It's about effing time - House Resolution apologizing for slavery and segregation of African-Americans

It just took like a hundred and forty years. Maybe they'll get a museum or two. I can already hear the ADL murmuring in the background wondering if they should shut this down the way they shut down the Armenian genocide resolution.

View the resolution's text at Black American Muslim Political Scientists.

Wajahat Ali: Biden His Time

Haven't I been saying this all along? More or less, he sucks. I've been telling the Obama supporters I know that his campaign is a mirage. I hope they realize it sooner or later because he's falling fast - it's time to reorganize the base of liberals and progressives for something better, greater. It's time to leave the DNC unless it starts to deliver on what the people want.

Barack Obama, that Presidential coquette who teased the world by not announcing his running mate for nearly two months, finally unveiled his vanilla, Vice Presidential bride, thus ultimately opting for a marriage of blandness, predictability and conciliation. Obama’s choice of Joe Biden, the 65 year old Senator from Delaware, now officially cements Obama’s ideological shift from a progressive message of “change” to a placating message of “more of the same…but better than that other guy, we swear!”

With his uninspired choice of Biden as his running mate, Obama not only betrays his initial, zeitgeist promise of reformation, but he also voluntarily concedes his growing insecurity by essentially admitting he lacks the political maturity, experience and depth needed to handle foreign affairs and the “gutter, smear game” known as politics.

For those who follow this fascinating circus known as Presidential elections, they understand traditional wisdom dictates, “He who moves quicker and closer to ‘the Center’ wins the ‘prize.’” However, due to two disastrous, thoroughly right wing administrations spearheaded by a bullish Neo-con cronyism - resulting in a weakened American dollar, a phenomenal deficit, a debilitating recession, an unprecedented loss of prestige in global opinion, and a strategic debacle of a war - the “Center” has shifted considerably to “the Right.”

As evidenced by Obama’s grassroots, progressive campaign, wisdom and common sense suggest a “change” from the current “Center” to the “Left” is what inspired the formerly jaded and apathetic electorate to jump on the “bandwagon.” The Democrats, a party that would win the annual “Mr. Magoo” award for myopia, must be commended for their innate, gifted talent of redundancy: an absolutely paralyzing fear of aggressively attacking the Republican Party for their egregious idiocy and a failure in jettisoning their own cowardly attachment to the right wing’s definition of “national security” and “tough on crime policies.” [See: John Kerry’s 2004 Campaign.] All of this is done to appease and pacify an electorate base [12% of which is firmly convinced that Obama is Muslim and nearly a quarter that are still “unsure”] that would never vote for him in the first place, at the risk of losing a newly energized “youth”, “liberal”,” first time voters” and “independent” block who came on board precisely due to an allegedly refreshing “new” message of “change and hope.”

Obama, as witnessed by his recent conciliatory and flip flop rhetoric on terrorism, the Iraq War, off shore drilling, and national security, continues to dampen any meaningful chance his presumed Presidency would have in actually altering the discourse, ideology and practice of American domestic and international diplomacy in the 21st century. The result? A recent Zogby poll announcing a 5 point McCain lead over Obama, with the latter’s star power falling amongst those he once enthralled: his base.

Read the rest.

Law School Musical

Why is Norman Finkelstein not allowed to teach?

"If he had only given in to the lure of power and prestige like so many before him. If only he had sold his soul and sold out the oppressed."

"If only," lamented the members of the Israel Lobby.

Excerpt:

Finkelstein was not denied tenure because of any shortcomings in scholarship or teaching. Noam Chomsky had earlier described Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpuh as "a very careful scholarly book" and "the best compendium that now exists of human rights violations in Israel" (Goodman, "Chomsky Accuses"). The late Raul Hilberg, widely recognized as the founder of Holocaust studies, said of Finkelstein, "his place in the whole history of writing history is assured," and praised his "acuity of vision and analytical power." (Goodman, "It Takes").

There can be little doubt that Finkelstein was fired because of his criticisms of Israel's human rights violations against the Palestinian people, and for his fact-based criticisms of the Israel lobby. Raul Hilberg warned at the time, "I have a sinking feeling about the damage this will do to academic freedom" (Grossman). Even the DePaul administration tacitly conceded that his firing was politically motivated when it acknowledged Finkelstein as a "prolific scholar and outstanding teacher'' in a later legal settlement (Finkelstein, "Joint Statement").

An unstated axiom for U.S. universities is that criticism of Israel by untenured faculty members is not allowed. Academic freedom protects critics of the national policies of the U.S., France, England, and every other country in the world, save one: Israel. Norman Finkelstein violated this axiom. Had he not been Jewish he would have been vilified successfully as anti-Semitic, and that slur alone would have isolated him from supporters. As it is, his detractors also smear him as a "Holocaust denier," knowing full well that Finkelstein is the son of two Holocaust survivors, and that the remainder of his family died in the Nazi death camps. His first book includes a dedication "to my beloved parents," ending with, "May I never forget what was done to them" (Finkelstein, The Rise i, "Biography").

Read the rest.

Wajahat Ali interviews Ahmed Rashid

Pakistan, Musharraf, and the future of Southeast Asia.

Pakistan, the United States volatile mistress in its continued "War on Terror," grew more tempestuous and unpredictable this week with the sudden and unexpected resignation of our former "ally" and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf due to impeachment pressure initiated by the new coalition government.

Musharraf and Pakistan's legacy in combating, and at times directly aiding, the Taliban and extremism in Central Asia has been critically examined by decorated journalist and commentator Ahmed Rashid, who has followed the turbulent history of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia for nearly three decades.

His latest book Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia represents a lifetime of research and reporting from the region with Rashid blasting all parties, even the United States, for their shared responsibility and culpability of a region teetering on the tenuous ledge between reformation and anarchy.

ALI: You've mentioned that time after time whenever the Pakistan military has tried to stop the Islamist guerillas, they've either been defeated or stymied. You've suggested this was a secret part of Musharraf's strategy: instead of cutting links with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's most powerful intelligence agency] has supplied them with money and intelligence. How disconnected is the military and the government from the ISI? Does the ISI act autonomously and why does it help Taliban and Al Qaeda?

RASHID: When you have a military government, in fact thereby the army ruling the country, the military intelligence agencies don't act in isolation from the government itself, since the government itself is the military. The decision to give sanctuary to the Afghan-Taliban leadership was a state decision: it was a decision taken by Musharraf at the highest level. What degree of support to give them, how to look after them, whether to allow them to import weapons - the mechanics of it were left to the ISI. So, what we have is a state decision backed by the intelligence agency, which was the directing agency, and this is something the Americans just did not want to see. Unfortunately, the reason for that simply is that if they did accept this is going on, it would have meant a major reappraisal of the whole relationship with Musharraf. And I don't think they were prepared for that.

Read the rest.

Fatima Bhutto on Musharraf's Impeachment

The always astute Fatima Bhutto dropping some knowledge.


The Impeachment of Musharraf

by Fatima Bhutto

The murky abyss of Pakistani politics has been especially murky over recent months, and true to form it just keeps getting murkier. The one thing that is absolute when dealing with the dregs that run my country is this: nothing is ever as it seems. Nowhere is that more true than in the current scenario involving President Musharraf's likely impeachment by the ruling coalition.

"It has become imperative to move for impeachment," barked Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, at a press conference in Islamabad last week. Sitting beside the new head of the Pakistan People's party was Nawaz Sharif, twice formerly prime minister of Pakistan. Zardari snarled every time Musharraf's name came up, seething with political rage and righteousness, while Sharif did his best to keep up with the pace of things. He nodded sombrely and harrumphed every once in a while. The two men are acting for democracy, you see. And impeaching dictators is a good thing for democracies, you know.

But Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari are unelected. They're not just unrepresentative in that they don't hold seats in the parliament - they have absolutely no mandate in Pakistan. They head the two largest, and most corrupt, parties in the state but hold no public office. Pots and kettles.
The rest of the coterie that wields power behind this administration, the attorney general and the interior minister for instance, also happen to be unelected. They serve, and I use the term ever so lightly, by appointment only. Some 170 million Pakistanis have lived under military rule of law for nine years. Musharraf stepping down from his army post has not changed that. Neither did the recent selections. Sorry, I meant elections, obviously.

The current administration - a party coalition comprising two formerly mortal enemies, the PPP and the PML - has enjoyed five months in office. And what has this thriving democratic union accomplished? It passed the National Reconciliation Ordinance, an odious piece of legislation that wipes out 15 years' worth of corruption cases against politicians, suspiciously covering 11 years of PPP and PML rule. Bankers and bureaucrats were also given the all-clear. Worse still, the ordinance contains a clause that makes it virtually impossible for future charges to be filed against sitting parliamentarians.

But they must have done more than that, surely? Well, all that really changed is that food inflation has accelerated, oil subsidies have been cut, gas prices have doubled, and those pesky militants in the Swat district the tribal regions have turned up the fighting. Several days before the decision to impeach Musharraf hurtled through the airwaves, a small story came in from the tribal areas: the militants are close, the story said, they've vowed to target the government, even to the point of attacking state schools. This is a civil war, the story said.

So what does the government do when its country appears to be tearing apart at the seams? Go on the attack. Impeach the tyrant. "The period of oppression is over for ever," declared the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, at an event marking 61 years of Pakistani independence yesterday. "Dictatorship has become a story of the past." Deny everything. Nothing is wrong, democracy is good and we hate dictators. Well done.

Pakistan is a sovereign country. We are a proud, resourceful, independent nation. We have options. Zardari is not an option. Sharif is not an option. The army is not our one and only option. The mullahs have not become an option yet. There are close to 200 million of us: I'm sure we can think of something better.

Fatima Bhutto is a poet and a columnist for the News in Pakistan

FAIR: Reporting on Georgia

It wouldn't be a hard case to make to add this Russian-Georgian conflict to the next edition of Manufacturing Consent. One could compare the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to Russia's invasion of Georgia and easily find the hypocrisy brimming from US news reports of each invasion. FAIR concludes their report with the following paragraphs:

A striking feature of the coverage was the ability of pundits who have enthusiastically advocated for U.S. invasions of sovereign countries, dismissing concerns that these would violate international law, to demand that Russia be punished for breaking that same law by violating Georgian sovereignty. These commentators seemed blissfully unaware of the contradiction, as when New York Times columnist William Kristol wrote (8/11/08) that "in Iraq, we and our Iraqi allies are on the verge of a strategic victory over the jihadists," citing this as evidence that 2008 was "an auspicious year for freedom and democracy," while two paragraphs later condemning the fact that "Russia has sent troops and tanks across an international border." Kristol even cited Georgia's eager participation in the violation of Iraq's sovereignty as a primary reason that "we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty."

Alternatives to the official media narrative were difficult to find outside of independent and foreign media (Just World News, 8/10/08; Real News Network, 8/12/08; Georgia Straight, 8/11/08; Guardian, 8/14/08). Hypocrisy, unfortunately, was much easier to find in corporate media coverage than disinterested humanitarian concern.

Read the rest.

Good things

Miami Gardens Muslim group donates school supplies

Sometimes it's hard for students to get into a straight line at school. But on Saturday, kids didn't think twice about scrambling into a huge line. The reason: they were getting free school supplies.

``I love it, said Shellitia Campbell, 10, from Miami Gardens. ``I can't wait for school to start.''

So getting free supplies for her was the beginning of a new academic year.

Shellitia, who attends Robert B. Ingram Elementary School, and other students scrambled into a huge line to receive supplies at the Masjid Miami Gardens, 4305 NW 183rd St. More than 250 students from Miami, Opa-locka, Hialeah, and as far away as Delray Beach attended the event.

The supplies were donated by the South Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The giveaway is part of the Muslims Care campaign that CAIR organizes every year from June to August. The organization partnered with the Muslim Teachers Association, as well as 20 other Islamic centers in South Florida, to make the event a success.

''This is a great opportunity to give,'' said Altaf Ali, the executive director of CAIR in Miami.

In total, $5,000 of school supplies were purchased. Students, ranging from pre-school to high school, walked out with notebooks, paper, pencils and highlighters in a new book bag. The kids could choose the color of their bag from yellow, pink, red, green and blue.

''They will have what they need to start school,'' Miami Gardens Mayor Shirley Gibson said during the event. CAIR officials invited Gibson to the event.

On the front of each bag was a Muslim symbol that is also CAIR's logo, which Ali said stands for ``unity, togetherness, sharing, friendship, and inclusiveness.''

The supply giveaway was promoted through fliers that were passed out in Miami Gardens neighborhoods. Ali also contacted schools nearby.

Today, CAIR is scheduled to visit Brownsville Middle School in Allapattah and donate supplies to those students.

''It encourages a better foundation for them to learn,'' Ali said.

Miami's CAIR center is one of 33 centers in the United States and Canada that work at building an understanding of the Muslim culture as well as giving back to the community.

''The event emphasizes to people that Muslims are concerned about the welfare of others,'' Ali said, adding he hoped the supply giveaway will dispel any stereotypes.

''We want to encourage our community to reach out and give,'' Ali said.

Ibish on Obama's Muslim Problem

I agree with this article even more. Especially this part:

If these are the standards by which Arab and Muslim Americans are to be judged, then only individuals who have been resolutely distant from Middle East and even community-related political activity can survive such judgments. A valuable and significant group of Americans would thereby be frozen out of public life to the grave detriment of our country.

The internal challenge suggested in this affair is that Arab and Muslim Americans have not been vigilant enough about holding political, religious and community figures to reasonable standards of responsible speech and conduct.

Even raising this issue is often seen as too divisive, thereby stifling the conversation and impeding improvement. But solidarity can no longer trump responsibility.

Well-known individuals have been revealed to have deceived the community about their political views and activities, and are nonetheless now being championed as "political prisoners". Some student groups, especially on the west coast, persist in hosting political and religious extremists as campus speakers. Expressions of religious intolerance too often pass without repudiation. Self-criticism and introspection are distinctly unwelcome in many quarters.

While it is a commonplace of political life that solidarity generally flows from the centre to the extremes, and not the other way around, Arab and Muslim Americans are uniquely unable to afford this under current circumstances.

It is true and irrelevant that toleration of in-group or foreign extremists can be readily identified among many other American ethnic groups, and, indeed, among many of the most virulent individual critics of the Arab and Muslim American communities.

However, the more important reality is that anything that suggests, however inadvertently, sympathy for radicalism in the Islamic world is a uniquely fatal political poison in our country.

While considerable progress has been made, more work is required in developing a consistent and clear consensus among Arab and Muslim Americans setting a reasonable standard of what they, as a community, will regard as responsible and constructive speech and activities.

These need, of course, to be independent, principled judgments, and not simply bowing to external pressures or reproducing bigoted constructs.

But the impulse to reflexively defend marginal figures, actual extremists or religious zealots must be resisted, even when spurred by an understandable sense of loyalty within a community that feels besieged. Raising this issue will itself be seen by some as a breech of solidarity, but recognising and correcting past mistakes is essential.

Read the rest.

The Muslim Problem in the Obama Campaign

I'll be writing on this topic sooner or later, but for now I'll let the article below stand in as it generally depicts my emotions on this issue. It's a lot less harsh on Obama than I will be, that's for sure.


Wrong... Wrong... Wrong: Obama Lets Muslim Advisor Resign

by Steve Clemons

Will anyone notice? Barack Obama's team just threw its key Muslim advisor under the bus.

Barack Obama needs to make a statement loudly, clearly, and with passion that he embraces Muslims as much as any other Americans of Christian, Buddhist, Jewish or other religious persuasions. It wouldn't hurt for him to embrace devout secularists like me for that matter.

But I'm irritated and saddened by news that Barack Obama's Muslim-outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi, has resigned "amid questions about his 'involvement' in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups."

Let's tally up Obama's Muslim outreach record:

~ Obama campaign apparatchiks ask young Muslim women not to stand in photo with Obama because of head scarves (Obama campaign later apologizes).

~ Barack Obama gives AIPAC speech that manages to run to the right of President Bush and Israel Prime Minister Ohlmert in demanding that "Jerusalem must not be divided." (Obama later recants after the fact)

~ Barack Obama not only terminates Middle East advisor Robert Malley from his team because of Malley's views that Hamas should be engaged -- but his spokesman, Bill Burton, states that not only is Rob Malley no longer advising Obama "but will never advise Obama." That's running the bus over someone and then backing it up to make sure that Malley doesn't survive and has no chance in an Obama administration. I like to remind folks that Paul Volcker and Ted Sorensen signed the same letter Malley did but have thus far missed the campaign guillotine.

~ Barack Obama gives an inspirational speech to more than 200,000 Germans in Berlin calling for a "World Without Walls." But Obama is silent in Israel when it is the wall dividing Israelis and Palestinians that is becoming an increasingly worse and impactful global ulcer.

~ Barack Obama spends 30 plus hours in Israel and 45 minutes in Ramallah during his recent trip and meets many Iraelis who have been pro-settilement expansion, solidly violating international law and US policy. Some on Obama's advisory team turn a blind eye to Israel's expanding settlements and continue to be associated with and meet with settlement zealots -- but Obama keeps ALL of these people on his team.

~ Barack Obama accepts the resignation of a mainstream Arab-American lawyer from his advisory team because eight years ago, Mazen Asbahi served on a board "for a few weeks" that included a muslim fundamentalist imam from Illinois. Asbahi resigned from the board. . .eight years ago.

What? Wait? Obama has had a many years long relationship with Jeremiah Wright -- and sat on a board with William Ayers -- NEITHER of which I think are disqualifiers for Obama's candidacy... and yet Obama's political team and Obama himself did not demand from Asbahi that he stay on the team, stand his ground, and fight back against the vile right-wing hit on him and his credibility?!

I think that this is outrageous -- and those on the left who appreciate Obama and what he may mean for this country must become as tenaciously committed to what is right and what is good -- and fighting for that -- because those on the other side of these debates are trying to compel Obama to dilute himself.

Zalmay Khalilzad is an effective and popular MUSLIM Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations. We need more Muslims in our diplomatic corps. We need Muslims on the Supreme Court. We need more Muslims like Keith Ellison in the US Senate and House of Representatives.

Obama should say it. Convince the American public that he's not setting up a zero sum game between Muslims on one side and Christians and Jews on the other.

Obama is a Christian. I get that. I'm a secularist hard core -- but I won't stand by to watch more good people be flushed down the political drain because they are Muslims trying to work for a balanced and level playing field in America.

This resignation by Asbahi stinks -- and Obama and his team should immediately call him back and help him stand up to anti-Muslimism in America.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Contradictions in the war on terror

Why Wasn't Ivins Declared an Enemy Combatant?

by Jacob B. Hornberger

So, the FBI was prepared to indict U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins for terrorism before he committed suicide. The specific act of terrorism for which Ivins was to be indicted was employing weapons of mass destruction, to wit: anthrax, on American citizens on American soil.

What?

An indictment?

Doesn’t that mean federal courts? Doesn’t that mean the Bill of Rights? Doesn’t that mean the presumption of innocence, right to counsel, right to be free from self-incrimination, protection from cruel and unusual punishments, right to bail, exclusion of evidence acquired by torture, coercion, or illegal searches, right to confront witnesses, right to summon witnesses, a public trial, and trial by jury?

Is that any way to treat an enemy combatant during time of war? Is that the way we treated German prisoners of war in World War II? Did the feds indict them too?

What gives? Haven’t the Bush administration and the Washington Post told us ad infinitum, ad nauseam that the courts are not equipped to handle terrorism cases? Isn’t that what Gitmo is all about? What better example of a terrorism case than the use of weapons of mass destruction against American citizens on American soil? What better example of an “enemy combatant” in the federal government’s “war on terrorism” than Bruce Ivins?

The FBI’s planned indictment of Ivins once again exposes the charade of the “enemy combatant” doctrine, the Pentagon’s kangaroo tribunals, and the so-called war on terrorism. As we have been arguing here at FFF ever since 9/11, terrorism is a federal crime, not an act of war. It is listed on the federal statute books as a federal crime. It was that way before 9/11 and it has remained that way after 9/11. That’s precisely why the FBI and the Justice Department were planning on securing a federal grand-jury indictment against Ivins.

What President Bush and the Pentagon did after the 9/11 attacks was assume dictatorial powers in the guise of waging war, which they called the “war on terrorism.” This included the omnipotent power to completely bypass the federal courts when it came to suspected terrorists. With the assumption of such power, the military could take anyone it wanted into custody simply by having the president designate the person as an “enemy combatant.” This included foreigners and Americans arrested both abroad and here within the United States. After all, in the war on terrorism the whole world is the battlefield, they told us, including the United States.

Read the rest.