Tim StanleyDr Tim Stanley is a historian of the United States. His biography of Pat Buchanan is out now. His personal website is www.timothystanley.co.ukand you can follow him on Twitter @timothy_stanley.The Muslim Brotherhood wants this back The Islamic Society of North America, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has published an article that calls Andalusia – the hottest bit of Spain – a "paradise" that will return when "the only victor is Allah." It reads like part travelogue and part religious tract, claiming that Andalusia was a region of tolerance "for 800 years" when occupied by Muslims, was then ruined by "the insanity following the Spanish reconquista" and, only today, has regained some of its former lustre thanks to growing interest in Islam in the region. Quote: "In 2006, Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said that Spain was indebted to Islam for its great historical contributions." Mr Zapatero also legalised gay marriage, so it's fair to presume that he's not too keen for the Caliphate to come back. The article actually makes some very good points. Islamic Andalusia was a cultural centre for western Europe, did tolerate the presence of Jews and Christians and did see a great many natives convert to Islam. Within Spain, that interpretation of history has become institutionalised as the country has tried to make peace with its Muslim minority and preach its own brand of multiculturalism. But it's only half the story. According to the New York Times:
Of course, even this was arguably preferable to what followed the Spanish reconquista – an era characterised by violent mass pogroms against the Jewish population. Nevertheless, there's something both creepy and presumptuous about a Muslim writer visiting a Christian country and yearning for its "return" to the fold. Creepy because, for many Islamists (the author of this travelogue not included), that return will be by compulsion rather than evangelical outreach and church picnics: Hassan al-Banna, the founder of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, once wrote that "Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, south Italy, and the Roman sea islands were all Islamic lands that have to be restored to the homeland of Islam… it is our right to restore the Islamic Empire its glory." Such sentiments are also presumptuous because they imply that certain parts of the globe spiritually "belong" to people who "owned" them for a bit in the past. And if we're really going to divide up the world by that logic, I'd like to make a counter offer to the Muslim Brotherhood. Can we Christians have North Africa back? After all, it was once a centre of Christian civilisation – some of the earliest Christian communities were found there. You want brilliant theologians – Africa gave us St Augustine. You want devotion – Africa gave us the Desert Fathers. You want beauty – Africa gave us stunning iconography. You want learning – Africa gave us the libraries and schools at Alexandria. So Andalusia for Egypt seems a fair swap. After all, those pagan pyramids can surely be of no use to the Muslim Brotherhood. |
Friday, May 03, 2013
The Muslim Brotherhood wants Spain back. Can the Christians have Egypt in exchange?
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Bangladesh Factory Accident: JCPenney, Joe Fresh, Primark Among Brands with Links to Factory | TIME.com
http://business.time.com/2013/05/02/bangladesh-factory-collapse-is-there-blood-on-your-shirt/
Sent from Samsung Mobile
The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi
http://mobile.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/04/mohamedou_ould_slahi_s_guantanamo_memoirs_part_1_the_endless_interrogations.single.html
Sent from Pocket.
Sent from Samsung Mobile
What options does Obama have to close Guantanamo?
(Reuters) - With his renewed vow to close the detention camp for foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, President Barack Obama has effectively assigned himself a list of possible ways to take the prison's population down from 166 to zero.
Some would be more easily achieved than others.
In pledging to look again at an unfulfilled promise dating back to his first election campaign and early days in office in 2009, Obama made plain on Tuesday that it was untenable to keep the 11-year-old camp open.
A hunger strike at the camp at the U.S. Naval Base on Cuba began in February, has been joined by 100 of the inmates and has led to force-feedings to keep the weakest prisoners alive, sparking fresh outrage from rights groups over a prison opened under Republican President George W. Bush in 2002.
There were about 245 prisoners at Guantanamo when Obama, a Democrat, took office in 2009 and that has dropped to 166. But releases have slowed to a trickle under restrictions imposed by Congress, including a ban on any of them being brought to the United States. No prisoners have left Guantanamo this year.
Among current inmates, nine have been charged with crimes or convicted, 24 are considered eligible for possible prosecution, 47 are considered too dangerous for release but are not facing prosecution, and 86 have been cleared for transfer or release.
Obama has several options, although it could take a combination of several to clear the camp.
PUT SOMEBODY IN CHARGE
In January, the State Department reassigned the special envoy who had been in charge of trying to persuade countries to take Guantanamo inmates approved for release, Daniel Fried, and did not replace him. That was widely seen as a signal that Obama was giving up on closing the prison any time soon.
Fried arranged for the transfer out of scores of prisoners, but the departures slowed to a crawl after Congress imposed restrictions on them. White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday the administration was considering naming a senior diplomat to renew the focus on repatriation or transferring detainees.
Christopher Anders, the senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said such a "point person" was sorely needed as a first step to manage the administration's effort - but that the person should be from the White House. "For the last three years at the White House, it's been like no one home" on Guantanamo, he said.
USE EXCEPTIONS IN LAW TO LET PRISONERS GO
Obama has blamed Congress for interfering with his plan to close Guantanamo. Starting in 2011, Congress began restricting transfers out, saying the Defense Department first had to certify a number of things, including that the destination country was not a state sponsor of terrorism and would take action to make sure the individual would not threaten the United States.
Starting last year, Congress let some restrictions be waived if it was in the "national security interests" of the United States. Obama has not used the waiver or certification provisions.
"For the past two years, our committee has worked with our Senate counterparts to ensure that the certifications necessary to transfer detainees overseas are reasonable. The administration has never certified a single transfer," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon, a Republican, said this week.
The White House could have pushed harder for officials at the Pentagon to process certifications, said the ACLU's Anders.
Wells Dixon, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York organization that has represented a number of Guantanamo prisoners, said Obama could order the Pentagon to begin certifying transfers out. But he also noted potential risks for the president. "There's no political upside" if Obama certifies that a prisoner can leave and then that prisoner later attacks U.S. interests, Dixon said.
SEND PRISONERS BACK TO YEMEN
Congress has prohibited the transfer of detainees to countries with troubled security situations. But the United States could decide that new Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour has taken adequate measures against al Qaeda and made the country stable enough to resume repatriations to Yemen.
Repatriations were halted in 2010 after a man trained by militants in Yemen tried to blow up a U.S.-bound plane in 2009.
Of the 86 prisoners cleared for transfer or release, 56 are Yemenis. The Yemeni government says it wants them home and is building a facility to hold them for rehabilitation.
That option also has a potential danger - if a repatriated Yemeni eventually attacked the United States or its interests.
USE THE PERIODIC REVIEW BOARD PROCESS
Two years ago, Obama signed an executive order establishing extra review procedures for Guantanamo detainees to determine if continued detention were warranted, but the Periodic Review Boards have not been used.
This option looks fairly simple, since it involves carrying out the president's own executive order. But there may have been no rush to establish more reviews boards since prisoners cleared by earlier review boards are still being held.
USE COURT RULINGS TO GET PEOPLE OUT
Dixon suggested the administration could use court rulings to help get prisoners released. Two members of China's Muslim Uighur minority were resettled in El Salvador in April 2012, four years after a U.S. District Court in Washington ruled there were no grounds to hold them.
When prisoners challenge their detention in federal court, the government could decide not to contest the case, paving the way for a court order effecting the prisoner's release, said Dixon. He said that could happen in any of the more than 100 detainee "habeus corpus" cases filed in federal court.
Obama could instruct the Justice Department to stop contesting those cases.
SEND PRISONERS OUT IN A PRISONER EXCHANGE
The United States tried to work out a deal to transfer five senior Taliban prisoners back to Afghanistan in return for U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Berghdal, who has been a prisoner of Taliban militants since 2009. The talks were suspended last year. But there will be pressure to return the Afghan prisoners when the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan ends in 2014.
This option would depend on how relations evolve with Afghanistan. But the Taliban prisoner release plan also met strong resistance among some members of Congress, especially Republicans, who might object if it resurfaces.
CALL ON CONGRESS
The legal restrictions on transfers will expire at the end of the fiscal year, on September 30, so Obama could urge Congress not to renew them - and make clear he considers that a political imperative.
If the restriction on transferring prisoners to the United States were allowed to expire, Obama could not only transfer Guantanamo prisoners to foreign countries, but could bring some back to the United States for trial in federal court.
But some Democrats as well as Republicans argue that bringing Guantanamo inmates to the United States is a security risk. Republican leaders in both chambers have made that a high-profile issue, and Republicans control the House of Representatives.
So the option could be bogged down in Washington politics.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell in Washington and Jane Sutton in Miami; Editing by Frances Kerry; Desking by Peter Cooney)
Shoppers face hurdles in finding ethical clothing
NEW YORK (AP) — You can recycle your waste, grow your own food and drive a fuel-efficient car. But being socially responsible isn't so easy when it comes to the clothes on your back.
Take Jason and Alexandra Lawrence of Lyons, Colo. The couple eat locally grown food that doesn't have to be transported from far-flung states. They fill up their diesel-powered Volkswagen and Dodge pickup with vegetable-based oil. They even bring silverware to a nearby coffeehouse to avoid using the shop's plastic utensils.
But when it comes to making sure that their clothes are made in factories that are safe for workers, the couple fall short.
"Clothing is one of our more challenging practices," says Jason Lawrence, 35, who mostly buys secondhand. "I don't want to travel around the world to see where my pants come from."
Last week's building collapse in Bangladesh that killed hundreds of clothing factory workers put a spotlight on the sobering fact that people in poor countries often risk their lives working in unsafe factories to make the cheap T-shirts and underwear that Westerners covet.
The disaster, which comes after a fire in another Bangladesh factory killed 112 people last November, also highlights something just as troubling for socially conscious shoppers: It's nearly impossible to make sure the clothes you buy come from factories with safe working conditions.
Very few companies sell clothing that's so-called "ethically made," or marketed as being made in factories that maintain safe working conditions. In fact, ethically made clothes make up a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the overall $1 trillion global fashion industry. And with a few exceptions, such as the 250-store clothing chain American Apparel Inc., most aren't national brands.
It's even more difficult to figure out if your clothes are made in safe factories if you're buying from retailers that don't specifically market their clothes as ethically made. That's because major chains typically use a complex web of suppliers in countries such as Bangladesh, which often contract business to other factories. That means the retailers themselves don't always know the origin of clothes when they're made overseas.
And even a "Made in USA" label only provides a small amount of assurance for a socially conscious shopper. For instance, maybe the tailors who assembled the skirt may have had good working conditions. But the fabric might have been woven overseas by people who do not work in a safe environment.
"For the consumer, it's virtually impossible to know whether the product was manufactured in safe conditions," says Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy. "For U.S.-made labels, you have good assurance, but the farther you get away from the U.S., the less confidence you have."
To be sure, most global retailers have standards for workplace safety in the factories that make their clothes. And the companies typically require that contractors and subcontractors follow these guidelines. But policing factories around the world is a costly, time-consuming process that's difficult to manage.
In fact, there were five factories alone in the building that collapsed in Bangladesh last week. They produced clothing for big name retailers including British retailer Primark, Children's Place and Canadian company Loblaw Inc., which markets the Joe Fresh clothing line.
"I have seen factories in (Bangladesh and other countries), and I know how difficult it is to monitor the factories to see they are safe," says Walter Loeb, a New York-based retail consultant.
And some experts say that retailers have little incentive to be more proactive and do more because the public isn't pushing them to do so.
America's Research Group, which interviews 10,000 to 15,000 consumers a week mostly on behalf of retailers, says that even in the aftermath of two deadly tragedies in Bangladesh, shoppers seem more concerned with fit and price than whether their clothes were made in factories where workers are safe and make reasonable wages.
C. Britt Beemer, chairman of the firm, says when he polls shoppers about their biggest concerns, they rarely mention "where something is made" or "abuses" in the factories in other countries.
"We have seen no consumer reaction to any charges about harmful working conditions," he says.
Tom Burson, 49, certainly is focused more on price and quality when he's shopping. Burson says that if someone told him that a brand of jeans is made in "sweatshops by 8-year-olds," he wouldn't buy it. But he says, overall, there is no practical way for him to trace where his pants were made.
"I am looking for value," says Burson, a management consultant who lives in Ashburn, Va. "I am not callous and not unconcerned about the conditions of the workers. It's just that when I am standing in a clothing store and am comparing two pairs of pants, there's nothing I can do about it. I need the pants."
In light of the recent disasters, though, some experts and retailers say things are slowly changing. They say more shoppers are starting to pay attention to labels and where their clothes are made.
Swati Argade, a clothing designer who promotes her Bhoomki boutique in the Brooklyn borough of New York City as "ethically fashioned," says people have been more conscious about where their clothes come from.
The store, which means "of the earth" in Hindi, sells everything from $18 organic cotton underwear to $1,000 coats that are primarily made in factories that are owned by their workers in India or Peru or that are designed by local designers in New York City.
"After the November fire in Bangladesh, many customers says it made them more aware of the things they buy, and who makes them," Argade says.
Jennifer Galatioto, a 31-year-old fashion photographer from Brooklyn, is among the shoppers who have become thoughtful about where her clothes are made. Galatioto has been making trips to local shops in the Williamsburg, a section of Brooklyn that sells a lot of clothes made locally. She has also ventured to local shopping markets that feature handmade clothing.
"I am trying to learn the story behind the clothing and the people who are making it," she says.
Some retailers are beginning to do more to ease shoppers' consciences.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said in January that it would cut ties with any factory that failed an inspection, instead of giving warnings first as had been its practice. The Gap Inc., which owns the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains, hired its own chief fire inspector to oversee factories that make its clothing in Bangladesh.
Still, Wal-Mart, Gap and many other global retailers continue to back off from a union-sponsored proposal to improve safety throughout Bangladesh's $20 billion garment industry. As part of the legally binding agreement, retailers would be liable when there's a factory fire and would have to pay factory owners more to make repairs.
Fair Trade U.S.A., a nonprofit that was founded in 1998 to audit products to make sure workers overseas are paid fair wages and work in safe conditions, is hoping to appeal to shoppers who care about where their clothing is made. In 2010, it expanded the list of products that it certifies beyond coffee, sugar and spices to include clothing.
The organization, known for its black, green and white label with an image of a person holding a bowl in front of a globe, says it's working with small businesses like PrAna, which sells yoga pants and other sportswear items to merchants like REI and Zappos. It also says it's in discussions with other big-name brands that it declined to name.
To use the Fair Trade label on their products, companies have to follow certain safety and wage standards that are based on established industry auditing groups, including the International Labor Organization. They include such things as paying workers based on a formula that allows them to meet basic cost-of-living needs.
Local nongovernment groups train the retailers' workers on their rights. And workers are provided a grievance process to report problems directly to the Fair Trade organization.
Still, well under 1 percent of clothing sold in the U.S. is stamped with a Fair Trade label. And shoppers will find that Fair Trade certified clothing is typically about 5 percent more expensive than similar items that don't have the label.
Fair Indigo is an online retailer that sells clothes and accessories that are certified by Fair Trade U.S.A., including $59.90 pima organic cotton dresses, $45.90 faux wrap skirts and $100 floral ballet flats.
Rob Behnke, Fair Indigo's co-founder and president, says some shoppers are calling in and citing the latest fatalities in Bangladesh. The retailer, which generates annual sales of just under $10 million, had a 35 percent rise in revenue (compared with last year) following the disaster. That was in line with the 38 percent revenue surge it had during the November-December season, following the factory fire.
Behnke says that the company's catalog and website that features some of the garment workers in countries including Peru are resonating with shoppers.
"We are connecting consumers with the garment workers on a personal level," he says. "We are showing that the garment workers are just like you and me."
While some retailers are working to improve safety overseas, others are making a "Made in USA" pitch.
Los Angeles-based American Apparel, which says it knits, dyes, cuts and sews all of its products in-house in California, touts on its website that the working conditions are "sweatshop free." The company highlights how it pays decent wages, offers subsidized lunches, free onsite massages and an onsite medical clinic.
American Apparel officials didn't return phone calls for this article, but in an interview in November with The Associated Press, the company's founder and CEO, Dov Charney, said that companies can control working conditions but they need to bring the production to the U.S.
"When the company knows the face of its worker, that's important," Charney said.