laura.fo

Much as I support the idea of waterboarding Sean Hannity for charity, I take issue with a couple things Lawrence O'Donnell, the MSNBC analyst interviewed by Olbermann, says in this video.

O'Donnell seems to believe that torturing only works on wussies. He identifies himself as just such a person, and says Hannity is one, too. This is why Hannity thinks torture would work, O'Donnell explains: since it would work on him, he thinks it would work on everybody. Hardened warriors, however — be they in the American military or members of Al-Qaeda — are not susceptible to a little waterboarding, a little fingernail-pulling, the occasional afternoon spent being electrocuted. They are real men. And torture doesn't work on real men.

Merriment ensues, since this take on the situation casts Hannity as a wimp. In other words, he's kind of a girl.

Forgive me if I don't find being "too feminine to endure torture" as much of an insult. I mean we're not talking about a snake bite here, or the ability to keep running after you get that stitch in your side. We're talking about undergoing physical pain so horrific it can bring on a spontaneous heart attack in an otherwise healthy individual. Yes, military personnel do get some training in withstanding these techniques, but when it comes to pain at this level, stamina and commitment to one's cause don't mean much. And that's the thing: terrorist groups know this, which is why they do things like refer to each other by code names, and ensure that the chains of communication are so convoluted that the individuals most likely to be caught won't have any information to give.

(In the movies, of course, all the bad guys sit around a table and plan the whole operation together. That way when Kiefer Sutherland captures one of them he can conveniently shoot him in the knee and immediately he'll learn where the bomb is, who put it there, where that guy is now, the first middle and last names of everyone involved in the plot, and all the passwords to their computers.)

Outside of Hollywood it's not so tidy. The "ticking time bomb scenario" isn't unworkable because terrorists are immune to pain: it's unworkable because if you've only captured one guy by the time the bomb has started ticking, you're screwed. You won't get much useful information out of him, because he doesn't have much useful information to give. This is true even if he tells you absolutely everything he knows, which he probably will and then some.

And here we have the other problem with O'Donnell's take. Members of Al-Qaeda, in his imagination, are inhuman, almost literally: so inhuman they don't respond to pain. He tries to pass this off as a progressive argument — since it falls under the rubric of "therefore we shouldn't torture!" — but in doing so he's glossed over all the human rights implications of being a nation that okays torture, not to mention all of the foreign policy decisions that lead desperate people to turn to terrorism in the first place.

He also continues to cast this conflict in gendered terms, where torture is masculine, whether you're enduring it or dishing it out, and cracking under it is feminine and wimpy. Under that logic, if Sean Hannity decides that you know what? he'd rather not be waterboarded, it's not because he's a hypocrite: it's because he's a pussy. If he does go through with it, though, well by gosh buy that man a beer!

'Battlestar Galactica's' trip to the United Nations

Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos appeared with two of the show's executive producers, four UN officials, and moderator Whoopi Goldberg at a panel to discuss human rights, religious conflict, terrorism, gender issues, and other moral conflicts and dilemmas addressed on Battlestar Galactica. The whole panel (about two hours) is available on the UN webcast archives (scroll down to 17 March 2009).

Later, McDonnell responded eloquently to a question about the imperatives of the military versus the rule of democracy and Roslin’s role in executing the fleet’s enemies. For a woman who had been perceived, early on, as a tentative former schoolteacher, President Roslin didn’t blink when it came to tossing a fractious Cylon into space. In fact, in time fans started to call her character “Madam Airlock.”

“She can talk about how she was haunted by the airlock,” Eick said. “But she’s also the one who made it a verb.”

Juan Cole on Gaza: What to do about it?

I think people should be careful about talking about "the Israeli lobby" (or worse, "the Jewish lobby") as the sole cause of America's Middle East policy being what it is (see "Anti-semitism and U.S. Middle East policy" by Stephen Zunes, a Palestinian supporter, for more on that). Not that Cole is doing this — he writes on all sorts of aspects of this conflict — but I want to note it here because I don't want this link to be read in isolation and then perpetuate that line of thinking.

However, it is undeniable that the pro-Israel side of this issue is much more organized than the pro-Palestinian side, especially when it comes to doing sustained lobbying of U.S. Congress members. And I think Cole is right when he says this is more effective than street activism. Here, he lays out a model for organizational strategies that anti-occupation activists could apply to counter the weight of AIPAC. They are surprisingly… doable.

When he first took office in 1993, it took President Clinton about two minutes to abolish the Reagan-era policy known as the Global Gag Rule. Then, in 2001, it took President Bush about two minutes to reinstate it. Now it looks like President Obama will be abolishing it again. This is good news.

Officially termed the Mexico City Policy, these restrictions mandate that no U.S. family planning assistance can be provided to foreign NGOs that use funding from any other source to: perform abortions in cases other than a threat to the woman’s life, rape or incest; provide counseling and referral for abortion; or lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country.

Called the "gag" rule because it stifles free speech and public debate on abortion-related issues, the policy forces a cruel choice on foreign NGOs: accept U.S. assistance to provide essential health services – but with restrictions that may jeopardize the health of many patients – or reject the policy and lose vital U.S. funds, contraceptive supplies and technical assistance.

This is one of those cases where I get worked up when people say there are no differences between Republicans and Democrats. We can fight battles both epic and tedious here in the U.S. to make incremental change in reproductive rights within our borders, but in the stroke of a pen the president can make a decision that affects millions of women abroad, with no debate here at home or even much awareness of it.

This is not me defending the Democrats so much as it is me lamenting the disproportionate role the U.S. plays in world affairs. However, since that is the case (at least for now) it seems there should be less focus on the president's positions on things he can't control (i.e. stuff that's decided at the local level or in the other branches of government) and much, much more attention to his views on foreign policy. (Note also that there's more to "foreign policy" than "war." See above.)

I find it curious that African-American women are all lazy unwed welfare-cheating baby-making machines and African-American men are all violent drug-abusing absentee fathers RIGHT UNTIL they are standing in the way of gay rights, at which point they become socially conservative homophobes who can't see past their religious family values. If you're going to scapegoat people of color for all the world's problems, at least make your stereotypes consistent, ya know? C'mon.

First of all, as other people have amply demonstrated, Prop 8 was not lost by people of color, despite what Dan Savage and a whole lot of other people think.

Brown People Did Not Pass Prop. 8

Propositioning Privilege: The reality is that white people are not being blamed as a racial group for the loss because of the sense that queer=white and there is no racial investment that would benefit from an argument that pathologized whiteness as inherently homophobic in the way that white privilege benefits from pathologizing blackness this way. This is a great, comprehensive look at how both sides of the Prop 8 campaign were handled.

Racialicious roundtable on Proposition 8

More links at Alas, A Blog

Furthermore, if it weren't for people of color most of the gay marriage bans still would have passed and McCain would have won the election in a landslide.

Even acknowledging this, I don't think it excuses the way No-on-8 campaign was run. I don't live in California, so I can't really speak to this outside of what I've seen on the internet, but I do want to say a few things about white Left movements, including but not limited to white queer movements, and how they (try to, sort of) do alliances with people of color. This has been brewing for me for a while now; it's not a new problem and I know other people reading this have thought about many of these things so forgive me if it comes off as repetitious or preaching to the choir. I think it still needs to be addressed.

1. Think about how you use civil rights imagery. There are parallels there, and they should be drawn, but to compare the passing of Prop 8 with lynching and Jim Crow disrespects Black history. Even the Loving decision, which is the most obvious parallel (and one Mildred Loving herself endorsed) had a profoundly different history than the history of gays and lesbians. Angry Black Woman discusses the background on that decision and how it was frankly not a huge priority during the civil rights era: So I have to wonder why the No on 8 people chose to present this as a parallel of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. To my mind, this helped trivialize their desire to marry, particularly among older blacks who remember when being able to marry white people was the least of their worries.

I think for white people the relationship is clear: if it was wrong to discriminate against relationships on the basis of race, it should likewise be wrong to discriminate against relationships on the basis of gender. But sexual 'relationships' between races had been going on for generations; what made Loving historic for a lot of people was that it was finally talking about such relationships in the context of mutual consent and agency for both partners — as opposed to systemic sexual violence against women of color by white men and the lynching of Black men perceived to be pursuing white women. It wasn't so much "yay! we get to marry white people! this is the best day of our lives!" :p Which is related to:

2. Think about how you talk about "sex" and "freedom." White people tend to think of consent as an individual thing. Did she, singular, say yes? They're not usually thinking of the three or four hundred years in which white men raped slaves and live-in domestic workers, or the women and girls today who are caught up in the sex trafficking industry. The right not to have sex was a lot harder to win than the right to have it, and I think a lot of folks (myself included) are skeptical of feminist/queer movements when they treat history as if it's all "our sex lives used to be so repressed and limited but hurray now we're free!" Add to that the number of Black men who've been falsely accused of raping white women, and there's an additional layer of reluctance to sign up for a cause that makes more cops the answer to sexual violence and invests a lot of energy in saving white women from all manner of discomfort while having little to say about the imprisonment of Black men for the most petty of crimes. Reluctance especially when, again, white movements treat sexual violence solely as an individual problem (one man raping one woman) rather than a community problem (one race or nationality being granted total sexual agency under the law and another race or nationality just hoping and praying to stay the hell out of their way).

3. Think about how you talk about Black churches. For many white gays and lesbians, the church is a place of repression and silencing, and one of the first institutions they are ready to abandon when they come into adulthood. But the church has played a different role in black communities — Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and many many other civil rights leaders tied their work to religious tradition. Black churches have been a powerful source of progressive organizing in communities of color, as well as a source of emotional and financial support for people who are struggling. I'm not saying there isn't more work to be done there, and I'm not saying religion played no role in getting people to support Prop 8. But to speak of African-American religiosity as if it's the same thing as your white neighbor's homophobic Bible-thumpin' Leviticus-quoting Rapture-believing denim-jumper-wearing young-earth anti-science women-get-back-in-the-kitchen 700 Club brand of Christianity is to shit on the people who brought you school desegregation and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Black churches are potential allies, and indeed many religious leaders have already come out in favor of LGBT rights, but those alliances aren't going to get very far if white Leftists keep talking about them as if they are forces of institutionalized oppression when in reality their role in American history has been precisely the opposite.

4. Think about how you talk about your neighborhood. I'm not going to go into the whole history of gentrification except to note that it goes beyond where any one person decides to locate. It's about how you treat and speak about your community. Would the elderly want to live in your neighborhood? Not would they be welcome but would they actually want to? Would they have things to do? What about families with small children who are not part of your particular subculture or political community? Would you send your own kids to the local schools?

I know white Leftists and/or LGBT folks live all over the map and these issues aren't germane to everybody, but "building community" seems to be something we value and devote a lot of time to without thinking about the impact it has and the message it sends to people outside "our" (actually quite insular) community. I've seen this come up a LOT, not just around Prop 8 but in general when the possibility of POC/queer alliances comes up.

5. Think about how you talk about other people's neighborhoods. I saw a fair bit of No-on-8 people talking about their reluctance to canvass in "bad" areas. I am going to go out on a limb and guess these were pretty much all communities of color. As far as I can tell, the Yes-on-8 people weren't complaining about this. Now to some extent that's apples and oranges because queer and transgender people have different concerns about safety than straight people (even Mormons) do when they're walking around in unfamiliar territory, but those concerns apply in white neighborhoods as much or more so and I didn't hear anyone saying "I can't doorknock in the suburbs or they'll kill me." I know when I hear someone say they won't go into certain parts of the city, even someone else's city, I feel like a wall just went up between us — even if I'd previously seen this person as a friend or ally — because that's the kind of neighborhood I live in. And I'm white. So think about how that comes across. As others have said repeatedly in the past few days, the No campaign didn't ask for those votes, so it is disingenuous to express shock after the fact.

6. Queerness does not negate whiteness. Neither does communism, anarchism, or any other brand of radical politics. This one was hard for me when I was younger, because the force of what for the sake of brevity I'll call Mainstream Society^TM was so strong that I saw all people who were any brand of "other" as natural allies. To an extent, there's value in that world view. In 1991 I went to a large demonstration in Chicago that was organized by CISPES, ACT UP, and the anti-war movement; the point was to solidify connections between groups that might otherwise seem disparate and single issue, to reject divide-and-conquer strategies of the Right, and to make sure our activist work was attentive to the interrelatedness of different forms of oppression.

But "interrelatedness" != "same as," and at some point I had to confront how my work on Issue X didn't give me an automatic pass on Issues Y and Z. Nor did it undermine the institutionalized benefits I'd received from growing up in a white family in a country where race matters very deeply. Over time I also realized how what I thought of as my "alternative" status was actually alienating to many people of color: that in many ways my flagrant disregard of Mainstream Society^TM was the ultimate sign of white privilege. I could go around carrying a placard with my hair dyed three colors and clothes covered in safety pins, but if an African American woman my same age walked out of the house with so much as a rip on her sleeve or a scuff on her shoe she risked being pegged as a charity case and borderline illiterate. That was difficult for me to work out, because the way I presented myself wasn't just a fashion thing — it was a rejection of mainstream beauty standards for women and traditional notions of gender. Appearance and self-presentation were politicized for me. I'm not saying we should all go around in pantsuits and business casual and try to be as safe and non-threatening as possible when talking about politics (don't read me that way), nor am I saying there aren't people of color who are also concerned about how these issues intersect (don't read me that way either), but when I looked at this whole thing from the perspective of people who were already, inherently, considered suspect and outsiders, it made the issue much more complicated for me. I used to be all "get out there! mix shit up!" end of story. But when you can put on a suit and tie and put your daughter in her Girl Scout uniform and go to church to pray to Jesus and still lose your child in a directed attack because of who you are, it makes me a lot less critical of people who might be reserved about pushing the envelope, especially if they're expected to do it in solidarity with people who've never shown much solidarity with them. Which brings me to:

7. Acknowledge your debt. This goes back to #1 and #3 above. If you're going to present your issue (I'm thinking of Prop 8, but other stuff, too) as the outgrowth of the civil rights movement, then it seems smart to learn more about that movement and to get to know people who were involved in it. Civil rights weren't gifts from enlightened white people, nor were they just part of the natural progression of history. They were earned with blood. Don't be casual about that. Don't bring it up only in the context of how it relates to your issue(s). And if you are going to ask for people to support your issue on principle, not because it benefits them but because It's Just The Right Thing To Do, you might work harder to support their issues on principle, too. By "support" I don't mean "agree with it in my mind"; I mean get out there and ask where you can be of service. In the case of California, there were at least two ballot measures that directly affected minority communities. I saw very few white activists write about these, especially compared to the number of straight POC I saw writing about Prop 8. ladyjax writes more about this: When white people roll up on Black folks about being oppressors, there's some truth to it but that gets lost when people start to remember: 'Hmm, that rally for (immigration rights, education, housing, etc. etc.). I didn't see you there.' … Sometimes the fight isn't always about what you want but about reciprocation.

8. Stop assuming African-American support. Everything I'm saying here could fall under the umbrella of "don't take people of color for granted," but I wanted to say something specifically about what seems to be a common assumption — that African Americans, even more than other minorities and definitely more than white people, "should just understand" what gays and lesbians are going through "because it happened to them, too." First of all, as I (and many others) said above, the parallels between the two movements are not nearly as clear as they've been made out to be. Second, to make this an issue of understanding or the lack thereof, rather than resentment at being ignored and trivialized or pushed out of one's own neighborhood, isn't helpful. But most of all, it misses the mother of all points, which is that Prop 8, like most everything that sucks, is overwhelmingly about white money and white power. Even if they voted yes in higher percentages, African Americans are not more guilty than whites, who funded this thing and got it done. Black homophobia isn't especially galling because of their history in this country. White homophobia is especially galling because white conservatives have the resources and, my god, the energy to make defeating LGBT rights such a priority.

9. Stop assuming African-American NON-support. The flip side to the white liberal saying "there's no point in asking for African-American support because we know we already have it" is the white Leftist saying "there's no point in asking for African-American support because we know we'll never get it." Either because of beliefs about Black homophobia or (more charitably) beliefs about Black communities having more pressing priorities, it's still a reluctance to form alliances. Over and over again, at least in blogs, I've been seeing black and brown women saying "no one approached us" or "we weren't asked to help." These are women who voted no anyway (if they're Californian, or from one of the other states that had a ballot measure of this kind), but while doing so some have bitterly pointed out it's another sign that people of color are being treated as silent foot soldiers in a movement while white organizers take over the leadership.

10. Finally, there are queer people of color! I almost didn't include this because it seems too obvious to mention, but I don't want the fact that I am addressing a white audience right now to be taken as a sign that I'm ignoring queer POC or that I'm painting the queer movement as exclusively white. That's been another huge issue in this debate. (See Pam's House Blend post about the treatment of Black gay activists after Prop 8 passed, The N-bomb is dropped on black passersby at Prop 8 protests and ask yourself with friends like these….?) I have much more to say about this, especially as it relates to the treatment of Islam by gay and lesbian activists because that's where most of my attention goes anymore, but really it merits its own post.

What I will say is that I've read some excellent stuff lately (offline) about building alliances between queer communities and immigrants/people of color, and/or about addressing racism in queer organizing, and as much as I like it it still needles me that so much of it assumes an audience of white gays and lesbians, exclusively. Never straight people of color, and, well, the existence of LGBT people of color would ruin the whole argument so they're just left out altogether. The assumption seems to be that white people can be educated about race but queer POC come from backgrounds so hopelessly homophobic that their only choice is to try to assimilate into a white queer community (who will try to be "more sensitive" but will ultimately still control and define the community's agenda).

But when the argument is always framed that way — "I know y'all are good on gay and lesbian issues, but now let's talk about race" — well, just who are you talking to there? I did it myself above, without thinking about it, by linking to the CISPES web site (in case someone doesn't know what that is) but not bothering to link to ACT UP (because I assume anyone reading me has heard of that). That's what I'm talking about. So if you're trying to build alliances but are always assuming that your audience is already politicized around queer stuff but isn't politicized around race issues, you are implicitly communicating your exclusion of people for whom it works the other way around, or who have been prioritizing both things long before they ever stumbled across whatever you're on about at this moment. But again, a post in itself. This one's long enough.

Baracking the World – Der Spiegel

The World Reacts – The New York Times

Reactions around the world (photos) – Huffington Post

US election: International reactions – BBC

Barack Obama is 'President of the world' – CNN

Pakistan 'Wary of Barack Obama' – SKY News

Suddenly, it may be cool to be an American again

Victory celebrations in Kenya, where Nov. 5 was declared a public holiday:

Obama's half-brother is carried through his village in Kenya:

At the elementary school Obama attended in Indonesia:

(I love how the other kids around him are going dude — chill. Because every classroom, everywhere in the world, always has that one, awesome, way-too-into-it kid.)

I wanted to do an election retrospective before Tuesday, if only so that I can look back someday and wonder if I was high or what to be so optimistic. Or ideally — hey, one can dream! — to laugh at how surprised I was that the Democrats have managed to accomplish anything and how cautious I was about their ability to do anything beyond this.

I care about the executive branch rather a lot. The main issues for me since 2001 have been civil liberties, the war(s), and the treatment of Arabs, Muslims, and immigrants here in the U.S. I put these things even above health care, abortion, education, queer issues, and the redistribution of wealth — not because I don't care about those things too, but because I think that democratic process, transparency in government, and a political culture favoring civil rights and human dignity are the bare minimum prerequisites to getting anything else done. This is the umbrella under which all other political issues fall, and the executive branch is where these things happen. Foreign policy in particular, as has been amply demonstrated these past seven years, is almost exclusively the domain of the president and his or her administration.

This is why I supported Obama over Edwards in the primary and even though he's disappointed me since then (e.g. FISA) I still believe he's the candidate most likely to speak for me, in part because of his Constitutional law background and in part because his international upbringing exposed him to governments that run on corruption and opacity and he has addressed this specifically in interviews, saying one of the reasons he "loves America" (always a softball question) is that you don't have to pay a bribe to open a business or a school (always a surprising answer). I think a lot of interviewers hear that and think whatever, weirdo because they never follow up on it, and yet he keeps saying it and it's kind of a big deal to me, that he's lived elsewhere and knows what happens when corruption permeates every pocket of society and he therefore gets why the rule of law is important. When I heard him speak in Iowa last winter he said, in answer to someone's question about the Bush administration's overreach, that one of his first priorities as president would be to go line-by-line over the changes that were made in the past two terms giving the executive branch too much power and to make sure those laws were changed. I haven't heard him raise this issue elsewhere so I don't know how committed he is to it, but he did say it and I hope We The People force him to do it.

So when I think about grassroots organizing, I'm not so much thinking about who's running for office at the local level or what dollars are being spent on which potholes; I'm thinking about changing the national mood to one more responsive to progressive issues. I want people who will push their politicians to do the right thing, and I want politicians who are responsive to that.

In January of 2007, someone asked me, "If you were to try to turn someone on to Obama, where would you start?" I didn't answer her then, but one of my first thoughts was this speech, from 2006. If you scroll to the end there's a bit about abortion that surprised me. A doctor in Chicago wrote to say he was considering voting for Obama, even though Obama was pro-choice, but would not do so as long as he was painting pro-lifers as "ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women." Obama considered this, thought it was a fair point, and changed the language on his web page — without changing his position on abortion. This, to me, felt like a significant change from the way Clintons did business. Rather than keeping the rhetoric and changing the policy, Obama kept the policy and changed the rhetoric.

Who cares, you ask? For the doctor in question, and I think for a lot of people on the independent center-right, especially those presumed to be Palin's constituency, there is no one issue that really moves them. (If there were, they'd have picked a side already.) And they are not nearly as committed (some would say vulnerable) to a right-wing Christian agenda as Democrats think they are. What they want is to be heard. They want to stop being ignored and invisible in the world they see on TV and the movies and in the speeches of those in power. It's not that they need abortion to be illegal and gay marriage to be outlawed; it's that they're terrified they'll wake up tomorrow and be living in an episode of Sex & the City. I mean hell, that terrifies me. But what Obama's "gift with words" — alternately celebrated and maligned — has brought to the table is the lullabye he is singing to people who are really afraid right now. Instead of moving immediately to the right at any whisper of opposition, he'll spell out why progressive policies aren't threatening. Which they aren't! At least if you're not a billionaire. In this sense it is NOT 1992 all over again, and I'm bored with people who have no other way to think about a potential Democratic presidency.

There's also his nerdy interest in data over personalities when it comes to choosing who advises him. Not all of that data is comforting (University of Chicago economists) but I have returned to this article several times since it was published in March because, even though its point seems to be the non-partisanship and non-ideological stance of an "Obama shop," what I take away from it is his willingness to take research seriously. Clinton, in contrast, was famous for agreeing with whoever was the last person to talk to him.

A couple weeks ago a friend posted this article from an Obama organizer, which also speaks to this shift away from old Democratic habits: There are great examples of this kind of organizing if you go back to the social movements of several decades ago. But the Obama campaign is the first in the Internet era to realize the dream of a disciplined, volunteer-driven, bottom-up-AND-top-down, distributed and massively scaleable organizing campaign. For anyone who knows how many times this has failed to happen, this is practically an apocryphal event.

And my friend asked what I think is the important question, can the Obama machine be mobilized for progressive/radical politics after the election? Some might find it cynical to doubt the momentum can be sustained — quit raining on the parade! — but what I find notable is that the question can be entertained in the first place. A new era of mobilizing around progressive politics… and it's to be found in the Democratic Party? What? Whether or not it comes to pass, the landscape has been permanently altered.

Having grown up in a town even smaller than Wasilla, Alaska, I understand, somewhat, the frustration of Palin supporters who mock community organizing. It's not that they're against community organizing, exactly — it's that they think it's nothing special. If disaster befalls your neighbor, OF COURSE you rush to help. But that's just a way of life, evidence that you're a basically decent person. It's not something you'd put on a resume. When they call Obama an elitist in this context they are accusing him of wanting extra credit for something ordinary people consider routine.

The trouble is, picking up litter or helping a sick neighbor or raising money to build a playground — these things are not what Obama's talking about when he says "community organizing." He's never properly defined what he IS talking about, though. In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, he admits that he, too, was confused about his job description when he first moved to Chicago and began doing this work. So it should be no surprise that others are unclear on it as well.

Aaron Schutz, one of the writers at Education Policy Blog, has two excellent posts that help define what community organizing is, and, importantly, what it isn't:

What is Community Organizing? What isn't Community Organizing?

How Do Community Organizers Think? (What is Organizing Part II)

He has more on the resources page of his web site.

Pop quiz time!

The antonym of "Arab" is:

a) decent
b) family man
c) citizen
d) all of the above.

If you, like John McCain, answered "d," pat yourself on the back. You've just earned yourself some praise from unexpected corners — including much of the liberal blogosphere — for finally reining in the vitriol of your most rabid supporters. In this case? By agreeing with a woman in your audience that the word "Arab" is a slur. She pins the word on Obama; McCain says that's just not nice.

What's notable here is that McCain, like everyone in his audience, knew immediately where she was going with this. He knew that to "respect" Obama in this case meant to defend him from the (supposedly heinous) charge of being Arab, and he did this not by saying "actually his father's family is Luo, from Kenya…" but by calling Obama a decent family man, a moniker he apparently believes no Arab could claim.

Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette, who was present at the event in question, reports that the woman, Gayle Quinnell, said "Arab terrorist," which would render McCain's comment more defensible. But in the video there is no indication that Quinnell said "terrorist." She just said "Arab." Some have wondered if the word "terrorist" was inaudible. This might be true, but Quinnell keeps speaking after she says the word "Arab," before McCain reclaims the mike.

I am guessing Cox simply misremembered the exchange: that the words "Arab" and "terrorist" are so thoroughly linked by now that to make the former an adjective of the latter has become second nature.

I can't believe I live in a country in which half the population has more contempt for this:

than for this:

US Firm Wins Umm Qasr Deal: A US company has won a $4.8m (£3m) contract to manage Umm Qasr port in southern Iraq.

And the Brits are jealous: British companies were said to be incensed by a $600m project soliciting bids from US companies to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure, including seaports, airports, roads and bridges.

Can't kill the future consumers civilians. But infrastructure? Now there's a good time.

Corporate America Divvies Up The Post-Saddam Spoils
Filed March 19, 2003

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner in Iraq. Yes, I know that the first smart bomb has yet to be dropped on Baghdad. But that's just a formality. The war has already been won. The conquering heroes are not generals in fatigues but CEOs in suits, and the shock troops are not an advance guard of commandos but legions of lobbyists.

The Bush administration is currently in the process of doling out over $1.5 billion in government contracts to American companies lining up to cash in on the rebuilding of postwar Iraq. So bombs away! The more destruction the better — at least for the lucky few in the rebuilding business.

The United Nations has traditionally overseen the reconstruction of war zones like Afghanistan or Kosovo. But in keeping with its unilateral, the-world-is-our-sandbox approach to this invasion, the White House has decided to nail a "Made in the USA" sign on this Iraqi fixer-upper. Postwar Iraq will be rebuilt using red, white, and blueprints.

Talk about advance planning: Even as the people of Iraq are girding themselves for the thousands of bombs expected to rain down on them during the first 24 hours of the attack, the administration is already picking and choosing who will be given the lucrative job of cleaning up
the rubble. Postwar rebuilding is a solitary bright spot in our own carpet-bombed economy.

(more)

This is a superb article about Palestine – "Anti-Semitism in U.S. Middle East Policy" by Stephen Zunes. You can get the whole thing at http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/mar95zunes.htm, but it's long, so I'm going to summarize it here. (Plus I just want to talk about it.) It was posted to the Progressive Islam list by an anti-Zionist Jewish man in the context of a discussion about AIPAC.

The article's basic contention is that the anti-Semitic demonization of AIPAC as The Evil Jewish Lobby serves the interests of American elites, who have altogether different reasons for supporting Israel but would prefer you not pay any attention to The Man behind the curtain.

There is something very easy — and all-too familiar — about Gentiles in powerful positions maintaining that it is not they who are responsible for their actions, but a cabal of rich and influential Jews manipulating events behind the scenes. Indeed, such claims constitute classic anti-Semitism: scape-goating Jews for unpopular actions by exaggerating Jewish economic and political power.

Those who've followed this issue at all know that the power of AIPAC is consistently raised as the *singular* reason for American support of Israel (I heard an anti-Zionist Jewish activist from Somerville mention this on NPR just yesterday — "it's so hard to get our message out, because the Israeli lobby is so much stronger than we are"). Granted, the U.S. wants a friend in the Middle East, but why choose Israel to be that friend – and the recipient of more American aid than any other country in the world – when, frankly, Israel doesn't have that much to offer? At least the Saudis have oil. Other states are much larger both geographically and demographically, and have better access to waterways. So why do the Americans keep courting Israel, the most hated country in the Middle East? "Obviously" because AIPAC is rich, and has American politicians under their armpit. Right?

But Zunes breaks down that argument:

Foreign policy decisions in the United States, as in most countries, are made by elites based on a broad consensus over strategic interests. Certain policies can be altered if challenged by mass popular movements — such as the opposition to the Vietnam War — but there has been no comparable movement in support of the Israeli government. The strong tilt in U.S. foreign policy in the past 20 years in support of the Israeli government has taken place primarily because of broader strategic concerns. Certainly there have been some specific Congressional votes where the outcome was certainly affected by the pro-Israel lobby, yet most of these were of a largely symbolic nature or were successful primarily because they paralleled already existing priorities by foreign policy elites.

Bush's success at blocking the loan guarantee is an example of the lobby's impotence when actually faced with resistance from those who really hold power in foreign policy implementation.

It is noteworthy that the major upturn in U.S. aid to Israel between 1967 and 1974 took place prior to the reorganization of AIPAC, when it greatly increased its power and influence on Capitol Hill. It also primarily took place under Richard Nixon, who was not only an anti-Semite, but also the least dependent on Jewish votes or financing of any recent president."

It's also worth noting that the U.S. recognized the state of Israel within minutes after its creation, at a time when AIPAC didn't even exist. There's usually a casual assumption here that this was because Americans were/are just so very enlightened about anti-Semitism and the rights of Zionists to have a Jewish homeland in Palestine in the aftermath of the Holocaust (as opposed to the racists in Europe and the Arab world). Zunes breaks that down, too:

The U.S. “supports” Israel for what that country has done for U.S. interests.

Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen, as well as in Palestine. They have kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check. Their air force is predominant throughout the region. Israel's frequent wars have provided battlefield testing for American arms, often against Soviet weapons. They have been a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements too unpopular in the United States for openly granting direct military assistance, such as South Africa, Iran, Guatemala, and the Nicaraguan Contras. Israeli military advisors have assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western Sahara. Their secret service has assisted the U.S. in intelligence gathering and covert operations. Israel has missiles capable of reaching the former Soviet Union and has cooperated with the U.S. military industrial complex with research and development for new jet fighters, anti-missile defense systems, and even the Strategic Defense Initiative.

As a result, the United States has been encouraging some of the more chauvinistic and militaristic elements in the Israeli government, undermining the last vestiges of Labor Zionism's commitment to socialism, non-alignment, and cooperation with the Third World. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it, “Israel's obstinacy. . . serves the purposes of both our countries best.” As Israeli military strength and repression of the Palestinians has increased, so has U.S. aid, contradicting the widespread belief that U.S. aid is to defend a threatened and democratic Israel.

The rise of the Likud Bloc in Israel and the rightward drift in the Labor Party since independence is in large part due to this large-scale American support. Israeli politicians such as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon would certainly exist without U.S. support, but they would have likely been part of a small right-wing minority in the Knesset. No one with those kinds of policies could last very long in office, given the self-defeating effect of such militarization on economic grounds or in terms of international isolation, were they not supported to such a degree that they did not have to worry about the consequences of their policies on their own population.

For reasons outlined above, it was in U.S. interests to maintain a militarily-powerful belligerent Israel dependent on the United States. Real peace could undermine such a relationship. The United States, therefore, pursued a policy of Pax Americana, one which might bring greater stability to the region while falling short of real peace."

He goes on to talk about the manner in which most foreign "aid" to Israel gets funneled back into the U.S. (this is true of all countries, not just Israel, but Israel gets one-third of American aid, so they're fucked harder by the phenomenon) and goes into some detail about the way American aid and American politics have supported not only Israel-the-country but specific politicians and political parties within Israel.

More:

One of the more unsettling aspects of U.S. policy is how closely it corresponds with historic anti-Semitism. Throughout Europe in past centuries, the ruling class of a given country would, in return for granting limited religious and cultural autonomy, set up certain individuals in the Jewish community to become the visible agents of the oppressive social order, such as tax collectors and money lenders. When the population would threaten to rise up against the ruling class, the rulers could then blame the Jews, sending the wrath of an exploited people against convenient scape-goats, resulting in the pogroms and other notorious waves of repression which have taken place throughout the Jewish Diaspora.

The idea behind Zionism was to break this cycle through the creation of a Jewish nation-state, where Jews would no longer be dependent on the ruling class of a given country. The tragic irony is that, as a result of Israel's inability or unwillingness to make peace with its Arab neighbors, the creation of Israel has perpetuated this cycle on a global scale, with Israel being used by Western imperialist powers — initially Great Britain and France and more recently the United States — to maintain their interests in the Middle East. Therefore, one finds autocratic Arab governments and other Third World regimes blaming “Zionism” for their problems rather than the broader exploitative global economic system and their own elites who benefit from and help perpetuate such a system.

*Thank you*. Not that Israel could be described as a nation of innocents or lacking in agency, but _in this context_ the scapegoating of Israel serves American interests long before it serves the Arabs'.

One last word here, and then I'll shut up with apologies for the length of this entry:

The combination of Israeli technology, Palestinian industriousness, and Arabian oil wealth could result in an economic, political, and social transformation of the Middle East which would be highly beneficial to the region's inhabitants, but not necessarily to certain elites in the United States and other Western nations who profit enormously from the continued divisions between these Semitic peoples."

This should never have become a war between Arabs and Jews. It's yet another case of the West pitting one oppressed group against another in order to fuel its own hegemony, and the only way to stop it is to recognize it and form alliances between those who are truly interested in both peace AND justice. Instead we have a situation in which the White House, the suicide bombers, and the right-wing fanatics in the Knesset are all at the very forefront of a discussion from which they should have been marginalized from the get-go.

The end.