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SUMMER 2010
A Publication of the Public Policy Committee
Elizabeth Spiro Clark, Editor
Table of Contents
At The WNDC
ISLAM AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS: Isobel Coleman on "Paradise Beneath Her Feet"
PRESS WATCH
Progressive Blogosphere
CNN Intimidated? Obama Intimidated?
Washington Post Poll
The "Giving Pledge"
HUMAN RIGHTS & INTERNATIONAL
Failed States Never Die and Never Fade Away: Burma
Meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi
Election in Burma (Myammar)
Iran
At The WNDC
ISLAM AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS: Isobel Coleman on "Paradise Beneath Her Feet"
July 19, Isobel Coleman spoke to an overflow WNDC luncheon on her newly published book “Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East.” Coleman noted that earlier generations of women in Muslim countries who fought for women’s rights did so in a secular context at a time when feminism was often associated with imperialism, atheism and communism. Now, Coleman says, women are connecting their advocacy with religion, working with the Koran and Muslim scholars.
There have been successes. In Iraq, Ayatollah al-Sistani issued a fatwa stating that in Islam women can work. In Morocco, the family code with respect to polygamy was rolled back on religious grounds, on the interpretation that the Koran allows polygamy only if the man can treat all his wives equally. Selling off daughters in marriage is countered by a Koranic injunction to give the daughter a say in whom she marries.
Coleman said that “Islam is a religion very few people understand.” Therefore she sees the great advances in women’s literacy across the Islamic world as a powerful bottom-up force for change, noting however the anomaly that the highest literacy rates for women are in the region’s most socially conservative country, Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the positive effects of increasing literacy, Coleman spoke of the role of the global media. Noting the popularity of Turkish soap operas in Saudi Arabia and especially the Arabic “View,” which airs a broad range of social issues, including sex. During a poetry contest on another program, “Arabic Idol,” a fully covered woman contestant was awarded first prize even though what she had to say was radical by Saudi standards (the judges received death threats from some conservative clerics).
In Iran, one of the region’s most important states, the government is losing its religious authority, its hypocrisy exposed in last summer’s fraudulent election.
Discussant, Middle East Institute Director, Wendy Chamberlin, noted that only in Turkey and Morocco has the family code been changed. Coleman admitted that the bottom-up progress in Islam she was describing would happen slowly.
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PRESS WATCH
The Progressive Blogosphere
In July your editor and WNDC member and journalist Peggy Orchowski attended a Center for American Progress forum discussion of the “progressive blogosphere” with two notable bloggers, Amanda Terkel of “Think Progress” and Tim Fernholz, fellow at the American Prospect and New American Foundation who blogs at “Tapped.”
The main message of Terkel and Fernholz is that blogging is changing:
1. The blogosphere is becoming professional, people are being paid, interns are
being hired.
2. Individual blogging will become less characteristic of the
blogosphere.
3. A blog is not a traditional newspaper, but increasingly it does
everything print journalism does or doesn’t do: opinion, advocacy
research. What it doesn’t have is a “filter.”
4. Mainstream media is not going to disappear but become more like
the blogosphere, supporting the trend to ever shorter “bites” of
information/opinion/advocacy and less traditional reporting ( see likely downsides
in the item on CNN below).
5. It has less ideological “traction” now than when the progressive
blogosphere was consistently opposing the Iraq war.
What the blogosphere isn’t doing:
1. Successfully putting grassroots pressure on the Obama
Administration to take actions more in line with the Progressive
agenda.
2. Bringing depth to the policy discussion. The panelists talked about the
blogosphere as “a conversation” and a “democratization of voices” but had no
answer to the criticism that as the blogosphere becomes more like the mainstream
media and visa versa, the tendency to focus on the celebrity politics game―is
Obama up or down?―will strengthen.
Finally, when asked what “the base” owes Obama, clearly the answer was nothing. The progressive blogger is “independent.”
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CNN Intimidated? Obama Intimidated?
An organization called the Secretaries of State Project is sending out email alerts calling on citizens to write CNN President Joe Klein to “stop giving Fox News credibility” by parroting their “lies.”
They start with the Fox News story on an event that took place on election day 2008 in which several men from a small, fringe organization called the New Black Panther Party stood in front of a polling place in a majority black voting district, one of them carrying a nightstick. The Bush Justice Department charged them with civil voter intimidation charges, after deciding that the case didn't meet the bar for criminal charges. After Obama took office, the Department of Justice dropped most of the remaining charges, saying that they weren't supported by the facts and the law, while obtaining an injunction against the man who had been carrying a nightstick. No "victim"―white or otherwise―has come forward to say he or she was intimidated by the NBPP members on the day in question. But in Fox's hands, the story has become that the case was dropped because of “anti-white policies” in the Obama administration, with Andrew Breitbart and host David Asman effectively calling the president a racist.
When Fox complained that other news outlets weren't covering the story, CNN uncritically echoed Fox's distorted and factually discredited story, lending it mainstream credibility.
Breitbart struck again with an edited video clip leading not to manufactured calumny against the Obama Administration but to the unjust firing of a dedicated public servant, Shirley Sherrod, also on the totally spurious grounds of anti-white prejudice, based on a decades-old story purporting to show she had discriminated against a white farmer. When the full story came out, including the thanks of the supposedly discriminated-against white farmer for her help, apologies emerged from all the players, even Breitbart, and Shirley Sherrod was offered her job back by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. The LA Times got the affair right when it said "the events came as an embarrassment to Obama administration officials, who have sought to depict themselves as immune to the blogosphere and demands of the news cycle."
Comment: Assume lies, folks, and Obama Administration take a pledge: “Check the Facts” and “Counterattack don’t Cave.”
More Comment on the Wayward Press:
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Washington Post will do anything for a headline?
A couple of alert readers took the Washington Post to task for its outrageously misleading front page July 13 headline that, according to Washington Post polls, “6 in 10 Americans lack faith in Obama.” How’s that again? The Post’s web site shows that 29 percent of those polled said they had “no confidence” in Obama. Seventy-one percent said they had “a great deal, a good amount or some confidence” in Obama. So, the Chevy Chase reader asked, shouldn’t the headline have been “7 in 10 Americans have confidence in Obama when it comes to making decisions for the country’s future”? But that headline wouldn’t have supported the story line the press is lazily cruising on: “The Obama Decline.”
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Beware of Billionaires Bearing Gifts
Financial Times Columnist Christopher Caldwell may have had the best take (FT,7/17) on the recently announced “Giving Pledge” by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, who joins Bill and Melinda Gates and several others in pledging to give half his fortune to charity. Caldwell says that instead of praise the philanthropists are getting anger back (“I guess Mr. Gates will give all his money to India” says one letter writer), and may have “misjudged the public mood.” Americans have more material inequality than any other western nation, and yet they tolerate it more uncomplainingly. Maybe the explanation lies in American’s very materialism. Naively, they associate money with purchasing power and not with any other kind. If a person is worth $50 billion that means that he can, if he wishes, buy 50 million really nice flat-screen TVs or a million new M-Class Mercedes. It is not much to be jealous of.
Caldwell continues, “Americans have a hair-trigger sensitivity, though, about money being converted into political power… ..Governing through money is what most present-day philanthropy does…. (They) deploy it through tax-exempt foundations to ends of their own choosing, and this can have disruptive effects on democracy no matter how noble the hubristic billionaire believes his aims to be.... Clearly Mr. Gates sees an almost formal decision-making role for billionaires in a new constitutional order (this editor’s italics).” There are philanthropists on one hand and what he calls “the democracy” on the other.
Caldwell concludes that ordinary taxpayers having bailed out their taxes to protect the economy may be less inclined to leave the billionaires’ pledged billions tax free, especially if high tech innovation has slowed and they are no longer “the geese who laid the golden eggs.”
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HUMAN RIGHTS & INTERNATIONAL
Failed States Never Die and Never Fade Away: Burma
The idea that failed states are some dark thing that can be locked away in a closet that never gets opened, should have died with the revelation that al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack received funding by “blood” diamonds from the disastrously governed (then) failed state of Sierra Leone. A state with no government or bad government is an easier base of operations for terrorists―and much else. One closet door just opened in Somalia when al-Shebab radical Islamists have spilled over the borders of that failed “state” to launch a suicide attacks in Kampala, Uganda, on crowds watching the World Cup (forbidden activity in al-Shebab areas of Somalia).
Now we have another possibility for spillover failed state disasters: Burma, center for the production of opium, may also be incubating the plague. According to a Reuters report (6/7)
Myanmar's health ministry has circulated a warning among government departments about rat-borne plague after finding infected dead rodents in a compound of a government office, an official said.
Half a dozen dead rats were found in a ministry in the new capital, Naypyitaw, an official told Reuters on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press…. Villagers and motorists between Yangon, the former capital, and Naypyitaw reported seeing thousands of field mice on the move and squashed on the highway in what could possibly be a mass migration away from an affected area…. A senior health ministry official … insisted there had been no humans affected. State-owned Myanmar language newspapers carried a public notice about the danger of bubonic plague spread by infected rat fleas on July 1, calling on civilians to report cases to the nearest health department.
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Meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi
Unlike other failed states, Burma has a superior government in waiting, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for most of the last 18 years. I had the truly great privilege of meeting Suu Kyi in her house in Rangoon during a period when she was allowed some visitors. I came from Washington where I was at the time (1995) directing a human rights and democracy fund in the State Department that included congressionally mandated money to support democratic opposition to the military junta in Burma that had canceled the free and fair elections of 1990 won by Suu Kyi.
It was assumed that none of this money would go to groups working inside Burma because they would not be able to operate independently of the government. My trip to assess the situation did not please the chief congressional aide involved, Robin Cleveland, then working for Senator Mitch McConnell, later for Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. I was in Burma to talk to Suu Kyi, and my strong personal view was that the U.S. should be guided by her views.
One had the immediate sense on meeting Suu Kyi that this was a person of indomitable spirit (I am certain Nelson Mandela made the same immediate impression), and because nothing could break that spirit she was a perfectly free person; freed by her strength to be charming and witty and expressing great and unforced interest in her visitors (I, for one, would have rather said nothing, so that no time was taken away from hearing her speak). As a result of our meeting I did meet with several humanitarian organizations active in the country and decided that one―World Concern, which was building schools and a women’s center―did have enough independence to receive one of our grants, partly because of the accidental fact that the father of its director had been a widely revered missionary. (The decision even got by Robin Cleveland on my return to Washington). When I left the meeting with Suu Kyi, I told the U.S. Chargé that I was “catching my breath” from the experience.
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Election in Burma (Myammar)
My meeting with Suu Kyi partly explains my deep skepticism of what can be accomplished through diplomacy with the Burmese regime, which has scheduled elections in an effort to legitimize itself in the international community. These will not be democratic elections. They will not even represent a step forward in Burma.
The National League for Democracy, the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi has decided to boycott the elections, and has received some criticism for its decision. What critics should remember is that had the party decided to register, under the government’s “rules” it would have had to oust its leader Suu Kyi because she is serving out probation on a sentence for a trumped up “crime.” Her probation runs out after the elections, timed by the junta so that she would not be able to participate. Elections will take place under a constitution engineered by the military in 2008; twenty-five percent of the seats in the Parliament are reserved for the military.
The Obama Administration, at its outset, had hopes that a shift in policy towards engagement with Burma (and other countries) would yield results. This has not happened. The Burmese junta has not budged from its repressive policies internally, and has even moved into new outlaw territory with revelations that it may be allowing North Korea to use Burma to export nuclear weapons technology.
The Administration should continue to support Aung San Suu Kyi and true movement towards democracy, if and when that happens. The recent visit to Burma by the Undersecretary for State, Kurt Campbell, may have served a useful purpose, especially the meeting he was allowed with Suu Kyi. Not only did he state that the elections would not be legitimate but said he was “moved” by her perseverance and commitment to a more just and benevolent Burma, despite her years of detention. He said it is “simply tragic” that authorities have rebuffed her many appeals to work together to solve the country’s problems.
It is clear that a U.S. “engagement” policy has been used by the regime in Burma. “Engagement” can only work if the international community continues to point to the regime’s failures. The Burmese regime should not be allowed to use this election to legitimize itself in the international community. That will not represent progress in dealing with a dangerous government.
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The Impact of Iran a Year Later: Good Elections Matter More for Legitimacy
The news from Tehran is dismal. Four men were hanged on July 19. There are reports of hand amputations and dozens of women awaiting stoning sentences. Iran’s prosecutor called on tighter checks on women who fail to observe Islamic dress code in public. It is not clear however that Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei are going to be successful in tightening their grip. They faced a strike from the business sector― the bazaaris―over increased taxes but, more importantly, over increased control by the Revolutionary Guard (Ahmadinejad had to declare a “holiday” to settle things down). They have also faced open splits in Parliament when Ahmadinejad tried to stop Ayatollah Khomeni’s grandson from speaking. Green Revolution figures are still speaking out. with Hossein Mousavi saying publically that international sanctions will hurt Iranians, and Karoubi justifying criticism on religious grounds, saying that historically criticism has been a “religious duty.”
Grounds for Hope
Whatever the outcome from the repression, the nine months of protest over last summer’s fraudulent elections produced one piece of good news that is not going to disappear:
Despite the success of the regime in silencing nighttime shouts of “death to the dictator,” the Iranian elections have highlighted the fact that people want their votes honestly counted in a process that meets international standards. Credible elections are a part of the universal striving for dignity President Barack Obama talks about; as such, they constitute the opposite of “imposing democracy.”
In his 2007 book, Second Chance, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski describes a new force in international politics: a massive “global political awakening” with publics who are no longer passive, but willing to force governments to deal with their passions. Although this “awakening” carries a potential for violent extremism, when fueled by anti-Western and anti-American hatreds, it can also lead to genuine reform.
In Iran, the public’s fierce desire was for elections where their vote was fairly and honestly counted. Like it or not, elections are a battleground for the global political awakening. This is an arena in which violent extremism can lose, under the pressure for neutral electoral administration and international monitoring. In cases of difficult elections where the international community perseveres in pushing local governments to meet international standards multiply, the trend will strengthen.
Evidence that this is happening is accumulating. Earlier this year in Togo, the government took steps to increase the credibility of the electoral process and reassure the international community that the election would be free and fair. It made it a priority to avert the violence that marred the 2005 election. Toward that end, a massive contingent of foreign monitors observed the elections. Following the vote count, opposition parties that had refused to unite behind one candidate, thus lessening their chances of winning, did hold demonstrations, but there was no violence or challenge to the results. Observers characterized the March elections in deeply divided Ukraine as a major improvement over the 2004 process, even as Viktor Yanukovich won a very narrow victory over Yulia Tymoshenko. After a tense period Tymoshenko dropped her legal challenge, enabling the results to be peacefully accepted.
Even in turbulent Kyrgyzstan, the process could have a positive outcome. The leaders of this year’s coup promised elections following a constitutional referendum to be held June 27 (after this issue goes to print). The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is hosting roundtable meetings to help with the drafting of the constitution and plans to observe both the referendum and subsequent elections.
It will be fascinating to see how the push for honest elections plays out in upcoming Parliamentary and Presidential elections in Egypt.
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The Political Dispatch is a publication of the Public Policy Committee.
Woman's National Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-232-7363 Fax 202/986-2791 www.democraticwoman.org
Comments to the Editor: info@democraticwoman.org Betsy Spiro Clark, Editor
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