A fond memory of America

The Washington Monument with a ring of American flags around its base.

I remember a scene from the summer of 2009 quite distinctly. The annual Cherry Blossom festival was on in Washington DC and the area around the Tidal Basin was packed with visitors enjoying a warm spring day in the US capital. There were clearly people from everywhere in the world. This wonderful microcosm of the United Nations was on its feet admiring the wispy blossoms of the cherry trees and their reflection in the waters of the basin. In the green areas around the basin, families sat around on picnic blankets eating ice-cream, playing games, chatting and laughing.

At one end of the basin sat the stately Jefferson Memorial while at the other end stood the iconic symbol of DC – the Washington Monument.


Sitting 200 feet from the base of the Monument, I observed a Muslim family, amongst the hundreds of other people. The adults in the group were sitting around talking while just outside their circle, a little girl in a head scarf was saying her prayers on a prayer mat spread out on the lawns. From where I stood, the ring of American flags at the base of the Monument served as a fine backdrop to the little figure. Although I am personally uncomfortable with religion in the public sphere, this scene was heart-warming and I felt like capturing it in a photograph.


To me, it spoke of the freedom and openness that Americans enjoy and the promise of liberty and the “golden door” that so many from my family have benefited from. It also reinforced my own uniformly amazing experience living, studying and working there.


More than a year after that day, I’m on the other side of the ocean, with the wonderful chatter of different languages and accents of that spring morning replaced by the ugly noises of hatred from politicians and ordinary people. I want this silly season to end soon.

Griffin Shouldn't Have Been on Question Time

“Shame. On. You. BBC!”



“Nazi. Scum! Off. Our. Streets!”


Facing a wall of policemen, anti-fascists and anti-racists screamed at the top of their lungs.


The outrage over the decision to invite the racist British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin onto a respected show like ‘Question Time’ had reached the BBC’s doorstep in Wood Lane, London. Inside, Griffin shared a panel for the first time with members of mainstream parties taking questions from a studio audience. He was hounded but never cornered. Although that doesn’t really matter because a man with views as odious as his should never have been on Question Time (QT) in the first place. The BBC was wrong to invite him.


A quick glance at some of the BNP’s claims to fame quickly reveals its racist agenda. It was only a few weeks ago that the party was forced by the court to change its constitution which earlier allowed only white people to become members. Griffin himself was convicted in 1998 for inciting racial hatred. His anti-Semitic past goes back a long way since he is understood to have read Mein Kampf at 13 and later said it had “some really useful ideas.”


Where this starts to become quite sinister is that he has been trying to give the BNP a veneer of respectability by talking about his extremist agenda in code or when it suits him, not at all. He has said, “This is a life-and-death struggle for white survival, not a fancy-dress party. Less banner waving and more guile wouldn’t go amiss.”


A more undeserving candidate for Question Time’s panel is hard to find.


The BBC was wrong for one principal reason. The format of Question Time legitimizes Nick Griffin. Having worked in television I know that the only way to get close to nailing down a double-speaking politician is to interview him or her individually and at length. Sort of like Karan Thapar’s demolition of Arjun Singh or Katie Couric’s demolition of Sarah Palin. However, with four other panelists, a moderator and an audience pulling the “discussion” this way and that, Griffin wriggled out just fine and for a while even managed to turn the tables on his fellow panelists who yammered on about failed immigration policies.


By placing him on a panel, he received the status of an “equal” or worse, won sympathy, going by the complaints the BBC received about unfair treatment towards Griffin. As if on cue, Griffin has complained that he was confronted by a “lynch mob” in London (where QT was shot) which according to him is “no longer a British city.”


After angry demands that the invitation to Griffin be withdrawn, the BBC dug in further saying censorship was the job of the government and not the BBC. I agree. And in fact, its not censorship that I want but a display of better editorial judgment. The BNP should not be removed from the airwaves. When their party wins an election or incites violence or does anything “newsworthy” then they must be covered. Nick Griffin must be interviewed, but just not on shows like Question Time that throw a cloak of respectability around the BNP.


The chief counter-argument in this debate is that not inviting Griffin violates his freedom of speech. But this is a slightly uni-dimensional way of looking at it because this line of reasoning ignores the fact that words can be used as codes - understood by the right audience, while staying within the law or simply as lies that suppress a darker agenda.


Griffin has said as much while sharing a platform with a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, whom he ridiculously called “non-violent.” Standing before a crowd of white nationalists, Griffin told them it was all about using “saleable words” such as “democracy”, “freedom” and “identity”. “Nobody can criticize them. Nobody can come at you and attack you for those ideas. Perhaps one day, by being rather more subtle, we’ve got ourselves in a position where we control the British broadcasting media, then perhaps one day the British people might change their mind and say yes, every last one must go (non-white immigrants).”


Words can be sweet and sinister. Such tactics allow the BNP to become more and more acceptable, while completely deflecting attention away from its real thuggish agenda. It is exactly that kind of creeping extremism that any society needs to guard against.


This brings me back to my argument. If we have genuinely committed to the dustbin of history the notions of racial purity and white supremacy, what we need today is not censorship but a much more rigorous cross-examination of the return of such destructive politics The BBC, which otherwise does this so well and which has truly earned the trust of its audiences, I regret to say, betrayed them this time.


This piece was published in The Indian Express on 30th October 2009.

Protests Against the BBC for Inviting Nick Griffin

BBC’s decision to invite the British National Party’s (BNP) Nick Griffin onto its programme ‘Question Time’ has rightfully invited a storm of protests by anti-fascists. The BNP is a racist political party which until a few days ago had a constitution that did not allow Blacks and Asians to become members of its organisation. The BBC has had to defend its decision vigorously, saying it is not for them but the government to censor groups like the BNP. Their justification for inviting him is that editorial impartiality demands it and that if more than a million people had voted for the BNP in the European elections, practical reality as well.


It has also been framed as a debate between those who oppose free speech and those who uphold it.


All of this is rejected by the coalition of ‘Unite Against Fascism’. At a protest meeting last night at the Conway Hall in Holborn (picture above), the debate was framed quite differently. Does freedom of speech really apply in a case when a party is committed to suppressing the rights and freedoms of an ethnic minority? So what if the BNP won a certain percentage of the vote in the European Parliamentary elections, doesn’t their racist ideology remain wrong regardless of whether 6% or 60% voted for it? Isn’t the BBC legitimizing a well-known fascist who incidentally has also learnt how to adapt his message depending on the audience he is speaking to?


I heard an interview Nick Griffin did with Sky News and its obvious that the man has learnt how to speak in code. For instance, he’ll say that although not “indigenously British” he has absolutely no problem with law-abiding Asians or Blacks. They may stay. But those who can’t stay within the law, can’t stop snatching British jobs from British workers and can’t stop ruining the peace and tranquility of these lovely islands, should leave. And on and on he can go while appearing as though he is being targeted for standing up for the rights of white people.


I think there are very clear-headed reasons for not allowing Nick Griffin onto Question Time. I’ll update this space with an op-ed soon.

Peace Prize Winner Has to Convince Americans First

Barack Hussein Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner of 2009 has to first sell his ideas about conflict resolution at home. Incredibly enough, according to a survey by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press, a “strong majority (61% of Americans polled) says it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action.”


That is an astonishingly high number for the country that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and lived to tell the tale – of misery. You’d think that by now even the most dogged, missile-loving, mullah-hating, troop-supporting Republican would have to concede that war may have been the worst of many bad options. But apparently too many people still believe that one military conflagration in the Middle East is not enough.


To be fair to the Republicans, they aren’t the only ones who support the use of force against Iran to stop it from going nuclear. Pew says that there is “broad willingness across the political spectrum.”


“Seven-in-ten Republicans (71%) and two-thirds of independents (66%) say it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons even if it means taking military action. Click here for the rest of the details.

THE SITUATION IN SRI LANKA

The tiny island of Sri Lanka has been ravaged by an on-again, off-again civil war since 1983. The militant, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has been battling the Sri Lankan government, for a separate Tamil homeland, Eelam, in the north and east of the island but without much success. In the process, nearly 70,000 civilians have died. The present government under President Mahinda Rajapakse has re-launched a military offensive to finish off the LTTE militarily. To make sense of the latest conflict, I interviewed Associate Editor of Indian newspaper, Deccan Herald, Sundararajan Murari.

Murari has toured Sri Lanka extensively and has covered the conflict for the last 25 years and has met several LTTE leaders, including Prabhakaran twice. He responded to questions over email from his hometown in Chennai, India.

Murari is both a friend and former colleague when I was working in Chennai. He is an excellent source for all things Dravidian and Lankan. You can read his interview on the website of the International Affairs Review.

PRESIDENT OBAMA MEETS WITH 9/11 AND COLE FAMILIES

John Clodfeller, father of Kenneth Clodfeller who died in the attack against the USS Cole in 2000.

The White House press waiting for the 9/11 and Cole families.

For all the Republican talk about supporting the troops, it was with some surprise that I learnt that George Bush hadn’t once met the victims of the bombing of the USS Cole in which 17 American servicemen died.

On February 6th, President Obama met the Cole families along with families of the victims of 9/11.The meeting was meant to allay some of their fears about the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the 120 day suspension in legal proceedings against terror suspects detained there.

The press staked out outside the West wing of the White House for a few hours waiting for the families after the meeting. The 9/11 families left without speaking to the media but the parents of Kenneth Clodfeller, who passed away in the Cole attack stayed to speak to the press. Accompanying them was the retired Cmdr. of the USS Cole, Kirk Lippold.

Cmdr. Lippold had criticized President Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay and while he emerged from the meeting “pleased with what the President said”, he still had strong reservations about the decision. He said, “It (Guantanamo Bay) served as a symbol of the war on terror that was affecting our national interests worldwide and overall the only issue that I still have with it was that he closed it on a one year date and still has to articulate procedures and policies for what hes going to do. So until those procedures and policies are actually laid out I think there is still a lot of concern as to what effect it’s going to have on our nation’s security.”

I asked him if that meant that he agreed in principle now with the closure decision to which he said, “I think that in principle the reasons that he gave may be good. Its well intentioned. But the problem I have remains that we still don’t have any procedures. There’s no process. He hasn’t articulated the specifics as to what hes going to do which means that they haven’t thought through the second and third order of impacts of that decision and we cannot afford to be arbitrarily setting deadlines without having to explain what the impact is going to be. We must have that.”

The families have been somewhat taken aback by the pace at which policy reversals have happened and Cmdr. Lippold strongly felt that President Obama should have met the families before making the decision to close Guantanamo and not after. That said, Cmdr. Lippold was also pleased that the White House had attempted to start a dialogue with military families. He said, “When it was all said and done he offered somethings that previously has never been done and for the first time, military families and families of 9/11 are going to have a seat at the table to be able to help this administration and have an open door as we articulate the policies that are going to keep our nation safe. I’m looking forward to working and seeing how they do.”

FAMILIES HAVE WAITED 8 YEARS

Most of the families came to the meeting with the impression that President Obama was going to release all the detainees of Guantanamo Bay – a fear that was allayed atleast for one USS Cole victim’s family – the Clodfellers from Mechanicsville, VA.

John Clodfeller’s son Kenneth’s body was the last to be found after the Cole bombing in Yemen. The former Air Force Officer became extremely emotional while talking to the media. It was clear that being remembered by the highest authority in the land meant a lot to him and in fact, the new young, President seemed to have had a remarkable influence on him.

Describing the meeting he said, “He (President Obama) really wants our help in trying to resolve this detainee issue. I did not vote for the man but the way he conducts himself, the way he talks to you, you can’t help but believe him. This President has a good possibility of being one of our best Presidents just because of the way he is as a human being.”

Abd-al-Rahim al-Nashiri has been accused of masterminding the USS Cole attack in which Kenneth Clodfeller died. But al-Nashiri has said that he was tortured to extract such a confession. The CIA has admitted that it “waterboarded” him but the interrogation tapes have since been destroyed.

Referring to the status of al-Nashiri Clodfeller said, “I can’t imagine an American that’s in one of our prisons for eight years without anything being done for him. It is just unconscionable that it’s taken eight years. They had him locked up and incommunicado. I asked CIA once, “Where is he?” and they refused to tell me," he said.

Clodfeller had tried to meet with President Bush through his representative in Congress but in vain. He said Bush’s refusal to meet with the Cole families led him to believe that “there’s something that they don’t want us to know about.”

His wife Gloria Clodfeller who was also at the meeting with Obama said that she agreed with President Obama’s policy of closing Guantanamo because it was “putting a black eye on America.” She said, “Hes trying to build up the way people feel about America again. To get our respect back which we have lost. I agree with that. Hes not closing it to let the prisoners be released. Hes just establishing a whole new mission so that way they can make the process move like its supposed to be so that by the end of the year everybody should know whats going on and they should be able to get the place cleared. And that the legal process should be exactly what it should be.”

“I just don’t believe in torturing or hurting people or anything like that. That’s my faith. Prisons should be able to rehabilitate people and no they’re not doing that. They’re just leaving them there to sit and stew and think and come up with more ideas about what they can do once they get off.”

Of the meeting with the President she said, “I feel like at least we’re getting an answer. At least somebody is talking to us. Somebody is letting us know after 8 years, no you’re not forgotten…”

I’m not entirely sure how other victims’ families felt after the meeting with President Obama. The Clodfellers are just one of the nearly 40 who attended.

PARTY POOPER'S MESSAGE

For me driving around in Chennai over the last few weeks has been a nauseating experience. I just can’t understand how people can be such sycophants and plaster the city with unlicensed, illegal hoardings of one man and his family and treat him above God Almighty and surrender their conscience and soul to him.

M.Karunanidhi has done nothing publicly to rein in his delinquent son M.K.Azhagiri for the murderous violence his supporters perpetrated on the employees of the ‘Dinakaran’ newspaper. I have little sympathy, mind you, for the Maran brothers who have thus far ridden happily on the back of a political empire to become all-powerful in this state. But to return to the earlier point, the DMK rank and file, far from mourning the behaviour of their colleagues in Madurai, far from hanging their heads in shame for belonging to a party responsible for the death of three people, are instead going berserk displaying their 'love' and loyalty. From laser shows and talking images of Periyar and Anna singing MK’s praises to people turning up from all corners of the state to wish their leader on his birthday, this celebration smacks of vulgarity that has become too commonplace to make news.

Why is a private function so public? Why must we be subjected to having our already ugly cityscape made worse by pictures of corrupt, duplicitous politicians?

Why isn’t there any outrage?

What can we do?