On June 27, 2007, Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was appointed Middle East Envoy to work as a peacemaker in the region on behalf of the US, the EU, the UN and Russia. The announcement of his appointment came just hours after Mr Blair stood down as UK Prime Minister. The analyst might be tempted to hypothesize that this nomination falls in Mr. Blair's political calculations to get a decent out-of-office job after he leaves the prestigious 10th Downing Street. Such hypothesis is not weak due to Blair's strong sense of political calculations that earned him three consecutive terms in office, a record in UK politics. However, the analyst might also hope that the still dynamic Blair is sent to fix a political chaos he contributed to maintain in the Middle East. In this case, his task might not be easy as it will require he changes tactics.

Tony Blair seems to be aware of the difficult task involving his nomination as Middle Envoy. Recent media reports indicate that he suggests that stability and peace in the Middle East require a huge and intense amount of work. The first step in this work is gaining the parties' trust. If Blair has already gained Israel's trust for being their ally, it is more difficult for him to gain the Palestinians' trust for the same reason. Obviously Abbas, the Palestinian Authority and his party Fatah salute Blair's appointment. However, the Palestinian movement Hamas criticises Blair's nomination, sending negative signals to cooperating with the new Middle East Envoy. Hamas accuses Blair of lacking honesty and neutrality. But in a recent statement Blair has assured the international community to work hard for a peaceful two-state solution to the Israelo-Palestinian conflict. UN officials trust Blair as a key player able to bring energy to the Middle East peace process.

If Tony Blair is to succeed in bringing positive energy and constructive peace to the Middle East, he must learn to embrace the qualities of a peacemaker. In other words, the newly appointed Middle Envoy must learn to be a neutral facilitator. He must learn to reach out to both sides in the conflict without taking a side. This requires other tactics than political calculation tactics. Political calculation usually involves people's manipulation aimed at more or less egoistic goals of political or social successes. Peacemaking requires compassion for others, reflective listening of others, negotiation with others to allow the empowerment of local capacity for peace. Time will tell us whether Tony Blair will be able to show compassion, to listen, and to help develop local capacity for peace in the Middle East. Of course, the Former UK Prime Minister has the assets and abilities to be a good peacemaker. We wait and see how he will uses his great assets!

Jacques KOKO, Senior Political Analyst -Americans for Informed Democracy       

June 28, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The White House and Vice President's Office have been subpoenaed for documents pertaining to the Bush Administration's five year long warrant-less wiretapping program.

Yes, this is very good news for all of us (and no doubt the work of those few beleaguered souls in Washington who still believe government should be transparent and accountable), but I won't feel like anything has been either learned of achieved until senior members of the administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales first) are sweating through their suits in the dock, facing the possibility of many, many years in prison for the international and domestic crimes they signed off on.

If no one at the top is ever prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq, for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, rendition to torture, and enforced disappearances, next time around will be infinitely worse. In my mind, impeachment wouldn't even be enough (and would only apply to a two of the culprits anyway), and what is really needed to create a precedent for the future is criminal prosecution. No decent public servant should be afraid to echo this.

June 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hi all --

We're getting ready for our "Social Entrepreneurship and Global Change" summit and we just got the awesome links below to great organizations young people should check out from our presenter on Progressive Youth Movements... check these out!

Seth

OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE
www.soros.org

A Sample of Youth Activist and Civic Engagement Organizations

AMERICANS FOR INFORMED DEMOCRACY

THE BUS PROJECT

CAMPUS PROGRESS, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS
www.campusprogress.org

CAMPUS CLIMATE CHALLENGE
www.climatechallenge.org

CENTER FOR PROGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP
www.progressleaders.org

CHOICE USA
www.choiceusa.org

GENDER PAC
www.gpac.org

GENERATION CHANGE, CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
www.community HYPERLINK "http://www.communitychange.org/issues/generationchange" change.org/issues/generationchange

GLOBAL JUSTICE
www.globaljusticenow.org

THE LEAGUE OF YOUNG VOTERS
www.indyvoter.org

ROCK THE VOTE
www.rockthevote.com

STUDENTS FOR A SENSIBLE DRUG POLICY
www.ssdp.org

STUDENT PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP’S NEW VOTERS PROJECT
www.newvotersproject.org

UNITED STATES STUDENT ASSOCIATION
www.usstudents.org

YOUTH RADIO
www.youthradio.org

YOUTH RIGHTS MEDIA
www.youthrightsmedia.org

YOUNG ELECTED OFFICIALS NETWORK, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY FOUNDATION
www.youngelectedofficials.org

YOUNG PEOPLE FOR, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY FOUNDATION
www.youngpeoplefor.org

Resources and Information

CIRCLE
www.civicyouth.org

YOUNG VOTER STRATEGIES
www.youngvoterstrategies.org

WIRETAP

FUTUREMAJORITY BLOG

NEW ORGANIZING INSTITUTE

IARA PENG’S ARTICLE, “HOW PROGRESSIVES CAN WIN IN THE LONG RUN”

ANNA GREENBERG’S STUDY ON THE MILLENIALS, FAITH, AND TECHNOLOGY

NEW AMERICA MEDIA’S STUDY ON CALIFORNIA YOUTH

NEW YORK TIMES, "YOUNG AMERICANS ARE LEANING LEFT, NEW POLL FINDS"

June 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All the time we hear about "radical Islam" and our fight against it, but never a clear definition of what that either "radical Islam" means or what our fight against it entails exactly. Too many people, pundits and politicians prominent among them, have decided that the West (whatever the heck that means anymore) is at war with Islam in general --all sects and expressions thereof-- and every part of the world where Islam is the dominant faith.

Fareed Zakaria injects some desperately needed sanity into the discourse:

The split between Sunnis and Shiites—which plays a role in Lebanon as well—is only one of the divisions within the world of Islam. Within that universe are Shiites and Sunnis, Persians and Arabs, Southeast Asians and Middle Easterners and, importantly, moderates and radicals. The clash between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian territories is the most vivid sign of the latter divide. Just as the diversity within the communist world ultimately made it less threatening, so the many varieties of Islam weaken its ability to coalesce into a single, monolithic foe. It would be even less dangerous if Western leaders recognized this and worked to emphasize such distinctions. Rather than speaking of a single worldwide movement—which absurdly lumps together Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India, Shiite warlords in Lebanon and Sunni jihadists in Egypt—we should be emphasizing that all these groups are distinct, with differing agendas, enemies and friends. That robs them of their claim to represent Islam. It describes them as they often are—small local gangs of misfits, hoping to attract attention through nihilism and barbarism.

The greatest weakness of militant Islam is that it is unpopular almost everywhere. Even in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has some roots, it was widely reviled. And now, when Taliban fighters occasionally take over a town in southern Afghanistan, they disband the schools, burn books, put women behind veils. These actions cause fear and resentment, not love. Most Muslims, even those who are devout and enraged at the West, don't want to return to some grim fantasy of medieval theocracy.

And by the way, in Sarajevo, a city estimated to be more the 80 percent Muslim, no one gives a hoot about Salman Rushdie's knighthood.

June 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

My God. I'll never be numb to this stuff, no matter how many of these stories I read.

This is what the Bush White House wrought on our watch. Read the whole article.

From WaPo.

Iraq's conflict is exacting an immense and largely unnoticed psychological toll on children and youth that will have long-term consequences, said social workers, psychiatrists, teachers and aid workers in interviews across Baghdad and in neighboring Jordan.

"With our limited resources, the societal impact is going to be very bad," said Haider Abdul Muhsin, one of the country's few child psychiatrists. "This generation will become a very violent generation, much worse than during Saddam Hussein's regime."

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes, half of them children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Many are being killed inside their sanctuaries -- at playgrounds, on soccer fields and in schools. Criminals are routinely kidnapping children for ransom as lawlessness goes unchecked. Violence has orphaned tens of thousands.

I have nothing really wise or insightful to add to this. It's just horrible, plain and simple. How many people, after 9/11, just wanted to see the United States attack an Arab county, any Arab country? Many, and they got their wish. Now, the lives our vengeful ignorance ruined will haunt us --and should haunt us-- long into this century. There is not a word in the English language for what the war is. Catastrophe, disaster, crisis --all terms fall flat against the number of dead, the soon-to-die, and the widening shadow of a regional conflagration.

AIDemocracy once had a rule not allowing its political analysts to post on the war. I'm not sure the exact reason for that rule, but I would guess it was made when the war was still considered merely a "divisive political issue," and AID didn't want to alienate anyone, especially "moderates" and people in the political "centre." I never followed the "no posts on the war" rule, and no one has called me out for it so far. If my posts alienate some people, good.

If ever there was a time to NOT be "moderate," it's now. Showing "moderation" when faced with explosive militarism and the conscious destruction of our democratic institutions and human rights is what got us to where we are now.

June 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

My latest piece is, at long last, up at Internationalist. It begins with the following letter:

Letter from Sarajevo:

I am currently living and working in the Balkans, where, following the breakup of Yugoslavia, a series of interconnected wars left hundreds of thousands dead and millions ripped apart physically and emotionally. Even on the sunniest summer days, reminders of the past are ever present. Where I live, in Sarajevo, the façade of almost every building is bullet-riddled and blast-marked, a testament to the city’s grueling almost four-year-long siege. Every bullet hole represents a conscious attempt to take a human life. Elsewhere in the country, the bones of victims still poke through the ground, betraying the locations of the mass graves, and the task of burying the dead is far from complete. Two weeks ago, eighty newly-exhumed civilian victims were buried in the city of Brcko. Talk of national reconciliation is beginning quietly and with tremendous trepidation.

Over the past few months, and especially since I came to Bosnia, I have devoted a great deal of thought to the consequences of militarism, nationalism, and the violence that always follows both. One night recently, a Bosnian colleague and I sat up talking until dawn. Ours was a grim conversation about war, genocide, and the long road to recovery countries and peoples must walk in the aftermath.  Though no two conflicts are ever exactly comparable, it is possible to recognize patterns. Today in Iraq, we are seeing a human disaster not completely unlike Bosnia during its 1992-1995 war. The ghosts of the past are not whispering to us, they’re shrieking. As I loook out my office window at the cityscape of Sarajevo, my thoughts drift to Baghdad.

Yours truly,
Una

Oddly enough, Roger Cohen of the New York Times has a Times Select piece about Iraq and the Balkans today. I'd love to read it, but I don't have Times Select. If any of you do, I'd really appreciate it if you could copy and paste the Cohen piece in an email to una@aidemocracy.org

June 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Well, this is simply beyond disgusting.

But, lest you think outside regime change is the answer, there's this:

At least three prominent nongovernment organizations that pushed for broader legal rights or civil society have been shuttered outright, while hundreds more have been forced underground. A recent article on the Baztab Web site said that about 8,000 nongovernment organizations were in jeopardy, forced to prove their innocence, basically because the government suspects all of them of being potential conduits for some $75 million the United States has earmarked to promote a change in government. Professors have been warned against attending overseas conferences or having any contact with foreign governments, lest they be recruited as spies. The Iranian-Americans are all being detained basically on the grounds that they were either recruiting or somehow abetting an American attempt to achieve a “velvet revolution” in Iran.

My Iranian peers are engaged in an everyday struggle to change their society, and they have my most heartfelt solidarity, but I oppose government interference from the outside --especially from the United States.

June 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I don't know why this stuff surprises me anymore.

From Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, and courtesy of the $%#@-you-can't-even-make-up-department here at AID.

"I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia said.

Even if a real terrorist who suffered mistreatment is released because of complaints of abuse, Judge Scalia said, the interruption to the terrorist's plot would have ensured "in Los Angeles everyone is safe." During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 when Jack Bauer finally figures out how to break the die-hard terrorist intent on nuking L.A. The real genius, the judge said, is that this is primarily done with mental leverage. "There's a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed," Judge Scalia said. "They had it on closed circuit television - and it was all staged. ... They really didn't kill the family."

June 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Newspaper reports revealing a labor trafficking practice in China have surfaced. The investigation resulted after hundred of parents pleaded for the return of their missing children in an online article. As of yet, hundreds have been forced into making bricks in Shanxi, a northeastern province of china, many of them teenagers, the New York Times reported.

Similar to most trafficking rings, the process of locating the victims in nearly impossible. Some factories, not all of which are legal, are owned by a single individual – it is said that the workers are moved from one place to another and no records are kept on the location of the workers. And in many cases, the local authorities have proved to be just as corrupt as the factory owners. Parents have been forced to bribe local officials in order to tour the brick factories to search for their missing children. And in some cases, it is believed that the authorities are reselling the found children back into the ring.

According to a recent article in the China Daily, five suspects have been arrested and have confessed to their involvemnt. The search continues for three others. Many of the victims were lured by the prospect of a profitable job and some were captured during travel. All were forced to make brick under very severe conditions, including little water, meager rations of food, and physically dangerous working conditions.

It is believed that most of the victims were trafficked from the Shaanxi and Henan Provinces to Shanxi, where many of these factories are located.

To read the New York Times article, click here.
To read the China Daily article, click here.

June 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

For all you international law wonks and aspiring international law wonks, this should be mighty interesting.

The Open Society Institute, in partnership with the International Senior Lawyers Project, has launched a blog about the Special Court for Sierra Leone trial of former Liberian president and war crimes indictee Charles Taylor. The blog is written by trial monitors with experience in other international international tribunals, including the ICTY (to which two more indictees were recently delivered, BTW.)

I've read some of the posts by the trial monitors, and they're very good, not just analysis-wise, but also in terms of writing quality. Lawyers aren't known for their prose, but this is good stuff:

Throughout the briefing, aides and diplomats wandered in an out of the four wooden doors on either side of the august room, whose mural on the back wall – depicting a phoenix rising from the ashes — dominates the scene. The U.N.’s top legal counsel and head of its Office of Legal Affairs, Nicholas Michel, remained for most of the briefing, looking relaxed as he sat directly behind the seat from which Dr Migiro delivered her intervention.  To the right, Special Court staff and advisor's from the Registry, Prosecution and Chambers, watched and whispered among themselves as the Security Council members went through their paces.  In the gallery, the front section reserved for diplomats was about halfway filled with ambassadors and their diplomatic legal advisors.  A handful of NGOs and students took notes from the upper gallery.

State reactions to President King and the Prosecutor’s remarks were remarkably uniform. What was surprising, however, was the content of the responses – almost all interventions highlighted the importance of legacy efforts designed to impact and enhance the Sierra Leonean legal system and the rule of law more generally after the court closes its doors; and the court’s outreach efforts which aimed to engage Sierra Leoneans at a grass roots level about the court’s work.  This marks a welcome shift in the way in which States have talked about international and hybrid courts more generally, moving away from discussions which have traditionally focused on a purely legal and budgetary analysis of the trials themselves, towards a greater appreciation and awareness of the daily impact such courts can have on people most affected by the crimes.

You can check out the Trial of Charles Taylor here. And here is an excellent BBC piece about the progress of international justice.

June 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack