By William Fisher
More than a decade ago, former President George H.W. Bush stated that “now more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS research . . . government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance.”
The problem is he never told his son.
We know that from a multi-year series of findings that the administration of President George W. Bush has systematically manipulated science to comply with ideology – and satisfy the political agenda of his right-wing base.
The latest evidence of this scientific sleight-of-hand is contained in a report by the Government Accountability Office – the Congressionally-mandated oversight agency. GAO found that most abstinence-until-marriage education programs -- which receive about $158 million annually from the Department of Health and Human Services -- are not reviewed for scientific accuracy before they are granted funding.
“Efforts by HHS and states to assess the scientific accuracy of materials used in abstinence-until-marriage education programs have been limited," the GAO report states.
"This is because HHS's Administration for Children and Families (ACF) -- which awards grants to two programs that account for the largest portion of federal spending on abstinence-until-marriage education -- does not review its grantees' education materials for scientific accuracy and does not require grantees of either program to review their own materials for scientific accuracy"
GAO auditors contacted 10 states that receive funding from ACF for their abstinence-until-marriage programs. It found that only half reviewed the programs for scientifically accurate data on contraception, sexually transmitted infections and other information.
The report also found that most state and federal efforts to assess the effectiveness of abstinence-until-marriage education programs "do not meet the minimum scientific standards" that experts say are necessary to be scientifically valid.
The GAO report should not surprise us. President Bush has consistently supported the view that sex education should teach “abstinence only” and not include information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.
And there are many other examples:
In an earlier action on abstinence education, the Administration changed sex education performance measures to produce the appearance that scientific evidence supports abstinence-only programs. It doesn’t.
Until recently, a Centers for Disease Control initiative called “Programs That Work” identified sex education programs that have been found to be effective in scientific studies and provided this information through its web site. In 2002, all five “Programs That Work” provided comprehensive sex education to teenagers, and none were “abstinence-only.” But the CDC later ended this initiative and deleted information about these proven sex education programs from its web site.
Information about condom use and efficacy was also deleted from the CDC web site. The CDC replaced a comprehensive fact sheet on condoms with one that emphasized condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence.
In banning federal funding for research on new stem cell lines, President Bush stated that “more than 60 genetically diverse" lines were available for potential research. Soon thereafter, then-HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson acknowledged that the correct number was 24 to 25. Still later, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni told Congress that only 11 stem cell lines were widely available to researchers.
Global Warming reports by the Environmental Protection Agency on the risks of climate change have been suppressed. The White House added so many hedges to the climate change section of the EPA's report card on the environment that former administrator Christie Todd Whitman deleted the section rather than publish one that was scientifically inaccurate.
Defense Department officials presented misleading information on whether a functional Missile Defense System could be quickly deployed. An Under Secretary of Defense told a Senate panel that by the end of 2004, the system would be 90% effective in intercepting missiles from the Korean peninsula. But in April 2003, the GAO found the President’s plan unworkable and even dangerous. The Defense Department’s claim of 90% effectiveness “is not supported by any publicly available evidence, and it appears not to comport with the Pentagon’s own classified estimates.”
Comments on Wetlands Policy from scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service on the destructive impacts of proposed regulatory changes have been withheld. Scientists at Service, part of the Interior Department, had prepared an analysis showing that a new proposal from the Army Corps of Engineers would “encourage the destruction of stream channels and lead to increased loss of aquatic functions.” But the Interior Secretary failed to submit the scientists’ comments to the Corps, which subsequently issued rules that weakened key wetland protections.
After social conservatives campaigned to require women to be “counseled” about an alleged risk of breast cancer from abortions, the National Cancer Institute revised its web site to suggest that studies of equal weight conflicted on the question. In fact, there is scientific consensus that no such link exists.
A report commissioned by Congressman Henry Waxman of California charged that the Bush Administration is manipulating Scientific Advisory Committees to advance its political and ideological agenda. Examples include appointing unqualified persons with industry ties and ideological agendas, while opposing qualified experts.
The Bush Administration contends that these examples are isolated coincidences. Right!
These are legitimate subjects for Congressional oversight. But the Republican-controlled House and Senate have been A.W.O.L. on oversight and have effectively blocked virtually all Democratic efforts to investigate how our tax dollars get used.
Now that Democrats have won majorities – and subpoena power -- in both bodies, voters should hold the feet of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid so that the nation can distinguish truth from spin.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
U.S. v. BUSH, et al
By William Fisher
The scene is a Federal Grand Jury room. There, impaneled ordinary citizens listen intently as a veteran Federal prosecutor asks them to return an indictment unique in American history.
The charge is Conspiracy to Defraud the United States. And the defendants are President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
On the first day of Grand Jury proceedings, the Prosecutor addresses the jurors.
“Please remember that you must decide the case based solely on the evidence that’s presented and applicable law, without regard to prejudice or sympathy. In other words, your politics, and any personal feelings you may have toward the defendants – positive or negative – should have no bearing on your deliberations.”
The prosecutor then passes out the indictment, reminding jurors, “don’t forget your reading glasses…”
The indictment charges that the defendants “did knowingly and intentionally conspire to defraud the United States by using deceit, craft, trickery, dishonest means, false and fraudulent representations, including ones made without a reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth or falsity, and omitting material facts necessary to make their representations truthful, fair and accurate, while knowing and intending that their false and fraudulent representations would influence the public and the deliberations of Congress with authorization of a preventive war against Iraq, thereby defeating, obstructing, impairing, and interfering with Congress’ lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and making appropriations.”
Over the next seven days, the grand jurors evaluate a 64-point case presented by the Federal Prosecutor. They hear compelling supporting testimony from three FBI agents. They battle their way through thousands of pages of documentation supporting the alleged crime.
Of course, none of this actually happened – nor is it likely to happen. Rather, it is the scenario of a new book about a hypothetical case, presented to a hypothetical Grand Jury, with hypothetical witnesses.
Only the prosecutor is real. She is Elizabeth de la Vega, a retired government lawyer with more than 20 years of experience. She served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis, and a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Branch Chief in San Jose, California.
Her book is titled, simply, U.S. v. George W. Bush et al. It will be published in December by Seven Stories Press. Amazon.com is currently taking orders for the book.
Why did Ms. de la Vega write this book? She says, “The President will not be held accountable for misrepresenting the prewar intelligence unless and until Congress conducts hearings similar to the Watergate hearings. As yet, however, we seem painfully incapable of reaching that point.”
She adds, “Although the evidence of wrongdoing is overwhelming, the facts are so complicated that it’s impossible to have a productive debate about them in the political sphere. One forum where that’s not true is the courtroom.”
Does she believe that her book will lead to making her hypothetical case real? She writes, “Consider this my 911 call. I’m calling on Democrats and Republicans to do the right thing…and convince Congress to do the right thing. I am not talking about bringing people to justice in the vengeful sense that President Bush employs. I am talking about effecting justice…holding out highest government officials accountable for…a criminal betrayal of trust that is strikingly similar to, yet far worse, than the fraud committed by Enron’s top officials.”
She told us, "Many of the victims of the President’s fraud – millions of Iraqis – have no voice in the United States, but the millions of Americans who were deceived by the President’s fraud do have a voice. We should use it, loudly and repeatedly, to pressure Congress into holding the President, the Vice President and their top-level aides accountable for tricking the nation into war."
The indictment takes jurors from the prewar period and the “regime change” influence of the neoconservative group, Project for the New American Century, to the attacks of 9/11, to the formation of the shadowy Iraq Group inside the White House, to the preparation of war plans beginning in September 2001, to the distortion of intelligence information regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities and programs, to President Bush’s strategy sessions with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to actions designed to end the United Nations inspections, to the abandonment of multilateral diplomacy, to Colin Powell’s deeply flawed presentation to the UN Security Council, to Congressional authorization of the use of force.
It sets out 19 “Overt Acts” allegedly committed by the defendants to “market” the need for preemptive invasion – based largely on their public statements via the media in which, among other things, Administration officials professed absolute certainty about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, use of aluminum tubes to process uranium, to the warnings from then-National Security Advisor Rice and Vice President Cheney that the smoking gun could be “in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
Some of Ms. de la Vega’s readers may be disappointed that we never learn about the decision of the Grand Jury. But that’s one of the points of the book – it’s the reader who is sitting on the jury.
This slender book is a fascinating, suspenseful, fact-based read. It is a volume that should be read by all those who seek truth and clarity – especially those who returned to Congress after November 7.
The scene is a Federal Grand Jury room. There, impaneled ordinary citizens listen intently as a veteran Federal prosecutor asks them to return an indictment unique in American history.
The charge is Conspiracy to Defraud the United States. And the defendants are President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
On the first day of Grand Jury proceedings, the Prosecutor addresses the jurors.
“Please remember that you must decide the case based solely on the evidence that’s presented and applicable law, without regard to prejudice or sympathy. In other words, your politics, and any personal feelings you may have toward the defendants – positive or negative – should have no bearing on your deliberations.”
The prosecutor then passes out the indictment, reminding jurors, “don’t forget your reading glasses…”
The indictment charges that the defendants “did knowingly and intentionally conspire to defraud the United States by using deceit, craft, trickery, dishonest means, false and fraudulent representations, including ones made without a reasonable basis and with reckless indifference to their truth or falsity, and omitting material facts necessary to make their representations truthful, fair and accurate, while knowing and intending that their false and fraudulent representations would influence the public and the deliberations of Congress with authorization of a preventive war against Iraq, thereby defeating, obstructing, impairing, and interfering with Congress’ lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and making appropriations.”
Over the next seven days, the grand jurors evaluate a 64-point case presented by the Federal Prosecutor. They hear compelling supporting testimony from three FBI agents. They battle their way through thousands of pages of documentation supporting the alleged crime.
Of course, none of this actually happened – nor is it likely to happen. Rather, it is the scenario of a new book about a hypothetical case, presented to a hypothetical Grand Jury, with hypothetical witnesses.
Only the prosecutor is real. She is Elizabeth de la Vega, a retired government lawyer with more than 20 years of experience. She served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis, and a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Branch Chief in San Jose, California.
Her book is titled, simply, U.S. v. George W. Bush et al. It will be published in December by Seven Stories Press. Amazon.com is currently taking orders for the book.
Why did Ms. de la Vega write this book? She says, “The President will not be held accountable for misrepresenting the prewar intelligence unless and until Congress conducts hearings similar to the Watergate hearings. As yet, however, we seem painfully incapable of reaching that point.”
She adds, “Although the evidence of wrongdoing is overwhelming, the facts are so complicated that it’s impossible to have a productive debate about them in the political sphere. One forum where that’s not true is the courtroom.”
Does she believe that her book will lead to making her hypothetical case real? She writes, “Consider this my 911 call. I’m calling on Democrats and Republicans to do the right thing…and convince Congress to do the right thing. I am not talking about bringing people to justice in the vengeful sense that President Bush employs. I am talking about effecting justice…holding out highest government officials accountable for…a criminal betrayal of trust that is strikingly similar to, yet far worse, than the fraud committed by Enron’s top officials.”
She told us, "Many of the victims of the President’s fraud – millions of Iraqis – have no voice in the United States, but the millions of Americans who were deceived by the President’s fraud do have a voice. We should use it, loudly and repeatedly, to pressure Congress into holding the President, the Vice President and their top-level aides accountable for tricking the nation into war."
The indictment takes jurors from the prewar period and the “regime change” influence of the neoconservative group, Project for the New American Century, to the attacks of 9/11, to the formation of the shadowy Iraq Group inside the White House, to the preparation of war plans beginning in September 2001, to the distortion of intelligence information regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities and programs, to President Bush’s strategy sessions with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to actions designed to end the United Nations inspections, to the abandonment of multilateral diplomacy, to Colin Powell’s deeply flawed presentation to the UN Security Council, to Congressional authorization of the use of force.
It sets out 19 “Overt Acts” allegedly committed by the defendants to “market” the need for preemptive invasion – based largely on their public statements via the media in which, among other things, Administration officials professed absolute certainty about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, use of aluminum tubes to process uranium, to the warnings from then-National Security Advisor Rice and Vice President Cheney that the smoking gun could be “in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
Some of Ms. de la Vega’s readers may be disappointed that we never learn about the decision of the Grand Jury. But that’s one of the points of the book – it’s the reader who is sitting on the jury.
This slender book is a fascinating, suspenseful, fact-based read. It is a volume that should be read by all those who seek truth and clarity – especially those who returned to Congress after November 7.
HOW LONG IS LONG ENOUGH?
By William Fisher
With everyone’s attention riveted on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea these days, it’s difficult to find anyone interested in thinking about the bankruptcy of U.S. policies right here in our own hemisphere.
Grabbing the headlines recently have been Castro’s illness and endless speculation about a post-Fidel Cuba, Hugo Chavez at the UN, calling George W. Bush “the devil,” the election of Evo Morales, a left-leaning president in Bolivia, and the self-reinvention of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
But, absent such sensational developments, the U.S. mainstream media is largely silent on hemispheric affairs.
The U.S. response to the more sensational events conjures up memories of the Cold War, when two superpowers split the world into rival camps. Or, more recently, President Bush’s Global War on Terror, where “You’re either with us or against us.”
Underpinning these responses is, in my view, a profound misunderstanding of Latin America and the aspirations of its people.
This is not rocket science. For over a century, the countries of Central and South America and the Caribbean have been plundered and repressed by governmental and corporate colonialism. The tiny elites in most of these countries have grown vastly richer while most of their populations continue to live in poverty. Through successive administrations, our own government has compiled a shameful record of meddling to maintain an unsustainable status quo, of overthrowing governments that don’t agree with our view of the world, of supporting despots who practice torture and “disappearance,” and, to be charitable, turning a blind eye to death squads.
Yet today, we seem surprised that this sordid history sometimes persuades Latin America’s people to accept – even champion -- demagogues. But Latin America has had demagogues for more than a century. Most were brutal dictators on the right. A few on the left expressed the people’s pushback against these repressive tyrannies.
The over-the-top rhetoric of this pushback has, for decades, has made the U.S. the sole villain in the piece. And the U.S. response has been to demonize and attempt to isolate the purveyors of this rhetoric. This approach is acceptable only if one shares George W. Bush’s view of the world as neatly divided into “good” and “evil.”
The inevitable result of this “My daddy is stronger than your daddy” approach is a bunch of children talking past one another, and accomplishing exactly nothing.
A perfect example of accomplishing exactly nothing can be found in a report issued last week by our Government Accountability Office, the
Congressionally-mandated organization that helps our legislators fulfill their oversight responsibilities.
The GAO report found that U.S. funds targeted to promote democracy in Cuba have been used to buy items like crabmeat, computer games, chocolate, and cashmere sweaters.
Reuters reported that the GAO found little oversight and accountability in the program, which spent "$76 million between 1996 and 2005 to support Cuban dissidents, independent journalists, academics and others." It also found that 95 percent of the grants were issued without competitive bids.
The auditors questioned checks written out to some staff members, questionable travel expenses, and payments to a manager's family. One group acknowledged selling books it was supposed to distribute under the democracy-promoting program.
One grantee "could not justify some purchases made with USAID funds, including a gas chain saw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat and Godiva chocolates," the report said.
Out of 10 recipients of public money reviewed by the auditors, three failed to keep adequate financial records, the GAO said. A lot of the money was used to pay smugglers, or "mules, to avoid U.S. restrictions on taking goods to Cuba.
Critics have long charged that such grants are aimed more at winning votes in Miami than triggering political change on the communist island, where Castro has ruled since his 1959 revolution. Imagine that!
To protect recipients from prosecution, none of the money from the USAID or the State Department is paid in cash to people in Cuba. A Cuban law can impose jail sentences on citizens who receive money.
Instead, the funds are distributed to Cuban-American groups in Miami, the heartland of opposition to Cuban President Fidel Castro, and in Washington, and are supposed to be used to buy medicines, books, short-wave radios, and other goods that are smuggled into Cuba.
President Bush has proposed increasing spending on Cuba-related programs, including propaganda transmissions by Radio and TV Marti, by $80 million over the next two years.
Which will accomplish what? Exactly nothing. Except more “My daddy is stronger than your daddy” rhetoric.
It has been 45 years since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, and 44 years since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. During that time, our trade embargo has provided foreign companies – many of which are longstanding U.S. allies -- an empty playing field for increasing exports and investments, particularly in agricultural produce and tourism. Having no ambassador in Cuba hinders our efforts to know what’s going on there. It obliterates our ability to exert any influence whatever on the Cuban government or people. It totally forecloses any possibility of rapprochement with this island, 90 miles from Florida. And it negatively impacts many of our relationships with other Latin American nations.
For American presidents, however, Cuba is the third rail of U.S. politics. A few have tried to jump over the rail, but Cuban-American voters have always blocked the tracks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. maintains embassies, ambassadors – and even aid programs -- in countries whose behaviors are arguably far more egregious than Cuba’s. Among them are such models of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Burma, and Uzbekistan.
For centuries the criterion for one nation to have diplomatic relations with another has been whether the host country is a sovereign power. These days, the test seems to be whether “you’re with us or against us” in the Global War on Terror. This is America shooting itself in the foot. The time for a serious review of our relationships with Cuba – and many other countries in Latin America – is comically overdue.
Maybe, after the Baker-Hamilton Commission solves all our Iraq problems, we could ask it to take a look at the Western Hemisphere.
With everyone’s attention riveted on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea these days, it’s difficult to find anyone interested in thinking about the bankruptcy of U.S. policies right here in our own hemisphere.
Grabbing the headlines recently have been Castro’s illness and endless speculation about a post-Fidel Cuba, Hugo Chavez at the UN, calling George W. Bush “the devil,” the election of Evo Morales, a left-leaning president in Bolivia, and the self-reinvention of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
But, absent such sensational developments, the U.S. mainstream media is largely silent on hemispheric affairs.
The U.S. response to the more sensational events conjures up memories of the Cold War, when two superpowers split the world into rival camps. Or, more recently, President Bush’s Global War on Terror, where “You’re either with us or against us.”
Underpinning these responses is, in my view, a profound misunderstanding of Latin America and the aspirations of its people.
This is not rocket science. For over a century, the countries of Central and South America and the Caribbean have been plundered and repressed by governmental and corporate colonialism. The tiny elites in most of these countries have grown vastly richer while most of their populations continue to live in poverty. Through successive administrations, our own government has compiled a shameful record of meddling to maintain an unsustainable status quo, of overthrowing governments that don’t agree with our view of the world, of supporting despots who practice torture and “disappearance,” and, to be charitable, turning a blind eye to death squads.
Yet today, we seem surprised that this sordid history sometimes persuades Latin America’s people to accept – even champion -- demagogues. But Latin America has had demagogues for more than a century. Most were brutal dictators on the right. A few on the left expressed the people’s pushback against these repressive tyrannies.
The over-the-top rhetoric of this pushback has, for decades, has made the U.S. the sole villain in the piece. And the U.S. response has been to demonize and attempt to isolate the purveyors of this rhetoric. This approach is acceptable only if one shares George W. Bush’s view of the world as neatly divided into “good” and “evil.”
The inevitable result of this “My daddy is stronger than your daddy” approach is a bunch of children talking past one another, and accomplishing exactly nothing.
A perfect example of accomplishing exactly nothing can be found in a report issued last week by our Government Accountability Office, the
Congressionally-mandated organization that helps our legislators fulfill their oversight responsibilities.
The GAO report found that U.S. funds targeted to promote democracy in Cuba have been used to buy items like crabmeat, computer games, chocolate, and cashmere sweaters.
Reuters reported that the GAO found little oversight and accountability in the program, which spent "$76 million between 1996 and 2005 to support Cuban dissidents, independent journalists, academics and others." It also found that 95 percent of the grants were issued without competitive bids.
The auditors questioned checks written out to some staff members, questionable travel expenses, and payments to a manager's family. One group acknowledged selling books it was supposed to distribute under the democracy-promoting program.
One grantee "could not justify some purchases made with USAID funds, including a gas chain saw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat and Godiva chocolates," the report said.
Out of 10 recipients of public money reviewed by the auditors, three failed to keep adequate financial records, the GAO said. A lot of the money was used to pay smugglers, or "mules, to avoid U.S. restrictions on taking goods to Cuba.
Critics have long charged that such grants are aimed more at winning votes in Miami than triggering political change on the communist island, where Castro has ruled since his 1959 revolution. Imagine that!
To protect recipients from prosecution, none of the money from the USAID or the State Department is paid in cash to people in Cuba. A Cuban law can impose jail sentences on citizens who receive money.
Instead, the funds are distributed to Cuban-American groups in Miami, the heartland of opposition to Cuban President Fidel Castro, and in Washington, and are supposed to be used to buy medicines, books, short-wave radios, and other goods that are smuggled into Cuba.
President Bush has proposed increasing spending on Cuba-related programs, including propaganda transmissions by Radio and TV Marti, by $80 million over the next two years.
Which will accomplish what? Exactly nothing. Except more “My daddy is stronger than your daddy” rhetoric.
It has been 45 years since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, and 44 years since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. During that time, our trade embargo has provided foreign companies – many of which are longstanding U.S. allies -- an empty playing field for increasing exports and investments, particularly in agricultural produce and tourism. Having no ambassador in Cuba hinders our efforts to know what’s going on there. It obliterates our ability to exert any influence whatever on the Cuban government or people. It totally forecloses any possibility of rapprochement with this island, 90 miles from Florida. And it negatively impacts many of our relationships with other Latin American nations.
For American presidents, however, Cuba is the third rail of U.S. politics. A few have tried to jump over the rail, but Cuban-American voters have always blocked the tracks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. maintains embassies, ambassadors – and even aid programs -- in countries whose behaviors are arguably far more egregious than Cuba’s. Among them are such models of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Burma, and Uzbekistan.
For centuries the criterion for one nation to have diplomatic relations with another has been whether the host country is a sovereign power. These days, the test seems to be whether “you’re with us or against us” in the Global War on Terror. This is America shooting itself in the foot. The time for a serious review of our relationships with Cuba – and many other countries in Latin America – is comically overdue.
Maybe, after the Baker-Hamilton Commission solves all our Iraq problems, we could ask it to take a look at the Western Hemisphere.
Friday, November 17, 2006
HISTORICAL AMNESIA
By William Fisher
Most of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I hope we will also remember the heart-wrenching image of MLK compatriot, Andrew Young, in tears as he spoke and being comforted by fellow civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson, at the groundbreaking of the new King Memorial on the Mall in Washington last week.
The groundbreaking for the Memorial – sited along the western edge of the Tidal Basin near the Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt memorials -- was profoundly moving. Speakers from George W. Bush to Bill Clinton to Oprah to Barack Obama reached into some inner place in their hearts to pay tribute to the immeasurable contribution Dr. King made to their lives, to our country, and to the world.
Some of the most poignant words came from Congressman John Lewis. There is no more credible witness to this tumultuous page in American history than this courageous man, who was at MLK’s side as hundreds challenged police by marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965. The marchers were attacked by Alabama State Troopers and beaten so badly that the event came to be known as "Bloody Sunday." A white clergyman was killed in the melee. It was Bloody Sunday that captured the attention of the nation – and of President Lyndon Johnson -- and resulted in the landmark civil rights laws of the 1960s.
The words of all who spoke at last week’s event were eloquent and heartfelt but, in the end, proved to be imperfect tools to convey the incalculable consequence of MLK’s life and death.
But there was also one joltingly abrasive moment. It came in the speech delivered by the Rev. Bernice King, MLK’s youngest daughter, who is an ordained preacher and an Elder at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Rev. King, speaking in pulpit cadence and sounding much like her father, praised him as a great pastor, not to just to his congregation, but to the nation and the world.
She also embraced her father’s politics – decrying the “triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism” which “are clogging our arteries more today, than they were in his.”
What came next, however, was a shock, not because she invoked the name of Jesus – arguably to be expected from a member of the Christian clergy – but because she implied that what was achieved by the civil rights movement was achieved in His name, and proclaimed, “America is a Christian nation.”
In the context of the civil rights movement, this seemed to me a worrying case of historical amnesia – and one grotesquely at odds with what MLK spent his life trying to teach us. It struck me as being right up there with Jesse Jackson’s unfortunate 1984 reference to New York City as “Hymietown.”
There is no argument that the civil rights movement was largely an African-American movement and that the black church played a pivotal role in getting it off the ground, keeping it going, and persevering against impossible odds to see it through to success.
But that doesn’t qualify America as “a Christian nation.” The struggle for black freedom always had significant and sustained help. And that help came in the form of participation by people of every religious faith – and many of no faith at all.
For example, what Bernice King failed to mention was that in the decade from 1954 to 1964, blacks and many whites worked together to end racial segregation, and that American Jews contributed more than any other white group to support the movement. They raised money. They gave money. And they repeatedly put their lives on the line.
Jews made up nearly half of the volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. While making up only two per cent of the population, Jews made up more than half the civil rights lawyers who worked with the movement in the south. Leaders of the Jewish Reform Movement were arrested with Dr. King in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodations. A year later, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel stood arm-in-arm with Dr. King as he marched on Selma.
One of the co-founders of the NAACP was Jewish, and many of its members and leading activists came from within the Jewish community. Jewish philanthropists actively supported the NAACP and other civil rights groups. The Jewish philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald, funded the creation of dozens of primary schools, secondary schools, and colleges for disenfranchised African-American youth. This effort by the Jewish community resulted in building some 2,000 schools.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, under the aegis of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which had been located in the Center for decades.
Why is this history important? Because it goes to the heart of MLK’s message – that the core of the non-violent civil rights movement was not about Christianity or any other religion. It was about love, justice and equity.
For that reason, news that the achievements of the movement were made in the name of Jesus came as a shock to many of us, perhaps most to the families of Michael Goodman and Mickey Schwerner.
For others with historical amnesia, rewind to June 16, 1964. That was the date on which armed members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan fire-bombed the Mount Zion Methodist Church in Longdale, Mississippi, a rural community in notorious Neshoba County.
Along with James Chaney, a black civil rights worker, Michael Schwerner, a Jewish volunteer, was asked to investigate the ruins. With them was Andrew Goodman, another Jewish volunteer who was in Mississippi to coordinate the Neshoba county voter registration project. While enroute back to Meridian, Mississippi, the three were stopped and detained by a Neshoba County sheriff's deputy. Later, they were released from police custody and conveniently intercepted by Klansmen. They were murdered and, after a 44-day search, their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam.
No one was ever charged with the murders but seven Klansmen were eventually convicted for violating the civil rights of the three young men and sentenced to three to ten years in prison. None served more than six years.
Goodman and Schwerner didn’t believe they were working for Jesus. Nor did they believe America was “a Christian nation.” They were working to reverse injustice. And their America was color-blind and religion-deaf.
The civil rights movement galvanized Americans of all shapes and sizes, of all colors and all religious beliefs. Its rich history needs no revision.
Not by any of us, including Bernice King.
Most of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I hope we will also remember the heart-wrenching image of MLK compatriot, Andrew Young, in tears as he spoke and being comforted by fellow civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson, at the groundbreaking of the new King Memorial on the Mall in Washington last week.
The groundbreaking for the Memorial – sited along the western edge of the Tidal Basin near the Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt memorials -- was profoundly moving. Speakers from George W. Bush to Bill Clinton to Oprah to Barack Obama reached into some inner place in their hearts to pay tribute to the immeasurable contribution Dr. King made to their lives, to our country, and to the world.
Some of the most poignant words came from Congressman John Lewis. There is no more credible witness to this tumultuous page in American history than this courageous man, who was at MLK’s side as hundreds challenged police by marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965. The marchers were attacked by Alabama State Troopers and beaten so badly that the event came to be known as "Bloody Sunday." A white clergyman was killed in the melee. It was Bloody Sunday that captured the attention of the nation – and of President Lyndon Johnson -- and resulted in the landmark civil rights laws of the 1960s.
The words of all who spoke at last week’s event were eloquent and heartfelt but, in the end, proved to be imperfect tools to convey the incalculable consequence of MLK’s life and death.
But there was also one joltingly abrasive moment. It came in the speech delivered by the Rev. Bernice King, MLK’s youngest daughter, who is an ordained preacher and an Elder at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Rev. King, speaking in pulpit cadence and sounding much like her father, praised him as a great pastor, not to just to his congregation, but to the nation and the world.
She also embraced her father’s politics – decrying the “triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism” which “are clogging our arteries more today, than they were in his.”
What came next, however, was a shock, not because she invoked the name of Jesus – arguably to be expected from a member of the Christian clergy – but because she implied that what was achieved by the civil rights movement was achieved in His name, and proclaimed, “America is a Christian nation.”
In the context of the civil rights movement, this seemed to me a worrying case of historical amnesia – and one grotesquely at odds with what MLK spent his life trying to teach us. It struck me as being right up there with Jesse Jackson’s unfortunate 1984 reference to New York City as “Hymietown.”
There is no argument that the civil rights movement was largely an African-American movement and that the black church played a pivotal role in getting it off the ground, keeping it going, and persevering against impossible odds to see it through to success.
But that doesn’t qualify America as “a Christian nation.” The struggle for black freedom always had significant and sustained help. And that help came in the form of participation by people of every religious faith – and many of no faith at all.
For example, what Bernice King failed to mention was that in the decade from 1954 to 1964, blacks and many whites worked together to end racial segregation, and that American Jews contributed more than any other white group to support the movement. They raised money. They gave money. And they repeatedly put their lives on the line.
Jews made up nearly half of the volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. While making up only two per cent of the population, Jews made up more than half the civil rights lawyers who worked with the movement in the south. Leaders of the Jewish Reform Movement were arrested with Dr. King in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodations. A year later, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel stood arm-in-arm with Dr. King as he marched on Selma.
One of the co-founders of the NAACP was Jewish, and many of its members and leading activists came from within the Jewish community. Jewish philanthropists actively supported the NAACP and other civil rights groups. The Jewish philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald, funded the creation of dozens of primary schools, secondary schools, and colleges for disenfranchised African-American youth. This effort by the Jewish community resulted in building some 2,000 schools.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, under the aegis of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which had been located in the Center for decades.
Why is this history important? Because it goes to the heart of MLK’s message – that the core of the non-violent civil rights movement was not about Christianity or any other religion. It was about love, justice and equity.
For that reason, news that the achievements of the movement were made in the name of Jesus came as a shock to many of us, perhaps most to the families of Michael Goodman and Mickey Schwerner.
For others with historical amnesia, rewind to June 16, 1964. That was the date on which armed members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan fire-bombed the Mount Zion Methodist Church in Longdale, Mississippi, a rural community in notorious Neshoba County.
Along with James Chaney, a black civil rights worker, Michael Schwerner, a Jewish volunteer, was asked to investigate the ruins. With them was Andrew Goodman, another Jewish volunteer who was in Mississippi to coordinate the Neshoba county voter registration project. While enroute back to Meridian, Mississippi, the three were stopped and detained by a Neshoba County sheriff's deputy. Later, they were released from police custody and conveniently intercepted by Klansmen. They were murdered and, after a 44-day search, their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam.
No one was ever charged with the murders but seven Klansmen were eventually convicted for violating the civil rights of the three young men and sentenced to three to ten years in prison. None served more than six years.
Goodman and Schwerner didn’t believe they were working for Jesus. Nor did they believe America was “a Christian nation.” They were working to reverse injustice. And their America was color-blind and religion-deaf.
The civil rights movement galvanized Americans of all shapes and sizes, of all colors and all religious beliefs. Its rich history needs no revision.
Not by any of us, including Bernice King.
Monday, November 13, 2006
ARROGANT TO THE END
By William Fisher
Well, our Pentagon rock star is gone.
President Bush’s encomium to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld after firing him last week was among the most predictable – and utterly forgettable – remarks ever to come out of a White House famous for its predictable and forgettable statements.
The president said the SecDef’s leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan “drove Saddam Hussein from power and helped the Iraqi people establish a constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East.” On his watch, the president said, “the men and women of our military overthrew two terrorist regimes, liberated some 50 million people, brought justice to the terrorist Zarqawi and scores of senior al Qaeda operatives, and helped stop new terrorist attacks on our people.”
Rummy’s response was perhaps less predictable and less forgettable. America’s misadventure in Iraq, he said, was “a little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century.” The war was “not well-known, it was not well-understood, it is complex for people to comprehend.”
So it’s our fault, right?
The people just don’t get it. The images of carnage we see 24/7 on our TV screens were all produced with PhotoShop on Osama Bin Laden’s laptop. The “revolt of the Generals” was a fiction concocted by Harry Reid. The $20 billion we wasted on Iraqi reconstruction resulted in schools and hospitals and electricity and increased oil output – it’s just that the vast leftwing media conspirators aren’t bringing us the good news stories (so the Pentagon better get busy and bribe more journalists to publish more of them). We’re really defeating the Taliban (again). The people we hold at Guantanamo are “the worst of the worst.” And our near-3000 dead soldiers and marines are only a tiny fraction of the 145,000 troops deployed to the Iraqi killing ground.
How is it we don’t understand all this stuff?
Well, American citizens don’t pretend to be military experts. But Mr. Rumsfeld does. And maybe, if we have sometimes found ourselves unable to comprehend all these foreign policy triumphs, Mr. Rumsfeld’s imperious rejection of the realities experienced by the uniformed military is largely responsible.
After all, wasn’t he the guy whose comment on our slain service members was,
“Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war?"
Wasn’t he the guy who told us in 2003 that, “It is unknowable how long (the war in Iraq) will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months?”
Wasn’t he the guy who said about our troops’ lack of armor, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
Wasn’t he the guy who told us a year earlier that the situation in Afghanistan was “encouraging. They have elected a government through the Loya Jirga process. The Taliban are gone. The al Qaeda are gone.”
Wasn’t he the guy who was asked by Jim Lehrer on PBS’ The News Hour in 2003 whether a US invasion would be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?’ To which Rummy replied, “There is no question but that they would be welcomed.”
Wasn’t he the guy who told NBC News the same year, “We know where (the weapons of mass destruction) are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat?”
Wasn’t he the guy who attributed the looting and lawlessness after the fall of Baghdad to “stuff happens?”
Wasn’t he the guy who confused even the White House’s professional obfuscators by declaring, “"The message is that there are known knowns - there are things that we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know we don't know. And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
And wasn’t he the guy who testified that he'd "never painted a rosy picture" of Iraq and that he hadn't been "overly optimistic."
Well, the question about who’s now going to confuse the public and amuse the stenographic Pentagon press corps remains unknown.
But there are a few things we do know. First, our people are not confused. We may not all be political junkies, but we’re not stupid either. And we showed that last week in the best American tradition: We rejected the spin, the lies, the death, the obfuscation, with our feet – on the way to the polling place.
Second, we know there can be no more conclusive evidence that the Bush administration is utterly incapable of crafting any viable strategy for “winning” in Iraq than the very existence of the Iraq Study Group, now widely known as the Baker-Hamilton commission.
The Constitution gives the President, as Commander-in-Chief, the responsibility for waging war and protecting our citizens. And that doesn’t mean any previous Commander-in-Chief.
W., like all former presidents, has always had virtually instant access to the world’s most thoughtful and knowledgeable experts on virtually any subject. But The Decider didn’t care much for listening. After all, he answers to a higher power.
Well, the higher power at the moment is the Baker-Hamilton Commission, co-chaired by his daddy’s secretary of state, James A. Baker, and Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman and co-chair of the 9/11 Commission. The other members are a group of other ultimate Washington insiders, including the one the president just nominated to be Rummy’s successor, Robert M. Gates, former CIA director.
Because this inside-the-Beltway bunch has little Middle East experience, it is being helped by four different think tanks. But despite lack of Middle East experience, we should all pray that the recommendations of this group will be substantive, not just more cosmetics. And that the president will be listening.
Aside from substance, however, this Commission is about giving the president the political cover to admit, by changing his policies, that he got it wrong. Perish the thought that our Commander-in-Chief would ever confront that fact in full frontal mode, as John F. Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco!
And if the Baker-Hamilton recommendations go wrong, W. will have a convenient scapegoat to swiftboat.
The one thing we poor confused, uninformed citizens can cling to is that Mr. Bush is now all about legacy. He doesn’t like the idea of being remembered as the president who made arguably the most egregious mistake in American foreign policy history.
The third thing we know is that, even in the event that the president announces some major new initiatives to extricate us from our Middle East quagmire, his government appears to lack the competence to execute those new initiatives. On the basis of this administration’s record, all of us can be excused for being just a tad skeptical – and very afraid.
One final thought about the Baker-Hamilton Commission: Can anyone imagine that it would ever have occurred to Franklin Roosevelt to outsource the decision about the Normandy landing in World War Two?
Well, our Pentagon rock star is gone.
President Bush’s encomium to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld after firing him last week was among the most predictable – and utterly forgettable – remarks ever to come out of a White House famous for its predictable and forgettable statements.
The president said the SecDef’s leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan “drove Saddam Hussein from power and helped the Iraqi people establish a constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East.” On his watch, the president said, “the men and women of our military overthrew two terrorist regimes, liberated some 50 million people, brought justice to the terrorist Zarqawi and scores of senior al Qaeda operatives, and helped stop new terrorist attacks on our people.”
Rummy’s response was perhaps less predictable and less forgettable. America’s misadventure in Iraq, he said, was “a little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century.” The war was “not well-known, it was not well-understood, it is complex for people to comprehend.”
So it’s our fault, right?
The people just don’t get it. The images of carnage we see 24/7 on our TV screens were all produced with PhotoShop on Osama Bin Laden’s laptop. The “revolt of the Generals” was a fiction concocted by Harry Reid. The $20 billion we wasted on Iraqi reconstruction resulted in schools and hospitals and electricity and increased oil output – it’s just that the vast leftwing media conspirators aren’t bringing us the good news stories (so the Pentagon better get busy and bribe more journalists to publish more of them). We’re really defeating the Taliban (again). The people we hold at Guantanamo are “the worst of the worst.” And our near-3000 dead soldiers and marines are only a tiny fraction of the 145,000 troops deployed to the Iraqi killing ground.
How is it we don’t understand all this stuff?
Well, American citizens don’t pretend to be military experts. But Mr. Rumsfeld does. And maybe, if we have sometimes found ourselves unable to comprehend all these foreign policy triumphs, Mr. Rumsfeld’s imperious rejection of the realities experienced by the uniformed military is largely responsible.
After all, wasn’t he the guy whose comment on our slain service members was,
“Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war?"
Wasn’t he the guy who told us in 2003 that, “It is unknowable how long (the war in Iraq) will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months?”
Wasn’t he the guy who said about our troops’ lack of armor, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
Wasn’t he the guy who told us a year earlier that the situation in Afghanistan was “encouraging. They have elected a government through the Loya Jirga process. The Taliban are gone. The al Qaeda are gone.”
Wasn’t he the guy who was asked by Jim Lehrer on PBS’ The News Hour in 2003 whether a US invasion would be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?’ To which Rummy replied, “There is no question but that they would be welcomed.”
Wasn’t he the guy who told NBC News the same year, “We know where (the weapons of mass destruction) are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat?”
Wasn’t he the guy who attributed the looting and lawlessness after the fall of Baghdad to “stuff happens?”
Wasn’t he the guy who confused even the White House’s professional obfuscators by declaring, “"The message is that there are known knowns - there are things that we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know we don't know. And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
And wasn’t he the guy who testified that he'd "never painted a rosy picture" of Iraq and that he hadn't been "overly optimistic."
Well, the question about who’s now going to confuse the public and amuse the stenographic Pentagon press corps remains unknown.
But there are a few things we do know. First, our people are not confused. We may not all be political junkies, but we’re not stupid either. And we showed that last week in the best American tradition: We rejected the spin, the lies, the death, the obfuscation, with our feet – on the way to the polling place.
Second, we know there can be no more conclusive evidence that the Bush administration is utterly incapable of crafting any viable strategy for “winning” in Iraq than the very existence of the Iraq Study Group, now widely known as the Baker-Hamilton commission.
The Constitution gives the President, as Commander-in-Chief, the responsibility for waging war and protecting our citizens. And that doesn’t mean any previous Commander-in-Chief.
W., like all former presidents, has always had virtually instant access to the world’s most thoughtful and knowledgeable experts on virtually any subject. But The Decider didn’t care much for listening. After all, he answers to a higher power.
Well, the higher power at the moment is the Baker-Hamilton Commission, co-chaired by his daddy’s secretary of state, James A. Baker, and Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman and co-chair of the 9/11 Commission. The other members are a group of other ultimate Washington insiders, including the one the president just nominated to be Rummy’s successor, Robert M. Gates, former CIA director.
Because this inside-the-Beltway bunch has little Middle East experience, it is being helped by four different think tanks. But despite lack of Middle East experience, we should all pray that the recommendations of this group will be substantive, not just more cosmetics. And that the president will be listening.
Aside from substance, however, this Commission is about giving the president the political cover to admit, by changing his policies, that he got it wrong. Perish the thought that our Commander-in-Chief would ever confront that fact in full frontal mode, as John F. Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco!
And if the Baker-Hamilton recommendations go wrong, W. will have a convenient scapegoat to swiftboat.
The one thing we poor confused, uninformed citizens can cling to is that Mr. Bush is now all about legacy. He doesn’t like the idea of being remembered as the president who made arguably the most egregious mistake in American foreign policy history.
The third thing we know is that, even in the event that the president announces some major new initiatives to extricate us from our Middle East quagmire, his government appears to lack the competence to execute those new initiatives. On the basis of this administration’s record, all of us can be excused for being just a tad skeptical – and very afraid.
One final thought about the Baker-Hamilton Commission: Can anyone imagine that it would ever have occurred to Franklin Roosevelt to outsource the decision about the Normandy landing in World War Two?
Sunday, November 05, 2006
GET OVER IT, JACK!
By William Fisher
In 1969, at the end of my first full year of what became a 20-plus-year residence in Britain, I recall jotting down what I found to be the defining characteristics of the UK at that time. They were:
1. Suspicion of people who weren’t “them.”
2. Fear of change.
3. A class-structured society, where the “working class knew its place” and was always reluctant to challenge the old “upper class” power establishment.
What brought this musing back to me was the recent rant by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about his Muslim women constituents being covered up. Straw claimed he would be better able to respond to their needs if he could see the expressions on their faces.
Mr. Straw, who is a Labor Party Member of Parliament for Blackburn, where between 25% and 30% of residents are Muslim, explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers -- people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said. That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.”
Mr. Straw added, "What I've been struck by when I've been talking to some of the ladies concerned is that they had not, I think, been fully aware of the potential in terms of community relations."
Could this just be a contemporary version of my 1969 note, “Suspicion of people who weren’t ‘them’?” Which raises the question about just who is being unaware of “the potential in terms of community relations.”
In 1969, Britain had a relatively miniscule Muslim population. Today, its Muslim population is estimated to be 1.3 million, or three per cent of those who said they adhered to any religion.
This is undeniably a different dynamic for Brits, especially given their traditional fear of change and the glacial pace of their ability to accept and absorb it. But it isn’t as if Muslim immigration happened suddenly, all at once. The number of Muslims in the UK has grown gradually over the past generation.
To make the controversy even more heated, the veil controversy landed smack in the middle of the arrest of the gang of (Muslim) men alleged to have plotted to blow up U.S.-bound flights from the U.K. Following the subway bombings of last July, the fear of so-called homegrown terrorists in the UK is now palpable. And made far more scary by Britain’s participation in the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, which many in Britain – and not only Muslims – see as a reflection of what they see as President Bush’s war on Islam.
But the dis-integration of Muslim minorities didn’t begin with the invasion of Iraq. Its been happening for years. Muslim immigrants and British-born Muslims from various countries have, like most new immigrants to most countries, tended to want to live in the same neighborhoods – a development encouraged by the block-busting and red-lining practices of banks and real estate brokers. Entire cities have become “Muslim Cities.” In the process, they have displaced “regular” Brits. With UK property prices off the charts and a relatively slow renewal of the housing stock, the “regulars” have come to resent the immigrants.
Like most immigrants, children in Muslim communities attend de facto segregated schools, and their parents start their work life at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many have by now climbed a bit up the ladder, most notably opening small shops and other small businesses. But most of these are situated in the ghettos inhabited by their countrymen.
That raises the question of what successive British governments have done over the years to anticipate an oncoming train wreck and what policies it has put in place to avoid it.
The answer, lamentably, is virtually nothing. Predictably, there are all manner of inter-faith organizations, headed by well-known clergy and other senior figures. But few of these effectively reach the rank-and-file of Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe. The recent riots in the public housing projects dedicated largely to immigrants on the outskirts of Paris demonstrate the bankruptcy of current European efforts to help to integrate their Muslim populations into the life of the nation. But France is but one example among many.
In the United States, Muslim population counts are hard to come by. Estimates range from 2 to 8 million. Whatever the number, Muslim-Americans have become well integrated into the fabric of our society. Like traditional immigrants, beginning with the great wave of the mid-19th century, they first gravitated toward living areas where they could be among their own, speak the same language, eat the same foods. But over the years, they have morphed into a community that speaks English, owns prosperous businesses, serves in elected office and in our government, joins our armed forces, and participates more in public life than their counterparts in Europe.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that Americans, unlike Brits and other Europeans, are less fearful of those who are “not like us,” and more optimistic about understanding and accepting change. And perhaps because of our nation’s struggles with black-white racial issues, we have come to be a bit less paranoid – though our current immigration debate presents yet another challenge.
But the strong and sustained Muslim-American identification with the rest of our country is not immutable. It could change. One of the things that might hasten that change is the current government harassment of this segment of our population. Another is the xenophobia that followed 9/11 – in which, sadly, our right-wing religious leaders have been all too willing to participate.
The bottom line is that, despite President Bush’s many statements in support of Muslim-Americans, some in this community are beginning to feel almost as estranged from their country as their European counterparts. The more that feeling grows, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves unwittingly breeding the anger and resentment that ends in homegrown terrorism.
The issue is not whether Muslim women prefer to cover themselves. Personally, I find the practice demeaning to women. But that’s a view through Western eyes. If they don’t mind, why should we? Do we demand that Christian and Jewish women remove the crosses and stars of David from the necklaces they wear? Do we insist that our Amish people behave like most of the rest of us? Do we rant against Hassidic Jews who wear fur hats, prayer shawls, and funny hair-dos?
I have had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time talking with and listening to Muslim women in the Middle East who wore face veils, or niqabs, covered head to toe, except for their eyes and mouths. I can tell you that, once you get used to the absence of body language as a conversational indicator, how a person happens to be dressed quickly gets trumped by what she has to say.
This is something Jack Straw needs to understand. Maybe he needs to spend a bit more time with each of his constituents. My advice to him is to just to learn and get over it.
In 1969, at the end of my first full year of what became a 20-plus-year residence in Britain, I recall jotting down what I found to be the defining characteristics of the UK at that time. They were:
1. Suspicion of people who weren’t “them.”
2. Fear of change.
3. A class-structured society, where the “working class knew its place” and was always reluctant to challenge the old “upper class” power establishment.
What brought this musing back to me was the recent rant by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about his Muslim women constituents being covered up. Straw claimed he would be better able to respond to their needs if he could see the expressions on their faces.
Mr. Straw, who is a Labor Party Member of Parliament for Blackburn, where between 25% and 30% of residents are Muslim, explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers -- people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said. That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.”
Mr. Straw added, "What I've been struck by when I've been talking to some of the ladies concerned is that they had not, I think, been fully aware of the potential in terms of community relations."
Could this just be a contemporary version of my 1969 note, “Suspicion of people who weren’t ‘them’?” Which raises the question about just who is being unaware of “the potential in terms of community relations.”
In 1969, Britain had a relatively miniscule Muslim population. Today, its Muslim population is estimated to be 1.3 million, or three per cent of those who said they adhered to any religion.
This is undeniably a different dynamic for Brits, especially given their traditional fear of change and the glacial pace of their ability to accept and absorb it. But it isn’t as if Muslim immigration happened suddenly, all at once. The number of Muslims in the UK has grown gradually over the past generation.
To make the controversy even more heated, the veil controversy landed smack in the middle of the arrest of the gang of (Muslim) men alleged to have plotted to blow up U.S.-bound flights from the U.K. Following the subway bombings of last July, the fear of so-called homegrown terrorists in the UK is now palpable. And made far more scary by Britain’s participation in the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, which many in Britain – and not only Muslims – see as a reflection of what they see as President Bush’s war on Islam.
But the dis-integration of Muslim minorities didn’t begin with the invasion of Iraq. Its been happening for years. Muslim immigrants and British-born Muslims from various countries have, like most new immigrants to most countries, tended to want to live in the same neighborhoods – a development encouraged by the block-busting and red-lining practices of banks and real estate brokers. Entire cities have become “Muslim Cities.” In the process, they have displaced “regular” Brits. With UK property prices off the charts and a relatively slow renewal of the housing stock, the “regulars” have come to resent the immigrants.
Like most immigrants, children in Muslim communities attend de facto segregated schools, and their parents start their work life at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many have by now climbed a bit up the ladder, most notably opening small shops and other small businesses. But most of these are situated in the ghettos inhabited by their countrymen.
That raises the question of what successive British governments have done over the years to anticipate an oncoming train wreck and what policies it has put in place to avoid it.
The answer, lamentably, is virtually nothing. Predictably, there are all manner of inter-faith organizations, headed by well-known clergy and other senior figures. But few of these effectively reach the rank-and-file of Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe. The recent riots in the public housing projects dedicated largely to immigrants on the outskirts of Paris demonstrate the bankruptcy of current European efforts to help to integrate their Muslim populations into the life of the nation. But France is but one example among many.
In the United States, Muslim population counts are hard to come by. Estimates range from 2 to 8 million. Whatever the number, Muslim-Americans have become well integrated into the fabric of our society. Like traditional immigrants, beginning with the great wave of the mid-19th century, they first gravitated toward living areas where they could be among their own, speak the same language, eat the same foods. But over the years, they have morphed into a community that speaks English, owns prosperous businesses, serves in elected office and in our government, joins our armed forces, and participates more in public life than their counterparts in Europe.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that Americans, unlike Brits and other Europeans, are less fearful of those who are “not like us,” and more optimistic about understanding and accepting change. And perhaps because of our nation’s struggles with black-white racial issues, we have come to be a bit less paranoid – though our current immigration debate presents yet another challenge.
But the strong and sustained Muslim-American identification with the rest of our country is not immutable. It could change. One of the things that might hasten that change is the current government harassment of this segment of our population. Another is the xenophobia that followed 9/11 – in which, sadly, our right-wing religious leaders have been all too willing to participate.
The bottom line is that, despite President Bush’s many statements in support of Muslim-Americans, some in this community are beginning to feel almost as estranged from their country as their European counterparts. The more that feeling grows, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves unwittingly breeding the anger and resentment that ends in homegrown terrorism.
The issue is not whether Muslim women prefer to cover themselves. Personally, I find the practice demeaning to women. But that’s a view through Western eyes. If they don’t mind, why should we? Do we demand that Christian and Jewish women remove the crosses and stars of David from the necklaces they wear? Do we insist that our Amish people behave like most of the rest of us? Do we rant against Hassidic Jews who wear fur hats, prayer shawls, and funny hair-dos?
I have had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time talking with and listening to Muslim women in the Middle East who wore face veils, or niqabs, covered head to toe, except for their eyes and mouths. I can tell you that, once you get used to the absence of body language as a conversational indicator, how a person happens to be dressed quickly gets trumped by what she has to say.
This is something Jack Straw needs to understand. Maybe he needs to spend a bit more time with each of his constituents. My advice to him is to just to learn and get over it.
GET OVER IT, JACK!
By William Fisher
In 1969, at the end of my first full year of what became a 20-plus-year residence in Britain, I recall jotting down what I found to be the defining characteristics of the UK at that time. They were:
1. Suspicion of people who weren’t “them.”
2. Fear of change.
3. A class-structured society, where the “working class knew its place” and was always reluctant to challenge the old “upper class” power establishment.
What brought this musing back to me was the recent rant by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about his Muslim women constituents being covered up. Straw claimed he would be better able to respond to their needs if he could see the expressions on their faces.
Mr. Straw, who is a Labor Party Member of Parliament for Blackburn, where between 25% and 30% of residents are Muslim, explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers -- people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said. That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.”
Mr. Straw added, "What I've been struck by when I've been talking to some of the ladies concerned is that they had not, I think, been fully aware of the potential in terms of community relations."
Could this just be a contemporary version of my 1969 note, “Suspicion of people who weren’t ‘them’?” Which raises the question about just who is being unaware of “the potential in terms of community relations.”
In 1969, Britain had a relatively miniscule Muslim population. Today, its Muslim population is estimated to be 1.3 million, or three per cent of those who said they adhered to any religion.
This is undeniably a different dynamic for Brits, especially given their traditional fear of change and the glacial pace of their ability to accept and absorb it. But it isn’t as if Muslim immigration happened suddenly, all at once. The number of Muslims in the UK has grown gradually over the past generation.
To make the controversy even more heated, the veil controversy landed smack in the middle of the arrest of the gang of (Muslim) men alleged to have plotted to blow up U.S.-bound flights from the U.K. Following the subway bombings of last July, the fear of so-called homegrown terrorists in the UK is now palpable. And made far more scary by Britain’s participation in the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, which many in Britain – and not only Muslims – see as a reflection of what they see as President Bush’s war on Islam.
But the dis-integration of Muslim minorities didn’t begin with the invasion of Iraq. Its been happening for years. Muslim immigrants and British-born Muslims from various countries have, like most new immigrants to most countries, tended to want to live in the same neighborhoods – a development encouraged by the block-busting and red-lining practices of banks and real estate brokers. Entire cities have become “Muslim Cities.” In the process, they have displaced “regular” Brits. With UK property prices off the charts and a relatively slow renewal of the housing stock, the “regulars” have come to resent the immigrants.
Like most immigrants, children in Muslim communities attend de facto segregated schools, and their parents start their work life at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many have by now climbed a bit up the ladder, most notably opening small shops and other small businesses. But most of these are situated in the ghettos inhabited by their countrymen.
That raises the question of what successive British governments have done over the years to anticipate an oncoming train wreck and what policies it has put in place to avoid it.
The answer, lamentably, is virtually nothing. Predictably, there are all manner of inter-faith organizations, headed by well-known clergy and other senior figures. But few of these effectively reach the rank-and-file of Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe. The recent riots in the public housing projects dedicated largely to immigrants on the outskirts of Paris demonstrate the bankruptcy of current European efforts to help to integrate their Muslim populations into the life of the nation. But France is but one example among many.
In the United States, Muslim population counts are hard to come by. Estimates range from 2 to 8 million. Whatever the number, Muslim-Americans have become well integrated into the fabric of our society. Like traditional immigrants, beginning with the great wave of the mid-19th century, they first gravitated toward living areas where they could be among their own, speak the same language, eat the same foods. But over the years, they have morphed into a community that speaks English, owns prosperous businesses, serves in elected office and in our government, joins our armed forces, and participates more in public life than their counterparts in Europe.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that Americans, unlike Brits and other Europeans, are less fearful of those who are “not like us,” and more optimistic about understanding and accepting change. And perhaps because of our nation’s struggles with black-white racial issues, we have come to be a bit less paranoid – though our current immigration debate presents yet another challenge.
But the strong and sustained Muslim-American identification with the rest of our country is not immutable. It could change. One of the things that might hasten that change is the current government harassment of this segment of our population. Another is the xenophobia that followed 9/11 – in which, sadly, our right-wing religious leaders have been all too willing to participate.
The bottom line is that, despite President Bush’s many statements in support of Muslim-Americans, some in this community are beginning to feel almost as estranged from their country as their European counterparts. The more that feeling grows, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves unwittingly breeding the anger and resentment that ends in homegrown terrorism.
The issue is not whether Muslim women prefer to cover themselves. Personally, I find the practice demeaning to women. But that’s a view through Western eyes. If they don’t mind, why should we? Do we demand that Christian and Jewish women remove the crosses and stars of David from the necklaces they wear? Do we insist that our Amish people behave like most of the rest of us? Do we rant against Hassidic Jews who wear fur hats, prayer shawls, and funny hair-dos?
I have had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time talking with and listening to Muslim women in the Middle East who wore face veils, or niqabs, covered head to toe, except for their eyes and mouths. I can tell you that, once you get used to the absence of body language as a conversational indicator, how a person happens to be dressed quickly gets trumped by what she has to say.
This is something Jack Straw needs to understand. Maybe he needs to spend a bit more time with each of his constituents. My advice to him is to just to learn and get over it.
In 1969, at the end of my first full year of what became a 20-plus-year residence in Britain, I recall jotting down what I found to be the defining characteristics of the UK at that time. They were:
1. Suspicion of people who weren’t “them.”
2. Fear of change.
3. A class-structured society, where the “working class knew its place” and was always reluctant to challenge the old “upper class” power establishment.
What brought this musing back to me was the recent rant by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about his Muslim women constituents being covered up. Straw claimed he would be better able to respond to their needs if he could see the expressions on their faces.
Mr. Straw, who is a Labor Party Member of Parliament for Blackburn, where between 25% and 30% of residents are Muslim, explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers -- people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said. That's made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That's just a fact of life.”
Mr. Straw added, "What I've been struck by when I've been talking to some of the ladies concerned is that they had not, I think, been fully aware of the potential in terms of community relations."
Could this just be a contemporary version of my 1969 note, “Suspicion of people who weren’t ‘them’?” Which raises the question about just who is being unaware of “the potential in terms of community relations.”
In 1969, Britain had a relatively miniscule Muslim population. Today, its Muslim population is estimated to be 1.3 million, or three per cent of those who said they adhered to any religion.
This is undeniably a different dynamic for Brits, especially given their traditional fear of change and the glacial pace of their ability to accept and absorb it. But it isn’t as if Muslim immigration happened suddenly, all at once. The number of Muslims in the UK has grown gradually over the past generation.
To make the controversy even more heated, the veil controversy landed smack in the middle of the arrest of the gang of (Muslim) men alleged to have plotted to blow up U.S.-bound flights from the U.K. Following the subway bombings of last July, the fear of so-called homegrown terrorists in the UK is now palpable. And made far more scary by Britain’s participation in the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, which many in Britain – and not only Muslims – see as a reflection of what they see as President Bush’s war on Islam.
But the dis-integration of Muslim minorities didn’t begin with the invasion of Iraq. Its been happening for years. Muslim immigrants and British-born Muslims from various countries have, like most new immigrants to most countries, tended to want to live in the same neighborhoods – a development encouraged by the block-busting and red-lining practices of banks and real estate brokers. Entire cities have become “Muslim Cities.” In the process, they have displaced “regular” Brits. With UK property prices off the charts and a relatively slow renewal of the housing stock, the “regulars” have come to resent the immigrants.
Like most immigrants, children in Muslim communities attend de facto segregated schools, and their parents start their work life at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many have by now climbed a bit up the ladder, most notably opening small shops and other small businesses. But most of these are situated in the ghettos inhabited by their countrymen.
That raises the question of what successive British governments have done over the years to anticipate an oncoming train wreck and what policies it has put in place to avoid it.
The answer, lamentably, is virtually nothing. Predictably, there are all manner of inter-faith organizations, headed by well-known clergy and other senior figures. But few of these effectively reach the rank-and-file of Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
The situation is similar elsewhere in Europe. The recent riots in the public housing projects dedicated largely to immigrants on the outskirts of Paris demonstrate the bankruptcy of current European efforts to help to integrate their Muslim populations into the life of the nation. But France is but one example among many.
In the United States, Muslim population counts are hard to come by. Estimates range from 2 to 8 million. Whatever the number, Muslim-Americans have become well integrated into the fabric of our society. Like traditional immigrants, beginning with the great wave of the mid-19th century, they first gravitated toward living areas where they could be among their own, speak the same language, eat the same foods. But over the years, they have morphed into a community that speaks English, owns prosperous businesses, serves in elected office and in our government, joins our armed forces, and participates more in public life than their counterparts in Europe.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that Americans, unlike Brits and other Europeans, are less fearful of those who are “not like us,” and more optimistic about understanding and accepting change. And perhaps because of our nation’s struggles with black-white racial issues, we have come to be a bit less paranoid – though our current immigration debate presents yet another challenge.
But the strong and sustained Muslim-American identification with the rest of our country is not immutable. It could change. One of the things that might hasten that change is the current government harassment of this segment of our population. Another is the xenophobia that followed 9/11 – in which, sadly, our right-wing religious leaders have been all too willing to participate.
The bottom line is that, despite President Bush’s many statements in support of Muslim-Americans, some in this community are beginning to feel almost as estranged from their country as their European counterparts. The more that feeling grows, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves unwittingly breeding the anger and resentment that ends in homegrown terrorism.
The issue is not whether Muslim women prefer to cover themselves. Personally, I find the practice demeaning to women. But that’s a view through Western eyes. If they don’t mind, why should we? Do we demand that Christian and Jewish women remove the crosses and stars of David from the necklaces they wear? Do we insist that our Amish people behave like most of the rest of us? Do we rant against Hassidic Jews who wear fur hats, prayer shawls, and funny hair-dos?
I have had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time talking with and listening to Muslim women in the Middle East who wore face veils, or niqabs, covered head to toe, except for their eyes and mouths. I can tell you that, once you get used to the absence of body language as a conversational indicator, how a person happens to be dressed quickly gets trumped by what she has to say.
This is something Jack Straw needs to understand. Maybe he needs to spend a bit more time with each of his constituents. My advice to him is to just to learn and get over it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
