the sawpit

A Global Protection Racket

Notes from Blighty – by Chris Cobb

The bully boys (aka the U.S. State Department) have just left town and while they were here many businesses were told that if they were trading with Cuba, they might want to reconsider. The bully boys didn't visit multinational corporations who all know better, they reached down to the level of the mom and pop stores. Now don't imagine these little people were visited by big guys with sharkskin suits and dark glasses ('Nice little store you got here, Mrs Brown. Shame to see something happen to it,' he said, tipping over a barrel of kippers), it doesn't work that way. They let the banks do the strong-arm stuff. Any British bank with ties to U.S. financial institutions (read all of them) were told if they wanted to keep their cozy relationship they had better lean on their customers who were defying the U.S. trade embargo. So a tobacconist who sold Cuban cigars or a commodities trader who was doing brisk business in organic Cuban sugar was informed by his bank that if he didn't want to see his loan threatened or his currency exchange mechanism turned off, he might want 'to make other arrangements'.

Needless to say, these small businesses, like the rest of the world, are hoping to celebrate an Obama election.

Tempest or Teapot?

Much has been said about the contentious primary battle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the past few months. I know we are all happy it's now history. As an early Edwards supporter, I was neutral when it came to the other candidates. But I was very disturbed when their supporters started demonizing each other. On the Obama side of the blog community, you had the sort of Clinton bashing you'd expect from dittoheads. And on the Hillary Clinton side, there was the sort of divisive politics Karl Rove has spent his life perfecting. In the end, I believe that Clinton's early support of the Iraq invasion,  and her campaign strategy of praising John McCain's qualifications for the presidency while belittling Obama's, turned many undecided Democrats against her. You see, as much as I don't care for the current GOP mindset of party unity at all cost, sometimes it's just the right thing to do. One's desire and desperation to become the party nominee should never trump the real goal of winning back the White House. And Hillary Clinton would have expected that same restraint from Barack Obama had he been trying to catch up to a Clinton lead.

Now I am not here to scold my fellow Democrats like an angry parent. But I think we can learn from this experience and grow from it. We should be focusing on the policy differences, not identity politics. To bash fellow Democrats during the primary season is self-defeating. The party must come first especially when so much is at stake. For months angry Clinton supporters railed against the "obvious" media bias for Barack Obama. They bristled at the idea that anyone could dislike Hillary Clinton for reasons other than simply being a woman. And, yes many of those sexist attacks were ugly. Blake Fleetwood at Huffington Post had no trouble convincing me that "sexism is alive and well in America." In fact, I've been bugged by it for years. And his May 18th post was rather evenhanded:

To be sure there have been many racist incidents in this heated campaign as seen by Kevin Merida article in the Washington Post earlier this week which drew 2100 comments and much media attention.

However, the embedded eight minute video not only show cases vulgar and tasteless invective aimed at  Hillary Clinton, it also condemns Barack Obama for not speaking out against the attacks. At the start of the video, a quote from veteran journalist Tom Watson is cited:

[U]nless Barack Obama speaks out, his campaign's chilling acceptance of the gender bias stirred by our national media will remind many of Ronald Reagan's race-baiting southern strategy--because if Obama accepts the presidency, at least in part, because of abject sexism, a brutal gender attack on a female rival -- the most famous female Democrat in history--he will set feminism in our country back a generation.

The assumption that Obama is obligated to attack every talking head, columnist and blogger who happens to stir sexism into their arguments seems a bit of a stretch. In fact, the vast majority of commentators did not resort to such cynical and backward attacks. Most Democrats are liberal, open-minded, and certainly not sexist. (I would love to see a list of sources for the worst offenders showcased on this documentary. My guess is that most represent the dregs of the right-wing Neanderthal movement.) And the very idea of his non-action setting feminism back a generation is laughable. Because if we really want to end the acceptance of sexism in the media, we must start a letter writing campaign against the offending pundits, authors and their publishers. We must all fight back together and demand a change in attitude.

Claiming that somehow Obama would owe his win to the sexist invective of small minded people like is mind-boggling. It just smacks of political desperation--especially when you consider that Clinton took full advantage of the conservative white males who would not vote for Obama because he's an African American. And as far as "The most famous female Democrat in history" is concerned, it's hard to call. So what is the current status of Eleanor Roosevelt as an inspiration for women in America? I will assume he meant the most famous elected female Democrat in history, because that is certainly true.

I know Tom Watson is a loyal Democrat and has called on his readers to support Barack Obama for president. But I just want to make sure we never go down this destructive road again. We can support our candidate and still keep our eyes on the prize at the same time. The consequences of failure are far too great--especially if you care about advancing women's rights.

Comedy Imitates Life

Last week on the season finale of Saturday Night Live, Senator John McCain appeared on the Weekend Update news segment encouraging Democrats to let the nomination process drag on as long as possible -- even past the Convention in August. Why not keep the party going until you have no choice but to pick them both? Of course this was supposed to be a parody of what John McCain really thinks. But I didn't find it funny because, well, it's kinda true. I don't care how you spin it -- dragging this primary out has been bad for the Democrats, and good for Senator McCain.

There is a war going on within the Democratic party. And it's not pretty. Some Democrats are taking this primary contest far too personally. If one peruses the pro-Obama and pro-Clinton blogs, the level of antagonism for the other side can be quite off-putting. These staunch supporters cannot be honestly critical about their own candidate. When the most outrageous comments are made by Obama or Clinton supporters, the other side attributes that attitude to the candidates themselves. 

But here is some common sense from radio host Thom Hartmann. I found this posted on Air America's Web site:

Obama - Ask Hillary First!

The issue at hand for the Democratic Party for winning in ‘08 is not losing to McCain but losing to a divided Democratic party. The first thing Obama should do if nominated is put Hillary on the ticket. Will the Republicans have a field day with her on the ticket? Yes! Is their some bad blood in the water due to some negative campaign strategies on the part of the Clintons? Probably. Can Hillary be a tough fighter able to play tough allowing Obama to stay higher above the fray? Yes!

Howard Dean said a few months ago that the loser will be the most important person in the Democratic presidential run this year. Hillary's legacy in this 08 election could place her as the healer and bring together a united Democratic party. As a winning ticket they also move this country closer to healing the racial and misogynist undertones that still have roots.

Can you picture Denver with Hillary's delegates close to half of all delegates demanding that she be included on the ticket? To some it's a crusade. If Hillary was the one out ahead - by just a little over half - wouldn't Obama supporters want the same?

Obama's offer and Hillary's acceptance of an Obama/Clinton ticket hold the healing and the power to move this country in the direction of the real change in Washington that Obama talks about. First he must bring the Democrats back together again.

Obama - ask Hillary first. And if she should say no, the offer would still have a unifying affect.

--Thom Hartmann

Not sure it's fair to blame Hillary Clinton for all the bad blood. But I don't think she's run the smartest campaign (as recently demonstrated by her mention of Bobby Kennedy's assassination in June, 1968 in order to defend staying in the race). Yes she had to be more aggressive to stay in there. That's just politics. But Clinton cannot deny the reality of where the delegate battle is going. Her position is becoming untenable.

But there is another problem. Many Hillary Clinton supporters feel that the sexist attacks in the media against her have been rampant. Some state they will not vote for Obama because of his silence on this issue. The idea of a unity ticket does not satisfy them. Just like many Obama supporters, having the other candidate on the ticket is unthinkable to them. I find it strange since both are moderate Democrats who don't really differ that much on the important issues. We all support the platform of the Democratic Party, don't we?

It's very simple. Obama and Clinton have both been victims of dirty campaigning from the GOP and by fellow Dems. So the bigger question is, when do we stop self-destructing our party and focus on the most important problems? That's not just rhetoric. This primary has not evolved into the war on sexism and racism 2008. The fight against ignorance and injustice goes on no matter who is President. We can't take our eyes off the prize because we don't like the way our media deals with certain issues. I think the sexism and racism permeating our media is a clever way of creating cynicism. People get so disgusted by the negativity, they end up not voting at all. We shouldn't sit back and let this happen again. So I agree with Hartmann's overall message: a unity ticket if possible. Victory at all costs.

Our New Mayor of London

Notes from Blighty – by Chris Cobb

Londoners have just gone to the polls to unseat their long-time mayor, Ken ('Red Ken') Livingstone, in favor of maverick Tory Boris Johnson. This outcome was considered so unlikely back in the autumn when Boris announced his candidacy that the bookies would give you 16-1 against. Boris, you see, was considered something of a buffoon, if not an outright liability, within the Conservative Party. That he was elected says something about rebellious Londoners who refuse to be dictated to by the pollsters and The Guardian; sort of like high schoolers electing the class clown as student council president in order to stick it to the school authorities.

Following are some of Boris's more infamous pronouncements:

On George W Bush
"The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy."

On using a mobile phone while driving
"I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on."

On commuting
"I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil."

On Euro-scepticism
"I can hardly condemn UKIP as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flecked Euro hysterics, when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flecked hysteria myself."

Tony Blair
"It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall."

On becoming Prime Minister:
"My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

On Channel 5
"I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap-dancing, and other related and vital subjects."

On being sacked by Michael Howard
"My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters."

On how to vote
"Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."

On why he voted for David Cameron as Tory leader
"I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest."

On drugs
"I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar."

On the City of Portsmouth
"Too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs."

On tennis
"I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around."

On the Labour Party (or Papua New Guinea)
"For 10 years, we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing, and so it is with happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour Party."

On the Liberal Democrats
"The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition."

A Frustrating Sideshow

I have not written any posts on the Democratic primary battle because I had hoped things would have settled down by now. How wrong I was. In fact, these past few months have been quite depressing. Last year I was very optimistic about the Democrat's chances at taking back the White House. Now I see that golden opportunity vanishing every day this war between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama drags on. For years the Democrats have been more united than I've ever seen them over issues like the failed war in Iraq, the outing of a covert CIA operative, the torture of detainees, the illegal wiretapping of Americans, and the political firings of the U.S. Attorneys. All those subjects have been excellent fodder for the liberal blogosphere and left leaning media in general. But for months now Clinton and Obama, along with their supporters, have been clashing as if they belong to different parties. It's been a frustrating sideshow of media hype and internal squabbles. Meanwhile, all the critical issues that voters really care about have been ignored while the fighting and bogus "reporting" continues. I just hope that the superdelegates will decide on a candidate before the convention so we can get on with the real fight against Senator John McCain. Voters must be reminded over and over that supporting McCain will only result in another four years of George W. Bush policies. And the only way we can convince the voters that McCain would be a disaster is to have all the Democrats united under one ticket. Let's hope that day comes real soon.

The Real Grave Threat to Peace

On October 7, 2002, President Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, in which he called Iraq a grave threat to peace, and that "knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst." Today, five years after the U.S invasion of Iraq, as U.S. and Iraqi body counts continue to climb, the conclusion of this bloody occupation is nowhere in sight. A few weeks ago, President Bush claimed the Iraq war was "noble, necessary and just" even though the initial rationales for war -- stock piles of chemical and biological weapons, an active nuclear weapons program, and direct links to al Qaeda -- have turned out to be false. Bush remains steadfast in defending his decision to invade Iraq despite all the horrible consequences. If the U.S. had kept the inspectors in Iraq instead of invading, it's hard to imagine Saddam Hussein killing between 82,591 -- 90,115 Iraqi civilians, or 4011 U.S. troops. It is unlikely that 1 in 5 Iraqis would have been forced to flee their homes for neighboring countries like Syria. And, of course, who can forget the billions of dollars already spent on this never-ending war. But none of that really matters to President Bush. He lives in his own version of reality -- one where future historians will revere him as another Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill.

And then there's John McCain. The Arizona Senator has made his support for the initial invasion and continued occupation, a cornerstone of his campaign for the Presidency. He has also hinted that Iran could be the next target of U.S. military action (see "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"). The question is, has John McCain learned anything from the tragic destruction of Iraqi civil society under the guise of "protecting" the United States from some perceived threat? Unfortunately, no. Senator McCain is banking on the same currency that has served the Bush administration so well in the past: fear. Playing the fear card means never having to tell the complete truth. McCain has been claiming repeatedly that al Qaeda is being trained by Iran and then unleashed to attack coalition forces in Iraq. Although McCain did correct himself, one must understand that his deceptions are intentional. He is employing the same propaganda tactics used by the Bush administration to connect al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein as partners in crime. We must keep John McCain out of the White House. After all, he has already told us that there will be more wars. We must insist on peaceful negotiations instead of war. We must keep the option of war as a very last resort. This is why it's so imperative that we support the Democratic nominee for President come November, whoever it may be.

The Working Poor Candidate Exits Stage Left

Now that John Edwards has exited the presidential race, will any other candidate address issues of poverty and working class alienation they way that he did? Will we hear the same message that Barbara Ehrenreich has championed for decades? I doubt it. In fact, I predict that after Clinton or Obama win the Democratic nomination for president, they will swiftly shuffle to the center-right. They will talk about a middle class that doesn't really exist. They will offer tax breaks for couples who earn $50,000 + a year. They will ignore the working poor families who earn too much for federal assistance, but not enough to afford health insurance. They will fall over themselves to offer capital-gains tax cuts. After all, they will be competing against John McCain -- the maverick conservative supply-side nightmare. I still think that Edwards was our best hope to take back the White House, regardless of the critics. I hope I am wrong.

I began my presidential campaign here to remind the country that we, as citizens and as a government, have a moral responsibility to each other, and what we do together matters. We must do better, if we want to live up to the great promise of this country that we all love so much.

When Silence Is Betrayal

For the past few weeks, tributes to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights legacy have been airing on commercial and public radio and television stations. You might have noticed that the later years of Dr. King's life and work are virtually ignored by those memorials. When you realize that Dr. King had changed his focus to fighting poverty and calling attention to the moral outrage of the Vietnam War, you can easily see why his activist history seems to end in 1965, and then jumps to his murder in 1968. Politicians and pundits who annually embrace Dr. King's inspiring message of racial harmony and equal opportunity for all, seem to be willfully ignorant of his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4th, 1967. After King delivered that speech, he was criticized by the NAACP, the New York Times and the Washington Post editorial pages. The Post wrote that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." Despite the attacks, King continued to condemn the moral and economic debacle of the Vietnam War. The country caught up to him soon enough, and the anti-war movement grew in the proceeding years. Perhaps the reason why so many in the media ignore Dr. King's final few years today is that his message is still very relevant to our current situation:

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

 

Watching the Watchers

Who is watching the watchers? That's the question which comes to mind when you realize that our government went underground in the 1950s. People began to suspect that something wasn't right after the Kennedy and King assassinations, and the Watergate break-in. Yet many Americans were in deep denial about what its government was doing in the shadows until the Iran-Contra scandal exploded in November of 1986. Although that investigation didn't go far enough, it did expose the secret foreign policy apparatus operating from the basement of the Reagan White House whose sole mission was to circumvent laws designed to restrict the clandestine operations of our intelligence agencies. In this case, they were violating the Boland Amendment which made it illegal to fund the Nicaraguan Contras -- the terrorists Reagan called the moral equivalent of our founding fathers. The weapons-for-hostages deal was exposed when a plane loaded with guns was shot down over Nicaragua. It quickly came to light that several Central Intelligence Agency operatives were directly involved in the operations, and that drugs sales were also being used to fund the Contras. Reagan went on television that November to explain why the White House had allowed weapons to be sold to Iran. If all this hadn't been bad enough, a cover-up had started once the operation had been exposed. I quote here from Wikipedia:

The scandal was compounded when Oliver North destroyed or hid pertinent documents between November 21 and November 25, 1986. During North's trial in 1989, his secretary Fawn Hall testified extensively about helping North alter, shred, and remove official United States National Security Council (NSC) documents from the White House.

Two decades later, we have the House Intelligence Committee issuing a subpoena for Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA official who oversaw the 2005 destruction of videotapes documenting the secret interrogation and possible torture of several terrorist suspects. Here we go again. The AP reported yesterday that:

House Intelligence Committee staff members want to know who authorized the tapes' destruction; who in the CIA, Justice Department and White House knew about it and when, and why Congress was not fully informed. The committee, which had threatened to subpoena the records if they did not get access this week, also wants to know exactly what was shown on the tapes, which document the harsh interrogation of two al-Qaida suspects in 2002.

A lawyer for Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay, David Remes, claims the CIA may have violated a court order which prohibits government agencies from destroying any evidence potentially relevant to an active case. U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy heard arguments today from Justice Department lawyers that the courts should let the Justice Department and the CIA conduct the investigations to determine whether or not the destruction of the tapes violated a court order to preserve all interrogation evidence. From the AP today:

"The Justice Department may have sanctioned the destruction of these videotapes," attorney David Remes said. "Now they are asking the court to stay out, on the ground it is investigating the destruction of these videotapes."

So, now we are back to the question: who is watching the watchers? I daresay that we are at a pivotal moment in our history. We can continue to allow the secret government to operate with almost no accountability, or Congress and the courts can grow spines and force our intelligence community to respect the rule of law, or face a grim future of criminal investigations and rigorous prosecutions. We must not allow these criminals to hide behind a smoke screen of "national security" in order to avoid accountability. Our republic is too fragile to withstand such self-serving excuses and lies.

The Devil You Know

A few years ago I wrote a post about "honor crime" victim Mukhtaran Bibi in response to Tom Watson's plea for bloggers to raise public awareness about Pakistan's misogynist sense of justice. Not long after, President Pervez Musharraf visited the United States and, for the most part, received uncritical treatment  from the media. President Musharraf presented himself then as a progressive moderate who wants to bring enlightened democratic principles to his Islamic Republic. I don't think anyone asked him about how he came to power in the first place. How can one believe him when overthrew a democratically elected leader in a military coup? Yes, he has made many speeches declaring his intentions to strengthen democratic institutions, and his own government Web page states that:

President General Pervez Musharraf envisions Pakistan to be a progressive, modern and moderate Islamic state, poised to take its place amongst the developed nations of the world. He envisages the country's development not exclusively in the economic sense, but rather in a more holistic manner to include social, cultural and political dimensions. He envisions Pakistan to grow in terms of national unity and social cohesion; democracy and political stability; social justice, quality of life, national morale and pride.

Now this sorta feels like reading the old Soviet constitution since he imposed martial law earlier this month, suspended the Pakistani constitution, arrested his political enemies, replaced supreme court members with loyal judges, and blocked access to external sources of news. Of course, Musharraf is not the first leader whose rhetoric does not match his record, especially on fighting extremists. But, you see, the war on terror demands that today's rule of law and democracy be suspended in order to preserve the rule of law and democracy in the future (I'll bet you anything that Cheney is sitting back toasting Pervez with a glass of 30 year old Scotch every night after dinner).

Musharraf is full of contradictions. During his rule the Pakistani press has opened up and more voices are being heard. At the same time he has cracked down on the press when it suits his interests. Now it seems that some of the outside pressures have pushed Musharraf to release 3,400 detained since martial law was imposed. Let's hope that he steps down before the scheduled elections and restores the constitutional government in Pakistan. The moderates are the only ones who can save Pakistan, and they have lost all faith in Musharraf.