What else do you do after a 100-day hunger strike?

When we were kids, my brother and I once were upset with something--the details I have forgotten now, and I am sure it was something absolutely trivial--and we decided that we would go on a hunger strike. I couldn't have been even at a double-digit age, and my brother is two years younger, and there we were refusing to eat my mother's tasty cooking.

What shocked me was this: my mother didn't get angry but was hurt.  It was almost like we had punched her awfully bad.  Yes, I know that kids do stupid things, but that image of my mother pleading with us on why we were torturing her that way was unbearable.  More than the hunger itself, we brothers simply could not bear to inflict that kind of a pain on mother and we ate in silence.  One of these days I ought to apologize to my mother for this.  But then that is one in a long list of apologies that are way past due!

When we care about the other human, it is impossible to watch a fellow human starve himself/herself as a protest.  I suppose Gandhi lucked out with his fasting to protest the British--the British were human enough to respond.  Imagine if Gandhi had protested against Hitler!  With that White Man's Burden, the British had no choice but to often yield to Gandhi's demands.  And when Gandhi fasted in order to end religious violence, even the killer mobs had no option but to put an end to their fanatical killings.  All because even the murderous mobs were not psychopaths--else, they would have gladly sent Gandhi off on an even earlier exit from this planet.

Hunger strikes are powerful.  They test the human in each and every one of us.

Which is why I am so shocked at the lack of media coverage on the hunger strike in Guantanamo that is now more than a hundred days old.  More than a hundred prisoners refusing food for more than a hundred days and yet this is being sidelined in favor of an incredible nonstop coverage of the hyped up Tea Party-IRS issue?

Out of 166 inmates, 102 are on hunger strike at Guantanamo, with 30 being fed through tubes. One inmate continued to be hospitalised but prison officials said his life was not in danger.
Inmates are restrained and a feeding tube is pushed through their nose and into their stomach - a practise the UN compares to torture.

Perhaps it is a sign of me getting old when I worry that we are rapidly losing any perspective on what it means to be human.  But, I don't think it is merely my old age at play. There is something seriously wrong here.

The frozen status of the detainees has fueled the hunger strikes, which grew from about a half-dozen inmates at first to more than 100 now.
"This is kind of the only option they have left, to say, 'Hey, we're still here. We are still your problem. Are you just gonna let us rot in here until the end of time?' " said Cori Crider, a lawyer who represents several detainees.
About 30 of them refuse to take even liquid nutritional drinks and have to be fed through tubes shoved down their noses.
The American Medical Association has criticized the practice, calling it a violation of the profession's core ethics. "Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions," AMA President Jeremy Lazarus wrote in an April letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
The Pentagon says the feeding program is lawful and humane. But Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the detention facility, acknowledges that the options for the administrators are dwindling.

While the UN might consider this torture, the 100-days is nothing compared to the hunger strike on the other side of the planet--in India.  Irom Sharmila began her fast twelve years ago as a protest against the use of the  Indian military against its own people.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Afspa), against which Ms Chanu is protesting, gives sweeping powers to the armed forces when they fight separatist insurgents or leftist radicals - powers which critics say are often misused.

She has been force-fed as well, and now Sharmila is being accused of trying to commit suicide:

Metropolitan Magistrate Akash Jain told her: “Madam, there is an accusation against you that you tried to commit suicide.” To this, Ms. Sharmila responded with an emphatic “No.”
“On April 20, 2012, an order was passed against you charging you under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code [attempting to commit suicide]. Do you plead guilty to the charge,” Mr. Jain asked.
Ms. Sharmila replied: “I don’t want to commit suicide. Mine is only a non-violent struggle to live as a human being.”
Mr. Jain said: “But the law of the land does not permit you to take your life.”
“I love life. I love life. I don’t want to take my life. What I want is justice and peace,” Ms. Sharmila replied. “I am protesting against AFSPA. If AFSPA is repealed I will take food again.”
The Magistrate told the activist that while he respected her sentiments, hers was a political stance, while the courts were concerned with the legal procedure. 

So, if a Sharmila can be set aside by a government for twelve years and be force-fed, then the Guantanamo prisoners can pretty much expect to be there forever?  Until their eventual death?

"Irom Sharmila Chanu is force-fed through a pipe in her nose"
Source

Guantanamo under Barack W. Obama

bin Laden is dead. It is the day after. Now what?

As I went to bed last night, I realized that I had to redo the mental script I had for my classes--some of the students might want to discuss the bin Laden-related events, while some might not care.  Then the question of whether I had a pedagogical responsibility to treat this as a learning opportunity as well.  If a learning opportunity, then what were the lessons to focus on?  How would I then go about discussing those lessons?

Teaching, as I see it, is nothing but editorial decisions everyday.  We select and present materials to students. We interpret the data in the manner in which we prefer--even when we try our best to be impartial, and leave our ideological preferences at home.

As I was driving to work, I figured out a game plan.  My formal teaching/learning moment would be to highlight the importance of understanding of geography.  That we understand that location matters, and the location-related relationships matter.  So, I would use maps of the Indian Subcontinent to tell a story of sorts. But tell a story in a way that draws questions.

However, I wanted to do that as a wrap-up after inviting comments from the students.  But then how would I broach the subject?  I figured I didn't have to worry about this--I was confident that at least a couple of students would jump on this topic even before I got to the computer in the classroom.

It turned out exactly that way. "T" loudly remarked that he wanted to discuss the current events and not our regularly scheduled topics.  "What happened, man?" I asked him with a smile.  "T" said "about last night, and Osama."  And thus we discussed the events. For 45 minutes. Including recalling where we were on that fateful 9/11. "T" asked whether it was ok to publicly celebrate--apparently a few had expressed displeasure at the celebrations.  "Go ahead and celebrate" I told him. "Bin Laden has killed tens of thousands, including thousands of Muslims" I added.

At the end, I reminded the class that all politics aside, we owe a thanks to the military.  I asked those who had served to stand so that we could thank them. One stood. We clapped. And then I asked all those with friends and families who have served in the military to stand. With the exception of a couple of students, the entire class stood up.

And, with that we took a break, and then I did my spiel on geography, location, and relationships. At the end of it all, we had only 20 minutes out of the 110-minute session to talk about resources, which was the topic for the day.

As the students were exiting, "T" paused for a second and said, "thanks for allowing us to talk about this for more than half the class time."  

I wonder whether the students know that I hate violence. I hate wars. I have never touched a gun in my life. Not even a bullet. I hope that I will never, ever, touch any of those killing machines.  A friend, "P," when I told him about these views a few years ago, thought it was a noble to goal to set for oneself--to not ever go anywhere near those weapons of destruction. He should know--he is a Vietnam veteran!

But, does it matter whether or not students know what my personal preferences are?  I tell you, teaching is immensely tougher than what it seems from the outside.

I am glad though that Osama bin Laden is gone. Capturing him, then trying him in a regular court--not one of those Guantanamo circus cages--would have been my preferred option. While I hate the death penalty, I recognize that it is legal in this country.  Bin Laden would have been sentenced to death after the due process.


So, it is now the day after. It is not as if we now revert to the halcyon days of September 10, 2001.  There is simply no there there. But, there are a few things I hope Obama, the Democrats, and the Republicans will start thinking about. Such as the ones that Dahlia Lithwick writes about:

About all we can say with certainty is this: We tortured. We live in a world in which we must contend with information obtained by torture. We now need to decide whether we want to continue to live that way. Writers from ideological backgrounds as diverse as Matt Yglesias and Ross Douthat argue that it is time to return to the paradigm abandoned after 9/11. Let's put the 9/11 attacks and the existential threat it created behind us. With Bin Laden's death, let's simply agree that the objectives of the Bush administration's massive anti-terror campaign have finally been achieved, and that the time for extra-legal, extra-judicial government programs—from torture, to illegal surveillance, to indefinite detention, to secret trials, to nontrials, to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay—has now passed. There will be no better marker for the end of this era. There will be no better time to inform the world that our flirtation with a system of shadow-laws was merely situational and that the situation now is over. ...

The "war on terror" language was always metaphorical, I realize, but it unloosed a very real Pandora's box of injustice on a nation that prides itself on its notions of fairness. That makes the highly symbolic death of Bin Laden an apt time—perhaps the last apt time—to ask whether this state of affairs is to be temporary or permanent. If President Obama truly believes, as he said last night, that justice has finally been done, he should use this opportunity to restore the central role of the rule of law in achieving justice in the future.

And, can we please start complete withdrawal of the military from Afghanistan? And not get all too entangled in Libya?  And reduce defense spending so that we can provide better social safety nets?

As the month draws to a close, I will have yet another learning opportunity--"Memorial Day."  But, I don't do any talking in class for that--like in the years past, all I have to do is update my slides of images of Oregon's soldiers who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A very quiet automated slide-show for ten minutes. That always leaves me drained, emotionally and physically.

So, ... Obama wusses out on closing Gitmo. OMG, what audacity!

Glenn Greenwald doesn't mince words, and his entire essay is a must read in order to appreciate how he gets to this observation:

Obama -- for reasons having nothing to do with Congress -- worked from the start to preserve the crux of the Bush/Cheney detention regime. Even with these new added levels of detention review (all inside the Executive Branch), this new Executive Order is little more than a by-product of that core commitment, and those blaming it on Congress either have little idea what they're talking about or are simply fabricating excuses in order to justify yet another instance where Obama dutifully "bolsters" the Bush War on Terror template. Indefinite detention and military commissions are continuing because Obama worked from the start for that goal -- not because Congress forced him to do so.

Reason points out:

The new executive order adds to the pile of evidence that Obama, despite his hope-arousing campaign talk about respecting civil liberties and the rule of law, is continuing his predecessor's anti-terrorism policies in almost all important respects. 

And, therefore, the awful and pathetic situation in which, Greenwald writes, we find ourselves as a country:

As as happened over and over, while progressives and civil libertarians are furious about the new Order, former Bush officials and right-wing Warriors are ecstatic. The anti-Muslim McCarthyite Rep. Peter King (R-NY) issued a statement this morning, as quoted by The Post, which lavished Obama with praise: "I commend the Obama Administration for issuing this Executive Order. The bottom line is that it affirms the Bush Administration policy that our government has the right to detain dangerous terrorists until the cessation of hostilities." That perfectly captures the legacy of Barack Obama on civil liberties.
It's certainly possible to claim that none of this much matters because other issues are more important. It's coherent to argue that -- everyone has to prioritize what matters most -- but that wasn't an argument I ever heard prior to January 20, 2009, when Democrats generally and Obama specifically aggressively touted these issues for substantial political gain.

Oh well ...

Not from Monty Python, but from Senator James Inhofe

From the NY Times Magazine: (in bold are the questions, and his responses follow)

You think the detainees at Guantánamo eat better than you do?
I’m talking about before they got in there, what they ate back in Yemen or wherever they came from. One of the big problems is they become obese when they get here because they’ve never eaten that good before. Can you tell me one reason to close Gitmo?
Because it’s on foreign soil, where prisoners don’t have the same legal rights as prisoners tried here, and we want to apply the same laws to everybody.
You want to apply the same laws to terrorists that are captured as you do to criminals in America?
Yes.
Wow.
Because we have to take the high road as Americans.
I see. That’s an interesting concept.

Guantanamo: a (US) state-sponsored madrassa!

I continue to have mixed feelings about Guantanamo, as I wrote earlier.
As always, I am simply impressed with how articulate Christopher Hitchens can be, and this time it is about Guantanamo. I mean, consider this sentence:

To the huge list of reasons to close down Guantanamo, add this: It's a state-sponsored madrassa.

Awesome. How powerful those few words strung together are! Hitchens' point is:

Suppose that you were a secular or unfanatical person caught in the net by mistake; you would still find yourself being compelled to pray five times a day (the guards are not permitted to interrupt), to have a Quran in your cell, and to eat food prepared to halal (or Sharia) standards. I suppose you could ask to abstain, but, in such a case, I wouldn't much fancy your chances. The officers in charge were so pleased by this ability to show off their extreme broad-mindedness in respect of Islam that they looked almost hurt when I asked how they justified the use of taxpayers' money to create an institution dedicated to the fervent practice of the most extreme version of just one religion.

And this is the same mentality that Hitchens says is the problem when it comes to Obama's big speech at Cairo--by "respecting" the traditions and practices of religions (in this case, Islam) what if we are accomplices?

Take the single case in which our president touched upon the best-known fact about the Islamic "world": its tendency to make women second-class citizens. He mentioned this only to say that "Western countries" were discriminating against Muslim women! And how is this discrimination imposed? By limiting the wearing of the head scarf or hijab (a word that Obama pronounced as hajib—imagine the uproar if George Bush had done that). The clear implication was an attack on the French law that prohibits the display of religious garb or symbols in state schools. Indeed, the following day in Paris, Obama made this point even more explicitly. I quote from an excellent commentary by an Algerian-American visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School, Karima Bennoune, who says:

I have just published research conducted among the many people of Muslim, Arab and North African descent in France who support that country's 2004 law banning religious symbols in public schools which they see as a necessary deployment of the "law of the republic" to counter the "law of the Brothers," an informal rule imposed undemocratically on many women and girls in neighborhoods and at home and by fundamentalists.

(Click here for more of professor Bennoune's work.)

But to the women who are compelled to dress according to the requirements of others, Obama had nothing to say at all, as if the only "right" at stake were the right to obey an instruction that is, in fact—if it matters—not found in the Quran.

I am ok with Hitchens bringing these issues up because he beats up on any and all religions--so, it is not as if he has some agenda to promote one religion while critiquing another. I suppose Hitchens' only fault in this context was how much of a warmonger he was .... if only he had been less hawkish!

ps: in case you are wondering what the heck a madrassa is, well, click here. and here for hijab v. chador

Jesse Ventura on waterboarding and torture

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will forcefully acknowledge what Ventura says. Thanks, Mr. Ventura.



via: The Daily Dish

Uyghurs in Guantanamo

A wonderful aspect of teaching is that it is a version of “life is like a box of chocolates you never know what you’re gonna get.”  The latest was when students introduced themselves in one of my classes, and one student said that her off-beat name reflects her Uyghur heritage. 

When I, from a land of a billion people, am a rare ethnic representative on campus, a Uyghur student at our university was beyond my wildest imagination.  So, naturally excited am I!

Up until this term, the Uyghurs (also spelt Uighurs) had been only an academic concept to me ever since reading about Muslims in China, in the far western province of Xinjiang.  Not anymore—I am now able to identify this academic concept with a real person. 

As a graduate student many years ago, one of the first things I did upon reading about the Uyghurs was to play my favorite game in such contexts, which is to establish a connection to India!  It turned out that it was not a difficult process at all, and it did not involve very many degrees of separation. 

In the English language, we use a word "mogul" when we refer to highly powerful businessmen.  Well, this word reflects the powerful and influential "Mughal Empire" that ruled over a large part of the Indian subcontinent, until it was replaced by the British. 

The Mughal dynasty began in 1526, when Babur defeated the reigning sultan in Delhi. The empire had some of its glorious years under Akbar and Shah Jahan--it was Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal.  Babur descended from Timur (also known as Tamerlane), who was Turkic, with some Mongol heritage. The Uyghurs also speak a Turkic language.  Aha, I had linked up the Uyghurs to India!

But, I was not happy once I understood that the Uyghurs were pretty much in the same situation that the Tibetans are, and fear the loss of language, culture, and traditions under the heavy-handed rule of the Chinese government. 

A reader might wonder why we should care about some eight million or so Uyghurs in a remote part of China.  Well, we in the US have even fewer degrees of separation, through a direct and controversial connection—Guantanamo. 

Soon after the US and NATO forces liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban regime, the US picked up a number of people while sweeping the area for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.  In the process, we apparently also picked up a few Uyghurs who happened to be in that area.  Their presence in Afghanistan is not that difficult to imagine, given that Xinjiang is so much out in the west of China that its borders abut Afghanistantoo. 

Designated as enemy combatants, these Uyghurs were confined to Guantanamo.  However, as it became clear that the Uyghurs were not involved with any militant activity directed against the US, five of them were released from Guantanamo.  But, they did not want to be sent back toChina out of a fear that they might be tortured there.  No other country offered to take them either, except Albania, which is they are since their release in 2006.  What a strange story of globalization! 

Meanwhile, another fifteen of the remaining seventeen Uyghurs in Guantanamo have been cleared for release, but more than a hundred countries contacted by the US have refused to take them.  While Uyghur families in the US have offered to house and help rehabilitate them, our government is not in favor of fifteen Guantanamo alums living within our borders. 

The status of the Uyghurs in Guantanamo will soon have to be addressed by the Obama administration.  The fundamental issue though is the Chinese government that continues with its policies of denying rights, particularly to minorities.  The Tibetan story is all too familiar to us; the situation in which the Uyghur are trapped in is very similar, which is why it is also referred to as China’s other Tibet problem. 

The slide from Timur’s expansive empire, which provided an environment for Turkic culture to flourish, to having a few of their people locked up inGuantanamo, has been quite a tragic tale for the Uyghur people.  I suppose life is not always a box of good chocolates.

Our lost constitution: why nobody talks about it ...

As always, Dahlia Lithwick asks pointed questions:
Bill Clinton is a lawyer. Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. Rep. Artur Davis is a lawyer. Michelle Obama is a lawyer. Chuck Schumer is a lawyer. Joe Biden is a lawyer. Ted Kennedy is a lawyer. I have heard virtually all of these people speak poignantly and passionately about the Constitution, the rule of law, and the outrages visited upon the Bill of Rights over the past eight years. Biden was prescient about the legal implications of what had been done at Abu Ghraib. Rep. Davis has been devastating on Guantanamo and torture on the House judiciary committee. When Ted Kennedy gets started on warrantless wiretapping and national-security letters and signing statements, there is nobody better. These are America's constitutional poet laureates. And yet Buchanan is right that almost every prime-time convention speaker has behaved as though President Bush's greatest crimes of the past eight years have involved lost jobs and climbing oil prices. On the streets of Denver, they are protesting Guantanamo, wiretapping, and water-boarding. But inside the hall, you'd think it was just another recession year.

Then she writes,
The great tragedy of the Bush administration was that it operated for years as though the Constitution was something nobody really cares about. The great crime of Denver may be that Democrats feel the same way.