All posts by tabsir

Colin Powell defends Obama

Election 2008, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media

On Meet the Press Sunday, retired General Colin Powell endorsed Senator Obama for President. In so doing he made an eloquent plea defending Senator Obama from the Islamophobia. It was not just that Obama has been falsely called a Muslim, but the injustice done to American Muslims who have proudly served their country. Here is what Powell said:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America. Continue reading Colin Powell defends Obama →

The Territory with which We Are Threatened

Egypt, Iraq War, Teaching Resources


Whitelaw Reid as a young correspondent

[In 1898 the United States was fresh from its imperialist expansion in the Spanish American War. Ironically, the situation faced by the United States today in Iraq has a parallel with the war in Cuba, as can be readily seen from this essay by the well-known journalist and Republican politician Whitelaw Reid. The irony continues in the example given by Reid of Egypt’s colonial occupation of Egypt. Although written over a century ago in one of America’s most popular periodicals, the sentiments are relevant to the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Whether or not history repeats itself, some historical observations are well worth repeating. Webshaykh]

by Whitelaw Reid

Men are everywhere asking what should be our course about the territory conquered in this war. Some inquire merely if it is good policy for the United States to abandon its continental limitations, and extend its rule over semi-tropical countries with mixed populations. Others ask if it would not be the wisest policy to give them away after conquering them, or abandon them. They say it would be ruinous to admit them as States to equal rights with ourselves, and contrary to the Constitution to hold them permanently as Territories. It would be bad policy, they argue, to lower the standard of our population by taking in hordes of West Indians and Asiatics; bad policy to run any chance of allowing these people to become some day joint arbiters with ourselves of the national destinies; bad policy to abandon the principles of Washington’s Farewell Address, to which we have adhered for a century, and involve ourselves in the Eastern Question, or in the entanglements of European politics. Continue reading The Territory with which We Are Threatened →

Flora primulaceae

Contemporary Art, Plants, Yemen


Drawing of a Yemeni primula plant by Hugo Haig-Thomas

Hugo Haig-Thomas–A Biography of a Special Artist
Painter and Diplomat of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. of Great Britain

By John Gilbert Bodenstein, President of The European Art Foundation

It is a pleasure to read the biography of Hugo Haig-Thomas, a special artist of our time. Some artists combine their creative activity with a normal career. In Germany Johann Wolfgang Goethe, for example, produced some of his literary works whilst holding an appointment which occupied him during the day. In France the German writer Rainer Maria Rilke was secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin. And the famous European author Ernst Juenger was an officer in both World Wars.

Haig-Thomas likewise was for a number of years a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, but throughout his service he continued to paint and draw. Continue reading Flora primulaceae →

Yes, We Qat no Grapes

Agriculture, Development, Food and Drink, Qat (Catha edulis), Yemen

Yemeni farmers threaten to swap grapes for qat
Saddam Al-Ashmori, The Yemen Times, October 11, 2008

SANA’A, Oct 11 – Yemeni raisin producers have threatened to replace grapes with qat in their plantations after the loss they sustained this year as a result of not being able to sell all their produce.

Nasser Al-Khawlani, owner of a vineyard, said that the reason behind the low demand for local raisins this year was the presence of other cheap and attractive raisins in the markets, smuggled into Yemen from China.

He further said that, if the government didn’t take steps to prevent the smuggling of Chinese raisins into the country, farmers would replace grapes with qat in their lands. Continue reading Yes, We Qat no Grapes →

The PKK as a burden on Iraqi Kurds

Iraq, Iraq War, Kurds, Turkey


Former PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, pictured in 1992.

The PKK as a burden on Iraqi Kurds

by IHSAN DAÄžI, Today’s Zaman, October 14, 2008

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) attacks from northern Iraq on Turkish targets have turned the Kurdish region in Iraq into a primary target of Turkey.

It is time for the regional Kurdish administration to stop using the PKK as a bargaining chip against Turkey; it is not a time for the Kurdish people of Iraq to side with the PKK out of Kurdish sentimentality. While the former produces no advantages and incites the animosity of Turkey and pressures of the US, the latter ignores the fact that the PKK threatens to undo the gains Iraqi Kurds have made through their long struggle.

What Iraqi Kurds have today, after decades of struggle, is certainly worth preserving and consolidating, and those gains should not be risked by protecting the PKK. Continue reading The PKK as a burden on Iraqi Kurds →

McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire

Afghanistan, Election 2008, Islamophobia, Literature

McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire

By Khaled Hosseini, The Washington Post, Sunday, October 12, 2008; B05

I prefer to discuss politics through my novels, but I am truly dismayed these days. Twice last week alone, speakers at McCain-Palin rallies have referred to Sen. Barack Obama, with unveiled scorn, as Barack Hussein Obama.

Never mind that this evokes — and brazenly tries to resurrect — the unsavory, cruel days of our past that we thought we had left behind. Never mind that such jeers are deeply offensive to millions of peaceful, law-abiding Muslim Americans who must bear the unveiled charge, made by some supporters of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, that Obama’s middle name makes him someone to distrust — and, judging by some of the crowd reactions at these rallies, someone to persecute or even kill. As a secular Muslim, I too was offended. Obama’s middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah too? Do McCain and Palin think there’s something wrong with my name? Continue reading McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire →

The Great Chain of Being Racist

Election 2008, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

Let’s start with the Bible. “Whatsoever a man soweth,” says the King James Version, “that shall he shall reap.” I doubt the Apostle Paul would mind if this verse was clarified for 2008 as “Whatsoever a politician sayeth, that shall he also reap bigtime.” For the past week, as Wall Street was dodging fire and brimstone economic news, the McCain/Palin campaign let loose the doggone attack dog one-liners, claiming that Obama was “pallin’ with terrorists,” mocking the idea of an American with a middle name of Hussein, and asking rhetorically “Who is Barack Obama?” For the vast undercurrent of racist attitudes in America this was red heifer meat, fear mongering in raw form. So who do at least a few (and it seems more than a few) of those listening to McCain and Palin think Senator Obama is? Why, he’s an Arab, of course.

To his credit, John McCain stepped back from the flames of the fire he himself set and set the record straight that his opponent is a “decent man” and a family man and not a scary man. To his discredit, this racist comment is the logical conclusion of many who have listened to his “I am John McCain and I approve this ad” campaign spin. While the government was scrambling to bail out the major financial institutions, in some of the redder side roads off Main Street the Straight Talk Express was spewing out Rove-driven poisonous carbon-copy monoxide. Continue reading The Great Chain of Being Racist →