The Daily Dialogue: Economists on Occupy; Live Tweeting WWII, Planting Trees/Wangari Maathaii

Check out the Occupy movements views of economics by watching this short video.

Occupy Economics from Softbox on Vimeo.

Follow Daily Live Tweets of World War 2

Follow the web’s hottest trend: live tweeting World War II day by day, covering all the battles of World War II with links to primary sources. This important, massive project of war will continue for the next 6 years.

Plant a tree in memory of Wangari Maathai

Click here to see the story, “The Hummingbird,” told by Nobel Winner, Wangari Maathai

When Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, her goal was to plant 1 billion trees. October 28th, 2011 marks the Green Belt Movement’s launch of the ‘I am the Hummingbird Campaign’ – a tree planting campaign seeking to honour the memory of Wangari Maathai by realizing her goal of seeing 1 billion trees planted around the world.

Take action to remember Wangari and her extraordinary work for the environment and women’s rights by planting a tree in her memory.  Visit the Green Belt Movement website to share your tree planting on their interactive map. You can also watch her ‘Be a Hummingbird’ video, which inspired the campaign.

The  Real Twins: The Romney Dialectic in 2 min.

http://youtu.be/Y7kog1CjzcY

 

The Union Leader Endorses Gingrich

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/joe-scarborough-blasts-new-hampshire-union

 

Mass Rape Expands in the DR Congo

Operations Manager Katrien Coppens explains how ordinary people in the conflict-ridden east of the country are being targeted. – Interview with Katrien Coppens, Operations Manager for MSF in Democratic Republic of Congo

An MSF team has treated more than a hundred women in the Fizi region of South Kivu after a recent mass rape.
“Yes, we sent a team of medical staff with supplies to the area immediately upon hearing reports about a mass rape a week earlier. Unfortunately it was already was too late for the team to administer post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) – a standard part of MSF’s medical response to rape. This can help protect against HIV transmission but must be started no later than 72 hours after exposure. Emergency contraception was also no longer possible as this needs to be administered within five days. But we could treat victims for sexually transmitted infections and physical trauma.

“The morning we arrived, a large group of villagers gathered in the village of Abala awaiting medical care. All the women in that group told us they had been raped between June 9 to 12, 2011. The next day we went to the neighbouring village of Nakiele, whose inhabitants told a similar story. Our team ended up staying here for two days instead of the one day planned so they could treat the high numbers of women that were presenting at the health centre. The team then moved on to the village of Kanguli and treated more women including two with severe complications as a result of the rape.”

What are the medical consequences of this type of violence?
“In addition to the physical trauma suffered, the medical consequences of sexual violence are many, including increased risk of transmission of HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and serious complications in reproductive health. Women who are pregnant at the time of the attack risk losing the foetus.

“Fear, nightmares and psychosomatic body pain are just some of the psychosocial problems experienced by victims of sexual violence. For women, the stigma of rape often means rejection by their families, and even the community as a whole. Victims of sexual violence feeling isolated and ashamed can suffer from socio-economic hardship as a result.”

Why are mass rape attacks happening so frequently in the Democratic Republic of Congo?
“It is an extremely complex and difficult situation – there is ongoing conflict in the east of DRC. For years civilians here have suffered displacement, looting, insecurity and violence as a result of the fighting and the activities of various armed actors who are roaming the area, living off the local population, and spreading fear and terror.

“Since the beginning of this year, MSF has treated around 500 victims of mass rape attacks in the Fizi region of South Kivu alone. It is so frustrating to witness civilians who have nothing to do with the conflict suffering in this way. MSF’s role is to provide the best medical care we can to rape survivors. This is in addition to our usual medical activities in Baraka town and surroundings where in 2011 alone we have treated over 50,000 patients in our health centres and over 3,000 patients in the MSF supported hospital.

“I’m concerned that the mass rape of civilian populations is on the increase in South Kivu. All actors in the conflict must understand that rape is a crime and sexual violence against civilian populations is absolutely unacceptable and must stop.”

Child Soldiers, Child Wives: Wounded for Life

Leymah Gbowee, Executive Director, Women's Peace and Security Network Africa

About the author

Leymah Gbowee is a women’s rights and peace activist from Liberia, and the founder of Women in Peacebuilding Program/ West African Network for Peacebuilding. She was recently feature in an interview with Alison Stewart on the PBS program, Need to Know. (WIPNET/WANEP [10]).

During the early years of my work as a peace activist, I worked for the Lutheran Church Trauma Healing program in Liberia with the war wounded ex-child soldiers of Charles Taylor’s [11] army. My job was to design counselling sessions for the boys and link them with institutions that could provide some assistance for the many physical needs they had. This was a perfect place for someone who had so many negative perceptions and stereotypes about these young people.

During the years of engagement with these little boys, it became very clear how patriarchy as a system first influenced first their decision to join the rebellion. John (not his real name) told me he had joined the rebellion because his older brother joined, and that every time he came back from the war front, the community hailed him as a “real man”, and he also at 12 wanted to prove that he was a real man. When we met at 19, he had lost an eye and had many physiological scars that would render him unfit to achieve his full life’s potentials.

Joseph’s story is also similar; “the boys who joined the rebellion came back and were really respected and were seen often in the company of the elders and community leaders. When we came around we were told we were little boys and could not sit in the company of men. I wanted to prove that I too could sit in the company of elders, so I joined to rebellion”. Joseph lost a leg during the war, and now lives in Monrovia as a shoemaker.

The fact that a lot of these little boys’ future was altered because they needed to prove their maleness is something for us to think about. The second side to these narratives is that as they proved their maleness by joining the rebellion, they also had to prove their maleness by taking in a wife or two and bringing her to a state of total submission. Many of the wives of these young men were forcibly taken, raped and beaten into submission.

As part of my work as a case worker, I had the opportunity of working with the wives of these young child soldiers, their interaction and conversations predominantly bordered around the use of violence and abusive language as a means of communicating. About 80% of the girls in these homes told stories of being forced into the relationship and excepting their fate, because it at least offered them protection from numerous unwanted sexual partners. These girls also exhibited a kind of violent nature that was even more frightening than the behaviour the young soldiers displayed. A young lady (Martha) said she learned to be violent as a means of coping with the life of violence that she had been exposed to.

Many of these young men and women, may never get to live a life without violence, because even as the physical violence has ended for them, they continue to live with  emotional and psychological violence.  Joseph, told me “every time someone pass by and insults me my trauma is re-ignited and all I want to do is abuse drugs and forget the state I find myself in”.

Similarly the girls in these homes continue to be victimised by these “husbands” of theirs. Many of the girls now have kids and leaving these men is not an option for them as many of them say “who will take me with all these children? ” or, ” it will be difficult to take the children away from their fathers as they are really close to their fathers”.

The sad state of life for these girls is that their entire life is caught up in a spiral of one individual trying to prove their “maleness”. The cases described here are not limited to Liberia. This is the every day story of girls and women in conflict situations. Sexual violence has become a norm and unfortunately, young boys and men trying to prove their maleness has become the status quo in conflict situations.

The question that many ask is how is it that the world has descended into such a sad state, where the bodies of women are being used as a battlefront and a war strategy. The global statistics of women and girls who have been sexually exploited is not only appalling but heart wrenching.

Major General Patrick Camert once said, “It was more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in conflict context”.

Recent narratives from female survivors of war are all about rape and rape and more rape.

In Liberia, women of some ethnic groups have told stories of how knives and guns were inserted into their private parts because the soldiers said their own private parts were too good to enter theirs.  Recent stories from Cote D’Ivoire, describe how girls and women were placed in special rooms and forced to service soldiers sexually as they came from the war front. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and many more African countries that have gone through conflict or are going through conflict tell similar stories of the horrors of being a woman.

I can’t help but ask, why is it like this? Why do we have such a situation?  Why have women become so vulnerable to the men and boys that they co-exist with in communities and in nations?

I honestly can not answer these questions, but I would like to take a step back and reflect on the words of Elizabeth Rein and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in the book Women War and Peace [12] that “the abuse women suffer during conflict is a reflection of the interaction between men and women, boys and girls, during peace time”.

Is this statement true at all? My verdict is yes. In most of our communities we objectify women as bearers of babies, and our global media has descended to using the sensual objectification of women’s bodies as the only means of promoting products. Girls are being socialized both directly and indirectly to believe that a super model physique is the way to obtaining fame and fortune.

During the early days of the Liberian civil war, one of the child soldiers, I worked with, told me he didn’t rape anyone; he had sex with them and then added, “Isn’t that what women were made for”. This statement has often drawn angry reaction from women every time I mention it, but the question to ask is why did he think that way, would it be different if the statement  came from an unarmed boy? Well, on March 8, 2011, as we women celebrated International Women’s Day, my 13 year old daughter went to school to tell her friends about the day and what it meant… A young boy in her class (13 years old) asked her, “what are women good for but making babies and caring for the home?”.

Put a gun in this child’s hand, and the story is the same one as that of my child soldier friend. So what must we do to change these interactions in peacetime so that women and girls are safer during conflict? I think as activists we need to strategize on how to effectively engage with men and boys, and make them to understand the impetus for the work that we do.

As difficult as it may sound, I think women tackling difficult issues specifically in Africa is not a strange phenomenon. In 2003, Liberian women organized a mass action campaign to pressure the warring parties to bring an end to the civil war. Many commentators have hailed the women’s actions [13] as one of the contributing factors that ended the war in Liberia.  I think if women across the globe join forces on the issue of sexual violence, there will be some change. It is time women globally start making the connection between sexual violence and the unequal treatment of women in economic, social, and political context, and devise strategies for tackling these inequalities in a holistic manner. It is time to make men and boys see what they stand to lose when women are ill treated – and what they stand to gain when women are treated well.

Opening up the space for sustain dialogue with young men and boys is vital if we are to break this trend.

On May 23rd, 120 women leaders from around the world will join the Nobel Women’s Initiative to discuss and try to find some answers to the issue of security and ending sexual violence in conflict. I believe that the diverse backgrounds and experiences of the women gathered together will produce some practical recommendations on ways of dealing with this modern day pandemic.

(This article is published by Leymah Gbowee, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it with attribution for non-commercial purposes following the CC guidelines. /wr)

Who Do They Think They Are? War Rapists as People

(This article is thankfully reprinted under the creative commons license of the democracynow web site, which is hosting articles for the Nobel Women’s Intiative Conference, Women Forging a New Security: Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict, May 23 -26, in Montebello, Canada.. You may participate and follow the conference on social media, including twitter. /wr)

About the author

Cynthia Cockburn is a feminist researcher and writer, and visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at City University London. Her most recent book is From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis (Zed, 2007)

War is social. It may be about wounding and killing, but these actions are performed in the context of relationships between identifiable people – people who have a sense of self, and a notion of the identity of the ones they attack or by whom they are attacked. Likewise, although it goes against the grain to think of rape and sexual torture as relational, it makes sense to ask who the rapist thinks he is, and who he thinks his victim is. I was prompted to this thought by reading the words of a young Vietnamese woman as later reported by the US soldier who, with his colleagues, was about to rape, mutilate and murder her. Speaking English, she surprised them (he later wrote) by asking, “Why are you doing this to me?”  You and me. She asked him in effect to identify himself, and to indicate the identity he ascribed to her. I wanted to try to answer her question, since he did not.It is sometimes suggested in the case of rapes in peace time that some are committed by men who are clinically insane, who cannot be held responsible for their actions and about whom it makes no sense to ask sociological questions. Be that as it may, the perpetrators in that US squad during the Vietnam war of 1955-75 were enlisted soldiers, operating effectively in a military system. This suggests a certain level of social and psychic competence. Besides, as war rape characteristically is, this was a collective act. We must assume therefore that it was performed by knowing individuals, who had a verifiable subjective sense of self, enabling and indeed requiring conscious processes of identification and dis-identification with others.A useful way of understanding identification is to distinguish between a person’s sense of self, and the ‘identity’ projected onto her or him by other people or institutions. Identity is complex, made up of several positionings in terms of power. We may assume the soldier ‘identified’ the woman as ethnically inferior. He was born under the Stars and Stripes, she is a slant-eyed oriental. In class terms, she is economically inferior, worth less than him, ‘worthless’. He also identifies her as a woman, to whose body, as a male in a patriarchal gender order, he feels entitled. This gender subordination is amplified by the fact that civilian status is usually perceived as feminizing by those whose sense-of-self is of being armed, of belonging to a military apparatus.

We know that processes of identification are unavoidable. They are what makes us human beings in relation to differentiated others in a complex human society. But there are a variety of modes in which we can constitute ourselves in relation to others. At one extreme we can define the self by constituting an ‘other’ who is totally alien and inimical, who may even have to be annihilated if one’s self is to survive. At the other extreme, the self may be constituted in relation to another conceived as an individual or group whose existence validates one’s own, even complements it. Usually we conceive of ourselves and others in forms somewhere between these two possibilities.

To attempt an answer to the young woman’s question (how I wish I knew her name), I decided to look at instances of armed conflict in which the men of a military force abstain from sexual violence against enemy women.  I uncovered research, first, on male soldiers of the Israeli Defence Force. The researcher, Tal Nitsan [10] observed that Israeli Jewish soldiers seldom perpetrate rape on Palestinian women, although the Occupation presents ample opportunity. Why, the researcher wondered, this infrequency, when the occurrence of rape of Israeli Jewish women by Israeli Jewish men is no less than that of intra-ethnic rape in other countries? And, given a record of other kinds of brutal treatment by IDF soldiers of Palestinians, why not rape? The answer, it emerged from interviews with IDF soldiers, is to be found in a religious ethic in Judaism that constitutes Palestinian women as profoundly impure – so dirty that such physical intimacy would befoul the Jewish rapist. The IDF soldier’s sense of self and other was constituted in terms of such extreme alienation that evasion had priority over subjection. Ironically, rape was averted.

The other case of abstention from rape I examined was in the case of the Vietcong forces during the Vietnam war. While not only the US but also their South Vietnamese allies, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) frequently raped Vietnamese women, those of the Vietcong very seldom did so. When rape did occur, the perpetrator was publicly shamed by his unit, brought to trial and sentenced to execution. The moral injunction in this case derived not from religion but politics. The Vietcong forces were tightly controlled by the Communist political wing of the National Liberation Front, whose cadres were involved right down to the three-man battle units in the field. While the political command did not hesitate to order brutal executions of the leaders of the ARVN-controlled villages through which the NLF troops passed, it sought to constitute soldierly identity as one involving ‘respect for the people’. Though the armed conflict was deadly, Vietcong soldiers were taught to view the population among which they fought not as the enemy but rather as the masses of a future Communist Vietnamese society. The belief was inculcated that it was wrong to steal even ‘a needle and thread’ from a villager. To rape his wife or sister was unthinkable.

So rape is averted in these two cases, it appears, by extreme forms of identity constitution. In the case of the Vietcong, the Vietnamese woman is constituted as ‘like’, ‘close’ to the self, ‘worthy of respect’. In the case of the IDF, the Palestinian woman is put beyond the pale, remote from the self, cast out from the social. Surprisingly, this process too results in an infrequency of rape, because the woman is so despised as to be sexually untouchable.

The key factor at work in both cases, it seems to me, is a further process of identification, that of the male soldiers with each other. It is well understood, not only by academics researching militaries, but by those who train and command soldiers, that male bonding is an important social mechanism in building a strong and effective fighting force. The men must identify each other as equals, gain their sense of self from the respect their comrades accord them, and in turn achieve viability in dangerous situations from being able to identify with and trust the soldiers of their unit. This, I would suggest, is the factor that inhibits rape in both cases.  The US soldier rapist with whom this story opened would be likely to gain approval and regard from his fellows by participating in the gang rape of that young Vietnamese woman. He would lose the respect he so badly needs by failing to do so. In the case of both the Israeli soldier and the Vietcong fighter, if he rapes an enemy woman he will be condemned and cast out by his comrades. It is in these details, I think, that war shows itself to be social.  There may be hints in these insights as to how the incidence of sexual violence in war might be reduced.  And perhaps if we learn how men can be led away from raping enemy women, we may be on the way to learning, too, how they may be led to reconsider the identification of certain men as enemies.

To read openDemocracy 50.50′s coverage of the Nobel Women’s Initiative conference, May 23-25, Women Forging a New Security:Ending Sexual Violence in War click here [7]

You can read the author’s article ‘Why Are You Doing This to Me? Identity, Power and Sexual Violence in War’ published in Jónasdóttir, Anna G., Valerie Bryson and Kathleen B.Jones (eds) (2011) Sexuality, Gender and Power: Intersectional and Transnational Perspectives

The Anti-Obama Buzz

Barack Obama sitting in the White House patio.

(Click title or pix for separate web page viewing.)

Even Rush Limbaugh and Beck are not disputing ben Laden is dead. But dueling conspiracy theories offer options on which to hang public disbelief. Here’s part of the anti-Obama buzz. A comment opened the dispute:

“I always find it surprising how many hate the president because he is half white”

Wrong, he is despised by people in the know because he is ALL incapable and totally inept. Even this could be forgiven if he wasn’t supremely arrogant on top of it all.
There is NOTHING worse then someone who simply doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. This is the single most glaring character flaw of this pathetic wannabe leader.

Another comment:

He brings nothing to the office of president and under his (lack of) leadership we have languished in a lengthy recession and due to his insane policies we have seen the price of gasoline skyrocket to about $4.15 per gallon.

He is laughed at; ridiculed for his arrogance and pomposity and look upon with amazement for his total tone deaf political stances. The political bump he gets off the backs of the great military will be short lived and when we go to fill our cars up and have to pay over $80.00 his numbers will be again where they deserve to be, in the toilet. When people see again and again as they shop for food how the prices have shot up they will be reminded of how empty this presidents suit really is.

Strikingly, both comments are apolitical. The writers ignore the President’s wish to rise taxes on the rich, penalize fossil fuel consumption, regulate Wall Street, or openly accept same sexual orientation in the military—or invade a foreign country with a small military team hoping to find Usama ben Laden, without knowing for sure he was there. They seethe at Barack Obama’s “arrogance and pomposity.” He is “despised” because he is “supremely arrogant,” “pathetic,” “incapable,” and a “flawed” “wannabe.”

I’ve learned that people express what matters; and it’s him—Barack at the top is “NOTHING.” They seem—inconsolable, empty of trust and filled with loathing and fear.

 Last week, Barack disarmed the ludicrous with the playful, chiding Don Trump. Trump’s scatological cursing of the Chinese and feudal claims of oversight of the Middle East burned up Twitter before ben Laden’s death. Obama played the dozens on The Donald’s pride and clowned on Trump’s prowess, suggesting he find Biggy and Tupac.

Across the internet is bad news with bad karma hovering over a bad, failed person, Barack. The echo of counterfeit truth in these statements is not about Barack. It is about those in our company who fear him beyond race because of race. Race would make him real, like us, sharing dreams, grieving, loving. Barack has to be beyond grief or love. So with confidence, they declare race isn’t it. Nor can he be tender or fearless.

Many in our midst seethe at his (I’m quoting from this week’s NYT comments) “arrogance and pomposity.” He is “despised” because he is “supremely arrogant,” “pathetic,” “incapable,” and a “flawed” “wannabe.” Inconsolable, empty of trust and filled with loathing and fear, across the internet such formulas echo of counterfeit truth.

Many fear him beyond race because of race. While declaring race isn’t it, Obama must be diminished: he wears the thousand masks of our fears. We must make him a victim. He laughs at us as we condemn what lies in our own hearts. Having been socialist, Muslim, a taqiyya, by what new insanity can he chose, a scholar asks, “laughter over lamentation, making fun of his refusal to conform?” Even his innocence is double edged. Obama gets the joke: weare burdened by his yoke. His laughter resists on our behalf, but it compromises the social order; Trump called it “inappropriate.”

Conservatives are making every effort to numb the national conversation by making the attack intense, singular and personal, and increasing the tension and blame. Their talking points mask their psychic flaw: the greater the falsehood the more the canting person believes it to be true. “Disgusting,” Glenn Beck wildly called the President’s plan to visit Ground Zero. His revulsion reminds us that fear has one important political utility: fear feeds on itself.

What we are witnessing is classic textbook class warfare; economic battles fought in cultural and political terms. The unemployed are the new lupen; the budget, the new declaration. But read the document. Look at the numbers. The war is conducted for the singular goal of profit and power put out of the common reach.

The President and the National Security Team Monitoring the Insertion of Navy SEAL team 6.

After Obama’s surgical strike, conservatives are making every effort to numb the national conversation. The talking points mask the blind parts of its psychic flaw: the greater the denial and contradictions, the more the character invests in its beliefs. In other words, the greater the falsehood the more the canting person believes it to be true. That’s why conservatives ignore the fact that it was an act of state sponsored assassination that raised the threat risk around the world.

“Anybody can give the order,” the comments run. By this calculus, ben Laden wasn’t important since both he and Obama did the same thing: give the order for others to kill. “Disgusting,” Glenn Beck called the President’s plan to visit Ground Zero. His revulsion reminds us that fear has one important political utility: fear feeds on itself.

A reader writes below of the countermeasure: “it adds faith that Obama is taking this fire from us and keeping the flame alive in his heart.”

A truly scary thought is that Obama’s “arrogrance” may stem from his rock solid comfort with his own humilty.

Better grab a clutch of pink flamingos.

“So Much Things to Say”

US President Barack Obama in Egypt at the Great Pyramds and the Sphinx June 2009

There is a surprising – and shocking – lack of respect for the rule of nations in many of the remarks in the comment stream. America simply can not go halfway around the world and impose its will on a legitmate country undergoing an internal crisis.

That’s called an invasion, not revolutionary assistance. And despite the fact that Reagan did in Grenada, both Bushes did, and that Barack has continued the war in Afghanistan, it is simple one note thinking to believe America can fix what’s broken in the regions of the world through bluster and fear.

For those who have accused the President of doing nothing (“fiddling while Cairo burns”), they conveniently omit what they would have him do. Blaming Obama does not solve the problem, help the Egyptian people, or stabilize the transition of state power in Egypt.

Blaming Obama is an American past-time that warps reality to reflect personal views about him that have nothing to do with the objective conditions on the ground in Egypt or elsewhere.

Does anyone think the British are blaming their prime minister, or the Chinese, the Italians, the French, or the Soviets or Saudis, all of whom are effected by changes in Egypt?

There seems to be too many delusions about American power. Patience is the proper course while Egypt works through its own issues. Our interference, whether sending the Navy to the gulf, or speaking out to substitute our views for the will of the people of Egypt on many levels would only make things worse. What we are seeing with President Obama is a latent anger that is expressed as a new class of denial. It’s a denial that denies it is denying. It calls for him to do things that we don’t want him to do. But either way, he is to be blamed.

Presidential Staff Rahm Emanuel, Reggie Love, Valerie Jarrett in Egypt, June 2009

Many of the key relationships of statecraft are inverse; a move in one direction actually has the opposite effect. Like backing up a car, turning the wheel to the right moves the car to the left. But inverse relationships defy the common sense of our culture and experiences. We think in direct terms. That’s why sound bites build on fallacies have such tenacity and staying power.

So while some blame Obama for every crisis – or its mismanagement – here’s a direct axiom to be remembered. This is an international world, and we share it; we don’t rule it.

Egyptian students listening to US President Barack Obama during a speech at Cairo University, June 4, 2009.

II

It’s amazing, and Egypt reminds us, that the most profound expressions of liberty and freedom are found in simple acts. Standing up and gathering in free assembly. Adding a personal voice to the collective voices of a people calling for freedom. Experiencing the bravery of facing the unknown. Turning aside fear to find the courage to face death for your beliefs while finding exhilaration in new hope. The acceptance from hand to hand of shared food and drink. The soaring feeling of safety in the face of military fire power.

It is equally amazing that every political leader opposed to progress and freedom has coined the same, tired, transparent reasons. They cite their job descriptions as the reason for the exercise of power without addressing its excesses. They frame repression as a patriotic reaction to “threats” to the “security” of the state.

They put into play a governance model which leads to clashes of public illogic. They sound warnings against the truth, keeping the people disorganized by appealing to their fears and consolidating their power. In times of intense conflict, the truth is always the first causality. Its fall spins and grasps cliches.

But the Egyptian people are resisting and in simple ways, standing steadfast, invite the world and their fellows to join with them. Like one large family, they have turned to each other and reclaimed the small ways. Their claims makes their leaders look foolish if they react with force to the “threat” of peace. Their claims make their grievances clear and reveal the government’s deaf ear.

US President Barack Obama greets a member of the Egyption delegation before the start of an expanded bilateral meeting with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the Oval Office, Sept. 1, 2010. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks with President Mubarak at right. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Mubarak and the current leaders are tone deaf. Their sincerity vanishes; their only “truth” becomes accusing those on the side of freedom that they are wrong. Their dire predictions become self-fulfilling; they drive the nails in the end of their existence.

Even now there are reports American officials had to bribe Egyptian officials to release the planes sent to pick American citizens. The disappearance and reappearance of the police was clearly contrived. The outrage of blaming Al Jazeera for the internal confrontations laughingly weakens any claim the government has to legitmacy – especially, if they can be brought down by a small group of reporters broadcasting on TV. Rats scurry in the light.

As Mubarak leaves, may he find comfort in the words of his religion rather in his power or his personal will: may God be with him and may he go in peace.

Click to hear traditional folk music of Egypt.

Means Testing Civility

Civil War Soldiers Playing Cards

Our moral imagination has loss its center, that place where the virtues of personal character, contributions to the common good, and a careful reading of experience and logic are means tested in action. What has replaced charity and hope as guiding, glorifying principles of the American milieu is power and the power to distort.

The means test for this conclusion is based on observed inconsistencies, most recently seen in the Republican controlled House. The House corrected a Constitutional faux pas of unsworn members participating in official House actions by rushing through a bill with only four minutes of debate. The Speaker insists the CBO is wrong and engaged in double counting, when it is the Republicans own bill that is being used for estimating an additional $230 billion in deficits if healthcare reform is repealed. The Speaker, with a “schedule conflict,” winds up at a Washington reception when the nation’s heart was collectively in Tucson. (His staff reports he left early.)

Three times this week, politics has danced around the media. Yet media rhetoric still has the same old fallacies, the complacent lack of accuracy and facts, the cheap shots that stifle alternatives and substitute for insights.

The first dance occurred when two senior House members, one the Chair of the Rules committee, raised their hands before a video monitor to be sworn in and later a Republican member from the floor tried to justify that gesture od standing before a as meeting the criteria for being officially sworn in. The second, when the Speaker left the reception before the President’s televised speech; he didn’t want to get caught by a camera at an inopportune video moment. The third dance, a solo, was the eight minute teleprompted video of Ms. Palin. (You could see its reflection in her glasses.) In the video, Sarah Palin uses a phrase in her defense historically used to incite violence against the religious group to which the recovering Congresswoman belongs.

Media is driving and blocking the conversations about what we share in common, the alternative ways to approach our progress, the details of fixing what’s broken.

But the clashing, opposite views have much that is the same. This is not cynical, but a deep look at underlying processes with the system. Nice or naughty, positions on both sides have been sanitized of examples, supporting detail, model building, and a weighing of pros and cons. Both sides have parsed and pared down to sound-bites and opinions that ring with catch phrases. Both sides hide the technical details of legislation in committee and staff work, making it difficult for the public to know what’s really in a bill. And its a cliche, but both sides are far too driven by money and PR campaigns and spin and blame shifting.

There’s an old Southern adage that liars steal and my mind still rings with that $8 billion we shrunk-wrapped and shipped to Iran and the money sent to Afganistan that ends up in enemy hands. While the detested Chinese build joint infra-structure projects around the world and export their workers, we funnel money to governments and fail to benefit from it being “recycled.”

Lucy Parsons, Texas born in 1853, a slave, married to a Confederate soldier, a stalwart of the Labor Movement in Chicago, offers quotes about government that won’t be heard on Fox or MSNBC, but are memorable in their guidance: “never be deceived that the rich will let you vote away their wealth” and “governments never lead, they follow progress.”

This week, especially, we are well served to remember the greatest progressive social movement in our history occurred through non-violence, and remained so, despite brutal beatings (one of which left House member John Lewis slightly impaired), lynchings, senseless murder (in Haley Barbour’s Mississippi 15 year old Emmett Till had a 75 pound cotton scale tied around his neck to sink his beaten body), cattle prods, fire hoses, and police dogs. Yet our institutional memory is so devalued that no one in the White House of an African-American President knew the civil rights legacy of Shirley Sherrod and her husband Charles, or knew that her father had been murdered and no one convicted of the crime.

Until we recognize and learn from our history, we are condemned to restore the old insanity. Decisions have lost their principles, and if we continue to allow the pursuit of power through money and deceit, our comfort will come from the wrong means and will bring about bad ends. Right now, we would do well to remember unexpected dangers lay in freedom.

National Genocide

African-American Civil War Soldiers Burying the Battlefield Dead, Library of Congress.

Closer to home, the bell has been rung: the $230 billion cost of analysis released by the Congressional Budget Office on Thursday that Speaker Boehmer discussed and questioned and claimed represented double counting was based on the health care repeal bill that House Republicans introduced on Wednesday!

The deaths of two persons needing transplants in Arizona is the first step toward cost rationing that will lead to national genocide. The CBO estimates, according to the NYTimes, 54 million people will be uninsured by 2019.

It all seems surreal. Arizona, according to BNET, burned through $2.8 billion of federal stimulus money while its politicians blamed the Democrats and Obama for the deficit and lack of jobs. The state even funded a study of algae as an alternative source of fuel. Now, the state, by default, has established ipso facto Republican death panels for patients with critical needs. Not a word about real care for Americans with critical needs from the new House leadership or Republicans in the Senate as members of its own party say no to those whose lives could be saved. WE are a country without virtue, killing itself. These are dark, tragic days for America. This is not what the people voted for. It is not our shining hour.

“When the Enemy is Relaxed, Make Them Toil”

 

 

President Barack Obama, Michele Obama, Sacha & Malia Obama landing in Ghana, 2009. Official White House photo by Pete Souza.

We are operating in the reality of the strange world of sub-particle nuclear theory when by a quark of politics, a good guy is being accelerated by political forces to become a smack-down outlaw with bona fides. But even here, policy doesn’t comport with photo-ops.

 For months, my screen saver was the Presidential family deplaning in Ghana, to cheering and the rhythms of wildly beating drums. But the Administration has turned a strange silence to the plight of women in the Congo. In the new heart of darkness, the rapes of women and female children exceed 15,000 a year. Many of these attacks are carried out by gangs of soldiers who leave the women brutalized, injured, or dead.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton With African Women in a Congo Marketplace

Secretary Clinton, a world leader in articulating the struggles and injustices of women, has condemned the continuing attacks in annual statements, but seems to have no policy of carrots or sticks to stop the degrading brutality and killing. More than the START agreement, the US failure to protect helpless women who are victims of guerrilla warfare in a failed state is an example of American impotence.

At some point, we must show the world that not only our vengance but our values matter. If we can conduct a war in Afganistan financed by our own monies paid to warlords for protection, and do so with Republican or Democratic protests being mute and null, surely the President can display the Joint Chiefs in a photo-op endorsing START, signal other world leaders to express and rally support (a global campaign modeled after his Chicago-style campaign), and summon Sen. Kyl and others to the White House and let them stand on the lawn to tell the American people why they oppose the treaty, a Republican legacy in place since the Reagan presidency.

Barack needs a copy of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” so he can learn the importance of terrain and the means of defending and attacking from the high ground and defeating those who advance on his positions. Since he refuses to enter the trenches, Sun Tzu makes clear how to use the advantages of the lofty perch. So far, Barack’s actions are a companion guide of common mistakes.

And after Sen. Kyl stands in the “rockets red glare” of the nuclear threat and the White House keig lights flanked by the Joint Chiefs and decides to stand down, then Barack needs to go after the men who think rape is a blood sport. Making the world safe for women, beginning in the Congo, is more cost effective than funding war lords, has a lasting effect on world peace and stability, and will certainly energize the disaffected base. The sovereignhood of women is more important than the respect for borders, and for a change, Barack would have done something we can believe in.

Texas worker, mother of two, 1942.

The Right to be a Bigot

Good riddance! Juan Williams, a journalist formerly with the Washington Post, who authored the companion book to the PBS special, “Eyes on the Prize,” and who was frequently seen on Fox News and heard on NPR was fired as a news analyst by NPR. Juan was arrogant and out of touch. His bonafides were always suspect. (Many see ad hominen here; others nod, recalling his description to Michele Obama to “avoid being Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress.”)

But many see his firing as further proof that we as a country require each statement to be “politically correct,” never speaking of other groups of people in ways that actually express our inner and truest thoughts. Why can’t a television personality be allowed to be critical of Jews, or express fear of Muslims? Or to question Obama’s birth? Why can’t journalists and others express negative views on intra-gender relationships? Why can’t blacks be criticized for their own failings? Isn’t self examination painful?

Truth is one thing, the public trust another. I am okay if someone wants to admits he or she is homophobic, racist, Islamophobic, sexist, or xenophobic. I openly call for their mea culpa. I would admire them for their open honesty. But should such a person be placed in a position of public trust, given their views? No. I don’t want them to be judges or journalists, sprouting the fear that blames those who have the right to free expression for crimes they did not commit. For those in the public realm, it should be an issue of private therapy, not public confession.

And why not? Because the second part of their honesty is usually that they see nothing wrong with their self-indulgent views of bigotry and ethnocentricism. How would Juan Williams feel if people followed him in stores, thinking he might shoplift because of his color? Or if were followed home by the police because he can afford to live in a neighborhood that others may think is off limits to him due to color rather than income?

Honesty should never become a safe house for bigotry and prejudice. Confession of a crime, whether an act or idea, whether murder or bias, still carries consequences. Our compassion is to show mercy, certainly. But mercy should never endorse the sin.