We wouldn't want things in Iraq to get bad!

Opponents of a US withdrawal from occupied Iraq argue that withdrawing before Iraqis are "ready" would be disastrous. We need to stay, 50 years if necessary, until the Iraqis decide to get their act together. Well, they have a good point.

Granted, more Iraqi civilians died in October than were killed in the 9/11/01 attacks. And that was just the latest month. Sure, Iraq just suffered its deadliest attack on civilians since 2003. And over 7000 Iraqis are forced to flee every single week. Far more people (3.4 million) are either refugees from or internally displaced within Iraq than Darfur (2.2 million). That isn't really surprising. After all, the official civilian death toll since the beginning of the Iraq Aggresion and the Darfur genocide aren't much different.

But we need to stay. If US troops left, things might get bad!

Al-Jazeera goes to Harare

This essay is part of a (more or less) weekly feature on this blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel, Iraq, North Korea and Iran.


Chippla's Weblog comments on the launching of al-Jazeera's English service.

Unlike many Americans, I've always respected al-Jazeera's mission. The channel essentially invented the concept of independent broadcasting in the Arab world. Certainly they were the first to do it on a wide scale. This is a region where state-controlled broadcast media remains the norm and all independent press outlets are tightly restricted by authoritarian regimes.

When criticizing al-Jazeera, many westerners focus exclusively on stuff related to the west: specifically verbal attacks on America and Israel and on al-Qaeda messages that pass on the station's airwaves. These westerners want free speech so long as it excludes the right to criticize them! Just as many of them want democracy in the Middle East unless that democracy produces a result that the west don't like (Palestinian Authority, Lebanon).

But what al-Jazeera brought to the Arab political culture is the concept that bad leaders can be criticized in the media. This is a revolutionary concept that's critically important for anyone who actually wants a true democratic culture to implant itself in the Middle East.

Chippla noted that al-Jazeera opened bureaus in five major African cities: Cairo (Egypt), Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire), Nairobi (Kenya), Johannesburg (South Africa) and Harare (Zimbabwe).

Like Chippla, I am surprised that they didn't open one in Lagos or Abuja, the economic and political capitals respectively of Africa's most populous country Nigeria. Especially since CNN opened one there five years ago. Then again, from everything I've heard, I'm not sure who would voluntarily choose to live in either city.

This is a smart decision by the broadcaster. Al-Jazeera English is obviously focusing its efforts on the developing world. One only needs to watch a few minutes of the channel (a free stream is available here) to realize this. They are giving attention to parts of the world which are largely ignored by their two main competitors: BBC World and CNN International, who are more centered around North America and western Europe. Al-Jazeera is smart to cater to an audience that feels underrepresented.

Nevertheless, when I read the list of cities where al-Jazeera bureaus would be located, I couldn't help but wondering what sort of difficulties their reporters will have.

Egypt has been in a "state of emergency" for the last 25 years, quite possibly the longest "state of emergency" ever maintained in any country not at war. Egypt is also a country where state insecurity agents attack journalists.

Zimbabwe has infamously banned foreign reporters from being in the country without permission from the regime of Robert Mugabe. And even the local journalists who do dare report the truth are often thrown in prison or otherwise harassed.

The choice of Harare is even more peculiar. The other cities on the list represent a fairly wide geographic coverage of the continent. But Harare isn't really that far from Johannesburg; South Africa and Zimbabwe are neighbors. Certainly a place like Lusaka (Zambia) or Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) would've made more sense. Libreville (Gabon) hosts the independent pan-African radio station Africa No. 1.

It makes me wonder if a network which wants to appeal to viewers in the developing world was offered some sort of deal with a Dictator that wants to be seen as some sort of hero to non-aligned nations types. I'm not sure if I really believe this and it's certainly against al-Jazeera's careully cultivated image of independence but the choice of Harare really doesn't seem to make any sense to me.

Chippla replied:

I do not think Al Jazeera would shy away from reporting fairly about the situation in Zimbabwe. Its first report from Harare looked at the influx of poorly skilled Zimbabweans into South Africa—not the sort of story Robert Mugabe, or other Zimbabwean ruling class members, would have wanted to hear.

Al Jazeera's Zimbabwe correspondent, Farai Sevenzo, is a Zimbabwean who has written extensively and produced documentaries on the situation in Zimbabwe in the past. I doubt he, or the Al Jazeera news team, would be silent about the reality of things on the ground in Zimbabwe.

Certainly the free press climate in many Arab countries al-Jazeera reports from isn't that much friendlier. But even with the best intentions, there's reason to be wonder if al-Jazeera really will be able to report freely from a country where journalists can face 20 years in prison for publishing news that the Leader doesn't like.

And there's surely plenty of that to go around in a country with a death rate higher than Darfur's or Iraq's.

A country or a cariciature?

The Christian Science Monitor printed a good op-ed piece about the movie Borat. There's been much discussion of this movie on a sociopolitical and I won't get into it too much. Personally, I love satirical humor and I'm a big fan of political cartoons in the newspapers.

But for my taste, regardless of the message, good satire has to be subtle, not crude. Brick in the face humor can be amusing but it tends to get boring and tiresome very quickly. That's the difference between Beavis & Butthead (lame), South Park (moderately amusing) and The Simpsons (arguably the best comedy TV show of all time). Borat is brick in the face humor. Somewhere in the South Park range. Moderately funny but it seeks easy laughs. Not very clever.

I'm a big Canadianophile. I follow its politics closely. I like its social and cultural values, its emphasis on improving the lives of its citizens rather than on rampant militarism. Canadians think it's a better idea to provide health insurance for all their citizens than create health crises in other countries. Basically if America were a bit more enlightened and civilized, it would look something like Canada (or at least Vermont).

Even though Sacha Baron Cohen (the actor who plays Borat) is British, Borat's humor is very Canadian. Over the years, I've watched a lot of television and listened to a lot of radio programs from the CBC. One of the things I've enjoyed is Canadian comedy shows. One of the staples is to interview Americans, ask them questions about Canada and air the stupidest responses.

For example, they might go to North Dakota and ask people there where Manitoba is (it's on N. Dakota's northern border). They might ask 100 people who get the answer right but it'll be the 5 who say that Manitoba is in Africa or northern Antarctica that will get broadcast. I've met more than a few Canadians who don't get the concept that New York is not just a city, but a state too. I hope they never visit Quebec.

But this is really cheap humor is easy and formulaic. It doesn't take an ounce of creativity to come up with. Yet these guys act like their comedic geniuses for making essentially the same joke over and over. Borat is like that. I mean does anyone, other than males under the age of 10, really think poopy humor is hilarious after the 100th joke about it?

The Monitor piece that points out that the real United States is far more nuanced than the cariacture presented in the cartoonish Borat. The two filmmakers who wrote the piece spoke of the crosscountry journey they took while making a documentary.

On our journey across the country, we were overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers. We received countless invitations to stay in their homes. People were excited to share their stories with us, and they were eager to hear our tales of life cruising the nation's asphalt on a Segway scooter ... at 10 m.p.h.

They pointed out how America is more than a few racists, drunken frat boys.

The abundant kindheartedness we saw helped us to regain our love for America, which had been severely tainted by modern media. The entertainment they sell is conditioned to incite conflict, challenge, and sensational response. It celebrates perversity, ugliness, and fear. "Borat" fits this model perfectly. This trend can cause us to lose sight of what really is.

Listen, Europeans, Canadians and Australians are vastly superior to us pathetic, crude, unsophisticated, mean-spirited Americans who all genuflect to Deus Bush, who are all heartless money grubbers, who all reject evolution and who all think that Kofi Annan is a cappucino-flavored ice cream. We get it!

I hardly belong to the 'America is uniquely righteous and everyone else sucks!' crowd but it begs the question: is this really movie length material or populist overkill that panders to, rather than challenges, easy stereotypes?

Sorry everyone. I adore good satire. But bad satire really stinks.


Update: This column in The Guardian also takes issue with the glee over Borat. Like I said, humiliation as entertainment (especially humiliation of the decent and unwitting, some of which Borat's victims were) is a phenomenon I've long found troubling.

The next aggression's pretext exposed

As most people know, some allies of the president are trying to prepare the American people for military action against Iran. This is why you hear commentators referring to Iran's president as "The Hitler of the Middle East," just like they did of Saddam. Iran's president is a loud-mouthed populist pandering to the crowd at home. He's quite clearly anti-Semitic. But Hitler? Give me a break.

Since he came to power, America's president has launched two wars (one unprovoked). How many wars has Iran's president launched?

The unprovoked war launced by America's president has led to the deaths of at least 150,000 civilians, according to Iraq's health minister. How many civilian deaths have been caused by decisions made by Iran's president?

These are not opinions. This is not ideology or polemics. This is not me saying Iran's president is a swell guy. These are questions with demonstrably factual answers.

But since some want to attack Iran, their president can't be the semi-democratically elected leader that he is. He can't simply be an ordinary, run of the mill populist with authoritarian tendencies. Heck, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is like that. George W. Bush in his first term was like that.

No, if we want to attack Iran, he has to be demonized. He has to be (insert menacing music) Hitler!

The only problem is that the president's allies are having trouble inventing a justification for such military action. Since their pretexts for the Iraq Aggression have been thoroughly discredited, they don't have much credibility left with the American people, who resent being fooled the first time.

So they're trying to scare people into believing that Iran is building nuclear weapons. I'm inclined to doubt this is true. Quite clearly, Iran's president is happy to let people think he's building nukes. But just because Iran's president wants people to believe he's developing nukes, doesn't mean he actually is. Leaving this impression, however false, gives Iran international prestige that it otherwise might not get. Also, standing up to the US administration, who the rest of the world sees as an aggressive bully, also gives Iran prestige.

This is EXACTLY the same tactic tried by Saddam Hussein. He was happy to let the rest of the world think he had an active weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program even though weapons inspectors doubted it. Why? Because it gave him international prestige. His downfall was that he underestimated the US president's mania for war, common sense be damned.

Iran's president doesn't have that problem. He knows the US is stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan and that US public opinion won't let Bush start another insane war based on a flimsy pretext. He knows that the American military is overextended in an Iraq conflict that never had anything to do with US national security or fighting international terrorism.

Maybe it's true. Maybe the Iranians really are developing nukes. The problem is that the administration's allies have no credibility anymore. They're the boys who cried wolf.

But now, even the CIA says it has no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, according to a New Yorker story. The White House refuses to deny the story, preferring to smear the reporter in question. This has been the Bush administration's modus operandi for years.

But it begs the question: if the CIA says they don't have reason to believe Iran is developing nukes, who DOES have the evidence to that effect?

The other question it begs is if it even matters to those who seem like they've already decided.

The good old days... for whom?

Adirondack Musing blog pointed to a letter in The Adirondack Daily Enterprise bemoaning the loss of the good old days.

Read the plaintive wail:

I remember when our children could walk about without fear of predators, but then we didn’t have the ACLU sticking up for the rights of the monsters who would destroy the lives of the most innocent of our society.

I remember a time when one’s marriage partner was of the opposite sex, and our children didn’t have to see men in panties on floats in a parade, or two women making out with each other.

That sexual predators didn't exist in the 50s will be a surprise to the countless baby boomers who were (silent) victims; this letter writer is under the delusion that just because it wasn't talked about, it didn't happen. And frankly, I've never seen, either as a child or as an adult, men in panties on floats in a parade or two women making out with each other in my town. I'm sure such behavior is even less likely in the conservative Adirondacks.

I too recall the good old days. Good old days when blacks were strung up on trees . Good old days when the poor stayed sick and miserable their whole lives. Good old days when Latinos broke their backs picking fruit without any expectation of anything more than poverty wages. The good old days where women, blacks and gays knew their place (in the kitchen, at the back of the bus and in the closet respectively) and didn't dare venture out of it.


I'm sure the 1950s when he grew up was a paradise for this letter writer. It's always pleasant when the ills of the world are hidden from your view. But the majority of Americans who were either black, female, gay or poor might have somewhat different memories of that time period.

I often read letters to the paper like this. What these people really bemoan is a time when their small minority (straight white, upper or upper middle class Protestant men) was the undisputed ruling class of this country. They had unique privilege while other groups were considered second or third class citizens. Starting in the 60s, other groups started challenging this status quo and demanding equal treatment and it made those in charge uncomfortable. Those in charge didn't want to share their unique place of privilege. They had special rights and didn't want to give them up. It's a fairly common human phenomenon. The Afrikaaners in South Africa have acted the same way since the end of apartheid.

Overt bigotry (or "political correctness" as he derides it) is no longer socially acceptable and America is a better place for it. This majority of Americans are now treated as first-class citizens and we are a better country for it.

That is indeed progress.


"Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery. " -Albert Camus

Too much testing is the enemy of learning

I enjoy occasionally reading local and regional papers from around the country, just to get a flavor of what's going on in different parts of the US. I came across this article from Maine's Portland Press-Herald talking about how recess is quickly disappearing from many schools.

Some schools are concerned about liability but most simply don't have enough time to allow kids unstructured play time. With the avalanche of new federal mandates (and state ones as well in many places), the educational system is no longer about learning. It's about testing.

Kids are now force fed standardized tests. Here in New York, kids are given standardized tests in English-language arts and math every single year from 3rd to 8th grade. Teachers thus don't have the luxury of letting kids learn anything outside the curriculum. Time is too short.

I'm surprised kids are allowed to sleep or go to the bathroom without taking a test. Where's the accountability?! After all, how can a kid be accountable if he's not taking a formulaic exam.

Standardized tests are useful in small doses. They can be a way of making sure everyone's learning the same basic, important information. But it's clearly gone too far. Why would a teacher 'waste' time teaching kids about the local history of their town since such information surely won't appear on a state test? Then again, I suppose this corresponds with the general distaste society has for anything that's not homogenized.

Recess is where children learn how to negotiate the unwritten rules of society. It teaches them about negotiation and conflict resolution and compromise. It's also where they get fresh air and exercise. Such learning is just as important as knowing that 2+2=4 but since these things can't easily be paraphrased into a multiple choice question, they have no value in an 'accountability' based educational system. As someone with a university math degree and a concentration in statistics, I know better than most both the value of numbers AND their limitations. Not everything is quantifiable.

The elite's fetish for standardized tests is not helping kids learn. It's crushing their natural curiosity for learning. And it's teaching them a skill, formal test-taking, which has almost no value in the working world.

It makes you wonder when the policy makers are going to be held accountable.

Book banning: it's not just for the Bible Belt anymore

The concept of busybodies trying to get schools to ban books is something many Americans associate with the south and midwest of the United States. But as WAMC/Northeast Public Radio reports, that's not the case.

A group in Red Hook, in New York's Hudson Valley, is trying to get the local school to ban The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison from its reading lists and taken out of the library.

Though in reality, this phenomenon was never limited to one or two parts of the country. One of the school districts most associated with book banning attempts is Vernon-Verona-Sherrill, in central New York. Among the classics challenged in this district include A Farewell to Arms, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and arguably the most beloved American novel of all time: To Kill A Mockingbird.

The tyranny of chaos

In writing yesterday's essay where I referred to a quote by Martin Luther, I came across a number of other good quotes.

In a recent debate with a pro-war reader on the Iraq Aggression, I used the phrase 'dictatorship of chaos' to describe the situation there. I think I should've used the 'tyranny of chaos' but the main point remains unaffected.

One of the worst self-delusions people make when going to war is that noble objectives render irrelevant the disastrous consequences that are inevitable in any war. Those disastrous consequences being destruction, death and displacement.

In other words, innocent people will necessarily lose their lives, homes and livelihoods. Simply having something called a democratically elected will not reverse those things.

This reader mocked my use of the phrase 'dictatorship of chaos.' "Where the hell did that come from?" he asked.

I've lived near two warzones, have visited a refugee camp and have friends who've fled warzones, so referring to the chaos as a type of tyranny seems completely self-evident to me.

Maybe it's not tyranny for the guys with the guns, though I suspect it is to some extent. But I've said it a million times: it's not the guys with the guns who are most destroyed by war.

Saddam Hussein was recently sentenced to death for his role in killing 148 people in a village in 1982.

In Iraq, over 150,000 civilians have lost their lives since the beginning of the aggression. That's according to the official Iraqi minister of health; other sources put the figure much higher.

In Saddam can be punished for the deaths of 148 people, who will be held accountable for a death count more than ONE HUNDRED TIMES HIGHER (and counting) in the current unnecessary aggressive war of choice?

There is a specious moral distinction made between intentional killing and pursuing a course of action which will inevitably lead to the deaths of innocent people.

What it boils down to is this: In deciding whether to go to war, one must take into account the unintended consequences, not just the intended ones.

Living conditions have deteroriated rapidly since the beginning of the aggression. Not since 1979 or some distant date, but since 2003. Not that things were great under Saddam, but things have gotten worse since his departure. This can be demonstrated with measurable statistics, which are more concrete to me than self-interested government pronouncements or second-hand stories from well-meaning troops in the field; policy by anecdote is always a bad idea.

So people are no longer dying because the government ordered their deaths. But they are dying because they don't have clean drinking water or modest medical care, things that had been previously available. What's the difference? Dead is dead.

If you die from a bullet wound, does it really matter if the shooter was targetting you or not? Whether you die from organized state violence or random, chaotic violence, what's the difference? There aren't different degrees of being dead.

This quote I found says it all:

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" -Gandhi




Here are some other quotes I came across regarding war and the lust for war.

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." - George Washington

"Nothing good ever comes of violence." -Martin Luther

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official..." -Theodore Roosevelt

"The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all." -Tacitus

"Peace is constructed, not fought for." -Brent Davis

"The worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being." -Ellen Key

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -James Madison

"Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. " -James Madison

"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." -James Madison

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." -George Orwell (the American version of the nationalist being called the patriot).

"It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them." -Alfred Adler