The Main Issue

PG&E's Power Grab - NO on Proposition 16

2010-05-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

As in years past, Californians are being bombarded by a raft of advertising for the upcoming June election. Most prominent this year are the proponents of proposition 16, dubbed the “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act,” who claim to be working to protect Californians from new taxes. In fact, Proposition 16 does nothing of the sort. If Prop. 16 passes, it will eliminate our ability to pick clean renewable energy producers, and guarantee the energy monopolies of the states largest private utilities.

The “coalition” in favor of Prop. 16 is actually a fiction created by the giant Northern Californian electricity monopoly, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), which is the sole sponsor of the campaign. PG&E is attempting to solidify its complete control over a large portion of the energy market in California, and it is using ratepayer funds - the money we pay to PG&E every month for electricity and gas service - to do it. According to the California Secretary of State, PG&E has already spent over $28 million on the effort, and has committed to spend over $35 million in total. Such a huge campaign war chest has allowed PG&E to pull out all the stops, inundating Californians mailboxes with flyers, purchasing radio, television, and internet advertising across the state, and telemarketing millions of homes.

PG&E’s attempt to manipulate voters as a means to pad their corporate profits could be but the latest example of the failure of California’s electoral system to protect the people from ravaging corporate interests. But it does not need to turn out this way. Voting NO on proposition 16 will give us the freedom to choose our energy future. But most importantly perhaps, voting NO will send a powerful message that our democracy cannot be simply bought.

The U.S. Elite Agree: The Masses Must Tighten Their Belts

2010-05-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

Is Obama's entitlement cutting commission planning to destroy social security, medicare, and medicaid?

Part 1

Part 2

Around the Web

2010-05-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

I've decided that from time to time I will do what many bloggers do in order to lighten their workload: link to the works of others. I'm going to call these posts "Around the Web," and I will attempt to do them at least every three days so as to offer readers of this blog some interesting bits of reading material. If you have links to suggest, send'em this way.

The New Yorker did an elucidating piece on media mogul Haim Saban - the man behind the "Power Rangers" series and merchandising extravaganza - in last weeks magazine. Haim not only did one of the richest media deals in history, he is also a serial tax-evader, fervent Israel supporter, close friend of the Clintons, and major sugar daddy to the Democratic Party. A long read but well worth it. (here)
Lloyd Blankfein, top dog at Goldman Sachs, did an interview with Charlie Rose the other day. While the content is not revelatory, what is interesting is seeing how well this guy understands his opponents. Being out-of-touch doesn't pay. (here)
It's statistically proven as best as can be expected: every life form on earth is related. (here)
Berkeley Professor Barry Eichengreen advices on how to keep the Euro currency together. Should be a useful read for understanding the events of the next few weeks. (here)
The markets say California is more likely to default than Greece. Gee-whiz, I live in California! (here)
Don't be down California. You've still got San Francisco, where an urban planning revolution is underway - unless SF's Municipal Transportation Authority goes bust due to Cali's woes that is. (here)

Stuck in a Bad Hotel

2010-05-12T09:18:00.001-07:00

A union organized flash mob at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. A new labor tactic for the internet age.

The New "Main Issue"

2010-05-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

Today I turned in my last paper at the University of California at Berkeley, which means I am now basically finished with college. So what to do with myself now? Well, I don't think it would be healthy to completely stop writing - I might get withdrawals after all the scribbling I've done this semester. So I've decided to restart "The Main Issue." Not only will this save me from the intellectual abyss of post-uni life, but it will also give all three of my readers an opportunity to know what I'm reading and thinking - lucky you! But seriously, there are a lot of important political, economic, environmental and social events that I believe I can offer a unique perspective on. And on issues in which my expertise does not suffice, I will point readers towards articles, authors, books, and blogs that will hopefully be insightful and erudite. That is my humble promise to those who decide to check up on my blog.
This is the new and improved "Main Issue." I promise that it will not disappoint.

Sincerely,
Brett Thurber

Restart: A New Presidency

2009-01-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

Open The Debates!

2008-09-09T18:02:00.000-07:00

Matt Gonzalez, vice-presidential candidate, speaking about the need for open debates where all major candidates running for president are allowed to present their case to the American public.

The Difficulty of Learning About Our Presidential Candidates

2008-09-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

I hate to write another media bashing blurb, but it just must be done. You see, recently I decided that I needed to watch a bit of the mainstream news programs via their swanky new websites just to see what political coverage the majority of Americans are getting. I already know what I feel the important issues are this election, and which candidate is more inline with my political positions, but I also recognize that political races are not usually won on issues. They are more often won on personality and on small, memorable, political moments, consisting either of a gaffe (bad) or a well put policy point (good). Reading substantive articles or watching substantive news programs can not edify you on these essentials of American politics.
The first news program I watched was ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," the Stephanopoulos, who, most recently, was widely castigated for his petty questioning during a primary debate between Obama and Hillary. Mr. Stephanopolous conducted the interview decently, pushing Obama a bit on issues such as tax cuts - where he misrepresented Obama's tax plan as "raising taxes" when it is more a cut than anything else - and Vice Presidential nominee Palin's experience. Overal though, I was struck by how boring the show was. As is most often the case with the mainstream media, Mr. Stephanopoulos exhibited what can only be described as follow-up question phobia, and when he did ask a follow-up question, they were always on very mundane political points consisting of making Obama respond to charges coming from the McCain camp. Most of the time however, the interview consisted of giving Obama a platform on which to talk about what he wanted to talk about. Hardly any context was offered by Stephanopoulos. This guy gets paid to do this?
After watching Obama's tedious interview I switched over to CBS's venerable "Face the Nation" with Bob Shiefer to see how McCain did, or, more accurately, how well Mr. Shiefer asked questions. Once again I was board out of my mind by Shiefer's line of questioning. Shiefer had so many opportunities to get substantive information from McCain. I'm not asking him to hold the Senators feet to the fire - by now we know the American media establishment is unwilling and incapable of doing this. I just want to know a little more about the guy running for president. If I wanted to hear McCain's dry policy positions I would rather go to his website than have to sit through a half-hour of him awkwardly regurgitate them, with the misrepresentations and lies left unchallenged.
There is much talk about why the media is so inept in their political coverage. Some say it is a conspiracy; others say it is the institutional framework that leaves news programs beholden to corporate ad revenue. I don't believe there is a deliberate conspiracy. Such a theory of overt malfeasance would require much more evidence to back it up than what is present. I do think the corporate structure does not work well to create the sort of independent media most people agree we need. But even corporate control can't account for how much worse American newsmen are compared to their just as corporate compatriots in other media markets around the world.
I think that our news outlets are as bad as they are due to a combination of slowly eroding journalistic standards (American journalists obsession with access to politicians is an example of this that I have written about before) and slowly growing media consolidation, which creates a stiff media establishment lacking the motivation to fix itself.
What we are left with is a monopolized media market producing a product of poor quality, and until there is some real competition, there is very little reason to believe the monopoly will be shaken. Luckily there are alternative media options that are refreshingly independent. Just remember that you might want to check back on the ugly news networks, lest you forget how most voters choose their president.

The Surge

2008-09-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

These days there appears to finally be consensus on the Iraq War. The mainstream media, politicians, and "sensible" voters all agree that the Iraq surge, much derided in the past as a Bush administration ploy to convince the public that with a little elbow grease and perseverance the horrible situation that we created in Iraq could be fixed, is working. Unfortunately, like most instances of American political consensus, the widespread belief that the surge achieved success is false and the American public is most probably in for a major disappointment - which is painless in comparison with what continued failure means for Iraq.
The surge has been successful politically in the U.S. due to it being so intuitive. The natural instinct in problem solving is to throw resources at the problem until it goes away, or in the case of Iraq, send more troops. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is not a simple problem with a simple solution. The messy political situation, where different ethnic, tribal, religious, and class contingencies compete for power and security, is not the open war on the battlefield where superior troop numbers have an advantage, nor is it similar to the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, when American troops toppled one government only to be left short-staffed to deal with providing a new one.
Fortunately for all those supporting the surge, the factions - especially Sunni - within Iraq who were doing the majority of the fighting, began to contemplate a new strategy towards winning security in a destabilized country. Beginning before the surge but finally coming to fruition as American troop levels in Baghdad and other restive areas grew, Iraqi insurgents switched their allegiance against Al-Qaeda, and in reward were given money and weapons by the U.S.
But it wasn't only switching allegiances that have made Iraq less violent since the surge. The decline of multi-ethnic neighborhoods, due to ethnic cleansing, evidenced by millions of refuge and internally displaced Iraqis, is another sad hint at why the killing has abated for now.
But this lull in fighting is probably temporary. The current arrangement where the conflicting interests are bribed into passivity is built on an increasingly shaky political foundation. The Sunni tribes cooperating with the U.S. will only cooperate for as long as they are paid. They also expect to have political power in the Iraqi government, and security guarantees, something that the Shiite leadership clearly is hesitant to afford them. Only recently it was reported in The New York Times (here) that the Iraqi government is preparing a major offensive against Sunni groups, including the Sons of Iraq, the very group that Gen. Patreaus credited with helping to bring down violence in Iraq and which is supported monetarily by the U.S. These are signs that the days of cooperation might be coming to a close.
The truth that is not expressed in pithy statements like "the surge worked" is that the political powers in Iraq have yet to shift into place. The current period of calm has been a godsend, especially for Republicans and McCain, but tension is mounting. McCain's unwillingness to point out the flaws in his myth of the surge's success is dangerous to him politically, especially if the situation spoils before November. Obama also is far too reluctant to tell the truth about the surge - which it appears he knows due to his continued, though often timid, opposition to it. He is not helped by the simplistic "the surge has worked/is working" line constantly repeated in the media. Even newsmagazines that think highly of their product, like The Economist, repeat the false assessment - most recently when they derided Obama for "denying funds to the 'surge' that has worked so well" - though The Economist has failed time and again in their analysis of events.
The point of this piece is to clarify the actual situation in Iraq. It is never helpful to have delusions about real, ongoing issues, especially in an election such as this where Americans must asses the good judgment of candidates, with one supporting the fictionalized surge, and the other choosing not to pander by proclaiming false victory.

Land of the Free: Amy Goodman Arrested at the RNC

2008-09-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

We knew that law enforcement has gone to unacceptable steps to protect the campaign convention pageants put on by the Democrats and Republicans, but this is absolutely ridiculous.

Kucinich Wakes Up A Mundane DNC

2008-08-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

A New Campaign Approach

2008-08-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

I don't think Barack Obama is running a very good campaign. The slogans and policy positions have not moved me. Ralph Nader's campaign, on the other hand, is full of policy and principle that I identify with, but I also do not think he is running the campaign he could be running. Ralph Nader, many times, seems to me to be preaching to the choir.
The problem is that both campaigns are not politicking as they should. They aren't finding something they really believe in and then selling that forcefully to the American public. They aren't putting the other side on the defensive, and when they are, they are not doing it in a constructive way that will chip away the opposition’s support.
Ralph Nader, to be sure, supports mostly majoritarian issues that Americans care about and support. The problem seems to be that he has adopted all of the left to center's dream list of policy, and is running on each piece equally. The one issue that he has pushed to the fore, in an attempt to justify his third-party run, is that of electoral reform. He wants to fix the way we run our democracy, an admirable and extremely important issue that needs far greater attention. The problem though is that in our current economic and geopolitical situation, there are other issues that, while in the long run less important than democracy promotion at home, for now are pressing to the majority of Americans.
Mr. Nader's continued focus on electoral reform is evidence of his focus on his core group of supporters, who, I would guess, care more about principles than political practicality. True, Nader's support in the general public is at a considerably high 6%, as shown by a CNN poll. But to get over 10% he will have to employ a technique other than what I would call Ron Paul politicking.
Ron Paul politicking is where a candidate, such as Ron Paul, has immense support with a core group of enthusiastic supporters galvanized by their candidates "perfect" policy platform. To many others, however, this messiah like candidates perfect ideology seems to be too good to be true, which in all likelihood is the case. Even if many of Ron Paul's positions could work wonders, his over the top cosmology and lack of focus makes everything seem a pipe dream and unattainable.
So what should Nader focus on if he wants to really push Democrats to act in the interest of this country? The good news is that he won't have to reach far to grasp the topic that could put both Democrats and Republicans on the defensive. One quite contrarian position that would throw those trying to pigeonhole Nader as a liberal extremist for a loop would be that of corporate reform. But Nader's corporate reform policy shouldn't be just the usual corporate bashing (which is deserved but off-putting to many voters due to the Ron Paul effect). No, Nader need only turn the issue on the Demo-Republicans by calling for greater support of owners, those who have stock in corporations and thus, in a capitalist economy, ought to be at the top of the command line.
The respected founder of The Vanguard Group, John Bogle, has written extensively about the creeping disenfranchisement of owners in our country. The management of companies - CEO's, CFO's, the board of directors - have waged war on the rights of owners to have a say in the companies they own, and owners have largely acquiesced when promised greater returns on their investments. The signs of management bamboozling those who they owe their jobs to are abundant - Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, the whole financial industry. Things like bad accounting are hostile actions against the owners of companies. The problem, as Bogle and also Nader has pointed out time and time again, is that absentee ownership has led not only to problems for owners but also severe problems in our economy. A system where no one is accountable until things really go bad and crimes are committed is very unstable. We have seen the effects of this in the latest financial industry bust.
As I have said before, Ralph Nader has talked often about corporate reform, specifically giving more responsibility and power to the owners of companies. But Ralph Nader could weaponize the issue, potentially driving a wedge in the business community, shocking the public out of their slumber by making them aware of how un-capitalist our country truly is, and proving that he is not an ideologue, just someone who knows what ails our country.
Now if Ralph Nader focused on this sort of corporate reform, and then coupled it with a promise to overhaul healthcare, while reminding the public that while he may be focusing on two issues, he has identified a lot of other problems that need fixing, I think we would see a whole new dynamic arise in the presidential race. Barack Obama could quickly adopt Ralph's positions once it is shown that the public is receptive, while McCain's policy would look almost as old as he looks. Instead of the usual situation of Democrats on the defensive (who started the debate on off-shore oil drilling? Republicans once again) they would be on the offensive, pushing the Republicans into the same corner they have been wallowing in for the last 28 years. The country would be immediately re-aligned to the left since in reality a capitalist economy cannot work without a healthy, strong, democratic government. Call me a dreamer, but I think that by focusing on two post-partisan but clearly leftwing issues we could see a dramatic shift in this election.

Russia-Georgia-US-EU-Oil

2008-08-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

The political section of the Mainissue is back after a long vacation, and just in time too. As we all know by now, a lot has gone in the Caucuses in the last week or so. All the details of what took place to ignite the war between Russia and Georgia are still not sufficiently worked out, but at this point it appears that what happened was that Georgia decided to try and take back the rebellious enclave of South Ossettia as the worlds attention was focused on the opening night of the Olympics. Georgian forces quickly made headway into South Ossettia, a region where most of the people identify with Russia, but Russia, clearly very prepared for such a move by Georgia, quickly pushed the Georgians back and were soon entering Georgian territory.
Acquisations were flying between the politicians of both warring countries, each one accussing the other of starting the war along with war crimes which undoubtadly occurred. Russias quick response does suggest that they were preparing, prepared for, or in the process of starting, a war with Georgia. For the last couple of months Russia has been acting as if they had plans. The most notable indication that Russia was stepping up pressure in the region came with the handing out of Russian passports to the residents of South Ossettia, a move to claim the territory as Russian and lay the groundwork for future military action in protection of "Russian citizens" if events should escalate.
Georgia, and especially its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, on the other hand, were bellicose and overly enthusiastic to start a war that, without the support of Europe, the U.S., or NATO, was impossible for it to win. It is still unclear how Georgia could have made such a blunder. Insiders and pundits talk about possible encouragement and pressure coming from within the Bush administration as well as other neo-conservatives within the government. Military aid and training from the U.S. has been steadily increasing since the Clinton years, and this, along with Georgian participation in the Iraq War as, up until this war started, the third largest contingent in the "Coalition of the Willing" probably made the Georgians think they had more international support than they did.
While culpability for the war is still not clear - perhaps because both sides had much to do with starting it - there is very little doubt about the outcome. Russia unequivocally won the war militarily. They were also able to meet what was clearly their main objective: taking South Ossetia, once and for all, from Georgia. So far they have not succeeded in ousting Mr. Saakashvili; his popularity has recently been heightened though that could change soon enough.
Most importantly for Russia, they have managed to scare the U.S. and Europe. They have brought home the reality that the West has very little leverage in the region when push comes to shove. And this matters, since oil is involved.
What is interesting in the diplomatic response to the conflict is the differing approaches taken by Europe and the U.S. A little understanding of what is at stake is needed in order to fully appreciate why the U.S. and Europe are acting so differently. Europes largest energy provider is Russia. Over 1/4 of all natural gas brought into Europe comes from Russia. Geopolitically, such a situation where one country dominates the energy resources of another is not good. When that one country is Russia and its energy dependant is not one country but a whole region - Europe - than the problem is serious.
In the nineties the U.S. and Europe sought to fix this geopolitical problem on the horizon by courting the recent breakaway states of the former USSR. The plan was to build oil pipelines circumventing the then weak Euro-Asian goliath with an imperial past - Russia. Things got of to a good start as Russia was embroiled in social, political, and economic chaos. But when Russia got back on its feet, it began to rationilize its geopolitical energy policy. It became clear very quickly that the pipelines skirting the new Russian borders were not just an annoyance that gave Russia's past provences great favor in the West, they also threatened Russian energy hegemony. The EU's fractured foreign policy offered Russia an opening to break apart concensus by striking bilateral deals with EU member states, thus staveing off the eventual goal of a united EU policy towards Russia. To further delay, or hopefully end, EU plans to open up a compeating energy tap in Turkey, Russia also stepped up the pressure on surrounding countries eager to strike deals with the West. Georgia was a particularly enticing location to stop an oil pipeline, since years of ethnic strife in the region could quickly and easily be fanned to Russia's advantage. Thus the conflict in Georgia began, and the regions people's peace and security, whether they realize it or not, are casualities of this sad geopolitical struggle.
When the war began, the differing circumstances of the U.S. and Europe became clear in how their diplomats approached the problem. The U.S. took a combative stand against Russias actions, decrying it as illegal and warrenting international condemnation. Europe, for the most part, was more concilitory, trying to stop the war quickly but not push Russia too hard, and definitely not condemn it outright. The reasons for the differing approaches are obvious when one considers oil. The U.S. gets far less oil and no natural gas from Russia. Europe, as we have seen, is tethered to Russia for a large portion of its energy. Noticably, the UK took up the U.S.'s line of attack on Russia. Why? Because the UK, like the U.S., imports very little oil from Russia - very little oil at all for that matter thanks to the North Sea - and no natural gas. They can afford to be hard-asses.
Now if the U.S. and Europe were working in conjunction on this diplomatic action it could possibly be construed as a genius solution to getting Russia to back off, allowing NATO countries to have their cake and eat it too. The U.S. often did seem to be acting as Europes foil. Unfortunately, I do not think this was what was going on. Europe was acting out of its interests, the U.S and UK theirs. In the end, there is very little good news that has come out of the conflict - not even to mention the sad outcome for all those civilians involved in the conflict.
It is clear now that there is very little that Europe or the U.S. can do if Russia chooses to flex its military muscles, and Russias powerful position sitting atop large oil and gas reserves allows it a lot of flexibility.
What leverage does the U.S. and the EU have? Not much really. There is the possibility of withholding talks on Russian WTO (World Trade Organization) membership, though stalling negotiations once again could do more harm than good and put Europe in an awkward position. The U.S. has been sending supplies and troops to the region for a while. It could send more, though there aren't many to spare and the act would be provocative. There are probably enough there as is to convince Russia not to risk a larger war by entering Tblisi. The U.S. has also announced that it will end joint military exercises with Russian troops, a move without much consequence.
All and all the last weeks turmoil is another problem for the U.S., but more so for Europe. Moreover, it is another indictment of this administrations lackadaisical foreign policy. It was bad policy (or worse still if the administration actually encouraged Georgia) to not warn Georgia that during lean times such as these, U.S support, especially militarily, would not be forthcoming if a conflict developed. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have sapped the U.S. military's ability to be a deterrent. The consequences of this are beginning to be clear.

Last Leg

2008-08-06T04:11:00.000-07:00

So here I am, back home (in LA, so not quite) dealing with the effects of jet lag by writing the last mainissue travel edition blog entry at 4 in the morning. Its quiet and dark; a perfect atmosphere for remembering and reminiscing. First, though, before I reflect, I'll try and bring the blog up to date:

Berlin was our last stop on our European leg of the tour. We arrived by bus from Prague, not sure how we were going to get in touch with our hosts. We met a couple Canadian girls from our bus also in the same situation, so we offered each other advice on the formatting of German numbers and hung out at the bus station payphones, trying to reach our friends. It turned out that the two girls were from Canada and had also done Birthright a year before. After the phone ate around six euros we were able to get definite directions from Max - Regina, our host's, son - and so we parted from our friends with plans to meet at the Jewish museum sometime in the future, pending email confirmation.

Al and I were very excited about our luck of meeting people so early on our stay in Berlin. I know both of us had great expectations. Things, unfortunately, did not turn out as well as we planned. We got in contact with our friends easily enough - via email - but when it came time to meet we ran into one trouble after another. Al and I diligently waited outside of the Jewish museum for quite a while, both looking indifferently cool slumped along the wall reading, which turned out to be a problem since the girls did not see us (though I think they could have looked a bit harder). We then set up another meeting spot, but they didn't receive the email in time. In their follow-up email they suggested a place to meet, but we did not get that email until the next day. Finally both the girls and us figured it was not meant to be and gave up trying.

So the beginning of our trip in Berlin was a bit disappointing socially. This, while putting a bit of a damper on things, did not take away from our enjoyment of Berlin. We wandered around the streets, marveling at the vibrancy we saw about us, from the culturally diverse neighborhoods full of Donar Kebab shops to the late night coffee houses and outdoor bars. The city was alive; maybe it was just when we were there and the sun was shinning brightly and the sky was clear, or maybe it was always like that, I couldn't say. I do think though that the warm weather helped to bring people out onto the streets.

We were initiated into the jovial atmosphere of the city on our first full day in Berlin. We had heard the night before from Max and his friends that America's presidential contender, Barack Obama, was planning to speak to Berlin the following evening. We decided to go, not only to get a good look at Barack but also to see what the Germans made of him. I wrote about our time at the rally in another post that the interested reader can refer to for more details. We found the event to be a bit disappointing, but seeing the Berliners have such a good time with it - drinking beer and yelling slogans - and being a part of the whole show was a nice first introduction to the city and its people.

We were lucky to get to spend our time in Berlin staying at a tasteful and spacious apartment on the top story of a beautiful building situated in one of the most dynamic neighborhoods of Berlin. Our hosts, Klaus and Regina, were incredibly gracious and friendly. Luckily our first introduction with Klaus - him finding Al and I asleep in Regina's bed after we had quietly snuck into the apartment the night before - was not too off-putting and was soon got over (We went on to share a nice few bottles of wine with him). We enjoyed not only our hosts but also their hand-operated Italian cappuccino machine. We helped ourselves to a beautiful espresso and foam mostly every morning on Regina's deck overlooking Landwehrkanal (a canal) and the bustling neighborhood of Kreuzberg. I haven't found a coffee shop that could rival Regina's house in scenery or elegance.

We were kinda in the dumps after our miscarried meetings with our Canadian friends, but this was soon remedied through couchsurfing. I have to give Al the credit for this: he really pursued those I had already emailed on couchsurfing's website, setting up dates with many of them - though they didn't all work out.

Our first outing was to Volkspark where a number of couchsurfers were getting together to hang out and talk (I think that was the idea). Volkspark is a very beautiful piece of greenery in what was once East Berlin. It was across town, and we got there somewhat late, but we were able to meet a number of friendly people, and when the party at the park rapped up we followed two crazy married kiwis (people from New Zealand for those not in the know) to a club. We ended up heading home though after the group decided on a punk club across town.

The next day we met up with another couchsurfer gal from the UK, who in turn met up with a few other Americans, and we all headed to a beach bar on the Spree River called "White Trash", near a remaining piece of the Berlin Wall called the East Side Gallery. It was a pretty bizarre/cool place. I love hefeweizen so I had a good time.

We stayed there for a long time, talking to our new friends. One girl who was from Sacramento and was now living in Berlin, invited Al and I to her pub crawl (for free) that she led almost every night. I thought it was a great idea so I got her email. Sadly, this was to be another instance of hopes dashed, though this time I suspect that she ignored my email.

But Berlin had more to offer than a central valley dwelling Californian. We were lucky enough to have arrived in Berlin while a great exhibit was underway at the Pergamon Museum. The show, which was only traveling to three museums - The British Museum, The Louvre, and The Pergamon - was called "Babylon: Myth and Truth". It was a comprehensive showcase of all things from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon, with extensive write-ups detailing even the smallest minutiae of daily life in the Biblical city. The "myth" section of the exhibit dealt with the stories and legends that the city of Babylon has spawned: the tales of evil and lasciviousness that have been passed down to us through the ages. This section was not as interesting as the "Truth" section, but together they both made for a great day at the museum.

On the final night of our stay in Berlin we made another trip to Museum Island (an island on which many of the largest museums are set) to take advantage of free admission Thursday. This time we went stoned, having scored a tiny bit of weed from some guys we met while playing ping-pong in the park. It turned out to be a really great night, our senses fully extended to take in all the art that the museum offered up. Luckily I was able to rid myself of all my giggles early on after Al bought for himself a faux East-German (GDR) officer's hat, which resembled a hat an S&M stripper might wear. I could really just focus on the 19th century art.

We were sad to leave Berlin, but I was also ready to continue on and meet my relatives in Israel. I didn't know what to expect: I knew it could be possibly very dull, with a lot of formalities and some guided touring around the country. But I was hopeful it wouldn't be so.

We arrived in Tel Aviv in the late afternoon and were picked up at the airport by my cousin Shani. She drove us to Afula where her parents live, a small town in the north of the country. We were greeted warmly by the whole family - Havov, Lia, Shani, Etay, Tali and her husband, who's name escapes me - and soon were around the table eating a delicious multi-course meal. We were informed of the plans for that night, or morning really, since we were going to be going with Etay to a rave lasting into the next day. Etay had planned the trip meticulously, anxiously awaiting our arrival at the airport to find out whether to get Al and I tickets for the highly coveted dance party in the Golan Heights. At the dinner party I also learned a bit about family history, all the way up to the recent wedding of Tali and her husband. After the large dinner we went to our bedroom to take a nap before our long night. Both Al and I had a hard time of it, and I finally gave up my attempt at some shut-eye and took a shower instead.

At around midnight we left the Rabkin house to go to Etay's apartment in the city of Afula. We hung out there for an hour or so, meeting Etay's friend Elad, before heading out towards the Golan Heights. I was a bit confused the whole drive, trying to place each left and right turn on the labyrinthine road network up to the Golan Heights into a coherent whole; I was unsuccessful. Etay, it seemed, was a bit confused too, and we arrived a bit late to our rave date - 3 in the morning. We got out of the car and into the surprisingly chilly weather and began the slow move to the entry of the party through thick crowds. Once inside all the misgivings we might have had as to the sanity of staying up this late were dispelled. Hundreds of tents were nestled in an expansive orchard of some sort of fruit or nut tree - no one was able to tell me what type of trees they were.

After a bit of confusion we were able to locate Etay's friend's tent, set our stuff down, have a few drinks and a light hummus snack, and then head off to the "dance floor," an outdoor arena with a large stage set in front of a geese pen. There we danced the dusk away and saw the sun rise, at which point we retired to the tent and slept until it became unbearably hot (around 9 o'clock).

After a morning dance under the cool rain of water misters we left the party for a swim in the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). It was a beautiful day. We floated in the warm water of Israel's main water source, peering off to the other end of the large inland sea towards Jordon.

We were all hungry so before heading back to the Rabkin's house we stopped at a traditional Levantine restaurant, where we tried a large selection of salads and dips along with a large kebab plate, topped off with a desert and Turkish coffee.

Back at the Rabkin's we slept very soundly, only waking for our next meal, this time with my other relatives, Adik and Luba Kriger. After finishing yet another large meal we went with the Kriger's to their town of Ma'alot an hour or so up north.

The Kriger's lived in a nice complex inhabited mainly by Russian-Israeli's who came to Israel en mass after the fall of the USSR. The Kriger family came during this time - in 1991 - and wanting to leave the deteriorating circumstances of their homeland but not the culture, chose to live in a community of Russian-immigrants. People who came to the country in the 90’s from the former USSR populate much of the north of Israel.

Adik was excited from the beginning to show Al and I all that was possible in the short time we had, but was careful to find out where we had been before so as not to be redundant. Even if his English was shaky at times he always enthusiastically pointed out things of interest to us. We traveled all around with the family, from the ancient port of Akko to the religious sites on the Sea of Galilee. It was a nice change of pace to tour in a more leisurely manner, able to jump in a car to get to the next spot.

At night we had a great Russian meal of borscht and salmon, washed down with very good vodka with tomato juice (aka Bloody Mary's) and vodka straight. Later we went out on the town with Anna (my cousin) her fiancé and a few of their friends. After a bout of anxiety caused by our thinking that our flight back home was that night and not the following, we mellowed down and enjoyed our last night, drinking beer and talking with Anna's friends as the Mediterranean sea crashed along the coast only twenty feet from our spot perched on lush couches.

The next day we toured the Bahá'í Gardens in Haifa. Well, unfortunately, it was not quite a tour since they only let us walk through an itsy-bitsy section of the gardens secluded from the main terraced walkway. Nevertheless it was very interesting. From there we went up to the Lebanese-Israeli border to look around, and then headed back home where Adik and Luba had planned for us to have a light meal with their Mothers before heading to the airport.

Before lunch we met my relative Rosa - my grandmother's first-cousin - who was excited to talk politics with me. Anna was helpful enough to translate Rosa's Russian to me and visa-versa. Rosa began by asking me whether I was a socialist, and sensing where this was going I said no. She was happy, since, she said, she had lived socialism and hated it. She then delved into American presidential politics, telling me that she did not trust Obama and thought McCain best since he was more steadfast in his support for Israel. I gave her reasons why I thought Obama wasn't as bad as she made him out to be, but she was indignant. She had other strong things to say about the Palestinians, to which I objected, thinking the characterization unfair. The most difficult sort of political discussion must be ones involving a translator. Maybe that's why foreign affairs are always so messy.

Our stay at the Kriger home was concluded after watching a video of a trip my great-grandmother and great uncle took to Russia in 1960. It was an appropriate ending to my visit to Israel in which I met many relatives I had never met before and learned much about my mom's family's history.

The flight home was long but not all that bad, especially with lots of sleep, and we arrived in LA perfectly on time. After passport control, baggage claim, customs, and then one premature round of goodbyes done before Al went the wrong way to catch his flight back to SF, Al and I parted ways. It was the end of our summer jaunt through Israel and Europe.

I had traveled before but never have I had as good of a time as I did on this trip. I think the combination of traveling partner, being older and wiser, doing a variety of different things, and traveling in a less touristy way (at least for part of the trip) combined to make the trip what it was.

Most important, perhaps, was the reading material that I brought along with me. I can't imagine what it would have been like without it. My first book, "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon," vivified our journey through the Balkans, giving an appreciation for the place that would have been absolutely unattainable if I would have just relied on the Lonely Planet guide to give me a sense of the history and culture of the place. Next, Tony Judt's "Post War" gave me a better comprehension of the roots of the prosperity that became so conspicuous when we crossed from former Communist countries to the "West". My grasping - but still not totally understanding - the complex history of the continent was invaluably helped by "Post War". Furthermore, being able to place my surroundings in the historical continuum was not only enjoyable but also made the trip that much more meaningful.

My last read, Josephues' "The Jewish War," written in the 1st century, was entertaining and powerful as a historical work written from such a long time ago and referencing so many sites that still exist in and around Israel.

In reading so many historical tracts I, and Al, through osmosis I assume, began thinking about our trip in historical terms. Thus we came up with historicalesque "periods" to categorize our trip. So in conclusion, I will attempt to distill our trip down to six loose periods:

Semitic Period - This period was characterized by lots of traveling through the deserts - on a bus - being more social than I have been in years, and meeting more Jewish people than I have met since pre-school.

Greco Period - A short period but distinct in its chaotic and worried energy. Since it was the first stop on our month 'n more trip I think Al and I were both eager to get into traveling gear, and we probably overcompensated a bit. The chaotic nature of Athens did not help.

Tim Period - Ah the Tim period. At the beginning of the Tim period we met.... Tim, and subsequently a whole period bears his name. The Tim period was one in which we hung out with Tim from Australia almost exclusively, save for a short day with Delia and Tessa. We did everything with Tim: we traveled with Tim, we ate with Tim, we slept with Tim (platonically).

Post-Tim - Growing pains... Tim moves on, we move on, and we have to reorient ourselves towards the rest of the world.
It really wasn't that hard. We just thought it would be funny to name a period "post-Tim".
Tim still held a special place on our facebook friend list, but we were out and about. Al met a girl, I met some guys to talk politics with, and it was all good. Like the Tim period, in the Post-Tim period we were constantly on the move, though we slowed down just a bit to enjoy some nice cups of coffee and a good read/draw.

Sedentary Period - This period should probably officially only apply to Vienna and Berlin, but I think it well sums up the part of our trip following our departure from Zagreb. The pace slowed considerably, we spent many days at people’s houses, and we didn't travel long distances much. It was a pleasant lull, filled with a variety of small, but not overly ambitious sightseeing
Return to the Homeland with a 4-day stop in the Homeland (period) - We go back to Israel, visit relatives, go to a rave, see the site where Jesus was baptized, and then head back home to try and adjust to the time difference.

The End

Croatia, Austria, and The Czech Republic

2008-07-27T04:31:00.000-07:00

Leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina it became clear that the distinctively rustic part of our travels were coming to an end. Since June 16 we had been traveling in poor countries, Greece being the most wealthy among them. Bosnia and Herzegovina appeared to be the poorest of them all, made that way by a recent history of brutal civil war. But now, from the capital city of the Republic Serbska, Banja Luca, we were heading towards the countries of the EU, with all of its modern rules and regulations, wealth and interconnectedness.

We were joined on our journey by a 21 year-old Russian Ph.D student, who had been living in Croatia studying Balkans politics and was soon leaving for New York to finish her schooling. From the description it might appear that she was a very interesting acquaintance, but she turned out to have a very abrasive personality. Even though I could tell from the beginning that she was hard to be around, I could do little as she slowly asserted control over mine and Al's travel plans from the moment we got off the bus in Zagreb, pulling us onto buses with the excuse of trying to help us find a hostel. I think part of the reason she took such an interest in us was because we told her we had been on Birthright to Israel. She, as it turned out, was Jewish as well. She called me 'her Jewish friend.'

She was not easy-going, nor did she have a sense of humor, and her presence began to ratchet up the stress. She was able, however, to find the hostel she was staying at, and the very friendly hostel attendant, thinking that we were all together in a group, tried to find us a space in the hostel although it was almost full. She offered Al and I a single bed to share for a discount, and we took it. The 'Russian reach around,' as we not-so-affectionately began to call our new co-traveller, was hungry, and so, not wanting to spend any more money or time than was needed with her, we steered her into going to McDonald's. Al was especially excited by the menu options, so much so that he went back for seconds on a milk-shake. This was to be the first of a number of stops at McDonald's that Al and I would make in the course of our travels in the more prosperous, and Americanized, EU Europe (Al loved the ice cream coffee drinks).

That night we managed to break free from the Russian and went out for drinks at an Irish bar with the hostel attendant, her boyfriend (the young part-owner of the hostel), their friend, and three English girls from the hostel. Over a Guinness the hostel attendant's boyfriend told us of how he got into the hostel business: He was trying to learn Japanese, and found out about a website that connects Japanese speakers with Croatian speakers so that they can teach each other their respective languages. He happened to get in contact with a Japanese man who was looking to start a hostel in Zagreb and wanted a Croatian to be his business partner. We were all happy to find out the history of our humble hostel.

The next day we toured around Zagreb a bit, planning our day out so that we could catch the overnight bus to Vienna at 11pm. We visited an old-masters art museum, rushing through most of it because we arrived right before closing time (it's not a good idea to plan much of anything in Europe on Sunday). We strolled down streets, observing the obviously Austrian inspired architecture in all of its flamboyant Baroqueness (it was nothing compared to Vienna though).

After a fulfilling pasta meal where we managed to spend almost all of our remaining Croatian kuna, we went back to our hostel, retrieved our bags, and headed to the bus depot. Just to make sure that we didn't leave Croatia with a single kuna needing usurious exchange, I suggested that we buy a snack for the bus ride. Unfortunately, we did not count on being charged for each piece of luggage on top of the ticket price, a practice common in the poorer Balkan regions but one which we thought we had left behind. So at the last minute I had to find an ATM, get charged a $5 transaction fee (a tariff that has added a considerable expense to our trip after months of travel) for money I was not going to be able to use, and pay the disgruntled bus driver.

But no matter: we were on our way, late at night, on a crowded little bus. Al easily dosed off on his neck pillow, but I was stuck sitting next to a beer drinking, cell phone talking Croatian, and wasn't able to sleep. When I finally managed to get a bit of sleep we arrived at the Slovenian EU border and were forced to debark at the checkpoint with a storm thundering around us. The process of passport checking took quite a while, but it was not without its entertainment: an old, apparently senile woman in front of me, tired of waiting in line, decided it best to just walk straight across the border. So after a hesitant start she picked up pace, and soon was waddling into Slovenia. A boarder guard and our bus driver chased her down, put her at the front of the line, and then once her passport was oked, walk her, legally this time, into Slovenia. Once there though, she tired of waiting for the others still on the other side, so she started back across the border, into Croatia, eliciting the same response from the border guard and bus driver.

At six in the morning we arrived in Vienna, lacking a map or any information on how to reach our Viennese host, Judith, because we weren't able to get her response email in time. We got on a U-Bahn and headed to the center of town. After a light nap under the awning of some impressive neo-classical building (still not sure what function the place had in imperial times) we went to a ritzy coffee shop where we ordered a cappuccino and small croissant, all coming to around 7 euro per person. At last - after spending a euro and a half on fifteen minutes of Internet - we found directions to Judith's house and headed her way.

Judith lived in what seemed to be a more working class, culturally diverse neighborhood. It was very nice, and offered easy access to very cheap Turkish food restaurants featuring the ubiquitous 'Donar Kebab'. Her apartment was also very close to light rail going towards a hub U-bahn station, but was also walking distance from many of the interesting cultural treats of Vienna.

Our stay with Judith turned out to be more than we could have hoped for. She was extremely hospitable, giving Al and I her bed - for which we repaid her in delicious fried egg breakfasts most mornings and a carbarnara pasta dinner - and when she was not busy with school work or preparing for her imminent departure to China for a year long study abroad program, she took us around the city, to swanky bars, coffee shops (where we tried a variety of famous Viennese pastries and deserts), an outdoor concert, a short film festival, a pay-what-you-like Indian restaurant, and a modern-art gallery. She introduced us to friends, and even was so kind as to talk politics with me, telling me about the recent electoral history of her country, the different parties, and the sometimes provincial and racist recalcitrance of her fellow Austrians.

Our stay in Vienna, for me, was marked by a lot of viewing and discussion of art. This, of course, is Al's forte, and he had a great time reflecting on a central and eastern European art history class he took a few years back, educating me on the importance of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimpt - the few names that I remember. We also, coincidentally, ran into Al's friend Sean at the Secessionist's (a early 20th century Viennese art movement) art nuevo HQ, who we knew was going to be in Vienna but was a surprise to run into nonetheless. We followed him and his art class into a couple galleries, but Judith and I were fatigued by all the avant garde art we had seen that day (though John Currin's hilarious paintings did offer a respite from art theory) and so headed back home.

After a long week exploring Vienna we sadly packed our bags and headed to the edge of town, hoping to hitch a ride to Prague. The problem was that the Austrian drivers had other plans. Al and I sat on the corner of the autobahn - or whatever the Austrians call it - for around two and a half hours before we decided it was hopeless and headed first for the train station, but then, finding trains too expensive, for the bus station, where the 21 euro ticket was more to our liking.

We arrived in Prague late that night, and after much confusion as to the location of our hostel, got onto a subway train and soon arrived at our somewhat rundown, but perfectly decent hostel on the outskirts of town. It turned out that our hostel wasn't particularly fun - everyone kind of kept to themselves - although I did have quite a surprise when I walked into our room the first night to find two guys from the Canary Islands whom I had share a hostel room with before when my friend Molly and I visited London a year and a half ago.

Like our hostel though, Prague too was less interesting than other places we had been on our journey through Europe. It wasn't that it wasn't beautiful - it was - and it wasn't that it didn't have any interesting things to offer - it does- it was, I think, that Al and I were not in the mood to be tourists, and in Prague, there is no way one can not be a tourist. The city is swarming with people from all around the world, and while this may, in certain places, imbue a certain cosmopolitanism, in Prague, where the multiculturalism is due mostly to holiday makers, the crowds give the city a Disney Land feel (Disney World might be more accurate).

It wasn't that I actively disliked Prague; I didn't. In fact we did quite a few cool things. While the Franz Kafka museum was underwhelming, walking through Malá Strana below the Prague castle was very enjoyable. Along these same lines, seeing Pink Floyed's The Wall might have been mainly an opportunity to remember how incredible idiotic that film was, but seeing it at an open air theatre on an Island in the Vltava River as it sporadically rained was quite enjoyable (although not enjoyable enough to keep us there through the whole movie). We also met up with Sean again, who had been living there for a month and more, had some great beer at an artisan beer brewery, and had lots of reading time. So it wasn't bad; it just wasn't great, wasn't as interesting and authentic as the other places we had visited up to that point.

So after four days we left Prague on a mid-afternoon bus, heading to our final European destination: Berlin.

From Berlin,
Brett

In Berlin with Obama

2008-07-25T01:00:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Al and I went down to the Victory Column in Berlin to hear Barack Obama speak to Berliners - and Europe - about the future of U.S.-Europe relations, whether or not he is elected president - although it sure would be a disappointment for all those people who came out to see him if he ends up losing.
I was not all that impressed by the speech. He didn't say much, choosing instead to paint a dramatic, if by now tired, picture of Euro-American relations as a partnership in the pursuit of greater freedom around the world, using the Berlin airlifts and the fall of communism as examples of the power of the trans-Atlantic partnership.
He did a fine job of working the crowed, one moment revving them up with pledges of support for tackling issue dear to most Germans such as nuclear disarmament and global warming, and the next calming them with less popular proposals such as expanding NATO commitments in Afghanistan with the help of German troops. I got the feeling that many who were there wanted to be moved by Obama, and tried very hard to get into it, but that there was very little that they could really latch on to and say 'this is the reason I support him over McCain; this is the issue that differentiates him.' On any close study of where Mr. Obama stands on many key principles, it is obvious how far apart Europe and the U.S. actually are. From the ethics of capital punishment to the reality of the American empire, there are very few issues that Americans and Europeans truly see eye to eye on. Mr. Obama's visit surly did not make this divide explicitly known to all the millions hearing him live and on television, but his presidency will.

Here Al and I are (inside the red circle) at the Obama rally. Obviously one of millions. This photo comes from the New York Times website here.

Americans Abroad

2008-07-24T02:40:00.000-07:00

Al and I are not the only Americans eagerly anticipated in Berlin. Unbeknown to us, our trip in Berlin coincides with the arrival of another American a bit more famous than us. Tonight at 7 pm, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama will be speaking at the Victory Column in the center of Berlin to an estimated crowd of over 1 million people. If we get there 3 hours before, we will also be able to hear him speak, which for us holds a special interest since it will be a rare opportunity to be an outsider at an American presidential campaign speech. Regardless of my political proclivities, I am excited to witness what seems to be a historical event if for no other reason than it being the largest international presidential campaigning event in history.

From Berlin,
Brett

Bosnia and Herzegovina

2008-07-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

I was negatively predisposed to Bosnia and Herzegovina by the time I spent in Serbia. The people I spoke to , especially Vlad who was originally from Sarajevo and was forced to leave during the war, and the book I had been reading introduced me to the awkward history of the country. I wish it were not so, but I travelled to our next stop in our Balkan tour with a complete set of biases.
But as we drove across the Bosnian country side at dusk it was hard to hold on to grudges. It was also hard to harbor anger towards people who had over the centuries, created for themselves such a bucolic home. Gazing across such a peaceful landscape as Northern Bosnia, it seemed incomprehensible that such a place could have nurtured the hatred that burst into war in the early nineties. I knew of course, that in fact this was one of many conflict flash points, that many of the people still living in the north of Bosnia, in what is officially - in all but international recognition - the separate nation of the Serbian Republic, still harbor animosity towards the others - Bosnian Muslims mostly. For reasons that were not readily apparent, especially from a quick drive through the place, I knew that the problems that started the first conflict have yet to be resolved, and this land could once again beget the worst of human cruelty. For now though, I decided, I would forget all of the human turmoil and just appreciate the natural and man made beauty of the place. It wasn't hard to do. I put on Chopin followed by an oriental sounding Kronos Quartet CD, and peered out the window:
We passed through a lively town on the crest of a hill. Children played basketball and soccer at a rundown but wholly functional schoolyard. Many other children lounged on the rafters encircling the yard and watched their peers play. We passed them by quickly and the children turned to watch us go.
Below their village, the hills tumbled away from us, mist rising from the contours of the landscape. The damp air and low light blended the greens, yellows, and blues of the countryside, softening contrasts and distinctions that would be present at midday. With such a view, and oriental music flitting in my ear, the mind can wonder and feel expansive. Shapes and ideas formed from the shadowy shapes of mountains, trees and houses until finally darkness obscured everything and brought the night sky into view. A crescent moon peered from behind foliage, reminding that we were leaving Christian Orthodox Serbia and were reaching Islamic Bosnia and Herzegovina.

We arrived at Sarajevo late that night. I worried about our chances of finding a hostel, but we were met at the bus by a man from a lonely planet approved hostel who drove us into the old city, past the massive, wall encircled construction site of the new U.S. embassy (you know you are in an important strategic spot when the U.S. builds such an immense embassy) to a couple of beds in dingy, but inexpensive, hostel.
Sarajevo was hot for the duration of our stay, only cooling off briefly for a few minutes of torrential rainfall. The weather worked perfectly with the way one is supposed to enjoy the city though: with oriental leisure. I, nor Al, could refuse this Ottoman contributed culture of long coffee breaks, and so we spent a good portion of our time sitting around by the Miljaha River bank, sipping on espresso's, Al usually writing or drawing in his journal while I read. We visited the old Turkish quarter of the city where tourists and locals alike stroll through cobblestone streets flanked by souvenir shops housed in original low roofed Turkish houses. We climbed to the top of a low hill in the north of the city, and took in the view of Sarajevo: the river snaking through a steep valley; grey buildings with brown roofs on either side; bristling with white minarets, many recently remodeled after the war, often with generous donations from oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
Our hostel turned out to be a very fun place. A group of English girls on their way to the Exit music festival in Novi Sad, Serbia arrived along with two Icelandic guys, another Englishman, and a Fin. The famous English congeniality - especially over a beer - made our stay very enjoyable.
Due to a tight budget we had been stingy when it came to food, but in Sarajevo we decided to splurge a little and eat out.; a very good choice as it turned out. Twice we went to a great traditional Bosnian restaurant (though our enthusiasm could have been a product of our other less than stellar meals).
After a few days spent lounging about in Sarajevo, we decided to go down to Mostar, a 2 1/2 hour train ride from Sarajevo. On our first attempt at getting to Mostar we found that there are only two trains a day leaving form Sarajevo to Mostar, one at 6 am and the other at 6 pm. After missing the first and not being prepared to take the second and stay over night, we decided on the 6 am train for the following day. So we woke early (so early) and, accompanied by two of the English girls, boarded a rickety train for Mostar.
Mostar was hard hit during the war. It was in the center of numerous battles between Croatians and Serbians, Serbians and Muslims, and Croatians and Muslim Bosnians. By the time the dust settled Mostar was in shambles, and the famous Ottoman built bridge, Stari Most, spanning the Neretva River was destroyed (by Croatian artillery). The city has come a long way since then, but many buildings still remain riddled with bullet holes. Even the skeletal remains of buildings still remain as reminders of the scourge of the inglorious ethnic conflicts of the past.
We stayed over night in Mostar, and in the morning head out on a hitchhiking journey we hoped would take us to the small city of Jajce in the north of Bosnia, and then eventually on to our final destination at Zalankovac in the Bosnian countryside.
Immediately after sticking out our thumb on the road to Mostar we were picked up by an affable guy our age from a town just below the junction leading to Jajce. We talked about music most of the time, and he was able to express his love of Balkans music and that he was in a band, even though he spoke somewhat bad English. At the junction we tried to hitch another ride, but we ran up against lots of competition from others with less baggage then us, so we decided to hitch a ride on a pay bus instead. After many ours of travelling, and one more hitch, we made it to Zalankovac, where we were given a place to stay for free thanks to couchsurfing.com and the eccentric owner of the "ecological park," Boro.
Boro started on his project to renovate his grandfathers mill into an ecological park twenty years ago. As he tells it, the townspeople thought he was crazy - the still call him crazy Boro, which I think is an appropriate name. They never thought he could attract tourists out to the middle-of-know-where in Bosnia. But he worked tirelessly, building bungalows and an interesting complex of log cabins along with a stage where he hosts an annual jazz festival. Many of his guests pay to stay at Zalankovac, but if you contact him he will put you up in a damp bedroom. One can't complain though when its free.
At this ecological retreat we met another American named Theresa. She was somewhere in her forties and had an interesting story to tell. She had been a very successful efficiency manager at almost all the major movie studies in LA. From this job she jumped into the tech sector right as the bubble was growing. She got involved in a start up that she hoped would fetch her a couple hundred million dollars when the company went public. Unfortunately, the tech bubble burst right before they were to go public, and her dreams of riches came to naught - though I think she was still quite wealthy. She decided to retreat from dot-com mania to Tahoe, where her and her apparently uber-cool race car driving boyfriend planned to build a mansion on the lake. Again her dreams were disappointed, this time not by the markets but by a neighbor, who sued them to stop them from cutting down some trees. The situation, by her accounts, got immensely litigious, until she couldn't take it any more and sold her half of the house to her bf, left her Porsche and once-a-night sushi dinners behind, and began a period of her life where she lived off the beneficence of others.
This is the stage at which we met her. To us she seemed a bit of a mooch, though she decided to describe her new life as a case of the universe providing. The funny thing was, that through all of her hippyish appearance - and she did appear quite the hippy - it was clear that she still had the LA bourgeois mentality. I guess the old adage is true: you can take Theresa out of LA, but you can't take LA out of Theresa.
At Boro's place we not only lounged about. On the second day we were there we helped to do some work like digging a hole for a water pipe and packing hay onto tractors. It was a taste of the Bosnian farming life and we enjoyed it, for the most part. Theresa, brought low by hay allergies, watched as me, Al, and a couple Bosnian youths loaded bails of hay from a piece of Boro's farmland onto a cart to be trucked away to waiting milk cows. After our work Boro took us to a patch of land he owns which he will be converting into an airstrip for small planes. He plans on having an aeronautics party some time soon, where friends of his will fly in from all parts of Europe.
Halfway back to Zalankovac from our farming stint, Boro's old car ran out of gas, so, as the sun set below the horizon, Al and I got out and pushed the car. Luckily much of the road to the gas station was downhill, so we were able to coast most of the way. That night I played chess with Boro's 14 year-old son, coincidentally named Alex, and beat him. I was very proud of that. The kid was quite good.
The next morning we said our goodbyes, packed our things, and headed to the road to hitch a ride to Jajce. The moment we were out on the road we were picked up by a guy who, while not going to Jajce, was going to Banja Luca, the capital of the Serbian Republic in Bosnia, and so we quickly decided to change our plans and head to Banja Luca instead, before taking a bus to Zagreb, Croatia. Our driver was not afraid of a little speed, especially on the curving roads heading down to Banja Luca. At times I felt the impulse to clutch the armrests tightly.
We arrived a little outside Banja Luca at around midday, and walked a very long 3 km into to town, searching for Internet, food, and the bus station. We found all three things, booked a ticket to Zagreb, and at around four thirty left for Croatia.

From Prague,
Brett

Tamo Daleko, Daleko od mora. Tamo ze selo, Tamo ze Serbiya.

2008-07-06T02:08:00.000-07:00

I did not know what to expect from Serbia. A guide book can only tell you so much about a place, and it's usually restricted to descriptions of cultural monuments and directions on how to find them. For places like Paris, Rome, or London, where historical sites are carefully preserved with ample funds and great care to give the citizenry and tourist a grand view of each places past and present achievements, your Frommer's or Lonely Planet guide is quite useful. But Belgrade is different. Sure it has its own unique set of cultural sites, but unlike the aforementioned Western European capitals, Belgrade's attractions seem confused in their diversity - here an Austrian fortress, there a uniquely Serb orthodox church, and between a smattering of Turkish buildings - and sometimes dilapidated for lack of funds and by war. Museums in Serbia are not much more useful in helping one understand the country. Many I have visited are more repositories of information and artifacts, light on analysis and English language translations. If there is any visibly explicit clues that can hint at the mentality of the people in Serbia and inform about their history, they are most likely to be found in the street graffiti, skeletal remains of bombed out buildings, and the nonstop nightlife of Belgrade.

To attain a more filled out conception of modern Serbia one must go beyond these visible clues and talk to the people. On our somewhat short sojourn in Belgrade, we were lucky enough to do this. For me the political talks that we had were the most rewarding part of our stay in Serbia, for, as I have said before, the sites only tell part of the story of the region, and without a historical narrative - which is pretty much universally known by young and old alike - they are insipid and without life.

Very shortly after arriving in Belgrade we got our first taste of the political awareness that vivifies life in this city. We were lost late at night in the complex streets of Belgrade trying to find our hostel, and a young newly-graduated doctor offered to help us. On our short walk to our hostel he informed us that he was currently unemployed, unable to find a job as a doctor in Belgrade. He asked us where we were traveling and we told him where we had been and where we were going, adding that we had just crossed over from Montenegro that day. Noticing the perturbed expression that came over him I noted the recent split of Montenegro from Serbia. He responded tersely that he won't go to Montenegro anymore due to their insistence on independence. Later on our walk he added that being a doctor, he was not political, something I found hard to believe.

The next day we went out with a Serbian friend named Marina whom we met through couchsurfing.com. In her original email she made clear that she was not, like the doctor, politically minded, though over coffee she was able to explain the current and historical situation of Serbia much better than a similarly self-described "non-political" American could recount American politics and history.

After coffee we took a tram to Ada Ciganlija - a long island on the Sava river chock full of outdoor activities, bars and eateries - to see how Belgraders spend their free time in the Summer. As we lounged about drinking a beer on one of the many beaches that run along the island, Marina got a call from a friend who was going to a punk rock concert with other couchsurfers.

The other couchsurfers did not make it, but Marina's friends were there. Very quickly one of her friends, Nickola, struck up a lively political discussion with the purposefully incendiary remark that he "doesn't like America". I explained that I don't blame him, that I would probably have difficulty appreciating a country after being on the receiving end of its massive air bombardments only a few years prior. From this spirited beginning Nickola told of his coming of age experience during the NATO military campaign, how he and friends were "like kings" during those times when everything was chaos and no one was in charge. Another friend came and joined our discussion. He was the bassist for the band Give Me Your Lips - GYM for short - and also had much to say on the topic of Serbia, Kosovo, and his grandfather's fight against fascism as a partisan in WWII. Both Nickola and his friend explained how ridiculous it was that they should be so informed about politics, how it is the pathetic outcome of the chaotic dismemberment of Yugoslavia and how they wished they could live more normally: more apathetically.

At the same time they appreciated their first hand experience of history. They recounted their experience at Slobodan Milošović's funeral, how they were the youngest people there and how they relished the fact that he was dead and they were still living and moving on to a hopefully brighter future.

Al and I did more exploring the next day, saw some sites, but felt once against that we were unable to grasp at the essence of the city. We opened our Lonely Planet guide infrequently and only for the map. We did visit the Military Museum, a repository of weapons, with a modern annex dedicated to the recent fight against the "terrorist" KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) and NATO. We saw pieces of a stealth bomber that was shot down in 1999, numerous bomb fragments including three pieces of highly-toxic depleted uranium munitions used against Serbia. Seeing a war from this perspective should be mandatory for all Americans.
The second hostel we stayed at featured a rotating retinue of overseers, and one of the nights we were there we met one very interesting older man who lived right above the hostel and was looking over it as a favor to the owner. He had been an engineer for a large and successful state-run construction company in the former-Yugoslavia. He had traveled all over the world, from Iraq to Mongolia, working on large projects. As Yugoslavia collapsed he witnessed the size of his construction projects shrink and shrink until the company went belly up. I could tell that this was very sad for him.
He was very knowledgeable about history and gave all those listening a very thorough introduction to Serbia. He despised Milošović for the corruption and doom he brought to the country, and saw the current situation in Serbia as worrying, especially since the same corruption as in Milošović's day was still, by his estimation, alive and well. Hearing the perspective of this man who had been through the ups and downs of Yugoslavia was especially interesting, though also quite sad, for things had fallen far from the old days. Still, he was about to receive his pension, though undoubtedly less than what he probably expected when he was younger and his company was, at least in appearance, thriving.

That same night we met up with other hostel guests along with two recently arrived Serbians from Australia and went out for a few beers. The two Serbians were both refuges. Vlad was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and left the country as a refuge when he was 15. After finding the Serbia of Milošović hostile to their needs, his family was granted a pass to Australia, where he had lived for the last fifteen years. His friend Davor was originally from Croatia. His family, like many other Serbs, were pushed out of their homes and fled to Serbia, where they received the same rough treatment from Serbia and so also moved to Australia.

I talked to Davor most of the night. He was very political, and knew a great deal about the history of the former-Yugoslavia. He was the first person I have met that was a reader of the World Socialist Website, a definite plus in my book.

Davor was also passionately pro-Serb, especially when it came to Kosovo. He saw the situation as based on simple historical facts: Kosovo was Serbian and always had been. It holds a unique and important place in the Serbian national identity, being the place where in 1389 Stephen Lazar fought the Ottoman Empire and lost, condemning Serbia to over 500 years of occupation. Since the time of Sultan Murad's conquest of Kosovo and Serbia, the demographics of Kosovo have changed, with large numbers of Muslim Albanian's moving in and now calling it home. The conflict is rooted in problems very familiar to the situation in Israel. But in this case the United States along with a few other NATO countries decided that Kosovo was to be separated from Serbia, something that became a reality a few month ago.

While at this moment many Serbians seem resigned to the fact that, when it comes to such international disputes, they would rather commit to repairing fences with the rest of the world and eventually joining the EU, Davor believes that Serbian national identity will reawaken and Kosovo will come back to Serbia. More worrisome is his belief that the unsteady demographic balancing act holding parts of Bosnia and Croatia together - with Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians, living in reluctant peace - cannot continue forever, and eventually the Serbs will demand autonomy, which could quite possibly lead to more bloodshed.

It is hard to tell without more reading whether this analysis of the situation is accurate. It could be that, like the Jewish Diaspora's relationship to Israel, the Serb diaspora is more apocalyptic than those living in the region who are now, after years of deprivation, just looking for economic prosperity. We shall see.

Throughout our trip in the Balkans I have been reading a book written by Rebecca West in the 1930's called "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" about her travels through the region. At the border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina I got to the section of the book where the title of the book is discussed. The Black Lamb, taken from a sacrificing ceremony for fertility Ms. West witnessed in Macedonia, symbolizes to West the disgusting mystical beliefs humans illogically hold in which they think that by destroying life in one form man can create life in another. The Grey Falcon imagery is taken from an ancient Serbian poem which describes the choice Stephen Lazar had to make at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 of defeat to the Ottomans with heavenly glory or victory with temporal power and self rule.
The choice the Serbian Tsar Lazar made all those years ago at Kosovo was to be the sacrificed black lamb and to choose the heavenly glory offered by the gray falcon. Those choices, Ms. West comes to understand, are the scourge of those who wish to be good, and in the process sacrifice doing good. Those who hold up the goodness in life would rather be sacrificed for their goodness than to aim for victory which would allow the manifestation of goodness. It is in Yugoslavia, Serbia specifically, a place "which writes obscure things plain, which furnishes symbols for what the intellect has not yet formulated," where West is able to realize this indelible conflict in human existence that resonated severely in her time at the brink of the most destructive war in human history.
Today it seems that we - in the liberal community of the U.S. specifically - have forgotten how to think in the terms symbolized by the black lamb and grey falcon. We are caught in a despicable war in Iraq which has jaded many to the fundamental questions of goodness and what things are worth fighting for. In Serbia the question still lingers, even as many try and ignore it. The question of what the goodness worth fighting for is, who holds it, and which side is offering to work for its fulfillment still remains. Those we talked to on our short stay in Serbia are forced to deal with these questions as very few Americans ever are, and regardless of whether they choose to approach it nationalistically or otherwise, the fact that the questions still remain is important. As in Rebecca West's time, Serbia is still the place to go to grapple with the eternal problems of human existence.

From Sarajevo,
Brett

From Tirana to Belgrade

2008-07-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

Tirana had its charm, but after a few days in this messy metropolis Tim, Al and I were wanting to move on. We had seen all the sights - which are conveniently located along the Bulevardi Deshmorel - walked through the trendy neighborhoods - mainly located in what was once the exclusive stomping grounds of Albania's communist party leaders - and marveled at the good to comically bad architecture of Albania's seething capital city.

One of the highlights was visiting the Albanian national art gallery. Housed in a stark communist era box of a building, the museum displays a narrow spectrum of art - often dimly lit - ranging from giant socialist realist paintings to ancient iconography, with not much in between save for a few sculptures. Nevertheless the museum was quite possibly the most entertaining museum I have been to. The paintings were characterized, for the most part, by each ones inclusion of at least one weapon - gun, knife, saber - a heroically poised male - usually with fist tightly clenched in an attempt to convey male virility and power - and Albania's famously foreboding national flag - see it here. Photography, unfortunately, was not allowed, but since the gift store offered no way to buy even a postcard of one of the socialist realist paintings, we had no choice but to take a few shots when no one was looking - this task our Australian friend Tim readily accepted. Hopefully I can get those photos from Tim sooner than later and put them up on the blog.

We had a few favorite socialist realist paintings. One was of a mother breast feeding her child, her knitting needles set aside, replaced by a large rifle which she rested upon her knee. She sat before a farmhouse with a red door emblazoned with the black double eagle crest of Albania. Behind the farmhouse a dark storm was gathering. We also enjoyed a large painting of a muscular man with a cape straddling a tank about to throw a grenade down its hatch.

After perusing the museums modern collection we went into the iconography section. I am not very interested in early iconography. It doesn't really do anything for me although I appreciate the skill that was involved in making it. What I did find interesting in this section of the museum was what was behind a large iconography piece: a set of seven panels outlining a "master plan" for the redevelopment of Tirana. Included was a large 3D map of what the new Tirana will look like, the skyline ripe with futuristic curved glass buildings. The project looks a long way off, though with China as the obvious model for redevelopment things could start rolling sooner than later. Now all Albania needs is an Olympics to really spur development, though from my experience in Albania I think we won't be seeing Tirana host the games for a long long while.

From Tirana we decided to head to Montenegro to get back to the beach and away from abject poverty. We got a bus from Tirana to the border city of Shkoder, and from Shkoder we got a taxi to the tourist hub of Bar in Montenegro.

Maybe it was just the changing climate, but very soon after crossing the border I began to notice that Montenegro seemed much more green and lush than Albania. Thick foliage hugged both sides of the road. We drove through tunnels of greenery, a light canopy of trees hanging low above us until we emerged from these forests and could see our surroundings: high craggy mountains dusted with snow.

From Bar we traveled to our final destination: Kotor, a small town on a fjord set below towering peaks. After walking around a bit trying to find a suitably inexpensive place to stay we were approached by Marko, a friendly man who spoke no English but was somehow able to communicate to us that he had a room for let in the old walled city of Kotor. Al's heart was set on a hostel that was a few euros cheaper though we had heard some bad things about it, but we all agreed that staying inside the walled city, at least for the first night, at 10 euros a person was the best idea. Al got his wish the next night; more on that to follow shortly.

Kotor is a beautiful city with small twisting streets, ancient orthodox churches, and hopping bars and clubs. Not only is Kotor beautiful but the people who live there are also very beautiful as well. This goes for Montenegro as a whole. The women are tall and shapely, and they are not shy about flaunting their figures. This can often be a good thing, though many girls can push the fashion envelope too far, and end up looking like prostitutes. This lascivious dress code was present in Albania as well, although I thought the girls were often more dolled up and weren't able to get away with it as well as Montenegrins could.

Our second day in Kotor we made the 2 km trip down the road to the youth hostel Al originally wanted to stay at. We found the place in a state of total disrepair, apparently in the midst of remodeling. The receptionist was happy to book us into a 3-bedroom dorm though. We went to our room and found it to be dirty, with unwashed sheets and a few half-finished beer bottles strewn on the table. I went down to talk to the boss and try to bring the price down to 8 euro from 10. He thought my complaints humorous and said that someone would be up to clean the room in half-an-hour.

Tim, Al, and I didn't want to wait around so we went down to the beach and hung about soaking up the sun - responsibly with sunscreen - for most of the day. When the sun was setting and the temperature lower we climbed to the fortress high above the old town of Kotor; a long, steep hike that was in the end rewarding for the view down on the town and across the fjord from the top was incredible.

Late at night we returned to our hostel with a bet on whether our room was cleaned while we were gone. I said that it wouldn't be, and Al, always the optimist, thought it would be. We had 1 euro riding on the professionalism of the hostel.

I won the bet and so went down to talk to the smiling manager who seemed to think it funny that we were still willing to stay at the hostel. I told him that we would at least like clean sheets to which he responded "You want sheets?.... OK" and he took me into his office where he gave me a stack of sheets a bid me farewell - still smiling.

The next day we caught a bus to Durmitor National Park in the north east of the country. The drive was very long, and half of it was on a cramped minibus, but on arrival we knew we had made the right decision in going. The high country of Montenegro is like a less populated version of the Swiss alps, with high alpine meadows filled with wildflowers, giant craggy peaks, and many translucent lakes.

Al and I camped for 3 euro each a night, while Tim stayed in a room. We met up the next morning for Turkish coffee and pastry, before starting a long hike into the heart of Durmitor NP. Our goal was an "ice cave" below an imposing peak that resembled half-dome in Yosemite. The trail took us through some incredibly rugged terrain. Al and I shared crime-scene puzzle stories we had learned while in Israel with Tim as we bouldered up to our destination, and Tim reciprocated with more outlandish puzzles of his own.

We eventually made it to the cave. After a bit of cajoling Al and I climbed down into the ice cave. We were joined by a group of Czech backpackers who were more prepared to get into the cave than we were. We took some pictures with giant stalactite and stalagmite ice sickles, climbed out of the cave, and began our long journey back to town. We rewarded ourselves with a meat meal before Al and I returned in the dusk to our camp ground.

The next day we boarded a bus at 11 bound for Belgrade. We arrived in Belgrade at 8:30 PM, exhausted by the trip and began our search for the Chillton Hostel. After having no luck finding the place we asked a man who happily walked with us to the hostel. He had just graduated from University as a doctor, but due to the state of things in Serbia, was unemployed. He asked where we had come from and we told him Montenegro, to which he responded that he doesn't go to Montenegro any more because they don't want to be part of Serbia so he doesn't see the point in "supporting their economy". Already it was apparent that in this part of the world politics is a fact of life and cannot be easily ignored.

At our hostel we were greeted by two stunning Serbian girls, offered shots of some sort of local spirit which we accepted and then shown our rooms. We showered and headed out to get some food at a fast food chicken joint. We were tired so we went to bed fairly early at around 1 - most people stay up and party in Belgrade, or at least that is what we have heard.

That's the update. Check back soon for more.

From Belgrade,

Brett

Video Report From Gjirokaster

2008-06-26T06:37:00.000-07:00

Travel Writing Is Difficult (Especially in Albania)

2008-06-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

I committed to updating this blog from halfway across the earth and so far I have failed at it. I have many excuses which I can't get into because time is running out on my 1 euro an hour Internet allotment (excuse number one: limited time).

So far the trip has been great. Israel was a jam packed week full of fun and friends. I could write much about our time there but I think I'll pass; its been too long since we've been there and many things have happened since that clutter the memory. I will start at Greece, because that is where Western Civilization began, as well as, coincidentally, our trip.

To me Greece trod awkwardly between developed Western Europe and the less developed Eastern half. It is an EU country, which can explain much of its developed air, but it also has a long, conflict riddled history that can explain why it is rough around the edges. It has fully exploited tourist traps, with fairly unfriendly attendants and high prices to boot, but also offers rustic towns untouched by culturally greedy tourists. Athens is an especially shocking mix of the two worlds of prosperity and recalcitrance. The streets are clogged to the breaking point, and the sky is a repulsive brown that brings the act of breathing to full consciousness. The interesting tourist spots, especially the acropolis, are far too crowded. Tourists stream up the side of the mountain to have a glimpse of the ancient monuments, but through all the mass of humanity the sense of wonder that I feel such monuments should command was lost.

We left Athens for Delphi, a more remote location, hoping that we might be able to escape to ancient ruins on a more human scale. Our camping experience at Delphi was quite nice, and our long walks to town through the semi-arid Grecian country side were enjoyable, but I still had the feeling that every experience was being created and conditioned for us tourists. So we left Athens and Delphi for the northern island of Corfu. The trip was long, but luckily we found a deal where we paid 55 euro for an overnight bus trip and one night at the famous (or infamous) Pink Palace Hostel, which included breakfast and dinner. We were greeted on our arrival at 7 in the morning with a shot of pink ouzo, a traditional Grecian spirit.

Corfu turned out to be quite nice though. The beaches were beautiful and we took full advantage of them. Both Al and I still felt a need to escape the manufactured landscapes of touristdom for the "true Greece" so we decided to take a hike. We set our sights on a tall mountain that towered over our hostel, and after several hours of navigating our way up windy country roads and through quaint towns we reached our goal; with no water. The weather was almost unbearably hot and I began to get nervous about our situation, but luckily we came across what appeared to be an abandoned hotel on top of the mountain which had a working faucet with running water.

Back at our hostel we ate dinner and met an Australian that was exactly like our friend Wade Orbelian - and they shared the same astrological sign too - and prepared for our early morning departure from Corfu to the seaside port of Saranda in Albania.

I knew that I liked Albania the moment we stepped off our small boat. For a week I had been used to feeling like a grudgingly welcomed tourist. All that changed in Albania. Immediately I got the sense that the people were excited to meet and talk to us, to help if we needed help. We walked with three other English speaking refuges from the Pink Palace to find an elusive tourist office supposedly located on the first floor of the city hall. Without street names and few English speakers the task is nearly impossible. So instead we called a hostel that one of our new travel buddies, Tim from Melbourne, Australia, had already booked. The Irish proprietor of the place was very accommodating, picking us up near where we were lost and taking us to her recently opened hostel.

After setting our bags aside Al, I and our two fellow travelers, Delia from Long Island and Tessa from Arizona, decided to travel to the ancient ruined city of Butrint, a half-hour from Saranda by bus.

Virgil claimed that Butrint was founded by refuges from Troy. This may or may not be true. What is known about the place is that it was inhabited by Greeks, Romans, Peasants and Venetians for over 2000 years. The place was completely antithetical to the tourist spots we had visited in Greece. Few tourists were present, it was hidden within a labyrinth of thick trees and foliage, and the ruins were remarkably intact. We wandered through the well labeled site for a few hours before heading back to Saranda to watch Eurocup football at a beach-front restaurant - the only way to watch soccer.

Our second day in Albania we alloted for a day trip to Gjirokaster, the birthplace of both Albania's most famous writer, Ismail Kadare, and its infamous communist dictator, Enver Hoxha. The old city's defining characteristic is the roofs of its houses, which are constructed with what appeared to be gray slate, giving the town a distinctly ominous look. Above the city sits a 14th century citadel completely open for exploration, though many dark recesses require some sort of light source in order to explore thoroughly. Me, Al and our new traveling buddy Tim (Tessa and Delia had to return back to Greece) climbed all around this stone monstrosity, down rickety wooden ladders, leaving time to stop by a hidden bar where we managed to somewhat communicate with the affable bartender.

One thing that must be mentioned is the state of transportation in Albania. Rail is basically non-existent so the main source of transportation is by bus, scooter, or Mercedes-Benz. The first two are straight forward, the last, not so much. We learned shortly after being in Albania that in the chaos of the 90's there was a full scale vehicle theft racket being run out of Albania which brought thousands of Benz's from Western Europe to the everyday-man of Albania.

If you can't get your hands on a Benz then you must settle for a bus or a forgon - small minibus - that can take you anywhere across the country, at a very slow pace. Due to the state of the roads in Albania, moving 40 km takes around 2 1/2, making every trip a long trip. Our drive from Saranda to Berat took around 6 1/2 hours, a long time on a 70's era bus with limited A/C. We made it though, arriving exhausted at Hotel Mangalemi, which turned out to be a great hotel. For around $16 a night we got a great room and a very nice breakfast. The food was traditional and delicious; though we made sure to stay away from more exotic meat varieties which included heart, brain, and spleen. The owner, Tomi, had purchased the building immediately after the fall of communism, beginning with a restaurant before expanding to include accommodations. It was clear from the way he and his family ran the place that entrepreneurial spirit and good taste were not all lost in the dreadful years of communism.

From Berat we traveled to Tirana, the capital of Albania. The south of the country where we had arrived is sparsely populated next to the north. It mostly consists of farmland. Driving on the decrepit road from Berat we began to see what lived-in Albania is like. Like in the south, small, often incomplete concrete buildings are scattered along the roadside, though in the north they are more densely packed in. Often the bottom floors feature a "Bar/Kafe" which serve various coffee drinks and alcohol. The top floors are where people live, their laundry strung across the side of the building often accompanied by a doll or stuffed animal dangling from a window - we think these strange dolls might be there to scare of birds, but we don't know. Across the country, seemingly randomly placed, are thousands of small (but sometimes large) domed concrete bunkers, holdovers from a period when the communist government was scared of a possible invasion and commanded the creation of this bizarre patchwork of defensive hideouts.

Aside from the "Bar/Kafe's" and bunkers, the roadsides are often littered with trash. Only in a few cities have we noticed any effort to clean up litter. Berat was mostly clean, and Tirana seems to have a methodical street cleaning operation going, employing older women with very long brooms. It seems though that in general there is a fairly indifferent attitude to the heaps of trash laying about Albania; something that will probably need to change if Albanians want to attract more than the intrepid tourist.

We arrived in Tirana at 3 PM. So far from what I can tell, Tirana is as strange as our guidebook says it is. We drove through the city - in a taxi we hired to find our hostel - along a wide street flanking a cemented river basin, its banks landscaped with grass. The tall housing complexes that loomed over us on our drive were all brightly colored with geometric patterns and shapes. After checking in at our hostel and trying to stay cool till nightfall, me, Al, Tim and two other Bay Area people we met at our hostel decided to go out and see what the nightlife in Tirana is all about. We walked to the section of town that was once reserved exclusively for communist party members, down streets with street lights planted in the ground as opposed to above our heads. These lights, which were reminiscent of swimming pool lights, had a classy look but were totally ineffectual at doing what they ought to: keep the streets lit. Instead they mainly brightened the bumpers of parked cars.

We searched the dark streets for a trendy bar, of which there were many. It was shocking how chic the bars were, and how sparsely peopled they were as well. A few had scattered groups of men, possibly with a woman or two but mostly without. We finally settled on a bar with a large projection screen placed in the street showing "The Mask of Zorro" with Albanian subtitles. We had a round of beers and stayed long enough to witness a power failure.

This morning I awoke to the loudest traffic noise I have ever heard. It comes in waves: it will be peaceful and quiet before traffic horns crescendo.

Today we will go visit the sights and I will report back hopefully sooner than later, depending on the availability of Internet.

From Tirana,
Brett

Point A to Point B

2008-05-30T23:07:00.000-07:00

So I think I will try and turn this blog into a travel log over the next few months. Why you ask? Because I will be traveling in some very interesting places and thought others might like to keep tabs. Also, writing about my time might put this trip in a reflective context which usually comes a few months after a trip. I think it will be good for me to do some writing while I'm over there; it stimulates the mind and gives some real good material to reminisce from.

The question then is, how will I accomplish this travel log while out and about and without a computer? That bridge will have to be crossed when we get to it; the sooner the better, I'm ready to begin this trip.

A little about the trip:

My friend Alexander and I will be flying from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv and going on a 10-day all expenses paid "tour" of Israel via Birthright. It should be quite an interesting experience. After this we skip across the Aegean on June 16 to Athens. From there we will be traveling through Greece, then into rustic Albania, up through Montenegro to Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina then down to Croatia and over to Italy. From Italy we will travel to Austria, Czech Republic, and then Berlin, Germany.

The plans our tentative - my nervousness has already set in. But I'm glad to say I only have had a couple nightmares. Anyway, the point is that The Main Issue is now traveling, and it won't be back until August.

-Brett

To Know And Not To Do Is Not To Know

2008-05-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

by Ralph Nader

Mountain View, California - An invitation to visit Google's headquarters and meet some of the people who made this ten year old giant that is giving Microsoft the nervies has to start with wonder.

The "campus" keeps spreading with the growth of Google into more and more fields, even though advertising revenue still comprises over 90 percent of its total revenues. The company wants to "change the world," make all information digital and accessible through Google. Its company motto-is "Do No Evil," which comes under increasing scrutiny, especially in the firm's business with the national security state in Washington, D.C. and with the censors of Red China.

Google's two founders out of Stanford graduate school -Sergey Brin and Larry Page-place the highest premium on hiring smart, motivated people who provide their own edge and work their own hours.

We were given "the tour" before entering a large space to be asked and answer questions before an audience of wunderkinds. E-mail traffic was monitored worldwide with a variety of electronic globes with various lights marking which countries were experiencing high or low traffic. Africa was the least lit. One of our photographers started to take a picture but was politely waved away with a few proprietary words. A new breed of trade secrets.

I noticed all the places where food-free and nutritious-was available. The guide said that food is no further than 150 feet from any workplace. "How can they keep their weight down with all these tempting repasts?" I asked. "Wait," he said, leading us toward a large room where an almost eerie silence surrounded dozens of exercising Googlelites going through their solitary motions at 3:45 in the afternoon.

"How many hours do they work?" one of my colleagues asked. "We don't really know. As long as they want to," came the response.

In the amphitheatre, the director of communications and I started a Q and A, followed by more questions from the audience. It was followed by a YouTube interview. You can see both of them on: (Q&A) http://youtube.com/watch?v=KR-V6bl41zU and (Interview) http://youtube.com/watch?v=zzUrUNhIj4c&feature=related.

Google is a gigantic information means, bedecked with ever complex software, to what end? Information ideally leads to knowledge, then to judgment, then to wisdom and then to some action. As the ancient Chinese proverb succinctly put it-"To know and not to do is not to know."

But what happens when a company is riding an ever rising crest of digitized information avalanches without being able to catch its breath and ask, "information for what?" I commented that we have had more information available in the last twenty five years, though our country and world seem to be getting worse overall; measured by indicators of the human condition. With information being the "currency of democracy," conditions should be improving across the board.

"Knowledge for what?" I asked. Well, for starters, Google is trying to figure out how to put on its own Presidential debates, starting with one in New Orleans in the autumn. Certainly it can deliver an internet audience of considerable size. But will the major candidates balk if there are other candidates meeting criteria such as a majority of Americans wanting them to participate?

The present Commission on Presidential Debates is a private nonprofit corporation created and controlled by the Republican and Democratic Parties (see http://opendebates.org/). They do not want other seats on the stage and the television networks follow along with this exclusionary format.

Google, with its own Foundation looking for creative applications that produce results for the well-being of people, should hold regular public hearings on the ground around the country for ideas. They may be surprised by what people propose.

In any event, the examples of knowing but not doing are everywhere. More people succumbed to tuberculosis in the world last year than ten years ago. Medical scientists learned how to treat TB nearly fifty years ago. Knowledge alone is not enough.

For years the technology to present the up-to-date voting record of each member of Congress has been available. Yet only about a dozen legislators do so, led by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Chris Shays (R-CT). Recalcitrant power blocks what people most want directly from their lawmakers' website. Here Google can make the difference with Capitol Hill, if it wants to connect information technology to informed voters.

When the internet began, some of us thought that it would make it easy and cheap for people to band together for bargaining and lobbying as consumers. At last, the big banks, insurance companies, credit card companies, automobile firms and so forth would have organized countervailing consumer power with millions of members and ample full time staffs. It has not happened.

Clearly technology and information by themselves do not produce beneficial change. That depends on how decentralized political, economic and social power is exercised in a corporate society where the few decide for the many.

I left Google hoping for a more extensive follow-up conversation, grounded in Marcus Cicero's assertion, over 2000 years ago, that "Freedom is participation in power." That is what connects knowledge to beneficial action, if people have that freedom.

I hope my discussions with the Google staff produced some food for thought that percolates up the organization to Google's leaders.

Syria and Israel Talk (Have Been Talking)

2008-05-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

I'll admit up front that I have neither the knowledge nor the experience to give an informative analysis of the recent acknowledgment of ongoing peace negotiations between Israel and Syria. Basically I don't completely understand how diplomatic relations should work; I'm a relative tenderfoot when it comes to international relations. Even so what I can offer is some perspective on the situation, and a reminder of why it is foolish to pay any attention to what politicians say.
Lets think back to just a few days ago and formulate a few assumptions that would have seemed reasonable enough to hold back then. Firstly, as President Bush pointed out, it would have been apt to assume that those talking to "terrorists" were appeasers, at least in the eyes of this administration. Secondly, when considering Jimmy Carter's recent trip to the Levant, one would have been right in thinking that Israel had no interest, was even hostile, to the idea of negotiating with their enemies. The government of Israel was adamantly against the idea of Carter's talks in Syria, possibly leading to Shin Bet's - the Israeli secret service - refusal to coordinate security with Mr. Carter's security detail, an unprecedented snub. Lastly, the axis of evil rhetoric combined with condemnations of Syrian influence in Lebanon should have dissuaded most from considering Israel to be negotiating with their supposed adversary.
Today we all have become a little wiser to the reality of our crazy geopolitical world, where enemies become friends overnight and even terrorists are forgiven (and sometimes become powerful politicians). Not only were we foolish to scoff at the idea of negotiations in the future, we were naive to think that negotiations weren't in progress - for more than a year actually, in Turkey.
I'll admit that I wasn't entirely caught off guard by this negotiation revelation. There are plenty of examples of Israel, for example, talking to their most vilified enemies. Hamas was courted by the Israel Defense Force in the early naughties, and talks are most probably - and hear I am preempting our next negotiation surprise - ongoing.
Even the Bush administration is not above talking, funding, and arming the "terrorists" - defined, circa 9/11, as Sunni fundamentalists apposed to U.S. policy in the Middle East - as reported by Seymour Hersh and others.
What we must remember is that it is no good listening to politicians. They have their own agenda, and telling the truth is not on it. These latest peace talks could be good, but they also may not work. Prime Minister Olmert of Israel is in a precarious situation, with a corruption investigation nipping at his heals, a shaky coalition government and an unhappy populous. The talks might also work out, and then peace with Syria may be used as a leverage to get even more from the constantly demeaned Palestinians. Who knows what will happen. What we can be certain of is that for Syria a peace deal is coveted to shore up the ruling dictatorship of Mr. Assad, and for Israel it is meant to change Israel's pariah status with many of its neighbors, further isolate the stateless Palestinians and force them into compromises, and allow Israeli's to drive to Paris. This is a simplification but it is more than you will learn from any of the negotiating partners.

Brilliant!

2008-05-14T22:20:00.001-07:00

Ok, ok, so I've loaded this blog as of late with tons of clips, articles, and analysis on Nader. Yes it might be a little too much, but I hope it has all been well received. Anyway, this latest clip (gem) that I discovered is probably one of the best, most fearless, speeches I have seen Mr. Nader give. It is a must watch, as in, you've got to watch it. Let me just say that it involves Nader speaking at google, the technology mecca of the world by all accounts, criticizing the information age for its inability to contribute to the political life of this country. After this I promise to temper my posting on all things Nader, at least until we get closer to the election.

Nader at the Roxie in San Francisco

2008-05-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a video of part of the Nader '08 rally at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco that I was lucky enough to attend. Enjoy!

Hamas: We are not engaged in a religious conflict with Jews; this is a political struggle

2008-05-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

This article originally appeared in the Guardian UK (here). It was written by Bassem Naeem, the minister of health and information in Hamas-led Gaza.

As the Palestinian people prepare to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba ("catastrophe") - the dispossession and expulsion of most of our people from our land - those remaining in Palestine face escalating aggression, killings, imprisonment, ethnic cleansing and siege. But instead of support and solidarity from the western media, we face frequent attempts to defend the indefensible or turn fire on the Palestinians themselves.

One recent approach, which seems to be part of the wider attempt to isolate the elected Palestinian leadership, is to portray Hamas and the population of the Gaza strip as motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than a hostility to Zionist occupation and domination of our land. A recent front page article in the International Herald Tribune followed this line, as did an article for Cif about an item broadcast on the al-Aqsa satellite TV channnel about the Nazi Holocaust.

In fact, the al-Aqsa Channel is an independent media institution that often does not express the views of the Palestinian government headed by Ismail Haniyeh or of the Hamas movement. The channel regularly gives Palestinians of different convictions the chance to express views that are not shared by the Palestinian government or the Hamas movement. In the case of the opinion expressed on al-Aqsa TV by Amin Dabbur, it is his alone and he is solely responsible for it.

It is rather surprising to us that so little attention, if any, is given by the western media to what is regularly broadcast or written in the Israeli media by politicians and writers demanding the total uprooting or "transfer" of the Palestinian people from their land.

The Israeli media and pro-Israel western press are full of views that deny or seek to excuse well-established facts of history including the Nakba of 1948 and the massacres perpetrated then by the Haganah, the Irgun and LEHI with the objective of forcing a mass dispossession of the Palestinians.

But it should be made clear that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian government in Gaza denies the Nazi Holocaust. The Holocaust was not only a crime against humanity but one of the most abhorrent crimes in modern history. We condemn it as we condemn every abuse of humanity and all forms of discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender or nationality.

And at the same time as we unreservedly condemn the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe, we categorically reject the exploitation of the Holocaust by the Zionists to justify their crimes and harness international acceptance of the campaign of ethnic cleansing and subjection they have been waging against us - to the point where in February the Israeli deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai threatened the people of Gaza with a "holocaust".

Within 24 hours, 61 Palestinians - more than half of them civilians and a quarter children - were killed in a series of air raids. Meanwhile, a horrible crime against humanity continues to be perpetrated against the people of Gaza: the two-year-old siege imposed after Hamas won the legislative elections in January 2006, which is causing great suffering. Due to severe shortages of medicines and food, scores of Palestinians have lost their lives.

It cannot be right that Europeans in general and the British in particular maintain a virtual silence toward what the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians, let alone supporting or justifying their oppressive policies, under the pretext of showing sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust.

The Palestinian people aspire to freedom, independence and peaceful coexistence with all their neighbours. There are, today, more than six million Palestinian refugees. No less than 700,000 Palestinians have been detained at least once by the Israeli occupation authorities since 1967. Hundreds of thousands have so far been killed or wounded. Little concern seems to be caused by all of this or by the erection of an apartheid wall that swallows more than 20% of the West Bank land or the heavily armed colonies that devour Palestinian land in a blatant violation of international law.

The plight of our people is not the product of a religious conflict between us and the Jews in Palestine or anywhere else: the aims and positions of today's Hamas have been repeatedly spelled out by its leadership, for example in Hamas's 2006 programme for government. The conflict is of a purely political nature: it is between a people who have come under occupation and an oppressive occupying power.

Our right to resistance against occupation is recognised by all conventions and religious traditions. The Jews are for us the people of a sacred book who suffered persecution in European lands. Whenever they sought refuge, Muslim and Arab lands provided them with safe havens. It was in our midst that they enjoyed peace and prosperity; many of them held leading positions in Muslim countries.

After almost a century of Zionist colonial and racist oppression, some Palestinians find it hard to imagine that some of their oppressors are the sons and daughters of those who were themselves oppressed and massacred.

Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust but find themselves punished for someone else's crime. But we are well aware and warmly welcome the outspoken support for Palestinian rights by Israeli and Jewish human rights activists in Palestine and around the world.

We hope that journalists in the west will begin to adopt a more objective approach when covering events in Palestine. The Palestinian people are being killed by Israel's machine of destruction on a daily basis. Nevertheless, we still see a clear bias in favour of Israel in the western media.

The Europeans bear a direct responsibility for what is befalling the Palestinians today. Britain was the mandate authority that handed over Palestine to Israeli occupation. Nazi Germany perpetrated the most heinous crimes against Jews, forcing the survivors to migrate to Palestine in pursuit of safety. We, therefore, expect the Europeans to atone for their historic crimes by restoring some balance to the inhuman and one-sided international response to the tragedy of our people.

Wish You Were Here: Nader Speaks in San Francisco

2008-05-11T21:48:00.000-07:00

The truly inspiring political speech has become increasingly difficult to come by. Millions were moved in the 60's by a plethora of activists who challenged people to wake up and become active in their roles as citizens in democracy. But sadly the heyday of empowering speeches has come and gone. Today we have few who can draw a large crowd and even fewer politicians that can draw crowds wearing anything but three-piece executive suits. Sure Barack Obama has many flocking to stadiums to see and hear him speak, has them enraptured with his "post-partisan" rhetoric of change, ecstatic as he promises the dawning of a new day in Washington. Yet I have noticed from the beginning of his camaign that there is a conspicuous lack of substance in Obama's message, that below all the feel-good rhetoric is policy, and that Mr. Obama's policy is based on a perspective and ideology that portends a continuation of militarism, corporatism, and bad government(ism). If history is any judge, it is assured that we will reap what we sow, or, in other words, if we support messianic orators with no progressive policy agenda to speak of, the next president will not work on the peoples behalf. And if the president we vote for is promising a continuation of failed policy, guess what we will get? Lets just say Iraq war veterans will be returning in 2050 - after their 100th tour of duty - to a country without a viable healthcare system.
Well fortunately there are other presidential contenders drawing crowds. Tonight I was lucky enough to get to attend a speech by the only candidate in the race running on no-brainer policies supported by the majority of Americans. What I discovered from this night listening to Ralph Nader - among others - speak at The Roxie theatre in San Francisco, was that talking about issues that matter is so much more inspiring than hearing the same old empty promises of mainstream politicians. Not only inspiring, it was educational. By the time Mr. Nader was half-way done with his speech, there was no way that one could possibly comprehend voting for one of the democrats.
It was not only the die-hards that were moved by Ralph's impassioned arguments for an involved citizenry and real democracy in the U.S. My mom, who I brought along with me for mothers day, conceded while we were walking in to the venue that she liked Nader but "she was going to vote for Obama." By the end of the night she had donated $100 dollars to his campaign and was wondering aloud how anyone could possibly vote for Obama or Hillary, or Nancy Pelosi for that matter, after hearing Nader speak. I think this is a testament to the power of Nader's candidacy. I think that anyone with an open mind, with the best intentions of this country at heart, and willing to listen to Nader, will think hard about voting for anyone else.
Politics has been made into a dirty word as of late, and it is a real tragedy. The cynicism rampant in this country both depresses and makes the possibility of a better future seem ever more elusive. We may not change the world, but to me, just making an effort is enough; making an effort is fulfilling. The first step is to work to hold people (Democrats) accountable, something clearly articulated by Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzalez, and, hopeful Nancy Pelosi replacement, Cindy Sheehan. I hope all my readers will take it upon themselves to learn why bringing accountability to Washington is of the utmost importance, and why voting for Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez may be our best hope of accomplishing it.

The Iranian Chessboard

2008-05-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

Five ways to think about Iran under the gun, without the American filter in place.

By Pepe Escobar
Reposted from the original Mother Jones article here.

More than two years ago, Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker how George W. Bush was considering strategic nuclear strikes against Iran. Ever since, a campaign to demonize that country has proceeded in a relentless, Terminator-like way, applying the same techniques and semantic contortions that were so familiar in the period before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq.

The campaign's greatest hits are widely known: "The ayatollahs" are building a Shi'ite nuclear bomb; Iranian weapons are killing American soldiers in Iraq; Iranian gunboats are provoking U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf—Iran, in short, is the new al-Qaeda, a terror state aimed at the heart of the United States. It's idle to expect the American mainstream media to offer any tools that might put this orchestrated blitzkrieg in context.

Here are just a few recent instances of the ongoing campaign: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insists that Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons." Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admits that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" when it comes to Iran. In tandem with U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus, Mullen denounces Iran's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq, although he claims to harbor "no expectations" of an attack on Iran "in the immediate future" and even admits he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved."

But keep in mind one thing the Great Saddam Take-out of 2003 proved: that a "smoking gun" is, in the end, irrelevant. And this week, the U.S. is ominously floating a second aircraft carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf.

But what of Iran itself under the blizzard of charges and threats? What to make of it? What does the world look like from Tehran? Here are five ways to think about Iran under the gun and to better decode the Iranian chessboard.

1. Don't underestimate the power of Shi'ite Islam: Seventy-five percent of the world's oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf. Seventy percent of the Gulf's population is Shi'ite. Shi'ism is an eschatological—and revolutionary—religion, fueled by a passionate mixture of romanticism and cosmic despair. As much as it may instill fear in hegemonic Sunni Islam, some Westerners should feel a certain empathy for intellectual Shi'ism's almost Sartrean nausea towards the vacuous material world.

For more than a thousand years Shi'ite Islam has, in fact, been a galaxy of Shi'isms—a kind of Fourth World of its own, always cursed by political exclusion and implacable economic marginalization, always carrying an immensely dramatic view of history with it.

It's impossible to understand Iran without grasping the contradiction that the Iranian religious leadership faces in ruling, however fractiously, a nation state. In the minds of Iran's religious leaders, the very concept of the nation-state is regarded with deep suspicion, because it detracts from the umma, the global Muslim community. The nation-state, as they see it, is but a way station on the road to the final triumph of Shi'ism and pure Islam. To venture beyond the present stage of history, however, they also recognize the necessity of reinforcing the nation-state that offers Shi'ism a sanctuary—and that, of course, happens to be Iran. When Shi'ism finally triumphs, the concept of nation-state—a heritage, in any case, of the West—will disappear, replaced by a community organized according to the will of Prophet Muhammad.

In the right context, this is, believe me, a powerful message. I briefly became a mashti—a pilgrim visiting a privileged Shi'ite gateway to Paradise, the holy shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, four hours west of the Iran-Afghan border. At sunset, the only foreigner lost in a pious multitude of black chadors and white turbans occupying every square inch of the huge walled shrine, I felt a tremendous emotional jolt. And I wasn't even a believer, just a simple infidel.

2. Geography is destiny: Whenever I go to the holy city of Qom, bordering the central deserts in Iran, I am always reminded, in no uncertain terms, that, as far as the major ayatollahs are concerned, their supreme mission is to convert the rest of Islam to the original purity and revolutionary power of Shi'ism—a religion invariably critical of the established social and political order.

Even a Shi'ite leader in Tehran, however, can't simply live by preaching and conversion alone. Iran, after all, happens to be a nation-state at the crucial intersection of the Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Indian worlds. It is the key transit point of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent. It lies between three seas (the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and the sea of Oman). Close to Europe and yet at the gates of Asia (in fact part of Southwest Asia), Iran is the ultimate Eurasian crossroads. Isfahan, the country's third largest city, is roughly equidistant from Paris and Shanghai. No wonder Dick Cheney, checking out Iran, "salivates like a Pavlov dog" (to quote those rock 'n roll geopoliticians, the Rolling Stones).

Members of the Iranian upper middle classes in North Tehran might spin dreams of Iran recapturing the expansive range of influence once held by the Persian empire; but the silky, Qom-carpet-like diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will assure you that what they really dream of is an Iran respected as a major regional power. To this end, they have little choice, faced with the enmity of the globe's "sole superpower," but to employ a sophisticated counter-encirclement foreign policy. After all, Iran is now completely surrounded by post-9/11 American military bases in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iraq, and the Gulf states. It faces the U.S. military on its Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Persian Gulf borders, and lives with ever tightening U.S. economic sanctions, as well as a continuing drumbeat of Bush administration threats involving possible air assaults on Iranian nuclear (and probably other) facilities.

The Iranian counter-response to sanctions and to its demonization as a rogue or pariah state has been to develop a "Look East" foreign policy that is, in itself, a challenge to American energy hegemony in the Gulf. The policy has been conducted with great skill by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was educated in Bangalore, India. While focused on massive energy deals with China, India, and Pakistan, it looks as well to Africa and Latin America. To the horror of American neocons, an intercontinental "axis of evil" air link already exists—a weekly commercial Tehran-Caracas flight via Iran Air.

Iran's diplomatic (and energy) reach is now striking. When I was in Bolivia early this year, I learned of a tour Iran's ambassador to Venezuela had taken on the jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The ambassador reportedly offered Morales "everything he wanted" to offset the influence of "American imperialism."

Meanwhile, a fierce energy competition is developing among the Turks, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, and Americans—all placing their bets on which future trade routes will be the crucial ones as oil and natural gas flow out of Central Asia. As a player, Iran is trying to position itself as the unavoidable bazaar-state in an oil-and-gas-fueled New Silk Road—the backbone of a new Asian Energy Security Grid. That's how it could recover some of the preeminence it enjoyed in the distant era of Darius, the King of Kings. And that's the main reason why U.S. neo-Cold Warriors, Zio-cons, armchair imperialists, or all of the above, are throwing such a collective—and threatening—fit.

3. What is the nuclear "new Hitler" Ahmadinejad up to?: Ever since the days when former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami suggested a "dialogue of civilizations," Iranian diplomats have endlessly repeated the official position on Iran's nuclear program: It's peaceful; the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no proof of the military development of nuclear power; the religious leadership opposes atomic weapons; and Iran—unlike the US—has not invaded or attacked any nation for the past quarter millennium.

Think of George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new Blues Brothers: Both believe they are on a mission from God. Both are religious fundamentalists. Ahmadinejad believes fervently in the imminent return of the Mahdi, the Shi'ite messiah, who "disappeared" and has remained hidden since the ninth century. Bush believes fervently in a coming end time and the return of Jesus Christ. But only Bush, despite his actual invasions and constant threats, gets a (sort of) free pass from the Western ideological machine, while Ahmadinejad is portrayed as a Hitlerian believer in a new Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad is relentlessly depicted as an angry, totally irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who wants to "wipe Israel off the map." That infamous quote, repeated ad nauseam but out of context, comes from an October 2005 speech at an obscure anti-Zionist student conference. What Ahmadinejad really said, in a literal translation from Farsi, was that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time." He was actually quoting the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, who said it first in the early 1980s. Khomeini hoped that a regime so unjust toward the Palestinians would be replaced by another more equitable one. He was not, however, threatening to nuke Israel.

In the 1980s, in the bitterest years of the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini also made it very clear that the production, possession, or use of nuclear weapons is against Islam. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later issued a fatwa—a religious injunction—under the same terms. For the theocratic regime, however, the Iranian nuclear program is a powerful symbol of independence vis-à-vis what is still widely considered by Iranians of all social classes and educational backgrounds as Anglo-Saxon colonialism.

Ahmadinejad is mad for the Iranian nuclear program. It's his bread and butter in terms of domestic popularity. During the Iran-Iraq War, he was a member of a support team aiding anti-Saddam Hussein Kurdish forces. (That's when he became friends with "Uncle" Jalal Talabani, now the Kurdish president of Iraq.) Not many presidents have been trained in guerrilla warfare. Speculation is rampant in Tehran that Ahmadinejad, the leadership of the Quds Force, an elite division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), plus the hardcore volunteer militia, the Basij (informally known in Iran as "the army of twenty million") are betting on a U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities to strengthen the country's theocratic regime and their faction of it.

Reformists refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran last October, when he was received by the Supreme Leader (a very rare honor). Putin offered a new plan to resolve the explosive Iranian nuclear dossier: Iran would halt nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil in return for peaceful nuclear cooperation and development in league with Russia, the Europeans, and the IAEA.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator of that moment, Ali Larijani, a confidant of Supreme Leader Khamenei, as well as the Leader himself let it be known that the idea would be seriously considered. But Ahmadinejad immediately contradicted the Supreme Leader in public. Even more startling, yet evidently with the Leader's acquiescence, he then sacked Larijani and replaced him with a longtime friend, Saeed Jalili, an ideological hardliner.

4. A velvet revolution is not around the corner: Before the 2005 Iranian elections, at a secret, high-level meeting of the ruling ayatollahs in his house, the Supreme Leader concluded that Ahmadinejad would be able to revive the regime with his populist rhetoric and pious conservatism, which then seemed very appealing to the downtrodden masses. (Curiously enough, Ahmadinejad's campaign motto was: "We can.")

But the ruling ayatollahs miscalculated. Since they controlled all key levers of power—the Supreme National Security Council, the Council of Guardians, the Judiciary, the bonyads (Islamic foundations that control vast sections of the economy), the army, the IRGC (the parallel army created by Khomeini in 1979 and recently branded a terrorist organization by the Bush administration), the media—they assumed they would also control the self-described "street cleaner of the people." How wrong they have been.

For Khamenei himself, this was big business. After 18 years of non-stop internal struggle, he was finally in full control of executive power, as well as of the legislature, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, and the key ayatollahs in Qom.

Ahmadinejad, for his part, unleashed his own agenda. He purged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of many reformist-minded diplomats; encouraged the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to crackdown on all forms of "nefarious" Western influences, from entertainment industry products to colorful made-in-India scarves for women; and filled his cabinet with revolutionary friends from the Iran-Iraq War days. These friends proved to be as faithful as administratively incompetent—especially in terms of economic policy. Instead of solidifying the theocratic leadership under Supreme Leader Khamenei, Ahmadinejad increasingly fractured an increasingly unpopular ruling elite.

Nonetheless, discontent with Ahmadinejad's economic incompetence has not translated into street barricades and it probably will not; nor, contrary to neocon fantasyland scenarios, would an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities provoke a popular uprising. Every single political faction supports the nuclear program out of patriotic pride.

There is surely a glaring paradox here. The regime may be wildly unpopular—because of so much enforced austerity in an energy-rich land and the virtual absence of social mobility—but for millions, especially in the countryside and the remote provinces, life is still bearable. In the large urban centers—Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz—most would be in favor of a move toward a more market-oriented economy combined with a progressive liberalization of mores (even as the regime insists on going the other way). No velvet revolution, however, seems to be on the horizon.

At least four main factions are at play in the intricate Persian-miniature-like game of today's Iranian power politics—and two others, the revolutionary left and the secular right, even though thoroughly marginalized, shouldn't be forgotten either.

The extreme right, very religiously conservative but economically socialist, has, from the beginning, been closely aligned with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmadinejad is the star of this faction.

The clerics, from the Supreme Leader to thousands of provincial religious figures, are pure conservatives, even more patriotic than the extreme right, yet generally no lovers of Ahmadinejad. But there is a crucial internal split. The substantially wealthy bonyads—the Islamic foundations, active in all economic sectors—badly want a reconciliation with the West. They know that, under the pressure of Western sanctions, the relentless flight of both capital and brains is working against the national interest.

Economists in Tehran project there may be as much as $600 billion in Iranian funds invested in the economies of Persian Gulf petro-monarchies. The best and the brightest continue to flee the country. But the Islamic foundations also know that this state of affairs slowly undermines Ahmadinejad's power.

The extremely influential Revolutionary Guard Corps, a key component of government with vast economic interests, transits between these two factions. They privilege the fight against what they define as Zionism, are in favor of close relations with Sunni Arab states, and want to go all the way with the nuclear program. In fact, substantial sections of the IRGC and the Basij believe Iran must enter the nuclear club not only to prevent an attack by the "American Satan," but to irreversibly change the balance of power in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

The current reformists/progressives of the left were originally former partisans of Khomeini's son, Ahmad Khomeini. Later, after a spectacular mutation from Soviet-style socialism to some sort of religious democracy, their new icon became former President Khatami (of "dialogue of civilizations" fame). Here, after all, was an Islamic president who had captured the youth vote and the women's vote and had written about the ideas of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas as applied to civil society as well as the possibility of democratization in Iran. Unfortunately, his "Tehran Spring" didn't last long—and is now long gone.

The key establishment faction is undoubtedly that of moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-term President, current chairman of the Expediency Council and a key member of the Council of Experts—86 clerics, no women, the Holy Grail of the system, and the only institution in the Islamic Republic capable of removing the Supreme Leader from office. He is now supported by the intelligentsia and urban youth. Colloquially known as "The Shark," Rafsanjani is the consummate Machiavellian. He retains privileged ties to key Washington players and has proven to be the ultimate survivor—moving like a skilled juggler between Khatami and Khamenei as power in the country shifted.

Rafsanjani is, and will always remain, a supporter of the Supreme Leader. As the regime's de facto number two, his quest is not only to "save" the Islamic Revolution, but also to consolidate Iran's regional power and reconcile the country with the West. His reasoning is clear: He knows that an anti-Islamic tempest is already brewing among the young in Iran's major cities, who dream of integrating with the nomad elites of liquid global modernity.

If the Bush administration had any real desire to let its aircraft carriers float out of the Gulf and establish an entente cordiale with Tehran, Rafsanjani would be the man to talk to.

5. Heading down the New Silk Road

Reformist friends in Tehran keep telling me the country is now immersed in an atmosphere similar to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China or the 1980s rectification campaign in Cuba—and nothing "velvet" or "orange" or "tulip" or any of the other color-coded Western-style movements that Washington might dream of is, as yet, on the horizon.

Under such conditions, what if there were an American air attack on Iran? The Supreme Leader, on the record, offered his own version of threats in 2006. If Iran were attacked, he said, the retaliation would be doubly powerful against U.S. interests elsewhere in the world.

From American supply lines and bases in southern Iraq to the Straits of Hormuz, the Iranians, though no military powerhouse, do have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests—and certainly to drive the price of oil into the stratosphere. Such a "war" would clearly be a disaster for everyone.

The Iranian theocratic leadership, however, seems to doubt that the Bush administration and the U.S. military, exhausted by their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will attack. They feel a tide at their backs. Meanwhile the "Look East" strategy, driven by soaring energy prices, is bearing fruit.

Ahmadinejad has just concluded a tour of South Asia and, to the despair of American neocons, the Asian Energy Security Grid is quickly becoming a reality. Two years ago, at the Petroleum Ministry in Tehran, I was told Iran is betting on the total "interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-economic politics." This year Iran finally becomes a natural gas-exporting country. The framework for the $7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace" pipeline, is a go. Both these key South Asian U.S. allies are ignoring Bush administration desires and rapidly bolstering their economic, political, cultural, and—crucially—geostrategic connections with Iran. An attack on Iran would now inevitably be viewed as an attack against Asia.

What a disaster in the making, and yet, now more than ever, Vice President Dick Cheney's faction in Washington (not to mention possible future president John McCain) seems ready to bomb. Perhaps the Mahdi himself—in his occult wisdom—is betting on a U.S. war against Asia to slouch towards Qom to be reborn.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is the roving correspondent for The Real News. He's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge, both published by Nimble Books in 2007.

Dockworkers Strike to Stop Iraq War

2008-05-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

From Democracy Now!

American Meddling

2008-05-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

A regional power is training Iraqi militias and funding extremists. The question is, why is the United States interfering in the affairs of the Iraqi people?

While Iran tries to create the most advantageous outcome in Iraq - a neighboring country which it shares a nine-hundred mile border with - for its own prosperity and security, the United States, Iraq's 7000-miles-away neighbor, is also involved in Iraq - significantly involved - with 150,000 American troops and over 100,000 private contractors on the ground, all trying to get control of an oil-rich region that seems to be slipping from America's mighty stranglehold.

The United States is: supporting an unpopular government which has very little legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqi's; supporting sunni clan and militia leaders with money and weapons; supporting Shiite militia leaders with money and weapons; fighting other shiite militia leaders with larger popular support (Muqtada Al-Sadr); fighting a "war on terrorism" (and militias not on the US's good side) complete with a sloppy dragnet that has caught thousands of Iraqi's, many, undoubtedly, innocent, and sent them into massive American run prisons for torture (Abu Ghraib is but one example) and indefinite detention without trials.

So who is the meddling nation then? Well, as Michael M. Gordon of the New York Times (see here), and many other American journalists would have you believe, the meddlers are the Iranians. Never mind the fact that much of the cash and weapons being used, Iraqi on Iraqi, and Iraqi on American, are either American weapons or weapons America failed to secure after their toppling of the Baathist regime.

The truth is that the New York Times is wrong. The Los Angeles Times is wrong. The Washington Post is wrong. The real meddlers are the American armed forces and contractors, who have come so far to interfere in the lives of people who have done them no harm, and hold up the fig leaf of democracy and rebuilding to hide the shameful nature of the occupation. The Iraqi's want America out. They want the superpower from 7000-miles away to stop its meddling.

Sami Al Hajj Is Freed

2008-05-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

In November of 2007 I wrote about the luckless Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami Al Hajj, who was picked up by the American military while traveling to Afghanistan as a journalist, and illegally detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As of that writing, Sami Al Hajj had been imprisoned for over five years.

On May 1, 2008, the U.S. government finally released this poor man, after being held for six years. In the last years of his imprisonment, Mr. Hajj health had severely deteriorated, his mental abilities suffered, he began to loose his ability to speak English, and he became, according to his lawyer Stafford Smith, "fixated on his death" - due, in part, to him witnessing other detainees die. Finally, in January of 2007, judging his situation hopeless, Mr. Hajj began a hunger strike. Upon his release in Sudan, Mr. Hajj was rushed to a hospital, as his health was dire. He must wait even longer to see his young son who was only a baby when Mr. Hajj was kidnapped by the American military.

The despicable nature of Mr. Hajj's illegal detention is but another indictment of our political class. As the world condemns America, lawmakers do nothing, the media stays relatively silent, and Bush looks smug.

Not only was Sami Al Hajj's 6-year detention by a nation that flatters itself with claims of moral rectitude a flagrant violation of basic human rights principles, there are also reports that Mr. Hajj was physically abused during his stay at America's murky military complex: Mr. Hajj's lawyer has said that both of his clients knee-caps were broken by prison guards, and that Mr. Hajj was denied cancer medication to treat his throat cancer.

In November of last year when I wrote about Mr. Hajj, I put his imprisonment in historical perspective, remembering how the Russians in Afghanistan also illegally imprisoned thousands of suspected insurgents, denying them habeas corpus as the Americans today have done. Today on the release of Mr. Hajj I think it is also apt to put Mr. Hajj's nonexistent, or illegal and secret, trial into some sort of context, so that understanding what went wrong is made easier.

In 1945, the victorious Allied states set up the Nuremberg Trials in Nuremberg, Germany, location of the infamous Nuremberg rallies, to try Axis war criminals and bring them to justice. While the trials were not perfect, they pushed law to a new international arena that was new, and they tried the accused transparently and based on international principles of a fair trail.

Today, America greedily holds thousands of prisoners in obscure prisons away from the prying eyes of the world. Detainees are tried according to arcane principles of justice, which includes not allowing the accused to see the evidence against them, the consideration of evidence obtained under torture, the possibility of shutting down a trial without explanation, and the lack of a freedom guarantee even when the defendant is found not guilt.

Is the reason for this justice disparity between 1945 and 2007 due to the fact that the purported insurgents or terrorists, accused of, at the most, killing 3000 Americans, are more dangerous and destructive than the men of Nazi Germany who lit Europe on fire, murdering millions of people? Is it a vicious brand of racism that informs this decision? Are white Europeans more worthy of a fair trail than dark skinned people who believe in an alien religion?

The plight that Sami Al Hajj faced, and others still face, in America's illegal prison, has left an indelible mark on America's image around the world, as it should. Unfortunately, what I wrote in November about Guantanamo Bay, and Sami Al Hajj, is just as applicable now, six months later, even after Mr. Hajj has been released: "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."

Sami Al Hajj eloquently talks about the inhumanity he experienced at Guantanamo

A report by Al-Jazeera on Sami Al Hajj's release:

'White-Nose Syndrome' and Other Epidemics

2008-04-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

Recently I heard a report on NPR's "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow about a mysterious epidemic decimating bat populations throughout the Northeast of the United States. So far the cause of this epidemic, dubbed 'white nose syndrome' for a mysterious white fungus that grows on effected bats noses, is elusive. As scientists try and discover the cause of this massive die-off that was first noticed around two years ago, the sickness continues to spread, threatening more and more bats and posing a serious risk to the species which plays an integral part in our ecosystem.

So far what is known about 'White-Nose Syndrome' is that bats stricken with the disorder either starve to death during hibernation due to a severe depletion of their fat supply, or they wake up from their hibernation hungry and go out of their caves in the dead of winter to try and find food, inevitably dying close to their caves in the cold weather.

This most recently reported epidemic is all the more troublesome because it comes as scientists are trying to grapple with another mysterious epidemic effecting world bee populations. 'Colony Collapse Disorder,' as this epidemic has been called, first appeared, like the epidemic facing bats, around two years ago, and has now spread around the world, possibly as far as Taiwan. The death en masse of bees posses a severe risk to world food supplies, since bees are the primary pollinators of around one-third of U.S. crops.

It is surly premature and purely speculative to connect the inexplicable die-offs of first bees and then bats, yet the similarities of the species - both living in large colonies - their interconnected ecological niches - bats eat many insects related to bees that might also be effected by whatever it is effecting bees - and the mysterious nature of both epidemics, inevitably invite comparison.

The writer/director of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan, is working on a new film called The Happening, about a global environmental disaster survived by Mark Wahlberg and friends. In the movie, the first clue that something is up is an epidemic in bee colonies. It seems that Mr. Shyamalan might have to include yet another strange epidemic in his film to really scare his audience with reality.

U.S. vs. Iran

2008-04-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

Another great report from Al Jazeera English. Make sure you watch the second half to see how good television journalism is done.

Part I

Part II

60 Minutes of Propaganda and Pandering

2008-04-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

I used to love the CBS news program 60 Minutes. I liked it because it offered accessible investigative news reports on the issues of the day. I continued watching it religiously up until three years ago or so when I went off to college and didn't have a TV. Since my break with 60 Minutes I have learned a lot about the world. Coming back to 60 Minutes now and again I would watch it much more critically, and sure enough, as with most mainstream media programming, holes began to appear.
Tonight's 60 Minutes program was possibly the worst product I have seen come from this bastion of mainstream television journalism. It was such an utterly pathetic program I could not stand to sit through the last 30 minutes. It was a perfect storm of unabashed propaganda, war baiting, sycophancy, and castrated questioning.
To understand why this 60 Minutes program was so bad you really have to watch it, but I will try to communicate what I found so disturbing briefly to the untainted reader.

The first segment was on the Israeli Air Force. Bob Simon prefaced the piece by saying that "in return for access to its planes and personnel, we had to agree to rigorous censorship." Rigorous censorship? The credulous viewer might argue that Mr. Simon is saying that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) only has veto power over what is shown of their "top secret" bases. That's nonsense. There are countless examples of the damage that "access" with stipulations can have on journalistic integrity. Quite recently I wrote on the perversity of this access game (see here). The truth is that 60 Minutes latched on to the IAF for an easy and cheap story, full of militaristic jingoism and official Israeli talking points, all with a dearth of any substantive information. Bob Simon - the same Bob Simon who was assigned to question the Iranian president, Mr. Ahmadinejad, in a combative and shockingly unprofessional manner - was sucked, most likely willingly, into what was a blatant Israeli PR operation to prepare the citizens of this country for a probable strike/war against Iran. It was all beautifully done. Firstly, the mise en scène was painstakingly established, no doubt with the help of Israeli censors: Mr. Simon toured a high-tech military base, talking to soldiers, some partially obscured, purportedly to hide their identity, but more likely to lend to the sense that what we were seeing was all very hush-hush. The special access suggests that we, the American viewer, have some common cause with Israel, that we are good friends willing to share secrets (I couldn't imagine seeing Mr. Simon spending a day on an Iranian military base talking to soldiers. No, all we see of the Iranians is video of them marching in formation). This initial "inside" look into the IAF was followed by a one-sided history lesson about how Israel took control of the Middle East skies, and how they used their air power to deter the likes of Iraq from acquiring a nuclear weapon. This directly lead into considering how Israel might bomb Iran into stopping nuclear research that they claim is two-years from fruition; a time-line Bob Simon dutifully repeats, failing to mention the U.S. intelligence communities own report (here) that comes to some very different conclusions. To make sure that Americans really comprehend the threat that Iran posses to Israel, we are reminded of the Holocaust, and of how Mr. Ahmadinejad is a new Hitler. The connotations suggested by bringing up the Holocaust are incredibly distasteful, along with comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler, especially since there are around 30,000 Jews living relatively peacefully in Iran, allowed many more rights than the majority of Palestinians who once called Israel their home.
By the end of this segment the keen and critical observer could see exactly what sort of conclusions the creators of the program wanted the viewer to walk away with: Israel is under threat; Israel can act decisively and humanely (they have "smart" bombs, never mind the thousands of Palestinian dead); If action is needed, Israel has every right to bomb Iran, just as it did against Saddam. The piece was propaganda, nothing more. Shameful propaganda. I don't know why or how something of its low-caliber and dubious type was produced. CBS ought to be ashamed.
The next section of the long hour was not quite as bad as the IAF piece, but it certainly showed just how far 60 Minutes has fallen. Lesley Stahl was assigned a two-part interview Antonin Scalia, the Conservative Supreme Court Justice. She brought up a few good points, which were subsequently brushed aside by the affable Scalia, including the infamous Bush v. Gore decision which handed the election to Bush. Right away the problem was obvious: Ms. Stahl was incredibly underprepared to actually press Scalia for answers that were half-way decent. Her duty is not to give the guy a pulpit from which to preach his point of view; as a journalist she must ask tough questions and get responses. Her lack of ability became too painful to watch when she brought up the question of torture, and then was quickly put on the defensive as Scalia cross-examined her on what she meant by saying that those being tortured were victims of "cruel and unusual punishment". "When he's hurting you trying to get information from you, you don't say he's punishing you; what's he punishing you for?" Lesley Stahl bumbled a response. How about talking about the Geneva Conventions Ms. Stahl, and how the Constitution instructs all members of government to abide by all treaties "made, under the authority of the United States," including the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War? When the interview then cut to commercials instead of a followup question on this very pertinent point about torture, I could not watch any more. I left the room, got my computer, and began writing this little polemic.
The Scalia interview is nothing knew to the mainstream media. We hear soft-ball questioning all the time. What was really disturbing for me was recognizing the ever loudening drum-beats moving us towards war with Iran. I hope that the amorphous interest group that wants to fight this new, and undoubtably costly war fail miserably in the ill endeavor. I hope that more people speak up against attacking Iran than spoke up five years ago when we blundered, guns blaring and bombs thundering, into Iraq.

Here is part one of the 60 Minutes program.
Excuse the commercial; they couldn't do the good work they do without it.

Hillary Threatening Genocide?

2008-04-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

Good Morning America does not seem to me to be the most apt platform from which to threaten nations with "total obliteration." American's aren't ready for that sort of saber rattling until at least mid-day. But presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton thought it prudent to bid America a good morning with a threat to "obliterate" Iran if it were to attack Israel with nuclear weapons. Now for those not comprehending what "total obliteration" would mean for Iran, let me inform you: it would entail the mass murder of 71 million Iranian civilians.
Beside the magnitude of her provocation, her statement is disturbing on many levels. Firstly, her hypothetical scenario of Iran striking Israel with nuclear weapons is based on facts that are tenuous at best. Who said Iran is even building nuclear weapons? Sure many nations suspect the Iranian regime of coveting a nuclear bomb, but there is also general agreement that such a weapon is a long way of. Hell, even the the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran suspended their nuclear weapons development in 2003 (see here). Secondly, where did the idea of a belligerent Iran, willing to unilaterally attack other nations without direct provocation come from? There is little historical evidence for such claims. The reality is that Iran has been incredibly peaceful in the international arena compared to other nations. They have never invaded another country. In fact, it has been the Iranian people who have been brutalized by foreign powers, most notably by the west's support for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980. Lastly, why is it prudent to suppose that Iran would even consider using a nuclear weapon against Israel? Like other Middle East nations, Iran's support for the Palestinians is used mainly as a way to curry favor from the Muslim street, and does not directly translate into actions that would eventually benefit the Palestinians. A nuclear strike against Israel would be foolish, and the Iranians are not so ideologically demented to try it. In fact, their foreign policy is remarkably rational. Even their supposed development of weapons makes good sense. They have the warmongering United States on both their East and West borders; do we expect the Iranian regime to take their safety on faith alone, especially with the recent history of the Middle East as a reminder of how willing the U.S. is to go to war? They realize that a nuclear weapon is one very good way to guarantee their safety.
Hillary's comments, when taken with the aforementioned context, seem incredibly demented. But that's U.S. politics. Her playing along with the Bush administration anti-Iran narrative, clearly laid out and documented (see the recent New York Times investigation of Bush administration strategy to sell the war, here) is not just stupid, it's worrisome. If her comments are just fear-mongering as usual, than we ought to be perturbed; if her comments are indicative of her foreign policy, than we ought to be outraged.

Jimmy Carter's Hopeless Peace Effort

2008-04-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Carter took a trip to Israel and Syria this week to try and push the peace process forward. The trip was a failure on many fronts, which points to the hopelessness of the situation in Israel/Palestine.
Mr. Carter's trip started off on a bad note. The Bush administration and the Israel government of Ehud Olmert decried his planned meeting with Khaled Meshal, Hamas's exiled political leader, and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also distanced themselves from Mr. Carter's talks in Syria. John McCain lambasted them.
The political climate got even chillier though. Not only did Israeli leaders, for the most part, shun the former U.S. president, but, in an unprecedented move, Shin Bet, the Israeli secret service, seems to have declined to coordinate security with Mr. Carter's U.S. secret service entourage. Meanwhile, back home in the U.S., Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed that the State Department had explicitly told Mr. Carter not to meet with Mr Meshal, a claim Mr. Carter calls "absolutely false". I tend to find Jimmy Carter more credible than Madame Rice.
The uproar over Mr. Carter's trip is more than enough evidence to show that the prospects for peace are not good. Far from a diplomatic foible, as many are trying to characterize the trip as, a meeting with Hamas is far overdue and is the best hope for any peace settlement - oh that a peace settlement was wanted by the West and the Israeli government. Hamas has at least some legitimacy among the Palestinian people, more than Fatah can claim. They were elected into government in 2006, only to be immediately boycotted by the international community, and plotted against by the United States in a failed coup attempt (see here). Since Hamas is such a crucial part of the political landscape, it is absolutely ridiculous to ostracize them.
Israel understands this well, and this is why it has continually been in contact with Hamas - not officially of course. The history of Israel's contact with Hamas goes back to its founding, which was helped by Israel's secret service in order to counter balance the PLO. More recently, as Robert Fisk has reported, the Israeli army was in contact with Hamas in order to undermine Arafat and the Oslo agreement. It can also be assured that there is constant, clandestine discussion between the Israeli government and Hamas, especially since the capture of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
In other words, all of this grandstanding we see going on is completely empty, for political purposes. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has a shaky coalition government that, by design, must pander to extremist elements, and make a big noise about any sensible discussion between political entities. America is beset with narrow-minded Zionists, who cannot understand the grave implications of a continued occupation of the Palestinians, and are flummoxed when anyone exposes the apartheidesque policies of Israel for what they are - as Jimmy Carter did in his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid".
So all of this context leads us back to Jimmy Carter's trip. He met with Mr. Assad of Syria, reporting that the President thinks that "about 85 percent" of the issues blocking a peace deal between Israel and Syria have been resolved. Mr. Carter also met with Mr. Meshal, who, Mr. Carter says, promised that Hamas would respect the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza if such a state were approved by the Palestinian people in a referendum. Mr. Carter could not secure a release of Gilad Shalit, nor could he commit Hamas to a unilateral ceasefire, at least without some Israeli concessions.
The best thing that came out of Mr. Carter's trip was the, not so revelatory, realization that such a discussion with Hamas can take place. The real question is why Mr. Carter is one of the first to give talks a try. Why hasn't the EU, the U.N., Israel, the U.S., or Tony Blair - envoy on behalf of the EU, UN, U.S. and Russia - talked to one of the most important political players in the ongoing conflict. The lame-old excuse that "we don't talk to terrorists" is tired, and doesn't stand up to any historical scrutiny.
Mr. Carter's trip, and all of the indignation that has gone with it, when taken as part of recent events such as the continued building of settlements in the West Bank by Israel, the killing of Palestinians by Israeli's and Israeli's by Palestinians, the ongoing siege of Gaza and the collective misery it has caused, the hollow pronouncements of present future U.S. presidents on the issue (excluding Nader/Gonzalez of course) and the willingness of despotic Arab government to turn a blind eye to all of it, against the wishes of their people, lead me to conclude that Carter's high-minded goals are unrealistic and destined to fail; unless something big happens.
What could it be, where could it come from? I don't know. Maybe it could come from the U.S., with the people voting for a president other than then the stale three. Maybe it could come from the Middle East - no, I don't think so. Maybe it could come from within Israel, with the ousting of this hawkish and expansionist government. Call me a pessimist; I think this mess is going to last a lot longer than anyone wants to contemplate.

General Embarrassment: The Media

2008-04-21T09:44:00.001-07:00

The Pentagon has been running "Psyops" - psychological operations - on the American public to sell a war and then keep it going when it became unpopular. This is what the New York Times revealed on the front of Sundays paper. The investigation, lasting 2-years, was finally able to wrench the incriminating documents - 8,000 pages - from the Pentagon through the Freedom of Information Act, revealing the psyops operation in all its sordid detail. The program to misinform Americans went like this: The Bush administration knew that in order to run a war with as little public meddling as possible they would need to use the media as a PR arm. So communications experts devised a plan to enlist the support of retired officers, who, in retirement, often ran or sat on the boards of big military contractors, as well as dropped by news channels such as CNN, FOX, ABC etc. to give their vaunted opinions on war. The Pentagon had it all worked out: The retired generals were too connected with the military, for profit or personal reasons, to be overly critical. Also, the Pentagon realized that by being fickle with access to top commanders - access that the news networks thought, for some strange reason, brought better information - they could exert control over the retired generals. In short, the Pentagon piled on conflicting interests until the pathetic generals were buried.
The Pentagon understood that anyone with the title of "retired general" was seen as credible by many credulous Americans. Once they had their "message force multipliers" regimented, they organized private sojourns to Iraq, where they were whisked to all the good spots to show how much progress was being made. Meanwhile things were going downhill in the 99.9% Iraq not visited by the message force multipliers. Many of the retired generals said to the Times that they realized that the Pentagon was pulling the fleece over their eyes, but they went along with it anyway because the web of rewards had entrapped them - kind of shameful, isn't it.
So as things got worse and worse, the generals dined on china with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, gave him tips on how he could fight the naysayers in the public and the media, along with a host of other, more prestigious generals in open revolt. In return for all their help, Rumsfeld's office put together gift baskets, if you will, of talking points, that the ret. generals could use to dispel any doubts about the progress in Iraq, or the Defense Secretary running the show.
Now all of this is really no surprise. It was totally obvious to anyone who critically listened to the retired generals that they were full of it. That isn't to say that the The New York Times investigation was a waste; to the contrary. As they say, journalists write the first draft of history, and this little piece is going straight into the historical file as one more deceitful thing done by this administration. But it should have taken a lot less investigating in order to understand what the danger was of having a bunch of ex-army guys on television expected to give a fair and balanced opinion on the war.
Like most stories, this piece points to a more fundamental problem than a conflict of interest, an ethical lapse, or government malfeasance. The root problem is a rot at the heart of corporate media; this rot of principle and purpose is what allowed jokers such as the retired generals on television, masquerading as journalists. This episode also points to a problem with the citizenry of this country. To grudgingly steal terms from the advertising industry, Americans are, by and large, uninformed consumers of news. We don't know what we want from news, and we don't know what good journalism is, and what to look for to spot it. If we really did understand what journalism was all about, and what we hope to gain from reading a newspaper or watching the news, we may become informed consumers of media, and turn off CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, MSNBC and the rest of them, and switch on news with more integrity, or better yet, read news with more integrity.
Truth be told, many watch their news strictly for entertainment, and such infotainment fans cannot be saved. They will continue to follow the antics of the various news personalities with bated breath until the next war is sold by the airwaves.
The lesson that I think we, as well as the smart guys at the networks, ought to take away from this big embarrassment, is that access to top officials does not matter. ACCESS DOES NOT MATTER. Access is actually worse than useless: it is corrupting, as this NYT investigation has shown. The incomparable Middle East correspondent for The Independent, Robert Fisk, put it best when he wrote in "The Great War For Civilization" that

Reporters often justify their own unique form of self-censorship - their uncritical repetition of the statements of generals and major generals - on the grounds that their "access" to senior military officials must be kept open, that this access gives them information that might otherwise be denied their readers. In Northern Ireland and in the Middle East - both among Arab or Iranian military officers and American and British forces - I have found the opposite to be the case. The more journalists challenge authority, the more the military whistleblowers want to talk to them.

Journalism on such a caliber can be applied not only on the battle field, but also on the local, regional, state, federal, and international levels. The best journalism comes from this sort of work, not the verbatim repetition of the press secretaries remarks, or the famous appeal to sources - i.e. sources say... - that are so frequently used by the arbiters of American journalistic integrity.
The networks should have known better, but they will never learn from their mistakes. They were built to play a little bit of news - cheaper the better - sell some advertising - pharmaceuticals for their aging audience - and do it again day after day after day, until a war comes, and more people tune in - more ad revenue. Sure, many of the networks will get rid or thin out their line-up of retired generals, but they still have all those journalists instructed to not rock the boat. Nothings learned by watching these drab boats on placid lakes. My suggestion is to read foreign papers, watch Democracy Now!, and keep checking up on The Main Issue.

Matt Gonzalez on Democracy Now!

2008-04-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

This is a great interview with Ralph Nader's vice-presidential running mate Matt Gonzalez. Addressing the issues sorely missing from the talking points of all other presidential candidates, Matt Gonzalez brings this campaign down to earth, while offering some stern rebukes of both Clinton and Obama's (especially Obama's) many illiberal positions. Doesn't Mr. Gonzalez just scream credibility.

The Conservative Nanny State

2008-04-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

"The Conservative Nanny State" is a book by the economist Dean Baker that has been highly influential in the way I have viewed economic policy. The book can be bought, or read for free online here, if you don't mind reading it from a computer. If you are not into reading a book at the moment, try and find some time to watch this video I just found of Dean Baker talking about the book in Charleston, West Virginia. The way he talks about economics is fresh and exciting, especially since it departs from all the vapid platitudes we usually hear in the media and from our government. Enjoy!

China Conundrum

2008-04-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

I recently wrote about my views on the Olympic torch run through San Francisco. As anyone following the torch's unhappy trip around the globe knows, the San Francisco event was quite an embarrassment. Instead of running the torch along the originally planned route, a decision was made by the mayor and police chief to re-route it away from the thousands protesting, without giving even many police officers notice. A brief torch ceremony occurred at a secure pier away from prying eyes, followed by an unannounced run down Van Ness street, miles away from where everyone thought the torch would pass.
I went down to the embarcadero even so, which wasn't such a bad idea as it turned out. No, I didn't see the torch - that didn't really bother me - but what I did witness was a clash of perspectives and allegiances that are becoming all the more important to consider in a time when power is shifting to the East.

The two main conflicting groups present at the protests were, obviously, Chinese and Tibetans, along with their respective sympathizers. The Tibetan's, as could be guessed, had a monopoly on the sympathizer crowed, although a few socialists stood at the base of Market with a banner reading "Say no to U.S.-CIA campaign against China" - read on, you'll understand why. I witnessed tempers flare many times between rival protesters. The most memorable scuffle was between a mid-forties goateed man and an older Chinese woman, in which he yelled at her "we no buy Chinese goods anymore," as she castigated him inaudibly.

That brief argument sums up the larger issues involved in this debate on the Beijing Olympics: economics and nationalism. The nationalism aspect blinds both sides to the implications of their actions, and the economics of a rising trading power, feeding off of nationalism, brings conflict.

As I understand it, there are two main positions present in U.S. foreign policy towards China. The first position is that it is in the interest of the U.S. to continue to integrate with China so as to take advantage of deep reserves of cheap labor. This position is held by those who's interest it is to see the price of labor continue to decline, especially relative to capital. The more trade between the U.S. and China, the higher profits are able to rise as costs are reduced. The price of goods also fall, benefiting consumers. All of this integration, however, comes at the expense of workers. The second position is that China's rise will inevitably bring a precipitous decline in U.S. power. The opponents of rising China, are, obviously, fairly nationalistic. With hard economic times we are likely to see many more taking up this position. In fact, judging by U.S. troop deployments in the Pacific, those wary of China hold sway at the Pentagon.

Now these two China-policy positions often mix, being championed at different times to different people by the same politicians. If history is any judge, the second position is the one most likely to triumph as China bumps up against the U.S. in its quest for resources to fuel its growth. So far China has gone to places the U.S. refuses to do business in order to fulfill its insatiable appetite for raw materials and energy. These places include Sudan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Iran, and Venezuela, to name a few off the top of my head. The U.S. and Europe has put up quite a fuss about China's trade with "rogue" nations, even as they too trade with their own personal brutal autocrats and dysfunctional countries, as well as start wars to secure resources. There are no good guys.

The interaction of all of the different interests, perspectives, and policy positions are already putting on quite a show in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. In the corridors of power, in both the U.S. and EU, many different political acts are being staged. Mr. Sarkozy of France is considering a boycott of the opening ceremonies, while Ms. Merkel of Germany has already committed to not showing up. Gordon Brown of Britain is less willing to anger China, and has commited to being at the Olympics ceremonies. In the U.S., the most cacophonous cries for a boycott are coming from the Democratic leadership, especially Nancy Pelosi - I think Ms. Pelosi ought to focus on getting us out of Iraq like she promised and stop being a hypocrite; was that harsh?

All of this brings up the question of what all the fuss is about? Firstly, its about the recent crackdown in Tibet. Secondly, it is about China's human-rights record. Thirdly, its about foreign policy.

As any reasonable person will acknowledge, China's actions against its people, minorities, and citizens of foreign countries have at times been cruel. Yet on many issues things are not as simple as many make them out to be. Take Tibet for example:

Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion was a feudal society. The monasteries and aristocracy owned most of the land, which was worked by a large underclass of serfs. China also had some merit in claiming Tibet as a part of historical China, although going back further than a hundred years to gain invasion license is going to be messy.

The first incarnation - no pun intended - of Chinese rule was fairly light, granting autonomy to much of Tibet, although in two provinces considered not part of Tibet, the Chinese began a land redistribution project that led to a general insurrection. This insurrection in 1959 was supported by the CIA, but eventually it failed. During the insurrection, the Chinese clamped down brutally and killed thousands. Since the rebellion, the Chinese have followed a sometimes-socialist policy, along with efforts to colonize areas with ethnic groups other than Tibetans.

The apparent undermining of Tibetan culture has sparked protests among many Tibetans. China views such protests, as any nation would, as separatist impulses, and, with the memory of CIA involvement from '59 through the 70's, is loth to come to compromises that would undermine its authority. The issue of Tibet has also been staked on principles of territorial integrity: how could the Chinese hope to deal with Taiwan if they were to spin off Tibet as an autonomous region. Add to all this the fact that China's steadfast policy on its rebellious provinces has proven to be pretty successful in holding the country together - Taiwan just elected a pro-Chinese government that wants to further integrate with the mainland - and it is understandable why China does not find it necessary to compromise on Tibet.

On its other inhumane aberrations, the Chinese leadership is just following the example of the rest of the international community. Sudan, where estimates put the death toll at between 180,000-400,000 with over 2 million people displaced, is China's main oil provider, and thus a major trading partner. I see China's involvement in Sudan directly comparable to the U.S. in Iraq, another country with massive oil reserves. Estimates of dead due to the U.S. invasion of Iraq are over 600,000 (John Hopkins University Study) with over 4 million people displaced. While China is giving tacit support to a genocidal regime, the U.S. is active in killing thousands of Iraqis, while acting as an occupational force. The majority of Iraqi's want the U.S. to leave, but the U.S. does not care. Knowing all this, it is a little hypocritical for U.S. leaders to preach human rights (lets not forget Guantanamo as well) as they are committed to a protractive war in Iraq.

The last question that needs to be answered is what the people of China think of the international reprobation of their country? They don't like it, as was on display in San Francisco. They see the condemnation of the EU and U.S., I believe rightfully so, as the first step in a PR war to delegitimize China, rightly or wrongly. Once China is brought low, it becomes much easier to create momentum towards war.
China by no means is a country that deserves much praise. But, by the standards being applied to China, neither does most other countries in the world. In fact China, a huge country with the infamously large million-man army, has been far less belligerent than the morally righteous United States.

Again, it is good to remember there are no good guys in foreign relations. Mostly everyones records have been irreparably tarnished. We ought to remember that and look for protesting positions that circumvent the policies of morally bankrupt states.

Count Me Out: The Obama Craze

2008-04-10T23:17:00.000-07:00

By MATT GONZALEZ

Part of me shares the enthusiasm for Barack Obama. After all, how could someone calling themself a progressive not sense the importance of what it means to have an African-American so close to the presidency? But as his campaign has unfolded, and I heard that we are not red states or blue states for the 6th or 7th time, I realized I knew virtually nothing about him.

Like most, I know he gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I know he defeated Alan Keyes in the Illinois Senate race; although it wasn't much of a contest (Keyes was living in Maryland when he announced). Recently, I started looking into Obama's voting record, and I'm afraid to say I'm not just uninspired: I'm downright fearful. Here's why:

This is a candidate who says he's going to usher in change; that he is a different kind of politician who has the skills to get things done. He reminds us again and again that he had the foresight to oppose the war in Iraq. And he seems to have a genuine interest in lifting up the poor.

But his record suggests that he is incapable of ushering in any kind of change I'd like to see. It is one of accommodation and concession to the very political powers that we need to reign in and oppose if we are to make truly lasting advances.

THE WAR IN IRAQ

Let's start with his signature position against the Iraq war. Obama has sent mixed messages at best.

First, he opposed the war in Iraq while in the Illinois state legislature. Once he was running for US Senate though, when public opinion and support for the war was at its highest, he was quoted in the July 27, 2004 Chicago Tribune as saying, "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage.
The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute." The Tribune went on to say that Obama, "now believes US forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration."

Obama's campaign says he was referring to the ongoing occupation and how best to stabilize the region. But why wouldn't he have taken the opportunity to urge withdrawal if he truly opposed the war? Was he trying to signal to conservative voters that he would subjugate his anti-war position if elected to the US Senate and perhaps support a lengthy occupation? Well as it turns out, he's done just that.

Since taking office in January 2005 he has voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward, totaling over $300 billion. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration's various false justifications for going to war in Iraq. Why would he vote to make one of the architects of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" the head of US foreign policy? Curiously, he lacked the courage of 13 of his colleagues who voted against her confirmation.

And though he often cites his background as a civil rights lawyer, Obama voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act in July 2005, easily the worse attack on civil liberties in the last half-century. It allows for wholesale eavesdropping on American citizens under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts.

And in March 2006, Obama went out of his way to travel to Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. At a Democratic Party dinner attended by Lamont, Obama called Lieberman "his mentor" and urged those in attendance to vote and give financial contributions to him. This is the same Lieberman who Alexander Cockburn called "Bush's closest Democratic ally on the Iraq War." Why would Obama have done that if he was truly against the war?

Recently, with anti-war sentiment on the rise, Obama declared he will get our combat troops out of Iraq in 2009. But Obama isn't actually saying he wants to get all of our troops out of Iraq. At a September 2007 debate before the New Hampshire primary, moderated by Tim Russert, Obama refused to commit to getting our troops out of Iraq by January 2013 and, on the campaign trail, he has repeatedly stated his desire to add 100,000 combat troops to the military.

At the same event, Obama committed to keeping enough soldiers in Iraq to "carry out our counter-terrorism activities there" which includes "striking at al Qaeda in Iraq." What he didn't say is this continued warfare will require an estimated 60,000 troops to remain in Iraq according to a May 2006 report prepared by the Center for American Progress. Moreover, it appears he intends to "redeploy" the troops he takes out of the unpopular war in Iraq and send them to Afghanistan. So it appears that under Obama's plan the US will remain heavily engaged in war.

This is hardly a position to get excited about.

CLASS ACTION REFORM:

In 2005, Obama joined Republicans in passing a law dubiously called the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) that would shut down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Long a desired objective of large corporations and President George Bush, Obama in effect voted to deny redress in many of the courts where these kinds of cases have the best chance of surviving corporate legal challenges. Instead, it forces them into the backlogged Republican-judge dominated federal courts.

By contrast, Senators Clinton, Edwards and Kerry joined 23 others to vote against CAFA, noting the "reform" was a thinly-veiled "special interest extravaganza" that favored banking, creditors and other corporate interests. David Sirota, the former spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, commented on CAFA in the June 26, 2006 issue of The Nation, "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop "frivolous" lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers."

Nation contributor Dan Zegart noted further: "On its face, the class-action bill is mere procedural tinkering, transferring from state to federal court actions involving more than $5 million where any plaintiff is from a different state from the defendant company. But federal courts are much more hostile to class actions than their state counterparts; such cases tend to be rooted in the finer points of state law, in which federal judges are reluctant to dabble. And even if federal judges do take on these suits, with only 678 of them on the bench (compared with 9,200 state judges), already overburdened dockets will grow. Thus, the bill will make class actions most of which involve discrimination, consumer fraud and wage-and-hour violations all but impossible. One example: After forty lawsuits were filed against Wal-Mart for allegedly forcing employees to work "off the clock," four state courts certified these suits as class actions. Not a single federal court did so, although the practice probably involves hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide."

Why would a civil rights lawyer knowingly make it harder for working-class people to have their day in court, in effect shutting off avenues of redress?

CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES:

Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it.

Now Obama explains his vote by saying the amendment was poorly written or set the ceiling too high. His explanation isn't credible as Obama offered no lower number as an alternative, and didn't put forward his own amendment clarifying whatever language he found objectionable.

Why wouldn't Obama have voted to create the first federal ceiling on predatory credit card interest rates, particularly as he calls himself a champion of the poor and middle classes? Perhaps he was signaling to the corporate establishment that they need not fear him. For all of his dynamic rhetoric about lifting up the masses, it seems Obama has little intention of doing anything concrete to reverse the cycle of poverty many struggle to overcome.

LIMITING NON-ECONOMIC DAMAGES:

These seemingly unusual votes wherein Obama aligns himself with Republican Party interests aren't new. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts. Capping non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases means a victim cannot fully recover for pain and suffering or for punitive damages. Moreover, it ignored that courts were already empowered to adjust awards when appropriate, and that the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled such limits on tort reform violated the state constitution.

In the US Senate, Obama continued interfering with patients' full recovery for tortious conduct. He was a sponsor of the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation Act of 2005. The bill requires hospitals to disclose errors to patients and has a mechanism whereby disclosure, coupled with apologies, is rewarded by limiting patients' economic recovery. Rather than simply mandating disclosure, Obama's solution is to trade what should be mandated for something that should never be given away: namely, full recovery for the injured patient.

MINING LAW OF 1872:

In November 2007, Obama came out against a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. The current statute, signed into law by Ulysses Grant, allows mining companies to pay a nominal fee, as little as $2.50 an acre, to mine for hardrock minerals like gold, silver, and copper without paying royalties. Yearly profits for mining hardrock on public lands is estimated to be in excess of $1 billion a year according to Earthworks, a group that monitors the industry. Not surprisingly, the industry spends freely when it comes to lobbying: an estimated $60 million between 1998-2004 according to The Center on Public Integrity. And it appears to be paying off, yet again.

The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 would have finally overhauled the law and allowed American taxpayers to reap part of the royalties (4 percent of gross revenue on existing mining operations and 8 percent on new ones). The bill provided a revenue source to cleanup abandoned hardrock mines, which is likely to cost taxpayers over $50 million, and addressed health and safety concerns in the 11 affected western states.

Later it came to light that one of Obama's key advisors in Nevada is a Nevada-based lobbyist in the employ of various mining companies (CBS News "Obama's Position On Mining Law Questioned. Democrat Shares Position with Mining Executives Who Employ Lobbyist Advising Him," November 14, 2007).

REGULATING NUCLEAR INDUSTRY:

The New York Times reported that, while campaigning in Iowa in December 2007, Obama boasted that he had passed a bill requiring nuclear plants to promptly report radioactive leaks. This came after residents of his home state of Illinois complained they were not told of leaks that occurred at a nuclear plant operated by Exelon Corporation.

The truth, however, was that Obama allowed the bill to be amended in Committee by Senate Republicans, replacing language mandating reporting with verbiage that merely offered guidance to regulators on how to address unreported leaks. The story noted that even this version of Obama's bill failed to pass the Senate, so it was unclear why Obama was claiming to have passed the legislation. The February 3, 2008 The New York Times article titled "Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate" by Mike McIntire also noted the opinion of one of Obama's constituents, which was hardly enthusiastic about Obama's legislative efforts:

"Senator Obama's staff was sending us copies of the bill to review, and we could see it weakening with each successive draft," said Joe Cosgrove, a park district director in Will County, Ill., where low-level radioactive runoff had turned up in groundwater. "The teeth were just taken out of it."

As it turns out, the New York Times story noted: "Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama's campaigns for the United States Senate and for president. Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers."

ENERGY POLICY:

On energy policy, it turns out Obama is a big supporter of corn-based ethanol which is well known for being an energy-intensive crop to grow. It is estimated that seven barrels of oil are required to produce eight barrels of corn ethanol, according to research by the Cato Institute. Ethanol's impact on climate change is nominal and isn't "green" according to Alisa Gravitz, Co-op America executive director. "It simply isn't a major improvement over gasoline when it comes to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions." A 2006 University of Minnesota study by Jason Hill and David Tilman, and an earlier study published in BioScience in 2005, concur. (There's even concern that a reliance on corn-based ethanol would lead to higher food prices.)

So why would Obama be touting this as a solution to our oil dependency? Could it have something to do with the fact that the first presidential primary is located in Iowa, corn capital of the country? In legislative terms this means Obama voted in favor of $8 billion worth of corn subsidies in 2006 alone, when most of that money should have been committed to alternative energy sources such as solar, tidal and wind.

SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE:

Obama opposed single-payer bill HR676, sponsored by Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2006, although at least 75 members of Congress supported it. Single-payer works by trying to diminish the administrative costs that comprise somewhere around one-third of every health care dollar spent, by eliminating the duplicative nature of these services. The expected $300 billion in annual savings such a system would produce would go directly to cover the uninsured and expand coverage to those who already have insurance, according to Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Obama's own plan has been widely criticized for leaving health care industry administrative costs in place and for allowing millions of people to remain uninsured. "Sicko" filmmaker Michael Moore ridiculed it saying, "Obama wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan-the same companies who have created the mess in the first place."

NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT:

Regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama recently boasted, "I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have." Yet, Calvin Woodward reviewed Obama's record on NAFTA in a February 26, 2008 Associated Press article and found that comment to be misleading: "In his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama said the US should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for US workers."

Putting aside campaign rhetoric, when actually given an opportunity to protect workers from unfair trade agreements, Obama cast the deciding vote against an amendment to a September 2005 Commerce Appropriations Bill, proposed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, that would have prohibited US trade negotiators from weakening US laws that provide safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices. The bill would have been a vital tool to combat the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers and would have ended a common corporate practice known as "pole-vaulting" over regulations, which allows companies doing foreign business to avoid "right to organize," "minimum wage," and other worker protections.

SOME FINAL EXAMPLES:

On March 2, 2007 Obama gave a speech at AIPAC, America's pro-Israeli government lobby, wherein he disavowed his previous support for the plight of the Palestinians. In what appears to be a troubling pattern, Obama told his audience what they wanted to hear. He recounted a one-sided history of the region and called for continued military support for Israel, rather than taking the opportunity to promote the various peace movements in and outside of Israel.

Why should we believe Obama has courage to bring about change? He wouldn't have his picture taken with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when visiting San Francisco for a fundraiser in his honor because Obama was scared voters might think he supports gay marriage (Newsom acknowledged this to Reuters on January 26, 2007 and former Mayor Willie Brown admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle on February 5, 2008 that Obama told him he wanted to avoid Newsom for that reason.)

Obama acknowledges the disproportionate impact the death penalty has on blacks, but still supports it, while other politicians are fighting to stop it. (On December 17, 2007 New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill banning the death penalty after it was passed by the New Jersey Assembly.)

On September 29, 2006, Obama joined Republicans in voting to build 700 miles of double fencing on the Mexican border (The Secure Fence Act of 2006), abandoning 19 of his colleagues who had the courage to oppose it. But now that he's campaigning in Texas and eager to win over Mexican-American voters, he says he'd employ a different border solution.

It is shocking how frequently and consistently Obama is willing to subjugate good decision making for his personal and political benefit.

Obama aggressively opposed initiating impeachment proceedings against the president ("Obama: Impeachment is not acceptable," USA Today, June 28, 2007) and he wouldn't even support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's effort to censure the Bush administration for illegally wiretapping American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In Feingold's words "I'm amazed at Democrats cowering with this president's number's so low." Once again, it's troubling that Obama would take these positions and miss the opportunity to document the abuses of the Bush regime.

CONCLUSION:

Once I started looking at the votes Obama actually cast, I began to hear his rhetoric differently. The principal conclusion I draw about "change" and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday make a decent candidate who could earn my support. For now Obama has fallen into a dangerous pattern of capitulation that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an agent of change.

I remain impressed by the enthusiasm generated by Obama's style and skill as an orator. But I remain more loyal to my values, and I'm glad to say that I want no part in the Obama craze sweeping our country.

Matt Gonzalez is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and is running on Nader's ticket as a vice presidential candidate.

Nepal's Upcoming Election

2008-04-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

Nepal, the last Hindu monarchy, will be holding parliamentary elections on April 10. This two-part report by Al-Jazeera highlights the difficult political situation in this small Himalayan country racked by poverty, warfare, and social unrest.

The Olympic Torch in San Francisco

2008-04-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

No one wants a repeat of the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, in which the world largely went along with an event propagandizing the triumphs of the Third Reich. Yet there is also a wariness to jump to such a comparison between the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the Olympics of over seventy years ago. Sure, China's human rights record is egregious, and its foreign policy, while less destructive than the United States', is quite repugnant, but they are also not retooling their economy for war, nor are there signs of ingrained racism in the government. Many say that exerting positive pressure on China to change its behavior towards Tibet, the situation in Sudan, Myanmar, and North Korea, is a far better approach than condemnation and negative pressure. The Olympics, these positive pressure proponents argue, is a perfect opportunity to cajole China towards less authoritarianism at home, and more constructive world citizenship abroad. Show China the benefit of world respect, and they will, possibly slowly at first, begin to come around to emulating the better parts of free, western democracies.
There are signs that such an approach towards China can work, to an extent: China has responded to international pressure on many international issues. But when it comes to domestic policy, international positive pressure has done little to soften China's authoritarian tendencies. The internet is still on lock down, Taiwan is still part of China - although recently Taiwanese seem to have acquiesced - Tibet is forced to accept Chinese control, and democracy is a long-way off. Recent events in Tibet show that even with the world's eyes on China in the lead-up to the Olympics, the Communist government is leaving little room for compromise. While not as brutal as the '89 crackdowns, the events in Lhasa last month show very little softening in China's approach to domestic unrest.
On April 9 the Olympic torch will be run along the Embarcadero in San Francisco under unprecedented security. The ceremonies have so far been marred by protests throughout the world. In London, the torch was almost put out by protesters with fire extinguishers, and in Paris, the torch had to be doused a number of times so that it could be rerouted around thousands of protesters. Many people have asked themselves the question of what their response should be to the Beijing Olympics, and the answer has been quite simple: protest. While it may not change China's ways, it certainly satisfies the motivation to do something, anything, in the face of injustice. On Tibet inparticular, China has chosen not only an abusive policy, but also a policy that does not make any sense, and they ought to know that the international community can't stand by as they crack down on a subjugated people. So on April 9th, after my class, I'll head down to the Embarcadero and join in with the protesters.

The events in Paris:

John Adams

2008-04-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

I've only watched the first installment of the HBO original series on John Adams, but so far I am very impressed. HBO purportedly spent over $100 million dollars on the production. Thankfully, the series, so far, has been without the usual corniness of big-budget historical films. Instead, the script has been insightful and honest. I was somewhat apprehensive of Paul Giamatti's ability to play John Adams, but so far I think his performance has been remarkable. Laura Linney has also been outstanding in the role of Abigail Adams. If you get the chance, be sure to watch this, or else rent it when it comes out.

Corporate-Do-Good

2008-04-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

Anyone traveling around San Francisco recently cannot help but notice a new advertisement appearing on public transport and bus shelters for a mobile phone service provider called Credo Mobile. The typical advert is orange and dark blue (the color combo screams for attention). A typical phone conversation beginning in the blue section merges into a political "socially aware" statement in the orange section. For example: (in the blue) i'll bring the chips and di (in the orange) preserve forests. On their website they are more explicit with their message: Change your plan, change the world.
Credo Mobile is the most blatant example I have found of the new business of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Credo is founded on the idea of donating 1% of your cell phone charges to "progressive non-profit groups". Most business' taking part in the CSR "revolution" have far less at stake in the new venture - it's tough getting into the cell phone service business - but they still realize that the times are a-changing, and they better lead, follow, or fail. So they make sure everyone knows about their new initiatives, their green product lines, their fair traded produce.
The truth is, all of this corporate do-goodery is nothing new. Companies have been setting aside profits for philanthropy for some time now. The legal precedent for corporations to allocate profits to "socially responsible" causes was set in the infancy of the corporation. One very interesting precedent setting case was in Theodora Holding Corp v Henderson in 1969, where the judge found that corporations should conduct philanthropy, lest "an aroused public" realize the real nature of the corporation and try to change things around (I have to thank Noam Chomsky for informing me of the exact court case).
So now here we are today, facing big problems, and looking for someone, anyone, who can address them. The last years have seen a grossly ineffectual government with little interest in working for public welfare, so naturally, many have turned to the next big power nexus for solutions: private industry. And as outlined before, private industry had just the legally acceptable palliative for our nations ills; at least that is what we are told.
Unfortunately, the future is a little less bright for many reasons. Firstly, there is no substitute for good government. You can have the most socially contentious business in the world, but it is still a business, and a business' only concern is to stay in business, and make a profit. Under the right circumstances this capitalist system can create fabulous wealth, but it creates wealth only for its customers and itself, not for society as a whole. If interests are harmonized, and business interests and societies interests are one and the same, then we have CSR, but most of the time, business interests only serve the interests of a portion of society. Too bad, huh. It could have been perfect. So we need government to represent the stakeholders of society.
Second problem: CSR is usually PR. Remember Theodora Holding Corp v Henderson? Remember assuaging the anxiety of "an aroused public"? Corporations remember as well, and so they dutifully donate to Ballets and Museums and give out free drugs to the poor (see here) so as to present an image of responsibility to the public. This sort of philanthropy, no doubt, can do a lot of good, just as Rockefeller's ill-gotten oil wealth did build a lot of libraries, but the gains of CSR are a little uneven and often not all they are cracked up to be. Voluntarily greening your business is not the same as making green business practices standard, but companies would like to make you believe it is, so you don't pester your congress man or woman for more regulation.
This is not to say that there are some good things coming out of the CSR movement. Consumers are making it clear that they want the products they buy to be ethically produced or grown, and companies are listening. This market driven approach makes up a big part of the change being described as new corporate responsibility.
Yet while there is good news, we must remember that the key (missing) ingredient is government. Programs such as Bank on San Francisco, a public-private partnership to provide free checking accounts to the poor, shows what can be done only through the effort of government. Before City Hall got involved, banks, for all their philanthropy, did not offer free checking accounts to the poor.

Vacation

2008-03-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

I should have posted this little spring break vacation, but the spontaneity of this trip left me little time to think about The Main Issue. Anywho, I will be back with new write-ups just as soon as I get up to date on my current events and sort out what my opinion of them is. Meanwhile, watch CNN (joke).

Winter Soldier and the Unconscionable War

2008-03-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

It's been five years since the U.S. began its devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq, and from all indications, we shall be there for much longer. Judging from the way the media is handling, or failing to report on, the Iraq war is how I have come to this conclusion. As Noam Chomsky so precisely put it, "the opposition to the war today in elite sectors... is pure cynicism, completely unprincipled". Instead of talking about the morality of being an imperial power, or the dubious role the U.S. plays as an occupying power in Iraq, exerting brutal military force in someone else's homeland, we argue whether the surge is working (working for America that is) or say, as Nancy Pelosi said, that it isn't working, and that we ought to stop sacrificing "our security for the sake of an Iraqi government that is unwilling or unable to secure its own future". We don't get the fundamentals of why this war is wrong, and so cannot possibly do what is right.
This hollow and cynical foreign policy begets political discourse where the anti-war candidates promise a "strategic and phased" withdrawal, "directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government". Continuing: "under the Obama plan, American troops may remain in Iraq or the region". Clinton's position is not much better. Given the choice between a pro-war candidate with convictions - John McCain - and a Candidate without anti-war principles, and not opposed to this war or wars like it in the future - Obama and Hillary - voters will most likely choose the candidate who's certitude feigns prescience.
The same sort of baselessness is seen in the media, our source for the information necessary to understand this conflict, what's at stake, and what is actually happening. I was made painfully aware of how out-of-touch our news media is, today, on the fifth anniversary of the war. After watching Democracy Now and their special coverage of the Winter Soldier event - more on that below - I switched to the most recent Newshour with Jim Lehrer. The lead-off piece, on the 5th anniversary mind you, was on the falling stock market. Following this was a piece on the Iraq war, which first devoted a big portion of the time to a Bush speech that offered little more than his usual empty platitudes. This was followed by the quote from Nancy Pelosi I included above, along with a quick mention of the anti-war protests. Moving on...
A few days prior, and making it onto the esteemed Democracy Now news program, was the Winter Soldier event held at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland. The event was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War. Coverage of this event would have been apt for fifth-anniversary tribute, not only to the fallen American soldiers , but also to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed. Unfortunately the event was not covered by PBS's news program, nor CNN or Fox News. Interestingly, I was able to find mention of the historic event on MSNBC, but I was informed that the story "was no longer available," having been up on MSNBC's website for a full four days.
The best way to understand how horrible this war really is, to truly comprehend why it must end today, and to fight our own urges to think abstractly about something that to millions of people in Iraq, and veterans over hear, still remains real and painful, is to hear about the war from those who lived it. I am including below parts of the testimonies of Iraq veterans from the Winter Soldier event. I hope that you will find the time to watch and possibly tell others to watch. It is a testament to our modern, willfully disconnected era that we can delude ourselves into thinking war is anything but inhumane. These videos explicitly tell of the real inhumanity of war, making it impossible to justify a continued occupation of Iraq and subjugation of the people who live there.

Spitzer, Politics, and the Housing Crisis

2008-03-18T22:42:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you probably think that war mongering, corporate coddling, corrupt and scheming politicians deserve more attention than politicians using their own money to buy a prostitute. And if you are like me, you probably noticed that we aren't in the majority in our value judgements. No, in most U.S. media outlets the Spitzer story "has legs," and so all the lurid details must be doggedly pursued. The New York Times found it compatible with their ever waning journalistic integrity to include a link to "Kristen's" Myspace page, for the readers interested in all the social networking news fit to print. What's missing in this coverage is perspective, as well as some context that might make this story interesting and important.

First, perspective: The investigation into Mr. Spitzer was expensive and far reaching. Thus, the investigation in all likelihood was politically motivated.

Yes, that's right, the Bush Justice Department, not adverse to being political (joke), set its sights on the Democratic "sheriff" of Wall Street, and they got him good. The fact is that you do not go from a dead-end money transfer inquiry to a full blown investigation with plenty of personnel and wiretaps to a media fiasco, without a larger political motivation. As wsws.org pointed out in their great article on the topic - a must read - if this were as big a case as the federal government was claiming, where are Clients 1 through 8 and 10 and above - Spitzer, remember, was "Client 9"? Where are the prostitution ringleaders? Where is the confiscated cash and bank accounts? The dearth of evidence points to a hit-job, where the Justice Department focused all their recourses on catching the Governor, while letting the prostitution-ring slip by.

This would not be the first time that the Bush administration has targeted politicians not of their ilk for termination. A recent 60 Minutes piece on the shady conviction of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, purportedly directed by Karl Rove via the White House, shows just how deep this administration is willing to get when they find it in their interest to get involved.

So what interest does the White House have in bringing down Elliot Spitzer. Now we are getting to context. Beside the fact that Mr. Spitzer was a popular Democrat who won the New York Governorship with over 60% of the vote and seemed to have high political aspiration, he was also very disliked by the money conjurers of Wall Street, a group very closely aligned with the Bush Administration.

Mr. Spitzer made his fair share of uber-wealthy enemies while working his way up to the Governors mansion in Albany. The scene of Wall Street traders cheering at the news of Spitzer's indictment clearly shows their antipathy towards him. As the journalist Greg Palast points out in a recent post on his blog, the bust of Spitzer coincides with another bust going on in the financial system, that of the housing market. Spitzer was very involved in investigating the shady sub-prime aspect of the housing bubble, filing suit not only against Countrywide Financial Corporation, but also its parent company, Bank of America, as well as many other financial firms, for illegal lending practices. Here, from his Washington Post op-ed, is what Mr. Spitzer had to say about the sub-prime mortgage debacle and the Bush administrations role:

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye..... When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably.

Harsh words... And so Spitzer is now out of office and out of the public arena for a very long time. No more prosecutor sticking his nose into Wall Street's sordid business. The saddest aspect of this whole story is the way the media has handled it. Instead of giving people the perspective and context that was needed, and should be expected from the venerable "liberal" 4th estate, we got a bunch of moral claptrap, without substance and without relevance.

Oh How I Dislike Big Pharma

2008-03-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

A recent article in The Washington Post explains why the Democrats have not been moving on their campaign promises to renegotiate parts of the Medicare prescription drug plan - aka pharmaceutical industry welfare - along with opening up our northern border to enable free trade in lower priced drugs from Canada. In short, The Washington Post found that the biggest stumbling block in Democratic efforts to fix our protectionist drug industry are Democrats themselves. This is no surprise in light of the fact that big pharma has drastically expanded their lobbying budget while making sure to dole it out evenly between both Democrats and Republicans. But the pharmaceutical industry is not just working on ways to stall today's meek protestations from the Democrats and a few Republicans; no, they have their future to think about. That is why they are pulling out all the stops in their drive to convince the American public that the current drug industry setup is the best. They are doing this, as the Post reports, by buying air-time in major media markets for half-hour talk-shows, where participants, including former Bush press secretary and fox news commentator Tony Snow, extoll the wonder making power of big pharma drugs, creating programs to provide low-income families with the drugs they need but can't afford, while making sure the media knows about the good deeds, and purchasing the lobbying services of former aids to big name Democrats.
Well, so what? If anything, this proves that the pharmaceutical industry understands that their old way of doing business will not work. They understand that their drug prices are too high for too many people, and so they are fixing this by providing discounted drugs. Doesn't all this show that big pharma has gotten the point, that they are mending their ways?

All this does prove that they realize that in order to keep doing what they are doing they need to change the ways they do business... on their own terms. There in lies the problem. The pharmaceutical industry has a sweet deal going: They have money, power, lots of well-connected friends, and high profits - although profits streams are waning due to faulty drugs, a lack of new drug prospects, and lawsuits. They have been doing very good up until quite recently, and so for years and years they have tried to hide the one dirty-little-secret that could bring their whole industry crashing down: profit-driven drug development is the most ineffective way to create innovative and cheap drugs. It is not only ineffective, it is rife with conflicts of interest that must be constantly regulated and mitigated, with mixed results.

To get a taste of how ineffective the current system is consider this: The pharmaceutical industry spent around $41.1 billion dollars on drug research in 2004, and yet the U.S. spent $220 billion dollars on drugs. The difference between the two are accounted for mostly by the cost of marketing and profits.

The drug industry is able to sell drugs for as much as they do because the government protects their profits through patent protections on their drugs. Patents are all fine and good when society has an interest in energizing research and development, but it hardly is the most effective way to spur innovation in drug creation. Why? Because the government is already funding huge amounts of research very effectively, through public universities, as well as the National Institute of Health (NIH), who's $30 billion a year budget is at the present moment a large subsidy for the pharmaceutical industry. What makes the current system even more ridiculous is the fact that much of that $41.1 billion research budget of big pharma is being spent on developing "copycat" drugs such as Cialis and Levitra, which cost around 90% more to develop than the original, Viagra, to treat a very profitable, if not life threatening, ailment. If the government were funding research there would be no copycat drug creation, because it is wasteful in an industry that has more important problems to focus on. Public funded drug research would allow most drugs to be sold at prices near those of generic drugs like aspirin, because, in a free market, drugs do not cost $6,000 to manufacture. I recommend reading this book to learn more about this and other corporate welfare.

Lastly, there is the ethical issues of for-profit drug production. In our current system there is a dangerous relationship between drug makers and drug consumers: their interests are divergent. Consumers are looking for a drug that will help them heal. They want to take a drug only for as long as is needed for them to recover from illness. They want the most impartial and informed advice as to what drug they should take. The drug industry, on the other hand, is looking to sell the most drugs possible at the highest price possible, to realize profit gains for their investors. To do this they must market their drugs effectively, not just to doctors, but also to patients who did not go through seven years of medical school. They apply the tried and true marketing techniques of a typical salesman, except in their case they are not selling appliances but products that often have life or death consequences, or at least potential to do harm in the short or long-term. Without constant regulation they would invariably be like the common drug dealer, with societal effects just as detestable. Because they are the only game in town, they have overwhelming power to make a money driven political system work for them to reach their profit objectives.

As a recent article in the New York Times shows, drug companies work first and foremost to drive sales, regardless of whether it benefits society. In this most recent example of drug company malfeasance reported by the NYT, the chief operating officer, soon to be CEO, of Eli Lilly, John C. Lechleiter, discussed in an e-mail possible "off-label" uses (uses not approved by the FDA) for a drug, Zyprexa, that is now the center of investigation and lawsuits. In this e-mail from 2003, Mr. Lechleiter seems to have been encouraging the use of this high power schizophrenia drug, which is now known to often cause obesity and high-cholesterol, on children and adolescents. He said, “The fact we are now talking to child psychs and peds and others about Strattera means that we must seize the opportunity to expand our work with Zyprexa in this same child-adolescent population”. Kids on antipsychotics, great one Mr. Lechleiter.

How many cases such as this does it take until we fix this mess; how much money must be wasted on big CEO paychecks and profits? How many deaths for lack of medicine until we wise up; how many deaths because of the misuse of medicine before we pull the wool from our eyes? Don't buy the lies propagated by big pharma. Their interests are different than yours and mine.

Islam in Britain

2008-03-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

On one of the many walks I took around Oxford when I was there in the spring of 2007, I stumbled upon a large, almost completed Mosque. It was a beautiful building, cream colored with a large dark metallic dome culminating in the familiar sickle and star. What was most interesting about the new Mosque, however, was the amount of security that encircled the construction site. Ten-foot high metal gates and cement walls strung with imposing barbed wire encircled the building, as high-tech surveillance cameras peered down from behind tinted enclosures. All this heavy security made a significant impression on me, and I thought at the time how interesting it would be to write something about the clash of Islam and Western democracy that I had heard about, and now, standing below this fortress of a Mosque, felt I recognized first-hand.
Later on during my stay in England, I took a bus trip to Cardiff. My bus took the long route, going up north to Birmingham before carrying on down to the south of Wales. So it was that I had the opportunity to have some dinner in Birmingham center on my layover.
I didn’t know much about Birmingham – I didn’t even know that I was going to be stopping over there before the bus stopped – and so it was quite a surprise when I stepped off the bus to find a typical post-industrial British city with a very unanticipated South Asian flair. I walked through the streets looking for somewhere to eat, heading in the general direction of a large garishly decorated mall in the center of the city, wondering all the while at what sort of city I had stumbled into. During my whole, short stay in Birmingham I did not see one Anglo-Saxon – I think I saw every nationality but the typical pasty white Englishman. I had no judgment on this; I had no reason to judge.
What I learned while in England though was there was no shortage of judging, and resentment, and hostility, and confusion in the general non-Muslim population. If people weren’t complaining about the proverbial Polish plumbers, they were deriding the “Pakis” (an offensive word for people of South Asian decent). The reasons for this state of affairs in England, where Mosques were fortified, cities segregated, and people aggravated, are many, and I do not hope to address them all. What I hope to do in this piece is give a brief overview of the contentious issues, what they stem from, and what might be done to alleviate some of the most harmful side effects of this process of integration and assimilation.

Recent History
The immigration of Muslims from their origins predominately in South Asia is a fairly recent affair. While many Muslims passed through England while working on merchant vessels in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was not until the 1950’s that the Muslim population living in Britain began to grow. The reasons for this growth in immigration were many. Economic imperatives, as always, were a driving factor in the decision of thousands of Muslims from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, to pack up and move thousands of miles away to a foreign land. Due in part to the exploits of British imperialism, South Asia began to slowly descend into ethnic, religious and economic turmoil, and many people tried to flee the conflicts that were tarrying their countries apart. Many more immigrants came from places with a tradition of emigration. This is especially the case for regions such as Sylhet in Bangladesh as well as rural areas such as Kashmir in India and Pakistan. Still more immigrants made there way to Britain after the completion of the Mangla Dam in the Mirpur District of India, which drowned many villages and displaced over 100,000 people.
As is often the case, some of the first immigrants to Britain were men, intent on making money to send back to their families in South Asia. They came to work in the giant textiles industries that once were a major component of the British economy.
This male South Asian vanguard was little noticed by the local population. They usually staid well outside of mainstream British culture, keeping within supportive ethnic communities in the urban centers of Britain. Because the majority of immigrants were in Britain primarily to make money to send back to their homes in the Indian Sub-Continent, and thus were in Britain without their families, the unique communal landscape of Mosque’s, Halal grocers, and Kebab shops that are now ubiquitous in many British cities were missing.
All this began to change in the late 50’s and early 60’s when a variety of forces converged to drastically increase Muslim immigration. The most important of these forces was the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act, which sought to stymie the influx of immigrants from across the world through restricting the right of entry for people from the commonwealth. The knowledge of this looming cutback on immigrant permits pushed more people to try and find a way to get into Britain before it was too late. This was especially true for the women, children and relatives of the South Asian men who were already working in Britain.
With the new immigration of families to Britain came the culture that had been lacking before. Mosques began to be constructed as the focal point of the Muslim community. With these new Mosques came a demand for Islamic scholar’s, called ‘ulema, to see over the Mosques and Muslim schools and lay down the Islamic law for the burgeoning South Asian demographic. These ‘ulema were often very traditional and spoke very little if any English. They were direct connections between Muslims in Britain and their traditional towns and villages in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Immigrant parents, not wanting their traditional culture to be lost on their children, were happy to offer their children up to be educated by the ‘ulema, creating new problems for the goal of integration originally sought by the British government.
As the population of South Asian’s continued to grow through the 60’s and into the early 70’s, with more and more Muslim children being born in Britain, the Muslim communities became more conspicuous, creating distinct neighborhoods within major cities such as London, Birmingham, Luton, and Bradford. As the textile industry started to crumble, many former textile workers went into business for themselves, creating shops that both served the local Muslim community as well as the tastes of greater British society.
Invariably conflict arose as the new Muslim communities began to assert themselves both economically and culturally. While the new ethnic groups and religion injected a diverse cultural element into British society, it also changed the uniquely British culture that had once been, and this change brought it into direct conflict with those who wished to keep things as they were before. Furthermore, the Muslim minorities were something different from the Hindu and Sikh Indian’s that had also come to the UK seeking a better life; they were far more hostile towards the dominant secular society around them, more steadfast in their traditional morals and values, and generally from poorer, less-educated backgrounds.
A noxious mixture of xenophobia on the British side, and cultural detachment on the Muslim side has come to a head recently as the perceived threat of Islamic terrorism quickly thrust the growing British Muslim minority into the spotlight. The public debates that have raged since the Salman Rushdie affair have often been hysteric, misplaced, or simply racist, but that does not mean they do not point to a real problem having to do with many millions of Muslims in Britain secluded both by choice and inertia from the general society.

Minority Status
Islam, historically, has not taken well to being in the minority. Unlike Christianity, which began as a religious movement separate from the political establishment of the time, Islam was founded as a complete ideology, including political aspirations. Ever since Muhammad left Mecca to establish his Islamic empire in Medina, Islam has had objectives larger than being a belief system apart from the tangible universe; it has been firmly rooted in the social, political, and economic forces of this world, as well as the spiritual realm of the next. And for a long time this arrangement worked remarkably well. The non-hierarchical nature of Islam allowed it to flourish in many forms within empires stretching across the Middle East, North Africa, and into Europe. Unlike the Christian world, which witnessed the idea of a unified catholic (coming from the Greek word for universal) faith dashed into many smaller sects, Islam saw only one main schism, between the Sunni’s and Shi’a’s. This remarkable unity of purpose and ideology allowed the Islamic faith to conquer huge swaths of the known world, quickly creating a civilization that worked harmoniously with its guiding aspirations of creating a pure Islamic state.
As the Islamic world began to butt up against the other large Abrahamic faith in Europe, and boundaries between Muslim states and Christian states shifted constantly due to war and conquest, Islamic scholars grappled with the idea of Muslim’s living outside of the Dar al-Islam (house of Islam) in the Dar al-Harb (house of war) of the Christian world. Because living with an Islamic state was so fundamental to Islam, these early scholars had a difficult time creating an acceptable rule governing the action a good Muslim should take if they were to fall into infidel hands. Sunni scholars generally came to the conclusion that a Muslim should immediately emigrate from their home if it were to become part of the Dar al-Harb, while Shi’a theologians were more willing to allow Muslim’s to stay in non-Muslim countries to be “an outpost and beacon of Islam” (Lewis). Both sects agreed that if a Muslim were to find himself in a foreign land, he would have to continue to conduct himself strictly in accordance with Muslim law and work to “reform” the infidel society he lived within to reflect the truth of Islam in its laws and institutions.
While at the time of the codification of the rules governing Muslim behavior the problem of Muslim’s living under infidel dominance hardly existed, today the number of Muslim’s living in non-Muslim lands grows by the year. While religious considerations factor into relations between Muslim’s and their secular governments, it would be far too simple to say that religion is the only or greatest factor. Nonetheless, it is helpful to recognize that the element of Islam that has difficulty accepting minority status does exist and is backed up by certain interpretations of Islam. Certain strains of radical Islam in Britain can be traced back to clearly intolerant ideas about the ability for disparate groups to live together, at least without an overarching Islamic state structure.
For the majority of Muslims that do not accept a hard-line Islamic ideology that rejects coexistence in a secular state, the experience of being a minority is quite similar to the experience of other minorities. Trouble adjusting to a drastically different and often hostile culture creates the urge to create parallel communities and institutions. The parallel communities are rooted in their own set of cultural norms and rules, which further isolate. But the idea that the differences in culture are insurmountable cannot be simply stated without actually looking into how different the cultural norms truly are, and how detrimental those differences can be to relations between Muslims and their non-Muslim neighbors.

Cultural Differences
The most offensive idea for many western pundits discussing the “Muslim issue” has to be Sharia law. Rolled up in this one term are all the repulsive images of radical Taliban judges stoning women to death, beheadings in town squares, and the imposition of harsh, chauvinistic repression of women. The reality of Sharia law is somewhat different from how it is often characterized, though this is not to say that such inhumane – by our standards – applications of Sharia law have not happened in the past or that they are not continually practiced today in many countries in the world. We often hear about the most horrific elements of Sharia as practiced in certain countries, and thus most “westerners” have a decidedly negative view of Islamic law. Because of this negative view, and misunderstanding as to how Sharia could possibly be administered within British society, controversies can erupt, such as the recent one over comments made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who felt that the application of some elements of Sharia law in Britain “seem[s] unavoidable”. While it is understandable why many would be hesitant to allow a parallel legal system to exist within their country, the frightening image of what that would look like is somewhat different from how Sharia law would probably be practiced, and why some concessions to the Muslim community on this issue will probably need to be made. Furthermore, the argument over whether or not to allow Sharia law is really one manifestation of a deeper problem of us versus them, which I will address later.
As has been discussed earlier, Islam is a religion that permeates all parts of life, and cannot be relegated to only spiritual affairs. So, over the years, Islamic scholars have codified many aspects of what it means to live a good life in accordance with Allah’s laws, and the reams and reams of documents on this subject are what make up Sharia law. Day to day, a Muslim individual is supposed to live by the rules, and if a problem or a dispute should arise, the individual is to ask guidance from an ulema, a person well versed in Islamic law, or go to an Islamic court, where the Islamic judge will sort out what the correct punishment or advise should be.
On certain issues, such as marriage, the application of Sharia law can seem unfair to the western world. But just as western law has changed through the centuries, so to does Sharia law change. More liberal ulema can, and have, slowly changed interpretations so as to fit the exigencies of our times. Conversely, conservative ulema can change the rules to reflect a stricter adherence to archaic beliefs. This is an ongoing process, much like the changes in our laws are constant and ongoing.
Because Islam is, and always has been, a complete ideology, it is unthinkable for a Muslim to work outside of the jurisdiction of Sharia law – whether the interpretation is strict or liberal. Telling a Muslim to ignore Sharia is equivalent to telling a Jew to eat pork. So while Muslim’s will go through the court system, the rulings that may come down from the magistrate must be in sync with Muslim law to be relevant and followed by a devout Muslim. So, for instance, if a Muslim wanted a divorce, and a British court granted such a divorce, the divorce would not be realized until a Sharia judge ruled that the divorce was valid.
Conflict between religious belief and government law is not unique to Islam. It is common source of controversy in all countries and must be dealt with fairly in order to mitigate social angst. In the light of this fact, the Archbishop of Canterbury was making a very reasonable point when he said the implementation of aspects of Sharia law were unavoidable. If the British government wants its Muslim citizens to follow its decisions on say marriage, it has to take into account Muslim sensibilities, at least to a point. Certain aspects of common law, though, are vital to a liberal, free democracy and so should not be compromised.
The process of reconciling differences is difficult but necessary. If done correctly it can be an opportunity to involve a growing constituent in the larger community. But reconciling will be hard. As is clear from a reading of the stricter forms of Sharia law, there are some real differences of opinion as to the role of the individual in society, human rights, and the nature of the law.
Sharia law is not the only portion of Islamic ideology that is difficult reconciling with Western norms. Islam’s relation with the idea of secularism, connected to the issue of Sharia law, is also an important topic to be examined if we are to understand the hurdles of coexistence.
Islam has historically had a difficult relationship with the idea of secularism. The demand for the creation of an Islamic state like the first Islamic state created by Muhammad obviously is a contradiction with the idea of separate spheres for government and religion. This, however, has not meant that Muslims today do not recognize, and are also willing, to go along and even embrace the idea of secular democracy, especially as the benefits of such a separation become apparent. The first Muslim country to internalize the idea of secularism was Turkey, which, under the rule of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was redefined as a modernizing secular nation. Others followed, and while many countries have not remained secular, many Muslim’s today understand and often covet the advantages of a secular state.
Recently there has been a backlash of Islamist sentiments, fueled by economic deprivation and war, but the ideas of human rights, democracy, and secularism are still alive and well in Muslim communities. A poll by the BBC world service last year showed that in reality, many Muslim’s are not thinking of the conflict between the West and Islam in strictly religious terms. In Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, and Indonesia, over 50% of the population thought the causes of conflict between Islam and the West were about “political power and interest,” while around 35% thought the conflict was because of differences of difference of “religion and/or culture”. This points clearly to the fact that what is at issue in the oft-cited conflict between the Muslim world and the West is far more nuanced, especially in the eyes of many Muslims, and not simply knee-jerk animosity towards Western ideas and values.
Another poll done by The Times and Populus in Britain a year after the 7/7 attacks on the London transportation network by Islamic terrorists shows more evidence that British Muslim’s are far from being unified against Western democracy, and Britain in particular. To the contrary, two-thirds of British Muslim’s feel that their community needs to integrate more with the larger British community. Clearly, such a sentiment would not be expected from people diabolically opposed to the culture and institutions of Britain.
The truth is that while cultural differences do exist between Muslim immigrants and the rest of the population, the barriers between the two groups are not as impenetrable as many seem to believe. The struggle for harmonious integration, not total integration, which is both infeasible and probably unwanted, from my perspective, will not be won by burying the tradition and culture that South Asian’s hold dear, but will come from greater economic integration along with a reevaluation of the merits of at least some portions of Sharia law, so as to integrate Muslim sensibilities into British institutions. This is not to say that some of the undesirable aspects of Sharia law should be condoned; they should not. But many aspects of Sharia, especially more liberalized interpretation, are not abhorrent and ought to be recognized. The truth is that the Muslim community is already abiding by many of these Sharia laws, and integrating some of them into the British legal system, much as other religions have aspects of their traditional law recognized, would only show Muslims that there are avenues for redress within common institutions, and that they need not look to parallel legal bodies to find solutions to their problems.

The Homogenous Myth
If there is one overriding problem with the way we view the issue of Muslim integration or the lack there of, it is in our propensity for imagining a unified Muslim bloc, when in reality such a consolidated coalition does not exist. It would seem that there are many reasons for this myth of homogeneity. Firstly, on certain, limited issues concerning Islam, there is a fairly consistent opinion as to what is good and what is bad. Secondly, many Muslims portray Islam as a unified whole, save for the Shi’a and Sunni schism, and tend to skim over the differences so as to give the impression that Islam has more socio-political control than it actually does. This attitude of universal Islam is in a large part wishful thinking. Lastly, to the Western world, the reason for this false analysis of Islam is created by a combination of pundits and decision makers being outsiders looking in on a foreign religion, along with fear mongering by those who are not clear on the details of Islam, are xenophobic, or have nefarious geo-political motivations.
The truth, as always, is far more complicated than the accepted knowledge about the Muslim community, especially in Britain. As was discussed in the first section of this essay, the South Asians that made Britain their home came from very diverse locations and backgrounds, and that diversity has not been lost as they have adjusted to their new homeland thousands of miles from their origins. Family relations are still of paramount importance, followed closely by village and town affiliation, religious philosophy, nation-state citizenship and so on. Depending on the crisis, one can expect to see the different faces of South Asia’s diverse identities come to the fore. If there is an “outrage” against Islam, such as the Salman Rushdie affair or the cartoonification of the prophet, than one can be assured that the Muslim community will speak as one. But when an issue involves geopolitics, or questions of religious interpretation, the Muslim community is splayed into a wide variety of interest groups, comprised of different nationalities, incomes, ethnicities, political affiliations, and cultures. In fact, it has been quite a struggle historically for any one movement to unite the disparate Muslim groups in Britain into a unified coalition that can lobby under one banner, with one voice. Add to geographical and economic divisions separate approaches to the practice of Islam, along with the split between fundamentalism and quasi-liberalism – more on that later – and the Muslim community is truly a splintered polity.
The blessing of the diversity of the British Muslim community is also a curse. While diversity makes it easier for the British government to ease in integration measures, thereby lessening the threat that those who are uneasy about the prospect of millions of “foreigners” in their country might feel, diversity also weakens Muslim efforts to get their concerns heard, opens the way for extremist elements to define the whole of the community, and creates an atmosphere of internal bickering where nothing gets accomplished.
There have been numerous efforts, both grassroots and otherwise, to organize Muslims as a united whole. These efforts have been mirrored by other, often political, organization drives that tend to splinter the Muslim contingent – a good example of this is in the Pakistan People’s Party (formerly headed by Benazir Bhutto) setting up of local chapters inside of Britain. Nonetheless, religious interest groups have grown dramatically as South Asian Muslim’s have realized that in order to find space within British society for their customs, values, and concerns, they have to actively lobby. This realization has manifested itself in a multitude of Mosque councils that have sprung up across the UK. The proliferation of these outspoken Islamic groups have spooked quite a few non-Muslims, and realizing this, many groups have changed their tactics.
In 1997 The Muslim Council of Britain was founded to further organize the Muslim community. This organization is another addition to an ever-growing network of groups dedicated to giving Muslim concerns the same amount of attention as other special interests receive. As more Muslim groups develop, the inevitable winners will be the moderates, who, as seen from a number of polls, have the greatest support in the population.

Extremism and Liberalism
There is no more incendiary question in discussions on the Muslim presence in the UK as how to categorize the majority Muslim sentiment as it relates to religion. Are most Muslims conservative or are they liberal? The truth lies somewhere in-between the classic dichotomy.
First generation Muslim immigrants to the UK, in general, come from rural locations of South Asia, have very little, if any, education, and often do not speak English. With such severe handicaps impeding the immigrant’s ability to integrate himself into the larger society, it is no wonder that many choose to create separate transplant communities, duplicating their traditional communal order on alien soil. As was discussed before, these separate communities not only engrain social divisions, they also tend to incubate conservative religious doctrines, many of which have their roots in the troubled socio-economic and political climates of Bangladesh and Pakistan.
As was gone over before in the first section of this essay, it has been only fairly recently that largely conservative Islamic scholars, ‘ulema, have come to the UK, funded by a more settled Muslim community that desires to connect their children with the traditional values of their homeland. The ‘ulema generally preach a conservative version of Islam, very extreme at times. Their extremist hold on many Mosques is a worrying portent for future relations between Muslims and the general society.
Most liberal western democrats would describe the brand of Islam taught by the old guard ‘ulema as extremely anachronistic, and that is the opinion I hold as well. Simplistic ideas relegating the status of woman, demeaning secular education and inquiry, and hostile to democracy has no place in our modern world. And yet it still continues to exist in the British Muslim community.
This continuation of reactionary and decrepit religious practices is, fortunately, only part of the story. For another larger subset of the Muslim population, the old ways of doing things simply cannot do. The young are faced with a society that does not, cannot, accept conservative religious practices, and so many are looking for other doctrines that can give them meaning. Unfortunately, hard economic times, inequality, and foreign policy crimes and blunders have helped to allow fundamentalist sentiment to fester, creating many young men willing to die in order to make rationally impaired political and religious statements.
But there are many more positive signs that show not only that Muslims, in general, do not support extremism, but also that the young generation is liberalizing quickly, modifying traditional norms to allow them to fit more snugly into British society. The Times/Populus poll cited early also highlighted that over half of the Muslim population in Britain feel that the government is not doing enough to fight extremism, while a majority also think that it is “acceptable” for the government to monitor what is preached in Mosques so as to catch extremist imams. These statistics reveal that a large portion of Muslim society are more willing to take a hard-line approach than many non-Muslim’s would care to take, for fear of breaching important civil liberties. But along with these somewhat heartening statistics are others that show just how diverse opinion is within the Muslim community. Sixteen percent of Muslim respondents to this same poll thought that the 7/7 bombers were justified in their actions, while thirteen percent consider the terrorists martyrs. These are high metrics and point to a divide between radicals and moderates that needs to be addressed in order to keep integration acceptable to the majority of the population.
What is clear from the statistics is that a divide exists, and while a majority are more than willing to work and learn from the mainstream British system, a small contingent is opposed to the whole order, and could well destabilize relations between groups, a process that is well under way in certain European countries, and arguably, in the UK as well.

Diversity Benefits
The mixing of different ethnic, cultural, and religious groups is a defining component of the history of our modern era. One can not begin to imagine all the ways that immigration has shaped, both positively and negatively, British culture and society, but there are certain aspects of Britain’s new diversity that have created some real benefits. This is a broad subject of course, and I will focus mainly on the benefits that British Muslim’s have brought to the formulation of Britain’s foreign policy, a very important aspect of government policy, especially for a small island nation that relies on good foreign relations for its bread and butter.
There is no better place to examine the impact politically active Muslim’s have had on foreign policy than in the recent conflict in Iraq, and, further back, the first Gulf War. Both conflicts were exceedingly unpopular within the Muslim community. Before both wars, Muslim’s mobilized to speak out against the looming conflicts, expressing a sentiment mirrored throughout the Muslim world, and one that would most likely have been lost to the West if it were not for vocal minorities. This is an important point that speaks to the benefit of having a diverse cultural and ethnic society in our modern world. With minorities come perspective, and with perspective comes understanding which can help decision makers make more informed decisions, and decisions that represent their diverse constituencies.
In 2003, as the U.S. was gearing up for war with Iraq, the majority of the world was against any action by the belligerent super power. In the UK, where Tony Blair was working furiously to secure public support for a U.S. invasion, poll numbers indicated that he had support from far less than a majority. This was even as the infamous Rupert Murdoch was acting as “the 24th member of the Blair cabinet,” selling the war through his newspapers much as the U.S. media did in the U.S. It would be exceedingly difficult to pin the lack of support for the Bush-Blair agenda on a large anti-war Muslim presence, but it cannot be denied that the Muslim communities vocal condemnation of any rush to war gave many Britain’s pause, especially since Muslim’s make up a large portion of the population in urban centers.
During the first Gulf War, large bastions of the population and the press derided anti-war sentiments in the Muslim community. While the situation was different in that war, with Saddam Hussein having invaded another country, the justification for war were equally suspect, being that the war amounted to one dictator invading another autocratic kingdom. The case for protecting freedom and democracy could not even be argued, though that did not stop many from selling the idea of such high moral aspirations.
Regardless of the fact that Muslims had a legitimate point in their opposition to the Gulf War I, many looked on their protests as anti-patriotic and anti-British, declaring that those who spoke out against the war held allegiances to Saddam over their adopted homeland. There were, in fact, many who did revere Saddam, seeing him as a worthy Muslim ruler in that he had the power and military might to not be pushed around by non-Muslim powers. For others though, their opposition to the war was rooted in an understanding of the conflict as primarily economic, with Western powers trying to secure Middle Eastern oil. They also condemned the prospect of non-Muslims setting up military bases in the Muslim holy land; a position shared by Muslims the world over. With hindsight, we can now see how wise it would have been for the government in Britain as well as the U.S. to pay attention to what their minorities were saying. Much of the conflicts we have witnessed today directly stems from this grave misstep in 1991.
The Israel-Palestinian conflict is another issue that Britain has gained considerable perspective on, due, at least in part, to their Muslim population. Britain had a large part to play in setting the conflict in motion by creating the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. Since then it has wavered back and forth in its approach to the ongoing conflict. For the most part, it has been on the side of Israel, working with it, most infamously, in the Suez Crisis of 1956 as well as helping it develop nuclear weapons, both actively and unknowingly, by supplying it key material such as plutonium for its nuclear weapons program. Recently, however, it has changed its policy towards Israel, taking a much more balanced approach towards the conflict. This is due to changing attitudes in the Western world on the issue, but the presence of a large voting population with sympathies towards the Palestinians has undoubtedly had an effect on the political posturing.
As many globalization proponents have argued before, the presence of large groups of minorities adds traction to the integration of the world. While there is always room to argue with the mainstream globalization crowed, it does appear that minorities can and do support greater global integration. Always a key part of integration is cultural sensitivity, and as we have seen in Britain in light of two major conflicts, the Gulf War one and two, and other international issues concerning Muslims, that sensitivity has helped to shift debates, modify – not change, at this point – policies, and dampen ill will between foreign countries. It is impossible for countries to look on each other today and not recognize their common heritage, since ethnicities and religions that once were exclusively tied to one nation are now dispersed across the world.

Here Today, Here Tomorrow
Problems exist in the British Muslim community, and they will continue to exist, because the Muslim community will remain in Britain. This fact means that what is necessary is a plan for making the current social dynamics in Britain work. There have been many events as of late that have made it very difficult to focus on problem solving rather than condemnation, but that does not mean that a concerted effort to break the barriers and bridge the gaps should not be attempted.
Beside the fact that all the naturalized citizens from across the world are in Britain for the long haul, there is the issue of further immigration. The British Isles are small, and crowded, and my personal opinion is that a growing population will be at the expense of quality of life. House prices throughout Britain have gone up tremendously in recent years, even as interest rates remained relatively high, especially compared to U.S. rates.
On top of all this there is the issue of whether further immigration from South Asia would be palatable to the general public. The odds are, especially as hard economic times loom, that most Briton’s would prefer a lock down of the border. In fact, the Home Office of the UK has announced a point system similar to the one employed by Australia, in order to attract workers with specific skills and English proficiency. That system was pushed for because of restlessness with past immigration policy and it will come online in 2008.
Regardless of how the immigration issue works out, or fails to work out, there will need to be a drastic change in the dynamics of British society, built upon a realization that multiculturalism is here to stay, and the choice is between embracing the opportunities it offers or wallowing in animosity. It will take more than individual citizens making efforts to bring about understanding; it is going to take an effort by the government to make the situation right through urban planning, community outreach, and an effort to get Muslims involved in British institutions. All of these steps cannot be taken unilaterally, but must bring along the Muslim community, adopting their values as much as possible so as to show that democracy goes both ways, that change can be manifested in both the individual and society.

Bibliography

Bawer, Bruce. While Europe Slept. New York: Doubleday, 2006.

Global Poll Finds that Religion and Culture are Not to Blame for Tensions between Islam and the West. 16 Febuary 2007. 1 March 2008 .

Immigration. 2 October 2002. 1 March 2008 .

Islam in Britain. 4 July 2006. 1 March 2008 .

Leigh, David. Papers reveal UK's nuclear aid to Israel. 10 December 2005. 13 March 2008 .

Lewis, Bernard. Islam and the West. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1993.

Lewis, Philip. Islamic Britain. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. , 2002.

Religion & Ethics - Islam. 1 March 2008 .

Why Nader?

2008-03-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

I have no illusions about the chances of Ralph Nader winning this election. More likely than not he will loose - he probably won't even be allowed to debate the other candidates. But whether he wins or looses is really beside the point. Ralph Nader is running for other reasons.

He is not running as a "spoiler". That argument made time and again by the Democrats in order to keep a system in which two parties dominate politics and nothing gets done is false. The truth is that Ralph Nader never lost the election for Gore or Kerry. The votes that went to Ralph were made by free individuals who have a right to choose who they would like as president. Gore and Kerry lost every vote they failed to get, including the millions upon millions of votes that were never cast by people fed up with a two-party dictatorship. The Democrats ought to be ashamed of the way they have tried to stifle democracy in this country by pushing third-party candidates off the ballot and out of the public eye.

Ralph Nader as well as every other third-party candidate has a right in a free democracy to run, and they must run if we are going to get the diversity of choices that the oldest democracy in the world deserves. Bill Clinton won both U.S. presidential elections with less than half of this country supporting him (43% the first time, 49% the second) because each time a "spoiler" fractured the Republican vote. But you didn't hear Democrats complaining then. As Matt Gonzalez, Nader's VP, points out, if the Democrats were so concerned with "spoilers" ruining elections, they and their Republican partners in crime would work hard to reform the voting system, taking such steps as introducing a ranked voting system, so that no candidate will win an election with less than 50% of the vote. But both parties refuse to do anything. They are content in divvying up districts, restricting choice, and taking advantage of vital voting blocks (liberals, progressives, social conservatives, Christian conservatives etc.).

I, for one, am tired of all this. I am tired of learning about inside deals, where the Democrats and Republicans connive to keep the system in which they thrive safe. I am tired of learning how Nancy Pelosi will come to agreements with then house majority leader Tom Delay to not investigate Republican ethical lapses if Delay will do the same for Democrats. This is called incestuous politics, and it stinks. I am also tired of two parties that continue each others failed foreign, economic, and social policies. The sad truth is that both parties, due to the tremendous amount of money at work in Washington, have one constituency: their major financial backers. Sure the Democrats might fix this bureau or tweak that regulation, but by in large they work to secure gains for a small subset of our population, consistently backing capital interests over the majority of people who make a living with their labor. That is why we have situations where the average worker pays 35% tax on their income, while a hedge fund manager, raking in millions of dollars of dubiously got income, pays a measly 15% tax. The Democrats #1 industry contributor is Wall Street, the ones who brought us a sub-prime crisis, housing bubble, rampant speculation etc. And guess who gives the Republicans the most money: Wall Street. You see how it goes.

So that is why I am supporting Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez. Their campaign is the best way to set up a structure that can be used to educate the public about the corporate Demo-Republican duopoly, electoral reform, progressive economic reform, real reform for our failed healthcare system, real environmental reform, and real education reform. His campaign gives us all a chance to participate in something we believe him, creates the foundations of a grassroots movement that is not built on airy-fairy pronouncements of "change" or "experience" but on a principled stand on issues. His campaign will hopefully shift the debate in this country from the completely corrupted talking points contrived by the Demo-Republicans, to a higher level, where solutions are more important than rhetoric, where securing human rights are our base motivation, and where setting our democracy free in the ways that our founding fathers envisioned is paramount.

William F. Buckley Obit

2008-03-04T22:41:00.000-08:00

Patrick Martin did an honest obituary - here - on the original conservative pundit, William F. Buckley, for WSWS.org. Here it is:

The death of William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review magazine and long-time media publicist for the American political right, has prompted an outpouring of tributes and praise in the American press, out of all proportion to the significance and stature of its subject.

The encomiums for Buckley from the likes of William Kristol, David Brooks and George Will are predictable, but they seem unaware that in proclaiming Buckley their political mentor and forerunner, they demonstrate their own intellectual and political poverty.

If one examines Buckley’s biography dispassionately, it is clear that he was a talented promoter of noxious, reactionary and anti-democratic ideas. He took the initiative to refurbish American conservatism in the early 1950s, at a time when the political right had been completely discredited by its ties to Nazism, fascism and the Great Depression.

For some 30 years, from the founding of National Review in 1955 to the rise of right-wing talk radio in the 1980s, Buckley was the most prominent advocate for what would become the dominant position within the American ruling class: opposition to any government effort to alleviate social distress; hostility to popular movements of the oppressed, whether in the United States or internationally; and a repudiation of the compromises made on both these fronts by the New Deal of the 1930s.

Buckley was put in a position to play this role because of his family’s wealth and connections. His father, William F. Buckley, Sr., was a wealthy oilman with holdings in Mexico and Venezuela, who reportedly played a role in financing the Cristero rebellion in Mexico—a right-wing, Catholic Church-inspired revolt in reaction to the Mexican Revolution of 1911-1919.

These two themes—conservative Catholicism and hostility to social revolution—became the axis of Buckley’s political life. After graduation from Yale in 1950, he enlisted in the Central Intelligence Agency, working as an undercover agent in Mexico reporting on left-wing student groups. His supervisor was E. Howard Hunt, then CIA station chief in Mexico City, later one of the organizers of the Watergate burglary that brought down the Nixon administration.

Buckley decided against a CIA career after his first book, God and Man at Yale, a memoir attacking the liberal proclivities of the university faculty, found a wide reception in right-wing circles and became a best-seller. He and his brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell, published a 1954 polemic, McCarthy and His Enemies, which declared, “As long as McCarthyism fixes its goals with its present precision, it is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks.”

In 1955, Buckley launched National Review, a magazine bankrolled by his own money and that of other wealthy supporters, and enlisting such figures as the ex-Stalinist Whittaker Chambers and the ex-Trotskyist Professor James Burnham.

The standpoint adopted by the magazine, as the founder declared it, was “to stand athwart history, yelling, ‘Stop!’” By this he meant not only opposition to then-dominant American liberalism, and to the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, but hostility to the growth of progressive and revolutionary movements throughout the world.

Buckley packaged his ferocious anti-communism as the defense of the “free world” against totalitarian rule in Russia and China, making full use of the crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy to discredit socialism. But his outlook was rooted in a class opposition to all genuine struggles for freedom and democratic rights on the part of the oppressed workers and peasants in the capitalist countries.

Thus, Buckley was an adamant opponent of the civil rights struggles in the American South, declaring, in a National Review editorial in 1957:

“The central question that emerges—and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal—is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”

Answering the charge that the Southern segregationists were defying the will of the majority of the American people, expressed in civil rights laws, executive orders by elected presidents, and the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Buckley argued in favor of resistance:

“National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way; and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence” (This whole passage was cited by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in his recent book, The Conscience of a Liberal).

This apologia for violence against demands for the abolition of Jim Crow came at the opening of an increasingly bloody decade that included the beating of Freedom Riders, the murders of Medgar Evers, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, Viola Liuzzo, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and dozens of others. Buckley’s only concession to criticism of this defense of racial oppression was to suggest that uneducated whites as well as blacks could be denied the vote.

Despite—or perhaps because of—this identification with the last-ditch defenders of Southern segregation, Buckley enjoyed increasing prominence as the media spokesman for the American right, beginning a syndicated newspaper column, “On the Right,” in 1962, and a weekly television interview program, “Firing Line,” in 1966, which ran for 33 years. He enthusiastically backed the campaign of Senator Barry Goldwater, who won the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 only to lose in a landslide to Democrat Lyndon Johnson.

To preserve his role as the “respectable” right-wing alternative in official political circles, Buckley was careful to distance himself from the more deranged segments of the ultra-right. National Review conducted a public campaign against the John Birch Society, whose founder accused President Eisenhower, General George Marshall, and other pillars of the US political establishment of being conscious agents of a world communist conspiracy.

Buckley also insisted, at least in public, on a break with anti-Semitism, which discredited the ultra-right in the wake of the Holocaust. He was not so careful about fascism, at least in its less populist form as espoused in Spain by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, whom Buckley repeatedly championed.

“General Franco is an authentic national hero,” he wrote in a “Letter from Spain,” published in his magazine, and widely quoted in press obituaries last week. “It is generally conceded that he above others had the combination of talents, the perseverance, and the sense of righteousness of his cause, that were required to wrest Spain from the hands of the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists and nihilists that were imposing on her, in the thirties, a regime so grotesque as to do violence to the Spanish soul, to deny, even Spain’s historical identity.”

Buckley defended other right-wing dictators whose regimes were aligned with US foreign policy, including Augusto Pinochet of Chile. He criticized the 1998 effort to bring criminal charges against Pinochet in Spain as “an act of ideological malice” and praised the military dictator for ousting Salvador Allende, “a president who was defiling the Chilean constitution and waving proudly the banner of his friend and idol, Fidel Castro.”

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Buckley served more as a right-wing gadfly than an actual influencer of policy. He ran for mayor of New York City in 1965, winning 13 percent of the vote as the Conservative Party candidate. He participated in frequent debates with liberals on college campuses and was a diehard defender of the Vietnam War. In one notorious live appearance on ABC television during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, he was paired with liberal author Gore Vidal, whose verbal sallies so infuriated Buckley that he threatened violence, shouting, “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face.”

Only the swing to the right in the American ruling elite, from the mid-1970s on, brought Buckley from the fringes of official politics into its center. Ronald Reagan was an admirer of Buckley and longtime reader of National Review, and with the Reagan administration, a whole layer of right-wing advocates trained in the Buckley school entered political office and rose to top positions in the media as well.

Buckley was not, however, entirely in step with some elements of the “Reagan coalition,” including the Christian fundamentalists who were, in many cases, virulently anti-Catholic, and the neo-conservatives, many of them Jews and former liberals who had supported the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

His orientation was always towards the worldwide struggle against social revolution, which he identified with the Soviet Union, and after the collapse of the USSR he evinced less interest in a militaristic foreign policy and more sympathy for the isolationism once traditional in the American right. He expressed regret that the conservative coalition was no longer held together by “the galvanizing thread that the Soviet Union provided. And for that reason I think conservatism has become a little bit slothful. It could be very decisive when the alternative was the apocalyptic reordering presented by the Soviet Union.”

Buckley eventually disavowed the longstanding blockade of Cuba after the collapse of Castro’s Soviet sponsor, on the grounds that the island nation no longer represented a security threat to the United States. He showed little enthusiasm for the Bush administration’s invasion and conquest of Iraq, observing that the “insurrectionists in Iraq can’t be defeated by any means that we would consent to use.”

The tributes from the right-wing pundits give a glimpse of the social milieu which produced Buckley and which remained a powerful source of attraction for corrupt elements of the aspiring middle class. David Brooks, now a New York Times columnist, gushes: “To enter Buckley’s world was to enter the world of yachts, limousines, finger bowls at dinner, celebrities like David Niven and tales of skiing at Gstaad ... He showered affection on his friends, and he had an endless stream of them, old and young. He took me sailing, invited me to concerts and included me at dinners with the great and the good.”

Apparently there were limits to this affection, however. According to Timothy Noah, columnist for the online magazine Slate, “Christian piety and anti-communism were Buckley’s twin pillars, the former to such an extent that Buckley ruled out David Brooks, his onetime protégé, as a possible editor of National Review on the grounds that Brooks was Jewish. Buckley wasn’t willing to sacrifice National Review’s identity as a publication whose mission was at least partly theological.”

The depth of Buckley’s embrace of reaction is summed up in another widely quoted remark in which he defined his conservative political philosophy as “tacit acknowledgment that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us.” It would be difficult to find a pithier summation of the obscurantism and hostility to the development of science, technology and human culture which characterize the right-wing world view.

"Rocket Men"

2008-03-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

An inside look at the war between Israelis and Palestinians by Al Jazeera's program People and Power.

Matt Gonzalez is Ralph Nader's VP

2008-02-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

I am very, very excited right now. Not only are we going to get, more likely than not, a fairly charismatic Democratic presidential nominee in Barack Obama, a stodgy Republican, and Ralph Nader, the intrepid consumer rights advocate, but we are also going to have San Francisco's adopted own, Matt Gonzalez, playing a pivotal role in this years election as Ralph Nader's Vice President. I knew that Matt Gonzalez was on Nader's team for a while now, working with the campaign on who-knew-what, but now it is clear that he is going to be taking a central role in this years election. All I can say is what a great ticket. Below I am including a video of Matt Gonzalez talking about what he hopes to bring to the Nader '08 ticket.

Here Come the Issues: Ralph Nader is Running!

2008-02-24T13:48:00.000-08:00

He's got a website too: www.votenader.org

East Timor

2008-02-23T18:47:00.000-08:00

Leave it to wsws.org to provide the only truly revelatory insight around on the current situation in East Timor. The article by Mike Head posted on February 19th - here, read it! - for one, gives the context sorely lacking in articles by "reputable" American journalism stalwarts like The New York Times and the Washington Post. Without such context how are we to judge the benefactors of the failed assassination attempt on President Ramos-Horta and the alleged attempt on Prime Minister Gusmao. Also, without context, how are we to judge the intent of the continued and augmented presence of Australian military forces, which claim to be in East Timor to keep the peace.

On the most superficial level, the wsws article is simply much more interesting than the simplistic articles by most media outlets. I thought that making your product interesting was fundamentally necessary in the news business.

It is simply beguiling why our newspapers can't get it together to give readers a better idea of the situation in such hot-spots as East Timor, and why they cannot simply come out with the disturbing truths about the U.S., and in this case Australia's, long and pretty much exclusively nefarious role in world events. I am not going to go over the whole situation over in East Timor in this post. For that I urge you to check out the original wsws.org article - here.

Kosovo Independence: It's Complicated

2008-02-21T18:07:00.000-08:00

I wish a could write a long winded article on the current situation in Kosovo, but sadly I cannot. The truth is I don't know much about the history of the region and I don't want to sound off like an expert knowing that there is still much to know. I was not fully involved in following current events in 1999, when Clinton ordered NATO conducted air assaults on Serbia, and I haven't read any in-depth piece on the Balkans region; aside from the standard Franz Ferdinand, Black Hand WWI articles.
With that said I can confidently assure my readers that what we know about the situation over there, including all the simple good versus bad arguments that are propagated by the U.S. government/media as well as other NATO countries, is far from the whole story. I will try to catch up on my recent history and post something more balanced than what we are getting from U.S. foreign policy apologists, but such an article will not be ready for a while. Until then, feel free to read up on the Kosovo situation - I guarantee that it will be very interesting - and remember: question, question, question.

Main Issue Special Update

2008-02-20T12:06:00.000-08:00

So I've been working on this special on Islam in Britain. Unfortunately, I am not close to done yet. I wasn't able to get all the books I wanted on the first go, so I will probably continue to work on it through this week. I hope to have it up by next Wednesday. In the mean time, enjoy my other less researched articles.
-Brett

Don't Buy the Deficit Lie

2008-02-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

It is often very difficult to ascertain the objective truth in the U.S. through the media, due, I believe, to a skewed institutional framework that rewards conventionality and group-thinking over being the archetypal intrepid reporter. There is no clearer example of this corrosive trend than in the sphere of economic reporting - where money is on the line - and no better an example of this than in the media's constant misrepresentation of the federal deficit.

In the past I was one of those who bought, hook, line, and sinker, the media's portrayal of the calamitous nature of our trillion dollar deficit. I understood very clearly that Clinton had surpluses, while Bush has deficits - very large deficits at that. I grasped the concept of a eminently doomed social security system, and a federal budget spiraling out of control. It was quite simple really: we went from a "surplus" to a deficit of $9.2 trillion. To me, the lay-economist, that does not sound too good. And I was not alone. I had most of the media along with a myriad of guest commentators warning me of economic Armageddon if the budget "crisis" was not fixed. For example, just the other day - Feb. 15 - The New York Times ran a profile of the billionaire-cum-government-watchdog Peter G. Peterson. The piece glowingly portrayed this rich man - complete with a heroic profile picture - who, after a long life of making lots and lots of money - and being taxed at 15% - has decided to start a foundation to warn the country about the looming budget catastrophe brought on by "costly entitlement programs, ballooning government deficits and cozy tax arrangements".

This is all fine and good until one realizes that deficits are not bad, social security is a compact made between governments and workers that would be wrong to be broken, and the biggest source of woe in the "entitlement" - social safety net - program is Medicare, which is due to the fact that the U.S. health care system is in shambles. That's a lot to take in all at once, so lets start by looking at the not-so-disastrous deficit.

The truth is that a mere deficit number is completely meaningless. Yeah, sure, $9.2 trillion sounds like a lot of money, but until we compare it with the size of our economy, it is irrelevant. I'll give a quick example: say we are in a small country, Jamaica, with a GDP of $10 billion. Now if Jamaica wanted to borrow, say $9.2 trillion, they would first want to make sure their economy was creating enough wealth to pay off the interest on that loan - fund the debt. Obviously, with a GDP of $10 billion dollars it would be impossible. More realistically, Jamaica could fund a debt of maybe half their GDP - $5 billion - the interest of which could be more easily repaid - Jamaica's actual debt burden is 135% of GDP, very high. The U.S. on the other hand has debt amounting to 34% of GDP, high, but not that high. Deficit to GDP is important, because without that comparison, it is impossible to put a raw deficit number in context.

This is why all this fear mongering is preposterous. That does not mean there can not be a discussion of U.S. debt, but what I suspect is that a discussion is not what many of the people calling for steep cutbacks in government services in order to control the debt have in mind. We can go back to Peter Peterson and his critique of social security to understand their motives better.

Social Security is an agreement between the government and workers that if we pay a certain amount of our paycheck to the government in order to fund todays social security recipients, we will, when we hit retirement age, have the workers of the future funding us. A simple agreement that works remarkably well. The growth of social security payments as a percentage of GDP is actually quite modest - see here - and while some tweaking of the system may be in order, social security is projected to remain solvent with all current formulas intact through 2046.

As I hope I have shown - with the help of many liberal free-thinkers, like Dean Baker, Paul Krugman etc. - is that the problem that, truth be told, conservative fat cats are crying wolf about is not a problem after all. With that said, there is one aspect of our debt that is worrisome and does need desperately to be fixed: Medicare/Medicaid health care.

The largest ballooning cost the U.S. faces today comes from Medicare and Medicaid, due, in full, to a dysfunctional health care system. What is needed is not a little tinkering here and there - see Hillary/Obama health care initiatives - but a complete restructuring of the health care industry, from private HMO and insurance providers, to the disastrous pharmaceutical industry. Single-payer is the one and only answer to this ongoing, and dangerously expensive crisis. The fact that all of the Peter Peterson's out there are not talking about this, the main issue, is telling.

So there you have. I call upon all those who value truth to be highly critical of doomsday talk about our deficit, while all the while demanding that the one issue that needs to be addressed is health care.

Damning Tidbit on Hillary Clinton

2008-02-14T17:28:00.000-08:00

Within a very interesting article by Foreign Policy in Focus on the hawkish foreign policy positions of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) - which can be read here - there was some damning information regarding presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's own hawkishness in the lead-up to war in Iraq. The AFT leadership admits that their initial support for war with Iraq was wrongheaded, but, as Stephen Zunes writes in the article, they "quietly acknowledge that it was actually the testimony of Senator Hillary Clinton before a meeting of labor leaders in 2002 that played a major role in convincing them that there was still an ongoing Iraqi threat".
Now I'll admit that I never did follow Clinton's position on a possible war with Iraq before she voted to authorize the use of force, but this information implicating Clinton as not merely a duped senator, but a wholesale promoter of the war is damning. She ought to be ashamed, not running for president.

Taxi to the Dark Side

2008-02-13T19:04:00.000-08:00

"Taxi to the Dark Side", the new film exposé of past and present U.S. torture in this ongoing "war on terror," was slated to be broadcast on the Discovery Channel. But, like many U.S. television stations before it, the Discovery Channel, which owns exclusive broadcasting rights to the film, has decided to not broadcast the film, because they find it "to controversial". Damn right it's controversial, as it should be. The film is about ongoing U.S. torture! So, as has been pointed out before, as Fox broadcasts Jack Bower on 24 torturing fictional terrorists, we are being spared the controversy of learning about our own governments sickening use of torture. This is a complete disgrace. I urge all Main Issue readers to go to Discovery Channel's contact website (here) and tell them that you either want them to broadcast the documentary, or at the least, sell it off to someone who will. If you would like, you can copy and paste what I wrote to them (below). Don't be deterred by the tedious contacting-discovery-channel protocol.

I have just heard the news that the Discovery Channel has decided to not broadcast the incredibly important documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side". This is extremely disappointing. As a company committed to educating the public, you are obligated to either show the program that you have already purchased, or at the very least, sell it to another television station so that they can broadcast this important and pertinent film. "Sitting" on the film for the three years that you have exclusive broadcasting rights is unacceptable. I hope that the Discovery Channel will do what is right for the sake of our democracy. Thank you.

West Bank Story

2008-02-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

I don't know what I think about this Oscar winning short film, but I am putting it out there so that you Main Issue readers can have a look and make up your own minds about whether such films are helpful in their broad message of common humanity and building bridges for peace or are just noise that do not help the specific debate over justice and human rights.

Update: Unfortunately, the film was taken down from youtube, but there still remains pieces of it in this edited form along with a so-so dialog between Palestinians and Israelis at the end:

Note to State Department: Don't Ask Peace Corps Members to Spy

2008-02-11T11:25:00.001-08:00

ABC News is reporting that a Fulbright scholar along with other Peace Corps volunteers working in Bolivia were asked by the State Department to spy on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals working in the country. The Fulbright scholar, John Alexander van Schnaick, told ABC News that he was approached by an official from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia and "was told to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers [he came] across during [his] time [in Bolivia]." The full ABC report can be found here.
This serious and dangerous lapse in State Department protocol shows just how far the U.S. administration has decided to go to regain control in South America and thwart the popular democratic movements taking root in historically undemocratic countries like Bolivia and Venezuela.
This episode should convince the State Department that, unfortunately for them, Peace Corps volunteers have more regard for their role as peace ambassadors, and are more ethically upstanding than to spy.

Islam in Britain

2008-02-09T16:56:00.000-08:00

A British friend of mine wrote me today wondering if I might write something about Islam in Britain. It was a coincidence because I have been mulling over the idea for a while now. I have been to Britain numerous times, and I have heard about and witnessed the social angst that is bubbling to the surface in Britain as ethnic and religious demographics change. The tension is acute and apparent, making Britain an interesting place to study what many are labeling a conflict between Islam and the West. The recent uproar over an interview on Radio 4 with Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, in which he said that the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law "seems unavoidable," is just a reminder of how contentious the question of how to integrate Islam within a Western Democracy has become. The fact that the Archbishop's remarks were presented thoughtfully and intelligently within a larger discussion on Islam's place within Britain, have, unfortunately, been lost as the uproarious admonishments have spread throughout the British media. And that is why, perhaps, it is time for someone across the "pond" to do an objective article on Islam in Britain. I am going to begin working on the piece Monday, and hopefully I will have it up by the following Monday (revision: probably not; the books I need will take a little longer to get than I expected. In two weeks probably). Check back often for this Main Issue special report: Islam in Britain.

"The Democrats' Class War"

2008-02-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

An interesting article by David Sirota on truthdig.com. The original article can be found here. Enjoy!

For all the hype about generational and gender wars in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, we have a class war on our hands. And incredibly, corporate America’s preferred candidate is winning the poorer “us” versus the wealthier “them”—a potentially decisive trend with the contest now moving to working-class bastions like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In most states, polls show Hillary Clinton is beating Barack Obama among voters making $50,000 a year or less—many of whom say the economy is their top concern. Yes, the New York senator who appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine as Big Business’s candidate is winning economically insecure, lower-income communities over the Illinois senator who grew up as an organizer helping those communities combat unemployment. This absurd phenomenon is a product of both message and bias.

Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration’s role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today’s boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm “where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards,” including Wal-Mart’s.

Obama hasn’t touched any of this for two reasons.

First, his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric.

But while this pressure to keep quiet affects all politicians, it is especially intense against black leaders.

“If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently,” says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver’s Center for African American Policy.

That’s because once Obama parroted Edwards’ attacks on greed and inequality, he would “be stigmatized as a candidate mobilizing race,” says Manning Marable, a Columbia University history professor. That is, the media would immediately portray him as another Jesse Jackson—a figure whose progressivism has been (unfairly) depicted as racial politics anathema to white swing voters.

Remember, this is always how power-challenging African-Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a black leader’s race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views. An extreme example of this came from the FBI, which labeled Martin Luther King Jr. “the most dangerous man in America” for talking about poverty. More typical is the attitude exemplified by Joe Klein’s 2006 Time magazine column. He called progressive Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., “an African-American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped” and “one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics.”

The Clintons are only too happy to navigate this ugly cultural topography. After a rare Obama attack on Hillary Clinton for supporting policies that eliminated jobs, Bill Clinton quickly likened Obama’s campaign to Jackson’s, and the Clinton campaign told the Associated Press that Obama was “the black candidate.” These were deliberate statements telling Obama that if he talks about class, they’ll talk about race.

And so, as Marable says, Obama’s pitch includes “no mention of the class struggle or class conflict.” It is “hope” instead of an economic case, bromide instead of critique. The result is an oxymoronic dynamic.

Obama, the person who fought blue-collar joblessness in the shadows of shuttered factories, is winning wealthy enclaves. But Clinton, the person whose globalization policies helped shutter those factories, is winning blue-collar strongholds.

Obama, who was schooled by the same organizing networks as Cesar Chavez, is being endorsed by hedge fund managers. But Clinton, business’s favorite, is being endorsed by the United Farm Workers—the union that Chavez created.

Obama, the candidate from Chicago’s impoverished South Side, is finding support on Connecticut’s gilded south coast. But Hillary Clinton, the candidate representing Big Money, is finding support from those with relatively little money.

As the campaign heads to the struggling Rust Belt under banners promising “change,” this bizarre class war may end up guaranteeing no real transformation at all.

David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” will be released in June. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network—both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.

GMO News

2008-02-07T22:50:00.000-08:00

Two stories pertaining to the issue of genetic modification have surfaced recently that I think deserve some special attention. Both news stories reveal how problematic the issue of GM food continues to be in the U.S., years after it was found by the FDA to be safe and ready for commercial use - there remains a moratorium on GMO food in the E.U., and other countries, such as Japan, have strict food labeling rules.

The first news item involves the infamous biotechnology giant Monsanto. The AP reported on Feb. 5 that Ben & Jerry's is protesting a move by Monsanto that would ban the ice cream maker, along with others, from advertising that their products are hormone free. The back-story is that Monsanto produces a bovine growth hormone (rBST) called Posilac which it hopes to see utilized by farmers the world over. Unfortunately, many countries, including Japan, Canada, and the E.U. have banned the sale of rBST for the sake of the animals. The last thing that Monsanto would want to see is a grassroots movement against rBST in their largest market, the U.S. - sadly, for Monsanto, such a movement is already afoot. So, the best hope this GM giant has is to undermine consumer choice by having the government protect their profits. This point about a sly form of protectionism is what is really interesting about this story. It was highlighted by economist Dean Baker in his blog, Beat the Press. The point Mr. Baker makes, which is very interesting for reasons outside of the GMO debate, is that while we call governments protectionist when they move to protect certain industries against foreign competition, we refuse to label such antics as the ones outlined above protectionist.
The second story has more to do with bread-and-butter GMO objections. A recent study by a research team from the University of Arizona has found that the bollworm insect has become resistant to a toxin produced by a type of genetically modified cotton - incidentally, this cotton is produced by Monsanto and it's called Bollgard. The bollworm can wreak havoc on cotton crops, and so the creation of the bollworm resistant cotton was a godsend for farmers. What Monsanto failed to do was stop evolution, and so slowly, but, as we now see, surely, the bollworm evolved resistance to the toxin. It was really only a matter of time before it happened. Invariably the arms race between man and nature will continue. But these two stories highlight the danger of going nuclear, so to speak.

Comedy at The Main Issue

2008-02-06T10:57:00.001-08:00

Here is a little clipping from HillaryClinton.com:

Conniving Clinton and Shady Obama

2008-02-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

The McClatchy newspaper has an interesting article about the real history of our two Democratic candidates. They go into the most detail on Ms. Clinton's thirty-year corporate shenanigans, while leaving a few paragraphs at the end to assault Obama's upstanding facade. The article can be found here.

Endorsements... And Then On To Important Topics

2008-02-04T19:32:00.000-08:00

On the eve of super tuesday, with the fates of the Democratic and Republican candidates still up in the air, I have decided to put it all out on the table and do endorsements (Obama, Paul). OK, now with that out of the way I can get to what I really want to discuss in this post. It involves meaty presidential politics after the Democratic and Republican nominations are sealed.

In the last long six months or so, we have heard a lot from our Repub-Democrat presidential wannabes. We have heard them address the tough issues, from caring for our veterans to faith. We have heard them tell us how they will change the culture in Washington, how they are the candidates of change, and why they are able to change things more than the next guy or girl. We also heard about change.

Even though it may not always be obvious, beneath all of this political showmanship and jousting, many of these candidates have staked out, more or less, positions on the tough issues facing our country other than whether they can be a change from Bush. Presenting "clear and coherent programs to voters" is what a responsible party government is all about, or at least that is what my political science textbook told me. A candidate telling an electorate that they have a secret plan to fix a problem, and that the electorate need just trust the candidate, vote for him, and then find out about the plan after the election (see Richard Nixon) is not fair, nor does it fit with the sort of democratic system we want to engender. So it is much better when candidates just tell us what they are thinking of doing when they win the election, and then let us decide who to vote for.

I have been lucky enough to have the time to check out each candidate's issues repository on their websites. This section is constantly being augmented and changed. For example, some months ago I went onto Barack Obama's website to check out where he stands on all the important issue and I wrote this - Not very friendly, huh. Fortunately, things have changed. He now has a hundred more words on the Iraq war than on Veterans, although both are dwarfed by his section on Family (over 2,000 more words).

All this is really beside the point though. What matters is the substance of the policy pronouncements. Quality not quantity. Now, I consider myself progressive, so I am personally particularly interested in the positions of the Democrats. Environment, tax equality, military expenditure, progressive foreign policy, corporate welfare, reinvigorating government regulation on business on behalf of the people, healthcare; all these issues and more are what I really want to hear about. I am really disheartened to say that the majority of these issues are almost completely ignored, passed over, or are illiberal. Barack Obama wants to expand the military by 92,000 troops. Hilary has a dubious past (see ABC report), an uninspiring senatorial stint (luckily we can still burn flags), and big support from corporate interests, especially Wall Street. Barack is really no better, and his relatively recent foray into politics gives the fact-checkers a lot less to check up on.

The issues that I outlined above are at best appeased, and at worst not even mentioned. Get this: both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton do not have an issue section on their website devoted to the environment (I'm not talking energy security, I'm talking national parks, wetlands etc.). The only viable candidate with such a section is John McCain, the Republican. When it comes to healthcare, Clinton offers a plan to achieve universal coverage in an awful roundabout way which includes fining people if they don't pony up and pay for health insurance. She and Barack both do not address the real endemic tragedies of our healthcare misfire, including profiteering drug companies, profit demented and empathy anemic insurance providers, and massive administration costs.

If liberals were expecting to find a call for more regulation of Wall Street, a revamping of fundamental economic policy (monetary and trade), and more corporate oversight and consumer protection, we must have fooled ourselves into thinking that our vote mattered. In reality, the Democrats take liberals and progressives for granted, just as the Republicans pander to the religious right and then never deliver the goods.

And then there is the arena of foreign policy. Both Barack and Hillary have a completely vapid approach to foreign policy, and that is what, to me, is the most distressing. On the Israel/Palestine issue, both Democrats forgo liberalism and support the continuation of the same old disastrous policy against the Palestinians. Both Hillary and Barack do not renounce the jingoistic foreign policy of Bush. They continue to buy into the idea that the U.S. empire is both moral and justified, while being neither. Their Iraq policy can not be summed up better than by this quote from Noam Chomsky: The opposition to the war today in elite sectors, including every viable candidate, is pure cynicism, completely unprincipled: "If we can get away with it, it's fine. If it costs us too much, it's bad."

So, what do we do when we have been abandoned by the one party that claims to offer us a place in this democracy. First we wait until after the primary rigmarole is over. Then we look towards the oft-forgotten third-parties. Luckily this year, it looks as though we might have some choices.

The rumor mills have been churning over a possible Michael Bloomberg run. While some see such a candidate as being another assault by the business interests of this country on the underrepresented majority (see here), I think that a Bloomberg candidate could add an interesting element to the presidential race, and allow more issues to come to the fore.

The other possible candidate, and one who I am personally very excited about, is Ralph Nader. Mr. Nader has put up a presidential exploratory website (here) for the purpose of looking into a possible run, especially, he says, now that Edwards and Kucinich are gone, and Hillary may win.

Now the arguments against Nader are many, and I don't hope to convince everyone on the value of having Mr. Nader run again. He is very good at laying out his own case, which you can see on a recent Main Issue blog post (Nader '08). But let me just say that for one, Nader did not loose the election for Gore, Gore lost it for himself (he was an incumbent VP, running while the economy boomed, and still lost his home state). Secondly, having Nader in the race creates a presidential contest where voters may actually be able to be educated about issues rarely discussed. This, in a functioning democracy, is a good thing, and we need a lot more of it. Lastly, a Nader presidential run, more than anything else - especially more than winning, which he is unlikely to do seeing as the system is so rigged in favor of the Demo-Republicans - could build a framework with which to mobilize people who care about fixing our democracy, and to send them off to educate and inform our cynical and apathetic population, and, hopefully, to live on to fight the good fight in the political arenas of the future.

This is why my real endorsement goes to the to-be-announced Ralph Nader ticket. Happy voting!

Juno

2008-02-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

I hated the movie "Juno". Like "Knocked Up" before it, I found Juno to be an utterly empty and pointless movie with disturbing overtones. Also like "Knocked Up," I look towards wsws.org to convey with brevity what I find to be so bad about this more recent morally and politically vapid film.

Review of Juno by Hiram Lee for wsws.org:

Juno, the new film from director Jason Reitman, has been lavished with praise and awards. Two weeks ago, it received Academy Award nominations in several categories: best picture, best director, best actress and best original screenplay. And like most of the movies nominated for best picture this year, it is not very good.

Juno is a comedy about teen pregnancy and adoption, but not a social satire, properly speaking. It is no Miracle at Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges, 1944). While there are countless jokes in the film, none of them shed much light on the subject matter. Instead, Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody inject crack after crack into their story almost at random. The humor is largely imposed on the events, not drawn from exploring the real-life contradictions and relations that such events might generate. It would have been second nature to a Sturges or a Jacques Tati to uncover the absurd or ridiculous possibilities of the situation itself.

“I actually see the movie as completely apolitical,” Reitman told CanMag.com in a recent interview. This stance, in itself a political position, also says a great deal about the film. One gets the impression the director has made a point of not stepping on anyone’s toes. He has, consequently, produced a toothless and evasive work that doesn’t challenge anyone or anything.

The story begins with 16-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) staring at the chair in which she and her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) have had their first sexual experience together. Having discovered—or accepted—that she is pregnant after her third home pregnancy test in a single day, Juno decides to have her baby and put it up for adoption.

The filmmakers quickly dispatch Juno’s initial plans to have an abortion. The clinic she visits disgusts her; it’s more reminiscent of the average Department of Motor Vehicles office than a caring medical facility. A lone protester outside the building—a fellow classmate of Juno’s—disturbs her further.

On the abortion issue, the filmmakers take the easy way out. They rush through the matter as though it were an obligation that has to be overcome before they get on with the real business of their film. While it would perhaps be unfair to say that Juno is “pro-life,” it certainly renders abortion an unthinkable course of action for the intelligent girl at the center of the story. The ludicrous arguments of her classmate-protester sway her with remarkable ease.

With abortion no longer an option, Juno must tell her parents about her condition and prepare for the coming adoption. Her parents are strangely unshaken by their daughter’s announcement. “I didn’t know he had it in him” is her father’s response to learning that the shy and unassuming Paulie Bleeker is the father. That Juno’s parents—or any parents for that matter—might respond to such a situation with sensitivity and support one might be willing to accept, but these parents respond with considerable amusement, taking things almost effortlessly in stride. The response feels false, arranged to make the film “contrarian” and unexpected in an empty fashion (see Reitman’s previous effort, Thank You for Smoking).

In the back pages of a PennySaver, Juno finds the perfect couple to adopt her baby. Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) are wealthy suburbanite professionals, people quite different from Juno and her own working class family. They are more than eager to enter into an arrangement with Juno in spite of the teenager’s brash and even patronizing behavior.

It should come as no surprise that this picture-perfect husband and wife will soon reveal themselves to be anything but perfect. Juno’s presence will awaken in Mark a desire to reconnect with his youth and his rock-n-roll past and to escape the stuffy atmosphere of his bourgeois life. This puts his marriage to the prim and proper Vanessa in jeopardy as well as the adoption itself.

Bateman’s performance turns out to be one of the few highlights of the film. While his character is certainly not a new creation, the actor is somehow able to draw a compelling and understated performance out of the well-worn material. His character is one of the few recognizable human beings in the work.

In contrast, perhaps the film’s greatest flaw is the character of Juno herself; she may in fact be the film’s least genuine element. She is quirky, like so many characters we’ve seen in this sort of comedy. We know this because she frequently has an unlit pipe stuck in her mouth, listens to The Stooges and has a telephone shaped and painted like a hamburger. Juno refuses to give a straight answer to any question put to her. Instead, every line out of her mouth is a joke, a quip or, worse, a zinger. “Being pregnant makes me pee like Seabiscuit,” she says at one point. In the same scene she points out the difference between Presidents Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt: “Franklin was the hot one with polio.” This all becomes tedious rather quickly.

Ultimately, Juno is not a real living and breathing human being so much as she is a contrivance, a mouthpiece for screenwriter Diablo Cody’s one-liners. It’s disconcerting, but not in an interesting way, to hear the screenwriter’s adult (or quasi-adult) humor and vocabulary emerge from 16-year-old Juno. The teenager can be heard to say in on scene, “I’m telling you I’m pregnant and you’re shockingly cavalier.” The words simply do not fit in her mouth.

Canadian-born Ellen Page has received numerous accolades for her performance as Juno, and there’s no denying her talent. She first gained notoriety when she appeared in Hard Candy (2005), a film about a teenage girl—an avenging angel of sorts—who tortures and terrorizes a pedophile she suspects was involved in the murder of a young girl. Essentially a right-wing vigilante picture of the most wrong-headed variety, Page, at least, was able contribute a disturbing and memorable performance.

In Juno, however, her performance fails to move the viewer. This is principally a problem of the material. It’s doubtful that any actor could have made much of it. A great deal of Page’s screen time is spent debating music and movies with Bateman’s character: what was the best period for rock-n-roll music?, was Dario Argento the greatest director of horror movies?, etc. It doesn’t amount to much at all.

As the film draws to a close, with the outcome of the adoption now uncertain thanks to the challenges facing the Lorings, the film grows increasingly sentimental. “I just need to know,” Juno will say to her father, having been changed by her recent experiences, “if it’s possible for two people to stay happy together forever.” She will go on to tell Bleeker how her baby only kicks when he’s around.

This is the basic trajectory of the film. Juno is tough and quick-witted, confident to a fault, but inside she is soft, sentimental, even scared. A banal revelation, to be sure, but all the filmmakers have to offer. For all its “offbeat” posturing, Juno is ultimately a very conventional movie. There is no reason why it shouldn’t do very well for itself at this year’s Academy Awards.

The Main Issue Manifesto, by Michel Foucault

2008-02-02T09:19:00.000-08:00

I couldn't have described why I care about politics any better than how Monsieur Foucault described his love of politics. Without further ado, the new manifesto for my blog, The Main Issue, from the Chomsky v. Foucault debate in 1971:

Your question is: why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.

So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested? Not to be interested in politics, that's what constitutes a problem. So instead of asking me, you should ask someone who is not interested in politics and then your question would be well-founded, and you would have the right to say, "Why, damn it, are you not interested?"

Nader '08

2008-02-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

Noam Chomsky v. William F. Buckley in 1969

2008-01-28T21:52:00.000-08:00

Here is a great video of Noam Chomsky on William F. Buckley's television program "The Firing Line" in 1969. Enjoy!

Over the Wall

2008-01-27T17:37:00.000-08:00

Al-Jazeera on the situation in the prison known as the Gaza strip.

When Budgets Are Tight, Cut Science

2008-01-27T14:04:00.001-08:00

It has become a common occurrence in the U.S. to cut essential spending, as long as it is discretionary, when times get tough. The cuts always come before any tax increases, and the rational for such moves comes from a skewed interpretation of market capitalism. The cuts often come to programs that have clear economic impact, provide good jobs, and usually benefit society in the short and long term. That is why the recent cuts to nationally funded scientific research in the latest budget should come as no surprise.

The venerable Fermi Lab in Chicago saw its budget cut by $22 million, requiring the elimination of hundereds of jobs. This cut was instead of what many expected would be a modest increase in funds going to this important laboratory. Along with the cuts to Fermi Lab, the U.S. was also forced to withdraw its participation in an international effort to construct a fusion reactor (ITER is the name of the project, Latin for "The Way") in France after Congress slashed all but $10.7 million of what was slated to be a $160 million allocation. While the other participating countries in the ITER project half expected the U.S. to founder on their obligations - they have learned to expect the inanity of our Congress - it is nonetheless a major setback.

The fact that this project was cut is a prime example of the mentality of our government. Here is a cooperative international effort to build the first large scale test fusion reactor, to develop a technology that is the major hope for the generation of energy in the future, and the U.S decides to all but drop out. The project will go ahead, albeit at a much slower pace, but it just goes to show that our Congress is not only impervious to the wishes of the country, it is also incredibly myopic.

Don't Sign A Deal With The Devil

2008-01-25T10:50:00.000-08:00

After years of occupying Iraq under a UN mandate that is now set to expire, the U.S. is looking to sign a new agreement with Iraq that will allow the U.S. to keep the rights it had under the old mandate far into the future. There are two big things very wrong with the new compact that the Bush administration is trying to get the Iraqi government to sign on to. One is that most Iraqi's don't support the U.S. staying in Iraq for more than a year (that was in September). The second problem is that the Bush administration is going ahead with negotiations with Iraq that are basically treaty negotiations, and yet it seems that they plan to forgo ratification by the senate, a move that would bring us a step closer towards an imperial presidency, which Bush has been trying to build all along.

In articles discussing this new deleterious development in the Iraq war, the fact that the U.S. is going ahead with a plan for continuing military presence while 71% (see World Public Opinion article) of Iraqi's are opposed to it is all but ignored. Instead, most articles focus on whether Bush can muster support in Iraq's divided legislature. The fact that Iraqi's are against the continued deployment of U.S. foreign fighters in their country is the most damning indictment of our continued presence there.

Aside from the awkward fact that the new treaty the U.S. is trying to push through has no democratic legitimacy, there is also the other problem that hits closer to home: Does the president have the right to sign what he euphemistically calls an agreement without the 3/4 ratification of the U.S. Senate? That is what Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.) wants to find out in his scheduled subcommittee hearing. The problem as he and anyone else who has been witnessing the ballooning power of the executive branch can see, is that allowing Bush to negotiate and sign such a treaty with Iraq will undercut yet another function of the Senate. Now we can expect the Bush administration to do all in its power to do just that, but I hope that we also see the Democratic majority stand up and fight back. It's the least they can do and it just might turn into an opportunity to end this war.

On Things Getting Worse Before They Get Better

2008-01-24T10:01:00.001-08:00

I watched the very good documentary "Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man" last night, and among all the very interesting history of Mr. Nader and the regulatory movement he largely inspired, there was a bit that one of the talking heads in the film said that really stood out for me. If I remember correctly, the particular talking head was a columnist from The Nation magazine who said something to the effect of "Ralph Nader is like a Leninist, he thinks things have to get worse before they get better". The comment was meant to be derisive, but I thought that it actually brought up a good point. Do things need to get worse before they get better?

I think the best way to approach this questions would be with a quick little jaunt through recent history to examine whether politics - we are interested in politics here if you haven't noticed - actually works like that. Lets rewind to the end of the Carter administration. Now I am not an expert on how Carter's refreshingly new liberalism eventually tanked, but from what I have gathered it was from a mixture of economic hardship and bad policing by the Carter camp. Conversely, on the Reagan side, there was extraordinary political savviness, and a desire, by Reagan's backers, to hit the liberals hard and keep them in a servile place for years to come. This backlash, as the Nader film also points out, was due mostly to the drumming that corporate power took during the sixties and seventies.

To digress for just a sec, I think I can make clear how drastically corporate powers changed their tactics by a short anecdote. A few months ago I met the former CEO of a large American conglomerate, that among other things, was a major weapons manufacturer. This man was the CEO of this company - I can't remember the name - in the sixties and seventies, when, as he made clear, things were very different in Washington. Things were so different, that when I asked him about lobbying back in those days, he had a hard time remembering his companies lobbyist - lobbyist; singular. Yes, back in those days this major weapons manufacturer had 1 lobbyist. Things have changed.

To come back to the main issue of this write-up, did things get worse before they got Reagan? Most definitely they did. The seventies was a time of immense economic turmoil, but it would be ridiculous to blame it on the relative economic equality and hefty social safety net that were still intact from FDR and Johnson's Great Society. The issue, from my understanding, was energy - think oil crisis - monetary policy, and shifting fortunes of American manufacturing that resulted at the convergence of the two problems. So Carter was walloped, and Reagan, the man who knew how to blow smoke up America's ass just so, was in. This is when things began to get worse.

It is good to remember that Reagan was unloved by large swaths of the country. His approval rating was average - around Bill Clinton's. It has been recently, after the Republican's set about creating a cult of Reagan, that people's perception of his presidency has rebounded. During the dark Reagan years things were quite bad, not only for the poor, who suffered the most under his regime, but also the middle classes. The two legacies that Reaganites claim as his was the dismantling of the Soviet Union and Economic recovery. Any serious scholar will tell you that Reagan really had nothing to do with the fall of the Soviet Union, and Reagan's economic policy, more than boosting productivity in the U.S. markets, caused or correlated with a huge market bubble - i.e. illusionary wealth. See Paul Krugman's article "Debunking the Reagan Myth" for more on this. So things got bad, and they got worse, economically, with Bush Sr. When Clinton finally came to power, with 43% of the vote mind you, he won on the implicit slogan "It's the economy stupid". Things get worse, they promise to make them better.

But by the 90's the Democrats had turned into Republican-lites, and the liberals had nowhere to go. We reluctantly voted for Democrats, because they were the only option. The Republicans continued their assault on all things that the old Democrats used to stand for, and things went on like this until 2000, when many people were unenthusiastic about the two mediocre candidates and Gore lost because he ran a shitty campaign on shitty issues.

Fast forward to today. Now we are faced with a presidential contest that is quite possibly going to be fought during an economic recession, while people are grappling with a grossly ineffective healthcare system, while we are pitched in a horrible war, while corporate profits are high and economic inequality is high as well, and while the specter of global warming - world wide catastrophe - is front and center, figuring into policy choices for energy security and environmental regulation. To me, most of these problems are the result of our weak democracy, where Republicans and Democrats are on the same page on everything from Welfare Reform to NAFTA, and people have no other choice but to grudgingly support one of the two candidates.

Out of this milieu of problems we are blessed with a presidential contest that addresses the issues. But wait, is that the presidential race we are witnessing? I surely don't think so. Even at this early stage in the primaries we are still faced with few choices. The Democratic field, aside from Kucinich, parrots each other on every issue. They talk change, but give the electorate very little on what that change will be. Their foreign policy is basically Republican, they talk about a slight trimming of the economic mess through more regulation but don't address the problem of a fundamentally imbalanced economic situation, and their plans on domestic policy are not bold or forward thinking. This is the presidential field after 8 years of one of the worst presidents in U.S. history? Things got real bad, but I'm not seeing that illicit the response that would be expected. Now the question is, why not? I have my theories, which I don't think I will get into here being that I've been writing this for an hour straight now. Maybe things need to get even worse to get society to demand real change in the institutions that are today holding us down. All I know is that I hope Ralph Nader runs again.