Showing posts with label u.s. foreign policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label u.s. foreign policy. Show all posts

ACLU on Guantanamo Discharged Prisoners

, , 6:44 PM | 0 comments

The American Civil Liberties Union has compiled a video of several different former Guantanamo inmates-all of whom entered without a real charge and left years later without a charge, still trying to piece together why this happened to them and now dealing with lost time from their lives and loved ones that they must now recuperate. Very powerful testimonies.


On the Road in America

, , 5:25 PM | 0 comments

I just became aware of a television show that apparently aired on the Sundance Channel called "On the Road in America", a combination of "Road Rules" and a public diplomacy project to send Arab youth to the United States to instill greater faith in the American image in a time when the US is having a rebranding crisis in the Middle East.


I found out about the program through a National Public Radio interview called "Arab Men Challenge Perceptions while 'On the Road'" on the show Tell Me More with two of the castmates from the first season. The trailer for Season 1 (2007) can be found below, as well as the trailer for Season 2 (2009), which apparently features a 29 year old Kuwaiti, who would like to meet "American Bedouins".



On This Day in History

, , 9:17 PM | 0 comments

Today marks the 19th anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops entered Kuwait and began their military operation to take over the city, catching Kuwaiti soldiers unaware.


There is a youtube account by nighthawk006 that has a plethora of retro compilation clips documenting all the news coverage of the war. I am including two of them, but you can check his account for further if you are interested.






Fox News Confuses Egypt with Iraq

, , 2:35 PM | 0 comments

From the 965Loft blog, Fox News makes a major blunder on a country whose invasion they fully endorsed and obsessively covered.


The Foreign Policy Blog: "Revisiting Obama's Riyadh meeting"

, 8:49 PM | 0 comments

Last month, I was glued to the news during Obama's first Middle East visit like the rest of the world. However, my interest had less to do with the Cairo Speech delivery than with his closed-doors meeting in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, hardly any press following his stop gave me much information as to what exactly happened on the ranch (I use that expression literally, not figuratively). I found it bizarre that so little was published. Well the Foreign Policy Blog just wrote a little piece on this bit of Obamamania blackout in the press during the President's visit with King Abdullah.

"U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia are always something of a proverbial black box. And President Barack Obama's meeting with Saudi King Abdullah last month was no exception. A late add-on to Obama's planned June itinerary to Egypt, Germany, and France and conducted at King Abdullah's horse ranch outside of Riyadh, the June 3 meeting was quickly overtaken by coverage of Obama's high-profile June 4 speech to the Muslim world from Cairo.

But two sources, one a former U.S. official who recently traveled there and one a current official speaking anonymously, say the meeting did not go well from Obama's perspective. What's more, the former official says that Dennis Rosshas told associates that part of what prompted Obama to bring him on as his special assistant and NSC senior director for the "Central Region" last month was the president's feeling that the preparation for the trip was insufficient. The White House vigorously disputes all of that, some of which was previouslyreported by the New York Times.

Sources say Obama was hoping to persuade the king to be ready to show reciprocal gestures to Israel, which Washington has been pushing to halt settlements with the goal of advancing regional peace and the creation of a Palestinian state.

"The more time goes by, the more the Saudi meeting was a watershed event," said the former U.S. official who recently traveled to Riyadh. "It was the first time that President Obama as a senator, candidate, or president was not able to get almost anything or any movement using his personal power of persuasion."

"The bottom line is that the Saudis were not prepared," the former official continued, for Obama to ask them to take steps toward Israel. Obama changed his trip to go to Saudi Arabia, he pointed out.

"Senior sources in the Saudi national security team," he said, "think the president's trip was poorly prepared." From their perspective, "he was coming and asking them for big favors with no preparation," but "the Saudis never give big" in that situation.

The former official said that Ross has told associates that Obama was "upset" about the meeting "because he got nothing out of it." Ross didn't respond to a query."....(for full article, click here)

Al Watan Daily: "U.S. keeps Kuwait on human trafficking blacklist"

, , 8:10 PM | 0 comments

"Although Kuwait''s ranking on the U.S. State Department''s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report remained at Tier III, the report noted that the Kuwaiti government has begun to examine this issue in a more serious light.


The United States on Tuesday added six African countries to a blacklist of countries trafficking in people, and put U.S. trading partner Malaysia back on the list.
Staying on the blacklist list are U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but also Cuba, Fiji, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Sudan, and Syria, according to the State Department report for 2009.

"This year''s TIP Report for Kuwait notes that elements of the government of Kuwait and the Kuwaiti public have begun to examine this issue in a more serious light, and are looking forward to further progress," said the U.S. Embassy in a press release on Tuesday.

It added that the report, which was also issued on Tuesday, included reports on 180 countries, in addition to the United States.

The annual TIP Report is mandated by the U.S. Congress and it scrutinizes the measures that the government of each country has undertaken to combat this problem. The TIP Report however, is not based on the level of TIP present in any individual country.

According to this year''s TIP Report on Kuwait, it indicated that the government "demonstrated some progress in punishing offences in trafficking this year." It noted that while the government did not punish any offenders under the specific charge of "human trafficking," it charged 12 individuals with domestic labor abuse and registered 1,762 cases against persons charged with falsifying labor petitions.

The report also noted that in September 2007, the government opened a temporary shelter for female victims of forced labor. The shelter has a maximum capacity of 40 and is intended to provide medical, psychological and legal services.

During its first full year of operation, 279 domestic workers, the group most vulnerable to trafficking and abuse, entered and departed the shelter.

There is, to date, no shelter available for male migrant workers. In 2007, the government proposed opening a larger shelter that would be able to accommodate up to 700 men and women. An existing building was finally selected in 2008 to serve as the shelter and 2.5 million U.S. dollars was allocated toward its refurbishment. The building has however not been opened yet.

The report also said that throughout September 2008, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs organized a series of lectures in mosques throughout the country where imams discussed the rights of domestic workers according to Islam. (for link, click here)

The Video Seizing the Net: Max Blumenthal's "Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama's Cairo Address"

, , 5:02 PM | 1 comments

Before any conclusions are drawn from watching the shocking video, I encourage everyone to read the poignant justification blog, written by Mr. Blumenthal, arguing why he made the video and discussing the reaction he has received in its wake, found by clicking here.


Obama Rumbles in Cairo, Murmurs in Riyadh

, 10:12 PM | 1 comments

President Obama's speech in Cairo (despite some minor pronunciation slip-ups) no doubt re-affirms his oratorical skills and time-tested ability to deliver powerful speeches, dense with ethical messages, a sage understanding of issues and, more than anything, moderation and pace.


However, while Obama was up to to the challenging task proving that classic liberal American pillars of freedom of religion, democracy, tolerance and progress can also be sensitive to Muslim values and identity, this is a necessary but insufficient condition to further convincing the Arab world that America's interests have them at heart.

After all, talk is cheap.  The incredible amount of hype that had amounted in the build-up to Obama's expected speech in Cairo stemmed from his pre-election promise to reach out to the Middle East in way that would be a stark departure from his predecessors.  In many ways, his speech truly was bolder than many former US presidents' public statements on the region.

However, part of many moderate Muslims' disenchantment with U.S. foreign policy stems from America's actions--not her words.  The peppering of his speech with "shukran" and "asalam alaikum", the encyclopedic, laudatory run-down of all the major contributions of Islamic civilization to culture and science in modern history, the poignant quotations of the Holy Quran to add breadth to a talking point and the many, many analogies of the plight of Muslims to different time periods of turmoil in the United States all demonstrate a deliberate verbal campaign to foster a new acceptance and trust of America.

But none of these beautiful verbal arrangements will be credible without corresponding policy action.    While all eyes seemed glued to the tv sets in the direction of Cairo for the megalithic, one hour ceremonial "dawn of a new era" of diplomacy in the region, I find myself having been more intrigued by learning more about his brief stopover in Saudi Arabia prior to landing in Egypt.  

Saudi Arabia, one of the most oil-rich countries in the world and a key US economic ally is also the homeland to some of the most famous terrorists in the world (many with high-class or royal family connections), boasts an abysmal human rights and freedom of speech record and also happens to be home to the most religious Muslim site on earth, Mecca.  A difficult game of Chess.

And this is perhaps the very fault in America's foreign policy attitude of lumping together a "MENA" region (for whatever that means) for the sake of categorization.  The simplification of this region as a single unit (in the case of the speech, "Muslim countries", whatever that means, and as absurd as "Christian countries") in rhetoric is incoherent with US ground-level policy, which has always had quite different and multi-pronged strategies according to each country and/or subregion.  This is where the discrepancy lies, which is causing an increasingly bitter aftertaste after so many saccharine speeches on behalf of US presidents.  US foreign policy in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait has nothing to do with US foreign policy in Palestine or Lebanon, for example.  

So what signs of change can be made from Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia?  Prior to this visit, the only real coverage of the President's interaction with KSA had emanated from his faux-pas ceremonial bow to the Saudi King Abdullah at the G20 summit in London.  While most recent coverage of his quick stop in Saudi Arabia has been eclipsed by anticipation to the Cairo leg of the journey, some noteworthy things resulted.

Rather than the fanfare that greeted him at Cairo University, it seems the KSA visit was quite a private affair.  In the same style as last year with then-president Bush, Obama was escorted to King Adbullah's Arabian horse-filled ranch at Jenadriyah.  Members of the press accompanying the President were under strict orders given to the State Department by the Saudi Government, which included the following (courtesy of the Friday Lunch Club blog):

—11:29 a.m. ET yesterday, State Department e-mail to White House reporters leaving today for Riyadh: “U.S. Embassy Guidance for Journalists — Dear Members of the White House Press Corps, The Saudi government is permitting journalists accompanying President Obama entry into the country without a visa or the usual customs procedures. While in Saudi Arabia, therefore, journalists are expressly prohibited from leaving the hotel or engaging in any journalistic activities outside of coverage of the POTUS visit. Those who do so risk arrest and detention by Saudi authorities.” 

— 3:50 a.m. ET today, State Department e-mail to White House reporters leaving today for Riyadh: “Correction: U.S. Embassy Guidance for Journalists — The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh Saudi Arabia would like to recall the inaccurate guidance issued to the White House press corps on June 1.”

According to The Kuwait Times, the US President was quoted as saying "I am confident that working together that the United States and Saudi Arabia can progress on a whole host of issues of mutual interest."  Then the King presented Obama with a the kingdom's highest honor, entitled the King Abdul Aziz Collar (ironic wording), which he awarded to the president.  They "sat together in gilded chairs, sipped cardamom-flavored Arabic coffee from small cups and chatted briefly in public before retreating to hold private talks on a range of issues."

Retreating to hold private talks really stuck in my mind after reading the little coverage of the Saudi Arabia stop.  If we wish to see a dramatic departure from earlier Bush policies in the Middle East, then Saudi Arabia, the major player GCC country, does not seem to fit the emblem of this new page turned, and Obama's trip (from what was seen on the other side of the closed doors) did not step in great deviation from his predecessor.  But the truth is, the United States has always played a double-game in the Middle East between the resource-rich and the conflict-prone, the disjointedness of which only surfaces when terrorism plots get connected to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

So what are my hopes for Obama?  I hope that he will put positive pressure for freedom of press, human rights and transparency not only on conflict-prone countries that the United States sees as a security threat in the region, but also on the resource-rich Gulf states with whom the US currently engages in a mutually beneficial economic situation.  This would truly demonstrate his commitment to these values.  If he indeed hopes to wean the United States off foreign oil dependency into more innovative energy technologies, perhaps he will be in a more advantageous position to do so.  As the United States plans to diversify its economy off oil, bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia will change as well, and most likely, demands from the United States will diversify beyond petroleum barrel pricing negotiations and Israel.

Watch The Cairo Obama Speech Here

, 5:59 PM | 0 comments

I myself am just starting to watch it now.  I will be writing another post on Obama's visit shortly.

Al-Jazeera News: "US troops urged to share faith in Afghanistan - 04 May 09"

, 11:11 AM | 0 comments

Afghanistan's long history of invasions continues:

Condi Rice on Human Rights and Torture

, , 7:06 PM | 0 comments

In this video that I found on the Foreign Policy blog Passport, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in an informal Q&A with some university students at Stanford, brings up the dilemma of turning a blind eye to the human rights record in many of the Gulf countries in order to retain alliances with them for the now defunct "Global War on Terror".  Are these mutually exclusive goals?  Judge for yourself at around the 2:10 mark.


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