“The Recent Liberalization and Possible Futures of Taiwain in the Shadow of China” (Salon on October 1st, 2005)
October 1, 2005
What is at the root of recent tensions across the Taiwan Strait after many years of quiet and stalemate? How might recent political and economic movements play out for Taiwan's future? We will explore the course and impact of Taiwan's recent political liberalization, which culminated in 2000 with the consolidation of a multi-party democracy and the electoral defeat of the long-ruling Kuomintang. We will also discuss the impact on Taiwan of China's economic liberalization and shift to global markets. Indeed, some observers envision a nascent linkage of Taiwan's managerial and technical skills with Hong Kong's capital markets and mainland China's resources and labor to form a "greater China" cemented by cultural and family ties. Taiwan's shoe, toy and textile industries have shifted production to the mainland, and its semiconductor industry is beginning to follow. However, political and military tensions have flared alongside this growing economic integration. How do these trends affect the possibility that mainland China might attempt a missile-based decapitation strike against Taiwan? Even in the absence of war, what kinds of long term political changes might accompany this growing belligerency?
The United States has played a significant role in this balance, most recently by dispatching the USS Nimitz and Independence during Chinese military exercises in 1996. The national unrest surrounding casualties in Iraq points to another question: are we prepared to have soldiers die defending Taiwan in the event of war with China? What is the US committed to by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act? What US interests are served or harmed by growing tensions there? And how might the US and Taiwan change their respective views of the other over the coming years?
Iran captured world attention with the 1979 revolution and the the following invasion by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which touched off the longest conventional war of the twentieth century. In Iran, the war had far-reaching consequences. The scope of its destruction prompted the leadership of the Islamic Republic to shift from revolutionary idealism to a more pragmatic course in the 1990s. Rapid shifts in education, urbanization and democratization swept over the nation, culminating in a landslide victory of reformist Mohammad Khatami to the presidency in 1997. The ensuing years have seen heightened internal struggle within a nation that increasingly finds itself once more the focus of the world's attention. We will explore the recent history and likely future of the Islamic Republic in Iran, using the following outline as a rough guide. We will attempt to move rapidly through the opening two segments so we can focus discussion on the final three.
1 Introduction
a. Background of Iran: history, population, geography
b. Context of 1979 revolution
i. Operation AJAX: 1953 coup
ii. Uprising in 1963
c. 1979 Revolution
i. causes and preconditions
ii. factions that mobilized against the shah
iii. role of Khomeini
d. Establishment of the Islamic Republic
i. Factions that vied with one another after collapse of the Shah
ii. Downfall of the Marxists and Nationalists
iii. Balance between traditional left and traditional right wings of the Islamists
e. war with Iraq, 1980-88
2. Power Structure in Iran
a. Elements of Divine Sovereignty: supervisory positions
b. Elements of Popular Sovereignty: elected positions
c. “Dual Governance”: constant struggle between Islamic and Republican elements of the Constitution
d. Foreign Policy
i. Hezbollah in Lebanon
ii. Iran-Syria Alliance
iii. Palestinian Conflict
iv. The Northern Alliance in Afghanistan
3. 1989-1997: from Revolutionism to Pragmatism
a. 1989: Hashemi Rafsanjani becomes president
b. Social, Educational & Economic Reforms: liberalization, urbanization, education
c. Corruption
d. Emergence of a third powerful faction within the Islamic Republic: a middle class and a generation of technocrats
e. Conservative reaction: religious reformation begins
4. 1997-2005: Experimenting with Reform
a. Presidency: only institution not controlled by right
b. Khatami elected president by landslide in 1997
i. Background
ii. Platform
c. Conservative backlash
d. Reform movement
i. Causes and preconditions
ii. Goals and campaign promises
e. Achievements
i. Changed political discourse
ii. Social freedoms
f. Setbacks
i. Failure to implement most campaign promises
ii. Failure to change core power structure
iii. Economy neglected
iv. Mass disenchantment
5. Looking ahead
a. Ninth Presidential Elections, June 2005
i. Election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, conservative
ii. Conservative platform
b. Nuclear stand-off with United States
c. Geopolitics in a changed Middle East
d. Possible future directions
PRESENTER BIO
I was born in Tehran in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war. I remained in Iran until the summer of 1999, when I was arrested briefly by the Revolutionary Guards as I participated in the student uprising at Tehran University. Following this, I emigrated to continue my education in the United States. For the past year I have been facilitating an introductory course to Iranian politics at UC Berkeley titled "ABC's of Iran: 26 years of revolution." I am also a board member of the Iranian Student Alliance in America (ISAA), the largest Iranian student group on the west coast. Currently I am working with a group of UC Berkeley and Harvard professors on a research project comparing the development trajectories of Iran and Turkey.
In the twilight of his political career, one of India's founding figures Jawaharlal Nehru warned that "the [real] danger to India is Hindu right-wing communalism." Were these words prescient? Without doubt, the rise of Hindu nationalism has been a key feature of contemporary Indian politics, with significant importance for India's sizable religious minorities, its concept of statehood and nation, the nexus of religion and politics, and India's place in the world. This issue has reached growing prominence in the United States in the aftermath of the government's denial to Gujurat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on grounds that his government's actions in 2002 violated religious freedom in India. We will discuss these issues, using the following outline as our guide:
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1. Background
- Introduction to Hindu nationalism – the organizations
- Hindu cultural dominance vs. Hindu nationalism
- Brief history of Hindu nationalism
- India – demographics
2. Minorities and confrontations with Hindu nationalism and Hindu cultural dominance
- Anti-Sikh violence in Delhi following Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984
- Destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the violence that followed
- Struggles for caste justice – e.g. impact of the Mandal Commission recommendations and responses
- Violence against Christians in Gujarat (Dangs district), 1998-1999
3. Hindu nationalism and the State
- Concepts of nation and national unity
- State response to sectarian violence in Delhi in 1984 and in Gujurat in 2002. What this might foreshadow.
- Role of the two dominant political parties, the more secularist Congress and the more Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
- Role of the army and police
4. What happened during Gujarat 2002
- BJP's entry into Gujarat
- Build-up toward the climate of violence, including 9/11
- What happened at Godhra, the general strike, the role of the media
- The massacres and the complicity of the state in them
- The aftermath: impunity, court cases, displacements, December elections
- 2004 Elections: The Congress Party defeats the BJP in national elections and takes power with a Sikh prime minister
- The continuing targeting of religious minorities (e.g. in employment, education, mobility, etc.)
5. Modi's Visa Denial and India-US relations
- Local Activist Groups (e.g. Coalition Against Genocide, Coalition Against Communalism)
- The US's stance and its diverse relations with others involved in crimes against humanity.
- Responses to the denial from Modi, Government of India, and others
PRESENTERS:
Annie Paradise is completing her master's degree in anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she will continue into the doctoral program in the fall. Her research includes issues of insurgency and human rights in Punjab, state accountability and rehabilitation in the Narmada Valley, and Hindu nationalism. She has also worked with local advocacy groups who work with issues of communalism and democracy in India. Pei Wu is a doctoral student in anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She has been researching issues related to India, Hindu nationalism, human rights, cultural survival, and minority issues for the last three years, and has helped in the work of the local advocacy groups who work on issues of communalism and democracy in India.
“The Lebanese Civil War: The Tragedy, Its Legacy, and the Nation’s Recovery” (April 2nd, 2005)
April 2, 2005
1. The history of Lebanon
- Geography
- Demography
- Independance
2. Its form of government
- Legistlative body
- Executive body
3. The events that led to the internal strife that lasted 17 years
- The creation of the State of Israel
- The Palestinian refugees
- The concerns of the Lebanese people
- The Kissinger plan
4. What did the war accomplish?
5. The recovery from the war
- The rebuilding
- The national debt
6. Future perspectives
“What Happened to the Jewel of Africa? Political Debacle in Zimbabwe” (Salon on February 5th, 2005)
February 5, 2005
Zimbabwe was once viewed as a model for African economic management and ranked among the continent’s safest travel destinations. The Mugabe-led national liberation war and ZANU-PF regime earned broad progressive backing and international support. However, a combination of repression, mismanagement (a schizophrenic gyration between state controls and neoliberal policy), and corruption have brought the nation to hunger, hyper-inflation, political paralysis (including jeopardizing the independence of the judiciary and press) and the verge of mass civil disobedience.
In 2001, a long-overdue campaign of land-reform, reclamation from white commercial farmers, began. However, instead of diverting the land to benefit the masses of farmers and farm workers, the campaign was twisted into service of the ZANU-PF party faithful. While issues of race relations and land reform in Zimbabwe are pressing and complex ones which dominate international media coverage, the hidden agendas at play had profound consequence for Zimbabwe’s national direction. Ruling party activists, largely youth militia, were deployed throughout the nation under the guise of land reform and were given free reign to pressure the population to support ZANU-PF in the 2002 presidential election and suppress opposition demonstrations. President Mugabe, now in his 24th year as state leader, has passed legislation restricting foreign funding of local civil organizations and NGOs attempting to influence “governance,” an act which may cripple Zimbabwe’s independent civil society.
My goals in this discussion are to provide historical context to Zimbabwe’s current impasse and look to how we might find a way to escape the current cycle of violence and repression. We will examine Zimbabwe’s path to independence, Mugabe’s early policies regarding race relations, the civil war of the 1980’s, the background behind and the actual impact of recent land reforms, the Lancaster House Agreement of 1980 and its implications for said reforms, and the nature of the multi-racial opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), itself a broad-based group rife with internal contradictions, whose demonstrations face state suppression via tear gas, clubs, and warning shots. Finally, we will look towards likely and hopeful futures in Zimbabwe.
While central themes of the evening will include politics and land, I hope to use these as points of departure to a more wide-ranging discussion.
ABOUT ME:
I work in Compliance and Operations for a fixed income securities firm in San Francisco. I was born and raised in a farming community in northern Zimbabwe. My father was a commercial farmer, and so I have an intimate connection to and inside knowledge of land issues and farming in Zimbabwe.
Presenter: Jawad Ali
I am one of the founders of Muslim WakeUp. I started this online magazine almost two years ago to provide a voice for an emerging progressive trend among Muslims worldwide, but particularly in North America. Some of the most popular features have names like “Hug a Jew” and “Sex and the Ummah”. Ummah is the global Islamic community.
In my presentation I will talk about the following:
• Social and political landscape of the Islamic world
• Progressive Islamic trends through the ages
• What makes someone progressive
• Issues of interest to Progressive Muslims in America
• Some emerging trends
Haiti, the second country to declare its independence from colonialism in the Americas in 1804, continues to struggle against foreign domination in this year of its bicentennial. Despite a legacy of foreign support for violent antidemocratic rule, the people of Haiti have attempted to construct a grass roots democracy. In the past decade, these efforts have engendered triumphs and reversals, notably the events of this past February.
What kinds of regimes have been in power in Haiti over the past decades and whose interests have they served? Who are the military and paramilitary forces that overthrew Aristide (in 1991 and earlier this year) and what kind of project do they promote? Who are their backers and beneficiaries? Who are the victims? What lies behind the US interventions in 1994 and before and since, especially the intervention this past February? Finally, who is resisting paramilitary rule and what are the prospects for democracy's return? We will discuss these and other questions surrounding recent events in Haiti, with an eye on its history and an emphasis on the state of its economic sovereignty over the past decade.
BIO
Pierre Labossiere is a founding member of the Haiti Action Committee. The committee is a Bay Area-based network of activists who have supported the Haitian struggle for democracy since 1991. Members foster extensive contacts with the grassroots movements in Haiti. HAC links journalists who want to hear an alternative viewpoint with sources both in Haiti and in the United States.
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, spearheaded by the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez, has envisioned and implemented an alternate path towards economic and social justice in a highly stratified though resource-rich nation. Our presentation will touch on a number of aspects of this revolution, including economic reforms; advances in health care, education and food production; foreign policy, including the government's opposition to the “Free Trade Area of the Americas” process; the politics around Venezuela's oil reserves; democratic procedural reforms; the current referendum drives being led by a wealthy opposition; and continued US Intervention in the internal affairs of the country, including a failed US-backed military coup in April of 2002, as well as resistance to it.
The Venezuela Solidarity Group, formed in the spring of 2002, is a group of Bay Area community activists committed to building solidarity with the Venezuelan people. The group has sponsored annual visits to Venezuela to observe first-hand the ground realities that the Bolivarian project contends with and effects.
Over the past two decades, Afghanistan has experienced Soviet occupation, civil war, Taliban rule, and US assault. In that vein, December 2003 was a historic month and a hoped-for turning point towards a better future. Delegates from across the country–members of the Loya Jirga, or Grand Assembly–met in the capital city of Kabul. Following a period of intense debate and diplomacy, they finalized and ratified the country's new constitution on January 4 (text: http://www.constitution-afg.com/Adopted%20Constitution.htm )
However, outside the grand council meetings, living conditions remain harsh for most Afghans. Poor infrastucture and lack of materials continue to plague Afghan schools and government employees. Increased opportunities for women remain largely confined to Kabul and its immediate surrounds.
What has happened since the US-backed coalition toppled the Taliban? Roya visited Afghanistan twice in 2003. She will share her observations and views on Afghanistan's current situation and future prospects.
“The Legacy of Chile’s September 11th” (Salon on February 7th, 2004)
February 7, 2004
While modern Chile is a constitutional democracy, its political, economic, and social forms–including state policy, grassroots organizing, judicial activism, and electoral attitudes–remain influenced and often constrained by its recent experience of military dictatorship from 1973 to 1989. I will speak about life in Chile during and since the ~18 years of Pinochet's military regime, including its prelude and its enduring consequences. I will address some or all of the following:
-a brief history of Chile's geography, demographics, and economy
-the Chilean political environment before the election to power of Salvador Allende
-The government of Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular Party
-The agrarian reform and nationalization of copper and their impacts
-Salvador Allende's final speech on Radio Agricultra, on the morning of September 11, 1973
-Pinochet's military coup and the role of CIA support, directed by Nixon and Kissinger. (Much of the relevant documentation was declassified by the US government only in 1998)
-17 years of Pinochet's rule, including political and economic management.
-The economic transformation guided by the "Chicago Boys." (Economic restructuring under Chile's military dictatorship followed guidelines set by Milton Friedman and Americans and Chileans trained under his influence at the University of Chicago. In many respects, the democratic regime that succeeded Pinochet has maintained this course to the present day.)
-The transitional road to democracy
-How the political, economic, and social forms taken by the present-day democracy have been influenced by the 17 years of Pinochet's military rule
-My years growing up in Chile and my personal retrospective of the Pinochet regime and its enduring legacy.
PRESENTER BIO:
I'm an HR manager for a manufacturing company in the peninsula. I went to Law school in Chile and I received a business degree from a US university in 2000. I grew up and lived in Chile until 1998, through a politically charged and polarized phase of Chile's history. My father was an attorney with the Christian Democratic Party, and he led some of Salvador Allende's agrarian reforms in the early 1970's. I witnessed what one might call the good and the bad (not least the terrors of physical repression) of the political regimen of Pinochet and its aftermath for 18 years. I will lead the discussion using the story, as I saw and see it, of the evolution of life in Chile under this political environment.
