MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: April 23, 2006

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April 29, 2006

Darfur: Stop the Genocide, Stop the U.S. Spin

Everybody talks about genocide, but, it seems, nobody in authority does anything about it. This past Sunday, there were major protests in Washington, featuring Sen. Barack Obama and actor George Clooney, and several other cities to raise awareness about the ethnic slaughter in the Darfur region. The rallies aim, in part, to prod the U.S. to take meaningful action. The prospects for peace, security and humanitrian aid in the region continue to deteriorate rapidly, with the Sudanese government ejecting another humanitarian aid organization.
But the United States' response to this crisis has been little more than rhetoric mixed with symbolic acts that have little real impact. Last week, the Progressive Policy Institute noted that the President's latest promise to seek 500 added NATO troops to supplement the feeble African Union force would do little to stop the slaughter.

Update: On a perfect sunny day in Washington, thousands turned out to see speakers from Sudanese exiles to George Clooney call for increased pressure on Sudan, with a strong emphasis on the need for the U.S. to spur UN and NATO intervention. As the Washington Post reported:

They wore skullcaps, turbans, headscarves, yarmulkes, baseball hats and bandanas. There were pastors, rabbis, imams, youths from churches and youths from synagogues. They cried out phrases in Arabic and held signs in Hebrew. But on this day, they said, they didn't come out as Jews or Muslims, Christians or Sikhs, Republicans or Democrats.
They came out as one, they said, to demand that the Bush administration place additional sanctions on Sudan and push harder for a multinational peacekeeping force to be sent to Darfur.

By Washington standards, where protests often draw more than 100,000 people, yesterday's rally -- estimated by organizers at between 10,000 and 15,000 -- was not huge. Yet the Rally to Stop Genocide appeared to be distinctive for being one of the more diverse rallies the capital has seen in years. Most demonstrations attract fairly homogenous crowds, who often share political, religious and ethnic makeup, as was the case when Latinos dominated immigration protests last month.

But yesterday's rally brought together people from dozens of backgrounds and affiliations, many of whom strongly disagree politically and ideologically on many issues. Judging from T-shirts and banners identifying the various groups, Jews appeared to be among the largest contingent of demonstrators.

Indeed, one of the most intriguing parts of the rally was the numerous delegations of Jewish synagogues and students from the East Coast, adapting the "Never Again!" slogan first used to remember the Holocaust, now applied to what has been branded "the first genocide of the 21st Century." Elie Weisel spoke as a visible reminder of the need to stop another Holocaust from happening.

"It is the capital of suffering," said Elie Weisel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor. "We have to gather and tell the victims they are not alone. Silence only helps the oppressor."

The rally had some progressive superstars and prominent politicians, including Al Sharpton, Clooney, Sen. Barack Obama, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, but some of the most eloquent explantions of what's happening there came from Nick Clooney, George's father. A veteran journalist, he talked about the refugees -- some of the 2 million forced from their lands -- they visited in Chad hanging on by a "gossamer thread" in the refugee camps, looking only for the next bottle of water while the world has abandoned them. You can read a news account and see some video clips here.

Last week, the need for more action was well summarized by the PPI-affiliated Democratic Leadership Council, which pointed out:

There are a number of steps the United States could take, well short of the threat of unilateral military action, to signal real determination to Khartoum. Nicholas Kristof noted several in a column in yesterday's New York Times: a no-fly zone in Darfur; a major speech by the president on the crisis; a summit involving our European allies (none of whom will do more than shed crocodile tears over Darfur), and a public diplomacy offensive drawing attention to the loss of life in the region. Moreover, when the new pallid sanction on Khartoum predictably produce no result, the United States should return to the United Nations and push for more robust sanctions, making this subject a much higher priority in our relations with Russia and China.
Most of all, the Bush administration should stop publicly or privately telling Khartoum the outcome is in its own hands. As Kevin Croke of PPI notes of the current strategy, which he calls "a very strange sort of choreographed political hyposcrisy:"

The Sudanese government will have to consent to a U.N. force to protect the very civilians the government itself has been targeting through its Janjaweed proxies. But why would they agree? After all, the international community has been demanding they do exactly that for the past 3 years. What has changed? What new pressures are being applied?

Those in both political parties and all across the U.S. ideological spectrum who have raised alarms about Darfur need to step up the pressure on the administration to step up the pressure on Khartoum. At a minimum, they need to expose the latest series of administration "actions" on Darfur for what they are: empty gestures accompanied by a counsel of despair

.

As Kevin Croke of PPI wrote:

Three years into the conflict in Darfur, it's still not clear if the United States has a strategy to stop the ongoing genocide. Two months ago, there was a glimmer of hope: In February, the United States used its month-long presidency of the U.N. Security Council to push for the transformation of the current African Union monitoring force into a much larger and more aggressive U.N. peacekeeping contingent. But just as this promising change seemed imminent, it fell apart. Under heavy pressure from Khartoum, the governments of the African Union began to drag their feet. This left the situation in a dangerous limbo: The AU force, with only 6,000 troops and rudimentary capabilities, isn't up to the job of protecting several million refugees. Yet the plan of building a bigger and more effective U.N. force around the AU contingent simply can't happen if the AU refuses to cooperate. The AU must be brought around, but even that won't be a panacea. The next task will be to pressure the Sudanese government into allowing the deployment of the new U.N. force.
Against this backdrop, The Washington Post reported last week that the Bush administration has decided on a new policy: NATO will send a team of up to 500 advisors to help the AU force with logistics, planning, and intelligence. Some Darfur watchers have taken this as an indication that the administration is giving up on serious intervention. After all, respected analysts like the International Crisis Group have long argued that an effective force will require at least 12,000 to 15,000 troops -- a far cry from 500 advisers. As The Washington Post editorial page argued, "Unless the Bush administration supplements these proposed [NATO] advisers with a more serious deployment, it will have capitulated."

Unfortunately, using American troops -- now being promoted by some liberal hawks who supported the Iraq invastion -- isn't going to work either, given our military's involvement in Iraq and the prospect it raises of a worldwide Muslim counter-attack. But Mark Leon Goldberg in the American Prospect has some sensible suggestions the U.S. could pursue diplomatically to step up the pressure. Yet while deriding "liberal hawks," even Goldberg argues that air strikes against some Sudanese military targets might be needed if all diplomatic measures and beefed-up African Union or U.N. forces fail to stop the genocide I don't know if airstrikes should be on the table, but here's his argument, with the caveat that the U.S. should seek UN approval for such an action:

But should Khartoum continue to support the their proxy janjaweed militia, disrupt humanitarian access to Darfur, or launch aggressive military campaigns in Darfur, the United States should reserve the right to launch cruise missile or airstrikes against Sudanese military instillations. The regime in Khartoum values its fleet of converted Antonov transport jets above human lives. So why not threaten the government where it will hurt? The leaders in Khartoum are not bloodthirsty thugs for the hell of it. Rather, they devised a counterinsurgency strategy of genocide precisely because it was the most practical way to suppress a rebellion. It would not take much to make that strategy prohibitively expense for Khartoum by taking out a few dozen aircraft. :

Before we go to that extreme, the U.S, using its leverage, needs to get far more international pressure applied to the Sudanese government. As the Save Darfur organization reported:

On Friday, representatives of the Save Darfur Coalition met with President Bush hours after five U.S. Representatives and six religious, international development and student leaders were arrested for protesting outside the Sudanese Embassy against the Darfur genocide. The rally highlighted four demands that the Save Darfur Coalition has made of the Sudanese government:

1. Withdraw any objection to a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur. The purpose of such a force would be to protect your own citizens from harm, and there is already ample precedent, given the current UN peacekeeping force in south Sudan.

2. Allow humanitarian relief organizations full and unfettered access to the villages and refugee camps for internally displaced people in Darfur. A good first step would be reinstating the Norwegian Refugee Council, which the Sudanese government ejected from Sudan in early April.

3. Abide by the terms of the N'Djamena ceasefire calling for an end to hostilities in Darfur, and to UN Security Council resolutions by disarming the genocidal Janjaweed militias.

4. Fully commit to reaching a lasting agreement at the current, seventh round of the Abuja peace talks on Sudan’s Darfur region.

There are a lot of good ideas worth pursuing, and the U.S. government needs to hear our voices so it takes action to stop the killing. Sunday's rallies were a good place for us to start, as well as joining with countless others to learn more ways to get involved at www.savedarfur.org.

The Sibel Edmonds case--forgotten, but still vitally important

It has now been a year and nine months since Senators Charles Grassley and Patrick Leahy sent their letter to John Ashcroft, Robert Mueller, and Glenn Fine, asking that retroactively-declared classified documents be made available to the public. Both of Bush's Attorneys General have used the little-known States Secrets law to keep former FBI translater Sibel Edmonds from revealing what she knows.

It has also been a year and ten months since Edmonds sent her letter to 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean, rightfully accusing the commission of bypassing one of the most important issues of the September 11 tragedy--the failure of the FBI to translate thousands of documents. Edmonds, you will recall, blew the whistle on the FBI failure, and was fired from the bureau. Her case has been wrapped in secrecy, with the government using "national security" as a way to silence her. The U.S. Department of Justice declared that the FBI failed to properly investigate Edmonds' allegations, but when Edmonds sued the FBI, a U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the White House's decision to keep all relevant documents secret, even though many of them were not previously listed as classified.

Edmonds' accusations go beyond the FBI's failure to translate documents that might have spared the country the attacks of September 11, 2001. She also says that drug money and money laundering were factors in the events leading to September 11, and that some lobbyists and elected officials may have been beneficiaries. Edmonds has also created the National Security Whistleblowers' Coaltion, whose goals include providing protection for whistleblowers, creation of better accountability, and the promotion of policy changes.

On November 28, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Edmonds' appeal, following the dismissal of her lawsuit against the FBI. Since then, the news media--which treated the story as a filler rather than one of the most important stories of the decade--has been totally quiet about her case. On March 24, Edmonds asked the judge assigned to her latest suit against the FBI to recuse himself because of his decision to keep his financial disclosure information private.

On April 18, Sibel Edmonds received the PEN Newman's Own Award from PEN. Edmonds' website, Just A Citizen, contains a petition for people to sign to get the FBI documents released, information about Edmonds, and a collection of documents and news items pertaining to national security whistleblowing.

April 28, 2006

Court Hears Discrimination Case

E.J. Graff does a very good job explaining Burlington Northern v. White, a case currently before the Supreme Court that will basically decide how much protection to afford whistleblowers who speak out against workplace discrimination. Here's the basic dilemma:

Different appeals courts have come to different conclusions on how you define retaliation. The Sixth Circuit declared that “materially adverse” was the standard, and that what happened to White [i.e., transferred to a different job and being suspended for 37 days without pay for speaking out against gender discrimination] counted under that standard.

Other circuits have said that it’s only retaliation if it involves an “ultimate employment decision” like failing to hire, failing to promote, or firing. Still others stand with the little gal: Any action that is “reasonably likely to deter” you from reporting discrimination -- say, a “lateral transfer” -- counts as retaliation, and you can sue.

Judging from the oral arguments, Graff reports, the Supreme Court will probably rule with White and set somewhat broad standards on what employers aren't allowed to do to retaliate. Interestingly enough, Scalia will probably rule against the employers, while Roberts and Alito will likely side with the company—more evidence for the idea that the White House ultimately nominated the people it did primarily with business interests in mind.

United 93

The recently released film United 93, which tells the story of the hijacked plane that didn't reach its target on 9/11, is being hyped as a "gripping, provocative drama" and an account of how Americans found courage on that day. But filmmaker Paul Greengrass can't seem to decide whether he wants the tale of "the flight that fought back" to be a blockbuster epic or a grittier, documentary-style work of historical fiction. And ultimately, he fails to deliver either.

Watching the trailer for United 93—which suggests an action-packed blockbuster—is a completely different experience from watching the movie itself. In the actual film, September 11, 2001 is portrayed as an ordinary day that unravels into confusion and panic. Neither the passengers of Flight 93 nor the hijackers are mythologized. During the confusion, the humanity of everyone involved is revealed: the stewardesses, the passengers, the military personnel, the hijackers. But as long as the passengers aren't portrayed as heroes, their struggle feels almost futile—embodied in their final, chaotic rush on the cockpit. In a moment, the violence is over and the plane crashes into the Pennsylvania countryside.

The simultaneous scenes of confusion in the film—in the FAA, in the military, in the flight itself—don't live up to standard-issue action films. Everything is presented chronologically, but not with enough clarity to answer the question, "Who knew what when?" A history-minded viewer is left to ask, “Is this real? Did this really happen in response to that and at that point in the sequence of events?” And then there's the scene of white Christians praying in the back of the plane and fanatical brown Muslims praying in the front of the plane—an image hard not to read as intending to portray "the clash of civilizations."

While Greengrass paints a picture of some of the people involved with the day’s horrific events, viewers seeking entertainment will likely be disappointed and viewers seeking an informative, inspiring, historical narrative will likely be unsettled. Even the host at our screening seemed pressed to find the right words to introduce the movie, “Enjoy the—,” she said, catching herself. “I don’t know if enjoy is the right word.”

April 27, 2006

How to spot a terrorist

I really had no idea how to spot a terrorist until I studied the manuals published by the Phoenix FBI, the state employees of Virginia, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Now that I have absorbed these manuals, I not only know how to spot a terrorist, but I have discovered that I probably am a terrorist.

The Phoenix FBI manual was published while Clinton was still president. The Joint Terrorism Task Force was formed to "help preserve the American way of life." Its flyer requested that citizens contact the task force if they saw any of the following:

Defenders of the U.S. Constitution against federal government and the UN
Groups of individuals engaging in para-military training
Those who make numerous references to the U.S. Constitution
Those who attempt to police the police
Lone individuals
Rebels

The Phoenix Sheriff's Office did not care for the flyer, and it had a short life.

On to Virginia...This manual tells us to beware of the following people:

Members of anti-government and militia movements
Property rights activists
Members of racist, separatist, and hate groups
Environmental and animal rights activists
Religious extremists
Members of street gangs

According to the authorities in Virginia, terrorists stand out in the crowd because of the stuff they carry:

Sketch pads or notebooks
Maps or charts
Still or video cameras
Hand-held tape recorders
SCUBA equipment
disguises

And finally, there's Texas, whose manual shares with us some characteristics of terrorists:

Focused and committed
Team-oriented and disciplined
Familiar with their physical environments
Employ a variety of vehicles and communicate by cell phone, email, or text messaging
Try not to draw attention to themselves
Look like students, tourists, or businesspersons
Travel in a mixed group of men, women, and children
Avoid confrontations with law enforcement
Use disguises or undergo cosmetic surgery

Well, there you are. Could someone pick you out of the crowd as a terrorist? As an emailing, camera-toting, focused and committed animal rights activist who sometimes looks like a businesswoman, frequently references the Constitution, and still has some leftover costumes from my years in New Orleans, I'm as good as gone.

Will Bush policy stop Jack Bauer from leaking to Sy Hersh?

The Bush administration’s hypocritical crackdown on intelligence leaks, if applied in the alternative reality of TV’s thriller show, 24, could prevent courageous Counter-Terrorism Unit agent Jack Bauer from getting the truth out about the president’s central role in a conspiracy. At first we all thought the president was just a bumbler, but it turns out he’s actually a mastermind in an evil plot to drum up the fear of terrorism as a way to promote an overseas invasion aimed at seizing oil fields. Fortunately, that plot-line is so far-fetched it could never, ever happen in the real world, such as in the run-up to the Iraq war.

If Jack Bauer leaked the truth about the conspiracy orchestrated by the President, however, he'd probably be swift-boated by the likes of Anne Coulter and William Bennett.

On the TV show, Bauer obtains through various nerve-wracking feats of derring-do a tape recording of President Charles Logan talking with an aide about how he delivered nerve gas to terrorists and allowed the former president, David Palmer, to be assassinated. During a recent episode, Bauer seeks help from Defense Secretary Heller in making the tape public:

12:08 A.M.
Jack takes [colleague and former girl-friend] Audrey Raines and [Defense Secretary James] Heller inside an empty hangar and plays them the tape recording. Logan gave the terrorists the Sentox gas, but planned to deploy the gas before it reached Moscow. This would provide him with an excuse to exercise the military terms of his arms treaty with [Russian Premier ] Suvarov. Jack thinks it was a play to control the oil supply in central Asia and that [ former president] David Palmer found out about it. Heller is not surprised at Logan’s actions. Jack asks Audrey to accompany her father to present this evidence to the Attorney General.

But in subsequent weeks, Bauer had turn over the tape to one of the bad guys, renegade CTU agent Christopher Henderson, to keep his love interest, Audrey, alive and then commandeer a jet with a Henderson accomplice at the helm to regain the tape. All the good guys are now working to obtain and use the the tape to expose the President’s plot and his treasonous link to terrorists.

In last night's episode, an evil snitch in CTU, Miles, ingratiates himself himself with the President after Bauer returns to CTU with the tape in hand by seeking to destroy the digital recording with a high-tech device. Tune in next week to find out what happens to the recording. But, through all this maneuvering, why didn’t Jack Bauer just arrange to play or upload the recording to tech wizard Chloe O’Brian so she could copy it – and then leak the recording to Sy Hersh, Lisa Meyers or other investigative reporters? If he could do so, he could expose the plot. We can image the possible conversation:

“Damn it, Chloe, patch me through to Seymour Hersh at the New Yorker!”
“Hersh here.”
“Mr. Hersh, this is CTU agent Jack Bauer and I’ve got taped evidence that President Logan conspired with terrorists to release nerve gas and helped arrange for the murder of former President Palmer. The President has ordered his personal security forces to find me and kill me.”

“I’d love to meet with you as soon as I can, but I have to confirm what you say with my other sources,” Hersh says. “Also, we’ve got a long lead time before we’re in print, but I can put it online as soon as possible. I’ll fly out there right away.”

“I’m running out of time, Mr. Hersh,” Bauer says. Ultimately, the minutes tick away as he asks Chloe to track down Lisa Meyers at NBC. Since it’s sweeps week, the producers at the Nightly News with Brian Williams allow her to rush it on-air without extensive additional reporting, using the copied audio tape and Bauer, with his voice disguised, as her primary source. Logan’s perfidy is exposed and the nation is saved.

Unfortunately, under the policies of the Bush (and Logan, for that matter) administration, no matter how illegal or immoral activity the intelligence services sources want to expose – such as CIA rendition to overseas torture prisons or NSA spying – Bush and his defenders decry it as a threat to national security. With firings and criminal investigations aimed at leakers and reporters, the Bush Administration is sending a clear message that any leaks that expose wrong-doing or challenge administration lies will be punished. But those leaks that promote administration positions will be either be done by -- or approved by -- Leaker-in_Chief. To line officers such as Jack Bauer (and his real-world counterparts) that sends a strong signal not to blow the whistle or serve the public good when superiors are violating laws, ethical standards and the Constitution.

Now the right-wingers are piling on fired CIA agent Mary McCarthy (while some right-wing bloggers are even claiming the secret overseas prisons are a fabrication designed to entrap her). Similarly, gambling addict/moralizer William Bennett has said the winners of the Pulitzer Prize should be jailed for their reporting, not honored. As he notoriously said last week of the reporters, they “took classified information, secret information, published it in their newspapers, against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president and others, that they not release it - they not only released it, they publicized it -- they put it on the front page, and it damaged us, it hurt us.” We can imagine his reaction to an investigative report of President Logan’s plot:

“Against the wishes of the President, reporters ran with an irresponsible story blaming the President for conspiring with terrorists and plotting to kill David Palmer. President Logan took the actions he needed to take to protect us from further terrorist attacks, defend our country and obtain the resources we need to survive as a democracy. Instead, these reporters and their sources are the ones being hailed as heroes, when they should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for betraying classified information. Instead, the president is being smeared.”

He concludes, “I don't think what they did was worthy of an award - I think what they did was worthy of jail, and I think this investigation needs to go forward. . .” (Actually, that last quote isn’t a made-up one, but what Bennett actually said about the prize-winners at the New York Times and Washington Post who reported administration security abuses.)

Anne Coulter and the right-wing Kool-Aid drinkers in the blogosphere, though, surely would echo support for the Logan Administration and smear its critics. Even his reputation as a tough guy willing to use torture wouldn’t protect him if he crossed the administration and its acolytes. Coulter, recycling her columns on Ambassador Joseph Wilson and the Niger uranium forgery, would no doubt write, “While turncoat Jack Bauer has become the plaything-de-jour of the liberal media elite, what do we really know about this traitor who criticized our President? My sources tell me that Bubblehead Bauer, as I call him, fabricated the taped voice of the president and has a history of lawbreaking, murder and theft while working at CTU. He’s even an ex-heroin addict who also killed a supervisor just to make a deal with terrorists. Jack Bauer has lied and cheated to get his way before, so why should we take his charges against our President any more seriously?

“It’s no surprise that the editorial-writing girlie-men at the New York Times have swooned over Jack Bauer because he serves their anti-American, anti-Logan agenda. But the rest of us shouldn’t be dumb enough to buy his fabrications. He doesn’t just need to be arrested, tried and executed for treason. Someone needs to drive a stake through his heart after he’s been killed -- I’ll do it myself if no one else has the nerve – to make sure that Bauer, and the loopy “ideals” he represents, doesn’t rise from the dead.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world of the Bush administration and its allies, the public burning of alleged CIA leaker Mary McCarthy is gathering force, even though she denies that she was the source for the Washington Post’s stories about the overseas rendition of prisoners. Even the canny Jack Bauer couldn’t maneuver his way through the minefield of a right-wing smear campaign.

Oh, Those Unfair Tax Cuts...

Speaking of gas prices, apparently Republicans in Congress now think it's "unfair" that wealthy oil companies are enjoying lavish tax breaks. The rich don't "need" extra tax cuts, we're told. Well then, if they really want to go there, I can think of a much better place to start. Focusing on excessive oil company profits, of all things, in a conversation about tax justice is myopic in the extreme.

Can Maliki Disarm the Militias?

American officials are stumped as to how Iraq's new prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, is going to carry out his pledge to disarm the Shiite and Kurdish militias that are carrying out a de facto civil war in the country:

Administration officials said that in his meeting with Ms. Rice, Mr. Maliki spoke of "re-establishing trust" among Iraqis by acting quickly to restore electrical power and root out the influence of militias in Iraq's police forces, which number about 135,000 nationwide.

With an estimated thousands of these forces in Baghdad alone infiltrated by the Badr brigade, a Shiite militia whose members have been accused of kidnapping and killing Sunnis, American officials said they did not know what sort of muscle or conciliation Mr. Maliki would use to carry out this pledge. "It's clearly one of the high priorities for the government," Ms. Rice said. "How they go about that I think is something they will have to work through." Mr. Rumsfeld, asked how American armed forces could do the job, said: "The first thing I'd say is, we don't. The Iraqis do." The new Iraqi government "undoubtedly and unquestionably will be addressing the question," he added. "Other countries have dealt with these issues. It's possible that these things can be done."

A lot of hand-waving, in other words. But does anyone think it's realistic for the Shiite parties to disarm their militias? Back when the CPA was running things, their approach to the militias involved creating a "virtuous circle," as Spencer Ackerman reported last year: "If security increased around the country and Iraqis reconciled their deep religious and ethnic divisions, the parties would no longer require paramilitary 'insurance policies.'" Getting rid of those paramilitaries would, in turn, improve security further. It was a pretty good idea in theory.

Except that the CPA tried this approach for two years, and it didn't work. Security never improved, stuff never got built, political developments got worse, not better, and the main Shiite parties are all — somewhat understandably — built up their militias for protection against a growing Sunni insurgency. And that, in turn, is making the security situation even worse. It's a cycle that seems structurally impossible to reverse, even if Ayatollah al-Sistani is now ordering the militias to disarm. Under the circumstances, it's not surprising that Rice and Rumsfeld are shrugging and saying, "Well, figure it out somehow." No one has any idea how to fix things.

One also can't help but suspect that Rice and Rumsfeld's overt backing for Maliki will only make the latter's job harder, not easier. Iraqis, as we've learned, aren't terribly keen on taking their marching orders from Washington: Only a year ago, Rumsfeld warned the Shiites not to purge the security forces of ex-Baathists, and yet they did just that. (UPDATE: See this story; some Shiites are already angry at the visit.)

Meanwhile, Spencer had a new piece up the other day noting that Iraq's new prime minister might not be the best person to reconcile the country after all — Maliki has been involved in nearly every move that's pissed off the Sunnis over the last few years. And in very related and very scary news, Shiite militiamen are moving into the oil-rich and Kurdish-dominated city of Kirkuk, ready to take the city back from the Kurds. One has to wonder whether even Rice and Rumsfeld believe that things are heading in a positive direction...

Demagoguing on Gas Prices

Over at Tapped, Matt Yglesias argues that the Democrats are doing the smart thing politically by proposing some ludicrous bill to lower gas prices this summer that Republicans will be forced to vote against. Maybe he's right. At the same time, there's a rather big dilemma here.

Oil prices are in all likelihood going to continue rising from now until whenever the oil runs out. And what's more, higher oil prices are, all things considered, a good thing—they'll spur people to use less gas and give everyone incentives to find alternatives to our oil-based economy that's literally burning up the earth. From that perspective, oil prices should actually be higher than they are now. Much higher. Ideally, Congress would levy gas taxes on everyone to hasten this process along, especially since we don't have a whole heap of time left before the carbon concentration levels in the atmosphere become irreversible.

But no one's proposing any such thing—because it's political suicide. And it's political suicide because the main narrative in Congress is that gas prices are somehow "too high," that they "should" be lower, and that it's somehow within Congress' power to make them lower (it's not). And that's the main narrative because it's always the "smart thing" politically to demagogue on this issue. Is this cycle somehow going to end if and when Democrats ever retake Congress? Probably not. Back in 1993 Democrats passed a 4-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax and... promptly lost power. Meanwhile...

April 26, 2006

Wounded soldiers return home to another fight--bill collectors

The Government Accountability Office is releasing a report tomrorrow that hundreds of American soldiers wounded in Iraq have had their debts turned over to collection agencies.

ABC News tells the story of Army specialist Tyson Johnson, who had just been promoted when a a mortar round exploded outside his tent, wounding him in the left kidney and the head. The injuries forced him out of the Army, which then demanded he repay an enlistment bonus of $2,700 because he had served only two-thirds of his tour. Johnson was unable to return the money, his account was turned over to a collection agency, and he ended up living in his car because of his bad credit record.

ABC also tells the story of Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly, who lost his leg in a roadside bomb attack. The Army continued to pay him his $2,000 combat bonus pay while he was hospitalized, and then demanded that he give it back. Kelly says he was threatened with the propect of dealing with a collection agency and having a bad credit report.

Apparently, wounded soldiers are taken off of the battlefield quickly, and the payroll system is not designed to keep up with their change of status. The Army has decided to forgive the debts of soldiers such as Johnson and Kelly. This decision came after ABC aired a program about the issue in the fall of 2004, but according to Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, there may be many more soldiers who have to deal with debt collection because of the faulty system.

KBR in Iraq

If you haven't already seen it, I'd highly recommend James Glanz' piece in the New York Times on how KBR—of Halliburton subsidiary fame—botched a pipeline project in Iraq. It definitely gives a vivid sense of just how and why reconstruction has been such a travesty. Meanwhile, Daniel Gross reports in Slate that KBR really hasn't been profiting much off its Iraq contracts thus far, although given that the Bush administration is going to leave a fine legacy of global instability in its wake, the company will probably have ample opportunity to redeem itself and smart investors should buy stock. Or something.

Democrats Cozy Up to Wall Street

Here's a headline worth noting: "Democrats beat Republicans in 2005 Fund-Raising on Wall Street." My suspicion has always been that the Democratic Party has snuggled ever closer to the financial industry over the past decade partly because it's one of the few corporate sectors that doesn't conflict in an obvious way with any other major liberal interest group.

Democrats have to get corporate donations from somewhere, the thinking goes, and the financial sector doesn't usually clash overtly with labor unions. It's not part of the military-industrial complex. It doesn't pillage the environment. It screws over ordinary voters in opaque and non-obvious ways. What's not to like? Indeed, it's a pretty natural ally for a "liberal" party in dire need of campaign cash.

The downside is that a party that jumps in bed with the financial sector is going to end up backing the sorts of anti-progressive measures—from the recent bankruptcy bill, to financial deregulation, to inflation targeting by the Fed—that all strike me as just as malignant, if not more so, than, say, an energy company donating to Tom DeLay in exchange for the right to pollute or pour MTBE into our drinking water or whatever. And increasingly, the Democrats are doing just that. In some ways, it would almost be preferable if, say, Hillary Clinton was getting her money from ExxonMobil and Halliburton, rather than Citigroup and MetLife. (Okay, probably not, but you get my point…)

Ranks of Uninsured Growing

In case anyone was under the illusion that the health insurance situation is improving in this country, a recently-released Commonwealth Fund report sets things straight. 37 percent of low-income workers are currently uninsured, up from 33 percent in 2001. And the number of low-income workers who have gone without insurance at some point in the past year is 53 percent. This despite the fact that Medicaid is ostensibly supposed to help cover this group (it doesn't, of course, and has way too many gaps to be fully effective, but that's another story).

"Moderate income" workers, making between $20,000 and $40,000 a year, aren't doing too well either—the number of uninsured has risen from 17 percent five years ago to 28 percent today. And this all matters: more than half of all uninsured adults have debt or medical bill problems. 59 percent of uninsured adults with a chronic illness had to skip a treatment or a prescription. Those adults are much more likely to go to an emergency room than those with insurance. It's a crisis.

The CIA's 1000 Undeclared Flights in Europe

One thing I've noticed while reading the coverage of the Mary McCarthy firing—who may or may not have been fired for leaking evidence that the CIA was running secret and illegal detention centers in Europe—is that most of the coverage has concentrated mostly on the leak itself, rather than the main issue at hand: the fact that the CIA is running a clandestine torture operation that many officers within the agency want no part of. At any rate, this AP story brings things back into focus:

European lawmakers said Wednesday they had discovered a "widespread regular practice" of human rights violations by the CIA in Europe….

They said they had also found that the CIA has conducted more than 1,000 undeclared flights over European territory since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — some carrying suspected terrorists to countries where they could face torture….

As of late December, some 100 to 150 people have been seized in "renditions" involving taking terror suspects off the street of one country and flying them to their home country or another where they are wanted for a crime or questioning. Government officials have said the action is reserved for those considered by the CIA to be the most serious terror suspects. Mistakes, however, have been made, and are being investigated by the CIA's inspector general.

Mistakes have been made? That's a rather understated way of putting it.

Chernobyl, 20 years later

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Photojournalist Lionel Delevingne is in Kiev, Ukraine for MotherJones.com, covering the commemorations. At the weekend he took a bus trip, laid on by the Ukrainian Ministry of Catastrophes, with a group of journalists and NGO activists, to the site of the disaster. A selection of photos below.

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Entering the 30km "Exclusion Zone" surrounding the disaster site. Entry and exit are strictly controlled by checkpoints like this one. Chernobyl is about 70 miles north of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.

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A sign at the same checkpoint warns of the danger of entering the exclusion zone, which is highly contaminated by radioactive material.

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An aerial photo of the Chernobyl site at the Ukrainian Ministry of Catastrophes.

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The bus, carrying journalists and NGO activists supervised by Ukrainian government representatives, heads toward the disaster site in the center of the Exclusion Zone.

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Reactor number 4, where the explosion occurred on April 26, 1986. It has been encased in a concrete "sarcophagus" to contain radioactive material. Unfortunately, the structure was hastily built and is in danger of collapsing.

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Abandoned buildings in the "model town" of Pripyat, designed to house nuclear workers and their families.

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Although hundreds of thousands of people were permanently evacuated from their homes in the region surrounding the plant, some, like these, have insisted on returning, effectively becoming squatters in their former homes. About 38 people are thought to live in the highly contaminated Exclusion Zone.

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Boyar Erdokia and husband of the village of Illincy, in the Exclusion Zone. They insisted on returning to their former home.

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A woman who lives in the Exclusion Zone.

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Feodor Ivanovich, 78, of Illincy Village.

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A Soviet-era helicopter and buses used to evacuate residents at the time of the disaster sit in one of several "graveyards" in the Exclusion Zone. They are highly contaminated.

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A journalist contemplates the disaster site from the bus.

April 25, 2006

Can the Democrats Bust the Bolten Bubble?

This week’s Time magazine has a curious article that brings us into the still-clueless world of the White House. It seems that new advisor Josh Bolten has a bold five-point “recovery plan” for victory that includes such pointers as “Brag More.” Yes, in the wake of a growing civil war in Iraq, the looming nuclear threat of Iran, chaos in the Medicare prescription drug plan and the criminal negligence of the Katrina response, what the President needs is some more of that good ol’ Texas swagger. Along with pandering to his nativist anti-Hispanic, anti-immigrant base and cutting more taxes to please Wall Street, the President could, even with his plunging job approval ratings, make things right again for his party and his tattered “legacy,” Bolten believes. Call it the “Bolten bubble.” Here are four of the big ideas on pandering they’ve cooked up, as reported by Time:

“The White House has no visions of expanding the G.O.P.'s position in the midterms; the mission is just to hold on to control of Congress by playing to the base. Here is the Bolten plan:
“1 DEPLOY GUNS AND BADGES. This is an unabashed play to members of the conservative base who are worried about illegal immigration. Under the banner of homeland security, the White House plans to seek more funding for an extremely visible enforcement crackdown at the Mexican border, including a beefed-up force of agents patrolling on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). "It'll be more guys with guns and badges," said a proponent of the plan. "Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an ATV." Bush has long insisted he wants a guest-worker program paired with stricter border enforcement, but House Republicans have balked at temporary legalization for immigrants, so the President's ambition of using the issue to make the party more welcoming to Hispanics may have to wait.

“2 MAKE WALL STREET HAPPY. In an effort to curry favor with dispirited Bush backers in the investment world, the Administration will focus on two tax measures already in the legislative pipeline--extensions of the rate cuts for stock dividends and capital gains. "We need all these financial TV shows to be talking about how great the economy is, and that only happens when their guests from Wall Street talk about it," said a presidential adviser. "This is very popular with investors, and a lot of Republicans are investors."
“3 BRAG MORE. White House officials who track coverage of Bush in media markets around the country said he garnered his best publicity in months from a tour to promote enrollment in Medicare's new prescription-drug plan. So they are planning a more focused and consistent effort to talk about the program's successes after months of press reports on start-up difficulties. Bolten's plan also calls for more happy talk about the economy. With gas prices a heavy drain on Bush's popularity, his aides want to trumpet the lofty stock market and stable inflation and interest rates. They also plan to highlight any glimmer of success in Iraq, especially the formation of a new government, in an effort to balance the negative impression voters get from continued signs of an incubating civil war.
“4 RECLAIM SECURITY CREDIBILITY. This is the riskiest, and potentially most consequential, element of the plan, keyed to the vow by Iran to continue its nuclear program despite the opposition of several major world powers. Presidential advisers believe that by putting pressure on Iran, Bush may be able to rehabilitate himself on national security, a core strength that has been compromised by a discouraging outlook in Iraq. "In the face of the Iranian menace, the Democrats will lose," said a Republican frequently consulted by the White House. However, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this April 8-11, found that 54% of respondents did not trust Bush to "make the right decision about whether we should go to war with Iran.’”

Is this wishful thinking – or insanity? Even so, these strategies are either doomed to fail or could have a disastrous impact on the Republican Party and global stability. “Reclaim Security Credibility” essentially means “bomb Iran,” as the neo-cons who brought us the Iraq war are so eagerly seeking. By a show of meaningless strength on the border, it could serve to alienate the increasingly important Hispanic-American community that is inflamed by the GOP’s tough policies on immigration and the many Americans who take a more nuanced view of immigration than GOP hard-liners. And by giving away more in tax breaks to the wealthy, it will only worsen America’s debt, weaken the economy and make it impossible for us to remain competitive in the global economy by investing in education and other vital needs.

As Bill Burton, the spokesperson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says about Bolten’s grand scheme: “He’s trying to put a positive spin on awful policies – rather than change the policies that are having no positive effect on Americans.”

The Democrats can fight back by showing, in part, that there’s nothing at all to brag about, and asking the fundamental question, “Had enough?” Along the way, it might be worth coming up with a unified positive message, too. Burton’s boss, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), did it in a concise way last October on Meet the Press. It’s too bad other leading Democrats aren’t doing so in a more visible way. Russert asked about him the Iraq war and what positive message Democrats had to offer. Here’s the exchange, with the best points on domestic policy:

MR. RUSSERT: So was it a mistake for Democrats in the Senate and House to vote to authorize the war?
REP. EMANUEL: Given the information that we were given them, they made their decision. What has been a mistake is to let this type of administration basically run a policy of incompetence when it comes to Iraq. Let me address, though, the future of this country. I'll give you five quick ideas. One, we make college education as universal for the 21st century that a high school education was in the 20th… Second, we get a summit on the budget to deal with the $3 trillion of debt that's been added up in five years and structural deficits of $400 billion a year. Third, an energy policy that says in 10 years, we cut our dependence on foreign oil in half and make this a hybrid economy. Four, we create an institute on science and technology that builds for America like, the National Institutes has done for health care, we maintain our edge. And five, we have a universal health-care system over the next 10 years where if you work, you have health care. That says fiscal discipline and investing in the American people by putting people first. The policies that the Republicans have offered have gotten us in the ditch we have today.

Bolten’s plan won’t get us of that ditch, but just digs us deeper. Still, the question remains: Will the Democrats know how to beat the White House political strategy?

Art Levine is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly and has written for Mother Jones, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and many other publications.

French Unemployment Revisited

A few weeks ago, I threw together some numbers and statistics suggesting that the French protesters might not be so misguided, and France-style labor protections might not cause high unemployment after all. Now David Howell and John Schmitt of EPI have a new paper getting into this in more depth.

The super-novel point here is that France's youth unemployment-to-population ratio (8.6) is actually nearly identical to that in the United States (8.3). France's "official" youth unemployment rate is higher primarily because very few French students enrolled in school actually work, while a lot of our college kids get jobs, so the ratio of unemployed youths to working youths is higher in France than it is here. Different numbers measure different things.

Now why do so few French high school and college students work? Maybe it's because they can't find jobs. Or maybe it's because they don't need to—their public universities are more heavily subsidized, after all. Interestingly, though, the percentage of 20 to 24-year-olds who aren't in school and are unemployed is actually a bit lower (14.1) than it is in the United States (14.4). That seems like the main number to worry about, and France seems to be doing okay on that front.

It's also worth noting that the share of young French adults still enrolled in education is much higher than it is in the United States (51.1 versus 35.0 percent). Again, whether that's because French kids like school or because they have no other options is up in the air. But even if it's because they have no other options, perhaps being "forced" to stay in school isn't so bad: According to OECD data, French workers are, on average, 6 to 16 percent more productive than American workers. Work less; study more—maybe that's the way to go.

Wilkerson Continues to Speak Out

Yesterday Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, wrote a blistering op-ed in the Baltimore Sun. Some excerpts:

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.
Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.

Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.

This administration has expanded government -- creation of the Homeland Security Department alone puts it in the record books -- and government intrusiveness. It has brought a new level of sleaze and corruption to Washington (difficult to do, to be sure). And it has done the impossible in war-waging: put in motion a conflict in Iraq that in terms of colossal incompetence, civilian and military, and unbridled arrogance portends to top the Vietnam era, a truly radical feat.