2007

2007

There are several issues/moments that I believe will define 2007:  Bhutto assassination, Iran intelligence report, Elections in Central and South America, Putin, and of course Iraq.

The most overlooked story of 2007 was the conflict and unrest in eastern Africa.  Over 1 million Somalians were displaced this year.  Added to Somalia’s continuing internal unrest was the intervention of the United States, through its own actions and through Ethiopia’s involvement.  Besides Ethiopia’s involvement in Somalia, they were also involved in a revived conflict with Eritrea.

So that I don’t repeat the previous posts, I’ll add the two biggest international stories originating out of Miami:

1)  The continuing Haitian and Cuban refugee crisis.  This includes the 100+ Haitians that came ashore in South Florida in the spring.  These refugees were detained for months without ever being released to local family members.  Most have now been deported to Haiti.

2)  The mistrial in the LIberty City 7 case.  These men, from one of the most economically depressed areas of Miami, were accused of supporting Al Qaeda and conspiring to blow up the Sears tower.  Their defense was that they saw the chance to ask for thousands of dollars and really had no intent to follow through with any actions.  One of the seven was acquitted.  He is now detained in a Georgia detention facility facing deportation charges, despite being a legal permanent resident for over a decade.  Due to the fact that immigration proceedings are a civil matter, he can face deportation on the terrorism charges under a burden of proof that is less than that of a criminal proceeding.  There is no double jeopardy protection, because of he is not being retried on criminal grounds. (More to come on this topic in a later post). 

2008

I hope that the biggest story of 2008 will be a major Supreme Court decision addressing the Guantanamo detainees.  Since I am undecided as to who I will support in the Presidential election, I hope the Supreme Court will create a broad precedent that will guide and restrain the next President.  If we have learned anything over the past year (or seven) its that an overactive judiciary is better than an unconstrained executive.

Personally I am hoping to travel more than I was able to in the last year.  Taking the Bar exam and starting a new job restricted my ability to go overseas this year.

Norway means business with its gender equality laws!

Norway is famous for its high level of gender equality in all spheres of life. It’s not uncommon or "weird" for men to be stay-at-home fathers, or for women to work on oil drilling stations. In my experience, Norwegians usually react with puzzlement when non-Norwegians (and especially non-Scandinavians) express shock at Norway’s degree of gender equality. Norwegians I know usually express a "why shouldn’t it be this way?" view. I once lamented to a Norwegian friend that Norway is a century ahead of the US on gender equality, and I wasn’t kidding or exaggerating.

And gender equality in Norway appears set to advance even further with a new law that will require that forty percent of all company boards be female. Via the Guardian:

Quarter of Norway’s firms face shutdown as female directors deadline approaches

· Companies must meet 40% quota by Monday
· Law helps raise proportion to world’s highest

Gwladys Fouché

Oslo The Guardian,

Thursday December 27 2007

Almost a quarter of Norway’s companies have failed to comply with a controversial law requiring them to increase the proportion of women on their boards to 40%, according to government figures. If they do not promote more women, they could be shut down.

Norway’s 487 public limited companies, including 175 firms listed on the Oslo stock exchange, have until the end of the year on Monday to implement a 2003 act that requires firms to boost the number of female directors.

The law, which introduced quotas, has been effective in raising the number of women board members at listed companies from 6% in 2001 to 37%.

Norway now boasts the highest proportion of women on boards in the world. Sweden comes second with 19%; the US has around 15%. In the UK, only 11% of directors were female in 2007.

The Norwegian government hailed the numbers as proof that quotas work.

The quotas work but not only because the law is enforced. Norway’s government, and the governments of the other Scandinavian countries, have long promoted gender equality as public policy. Parenthood leave for both mothers and fathers, government subsidized childcare, free or heavily subsidized education, and promotion of gender equality in schools, workplaces, and the media have, over time, created cultures that are conducive to men and women working, living, earning, studying, and parenting as equals.

So yes, folks, this is Big Government (run for the exits! Here comes Marx!) at work. Because that’s what it takes. Cultural ideas about gender  are among the most ingrained in any society. Public perceptions about gender roles change slowly. Government, through interventionist policies –which yes, do require high taxes– can speed up the process, but only if they make gender equality an apolitical goal and devote serious enough effort and money to working toward it.

Even serious efforts, though, sometimes don’t work out as well as they were intended to.

"This trend would not have happened without regulation," said the gender equality minister, Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen. "Business organisations have tried for 20 years to boost the number of women on boards, but they have been unsuccessful."

That doesn’t, however, mean that Big Government failed, or that gender equality is unattainable. It just means governments have to try harder, and enforce their policies –in other words, get tough on inequality.

When asked whether the government would really shut down companies that do not comply, Ramin-Osmundsen said: "The law is clear – we will enforce the procedures. These have existed for 30 years. They have not come out of nowhere."

The Norwegians have a minister for gender equality, and she sounds like she doesn’t take nonsense from anyone. That’s awesome.

Can you imagine a Secretary for Gender Equality in the US president’s cabinet? The Republicans would keel over from shock and indignation. "The wimmenz are ruining everything us privileged white males fought to keep for ourselves!" they would wail.

As I’ve learned in economic and social rights work, four kinds of equality have been advanced in the past hundred years: formal equality, equality of results, equality of opportunity, and substantive equality of opportunity. Today, the trend is toward substantive equality of opportunity, which involves taking positive measures to increase the numbers of people from disadvantaged categories competing for jobs, goods, and services. This is an idea embraced in most European countries, and especially those in Western Europe.

Backing Out of Anger

Nation-states often exhibit strangely human behavior for being theoretical non-living actors. One instance of this is their inability to back away from a fight once tensions have risen.

Arguably, the tiff between the United States and Iran could be no more than the result of personal politics between Ahmedinejad and Bush but there is enough national antipathy between these two nations that the inability of the United States to step back and put less pressure on Iran is most likely the result of a still ever present fear that Iran is a bastion of evil and hatred.

Of course, there is evidence to the contrary. Reports released two weeks ago from our very own government’s intelligence stated that Iran had not been pursing nuclear capabilities since 2003 and other reports from as recently as mid-2007 confirm that no efforts have been made to restart these programs.

Now we have the issue of Russia supplying Iran with enriched uranium fuel rods for their power plants, and the US is still looking for fights. Bush did not support the Russian action, looking to further intimidate Iran with international solidarity that included Russian and Chinese support. This shipment, however, proves to the world that Russia does not agree with the harsh stance the US has adopted. Trying to use this to his advantage as best he could, Bush commented that now Iran would not require its own enrichment operations, as they were receiving them from abroad.

I wonder though, why do we keep asking this of Iran if we know they are not enriching for weapons capabilities? I believe this administration, in spite of the quagmire that is Iraq, has done a very good job of instilling fear of Iran in the American populace. This is something I hear echoed in my coworkers’ conversations here in the Midwest especially, time and time again; they are certain that Iran is just a step away from blasting the US to nothingness. Just because there is evidence that says that while Iran might not be 100% wholesome fun for the whole family, maybe they aren’t as bad as we have been portraying, doesn’t mean that the government can just stop touting them as a ferocious enemy. That might suggest that the Bush administration is just crying wolf. Until we have an administration that can still hold their heads up high while they say “circumstances are not as bad as we predicted” we will have this sticky behavior of being unable to back down from a fight, and we run the risk of never being able to retify hatreds.

War has created a living Hell for Iraqi women

The Guardian’s Mark Lattimer has written a gruesome and important piece about the situation of women in Iraq today, four and half years into a war in which they have lost nearly every fundamental freedom. Even worse, Lattimer explains in gory detail, they are now being subjected to the most brutal forms of sexual and gender-based violence. Whereas most conflicts involve murders and massacres of men and boys, Iraq’s war has given rise to increasingly common gendered targeting of women and girls for deaths so grim their descriptions leave me lightheaded.

They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman’s face into a fixed look of surprise.

I want to vomit. I want to grab the right wing warmongers who argued that invading Iraq would "liberate" it’s "oppressed women" and shake them senseless. This violent impulse comes from a place of profound frustration, anger, and shame. I am shaking with rage because the actions of my elected leaders led to the deaths and misery of my sisters. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to be punished for my own sins of omission. I want to turn back time.

In March 2004 George Bush said that "the advance of freedom in the Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women … the systematic use of rape by Saddam’s former regime to dishonour families has ended". This may have given some people the impression that the American and British invasion of Iraq had helped to improve the lives of its women. But this is far from the case.

Even under Saddam, women in Iraq – including in semi-autonomous Kurdistan – were widely recognised as among the most liberated in the Middle East. They held important positions in business, education and the public sector, and their rights were protected by a statutory family law that was the envy of women’s activists in neighbouring countries. But since the 2003 invasion, advances that took 50 years to establish are crumbling away. In much of the country, women can only now move around with a male escort. Rape is committed habitually by all the main armed groups, including those linked to the government. Women are being murdered throughout Iraq in unprecedented numbers

Surely we have passed the point at which the need for an international tribunal to deal out justice for the crimes committed by and against all sides in this war could still be a subject of debate. Investigations, prosecutions, and reparations won’t bring back the lives gone, but they can put the moral balance of the world a little less off kilter.

Furthermore, any kind of better future demands that there be a reckoning for these crimes inside and outside Iraq. The perpetrators on the individual murders and massacres, the men with literal blood on their hands, must face justice, but so too must the men who created the climate in which these crimes can be committed. Most members of this latter group today sit comfortably in the same Washington offices from which they set the wheels of Iraq’s death machine in motion. They must be made to face the consequences of their decisions. If impunity prevails, we are all lost.

Problems with NAFTA

In the early 1990s, George Bush was trying to master a plan to create a free, three-way trade agreement with Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The plans were initially secret but in 1992 when President Bush, Prime Minister Mulroney, and Carlos Salinas signed this two-thousand page agreement, the public was let in on the decision. Later, in 1993, new president Bill Clinton fought energetically for the acceptance of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and it became official policy in 1994.

“Policy issues are some of the most complex and far-reaching problems confronted by societies. Policy issues range from city problems to international and world issues, include conflicting sets of interest and objectives, need to be resolved in the face of uncertainty, and may affect millions of people” (Ley-Borras).

The terms of NAFTA include gradually reducing tariffs between the three nation-states, reducing non-tariffs for trade/investments by non-discriminatory practices, and leniency by the governments for businesses. It was also arranged for a secret panel to handle conflicts that may arise due to the Agreement. While many approved of NAFTA, opposition was fierce as well. In all three countries, there were those who feared the deal would raise unemployment in the United States and Canada, labor organizations would be undermined, environmental standards would be ignored, and congestion in transportation would occur. (McKillen)

While NAFTA benefits trading purposes it also has many difficulties associated with it due to actors at the industry level in each included country. If we are going to discuss the renegotiation of NAFTA then it must be realized that NAFTA has been hurtful to labor unions and the workers. The trucking, automobile, and agricultural companies are strongly opposed to the agreement There are also intranational actors that are involved, such as; Importer/exporter organizations, corporations, industry, service firm associations, agricultural producers, financial institutions, NAFTA officials, Congress, state/provincial governors, labor unions, environmental groups, small firms, farmers, and political parties. Because each of these groups like and dislike many things, NAFTA faces the difficulty of trying to please everyone. (Ley-Borras)

Congestion concerning transportation vehicles from the Mexican border into the United States is a serious concern. The borders have been opened to trucking and various solutions have been proposed. Solutions consist of restricting trucks from the highways or insisting they stay in the right lanes, slower speed limits on the interstates, and various taxes. These propositions often lead to further congestion and the tax money received is often used wastefully, an example being a bridge in Alaska that is rarely used. (Bailey)

Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1955, said, “Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods”. Congress is currently feuding with the president over these transportation issues. In the original 1994 negotiations, Mexican trucks were conditionally allowed to haul their goods anywhere in the country, but environmental and labor groups have protested ever since. Congress has continued denying the trucking companies access well into the current year. (Lynch)

Senator Byron Dorgan is quoted saying, “We don’t have equivalent standards and most especially enforcement of these standards…To allow long-haul Mexican trucks under these circumstances would cause safety questions on American roads.” John Hill, who is the head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), says that his agency will carefully inspect every Mexican carrier to see how it compares to U.S. safety standards. Dorgan replies, “…a colossal failure… [Hill’s agency] had not developed sufficient plans for checking every demonstration project truck”.

Hillary Clinton, a democratic presidential candidate, went against husband, former President Bill Clinton, by rejecting NAFTA. She insists that the benefits have gone to the wealthy and have cost occupational opportunities for people in America by outsourcing businesses to Mexico to pay a lower wage. The capitalist intent, contrasted to the socialist intent, is shown clearly through the principle of paying Mexican workers lower wages to maximize profits while people in the home country go without jobs. Hillary Clinton wants Americans to question whether or not the ideal of globalization has been fully embraced and taken advantage of. She feels this is not the case because of the problems encountered concerning NAFTA.

It also must be questioned whether or not these re-located businesses in Mexico are exploiting their workers. They are being paid low wages compared to the United States and there is a reason that labor unions are upset with NAFTA. Have the effects of low wages, child workers, and no labor unions been studied? Robyn Sears, a child development specialist, states that children are the very most important asset to a country, and every possible mean to protect them should be implemented. Environmental standards in Mexico, such as waste management, may vary from practices in our country. Is detriment to the environment acceptable? These questions must be analyzed and studied to find a real solution.

Mexico’s economy used to be completely dependent on oil and oil pricings. But because of NAFTA (1992), the United States’ industrial production began to control the economy instead. When U.S. economic growth slowed in 2001, Mexico was directly affected by this until 2003. Almost three-quarters of Mexican exports come to the United States, and the impact on Mexico is phenomenal. Is it moral and just that America can completely control other countries economies? The other side of this point is that Mexican consumers are now spending more than ever and lending more than ever from banking institutions. And the Mexican finance departments are expecting up to a four percent increase in economic value in 2008. (USA Today)

Because of the problems with NAFTA, there must be a call to action. The North American Free Trade Agreement must be renegotiated. Leaders must re-define the issue and participatory actors, develop a list of alternatives, and agree on a permanent position. (Ley-Borras)

Freedom of Speech or Freedom Not to be Bothered?

Where do you stand?

I’m curious.

With the Sudanese Teddy Bear Crisis (say that with a straight face) now at an end and Ms. Gibbons safely returned to England, I find my own sense of justice befuddled and confused.  There can be no doubt that many in the western world saw her arrest as an overreaction, but this is just part of a larger issue that goes beyond one case of cultural ignorance.  Just as with the Danish cartoons several months back that brought death threats found around the Islamic world or a recent news story from India where protests have pressed for a ban on books carrying the Prophet’s picture, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/south_asia/7126217.stm) this is a case of where exactly should freedom of speech end and respect for religion begin?

In this county few religions are spared intentional torturous insult.  The religion of my family, Catholicism, is a magnet for jibes ad ridicule.  Judaism, Hinduism, Wiccan, they all have a myriad of jokes and insults that have developed in our culture.  True believers of these faiths do not enjoy being belittled, yet through out the world no religion is quite as taboo as Islam.  Why does Islam deserve more consideration than any other religion?

Conversely, I am sympathetic to cultural understanding and respect.  Ms. Gibbons’ offense may not have been criminal, but it was a mistake made out of ignorance.  Additionally, state sovereignty, that is, the fact that this world is no longer colonial, means that an individual country should be free to make law that follows the political will of its people.  If the majority of a population is Islamic and religiously sensitive, it would behoove a government to enforce policies that protect and respect the faith of their people as their people believe it should be respected.

What is your opinion on this matter?  In this globalized world, is freedom of speech, or global respect for a cultural morals and values more important?

For the billionth time, what is wrong in the banlieues of France has nothing to do with Islam

On Feministe, Jill wrote the following short post in response to the Times (UK) headline: "France stunned by rioter’s savagery."

Here’s Jill’s post, which is short but to-the-point.

“Savagery”

Posted by Jill @ 8:46 pm

Headline writers choose their words deliberately. And when they choose the word “savage,” they are trying to paint a very specific picture for you — and can guess the colors they’re using (hint: white is not on the palate).

A commenter smartly wrote: "The term ‘savage’ has a lot of racist baggage from its use in colonial and post-colonial discourse in Western societies."

This is true, but the Times article (while not good) was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the worst article or commentary piece on the recent riots. The worst, in my opinion, were those from far right bloggers and newspaper columnists that attempted to paint riots about race relations and social exclusion as Islamist activities.

Debbie Schlussel, frequent Fox News guest and owner of one of the most popular political blogs, referred to the riots as “punk jihad” and the rioters (not all of whom are even Muslim to begin with) as “unrequited 72 virgins yearning romeos.” Other right-wing opinion-shapers have stressed over and over again their annoyance with the “mainstream media” for not including in every piece on the violence the fact that the rioters came from Muslim and non-white backgrounds.

What really disturbs me is that Schlussel, Steyn, Malkin, the “Little Green Footballs” crowd, and the rest know very well that the riots in France have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with discrimination. However, they see in the images of cars aflame and teenagers with dark complexions hurling stones at riot police a ripe opportunity to bolster their theories of a “clash of civilizations,” a European takeover by Muslims (the “Eurabia” theory), and the unassimilability of non-white, non-Christian peoples into majority white, irreligious, and Christian European societies.

At the heart of these theories (which do differ slightly, and thus require different methods of de-bunking) is white supremacism, and a profitable kind of white supremacism, too. The bigoted blogging of Michelle Malkin and Debbie Schlussel and the multimedia Islamophobic, Europhobic, eugenicist, and sometimes even genocide-justifying screeds of Mark Steyn generate cash. Their authors know they’re full of you-know-what, but they also understand that there is an international market for their kind of bigotry. This makes them morally far worse than the thousands of idiots who buy into their absurd, fever-dream theories wholeheartedly.

I used to think the best ting to do with people like Malkin, Steyn, etc was to ignore them, to not dignify their prejudice-inciting ramblings with an intelligent response. I also felt like this was the best way to handle Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, coincidentally. A European professor of mine changed my mind when she very persuasively argued that Holocaust denial should not be criminalized anywhere outside Germany or Austria, and that instead of jailing or fining Holocaust deniers, they should be encouraged to enter into public debates with legitimate historians and social scientists. This, she argued, would result in the hate-mongers’ public humiliation and banishment to the realm of obscurity. Now, I believe that all purveyors of hatred must be confronted head-on, in the public sphere, and in ways that not only disprove their theories, but show them to be the malevolent charlatans they are –in other words, shame and discredit them completely.

What I’m advocating here isn’t "fighting fire with fire." What I’m advocating is fighting hate propaganda with the full force of reality.

Recycle to Eradicate Poverty / The Earth Day Challenge

Hi everyone,

I felt informed citizens like yourselves, as senior political analysts and readers, would take interest in a program that simultaenously creates positive social, economic, and environmental impact around the world.

I’m the Communications Director for a program called Recycle to Eradicate Poverty. Our program recycles used cell phones and ink cartridges — pollutants extremely harmful to public health and the environment — to fund microfinance loans for poor women in Latin America.

It works this way: We collect phones and cartridges to resell or recycle them, and the proceeds go to the Grameen Foundation through its affiliate, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization called The Chiapas Project. The funds go to support women and their children in Mexico, Haiti, and Elsalvador, empowering them financially and socially.

So we 1) prevent pollutants from entering the environment, 2) enable woman-owned businesses in Latin America, and 3) empower women and their children. Next spring Recycle to Eradicate Poverty plans to launch the first annual 2008 Earth Day Challenge to protect the environment and fight poverty. The Challenge will start January 22 and end Earth Day, April 22. We seek to participate with universities, community colleges, high schools, and businesses to ensure this globally empowering Challenge makes as much scial, economic, and environmental impact as possible.

If this find your interest or you know of students and friends who would take interest, would you consider passing this forward to them at high schools and universities? This is the perfect opportunity for youth to take ownership of a great cause and use it to protect the environment and fight poverty.

I can be reached with any questions at ryan@phoneraiser.com. More information about Recycle can be found at www.recycletoeradicatepoverty.com.

Some facts you might or might not know:

• Cell phones are retired in enormous amounts: 500 million each year, 10 million each month.
• Each phone contains 8 toxic substances — arsenic and mercury included — and can pollute up to 135,000 liters of water.
• Women and men around the world live on less than $2 per day.
• Microfinance for-profits and non-profits enjoy loan repayment rates at or above 90% worldwide.

Recycle to Eradicate Poverty prides itself on direct affiliation with the Grameen Foundation and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.