OMNI
NATIONALISM NEWSLETTER
and FLAG PATRIOTISM #2, January 9, 2015
Compiled by Dick Bennett for
a Culture of Peace and Justice
What’s at
stake: Understanding US hyper-nationalism
and flag patriotism in order to judge whether and how they serve the US and the
world.
Newsletters
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/
For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.
For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.
j.dick.bennett@gmail.com See: Control of Information,
Ethnocentrism, Fear, Flag Day (Liberty and Justice for All Day), Identity,
Imperialism, Jingoism, Militarism, National Security State, Patriotism,
Permanent War, Preemptive Invasion, Torture, War on Terror, Xenophobia, and
many other related topics in the Newsletters (see the Index).
Contents of
Nationalism Newsletter #1
Americentrism
Selfa: US
Economic Nationalism, Imperialism
Ousby: World War I, Verdun ,
France , Germany
Hedges, War
Is a Force
Koenigsberg, Call for Papers on Mass Death
Necessary to Nation
Koenigsberg: National Right to Kill?
Mystical Nationalism: Koenigsberg’s Rev.
of The
King's Two Bodies by Ernst
Kantorowicz
Contents of
Nationalism Newsletter and Flag Patriotism #2
Sarah Wire, “Womack Calls for Flag Protections”
J. William Fulbright on Flag Burning and “Destructive Nationalism”
Marvin and Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation
Koenigsberg, Nationalism, War, and Sacrifice
Speckhardt, Humanity Before Nationality
US Nationalism:
Google Search
Who Owns the Arctic Seabed? A UN Issue.
Majid, We
Are All Moors, Religious Nationalism
Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette: Bid to protect American flag again in wind. Sarah D. Wire
Washington,
Jan 8, 2015 [“Womack Calls for Flag
Protections, Says New Senate ‘Friendlier’ to Idea.” Title in my copy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette same date. Bold emphases mine. –Dick]
Andy Shupe
Credit: © NWA Media Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., proposed a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the United States flag. |
U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., proposed a constitutional
amendment to ban desecration of the United States flag, his office announced
Wednesday.
Congress has tried repeatedly to pass similar restrictions on
destroying the flag in the 26 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
flag burning is political expression protected by the First Amendment. Several
civil-liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, oppose
the restrictions.
The most recent ban attempt, in 2006, fell one Senate vote shy
of the 67 votes necessary to send the measure to the states for ratification. The
House passed its version in 2005.
Womack said the previous Senate vote, which occurred before he
entered Congress, always bothered him. Then-U.S. Sens. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.,
voted in favor of the amendment and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., voted against.
"It's always just kind of been an aggravating thought to me
that our ability to protect the symbol of this nation, to give Congress the
authority to protect the symbol of this nation fell one vote short of going to
the states," he said Wednesday.
Similar measures have been proposed nearly every year since but
have not been brought up for a vote.
A joint resolution creating a constitutional amendment needs
approval from two-thirds of the House and Senate members, and passage by
three-fourths of state legislatures before the amendment can go into effect.
The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, have not
been changed since they were approved in 1792.
Womack co-sponsored the joint resolution along with Reps. Kevin
Cramer, R-N.D., Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., Phil Roe, R-Tenn., Bill Johnson,
R-Ohio, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. It has been referred to the House
Committee on the Judiciary.
Womack of Rogers said the new Republican majority in the Senate
and the large Republican margin in the House could make it easier to pass the
measure this time. Arkansas now has an all-Republican congressional delegation
that includes three members who have co-sponsored similar measures in the past.
"We've got a much friendlier Senate to deal with. This is
an opportunity for us to really make a big statement about who we are as
Americans," Womack said. "Given the changes that have taken place and
the majorities in place in both chambers, now is as good a time as any to
reaffirm what we all believe about our beloved America."
One obstacle this year could be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who was one of three
Republican senators who opposed the 2006 effort, and he now leads the Senate.
In a 2006 editorial in the Central Kentucky News,
McConnell wrote that freedom includes the freedom to burn a flag. "I
revere the American flag as a symbol of freedom. But behind it is something
larger -- the Constitution."
Before the U.S. Supreme
Court's 1989 Texas v. Johnson decision that flag burning
was a constitutionally protected form of political expression, nearly every
state had a law banning desecration of the American flag. The court's decision
invalidated those laws.
Congress quickly passed a federal law to protect the flag, but
that was struck down in the court's 1990 United
States v. Eichman decision.
"There is not a more symbolic effort that we can make in my
strong opinion than ... to answer the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in
1989," Womack said. "It's a thing that needs to be done, is long
overdue."
Civil-liberties groups
oppose the proposal.
Americans shouldn't give
up their freedoms so Congress can restrict how a flag is used, said Rita Sklar,
the head of the Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"The First Amendment
is what should not be desecrated," Sklar said. "As distasteful as
desecration of the flag is to many people, it is the essence of the First
Amendment to prevent the government from deciding what is tasteful and what is
not."
Sklar pointed to a 1990
speech on the Senate floor by then-U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., who
cautioned against altering the Constitution, especially the First Amendment.
"Colleagues ask yourself, because some lunatic in Texas, in
Dallas in 1984, decided to burn the flag, is that incident worthy of tinkering
with the most precious segment of the Constitution that gives us religious
freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of press?" Bumpers said, adding,
"I say no."
Womack said Wednesday that he wasn't going to debate whether he
or Bumpers has the right opinion.
"I am a true believer in the Constitution, which is why I'm
trying to pursue an amendment to the Constitution to give Congress the
authority to protect Old Glory," Womack said. "He's entitled to his
opinion, and I respect that, but Steve Womack, a member of the U.S. House of
Representatives, has a different opinion."Click here to read the
original article.
[Go to end to contact Cong. Womack. --D]
J. WILLIAM
FULBRIGHT ON FLAG BURNING
Fulbright Calls Flag
Issue Unimportant, Emotional : Politics: Former U.S. senator decries shift away
from world events to debate constitutional amendment.
WASHINGTON — Former Sen. J. William
Fulbright expressed disappointment with his successors in government, saying it
is a "great tragedy" that politicians have shifted their attention
from world events to debate a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.
The 85-year-old Democrat from Arkansas invited reporters to his
home Monday to call for greater funding for the scholarship program that bears
his name and has helped nearly 180,000 students worldwide attend universities
in other nations.
But Fulbright, the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and an early congressional foe of the Vietnam War, also
surveyed the world scene and found much to his liking.
"I feel more optimistic about the international situation than
any time I was in the Senate," he said, adding that he believes even the
Chinese will "come around" and join the world move toward democracy.
But Fulbright was clearly troubled by the response of American
politicians, faulting President Bush for refusing to cut defense spending or
raise taxes, criticizing the invasion of Panama and the funding of the rebels
in Nicaragua and accusing Democrats in Congress of timidity.
Asked to comment on the flag
amendment, he said, "I think it's a great tragedy that in this time of
very promising issues that we should be diverted by such an . . . utterly
emotional and unimportant issue.
"I just don't understand it. But I thoroughly disapprove of
fooling with (the Constitution). I think it ought to be left alone." . . .
.
J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT on NATIONALISM
“A new idea has sprung up out of the ashes of two
World Wars: the idea that the sovereign
nation can no longer serve as the ultimate unit of personal loyalty and
responsibility. We have begun to
perceive that our happiness and prosperity, and perhaps even our survival, may
depend on whether we allow the West to succumb once again to divisive and
destructive nationalism. . . .” Old Myths and New Realities (108).
US Nationalism, Flag, Patriotrism
Marvin and Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation
The authors argue that American patriotism is a civil
religion organized around a sacred flag, whose followers engage in periodic
blood sacrifice of their own children to unify the group. Using an
anthropological theory, this groundbreaking book presents and explains the
ritual sacrifices and regeneration that constitute American nationalism. [Book in UA’s Mullins Library JC346 .M27 1999
--Dick]
|
Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the
American Flag (review)
Review by Heidi Ehernberger Hamilton
Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the
American Flag. By Carolyn Marvin
and David W. Ingle. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999; pp. xv + 398.
Flagburning. Flagwaving. The role of the flag in American
culture, the way in which it is used, and what it symbolizes are the topics of
a new book on blood sacrifice, violence, and the flag. Marvin and Ingle argue
that "violent blood sacrifice makes enduring groups cohere" (1)
despite the belief in civilized society. The flag, for these authors, rests at
the center of the sacrificial system, or the civil religion of patriotism. The
necessity of this sacrifice in order to preserve the nation remains a secret,
for the nation cannot acknowledge that it is willing to kill its own children
in order to maintain the system. Thus, Marvin and Ingle contend that the
operation of the flag in society demonstrates the power of the totem myth, the creation-sacrifice
story. Utilizing Durkheim's theory of totem ritual to undergird much, although
not all, of their analysis, they set out to "explore how American national
identity is created and maintained" (3).
After a brief introduction of the argument, the book
proceeds to lay out how the totem myth operates, beginning with defining civil
religion and explaining the attributes of the totem flag. The subsequent
chapters further elaborate the totem myth by outlining its various parts,
including the totem secret, the willing sacrifice, the totem leader, and the
re-creation of the myth. Each of these initial chapters builds upon those
previous to construct an image of the totem myth in practice. Later chapters,
each of which somewhat narrows the focus to affiliate groups and sports, flag
use in the popular domain, elections, and commerce, provide both an analysis of
the totem myth and a glimpse into its power in society.
For readers of this journal, the authors' approach to this
analysis may be one of the most interesting parts of the book. Marvin and Ingle
refute theorists who have rejected a civic religion of patriotism by commenting
that those authors have tended to focus on presidential statements while
ignoring the wider culture (17). Because they see this as the flaw in previous
studies of patriotism, they place a greater emphasis on a variety of texts.
Their analysis then encompasses a range from historical narratives to media
statements to children's contest letters to movies. They are careful to point
out, however, that they do not view the flag as a text, but as a body,
prompting a discussion of the differences between body and text (42-44).
The approach Marvin and Ingle take offers several insights.
First, this emphasis on a wide variety of cultural texts does indeed provide an
engaging glimpse into the role the American flag plays in the culture. The
recognition by schoolchildren of the semiotic symbolism (who, of course, do not
use those terms), for example, shows a deep penetration into the American
psyche of the flag's importance to what we believe to be true. In several
instances, the choice of texts to support the authors' argument proves poignant
and illustrative.
Additionally, chapter five on military culture thoroughly
encompasses the explanation of the totem myth while adding to existing
literature on the military's symbolic role in unifying the nation. Marvin and
Ingle point out that the sacrificial system requires individuals who are
willing to make the sacrifice, the most obvious example of whom are members of
the military. These soldiers are "border-crossers" who both are given
the authority to kill and are sacrificed in order to purify the community that
has sent them to kill (100). While the idea that the military exists as a
unique culture set apart from society has been well developed elsewhere, Marvin
and Ingle's addition lies in this notion of borders; "[b]order-crossers
model and train for death" (104), they state. In doing so, crossing back
over the border after touching death becomes difficult for these soldiers,
especially if the country lacks pride in the sacrifice... [See OMNI’s newsletters on the recent Iraq
and Afghan wars, on returning soldiers and PTSD, and related topics. –Dick]
We are extremely excited by the abstracts we've
received in response to the call for papers for our second edited book volume, Nationalism, War and Sacrifice:
Dying for One's Country.
We received well over 100 proposals, and have
narrowed them down to the 12 that are summarized below. We hope our Newsletter subscribers will read
these extracts—as well as the book's Statement of Purpose, authored by the
book's editor, Richard A. Koenigsberg.
We are very grateful to everyone who submitted an
abstract.
With best regards,
Orion Anderson, Communications Director
Library of Social Science, Telephone: 718-393-1104
oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com
Nationalism,
War and Sacrifice: Dying for One’s Country
Statement of Purpose
Richard A. Koenigsberg, Volume Editor
It seems that the sun revolves around the
earth—but this is not the case. War was once conceptualized as “male
aggression.” Contemporary research points in a different direction.
General Sir John Hackett observes that the
military makes demands that “few if any other callings do.” While
emotionally-disturbed people talk about being “trained to kill,” the whole
essence of being a soldier, Hackett says, is “not to slay but to be slain.”
Gwynne Dyer states that by becoming soldiers, men “agree to die when we tell
them to.&rd quo; General Douglas MacArthur concurred with these assessments
when he told West Point graduates that as soldiers they were required to
practice the “greatest act of religious training—sacrifice.”
This book will explore the idea of “dying for
one’s country” as a central dimension of the ideology and institution of
warfare.
According to “realist” theories, nations go to war
for rational, utilitarian reasons: the quest for territory or power, national
defense, etc. Adolf Hitler is conventionally seen as wishing to achieve “world
conquest.” It seems that way. Yet in 45 years studying Hitler’s texts, I never
saw him speak in terms of conquest or conquering.
When Hitler declared war on September 1, 1939, he
asked each German to do “what he was prepared to do”: to “lay down his life for
his people and for his country.” Hitler went on to say that if anyone thought
he could “evade this national duty,” he would “perish.” In his declaration of
war, Hitler set forth the essence of Nazism: Either die for Germany
In Blood Sacrifice and the Nation, Carolyn Marvin
examines this intimate link between nationalism and sacrificial death in war.
Focusing on the United
States
Writing about the Second World War, John Dower
observes that Japanese soldiers—like American soldiers—died believing they were
giving their lives for a noble cause, and did so in a spirit of duty, honor and
obedience in ways familiar everywhere. Japanese fighting men died because
“their country and sovereign called upon them to do so.”
In the opening days of 1943, General Sir Thomas
Blamey gave an emotional speech to his exhausted Australian troops: “You have
lost many comrades,” he told his men, “but you have learnt that it is the
highest and sweetest achievement of us all that we should die for our country.”
Such words, Dower says, could have been “placed in
the mouth of a Japanese commander almost without change.” But when Japanese
spoke of the nobility of dying for their emperor and country, their enemies
offered this as evidence of their “peculiar fanaticism, irrationality, even
collective psychosis and death wish.” The number of United Kingdom
This book builds on the hypothesis that
sacrificial death in warfare is common to many cultures—revolving around the
willingness to give one’s life as a testimony of devotion to an object
conceived as sacred in one’s society. When the other guy dies for his sacred
object (e.g., the Japanese soldier or Islamic jihadist), sacrificial death
seems self-destructive, even bizarre. When we die for our sacred object,
sacrificial death is conceived and experienced as noble, honorable and
beautiful.
Hitler stated that any man who loves his people
“proves it solely by the sacrifices which he is prepared to make for it,”
insisting that giving one’s life for the community constitutes the “crown of
sacrifice.” Political leaders of nearly every nation in the world have
expressed, and continue to express, similar sentiments.
The French theorist Ernest Renan—in his famous
essay “What is a Nation?” (1882)—stated that one loves one’s nation in
proportion to the “ills that one has suffered.” Suffering in common, Renan
says, “unifies more than joy does.” A nation is a large-scale solidarity
constituted by the “sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that
one is prepared to make in the future.”
Following the Vietnam War, the belief in the
validity of sacrificial death for a cause faded as mankind seemed to be moving
toward the “end of history”. September 11, 2001 resurrected the idea of
sacrificial death (martyrdom) for the sake of a sacred ideal. Bin Laden
declared that Muslim youth “Love death the way you Americans love life.”
Islamic revolutionary Ali Belhadj declared that if a faith or belief is not
“watered and irrigated by blood, it does not grow.”
René Girard observes that resemblances among
sacrificial rites practiced in disparate cultures are striking—that variations
are never sufficient to “disguise the basic similarities.” Hubert and Mauss
describe the sacrificial process apart from any specific culture’s context as
“some kind of technique.” How can we understand the sacrificial technique or
methodology?
Girard states that sacrifice “accords the god all
he needs to assure his continued growth and vigor.” Or as I put it in Nations
Have the Right to Kill, “As the soldier dies, so the nation comes alive.”
Excerpts of abstracts selected for possible
inclusion in
Nationalism, War & Sacrifice
“Memorializing War Heroes in the Context of the
War on Terror, 2001-2012”
Michael Blain, Boise State
University
The “compulsive repetition” of victimage rituals
provides a stage for leaders to engage in the use of dramatic rhetorical
discourses to vilify opponents as ultimate threats to “security” and to glorify
heroes to sustain military or terrorist campaigns. The sacrifice of human life
is central to these cultural practices (e.g., memorials to the Crucifixion of
Christ in the Christian movement; the Nazi use of World War I memorials; the
9/11 memorials). These memorials are as crucial to generating a willingness to
fight and die as are the disciplinary practices of the military, which deliver
the troops to the field of battle and sustain the willingness to fight and die
facing the enemy.
“Nationalism, Honor, and Sacrificial Victims in
the War Movies of Stanley
George A. Dunn & Kevin Corn, University of Indianapolis
Kubrick examines the ideologies that leaders have
used to justify the bloody sacrifice of their citizens to the transcendent
ideal of nationhood and, like the child in Hans Christian Anderson’s famous
tale, allows us to see that “the emperor is naked.” The ideologies that
underlie the sacrificial machinery of the state are shown to be monstrous when
their fruits are measured against the demands of human decency (Paths of
Glory), comically absurd when their rhetoric is held up to rational scrutiny
(Dr. Strangelove), and generally paranoid in the way they forge solidarity by
dehumanizing the “other,” who is in reality just a fantastic projection of our
own insecurities and fears (Fear and Desire and Full Metal Jacket).
“Dying for the Motherland: Orthodox Christianity
& the Invention of “Isaac” a Jewish Military Hero”
Yael S. Feldman, New York University
“Ultimately,” says B. Anderson, national
‘fraternity’ made it possible, for so many millions of people, “not so much to
kill, as willingly to die”… A WWI Jewish volunteer to the British Army
similarly declared: “You don’t understand me: I am going to die… not to kill”.
Sentiments of this sort abound in my study, Glory and Agony: Isaac’s Sacrifice
and National Narrative (2010). However, the language and imagery in which these
sentiments are often couched reveal that they were not necessarily fuelled by
the “horizontal comradeship” of the “imagined communities” argued for by Anderson
“Mishima’s Negative Political Theology: Dying for
the Absent Emperor”
Akio Kimura, Meiji University
Just as Hitler asked every German to sacrifice his
life for the country, the Japanese military government at the end of World War
II told every Japanese to sacrifice his life for the country under the slogan,
“Ichioku sogyokusai,” which literally means one hundred million broken jewels,
and encouraged the people to keep fighting to the death. In fact, many Japanese
died while the government hesitated to surrender and among those were the
victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan Japan
“Human Wave & Communist Ideology: Chinese Massive
Attacks during the Korean War”
Xiaobing Li, University
of Central Oklahoma
Some Western historians describe the massed
Chinese assaults as “human wave” attacks “in an effort to overwhelm their
better-armed opponents and capture their weapons.” Edward C. O’Dowd claims that
“American infantrymen dubbed these massed groups of Chinese soldiers ‘hordes,’
and the attacks became known as ‘human waves’.” One of the important
characteristics of the Chinese military is its emphasis on the human component
in war. Mao firmly believed that a weak army could win in a war against a
strong enemy because he was convinced that a man could beat a weapon. “Weapons
are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor,” Mao wrote. “It is
people, not things, that are decisive.” Mao’s confidence in a human being’s
“subjective capability” to determine defeat or victory in war made sense to the
Chinese officers and soldiers. The idea that a soldie r or a warrior, because
of his godliness and virtue, can vanquish stronger opponents has a long
tradition.
“Of Heroes, Martyrs and Apathy: the Limits of
Ideological Manipulation in a Place like Columbia
Gregory Lobo, University of the Andes
this chapter presents an “ideology critique” of Colombia
“Why Enlist? Anatomy of a Recruit”
Moni McIntyre, Duquesne University
What motivates someone to join an all-volunteer
force when the possibility of their death or dismemberment is clear and
present? What, in addition to a poor economy, would entice individuals to put
their life at risk when other options are available? How prominent is the
prospect of dying for one’s country in the mind of a potential inductee? Do
they aspire to be heroes or merely to “get by”? Do family expectations make a
difference? Do officers and enlisted personnel have different motives for
choosing the military either as a career or as a way station in their lives?
How clear are they about the risks to their life and limb when they swear to
support and defend the Constitution of their country? How much of a role does
patriotism--as they understand it—play? Does religion play a part in their
decision? If so, then in what way? Is the possibility of a sacrificial death
and subsequent memorialization a part of their decision?
“Live faithfully, fight bravely, die laughing”:
The Behavior Socialization of German Boys in the pre-war Hitler Youth”
Nancy E. Rupprecht, Middle Tennessee
State University
This article will discuss the implementation of
the Youth Leadership's personality profile for German boys that was structured
to create enthusiastic and obedient soldiers for the German future. To that end, German youth was systematically
steeped in National Socialist behavioral values that were simultaneously ideals
in which they were expected to believe and behavioral traits they were required
to exhibit. In particular it will
discuss those values designed to socialize boys to sacrifice their lives for
their nation without hesitation: These include bravery, courage, toughness,
discipline, duty, loyalty, obedience, selflessness, sacrifice and
sacrifice-readiness (opferbereitschaft).
“Their name liveth for ever more”: Narratives of
sacrifice in British public remembrance 1918-2011”
Mark Sandle, The King's University College
This essay will examine the history of public
remembrance of the two world wars within Britain
Title and Topic To Be Announced
Ivan Strenski, University
of California , Riverside
“Sacrificing Women for Uniformed Men: Imperial
Japan’s Comfort Women Rape as the Nationalism-Enhancing Cult”
Chiaki Takagi, University
of North Carolina at Greensboro
War occurs within the male sphere. When a nation
goes to war, men are asked to sacrifice their lives for the nation.
Traditionally, women have engaged in this national project indirectly by
serving men in uniform. During World War
II, the Imperial Japanese Army established the special facilities called Jugun
Ianjo (Military Comfort Stations) to release their soldiers’ mental stress from
combat and the strict military discipline. For this military project, many
young women, mainly from Japan
Title To Be Announced
Michael Vlahos, United States Naval War College
The new, emerging consciousness is a declaration
by all of us that we are indeed together as humans, everyone: Every lingering
and atavistic claim of religious nationalism is as corrosive of humanity's
collective progress as a laboratory acid-beaker flung in hopeless spite at a
glorious experiment near fruition. Religious nationalism is now a
civilizational "dead hand," holding us all back. The final sacred
spasms of blood-sacrificial visions may be the ruin of our collective hopes for
a new world, pulling human energies away from the challenges that lie ahead.
ROY SPECKHARDT, “PLANETARY PATRIOTISM: PUTTING
HUMANITY BEFORE NATIONALITY,” FREE MIND (WINTER
2014): “Nationalism
remains a potent cause of violence between opposing governments.” A succinct case for internationalism by the
Executive Director of the American Humanist Association.
US NATIONALISM, Google Search
American nationalism is the nationalism of
Americans - as in the people of the United States of America
o
o
o
o
o
Sep
28, 2011 – Call it what you will — American nationalism or
patriotism — it is covering the country like a Wi-Fi cloud — above the fruited
plain from sea to ...
4.
Nationalism
Aug
8, 2005 – While nationalism is a strong force in both
the US and Canada
Mar
22, 2012 – The backlash against the misguided video campaign may say more
about how American self-conceptions have changed in the last 10
years.
The Local.se - 14 hours ago
Includes platform, issues of the Nationalist Times, a
news service and bookstore. Organization opposes free trade, immigration and
the United Nations. Founded ...
Jul
15, 2011 – Marty, for God's sake, the World already existed
"before" the US was
created!, in fact, the contribution -so to speak- to 'nationalism' of the US
Projecting their own experience onto the rest of the world,
Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in
politics. After all, in the United States ...
Feb
13, 2008 – A Survey at the roots of nationalism in the United States
WHO OWNS ARCTIC SEABED?
The Importance of the United Nations Seabed Treaty
A newspaper report and an article from a scientific journal
focus on only one of many international disputes that reveal the urgent need of
UN jurisdiction.
“John Baird, Canada ’s
Foreign minister, said his country intends to extend its seabed claims in the Arctic to include the North Pole.” ADG (Dec.
10, 2013).
geology.com
› Climate Change
Control of Arctic resources is an
extremely valuable prize. ... The United Nations sought to bring
order and equity to the diversity of claims being made by nations ...
OVERCOMING
ANIMOSITIES OF NATIONS: CENTURIES OF PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS
Book
Review: We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades... by Anouar
Majid
Living in the 21st Century, we believe, of course, that we base our
decisions and actions upon contemporary ideas. We've advanced enough to throw
off the shackles of antiquated thinking in favor of modernity. Yet Anouar
Majid's We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades against Muslims and
Other Minorities reveals we may not be quite so free of historical
influences as we might think.
Majid, in fact, argues
that our current attitudes toward such things as immigration and the so-called
"clash of cultures" between the West and Islam hearken back some 500
years or more and that we have yet to overcome "medieval animosities."
Those animosities are reflected in the efforts to drive Muslims from Iberia , one phase of which culminated when the
last Muslin stronghold in Spain Spain 's
persecution of and efforts to expel all Spaniards of Muslim descent but how
those attitudes spread in both Europe and the Americas
To Majid, Moors are a
prototype, and not one that redounds to our credit. The persecution of Moors as
"undesirable" or worse by a Christian nation was emblematic of how
Western civilization also would treat Jews, Africans, Hispanics or Native
Americans at various times. "It is only in this symbolic or metaphorical
sense that minorities living in the West after 1492 are the descendants of the
Moors," he writes in the Introduction. "Given that the archetypal
Other of Europe before 1492 was the Muslim, the world's non-European
natives or religions were all stamped with the taint of Muslim impurity."
Thus, for example, We
Are All Moors also explores how the treatment of African slaves and Native
Americans was impacted not only by a Spanish and Muslim influence in the New
World but also the fact that portions of Africa already had a Muslim influence.
In essence, the argument is that the same characteristics used to justify
attacks on Moors — racial inferiority, religious impurity, and cultural
incompatibility — also were the prism through which other non-Christian
minorities were viewed. Majid argues that we still use that prism today,
whether in the clash with so-called "Islamists" or European unease
over the number of Muslim immigrants and similar feelings in American toward
Hispanic immigrants. MORE http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-we-are-all-moors/
Rep. Steve Womack
3RD DISTRICT
Republican, second term
1119 Longworth Office Building
New Jersey and
Independence Avenues SE
Washington 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4301
Fax: (202) 225-5713
Arkansas offices:
ROGERS: (479) 464-0446
HARRISON: (870) 741-7741
FORT SMITH: (479) 424-1146
Website: www.womack.house.gov
3RD DISTRICT
Republican, second term
1119 Longworth Office Building
New Jersey and
Independence Avenues SE
Washington 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4301
Fax: (202) 225-5713
Arkansas offices:
ROGERS: (479) 464-0446
HARRISON: (870) 741-7741
FORT SMITH: (479) 424-1146
Website: www.womack.house.gov
END NATIONALISM NEWSLETTER #2
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