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Category Archives: politics
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the new face of U.S./North Korean Impasse
Forget about Kim Jong Il’s bad hair days, and images of the dictator as an Asian Dr. Strangelove.
Today, my heart goes out to fellow Asian American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.
They are now the human face of the North Korea/U.S. impasse.
The U.S. and North Korea have no diplomatic relations. Apparently, someone in Pyongyang thinks Ling and Lee may help force the issue.
North Korea has sentenced the two women to 12 years of hard labor, according to KCNA, the North’s official news agency.
The two were arrested in March while doing stories for Current TV about North Korean families desperate migration for food along the Chinese border.
Yesterday, in a closed session, the Central Court, the highest in North Korea, convicted the journalists for “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry.”
Their exact crime is irrelevant. Ling and Lee were simply too good and too convenient for the North Koreans to pass up. They’re now in place as the perfect tools to help solve the non-diplomatic “diplomacy that exists between the U.S. and North Korea.
Everything in this story is tea-leaf reading, with Ling and Lee up to their eyeballs in the muck.
It’s all rather surreal, where things aren’t always what they appear.
The State Department and Hillary Clinton have issued public statements condemning the convictions and say all that can be done is being done. Whatever that means.
Meanwhile, North Korea has been banging a loud drum, firing off nuclear tests in the past two months. The country wants to be accepted as a nuclear power and doesn’t mind alienating friends and foes alike. The U.S. response to the testing has been predictable. Beyond a perfunctory public condemnation, the world has been waiting to see a more forceful response from the U.S. to punish North Korea.
Pyongyang complicates matters by dangling Ling and Lee.
Pyongyang has put bait on the hook. Does the U.S. send an envoy? Does it lead to at least the beginning of the end of the long diplomatic impasse?
These issues take time, unfortunately. But the harsh sentence to Ling and Lee indicate the North Koreans mean business.
Obama’s affirmative action for Muslims, Harvard Class Day, my day
Barack Obama couldn’t be Harvard Class Day speaker yesterday for obvious reasons. He was too busy preparing to reach out to his Muslim brothers and sisters.
Outreach to Muslims? This is affirmative action the U.S. can really use.
Policy-wise, Obama’s address could have been a speech George W. Bush would have given. The end goal of Obama’s comments essentially is a two-state solution exactly what Bush was pushing in the end.
But what a difference the messenger makes.
Would you say that Bush had a credibility problem? He only helped perpetuate the white stereotype that Obama referred to in his speech. Of course, it’s no different from the way Bin Laden feeds the Muslim stereotypes Americans know and love.
They all get in the way of communication.
But with a new messenger before them, the Muslim audience saw a new global leader in whom they could see a bit of a reflection of themselves. It was worth another look at the New America.
“I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” said Obama. “One based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”
With Obama’s background in Indonesia, his parentage, his cultural connection comes a new kind of diplomatic tone that may prove to be a more productive path to a lasting peace.
It’s a personal touch, the kind that comes with a new messenger. Denigrate Obama’s Muslim outreach as just a pretty speech. We are in a phase, amid war and terror, where one cannot make light of pretty speech.
Obama was plenty tough on both Israel and Hamas. Masked in pretty speech, it may help all sides see and value their common interests.
CLASS DAY
So Obama was at a university in Cairo and not Cambridge. Not at Harvard. But Matt Lauer was.
On the “The Today” show, Lauer talked about being the Harvard Class Day speaker: “Giving a speech to Harvard students and their parents and the faculty is just nerve-wracking and I admit it was intimidating.”
I can relate. I gave the student speech before the Class Day speaker in 1977 (George Plimpton that year). And it was intimidating. And exhilarating. It was a funny speech making fun of Harvard. So, of course, it got laughs. And one big one, I’ll never forget.
As I look back, I have given many speeches, but because of the setting the students, the parents, and the faculty that Lauer talked about, it was special.
I look to replicate that feeling every time I step to a podium.
Context? Here’s what Sotomayor said in 2001; Was it racist?
Sometimes you need more than the soundbite. In the new racist war being waged by conservatives over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, it seems that there’s an attempt to stymie the new emerging politics of diversity with the polarizing old politics of angry white men.
It’s so 1994.
Going back to the hate politics of a previous decade doesn’t get us anywhere we need to be.
So I admit to being a little puzzled by how conservatives like Rush Limbaugh continue to call Sotomayor a racist for comments made in Berkeley in 2001.
The phrase that conservatives are in a tizzy about is bolded below.But you tell me if there’s an ounce of racism when you see how the phrase came up in her talk in Berkeley in 2001.
“Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
“Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
“However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”
These judges aren’t robots. They’re human. They have feelings and experiences that will inform their decisions. That’s why a diverse America needs a diverse high court,one that creates a certain empathy for all those seeking justice. Empathy alone won’t return a favorable decision. But it will assure anyone who stands before the court that no perspectives were overlooked. That’s what a diverse bench promises, a sense of fairness and justice for all.
