The case had become a major international diplomatic issue, with the US government calling the charges “baseless” and both Sec. of State Clinton and Pres. Obama repeatedly demanding her immediate release. Today, Sec. of State Clinton announced today that Saberi’s release had been confirmed, adding that she was “heartened” by the news.

According to the Washington Post:

Saberi’s release was confirmed by the semi-official state news agency Mehrnews. She did not immediately appear before the crowd of reporters that had gathered at the gray metal gate of Evin Prison in northwest Tehran. Saberi’s attorney, Abdolsamad Khorramshai, said Saberi apparently had been sent out of the prison through another door.

Saberi had undertaken a hunger-strike in protest of her detention and has been described in recent days as being gaunt and frail. Her father just yesterday said he was concerned that if her sentence were upheld, she would starve herself to death, in protest or in despair. Iran’s Pres. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, considered a hardline ideologue and fierce opponent of the US, had ordered prosecutors to permit Saberi to present a complete defense.

In a 5-hour hearing yesterday, Saberi’s lawyers presented her defense and argued that the charges were illegitimate and that the process used to convict her violated due process requirements. No specifics about the defense arguments have been released so far, and the courts have not made the proceedings public.

Her attorney told the press that his client was free to leave Iran after her release and that “They explained [to] me that the two years were conditional and would not be carried out if she would not commit any crimes in the coming five years”. Though Saberi’s release may signal a slight thaw in Washington-Tehran relations, there are still at least 7 journalists in jail in Iran, and observers note that Iran may be trying to curry favor with the release.

• Originally published 11 May 2009, at CafeSentido.com

According to the AP:

“I am hopeful and optimistic that there will be a remarkable change to her verdict,” Abdolsamad Khorramshahi said outside the courthouse. “My colleague and I were allowed to defend our client in a favorable atmosphere. Our client also had enough time to defend herself.”

Khorramshahi’s reference to the court’s atmosphere and time to defend stems from heavy criticism levied against the court that convicted Saberi. It was reported at the time that the initial conviction came after a closed-door hearing of only 15 minutes, in which her lawyer was not permitted to state the case for her defense and evidence both for and against her was not adequately examined.

Civil rights lawyers within Iran have complained that the case clearly violates Iran’s own provisions for due process and have called for a reversal based on those grounds. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, has said the court should engage in a full and impartial review, but has also said he cannot intervene, as the courts are independent under the Iranian system.

There had been speculation diplomatic pressure might somehow lead the state to withdraw all charges, nullifying the conviction, but such a process has been seen to be outside the norms in Iranian judicial review. But on 19 April, Ahmedinejad did “intervene”, urging the top Iranian prosecutor to permit the journalist to defend herself at her appeal.

VOA reports:

Saberi’s father Reza Saberi says the journalist ended a hunger strike Monday at Evin prison after refusing to eat for nearly two weeks. Witnesses to Sunday’s closed-door proceedings say Saberi appeared tired and thin when she arrived at the courthouse.

Saberi’s lawyer told the press today that he believes a verdict may come as early as this evening, though the verdict was not initially expected for several days. Iranian officials have said it is not clear there will be a ruling today. Saberi has been described as looking gaunt and frail, after her near three-week hunger strike to protest her imprisonment.

Reza Saberi has also said that, though he believes this appeal process will judge his daughter “more moderately”, he fears that she may starve herself to death if the 8-year sentence is upheld. No evidence against the Iranian-American journalist has been made public to date, and the US government, including Sec. of State Clinton and Pres. Obama himself, has been firm that the charges are “baseless”.

• Originally published 10 May 2009, at CafeSentido.com

The situation in Iraq continues to be extremely grave, with over 200 journalists and media workers killed since the 2003 invasion. Violence is ongoing and the government of Nouri al-Maliki is reported to be putting mounting pressure on reporters to be less critical of government.

In Cuba, Pres. Raúl Castro is reported to be continuing the regime’s harsh treatment of journalists. According to RSF:

The transition period and Raúl Castro’s first few months in sole charge saw continuing harassment of independent journalists including police brutality, summonses and searches by State Security (the political police) and detention for short periods. Nineteen of the journalists arrested during the March 2003 “Black Spring” continue to serve jail terms ranging from 14 to 27 years in appalling prison conditions. With a total of 23 journalists detained, Cuba is the world’s second biggest prison for the media, after China.

China’s Hu Jintao is also listed as a predator of the press by RSF, along with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko. Accused not only of torturing detained Tibetan activists and at least one editor, China has been jailing journalists and cyber-dissidents for years, with very little effort made to cover-up such persecution of the press.

Sri Lanka has become one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists to operate. The government’s recent offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), aimed at ending a decades’ long civil war, has been described as indiscriminate, targeting densely populated civilian areas. A recent BBC radio report clearly featured constant heavy artillery bombardment of the purported civilian “safe zone”, from where a Tamil minister gave his interview.

Journalists have been barred from areas where they might perceive some of the brutality of the conflict. No known measures have been confirmed to protect journalists traveling to the safe zone or attempting to track civilian deaths in the region, and the Sri Lankan government has resorted to jailing journalists. Pres. Obama expressed concern about the fate of J.S. Tissainayagam, who has spent more than a year in prison for his work writing about Sri Lanka’s inter-ethnic conflict.

Lasantha Wickramatunge, editor in chief of The Sunday Leader, was assaulted in his car by 8 masked attackers, and shot to death, apparent retribution for reporting that was critical of the government. His last story foreshadowed his murder, carrying the headline “And Then They Came for Me”. He was killed just two days after the bombing of the country’s main independent television station.

Two weeks after Wickramatunge’s assassination, another newspaper editor was brutally beaten in his car. He survived, but fled the country. There has been no evidence of prosecution or punishment for anyone involved in attacking or killing journalists in Sri Lanka, and The New York Times reports:

[Wickramatunge] was one of at least eight journalists who have been killed in recent years in what appears to be a broad Sri Lankan government campaign to silence dissenting voices.

Many others have been kidnapped or assaulted, according to the reports of press monitoring agencies. Many have stopped writing or have capitulated in self-censorship. Dozens are under arrest, and dozens more have fled the country.

Lasantha’s brother Lal continues as managing editor of The Sunday Leader and has said “if we don’

t take what happened and make Sri Lanka a better place, then Lasantha will have died in vain”. His job is dangerous in that simply reporting the truth may require him to put his life on the line, publishing information the government would like to conceal.

In April, Lasantha Wickramatunge was posthumously awarded UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Prize for 2009. According to a UN press release:

In 1994, he started the Sunday Leader with his brother and used the publication to campaign vigorously against the war between the Sri Lankan army and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

In 2000, Mr. Wickrematunge secured a court victory which led to the abolition of the law that allowed the Government to curb the media. In November 2007, the Sunday Leader was damaged in an arson attack that Mr. Wickrematunge said resembled a “commando action.”

The jury that chose Wickramatunge was said by its members to have been moved to near unanimity by the evidence that the crusading editor was well aware of the very real threat to his safety, but continued to fight for the principle of a free press and to report the truth, even amid a violent crackdown on the independent press.

Hundreds of journalists around the world are presently facing imprisonment or the threat of physical violence. A series of high-profile assassinations in Russia have made it one of the places press rights groups watch with most concern. Security services and militant paramilitaries across Africa are accused of attacks on the press, from Nigeria to Sudan, Somalia to Zimbabwe, and into the heart of the Kivu conflict in eastern Congo.

Even as some nations struggle to shape a vibrant truth-telling media culture, press activity is often seen by political factions to have political motivations or affiliations, and partisan groups will often lend their support to media outlets that criticize their opponents or favor their agenda. The politicization of media is most intense where there is official abuse or totalitarian state apparatus, and the chances for free media are often tied directly to the degree of democracy a ruling party is willing to or forced to accept.

• Originally published 4 May 2009, at CafeSentido.com

When David Frum writes about why the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is not only “impossible” but also “dangerous”, he does so with two major obstacles to credibility: 1. he is arguing for the policies of an administration in which he served; 2. he is arguing that he can prove a negative (claiming to know what will never come to pass, what can never be expected from comprehensive global negotiations, the development of surveillance and inspections technologies, the enticements of a truly global regime of denuclearization).

It is astounding that Frum is so convinced of his own clarity of vision so far into the future. That is, of course, unless we understand that for the ideology Frum has long preached and defended, it is gospel that a cynical outlook can be trusted, whereas a hopeful outlook is reckless gibberish. The problem is, and many of Frum’s colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute would be well-served to look inward on this point: cynicism is not an oracle, and it does not tell the future; it is just another formula for thought, which provides no actual evidence of anything.

Cynicism often lends itself to the construction of intellectually convenient, overly facile descriptions of future events, which —bolstered by the impassioned worries and self-promotion of the cynic, the anti-prophet— quickly assume an air of prophetic certainty. Buoyed by the psychological satisfaction of carrying prophetic certainty within, the cynic then commits more and more fully to the proclamation of unshakeable doctrines about the future, based on bad-faith arguments and a passion for the despairing global outlook.

(He is known, of course, for delivering the “axis of evil” idea to George W. Bush as “axis of hatred”, again a phrase rooted in the presumption of cynical omniscience. Look at how gleefully that rhetoric was put to the task of describing, threatening and invading a country, about whom the most important claims were utterly false. This kind of zealous cynicism can get us into trouble; that much we know.)

We can thank Mr. Frum for informing us of how ideal the most recent theoretical developments in nuclear weapons technology are. Quoting:

These new weapons, on a new generation of missiles, could overwhelmingly deter any potential nuclear aggressor, while all but eliminating the risk of nuclear accident. Unlike current weapons, they do not need frequent refreshment of their nuclear core. They present near-zero risk of a radioactive leak. And they cannot be detonated by accident: According to one expert, these next-generation weapons could be loaded into a cannon and fired at a wall at four times the speed of sound without risk of unintended explosion.

“Sounds good” he writes. It does. It sounds beautiful, enticing, irresistible. The ingenuity of advanced human sciences have achieved perfection in technology. But this is where we have to be careful to remember that the cynic does not trust rosy predictions. Or does he? When he represents the American Enterprise Institute, the neo-conservative movement or the planning of war in Iraq, he often does: he uses the cynic’s claim to omniscience to rule out all dissent, then uses the powers of his assumption about the absolute fallibility of the outside world to adopt the most seductive rose-tinted expectations imaginable.

What Frum does not explain is the following:

1. Fissile material, being radioactive, must deteriorate (all radioactive materials have a “half-life”, due to complex entropy inherent in the physics of radioactivity; that half-life, the time after which the level of radioactivity is half what it was initially, is measurable and does not vary), but David Frum professes to know that nuclear scientists have successfully thwarted the universal phenomenon of entropy (the release of energy from a closed system to the surrounding environment).

2. While testing these special new nuclear devices sounds simple enough, they need to be tested somewhere, releasing a massive amount of radiation into the atmosphere, and such tests tend to provoke a militant response; they are the signal that an arms race is underway, and other nations will respond accordingly. Again, in his ignoring this problem completely, we find the willing naïveté with which Frum fuses his cynical outlook to get rosy prophetic visions.

3. He also gives us no reason whatsoever to believe that he is using sources linked to real science, just makes claims about what “one expert” has told him. It is attractive to think that by securing nuclear weapons against accidental explosion we prevent the threat of their being detonated, but once we have them, we have to deal with the appetites of human beings who have control over them. The human failsafe mechanism would still be required.

4. He does note that “President Obama did not exactly say that he would never test one of the new warheads”, adding”But he sure raised some fierce political difficulties for himself if he ever did want to test.” But he ignores completely the fact that Obama said he knows the lofty goal of global denuclearization may likely not be achieved in his lifetime (that’s 30 to 40 more years), so while he’s pressing to achieve a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, he may not be rushing to disarm.

Frum also conveniently ignores the fact that those “fierce political difficulties” related to testing a nuclear weapon aren’t necessarily the result of Obama’s favoring a ban. The reason no new devices have been tested by the US since 1992 is that the public wants to move beyond the threat of nuclear holocaust. With the Cold War ended, the US public took a strong position against the continued advancement of nuclear weapons, period.

So, we are left to consider whether or not —despite Frum’s clumsy way of using a blindly cynical approach to geo-politics in order to fashion a utopian vision of America’s nuclear future—

it is true that aspiring to the elimination of nuclear weapons is a dangerous proposition. Again, the only justifiable basis for this claim is to assume that the US intends to discard its weapons willy-nilly, without any collaboration from the world’s other nuclear powers to ensure that all weapons are phased out and no one can acquire the technology to build new ones.

Aside from its value as a genuine example of the absurd, how could Frum actually believe that? It will not be for Pres. Obama to see his goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world through; it will be for him to build the necessary diplomatic and strategic relationships capable of starting the world down that road. And those relationships can only be of benefit for the long-term security interests of a world that would rather not see itself obliterated by senseless allegiance to weapons that serve no moral purpose and whose use does not fit within any of our laws.

We must also take very seriously the logical and moral problems inherent in any position that promotes the advancement or the permanent commitment to these weapons, the very same weapons that Frum’s old boss considered the ultimate manifestation of evil in the world (at least the illusory Iraqi version of them). That administration championed its right to invade a nation to prevent its using WMD, but actively used depleted uranium shells and pronounced its intention to create new “mini-nukes” to be used on conventional targets in non-nuclear-armed states that posed only a “potential future threat”.

It is the clumsy intellectual acrobatics of the people David Frum has chosen to surround himself with that seems most irresponsible and “dangerous” in all of this. To wage war on someone for the very thing one is claiming the right to do is to exhibit total moral and intellectual bankruptcy. To claim that one must use the world’s worst weapons as a deterrent against the horrors of the human world, because the human world in its infinite perfection has conquered nature and created failsafe nukes, is just another example of that reckless use of intellect.

Mr. Frum is likely proud of himself for finding a way to put into words the insane accusation that Obama wants Iran to develop the bomb (he has been very adamant in his opposition to this and is already coordinating world leaders to prevent it). He is proud of this, because his intention is to serve a partisan argument and defend the pro-nuclear policies of the administration he served.

And he is likely also very proud of himself for finding a way to argue that some nukes are good nukes and we can have them and also be safe. Very cozy. But his argument ignores the most serious issues involved in nuclear proliferation; it is dangerous politics he is playing with these words, and he offers them, because he can’t come up with anything better.

Probably not one nation not specifically seeking to expand the “nuclear club” to include itself would entrust to an autonomous international body the adjudication of who is responsible enough to have the right to add more nuclear weapons to the global stockpile. Certainly, the US tends to oppose allowing any external body to judge its own level of inherent responsibility or sovereign rights. And international law, at present, forbids the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

But, the existence of nuclear weapons, and the special privileges that accrue to any nation that possesses them, mean even a strict global ban with the possibility of harsh sanctions and even military strikes to prevent proliferation, do not serve as adequate deterrent: there is, in effect, a supreme incentive to achieve the status of “nuclear-armed”, and so become a global power.

Obviously, we are all better off if no further nations obtain nuclear weapons, but the aforementioned false premise on which we base our non-proliferation efforts is not adequate to achieving non-proliferation. It’s most salient problem areas can be nutshelled as follows:

Does the ‘responsibility’ of nations depend on current government ideology, the nation’s nuclear history, evidence of a willingness not to use them under any circumstances (in which case, why possess them?), the individuals in power, the nature of the political system over which they preside, the frequency of peaceful transitions of power, or just the will of those who already possess the weapons?

Don’t nations positioned outside the nuclear club’s population of favorites have a clear motivation, on both security and enhanced-sovereignty grounds, to develop nuclear weapons and join the club? If the use of nuclear weapons is a war crime, on what pretext do any of the nuclear-armed states maintain them? And worse: the US, the only nation to have used them in war and which under the administration of George W. Bush actively pronounced its right to use them in war, even in “pre-emptive” strikes, seeks to forbid their use by others by the Cold War logic of “mutually-assured destruction” (MAD).

Total denuclearization has one important flaw, which must be overcome through comprehensive cooperative negotiation: no nation will be willing to fully dismantle its arsenal and/or disperse its nuclear-weapons know-how, because it will always be assumed the others are keeping a secret stash of weapons. This is, of course, the guiding logic for allowing the extant nuclear arsenals to remain in place and under ‘responsible’ maintenance and secure upkeep.

Trust is the fundamental problem in the nuclear component of global diplomacy. And no seasoned diplomat will allow her nation to forego a necessary and comprehensive defense solely on the basis of giving unreconsidered trust to other nations. National security apparatus are notoriously possessive of their inherent (though arguably not ‘God-given) right to keep secrets, and all counter-proliferation efforts work on this assumption, that the keeping of secrets is so vital to security regimes that even the most law-abiding and upstanding diplomats will lie to protect their nation’s defenses.

So, trust in diplomacy relies not on blind human confidence, but on procedures of strict verification, which allow for credible modes of evaluating and confirming risk. For this reason, Pres. Obama said in an historic speech in Prague that he knows that total denuclearization may not occur “in my lifetime”; noting that it would be naive to think global denuclearization an easy task, he also took the most intelligent realpolitik approach, which is that only with a credible system aimed at total elimination of nuclear weapons, can there be a real scaling back of proliferation risks or the risk of such weapons’ use.

One proposal would be that each of the current nuclear-armed states ascribe to a system of shared guarantees about the security of their weapons:

1. Failsafe Protocols: nuclear-armed states would agree that strict, multi-redundant failsafe protocols be in place so that no one or two or three-person teams could launch nuclear weapons without a multi-party policy review involving truly independent arms of government. This would promote the creation of checks and balances that decentralize power and democratize even authoritarian regimes, and would lessen the risk of efforts to undermine the non-proliferation regime.

2. Transnational Maintenance and Security: the most successful methods of maintaining in secure isolation and protecting against seizure, looting or black-market transfer, would be implemented with the help of those states most advanced in their techniques of upkeep and secure isolation.

3. Commitment Not to Launch: an enforceable commitment not to launch any nuclear-armed missiles or other nuclear devices except in direct response to a proven and catastrophic nuclear attack by a national government is required. This would allow a global “stand down” that would preclude the possibility of nuclear war, but only if the commitment were legally binding, verifiable by inspection-and-report and uniform.

4. StART Roadmap: A Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is needed, first between the United States and the Russian Federation, the two most heavily-armed nuclear powers, with a second round including all subsequently nuclear-armed states. The roadmap to a global StART would require efforts to unmask secret weaponization programs, along with commitments for participating states not to attack one another.

5. Cooperative Incrementalism: The eventual goal of total denuclearization would be reached as participating nations mutually confirm and report serious strides toward the dismantling and safe disposal of their nuclear arsenals and fundamental armament materials. A repository secure enough to contain all weapons-grade nuclear fissile material and spent fuels in 100% isolation for a minimum of 100,000 years would be required, and could be constructed in concert by all participating nations.

6. Incentives to join Global StART: none of the currently nuclear-armed nations or nations suspected of or proven to be in development stages (including all nations using or exploring nuclear power production) would be permitted to forego participation in the Global StART process of universal denuclearization. Incentives and intensive cooperative diplomacy would be necessary to make the plan viable across the globe.

Ultimately, such a strategy is more logically coherent and strategically beneficial than the current paradigm of selective non-proliferation, which only enhances the vast power gap between nations whose influence on the global stages is significantly enhanced by possession of nuclear weapons and those who forego weaponization, either voluntarily or for lack of resources or strategic leeway.

What we are seeing now in Pakistan is a good example: there is no guarantee that selective non-proliferation will not lead to cooperative black-market mechanisms that facilitate the spread of nuclear-weapons technology. Pakistan acquired the technology this way, and some of its black-marketeers may have further spread the technology they purchased. Pakistan is now experiencing severe political destabilization and the Taliban has taken over areas just 100 km from the capital.

Selective non-proliferation makes this sort of situation possible. The flaws in selective non-proliferation have been radically exacerbated by the Bush-era policy of developing new pre-emptive “mini-nukes” and proclaiming the intention to use them agaisnt nations that neither possess nuclear weapons nor have threatened the US directly. This means that without aggressive diplomatic action to counter the influence of those paradigmatic faultlines, the incentive to proliferate will hold.

Only in a global cooperative StART regime can other nuclear club member states reasonably expect Pakistan’s government to let them safely liberate, disperse and secure, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons before they fall into the hands of an amoral fundamentalist militia bent on the destruction of all who disagree with their ideology. We are now facing a global crisis situation in Pakistan, where these issues are no longer theoretical or diplomatic, but an immediate security issue for states where more than half the world’s population resides.

Pres. Obama has arranged for talks with Russian pres. Dmitri Medvedev to effect a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the end of this year. A group of ‘6 powers’ —which includes the United States— has invited Tehran to talks to prevent the weaponization of Iran’s nuclear research program. This new focus on global diplomacy to institute a system of denuclearization is a necessary first step to saving ourselves from the unacceptable pitfalls inherent in selective non-proliferation policies.

Soft power works, because one is able to use the social force of virtue —rooted in actual qualities and demonstrable value to those concerned— and because one shows proof of being closer to shared goals than the other party, leading the other party to follow one’s lead.

Obama has demonstrated an incredible ability for a victorious politician: forgiveness. His magnanimity is, whether he intends it to be or not, an exceedingly valuable asset to him, not just in terms of public image, but because he wields power through it, and that leverage is not missed by those he is negotiating with. Imagine the awe his show of mercy to Joe Lieberman must inspire in the vigilant eyes of the fallen leaders of the Republican party’s aspirational one-party government.

They were terrified of letting one inch slip to their opponents; this man is strong enough to be generous, politically. That means he can win favor with enemies, listen to a bewildering array of intelligent concepts and proposals, and rely on his judgment, not the maneuverings of party minions, to select, adopt and enact the best and most effective. This is the position leaders of all kinds most aspire to be in, and he is reminding them from day one that he is already there.

Is it “soft power” or “3d diplomacy” —diplomacy, development, defense—, is it “smart power”, or “principled pragmatism”? There is really no need to put a label on it, because for the sake of historical argument, we can call it the Obama way: push your friend and rivals alike to adopt bold new ideas that focus on solutions in stead of ideology; be courageous enough to tackle all of the toughest issues at once; use the levers of power to your advantage, but listen to dissent and allow for crafted solutions that broaden support for your strategy.

This is the kind of unrelenting soft power that has allowed Barack Obama to continue winning an historically broad base of support, even as he takes positions that other presidents would have seen as controversial, and battles Congress for leadership in the game of national policy rhetoric.

As in the campaign, Obama’s style of governing owes much to his prowess at framing the debate within a vocabulary rooted in his ideas. Everyone is speaking his language, so inevitably, the final verdict will be rooted in his principles, even if he has to give up some ground to get the most salient projects passed.

Much has been made of his “capitulating” on renewal of the assault weapons ban… the problem is, it wasn’t his ban, it wasn’t a priority to begin with, and Congress (unbelievably) is unwilling to pass it. Despite a severe rash of mass killings and spreading gun violence, despite evidenced that American gun-shop owners have been ferrying high-powered assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels, Congress is afraid of the gun lobby.

It is not for a president with major reforms ahead to pick a fight in which his allies are few and the public’s view of the issue is so severely skewed by relentless propaganda from a commercially-interested lobby. Every time the GOP leadership comes out in support of weapons that kill children, it gets harder for them to sustain any credibility, and the question of a “fight” on gun control seems to dim.

There may come a time, but using power wisely means letting people have their say, and for now, Congress says gun control will be a political bloodbath. Obama has been very adroit, throughout his rise, at letting hostile opponents sabotage themselves, letting John McCain make nitwit pronouncements on economic policy for instance, letting the Republicans propose a pointless tax-cut-for-the-wealthy budget even as they claim they are now suddenly populist.

With each round of renewed idiocy in the sort of attack levied against him, his pragmatist agenda and his personal standing are elevated. His political capital expands as his political enemies squander their own credibility in unfounded or illogical attacks. His “record budget” is adequately explained when the Republicans produce a faux budget with just as large a deficit, but no plans for recovery, and Obama announces a deliberative process to find record spending cuts, pointing out that Bush’s spending was even higher, he just excluded the wars from his budget.

It is hard for the Republican party to grasp how this kind of exercise of authority works: using moral authority to support solution-oriented policies, instead of the bully pulpit to ram ideological concessions down people’s throats; using carefully worded policy-speak to re-frame the entire scope of debate on a given issue, forcing even opponents into a debate within one’s vocabulary, i.e. winning the debate before it begins; listening to one’s opponents, even harvesting workable ideas from their agenda, but using those ideas to bolster one’s own position.

It is incomprehensible to seasoned Washington strategists that Obama is not using his high approval ratings and his bold agenda to bludgeon beleaguered Republicans to death in a campaign of character assassination and scorched-earth attacks. But Obama’s special quality of governing from balance and confidence is rooted in his belief that while the others may waste their energy on such games, actually governing effectively will always beat them. He intends to “lap” the Republicans over and over again, by getting things done, and so far, it has worked to an historic degree.

Know your enemy’s flaws, and avoid exhibiting them yourself. He is well aware of how toxic the Republican party’s vicious blood-and-guts politicking has been; he has seen Gingrich and DeLay go down in infamy; Rove’s name is synonymous with “liar” and Cheney is seen as a man so obsessed with strength that no principle and no ethics can contain his ambition.

You will notice that Obama exhibits none of these qualities, because he understands them to be a waste of time. If one wants to achieve important improvements to the quality of life of real people, the work is hard and the negotiations may be bitter, but open combat with one’s most bitter rivals is not an effective way to get there.

Obama’s way of relentlessly releasing new ideas and making much needed policy changes, always in line with his promises of reform oriented toward expanding transparency and ridding government of entrenched monied interests, has left the Republican party reeling. They keep waiting for something they can attack him for, on an all-day everyday basis, for weeks, and the struggle has left them looking like the party of “zero ideas” as one of their own recently confessed.

If we are to understand the “preternatural calm” or the legendary poise that was so often spoken of during the campaign, we have to take seriously Obama’s frequent admission that the campaign “was never about me”, that he was in it because the people needed someone to work for them. His focus is not on accumulating wealth and power, or is it on serving interests that have built him into an institution over several decades: it’s on doing the work he promised to do, and answering to the many millions who made his power base so genuinely grassroots.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people: Obama is qualified to use his own ideas and his own principles to effect this sort of government, because he was wide open about his policy proposals and his agenda from day one. He announced his bold reform initiatives over two years ago. His ideas were unpacked and deconstructed in the public eye, and he won sweeping support from voters to carry out his agenda. His soft-power strategy is far from weak; it is the manifestation of a deep reserve of political strength and commitment to effective reform.

According to CNN:

Computers —including machines at NATO, governments and embassies— are infected with software that lets attackers gain complete control of them, cyber-security experts alleged in two reports Sunday.

So far, there are no official accusations against the Chinese state, but the targets of the GhostNet hackers suggest that interests of the state may have motivated the network’s creation in some way. “In spite (of being a) big nation, they act like (a) very weak nation”, said the Dalai Lama through a translator.

Beijing denies involvement and says the issue is being exaggerated by “the West” for political purposes. A Canadian report entitled “Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network” suggested the rapid increase in Chinese cyber spying could be attributed to “The sheer number of young digital natives online” and spontaneous hacking activity. The report also notes that:

Chinese cyber espionage is a major global concern… (b)ut attributing all Chinese malware to deliberate or targeted intelligence gathering operations by the Chinese state is wrong and misleading…

The revelations have raised concerns about the need for global regulations that would prevent both governments and private interests from using the web as a means of interfering in individuals’ private lives or conducting potentially dangerous espionage on governments and corporate and financial interests.  A key concern is that the web must remain open and unfiltered, but that actions must be taken to crack down on cyber-spying, identity theft or global espionage, without restricting individual freedoms or freedom of information.

Despite hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and reports of rapes per year exceeding 10,000, eve of the government supporting the use of rape as a “tool of war”, the study counted only those cases where the government’s narrow legal definition of rape (”proven” and documented prior to any investigation) permitted actual charges and an eventual conviction. Despite the session’s being advertised as focusing on “women in conflict”, not one aspect of conflict, in the abstract or the particular, was mentioned, save the sparing now-and-then references to “the camps”.

The study lays out what its authors call “Four years of success in combating violence against women in Darfur 2004-2008?. It announces “a task force to study the role of Government and Women Organization in Women Protection Darfur Experience” and openly says the project was “a response to the false accusations stating that Sudan Government has done nothing to protect Women in Darfur”.

The study also explains actions taken by government ministries to speed women’s access to medical treatment immediately after any violent assault (”Circular No. 2?, 23 October 2004), but the provisions form a system of bureaucratic processes that are likely to impede women’s access to legal advice, medical treatment and justice. The report also included mention of a National Plan of Action (NPOA) to investigate violence against women and treat victims, as well as directives to local “police and medical workers” in the “application” of Circular No. 2.

But the NPOA itself is tainted by the open direction that it be used “to respond to international claims and accusations”. Though there are provisions for “raising awareness” about violence against women, via the Ministry of Information, a process to be organized by a dedicated special committee, the mission of countering international perceptions about extreme violence and mass rape means there is pressure to file reports of reduced or scarce violence against women (”Four years of success in combating violence against women”), incentive to not report, not address, to cover up, what violence there is.

While certain promising language was used, such as an Advisory Council on Human Rights hosting workshops in Nyala and Al Fasher discussing “Rights of victims / Violence against women in international, regional and domestic law / Legal aid and victims”, the process as described does not facilitate women coming forward for treatment or to demand justice.

Workshops and protocols feature in the report’s claims about Sudan’s efforts to curb violence against women in Darfur. Observance of the dictates of UN agencies also features prominently, though specific evidence of effective observance of the UN’s human rights standards or of any actual acts to bring the treatment of women in line with international law is totally lacking. The report and the hearing both are devoid of any reference to a large-scale investigation into allegations of mass rape or of the military carrying out acts of violence against women.

A key specific point of contention is women’s access to medical treatment and to pressing criminal charges, in the wake of an assault. According to the report, a 2006 protocol, developed in coordination with UNFPA, directed clinical treatment for rape, including a requirement “to ensure documentation of medical history” and recognize women’s right to that documentation.

But all of this glosses over an underlying stain on the report and the process of organizing these new plans of action to protect women: the number of cases actually prosecuted is so low as to leave the reader in shock. (Several people stood up and walked out of the presentation at UNHQ last Thursday, as the report’s figures came to light.)

In fact, during the SWPC presentation, we were informed that women require the medical documentation in order to file charges or prompt an actual investigation. They cannot even seek justice without the medical documentation the government says women are entitled to have. Afterward, this reporter was told specifically that they cannot imagine any other way in which rape could be investigated, except in light of an immediate medical examination.

In Darfur, where all manifestations of officialdom provoke fear and suspicion among the ethnic African population, where doctors are exceedingly scarce, where confidentiality is not standard and where police may be military personnel, enemies of those seeking justice, and possibly even involved in the crimes reported, most victims of rape are, by virtue of this highly bureaucratic system, effectively barred from seeking justice at all.

The number of cases of rape officially recognized by the government report for all of Darfur in 2004 were just 19. In 2005, the total was 32. And in 2006, the figure dropped to just 10 overall. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) global report for 2007, covering the events of 2006, cites “serious abuses of civilians, including forced displacement, rape, killings, and increasing attacks on humanitarian aid workers.”

It is improbable that with the mass violence in Darfur in 2006, with specific documented cases of conflict-related rape, that the figure could be as low as just 10. It would make Darfur, in the midst of a chaotic, genocidal conflict, the safest place in the world for women, in terms of risk of suffering rape. The HRW report even specifies the following:

The establishment in 2005 of a national tribunal to respond to the crimes in Darfur had no effect on the continuing impunity of militia leaders and government officials responsible for crimes against humanity.

The report delivered at the UNHQ by the panel from Sudan gave no information whatsoever regarding the involvement of officials and government-backed militia in crimes against civilians, much less of any effort to combat that problem. We also received no detailed information about the actual ongoing activities of the national tribunal, the women’s security unit or the clinics we were told were planned for community-level assistance to victims of sexual assault.

Obviously, the entire report is a logical nonsequitur in that such low levels of sexual assault would imply little need for a National Plan of Action to combat it, much less the construction of dedicated confidential clinics at the community level. But while the Sudanese government’s study, with its stated mission of refuting “false” accusations from abroad, claims to demonstrate a low incidence of rape in Darfur, HRW reported in 2007 that as of 2006:

Rape and sexual violence continue to be pervasive throughout Darfur, with attacks on women and girls taking palce both in the context of hostilities between the warring parties as well as when internally displaced women and girls travel outside camp settings to collect firewood and other items. In just one example in August [2006], aid workers reported that more than 200 women and girls were sexually assaulted over a five week period in Kalma, the largest diplaced persons camp in south Darfur.

The HRW report is also explicit in charging that the ruling party “made no substantive effort to investigate or prosecute those individuals reponsible for the most serious crimes in Darfur”. The SWPC report focused on laws, plans, protocols and an “initiative” designed to start raising awareness about violence against women. Again, we saw little evidence that any substantive actions have yet been taken, and not one community center was cited as evidence of the government’s plan actually working for victims.

During the Q&A session after the presentation of the SWPC report, several questioners raised issues about the veracity or credibility of the figures reported. The extremely low rape statistics were of particular concern, and reports by Amnesty International and the BBC, both supported by documentary evidence, were decried by the presenter as distortions and lies.

When pressed on the existence of “centers” where confidential medical treatment, advanced counseling services, and female-only police, would be made available to women, the presenter clarified that she had not intended to give the impression such centers (plural) existed, but that there was “one center”, whose location, functions and achievements, she did not name.

It is clear the event was staged as part of an information campaign, designed to beat back attacks on the government of Omar al-Bashir, indicted just a week before by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is also clear that the report given demonstrates a clear awareness of the need to conceal the facts on the ground, which were never mentioned during the nearly two hour presentation.

The issue of protecting women during conflict, the stated purpose of the meeting, was never directly addressed, as the conflict itself was not raised. Again, the only reference to the conflict in Darfur was the use of the word “camps” at intervals. Ultimately, it appears women in Darfur are less well served than they are hampered by the process laid out by the government for prosecuting rape allegations, and other forms of violence were left completely unaddressed by the panel.

• Originally published 18 March 2009, at CafeSentido.com

A panel of presenters from several of the island nations spoke of the need to conceive “gender-responsive programs” that are able to grasp women’s real immediate interests and implement relevant strategies for improving conditions for them across Pacific island society.

Veena Singh Bryar, of the femLINKPACIFIC network, reported on the development of FemTalk radio, a “rural women’s media network” designed to help give a voice to women whose influence on policy normally limited and to serve as a platform for educating women and men about issues and rights that determine women’s autonomy and equality in society.

Among the issues they seek to find solutions for: women’s personal security, education, production (be it biological, economic —paid and unpaid— and because it is necessary to find ways to recognize and reward that production). Economic rights, including the right to property, determine in many areas a woman’s real autonomy and ability to shape her own life and experience.

The mounting risk of HIV/AIDS to the Pacific Island nations was also discussed in some detail. Throughout the two weeks of the 53rd Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the risk of infection was linked to women’s rights and economic independence.

Women who are bound to the home or unable to pursue independent careers or accumulate property are less able to take preventive action to avoid infection. Women who are entirely dependent on their husbands have less leverage to demand use of condoms, which means men may infect their wives, if they have had other partners.

Sex work is an increasing problem in the Pacific Island nations, long protected from the AIDS pandemic by geography and demographics. The islands’ small populations afforded fewer opportunities for the spread of the disease, but as population has shifted to urban centers (now over 50% in 10 of the 22 nations), sex workers have been “imported” from larger Asian nations, bringing with them the added risk of infection for both men and women in the island societies.

A number of the presenters spoke of the need to fully implement and the meet the objectives of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW has been ratified by 185 countries, but has yet to become a truly binding global standard for women’s equality and has not yet been brought before the US Senate for ratification.

WomensTreaty.org explains some of the false assumptions that have led to conservative opposition to CEDAW in the US:

» Fiction: The Treaty will destroy traditional families by redefining “family” and the roles of women and men.

» Fact: The Treaty does not seek to regulate family life. It only urges governments “to adopt education and public information programs [to] eliminate prejudices and current practices that hinder the full operation of the principle of the social equality of women.”

»» Fiction: The Treaty will require the United States and other countries to send women into armed ground combat.

»» Fact: The Treaty does not require countries to send women into combat. In fact, there is no reference in the Treaty to women in the military or women in combat. In addition, the 1997 CEDAW Committee report urging “full participation of women in the military” is not a requirement but an observation that women’s absence in military decision-making councils hampers diplomacy, negotiations, and peacekeeping and peace-making efforts and neglects to take note of the effect upon women and families of military decisions in times of conflict.

»»» Fiction: The Treaty will interfere in the proper role of parents in child-rearing.

»»» Fact: The Treaty calls only for recognition of the “common responsibility of men and women in the upbringing and development of their children” and “to promote what is in the best interests of the child.” This is consistent with U.S. law.

Ofa ki-Levuka-Guttenbeil-Likiliki, of the Tonga National Center for Women and Children, explained the slow history of evolving women’s equality in her country. While in 1975, only 1% of parliament ministers were women, the 2005 Tonga elections had 5 female candidates, the most ever. In 2008, no women entered Parliament, and only one woman serves as MP at present.

She said that Tonga women’s groups are working with NGOs and agencies across the island nations to examine the need for “temporary special measures” that could assist in bringing more women into politics and raise their representation in Parliament. During the Q&A session after the panel discussion, a woman who works for women’s rights in Rwanda explained that there the temporary measures used to involve women in politics require alternating between men and women in each party.

There is stiff opposition from the traditional power-base to implementing temporary special measures that could interfere with some politicians’ own careers or influence and destabilize traditional cultural structures, which at present limit women’s access to leadership and decision-making, but which are prized by conservatives as structures that maintain family structure.

Kairangi Samuela, of the Cook Islands Women’s Counseling Center explained how cultural standards are used as an excuse for not advancing women’s rights further, but also noted that cultural imperatives are fluid and can evolve as the mentality or education and experience of a population evolve. In fact, Pacific Island society is now more in need of women in public life than before, and would benefit from tapping the individual talents and insights of women who may, even now, not be able to access positions of leadership or decision-making.

Paternity leave is an area of law which is underdeveloped in the Cook Islands, according to Samuela, and which if implemented seriously could help free women to study and pursue careers of their own. The stereotype that “a woman’s place is in the home” means women are expected to abandon work or study and devote their full attention to child-rearing and caregiving, which impedes their ability to access longer-term work or career opportunities.

Paternity leave, or an egalitarian family leave law, would allow for men to take on some of the joint reponsibility traditionally assigned solely to women, so that women can experience some of the responsibility and decision-making authority traditionally reserved for men. The issue is not mixing gender roles, but rather shared responsibility, so that women can realized their abilities and serve society by taking leadership roles and aiding in decision-making processes.

Peone Fuimaono, of the Somoa AIDS Foundation, noted the rates of HIV/AIDS across the 22 nations of the Pacific Islands region remains relatively low, as compared to high-concentration regions, but that rates are showing a steady upward trend. This is due, in part, to a concentration of conditions suitable for higher risk of spreading the disease: a youthful population, high incidence of youth SDI (sexually transmitted infections), cultural practices putting women at risk, increasing urban population, new wave of sex workers.

Papua New Guinea (PNG), the most populous nation in the region, sees the majority of its HIV infections from heterosexual sex. Across the rest of the region, the rate is about 50%. A lack of voluntary confidential counseling and testing centers is reportedly impeding efforts to spread awareness and prevention.

Ms. Fuimaono’s report found that between 1985 and 1990, the first full 5-year period for which there are figures, 75% of HIV infections occurred in males. But from 2000 through 2005, the infections rates were 50/50, meaning a significant rise in infection risk to women. With trends affecting women more adversely, efforts to educate women about HIV/AIDS and their own rights, as well as efforts to expand women’s autonomy and decision-making capacity in society, may be able to help limit the spread of the disease.

Each member of the panel, as well as one ambassador attending the event, spoke of the need to get government more involved in women’s issues and in the implementation of funding and strategies for education and prevention, to fight the spread of disease. International views that less populous nations suffer less gravely from such crises, due to smaller numbers, were criticized as marginalization of small nations whose populations may be impacted in the same proportion as larger nations with more visible crises.

• Reporting from the CSW, at UN Headquarters in New York
• Originally published 13 March 2009, at CafeSentido.com

It may sound like a tall order, or an overly optimistic thing to ask, considering China’s authoritarian history and authoritarian present, but there is really no point to such a level of centralization or state orchestration, other than the better legitimating of the claims of citizens against injustice or hardship.

A staunch, credible, transparent anti-corruption campaign might be a type of incremental democratization the Central Committee mullahs could countenance, allowing them to test and demonstrate some of what they claim is an ideology of people’s government, in a country so starved for it that real, widespread unrest is growing ever more a genuine risk.

Beijing needs to consider seriously the best, most authentic way to implement a decentralized petition system in which local officials are rewarded and promoted for aggressively siding with aggrieved citizens. The process needs to be backed up by serious, credible criminal proceedings against officials who impede corruption probes or assault investigations.

A centralized review process that would make it possible to track specific examples of well-practiced petition resolution and of failed petition resolution, and be open to independent scrutiny, would allow the government to take the side of citizens and urge improvement. Local citizens’ boards, with rotating membership, a non-political selection process and transparency monitors or human rights groups supervising selection, would provide the checks and balances to ensure state power is not misused in such hearings.

Time is past for China’s rulers to expect any credibility or the illusion of legitimacy simply from inertia, from the notion that Chinese power is inherently noble and immaculate. There is no saving face for the government without demonstrating this fundamental respect for its citizens’ right to justice and fairness. There must be procedural evidence of clean rule and legitimacy must be evidently rooted in responsiveness to the needs and will of citizens.

For the government in Beijing to continue governing as if the regime were in the midst of a post-takeover state of emergency is, however inconvenient it may be to recognize it, an admission of failure on a colossal scale, to have failed to create a viable, malleable people’s government, even after 60 years in power.

It is possible now, with the information made available via global media, to see the reality of the situation for the Chinese state, and to take stock and make the necessary improvements to ensure the logic of the state remains credible. Even as factional movements threaten regional separation and an increasing segment of the population, both urban and rural, clamors for better treatment and more opportunity, the environment across China is in decline, threatening sustained food insecurity.

Water scarcity and a deficit of dependable arable land are increasing pressure on authorities to find economic solutions in an economy accustomed to unsustainable rates of growth and nevertheless plagued by massive chronic deprivation. Addressing these crises, along with the political tensions growing up around dissident groups angered by authoritarian policies, will be much easier with the participation of a citizenry convinced of its government’s commitment to the value of each individual life and circumstance.

• Originally published 11 March 2009 at CafeSentido.com