Gaza and Israel: Is a Nation State’s First Job to Protect Its Citizens?
See my posting at Salon.com in Open Salon.
The inchoate feelings that so very many people feel today need to be acted upon by the people. It needs to be organized and it needs to find its voice. The world awaits. The future beckons. Who will answer the call?
See my posting at Salon.com in Open Salon.
Posted by
Dennis Loo
at
10:31 AM
0
comments
Today's NYT's has Herbert's latest OpEd, "Stop Being Stupid," in which he points out how extraordinarily stupid the idea - originating with the free market fundamentalists and implemented beginning under Reagan - is "that you could radically cut taxes and still maintain critical government services — and fight two wars to boot!"
Herbert scores many good points, but fails to really nail down the source of these stupidities and what it would take to turn the corner on it. He does correctly name some names, such as Alan Greenspan, Rob Rubin and Larry Summers, but not their ideological foundations.
An excerpt, followed by a reader's letter and my commentary:
December 27, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Stop Being Stupid
By BOB HERBERT
I’ve got a new year’s resolution and a new slogan for the country.
The resolution may be difficult, but it’s essential. Americans must resolve to be smarter going forward than we have been for the past several years.
Look around you. We have behaved in ways that were incredibly, astonishingly and embarrassingly stupid for much too long. We’ve wrecked the economy and mortgaged the future of generations yet unborn. We don’t even know if we’ll have an automobile industry in the coming years. It’s time to stop the self-destruction.
The slogan? “Invest in the U.S.” By that I mean we should stop squandering the nation’s wealth on unnecessary warfare overseas and mindless consumption here at home and start making sensible investments in the well-being of the American people and the long-term health of the economy.
The mind-boggling stupidity that we’ve indulged in was hammered home by a comment almost casually delivered by, of all people, Bernie Madoff, the mild-mannered creator of what appears to have been a nuclear-powered Ponzi scheme. Madoff summed up his activities with devastating simplicity. He is said to have told the F.B.I. that he “paid investors with money that wasn’t there.”
Somehow, over the past few decades, that has become the American way: to pay for things — from wars to Wall Street bonuses to flat-screen TVs to video games — with money that wasn’t there.
For the rest of his OpEd, see here.
In times of major crisis the opportunity presents itself to either recognize what's really wrong and radically change this (and thereby really resolve things), or fail to rise to the occasion and usher in some other more virulent version of what has previously existed. What paradigm one is employing will prove decisive. The following comment on the NYT's website from a reader, one of the NYT's editors' selections, reflects this:
"Nobody can argue with 'be smart.' But how many tens of millions of Americans make their living with a job that, in one form or another, is aimed at getting other Americans to decrease their savings or increase their debt? Too many of us go to work and devise ways to legally pick the pockets of our unknowing fellow citizens in ways big and small. Americans are subjected to a daily blizzard of hidden fees and co-pays and penalties and tolls, each of which wears us down mentally, emotionally and financially. And behind every one of those fees is probably another American who thought it up, and got a big bonus for doing so. We need to revert back (or should I say move forward?) to true capitalism, where the seller and the buyer understand exactly what is being sold and the price that will be paid, and where it is engrained into our capitalist souls that cheating, swindling, hiding, and misrepresenting are immoral, shameful, illegal, and a threat to our country's future. If we know what things truly cost -- whether it be a cell phone, a mortgage, a flight to Denver or a visit to our doctor -- we can can make more intelligent decisions and maintain more control over our financial destinies. This is what actually goes on now, every day, between sophisticated businesses: prices are known, terms are understood, and the commercial code is clearly defined. When there are two sophisticated parties to a transaction, armed with tools of enforcement, things run remarkably smoothly. But consumers are not armed with the information or power necessary to calmly and rationally control our financial destinies. We open our bills wincing at the hidden pain we expect to find, because we are completely vulnerable to small print and long disclosures and agreement amendments and impossibly byzantine rules that we had no choice but to sign on to. Making this change requires more than a "be smart" slogan (which is a good start, mind you). In the short run it requires legal access to information, and penalties and stigma strong enough to dissaude [sic] deception. In the long run it requires us to redefine right and wrong.
— Kevin C, New York, NY"
Kevin C, like Herbert, puts his finger on some important aspects of the situation. I especially like his point that many people's jobs and bonuses are tied to driving other Americans into debt and "legally pick[ing] their pockets."
However, the idea that pure capitalism is the solution is precisely 180 degrees incorrect.
What would it take for the public to know exactly how much something cost, as Kevin recommends happen? How could dissuading deception with penalties and stigma actually come about? You'd have to introduce measures to curb the power of capital in a situation in which capital commands the key levers of power in the society. You'd have to convince those who really run things to do things that are not in their interests.
You might tell them, "Dear Messrs Capital: It is in your best and long-term interest to allow those who you rob and steal from everyday - which is the source of your profts - to regulate you and limit your ability to rob and steal from them. After all, look at the fine mess you are in and have put us into!"
Messrs Capital would say what exactly in response to this? "Dear Mr. and Ms. Citizen: Thank you for your letter. I have your best interests in mind. Yours truly, Capital."
In other words, Capital wouldn't listen. And for a very good reason. Because it's in its nature to do exactly what it has been doing! Asking Capital, or even demanding that Capital do something else, is like trying to get a crab to walk forward. It's like telling a butterfly to go back to being a caterpillar. Even if you could force butterflies back into being caterpillars - pushing monopoly capital back into free enterprise capital - they'd evolve back into butterflies again. Why? Because free enterprise capital becomes monopolistic because the modus operandi for capitalism is profit and it's more profitable to reap the rewards of economies of scale and to eat up your competition. Those who try to do otherwise will be extinguished by the nature of capital itself.
If Wal-Mart's CEO was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and realized the folly of his ways and announced to the Wal-Mart Shareholders and Directors that he was going to stop paying Wal-Mart workers poverty level wages, begin giving them health and pension benefits, and stop driving down the costs of suppliers to the nth degree, what exactly would the shareholders, the directors, and the rest of the stock market do to this CEO and to the share price of Wal-Mart?
We all know the answer to that question, whether we've never taken Econ 101 or we've gotten an advanced degree in Economics. Wal-Mart's stock price would dive and the enlightened CEO would be canned forthwith.
Even if all of the Captains of Capital were to become Buddhas overnight, in other words, financial capital would discipline them or replace them.
Dealing with the crisis and the insanity that we see all around us requires recognizing what is at fault. It isn't capitalism distorted that is at fault. It is capitalism par excellence that is at work here. The problem isn't back to the future. The problem is capital - that is, a system that feeds on and requires deception, profit and exploitation.
Posted by
Dennis Loo
at
10:27 AM
2
comments
FREE AL-ZEIDI RALLY SET FOR DEC. 29 IN WASHINGTON, DC
A rally calling on the Iraqi Government to free Montather Al-Ziedi, the man who threw his shoes at George W. Bush, will be held Monday, December 29 at noon in front of the Iraqi consulate to the United States, located at 1801 P Street NW in Washington, DC.
The rally is timed to immediately precede Mr. Al-Ziedi’s appearance in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq on Dec. 31, New Year’s Eve. Mr. Al-Ziedi was arrested December 14 after hurling his shoes at Mr. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad.
"Al-Zeidi did not attempt to physically hurt George Bush but to insult him and express the deep anger that so many Iraqis feel over the U.S. occupation. He should be immediately released and the Iraqi government should be held accountable for abusing him while in custody," said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK.
"The treatment Al-Zeidi has received should shame all Americans and is likely to motivate as much anti-American sentiment as have the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib," said David Swanson, cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org. "While our President and Vice President openly confess to authorizing torture, their puppet government in Iraq tortures a man for throwing shoes, in complete absence of even the pretense of 'interrogation,' much less a ticking time bomb. Freeing Al-Zeidi will not fix this situation. We must also put Bush and Cheney behind bars."
"There are credible reports that Montather Al-Ziedi has been tortured while in the custody of the government of Iraq," said Nick Mottern, Director of Consumers for Peace, one of the rally organizers, "and this alone provides the basis for setting him free."
"Mr. Al-Ziedi's act, in the context of the suffering caused by the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, can be seen as a legitimate form of self-expression," Mottern said, "but in any case his action is something that should be treated as nothing more than a misdemeanor in which his time already spent in jail would be more than sufficient."
The rally is being called by a coalition of peace and justice organizations including: CODEPINK: Women for Peace; Iraq Veterans Against the War; AfterDowningStreet.org; Consumers for Peace; Democrats.com, and others.
At the close of the rally, organizers will deliver a petition to Ambassador of Iraq to the United States Samir Sumaida’ie at the Iraqi embassy at 3421 Massachusetts Avenue NW.
Posted by
Dennis Loo
at
9:56 AM
1 comments
In today's NYT:
December 23, 2008
EDITORIAL
The World According to Cheney
Vice President Dick Cheney has a parting message for Americans: They should quit whining about all the things he and President Bush did to undermine the rule of law, erode the balance of powers between the White House and Congress, abuse prisoners and spy illegally on Americans. After all, he said, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln did worse than that.
So Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush managed to stop short of repeating two of the most outrageous abuses of power in American history — Roosevelt’s decision to force Japanese-Americans into camps and Lincoln’s declaration of martial law to silence his critics? That’s not exactly a lofty standard of behavior.
Then again, it must be exhausting to rewrite history as much as Mr. Cheney has done in a series of exit interviews where he has made those comments. It seems as if everything went just great in the Bush years.
The invasion of Iraq was exactly the right thing to do, not an unnecessary war that required misleading Americans. The postinvasion period was not bungled to the point where Americans got shot up by an insurgency that the Bush team failed to see building.
The horrors at Abu Ghraib were not the result of the Pentagon’s decision to authorize abusive and illegal interrogation techniques, which Mr. Cheney endorsed. And only three men were subjected to waterboarding. (Future truth commissions take note.)
In Mr. Cheney’s reality, the crippling budget deficit was caused mainly by fighting two wars and by essential programs like “enhancing the security of our shipping container business.”
Well, no. The Bush team’s program to scan cargo for nuclear materials at air, land and sea ports has been mired in delays, cost overruns and questions about effectiveness. As for the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office has said the Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy were the biggest reason that the budget went into the red.
Some of Mr. Cheney’s comments were self-serving spin (as when The Washington Times helpfully prodded him to reveal that even though the world might have seen Mr. Bush as insensitive to the casualties of war, Mr. Cheney himself made a “secret” mission to comfort the families of the dead.)
Mr. Cheney was simply dishonest about Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize spying on Americans’ international calls without a warrant. He claimed the White House kept the Democratic and Republican Congressional leadership fully briefed on the program starting in late 2001. He said he personally ran a meeting at which “they were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike” that the program was essential and did not require further Congressional involvement.
But in a July 17, 2003, letter to Mr. Cheney, Senator John Rockefeller IV, then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wanted to “reiterate” the concerns he expressed in “the meeting today.” He said “the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues” and created “concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology and surveillance.”
Mr. Cheney mocked Vice President-elect Joseph Biden for saying that he does not intend to have his own “shadow government” in the White House. Mr. Cheney said it was up to Mr. Biden to decide if he wants “to diminish the office of vice president.”
Based on Mr. Cheney’s record and his standards for measuring these things, we’re certain a little diminishing of that office would be good for the country.
* * *
If you go to the comments on the editorial you will find many letters stating that Bush and Cheney ought to be in prison and, as one writer put it, the New York Times has closed the barn door after the animals have already left.
Another person who is a former Legislative Director for a Congressperson points out in letter #342 that the Jay Rockefeller letter that the NYT puts so much stock in is a "cover your ass" letter that Congresspeople write all the time. The NYT, as this person notes, is not so naive as to truly think it is anything else.
What's in play here is the NYT's inability and unwillingness to step outside the safety of caviling at the margins and act in a way appropriate to the gravity of the situation.
It underscores the necessity for the American people to step beyond what our mass media and major parties will do.
This was my comment at their website on their editorial:
Unfortunately, Cheney isn't misrepresenting the essential facts with respect to the White House briefing the Democratic Congressional leadership on their felonious program of massive spying on the American people. While some of the Democratic leadership might have expressed some reservations such as Jay Rockefeller, the fact remains that none of them went public on this in a manner appropriate to the egregious and outrageous violations of the 1978 FISA law that prohibited surveillance without cause. Moreover, none of them did what WOULD have been meaningful if they really objected - moved to impeach. Letters such as Rockefeller's expressing misgivings and concerns mean exactly how much to someone like Bush and Cheney? It's like saying "No, no, no" to a spoiled and rotten kid demanding his way, while GIVING the damn kid what he wants.
Not only did Bush and Cheney involve and get the approval of the Democratic leadership for their ubiquitous spying, but also for the program of TORTURE, not "abuse" as you continue to describe it. Pelosi, among others, was briefed on their use of waterboarding at least as early as 2002.
What is more disturbing than what Bush and Cheney have done is that they have been allowed to get away with it by the Democrats and by the mass media. If they are not held to account and their precedents are allowed to stand, then anything that they have done and more can be and will eventually be done by future presidents. Even if Obama doesn't do it, in other words, some other president can and will. What happens, therefore, to the rule of law?
The New York Times to its credit exposed the warrantless spying, although it delayed revealing it for a full year, having known about it before the 2004 election, by acceding to the White House's entreaties to not reveal "national security secrets" to who? Why to the American people themselves who were being spied upon!
The Times, to its discredit, still refuses to call for impeachment and still refuses to call torture torture.
Posted by
Dennis Loo
at
1:37 PM
0
comments
More evidence of what finding common ground with people who want to delegitimize and stigmatize whole categories of people - which is what Obama's stance is - leads to:
From the Human Rights Campaign:
Letter to Pres-Elect Obama on Choice of Rev. Rick Warren to Deliver Invocation at 56th Presidential Inauguration
12/17/2008
WASHINGTON – Today the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, sent the following letter to President-elect Obama on the selection of anti-gay reverend, Rick Warren, to deliver the invocation at the 56th Presidential Inauguration set to take place on the West Front of the United States Capitol on January 20th.
The letter is as follows:
Dear President-elect Obama -
Let me get right to the point. Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.
Rick Warren has not sat on the sidelines in the fight for basic equality and fairness. In fact, Rev. Warren spoke out vocally in support of Prop 8 in California saying, “there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population ... This is not a political issue -- it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about." Furthermore, he continues to misrepresent marriage equality as silencing his religious views. This was a lie during the battle over Proposition 8, and it's a lie today.
Rev. Warren cannot name a single theological issue that he and vehemently, anti-gay theologian James Dobson disagree on. Rev. Warren is not a moderate pastor who is trying to bring all sides together. Instead, Rev. Warren has often played the role of general in the cultural war waged against LGBT Americans, many of whom also share a strong tradition of religion and faith.
We have been moved by your calls to religious leaders to own up to the homophobia and racism that has stood in the way of combating HIV and AIDS in this country. And that you have publicly called on religious leaders to open their hearts to their LGBT family members, neighbors and friends.
But in this case, we feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination. Only when Rev. Warren and others support basic legislative protections for LGBT Americans can we believe their claim that they are not four-square against our rights and dignity. In that light, we urge you to reconsider this announcement.
Sincerely,
Joe Solmonese
President
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.
Posted by
Dennis Loo
at
10:30 AM
0
comments
Update:
About the shoe throwing incident, the New York Times shamefully said:
"Mr. Zaidi had been severely beaten by security officers on Sunday after being tackled at the press conference and dragged out. While he has not been formally charged, Iraqi officials said he faced up to seven years in prison if convicted of committing an act of aggression against a visiting head of state. No doubt he must face the charges - and punished if found guilty."
Would that the New York Times could aspire to acting with even a modicum of the forcefulness of truth that Mr. Zaidi did! Would that they could uphold the rights of the people in such a fashion, even in a pale shadow of his bravery! Would that journalists who have been so culpable in demurring to tell the people the truth about the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions were punished for that guilt! Would that the New York Times would face their responsibility and call for the prosecution and punishment of the monstrous war criminals Bush and Cheney and their gang!
The Shoes We Longed For
The young journalist who took on Bush has become a unifying Iraqi symbol, a national hero
Sami Ramadani
The Guardian, Wednesday 17 December 2008
Within a few unlikely seconds, a pair of size 10 shoes have become the most destructive weapon the people of Iraq have managed to throw at the occupying powers, after nearly six years of occupation and formidable resistance. One Iraqi writer called the shoes, hurled by a journalist at George Bush, "Iraq's weapon of comprehensive destruction".
While the uprisings of Falluja, Najaf, Basra and Baghdad against the occupation will always remain as landmarks of a people resisting occupation, these incredible seconds have united Iraqis in the most dramatic fashion.
Contrary to most media coverage, the 28-year-old TV reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi made history not by merely throwing a pair of shoes, the highest expression of insult in Iraqi culture, at the US president, but by what he said while doing so and as he was smothered by US and Iraqi security men. He groaned as they dragged him out of the press conference. They succeeded in silencing him - and according to his brother he was beaten in custody - but he had already said enough to shake the occupation and Nouri al-Maliki's Green Zone regime to their foundations.
Strip the words away, and his and the Iraqi people's cry of deep pain, anger and defiance would amount to no more than a shoe-throwing insult. But the words were heard. "This is the farewell kiss, you dog," he shouted as he threw the first shoe. The crucial line followed the second shoe: "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq." Once those words were heard, the impact of a pair of shoes became electrifying. A young journalist has put aside the demands of his profession, preferring to act as the loudest cry of his long-suffering people. If one considers the torture and killings in Iraqi and US jails that Muntadhar often mentioned in his reports for al-Baghdadia satellite TV station, he was certainly aware he risked being badly hurt.
As the Iraqi and Arab satellite stations switched from the live press conference to reporting reaction to the event, the stunned presenters and reporters were swept away by popular expressions of joy in the streets, from Baghdad to Gaza to Casablanca. TV stations and media websites were inundated with messages of adulation. The instant reply to any criticism of "insulting a guest" was: "Bush is a mass murderer and a war criminal who sneaked into Baghdad. He killed a million Iraqis. He burned the country down."
Expressions of support and demands for Muntadhar's immediate release have spread from Najaf and Falluja to Baghdad, and from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south. An impressive show of anti-occupation unity is developing fast, after being weakened by the sectarian forces that the occupation itself has strengthened and nourished, as Muntadhar himself used to stress.
No one asked after Muntadhar's religion or sect, but they all loved his message. Indeed, I have yet to come across an Iraqi media outlet or website that pronounced on his religion, sect or ethnicity. The first I heard of his "sect" was through US and British media.
The reality is that Muntadhar is a secular socialist whose hero happens to be Che Guevara. He became a prominent leftwing student leader immediately after the occupation, while at Baghdad University's media college. He reported for al-Baghdadia on the poor and downtrodden victims of the US war. He was first on the scene in Sadr City and wherever people suffered violence or severe deprivation. He not only followed US Apache helicopters' trails of death and destruction, but he was also among the first to report every "sectarian" atrocity and the bombing of popular market places. He let the victims talk first.
It was effective journalism, reporting that the victims of violence themselves accused the US-led occupation of being behind all the carnage. He was a voice that could not be silenced, despite being kidnapped by a gang and arrested by US and regime forces.
His passion for the war's victims and his staunchly anti-occupation message endeared him to al-Baghdadia viewers. And after sending Bush out of Iraq in ignominy he has become a formidable national hero. The orphan who was brought up by his aunt, and whose name means the longed or awaited for, has become a powerful unifying symbol of defiance, and is being adopted by countless Iraqis as "our dearest son".
• Sami Ramadani, a political exile from Saddam's regime, is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University sami.ramadani@londonmet.ac.uk
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Posted by
Dennis Loo
at
10:26 AM
0
comments
Perhaps then this American Dog of a President would never have been allowed to seize the presidency in the first place, despite losing twice!
Throwing shoes at a tyrant beats licking their butts, which is what dogs are also wont to do.
Iraqi Journalist Hurls Shoes at Bush and Denounces Him on TV as a ‘Dog’ (December 15, 2008)
In Iraqi’s Shoe-Hurling Protest, Arabs Find a Hero. (It’s Not Bush.)
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and ABEER MOHAMMED
BAGHDAD — Calling someone the “son of a shoe” is one of the worst insults in Iraq. But the lowly shoe and the Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war.
In Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported that a man had offered $10 million to buy just one of what has almost certainly become the world’s most famous pair of black dress shoes.
See the rest of the story:
Times Topics: Muntader al-Zaidi
Posted by
Dennis Loo
at
8:59 AM
0
comments