Godheval.com

I haven’t been blogging on a regular basis lately because just using the internet opens the floodgates to all sorts of infuriating things going on in the world.  So I’ve been playing video games, writing fiction, and watching various TV shows – to provide myself a temporary (always only temporary) respite from the burden of being “aware”.  Aware of what?  Well, the list below is of 20 things going on in the world that are pissing me off, making me sad, frustrated, or feeling hopeless.  A mere 20 reasons for escapism out of hundreds.  In no ranking order:

1. BP CEO saying that the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is relatively tiny compared to the size of the ocean. By that logic, someone could argue that the over a million people killed in a war built on a false pretext is tiny compared to the 6 billion people in the world.  Oh, wait…
2. SB 1070 – more popularly known as the “Arizona Immigration bill”
3. Arizona banning ethnic studies
4. Texas conservatives working to revise history along Biblical/American exceptionalist/racist lines in textbooks
5. Corporations authorized to buy U.S. elections after the Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission case
6. The surge of people “tweeting” and “microblogging” about nonsense while remaining dormant on things that matter
7. People wasting their time talking about Jay-Z is a devil-worshiping Freemason.  Even if he is, who cares? There are bigger things to worry about.
8. Republicans and Democrats both screwing the public through bankrupt policy, while continuing to trick people into thinking there’s any substantive difference between them.
9. The fact that legally, BP may only be obligated to pay no more than $75 million in damages, which doesn’t even begin to cover it, and that they’re fighting even that.  You want to know what’s “tiny”?  $75 million compared to the hundreds of billions^PDF that BP makes every year
10. Open racism coming back in style
11. The mainstream media continuing to report on sensationalist bullshit, rather than covering the stuff that really matters – the corporate version of #6
12. Omar al-Bashir “winning” the election in Sudan, in spite of being convicted of war crimes and genocide by the U.N.
13. People chasing conspiracy theories, while doing nothing about evil acts being committed every day out in the open
14. How perfectly the “divide and conquer” social strategy is continuing to work
15. All this talk of Iran having nuclear weapons, while no one says anything to Israel
16. The betrayed promise of “change” from President Obama
17. How the people around me don’t know and don’t seem to care about what’s going on in the world
18. Facebook’s new privacy policy violations
19. Obama authorizing the targeted killing of a U.S. Citizen, setting a dangerous precedent
20. How people are pawns of their respective political parties, rather than thinking critically as individuals

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play some Torchlight, as an alternative to shooting myself in the head…

According to Al-Jazeera:

The Iranian president has warned that a new round of UN sanctions against his country over its disputed nuclear programme could permanently damage Tehran’s ties with the United States.

So much for all of Obama’s talk about reaching out to Iran, even going so far as to correctly acknowledge it as the Islamic Republic.  Remember his message, back in March, tactically delivered at Norwuz, the Persian New Year?  As if to symbolize a new dawn in Iranian-U.S. relations?

Obama’s message said the United States seeks engagement with Iran “that is honest and grounded in mutual respect,” but cautioned that the country cannot “take its rightful place in the community of nations . . . through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.

More hopeful rhetoric backed by zero substance or commitment.  Maybe Ahmadinejad doesn’t represent all Iranians, but most Iranians do want nuclear energy as a clean and efficient option.  So in the U.S. persistently denying Iran a right to that technology and threatening it with sanctions that further cripple the people economically, exactly how does that represent “mutual respect”?

For his part, Ahmadinejad could be more open to U.N. inspection of the Iranian nuclear program, but one can hardly fault his skepticism towards a body that has openly disregarded, ignored, and walked out on him in relaying the interests of his nation and his people.  Especially considering that all of the rhetoric coming out of the U.S. and the U.N. revolves around stopping Iran’s nuclear program, not merely making sure that it is exclusively for energy.

There is also the small matter of the double standard of the United States’ hard-line against nuclear proliferation, while completely ignoring Israel not being a signatory to the treaty.  Or the hypocrisy of the U.S. criticizing any country for nuclear ambitions when to date we are the only country to ever use nuclear weapons against anyone.  Not only that, but there’s also the recent affirmation that military action against Iran is “not off the table”.

All this, under the pretext of “mutual respect”?  Yeah, okay.

About the Iranian elections:

The supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seem to be coming out in equal force to match the protests of the Mir-Hossein Mousavi supporters.  To me, even if the election was a fraud and the outcome was more like Ahmadinejad 50.5% vs. Mousavi 49.5%, that’s still millions of people who supported Ahmadinejad.  While Mousavi sounds like the better candidate to me, and Ayatollah Montazeri sounds better still as a Supreme Leader than Ali Khamenei, ignoring the strong support behind Ahmadinejad and Khamenei would be no more democratic than a corrupt election.

It sounds to me like the changes in Iran will have to be piecemeal – a re-education of the people to understand what is wrong with the Islamic Republic as it is, so that eventually someone like A-Jad would not even be a contender.

At the same time I realize that maybe the results could’ve been inverted, with Mousavi the overwhelming winner, but…who really knows?  While I’d like to say I support the “Iranian people”, I don’t think they all feel one way, and I don’t know how they feel in any case.

Just because the dissenters are the ones twittering and blogging doesn’t mean that they represent the majority.  The older and/or less technologically savvy – which could include the poor who simply do not have access to the internet – may not support Mousavi.  They may not support Ahmadinejad, either.

To be clear, although I have defended him in other posts, because I think that he is misrepresented in Western media, I do not support him in any capacity as a politician, and I am as wary of him and his government as I am of my own.  I think politicians as a species are a corrupt sort, and therefore I do not trust them.

I am also skeptical of pro-Western sentiments coming out of Iran, not because I support the anti-Western conservatives and extremists, but because I am wary of propaganda, and wary of any attempt to exploit the wishes of the Iranian people to bolster Western interests.

In summary, my stance is going to remain neutral.  It is not for anyone in the West to say what the Iranian people want, since we just plain do not know.  President Obama, I think, has taken precisely the right stand in the matter.  For now, we wait.  And watch.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become infamous for his public statements condemning the state of Israel, even going so far as to say that it should be “wiped from the pages of history”. It is for this reason, amongst others, that Israel – and by proxy the United States – regard Iran as a hostile state.

However, at the recent World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Geneva, Ahmadinejad showed a different face. Other UN member states were wary of his presence, thinking that he would use the conference as a platform to spout Anti-Semitic rhetoric. And indeed, once he started speaking, diplomats from 23 European countries walked out, to return only once he was finished speaking.

The thing is…Ahmadinejad did not spout anything remotely Anti-Semitic. He was quoted as saying:

Following World War II they resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering…

AND:

In compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.

(more…)

As I muddled over the recent comments of two particular individuals, which lead me to think that they should shut their mouths, it occurred to me that “people who need to shut up” could become a recurring topic here at Godheval.net.

Welcome to the first installment, featuring none other than Nobel Peace Laureate and President of Israel, Shimon Peres, and God’s earthly emissary (according to the Catholic Faith), his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.

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The Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee – one of many sub-committees within the U.S. Senate that most people have never heard of, and even less of which know its purpose – conducted a hearing to address rising concerns over homegrown terrorism.  This time the high-risk group, according to the panel, is Somali-Americans.

According to the various testimonies, the threat comes from Somali immigrants who have been making the U.S. their home since 1992, after fleeing their country’s civil war.  Apparently, unlike other immigrants, the Somalis have had some difficulty assimilating, torn between their own tribal traditions and the markedly different American culture that surrounds them.  This difficulty has made some Somalians – particularly those young and male – more susceptible to what the panel calls “radicalization”, that is, indoctrination in the ways of militancy and terrorism.  They highlighted the case of Shirwa Ahmed, a 27-year old Somali-American who went missing in October, and was later implicated in a series of suicide bombings in the Somali towns of Hargeisa and Bosaso.

The Senate committee was careful – at least rhetorically – not to target the entire Somali-American community as a high-risk group for terrorist activity.  They claimed that the community itself was being victimized by radical clusters.  Still, this is where the story becomes troublesome, because chances are that for any Americans living in close proximity to a sizeable Somali population, fear of this homegrown terrorism will not limit itself to the knowledge that the threat comes only from a radical few.

Much like the events of September 11th, 2001 caused most Americans to red flag anyone Arab or Muslim (these two terms often falsely considered synonymous) or even wrongfully perceived to be members of either group, this kind of report is likely to generate similar prejudices towards Somali-Americans. (more…)

As a person of color, I am necessarily engaged in the global dialogue about race and racism, and I even consider myself someone with some original thoughts to contribute to that discussion.  However, being a person of color I am sometimes let “off the hook”, when it comes to my own prejudices.  I’ve even heard things like “black people can’t be racist” – with which I disagree.  I would say instead that racism on the part of disempowered minority groups lacks the potency of that exercised by the majority.  In the United States, this means that racism by “white people” is the most significant and devastating form of racism with far-reaching sociopolitical consequences, while racism by people of color is mostly a personal moral dilemma.

That being said, I find myself wrestling with an emergent new prejudice, one that like most prejudices is easy to reinforce, but not so easy to eliminate.  As you can guess from the title of this post, that prejudice is towards Jewish people.  I am writing this to the general public in hopes of starting a candid discussion on the matter.

As a sensible person, I do not believe that Jewish people as a whole, or on any inherent level are – well, anything bad – but I have started to develop little inklings, little annoyances that I’ve come to associate with Jewish people.  Upon checking myself, I’ve resolved that my problem is not necessarily with Jewish people but with Jewish culture, as it were.  Going deeper, I resolve that my problem is actually with certain memes within Jewish culture, and not the culture as a whole. (more…)

Republican Senator Richard Lugar, one of the ranking members of the Foreign Relations Committee, has suggested that the embargo against Cuba may be obsolete.  He said:

After 47 years … the unilateral embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its stated purpose of bringing democracy to the Cuban people.

While on the surface this sounds like the start of an important reversal in U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba, one has to wonder the true motives of such a move, if the embargo were to be lifted.  The “stated purpose” of the sanctions are more or less to punish Fidel Castro – and by proxy the Cuban people – for not having a democratic government.  The truth of the matter, of course, is far more complex, and has more than a little to do with the fact that the Castro regime ousted the U.S. installed government led by President Batista.  It also had much to do with the Cold War and the ideological opposition between so-called “democratic” and “communist” nations.  The shift of power from Batista to Castro also meant a change in how the U.S. conducted business in Cuba – that is, it would no longer function primarily as a resort for wealthy tourists while the majority of the Cuban people remained in abject poverty. (more…)

It is the essential duty of the press to disseminate information accurately, responsibly, and to the best of their ability, impartially.   Failing this, they must place their information in its proper context – as editorial where bias cannot be separated.

At least since the events of September 11th, 2001, the media and the blogosphere have reported on individuals and factions they regard as extremists – like those responsible for the attacks.  Most prominent in the reporting was mention of the religion of these offenders, that being – at least nominally – Islam.

The terms that subsequently emerged were “Islamic radicals”, “Islamists” and most venomously “Islamofascists”.  So often was Islam – as a faith of one-fifth of the human population – tethered to the inexcusable actions of an aggressive few, that one could hardly think of one without thinking about the other.  While for some this association produced a new and profound animosity towards Islam and Muslims, I was inclined to investigate the relationship, if any, between the religion and the deviant practice of terrorism.

What I found was that in most instances of separatism, radicalism, and/or militancy, Islam was more a mere fact of their identity or culture than the inspiration for their actions.  For all that Islam really had to do with it, the aggressors might as well have been called “turbanist radicals”, if they happened to be wearing turbans.  That there is such an emphasis on religion would appear to be a rhetorical attack on Islam as a global faith. (more…)

My official position on the nation of Israel is that it should have never existed.  It is one of the more grotesque products of colonialism and has continued to stand as a blatant offense to nearly every other nation in the region.  That said, I do not think it is feasible, or even reasonable, to expect that it will go anywhere, neither by peaceably reverting to the state of Palestine, nor being removed by aggression.  It is about as unreasonable as expecting the United States to cede half of its territory back to the Native American tribes from whom the land was stolen.  It simply will never happen.

For the sake of peace, Israel will have to maintain its sovereignty as a nation, regardless of the conditions by which that sovereignty was acquired.  However, also for the sake of peace, something must change with regards to how Israel maintains that sovereignty.  It cannot continue to conduct its military operations and Apartheid-like practices unabated, with no accountability.

I fail to understand what seems to be the infallibility of Israel – how those voices who speak out against the country’s practices are either a quiet minority or a few violent pockets of militancy.  How is it that most of the world seems to offer either tacit approval or feign blissful ignorance as Israel has continued throughout its history to perpetrate a plethora of human rights violations and countless other offenses?

I could be wrong, and it may be that I simply cannot hear the voices speaking out against Israel because they are censored – i.e. simply not covered – by the media.  Either way, I wonder what exactly Israel would have to do before the mainstream voice becomes one of opposition to Israel rather than one of quiet complicity. (more…)