By now we’ve all heard how the surge strategy in Iraq has been a great success. Which raises the question whether the things that have made this “success” possible can be applied to problems in our own country. Here are a few tips in that regard.
So-called “Awakening Councils” in Sunni areas of Iraq where we used to encounter fierce resistance have been largely pacified. How? We simply put the guys who were killing our soldiers and marines on the American payroll. We pay them regular salaries, arm them, and train them.
So why not apply the same principle to street gangs in places like Los Angeles? We could pay gang members with public funds, arm them and train them in advanced fighting techniques. And all we would ask in return is that they stop shooting up their neighborhoods and be less public about dealing drugs. A great deal all around, no?
To lessen the damages done by exploding truck bombs in Iraq, we have built blast walls that separate ethnic neighborhoods, and placed armed guards at the only entrances and exits through these walls. This has worked wonders in cutting down civilian casualties.
Why not do the same thing to separate ethnic neighborhoods in American cities like Washington? Officials there are already stopping and searching vehicles going into some neighborhoods. And heaven knows, there are literally thousands of gated communities around the country that separate the well-off from those who are less financially desirable. Blast walls are thus a natural extension of what we’ve been doing in this country for some time—with the added benefit that constructing them would provide infrastructure jobs for the wall builders.
And then, of course, is the glorious success that we’ve had in Iraq by hiring mercenaries (oops, contractors) to do the work of regular military personnel. Sure, these hirelings cost six figure salaries each and seem surprisingly detached from ordinary rules governing the regular military. But their deaths don’t make the papers and they stretch a regular military that doesn’t attract enough men and women to do the jobs they are currently assigned because these jobs have so little popular support.
We could easily create a variant of this approach in our own homeland. Armed, highly trained and paid vigilantes who do the dirty crime-stopping jobs and aren’t held back by silly legal piccadillos.
If this transference of ideas and approaches from our Iraq venture strikes you as a good way to go, let your Congress person know. After all, what could be fairer than doing unto ourselves what we have so egregiously done unto Iraqi others?
“We have created a system of corruption far more corrupt than anything that existed during Saddam Hussein’s regime, and which is unprecedented in Iraqi history.”
“In essence, the prevailing corruption is due to America’s mismanagement in administering Iraqi affairs, and the emboldening of corrupt leaders who prey on the public interest.”
An East Jerusalem Palestinian hijacked a bulldozer today and began attacking buses, cars and the people in them. A few people were killed and around 60 were wounded. Fortunately, the terrorist was quickly killed.
While BBC Online currently covers the story “Bulldozer rampage hits Jerusalem,” this was not the original headline. Offering a glimpse into the BBC’s warped journalism, the initial headline read “Israel bulldozer driver shot dead”.
I am appalled to see that CNN is writing “terrorist” and MSNBC is writing ‘terrorist’ when these are TERRORISTS without quotation marks or apostrophes.
Credit for some of these links goes to Rabbi David in Iowa.
“If for political and tactical reasons, the American administration won’t announce the terms of the Convention; if some of the terms of the deal adversely affect Iraqi “sovereignty and dignity”; and if as Nouri al-Maliki has said, talks are at a standstill, then why doesn’t the Iraqi government or it’s representatives at the talks reveal to the Iraqi people the items that they say so detrimentally affect Iraqi sovereignty and dignity, to help win popular support for the government’s position so that all can understand how the government defines its “sovereignty and dignity”? … Do we truly live in the era of transparency and democracy, as our esteemed government leaders, members of Parliament and party leaders claim? Or is this only talk - the sowing of seeds of illusion within the minds of this pitiful people, whose field of dreams is desolate and barren, and for whom the hoped-for heaven is instead a living hell?”
“Someone should explain the meaning of the absolute secrecy that has surrounded the draft Convention - and the meaning of the non-disclosure of the names of those on the negotiating team … Are negotiators afraid to shoulder the blame, or are they concerned they can’t stand up to the Arabic or Iranian backlash? The legs of the negotiators tremble when it comes to accepting responsibility for their actions.”
“… not only to repel the conflicting ambitions of Arabs, Turks and Iranians, but also to prevent a civil war, the flame of which has yet to be extinguished. For there are thousands who continue to blow on the embers - embers that are mainly due to the presence of political Islam at the head of the state and the spread of sectarian thinking in politics, culture and different types of Arab media.”
“That attitude of some parties, politicians and religious authorities are just an echo of the sectarian forces outside of Iraq, that don’t care about Iraq nor the people of Iraq, except to the extent that it’s in harmony with their wasteful, selfish interests. Hence we can understand why so many are opposed to the Iraqi-American agreement, because their opposition isn’t based on the national interest. Rather, they oppose it on the basis of sectarian motivations, decided by people outside of Iraq.”
Beyond the headlines, we occasionally get “soft” news about how the post-9/11 world really is, as we do today in disturbing narratives about the unseen wars in Iran and Pakistan–patterns of secrets and lies that Americans and their representatives in Washington either don’t fully know or want to talk about publicly.
In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh details a new “major escalation of covert operations against Iran…designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership” as part of a literal tug of war in the White House and Congress on how to deal with the nuclear threat from Tehran.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports “a secret plan to make it easer for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda,” a plan that exists only on paper as a result of Washington indecision and in-fighting.
Until the Bush Administration departs next January, it will be easy enough to blame all this dangerous confusion on their certified bunglers, but how well will successors of either party in a country that prides itself on government transparency be equipped to navigate this shadowy world of shifting alliances among violent splinter groups?
Just as it has in the United States, Barack Obama’s strategic ambiguity in regard to the Middle East and foreign policy in general has definitively shown up on Europe’s radar screen.
“The candidate of American Democrats, Barack Obama, is campaigning with the help of the American Jewish lobby. Going further than many presidential candidates before him; Obama calls for an ‘undivided Jerusalem’ and threatens to do ‘everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.’”
“Confusing for many voters are the contradictory statements that Obama has made about the most controversial foreign policy issues. On the question of the moment: “How should we deal with Iran?,” Obama offers ambiguous answers. Before liberal students, he portrays himself as a true pacifist. However, before the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC - the acronym for the praised or damned Jewish lobby - he declares with the deepest conviction that there will be no limits when it comes to preventing Iran from manufacturing nuclear weapons.”
But Weidenfeld cautions that after the campaign, whoever wins will have to engage in ‘intellectual decontamination’ to clarify where the winner truly stands.
Writing for Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper, Abdulsalam suggests that the government’s four-year policy of coddling and cooperating with militias and ‘falling into the orbit of foreign powers’ has resulted in a nation as ungovernable as it is insecure.
“There is a clear and resurgent determination to carry out attacks within Baghdad and some of the provinces. These attacks serve to re-ignite the conflict between religious communities that had only recently settled down. This is the reality created by ‘politicians’ and ‘parties’ that took four years to wake-up to the fact that this method of seed-planting doesn’t germinate very well politically.”
“What’s the point of operations with fancy names if the chaos roars back as soon as police and military forces are withdrawn? … If government leaders and their counterparts across the table in Parliament are caught up in the orbit of other countries [Iran]; and if their proposals fail serve the nation during its current trials; all steps taken to put Iraq on a safe and secure path will fail to take hold. The impact of such steps won’t survive even an hour after they’re completed.
Yesterday, I wrote a column comparing–contrasting–the Vietnamese refugee crisis with the present and ongoing Iraqi refugee crisis. My comments were based mostly on personal experiences and on personal views on the issue. Most of the experiences came from a stint of military duty in 1975 at one of the Vietnamese refugee camps as a Senior Refugee Liaison Officer–a tour of duty that turned out to be one of the most fascinating and rewarding aspects of my entire Air Force career.
Coincidentally, and fortunately, today’s Los Angeles Times carried a column, “The shortchanging of Iraqi refugees,” written by Morton Abramowitz, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a board member of the International Rescue Committee. He also was the U.S. ambassador to Thailand (1978-81) and Turkey (1989-91). I say “fortunately” because while, as I said, my piece was based mostly on personal experience, Abramowitz column is steeped in professional knowledge and experience at the highest multinational levels in the areas of human rights, international rescue, refugees and crisis prevention missions and activities. Where else to go to both fact-check and complement my original article in such rapid succession?
Ambassador Abramowitz first provides a historic perspective on present and past refugee crises by pointing out that, “Since World War II, American actions have unintentionally created three huge refugee crises: the Indochinese in Southeast Asia, the Kurds of northern Iraq and now a third: the Iraqis displaced by today’s war.”
He then describes the professional, humanitarian and compassionate way in which the U.S. handled the Indochinese refugee crisis–“an extraordinary act“– and how the Kurdish refugee crisis was resolved.
With respect to the present Iraqi refugee crisis, the Ambassador has this to say:
Our war has displaced 4 million Iraqis since 2003, including 2 million now living beyond its borders in tough conditions. Yet we have allowed this vast, potentially destabilizing refugee burden to be borne mostly by Syria and Jordan. We have provided some aid to host countries but none to Syria, and we have allowed only a trickle of Iraqis (fewer than 10,000 so far) to resettle in the U.S. — far fewer than have been taken in by Sweden.
And,
For five years, the U.S. has failed to make Iraq’s refugee exodus a focus of national or international attention. The U.S. has allowed the crisis to be managed by concerned but second-tier American officials, and it has been slow to provide financial assistance. This year’s aid, the most generous so far, will surpass $200 million — but it is still only a quarter of what is needed, relief agencies say. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees complained last month that he would run out of funds in August.
Abramowitz then goes on to explain the differing responses to the three crises and offers some reflections. Included in the explanations are:
* The fact that White House leadership provided by Presidents Carter and George H.W. Bush was good and the fact that “This time around, there has been little presidential involvement.”
* The facts that “guilt was an underlying factor in previous crises,” and that “The current Bush White House, by contrast, appears to be without guilt or remorse.”
* The fact that the media have been generally uninterested in the story of the refugees this time. “Partly because, unlike, say, Darfur, where overcrowded, grim refugee camps can be graphically portrayed, Iraqi refugees generally live in crowded quarters in the cities of Syria and Jordan, surviving on inadequate international handouts, illegal labor or declining savings — but without much visual squalor to stir sympathy.”
* The fact–as I mentioned in my story–that “9/11 changed our national consciousness as well. We became less welcoming of outsiders in general and more suspicious of Arabs and Muslims in particular.”
In his conclusion, the Ambassador addresses a couple of my rhetorical questions and issues:
The stark reality is that no U.S. government, Republican or Democrat, is going to resettle hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees in the U.S. Nor is that the best solution. The best solution — as is almost always the case — is for most of the refugees to return home. They need to rebuild their lives and their country. After five years of war, violence is down and the situation offers hope for mass return, but that day has not yet come (despite the Iraq government’s recent promise to provide $195 million for returnees).
Until that time comes, they need plenty of help. In its waning days, the administration can at least provide the refugees greater financial assistance and can pressure Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to provide more than a pittance to them and to the states sheltering them.
Finally, I am pleased that the Ambassador agrees with me that “the U.S. should take in more refugees — particularly those who will simply never return to Iraq or whose savings have run out. Our values and our interests in the Middle East demand a better response.”
If I might quote myself, “Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children anxiously await our answers–answers that will reflect and perhaps redefine ‘the character of a nation.’”
Are Arabs finally coming to accept that the United States is not really part of a Zionist conspiracy in pursuit of a Jewish takeover of the world?
In this hopeful op-ed from Yemen’s Alsahwa newspaper, Sabah Al Kheshni makes quick work of the global Zionist conspiracy and argues against the common habit in many Arab countries of blaming everything that’s wrong on a conspiracy. In regard to the Iraq War and other targets of Arab angst, he writes in part:
“All strong nations believe they have the right to secure and expand their interests beyond their borders, just as America has done. … The conspiracy theory has become the peg upon which weak societies - most importantly ours - hang their misfortunes … The latest fashion is a conspiracy, hair-styles are a conspiracy - even freedom of expression can’t escape conspiracy …”
Author’s wife (center) with a family of South Vietnamese refugees at the Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, refugee camp in 1975
The New York Times periodically publishes an “Op-Chart” that graphically depicts the progress, or lack thereof, that we are making in Iraq. The latest Op-Chart published today (Sunday, June 22), (”The State of Iraq: An Update”) does indeed reflect progress on several fronts, including the all-important political and military fronts.
The Op-Chart analysts, however, do offer some words of caution: “Iraq remains a violent country plagued by high unemployment, raw wounds from sectarian conflict, extremist militias aided by Iran, more than four million people still displaced by violence, and very limited government capacity to meet the country’s core needs.“
It is the “more than four million people still displaced by violence” that I would like to address. These “more than four million people” include approximately 2.7 million Iraqis who have been “internally“ displaced by the raging sectarian fighting since the war began, and who now live in squalid conditions and in virtual imprisonment in their own country. The number also includes approximately two million Iraqis who have fled the carnage in Iraq, mostly to Syria and Jordan and whose plight is not much better. Up to very recently, thousands of Iraqis were fleeing their war-ravaged country every month, making this the largest diaspora in the Middle East since 1948.
While the plight of all of these human beings is horrific and needs to be addressed, it is the situation–I call it a crisis–of the Iraqi refugees abroad that affects me most deeply, because it evokes poignant memories of a muggy May morning 33 years ago at a makeshift refugee camp at a sprawling military base in Florida.
Military personnel like me and others were there to welcome South Vietnamese refugees to the United States. An article I wrote at the time describing my experience said: “The character of a nation is reflected in the faces of these volunteers. Some have flowers in their hands, some have tears in their eyes, and all have compassion in their hearts”
The “volunteers” (social workers, housewives, college students, etc.) were watching a small, fragile old woman break down in tears as she stepped off the bus that brought her and the others to the camp. Next, an exhausted young mother holding a tiny baby was followed off the bus by six more small children–the father conspicuously missing. And so it went on. Last, a young helicopter pilot stepped off with just the clothes on his back, happy to be alive. These refugees and hundreds of others like them would be placed in our care for the next six months.
That morning in 1975 was only a few weeks after the fall of Saigon, an event that precipitated a chaotic helicopter evacuation out of Vietnam. The U.S. military airlifted 6,000 desperate South Vietnamese along with about 1,000 Americans to aircraft carriers offshore. The images of crying Vietnamese women, babies in their arms, desperately reaching out to dangerously overloaded helicopters are still with us. Over the next eight months, more than 125,000 Vietnamese were warmly greeted at several “Operation New Arrivals” camps like the one in Florida.
America and Americans opened up their hearts and arms to this “first wave” of Vietnamese refugees. (Hundreds of thousands of additional Vietnamese would be given refuge in our country during the next 10 years.) Within a few months the refugees were resettled in communities throughout the U.S. Thousands were graciously welcomed by Americans into their own homes; thousands more were “sponsored” by social and welfare organizations and provided with jobs. The vast majority would become hard-working, productive, loyal and grateful residents of our country.
What does Vietnam have to do with the ongoing Iraqi refugee crisis? A great deal, I believe. But, sadly, only by way of contrast.
While our government and our nation acted so nobly at the end of the Vietnam War, our government has been singularly blasé, ambivalent and slow in responding to the Iraqi refugee crisis. While many believe that the U.S. has the moral responsibility to seriously and meaningfully tackle the Iraqi humanitarian crisis, President Bush lacks the political will and does little more than make promises and provide money for refugee assistance–a “whopping” $208 million, according to USA Today “barely one-tenth of the $2 billion that members of the International Rescue Committee‘s board believe is needed annually for up to four years.”.
Since the war in Iraq started more than five years ago, the United States has admitted fewer than 6,000 Iraqi refugees. (Small Sweden has taken in more than 9,000 Iraqi refugees since the war began.) Last year, under pressure from the United Nations and other organizations, the U.S. State Department promised to allow 7,000 Iraqi refugees to enter the United States. Only 1608 were resettled. Since October 2007, only about 4,700 Iraqi refugees have been allowed to enter the United States.
Murtaja Kamal Aldeen is one of those 4,700 fortunate Iraqis. This Sunday’s New York Times tells how the 26-year-old Baghdad University dentistry graduate left everything back home to “escape a nightmare” that included death threats because he had worked for an American organization.
As in Vietnam, there are thousands of other not-as-fortunate Iraqi men and women who risked their lives by working with U.S. military and government officials, who believed our promises, and who now find themselves the targets of terrorists, insurgents and militia groups.
At least, there are small quotas for these Iraqis–whether they will be filled is another matter. The administration has allocated 12,000 slots for such Iraqi refugees this year–and is very slow in filling them.
But how about the two-million-plus Iraqis who are languishing in Syria, Jordan and elsewhere? Will we welcome hundreds of thousands of them as we welcomed the South Vietnamese? Doesn’t the U.S. as an invading and occupying nation bear some responsibility for the crisis? Or, do we agree with former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton’s position that “our obligation was to give [Iraqis] new institutions and provide security…” and that we don’t “have an obligation to compensate [Iraqis] for the hardships of war.”?
How have Sept. 11 and the war on terror changed our attitudes towards Arabs and Muslims? What are our security concerns when it comes to such refugees? The administration claims, and perhaps rightly so, that it has to be careful to weed out potential terrorists when processing the refugees. They also claim that admitting large numbers of Iraqis would just make their return to Iraq more difficult when Iraq is finally “liberated.”
More than 4,100 of our troops have sacrificed their lives to, as we are told, give Iraqis some measure of security, liberty and democracy. But, are these very same Iraqis not “good enough” to be let into our country?
Americans must address these questions and issues soberly and pragmatically, but hopefully also with some compassion. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children anxiously await our answers–answers that will reflect and perhaps redefine “the character of a nation.”
(The author served as a Senior Refugee Liaison Officer at the Eglin Air Force Base Vietnamese Refugee Center during “Operation New Arrivals” in 1975, and was responsible for the reception, processing, housing, health and welfare and assistance with the resettlement of over 600 South Vietnamese refugees)
Last night the News and Notes Reporters Round Table discussed the Monday incident where campaign workers barred two Muslim women from sitting behind the podium at a Detroit rally to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in media images.
The campaign apologized, but CNN’s Fredericka Whitfield and the St. Petersburg Times’ Eric Deggans see potential problems:
Mr. DEGGANS: I think they’re going to have to develop a more nuanced way of dealing with these issues, otherwise it’s going to backfire. The other thing that’s going on here is that Muslims, frankly, are concerned because Barack Obama doesn’t attack the central issue at the heart of a lot of these issues which is, that what’s wrong with being Muslim?
Ms. WHITEFIELD: Right.
Mr. DEGGANS: He gets out there and he says, I’m not a Muslim and sort of seeds the idea that if he were a Muslim there would be a problem. And so I think he’s going to have to be careful again about, sort of, going along with the underlying notion of some of these things which is that being associated with Muslims is something that’s bad.
Ms. WHITEFIELD: Right. If I can just underscore on that, that, you know, that’s a really great point because, you know, in part what we’re seeing, we’re seeing that the word Muslim is being used like it’s a dirty word. Like oh no, you know if he had any affiliation with the Muslim faith way back when or even now, it’s a terrible thing and that Americans should shut down. And I think he has responsibilities, just as this campaign does, to come out and say something or address this issue.
This is a Guest Voice post by journalism professor and author Walter Brasch who is also a syndicated newspaper columnist and radio commentator, and president of the Pennsylvania Press Club. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
Pennsylvania Politics: Resolved to Continue Bigotry
by Walter Brasch
There should have been absolutely no controversy in a resolution presented in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives this past week.
Speaker Dennis O’Brien, a Republican from Philadelphia, wanted to honor the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which was holding its 60th annual national convention in Harrisburg. These resolutions are routine and almost always noncontroversial. The resolution pointed out that the organization’s purpose was to “increase faith and harmony and introduce various humanitarian, social and religious services.”
But that wasn’t what angered Rep. Daryl Metcalf, a five term Republican from north of Pittsburgh.
“The Muslims do not recognize Jesus Christ as God,” he declared indignantly, and said he would vote against the resolution.
Now, normally, Rep. Metcalf’s views would be heard—and dismissed as a bigoted attack. But this is Pennsylvania politics. So, Rep. Gordon Denlinger, a Republican from Lancaster, felt he had to talk. “Certainly this nation went through an attack some years ago that is well-burned into the subconscious of our society,” he said, and then emphasized, “What I sense on our floor today is that, for some people, this evokes very strong passion and emotion.” Apparently, Denlinger never considered that all religions, including Christianity, have violent extremists. Nevertheless, on Denlinger’s suggestion, the full House sent the resolution to committee, where it would ultimately die long after the weekend convention.
The nonsense in the House isn’t isolated.
Voluminous lies and exaggerations about Sen. Barack Obama permeate the conservative talk shows, e-mails, and Internet. From bitterness dripping in an equal amount of invective and stupidity, we are told that Obama is a radical Muslim “mole” who is waiting to take over America, that he attended Muslim schools and was indoctrinated in that faith, that he switched to Christianity solely to get elected to office, and that he took his oath of office by placing his hand on a Koran.
In the great competition now taking place between Iran and the United States for influence in Iraq, who’s ahead? Centering his column around the long-term security agreement now under negotiation with the United States, Fateh Abdusalam writes for Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper:
“It seems that Iran’s project to compete with America for the approval of Iraq’s shattered heart is slowly gaining impetus. Politicians and nationalists are busy discussing the security agreement with the United States, which has met with categorical Iranian refusal even before an Iraqi one. … Read the rest of this entry »
This morning at 11:00 AM eastern time, I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion on internet radio which is being hosted by Fausta Wertz of Fausta’s Blog. The subject will be (brace yourself…) hymen reconstruction surgery. We’ll be taking a second look at a previous New York Times article and accompanying analysis from National Review Online regarding the growing phenomenon of young women having reconstructive surgery done to “restore their virginity” prior to marriage.
This trend is not in any way unique to young Muslim women in Euorpe and the Arab street. It’s also picking up speed in India among various Hindu sects. (India is still a place where women are treated far worse than either cattle or monkeys in many remote areas, by most accounts.) But it doesn’t stop there. I’ve already found no less than 20 clinics offering the procedure right here in the United States. (Check out the Center for Vaginal Surgery for one example. There are more than half a dozen in New York City alone.) Records and numbers are sketchy since the procedure is generally not covered by insurance and is highly private, but some clinics claim to be performing hundreds per year.
Where did this requirement for a woman to be a virgin on her wedding night come from and how well is it surviving in the modern era? It seems to show up in all the major religions, and women failing to live up to this ideal are instructed to be dealt with in a variety of ways ranging from slavery to death by fire or stoning.
Is this chase for chastity something to be admired or shunned? Has the sexual revolution set us free or dragged us to the gates of hell? And do a few stiches from a surgeon really turn back the clock on your virginity, or are you just fooling yourself and lying to your prospective husband? You be the judge. Leave your comments in this thread. Or, if you’d care to take part in the discussion, join us at 11:00 eastern at Fausta’s show, or using the player below, or call in during the show at (646) 652-2639 to have your say.
June 16th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
You might remember my reports on the monk’s, nun’s and Burmese people’s protests in September of last year, how my contacts in Yangon (Rangoon) dried up within days as cpu’s were confiscated, cell phones smashed, communications wires cut, and various deeply good souls arrested, many children, men, women beaten, many murdered by Than Shwe’s evil orders. It was agony and remains so, not to know the fates of those specific contacts/blogger/photographers who were bravely and desperately funneling information and photos out of Burma to literally anyone who would receive them.
I pray for highly endangered bloggers and journalists and radio and broadcast press people everyday. But after such brutal crackdowns as the smug dictator Shwe’s in Burma, for instance, I dont know the storytellers’ whereabouts, if I should pray for them on earth, or perhaps they have been killed and are in heaven. So I pray for them wherever they might be, that they be given all mercy possible, that they be made invisible at just the right moments, that they somehow know we know; that they can be assured that their courage work did not fall on stones.
I would like a monument to The Unknown Bloggers of the World. I would. I am deadly serious. Those who risked their lives to tell the story. Those who gave their lives to tell the story before they were cut down.
Here is more on the hugely disturbing free-form arresting and harming of bloggers, a practice that despite public knowlege, continues without effective intervention… In this report from University of Washington, a reported 64 bloggers arrested for publishing their views in 2003, to a 192 bloggers reported arrested in 2007, the numbers only increase. It is poignant to note that ‘reported’ numbers does not include those who are maimed, disappeared, murdered. Nor does it include, as the article states, those arrested in place just like Burma where the government gives the evil eye to anyone who asks after the welfare of any citizen.
From BBC
…A University of Washington annual report….
More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.
Citizens have faced arrest and jail for blogging about many different topics, said the World Information Access (WIA) report.
Arrested bloggers exposed corruption in government, abuse of human rights or suppression of protests. They criticised public policies and took political figures to task. Read the rest of this entry »
Europe this week bade President Bush farewell - and if it was a fond farewell, it is because they know he’s leaving not only Europe, but the corridors of American power.
The issue of Arab angst over Israeli influence in the United States has very clearly spilled over into the issue of Barack Obama’s candidacy for the presidency, as recent Arabic translations on WORLDMEETS.US demonstrate.
This article from Al-Arab Al-Yawm of Jordan - which is a majority Palestinian country - expresses optimism over the emergence of Barack Obama, but also a sense that no matter who becomes President of the United States, that person will remain a tool of the all-powerful ‘Zionist Machine.’
“When the car carrying Senator Barack Obama, a colored man, crosses the street that separates Blair House [the official guest house] from the gates of the White House, all will have to acknowledge that he personifies a deep and monumental change in American society … Read the rest of this entry »
While the advent of Barack Obama onto the American political scene has done wonders for America’s global image, in Kuwait, which is regarded as a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, Obama’s appearance has done little to allay suspicion in many quarters about ‘Zionist control’ of the United States.
This morning at 11:00 AM eastern time, I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion 
