East vs. West: The Superpower Squeeze of Sovereignty in Ukraine

Armed men in front of a tank. Donbas region.

There is a war raging in eastern Ukraine that threatens the stability of the entirety of Europe and possibly the world. It does not equal the Syrian Civil War in terms of casualties or refugees, but it reflects deeper underlying problems in the region that could lead to further bloodshed between Western powers and the Russian Federation.

In the winter of 2013-2014, Ukrainian nationalists in the Maidan revolution ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych and put pro-EU candidate Petro Poroshenko in power. Shortly after, Vladimir Putin seized control of the Crimea, a semi-autonomous region in the south of Ukraine which encouraged pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine to then declare independence in a region known as Donbas. In the year and a half since then, the war has continued to rage in Donbas between the Ukrainian military and the rebel forces supported by Putin.

The United States has so far supported the new Ukrainian government because they are pro-Western and wish to be granted entry in the EU. Russia supports the secession of Donbas and defends their claims on Crimea because it is Putin's goal to create a Eurasian sphere of influence for Russia to once again reassert itself as a global power. When the Ukrainian people rejected his offer of inclusion in his newly formed Eurasian Union, in favor of the European Union, it was a great blow to Russian economic plans in Eastern Europe. Putin has also shown great initiative in the Middle East as an ally of Assad's fight against Daesh and other rebel groups in Syria; no matter the political implications. The Russian military is out-showing their rivals in NATO in that region. And so it is in Ukraine where it seems that despite crippling economic sanctions, Russia is unwilling to back down on their stance in the country.

Unlike the United States, the Russians also have a deep cultural impetus to gaining more control in Ukraine. The land that comprises Ukraine  forms the heartland of the ancient homeland of the Rus and some of the oldest Russian cities can be found there, including Kiev which is arguably even more historically significant to the Russian people than Moscow. The West is willing to offer paltry support to the Ukrainian government, but we do not feel the same deep connection to the land that the Russians do. That being said, neither the Russian government nor the Ukrainian government should be allowed to decide what determines the sovereignty of any particularly region of the country.

We need to care about what is happening in Ukraine. Not because we should wish to be the ones dominating the Ukrainian sphere of economics and politics rather than the Russians, but because both the Russians and the West are allowing this country to fall apart all for the sake of more power. It is this hunger for power that is truly reprehensible, that is causing a rift to form in Ukraine. Instead of competing for influence over a country that is too weak to be able to reform on its own, we should be joining together to figure out a solution to the issues in Ukraine so that all of its citizens may strive for a better and freer life.

Voting: The Cornerstone of American Democracy

A county-by-county map of the 2012 presidential election. Red =Romney, Blue = Obama.

With the upcoming presidential election even now looming over our heads; I feel like its important to take a break from the violence that has pervaded recent news to talk about the importance of voting. We are lucky enough to live in a time and a place that affords a great percentage of our population the ability to vote. However, our democracy is participatory. The people who actually do go out and vote tend to be wealthier, older, and whiter. These statistics do not accurately reflect the true demographic make-up of this country. Voting determines who is allowed to make decisions in our society; so why isn't everyone voting?

One major reason a lot of 'rare voters' (people who rarely, if ever, make it to the polls) cite is that they don't feel they know enough about the candidates to have an opinion. This is a major deal seeing as a quarter of registered voters are currently labelled as being 'rare' according to the Pew Research Center. Is it the responsibility of our candidates to more effectively get their message across? Or is it the responsibility of our citizenry to educate themselves on matters of government and politics in our republic? I would argue a little bit of both. Americans need transparency from our elected officials. Without the guarantee of honesty, many people just feel they cannot trust who they are voting for. But it is also the responsibility of the voters to educate themselves about what issues need to be focused on in our society and which candidates have the most feasible responses to these dilemmas.

Voting is also generational. That is to say that if people in your family have traditionally been involved in politics, (and further extending to include your neighborhood/town/city) then you yourself are more likely to at least know the importance of voting or be more informed about elections. Candidates statistically do not campaign in communities with low voter turnout. Millions of Americans are effectively being glossed over because they are, i.e. too uneducated, too poor, or simply not white enough. Because America is an elective democracy, the people who vote get to determine what kind of candidate best represents them; and what kind of policies they want to see preserved or acted upon. Think about the tyranny that was the Jim Crow South. Even in states like Mississippi or Alabama with large black populations, because black people either didn't have the means to vote or were intimidated into not voting, racial Apartheid was upheld and white voters were able to secure more social control and effectively power in their government.

What we see in modern America is an economic/ethnic divide in voter coverage that mirrors the racial politics of the segregated South. An apathetic underclass allows a more socially mobile and socially aware upper and upper middle class to dominate elections and retain control over political interests that favor their continued prosperity. If we want to see real progress for the vast underclass in America, there needs to be a renewed interest in the voting process. Real change starts from the grassroots level up. It's not only important to vote in the big presidential and senatorial elections, but in the elections that effect us in our own backyards. Don't scoff at the polls, they are the driving force of our society and who we elect also ultimately determines the character of that society.

I would like to leave you with a quote from George Takei;

"This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we're not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there."

The Face of Terror is Fear: How the GOP's Response to Paris Highlights the Deep Hypocrisy of the United States

Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is causing a stir once again for rather inflammatory remarks towards Muslim Americans that are frankly sickening. In a recent interview with Yahoo News, he said he was 'open to the idea' of having Muslims register in a database and/or carry ID cards professing their faith. As if this wasn't enough to make Adolf Hitler smile from beyond the grave, he also stated he was open to indiscriminate surveillance of Muslims Americans and warrantless searches of mosques. Where does the hatred end? And the terrifying part of all this is a startling percentage of people, almost entirely Conservative Americans, either commend these measures or merely shrug their shoulders. What's next, hauling Muslims off to internment camps? Extermination camps? These are not the sort of steps a freedom-loving democracy should take in the face of a global terror epidemic.

Which Governors oppose new Syrian refugees?

And it's not just 'the Trump' who's fanning the flames of hate. More than half of the country's governors have stated that they are not interested in taking in Syrian refugees following Daesh's attacks in Paris. Parallels have apparently been drawn between Muslim Americans and the growing threat of terror in the Middle East. Not only are refugees suspect of being potential terrorists but our very own American citizens are as well. Following the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor that sparked U.S. entry into WWII, Japanese-Americans were summarily rounded up and deposited in internment camps on the suspicion of being Japanese spies. What is this repetition of history going to teach Muslim Americans and refugees about the United States? Despite our vows of being welcoming of all creeds, colors, and faiths, do we really find Islam to be so un-American?

What's so dangerous about this way of thinking is that it breeds the mentality that Muslims are inherently different and inferior to (what is unspokenly implied) Christian Americans; and even more unspokenly white Americans. That is the rhetoric that this hate-breeding generates, and it is exactly what groups like Daesh want in response to their attacks. The disgusting notion is that these politicians are quick to call for airstrikes in the Middle East, and disregard the killing of civilians over there, and at the same time hide behind their prejudice in the name of protecting our own citizens. Only what they imagine to be the ideal American citizen will never wear a burqa or hijab, or carry the name Fatima or Abdullah.

I cannot think of a more un-American idea than to refuse refugees. At least in the America I envision, we do not wage war thousands of miles from our borders, only to refuse aid to the displaced civilians whose homes we've destroyed. Daesh is an outgrowth of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and if people in Syria and Iraq are fleeing Daesh we should not turn our backs to them. The truly unforgivable notion in my eyes is to look upon Arab people as being suspect of terror simply because of their faith and ethnicity, when white Americans have used both for just that purpose for hundreds of years. If Conservatives are so worried about terrorism, then where are the Republican governors denouncing the rise in white supremacist groups in their states? When white Americans are the number one terror threat in the country statistically, why is there so much focus on Muslims being potential terror suspects? Aren't they suffering at the hands of Islamic militants in their own countries enough? Or have we conveniently forgotten that Daesh primarily target Muslim civilians? I guess we can let the neo-Nazis slide since they apparently represent the ideals of this country more accurately.

Map of active hate groups in the United States as of 2013: from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

What new hatred will the fear-mongering right instill in the hearts of our own citizens? The map above is already enough to make me cringe. The fact is, there is already a terror epidemic in this country and it is home-grown. It has spread from the blood-soaked soil of the slave South to rear it's ugly head once again in this time of critical international peril when American compassion is needed most. We cannot succumb to hate. The world needs us to lead by example. To uphold the ideals that make our country a beacon of hope for the refugees we are told to fear.

Why aren’t more Americans paying attention to Anonymous?

The anonymous online hacking group known as…you guessed it… Anonymous has vowed to shut down ISIS connected internet feeds in the wake of the Paris suicide-bombings. Their activities, while perhaps illegal, are an inspired and downright cool response to terrorism.  Yet, this surprising and truly odd development out the chaos of last week brings up some many puzzling albeit interesting and productive questions in this new age of the War On Terror.

The U.S. government has often received criticism for the NSA’s systematic cyber-spying on the American people.  The central question at the crux of that debate has long been “What, if any, freedoms should we as a people sacrifice in order to ensure safety.  What Anonymous is showing us is that the answer to that question might be less than we think.

Why hasn’t the U.S. employed its multi-billion dollar security and intelligence force towards hacking the bad guys’ computers instead of the one I’m blogging with?  Chinese and Russian hackers have robbed Americans silly over the past five years; where’s the NSA’s response to them?  Almost adding to drones, ICBM’s, and bio-chemical weapons,  Anonymous and other hacking-oriented individuals could emerge as the new face of the highly interpersonal wars we post-modern societies are engaged in.  Think about it: from your man-cellar or your bunker, with a mommy-made sandwich by your side, you can either take out scores of terrorists and their families or you can wipe out their ability to recruit, buy weapons, sell drugs, etc.

If the U.S. government were smart, they’d start employing people like this.  We should invest in the types of education and work programs that teach people these computer sciences and put them to work protecting the most unforeseeably unpredictable frontier out there: the wild, wild web.  We could keep Americans safe without bringing up nude photos and sexy text messages up for the whole workplace to see and laugh at, but that would require a smart U.S. government, as I said before.

Why we can’t have a Republican president, until the party starts behaving.

America and much of the world is on high alert due to recent terrorist attacks and plots, a stable but fragile world economy, and a hotbed of other political issues driving wedges between Americans and making for an uncertain future.  Adding to much of the hostility, anger, and fear of this political climate has been Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.  His comments regarding Mexicans, Muslims and women have offended many but changed the minds of very few Republican voters.  At a rally in Worcester, MA, a Black Lives Matter protestor was assaulted and Donald Trump later defended the actions of those who were kicking and choking a man speaking his mind.  How can this behavior possibly be tolerated let alone accepted by not only the brass of the GOP but by the entire conservative voting public?  It has to stop.

Meanwhile, the runner-up to Trump in the national polls, Ben Carson has repeatedly lied about his own life and personal story leading many to wonder whether anything he says is true.  Now, it might be said of the two candidates exceeding everyone’s expectations that “Hey, Mr. Trump and Mr. Carson are just stunt men in this for publicity” or “Their reign at the top of polls and news headlines is bound to end once rational Republican voters start to examine their policies.”  Well, the time for this prophesied slip by the men widely believed amongst the political community to be the least qualified has, I believe, come and gone.  Primary season is fast-approaching, but I get the feeling that come February, candidates like Carson and Trump won’t cool down.

Currently, 27 percent of all eligible Republican voters think that Donald Trump should be the next POTUS, and 20 percent think it should be Ben Carson.  That means that a near majority of Republican voters are considering a vote for a candidate with no political experience, no integrity when it comes to telling the truth or examining facts, and no respect for the concerns or opinions of their opponents who are mostly minority groups like African-Americans and Latinos, but also Muslims and women.
 
The polls, the behavior of voters like those at the Trump rally in Worcester, and the candidates’ policies and opinions all indicate that this is indeed what the conservatives in this country want.  Let's give voters some credit.  They pay attention and are informed, to a degree, and this race has drawn some heavy viewership in part because of the times themselves.  I mean for God's sakes 25 million people tuned in for the first Republican presidential debate on CNN.  That's totally unprecedented in American politics.  So, there is no reason to think Republican voters are sheep or slaves to their basest emotions and blindly following the loud frontrunner with the flashy suit and shiny gold everything.  They are not being fooled or tricked into thinking they are supporting a good-but-secretly-corrupt candidate.  They are paying attention to the issues at hand and know they are being fed the very sincere personality of a very disingenuous man, and gobbling it up just in time for Thanksgiving.

To say that Trump is an outcast or an outsider to the Republican field is also, I think, inaccurate.  The GOP has been a divided, broken, incompetent, and insensitive Party since the rise of its extreme right-wing faction the Tea Party in the 2010 midterm elections.  For candidates or political experts to claim that the very divisive, destructive, inexperienced, and bigoted Mr. Trump or Mr. Carson do not represent the Republican Party as a whole is downright false.  The opposite could not be truer.  Americans ought to take the complete inability for Republicans to govern effectively and peaceably over the country or even their own nomination process into account when the voting starts a year from now, whether or not you like Hillary Clinton's policy.

The Cult of the Other

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A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) waves an ISIS flag in Raqqa.(Reuters / Stringer)

Americans are outraged in the wake of another indiscriminate mass shooting. The Friday terrorist attacks conducted by members of ISIS, which I will unaffectionately refer to by the Arabic term ‘Daesh’, sent shockwaves across the world as Western nations mourned the loss of over 130 people and condemned the depravity of the attackers. But while the attacks on Paris have already generated immense discourse and empathy almost immediately after their occurrence, Americans all but ignored terrorist attacks in Baghdad and Beirut within a couple days of the attacks on Paris. It is easier for Americans to empathize with French people than with Middle Easterners because we share a similar cultural heritage. This selective empathy defines our societal attitude towards terror and Islam, and highlights our fear of the unfamiliar as well as our contempt for the other.

There is an ethno-cultural gap between America and the Middle East that has only grown wider in the decade and a half since 9/11. In fact, this ‘war on terror’ has little to do with religious ideology at all. This is not the Dark Ages or the Crusades, but religious dogma is still playing the same role in the Christian West’s eternal conflict with the Muslim East in 2015. It is important to remember that religion was used in the West to justify colonialism just as it is used in the Middle East to justify anti-colonialism. We already have a self-proclaimed Caliphate in this struggle, only substitute the crusaders with NATO and Christendom with the ‘Free World’ and you may understand how history can repeat itself.

It is appropriate to express solidarity with the French people in their time of grief. But it is one thing to grieve and another to substitute a moment of consolation with the kairotic moment of a war-mongering political agenda. By lashing out against the Muslim world in the wake of the Paris attacks, Americans are succumbing to the very hate-breeding that Bin Laden predicted would promulgate the growth of radical Islam. The fact is that Daesh does not exist in a vacuum. It is a direct result of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion that many people still consider to be illegal.

Most, if not all, of the leaders of Daesh are former officers of Saddam Hussein’s military brass. The war between the Sunni minority and the US-approved Shiite government under Nour al-Maliki allowed for a new generation of disenfranchised Sunni youth to mature in a war-torn nation that seemingly had no use for them. Ashamed of their heritage, despising the US and Shiite soldiers who killed their fathers and uncles, many turned to Daesh as a means of escape and a way to reclaim the ‘dignity’ they felt had been stripped from them. This is not to say the actions of Daesh are justified, but it is to say that without the United States pulling the puppet strings in Iraq, they may never have existed in the first place.

The United States dominates the post-colonial world. While globe-spanning European empires no longer lord over their ‘uncivilized’ colonial possessions directly, we still can see vestiges of that bygone era in how we as a society react to terror. Post-colonialism means Americans care more for French lives than we do for Syrian lives. Or Iraqi lives. Nigerian, Kenyan, or Somali lives. Terror has nothing to do with Islam, but it has everything to do with colonialism. Acts of barbarism are simultaneously praised and condemned depending on who is the recipient. And in a post-colonial world, the tired old ‘us vs. them’ mantra is still being slung back and forth between the haves and the have-nots.

Western Wake-up Call: How to Process the Paris Attacks?                                   

Once more, the soundbites and images come flooding through the television screen.  Once more, the words “dead” and “injured” appear side-by-side in the rolling headline below the pundit’s bust.  Suicide bombers, eight of them, took over a hundred Parisian lives this Friday evening.  The same type of attack killed dozens in Lebanon earlier this week.  Horror and fear are permeating French communities to the extent not seen since World War II.  The Middle East is withstanding war and crisis on a catastrophic level.  The West's War on Terror has certainly entered a new chapter.

Journalists hesitate towards speculation on this latest attack, but we know the facts already.  We know what caused this attack and what has caused attacks like this one on Western cities in the past: a policy of "exporting democracy" to Middle Eastern countries.  Decades of military occupations, regime changes, financial aid to groups who "share our interests," total devastation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and we wonder what might motivate terrorists to commit heinous acts like those that have just taken place in Paris.  Granted, the actions of Islamic extremists are irrational, carnal, and murderous, but there is a direct correlation between the desire to commit or incite violence against the West and the West’s ongoing and unwanted involvement in the Middle East.

It is arrogant, and has been since the days of the Bush foreign policy doctrine, to assume that America is morally obligated to export its democratic values and philosophies to a region of the world with its own separate history, culture, political process, religion, economy, geography, etc.  Barring the individual motivations for a few radicalized human beings to commit such violence as has been endured in France, the real reasons the West has seen such attacks is the West’s own fault.  The headlines truthfully categorize the violence as the worst that’s taken place in France since World War II, but will anyone honestly discuss how Europe has otherwise failed to protect its people and maintain democracy since World War II?  When will we Westerners, who proclaim to be more civilized and righteous, actually start acting like it and stop bombing, invading, and meddling with an already crippled region?

In the United States, a country whose ties with France extend back to the founding of our own nation, a debate is currently raging amongst the Republicans running for president over how to combat ISIL.  The front-runner Ben Carson has lied about his sources, who he claims informed him of “China’s involvement” in Syria; Donald Trump, at a rally, promised to "bomb the sh*t" out of ISIL if elected; Lindsay Graham promises 10,000 ground troops in Iraq.  These are the would-be so-called diplomats and commanders-in-chief of our country?  They don’t have a clue as how to solve the problem.

Furthermore, they only seem interested in continuations of Bush foreign policy which are senseless, cost-ineffective, immoral, neo-conservative policies that have only angered and emboldened terrorists since they have been implemented post-9/11.  These kinds of men, their policies and ideas of "exporting democracy and Western values" have not kept and will not keep us safe. So, instead of "punishing" ISIL as President Hollande of France has vowed to do, why doesn't he divert his efforts towards making France a more diplomatic, tolerant community, instead of an aggressive, militaristic, conflict-exacerbating  state like the one the U.S. has become?