Obama’s Undeclared War Against Pakistan Continues, Despite His Attempt to Downplay It

It is clear—and has been for a long time— that the Obama administration is radically expanding the US war in Afghanistan deeply into Pakistan. Whether it is through US military trainers (that’s what they were called in Vietnam too), drone attacks or commando raids inside the country, the US is militarily entrenched in Pakistan. It makes Obama’s comment that “[W]e have no intention of sending US troops into Pakistan” simply unbelievable. Full article.

Patience is a Dirty and Nasty Word

At age 23, John Lewis, chairman of SNCC, was a veteran of many civil rights battles. On August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington, he gave one of the major speeches.

Though not as well known as Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, delivered the same day, Lewis’ fiery words cut deep, accusing the federal government of conspiring to ignore inequality. The text of Lewis’ speech was itself a battleground; some of the most controversial words and phrases were removed, and the ending was reworked, at the insistence of other march leaders. The text here is the version Lewis delivered.

SPEECH:

We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages, or no wages at all. In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration’s civil rights bill. There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality.

This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses, for engaging in peaceful demonstrations: This bill will not protect the citizens in Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state. This bill will not protect the hundreds of people who have been arrested on trumped-up charges. What about the three young men in Americus, Georgia, who face the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest? The voting section of this bill will not help thousands of black citizens who want to vote. It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia, who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth-grade education. “ONE MAN, ONE VOTE” is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours.

People have been forced to leave their homes because they dared to exercise their right to register to vote. What is there in this bill to ensure the equality of a maid who earns $5 a week in the home of a family whose income is $100,000 a year?

For the first time in one hundred years this nation is being awakened to the fact that segregation is evil and that it must be destroyed in all forms. Your presence today proves that you have been aroused to the point of action. We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, “My party is the party of principles?” The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party?

In some parts of the South we work in the fields from sunup to sundown for $12 a week. In Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted not by Dixiecrats but by the federal government for peaceful protest. But what did the federal government do when Albany’s deputy sheriff beat attorney C. B. King and left him half dead? What did the federal government do when local police officials kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby?

It seems to me that the Albany indictment is part of a conspiracy on the part of the federal government and local politicians in the interest of expediency.

The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery. The nonviolent revolution is saying, “We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years. We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside of any national structure, that could and would assure us a victory.”

To those who have said, “Be patient and wait,” we must say that “patience” is a dirty and nasty word. We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually. We want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for both the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.

We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about. In the struggle, we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace and true brotherhood. Our minds, souls and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people.

The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won’t be a “cooling-off” period.

We will not stop. If we do not get meaningful legislation out of this Congress, the time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington. We will march through the South, through the streets of Jackson, through the streets of Danville, through the streets of Cambridge, through the streets of Birmingham. But we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today.

By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the desegregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of God and democracy.

We must say, “Wake up, America. Wake up! For we cannot stop, and we will not be patient.”

Source: Lewis, John, with Michael D’Orso. Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Howard Zinn: “I Wish Obama Would Listen to MLK”

brilliant, brilliant interview with howard zinn!

we won’t disillusion young people by bringing down conventional american heroes (like columbus and theodore roosevelt). we can introduce them to the real heroes of our history by bringing them out of obscurity – people who resisted and brought about change.

watch interview on democracy now!

Destroying Indigenous Populations

The Fort Laramie Treaty once guaranteed the Sioux Nation the right to a large area of their original land, which spanned several states and included their sacred Black Hills, where they were to have “the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the land.

However, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, President Ulysses S. Grant told the army to look the other way in order to allow gold miners to enter the territory. After repeated violations of the exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors and by migrant workers crossing the reservation borders, the US government seized the Black Hills land in 1877. Full article.

Daughter of Rafsanjani Arrested

The regime has arrested Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, daughter of the former president, who spoke at a pro-Mousavi rally, along with 4 other members of that family. This step is typical of an old Iranian ruling technique, of keeping provincial tribal chieftains in check by keeping some of their children hostage at the royal court. It is widely suspected that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a multi-billionaire who is well connected politically, is funding and aiding the reform movement’s protests. Full article.

“awaiting for men” and much more

katy lena ndiaye’s “awaiting for men” is set in the beautiful red-walled city of oualata, in southeastern mauritania. the film is based on a series of intimate interviews with three women who speak with candor about their relationships with men. the cinematography is rich with the bold colors, patterns and textures of northwest africa. the pace of the film is unhurried, almost languorous. there is a stillness to the film. it has an uncluttered, poetic quality.

oualata was one of the four ksours (arabic for village) erected between the 11th and 12th centuries in what is now mauritania. these settlements were built around a mosque, mostly a simple unadorned prayer hall comprising a madrassa or islamic school, with the houses radiating outwards from this center and getting progressively bigger. the entire ksour was contained within a single continuous wall and many of the village’s amenities were shared – there were common storehouses, ovens, baths, shops, etc. the four kasours were immensely prosperous until the 16th-17th centuries. not only were they trade posts for caravans traveling across the sahara but they also became renowned centers of islamic thought and culture, attracting a multitude of foreign students. it is said that some mauritanian libraries and schools have managed to preserve over 40,000 extremely rare, priceless islamic manuscripts. however, with the gradual desiccation of the sahara much of the farmland that was fertile enough to feed local inhabitants has now become buried in sand.

a faltering economy is apparent in the film, as most oualata men seem to be employed elsewhere. it’s the women who inhabit the kasour for the most part. they take care of the cattle, run their shops, deliver babies, gossip while sipping mint tea, and wait (sometimes for months) for their men to return.

the women who are interviewed speak directly to the camera. they are frank, self-assured, articulate. they are also quite different from one another, a fact that belies western perceptions of other societies (especially muslim ones) as being homogenized, where the individual is largely overshadowed by the collective. many of them have had multiple marriages.

one woman, who exudes sheer power on screen, explains how she can only live with a man as long as she loves him. once she falls out of love, she divorces him. if he annoys her, she has no qualms about beating him. this woman is all business. she frequently challenges the director, the woman behind the camera, with a certain brazenness that’s rarely seen in interview subjects, irrespective of race, religion, ethinicity or gender. this woman is single right now, after going through 5 marriages. she supports herself by painting tarkhas (beautiful murals involving endlessly repeating designs that are painted exclusively by women on the exterior and interior walls of houses in order to highlight doors, windows and alcoves). she also makes money by using henna to draw the same arabesques on the hands and feet of women, and by playing conga drums.

another woman introduces herself by confessing that she is not the prettiest woman around but she likes to talk and men enjoy that. she is lively, down to earth and happy to share her innermost thoughts and feelings. she works as a midwife and runs her own clinic. she is madly in love with her fourth husband and isn’t shy about expressing her physical attraction to him. “a handsome man around here” she explains, “is a man who is generous and tall and can please his woman.”

the third woman is the most reserved. she owns a shop and dreams of one day owning an entire market. she is demure and when prodded too much about her sex life, she turns away, saying “that’s enough, you tire me.” she struck me as being better off than the other two. for her, painting tarkhas is a hobby, not a source of income.

i moderated a discussion after the film. it was most interesting. some in the audience were frustrated by the lack of information, the focus on three women only, the conversations about men and women to the detriment of the women’s interactions with their children, families, communities. some thought the film was a bit too slow, every shot even though beautiful was held for a bit too long. someone thought the women were “sad” because one of them posits that girls don’t need to be educated and another confides how she staged a fall in order to abort an unwanted pregnancy.

others enjoyed the film’s lyricism. they compared it to a piece of music. i agree. as with poetry, everything does not need to be explained away. sometimes a film, even a documentary, can simply create a mood, a feeling, a thought without having to formulate a formal beginning or end. that’s certainly true of french cinema – much of it is open-ended, something that american audiences find frustrating. i like to fill in the blanks and make the film my own. viewing becomes more participative, more active.

i certainly didn’t find the women “sad”. it’s unfortunate that we apply a rigid western or maybe even “christian missionary” filter to how we view other cultures. we have such confidence in our achievements as a society that our instinctive, gut level reaction is one of condescension towards what is different. it’s like this discussion i took part in on facebook, where someone asked if “third world” was an offensive term. many agreed that it was a judgmental term. to me it almost sounds like “third rate”. someone exclaimed: why not just call them poor countries? my answer was: poor in terms of what, really? over-consumption? obesity? materialism? capitalistic greed? production of waste? many third world countries r much richer in how families and communities function. their relationship to the environment is far less toxic. if first world countries stopped exploiting and interfering in third world countries, the gap between them would lessen over time. we seem to transpose our template for what we see as “civilization” onto other cultures without trying to develop an understanding of their circumstances – climate, geography, history, economy, ethnography.

to me the women seemed quite independent, both financially and emotionally. they were used to living on their own. they were well-adjusted, content, confident in who they were. education does not mean the same thing to them as it does to us. i don’t think that the men were much more educated. education refers mostly to studying the quran and hadith. mauritanians are a mixtures of original african agriculturalists, nomadic north african berber tribes and yemeni arabs who conquered the region in the 11th century. in berber society women have a preeminent role, as mothers of the clan. they r the ones who are educated in the histories of their ancestral tribes and they pass on that oral tradition from one generation to another. some of that matriarchal culture is reflected in the attitudes of the three women. the ease with which they divorce men is probably made easier by islam, which gave women the right to divorce in the 7th century.

as far as abortion, with all our western civilization and its legal protections for women, isn’t it sad that a doctor who performed late term abortions was recently shot in the united states? harassment, death threats, murder and terrorism are used to stop women from having abortions. we have a long way to go before we can criticize mauritanian culture.

the slow rhythm of the film with its abundance of still shots, seemed to be informed by photography. i was happy to learn from an interview with katy nadiaye that the film was in fact inspired by a book of photographs called “africa paintings”.

henna design
tarkhas

more on “beautiful occupation”

12 Memories from Travis proved to be one of the favourite album releases this year amongst reviewers.

The Sunday Times hailed it as “bloody brilliant…A Triumph.” Time Out boasted it as being “sonically eloquent and emotionally resonant…there’s much here to admire.”

And now, the second track is due for release.

“Don’t just stand there watching it happening / I can’t stand it / Don’t feel it….” The Beautiful Occupation.

Every period of social upheaval gives birth to songs of discontent. Some songs are crafted specifically as rallying cries to garner support for a cause or to broadcast a grievance. Travis’s new single, The Beautiful Occupation, is just such a song.

Written by Fran Healy as war with Iraq was becoming a real possibility and the crisis in the Middle East was escalating, The Beautiful Occupation addresses Fran’s frustrations and concerns with the turbulent times in which we’re living. As he recalls. “September 11 was the start of something. I can see how fragile the world is”.

Effectively a peace anthem for modern times, an acoustic version of the song originally appeared on Warchild’s Hope album earlier this year prior to being included on the band’s new album, 12 Memories, released in October.

The last year has been a period of reflection for Travis, as evident from the songs on 12 Memories their most poignant and effecting work to date. The enforced break following Neil Primrose’s accident gave Travis both an opportunity to re-group and to reflect on the times in which we live. The resulting songs explore lyrically darker themes, a reaction to today’s unstable social and political climate.
(from contactmusic.com)

LYRICS

Don’t just stand there watching it happening
I can’t stand it
Don’t feel it
Something’s telling me
Don’t wanna go out this way
But have a nice day

Then read it in the headlines
Watch it on the TV
Put it in the background
Stick it in the back
Stick it in the back

For the beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
You don’t need an invitation
To drop in upon a nation

I’m too cynical
I’m just sitting here
I’m just wasting my time
Half a million civillians gonna die today
But look the wrong way

Then read it in the headlines
Watch it on the TV
Put it in the background
Stick it in the back
Stick it in the back

For the beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
You don’t need an invitation
To drop in upon a nation

Don’t just stand there watching it happening
I can’t stand it
Don’t feel it
Something telling me
Don’t wanna go out this way
But have a nice day

Then read it in the headlines
Watch it on the TV
Put it in the background
Stick in the back
Stick in the back

For the beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
Don’t need an invitation
To drop in upon a nation

The beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
So much for an intervention
Don’t call the united nations

travis

“Beautiful occupation” by Travis

“I’m too cynical
I’m just sitting here
I’m just wasting my time
Half a million civillians gonna die today
But look the wrong way

Then read it in the headlines
Watch it on the TV
Put it in the background
Stick it in the back
Stick it in the back

For the beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
You don’t need an invitation
To drop in upon a nation…”

Rebranding war and occupation

“What I think the policies of the Obama administration over the past five months show is that we need independent political movements in this country that cannot and will not allow themselves to be co-opted by the Democratic Party–that don’t function as partisan movements for the promotion of one of the two corporate parties, but rather keep as their primary focus ending U.S. wars of aggression around the world, fighting for single-payer health care and fighting for the rights of working-class people and the poor in this nation.” Full article.

Shame: The ‘Anti-War’ Democrats Who Sold Out

“In a vote that should go down in recent histories as a day of shame for the Democrats, on Tuesday the House voted to approve another $106 billion dollars for the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and increasingly Pakistan). To put a fine point on the interconnection of the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of free market neoliberal economics, the bill included a massive initiative to give the International Monetary Fund billions more in U.S. taxpayer funds.” Full article.

Obama’s bulldozer risks turning the Taliban into Pakistan’s Khmer Rouge

pankaj mishra on pakistan: “The Obama administration should consider the possibility that, as Graham Fuller, the CIA’s former station chief in Kabul puts it, few Pashtuns “will long maintain a radical and international jihadi perspective once the incitement of the US presence is gone.” Full article.