I was wrong

I thought America will fail the world yet again.  I was wrong.

I thought negative campaigns and insinuations will form most opinions.  I was wrong.

I thought refreshing high-road politics will be drowned out by the old, dirty tricks.  I was wrong.

I thought the Republican political machine will delay the results with lawsuits and technicalities.  I was wrong.

I thought fear and ignorance will drown out reason and nuanced thinking in the electoral debate.  I was wrong.

I thought hundreds of years of hate and racism will prevail over hope and change.  I was wrong.

I thought America would not, could not, elect Barack Obama.  I was wrong.

I've never been so glad to be wrong.

McCain fighting for America!

Finally, McCain is taking it to Obama, and taking it hard.  First the terrorism link and now calling Obama a socialist for wanting to "spread the wealth around" (Obama's words).  Yeah, who the $#%@ wants that?  Who the $#%@ cares about the poor during an economic crisis?  McCain's plan is so much better-- don't give the poor tax breaks so the rich won't have to be taxed more.  Trickle-down economics has been working so well anyway.

So McCain slipped up by saying Obama is a decent family man, but we now have the McCain-Palin we've always wanted-- name calling and fear mongering.

Obama is just so wrong for America.  Obama, that madrassah-studying, terrorist-palling, income-redistributing, Jeremiah-Wright-following, smooth-talking closet Muslim/Arab poser for the US presidency.  It's true, I heard it on Fox News.  Only fair and balanced facts from Sean Hannity.

I'm so glad McCain is taking it to Obama.  Really nothing like hate, fear, and ignorance to get him back up in the polls.

Reality TV: Financial Catastrofuck

The US Congress and Dow Jones don't usually make exciting TV, but last night was different.  Watching BBC and CNN at 1:30 to 4:00 in the morning was more nail-biting and nerve-wracking than that overhyped, inconsequential Ateneo-La Salle game.  By the time it was over, the Dow Jones lost 778 points, its biggest one-day loss ever.  The World Trade Center being demolished by two planes in the middle of Manhattan did not have that much impact on the Dow.

The day started ominously enough with multiple bank failures and bailouts-- in the US, UK, Belgium, Germany, even Iceland-- and that was on top of all the bank failures and bailouts of the past two weeks. Then congressmen started debating whether or not they will approve the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act, which is essentially a transfusion of captial into markets that have stopped running.  It was a very unpopular bill as Main Street complained that their tax dollars are being used to help Wall Street fatcats while ordinary taxpayers are left with foreclosures and bankruptcies.  But after three days of intense negotiations and with the solid backing of the White House and the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties, the bill's passage was almost a foregone conclusion.

Then the voting started.  The Yeas started with a margin of 30 votes, all the way to 110 Yeas and 80 Nays.  Then the margin was whittled down to 25.  20.  15.  10.  Then it was dead even with only a few minutes left for voting.  Then the Nays were leading and the lead stood.  Voting ended with 228 Nays and 205 Yeas.  The bill failed.

As voting took place CNN was showing a live feed from Dow Jones showing real-time reaction to the vote.  When voting started the Dow was down around 200 points.  Then it was down 300.  400.  500. 600.  Hala Gorani, the CNN anchor who used to be a finance news reporter, could not believe the numbers she was seeing.  By the time the 15-minute voting window ran out the Dow lost 700 points.  The index was erratic for the next few hours while the House Democrats and Republicans were blaming each other, but by the end of the trading day the Dow suffered its worst single-day loss ever, worse than 9/11, the DotCom Bust, and the Asian Crisis.  And after a few hours, as I write this, the Asian markets are crashing as well; European markets haven't opened yet.

As Jon Stewart would say, this is a financial catastrofuck.  On live TV.

Don't bring your laptops to the US

Or any electronic storage device, for that matter. Read the whole story here (c/o the Daily Mail). Chek out the lead of the story:

Travellers to the U.S. could have their laptops and other electronic devices seized at the airport under new anti-terror measures.

Federal agents have been granted powers to take such devices and hold them as long as they like.

They do not even need grounds to suspect wrongdoing.

Now, I understand the need to secure the borders and ensure the safety of the public, but this is just crazy. It's one thing to check your bags for explosives or contraband, but to rummage through your email and personal files? Without even having to show probable cause? By comparing a laptop to a suitcase, they are practically saying that certain thoughts, ideas, and knowledge are considered contraband and, thus, actionable.

Guantanamo. Waterboarding. Extraordinary rendition. Warrantless electronic surveillance. Now this. After one terrorist attack these Americans are so ready to give up their rights and forget everything their founding fathers stood for. Not even Israel at the height of the Palestinian intifada, or Britain at the height of the IRA threat, or Spain at the height of the Basque separatist movement, resorted to such draconian measures.

I was in America when 9/11 happened, and I do understand where they are coming from. But this is just wrong. Very wrong.

As Benjamin Franklin so famously wrote, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Philippines, 1899; Iraq, 2003

One hundred and nine years ago today, on 4 February 1899, Pvt. Robert Grayson of the First Nebraska Volunteers shot a Filipino soldier, whose name has been lost to history, and started the Philippine-American War. Not an insurrection, not an uprising, but a war. A war between a newly industrialised United States, fresh from its defeat of the former superpower that was Spain, and a newly sovereign Philippines, barely seven months after it declared its independence.

A war where America's preferred method of torture-- waterboarding-- was first tried and perfected. A war where America's miltary losses-- in Balangiga and Bud Dajo-- were avenged with the blood of civilians. A war where at least 600,000 Filipinos, mostly civilians, lay dead.

A war which was the fruition of an American president's desire-- his Manifest Destiny-- to spread democracy by the barrel of a gun. A war which America has chosen to forget. A war which America is doing all over again.

9/11

I was in America when 9/11 happened. Not in New York but on the other side of the country: the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a sunny Tuesday morning, I remember, and as usual I woke up around 8:15 in the morning to prepare for work which was just a 20-minute bus ride away. I was living with my cousin then, and usually by the time I wake up he has already left for work; that day, I saw him watching the news with a grave look that will only be clear to me in the moments to follow.

"Planes crashed into the World Trade Center," he said. "The towers are gone." He had just visited the towers a few weeks back, bringing me a souvenir keychain.

"What do you mean they're gone?" I asked. "How could they be gone?"

"They're gone. They fell into the ground. Like in the demolition movies," he replied.

By the time I woke up it was already 11:15 in New York and all the events of 9/11 had transpired. Details were still hazy-- there were rumours that bombs detonated all over Washington, that the Air Force just shot down another plane, that around 10,000 people may have died.

Before I got the complete picture I took my usual bus ride to work. No one made a sound in the bus that day-- no chatty old men, no teeners tapping their cd-man-- but the mood was electric. Everyone was aware of what happened and the shock was at its strongest.

My officemates and I immediately talked about what happened and all the theories of who did it. We learned that the best friend of one of my officemates worked in WTC-- she made it out. We watched footages via video streaming, which was still very low quality those days. Over and over, we watched as UA175 hit the South Tower-- there were no footages of the other attacks yet. Airplanes usually pass over our office building, which is just a 15-minute drive from the San Francisco Airport. That day there were no flights and silence replaced the usual roar of passing planes.

By lunch time, our boss allowed us to go home. There was less traffic than usual along El Camino Real that day, so it took longer to get a bus home. While waiting for a bus I saw a lone young man-- maybe in his late teens or early 20's-- walking the length of the thoroughfare waving the American flag. I saw more flags on the way home, and even more being put up. I decided to get a flag myself.

Looking back after six years, nothing really compares to the mood and electricity of that day. Even I, whose politics you all know, proudly waved the Stars and Stripes. It was a shared feeling of shock and anger at what happened, tempered by the empathy one felt for his community and his country. Politics was set aside, replaced only by the oneness that can only come after a shared jarring experience. As famously written by Jean-Marie Colombani in Le Monde: Nous sommes tous Americains. We are all Americans.

Looking back after six years, I am truly saddened that things turned out the way they did. How, from a point of almost unshakeable unity, policy after disastrous policy has given us the utterly polarised world and America we now see. How the world's compassion and support was met with arrogance and contempt.

We were all Americans.

Loss of Political Capital

Vote dashes Bush immigration plan (on BBC)

It is unfortunate that in the one issue where Bush is acting in a non-partisan manner, where his views are balanced and his actions tempered, he is torpedoed by his own party. In the one issue where there is a tinge of the "compassionate conservative" in him, the, um, uncompassionate conservatives win the day. Too bad, he lost so much political capital over Iraq that he can't even get his good policies out.

Anti-Americanism explained

The BBC is having a series on anti-Americanism to be aired over Radio 4 in the UK. Based to the article, it seems to challenge the concept of anti-Americanism as a reaction to American foreign policy, putting it in the same hate box as anti-Semitism or racism. The correspondent, Jim Webb, "argues anti-Americanism is often a cover for hatreds with little justification in fact". He travels to Paris, Caracas, Cairo, and Washington to study this phenomenon. Too bad I don't get Radio 4 in this part of the world-- it would've been good to listen in.

It is apparent in the article that the series has a benign veiw of America, attributing anti-Americanism in Paris as a reaction to America's "kind of democracy that celebrates and encourages ordinariness" (i.e., the elitist and cultured French aristocrat versus the egalitarian but uncouth American cowboy). But whatever the etiology of French anti-American sentiment is, what I'm more concerned about is the sentiment as a reaction to American foreign policy-- is it well placed? Webb discusses it early on in the article. After seeing an anti-American protest in London, he observes:

"A pattern was emerging and has never seriously been altered. A pattern of willingness to condemn America for the tiniest indiscretion - or to magnify those indiscretions - while leaving the murderers, dictators, and thieves who run other nations oddly untouched. "

What Webb fails to comprehend is that this strong reaction to America's "tiniest indiscretion" is actually an acknowledgement that it is expected to have moral ascendancy. The world demands more of America and is very disappointed when it acts like other thuggish countries.

More than any other country in the world and more than any other superpower in history, America has trumpeted itself as the beacon of democracy and human rights. The British never claimed to spread democracy in India-- it was honest that it's all about expanding the British Empire. America, on the other hand, never owned up to its imperial past, pointing to Manifest Destiny as the reason for denying the nascent Filipino government its independence.

America prides itself in its democratic ideals and its wide open arms to all peoples. It claims to defend human rights and civil liberties, and promises to defend the world against oppressive regimes. And, to a large extent, the world believed that. That is why the world bristles at America's "tiniest indiscretions"-- it cannot claim to defend democracy and human rights and democracy while destroying them with its actions. America has proclaimed itself to be the good guy, the defender of the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free". Its actions have shown us otherwise. That is why there is so much anti-Americanism in the world-- it's a reaction against hypocrisy. That is why America is so easily condemned for its "tiniest indiscretions".

There is one thing the world hates more than murderers, dictators, and thieves. It is self-righteous murderers, dictators, and thieves.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

US crowd beats passenger to death (BBC)
Angry crowd kills passenger in car that struck child (CNN)
Texas Crowd Kills Man After Car Hit Girl (CBS)

I wonder if the same would've happened if the passenger weren't Hispanic.

Shame! Shame! Shame!

(My apologies for quickly reverting to serious threads, but this just rankled my nerves. Warning: this is a rant.)

A second American soldier has been convicted for the now infamous rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family (parents and 5-year-old sister) in Mahmoudiya, Iraq. In case you weren't aware of the details, the rape victim, Abeer Qasim Hamza, was made aware that her parents and sister have been mudrered while she was being raped. And after being raped, her head was bashed in with a concrete block and her body set ablaze.

This soldier, Sgt. Paul Cortez from the 101st Airborne, gets 100 years for the heinous crime, but is eligible for parole in just 10 years. So he can get a measly 10 years in jail for his dastardly crime if his parole is granted, which is likely if he stays a good boy in jail (no little girls to rape there, after all). And 10 years from now the Iraq War and all its atrocities would be distant history, unless of course it's still raging.

Shame on American justice for giving this soldier an easy escape. It's fine to spare him from the death penalty for his cooperation, but allowing him a chance for parole in 10 years? If this were a white girl and her family, American media would be saturated with coverage and this soldier would be dead by now. Or at the minimum have a 100-year sentence without the chance for parole. But this sentence for the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family is just so light. The US justice system has denied eligibility for parole for much lighter offenses, so why not now? In this case, justice has been denied from the most innocent of victims.

It'll be justice if he and his four co-rapists/murderers serve those first 10 years in an Iraqi prison. Hopefully they'll be spending most of their time sitting on broomsticks, and not like fairy-tale witches.

---

Now, don't give me that crap that 99.99% of American soldiers in Iraq are doing their jobs honourably. This is not a case of how many good vs. how many bad; the Defense Department's (and American public's) attitude must be one atrocity is one too many. Besides, Mahmoudiya is not an isolated incident. BBC has a list of American atrocities in Iraq, and these are just the ones that made headlines in Western media. And if Robert Koehler is to be believed, the racism against Arabs is deep-seated in the US Armed Forces.

And don't give me crap about 3,000+ American soldiers dying in Iraq and the stress they face there (that's the excuse of the five Mahmoudiya soldeirs, btw-- an IED just killed a few of their mates so they wanted revenge). They have guns, for crying out loud. They are legitimate targets in a war. They can defend themselves from attackers. It's not an excuse or even an explanation for killing civilians. The Brits and Aussies are also in Iraq; so far they haven't done anything that approaches American atrocities.

Shame on Cheney-head Bush for starting this war. Shame on the American justice system for treating war criminals with kid-gloves. Shame on the American public for not demanding justice for Iraqi victims.

The Redcoats are leaving!

Prime Minister Tony Blair announced on Wedensday that 1,600 British troops will be pulled out of Iraq over the next few months. The official reason is that security in Basra in southern Iraq-- a relatively peaceful Shiite-dominated area-- can now be taken over by Iraqi troops. "We'll stand down when the Iraqis stand up," so to speak. Likewise, all 460 Danish will be withdrawn in the coming months presumably for the same reason. All this is happening as the US is sending an additional 21,000 troops to the volatile and very violent Baghdad and the Sunni triangle.

The US is putting a happy face in all this-- they (the Brits and Danes) can leave since it's peaceful where they are deployed, and it probably is. But that is not the point. If America's allies in the Iraq war are so committed to the cause, why not send those 1,600 British and 460 Danish troops to Baghdad instead of bringing them home? Obviously, there is a need to reallocate troop strength from southern Iraq to the central Sunni triangle; how come the Allies aren't willing to give their American partners a hand? Is it because they don't want to put their troops into harm's way? Or do they think that the Bush policy of escalation is the wrong way to go? Either way, America is being left high and dry in Iraq. "Go it alone" is just too real now.

From sea to shining sea, America's allies in Iraq are deserting them. I just wonder how many bells will have to crack before Bush hears them toll.

The Big Three

Foreign ministers of China, India, and Russia met recently in Delhi to discuss matters ranging from border disputes and shared rivers to Iraq and Afghanistan. (As always, read about it here)

The BBC headline names the three countries the "Big Three". There are many reasons why they're big. Their collective population, for one, is nearly half that of the entire world. More importantly, though, China and India are re-emerging economic powers (they were dominant centuries ago), while Russia is being re-assertive after decades of post-Cold War humiliation. Combined, this bloc can be a formidable force in world affairs. All three are nuclear powers, and two have permanent seats in the UN Security Council. China is the world's factory, producing nearly everything sold in the West. The IT industry has effectively been outsourced to India, whose engineers now populate US technical universities. Russia is becoming the main energy source for Europe, and has shown inclination to use its petroleum muscle.

It's about time a bloc challenges US dominance in world affairs. This meeting, although by no means binding or policy-setting, is a signal to the US that the three countries can work together and present a unified foreign policy front. These three can "buy" their way into alliances with smaller countries-- China's forays into Africa is a prime example-- and challenge US influence. The US can suddenly find its options lessened and be forced into compromises with the rest of the world. Moreover, small nations that have been at the short end of US foreign policy, like Palestine and the Philippines, can form (or threaten to form) alliances with the Big Three and forge a better deal for themselves.

America, being the sole superpower, gives it a monopoly over world affairs. Without the threat of being unseated it rules roughshod over smaller states, using a combination of incentives and punishments to impose its interests around the world. The Big Three has the potential to challenge US hegemony and soften its barganing stance. On the other hand, the US can provide the necessary counterweight against possible abuse by the Big Three.

In the marketplace of power, competition among the big benefits the small.

You got me convinced, Dubya

Last Sunday, three non-senior US defense officials, who remained anonymous, presented evidence that Iran is supplying Shia militias with ammunition and explosives, including Explosively Formed Penetrators that can pierce through the best US tank armour. (Read the BBC's report here) Even worse, they say, the support is coming directly from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

If I remember correctly, the last time the US presented "evidence" of threat from another country was in February 2003 when then State Sec. Colin Powell argued for the invasion of Iraq before the UN Security Council. Back then, he presented satellite and physical evidence to prove the existence of WMD's in Iraq and justify an all-out war. We now know that the evidence he presented was false and intelligence data was manipulated to the point of fabrication.

The accusers this time are three US defense officials who wish to remain anonymous.

At least Powell had the balls to put his reputation on the line when he made his case against Iraq. These officials, who are making very serious accusations indeed, don't want their names published. They won't even stake their reputations on the veracity of their own evidence. Mind you, this wasn't an unauthorised leak to media; this is fully supported by the Bush administration which reiterated (on Monday) the case made by the defense officials. What a great way to rebuild US credibility-- make accusations through anonymous officials presenting evidence not verified by any third party.

Good job making your case, Dubya. Those three anonymous officials really did the trick. Now I'm convinced you're a Cheney-head.