Libelism, Islam, Islamaphobia and Libya...What are The Connections, And Where is America Going?

Read Disclaimer Clause at the Bottom First and Last

Southern Poverty Law Center has collected data on domestic terrorism and found that two-third of the violence conducted within the United States from 1980 up until 2010, that killed, injured and frighened innocent American citizens and residents, have been by non-Muslim groups. So, why is Representative Pete King of New York targeting Muslims, immigrants and citizens, most of whom are well adjusted well-acculturated people, who do not even have a traffic violation - let alone association with terrorist groups?

And how is this helping fight real national security threats - inside and outside the United States?

The recent Washington committee hearings, to analyze and address Muslim-American domestic terrorism, appears short-sighted and judgmental. Is this Islamaphobia at the highest level? And where is it coming from?

Islam has been tainted in the United States both by the Nation of Islam's association with some extremist African-American groups - that struggled against institutionalized racism, bigotry and prejudice, and Sept 11 - that stereotyped all Muslims as fundamentalists and terrorists.

Even the Sikh community, belonging to a religion very different from Islam, has been a target of hate-violence with several recent murders only because many of its men wear turbans - though the turbans are different than what is ordinarily worn by Muslim men.

When so much cultural ignorance and bigotry exists, even in some large diverse cities of America, one can only imagine the kind of stereotypes, slander and sick judgments that abound in many communities - particularly about Islam as well as other minority religions and spiritual traditions!

The United States in stead of moving forward, in its understanding and inclusion of ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, as some may worry is moving backward. The answer is not to merely point to communities and countries around the world where diversity is limited or absent, and one State religion dominates and directs the affairs of the people.  If Al Qaeda and its philosophy becomes the "ultimate comparison" of what America should be, should not be, must try follow or avoid...then when is America going to be a true independent nation that is a beacon of light for all immigrants, citizens and people of  diversity?

When will there be real inclusion, integration and intelligent economic and political mobility for all Americans and residents? Will we ever move beyond the narrowest and lowest of denominators in our social and cultural analysis, evaluation and programs?

As Wisconsinites struggle for basic rights to collective bargaining ; as the Japanese struggle to recover from one of the worst earthquakes in global history ; as food prices shoot up globally, plunging millions of families into acute poverty...America's political focus seems to be on segregating and discriminating an entire community of Muslims and Muslim-Americans, while also debating possible military strikes against Libya - an Arab Muslim country! This is disturbing even for people concerned with real terrorism and violent Jihadism.

Many moderate, secular and patriotic Muslims who have spoken and taken action against extremist and anti-American elements within their communities now feel, no matter how much they give and how many confrontation they take on within their own groups, it will never be enough, and they will never be trusted. These hearings (there are more to come), headed by Representative Peter King, have already created an unbridgeable ever-increasing wedge between Muslims and Christians - Muslim and non-Muslim Americans - in many communities across the United States.

Disenfranchised young minority men, like in many poor communities throughout our history and across the globe, are going to become more isolated, angry and distrustful due to these hearings - becoming easy targets of extremist religious or political propaganda that will exploit their confusion and legitimate anger. 

There are already too many young men: Black, Brown or White, Muslim or non-Muslim, poor or rich, who are feeling lost and conflicted in a world that is changing rapidly - economically, socially and politically. Added to this internal conflict and confusion is the change in status of women that is intimidating traditional and patriarchal men -  many of whom find going into the kitchen and cooking a big challenge to their status quo and their familiar comfort zone.

On top of this rapid social-gender change is the globalization of capital, without labor rights, that is thrusting many poor and/or minority men and their families into poverty.

Nobody has yet publicly provided the data on Muslim American men drop-out-rate from schools and colleges, their unemployment and underemployment, and their economic struggles in the United States. But there is a lot of publicity on possible introduction of the Sharia law in the United States, one Muslim psychiatrist who went berserk and shot his colleagues, and one Muslim-American doctor who beheaded his wife. Imagine the bias and bigotry this kind of focus stirs up!

Many minority and poor men, and some women, both in the US and beyond find themselves outside their political system...that appears to not listen to them, include them and help protect or promote their interests.

Some Muslim women admit that they are treated better, trusted more and included often in the larger American social and cultural environment than their Muslim brothers, fathers or sons. Hence Muslim men feel their isolation, marginalization and vilification not only grew in the US after Sept 11, 2001...but has gotten worse.

There is not only an unfair sweeping judgment of Islam and Muslims - irrespective of where in the world they come from, what social position they occupy, what qualifications they hold and how much they give to the US military and pentagon -as fundamentally anti-democratic, but there is a growing feeling in the United States that most Muslims are anti-American.
 
Some would call this Hobbes' choice, which is no choice at all - damned if you do and damned if you don't. Many moderate Muslims who found themselves siding with Conservatives during the Iraq invasion and occupation are now wondering whether they were conned, deceived and merely used by the system that was intrinsically anti-Islamic.

If conspiracy theories began to fly around after the Iraq invasion they are beginning to fly again with these hearings. And the lack of organized effort to balance these hearings with appropriate focus on protecting minority rights without neglecting legitimate concerns over national security, even by the Democrats and Independents, have led to feelings of further marginalization among many Muslim Americans.

And for many Muslims, who come from communities and countries where there is limited religious diversity and little political democracy, America, once a beacon of light and hope, must now appear dim or dark.

Such hearings are already pushing many of our youth, Muslim or not, into political extremism, cultural myopia and/or religious fundamentalism - turning many minorities and immigrants, including non-Muslims, into victims of ethnocentricism and xenophobia.

I am glad there are counter voices of objection, protest and refusal to participate in these hearings...which is not a witch-hunt as much as a head-hunt - where real people of violence are ignored while innocent people are vilified.

Is Wisconsin Fifteen Years Too Late? Try Thirty! In 1981 Wisconsin Passed the Economic Recovery Tax Act

Read Disclaimer Clause First and Last

In my 1994-1995 ethnographic evaluation research in Kansas City, with the University of Kansas, on a national anti-poverty demonstration project, that was conducted across different cities and towns throughout America, I had a chance to interview a group of mothers over their forced "welfare-to-work" training program, and its poor success. They were able to demonstrate to me, what later research confirmed, that being on welfare was not only hard enough economically, but working, in poorly paying jobs with few benefits, made their economic condition worse. Something Conservatives, who love to shame and stigmatize welfare recipients and the welfare system, never admit.

It was hard enough for many single mothers to manage their rent, even in dilapidated buildings in run down neighborhoods, let alone pay for food, electricity and heating for themselves and their children. But when these women are forced to work, usually in low status jobs with poor pay and no benefit, they incur additional expenses that did not exist when they were on welfare.

Working mothers have to pay for childcare, health care, dental care, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses that they do not have to worry about when on welfare. It was obvious to me, during my research more than fifteen years ago, that the men who had designed welfare policies and welfare-to-work programs had not lived, or even observed up-close, the lives of women they were affecting. There was a social-economic-gender distance, fed by race, class and sex, between welfare program designers, enforcers, and aid-cutters and the poor single mothers of color trying to survive on a measly handout.

Michael Moore's touching film The Big One, made in the 90s, about the corporate mentality that had taken over some State governments, had a scene where a group of Black welfare mothers attempted to convince a Wisconsin legislator, who is supposed to represent them, that they wanted to work...if they could get a job, and the job provided enough so they did not have to beg, borrow or bow to hunger in the middle of a pay cycle.

These women, of course, were at the extreme end of poverty that most working and middle class protesters at the Wisconsin march of 2011 do not belong to. These poor mothers were begging to not have $50 or $100 cut from their meagre welfare checks. They were not protesting against benefit cuts or the repeal of collective bargaining rights. So, why did Wisconsinites take this long to wake up to what minority and some immigrant women have been acutely struggling with for a long time in their own State?

There is a popular belief that problems in the US do not receive social recognition, attention and importance unless it affects rich White boys or mainstream (middle class) America. Feminists have often joked on how "abortion" would be a sacrament if American Conservative Anglo men could get pregnant. Inner city Blacks, concerned about gangs and school violence, predicted that these problems, once hidden and segregated to poor minority communities, would receive public and policy attention only when it spilled over to middle class or/and suburban America. Problems with schools, guns, drugs and mental health services for our youth (or lack of one) did become part of our national debate and public policy concern with the shooting in Columbine - a predominantly Anglo community in the State of Colorado.

Middle America, Middle Class America and Mainstream America have woken up to problems that plagued immigrants, minorities, people of color, women and the poor mostly, and sometimes exclusively. But is this wake-up "too little too soon" as Michale Moore, a Middle Class Midwesterner, claims?

Are we, as Michael Lewis (of The Big Short, 2011, fame) and I worry, merely tweaking some marginal policies rather than doing real structural reform in Wisconsin and elsewhere?

The protests in Wisconsin are understandable and require support...but have too many changes already been introduced into our system that make it impossible for real reform - beyond a mere negotiation over breadcrumbs?

States' assertion to gain control over our debt and deficit is admirable - though the processes and the controversies (on what should be cut and how much) are going to be painful and difficult. But will the right decisions that balance responsible fiscal spending with socio-economic justice be made...and adequately implemented? That is a trillion dollar question! The two critical issues are at loggerheads - not in a long conversation and collaboration as they should!

America is still at the top on many things - though it maybe failing. But, as Niel Ferguson of Harvard University admits, "We maybe at the top of a cliff...a great place to feel good, important and superior from. But you can also fall off a cliff!"

Of course, the most realistic Americans - optimistic or pessimistic - are still at the bottom. Like the poor everywhere they endure more, they are more humble, they are more generous and they see America with the kind of eyes that few in the middle or at the top do.

My homeless friend Jim in Berkeley, California, noted, "We are not superior or exceptional. We are not that stupid either. We have a hard time saying, 'I am an average Joe' without becoming mediocre. I find homeless peers of mine more sensible, fair and value reading (more homeless people in California read voluntarily than high school students), than the guys driving nice cars and throwing profanities at me. We Americans always find one thing to blame, fixate on or fix. To create improvements, not just changes, we need a whole lot of people doing a whole lot of things at many levels of our system! If I were elected I'd start with education...I read and write better than kids who work in WalMart and K-Mart, and then our elections. We have too many elections, too much campaign money in those elections and too many candidates focused on the election victory exclusively. How are we ever going to have a smart citizen' society with that kind of a system?"

This from a homeless guy who pretty much says what academics at Harvard, Stanford, USC (my Alma mater)...have been saying - except he puts it crudely.

Bruce Jannson in his brilliant book  The Sixteen Trillion Dollar Mistake: How the U.S. Bungled its National Priorities from FDR to Clinton (2001) admits that honest numbers, gotten through reliable and valid data, beyond a level can not digress too much from the truth - though it can be distorted or hidden for political reasons. And the numbers tell us, loud, bright and clear, that social security, medicare and defense budget alone are going to eat up 35% of our GDP.

Added to this horrific truth is the fact - that Neil Ferugson, an economist at Harvard, also admits - interest alone on the treasury debt, not the defense debt, is going to be hard to pay off. Lot of the debt numbers that have been presented to the public do not include defense borrowing. Imagine if it did?

It is easy, amidst this growing pain, frustration and fear, to blame incompetent or inefficient government. That is what profitable businesses, an ignorant public and private media like to do.

American government is not big, bad or bold (with excessive spending). That is a myth! Small government is not necessarily better, efficient or relevant. And spending cuts, without smart planning and hard choices, are not going to save money. Axing aid and assistance to the poor, while subsidizing agribusinesses, bailing out failing financial companies and providing benefits to the rich - old or young, is going to suffocate America, and may push the economy over the cliff.

The real American terrorist might not be some Al-Queda bogeyman wearing pyjamas and a turban. It may be the idiots on all sides who are not thinking right...or doing right!

With growing classism, racism, sexism, xenophobia and Islamaphobia we are forgetting "Thinkingphobia" and "Truthophobia" -  fear of thinking and fear of the truth - that is all too prevalent.

Even Tea Party advocates have become soft on their rants and raves about "closing Congress" over extending the ceiling on the national debt...and they have been in Washington less than two months. Few want a shutdown as, unlike Brussels, a shutdown here will be a meltdown. But if young passionate newcomers to Washington,  elected representatives who made big statements, gestures, proposals and promises, cannot use a simple vote on a policy they hold dear...imagine these guys, and their peers, making structural changes? It is not happening!

Is Wisconsin fifteen years too late, as Michael Moore claimed? Try thirty! In 1981 Wisconsin passed the Economic Recovery Tax Act which allowed tax-free stock exchanges, tax deductions for merger loans, lower capital gains tax rates - that actually invited big mergers and acquisitions to occur.

Its been downhill for social and economic justice in Wisconsin, and like States, since then!

Corrosive Conservative Actions: Shooting Themselves in the Foot

Read Disclaimer Clause at the Bottom First and Last

I used to tell my students, in my women, gender and social work class, that women's rights, like a garden, had to be carefully watched, nurtured and protected, otherwise no matter how big and beautiful it will wither and die...or be killed!

American women's rights, hard fought and won in the 60s and the 70s, are now on a forced retreat and a political backslide. This time, not because of any callous oversight on the part of feminist organizations, but because the Conservatives have been meticulous and strategically shrewd in the way they have eroded women's rights and options from the ground up. Their actions are more than control of women's reproductive rights and related freedoms...it is a slow erosion of basic civil rights.

What Conservatives are forgetting is that in this kind of policy over-reach they might be threatening American individual rights, traditional male independence and their Constitutional privileges - entitlements they hold dear to their hearts. Are Conservatives shooting themselves in the foot?

There are three insidious reasons: religious, ideological and racial, behind these "reproductive restraints and choice removals". The religious and social belief that conception begins at birth - which labels abortion as a crime against life and a sin (in moral terms). The other is a broader ideological attack on feminism and women's rights - beyond reproductive choices - that are seen as an affront to traditional family values. Third is racial politics, that is not discussed much, based on the statistics and fear of the declining birthrate among white women.

Mellissa Harris-Perry in The Nation (Online March 21, 2011) writes:

Since the introduction of the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion, women in America have significantly reduced the number of children they bear. This decrease in fertility has been particularly striking among white women. Fewer white women marry, most marry much later than in previous generations, far more get divorced and the size of their families has decreased dramatically. Along with these changes, white women’s educational achievement has soared, their participation in the workforce has increased and their health outcomes, lifetime earnings and political participation have improved. Today, more than three in five American women work for pay outside the home.

However shrouded in the language of fiscal austerity, the GOP’s social agenda intends to undo these changes, forcing women back into the domestic sphere. While leaving abortion nominally legal, cuts to family planning services and the legalization of terror against abortion providers would create an environment of compulsory childbearing. Women who can’t control their fertility will be unable to compete for degrees or jobs with their male counterparts. Likewise, without affordable childcare women would be less likely to work outside the home. And without basic rights to organize, women teachers, nurses and other public sector workers would be compelled to accept lower wages and harsher working conditions, shoving many women out of the workforce altogether. In the Republicans’ future America, women will be encouraged to marry younger, to stay in difficult (even abusive) marriages and to rely on male wages.

All these reasons to restrict reproductive rights for women are hypocritical in that it overlooks male responsibility in avoiding pregnancy, or in becoming and being a responsible parent. It also overlooks what Conservatives constantly worry about: debt, deficit and excessive spending.

Unwanted children, young parents (married or not), unprepared parents, unwilling or reluctant parents, abusive parents, poor parents and large families...can be a big financial cost to society already reeling in debt and deficit. Also, while family values are touted as good for children, with an old fashioned romantic view of a home as having a father, a mother, two children and a dog in a happy healthy suburb exclusively, it overlooks an important conservative emphasis - "Individual Freedom"!

There is a Conservative loss to these emerging reproductive restrictions that many Republicans have not bothered to pay attention to:

For every woman who is forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy there is a man who is forced to be a father - without choice.

For every woman who is expected to carry an unplanned pregnancy to full term there is a man who might continue his "unprotected sexual activities" without responsibility -because the woman is expected to carry all the weight (literally).

For every woman who is now compelled to have a child, only because contraception and/or abortion were unavailable, there is a man who has to pay for unwanted children - which consumes, indirectly, community or corporate money.

And, for every woman who is forced to have a child there will be a man who will abandon or ill treat that child - due to pressures of forced parenting that goes against his need and individual freedom.

Did the White Conservative boys in power, old and/or rich, think about these serious repercussions that erode into their own protection and pursuit of American freedom and the Constitution?

How Far Will They Go? The Illegal Immigration Issue

Read Disclaimer Clause at the Bottom First and Last

Wetback: The Undocumented Documentary (2005) is an interesting look, from the ground-up, of who the so-called undocumented or illegal immigrants are, what they go through to come to the United States and find the American dream, and the hurdles, the challenges, near-death experiences and death itself that most encounter!

There are many experiences, many realities and many perspectives to the experiences and realities of illegal immigrants: the economic conditions that propel them from their countries, their choice of migration or lack of one, their challenges across the border or through several borders, their labor struggles, their economic pressures and their connection to the movement of labor, not just capital, around the globe. But there is only one truth to all their experiences! The truth that illegal and undocumented immigrants, like many legal immigrants, minorities and people of color, are exploited, abused, overworked, overqualified for jobs they do, and are usually at the bottom of the American or North American socio-economic-political ladder.

Many immigrants - legal or illegal, educated or uneducated, poor or middle class - are second class citizens in their countries of origin and are third or fourth class citizens in the United States. They are, like poor people (everywhere), people of color (here and elsewhere) and women (all over the world), marginalized or oppressed on both sides of the fence...sometimes on all sides of the fence.

Arizona maybe the first major fault line where the battle between those who are against illegality, for variety of reasons, is being fought against those who want more protection and rights for illegals, and want to make sure that citizens and legal residents are not harassed or targeted due to mistaken identity (because of their appearance or politics). But it is not the last! The Arizona fault line is not confined to border States - it is moving North! Unfortunately our media has not covered this migration of issue well.

The contradiction in many Conservative arguments, including among many Tea Party activists, is that while they worry government (big or small), liberalism or real libertarianism, could take away, or restrict, freedom and civil liberties that give ordinary people the option to move, migrate, work and live anywhere without constant supervision, surveillance and strict impositions, they want to restrict the movement of labor and the rights of minorities without recognizing their basic civil liberties.

How does one get away with such a hypocrisy?

Here are some popular myths that circulate around "illegal and undocumented" workers, and skews some of the facts about "labor migration, labor movement, labor exploitation, labor contribution, labor security and labor success!"

Myth 1: Lot of people cross the border with determination, courage, fear and take unbelievable risks to find the American dream...because America is fair, kind and generous!

Large segments of the immigrant population, legal and illegal, like many American minorities, are overworked, underpaid, under protected and easily dispensed with. They have given a great deal to taxes, social security, government wealth, business profits and rarely articulate their legitimate needs and rights (out of shyness, fear, isolation, prejudice and racism). Most of them will never see their social security, their retirement benefits or any benefit that they have contributed to. Even legal minority faculty struggle in schools and universities without protection or proper pay for years.

While some illegal immigrants use State funds, benefits and emergency services, and get into crime (for survival or for quick money), most struggle to get into the US, struggle after getting into the US and struggle for many years just to earn a few dollars. American dream is a relative term: depending on where you come from, where you've been, what your standards are, what you are willing to accept and tolerate, what you are willing to put up with or endure, and how much of your mind is indoctrinated by Conservative propaganda about "hard honest work being appropriately rewarded, or helping you become rich, successful, well liked, well integrated and happy" in the United States.

The search for American dream is sometimes driven by ignorance, naivete, hope, faith, desperation, illusion and indoctrination.

Myth 2: Immigrants, legal and illegal, change the great culture of America, take away choices from American natives (a term that is so vague and odd, considering most Americans have immigrant ancestry - many of whom probably came illegally into this country).

Lot of immigrants do not consider the "popular American culture" attractive or really a culture...neither do many conservatives who constantly preach about less drugs, drinks and pornographic dances in our children's lives. In fact many immigrants and their children do better psychologically, socially and academically because of their culture, and by avoiding American popular culture. Not the other way around!

Also, how are poor and desperate illegal immigrants, employed by American businesses that are interested in profits and wealth accumulation, responsible for taking jobs that are thrown their way so they can buy bread and milk for their children? Why are Conservatives and Tea Party members taking out their anger, annoyance and frustration on the poorest of the poor, the powerless of the powerless, when they should be challenging fat cats in their own communities and society who are deceiving or exploiting them?

Even legal immigrants, not all of them George Soros or Arianne Huffington (who have billions and millions of dollars respectively), are overqualified, overworked, underpaid, under-served, and unprotected much of the time. For every legal immigrant who finds the American dream (as defined by Conservatives), there are thousands who have a hard time keeping a roof over their heads and raising a decent family. For every illegal immigrant who finds a decent working class life in the US a lot sink, drown and die in the US - many while trying to get into the US.

Myth 3: Illegal immigrants are good for the American economy: they help businesses and economic investments, while also helping themselves.

Illegal immigrants, like legal immigrants, minorities and poor workers, help the good ole rich boys stay rich, powerful and access more wealth, while they struggle for basic justice. Many of them also protect the privileged class, or people who feel entitled to rights without responsibilities, from difficult, dangerous and demeaning jobs. Illegal immigrants are good for the capitalists with money, power and ideology.They are never good for themselves, their families, their rights, their future or the general economy back in their home countries (no matter how many big vacant houses they build infrequently with their few migrant dollars).

Myth 4: Illegal immigrants are good for their home countries from where they migrated from because they remit huge amounts of money that help that economy.

Many illegal immigrants do not earn enough to even feed themselves in the United States let alone save for the future - and fewer remit money back to their home countries. Many of them are legally stuck in the US, economically trapped in their communities (even with low paying jobs) and are constantly exploited. Whenever there are economic challenges in the US they suffer the most: they are the last to be hired, first to be fired, frequently vilified and most to be exploited and abused. This is true for many legal immigrants too - including as faculties who provide cheap intellectual labor.

As long as the poor escape, or are encouraged to do so by their families, communities and countries' governments and businesses, no effort will be made by these governments and businesses to improve justice, resources for the poor and the middle class, and create a more egalitarian society - that does not have their elites working with capitalists elsewhere for their own narrow economic interests. Countries, from where many illegal immigrants migrate from, have either been colonies that have been exploited by foreign powers and businesses for centuries, or they have had an elite ruling class that does not care for its poor, women or its disenfranchised and marginalized.

Myth 5: The southern border, where American troops, the military and the para-military operate intensely (though vigilante groups claim it is not enough), stops at the official differentiation between American and Mexican territories.

American troops and money (including taxpayers' money) extend way into Mexico, and influence the borders between Mexico and Guatemala, and beyond. Illegal immigrants, who cross the border by foot or land, do not just come from Mexico, but from many other Latin and South American countries south of Mexico. Lot of the Mexican border patrol, narcotics control agencies, domestic policing, immigration services and national (military) security, even at the Guatemalan border, are funded by the US. Thus the unofficial American border extends way into Mexico, and beyond.

The logic behind this is that if America can finance services and efforts to curb Latin American migration into Mexico then the US will not have to deal with illegal immigration from or through Mexico. They can also, through this infiltration and expansion, control or eliminate Mexican and Latin American drug cartels and coyotes that operate in Mexico and the US.

Well known journalists like Fareed Zakaria, and social scientists like Jeffry Miron and Andres Martinez, that the American public are familiar with, have indicated that "this war on drug, and obsession with illegal immigrants" have created a very unique Mexican dependency on the US government, its foreign policy and selective business activities. They fear that the Mexican government is constantly being told what to do with their people and how to man their borders on both sides.

The critics continue, "There are entire departments, institutions and systems within Mexico, and the American gun industries and lobby groups, that rely on the American war-on-drugs money to sustain themselves and keep themselves employed. Some even make big profits from these programs. So how will these war-on-drug policies ever solve the real problems? Or the underlying ones?"

Myth 6: We don't have enough research to help us decide on the best solution, as we don't have accurate or detailed information for the best policy on this matter.

There has been thirty years of research on illegal and undocumented labor in the United States, and enough facts and details are available for a constructive policy that will prevent poor people from fleeing their countries due to lack of protection, choice and justice in their home countries. We know their domestic economies neglect them, and make it easy for elites inside and outside their communities to exploit them. Their decisions to leave their communities and countries are made from a desperate impulse to survive, as they get trapped into a second, third or fourth class citizenship, or become person non-grata, in the United States.

How far will a system go to make sure that non-aliens, labeled real Americans, are the only ones who remain, breed and prosper - no matter how poorly they read, think and act? How far should we go to deport - even those early immigrants who came to the US illegally, or when immigration laws and its enforcements were lax? Are we willing to evaluate the legality of the ancestors who might have given birth to men like Jared Lee Loughner, a mentally unstable man who shot and killed 13 Americans - including a 9 year old child and a reputed State judge?

Men of cloth, like Reverend Huckabee who ran for the Presidency and plans to run again, very disturbingly attack anti-imperialist views of people whose countries painfully struggled against colonialism - including his country "The United States of America". What is Huckabee assuming? That colonialism, even for America, is good?
How can the Tea Party, that Huckabee belongs to, consider itself a great protector and defender of freedom and rights when it forgets America's great revolutionary past -against colonial tyranny and slavery?

Will American Libertarians and Conservatives get strong enough to start deporting people among them, their families and communities, who came illegally (decades or generations ago), or with inadequate documentation, no matter how old, how fair skinned and how Conservative? If they want to have a social litmus test for who is "a real reliable American"...how far are they willing to go into their own past? Would they be willing to deport the great great grand children of illegal immigrants from Europe - especially when their progenies have committed financial crimes or assassinations like Jared Lee Loughner?

Tell me Conservatives and Tea Party activists...how far do you want to take this?

Betrayal of All Sorts: The Laotian Experience, Exodus, Exile and Excruciating Pain

Read Disclaimer Clause at the Bottom First and Last

The autobiographical documentary "The Betrayal" (2008), by Thavisouk Phrasavath (Thavi) and Ellen Kuras, is a painful poignant look at Thavi's family's involvement with the Vietnam war, that devastated his small country of Laos and tore his and many other families apart - leaving social, cultural, economic and psychological scars that they must struggle with for generations to come, But, above all this trauma (of military conflict and combat) is the social and political betrayal that Thavisouk and his family, and so many like his, are forced to endure - over and over again. They were betrayed by Americans, that Thavi's father loyally served, the American government, whose policies towards refugees have been careless and half hearted, and by America itself, a country Thavi's family migrated to with hope and excitement - only to find that it offered its own version of "hell".

There is no anger in Thavi as he interviews various members of his family, in Brooklyn, New York (where they were forced to settle) and back in Laos (where his grandparents and two siblings were left behind during their escape to Thailand), while they reveal their losses, grief, emotional bruises, pain, suffering, fears, confusions, conflicts and tears....These are people who endured the kind of cruelties we cannot imagine - not even soldiers in uniforms with guns and orders to kill can.

Thavi's family saw their village bombed, many of their neighbors shot and killed, women being raped and brutalized, bodies of dead babies and children strewn all over their beautiful lush country side. They had members of their families taken away under a gun point in the middle of the night...never to return. They saw horrors that we could only read about, watch on TV and hear from people like them. And their grief never stops after the war.

Thavi's father was taken away by the opposing army once the Americans pulled out without any protection for all the locals who had fought with them. Many were betrayed by the Americans they had served with their blood and their lives. Thavi's mother was forced to care for her nine children in utter poverty and devastation once her husband disappeared, and there was no American to even throw a few handouts. They were constantly starving and afraid for their lives.

After years of desperate living in poverty and paranoia Thavi's mother bribed a fishermen to take her and her family to Thailand - where there was a refugee camp. They escaped in an old wooden boat, with 17 other people, holding on to their lives...afraid they'd drown in the middle of a river in a middle of their journey of hope. Once they reached the refugee camps in Thailand new problems began to plague them.

Refugee camps were overcrowded, unhygienic, unhealthy and under-served. They went hungry many days, begged for food, picked trash for clothes and fell sick often. After several years of hunger, begging and a humiliating life their hopeful wait was answered with visas and one-way tickets to the US of A - a country that was presented to them as paradise with "running water, indoor plumbing and lights in every room".

Thavi and his family arrived in New York city only to be stranded for many hours without anyone to pick them up and provide them with helpful information. Their sponsor did arrive, after hours of delay, without an open arm, a smile, flowers or food. They had dreamt of this moment of arrival to the American shores for decades, and had hoped to be received with some thoughtfulness and kindness. In stead, an officious man, with no sensitivity, warmth or compassion for his new clients and co-citizens, shows up late and takes them in a hot van to dump them at an old dilapidated building, that was once a crack house, in a crowded crime ridden part of Brooklyn. This was to be their new home...and a different nightmare ensued for this already devastated traumatized tired family.

Brooklyn, where they settled in the 1980s, was high on drugs, crime and gangs. They were surrounded by people who did not speak their language, care for them or connect with them. They were now unwanted and misunderstood strangers, isolated, alienated and many times treated with prejudice, stuck in the margins and at the bottom of the American socio-economic political ladder.

Their dreams of America were crushed when, on their first day, they were thrust into one room of an apartment - all eight of them, to be shared with another Vietnamese family of seven. The family was left with one bag of rice and no utensils to cook it in. Their sponsor had not bothered to find out if they had even eaten after an exhausting flight followed by a long wait at the airport. Nor were there any efforts made to evaluate their basic needs, like food and clothes, for their first few weeks in the US as they tried to settle in and adjust. Welcome to paradise and the land of the free - where once you come, are allowed to enter, you are thrown to the sharks. You either swim - and few do ; drown - most do ; or merely float - sometimes with a glazed look in their eyes (as Thavi's mother describes some of the American youngsters).

Life for Thavi's family was hard...living on welfare and food stamps that was never enough or adequate. His siblings went to poorly run schools where drugs, drinks and gangs ruled kids' lives. Several of his siblings dropped out, few joined gangs, many did drugs and most hung out in street corners with nothing to do - disrespectful to their elders, their culture, and their own mother who had once begged to save them. Above all most seemed clueless about their own past and what their family had endured (and why). The past you don't know you might be forced to relive or be victimized by - all over again.

The family managed to eke out a frugal difficult living in Brooklyn. One day, after seventeen years, they received a call from their father - who was alive and living in Miami. He came to visit them, and Thavi, the son who ached for his father the most, excitedly looked forward to his parents reuniting and the family - for the first time - resolving all their years of painful separations, struggles and suffering.

While the time with their father was wonderful, exciting and hopeful, Thavi's family learned, to their disappointment, that their father had another wife and children in Miami: a woman he had met in Thailand and married after 13 years of staying away from his family to protect them, and later futilely trying to find them. Thavi's mother was heartbroken again! One wonders how many heartaches and heartbreaks a woman can take.

Thavi's mother deals with this devastating news as gracefully as she can - with her cultural stoicism, traditional rituals of healing and forgiveness, and her Buddhist faith. It is truly amazing what some people endure and then attempt to forgive - an admirable quality, and one that might be good for mental health sometimes. Though legitmate anger at the bigger systems of combat and exploitation is also acceptable.

Faith and forgiveness must not make us forget, or deceive us into forgiving the wrong people or the wrong system. For the self absorbed narcissist will kill a woman and then run to her mother for forgiveness, with cooked up tears, reasons, rationale and pretentious regrets. Once he is forgiven, and does not pay with his future, savings, wealth, power, privilege or his life, he will commit the same heinous crimes over and over again.  Hence,Thavisouk Phrasavath (Thavi) should not forget, there will be betrayals over and over again!

Thavi's father admits that he regrets having collaborated with the Americans who made him drop bombs on his own country...and in the end bombed his family's unity, welfare, success and happiness. While he takes responsibility for some of the things he did...not a single American leader, businessman or military personnel was ever questioned, or showed remorse and regret.

But why exclusively blame a man who was a mere "foot soldier" - following instructions and co-opting with the big boys with the big power and the big guns...when these big boys in power, who unleashed chaos, madness and murders on other cultures and countries, are rarely included in documentaries like these, and contnue to remain hidden, comfortable and powerful.

From a famous Hitchcock movie "Gaslight" (1944) the term "gaslighting"  was coined -to refer to processes or methods that distort truth and/or reality, thereby shifting focus and removing blame from the real perpetrators. In "gaslighting" arguments are shrewdly twisted, words are cunningly redefined, events are presented with slanted lens and some facts are deliberately left out or distorted - creating the opposite reality, away from the real truth. Such maneavors make the innocent and the real victims insane, and shifts the blame and focus away from real criminals and perpetrators.

While this documentary is poignant, emotional and courageous - it is incomplete. To really break the cycle of destrution and control, that is unleashed on innocent communities and cultures, so families never have to go through what Thavi and his family did, we need a Part II to this documentary...titled, "Betrayal and Beyond: Pursuit with a Purpose, Prosecution with Fairness and Full Legal Conviction with Compassion".  Not the other way around!