Iran: A Revolution Goes Awry

It has often been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case these few pictures speak volumes about the ruthless Iranian regime and its henchmen. There can be no better indictment of the current power structure than the attached and in particular when the gruesome circumstances are kept in mind. This poor innocent girl was standing by watching a demonstration when she was shot literally in the heart by a Basij sharpshooter from a roof top. Enough said. What the world is witnessing is nothing short of a revolution that is devouring its own children and that has no respect for human rights , democracy or the dissent. The challenge is to be able to watch these 40 seconds without crying.





Editor's warning: this video depicts graphic violence.

US-liberated Afhanistan: Blasphemy and Women's Rights are Punishable by Death!

What do You Mean Religion Can Breed Violence? You Deserve to Die for Saying this!


I've discussed the issue of blasphemy in several of my classes, and most students seem to agree that the UN General Assembly's attempt to ban criticism of religion is a bad thing. We then talked about the illiberal regimes--which include some democracies (more like mob rule) that don't afford individual conscience & expression. Invariably, however,most students are apt to criticize foreign people and countries without even thinking about the US or western democracies. In the previous post, the illiberal practice by Germany is cited as an example of censorship and violation of individual rights to free speech.

When I press the students a little harder on the question whether we should criticize, even offend, our own political & religious institutions, many reply in the negative! We have free speech, they tell me, so some limits are OK! Thankfully, many students seem willing to allow for maximum free expression, including blasphemy.What to you think about political blasphemy? As in burning the US flag for political protest?

Remember that Afghani student who was sentenced to death last year for promoting women's rights--a blasphemous act in Afghanistan--by distributing an essay questioning passages in the Koran? This past week and appeals court (more like a "cangaroo" court) converted the death sentence to 20 years in prison. If this decision stands, Pervez Kambaksh, will not survive, because the Taliban want him killed. Even if he's pardoned by the president of Afghanistan, there are thousands of others who have been killed, tortured, and sentenced to long prison terms for blasphemy or for promoting a more civil society--including women's rights!


PS. By clicking on the picture (Jesus & Mo), you can open it bigger; the picture on the right is that of Kambaksh being led out of the kangaroo court in Kabul. Clicking on his name in the post connects to the article by The Independent.

What Took So Long?

Who Wants What?

So the Egyptian government has come to the conclusion that Hassan Nasrallah and his followers at Hezbollah in addition to Hamas and its leadership are in essence Iranian agents. My only question is: What took so long?

Walid Jumblatt declared over a year ago, on January 2, 2008 to be precise, that Nasrallah "is not a free man and his decision-making is not free." Then he went on to say that Mr. Nasrallah and his henchmen are paid Syrian and Iranian agents bent on destroying the Lebanese state in order to satisfy the grandiose visions held by their masters. Even two years prior to that, in the summer of 2006, Mr. Jumblatt explained that "We had been trying for months, to spring our country out of the Syrian-Iranian trap, and here we are forcibly pushed into that trap again."

It is important to note that Mr. Jumblatt was not alone in his assessment. A broad coalition of Lebanese political parties and associations questioned the motivations of the acts taken by Hezbollah by stating: "Is it Lebanon's fate to endure the killing of its citizens and the destruction of its economy and its tourist season in order to serve the interests of empty nationalist slogans?"

Many a journalist , blogger and analyst had arrived at the same conclusion four years ago. It was evident to whoever cared to look at the facts that Hezbollah’s interests were not compatible with those of an open, democratic and secular society. In the final analysis Hezbollah is a group of religious fanatics created to promote the interests of an Iranian theocracy. And as the saying goes :if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck then it is a duck.

It is unfortunate but it appears that many in Lebanon and the Arab world have chosen to conveniently forget the clear history of the evolution of Hezbollah. The para-military and illegal militia was established by generals from the Iranian Pasadran, funded by Iranian money, supplied with smuggled Iranian and Syrian arms, trained in illicit bases in Lebanon by Iranian personnel and is structured to serve the Iranian national interests as seen through the eyes of the Grand Ayatollah to whom Hassan Nasrallah pays ultimate homage as he himself has declared in 1987 that “Those who reject the Faqih’s authority are rejecting God and the descendents of the prophet Mohammad.” Some might need to be reminded that the Wilayat Al Faqih concept started with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978 and is interpreted to mean that the Grand ayatollah has power over all Shiite in the world and in all fields: religious, social and political.

Those who willingly choose to live in denial do so at their own peril. When will the Arabs, in general, and the Lebanese, in particular, decide to wake up from their slumber and call things by their real name? The Arab- Israeli conflict has been transformed over the past decade into an Iranian- Israeli conflict except that the ones who are doing the dying, the suffering and the fighting are Arabs. Iran has been able to penetrate masterfully the Arab ranks through its creation, funding and support of Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran has hijacked the Arab –Israeli conflict with the express complicity of these two parties and the cooperation of the isolated weakened and desperate Syrian regime.

To expect loyalty to a state and support for democracy and diversity by those whose founding charter declares: “We, the Umma of Hezbollah, consider ourselves part of the Islamic state of Iran… We are committed to the orders of one leadership, represented by the Wilayat Al-Faqih, the supreme leader” is the biggest of all follies.

Hamas Intransigence + Israeli Belligerence = Human Catastrophe

This has to wait a little longer..

The tragic events that have been in control of the Palestinian- Israeli problem for over sixty years have brought nothing but misery and suffering to both parties. It is unfortunate but true, that the continuing struggle between both sides and the ensuing “logic’ applied by them has been inevitable. This is a classic tragedy that cannot be avoided since the rules of logic that are in control of the situation dictate and lock in what economists call a sub Pareto optimal solution.

It is in the light of the above, the current Gaza crisis should be evaluated. Hamas and the government of Israel are in essence the two actors in the traditional Game Theory known as a Prisoners Dilemma. According to the rules of logic where each party is concerned with improving its own welfare the solution is always sub optimal. This simply means that whenever the actors in a “game” are attempting to maximize their own welfare they inevitably make choices that are not in their best interest

Note the decision by Hamas to keep on lobbing its ineffective and rudimentary rockets on near by Israeli towns despite the fact that Israel has pulled out its forces and settlements from Gaza over two years ago. I have no doubt in my mind that the Hamas leadership and the greater majority of the 1.5 million Gazans are convinced that these acts are helpful to the Palestinian people. Except that the real calculus makes it very clear that this chosen line of action is very costly on the Palestinian people. Actually the death and destruction brought about through these acts is ultimately a set back to the welfare and aspirations of the Palestinian people.

The same flawed logic is in control of the Israeli side. Israel appears to think that there is only one solution to the Hamas intransigence, a military solution. Israel has chosen, at its peril, not to learn from history that victory at the battlefield does not translate in this case to peaceful relationships with its neighbours. Israel has not learned yet the lesson that many problems in the world do not have a technical solution.

Is it inevitable for the two persons randomly picked up by police and accused of a crime to confess to a crime that they did not commit? Not until they learn to cooperate and stop making decisions based on their own selfish welfare. Unfortunately the exact conditions apply to our protagonists in the current Gaza –Israel quagmire. Both parties need a radical transformation in their priorities, values and mores. Unless they learn to play the game cooperatively then both of them are doomed to stay in the hell that they have created.

Global Capital and Delocalization

“Ideological celebration of so-called globalization is in reality the swan song of our historical system.”

Immanuel Wallerstein

In Epilogue II of War and Peace, which often goes unread, Tolstoy berates modern Historians who “ought to be studying not the manifestations of power but the causes which create power” if they are to provide a “description of the flux of humanity and of peoples”. Alas they act “like a deaf man answering questions no one has put to him.” This serious methodological defect highlighted by Tolstoy over a hundred and fifty years ago is still often committed not only by historians but by many of their colleagues in the social sciences. The results of such flawed cognitive processes dominate the field of Economic Development, Environmental Studies and what passes for analysis in the ubiquitous phenomenon of Globalization to name just three areas.

One illustration of the shortcomings of such models can be seen clearly in the efforts of The Group of Industrialized Countries, G 8, to deal with the ever spiraling level of poverty and deprivation on the African continent. The G 8 decided in 2005 to stem this downward cycle by lending its strong approval to the UK’s “Commission for Africa” plan spearheaded by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and the support of the PM Tony Blair in addition to the rather lukewarm support of the US administration. Fundamentally, the plan was based around the idea that a write off of the debt of the countries in question is the prescription for leading these countries out of poverty and dependency. Unfortunately, this scheme of increased money grants has been tried before with dire results.

The level of sincerity of the G8 nations is not questioned; their ability to differentiate between “manifestations” and “causes” is. There is no doubt that if an individual/country/institution has a lighter burden of financial liabilities, then they would be better of temporarily. But if the initial conditions that resulted in the debt in the first place have not been removed, then do we have any right to expect a different outcome the next time around? Of course not. Since it is safe to assume that neither countries nor individuals within countries will freely choose to live under inhumane conditions of deprivation, misery and squalor, then such outcomes are imposed on the unlucky recipients by a set of rules that demand such outcomes. Outcomes do not just happen; they are dictated by the prevailing social, economic and political structure; by the mode of production. Outcomes change only if we make changes to the world system.

Environmental studies is another field that is replete with policy suggestions that commit the fallacy that Tolstoy warned against. Despite the clear conclusions of large scale scientific studies that global ecological resources are under severe stress the global community and the United Nations proceed to work on peripheral issues . We have chosen to address symptoms instead of causes when we know that any meaningful relief demands a fundamental change in the conduct of economic, social and political affairs. Anything short of a radical change in the architecture of the world system is a palliative measure that would be doomed to fail and to only aggravate the problem that it was intended to resolve.

Whether it is global warming, the ever shrinking rain forest, desertification, endangered ocean fisheries, urbanization , water scarcity, pollution or declining biodiversity, just to name a few of the major environmental issues, it is clear that all of these problems are generated as a result of the global community’s unrestrained obsession with material accumulation. Again the solution is clear and obvious but the global community chooses to concentrate on “manifestations” instead of the real “cause”, economic growth. But to renounce growth and advocate redistribution is an unrealistic expectation from within the confines of the current paradigm that is constructed on the unrealistic assumptions of infinite growth and an economy that is not subject to any form of ecological constraints.

Globalization is yet another area whose analysis lacks distinction between symptom and cause. Recommendations and policy suggestions emphasize the superficial aspects of the phenomenon in question, proceed to describe in great detail its outer appearances, then conclude that globalization’s demands must always be accommodated since the process of globalization is inevitable and even irreversible. No attempt is made to explain the cause of globalization, its ultimate goal or whether that end is worthwhile. Globalization, to this group, is the order of the day, it can never do any harm and it must be unquestionably accommodated. A slight variation of the above admits to the possibility of generating unpleasant outcomes from the globalization process but believes that the structure is amenable to adjustment. It believes that reform could produce globalization with a human face thus creating a win-win solution for all stakeholders. This level of analysis is equally unsatisfactory since it does not delve into a meaningful analysis of the reason globalization arose, what is its reason d’être and whether it is amenable to reform.

Conclusion

Globalization in its entire facets, political, social, cultural and economic, is ultimately the result of a unique project due to the nature of capital accumulation on a world scale and the need for capital to dominate and homogenize. As production and consumption become alienated from their local surroundings, then this pursuit of global commodification will result in delocalization, desocialization and deterritorialization. Globalization results in less diversity, less control and a loss of identity. None of these unhealthy effects of globalization can be eliminated if globalization is maintained.

Change, if it is to come, will only occur when the victims decide to take action in order to vanquish the world system that has produced an environmentally unhealthy ecosystem and a humanly unjust society.

Chickens of Environmental Skeptics have Come Home to Roost

For almost two decades environmental skeptics, those who believe that there is no problem that cannot be solved through the application of a healthy dose of unfettered markets and technological innovation, have never tired from gloating over the Ehrlich/Simon wager.

Paul Ehrlich the author of the Population Bomb and a staunch advocate that planet earth is overpopulated and that there are limits to growth had a wager with Julian Simon who was just the opposite. He believed that science and technology will always deliver and that there is no limit to the level and intensity of human activity.

Mr. Simon argued that if the bleak view held by Mr. Ehrlich is accurate then the prices of commodities will go up from the resulting scarcity. But he does not think that will happen because human ingenuity will find substitutes to prevent that from occurring. Ultimately they agreed to keep track of the prices of five commodities; tin, copper, chromium, nickel and tungsten; over a ten year period. That was agreed upon during 1980 and by 1990 all the prices were lower than 10 years ago even in nominal terms. Paul Ehrlich wrote a check to Mr. Simon and suggested another bet but Julian Simon turned down the offer.

As is often the case Mr. Ehrlich turned out to be correct in his pessimism but his mistake was in limiting the bet to ten years only. A recent recalculation of what has transpired over the past 28 years shows very clearly that the prices of each of the five commodities in question has increased , both in real and nominal terms significantly. So yes Julian Simon won the wager over the first ten years while the caution about excessive demand and limits to growth as advocated by Paul Ehrlich is the real winner.

Overconsumption began long time ago

Another illustration that demonstrates the prescience of Paul Ehrlich can be found in the recent study released by the University of London’s’ London School of Hygiene and Tropical Disease in which they calculate that obesity is a serious contributor to Climate Change because of the additional food that needs to be consumed, the energy needed to grow the food and the additional energy required to transport obese people. Again what the authors of that study seem to have conveniently neglected is he formula developed by Paul Ehrlich and used by most serious students of environmental degradation namely that the environmental impact is very much determined by our chosen lifestyles.

Instead of discovering the detrimental impact of SUV’s, incandescent light bulbs, air travel, large homes, diets, fashion, war (just to name a few) and now obesity one at a time Paul Ehrlich admonished us more than forty years ago that what is needed in order to avoid the ecological and environmental abyss is a radical change in our life styles and not one item at a time. Will we recognize the significance of the moral imperative to act and act now or are we going to wait one more time until it is too late to act.

From Vietnam to Iraq: A Repeat of History, A Repeat of Mistakes

By Ashley Studley. [Pol 301D-Spring 2008]

Up until 9/11/2001, I rarely paid any heed to politics or worldly issues. I was slightly aware of current events, but I was far more preoccupied with my adolescent self to be truly bothered by any larger matter. Once the events of September the Eleventh occurred, I was shaken awake. I was distraught, confused, and wanting justice within every part of my being.
When President George W. Bush announced that Iraq had a direct correlation to 9/11, I almost ate it up as quickly as it had been served. I assumed Saddam Hussein had always been a threat, to his people and our own, and I was about to jump on Bush’s bandwagon like so many have now regretted doing.

But my high school social studies teacher deterred me from doing so. As he introduced us to the major issues surrounding the War in Iraq, he reminded us of the issues that revolved around the Vietnam War. That war, which lasted 16 years-the longest in American history, was one which we should not have involved ourselves in, and is eerily similar to the circumstances regarding our effort in the Middle East.

I found an article written by then-student Charlie Dering, dated March 30, 1971 in Pace’s former school newspaper, Sunshine. The headline reads as “War Atrocities”, and in it Dering makes note of the unmistakable actions taken by American forces in Vietnam. If it wasn’t for minor distinctions here and there, it would be easy to believe that Dering was ranting about today’s conflict.

In 1959, the United States sent troops to Southern Vietnam to assist in the stabilizing of their government. This part of Vietnam was having difficulty separating itself from the Communist party which controlled Northern Vietnam. In an attempt to settle this conflict, millions of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed, along with thousands of Americans. The U.S. finally pulled out in 1975, having failed to resolve anything.

Similar to today, the President has claimed that our new mission is to build and promote democracy within Iraq. Since his weapons of mass destruction theory didn’t pan out as well as he’d hoped, the goal now is to stabilize their government-the one which we destroyed by invading the country in March of 2003. We were only supposed to occupy for two years at most, a time span which has more than doubled as it reaches its fifth year anniversary in just a month. According to the Washington Post, American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimate that the combined death toll has reached 655,000. It is sad that our President knowingly misled us into an un-winnable war, and it is even worse that we have allowed it to go on for so long.

Dering’s article touches upon the sanitization of the news, and how up until Seymour Hersh exposed the Mai Lai massacre in 1969, Americans were not being informed of the truths of the war. Dering makes note that foreign media outlets were far more truthful in facts and photos with their presentations of the war. The same applies to today’s media, which is constantly criticized for its failure to give an accurate look into the Middle East. All we are given from day to day is a death toll, one without names or faces. Is the media attempting to keep us as detached from these casualties as possible? Or is it simply the government controlling what we see and what we hear? Whatever the unjustified reasoning, the public deserves truth, no matter how ugly or how bad it makes the country appear.

The student ends his article by saying “An end to these atrocities can be realized only by an end to the war. Evidently our President doesn’t want that.” Upon reading this, I realized that our country has not learned from its previous mistakes. It’s almost as if Charlie Dering looked into the future 37 years ago, and knew that our country would make the same blinding errors and never learn from them. Sadly, I wonder how many lives it will take and how many history books will need printing in order to end and prevent such atrocities from ever occurring again.

The Pulitzer prize photo: Kim Phuc - Vietnam Napalm bombing, South Vietnam 1972

The Tragedy that is Darfur. When Will the US Intervene?

By Matthew Herlihy. The following is an editorial for the general public. [Pol 301D, Spring 2008].

The War in Darfur, also known as the Darfur Genocide, is a battle that has been ravaging the western region of Sudan since 2003. Yet, for some reason, the citizens of the United States have not learned as much on this genocide as I think is necessary. It has been the habit of our government to engage in global endeavors to police our globe, to control genocidal acts in essence, but, still, the United States has no involvement in the growing problem that is plaguing the African continent. Civil wars are not uncommon to the continent; however genocide, considered a heinous war crime, is is an evil that must be tamed.

One side of this armed conflict is the Janjaweed, a group formed mostly of Sudanese military. The Janjaweed is a group based around the religion of Islam and shuns those who do not believe in the Islamic ways. Since 2003 they have been fighting with several rebel groups, primarily the Sudan Liberation Movement among others, all comprised of non-Arab persons. Statistics vary vastly on the number of deaths that have occurred from 2003 to now, but the majority of experts, including the United Nations, estimate that “as many as 200,000 are dead”(Q&A: Sudan’s Darfur Conflict, BBC News), and quite possibly many more. The United Nations however does not mark this conflict as genocide, whereas the United States has classified it as such.

How could this happen, some people will ask; how is it possible that such a terrible war can fly so easily under the American radar? Well, the United States still remains a part of the United Nations and therefore acts in compliance with the U.N. in efforts to relieve the situation of some of the tension. The roots of the War in Darfur though lie in the government. Rebel forces, in addition to enormous overpopulation and what is called “desertification”, or more simply put, the loss of serviceable crop land, have claimed that the government was favoring Arab Africans over black Africans. This type of sentiment led to various rebel groups forming, all with different leaders and different agendas, but all with the same general intent of overthrowing the government.

So what is the issue really, this is nothing more then a civil war it would seem on the surface, but in reality, it is the civilians of this region that are hurt the most. According to a November 15, 2007 article on bbc.com women have reported being held captive by the Janjaweed and used as sex slaves, citing the proclamation by the U.N. that war crimes are being committed with regularity inside Darfur. This however, is just the beginning of the vast troubles for the Darfur natives.

Refugees are what many Darfur natives have become, with millions displaced. In the same BBC article the author states, “millions have fled their destroyed villages, with some two million people in camps near Darfur’s main towns.”(Q&A: Sudan’s Darfur Conflict, BBC News). These camps though are hotspots for Janjaweed as they patrol the outskirts, and natives state that upon venturing too far from town “the men are killed and the women are raped,”(Q&A: Sudan’s Darfur Conflict, BBC News). Darfur remains an extremely hostile territory and at the present time it is difficult for aide groups to lend a helping hand, further disadvantaging the refugees from a stable form of life.

Unfortunately there is not much that can be done to stop such a large group of people who do not desire peace. If peace were something that most of these rebel parties thirsted for this conflict would have expired long ago, but this is not the case. The blood thirst that has become Darfur will continue until one of several things happen. First and foremost, all parties involved need to have a working ceasefire and pick up peace talks that were held in Nigeria without much, if any success. Secondly, despite the denial of western help by the Sudan, it is the responsibility of the United States and more importantly the United Nations to act swiftly and decisively in order to isolate these rebel groups and control them, most likely though having to be done with an insurgence of U.N. troops.

The Darfur conflict is a gripping dilemma and one without a clear cut solution presently, but a situation that without an evident ending can only lead to long civil war and unrest for the civilians of Darfur. I wrote this article in order to educate at the most basic level those who remain unaware of the trials that these refugees face at all times. If it has become the job of the United States to act as the policeman to the world, there is not a better time to live up to this role than this one. The involvement of the United States in Darfur should be a case of when, not if, and it seems appropriately so.