If Barack Obama went to Sigd, the main Ethiopian Jewish religious festival held every year in Jerusalem to celebrate Israel & the Torah, he would fit right in. He shares many of the same distinctive and beautiful East African features due to his father’s Kenyan heritage. Indeed, if Obama went to Sigd wearing the same East African garb that he wore in the photograph the Drudge Report released on February 25, he might be mistaken by the crowds at Sigd for a Kessim - an Ethiopian Jewish rabbi.

Traditionally in East Africa, men of all confessional backgrounds have been fond of wrapping lots and lots of white cloth around their heads and bodies. For one, it’s really hot there, especially in the summer months. Beyond that, in these cultures and others around the world, flowing white clothing symbolizes dignity, modesty, and humility. So, Ethiopian Jewish rabbis, Orthodox Christian priests in Eritrea and nomadic Muslims in Darfur all wear white cloth on their heads and bodies.

That is why the release of the photograph of Barack Obama in a white head-wrap and dress marks another non-issue episode in the political silly season we call the 2008 Presidential campaign (no, I’m not plagiarising Obama’s words - “silly season” is a well-known cliche). At best, whoever passed the photo onto Drudge sought to embarass Obama with an awkward (to American eyeballs) "hey-I-wore-something-like-that-for-Halloween-once" costume to diminish his stature. At worst, the photo’s release was intended as a form of political psy-ops: to stoke latent reservoirs of xenophobia and racism by producing an image that casts the candidate as foreign or alien and somehow makes his less-inspiring opposition more electable.

If the intent of the photograph’s release was to appeal to the baser instincts of voters, it has failed given Obama’s thickening teflon and burgeoning popularity. Unfortunately, we will see many more attempts ahead to frame the candidate of hope in terms that speak to middle America’s deepest racial, religious, and cultural fears. It doesn’t seem to matter that Obama’s honorific garb in the photograph is common to Christians, Jews, and Muslims in East Africa. That the dress and culture of African Jews and Christians seems to also be fair game for mockery. That we could fill albums and albums with pictures of presidents and first ladies wearing clothing given to them on their travels that may appear strange or silly to us.

Yet holding these pictures up as objects of ridicule reinforces American arrogance and ignorance at a time when we should be inculcating humility and a respect for human dignity. Perhaps we should all, as Americans, embrace East African garb - it may provide us with the sorely-needed humility, modesty, and dignity we need desperately to heal us as a nation.

Racism is a deeply ingrained human habit. It never ceases to surprise me how "American-Muslims" are always crying about Americans being racist. As if there is something in the American soil that cleanses racism out of the average American blood stream?

There is nothing extraordinary about Americans other than the sophistication of their weapon systems and Hollywood movies. Everything else is made better by someone somewhere else in the world. Its a country of immigrants and these immigrants bring their prejudices with them when they get here.

Becoming Muslim does not help much because this whole newsgroup is full of racists, you only need to read between the lines. One could argue Islam is a sort of racism along puritanical lines. If you are good you go to heaven, if you are better than good, you get elevated higher. You get more virgins and intoxicating drinks and all that crap.

So to expect Americans to act like civilized non-racist people is a sort of racism in itself, kind of liking asking a pig to clean itself. Quite pathetic.

Some interesting snipets about the cost of the Iraq War from........

**** The Three Trillion Dollar War ****
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics, an academic tempered by four years on Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and another three as chief economist at the World Bank.

A===================
The interest to finance the war will equal, $1,000,000,000,000 which is One Trillion Dollars by 2017. Since Bush did not raise taxes to finance the war, it was financed by Government Debt. But since the American Savings rate is ZERO!! Some of the money is coming from overseas Mideast and Chinese investments in US Government Bonds (so effectively, some Arab governments are unintentionally financing the war!) Oddly, the current government will not be around to pay for most of this interest and someone else will end up with the burden of these future payments (how convenient!).

Spitgapitz argues that it would have been more "responsible" to finance the war with higher taxes so that people would have been more involved in its conclusion as it would have been directing burning a hole in their pockets. Interesting the democrats did not suggest this at the time (I assume).

B===================
The price of oil has gone up from $25 >>>> $100 per barrel in the past five years, some of it attributable to the unstable supply resulting from this conflict. So consumers are paying for this war, but not to the war! Their increased expenditure is not going to finance the war, it is only making oil companies and oil supplying countries rich.

C===================
Then, for example, a contractor working as a security guard gets about $400,000 a year, for example, as opposed to a soldier, who might get about $40,000. Quite ironic.

D==================
At the same time, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue, the Federal Reserve colluded in this obfuscation, because it "kept interest rates lower than they otherwise might have been, and looked the other way as lending standards were lowered, thereby encouraging households to borrow more - and spend more." Alan Greenspan, by this account, encouraged people to take on variable-rate mortgages, even as household savings rates went negative for the first time since the Depression. **Not sure what the hell that means.**

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan

Continuing on the above theme, I find the whole [[ 1,000,000,000 (one trillion) in interest to finance the war]] figure to be a bit absurd. Something must be wrong here. How can a war that cost $200 billion in its first four months yield FIVE TIMES as much in interest alone. Its like you borrow $50,000 to buy a Lexus and 14 years later you owe the local mafia thug $300,000 for principal and interest......

So suppose the war lasts 8 years until 2011, costs $15 billion a month as the author says, and money is borrowed at 5% annual interest, then, yes, according to my spreadsheet, it adds up to $400 billion in interest by the time the war ends with the government having accumulatedly spent $2 trillion on the war.

If this $2 trillion is not paid back, then from 2011 through 2017 another $600 billion in interest would accumulate at 5% per annum, yielding $400 + $600 billion = $1 trillion in interest.

Anyone need their taxes done, btw???

It's no slur to be called a Muslim!!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/01/religion.islam

Abed Z. Bhuyan- OnFaith blog of Washington Post-

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/faithbook/2008/02/barack_handsome_obama.html

Barack Goodness Obama
In case you haven’t heard, Senator Barack Obama is not Muslim.

As if this wasn’t already clear to me before trekking down to South Carolina to do what 13,000 other Obama supporters were doing, the Senator has gone out of his way to make sure this point was hammered home.

As I was canvassing and going door-to-door talking to voters, part of me forgot the fact that the man I support for president had laughed off a question from NBC News Anchor Brian Williams during a debate about allegations that he is hiding his Muslim faith. While Obama did rightfully say that he is a Christian, he ignored the negative connotation that was attached to Williams' question. What Obama did, or better yet didn't do, in that debate should have made voters of any faith cringe: He perpetuated Williams’ implication that being a Muslim is bad.

I had forgotten this until I was standing in the local barbershop that served as the headquarters of local campaign operations. We were watching coverage of Obama giving a speech in Charleston. After telling his audience that they may have received e-mails saying he is a Muslim, he proceeded to say that they had been “hoodwinked” without clearly calling out the senders of such e-mails on their vilification of an entire faith. I was suddenly very aware of my Muslim identity as staffers surrounding me were shaking their heads at the shame and embarrassment facing their candidate, my candidate, having been accused of being Muslim. Can you imagine a candidate being accused of being a Christian and then vehemently denying it? What type of reaction would that get?

In the days after that primary, I was in a daze of disappointment. I expected to come back from the trip being even more vocal in my support, even more passionate about the hope and change that has thus far fueled Obama’s candidacy. When discussing what can be seen as Obama’s tacit consent to the negative implications with my friends and family, I detested the comment “Well, Abed, he is a politician.” That much is true, but I couldn’t help but ask myself some questions. Is it unfair for me to hold the man I support to be my president to a higher standard? Is it unfair for me to expect him to hold himself to a higher standard? To do and say what is right because it is right despite what the pundits and advisers think? Would he have lost voters if he said unequivocally to Williams in that debate and to his audience in South Carolina that allowing the vilification of Islam to continue is simply wrong and he will not be a party to it? Would it matter if people knew that Obama’s middle name Hussein means “goodness” and “handsome”?

I think I know the answer to the first three questions: No. It is not unfair of me to have these expectations at all. In fact, I think even Senator Obama would want the voters to hold him to a higher standard because it would, at the very least, push him to excel.

I hope that in writing this, I’m doing just that.

Posted by Abed Z. Bhuyan on February 19, 2008

thank you nana for the link,

my following comment-
Comments (10)
VICTORIA:
do you really feel comfortable supporting and canvassing for a candidate who is openly distancing himself from muslims?

im not a politician, nor an important person- but i do not allow people to vilify or disparage other groups in my presence, and speak up- even though it costs me sometimes.

how much more should a person in a position of some power stand up against any form of xenophobic language.

especially when he has been the target of it.

i have the fear that if obama does make it to the presidency- he will be too afraid of being accused of being pro-muslim, and will go to the opposite extreme (as evidenced already).

Hajibaba ~

Racism, Sexism, Paganism, Religionism .. these are not ingrained human habits. Islam is not racism on puritanical lines. Though I do believe that you can and do argue for the sake of it.

>>Racism, Sexism, Paganism, Religionism .. these are not ingrained human habits.<<

O Really. Well. Ghulam. You really outdo yourself on this one. These are not ingrained habits, eh? Just something humanity has been practicing from Day 1 thru thousands of years all over the planet, out of sheer co-incidence in every culture and continent. Right.