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Written by Fran Lucientes

Published: 12 October 2013

Poet and critic James Emanuel died in Paris on Sept. 27 at the age of 92.  --  An obituary in the New York Times published on Saturday appeared to be the first notice of the event in the United States.  --  Noting that Emanuel "started the first class on black poetry [at CUNY], wrote academic studies of Langston Hughes and other black writers, and mentored young scholars, including the critic Addison Gayle Jr.," William Yardley said that "Even as his reputation grew, [Emanuel] became increasingly frustrated with racism in America."  --  "When European universities began offering him teaching positions in the late ’60s, he accepted.  --  By the early ’80s, after the death of his only child in Los Angeles, he had vowed never to return to the United States.  --  He never did."[1] ...

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Written by Hank Berger

Published: 11 October 2013

A recent volume reviewed in the New York Review of Books argues that due to a fundamental error in U.S. strategic thinking the world's first drone war "has morphed into a campaign against tribal peoples generally."[1]  --  "U.S. leaders believe they are facing a threat from enemies whose motivation is primarily ideological," said Malise Ruthven.  --  But according to Akbar Ahmed's The Thistle and the Drone: How America's War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (Brookings, 2013), "the primary motive for terror" comes not from ideology but from "the complex interactions between national state systems and tribal identities, as the latter react to the imposition of state authority."  --  in this view, the supposed "affiliates" of al-Qaeda are really motivated not so much by ideology as by "local considerations of honor and revenge, the usual responses of tribes that feel themselves threatened."  --  "Ahmed produces an impressive body of data to support his argument."  --  "[B]y ignoring this all-important factor the U.S. has been courting disaster."  --  What to do?  --  "[T]ribal peoples must be negotiated with, rather than cowed into submission by targeting their leadership."  --  COMMENT:  What a tragedy that Barack Obama, who won office by convincing Americans he was against "dumb wars," is turning out to be the enthusiastic "Terror Tuesday" commander-in-chief of one of the dumbest wars of all time.  --  BACKGROUND:  In 2012, UFPPC adopted a statement entitled "On the World's First Drone War and Its Consequences, Known and Unknown," calling for an international treaty banning drone warfare....

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