July 2008
Middle East Mosaic: A Geopolitical Analysis
By Arthur Scott: Middle East geography has made it historically a “fault’ region in which East/West have encountered, challenged, and borrowed from each other going back fifteen hundred years. The irony is that the cradle of Western civilization rest in Mesopotamia centering on the city-states dotting the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers. Read More
October 2008
Rise of the American empire and the imperial presidency
By Arthur Kane Scott: At present, the Iraq war has seen Bush’s popularity dramatically wane as America awaits the outcome of election 2008. But the election, unless it leads to a reassessment of the costs of Empire fed by privatization and Reaganomics and the growing power of the Imperial Presidency by Congress, will deepen the constitutional crisis the country is already in leading to the shredding of Bill of Rights and to a system based on the Roman model of Principia in which the Executive is first among equals and the Senate and House become mere appendages. The question confronting all Americans in this year’s election is whether or not the Republic envisaged by the Founding Fathers can be revitalized and saved. Read More
April-July 2009
Military/industrial complex: nature/implications
By Arthur Scott: Building the American Empire has been terribly costly to the American people. Economically, the Empire has impoverished the nation. Impoverishment of the nation by war started with the Vietnam conflict of the 60’s and 70’s. It reached its zenith during the Reagan-Bush years when the federal debt rose from less than a trillion dollars to more than 9.5 trillion dollars in 2008. Read More
January 2010
Iranian green revolution: Its modern features
Prof. Arthur Kane Scott: The Iranian “Green Revolution” embodies many of the characteristics of modern revolutions, either liberal/democratic or conservative/Fundamentalist, that have swept across the globe since the Great French Revolution of 1789. Socio/psychologically revolutions go through three stages moderate, radical, and conservative. Iran today appears to be in the first stage of revolutionary change although there are indicators that it may be moving into stage two.ﾠRead More
July-August 2010
Why big history?: Its educational implications
By Prof. Arthur Kane Scott: Big History is essentially a story which investigates all of existence or life from the “Big Bang” of 13.7 billion years ago to post-modern Information Age of Homo Sapiens in the twenty-first century. It will conclude with a peak into the future regarding man’s impact on planet Mother Earth, and on the larger solar system. Read More
February 2012
Who are the Syrian Sunnas?
By Prof. Arthur Kane Scott: Today, the Free Syrian Army opposition forces are gathering position and strength in the suburbs of Damascus. The great fear however still remains that the collapse of Bashir’s regime will trigger sectarian violence of the same fury which engulfed Iraq in 2006. One can only hope that when Bashir does resign that the Sunna majority, especially the Islamic Brotherhood, will exercise the restraint essential to building a civil society in dialogue with other Syrian segments: Christians, Kurds, Alawites, Druzes, Shiia’s, so that chant within the Syrian street for “freedom” can be realized in the noblest tradition of Islam; namely, peace, surrender and unity. Read More
April 2012
School of Americas Watch delegation visits volatile El Paso-Juarez
Arthur Kane Scott: School of Americas Watch (http://www.soaw.org/about-us/faq) led by Father Roy Bourgeois recently led a delegation of nine to El Paso – Juarez to investigate the socio-economic and political devastation that Mexican women/men/children are experiencing in the city of Juarez bordering El Paso, Texas.ﾠRead More
July 2012
Syria: Descent into hell
By Arthur Kane Scott: The Syrian revolution has reached the boiling point of civil war with sectarian violence escalating throughout the country. At least 10 000 Syrians have lost their lives. The city of Hama has become the metaphor for the horrendous violence erupting throughout the country. There are uncanny parallels between what is unfolding in Syria to what occurred in the Balkans in the 1990’s with the collapse of Yugoslavia, and to what occurred in Iraq after the American invasion in 2003. In each case ethnic/religious violence exploded. Read More
August 2012
Political aftermath of JFK assassination
By Arthur Kane Scott: On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, with his wife Jackie, was fired upon at Dealey Plaza. The young President was pronounced dead at 1:30 pm, Central Standard Time, at Parkland Hospital, Dallas. While the nation was in deep shock, Lyndon Banes Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President. What was not realized at the time was that America, not only had witnessed a political assassination in which the vision of the “New Frontier” and its “New Deal” roots were marginalized, but more importantly JFK’s death represented the beginnings of a profound paradigm shift to the “Far Right” within the American culture. By the election of 2012, Corporate America, intelligence agencies, the military-industrial complex, Wall Street/Banking Industry, Religious Right and their sibling money had become the masters of the country where the one percent dominate, and economic fairness/equity banished from the dialogue. The JFK statement: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich” is forgotten, or at best ignored. Read More
October 2012
Political aftermath of JFK assassination – Part II
By Arthur Kane Scott: On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, with his wife Jackie, was fired upon at Dealey Plaza. The young President was pronounced dead at 1:30 pm, Central Standard Time, at Parkland Hospital, Dallas. While the nation was in deep shock, Lyndon Banes Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President. What was not realized at the time was that America, not only had witnessed a political assassination in which the vision of the “New Frontier” and its “New Deal” roots were marginalized, but more importantly JFK’s death represented the beginnings of a profound paradigm shift to the “Far Right” within the American culture. By the election of 2012, Corporate America, intelligence agencies, the military-industrial complex, Wall Street/Banking Industry, Religious Right and their sibling money had become the masters of the country where the one percent dominate, and economic fairness/equity banished from the dialogue. The JFK statement: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich” is forgotten, or at best ignored.ﾠRead More
December 2012
Obama re-election indicates just how out dated the Republican Party has become
By Arthur Kane Scott: The Obama election was a watershed in American political history as it represented the dying gasp of a sociological constituency that history has passed. Their social makeup consists primarily of conservative, white male Republicans, who are to a large extent Evangelicals /Fundamentalists, or business/corporate types. Geographically they are to be found in the South or the Midwest. They belong mainly to the Boomer or Xers Generations, and have succumbed to an antiquated HUBRIS of racism /sexism/Exceptionalism which no longer reflects the American culture. Read More
March 2013
Comment on Islam & Muslims in the Post 9/11 America
Race as a political tool has always been prominent strategy in the American landscape as exemplified by Black segregation and Jim Crow, by the “Yellow Scare” leading to Chinese Exclusion and the Gentleman’s Agreement which limited the number of Japanese entering the country leading to Japanese internment during the World War II. Similarly throughout the twentieth century hysterical outburst against communism raised its head taking the form of the “Red Scare” first with the Palmer Raids in 1920, reaching its apotheosis under Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hearings in the 1950’s in which thousands of Americans were terrorized and had their civil liberties compromised. Today the Far Right has gone ballistic over gun control seeing in it a governmental/Obama conspiracy to disarm “White America” and to marginalize the Second Amendment. It is no coincidence that these episodes are described in terms of color, for color touches on a deep aspect of the American psychic racism, which is endemic in the American culture going back to first encounters with the indigenous peoples who were described by the Anglo Puritan settlers as “Red.” Abdus Sattar Ghazali, a noted Pakistani and Middle East scholar, in his just published book - Islam & Muslims In The Post- 9/11 Era - discusses in great detail the impact of the “Green Terror” on the civil liberties of the seven million Muslims, who comprise the American Islamic community, since 9/11. Read More
June 2013
Democracy: An American illusion
By Arthur Scott: When you ask Americans what their key value or belief is the word you hear most frequent is “democracy”/ “democratic”. This response when you listen close represents a learned cultural response, one heard or taught, but not based on knowledge or thought. It reflects an ignorance of American history, power, sociology, class and politics. Even going back to the founding days of 1776, it can hardly be described as a democratic society. The revolution was orchestrated by a powerful minority of northern commercial and southern plantation families who had concluded that they had out grown their political/economic relationship with England and could do much better alone. They drew heavily upon the thinking of the Eighteenth Century Philosophy of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on human rights: “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. These “rights” however were not universal, but limited to one percenters of the time who were WASP (white Anglo –Saxon Protestants). It excluded Blacks, Native Americans, women and the poor. Read More
July 2013
US intelligence and the rise of a national security state
By Arthur Scott: Only two Presidents have alerted the American public to the dangers of a National Security State. One was Dwight D. Eisenhower who in his Farewell Address to the American public warned the nation of the threat posed by the military –industrial complex when he said: “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”ﾠRead More
September 2013
Where goest revolutionary Egypt: an analysis
By Arthur Scott: In my previous article entitled: “Principles of Revolution: Egypt”, I had mentioned that revolutions go through three stages: moderate, radical and conservative. In February 2011, the overthrow of Mubarak represented the first stage ushering in wide euphoria among the Egyptian people for democracy and democratic change. This period paved the way for the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood under Muhammed Morsi, which was the only group, other than the military, that had developed a robust party infra- structure strong enough to take power when elections were held in June 2012. Read More
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