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May 5, 2006

What Next for Darfur?

The New Republic is devoting its current issue to Darfur, and many of the essays seem to suggest that the United States ought to grab its military and intervene to keep the peace there. (Or rather, many of the articles seem intent on tweaking unnamed liberals whose "anti-imperialist" pose supposedly makes them complicit in genocide… or something.)

Anyway, leaving aside the fact that the Khartoum government recently signed a peace agreement with the main Darfur rebel groups—which may or may not translate into actual peace—and a large-scale military intervention might be unnecessary, there are real practical problems with an invasion of Sudan, if that's what's being recommended, that this TNR editorial passes over much too glibly. I reported on a bunch of difficulties over a year ago, and Samantha Power notes that the obstacles are no less dire now:

Thanks to the war in Iraq, sending a sizable U.S. force to Darfur is not an option. Units in Iraq are already on their third tours, and the crumbling Afghan peace demands ever-more resources. Moreover, sending Americans into another Islamic country is unadvisable, given the ease with which jihadis could pour across Sudan's porous and expansive borders. Making Darfur a magnet for foreign fighters or yet another front in the global proxy war between the United States and Al Qaeda would just compound the refugees' woes.

So what could be done short of invasion if, as some fear, the peace talks break down? Mark Leon Goldberg of the American Prospect recently wrote a piece noting that the Bush administration could deploy much more diplomatic pressure than it has in the past, and that there are plenty of steps short of invading that could go very far to halting the violence.

Unfortunately, as Marisa Katz reports in the TNR issue, the administration's policy towards Khartoum over the past three years has generally been unabashed appeasement—partly because Sudan's genocidaires such as Salah Abdallah Gosh have offered cooperation on terrorism issues (although one official tells Katz that this cooperation hasn't been all that valuable). Now the administration's stance appears to be changing of late, and for whatever reason, Robert Zoellick seems to have been able to pressure most of the parties involved to agree to a tentative peace deal, although this is one of those things on which we'll really have to wait and see.

Finally—and perhaps most importantly—Eric Reeves, who has done better and more extensive work on Darfur than any journalist over the past three years, surveys the vast humanitarian wreckage in Darfur and points out that even if the fighting stops (again, a big 'if'), the area is still going to be an utter disaster. Millions are displaced. Agriculture has been ruined. The next generation of Darfuris will grow up without having learned the necessary farming skills to sustain themselves. There are refugee camps that are bordering on permanence. Massive foreign aid and assistance will be needed. Massive, but doable. Yet Western countries have rarely, if ever, been good about helping refugees in post-conflict environments, or devoting the requisite resources to alleviating poverty and the like. That will need to change, and it would be unimaginably catastrophic to ignore Darfur just because the fighting has stopped.

May 4, 2006

After all these years, Bush has found something to veto

Today, the U.S. Senate passed a $109 billion bill to pay for both the war in Iraq and hurricane relief in the United States, and George W. Bush has made it clear that he will veto it if it becomes law as is. "The House will not take up an emergency supplemental spending bill for Katrina and the war in Iraq that spends one dollar more than what the president asks for," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Period."

The Congressional Research Service says that the bill would bring total Iraq war spending to about $430 billion. In addition to $28.9 billion for other hurricane relief,, the bill includes $4 billion for levees and flood control projects in Louisiana. It includes $65.7 billion for war operations. Bush says that the bill is supposed to cover emergency spending, and that the Senate has filled it with "unecessary spending."

Speaking today on WWL Radio, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said that if she has to, she will use the courts to obtain the funding that Louisiana needs to rebuild. It is now an indisputable fact that the Army Corps of Engineers intentionally failed to provide appropriate protection for New Orleans when it constructed levees and floodwalls. No whistleblower came forward to tell the public what was going on, and as a result, we have the devastation that was caused during Hurricane Katrina. To make matters worse, the Orleans Parish Levee Board did a terrible job of inspecting the levees.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, as in the rest of the nation, today was a National Day of Prayer, which da po' blog thinks may not be enough for the people of Louisiana.

And now for some good news: Word came today from Washington that the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet is being deauthorized ASAP. There will be no more dredging, nad MRGO will probably be closed in the near future.

What the Media Finds Funny

Stephen Colbert’s recent skewering of the president and the press at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner prompted a number of journalists to declare that Colbert "just wasn’t that funny." (Lloyd Grove suggested that the lampoon had "bombed badly.") But while mainstream outlets have all but ignored or belittled the event, web writers have rushed to Colbert's defense. Yesterday Salon wrote a cover story on the media's efforts to sweep Colbert under the rug—and got more traffic for this than for any story since breaking the Abu Ghraib torture photos—while the liberal blogosphere has been talking about him nonstop.

The disdain for Colbert's remarks, most of which touched on issues that were all perfectly valid and matters of public record (NSA spying, the energy crisis, global warming, FEMA and Joseph Wilson), raises the question: what does the media find funny? Apparently, it’s when President Bush makes fun of those missing WMDs. According to Alternet:

It occurred on March 24, 2004. The setting: The 60th annual black-tie dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association (with many print journalists there as guests) at the Washington Hilton. On the menu: surf and turf. Attendance: 1,500. The main speaker: President George W. Bush, one year into the Iraq war, with 500 Americans already dead. That night, in the middle of his stand-up routine before the (perhaps tipsy) journos, Bush showed on a screen behind him some candid on-the-job photos of himself. One featured him gazing out a window, as Bush narrated, smiling: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."

Since Bush’s parody—which received none of the media backlash that Colbert's did—1,900 more Americans have died in Iraq. Yet two years later Colbert points out indisputable failures of the administration and it’s widely considered "unfunny."

The War Against Cola...

Apparently all those irresponsible rumors about the soft-drink industry being totally omnipotent were overstated, as the three major soda companies have recently and voluntarily agreed to remove "sweetened drinks like Coke, Pepsi, and iced teas" from school cafeterias, in response to the growing number of lawsuits and pending state legislation that would ban soda from schools for health reasons. And here we thought that the soda lobby could prevail against these legislators forever. Guess not.

On the other hand, maybe it's too early to count Big Cola out. The Times story notes that "the beverage industry said its school sales would not be affected because it expected to replace sugary drinks with other ones." Graham Amazon, med student and intrepid blogger, thinks that the juice these companies will now peddle heavily in schools will pose a new problem, partly because everyone thinks juice is healthy—even when it's not juice, but sugar that tastes like juice. This would all seem sort of silly if it wasn't making everyone unhealthy and driving up our medical bills.

Lobbying Reform Is a Sham

So Republicans in the House passed a "lobbying reform" bill today. What kind of lobbying reform? Here's how the Times describes it:

The new bill would require lobbyists to disclose more of their activities, increase financial penalties for violations and require lawmakers and their aides to attend ethics training.

It also aims to discourage earmarks by requiring House members who write spending bills to disclose them, a move lauded by fiscal conservatives who complain that earmarks waste taxpayer money and drive up the cost of legislation.

That second paragraph can be dispatched rather quickly; "earmarks" amount to a very, very tiny fraction of government spending (about 0.1 percent in 2006). That "reform" won't amount to anything major. So the first paragraph there seems to be the nut of it: Congress will crack down on lobbyists. But Democrats, who "denounced the measure as a sham," have long argued that lobbyists are only half the problem. And they're totally right. The actual members of Congress, after all, first had to open the door for Jack Abramoff and his ilk before any corruption could take place.

Most importantly, the bill does absolutely nothing about the procedural abuses that Republicans have devised in Congress to stifle debate and create a "spoils" system for their corporate funders. (Susan Milligan's three-part series on this subject is invaluable.) As the Democratic analysis of the bill notes, "A legislative process that does not allow open debate and provide opportunity for amendment on legislation, and instead allows small groups of House leaders and private interests to write the bills, is a process vulnerable to corruption and improper influence from lobbyists." That's really the main issue, and on this point the reform bill is utterly silent.

Instead, the bill focused on minor rules governing gifts and the like. But as a number of experts who testified before the House and Senate noted, Congress already has a number of rules governing gifts and lobbying law and ethics violations. Unfortunately, they've been inadequately enforced, especially since Denny Hastert helped push through a rule in 2005 making it easier for Republicans to block ethics investigations. And so long as effective oversight is nowhere to be found, minor new rule changes won't make all that much of a difference.

May 3, 2006

Taliban not classified as terrorist organization

The Raw Story reports that the United States and its coaltion allies do not classify the organization as a terrorist group. According to State Department documents, the Taliban has not been classified as terrorist for the past six years. The Taliban provided safe haven for Osame bin Laden and al Qaeda, and is currently in southern Afghanistan, intimidating villagers and ambushing vehicles.

No reason is given for the omission of the Taliban as a terrorist organization. State department officials describe the group as "an insurgent organization that will periodically use terrorism to carry out its operations." Using George W. Bush's definition, this would make the Taliban terrorists.

Though it may not be relevant, it is worth nothing that since the mid-90's, the United States has negotiated on and off with the Taliban for various oil pipeline deals; one such negotiation was taking place as late as 2001.

May 2, 2006

American Dream Harder Than Ever to Reach

A new report by the Center for American Progress looks at economic mobility in the United States, and finds that children's potential for success in this country is very closely tied to the financial status of their parents. In particular, children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution in their lifetime, while children of the rich have a 22 percent chance of doing so.

Other key findings:

African-American children who are born in the bottom quartile are nearly twice as likely to remain there as white children whose parents had identical incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile.
The difference in mobility for blacks and whites persists even after controlling for a host of parental background factors, children’s education and health, as well as whether the household was female-headed or receiving public assistance.

By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.

The study also examines economic trends over the past five years, and finds that despite strong GDP growth in 2003-2004, median household income hasn't moved up any faster than it did during the recession of 1990-91. And working longer hours no longer increases one’s chance for upward mobility: In 2003-04, families whose adult members worked 40 or more hours per week for two consecutive years were less upwardly mobile than in the early and late nineties.

The upper class is doing better than ever. But "for the middle class… the recent economic expansion has generated tepid growth in median household income, and a considerable increase in the risk of major income losses from year to year. In today’s environment of record levels of both secured and unsecured debt, these losses may have lasting effects on their financial health."

Gang Members in the Military

Here's a fascinating piece in the Chicago Sun-Times about how gangs such as Chicago's Latin Kings and Vice Lords are sending members into the U.S. military—some of them making it as far as Iraq. Only a very small fraction of soldiers are gang members, and few commit crimes while on base, but some observers seem to be worried that many will eventually leave and then use their training and access to military equipment to become "deadly urban warriors" when they return home.

[Scott] Barfield[, a Defense Department gang detective] said gangs are encouraging their members to join the military to learn urban warfare techniques they can teach when they go back to their neighborhoods.

"Gang members are telling us in the interviews that their gang is putting them in," he said…

Barfield said he has documented gang-affiliated soldiers' involvement in drug dealing, gunrunning and other criminal activity off base. More than a year ago, a soldier tied to a white supremacy group was caught trying to ship an assault rifle from Iraq to the United States in pieces, he said.

Part of the reason the military has been letting in so many gang members is that it's had to lower its standards; recruits are increasingly getting waivers for criminal backgrounds, and recruiters are told that it's now okay to accept people with gang tattoos, so long as there are fewer than five. And, of course, part of the reason that standards have dropped so low is that the military's bogged down in a pointless and deadly war that no one wants to fight. But at least we'll have some great urban violence to show for it.

How to Conquer Canada

Michael Byers, a professor in British Columbia, writes in the Toronto Star about a little-known plan to increase cooperation between the Canadian and American militaries:

They seem harmless enough at first: two mid-level Canadian Forces officers and a mild-mannered bespectacled American consultant explaining the work of their 48-member Bi-National Planning Group to audiences across Canada. Their professed goal is to improve co-operation between the Canadian and U.S. militaries, the better to defend both countries.

Yet a close reading of their final report released last month, reveals that their actual intent — or at least the intent of the politicians who set their mandate — is far from benign. They seek nothing less than the complete integration of Canada's military, security and foreign policy into the decision-making and operating systems of the U.S. …

Today, two Canadian elections later, the authors of the BPG report can hardly believe their luck. Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have only a minority government, but there is little doubt he desires closer ties with Washington.

Really? What? Looking more closely, it's hard to say what will actually come of this. Certainly there are degrees of cooperation being considered. At the very lowest level, the BPG report recommends that the two countries expand the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which was established during the Cold War to watch for threats from the air, in order to include maritime surveillance. (And yes, the idea that this continent is in danger of an attack by sea seems ludicrous, but there you go.)

The BPG's most radical proposal, however, is to put the Canadian military essentially under U.S. command. Does that mean we could use Canadian troops whenever election time rolled around and a failed president needed to topple some "rogue" regime somewhere? It's not clear, but it sure sounds that way. Of course, that could make any sort of U.S. military action more difficult if the average Canadian voter—who appears a bit less militaristic than your average American voter—suddenly has a right to sound off on who's invading whom. Either way, it's kind of a weird development.

Same-Sex Couples and Immigration

It's not entirely surprising, but Human Rights Watch points out in a new report that current immigration law discriminates rather seriously against gays and lesbians. There are at least 40,000 same-sex couples in the United States in which one partner is a citizen or permanent resident and the other a foreign national. But in those relationships, the U.S. citizen isn't allowed to sponsor his or her partner for entry into the country in the way that virtually all heterosexual couples can:

For more than 50 years, family reunification has been a stated and central goal of U.S. immigration policy. Immigration law places a priority on allowing citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their spouses and close relatives for entry into the U.S. Although the system remains imperfect, riddled with delays that rising anti-immigrant sentiment only intensifies, U.S. citizens and their foreign heterosexual partners can easily claim spousal status and the immigration rights that it brings.

U.S. citizens with foreign lesbian or gay partners, however, find that their relationship is considered non-existent under federal law. … Based on interviews and surveys with dozens of binational same-sex couples across the United States and around the world, the report documents the pressures and ordeals that lack of legal recognition imposes on lesbian and gay families. Couples described abuse and harassment by immigration officials. Some partners told stories of being deported from the United States and separated from their partners. Many couples, forced to live in different countries or continents, endure financial as well as emotional strain in keeping their relationships together.

A number of transnational same-sex couples end up in exile in one the 19 countries that actually allow same-sex couples to immigrate. Interestingly—or depressingly; take your pick—the report notes that a good deal of immigration policy in the United States has been motivated by fears of sexuality for quite some time. Up until 1990, the U.S. barred foreign-born gays and lesbians from entering the country, a policy that started in the McCarthy era. It still imposes a ban on H.I.V.-positive individuals from entering the country—one of the only industrialized countries to do so—despite the fact that there's not really a compelling public health reason to do so. And now this, which, sadly, isn't likely to be corrected anytime soon.

The Decline of Workplace Safety

I probably should've linked to this a few days ago, but Jordan Barab had an outstanding post on Worker's Memorial Day about the dismal state of workplace safety standards in the United States. Workplace deaths have risen to 6,000 a year—that's 15 every day; serious injuries are going underreported; negligent employers are getting off lightly; and the Bush administration continues to gut MSHA and OSHA, the two agencies responsible for workplace safety. This part is particularly damning:

Although rarely used, OSHA has the ability to criminally prosecute employers when a willful violation of a standard leads to the death of a worker. ("Willful" means violations in which the employer knew that workers’ lives were being put at risk.)

OSHA was embarrassed in 2003 by a New York Times investigation that revealed that from 1982 to 2002, OSHA declined to seek criminal prosecution in 93 percent of more than 1200 cases where a worker was killed due to a willful violation of an OSHA standard. At least 70 employers willfully violated safety laws again, resulting in scores of additional deaths. Even these repeat violators were rarely prosecuted. Fewer than 20 employers have ever gone to jail despite well over a thousand cases involving work deaths that involve "willful" OSHA violations over the past twenty years.

Indeed, most of the time OSHA merely chooses to slap fines on willfully negligent employers; but the maximum fine only comes to $70,000 (and fines rarely reach even that)—hardly enough to persuade billion-dollar businesses to just think a bit harder about worker safety. Barab notes that state and local prosecutors have tried to exact stricter punishments, but, of course, unless the federal government steps in, businesses will frequently be able to move to whatever part of the country has the laxest standards and the gentlest juries. But, of course, the federal government won't step in so long as a wholly-owned subsidiary of big agribusiness, etc., is sitting in the White House.

May 1, 2006

White House trying to get suit against NSA thrown out of court

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, filed a class action suit against the government at the end of January, claiming that AT&T's alleged cooperation with the National Security Agency in eavesdropping on Americans violates Constitutionally guaranteed free speech and privacy rights. AT&T has not responded to the suit, but on Friday, the U.S. Justice Department filed a Statement of Interest, saying it intends to intervene and have the suit tossed out of court. The government plans to invoke the State Secrets privilege.

According to the EFF:

The lawsuit alleges that AT&T Corp. has opened its key telecommunications facilities and databases to direct access by the NSA and/or other government agencies, thereby disclosing to the government the contents of its customers' communications as well as detailed communications records about millions of its customers, including the lawsuit's class members.
The lawsuit also alleges that AT&T has given the government unfettered access to its over 300 terabyte "Daytona" database of caller information -- one of the largest databases in the world. Moreover, by opening its network and databases to wholesale surveillance by the NSA, EFF alleges that AT&T has violated the privacy of its customers and the people they call and email, as well as broken longstanding communications privacy laws.

The lawsuit also alleges that AT&T continues to assist the government in its secret surveillance of millions of Americans. EFF, on behalf of a nationwide class of AT&T customers, is suing to stop this illegal conduct and hold AT&T responsible for its illegal collaboration in the government's domestic spying program, which has violated the law and damaged the fundamental freedoms of the American public.

Why Currency Reserves Matter

This goes in the "obscure but sort of important" folder. Eduardo Porter reports that developing countries are building up excessively large currency reserves, partly as "insurance against financial disaster." Rather tragically, these countries tend to lose money on all the dollars they're buying up—and it's not like they can really afford to lose money here—and what's worse, the money they spend padding their reserves is money they're not spending on important things, like health care or infrastructure or other domestic investments.

So why are they all doing it? Dean Baker and Karl Walentin have argued before that it's because everyone thinks the international financial system is rather volatile and no one wants to go through the same meltdown that countries in East Asia suffered in the late '90s. But the fact that these poorer countries all have to incur very large costs because of a rickety system set up largely to benefit the richer countries indicates, as Baker and Walentin wrote, "a serious failing of international financial institutions."

Bush Feels Free to Ignore Law

Does this look like a crisis to anyone else?

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

On another note, there seem to be a lot of Republicans upset today that various immigration proposals will "reward" people who are breaking the law. Entirely unrelated stories, no doubt.

MORE: And just in case any members of Congress think they'd like to have a say in whether or not the U.S. launches military strikes against, say, Iran, this bit is noteworthy:

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.

After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.

Okay, then.

'Turning Point' in Iraq? Probably Not.

The New York Times reports that the Army has set up mock Iraqi villages here in California so that soldiers can practice fighting insurgents. Presumably that means that the military is already planning to dig in and stay in Iraq for a long time, despite the odd rumors of a massive drawdown. On the other hand, this interview suggests that no matter how adept the military gets at counterinsurgency, the larger overall strategy in Iraq is so incoherent that it probably won't do much good:

"There is a paradox in the approach," said Kalev Sepp, a former Special Forces officer and one of the most vocal proponents for changing the Army. "The training in the United States and in Iraq is teaching all the right things — decentralization of authority and responsibility to the lowest levels, engagement with the Iraqi population, cultural awareness and political sensitivity — the full broad range of measures needed to defeat the insurgency."

"But on the ground," Mr. Sepp said in an interview, "the troops are being moved onto these large consolidated bases and being drawn away from the population just at point that they have been trained to engage them." Nowhere are the changes in the Army's thinking more visible than at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post ran the headline, "Merits of Partitioning Iraq or Allowing Civil War Weighed" over the weekend and now today Sen. Joe Biden chimes in with a plan to split Iraq up into three separate countries. Juan Cole thinks it's a bad idea and has his own proposal for partition. The idea that the United States, under this administration, could handle anything like the "peaceful" break-up of a country deftly strikes me as totally unrealistic, not to mention potentially horrifying (it's worth noting that Biden's model for partition, the Dayton Accords, failed to resolve the Kosovo issue, which indirectly led to yet another round of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans only five years later), but that seems to be what the experts all think.

May 5, 2006

What Next for Darfur?

May 4, 2006

After all these years, Bush has found something to veto

What the Media Finds Funny

The War Against Cola...

Lobbying Reform Is a Sham

May 3, 2006

Taliban not classified as terrorist organization

May 2, 2006

American Dream Harder Than Ever to Reach

Gang Members in the Military

How to Conquer Canada

Same-Sex Couples and Immigration

The Decline of Workplace Safety

May 1, 2006

White House trying to get suit against NSA thrown out of court

Why Currency Reserves Matter

Bush Feels Free to Ignore Law

'Turning Point' in Iraq? Probably Not.

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