Zaki Badawi

First it was folk singer Yusuf Islam, better known as Cat Stevens, who was denied entry into the United States, and we have internationally renowned British Muslim scholar Dr. Zaki Badawi, who was sent back to the UK. Popular Muslims aren't popular in America. Badawi is the head of the Muslim College in London and is the former imam of London's most famous mosque, Regent's Park Mosque. On July 14, Badawi flew to New York City to give a talk at the prestigious Chautauqua institute. Unfortunately he never made it to his lecture, as he was stuck in a small room and forced to answer the secret service's invasive questions for six long hours, only to be put back on a plane and flown back to the UK.
The US government's refusal to allow popular Muslims from Britain entry into the country, borders on xenophobic. As Badawi told the Associated Press, "The people I was speaking to were very junior people and they are just executing things they were told. They were very, very embarrassed and I felt sorry for them. America is a lovely country. There is no reason why it should behave like that."
The US Customs and Border Protection says that Prof. Badawi had been refused entry to United States because they had acquired information, which labeled him "inadmissible". Perhaps simply being of the Islamic faith and from a foreign country (even if it's an ally) is "inadmissible" these days.
Could it also be that Badawi was refused entry because he has been critical of US and British foreign policy, writing "The war between Iraq and Iran was an oil war. So was the second Persian Gulf War...The presence of a conflict under these circumstances is not a function of the fact that these states are Muslims. These areas are rich [with oil]."
In February of 2003, Badawi admitted that he believed many Muslims would see an Iraq war as a war against Islam, noting "It would provide recruits for extremists." He also added that Bush's imminent war would undermine the UN's authority, "I think in the Security Council the US can get its way any time. When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia [in 1935] he ended the credibility of the League of Nations. Mr. Bush could do the same."
Badawi's criticisms of US and Britain don't make him a terrorist, however. Following the London bombings Badawi openly criticized the attacks alongside other prominent UK religious leaders, including Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.
But no matter how egregious US human rights violations may be, US "national security" always trumps rationality. So don't expect the US government to apologize for shipping Zaki Badawi back to London anytime soon.
Joshua Frank
BRICKBURNER.ORG

Like anything newborn, peace deals start life fragile and vulnerable. However ardently peace may have been wished for in times of bloodshed and destruction, the moment it arrives it is greeted with fear and suspicion. Thus the people of the Indonesian province of Aceh are saluting the deal inked yesterday between Acehnese rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government meeting in Finland with caution. Hopes are the more guarded because a similar deal three years ago fell apart after five months.
This time however it seems that the outcome may be different. Twenty-nine years of often-bitter insurgency may at last be coming to an end. The people of Aceh, harking back to proud 18 century past when they had been a dominant commercial and military power, had sought independence from the rest of Indonesia. It was their argument that Aceh had never actually been annexed by the Dutch colonialists and should therefore not have been included in the independence deal the Dutch cut with President Sukarno to end their occupation. However, successive governments in Jakarta, aware of the complex ethnic mix of the whole of their country, preferred to clamp down rather than negotiate, which they saw as a sign of weakness, likely to encourage rather than dampen the revolt. Matters have been further complicated by the existence of onshore natural gas and offshore oil reserves within the province.
Now IndonesiaÕs President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has put his personal authority behind an agreement designed to find a peaceful political solution to the conflict. There is much that could yet go wrong. The government believes that the law must be changed to allow the separate political representation they have conceded to the Acehnese - and some in Jakarta may oppose this. In addition there are still elements in IndonesiaÕs powerful armed forces that believe the revolt can still be broken militarily.
It is of course the tragedy of the tsunami that has made this accord possible. The resolute action of the Jakarta authorities in the wake of DecemberÕs catastrophe caused the people of Aceh to reconsider their relations with them. By and large the reaction of all Indonesians to the disaster that had befallen the northern tip of Sumatra was fulsome and generous. An uneasy truce was agreed between GAM rebels and government troops.
At a time of such overwhelming tragedy, differences however deeply held, were put aside in a decent human response to the plight of the survivors and the recovery of the dead. As a result, when Aceh began the long road to recovery, it was not Òconflict as usualÓ but rather both sides were prepared to re-explore the options for peace. The Helsinki peace deal still faces many dangers but the longer it holds, the greater will be the rebuilding of trust and confidence on both sides.
ARABNEWS.COM

Nicolas Sarkozy

Not for nothing is Nicolas Sarkozy the unchallenged holder of the title of the most interesting man in French politics. The charming, media-savvy leader of Jacques Chirac's centre-right UMP party, who is also deputy prime minister and interior minister, never misses an opportunity to score points against his former mentor, whom he now openly aspires to replace in the ƒlysŽe Palace in 2007.
Last week the man universally known as "Sarko" struck again, flaunting his relative youth and dynamism and taunting the president's hauteur and immobilisme to undermine just how much credibility he has lost since May's disastrous referendum on the EU constitution and London's victory over Paris in winning the 2012 Olympics. To suggest on Bastille Day, of all days, that the president of the republic has nothing new to say would have been jaw-droppingly insolent if directed against a political opponent, let alone a member of the same party.
It is hardly surprising then to see the beginnings of what may be a backlash against Sarko's brash, self-promoting style. Some critics are suggesting that in attacking Mr Chirac so relentlessly he is insulting the same high office to which he aspires, as well as launching his presidential campaign far too early--and perhaps even spoiling his chances.
Sarko's appeal is based to a large extent on his ability to articulate what Chirac and the bitterly divided opposition socialists fail to acknowledge: that a France that is obsessed with its decline but paralysed by a status quo that includes 10% unemployment badly needs to change. It must, he says, adapt its cherished "social model" to withstand the buffeting winds of globalisation and an enlarged Europe--represented by the mythical "Polish plumber" who figured so prominently in the EU referendum campaign. On the downside, his habit of scoring opportunistic political points--such as calling for the expulsion of radical imams, or opposing Turkish membership of the union--is worrying.
Popularity at home has won him admirers abroad, especially among British ministers who like his pro-Americanism, his call for an end to reliance on the old Paris-Berlin axis--and have had enough of Mr Chirac. His meeting with his fellow conservative Angela Merkel, likely to beat Gerhard Schroeder in September's elections, gives us a sense of how the EU would look in future if they were both in charge. Sarko-watchers hope it marks the start of a period of statesmanlike discretion and an end to headline-grabbing antics that might one day turn out to be a faux pas too far.
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

In many ways, Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is a bright exception to politics as usual in Brazil--and indeed in Latin America. Power in the region is too often the monopoly of well-born elites; Mr. da Silva rose from humble origins. Policies in the region too often veer between ruinous populism and punishing austerity; Mr. da Silva has combined macroeconomic stability with progressive social policies. Yet Mr. da Silva's administration is now mired in a corruption scandal. A member of his party was arrested this month trying to board a plane with $100,000 hidden in his underpants. His chief of staff and two other senior officials have resigned. His political future is uncertain.
Mr. da Silva's plight is part of a broader problem in Latin America. The region has successfully outgrown military coups, but political institutions remain weak and corruption is endemic. Since 1990 a score of Latin American presidents and ex-presidents have been charged with corruption, and their ignominious falls do not seem to deter more scandals. In 1992 another Brazilian president, Fernando Collor de Mello, was forced to resign after investigators discovered that his lieutenants had collected millions of dollars in bribes.
"What may come out of all this is a turning point for reducing Brazil's pervasive corruption," Roberto Civita, a Brazilian magazine owner, told the New York Times then. If only.
Brazil's current scandal reflects the problem of institutional weakness as well as the tradition of corruption. Because of the weakness of political parties--there have been more than 250 party switches by Brazilian lawmakers since 2003--Mr. da Silva has had difficulty putting together congressional coalitions to enact his legislative program. It looks as though the president's party used bribery as a short cut, though the president himself remains untainted.
If this is what happened, it would not be the first time. In 2000 the administration of Argentine President Fernando de la Rua faced charges that it had bribed opposition senators to enact a new labor code. The vice president was forced out of office.
Most political systems feature factions that are held together by money. Latin America's weak parties exacerbate this problem--there's no ideological glue, so financial glue does all the work--and the region's presidential systems add further stresses. Legislatures have few incentives to support a president: If he is weak, lawmakers don't want to be associated with his program; if he is strong, lawmakers see no reason to build him up further. This creates a temptation to bully the legislature (thus Peru's President Alberto Fujimori suspended Congress in 1992) or, alternatively, to buy it. Presidents who virtuously resist both routes may end up looking impotent. Five years after his impressive presidential election victory, Mexico's Vicente Fox has failed to implement much of his program.
Some commentators, notably Arturo Valenzuela of Georgetown University, advocate a switch to parliamentary systems. But as Mr. Valenzuela concedes, there's little support for this option; in a referendum in 1993, Brazil's voters rejected it decisively. Latin Americans will probably live with separation-of-powers gridlock for years, and perhaps may eventually appreciate its charms. Despite the political scandal in Brazil, the economy is sailing along nicely.
WASHINGTONPOST.
COM

What accounts for the success of the Harry Potter series, as well as the "Star Wars" films whence they derive? The answer is their appeal to complacency and narcissism. "Use the Force," Obi-Wan tells the young Luke Skywalker, while the master wizard Dumbledore instructs Harry to draw from his inner well of familial emotions. No one likes to imagine that he is Frodo Baggins, an ordinary fellow who has quite a rough time of it in Tolkien's story. But everyone likes to imagine that he possesses inborn powers that make him a master of magic as well as a hero at games. Harry Potter merely needs to tap his inner feelings to conjure up the needful spell.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but complacency is the secret attraction of J K RowlingÕs magical world. It lets the reader imagine that he is something different, while remaining just what he is. Harry (like young Skywalker) draws his superhuman powers out of the well of his "inner feelings". In this respect Rowling has much in common with the legion of self-help writers who advise the anxious denizens of the West. She also has much in common with writers of pop spirituality, who promise the reader the secret of inner discovery in a few easy lessons.
The spiritual tradition of the West, which begins with classic tragedy and continues through St Augustine's Confessions, tells us just the contrary, namely, that one's inner feelings are the problem, not the solution. The West is a construct, the result of a millennium of war against the inner feelings of the barbarian invaders whom Christianity turned into Europeans.
Paganism exults in its unchanging, autochthonous character, and glorifies the native impulses of its people; Christianity despises these impulses and attempts to root them out. Western tradition demands that the individual must draw upon something better than one's inner feelings. Narcissism where one's innermost feelings are concerned therefore is the supreme hallmark of decadence.
A culture may be called decadent when its members exult in what they are, rather than strive to become what they should be.
The more one wallows in one's inner feelings, of course, the more anxious one becomes. Your innermost feelings, whoever you might be, are commonplace, dull, and tawdry. Thrown back upon one's feelings, one does not become a Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker, but a petulant, self-indulgent bore with an aversion to mirrors. To compensate for this ennui one demands stimulus. That is the other ingredient in J K Rowlings' success formula.
ATIMES.COM

On 8 July I wrote that the London bombings were the result of Blair's participation in the Iraq war. The next day the entire media was united in refusing to accept there was any link. They loyally echoed the Government. Blair said there was no link and tried to prove it by arguing that 'President Putin opposed the war in Iraq but his country has been subjected to terrorism'. He must have thought that British citizens had never heard of Chechnya (Blair had supported Putin's offensive against the Chechens and applauded Russia).
But why did these attacks happen? That is the key question which the entire media and the entire political class in this country tried to ignore. They did so because the government and the main opposition party know perfectly well why it happened. They have a guilty conscience. To accept the link meant that the pro-war politicians and newspaper editors were, at the very least, partially responsible.
As I traveled in different parts of London and elsewhere in Britain, I was amazed by the number of people who told me, without hesitation, that we were paying the price for the war in Iraq. A few went further and argued that British politicians thought they could press buttons and make war in the Arab world and remain safe themselves. Now they had a reply.
On July 18, a Foreign Office think-tank, the Royal Institute of International Affairs published a special report which argued that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had resulted in an increase of terrorism and Blair had made the UK vulnerable. In other words (mine) it happened, without any doubt, because Tony Blair decided to lock himself in embrace with the US president, from which he could not be easily prised loose. Blair and his court denounced the report.
On July 19, a special opinion poll commissioned by The Guardian/ICM has made this view public. 66 percent of the British public believes there was a link with Iraq. The Guardian, embarrassed by its own findings did not report this on its own front page. The message is clear. Despite the weight of official propaganda people refuse to believe Blair. The British political and media elite is as isolated from the public as its French and Dutch counterparts. No doubt Blair's tame journalists will accuse the public of being scared and ignorant. The reality is otherwise.
Unless you give people a political explanation for what has happened, the only other explanation is an apocalyptic one, which the prime minister duly gave--barbarians versus civilisation. Blair says this, his parrot cabinet members have been repeating it, and even Bush has picked up a few phrases.
We have to be clear. If the killing of innocent civilians in London is barbaric, and it is, how does one define the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians? A viler barbarism.
In the dominant culture of the West there is a deep-seated belief that the lives of Western civilians are somehow worth more than those living in other parts of the world--especially those parts being bombed and occupied by the West. If these attitudes become entrenched, so will terrorism. Meanwhile in Britain even the most servile New Labour parliamentarians (a large majority) should understand that it's time for Blair to have a long holiday--Berlusconi could be helpful in this regard--and then resign.
Tariq Ali
COUNTERPUNCH.COM