« February 26, 2006 - March 4, 2006 | Main | March 12, 2006 - March 18, 2006 »

March 10, 2006

Catholic Bishops Stop Adoption Services

The Boston Archdiocese's Catholic Charities announced today that it will no longer provide adoption services in the state of Massachusetts, because it doesn't want to sanction the placement of children with same-sex couples. Over the past two decades, Catholic Charities has placed 720 children with families, 13 of which were same-sex couples. There are currently 692 kids waiting to be adopted. Despite the fact that the charity's board voted 42-0 to continue providing services, the state's four Catholic bishops overruled the decision, arguing that "gravely immoral" homosexual adoption ''would actually mean doing violence to these children."

Not everyone agrees with the bishops. Seven Catholic Charities board members resigned last week in protest, calling the bishops' ruling a contradiction of the true mission of Christianity—to help those in need. Rev. J Bryan Hehir, president of Catholic Charities, acknowledged that because the world has changed since the organization began, the ministry should adapt "to meet the changing times and needs." Even Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who opposes same sex marriage, said, "It’s a sad day for neglected and abandoned children. It's a mistake for our laws to put the rights of adults over the needs of children."

Trafficking and Abuse a Concern at the World Cup

It's less than a hundred days until the start of the World Cup in Germany, where more than three million fans will fill the stadiums from thirty-two nations. Understandably, the host country wants to do its part to make sure its guests are comfortable. But in addition to bathrooms and food stands, German cities are also bringing in mobile brothels to accommodate the anticipated boom in the sex trade.

In addition to the registered German prostitutes who will be there, it's possible that over 40,000 women from Central and Eastern Europe will enter the country illegally to "entertain" clients. (Prostitution is legal in Germany, and all registered prostitutes are unionized and receive pensions and health benefits.) So while many women are anticipating a boom in business, critics are concerned about human trafficking and abuse, especially once fired-up soccer fans start hitting the streets after hours of drinking at the games.

European soccer games are notoriously rowdy, and often lead to disorderly and violent behavior. One need only glance at the Scotsman's regular feature, "football and sex assault claims" to get a sense of what goes on here. And while Germany is spending upwards of 20 million euros on stadium security alone, they've done little to quell fears about sex abuse beyond pledging to hand out 100,000 free condoms.

A "Communal Civil War"

The other day, Donald Rumsfeld mentioned that he would prefer to avoid a "civil war" in Iraq—right, obviously—but that if one did "break out" (presumably he means if things got really, really bad), then the United States would stay out of it, letting Iraqi security forces "deal with it." That's not exactly comforting, and ignores the fact that U.S. forces might not be able to stay neutral. Gary Hart recently worried that if "all-out civil war breaks out, we could lose our army. If Sunnis and Shiites take to the streets by the thousands, it could literally be impossible to get [the soldiers] out."

More recently in Foreign Affairs, Stephen Biddle wrote a piece noting that Rumsfeld's current strategy is exactly the wrong one. Iraq, he argues, is already in the midst of a "communal civil war," and leaning too hard on "Iraqization"—that is, training native Iraqi forces to replace the U.S. military as soon as possible—and "democratization" will only make things worse. (Among other things, rushing the police force, which is filled with militant Shiites, will only further anger the Sunnis—there are signs that the U.S. is recognizing this of late, trying to weed sectarian elements out of the police force, but the problem still exists. And many of the security forces may be too far gone for the U.S. to do anything about it—if the U.S. even intends to "do anything about it.")

The only thing that can save Iraq, Biddle argues, is a "compromise based on a constitutional deal with ironclad power-sharing arrangements protecting all parties." And to get there, he says, the United States will have to remain in the country for awhile, guns blasting and all, rather than pawning security responsibilities as quickly as possible on native Iraqi forces. The way to get various Shiite and Kurdish and Sunni interests to agree to something like the (unstable-but-not-as-unstable-as-Iraq) Taif Accords, in Biddle's view, is to threaten each side:

The only way to break the logjam is to change the parties' relative comfort with the status quo by drastically raising the costs of their failure to negotiate. The U.S. presence now caps the war's intensity, and U.S. aid could give any side an enormous military advantage. Thus Washington should threaten to use its influence to alter the balance of power depending on the parties' behavior. By doing so, it could make stubbornness look worse than cooperation and compel all sides to compromise.

Biddle has some nice things to say about U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's current "interventionist approach" for going down this route already, and wants him to try harder, with more in the way of promises to alter the balance of power.

I can't really say if it will work or not—doing pretty much anything to avoid a larger all-out civil war and thus limit the total amount of catastrophe to come of this invasion seems worth trying—but Biddle's plan sounds dubious. What if the sort of Sunni political leaders who can actually credibly negotiate and enforce a "power-sharing agreement" never show themselves? Or what if they don't even exist? What then? What if the United States' threats to "use its influence to alter the balance of power" end up escalating tensions, or what if the U.S. finds itself trapped into committing to backing one side over the other, unable to withdraw when "Sunnis and Shiites take to the streets by the thousands," as Gary Hart fears.

What Biddle's suggesting seems like a delicate diplomatic operation, the sort of thing this administration isn't very good at, even if it has become a bit less ham-fisted over the past year or so. Certainly Rumsfeld, the guy who's still in charge here, doesn't seem to have any idea of how to handle what Iraq expert Marina Ottaway told Der Spiegel the other day, "[Iraq] has already collapsed. Now the challenge is figuring out a way to deal with this fact." (And read Michael Schwartz in Mother Jones today for more on this.)

"The Arctic climate of the Bering Sea is in full retreat"

Not to belabor this, but if your appetite for alarming environmental news wasn't sated by our special issues on global warming and, more recently, the roiling sewers that are our oceans, well, then, the LA Times has just the story for you.

Whales, walruses, seabirds and fish are struggling to survive the changing climate of the Bering Sea, their northern feeding grounds perhaps permanently disrupted by warmer temperatures and melting ice, scientists reported Thursday in the journal Science.

By pulling together a broad range of observations and surveys, an international research team concluded that it is witnessing the transformation of an entire ecosystem in a region home to almost half of U.S. commercial fish production.

Then it gets shocking.

...As sea ice diminished, breeding grounds for seals were disrupted and populations plummeted. Polar bears started to drown. Walruses, accustomed to diving in the shallows to feed along the sea bottom, found themselves adrift on broken ice floes in waters 6,500 feet deep. The animals starved.

For more on the effects of climate change on polar bears in particular--if you can take it--see this piece by Marla Cone in the current issue of Mother Jones.

U.S. found guilty of violating human rights of Native Americans

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has urged the United States to "freeze," "desist" and "stop" actions or threatened actions against the Western Shoshone Peoples of the Western Shoshone Nation. This action challenges the United States' government's claim of ownership of almost 90% of Western Shoshone lands.

According to Shoshone spokeswoman Bernice Lalo:

The mines are polluting our waters, destroying hot springs and exploding sacred mountains--our burials along with them--attempting to erase our signature on the land. We are coerced and threatened by mining and Federal agencies when we seek to continue spiritual prayers for traditional food or medicine on Shoshone land.

And from spokesman Joe Kennedy:

...we have rights to protect our homelands and stop the destruction of our land, water, and air by the abuses of the United States government and the multinational corporations. He says "the situation is outrageous and we're glad the United Nations Committee agrees with us.

The land in question has been used for military testing, nuclear waste disposal planning, and open pit cyanide heap leach gold mining. The federal government has seized Shoshone livestock, issued trespass fines, and practiced armed surveillance of Western Shoshone. The Shoshone claim that the U.S. government has also dug up their ancestors' graves.

March 9, 2006

San Diego woman says she was fired for having an Air America bumper sticker

Linda Laroca has filed suit against her former manager, Beverly Fath, and her former company, Advantage Sales and Marketing, Inc. because, she says, she was fired because of a bumper sticker. According to Laroca, Fath saw her 1360 Air America Talk Radio bumper sticker and called it "that Al Franken left-wing radical radio station." Laroca says Fath then told her: "The country is on a high state of alert. For all I know, you could be al-Quaida," and then fired her.

California's labor law prohibits employers from controlling or directing their employees' political activities. Laroca is seeking lost wages and damages not only for violation of the state labor law, but also for wrongful termination, emotional distress, and violation of the state constitution.

Santorum and lobbyists: Plus ça change...

The Washington Post reports:

After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week. ...
[The] purpose [of the meetings] is to help Santorum's reelection effort, but many of the same topics other than jobs are discussed, aides and participants said. ...

[T]he new meetings have added 20 to 30 people to their invitation lists, while retaining from the old list 40 of the 70 or so lobbyists who had been regularly invited. ...

One lobbyist called the attendees "the usual suspects," and said they were among the city's best-known lobbyists whose firms represent financial services, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, oil production and tobacco companies. ...

"We're going to formalize this [meeting] into a campaign briefing about once a month," [Mark] Rodgers [staff director of the Senate Republican Conference] said. "This will grow with people who are committed to Rick's campaign."

Recall that this is the guy Senate Republicans put in charge of lobbying reform.

Posted by Julian Brookes on 03/09/06 at 12:18 PM | | Comments (1) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Men's Rights Group Files Abortion Suit

The National Center for Men has launched its "voluntary fatherhood" project by filing a federal lawsuit, arguing that as long as women can chose to have an abortion, then men should have the right to chose fatherhood—and to decide whether they pay child support or not. The Center's affidavit reads:

We will ask a United States district court judge to apply the principles of reproductive choice, as articulated in Roe vs. Wade, to men. We will ask that men be granted equal protection of the laws which safeguard the right of women to make family planning decisions after sex. We will argue that, at a time of reproductive freedom for women, fatherhood must be more than a matter of DNA: A man must choose to be a father in the same way that a woman chooses to be a mother.
The lawsuit has little chance of winning, and for good reason. Yes, women have the same access to birth control as men, and also have the right to an abortion. But the problem here is the simple truth that women and men are not equal in their child-bearing roles. The government forcing a woman to carry a baby to term is not the same as a man carrying a financial burden. The National Center for Men can call it a double standard. I call it biology.

Posted by on 03/09/06 at 11:50 AM | | Comments (13) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Civilian Deaths Rise in Iraq

Today Iraq Body Count released a new report noting that the number of civilian deaths in Iraq has increased each year of the occupation. The figures, which start in May of 2003, rose from an estimated 6,331 civilians killed in the first year to a total of 12,617 killed in the third year (Mar. 2005-Mar. 2006), and are based on data from the morgue in Baghdad.

Even more staggering, the statistics for the third year don't include the majority of civilian deaths that resulted from sectarian violence after the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra—a figure estimated at around a thousand deaths—and exclude January and February data from the Baghdad morgue.

"The initial act that sparked this cycle of violence is the illegal US-led invasion of March and April 2003 which resulted in 7,312 civilian deaths and 17,298 injured in a mere 42 days," IBC co-founder John Sloboda said. "The insurgency will remain strong so long as the US military remains in Iraq, and ordinary Iraqi people will have more death and destruction to look forward to." Following its initial 2003 evaluation, the organization concluded that, by the numbers, the American military was incapable of protecting the civilian population in Iraq from attacks. "And if the US military can’t ensure the safety of Iraqi civilians and itself poses a danger to them, what is its role in that country?"

Posted by on 03/09/06 at 11:35 AM | | Comments (1) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

There won't be a civil war. Unless there is. But Iraqi forces can handle it. Unless they can't.

Via the Guardian:

Earlier this week Mr Rumsfeld said reports had overestimated the possibility of civil war breaking out in Iraq following the sectarian clashes provoked after insurgents destroyed an important Shia shrine in Samarra last month.

Today he conceded there was a high level of "tension in the country, sectarian tension and conflict," but he added that it had not yet become a civil war "by most experts' calculation."

Mr Rumsfeld said: "The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the—from a security standpoint— have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to."

Feel better now?

Posted by Julian Brookes on 03/09/06 at 11:25 AM | | Comments (1) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

March 8, 2006

Health Care and Debt

This month's Health Affairs has a couple of good pieces on health care costs and debt that are worth reading. The first article, by David Dranove and Michael Millenson, argues that only about 17 percent of all bankruptcies today are caused by unaffordable medical expenses, which is far lower than the 54.5 percent figure found by David Himmelstein and colleagues about a year ago.

So maybe crippling health care costs aren't as crippling as once assumed, right? Hold on. Himmelstein and colleagues respond to the new study here, saying that Dranove and Millenson "misrepresented" their data. Among other things, Himmelstein and friends note that many people who appear before bankruptcy court give as their reason "credit card debt" or "mortgage," even though that problem had been brought about by medical expenses. Yet Dranove and Millenson didn't seem to count these people as those who go bankrupt because of medical bills, even though common sense would say otherwise.

It's a fun debate, but either way, Robert Seifert and Mark Rukavina probably have the last word on the subject in this third piece, noting that regardless of who's right, bankruptcy is really only the tip of the iceberg here. It's still the case that one of six nonelderly adults—some 29 million Americans—are currently shouldering debt caused by medical bills, and another 56 million adults are at risk of incurring heavy debt, should they happen to get hurt or fall ill through no fault of their own. Regardless of how many people are being driven to actual bankruptcy by medical costs, a lot of people are finding themselves in pretty dire straits.

Additionally, the mere prospect of being saddled with medical debt prevents many people from seeking care—they don't fill a prescription, or don't see a specialist, or don't visit a clinic for a medical problem. (Sometimes this is self-imposed, but sometimes not: some providers will refuse treat a patient with previous outstanding medical bills, so a person with too much medical debt may simply be denied care.) It's another indication that merely reducing the number of uninsured Americans won't solve the health care crisis in this country—many of those who are insured still face all sorts of problems associated with not being able to pay for necessary health care.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 03/08/06 at 6:00 PM | | Comments (4) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Church Tries New Approach on Pornography

This weekend Florida’s Clermont Fellowship Church is hosting a "Free Porn" weekend, with symposiums led by reformed adult porn stars and pastors who have been "freed" from porn. Getting past initial chuckles over events such as the screening of the "award-winning" documentary, Missionary Positions, the church's website seems to take a somewhat unorthodox position on porn—advocating for love, acceptance, and forgiveness rather than pure damnation. As Lead Pastor Tom Casolaro says:

Porn is at epidemic proportions, it's destroying families, churches, and the fabric of our society, and it's time the church stands up and says something. We want to offer hope and help people heal and build solid relationships with each other and God. Porn is 24/7 and the community needs to know we are here for them."
But conservatives aren't always receptive to churches having open and frank discussions about pornography with their congregations. Many believe that porn should never be talked about, that the only way these sinners will reach salvation is through the scripture. (And think that letting the church have anything to do with pornography is an abomination.) But even if Jesus did not "employ such unholy hyperbole" in spreading his message, as one letter-writer to XXXChurch writes, Free Porn Weekend is addressing an important issue that the majority of people of faith are often ashamed to tackle. So what if the star of their public service announcement is Pete the Porno Puppet?
Meanwhile, here are some statistics on pornography:

Number of pornographic web sites: 280 Million

People who regularly visit Internet porn web sites daily: 40 million

Christians who said pornography is a major problem in the home: 47%

Breakdown of male/female visitors to pornography sites: 65% male - 35% female

30% of unsolicited e-mails contain pornographic materials

Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs.

Porn revenue is larger than all combined revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises.

US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC at $6.2 billion.

Posted by on 03/08/06 at 3:08 PM | | Comments (0) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Who Needs a Unified Message?

Via Jacob Weisberg's Democratic-bashing article in Slate (and this wasn't one of the good Democratic-bashing articles, attacking the minority party on substance for being too filled with pro-corporate moderates who back bad bankruptcy bills, harmful abortion restrictions, and defeating the Kyoto Protocol; no, no, it was one of those bitchy "insider" pieces where we learn that Harry Reid is "colorless," Nancy Pelosi is "Washington's answer to Barbara Streisand," and Howard Dean stands for "incandescent rage"—in other words, sheer wankery), here's a New York Times piece that talks about the problems with the Democratic Party's electoral strategy:

From Arizona to Pennsylvania, from Colorado to Connecticut, Democratic candidates for Congress are reading from a stack of different scripts these days.
At the Capitol in Hartford the other morning, State Senator Christopher Murphy denounced the "disastrous prescription drug benefit bill" embraced by his Republican opponent, Representative Nancy L. Johnson.

Jeff Latas, a Democratic candidate in an Arizona race, is talking about the nation's dangerous reliance on oil imports from the Middle East. Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat, says he is running against "the arrogance and cronyism" displayed by Washington Republicans.
In this context, the fact that all these Democrats are saying different things is a "problem" because the Democratic leadership in Washington wants to nationalize this race, since that's what Newt Gingrich and the GOP did in 1994 and, for whatever reason, that's the model. I don't know if it will work or not—real political analysts can speak to that—but from a small-d democratic perspective, it doesn't seem so bad that different (big-d) Democratic candidates are running on different things.

The House, after all, is set up so that each member of Congress represents a single district. I'd prefer we had something like proportional representation, where people really did vote for national candidates, but that's just not the case, and under the current system, if people in Connecticut have different concerns from people in Arizona, well, then it seems quite natural for representatives to talk about those local concerns. Maybe Christopher Murphy's constituents don't care about "arrogance and cronyism" but care a lot about the prescription drug bill. Shouldn't they be able to elect someone who pledges to fight for that issue? Same with the war—if people have varying views on when and how the United States should pull out of Iraq, shouldn't they be allowed to elect a Democratic Congress (if they elect a Democratic Congress) that reflects that disagreement, to some extent? Maybe there are counterarguments here, but the obsession in the media with Democrats having a "unified message" seems a bit bizarre to me.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 03/08/06 at 2:12 PM | | Comments (3) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Global warming...still happening!

Last year, Mother Jones put out a special package on global warming and the Bush administration's determined refusal to take it seriously. As expected—to quote Jon Stewart—the issue was never a problem again.

Or so we thought. David Ignatius, in his Washington Post column, sets us straight:

Every week brings new evidence that global climate change is real and that it's advancing more rapidly than scientists had expected. This past week brought a report in Science that the Antarctic is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year. Last month researchers reported that glaciers in Greenland are melting twice as fast as previously estimated. One normally cautious scientist, Richard Alley, told the Post's Juliet Eilperin he was concerned about the Antarctic findings, since just five years ago scientists had been expecting more ice. "That's a wake-up call," he said. "We better figure out what's going on."
Animals don't have the luxury of ordering up more studies of global warming. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times reported in January that colorful harlequin frogs found in Latin America are dying at alarming rates because of a fungus that seems to be linked to global warming. Doug Struck explained last week in the Post that climate change is helping the ravenous mountain pine beetle devour forests in British Columbia, killing more trees than wildfires or logging. Similar findings are stacked in a depressing pile in my study that keeps getting taller.

And no, still nothing halfway serious on this from the Bush administration or Congress.

Posted by Julian Brookes on 03/08/06 at 1:51 PM | | Comments (1) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Will NATO Go to Darfur?

A few weeks ago we predicted that the Bush administration's bold new promises to help stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur—perhaps by employing NATO—wouldn't amount to much. Sadly, that prediction proved entirely correct. On Monday, NATO's Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Schefer said NATO had no intention of putting "boots on the ground" in Darfur. (As mentioned before, in most European countries there's not really any popular outcry among civil society groups to do anything about a bit of ethnic-cleansing in Africa.)

Eric Reeves, who's followed the Darfur conflict closer than just about anyone else on the planet, notes today that it's not just Europe that deserves the blame here. The United States isn't exactly leading on the issue, either. And while both the EU and the U.S. are pushing for UN involvement, that won't be enough—ultimately, NATO needs to get involved:

Even if the United Nations agrees to relieve the African Union in Darfur, there is no reserve of U.N. peacekeepers from which to draw. Assembling a U.N. force will therefore take a good deal of time; and, meanwhile, the genocide will continue. Insecurity is on the rise throughout Darfur; humanitarian reach is contracting; and violent attacks continue to displace civilians. If security deteriorates to the point where humanitarian workers cannot stay in Darfur and continue to serve refugees, then disease and malnutrition will take over--and finish the genocidal work that the Sudanese government began. That is where NATO could have helped: by deploying troops now as an interim step until the United Nations is ready to send peacekeepers of its own.
According to the NATO diplomat, "to get a significant number of NATO nations involved would take a lot of persuading." Persuading, then, is what we will have to do. Bush's willingness to undertake such persuasion will serve as the ultimate test of whether his recent rhetoric on Darfur reflected genuine commitment or political expedience. As TNR argued last week, convincing NATO leaders to send troops will mean more than merely lobbying. It will mean leading by example: pledging that U.S. forces will participate if NATO deploys to Darfur. As the Senate resolution says, "[A]ll members of the international community must participate in efforts to stop genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Darfur." That includes us.
The Bush administration's signals haven't been encouraging—its spokesmen still insist that it's "premature to speculate" on what a U.S. response would look like. And it's not just the Bush administration. Congress certainly hasn't rushed to require a U.S. commitment. No one wants to send American troops to die in the hot Sudanese sun just to stop African genocide. And that means that the genocide will almost certainly continue until there's no one left to kill.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 03/08/06 at 11:38 AM | | Comments (0) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Rumsfeld Blames the Media

Donald Rumsfeld thinks the media is responsible for widespread fears of a civil war in Iraq. Recent polls have shown support for the President and the war in Iraq dwindling, with half of Americans calling for a pullout and eighty percent seeing the sectarian violence leading to civil war. But according to Rumsfeld, polls like these aren’t reliable as long as public opinions is being corrupted by a press that seems "to be of a nature to inflame the situation and to give heart to the terrorists and to discourage those who hope for success in Iraq."

Although Rumsfeld did not give specific examples of misreporting, he did hypothesize on the root of the problem: "We do know, of course, that al-Qaeda has media committees. We do know that they teach people exactly how to try to manipulate the media," he said. "Now I can't take a string and tie it to a news report and then trace it back to an al-Qaeda media committee meeting. I'm not able to do that at all."

Actually, this isn't the first time Rumsfeld has talked about al-Qaeda's media apparatus. Last month he accused the organization of poisoning Muslim views of the United States through media vehicles like the internet and instant messaging. "Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we—our country, our government—has not adapted," he said. "In some cases, military public affairs officials have had little communications training and little, if any, grounding in the importance of timing and rapid response, and the realities of digital and broadcast media." But if military specialists in public affairs haven’t had training in communications, what is it exactly, that they are trained to do?

Posted by on 03/08/06 at 10:34 AM | | Comments (0) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Today is International Women's Day and Blog Against Sexism Day

Today is International Women's Day, which George W. Bush has already celebrated by lying about the status of Iraqi women. It is also Blog Against Sexism Day; a list of participating blogs can be found here.

Bella Abzug once said:

They used to give us a day--it was called International Women's Day. In 1975 they gave us a year, the Year of the Woman. Then from 1975 to 1985 they gave us a decade, the Decade of the Woman. I said at the time, who knows, if we behave they may let us into the whole thing. Well, we didn't behave and here we are.

For many, International Women's Day is either a nice commemoration or just another liberal plot. Its real purpose, however, is to call attention to the need for equality and justice among all people.

Posted by Diane E. Dees on 03/08/06 at 8:59 AM | | Comments (0) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

March 7, 2006

Guest Workers, Again

Linda Chavez-Thompson, the executive vice-president of the AFL-CIO, has an op-ed on immigration in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today that hits a bunch of good notes, including:

Temporary guest worker programs are not a cure-all. Real immigration reform cannot and should not be designed primarily to enlarge guest worker programs that have served only to provide employers with a steady stream of vulnerable, indentured workers they may exploit for commercial gain.
Right. The historical experience is pretty clear on this. Between 1942 and 1964, when immigration was still very much restricted in the United States, the federal government operated the Bracero Program for agricultural work. Immigrants who enrolled were put in holding pens at the border, waited with their numbers for a job, and then stripped and "deloused" and shuttled off to the U.S., where they were bound to their employer and virtually powerless.

As one would expect, many immigrants were exploited and denied the benefits due to them under law, and eventually the program was ended after enough allegations of abuse came to light. Not to mention the fact that growers often imported braceros to use as union-busters during farmworker strikes; plus, above all, it didn't do much to halt illegal immigration.

Variations of the bracero scheme still remain; under the H-2A visa program, growers are allowed to import "guest workers" if they can't find domestic help (in practice, the federal government is pretty lax about this provision). And now several immigration reform proposals, from the "liberal" McCain-Kennedy bill to the conservative Cornyn-Kyl proposal, are calling for the creation of new temporary guest-worker programs. It's hard to imagine why they'd work any better than the Bracero Program did—"guest workers" who are in the country and tied to a single employer are going to be vulnerable to abuse, no matter what.

It's also hard to imagine that they'll stop illegal immigration, since, especially under Cornyn-Kyl, many workers could simply "disappear" and stay in the country once their five-year guest-worker stint is up. (That certainly happened in Europe in the 1960s—many Algerian and Moroccan workers simply stayed—which is why the programs were discontinued.)

What most of these guest-worker proposals will do, however, is allow employers to keep wages and labor standards low—after all, immigrants can't really bargain for better pay and working conditions if they have to live in fear of being deported. Most of these schemes are awful. On the other hand, living conditions for many migrants have become so dire, and the dangers in crossing the border so horrendous, that some immigration advocates think that guest-worker programs are better than nothing. A more sensible idea would be to make sure that all workers, regardless of their nationality, are protected from exploitation, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards as far as Congress goes.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 03/07/06 at 5:21 PM | | Comments (6) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Iraqi women without headscarves threatened, attacked, and killed

According to the Women's Rights Association, a Baghdad NGO, since 2003, the number of women in Iraq attacked because they were not wearing headscarves has more than tripled. Between 1999 and March of 2003, there were 22 attacks and one death; since then, there have been 80 attacks and 4 deaths, with no figures are available yet for 2006.

The decision to not wear a headscarf is concentrated in the area around Baghdad because that is where Iraq's modern society has grown. According to a WRA spokeswoman, there are now significantly fewer women and girls around Baghdad wearing headscarves, but many have been threatened by relatives or have been imprisoned inside their homes.

A year ago, insurgents took an Iraqi woman in Western dress out of a local pharmacy and executed her. She was found with two bullet holes in her head, and she had been covered with a traditional abaya veil with a message pinned to it that said "She was a collaborator against Islam." She was not the first woman to have a "collaborator" label pinned to her clothing.

"Honor killings" are still permitted in Iraq. One woman was strangled by her father because she went to visit him without her veil, which her husband had asked her to remove after their marriage. Her husband says there has never been an investigation of his wife's death. A police spokesman said that there is little the Iraqi police can do in these cases because "We're in a Muslim country... if you interfere in family cases concerning veils, you're considered a betrayer of Islam. We cannot touch such cases."

Human Rights Watch points out that--though the new Iraqi constitution permits women the right to transfer citizenship to their children, it fails to give women equal rights within the family. HRW also confirms that Iraqi women are being attacked for dancing, socializing with men, and not wearing headscarves.

An International Women's Day news release from the White House, dated today, states "No longer denied basic rights and brutalized by tyrants, Mr. Bush says those women are now making their own history."

Posted by Diane E. Dees on 03/07/06 at 3:52 PM | | Comments (1) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

More on the India Nuke Deal

Fred Kaplan gets at some of the problems with the Bush administration's recent nuclear deal with India. Among other worries, India could start building fast-breeder reactors—which can be used to build lots and lots of plutonium bombs—inside its unmonitored military facilities. The whole thing also undermines the Non-Proliferation Treaty: after all, if the U.S. can offer India nuclear technology without requiring the latter to disarm (or even, more weakly, put a moratorium on new weapons), what's to stop Russia and China from offering, say, Pakistan or Iran a similar deal?

But there's another—and, I think, far more serious—problem here. A few weeks ago in the New Yorker, Steve Coll had a scary piece of reporting about how in December of 2001, after Kashmiri jihadis allegedly tried to blow up the Parliament House in New Delhi, India and Pakistan came very close to war. Very close. And because neither country could tell how serious the other side was about deterrence and using its nukes, the world came closer to seeing a real-life nuclear exchange than at any time since 1962. For instance:

At a round-table discussion in London, a Pakistani general involved with his country's nuclear program discussed the crisis with Indian civilian participants. "They said, 'We can live with losing Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta, but we will wipe out Pakistan,'" the general recalled. "I said, 'That's easier said than done. Losing Delhi, Calcutta, and Bombay, it would be very difficult for India to survive.'"

Such talk unnerved British and American officials, and in late May Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, called Armitage, asking him to visit Islamabad and New Delhi; he was hoping that a new round of diplomacy might at least slow down India's war planners. Armitage agreed, and he invited analysts from the State Department's intelligence and regional bureaus to his office. He asked for a show of hands: "How many think we're going to war?" Everybody's hand went up but his.
(Indeed, the State Department took the threat so seriously that it evacuated its diplomats from the region—the first time it had ever done so.) Now the standoff was resolved, at least in Coll's telling, because Colin Powell and Richard Armitage did a deft job of mediating between the two sides. That's partly because they could be seen as somewhat impartial mediators—among other things, relations between the United States and Pakistan were warming in late 2001. But because the Bush administration has cozied up to India of late, Pakistan's generals now have "an absolute certainty that the U.S. is not an honest broker," one Defense Department official told Coll.

It's hard to tell whether the nuclear crisis in late 2001 has scared Pakistani and Indian leaders into bouts of moderation—the two countries have warmed slightly towards each other of late. But another major attack by Pakistani groups could easily provoke a war—or at the very least another round of brinksmanship. (Some jihadi groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed seem to have this very goal in mind.) And the next time, the United States might not be able to calm everyone down.

War would be disastrous for all the obvious reasons, but even having Pakistan and India get close to war would be extremely dangerous from a global security perspective. As Coll reports, Pakistan's nuclear weapons are pretty well guarded until they're put on alert and dispersed in preparation for battle. When that happens, the chances that a nuclear weapon could fall into the wrong hands will suddenly go up significantly. (And it won't be known when that happens—it's not even known to what extent Pakistan's arsenal was dispersed in late 2001.)

A few years ago in the Atlantic, Graham Allison explained why we should all be terrified of this scenario—he was also worried about a possible coup in Pakistan, which could again lead to nuclear weapons falling in the wrong hands—and suggested that as a solution, the U.S. should provide technological safeguards to Pakistan, such as bomb locks known as Permissive Action Links that would ensure that only Gen. Perez Musharraf could activate the weapons. It seemed like a sound idea, but Coll describes why Pakistan never accepted:

Colin Powell first raised the possibility of American assistance with Musharraf [on nuclear safeguards] in the autumn of 2001, but Musharraf rejected the idea; the Pakistani side "just said no," the former Bush Administration official recalled. The Pakistanis said they "had it all under control themselves."

Many of Pakistan's ruling generals fear that, given an opportunity, the United States might stand by as India attempted to preëmptively destroy Pakistan's nuclear-weapons facilities. In the view of Musharraf and his senior generals, Feroz Khan told me, "the United States is not hostile to Pakistan, but they do know that the U.S. was inimical to the Pakistani program from the beginning, so they would not assume any sympathy" if India attacked. Pakistan's military has gone to great lengths to keep the operational details of its nuclear-weapons systems secret, several well-placed American officials told me. To accept U.S. nuclear-security assistance, the generals would have to be convinced that the aid would not be used to collect intelligence or undermine Pakistan's control of its nuclear arsenal.
It's not an entirely unreasonable fear, really, and the United States' recent deal with India will very likely make Pakistan's generals even less likely to accept assistance anytime in the near future. And that makes nuclear proliferation more likely. Now perhaps it really is in our best interests to make a long-term strategic alliance with India—so that they can help us "contain China" or whatever nonsense is the rationale here—but it's easy to see the problems here.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 03/07/06 at 12:15 PM | | Comments (2) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Chinese Censor Ang Lee

An AP headline today reads, "Chinese newspaper praises director Ang Lee"—the Academy Award-winning director of Brokeback Mountain. "Ang Lee is the pride of Chinese people all over the world, and he is the glory of Chinese cinematic talent," said China Daily, the official newspaper of China, in a front-page article. But Lee is actually from Taiwan, a detail the People’s Republic of China would prefer to omit, since Taiwan is still claimed by China.

And despite the country's praise for Lee's award, Brokeback Mountain is actually banned in China, seen only by those who can get their hands on a pirated copy. Moreover, Chinese censors edited Lee's acceptance speech at the Oscars down for public consumption, taking out both his thanks to "everyone in Taiwan" and his gratitude to "the two gay cowboys." (Until 2001, the Chinese Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality a disease, treatable with shock therapy.)

Posted by on 03/07/06 at 11:09 AM | | Comments (0) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |

Supreme Court Backs Military Recuriters

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that universities must open their doors to military recruiters if they want to continue receiving federal funds, even if those universities oppose the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Many university law schools had claimed that being forced to associate with the recruiters was an infringement of their free speech rights. But in his unanimous opinion Justice John Roberts countered this argument, citing the federal law that requires universities to accept recruiters in order to receive funding:

The Solomon Amendment regulates conduct, not speech. It affects what law schools must do — afford equal access to military recruiters — not what they may or may not say…. [It] neither limits what the law schools may say nor requires them to say anything.
The opinion also considered campus visits a good recruiting tool. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor added that, in any case, the presence of recruiters does not prevent schools from actively voicing their opposition to military policies. (The federal law is more contentious among many university law schools, because they require recruiters to sign pledges saying that they will not discriminate based on sex, race, gender, or other factors.)
Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at UCLA, explains that the key issue here is the "unconstitutional conditions doctrine." As Justice Roberts explained, "The Solomon Amendment would be unconstitutional if Congress could not directly require universities to provide military recruiters equal access to their students." Congress isn't forcing campuses to welcome military recruiting—universities can always ban recruiters if they're willing to forego federal funding.

But that's often easier said than done. Universities receive $35 billion from the federal government each year, with a good chunk of that money going towards medical and scientific research. Academia is not equipped to make up the difference if that funding is pulled, which means that the federal government will continue to have significant leeway in directing what universities can and can't do.

Posted by on 03/07/06 at 10:51 AM | | Comments (1) | E-mail | Print | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Newsvine | Netscape | Google |