SUPPORT THE WALL STREET PROTESTS

Hello readers,

I am happy to report from New York that there are signs of positive social change in late imperial America.

The photos accompanying this post were taken by the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011.

I've been in China for the last few months and unable to update this blog because Blogger is blocked by Beijing.
Although Chinese internet controls can be a nuisance, or worse, block vital information that citizens need to understand and improve the society in which they live, I don't really dispute the right of a sovereign nation to block data-mining products that collude with the US government.

The surreptitious statistical surveillance conducted by Google, Facebook and other "darlings" of late-era US imperialism takes the joy out of technological innovation and erodes trust on the creative commons of the Internet. As such I refuse to post on Facebook and am winding down my use of Google products; as attractive as some of the technology is, the company is not to be trusted.

Please look for future posts on Wordpress under my name, or by my internet tag, jinpeili.

Phil Cunningham Read more on this article...

Who is to Occupy Wall Street?

Occupy Wall Street is a 12 days long protest taking place at the Liberty Plaza, New York, not very far from its original target. On occasion the crowd there gets organized and stages walk outs, circling the sidewalks near and around what had become the symbol financial corruption in the United States. I am blessed with the fact that the Liberty Plaza is where I transfer from the metro to the express bus, twice a week. Thus far I was able visit the protest more than 10 times, mostly around the hours of 7.30 am and 7.30 pm. In its initial beginning, the protest drew thousands of people, but afterwards only a handful of participants remained in the park. Throughout the week their numbers ranged from as little as a few dozens to several hundreds, depending on the call they were able to send out, and the response they were able to gather. When I started to follow them on the twitter, they had around 3000 followers; today the number is swelled into 14,000 and steadily growing. Originally I was surprised how little media coverage the protest received, but this is no longer the case. Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Rosanne Barr and Cornell West have visited the protesters and it has been mentioned by the media frequently since last Sunday, when a police officer used pepper spray on a group of peaceful protesters.

Last week, when the media coverage was still low, I saw a rather disturbing picture of the protest in the paper, depicting it almost like a juvenile orgy. I emailed a few columnists there, complaining about it and asking why they could not talk about it rather than condescendingly portraying it with such images. The ensuing email exchanges inspired me to write these paragraphs. Only Clyde Haberman and Ginia Belefante responded to my emails. Clyde Haberman’s reply was near condescending. He wrote “Actually, we’ve covered them every day, in the newspaper on Sunday and every day on City Room, our on-line blog. Aren’t we endlessly told that on line is where young people read these days?” In his view, so it seemed, this protest was about the young people, to whom the New York Times catered mainly electronically, whereas the print readers did not need to know about it (presumably because they were old), except, of course on the weekends, when the Americans notoriously read the least amount of newspapers. Ginia Belefante was more articulate, and wrote that she was working on a large piece to be published on September 25, and asked me if I was a grounded supporter or observing from afar. Finding out that I was an occasional follower, she ensured me that this protest was not as relevant as I believed, and if I had spent enough time around it I would have realized that they were an aimless bunch. When I pointed at how the Guardian hired Amy Goodman to write a column about the protest, she argued that they got some of their facts wrong. When I asked her what these facts were, and gave a list of the facts that I was familiar with, such as the harassment and the arrest of dozens of activists and the confiscation of recording devices and computers, she stopped responding to my emails.

On September 25, Sunday, the day after the police arrested a larger number of protesters and used teargas, the New York Times still went on with their scheduled essay by Ginia Belefante. Not to my surprise, she was heavily criticized for her lack of consciousness, understanding and solidarity. To be honest, I have never been a big fan of the New York Times, and subscribed this year, because my wife insisted on it. The above incident made me think that it is a newspaper that lacks any desire to promote change or progress in our country, and mainly stands as a relic of the old media erected to support the Democratic Party, which has become a co-opted institution serving the financial elite. However, there was something shocking going on. As a media giant, the New York Times failed to recognize what was the true strength of this protest.

Occupy Wall Street is organized by a group of alternative media/internet activists. They are the creators of an extremely successful journal titled Adbusters, which attacks commercialism and capitalism, while generating serious advertising revenues to support its self. Moreover, in this public protest, they joined forces with the Internet activists known as the Anonymous. Together, the Adbusters and the Anonymous constitute a media team far from incompetent and aimless. As one of their participants explained it to me, their main goal is to start a paradigm shift. They want people to question capitalism and unregulated markets. They are not romantic visionaries. They want a grassroots socialism generated by people for the people. They want people to understand that the form economy we are practicing is flawed.

The fact that they are talking about a paradigm shift shows how smart they are. They seem to have read their Michael Foucault and Noam Chomsky, learned that a peaceful movement must establish its strength via discourse, and aware that the Internet and independent media is their best option to organize something both grassroots and international. And, history tells us that a paradigm shift is no small thing.

A few hundred years ago, the transformation of power from the oligarchs into the middle and upper classes, which was initiated by the American Revolution and French Revolution, also relied on a paradigm shift. Both revolutions used pamphlets and newspapers, what was the independent media of their time, to raise consciousness and support. During the following century, many kings and sultans were replaced by the abstract notion of nation and national sovereignty. Today, it is rudimentary that we live in a nation state, with its preferred interpretation of citizenship and history. It is rudimentary that we live in a nation state where the economy and politics are governed by the middle and upper classes.

Down at the Liberty Plaza, a group of Americans are busy on a media desk, trying to grow their protest base. Like their forefathers, they know they are not acting in a vacuum. They know the spirit of revolution is everywhere, from Bahrain to Detroit. Like their forefathers, they know they are young and privileged subjects of a global economy. They know they are exceptionally lucky. They are mixed bunch, who also believe they lack liberty and self-determination, and they are brewing alternative economic ideas. Some old fashion newspapers think these kids are not worth much attention.

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Turkey, Israel and Kurdistan?

By Murat Cem Menguc

The leaders of the European Union must be grateful that they never allowed Turkey to join. The recent crisis between her and Israel could have easily transformed into something humiliating for the conservative governments of France, Germany, Italy and United Kingdom, which is pretty much the Europe that would have mattered. Imagine what would have happened if the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sent the Israeli envoy back to Tel Aviv and stated that from now on the Italian army will escort aid flotillas to Gaza. Or better, try to visualize him visiting first Cairo, and then crossing the border into Gaza to shake hands with a few members of the Hamas. It was about to happen in the Turkish case and right before the United Nations is going to vote on recognizing Palestine as a state.

During the recent scuffle between Turkey and Israel, one thing became clear; Turkey is a regional asset far bigger than even it could have imagined. Its stable economy puzzles and generates jealousy among the European states who are struggling with serious monetary crises, like Greece, Portugal and Spain. Its blunt unilateral relations with the US are one of kind among the Muslim nations, making many envious and infuriating Israel. Its democratically elected government’s capability of dictating its will on the historically arrogant Turkish Military invokes admiration and discontent, both at home and abroad.

Who would have thought that once its secret service aiding Turkey to capture the leader of the Kurdish insurgency, today Israel could draft a Plan C to aid the Kurdish insurgency and destabilize Turkey, so we all can return to the previous epoch of friendly alliance? Who could have thought that Kurds, despised by Turks at all levels, still fighting to express themselves in their own language, still fighting to name its own children in its own language, and considered a nuisance to the political establishment of the entire region burning with revolutionary upheaval deliver Israel what it needs? Who could have thought in the grand scheme of things, the Israeli Foreign Ministry would pull the Kurdish card so it can “normalize” its relations with its strongest regional ally? In all honesty, only a schmuck like the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman could have imagined such fantasy. Surely, all our old friends whose houses we set on fire return to us as friends again.

One of the major lessons of the Hebrew Bible appears to be lost to Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu’s lot: times change and one must adapt to change. Israeli conservative political elite, having grown used to considering itself beyond the influence of history, is ignoring what is happening at their door step. The Middle East is no longer what it used to be. The same can be said about Europe and the US. The economic system which drives our daily lives, which used to rely and support the well-established local and international meritocracies, is in trouble. Even the top practitioners of capital accumulation are disillusioned with the world we live in today. The unequal distribution of wealth is grotesque, and everything in the news suggests that the masses are discontent. Everyone wants to live in a better world, where there is affordable food, housing, education, healthcare and natural environment. Enter Israel, where an out-of-date political elite is perpetuating a dangerously out-of-touch vision. One wonders if Netanyahu really thinks the Arab spring is a uniquely Arab phenomenon. Is the irony of the recent protests wholly lost on the Israeli conservative elite, that a nation, which is illegally occupying the land of another nation, was protesting that it cannot afford its own homes? More terribily, what was the Plan D? What were they planing to do if using the Kurds wouldn't work?

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Zanga Zanga Kurdistan?

By Murat Cem Mengüç

The expression zanga zanga (alley by alley), coined by the dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, is strikingly accurate in terms of the nature of not just Libyan but most of the Middle Eastern uprisings. Whether he will become the winner or the loser of the conflict in Libya, Qaddafi seems to be well aware of his battlefront, i.e. the alleyways. The first time I heard the expression zanga zanga, I could not help but remember a harrowing paragraph from Franz Fannon’s The Wretched of the Earth:

“The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where nor how. It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other. The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light. The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees, a town wallowing in the mire. It is a town of niggers and Arabs. The look that the native turns on the settler’s town is a look of lust, a look of envy; it expresses his dreams of possession – all manner of possession: to sit at the settler’s table, to sleep in the settler’s bed, with his wife if possible. The colonized man is an envious man. And this the settler knows very well; when their glances meet he ascertains bitterly, always on the defensive, “They want to take our place.” It is true, for there is no native who does not dream at least once a day of setting himself up in the settler’s place.”

Neither with the intention of offending nor with a desire to put words into anyone’s mouth, I quote Fanon’s words simply because they encapsulate a reality far too important to be ignored. What we are witnessing in the Middle East today, even though the historical context could suggest we are somewhat beyond colonialism, is revolts springing from native towns. So far, in the Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan, and Syrian revolts, there are no dominant insurgent groups who are long time opponents of the existing dictators, who have lived in the wilderness for years, and who finally, with popular support, begun to descend into the city squares. There are no Havanas, Moscows, or even Tehrans here, where the final confrontation between the ruling elite and a popular organized group to be showcased. Peasants are not involved, we are told by the Egyptian sociologists. Besides the mercenaries, the soldiers are reluctant, we are informed by the Libyan eyewitnesses. This is a people’s movement, we are informed by Syrian observers. And, from Tunis to Damascus, the oppositions are made of not ideologically indoctrinated young men and women in guerilla uniforms but composed of city dwellers, such as vegetable vendors, unemployed accountants, teachers, housewives and doctors.

For most of the Middle East, the next big curiosity is how the situation in Syria may unfold. For the Turks, on the other hand, a new front is opening, and zanga zanga. Since the beginning of the summer, slowly but surely, the Kurdish liberation movement started to resemble its neighboring revolts. Before the June elections, Kurdish political leaders warned the Turkish government of this possibility, and gave or delivered a deadline, June 15^th, to either normalize the relationship with the insurgents (regarding the issues of amnesty and return), or face a new phase of confrontation. The government’s response was grotesque. First the Kurdish party was banned from the elections. Then, its 60 or so members, who ran and won as independent candidates, were individually forbidden from politics. Presently, attacks by the Turkish nationalist street tugs on the Kurdish population are a daily occurrence too. In other words, what used to be a war between the Turkish military and a communist guerilla movement is becoming an ethnic confrontation. In the cities like İstanbul, Ankara, Izmir or Bursa, communities are turning against each other.

The ruling AKP, having won the election, became bolder, it seems, and it has so far remained unresponsive or mocked the suggestions that the state should bargain with Kurds. Furthermore, emboldened with having brought the Turkish military under their yoke, the AKP government is acting arrogantly. Recently, they have announced a full-fledged war against the Kurdish guerillas, in what appears to be a joint program with the Iranian authorities. A respected politician from the opposition party CHP, Sezgin Tanrıkulu, described the new phase of the confrontation as the first civil war in the history of the Republic, given that for the first time in Turkish history, a democratically elected government decided to wage war against its own citizens. Turkish military have hit insurgency positions in both Turkey and Iraq, since the guerillas have ended their cease-fire agreement after the June 15^th deadline.

Those who are familiar with the history of the conflict would know that jabal jabal (mountain by mountain) rather than zanga zanga best applies to the previous epochs of the insurgency. However, in the past, the conflict was between the autonomous Turkish military, who rarely paid any heed to the Turkish government, and a Kurdish communist guerilla movement. Today, it is not clear who is hit where, and some Kurdish communities have jointly set themselves as human shields against the all out assault on their militants. During the previous decades, the conflict sometimes drew near to the historically Kurdish cities, but it was also a known fact that the guerillas refused to battle in their hometowns while the Turkish military used them as centers of scare tactics and propaganda. However, there have been several incidents in these cities, in the recent past, and the present campaign is threatening to transform them into zones of conflict. Unlike the Western cities, like Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Bursa, these cities are native towns, in the most Fanonian sense of the word. The natives who have been, for many generations, dreaming of taking the settlers place, inhabit them. Moreover, organized armies are notoriously ineffective in city centers, and the Turkish military failed for over 30 years to subdue the Kurdish insurgency when it was a mountain phenomenon. As a critique of Qaddafi’s dictatorship in Libya, or Assad’s totalitarianism in Syria, as well as a fervent supporter of the Egyptian revolution, the leaders of the Turkish democracy should know better than bringing this ethnic confrontation into the town squares.

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The Kids Are Alright?

 

 

By Murat Cem Mengüç

Last week in Turkey was marked by the celebrations of the Turkish National Sovereignty and Children’s Day (April 23), a combined holiday which celebrates the transfer of political sovereignty from the Ottoman Sultanate to the Turkish people and acknowledges the orphans of the nation’s martyrs. During the same week, political campaigns for the coming parliamentary elections took off as well. Fought with nasty retorts and personalized attacks, political campaigns are always more suitable for the gossip driven front pages of the Turkish media, and judging from the headlines of April 23, they surely stole the spot light. Trusted polls still indicate that AKP (Justice and Development Party) is due for its third landslide victory, but the scene is far more polarized than the previous elections. Also, the events surrounding the election campaigns suggest that the classic institutions of CHP (People’s Republican Party) and MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) no longer fight the Islamist conservative AKP by themselves. Opposition to AKP has become an intimidating block, and some polls suggest that MHP and CHP are the leading parties in the three major cities. Beneath them, a tacit coalition operates loosely and tries to destabilize AKP on a regular basis. TKP (Turkish Communist Party), SDP (Socialist Democratic Party) and BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) all joined in to create an environment in which they could carve a piece of the electorate at any cost.

A recent example of this tacit coalition was the general outcry arguing AKP was cracking down on journalists. Having become a meritocracy of its own, AKP is long accused of silencing is critics. This time the occasion arose with the banning, by the Turkish court, of an unpublished book. about Islamist leader Fetullah Gülen and his influence on Turkish politics. Gülen’s followers are dear to AKP, but it was not clear if AKP was involved at all. In the heavily charged Ergenekon trials, trying to explain the paramilitary activities of the Turkish State against its own citizens in the Kurdish East, the book became evidence because its author was arrested in connection to the trials. Rightfully so, the media and citizens united against the banning of a book yet to be published, and the common finger pointed at AKP, without a valid discussion of the reasons why the court may have benefited from keeping an unpublished document unpublished, suggesting that most of this criticism was reactionary.

A similar event was the protests staged by angry college students who believed a cheating formula for the state university entrance exams was circulated. This centralized exam is an archaic institution and determines the future of all students who wish to study at government universities. The cheating formula was never unearthed but TKP and SDP mobilized the youth, holding banners and chanting slogans that accused AKP for having masterminded a cheating formula to benefit its own meritocracy.

Later came the banning of 12 independent candidates from the approaching election lists, 7 of whom were Kurdish. This last incident caused widespread street protests in major cities; one person died, a number of post offices and banks were set on fire, and AKP headquarters and public busses were stoned. BDP and PKK sympathizers organized demonstrations, while banners and slogans argued this political ban was designed to benefit the AKP. However, there was no clear sign at all that AKP was involved.

The election campaigns began in this climate, and the leader of AKP and Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdoğan stated that he was ready to bring thousands of people to the streets to counter these nonsense protests against his electorate. In response, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the MHP, stated that he could confront Erdoğan’s people with his grey wolves (the mythological symbol of Turkish fascism, here referring to his youth groups). Erdoğan’s answer retorted that Bahçeli’s “dogs” would run for their lives when confronted by the will of people. Then, an eyewitness video in which the police officers from Sivas were shown chanting a fascist march on the streets and identifying themselves as the grey wolves was circulated widely. A bystander was seen making the grey wolf sign to celebrate their courage as well. The city of Sivas has been a hub of political confrontations between the religious conservatives, fascist nationalists and Kurdish fractions for many years.

Obviously, AKP has become more confident and feels cornered at the same time. The party is nervous and thinks that it is indispensable as well. It forgets that it is a tolerated, not fully supported institution. It is permitted to do politics as long as it doesn’t turn up the volume of its ideological discourse.[1] Of course, where the arguments are personal and the media is thirsty for sensation, this is a hard task. Thus, Zaman (the leading religious daily) argues that jamaat (religious community supporting the AKP) is being turned into a scapegoat for anything that goes wrong.

This year, Turkey celebrated the 90^th anniversary of its national sovereignty as a country where the media loves sensation, the military is on trial in civil courts, the police officers chant fascist slogans, the Kurdish minority burns banks and post offices, and the mass graves of recent history are being excavated reluctantly. While a coalition against AKP jumps at any chance of being in the headlines and pointing its finger at a democratically elected government, they lack reflection. Obviously, one day, the AKP government will be ousted, most probably by a confused coalition. However, the ultimate victims of this ousting may be the Turkish democracy and the reactionary Turkish youth, herded into the streets by opportunist politicians. The last national holiday celebrated the Turkish children but generated little interest. The next national holiday is May 19 and is dedicated to the Turkish youth. Economic data, the unemployment rates, rising food and oil prices, constant news of revolution in the Middle East, and the escalating tone of Turkish politics suggests a perfect atmosphere in which this year's youth may become  next years tool for a collision. If the politicians are to drive them into the streets in ever growing numbers, the Turkish Military may become involved as well. Some politicians think that the military is too busy to do this, but they may be wrong. The Turkish military has its own agenda and is ready to seize the best opportunity to put an end to the Ergenekon trials, which ruined its reputation.

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[1] Readers might like the following essay on this subject. Hakan Yavuz, “Is There a Turkish Islam? The Emergence of Convergence and Consensus” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 2, October 2004.

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Important piece on Saudi Intervention in Bahrain

Cross-posted with "From the Field"

 

Caryle Murphy provides interesting detail on the March 16, 2011, intervention in Bahrain by Saudi Arabia.  There are a variety of notable elements in the piece:

• King Abdullah and company have been riled by the U.S. embrace of reform in Egypt and in Bahrain. 
• They signalled this in several ways, including refusing to receive Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates.
• Hardliners in Bahrain have been intent to sabotage active reform efforts by the Bahraini crown prince, and the hardliners have willing collaborators in Saudi Arabia.
• Once "requested",  the Saudis were glad to lead the charge into Bahrain and launch a wave of repression and thuggery against the majority population in Bahrain.
• Reading between the lines, there is good reason to question how much freedom of action the Bahraini leaders truly enjoy.  The Saudi godfather is not easily ignored, especially given the financial dependence of Bahrain on the KSA.
• Notable for it absence from Murphy's account is any mention of a significant role by Iran, which has the poppycock peddled by King Hamad in recent weeks.

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The Reverse Orientalism of the Turkish Left

by Murat Cem Mengüç

During a recent workshop entitled “Violence in Ottoman Anatolia” at New York University, Christine Philliou summed up the emergence of the Turkish Republic and its leading architect Mustafa Kemal Atatürk with an allusion to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. She rightfully suggested that Atatürk resembled Hobbes’ Leviathan, who was in search of bringing order to a chaotic environment. The richness of this allusion is obvious to all of us who are familiar with the history of late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. Hobbes’ prominence in European Enlightenment literature and his usefulness for the intellectual construction of Western imperialism make it an even more captivating metaphor.

As we all know, Hobbes’ description of the human political realm as a chaotic environment sprang from not just his belief that human beings were evil by nature, but also from the fact that he was writing during the English Civil War (1642-1651). Similar ideas and similar epochs of history furnished many other intellectuals to cut clean slates for their favorite authoritarian rulers. But, in the Turkish case, depicting the early Turkish Republican regime and particularly Atatürk as legitimate leviathans of their people also helps generate, what I will call for the lack of a better term, a reverse orientalism. This reverse orientalism, especially, helps official Turkish historiography to depict Atatürk and his people as the subjects of a chaotic environment, which resulted from the evil nature of other people and argues that they were rightfully fighting to create a zone of order, stability and self-expression. Most primary and secondary schoolbooks in Turkey to date narrate the Turkish Independence War (1919-1923) accordingly.

The most convenient aspect of this reverse Orientalist narrative is the fact that it transforms the Ottoman Turks into subjects of Western imperialism, making them a part of the so-called Third World, which lost its sovereignty and had to fight for its freedom from the yoke of Western Imperialism. In doing so, the Ottoman Turkish genocide of the Armenians, as well as the prosecution of other civilian masses like Kurds, Greeks and Arabs, become either fabrications of Western imperialism, or isolated episodes of an Hobbsian chaos that was about to swallow the Turkish nation.

On another level, the same reverse orientalism also allows the Turkish intellectuals to comfortably navigate diverse ideologies. In fact, some of the expressions encountered in the Turkish media regarding the recent Middle Eastern revolutions suggest that the old camps of the Turkish progressive left and the Turkish republican left can be easily altered in the radius of this reverse orientalism. For example, a leading columnists of the progressive left, Ahmet Altan, from whom we would expect a more careful language and a deeper sympathy towards the developments in the Middle East, openly writes that “Turkey is not like the other countries in the Middle Eastern garbage heap.”[1] This statement indicates that the status of Turkey is somewhat different than its underdeveloped neighbors who continue to live in political slums. Similarly, a leading columnist of the republican left, Banu Avar, argues that the recent NATO supervised war on Gaddafi is nothing less than a European imperialist project designed to subjugate the innocent Muslim masses.[2] Avar is outrageous enough to quote the Lybian state television as a viable source for her claims and show that her heart beats for the Muslim masses of the world, as long as they do not run for the government in her country. It seems that Hobbsian expressions of chaos not only speak about the absence of clear ideas and ideologies, but also may lack clear ideas and ideologies in themselves. Ignoring the legacy of the Ottoman Turkish imperialism in the Middle East, Turkish opinion makers of the progressive and republican left carve special statuses for themselves, whether hiding behind fake statuses of oppressed masses or distancing themselves from these masses by thinking that they have achieved something better already.

Interestingly enough, the Turkish Islamist political camp, the camp that is most deeply dedicated to the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, does not suffer from such an identity crisis. Not only that it openly supports the NATO actions against Gaddafi, but also it keeps winning elections.

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[1] http://www.taraf.com.tr/ahmet-altan/makale-misir-baskanlik-cinayet.htm

[2] http://www.ilk-kursun.com/2011/03/banu-avar-yazdi-bugun-libya-yarin-kim/

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JAPAN QUAKE SHAKES TV

by Philip J Cunningham




When the biggest earthquake in memory hit Japan at 2:46 PM on the afternoon of March 11, 2011, it took less than ten minutes for the bright, cluttered screens of Tokyo top six stations to be drained of color, commercialism and fun. With a disaster unfolding, TV stations were under intense pressure to change the tone of their broadcasts and offer news and safety advice.

To review broadcasts from that afternoon, is to be transported back to a turning point in which everything suddenly changed. The state of TV, as it existed at that precarious moment, good, bad and banal as it might have been, is now a broadcast relic, the last gasp of normalcy before the earth shook Japan to its core, the sea swept the Northeast with tsunamis and a nuclear crisis broke the easy access to electric power that has been a hallmark of modernity in Japan for decades.

For an illustration about how the 3.11 quake is changing life in Tokyo, with particularly focus on the airwaves and the energy-guzzling lifestyle promoted on TV, please view my latest piece at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Philip_J_-Cunningham/3506 Read more on this article...

WORDS ON THE JAPAN DISASTER FRONT

by Philip J Cunningham

The world of information made possible by Twitter technology is vast and fascinating, but what really rises above the Twittering noise, random comments and repetitive multiple posts of second, third and fourth hand material is the work of an intrepid individual, sharing, in short installments, an eye-witness view of an evolving situation. It is a take on the news as old as the news itself, first person testimony, offering a degree of coherence and individual fidelity that stands head and shoulders above the random, aggregate posts of a busy Twitter feed.

In a matter of just a few days, one of the most privileged, affluent societies in Asia has been hit and laid prone with multiple disasters, and though the worst may be over, it's far from over yet. Japan, indeed the world as a whole, will feel the influence of the deadly March 11 earthquake, tsunami, related aftershocks, eruptions and subsequent damage to nuclear power plants and more generally the economy for years to come.

The following is the tweet record of an American reporter, now an Asia correspondent for VOA, with 18 years experience in Japan as he covers what could be fairly described as the biggest news story of his career

The reporter is Steve Herman and his twitter tag is W7VOA.

Steve Herman and I worked together in the International Division of NHK in 1990-1, sharing a Tokyo office while working as televison producers on Asia Now and China Now respectively.

Even then, long before he became a radio correspondent for CBS and later President of the FCCJ, I thought him the epitome of a newsman, one who was living and breathing news round the clock. A solid reporter with an excellent understanding not just of international news issues but the minutae of how things work in Japan, Steve is a good guide to a big breaking story.

The veteran reporter happened to be out of Japan when the big quake struck but managed to get back in country, despite disruptions at airports and rail lines, within a day. His posts chronicle a journey across Japan as he seeks access and interviews in the three hardest hit areas, Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures.

His intial entries in this informal online diary commence with short notes about news he is reading and re-tweets of posts made by other journalists he is following on Twitter, reacting to news rather than reporting it, and appropriately enough, as it takes him the better part of a day to get on the scene. RT is short for re-tweet and sometimes he posts links to published articles that he likes or makes reference to.

Once he’s on his way to the scene of tsunami damage and dysfunctional nuclear power plants, the second-hand news and reactions to the news are gradually replaced by first-person anecdotes, sensations, interviews and reporting. When the earth starts shaking, he describes it. Then he finds out more about the quake or aftershock, and tweets the best information available to him at the time.

Sometimes it's an earthquake warning with no earthquake, sometimes an earthquake without warning.

The constant tickertape flow of tweets by him and other people on the scene start to be incorporated into news updates which are also tagged, retweeted and made reference to on the Internet, TV and radio.

In short, by looking at a series of thoughtful on the scene tweets, one can get a feel for how information travels, how information is culled and selected and how it is then broadcast and repeated until it becomes the received understanding of an event.

This sort of tweet diary is interesting even when second-hand and third hand information is collated and forwarded, but it really is at its best when it shifts to the first person, and the tweeter on the scene is telling us about things he or she sees, hears, wonders about and analyzes in an original way.

Following his twitter reports in real time is to be transported into the urgency of a breaking story in the company of a cool, seasoned guide who does not flinch in the face of obstacles or bad news. Even with the haiku-like discipline of writing in short bursts, there is narrative arc and a building sense of drama as the reporter moves onto the scene and traverses difficult, sometimes outright dangerous territory.

For all their news value and dramatic impact, tweets are also snippets of personal conversations put to print. In Steve’s case, as he makes a dash from a safe part of Japan to an area at risk, his friends on Twitter urged him not to go, to consider the dangers, to which his response was simple and firm.

“It's my job.”

Here, then, a record of informal tweets from veteran Asia correspondent Steve Herman as he does his job. While investigating a tough, multifaceted breaking story, he took the time to tweet updates about things he saw and heard and gleaned from official sources. His short, abbreviated observations were informative enough that within a few days time he had ten thousand “followers” reading and re-tweeting his posts, including fellow journalists, all the while filing formal, in-depth reports for Voice of America.

The posts here have been copied from his twitter history, and thus are in reverse chronological order. To better sense the drama of an unfolding story in which each subsequent development is unknown, one might browse his posts by scrolling from the bottom up.


Steve Herman
@W7VOA ÜT: 37.373258,140.371634
Voice of America (VOA) Bureau Chief/Correspondent, based in Seoul, mainly covering NE Asia (Korean peninsula & Japan)


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COMING SOON: TO EACH NATION, ITS OWN INTERNET

by Philip J Cunningham


When reveille sounds, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

The US military is now thinking of ways to block and segregate the internet into smaller ‘‘cyber nations’’ which would be easier to monitor and control.

During this era of incessant online babble, blogs, tweets and cacophonous concatenations, the internet has become a virtual Tower of Babel, an ambitious, overloaded unitary structure breaking at the seams. It's only a matter of time before it crumbles.

That, in a nutshell, is the view put forward by a group of US military thinkers in the latest issue of Strategic Studies Quarterly, who see the breaking up and "Balkanisation of the Internet" as natural as it is inevitable, and not without public benefit, assuming that the 'Net reorganises along traditional, nationalistic lines.

Theirs is a clarion call to end the utopian, universal stage of internet development and instead to hunker down and build national bunkers.

The internet has been imbued with a feel-good idealism since its inception, despite it having been a quasi-military invention. It was developed by a generation familiar with John Lennon's utopian lullaby Imagine, dreamily invoking the idea of a world with no countries. And some cyber utopians took a cue from that, driven by the concept that "information wants to be free", a formulation first given voice by Stewart Brand and dramatically acted out more recently by Julian Assange.

But even if information wants to be free, there are the vagaries of human nature that have to be taken into account.

Just as a handful of hijackers can burden millions of jet flyers, in the communication commons the bad behaviour of a few can change the rules of the game; trolls lurk in comment sections, spammers clog up your inbox, data-miners violate your privacy, hackers close your system down.

These problems are being addressed on an ad hoc basis, mostly by the private sector, to make the cooperative, interdependent venture known as the internet safe for commerce and communication.

And then there is the US military, which has bigger fish to fry.

Entrusted with the keys to the world's biggest nuclear arsenal, bound by social contract to guard the nation with vigilance, it should come as no surprise that military thinkers are more worried about information control than information freedom.

The US Cyber Command, which works closely with the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, is tapping technology organisations such as Google, Intel and Microsoft for help with cyber-defence, integrating traditional concepts of military preparedness and defence of the state with new borderless technologies.

If military thinkers tend to be more orthodox in their regard for the sanctity of national borders, it is in part a reflection of the role they assign themselves to play as defenders of the nation.

Where a tech geek might revel in faster computation speeds and an advertiser might obsess over ways to get more clicks, and academics might demand unfettered freedom of expression, it is natural that military thinkers should want to consider the same technology with an eye to violations of sovereignty and security, especially with regard to command and control systems and energy infrastructure.

Inspired by the folk wisdom that good fences make good neighbours, there is a school of thought in the US military that posits a not-so-distant future in which the worldwide web will be divided up along national lines.

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(as published in the Bangkok Post, March 12, 2011) Read more on this article...

Turkish Islam and the Middle Eastern Revolution

At a recent panel discussion, a Palestinian colleague pointed out that when a dictator falls, with him disappears his imagined enemies. The fact that the Egyptian, the Tunisian and now the Lybian revolutions did not have Islamic fundamentalism as their common denominator suggests that most of this so called global Islamic fundamentalism was in fact imaginary. Historically speaking, global Islamic fundamentalism was similar to the phenomenon of the Eastern Question, meaning that it was mainly cultivated in the Western minds and turned into a practice with Western financial aid in order to fend off socialism and communism. When the Cold War ended, the economic and political data still indicated that the cooperation of capitalism and democracy wouldn’t be tenable forever. Western civilization was forced to re-imagine itself in this conjecture, unfortunately with a renewed emphasis on domestic authoritarianism, so as to hush and tame its native critics. At that stage, global Islamic fundamentalism emerged as a newly discovered evil half brother of global capitalism. It became the leading hero of all fear factors and justified domestic authoritarianisms.

Among the critics of the West, Muslim thinkers always had a special status. They challenged the most central tenet of Western civilization, its so-called secularism. Muslim thinkers argued that democracy was not exclusive of religious expressions of morality, and the idea of secularism was an illusion. They were pretty much right on both accounts, since most Western governments maintained capitalistic alliances with the religious institutions of their citizens and allowed room for religiously motivated parties to take part in democratic elections.

The explicit attack these Muslim thinkers waged on Western civilization made them ideal candidates to become the new nemeses of the West. Many of them were educated in the West, developed their theories with a mixture of Western ideas and grew into strong ideological lobbies through the financial help of British, Israeli and US authorities. They did not represent the majority of the Muslim people among whom they organized themselves but readily accepted to be pitted against the socialist and communist fractions of their native communities.

It is in this context interesting to listen to the ongoing argument in the Western media, that there is something called Turkish Islam, and it is a valid alternative to global Islamic fundamentalism. ‘What is Turkish Islam?’ one wants to know. When did it become an antidote to other Islams? And, at a time when a number of revolutions proved that global Islamic fundamentalism is not the common denominator of popular discontent in Muslim societies, who needs an Islamic antidote?

To begin with, the argument that a Saudi Arabian, Egyptian or Tunisian community should practice Turkish Islam is akin to suggest that these people do not need their customs and reason. In my classes, to explain the process of Islamic jurisprudence and its Ottoman/Turkish variants, I often refer to Abu Hanifa, an 8^th century orthodox Muslim jurist from Iraq. It is reported that Abu Hanifa refused to eat things that Qur’an and the Hadith didn’t approve. Given that he was a truly orthodox judge, and text oriented, it is reported that he never relied on local tradition or speculative precedents either. Thus, it seems, he never consumed a watermelon in his life, which must have been a remarkable feat in a place like Iraq. Abu Hanifa’s teaching also argued against the consumption of shellfish, based on very similar grounds. Today, the majority of the Turkish Muslims describe themselves as Hanafi, the Sunni sect founded upon the teachings of Abu Hanifa. However, they regularly enjoy watermelon, and a deep fried clam sandwich made with fresh bread and tartar sauce is one of their most popular late night snacks. This raises no controversy among the Turkish Muslims because the practice of sharia allows room for local customs and speculative reason to be practiced as well. For obvious reasons, it would be ridiculous to ban shellfish in a country surrounded by Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Similarly, watermelon, which arrived to Egypt in second millennium BC and soon afterwards made itself to Anatolia, is traditional delight in Turkey.

Meanwhile, what is called Turkish Islam in the Western media is nothing more than a metropolitan conservative middle and lower class religiosity. It is not a theological school but a pseudo-ideological stand, cultivated in reaction to the Turkish state nationalism. Although most nationalist movements embrace the religious sensitivities of the masses they desire to represent, Turkish nationalism was of a different kind. For example, to my knowledge, Arab nationalism, in all its forms, was more willing to recognize its mainly Muslim profile. Turkish nationalism, on the other hand, emerged in confrontation with the Ottoman Empire’s Muslim religious imperialist image, which the sultan/caliph used fervently. In its various forms, Turkish nationalism always argued that it was a modern and secular nationalism. This was particularly so for its state sponsored variant, which used the separation of religion and state as the central tenet of its ideology.

This so called Turkish Islam is a conservative religiosity, postulated as a viable ethical alternative to conservative nationalism. It is a substitute for nationalism, and it appeals to the Turkish speaking middle classes who are tired of state nationalism. These middle classes are not theologically superior moderate citizens; they are religious conservative consumers who follow the Western economic recipes for capitalist prosperity and happen to be Muslims. Thus, anyone who is familiar with the history of Islam should know that all Muslim societies have their own version of this so-called Turkish Islam. What they do lack is the pro-capitalist democracies in which their moderate religiosity could imagine itself as a voting block.

At a time when we are witnessing a chain of revolutions, arguing that Turks have invented an ideal Islamic model highlights the fact that the West is still looking for an Islam of its own version rather than observing the existing trends. Those who argue that a moderate Islamic conservatism is an antidote against fundamentalist Islam, and want to export it to the Muslim people should take a look at the European outlet stores in the Middle East or observe the duty free liquor stores of their home town international airports. Most Muslims already live their lives according to their customs and speculative reason. Orthodox men like Abu Hanifa remain the kings of their own dinner table. Most importantly, revolutions do take place for moderate reasons Read more on this article...

No longer thwarted: Egypt's Hizb al-Wasat finally gains legal status

Cross-posted with:
From the field: No longer thwarted: Egypt's Hizb al-Wasat finally gains legal status
Links for AR Norton's study of Hizb al-Wasat are on From the Field.

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The Egyptian people have toppled Mubarak, an extraordinary moment, but the regime has not been toppled, not yet.

The military has taken power, but in reality the military has--even since the 1952 coup-- held the balance of power in Cairo.

The Egyptian military has always lurked in the shadows of the Egyptian regime. The levers of influence were seldom exposed to view.  Yet, when senior civilian politicos, such as Osama al-Baz, reflected on the regime and its prospects for reform, they often pointed to the powerful role of the generals and vetoes they held in their back pockets.  For years, as expectations grew that Husni Mubarak's son Gamal would succeed his father, it was the military veto that thwarted him. 

Now the power of the generals is in the sunlight.  There are some reasons to be optimistic: the army generally showed commendable discipline in its response to the last three weeks of demonstrations, and the demonstrators--whether intuitively or shrewdly--embraced the soldiers; the officer corps is highly professional, promotions are based on merit not connections, and no officer or soldier wishes to be seen as an oppressor of the nation that it is pledged to defend; a skilled group of opposition figures is poised to negotiate a transition, and the Ikhwan have wisely forged consensus with the non-Islamist elements while also remaining in the background; and, the actions and misactions of the military will be in full international view.

Nonetheless, the senior officers have a big stake in the existing system, not least economic interests.  In retirement, many senior officers move to industries dominated by the military, and others move into the thriving private sector.  But many others infiltrate the civilian branches of government.  They will want to protect their prerogatives.  The military leadership will prove cautious about dramatic changes, and they will be nervous about permitting a powerful civilian government to challenge their privileges, or hold officers accountable for their misdeeds. The deep suspicion of the Ikhwan will not be erased, so the generals will want to be assured that the Ikhwan (still an illegal entity) will gain no more than a marginal role in politics. 

When Presidential elections are held, you can be sure that the military will have satisfied itself that its interests will not be jeopardized.  It is too early to determine who all the contenders for the Presidency will be, but it is now clear that Amre Mossa, is a front runner.  He is widely respected, and, indeed, is a man of integrity.  He was the popular Foreign Minister of Egypt, so popular that Mubarak that "promoted" him to become Secretary General of the Arab League in order to keep him well distant from Egyptian politics.  But a lot may happen in a year of transition, and many secrets will be exposed, so keep your bets in your pocket for now.

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EMBRACING THE OPPOSITION

BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

A powerful regime, facing a rare moment of vulnerability, is all of a sudden interested in reform and willing to talk. It invites its arch-enemies to the negotiating table. But once the crowds are gone, what guarantee remains that the police state will not regroup and retrench and strike back with a vengeance?

Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman met with members of the opposition over the weekend. What remains unclear is if the Mubarak regime is sincerely extending an open hand of peace to the opposition, or trying to draw them in close enough so they can be slapped or lured into a trap. Is the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood a heartfelt bid to hear all sides or a plan to sow division in a protest that to date has been notable for being leaderless, secular, spontaneous and youthful?

Given the low esteem with which the Muslim Brotherhood is viewed in Israel, Europe and the US, extending an olive branch to the banned, radical opposition might seem paradoxical at first. But it is sometimes easier for entrenched power to deal with its arch-enemy, the enemy that it knows, and not only knows, but probably needs, as an existential doppelganger. On a certain functional level it may be easier for a ruthless power to deal with, if not respect, another ruthless, tightly organized entity, rather than deal with a random mass of peaceful moderates without a hierarchical political organization.

Certainly in other places, at other times, this paradoxical embrace of the opposite can be seen in effect. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US found it easier to work with Japan’s old wartime elite than the communists, pacifists and trade unionists who opposed Tokyo’s war on Asia. In recent decades, Beijing’s rulers have found it easier to engage the Communist Party of China’s arch-enemy represented by the KMT party on Taiwan, rather than deal respectfully with rag-tag individuals such as Liu Xiaobo, and many thousands of others, who demonstrated at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thus, what appears at first glance a gesture of inclusion on the part of the Egyptian regime might in fact be a bid to exclude the moderate core demonstrators and keep the focus on mutually antagonistic extremes instead.


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EVERY UPRISING IS DIFFERENT

Philip J Cunningham


Every uprising is different. But given shared human strengths and weaknesses, the dynamics of crowd behavior, crowd control, and crowd chaos play out in ways that strike a common chord. Having written about popular protest, cultural clashes and street marches in East Asia for two decades now, there are certain commonalities that come to fore as the events in Cairo, as reported by Al Jazeera and other Internet sources, unfold in real time on my computer screen.

-Truth is an early casualty of any conflict, and the media comes under pressure almost immediately. Competing media narratives diverge wildly, usually the storytelling of the government pitted against the storytelling of the protesters. Distortions to the truth range from outright lies and censorship, to mudslinging, misdirection and deliberate prevarications. There is obfuscation and startling clarity. There are also moments of heartfelt expression, courageous calls for change and sometimes shocking clandestine reports from the frontlines of the conflict.

-Television stations are a coveted resource for those seeking political control. State television, even when it is reduced to producing propaganda, is such an effective transmitter of information, (including mis-information, mis-direction, taboos and telling silences) in regards to an escalating crisis that it can inadvertently help fan the flames of nationwide protest. Even when the details of a mass incident in progress are garbled or distorted by heavy-handed censorship, the fingerprints of the heavy-handedness are visible for all to see. The odd, Orwellian quality of manipulated news, what with its revved up nationalistic fervor, glaring contradictions, threatening reassurances and a rather too loud pleading of innocence, is politically charged enough to betray meta-truths about the abject nature of the regime.

-Reporters and citizen Journalists are at risk. Be it for their truth-telling capacity or simply a vengeful way of blaming the messenger, journalists often get roughed up as public disturbances unfold. Journalists are detained and denied access to key locations, often in the name of safety. Western journalists are especially easy to find as they tend to hole up in luxury hotels where they are subject to surveillance, harassment, and confiscation of film, memory chips, cameras, etc.

-Al Jazeera TV. The upstart TV station based in Qatar has come of age, although it observes, like every news service on the earth, certain ground rules and avoids certain sensitive topics. Its unique take on world news is largely ignored by US cable TV providers, but luckily Al Jazeera Internet streaming can reach a truly global audience, providing a service to viewers whose television and cable service is tilted in favor of the national agendas of the traditional media giants such as CNN, BBC, Fox and ABC. In what might be understood as a backhanded compliment, Al Jazeera has been accused of meddling by the Egyptian government.

-The Internet. Online news services, specialist blogs, Twitter and social networking tools have helped get the story out as well. Advanced information technologies, and the costly, complex devices required to view the news on, are convenient when they work well, and they work especially well across borders at global distances, but remain largely out of the reach of the poor and can be rendered momentarily worthless when the plug gets pulled, as was the case in Egypt when the Internet was turned off. The technology itself is neutral, and there are various ingenious ways to get around blocking, but despite the freedom of expression hype, modern tools are no different from the printing press or radio in the sense that they can be used to further things good and bad and can be used to promote the cause of either side through skillful public relations and information control.

-Word of mouth. Fortunately, the information ecosystem is full of diverse platforms and incidental redundancies; if one technology fails, or is blocked, other ways of transmitting information remain. This includes everything from hardy, traditional technologies such as landline telephones and fax machines to hand-painted banners, chants, slogans and word of mouth.

-Rumors. Rightly or wrongly, rumors take the place of reliable information when reliable information is hard to come by. Rumors serve to excite people to action. The more severe information control at home, the more likely agitated citizens are to turn to the latest gossip on the street.

-Crowd dynamics. When a large crowd manages to gather and assemble, especially in an environment where political gatherings are generally banned and ruthlessly suppressed, success breeds success. If ten, a hundred, a thousand brave individuals get away with the impossible, it inspires others to follow.

-Something in the air. When a large crowd asserts itself in public space and coalesces on symbolic ground, a window is opened to possible political change, an opportunity not normally evident. An indefinable “something in the air,” combined with concrete opportunities for assembly, adequate channels for expression and a broad consensus that change is desirable if not necessary, helps kick-start a major public uprising. When this takes the form of staking out contested ground in the heart of the capital its significance is magnified in a way that enables a crowd to grow exponentially. Under the natural evolution of such circumstances, the crowd is likely to be diverse and composed of people from all walks of life.

-Safety in numbers. When the numbers soar to the hundred of thousands, not only do individual members of the crowd begin to feel uncannily safe –however illusory that protective aura might be – but it gives rise to a sense that a historic turning point is at hand. Suddenly, due to a confluence of rising frustration, mutual reinforcement, strength in numbers and chance developments, there’s a perception that an unprecedented and largely unexpected overhaul to the status quo just might be possible. It’s a bid to hit society’s reset button.

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