mohammadalisalih.com Blog

I have come to believe that people, naturally, are able to hide some of their feelings, especially if what they hide is negative. I apply that to what I have come to believe is a general subtle negative Americans’ attitude towards Muslims.

But, before Muslims and, at least since the end of segregation laws, there have been documented subtle negative Whites’ attitude towards Blacks.

Right before his inauguration, President Obama recently said: “There is an entire generation that will grow up taking for granted that the highest office in the land is filled by an African American … It changes how black children look at themselves. It also changes how white children look at black children.”

On the same day, a poll showed a quarter of Americans saw racism as a large problem, about half of the 54 percent who said so about a dozen years ago.

Good news.

But then this:

The poll showed there had been little change in the amount of racism people perceive in their local communities.

Ron Walters, a Black University of Maryland political scientist: “There are two levels of identity with racism: One is the national level, which is more symbolic. And the other is how they parse it in terms of their lives.”

Often, he explained, people channel the experiences of family and friends as they develop their views about racism. He said: “If I have a brother who is pulled over by the cops, it influences me almost as much as if it happened to me.”

Despite the drop in those who saw racism as a big problem in the country, just as many saw bias in their communities. Two-thirds of Blacks and a little less than half of Whites said Blacks in their communities experienced racial discrimination.

Forty percent of all Americans said they had been discriminated against: Three-quarters Blacks, but about a quarter of Whites.

Sixty percent of Blacks said they had at some point felt unwelcome in a store because of their race, and about forty percent said they had been stopped by the police or have been denied a job for racial reasons.

Of course, it is good news that people said racism in America, and especially Whites attitudes towards Blacks, is declining.

But my point is about subtle feelings.

Maybe I should add, negative subtle feelings are natural and understood, but the wise among us are those who don’t let these feelings take control of their feelings – and actions.

Former giants in American business have recently tilted into extinction: Circuit City, Linens ‘n Things, Sharper Image, etc.
The number of business bankruptcy filings rose sharply in 2008, with 31 percent more companies looking to liquidate — instead of just restructure their debt — in the third quarter than in the first.
They have little choice.
Many companies are loaded down with debt amassed in the days of easy money. Servicing that debt is harder because of falling revenue. Lenders, facing their own troubles, are not as eager to refinance. And the buyers that can afford an acquisition right now are few and far between.
Many businesses are paying dearly for the easy terms under which they borrowed money just a few years ago.
During the height of the debt craze in 2006 and 2007, lenders let borrowers take a holiday before having to pay down the principal. They also allowed companies that couldn’t meet interest payments to add those payments onto the principal.
Colin Blaydon, director of Dartmouth’s Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship: Such “covenant light” loans allowed companies to default later than they would have in years past, but when they did, they were worse off.
Debt financing also grew more complicated in recent years, as multiple layers of creditors were added.
George Singer, a bankruptcy lawyer in Minneapolis: “Although creditor agreements can help avoid disputes, creditors can find themselves at odds among themselves.”

Nearly 100 wealthy families and power couples contributed at least $100,000 each to help Barack Obama over election campaign and inauguration celebrations.
He has proven his success with a system that allows supporters to give maximum amounts on several occasions and to multiple committees.
Among the supporters the Rockefellers and New Yorker Frank Brosens, a leader in the hedge fund industry, who raised $500,000 for Obama’s campaign and inauguration in addition to the $182,000 he gave with his wife, parents and three sons.
“I told them it’s going to be a passion for me, and I’d like for them to get involved,” Brosens said.
The $100,000 group stands in stark contrast to the grass-roots campaign that Obama’s team has waged over the Internet, through which small donors, giving $200 or less, made up about a quarter of Obama’s campaign revenue. Small donors are still receiving e-mails directing them to the inaugural Web site, where they are asked for contributions of $5.
Stephen Weissman, associate director for policy at the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute: “Obama had a well-organized core of larger donors who he went back to repeatedly for donations. These cumulative donations add up and lead to greater and greater influence.”
Obama’s inaugurations committee spokeswoman Linda Douglass: “Although the Obama campaign was unprecedented in its aggressive outreach to small donors, it is a fact in American politics that large donations are necessary as well. Nothing has ever led any donor to believe they will have special access to President-elect Obama.”
Politicians and their spokesmen and spokeswomen always say that when asked about the relations between money merchants and corrupt politicians.
The ability to direct such large sums to a presidential candidate stems from the politicians themselves. Like the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. The law banned unlimited “soft money” donations, but it increased the amount individuals can steer to presidential candidates by allowing them to donate directly to a campaign as well as to state and national political parties to help elect a candidate.
Under the law, the maximum amount an individual can give in a presidential election year has gone from $25,000 to $70,100 over the past five years. And by creating joint fundraising committees — allowing donors to give the maximum to all three funding pools at once — campaigns have become much more efficient in collecting the donations.
Talking about money merchants and corrupt politicians.

“Children of Gaza:
Teach us because we forgot
Teach us how to be men
Because our men have become like dough
Teach us how to throw stones
How stones, in your hands, become diamonds
How a boy’s bicycle becomes an explosive
How a girl’s silk ribbon becomes a trap
How a baby’s milk bottle becomes a knife
Children of Gaza:
Don’t read our newspapers
Just hit and hit
Don’t ask our advice
Just fight and fight
We are running away from ourselves
Please, bring robes and hang us
We are dead bodies without graves
We are orphans without shelters
You fight on our behalf, you kill the dragon
Children of Gaza:
We have regressed by centuries
And you have grown, within a month, by centuries.
We are your parents, but don’t be like us
We are your idols, but don’t worship us
We are addicted to torture and drugs
And building jails and digging graves
So, please, liberate us
From ourselves, from our fears
And from the opium in our veins
Children of Gaza:
Please, don’t disappoint Jesus Christ
You, our little darlings
May God flavors your days with Jasmine
This Jewish era is but an illusion
It will end if we will have a will
Children of Gaza, crazies of Gaza:
Welcome to the crazies, if they will liberate us
Because rational politics is dead
So, teach us how to be crazy.”

Today, I check the National Park Police website to see how I will get a permission to stand in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House, with my banner.
At first, I wasn’t sure how to handle this.
I remember in 1980’s, when I first come to Washington in my current job as a foreign correspondent, there was a man, not only standing in Lafayette Park, but camping, protesting against the nuclear armament, and he was there for many years.
But, I don’t see him anymore. Most probably, the post-9/11 security measurements moved him to somewhere else, or he gave up after the end of the Cold War. I don’t’ think I want to do the same for the GWOT. I will just start with my “one-man silent” show.
Maybe in the future, if I received many donations (a total of a million dollars?), I will quit my current job and just stand there everyday. I don’t think I will ever want to camp.
It is tacky.
Also, I would like to have my show nice and decent. I will dress up in a suit and tie, make a “beautiful” banner, not a hand-written one. And try not to talk (except maybe with reporters).
I am not going to start a shouting match with strangers. I don’t even do that with the people I know.
Today, a piece in “The Washington Post” mentioned something about demonstrations during President Obama’s inauguration, and quoted a National Park Police spokesman saying something about giving permissions to certain groups.
So, I need permission.
The National Park Police site said:
“Applicants shall submit permit applications in writing on a form provided by the National Park Service so as to be received by the Regional Director at least 48 hours in advance of any proposed demonstration or special event. This 48–hour period will be waived by the Regional Director if the size and nature of the activity will not reasonably require the commitment of park resources or personnel in excess of that which are normally available or which can reasonably be made available within the necessary time period. The Regional Director shall accept permit applications only during the hours of 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, holidays excepted. All demonstration applications, except those seeking waiver of the numerical limitations applicable to Lafayette Park are deemed granted, subject to all limitations and restrictions applicable to said park area, unless denied within 24 hours of receipt …
Permittee and all participants authorized therein must comply with all of the conditions of the permit regulations and with all reasonable directions of the United States Park Police.
All sidewalks, walkways, and roadways must remain unobstructed to allow for the reasonable use of these areas by pedestrians, vehicles and other park visitors …
All laws, rules and regulations applicable to the area covered by this
A copy of your permit must be carried at all times by the permittee while operating under the authority granted …
Contact Leonard D. Lee, National Capital Regional, (202) 619–7225 for additional information and to finalize any logistical setup.
Contact Sgt. Roxanne Brown–Ankeny, U.S. Park Police: (202) 610–7092, to finalize any police logistics.”

WHAT IS TERRORISM? BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY, “THE GURADIAN,” 1/15/2009:

“Seven years on from 9/11 it is clear that we need to take a fundamental look at our efforts to prevent extremism and its terrible offspring, terrorist violence. Since 9/11, the notion of a “war on terror” has defined the terrain.
The phrase had some merit: it captured the gravity of the threats, the need for solidarity, and the need to respond urgently – where necessary, with force.
But ultimately, the notion is misleading and mistaken. The issue is not whether we need to attack the use of terror at its roots, with all the tools available. We must. The question is how.
The idea of a “war on terror” gave the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
The reality is that the motivations and identities of terrorist groups are disparate. Lashkar-e-Taiba has roots in Pakistan and says its cause is Kashmir. Hezbollah says it stands for resistance to occupation of the Golan Heights. The Shia and Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq have myriad demands. They are as diverse as the 1970s European movements of the IRA, Baader-Meinhof, and Eta. All used terrorism and sometimes they supported each other, but their causes were not unified and their cooperation was opportunistic.
So it is today.
The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common. Terrorist groups need to be tackled at root, interdicting flows of weapons and finance, exposing the shallowness of their claims, channelling their followers into democratic politics.
The “war on terror” also implied that the correct response was primarily military. But as General Petraeus said to me and others in Iraq, the coalition there could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife …
We must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, for it is the cornerstone of the democratic society. We must uphold our commitments to human rights and civil liberties at home and abroad.
That is surely the lesson of Guantánamo and it is why we welcome President-elect Obama’s commitment to close it.
The call for a “war on terror” was a call to arms, an attempt to build solidarity for a fight against a single shared enemy. But the foundation for solidarity between peoples and nations should be based not on who we are against, but on the idea of who we are and the values we share.
Terrorists succeed when they render countries fearful and vindictive; when they sow division and animosity; when they force countries to respond with violence and repression.
The best response is to refuse to be cowed.”

(Bruce Hoffman, “The National Interest,” 1/13/2009, summarized)

“1. The fundamental organizing principle of America’s struggle against terrorism as a global war has outlived its utility.
2. The central front in the war on terrorism today is not Iraq, but the lawless border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
3. The interagency process is broken and requires fixing. This is as much a matter of a change in mindset as it is bureaucratic reorganization
4. Decapitation strategies only work if fully and successfully executed at the onset of a counterterrorism campaign. Accordingly, in tandem with decapitation efforts, continue to emphasize targeting mid-level leaders in terrorist groups.
5. Information operations that delegitimize the top leaders of terrorist groups and undermine the image of these groups’ omnipotence is an essential adjunct to kinetic approaches.
6. Focus on disrupting support networks and trafficking activities. In tandem with
7. Knowing the enemy is an essential prerequisite for any successful counterterrorism campaign.
8. Equal emphasis has to be given to the importance of information operations, psychological operations and public diplomacy alongside kinetic approaches.
9. Playing an active and positive role in the resolution of iconic Muslim conflicts will accomplish more, have a greater immediate and long-term impact, and potentially will more decisively improve America’s image in the eyes of the Muslim world than foreign political reform, economic development and agrarian programs applied to individual Muslim countries.
10. Protecting and securing the United States from terrorist attack depends on state and local law enforcement officers who are both the first and last lines of homeland defense.
11. Terrorism is more than a technical issue and requires a new political relationship between U.S. and European partners..
12. NYPD (New York Police Department) has played a leading role in facilitating cooperation with international partners on counterterrorism issues, but current federal efforts to broaden these programs and make them available to other jurisdictions on a national basis are as inchoate as they have been inadequate. “

Now, after I have come to believe that President Bush’s global wars on terrorism are put subtle wars on Muslims, I would like to say that in public. But in a nice way.
That was why I decided to try to stand in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House, and carry a sign about this.
At first I thought of “Subtle Wars On Muslims,” then “Subtle Wars On Muslims?” But, instead, I have decided to carry a banner with two questions, one on each side:
“WHAT IS TERRORISM?”
“WARS ON MUSLIMS?”
Why questions and not statements? (1) Being a reporter. (2) Trying to be nice. (3) Don’t have answers myself.
Though, like I said, I have come to believe that President Bush’s wars on terrorism are subtle wars on Muslims, I am not sure that is the case. Of course, Bush and no other US official ever declared “War on Muslims” but the key word here in “subtle.” I did some research on “subtlety,” like subtle attitudes, subtle discrimination, etc.
But, I don’t want someone to ask me: how did you know it if it is subtle? So, I thought I would be safe to ask a question: are these wars on Muslims? If asked, I will say: I am not sure, and that is why I am asking.
As for the other side: “What is Terrorism?” obviously, it is not a new question. But, I have come to believe that it is the basic issue. President Bush first mistake was not declaring war on terrorism, but of not defining what terrorism was.
So, if I will be standing with my sign in front of the White House and some questions my questions, I will just say they are only questions.

For almost thirty years in Washington, DC, as a full-time correspondent for major Arabic newspapers and magazines in the Middle East, I barely wrote opinions, in Arabic or English:
First, for more than forty years as a full-time journalist in Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the US, I have always wanted to be just a reporter: just ask questions, read news, reports and books, and report on them to readers.
Second, during my Sudanese and Saudi years, even if I wanted to, publishing critical opinion on these two governments would not have been published, and even if published, would have gotten me in trouble.
Third, long time ago in my career, I have, reluctantly, decided I would rather sacrifice expressing my free opinions than not be a journalist.
I didn’t start writing in US newspapers until after 9/11 attack. Partly because my English language was not as reasonable as today, because, though a naturalized US citizen since 1990, for many years afterwards I felt I had “foreign” identity, but, mostly, because there was no burning issue.
But, after 9/11 attacks, I had few pieces published in “The Washington Post,” “USA Today,” “International Herald Tribune,” etc, but almost only ten percent of what I sent out.
All the pieces were mixtures of hard issues and personal experiences on religion, race and politics; especially because of my multi-religions and multi-races immediate family.
Now, to demonstrations and carrying signs. Only in 2005, I went to a demonstration in the Mall, in front of the Congress, against the war in Iraq. I made my first sign: on a 2X4 ft. plywood piece with colorful spray writings on both sides: “Peace in Iraq. Peace in Afghanistan. Peace in Palestine. Peace in Israel. Peace in Darfur. Peace in Somalia.”
I participated in some quite discussions with some demonstrators, and some photographers took shots of my sign, but I didn’t see my sign or my name published. Some said comments like: “I like your sign” and “No one can argue with a piece sign.”
I returned home and showed the sign to my family who seemed excited and appreciative, but probably unable to understand the whole situation.
Now, the sign is in my cars garage.
But, it seems that I will move from a sign that calls for peace to one that asks questions.

WEDNESDAY, JAN 14, 2009
(NO ANSWERS. JUST QUESTIONS).

“Q Dana, the Palestinians say their Gaza death toll has topped a thousand, with well more than half of those being civilians. Has this given the administration any cause to reassert with Israel the need to take caution to prevent civilian casualties? And has the U.S. — is the U.S. pressing Israel to start wrapping things up in Gaza?
Q What about wrapping up their offensive?
Q I have a quick — a follow-up on the Gaza situation. You talked about a durable cease-fire. You said you appreciate the Egyptian efforts to mediate. Hamas now has indicated that it plans to sign on to the Egyptian proposal. Are you going to urge Israel to sign on, as well?
Q Hamas is now indicating they’re going to accept the Egyptian —
Q And I apologize if you already visited this, but what exactly — how will you know a durable cease-fire when you see it?
Q I had a question about Gaza — but on the issue of Qahtani, can you just define the term “command influence” — what the issue —
Q Okay. On Gaza, I’m assuming that the President is not trying to wrap or push for a resolution before he leaves office, but, I mean, is he okay with this conflict continuing as he leaves office or is there any kind of sense within the White House that he’d like to wrap things up or at least achieve a resolution before —
Q Dana, on that, the President has said numerous times that he’s sprinting to the finish in these final days and weeks. On that point, then, when’s the last time he was working the phones on this situation?
Q But when is the last time he had direct conversations with people brokering the Egyptian-French cease-fire —
Q Prime Minister Olmert is maintaining that he caused the U.S. to abstain on the U.N. resolution. Are you maintaining that it didn’t happen?
Q You still say that the President’s last public appearance is going to be the speech to the nation tomorrow night?
Q What’s he doing the rest of the time? I mean, he’s going to Camp David, obviously. What’s he doing in — the rest of the time in private?
MS. PERINO: I’ll see if I can — it’s private time, but he’ll have things that he needs to do around here, meetings with staff, a goodbye lunch with the senior staff on Friday, and, you know, some calls that — some requests for calls from world leaders that I think will take place between now and then. And we’ll provide you an update on those if appropriate.
Q Any packing going on?
Q And is anything special going on at Camp David this weekend?
Q It is a federal holiday and —
Q Thank you.”