Why Can't They All Just Get Along?

Today there is a deep divide between the Arab states, which are predominantly Sunni Muslim, and the Shiite Muslims, who are more numerous, but are generally politically underrepresented. We know the conflicting powers in the region and understand their animosity through their divergent brands of Islam. The Arab kingdoms on the Arabian peninsula stick together on international issues. The general consensus is that their main threat is Shia Iran. First and foremost, they see Iran as a dangerous example for their own restive Shiite populations. This is especially true for countries such as Saudi Arabia, where the state aids a hardline version of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, and the Shiite population is historically located atop the countries lucrative oil reserves. Secondly, the Arab states are wary of Iran's geopolitical ability to stack the Middle East in its favor. Iran has already proved adept at reaching out to its neighbors in ways that directly appeal to the people. In Lebanon, Iranian funded Hezbollah garnered support not only from their sympathetic Shiite constituents, but also from many Sunni and Christian Lebanese. Iran's policy towards Israel has also engendered admiration from the masses. Most importantly, Iran has the legitimacy that most Arab countries lack. It was founded on a popular revolution, and while it is still fundamentally an authoritarian theocracy, the Iranian regime has slowly been exhibiting a growing willingness to expand popular participation in the government. Predictably, the nascent liberalizing movement in Iran was deferred by blundering U.S. foreign policy following 9/11, but the fact that it was allowed to come into existence in the first place and that the liberal sentiments are still alive, well, and free to speak out - to an extent - shows that popular will can move the Ayatollah. 

Iran looks back at its neighbors with the same sort of icy skepticism that it receives, especially the countries that choose to align themselves with the United States. The ideology of the Iranian revolution is set upon empowering Shitte Muslims the world over. When it comes to Shiite neighbors, such as the large Shia Iraqi population, it is only natural that they would lend a helping hand. This is especially true since Iraq is home to some of the holiest Shia sights - one of which, the Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, was destroyed in two separate bombing attacks in 2006 and 2007. Iran is also deeply aware of recent history. It remembers Arab backing of Saddam Hussein during his brutal "imposed war". It also remembers the Pan-Arabist movement, and especially the Baathist incarnation of Pan-Arabism that took root in Syria, and most infamously, in Iraq. Lastly, Iran recognizes who supports who in the Arab world. The Arab states get their backing from the United States, a sworn enemy of the Iranian revolution, and a regional irritator that has tried on numerous occasions to depose the Iranian government.  

It is very hard to imagine a scenario where relations between Shia and Sunni could be placated. Yet there are numerous examples of equanimity between the sects that give hope for the future. 

It is not written in stone that Sunni and Shiite can not get along. Iran and Syria have had friendly relations for a long time now, created by both countries realistic approach to foreign relations. Iran and Syria are motivated towards friendship because both countries realize that the relationship is mutually beneficial, especially as the specter of U.S. military action grew. Similarly in Lebanon, where we are accustomed to hearing of perpetual ethnic and religious strife, Hezbollah, a Shia organization backed by Iran and Syria, is viewed as a heroic national organization for its war against Israel which culminated in Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and its successful humanitarian intervention following the 2006 Lebanon war. Recently, with the release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nuclear ambitions, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been warming up to each other. There is still a long way to go, but the Saudi King Abdullah's invitation to Iranian President Ahmadinejad to participate in the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the first invitation of its kind to an Iranian President, shows that relations are becoming friendlier. 

The question now becomes what will it take for a real and pronounced break from past hostility, and is such a change possible? Currently change seems very unlikely. In terms of Saudi-Iranian relations, the fact that the Saudi Shia population is restive and sitting upon all the countries oil reserves means that it will take a dramatic change of events to see the two countries reconcile in any meaningful way. 

Such a dramatic event has occurred on Saudi Arabia's doorstep, unwittingly of course, because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What once was a strongly Sunni country has been transformed into a predominantly Shia country, and while its international stature is anemic its border still encompasses the largest oil reserves in the entire world, giving it immense power. This change of events has resulted in giving Iran considerable regional power, an unexpected gift, and especially ironic since, in the run up to the Iraq invasion, Iran was incredibly fearful of what it saw as inevitable U.S. encirclement. As was made clear in Iraq, it is the autocratic nature of most Middle East governments that keeps Sunni-Shia relations chilly. Until some sort of participatory democracy is instituted in the currently dynastic and autocratic Middle Eastern countries, leaders will find it more beneficial to play the people off against each other and outside forces than make peace.

U.S. power plays a key role in keeping the current conflict ridden system well-oiled and malignantly efficient. A waning of U.S. power in the region, while possibly internationally destabilizing, could work wonders for Middle Eastern self-determination. By the way that most U.S. Presidential wannabes talk about their Iraq policy it seems that the U.S. will be in the region indefinitely, so the end of U.S. meddling is far from over. 

The most hopeful aspect of the current situation in the Levant, Arabia, and Persia, is that it appears that the major regional actors are reasonable. History has shown that all of the countries act in very predictable ways to guarantee very predictable outcomes. They care, first and foremost, about preserving their regimes, usually built on very unstable, but remarkably resilient, foundations. Because reasonableness reigns supreme in relations between Sunni and Shia powerhouses it seems that the most dangerous scenarios in Eastern Asia right now do not involve Iran, which is relatively stable and, as was made clear by the N.I.E. report, completely rational, but instead could involve chaotic countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan. In those countries there are numerous situations that could be explosive and cause real damage domestically and internationally. Those situations do not necessarily involve the Sunni-Shiite factions. What these urgent threats involve is the loss of order. The devolution of order may be rooted in an ethnic or religious divide, but such divides need not be the cause of conflict. If there is order and the government is functional, conflicts can be stymied through diplomacy, an option not available to the chaotic countries. 

This brings us back to the divide between Sunni countries and Shiite countries - country really: Iran. Because a majority of these countries have the order necessary for meaningful diplomacy there is a real opportunity for the countries to bring their concerns to the table and develop a system - necessarily different from the current one - for peaceful relations. Peaceful relations can, I believe, be forged through diplomacy. If disorder grows in countries such as Iraq, Lebanon and Pakistan, the appeal of finding solid security guarantees between more stable Sunni-Shiite countries will grow. Out of such a situation we could begin to see the sun shine over Sunni-Shiite relations. 

Benazir Bhutto

The impact of the assassination of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto will not be small. 

Pakistan, one of the most underdeveloped countries around, was in a particularly precarious situation before today's assassination. Militant Islam is on the rise in Pakistan, made clear by the July siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad and the resurgent Taliban in the Northern provinces. Poverty is rampant, amplified by the 2005 Earthquake centered around the contested Kashmir region straddling India and Pakistan. Tribalism threatens to splinter the country into warring regions. The specter of nuclear war looms, as well as the fear that Pakistan's nuclear weapons could slip into the hands of a dangerous sovereign or rogue militant.   

Ms. Bhutto, while not without her flaws, was the voice of the opposition, the voice for democratization and secularization. She was the spokeswomen for millions of Pakistani's who feared for their countries future, who wanted to take power from the dictators and the military that had been in charge for so long, and give it back to the people. Any assassination, no matter who it may be, is dreadful. But when the fate of a country, of neighboring countries, and even the world, is threatened by an assassination than such an act is made even more horrendous. The assassination of the President of the U.S., while a shock and a national tragedy, does not have the same force as the assassination that occurred today. In the U.S., popular democracy in its U.S. incarnation, roles on, because the path of democracy is clear and nonnegotiable. In Pakistan the situation is different. The future is filled with uncertainty. There is little past history to give hope. Instead the past is full of dark memories of inchoate democracy thwarted, of strong-men and power grabs, of turmoil and killing. Today was another bleak chapter in that sorrowful history, and with Ms. Bhutto gone it seems the worst is yet to come.  

$647 Billion

There has been much debate since the end of the Cold War as to how America can best protect itself and its interests. Actually, there may have been debate, but it certainly has not stalled any action on the issue. Far from it. While academia, the media, and the people discuss new threats, old threats, and whether something is or is not a threat at all, the U.S. Congress, with the blessing of every President, has been appropriating tax dollars to an approach that is both uncontroversial and unoriginal: They have been handing money to the U.S. military. In his essay in the November/December issue of "Foreign Affairs," Richard K. Betts explains how much money has been syphoned off to the military, the historical precedence of such spending, and whether such spending is warranted in this day and age, where U.S. military spending is not only preeminent, but almost equal to the whole world's military spending combined. The article is a stark reminder of how out of whack our spending priorities have become. With no major threat to U.S. military power in the short term, let alone the long term, spending at levels "25% higher, in real terms," than during the "height of combat in Vietnam" ("A Disciplined Defense") is outrageous. 

What struck me in Mr. Betts' essay were the political overtones. We all know the famous Eisenhower warning about the military industrial complex, about how we ought to mind the powerful forces that manipulate congress to keep their profits pilling in. George Orwell was also apt to refer to the inclination towards perpetual war. The essay shows, without mentioning any sinister motives, that U.S. military spending has gone up in "nine f the past ten years at... a record unmatched in any other decade since World War II" without the equivalent of a Hitler or Stalin as a threat. This shows that there is something more going on than a fair assessment by Congress and the President of the dangers at hand. Maybe it's democracy that's doing it, where candidates run on the easy platform of strengthening the military. Maybe it's the military industrial complex, an amorphous gaggle of CEO's and industry barons who swoon congressmen and women into appropriating huge sums of money into needless projects (think Duke Cunningham). Or maybe it's sinister foreign policy motives (you know what I'm talking about). Whatever it is we need to begin to focus our foreign policy objectives so that we know exactly what our military is for. Is it for preemptive striking? Not in the near future, that is for sure. Is it for self-defense? I wish. Is it for international "peacekeeping"? Maybe when there is a geopolitical reason to get involved. America needs to focus. What exactly are we prepared to use our military for? That is the question that needs to be asked. Very few Presidential candidates have addressed this question. Ron Paul is the only one who has been clear and succinct - he wants the U.S. military to be exclusively for self-defense - and hasn't gone off message. That is the sort of vision we need if we are going to grapple down our half a trillion dollar defense budget. Stay posted for more on the military. Next: Should the U.S. employ its military unilaterally or through NATO for peacekeeping? I say no. 

Never Mind the Words, Just Sing!

Spain has had a rough time establishing a national identity. From early on its international image was tarnished by accounts of its conquest and exploitation of the America's and the excesses of the Spanish Catholic Church.  Later, after Spain sank to the rank of a second-rate power, there was the brutal Spanish Civil War, with the eventual rousting of the left-wing contingents in the country and the elevation of Francisco Franco to the role of Fascist dictator. The country is also a hodgepodge of cultural and ethnic identities, many unwilling to be consolidated into even the semblance of a coherent kingdom - later, nation state - and some (Jews and Muslims in particular) forced to convert or leave Iberia.Today, the effects of this tumultuous history are clearly apparent in the fractured federal government, domestic terrorism, and most conspicuously, in the lack of lyrics for the Spanish national anthem. 

There once were lyrics to the Spanish anthem "La Marcha Real" (The Royal March). The problem is that the lyrics that most Spaniards know come from Franco Spain, and as such are not appropriate. So instead of singing the old lyrics, Spaniards improvise by doing something like this:

It is no surprise then that ahead of Spain's bid for the 2016 Olympics, the President of the Spanish Olympic Committee, Alejandro Blanco, has created a competition to create new lyrics for the old anthem. The problem still remains that many parts of Spain do not consider themselves Spanish, and do not wish to sing or support any national anthem. The anthem has thus become a political third rail. Politicians are wary of mentioning the competition for fear of upsetting the already tenuous federal arrangement. It remains to be seen whether a unifying anthem will ever be agreed on. For now a lot can be learned about modern Spain in the quiet contemplation of "La Marcha Royal". 

The Falling Dollar

A grim tale of what could happen if our current monetary policy continues. This video is from Al-Jazeera's program "People & Power". 

Awkward Silence

I have been real busy as of late, and I have not had the time to keep the blogging up. Next week I am done with finals, and once I get those out of the way I look forward to writing some more stuff. I miss reading the stuff I want to read - i.e. political and social news. 

Also... I was thinking it would be cool if I could get more contributors to this project. I would love to talk to anyone who would enjoy contributing whenever they have a great idea for a story. There are a few things I would expect for an article posted on this blog - it has to be about some sort of news event or it has to be historical, and it has to be accurate - but other than those modest stipulation I am open to anything. 

I hope to hear from those who visit this modest corner of cyberspace.

-Brett

The Trials of Henry Kissinger

Enjoy this full documentry on the life and war crimes of Dr. Henry Kissinger. Click the google video link on the bottom right of the video to watch it full screen.

Iraq Casualties

Another outstanding report by Al-Jazeera English on casualties in Iraq and the U.S. media's unwillingness to report them truthfully. 

If you want to see more of Al-Jazeera English, subscribe to their YouTube feed here. 

Bush Responds As Expected

A day after the N.I.E. report was released on the suspended Iranian nuclear development program, Bush has responded as we all knew he would. In a press-conference today he said that the report does not mean Iran is not a threat, and that the U.S. should continue to move aggressively to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb. What his statements effectively add up to is an attempt to shift the debate away from the N.I.E. report and onto Bush administration terms. The Deputy Director of the N.I.E. specifically said, in so many words, that the agency decided to go public with the report so as not to allow these sort of deceitful political maneuverings. Now at least the general public, or anyone skeptical of Israeli and U.S. goals in regards to Iran, can blatantly see that stopping Iran getting weapons is not the real issue. The question becomes then, what is the real issue? I won't try and answer that now because there is homework to be done. 

Politics, Transparency, and Iran

The National Intelligence Estimate (N.I.E.) has just released a new report on Iran's nuclear program stating that Iran has put a hold on their nuclear weapons development since 2003. There are a number of reasons why this is a very interesting development, in terms of foreign and domestic policy. 

In the United States there has been a push in the last couple years to deal with an alleged Iranian nuclear program. The rhetoric used by those inside the Bush administration as well as other hawkish politicos - Joe Lieberman  comes to mind - has been harsh, unrelenting, and familiar. We were all party to such fear-mongering in the lead-up to the Iraq war. What hasn't materialized, much like in the run-up to the Iraq war, has been evidence to back up the claims of an immanently nuclear Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been ambivalent about Iranian nuclear progress, mostly stating that Iran, while not fully cooperating, is not about to "go nuclear". 

The Mitt Romney ad I posted on this blog is another example of what the Iranian boogyman can do for a campaign. I am sure most intelligent people who watch that ad will find it ridiculous. We all know that Romney's case is exaggerated. What happens though, especially in a country dominated by sound-bites and shallow political punditry, is that eventually, when "nuclear Iran" is repeated enough, false assumptions begin to propagate, and priority shifts from real issues to specters. 

Now we are getting to why this new N.I.E. report is so remarkable. Firstly, it goes a long way in demystifying the Iranian nuclear agenda: instead of framing Iran as a maniacal weapons developer, determined to get weapons of mass-destruction and then use them, the report concludes that Iran is "guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs" (report). Secondly, the report reaffirms what the IAEA has been saying for a while now, that there is no evidence that Iran is developing weapons at the breakneck speeds alleged by those with seemingly nefarious motives. Lastly, and most importantly, this report was released to the public. As the New York Times reports, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Donald M. Kerr, said that the assesment should be released to the public "to ensure that an accurate presentation is available." Now that this information is out there it will make it much harder, although far from impossible, for the Bush administration to make a case for an assault on Iran. I only hope that people pay attention and begin to put the "Iranian threat" in context. 

Robert Fisk Perspective

Here's an article by Robert Fisk about the peace talks in Annapolis (the original can be found here):

Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo.

"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time for the cycle of blood... to end"?

Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an Israeli state – and in reality, of course, it is – there can be no "right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled (or whose families fled) what became Israel in 1948.

And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of the joint document: "The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations (sic) teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party." Come again?

We went through all these steering committees before – and they never worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of this so-called "steering committee" and we have the faint hope from Mr Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that we're going to have an agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians have a state without a capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state when their entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war?

Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this – or at least Syrian support to control Hamas – and what do we get? Bush continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it must keep clear of Lebanese elections, or else...

Yes, Hizbollah is a surrogate of Iran and is playing a leading role in the opposition to the government of Lebanon. Do Bush and Condoleezza Rice (or Abbas or Olmert for that matter) really think they're going to have a free ride for a year without the full involvement of every party in the region? More than half of the Palestinians under occupation are under the control of Hamas.

Reading the speeches – especially the joint document – it seems like an exercise in self-delusion. The Middle East is currently a hell disaster and the President of the United States thinks he is going to produce the crown jewels from a cabinet and forget Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran – and Pakistan, for that matter. The worst element of the whole Annapolis shindig is that once again millions of people across the Middle East – Muslims, Jews and Christians – will believe all this and will then turn – after its failure – with fury on their antagonists for breaking these agreements.

For more than two years, the Saudis have been offering Israel security and recognition by Arab states in return for a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories. What was wrong with that? Mr Olmert promised that "negotiations will address all the issues which thus far has been evaded". Yet the phrase "withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories" simply doesn't exist in the text.

Like most people who live in the Middle East, I would like to enjoy these dreams and believe they are true. But they are not. Wait for the end of 2008.

It's That Time Again!

This is the typical presidential chronology: The first term is the time for pushing, ever so softly, your pet initiatives while the populace is still somewhat entranced by the idea of a new president. The last half of the first term is the time to make the electoral rounds, trumpeting triumphs while glossing over mistakes. The second term is the time to set about creating a legacy by pushing the bold initiatives you aren't scared to champion now that the election is behind you. After seven years in office, when all your political capital is long gone, it is at last time to try your luck in the Middle East. It is time to try and facilitate peace between the Israeli's and Palestinian's.

I say facilitate because no American president would actually want to get their hands dirty creating peace. This is especially true with Mr. Bush. Seven years of inadequate attention to one of the most urgent conflicts in the world is about to be made right tomorrow by a little flesh pressing in Annapolis, and it won't do a thing.

While Mr. Bush's cool detachment may seem like another typical example of the Bush administrations unwillingness to confront and deal with the real problems of the world, the legacy of U.S. policy in the region has not been much better. There has been a consistent unwillingness to address the real issues in the region for years now, for reasons having to do with the special U.S.-Israeli relationship. The U.S. prefers Israel over Israeli security (more on that below) and especially over the Palestinians. But the Israel that the U.S. prefers has been downright disgraceful in dealing with the historical inheritors of the land their state is set upon.

Here are the facts. Israel has been unlawfully colonizing the occupied territories since 1967, all in violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions and numerous U.N. resolutions. Israel is holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners, some held without charge, many convicted in unlawful courts (see here). These prisons have been lambasted by human rights organizations the world over. Israel has created a virtual prison of Gaza, and has been unlawfully controlling the flow of people and goods throughout the occupied territories with roadblocks and checkpoints. Israel is building an illegal (recognized as illegal by both international and Israeli courts) wall under the pretenses of security. The wall is in fact a deliberate attempt to cut through Palestinian territory, thereby creating a situation where once contiguous land claims are balkanized, making it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. Countlessly more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli's than the other way around. The Israeli army has tanks and gunships, the palestinians have crude rockets, rocks, and bombs. In The Battle of Algiers, a leader of the FLN (a group fighting for Algerian independence), Mr. Ben M'Hidi, is asked by a reporter at a press conference whether it is cowardly to kill civilians with bombs hidden in baskets. Mr. Ben M'Hidi reminds the reporter of French atrocities against Algerians, and then replies that "of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.” That response is directly analogous to the situation in Palestine.

All of this is according to plan for the historically hawkish Israeli government, who have consistently chosen, with tacit U.S. support, as Noam Chomsky puts it, "expansion over security". The Israeli government is one of the largest recipients of U.S. aid, mostly military, of any country in the world. The U.S. has leverage but the policy has been to not even talk about using it.

There is little hope for the situation to get equitable with a new president, be he/she democrat or republican. The one foreign policy point that every single major candidate agrees on is that Israel ought to be supported, right or wrong.

To convince the public of the validity of such unequivocal support of Israel, most politicians, as well as media outlets, are incredibly good at shifting the debate onto pro-Israel terms. Instead of a dialog based on the presupposition that Israel must adhere to U.N. resolutions 242 - which demands an Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied during the six day war in 1967 - as well as all other U.N. resolutions, the debate is based upon vague demands such as Palestinians must renounce violence and except Israel as a "Jewish state". That sort of debate is what I will call a Security First debate. Nancy Pelosi - liberal democrat, San Francisco - as well as most American politicians, is a firm believer in "security first," a presupposition that is not only fairly impossible to gauge if it has been met, but also one which can shift, change, morph, at the whims of the one defining what "security" means. In other words it's just diplomatic claptrap meant to stall any real peace agreement that might put an end to the suffering felt by the Palestinians.

This brings us back to where we started, with Bush finally getting around to bringing peace upon the Middle East after his Iraq expedition got all fucked up. What Condoleezza is proposing is nothing new. The U.S. still refuses to use leverage to get Israel to meet Palestinians on fair terms. What it seems this will turn into is just one more piece of evidence for the Security Firsters. I can here it now: Israel tried its best to create peace. They came all the way from the Middle East to work things out but the ungrateful Palestinian delegation is just unable to deliver on Israel's modest preconditions for peace talks. All Israel demands is that Abbas makes sure that angry Palestinians won't hurt Israel as it continues to flaunt every U.N. resolution on the books as well as the Geneva Conventions.

I fear it won't be long before presidents give up on the pretenses of trying to bring peace to the Middle East, and instead just bow out early so they can spend more time sprucing up their legacy filled presidential libraries.

Is This Funny?

Mitt Romney has put together a campaign video summing up the vapid and dishonest nature of the Republican party as a whole. Enjoy!

Kindle Me Not

Amazon.com just released a new e-book reader called the Kindle. The name seems to try and invoke emotions of warmth and coziness, but don't let that disarm suspicion. It is a device more tethered to Amazon than any iPod is to Apple, and I don't think that is a good thing.

An electronic e-book reader is a great idea in many ways. Firstly it does not require paper, a good thing for the environment, especially if this little plastic device can last longer than an iPod. Secondly, it could rekindle the flagging newspaper business, offering a new revenue outlet for the struggling newsmen by jiving with the tech savvy sensibilities of the 21st century crowd. Lastly, from what I can tell, the Kindle is damn convenient. It is completely wireless, allowing you to browse the amazon bookstore wherever you are and download a book, magazine, or blog for a reasonable price in about a minute. 

There is a downside to the modern book. People used to go to the theatre, now they sit alone in a home theatre. Music used to be exclusively heard in a social space, now we are walled in by tiny white earbuds. Reading used to involve going to bookstores to touch and feel your way towards your next read. A book used to be shareable; it could be borrowed by friends and enjoyed alike. 

The Kindle is mediated by Amazon.com. The books are proprietary and fleetingly digital. Call me a luddite, but I am somewhat uncomfortable with the specter of Amazons new product. The most unnerving thing about it is its insularity. By being exclusively chained to Amazon to do anything, a Kindle owner is forced to surrender to the will of Amazon, unless he/she would like to see their $400 device sit lifeless. I know there is nothing sinister going on here, Amazon just wants to make money. But do we really want to find ourselves once again as the cash cow, especially when we have no other choice but to buy from one company?

The next part is a rant: 

The Kindle is just one more example of how those who wish to make a buck have successfully gained the upper hand in the battle for our minds. Ok, sure, that sounds a little hyperbolic, but hear me out. 

We are at a point in human history where it has become both exceedingly easy and very difficult to make people internalize ideas, values, and beliefs. At the same time we have both a plethora of information and resources to educate ourselves with as well as giant institutions that work every day to have us think and behave in certain ways so that we will consume their merchandise. A survey of society would probably tell us that the institutions are winning. They win by consolidating what we experience. The mass media has successfully done this. 

The book is one of the last holdouts in this push towards consolidation. Sure, there are retailers like Wal-Mart that have done a great job controlling what books their customers may buy or see. When Wal-Mart is the only store in your community then you have been successfully monopolized and your thoughts and actions are well on their way to being consolidated for profit. But by and large the book is still a free thing. Free to be loaned and borrowed, free to be found or discarded. Amazon is seeking to change this, not with malevolent intentions, but, as I said before, to make money. 

I am not sure how this will turn out. Eventually the e-book will be a reality; it is only a matter of time. The question is how that will happen. Will our reading be mediated, or will we have free reign? Time will tell, but for now I am staying away from the Kindle. 

Fashion Statement

This article is by John Feefer from Foreign Policy in Focus. Worth a read:

If you're going to throw rocks at the government, you'd better dress up for the occasion. That's the take-away point from the media coverage of the protests in Pakistan. Splashed across the front page of newspapers last week was a picture of a Pakistani lawyer in a suit launching a projectile at the police. The photo editors couldn't resist showcasing such a delicious juxtaposition of law and disorder.

The coverage in The Washington Post was particularly revealing, though not in the ways intended. In his attempt to deconstruct the image of the lawyer-protestor, for instance, Philip Kennicott succeeded only in displaying his own class prejudices. "Men in suits don't throw things," he writes. "If they confront police, they do it politely, in letters, in words spoken softly, reasonably, between reasonable men."

Excuse me? Men in suits throw things all the time. The suits in the U.S. government, for instance, throw bombs at other countries. But alas, we have no pictures of these government officials breaking laws by signing orders to wage war, promote regime change, or stoke revolution. The truth is, men in suits are just as unreasonable, impolite, and confrontational as your average anti-war protestor—or more so. They simply don't do it in the streets.

The anti-war and anti-globalization movements should take note. Forget pink. Forget Bread and Puppet. Forget peace signs, catchy slogans, Zapatista ski masks, and sensible protest wear. If we want to get media coverage and strike fear in the heart of Washington, we should come out for the next demonstration, all 500,000 of us, in our best interview suits

Oh Nancy...

A few weeks ago I sent Nancy Pelosi an email regarding her position on upcoming rule changes by the FCC in favor of further media consolidation. I am a constituent of hers, so I am to get special treatment you know. Sure enough on her website it says that she only has to respond to constituents. So I dutifully put my name, address, zip code, and phone number into the appropriate boxes and then wrote out my question. The first three quarters of my email was very nice. The last part not so much. But that is beside the point. What I wanted to know was about her position on FCC rule changes, and so I sent off my email, and waited for a response. And waited. And waited. 

Finally today I got a response; about three weeks after I sent it. Late is better than never I guess. What isn't better than never though is the email I got from Nancy. You'll remember I asked about FCC Rule Changes. Here was the answer to my question: "Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns regarding global warming". 

I hope this flub isn't symptomatic of deeper problems in the Nancy office. 

Maybe the answer to my question got lost in the (e)mail. Oh well. 

Colin Powell, where are you?

This is not to say I want you back Colin. I just want to know where you are, that's all.
It's been about three years since Colin (the reluctant cheerleader was probably his nickname inside the White House) left the corridors of power and returned to civilian life. His career in government, to me, can be characterized as sad. He championed a doctrine - a whole doctrine - bearing his name which was subsequently ignored by the Bush administration while he was in office. If that isn't sad I don't know what is. He also was made into the publicity puppet for the neocons, putting his credibility on the line to present "bullshit" - allegedly Colin's words to describe the script detailing Iraq's WMD's (see here) - to the U.N. Not so much sad as pathetic. After Bush won reelection in 2004 with a "mandate" to rule as he saw fit, he swept Colin out the door, replacing him with the more docile Condoleezza Rice.
After that Colin really went off the radar. He popped up in 2005 to timidly, and in secret telephone conversations, cast concern on Mr. Bush's U.N.-hating U.N. ambassador pick, John R. Bolton. He also "talk[ed] about foreign policy matters and military matters" with Barack Obama. Missing are any tell-all expositions of what went wrong in the lead-up to war in Iraq. I guess the guy's too busy giving interviews with GQ magazine and becoming a "limited" partner at the venture capital firm KPCB. He's actually a "strategic limited partner" so I guess he is only employed strategically (I thought that was funny). Oh, and I forgot one more thing: he's also busy appearing with Joe Montana at a tacky - and I mean tacky, check it out here - motivational speaker seminar where you can "send your entire office for only $19".
All I've got to say is that if you are reading this Colin I would really like to get you a speaking engagement on national television - we can call it motivational if you'd like - where you come out and tell the American people that you are sorry for not standing up and stopping the lies that have cost the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands, if not over a million, Iraqis.

Giant Volcano Unusually Active

"The Independent" reports that a recent study has found that the caldera under Yellowstone National Park is rising at around three inches a year. The implications of this are not totally clear, but what is a little nerve-racking is the fact that this volcano underneath Yellowstone is one of the largest extant volcanos on earth. It being very active is kind of worrying. The last major eruption was 640,000 years ago so the chances of it erupting within our lifetime are pretty slim. But scientists seem to think that this mega-volcano erupts in 640,000 year cycles - what a coincidence - which means that we are due for another world shaking eruption about now. Keep your eyes open for an explosion 2,500 times greater than that of Mt. St. Helens in 1980.

No End in Sight

The documentary No End in Sight by Charles Ferguson will leave you unspeakably angry. It will show you how the United States destroyed a country, destroying the lives of 30 million people. It will also show you a few individuals who knew about, and to varying degrees, participated in the catastrophe, and yet did not say a thing, did not speak up, did not condemn this administration for gross incompetence and war crimes without the prodding of journalists and filmmakers like Mr. Ferguson. 

It will leave you with questions: Why has there been tepid to nonexistent investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the Iraq atrocity? This film is a veritable line-item indictment and yet Ms. Pelosi has taken impeachment "off the table." It will leave you convinced that something is wrong with our federal bureaucracy when the civil service is staffed by pathetic yes men who are incapable of speaking truth to power or even informing the American citizens who pay their salaries. Where were these guys during the 2004 election? They knew what was going on, why didn't they say anything? 

This is not a documentary that lets you know how you can get involved to help. This begs the question of whether anything can be done. Those in Washington have their own agenda, even the ones who say that their constituents agenda and their own is one and the same. They will continue funding the war while they emphatically emphasize to the news media that they are doing all they can to both support the troops and bring them home, while doing neither. And lost in all of this political showmanship are the Iraqis. When it comes down to it, the Iraqis are just contingencies, barely statistics, and never worth more then an eightieth of an American casualty. 

I am sad and I am angry. Justice being served on those responsible for the Iraqi catastrophe is all that is left to infinitesimally soothe the destruction and pain they have caused. If Nancy Pelosi can not give us even that then we cannot support her. We cannot support her and we must do all we can to show her that we will not support her until she at least tries to administer justice. Anything less, like sending an impeachment bill to committee so it wouldn't come to a vote, is an insult to her constituents, to the country, and to the millions of Iraqis who are casualties of this imposed war. 

China and the Euro

The dollar has been declining steadily in recent months. A declining dollar is a sign that the world markets sense problems in the U.S. economy. These problems, rather then being fleeting, are far from over and are more then likely to get worse. That is why the dollar is trading at all time lows. More worrying though is a recent comment by Cheng Siwei, vice chairmen of China's National Peoples Congress, that China might consider switching from the dollar as their reserve currency to stronger currencies like the Euro. At the moment, China's trade with the outside world is conducted in dollars, so if someone wants to buy Chinese products they more often than not must have dollars in hand. In this way China has been sucking up dollars and placing them as reserves in their national banks as a backing for the Chinese Yuan and a bulwark against a currency crisis. But with the U.S. economy teetering, the greenback is looking pretty insecure and so China is considering a switch. 

What does this mean for China? If China were to sell off dollars the dollar would fall even further, hurting the remaining Chinese reserve dollars in the process. But, as the economist Dean Baker pointed out on his website, the Chinese main reason for buying dollars in the first place was to stimulate trade with the U.S. If they can keep their economy chugging - and because of their state run set up they have more leverage to do this- and selling their goods to Europe in the process, their state run banks might loose out in the short-term, but they might not even care so long as everything else is going smoothly. As Dean Baker also points out, another big incentive for China to switch to a stronger currency is to stem inflation caused by a white-hot economy growing at 11% a-year. 

But a major sell-off of U.S. dollars poses a significant problem for the U.S., a country increasingly in debt and reliant on foreign energy. A falling dollar means less oil, and less ability to pay off debt - and sell debt. Conversely, a weak dollar could help stimulate manufacturing, only, of course, if the economy as a whole does not take a real dive. In such a scenario even the most feeble dollar would have a hard time bringing U.S. manufacturing back to life. 

The British ran into a problem quite similar to this back in 1839. China only excepted silver for all trade, limiting Britain's ability to trade British goods for the coveted items produced in China. Britain eventual found an addictive product produced in excess in their Indian colonies which they forced upon the Chinese. The product was opium. Opium is illegal today, but maybe the U.S. might be able to trade Zoloft for a holiday shipment of Tickle Me Elmo's and Celebrex for some Hot Wheels. We're going to need to think of something soon before Santa begins accepting Euros exclusively. €:)

The Story That Got Away

Costa Rica is a small country. In many ways us not hearing about it often can be seen as a sign that things are going relatively well. But every once in a while things happens in even the most obscure countries that are at least marginally newsworthy. Costa Rica just went through a trying fight over their economic future concerning the CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) trade deal and we heard hardly a peep from the mainstream media. Whereas other Central American countries approved CAFTA without the direct input of the populace, Costa Rican's demanded to be consulted and so it was put to the voters as a referendum. What could have been a secret deal turned instead into a divisive struggle, pitting business interests, the government, and the U.S. against labor, with a majority of people left trying to figure out what the possible outcome of either a Yes or No vote would be. This was a struggle for the soul of a country, not just any country but a country where many Americans have visited as eco-tourists or aspiring Spanish speakers. 

All of this conflict and turmoil should seem to have piqued the journalistic appetite of at least one major newspaper editor, but unfortunately this story, like many others before it, fell through the cracks. Here is an example of what the illustrious New York Times ran after it became clear that CAFTA had won by the slimmest of margins:

 Yeah, that's it. When the San Francisco Chronicle ran something about as small on page Z16 I noticed and went looking for more information. What I found was another sordid tale of U.S. bullying, business saber rattling, and a confused and angry general population. Elsa Arismendi wrote a very interesting article for Foreign Policy in Focus titled, "Fear and Voting in Costa Rica" (you can read the article here). To summarize, Elsa found that the the coalitions opposing CAFTA were strong but the coalitions that held the means of production were, as always, stronger. Shameless scare tactics, including a message from President Bush himself, were used to frighten the populace into voting Si. In the end CAFTA passed by around 51.6% of the vote, although a few have called foul. 

Is this the beginning of a dismantling of the public institutions and safety nets in one of the few functioning democracies in Central America? Only time will tell. What is crystal-clear right now is that we've better get glasses, because all the important stories seem to be small. 

Guantanamo

A recent article on Al-Jazeera got me thinking about the forgotten prison in Cuba. Al-Jazeera reports that one of their cameramen, Sami al-Hajj, is near death at Guantanamo Bay. Al-Hajj was picked up by Pakistani authorities in 2001 crossing into Afghanistan and subsequently charged as an "enemy combatant" by the U.S. military and transfered to Guantanamo. As with most detainees, the evidence against this foreign reporter is extremely weak, made plain by the fact that he has still not been formally charged with anything, six years after being taken prisoner. For 247 days he has been on hunger strike in protest of his continued unlawful detention and mistreatment.During the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan many Afghanis were taken captive by the invaders. Some were fighting the Soviet invaders in the same way that insurgents today are fighting the American invaders. Others were simply caught up in the chaos and forced into brutal detention centers with little hope of ever going back to their families. They were held there without charge. But these were totalitarian Soviets holding them, a country lacking the norms of justice and human rights that western democracies took for granted. From the Soviets perspective, they were in Afghanistan to keep the order during a tumultuous period. They wanted nothing more then to create a thriving and functioning, albeit communist, state on their southern border. These "terrorists" were obstacles that had to be overcome. And then there were all the technicalities: If, in all the chaos that marked the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, a few innocents were taken prisoner, tortured and humiliated to determine their status, and then finally found to be innocent, what was to be done? Should the Soviets formally apologize and then release the prisoners back to their families so that they can spread the details of the horrors they experienced while imprisoned? No no, that would not do. So instead the innocents were just placed in legal limbo and indefinitely imprisoned, unable to see the evidence against them, unable to be even charged with a crime, but completely capable of being routinely humiliated and tortured.
Sound familiar? It does to me as well. It seems that perhaps the biggest reason why many of these prisoners in Guantanamo as well as in the sprawling Iraqi prisons administered by Americans - 60,000 prisoners and counting - are not released, even when all evidence against them is lacking, is that it would be: 1. A fucking embarrassment 2. A catalyst creating more anti-American sentiment 3. An acknowledgment of blatant war crimes.
As Americans we are, unfortunately, all culpable for what has happened here. It is completely unacceptable and it needs to stop. The problem is that as long as American citizens - and presidents and presidential candidates - are not bright enough to realize the implications, then we will continue to violate international law, leaving us with no moral superiority and little pity when we get our comeuppance.

The Beauty and Bane of Capitalism (Expanded for more Clarity)

preface: I wrote this because I think it is important to understand where we are, and, regrettably, where we may be going. Also, I'm not just talking out of my ass, although at time it might sound like that. To be sure I am showing off a bit, but also I hope there is a higher purpose: namely helping you make a killing by investing in recession resistant companies like supermarkets, cosmetics creators, and alcoholic beverage purveyors.


If we were to take a poll of the populous we would probably find severe negative metrics for the question, Is our economy healthy? The warning signs of a troubled economy are all obvious. We know the housing market is hurting and the dollar is on the skids. Most people also must realize that their paychecks have been stagnating or falling, and a number of important product prices are inflating. For all my friends in San Francisco all of this economic pessimism might sound odd, but there is a reason why we don't feel it yet, which I will get to, so keep reading.
On the other hand, we have a white hot stock market that has been hitting all time highs. No one is bullish about the future and yet security prices have gone up and up. What do they know that we don't? And who are the they anyway? Are the people that are pushing stocks up to all time highs calm and calculating investors seeking long time returns on their capital?
The short answer is no.

I think that we are in trouble, serious trouble. The economy is off kilter in a bad way. Economic fundamentalism has brought us to a precipice last visited, and fallen from, in 1929. By either willful mismanagement or gross ignorance we have failed to protect the American economy from those who seek a quick buck. The dangers are real and the threat is gathering.

So who is to blame? To start off with, Alan Greenspan. If name recognition were the measure of success we'd be doing great. But we all know that Americans tend to pick poor heroes. What Alan did was stave off readjustment in the financial markets by band-aiding up the wounds with easy cash, compounding the problem. To put it more simply, Alan lowered the interest rates on borrowing, allowing more borrowing, thus more capital, to be used to buy assets, stocks, companies, etc. Usually this would create price inflation - more money going after less goods causes inflation - but because the rest of the world agreed to fund us, by buying our debt, we could continue to spend.
Why would lower interest rates superficially help us from between a rock and a hard place? After the dot-com bubble the economy looked as if it were going to take a nose dive because, like today, people had put tons of money into worthless ideas and companies. Remember the day-traders? To make sure that people could continue to spend money, which keeps the economy going, Alan decided to make it easier to borrow. This easy borrowing created the next bubble, this time in the housing market. Because capital was so cheap to get, people took out loans for houses without having the financial means to support the loan if - a question of when really - the rate on the loan rose. I will discuss later why bad borrowers were able to get loans so easily - it's another reason why we are in a bad mess today.
The problem with Greenspan's lower interest rates was that eventually inflation was going to rise, it was inevitable, and high inflation is a bad thing. And when inflation rises too high something must be done, like raise interest rates. We have about reached that day of reckoning.

Moving on with the blame game brings us to rich people. The rich are, most of the time, greedy. That's what got them rich. I'm not talking about the six-figure salary rich people. I'm talking nine-figures. Starting a long time ago, but expedited recently because of low interest rates, rich people's financial planners found ways to make huge amounts of money with little to no regulation. The results were financial constructs such as hedge funds and private equity groups. These private investment schemes are invitation only and require proof of financial soundness - i.e. do you have a billion dollars to spare? But once they get everyone together boy do they have power. It is estimated that Hedge Funds control $1.7 trillion of capital today and private equity has around $600 billion. And remember, none of that is regulated. NOT REGULATED! But there is more. Not only are hedge funds and private equity not regulated, but they are in debt in a big way. They wouldn't call it debt though. Their debt is euphemistically called leverage. So, for instance, lets say Joe billionaire has $10,000 he wants to invest (a triffle, really). So he goes and borrows at ten to one, so for every one dollar he has he gets ten from the bank. Now, instead of a measly $10,000, this rebel billionaire has $100,000 to play around with. All this leveraging is a result of cheap credit - thank you Mr. Greenspan - without which private equity and hedge funds would probably not have been created in their present incarnations.
All this adds up to trouble. The trouble has been noted before. In 1997 a successful hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management had a hiccup that almost brought down the U.S. financial markets. It was the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that came to the rescue and bought the beleaguered hedge fund out.

Also, the hedge fund managers have been under increasing pressure to bring home the bacon to their money hungry plutocrats (as well as other investors like pension funds and trust funds). This pressure creates a huge incentive to be loose with the ethical rules of investment and can lead to outright lying and manipulation. Tack that on to the worrying fact that these hedge funds are huge goliaths, lacking any regulation, and highly in-debt and you've got one helluva nightmare scenario. On top of all that bad news hedge funds are also victims of complexity. They have their money invested in so many different things and in so many different ways, and they keep it so secret, that it has become almost impossible to know what will happen if they fail.

Sub-prime mortgages - bad lending. This is the last of the bad guys; an anthropomorphized fuck up. (There are more bad guys and complexities then what I have jotted down. Lots to learn). This one also harks back to good old Alan. Because credit was so cheap lenders could, and were almost obligated, to take more risk lending to bad or no credit individuals. Lenders compensated for the higher risk by building in a variety of lending schemes that were far from transparent and user friendly. These sub-prime loans were bundled (put together) in complex financial "instruments" that allowed the crappy loan to be hitched with better ones (from borrowers with better credit), in the end creating the illusion that the "mortgage-backed security" - the new financial instrument created by the bundling of sub-prime and good loans - was less risky, i.e. worth buying. So as I hopefully made clear, by putting good loans with bad loans into one financial instrument (a thing that can be sold to a willing investor) the risk of the loan was diluted. The problem of diluted risk was made worse by the fact that the companies that put ratings on these mortgage-backed securities (MBS - this is what the financial instrument is called) had a conflict of interest: they were being paid to give the MBS's good ratings by the very banks trying to sell the MBS's. It's kind of like if Hoover payed Consumer Reports to rate their vacuums and we expected Consumer Reports to be unbiased. So in the end, as interest rates have risen to stave off inflation, and the poor borrowers were squeezed to the point of defaulting on their loans (not paying), the MBS's have begun to crumble, hurting all the investors that knowingly or unwittingly held these risky loans. Some of those investors are hedge funds, although no one how much bad debt the hedge funds hold.

All that stuff above that I have written are descriptions of the bane of capitalism. They are examples of markets gone amuck. We have only begun to witness the victims. However much we like to tell ourselves that, "economics will never happen to me," the sad truth is that economics happen to everyone; we only notice the stuff when shit goes wrong.

But there is also a beautiful side to Capitalism. Capitalism has the natural ability to check itself. Man can only speculate on a tulip for so long before he realizes that it's just a tulip and is worth about as much as it takes to grow the darn thing, and reap a little profit. It is only so long before that natural check will set in. The question is, do we want a whiplash experience or do we want an airbag? We are about to break our necks, but it does not have to be so. The indicators are all inflamed. It is estimated that each day over 20% of all the value of global trade is speculative, meaning that 20% of trade does not create any new wealth; it just pads the collective pockets of the financial sector. We have not seen this sort of gross inequality and secrecy since the gilded age; you know, the time before the Great Depression. What is needed now is decisive action to regulate and stop this madness. We must move away from the economic fundamentalism that this country recently, and Herbert Hoover in the past, are famous for. Managed capitalism is what is desperately needed before something goes wrong and the markets wake up and realize that reaching new highs while the American economy is stagnating does not make any logical or economic sense. Will our politicians wake up and do something? I am pessimistic. So maybe a good walloping is in order after all. Stay posted.

Oh, and San Francisco folks: how do you suppose our dot-com industry behemoths will hold up when there are no more companies wanting to take out advertisement to entice their newly impoverished clientele. Not too well. Hopefully they have more of a business model then being completely ad supported or else the Bay Area is in for some hard times.

Attention: Barack Obama

Mr. Obama,
I decided today to take a look through your website to try and get an idea of what your candidacy will bring to the political debate in this country. I am sorry to report that I was very disappointed by what I saw. There was not one policy point laid out by your campaign that was exciting, innovative or new. I noticed how the section on ending the war in Iraq was a short blurb, dwarfed by the section on honoring our veterans. The section on improving education included just three mundane positions, each explained away in a quick paragraph. One would think that the healthcare section would have some pronouncements on ways to fight the gross inefficiency in the medical sector and the lack of coverage for 45 million people. Nope. There was not even a section on environmental problems, a pressing issue more and more Americans are waking up to. What does this say about your campaign so far. It says that like so many presidential hopefuls before, you are unwilling to present a vision that is bold and exciting. You would rather play it so safe as to make your running for president unimportant to most people, including myself. You would rather have us sift through your speeches and photo-op's in the hopes of discovering what you will actually do as president. I don't need to agree with my pick for president on all issues, but I have to know that when I do put my support behind a candidate, I am supporting someone not afraid to bring new ideas to the table. I don't vote on personality alone, I vote on issues. Most people who are serious about voting are hungry for a candidate who will stop short-selling them on the issues, substituting style for substance, and start talking honestly about the problems we face. Put away the consultants paid generously to trick the people into voting for you, and instead rely on selling innovative policy. I know you will find that America is waiting for this new type of candidate and will fall behind you, allowing you to do the difficult job of righting this country and making it a better place. I am relatively young, twenty years old, but I have already become jaded by our political system. I feel like you have the momentum to be something different and I hope the American people will not be disappointed again as we were in 2004.