America's new Foreign Policy Entanglement

The events of the past weeks have served as a dramatic wake up call for President Obama and his retinue of advisors, as well as America as a whole regarding re-thinking their approaches to foreign policy in North Africa, the Middle east and worldwide. Although Most African Americans are familiar with Egypt and the turmoil occurring across its chronicled cities and other nation states in the region, grievously most have a curbed comprehension of the impact these occurrences have on President Obama and any policy deliberated as a function of these events. For President Obama and his administration, the conundrum from this vantage point is not purely formulating policy for America, but conspicuously deciding how to formulate policy on behalf of Israel and ally’s in the region or the inchoate masses of the secular populations in revolt.

First and foremost is dealing with addressing emotion, better know as terror as a singular attribute that Americans alone confront in concert with dealing with autocrats all for the good of us, under the guise of peace and Islamic fundamentalism. Mistakes made some 30 years ago in Iran, and what we have observed in Egypt and Libya, still fall on deaf ears – even for the prophet of all prophets Obama. In addition, our monolithic approach to supporting what is best for Israel and a myopic focus on Al Qaeda is misplaced and may do more harm than good. Common sense would advocate looking at all nations singularly but our focus on terrorism prevents such. There are differences between military dictators and monarchs, but starvation, repression, discrimination and poverty are least common dominators if one accepts and place the people of nations first.

In Libya, The United States is openly spoken out against the violence in the country’s second-largest city, Benghazi, where there are reports of security forces firing on peaceful protesters and where human-rights groups say many have been killed in recent days. In Iran, unconfirmed reports of anti-government gatherings on being broken up by a security police and members of the feared pro-government Basij militia patrolling the streets again he has spoken out.

The hand he is dealing with is progresively getting difficult to contain. There is Raymond Davis, the American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and the US. A former CIA agent, he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January. The 36-year-old former special forces soldier fired 10 shots and got out of his car to shoot one man twice in the back as he fled. A third man was crushed by an American vehicle as it rushed to Davis’s aid. Police confiscated from his car: an unlicensed pistol, a long-range radio, a GPS device, an infrared torch and a camera with pictures of buildings around Lahore. Plus, the possibility of unrest growing and spreading in the region and its impact on the price of Oil and the recovering US Economy makes all even more difficult. We have already seen militant actions lead to blowing up Iraq's largest oil refinery.

This is the position Obama is in. His taciturn inactivity places us in more danger by ignoring this for the people which make matters worse, for they will not forget either his inactivity or ineptness when orating support for the likes of King Abdullah of Saudi, a Mubarak of Egypt, Bashar Assad of Syria, or King Hamad bin isa al-Khalife of Bahrain. President Obama needs to make a decision regarding what is next for Libya and the Middle East. He must no make the mistake of the past and be able to see that the protest in North African and the Arab world are closer to the protest observed here in America during the 60s and the civil rights era. For one they are the youth of these nations just like it was the youth in the united sates that hit the streets then.

It will be difficult. On the one hand he will need to defend individual policy parameters that support nation building, democracy and human rights; not just in North Africa and the Middle East but Russia and china also. He must in addition, re-establish US credibility, and form new relationships with the new leadership of Egypt, Tunisia, and other places if such comes to fruition. And if not, engage the opposition leadership while maintain close ties with the military of said countries.

This will mean changing the US Foreign policy assumption of a one sixe fit all approach. Although outside of the region, we may be able to learn a thing or two from the riots in Greece and India, and use this to re-evaluate what we did wrong for example in Iran in 1979. Regardless, this is a difficult situation he faces since it is obvious his noted difficulty is siding with the ideas of freedom, liberty and democracy for the citizenry or maintaining an autocratic association with a dictator for the sake of a quasi-peace for Israel, and good standing of the US in the eyes of the regions other despots.

The President’s talk has been top shelf; demanding change now but it is rhetorical seeing that he and his state Department are torn between advancing democracy in the region and the old school, approach that change “taking time” Obama’s decision will become even more difficult in the future and will range from the role of Islam in politics. He should take into consideration that polity should be based on security and the well-being of the US first and foremost.

Things in the Arab world will continue to surprise and if Obama is to maintain any type of control, he must become a student of history and learn from the mistakes in US foreign policy of the past. he does have one advantage, he was opposite Rush Limbaugh, Glenn beck, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee who criticized the President for not Support Mubarak.

The Two face Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy

I have been writing and expounding on US foreign policy since the early 1980s. My first or one of my earliest essays was called “Israel’s fascist Penumbra” which was published in the Black Students Association Journal at Memphis State University in 1985.

It addressed the “do anything” for Israel mentality and our traditionally mistaken monolithic conviction of Arabs and Africans worldwide, that we often dissemble under the shadow of peace and agoraphobia. What is common regarding now and then and even times prior is the “do as I say and not as I do” legacy of colonialist and imperial belief orientations that place all European in origin at the summit of rational behavior and what is deemed to be acceptable.

On the one hand we vilify the Arab and African States for their desire for governments to run as theocracies, yet we do the same here. Promulgating policies based on religious beliefs and biblical guidance. Our own founding as a nation saw the assertion that Africans were less valuable and more akin to live stock than human beings. An edict that presented itself in policies from slavery to Jim Crow and segregation. In Oklahoma, a law was recently passed that bars courts from considering Shariah law when deciding cases was put on hold. And we are well aware of the tense debate facilitated via the discussion of abortion.

We condemn terrorist for their no holds barred attacks on America, yet we support going to Somalia and just killing everyone in sight as if their lives are less important than ours to avenge the deaths of four Christian Missionaries who were not asked to come to their country in the first place. We support invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and manufacture policy and war to remove leaders we label tyrants and dictators and autocrats yet give similar men billions in aid annually and historically and invite them to the Whitehouse for dinner pretending as if their blood is not on our hands from the tanks and fighter we give them.

We supported Chiang Kai-Shek’s ROC government from the 1930s to 1949 in a civil war that saw the murder of tens of thousands. In Chilie we funded General Augusto Pinochet who murdered and tortured thousands from 1973 to 1990. Then there was Suharto in Indonesia and Papa and baby Doc in Haiti.

But it is to only be expected for unfortunately we too are a nation of terrorist and celebrate such resonantly. In Mississippi, there is an attempt to venerate Nathan Bedford Forrest, a man whose image on horseback I road past almost daily in my home town of Memphis, Tennessee. Yes, 150 years after the start of the Civil War people want to celebrate a murderer who founded a terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan. An organization from its inception main goal was to conduct inordinate acts of violence solely on African Americans in the South eventually including the bombing deaths of four girls attending Sunday school in a Church in 1963.

This man was also known for what he did on April 12, 1864 at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, when General Nathan Bedford Forrest captured the fort with his 1,500. In the process, according to eyewitness accounts like General Kilpatrick (USA), Forrest “nailed Negroes to the fences, set fire to the fences, and burned the Negroes to death.” More than 300 African American Union troops were massacred then.

But let me not digress, the point is that US foreign policy is the result of constructs that are two-faced. For if other did to us what we did to them we would be extremely upset and throwing hissy fits. We are so shallow, self-centered and heedless. Yes we are hypocrites and this hypocrisy may be what destroys us, just as it leads to behaviors that spoliated ancient Rome.

First Presidential Anti-Obama Campaign Attack Ad For 2012 Hits New Hampshire

Police arrest 11-year-old over 'inappropriate' stick figure drawing

 

What U wont see on TV #2

1] Whites leaving the Democratic Party in droves

2] Detroit Officials To Shut Half The City's Schools

3] Mom Arrested For Duct-Taping Baby Daughter

4] Blood Tests Show Chemicals In Gulf Citizens Blood From SeaFood

5] If Libyan unrest spreads, gas could reach $5

6] BABY DOLPHINS ARE WASHING UP DEAD ALONG THE GULF

7] Security Industry Association recommends biometric authentication for federal E-Verify program

8] Italian Stock Exchange suspended due to 'technical issues'

9] 5.7 Volcano Island Japan and 5.8 Santiago Argentina.

African- Sub-Saharan mercenary killed in Libya (extremely graphic)

The Internet is for Entertainment - Not Information

A new study has reported some startling findings on cell phone usage in America. Although it examines cell phone usage across the nation, it pointed out that African-Americans and Latinos outpace whites in their use of data applications on handheld devices, continuing a trend we first identified in 2009.

Conducted by the Pew foundation, the Pew internet and American Life Project Noted that minority Americans lead the way when it comes to mobile access with almost two-thirds of African-Americans (64%) being wireless internet users. In addition, African Americans are significantly more likely to own a cell phone than white’s counterparts (87% of blacks own a cell phone, compared with 80% of whites). In total,
Findings also indicate that although the internet is a wealth of information, that when compared to whites, researchers have noticed signs of segregation online and display trends that show blacks and Latinos may be using their increased Web access more for entertainment than empowerment. Forty-one percent of blacks use their phones for e-mail, compared with 30 percent of whites. The figures for using social media like Facebook via phone were 36 percent for Latinos, 33 percent for blacks and 19 percent for whites.

Another study conducted by the Nielsen Company using cell phone bills found found that the average African-American uses 1,331 talk minutes a month. The average white person, on the other hand, only goes through 647. The Caucasians aren't making up this difference through texting either, as they text an average of 566 messages a month, to blacks' 780. Moreover African-Americans are slightly more likely than whites to have a cell phone, but not a land line.

Jamaican Musician David Minott is asked millions of African Americans to go without using their cell phones for 24 hours during his “Our Silence Speaks Volumes: the Black Out” campaign. His desire was to get people of color to turn off their cell phones for 24 hours starting on the first day of Black History Month, Feb. 1.

Yep, thats where wer have come. Wonder what Tim Berners-Lee would think now,he first proposed the World Wide Web more than 20 years ago. And just think, I was in college and school when their was no desktop computer, cell phone or even internet. I bet some folks even think it is impossible to live without such. Just think I sued to read books, listen to records and actually remembered telephone numbers.

I agree the enternet is good, but we also loose a lot. No wonder my students can't formulate sentences with correct subject verb agreement or attend to a page for more than 10 seconds. The convience of the internet has dumbed us down, for we mainly use it to be entertained, when in fact we have serious work left to do.

yet it’s now difficult to even imagine ordinary life without it

What U wont see on TV

Sarah Palin takes breastfeeding dig at Michelle Obama during Long Island appearance

Kendall Anderson, 16, killed mom with claw hammer for taking away his PlayStation: court

Michele Bachmann, Tea Party darling, slams First Lady Michelle Obama over breastfeeding

Student strike at University of Puerto Rico rocks island and sparks political crisis


GOP State Sen. Proposes Elimination of Child Labor Laws

Mississippi governor refuses to denounce proposal to honour former Ku Klux Klan leader

Housing Doom: Nearly 5% of US Mortgages in Foreclosure (up from 4.39%)

US Patent 6506148 – Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors

John Henrik Clarke/ Cornell West: Debate on Afrikan Nationalism

Who is the real madoff: African Americnas Still Display Scant Signs of Economic Improvement

By definition, to improve is to enhance in value or quality — to make better. Yet more than 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, there is still no noticeable improvement in the quality of life in the African American community.

A new report suggests that a large corpus of the African American community has made very little progress when compared to whites over the past few decades. According to a survey given to African American adults, seven out of 10 adults view today as very tough times for their children and perceive poor black youth as falling further behind. Yet, unlike adults, two out of three African American youth perceive current times as being “very good or OK.”

In addition to survey data, the report also provides economic data on opportunity trends. Four out of ten black children are born into poverty compared to less than one in ten for whites. Less than 40 percent live with two parents versus 75 percent for whites. African American children are statistically more likely to die before their first birthday or become obese in school.

More startling is the finding that 85 percent of African American children in the fourth grade cannot read or do math at their grade level, and almost half eventually drop out of school. A young African American male born over the past decade has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime.

It is essential that we remember that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than a dreamer; he was a catalyst. We cannot think we have it made, since the numbers show us otherwise.

In 2010 the unemployment, underemployment and hidden unemployment rate for black 16 to 29-year-olds was 40 percent and 43 percent for black males. The large number of young black adults not working full-time jobs will severely limit their future employability, earnings and ability to support their families.

It was Dr. King who said, "It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps."