Shunya's Notes

My Daughter, the Terrorist

I stumbled upon this documentary film from 2007 (haven't seen it yet). It explores "what happens to a population that has experienced more than a generation of warfare," and "how people become suicide bombers, a choice that seems completely incomprehensible to most of us":

In Sri Lanka's brutal civil war, some rebel women end their lives as suicide bombers that have killed hundreds over the years. A Norwegian documentary film that follows two 24-year-olds training to do just this has enraged the Sri Lankan government, but raises important questions about the conduct of war and its consequences.

The women are from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), often called the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that has been fighting for an independent homeland for the Tamil ethnic minority since the 1970s. The demand has arisen, they say, in reaction to abuses and discrimination by the Sri Lankan government.

A third of the Tigers are women.

More here.  (Watch the trailer; the movie is not yet available in the US.) From the movie site, I also discovered the relatively new Society for Terrorism Research (STR), which invited a screening of this film at its first annual conference last year.

The Society for Terrorism Research (STR) is an international, multi-disciplinary organization of theoretical and empirical researchers in such behavioral sciences as anthropology, biology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, and others. Its mission is to enhance knowledge and understanding of terrorism. Research on terrorism should include and integrate theoretical frameworks and findings from multiple disciplines. Thus informed, more effective policies worldwide will be able to reflect diverse models of complex causation.

Sounds promising, even though Scott Atran is conspicuous by his absence from its governing, advisory, and journal editorial boards.

On American Jingoism

Shortly before the "shock & awe" attack on Iraq, and for months after, public support for the war was high in the US. This was reflected in the 70-80% approval rating for Bush, who had no doubt hoped that the war would turn him into a great president and American hero. Alas. But even today, many US politicians who once supported Bush but now criticize him, do so with the logic that they didn’t support this kind of war, one that would be so badly run. Bush, they say, should have sent in more troops and supplies, and planned "to win the peace". In other words, they supported an operationally smarter war. They reflect not on the idea of war itself, but on a war that America would have won.

A minority of Americans did oppose the war from the start and called these politicians irresponsible, ignorant, and morally complicit. But what about the other 70-80% of Americans who had also approved? Most of them even re-elected the same politicians, knowing their devious course of action. Are they any less irresponsible, ignorant, and morally complicit? 

It's not enough to argue that Americans were lied to about Saddam's nukes and his links to al-Qaeda. With the exact same "evidence", why did Americans support the war, when much of the rest of the world opposed it? Why was the threshold for using the military option so low in the US? Aren't the same people now receptive to the saber-rattling against Iran (including casual threats of obliteration)?

What is it that makes Americans, and hence their politicians, so jingoistic? This jingoism, combined with US military might and the ordinary American's ignorance about the cultural complexities of much older societies, is today a blight upon the world. In Iraq alone, it has helped kill perhaps a million people and turn millions more into refugees, creating the "most catastrophic refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian diaspora of 1948".

In the excerpt below, professor Tony Judt offers a compelling explanation for why "the United States today is the only advanced democracy where public figures glorify and exalt the military":

Americans, perhaps alone in the world, experienced the twentieth century in a far more positive light. The US was not invaded. It did not lose vast numbers of citizens, or huge swathes of territory, as a result of occupation or dismemberment. Although humiliated in distant neocolonial wars (in Vietnam and now in Iraq), the US has never suffered the full consequences of defeat. Despite their ambivalence toward its recent undertakings, most Americans still feel that the wars their country has fought were mostly "good wars." The US was greatly enriched by its role in the two world wars and by their outcome, in which respect it has nothing in common with Britain, the only other major country to emerge unambiguously victorious from those struggles but at the cost of near bankruptcy and the loss of empire. And compared with other major twentieth-century combatants, the US lost relatively few soldiers in battle and suffered hardly any civilian casualties.

The Other Guantanamo

David Vine, author of the forthcoming Island of Shame: The Secret History of Exile and Empire on Diego Garcia, chronicles yet another sorry saga of American imperialism.

On the small, remote island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean halfway between Africa and Indonesia, the United States has one of the most secretive military bases in the world ... this huge US air and naval base has been a major, if little known, launch pad for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the past year, the George W Bush administration has made improvements that point toward its use in a possible attack on Iran. The administration recently admitted what it had long denied and what journalists, human-rights investigators and others had long suspected: the island has also been part of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) secret "rendition" program for captured terrorist suspects.

More here.

Jensen on Pro Publica

Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at UT Austin, analyzes the "grand" ambitions of Pro Publica:

Pro Publica, an initiative launched last month in the United States to help revitalize investigative journalism ... reminds us of important values at the core of the craft of journalism, but also exposes the common political confusions of mainstream journalists that so often undermine their best efforts.

Launched with a multi-million dollar [philanthropic] grant ... Pro Publica plans to function as an independent newsroom staffed by some of the country’s top journalists, offering stories to a variety of media outlets under various distribution arrangements ... So far, so good. There’s a problem: Managers of the profit-hungry corporations that produce most of the country’s journalism have fewer resources to do their jobs, which predictably leads to less of the investigative journalism that requires time and money. The proposed solution: Committed journalists, backed by well-intentioned benefactors, step in to fill the gap through Pro Publica.

But the more vexing problem — and what may make the project, in the end, largely irrelevant — becomes clear in reading the mission statement of the group, which includes these crucial two paragraphs:

More here.

Over 1,000,000 Iraqis Killed by US-Lead Invasion?

Here's something you're unlikely to see in the US press:

Further survey work undertaken by ORB, in association with its research partner IIACSS, confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003.

This is the conclusion of Opinion Research Business (ORB), an establishmentarian, British polling firm that conducted a study in Iraq in 2007. You can see their results on their website here, with an update here. But apparently, this information isn't newsworthy enough even to warrant discussion in the media.

Meanwhile, the US president is focused on his "legacy." He's aided in the effort by a new Fox documentary eulogizing him and claiming that he's been credited with "some of the most eloquent and visionary speeches ever delivered by an American president." And as the show goes on, with President Bush comparing himself to President Lincoln, it sounds increasingly like a joke. Was this program produced by satirist Stephen Colbert? Unfortunately not. Here's a taste (approx. 10 minutes):

Watch the full documentary here.

Peirce on Muslims in Britain

Gareth Peirce, a UK lawyer who has since the 1970s represented individuals accused of involvement in terrorism from both the Irish and the Muslim communities, finds instructive parallels between their situations:

The history of thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, as it is being written today, might give the impression of a steady progression towards an inevitable and just conclusion. The new suspect community in this country, Muslims, want to know whether their experience today can be compared with that of the Irish in the last third of the 20th century. It is dangerously misleading to assert that it was the conflict in Northern Ireland which produced the many terrible wrongs in the country’s recent history: it was injustice that created and fuelled the conflict. Before Bloody Sunday, when British soldiers shot and killed 13 unarmed Catholic demonstrators who were marching to demand not a united Ireland but equal rights in employment, education and housing (as well as an end to internment), the IRA was a diminished organisation, unable to recruit. After Bloody Sunday volunteers from every part of Ireland and every background came forward. Over the years of the conflict, every lawless action on the part of the British state provoked a similar reaction: internment, ‘shoot to kill’, the use of torture (hooding, extreme stress positions, mock executions), brutally obtained false confessions and fabricated evidence. This was registered by the community most affected, but the British public, in whose name these actions were taken, remained ignorant: that the state was seen to be combating terrorism sufficed. Central to the anger and despair that fuelled the conflict was the realisation that the British courts offered neither protection nor justice. The Widgery Report into Bloody Sunday, which was carried out by the lord chief justice, absolved the British army and backed its false account of 13 murders, ensuring that Irish nationalists would see the legal system as being aligned against them.

We should keep all this in mind as we look at the experiences of our new suspect community.

More here.

Avnery on the Candidates

Uri Avnery, writer, peace activist, and an Israeli Jew with a refined moral conscience, evaluates the remaining US presidential candidates—McCain, Clinton, Obama—including their attitudes to Israel.

Here a Jew will pop the classic question: Is it good for the Jews?

The people who claim to speak for the American Jews, the "leaders" who were not elected by anyone, the chiefs of the fetid "organizations", are conducting a dirty campaign of defamation and sly hints against [Obama]. If his middle name is Hussein and he is black, he must be an "Arab-lover". Also, he did not distance himself enough from the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

The same "leaders" are in bed with the most loathsome racists in the US, obscurantist fundamentalists and blood-stained neo-cons. But most American Jews know that their place is not there. The unholy alliance with those types will inevitably come home to roost. The Jews have to be where they have always been: in the progressive camp, striving for equality and the separation between state and religion.

It must be asked: Is it good for Israel?

All three candidates have groveled at the feet of AIPAC. The fawning of all three before the Israeli leadership is disgusting. They all show a lack of integrity. But I know that they have no choice. That's how it is in the USA.

In spite of this, Obama succeeded in getting out one courageous sentence. Speaking before a mainly Jewish audience in Cleveland, he said: "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."

More here.

Hedges on the New Atheists

Chris Hedges, journalist and war correspondent, on why New Atheists like Hitchens and Harris are as dangerous as Christian fundamentalists:

I think a lot of their popularity stems from a legitimate anger on the part of a lot of Americans toward the intolerance and chauvinism of the radical religious right in this country. Unfortunately, what they've done is offer a Utopian belief system that is as self-delusional as that offered by Christian fundamentalists. They adopt many of the foundational belief systems of fundamentalists. For example, they believe that the human species is marching forward, that there is an advancement toward some kind of collective moral progress -- that we are moving towards, if not a Utopian, certainly a better, more perfected human society. That's fundamental to the Christian right, and it's also fundamental to the New Atheists.

You know, there is nothing in human nature or in human history that points to the idea that we are moving anywhere. Technology and science, though they are cumulative and have improved, in many ways, the lives of people within the industrialized nations, have also unleashed the most horrific forms of violence and death, and let's not forget, environmental degradation, in human history. So, there's nothing intrinsically moral about science. Science is morally neutral. It serves the good and the bad. I mean, industrial killing is a product of technological advance, just as is penicillin and modern medicine. So I think that I find the faith that these people place in science and reason as a route toward human salvation to be as delusional as the faith the Christian right places in miracles and angels.

In other words, material progress without moral progress—the two have no obvious correlation—only raises the stakes for humanity. The New Atheists conflate the two, thus creating a justification for a neo-con imperial agenda. Read the transcript of the full interview here.

Gandhis of Olive Country

Another path to peace? Palestinians revel in Gandhi and the non-violent struggle (Aimee Ginsberg in Outlook India):

I'm sitting with Robert Hirschfield at the corner ice-cream shop, tall windows facing the street, steaming mint tea in our glass mugs. Outside, a large group of angry young PLO supporters are waving their fists and their kaffiyas, shouting slogans against the Hamas' massacre of 14 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) members in Gaza. We are in Ramallah, the interim capital of Palestine, two American Jewish writers, and I am thinking we are crazy. Hirschfield, 68, is comfortable. He has been travelling through Palestine for a month now, researching his book on Palestinian non-violence.

He likes it here. "There is an aliveness, an open and present friendliness, a warmth," he says. Outside, the shouting gets louder. I, sorry to say, think of Daniel Pearl; Hirschfield of Mahatma Gandhi.

It was the visit of Arun Gandhi—the Mahatma's grandson—to Palestine in 2004 that first caught Hirschfield's interest. "In the United States," Hirschfield says, "Palestinians are seldom portrayed as anything other than terrorists. Sure the terror is real, and Israel must defend herself. But why stigmatise the whole of the Palestinian people?" It was this point Arun Gandhi addressed ... "Imagine yourselves marching by the thousands behind your leaders, demanding the right to be treated as human beings," he had asked a large audience of Palestinians and their Israeli sympathisers. "Sit at the roadblocks and sing your songs. March to the wall and dance your dances."

No mass march followed this perhaps naive plea, but Arun's message was absorbed, part of a continuing Palestinian debate on the viability of a nonviolent (NV) resolution to the Israeli occupation.

More here. Also read about Mubarak Awad, the man who brought Gandhian methods to Palestine.

On Nuclear Energy

A compelling presentation on why nuclear energy must be a significant part of a clean energy solution (Gwyneth Cravens and Rip Anderson). What's needed next is a slick production -- "An Inconvenient Truth, Part II" -- to tie it all together using more charismatic presenters.