'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

BBC's embarrassing ethnocentrism

The BBC's nightly, half-hour TV newscast here in the US ("and elsewhere around the world") still has much to commend it. Tonight's footage of Elizabeth Wilmshurst at the Chilcott Enquiry, lambasting the (il-)legal basis of the Blair government's decision to back the invasion of Iraq was wonderful for us here in America to behold.

However... The Beeb does still bring a breathtakingly provincial and ethnocentric sensibility to its coverage of various "foreign" disasters. I just watched their footage of the after-effects of the massive floods in the Peruvian Andes. The reporter led off with the fairly minor trials and tribulations of the (let's face it, mostly somewhat wealthy) western tourists in the region... and only some minutes into the report did he note that "local people" (i.e., the people formerly known as "natives") "have also been affected."

Who knew?

Who knew that Peruvian citizens, who have lost homes, businesses, livelihoods, and even lives due to the floods, should "also" be mentioned, as an afterthought, in a news bulletin that claims to be "international"???

This was an echo of the Beeb's shockingly ethnocentric, or perhaps we should say whitefolks-centric, early coverage of the earthquake in Haiti two weeks ago.

Where on earth does the BBC find all these white-centric reporters and editors?

Time to retire or re-educate the lot of them, I think.

Charlottesville's internet-speed glory

Every so often I get back to reading my Google Reader.... Just now I saw this great post by Matthew Yglesias.

So the USA is still not #1 worldwide in average speed of the available internet. We're, um, #18, as of the third quarter of 2009. Amazingly, too, of all the countries Yglesias lists, the US is the only one that saw a Year-on-year drop in speeds. I suppose one possible explanation for that is that a lot of new users got connected, but at lower speeds. Either that, or someone is, whatever, sitting inside the Intertubes someplace blocking all the traffic as it goes past. (Could that be the NSA?)

But then, look at the city-by-city listing. Charlottesville is right up there among the global leaders, at #8! Go, Charlottesville!

I don't know why Yglesias has to be sniffy and make a point of noting that, like the other "fast" US city listed there, Charlottesville is, um, pretty darn small by world standards.

In Boston Review forum-- on Afghanistan

I have a contribution in this latest Boston Review forum on Afghanistan. The forum is built around a great piece of reporting by Nir Rosen.

I wish I'd had more time to work on my contribution. But given the time constraints I was under, I'm pretty happy about it.

There are some other good contributions there, too. I haven't read them all yet; but I looked at Andy Bacevich's and it's filled with his usual good sense.

Fwiw, my life has been extremely busy since I took on this job at CNI two months ago. The job has involved a ton more administration than I'd envisaged, and has left just about zero time or energy to do anything else. In fact, this BR contribution is the only non-CNI work I've done since October 20.

My very first contribution to BR, back in 2001, was this contribution to a forum they were running on the one-state project in Palestine/Israel. At that time, I was against it, mainly because of its political unfeasibility. As I have noted elsewhere about this piece, "My views later evolved."

Hey, maybe my views on the unwinnability of the US's war in Afghanistan might "evolve", too. At this point, though, I am not expecting that they will...

And here, obviously, is something else very sad about my work load. I haven't had time to do any JWN blogging... Boo-hoo...

Anyway, if anyone's reading this, Have a Great Christmas/Holiday time!

CNI study-tour blogging at FPFD

Just a reminder to all readers to check out my/our new blog, "Fair Policy, Fair Discussion", which now has five or six posts that are quick takes on what we've been doing on our CNI study tour ("political pilgrimage") around the Middle/Near East.

We've now had all the meetings and formal activities of the tour, and it's been tremendous. We have a group of ten people, self included; and we've spent the past 16 days traveling to: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Palestine again (Gaza), and back to Egypt.

I've never been a tour director before. This one's been a lot of hard work but also really rewarding.

Expect a lot more blogging about the tour, over there at FPFD, over the next couple of weeks. Thus far, I've had no opportunity to give justice to the immense richness of the experiences and personal encounters that we had.

We had with us a great young videographer, Dominic Musacchio, who's taken many tens of hours of what looks like great footage. He'll be making cuts of that over the coming days that we'll post, or at least link to, on FPFD. We also have still photos that we'll get up.

One of the focuses of the trip has been, of course, Gaza. Another has been Jerusalem, and the ever-explosive situation there. Another, that emerged over time and was sparked in particular by Dominic's enthusiasm and the help of our last-minute Jerusalem volunteer Kate Gould, has been getting the views of young people. Dominic has what I think is some great footage from talking with and hanging out with young people in Jordan, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

So anyway, head on over there as soon as you can...

A Grave View of US-Iran Relations

In some countries, mine included, today is remembered as "Veterans' Day" or "Armistice Day." Juan Cole sensibly wrote earlier today that "The most patriotic way to honor future veterans of foreign wars is not to create any unnecessarily."

Fellow "Wahoo" and good friend Barin Kayaoglu, writing in the Turkish Weekly, goes a step deeper in considering the state of US-Iran nuclear negotiations.

Barin neatly anticipates the standard arguments from partisans on both sides, accusations of intransigence vs. bullying, terrorism vs. imperialism, then arguments over what to do, of all the reasons to be hard-headed, to fight the "necessary war."

Barin trumps such verbal combat by considering the stakes from a very different vantage point, that of the grave. He takes us to the two sprawling national cemeteries of America and Iran, Arlington and Behesht-e Zahra. I've been to both; somber places where the two nations, where families, mourn their losses, the lives cut short. Barin concludes:

"The graves of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters at these places are somber reminders of the real price of war.

So before Iranian and American policy-makers make up their mind about the next step, it would be humane for them to spend some time at Behesht-e Zahra and Arlington. Nothing can bring back the dead. But there is no good reason to start another Middle East war that would create new ones."

Well said Barin. Amen.

Iran's Capital Idea

The BBC this morning carries a curious item about Iran moving its capital city away from Tehran. It's not a particularly new idea, and a geo-physical argument exists to support such a dramatic change.

Yet recent political earthquakes may also be involved in the calculation. The article buys into the misleading, if all too common Western sense of Tehran being more "liberal" and politically restive than the rest of the country. Right-o.... Tell that to Tabrizis.

In any case, maybe now we know the "real reason" why urban planners are such hot potatoes inside Iran. Hey, maybe this news could provide a "constructive" pathway to free Kian Tajbakhsh -- to help with this whopper of an urban planning project.

MTV-U's Poet Laureate: Simin Behbahani

MTV (Music Television) "University" has selected Simin Behbahani, "the poet who never sold her soul or her pen," to be its second poet laureate.

For a visually challenged 82-years-young Iranian, how cool is that?

Beginning Monday, Nov. 2nd Behbahani's poems will be featured on MTV-U in a series of 19 short films.

Why would MTV do this? Is it political? In the The Wall Street Journal, MTV senior Vice President Ross Martin explains:

“Her poems speak to us because they are from a part of the world that is front of mind and confusing... We know there’s a groundswell on U.S. campuses advocating freedom and an end to oppression in Iran. mtvU has a responsibility to hear that cry and respond to it."

Amid Iran's post election tumult, millions around the world heard Behbahani's timeless lament at the death of Neda Soltani:

You are neither dead, nor will you die

You will always remain alive

You have an eternal existence

You are the voice of the people of Iran

Yet it is Behbahani, the reputed "Lioness of Iran," who will now re-introduce millions of the world's youth to Iran, through the medium of rock 'n roll, music television, in her universal voice.

When Iran's President Ahmadinejad dismissed those who protested the election's legitimacy as mere "dirt," Behbahani hurled the insult back, with the pen:

"If the flames of anger rise any higher in this land

Your name on your tombstone will be covered with dirt

Yet MTV's featuring of Behbahani should not be interpreted as adding to the cacaphony of voices pining for more invasions, war, sanctions, bloodshed. Nearly 30 years ago, Behbahani wrote of her horror in seeing a martial fever for war arise in her students then:

Oh, the child of today

If war is what you want

I am the child of yesterday

To me, war is shameful

MTV's Ross Martin further explains the choice of Behbahani on his own blog,

"Behbahani's poetry champions women’s rights and acts as a voice of peace and freedom during a time of political and social upheaval. Twice, she has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Poetry. Her poems illuminate not only the struggle of Iran but also the extreme beauty of the land, its people, and its history."

Martin also notes how none of this would have been possible were it not for the literary skills and devotion of Professor Farzaneh Milani. Her translations bring Behbahani's "iconic" poems to life in English. If Behbahani is Iran's national poet, Milani has rendered her the world's.

To stay alive, you must slay silence,

to pay homage to being, you must sing....

New blog!

For the foreseeable future I'll be doing all or most of my Middle East-related blogging over at the new blog I've launched on behalf of the CNI Foundation. It's called Fair Policy, Fair Discussion.

As veteran bloggers will probably recognize, at present FPFD uses a very standard Wordpress template. I wanted to get it up and running quickly so it can be the main vehicle for whatever blogging I'm able to do during the upcoming CNI Foundation tour of the Middle East that I'll be co-leading, October 30 - November 16. I'm hoping that other tour participants can do some blogging there, too.

So anyway, please put FPFD onto your RSS reader or other regular reading mechanism. Come and join in the (hopefully civilized) discussion over there.

The value of the human rights frame

Michael Goldfarb, who was the deputy communications director for John McCain's campaign, worked for a while in that temple of neoconservative organizing, the Project for a New American Century, and is a kind of scuzzy attack-dog for the pro-settler hard right, has now decided to come after-- poor little moi.

(Yay! I made the big leagues of this guy's 'enemies' list'! Oops, suppress that childish thought, Helena.)

HT to Richard Silverstein, co-rabbi of our "off-broadway" bloggers' panel at J Street, next Monday noon-time, for having read Michael Goldfarb's blog so the rest of us don't have to...

Long story short, Goldfarb is attacking me because, he says, "she likes to compare Israel to Hamas." And he picks a pretty good quote from this late December 2008 JWN post, to prove it:

Most people in the west have been wilfully mis- or dis-informed about Hamas and believe either that it is made up of wild-eyed men of violence who perpetrate violence for its own sake, or that its main goal is the violent expulsion of all Jewish people from Israel/Palestine. These impressions are quite misleading. Yes, Hamas has used significant amounts of violence against Israelis since it was founded in 1987. But so too has Israel, against Hamas. Indeed, Israel has killed many times more Hamas supporters and leaders than Hamas has ever killed Israelis. Does that mean we understand Israelis to be only "mindless, wild-eyed men of violence"? No. For both sides, we need to try to understand what they seek to achieve with the violence they use; as well as the conditions under which they can be expected to moderate or end it.

So here's the thing that Michael Goldfarb and people of his ilk really don't seem to understand: For the vast majority of the people on God's earth today, Palestinians are just as fully human as Jewish people, and just as deserving as Jewish people of our compassion and our understanding.

That, it seems to me, is the true value of the "human rights" approach to world affairs. To understand that no one bunch of people, however described-- "Jewish", or "Arab", "American", "Burmese", "Georgian", "Muslim", or even "Quaker"-- is deserving, at a deep level, of any more deep human concern than any other people. To understand that all "peoples", as such, have made wonderful and distinctive contributions to the expression of full human flourishing, and that--even more importantly-- all human persons, whichever of these groups they self-affiliate with, are equally deserving of our concern and our objective judgment regarding their actions.

And that the basis for any such judgment must be quite "culture"- and politics-neutral.

That is the true value of putting a human-rights frame on world affairs. But the Michael Goldfarbs, the Norman Podhoretz's, the Alan Dershowitz's, and Robert Bernsteins of this world truly don't get this. They truly think there is something so "special" about Jewish people and their experience in the world that somehow the (and especially the allegedly "Jewish" state, Israel) deserve to be given a free pass on the application of any neutral standards of behavior, such as would be applied to anyone else.

So Michael Goldfarb can't bear it when I write,

Yes, Hamas has used significant amounts of violence against Israelis since it was founded in 1987. But so too has Israel, against Hamas. Indeed, Israel has killed many times more Hamas supporters and leaders than Hamas has ever killed Israelis. Does that mean we understand Israelis to be only "mindless, wild-eyed men of violence"? No. For both sides, we need to try to understand what they seek to achieve with the violence they use; as well as the conditions under which they can be expected to moderate or end it.

And more importantly, Goldfarb, Bernstein, and many other die-hard supporters of "Israel-- right or wrong" truly couldn't bear it when the distinguished Jewish (and as it happens, also Zionist) criminal investigator Judge Richard Goldstone came out with the report in which he tried to apply a single unified "human rights" standard to the behavior of the decisionmakers on both sides of the Israel-Hamas divide.

Bernstein's case is particularly egregious. In Monday's New York Times this guy who, ways back when, had been the founding Chair of Human Rights Watch-- back when it was still "Helsinki Watch"-- had an anguished op-ed piece in which he wrote that he now felt he had to break publicly with HRW because of its alleged "unfairness" in criticizing Israel.

The argument Bernstein made was revealingly disingenuous. He still seems stuck in the "Helsinki era" mindset of using the human rights issue as a weapon in Cold War rivalry. Hullo! The Cold War has been over for 20 years next month!

Also, though the frame he tried to use was the distinctly Cold War frame of "democratic" versus "undemocratic" nations, he made no reference at all to the fact that there had in fact been an election in Palestine in January 2006, that was free and fair, and which Hamas won... Or, to the tragic response the election of that leadership met with from Israel, Washington-- and come to that, from Bob Bernstein, too.

This reminds me of the piercing comment that the great Jewish-American liberal Ira Glasser recently made about Norman Podhoretz: "He has not only lost the ability to feel for or identify with the persecution of others; he has lost all ability to see why anyone else would."

... Bernstein's piece came out Monday. Then on Tuesday, Netanyahu trotted out his ridiculous "whining baby" argument against the whole, weighty corpus of the "laws of war", which in modern times have been assembled over the course of 150 years now.

Honestly, what a whiny baby. The last person who claimed that "things are so different now" that the laws of war all have to be upended was, of course, Alan Dershowitz, back when he was arguing that somehow in the "age of terrorism" it would be necessary and justifiable to start engaging in torture.

The bottom line on the whole furor over Goldtsone in rightwing Israeli and Likudnik American circles is, however, that the reaction of the whole of the international community-- not just Judge Goldstone, but certainly including him-- to the assault the israeli government launched against Gaza last winter just about ensured that no Israeli government will dare to launch any kind of similar assault any time in the near future-- if ever.

I think Aluf Benn had it just about right in this recent article:

Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was perceived in Israel as a shining victory. Rocket fire from Gaza was brought to a halt almost completely. The Israel Defense Forces emerged from its failure during the Second Lebanon War and deployed ground forces with few casualties. "The world" let the operation continue and did not impose a cease-fire. A wonderful war.

Ten months later, it seems the victory was a Pyrrhic one. Israel did not realize that the rules have changed with Barack Obama's election as U.S. president.

...Even if the legal process that Goldstone initiated ends up being halted, and Israel is not put in the dock in The Hague, its hands have been tied. The world, led by Obama, will not let it initiate a Cast Lead II operation.

So now, frustrated by their inability to dream up a "Cast lead II", Israel's hardliners are taking out their frustrations by railing against Goldstone and "demanding deep changes in the laws of war". Oh yes, that, and also in a fit of continuing pique, continuing to keep the 1.5 million of Gaza tightly-- and quite illegally-- besieged.

Beware the whiny babies when they have guns and exercise real coercive power.

That corporate thang

Well, it's been quite the mindshift transplant for me the past couple of days, getting my head around budgets, HR policies, management structures, etc in my speedily assumed new job as Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

When I say "national interest", I mean-- as readers of my book Re-engage will surely remember-- "the true interests of the American citizenry", and not simply the interests of some big US-based multinational corporations, working in the arms industry or whatever...

Last weekend, I was talking with my fabulous son about some of the lifestyle changes involved. He's an environmental engineer on the west coast. I was telling him, "You know, this past week I've been trying to train myself to be ready for this. Up till now, I would get up around around 7 or 7:15, do some leisurely yoga. But now I've been setting my alarm at 6:40 and-- "

"Right," he said, "then doing frantic yoga instead..."

I love his sense of humor. I love and admire all of my kids so much for what they do in the world, and who they are.

But anyway, yes. Frantic yoga is kind of what it's all been feeling like this past couple of days.

So, ommmmmmm.

People, if you support what I'll be doing at the Council for the National Interest, or if you want to express appreciation for what I've done here at JWN, I urge you to support our work at CNI with a donation.

Also, okay, I understand that getting up at 6:40am and putting in 9- to 10-hour days at an office job is what a lot of people do. It's no big deal. My daughter Leila gets up at 6 each morning to look after her baby and then go off and teach a class of fourth graders in New York City. You can see why I admire her! But still, if you support what we're doing at CNI, please do consider giving as big of a donation as we can. this organization can-- and will-- become so much more effective than it has been until now!

That's it for now. End of corporate thang.