John F. Kennedy’s Thanksgiving Ideals, 1962– How different they are from Ours

Posted on 11/28/2013 by Juan Cole

The fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has brought forth a flood of books and documentaries.

On this Thanksgiving, what strikes me is the ideals JFK put forward in his Thanksgiving proclamations, and how different they are from today’s discourse in Washington, D.C.

Kennedy wrote in November of 1962 that

“It is fitting that we give our thanks for the safety of our land, for the fertility of our harvests, for the strength of our liberties, for the health of our people. We do so in no spirit of self-righteousness.”

Kennedy talks of giving thanks for the “health of our people.” The people’s health was of concern to him. Today, we have a vast disinformation campaign against the Affordable Health Care Act, a campaign aimed at ensuring that 40 million Americans remain without health insurance, at danger at any time of losing everything. Our liberties were enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which since 1962 has been more or less gutted. They are no longer strong. The Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches of our private papers and effects has been gutted by an out-of-control National Security Agency. Our freedom of speech is threatened by surveillance and dirty tricks, which has already induced self-censorship in many American authors. As for self-righteousness, it pervades the atmosphere on Capitol Hill.

Kennedy said,

“Let us renew that spirit by sharing the abundance of this day with those less fortunate, in our own land and abroad. Let us renew that spirit by seeking always to establish larger communities of brotherhood.”

There is nothing in Kennedy of the hatred of the foreigner or the punitive attitude toward the poor so prominent in the discourse of today. JFK wanted to see America’s bounty shared with the disprivileged not only in the United States but abroad. Nowadays, the Congress is obsessed with punishing the working poor and reducing government assistance for them, including food stamps. Mitt Romney revealed their thinking when he referred to the 47%, the portion of the population he said depends on government help. But that 47% includes Veterans, who deserve all the help they can get. It includes retirees, who paid into Social Security all their lives and are not getting a handout but their due.

We haven’t cared about the fate of the working poor, who make as little as $9000 a year despite all their labor, and who are food insecure. They need a raise in the minimum wage. That is how we would share the abundance. All the solid economic studies show that raising the minimum wage increases employment, since it draws people into the work force.

As for the poor abroad, what an outlandish idea JFK put forward. The US is outspent per capita on foreign aid by Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and even by Japan, Britain and Belgium. An urban myth circulates among the American public that foreign aid is a big item in the budget. It is not. We are not pulling our weight per capita in dealing with poverty.

“Let us renew that spirit by preparing our souls for the incertitude’s ahead–by being always ready to confront crisis with steadfastness and achievement with grace and modesty.”

We haven’t confronted the uncertainties we now face with “grace and modesty.” We have not risen to the challenge of climate change; rather, we have allowed the debate to be dominated by the multi-billionaires and their sock puppets. We haven’t confronted the crisis in health care with grace and modesty but rather with misrepresentations and false flags. We didn’t deal well with the 9/11 attacks, going off in our anger to strike an unrelated country, Iraq. The US public was manipulated into blaming Muslims in general, whereas it was the work of a tiny, extremist fringe.

JFK concluded with a hope that Thanksgiving might go global as a holiday:

Let us renew that spirit by concerting our energy and our hope with men and women everywhere that the world may move more rapidly toward the time when Thanksgiving may be a day of universal celebration.

Let us renew that spirit by expressing our acceptance of the limitations of human striving and by affirming our duty to strive nonetheless, as Providence may direct us, toward a better world for all mankind.

A better world for all mankind will require that we deal straightforwardly and expeditiously with climate change. It will require that we address hunger and vast inequality.

Kennedy thought that precisely because so many of us have so much to be thankful for, we should be compassionate toward and help the working poor. At the least, we should make sure that they aren’t bankrupted by an illness just because they don’t have insurance.

We can’t hope for a universal Thanksgiving Day until we honor the aspirations and values put forward by President Kennedy.

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NSA monitored visits of “Radicalizers” to Chat Rooms, Skin Sites to Discredit Them

Posted on 11/27/2013 by Juan Cole

Six persons living abroad, one of them a “US person,” were targeted by the National Security Agency for discrediting, according to information leaked by Edward Snowden and reported on by Glenn Greenwald and two colleagues at HuffPo.

The NSA branded the six Muslims “radicalizers” even though it did not tie them to terrorist activity. Their crimes were apparently thought crimes. Their conversations at dating sites and visits to explicit web sites were seen by the NSA as hypocritical and of potential use in discrediting them with their puritanical followers.

That one of the six is a US citizen or resident is especially troubling.

The problem with the NSA scooping up the web history of millions of people indiscriminately is that it becomes judge, jury and executioner. It decides what is radical, and punishes persons who have been charged with no crime. It punishes them by smearing their reputations based on warrantless monitoring of their activities online.

What happens if a member of Greenpeace (viewed by many in the US government as a conspiratorial organization willing to break the law) goes to London for a couple of weeks? While abroad, can that activist be intensively monitored, their emails read, their web history recorded and stored? What about Occupy Wall Street members? Who are the “radicalizers” in the eyes of the government and are they only Muslims? Was a warrant obtained to monitor a “US person”?

Allowing any arm of the government this kind of unchecked power to stifle dissent is a big step toward tyranny. Indeed, with massive surveillance, the government could make itself an unchallengeable tyrant.

This spying on free persons not charged with a crime as they pursued private activities–and this interest in destroying the reputations of people whose views the USG despises is deeply troubling. If the six persons targeted were dangerous, that would be one thing. Apparently, they weren’t violent, only vehement.

It is only a matter of time before the dissent of Americans on American soil is curbed in a major way, if these NSA procedures are allowed to stand.

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Pope Francis: Why are Deaths of the Homeless not a Headline but a 2-point Dow Jones rise is? (Germanos)

Posted on 11/27/2013 by Juan Cole

Andrea Germanos writes at Commondreams.org

Pope Francis has issued a new document in which he rails against growing inequality, trickle-down economics and the current socioeconomic system that "is unjust at its root."

Issued on Tuesday, his 224-page document, called an apostolic exhortation, is titled The Joy of the Gospel, and follows previous remarks the pontiff has made against inequality.

From the document:

Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

Further, the Pope writes, "the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root," and thus spawns violence.

"Until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples is reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence," he wrote.

Security is impossible in a state with rampant inequality, and cannot be provided through the surveillance state or militarism, he continued:

When a society – whether local, national or global – is willing to leave a part of itself on the fringes, no political programmes or resources spent on law enforcement or surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility. This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root.

Inequality eventually engenders a violence which recourse to arms cannot and never will be able to resolve. This serves only to offer false hopes to those clamouring for heightened security, even though nowadays we know that weapons and violence, rather than providing solutions, create new and more serious conflicts.

As for adherents to so-called trickle-down economics and austerity policies, he says:

… some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.

While some have welcomed Pope Francis' comments against inequality and war, he has been the target of criticism as well, including accusations of ties to Argentina's rightwing junta during the country's military dictatorship.

____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

——–

Mirrored from Commondreams.org

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Brubeck Jazz Classic “Take Five” in Pakistan Style (Video)

Posted on 11/27/2013 by Juan Cole

Dave Brubeck called the cover of his band’s classic “Take Five” (Paul Desmond) by the Pakistani musical group Sachal the “most original” he had ever heard.

See why in this video:

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The Middle East warmly welcomes Iran Deal, sees it as Step toward Denuclearizing Israel

Posted on 11/26/2013 by Juan Cole

Israel and Saudi Arabia have loomed large in reporting about the regional reaction to the UN Security Council plus Germany’s preliminary deal with Iran as they negotiate an end to the international boycott of Iran in return for practical steps permanently forestalling an Iranian nuclear weapon. Israel is a small country of 7.5 million with a GDP around the same as Portugal’s, and it isn’t actually all that important in the Middle East, which contains 600 million people if you include North Africa– and with which the US does $400 billion a year in trade.

But despite the fear-mongering and hysteria of Israeli politicians [see below], the general reaction in the region has been much more positive than the Likud government would have us believe. Moreover, far from there being an Israel-Arab consensus against the agreement, much of the Arab world welcomed the Iran deal and saw it as a first step toward getting nuclear weapons out of the Middle East altogether. That is, they are hoping that once Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is restructured as permanently peaceful, the United Nations Security Council will turn up pressure on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons.

Turkey, a NATO ally of the US that has some disputes with Iran (notably over Syria) nevertheless warmly greeted the announcement. Turkey has a population of 76 million, as does Iran, i.e., both are just a little less populous than Germany.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Twitter on Sunday,

“I welcome today’s agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. I have been advocating a solution through diplomacy and we hosted many diplomatic efforts in Turkey to this end . . . This is a major step forward. I hope it’ll be sealed with a final agreement soon. I congratulate all parties for their constructive engagement.”

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has a doctrine of seeking good relations with neighbors in order to expand trade. After AK came to power in 2002, Turkey’s foreign trade expanded a great deal ( it was $239 billion in 2012) and trade with the Middle East expanded from almost nothing under the nationalist, secularist generals to 22%. (Turkey’s GDP is $788 billion in nominal terms, more than that of the Netherlands and just behind Indonesia, making it the 17th largest economy in the world, lagging behind not only Indonesia but Mexico and South Korea).

The new commerce of the past decade is worth billions to Ankara and comes as cream on top of expanded trade with Europe and Asia. By 2011, Turkey’s trade with Iran had gone from almost nothing to $16 bn. Some 2500 Iranian companies have invested in Turkey. But in 2013 the value of the trade has fallen from the previous year, largely because of international sanctions that make it difficult for Iran to develop its oil and gas production and difficult for Turkish banks to interface with Iranian ones. Turkish officials view the level of trade with Iran as far below what could be achieved, and as currently almost insignificant. They would like to expand the trade to $100 billion, and had aimed for $30 billion by 2015.

International sanctions were therefore extremely inconvenient for Turkey’s policy of trade expansion in the region. Moreover, Turkey depends on inexpensive natural gas from Iran for some of its own electricity production. Compared to the Turkish-Iranian tiff over Syria, the possible cooperation in energy and trade expansion is much more important to Ankara. Likewise, the AKP supports the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, and has that in common with Iran. Turkey is champing at the bit to trade unhindered with Iran and to invest in it, as well as to welcome further Iranian investment in Turkey. The Kerry-Zarif deal could not be more welcome in Ankara.

Iraq, with a population of over 30 million and a GDP of $212 bn., also enthusiastically greeted the news. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said,

“Reaching an agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the six nations over Iran’s nuclear program is a major step in the security and stability of the region… We hope that the process of confidence-building and dialogue will continue in the interest of both sides to prevent nuclear proliferation and to recognize the right of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

Iran and Iraq were probably at one point in a nuclear arms race with one another (and with Israel, which started it), so it is remarkable that Baghdad defends Iran’s right to enrich uranium for peaceful energy purposes. Al-Maliki has poor relations with the Sunni Gulf oil monarchies and so is isolated. He depends on Iran for trade and electricity and for support in his war of attrition with Sunni extremists who keep blowing up his capital.

Iraq hasn’t paid any attention to the international sanctions on Iran because it needs Iran too much, and indeed it may have been extending aid to Iran to help it in its economic difficulties. The Maliki government has been caught between its American ally and its Iranian one, and been subject to pressure from each side. Kurdish Member of Parliament Mahmoud Osman made this point, saying that if relations between Washington and Tehran improved, it would reduce pressures on Iraq. Osman said that Iraq would benefit economically, because it would not have to extend aid to Iran to help it get through the harsh sanctions. This is the first time I’ve seen the allegation that Iraq is helping Iran with aid (it used to be the other way around). I would be very surprised if Iraq is not helping Iran smuggle petroleum out in contravention of American sanctions.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Adnan Mansour, welcomed the agreement as “positive.” In particular, he tied it to Iran’s agreement never to produce a bomb, and saw it as a step toward the de-nuclearization of the Middle East. That is, Lebanon is hoping that after the Iran nuclear problem is dealt with, the world community will next turn to the Israeli nuclear problem, which Mansour says threatens his country.

Egypt, a country of 84 million with a GDP of $254 bn, took much the same tack as Lebanon. A spokesman for interim Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy “welcomed” the agreement and also saw it as a move toward the de-nuclearization of the Middle East.

The spokesman for the Jordanian government, Muhammad al-Mumini , said that the agreement was “a step in the right direction.” He went on to express his hope that the international community would go on to take equal interest in resolving the other security problems in the region. (He meant the Syrian civil war, which is putting an enormous burden on Jordan, and the problem of Palestinian statelessness, which concerns the 60% of Jordan’s population that consists of families ethnically cleansed by the Israelis from their original homes). Jordan’s King Abdullah II had long warned that a war with Iran would be a catastrophe for the whole Middle East, but a few years ago in the Bush era he was not always on the same page with his American and Saudi allies.

The Gulf Cooperation Council of oil monarchies was not as negative as the US media keeps reporting. The cabinet of the United Arab Emirates praised the agreement and said it hoped it would lead to regional stability and an end to nuclear proliferation. Likewise, Qatar and Bahrain welcomed the development, and like Lebanon and Egypt said they hoped it would lead to a nuclear free zone in the Middle East. We know Oman approves because it hosted the preparatory meetings between the US and Iran. Kuwait (a country of 3.2 million with a GDP of $173 bn) seems to dislike the agreement, since it appears to be silent on it.

As for Saudi Arabia, which some pundits allege is so upset by the negotiations that it is ready to throw in with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, well, not so much. The Saudi Minister of Culture, Dr. Abdul Aziz bin Muhyi’d-Din Khoja, said that the preparatory agreement could lead to a resolution of the Iran nuclear problem, assuming that that country acts in good faith. He was also glad that the agreement recognized the right of countries in the region to benefit from nuclear power. (Saudi Arabia wants nuclear reactors, something Iran already has at Bushehr, but Israel had bombed Iraq when it built a light water nuclear reactor, so Riyadh seems to see the UNSC undertakings as removing any Israeli veto against peaceful reactors in the region). Like Egypt and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia also saw the understanding as a first step toward also removing Israeli nukes from the Middle East.

Algeria, a country with a population of 38 million and a GDP of $209 bn, warmly welcomed the deal.

There was no question that Syria would be happy about the breakthrough, and Damascus said it showed that the region’s problems can be resolved through negotiation.

So actually, folks, the Likud government of Netanyahu is completely isolated in its loud rejection of these negotiations. Virtually everyone else in the Middle East is positive, and most of the countries that count (by size and power) are absolutely enthusiastic. The degree of Israeli isolation is matched only by the extremeness of its rhetoric. One Israeli cabinet member who has read too much Tom Clancy warned of “suitcase bombs” provided by Iran to terrorist for use in Western cities. Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon and there aren’t any such things as suitcase bombs and no country has ever given away a nuclear weapon to anyone, let alone to a scruffy terrorist. And, again, Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon or any particular prospect of one. Israel in contrast has several hundred warheads and the means to deliver them, bombs that it developed sneakily and under false pretenses. And Israel routinely uses its nuclear stockpile to threaten or blackmail other countries (as with Ariel Sharon’s threats directed at Saddam Hussein’s Iraq).

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Does the Road to Mideast Peace Run through Tehran?

Posted on 11/25/2013 by Juan Cole

The diplomatic breakthrough at Geneva is still only a down payment on a much bigger deal, and it is early to begin speaking of realignments in the Middle East on this basis. Hard liners on both sides could still derail the negotiations.

But it is not too soon to begin considering what the Middle East would look like if relations between Iran and the West (the United States and Europe) were to improve.

1. China: One immediate diplomatic benefit to the United States is that a source of friction will be removed with China. China has good relations with Iran and buys its petroleum. The US Congress arranged legislation that threatened China with third party, Department of the Treasury sanctions for buying Iranian petroleum. Not having to follow through on so foolish a threat against a country with which the US runs a huge trade deficit and to which the US owes $1 trillion will be a real relief among the adults in Washington.

2. Afghanistan: Most importantly, it seems to me, a friendlier US-Iran relationship could contribute to a soft landing in Afghanistan. As the US withdraws all but a few thousand troops from that country and confines the remaining ones to a role as trainers and advisers to the Afghanistan National Army, the specter arises that Pashtun Sunni extremists (the Taliban, Hizb-i Islami, the Haqqani group and others) could launch an all-out attempt to topple the government in Kabul.

Iran has strong ties to the Tajiks (Persian-speaking Sunnis) and to the Hazaras (Persian-speaking Shiites), and good relations with the Uzbeks of the north (who tend not to be adherents of political Islam). That is, Iran supports ethnic groups that are disproportionately present in the Afghanistan National Army and who despise Talibanism (which is mainly a Pashtun phenomenon, though a majority of Pashtuns also despise it). Iran’s support for the elected government in Kabul will be important to its survival, especially since far right wing elements in Pakistan and the Gulf may back the Taliban increasingly openly as the US contingent shrinks.

Ironically, then, the small American military force in Afghanistan after 2014 may have reason to be grateful to Iran as an ally of convenience. It may even become desirable in Washington that Iran’s oil income be sufficient to allow it to support the anti-Taliban forces.

3. Syria and Israel-Palestine: Iran has backed the Baathist government in Damascus to the hilt, despite Tehran’s uneasiness both with the scale of the bloodshed and their client’s willingness to use poison gas (from which Iranian troops and officers suffered during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988). As it comes in from the diplomatic cold, might Tehran be willing to play a more positive role, pressuring the Syrian regime to stop massacring its population? Likewise, what would happen if US-Iranian relations improved over the years and a center-left government came to power in Israel eager for a deal with its neighbors? What would happen if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, a hardliner, died and was replaced by someone like Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani or Hasan Rouhani? Might Iran be persuaded to pressure clients like Hizbullah not to obstruct the deal? It is highly unlikely but not impossible. Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states offered Israel a wide-ranging peace proposal in 2002.

Even just the assured (removal of an irritant with China) and the likely (Iranian help in Afghanistan) consequences of a Western deal with Iran would make the effort worthwhile, not to mention the benefit of backing away from a war footing.

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Today’s America is the Real Hunger Games: Why aren’t we Terrified? (Engelhardt)

Posted on 11/25/2013 by Juan Cole

Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com:

. . . gazillions of movie viewers have seen … films with the usual array of sharks, dinosaurs, anacondas, axe murderers, mutants, zombies, vampires, aliens, or serial killers, and done so with remarkable pleasure.  They didn’t bolt.  They didn’t imagine having heart attacks on the spot.  They didn’t find it unbearable.  In some way, they liked it, ensuring that such films remain pots of gold for Hollywood to this day.  Which means that they — you — are an alien race to me.

The Sharks, Aliens, and Snakes of Our World

This came to mind recently because I started wondering why, when we step out of those movie theaters, our American world doesn’t scare us more.  Why doesn’t it make more of us want to jump out of our skins?  These days, our screen lives seem an apocalyptic tinge to them, with all those zombie war movies and the like.  I’m curious, though: Does what should be deeply disturbing, even apocalyptically terrifying, in the present moment strike many of us as the equivalent of so many movie-made terrors — shivers and fears produced in a world so far beyond us that we can do nothing about them?

I’m not talking, of course, about the things that reach directly for your throat and, in their immediacy, scare the hell out of you — not the sharks who took millions of homes in the foreclosure crisis or the aliens who ate so many jobs in recent years or even the snakes who snatched food stamps from needy Americans.  It’s the overarching dystopian picture I’m wondering about.  The question is: Are most Americans still in that movie house just waiting for the lights to come back on?

I mean, we’re living in a country that my parents would barely recognize.  It has a frozen, riven, shutdown-driven Congress, professionally gerrymandered into incumbency, endlessly lobbied, and seemingly incapable of actually governing.  It has a leader whose presidency appears to be imploding before our eyes and whose single accomplishment (according to most pundits), like the website that goes with it, has been unraveling as we watch.  Its 1% elections, with their multi-billion dollar campaign seasons and staggering infusions of money from the upper reaches of wealth and corporate life, are less and less anybody’s definition of “democratic.”

And while Washington fiddles, inequality is on the rise, with so much money floating around in the 1% world that millions of dollars are left over to drive the prices of pieces of art into the stratosphere, even as poverty grows and the army of the poor multiplies.  And don’t forget that the national infrastructure — all those highways, bridges, sewer systems, and tunnels that were once the unspoken pride of the country — is visibly fraying.

Up-Armoring America

Meanwhile, to the tune of a trillion dollars or more a year, our national treasure has been squandered on the maintenance of a war state, the garrisoning of the planet, and the eternal upgrading of “homeland security.”  Think about it: so far in the twenty-first century, the U.S. is the only nation to invade a country not on its border. In fact, it invaded two such countries, launching failed wars in which, when all the costs are in, trillions of dollars will have gone down the drain and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, as well as thousands of Americans, will have died.  This country has also led the way in creating the rules of the road for global drone assassination campaigns (no small thing now that up to 87 countries are into drone technology); it has turned significant parts of the planet into free-fire zones and, whenever it seemed convenient, obliterated the idea that other countries have something called “national sovereignty”; it has built up its Special Operations forces, tens of thousands of highly trained troops that constitute a secret military within the U.S. military, which are now operational in more than 100 countries and sent into action whenever the White House desires, again with little regard for the sovereignty of other states; it has launched the first set of cyber wars in history (against Iran and its nuclear program), has specialized in kidnapping terror suspects off city streets and in rural backlands globally, and has a near-monopolistic grip on the world arms trade (a 78% market share according to the latest figures available); its military expenditures are greater than the next 13 nations combined; and it continues to build military bases across the planet in a historically unprecedented way.

Keep reading Today's America is the Real Hunger Games: Why aren't we Terrified? (Engelhardt)

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