An Alternate Witness

I won't say too much, except that this article says many of the things I've been saying all along about being a critical supporter of Obama, not putting great blind faith in him to fix everything, but believing that he will respond to the will and the best interests of the people more readily than his predecessor, if we tell him what that is! (Thanks, Ryan!)

Published on Saturday, May 16, 2009 by The Progressive
Changing Obama's Mindset
by Howard Zinn

We are citizens, and Obama is a politician. You might not like that word. But the fact is he's a politician. He's other things, too-he's a very sensitive and intelligent and thoughtful and promising person. But he's a politician.
If you're a citizen, you have to know the difference between them and you-the difference between what they have to do and what you have to do. And there are things they don't have to do, if you make it clear to them they don't have to do it.
From the beginning, I liked Obama. But the first time it suddenly struck me that he was a politician was early on, when Joe Lieberman was running for the Democratic nomination for his Senate seat in 2006.

Lieberman-who, as you know, was and is a war lover-was running for the Democratic nomination, and his opponent was a man named Ned Lamont, who was the peace candidate. And Obama went to Connecticut to support Lieberman against Lamont.
It took me aback. I say that to indicate that, yes, Obama was and is a politician. So we must not be swept away into an unthinking and unquestioning acceptance of what Obama does.

Our job is not to give him a blank check or simply be cheerleaders. It was good that we were cheerleaders while he was running for office, but it's not good to be cheerleaders now. Because we want the country to go beyond where it has been in the past. We want to make a clean break from what it has been in the past.
I had a teacher at Columbia University named Richard Hofstadter, who wrote a book called The American Political Tradition, and in it, he examined presidents from the Founding Fathers down through Franklin Roosevelt. There were liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats. And there were differences between them. But he found that the so-called liberals were not as liberal as people thought-and that the difference between the liberals and the conservatives, and between Republicans and Democrats, was not a polar difference. There was a common thread that ran through all American history, and all of the presidents-Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative-followed this thread.

The thread consisted of two elements: one, nationalism; and two, capitalism. And Obama is not yet free of that powerful double heritage.

We can see it in the policies that have been enunciated so far, even though he's been in office only a short time. Some people might say, "Well, what do you expect?"
And the answer is that we expect a lot. People say, "What, are you a dreamer?"
And the answer is, yes, we're dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don't want war. We don't want capitalism. We want a decent society. We better hold on to that dream-because if we don't, we'll sink closer and closer to this reality that we have, and that we don't want.

Be wary when you hear about the glories of the market system. The market system is what we've had. Let the market decide, they say. The government mustn't give people free health care; let the market decide.

Which is what the market has been doing-and that's why we have forty-eight million people without health care. The market has decided that. Leave things to the market, and there are two million people homeless. Leave things to the market, and there are millions and millions of people who can't pay their rent. Leave things to the market, and there are thirty-five million people who go hungry.

You can't leave it to the market. If you're facing an economic crisis like we're facing now, you can't do what was done in the past. You can't pour money into the upper levels of the country-and into the banks and corporations-and hope that it somehow trickles down.

What was one of the first things that happened when the Bush Administration saw that the economy was in trouble? A $700 billion bailout, and who did we give the $700 billion to? To the financial institutions that caused this crisis.

This was when the Presidential campaign was still going on, and it pained me to see Obama standing there, endorsing this huge bailout to the corporations.

What Obama should have been saying was: Hey, wait a while. The banks aren't poverty stricken. The CEOs aren't poverty stricken. But there are people who are out of work. There are people who can't pay their mortgages. Let's take $700 billion and give it directly to the people who need it. Let's take $1 trillion, let's take $2 trillion.

Let's take this money and give it directly to the people who need it. Give it to the people who have to pay their mortgages. Nobody should be evicted. Nobody should be left with their belongings out on the street.

Obama wants to spend perhaps a trillion more on the banks. Like Bush, he's not giving it directly to homeowners. Unlike the Republicans, Obama also wants to spend $800 billion for his economic stimulus plan. Which is good-the idea of a stimulus is good. But if you look closely at the plan, too much of it goes through the market, through corporations.

It gives tax breaks to businesses, hoping that they'll hire people. No-if people need jobs, you don't give money to the corporations, hoping that maybe jobs will be created. You give people work immediately.

A lot of people don't know the history of the New Deal of the 1930s. The New Deal didn't go far enough, but it had some very good ideas. And the reason the New Deal came to these good ideas was because there was huge agitation in this country, and Roosevelt had to react. So what did he do? He took billions of dollars and said the government was going to hire people. You're out of work? The government has a job for you.

As a result of this, lots of very wonderful work was done all over the country. Several million young people were put into the Civilian Conservation Corps. They went around the country, building bridges and roads and playgrounds, and doing remarkable things.

The government created a federal arts program. It wasn't going to wait for the markets to decide that. The government set up a program and hired thousands of unemployed artists: playwrights, actors, musicians, painters, sculptors, writers. What was the result? The result was the production of 200,000 pieces of art. Today, around the country, there are thousands of murals painted by people in the WPA program. Plays were put on all over the country at very cheap prices, so that people who had never seen a play in their lives were able to afford to go.

And that's just a glimmer of what could be done. The government has to represent the people's needs. The government can't give the job of representing the people's needs to corporations and the banks, because they don't care about the people's needs. They only care about profit.

In the course of his campaign, Obama said something that struck me as very wise-and when people say something very wise, you have to remember it, because they may not hold to it. You may have to remind them of that wise thing they said.

Obama was talking about the war in Iraq, and he said, "It's not just that we have to get out of Iraq." He said "get out of Iraq," and we mustn't forget it. We must keep reminding him: Out of Iraq, out of Iraq, out of Iraq-not next year, not two years from now, but out of Iraq now.

But listen to the second part, too. His whole sentence was: "It's not enough to get out of Iraq; we have to get out of the mindset that led us into Iraq." What is the mindset that got us into Iraq?

It's the mindset that says force will do the trick. Violence, war, bombers-that they will bring democracy and liberty to the people.

It's the mindset that says America has some God-given right to invade other countries for their own benefit. We will bring civilization to the Mexicans in 1846. We will bring freedom to the Cubans in 1898. We will bring democracy to the Filipinos in 1900. You know how successful we've been at bringing democracy all over the world.

Obama has not gotten out of this militaristic missionary mindset. He talks about sending tens of thousands of more troops to Afghanistan.

Obama is a very smart guy, and surely he must know some of the history. You don't have to know a lot to know the history of Afghanistan has been decades and decades and decades and decades of Western powers trying to impose their will on Afghanistan by force: the English, the Russians, and now the Americans. What has been the result? The result has been a ruined country.

This is the mindset that sends 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and that says, as Obama has, that we've got to have a bigger military. My heart sank when Obama said that. Why do we need a bigger military? We have an enormous military budget. Has Obama talked about cutting the military budget in half or some fraction? No.
We have military bases in more than a hundred countries. We have fourteen military bases on Okinawa alone. Who wants us there? The governments. They get benefits. But the people don't really want us there. There have been huge demonstrations in Italy against the establishment of a U.S. military base. There have been big demonstrations in South Korea and on Okinawa.

One of the first acts of the Obama Administration was to send Predator missiles to bomb Pakistan. People died. The claim is, "Oh, we're very precise with our weapons. We have the latest equipment. We can target anywhere and hit just what we want."
This is the mindset of technological infatuation. Yes, they can actually decide that they're going to bomb this one house. But there's one problem: They don't know who's in the house. They can hit one car with a rocket from a great distance. Do they know who's in the car? No.

And later-after the bodies have been taken out of the car, after the bodies have been taken out of the house-they tell you, "Well, there were three suspected terrorists in that house, and yes, there's seven other people killed, including two children, but we got the suspected terrorists." But notice that the word is "suspected." The truth is they don't know who the terrorists are.

So, yes, we have to get out of the mindset that got us into Iraq, but we've got to identify that mindset. And Obama has to be pulled by the people who elected him, by the people who are enthusiastic about him, to renounce that mindset. We're the ones who have to tell him, "No, you're on the wrong course with this militaristic idea of using force to accomplish things in the world. We won't accomplish anything that way, and we'll remain a hated country in the world."

Obama has talked about a vision for this country. You have to have a vision, and now I want to tell Obama what his vision should be.

The vision should be of a nation that becomes liked all over the world. I won't even say loved-it'll take a while to build up to that. A nation that is not feared, not disliked, not hated, as too often we are, but a nation that is looked upon as peaceful, because we've withdrawn our military bases from all these countries. We don't need to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on the military budget. Take all the money allocated to military bases and the military budget, and-this is part of the emancipation-you can use that money to give everybody free health care, to guarantee jobs to everybody who doesn't have a job, guaranteed payment of rent to everybody who can't pay their rent, build child care centers.

Let's use the money to help other people around the world, not to send bombers over there. When disasters take place, they need helicopters to transport people out of the floods and out of devastated areas. They need helicopters to save people's lives, and the helicopters are over in the Middle East, bombing and strafing people.
What's required is a total turn­around. We want a country that uses its resources, its wealth, and its power to help people, not to hurt them. That's what we need. This is a vision we have to keep alive. We shouldn't be easily satisfied and say, "Oh well, give him a break. Obama deserves respect."

But you don't respect somebody when you give them a blank check. You respect somebody when you treat them as an equal to you, and as somebody you can talk to and somebody who will listen to you.

Not only is Obama a politician. Worse, he's surrounded by politicians. And some of them he picked himself. He picked Hillary Clinton, he picked Lawrence Summers, he picked people who show no sign of breaking from the past.

We are citizens. We must not put ourselves in the position of looking at the world from their eyes and say, "Well, we have to compromise, we have to do this for political reasons." No, we have to speak our minds.

This is the position that the abolitionists were in before the Civil War, and people said, "Well, you have to look at it from Lincoln's point of view." Lincoln didn't believe that his first priority was abolishing slavery. But the anti-slavery movement did, and the abolitionists said, "We're not going to put ourselves in Lincoln's position. We are going to express our own position, and we are going to express it so powerfully that Lincoln will have to listen to us."

And the anti-slavery movement grew large enough and powerful enough that Lincoln had to listen. That's how we got the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

That's been the story of this country. Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it's been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn't just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that's what we have to do today.

Thanks to Alex Read and Matt Korn for transcribing Zinn’s talk on February 2 at the Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington, D.C., from which this is adapted.

I want to thank Gabe for linking to this brilliant column of The Daily Dish that so brilliant utilizes George Orwell, one of my all-time favorite political commentators, to pillory Dick Cheney. It reminds me of the summer I spent house-sitting for my mother's Kiwi friend Pat, the summer I read 1984 in its entirety for the first time. I sat there at the dining room table, stroking the cats and the epileptic dog in turn, and wondering if George W. Bush's speechwriters were cutting and pasting straight from Orwell, and whether they could see the satire in it....

The New York Times

April 19, 2009
Editorial
The Torturers’ Manifesto

To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos’ release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped “Top Secret” were released with hardly any deletions.

But this cannot be the end of the scrutiny for these and other decisions by the Bush administration.

Until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses — and who set the rules and who approved them — there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated.

The abuses and the dangers do not end with the torture memos. Americans still know far too little about President Bush’s decision to illegally eavesdrop on Americans — a program that has since been given legal cover by the Congress.

Last week, The Times reported that the nation’s intelligence agencies have been collecting private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans on a scale that went beyond the broad limits established in legislation last year. The article quoted the Justice Department as saying there had been problems in the surveillance program that had been resolved. But Justice did not say what those problems were or what the resolution was.

That is the heart of the matter: nobody really knows what any of the rules were. Mr. Bush never offered the slightest explanation of what he found lacking in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he decided to ignore the law after 9/11 and ordered the warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ overseas calls and e-mail. He said he was president and could do what he wanted.

The Bush administration also never explained how it interpreted laws that were later passed to expand the government’s powers to eavesdrop. And the Obama administration argued in a recent court filing that everything associated with electronic eavesdropping, including what is allowed and what is not, is a state secret.

We do not think Mr. Obama will violate Americans’ rights as Mr. Bush did. But if Americans do not know the rules, they cannot judge whether this government or any one that follows is abiding by the rules.

In the case of detainee abuse, Mr. Obama assured C.I.A. operatives that they would not be prosecuted for actions that their superiors told them were legal. We have never been comfortable with the “only following orders” excuse, especially because Americans still do not know what was actually done or who was giving the orders.

After all, as far as Mr. Bush’s lawyers were concerned, it was not really torture unless it involved breaking bones, burning flesh or pulling teeth. That, Mr. Bybee kept noting, was what the Libyan secret police did to one prisoner. The standard for American behavior should be a lot higher than that of the Libyan secret police.

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

'Nuff said!

It started with Taylor Mali. I wanted to go back and hear "Like Lilly Like Wilson Like," to relive that moment where he says,

And the eighth-grade mind is a beautiful thing;
Like a new-born baby's face, you can often see it
change before your very eyes.

I can't believe I'm saying this, Mr. Mali,
but I think I'd like to switch sides.

And I want to tell her to do more than just believe it,
but to enjoy it!
That changing your mind is one of the best ways
of finding out whether or not you still have one.
Or even that minds are like parachutes,
that it doesn't matter what you pack
them with so long as they open
at the right time.
O God, Lilly, I want to say
you make me feel like a teacher,
and who could ask to feel more than that?

Before I knew it, I was on YouTube, watching Taylor Mali pontificate on "Miracle Workers":



YouTube is addicting, it's no secret, and I got sucked in, watching Taylor Mali work his magic on the first episode of Def Poetry Jam with one of my favorite spoken word pieces, "What Teachers Make":



What can I say? I'm a teacher at heart! But once I was listening to Def Poetry, I was reminded of some of the more weighty poets that I love who have appeared on Def Poetry. I actually saw Amir Sulaiman for the first time at Indiana University - Bloomington at an event hosted as part of Muslim History Month by the Muslim Students Association, where he put 9/11 in perspective with "Danger":



But when it comes to putting 9/11 in perspective, no one has more lyrically expressed a perspective quite like hers better than Suheir Hammad in "First Writing Since":



Please, lose yourself in Def Poetry and other such spoken word on the Internet. I can spend hours listening to this kind of thing!

Yesterday I tried to wax eloquent on what I believe Americans know, don't know and want to know about the Arab world. Today, let me show you this book review of What the Arabs Think of America by long-time Middle East correspondent Andrew Hammond. I'm not impressed with the quality of the reviewer's writing, but I think Hammond's book must be an interesting read, and one that supports my own observations that, whatever Arabs may think of American policy, they do like Americans.

A year after the publication of the entertaining and well researched “Popular Culture in the Arab World,” Andrew Hammond has come up with another engaging title: “What the Arabs Think of America”. The author strongly dispels the notion that after Sept. 11 the Arab world — and especially Muslims — hates America. This book tries to show there is hardly any connection between the way Arabs feel toward American policies and American culture.

Anyone traveling through the Middle East is bound to notice signs of American consumerism, a lifestyle embraced by a large majority of Arab youth. According to the UN Arab Human Development Reports, about 38% of the population of Arab League member states are minors. Nowhere is this more visible than on Arab TV screens where western entertainment appeals to youth. Free-to-air satellite channels offer around the clock US sitcoms, reality TV, chat shows and movies.

Other reviewers have been more eloquent in their description and review of the book.

Review

“This is a well-documented and timely volume since there are currently few other works dealing with the same subject. The book is based on the author's....thorough knowledge of Middle Eastern countries, their history, and politics before and after 9/11/2001; interviews with Arabs of various political persuasions and social strata; his own witnessing of events; and writings of political analysts and novelists.”–MultiCultural Review

“[a] timely and informative study.”–Arab News

Product Description

For hundreds of years, pilgrims to Mecca have paused in the narrow mountain pass known as Mina to cast stones at the three pillars of the Jamaraat in a symbolic casting out of the Devil. Recently, someone added graffiti to the central pillar, four Latin letters of the English script - Bush. These days, Americans and America provoke strong opinions from Arabs of all sorts, from politicians and journalists to the ordinary men and women of 'Arab Street'. Their voices aren't always heard in the West, but for over a decade British journalist Andrew Hammond, based in the Middle East, has been listening to what they have to say, and in this book they are heard loud and clear. Many of the issues are political. What do the Arabs think of American support for Israel or its close relationship with Saudi Arabia? How have they reacted to the American occupation of Iraq? But American influence in the Arab world isn't limited to politics. What is the Arab view of American film, television or the latest hip-hop or rap music? And what, for that matter, do Arabs think of Americans themselves, their life-style, attitudes and character? Incorporating interviews with individuals of all sorts from all over the Arab world, What the Arabs Think of America gives voice to the unheard partner in a relationship in crisis. After an introductory chapter describing the historical background, six chapters are devoted to issues of crucial importance to Arabs: 1) 'Domestic America' (exploring Arab enthusiasm for American pop culture, admiration for the US as a land of freedom, and ambivalence about religion in America); 2) 'The Palestinians' (showing how US policy towards Israel and Palestine has come to dominate Arab views of the US in recent years); 3) 'The Iraq Project' (articulating Arab theories about American motives for the invasion and reactions to the occupation, including the Abu Ghraib scandal); 4) 'Peace with Egypt' (highlighting the general Arab view that America's brokerage of the 1979 Camp David agreement deliberately split the Arab world in its opposition to Israel); 5) 'The House of Saud' (reviewing Arab distrust of the close relationship between the ruling Saudi royal family and the US since the monarchy allowed US companies to drill for oil in the 1930s); and 6) 'The Sudanese Card' (exploring Arab dismay at American support of south Sudanese Christian separatists at war with the Islamic north). A short chapter speculating on likely future developments in the Arab-America relationship concludes the book. A Chronology, Glossary (of Arab institutions, political parties, historical events, etc.), Biographies (of key Arab figures) and Bibliography help orientate the reader.

So for those of my friends in America who are interested in learning more about what the Arabs think of us, and for those of you who are worried about my safety in this time of protests, I think this book would both be accurate and reassure you.

Emily put me on to the fabulous commentary excerpted here, by Najlaa A. Al-Nashi, with Noah Baker Merrill, of Direct Aid Iraq:

You may have heard the news that an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the American president, but as an Iraqi I’d like to share with you a few details about the journalist, and why he did that.

Muntather’s actions have, for these days, united Sunnis, Shiites, and Christians. It united Iraqis as Iraqis. And it only took a few seconds. Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders have publicly asked that Muntather not be referred to using his tribal affiliation (Muntather al-Zaidi), because they believe his tribal affiliation now encompasses all the tribes of Iraq: They’ve asked for him to be referred to as “Muntather Al-Iraqi” (Muntather the Iraqi). At the same time, the tribal leaders have said that they hope it is now clear that they have only one enemy — the occupation of Iraq.

The Iraqi response shows clearly that Muntather’s actions have triggered a deep release in Iraqi society. It gives an indication to the outside world how much so many Iraqis oppose the occupation and the ongoing presence of foreign troops in their country, but have been without a voice that cut through the walls of silence and the filtered mainstream media.

It is important to be clear that this action by a single man does not arise from his role as a journalist, or from some specific incident or time in his life. It comes from an Iraqi man who, like all of his people, has suffered greatly from occupation, from the actions of mercenaries like those employed by Blackwater Worldwide, from the torture of Iraqis by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, and from the sectarian violence that the occupation has cultivated, fueled, and allowed to thrive. Muntather himself was kidnapped a few months ago, though thankfully he was released alive.

Unfortunately, Direct Aid Iraq is reporting that he was tortured in the care of Iraqi police, a practice common under the Saddam Regime, and unfortunately not much discouraged by the Americans, Jordanians, Saudis and others who trained those police. It reminds me of what my roommate said when he heard about the incident: "I wonder if they'll kill his whole family for this." I'm happy to see that the shoe-throwing has not fueled the sectarian violence, and that the Americans didn't cart poor Muntather off to Guantanamo for the insult. Nonetheless, it is a vivid example of how ludicrous it is to think that the United States would be able to bring democracy and freedom of speech and expression to Iraq by the means which the Bush Administration has chosen.

I don't know much about the campaign that is being waged against Rashid Khalidi. I don't remember much of what I read by Rashid Khalidi in graduate school. Unfortunately, I worked so many hours to pay my bills that I had to choose between learning Arabic or reading carefully for my so-called "content classes," and chose the former (but that's another rant for another day). What I do know is that my friend Chris brought this video to my attention while I'm unemployed and have the time to watch it, and I think every student and politician should be listening to what Rashid Khalidi (and presumably the other presenters at this conference) have to say about the state of the Fifth Column.

We had this discussion all the time at Indiana University. With some valuable exceptions, academics have become so turned inward that they don't know how to engage with the public, how to make use of the new media revolution to get out their valuable, informed opinions. Academia and a free press are supposed to be working together to illuminate what government forgets or attempts to cover up. Western liberal democracies tout academic freedom and press freedom as hallmarks of what makes Western liberal democracy great and worth exporting to the developing world. If we can't guarantee those freedoms at home, what business do we have imposing our particular variety of liberal democracy on Iraq, Afghanistan, DR Congo, North Korea, Iran, or anywhere else? If we can't keep the press honest, if we can't keep the debate clean, if we resort to Swiftboat-style personal vendettas, and if we can't give academics the freedom and objectivity that they deserve, how can we claim to be a bastion of liberal democracy?

Because I can tell you with absolute certainty that the rest of the world is watching. I can say this with such certainty because I'm now out in the rest of the world. I'm interacting not only with Jordanians, but with Germans, Filipinas, Mexicans, Canadians ... people from all over the world. I can tell you that they know more about American politics than the majority of Americans know about the politics of any other country in the world, even more than most Americans know about their own politics. Furthermore, I tell you that this is no new phenomenon. I've been out in this world for a decade listening to Europeans, Arabs, Aussies, Kiwis, South and East Asians, Africans and South Americans give detailed, accurate arguments about American foreign AND domestic policy.

They're listening, they're watching, and they are most certainly judging us. If you ask me, they're doing a very good job of it. People here know that while the administration and the media are touting full-voice their support of the occupation of Iraq, the majority of Americans are against it. People out in the world see that American policy is addressing the exact same nuclear issues by making nice with North Korea, but not with Iran or Syria. People here know that the European Union's economic stimulus package announced yesterday is a serious attempt to fix the problem, and the stimulus package McCain made such a big deal of abandoning his campaigning for was just that much flag waving, and won't actually help anyone who really needs it. (They also know that's why Obama won the election.)

People out here are very insightful critics of American policy, politics, media and society, and let me tell you, it does not look good from out here in the rest of the world!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9783129

I can't believe it. The Americans and their Iraqi lackeys are building a wall around the Shi'a community of Adamiya in northern Baghdad. Despite spokesman for the US military command in Iraq, Major Gen. William Caldwell's comment that it is not usually America policy to build walls, I am reminded of the wall under construction between the United States and Mexico. Not only that, but who do you think is really paying for the so-called "Security Barrier" (i.e. Big Concrete Wall) that Israel has almost finished building around the West Bank? At the very least, the United States' government is perfectly transparent about its support for the Anti-Palestinian Wall. That's surely the wall Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was referring to when he said he was "afraid that the wall may remind us of other walls we reject."

But let's be realistic here. Do walls really work? No wall is going to keep destitute Mexicans out of the underbelly of the United States' economy, nor keep outraged, desperate Palestinians from attacking their Israeli opressors. How successful was the Berlin Wall at keeping capitalism out of the Soviet Bloc?

I can only think of only one wall that was truly effective at confining a targetted population: the wall around the Warsaw ghetto. Do we really want to follow Hitler and Himmler's example, though?

There must be a better way. What ever happened to negotiation, democratic processes inclusionary of militant Iraqi nationalists, humanitarian aid, and "winning hearts and minds"?

I was a college Senior in Political Science 101 on the first anniversary of September 11th. The professor wanted to spend that day's class remembering the tragedy of a year before; knowing that almost half the students in the class had been high school Seniors in New York City a year earlier, I was dreading the class. I was wrong to do so. I was surprised at how clear-headed and eloquent my classmates were. In particular, I remember the words of a girl from Oregon. Her mother woke her that morning with the news, and she said her first thought was that she didn't have time to mourn, because someone was going to have to make sure that our civil liberties would not be stolen away as the nation reacted.

When I heard what had happened at Virginia Tech, I thought of the girl from Oregon, and I thought, I can't mourn because someone has to remember the dead, beseiged and violated elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong, this is a tragedy, as unprecedented a tragedy in its own way as September 11th. My junior high was the site of a school shooting, and my sympathy goes out to the students of Virginia Tech and the people of Centerville, VA, home town of the shooter and several of his victims (and some friends of mine).

But let us not neglect to notice that today--two days later--was an extraordinarily bloody day in Iraq. More than a hundred were killed and over twice that many injured. It is absolutely right for Pres. Bush to pray at Virginia Tech, and for universities and schools all across the country to re-examine their emergency procedures and the measures they take to monitor the mental health of their students. However, we must be careful that such actions are not taken at the expense of the attention Iraq, Darfur, Nigeria, Russia and other troublespots also deserve, even require.

Taxes are supposed to support government programs to support and protect the people served by that government. If that were truly the case, I wouldn't mind paying taxes at all. As the Finns and Swedes say, we gladly pay 50% in taxes, because the government takes good care of us. Or as Elton John has said, he has no interest in moving to the U.S. where the taxes are lower, because his taxes support the poor in South London who buy his records and make him rich.

Half a century ago, the CEO of General Motors made fifty times what his average worker made, and paid well over half that money back to the government. Now the CEOs of major companies pay easily 500 times what their average workers make, and pay far less than 50% of that money back in taxes. Yes, there are philanthropists like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and the Ford Foundation who are privately distributing their wealth all over this country and the world; they are major contributors to the fact that Americans, per capita, make more private donations to people and programs in impoverished nations than the citizens of any other nation in the world.

But if we taxed Bill Gates for half his yearly net income, he'd still have millions of dollars to put into philanthropy, and I suspect that his taxes could almost single-handedly provide universal health care in the United States. Instead, take a look at this report of UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, "Child Poverty In Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being In Rich Countries" (http://www.unicef-icdc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf). Of the 21 countries surveyed, the United States ranks in the bottom third in 4 of the 5 categories for which US ranking was provided, including 20th in Family and Peer Relationships, and Behaviours and Risks, and 21st--that's last of the richest nations!--in Health and Safety! That's worse than even the significantly poorer former Soviet Bloc nations of Poland and the Czech Republic. According to this report, 22% of American children under 18 live in homes taking in less than 50% of the median national income; that's dead last of the nations polled. One in eight American 15-year-olds polled has less than 10 books in his or her household. The United States has among the highest rates of infant mortality and accidental child deaths of these rich nations. At 75%, the United States has the 5th lowest rate of 15-19-year-olds in school. American children are judged to have the second worst relationships with parents and peers of the 21 nations surveyed. American children have the worst health behaviours of the nations surveyed, the highest child obesity rate, and the highest teen pregnancy rate. One in 5 American children rate their own health as 'fair or poor.'

Could we not be using our tax money to improve these numbers? Why are we not?

Instead of making the richest nation in the world the best place in the world to be a child, we are engaged in a quagmire in Iraq. We were told that fighting the "terrorists" there would keep us safer here. This is unlikely to be the case. Our arrogance in Iraq has cost us more friends than it has made us; this conflict has undermined our soft power and image in the world, and made us look like the big bully on the block. And we are suffering at home for this war every day.

The money we have spent in Iraq could have provided health insurance to nearly 250 million American children, or have built over 3.7 million units of public housing for the millions of hurricane displaced or otherwise impoverished and homeless persons, including children, in the United States. Or the money we spent in Iraq could have paid for a year's Head Start expenses for 55 million children, or hired over 7 million new teachers, or provided over 20 million 4-year scholarships for Americans to attend college. You can see a running tally of these figures at http://costofwar.com/index.html. Or we could use the money we're spending in Iraq to reduce world hunger by half in 10 years, immunize children around the world for that time, stem the tide of AIDS in the world, and still have money left over (http://costofwar.com/numbers.html)! Any one of those things would improve our image and thereby increase our national security far more than any war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or elsewhere.

As you pay your taxes, I challenge you to consider where that money is going, and whether you are comfortable supporting the actions your money supports. Because if you're not, it's time to take ownership of that money and of your government--for the people, by the people--and demand change!