Antemedius - Liberally Critical Thinking

Students Versus Senators

davidswanson — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:44:52 -0700

By David Swanson

As long as we're going to dump most of our money into wars and the military and Wall Street and health insurance bailouts, students are going to have to go into debt to afford college. But it would cost the students less and the government less, if private companies were not permitted to act as middlemen profiting off public loans to students.

One of the companies so profiting, Sallie Mae, is based here in Virginia and funnels millions of dollars from its profits into lobbying to make sure the free money keeps flowing. Senators Warner and Webb have chosen to side with the parasites rather than the students, but disguised their choice as one of concern for jobs, the jobs of the loan sharks who could find respectable work in a better educated society. I grew up in Reston, where Sallie Mae's jobs are, and I know there are people there who will find a way to publicly say thank you for Sallie Mae's help in driving our nation deeper into ignorance and debt.

But our representatives are in Washington, not Reston, and they represent their donors, the media, and the president, not us. Student lending is an issue on which the White House officially supports good legislation. But no congress members are getting hounded with promises or threats the way they do when it comes to funding wars. Clearly the corporate media couldn't care less. Educated students, after all, are statistically the least likely to watch the crap we call television news. And the legalized bribes always weigh against public needs, not for them.

While I would choose to end the wars and make college free, or -- as a distant second choice -- to make Webb and Warner pay off students' loans by cleaning Virginia's highways in orange jumpsuits for $0.25 an hour, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act is admirable for its sensible approach to keeping student debt as low as the military will tolerate. It's also admirable for the remarkable irony that -- were it not for the corruption of Webb (202-224-4024) and Warner (202-224-2023) and a few other senators -- this legislation might be included in a health insurance bill that takes the exact opposite approach.

I recall watching a performance at the White House several months back at which the president answered pre-approved questions from the public about healthcare and the economy and student loans. His argument for cutting out the student-loan middleman and saving money was direct and coherent, just as his support for single-payer healthcare had been when he served as a state senator in Illinois. Now his approach to healthcare is to empower the parasitical middlemen, the insurance companies, and require us to hand our money to them.

Yet, rarely is the excuse used that our society could not find respectable jobs for former employees of the Sickness Industry. Instead, the claim is repeated so many times that it begins to sound plausible, that we, the customers, are actually too comfortable with our victimizers to give them up. If it becomes necessary, you'll begin to hear about the public's affection for student loan companies too. That may sound crazy now, but that's only because you haven't heard it 10,000 times yet. Our trepidation about parting with HMOs would have sounded like lunacy before the "health insurance reform" debate got going.

And let’s not imagine that the health insurance corporations will succeed in passing a public mandate to buy their useless and murderous products without every other industry noticing. We may soon learn about the public's deep attachment to all sorts of crap that just won't sell. "Education reform," anyone?

Kucinich tells his side of the story on Democracy Now!

RossL — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:48:01 -0800

In a lengthy interview on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Congressman Dennis Kucinich explained why he would not vote for the present health care bill and defended his position against attacks from people on the left like Markos Moulitsas. He also spoke about the subjects of Afghanistan, campaign finance, and the passing of activist Granny D.

I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There’s about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, “Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure’s building. Just forget about it,” actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it’s really critical to take this stand, because without it, there’s no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system.

The main topic of the interview was health care. Earlier in the week, of course, Kucinich said that he was willing to be the deciding vote against this health care bill. However, on Democracy Now! the Congressman said that his vote was not by a long shot a guaranteed "no:"

AMY GOODMAN: Is anything that would cause you to support the bill at this point?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I mean, it’s—we don’t have the vote yet. The ball is still in play. The White House could decide that in order to pass the bill, they need to put public option in it, a meaningful public option. That would certainly get my attention. Or they could decide that they also want to protect the right of states to proceed with single payer, and not some place far into the future, but do it now. I mean, you have movements in Pennsylvania and in California, in my own state of Ohio, for states to be able to take responsibility for healthcare. I mean, create the possibility now. Let the momentum go in many different areas. But to say 2017 at best, and then it’s an if-come waiver to not permit the states to have legal protection against challenge by the insurance companies?

I should just mention here that I'm involved with the movement for single payer in Pennsylvania, which is currently supporting a bipartisan bill (with support from the governor and the state Democratic party, as well) in the state legislature.

There are two things that Kucinich is demanding, and apparently trying to get by building up pressure, from the health care bill. It remains unclear if he would vote for a bill with just one of the two. One is, of course, a strong public option, a subject which has been covered to death. The other is a way to change ERISA so that it does not interfere with implementing single payer systems on a state by state basis.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, President Obama says that the Senate bill does include single-payer language. He was talking about a provision by Senator Bernie Sanders which would allow states to use federal money to set up a single-payer system years down the road. What do you think of that?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, it provides for a waiver; it doesn’t grant the waiver. And it takes effect 2017. But by then, we’ll already have a system in place that will be very difficult to move out of. And it doesn’t cure the attack that insurance companies can make on state plans using the Employee—the ERISA Act. And so, my amendment that was passed in committee would have protected states from illegal challenge by insurance companies. The Sanders amendment doesn’t do that, so you still have the problem that, no matter what reforms are enacted, can be knocked out. I mean, I talked to the President personally about this. I’ve met with the President three times on this bill. The White House knows my position.

He was also asked to directly respond to what Markos Moulitsas said of him on the MSNBC show Countdown:

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Congressman, on the issue of healthcare, you’ve come under intense criticism by some commentators. Earlier this week, Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the website Daily Kos, appeared on MSNBC and slammed you for threatening to vote against the Democrats’ healthcare reform bill.

MARKOS MOULITSAS: [I’m going to hold] people like Dennis Kucinich responsible for the 40,000 Americans that die each year from a lack of healthcare. And I don’t care if you’re a Republican or you’re a conservative Democrat or you’re somebody like Dennis Kucinich. The fact is, this does a heck of a lot for a lot of people. And like I said, it’s not perfect, it definitely needs to be improved, but it’s a first step. And God knows, it’s taken us a long time to even get our toe in the door, given the corporate interests that are arrayed against any kind of real reform. So I think this is a first step. It’s definitely not the end of the path. It’s not the ideal solution. But we are—our foot’s in the door. And if somebody like Kucinich wants to block that, I find that completely reprehensible.

And he’s elected, not to run for president, which he seems to do every four years. He’s not elected to grandstand and to—and to give us this ideal utopian society. He’s elected to represent the people of his district, and he’s not representing the uninsured constituents in his district by pretending to take the high ground here. What he’s doing, he’s undermining this reform. He’s making common cause with the Republicans. And I think that’s a perfect excuse and a rationale for a primary challenge.

And just one note here. It has been pointed out that it's too late to mount a 2010 primary challenge to Kucinich.

Kucinich said:

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know, I brought the issue of single-payer healthcare before three separate meetings of the Democratic Platform Committee. I brought it into two presidential campaigns to raise the bar about what’s possible. Now I made a compromise when I backed the public option and voted for it in committee. I also had an amendment passed that would protect the rights of states to proceed with a single-payer approach at a state level. Each step along the way, I’ve shown a willingness to try to work with the White House so that we can have meaningful healthcare reform. I signed a letter, along with seventy-seven other members of Congress, saying that I would not vote for the bill unless it had a robust public option. At this point, I’m the only one left standing who has kept that pledge.

I think that we have to ask ourselves why we would have a circumstance where, you know, a week or two before a vote would come, that it would be said that this is going to come down to a single member of Congress, who stands for healthcare for all, Medicare for all, who stands for a public option, who stands to protect right of states, to pursue it, and yet, we should sweep all that aside in favor of a bill that gives the insurance companies a lock on health insurance in America, privatizes the health insurance—$70 billion-a-year subsidy to the insurance industry.

Kucinich has reiterated these ideas elsewhere, such as ABC's Top Line (skip to about 4 minutes into the video).

“You know, this thing isn’t over. They know what they have to do to get the votes and if they need my vote badly enough I suppose they have to think about a robust public option and about the [Employee Retirement Income Security Act], addressing the ERISA preemption which would in effect, protect states from a tax by insurance companies if the states want to establish a single-payer system.”

“I think that the Democrats ought not to be fronting for insurance company interests, and frankly every time they lay a bill out insurance stocks go up. I mean, how -- how would that happen?” he added. “I mean, we have to have a bill for the American people and if the administration wants to change its position, I’m all ears.”

Before health care, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez asked Kucinich about the symbolic resolution on Afghanistan that he introduced and was subsequently voted on, about which he said,

I felt, after a eight-and-a-half years, we had waited long enough to have the debate, and so I used the War Powers Act to create the debate.

I’m glad there was a debate. Now Congress has taken responsibility. The debate didn’t turn out the way I would have liked it to, but at least we brought it into the public’s awareness that Congress has now entered into essentially affirming the Obama administration’s policy on Afghanistan.

The /Citizens United/ decision and the death of Granny D were both mentioned, as well.

What an amazing woman, who lived her life with great passion and commitment to the highest principles of our country. Her commitment to seeing real campaign finance reform, you know, has really been a central part of a movement that tells us we have to change the way we finance elections in order to reclaim our government.

Premature Withdrawal: Washington’s Cult of Narcissism and Iraq

Tom Engelhardt — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:27:21 -0800

Originally published at TomDispatch.com

We’ve now been at war with, or in, Iraq for almost 20 years, and intermittently at war in Afghanistan for 30 years. Think of it as nearly half a century of experience, all bad. And what is it that Washington seems to have concluded? In Afghanistan, where one disaster after another has occurred, that we Americans can finally do more of the same, somewhat differently calibrated, and so much better. In Iraq, where we had, it seemed, decided that enough was enough and we should simply depart, the calls from a familiar crew for us to stay are growing louder by the week.

The Iraqis, so the argument goes, need us. After all, who would leave them alone, trusting them not to do what they’ve done best in recent years: cut one another’s throats?

Modesty in Washington? Humility? The ability to draw new lessons from long-term experience? None of the above is evidently appropriate for “the indispensable nation,” as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once called the United States, and to whose leaders she attributed the ability to “see further into the future.” None of the above is part of the American arsenal, not when Washington’s weapon of choice, repeatedly consigned to the scrapheap of history and repeatedly rescued, remains a deep conviction that nothing is going to go anything but truly, deeply, madly badly without us, even if, as in Iraq, things have for years gone truly, deeply, madly badly with us.

An expanding crew of Washington-based opiners are now calling for the Obama administration to alter its plans, negotiated in the last months of the Bush administration, for the departure of all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. They seem to have taken Albright’s belief in American foresight -- even prophesy -- to heart and so are basing their arguments on their ability to divine the future.

The problem, it seems, is that, whatever may be happening in the present, Iraq’s future prospects are terrifying, making leaving, if not inconceivable, then as massively irresponsible (as former Washington Post correspondent and bestselling author Tom Ricks wrote recently in a New York Times op-ed) as invading in the first place. Without the U.S. military on hand, we’re told, the Iraqis will almost certainly deep-six democracy, while devolving into major civil violence and ethnic bloodletting, possibly of the sort that convulsed their country in 2005-2006 when, by the way, the U.S. military was present in force.

The various partial winners of Iraq’s much delayed March 7th election will, we were assured beforehand, jockey for power for months trying to cobble together a functioning national government. During that period, violence, it's said, will surely escalate, potentially endangering the marginal gains made thanks to the U.S. military “surge” of 2007. The possibilities remain endless and, according to these doomsayers, none of them are encouraging: Shiite militias coulduse our withdrawal to stage a violence-filled comeback. Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs is likely to increase and violently so, while al-Qaeda-in-Iraq could move into any post-election power void with its own destructive agenda.

The Warrior-Pundits Occupy the Future

Such predictions are now dribbling out of the world of punditry and into the world of news reporting where the future threatens to become fact long before it makes it onto the scene. Already it’s reported that the anxious U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, “citing the prospects for political instability and increased violence,” is talking about “plan B's” to delay the agreed upon withdrawal of all “combat troops” from the country this August. He has, Ricks reported on Foreign Policy's website, officially requested that a combat brigade remain in or near the troubled northern city of Kirkuk after the deadline.

As 2009 ended, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was suggesting that new negotiations might extend the U.S. position into the post-2011 years. (“I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see agreements between ourselves and the Iraqis that continue a train, equip, and advise role beyond the end of 2011.”) Centcom commander General David Petraeus agrees. More recently, Gates added that a “pretty considerable deterioration” in the country’s security situation might lead to a delay in withdrawal plans (and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has agreed that this is a possibility). Vice President Joe Biden is already talking about re-labeling “combat troops” not sent home in August because, as he put it in an interview with Helene Cooper and Mark Landler of the New York Times, “we’re not leaving behind cooks and quartermasters.” The bulk of the troops remaining, he insisted, “will still be guys who can shoot straight and go get bad guys.”

And a chorus of the usual suspects, Washington’s warrior-pundits and “warrior journalists” (as Tom Hayden calls them), are singing ever louder versions of a song warning of that greatest of all dangers: premature withdrawal. Ricks, for instance, recommended in the Times that, having scuttled the “grandiose original vision” of the Bush invasion, the Obama administration should still “find a way” to keep a “relatively small, tailored force” of 30,000-50,000 troops in Iraq “for many years to come.” (Those numbers, oddly enough, bring to mind the 34,000 U.S. troops that, according to Ricks in his 2006 bestseller Fiasco, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz projected as the future U.S. garrison in Iraq in the weeks before the invasion of 2003.)

Kenneth Pollack, a drumbeater for that invasion, is now wary of removing “the cast” -- his metaphor for the U.S. military presence -- on the “broken arm” of Iraq too soon since states that have “undergone a major inter-communal civil war have a terrifying rate of recidivism.” For Kimberley and Frederick Kagan, drumbeaters extraordinaires, writing for the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. must start discussing “a long-term military partnership with Iraq beyond 2011,” especially since that country will not be able to defend itself by then.

Why, you might well ask, must we stay in Iraq, given our abysmal record there? Well, say these experts, we are the only force all Iraqis now accept, however grudgingly. We are, according to Pollack, the “peacemakers, the lev[ee] holding back violence... Iraq’s security blanket, and... the broker of political deals… we enforce the rules.” According to Ricks, we are the only “honest brokers” around. According to the Kagans, we were the “guarantor” of the recent elections, and have a kind of “continuing leverage” not available to any other group in that country, “should we choose to use it.”

Today, Iraq is admittedly a mess. On our watch, the country crashed and burned. No one claims that we’ve put it back together. Multi-billions of dollars in reconstruction funds later, the U.S. has been incapable of delivering the simplest things like reliable electricity or potable water to significant parts of the country. Now, the future sits empty and threatening before us. So much time in which so many things could happen, and all of them horrifying, all calling out for us to remain because they just can’t be trusted, they just don’t deliver.

The Sally Fields of American Foreign Policy

Talk about blaming the victim. An uninvited guest breaks into a lousy dinner party, sweeps the already meager meal off the table, smashes the patched-together silverware, busts up the rickety furniture, and then insists on staying ad infinitum because the place is such a mess that someone responsible has to oversee the clean-up process.

What’s remained in all this, remarkably enough, is our confidence in ourselves, our admiration for us, our -- well, why not say it? -- narcissism. Nothing we’ve done so far stops us from staring into that pool and being struck by what a kindly, helpful face stares back at us. Think of those gathering officials, pundits, journalists, and military figures seemingly eager to imagine the worst and so put the brakes on a full-scale American withdrawal as the Sally Fields of foreign policy. (“I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!”)

When you have an administration that has made backpedaling its modus operandi, this rising chorus in Washington and perhaps among the military in Iraq could prove formidable in an election year (here, not there). What, of course, makes their arguments particularly potent is the fact that they base them almost entirely on things that have yet to happen, that may, in fact, never happen. After all, humans have such a lousy track record as predictors of the future. History regularly surprises us, and yet their dismal tune about that future turns out to be an effective cudgel with which to beat those in favor of getting all U.S. troops out by the end of 2011.

Few remember anymore, but we went through a version of this 40 years ago in Vietnam. There, too, Americans were repeatedly told that the U.S. couldn’t withdraw because, if we left, the enemy would launch a “bloodbath” in South Vietnam. This future bloodbath of the imagination appeared in innumerable official speeches and accounts. It became so real that sometimes it seemed to put the actual, ongoing bloodbath in Vietnam in the shade, and for years it provided a winning explanation for why any departure would have to be interminably and indefinitely delayed. The only problem was: When the last American took that last helicopter out, the bloodbath didn’t happen.

In Iraq, only one thing is really known: after our invasion and with U.S. and allied troops occupying the country in significant numbers, the Iraqis did descend into the charnel house of history, into a monumental bloodbath. It happened in our presence, on our watch, and in significant part thanks to us.

But why should the historical record -- the only thing we can, in part, rely on -- be taken into account when our pundits and strategists have such privileged access to an otherwise unknown future? In the year to come, based on what we’re seeing now, such arguments may intensify. Terrible prophesies about Iraq’s future without us may multiply. And make no mistake, terrible things could indeed happen in Iraq. They could happen while we are there. They could happen with us gone. But history delivers its surprises more regularly than we imagine -- even in Iraq.

In the meantime, it’s worth keeping in mind that not even Americans can occupy the future. It belongs to no one.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His latest book, The American Way of War (Haymarket Books), will be published in May. Catch a recent TomCast, TomDispatch.com’s audio interview with Tom Engelhardt on the American state of perpetual war, by clicking here, or download the podcast by clicking here.

Supporting Policy, Governance, and Democracy with Workers in Mind

borderjumpers — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:10:00 -0800

Cross posted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

While in Harare, Zimbabwe, we met with the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), an initiative of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) which started operating in September of 2003. The research institute's primary objective to develop, through research, well-grounded policy positions designed to influence development processes and outcomes at the national, regional and international levels. This is particularly important in the context of globalization where national policy is increasingly giving way to regional and international developments. In this regard, the ability to anticipate developments will help in designing proactive policies that respond promptly to external challenges.

LEDRIZ shared with us the training and research materials and documents they use in training programs throughout the country around the "8 Socio-Economic Rights.’ Rather than directly endorsing political candidates, ZCTU advocates for democracy and good governance in Zimbabwe. LEDRIZ is strategically positioning itself to be part of every major economic policy debate in Zimbabwe, an impressive feat given the tight autocratic rule President Mugabe maintains over the country. In addition, LEDRIZ is fighting hard to establish progressive policies such as opposing the privatization of public utilities, providing support for the informal sector, protecting workers' pensions and their ability to retire with dignity.

In establishing an aligned research institute, the labor movement in Zimbabwe is following the examples of the US, European, South African and Namibian trade unions. Such a research think-tank is particularly helpful in an economy like Zimbabwe's which has experienced a wrenching brain drain, undermining capacity. The main strength of LEDRIZ is that it is a member of several national, regional and international networks such as the Alternatives to Neo-liberalism in Southern Africa (ANSA) which it coordinates; the African Labour Research Network (ALRN); and the Global Union Research Network (GURN), launched in January 2004 under the coordination of the ILO Bureau of Workers’ Activities and the International Trade Union Council (ITUC).

In Zimbabwe, the Voice of the Worker

borderjumpers — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:58:34 -0800

Cross posted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

Imagine being one of only five opposition voices in a country of thirteen million people, where all radio, print and television is strictly controlled by the government. That's Ben Madzimure’s uphill battle everyday as editor of "The Worker," the voice of the labor movement, in Zimbabwe--especially because his newspaper is only printed once a month, with only 5,000 copies distributed throughout the country.

"Zimbabwe used to have such a vibrant and independent media but most of the press was shut down," said Madzimure. Today many of the print reporters across the country bite their tongues and print the government's viewpoint. Madzimure, on the other hand, actively seeks out stories the government doesn't want mentioned, such as worker discontent and political corruption, and provides an unfiltered analysis of current events.

While President Mugabe lost the presidential election of 2008 (despite employing voter suppression strategies), he refused to relinquish power to the victor, Morgan Richard Tsvangirai. Today, under a "power sharing" agreement between the parties of Mugabe and Tsvangirai, the government continues to control all forms of media and mass-communication.

Given that Zimbabwe is one of the most literate countries in Africa, around 90 percent literacy rate, print media is a critical tool in moving a message. Madzimure says that after the newspaper is read, it's passed on to at least nine other people and it remains a "permanent marker," because people use it to "wrap things or to fill holes."

With a population spread out over hundreds of miles in rural areas, "The Worker" is the main way for the trade union federation, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), to disseminate news and inspire activity. "When ZCTU calls for national actions, the media doesn't report on it at all, "The Worker" is a main vehicle giving directions to people on how to participate in strikes, elections and public actions," said Madzimure.

Yet, despite financial support from the ZCTU, the Solidarity Center in the United States, the Canadian Labour Congress, and others -- the $1 USD price tag to purchase the paper is too expensive for most Zimbabweans. With 80 percent job informalization in the country , according to a recent United Nations report, the labor movement relies on its local networks to make sure the message filters throughout the country. Union members at every district are providing reporting as "volunteer correspondents" and several unemployed reporters are also lending a hand.

Madzimure's dream is to eventually turn "The Worker" into a daily publication, offering investigative reporting and political analysis. In the meantime, while most Zimbabweans have no access to the computer, this does not stop Ben from promoting widely via every medium at his disposal including a news blog, a fan page on Facebook (it has 3,800 fans), and on Twitter (12,000 followers).

By the Standards of his Hero Nixon, is Rove a Traitor?

billhare — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:47:50 -0800

With Karl Rove arrogantly proclaiming not only that he did nothing wrong, but that he is very much on the correct side of history, it is interesting to look back and see how he would fare in accordance with the standards of his first political hero, Richard M. Nixon.

As a young man growing up in Salt Lake City, Rove adhered strongly to the Nixon Vietnam position. He accepted Nixon’s position of demonizing opponents of the Vietnam War, including questioning their patriotism.

After Nixon’s death progressive historians asserted that Nixon and his administration’s foot soldiers demeaned true patriotism by embracing a narrow standard wherein, if they failed to support a flag waving posture operating lockstep within Nixon’s narrow dogma relating to Vietnam, they were labeled as unpatriotic.

Like so many of Nixon’s stalwart young supporters, including of William Kristol, Dick Cheney and others, Rove had no stomach for traveling to Southeast Asia and fighting for a cause he verbally supported.

When time ultimately substantiated the anti-Vietnam War contingent position that no domino theory existed and hordes of Asians, spearheaded by the Chinese, never sought to invade America via San Francisco Bay or any other way, the chicken hawks never changed their position.

The same holds true with Rove’s position on the Iraq War as well as an issue that has awkwardly surfaced as he hawks his new book this week in the media, that being his leaking, along with the late ultra right political columnist Robert Novak, of the name of CIA weapons analyst Valerie Plame.

On the war Rove repeats the same stale claim that the Bush Administration was compelled to act in Iraq through a justifiable concern that Saddam Hussein contained the wherewithal and the desire to launch a nuclear attack against the United States.

What Rove fails to consider, much less confront, was that the Project for the New American Century had urged an Iraq War on President Bill Clinton without success.

He also ignores the activities of Dick Cheney in seeking to pressure the CIA to deliver “facts” indicating an Iraq nuclear threat, nor does he consider those secret meetings with the corporate aristocracy led by the formerly Cheney led Halliburton to divide up the fruits of impending battle before the first Shock and Awe attacks on Iraq.

Nor does he say anything about that UN weapons inspection team led by Sweden’s Hans Blix. The group had theretofore found nothing and asked for time to finish their inspection and deliver a final report. That effort was pre-empted by a Bush war declaration and attack.

Now on to the outing of Valerie Plame. Rove insists he owes no apology to former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan after lying to him about not passing along information to the media about Valerie Plame, resulting in McClellan’s presenting unknowing false information regarding Rove’s culpability.

McClellan was philosophical about Rove’s stonewalling, stating that to someone who regards politics as warfare it is not possible to reason with him.

On the Today Show on Tuesday Rove declared to Matt Lauer that his outing of CIA weapons specialist Valerie Plame was “no big deal.” Think of it, here was someone in harmony with the Nixon position demonizing anyone who opposed his Vietnam War policy no matter how sincere the intent, and even if such individuals actually served in the conflict, which Rove would not do.

In the case of Valerie Plame her life was placed in jeopardy, along with the lives of all those with whom she communicated. She was destroyed forever as a source, as well as anyone with whom she interacted. In terms of her sources, their lives were also placed in jeopardy.

How about any information derived from Plame efforts, including any Iraqi effort to acquire nuclear weapons? Such efforts are also severely compromised upon Plame’s identity becoming known.

So on the one hand Rove ardently supported a false Nixon standard impugning the patriotism of sincere individuals who believed that the Vietnam War was wrong.

Rove proclaimed himself to be ardently committed to stamping out terrorism in the wake of 9/11, but yet for reasons of political opportunism and vengeance he would put the life and work at risk of someone seeking to ascertain who might have acquired or be on the verge of acquiring weaponry to put America and other nations at risk.

The definition of treason is that of “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” Tell us, Karl, were America’s enemies hindered or aided by your contribution in outing Valerie Plame?

The fact that Rove, operating as a sociopath running away from standards of right and wrong, can display himself to arrogantly in the pursuit of financial profit indicates the tragic current picture in which the wheels of American justice look the other way in the face of egregious misconduct.

Steal a loaf of bread and expect to end up in jail. Engage in the kind of imperiling conduct of Karl Rove, then appear on the national media and sell your book.

War Is Over (If They Mean It)

davidswanson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:34:59 -0800

By David Swanson

Sixty-five congress members, including 60 Democrats and 5 Republicans, voted to end the occupation of Afghanistan on Wednesday. But 356 congress members, including 189 Democrats and 167 Republicans voted to keep the war going. The vote followed three hours of debate created by Congressman Dennis Kucinich's introduction of a privileged resolution.

The debate featured three leaders from three groups of congress members: the war opponents (almost all Democrats), the pro-war Democrats, and the pro-war Republicans. Given this alignment, which has existed for nearly a decade now, is there any reason for supporters of peace and justice to take heart? I think so. Here's why: If the 60 Democrats acted in good faith and would have voted the same way even if the bill had a chance of passing, or even if that could be said of only 38 of them, then we may very well see funding of the wars dry up. If the leadership includes unrelated measures in the next war funding bill ($33 billion coming in April or May), measures that lead all the Republicans to vote No (as happened last July), then only 38 Democrats have to vote No to block the bill.

Now, there are two weak points in this plan. One is that the war funding could be brought up on its own without anything displeasing to the Republicans attached to it. But that would be the smart thing to do, so don't count on it. The moving of Guantanamo to Illinois has already been proposed for inclusion in the bill. The other weak point is that, of course, very few of the Democrats who voted Yes on Wednesday did so in good faith. Look back to July when 51 Democrats voted no on the funding when it was guaranteed to pass, and only 32 were willing to vote No when they had a chance of actually blocking the bill. Look at Congressman David Obey who voted to end the war on Wednesday and will write and shepherd the bill to fund it next month.

Yet we are in a greatly strengthened position from which to pressure 65 congress members to vote No on the next funding. They just went on record officially acting to end the war. And many of them went on video on the floor of the House speaking passionately in favor of ending the war. Constituents can now play back the videos, praise the anti-war commitments, and demand that none of these officials put our money where their mouth isn't. This whipping operation is being tracked at http://defundwar.org

These are the Republicans who voted to end the war in Afghanistan: Campbell, Duncan, Johnson (IL), Jones, Paul. These are the Democrats: Baldwin, Capuano, Chu, Clarke, Clay, Cleaver, Crowley, Davis (IL), DeFazio, Doyle, Edwards (MD), Ellison, Farr, Filner, Frank (MA), Grayson, Grijalva, Gutierrez, Hastings (FL), Jackson (IL), Jackson Lee (TX), Johnson E. B., Kagen, Kucinich, Larson (CT), Lee (CA), Lewis (GA), Maffei, Maloney, Markey (MA), McDermott, McGovern, Michaud, Miller George, Nadler (NY), Napolitano, Neal (MA), Obey, Olver, Payne, Pingree (ME), Polis (CO), Quigley, Rangel, Richardson, Sánchez Linda T., Sanchez Loretta, Schakowsky, Serrano, Speier, Stark, Stupak, Tierney, Towns, Tsongas, Velázquez, Waters, Watson, Welch, Woolsey.

A special focus on Obey would be appropriate. If he claims he wants to continue the Iraq War, he can fund that one separately. He cannot, however, claim that his vote on Wednesday was sincere while he continues to fund the war in Afghanistan. An additional special focus on Grijalva and Woolsey makes sense as well. If they want to end the war and understand it as a matter of life and death on a large scale, they must use the progressive caucus they chair to whip their colleagues to stand with them against the funding.

Whether we are able to block the funding this year or not, the central issue facing our government has been raised, and a debate has been aired. We've identified 356 congress members who need to be sent packing. And we've identified another 65 who need to demonstrate their lack of hypocrisy. I liveblogged the debate at http://afterdowningstreet.org/afghanliveblog and there were many highlights, including a lot of love for President Obama from a lot of Republicans, and a lot of debunking of pro-war nonsense from progressives -- including some really passionate cries for peace that sounded almost, you know, like they meant it.

Gaining a Formal Voice for the Informal Sector

borderjumpers — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:41:00 -0800

Cross posted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

It's hard to believe that more than 90 percent of the workforce in Zimbabwe are part of the informal sector. These workers do everything from selling bananas and playing music to selling stone carvings and other crafts. Unfortunately because they are not considered part of the formal economy, they are often the most exploited—or ignored—by the government. As a result, in 2002, they formed the Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations (ZCIEA), an associate of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), to help gain a voice for their members in government.

These workers, who traditionally competed against each other and with the formal sector —are now coordinated and working together to tackle pressing issues such as social security, disability benefits, improved infrastructure, working conditions, and many others.

The Informal Economy is being helped by ZCTU together with their elected leadership to lobby legislators to change the laws to that they become user friendly.

We were given the opportunity to visit two community projects coordinated by the informal workers association with President Beauty Mugijima and program coordinator Elijah Mutemeri.

The first project was a village where they are working with the local community to build a school in an area where hundreds of people were forced to relocate during "Operation Restore Order." As part of a de-urbanization program under Mugabe, the controversial leader of the country, nearly 2 million workers were forcibly removed from their homes in cities, stripped of their belongings, and forced to live in rural areas, without any agriculture skills or training. We met with this community who, despite having very few resources and little volunteer support, are trying to build a school to teach area children. They recently succeeded in getting accredited by the local government and the community is pushing public officials for additional resources to build the school. The visit was especially inspiring because the teachers working there endure long commutes because they believed in helping the community. Many families in the makeshift town are also raising orphans or abandoned children, as well their own.

The second project we visited is an orphanage for children that the union is helping support. As we arrived children were singing, clapping, and rushing to offer us hugs and high fives. Most of these hundreds of kids lost their parents to HIV/AIDS, and the orphanage provides them not only with a place to go to learn and go to school, but also gives them a family.

The teachers and caretakers who work there are mostly volunteers and you can see that they share a deep commitment and passion for the future of these kids.

Stay tuned for a small-dollar donation drive to help this orphanage in the coming weeks.

Health Care Reform - Idealism Or Progress?

Something The Dog Said — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:01:37 -0800

There are two signs over the Dogs desk; one reads;

“The man that favors the ideal over the real learns to achieve not his salvation but his ruin”

the other reads

“Ideals must be defended with idealism”.

Yes, they seem to contradict each other yet to me they are the essence of politics and policy.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

On the one hand, when we are talking about policy, there is the need to get things done, to make progress on the issues, even if we don’t finish them in this fight. If there is not a pressing need, then the issue should not be the focus of political and legislative policy, so by definition if an issue is being worked on it has a real world impact for real people. This generally means that doing nothing is unacceptable. Trying and failing often means that nothing will change, and the damage (whatever it may be) that is spurring the debate will continue.

The bigger the issue the more important it is likely to be and thus the need for progress is greater. However, the bigger the issue the more important the ideals one holds to become as well. When looking at a policy that would mean major change, there is always the chance that the change will go in a direction that you vehemently oppose. This can engage the ideals that guide your thinking in an immediate fashion.

Ideals are important. They are the rudder that keeps your policy thinking and actions on course. Without a clear set of principles that you use to inform your thinking you will blow in every political wind. It will make you susceptible to weak arguments and worse, corruption that never starts with the big crime but with the little one. By sticking to ideals and defending them with idealism, you are signing up to lose from time to time and lose totally. If there can be no bending in your point of view, then there can be no compromise and thus all your ideals have to be total wins or total losses.

This leads us to the issue of Health Care Reform. Looked at from the point of view of ideals both the House and Senate bills fail miserably. There should be no debate, single payer, in one form or another, is the proven way to achieve the best possible health outcomes with the least possible cost. Every other industrialized nation in the world (and many of the not so developed countries) has version of the single payer system. The variations are wide enough that the fight for health care reform should be about picking the methods that work for us, not over whether we should go this direction or not.

Further, it is clear that a for-profit system of health care administration is one that pits the profit motive against what is best for the patient. That fundamental flaw can not be resolved. Corporations, by law, are required to look out for the profits of their shareholders above all. To do anything else is a breach of their fiduciary responsibility. To put the care of patients, the health of people, into the hands of a group whose primary goal is anything but the best possible outcome is to set up a system that will consistently fail over time.

Looking at these factors; it is easy to understand the words and actions of members of Congress like Dennis Kucinich. He is not willing to let this dysfunctional system that can not in the long run succeed be propped up with 70 billion in yearly subsidies. He understands, and sees as paramount, the need to take the profit motive and the corporate culture out of the delivery of health care . This makes it possible for him to defend an ideal with idealism and vote no on the Senate bill, even if it kills this reform effort.

The pragmatic (or Machiavellian, since the top quote is from old Niccolo) point of looks at the real world cost of the status quo. 44,000 Americans will die this year if we do not act to get them some kind of access to health care. That is 120 people today. That is 120 people tomorrow, that is 120 people the next day and every day from now until December 31st. These are not abstractions; these are our neighbors, our co-workers, our family members. They are flesh and blood citizens of this nation who will die if things do not change.

This bill will not save all of them, but it will save some. To the Dogs thinking, even one is enough. This bill will also prevent insurance companies from dropping those who are very ill and will require expensive treatment. That factor alone will keep many families who would face financial ruin from facing it while dealing with a major illness.

This bill will bring about 15 million people into the Medicaid system. It will bring about 15 more into the private insurance system. While the insurance might not be all that it should be, having access to preventative care will make a huge difference for those 15 million. Being able to visit a doctor when they have an illness and have them treated will be transformative for them.

This bill comes with costs. The new language that is going to make coverage for abortion is a big problem. The excise tax funding is a slap at Organized Labor who gave up increases in pay and other benefits for years in order to protect excellent health benefits. The increase in customers the private insurers will get will, in the short term, make them more profitable and more powerful. All of these are facts, however, this bill, even the raw, un-amended Senate bill is progress.

It is a huge step forward to insure that many more Americans. It is a stake in the ground that says “we will find a way to cover all our people”. It will transform to the measurably better millions of lives and save some of the 120 people that would die every day without this change. It is progress, even if it is far from perfection. This is the realist argument for passing this reform and passing it now. There is no way to do this piece meal, the Democrats in both the House and Senate have already been on record as voting for this, the political cost has been paid, all that is left is to get the benefits that we can from it.

This is President Obama’s argument. It is the argument of those who are willing to take progress towards an overall goal, even flawed and expensive progress, rather than wait for the time when they can win in one fell swoop. It is the half a loaf is better than none when you are starving argument.

All of us have to come to our own balance between the idealism and the pragmatic acceptance of progress over perfection. For the Dog, given that we are talking about the lives of our fellow citizens balanced against the most effective system and the need to end corporate greed in this industry, the decision has to be for progress.

By moving forward, we take some of the issues off the table. We address a real problem that kills people, while leaving a real problem that threatens to bankrupt our nation in place. This is a trade the Dog will willingly make, since every the funding for the subsidies will come from the Federal government and for all its faults, that government will always look for ways to reduce those costs. The only real way to do that is to create more competition and eventually move the profit motive out of health care administration all together.

In this case, the real must win over the ideal. This does not mean giving up on the ideal of single payer; instead, it means accepting the progress that can be made, consolidating it and using our idealism to gear up for the next fight to improve on the progress we have made.

The floor is yours.

We Remain United: In Zimbabwe's Labor Movement, a Voice for Human Rights and Democracy

borderjumpers — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:21:52 -0800

Cross posted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

In Harare, on the way to our meeting with Wellington Chibebe, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), even our driver was excited for us.

"He is a good, good man. I've only seen him on TV, but he's fights very hard for the people and to promote democracy!"

Since the early 1990s, ZCTU grew increasingly opposed to the government of Robert Mugabe and was the main force behind the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). In fact, MDC's leader and the current Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Richard Tsvangirai held the same position with the ZCTU before Chibebe.

Chibebe is one of the most vocal—and effective—voices in civil society promoting respect for human rights and democracy. Despite being brutally beaten, tortured, and having his life threatened over the last two decades, Chibebe remains more positive than ever about the direction of his country. It was largely due to Zimbabwe's labor movement that in the 2008 presidential election Tsvangirai defeated Mugagbe. Yet despite MDC's victory, Mugabe, refuses to step down and the nation has a "power sharing" agreement.

When we met with Chibebe, he was cautiously optimistic about the power-sharing agreement and the future of democracy in Zimbabwe. "Our role as the labor movement is to fight for democracy and good governance, respect for people's basic rights, and also social and economic rights." He says that while the MDC plays a critical role in promoting democracy, the mission of the union movement will be to hold all political parties accountable to these principles. "We just can't afford to repeat the same mistake by treating any government or political party as angels from heaven," he says. While he described the beginning of the power-sharing agreement as "terrible," Chibebe felt strongly that "things are now getting better, we are able to make some positive changes happen."

Chibebe was born 300 miles south of Harare. His upbringing herding goats and farming built both a sense of responsibility and social consciousness, he says. "Rural kids grow up different from urban ones, you start fighting for your rights at a very early age. If you aren't aggressive, you'll get abused." He also described how in rural life he had no access to books or libraries, so everyone listened to their elders, learning about the importance of struggle and hearing passionate tales of resistance against the ruling government. Not even a teen when his mother passed away, Chibebe became passionately involved in political struggle for social and economic justice that has lasted his whole life.

Being at the helm of the Zimbabwe labor movement at this moment is no easy task. The country faces unemployment rates of more than 90 percent. The media is controlled by the government. Union leaders are routinely harassed and imprisoned. And the Mugabe government instituted draconian laws to thwart unions, such as arresting any meeting of more than four people. Yet the affiliates of the ZCTU, representing more than 30 unions and every sector of the economy, have remained united. "While it is very difficult at times with unemployment so high to convince people to be in unions, we are still able to recruit and grow."

Chibebe works tirelessly to bring attention to Zimbabwe’s economic and human rights realities and to pressure the government to reform its ways. As workers struggle to survive inflation and low paying informal employment, Chibebe has expanded the work of the ZCTU to represent all workers in both formal and informal employment. ZCTU fights for economic and social justice not just for his members, but for the fundamental rights of all of Zimbabwe’s workers.

In 2002, Chibebe and the ZCTU had the vision of helping informal sector workers—everyone from street vendors to musicians and artisans—form unions. The desire for social and economic change spread like wild fire when the Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Associations (ZCIEA) started in 2002. Presently with more than 1.5 million paying members (out of 3.5 million members), the informal workers now have access to all the resources of the ZCTU such as their lobbyists, their research arm, and the strength and power of their affiliate unions.

Chibebe, and everyone we met with at ZCTU, speaks with great pride about the support they've been given by the American labor movement through the Solidarity Center, which maintains an office in the country. "Because of the Solidarity Center and the American worker, we've had incredible moral and material support," Chibebe said. Some of the examples he cites are the role the Solidarity Center plays in supporting their research institute, expanding distribution of their newspaper "the Worker," their ability to fund a lobbyist, create a paralegal program, training activists and leaders, and getting support from international governments and politicians through organizational delegations such as the visit from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU).

Creeping Jethro Bodine-ism In The Republican Party

Something The Dog Said — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:00:11 -0800

It is easy to think of Members of Congress as corrupt, this is particularly true of the Republicans who seem hell bent on doing everything they can to go against what polls show time and again is the will of the people. Since they are the avowed party of business and they have so many multi-millionaires and billionaires in their ranks the circumstantial evidence is pretty strongly in favor of this idea.

However the Dog would like to offer an alternate theory; namely that a large percentage of Congressional Republicans are not evil or corrupt, they are merely sack-of-hammers-dumb. Call it the creeping Jethro Bodine-ism of the Republican Party.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

It is a dirty little secret that we don’t like to talk about, but there is no really requirement for being intelligent and being a Senator or a Congressman. Sure, we love to think that the voters of this nation will make an informed decision and not elect an obvious fool to one of the most powerful offices of our nation, but the evidence just does not support that wish.

In some ways, what you have to do to be elected in our modern system actually selects against the truly smart. Campaigning, for candidates and for the most part consists of saying the same thing, the same way over and over and over and over and over. There is the basic stump speech, there is the basic door knock spiel and there is the basic fund raising pitch. For months on end this is most of a what a candidate will say. That is not something that most very smart people find interesting or desirable to do.

The smart ones who are elected do it because they know it is the way to get to where their thoughts and words can make a difference. However, that does not prevent those who are not so smart from doing it as well, the difference comes when it is time for them to do that actual job as opposed to the job of campaigning. This where we get our Jethros in Congress.

Think back the old Beverly Hill Billy’s show and you will see what I mean. Jethro was the completely gormless backwoods cousin Jed Calmpet brought with them to California. He was enthusiastic about everything, even though he was the complete and total package in terms of cluelessness. This allowed him to say and do the dumbest things with complete sincerity. It was never his fault that things fell apart, he did not have a mean bone in his body, he just went where he was told and did what he was told was the right thing.

This is the problem with far too many Republicans in the House and Senate. They are members of the CPAC training, which was about looking good, raising money and parroting the talking points of the leadership. This was the brain child of Newt Gingrich and it worked as long as there was a core of smart (and lets face it, corrupt and evil) leadership in the Republican Party.

Where things started to go bad for the Republicans is when the corruption got to the point where people like Newt and Tom DeLay and other Republican Revolution leaders were shamed out of Congress. This left the Republicans in the position of moving some of their Jethros up to leadership positions. This is how the frightfully orange John Boehner becomes the Minority Leader. A man so gormless that after a day of listening to substanitive back and forth about health care thinks it is okay and effective to repeat the stale and discredited Republican talking points. Or Minority Whip Eric Cantor who brought enough binders to make himself a little fort at the health care summit and proceeded to hide behind it.

It is how we are treated to things like Republican budget proposals, without any numbers in them. This is not to say that all Republicans are mentally challenged, far from it, some, like Minority Leader McConnell is clearly just bought and paid for. He will say whatever his owners want him to say, he does not pretend that he believes it, it does not matter.

That brings us to folks like Rep. Michele Bachmann. She says some of the most heinous and destructive things imaginable, telling her constituents she is their reporter behind the lines; that they should not fill out their census form (even though if they follow her advice her congressional district is likely to disappear); she has also been an enthusiastic pusher of the death panel meme. The thing is I do not believe any of these ideas are hers, she has just been loaded up with talking points from the various Republican think tanks and goes out and spouts them.

It is this outsourcing of thinking which is the most probable cause of Bodine-ism. Chris Mathews is right about one thing (even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while) politics should be a learning profession, if you are going to practice it you should be learning and thinking all the time. Republicans are more than content to let the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation or Federalist Society do their thinking for them, they just have to read the cliff notes. As my grandfather said (on numerous occasions) if you let someone else do your thinking for you, that is when you wind up cleaning the stables.

Is there a solution for this? No, not short of the Republicans coming to the conclusion that they need to stop having fools in their party who think the Internet is a series of tubes, or that a snow-storm in the winter in on the East Coast is somehow evidence against global warming. The sad fact is that the nation has a large share of Jethro’s in the population and as long as they are happy to be gormless and uninformed there will be room in Congress for those who think that Medicare is not a government run health care program.

In the end it is just enough to recognize that it is likely that many of those we think of as evil and corrupt are more likely to be dumb. There is some benefit in this, if we stop treating them as though they have well thought out and principled opposition we can start to use our own smart guys to run circles around them and get more of our agenda done. All it takes is elected a few Jane Hathaway’s to clean up the Jethro’s messes.

The floor is yours.

How to Fight a Better War (Next Time): Three Fixes for the American Way of War

Tom Engelhardt — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:44:28 -0800

Originally published at TomDispatch.com

Iraq remains a mess from which the U.S. military seems increasingly uninterested in withdrawing fully and Afghanistan a disaster area, but it’s never too soon to think about the next war. The subject is already on the minds of Pentagon planners. The question is: Are they focusing on how to manage future wars so that they won’t last longer than the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II combined?

There’s reason to worry, especially since the lessons of both Iraq and Afghanistan are clear: it takes years after a war has been launched for the U.S. military to develop tactics that lead to stasis. (“Victory” is a word that has gone out of fashion.)

Here, then, are three modest suggestions for recalibrating the American way of war. All are based on a simple principle -- “preventive war planning” -- and are focused on getting the next war right before it begins, not decades after it’s launched.

1. Make the Apologies in Advance

Who can doubt that the American way of war has undergone changes since, in December 2001, a B-52 and two B-1B bombers using precision-guided weapons essentially wiped out a village celebrating a wedding in Eastern Afghanistan? Of 112 Afghans in that wedding party, only two women survived. Similarly, in August 2008, in the village of Azizabad in Herat Province, at least 90 Afghans, including 60 children, were killed in a series of U.S. air strikes, while in May 2009, up to 140 Afghan civilians died in a U.S. bombing attack in Farah Province.

Understandably, such “incidents” have done little to endear the U.S. and its allies to Afghans. Until recently, the U.S. military would initially deny that civilians had even died; if the incident refused to go away, military spokespeople would then admit to small numbers of civilian deaths (often blamed on the Taliban), while launching an “investigation” and waiting for the hubbub to die away. Apologies or “regrets” came late and grudgingly, if at all (along with modest payments to the relatives of the dead). Back then, being American and at war in distant lands meant never having to say you were sorry.

More recently, Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal has changed the rules, curbing air strikes (though not drone strikes), warning his troops to prevent civilian deaths, and instituting an instant expression of “regrets” for such deaths. One thing, however, has changed only marginally: the civilian deaths themselves.

In mid-February, for instance, 12 civilians died when two U.S. rockets slammed into a compound near the city of Marja in Helmand Province. The following day, five Afghan civilians digging at the side of a road in Kandahar Province were killed in an air strike after being mistaken for insurgents planting a roadside bomb. Then, in Uruzgan Province, U.S. Special Forces troops in helicopters struck a convoy of mini-buses, killing up to 27 civilians, including women and children.

After each of these incidents, regrets were quickly expressed, investigations launched. In the case of the mini-buses, McChrystal apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai personally and then went on Afghan television to make his apology public. (“I pledge to strengthen our efforts to regain your trust to build a brighter future for all Afghans. Most importantly, I express my deepest, heartfelt condolences to the victims and their families. We all share in their grief and will keep them in our thoughts and prayers.”)

Unfortunately, a policy of repeated apology is unlikely to prove much more successful than the previous stonewalling tactic as long as civilians die, which they will, given the American style of war. It may be too late to correct this in Afghanistan, but the next war is another story. My suggestion is simple: in the future, the U.S. military should issue a blanket apology before going to war, and the first waves of U.S. planes should not drop bombs but abjectly worded leaflets. These would take responsibility in advance for future civilian deaths and pre-apologize for them.

There is a partial precedent for this. In both the Korean and Vietnam wars, American planes regularly dropped leaflets warning peasant farmers that they were living in “free fire zones” and should beware or move out. In this case, the pamphlets would make clear that the United States is going after “the evil-doers” and admit that, despite our ever more precise weaponry, we will unfortunately kill a certain percentage of you in the process. (“The U.S. military expresses our deepest, heartfelt condolences to the future victims and their families. We will all share in their grief and, when they die, will keep them in our thoughts and prayers.”) We should also announce in advance at least a $1,500 solatium payment for any relative, spouse, or child who perishes, as well as carefully calibrated sums for the loss of limbs, eyes, and the like.

After this, whenever civilians die, the military would simply refer interested parties to the prewar statement. This should guarantee a cleaner, more effective way of war.

2. Pre-Build the Bases, Prisons, and Embassy Complexes

Thanks to nine years in Afghanistan and seven in Iraq, it’s easier to grasp how the American way of war actually works. A striking (if little discussed) aspect of it is the base-building that accompanies it. In the years of fighting, the Pentagon built several hundred bases in each country, ranging from tiny outposts to massive American “towns.” It also constructed multiple prisons and holding centers (some secret), and for each war, a nearly billion-dollar regional command center, which we still inaccurately call an “embassy.” The one in Islamabad, Pakistan, is only now under construction.

Much of this was done on the fly and in response to events. For the next war, it would be more logical to prepare in advance. Again, there is a partial precedent. In recent years, the U.S. has pre-positioned equipment at small bases and other locations around the world, so that, should a sudden desire to intervene arise, the means are relatively close at hand. This strategy should be significantly expanded. The Pentagon and the U.S. Intelligence Community could agree on the four most likely places for future interventions. Say, Yemen, Colombia, Nigeria, and Kyrgyzstan, and start laying the groundwork now.

The usual private contractors -- Fluor, DynCorp, and KBR -- should be rounded up to build the necessary 1,400 bases and accompanying prisons under a global multi-billion dollar LOGCAP contract to be divided among them. At the same time, the State Department would put those future mega-embassies out for bid to U.S. architectural firms so that the now-typical fortress-like designs (with their near-billion-dollar price tags) would be ready to go.

With full-scale base-prison-embassy complexes ready in four strategically located regions, future invasions would have a reasonable shot at not dragging out for decades.

3. Pick the Right Natives

It’s noticeable that the U.S. military always seems to get stuck with the wrong natives. Take the current campaign in Marja:

Afghan National Army (ANA) troops are regularly described as unable to read maps, incapable of “planning a complicated patrol” or resupplying themselves, poor at small unit maneuvering, poorly trained, refusing to stand night guard duty and sometimes even to fight, high on drugs, riddled with corruption, unable to aim their weapons, “years away from functioning effectively on their own,” and as C.J. Chivers of the New York Times recently summed matters up, totally inadequate when it comes to “transporting troops, directing them in battle and coordinating fire support [or] arranging modern communications, logistics, aviation and medical support.” And keep in mind that the soldiers sent into Marja are reportedly the best the ANA has available. All this, despite multi-billions of dollars and years of effort invested in Afghan army training. (And the Afghan police, for multi-billions more, make the Afghan army look good.)

On the other hand, perhaps a few hundred Taliban fighters stayed in Marja and fought. Descriptions of them invariably reflect grudging admiration. They are considered capable of planning and executing complex small-unit maneuvers as well as “sustained and complex attacks,” of resupplying themselves, of “surprisingly accurate” sniper fire, and of not being corrupt. In Marja, it was repeatedly said that “outnumbered and outgunned” Taliban fighters were “mounting a tougher fight than expected” or engaging in “determined resistance,” that they represented, in the words of Centcom commander General David Petraeus, a “formidable” force.

For those old enough to remember the Vietnam War, you could replace such descriptions of “our” Afghans with “our” Vietnamese and “their” Afghans with “their” Vietnamese without breaking stride. One explanation for this is that indigenous people react differently when fighting a foreign occupying force rather than aiding it. However, as U.S. forces are incapable of occupying a country thanks to our exceptionally good intentions (of which we are well aware), another explanation makes better sense: In the kinds of countries we’re likely to invade, there are evidently two races (or the equivalent) of natives -- think of them as like the Eloi and the Morlocks in H.G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine -- and we always pick the wrong one.

So before the next invasion, we should make use of small teams of anthropologists and social scientists from the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System, already trained to help the military with local cultural problems. They should be inserted in the country or region in question to identify which natives are best suited for learning small-unit maneuvering and the other skills over which the enemy always seems to have such a monopoly.

Of course, a fourth planning possibility would involve not launching such wars in the first place. But that path would conflict with a basic American can-do spirit that this country prizes, so suggestions 1 through 3 are undoubtedly a more practical way to proceed.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His latest book, The American Way of War (Haymarket Books), will be published in May. Catch the latest TomCast, TomDispatch.com’s audio interview with Tom Engelhardt on the American state of perpetual war, by clicking here, or download the podcast by clicking here.

Unemployment Benefits Keep People From Looking For Work? F. U. Tom DeLay!

Something The Dog Said — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:36:58 -0800

Okay the Dog has had it right up to here with Republicans saying that unemployment assistance keeps people from finding work. Only a party that is the refuge of scoundrels and the ultra-rich could possibly think this. As one of those folks who is trying (and failing) to get by on the unemployment benefits, let the Dog lay it out for you.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

In the state of Colorado, you are entitled to 60% of your wages on unemployment. That is as long as you did not make too much money at your previous job. You see benefits are capped at $443 a week, so if you made any more than $38,400 you are out of luck for the rest of the 60%. This means that when middle class folks making around $50,000 a year become unemployed they are getting the shaft, twice. When the Dog was employed he was making $1,025 a week (not how they actually paid it but to compare apples to apples) so instead of getting 60% of that the hound is getting 43%.

Now is this better than nothing? Oh hell yes, it is but it is hardly enough to keep the Dog from desperately looking for work. Getting less than half of the income you used to get means that you have very little chance of actually being able to meet you living costs, let alone pay the debt that nearly every American family owes from the free borrowing and free spending that this nation is famous for.

To hear Republicans talk as though this meager amount of money, which does the job of keeping people from being starving in the street, but little else, is going to be a disincentive to finding work is insulting and flatly insane. When an indicted criminal like Tom DeLay (R-Asshole Town) can go on CNN and say things like:

"You know," DeLay said, "there is an argument to be made that these extensions of these unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs." When CNN's Candy Crowley described his argument as "a hard sell" to the public, DeLay replied, "It's the truth."
Crowley followed up, asking, "People are unemployed because they want to be?" DeLay again said, "Well, it is the truth."

The disgraced (but unapologetic and unembarrassed) former Republican Majority Leader is not the only one making this argument. Senator John Kyl actually said that since people are being paid not to work, unemployment benefits discourage them from trying to return to the workforce.

That they would make these arguments, and make them with a straight face shows exactly how out of touch they are. No one is paid to be unemployed. You are required to be actively looking for work. In Colorado you have to have a minimum of five applications or contacts about work every week. You are required to file what amounts to an affidavit every week that you have done so in order to get your benefits and you can be audited at any time and required to provide evidence of your contacts. You are being paid something below 60% of your former wages to look for work.

Even more importantly these rich S.O.B.’s have exactly no idea what the employment situation is like nationally. Somewhere between 16 and 25 million people are looking for a job. They are people who have houses and families. Some are young and just out of college, some are middle aged and have been unemployed for the longest stretch of their adult lives, all want a job that will allow them to have a decent life. No one is saying “Oh, I won’t take this 60,000 a year job, I am going to hold out for the something closer to $150,000, since I have unemployment”.

It should be a scandal that these Republican politicians can basically tell the workers of America (who their policies put in these straights) that they are lazy and should not get even the small benefits that unemployment provides. They have not felt the helplessness and worthlessness that long term unemployement causes. Americans are an immigrant people, we all have this concept that work defines us and we want to work. There very well may be some small percentage that would like to be paid for doing nothing, but 99% or more of this country would rather work for their money. It is about pride, it is about self-worth and to have criminals like DeLay shit on us like that is unacceptable.

Unemployment is not a cushy ride for anyone. It is there to keep things from being catastrophic when you lose a job. In economic times like these it serves a further purpose of keeping a weak economy going as it gives those without a job money for thinks like shelter and food and electricity. That Republicans, in an election year, could talk about it as some kind of program for the lazy should be shocking, but the Dog has long lost his ability to shocked at the callus mendacity of the Republicans.

What does need to be done is to show the voters, who seem to be flirting with the idea of returning these assholes to power, exactly who they are. They do not care for the people of this nation. In the Republican world view if you need any kind of help from the government, whether it is equal opportunity protections, health care or unemployment you are out of luck. This is what they will bring to a Congress they control. We should not let it happen again.

The floor is yours.

Is Limbaugh Promoting Corporate Fascism?

billhare — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:12:37 -0800

With Rush Limbaugh’s latest full court press against Barack Obama he has, among other things, sought to link Obama’s effort to pass a health care bill with Nazism.

This is dangerous ground for Limbaugh since analysis of Nazi practices, particularly in the realms of propaganda and economics, reveal much more in the way of commonality with the loquacious talk show host than with Barack Obama.

On the subject of propaganda, look at what Limbaugh has been up to the last few days. He has been referring to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as imams and mullahs.

Now just what does that translate into? Race hate against Arabs. He is using a blanket charge of racism against the Arab community and then linking the House and Senate Democratic Party leaders to terrorism through trying to domineer the legislative process in a dictatorial manner.

Limbaugh uses racism frequently. Not only did he once hang up on an African America caller with the angry comment, “Put a bone in your nose.”

After a young African American man threw a brick at a white truck driver in a tragic racial incident in Los Angeles following demonstrations regarding the O.J. Simpson trial, Limbaugh targeted Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who represented the district where the attack occurred.

Using a then frequent advertisement practice of showcasing 800 numbers, Limbaugh presented a mock radio commercial repeatedly, starting off with, “1-800-Brick Maxine.”

Since the truck driver sustained permanent injury by being hit in the head by a brick and Representative Waters never had anything to do with the attack, nor did she condone it in any way, the attack was vicious and malicious. It can be reasonably seen as nothing more than an attempt to raise the racial tension level in an already volatile situation.

Notice how Limbaugh’s attacks are repeated over and over again. This is a paramount brainwashing tactic.

This coupled with linking the repetition tactic to racial situations was a tactic used by Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of Hitler’s Third Reich. Read the primer exposing that regime, William L. Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, and the tactical similarities are striking.

Another area where Limbaugh’s pronouncements fall into a Nazi or Fascist realm is in economics. He last week praised Senator Jim Bunning after the Kentucky solon’s delay tactic was used on legislation to keep unemployment benefits alive.

To Limbaugh Bunning, who has been checkmated from running again in Kentucky with party support from none other than staunchly rightist Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is a hero since, as he put it, somebody needs to stand up to the socialist welfare state.

In Limbaugh’s view any government program aside from the military and Department of Defense weaponry constitutes socialism. Many programs he condemns are no more than what any mixed economy nation incorporates into its economic system.

Moderate Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower condemned those in his party who sought to cut or eliminate basic New Deal programs, recognizing the need of a safety net in the American economic system.

So Limbaugh sees no need for health care or even unemployment benefits. He has no problem with corporate control and has never taken issue with anything the mighty health care industry has done.

Totally eliminate any programs such as Social Security or Medicare in which the government is involved, retain only a large military with significant amounts of spending on weaponry, and what results is corporate control.

In Fascist states the government operates in conjunction with the corporate sector. The mighty corporate structure exists in lockstep with the state. Social welfare legislation is verboten.

Such is Rush Limbaugh’s world. It is the same one that has been visited by numerous totalitarian regimes.

Capitalism Driving Humanity's Downfall

Edger — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:17:28 -0800

Raw Story, March 6th, 2010

In his film Capitalism: A Love Story [set to be released on DVD and Blu-ray Monday], Michael Moore squares off with the free-market system for its role in leveraging the United States's wealth into the hands of a few.

But in one clip cut from the documentary [Moore] interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, who explains how capitalism is actually contributing to the very downfall of the human race and the "degradation of the planet."

"All sorts of people who have spent their lives studying climate change, from Bill McKibben on down, have warned us that we don't have a lot of time left," Hedges said. "So it's not just that capitalism has destroyed our economic system and hijacked our political system, but it literally is extinguishing the system that sustains life. If that's not thwarted soon...then we will begin to see massive dislocations, environmental refugees, further depleting of natural resources. Overpopulation is also an issue. The UN estimates that by 2050 the size of the planet will double."

The very concept of capitalism, Moore declares in the film, is the problem because it inevitably leads to a system where the richest few control the means of production as well as the levers of power -- leading to a "plutonomy," a term used in a leaked Citigroup memo from 2005, in which the finance juggernaut concluded that the United States is no longer a democracy.

In the interview, Hedges decries America's turn toward supply-side economics over the last three decades as the cause of stagnating middle class incomes, contrasting it with the increasingly lavish fortunes of the wealthy and the aid they often receive from the government at the expense of working people.

Citigroup Oct 16, 2005 Plutonomy Report Part 1