Just World News with Helena Cobban – Page 160 – Info, analysis, discussion

Bookwriting “Mission Accomplished”

Well I haven’t decided which aircraft carrier to make a showboat appearance on yet… Gotta try on my fighter-aircraft piloting duds and have the midshipmen paint the banner…
Nah, that all sounds like too much darn work. Because me, I feel I really did accomplish something already, getting this book manuscript produced and sent off to Paradigm very darn close to the agreed deadline… And anyway, in time to meet my personal deadline, which was today.
It’s been a lot of work but I feel I’ve learned a lot by doing it, and have usefully pulled together in new ways things I knew in some sense before.
The “new” things were mainly what you’ll see in Chapters 5 and 6, which are on, respectively, climate change and the shifting global power balances. Re climate change, I have of course long been aware there’s a huge “issue” out there. But frankly, when Tom Friedman would keep going on an on about it I often felt that

Well, now I feel a lot better able to substantiate that latter criticism. (And the former one certainly still stands.)
Climate change and the shift in global power balances are the two huge issues of which Bush– along with the vast bulk of the US political elite from both parties (except Al Gore)– have all remained recklessly unaware while they have kept 90% of their attention on the still-unfolding debacle in Iraq and the completely mis-focused, and actually unsuccessful, “GWOT”.
Indeed, re the shifting global power balances (see my earlier post on the subject here) it is not just that the US political elite has been AWOL attention-wise as these shifts have been occurring in the past 5 years, but the actions and choices of the Bush administration have themselves considerably accelerated these shifts. Well, okay, mainly one fateful choice and all the actions that flowed from that: viz., the choice to invade Iraq unilaterally, without UN approval of the decision and indeed in the face of the publicly expressed opposition of most other world powers to it.
From that point of view, we can see Iraq as the “Angola” of US imperial over-reach… the bridge too far whose taking then sets in train a much broader rollback of the power-projection project. (I have to note that my old and dear friend the strategic analyst Mike MccGwire foresaw all this in a phone conversation he and I had just days after the US invasion, in March 2003.)
The US militarists’ misadventures in Iraq have also– like those of their Israeli counterparts in Lebanon last year– provided a very valuable lesson to the whole world about the rapid decline in the strategic utility of raw military power in an age when people all around the world can actually see and understand what happens to the people living in the war-zone.
So anyway, I’ve been learning a lot and shall use much of this new material in shorter pieces that I’m planning to write between now and when the book comes out, next spring.
Meanwhile, big thanks to all of you who responded to my requests for help along the way (and for the general support you expressed for this book project.) I think Christiane will definitely be getting a couple of free copies of the book for her suggestions re epigraphs and graphics. I need to figure out if anyone else will be on the list…
As for me, I wish I could curl up in a ball and sleep for a week but alas I have lots of other things to do. Tomorrow I am giving this talk at the World Bank on the last book (the Africa book.) Yesterday something really nice happened. Last week I sent out an electronic notice about the World Bank gig to an old email list I had of people connected with that book. Over the past few days I’ve heard back from quite a lot of them– nice supportive stuff. But the best was yesterday, from Norbert Mao, who’s the elected chair of the “LC-5” district in Gulu, Uganda… He wrote that the copies of the book I sent him last year had really helped him deal with all the pressure the Northern Ugandans have been facing to let the ICC proceed with its plan to prosecute the LRA leaders, at a still very complex time in the peace negotiations there.
So it was great to get that feedback from Mao. It reminded me why I write books at all, rather than just posting here on the blog or doing newspaper columns or magazine articles. Books have a solidity and a shelf-life to them that is still quite distinctive. So I guess it is worth all the anguish??

Nonviolent actions growing in Burma

I have been so moved to read of the determined and well-disciplined pro-democracy activities of the Buddhist monks (and nuns) in Burma. The Boston Globe has a good picture, along with the AP daylead on the story, here.
English-Al-Jazeera has pretty good version of the Burmese events, too. It includes a picture of monks walking with calm, nonviolent nonviolent activism.
One little mistake there. The parliamentary election that the National League for Democracy won was on 8-8-1988, not in 1990. The results of that election (= power to govern) were then immediately stolen from them by the military– very similar to what happened to Hamas, 18 years later. And since then, the NLD’s leaders and many of its cadres have been ruthlessly hunted down, imprisoned, and in many cases tortured.
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991; but that has not prevented the junta from keeping her either in prison or in very tight home-confinement since 1988– with just one short period when she was allowed a small amount of travel around the country before they clamped down once again.
In my 2000 book The Moral Architecture of World Peace: Nobel Laureates Discuss Our Global Future I had a whole chapter about Daw Suu, as she is called. It was very inspiring to learn about her and the development of the NLD’s thinking and organization. I learned a lot from, in particular, these two books: The Voice of Hope (1997), a compilation of discussions she had with writer Alan Clements; and Freedom from Fear (1995), a compilation of her own writings.
In the discussions with Clements, in particular, he seems to be somewhat of a skeptic, asking “But what about choosing violence out of compassion, if it’s the right word… ?” Daw Suu replies, “It depends on the situation and I think that in the context of Burma today, non-violent means are the best way to achieve our goal. But I certainly do not condemn those who fight the ‘just fight’, as it were. My father did, and I admire him greatly for it.”
… Well, I am in the last couple of days of work on my book. I totally need to get back to it. Right now. But I couldn’t resist blogging about this.
What’s happening in Burma these days could change things a lot. In Burma, I certainly hope. But also, far beyond Burma.

Ebola in the DRC; Nonviolence events suspended

The people of the chronically conflict-riven Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) now have another assailant to face: the ultra-deadly Ebola virus, which has erupted in Kasai Occidentale province in the past couple of weeks reportedly killing 170 people so far.
Kasai also apparently has cases of typhoid and the also-deadly Shigella virus. These are the tragic consequences of the complete breakdown of state authority and of chronic inter-group armed conflict.
I am very concerned about this because one of my good friends in the Global Network for Nonviolence has been working in Kasai Occidentale for a while and is now involved in the quarantining effort there and feeling, obviously, personally at risk from the Ebola.
Our friend, who asked to stay anonymous at this point, gave us permission to post his most recent letter to the GNN Steering Committee over at the GNN website. (It’s here.) It is also his birthday today, which makes everything harder for him.
He asks for people’s prayers and support for all the people dealing with the Ebola. Please go over to that post on the GNN site and send him a message to tell him you care about what’s happening to him and his colleagues.
As you’ll see, our colleague Sagar Gurung also had to postpone his plans for International Peace Day, in Kathmandu, because of the new political risks and uncertainties there. I am so in awe of what these GNN colleagues are trying to do, in extremely difficult circumstances.
All strength and comfort to them! (And really, please do send your messages of support to them there.)

Public discussion on my Africa book, Washington DC, Sept. 26

I am happy to announce that there will be a public discussion (and book-signing) of my book Amnesty After Atrocity, organized by the InfoShop at the World Bank, next Wednesday, September 26.
It will be in the World Bank’s J Building, Auditorium J1-050, at 701, 18th St NW, Washington DC. Chairing the discussion will be Katherine Marshall, a really fascinating dynamo of a woman who was appointed by former World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn to be Vice-President for Ethics, Values, and Religion.
I hope there are some JWN readers in the DC region who would like to come. I would also really appreciate it if you could circulate the announcement of the event to anyone you think would be interested in coming. It’s here.
The announcement adds the following details: “Coffee and cookies will be served… (A security pass is not required for this event.)”
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An Iranian Schindler’s List: “Zero Degree Turn”

Remember the controversy over the current Iranian President’s inflammatory questioning of the Holocaust, at one point doubting its extent, at other moments playing up old regional wounds, asking why the Mideast had to “pay” for Europe’s sins? Iran’s image has taken a severe beating as a result of such rhetoric.
Ironically, Iranian state television since April has been showing an extraordinary series, entitled “Zero Degree Turn.” The most expensive production in Iranian TV history, the government approved and funded program sympathetically portrays the suffering of Jews at the hands of the Nazis, and depicts an Iranian embassy employee in Paris as a hero who helps his Jewish love and her family flee.
The intriguing series has been a smash hit inside Iran. It’s also gaining an audience internationally, via satellite and net re-broadcasts. Here’s a ten minute sample, with English sub-titles, on YouTube.
For an overview of the series, see Sunday’s AP report. Among Israeli reviews, here’s an early skeptical Ha’aretz report in June. Ynet ran this more upbeat assessment just last week. Ynet draws from an interesting interview of the series producer, Hassan Fatthi, in The Wall Street Journal..
Some may object to Fatthi’s comment that, “The murder of innocent Jews during World War II is just as despicable, sad and shocking as the killing of innocent Palestinian women and children by racist Zionist soldiers.” Yet even David Horovitz in the Jerusalem Post is more impressed by the fact that,

“Monday night after Monday night across Iran, Fatthi is broadcasting an unmistakable challenge to his own president’s efforts at historical revisionism. State TV is essentially telling Ahmadinejad to shut up.”

While the show’s central love story is fictional, Fatthi’s inspiration for his series is true, of an Iranian diplomat in Paris during WWII, Abdol Hussein Sardari, who “saved over a thousand European Jews by forging Iranian passports and claiming they belonged to an Iranian tribe.”
Move over Cyrus.
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I don’t have the time to highlight these reports and comment. In the next few days, I’m finishing an essay about the previous Iranian President’s critically important reformist legacy, one that Iran doubters dismiss too readily. Anybody else miss Khatami’s “Dialogue Among Civilizations?”
Funny thing, just as I’m crossing the “T’s,” this report appears in today’s Financial Times: “Khatami Plots a Comeback.”
If “they” let him run in 2009, my sense of the Iranian landscape (at least as of today) is that he’d win in a landslide. Imagine, we could have a second chance at a Khatami-Clinton Summit.

“Bending” Iraqi detainees to the US will

The commander of US detention facilities in Iraq, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, on Tuesday told a group of military bloggers that the US is now holding 25,000 detainees there. He also, more scarily yet, said that the military has activated programs with the detainees designed to “bend them back to our will.”
This language does not make it sound like a program of friendly persuasion. It makes it sound like highly coercive brainwashing. And it seems it is being practised with particular energy on the “about 840-something” detainees who are minors.
That is a shockingly high number of youthful detainees. (We can note that the US and Somalia are the only two countries in the world that have not ratified the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.)
Stone confirmed reports that some of the detainees are as young as 11 and 12 years old:

now, the trend is towards the youth. And you know, if they’re 11 years old and 12 years old and 13 years old, we tend to see them, the psychologists tend too see them as, you know, kids that, you know, are — can be told to do anything and they’ll go do it. The older ones, the 15, 16, 17-year-old ones, you know, they’re the harder nuts. And again my numbers are going to be a little bit off, but 50 to 60 of those we’ve been able to actually get criminal court hearings against.

Many, many aspects of what Stone says are truly outrageous. (Indeed, his entire discussion there constitutes a very important document of the US “counter-insurgency” mindset at work in Iraq.) Detaining children… using the fact and conditions of detention to try to brainwash people and/or as hostages in a cynical political game… trying to use coercively applied interpretations of “religion” in this brainwashing effort…
Mainly, I wanted to blog this– despite the horrendous time-crunch on my book deadline– because what Stone describes his units as so hurriedly trying to do in Iraq is all very similar indeed to what the Brits were trying to do with “Operation Pipeline” during their brutal, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to quell the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya 50 years ago. As I wrote about here— PDF– about 18 months ago.
Interestingly, Stone presents a large part of his effort as very humane, and almost similar to “social work” (Operation Pipeline was also in its time publicized as having a “rehabilitative” intent.)
Stone also writes about how enthusiastic Iraqi Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi has become about the “educational” (i.e. mostly brainwashing) parts of the detention plan.
Well, maybe running a Pipeline-like detain-and-brainwash operation in Iraq will win the US a few extra months for Washington’s occupation of the country. Maybe not. It will almost certainly, however, sow additional trauma amongst everyone who takes part, both detainees and detainers, so from every point of view it is an extremely tragic episode.
But it won’t materially affect the ultimate fate of the US occupation there. Ending the occupation remains the prime responsibility of all Americans. We need to do it sooner rather than later and in a way that reduces to an absolute minimum both the conflict levels as we withdraw and the conflict levels within the Iraq that we leave behind. With wise diplomacy that is still possible– though of course nothing can bring back to life the many thousands who have died there in the 54 months of this senseless war to date.

“Rick Warren should be in jail”

“Rick Warren should be in jail.” So should Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, Robert H. Schuller, and perhaps even…. Helena Cobban. :-}
I’m referring, if you haven’t guessed, to prison libraries and to the NYTimes report on new Federal Prison guidelines for libraries, specifically their sections on faith.
Kudos to Sojourners and “Sojo mail” for the catchy, if purposeful, headline about Mr. Warren. From their e-mail today:

Imagine walking into your local library, planning to read a theologian such as Reinhold Niebuhr or Karl Barth, or a popular inspirational work, such as Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life or Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
But instead of finding such important and popular titles, you discover that the religion section has been decimated – stripped of any book that did not appear on a government-approved list.
That’s exactly what’s happening right now to inmates in federal prisons under a Bush Administration policy. As The New York Times put it, “chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.”

Imagine, the Federal Prisons have labored to compile lists of approved books on faith; those not on the list get pulled or blocked. The specific criteria and the actual approved lists are not open for public review; this is, after all, the Bush-Cheney Administration.
Here’s a Sojo link for a suggested protest letter to the Prisons’ Director.
So how did the Bush Administration, reputed for faith-based approaches to social problems, come up with this bizarre policy? Maybe it comes from the “Feith-based” neoconservative view of the world — as in, “it’s all about national security.” According then to the “Stardardized Chapel Library Project,” we prevent prisoners from accessing anything that would “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.” As claimed by the Federal Prisons spokesperson quoted in the Times,

“We really wanted consistently available information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts.”

Just who, we wonder, determines what religious materials are “reliable teachings?” What’s meant by “radicalize,” or “discrimination?” Should we prohibit a book that says there’s only one way to be accepted by God? Wouldn’t that be “discriminating” against others who pointed to another “path?” One would think, this is absurd. Or as the Mark Early of Prison Fellowship puts it,

“It’s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer…. There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.”

Meanwhile, back to the front lines in Iraq – and their religious freedoms – consider this allegation that some US soldiers are being compelled to participate in Christian services. Perhaps there’s a “devil” or two in the details here, as I find it hard to believe that the Pentagon, much less Secretary Gates, would knowingly mandate the practice of any religion by soldiers.
Yet as we’ve noted here before, some “dispensationalist” Christian-zionist groups still view Iraq as a “crusade” for the spread of Christianity. It’s advance will bring on the rapture, Armageddon, the return & reign of Christ, etc. etc. See, for example, Max Blumenthal’s report on “Operation Straight Up” a group that operates with the Pentagon’s “blessing” and proselytizes among active-duty members of the US military, including with inflammatory apocalyptic video games.
In the judgment of Mikey Weinstein, a former Reagan Administration White House,

“The constitution has been assaulted and brutalized,… Thanks to the influence of extreme Christian fundamentalism, the wall separating church and state is nothing but smoke and debris. And OSU is the IED that exploded the wall separating church and state in the Pentagon and throughout our military.”

Meanwhile, the US State Department recently issued its annual, heavily politicized report on religious freedom around the world.
No doubt the rest of the world wonders:

“What, pray tell, gives you the standing to show us the way?

‘Super-typhoon’ approaching Shanghai

The very best of luck to our friends and readers in eastern China as they brace for the arrival of Typhoon Wipha.
Xinhua tells us that,

The WaPo tells us that Shanghai, a city of 17 million people, has evacuated 1.8 million of them.
The 4th Assessment Report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued earlier this year, warns us that it is “very likely” that because of global warming there will greater numbers of violent precipitation events worldwide as this century progresses.
So governments had better get used to organizing large-scale and effective mass evacuations of residents from large cities. Governments are the only bodies that can do this.
Here in the US, there is still low confidence that the government can do much better next time around than “Heckuva job Brownie” managed to do in September 2005…
Meantime, very best wishes to emergency planners in China and other East Asian countries as they deal with Wipha.

And now for the “Right to Drive” Movement

Recently, I waxed airily about the “right to dry” movement and the “answer blowing in the wind.” Can’t resist noting, in the same (ironic) spirit, the budding “right to drive” movement in our erstwhile ally, Saudi Arabia.
Nascar dudes, check this out: (from The Independent)

“Women in the only country in the world which still bans women from driving want to put their best foot forward – on the accelerator.
Saudi Arabia’s newly established League of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars plans to deliver a petition to King Abdallah Bin Abd Al-Aziz Al Saud, calling for their “stolen” entitlement of free movement to be restored.
In a statement on the Arab website Aafaq, (note – from Sept. 4th) the women said: “This is a right that was enjoyed by our mothers and grandmothers in complete freedom, through the means of transportation available.”

One wonders what “means” the grandmothers then had ?
By the way, MEMRI ‘s translation of the statement includes this curious statement:

“We Would Like to Remind Everyone That Rights Are Not Given or Earned – They Are Taken”

Taken? I wonder if something here still “got lost in the translation.” (I haven’t yet found the original or an OSC rendering.) Might there be a Jefferson echo here, that rights are “inalienable” — as in God given, but “men” take them away, and now women beseech the men to give them back?
See also yesterday’s Arab News (Jeddah) for further insights into this “social” issue. Legally speaking, “there is no law in the Kingdom that explicitly states that women cannot drive.”
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Side subject:
One might also ponder just where the American publishing houses have been on Saudi women’s issues? And how about that unique literary genre of the American “true story” — the “captivity narrative?” Or are those best-selling formula books reserved just for women in countries currently on the bad guy list? (fill in the blank, Iraq, then Afghanistan, and now Iran….)
Here via jwn, I’ve previously mentioned Farzaneh Milani’s ongoing investigations into this realm of American publishing, that of the “hostage narrative.”
For those who missed it, we also featured (via the delic sidebar) a recent compelling oped on the subject by Susan Faludi, entitled “America’s Guardian Myths.”
If you’re not familiar with what 1675 might have to do with 2001, read it. Hint:

“Our original “war on terrorism” bequeathed us a heritage that haunts our reaction to crises like the one that struck on that crisp, clear morning in the late summer of 2001.”

Another Journalism Scandal – the Debat/ABC case

Item: A “counter-terrorism expert” of dubious credentials has been fabricating reports for leading media organizations. Imagine that.
The “expert” in question is one Alexis Debat, whom the London Times (Murdoch Media) cited as their source for the following screaming headline, “Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran.”

“THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

That is, why bother hitting just narrow targets inside Iran somehow connected to violence against Americans in Iraq? Because we can “calculate” that Iranians will hit back hard with additional assets, then we better pre-emptively strike at the retaliatory capability too. And thus, smash the entire country. (Does this logic have an echo to last summer in Lebanon, 2006?)
One problem for the story, the “expert” source of this revelation stands accused of being a disinformation specialist, one who for years has been embedded with ABC News and Washington’s influential Nixon Center think tank. This no doubt is a fast moving story, and I have my own file of Debat doozies, including a disputed April 3rd ABC report of this year that the US, via Pakistan, was secretly providing support to Baluchi insurgents against Iran.
I’m also recalling a widely cited Debat essay, published in The National Interest, from last December 8th, wherein he argued against the Baker-Hamilton Commission recommendations (“There’s nothing we can offer Iran or Syria that they would be interested in”) and instead cynically argued for “a further empowerment of the Sunni militias….” Why, because “the ensuing chaos… would apply significant pressure on the Shi‘a leadership in Baghdad.” (and somehow result in a Milosevic style Dayton deal.) One wonders if Debat also works for Petraeus.
Debat’s present troubles apparently owe to his penchant for publishing long – and faked – interviews, in France’s Politique Internationale, with major American and international figures, including Alan Greenspan, Colin Powell, Bill Gates, Nancy Pelosi, Kofi Annan, and a recent “scoop” with Presidential Candidate Barrack Obama. Debat’s reputation for fabricating stories supposedly was whispered about, but not publicly exposed until a September 7th report in Rue89 . Debat’s initial denial only made matters worse.
ABC now claims they (quietly) “demanded his resignation” in June (without clarifying when they got it). ABC is also sticking to the lame line that the integrity of their reports was not compromised. The Nixon Center cut Debat loose only after the “Rue89” story. Debat’s reports are now disappearing fast from the net.
For more of the details on the scandal, including a hint that Debat claimed he was a Pentagon contractor, see Laura Rozen’s MoJO blog entry. In “Subject to Debat: What did ABC Know and When Did It Know It?,” Rozen observes,

“Overall, the picture of Debat that emerges from these interviews is of a smart, ambitious and cunning operator who would claim to be getting text messages from Middle Eastern intelligence operatives while at meetings with Ross and others at ABC, with tips that seemed too good to be true (which some colleagues believe were bogus), yet were used as “exclusives.”

I suspect there’s more to it than just “cunning” ambition; this is ambition with a neoconservative-style agenda. Rozen also raises key questions about ABC’s internal handling of Debat “scoops” and its present investigation. That is, will Brian Ross’s now tainted “investigative unit” be tasked with investigating itself? (For example, will it touch that Valentines’ Day 2003 story about Udai Hussein being more brutal than his father – the one that cited Debat and was part of media blitz to justify invading Iraq?) Lastly, “enquiring minds will want to know” if ABC will drop the Cheney-like insistence that, “it was confident that all of Debat’s reports for ABC had been vetted and multiple sourced and were standing up to scrutiny.”
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Added note: In this excellent “attytood” comment, Will Bunch of The Daily News points out a “neoconservative” link to Politique Internationale – the French journal that long posted Debat’s fabricated interviews. (The journal’s recent claims that they didn’t know how “crazy” Debat was are, on the face of them, absurd. How many complaints did they get over how many years?) Turns out no less than the infamous Amir Taheri has been an editor at PI from around 2001 until recently. Remember Taheri ? Top “star” in Mdme Benador’s stable of neoconservative propagandists, Taheri was the author of the May 2006 “Yellow Stars for Iranian Jews” disinfo fabrication.
Birds of a feather flock together.