Archive for March, 2010
March 31st, 2010 by Justin
The recent resurgence of Chechen- and North Caucasus-related terrorism on Monday and Wednesday of this week points to the deep unresolved issues between Russia and its tiny region. Like in any situation of rebellion and civil strife, the short term details of the violence are sure to be complex. But the essential dynamics remain identical to what is seen in countless places around the world, including modern Iraq and Afghanistan: the interplay of identity, nationalism and sovereignty. There remains a segment of the Chechen population, and of the Caucasian population, that identifies itself separately from the rest of Russia. This unique sense of identity or separateness has persisted through two Chechen wars and 2 decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. How widely held among the people is this sense of ethno-national uniqueness? Evidently, popular enough to result in the death of several dozen innocents in the span of three days.
Russia under Putin is not interested in peace with Chechnya. Vladimir led the country in the offensive Second Chechen War in 1999, which reestablished Russian suzerainty in the region after a period of self-rule. He is also now using bombastic rhetoric in the aftermath of the recent attacks, to say nothing of the uptick in jingoistic prejudice that is sure to come, the early signs of which we are already seeing. And let’s not forget the oppression and ruthlessness that has characterized Chechnya under Russian control in recent years–always a popular cause of radicalization.
So Russia is not interested in peaceful coexistence. But if it were, the proper action would be quite simple: give them independence. Just let go. Barring the extermination of hundreds of thousands of human beings and totally remaking the society and culture of the region, it is clear that the unique sense of identity there will remain strong for a while. And as long as it is, there will be ethnic and nationalist tension, which will provide the fuel for radicalism and terrorism, which will result in the deaths of innocent Russians. The recent influence of global Islamic fanaticism on the terrorist movement adds another dimension of difference from the Russian population–religion.
Would Chechen independence hurt Russia in any way? Essentially, it is irrelevant because the positives for peace and prosperity in both countries would more than outweigh any negatives. Nonetheless, according to Wikipedia, the area of Russia is 6,592,800 square miles (17,075,400 square kilometers), and that of Chechnya is a whopping 6,680 square miles (17,300 square kilometers). That makes Chechnya literally one tenth of one percent of the total Russian land mass. I think Russia would be okay. In fact, I don’t think they would notice at all.
March 30th, 2010 by Justin
A glowing piece in the Guardian reports recently that Iceland (“the world’s most feminist country”) has banned strip clubs. The move is just the most recent in a line of measures taken to snuff out the sex trade. According to the author:
Even more impressive: the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons. Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: “It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold.”
This is a foolish and wrongheaded notion. People who are slaves are “a product to be sold”—perhaps the Icelandic parliament should have chosen to help the many people around the world living in modern day slavery, if they are so concerned with people being bought and sold? For the decrease in economic activity caused by this ban, they could probably give hundreds of thousands of dollars to that cause. Their concern for human welfare is “impressive,” indeed. The article also says:
Jónsdóttir [of a group that fights sexual violence] says the ban could mean the death of the sex industry. “Last year we passed a law against the purchase of sex, recently introduced an action plan on trafficking of women, and now we have shut down the strip clubs. The Nordic countries are leading the way on women’s equality, recognising women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale… I guess the men of Iceland will just have to get used to the idea that women are not for sale.”
Another cockeyed way of thinking. A woman is not “for sale” if she is freely choosing to do something. The fact that there is so much talk of “women for sale” or “people for sale,” even though they are not actually for sale indicates that the women of Iceland desire to outlaw this activity because they object to it emotionally. It simply bothers them to see a woman being paid for taking her clothes off for men’s entertainment. Visually, they see a man or men in control of a woman and using her for their pleasure. (From a man’s perspective, the power in the relationship might be seen very differently, but that’s another issue.) The image is objectionable to them on a subjective level, and therefore they want to do away with it, while couching their effort in the explosive terms of “ending the commodification of women.” Who would not be against the commodification of women?
A frequent canard used by those fighting the sex industry is the conflation of willing, freely-chosen participation in the sex industry with forced participation or, even worse, the forced participation of children. And the legal action taken in Iceland against human trafficking is very positive and laudable. The exploitation of any human being, female or otherwise, is fundamentally wrong. But what if that person chooses to exploit themselves?
If a government can forbid one woman from using her body to her financial advantage, why can it not forbid another woman from using her brain to her advantage? Are not both the body and the brain the sole property of the person themselves? If the state should ban the selling of sexual services, why should it not ban the selling of massage services? Do not both confer physical pleasure to the customer for a price? If nude dancing should be outlawed, why not clothed dancing? Do not both provide visual stimulation to a customer? Is not the ballet patron exploiting his or her “power” over the performer for the sake of visual enjoyment?
None of this is to argue that prostitution, pornography, stripping or other related activities support the empowerment of females. But they do not hurt the empowerment of females, anymore than a man stripping and being treated as a sex object in a bachelorette party diminishes my empowerment as a male. The point is that allowing them to occur, with adequate controls and regulations, supports the empowerment of human beings insofar as it supports freedom.
Freedom is not about doing what is “morally” right. Except for certain fundamental rules such as causing harm to others, or limiting others’ freedom, in a truly free society one should be free to do as they wish—whether I or anyone else “approve” of it or not. That does not mean behavior cannot be regulated; it would be ridiculous for zoning laws to allow brothels next to elementary schools. But there is a huge leap from regulating, controlling or directing human activity and illegalizing that activity altogether.
What will be the consequences of a stripper-less Iceland? They will probably not be very severe on the surface. Several hundred people will be out of work, to be sure. But in time they will probably find new jobs. Enterprising former strippers can start dance studios or pole dancing fitness centers that have become popular recently. The real consequences of such action are more serious, though radical feminists would refuse to hear it: that the state further constrains and restricts human activity, making human life just a bit more bland and homogenous, limiting diversity of lifestyle and the freedom of choice that make life worth living.
March 29th, 2010 by Justin
It never ceases to amaze me how many on the conservative side of the political, and especially cultural, spectrum gleefully embrace the thing that their intellectual forefathers fought against. Meanwhile they use the very same language and reasoning to fight against new sociopolitical developments that are, essentially, logical extensions of the very thing they claim to embrace. A good example of this is women’s rights: they were against it in the middle of the 20th century, until they were for it insofar as it distinguishes the west from radical Islamists.
Another case in point is interracial marriage and gay marriage. There are differences between the two phenomena, to be sure, but at the bottom lies a very simple dynamic: the right for people to receive the same legal benefits as anyone else in the same type of relationship, regardless of their personal characteristics. Whether those characteristics are skin color or sexual orientation, it makes no difference, and has no relevant impact, as far as the nature of the relationship is concerned. The fact that conservatism intellectually and culturally cannot grasp this concept points to the fact that their objections to both have been based primarily on traditionalism, emotionalism, simple-minded religiosity and discomfort with change. In other words, no solid intellectual analysis.
In an article on interracial marriage and the effect on children, the following account of an early legal battle is given.
During the course of the proceeding the trial judge asserted that: “Almighty God created the races of White, Black, Yellow, Malay, and Red, and He placed them on separate continents.” “And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.” “The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.”
Looks like the more things change, the more they stay the same.
March 27th, 2010 by Justin
The Iraqi ethnoreligious landscape: three nations for the price of one
Another completed election in the third world, another round of fraud charges. Of course, it was almost guaranteed that whoever lost the recent elections in Iraq would allege fraud—regardless of the truth or falsity of the claim. That’s just how “democracy” works in these kinds of places. The cloud of “fraud” will continue to hang over Iraq in the coming days and weeks, and it will add another valuable ingredient to the instability soup, along with religious fundamentalism, terrorism, corruption, anti-Americanism, poverty… you get the idea. Reuters recently reported on Iyad Allawi and Nuri al-Maliki in the context of the political situation:
Allawi, a secular Shi’ite who served as prime minister in 2004-05 after the U.S. invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, and his Iraqiya partners took 91 seats in parliament to 89 for Maliki’s State of Law coalition in a vote that exposed the depth of Iraq’s sectarian divide.
Violence erupted when Iraq’s political leaders took five months to form a government after the last parliamentary vote in 2005. Allawi appeared to try to allay fears of a repeat…
Officials with Maliki’s coalition and from the third-place finisher, the Iraqi National Alliance, a bloc with close relationships with Shi’ite neighbor Iran, have said they are working toward a merger. The two combined would hold 159 seats, close to the majority needed to form a government.
INA includes the Sadrist political movement of anti-American Shi’ite Moqtada al-Sadr, who is studying in Iran and is shaping up to be the new kingmaker of Iraqi politics…
any attempt by the major Shi’ite blocs to sideline Allawi could lead to resentment among Sunnis pushed to the side when the majority Shi’ites rose to power following the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Iraq is in trouble and has been for a while, for the same reason as Afghanistan: extensive heterogeneity in identity among the people belies the authority of a unitary central government. In other words, a state from multiple nations won’t work. In western terms, the analogy is a single state and a single central government trying to be formed to encompass Italy, Germany and France. Now, there are certainly very different circumstances in Afghanistan and Iraq culturally, socially and economically. But the essential characteristics of identity and the challenges to nation-state stability are identical.
There is a very simple test that can be used to determine the stability of a government: do the people over which that government has authority identify with each other, or not? If they do, then, despite all other problems, that government has a reasonable chance at success. If they do not, then there is no chance, because the most fundamental aspect of a nation-state (the nation) is not there. Sooner or later, it will probably fail. It is vital to understand that this is not because of short term violence, it is not because of the vicissitudes of day-to-day parliamentary politics, or because of an economic downturn (which are probably what the press will blame it on if and when the Iraqi state does fail). It is a structural feature of the society in question that guarantees state failure.
Saddam Hussein ensured internal stability in Iraq for over 20 years through blood-soaked tyranny. It was ruthless dictatorship alone that was able to keep a lid on the bubbling stew of ethnic, tribal and religious tension. That bubbling stew, naturally, boiled over in the aftermath of Hussein’s overthrow. For years, hundreds of Americans and many thousands of Iraqis died during the botched Bush nation-building project. Then, in the last few years, a surge in American troops ensured some temporary stability that has allowed some democratic progress to be made.
Rest assured that this stability is indeed temporary. As Obama winds down the troop presence in the coming months, we can expect that Iraq will once again regress back into a quagmire of ethnic, tribal and sectarian violence. But it is not, as the Republicans and conservatives will undoubtedly argue, because of the decrease in troops. It will be ultimately due to the inherent structural attributes of Iraqi society spelled out above. In time, unless identity is overhauled in Iraq, and average Iraqis really start to see themselves as Iraqis first and Sunni Arabs or Shiite Arabs or Kurds second, it is inevitable that the current state model will fail.
March 24th, 2010 by Justin
The recent actions of the Benjamin Netanyahu government can be characterized with a good Yiddish word: chutzpah. Admittedly, the Israelis have little reason to believe that any consequences are in store, given the history of their relations with the US. And cautious optimism is still very much warranted when it comes to any analysis of the Obama administration’s Israel policy. However, recent developments are some of the best signs we have seen in years. Even if Obama is a one-termer and the next president is a staunch Israel supporter, given the blind pro-Israel stance that has been the norm in modern American foreign policy, any pressure at all on the “Jewish state” is a good thing, and should be treasured.
Israel’s government continues to engage in its despicable campaign of apartheid and oppression, no doubt expecting the full support of the American sugar daddy. The Israeli colonists and their apologists offer the fantastic notion of “natural growth” as justification for their theft of private property and eviction of innocent people. But what about the “natural growth” of the Palestinian population, which is even greater, given their higher birth rate?
The fact is that Israel does not need peace as long as it has America. The question for Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton is, how long will they have America?
