the Preznit nearly blows himself up

He can't do anything right.

Our Only Real Diplomat?

Nagging questions of political decorum aside (and since when did decorum, I dunno, prevent a chlorine bombing?)..., who the fuck gives somebody flak for trying to reconcile hostile powers in the Middle East?

The fact that Pelosi is not a member of the Executive branch merely underscores that branch's failures.

If Bush cannot reach out to "Axis Of Evil" leaders, he cannot hope to entice them to change their policies towards Israel, sectarian rivalry, or falafels, which, as stated earlier, must be safe to eat if the Middle East is ever to recover from its long slide back into Medieval violence and state-choking autocracy.

Anyway, here's a little blurb about our Madam Speaker's controversial trip:

From the NYTimes, April 6, 2007, "Pelosi Nudges Saudi Arabia to Give Women a Role in Politics," ASSOCIATED PRESS:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, April 5 (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday visited Saudi Arabia’s unelected advisory council, the closest thing in the kingdom to a legislature, where she tried out her counterpart’s chair — a privilege not available to Saudi women because they cannot become legislators.

...

Ms. Pelosi and King Abdullah discussed at length the Arab peace initiative, which offers Israel peace with Arab states if it withdraws from lands seized in 1967 and allows the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel has said it will accept the proposal only if some changes are made.

“I explained to him that this can be a very important and historic proposal if he is prepared for a discussion and a dialogue and not a presentation on a take-it-or-leave-it basis,” said Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who is also part of the American delegation. “His reaction was very positive.”

Of course Bush should value diplomacy, too.

But if he doesn't, I vote we send in Pelosi, Jimmy Carter, the A Team, and Sam Jackson, who, as we all know from Snakes On A Plane, is a master of both conflict resolution and off-the-cuff toxicology.

Also, this is something that should get more attention/political pressure: Many Iraqi refugees in Syria (and probably in Jordan, Iran, Saudia Arabia, Yemen, etc.) are being forced in quasi-slave positions as "cabaret dancers" or domestic servants... So besides the number of deaths/serious injuries in Iraq, one must, when one appraises America's intervention there, consider the number of less enumerable vilenesses that have come to pass since April, 2003.

From the (rather dark, X-Files-chic) CIA website:

current situation: Syria is a destination country for women from South and Southeast Asia and Africa for domestic servitude and from Eastern Europe and Iraq for sexual exploitation; women are recruited for work in Syria as domestic servants, but some face conditions of exploitation and involuntary servitude including long hours, non-payment of wages, withholding of passports and other restrictions on movement, and physical and sexual abuse; Eastern European women recruited for work in Syria as cabaret dancers are not permitted to leave their work premises without permission and have their passports withheld; some displaced Iraqi women and children are reportedly forced into sexual exploitation
tier rating: Tier 3 - Syria does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so

We should engage Syria diplomatically if for no other reason than to pressure them to reform/transform/abolish their domestic servant/sex trade.

Tom Paine/Obama In 08

Snippets:

1. Iran sends home their 15 pet sailing-Brits, one plus a hijab. Here's a great fish-eyed picture of the vicious Anglo-trespassers in their second-hand Persian suits. (I want one!)



From today's NYTimes:

“Throughout, we have taken a measured approach, firm but calm, not negotiating but not confronting either,” Mr. Blair said. Britain bore no ill will toward the Iranian people, he told reporters, and respected Iran’s “proud and dignified history.”

So... Britain wouldn't negotiate or confront? Meaning the only option left to explore was... to ignore the situation and hope cooler heads prevailed in Tehran. Gotcha. Isn't that basically "chance-based engagement" (a term I just made up that I will continue to apply to this hope-it-goes-away brand of diplomacy, such as Bush's/America's re: Hamas, DPRNK, Castro, &c.).

I don't know which was lamer, the Brit's faith/head-in-sand-based conflict resolution or the Iranian's lame video/pictorial propaganda about how "sorry" the sailors were (really, for real, guys), which featured a much be-Sharpied map of the Iran/Iraq aqua-divide and a dour-looking Revolutionary Guardsman pointing to the obviously offensive Brit-boat coordinate.

(In other news, Russia plans to build a GPS system to rival our own... Competition is a good thing.)

2. Again we favour Israel bearing arms rather than brown people bearing them. Also from today's Times:

WASHINGTON, April 4 — A major arms-sale package that the Bush administration is planning to offer Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to deter Iran has been delayed because of objections from Israel, which says that the advanced weaponry would erode its military advantage over its regional rivals, according to senior United States officials.

This is the other backbone of American policy: Fucking things up. To prevent dictatorships, Communism, religious radicalism, and anti-selling-us-oil governments in general, we prop up crazy dictators. To prevent war, we sell arms to side X, which makes side Y want to go to war, meaning we have to give more arms to side Z to create an "equilibrium," though it's easy to misinterpret how to do that, and with whom...

3. John Edwards is "roaring" with Christ's power.

Actually, I'm not going to make fun of him, even though I'm all about some Age Of Reason non-theistic (i.e., non-carrot-&-stick-based) morality. Check out this:

I think he would be happy with the fact that I have focused on people who live in poverty here and people without healthcare. And the suffering of others in other parts of the world, like some of the work that I've done on humanitarian issues in Africa, for example, and going to the slums outside of Delhi and India.

Focusing on problems in a very personal way that exist, and without regard to my own selfish ambitions, talking about things that may not seem so politically powerful, but are important to me, and I think important to God.

That sounds about right. Except that talking about morality should be a part of politics, as it once was (see below; buy the book).

Possibly even better is:

Do you think that America is a Christian nation?

...I never thought of it quite that way. There's a lot of America that's Christian. I would not describe us, though, on the whole, as a Christian nation. I guess the word "Christian" is what bothers me, even though I'm a Christian.

Correct/bravo. Can you imagine Pres. John Edwards (and I am an electorally-monogamous Obama man mydamnself) talking to Middle Eastern leaders? I can--more than I can imagine Bush, another serious Christian, doing so. Because, unlike Bush, Edwards seems to have a grasp on the idea of many faiths/one nation, or of the continually self-revising nature of history... Which leads me to:

4. Paul Collins is THE MAN, as is Tom Paine. Best recognize.

You should buy this book by the former/about the latter. Right now.

flat-top mountain's chinese brothers and sisters

to lend a global addendum to wythe's post last month about mountaintop removal mining in the U.S, here's an amazing narrated slideshow about the effects of mining in Linfen, China:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/v5/content/features/chinaslideshow/index.html

really scary. really worth watching.

on another note

looks like it's not just Culture Project staff with an abiding interest in the art of karaoke:

the economist again:

Yanji, a town predominately of ethnic Korean Chinese, then had something of wartime Casablanca about it. The place was crawling with South Korean, Chinese and North Korean spooks; snakeheads promising to get refugees, for a sum, into safe third countries; and starving North Korean women willing to sell themselves for a song in return for protection.

I had wanted some of the story, but, as a journalist, I came away feeling a fraud. I had met a Korean Chinese—a Communist official, indeed—who had promised I could meet two young North Korean women whom he was sheltering; they would tell me their story. But when I saw them the following evening, it was clear that whatever their past sufferings, these two large plump women were now party girls. They insisted we hire a private karaoke room. They knew all the South Korean songs. And with a show of considerable force they pushed me on to my back on the sofa, cramming grapes into my mouth. I tried, I swear I tried, but I never did get their story, though I remember charging the experience to expenses.

women are center stage

while we're stuck in the U.S. talking about Hillary (is it important to vote for a woman for prez even if her politics are f**ked?), the economist reminds us about some real progressive women out there fighting the good (political) fight:

Ségolène Royal is a Socialist candidate for president in France (even though it may mean she needs to spend a little more on babysitters), joining the ranks of Helle Thorning-Schmidt of Denmark and Mona Sahlin in Sweden, also Social Democratic leaders who are out there in the battle.

these are the kind of strong women with a people-centered political agenda that we should be taking our direction from.

Really?!!?

I felt really bad when I smoked pot in front of my dad's grave. Now..... not so much.

US Priorities = Fucked

1. Africa

...should be a huge priority. Easy-to-slow down or stop human rights crises abound. See: Yesterday's post about Central African Republic. Or check out today's NYTimes, "Showing Mugabe the Door," by PETER GODWIN:

Zimbabwe lacks the two exports necessary to interest the United States in direct intervention: oil and terrorism. International sanctions on Zimbabwe are now minuscule. We could ramp up “smart sanctions” against Mr. Mugabe and his coterie, for example by freezing their ill-gotten external assets, but any wider sanctions would probably only hurt those at the bottom of the food chain, not the elite kleptocracy. Megaphone diplomacy tends to feed Mr. Mugabe’s portrayal of Western powers as shrill, hectoring, imperialist bullies.

Long story short: Zimbabwe is the poorest, most messed-up country on the planet. And Democrats and Republicans aren't going to do anything to help the people there.

(Check out Alex Cockburn's perfectly motley, perfectly reasoned discussion of latter-day Radicalism, and why he's not a card-carryin' Dem. Then go out and vote Freak Power Party, when I run for NY Senate...)

2. Iraq

Read George Packard's excellent, excellent discussion of how we treat our own allies--or, rather, how we grossly mistreat our own allies in Iraq.

From the article:

From the hotel window, Othman could see the palace domes of the Green Zone directly across the Tigris River. “It’s sad,” he told me. “With all the hopes that we had, and all the dreams, I was totally against the word ‘invasion.’ Wherever I go, I was defending the Americans and strongly saying, ‘America was here to make a change.’ Now I have my doubts.”

Laith was more blunt: “Sometimes, I feel like we’re standing in line for a ticket, waiting to die.”

3. America

From the NYTimes' "Relatives of Interned Japanese-Americans Side With Muslims," By NINA BERNSTEIN:

In recent years, many scholars have drawn parallels and contrasts between the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the treatment of hundreds of Muslim noncitizens who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, then held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported.

But the brief being filed today is a rare case of members of a third generation stepping up to defend legal protections that were lost to their grandparents, and that their parents devoted their lives to reclaiming.

“I feel that racial profiling is absolutely wrong and unjustifiable,” Ms. Yasui, 53, wrote in an e-mail message from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she works as a writer and graphic designer. “That my grandmother was treated by the U.S. government as a ‘dangerous enemy alien’ was a travesty. And it killed my grandfather.”

Meaning history repeats, because we turn our eyes from it.

4.

We must at least consider--as a nation, from the highest benches of government on down--that the starving, oppressed peoples of Africa might just be worthy of our help, even if such help does not result in any financial or political gain for us. We must consider that we might really have to help them, just because it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do in the MLK II/Faulkner/Mos Def sense--the sense that does not take explaining or theorizing or justifying--just doing.

We must consider the fact that, by treating our Iraqi allies in Baghdad badly and replacing them with Jordanians and Uzbeks, we might be harming both the Iraqi people and the American people. We might be placing ourselves at a continually greater risk of terrorist attack by neglecting to follow the advice of the Iraqis who want to help us fix Iraq.

And finally we must treat each and every American citizen as a citizen; in fact, we must treat as citizens even those proto-citizens who are prevented from joining this Union by right wing xenophobics. We must not treat Muslims like terrorists simply because they are Muslims.

Sure, the Quran and Bible and Torah and other religious/doctrinal texts advocate or don't advocate violence against various groups and for various reasons and via various metaphors and with various room for diplomatic out-bowing... But more important than all that hogwashing is the fact that most US Muslims--must Muslims everywhere--aren't "violent" and shouldn't be treated as dangerous outsiders. They pay taxes, watch the Super Bowl and eat at frickin Chucky Cheese, just like everyone else (except Tax Skippin Jimmy) in New Jersey.

Which all leads me to one more short mosaic-piece of information for you to ponder over. O ye who saw Guantánamo: Honorbound to Defend Freedom here at CP, weep! Then stop weeping. Then write your senator, your rep, your local judges, your PTA people, and your President. Just copy the paragraph below and X it out with chicken's blood. (That's called "Bad Bird" houdou.) Anyway, here it is:

5. Sad, Sad Tidings

From the NYTimes' "Supreme Court Denies Guantánamo Appeal," By LINDA GREENHOUSE:

WASHINGTON, April 2 — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear urgent appeals from two groups of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. The 45 men sought to challenge the constitutionality of a new law stripping federal judges of the authority to hear challenges to the open-ended confinement of foreign citizens held at the American naval base in Cuba and designated as enemy combatants.

What a pair!

Rudy's a cross-dressing, racist cop-defending, adulterer and Judy's a dog killer. Nice.

Preventable Tragedies

From the NYTimes' "Wedged Amid African Crises, a Neglected Nation Suffers," by LYDIA POLGREEN:

The crisis in the Central African Republic is now more than two years old, and the fighting has killed thousands of people and caused hundreds of thousands of the country’s four million people to flee their homes.

Their flight has been so desperate that those who can have run across the border into their troubled neighbors’ territory. About 50,000 people from the northwest have fled into southern Chad, and thousands of residents of the northeastern town of Birao, in a perverse twist, have even fled into the Darfur region of Sudan, where a struggle over power, land and identity has raged since 2003.

Toby Lanzer, the United Nations humanitarian chief in the Central African Republic, said that despite the nation’s desperate poverty, saving lives here, with enough resources, would be relatively easy.

Chad and Sudan are vast, arid nations that have complex ethnic problems, and aid workers have been attacked and stymied by government bureaucracy. Sudan and Chad have both refused United Nations peacekeeping troops, but the Central African Republic has said it would cooperate with an international force.

“This is a place where the international community is welcomed,” Mr. Lanzer said. “It is a country of four million people. We should be able to fix this.”

His lonely way back home...

James Moore, co-author of "Bush's Brain" and an upcoming book on the long-term effects of Bush and Rove's deplorable policies on America, has a 'must read' in today's Huffington Post.

If you read or watched anything yesterday, you heard about Matthew Dowd, Bush's former chief strategist, who overnight tried to mea culpa his way out of 6 years of war mongering and Constitution shredding. This is the guy almost single-handedly responsible for both Bush victories (he was Rove's right hand) and now, just as his son is about to be shipped off to Iraq, he's suddenly had a crisis of conscience. Well, it's just a little too late.

Safer than Phoenix ?

See Saint McCain take a "stroll" through the marketplace in downtown Baghdad.

You may recall that at the beginning of the week, the "maverick" got into a little trouble for saying that some parts of Baghdad are so safe one can take a stroll without any worries for their safety. He went so far as to lie, I mean say, that even General Petraeus often goes out in un-armored humvees. But when CNN told him that, in fact, the General never goes without fully armored humvees, heavily armed, the "straight talk express" went off the tracks. Not to be outdone by a little 'truth' however, St. McCain decided to visit inside the Green Zone, and then he went out shopping in downtown Baghdad - to prove that we silly Americans are just not understanding how much better things are going over there.

Only problem? When Johnny went walking through Baghdad today he was accompanied by 100 armed soldiers, with three blackhawk helicopters and two apache gunships circling above. And in a totally Dukakis-in-the-tank moment, he took his stroll in a bulletproof vest. Wow, it's just like Main Street in Flagstaff.

It's just too bad that those 6 U.S. soldiers who were killed in Baghdad while McCain went shopping didn't have 100 armed soldiers, three blackhawk helicopters and two apache gunships in tow. Maybe if the U.S. Army wasn't so concerned about protecting the maverick's photo op, they would have protected our soldiers instead. Maybe McCain should call their families personally and apologize for his despicable war.

Monty Python rates the Iranians "uncivilised"

If you didn't see Terry Jones' piece in today's Guardian, you missed a truly brave editorial on the UK sailors being held in Iran. Inserting tongue firmly in cheek, Jones took the hypocrisy of the Bush-Blair torture principle to task. You just gotta read this.