May 2007

COLUMBIA

MAY 2007

POLITICAL REVIEW VOLUME VI , ISSUE IV

CHIQUITA MASSACRE

By DIEGO LASERNA

STUDENT BODY POLL

: HOW MUCH DO CORPORATE ETHICS INFLUENCE COLUMBIA CONSUMERS?

Fake ID: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race BY SETH BERLINER The Neuer Affair: Human Rights, Israel and the Silent Left BY BARI WEISS

Student Body Poll

COLUMBIA CONSUMERS : HOW DO ETHICS AFFECT OUR PURCHASES ?

327 Columbia undergraduates were polled over the course of one week.

Do you feel that the positive aspects of sweatshops (benefits to economies of developing countries, job creation, globalization, etc) potentially outweigh the negatives (human rights violations, etc)?

Yes: 30.3%

No: 69.7%

People who described themselves as “liberal” were less likely to respond “yes” than those who described themselves as “conservative.” CC students were less likely to respond “yes” than SEAS students were. * * * * *

As a consumer, do you usually consider factors other than personal satisfaction when purchasing a product (i.e. labor standards, environmental friendliness, political ties of the company...)?

Yes: 42.4%

No: 57.6%

GS students were more likely to respond “yes” than CC, SEAS, and BC students were. * * * * *

Assuming they follow the laws of the countries in which they operate, do corporations have any obligations outside profit making... for instance, charity, labor standards, environmental sustainability, etc?

Yes: 80.1%

No: 19.1%

Seniors were less likely to respond “yes” than first-years were. Students on financial aid were more likely to respond “yes.” * * * * *

Do conscientious initiatives––such as Gap (RED) or Burger King’s decision to begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers who do not keep their animals in cages––make you more likely to patronize those manufacturers?

Yes: 60.0%

No: 40.0%

Female respondents were more likely to respond “yes.” * * * * *

A positive buyer is someone who is willing to spend more to buy “ethical products,” be they fair trade, cruelty free, organic, recycled or produced locally. Do you consider yourself a positive buyer?

Yes: 48.3%

2 | Columbia Political Review

No: 51.7%

Females were more likely to consider themselves positive buyers. Selfdescribed conservatives were less likely to consider themselves positive buyers than self-described moderates and liberals were. * * * * *

If you found out that the manufacturers of the jeans that fit you best donated to an organization that you find morally or politically objectionable, would you stop buying jeans from that manufacturer?

Yes: 53.7%

No: 46.3%

Female respondents were more likely to respond “yes.” * * * * *

Would you be willing to pay a 5 to 10 percent price premium (5 to 10 percent more) for a product produced by a company with public “ethical” positions that you agree with (for example, environmental policies or treatment of staff and suppliers)? The product is inexpensive. For example, would you be willing to pay $11 instead of $10?

Yes: 86.8%

No: 13.2%

Self-described conservatives were less likely to respond “yes” than selfdescribed moderates and liberals were. * * * * *

You graduate from Columbia and you take a $50,000/year job in rural Nevada, where you need a car to get around.

You have enough cash to buy a Honda Civic. Would you be willing to pay $5500 more to buy a Honda Civic Hybrid?

(The Hybrid gets 50 miles to the gallon instead of 34).

Yes: 74.2%

No: 25.8%

Females were more likely to decide to buy the Hybrid than males were. * * * * *

Do workers’ calls for boycotts of Ollie’s and Saigon Grill because of what workers are calling substandard working conditions and pay make you significantly less likely to eat at these restaurants?

Yes: 57.7%

No: 42.3%

Females were more likely to respond “yes” than males were.

Margin of error +/- 5.3%

Contents

W W W. C O L U M B I A P O L I T I C A L R E V I E W. C O M

EDITOR-IN- CHIEF

Paul Sonne

MANAGING EDITORS

Jonathan Blitzer Mark Krotov SENIOR EDITORS

M. Alper Bahadir Michael Brener Diego Laserna Yael Merkin Sara Vogel CAMPUS EDITOR

Michelle Diamond BUSINESS DIRECTORS

Nicolas Alvear Ben Parisi ART EDITOR

Stacy Chu

DESIGN EDITOR

Saumil Kachhy

DEPUTY CAMPUS EDITORS

Andrew Gershon Victoria Gerstman Mark Modesitt David Schor COPY EDITORS

Seth Berliner Diana Duarte Ashley James Chris Kulawik Elizabeth Tarras WEB EDITOR

Christopher Chan

Student Body Poll Ethical Consumerism...................2

Books in Brief...............................4 Illogic and Rhetoric David Catalinotto Conservatism’s Warrior. ...........5 Jessica Cohen I Don’t Believe You.......................7 Seth Berliner Fake ID: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race...............8 Bari Weiss The Neuer Affair.........................10 Jackie Mauro Empowe(red).............................12

Diego Laserna Chiquita Massacre.....................14

Alper Bahadir How (not) to Conclude The Debate on the Armenian Genocide....................16 Avram Sand Strung-Along Bikini......................18

Ian Crone Gunboat Diplomacy......................19 CLOSER TO HOME

Brendan Ballou Of Privacy and Piracy................21 BOOK REVIEW

James F. Mahon, III Putting Liberalism in Its Place.....................................22 Jacob Shapiro Pragmatics of Remembrance......23

Letters to the Editor

The CPR welcomes letters to the editor. They should be sent to cpureview@columbia.edu and should not exceed 150 words. Letters for publication must include the author’s name, contact information and Columbia affiliation. The CPR reserves the right to edit content.

The Columbia Political Review is the magazine of the non-partisan Columbia Political Union. The CPU does not endorse the ideas contained herein; their worth is for our readers to determine.

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BOOKS YOU COULD, SHOULD OR MIGHT HAVE READ

What a Party! My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals

by Terry McAuliffe and Steve Kettmann

Patriots as the British approached the shore. The novel centers, not surprisingly, on George Washington, the traditional hero of the American Revolution, but the intimate way McCullough depicts Washington is anything but traditional.

We see the great General in moments of weakness and doubt.

McCullough’s Washington is a human being, not just a triumphant military hero and Founding Father. If the book has one flaw, it would perhaps be that McCullough makes the story almost too personal, detracting at times from historical context. But overall, this narrative’s engaging story will not disappoint. Get transported back to 1776, feel the fear and uneasiness that plagued the colonists. Even with a story so familiar, McCullough makes it so personal that you’ll just briefly forget that you already know what happens.

–Dan Blank

At the beginning of what promises to be a record-breaking fundraising Presidential campaign, an account from a fundraising master has never proved more insightful. In his memoir entitled What a Party!

Terry “Mad Dog” McAuliffe details his 25 years fundraising and politicking for the Democrats. Throughout the work, McAuliffe makes it clear that he has the credibility to say what he wants––under his watch as Chairman, he writes, the Democratic National Committee was debt free, and even outraised the Republicans. Since 1980, he has raised over a billion dollars for the Democrats. He uses his memoir as a platform to Terror Incorporated: muse on current Democrats’ Tracing the Dollars What a Party! strengths and weaknesses, harpBehind the Terror Terry McAuliffe ing on the limited success they Network have had fighting the 1776

By Loretta Napoloeni Republicans––best exemplified David McCullough by their surrendering of the 2000 Several years after September Terror Incorporated presidential election popular 11, finding new and interesting Loretta Napoleoni vote. Republicans be warned. angles on terrorism is no easy The book is an ode to the task. But by focusing on the ecoDemocrats. And all you nomics of scare tactics, Loretta Napoleoni’s Terror Incorporated Democrats ready to vote Obama or Edwards, also be warned, adds another dimension to our understanding. Terror for McAuliffe’s account is a far cry from partiality, as he con- Incorporated is largely uninterested in cultural differences and tinuously exalts his “buds,” Bill and Hillary Clinton. But nev- ideological foundations of terrorism, and Napoleoni never ertheless, McAuliffe’s book is humorous and astute. Along the veers from her methodical examination of the role of money way from Carter to Bush, he offers a glimpse into the money- in the development of terror networks. The book takes us driven presidential campaigns of the modern era, tells tales of back as far as the Cold War to demonstrate the role of the singing karaoke, playing golf with the Clintons, and, yes, how West’s inadvertent financial support of terror networks. She he came to wrestle an alligator. brilliantly juxtaposes historical events with economic figures –Stefanie Goodsell to contextualize her findings.

1776

By David McCullough

From George Orwell’s 1984 to Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, well-written books with dates in their titles are numerous. Add one more to the list. David McCullough’s 1776 is not just another “one if by land, two if by sea” and “shot heard round the world” textbook history. It sheds new light on the familiar tale of the American Revolution by bringing to life the experiences of the common man—an alltoo-often forgotten figure in historical depictions.

McCullough incorporates the letters and first-hand accounts of family members of the Revolution’s celebrities, and obscure figures, like the man manning the telescope for the 4 | Columbia Political Review

Through her discussions of what she calls the “New Economy of Terror,” Napoleoni does away with clichéd conceptions of the Middle East. Discussing phenomena such as the “Modern Jihad,” she provides an updated, empirical view of terrorism that shows terrorist groups as neither outdated nor wholly illogical—and, in the process, Napoleoni makes us realize that our ties to these organizations are not as distant as we might feel comfortable thinking.

If the book has one shortcoming, it is that its analysis is overwhelmingly based in economics, which can, at times, seem dry and hard to follow (for those who are not students of the subject). But generally, Napoleoni’s writing style is accessible, and Terror Incorporated will surely fascinate anyone looking to learn more about how the international terrorist system operates.

–Dan Blank

Lame Duck

Conservatism’s Warrior

Indicted former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay is a born fighter, a fact he makes clear in his aptly titled new book, No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight. DeLay’s distinguished service in the armed forces culminated in numerous awards for bravery on the battlefield in Vietnam… no, wait: DeLay never served in the military. Instead, he received multiple student deferments, even after getting expelled from Baylor University in 1967, but no matter—he’s been working overtime to catch up, fighting for what he believes in.

“I remain unyielding about my fight in Congress, my fights in the courts, and my fight for the hearts and minds of the American people,” says The Hammer.

The former pest exterminator’s aggressive inclinations are matched in fervor only by his love for Jesus Christ. It is a love that guides his political conservatism, the “epitome of compassion,” according to radio show host Rush Limbaugh’s foreword to the book. It is, indeed, a love that instills in DeLay the confidence to keep fighting for relevance when lesser men would have retreated. Humiliated by numerous charges of corruption, including an indictment for conspiracy to violate campaign finance law, a man might consider backing down. Not DeLay. On the political front, DeLay acknowledges that the Republican Revolution was a team effort. He appreciates the contributions of his fellow Republicans in the fight for the

principles of conservatism and, more generally, the well-being of the country.

On Newt Gingrich, the public face of the Republicans after they took Congress in 1994: “An ineffective speaker of the House… It was impossible to follow him.” About Dick Armey, his fellow Texan who served as Majority Leader before DeLay: “Beware the man drunk with ambition.” Regarding Mark Foley, who resigned his Florida seat after revelations that he was sending sexual messages to male pages: “Homosexuality is a perverse lifestyle and a sin before God.” George W. Bush? Dick Cheney? Denny Hastert?

Cassie Spodak

“Not an articulate voice among them.”

Nonetheless, DeLay recognizes that Americans of all political stripes are committed to their country. They should be perceived respectfully as opponents, not enemies: “I have learned something about liberals. They are a lot like communists… Liberalism is an early stage of the same evil I experienced in Havana.” DeLay also values the Christian beliefs in mercy and redemption. No stranger to adultery himself, DeLay forgave former President Bill Clinton for his philandering behavior: “I openly admit that I just don’t like the man, and my disgust is both personal and political… The truth is that Bill Clinton was slimy… had to be impeached.”

DeLay is a man humbled by Jesus Christ, and dares not exaggerate his own importance: “I stood in the way of liberalism’s grasp for power… I had to be destroyed.” Nor does he make himself into a Christlike martyr: “since 1996 there has been a coordinated effort to make me the poster boy for the culture of corruption in Washington… These have conspirators sought to drive me from office … with the politics of personal destruction.”

Which brings us, finally, to accountability. DeLay knows that true compassionate conservatism (“President Bush may be compassionate, but he is certainly no conservative”) requires commitment to the ethos of personal responsibility. In that vein, DeLay has come clean about his own behavior; he notes that all charges are completely false and part of an elaborate witchhunt by the “vast left-wing conspiracy.”

Columbia Political Review | 5

ILLOGIC AND RHETORIC In his book, he catalogues ten lies about himself, countering each of them with the truth. The chart below, entirely in his own words, documents both these lies and DeLay’s defense of his conduct:

LIE DESCRIPTION

REBUTTAL

1.“Tom DeLay took trips illegally paid for by corporations and lobbyists, which he rewarded with political favors.”

1. “It does not bother me that people think I’m corrupt.”

3. “Tom DeLay was repeatedly found guilty of ethics violations by the House Ethics Committee.”

3. “An admonishment is not a sanction, though.”

5. “Tom DeLay gathered around him a group of corrupt characters, most of whom are now in jail.”

5. “Jack Abramoff… Tony Rudy… Ed Buckham… Michael Scanlon.”

2. “Tom DeLay introduced a culture of corruption into Washington through his K-Street Project.”

2. “The problem is that there isn’t enough money spent in politics.”

4. “Tom DeLay blocked the progress of basic civil rights in the Mariana Islands.”

4. “The harder I work to champion freedom, the more the left accuses me of supporting slavery.”

6. “Tom DeLay hired his wife and daughter to do nothing – except party in Vegas.”

6. “It is a shameful sign of liberalism’s intellectual and moral bankruptcy.”

8. “Tom DeLay illegally laundered money to fund political campaigns in Texas.”

8. “Liberals have finally joined the ranks of scoundrels like Hitler.”

10. “Tom DeLay left office because he is guilty of crimes and he is trying to avoid prosecution.”

10. “All I wanted was for people to see Jesus in my life.”

7. “Tom DeLay’s nickname is ‘The Hammer’ because he frequently bullied his fellow congressmen to vote his way.”

9. “Tom DeLay cynically ‘got religion’ so he could ride the rising wave of the religious right in the 1980s.”

7. “There are two sides to a hammer.”

9. “Tom DeLay is not perfect.”

But perhaps it is unfair to equate passages from a DeLay book with the thoughts of DeLay himself. Pundit Chris Matthews made this mistake in late March. When Matthews pointed out the “drunk with ambition” quotation (page 155, fourth line from the bottom), DeLay was incredulous, insisting that he never wrote the phrase. DeLay was simply being the same honest and upstanding fellow he’s always been since he found Jesus Christ. Clearly, his co-author Stephen Mansfield, best known for his book The Faith of George W. Bush, needs to give him a few lessons in ghostwriting.

–David Catalinotto

6 | Columbia Political Review

Truth in Advertising

I Don’t Believe You

Everybody knows that politicians lie. They mudsling, twist facts, and express regret over things, often claiming that what they “actually meant at the time” was misconstrued. In fact, it is so obvious that the noses of our current leaders are unnaturally long that it is not even cool to talk about it anymore. Bush is a liar, Cheney’s a bigger liar, and Rove’s the biggest, fattest liar of all. Everyone knows it. Everyone accepts it. No one seems to care.

But alas, we’ve all been saved.

Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, founders of Factcheck.org and authors of unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, want none of it. They are on a crusade to expose surprising truths and arm the public with the assault weapons—read: nonautomatic handguns—with which to recognize the political falsehoods of Bush’s posse. As the 2008 elections approach, watch out, heads up, my friends say. It is difficult to maintain a high level of skepticism, but it is necessary in order to be engaged and informed. Never mind the fact that our President is lying to the American public in the first place, never mind the untruths that so many of our compatriots will believe. Just read this book, and you’ll be A-okay.

The authors offer warning signs for bogus claims. Stories that seem “too good” probably are; superlative assertions are often exaggerations, and “if it’s scary, be wary.” Take Michael Moore’s proposition, as presented in Fahrenheit 9/11, that bin Laden’s family was allowed to leave the country on a special flight immediately after the September 11 attacks.

That story is almost “too good” to be true. It’s also a lie.

Republicans often claim that Congress penned the biggest tax hike in history under Clinton. Superlative!

It turns out that their assessments do not account for inflation, increasing incomes and general economic growth. Whammy.

Bush told us that Saddam Hussein had been pursuing WMDs and look-

ing to enrich uranium from Nigeria. They were hot on his trail, said Bush in his 2003 State of the Union, and didn’t want the “smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” That line is scary: I’m wary. And rightfully so.

Jackson and Jamieson told me to watch for glittering generalities, like Kerry’s promise to protect the taxes of the middle class (how are we defining “middle” anyway?), and the framing of issues (think “No Child Left Behind,” “the death tax,” “progressivism,” and “compassionate conservatism”). Some of their tricks, including looking for words like “up to” as in “up to 50 percent off,” can fortuitously be applied in other arenas of life.

Stacy Chu

The authors note that there is a legal right to lie, which may lessen the guilt of advertisers, writers, and politicians alike. I think they mean that lying is a civil liberty, but either way, that doesn’t mean anyone should get away with it. Remember what happened in 1998? Clinton signed a statement that read: “there is absolutely no sex of any kind” between him and that intern. After the truth was exposed, he later explained: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is…If ‘is’ means is and never has been that is not—that is one thing.

If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.”

Kenneth Starr knew that one was just too good to be true. Next time, I’ll be ready with my book to find out the truth just like he did. Thank you, Mr. Brooks, thank you, Ms. Jamieson!

–Jessica Cohen

Columbia Political Review | 7

Fake ID Barack Obama and the Politics of Race

By SETH BERLINER

During a speech in Milwaukee in mid-April, Barack Obama brought his talk back to a common campaign theme: “Our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other.” That was an especially poignant point to make in front of the mostly black audience.

Obama’s authenticity as a black man has been questioned publicly by a number of people.

The New York Daily News’ Stanley Crouch was vocal about doubting Obama’s black identity. “Obama did not—does not—share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves,” he said. And Debra Dickerson, writing for Salon.com, echoed Crouch, “Not descended from West African slaves brought to America, [Obama] steps into the benefits of black progress (like Harvard Law School) without having borne any of the burden.”

In part because Obama’s dark skin comes from a Kenyan father and not from ancestors who were slaves in America, his black credentials have come under intense scrutiny. The scrutiny also stems, though, from a seemingly self-conscious effort by Obama not to run as the “black candidate,” as Jesse Jackson did in 1984 and 1988 and as Al Sharpton did in 2004. Sharpton too has questioned Obama’s commitment to traditionally black causes.

Granted, Obama eschews identifying exclusively as black, instead emphasizing his multi-racial and multi-cultural identity because by blood he is just as white as he is black. In doing this, Obama has become one of the most fascinating case studies in American 8 | Columbia Political Review

racial politics. Obama is exposing not only how simplistically Americans understand group identities, but also the extent to which the politics associated with those identities are overly touchy and intensely potent. Above all, he is asking Americans to look beyond the touchiness and the potency, to identify with him and thereby with each other.

From then on, a respondent could check one or more identity boxes, making room for what Columbia Law Professor Patricia Williams calls, “A new-age Tiger Woods-ish formulation,” referring to the champion golfer—of black, white, Asian, and Native American heritage—who once classified himself as “Caublanasian.”

American racial politics have long been dominated by a black-white divide stemming from America’s tortured (and tortuous) history of slavery and an ongoing hostility between the black and white communities. Fairly recently, though, notions of race in America have expanded beyond black and white to a new framework, what some call the “ethno-racial pentagon”: five categories that mark Americans as (1) white, (2) black, (3) Hispanic, (4) Asian, or (5) Native American.

While for many the choice is easy, the notion that everyone should fit neatly into only one category is illogical. It is especially so in the context of the fivesided framework’s origin: a somewhat obscure 1977 directive from the Office of Management and Budget intended to standardize Census statistics pertinent to enforcement of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts.

The categories were meant merely as statistical generalities, but they have become “so much the way [race] is constructed,” said Barnard Political Science Professor Raymond Smith. But in which category does someone belong when he or she can claim membership in all of them? This question led the office to revise the instructions in 1997.

Tiger Woods, though, was racialized—that is, racially identified, particularly by the media and public—as black.

In part, such identification is based on appearance, which is a dominating factor in American racial identity. But it is also the legacy of the one-drop rule, which stipulates that if a person has one drop of black blood he or she is black.

The rule was born of “white-supremacist, racist ideology, which in many ways permeates American history,” says Smith.

Tiger Woods and Barack Obama are black enough to be subjected to the one-drop rule, but other enough to be criticized by blacks for their lack of black-American heritage. But why does that matter? The success of the Civil Rights Movement, in some ways, provides an answer, because to be sure, says Williams, there are “people who grumble about the piggy-backers.” She is referring to black people such as Dickerson and Crouch who practice a sort of reverse one-drop rule, under which the gains of the Civil Rights Movement should go only to the descendants of black slaves. But regardless of such insistence, the Civil Rights Movement has proven much broader, argues Williams: “Of course it should

Racial Geometry

Obamerican?

be expansive enough to encompass Barack Obama’s complex, maybe unusual, but in another sense really quite iconic American identity.”

Throughout his recent political career, Obama has played up the complicated background that gave birth to that complex identity: Kenyan father, Kansan mother; raised partly in Indonesia by his mother and her Indonesian husband, partly in Hawaii by his mother’s white parents. Obama also claims to have Native American ancestry, and in March it was reported that some of his distant forebears owned slaves. Such a genealogical trail is not in itself surprising, “many people descended from slaves have slave-owning ancestors,” says Paula Moya, former director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. But it was a genealogical excavation that has been highly talked-about in light of the many questions regarding the ‘authenticity’ of Obama’s blackness.

For those asking the questions, having slave-owning ancestors serves to highlight the fact that Obama does not have any slave ancestors.

“Part of what [those who question Obama’s blackness] are saying is that there is something about being black— as opposed to being an American of African descent—that has to do with a legacy and an experience that come down through your family, and part of that experience has to do with being the descendants of slaves,” Moya explains.

In responding to the revelation of Obama’s slave-owning ancestors, though, Obama’s campaign hit a persistent note, saying that the candidate’s ancestry is “representative of America.”

Though sidestepping the concern about Obama’s having slave-owning ancestors but no slave ancestors, that response cut to the core of Obama’s relation to identity politics. Obama’s campaign has been almost entirely based on his individual identity. Other than questions of his support and identity within the black community, the most persistent critique dogging Obama has been his lack of substance. Much of this critique comes from a combination of his lack of political experience and the high-minded rhetoric about American politics he favors, but much of

Cassie Spodak

it also comes from Obama’s almost stubborn insistence on talking about his personal history.

And yet people respond to, and are inspired by, that history. As Obama said in his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention: “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” In a way, Obama is subverting the critique: his identity is substantive; it is as much a part of his appeal as a candidate as any position he might have on an issue.

The Transitive Property of Barack Obama

Whereas campaigning on personal identity is about single words or phrases for many candidates—Vietnam for McCain and Kerry, Clinton woman for Hillary—Obama’s identity requires hundreds of words and phrases and articles. He often attacks the “smallness of our politics;” the groups Americans have created for themselves and for others are too small for Obama.

In that same speech in 2004, Obama spoke of his vision of social justice: “If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child… If there’s an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.” Through this kind of rhetoric, Obama is not only enlarging American conceptions of racial identity, he is also using his own identity as a nexus through which Americans can connect to those with whom they otherwise might not identify—Obama is asking Americans to identify with him, and through him, with each other.

“He personifies, more than any other candidate, a diverse constituency of the US, and in that sense people are more easily able to identify with him personally,” says Columbia political science professor Dorian Warren. “He can take them there, and he can say, ‘Okay, now that you’re seeing through my eyes, let’s look around at these problems and see how they affect us,’ even if [those people] don’t seem to be connected at first glance.”

Obama, in his rhetoric and person, points out the fiction in the perceived simplicity of American racial identities.

But Americans, in questioning Obama’s group identification, insist on the potency of those identities. Still, before there were questions about Obama’s blackness, some called Obama a “postracial” candidate, a candidate who signaled the end of racial and ethnic group identity politics in America. But, Moya argues, “If race didn’t really matter, we wouldn’t be talking about this.” And all that talking, she remarks, “says a whole lot more about us as a country than it does about Obama.”

Obama is hoping Americans are ready for a leader who represents an America that has moved beyond simple racial identities. Most telling will be what American voters have to say.

Seth Berliner, CC ’08, is majoring in urban studies. His last article, “Fat Chance,” appeared in the March 2007 issue of the CPR. He is the president of the Columbia chapter of Students for Barack Obama, and he can be reached via e-mail at seth.berliner@columbia.edu.

Columbia Political Review | 9

The Neuer Affair THE

UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL AND THE SILENT LEFT

By BARI WEISS

In the past few weeks, Hillel Neuer, the executive director of the watchdog organization UNWatch, has become the persona non grata at the recently overhauled UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. At the Council’s fourth session in late March, Neuer delivered a speech that so infuriated Council President Luis Alfonso de Alba that it was stricken from the official UN record. What could Neuer have said to provoke such censure?

Beginning his speech by invoking

explained, more than 130 Palestinians civilians were killed in skirmishes between Hamas and Fatah, three times the combined total that lead to special sessions of the Human Rights Council in July and November. “Meanwhile, the champions of Palestinian rights — Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard — said nothing.” When 3year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered by Hamas gunmen, the Council “chose silence,” said Neuer. Why? Because, Neuer asserted, despite their never-ending rhetoric about defending Palestinian rights, the members of the Council do

Council. Neuer’s speech was never posted on the site.

If the Council regularly censured speeches it considered undiplomatic, this incident might not be worthy of attention. But even the briefest glance at recent statements confirms de Alba’s pointed selectivity. At the Council’s sessions in the fall and winter of 2006, it approved a number of egregious remarks.

Cuban Ambassador Juan Antonio Fernadez Palacious, who upon receiving a report documenting human rights abuses in Cuba, said, “This libelous report does not deserve any respect or

not really care about human rights: they care about vilifying Israel.

Watching this speech via YouTube (it has been viewed at least 200,000 times), one can see the rage building within Mexican Council President Luis Alfonso de Alba. For the first time, de Alba, his arms tightly crossed, did not express the token thanks for a representative’s remarks. “I am sorry that I’m not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council. The way in which members of this Council were referred to…is inadmissible.” De Alba added that any future statements made “in similar tones” would be prohibited.

For de Alba, the word “inadmissible” was not empty rhetoric. The Council keeps a de facto record— Ohchr.org—which offers full-text versions of all speeches delivered to the

credibility. We will send it to the same place that we have sent all previous reports: the paper-recycling bin.” This earned the Council’s “thanks.”

Iranian ambassador Alireza Moayer, who penned a letter that called the Holocaust a “historical claim” and suggested that there are “serious opposing ideas over the issue” was given the Council’s tacit approval when it decided to circulate it.

Nigerian Ambassador Joseph Ayalogu’s speech on stoning as an appropriate punishment for homosexuality, rather than a human rights violation, also earned the Council’s “thanks.”

In each of these outrageous cases,the Council president formally, reliably, extended his gratitude. Why the difference in Neuer’s case? Unlike the comments above, which attack human rights (the one thing the

“In an all-but distinct display of candor on the banks of Lake Geneva, Neuer outlined how the Council has gone so wrong.” the legacy of the Human Rights Commission’s founders, a group of five that included Eleanor Roosevelt and Réné Cassin, Neuer asked what had become of “their noble dream.” Three minutes later he delivered the verdict: “With terrible lies and moral inversion, it is being turned into a nightmare.”

In an all-but-extinct display of candor on the banks of Lake Geneva, Neuer outlined how and why the Council has gone so wrong. Under the disingenuous guise of protecting Palestinian rights, he argued, the representatives have avoided confronting their countries’ own sins. The result?

Millions of human rights violators in 191 countries have been granted almost total impunity. “The racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims,” said Neuer. “But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?”

In the last several months, Neuer

10 | Columbia Political Review

YouTube Guide: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhWgZu6tcZU

Council is designed to defend), Neuer’s comments attacked the Council itself— unthinkable. They attacked the hypocrisy that has turned the Council into a farce.

That the UN Human Rights Council struck Neuer’s speech from the record but admitted, even thanked, speakers who brazenly called for the resignation of council representatives, spouted justifications for the killing of gays, and denied the Holocaust seems a newsworthy event in its own right.

For some, it was. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial titled “Your UN at Work,” that compared the Council’s disregard of actual human rights violations to a squid discharging its ink. The New York Sun lauded the speech as well, calling it a “diplomatic moment to remember.” “Newspapermen have to have strong stomachs,” the Sun said, “but it’s nothing compared to what he needs to sit through these sessions.”

But it’s no surprise that Neuer’s speech drew cheers from conservative sources—they are the usual suspects.

What’s distressing is the deafening silence on the part of those on the left who still claim to give a damn. It seems that issues of building a strong international community, free expression, human rights—causes that the American left has historically championed—are being ignored by leftwingers out of fear that they might be considered handmaidens of a “neoconservative” agenda. God forbid.

To be sure, the fear of being politically branded or, worse, tarnished, can be paralyzing. But such partisan fears are a lame excuse for ignoring Neuer’s censure, and more broadly, for withholding criticism about the Human Rights Council’s obsession with attacking Israel. Those on the left seem worried about the implication of criticizing the UN’s disproportionate focus on Israel. But this is a false fear. Criticism of the Council’s fixation on Israel is not equivalent to supporting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Indeed, such criticism should not be seen as doing the bidding of Israel, but as advocating action on far graver human rights violations that are currently ignored or underplayed on account of too much energy spent attacking Israel. It is for this reason that the left must speak up.

“Criticism of the Council’s fixation on Israel is not equivalent to supporting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

Indeed, such criticism should not be seen as doing the bidding of Israel, but as advocating for action on far graver human rights violations that are currently ignored or underplayed on account of too much energy spent attacking Israel.”

There is a lot about which the left can speak up. Between 2003 and 2007, the UN at large took 501 actions (resolutions, decisions, reports, cases, letters, and visits) on Israel and 220 on Sudan.

This year alone, Israel has received 135 actions, while Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have received 69 and 40, respectively. Last year, at the Human Rights Council, Israel was top on the list with 39 actions, the US pulled in at second with 29, while Cote D’Ivoire had 9. This year, 15 actions have been taken on

Israel, while Sudan, whose government has condoned (or at least failed to stem) the murder of at least 200,000 in an ongoing genocide, has received only 9 actions.

Yet some among the left’s ranks don’t see this dramatically disproportionate focus on Israel as a problem.

Because Israel is a democracy, some argue, it is rightfully held to higher standards. This argument is premised on the assumption that Israel’s status as a democracy would lead it to answer to criticism that closed societies would simply ignore. But this argument ends up mandating avoiding the worst human rights violations: should the Council ignore genocide simply because it occurs in an undemocratic state?

“The UN charter claims that it gives equal treatment to all nations large and small,” Neuer said. Its specific mission is to be impartial and objective and so “singling out Israel” constitutes, by mere definition, “an egregious breach.”

Another argument that could conceivably explain the left’s silence is a case of mistaken idealism. Perhaps those who still hold out hope that the Council will act as an effective institution hesitate to lend credence to voices refuting that hope. And yet, at its core, the silence from the left represents cynicism rather than idealism. Stories like the Neuer speech are ignored because they no longer seem interesting or new to readers. As Neuer quips: “UN condemns Israel—yawn.”

He’s right. Indeed, searches through the archives of the New York Times, The Nation, NPR, and The American Prospect about Neuer’s censure produced zero hits. Pointing out bias against Israel is passé, especially when it comes from a guy named Hillel.

Presumably the left still abides by the basic calculus that genocide is worse that occupation. If so, ignoring the substance of Neuer’s message is a luxury that victims in the Congo and Cote D’Ivoire can no longer afford.

Bari Weiss, CC ’07, is majoring in history.

She is the founding editor of The Current, a journal of contemporary politics, culture and Jewish affairs. She can be reached via e-mail at bariweiss@gmail.com.

Columbia Political Review | 11

EMPOWE ETHICAL CONSUMERISM CHOICES WE MAKE

By JACQUELINE MAURO

“I don’t drink Starbucks.” That used to be my mantra. They had destroyed Spinelli’s and were squeezing Martha’s, and I did not appreciate it. It wasn’t that I did not love their orange-mocha frappuccinos (I did), but I felt like buying their coffee would be an unforgivable breach of my ethical codes. Today, I’m an addict. What changed? I heard about their contributions to local communities and their—supposedly—great labor practices (free dental care), and I moved to a city with no Martha’s. Starbucks’ public image campaign won them at least one loyal customer, and maybe my holding out on them until they proved themselves less of a villain won one of their employees an all-expenses paid root canal.

The idea of ethical consumerism, that a consumer can and should choose what to buy with regard to the ethical implications of the purchase, is not exactly novel, but the practice of ethical consumerism has exploded in recent years. The consumption of fair-trade products, for example, doubled between 2002 and 2003 alone, according to the Fairtrade Foundation’s 2003 report.

Companies have caught on that people want to feel good about what they buy, and consumers have caught on that our wallets give us power. And so, products are being created expressly with the ethical consumer in mind.

Ethos Water, recently acquired by Starbucks, is one such product. It is just water, and it costs $1.80 for a 700 mL bottle, and yet people like the idea that five cents of their money goes to providing clean water to the disadvantaged, and so they pay up and feel good about what they just bought. Companies with bad reputations are trying to patch up 12 | Columbia Political Review

AND THE

their image, like Gap, with its launch of the highly publicized Inspi(RED) campaign. The clothing giant, which has long been accused of exploiting third world countries through its use of sweatshop labor, has created a campaign that creates factories in African nations and donates large sums to support HIV/AIDS research in the Third World.

Buying as Protest

But do we buy into ethical consumption as a new form of activism to excuse ourselves from more proactive forms of protest, or is this actually a new, and perhaps more effective, form of making our voices heard? While I have done my share (probably a couple of people’s shares) of marching and letter-writing, it starts to seem a bit worn relatively quickly. On the other hand, the dollar is eternally powerful, and there are a lot of American dollars out there just waiting for their day to make a difference.

Essentially, we would all like to be ethical consumers, but as a goal, it is not so easy to attain. The first problem comes with the price tag. The “ethical” choice is usually the more expensive one—think Inspi(RED) T-shirts at $28—and often harder to find. You may really want local, organic produce, but then Morton Williams is just a few steps away. Or in the words of Brigitte Nacos, a political science professor at Columbia, “People who count every dollar are not going to buy organic food.”

Indeed, as a form of protest, ethical consumption is a luxury. Besides, to consume ethically, you must define your “ethics.” On its website, the British magazine Ethical Consumer posts a list of numerous sponsored boycotts, which range from major producers like Dolce

and Gabbana (“for using a chimpanzee in an advert”) to flooring provider Tarkett, to countries like Burma, China, Canada, and then even the dental-careproviding Starbucks. When countries I usually think of as benevolent—Canada, not Burma—are blackballed “for the government-subsidized slaughter of over one million seals” and bad guys like Starbucks can turn good and then go back to bad, it gets hard to keep track of when consuming is correct. Besides which, my ethical choices depend on my ethical priorities: I might not care that Dolce and Gabbana used a chimp in an ad, or I could flout Ethical Consumer’s advice and buy from Maxwell House, even though it is a major donor to the Republican Party. The complications are endless. Local or organic? Fair-labor practices or economic sustainability?

And ultimately it is up to the usually overworked consumer to keep herself informed.

The idea of ethical consumption seems to have undergone a shift away from the major campaigns and boycotts of generations past toward a more quotidian kind of conscious consuming.

This has led to the endless confusion mentioned above. It is not often that people picket outside of companies they disagree with, or pour red paint on ladies in fur coats anymore.

And the focus has changed to people simply hesitating in the fruit aisle and eventually choosing the organic apple over the commercial one, because the implications of that apple’s past have come to the forefront of our consciousness as consumers. As Peter Thum, cofounder of Ethos Water, told BusinessWeek, “Every buyer is opting into the community by the simple act of purchasing the product.” All it takes, it seems, is a little educated shopping.

Do-Good or Feel-Good?

One of the most encouraging signs of ethical consumption’s success is that producers are starting to catch on to the consumer’s new desire, reshaping themselves accordingly. More and more often, companies are trying to clean up their image and keep it clean or are banking on consumers’ support of their chosen cause as a major selling point. The simple laws of supply and demand that we learned in Introduction to Economics overlooked something: it is not just quality and price that define demand––now people want morality too.

The crux of the matter, though, is whether all this demand will make a difference. Will companies reform only to the point of good appearances, to the point where customers feel good––even if they are not substantively doing any good?

Theoretically, a rise in the desire to consume ethically should motivate companies to behave better genuinely. Nacos stresses the role of traditional activists as educators of the public. “It is not necessarily that corporations determine the trends in society, but when they recognize them, they try to cater to them,” she said.

We may be seeing this kind of behavior in Gap’s Inspi(red) campain. Gap recently paired with (RED), an initiative launched by Bono and Bobby Shriver, and in October of last year, they launched their highly publicized Inspi(red) campaign. The campaign consists of a new line of clothing, half of whose profits will be given to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS in women and children in Africa. Emporio Armani, Converse and Motorola have all signed on to the same effort, making it a truly massive source of funding. Melissa Swanson, a spokesperson for Gap, told me that since the October launch, the campaign has raised enough money to cover annual antiretroviral drugs for over 20,000 women and children in Africa.

Does this mean that Gap, chastised in the past for its use of sweatshops, has reformed completely? Well, no. First off, I might be skeptical of their motives, though, to be fair, when I spoke with Swanson, she told me that the company has a long-standing dedication to corporate responsibility and that “Product

(Red) is an expansion of the work we’ve done in Africa for years.” That said, consumer pressure has not made the issue of sweatshop labor disappear. In the FAQ section of its website, Gap wavers: “It’s difficult for any apparel company to make a definitive statement about sweatshops because, unfortunately, they are a very real issue in the garment industry.”

Gap’s efforts to improve, though, appear remarkable. In 2004, they released a sixty-page report called “Facing Challenges, Finding Opportunity” on the conditions of the company’s factories and on methods of factory monitoring and screening. They are obviously trying to reshape the public’s perception, and they may actually be making a difference in the mean time.

When I talked to Greg Rossiter, another spokesperson for Gap, he said, “The factories we source in Africa are highly

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UNDERGRADS WEIGH IN

As a consumer, do you usually consider factors other than personal satisfaction when purchasing a product (i.e. labor standards, environmental friendliness, political ties of the company...)?

Yes: 42.4%

No: 57.6%

Yes: 48.3%

No: 51.7%

Yes: 53.7%

No: 46.3%

A positive buyer is someone who is willing to spend more to buy “ethical products,” be they fair trade, cruelty free, organic, recycled or produced locally. Do you consider yourself a positive buyer?

If you found out that the manufacturers of the jeans that fit you best donated to an organization that you find morally or politically objectionable, would you stop buying jeans from that manufacturer?

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2.

monitored. We are proud of our association with them.”

Gap now rates all its factories and monitors them for violations. In the past, the company has refused to do business with 15 to 16 percent of screened factories, whose violations were too severe.

This kind of gesture sends a strong message to the garment industry that fair(er) labor practices are now expected and required. So Gap’s image gets cleaned up, and by proxy, so do the factories and their labor practices. All this could be due to the magnanimity of Gap’s chief executives, but I’m tempted to think that it is at least in part a reaction to some outside pressures.

Another advantage touted by the supporters of campaigns like Inspi(red) is that it is a way to raise consciousness about the issues at hand. In BusinessWeek’s article on Gap’s campaign, Don Cheadle is quoted as saying, “Hopefully this campaign will help people educate themselves and get them interested about what’s happening in the world beyond our own borders.”

Certainly, the celebrity-filled ads cannot but help attract attention to the campaign and its goal. The fact remains, though, that the AIDS epidemic in Africa is no secret, and that the ads do not draw attention directly to the crisis.

They draw attention to celebrities wearing new clothes that––supposedly––you should go buy.

So how effective is ethical consumption as a form of activism? That depends on the level of dedication of its activists, “If certain demands and trends persist, then it will have an effect,”’ said Nacos.

But she was hesitant. “Unfortunately consumers are pretty fickle,” she said.

To be a true ethical consumer takes a lot of research and a lot of willingness to go out of one’s way. It means investigating your products, investigating their distributors, getting there without polluting and spending the extra money. That said, to be a true traditional activist takes no less work. Most people just want to make a difference in whatever small way they can. The voice of the consumer, when backed up by the dollar, is one that will be heard. And companies will be forced to listen.

Jacqueline Mauro, BC ’10, is studying economic history and Francophone studies. She can be reached at jm2846@barnard.edu.

Columbia Political Review | 13

Chiquita Massacre

By DIEGO LASERNA

“After his shout something happened that did not bring on fright but a kind of hallucination. The captain gave the order to fire and fourteen machine guns answered at once... When Jose Arcadio came to he was lying face up in the darkness… Several hours must have passed since the massacre because the corpses had the same temperature as plaster in autumn…and those who had put them in the car had had time to pile them like bananas…man corpses, woman corpses, child corpses who would be thrown into the sea like rejected bananas.”

This passage from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude could be read as another example of the Nobel Prize-winner’s genius ability to use fantasy as a metaphor for everyday life. It could be an imagined story that references the violent history of Colombia and the country’s seeming inability to learn from its experiences. Yet as those who visit Colombia will realize, Marquez describes Colombian reality much more often than one would think, and this case is no exception: in Colombia, banana companies help pile people like bananas.

In 1928, roughly ten thousand workers of the United Fruit Company went on strike in a small town called Cienaga, on the northern coast of Colombia. Their demands were considerably modest: they did not want to be paid in coupons that could be used only at company stores, they did not want to live in extremely poor conditions at company shelters, and they wanted to unionize. Still, the company refused to negotiate, and the army was called in to solve the problem. An estimated 300 people were killed, but precise figures remain elusive. Soon after, the United Fruit Company (UFC) decided that Colombia was too messy for it to operate there, and with no acknowledgement of the tragedy they had caused, the corporation left.

Sadly, the massacre did not strike any sense into the UFC, which continued to meddle in Latin American politics. In 1954, the company pressured President Dwight D. Eisenhower 14 | Columbia Political Review

to overthrow Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz when he proposed to carry out a land reform program that threatened to redistribute uncultivated land to landless peasants. The UFC, which owned approximately half of all the productive land in Guatemala—85 percent of which was uncultivated— was not very fond of Arbenz’s idea. The company eventually managed to depose him and Guatemala was ruled by military dictatorship for the next 40 years.

Somewhat embarrassed by the reputation it had earned, the United Fruit Company changed its name to the United Brands Company in 1975 only to be forced to change it again in 1980s after information emerged that the company had bribed Honduran Dictator Oswaldo Lopez Arellano. The new name they chose was Chiquita Banana.

But as poor, old and blind Ursula desperately claims in One Hundred Years of Solitude, “It’s as if the world is repeating itself,” and Chiquita has proven no better than its predecessors. In fact, much like Marquez’s novel, everything seems to be coming full circle, back to Colombia. In a plea agreement with the US Justice Department on March 14, Chiquita agreed to pay a $25 million fine after the company confessed to making over one hundred payments amounting to $1.7 million to Colombian paramilitaries for “security services” between 1997 and 2004. The company also admitted to paying Colombian guerrillas between 1989 and 1997.

Chiquita is not the only US corporation in trouble for The Colombian paramilitaries, or AUC, have long been known for controlling the largest share of the country’s cocaine working with the paramilitaries. Both Coca-Cola and export business, using gruesome methods to kill those who Drummond, an Alabama based coal corporation, have come stand in their way. Nonetheless, Chiquita was quite comfort- under fire for hiring paramilitaries to kill union leaders. And able sponsoring them even after September 11, when the com- with current developments in Colombia, similar scandals are pany failed to realize that the US State Department had likely to multiply.

But what exactly was Chiquita supposed to do? Cornered included the Colombian paramilitaries and guerrillas in its list of terrorist organizations. At that point, the payments became in one of the most dangerous places in the world, abandoned a crime not only Colombia, but in the US as well. In fact, the by the Colombian government, blackmailed and harassed by relationship between Chiquita and the paramilitaries had guerrillas; the option of paying the paramilitaries seemed the grown to be so close and productive that according to the only alternative to halting all operations.

Granted, Uraba has long been an epicenter of violence in Colombian Attorney General, on November 7, 2001, Chiquita allowed the paramilitaries to smuggle 3,400 rifles and 4 million Colombia, and it is hardly a great place to do business. If Chiquita had not paid the paramilitaries, they might have rounds of ammunition through its private port in the region of turned hostile and disrupted the company’s operations.

Uraba. The company even held on to the goods for four days But many companies that operate in the region have until the paramilitaries could schedule a pick up. survived without paying the paramilitaries.

Although no one knows exactly where Chiquita’s Chiquita could have offered to pay the governrifles and money went, Carlos Castaño, the founder ment to bring its own troops to provide secuand leader of the paramilitaries, acknowledged that rity. Indeed, it even could have hired a receiving those weapons was a turning point in private security agency that was large his war. The number of combatants grew from enough, instead of paying a terror8,000 in 1998 to 32,000 in 2006, and the ist organization known throughparamilitaries’ resulting territorial expanout the world for human sion was built on massacres like that of rights violations. Chiquita did El Salado. In that incident, the paranot follow that path—the commilitaries mutilated 38 people pany found it easier and cheaper to while drinking and dancing for hire the paramilitaries, and it did so three days in a row. without any concern for the conseHighlighting the brutality quences to the company’s host country that has made them famous, and its people. The bottom line often takes the paramilitaries in El Salado precedence over the higher moral ground. were not satisfied with mere mutilaThe Chiquita case also poses some interesting tion—they proceeded to undress the Stacy Chu questions for the future of US foreign policy and the town’s women and dance with them to US government’s war on terror. Should the US govVallenato tunes while their relatives were exeernment bother to bring American corporations that cuted with chainsaws at a nearby table. support terrorists to justice when those terrorists do not Questioned on the payments to the paramilitaries, harm American interests? Since September 11, Americans Chiquita spokesman Michael Mitchell explained in an ehave realized that terrorism can have grave consequences and mail that Chiquita’s actions “were always motivated by our good faith concern for the safety of our employees and their that to stop it both the people who perpetrate it and those who families…The company could stop making the payments, sponsor it must be held responsible. While Chiquita was paycomplying with the law, but putting the lives of our workers in ing the paramilitaries, they murdered around 3,700 people— immediate jeopardy; or we could keep our workers out of roughly the same amount of people who died on September harm’s way while violating American law. Each alternative 11. Why should the Al-Qaeda cells that sponsored the September 11 hijackers be treated on different terms than was unpalatable and unacceptable.”

Yet Chiquita’s apparently reasonable argument does not those who made it possible for the paramilitaries to cause just hold water. Paramilitaries have never been very fond of work- as much harm? The notion that terrorism is a problem only ers, and even less so of unionized workers; many of Chiquita’s when it affects American interests is dangerous: it suggests to own employees died at the hands of those who were supposed the world that terrorism is only an American problem and it to be defending them. But more importantly, Chiquita’s makes countries more reluctant to cooperate with the US. History has led many non-Americans living abroad to view defense conveniently elides the fact that between 2001 and 2004, a time of great financial difficulties for the company, the the US government and US corporations as two sides of the company’s Colombian affiliate earned over $49 million, mak- same coin. Events such as the Chiquita-Eisenhower cooperaing it the corporation’s most profitable unit. Great profitability tion in Guatemala or the Nixon-ATT relationship in Chile in a time of crisis might go a long way in explaining why the have only reinforced this belief. Thus, when a corporation like orders to continue paying the paramilitaries came from the top Chiquita is able to get away with a mere fine—paid to the US of Chiquita’s corporate structure. In fact, according to Justice government no less—after having sponsored a terrorist group Department documents, the decision to continue making the that caused thousands of deaths and widespread destruction, payments was approved by at least one member of the board people tend to perceive the US government’s complicity in the of directors and five senior executives in Cincinnati, where the crime. Nonetheless, Columbia professor Stuart Gottlieb says, “As important of an issue as this is, it just doesn’t have any traccompany is headquartered.

Columbia Political Review | 15

tion; it’s not on anyone’s radar and the US government is not ethical and coherent in combating global terrorism, Chiquita’s executives would be extradited to Colombia, just as Colombian going to take the initiative on it.” narco-traffickers are extradited But if an American corpoto the US. But that will not ration were unable to operVideo Guide: happen. And Uribe probably ate in Lebanon without payCHIQUITA BANANA AND THE CANNIBALS will not push the matter furing Hezbollah, would paying ther—after all, “too much” is that notorious terrorist www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr0vWjq35rU at stake. group be appropriate? Many The US government critics argue that being too JOURNEY TO BANANA LAND should nonetheless show a cerstringent on the behavior of www.archive.org/details/Journey1950 tain degree of consideration American corporations for the victims of the paramiliabroad might severely impair their ability to bring important foreign investment to develop- taries that Chiquita helped sponsor; the government should ing countries and to do business in many places in the world. hand over the $25 million fine received by the US Justice Still, none of those critics would forgive any corporation that Department to an organization that helps rehabilitate victims paid Islamic terrorists for security under any circumstances. of Colombian paramilitaries. Those who have survived to this Why should anyone be any more understanding with day live in slums of Colombia’s large cities in utter misery, burdened with the psychological trauma of having seen their relaChiquita?

Often against its own interests, Colombia has collaborated tives and friends murdered in front of their eyes. extensively with the US. The country follows the US’s inept Unprecedented as such a transfer of money might be, these drug policy to the letter and Colombian President Alvaro victims should receive compensation. Such a redistributive gesUribe is the only South American head of state who claims to ture might make sense for US policymakers as a display of be George W. Bush’s friend. Also, the nation is about to sign a sympathy for other people’s suffering in a world increasingly bilateral trade agreement that will destroy vital sectors of its tainted by anti-Americanism. While compensation would not economy, and it has extradited just about anybody the US has fully exculpate Chiquita for its crimes, it might make America requested. Yet shortly after the Chiquita scandal, in a display of more respected in the eyes of its neighbors and the rest of the false bravado, Uribe demanded that Chiquita officials respon- world. In the meantime, Colombians and Americans alike will sible for approving the payments to the guerrillas and paramil- have to put up with a not so magical realism that allows a comitaries be extradited to Colombia: they had violated pany that caused so much violence to advertise its products Colombian law and, he claimed, extradition had to be a recip- with a strikingly innocuous motto: “perfect for life.” rocal process. From Washington there was only silence.

During part of Chiquita’s illicit payment period, the com- Diego Laserna, CC ’07, is majoring in political science and economics, pany’s CEO was none other than Cyrus Freidheim, currently and he is currently a senior editor of the CPR. His last article, “From the CEO of Sun-Times Media, a corporation that owns the Stadium to the Streets,” appeared in the March 2007 issue of the dozens of newspapers in the Chicago area. Although magazine. He is currently leading a campaign to get Columbia Freidheim has not been officially linked to the Justice University to divest from Chiquita. He can be reached via e-mail at Department’s investigation, Uribe should know full well that dl2028@columbia.edu. people like this do not get extradited. But if the US were truly

How (not) to Conclude the Debate on the Armenian Genocide

By ALPER BAHADIR

You hear the story every year around this time: Turks massacred hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the early 1900s. The modern state of Turkey claims that the crumbling Ottoman state did not premeditate or direct the killings, noting that the Turks suffered as many deaths as the Armenians. Armenians, for their part, want the episode recognized as genocide, and they blame the inter16 | Columbia Political Review

national community for its inattention and hypocrisy. It sounds like one of those debates that will go on for eternity. The likelihood of outside intervention appeasing either side seems hopelessly low, the prospects of revealing any historical “truth” decisively grim.

Yet in the 90-year history of this debate, this is perhaps the worst time to lose interest. Last October, the lower house of the French parliament passed a law that would criminalize

denying that the massacres of 1915 amounted to genocide. The approval of the bill by the French cabinet seems unlikely but the attempt strained Turkish-French relations and added to the rising nationalist tensions in Turkey. The French move was also criticized by many Turkish and European liberals as an attack against freedom of speech and was seen as a populist attempt to woo the large Armenian minority living in France.

In response to the bill, journalist and

editor Hrant Dink, a member of the small Armenian minority left in Turkey and an outspoken critic of the Turkish government's repressive stance on the Armenian issue, said: “If the French cabinet approves this law, I swear I will go over there and say ‘No, it wasn't genocide.’ Then I will come back here and say ‘Yes, it was genocide’ and I’ll just wait and see which country arrests me first.”

Three months later, Dink was assassinated in Istanbul. That a figure as conciliatory as Dink could be targeted by fanatic nationalists shocked the country. Thousands marched at his funeral with banners proclaiming, “We are all Armenian,” expressing solidarity with the tiny Armenian community in Turkey. Still, a nationalist backlash was quick to emerge— some thought the shows of sympathy had “gone too far.” “[The assassination] marks a turning point. Dink's funeral showed how deeply the country is divided,” said Taner Akcam, a Turkish historian at the University of Minnesota, who was one of the first Turkish academics to openly call the events of 1915 “genocide.” What Akcam calls the “deep divide” is not limited to the debate over the Armenian genocide.

As Turkey continues to shed its authoritarian past, moving toward a more democratic state and EU membership, the vanguard ideologies of the old system—fanatic republicanism, nationalism, and a belief in the military as the only reliable protector of the regime—have experienced an upsurge.

Dink was criticized not only by Turkish nationalists, but also by most Armenian activists living in the diaspora. Dink saw political pressure from the US and European states as insincere and counterproductive and he called on Armenians living abroad to focus on building ties with their Armenian homeland instead of expending all their energy on pressuring Turkey to accept the genocide.

“If a national identity is in need of an enemy to keep itself alive, then that is a sickly identity,” he said.

Akcam, on the other hand, sees

most unfortunate is that the debate about the Armenian genocide has evolved into a fight over naming instead of an effort to understand what happened and why. Asking the latter questions is perhaps more important and productive than forcing Turkey to accept guilt and offer apologies.

“Many Turks who deny that a genocide took place do so not because they know it for a fact, but because they think of it as an act so horrid that they cannot believe their ancestors could commit it,” Dink said in an interview shortly before he was murdered. He argued that time was needed for people “to question and understand the past” before being forced to pick sides in an increasingly polarized debate.

To create the environment for mutual understanding and sympathy, nothing is more critical than strengthening ties between Turkey and Armenia. The border between the two countries has been closed since 1993 and restoring full diplomatic relations would relieve some of the pressure of these debates about history. The second step, Akcam suggests, is to make it a state policy to preserve what remains of Armenian culture in Turkey. Only then will the tension surrounding the debate begin to subside. The US and Europe— beginning with France—should help reconciliation efforts rather than throw salt in the wound.

“People's understanding of history is not static, and understanding each other better today may ease the way we look into the past,” Akcam believes. There is much that can be done to cope with and reconsider the past. Insisting on the pressure-andresistance dynamic that has come to embody the debate on the Armenian genocide, however, does nothing but dishonor the victims of 1915.

Shaina Rubin

the question of foreign intervention in the debate in a different light: “To argue for ‘no intervention’ is still an argument for a specific foreign attitude towards the issue, and it’s a part of a nationalist resistance that has a long history in Turkey,” he said.

“To say that this is a part of a greater problem of democratization which Turkey should be left alone to resolve is a joke,” he added. “There is not a single civil initiative in Turkey [that tries to deal with the debate].”

Even if foreign intervention does help, however, getting the Turkish state to shift from complete denial to formal apology would not be an easy task, and the ultimate value of such an attempt is debatable. Pushing for the unquestioned acceptance of the term “genocide” does nothing but polarize opinions and create an environment where the whole debate revolves around a binary answer.

Denial of the genocide is seen by many in Turkey as a litmus test for patriotism, and changing that attitude requires the ability to look critically at the very foundation of the Turkish identity and state. “The image of the Armenian as ‘the evil other’ is critical in our ‘national foundation myth,’ and how a favorable historical image could develop out of that… I don’t know, it’s very hard,” says Akcam.

Our understanding of history is rarely in black and white. There is ongoing research about the events of 1915, and while a sizeable majority of historians would agree that you could label the events as genocide, it would be wrong-headed simply to dismiss as invalid or illegitimate the process of questioning the historical dimensions of the massacres. But what is perhaps

Alper Bahadir, CC '07, is majoring in economics and political science. He is currently a senior editor of the CPR. His last article, "Kurds and Peace in the Middle East," ran in the December 2005 issue. He can be reached at mab2114@columbia.edu.

Columbia Political Review | 17

Strung-Along Bikini

By AVRAM SAND

Should Mahmoud Ahmadinejad want to catch President Bush in an awkward situation, he might simply reference America’s favorite bathing suit.

Located in present-day Marshall Islands, Bikini Atoll is probably far more renowned for the bathing suit that bears its name than for the nuclear weapons tests conducted there by the United States between 1946 and 1958. Le bikini was introduced only days after the first nuclear test, and the name was actually inspired by the testing; the design was a modification on a model from earlier that year called le atome.

The swimsuit’s name was a reference to the magnitude of excitement the swimsuit was intended to arouse. Today, the bikini is more popular than ever, but its namesake’s beaches remain contaminated over half a century after the first nuclear test.

The testing began under the US military occupation of Bikini Atoll following its liberation from Japan, and it continued after the establishment of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The UN Trust Territory included Bikini Atoll, and was to be administered by the US government. The military detonated 23 bombs over sixteen years, including the first hydrogen bomb test, the largest such test ever conducted by the US. Prior to the tests, Bikinian King Juda agreed to evacuate temporarily when told by the military governor that nuclear testing was necessary for “the good of mankind and to end all world wars.” It proved to be a temporary evacuation that is still in effect.

The tests took place in the shadow of the American failure to implement an international nuclear weapons ban because the Soviet Union refused to comply. If the Americans could not eliminate the bomb, they would make sure that they could use it most effectively.

The Bikinians were resettled multiple times over the next fifteen years, but each new site was alternatively unable to produce enough food to feed the Bikinians. One new site was populated by inedible and poisonous fish, while others lacked a lagoon in which the Bikinians knew how to fish. None of the sites was spacious enough to provide sufficient cocounut or banana. In 1968, they were allowed to return home after President Lyndon Johnson declared it safe and ordered its immediate resettlement. By 1978, the residents were once again forced to leave when it was discovered that the island was still contaminated—the residents’ radiation body burdens increased eleven-fold in less than ten years and were far above

18 | Columbia Political Review

Michael Bredin

the maximum US levels.

Ironically, the Marshall Islands is one of the most important parts of the US defense network against nuclear missiles. The US secured full military rights in the Marshalls under the Compact of Free Association, a bilateral agreement that established the Marshall Islands as a sovereign state in free association with the US. The missile range on Kwajalein Atoll is host to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, which is America’s first interceptor site against intercontinental missiles. The irony is not lost on the Bikinians.

“The opinion of most Bikinians is that the US has taken way too long to rectify their situation,” said Jack Niedenthal, Trust Liaison for the People of Bikini. “They see how much money is spent in Iraq each week for a country that has citizens that shoot at Americans as they try to help them. The Marshalls [RMI] have given up their land, and in some cases their people, so that the US could test their nuclear weapons during the Cold War; the US currently has a missile range on Kwajalein; the RMI votes with the US all the time in the UN regardless of the issue; the RMI has a Compact of ‘Free Association’ with the US; citizens of the RMI serve in the US armed forces.”

Yet the Marshallese do not receive much in the way of gratitude. “We are great friends of the US,” Niedenthal says, “so a lot of Bikinians ask, ‘Why do they ignore our needs after all we do and have done for them?’”

To this day, the Bikinians are unable to return home. When the Marshall Islands and the United States signed the Compact of Free Association in 1986, the two parties also came to an agreement for reparations referred to as the Section 177 Agreement. The treaty specified that the United States estab-

lish a trust fund that would provide for former residents of Bikini Atoll, as well as other Marshall Islands locales harmed by any kind of testing.

In 2001, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, a Marshallese body given the authority to evaluate claims and disburse the trust funds, ruled that the Bikinians were entitled to $563,315,500.

The money was meant to pay for Bikini Atoll’s loss of value, restoration costs, suffering, and hardship after past compensation was deducted. But the fund was provided with only $45.75 million and as a result, the Tribunal was only able to make a payment of 0.5 percent of the award.

The people of Bikini petitioned Congress for more funds under the “Changed Circumstances” provision of the Section 177 Agreement. Though the Nuclear Claims Tribunal’s findings were declared legitimate in an independent report prepared by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, Congress has yet to respond. The State Department has advised Congress that the petition had no merit based on the terms of the Section 177 Agreement, yet when the Compact of Free Association was renegotiated and renewed in 2003, the US negotiator refused to address the issue of increased funding.

Why? Because the request was—and still is—before Congress.

The Bikinians filed suit in US Federal Claims Court in 2006, claiming the US was in breach of its “fiduciary duty to

provide just and adequate compensation.” They further argued that the original seizure of Bikini—as well as the actual Compact of Free Association—constituted a violation of the Bikinians’ Fifth Amendment rights as (then) residents of a US territory. Specifically, since the Marshall Islands was not a sovereign state until 1986, and was not recognized by the United Nations until 1990, it had no right to enter into an agreement on behalf of the Bikinians.

Once again, Bikini has resurfaced concurrent with international debate over proliferation. In the current political climate, in which the United States attempts to prevent rogue states like Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, the US might reconsider its own nuclear record––if only for the PR value. Opponents of the US anti-proliferation drive are quick to point out that the US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons during World War II, but while the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima can be justified by total war, the Bikini detonations lack that ambiguity. Whatever its legal responsibilities in this instance, the present would be an optimal time for Congress to respond positively to the Bikinian petition.

Avram Sand, CC ’10, is majoring in East Asian languages and cultures.

He is an adviser to the Palau Mission to the United Nations, and he can be reached via e-mail at ads2130@columbia.edu.

GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY *****

The US Navy and a Misguided Plan of Attack

By IAN CRONE

Each US super carrier is three football fields long, displaces 102,000 tons of water, carries 6,000 crewmen, and can operate 80 combat aircraft. The US Navy operates 12 of these behemoths and plans to build three more.

For as massive as the fleet is—comprising over 280 combat ships—it finds itself increasingly antiquated these days, not because the equipment is archaic, but because its capabilities are irrelevant.

The Navy’s planned programs fail to take into account the practical necessities of the 21st century. Simply put, the Navy’s latest projects are poorly designed and represent massive overkill, particularly given the dominance the US Navy already enjoys. In the unlikely event of some future engagement, the Navy’s programs might not even

accomplish their purported goals.

The situation is especially troublesome given its cost. The Navy’s budget for the 2008 fiscal year is $120 billion— about a fourth of all defense spending—and that includes about $20 billion in procurement of new ships and aircraft. That budget buys the US a navy that is extraordinarily well-suited to fighting battles reminiscent of the Cold War: that is to say, finding and engaging Soviet submarines, projecting force against hardened conventional targets like missile silos, airbases, land forces, or defeating a rival fleet in bluewater battle.

Needless to say, the threats that currently face America have shifted dramatically from the conventional conflicts that loomed during the Cold War years. Today, we face an altogether more asymmetrical, intelligence-driven brand of warfare in which one fanatic

with a bomb—rather than a million men with guns—might represent the biggest threat. Of what use is the trillion-dollar hammer that is the United States Navy?

“We’re stuck with a Navy that is left without a target,” said Warner Schilling, a professor of international relations at Columbia’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. If the United States wants to succeed, says Shilling, the country’s military policies should reflect 2007, not 1987.

It is difficult to grasp the extent of the US Navy’s dominance. By comparison, the 285 ships of the US Navy have a total displacement exceeding the displacements of all the ships of the next seventeen largest navies combined.

Moreover, no nation other than the US has more than two aircraft carriers.

The Navy, in short, rules the seas unchallenged in a way that even the Columbia Political Review | 19

Royal Navy at the height of Pax Britannia could never have imagined.

Between its 12 carriers, 11 amphibious assault ships, 22 cruisers, 60 destroyers, 30 frigates, 18 missile submarines, 54 attack submarines, and over 4,000 aircraft, the US Navy has the ability to project power around the world and deploy forces to confront and destroy almost any conceivable threat.

Although the US Navy’s dominance goes without saying, the Navy has underway Michael several next-generation proj- Bredin ects to “modernize” its fleet and provide “new” capabilities.

These include the Ford Class aircraft carrier, the DDX next-generation destroyer, the Virginia Class attack submarine, the Littoral Combat Ship, and F-35 fighter-bomber. At the same time, the Navy is in the process of upgrading existing weapons systems, including the Arleigh Burke Class destroyers, the Super Hornet attack aircraft, and the Ohio Class ballistic missile submarine.

Piling on more weapons to an arsenal that is already unparalleled is, despite the label assigned by the Navy, hardly a feat of modernization.

What’s more, much of the existing technology will remain functional for years to come: the Arleigh Burke Class destroyers (designed to protect our carriers), for example, are projected to have up to 40 more years of service life.

Given that the US Navy does not in any way find itself in danger of being overtaken technologically or numerically, planning for the future presents a different sort of imperative: it demands careful consideration of what we will ask our men and women in uniform to do, and it means that we must ensure that they have the appropriate equipment without wasting money on things drastically unnecessary.

To date, the Navy’s contribution to the war on terror has largely consisted of parking its forces in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, and then launching missiles and air strikes on targets in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Other possible missions include humanitarian relief after hurricanes or 20 | Columbia Political Review

tsunamis, as in Southeast Asia in 2006, and support for peacekeeping missions, in Africa, for instance. These are not missions in which having enough bombs to turn a small country into the moon is valuable. Ships cannot effectively deter terrorists operating inland except as mobile weapons platforms, and it certainly does not take a carrier to fulfill this role. Osama bin Laden is not cowed by the might of the US Navy.

And when it comes to defending the homeland, the Coast Guard—not the Navy—seems the most effective tool to protect against terrorism.

But even the kinds of missions in which today’s Navy could excel do not seem to be looming on the horizon. A full-scale, conventional war seems only fleetingly likely, and the two nations with which such a war could possibly occur—Iran and China—are not interested in confronting America face to face in open conflict on the high seas.

“We wouldn’t want to rule out the possibility of having to defend Taiwan,” says Schilling, and neither would the Navy. Both Iran and China know they cannot win in a conventional war, so they would revert to asymmetrical tactics, like supporting terrorism in Iraq, acquiring nuclear weapons, or equipping their forces with weapons suited to deterring a US attack.

China, for its part, does not need a huge navy to block US intervention in Taiwan. (After all, if war broke out, the People’s Liberation Army could do enough damage to Taiwanese infrastructure from land to cripple the island’s economy, and use its large number of quiet Russian-built diesel-electric submarines and antiship missiles to make the US think twice about attacking with carriers). A conventional war with either Iran or China would render the US Navy’s sea supremacy largely irrelevant.

Ultimately, maintaining a dominant, functional Navy should be about spending enough to remain powerful without dancing extravagantly—indeed, needlessly— into excess. And this should mean taking a hard line on defense contractors with a history of overcharging taxpayers. It should also mean scrutinizing the enablers of such contractors in Congress. “Congress has an inherent responsibility to the American taxpayer,” says Congressman Gene Taylor, Chairman of the House Armed Forces Subcommittee on Seapower. “If this Nation is to maintain undisputed dominance on the oceans of the world, we need to come to terms with the out-ofcontrol cost growth of these major ship programs.”

The US devotes an extraordinary amount of resources to the military, and rightly so. But we must ensure that those resources go toward the practical end of defending the nation and securing peace around the world, rather than disappearing into the pockets of military contractors or fueling some unwieldy national paranoia. We should make sure that the billions of dollars we spend on tanks and planes rather than schools and healthcare go to fighting the enemies we actually face, not the ones we faced before and might not even face again.

Ian Crone, CC ’10, is majoring in political science and history.

His last article, “Unnaturalized Alliance,” appeared in the March 2007 issue of the CPR. He can be reached via e-mail at ipc2101@columbia.edu.

Closer to Home

Of Privacy and Piracy

be a different user. When the RIAA asks for the student with the IP address, Columbia could end up blaming the wrong student.

This alone is a real risk. And yet given the amount of downloading on campus, even if the RIAA were to

By BRENDAN BALLOU target the wrong student, the accused may very Most everyone on campus knows that the well turn out to be a music downloader after all.

Recording Industry Association of America Still, such reasoning is beside the point: there is (RIAA) is cracking down on music downloada danger far more distressing than the specific ing—and the Association’s top target is colprotocol adopted by the RIAA in these cases. lege students. Over the past few months the The fact that the Columbia administration RIAA has sent out over 400 ‘pre-litigation’ assisted an outside group on such minimal notices to students, 20 to Columbians, telling grounds does not bode well for student prithem to either pay $3,000 to $5,000 now or vacy here, and given both our current culface prosecution and a possible fine of ture of surveillance and given the amount of $10,000 per downloaded song. personal information Columbia holds about Of course, illegal music downloading is each student, this is no small matter. Columbia just that: illegal. And the RIAA is fully within its not only knows your name and IP address, it right to go after any student guilty of doing so. has the capabilities to track what websites you But what is most interesting is how they have purhave been to and what you have downloaded, even Shaina Rubin sued their cases, because the RIAA’s tactics have e-mails. If Columbia so readily helped the RIAA, is much broader implications for Internet privacy everythere any reason to think it would be less willing to interwhere. cede on the government’s behalf ?

To start, the RIAA did not address its pre-litigation letters to I believe Columbia generally has students’ best interests at students; they addressed them to IP addresses—that is, the heart. I also, however, believe that the recent RIAA situation numbers assigned to computers as unique identities on the Web. shows that that the Columbia administration is willing to comWhile it is fairly easy for an outside organization like the RIAA promise student privacy in order to avoid getting sued. Free to track downloading on IP addresses, they would not (without Culture at Columbia, the club of which I am in charge, wants help) be able to determine who is using which IP address. For to position Columbia so that the next time an outside organizathat reason, the RIAA could not send these letters directly to tion seeks private student information, our Information students. Instead, the RIAA asked the Columbia administration Technology center simply will not have the capacity to help to track down the offenders and to forward the letters itself. them. How can we do this? Unfortunately, it is not as simple as Columbia was not under any legal obligation to help the changing a line of code. CUIT has too many databases, too RIAA. Several universities (among them, University of many ways to track student activity, and too much institutional Wisconsin at Madison) pointedly refused to send such letters resistance (at least for now) to separating these databases for an without a court’s subpoena. Ken Frazier, interim director of institutional change, however slight, to take place. Rather, stuUW Madison’s information technology department, wrote that dent privacy will have to be the responsibility of students. That’s these new pre-litigation notices were different from the RIAA’s why a few people from Free Culture are modifying a program previous tactics. Before, the recording industry would send called Tor and making it specific to the Columbia intranet. As cease-and-desist letters to IP addresses, which the university the Electronic Frontier Foundation—the developers of Tor— would forward on to offending students. explain on their website, Tor is pretty simple.

“When the link between an IP address and a network user “The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in is fairly obvious, we have cooperated by forwarding the cease- order to throw off somebody who is tailing you—and then periand-desist notice to the person suspected of file sharing,” said odically erasing your footprints,” the website reads. “Instead of Frazier in an e-mail. “In many cases, that person promptly taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on responds by saying the activity has ceased and that he or she has the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers removed the content from his/her computer.” that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell But recently the RIAA has changed its tune. The organiza- where the data came from or where it’s going.” tion now attempts to involve universities in what Frazier calls a That way, instead of going directly from your computer to “pre-litigation settlement” program. This means that the onus digg.com, information hops from Sweden to Wyoming to Wein of prosecution falls in large part on the university, not on the and, finally, to your computer in Watt. Our modified program, RIAA. “With all of its resources, we believe that the RIAA is the Columbia University Local Area Tor (pronounced “seemore than capable of serving subpoenas and settling potential you-later”) will be able keep students’ online activity effectively lawsuits without the University’s help,” said Frazier. “Instead, outside the sight of the Columbia administration. The details of we can better serve our network users by protecting their priva- the technology may seem slightly obscure, but I hope the imporcy rights and by highlighting the serious ramifications of tance of the issue is not. We are living in a time of restricted priinfringing on the intellectual property rights of others.” vacy in the US and here at Columbia. The administration can The evidence the RIAA gave to Columbia as proof that its see a shocking amount of our online lives, whether it is web surfstudents were downloading—namely, the simple IP addresses— ing activity or personal emails, and the administration has is flimsy. The recurring IP addresses in each room suggest that demonstrated an unfortunate willingness to use that informaan IP address is connected to a room, which in turn is connect- tion against students. ed to a student. However, it is quite possible for people in a different room to fabricate or falsify an IP address and pretend to Brendan Ballou, CC ’09, is majoring in philosophy. He is the head of Free Culture at Columbia. He can be reached at bcb2114@columbia.edu.

Columbia Political Review | 21

Putting Liberalism In Its Place

Book Review

Patriotism, not individual rights, is the ultimate value of the American state, Kahn argues. The American Constitution is valuable not because of any particular system of government or set of individual rights that it enumerates, but because it is the American Constitution, our Constitution.

By JAMES F. MAHON, III Kahn radically places the state above the individual by not ‘Patriotism’ became a clarion call for conservative politi- equating the state with the individual, by depicting the state cal commentators after September 11. Conservatives used it as a source of ultimate meaning for the individual. In Putting to marginalize political competitors who expressed doubts Liberalism in its Place, Kahn subtly but dramatically argues that about the prudence of national security policy. How did America is not a culture that places individualism above all other values. For Kahn, patriotism, a patriotism have such rhetorical power in love of self-governance by the popular “Kahn boldly the aftermath of September 11 in a sovereign, defines American politics country where the language of individ- refutes liberalism’s first and foremost. ual rights traditionally dominates politiIn addition to reevaluating the justical debates? Why is patriotism a value in description of the fication for a state's existence, Putting a political system founded to protect cit- American state as Liberalism in its Place also attempts to izens against an abusive government? explain international conflict by excaPaul Kahn wrote Putting Liberalism an entity separate vating unspoken American political valin its Place to tackle just this problem: from the citizenry ues. Two key omissions make his arguhow can the American government maintain the authority to demand the that exists to protect ments about international conflict seem like afterthoughts suggested by the edilives of its citizens, given that the govindividual rights.” tor. First, Kahn never provides a full ernment was founded to protect individexplanation for why political violence ual rights—most essential of all, the right to life? A traditionerupts.

He explains why American citizens are willing to sacal response would rationalize the paradox by arguing that a rifice themselves, but he never explains what conditions cause state designed to protect individual rights cannot exist unless acts of sacrifice to take place.

Second, Kahn cannot explain citizens are willing to defend it. In other words, citizens the willingness of non-Americans to sacrifice themselves in should be willing to sacrifice their lives if they want to live in conflict because he relies too heavily on a cultural study that a state that protects their individual rights.

But Kahn avoids this rationalization and insists on a rad- is specific to the US. Kahn certainly gives readers a much better understanding of American political culture through his ical alternative. He argues that people book, but not necessarily of internaunderstand the state as the popular tional conflict. sovereign, as a transcendental ideal of Kahn radically reinterprets the communal self-governance. For Kahn, practiced values of American politics the popular sovereign is a mirror in through a diverse array of lenses— which citizens see themselves and from historical to literary, biblical to understand themselves as part of largphilosophical, and even legal sources. er, historical project that extends backAlthough this approach results in a wards and forwards into time. Citizens somewhat fragmented, non-linear become willing to sacrifice themselves argument, it also results in a series of for the state because they derive subthought-provoking re-castings of the stantial meaning and purpose from the American political experience. The historical state project. Because the citbook is highly recommended for anyizen finds his purpose in the state, the one tired of the standard political state's death becomes worse than his speak of contemporary commentaown death. tors and in search of a new way to Kahn boldly refutes liberalism’s view American politics. description of the American state as an entity separate from the citizenry that James F. Mahon III, CC ’07, is a double exists to protect individual rights. major in political science and economics.

Instead, he insists that the American His political science subfield concentration state exists as an expression of the colis political theory. He can be reached at lective body politic—as an expression jfm2115@columbia.edu. of the American citizenry.

22 | Columbia Political Review

Pragmatics of Remembrance

By JACOB SHAPIRO

Israeli Memorial Day and Commemorating the Fallen

A two-minute alarm sounds at 11 a.m. and everything stops. Cell phone conversations are cut off; drivers stop their cars and stand at attention; an entire country is strangely frozen. Unlike in America, where Memorial Day conjures thoughts of barbeques and shopping sales, in Israel, Memorial Day leaves the entire country in a sustained halt.

On April 22, Israelis observed Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, a day designed to remember fallen soldiers and civilians killed in terrorist attacks.

“It’s really a Memorial Day. It’s not barbeques, it’s not a workday vacation,” said historian Michael Oren. “It’s truly a palpable day of national mourning, a heavy air that settles over the county.”

In its short 59-year history, Israel has seen a staggering amount of violence, enduring seven major wars and two intifadas. Every Israeli teenager is required to serve in the army for four years after turning 18, and in a country of just seven million, it seems that everyone knows at least one person who has died in service to the country.

“This is a very solemn day. People go to the cemeteries, family, schools, children,” says Anita Shapira, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University. “It’s a day that is reminiscent of mourning days in the Jewish calendar,” she added. If a man does not know somebody who died in his own family, she said, he at least knows somebody whose family lost a member.

In addition, Memorial Day is one of Israel’s only state holidays. Memorial Day and Independence Day, which occur one after the other on the calendar, are the only holidays predicated on the idea of statehood in a country that takes its statehood very seriously.

But it is not only Israeli Jews mourning their fallen soldiers. Israeli Druze and Israeli Christians also serve in the army, and there has been such an increase in Israeli Christian soldiers that the army has started to publish and distribute copies of the New Testament in Hebrew.

“It’s the only truly Israeli holiday,”

said Oren. “Every other holiday is the Defense Minister’s future political observed by Diaspora Jewry as well, ambitions, and resulted in the resignawhether it is Holocaust Remembrance tion of IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.

Day or the Day of Independence. When soldiers are remembered, their Memorial Day is not; it is unique to this friends and families also remember how and why they died. It is this “reckoning” country.”

But according to some, Israel’s stance as Shapira says, that Israelis must engage on commemoration is a bit excessive and in during Memorial Day. “The loss of soldiers—indeed the propagandized. Meira Weiss, a professor at Hebrew University, in her essay experience of wars in general—were “Bereavement, Commemoration and constructed by dominant groups as an Collective Identity in Contemporary inevitable price for the survival of Israeli Society,” acknowledges that Israel,” says Weiss. “[Recently] protest Israel’s “obsession with commemora- movements have questioned the tion” can be attributed to the “sheer ‘inevitability’ of Israel’s engagement in wars.” number and freOren agrees quency of war and with Weiss’ assessterror casualties.” ment of such politiShe goes on to cal opposition, that argue that two reait often leads citizens sons for Israel’s to question the extensive Memorial nature of their sacDay are “the politirifices altogether. cal use of com“We’ve had some memoration as a –Michael Oren very unpopular symbolic mediator wars and Israelis between past and present and the use of commemoration have fallen,” said Oren. “I participated in the battle of Beirut, a very unpopular for social mobility.”

This year’s commemoration was war, and Israelis who fell in that camsomehow different. Since Israel’s last paign were perceived to have given their Memorial Day, 119 soldiers and 43 lives in a failed war.”

One thing, however, remains clear.

Israeli civilians lost their lives in last summer’s war with Hezbollah, according to While Israelis might question the acts of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. their government, their commitment to The Harry S. Truman Research Institute the preservation of their state is of of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center utmost importance. Their unwavering for Policy and Survey Research in dedication unites them on Memorial Ramallah report that 78 percent of Day, so much so that even the leaders of Israeli Jews favored the Lebanon War at drastically different political parties are its start, but ultimately 64 percent of unified in their thoughts of rememIsraeli Jews and 59 percent of Israeli brance.

“Whether a soldier fell in the War of Arabs felt that the war ended in a draw.

Shapira describes Memorial Day as Independence, which is widely viewed as “a day of reckoning between the individ- sacrosanct; or the Lebanon Wars, both of ual and the state, and a day in which which are largely lamented, remains people confront what it means to be an irrelevant. He or she is equally commemindependent state—what kind of sacri- orated,” says Oren. fice it is.” But the events of last summer may have led individuals to question the Jacob Shapiro, GS/JTS ’10, is majoring in actions of the state they risk their lives to history and Jewish history. His last article, defend.

“Negotiating Syria,” ran in the March 2007 The War in Lebanon crippled the issue of the CPR. He can be reached by e-mail Prime Minister’s ability to lead, ruined at jls2171@columbia.edu.

“It’s really a Memorial Day. It’s not barbeques, it’s not a workday vacation.”

Columbia Political Review | 23