's notorious cellblock 1A was done in sport.

"We thought it looked funny, so pictures were taken," she said. It was "basically us fooling around."

Done in sport? Fooling around?

Many of the identified torturers have made statements to the effect they "weren't given proper training." Is that not more scary? How does a human being do this to another human being without intensive training and brainwashing? What is it in us, our society and our culture that allows this? How can Sabrina Harmon flash the smile she would for a toothpaste commercial with such ease?

"These soldiers were ordered to do this" would be less damming, less scary than this just us kids "fooling around" talk.

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Cheap oil is not good for us

If bandits broke into your house, destroyed your furniture, garden, and roof, beat you up, and then shamelessly proceeded to auction off precious items left to you from your great-grandparents, which you had hoped to pass on to your children, would you be yelling “cheaper, cheaper, you’re selling them for too high”? And fight with your spouse about who can get them to sell it for cheaper?

That’s the functional equivalent of the dominant debate on the oil prices.

It’s almost surreal to watch the stories in the evening news about politicians trading barbs on who can bring oil prices lower, dotted with “man at the gas pump complaining about the oil prices” interviews.

It’s an open secret that oil is limited and will run out sooner or later, no matter what we pretend. It’s a bit like the truth of death: most people live as if they don’t believe it. Applying induction to human history, we can easily conclude that human thinking isn’t induction friendly -- and that may well be our undoing.

Currently, almost all profits stemming from the increase in oil prices are pocketed by huge corporations and tyrannical regimes, who often do very little to spread the wealth around except in a few democratic countries like Venezuela and, in a few semi-corporatist states like Iran and Iraq in the past. Millions of Nigerians continue to live in dire poverty in the oil-rich Niger Delta; millions of Pakistani, Bengali and other immigrants from poor countries around the world toil under semi-slavery conditions in the oil-rich Gulf countries. Remember the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled en masse from Kuwait after the first Gulf War? Without an audible peep from the world community, who would surely protest if 400,000 white people were collectively punished and suddenly expelled from the country of their employment, with no due process and no rights? (Kuwaitis claimed that Palestinians supported Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. I wonder how it feels to admit that Saddam Hussein’s brutality is preferable to yours?)

In contrast to these private profits, almost all the real costs of oil production are public. After 15 years, Exxon Valdez still hasn’t paid damages for the Alaska spill -- it keeps running circles around the $5 billion verdict, modest considering the damage, with its army of lawyers. Back at the ranch, 1,200 of the plaintiffs have passed away and, unfortunately, sea otters and fish don’t yet have standing in human courts. Oil corporations have a sordid history of supporting some of the most brutal regimes and that is not a coincidence. Extractive industries, almost by nature, require suppressing the local population because of the inevitable damage they do the local environment and also because they create a large booty to be shared --especially large if you don’t have to pay the pesky natives-- and thus attract the greediest and the most vicious.

Even under the current scenario of private profits and public costs, high oil prices are good for us because such pressures force people to choose more efficient vehicles and give impetus to the search for alternative energy sources. In fact, that’s why oil prices will come down. OPEC knows full well too high prices will inevitably cause alternative sources to be promoted.

Of course, a just society would not let the poorest pay the highest cost for the oil prices and would subsidize reasonable and unavoidable living costs during the transition to sane energy sources -- and penalize their wasteful use. Why should a hummer owner pay the same price for gas as a hybrid owner? It’s like using high taxes and levies on cigarettes to pay for lung cancer treatment. It’s good because it cuts down on smoking, especially among teenagers who are the most vulnerable and most price-sensitive segment of smokers, and limits private profits made at the expense of such public detriment.

And last but not least, oil is part of earth’s wealth. It should benefit first and foremost the people who live in oil rich regions, since they have to put up with the conditions of its production, and then be used very judiciously with the awareness that it’s part of the inheritance of future generations.

$40 a barrel? Higher the better.

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May 19, 2004

Rumsfeld is our Victimologist-in-Chief

The higher-ups have a tricky act. They have to tell the few who were caught, and who are now destined for all the official public blame, that they are rotten bad apples and that they should’ve known better.

Let's see now, how could they have known better?

By reflection, thoughtfulness and criticism of their role in the world.

But, oops, nope, can’t let that idea catch on.

So, Rumsfeld goes all the way to Iraq to personally tell them: “"Don't let anyone tell you America is what's wrong with the world because it isn't.” In one stroke, Rumsfeld creates this caricature, reducing all who criticize U.S. foreign policy or the conduct of the U.S. military to simplistic people who think “America is what’s wrong with the world.” He also tells the soldiers to ignore such criticisms, because, well, “it isn’t.” He wants to limit the national debate to “is too,” “is not,” “is too,” “is not.” I’m going to hold my breath now.

Obviously, there is plenty wrong in the world besides U.S. foreign policy. But other wrongs don’t excuse ours. Also, since American people are the “we” as in “we the people,” and since they, at least most of the time, get to elect their government, it’s only right that they hold the government accountable for what’s done in their name before needing to go out and make a comprehensive and full list every other wrong in the world.

And note Rumsfeld’s “It's been a body blow for all of us” and “we'll get through this tough period, let there be no question” and "I'm a survivor" rhetoric. Whaddya mean us, pale face? And what exactly are you surviving, again?

And to think how much the right criticizes the left for victimology; these guys are victimologists-in-chief. We get caught torturing and killing and that’s a body blow for “us”? "We'll" get through this?

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May 18, 2004

The background picture

People ask me about the background picture. Those are school kids in Wamale, Ghana and the picture was taken during the relatively heavily publicized trip to Africa by AIDS activist Bono and former treasury secretary O'Neill.

At the time of the visit Ghana's debt burden was about $3.9 billion. About 19.3 percent of its export revenues went to the never-ending servicing of that debt -- all the while one child in ten died before her fifth birthday.

According to my rough calculations O'Neill was trying to collect roughly $215 from each and every one of those kids. (Per capita income in Ghana was around $290 at the time).

I put that picture up not simply because those kids are sweet, like all kids everywhere, but because I think we all need to be reminded who we're demanding payment from. Read all the economic analysis, World Bank papers, Financial Times articles and what-have-you regarding the debt crisis you want -- and I do read them. It all comes down to something this simple and this uncomfortable: we are loan sharks and those are our victims.

I wrote a short bit about the media coverage of that trip in Extra!, the media criticism mag published by FAIR, but I see that it's not online. I'll dig it up and put it up.

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Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

For the powers-that-be, scapegoating individuals serves as a smokescreen to deflect attention from unjust power structures. When the individuals targeted are far down in the social hierarchy, this serves the added benefit of deflecting attention from the people at the top, the ones who give the orders and who create the structures of injustice and oppression that we live under. In the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, we see this pattern playing out, with the rhetoric about a “few bad apples” and the focus on a handful of Army reservists.

Progressives are right to focus instead on institutional change and on accountability for those at the top. They are right to oppose these efforts to cover up the systematic nature of torture in American gulags around the world. Unfortunately, in doing so, many are on the verge of degenerating into a denial of individual moral agency.

Human beings are capable of choice and morally accountable for their actions. Circumstances can alter culpability-- people in certain kinds of institutions and situations are more likely to commit morally reprehensible actions. But to deny their ability of choice and their role as moral subjects and not just objects is to deny their humanity. Individual moral agency is at the core of one’s right to an equal standing before one’s community. That is not a right that can or should be sacrificed at the altar of institutional responsibility.

One striking example comes from Code Pink, a marvelous group with a history of creative actions, which describes itself as “women for peace.” Yet, while rightly pointing to the responsibility of higher-ups, Code Pink argues that we shouldn’t “let 21-year-old girls be the only people held responsible.”

We don’t need to juvenilize Lynndie England as a “girl,” invoking both age and gender as a way to diminish her agency, in order to hold Rumsfeld and Bush accountable. If Codepink are “women” for peace then Lynndie England is a “woman” torturer. It’s disdainful to describe a 21 year old adult as a girl; she is a woman of equal standing and equal right to moral agency, and therefore culpability, as Code Pink “women” -- and the rest of us. We would all loudly protest if she was denied any basic right or privilege because of her youth, all the while being addressed as a “girl.” The irony is especially profound because many Code Pink women are themselves living embodiments of individual moral agency in restrictive political conditions.

A few years ago, I encountered this drive towards individual absolution in a peculiar setting. I had been in on vacation in Istanbul, about a hundred miles from my childhood hometown when a massive earthquake leveled it. I cancelled my return and rushed back to help with the rescue efforts, spending two weeks in the open-air mass grave my hometown had become. It was hard stuff: we dug, buried, consoled survivors, dug, listened for sounds of life under tons of twisted steel and concrete, and dug more. Although the ordeal was not easy, I felt relatively okay upon my return -- except the stench of death and destruction just wouldn’t leave me. Literally. I was having olfactory hallucinations. If I saw a picture of a dead body on TV, or even thought about death, I smelled it. My doctor recommended I see a post-trauma specialist.

The therapist was a kind, patient woman who made me tell the whole story many times. She then told me that it was not my fault.

Excuse me? Of course it wasn’t my fault. I had never said or thought that it was.

Actually, I thought I had done relatively well given the conditions. I had helped direct a rescue team, composed of a genuinely brave American men and women from Fairfax, Virginia, to a region which had been skipped over because it was a very poor neighborhood next to a burning refinery that authorities and other rescue teams feared might explode. We joked that it made our work easier since we could use the light from its fire to work through night without needing generators -- and worked on, practically non-stop, through very strong aftershocks. Witnessing the heroism, and the aching, impossible solidarity common to scenes of disaster, I didn’t think of myself as a hero but I still felt pretty okay about my role. Certainly not at fault.

But my therapist wouldn’t let up. She kept repeating herself:

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know it’s not my fault.”

“No, really, it’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean it.”

“I mean it too: I’m well aware it’s not my fault.”

“Really, you should accept it’s not your fault because it is not.”

After many rounds of this puzzling behavior, thinking this was some quirky school of psychotherapy that I had never heard about, I started inquiring about her and her work.

She worked mostly with Vietnam veterans.

She told me that, thirty years after the war, some of her patients were having nightmares, crying fits and many were crushed with guilt.

They came to her with souls in the kind of deep wrenching pain that would not go away.

She kept telling them it wasn’t their fault.

From there on, the subject changed.

I pointed out that people who are truly not at fault often know that and do not need to hear it 30 years later. If a man is having crying fits and nightmares three decades after a war, there is a possibility that something really was his fault and that the last thing he needs to hear is “it’s not your fault.” Maybe he needs to say he was indeed at fault, that he was guilty. Is there a way to redemption without acknowledgement of guilt?

Who was she, I argued, to so persistently deny these men’s claim to their own moral agency? Perhaps, I said, she told them what they appeared to want to hear without listening for what their souls, in the nightmares and the crying fits, were desperately trying to say.

Part of the problem is the schizophrenic attitude progressives have towards the U.S. military and the largely poor, mostly red-state population that its foot-soldiers are drawn from. A typical example comes from Bob Herbert, a persistent critic of the administration, the war, and corporate brutality. In a single op-ed, Herbert both says that the price for the administration’s policies is being paid by “brave and patriotic men and women who deserve so much more from the country they are willing to defend with their lives” and just a few paragraphs later, that “we've destroyed countless homes and legitimate businesses and killed or maimed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including many women and children. That was a lousy strategy for winning hearts and minds in Vietnam and it's a lousy strategy now.”

But just as millions of Vietnamese did not die of sudden heart attacks, but were killed, just as villages did not burn from forgotten candles at bedtime, but were set alight with Zippo lighters, and just as Agent Orange did not rain from the clouds, but was dropped from planes, those thousands of Iraqis were killed by our policies, and by the people implementing our policies.

The peace movement has been adamant that it supports and respects the men and women in uniform. But what is real support and real respect? Denying moral agency and refusing to push for full individual accountability is not respect; in fact, it’s rather blatant disrespect, especially given the fact that our concern for “our brave men and women in harm’s way” has been a central slogan of the anti-war movement. Concern without accountability is inherently contemptuous -- even children are generally held accountable, subject to the limits of their understanding. Furthermore, how can any real accounting of the harm done by war exclude the damage done to the soul of someone who tortures people at his complete mercy or fires at inhabited buildings from a helicopter gunship?

I understand all the reasons and the levels of victimization that result in unsuspecting, poor urban and rural youth signing up for the military or the reserves. I have indeed worked in the kind of hellish schools where the recruiting office does seem like a neat little slice of cleanliness and purpose amidst hopelessness. I understand the “poverty draft,” the lack of opportunities for the structurally poor underclass, and all the things that are wrong with the racial and economic realities in this country, which, not incidentally, we are obliged to change.

But we still have to respect the humanity of those soldiers. Anything less is indeed the true “soft bigotry of low expectations.” These men and women are not predator drones with arms and legs. We can’t get away with just talking about institutions, orders, poverty draft and the commanders-in-chief.

Perhaps we shy away from this deeper recognition of individual moral agency because it has such far reaching consequences. When we deny another’s moral agency, we help to create the conditions for denying our own. If we start talking about individual responsibility when it comes to soldiers, how long is it before we discover our own individual responsibility when it comes to war, colonialism, disproportionate consumption, racism, ecological damage, global poverty and hunger, millions of dead children who lacked simple drugs…

The simple fact is almost all of us, even those who try to consume little and recycle everything, benefit from living in such a wealthy country. As George Orwell wrote, “certain kinds of goods are necessarily held in common. A millionaire cannot, for example, light the streets for himself while darkening them for other people. Nearly all citizens of civilized countries now enjoy the use of good roads, germ-free water, police protection, free libraries and probably free education of a kind.” The fact that one can dial 9-1-1 during a heart attack gives us 10 to 20 years advantage over the life expectancy of most of the rest of world. Even if you swear not to use it, you have the option -- and I believe that, being human, you will be weaker in your resolve when your breath almost leaves you.

This is simply repeating a truth that I think most of us know at some level: we all exercise privileges that depend, at least partially, on ill-gained wealth in an unjust world.

When viewed through this lens, it’s difficult not to start questioning the connection between our privileges and the occupation of a country at the center of world’s primary oil producing region along with the maintenance of an imperial military that clearly exceeds any reasonable requirements of self-defense. Let me be clear, I am not defending or proposing that we ignore institutions and structures, quite the opposite. Of course we must primarily concentrate on changing and abolishing unjust institutions; however, in the mean time, let us not lose a basic respect for the people in them by withholding a demand for accountability.

Individual moral agency is a precious component of being human; it is also something that people try desperately to avoid coming to terms with. It turned out that my therapist was married to a Vietnam vet -- she wasn’t just trying to protect her patients, she was protecting herself from the reality of that war. She basically asked me to stop coming. A month later I got a check in the mail refunding my co-payment for those last contentious sessions. There was no note.

Posted by zeynep at 12:06 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Welcome and intro

Welcome. This site has just been put up so a bit of patience in the beginning is required while things are tweaked and colors adjusted. I promise the orange will be less bright.

I've posted some of my articles from the last few years -- they are listed to the right under recent entries. Categories aren't fully functional yet.

The topics I have written about have mostly been AIDS, Africa, famine, and war but this site will be discussing many more topics in a part blog, part essay style.

Actually, most everything I write or think about is connected in my mind but they span over many categories.

My fundamental belief is quite simple: every life is worthy of equal consideration and everyone's time on earth is equally precious. The AIDS holocaust represents the most striking violation of this principle in my lifetime; that's why I end up writing about it a lot.

I have never forgotten my visit to the Dachau concentration camp as a child. I still choke up even thinking about it so I'm going to skip to the point I want to make.

In the camp, there is a structure built by Yugoslav Partisan Glid Nandor that looks like barbed wire from a distance but it's actually composed of starving, skeletal human bodies in pain twisted into the shape of barbed wire. Right next to it is an inscription that says "never again" in five languages. I have never shaken the feeling of standing right there, infinitely despairing and infinitely hopeful.

I still think of Dachau quite often -- that visit imparted on me an existential awareness which, quite honestly, most of the time, I find very liberating although from time to time it does feel crushing. I realize such an awareness could take a hedonistic turn but I do try to center it around the "never again."

And let me end this round of self-disclosure, carried out mostly because I believe any attempt to communicate should include some, with one more anecdote. During a class in college, each of us in the class was made to write ten attributes that were important to our sense of self on index cards and meditate on them as we tried to sort the bunch in order of importance, contemplate discarding some them, etc.

I could only come up with three major ones: empathy, curiosity and passion. Everything else was a mile away.

That is not to suggest that I'm capable of infinite empathy, boundless curiosity and endless passion! Rather, I am in awe of those qualities; even writing the previous sentence kind of took my breath away. What I mean is that, in this world, empathy, curiosity and passion are what I look to with appreciation, and sometimes envy, when I notice them in others and what I find gratifying to share -- hopefully through this site as well. (Well, okay, okay, enough with the pretentious stuff. I also do really, really envy people with perfect pitch, sense of rhythm and/or exceptional memory. I turn green with jealousy around them. Please do not tell me you know someone with all three. If you are one, feel free to not mention it. The list used to include the ability to do chin-ups but on March 31, 2002, I conquered that one after only a measly year of training.)

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May 14, 2004

hello, world

hello, world

Posted by zeynep at 04:37 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack