A great article by Kenan Malik removing the sanctified coat and presenting a raw human Muhammad Ali of Jim Crow era. ”  I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to Me” posted by f.sheikh. 

‘A strange fate befell Muhammad Ali in the 1990s’, Mike Marqusee writes in Redemption Song, his wonderful, illuminating study of ‘Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties’. ‘The man who had defied the American establishment was taken into its bosom. There he was lavished with an affection which had been strikingly absent thirty years before, when for several years he reigned unchallenged as the most reviled figure in the history of American sports.’

The global outpouring of grief, affection and tribute to Ali this weekend  has been moving and heart-warming. Yet, there is a part of me that thinks that, as affection has washed away the old contempt with which he once was greeted by large sections, especially of American society, we have also lost something of the sense of Ali’s true greatness. It is not that I would rather that Ali be treated with contempt than with affection – far from it. Nor is it that Ali’s brashness and braggadocio, his opposition to the Vietnam War, or his support for the Nation of Islam, have been ignored in the thousands of eulogies this weekend. It is rather that, as Ali’s biographer Thomas Hauser observed, so much effort has been spent trying to sanitise Ali that we are danger of forgetting the real man and his real courage. It is also that we have moved so far from the world that created Muhammad Ali that it is difficult properly to comprehend the hatred and revulsion that once greeted him, or the radicalism and hope that he embodied.

There is a danger, too, of sanctifying Ali, of according him mythical status, and so depriving him of his real humanity. He was a man of great contradictions and, like all human beings, of deep flaws. He was one of the greatest symbols of black pride, and yet, as Arthur Ashe said of his run-ins with Sonny Liston and Floyd Paterson, ‘No black athlete had ever spoken so disparagingly to another black athlete’.  He was proud of his accomplishments as a fighter, and yet also deeply ambivalent about his role in the ring, describing boxing as ‘a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up’.  He was an icon of the civil rights movement yet pledged allegiance to the Nation of Islam, an organization that despised the movement and the ‘integration agenda’. He prized friendship and loyalty, yet treated his friend and mentor Malcolm X with cruel disdain after the latter broke with the Nation of Islam.

Part of Ali’s greatness, however, was his ability to reveal all his contradictions and flaws, and yet also to transcend them. Listening now, in an age which most boxers are merely loudmouth journeymen, to Ali’s great, boastful tirades, the ‘Louisville Lip’ may sound similarly tiresome. But that is not to understand the context of his swagger. In an age of Jim Crow laws and brutal lynchings, for a young black man to stand up and proclaim his greatness, defy convention, refuse to be humble or to know his place, was an incomparable act of bravery and defiance. It was a means of turning the world on its head, of demonstrating that through strength of will and force of personality, it was possible to force people to look upon the world – to look upon you – differently. As Ali put it:

I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.

Ali’s support for the reactionary National of Islam may, from today’s perspective, seem disturbing. But, again, in the context of the treatment of African Americans in the 1960s, it was a bold insistence on being able to define his own identity, and not allowing himself to be constrained by a deeply racist society and by his ‘slave name’. The day after he defeated Sonny Liston to become world champion for the first time,  Ali held a press conference in which he formally announced that he had joined the Nation of Islam (he had secretly been a member for two years). ‘I don’t have to be what you want me to be’, he told the assembled media. ‘I’m free to be what I want.’ ‘I don’t have to be what you want me to be’. Nothing better summed up the Muhammad Ali of the 1960s, or why he drew upon himself such opprobrium and contempt from the establishment, or why, for so many, he was such a symbol of aspiration and hope.

Ali’s refusal of the draft to fight in Vietnam was a courageous stance. His willingness to stand by his decision, despite the authorities stripping him of his world title, his boxing licence, his passport and almost his liberty (he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for draft evasion, the conviction eventually being overturned  by the Supreme Court  after a four-year legal battle), was an act of great principle. ‘Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?’ he asked. ‘The real enemy of my people’, he continued, ‘is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality’.

Click here for full article

(The debate is raging in California whether in new history curriculum of schools, the south Asia region that includes Pakistan, India and Nepal should be called ‘ India’ and caste system in Hinduism should be referred to as ‘regional phenomenon’   and not part of Hindu religion. Worth reading news article in NYT- how the politics are dictating to sanitize the history f. sheikh)

“The dispute centers on whether the region that includes modern-day India, Pakistan and Nepal should be referred to as India or as South Asia, to represent the plurality of cultures there — particularly because India was not a nation-state until 1947. It also touches on how the culture of the region is portrayed, including women’s role in society and the vestiges of the caste system.

When the committee met earlier this spring, dozens of students turned out at the State Capitol, some in tears, earnestly telling the educators that anything other than India would amount to erasing their heritage.

State educators have also heard debates about the portrayal of so-called comfort women in World War II, the Armenian genocide and discrimination against Sikhs in the United States. But none of the arguments have persisted as strongly as the fight over the Indian subcontinent. That is a reflection of the transformation in California’s population, where Asians, including South Asians, are the fastest-growing demographic.

On one side are advocates from the Hindu American Foundation, which seeks to shape the image of Hinduism in the United States. Backed by some scholars, they want the entire area under dispute to be referred to as India, reflecting what they say is the most important influence in the area.

They also want the caste system to be explained as a phenomenon of the region, not as a Hindu practice — an idea that is not universally accepted in India.

Click HERE for full article

“At war with Catholic Europe, Elizabethan England turned to the Ottomans”

On a May morning in 1570 a papal bull, nailed to the door of the Bishop of London’s palace, sealed Protestant England’s break with Catholic Europe. But the excommunication of Elizabeth I had another consequence, one that posterity has been slow to acknowledge, and which this timely book is among the first to treat in substantial detail: the isolated English queen’s pursuit of ties with the sultans and shahs of Islamic Turkey, Morocco and Persia.

There is no question that Jerry Brotton’s exploration of “a much longer connection between England and the Islamic world” than is generally appreciated has currency. His canvas takes in places with “tragic resonance” for our age, among them Raqqa, Aleppo and Fallujah. But resisting the temptation to draw parallels between then and now, Brotton crafts a purely 16th-century narrative set on two geographical fronts. We follow pioneer embassies to Constantinople, Marrakesh and Qazvin (the former Persian capital) alongside the growing hold the Islamic world exerted on the English from the time of Henry VIII, a fascination that would find powerful expression in Elizabethan cuisine, fashion and theatre.

But it is overseas where the best of the book’s drama takes place. Brotton’s cast of intrepid itinerants – merchant envoys, adventurer spies and maverick chancers – were to prove remarkably resourceful in charming or bribing high-ranking court officials among Turkey’s ruling Ottomans, then at the height of their power, as well as Morocco’s Sa’adian Dynasty and the Safavids of Persia. Chief among these proto-diplomats was William Harborne, who in 1578 successfully petitioned the Grand Vizier to instigate a formal but increasingly warm correspondence between Sultan Murad III and Elizabeth. In just two years Harborne secured for English merchants full commercial rights, or “Capitulations”, which were to last until the Ottoman Empire’s demise in 1923.

Brotton is at his best when he analyses the glue – a mix of expedience and ideology – which bound this “Turco-Protestant Conspiracy”, as it was seen by the outmanoeuvred representatives of Constantinople’s competing commercial powers, mainly the French and Venetians.

Click here for full article

posted by f.sheikh

O Canada! The dividing line between the United States and its great northern neighbor is often called “the friendliest border in the world.” Which goes to show how quickly people forget that, over the years, the two countries have wanted to invade each other over everything from dreams of Irish independence to a squabble over a single pig.

The Morning News spoke to Princeton Architectural Press publisher Kevin Lippert about War Plan Red: The United States’ Secret Plan to Invade Canada and Canada’s Secret Plan to Invade the United States, his new book chronicling the sometimes fraught and often ridiculous history of tension between the two nations.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The Morning News: I have to ask: how did you become interested in this topic? How did the history of US-Canada land disputes, which isn’t very well-known, come to your attention?

Kevin Lippert: I was having a conversation with one of [Princeton Architectural Press’s] Canadian distributors, a woman whose job is to sell our books in Canada, and she goes, “Are you working on anything that will be of interest to Canadians?’ I say, “I don’t know, what interests Canadians?” She says something like, “Canadians are very worried about what Americans are thinking of them.”

Then, two days later, I saw an article online where somebody had asked Obama if America had any plans to invade Canada and he laughed it off. But the article added that in the 1930s the United States did have a very detailed plan to invade Canada called “War Plan Red.” That information was shocking and there was something funny about the fact that that was shocking—like, when we think Canada, we don’t care enough to have a plan to invade them. We liked Iraq enough to invade them, but we don’t like Canada enough, it’s not as interesting.

So I dug into that history and it turns out that, like in many things, Canada was 10 years ahead of us and had developed their own plan to invade the United States in 1920. Now we’re such good neighbors and good friends, the idea seems kind of laughable. In fact, several people thought the book was a parody, that I had cooked the whole thing up and sort of forged these so-called authentic historic documents.

TMN: But the history is about more than just War Plan Red, which was in the 1930s, right? Your book discusses all these other times the US tried to invade Canada, such as during the War of 1812 which, it seems, did not go well.

Kevin: Yeah, there has been a long history of border conflicts between the US and Canada, which somehow nobody remembers. The War of 1812 was a major one, where we actually tried to invade. Either I didn’t pay attention in high school or we fast-forwarded past that war, which was a disastrous war for the United States in many regards anyway.

TMN: Why did the attempt fail so badly? Was it just arrogance at thinking that Canada would be easy to take over?

Kevin: It was a bit of arrogance, coupled with some incredible incompetence and some bad luck. Americans in 1812 really thought that conquering Canada would be, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, “a matter of marching.” I mean, we did have eight million people versus 500,000 Canadians, and our army was twice as large as theirs, and we had an increasingly powerful navy.

So I think Americans really thought it was just going to be a cakewalk. But, also, think about it this way. There’s one quote from somebody writing to President Madison saying something like, “Even the most pessimistic thinkers couldn’t imagine how undertrained and inexperienced our men are.” We were terrible soldiers and all our plans to invade Canada fell flat. People are shouting at each other in the dark, one guy rowed off with all the oars for the invasion boats—it was actually comical.

To be fair, some of it was weather-related and some of the troops were sick, but there were other larger factors as well. The war in general plunged the United States into terrible financial crisis—that was the first time the US defaulted—and so it had no money to pay its troops, and desertion was extremely high. I think 15 percent of the army deserted at one point, and there were a great number of executions as result of desertions. So morale was very low, and Canada, as it turns out, is very cold, so they were unhappy troops who weren’t getting paid in this incredibly unpopular war.

In a lot of these cases, there’s this recurring theme in which the US thinks they’re going to be welcomed as liberators. They invaded Canada during the Revolutionary War, for example, and thought the Québécois would join us in a fight against the British. We’ve heard this rhetoric in Iraq as well. Read full article on link below;

http://www.themorningnews.org/article/war-plan-red

posted by f. sheikh