American Studies

5000 words essay

2008-04-03T21:41:00.002+04:30

The Outline of Whites’ Violence

Vs.

Blacks’ Nonviolence in American History

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood...

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

Prologue

African Slaves were the first Blacks whom had brought to the “New World” in 1619 and it was just 12 years passing from settlement of James Town. They weren’t aggressive, but aggression was upon them. If so poor, but human at least were they in their motherland; but apocryphal white gods forging ahead enslave them. Promising peace and piety sent them to hell where apostasy from their fathers’ belief was mandatory.

Violence violence and a little more violence was their wage from working in their unwanted servitude in charge of others’ malefactor. So gradually the common color of “good” became evil and the color of “evil” changed for innocence, a world full of Black and White.

As time passed the so called “slaves” start to ask for their human dignity and that was a totally new phase for violent response from the “masters”. Black takes a long time to fade as their hope; they hadn’t been giving up and reach to what they struggle for, as once Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last”

Introduction

Various dissatisfactions may result in protests in a community or a society. Religious, economical, societal and political concerns are amongst the most important factors which provoke different groups and classes to counter act against the status quo. In most of the time such displeasures end in some political gained grants, trivial or general reformations in current law and mechanism and compromise and returning to pre-challenge era. But in some occasions the depth and level of discontent is in its extreme thus the protestors are looking for a fundamental reformation or in other words revolution and subversion. Overthrow can be done by civilians or servicemen, in societal level such a protest is known as a movement. In deed, social movements are acts and processes in which some (most of time minorities but certainly not always) seek their own wills.

From one aspect movements can be divided to violent and nonviolent. Many of social movements are peaceful at start, but different events may lead them to violence; and off course in some cases their first intended shifts to a major one and may be revolution. Reading history since 19^th century shows that such procedures in China, Russia, France, Czechoslovakia, Iran and etc had been caused to revolution and regime change.

In China peasants were against high tax which they were obliged to pay to Emperor, but the mismanagement and not tolerating of their claim, led to emerging of Marxist beliefs and Chinese masses movement led by Mao Tse-tung who was a communist teacher. Some campaigns caused to ousting the last emperor of the Qing dynasty and establishing the People’s Republic of China.

In Russia the workers were against their low wages, but the Emperor’s police violently killed 5 of them, and that was the beginning of toppling Romanov’s Empire. 1917 February was the time to say good bye to Kremlin, just in 8 months form then the first communist government announced by Bolsheviks led by Lenin.

In France people had some criticisms on Empire, but neglecting their demands and treating with them brutality, expanding the bourgeoisie in state convince the people for democracy rather than dictatorship. If so this regime change took a 10 year struggle but at last people got what they want.

In Czechoslovakia as well harsh communist environment, encouraged people for a Reform, which off course soon changed to a movement for Velvet Revolution (which was coin thereafter for revolutions with reformative apparatuses). That was the beginning of so called Color Revolutions, nonviolent regime changes in ex-soviet states.

In Iran off course the main demand was on religion rather than economy, but people chose to have theological based democracy rather than living under Pahlavi’s dictatorship. So they decide to change and thus drove out the 2500 years kingdom in Iran and replaced a democratic Republic government.

As it’s obvious form previous lines most of social movements which had been enlarged to a national extend changed to a revolutionary movements, but in America there is an exceptional case.

Social movements in America which had been known from 1960s have a longer history; it dates back to the first days of American Revolution. Since then various and different actions, rebellions and movements flourished and diminished. Each of these events had led to a reform even a minor one.

So interesting it is that despite of numerous opponent beliefs and opinions none of them were looked for revolution. All Americans believe in America as a benevolent Empire, which have been bestowed them their rights and may be it can be called “democratic empire”, which is a self contrary term as Empire and Republic are binary opposites.

Blacks’ movement in 1960s in spite of all Ku Klux Klan violent actions against them was nonviolently supporters of America as well. Off course in a short period Black Power shifted to violence under leadership of intellectuals like Malcolm X, but still was supporter and fan of America.

Women’, Students’ and Indians’ movements have been supporters of America too. This is the exceptional identity of American social movements which despite of all different heterogeneous bona fide beliefs the overall activists are unanimously supporters of status quo and by that I mean America.

Entering of Blacks into the American Scene

“Violence is as American as cherry pie.”

H. Rap Brown (1943 - )

Africans entered into the “West Indies” a short after Europeans did. At first they weren’t “slaves” but servants whom could buy their freedom; but as days were gone more need for worker was felt, thus the servants enslaved and that’s all. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, an estimated total of 12 million Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas.

Slavery

The new discovered land seemed to be a “promised land” full of fertile lands, but much land were there, fewer men were present. Whites started to bring Blacks to there, primarily with consent and kindness and step by step interchanged their manner to kidnapping. Blacks were to be farmers or farmhands, but became indentured servants whom were enlisted to be free for more than 3 centuries.

Southern colonies was a paradise of cotton and West Indies Company as well as its eastern half was responsible for preparing demanded cotton for English textile companies. It’s obvious that anybody is looking for cheaper production and so more benefit. They put at work the new black comers, low wage and high gage servants who could made money far more than their own cost.

Slavery is obscure in American Constitution, if so some hints verify it within. The Founding Fathers with no exception were slave holders. They established laws to have blacks as their property, and an obligation to send back “runaways” to their masters. Huge and vast lands really required man power to be cultivated.

Too many discourses and dialogues were common about the inimical nature of this phenomenon but it was commonly widespread in southern states. But Eli Whitney invented a machine for prolonging the debate on abolitionism.

If so Missouri Compromise succeeded to some extend in banning of slavery extension but it was an ignition for the American Civil Wars. 450,000 to 483,000 casualties -save economical and emotional losses- is just the Human cost of this simple statement: to have or not to have slaves, that’s the question. From 1861 to 1865 Americans “spoke daggers” to each other to understood whether they should remain masters or simply became neighbors.

Abolitionism

The keystones of anti slavery dates back to 1783 but the organized steps towards it began years after it. Under the leadership of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, anti slavery campaigners succeeded in getting the slave trade to the British colonies abolished in 1807. The United States prohibited the importation of slaves that same year, though widespread smuggling continued until about 1862.

“Liberator” read and asked for emancipation and liberation of slaves from the starting hours of 1831 frankly, if so it took 32 years for this claim to be verified. Torture was what had been done upon poor slaves, thus those religious orthodox men whom were unable to have slaves financially or there was no need for black work in their occupation echoed for “abolitionism”.

William Lloyd Garrison was one who believed in nonviolent and peaceful campaign against slavery. As the founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833–70) he let the runaways Frederick Douglas and William Wells Brown to state their wishes to Northerners in his publication (North Star). But lucky he was as Elijah P. Lovejoy another American newspaper editor martyred in Alton, Illinois in defense of his right to print antislavery material in 1837.

Furthermore Whites also raided to post offices and burnt all anti-slavery stuffs; the post director refused to accept the anti-slavery materials and congress ignored to mention the issue as well.

Underground Railroad

Fugitive slave law of 1850 which asserted for sending back the runaways from the state to state in addition of a new opportunity for white jobless called “slave catcher” was another violent measure facing the blacks.

As a counter measure, Blacks developed a system called “Underground Railroad” or “Underground Railway” for transferring enslaved blacks to northern states and Canada to nonviolently free them.

Using disguise and darkness 40,000 to 100,000 blacks liberated from white tyranny and of course not “white supremacy”. Liberty Line introduced from 1830 was a brilliant hope for black peace sojourners, although it granted them Compromise of 1850 and Emancipation Proclamation (1863) by slave-holder Lincoln, which freed all slaves in the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. but violent Civil War had begun in 1861.

Not being too late must another case be mentioned; Dred Scott a slave who sued for liberty after living in a non-slave state; caused the Supreme Court to declare the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional! A national compromise violently broke simply to not grant a black his liberty.

Civil War

Emancipation Proclamation was meant that the blacks as freedmen! could (must) attend the Union Army and defend of other freemen (whites). United States Colored Troops was established involved of 178,000 blacks.

Out-Migrate vs. In-Migrate

While for decades blacks for violently brought to Americas for servitude, after emancipation in fear of Blacks’ retaliation whites thought to send back them to Africa.

Liberia

From 1817 a program called American Colonization Society emerged in Washington D.C with supports of local branches, churches, and the legislatures of Border States to transport freed and free-born blacks to Africa. The program was headed by Henry Clay and Francis Scott Key whom were from prominent slave holders. They bought a land on the western coast of Africa now called Liberia. Once forcibly in-migrated blacks then “peacefully” became out-migrated by whites and gained their freedom!

Discrimination

Although, if so in lip service blacks had been freed, but it was not encompassed the social rights such as right to vote and education. They were freed to be killed for defending of whites.

It took a long more time to these rights found legitimacy. By the 15^th amendment of American Constitution, Section 1, that reads: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” in 1870 Blacks found suffrage at last.

But another odd occurrence took place, for the 1^st time since and then the American President impeached, Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), 17th president of the United States (1865-1869) impeached accused of “violation of the Tenure of Office Act and the ‘command of the army’ provisions of the Army Appropriations” and also another one which conveys that Johnson had attempted to undermine Congress. Save what aforesaid Johnson was pro-blacks and support them, so simply and violently he removed.

Jim Crow

The last quarter of 19^th century was the time for another plot against Blacks. Jim Crow laws were discriminational written and un-written codes to prevent Black form accessing to public services like: parks, restaurants, hotels and etc. furthermore, Black veterans weren’t in an equal status as whites were. “Persons of color” weren’t called “negroes” but no inequality against them was common. This traditional violence against Blacks went further as a new club called Ku Klaus Klan emerged.

Ku Klux Klan

Post American Civil War a secret society of white Southerners in the United States was formed to resist the emancipation of slaves; they used terrorist tactics to suppress Black people. In fact they were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) whom believed America belongs to whom are 100% American. They were against immigrants whether in terms of ethnicity or religion but their major animosity was for poor Blacks. There were two in the United States, one founded immediately after the Civil War and lasting until the 1870s, the other beginning in 1915 and continuing to the present and still act violently against Blacks.

However, there were acts like Force Act in 1870 and the Ku Klux Act in 1871 which authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, suppress disturbances by force, and impose heavy penalties upon terrorist organizations; but “white violence” could not tolerate it and in United States v. Harris in 1882, the Supreme Court declared the Ku Klux Act unconstitutional.

W.E.B Dubois

“Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down.”

W. E. B. DuBois

William Edward Burghardt DuBois was the United States civil rights leader and political activist who campaigned for equality for Black Americans, he was the first Afro-American received PhD degree. He was one of founders of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and it was synchronous with Harlem Renaissance. This was a time for blacks to fight against white’s violence literarily. Of course, some black intellectuals were predecessors to them like Harriet Beecher Stowe with her "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Authors like Langston Hughes (belongs to Lost Generation) draw a vivid vision of Blacks’ situation in America; as he versifies:

I’m nobody, who are you?

Are you nobody too?

Then, there is a pair of us

Don’t tell you know

They’ll banish us

How already to be somebody?

Say your name all day long

Like a frog in the bog.

W.E.B. DuBois’s doctoral dissertation was The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870. As the editor of The Crisis, he encouraged the development of black literature and art and urged his readers to see “Beauty in Black.” In deed he and his contemporaries were the literate nonviolent campaigners against white’s violence.

Elijah Muhammad and Nation of Islam

“The Negro wants to be everything but himself...He wants to integrate with the white man, but he cannot integrate with himself or with his own kind. The Negro wants to lose his identity because he does not know his own identity.”

Elijah Muhammad

Elijah Poole converted to Islam as Elijah Muhammad was founder and leader of the black separatist religious movement known as the Nation of Islam (sometimes called Black Muslims) in the United States. He was famous for his rhetoric directed at white people, whom he called “blue-eyed devils.” He challenged white’s violence by articulating Islam rulings in Black Americans context and promoted racial unity and self-help and maintained a strict code of discipline among members. During World War II he asked his followers not to attend military service and serve for white’s devil whimsical desire. He was jailed for his thoughts and speeches, but being imprisoned he was challenging with white’s violence and try to find others to convert them to Islam and enter them to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X was one of them.

Malcolm X and Black Power

“There is nothing in our book, The Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone, but, if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion.”

Malcolm X

Malcolm Little well known as Malcolm X was a black militant leader who articulated concepts of race pride and Black Nationalism in the early 1960s. Primarily he was not a Muslim, but he converted to Islam and became a minister of the Nation of Islam movement being familiar with Elijah Muhammad. He was an exception in this narrative as he believed in violence rather than violence, in deed it’s his belief: “I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me.” Whites were violent to him so he was to them as well. This is was the bone of a little contention between him and MLK.

Back Power who were movement formed by American blacks to produce social equality and equal rights and emphasize racial pride; and Black Panthers who were radical underground African American organization that was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in the mid-1960s and advocated violence to attain liberation and equality for African Americans were largely influenced by his opinions. They were standing for violent campaign in facing of white’s violence and mostly Ku Klux Klan. For this belief he sentenced years of his life in prison and actually there he met Elijah Muhammad.

However, after he came back from Hajj pilgrimage and rename himself as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, chose a more nonviolent way in his struggle against white’s violence. That’s why he was assassinated in 1965 by some which there is belief they were Blacks related to Nation of Islam!

Thurgood Marshall and Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka

“The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down.”

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was the first black member of the U.S. Supreme Court. As an attorney he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), in which racial segregation in American public schools was declared unconstitutional. He’s prominent in advancing anti discriminational laws in US judiciary system. His legacy up to now is what Black community benefits form. Before his legacy white’s violence even militarily prevented Black students to entering White’s school, after it they become motley.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Movements

“Today the choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence.

It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

MLK

The most famous figure in American Black Community is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. doubtless. He is an American emblem of Nonviolence. King's nonviolent doctrine was strongly influenced by the teachings of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. Unlike the great majority of civil rights activists who have regarded nonviolence as a convenient tactic. King followed Gandhi's principles of pacifism. In King's view, civil rights demonstrators, who were beaten and jailed by hostile whites, through the redemptive character of their unmerited suffering educated and transformed their oppressors. King set about organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which gave him a base of operation throughout the South, as well as a national platform from which to speak

The Montgomery bus boycott started on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, and as a consequence was arrested for violating the city's segregation law. It was an ignition for chain of nonviolent protests against segregation and racial discrimination. Sit-Ins in Nashville under leadership of James Lawson, nonviolent demonstrations and public speech were usual tactics rendered by Blacks (mostly students) to confront Whites brutality and violence.

King joined other civil rights leaders in organizing the historic March on Washington. On August 28, 1963, an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 gathered peaceably in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. It led to Civil Rights Act in coming year.

But these accomplishments were not as easy as ABC; once MLK had said: “I'm frankly tired of marching. I'm tired of going to jail,” for every minute reason he had been sued by whites. In 1968 days before living for Memphis he’d asserted: “Living every day under the threat of death, I feel discouraged every now and then and feel my work's in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.” He was accurate, on April 4, 1968 he was shot in a Balcony of a hotel in Memphis by a violent white some like to call him James Earl Ray. He sentenced for a century a year after but even Dr. King’s family doesn’t believe in him as the assassinator.

If so King chose nonviolence and not nonexistence; but “White violence” chose nonexistence for him, even by announcing his birthday as a holyday.

Louise Farrakhan

After Muhammad's death in 1975 another group, retaining both the name and the founding principles of Elijah Muhammad's original Nation of Islam, was established under the leadership of Louis Eugene Wolcott converted to Islam with a new name Louis Farrakhan. He was leader of the New York Temple and the Nation' most prominent spokesman at the time of Elijah Muhammad' death. Although given a national post by Mohammed, Farrakhan disagreed with Mohammed' changes, and in 1978 he left to found a third Nation of Islam.

By the 1990s he had emerged as a prominent African American leader, as demonstrated by the success in 1995 of the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., which he helped to organize. In 1995 Qubilah Shabazz daughter of Malcolm X was accused of plot to assassinate him, but he didn’t sue the case. Farrakhan toned down his racial rhetoric and moved the group toward orthodox Islam after a bout with prostate cancer in 2000.

COINTELPRO

During the 1950s and '60s, the bureau used covert means to disrupt the activities of groups it considered subversive and to discredit their leaders; the operations, known as COINTELPRO (counterintelligence programs), were officially discontinued in 1971.

John Edgar Hoover, ex FBI director who was 48 years at office, clarifies the mission of COINTELPRO against nationalist blacks as below:

a. preventing form emergence of a new leader who can unify Blacks.

b. preventing from violence directed by Black nationalist groups

c. preventing from popularizing of Black Nationalist groups and their leaders

d. preventing from rapid growth of Black Nationalist Organizations especially among youth.

e. targets of these operation were: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad and … .

Hoover also ordered aggressive surveillance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and tried to discredit King by disseminating derogatory information about him to the media, Congress, and others.

Conclusion

It’s 2008, to a high extend Blacks and Whites have been melted, even a Black man have nominated himself for American Presidency; but still there is Ku Klux Klan (if so, underground); WASPs are still the superiors amongst nation; guys show “noose” to their Black friends and foes even jokingly and white’s violence is still common.

Individualism is a white phenomenon in American mind as volunteerism is; in fact as George Orwell says in Animal Farm: “all are equal but some are more equal” and this is the true meaning of egalitarianism and Human Rights in the States. America is a melting pot, but blacks never considered as edible and thus prevented to enter the pot.

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Resources:

· A Force More Powerful, Peter Ackerman, Palgrave 2000
· COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom, Nelson Blackstock, Pathfinder, 1975.
· Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite . Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008.
· Encyclopædia Encarta. Encyclopedia Encarta Premium 2007 Microsoft
· Nonviolent Social Movements, ed. Stephen Zunes, Blackwell 1999.

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2008-02-24T14:16:00.003+03:30

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American Exceptional Social Movement (700 words essay)

2008-02-24T09:23:00.004+03:30

As it’s obvious form previous lines most of social movements which had been enlarged to a national extend changed to a revolutionary movements, but in America there is an exceptional case.

1500 word Essay (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

2008-01-14T18:39:00.000+03:30

Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
March on Washington Speech, August, 1963

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), American clergyman and Nobel Prize winner, one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest was born on January 15, 1929, the second of three children. His father was a Baptist minister and served as pastor of a large Atlanta church, Ebenezer Baptist, which had been founded by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, maternal grandfather. Martin was ordained as a Baptist minister at age 18.

He attended public elementary and high schools as well as the private Laboratory High School of Atlanta University. King entered Morehouse College at age 15 in September 1944 as a special student. He received a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1948. In the fall of that year, King enrolled at Crozier Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and received his Bachelor of Divinity degree three years later. King’s public-speaking abilities—which would become renowned as his stature grew in the civil rights movement—developed slowly during his collegiate years. He won a second-place prize in a speech contest while an undergraduate at Morehouse, but received Cs in two public-speaking courses in his first year at Crozer. By the end of his third year at Crozer, however, professors were praising King for the powerful impression he made in public speeches and discussions. King was awarded a doctorate by Boston University in 1955. Throughout his education, King was exposed to influences that related Christian theology to the struggles of oppressed peoples. At Morehouse, Crozer, and Boston University, he studied the teachings on nonviolent protest of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. King also read and heard the sermons of white Protestant ministers who preached against American racism. Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse and a leader in the national community of racially liberal clergymen, was especially important in shaping King’s theological development.

While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a music student and native of Alabama. They were married in June 18, 1953 and would have four children. In 1954 King accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, a church with a well-educated congregation that had recently been led by a minister who had protested against segregation.

He had been a resident in Montgomery less than one year when Rosa Parks defied the ordinance regulating segregated seating on municipal transportation. King was soon chosen as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), the organization that directed the bus boycott. King’s serious demeanor and consistent appeal to Christian brotherhood and American idealism made a positive impression on whites outside the South. Incidents of violence against black protesters, including the bombing of King’s home, focused media attention on Montgomery. In February 1956 an attorney for the MIA filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking an injunction against Montgomery’s segregated seating practices. The federal court ruled in favor of the MIA, ordering the city’s buses to be desegregated, but the city government appealed the ruling to the United States Supreme Court. For 12 months, makeshift car pools substituted for public transportation. At first the bus company scoffed at the black protest, but as the economic effects of the boycott were felt, the company sought a settlement. Meanwhile, legal action ended the bus segregation policy. On June 5, 1956, a federal district court ruled that the bus segregation policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids the states from denying equal rights to any citizen. The boycott ended, and it thrust into national prominence a person who clearly possessed charismatic leadership, Martin Luther King, Jr.

By the time the Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision in November 1956, King was a national figure. His memoir of the bus boycott, Stride Toward Freedom (1958), provided a thoughtful account of that experience and further extended King’s national influence.

King, urged by prominent black Baptist ministers in the South to assume a larger role in the struggle for black civil rights following the successful boycott, accepted the presidency of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) -an organization of black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge racial segregation. As SCLC’s president, King became the organization’s dominant personality and its primary intellectual influence. He was responsible for much of the organization’s fund-raising, which he frequently conducted in conjunction with preaching engagements in Northern churches.

In January 1960, he resigned his Montgomery pastorate and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where the SCLC had its headquarters. SCLC sought to complement the NAACP’s legal efforts to dismantle segregation through the courts, with King and other SCLC leaders encouraging the use of nonviolent direct action to protest discrimination. These activities included marches, demonstrations, and boycotts. The violent responses that direct action provoked from some whites eventually forced the federal government to confront the issues of injustice and racism in the South. King’s challenges to segregation and racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States.

In 1963 Wrote 'Letter from Birmingham Jail,' arguing that it was his moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, in the every year he had Delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech to civil rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In 1964, King became the first black American to be honored as Time magazine's Man of the Year and also won the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway; Accepting the award on behalf of the civil rights movement, Dr. King said, "Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.". King's efforts were not limited to securing civil rights; he also spoke out against poverty and the Vietnam War; throughout 1966 and 1967 King increasingly turned the focus of his civil rights activism throughout the country to economic issues.

He began to argue for redistribution of the nation’s economic wealth to overcome entrenched black poverty. In 1967 he began planning a Poor People’s Campaign to pressure national lawmakers to address the issue of economic justice. After his assassination in April 4, 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee by a sniper then realized named James Earl Ray and sentenced for 99 years imprisonment. The FBI had believing that King had been associating with Communists and other radicals, but King became a symbol of protest in the struggle for racial justice; and at last President Ronald Reagan signs legislation designating Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday in 1983 (the 3^rd Monday of every new year).

King's nonviolent doctrine was strongly influenced by the teachings of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. Unlike the great majority of civil rights activists who have regarded nonviolence as a convenient tactic. King followed Gandhi's principles of pacifism. In King's view, civil rights demonstrators, who were beaten and jailed by hostile whites, educated and transformed their oppressors through the redemptive character of their unmerited suffering.

The SCLC helped the students organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), at a meeting held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, to coordinate the protests. As a direct result of the sit-ins, lunch counters across the South began to serve blacks, and other public facilities were desegregated.

An important interplay of action and response developed between government and civil rights advocates. And it was this interplay that did so much to quicken the pace of social change.

The most critical direct action demonstration began in Birmingham, Alabama, on April 3, 1963, under the leadership of Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The demonstrators demanded fair employment opportunities, desegregation of public facilities and the creation of a committee to plan desegregation. King was arrested and, while imprisoned, wrote his celebrated "Letter from a Birmingham jail" to fellow clergymen critical of his tactics of civil. King was arrested more than seven times during his many civil rights campaigns throughout the South.

On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 Americans from many religious and ethnic backgrounds converged on Washington, staging the largest demonstration in the history of the nation's capital. The orderly procession moved from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, where King electrified the demonstrators with an eloquent articulation of the American dream (I have a Dream) and his hope that it would be fully realized. In one of the most famous passages from the speech, King declared:

"When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual 'Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last'"

References

Encarta Encyclopedia Premium 2007 DVD edition

International Information Programs of Department of State

Why American Studies?

2008-01-11T12:23:00.001+03:30

My first impression to America dates back to days when I was a child. In that time my country was in war vs. Iraq. Iraq was known to me by its ex-leader Saddam, who had caused a lot of sorrows to my Land and people; as I remember he had a c-worker who ever had a hat with a context of stars and stripes; those days I thought to myself that America is a man who is friend of Saddam. To be frank I really had liked to be grown up sooner to kill both of them because they had been bombing my Land every often. Once they deprived my pals and I from going to the movies by a bomb which exploded near our school. As I became older Iran and Iraq reconciled and became friends, but still I would rather t meet a dead Saddam.

As the time passed internet introduced in Iran. I remember a lot of occasions when I had a chat moment with American citizens thorough Messenger; surprisingly most of them didn’t know either actually Iran is a country or even where it is located; amazingly many of them mistaken me as an Iraqi, in other words me and my ex-foe were the same in their American eyes (a great example of reconciliation of opposites of course without my consent). I knew their Superman, Batman and Catty woman, but they didn’t know our Rostum, Sohrab and Tahmineh.

I had been accepted for BA level in English Literature so I became more known of American intellectuals like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and many more; but once more I found out that they know more less about our intellectuals like Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa’di and others.

On the other hand America had been transformed to a superpower after USSR collapsed, America has been more and more powerful and by now it produces 31% of global science per year but still Know Nothing of Iran. I can remember made in USA weaponry killing my people, but I’m sure now American has such a memoir. They call us terrorist and threat to their homeland security, but we never do anything n their land.

There are a lot of my compatriots, whom are living in America by now; but no one can call them threat as most of them are well educated and wealthy people which America is benefiting from them. In fact even now I -as an American Studies post graduation student- don’t know why we peaceful and pacifist people are calling danger by them?

America puts sanctions on my country, teases our President, funds for chaos in our State, produces cultural goods against our national interest, undermines our historical honor and helps anybody who simply says a word against us.

American citizens must know we are not English people who buried White House, not Russians who had a quarter century Cold War vs. them; not Spanish, Mexican, French, Cuban or Vietnamese whom all had battles with America; not Taliban, Al-Qaeda or Black Power whom all committed missions against their security.

America, I believe is living in a hallucinational exceptionality which thinks once in a while must address a country an enemy to America. Iran had never sanctioned America or didn’t put any embargo on it, no American experienced fingerprint test entering Iran, but America doesn’t understand it. We don’t hate America but it does. In Iran I’m studying American Studies, Americanism and Americanization but they themselves coin terms of Anti-Americanism and Anti-Americanization. Sorry to say there is strong and immediate need to visit a psychoanalyst for America, it suffers from a virulent xenophobia.

I chose American Studies to understand why a powerful, smart, vast and plentiful country becomes morally weak, stupid and so sensitive to every comment on it? America is a good looking youth suffering from schizophrenia. Its mental disorder caused it to runaway from what it was and being a drop out from a religious school it belongs. It is not a culprit but a ill one needs cure rather than ruling.

America and Human Rights

2008-01-11T11:59:00.000+03:30

The United States of America was founded in 1776 during a revolution against British colonial rule. The current system of government began functioning in 1789, following the ratification of the country's constitution. Because the founders of the United States distrusted concentrated government power, they set up a system in which the federal government has three competing centers of power-executive, legislative, and judicial branches-and they left many powers with the state governments and the citizenry.

Population: 296,500,000

GNI/Capita: $37,870

Life Expectancy: 77

Religious Groups: Protestant (52 percent),

Roman Catholic (24 percent), Mormon (2 percent), jewish (1 percent),

muslim (1 percent), other (20 percent)

Ethnic Groups: White (66.9 percent), Hispanic (14.4 percent),

black (12.2 percent), Asian (4.2 percent), Native American and Hawaiian (0.9 percent), more than one race (1.3 percent)

Capital: Washington, D.C.

The Government of United States of America explaines its views on the matter as follows: The protection of fundamental human rights was a foundation stone in the establishment of the United States over 200 years ago. Since then, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been the promotion of respect for human rights, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States understands that the existence of human rights helps secure the peace, deter aggression, promote the rule of law, combat crime and corruption, strengthen democracies, and prevent humanitarian crises.

Because the promotion of human rights is an important national interest, the United States seeks to:

Hold governments accountable to their obligations under universal human rights norms and international human rights instruments;
Promote greater respect for human rights, including freedom from torture, freedom of expression, press freedom, women's rights, children's rights, and the protection of minorities;
Promote the rule of law, seek accountability, and change cultures of impunity;
Assist efforts to reform and strengthen the institutional capacity of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Commission on Human Rights; and
Coordinate human rights activities with important allies, including the EU, and regional organizations.

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) applies three key principles to its work on human rights:

First, DRL strives to learn the truth and state the facts in all of its human rights investigations, reports on country conditions, speeches and votes in the UN, and asylum profiles.

Second, DRL takes consistent positions concerning past, present, and future abuses. With regard to past abuses, it actively promotes accountability. To stop ongoing abuses, the bureau uses an "inside-outside" approach that combines vigorous, external focus on human rights concerns (including the possibility of sanctions) with equally robust support for internal reform.
Third, DRL forges and maintains partnerships with organizations, governments, and multilateral institutions committed to human rights. The bureau takes advantage of multilateral fora to focus international attention on human rights problems and to seek correction.

But Amnesty International has some other minding on USA case in Human Rights issue: Thousands of detainees continued to be held in US custody without charge or trial in Iraq, Afghanistan and the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In the US Supreme Court struck down the military commissions established by President Bush and reversed the presidential decision not to apply Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions to detainees suspected of links with the Taleban or al-Qa'ida. Congress passed the Military Commissions Act stripping the US federal courts of the jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus appeals from such detainees, providing for trials by military commission, and amending the US War Crimes Act. In September 2007, President Bush confirmed the existence of a program of secret detentions run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). There were reports of possible extrajudicial executions by US soldiers in Iraq, with a number of soldiers facing prosecution. There was a continued failure to hold senior government officials accountable for torture and other ill-treatment of "war on terror" detainees despite evidence that abuses had been systematic. There were reports of police brutality and ill-treatment in detention facilities in the USA. More than 70 people died after being struck by police tasers. Fifty-three people were executed in 14 states.

Major concerning of Human Rights institutions about America can be categorized as below:

Military Commissions Act
Renditions and secret detention
Guantánamo
Detentions in Afghanistan and Iraq
Unlawful killings by US forces outside the USA
Detention of 'enemy combatants' in the USA
Torture and other ill-treatment
Ill-treatment in jails and police custody
'Supermax' prisons
Women in prison
Prisoners of conscience
Death penalty
Other concerns

The Committee against Torture and the Human Rights Committee issued recommendations to the US authorities. They included calls for an end to secret detention and enforced disappearances and for the closure of Guantánamo. The Committee against Torture also called for cruel interrogation techniques to be rescinded, and for thorough and impartial investigations into torture and other ill-treatment, including the role of senior government officials.

On domestic policy, both Committees called for strict limitations on the use of electro-shock devices; a review of cruel conditions in "supermaximum" security prisons; and measures to prevent sexual abuse of prisoners and the shackling of women prisoners during childbirth. The Human Rights Committee also called for a moratorium on executions and a ban on "life without parole" sentences for children. It expressed concern that poor people, and in particular African Americans, were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, and continued to be disadvantaged under the reconstruction plans. It urged the government to ensure their rights were fully taken into account with regard to access to housing, education and health care.

Political developments in the United States in 2005 were dominated by controversy over nominations for two vacant positions on the Supreme Court, the country's highest judicial body; angry debates over the apparent ineffectiveness of the federal government's response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina; several high-profile cases of alleged corruption involving, among others, the leader of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives; and a criminal indictment of the most senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as heated debate over the premises of the intervention in Iraq. The year also saw continuing debate over the counterterrorism policies adopted by the administration of President George W. Bush.

References

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (Department of State)

Book Review of Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. The American People

2007-12-31T23:46:00.002+03:30

Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. The American People is a controversial work by Doctor Jamin B. Raskin, professor of constitutional law at American university. His writings have been published in Washington post, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Washington Monthly, The American Lawyer, Legal Times and George and Slate. Also he is author of We the Students. The present book had been published in 2003 by Routledge (Taylor & Francis Books Inc.) with the ISBN: 0415934397 and 27.50$ price in US.

The book includes ten chapters in 242 pages, bibliographical references as endnote and index. Each chapter begins with a prelude from famous Americans quotations on America. As it’s obvious from the title, its debate in on political questions concerning the issue of democracy according to the Constitution and rulings of the Supreme Court in the United Stats of America. The books had been published in a hardback and strong binding which it self resembles the seriousness of legal issues. On front cover a standing double-headed hammer is figured which can be a metaphor for doubt and hesitation in Supreme Court decision making which is in dilemma on which head should be hammered.

In his presentation Raskin asks for revising constitution by adding an amendment so called “Right to Vote” amendment, as he believes there is no real democratic franchise in a document which states 3/5 portion for Men. He also recommends for general election in presidency campaign in which the president must be chosen out of all 18-aged and older people direct vote and of course not in electoral system; in his suggestion every individual candidate who can gain at least 50% of the ballot regardless of his/her affiliation to any major, minor or no political party would be the President of the United States of America. Raskin offers that if none of candidates could get the half ballot, the last candidate’s votes in ranking should be shared to others and this process should be continued till one can gain the criterion.

Brian P. Marron in his review of the work asserts:

“In Overruling Democracy, Professor Jamin Raskin discusses how the Supreme Court has failed to enforce basic political rights by subordinating democratic principles inherent in the Constitution. The Court tolerates the usurpation of popular sovereignty through the manipulation of the electoral process. The Court also fails to protect the functioning of democratic principles in our everyday lives in cases dealing with schools and corporations. Throughout the book, Raskin offers several solutions to the democracy deficit, including several proposed constitutional amendments to clearly enshrine democratic rights. However, the issues are presented in such a manner that may undermine the book’s effectiveness as a tool for building support for a democracy reform movement.”

This book of course not as a handbook but as a really informative one can be useful for those with democracy concerns especially in modern United States context. As John Sweeney president of the AFL-CIO had echoed about this book:

“A gripping book about the Supreme Court’s assault on the political rights of the people. This book is required reading for every citizen who cares about the fate of our democracy.”

Raskin focusing on Bush vs. Gore (2000) “Taking on the elitist and reactionary impulses of contemporary conservatism, Overruling Democracy lays out a compelling plan for “we the people” to overrule the Court with some basic constitutional changes in the new century. Raskin’s aggressive to “constitutional patriotism” shows the way forward to a more democratic constitution, judiciary and nation.”

Raskin begins with a discussion of Bush v. Gore as a recent and blatant example of the Court’s (mainly the conservative justices’) hostility to democratic principles. He states that “the Court’s decision expressed perfectly its paramount commitment to the political rights of conservative majority-white factions in each state, its hostility to potential electoral majorities comprised of African Americans and Hispanics, its perplexing eagerness to show favoritism towards certain political parties over others, and its readiness in the crunch to substitute its political will for that of the people.” He ends the chapter by concluding that the justices have not embraced the protection of democracy as a central (or even important) value in the Constitution. The judges freely subordinate the constitutionally mandated tenets of democracy in order to protect other values that they hold dear.

Raskin opens the third chapter by stating that the Court has continued to assume that there is no right to vote in the Constitution. Yet textual silence has not prevented the Court from recognizing other rights such as the right to choose an abortion or the right to marry, as well as several exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Raskin argues that the recognition and enforcement of the right to vote would prevent manipulation of the electorate including incidents such as the purging of names from voter lists without giving the voter notice. A right to vote must be incorporated into the Constitution to protect it from actions taken by legislatures and tolerated by courts. Raskin concludes the chapter by offering a Right-to-Vote amendment designed to strengthen American democracy.

Next, Raskin explains that creating universal suffrage is not enough to restore America’s democracy. The “winner take all” feature of the electoral college depresses turnout and the value of votes cast in states that are lopsidedly Democratic or Republican. To replace the Electoral College, Raskin offers a “Popular Election of the President Amendment” that states: The President and Vice President shall be elected by direct popular vote of all U.S. Citizens eighteen years of age and older; but no person shall be elected President who has not attained at least 50 percent support among the votes cast. Whenever there are three or more candidates listed on the ballot, the ballot shall ask voters to rank their choices in order of preference. If no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the first-place votes cast, the last-place candidate’s ballots shall be redistributed to the second choice candidates of these voters. This instant runoff method shall continue until a candidate has achieved a majority of all votes cast.

In the fourth chapter Raskin discusses the Court’s historical treatment of congressional districts drawn to create districts where a majority of registered voters are members of a racial minority. These cases show how the Court allows incumbents to tailor democratic process to their advantage even at the expense of lessening the political efficacy of certain classes. He begins by explaining how the Civil Rights movement sought to restore African Americans’ right to vote. For a time the Justice Department was able to use the Voting Rights Act to protect black effective by suing under a theory of vote dilution. Raskin finds this “a far greater affront to democratic principles to build a congressional district around the political career of a single person than it is to shape a district to enable hundreds of thousands of citizens belonging to a long-gerrymandered-out racial group to take a turn at being in an electoral majority.”

In the fifth chapter Raskin explains how the Court further subverts democracy by allowing a “gerrymandering” of the ballot, suppressing participation of persons outside of the two largest parties. He begins by showing how the vast majority of the public wants to consider alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans. The Court upheld the Georgia statute by 1) finding petitioning to be no more burdensome to a candidate than winning a primary; and 2) recognizing the state’s interest in “avoiding confusion, deception, and frustration of the democratic process at the general election.” Raskin analyzes each of these justifications and concludes that they are either invalid or could be served through other effective means that impose fewer burdens on the democratic rights of the people.

On the Court’s assertion that petitioning for ballot access is “no more burdensome” for a candidate than winning a major party primary, Raskin explains that it is not a useful comparison. The proper comparison is thus not between how hard it is for any SWP candidate to get on the ballot (very hard) and how hard it is for a specific Democrat or Republican to emerge from a competitive primary battle (very hard). The proper comparison is between the chances that any Democratic or Republican nominee will be placed on the general election ballot (100 percent) and the chances that any SWP candidate will be placed there (miniscule under Georgia’s laws).

Raskin next turns to the other state interests the Court somehow recognized as “important” enough to justify ballot exclusion. “Avoiding confusion,” “voter confusion,” and preventing “ballot overcrowding” are frequently asserted as state interests being pursued by ballot access laws that work to exclude third parties. Raskin points out that this concern about the number of names on the ballot is weak if not pretextual. He concludes that the government should be forced to prove this claim of confusion before recognizing it as even a legitimate interest on which to base a restriction on a candidate or party’s right to run for office.

Next Raskin examines the state’s asserted justification of preventing deception. “Deception” refers to the highly imaginative scenario where a major party secretly creates a third candidacy designed to draw votes away from the opposing major party. Raskin explains that it is absurd to believe that if such a scheme existed that it would not be exposed in the media followed by a severe backlash against the perpetrators. Such an outlandish and unlikely scenario should not be sufficient to create an important interest used to justify such harsh ballot access restrictions.

Next, he turns to the sometimes-directly asserted interest in requiring third parties to show “a modicum of support.” Usually this showing is merely a means to pursue other state interests such as limiting the number of names on the ballot to avoid confusion. Sometimes the Court seems to describe it as an interest in itself. Raskin explains that if it is an independent interest, requiring a showing of “a modicum of support” does not seem to have any purpose at all. A more effective method of determining the “modicum of support” the Court wants to require would be a petition that includes a statement that the signer intends to vote for that person. Again this seems to usurp the purpose of the election.

Raskin next examines the Court’s rejection of the strategy of “fusion,” a process where a party nominates the candidate of another party. Raskin concludes that under this test signature requirements do not serve any important interests that justify their severe burden on the alternative candidates and parties. In fact, he continues, they impose an additional qualification for office along the lines of the ones struck down in Thornton and Cook. The signature requirements “effectively ban those that lack the resources or status of incumbents” and in essence “confers a kind of title of political nobility on those officials and candidates aligning themselves with the two-party system.”

In the sixth chapter Raskin examines how the Court has upheld the practice of excluding third party candidates from debates. Raskin rightly objects: “The constitutional rights of candidates … in public fora do not depend on their political popularity, estimated favor with the media or fund-raising prowess.” The first debate should include all presidential candidates on enough state ballots to make it mathematically possible to win the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election. In the last several elections this standard would have included four candidates. Subsequent debates would require the candidate meet two additional criteria: register five percent in a national opinion poll and at least 50 percent in a poll asking people who should be included in the next debate. This standard provides a more inclusive and democratic debate than any scheme provided thus far by the bipartisan CPD—especially its shameful 15 percent “viability” rule.

Democracy is not limited to the electoral process. Democratic freedoms are becoming less respected and protected within the institutions that people interact with every day. In the last third of the book, Raskin examines how democratic standards are impaired in our society’s institutions other than the electoral process. Their internal operation often tramples basic democratic liberties. Raskin shows how the Court has failed to protect democracy in these institutions.

In the seventh chapter Raskin discusses the state of democracy in our public schools. In a democratic society, schools should allow students and teachers to express themselves freely, bounded only by the school’s mission to educate. Raskin also explores the school system’s democratic duty to equip students with the skills necessary to effectively participate as citizens in a healthy democracy. He exposes Court decisions that have maintained unequal and inadequate school systems, thus creating a class of ill-prepared, second-class citizens.

In the next section Raskin explains how the Court has come to tolerate the unequal and inadequate distribution of education—our society’s prominent means of producing a robust and effective democratic citizenry. Brown v. Board of Education was a promising start to recognizing the importance of education to our democracy. It stated that citizens cannot be denied an equal right to an education based on race. Since then the Court has upheld state actions that create and maintain systems of unequal and inadequate delivery of education across different populations.

In the final chapter Raskin introduces some solutions to the problems identified throughout the book. He states that a widespread reform movement must mobilize to demand the adoption of policies designed to strengthen our democracy. Raskin explains that some of the solutions require the adoption of new Constitutional amendments such as the ones he has mentioned earlier. Congress lacks the power to effectively reverse the Supreme Court’s (mis)interpretations of the Constitution that rejected democratic values. Raskin concludes the book by stating how a widespread movement to restore democratic principles to the Constitution will be a useful backdrop to the coming struggle over Supreme Court confirmations.

E.J Dionne author of Why Americans Hate Politics and They only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era has a thinkable view about this book. He Says:

“American democracy thrives because people like Jamin Raskin, an eloquent, thoughtful, and provocative small-d democrat, insist on reminding us of our aspirations to equality and rule by the people. You may disagree with some of his ideas, as I do, and still come away refreshed and even electrified. The old issue was liberal judicial activism. The new issue is a conservative judicial activism that could constrain the ability of the democratic branches of our government to solve public problems. For liberals, Raskin says, ‘it is time to let go of any lingering nostalgic enchantment with the Supreme Court.’ He’s right.”

In general this work at least gives new visions on issue of American democracy and this point that whether it’s is appropriate kind of peoples’ consenting or just a mocking oligarchy in disguise of democracy.

American Identity and Issue of War

2007-12-29T22:51:00.000+03:30

American Identity and Issue of War

Identity is about our self-perception and others, of us as well national identity is a one consisted of individual identities, thus individual identity is the substrate of social identity. This role hasn’t any exception eve in America. Three different types of identity is observable in America, which in this writing focusing on the issue of war these three will more discussed. The three are Resistance, Legitimizing and Projective Identities.

All American individuals are defending of a holy triangle of God, Gold and Gun; of course some subtle differences are obvious in various people’s mind of issue, but almost none of them offend on these three and in fact most are defenders. They believe in a bestowed land and power from God and wealth as well. Gun is a symbol for them to defend of their values and supporting their identity; albeit its over-expanding usage in peace time and by civilians has emerged the issue of Gun Control in USA, but no one believes in gone guns.

Elements of American social identity can be categorized in Exceptionality, Continuity and Distinction. Americans believe in their military as a peace-maker rather than a chaos-bringer; they look at their military forces as exceptional guardians of global peace. For this exceptionalism they count four components: 1. Soft power, 2. Democracy and pragmatism, 3. Religion and voluntary organizations and 4. Uniformity.

Soft power: American draftees have a sense of proud and honor to fight for America, they believe in it as their own identity, and off course they are wholly respectable by Nation as there is a department in Cabinet for their affairs which is called Department of Veterans Affairs and a national day (9/11) as well.

Democracy and pragmatism: All America’s goings into war must be by Congress members’ ratification who are chosen by Nation or in some special events by President’s order who is also stands for Nation

Religion and voluntary organizations: Almost all American soldiers think of themselves as divine warriors whom are struggling for God’s promised peace in world and all of them are in their own will to attend military forces.

Uniformity: American military is at service of one nation and one flag and another one which is called Pentagon.

Continuity is the second element. Aspects of American identity all are in meaningful Continuity, their glance to war, is the same as their gaze to peace, industry, family, agriculture, state, neighbor and many more issues. In fact there is a whole identity and all other readings and observations to everything is upon it, thus it can be claimed there is a continuous trend in American watching of world.

Distinction is the third and last element of American social identity. At first impression it may mis-considered with Exceptionality, but it must be said that in exceptionalism argument is on notions and concepts that are unique in America and there is no pair for them throughout the world; but in Distinction the debate is on things which are never found in America or in other words there is no case and place for them in there. Apartheid and dictatorship can be come forward as examples of American distinction to some other nations.

Film Review: Dead Man

2007-12-29T22:40:00.002+03:30

Dead Man

Date of Release: May 26, 1995

Director and playwright: Jim Jarmusch

Genre: Western

Main artists: Johnny Depp (William Blake), Avital (Thel Russell), Gary Farmer (Nobady), Lance Henriksen (Cole Wilson), Michael Wincott (Conway Twill) and John Hurt (John Scholfield).

Synopsis:

Bill Blake comes in the town of Machine to work in a factory as an accountant; but unfortunately he has come just one month late because of his parents’ death and dealing with their funerals and so he losses the job. At the coming night of his arrival in to town, Bill confronts with a hawker girl and being invited to be with her for the night but the girl's former boy friend (son of Machine's Metal Works Company owner) comes and bill obliged to kill him as self-defense and he himself became wounded. He ran away and at morning waking up he meets Nobody who is an English literate Indian; he calls William Blake the Dead Man as he has name of a dead English poet and also carrying a bullet in his chest. They start a journey to escape from their prosecution(ors), on way they face with different surprising and adventures; these events transforms William Blake into a cold blooded man slaughterer just for his survival. It makes a killing-field which their death is its outcome.

Setting:

Time: the film is set in late 19^th century,

Place: in extreme western frontier of America.

Genre: Western, Drama

"It is preferable not to travel with a dead man." Is a quotation from Henri Michaux with which the movie begins, so initially it is obvious that the audiences are going to watch a fully metaphoric movie. William Blake (1757-1827), English poet, painter, and engraver, who created an unusual form of illustrated verse; his poetry, inspired by mystical vision, is among the most original, lyric, and prophetic in the language is name of the main character and Nobody which I think can be a metaphor from American dramatist Arthur Miller’s most renowned work, Death of a Salesman (1949) which tells the story of a traveling salesman, Willy Loman, who experiences frustration and failure as he reflects upon his life, in a scene that Charley (Loman’s friend)speaks over the salesman’s grave start with “Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman…” is name of the second man. Both are metaphors seeking and fighting for their identities: Blake has lost his kin and hits the road to west in search of a location where he can ignite a new life. Although it’s asserted in the finishing scripts that it’s a fictional story and no one should be considered as any real character but to a high extend Willy Blake (the dead man) represents the ex-President Andrew Jackson who was a orphan as Billy is and a Dead Man as he had a bullet in his chest too.

Technique of Film:

Dead Man is projected in black and white, which by itself represents the sorrow mood of the story; furthermore it shows that all main characters in the work are white and good or black and villain, there is no gray main character in the story. In 1995 a black and white film can also considered as a dehabitualization and deconstruction after long time color motion pictures (since 1940 & 50s). Dead Man is full of violence and that’s why it got R in rating, it conveys a full sense of bitterness and fright in 19^th centaury America.

The music of the film is outstanding; written and performed by Neil Young using an electric guitar, he did solely what the whole blacks and whites did or what had been done in whole black and white.

Figures of Play (rather than speech)

The train seems to move retroversively which might is intended to takes back the audiences to the willing time in the western territories of 19^th centaury America. Starting in train Billy Blake understood that people in that land “speak dagger” to innocents; but as it’s a long time since Shakespeare’s Hamlet, they speak and versify in gun. From street to bed and from hate to love all should have gun “because it’s America”. Industrialization also put more wood on fire of brutality as locomotive engineer did in the starting scenes. Another notion which must be considered is tobacco, a healing herb for Indians which has been changed into a smoking grass for whites.

Conclusion

Dead Man talks and shows nothing but a dead value of humanity. It shows that in modern so-called civilized West even a pinto is more valuable than a man (even a white one). Jarmusch’s cinema always shows social problems and issues just as it’s observable in his other work like: Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1992), Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California (1993), Year of the Horse (1997) and Butterfly Man (2005).

White House Video Tour

2007-12-21T15:35:00.001+03:30

“I pray Heaven to Bestow the Best of Blessings on THIS HOUSE and on All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but honest and Wise Men ever rule under this roof.”

Abraham Lincoln

The official website of White House is consisted of different sections. President, Vice President, First Lady, wife of VP and Barney (Bushs’ pet) are those who have individual link in home page. One of the most amazing parts is White House Video Tours, which itself is combined of various subdivisions. There are numerous links to virtual tours to every room of the House; Panoramic Tours, West Wing, Historical Photo Essays and Articles & Anecdotes. Some other tours are also available, In Person, On Line, Panoramic and Grounds & Ground. In Person Tours are at hand for all Presidents and First Ladies up to now, with a full bio and photo package for each. Sixteen 360° Photo Tours from colorful rooms have been made the virtual House more decorated. Great hyper-links are also put to Kid’s specific space, where they can learn more about their homeland and its history.

Tolerating few moments after entering to video tours, George W Bush’s introduction to Oval Room start to play, it takes about seven minutes. Furthermore some other videos are also at reach. You can really feel home but by sure not House, just walls and furniture can not show the real atmosphere of the house but just a second handed virtual space which is nothing more than a dead album!; may be interactive version in which visitors can have a hand on every visible thing even though in a graphical style can make it more real. Virtual reality can be accessed by optional authorized mandate, so then every individual can feel House as home.

Planting Spinage for Espionage

2007-12-14T15:53:00.000+03:30

Why Spying and Policymaking Don't Mix

By Henry Kissinger

...“The NIE holds that Iran may be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by the end of 2009 and, with increasing confidence, more warheads by the period 2010 to 2015. That is virtually the same timeline as was suggested in the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate. The new estimate does not assess how long it would take to build a warhead, though it treats the availability of fissile material as the principal limiting factor. If there is a significant gap between these two processes, it would be important to be told what it is. Nor are we told how close to developing a warhead Tehran was when it suspended its program or how confident the intelligence community is in its ability to learn when work on warheads has resumed. On the latter point, the new estimate expresses only "moderate" confidence that the suspension has not been lifted already.”…..

“The executive branch and the intelligence community have gone through a rough period. The White House has been accused of politicizing intelligence; the intelligence community has been charged with promoting institutional policy biases. The Key Judgments document accelerates that controversy, dismaying friends and confusing adversaries.”….

“Intelligence personnel need to return to their traditional anonymity. Policymakers and Congress should once again assume responsibility for their judgments without involving intelligence in their public justifications. To define the proper balance between the user and producer of intelligence is a task that cannot be accomplished at the end of an administration. It is, however, one of the most urgent challenges a newly elected president will face.”

Intelligence Oversight In Free Fall

By David Ignatius

… “The intelligence committees were meant to be bipartisan. And to avoid the usual congressional logrolling, they weren't permanent committees at first. Back then, the congressional leadership expected it would be difficult to get anyone to serve very long on the intelligence panels, because the members wouldn't be able to talk about what they did.”

Congressional oversight of intelligence was a radical idea. Some experts questioned whether it was realistic to ask elected officials to sign off on the work of intelligence agencies -- which, when you strip away all the high-minded language, basically involves the systematic violation of other countries' laws. Intelligence agencies steal other nations' secrets, bribe their officials into committing treason, intercept their most private conversations. And that's just the easy, noncontroversial stuff. We haven't gotten to interrogation techniques.

Reading the newspapers over the past week, you would have to conclude that this oversight system is broken. It was intended to set clear limits for intelligence activities and then provide bipartisan political support for the operatives who do the dirty work. Instead, the process has allowed practices that are later viewed as abuses -- and then, once the news leaks, it has encouraged a feeding frenzy of recrimination against the intelligence agencies.”…

“The oversight process has broken down in a deeper way: The intelligence committees have become politicized. Members and staffers encourage political vendettas against intelligence officers they don't like, as happened when Goss brought his congressional aides with him to the CIA. The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran has become a political football; so has negotiation over legal rules on intercepting foreign communications, one of the nation's most sensitive activities. The bickering has turned the intelligence world into a nonstop political circus, to the point that foreign governments have become increasingly wary of sharing secrets.

The CIA makes too many mistakes. It is too cautious and bureaucratic. It tolerates too much mediocrity. But looking at the process of oversight -- the retroactive blame game masquerading as accountability -- is it any wonder the CIA needs help? This process is broken, and the next administration should think creatively about how to fix it.”

Analysis

Passing a more than week form NIE on Iran issue, still it’s a hot controversy among politicians and media. Intelligence agencies believe that there is no fear for atomic Iran at least to 2015, and they have been concluded from their report that by now Iran doesn’t look after atomic bomb; while politicians say they are wrong and Iran is just working on N-bomb and WMDs. It seems some thing strange here the specialists find the test is clear but their current chiefs claim that they are wrong and easily deconstruct all reputation and burden they have been cultivated. The policy maker bosses proudly state: You are wrong, because we don’t like your findings; You are wrong, because we lose our pretext on the issue; in fact you Intelligence Community have been planted Spinage in stead of Espionage. We the omniscient policy makers from our safe and secure benches know what you couldn’t find by all your high-tech apparatuses. The imperiously pleas of the political gurus may result in nothing but making IC infamous. It’s a might that these assessments on estimates show statesmen ever upper hand, but it will affect on their intelligent servants’ opinion on them; The common sense believe on satisfying geniuses of the state, otherwise it may result in brain drain; by this metaphor I warn gurus to affably caress the smarts before the other religions to that.

Spies Spice on Iran Dish

2007-12-07T13:19:00.000+03:30

With New Data, U.S. Revises Its View of Iran

Mark Mazzetti in The New York Times says:The spy agencies had swallowed hard and pledged to do better after a presidential commission in March 2005 issued a blistering accounting of the intelligence failures leading to the Iraq war.

But a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that was issued two months later said Iran’s leaders were working tirelessly to acquire a nuclear weapon — a finding that, like the prewar intelligence on Iraq, has now been acknowledged to have been wrong in one of its chief conclusions.

Current and former intelligence officials insist that much of the 2005 Iran report still holds up to scrutiny.

At the same time, they acknowledge that in retrospect, some of its conclusions appear to have been thinly sourced and were based on methods less rigorous than were ultimately required under an intelligence overhaul that did not begin in earnest until later.

The officials said that the 2007 estimate was an attempt by spy agencies to examine the Iran problem in a new light, and that in the process they recast many of their principal judgments about Iran’s weapons programs that might have relied on outdated information.

Some sources used for the 2005 estimate were discarded for the new report, and some old information that intelligence agencies did not use for the 2005 estimate was re-examined and included in the estimate released Monday.

The new intelligence estimate concludes with “high confidence” that Iran halted work on its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

Government officials said the new judgments were grounded largely in information from human sources that is buttressed by other information gathered by spy satellites and communications intercepts.

Analysts from disparate spy agencies are no longer pushed to achieve unanimity in their conclusions, a process criticized in the past for leading to “groupthink.” Alternate judgments are now encouraged.

In the case of the 2007 Iran report, “red teams” were established to test and find weaknesses in the report’s conclusions. Counterintelligence officials at the C.I.A. also did an extensive analysis to determine whether the new information might have been planted by Tehran to throw the United States off the trail of Iran’s nuclear program.

One result was an intelligence report that some of the intelligence community’s consistent critics have embraced.

No proof Iran ever had nuke program

The Jerusalem post cited from Associated Press quoted: Russia's foreign minister said Wednesday there was no proof that Iran has ever run a nuclear weapons program, and praised Teheran for its readiness to cooperate with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

"Data that we have seen don't allow to say with certainty that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program," Sergei Lavrov said when asked to comment on the US intelligence report saying that Iran suspended its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2003.

He said he was referring to the intelligence data which Washington had provided to Moscow as part of a dialogue on Iran over the past few years.

Russia and China, another important ally of Iran, have grudgingly approved two sets of limited UN sanctions against Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. But the Kremlin has bristled at the US push for tougher measures, saying they would only widen the rift.

"Naturally, we will need a full clarity," he said. "We support the IAEA's activities, which the IAEA and Iran have pledged to actively pursue. We support Iran's determination to do that ... and we will determine our future steps based on professional expert conclusions of the IAEA."

On Tuesday, Russia's President Vladimir Putin told Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, that Tehran's nuclear program should be transparent and remain under control of the UN nuclear watchdog.

Lavrov said that Putin urged Jalili to fully cooperate with the IAEA, answer all its questions and also meet international demands to freeze its uranium enrichment program.

Intelligence on Iran

The new U.S. assessment has some good news -- but the reaction to it could be bad.

Washington Post says:THE NEW National Intelligence Estimate on Iran contains some unambiguously good news: that Tehran halted a covert nuclear weapons program in 2003, and that it is responsive to the sort of international pressure applied by the United States and other Western governments. Iran's "decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs," says the public summary released Monday. That sounds like an endorsement of the diplomatic strategy pursued by the Bush administration since 2005, which has been aimed at forcing Iran to choose between the nuclear program and normal economic and security relations with the outside world. It strengthens the view, which we have previously endorsed, that this administration should not have to resort to military action to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities.

That's not to say the United States should never attempt to negotiate directly with Iran about its nuclear program. But before doing so, the administration should have some indication that the Iranian regime is prepared to comply with binding U.N. resolutions and seriously address other U.S. concerns. A report by U.S. intelligence agencies is an unsatisfying substitute for a signal that has yet to come from Tehran.

Analysis

The recent report by 16 intelligence agencies in USA known as NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) must be considered from different aspects. This post Annapolis report shows that American government gained null in the conference, furthermore Iran had been invited to Arab countries summit for the first time, which is another defeat for Israerica administration. In addition Iran held a Judiciary summit for Muslim countries in which a lot of states had participated in. in fact I'm not as optimistic to interpret the recent NIE as a certain official formal acceptance of USA for not looking to Iran as a N-bomb maker; in spite it could be a temporary trick. USA had warned a lot about NBC threats post 9\11, which after not finding any WMDs in Saddam’s Iraq and the recent NIE on Iran issue; many may look at point as the US president is a liar which just looks for vindicating his failures in his policy toward confronting terrorism. So I believe there must be a NBC or WMD attack in a few months, and that may help to validate White House’s adopted positions toward a severe danger which has been putting Humans fate at stake. Otherwise it may build a presidential lying chain in peoples’ mind; Water gate, Iran-Contra, Monica gate and the current scandal in US executive which I prefer to call it Terrorism illusion gate.

Annapolis Antipode Aim

2007-11-30T13:22:00.000+03:30

Excerpt News from various presses

The Wall Street Journal online in its Review and Outlook column under After Annapolis says: “Mr. Bush is helped, too -- at least in theory -- by the rising power of Iran, and the fear this inspires among Sunni regimes that Tehran will capitalize on the Palestinian issue for its own revolutionary ends. This helps account for the presence of Egyptians and Jordanians at the Annapolis conference, but also the Saudis.”

New York Times states: The Middle East peace conference here on Tuesday was officially about ending the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But there was an unspoken goal just below the surface: stopping the rising regional influence of Iran and Islamic radicalism.
New York Times Analysis of the event form Annapolis asserts:
Iran Casts Shadow on Mideast Talks

The Middle East peace conference here on Tuesday was officially about ending the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But there was an unspoken goal just below the surface: stopping the rising regional influence of Iran and Islamic radicalism. An adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team who spoke on condition of anonymity aired: “The Arabs came because they need a strategic alliance with the United States against Iran.”
Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya television said: “They worry that Iran and its allies act as if this may be the beginning of the end of America’s moment in the Middle East.”
Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, put it this way: “… the Israeli-Palestinian problem is not the core and can be solved, and their fear of Islamic extremism and Iran, which they call the Persian threat. This is what brought them here.”
President Bush listed three reasons why he thought “the time is right” for Annapolis. First, “because Palestinians and Israelis have leaders who are determined to achieve peace.” second, “because a battle is under way for the future of the Middle East, and we must not cede victory to the extremists.” third, “because the world understands the urgency of supporting these negotiations.”
Representative Gary L. Ackerman, (D- NY) calimed: “Everybody at Annapolis has something in common,” he said. “It’s not love of Israel or the Palestinians. It’s fear of Iran. Everyone needs a relative to protect them from Iran.”

The Statesman on its World column says: “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today that the US-brokered West Asian peace conference was a “failure” and that Israel is doomed to “collapse,” lashing out at the Annapolis gathering that many saw as aimed at isolating Iran.”

Israeli Ynetnews in its Israel Opinion column declared:

Iran wins at Annapolis

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been lashing out publicly the past few days at the US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian summit in Annapolis, denouncing the meeting as a Zionist conspiracy and slamming fellow Arab countries for participating. But if anyone is sitting happy after yesterday's events, it's the little man in Iran, whose country and its proxies have emerged more empowered. First let's look at the Palestinian side. President Bush read a joint declaration that committed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to conclude negotiations by the end of next year aimed at an Israeli evacuation of much of the strategic West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, handing the territories over to Abbas' US-backed security forces.

One step closer to victory
Iran must also be sitting happy since its proxy state Syria is exiting Annapolis victorious. Syria is in a military alliance with Iran and is accused by the US of supporting the insurgency in Iraq and generating instability in Lebanon…, Bush wrongly believed he could isolate Iran from Damascus by inviting Syria to Annapolis, but the egg is all over the US president's face. Syria cannot breathe without Iranian permission, let alone decide to attend the Annapolis conference. This coup was coordinated. Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Assad played Bush for a fool. And then we have Saudi Arabia, no friend of Iran, but its agenda regarding Israel jibes with Tehran.

Background and Analysis

Annapolis Conference is held to may find way(s) for resolving Israel-Palestine aging skirmishes. But as many observers believe this is not the point as none of Camp David, Sharm Al-Sheikh or any other conferences which had concerned the issue gained nothing more than nil. Annapolis is a gathering for evaluating Iran’s power at the region and finding a solution to deter Iran from becoming more invulnerable. If so Iranian officials including their Supreme leader and President had announced it as a fall which is really occurring in the Fall. Although 47 states and organizations had attended the show, but common sense knows that this might willing peace never will born without Iran accepting nod. Sunni Arabs fear of promoting Shiite Iran, Zionist Israel is panic of Iran’s growing military power; United Stated is concerning atomic Iran, and the rest are mimicking puppets of these. Furthermore presidency crises in Lebanon and Pakistan can affect the future of the issue and Oil had changed to a launched missile with a indistinct destination; so I’m severely disagree to what president Bush(Jr.) called “the right time”, it should be postponed to a more calm time than now. At last I like to call it American version of Security Council which is promoting Iran issue once more but not in UN if so in America.

List of Participants in Annapolis Conference
Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State Web site: introduces participants as:

Attendees: 1. United States 2. Israel 3. Palestinian Authority 4. Algeria 5. Arab League Secretary General 6.Bahrain 7. Brazil 8.Canada 9.China 10.Egypt 11. European Union Commission 12. European Union High Representative 13. European Union President (Portugal) 14. France 15. Germany 16. Greece 17. India 18. Indonesia 19. Iraq 20. Italy 21. Japan 22. Jordan 23. Lebanon 24. Malaysia 25. Mauritania 26. Morocco 27. Norway 28. Oman 29. Pakistan 30. Poland 31. Qatar32. Russia 3. Saudi Arabia 34. Senegal 35. Slovenia 36. South Africa 37. Spain 38. Sudan 39. Sweden 40. Syria 41. Quartet Special Envoy Tony Blair 42. Tunisia 43. Turkey 44. United Arab Emirates 45. United Kingdom 46.U.N. Secretary-General 47. Yemen

Observers: 1.the International Monetary Fund 2. the World Bank.

Co-author Book Review

2007-11-30T13:09:00.001+03:30

Review of Transnational America: Contours of Modern US Culture

Transnational America: Contours of Modern US Culture is an editorial book including 13 essays by different individuals plus a completely illustrated one named photo essay in the work, edited by Russell Duncan and Clara Juncker. Museum Tusculanum Press has published it in 276 pages paperback with ISBN 8772899581 on 2004 in Copenhagen.

Contributors in this one volume editorial are experts in various disciplines mostly English Literature and American Studies.

The work categorized in 5 major categories: 1- Visions and Revisions 2- Secrets and Lies 3- Photo Essay 4- New People 5- New Places, which each one subcategorizes to a few essays.

This book has a pro-American structure, and tries to introduce America as a transpattern and even an Archetype which all other nations and states must follow from its nation-state pattern. Many countries are consciously or unconsciously go after it, and its taste and scent can be sensed in rest of the world. That’s why it’s called Transnational America.

In fact editors believe in an alliteration of Trans in everything related to America as it’s depicted in editors’ introduction:

“A transatlantic voyage can discover a new continent or start new lives, and a transcontinental exploration can give rise to Manifest Destiny. Pioneers can transverse frontiers to build a nation. To transmigrate is to travel through one country on the way to a more permanent resting place. Slaves are transported; immigrants make transitions; people are transformed. Transactions are necessary to property acquisition. Translators mediate among languages. Hopes are transmitted; communities are transplanted; nations are transfigured. Media producers transcribe programs for broadcast. Employees are transferred to regional for international offices.”

It can be said -In deed- the book tries to normalize the trans-Naturalization concept.

“The editors commissioned articles that explain the contours of the ‘glocal’ (global and local) and ‘intermestic’ (international and domestic) tendencies involved in transnational America.” The language of the work is not too complicated but to some extent sophisticated, editors intend to deliver their minds by coining new words using blending method which can be a sign and metaphor of interdisciplinary approach of the book per se.

“They address the complex issues of globalization, American mythology, Christian proselytizing, modern slavery, conspiracy theory, apocalyptic terrorism, Vietnam stories, international feminism, changing gender roles, resurgent regionalism, Hillary Clinton, Muhammad Ali, Latinos, and the changing definitions of place-be they in Hungary, Nigeria, Estonia, the American South or Canadian cities. As the word enters America, so America enters the world, unfettered by territorial boundaries, and experiencing ambivalent reactions of acceptance and resistance.”

It’s really hard to label it as unique, but undoubtedly it’s a great work for those who are new comers in Americaology and Globalizationology. Popular culture is smelled in the whole; examples, similes and metaphors to different Hollywood motion pictures give a subtle abstract interactive mood to work.

Nonetheless it has a unique part, and it’s the photo essay. 14 Dazzling photos which may represents 14 essays of the work. A well expert eye obviously can find a lot and even more in each; ‘Naturalization’, ‘Mc Donaldization’, American Surreallization, Presidential Exceptionalization, American Spherialization, 9/11ization, Conspiring Terrorization, American jigsawization, Phallicist Feminization, Negro-Islam Americanization, Economical Novelization, Mexico-America Hybridization, Amerinadaization, un-American assimilation; are probable conceptualized nominations which I dare to put on them, and of course all are coined by me save in quotation marks. I really recommend everyone who is interested in book and is in lack of time for whole reading even though skipping the rest live a quarter with this photo essay which has a encyclopedic essence.

As it is asserted in the book for American Understanding various notions and concepts must be taken into account; ‘nationalism’, ‘racism’, ‘manhood’, ‘Christianity’, ‘globalization’, ‘immigration’, ‘classic-democratic roots’, ‘militarism’, ‘technology’, ‘advertising banners’, ‘youth’, ‘future’, ‘progress’ and ‘frontier’ are issues which are reviewed in this work, so paves the way for American Understanding. But some other points are neglected in this work if so they are being concerned as modern US culture elements too; Hip Hop music, same sex marriage, new concept of Stew as successor of Melting Pot, Voluntarism, Democratization of the World and pre-emption. Nevertheless it enlightens new horizons in watching America as an insider even out of it.

Abstract of 5000 word essay

2007-11-30T12:38:00.000+03:30

Nonviolence is a doctrine with which some may seek their volitions and of course without applying any violence. In the contemporary age this concept reminds Gandhi’s campaign in India and especially Martin Luther King Junior in United States of America.

Numbers of works have been done about its application in the contemporary usage, but in this writing nonviolence thought and its rendering methods is going to be scrutinized in Colonial and pre-Revolution America, according to Gene Sharp’s masterpiece on the issue: The Methods of Nonviolent action (1973) which by many is regarded as the handbook of this doctrine. Sharp in this 3 volume book introduces ‘198 methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion’, which some of them are going to be reviewed in pre-Revolution America context.

In post Cold War era this doctrine frequently has been applied in events so called Color Revolution. Thus the title Color revolution in Colonial America is chosen for this work. In spite of its soft and kind appearance, applying this doctrine led to one of the harshest occurrences throughout the history i.e. Regime Change.

‘Wearing of symbols’, ‘Paint as protest’, ‘Parades’, ‘Assemblies of protest or support’, ‘Camouflaged meetings of protest’. ‘Social boycott’, ‘Consumers' boycott’, ‘Refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments’, ‘Seizure of assets’, ‘Dual sovereignty and parallel government’ and etc. are some of the methods which with Colonial Americans by nonviolent belief had progressed American Revolution in Colonial America.

2007-11-24T15:46:00.000+03:30

Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats’ Defeat?

((((((((Summarized)))))))))

WHEN President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran. But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don’t, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night’s debate, the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one.
The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is so flagrantly rerunning the sales campaign that gave us Iraq. The same old scare tactic — a Middle East Hitler plotting a nuclear holocaust — has been recycled with a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.
Yet 2002 history may not literally repeat itself. Mr. Cheney doesn’t necessarily rule in the post-Rumsfeld second Bush term. There are saner military minds afoot now: the defense secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen, the Central Command chief William Fallon. They know that a clean, surgical military strike at Iran could precipitate even more blowback than our “cakewalk” in Iraq. The Economist tallied up the risks of a potential Shock and Awe II this summer: “Iran could fire hundreds of missiles at Israel, attack American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, organize terrorist attacks in the West or choke off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s oil windpipe.”
Joe Biden said Tuesday night, if we attack Iran to stop it from obtaining a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, we risk facilitating the fall of the teetering Musharraf government and the unleashing of Pakistan’s already good-to-go nuclear arsenal on Israel and India.
A full-scale regional war, chaos in the oil market, an overstretched American military pushed past the brink — all to take down a little thug like Ahmadinejad (who isn’t even Iran’s primary leader) and a state, however truculent, whose defense budget is less than 1 percent of America’s?
Yet there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it’s a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans.
Whatever happens in or to Iran, the American public will be carpet-bombed by apocalyptic propaganda for the 12 months to come. Mr. Bush has nothing to lose by once again using the specter of war to pillory the Democrats as soft on national security. The question for the Democrats is whether they’ll walk once more into this trap.But even a lame-duck president can effectively wield the power of the bully pulpit. From Mr. Bush’s surge speech in January to Gen. David Petraeus’s Congressional testimony in September, the pivot toward Iran has been relentless.
Reinforcements are arriving daily. Dan Senor, the former flack for L. Paul Bremer in Baghdad, fronted a recent Fox News special, “Iran: The Ticking Bomb,” a perfect accompaniment to the Rudy Giuliani campaign that is ubiquitous on that Murdoch channel. The former Bush flack Ari Fleischer is a founder of Freedom’s Watch, a neocon fat-cat fund that has been spending $15 million for ads supporting the surge and is poised to up the ante for Iran war fever.
Potentially facing that Republican may be a Democrat who is not in favor of rushing to war in Iran but, now as in 2002, may well be in favor of walking to war. In any event, she will not have been a leader in making the strenuous case for an alternative policy that defuses rather than escalates tensions with Tehran.
Noun + verb + 9/11 — also Mr. Bush’s strategy in 2004, lest we forget — would once again square off against a Democratic opponent who was for a pre-emptive war before being against it.

2007-11-07T18:26:00.000+03:30

United States Raises New Sanctions On Iran

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accompanied by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, announces new sanctions against Iran.

On October 25^th 2007, The Bush administration announced sweeping new sanctions against Iran today – the harshest since the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in 1979 – charging anew that Tehran supports terrorism in the Middle East, exports missiles and is engaging in a nuclear build up. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, joined at a State Department news conference by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, said the steps the Bush administration is taking against the Revolutionary Guard Corps and a number of banks are designed, among other things, to punish Tehran for its support of terrorist organizations in Iraq and the Middle East. The sanctions will cut off more than 20 Iranian entities, including individuals and companies owned or controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, from the American financial system and will likely have ripple effects throughout the international banking community. In addition, three major Iranian banks — Bank Melli, Bank Mellat and Bank Saderat — and a number of top military officials were sanctioned. The U.S. action cited their support of terrorist groups and role in spreading ballistic missile technology.

IRGC called terrorist according to terrorists’ report by Bush administration!!!

IRGC business enterprises, ranging from construction and insurance to importing consumer goods and car parts, have flourished under hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to information supplied to The Washington Times by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The NCRI is an emigre group advocating the overthrow of the Islamist regime in Tehran, said in a study that the Revolutionary Guard Corps controls 30 percent of Iran's non-oil exports and more than half the country's imports, in addition to vast new contracts to develop Iran's oil and gas fields."Today, various executive and economic instruments of [the Iranian government] are practically controlled by the IRGC," NCRI foreign affairs spokesman Mohammad Mohaddessin said. The report said the IRGC operates more than 500 companies, with branch offices throughout the Middle East as well as Europe, East Asia, Africa and Latin America.

NCRI is official name of MKO (Mojahedin - e – Khalgh Organization) which had been announced as a terrorist group by USA officials before this, in addition its top rankers are declared as wanted by Interpol because of their brutality in Iraq and as War criminals.

So it’s up to any common sense whether it’s rational to depend on such a statements or not!!

BACKGROUND

United States have been raising numerous sanctions on Iran post Islamic Revolution in 1979. Which all have been initiated after Hostages Crisis in USA embassy in Tehran(1980) and failure of Ajax operation in Kennedy’s era. During 8-year Iran vs. Iraq war these sanctions where overt act, but in 1986 a Lebanese paper (Al-shar`e`) betrayed Irangate(Iran-Contra) during Reagan’s presidency, in which his administration was accused of selling guns to Iran even it was banned by law. This skirmish prolonged to 1996 when Republican Senator D'amato of New YorkIran, which now is called D'amato Act which asserts presented his plan to put further sanctions on. In 2002 President George W. Bush declared Iran, Iraq and North Korea as Axis of Evil in his 2002 State of Union.

The Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) in 2006 is almost the last general sanction on Iran in its prologue it is read:

“No firms have been sanctioned under the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA). Set to expire in August 2006, bills in the 109th Congress, H.R. 282 (passed by the House on April 26, 2006), S. 333, and H.R. 6198 extended it and added provisions to apply it more strictly. The latter bill, (P.L. 109-293, signed September 30, 2006), extended it until December 31, 2011, changed its name from the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) to ISA by terminating application to Libya, and allows substantial Administration flexibility in applying the new provisions.’

And finally it’s the last one on 25^th October 2007 to put sanctions on Islamic Republic Guardians Corps (IRGC) and some other financial institutes in charge of preparing essential fund for developing WMDs and supporting so called Lebanese and Palestinian terrorist groups.

Attachments:

An overview of O.F.A.C. Regulations involving Sanctions against Iran

The Iran Sanctions Act (ISA)

From these Sources you can learn and be more informed of this issue: