The Daily Journalist.
Posts by thedailyjournalist:
- When Obama leaves office, will you miss him as Commander and Chief?
- Was Barak Obama a good president? Did he do the best job possible considering the problems he faced? Is his legacy tainted?
- Should Obama be blamed for inheriting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?
- Should he be blamed for the Banking Crisis that really started in 1999 when Bill Clinton repealed the Glass Steagall Act that allowed banks to be free of Keynesian regulations?
- What was his best policy? What was his worst policy?
- Is he responsible for sparking racial wars against police officers?
- Did he unify Americans? Was he ever prepared to take on American politics?
- In few sentences: What is your opinion of Barack Obama?
- Fighting the effects of the “Great Recession” in global markets, which began in 2007-08 right in the USA;
- Ending the US occupation in Iraq;
- Destroying al-Qā’ida;
- A new relationship with the Muslim world, till then having seen as an unyielding foe according to a “clash of civilizations”, theorized and skillfully exaggerated by the Project for the New American Century of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
- The “Great Recession” (still shunned by China and India) has not resulted in destructive and generally destabilizing effects;
- Iraq has regained its (however weak) institutions, formally not depending by the US;
- Al-Qā’ida has been resized after the alleged bin Lādin’s elimination;
- The way the Muslim world is perceived is considerably more conscious in terms of its religious and cultural role and its relevance at the international political level;
- The Monroe Doctrine to Latin America has come to an end, as stated by Obama himself less than a year ago in Panama.
- The effects of market financial crisis are overcome in the US, but continue to deeply plague most of the European countries and still affect the resilience of Asian-Pacific countries. As a result, the international coordination Obama had legitimately headed using G-20 and IMF tools might correctly be regarded as insufficient;
- Newly independent Iraq currently reflects gross errors made during and after its invasion by the “Western”-led coalition against Ṣaddām Ḥusayn (once our beloved ally), leaving the court to new Islamic State entity onset;
- Radical Islam was certainly not only performed by bin Lādin’s pretensions (once our beloved ally), but a 150-years-long phenomenon, well rooted in the Middle East and North Africa history as a structured and complex thinking, not simply to be banned as a temporary and localized criminal event, but to be studied, understood, dealt with diplomatic arms, and only since to be possibly condemned and uprooted using methods just as violent. Obama had the merit of acknowledging that military intervention is not always conclusive in solving so deeply consolidated problems and that another strategy was appropriate. Analysts must keep wondering for the coming years (standing this approach unchanged in next President desire) how much this new strategy (if any) has worked, since results of foreign policy are gauged in future projections, certainly not on short-term basis just because an election campaign is opening;
- Obama’s insufficient support to Islamic democracy attempts has generated ambivalent feelings in those who had believed it and had invested their political future in: on one side, moderate people have been disillusioned with, and realized that Western world rhetoric calls for democracy quickly crash (as usual!) facing geo-political and business logic, so, better to stay at home; on the other, the most extremist ones have begun thinking about the hypocrisy of the assumption that a Western model gives everyone the same opportunities, because they perceive a free election is not accepted when the winner is not the “right” one (see the examples of 1992 Algeria, 2006 Palestine, and, latest and dramatic, 2012 Egypt). Basically, their feeling is that the Western world is not convinced, yet, even under Obama’s ruling, that democracy is better (as it claims) than a relentless Sīsī-like dictatorship, which may ensure a docile submission and simultaneously an effective elimination of “dangerous” political forces. So, better to rely on an armed struggle.
- The use of drones to perform extrajudicial executions targeting individuals, in full continuity with the Bush era and even up compared to the latter. Apart from moral considerations and violations of international law by a Nobel Prize for Peace, we must remember that such actions have resulted in recent years in a killing of hundreds of defenseless civilians reportedly involved in combat;
- The issues of closing Guantánamo Bay detention camps, the infamous prison where, in defiance of Constitution and international laws, arbitrary detentions have been carried out and tortures and other atrocities alleged by the international community were perpetrated. Spite of Obama’s desire and efforts, this lager is still running;
- The Afghanistan “affaire”, following a few months ago statement about an extension of US presence in the country, which de facto belied the Resolute Support Mission premises (even by the alleged White House authorization to the extension of US missions against the Tālibān), and also belied Obama’s promises during the election campaign leading him to the Presidency;
- The Palestinian issue, actually ousted from the White House Agenda, a tribute to the special partnership US maintain with Israel and its lobbies, despite Obama-Netanyahu relationship has deteriorated due to the opening Washington made to Tehrān and because of a Jewish State obduracy in extending the illegal occupation plan in the territories under PNA jurisdiction. It should also be recalled that, under Obama’s Administration, the US has opposed the recognition of the State of Palestine, and vetoed any UN resolution granting it;
- The issue of Africa as a whole. Following the 90’s disastrous military intervention in Somalia, with a complete disintegration of its State, the US military has been back in Africa by the operation against Mu‘ammar Qaddāfī, once more with a complete disintegration of his State, in the likeness of Somali and Iraqi situations. One would say, it’s a lack of ability to handle post-conflict situations after having bombed, and an incapacity to identify the bearing structures of a State other than the American’s, while claiming, however, of safeguarding the interests of “freed” people. This failure is not to be charged to Obama, it pretty looks a historical flaw of US administrations, completely biased towards a post-conflict reconstruction managing.
- 210,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict
- 7.6 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons
- The US federal price tag for the Iraq war is about 4.4 trillion dollars
- The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad
- The wars did not result in inclusive, transparent, and democratic governments in Iraq or Afghanistan. (http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/)
- He never incarcerated the banking CEO’s, who he accused of corruption for their responsiblity in the 2008 credit crisis. Although ultimately the crisis layed on people’s selfishness in signing such risky mortgages, the bankers corrupted proprietary trading with heavy lobbying and pocketed a lot of money from tax payers.
- He was against lobbying and promised to end it, but lobbist are still alive as the hallmark of American liberal bureaucracy.
- The recovery of the economy is mostly thanks to the boom in conservative states in South and South Western United States and the consequence of state policies undermining federal intervention. To name a few cities backed by federal utopias; Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago (Obama’s hometown) have been declared officially bankrupted, thus the massive migration of Midwesterners and East Coasters to western and southern US.
- The current relationship between Joint Chiefs of Staffs and the Obama Administration has damaged the military’s perception of the political class as arrogant – specially the Democratic Party – consequently such action won’t pan out well for liberals in the future during a possible financial collapse.
- Obama’s administration has fired more generals than any other president in history. Since Dave Petraeus, the dawn of strategic warfare has changed into diplomatic assumptions without historical basis to ultimately self-eagerly help Obama’s legacy as ‘the legendary’ diplomat in US history who solved all world problems.
- The Arab Spring was sponsored by Hillary’s progressive assumptions of the ME, during Obama’s presidency. The results are the dried and sectarian wood-logs of radical Islamism fueling the expansion of ISIL.
- Benghazi!
- I am no conspiracy theorist, but till this day, I am in doubt whether or not Bin Laden died in operation Geronimo or years before the operation ever took place. The whole scenario just lacks overall credibility.
- Weakest president in American foreign policy to ever exist. Such weakness has given occasion for regional juggernauts like Russia and China to permeate their military might in the ME, and the Pacific Rim.
- Since Obama assumed power statistics show that racism has hit a record peak. The real evidence of such rise does not come from polls, but by looking at social media.
- Obama has done nothing to help Black America:
- 25% of black households live below the poverty line as compared to eight percent for white households.
- One out of three black children lives in poverty.
- Blacks are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed.
- Blacks earn $13,000 less per year than their white counterparts.
- The unemployment rate of African Americans has consistently been twice as high as for whites over the last 50 years.
- For every $100 in wealth of a white household, the black household only has $6 in wealth.
- Obama has jeopardized the reputation of good police officers across the nation by medling with the media’s progressive hype, mixing police action with racism in America. Media networks to gain more audience have used Obama to further scope the problem into a never ending cycle of crime vs cops’ vs racism. Statistics show that most police officers base their suspicion, not on race, but behavior: Gangs, illegal narcotics, poor education and family violence are precursors for greater policing!
- African-Americans proportionally have the highest number of crime rates in America per-capita.
- Prisons have swelled. Violent inmates, waste tax payer money like never before and are conceded more rights in progressive states that keep collecting higher taxes.
- Obama’s last four year budgets have help shut down operational military bases in strategical sections across the globe, weakening American defense systems to protect the critical infrastructure.
- The rise of conspiracy theories among ordinary people has been more fueled during Obama’s administration than the Bush administration.
- The refugee crisis will be one to remember.
- The Arab League is mostly against pro-Obama; even though, the president has never once said the words ‘radical Islam’ in public — that says something
- Ultimately the ‘not so surprising’ rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in their respective parties, comes from the public sphere negative perception of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy. Obama was the last politician to gain credibility among voters considering he labelled himself as America’s last “hope”.
- More than ever before American’s are divided.
New Interpretation of the Rök Runestone Inscription Changes View of Viking Age
May 5th, 2016The Daily Journalist.
The Rök Runestone, erected in the late 800s in the Swedish province of Östergötland, is the world’s most well-known runestone. Its long inscription has seemed impossible to understand, despite the fact that it is relatively easy to read. A new interpretation of the inscription has now been presented – an interpretation that breaks completely with a century-old interpretative tradition. What has previously been understood as references to heroic feats, kings and wars in fact seems to refer to the monument itself.
‘The inscription on the Rök Runestone is not as hard to understand as previously thought,’ says Per Holmberg, associate professor of Scandinavian languages at the University of Gothenburg. ‘The riddles on the front of the stone have to do with the daylight that we need to be able to read the runes, and on the back are riddles that probably have to do with the carving of the runes and the runic alphabet, the so called futhark.’
Previous research has treated the Rök Runestone as a unique runestone that gives accounts of long forgotten acts of heroism. This understanding has sparked speculations about how Varin, who made the inscriptions on the stone, was related to Gothic kings. In his research, Holmberg shows that the Rök Runestone can be understood as more similar to other runestones from the Viking Age. In most cases, runestone inscriptions say something about themselves.
‘Already 10 years ago, the linguist Professor Bo Ralph proposed that the old idea that the Rök Runestone says mentions the Gothic emperor Theodoric is based on a minor reading error and a major portion of nationalistic wishful thinking. What has been missing is an interpretation of the whole inscription that is unaffected by such fantasies.’
Holmberg’s study is based on social semiotics, a theory about how language is a potential for realizing meaning in different types of texts and contexts.
‘Without a modern text theory, it would not have been possible to explore which meanings are the most important for runestones. Nor would it have been possible to test the hypothesis that the Rök Runestone expresses similar meanings as other runestones, despite the fact that its inscription is unusually long.’
One feature of the Rök Runestone that researchers have struggled with is that its inscription begins by listing in numerical order what it wants the reader to guess (‘Secondly, say who…’), but then seems to skip all the way to ‘twelfth, …’. Previous research has assumed there was an oral version of the message that included the missing nine riddles. Holmberg reaches a surprising conclusion:
‘If you let the inscription lead you step by step around the stone, the twelfth actually appears as the twelfth thing the reader is supposed to consider. It’s not the inscription that skips over something. It’s the researchers that have taken a wrong way through the inscription, in order to make it be about heroic deeds.’
For over a century, the traditional interpretation has contributed to our understanding of the Viking Age. With the new interpretation, the Rök Runestone does not carry a message of honour and vengeance. Instead the message concerns how the technology of writing gives us an opportunity to commemorate those who have passed away.
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Lost Language Text May Reveal God or Goddess Worshiped at Ancient Temple by Etruscans
May 4th, 2016The daily Journalist.
( ancient temple site in Italy )
A rare religious artifact found at ancient temple site in Italy is from lost culture fundamental to western traditions.
Archaeologists in Italy have discovered what may be a rare sacred text in the Etruscan language that is likely to yield rich details about Etruscan worship of a god or goddess.
The lengthy text is inscribed on a large 6th century BCE sandstone slab that was uncovered from an Etruscan temple.
A new religious artifact is rare. Most Etruscan discoveries typically have been grave and funeral objects.
The Etruscan stele was discovered embedded in the foundations of a monumental temple where it had been buried for more than 2,500 years.
(1)
(Mugello Valley Archaeological Project)
“This is probably going to be a sacred text, and will be remarkable for telling us about the early belief system of a lost culture that is fundamental to western traditions,” said archaeologist Gregory Warden, co-director and principal investigator of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which made the discovery.
The slab, weighing about 500 pounds and nearly four feet tall by more than two feet wide, has at least 70 legible letters and punctuation marks, said Warden, professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, main sponsor of the project.
Scholars in the field predict the stele (STEE-lee), as such slabs are called, will yield a wealth of new knowledge about the lost culture of the Etruscans. The Etruscan civilization once ruled Rome and influenced Romans on everything from religion to government to art to architecture.
Considered one of the most religious people of the ancient world, Etruscan life was permeated by religion, and ruling magistrates also exercised religious authority.
The slab was discovered embedded in the foundations of a monumental temple where it had been buried for more than 2,500 years. At one time it would have been displayed as an imposing and monumental symbol of authority, Warden said.
The slab, weighing about 500 pounds and nearly four feet tall by more than two feet wide, has at least 70 legible letters and punctuation marks, likely with new words never seen before.
(2)
(Etruscan 70 legible letters )
The Mugello Valley dig, specifically the Poggio Colla site, is northeast of Florence, Italy. The slab would have been connected to the early sacred life of the sanctuary there. The architecture then was characterized by timber-framed oval structures pre-dating a large temple with an imposing stone podium and large stone column bases of the Tuscan Doric type, five of which have been found at the site, Warden said.
“We hope to make inroads into the Etruscan language,” said Warden, president and professor of archaeology at Franklin University Switzerland. “Long inscriptions are rare, especially one this long, so there will be new words that we have never seen before, since it is not a funerary text.”
Conservation and study of the stele, with full photogrammetry and laser scanning to document all aspects of the conservation process and all details of the inscribed surfaces, is underway in the next few months at the conservation laboratories of the Tuscan Archaeological Superintendency in Florence by experts from the architecture department of the University of Florence. The sandstone, likely from a local source, is heavily abraded and chipped, with one side reddened, possibly from undergoing burning in antiquity. Cleaning will allow scholars to read the inscription.
“We know how Etruscan grammar works, what’s a verb, what’s an object, some of the words,” Warden said. “But we hope this will reveal the name of the god or goddess that is worshiped at this site.” The text will be studied and published by a noted expert on the Etruscan language, Rex Wallace, Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
In two decades of digging, Mugello Valley Archaeological Project has unearthed objects about Etruscan worship, beliefs, gifts to divinities, and discoveries related to the daily lives of elites and non-elites, including workshops, kilns, pottery and homes. This wealth of material helps document the ritual activity from the 7th century to the 2nd century BCE, including gold jewelry, coins, the earliest scene of childbirth in western European art, and in the past two seasons, four 6th-century bronze statuettes.
Etruscan scholar Jean MacIntosh Turfa with the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, said the stele discovery will advance knowledge of Etruscan history, literacy and religious practices.
“Inscriptions of more than a few words, on permanent materials, are rare for the Etruscans, who tended to use perishable media like linen cloth books or wax tablets,” Turfa said. “This stone stele is evidence of a permanent religious cult with monumental dedications, at least as early as the Late Archaic Period, from about 525 to 480 BCE. Its re-use in the foundations of a slightly later sanctuary structure points to deep changes in the town and its social structure.”
It would be a rare discovery to identify the Etruscan god or goddess to which the sanctuary was dedicated.
“Apart from the famous seaside shrine at Pyrgi, with its inscribed gold plaques, very few Etruscan sanctuaries can be so conclusively identified,” Turfa said. “A study of the names of the dedicants will yield rich data on a powerful society where the nobility, commoners and even freed slaves could offer public vows and gifts.”
Etruscans were a highly cultured people, but very little of their writing has been preserved, mostly just short funerary inscriptions with names and titles, said archaeologist Ingrid Edlund-Berry, professor emerita, The University of Texas at Austin.
“So any text, especially a longer one, is an exciting addition to our knowledge,” said Edlund-Berry, an expert in Etruscan civilization. “It is very interesting that the stele was found within the walls of the buildings at the site, thus suggesting that it was re-used, and that it represents an early phase at the site.”
The Poggio Colla site is in northern Etruria. Most inscriptions have come from centers further south, Edlund-Berry said.
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First European Farmers Are Traced Back To Anatolia
May 2nd, 2016the Daily Journalist.
Human material from the Anatolian site Kumtepe was used in the study. The material was heavily degraded, but yielded enough DNA for the doctorate student Ayca Omrak to address questions concerning the demography connected to the spread of farming. She conducted her work at the Archaeological Research Laboratory.
“I have never worked with a more complicated material. But it was worth every hour in the laboratory. I could use the DNA from the Kumtepe material to trace the european farmers back to Anatolia. It is also fun to have worked with this material from the site Kumtepe, as this is the precursor to Troy”, says doctorate student Ayca Omrak, at the Archaeological Research Laboratory Stockholm University.
A large part of results come from grave 6 in Kumtepe, excavated in 1994. Here the upper part of a skeleton. Photo provided by Project Troia, thanks to Peter Jablonka.
Jan Storå, associate professor in osteoarchaeology and coauthor to the study agrees with Ayca. The results confirms Anatolias importance to Europe’s cultural history. He also thinks that material from the area needs to be researched further.
“It is complicated to work with material from this region, it is hot and the DNA is degraded. But if we want to understand how the process that led from a hunter-gatherer society proceeded to a farming society, it is this material we need to exhaust”, says Jan Storå, associate professor in osteoarchaeology, Stockholm University.Anders Götherstörm who heads the archaeogenetic research at the Archaeological Research Laboratory agrees that this study indicates further possibilities:
“Our results stress the importance Anatolia has had on Europe’s prehistory. But to fully understand how the agricultural development proceeded we need to dive deeper down into material from the Levant. Jan is right about that.”
The archaeogenetic group in Stockholm is presently advancing its collaboration with colleagues in Anatolia and Iran.
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Descendants of Black Death Confirmed as Source of Repeated European Plague Outbreaks
April 29th, 2016The Daily Journalist.
An international team of researchers has uncovered new information about the Black Death in Europe and its descendants, suggesting it persisted on the continent over four centuries, re-emerging to kill hundreds of thousands in Europe in separate, devastating waves.
The findings address the longstanding debate among scientists about whether or not the bacterium Yersinia pestis — responsible for the Black Death — remained within Europe for hundreds of years and was the principal cause of some of the worst re-emergences and subsequent plague epidemics in human history.
Until now, some researchers believed repeated outbreaks were the result of the bacterium being re-introduced through major trade with China, a widely-known reservoir of the plague. Instead, it turns out the plague may never have left.
“The more plague genomes we have from these disparate time periods, the better we are able to reconstruct the evolutionary history of this pathogen” says evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar, director of McMaster University’s Ancient DNA Centre and a principal investigator at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research.
Poinar collaborated with Edward Holmes at the University of Sydney, Olivier Dutour of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in France, and Kirsti Bos and Johannes Krause at the University of Tubingen, and others, to map the complete genomes of Y.pestis which was harvested from five adult male victims of the 1722 Plague of Provence.
To do so, they analyzed the dental pulp taken from the five bodies, originally buried in Marseille, France. Researchers were able to extract, purify and enrich specifically for the pathogen’s DNA, and then compare the samples with over 150 plague genomes representing a world wide distribution as well as from other points in time, both modern and ancient.
Inspired by the Black Death, The Dance of Death or Danse Macabre, an allegory on the universality of death, is a common painting motif in the late medieval period.
By comparing and contrasting the samples, researchers determined the Marseille strain is a direct descendant of the Black Death that devastated Europe nearly 400 years earlier and not a divergent strain that came, like the previous pandemic strains Justinian and Black Death, from separate emergences originating in Asia.
More extensive sampling of modern rodent populations, in addition to ancient human and rodent remains from various regions in Asia, the Caucasus and Europe, may yield additional clues about past ecological niches for plague.
“There are many unresolved questions that need to be answered: why did the plague erupt in these devastating waves and then lay dormant? Did it linger in the soil or did it re-emerge in rats? And ultimately why did it suddenly disappear and never come back? Sadly, we don’t have the answer to this yet,” says Poinar.
“Understanding the evolution of the plague will be critically important as antibiotic resistance becomes a greater threat, particularly since we treat modern-day plague with standard antibiotics. Without methods of treatment, easily treatable infections can become devastating again,” he says.
The research was published online in the journal eLife.
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Is illegal immigration really a problem?
April 26th, 2016The Daily Journalist community opinion.
This past year, the issue of immigration has stirred a hurricane of controversy in Europe more so than the United States. Radical religious and right wing groups have risen to protest immigration all over Europe, especially the recent Syrian refugee crisis. They mostly worry that with new waves of immigration mixed with low native natality rates, the customs and traditions of England, France or Germany — to name a few — will soon be lost, including democracy itself. But immigration itself is a byproduct of growth, and equality given the right circumstances.
The first colonizers to settle in America, without need to present official documents and pass through customs and migration checkpoints, where immigrants themselves in search for new opportunities; Mexican Americans now migrate the US in search for new opportunities — mostly the lower class jobs Americans won’t dare to work.
Historically, Europeans have got involved in African and Middle Eastern affairs without the majority consensus of the inborn population they invaded — one could argue that in some cases they were invited to take over. Now migratory waves have left Africa and the Middle East to journey new opportunities in Europe.
1) Do Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration, considering they’re partly responsible for the mess experienced in the Middle East, including the colonization of other countries in history?
2) Are Islam and Democracy compatible partners? Or should westerners be afraid of it?
3) Why is Xenophobia prevalent in the west?
4) Should Mexican illegals working low class jobs go back to Mexico? Despite the fact that they help America’s efficiency in different work sectors Americans don’t take?
5) What is the main difference between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves?
Sebastian Sarbu.
(He is a military analyst and vice-president of National Academy of Security and Defense Planning. Member of American Diplomatic Mission for International Relations)
“Illegal immigration is dangerous, because it can destabilize the economy and social security. In other ideas of matters, the government should adopt a legislation to permit the integration of immigrants in American or European society. The problem is complex and cannot be resumed as an option or interpretation.
This problem has dual issues. We identify an individual responsibility and also a collective responsibility. The instrument of measure should not suffer ideological influences or be a transnational political calculation.
Immigration must be accepted like a reality of globalization, and not transformed into a conflict of civilizations.
Democracy imposes rules, but it does not mean that the rule of law is a limitation or a substitute of democracy.
Islam is not compatible with democracy and much less with globalization. Democracy is compatible with Islam only in the states where theocracy don’t exist as legal forms of governance. But also in the liberal form it is in conflict with the socio-cultural diversity and civil rights of common people.
In general to build walls between nations is not a solution; however, illegal immigration must be taken very seriously. An option could be to send the armed forces, but only to help law enforcement and aid any social emergencies authorized by law.”
Barack Obama Mandela.
(He is a California attorney. He served as policy adviser to California Governor Pete Wilson and public affairs intern for US Senator Barack Boxer. He also served as public affairs intern for the Israeli Consulatea nd mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert. Recipient of the National Defense Service Medal)
“1) Do Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration, considering they’re partly responsible for the mess experienced in the Middle East, including the colonization of other countries in history?
Although the world is in a post colonial period, the Third World is still dealing with conflicts and inequality caused by European colonialist. However, both Europe and the United States have a fundamental right to protect their borders against illegal immigration.
It is important, however, for undocumented immigrants to be treated with dignity and respect. In the United States, for example, I have become an advocate and supporter of Latino and Hispanic immigrants. I have perceived this community to be largely faith-based and also hard working. I oppose racism and mistreatment of Latin American immigrants to the USA; including undocumented immigrants.
‘
2) Are Islam and Democracy compatible partners? Or should westerners be afraid of it?
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has raised the issue of a potential conflict between Islam and Western Civilization. Controversially, Mr. Trump suggested a freeze on Muslim immigration to the United States.
Although Mr. Trump raises some legitimate issues, I oppose a freeze on Muslim immigration to the United States. I do not view Islam—in general—as an opponent to Western democracy. I believe a moderate and modern version of Islam should be promoted by Western governments. I think moderate Islamic clerics should be fortified and promoted. Finally, I think a public relations campaign called “Islam of Peace” should be created in order to urge young Muslim to embrace a modern, democracy-friendly version of Islam.”
3) Why is Xenophobia prevalent in the west?
Xenophobia and racism are two sides of the same coin. Western countries participated in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, colonialism, and the near eradication of native peoples. The legacy of racism and xenophobia require long-term, government sponsored psychotherapy for racists and xenophobes. The healing of these issues begins within the minds and hearts of the people. Superficial solutions are
only temporary in nature”.
4) Should Mexican illegals working low class jobs go back to Mexico? Despite the fact that they help
America’s efficiency in different work sectors Americans don’t take?
Mexican immigrants may be referred to as “undocumented workers”. However, it is politically incorrect to refer to them as “illegals” or “illegal immigrants”. These phrases are unnecessarily dehumanizing
and discriminatory. Undocumented workers are human beings with human emotions that must be respected in a sensitive and humane manner.
Undocumented workers should be provided with: (1) A path to US citizenship (2) Worker identification cards allowing them to work (3) Free English language immersion courses. These courses could be taught by college students as part of their work study”.
5) What is the main difference between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves?
The Mexican and Syrian waves of immigration have some similarities and differences. First of all, the Syrian immigration wave is caused by a nearly complete collapse of the government and a bloody civil war. In addition, parts of Syria have been invaded by ISIS. On the other hand, the Mexican immigration is caused by lack of jobs and poor economy in Mexico and the bloody narco-trafficking war.”
Moreover, the western portion of the United States was formerly part of Mexico. Therefore Mexican immigrants have cultural and historical ties to the USA. Major cities in California have Hispanic names: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, and Santa Barbara. Surely this indicates the region’s Hispanic heritage. In fact, the Aztecs referred to the western United States as “Aztlan”. Therefore, Mexican immigration to the US is partially driven by historical socio-cultural forces.”
Vassilios Damiras.
(Is a U.S. counter-terrorism, homeland security, and defense expert. He has extensively studied and worked on various U.S. National Security issues, Middle East, and Balkan politics and history)
“The Americans and the Europeans have the right to protest illegal immigration and the clear the real refugees. The United States and the European Union member nation-states have specific rules regarding legal immigration and refugee status.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration and the various European governments both conservatives and socialists follow a utopian approach to the issue. Specifically, the communist government of Greece has opened the borders in order to blackmail the EU to reduce the Greek debt. In addition, the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras believes like Obama on open borders.
Regarding the mess in the Middle East, the responsibility falls mostly to the local population due to absent democratic values. In addition, it was wrong for the Obama administration to withdraw from Iraq. The American withdrawal created a vacuum that ISIS covered.
For the stable Middle East, the main ingredient is an aggressive American foreign policy. However, most Americans want isolationism to solve the domestic issues. That is wrong. The globe and the Middle East region asks and wants American leadership.”
Steven Hansen.
(Publisher and Co-founder of Econintersect, is an international business and industrial consultant specializing in turning around troubled business units; consults to governments to optimize process flows; and provides economic indicator analysis based on unadjusted data and process limitations)
“1) Do Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration, considering they’re partly responsible for the mess experienced in the Middle East, including the colonization of other countries in history?
You cannot judge what has happened in the past using 2016 eyes. Mores have changed. What was acceptable to my father’s generation, is not acceptable to mine. Mankind is continuing to hone the line between right and wrong.
I know of no country in the world which allows open borders. Who has a right to work and to stay are controlled. Just because everyone does it – is it right? There of pros and cons. But in the final analysis, no country can allow a wave of immigration which affects its customs and way of life. But in the case of the USA and Mexico – it is even more complicated. All I can say is that I cannot go to Mexico and establish residence without a process. It is difficult to the point of impossible to get a work permit for Mexico.
But I believe work permits should be freely obtainable by Mexicans – and with a permit, they should have the right to stay until they no longer work.
2) Are Islam and Democracy compatible partners? Or should westerners be afraid of it?
I have lived the majority of my life in Muslim countries. The interpretation of the Koran varies country by country, region by region, family by family. Out of curiosity – what countries do you consider democratic (as the USA is democratic in definition but not in practice).
3) Why is Xenophobia prevalent in the west?
Xenophobia exists where its citizens do not travel, and have no perspectives.
4) Should Mexican illegals working low class jobs go back to Mexico? Despite the fact that they help America’s efficiency in different work sectors Americans don’t take?
I believe work permits should be readily available to Mexicans – and go back to Mexico only when they do not have a job.
5) What is the main difference between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves?
Culturally, Mexico and the USA share common values – and much of the area in the west was Spanish speaking at one time. As I have said, the relationship between the USA and Mexico is complex and defies simple answers. Syria, on the other hand – is having a civil war. I believe the west owes Syrians a temporary place to stay until the war ends – but that does not mean permanent residence in any other country.”
Adil F. Raja.
(He is an independent Political and Security analyst from Pakistan with a diverse background in Governance, International Relations, Special Ops and International Security/Political Consultancy)
“1) Do Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration, considering they’re partly responsible for the mess experienced in the Middle East, including the colonization of other countries in history?
A- Obviously not. The EU and US populations failed to question/stop their leaders to venture upon wars on false pretexts, such as the Iraq war (Weapons of mass destruction) creating havoc on the affected countries. Instead of now feeling sorry for themselves they should realise that this is a result of their interference. Every action has a consequence and on this occasion mass immigration to Europe from war torn countries is the consequence
2) Are Islam and Democracy compatible partners? Or should westerners be afraid of it?
A- Democracy and Islam are not opposing concepts, however democracy in it’s western context could never flourish in Islamic countries. Modern Muslim societies are divided within themselves into numerous sects and tribes wherein tribal code reigns supreme in maintaining order in these societies.Democratic culture demands accountability for their leadership where as the majority of Muslim societies are run my autocratic governance which is the only method proving to maintain order in these societies.
Examples of the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq and Qaddafi’s autocracy in Libya. By forcefully introducing Western style democracy in these Muslim countries by the West, the very basic fabric of these societies was torn where these prosperous countries were destroyed and made into a hub of terrorism and blood shed, It proves that Western style of democracy is suitable only in the West, whereas Muslim societies demand a certain degree of autocracy to maintain order amoungst the tribal/sectarian traditions. The west should refrain from creating further fiascoes like Iraq, Libya and Syria.
3) Why is Xenophobia prevalent in the west?
A-The prevalent xenophobia in the west is not by default but through design. The mainstream media is being used by vested interests for political reasons to spread the hatred which in turn becomes handy in waging wars for corporate greed. One man’s terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.
4) Should Mexican illegals working low class jobs go back to Mexico? Despite the fact that they help America’s efficiency in different work sectors Americans don’t take?
A- No comments.
5) What is the main difference between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves?
A- The Mexican immigration wave is mainly due to economic reasons and the Syrian immigration wave is because of the present war in the country.”
Peter D. Rosenstein.
(He is a non-profit executive, journalist and Democratic and community activist. His background includes teaching; serving as Coordinator of Local Government for the City of New York; working in the Carter Administration; and Vice-chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of the District of Columbia)
“1) Do Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration, considering they’re partly responsible for the mess experienced in the Middle East, including the colonization of other countries in history?
Of course groups have a right to protest illegal immigration- the question is what policies countries should adopt to deal with it. I am more familiar with what America is doing and at this time we are fighting over it. America, if it elects more Democrats in the upcoming election, will have a push towards a comprehensive immigration policy.
It will deal with the current over eleven million illegal immigrants in the country and try to give them a path to citizenship if they are law abiding people who have come to the United States to make a better life for themselves and their families. I am also in favor of the United States opening up our borders to immigrants from Syria who are escaping because their lives are in danger. Now I don’t think we should look at this as our being responsible for the mess in the Middle East. We should look at some immigration as a humanitarian issue.
2) Are Islam and Democracy compatible partners? Or should westerners be afraid of it?
I think that Islam and Democracy can be compatible partners but we have to learn to understand each other. Because of the rise in violence of the Jihadist movement it is natural that Westerners are afraid. But we need to educate people about the difference between Islam and the majority of Muslims and the Jihadist movement.
4) Why is Xenophobia prevalent in the west?
A simple definition of Xenophobia is “fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners”. It is more prevalent because of the rash of attacks that have occurred in western capitals in recent years. People also have a natural tendency to fear what they don’t understand and most people in the West don’t understand Islam at all. The only way to counter xenophobia is through education.
5) Should Mexican illegals working low class jobs go back to Mexico? Despite the fact that they help America’s efficiency in different work sectors Americans don’t take?
The United States needs a comprehensive immigration policy. It really shouldn’t have anything to do with the kind of jobs people have but rather how and why they have come to the United States. The United States was founded by immigrants and those coming here to make a better life for themselves and their families. We need to respect that tradition as we set new policies on immigration. Today we need to develop that pathway to citizenship for those law abiding people here now illegally. But any nation is also allowed to set policy for how to enter the country legally and then to stick to those policies.
6) What is the main difference between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves?
The Syrian immigration wave is one brought about because of people’s fearing for their lives if they stay where they are. This is a humanitarian issue and in many cases if they could live safely in Syria many of the refugees would choose to go home. The Mexican immigration is one of economic issues and those Mexican’s who have come to the United States do so in most cases for economic issues not for political issues.”
Arik (Oren) Smila.
(He is the co-founder and executive director at Diplomacy.co.il, he is a Masters degree graduate from Tel-Aviv University at the field of Diplomacy studies)
“1) A complex question. How does one protest a right that his predecessors enjoyed in the past, what gives him the right to deny other human beings from seeking better opportunities for them and for their children?
The argument pro migration are clear and well known, it’s a tool for growth and prosperity, they are (at most cases) very respectful of the law and their communities, not to mention that the next generations are very ambitious and diligent, given their lives and experiences growing up as immigrants in a foreign country.
The counter arguments varies however, I believe that in the base of those arguments lays the core feeling of fear of the unknown, the different, a change to a lifestyle that one grown a custom to and reluctant to any change. Does migration brings problems that one country did not have to deal with prior? Absolutely, but the governments role is to find solution to those problems and not blame certain group in creating them.
2) Afraid? No. Knowledgeable? Yes. History shows that true democracy could not co-exist with Islam as the common believe. Some place the blame on the fact that the Imam, historically, was the secular ruler and the spiritual leader. As oppose to Christianity, where there was a desperation of state and religion, with the church and the King. Hence the ability to accept separation of authorities which Islam was never accustomed to. Arab leaders, throughout history made a habit of eliminating any shred of opposition and killed the seeds of what could have been a base of true liberal political system. Could that be changed given that information is more accessible in our time? I believe so, but it will take long time before the new generation will rise up again and understand that the political system is not a tool to remain in power but a way to serve the community.
As one that studied the matter of Arab political systems throughout history, I was full of hope at the time of the “Arab Spring” but somewhere inside I knew that it will only lead to the same results of Islam will not be completely separated from the state.
3) very simple answer. It is branded in each one of us to be afraid of the unknown and the different. Why is it so common in the west? I cannot speak of Europe as I have not spent much time there, but America is the richest country in history, most people’s income exceeds their needs by far. If you introduce an unknown, unpredictable (in their minds) factor to a community that has only to lose, it’s not unusual to see resistance.
Of course, Islam extremists have contributed to the fear of Islam in the most profound way. Over 90% of terror attacks in the last 15 years were conducted in the name of Islam. It is certain that the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not support these actions but even a small percentage of those who believe in that way creates a large number. Furthermore, the voices of those who preach against violent actions are weak and hardly heard.
Muslims in Europe have no desire to be integrated to the society and are very prone to be recruited to the extreme groups out of despair. Education is not integral and rejects other cultures which leads to lack of job opportunities and the depression that follows is only an excuse to look for a different way.
Extremism Islam is a problem that should be dealt with, not ignored. We can cut the head of the snake each time it rises, but more and more snakes will continue to appear. Only with inclusive education program and proper job opportunities, the extreme Islam recruiters will find their job to be harder and harder.
4) Absolutely not. And it is not a question of effectiveness or market benefit. Those immigrants are mostly families with children that are entitled to a better education, healthcare, nutrition and other social services as any human being should receive. We all should have a communal conscience as we are a part of the same society that help us achieve what we have thus far. It is ungrateful to deny people of the same right that your grandparents enjoyed.
That aside, Mexicans are, by majority hard working and contribute immensely to the growth of the American economy. Nevertheless, that should always come second to the first reason.
5) The main difference between both waves of immigration is the cause. Mexican immigrants seek better economic opportunities and better future for their children. Syrian refugees seek a safe asylum. Syrian refugees are being “feared” more given the chance that ISIS terrorists will seize the opportunity to enter Europe and the US with an ideology of executing a violent act.
However both waves influence each other and there is no doubt that any resistance to migration will be exclusive to all immigrants. Perhaps there lays the explanation to the rise in popularity of the GOP candidate Donald Trump. ”
Michael Smith Phd.
(He is a professor of political science at Emporia State Univeristy. Teaches local politics, campaigns and elections, political philosophy, legislative politics, and nonprofit management)
1) Do Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration, considering they’re partly responsible for the mess experienced in the Middle East, including the colonization of other countries in history?
Of course we have the right, as per free speech (though that’s a bit more restricted in Western Europe than in the USA– e.g. bans on denying the Holocaust–but free speech is still valued in Europe and the USA). The question is, how productive are such protests, and how wise? There is the hypocrisy issue, of course. Also, the basic premise seems to be that law enforcement should regulate flows of immigrants, but all the research of which I am aware shows that economic conditions, not laws or enforcement, are what govern such things.
2) Are Islam and Democracy compatible partners? Or should westerners be afraid of it?
Islam is a major world religion with many sects and followers, like Christianity. Sufis and Wahhabis are as different as The United Church of Christ and Primitive Baptists. I do think that there is something to the idea that certain sects of Islam capture the rage of the world’s have-nots, and resolution of these differences will not prove easy.
3) Why is Xenophobia prevalent in the west?
Causes are complex, ranging from a fear of crime committed by new, low-income migrants, to discomfort at hearing a new language spoken in one’s community, to a desire to see change regulated by law enforcement, which is not always possible as per my answer to question #1. There is also resentment of migrants willing to work for low wages competing with citizens who have worked hard for, and expect higher pay. Finally, the racial, language, cultural, and religious changes can be threatening to those who want one language, one culture, even one predominant religion in their country.
4) Should Mexican illegals working low class jobs go back to Mexico? Despite the fact that they help America’s efficiency in different work sectors Americans don’t take?
It would severely disrupt the U.S. economy if all undocumented immigrants were suddenly deported– as if such a thing is even feasible in the 1st place.
5) What is the main difference between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves?
This gets into one of the really murky areas of immigration policy. The U.S. tries to draw a bright, shining line between economic and political refugees. In practice, this is not clear-cut. A case in point are the many undocumented immigrants being deported to Central America right now. They are being labeled as economic refugees and therefore not eligible for asylum, yet their countries are not only poor but also they have a great deal of political unrest. Policy rests on a distinction which is not as clear in real life.”
Randal O’Toole.
(He is a Cato Institute Senior Fellow working on urban growth, public land, and transportation issues. O’Toole’s research on national forest management, culminating in his 1988 book, Reforming the Forest Service, has had a major influence on Forest Service policy and on-the-ground management)
1) Do Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration, considering they’re partly responsible for the mess experienced in the Middle East, including the colonization of other countries in history?
I believe that just being born in a country doesn’t give people a right to exclude others from living there. I believe in open borders.
2) Are Islam and Democracy compatible partners? Or should westerners be afraid of it?
Some Islamists are violent, but overall Islam is no more violent than Christianity or Judism has been in the past.
3) Why is Xenophobia prevalent in the west?
The best way to build a following is to find someone for followers to hate, so politicians use fear of terrorism to build constituencies and power. This has been true for as long as there have been people and is certainly not confined to the West.
4) Should Mexican illegals working low class jobs go back to Mexico? Despite the fact that they help America’s efficiency in different work sectors Americans don’t take?
America is a big country and has room and work for everyone who wants to live here. Some form of immigration reform including amnesty would be a good thing for both the immigrants and the economy as a whole.
5) What is the main difference between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves?
The main difference is that much of Europe is economically hostile to newcomers. Most large European nations have made housing very expensive. They have imposed minimum wages and other labor regulations that discourage people from hiring new workers. The result is high unemployment rates, which means that many if not most Syrian immigrants will also be unemployed and forced to live in government-provided housing, often housing that residents have rejected.
California and a few other states have imposed similar rules, but most U.S. states have minimal housing and labor regulation. Minimum wages are about two-thirds of many European countries. This means there is room for more people, both in terms of jobs and housing.
Most problems with immigration are really symptoms of deeper problems that should be corrected even if there were no immigration.”
John D. Vernon Sr.
(He has proudly served the United States of America for over 37 years as a Military Officer, retiring at the rank of Colonel,later serving as a Department of Defense civilian, and finally as a Township Supervisor.In 2012, John ran as a Conservative candidate for the U.S. Senate in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is the CEO, American Warrior Press)
“The topic of immigration is a “hot button” subject today both here in the United States and in Europe. Progressives like to use this word in order to push their liberal agenda which deliberately embraces illegal activity verses actually stating that the migration of people that is occurring is actually an illegal breach of sovereign nation’s borders. That in itself is the fraud they sadly perpetrate at the expense of their citizens.
That said, whether people like it or not, the tragic events of September 11, 2001, changed the way the world views national immigration policy and those attempting to migrate from Africa and the Middle East. Western fears of radicalism and terrorism are real and strike at the heart of their security concerns. Europe is now facing its own security crisis based upon the political pressure to look the other way and embrace tolerance. They and their citizens have been hoodwinked.
In many Progressive circles, the comparison between today’s illegal immigration is made to the early settlers who came to the “New World,” in order to foster a false premise and narrative regarding the lack of official documentation and the search of new opportunities. First, the “New World” as it was known at the time was not an established nation or country and those who have studied history know, that the settlers of the “New World” claimed certain plots of property in the name of their King or Queen. In other words, they seized property by occupational or conquering force, as that was how land was acquired.
The idea that early American settlers and illegal migrants are in the same category is laughable. In fact it’s intellectually insulting. There is no comparison as they are separate entities. Now, fast forward to today and the wave of illegals flowing across our nation’s southern border. As I stated earlier, the breaching of another nations border is a direct attack on that nation’s sovereignty and violates America’s rule of law. As a bottom line, illegals have given America the “finger” and said, “To hell with your laws, I don’t give a damn.”
It infuriates me that the discussion is not about the violation of the rule of law but rather somehow that our immigration policies need to be changed to allow illegals who have committed a crime, to become citizens. As Pope Francis recently quipped after a Bernie Sanders visit, maybe you should see a psychologist. In my view, its pure insanity, but people on the Progressive Left strongly believe they need to help every person in the world, regardless of the cost and personal involvement, even if it not their own.
For many years after September 11, 2001, I have been on the front lines fighting terrorism, so for me it’s not just political ideology, its personal; been there done that. I know first-hand what it’s like to survive a terrorist attack, so when people accuse me of Xenophobia, I look them in the eye and say, walk a mile in my shoes. As I stated earlier, the events of September 11, 2001, changed the way the world looks at people from the Middle East and or areas that support terrorism. I refuse to give into the tolerance or grievance community. After all, what kind of Godless people murder innocent people in the name of radical religion?
The grievance industry has asserted that the West is somehow responsible for the mess in the Middle East that “they” somehow created. However, this argument is typical nonsense and is asinine on its face. The grievance industry fails to account for the wrongs and terrorist actions that the dictators of these countries caused across the world. After all, the grievance industry knows that the United States has a constitution and rule of law that determines the limits of how government works. Like in Syria, they know that the “red line” will not be crossed. However, that comes with a price, and that price is anarchy.
The United States is the greatest idea that has ever been given to the world. Under our constitution and as part of the first amendment of the bill of rights, citizens have the right to peacefully assembly, and exercise their freedom of speech and right to protest. The expression of free thought and expression what separate great nations from good nations.
The United States is now facing a huge immigration policy dilemma as the 2016 election cycle is in full swing and candidates on the Left and Right are at opposite ends of the spectrum. What the American people have long known is that a guest worker program has long served a valuable purpose to both the United States and Mexico. However, it is not about the false premise that Mexicans will do jobs American don’t want, but rather they are willing to do the job for less money and that’s the bottom line.
President Obama is currently finishing out the last year of his presidential term. Some call it the “lame duck” term because nothing gets done. I see the same regarding the comparison between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves; it’s a lame duck. As I mentioned earlier, this comparison is not an immigration action. Syrians are not trying to immigrate to the United States, but rather politicians are trying to defuse an international refugee program. For illegal Mexicans who have come to the United States, they are neither trying to immigrate nor are they refugees, but rather they are criminals who have broken the laws of the United States and must face justice under our rule of law.
The United States has a long standing immigration policy and program based upon the rule of law. Those who subvert the system are nothing more than charlatans and criminals; period. In today’s politically correct world, these same people believe the United States owes them something. Let me be clear. We owe them nothing and demand that they respect our laws and borders. Change is definitely coming in 2017.”
Halyna Mokrushyna.
(Holds a doctorate in linguistics and MA degree in communication. She publishes in Counterpunch, Truthout, and New Cold War on Ukrainian politics, history, and culture. She is also a contributing editor to the New Cold War: Ukraine and beyond and a founder of the Civic group for democracy in Ukraine)
“Questions that Jaime Ortega has asked this time are very broad and to answer each of them one would need to write a book per question. I will nevertheless try to embrace the un-braceable.
1) The first question whether Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration. It depends which rights we are talking about. In a real democracy, citizens have a political right to protest about anything. If we are talking about moral right, I do not think they have the moral right to do so, given the terrible destruction of cultures and death of millions of people brought by European colonization and the military intervention in non-Western countries, disguised under hypocritical claims of helping these countries to build democracy. This “help” has had disastrous results in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine. But Western democratizers are still convinced that they are the most progressive, the most advanced civilization, and it is their responsibility to educate the rest of the world and to convert the uncivilized. The White Man marches on. Mentality is the hardest thing to change.
I would draw a distinction line though between common men and political elites. The problem with Europe, for instance, is that democracy is not working in reality – national governments lost their autonomy to transnational capital. The biggest mockery of democracy was the national referendum in Greece in June of 2015 whether to accept the bailout conditions, proposed by the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. The majority of Greeks (over 61%) rejected the bailout. The “No” vote won in all of the Greece’s regions. What did the left-wing Prime-Minister Alexis Tsipras do? Ignored the results of Greeks and signed the bail-out. Did he really have a choice? I do not think so. Greece has become trapped into a deep debt hole, dug by international monetary institutions and will never get out of there.
2) I think Islam and democracy are compatible. It depends what we mean by democracy. If it is a political system, in which church and state are separated and religion is a private business of any citizen, then it would take many decades before we see a democratic Islamic state in this sense. In Western Europe the liberal democracy started appearing as religion started losing its influence on people. Enlightenment with its rationalization neutralized the religion’s grip on people’s minds. The divine right of Kings was replaced by elected politicians and rational bureaucracies.
In a country where the absolute majority of people share the same religion, the state can function according to religious laws, and it will reflect interests of the whole population. No violence will be needed to keep population under control, because there are no dissenters. However, no such country exists in the Arab world or anywhere in the world for that matter. There are religious or ethnic minorities everywhere, and it is up to societies of every Arab country to find their own ways to live together without killing each other. And Western countries should not intervene in this domestic dialogue, which is, again, highly improbable to happen. Examples of secular Arab states, such as Libya or Syria, show that the separation of religion and governance in Islamic countries is possible only through authoritarian regimes. The price of such secularization is too high, higher than letting Arabic countries develop their own ways of ensuring a secure and decent life for all members, of whichever religion or ethnicity they might be. Westerners should not be afraid of Arabs or should not try to change them. Westerners should try to understand them and respect the difference.
3) Why is xenophobia prevalent in the west? The answer is simple – because it is in the west that we find the biggest number of immigrants. People, no matter the color of skin, language, age, nationality, want to live better. The global North draws people from the global South because of the material wealth. European colonizers treated Africans or Indians from the position of superiority and security because they were stronger military. Now the official policy in European Union is equality, tolerance and multiculturalism, but many Europeans still hate immigrants from Middle East or Africa because they think they are going to steal their jobs and destroy their culture. Europe is reaping the fruits of its colonialism.
Colonized are flocking to the European beam of prosperity and security. Europe is facing the Other on its own grounds now. There are hundreds of thousands of Others now in various European countries, compared to quite homogenous Europe of the first half of the XX century. There have always been ethnic and religious minorities in Europe, but they were white and Christians, like titular nations. The only Others were Jews and Roma. But they have been living in Europe for ages. It is only after the WWII and the decolonization, which it triggered, that Europe has seen the influx of immigrants from the former colonies. These immigrants are not white, they are not Christians. That is why they instill fear, and that is why xenophobia is prevalent in the West.
4) Migration/immigration cannot be stopped, because people will always seek a better place to live. And it is their natural right to do so. The government of a country to which migrants/immigrants are going faces a difficult task of finding a balance between the economic necessity to keep the migrants, because they are filling the demand in the unskilled jobs, and the fear of native citizens to lose their jobs and culture to foreigners. No wall can stop people seeking better life, especially when the country-destination invites the migrants, as it was the case with braceros in the US during WWII. The U.S. ‘imported’ thousands of Mexican farm laborers to ensure the production of food supply. American farmers liked the cheap labor, and continued to hire undocumented Mexicans after the war. Americans grew dissatisfied. In 1954, the U.S. government responded by apprehending close to one million illegal workers in the “Operation Wetback”.
At the same time, to appease American farmers, the Immigration and Naturalization Service reviewed cases of many undocumented Mexicans, legalized them and allowed them to return to the work on farms. Bringing in workers from abroad will always provoke dissatisfaction of some parts of the local population, and foreign workers will always try to stay, unless the economic situation in the country of their origin improves. Governments of countries receiving foreign workers should ensure that workers have social security and safety at work and that their human rights are respected. As for the monetary aspect, it is up to those who are providing work to establish a decent pay that would suit both the worker and the employer.
5) Syrian refugees who are now flooding Europe are fleeing the war. Out of the almost 23 million of Syrian population, 45% of Syrians are displaced – around 4.8 million are refugees outside of Syria, and 6.6 million are displaced internally. Life expectancy has dropped from 70 in 2010 to 55.4 in 2015. Fatalities caused by war, directly and indirectly, amount to 470,000, according to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research (cited in The Guardian ).
These are shocking statistics, especially considering a high increase of the Syrian population in the last six decades: from close to 5million in 1960 to almost 23 million in 2013. Population growth followed the economic development: Syrian GDP grew from 857.7 million USD in 1960 to 73.67 billion USD in 2012. The GDP per capita was also increasing, reaching 4684.72 USD in 2012 (as adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity). This war, enflamed by ill-designed Western intervention, destroyed Syrian economy. Overall economic losses are estimated at $255bn.
Syria is a very sad example for the political elite of any country, incapable of reaching an agreement without the ‘assistance’ from the West. This incapacity leads to the civil war which destroys the country and decimates the population.
Syrians are fleeing to Europe to save their lives. Mexicans are immigrating to the U.S. to improve their lives. This is a fundamental difference between them.”
Nake M. Kamrany. Co-authors: Ghaffar Mughal, Qatar University, Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Mathew Jackson, University of Montana and member of the Global Income Convergence Group, Jessica Greenhalgh, Global Income Convergence Group and Sam Kosydar, Global Income Convergence Group.
(He is an eminent Afghan-American development economist with superior experience in economic development who is held in high esteem by the international development community, Afghan leaders, scholars, the private sector and intellectuals. He has more than 20 publications on the political economy of Afghanistan)
“INTRODUCTION
IMMIGRATION’S RECENT SURGE is caused because more bombs are dropped, millions are dead, and millions more march to perceived safety or in many cases internment camps in Europe. And all the while America still does nothing except to threaten massive deportation of some 11+ million who have lived in the U.S. for years. Although President Barrack Obama may have tried to avoid getting more involved in the Middle East war and entanglement, but he is presiding over one of the largest humanitarian disasters of this century.
Moreover, I vehemently disagree with Obama strategy and those who advocates it. ,“The Obama administration compares ISIS to cancer, and the analogy offers insights into defeating the extremists. “That analogy is incorrect and has been proven to be wrong. Take a hard look at Afghanistan. Obama applied the same strategy with 48 NATO members for 15 years IN AFGHANISTAN and it is being defeated despite U.S./NATO incessant bombing, destroying thousands of villages and killing million. Obama’s strategy has produced more refugees in Afghanistan causing emigrating out of Afghanistan.
U.S. strategy has radicalized many Afghans including governmental soldiers who are on U.S. payroll. A couple days ago an Afghan soldier shot and killed TWO NATO soldiers and went ON TV with no regrets and said that over the last 15 years U.S./NATO has done nothing but kill and destroy. That incident was not the first, hundreds of NATO soldiers over the last years have been shot by Afghan government soldiers who are supposed to fight with the U.S. They are radicalized so are million in the M.E.
How about PEACE – do we have the wisdom and courage to give peace a chance AND END THESE ANALOGIES AD JUSTIFICATION FOR WARs that are in violation of human rights.
To be fair, Obama’s hands have been tied. No American president of the modern era, with the exception of perhaps FDR in last term, has faced a Congress as obstructionist or as intent on undermining the legislative policies of its chief executive. Even if Obama moved to take in more refugees or send ground forces into Syria, would Congress allow him? The answer would most likely be a resounding no. And while criticism can be leveled at both parties, Robert Kagan’s assertion that the current Republican Party is suffering from a “racially tinged derangement syndrome” is starting to gain credence with a lot of Americans, particularly young Americans. More importantly, American leadership has not expressed an interest in giving PEACE a chance as an alternative.
This frustration has funneled itself into what has to be one of the most anti-establishment let’s burn the house down presidential campaigns of the last sixty years. Trumped with anger, popular discontent has once again found its willing historical victim: Immigrants. Particularly, the 11 million undocumented immigrants who call America home have been singled out. The bluster and braggadocio of the primary season alone, in which we have heard assertions of building walls and mass deportations have rendered the once storied words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free” all but hollow.
GENESIS OF IMMIGRATION
Immigration issue in the United States transcends those of Europeans although the root causes are substantially different. U.S. immigration issue consists of some 11+ million non-documented due to economic disparity. Europeans receive flood of people who are seeking both economic equity, personal safety and political asylum as refugees.
Immigration consists of peoples’ movement for resettlement from sending countries to receiving countries due to (1) political and social repressions in the home country or political immigration caused by dictatorial home governments such as the Syrian exodus. And, (2) economic immigration due to wage/income differentials between the sending and receiving countries who are motivated by economic incentives. Historically the world has experienced several waves of non-documented immigration, mostly motivated by economic incentives and opportunities, and they have largely proven favorable for both the receiving and sending countries just the same as the mutual benefits of un-impinged free international trade.
All parties have gained by international trade and immigration. Sending countries have gained from the annual remittances of the immigrants who have send billions of dollars annually to their home countries. Concurrently, the receiving countries have benefited by the availability of cheaper labor than the prevailing labor cost. However, in the current wave of immigration into Europe, the receiving countries confront the European Migration Crisis and are overwhelmed with political refugees which have overwhelmed the infrastructure and socio/political /economic capacity of the receiving countries. The United States is confronted with millions of undocumented immigrants who must conform to U.S. Immigration laws.
However, the current immigration issue in the United States election is the existence of an alleged 11+ non-documented immigrants that candidate Donald Trump has singled out for deportation and to build a tall wall between Mexico and the U.S. borders. Although these measures may have some impact to stemming the flow of non-documents into the U.S., however, these measures do not augur well with the public. Donald Trump has highlighted the issue of immigration in the forefront of the U.S. 2016 presidential election. However, a majority of the American public would opt a humanitarian approach for those non-documents who have lived in the U.S., have held jobs, have paid taxes, have raised families, are law abiding individuals and are productive individuals the same as productive citizens. Equity demands a fair and humanitarian treatment.
In a recent survey conducted by USC Dornsife /Los Angeles Times statewide poll found that 62% of the voters said that they believed illegal immigrants in California is at least a major problem while 36% believed the issue was a small problem. Or not a problem at all. However, the state voters rejected the measures proposed by presidential front runner Donald Trump’s mass deportation proposal. More than three- fourth of the voters expressed the view that immigrants who are already in the U.S. be granted permission and allowed to stay and apply for U.S. citizenship. By 2 to 1 voters opposed building a wall along the southern U.S. border to prevent immigrants entering the U.S. without proper legal documentation. The young voters in the state of California, which is housing the largest non-documented immigrants in the U.S. have taken a nuanced approach in contrast to older voters who are more likely to favor mass deportation of illegals.
President Obama has submitted a bill to Congress designed to grant millions of non-documents to avoid deportation from the United States. The issue is being challenged by some states on grounds of jurisdiction issue over immigration subject of the federal government vs. the state governments. During the Supreme Court initial deliberation on April 20, 2016 the prospect vote ostensibly will be on ideological line rather than on the merit of the subject which means the lower federal ruling will prevail in view of 4-4 split in the Supreme Court.
FUNDAMENTAL SOLUTION TO IMMIGRATION
Walls and deportations have been tried before and they are not effective in addressing the issue of immigration as long as political repression and economic disparity prevail on global scale. The solution to immigration issue is to single out the above two problems and devise and apply an effective global approach.
With respect to political repression, most notably tribal, religious, and sectarian divide must be countered through democracy, education, communication, and technology. Measures of domestic, political, social and economic indicators as they apply to repression must be established for troubled countries and followed over time under the auspices of the World Bank/IMF.
Positive and negative incentives must be applied to encourage progression over time.
With respect to economic immigration the response to stem it must be to stimulate economic development and employment opportunities in the home countries. The target should be 4% annual growth of the GDP and an unemployment rate of less than 6%. The affected countries and the international community of the rich countries must work together to increase the per-capita income and wage level and employment opportunity of the sending countries. When these indicators reach some proximity to development standard, then the flow of emigration due to economic incentives will subside. There exist an innate desire for a majority of the people to remain in their homes and villages.
Whenever emigration from sending countries reach equilibrium the issue will subside or get resolved. This approach will require transfer of substantial amount of investment funds from the rich to low income countries. However, resources are scarce everywhere. However, the sources of these funds could be tapped by re-allocating the military budget in the rich countries and apply it for reducing economic and political immigration in the low income countries. This process may continue until the income and wage level in the sending countries reach a level of income that would stem emigration. In the past the rich countries had agreed to allocate 1% of their GDP for economic development in LDCs, but it never materialized due to former cold-war – East-West completion.
Global immigration issue must be dealt with ethical and humanitarian precepts including genericity and altruism. Needless to say, there is a dire need to pay attention to this income gap issue. For instance the current poverty wage in the low income countries is set by the World Bank at $1.25/day in 2005 while the minimum wage in the United States is targeted at $15/hr. Or $120/day. That means that he figure in low income countries should move towards (96 * 1.25) over time. Alternatively the measure of per-capita income could be used to estimate the annual flow of resources from the rich to low income countries.”
Jon Kofas.
(Retired Indiana University university professor. Academic Writing. International Political Economy – Fiction.)
“Why is Xenophobia prevalent in the West?
Xenophobia has been on the rise in the last two decades in the Western World and it has influenced the political arena not just of conservative parties moving toward a more right wing course, but even centrist ones under pressure to “protect” the nation from perceived external threats. Is rising xenophobia a reflection of rising nationalism and conservatism in the age of globalization, or is it a reaction to a tangible threat posed by non-whites from the Third World, some who are Muslims, trying to settle in the West and diluting the “purity” of white Judeo-Christian society? Would the Western media, politicians and xenophobes of our era react the same way if instead of Muslim refugees and undocumented Mexican workers the migrants were from the Scandinavian countries?
Because they come from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, Western xenophobia assumes racist characteristics, while humanitarianism is tossed aside no matter what the Vatican and the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees have to say on the matter. In other words, it is not the immigrant and refugee to which many in the Western World object, but that “outsiders” are perceived as a threat to the “purity of the native culture” diluted with influx of people with different skin color, culture and in many cases religion.
Many European analysts have been warning that the influx of immigrants, especially Muslim refugees fleeing war-torn Syria and Iraq, could tear apart the European Union as one after another member is becoming more nationalistic and tries to protect its national borders and its economic and cultural integrity. Just as many Europeans are concerned about the immigrants undercutting the continental bloc that has taken decades to build, many US analysts agree with politicians from both the Republican and Democrat party contending that illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America undermines security and takes away jobs from American citizens. Anti immigration arguments on either side of the Atlantic have become part of the political arena. Right wing populist politicians embrace positions not much different than one would expect from neo-Nazis, thus moving the xenophobia debate issue into the core of what would be otherwise mainstream politics.
What exactly is the scope and magnitude of the so-called European Muslim refugee problem that has its causes in Western military intervention in Muslim countries and in Mexican illegal aliens? Of the 4.5 million Muslim refugees mostly from Syria and Iraq, an estimated 850,000 have crossed from Turkey for various European destinations. Of those, the US has accepted 2,290 in the last five years to join the approximately 3.3 million Muslim Americans that make up about 1% of the US population. http://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/facts-about-the-syrian-refugees/
As a percentage of the total population, Muslims in France are 7.5%, Netherlands and Belgium, 6% each, Germany 5.8%. Greece 5.3%, UK and Sweden at 4.6% each, Italy and Slovenia 3.6% each, Bulgaria 13.7% and Russia 10% with the largest total number of 14 million. The total Muslim population in the European Union is 19 million or 3.8% of the total. US Muslim population is roughly 1% of the total, or 3.3 million. This compares with 11.4 million illegal aliens, of which about half are from Mexico owing to the common border. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/17/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/
In the age of the US-led war on terror, which has replaced the old East-West conflict, xenophobia reflects not just a deliberate political orientation and cultural prejudice owing to ignorance on the part of xenophobes. At the same time, right wing politicians and businesses have been using the issue to deflect attention away from structural problems society faces owing to downward socioeconomic mobility. However, this is also a manifestation of a far-reaching anxiety on the part of the mainstream society, the media, and the political and social elites. It clearly signals that they lack the means to forge a broad popular consensus around the weakened political economy. Therefore, xenophobia as a means of scapegoating becomes a convenient tool toward that goal.
Migration of people from poor countries, especially Islamic ones in the last decade or so, is symptomatic of imperial policies that the West has been pursuing toward non-Western countries and most certainly not the result of any clash of civilizations as many would opportunistically argue. After all, Muslims co-existed harmoniously with all religions for many centuries from the Emirate of Cordoba in the mid-8th century until the early 16th century when the Spanish Christians expelled the Moriscos (Moors) of Granada to the Kingdom of Castile, Extremadura and Andalusia between 1568 and 1571.
If one deconstructs the “clash of civilizations” theory it is evident that behind it rest Western views of hegemony and transformation policy intended to perpetuate the Islamic countries and indeed even the non-Islamic developing nations under permanent political, economic and strategic dependency on the West. After all, the entire Islamic world was under European colonial control that transformed into a neo-colonial relationship after WWII when the US became the world’s preeminent superpower. Moreover, the long-standing Israel-Palestinian conflict in which the US has always sided with Israel against the Palestinians and their Muslim allies has helped to mold xenophobia in the form of Islamophobia. The Iranian Revolution in 1979 that attempted a neutral course between East and West was another step in molding Western anti-Islamic views. This was followed by the US decision to use counterterrorism as the pretext to perpetuate the military industrial complex and Cold War policies after the end of Communism.
Although in the first part of the 21st century, Western xenophobia is associated largely with Muslims, xenophobia is hardly a new phenomenon in politics and culture. Naturally, the influx of Muslim refugees primarily from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya into Europe has intensified not just strong sentiment among racists, but exacerbated the xenophobic rhetoric in the political arena and media. Serving as a convenient distraction from practical solutions to society’s systemic problems because it scapegoats migrants, xenophobia engenders fear about a specific tangible enemy. Instead of pointing to the structural flaws in the political economy, politicians and media point to someone to hate for undermining society – the Syrian refugee family that is a potential terrorist, the Mexican family that takes away American jobs and feeds off the welfare system.
Europeans and Americans hardly have a monopoly on xenophobia and this is not a recent phenomenon considering there is evidence of it throughout history in many parts of the world. There are more than 700 books and several thousand articles on this subject that has been prominent from the Golden Age of Pericles in 5th century Athens to the so-called post-racial Obama era that has in reality experienced a sharp rise in xenophobia. Just as the Athenian city-state had formalized the status of foreigners known as Metics and treated them as lesser citizens, the modern state is not much different in so far as it has the power to marginalize legal and illegal immigrants from the mainstream as well as project a negative image of them to society regardless of their contributions to the economy and culture.
Besides fear, ignorance and the irrational in human beings prompted by media indoctrination that molds the dominant culture, mainstream institutions from businesses to churches do their part to keep xenophobia in the public debate. However, the relative decline of the Western middle class and rise of the Asian economy, especially China amid a new Gilded Age when capital is so thoroughly concentrated accounts for the rise of xenophobia. In other words, when the middle class fears its future and that of its children it does not blame the capitalist economy under globalization and neoliberal policies but refugees and immigrants who take low-end jobs to survive in their adopted land.
‘Scapegoating psychology’ becomes an integral part of the mainstream because it is simply politically and socially unacceptable to challenge the root causes of mass migration from poor and politically unstable countries to richer and more stables one. “In scapegoating, by definition, the enemy must be weaker than those on the attack — which is why even at the height of the financial crisis, popular anger at bankers never became as strong as current Islamophobia. It’s the same as the way a guy who’s treated as a drudge at work then finds his “strength” by abusing his wife. The more that Muslims can be made to feel like outsiders, the more those who have defined them as other can feel empowered.” (Paul Woodward, “Scapegoating-psychology and rising xenophobia in America” September 14, 2010) http://warincontext.org/2010/09/14/scapegoating-psychology-and-rising-xenophobia-in-america/
Besides the mass psychology of scapegoating that the media and politicians create and perpetuate, the world-economy’s weakened core in northwest Europe and US plays a catalytic role in convincing a segment of the masses that their “real enemy” is not caused by domestic and foreign policies intended to continue capital concentration at the expense of the vast majority. The shifting capitalist core from the West to East Asia affects the Western social structure in so far as middle class living standards historically high in industrialized countries have been sliding downward in the past four decades and they are unlikely to improve. In fact, downward socioeconomic mobility will continue across the entire Western World. This trend will only exacerbate xenophobia and afford the opportunity not just the right wing, but even mainstream bourgeois political leaders to blame influx of immigrants for all calamities befalling society. It serves the interests of the political and economic elites to blame the illegal immigrants and Muslim refugees rather than fault the political economy that results in downward socioeconomic mobility.
The “war on terror” has added to the culture of fear surrounding xenophobia that only makes it more legitimate rather than an issue neo-Nazis and other extremists espouse. This allows xenophobes to argue it is all about national security and their ideological position has nothing to do with underlying racism. When the state is itself xenophobic and racist in its policies despite employing democratic rhetoric to present an image of an open society, why would the masses, at least a segment of them, be much different? This is as true in the US that leads the world in “war on terror” with policies intended to justify the continuation of the waning Pax Americana, as it is for the European countries.
As an integral part of a “Nativist” ideology, xenophobia has become part of the mainstream because it has the stamp of legitimacy from the state that rhetorically opposes it but whose policies and practices promote it not just domestically but globally. Although it could be argued this is just a case of nationalism, there are degrees of nationalism ranging from moderate to neo-Nazi aspects that have become part of the political mainstream both in Europe and US.
Do Europeans and Americans have the right to protest illegal immigration?
In an open society citizens ought to have the right to protest for just about anything. However, only as long as such protests do not translate into: a) random vigilante acts; b) populist rhetoric of stereotyping and demonizing entire groups of people that leads to social and institutional marginalization; c) becomes a pretext for racist policies targeting minority groups; and d) impedes social justice in the rest of society and/or runs counter to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) of which all Western nations are signatories.
If social justice is a fundamental right for the protester of illegal immigration and refugees, it is equally the case for the immigrant who has basic human rights according to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Does this mean that the US and EU must open their doors widely for all to enter? Of course no country can possibly have a complete open door policy. However, the advanced capitalist countries are in the position to pursue policies that do not force people from their native lands where they desire to live with their loved ones. Such policies range from economic exploitation to warfare, from supporting authoritarian regimes to regime change operations; all which are the root causes of mass migration whether from Islamic countries to EU or from Mexico and Central America to the US.
It is essential to ask why there was a low level of inter-European immigration from the promulgation of the Schengen Agreement in 1985 until 2010, and why such a sharp rise after the EU led by Germany changed the inter-dependent integration model that essentially relegates the southern and Eastern European countries to virtually neocolonial areas of the northwest core region. Just as significant, why do we have so few Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Libyans trying to cross over to Europe before the US and its NATO partners intervened directly or covertly in these countries to topple their regimes and destroy their countries in the process?
While the Europeans are concerned about Muslim refugees, the US whose military solution policies caused the crisis is constantly warning about terrorism threats. At the same time, the US is also focused on the Mexican and Central American illegal immigration. One cause for the Mexican and Central America immigration is the chronic uneven terms of trade between the US and its southern neighbors. This means that the value of labor south of the Rio Grande is much lower to the benefit of more affluent US consumers and domestic and foreign corporations realizing higher profit margins because of low wages. After all, the goal of neoliberal policies is to reduce “wage costs” and raise profit margins globally. These economic refugees are created by Western policies as much as the political ones in the Muslim counties.
Globalization under neoliberal policies since the Reagan-Thatcher decades of the 1980s has actually contributed to the rise of xenophobia ideologically and pushed the issue into the mainstream. This is because of the steady decline of the middle class that feels threatened by low-wage immigrant workers taking jobs considered undesirable by the native population. Despite the fact that immigrants usually take low-paying jobs, there is no shortage of protests against them, even against their babies born in the US. This is because of fear and prejudice but also because the media and right wing politicians directly or subtly promote cultural biases of religion, race, and ethnicity.
The situation is not very different in Europe where people of color, invariably Muslim from Africa and Asia, work for much less and live in ghetto areas. In major European cities such as Paris, London, and Brussels there are ghettos because there is systemic, institutional and cultural racism and xenophobia against people already on the margins of society. Europeans of course have had the long-standing experience of racism with the Romani (Gypsy). For centuries gypsies have survived on the margins of the institutional mainstream. They have engaged in legal and illegal activities, as one would expect of a nomadic people not integrated into the mainstream. It is not a stretch of the imagination for xenophobes to place gypsies and Muslims in the same category and attribute to them stereotypes rooted in Social Darwinism.
Naturally, “political correctness,” yet another treacherous brick on Liberal society’s wall of hypocrisy, does not permit them to be as bluntly xenophobic as neo-Nazis. In many respects, the liberal political mainstream is even more dangerous than the conservative that is more open in its criticism of illegal aliens. This is because the liberals maintain a façade of the open society concept but legislate to discriminate. If there is social upheaval, and sociopolitical polarization, as far as the liberal and conservative mainstream is concerned it is not because the richest people are engaged in tax evasion; it is not because banks are laundering money and corporations are engaged in bribery while receiving government subsidies, including the European Central Bank propping them up buying corporate bonds. The fault rests with the lumpen-proletariat, gypsies, and Muslim refugees who lack the social, political and cultural respectability of the elites causing structural problems in society.
If popular protests were to focus on the root causes of the Muslim refugee crisis in Europe and the illegal alien issue in the US instead of demonizing the migrants, it means that people would then turn their attention to government policies rather than blaming the victims of those policies. However, the politicians and the media manipulate public opinion so that people focus on the Syrian man carrying his daughter in his arms while trying to cross the border from Greece into Macedonia so he can reach Western Europe.
Should Westerners be afraid of Islam, and are Democracy and Islam compatible?
Fear of Islam is a manifestation of a long-standing successful political propaganda in the Western mass media and political arena. If we simply stick to the empirical evidence we find that Islamic countries are not invading Western ones; Islamic countries are not exploiting the Western World through multinational corporations in every sector from energy to minerals; Islamic countries are not trying to overthrow Western governments because they want to install puppet regimes in Washington or London; Islamic countries are not forcing a transformation policy intended to exploit not just the economy but all of society in the West as the latter has been doing for decades in Muslim countries. The West has manufactured fear of Islam just as it manufactured fear of Communism because there is a struggle for Western hegemony on a world scale.
There is no doubt that Islam like Judaism and Christianity has doctrinal biases that favor men over women and promote sociopolitical conformity. There is no doubt that those practicing Islam are just as hypocritical when it comes to the gap between what they preach and what they practice no different than Jews or Christians. The idea that Islam as old organized religion is somehow much different from Judaism and Christianity implies ignorance of its doctrines on the part of those making such an argument.
The idea that Islam is incompatible with democracy implies a cultural and political bias that relegates Islam to an inferior religion than Christianity and Judaism. If Islam is indeed incompatible with democracy, then all religions are as well because Islam is hardly much different than the other two monotheistic religions. Besides, how often do Western politicians ask if Israel under a majority Jewish population is a theocratic or secular society considering it behaves as a theocratic state with the full backing of the US and EU while systematically persecuting Palestinians. If Israel behaves like a Zionist state in its policies, why has the argument about the inherent contradiction between Judaism and democracy not been raised in the West, except by a handful of intellectuals?
If democracy implies unfettered materialism, consumerism, and hedonism, then many in the Islamic world reject the identification of democracy with such values. But so does Pope Francis who is as critical as many Muslims about the Western decadent value system rooted in materialism. If democracy means violating the national sovereignty of other nations, toppling their regimes, interfering in their internal affairs, then Western nations would fit the profile in this respect much better than Islamic nations. Oddly enough, the imperial powers have no qualms about violating the national sovereignty of developing Muslim and non-Muslim nations on which they impose economic, political, strategic and cultural hegemony, but they vigorously protest the symptoms of imperialism that include economic exploitation and refugee conditions owing to societal instability that results in emigration on the part of people seeking safer and improved conditions in the country that caused problems in their homeland.
The glaring contradiction and hypocrisy of xenophobia inexorably intertwined with underlying racism is that the hegemonic power invokes its own right to self-determination and democracy but then denies it to the nation and people of countries whose population is fleeing hardships caused primarily but not exclusively by the hegemonic power. Even worse, Western xenophobes raise the question of compatibility of Islam and democracy, thus blaming the victim of imperialism for the absence of democracy.
Should the US force out Mexican illegal immigrants?
The political rhetoric about Mexican illegal immigration is as hollow and hypocritical as those advocating it for the simple reason that illegal immigrants are the cheapest labor force that capitalists exploit in every sector from farming to construction to domestic work. It is hardly ironic that politicians who take such a position usually have or had illegal aliens work for them. While most Republicans have a harsh anti-immigrant policy, Democrats support low-cost labor force coming from south of the border rather than sending them back or building walls as Israel has done in the West Bank to isolate Palestinians.
According to US official studies, the cost to the US GDP if undocumented workers are expelled would be $850 billion in a period of 10 years, adding $40 billion annually to the federal budget deficit. One could argue that $40 billion increase in a deficit of $19 trillion is not significant, just as the $850 billion additional boost in GDP over ten years. However, in an international competitive environment and downward pressure on working class and middle class incomes, those figures are important. http://fortune.com/2015/01/29/does-it-cost-more-to-keep-illegal-immigrants-in-the-u-s-or-to-deport-them/
There is no doubt that the monetary cost of physically deporting, let alone building a wall would be very high versus the benefits US businesses derives from cheap undocumented laborers. It is hardly surprising that labor unions are against such workers who take any job for below minimum wage scale, thus putting downward pressure on wages of American citizens. Some of the union workers direct their anger toward the undocumented workers rather than the employers who hire them at below minimum wages, just as they direct their anger at technology that replaces them rather than the employer who keeps wages low and politicians who refuse to raise the minimum wage.
What is the main difference between the Syrian and Mexican immigration waves?
Europe’s refugee problem is monumental in comparison to that of the US-Mexico immigration issue. However, the common denominator in both cases is the obtrusive presence of Pax Americana as manifested in military action in Syria and economic policies in Mexico. Besides differences in scope, the obvious differences between Syrian and Mexican immigration are that the former are fleeing a war-torn country where the US, its European allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia tried to overthrow the Assad regime in order to determine the regional balance of power. In the case of Mexico, a nation “so far from God and so close to the US”, the issue is strictly economic conditions of a very corrupt country with detrimental social conditions that some people try to escape. Because politicians and the media in the US lump together the so-called “immigration problem”, and because Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump’s characterization of Mexicans as criminals and Muslims as terrorists, many people hardly bother with nuances of immigrant groups or the causes for their endeavors to reach the US.
In September 2015, Eskinder Negash, former chief of the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement stated that he had no serious concerns about allowing Syrian refugees into the US. By contrast, a number of Republicans at the federal and state level have argued in favor of a ban of such refugees, while they are also in favor of very tough measures against undocumented Mexican workers. In many cases, they link the two arguing that terrorists can and do come through the US-Mexico border thus posing a security threat. This fear mongering find fertile ground to fester like a disease that grows across America when middle class incomes keep dropping and the cost of living rises.
CONCLUSIONS
From the early overseas voyages of the Portuguese in the 15th century until the US-NATO direct and insurgent operations in a number of Islamic countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen), the predominantly Christian West has engaged in colonial and neo-colonial domination to secure markets, geopolitical and strategic hegemony over non-Western, non-Christian countries. In an interview with a TV network in February 2015, State Department official Marie Harf stated that the US government understands a military solution to Islamic terrorism is a futile exercise and only by addressing the root causes such as poverty and injustice, absence of social justice and human rights could there be progress. She argued that: “We cannot win the War on Terror, nor can we win the war on ISIS by killing them. We need to find them jobs. We need to get to the root cause of terrorism and that is poverty and lack of opportunity in the terrorist community.” This candid admission illustrates that US government is well aware of the real causes and plausible solutions, but chooses the military option for various reasons that in turn create other problems such as refugee crises in the Middle East and xenophobia in the West.
Of course, Latin America is predominantly Christian, but the US considers it its “sphere of influence” since the US-Mexican war in the 1840s that gave us the “Manifest Destiny”, a long-standing doctrine running at the core of US foreign policy ideology. Like the Islamic countries that Europe initially subjected to colonial and neo-colonial conditions, and the US followed the European pattern of imperialism after 1945, similarly Latin America has been subjected to colonial and neo-colonial conditions under the patron-client integration model that permeates NAFTA and various other trade agreements inter-American economic relations.
The changing demographics in the Western World clearly determine the level of xenophobia probably as much if not more than the steady downward socioeconomic mobility of the last four decades. Many xenophobes believe that the dilution of their “white race” will be contaminated and they will become a minority in the future so their culture will be bastardized and slowly effaced. Fear of losing their national/ethnic/religious/cultural identity because they could eventually become a minority is inexorably linked to the declining middle class and lack of prospects for upward mobility for the next generation.
When xenophobes talk about “taking back our country”, or “restoring its values and honor”, or “preserve our heritage”, they are referring to underlying fear that cultural diffusion is the enemy when it comes in the form of people of a different race, ethnicity, and culture. Throughout civilization the process of cultural diffusion that takes place primarily through migration has been the catalyst for societal progress while isolation has been the catalyst for backwardness, decline and fall. Xenophobes and other varieties of racists clinging to the phantom of “purity” in race, ethnicity, and culture fail to recognize this reality tested throughout history across the world, thus inviting the demise the civilization they are trying to preserve.”
Jaime Ortega-Simo.
(The Daily Journalist president and founder)
I think that when people look at land as a measure of self-ownership, they’re looking at history with the wrong lenses. We tend to look at history with blame and pointed fingers, but hardly never with accountability. It is easy to fall in the trap of accusing westerners for taking the land of Native Americans, without digging deeper into the subject. Before the Europeans arrived, the Native American Warfare in North America was brutal, especially in the southwest. Navajo’s and Pueblo Indians contested land with tribes like the Apache for material gain and resources, and where notoriously brutal in their campaigns against smaller tribes – truces occurred on the basis of necessity, but hardly lasted long. America was not unified under native control, it was plundered under the umbrella of local warfare and land distribution; every tribe earned land by means of strength in numbers and alliance. Our history of North America has been skewed by people who simply have never attended a class in Native American history or have an ideological agenda exclusively directed at blaming Caucasians to squeeze resentment and sorrow as an apologetic act of kindness to newer minorities.
The only difference is that Europe’s early settlers in contrast with the fragmented native tribes separated by customs, dialect, tradition, and religion, where somehow united based on common religious grounds and new opportunities. However, even that took time to smelt, since the British, Spanish, French and Dutch had many disputes and battles before George Washington and the declaration of independence took fruition in North America. So again, the difference between the North American original settlers and the European invasion was based on unification and numbers — we can also observe this scenario in Central America and other parts of North America like Mexico, where the Aztec population massacred and sacrificed for centuries millions of smaller tribes including the Maya. Pre-colonial America was not a place where Indians smoked the peace pipe and danced happily in the rain – that is of course, media propaganda — it was conflictive, dangerous, and hierarchical and tribal based.
With that said, Islam and the Roman Catholic Church were notoriously brutal in their conquest of Arab and Non-Arab lands. So to suggest that Islam or the Roman Catholic Church were not responsible for millions of atrocities, but European pilgrims to America were, is beyond unhistorical and presumptuous. The unknown atrocities and non-recorded beheadings of other smaller religious creeds conducted by Islam and the Roman Catholics will never surface fully known. The Arab-Slave trade conducted by Berbers and Arabs in West Africa, kidnapping women for sexual intercourse all the way to Yemen, killed an estimate of 100.000.000 Africans over millennia and it is hardly ever discussed in history classes unlike the western and Persian slave trade. The point is that instead of recognizing individual issues, we like to point the finger as if the other culture is innocent and the other is not – a fine slippery slope. Land has no permanent ownership, it is just based on temporal control and we need to either accept it or show a blind eye.
They are two types of migratory prospects. The adaptable and the inadaptable. The inadaptable will always pose negative influences on the adaptable, making cultural bonds with native residents a cultural non-negotiable issue — and take full advantage of the system. If an immigrant tells his fellow that “Americans or westerners are ideologically crocked and pervasive people compared to us the superior ethnic and religious group” the negative influx eventually takes a toll in the mindset of those trying to adapt. Islam has an issue with this problem in Europe, mainly because as history teaches, Islam tends to dominate and is not submissive to western constitutions; democracy opposes rule by faith and the teachings of religious law as a form of governance —Islam like the Roman Catholic Church are politically driven, not just religious. If Muslim Americans enroll in the military to fight other Muslims on Arab lands in the name of the US flag or NATO– it’s almost an incomprehensible act of defiance against their religion – a faith barrier. Many Latinos who’ve lived in the US for 10 years, have no intention to learn English because they feel entitled to their native language and don’t feel the need to adapt to the system or pass through the legal procedure to become US citizens fearing apprehension from US justice. Of course illegal narcotics are big issue, but I wouldn’t accuse the illegal immigrants for drug supply, but the people who buy it – and we hardly persecute the buyers because in many instances they end up being close family members.
The adaptable have a different mindset. Their goal is to become part of the nationalistic cause and not just the political side. Their goal is to adapt and become part of the socio-cultural process regulated by national, state and local laws to help the nation’s sovereignty without interposing a hidden agenda. Many Arab and Mexican Americans feel this way. They mix and interbreed with the native population, without subjection, overlooking faith and past-cultural affiliations on their quest to fully westernize. They believe that the constitutional law provides depth in their everyday life and promotes cultural openness without interposing religious filters and barriers. The adaptable would join the military ranks and fight for their country, if it came down to war. They feel free to choose their own lifestyle without cultural repercussions.
The problem with the adaptable is the self-struggle to submit based on freedom of choice, as opposed to cultural and religious ties. Here is where the inadaptable play a cancerous roll inside their communities, for their goal is to vanquish national laws and customs by convincing the adaptable of their ultimate mission regardless of the consequences. So the adaptable and the inadaptable are the intrinsic Ying Yang of western immigration policy. The good Mexican vs the bad Mexican. The good Syrian vs the Syrian planting the seeds of radical Islam. Many native Europeans and Americans are close minded to the all immigrants because the lackluster of the inadaptable; then again, Europeans and Americans in general have forgotten that land is no privilege, and its earned with hard work and nationalism– and American youth lack completely in that department and are getting gutted by immigrants who simply work harder. The new wave of Europeans have forgotten the nationalist cause only deepening the debate of what patriotism represents and at what cause — haven’t never been part of a war, spoiled with grandmas cookies.
The west overall has shown open arms to all nations from every ethnicity, culture and tribe to settle in their lands since the dawn of political democracy. The fact that Muslims can practice their religion freely and safely in the US, England, France and other European countries is sufficient to underline the greatness of democracy as a whole; I can’t say the same of Saudi Arabia, UAE, or other well established Muslims nations — particularly Saudi Arabia, where openly religious practices outside of Islam gets folks beheaded. In the campuses around the US, an atheist can freely debate without hiding—now go to King Saud University and start debating Muslims on evolution in the middle of campus and the Muslim police will either lash you, or send you to prison for blasphemy— not my ideal world. Islam is not at the level of tolerance of the west –at least yet. The day homosexuals from other countries are welcomed to the Middle East without public executions in return; the day Muslims have the permission to speak about freedom of expression and democracy. In my opinion, the ordinary westerner has a xenophobic wired-driven view of Muslims, based on the historical contingency between Europe and the Middle East. That resentment will never go away despite political reforms and the pushers. The non-adaptable Muslims on the other hand will view westerners as decrepit infidel who set to destroy the values of Islam – and it won’t go away either.
On the other hand, Mexicans and Central American immigrants don’t have a religious agenda to subvert Americans when they settle illegally or legally in the US, which makes their transition relatively easier among natives. They don’t try to enforce Roman Catholicism to US citizens, or try to persuade their own that western culture should be ultimately decimated to obtain a greater spiritual insight in heaven. Americans in general are much more tolerant with Mexicans, than Arabs because it’s a cultural bond non-affiliated with after life mysticism. They are exceptions to every rule, and they are xenophobic Americans and Europeans who don’t base their fear on cultural differences, but on skin color – but their influence is weak. Within the frames of Americanism, racism itself has no colors and racism can come from whites living in the hills of Ohio or blacks in the streets of Brooklyn — only littering flames into the migration issue.
There is no question that Mexico has become the new Colombia, and Cartels not only influence the PAN, PRI and PRD, but President Pena Nieto himself; however, the US is to blame for socio-cultural problems with Mexican immigration. To be fair, I understand why some American’s correlate crime rates with immigration. Spain’s sudden South American wave of immigrants brought crime in the 90’s to an all-time high, since immigrants desperate for jobs, started to rob the native population and become part of gangs that related to organized crime in South America. But unlike the US, Spain’s wave of immigration came suddenly without warning at a time when the economy stalled and ‘Aznar’s PP’ believed in unlimited amnesty without background check.
The problem with migration, particularly in America is based on opportunism rather than just socio-economic issues. New immigrants per-average (not all) take full advantage of the system; whereas, third generation US citizens tend to overlook opportunities and feel entitled to become spoiled with government issued programs. In America, Arabs and Mexicans generally are likely to become successful business owners, and escape poverty based on work ethic. Most science jobs are taken by immigrants from South East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe; whereas Mexicans exploit the lower end jobs, totally out-working most Americans with great efficiency – construction, agriculture, and industrial work to name a few sectors. Meanwhile, US lax has become a self-destructive paradox where entitlement, not earned skills has become the rule of thumb for many Americans—Donald Trump feeds the feud igniting fire, ignoring the poor work ethic that corrodes American youth. The average unskilled American wants the whole world at his feet, at the expense of borrowing credit and without sacrifices; in contrast the new immigrant, illegal or not, comes to look for opportunities and take full advantage of the system to escape poverty and ascend to financial success.
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What Is Time? Timeless Thoughts on the Definition of Time
April 25th, 2016The Daily Journalist.
The earliest definitions of time and time-interval quantities were based on observed astronomical phenomena, such as apparent solar or lunar time, and as such, time as measured by clocks, and frequency, as measured by devices were derived quantities. In contrast, time is now based on the properties of atoms, making time and time intervals themselves derived quantities.
Today’s definition of time uses a combination of atomic and astronomical time. However, their connection could be modified in the future to reconcile the divergence between the astronomic and atomic definitions. These are some of the observations made by Judah Levine, author of a riveting paper just published in EPJ H, which provides unprecedented insights into the nature of time and its historical evolution.
The earliest clocks were in Egypt, India, China, and Babylonia before 1500 BC and used the flow of water or sand to measure time intervals. The Babylonians were probably the first to use a base-60 numbering system, and we also employ the Egyptian system of dividing the day into 24 hours, each with 60 minutes, and each minute with 60 seconds.
The definition of the length of the day therefore implicitly defines the length of the second, and vice versa. This link was an important consideration in the definition of the international time scale, UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
In fact, UTC combines atomic frequency-standard data with observations of the astronomical time-scale UT1, a combination that has both advantages and problems, as discussed in this paper. However, the rate of divergence between UTC and UT1 is estimated to be less than one minute per century.
God seated in the center, surrounded by a circular serpent biting its own tail as a symbol of the returning cycles of the year.
Levine concludes that as we move away from the everyday definitions of time and time interval towards a more uniform but more abstract realisation, then applications that depend on stable frequencies and time intervals will play a more fundamental role than time itself.
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Interview two: Inter-dimensional, extra-terrestrial or government projects?
April 24th, 2016Interview conducted by Jaime Ortega.
Nick Pope.
He is an author, journalist and broadcaster, who once ran the British Government’s UFO project and is now recognized as a leading authority on the unexplained, conspiracy theories and fringe science.
1) A lot of people have observed lights floating in the sky, some shaped like lines and dots; others proclaim to have observed unknown aircraft flying around visible sight – the government calls them black projects. Are such sightings real?
There’s no doubt that throughout human history people have seen strange things in the sky that they were unable to identify at the time. In this sense, these sightings are undeniably “real”. That said, most sightings turn out to be miss-identifications of ordinary objects and phenomena. On occasion, people have seen secret prototype aircraft or drones, and reported them as “UFOs”, but this doesn’t happen as often as some people might think, because these so-called black projects are normally tested in remote military areas, well away from public scrutiny.
2) In 2012 Kelton Research conducted a survey commissioned by National Geographic that showed that one out of ten Americans had personally witnesses a UFO. Many cases are observed all over the world. Do people that observe these crafts, are they delusional? Do they suffer from any mental condition?
A small proportion of UFO sightings are attributable to hoaxes or some sort of psychological or psychiatric factor, such as a delusion or hallucination. However, as stated previously, most sightings are miss-identifications, and in these cases, while the witnesses may not be identifying something correctly, they’re not delusional.
3) Area 51 in Nevada, nicknamed Dreamland is it really an installation run by government. How many are they?
Governments all around the world run various facilities, some secret and some not secret. There are few facilities quite on the scale of Area 51, but I don’t know how many similar facilities to this exist worldwide, and I probably couldn’t say so even if I knew, as information about such sites is usually highly classified.
4) Is there a difference between UFOs and military aircraft? (floating light vs physical powered object)
Some UFO sightings are generated by people seeing military aircraft, but this is only one of many, many different things that cause people to report UFO sightings. The UFO phenomenon is multi-faceted, and there’s no single, neat explanation that explains all of the sightings. This is a mystery with more than one explanation.
5) We know the universe is not infinite because it continues to expand at a greater speed than light. Astronomers have plotted the dimensions of the universe composed of 4% matter, and the remaining hypothetical dark energy and dark matter. The theory of evolution holds grown in the mainstream scientific community, but mathematically wise, what are the chances of evolution occurring in other galaxies?
Wherever life might arise, elsewhere in the Universe, I strongly suspect that evolution by natural selection will occur. I think this will turn out to be a ‘universal law’, in the same sense as the unalterable laws of mathematics.
6) SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) has never received radio signals from outer-space that support the idea that life exist outside of planet earth. Do we have any hard evidence to back the existence of UFOs or is it based on highly speculative assumptions?
We do not yet have any ‘smoking gun’ in relation to UFOs. In other words, there is no definitive proof that any sightings are attributable to extraterrestrial activity. Having said that, there are many unexplained UFO sightings with intriguing evidence in terms of reliable eyewitness testimony, radar data, and photographic and video imagery. As for SETI, their search is based on sound scientific assumptions, and while they have been unsuccessful to date, there is no reason why they might not be successful in the future. Indeed, this is increasingly likely as the next generation of radio telescopes become operational.
7) There are a few problems with the ETH (extraterrestrial theory). Physics shows it is impossible for any mass composed by atoms to reach the speed of light (186.000 miles per second). Even if they reached SL travel, coming from another galaxy would take them at least two million years to get to planet earth —- the closest star system Alpha Centaury is 4.5 LY from earth and there is no evidence of life there– strangely most UFO’s observed are small and not massive showing different forms and shapes. Some estimates indicate that a space ship carrying ten people travelling five LY’s from a nearby star at almost the speed of light would use up 500.000 times the total amount of energy consumed in the US in one year; also, an equal amount of energy would be consumed just in slowing down the spacecraft from the incredible speed at which it was travelling – for larger craft like the massive spacecraft shown in the movie Independence Day, it would use an staggering amount of energy. But physicist contend that to accelerate to the actual SL it is impossible because it would require infinite energy. Also changing direction in speed at such high speeds could obliterate any spacecraft given the amount of energy required to change direction while moving. Another problem is that reaching great travel speed in space would be very dangerous. It has been estimated that there are 100.000 dust particles per-cubic meter in space. Travelling at SL, an impact with even one of these tiny dust particles would destroy a spaceship – at one-tenth the speed of light, the impact would be equal to an explosion of almost ten tons of TNT. The last problem encountered, is that if these aliens have biological bodies, in space they would be exposed by extreme heat and freezing conditions – not to mention exposure to Gamma Rays, and Cosmic Rays constantly travelling through space which could instantly kill any biological organism. So with all the examples given above, what is the likelihood of UFO’s to be of extraterrestrial origin?
We should always remember that when we talk about the laws of physics, we talk about them as they are currently understood. But our understanding changes all the time as a result of the scientific process of postulating new theories and then validating them through experimentation. We see this happening, for example, at CERN. So we should be wary of saying that things are “impossible” in terms of the laws of physics. However, even if faster-than-light travel is genuinely impossible, it does not rule out the ETH, if we get away from the idea of piloted vehicles. Humans have designed and built craft (e.g. the Voyager and Pioneer probes) that will eventually traverse interstellar distances. So a civilization at only our own technological level, but which started its space program a few hundred thousand or perhaps a few million years before us (hardly inconceivable in a Universe nearly 14 billion years old), could already have seeded large parts of our galaxy with such probes.
8) Some ufologist claim that many objects observed travelling in the sky violate the laws of known physics. Objects that reach speeds of 50,000 MPH. Some objects suddenly make 90 degree turns in mid-air travelling nearly at 25,000 MPH. These object make no physical noise, and unlike aircraft or known space craft, make no sonic booms. Most of the objects cannot be picked up by radar, but some have. Sometimes show up on photographs, but other times do not. Many change colors many times only when accelerating, with virtually every color of the spectrum reported. Many times UFO’s instantly appear and disappear in front of people and they will pass through physical objects; people have also observed multiple UFO’s merged with other UFO’s, and into one UFO, and one UFO turn into many UFOs. What is your take on this?
Again, this shows the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon. We are almost certainly dealing with a variety of different things here. A few reports are completely fabricated (i.e. they are hoaxes), or the product of some sort of delusion. Others will be attributable to people seeing secret prototype aircraft or drones. But other sightings may be misidentifications of meteors, fireballs, satellites, mirages, weather balloons, or any number of other meteorological, atmospheric or astronomical phenomena. So the variety of speeds, accelerations and other factors reported does not surprise me.
9) Gordon Creighton editor of the Flying Saucer Review, and recognized as the UFO leading publication said in 1996, before he died that. “There seems to be no evidence yet that any of these crafts or beings originate from outer space” – a position later adopted by Dr. Jacques Vallee a computer scientist and astrophysics a leading expert on the subject . Do you agree?
The extraterrestrial hypothesis is only one competing theory among many. Even among those people who support a non-conventional explanation for the UFO phenomenon there are competing theories, e.g. the idea that some UFO sightings may be attributable to inter-dimensional or inter-temporal phenomena of some sort. I think there’s some intriguing evidence pointing towards non-conventional explanations in some cases, but as I said previously, we don’t yet have any definitive proof.
10) There is growing speculation that UFO’s are not extraterrestrial in origin, but more likely inter-dimensional entities. Many have abandoned the ETH for the IDH hypothesis — do you agree?
This is certainly a theory that is gaining popularity at present, though in a sense this theory is no more or no less speculative than the ETH. That said, with scientists at CERN discussing the search for so-called ‘hidden’ dimensions, it is tempting to remind ourselves that today’s science fiction is sometimes tomorrow’s science fact.
11) According to the “Roper poll” nearly 4 million American’s have suffered an alien abduction. Is the number of alien cited abductions growing in America and worldwide?
Though well-intentioned, this Roper poll was based on some erroneous reasoning. Essentially, it was designed to identify people who had experienced a number of things previously reported by people who believe they have been abducted by aliens, e.g. a period of so-called “missing time”. But such reasoning is flawed, because there are numerous prosaic reasons why people may believe they have experienced missing time, including falling asleep, having a poor memory, or simply not being very good at estimating the time. The other factors that the poll was looking for are also ones for which there are various conventional explanations.
12) Is it true that those who been abducted claim to have had sexual experimentation, face to face contact, translucent apparitions, predictions of catastrophic events including performing tasks? Is this true or imaginary?
All of these things have been reported, but we don’t know how much of this is attributable to hoaxes, dreams, hallucinations, or distorted memories caused by regression hypnosis. As with UFO sightings, while most of the claims may be made by people who genuinely believe the events happened as reported, we can’t be sure that this is what actually happened. In other words, people may be essentially truthful, but mistaken about what they have actually experienced.
13) Is it true that alien abductees are given speeches of new age philosophy by their captors? What is there message?
These ‘messages’ are actually quite clichéd. Interestingly, they seem to reflect contemporary concerns popular in the media and in wider society. Currently, environmental issues are mentioned a lot, and previously, concerns seemed to be predominantly about nuclear war. This is an important clue, I think, that these ‘messages’ actually come from within ourselves, and not from extraterrestrials.
14) Many people claim that aliens ask abductees to enter a state of trance to communicate with them?
Again, I think this is a clue that these experiences may come from within ourselves, and are the product of our imaginations. The idea of some form of telepathic communication is something one sees a lot in science fiction, and if abductees are reporting this, it may be that people are incorporating expectations (inspired by sci-fi) of what aliens will do into their narrative.
15) The following quotes brought by experts on the subject explain there is a strong relationship between alien abduction and poltergeist and demonic possessions in the past.
-Gordon Creighton, Official 1992 Flying Saucer Review Policy Statement “A
large part of the available UFO literature is closely linked with mysticism
and the metaphysical. It deals with subjects like mental telepathy,
automatic writing and invisible entities as well as phenomena like poltergeist
[ghost] manifestation and ‘possession.’ Many of the UFO reports now being
published in the popular press recount alleged incidents that are strikingly
similar to demonic possession and psychic phenomena.”
– Lynn E. Catoe, UFOs and Related Subjects: USGPO, 1969; prepared under
AFOSR Project Order 67-0002 and 68-0003 “UFO behaviour is more akin to magic
than to physics as we know it… the modern UFOnauts and the demons of past
days are probably identical.”
-Dr. Pierre Guerin, FSR Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 13-14 “The UFO manifestations
seem to be, by and large, merely minor variations of the age-old
demonological phenomenon…”
– John A. Keel, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, p. 299 “A working knowledge
of occult science…is indispensable to UFO investigation.”
-Trevor James, FSR Vol. 8, No. 1, p.10 “Studies of flying saucer cults
repeatedly show that they are part of a larger occult social world.”
-Stupple & McNeece, 1979 MUFON UFO Symposium Proceedings, p. 49 “The
‘medical examination’ to which abductees are said to be subjected, often
accompanied by sadistic sexual manipulation, is reminiscent of the medieval tales
of encounters with demons. It makes no sense in a sophisticated or
technical framework: any intelligent being equipped with the scientific marvels
that UFOs possess would be in a position to achieve any of these alleged
scientific objectives in a shorter time and with fewer risks.”
– Dr. Jacques Vallee, Confrontations, p. 13 “The symbolic display seen by
the abductees is identical to the type of initiation ritual or astral
voyage that is embedded in the [occult] traditions of every culture…the
structure of abduction stories is identical to that of occult initiation
rituals…the UFO beings of today belong to the same class of manifestation as the
[occult] entities that were described in centuries past.”
-Dr. Jacques Vallee citing the extensive research of Bertrand Meheust [
Science-Fiction et Soucoupes Volantes (Paris, 1978); Soucoupes Volantes et
Folklore (Paris, 1985)], in Confrontations, p. 146, 159-161 “[The occultist]
is brought into intelligent communication with the spirits of the air, and
can receive any knowledge which they possess, or any false impression they
choose to impart…the demons seem permitted to do various wonders at their
request.”
– G.H. Pember, Earth’s Earliest Ages and Their Connection with Modern
Spiritualism and Theosophy (1876), p. 254 “These entities are clever enough to
make Streiber think they care about him. Yet his torment by them never
ceases. Whatever his relationship to the entities, and he increasingly concludes
that their involvement with him is something ‘good,’ he also remains
terrified of them and uncertain as to what they are.”
– John Ankerberg, The Facts on UFOs and Other Supernatural Phenomena, p.
21 “I became entirely given over to extreme dread. The fear was so powerful
that it seemed to make my personality completely evaporate… ‘Whitley’
ceased to exist. What was left was a body and a state of raw fear so great
that it swept about me like a thick, suffocating curtain, turning paralysis
into a condition that seemed close to death…I died and a wild animal
appeared in my place.”
– Whitley Streiber, Communion, p. 25-26 “Increasingly I felt as if I were
entering a struggle that might even be more than life and death. It might
be a struggle for my soul, my essence, or whatever part of me might have
reference to the eternal. There are worse things than death, I suspected… so
far the word demon had never been spoken among the scientists and doctors
who were working with me…Alone at night I worried about the legendary
cunning of demons …At the very least I was going stark, raving mad.”
– Whitley Streiber, Transformation, p. 44-45 “I wondered if I might not be
in the grip of demons, if they were not making me suffer for their own
purposes, or simply for their enjoyment.”
Others claim a smell of sulfur is present within their abduction also identical with demonic possessions and poltergeist. What is your opinion of such controversy?
I’m certainly aware that some people regard UFOs as demonic, often on the basis of the Biblical description of Satan as being “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). Irrespective of what one believes, I don’t think one should ignore this aspect, because as long as some people think any of this is true, it’s relevant, on the basis that one’s personal background, culture and belief system is likely to play a role in how anomalous events (or events that people believe to be anomalous) are perceived and interpreted. Personally, I’m an atheist, and I believe that it’s better to examine claims of anomalous phenomena using science and reason, not fear and superstition.
16) Any final thoughts?
Some of my answers may sound as if I’m overly skeptical about this phenomenon. While this may be the case, I should point out that I certainly don’t dismiss any of this out of hand. It’s certainly a subject that merits more serious, scientific research and investigation than is currently the case. And finally, as I often like to remind people, the skeptics have to be right every day, but the believers only have to be right once!
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Russia launches impenetrable Nuclear ballistic test defense system
April 23rd, 2016The Daily Journalist.
State media Russia Today claims the new technology will make it impossible its enemies’ defenses to calculate the warhead’s trajectory before it is too late.
According to the media site, the test of the hypersonic cruise vehicle was a success after launching a UR-100N strategic ballistic missile near the Kazakhstan border.
The new RS-28 missile that military experts hope to arm the vehicle with is reportedly capable of carrying a ten ton payload, which can strike in any direction once it is launched.
Vladimir Putin has already warned that his Syria campaign is merely a “dress rehearsal” for all-out conflict.
And “all-out conflict” could be bad, really bad.
The Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia’s total inventory of nuclear weapons is bigger than any other country.
Worse still, Putin has an eye-watering 890 nuclear warheads on “high alert” – some of which, known as SS18’s, are up to 1,000 times more explosive than the Hiroshima bomb.
The Russian Federation has declared five types of land-based ballistic missiles all of which with a range of more than 3,500 miles.
There are currently four fixed silo launcher sites: Dombarovsky, Uzhur, Kozel’sk and Tatishchevo – and London would be in range from all four.
The event happened, amid the controversy of Russian attack submarines increasingly patrolling the coasts of Scandinavia and Scotland, the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, a US Navy chief has said.
Vladimir Putin’s recent boost to the submarine fleet means Russia now has the most underwater attack vessels in the area in two decades.
Meanwhile Putin was harshly criticized by US General Curtis Scaparrotti for the dangerous Russian flybys, which according to him ” are part of an overall Russian effort —which includes ramping up submarine patrols to cold War levels, poking Blatic state, and supporting separatists in the Ukraine – that show President Putin “is deliberately trying to break NATO”, the general said.
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Ancient Southwest art
April 22nd, 2016The Daily Journalist.
The heavily studied yet largely unexplained disappearance of ancestral Pueblo people from southwest Colorado is “the most vexing and persistent question in Southwestern archaeology,” according to the New York Times.
But it’s not all that unique, say Washington State University scientists. Writing in the journal Science Advances, they say the region saw three other cultural transitions over the preceding five centuries. The researchers also document recurring narratives in which the Pueblo people agreed on canons of ritual, behavior and belief that quickly dissolved as climate change hurt crops and precipitated social turmoil and violence.
Pueblo Bonito, one of the largest Great Houses in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, grew out of one of several cultural transformations that researchers have documented in the ancient Southwest.
“The process of releasing one’s self from those canons, the process of breaking that down, can occur very quickly and occurred very quickly four times in the Pueblo past,” said Kyle Bocinsky, a WSU adjunct faculty member in anthropology and director of sponsored projects for the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colo. The article grew out of work toward Bocinsky’s WSU doctorate.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, Bocinsky, WSU Regents Professor Tim Kohler and colleagues analyzed data from just over 1,000 southwest archaeological sites and nearly 30,000 tree-ring dates that served as indicators of rainfall, heat and time. Their data-intensive approach, facilitated by climate reconstructions run at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, gives a remarkably detailed picture of year-to-year changes.
This is particularly important as droughts of just five or ten years were enough to prompt major shifts in the small niches where Pueblo people grew maize, their major crop.
The niches, said Kohler, were “woven together with a web of ceremony and ritual that required belief in the supernatural” to ensure plentiful rain and good crops. When rains failed to appear, he said, the rituals were delegitimized.
“Then there’s a point where people say, ‘This isn’t working. We’re leaving,'” he said.
That starts a period of exploration in which people look for new places to live and develop new ways of living, followed by a period of exploitation in a new niche with different behaviors and values.
“There’s a new period of wealth creation, investment in architecture and culture change,” said Kohler.
The researchers said the first period of exploitation, known as Basketmaker III, took place between 600 and 700 A.D. It ended with a mild drought and was followed by a period known as Pueblo I, in which the practice of storing maize in underground chambers gave way to storage in rooms above ground.
The researchers think this represents a shift from unrestricted sharing of food to more restricted exchanges controlled by households or family groups. The period ended around 890 with a slightly larger drought.
The exploitation phase of the Pueblo II period ran from 1035 to 1145 and was marked by large shared plazas and great houses–what we would today call McMansions–in the Chaco Canyon area south of Mesa Verde, Colo.
An image of the ruins of Chetro Ketl in Chaco Canyon (New Mexico, United States); shown is the complex’s great kiva.
“We’re talking some of the largest–actually, the largest–prehistoric masonry structures in North America north of Mexico,” said Kohler. “These things are huge.”
Wood for roofs had to come from 50 to 75 miles away, requiring an unprecedented level of coordination. The mix of large and small buildings also suggests a more hierarchal social structure with someone in charge.
Pueblo III, which peaked around 1250, featured restricted access to civic and ceremonial spaces and has some of the greatest evidence of social inequality. This period ended with the largest and most widespread of the four droughts. By contrast, the ensuing Pueblo IV period had big rectangular pueblos with apartments surrounding large shared plazas and civic ceremonial spaces.
A digital model of ancient Pueblo Bonito (Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, United States) before it was abandoned
“It’s as if everybody has equal access to where all the important stuff happens,” said Bocinsky. “That’s been interpreted as being far more egalitarian in how people were organizing themselves as a society than what we see during any of the previous periods.”
“There’s a total reorganization,” said Kohler.
The researchers hope their analysis of societal expansion and collapse, as well as periods of exploration and exploitation, can be applied to other Neolithic societies whose economic, organizational and ritual practices collapsed when they failed to meet expectations.
To varying degrees, Bocinsky and Kohler also draw parallels to the current dissatisfaction among people who have yet to recover from the last recession.
“A lot of the nation has not recovered since 2008, and what you’re seeing is a populist movement to radically reorganize the way that politics is done in this country,” said Bocinsky. “We’re seeing that need to reorganize four times in the Pueblo record.”
Bocinsky and Kohler collaborated on their paper with Jonathan Rush of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Keith Kintigh of Arizona State University.
The work is in keeping with WSU’s Grand Challenges, a suite of research initiatives aimed at large societal issues. It is particularly relevant to the themes of sustainable resources and advancing opportunity and equity
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Research Reveals Greatest Formula One Drivers of All Time
April 19th, 2016The Daily Journalist.
Statistical analysis suggests Juan Manuel Fangio is the greatest Formula One driver in history
Teams found to be around six times more important to success than individual drivers – and their importance has increased over time
Juan Manuel Fangio is the greatest Formula One driver of all time, according to new research by the University of Sheffield.
Dr Andrew Bell, of the Sheffield Methods Institute, used statistical analysis to work out who the sport’s most accomplished competitor is – looking at who is the best driver because of their talent, rather than because they have a good car.
Without considering the impact of his team, the greatest driver of all time in terms of most race wins is Michael Schumacher. But the study found that once the effect of his team is removed, legendary racer Fangio claims the top spot, followed by Alain Prost in second and Fernando Alonso in third position.
In fact, Schumacher drops to ninth place in this analysis – although his ranking is dragged down by his post-retirement performances in 2010-2012 when he was generally outperformed by his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg. If his pre-retirement career is considered on its own, he ranks in third position.
Of current drivers, Fernando Alonso is the highest ranked driver, and both he and Sebastian Vettel are ahead of reigning champion Lewis Hamilton.
The study, published in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, also found:
Teams matter about six times more than drivers when it comes to success in F1.
About two-thirds of the team effect is consistent over time, with the rest caused by teams changing year-on-year.
Team effects have increased over time, but appear to be smaller on street circuits, where the driver’s skill plays a greater role.
Dr Bell said: “The question ‘who is the greatest F1 driver of all time’ is a difficult one to answer, because we don’t know the extent to which drivers do well because of their talent or because they are driving a good car. The question has fascinated fans for years and I’m sure will continue to do so.
“Our statistical model allows us to find a ranking and assess the relative importance of team and driver effects, and there are some surprising results. For example the relatively unknown Christian Fittipaldi is in the top 20, whilst three time champion Niki Lauda doesn’t even make the top 100. Had these drivers raced for different teams, their legacies might have been rather different.”
He added: “A similar model could be used to answer a variety of questions in society -for example, how much do individuals, teams and companies affect worker productivity or how much classes, schools and neighborhoods affect educational attainment
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Ecuador in state of emergency
April 19th, 2016
The Daily Journalist.
Ecuador Saturday night shook with an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale that struck the northern coastal region and left hundreds killed and thousands injured. The latest report has raised the death toll to 350 and 2,068 injured. The Government has declared a state of emergency. The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, said that reconstruction will cost millions of dollars.
The number of deaths continues to increase as the hours pass. The vice-president, Jorge Glas, remarked that the death toll could increase because of the damage caused in the epicenter area. In an appearance before the media, Glas also said that the situation is particularly “complex” in the seaside resort of Pedernales, where rescue teams and assistance has been difficult to access .
Most of the dead were in the area of the earthquake’s epicenter — an eminently tourist area, both filled with Ecuadorians and tourists, known for its beaches and its gastronomy, and the humpback whales during several months a year. Manabi is the third province in economic importance in Ecuador and there is Manta, one of the biggest ports in the country.
The authorities do not rule out that the death toll could rise, since, for example, in Pedernales, its mayor, Gabriel Alcivar, reported that more than 30 hotels had been destroyed and feared that many of its customers had been trapped. In addition, also said the destruction of the city was evidently harsh, so he called for national authorities to send rescue teams and food for those without home.
Hours after the earthquake, the government decreed emergency for the coastal provinces: Esmeraldas, Los Rios, Manabi, Santa Elena, Guayas and Santo Domingo and the state of emergency for the whole country. Because of that decision, it ordered 4,600 police and 10,000 military come to the areas of greatest devastation. The first groups came in late Saturday to help rescue victims and provide security to the allegations that were made through social networks and instant messaging systems on attempts of looting especially in areas of Manabi, where property losses were not total. The security forces also controlled markets and supermarkets, to ensure the supply of food and water, as well as to mark routes that would leave cities like Portoviejo — whose center was badly affected.
President Rafael Correa, who was visiting the Vatican, returned to the country. His first messages through their own social network Twitter, were to ask encouragement to the population. His arrival was scheduled for late afternoon. Although they not yet accounted for the damage, its estimated to be several billion dollars. The most important infrastructure works (refinery, hydroelectric power plants, multipurpose) suffer no harm.
The help offers and international solidarity messages were immediate. The authorities especially requested rescue personnel and tents due to the rainy season, another difficulty for the affected. In Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca and Ibarra, through social networks, collections of food and clothing were organized while the authorities constantly reminded that Ecuadorians have emergency backpacks ready, before any aftershock.
The European Union (EU) has also shown solidarity. “Ecuador has been hit by a deadly earthquake that has caused many victims. Our thoughts are with the victims, their families and friends, as well as with all those affected,” he expressed the head of EU diplomacy, Federica Mogherini and Commissioner Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides.
The Spanish Government, which has conveyed its solidarity with the victims and deplored the “catastrophic consequences” is not aware at this time that a Spanish citizen has been affected but has activated the Emergency Center AECID in order to provide emergency assistance and consulates of Spain in Quito and Guayaquil to remain in contact with local authorities to know the situation of the Spanish community. Latin American leaders also expressed their solidarity with Ecuador through social networks. Unasur Secretary General, Ernesto Samper, and the presidents of Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, Paraguay, Mexico and Venezuela expressed today in social networks support.
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Easy as Alep, Bet, Gimel? Researchers Explore Social Context of Ancient Writing
April 14th, 2016The Daily Journalist.
A new University of Cambridge research project is set to shed light on the history of writing in the ancient world, and explore the long lasting relationship between society and writing that persists today. The project is revealing connections to our modern alphabet that cross cultures and go back thousands of years
A new research project at the University of Cambridge is set to shed light on the history of writing, revealing connections to our modern alphabet that cross cultures and go back thousands of years. The project, called Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS for short), is to focus on exploring how writing developed during the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, and will investigate how different writing systems and the cultures that used them were related to each other.
Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet
The project is led by Dr Philippa Steele of the University’s Faculty of Classics. Described as an “innovative and interdisciplinary approach to the history of writing” the CREWS project aims to enrich our understanding of linguistic, cultural and social aspects of the use, borrowing and development of writing in the ancient world – which can uncover some often surprising links to our modern-day written culture.
For instance, today the notion of “alphabetical order” is used to arrange everything from dictionaries to telephone books, but why is the alphabet organised the way it is? Alphabetical order as we would recognize it first appeared over three thousand years ago in Ugaritic, written in a cuneiform script made of wedge-shaped signs impressed on clay tablets. The Ugaritic alphabet was in use in the ancient city of Ugarit, uncovered at Ras Shamra in modern Syria.
Ras Shamra
Some of the surviving tablets discovered by archaeologists are known as “abecedaria”, where the letters of the alphabet are written in order, possibly for teaching or as a training exercise for new scribes. The destruction of Ugarit in around 1200 BCE was not the end for alphabetical order. The Phoenicians, living in what is now modern Syria and Lebanon, used the same order for their own alphabet.
While their language was related to Ugaritic, their writing system was not. Instead of cuneiform wedge-shapes, the Phoenicians used linear letters, which were much more similar to those we use in English today. The Phoenician alphabet began with the letters Alep, Bet, Gimel, Dalet, which are strikingly similar to our own A, B, C and D. Dr Steele said: “The links from the ancient past to our alphabet today are no coincidence.
The Greeks borrowed the Phoenician writing system and they still kept the same order of signs: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta. They transported the alphabet to Italy, where it was passed on to the Etruscans, and also to the Romans, who still kept the same order: A, B, C, D, which is why our modern alphabet is the way it is today.”
That such an apparently simple idea remained so stable and powerful over thousands of years of cultural change and movement is an historic mystery. “The answer cannot be purely linguistic”, Dr Steele said. “There must have been considerable social importance attached to the idea of the alphabet having a particular order. It matters who was doing the writing and what they were using writing for.”
The origin of the alphabet is just one of the areas that the CREWS project will explore, along with the social and political context of writing, and drivers of language change, literacy and communication. Because of the high level of interconnectedness in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, ideas could be spread widely as people moved, traded and interacted with different cultures. “Globalization is not a purely modern phenomenon”, Dr Steele commented. “We might have better technology to pursue it now, but essentially we are engaging in the same activities as our ancestors.”
The CREWS project is the result of a long-term innovative programme of combined and comparative research at the University of Cambridge. It will run for five years and will involve a four-person team working on a variety of ancient cultures and writing systems. The CREWS project has been made possible thanks to the European Research Council, who describe their mission as being “to encourage the highest-quality research in Europe.”
Dr Steele, the Principal Investigator on the project and a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, has worked on ancient languages and writing systems for over ten years and previously specialized in the languages of ancient Cyprus.She said: “Cyprus lies right in the middle of an area where ancient people were moving about by land and sea and swapping technologies and ideas. That was one of the inspirations of the CREWS project.
By studying how and what ancient people were writing, we will be able to gain more insight into their interactions with each other in ways that have never been fully understood before.” The Contexts of and Relations Between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) project will be based at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Classics, a world-leading center for the study of the ancient world with a track record for innovative and interdisciplinary research. Running from April 2016, it will continue until 2021.
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Ancient DNA Confirms European Wipe-out of Early American Lineages
April 4th, 2016The Daily Journalist.
The first large-scale study of ancient DNA from early American people has confirmed the devastating impact of European colonization on the Indigenous American populations of the time.
Led by the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), the researchers have reconstructed a genetic history of Indigenous American populations by looking directly into the DNA of 92 pre-Columbian mummies and skeletons, between 500 and 8600 years old.
Published recently in Science Advances, the study reveals a striking absence of the pre-Columbian genetic lineages in modern Indigenous Americans; showing extinction of these lineages with the arrival of the Spaniards.
Human remains in the burial site of the Lima culture (500-700 AD) uncovered at the Huaca Pucllana great adobe pyramid, in the city of Lima, Peru.
Credit: Huaca Pucllana research, conservation and valorisation project
“Surprisingly, none of the genetic lineages we found in almost 100 ancient humans were present, or showed evidence of descendants, in today’s Indigenous populations,” says joint lead author Dr Bastien Llamas, Senior Research Associate with ACAD. “This separation appears to have been established as early as 9000 years ago and was completely unexpected, so we examined many demographic scenarios to try and explain the pattern.”
“The only scenario that fit our observations was that shortly after the initial colonisation, populations were established that subsequently stayed geographically isolated from one another, and that a major portion of these populations later became extinct following European contact. This closely matches the historical reports of a major demographic collapse immediately after the Spaniards arrived in the late 1400s.”
The research team, which also includes members from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and Harvard Medical School, studied maternal genetic lineages by sequencing whole mitochondrial genomes extracted from bone and teeth samples from 92 pre-Columbian–mainly South American–human mummies and skeletons.
Llull Maiden: DNA of The Doncela (The Maiden) Incan mummy found at Mount Llullaillaco, Argentina, in 1999, was used in the study.
Credit Johan Reinhard
The ancient genetic signals also provide a more precise timing of the first people entering the Americas–via the Beringian land bridge that connected Asia and the north-western tip of North America during the last Ice Age.
“Our genetic reconstruction confirms that the first Americans entered around 16,000 years ago via the Pacific coast, skirting around the massive ice sheets that blocked an inland corridor route which only opened much later,” says Professor Alan Cooper, Director of ACAD. “They spread southward remarkably swiftly, reaching southern Chile by 14,600 years ago.”
“Genetic diversity in these early people from Asia was limited by the small founding populations which were isolated on the Beringian land bridge for around 2400 to 9000 years,” says joint lead author Dr Lars Fehren-Schmitz, from UCSC. “It was at the peak of the last Ice Age, when cold deserts and ice sheets blocked human movement, and limited resources would have constrained population size. This long isolation of a small group of people brewed the unique genetic diversity observed in the early Americans.”
Dr Wolfgang Haak, formerly at ACAD and now at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, says: “Our study is the first real time genetic record of these key questions regarding the timing and process of the peopling of the Americas. To get an even fuller picture, however, we will need a concerted effort to build a comprehensive dataset from the DNA of people alive today and their pre-Columbian ancestors, to further compare ancient and modern diversity.”
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Punk Will Never Die: Six Pistols’ House Given Historic Status To Protect Johnny Rotten’s Art
March 28th, 2016
An archaeologist who carried out detailed analysis of artwork daubed on the walls of a flat by the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten today said he had “mixed feelings” after it was announced the building had been given listed status
Sex Pistols in Paradiso – Johnny Rotten (John Lydon, )
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has given two townhouses on Denmark Street, known as London’s ‘Tin Pan Alley’, special protection on the advice of Historic England. The Grade II*listing places the buildings amongst the top six percent of protected buildings in England.
Denmark Street: London’s ‘Tin Pan Alley’
The decision was closely informed by research by Professor John Schofield, Head of Archaeology at the University of York and independent researcher Dr Paul Graves-Brown, who published their results in the international journal Antiquity in 2011, assessing the cultural significance of 6 Denmark Street and its artworks for the first time.
Professor John Schofield examines the artwork.
The listing is particularly significant as it takes place in the year of punk’s 40th anniversary.
Professor Schofield, said: “I think these artworks are highly significant, but that view and the Grade II* listing will of course divide opinion – the Sex Pistols are and will always be controversial.
“I have mixed feelings about the listing to be honest. It is good to have this designation off the coattails of our own research, and to see such an alternative and counter-cultural place given this national recognition.
“But it is also a rather odd contradiction, for a building so closely associated with the Sex Pistols and their rallying cry ‘No Future’ to be preserved for the benefit of future generations.
12 Bar Club farewell party at Denmark Street, London, Date 11 January 2015
“Punk helped change the world, and it did so with genuine anger, but also with passion, compassion and humour. Maybe there is a lesson there for our times. Denmark Street was where it all started.”
Campaigners had argued that the building, where the pioneering punk band lived, rehearsed and made demo recordings for their first album, and which gave birth to the worldwide punk rock phenomenon, was important to the nation’s musical heritage.
12 Bar Club Farewell party at Denmark Street, London, Date 11 January 2015,
The bulk of the artwork is by John Lydon (aka Rotten) and consists of eight cartoons depicting himself and other members of the band, as well as their manager, Malcolm McLaren, and other Pistols’ associates.
John Lydon (aka Rotten) taken at Bingley Music Live, September 04 2010.
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UN not happy with Brussel-Ankara accord
March 8th, 2016
The Daily Journalist.
Brusels has reached an agreement with Ankara desperate to stem the flow of refugees to Europe. The problem is that this agreement leaves many doubts about its legality, on its development and about the true intentions of the signatories.
De facto, the text represents a return to the situation a year ago, which were not yet ‘refugees’ but ‘illegal immigrants’. What has been the international reaction to this agreement? United Nations, through its refugee agency (UNHCR) has been “disturbed”.
“Collective expulsion is prohibited by the European Convention on Human Rights, and an agreement seems that establishes the direct expulsion of aliens to a third country is not compatible with European law and with international humanitarian law,” said the European official of UNHCR.
Amnesty International, meanwhile, described as “inhuman” the text signed by Brussels and Ankara and has “moral and legal defects.” And added: “The leaders of the EU and Turkey incur” haggling section of the rights and dignity of some of the most vulnerable people in the world “Doctors Without Borders, an NGO involved in the rescue of refugees in the Aegean says. “European leaders have lost all sense of reality and the agreement being negotiated between the EU and Turkey is one of the clearest examples of their cynicism.”
What laws breach?
The most controversial part of the agreement (point D) is the one that shipped the massive return of refugees from the EU to Turkey. De facto, it will prevent these people apply for asylum in Europe. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “In case of persecution, everyone has the right to seek asylum, and to enjoy it, in other countries.”
In Europe, this treaty, this right is restricted. Neither the Status of Refugees of the Geneva Convention, which prevents the mass deportations, as enshrined in this agreement is respected. The European Convention on Human Rights is trodden down in Articles 3, 13 and Protocol IV. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, Article 9 speaks of the “obligation to register all applications for international protection present”.
That is, with this text, Europe will no longer register these requests and will skip their own asylum laws. Turkey Will you keep your part? Turkey, which is home to 2.7 million Syrians, has not so far been a state too preoccupied to fight mafias. Its coast, base of well-organized criminal groups, is the scene of daily human trafficking on a large scale with impunity to the Greek islands.
Until Europe did not start talking money, nobody moved in Ankara, despite the visible evidence of that huge business on the streets of Bodrum or Izmir, with clothing stores to which they ‘grew’ lifejackets showcases, with traffickers always around to Iraqi or Syrian families.
But 3,000 billion pledged last fall were not enough for the Turkish coast guard that would end human trafficking. Until NATO has been deployed in the Aegean facing no opposition from the Turks. Now the compromise reached 6,000 million euros.
The problem is that the mafias are still leaving more benefits with the crossing, to date, more than one million people to Europe, about 1,200 euros per refugee. A round business that seems no one wants to give up. Why is not spoken in the text of “refugees” and other “irregular immigrants”? In this issue its back to square one.
European ministers took months to use the word ‘refugee’ instead of ‘immigrant’. At this point, it is not necessary to remember that the refugees are fleeing war, violence or persecution. That is, 88% of people who have come to Europe since last spring, according to UNHCR.
The use of the word ‘refugee’ by Merkel infected the rest of their European counterparts, back in September, so reluctant to pronounce it. This text signed with Ankara returns to the previous word. Perhaps because it is easier to expel ‘immigrants’, while the ‘refugees’ have rights in this agreement are not guaranteed. Donald Tusk himself has tweeted a message: “The days of illegal immigration in Europe are done.”
But were not refugees?
No, not anymore. Does the resettlement program proposed text to be effective? This compromise between Brussels and Ankara stated that each person returned to Turkish soil, Turkey will send another to the EU to be relocated in one of its member countries.
Already some countries have refused this possibility, but it also should be recalled that plan refugee resettlement has failed inaction of the European partners: only 349 people from Italy and 536 from Greece of a total of 160,000 have been resettled in Europe. Continue to defend this system, and tested and buried is at best unrealistic.
Can this agreement alleviate the problem?
Hardly. The text does not put the focus on resolving conflicts that cause these great waves of refugees. In addition outsources to Turkey, actor Syrian conflict, refugee management and monitoring of the Aegean. There is talk of mafias as if they were these criminal groups which cause the flight of these people rather than the conflicts themselves.
Traffickers are seeking new routes and to circumvent European controls and continue to do business facing no opposition from the Turkish authorities. The mafias have won just over Aegean 1,200,000,000 euros a year takind advantage of the refugee crisis.
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Questions remain after Democratic caucus
February 7th, 2016
The Daily Journalist.
Monday, the caucus in the social center of the Simpson Barn in Johnston, a village on the outskirts of Des Moine which is the capital of Iowa, has a little organizational chaos. As always, the caucus was full of democrats.
The people gathered in three groups. Some fans of Hillary, who won and others for Sanders, who finished second. And a third, for O’Malley, that due to the rules of the caucus, had to disband and join the other two that mostly went with Sanders to not reach 15% of gathered, so that their support would not be counted.
Although two members of the O’Malley refused to leave with the others, and they were alone defending the former governor of Maryland, in a show of political allegiance. Now multiply that barn 1.681 in voting, including five salons- eaters- homes, in an election in which the winner, Hillary Clinton, won by three tenths and you have the recipe for controversy.
Especially when that formula is seasoned with a surreal political tradition of the Democratic Party of Iowa: not to make public the number of people who voted. For example, we all know that 182,000 shows the Republican turnout. But among Democrats, the figure is a mystery. And it will remain so.
The Iowa Democratic Party has refused to do something as basic as a democracy to spread the turnout for the caucuses, as many supported each candidate. Above, the Democrats themselves have admitted that they had enough volunteers to ensure compliance with the rules in all caucuses. So the shadow of fraud hangs over Iowa. And the Democratic Party has been forced to carry out a recount of several caucuses.
For now, we know that in at least one of them, a delegate that would be for Sanders was transferred to Clinton. At about the haste with which the Democrats gave Hillary winner, just three hours after the official close of polling adds, but when some were still voting. The announcement came as a surprise to many responsible for the caucus, which party had officially informed that there was still a winner.
Twelve hours later, on the morning of Wednesday, the Democratic Party had to give the winner, again, Clinton, because the count was so tight that the first statement was worthless. “Something stinks, in the Democratic Party,” said an editorial in the leading newspaper of the state, ‘Des Moines Register’, which had requested the vote for Clinton.
Sanders, who is hurt by confusion, has played in style, the trick to say that nothing happens here. “Let’s not jump this ratio. This is not the most important in the world,” he said in Thursday’s televised debate with Hillary. Of course, these are the only two delegates at stake, and it takes 2,500 to reach the nomination. So the argument is impeccable. But it is also flawless game for Sanders.
While the candidate calls for calming the electorate controversy, his campaign is fueling the fire of indignation among his followers, who believe that Iowa is just the first step in a dirty war against Senator Hillary Vermont. If something is not Hillary Clinton, it is reputed to be honest — after Iowa, might become even less.
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Scientist unveil social and telepresence robots
January 27th, 2016The Daily Journalist
Say hello to Nadine, a “receptionist” at Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore). She is friendly, and will greet you back. Next time you meet her, she will remember your name and your previous conversation with her.
She looks almost like a human being, with soft skin and flowing brunette hair. She smiles when greeting you, looks at you in the eye when talking, and can also shake hands with you. And she is a humanoid.
Prof Nadia Thalmann (left) posing beside Nadine. NTU-built EDGAR telepresence robot (right).
Credit: Nanyang Technological UniversityUnlike conventional robots, Nadine has her own personality, mood and emotions. She can be happy or sad, depending on the conversation. She also has a good memory, and can recognise the people she has met, and remembers what the person had said before.
Nadine is the latest social robot developed by scientists at NTU. The doppelganger of its creator, Prof Nadia Thalmann, Nadine is powered by intelligent software similar to Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana. Nadine can be a personal assistant in offices and homes in future. And she can be used as social companions for the young and the elderly.
A humanoid like Nadine is just one of the interfaces where the technology can be applied. It can also be made virtual and appear on a TV or computer screen, and become a low-cost virtual social companion.
With further progress in robotics sparked by technological improvements in silicon chips, sensors and computation, physical social robots such as Nadine are poised to become more visible in offices and homes in future.
The rise of social robots
Prof Thalmann, the director of the Institute for Media Innovation who led the development of Nadine, said these social robots are among NTU’s many exciting new media innovations that companies can leverage for commercialisation.
Credit: Nanyang Technological University
“Robotics technologies have advanced significantly over the past few decades and are already being used in manufacturing and logistics. As countries worldwide face challenges of an aging population, social robots can be one solution to address the shrinking workforce, become personal companions for children and the elderly at home, and even serve as a platform for healthcare services in future,” explained Prof Thalmann, an expert in virtual humans and a faculty from NTU’s School of Computer Engineering.“Over the past four years, our team at NTU have been fostering cross-disciplinary research in social robotics technologies – involving engineering, computer science, linguistics, psychology and other fields – to transform a virtual human, from within a computer, into a physical being that is able to observe and interact with other humans.
“This is somewhat like a real companion that is always with you and conscious of what is happening. So in future, these socially intelligent robots could be like C-3PO, the iconic golden droid from Star Wars, with knowledge of language and etiquette.”
Telepresence robot lets people be in two or more places at once
Nadine’s robot-in-arms, EDGAR, was also put through its paces at NTU’s new media showcase, complete with a rear-projection screen for its face and two highly articulated arms.
EDGAR is a tele-presence robot optimised to project the gestures of its human user. By standing in front of a specialised webcam, a user can control EDGAR remotely from anywhere in the world. The user’s face and expressions will be displayed on the robot’s face in real time, while the robot mimics the person’s upper body movements.
Credit: Nanyang Technological University
EDGAR can also deliver speeches by autonomously acting out a script. With an integrated webcam, he automatically tracks the people he meets to engage them in conversation, giving them informative and witty replies to their questions.Such social robots are ideal for use at public venues, such as tourist attractions and shopping centres, as they can offer practical information to visitors.
Led by Assoc Prof Gerald Seet from the School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and the BeingThere Centre at NTU, this made-in-Singapore robot represents three years of research and development.
“EDGAR is a real demonstration of how telepresence and social robots can be used for business and education,” added Prof Seet. “Telepresence provides an additional dimension to mobility. The user may project his or her physical presence at one or more locations simultaneously, meaning that geography is no longer an obstacle.
“In future, a renowned educator giving lectures or classes to large groups of people in different locations at the same time could become commonplace. Or you could attend classes or business meetings all over the world using robot proxies, saving time and travel , .”
Given that some companies have expressed interest in the robot technologies, the next step for these NTU scientists is to look at how they can partner with industry to bring them to the market.
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Dark “noodles” and invisible lumps challenge understanding of the Milky way
January 27th, 2016The Daily Journalist.
New discovery by Australian scientists radically challenges our understanding of gas conditions in the Milky Way.
Invisible structures shaped like noodles, lasagne sheets or hazelnuts could be floating around in our Galaxy radically challenging our understanding of gas conditions in the Milky Way.
CSIRO astronomer and first author of a paper released in Science Dr Keith Bannister said the structures appear to be ‘lumps’ in the thin gas that lies between the stars in our Galaxy.
CSIRO’s Compact Array in Australia is shown under the night lights of the Milky Way.
Credit: Alex Cherney
“They could radically change ideas about this interstellar gas, which is the Galaxy’s star recycling depot, housing material from old stars that will be refashioned into new ones,” Dr Bannister said.
Dr Bannister and his colleagues described breakthrough observations of one of these ‘lumps’ that have allowed them to make the first estimate of its shape.
The observations were made possible by an innovative new technique the scientists employed using CSIRO’s Compact Array telescope in eastern Australia.
Astronomers got the first hints of the mysterious objects 30 years ago when they saw radio waves from a bright, distant galaxy called a quasar varying wildly in strength.
They figured out this behaviour was the work of our Galaxy’s invisible ‘atmosphere’, a thin gas of electrically charged particles which fills the space between the stars.
“Lumps in this gas work like lenses, focusing and defocusing the radio waves, making them appear to strengthen and weaken over a period of days, weeks or months,” Dr Bannister said.
These episodes were so hard to find that researchers had given up looking for them.
But Dr Bannister and his colleagues realised they could do it with CSIRO’s Compact Array.
Pointing the telescope at a quasar called PKS 1939-315 in the constellation of Sagittarius, they saw a lensing event that went on for a year.
Astronomers think the lenses are about the size of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and lie approximately 3000 light-years away – 1000 times further than the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.
Until now they knew nothing about their shape, however, the team has shown this lens could not be a solid lump or shaped like a bent sheet.
“We could be looking at a flat sheet, edge on,” CSIRO team member Dr Cormac Reynolds said.
“Or we might be looking down the barrel of a hollow cylinder like a noodle, or at a spherical shell like a hazelnut.”
Getting more observations will “definitely sort out the geometry,” he said.
While the lensing event went on, Dr Bannister’s team observed it with other radio and optical telescopes.
The optical light from the quasar didn’t vary while the radio lensing was taking place. This is important, Dr Bannister said, because it means earlier optical surveys that looked for dark lumps in space couldn’t have found the one his team has detected.
So what can these lenses be? One suggestion is cold clouds of gas that stay pulled together by the force of their own gravity. That model, worked through in detail, implies the clouds must make up a substantial fraction of the mass of our Galaxy.
Nobody knows how the invisible lenses could form. “But these structures are real, and our observations are a big step forward in determining their size and shape,” Dr Bannister said.
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Good photojournalism is vital in the modern world
January 27th, 2016
It is said that a picture paints a thousand words, and in the case of photojournalism that is most definitely true. Without reading the accompanying facts in reams of text, the public is usually able to recognize an important moment in history, and identify with key emotions through the power of the images used. Readers of newspapers, magazines, and online columns, and viewers of televised news broadcasts around the world are subjected to thousands of images each day. Only echoes of the most powerful are felt, though, and endure through history.
The importance of photojournalism
Photographs are an integral part of journalism; a visual hook that will draw readers, and viewers, into that particular moment in history, and be remembered long after the accompanying words have fallen out of sight, and memory.
Photojournalism is a means of capturing some of the most iconic moments of all time and ensuring they are never forgotten, and images can instantly make, or break, a big story. Emotive, informative, sometimes disturbing, but always powerful, the pictures that accompany history’s biggest moments ensure that a story is told, received and remembered by the masses.
The most famous instances of photojournalism are those that reflect a particular social, or political, moment in history: an image that is instantly identifiable, immediately relatable, and conjures a story without any words.
Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic photograph of a young American sailor embracing a woman in Times Square has become one of the world’s most recognizable wartime images, as it came to symbolize the jubilation felt at the end of World War II. Mirroring the tragedies experienced during the Vietnam War, meanwhile, is Nick Ut’s devastating picture of children fleeing a napalm strike in 1972; those who were born long after the event can still identify with the heartbreak felt in that single moment. Without political agenda or social comment Sam Shere’s 1937 photograph of the Hindenburg Disaster captured the fragility of human life, as well as an end to passenger-carrying airships, while Kevin Carter moved the world in 1993 when he shot the now-iconic picture of a Sudanese child watched over by a vulture. None of these images need explanation, yet all tell a story more complex than words could.
The power of an image
More recent images to have captured the world’s imagination, and admiration, include photographs taken at the moment President Obama and his national security team learned of Osama Bin Laden’s death, photographs depicting the aftermath of numerous, worldwide, terrorist events, and snapshots of the devastation left behind by disease and famine in some of the world’s poorest areas. While often difficult to view, and process, they have become a part of this generation’s story. Now available via editorial photography agencies, and as free stock images from Dreamstime and similar companies, these images will always be reproduced and remembered, for years, and events, to come.
Each these photographs has its own story and agenda, but all will be remembered long after the moment has passed; these are the photographs that will ensure today’s stories become tomorrow’s history, and for that, photojournalism should be heralded and respected.
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Obama’s legacy: Was it good or bad?
January 24th, 2016
The Daily Journalist community question.
President Barack H. Obama will soon exit his office in the White House. Eight years after his ascension to power in 2008, a lot of questions come to mind thinking of his legacy. Probably one of the most controversial presidents to ever set foot on the White House, not just based in his relentless promise to save America, but also on his attitude to change the world. From foreign policy to heath care, his reforms and decisions have stirred admiration and controversy around the world especially in America. Some people blame Obama for ISIS, others blame him for the greater turmoil affecting the Middle East; others blame him for his open border policy and the refugee crisis; others accuse him of stirring African Americans against police officers, and others vilify him for supporting his own ethnicity by overlooking the laws of criminal justice; those are just a few issues that have question his campaign among his critics. Despite the criticism I don’t think it’s fair to blame Obama for many of the problems he unfortunately inherited. Personally, I never blamed former president George W. Bush for 9-11, considering that Bill Clintons foreign and national security policy in 90’s eventually led to the collapse of the twin towers; so I don’t think It is fair to blame Obama for the Neo-Con agenda in Iraq outside the evident rise of ISIS . But I know people in our community of experts feel indifferent about Obama, so here go the questions.
William “Bill” Hecht.
(He is the staff editor for SED, Inc., a prestigious economics newsletter)
“1) He appeared to accept his role reluctantly as Commander and Chief, probably deferring to his generals more than he cared to.
2) He was a mediocre president by deed. As a symbol of possibility and empowerment for subordinate groups and for the democratic process, he stands out.
3) No. That war was planned and assembled by Rummy, Cheney, et al.
4) No, but he lost a chance to make some major changes in the banking system. Instead, no one went to jail and the banks are fewer, bigger, and stronger now.
5) ACA was best.
6) No. Racial hatred is fueled by agitprop media. Since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, hate speech and narrative are available hourly from talk (trash) radio and the Flow Of Xenophobia news channel.
7) He wanted to unify. He wasn’t ruthless enough for the political system here.
8) He reminds me of Jimmy Carter in that he is well meaning, but seemed in over his head from early on.”
William Blum
(He left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer,because of his opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam. He then became one of the founders and editors of the Washington Free Press, the first “alternative” newspaper in the capital)
“Your questions are all hopelessly biased in favor of Obama. Your poll is therefore useless. “Should Obama be blamed for inheriting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?” Of course not. He should be blamed for extending those wars for years, during which time thousands more — Americans and Iraqis and Afghans — lost their lives and the two countries suffered a great deal more damage and death.
Do you – duh! – not see your bias in this and other questions?”
Sebastian Sarbu.
(He is a military analyst and vice-president of National Academy of Security and Defense Planning. Member of American Diplomatic Mission for International Relations)
“Obama was a good president, but not the kind of president that is strong enough. He promoted a strong and usefull political advocacy on human right, global challenge of democracy and civil society involvment. President Barack Obama is the best president possible for this kind of historical epoch, with global changes in every field of society, economy and global ecosystem. The fundamental problem of his administration is the lead of political heritage of the fmr President George W. Bush Jr. who generated two wars with the consequences that we all know today. Mr. Barack Obama will enter United States history with legacy, the same as Martin Luther King Legacy.”
Claude Nougat.
(Passionate traveller (80 countries+) 25 years experience in United Nations: project evaluation specialist; FAO Director for Europe/Central Asia)
“Obama is not yet out of office and nobody should discount what he might (or might not do) in his last year. Over here in Europe where I live, Obama is considered an excellent President, possibly one of the best the United States has had in the last 20 years. He hasn’t managed to do everything he’d promised he would do – notably shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison – but at every turn, Republicans in Congress have stopped him. And most recently, his efforts at gun control are being again thwarted. And America goes on unimpeded in its love affair…
In spite of this incredible, continuous and increasingly harsh opposition, Obama has still managed some notable achievements, chief among them the health care reform that brought insurance to millions of poor Americans – yet not causing any breakdown in the health care system nor a surge in prices nor a drop in employment. On the contrary, under Obama‘s watch, the economy has recovered and millions of jobs have been created.
In his State of the Union Address, Obama noted that polarization of political life had increased during his presidency, suggesting something should be done about it – possibly thus becoming the first President to ever publicly acknowledge such a thing. And it is definitely a sign of profound unease that the American political class, both Republicans and Democrats, should take seriously. Politicians need to consider what their role in society is. If they go on like this, the political system will break down as they increasingly look like know-nothing idiots…Which is why of course, so many people don’t even bother to vote anymore.”
Wayne Dunlap.
(The Dunlaps have been awarded Top Travel Blogger and Best Boomer Travel Bloggers to Follow and stories about their travel adventures and unique travel tips have appeared in the Frommer’s The Travel Show, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, The Christian Science Monitor, Entrepreneur Magazine, ABC News,Newsmax, EuroTravel, & SecondAct Magazines, radio,TV, and other media)
“People should be aware of the very slow recovery, large increase in welfare, and troubled economy during Obama‘s term:
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Allen Schmertzler.
(He is an award winning and published political artist specializing in figurative, narrative and caricatured interpretations of current events)
“On the question regarding qualifying and quantifying the presidency of Barack Obama, I will keep it simple. This President will rank extremely high as one amazing and ultimately beloved Presidents. Obama kept the drama machine on snooze, put the instant gratification culture on snooze, refused the immediate for the long term, kept a remarkably steady and consistent presence, and without question, he played a major role in ushering in change, change that demanded attention.
Books will be written, talking heads will talk, spin masters will spin, but the record, the facts, will speak louder than the rest, and the facts will live as a preponderance of evidence, that President Obama succeeded and even excelled. He did this despite taking on absolute determined Republican opposition from the very first day. Every “sky is falling” claim has been proven wrong.
Even just a few days ago, as the President delivered his last State of The Union under the nasty and ugly commentary from Republicans over captured U.S. military personnel by the iranians, the President must have know that not only the military but also the previously long held journalists were coming home, alive, again shattering the doomsayers predictions.
I am not saying that Obama‘s Presidency was even close to perfect. I am not saying there were no missed opportunities and or miscalculations. But when you measure his record, especially against the conditions he inherited, and especially against every claim by his political opposition, all of which lowered the threshold of expectations, America had the right President at the right time.
Please just mention one other person who put themselves forward as a potential candidate for President could have come close to delivering America to this state of our union. Presidents do not make the times. The times do not make the President. But, having a President that has magical alchemy to balance and read the world and deliver us better off than before is a cause for celebration. Only Nixon could have gone to China. Only Barack Obama could have gone to the long list of “forbiddens” present at the time of his presidency. Closing Guantanamo remains, but so does another year.”
Robert A. Slayton.
(Professor of History, Chapman University. Research Specialist in Housing, Chicago Urban League Author of seven books, including Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith)
“I would rate Baraka Obama in the “Very Good” or “Near Great” categories, with a major caveat of, “We’ll never know”.
On foreign policy I think he has been a nuanced hand, using violence when necessary, but not foolishly or lavishly. And with a rare (for American presidents) sense of foreign cultures and how to appeal to them.
Domestically he has a number of significant achievements: ending the 2008-2009 recession, the Affordable Care Act, saving the American auto industry, a booming economy (with mixed fortunes for various Americans), a progressive approach to immigration.
One other landmark: he will be seen as the Jackie Robinson of American politics, the pioneer who broke through and restrained himself amidst attacks.
As to, “We’ll never know”: Barack Obama has been the subject of more blind Congressional opposition than any other president. Many others have had to work with hostile legislators, but not this kind of total, unyielding intransigence. We’ll never know who he would have functioned—successfully or not—in a more normative environment.””
Mark Chapman.
(A ripening cynic opposed to irresponsible corporatism and journalistic toadying. Focused mostly on Eastern Europe and the relationship between Russia and North America. Frequent columnist at Russia Insider)
“Although Barack Obama was not my President, I will not miss him as he leaves office, except that it means a successor who will likely also be a failure will arrive. I was very enthusiastic about his presidency at first, and hoped he would be able to achieve most or even all the things he promised. He did not actually achieve any of them, and the country is at least as divided and polarized as it was when he entered office if not more so.
I must reluctantly acknowledge that his critics were right, and he was mostly an empty suit who made eloquent speeches that ultimately did not mean enough to him for him to get serious about implementing the visions he described. I wouldn’t say his legacy is tainted so much as he does not really have a legacy, and he turned out to be just a placeholder as he carried on with George W. Bush’s agenda, whether willingly or because he did not have the spine to resist.
He was not specifically to blame for the banking crisis, but he did nothing to arrest the spendthrift policies and handed the banksters tons of free money to do with what they would. He will leave office with America deeper in debt than it was when he came in, and maybe he could not have done anything anyway because the debt has now reached such gargantuan proportions that there is no way the USA can ever balance the books without some sleight-of-hand which simply erases it as if it never existed.
His best moments were in his first term, when he tried to tear apart the Health Care system. His critics are right to deride the horrid plan he came up with, but that was the result of so many compromises with the Republicans that there is virtually nothing left of the original plan. He squandered his entire first term trying to make friends with the Republicans, and then lost his majority without having done a single useful thing with it. It went downhill from there.
He inherited the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but his efforts to disentangle America from them were mostly cosmetic fluff. He succumbed to the policy wonks who told him the USA must keep a military presence in the region or other forces would rush in to fill the vacuum, and he completely owns the debacle in Syria, in which the USA pretended to bomb ISIL while actually abetting its advances on Damascus, in the hope that it would unseat Assad.
Then the USA would swoop to the rescue and pick a new government it liked. Despite all the twaddle about Assad’s ‘Alawite Power Structure’, only three ministers in his cabinet are Alawites and there are many Sunnis. The Obama administration deliberately misunderstood and misrepresented the Syrian government because the American agenda demanded it be overthrown, so there was no use trying to deal with it constructively. Similarly, his economic war on Russia has been a disaster. He has had to backtrack on virtually every threat he ever made, after his boasting made him look twice as much of a fool when he eventually had to climb down.
If I had to sum him up in one sentence, it would be, “Barack Obama is a statesman like a shoehorn is a toothbrush.””
Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi.
(His research interests focus on the international relations, particularly with reference to the EU’s affairs, the United Nations affairs, the US foreign policy and prevention of conflict-studies. He contributed to the publications to the Daily Dawn (a leading English newspaper) and the Pakistan Observer (an Islamabad-based English daily)
“A-Q-1 A closer look at Obama’s boasted achievements of foreign policy issues will easily reveal that many of them will still be unfinished when he leaves office. As for the Americans, the commander Obama seems to have adopted a cautious course. He did not encourage a war-mongering policy as his predecessor George W. Bush did during his tenure
But the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq Obama vowed to end when taking office in 2009.
A-Q-2 Assessing Obama’s both terms through the prism of the multiple tests, we can say that he is challenged on a number of them. The economy isn’t sputtering currently (though that could happen before November 2016), but per capita income has declined on his watch. It’s difficult to argue he has brought about any significant domestic accomplishment, in the nature of Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights legislation or Ronald Reagan’s new-direction tax policies.
One can argue, and Obama supporters often do, that it wasn’t his fault; the Republican Congress just wouldn’t play ball with him. But voters don’t parse these questions in such ways. For them, it’s no excuses; he either produced accomplishments or he didn’t. Obama didn’t. President Obama ranks 18th overall, but beneath the surface of the aggregate figures lurks evidence of significant ambivalence. For example, those who view Obama as one of the worst American presidents outnumber those who view him as one of the best by nearly a 3-1 margin. Similarly, nearly twice as many respondents view Obama as over-rated than do those who consider him under-rated. One area where there is significant expert consensus about the president, however, concerns how polarizing he is viewed as being – only George W. Bush was viewed as more a more polarizing president.
Next, Obama does not perform well on more specific dimensions of presidential greatness, often viewed as average or worse. For example, he is the midpoint in terms of both personal integrity and military skill (e.g., 10th of 19 in both categories), but falls to 11th when it comes to diplomatic skill and 13th with respect to legislative skill. Even so, when asked which president should be added as the fifth face of Mt Rushmore, Obama ties with James Madison as the 7thmost popular choice.
President Obama used a political spotlight he may never command to the same degree again to bring the nation’s focus to his legacy -– with a hope of reclaiming a spirit he long ago saw vanish.
Coming at a moment of national angst and anger, with a loud campaign raging to replace him, the president used his final State of the Union address to remind the nation of his achievements, even if many of those are less than popular.
He was calm in comparison to the overheated politics outside the House chamber. One of his last big speeches as president, though, will go down not for its unifying tones but for the challenges he offered for Americans to join him in his vision all over again, for posterity’s sake.
President Barack Obama called on the American people to “fix our politics” in his final State of the Union address. President John F. Kennedy’s domestic record was light, but his youth, glamour, religion, and halting steps towards civil rights made him a symbol of a country on the brink of historic change on many fronts. He’s still regularly picked as one of the country’s greatest modern presidents in polls.
“America has been through big changes before – wars and depression, the influx of immigrants, workers fighting for a fair deal, and movements to expand civil rights. Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears,” Obama said. “We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the ‘dogmas of the quiet past.’ Instead we thought anew, and acted anew. We made change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more and more people. And because we did – because we saw opportunity where others saw only peril – we emerged stronger and better than before.” He’s likely to occupy a middling position along with such presidents as Lyndon Johnson, the two Bushes, William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge. Of course history makes its own judgment in its own time, and it can’t be rushed. So we’ll have to wait on that. As for the voters, we’ll know how they feel about Obama’s second term come November of next year.
A-Q-3 By all reasonable calculations, he inherited the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan from junior Bush’s legacy. But the fact is that the Obama administration has not only delayed troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, but also sent more soldiers to Iraq.
A-Q-4 He should be no more be accountable for the Banking crisis. Yet the Obama government’s idea– to partner with the private sector to produce the public goods–seems challenging. An Obama government bank will direct these investments, making project decisions based on the merits of each project, not on politics. This approach has been a cornerstone of US foreign policy for several decades. In fact, our government-led reinvestment in America is modeled explicitly on international public banks and partnerships. However, although this foreign commercial policy is well-established with many successes, it has also been deservedly controversial and divisive.
A-Q-5 As for his worst policy in terms of foreign policy, the use of ‘drone attacks’ has been the most negative one that undermined the very spirit of international law. Having promised “A New Beginning” for the United States and the Middle East, Obama turned out to see a more troubled Middle East — a fallen society, endless conflicts, countless refugees, rise of the Islamic State, and a neglected peace process. And as for his best foreign policy, he appears to have normalized the relations with both’ Iran and Cuba’ via his policy of ‘peace discourse’.
A-Q-6 No , he may not be responsible for this. President Obama said the type of racial discrimination found in Ferguson, Missouri, is not unique to that police department, and he cast law enforcement reform as a chief struggle for today’s civil rights movement.
Obama said improving civil rights and civil liberties with police is one of the areas that ‘requires collective action and mobilization’ 50 years after pivotal civil rights marches brought change to the country.
The president made his first remarks about the Justice Department report of racial bias in Ferguson, which found officers routinely discriminating against blacks by using excessive force.
A-Q-7-“We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we are providing Americans the kind of help that they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” Obama said.
Obama continued: ”And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”
Obama stated he wants to “advance a mission” in an effort to unify all Americans.
“One of the things that I’m going to be talking to my Cabinet about is how do we use all the tools available to us, not just legislation, in order to advance a mission that I think unifies all Americans,” Obama said. “The belief that everybody’s got to take responsibility, everybody’s got to work hard, but if you do, that you can support a family and meet the kinds of obligations that you have to yourself and your family, but also to your communities and your neighbors.”
He says he is “very pleased” that Congress has agreed on a $1 trillion budget measure and urges lawmakers to pass it promptly.
Obama made his remarks at the top of a meeting with his Cabinet secretaries, two weeks before he delivers an economy-focused State of the Union address. The meeting was part of a week devoted to the economy, including a trip to North Carolina Wednesday to promote a manufacturing innovation hub and a meeting Thursday with college presidents to discuss worker training .But factually seen, on many issues, he could not unify the Americans on the issue of his Iran nuclear deal, his Syria policy, his drone policy, and the US policy regarding the Syrian refugees’ crisis.
A-Q-8 Barack Obama seems to have been a US President who wielded a pragmatist approach on the foreign front; while a progressive and liberal approach on the domestic front.
The man who started the tenure of his presidency as a person who ardently believed in the audacity of hope, though the seven years of his presidency has demonstrated the truth that he has partially achieved his goals. Obama appears to be remembered as the future John F. Kennedy, but to glorify himself as a true successor of Kennedy, Obama had to do something more remarkable that could have possibly personified him in the future course of history. Coming at a moment of national angst and anger, with a loud campaign raging to replace him, the president used his final State of the Union address to remind the nation of his achievements, even if many of those are less than popular.
He was calm in comparison to the overheated politics outside the House chamber. One of his last big speeches as president, though, will go down not for its unifying tones but for the challenges he offered for Americans to join him in his vision all over again, for posterity’s sake.”
Dale Yeager.
(He is the CEO of SERAPH and F.L.E.T.C trained Forensic Profiler and U.S. DOJ DOD Federal Law Enforcement SME / Instructor)
“1. When Obama leaves office, will you miss him as Commander and Chief?
He is my President and I respect the office but no I will not miss him. He came to the presidency with the mentality of an academic and advocate. He failed to lead, he was a loner and he created massive division among the American people.
2. Was Barak Obama a good president? Did he do the best job possible considering the problems he faced? Is his legacy tainted?
No he is one of the most troubling. He created a czar system of government and made decision unilaterally.
3. Should Obama be blamed for inheriting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?
No, conflict has always been sadly a mainstay of world politics and as President he was required to protect the country and U.S. interests.
4. Should he be blamed for the Banking Crisis that really started in 1999 when Bill Clinton repealed the Glass Steagall Act that allowed banks to be free of Keynesian regulations?
Wow that’s a leap! Keynesian theory is why financial institutions created ‘new’ products that were high risk and led to the 2008 recession.
5. What was his best policy? What was his worst policy?
Race to the Top was his best. All of his military actions where suspect at best.
6. Is he responsible for sparking racial wars against police officers?
Yes. It started with his statements against police in the Henry Louis Gates Jr. case. He along with the AG encouraged NGOs and gave political power to radical extremists. I know this because I am an SME on Domestic Terrorism for the HIDTA program.
7. Did he unify Americans? Was he ever prepared to take on American politics?
No he divides all of us in greater ways than we were before. Even his own had issues with him. He was not prepared to be President.
8. In few sentences: What is your opinion of Barack Obama?
Charming, arrogant, disconnected and indecisive.”
Halyna Mokrushyna.
(Holds a doctorate in linguistics and MA degree in communication. She publishes in Counterpunch, Truthout, and New Cold War on Ukrainian politics, history, and culture. She is also a contributing editor to the New Cold War: Ukraine and beyond and a founder of the Civic group for democracy in Ukraine)
“Barack Obama will have left a mixed record as the 44th President of the US. In his two terms in the Oval Office he achieved some of the plans for which he was in advance awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, in the first year of his presidency.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, announcing its decision, stressed Obama’s promotion of nuclear disarmament and fostering of a “new climate” in international diplomacy and cooperation between people, in particular reaching out to the Muslim world.
I think, not in the last place the Nobel committee was driven by the novel appearance in the Oval Office of a Black American, itself a huge achievement in a country, run by white Anglo-Saxon elite. Obama came in the office as a breath of fresh air, as hope for change. And he delivered on many of his promises, justifying, in my opinion, the Nobel Peace Prize (I was skeptical and puzzled how somebody can be awarded such an important recognition for actions yet to be completed).
Barack Obama does not come from wealthy and powerful American establishment. He worked his way to the highest echelons of American politics through hard works and studies. To me he represents an America of common people, a democratic America which should lead by example of being a great country of freedom and tolerance.
Bringing democracy on gunpoint of American weapons has always lead to disastrous results. Obama promised to end US military involvement in the Iraq, and he did. He continued the process of ending US combat operations in Afghanistan. He has been fighting the conservative powerful lobby for the introduction of measures to tighten control over arms selling and possession (I will never understand this American obsession with the right to own arms, not after so many tragic mass shootings in American schools and churches).
The biggest achievement of Obama internally is Obamacare, or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which, in spite of criticism, proved to be effective. It increased the quality and affordability of health insurance and lowered the uninsured rate, especially among Hispanics, blacks and lower-income Americans (according to the latest Gallup data, nationwide the uninsured rate dropped to 11.4% in the second quarter of 2015 compared to 17.1% in the last quarter of 2013, while for Hispanics, for instance, this drop constituted 9,6%).
One of the big failures for Obama in foreign policy is the dramatic worsening of relations with Russia. Obama’s personal fundamental misunderstanding of Russia, coupled with the lack of real experts on Russia in his team led to the lowest level of relations between these two great countries since the Cold War. To list Russia as one of the biggest threats to the world, together with Ebola and terrorism is the worst possible blunder for a politician, especially for the president of the US. Russia should be an ally, not an enemy.
But then again, Obama is an American, to the last bone, and for him, as for any American, it is difficult to give up a conviction that Americans are the greatest nation on this planet and the only savior of the world. Luckily, he is wise enough not to destroy the world for the sake of implementing everywhere American hegemonic democracy. His unexpected call to Putin on the Russian Old New Year Eve (January 13) is a hopeful sign of a coming thaw in Russian-American relations.”
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Glauco D’Agostino.
(Architect, Scholar of political Islam. He played several roles in the public sector as (Ministry of Economy and Finance, Consortia for Industrialization, Development and Investment, Agency for Development, various public administrations among other great achievements)
“Quite naturally, it makes no sense to judge the work of a ruling politician as totally good or bad, especially if he’s the most influential man on Earth. Since I’m not a US citizen, I will avoid making judgments on the Administration domestic policy over the past seven years (Health Care Reform, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Wall Street Reform, enhancement of gays and lesbians conditions, nomination of the first Hispanic woman at the US Supreme Court), focusing, instead, on US role as the sole leading world power, and on the effects over regional arrangements, both designed and implemented by their major player, President Obama, in fact. I will leave aside, too, American parties propagandistic positions, completely aimed at the presidential campaign, and designed to deal with an internal public opinion notoriously not interested to address issues of broad international scope and castled on potential direct economic advantages that may arise to individuals from White House public policies.
As a general observation, I think Obama’s international attitude, even amid a thousand inconsistencies, has been marked by multilateralism and cooperation, reversing a trend imposed by his predecessor Bush, entirely addressed to determine a superpower volition, with no effort of inclusion and involvement (even of the allies) in Washington decision-making. It’s a reversal of a will for military intervention, which had, sure, cheer the lobbies of arms and had benefited the US in terms of GDP growth borne by the public purse, just the opposite of ideologically trumpeted liberal policies and a natural result whenever a government is aimed to solve inside economic problems through the war tool.
This theoretically positive consideration is still about Obama’s intentions, and certainly does not automatically absolve him with respect to the US foreign policy driving. An end-term assessment (which is not yet finalized) can be made on an eight-year work, and anyway on the basis of the expressed purposes achievement. And it seems to me Mr. Obama had these goals among others:
In addition, multilateralism and cooperation concepts did offer a glimpse of opening to an appeasement policy with regard to Latin America and Asian-Pacific area.
Prior to check the effects (positive or negative, depending on points of view) induced by these policies and especially to detect who have brought back benefits, we must note down that:
That said, the fact remains that:
However, in a wider perspective, there is no doubt that President Obama has gathered two clear achievements of his foreign policy by an opening to two countries deemed to be historical US opponents: the Islamic Republic of Iran and Cuba. It’s evident that no ideological reading can be given to this willingness to discuss, since the prior has a quasi-theocratic rule, and the latter a communist regime. Such an evidence may bother both rightists and leftists, conservatives and liberals, but their respective supporters should realize the obsolescence of their nineteenth-century outdated conceptions.
After having tightened sanctions against Iran earlier this decade, the US President has completely reversed his attitude, by inaugurating a slow diplomatic approach to Tehrān, on the one hand forcing the Āyatollāhs to a tougher control on their nuclear program, but on the other, thus allowing a back on stage of a undisputed player in the Middle Eastern dynamics, without which no credible framework is possible to give the institutions of those countries. This, too, upsets the current supporters of the ancient Cold War sides, since through this step Russia is fully part in the international equilibrium building, as it deserves by history and dimensions. Is this a mistake of US President? It depends on concept of world balance, and, as we already said, Obama bets on multilateralism. Something similar applies to Cuba, when right the agreement with Iran is leaving Castro, Maduro and every Latin American regimes averse to Washington the blunt weapon of any Tehrān-backed political blackmails.
Conversely, among the unresolved issues, Obama certainly may include:
Ultimately, is Obama innocent or guilty?, capable or incapable? A Head of State of that relevance unlikely can get a unanimous opinion on his actions. Here we have tried to single out a few meaningful effects of his foreign policy. Historians will give the related verdict. In a year, a new President will decide whether to emulate or abhor his work, or, more, whether, as it seems fair and fateful, acting in continuity with the ambiguity typical of a great power!”
Jon Kofas.
(Retired Indiana University university professor. Academic Writing. International Political Economy – Fiction)
“I always believed that rating presidents is an inane exercise for many reasons including the burden of the impossible task of comparing a president from the early 19th century with one in the early 21st century under very different domestic political, economic, social conditions and developments in the international arena that impact the balance of power. How can anyone possibly compare Andrew Jackson with Lyndon Johnson, James Polk with George W. Bush, and Lincoln with Kennedy? This is a mystery best reserved for fiction rather than serious scholarship.
Presidents have to be judged on the merits of the effectiveness of their policies at the specific period in history and not across the span of time as though they governed at the same time as a future or a past president. Moreover, they have to be judged against the realities of the constraints of the political system and the Constitution, the economic and social structure, and of course the dominant culture and sub-cultures of the nation that are impossible to change for any president.
The absurd “political beauty contest” of rating presidents is more fitting for the media seeking to entice, manipulate, distract and brainwash the public by providing a superficial overview of presidents that often includes personal traits and “likeability factors” as though a candidate for president is a candidate for dating or going out to socialize with voters. Not that the cult of personality is anything new in politics or the exclusive domain of contemporary bourgeois politicians in America. However, having a candidate that “makes people feel good” so that the mass voters form a popular political base is really a key criteria for bourgeois politicians and it is what is expected of them by those who provide the financing to their campaigns.
Not to belabor the issue of people judging by appearances and falling for “image-making”, especially their leaders as Nicolo Machiavelli (The Prince) argued five centuries ago, but it is extremely rare that anything of substance is analyzed when it comes to rating presidents like beauty queens. When substantive issues are raised, they are simply a reflection of the person’s ideological orientation without full disclosure of criteria used to rate presidents by the individual doing the rating. Considering that more than half of US voters do not identify with either Republican or Democrat party, ranking presidents becomes just another intellectual exercise whose significance rests in the attempt to convince people that popularity sovereignty is at works when this is far from true.
History will always judge Obama from the prism of his race – the reality that he was the first African-American president in a country with a very long history of racism that only intensified under this president largely because of the socioeconomic polarization owing to the lingering effects of the Great Recession of 2008 and neoliberal policies, but also the deep institutional and cultural racism of America. Where Obama actually delivered anything more than the symbolic political and psychological satisfaction to people who believed a minority must have the opportunity to become president is another question addressed below. Beyond the race issue that will also be in the forefront of his legacy, the others are the economy and foreign policy.
The first issue is that Obama ran for president in 2008 when the Great Recession was the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Of course, he promised to revive the economy and gave the impression that he was the new FDR of the 21st century; an indication that he would undertake massive reforms rather than preserve the status quo. Whether he revived the economy on a sound basis for the duration, whether he revived finance capitalism and corporate capitalism to the detriment of the middle class and workers living standards is something that people can judge for themselves looking at statistics of declining living standards for the majority despite unemployment reaching 5% in 2015-2016.
The second issue is that Obama promised to change America’s image in the world after George W. Bush, a president ranking among the worst in history and who had sunk the nation in two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and the ‘war on terror’ that had contributed to a monumental budgetary deficit without any tangible results in terms of reducing jihadist activities globally and engendering greater stability in the Middle East. Obama came to office promising to create a positive image of America around the world, one that would not have the country as the most hated on the planet and one that would strive to restore leadership without the aggressive militarist baggage that Bush had created. He also promised to respect human rights, to put an end to war crimes that many governments and organizations had accused the US of committing, and to close down the Guantanamo prison where political prisoners were and still are kept. Whether any of this was achieved or we are right back where Obama started in 2008 in terms of terrorism and a tainted US image in the world is another issue we will analyze below.
Arthur Schlesinger and the Criteria for judging presidents
In 1948, an election year that kept Harry Truman, the first Cold War president, in the White House, historian Arthur Schlesinger was the first scholar to conduct a poll of 55 colleagues to rate presidents on “performance”. Making a reputation as a scholar of Andrew Jackson – the pro-slavery president of Indian removal policy fame – Schlesinger joined the Kennedy administration and provided his own criteria for ranking presidents, including: 1. “great presidents who were strong party men” like Jackson; 2. They confronted the Supreme Court (as did FDR), and 3. They aroused strong opposition as did Kennedy. One is immediately struck by the absence of key criteria appropriate for any democracy, namely, economic improvement for the majority of the people, maintaining peace, safeguarding civil rights and human rights, and improving social justice to achieve the ideal of a truly democratic society. None of these are included by Schlesinger or the vast majority of those ranking presidents since 1948.
Instead of judging presidents by policy results impacting the lives of all people, Schlesinger and all of those endeavoring to do same since the late 1940s listed such things as dealing with “turning points in history” – regardless of the result benefiting the majority of the population or resulting to its detriment. Although Schlesinger was molded by FDR’s New Deal when he was young, he came of age as a Truman Cold War Democrat who influenced the ideological orientation of American liberalism as expressed in the 1960s. Typical of an American scholar rating presidents on criteria of preserving and strengthening the system of government, Schlesinger simply assumed presidents ranking must be conducted from the perspective of the white male Anglo-Saxon elites.
a. Winning wars without considering the cost to society both short and long term;
b. Strengthening the economy and financial institutions geared to raise GDP but not necessarily closing the rich-poor economic gap;
c. Dealing with public corruption but not necessarily private sector corruption that went as unchecked or minimally regulated in the 19th as it is in the 21st century;
d. Unifying the party under strong consensus to mobilize popular support but not addressing the needs of the people who comprise the popular party base;
e. Imposing executive branch power over legislative and judicial to harmonize and rationalize capitalist interests, but not necessarily to provide a social safety net for the poor, women and minorities;
f. Confronting the political opposition to demonstrate Machiavellian leadership qualities for the sake of a “strong nation” but not for the improvement of citizens’ welfare.
In 2016 amid a climate of extreme right wing populist Republican presidential candidates trying to outdo one another on which one is more militarist and more in favor of strengthening corporate capital to the detriment of the majority, Schlesinger would be considered a left-wing liberal merely because he would be outspoken against the neo-Fascist orientation of the Republican Party as detrimental to forging a middle-of-the-road consensus. Nevertheless, Schlesinger remains the American bourgeois scholar icon who defined the criteria for rating presidents. Such criteria always takes into account preserving the political economic and social status quo, no matter how detrimental to the welfare of its citizens. After all, Schlesinger supported the Bay of Pigs operation and the Vietnam War that were disasters by any one’s estimation, including his own.
Scholars who follow the Schlesinger model have no problem ranking presidents today on:
1. How well did the president conduct policy to fight terrorism, rather than how we can mitigate or eliminate terrorism by addressing its root causes that range from the Palestinian Question to repeated interventions in the Middle East with intent to destabilize and divide for the same of securing spheres of influence;
2. How well did the president help economic recovery based solely on GDP, stock market performance, and “official employment” criteria, rather than living standards improvements, upward social mobility, and strengthening the middle class and workers as the popular base of a democracy. (Unofficial is twice as high and part time and seasonal account for distortions in official stats);
3. How strong US defense is for the purpose of benefiting the military-industrial complex as Eisenhower warned more than half century ago, instead of how US foreign policy benefits its citizens;
4. How can we strengthen corporate welfare that entails massive transfer of income through the fiscal system and in subsidies at the local, state and federal levels, no matter the consequences to the social safety net, the public debt, and viability of the capitalist system?
If the sole criterion is how militarily strong has any given president made the country, then we could argue that this is no different than the criterion of a dictator. If the criterion how effective the president was in strengthening the economy without the benefits accruing across the broad population, then we could argue that the criteria ought to be same as for non-Western dictators in power to benefit themselves and a small circle of people backing them. After all, the top 1% according to the New York Timesdetermines fiscal policy to benefit itself. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-wealthiest-private-tax-system-saves-them-billions.html?_r=0). If the criterion is how effective is a president in mobilizing public support for political consensus to govern on behalf of the capitalist class while keeping a docile working class and middle class, then this ought to be fully disclosed as all other criteria.
1. Overall, was Obama a Good President?
Judged on the Schlesinger criteria, Obama was an average president who held the status quo in tact at a critical time of the Great Recession that started under Bush and two wars that proved a foreign policy and economic disasters During the 2008 presidential campaign, I argued on website of the World Association for International Studies (Stanford University) that people should be cautious about buying into the ‘Obama mystique’, that his presence was largely symbolic, intended to de-radicalize the masses and not substantive, that it was obvious his policies would not be very different than those of Bush who has the distinction of earning the rightful place of one of the worst American presidents.
Both Bush and Obama promised that bailout money in the trillions was necessary to save jobs and keep the economy going, presumably living standards steady. Taxpayer money went into banks and corporations but people still lost their jobs and suffered sharp drop in living standards, while the economy remains anemic. Bush was in office eight years and his gift to the world was two wars and $3.3 trillion in debt – 3.3% of GDP. After seven years in office, Obama continued the wars of the previous administration, started a new on in Libya and Syria, and added $3.3 trillion or 2.7% of GDP to the sovereign debt in his first three years alone. While Bush inherited a $3 trillion debt, Obama inherited $6.3 trillion debt and the Republican economic crisis. The debt Obama added technically belongs to his predecessor, although it was his decision to continue along the same fiscal and defense policy lines as his predecessor. He continued the policy of strengthening corporate welfare that only adds debt and weakens the middle class, as he continued militarist adventures, expanding them to Syria that benefit the defense industry at the expense of the people.
Could Obama be the president of the people as he presented himself? Considering the source of funding for Obama’s 2008 campaign, it is difficult to imagine this was the choice of the common man and woman. “Goldman Sachs donated nearly a million bucks to Obama. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase donated nearly $1.5 million to the Obama campaign while Morgan Stanley pitched in over a half million dollars. When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. Goldman Sachs is followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google… Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain.” New York Times (July 1, 2008).
The US could have done worse with McCain and Romney who would have sunk the economy deeper in debt by providing even more corporate welfare gifts and lower tax brackets for the top 1%. In short, the people have the choice of who will be less reckless in foreign affairs and domestic policy that would make the majority even poorer. It is not a choice of which president will represent the workers and the middle class but which president will cause less damage because the system is such that it caters to the 1%.
2. Obama, Terrorism, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?
In his last state of the union, Obama boasted, “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.” Historically, the US has had a bipartisan foreign policy, with differences on tactics, rather than goals. While the Republicans are generally blatant militarists insisting on unilateral foreign policy approach, Democrats like Obama will consider multilateralism once they have no choice as has been the case with Syria and Ukraine where interventionism just has not worked out as they envisioned. Obama did not start the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and certainly not the war on terror. Nevertheless, he did not seek political solutions to crises, yielding to the militarist establishment. According to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the results of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as follows:
1. Over 370,000 people have died due to direct war violence, and many more indirectly (The US Green Party estimate of Iraqis dead is one million)
In 2011 Congress had approved a total of $1.283 trillion for things such as military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and health care for veterans for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks. Of that amount, $806 billion was allocated to expenses for Iraq and $444 billion for Afghanistan and related expenses.http://247wallst.com/investing/2013/04/19/the–real–cost–of–terrorism–for–nations–billions–and–trillions/#ixzz3xQlqHqET
These are the remarkable costs that militarism has delivered to America under both Bush and Obama, and this does not include money spent on Homeland Security that both Bush and Obama insist on maintaining because they made the war on terror a permanent fixture of US foreign and defense policy. According to one estimate, the US spends more than $100 billion annually on counter-terrorism, while the cost to the world economy is estimated in the trillions. The war against “Muslim terrorism”–the ultimate specter and trap haunting US foreign policy – has expanded under Obama. Under Obama, there were operations across North Africa especially in Libya on the pretext of wanting to help “spread democracy”, when in fact the US was working toward the same goal as terrorists to bring down anti-Western regimes. The same was the case with Syria and Yemen. While Obama pulled troops out of hot spots, he expanded drone warfare that many governments and organizations have accused for killing innocent civilians that the US dismisses as “collateral damage”.
Obama had the opportunity to change the course of US foreign policy but he chose to continue along the same lines. He could have rejected using the war on terror as the pretext to perpetuate Pax Americana, and he could have chosen political solutions to crises as he ultimately did with Iran over the nuclear issue. His legacy will be that he maintained the foreign policy, defense policy and war on terror policy that Bush started, never addressing root causes of conflicts including the Palestinian Question and backing Saudi Arabia which has been behind jihadist terrorism for decades.
3. What was his best policy? What was his worst policy?
“Obamacare” (Affordable Care Act) is about his best achievement, as far as it goes, despite massive Republican opposition. Although a future administration may do away with Obamacare or water it down substantially as I believe will happen in the name of neoliberalism, health care was an issue that had been important for Democrats since the Clintons in the 1990s and it was Obama who managed to implement it. He will also be remembered for trying to satisfy the socio-cultural agenda of the middle class by defending lifestyle choices such as gay marriage. To his credit, he held firm on women’s right to choose and funding of clinics providing services to women. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/25/obama–legacy–scotus–trade_n_7667946.html; http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/how–president–obamas–legacy–will–define-2016-election–n451616
Obama would also like to be known for his environmental policy owing to the Paris climate agreement of December 2015. Compared with his Republican predecessors since Reagan, he at least held the line on the status quo rather than permitting further emissions that result in greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming. However, the corporations committed to a “green economy” in which they see profits for the future and the low energy demand made it easier for Obama to push the green agenda Because the Republicans oppose the Paris Agreement and because it cannot become binding until 55 member states parties responsible for more than half of the world’s pollution have ratified it, there is serious doubt this will ever see the light of day in Obama’s lifetime. (http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/70708/obama-reaches-green-legacy-will-history-books-agree; http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/12/obama-speech-paris-climate-change-talks-deal-american-leadership)
The growing socioeconomic gap and downward social mobility owing to a fiscal system that favor the very wealthy is his greatest failure along with a militarist foreign policy disguised as “multilateral engagement” because of the deals with Iran and Cuba, and more recently “Metternich-style” negotiations to resolve the Syria impasse where ISIS reigns supreme. Although official unemployment is at 5%, living standards are continuing to decline for the majority of the middle class and workers saddled with debt. Even worse, the prospects of young people are very dim because even those coming out of college with a degree cannot find jobs in their own field and certainly not a good paying job. The land of opportunity is now the land of opportunism and Obama who did not create this phenomenon simply contributed to it instead of doing what he could to halt it.
The post-2008 recovery has been very weak because job creation came at the expense of low-wage jobs, including part time. One reason that January 2016 was one of the worst for Wall Street, which predicts economic trends, is because the US economy is consumer driven but the consumer is too deep in debt. WALMART closing 169 stores is indicative of low purchasing power of its customers who tend to be working class and lower middle class. When one looks at the map of closings, it is no surprise that they are throughout the south that is in fact the core of America’s “Third World” with a high concentration of poor.
4. Was Obama responsible for racial wars and police confrontations?
Of course Obama did not create racial wars and contrary to the right-wing media in the US he is hardly the cause for the divisions that exist in a society that has always been divided owing to class, race and ethnicity gaps the political regime and economy create. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-obama-legacy-project-1452643869
However, neither he nor his Justice Department also headed by a minority did anything about police shooting to kill, not injure at unarmed black youth in the inner cities of America. Obama did nothing about the unofficial torture inside jail cells as well as at the Homan Square facility where at least 3500 people, 82% of them black were detained without due process and often tortured. The US government knew of the link between Homan Square and Guantanamo as it knew of the deep racist culture in the police department, but it did nothing. The same is true for most of the US where institutional racist practices prevail in the criminal justice system. (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/05/homan-square-chicago-thousands-detained)
What exactly has Obama done for Blacks? In 2013, the NAACP announced that Obama had done nothing to improve the condition of blacks. When we examine the statistics on the overall condition of the black community we find that in fact blacks are worse off now than they were under the right-wing Republican Bush-Cheney administration.
1. Black home ownership has declined from 46 to 43% under Obama who had no problem providing hundreds of billions in bank and corporate bailouts and corporate subsidies.
2. Black-white income gap has increased and the median income stands at about $19,000. “In absolute terms, the median white household had $111,146 in wealth holdings in 2011, compared to $7,113 for the median black household and $8,348 for the median Latino household.” According to FORBES, a typical white family enjoys 16 times the wealth of a typical black family. While income for whites fell 1% from 2010 to 2013, it fell 9% for blacks. http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/03/26/the–racial–wealth–gap–why–a–typical–white–household–has-16-times–the–wealth–of–a–black–one/#2715e4857a0b4fbed7cb6c5b
3. Black poverty is at around 28% in 2012, and black children suffer poverty rates are four times higher than white children. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/14/black-child-poverty-rate-holds-steady-even-as-other-groups-see-declines/
“More than half of all people in Black families (54.9%) and 70% of people in Black families headed by single mothers were living in poverty in 1959. Black poverty rates reached their lowest levels in 2000 (38.6% and 21.2% respectively) just before the dot com bubble burst of 2000. Black poverty rates have beenslowly increasing since reaching 25.7% for all people in Black families and 41.2% for people in Black families headed by single mothers.”http://blackdemographics.com/households/poverty/
4. Black unemployment historically has averaged about double to that of whites. Obama has done nothing to reverse this trend, as blacks continue to dominate in low-skill and low-wage jobs. Blacks have seen few gains from the “Obama recovery”. It must be stressed that the annual growth rate under Obama has averaged 2.24% in comparison with 3.97% in all economic recoveries since the 1960s. In such an anemic climate black unemployment is twice that of the general population. While official unemployment if at 5%, it is at 23% for blacks. Black male unemployment for 18 to 34 years of age runs at 43%. What can Obama do about this in a free enterprise economy where neoliberal thinking prevails? Not much and that is exactly what he has done, which is why we have the statistics I have listed above.http://www.ibtimes.com/black–unemployment–rate-2015-better–economy–african–americans–see–minimal–gains-1837870
While Obama did not create any of the institutional and structural or cultural problems confronting blacks, he has done nothing to address them other than going on TV and decrying racism and inequality. That is nice, but Lyndon Johnson did the same thing and then he at least followed up with some measures to back up the liberal apologetic rhetoric.
5. Was Obama prepared for the Presidency and did he unify the country?
The assumption is that to become president one must hold some high public office. However, we have examples of presidents who held such high offices but they were disasters because of policies they followed. Besides, the president surrounds himself with an administration of people that run various departments in accordance with the considerable input of lobbyists who literally write legislation to benefit their corporate clients. Obama’s administration reflected what corporate America wanted, just as those administrations of his predecessors. The administration team is imposed upon the president by various powerful interest groups, mainly Wall Street favorites. The institution of the presidency is already captive to such interests no matter who sits in the Oval Office. The only choice is whether to strengthen the energy sector, vs. high tech sector, banking vs. traditional manufacturing, etc.
The issue of “unifying” for the Democrat party financial backers was really one of “de-radicalizing” the disgruntled workers and middle class after eight years of Bush, and co-opting the masses in the same manner as FDR when he too inherited a major economic crisis that could have polarized American society. According to public opinion polls, Obama’s popularity is much higher at roughly 50/50 split in approval/disapproval in comparison to Bush at roughly 65% disapproval and 35% approval after seven years in office. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_bush_first_term_job_approval.html)
Obama’s major achievement was that he managed to protect and preserve the neoliberal establishment with predominantly Clinton administration individuals representing Wall Street. Neo-corporatism under Obama reached new levels. This is because he is black and managed to appeal to women, minorities and gay-rights supporters. These voters saw him as their president, regardless of his mainstream policies in the domains of foreign affairs, economic, fiscal and monetary policy as well as labor-management relations that continued to deteriorate to the point of collective bargaining coming under serious threat from the Supreme Court. While Obama essentially served traditional interests as his predecessors, he managed to include people who otherwise felt disenfranchised. This does not mean that there were not the extreme right wingers dominating the media constantly complaining that he was not sufficiently militarist and sufficiently supportive of corporate welfare and neo-liberalism like his predecessor Bush.
6. What will be Obama’s lasting legacy?
Beyond the color of his skin and its symbolism in a country with a long history of racism imbedded in its institutions and culture, Obama was a restorative president who upheld neoliberal status quo and militarism with some modifications on health care reform, personal lifestyle choice issues, and a commitment to restore some regulations to preserve the pluralistic society he inherited. His own and Democrat rhetoric aside about achievements that are really disasters such as the war on terror, the bottom line is that terrorism, as the State Department defines it, has increased under Obama largely because of policies the administration pursued resulting in feeding militant Muslims throughout the world.
US involvement in Libya and Syria where indirect collaboration with jihadists manifested the absurd contradictions of US foreign policy turned out to be an unmitigated disaster by any measure one wishes to use. Providing Israel with military aid in August 2014, with Democrats voting in favor, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, amid Tel Aviv’s bombing of Gaza where children and women fell victims is a reality from which no rhetoric can wash away as part of the Obama legacy. The US policy of Israel regardless of its crimes against the Palestinians, and backing Saudi Arabia in its various foreign policy disasters intended to weaken Iran and Russia have also backfired. If this was the kind of America Obama had promised in 2008 running against John McCain, would he still have won the race to the White House?
US involvement in Ukraine was equally disastrous and it yielded absolutely no benefit for the US other than to tighten the NATO containment policy around Russia. In a public opinion poll in March 2014, only 18% of Americans said that the US ought to become involved in Ukraine; this despite massive media propaganda trying to convince people otherwise. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/03/ukraine-poll_n_4891224.html) The irony is that Obama and the Democrats only disagree with their Republican counterparts on foreign policy and defense policy tactics rather than goals that are to maintain Pax Americana no matter the cost to the majority of the people at home and of course at the receiving end overseas.
It is pointless to judge the president of the US on the basis of Socialist expectations because the institution exists to prevent Socialism and strengthen capitalism. One can only judge the president within the perimeters of the existing system. However, if a president, and this includes Obama, runs campaign promises of broadening the democratic system to engender more social justice, human rights, economic and judicial equality for all people, but then fails to deliver on every single promise, then analysts have every right to emphasize the failure of the president based on his broken promises intended to strengthen the system by deceiving voters and de-radicalizing them as Obama did. In short, even if a president wanted to make systemic changes to achieve some type of ideal Jeffersonian democracy, it is simply impossible under the existing social order. In September 2013, Obama admitted that the top 1% grabbed 95% of all new income, leaving just 5% of the remaining for the entire population? (http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/15/news/economy/income-inequality-obama/;
The road to downward socioeconomic mobility and rising aspects of authoritarianism in America continued under Obama and this is his legacy as historians of the future will confirm. When the National Archives and the future Obama presidential library declassify documents and make them available to researchers in the middle of the this century, we will have a clearer picture of this administration. Of course, the performance of the presidents who follow Obama will have an impact on how his rankings will evolve, as I suspect that the US will be going through some very difficult times in this century because socioeconomic and political polarization combined with militarist adventures will continue to weaken America.”
Jaime Ortega-Simo.
(The Daily Journalist president and founder)
Barack Obama overall has halt the union of the United States in defying history into a progressist agenda. I am pro-grating support to gay cuples, giving greater civil rights for women and helping the lower end of America. However, that is not what defines great presidents and Obama has extended his powers to breakup and divide the nation by using certain situations to ignite greater austerity among Americans with his self-centered decision making. This is how I will remeber Obama, and I am no republican!
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