The Agonist - thoughtful, global, timely

A Betrayal Is A Betrayal

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:27:50 -0800

By now you’ve probably heard about the Stupack amendment, which would make it illegal for any insurance offered on the exchanges set up by the health care reform bill to cover abortion services. It is being allowed to the floor by the leadership, and indications are that there may be enough votes for it to pass. If it were to remain in the final bill, it would strip practical access to insurance from millions of women, a number which would increase when the exchanges open to businesses.

This is such a huge betrayal of Democratic ideals and values I know not what to say. It's also, as Ian notes, a betrayal that will burden women of child-bearing age disproportionately. Is this what the Democrats in Congress have become?

It's regressive and backwards in every way.

Prospect of More U.S. Troops Worries Afghan Public

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:41:58 -0800

Alissa Rubin | Charikar, Afghanistan — | November 7

NY Times - As Americans, including President Obama’s top advisers, tensely debate whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, Afghans themselves are having a similar discussion and voicing serious doubts.

In bazaars and university corridors across the country, eight years of war have left people exhausted and impatient. They are increasingly skeptical that the Taliban can be defeated. Nearly everyone agrees that the Afghan government must negotiate with the insurgents. If more American forces do arrive, many here say, they should come to train Afghans to take over the fight, so the foreigners can leave.

“What have the Americans done in eight years?” asked Abdullah Wasay, 60, a pharmacist in Charikar, a market town about 25 miles north of Kabul, expressing a view typical of many here. “Americans are saying that with their planes they can see an egg 18 kilometers away, so why can’t they see the Taliban?”

Such sentiments were repeated in conversation after conversation with more than 30 Afghans in Kabul and nearby rural areas and with local officials in outlying provinces. The comments point to the difficulties that American and Afghan officials face if they choose to add more foreign troops.

If the foreign forces are not seen so by Afghans already, they are on the cusp of being regarded as occupiers, with little to show people for their extended presence, fueling wild conspiracies about why they remain here.

The feeling is particularly acute in the Pashtun south, but it is spreading to other parts of the country. More American troops could tip the balance of opinion, particularly if they increase civilian casualties and prompt even more Taliban attacks.

The grass-roots view among Afghans is at odds with those of top Afghan officials, as well as many American military commanders, who strongly endorse a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy, including a large troop increase.

The aim of sending more troops would be to help secure Afghanistan’s biggest cities and towns to make the population feel safe and in doing so to show that the foreign presence can bring benefits.

At the same time, the Americans support the idea of negotiating with moderate members of the Taliban, but would prefer to do so once the insurgency has been weakened. And, that, in turn, may also require more troops.

Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said he was in “full agreement” with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American commander of forces in Afghanistan, that a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy was necessary, including more forces.

“One piece of that strategy is a troop increase as a stopgap measure that will create an environment in which Afghan security forces can continue to grow and people will be protected against insurgents,” he said.

The mood on the street is darker and more wary. Mr. Wasay and several friends visiting his pharmacy were discussing the Taliban’s killing of a police chief in a rural part of the province. The rumor was that Taliban fighters had severed his head and delivered it to his son, according to one of Mr. Wasay’s friends.

True or not, the anecdote was part of a growing mythology of Taliban power and a general perception that neither the Afghan government nor American troops were protecting Afghans.

Daily life continues to be so precarious for many people interviewed, especially those outside Kabul, that they have come to believe that the United States must want the fighting to go on.

“In the first days of the war, the Americans defeated the Taliban in just a few days,” said Mohammed Shefi, a graduate student in the pharmacy school at Kabul University. “Now they have more than 60,000 forces and they cannot defeat them.”

Alex Thier, an analyst at the United States Institute of Peace, who has spent years working in Afghanistan, said the country’s mood was shifting. “What’s changed fairly recently was the confidence of the population as to whether we can actually achieve the job, even with more resources,” he said.

These doubts do not tally with some surveys, like the poll taken by the International Republican Institute, in which a majority of Afghans appeared to be positive about Americans and said they thought that the country was going in the right direction. However, the security environment in Afghanistan makes it a difficult place in which to conduct polls, and the survey by the institute, a pro-democracy group affiliated with the Republican Party and financed by the American government, was taken in July before the rampant fraud in the presidential election.

Zia Ahmet, a seller of tea kettles and pots just down the street from Mr. Wasay, was positive about the current international presence, but dubious about increasing it. “Instead of increasing foreign troops, it’s better to equip the Afghan National Army and the Afghan police,” he said, a view that was shared by almost everyone interviewed. “The local army are known in the villages, and they are more useful than foreign troops.”

A tribal elder in Balkh Province, in the remote north, said the insurgency had disrupted life for farmers and herders, and he repeated one of a growing number of conspiracy theories about the Americans’ intentions. In his version, the Americans were transporting Taliban fighters to the north and dropping them from helicopters at night, on the theory that the Americans wanted more fighting so they could stay in the country. Other versions have the British transporting the insurgents.

There is no truth to the accounts, according to American military officials in Kabul.

Graduate students at Kabul University were no less suspicious. “Those countries that are working with the U.S. and are friends of theirs are Saudi and Pakistan and those are the same countries the insurgents are coming from,” said Abdullah, a graduate student in the Faculty of Islamic Law who, like many Afghans, has only one name.

While the notions may seem absurd to Americans, they have added to an increasingly volatile public mood here. A story that American forces burned a Koran in Wardak Province brought hundreds of young people into the streets last month to protest the American presence, even though the story was roundly disputed by Afghan and American officials.

With less certainty about America’s continued commitment, there is a growing sense that the only sure way to peace is through negotiations with the Taliban. “They are the sons of this country, it is right to negotiate with the Taliban,” said Mohammed Younnis, a shopkeeper in Charikar who sells tea, sugar and grains.

“This government is Afghan, and the Taliban are Afghan; they should build the country together,” he said.

"The Neocon dream of Turko-Israeli regional military-economic cooperation sphere is now in tatters"

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:40:36 -0800

My friend Chuck Spinney writes in from Turkey this morning riffing off a recent op-ed in the Times. I can't quibble with what either of them have to say. Chuck says:

As someone who has lived in Turkey for most of the last two years, I have watched the development of her foreign policy with great interest, not to mention a good deal of confusion.

It is hard to make sense out this rapidly-emerging, vibrant country of 70 million, increasingly well-educated, industrious people. While its remote interior is still very traditional, Turkey's coastal regions are already beginning to blossom into an outward looking, modern multinational consumer society, and the effects of rising incomes and education are very visible. In the coastal regions, I would say that living standards are now higher than those of Portugal, about the same as those of Greece, and somewhat lower than those of Spain. To be sure, the interior is poorer, especially as one travels east, but even in the east, there is growing modernity. Everywhere, markets are chock a block with high-quality healthy food and vast quantities middle income consumer goods, and there is fresh water galore, especially in the coastal regions.

The attached op-ed by Patrick Seale is a good summary that brings clarity to much of what is going on with Turkey's foreign policy and is well worth reading.

But there is more. Not mentioned are Turkey's bilateral overtures to Russia, Georgia, the Ukraine, and the various Turkic countries in great swath of Central Asia (including the Uighurs in NW China), as well as a bewildering variety of multilateral environmental and economic initiatives in the Black Sea region (involving Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Greece, and Turkey). On a personal level, when talking to individual Turks, I have sensed occasionally some faint echoes of a revival of the kinship links which once connected the cosmopolitan inhabitants around the Black Sea littoral (Turks marrying Ukranians and Russians, Turkish Tatars reconnecting with distant relatives in the Crimea or Kuban, Turkish Las east of Trabzon connecting to Georgians, etc.)

Much of this dynamism is definitely due to the proactive leadership of Prime Minister Edogan and Foreign Minister Davutoglu in the sense described by Seale, but part of the impetus, I think, also comes from Turkey being sucked willy-nilly into the power vacuum that arose suddenly with collapse of the Soviet Union, and then was deepened more recently by the escalation of US bungling in the Middle East and Central Asia (especially wrt Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan,and Syria). The interplay of chance and necessity is now shaping unfolding events in an unpredictable way.

What this political/social evolution means for the Greater Middle East as well as relationships among Turkey, the EU, and the US is unknowable at this point in time, but we may be witnessing the beginning of what may turn out to be one of the most important geopolitical realignments of the 21st Century.

One this is clear, however: The Neocon dream of Turko-Israeli regional military-economic cooperation sphere is now in tatters. How Israel adapts to these changes and how Israel attempts to use its pernicious lobbying influence in the US to shape our response to these changes is likely to be one the great strategic headaches for President Obama and his successors for the foreseeable future.

Here's a link to the Times op-ed.

Are You Currently Employed, Unemployed, or Underemployed?

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:26:58 -0800

Foreign Contributions and the Supreme's Overdue Decision on Campaign Funding

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:05:16 -0800

The Supreme Court of the United States will soon announce a major decision on our lightly controlled system of campaign funding. Will it retain some limitations on corporate influence or will the court blow the lid off and cause a perpetual flood of unrestricted corporate contributions?

An additional outcome may surprise and shock the public.

If the Supreme Court overturns the lower court's decision, foreign nationals, corporations, and governments with partial ownership of U.S. corporations will, in effect, end up contributing to and influencing U.S. candidates in federal elections.

The Supreme Court surprised many when it agreed to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that enforced key sections of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold) -- Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

In January 2008, the Federal District Court, District of Columbia upheld an FEC action that barred Citizens United, a right wing nonprofit corporation, from airing an extended attack on Hillary Clinton called Hillary: The Movie. Citizens United is headed by David Bossie, a well known political enemy of the Clintons. Citizens' lead counsel, Ted Olsen, is an alumnus of the infamous 1990's Clinton bashing Arkansas Project.

The lower court found The Movie violated provisions of McCain-Feingold since some funding for the movie came from the general treasury of Citizens United, rather than a segregated account for political action, e.g., a Political Action Committee (PAC). The Movie had the sole purpose of convincing viewers that Clinton was unfit for office, making it an example of electioneering communications -- the overriding purpose of which are to advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate. And The Movie was planned for broadcast both 30 days prior to Democratic primaries and 60 days prior to the general election (had Clinton won the nomination), blackout periods for electioneering communications.

In its appeal, Citizens argued that broadcast restrictions in McCain-Feingold should be overturned to allow unrestricted electioneering communications funded directly from corporate treasuries.

But the appeal also served as a vehicle for lifting virtually any ban on corporate giving. In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that corporate funding of campaigns from general funds could be restricted. The heart of the decision is found here:

"they (the Michigan laws) are justified by a compelling state interest: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption in the political arena by reducing the threat that huge corporate treasuries, which are amassed with the aid of favorable state laws and have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas, will be used to influence unfairly election outcomes. Justice Marshall, Austin v. Mich. Chamber of Comm., 1990

Lead counsel for Citizens United, Ted Olsen, argued that "Austin was wrongly decided and should be overruled." He counters with another case that claimed,"First Amendment’s protection against governmental abridgment of free expression cannot properly be made to depend on a person’s financial ability to engage in public discussion.” Ted Olsen, Merits Brief, p. 30, Sept. 9

This challenge to the Austin decision is the true threat within the Trojan horse argument over broadcast restrictions on political hit pieces. The goal of this appeal is nothing less than the legal treatment of corporations as the equal of individual citizens and lesser groups in the political process resulting in an even greater advantage for corporations to control elections.

"We are the World"

During oral arguments before the court, Olson argued that McCain-Feingold unlawfully restricts the First Amendment rights of U.S. corporations. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had this exchange with Olson:

MR. OLSON: What the Court has said in the First Amendment context, New York Times v. Sullivan, Rose Jean v. Associated Press, and over and over again, is that corporations are persons entitled to protection under the First Amendment.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Would that include --

MR. OLSON: Now, Justice --

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Would that include today's mega-corporations, where many of the investors may be foreign individuals or entities?

MR. OLSON: The Court in the past has made no distinction based upon the nature of the entity that might own a share of a corporation.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Own many shares?

MR. OLSON: Pardon?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Nowadays there are foreign interests, even foreign governments that own not one share but a goodly number of shares.

Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, Oral Arguments, pp. 4, 5, Sept. 9, 2009

Justice Ginsburg created a poison pill by putting on notice any Supreme Court majority that overturns the lower court decision: your actions will allow foreign funding for U.S. campaigns. Any foreign entity could simply exercise an existing or newly acquired ownership position in a U.S. corporation to demand services from that corporation's latest wholly owned candidate.

The current bans on direct corporate contributions and contributions from foreign entities would become meaningless. The influence of the "corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth" obtained through the control of puppet politicians would submit all of us to the vicissitudes of balance sheets and the salary and bonus demands of board chairmen all over the world (to an even greater degree than we now experience).

Supremes Green Light Foreign Money in U.S. Elections! How well will that fly with citizens in the current political climate? Does the Supreme Court even care?

Class of 2000 Reunion

Two alumni of the Bush effort to stop the Florida 2000 recount, freeze in place various voting rights violations, and prevent any real judicial review of a flawed election are reunited in this case. Chief Justice Roberts was recognized for his contributions to election chaos as then Florida Governor Jeb Bush's legal advisor. His contributions were less than helpful. Ted Olson represented George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case that stopped the recount. He also served as a key strategist for George W. Bush's Florida 2000 recount efforts.

How coincidental that Chief Justice Roberts reached out to his Bush campaign 2000 alumnus Olson by agreeing to hear a case that surprised many when it was selected for the Supreme Court docket.

How ironic that the case presents the opportunity to bring corporate funding into U.S. politics in a way that would end any pretences of democracy as we know it. History waited just nine years to repeat itself.

END

N.B. Wouldn't a reasonable person conclude that Fox News violates the McCain-Feingold Act on a regular basis? Link

This article may be reproduced in part or in whole with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

Sabbath eve, November 6, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:05:27 -0800

Sean Paul Kelly asked a number of Agonist readers to predict what the world would look like in 30 years. I am hesitant to comply. For me, to predict events in the future is to prophesy. To prophesy incorrectly makes one a false prophet. So I am very cautious with even the simplest statements regarding the future.

I rarely say I will do anything tomorrow without adding, good Lord willing, as a qualifier.

To be honest, I have had mental images, glimpses if you will, of events I think may be part of this country’s future and they are quite scary. I don’t know if these images are divinely inspired or just creations of my own mind.

Thoughts I’ve had are disjointed and full of gaps, like looking through a key hole that remains blocked most of the time.

I interact routinely with people that claim insight into our future or who see things the rest of us don’t, hear voices the rest of us can’t. Many of these people are deemed crazy by the majority, as I am sure were prophets and seers of old. I am influenced by what they say, think and do.

I read prophetic writings almost complusively and have only recently read a book that altered the way I understand history and therefore our future: The fourth turning, by Strauss and Howe.

Before I start, a disclaimer: I am not predicting the future or offering much in the way of anything original here. Instead, I am interpreting what others have prophesied after trying to reconcile their predictions to the world in which I live. This is a narrow glimpse: it’d take a library full of books to consider all possibilities that have coursed through my head since the late 1970’s when I began studying this subject in earnest (and believe it or not, this has been an ongoing concern of mine since that time). I will provide very little in the way of detail, because to put it simply, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Stauss and Howe will tell you that history repeats itself, or comes near doing so in patterns resembling seasons of a year. Each season lasts roughly twenty years (some more, some less) and four seasons complete a saeculum.

The firt season, always following a period of crisis, is called the high, and corresponds with the spring of a year. Those born into this time are referred to as Prophets. In this particular saeculum, that’d be boomers, of which I am part (born 1943 – 1960. I’m doing this from memory as I gave the book to my dad after reading it and no longer have a copy.)

The second season is called the awakening; those born into this period are referred to as Nomads. Current nomads are Gen – Xers (born 1961 – 1981). This season corresponds with summer.

The third period is the unraveling. People born in the fall season are referred to as part of the Hero generation. This because they will become young adults during the fourth and last season – the crisis or winter season. Children born during the crisis are referred to as Artists. Today’s heroes are called Millenials. We’ve yet to come up with a name for the next crops of artists, the majority of which probably have not been born. For what it’s worth, my dad is part of the previous generation of artists, referred to as the Silent generation (born 1923 – 1942).

It took a book or several of them for Strauss and Howe to describe the patterns that define our history so I won’t rewrite what they suggest. Read the book. Suffice it to say that I am convinced. Seasonal patterns presented are similar to those an individual human goes through: birth, young adulthood, maturation, decline, and of course ultimately death (and rebirth, if you will). If you live a full life expectancy you will likely die in a time similar to that in which you are born.

Each crisis period since the founding of this country and for centuries before dating back to the Roman Empire and even before ended in a major war. The last three crisis periods here in the United States culminated respectively with the Revoltionary war, the Civil War, and World War II. In each case, the hero generation bore the brunt of fighting those wars. Notice that each of these occurred 80 years apart and came near the end of a twenty year economic, spiritual and moral collapse. Also note that each successive war was larger and more destructive in nature than the last. (Also notice that the stock market collapsed in 1929 and were are now living in 2009, eighties years later.) We just recently entered a period of crisis.

Here’s where I depart from Strauss and Howe’s predictions. I see these repetitive cycles like a harmonic vibration of sorts. Each wave of movement back and forth progressively gets larger and more powerful. Have you ever seen video of wind whipping a suspension bridge back and forth, up and down? If you have, you know at some point the structure fails and flies to pieces.

And that is what happens to empires as well. They survive a number of cycles but at some point a crisis period becomes so severe that they are broken to pieces, relegated to history. So not only are there saeculums, but also larger groups of saeculums, or epochs *probably not the word Strauss and Howe would use* that define history and denote the end and the beginning of a new era.

I don’t know if America, or the world at large survives the current crisis period in a form that would be recognizable to someone born antyime during the last century. Of course, each generation of prophets along the way asked the same questions and considered the same possibilities. Can we, will we survive this turbulent time?

Just because we survived three previous periods of crisis, doesn’t mean we survive the next.

Never before have > 6 billion people inhabited the earth. Not even close. So you can’t say that just because humans have never before affected the climate, we aren’t doing so now. In less than 100 years we have consumed half the known supply of extractable oil from the earth, oil that probably took millions of years to form. We’ve cut down trees, paved over swamps, ripped open land and allowed topsoil to erode. Balls of tar and plastic float in our oceans; coral reefs die, ice caps melt, species disappear.

Never before have we been so dependant on machinery, most of which is powered directly or indirectly by fossil fuels. Never before has such a large percentage of our population been so far removed from the land that feeds them. Never before has a single farmer fed some many others.

Naseem Taleb says the larger and more complex a system, the more redundancies that are built into that system, the less likely the system is to fail. But… When it does fail, (and it will), the greater the consequences of that failure.

Pride comes before destruction. The more you tell me how we can or won’t fail, the more I am convinced we must. We (not just the US, but modern man as a whole) built something approximating the tower of babel. It must be destroyed in order to save the planet.

There are some, the most evil among us, Malthusians also, but of a much more radical strain than I, that see the same things I see and decide they will engineer the collapse to the favor of their own based on race, religion, region, class, gender etc. They say, if it’s them or us, it’s going to be them and then they proceed to make it happen. Bush, Cheney, Gore and even your boy Obama are counted among them. Worse than these lie ahead.

It’s not that there aren’t non-violent fixes out there, it’s that they won’t be employed.

It will not be geologic constraints of peak oil that seals our fate, nor will climate change get us, although either of these in time presents grave threats. It will be the anticipation of these events and the reactions of those in power that bring about the worst disasters this world has seen.

Plans for the destruction of others will backfire. We will fall victim to devices of our own construction. We are entering a time of great upheaval: wars, famine, disease and natural disasters unparalleled in the history of this planet are soon to come if I don't miss my guess.

I’d say more, but it’d take a book. More than a book. And I don't have the time or space to do that here.

But take heart. The old must pass away so the new can rise. If something isn’t done to destroy civilization as we now practice it, the planet will be destroyed. And I don’t think that’s going to happen.

You see, in the end, I am an optimist.

My guess: Thirty years from now, the United States of America will have collapsed. The world’s population will number less than 2 billion. I don’t expect to be one of them. But you never know.

And the planet will begin to heal itself.

Five Books

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:33:31 -0800

If you knew you were going to stranded on a deserted island for a full year with no cable, iPod, DVD/Blue Ray or any other assorted form of entertainment and only had room for five books, which five books would it be?

Me? The Histories of Herodotus, The Divine Comedy by Dante, the complete Essays of Montaigne, The Complete Poems of Yeats and East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

You?

"You Can't Pick Your Side in a Race Riot"

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:09:05 -0800

The title of the post is a quote from an inmate who survived the infamous Santa Fe Prison Riot in 1980. The sentiment is obvious, when the worst, most atavistic tribal impulses of human beings take over, people can't make rational choices about which side to take, and often don't even have the choice of remaining neutral.

This unfortunate reality of the human condition greatly complicates the internal politics of a polyglot nation like the U.S.

It's been that way since the American Revolution. Certain ethnic/socio-political groups remained more loyal to the Crown and many were driven out of the country at the end of the war. I'm familiar with this because my father's family were tories who migrated from New York to New Brunswick after the Revolution.

My home state of Texas infamously oppressed the Tejanos who played leading roles in the Texas Revolution once independence from Mexico had been achieved.

German-Americans famously suffered the brunt of an angry populace during WWI, from Wikipedia:

The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. One man was hanged in Illinois, apparently for no other reason than that he was of German descent. The killers were found not guilty of the crime and the hanging was called an act of patriotism by a jury. A Minnesota minister was tarred and feathered when he was overheard praying in German with a dying woman. Some Germans during this time "Americanized" their names (e.g. Schmidt to Smith, Müller to Miller) and limited their use of the German language in public places. Newspapers also printed blacklists of names of Germans, including their addresses, headlined as German Enemy Aliens.

During WWII, Japanese-Americans had it even worse, being interned in concentration camps.

It shouldn't be surprising that our current ~~wars to export freedom and Democracy~~ state of war with two Muslim countries is putting yet another subset of Americans in a very awkward spot. And when one individual snaps, rather than being seen as an example of aberrant individual psychology or criminal evil, the jingo-artists among us seize on this to make the situation even worse.

From TPM:

One conservative writer is already declaring -- without citing any evidence -- that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter who killed 13 at Fort Hood yesterday, was acting at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood.

and from Raw Story:

In the wake of a shooting rampage at Fort Hood by a military psychiatrist of Middle Eastern lineage, the hosts at Fox News have begun suggesting that all Muslims in the military should be treated as potential threats.

"Do you think it's time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army officers -- anybody enlisted?" Fox's Brian Kilmeade asked Geraldo Rivera on Friday morning. "Because if I'm going to be deployed in a foxhole, if I'm going to be sticking in an outpost, I got to know the guy next to me is not going to want to kill me."

I hope we can pull out of this downward spiral before it gets stupider and more deadly.

Some excerpts from an interview with a local newspaper editor near Fort Hood in the full entry. She takes a much more measured and responsible approach than the national media.

From Boing Boing's interview with Amanda Kim Stairrett, the military editor at the Killeen Daily Herald.

Besides the families, people really want to know more about the alleged shooter himself. What are you seeing in this coverage?
AKS: A lot of the news organizations are very much wanting to push his religion. Him being Muslim and the impact of that on the incident itself. We don't have anything with that confirmed yet, so I've been really hesitant to say that that played a big part in the incident. We did had a reporter who was at the shooter's off-Post apartment and talked to neighbors. They said he was outspoken about being Muslim and had a lot of pride in his faith. But right now, I've stayed away from saying whether that played a hand in the shooting. I don't know if it's a big problem that people are speculating. I think it's first instinct. But I don't know why new organizations are so prominently featuring surveillance footage of him in a convenience store in traditional clothing. They're building this background in case it turns out that his religion did come into this. But we just don't know right now. And we're not willing to go that route with our reporting at this time.

What's your take on the speculation that's running rampant on TV news with this incident, in general? How does that compare to the actual facts that you know?
AKS: It's been interesting. Very early after the incident yesterday, I was pretty amazed to stand by and listen to, mostly, TV reporters go on air and speculate and report on rumors they'd heard. Whereas, our newspaper is right next to Fort Hood. We have a close relationship and it's always been our policy where we find that it's best to wait for correct information rather than to speculate. Because there's a large family population that isn't necessarily on Post, and don't know what's going on. It's a dangerous situation to get those people worried and worked up for reasons that maybe aren't correct. It's been really frustrating to see all the speculation. I've even been avoiding watching the TV coverage too closely, because I don't want the speculation to accidentally influence what I write.

Some More Friday Fun

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:36:09 -0800

Many of you, I have a feeling, will like this one:

Unemployment: 10.2%

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:31:32 -0800

Where are my green shoots?

The U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 10.2% in October, topping the 10% mark for the first time in 26 years, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls dropped by a seasonally adjusted 190,000 in October, bringing to total number of jobs lost in the recession to 7.3 million. It was the 22nd straight decline in payrolls. Large losses were seen in manufacturing, construction and retail. Health care and temporary-help agencies added jobs.

10.2% is not, I repeat, is not a good number.

Friday Catblogging: Canadian Version

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:29:51 -0800

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

This one is for our Canadian friends.

Thirty Years Later: Floods, Famine and Fundamentalism

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:31:25 -0800

These are mostly random thoughts, for the future never really coheres into a narrative until it is long since past. I'll address the Rights of Women and the Environment tomorrow. I'll be adding random thoughts as they occur.

Military/War/Diplomacy:

The US retains it's dominant power position, if only just. Most of it's power will rest on innovations long since past. China and the EU will have set up an alternative to the US's space dominance, however. The US will be unable to affect it's will in the Asia heartland but will still dominate the global littoral. The SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) will emerge as a serious player led by China, Russia and a nuclear Iran.

Japan will remain an ally, but will have attained great power status. Virulent piracy in the South China sea, led by a collapsed Indonesia, leads to the Japanese navy patrolling the Straits of Malacca. China and Japan engage in a naval build-up. But the US, in the aftermath of the depression, retains its global naval presence after a series of military realignment bills in Congress transform US grand strategy.

Korea is unified as the US footprint in Asia is at its lowest level since shortly before the Spanish-American War. The Navy and the Airforce garner a lion's share of the budget, as the army reverts to a post-World War One size. The deterioration of the US position in Latin America gains steam in the aftermath of a crisis with China over Taiwan, but overall the US maintains a grip on the politics of Latin America, if only just.

Pakistan and India nuke each other. India occupies the fertile lowlands of Pakistan and annexes them. Large swaths are uninhabitable. The Indo-American alliance grows stronger. North Korea implodes, sending an endless stream of economic immigrants over the DMZ. The Central Asian states fall under the sway of Russia and China, setting off a mini-Cold War of sorts between the two.

In the aftermath of Castro's death, South Florida emigres press their 'ownership' rights in Cuba. It quickly becomes an American playground for the wealthy.

In the aftermath of the depression the United States ceases it's foreign aid to Egypt. Within a few years Israel is attacked by another Arab coalition, this one led by Egypt and Syria and the Jordanian House of Saud. The surprise attack from Syria and Lebanon regains the Golan Heights, but fails in the South.

Mexico muddles along. Brazil announces a breakout 'nuclear capacity' but doesn't build the bomb. The Australian population peaks and begins a rapid decline, fed by over-mining and a lack of water.

Economy/Development:

In the aftermath of a economic depression brought about by banks 'too large to fail' the United States defaults on its sovereign debt. No States leave the Union, although states paying more in taxes to the Federal government to welfare states use the threat of secession to repair the balance of monies shifted from wealthier states to poorer ones. A bill is pushed through Congress called the "The Great Compromise of 2021," harkening back to the 'Great Compromise of 1850. It defuses a constitutional crisis.

But the politics of the US grow more extreme and violent in the face of said development. California and Texas routinely use the threat of secession to garner air force and navy procurement contracts. The South is a place of febrile intolerance, but the 'Great Compromise' leaves its senators toothless. The Treaty of Lisbon led to a reawakening of soft-power in the EU, but only in it's near abroad. The EU does not enlarge itself. Turkey does not gain admittance. Falls back into more conservative-religious governance. The pace of scientific innovation in the developed world falls drastically, as fundamentalist movements in places as far afield as India and the United States create a very real anti-Enlightenment backlash. The Arab Middle East becomes ever more sclerotic and radical as peak oil becomes a reality. A succession of revisionist Popes in Europe leads to ever greater Muslim-Christian tension with radical anti-immigration parties adopting a more fundamentalist religion tone similar to that in turn of the century America. America remains the global land of plenty, but looks more and more like a bifurcated land of plenty, riven with sectarian violence.

Rights of Women:

In most of the world the rights of women are severely curtailed. Roe versus Wade is overturned in the US. Several southern states ban abortion outright. Evangelical Christianity makes increasingly large inroads in Latin America, deteriorating tenuous gains made in the late twentieth century. In Northern Europe women maintain their liberties, but they come under increasing pressure due to a global economic realignment as wealth shifts more and more to the global 'South' and China. A succession of radically conservative popes--one from Latin America--bring about a reawakening of religion in Southern Europe. The Anglican Church splits on the issues of abortion and gay rights.

Environment:

The depression in the United States and the globe begins when the bubble surrounding 'renewable energy' pops. It is the last great economic expansion of the United States. Several Pacific and Indian Ocean island nations no longer exist. Portions of South Asia, once known for their intense population density are uninhabitable, creating a fresh pool of displaced laborers for the 'Indian economic miracle' that is resembles slavery more than employment. Portions of Eastern China are also uninhabitable. Famine stalks many portions of the globe, including Peru, Western China, India, Pakistan, East Africa and also portions of the Sahel. Grinding, irremediable famine, that is.

Peak oil and global climate change bring about a remarkable change in Russia, as Russian neo-Communists win concessions in spreading the untapped wealth of the nation. Large tracts of oil and natural gas are exploited in areas hitherto impossible to develop. Russia is the sole developed nation that sees large scale population growth, outside of the US. A highway is built along the trans-Siberian railway and plans are afoot to link the Kamchatka Peninsula as well. Russia establishes are large naval base on the Arctic Ocean along the Ob River Delta.

In light of the melting polar icecaps the relationship between Canada and the United States is strained. Canada forces the United States to deal with it as a 'more equal partner' and not as a junior partner. Right wing agitators imitate those south of the border.

Do I outline developments that are contradictory? Certainly. History is rarely smooth or logical. Am I bit too pessimistic? Perhaps.

To The Victors Go The Spoils

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:10:09 -0800

If the banking crisis and the bailout wasn't enough to piss you off, watch this.

Sausage Factory

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:26:31 -0800

Speaking of irony, this is a classic.

American's Just Think They Are Conservative

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:04:13 -0800

It's a conversation I have all to frequently. And one I had just the other day.

"How much do you make a year?"

"About $35-40k."

"You work hard for your money?"

"Hell yeah, I'm in the landscaping business. But my taxes are too high. The government takes too much of my money to pay for welfare and gives it to immigrants."

"Who are your best customers?"

"Mostly people who live in Westlake and Tarrytown. (The wealthy areas of Austin.~spk)

"Do you have a retirement plan?"

"Social Security but that needs to be privatized so I can get better returns. Just look at the markets! I had a 401(k) but it got creamed after I got laid off."

"And you're business has a good health care plan?"

"No, I'm self-employed. But I'm going to get a health care plan soon. I don't want socialized medicine. I don't want to wait in line to see a doctor."

More after the jump.

There's more, lots more. But this snippet of the conversation is a good jumping off point. I often wonder why the irony of this guy's life is lost on him. Here is a guy who slaves away for the richest people in town and thinks he pays too much in taxes. Never mind the folks he works for get tax breaks that equal or exceed his annual income. Never mind that they probably have excellent health care plans, visit the best doctors. Never mind that the stock in his 401(k) got creamed after the people he works for took all their money out of the market, right? And never mind that the one program he is relying on now is in essence socialism. They guy is living off the scraps the wealthy toss him. He has a college education, but doesn't use it.

So, where does his conservatism come from? Here in Texas I'm pretty convinced that the lower middle classes are so conservative due to patriot porn. We've had at least 40 years of it. And it shows. Guys like this are going to root for the party that cater to the prevailing myths of the day. And those myths can be boiled down into one simple line, really: "America is the greatest country in the world."

That hoary chestnut leaves zero room for improvement. Hence, the prevalence of conservatism in these parts. It's also the reason why Ian is right:

More to the point, if Obama does not do effective policy, which is to say liberal policy, because reality is much closer to how liberals describe it than how “conservatives” describe it, his policies will be ineffective. No one is going to care whether he followed moderate, conservative or liberal policies if they’re unemployed or poorer than they were when he took office.

Conversely, if he followed actual liberal policies, and they worked, and everyone was prosperous, he’d get reelected.

If you enact policies that improve people's lives, as opposed to those that just cater to their innate prejudices, you show them, prove to them that liberal policies will make their life better.

But that requires leadership, not golden-throated rhetoric. Something I don't expect to see anytime soon.