avari | haroon moghul

Jon Stewart, the Daily Show and Palestine

Featuring the first heckler in the Daily Show's 11 years, and yet, what a response offered by Mr. Barghouti.  They are getting a lot of flak for this (I've linked through Mondoweiss b/c Adam Horowitz was there, and offers a really inspiring overview of how the show went down, and how the crowd, as a whole, reacted.  In the first minutes of clip one, watch Jon Stewart, my hero, get p.o.'d at Joe Wilson, Jr.)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Rachel Maddow on the Muslim Mafia Mess

Leaving Afghanistan

Sharing a number of links with you for the weekend.  

I am pretty convinced that there is no military solution to this conflict, and that we will have to engage the Taliban; as distasteful as it is, we must distinguish between al Qaeda and the Taliban's ambitions.  But more than matters of morality and even issues of legacy, there are two deeper national security questions at work: We are not the global power some neocons thought (or think) we are.  We cannot sustain this war, financially or politically, without massive infusions from allied forces, and those will not be forthcoming, which is the lead-in to the second question: Why fight a war that could destroy NATO, when the chances of "winning" are so slim?  

Some people ask how it is a power declines and another power rises.  It's because of bad decisions at extremely crucial moments.  There are transitional periods in world history, and often time those transitional moments are made still more crucial because one power made a very bad choice and found itself paying the consequences of that choice for years down the road, while the other power(s) made smarter choices.  (Note: Intention doesn't have to count.)  You cannot always go back and change a choice, and pretend nothing happened.  When we embarked on our two most recent wars in the last eight years, we were not given a clear strategy, nor did we bother to realize that we are no longer in the colonial era.  As we went on into two wars that, although they did not cost the number of lives Vietnam did, ended up costing us probably $1 trillion, future competitors of the United States were putting massive sums of money into more relevant causes.  

Americans Are Scarcely Prepared for a Middle East and South Asia Firestorm

There is a firestorm ahead in the Middle East for which neither the U.S. government nor the U.S. public is prepared. They seem scarcely aware how close it is on the horizon or how ferocious it will be. The U.S. government (and therefore almost inevitably the U.S. public) is deluding itself massively about its capacity to handle the situation in terms of its stated objectives. The storm will go from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Israel/Palestine, and in the classic expression "it will spread like wildfire."

Let us start with Iraq. The United States has signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq, which went into effect on July 1. It provided for turning over internal security to the Iraqi government and, in theory, essentially restricting U.S. forces to their bases and to some limited role in training Iraqi troops. Some of the wording of this agreement is ambiguous. Deliberately so, since that was the only way both sides would sign it.

Even the first months of operation show how poorly this agreement is operating. The Iraqi forces have been interpreting it very strictly, formally forbidding both joint patrols and also any unilateral U.S. military actions without prior detailed clearance with the government. It has gotten to the point that Iraqi forces are stopping U.S. forces from passing checkpoints with supplies during daytime hours.

The U.S. forces have been chafing. They have tried to interpret the clause guaranteeing them the right of self-defense far more loosely than the Iraqi forces want. They are pointing to the upturn in violence in Iraq and therefore implicitly to the incapacity of Iraqi forces to guarantee order.

The general commanding the U.S. forces, Ray Odierno, is obviously extremely unhappy and is patently scheming to find excuses to reestablish a direct U.S. role. Recently, he met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq and President Masoud Barzani of the Kurdish Regional Government. Odierno sought to persuade them to permit tripartite (Iraqi/Kurdish/American) joint patrols in Mosul and other areas of northern Iraq, in order to prevent or minimize violence. They politely agreed to consider his proposal. Unfortunately for Odierno, his plan would require a formal revision of the SOFA agreement.

Originally, there was supposed to be a referendum in the beginning of July on popular approval of the SOFA agreement. The United States was afraid of losing the vote, which would have meant that all U.S. forces would have had to be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, 2010, one full year earlier than the theoretical date in the SOFA agreement.

The United States thought it was very clever in persuading al-Maliki to postpone this referendum to January 2010. Now it will be held in conjunction with the national elections. In the national elections, everyone will be seeking to obtain votes. No one is going to be campaigning in favor of a "yes" vote on the referendum. Lest this be in any doubt, al-Maliki is submitting a project to the Iraqi parliament that will permit a simple majority of "no" votes to annul the agreement. There will be a majority of "no" votes. There may even be an overwhelming majority of "no" votes. Odierno should be packing his bags now. I'll bet he still has the illusion that he can avoid the onset of the firestorm. He can't.

What will happen next? At the present, but this may change between now and January, it looks like al-Maliki will win the election. He will do this by becoming the number one champion of Iraqi nationalism. He will make deals with all and sundry on this basis. Iraqi nationalism at the moment doesn't have much to do with Iran or Saudi Arabia or Israel or Russia. It means first of all liberating Iraq from the last vestiges of U.S. colonial rule, which is how almost all Iraqis define what they have been living under since 2003.

Will there be internal violence in Iraq? Probably, though possibly less than Odierno and others expect. But so what? Iraqi "liberation" - which is what the entire Middle East will interpret a "no" vote on the referendum to be - will immediately have a great impact on Afghanistan. There people will say, if the Iraqis can do it, so can we.

Of course, the situation in Afghanistan is different, very different, from that of Iraq. But look at what is going on now with the elections in Afghanistan. We have a government put into power to contain and destroy the Taliban. The Taliban have turned out to be more tenacious and militarily effective than any one seemed ever to anticipate. Even the tough U.S. commander there, Stanley McChrystal, has recognized that. The U.S. military is now talking of "succeeding" in perhaps a decade. Soldiers who think they have a decade to win a war against insurgents have clearly not been reading military history.

Notice the Afghan politicians themselves. Three leading candidates for the presidency, including President Hamid Karzai, debated on television the current internal war. They agreed on one thing. There must be some kind of political negotiations with the Taliban. They differed on the details. The U.S. (and NATO) forces are there ostensibly to destroy the Taliban. And the leading Afghan politicians are debating how to come to political terms with them. There is a serious disjuncture here of appreciation of realities, or perhaps of political objectives.

The polls - for what they are worth - are showing that the majority of Afghans want the NATO forces to leave and the majority of U.S. voters want the same thing. Now look ahead to January 2010, when the Iraqis vote the United States out of Iraq. Remember that, before the Taliban came to power, the country was the site of fierce and ruthless fighting among competing warlords, each with different ethnic bases, to control the country.

The United States was actually relieved when the Pakistani-backed Taliban took power. Order at last. There turned out to be a minor problem. The Taliban were serious about sharia and friendly to the emergent al-Qaeda. So, after 9/11, the United States, with west European approval and United Nations sanction, invaded. The Taliban were ousted from power - for a little while.

What will happen now? The Afghans will probably revert to the nasty continuing inter-ethnic wars of the warlords, with the Taliban just one more faction. The U.S. public's tolerance for that war will evaporate entirely. All the internal factions and many of the neighbors (Russia, Iran, India, and Pakistan) will remain to fight over the pieces.

And then stage three - Pakistan. Pakistan is another complicated situation. But none of the players there trust the United States. And the polls there show that the Pakistani public thinks that the greatest danger to Pakistan is the United States, and that by an overwhelming vote. The traditional enemy, India, is far behind the United States in the polls. When Afghanistan crumbles into a full-fledged civil war, the Pakistani army will be very busy supporting the Taliban. They cannot support the Taliban in Afghanistan while fighting them in Pakistan. They will no longer be able to accept U.S. drones bombing in Pakistan.

So then comes stage four of the firestorm - Israel/Palestine. The Arab world will observe the collapse of U.S. projects in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The U.S. project in Israel/Palestine is a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Israelis are not going to budge an inch. But neither now, and especially after the rest of the firestorm, are the Palestinians. The one consequence will be the enormous pressure that other Arab states will put upon Fatah and Hamas to join forces. This will be over Mahmoud Abbas's dead body - which might literally be the case.

The whole Obama program will have gone up in flames. And the Republicans will make hay with it. They will call U.S. defeat in the Middle East "betrayal" and it is obvious now that there is a large group inside the United States very receptive to such a theme.

One either anticipates firestorms and does something useful, or one gets swept up in them.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

The World is The E.U. and al Qaeda

I still cannot believe that the following was written, and published, in Newsweek.  I was going to be judicious, but this is unacceptable.  There is no longer any excuse for hack bloviating, as follows:

Now, with the EU pushing its boundaries into the Balkans up to Turkey, and with Al Qaeda clamoring that there is a war between the "Muslim world" and the West, there is no longer a gray area in which Turkey can position itself: it must become an EU member and part of the West, or else fold into the Muslim world, as per Al Qaeda's vision. Sarkozy should be alarmed about an alienated Turkey on Europe's eastern borders.

Yes, Soner, that's exactly it!  Either the E.U., or al Qaeda.  These are the considerations that power EU expansion policy, and these should be the terms on which we understand the evolution of the EU and a Turkish trajectory that goes from late Ottoman to AKP: By way of Bin Laden.  This is almost the most absurd thing I have ever read, and I have read many, many things.  I believe that we must grow, mentally, beyond such senility -- never mind such rank racist nonsense.  Even if Turkey doesn't join the EU, that does not mean that Turkey will fail to grow and mature.  The idea that only through adherence to European standards can a society develop itself is disproved everyday; it was disproved when Pakistanis turned to the streets in the thousands to demand the reinstatement of their Chief Justice, and it is disproved when Iranians bravely protest the results of the current election.  Never mind the changes, good and bad, that so many other societies have gone through.  (I suppose Nelson Mandela was an EU employee). 

But wait, let me share with you what is by far the best part: "There is no longer a gray area"?  Got that?  No longer.  No longer!  But why?  What changed?  Is Soner arguing that, after 9/11, we must base all future policy decisions on al Qaeda actions?   In other words, make al Qaeda the frame by which to judge -- which is, by the by, a rather frightening road to go down.  You be the judge.  Did the author of the essay above suddenly stop thinking, but continue writing?  Should someone call Dr. House to explore and explain, with far more caustic wit than I in all my life could muster, how such a strange event has come to pass?  Truly disappointing and, still more, deeply worrying.  But it really is that easy to say something foolish and pass it off as deep analysis.  (Kind of like this blog post, wherein I wasted my time on a nonthought.)

The Hispanic as the Not-Other: Frank Rich on Sotomayor's Non-Event

From the Times, of course:

Yet the Sotomayor show was still rich in historical significance. Someday we may regard it as we do those final, frozen tableaus of Pompeii. It offered a vivid snapshot of what Washington looked like when clueless ancien-régime conservatives were feebly clinging to their last levers of power, blissfully oblivious to the new America that was crashing down on their heads and reducing their antics to a sideshow as ridiculous as it was obsolescent.

The hearings were pure “Alice in Wonderland.” Reality was turned upside down. Southern senators who relate every question to race, ethnicity and gender just assumed that their unreconstructed obsessions are America’s and that the country would find them riveting. Instead the country yawned. The Sotomayor questioners also assumed a Hispanic woman, simply for being a Hispanic woman, could be portrayed as The Other and patronized like a greenhorn unfamiliar with How We Do Things Around Here. The senators seemed to have no idea they were describing themselves when they tried to caricature Sotomayor as an overemotional, biased ideologue.

At least they didn’t refer to “Maria Sotomayor” as had Mike Huckabee, whose sole knowledge of Latinos apparently derives from “West Side Story.”

Pointing Out Hypocrisies: It'd Be Better If You Killed Han Chinese, for Consistency's Sake

When Muslim radicals go nuts, it's a sign of barbarism.  When they don't, it's hypocrisy.  Except, of course, the fact that China doesn't claim to be a progressive democracy.  Even Muslims can smell the rank hypocrisy of European countries that claim to be secular and yet define religion for their marginalized populations; China claims no such authority, no such progressive humanism, and as such, their violence -- while deeply upsetting -- is not "surprising". That doesn't make it okay, but it does mean people have less to be shocked by, unfortunately.  Plus Denmark is tiny and Europe is militarily weak: Let's be honest.  Easy target.  That doesn't make it okay, but if we are political observers, we can understand political actors.

The deeper issue here is that -- and this is so important -- religion is judged by its adherence to an immaterial standard; the distinction is deeply problematic in Islam, among other religions, and any way, it implies a feeling that if a religious person is not one hundred percent perfect, s/he is a hypocrite.  Islam must go all the way!  Muslims must be fully Muslim, or their Islam is wack.  Is Naim encouraging Muslims to demonstrate like crazy, burn buildings and turn to violence?  Professor Sherman Jackson, while at NYU, noted that if such people were Muslim, they would very likely be fundamentalists in the worst sense, because they do not understand nuance, nor the give-and-take that Islam recognizes is part of reality.  You cannot have a "perfect" world -- when you try, it just makes it worse.  Traditionally, the Islamic legacy recognized this.  Why is it so hard for commentators to get this?

But... on top of this... I would counter that there is a reaction to this violence in the Muslim world, and it will get stronger.  It is not so much hypocrisy as, in part, strategic necessity (one cannot fight every battle one wants to -- if you did, you would be Gregory House, but the Muslim world is not pure genius and cannot risk the consequences) and the other part, media reality: What gets covered and what doesn't.  Keep in mind that until 1996, for example, and al-Jazeera, most Arabs got their news either through a "foreign" medium or through state-sponsored channels, in which case it was not actually news so much as Vicodin for the mind.  As China rises and simultaneously more media proliferates, you will see more Muslims agitated by cases such as East Turkestan.

In the meantime, China will invade Turkey, and they will in the process push all the Muslims between Kashgar and Edirne into Europe, making Eurabia a reality and then commentators can be happy at an absence of hypocrisy and excess of Muslims.  (That is some 420 million extra people; Arabs, no need to get up, China will go right by your northern flank.)  Then I will write a better blog post than this one.

The Islamic Republic (You Know Which One) is Speaking Up

Seems I was wrong.  It takes a lot of courage for a country as internationally isolated as Iran to speak up, especially against such a close ally.  (And Turkey?  There's a reason they descend from Ottomans.  Our steppe brothers can really get agitated.)  Check out this article:

Iran has been one of the few Muslim countries to speak out on the crackdown. On Sunday, the official IRNA news agency reported that Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had discussed the ethnic clashes in a phone conversation with his Chinese counterpart and "reflected concerns among Islamic countries."

High-ranking clerics also condemned the crackdown and urged the government to complain to China.

"Silence and indifference toward such oppressions on the people is an unforgivable vice," said Grand Ayatollah Youssef Saanei, a major religious figure who has criticized his own government's violent response to mass protests over the disputed June 12 election. Iran's crackdown on protesters has drawn international condemnation from both Western governments and human rights groups.

The most powerful response from the Muslim world came from Turkey, where some 5,000 people protested in Istanbul on Sunday to denounce the ethnic violence and call on their government to intervene.

Turks share ethnic and cultural bonds with the Turkic-speaking Uighurs. The Chinese violence has sparked almost daily protests in Turkey, mostly outside heavily guarded Chinese diplomatic missions in Istanbul and Ankara where some protesters have burned Chinese flags or China-made goods. Sunday's protest, however, was the largest.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has compared the situation in Xinjiang to genocide, the foreign minister has conveyed Turkey's concerns to China, and Turkey's industry minister has urged Turks to stop buying Chinese goods. The government, however, has no plans for an official boycott.

The Israel Project: Selling Americans on the Settlements

In a recently released report, summarized here, you can find out how advocacy groups attempt to change the discourse in order to persuade the public of their cause.  A definite, absolute, complete must-read (then come back and tell me what it says.) 

The Ideal Muslim Woman: Jeans, form-fitting tops and dresses

No matter how much changes, it all stays the same.  Women remain the pivot around which the Orientalist imagination develops, from its Christian origins in the medieval to the supposedly open-minded liberalism of today.  The judgment changes, from too sexual to not sufficiently sexual, but the judge and the judged don't want to swap.  The self-righteousness, the masked and unveiled candor, the casual commentary which reveals the depths of obsession around sexuality, the woman and modernity: Ultimately, it seems, the measure of the modern -- for the Muslim -- is the tightness of the clothes (or the degree of their absence.)  This happened in Lebanon, as analysts attempted to use "whose women are hotter?" to explain which side would win (talk about genetic teleology) to Iran and the "better-looking women support Mousavi" -- all the way to now, in East Turkestan.

You will laugh, cry, or stop in sudden surprise when you read this, an otherwise positive portrayal of Muslim women and the leadership roles they have bravely and courageously taken on against Chinese government policies and police (at MSNBC no less):

But on Friday, some men challenged officials when they showed up for prayers at Urumqi's popular White Mosque and found the gate closed. Officials had earlier said the mosque would be closed for public safety reasons as security forces tried to pacify the capital.

The mosque was eventually opened when the crowd swelled and there was a threat of unrest, police said.

Most Muslim Uighurs practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam or follow the mystical Sufism tradition. The women often work and lead an active social life outside the home. Many wear brightly colored head scarves but the custom is not strongly enforced. Young Uighur women often wear jeans, form-fitting tops and dresses.

This is how Wikipedia defines a paragraph: "a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea."

So... "most Muslim Uighurs" are "moderate" or "mystical," which means (subtext) they are not radical or fundamentalist or dangerous.  They are, in other words, not too Muslim.  That's because women work and have active social lives, as if only mystical or moderate Muslim women work or have social lives.  They are also moderate because they wear headscarves here and there, but really because they wear tight clothes.  There's your self-contained idea = you are moderate if you wear certain types of clothes.  This is the same logic that led Sarkozy to call for a ban on the burqa.

This then applies from the instance of women to describe the whole people, since Muslims are (here's tautology for you) a people contained within a definition of religiosity.  So, because the Uighur women are "moderate," and we determine that from their dress, they're okay, Heaven forbid they dress differently.  They wouldn't be fully human.  Sometimes, it seems, the idea of civilization vs. savagery is not so far away.  It has just found a far fancier -- and, we must admit, better looking -- medium.  But you know who else dressed just like Westerners, and wasn't quite the mystic or moderate?  Her, for one.

Clothes make the Muslimah:  So what's the difference between that, and defining the worth (that is, Muslim-ness) of a woman in the external measure of her hijab?  It seems woman is the battlefield.  The right Muslim woman, as determined by either extreme, is judged far, far too often on the clothes she does or does not wear.  Who empowered who to make that call?  Anyway, by that measure, if you combine the two, you make everyone happy (or just write a really conceptually confused book.)