AlJazeera.net: Maliki, Bill Gates & poll
Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 06:12:20 AM PDT
On visit to AlJazeera.net this morning I found this poll:
http://english.aljazeera.net
Who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq?
a. Coalition forces
b. Divided Iraqis
c. Lack of qualified statesmen
d. All of the above
e. None of the above
Answer below the fold
a 43%
b 14%
c 3%
d 34%
e 6%
Total: 20,600
It seems as if the world that constitutes AlJazeera.net's readership is as prepared to accept the currrent failure in Iraq as not just a "coalition" problem (touching how they used the word...) but also hold the Iraqis themselves accountable. Somehow this engendered hope in me--it softens a mindset of iron US control and a helpless oppressed people, something I fear I fall prey to myself.
The nomination of Jawad al-Maliki as the compromise candidate for prime minister in Iraq addresses B and C in one stroke, while also mollifying A. I had gone to AlJazeera.net to try to find out more about him; the coverage was not as in-depth as I'd hoped, similar to what you'd find in the NY Times:
"Maliki has a Baghdad University master's degree in Arabic and served as an education official in his hometown of Hilla, 120km south of the capital.
"From 2003-2004 under the US occupation, Maliki served on a de-Baathification committee to rid the country's government and civil service of Saddam supporters.
"However, the committee quickly earned the reputation of being overzealous and it purged thousands of people who had only joined Saddam'sBaath party in order to climb up the career ladder.
"In April 2004, the then top US official in Iraq Paul Bremer conceded the de-Baathification committee had overstepped its boundaries and moved to install teachers and military veterans to their old jobs."
I found it a measure of Iraqi desperation that someone who out-deBaathed even the American leadership was now an acceptable compromise candidate to Sunnis as well as Kurds. But it may also be faith in this man's leadership qualities, something Iraq clearly needs above all else. I found it a hopeful sign that his acceptance by all except one of the nine major parties was signalled so quickly. Success breeds success--solving this problem should give Iraqis confidence in their abilities to retake control of their country.
Despite the Mega-Embassy City and 14 bases in the works, the Iraqis are not irrevocably the puppets of US/UK oil politics. No matter how insane US administration policy can be, both Dem and GOP, things can change pretty quickly, as another story told me:
http://english.aljazeera.net/...
Crowds welcome Gates to Vietnam
Saturday 22 April 2006, 13:44 Makka Time, 10:44 GMT
Vietnamese students greeted Gates outside the university
"On a 24-hour flying visit to Vietnam, Bill Gates has received a rock-star's reception from students at Hanoi university.
"Thousands of students climbed trees and pushed against barricades to catch a glimpse of the Microsoft chairman and world's richest man."
Maybe I'm just sick of feeling grim, but the spreading of Microsoft IT jobs to poor countries around the world that have put their recources into education really cheered me up. This story was one of the top five world stories listed on the site. (Oddly, another of the top five world stories was about the foiled school shooting in Kansas.) There is a hunger for globalization in surprising areas.
I've spent a good part of my life resoutely anti-everything: anti-imperialist, anticapitalist, antiglobalization; ashamed of my country. And I loathe many aspects of the Microsoft business plan. But I have come to see much of change and self-determination as very exciting. The communist party in Vietnam is awash in scandal, with stories of bureaucrats gambling (literally) with millions of dollars in aid money. The group responsible for its country's liberation has become corrupt--humans are humans. And in a story such as Vietnam's, the dilution of power away from the central government and toward private business may benefit many people.
A lightning bolt hovers perilously close as I write those words, and they do not change the fact that the opposite is true: in our country, private business controls the government--right now. "Right now" are the operative words. But these stories reminded me not to despair--that things can change, and more quickly than one might dare hope.
I left AlJazeera.net wishing I'd found more "hard news" on Maliki, but surprised at its tone and content. The last time I'd visited was in the early days of the war, when grief and rage at the invasion dominated its pages and I could barely read it for the shame I felt. Has it become "feel good" for business purposes? Not believing in "the Arab Street," I don't believe it's simply become a smarter propaganda organ for those wascally Arabs. Let's just say I found it a broader place than my own mind has sometimes been in recent years.
[But am I scared about what even one visit to that site does to my FILE? You bet. We have a dear friend, an Epicopal priest, who startes every e-mail with a string of words like Osama bin Laden Guantanamo Al Quaeda, just to keep the FBI hopping. Seems almost a civic duty these days...]
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