Troubled times for Scottie

The DC press corp is making Scottie earn his paycheck.

Q You speak for the President. Your credibility and his credibility is not on criminal trial. But it may very well be on trial with the American public, don't you agree?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm very confident in the relationship that we have in this room, and the trust that has been established between us. This relationship --

Q See those cameras? It's not about us. It's about what the American people --

MR. McCLELLAN: This relationship is built on trust, and you know very well that I have worked hard to earn the trust of the people in this room, and I think I've earned it --

Q Is the President -- let me just follow up on one more thing.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and I think I've earned it with the American people.

HAHAHAHAHA

The war of the liberals

Must read article (actually a review of two books) from The Nation. An excerpt:

More instructive than the speechlessness of the Democratic Party, unable to react coherently to the bloody impasse in Iraq, is the debate among progressive writers about the justice of the invasion. To penetrate the thinking of the prowar liberals, whose zeal for toppling a malignant dictatorship split the left and therefore eased the slog to disaster, we need to cast our eyes back to the 1990s. Written by thoughtful observers of the current crisis, two new highly personal books help us understand the gestation of liberal hawks in the dozen years between the fall of the wall and the fall of the towers. Images of Rwanda and Kosovo were not especially poignant for the principal Bush Administration insiders who made the decision to invade Iraq. At the outset, for them, humanitarianism was not even a pretext for war. But the appalling failures and modest successes of humanitarian intervention during the 1990s did shape the thinking of certain sparkling liberal intellects. Their heady support for war played little or no role in the decision to invade Iraq. But it did diminish and isolate voices of dissent, helping insure that Bush's ill-fated war was set afoot with little national debate, even in the high-circulation liberal press.

Justice Sc-alito?

Check out this fact sheet from People for the American Way on Bush's latest and greatest pick here (you need Adobe Acrobat). If you have the time, also read Thinkprogress' oppo research against this right-wing idealogue here. Some MSM analysis by the NY Times.

Oh, and how "hard core" right-wing is he really? This right-wing.

Oy.

Human Trafficking and Sweatshops

USA Today has an article on the elusive nature of human trafficking in the US. A small part of the problem:

Trafficking is a stubborn problem and a staggering one worldwide, affecting an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 victims a year. Federal officials say 14,500 to 17,500 of them are trafficked to the United States, where the myriad forms of modern-day slavery present an elusive target for those trying to eradicate it.

Victims have come from at least 50 countries in almost every part of the world, and are trafficked to virtually every state — to clandestine factories, restaurants, massage parlors, even private homes where women and girls are kept in servitude.

"Human trafficking is so hidden you don't know who you're fighting — the victims are so scared, they're not going to tell you what's happening to them," said Given Kachepa, a former victim of a scam which exploited Zambian orphans touring the United States in a boys' choir.

Aligned against the traffickers is an array of federal, state and local government agencies, teamed up with an odd coalition of private groups that include Christian conservatives and left-of-center immigrant-rights advocates. The result is perhaps the most far-reaching anti-trafficking campaign of any nation, yet some victim-support groups question its effectiveness.

They contend that federal criteria offering assistance to victims only if they help prosecute their traffickers deters some people from seeking help. Others say the government has placed too much emphasis on sex trafficking and too little on workplace abuses at sweatshops and farms.

Some of these issues are illustrated in the excellent Lifetime mini-series Human Trafficking that was on last week and the week before that. The series dealt specifically with sex trafficking, although as the article makes clear the problem is much broader than that. In particulat, advocates urge policy-makers not to view the trafficking phenomenon in a vacuum, but rather as part of broader socio-economic conditions, such as the contunued existance of sweatshops.

Among the groups campaigning against slave labor is the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers. One of its leaders, Laura Germino, said the government could undermine trafficking by cracking down on all types of abusive workplace practices.

"You can't view trafficking in a vacuum," Germino said. "If you bring an end to sweatshops, you would curb trafficking."

Yeah, and Capone was not a gangster

A followup to my previous posts on Plamegate and the Libby indictment. John From AMERICAblog makes a great point about those GOP loyalists who claim that because he was wasn't charged with an underlying crime, Libby is somehow "innocent". Read his post, it's short but a vivid example of just how wrong this uncritical thinking is.

Progressive Victory: Bush reverses decision to suspend prevailing wage laws

A rare bit of positive news on this otherwise pessimistic blog.

Michael Albert on "Market Madness" and ParEcon

From ZNet:

1) In Poland a growing number of economists are in favour of free market ideology. They called themselves 'anarchists' or 'libertarian' economists. Would you call them the same? What does the term 'anarchy' in economy mean, in your opinion?

Free market ideology is about providing justification for aggrandizing the rich and powerful, nothing more. It isn't even about free markets, because whenever statist intervention benefits the rich, free marketeers turn out to favor statist intervention. See whether they are against defense spending, or against police intervention in strikes on the side of owners, for that matter. See if they turn down state subsidies to investment, and state purchases of output, and state protection against international competitors, etc. But even ignoring the hypocrisy, markets are in no sense liberatarian or anarchist. They create a war of each against all, not solidarity, They virtually compel atomistic selfishness, not community. They misprice all items which have external and public affects (whether positive or negative). They compel pursuit of profit or, in the market socialist varient, pursuit of surpluses, both at the expanse of social good. They remunerate producers for ownership and power, and to a modest degree for output, but not for effort and sacrifice, which is the only morally warranted or economically wise remunerative norm. And markets exacerbate and even impose class divisions. Markets are, in short, not even good at what they claim -- determining relative valuations and permitting judgements about allocation which they entirely bias and pervert -- and are horrible at what their advocates don't bother talking about.

It seems to me that economic anarchism means seeking to reduce illegitimate hierarchy to a minimum, or zero. Markets do the opposite, imposing on economies class hierarchies, income hierarchies, influence hierchies, etc. I should think anarchism is also intent on economic activity seeking fullfillment of human potentials and needs, whereas markets subordinate that to pursuit of market share and profits or suplus. There is much more to be said, of course, but honestly, this kind of posturing about markets being a boon to humanity is worse than the proverbial king with no clothes -- or then the stalinist commisar claiming to be for democracy and participation.

2) Austrian economists (for example Mises) used to say that it is unnecessary to look at statistical data and measure social and economic phenomenon. They say that only important are 'economic laws'. Statistical data doesn't matter. What do you think about these views? Do you think that 'economic laws', which are always the same, exist?

I don't know what Mises said about this matter. If it was what you claim, and he meant what you imply, then he was an absolute moron -- so I doubt he said that, or at least, I doubt he believed it. Imagine a physicist or biologist saying we don't have to look at what actually happens in the real cases, we only have to look at what some fellow wrote on a sheet of paper under the label laws. It is utterly absurd. Humans hypothesize that laws exist and then test, and keep testing, to see if their views have merit. There is a sense however in which ignoring evidence captures the actual mechanics of this discipline, economics, which is certainly not very scientific. The picture exagerates the ills of the discipline a bit...but the discipline does do a very effective job of ignoring or downplaying whatever its paymasters don't want to hear about, and of elevating and if need be even manufacturing what they are interested in hearing -- which is mostly glorious stories of inevitable generalized benefits when a little line called supply on a graph crosses another little line, called demand, which benefits and bliss, of course, never come to pass admist the unemployment, the maldistribution, the hunger, the indignity, and so on.

As to economic laws existing, it depends what you mean. If you mean do I think that certain types of economy, or of economic institutions, have intrinsic features which we can discern and understand so as to be able to make statements about them which are virtually always the case for them -- yes, I do think that is possible. So, for example, I made a number of such statements about markets, above, and one could do likewise for corporate divisions of labor, for private ownership of productive assetts, and so on.

3) Austrian economists used to call themselves 'friends of freedom' . Do you think that in hypothetical economic system based on their conceptions (pure free market, without other socio-economic institutions) freedom would exist?

Freedom to pursue private gain as an owner or a wage slave, yes? Freedom from want, from disease, from degradation, from violence, no. Freedom to fulfill one's human capacities, to enjoy solidiarity with with others, to have a say in ones' circumstances and actions, no. I think in history arguably the closest approximation to unimpeded and uncorrected market allocation for economic life was in Dickens' England. Reading his accounts is quite sobering. But, honestly, this claim is so utterly absurd as to defy response. First, an economy is not an allocation system alone. What is the institutional structure of work and production, of neighborhoods, etc. Second, unfettered un restricted markets would lead to not only the unlimited impoverishment of huge swatchs of humanity, not only the unlimited pollution of the environment, not only the virtually unlimited accumulation of centralized power in corporate giants, and so on, but to the devolution of human personality as well. In the U.S. there is a phrase, nice guys finish last. It captures that markets compel you to care naught for others and even to ignore their pains in order to advance yourself, and if you do care for others, then you don't advance. Thus the claim that nice guys finish last. Or, perhaps more provocatively, we might note that in market economies garbage rises meaing not only that pollution abounds, but that people who have become antisocial and cruel, even, tend to do very well.

The real issue isn't should we have markets and not have a political system which amelioriates the ills markets generate, cleaning up the environmental and human messes and protecting people from the most violent and damning outcomes. Only an insance lunatic, or a shameless advocate for the rich and powerful, would sincerely advocate that. The real question is, why should we have a mode of allocation which requires that we constantly intervene to prevent its devolving into utter and complete catastrophe, even as it constantly violates values we hold dear such as equity, diversity, solidarity, democracy, participation, ecological sustainabilty, etc.? Why not, instead, replace markets with a system that actually propels values that we desire, rather than trampling them? I am a market abolitionist. I know markets are going to be with us for some time to come, but I also know -- or hope -- that in time we will replace them entirely.

4) Austrian economists called themselves 'friends of freedom' but in the same time they are in favour of hierarchical structures. Do you think that this is logical?

It depends what you mean by logical? Was it logical that commissars and/or academics in the Soviet style systems called themselves friends of workers and friends of freedom? Not if by logical we mean honest, no. But if by logical we mean consistent with their interests when put forth as a manipulative lie, then sure it is logical. Just like it is logical for Hitler to talk about freeing Europe, or for Stalin to talk about bringing freedom to Poland, or for Bush to talk about bringing freedom to Iraq, or, on a more relevant scale, for the owners of a corporation to talk about their overwhelming concern for humanity as they dump pollution on their neighbors, create manipulative ads to generate socially useless consumption, and drive down wages as best they are able, or in an exact analogy, just as it is logical for cowardly scholars who work at the behest of the rich and powerful in any society to say things that the rich and powerful will keep paying for, and to not say what the rich and powerful will be horrified by.

5) In their methodology austrian economists prefer to talk about individuals without wider economic and social context (they used to talk about Robinson Cruzoe's economy). Another premise is that if somebody is doing something it always means that conditions of living for that person are changing for better (motivation and reasons why this person is doing something doesn't matter). The most important presumption for austrian economists is that 'human act' and economists should just only say how to achive goals with minimal effort and cost which is nothing different than .....praxeology. There are a lot more that kind of conceptions.....What do you think about this? Could these conceptions be applied in real economic processes? Aren't they just trivial?

Again there is too much to say for a brief interview, but let me try one thing. Imagine you are having a discussion with an advocate of slavery in the pre civil war south in the U.S. -- or an argument with a Stalinist in Poland years back, for that matter. The person says the only issue is how to accomplish X with the least expenditure of Y. X is a goal we have. Y are things we value. The problems are legion. Who gets to decide what X we seek? Who gets to decide the relative values of all Y? Value to who? In what context is X sensible to seek and might it not be better, instead of seeking X, to seek a different context in which better outcomes are possible. Same for valuing Y, or not -- perhaps we should prefer an entirely different context in which things values are very different. Profits make sense to seek in some systems, but don't even exist in others. One system may not value the health and comfort of workers at all, another may highly value these. The difference is due to different institutions having different implications for valuations and pursuits. The slave owner is saying all we have to do is ask how do we get as much cotton as possible with as few costs -- to me -- as possible. Why so much cotton? More important, how come the dignity and freedom of the people picking the cotton isn't seen to be a value being squandered? It isn't accounted. The Stalinist, similarly, is seeking gigantic arms production, or luxuries for elites, in his plan, and again doesn't value the well being of the producers, save in a very limited sense dictated by defining social relations.

The point is, the economics discipline takes as given precisely what the serious analyst should be examining and assessing -- the social and economic relations within which projects are pursued and valuations are determined -- and does this for the very understandable reason that his or paymasters as well as his or her own involvements and position, remove from visibility the discomforting truthes of the injustice and hypocrisy of existing relations.

6) A few worlds about political demands. Austrian economists think that the only reason why there is exploitation is existence of states which means necessity of paying taxes. They say that if taxes should at all exist it should be the same amount of money for everyone. Education, army, police, hospitals etc. should of course be in private hands. What consequences of such demands could be?

Market capitalism without regulation? Without state protection of rights and conditions? First, we should note, these intrusions against market operations -- and they are that, it is true -- are won by the poor and weak against the rich and powerful. Remove them and the former suffer even more, almost without limit. While the latter gain even more, if one can imagine that. Just imagine corporations spewing pollution and chemical violence without limit, clearing fields without limit, exploiting the workforce without limit. Imagine pharmaceutical companies with no constraints, no oversight of their processes, advertising, marketting. These marketeer intellects are either utter fools -- which seems unlikely -- or contemptable parrots seeking to say what wealth and power will reward them for. People in Poland should have no trouble remembering that "great intellects" did that for Stalinists, too.

7) You and Robin Hahnel have created economic system which is called 'parecon'. Why do you think that parecon is better possibility to fulfill human needs than austrian economics?

Participatory economics is built around new defining institutions which propel different values than market systems, than private ownership, than corporate divisions of labor, etc. It is impossible to describe a whole different economy, and argue its merits even in a full interview much less in one question. But what parecon achieves is to facilitate each producer and consumer having a say in economic outcomes proportionate to the degree those outcomes affect him or her (self mangement), via social structures which promote mutual solidarity and shared interests, which advance diverse patterns of behavior and outcome, and which attain distributional equity both of circumstances and of income. Parecon is an economy that has no owners monopolizing property and without what I call a coordinator class (what was the ruling class in the old Soviet Union and Poland) monopolizing empowering conditions of work. It is built on new institutional choices including councils, balanced job complexes, self managed decision making, remuneration for duration and intensity and hardship of work, and what is called participatory planning. Those interested in the possibility of a solidarity economy, an equity economy, a diversity economy, a self managed economy, a participatory economy, might wish to take a look at www.parecon.org. There they will find full presentations so they can come to a judgement about this system themselves. But, however they might feel about parecon, there is simply no reason whatsoever to pay the slightest intellectual credence to agents of power and wealth prattling about free markets and their benefits. This is all propaganda and rationalization -- nothing more. It deserves our attention only due to the power it wields, not any veracity, which it totally lacks.

Avian Flu: Patents, Power and People

It seems the threat of Avian Flu to Europe and the US is enough to compel Roche to give up its patent so that it can be produced generically by US drug manufacturers. That's great, but where were similiar concerns when the virus was killing people in southeast Asia? Without the power that US Senators have, these Asian leaders' pleas for help fell on deaf ears. The compulsory licensing granted to the US was denied to the developing world at the same time the US and EU nations lobby to support Big Pharma's intellectual property rights for AIDS medicines, keeping it too expensive for these poorer countries.

Read the whole story here.

What happens when you politicize national intelligence

Must read article from AP this morning, discussing how the Libby indictment spells out in blac-and-white just how far relations have deteriorated between rank-and-file CIA agents and this White House. From the article:

It's unclear if Friday's indictment of Libby will help conclude a rocky chapter of White House-CIA relations or further enflame the situation. However, many senior CIA officials who were directly involved with the White House left the agency after George Tenet stepped down as director in July 2004.

[...]

[F]ormer CIA official Lee Strickland, who was responsible for all disclosure activities at the CIA as chief of its information review group, said he can't recall a time in his 30 years at the agency when there was so much tension with the White House.

He said the situation highlights problems with the politicization of intelligence. "You want to keep the politics separate from the intelligence," he said.

Scary stuff. No wonder morale is so low at the CIA. they were assaulted by high-level WH officials not for making mistakes but because it was politically expedient to do so.

Lewis Libby Indicted...GOP "party of values" fails to voice righteous indignation

Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted today by special prosecutor Fitzgerald. So the George Bush administration, which promised to restore honor and integrity to the office after the political witchhunt that ended with Clinton's impeachment, watches in humiliation as the Vice President's Chief of Staff is forced to resign.

I think the most interesting way to examine the hypocrisy exposed by this latest turn of events is to read what some of the right wing's finest are saying about the day's events.

Little Green Footballs: it's pathetic that after a two-year, multimillion dollar investigation the biggest charge is perjury (but that's what th GOP got Clinton impeached over!)

National Review: Since we can't blame Fitgerald, let's attack Joe Wilson and his family some more. Yeah, this is all his fault somehow...

Rush Limbaugh: Nothing on his website yet. Maybe he's ignoring the story, but more likely he is blaming either the "liberal media" or Joe Wilson for the first indicted White House official in 130 years.

Captain's Quarters: Libby did something stupid, but liberals are the loser in all this because this is all Fitzgerald has on the Bush administration and they wanted Rove' s head. So na-na-na!

GOP mouthpiece Ken Mehlman:

"Scooter Libby is a good and capable man who has given many years of his life to serve our nation. Mr. Libby is entitled to his day in court to answer the charges against him, receive a full airing of all the facts and is innocent until proven otherwise.

While some Democrats have acted irresponsibly in regards to this matter from the beginning, the President and Republicans in Congress have and will continue to focus on the American people's priorities: strengthening the economy, winning the War on Terror, lowering energy costs and improving our schools.

Yes, it's all the unnamed irresponsible Democrats fault!

Where's all the righteous indignation you conservative pundits and spokesmen are so famous for? When Clinton tried to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky, you said he brought shame to the Oval Office, disgraced America. But Libby lies to a grand jury in an investigation on the outing of a covert CIA agent fighting in the War on Terror, and he just made a silly mistake...and remember, he's innocent until proven guilty. And this doesn't say anything about Cheney, Libby is just a bad apple.

But the funniest comment I heard today was from Bill O'Reilly, who said on his piece-of-shit TV show just an hour ago that by Monday this scandal will have blown over and that liberals will hurt the DNC if they try to prolong it. And he repeated said he just can't understand why Libby would lie...In other words, it's not really a big mystery and not that big of a deal.

The hypocrisy is disgusting.

PS: Matt Singer makes a good point:

The right-wing blogs are making a big deal that what Libby is in trouble for isn't the outing of a CIA agent. They're even stretching the claim to say that the charges are unrelated to the original scope. That's not a tough straw man to knock down. Fitzgerald was supposed to look into whether classified information was inappropriately shared. When Scooter Libby was asked how he came to receive certain information and how he shared it, he lied repeatedly. That's not a tough conclusion to reach based on the indictment.

Good Night and Good Luck

I saw the new Edward R. Murrow biopic Good Night and Good Luck with George Clooney the other night and I was very impressed. The story is quite very relevant today, with our mainstream media afraid to take on politicial bullies who question dissenter's patriotism (liberals are soft on terrorism, etc). You would think American citizens would have learned the lessons from previous generations and demand more from our journalists, but well, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, etc. There are some notable exceptions, but in my opinion the Wolf Blitzers and Brian Williamses are way too soft on the political demagogery the Bush administration has perfected into an art form. If you don't support Bush's reckless foreign policy, you don't honor the troops and have forgotten about the horrors of 9/11 in these guys' minds (NB: I haven't forgotten 9/11, considering I was a few miles away from ground zero that morning). If you don't support Bush, don't forget, you are "against us". Even with his approval rating now below 40%, Bush is unwilling, or incabable of conceding that his foreign policies and prosecution of the war on terror are monumental failures as he instead condemns critics who in his twisted mind are lowering our morale. This is much the same thinking as the Vietnam War hawks who insist that we lost that war because the media destroyed morale--not that it was an unwinnable war based on propaganda in the first place.

We need an Edward R. Murrow, and a television network with the integrity to give him the air time to take down the Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds and Roves of the world whose sinister bullying are every inch as malevolent as the late Joe McCarthy.

A review of "The World is Flat"

Take that Tom Friedman. Jeff Faux does a yeoman's job dissecting the piece of trash that is Friedman's latest paeon to the wonders of globalization.

Sharon calls for Iran to be expelled from UN

Report from the AP.
It's interesting to note that foreign ministers across Europe seem so shocked with the Iranian President's rhetoric. Was anyone actually taken by surprise to hear the head of state of Iran call for Israel to be "wiped off the map"? He was merely giving voice to Iranian hardliner policy towards Israel for decades. To repeat--this is NOT a surprise at all. So what should be done? Of course Iran should be heavily sanctioned by the UN for such violent rhetoric, especially in light of the fragile peace in Israel (if one can call it that with yesterday's suicide bombing). But what is the long-term solution? Should Israel blow up Iran's nuclear facilities as it did to Iraq in 1981? Should it use Iran's rhetoric as an excuse to withdraw from the "peace process" (such as it is). Should Washington turn up the heat on the EU to sanction Iran, seeing as how Israel has no clout at the world body? Should Iran be booted from the UN? I don't have a good answer.
UPDATE: A reiteration of Iran's position here.

Nightmare in Hadera

Absolutely horrible. Meanwhile, Iran's "President" calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map":

Iran announced earlier this year that it had fully developed solid fuel technology for missiles, a major breakthrough that increases their accuracy. The Shahab-3, with a range of 810 miles to more than 1,200 miles, is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East.

IPSOS Poll: Americans Support Bush Impeachment if He Lied About Iraq

According to a new non-partisan poll, 50% of Americans support impeaching Bush if it were found to be the case that he lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq. In other words, if he was false intelligence by the CIA and UK intelligence services, that should not qualify for impeachment. However, if he did cherrypick intelligence given to him in order to bolster support for a war he had already decided on--that would qualify for impeachment.

I really don't know what to say about this. I guess it's a good sign that half the country thinks a conspiracy to invade another country under false pretences is worse than getting blowjobs in the Oval Office (for the record, I supported the Clinton impeachment at the time because of his perjury charges, but now think I was wrong). On the other hand, what is the other half of the country smoking? They still unquestioningly support Bush, even if he lied about starting a war that has cost billions of dollars, thousands of lives and has no end in sight? That's scary.
Also, I think a very strong case has already been made that Bush did know Iraq didn't have WMD and just used that canard as a means-to-an-end. His shifting rationalizations towards the actual invasion--claiming the war was being fought on humanitarian grounds, that the US's mandate was to promote democracy in the Middle East, etc., bears that out as well. Even the mainstream media has reported on this evidence of a conspiracy at the highest levels of our government to lie about the need to go to war with Iraq. Doesn't all of this evidence at least warrant a serious bipartisan investigation? Of course, but don't hold your breath.

Note: The best article I ever read on Bush's fixation on going to war with IRaw despite inspections, evidence, etc. was in the Vanity Fair article "The Path to War", which I can't find online.

Grim milestone

From AP, confirmation of the inevitable occurs.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military death toll in the Iraq war reached 2,000 with the announcements Tuesday of three more deaths.

And kudos to the NY Times, the LA Times and other newspapers/TV news anchors who ignored Pentagon "warnings" not to make hay of this sad situation. Looks like the Bush admin lost this PR battle.

White House will fight "torture ban"

From today's NY Times comes word that the White House is threatening to veto an amendment that would ban the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of any detainee held by the United States government--specifically the CIA. The Senate defied the threatened veto and passed the amendment.

I think the real irony here is who sponsored the amendment: former POW John McCain who knows first-hand what it's like to be on the receiving end of interrogation, long-term imprisonment and torture. Another supporter of the bill, Colin Powell. Despite what you or I might think about Powell and his role in the lead-up to the Iraq war, his support for the amendment is still significant given his experience as a Former Four-Star General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Who supports letting CIA spooks violate the Geneva Convention , which if I'm not mistaken the USA is a signatory of? Bush, Cheney and their right-wing CIA director waterboy Porter Goss.

The logic of allowing the CIA to employ torture when interrogating suspected al Qaeda prisoners? To allow the President "maximum flexibility in prosecuting the war on terror". But the article points out that a few obvious issues have not been addressed yet (beyond the obvious violation of international law this would present).
Will the President himself decide on a case-by-case basis when torture should be sanctioned? And how can the US expect its military personnel to refrain from engaging in torture and abuse when they often work hand-in-hand with intelligence officers who would be allowed -- or day I say encouraged?

I just want to take this opportunity to wish Karen Hughes good luck in her PR efforts in the Middle East.

Bigger than Jayson Blair

The NYTimes' reputation has received an almost non-stop beatdown in the last few years. First, we had the Jayson Blair scandal (remember the guy whose editor let him make shit up because he was African-American). Now, after having served as an uncritical mouthpiece of neoconservative warmongers obsessed with invading Iraq at any cost, Judith Miller is facing increasing pressure from her own colleagues to resign.

By the way, they really need to rethink this whole TimesSelect garbage, especially in light of the fact that you can read most of Frank Rich and Paul Krugman's articles online for free at other sites. And the rest of their editorials suck.

LATAM: the price for market access

From IRC:

Three international meetings in late 2005—the Summit of Americas in Mar del Plata (November), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Busan, South Korea (November), and the World Trade Organization ministerial in Hong Kong (December)—will highlight the uncertain future of free trade agreements. As a way to increase the benefits of international trade, developing countries are seeking greater access to the markets of the industrial world. But too often there is a high price to be paid for increased access to these large markets.
1. Poor Compensation

Access to the U.S. market is poor compensation for the concessions that Latin American governments are required to make in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the United States because the United States picks and chooses what access to give, while demanding near total liberalization for entry of its own products.

2. Short-Lived

The export advantages of FTAs are likely to be short-lived . As the United States negotiates FTAs and trade liberalization rules with nations all over the world, the privileged access of its previous partners becomes less of a competitive edge. Neither the North American Free Trade Agreement nor the Central American Free Trade Agreement will protect Mexico and Central America from lower-priced exports from China and other countries into the U.S. market.

3. Decimating, Not Developing, Agriculture

Agriculture offers the best example of the fallacy of the argument that market access can achieve major development goals . Since market access goes both ways, access to the U.S. market for Mexican fruits and vegetables under NAFTA led to high growth in the horticulture sector but came at the expense of losing national markets for other products. While Mexico experienced over 50% growth in the value of its exports of major fruits and vegetables to the United States , the earnings have been more than offset by the cost of its burgeoning imports in grains, especially corn, which tripled under NAFTA.

4. Displacement Not Calculated or Compensated

The displacement caused by massive imports can be difficult to calculate and compensate . Mexican planners anticipated a need for maize farmers to convert because of NAFTA but overestimated the growth of livelihood alternatives in other sectors and underestimated cultural resistance to abandoning rural communities. The result was emigration to the United States , rural poverty, increased illegal drug production in some regions, and intensification of farm labor, especially for women. Given the U.S. surplus production in key agricultural products and the impact of imports on small and medium industries that produce for the domestic market, the social, economic, and political costs of domestic markets lost to cheap, often subsidized imports are very high.

5. Subsidies Increase Food Dependency

Providing access for U.S. agricultural products, rather than “leveling the playing field” as U.S. trade negotiators claim, causes severe distortions in the value of these goods since many U.S. exports are so heavily subsidized. The 2002 Farm Bill authorizes an 80% increase in subsidies over the next ten years. The United States has refused to discuss its agricultural subsidies in every one of the bilateral FTAs negotiated to date. Due to these subsidies, particularly grains are being sold on the international market with dumping margins of 25% or more. This puts domestic production in developing countries, where these grains constitute the staples of the local diet, at an unfair disadvantage. The resulting dependence on imports also poses a serious threat to food security and sovereignty.

6. Free Trade, Plus Protectionism

Free trade agreements with the United States do not even necessarily ensure fair market access. In key horticultural crops and others, Mexico has met with protectionist measures from the United States in the form of dubious phyto-sanitary barriers, antidumping complaints, and other pretexts. The U.S. government also has no qualms about protecting sectors it considers politically strategic. The United States routinely maintains protections in the form of quotas and non-tariff barriers that it rarely allows for its trade partners.

7. Gains Offset by Losses

Market access cuts both ways and never constitutes an unmitigated gain for a developing country . Large industrialists typically come to the table with considerable influence and a convincing case—we make this, we need a market, the United States offers the largest in the world, ergo we need an FTA with full market access. Gain in access to the U.S. market can be offset by the loss of domestic markets in key sectors.

Mayor Mute

Great article from the Village Voice that really made me stop and think. The premise is pretty straightfoward: most NYC residents have for some reason decided to give Bloomberg a free pass on his unquestioning loyalty to the Bush/Cheney/Rove regime, as well as his continued support support for the never-ending boondoggle in Iraq (which has cost NYC residents $6.8 billion in lost federal revenue and many lives). The article also asks a logical question:

What New Yorker in 2001 would've imagined that the mayor we then elected would neither act to restore what we lost at ground zero, nor press the president to make good on his "wanted dead or alive" threat or bullhorn promise that "the people who knocked down these towers" would "hear from all of us soon"? Don't we expect the mayor to be our badgering lobbyist in Washington for more than homeland security dollars? Don't we want him asking just what the "smoke 'em out" president meant by "soon"? Don't we all, in fact, think bin Laden still represents a threat, particularly to New York? And isn't Mike Bloomberg's silence a measure of his partisan softness on Bush, one of a plethora of indications that our politically deferential mayor prefers to push the mute button when our memories and our fears demand he turn up the volume?

And how does the mayor defend his "get along policy" with the administration on whose watch 9/11 happened?, an administration that purposefully sidetracked our military in Iraq while Osama bin Laden remains at large?

The mayor's rationale for this get-along policy with Bush is that it's helped him win additional federal help for the city, and he can make a case that he was able to prod the president to alter the formula for distributing homeland security funding to benefit the city. But the formula change he won was temporary, and only partially changed a pattern of discrimination championed for years by Bush and congressional Republicans.

Bloomberg has done a masterful job of appearing to be a "moderate" in order to placate liberals, but at the same time has managed to avoid rockng the boat with the GOP by being such a good little supportive lapdog. He's also shown himself to be willing to engage in ,unethical campaign stunts. If you are a NYC resident who is anti-war or anti-Bush, read the whole article here before you make up your mind about voting for Bloomberg (despite the NY Times' glowing endorsement).

House of Reps sides with gun-makers and dealers over victims

Look, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not going to pretend to understand the constitutional intricacies involved with gun control and the the right to bear arms. That being said, I don't understand why the GOP controlled House is so obsessed with writing bills that protect gun makers and dealers from potentially meritorious claims of negligence, especially considering that just 1% of gun dealers are responsible for 57% of gun-related deaths in the US. Oh wait, maybe it has to do with the amount of money the gun lobby has contributed to the GOP.

Most disturbing about this bill is that it retroactively applies to cases already in the judicial system. The Boston Globe quotes one gun-control advocate as saying:

''This is the United States Congress stepping in and saying these victims cannot get any kind of relief, even though their claims have already been recognized to be valid," said Dennis Henigan, director of the legal action project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Of course Bush and right wing congressmen like George Sensenbrenner continue to argue that this is all about "democracy" and "protecting small business-owners". This quote by Sensenbrenner is particularly idiotic:

''This common-sense legislation is long overdue," said Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He called the lawsuits ''brazen attempts to accomplish through litigation what has not been achieved by legislation and the democratic process."

.

Wait, I'm no lawyer, but I thought the Judicial branch was part of the democratic process. I didn't realize that only the Legislative branch is part of the democratic process. And what does pimping for the multi-billion dollar gun lobby have to do with the rights of small business owners?

I say, if a case has merits, let it go through the court system and be decided upon by a jury. If not, let a judge exercise his judgement and dismiss the case. All this GOP rhetoric is just a smokescreen for its pathetic support of gun manufacturers over the right of its possible victims.

UPDATE (10/25): Great editorial from Robert Scheer here. Check it out.

US drops in "press freedom" rankings

The Washington Post reports that the US dropped more than 20 points on Reporters Without Borders' annual World Press Freedom Index. While I'm not surprised that our freedom of the press has taken quite a few knocks as of late, I'm surprised as to the specific reason--Judith Miller's imprisonment. If I were doing the rankings, I would be less concerned with war propagandist martyr-of-the-year Miller and much more concerned about the ultra-secretive Bush administration and its sustained assault on press freedom. After all, as Arianna Huffington notes regarding Miller:

The Plame scandal took shape not only when the White House was under attack but when Miller herself was increasingly being attacked by critics for her deeply flawed dispatches. When she met with her anti-Plame source — or sources — she was not only still on the WMD beat but still a true believer promoting the administration's lies about Iraq's nonexistent WMD threat despite an avalanche of contrary information.

The inescapable fact is that Miller — intentionally or unintentionally — worked hand in glove in helping the White House propaganda machine sell the war in Iraq. And that includes Libby and his boss, Dick Cheney.

Before her transformation into a journalistic Joan of Arc, Miller was in a tailspin, her work discredited, removed from the WMD beat and forced to deal with colleagues who refused to share a byline with her. She desperately needed to change the subject and cleanse herself of the stench left by her misleading coverage leading up to the war —- coverage that makes the Jayson Blair scandal, by comparison, seem ludicrously insignificant. And there are few more effective acts of purification for a reporter than going to jail to (in PR theory) protect the 1st Amendment.

Big Business chafes under the PATRIOT Act

Very ginteresting article here from some Stanford Law professor. He argues that while Bush has been the best friend Big Business could buy for the past five years, there is some frustration regarding the PATRIOT Act. It make sense that some big shot corporate CEO would be opposed to the PATRIOT Act...after all the act allows the feds to snoop through the company's private records--in some cases without a warrant--while doing litte to actually secure the nation's infrastructure. As the article notes:

Business leaders have specific complaints about the Patriot Act as well. For one thing, they would prefer not to give up confidential information regarding customers, employees, and trade secrets, all of which are possibilities under the Act. For another, Patriot Act provisions trump any guarantees of privacy given to customers...

I would think any true conservative (not neo-conservative) would be against the PATRIOT Act--true conservatives are ostensibly for limited government and personal liberty. As disgusting of a person Bob Barr is (and I do think he is disgusting), he has formed an alliance with the uber-liberal ACLU on matters of personal privacy. Not surprisingly, he is a stanch opponent of the PATRIOT Act as well.

There is no doubt in my mind that provisions of the Act are both well-intentioned and helpful to law enforcement/intelligence authorities. But a balance has not been struck in terms of guaranteeing the constitutional civil liberties of US citizens, something people across the political spectrum--from liberals, to conservatives to libertarians have come to realize.

With the religious right pissed at bush over the Miers nomination and Big Business upset with the nosy, ever-expanding federal government, Bush is running out of friends fast. Lets just hope Rove gets indicted.

The Bell Curve redux

Most of you New York City residents have at least seen, if not read this week's New York Magazine cover story "Are Jews Smarter?" Full disclosure: I have not read the entire article because I am in the middle of studying for an exam and writing a paper, but I promise after I do I'll expand this post. Anyway, the article debunks a "scientific study" that claims that higher intelligence levels for Ashkenazim Jews evolved as a result of historic circumstances. The article then goes on to debunk the study. One paragraph that seems rather intuitive:

Talk to most geneticists, and they’ll say that it’s a combination of genetics and environment that inevitably makes us who we are—attempts to link specific behaviors, aptitudes, and weaknesses to genes and genes alone almost always come up short. Lynn Jorde, professor of genetics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, gives but one example: For a while, it was assumed that a particular variant of monoamine oxidase caused antisocial behavior. Then several thousand children in New Zealand with this variant were followed for a period of more than twenty years. Researchers found that their subjects misbehaved only if they’d been abused as children—if they hadn’t, there was none. “We’ll probably find that there are genes that influence behavior,” says Jorde. “But I’m quite certain we won’t find genes that determine behavior.”

All of this fuss reminds me a bit of when the "Bell Curve" came out. When Herrstein's infamous "Bell Curve" book came out about 10 years ago when I was in college, I remember reading it and think it was all right-wing, racist garbage. The theory behind the book (which was written by a Harvard Psych professor) that different ethnicities have different innate degrees of intelligence, has been thoroughly debunked by Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker and many others (see this old slate article for a plain-english debunking). We all have met smart Jews, dumb Jews, smart Italians, dumb Italians, etc... And there are no meaningful policy perscriptions to be derived from accepting these theories anyway, in my opinion. Plus, I see Judaism as a religion first and an ethnicity second--that's the whole point of converts to Judiasm being accepted as equal to any one "born Jewish". Experts seem to agree with this.
For more background on the Bell Curve, see here.

Top Powell aide SLAMS Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld

Interesting article in today's Financial Times. Colin Powell's top aide laid the smack down on Bush & co., pointing out that the Bush administration was taken over by a "cabal" comprised of Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld, who "hijacked" US foreign policy. This aide doesn't sound like a flaming liberal, either:

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either”.

“There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.”

But what's most important about the article, in my view, is that apparently Powell is unhappy that his aide is speaking out. Two points on this: 1) is the aide really saying anything that anyone who has read a paper in the past 3 years didn't know? and 2) I thought that Powell would be sufficiently angry with the neoconservatives who force-fed him all those cherry-picked WMD lies he spread at the UN that he would be speaking out as well. This just confirms my earlier opinion that Powell was no victim, he has as much blood on his hands as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

UPDATE (10/21): Whiskey Bar has an even more pessimistic take on all this here. It's worth checking out, especially because unlike me he bothered to read the whole transcript of the aide's speech.

UPDATE (12/1): Norman Solomon calls out Powell and Wilkerson big time. Referencing Wilkerson's attacks on Cheney:

[it is]Strong stuff, especially since it’s obvious that Wilkerson is channeling Powell with those statements. But Powell was a team player and a very effective front man for the administration that was doing all that politicizing and cherry-picking -- and then proceeding with the policies that Wilkerson now seeks to pin on Cheney as possible war crimes.

White House war makers deftly hyped Powell’s “moderate” credibility while the Washington press corps lauded his supposed integrity. Powell was the crucial point man for giving “diplomatic” cover to the Iraq invasion fixation of Bush and Cheney. So, typically, Powell proclaimed three weeks into 2003: “If the United Nations is going to be relevant, it has to take a firm stand.”

[...]

Now, after so much clear evidence has emerged to discredit the entire U.S. war effort, Colin Powell still can’t bring himself to stand up and account for his crucial role. Instead, he’s leaving it to a former aide to pin blame on those who remain at the top of the Bush administration. But Powell was an integral part of the war propaganda machinery. And we can hardly expect the same media outlets that puffed him up at crucial times to now scrutinize their mutual history.

Can't wait to read Solomon's new book "War Made Easy".

Time to socialize drug research?

From Ezra Klein via Bradford Plumer's blog. Since Plumer's blog links a little funky, here is the full text here:

Dean Baker's post on why the U.S. government should confiscate the Tamiflu patent is all well and good (read Tyler Cowen's rejoinder too), and his rant on the evils of the pharmaceutical industry well-warranted, but the real action's all in this old paper he wrote on alternatives to our present method of financing drug innovation. Why doesn't the current patent system—which allows drug companies to sell their little pills for 300-400 percent above the competitive market price in order to recoup their "research" investment—work very well? Here:
[T]here are very good reasons - well known to all economists -- for preferring that drugs be sold in a competitive market with the price approximating the marginal cost of production. The gap between price and marginal costs under the current system of patent supported research leads to large and rapidly growing distortions. This includes denying drugs to patients who could afford them if they were sold at their marginal cost, the distortions also include the tens of billions of dollars spent each year on promoting drugs.

Even more serious is the incentive that monopoly pricing provides firms to conceal or misrepresent research findings. Finally, a large gap between price and marginal cost will inevitably lead to the production of unauthorized versions of patent protected drugs. While these unauthorized versions make drugs available at a lower costs to patients, their quality cannot be ensured since illegal markets are unregulated.
All very real problems, these, and one can note that this sort of protectionism matters much, much more than the various trade barriers people get agitated about. Now obviously we can't just junk the patent system; companies need some incentive to invest in research. But sure we can think of alternatives that work better. Baker lists a couple, including Dennis Kucinich's proposal to get rid of drug patents and steer about $25 billion in taxpayer money—about what Big Pharma claims to spend on research—to government-backed research organizations, similar to the current NIH or the research universities of yore, and socialize drug research. (He lists some other, less drastic, and very clever alternatives too.) More on that in a bit, but the point here is that any financing alternative will have to achieve four main things:
1) provide incentives for pursuing "useful" research
2) minimize the possibility that market distortions will create incentives to pursue less useful lines of research
3) minimize the risk that political interference will direct research spending to less useful ends
4) minimize the incentive to suppress research findings
Obviously it's tricky to decide what is and isn't "useful" research—who decides? the "market"? the government? the dying children lobby?—but the current patent system certainly does badly on the last three counts. Drug companies presently have greater financial incentives to cater their research towards balding, impotent, overweight suburban males rather than look into, say, innovative malaria treatments for the Third World. The patent system also gives drug companies incentives to pursue "me-too" drugs and reap the monetary rewards—see Marcia Angell on this—as well as to suppress any inconvenient research findings.

Now if the government decided to sponsor research directly, as Kucinich proposed, it could avoid many of these problems—2) and 4) especially—but, of course, there's the possibility that politicians could start mucking around with where the research dollars go. Think the reigning First Church of Dennis Hastert would approve one cent for developing new contraceptives? Me neither. And under Kucinich's plan, private research companies could use the legalized graft system in this country to win contracts unduly. On the other hand, to some extent this problem already exists—current research at the NIH is subject to political pressures, and since drug companies often depend to a large extent on government Medicare purchases to profit from their patents, innovation already depends on lobbying, to some extent.

So... What Is to Be Done? In my opinion, the pharmaceutical industry as it stands still does good work, and I don't think full-blown socialism is called for just yet. No, I much prefer creeping socialism. Right now most government research money goes towards basic research, rather than the development and testing of new drugs. Why not steer a couple billion this way, as a test to see if the government can do drug innovation on its own? In the meantime, draconian regulation to crack down on some of the worst excesses of the current system: i.e., force drug companies to open its books; regulate advertising; free the FDA from Big Pharma's tentacles; make the approval of new drugs contingent on improvements over existing drugs (right now, new drugs merely need to be better than placebos to be approved). We can be reasonable people.

Some food for thought...

Review of "New American Militarism"

The London Review of Books has a provocative analysis of Andrew Bacevich's new book here. I don't necessarily agree with everything the reviewer has to say, especially regarding the "Israel lobby" and its role in shifting US public opinion. Nevertheless, since I don't have the time right now to read the book, this review will have to suffice.

The limited success of "No Child Left Behind"

From today's Washington Post:

Despite a new federal educational testing law championed by the Bush administration, scores among fourth and eighth graders failed to show any improvements in reading, and showed only slow gains in math nationally during the past two years, according to a study released today.

Most troubling for educators are the sluggish reading skills among middle school students, which have remained flat for 13 years, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has been testing students for three decades and bills itself as the "nation's report card."

"There is no rationale on eighth-grade reading other than we are not making progress," said Darvin M. Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the testing. Yet, he added, "I think educators and parents of elementary schools students should feel pretty good about this report. There is progress."

In a meeting at the White House with Education Secretary Margaret Spellings shortly after the report was released, President Bush called the results encouraging. "It shows there's an achievement gap in America that is closing; that minority students, particularly in fourth-grade math and fourth-grade reading are beginning to catch up with their Anglo counterparts. And that's positive, and that's important."

He also noted that "we've got work to do in eighth-grade reading" and called on Congress to fund programs for intense help to students who are lagging behind standards.

In fourth-grade math, more that 30 states -- including Virginia--and the District posted statistically significant scores. Maryland scores made a modest one-point gain. Seven states showed significant gains in eighth-grade math. Virginia and the District showed a small gain; Maryland remained the same as 2003.

Fourth-grade reading scores nationally showed a modest one-point gain over the past two years, after demonstrating a significant six-point jump between 2000 and 2002, before the No Child Left Behind law was implemented. Only three states showed a significant gain in fourth-grade reading -- and three states showed a significant drop. The District, Virginia and Maryland all posted gains.

The NAEP scores are the first tangible and respected testing numbers available since the implementation of No Child Left Behind -- the Bush administration's premier education initiative requiring states to test students annually as a prerequisite for receiving federal funds.

Billboard misses target audience

This is actually pretty funny.

Putting Saddam's trial in perspective

Billmon does so here. Some Reuters coverage of the trial here.

WP: "CIA Still in Turmoil"

Chaos and lack of direction evident at the CIA. And I'm not sure if Dick Cheney devotee and GOP partisan hack Porter Goss is the right man for the job. As the article notes:

Goss is at loggerheads with the clandestine service he sought to embrace. At least a dozen senior officials - several of whom were promoted under Goss - have resigned, retired early or requested reassignment. The directorate's second-in-command walked out of Langley last month and then told senators in a closed-door hearing that he had lost confidence in Goss's leadership.

The turmoil has left some employees shaken and has prompted former colleagues in Congress to question how Goss intends to improve the agency's capabilities and restore morale. The White House is aware of the problems, administration officials said, and believes they are being handled by the director of national intelligence, who now oversees the agency.

But the Senate intelligence committee, which generally took testimony once a year from Goss's predecessors, has invited him for an unusual closed-door hearing today. Senators, according to their staff, intend to ask the former congressman from Florida to explain why the CIA is bleeding talent at a time of war, and to answer charges that the agency is adrift.

"Hundreds of years of leadership and experience has walked out the door in the last year," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), "and more senior people are making critical career decisions as we speak."

On a recent visit to a large CIA station in the Middle East, Harman, the ranking Democrat on the same House intelligence panel where Goss once presided, said she asked for a show of hands from those who understood where Goss was leading the agency. "The vast majority didn't know, and they are worried," Harman said in a telephone interview during her trip.

[. . .]
There is [. . .] .a perception among some at the agency that Goss and his staff are not as engaged as Tenet, a gregarious New Yorker who roamed the halls, chatting up analysts and putting in 16-hour days at headquarters.

Goss's style is more reserved, and his aides said his days are just as long. But not all his work is conducted from behind his desk. "He begins every day with an intelligence update briefing prior to his arrival at the agency," his spokeswoman said. "He has meetings throughout the day; some are at Langley, some are downtown. Some days he stays very late, but every day is different."

In March, Goss complained during a speech that his job was overwhelming and that he was surprised by the number of hours it demanded. "The White House wasn't amused by that," one intelligence community official said. Then in June, Goss told Time magazine that he had "an excellent idea" where Osama bin Laden was but that the United States could not get him because of diplomatic sensitivities. This time, the White House and the State Department publicly disputed the remarks.

I guess this is what we can expect every time Bush puts one of his cronies in a position of great power.

Transparency International releases Corrupt Perceptions Index

From IPS, reporting on the latest Transparency International report on Corruption Perception Index:

LONDON, Oct 18 (IPS) - The Corruption Perceptions Index published by the group Transparency International Tuesday shows high degrees of corruption among developing nations. But banking systems in the West are helping make that possible.

''The total capital flight from the African continent a year is about 150 billion dollars, and the total aid flow to the African continent is 25 billion dollars,'' Chandrashekhar Krishnan, executive director for Transparency International (TI) UK told IPS.

''That flight capital basically represents the routing of state assets by corrupt politicians,'' he said. ''That money is being deposited in financial institutions in London, in Zurich, in New York. What I suggest is that Western governments should be doing much more to ensure that their financial systems are not used to launder dirty money.''

[...]

Wealth does not determine progress against corruption. Perception of corruption has decreased significantly in lower-income countries such as Estonia, Colombia and Bulgaria over the past decade, an analysis has shown.

''Similarly, the responsibility in the fight against corruption does not fall solely on lower-income countries,'' the TI report says. ''Wealthier countries, apart from facing numerous corruption cases within their own borders, must share the burden by ensuring that their companies are not involved in corrupt practices abroad.''

The full results can be seen here.

F-- Judy Miller

Norman Solomon has an important new editorial over at TomPaine discussing how Miller aided the neocon propaganda machine in pawning the lie of Iraq's "WMD" on the American public. A key highlight:

In effect, during the propaganda buildup for the invasion of Iraq, while Miller was the paper’s lead reporter on weapons of mass destruction, The New York Times news department served as a key asset of the warfare state.

“WMD—I got it totally wrong,” the Times quoted Miller as saying in a Friday interview. “The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them—we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong.”

But analysts, experts and journalists were not “all wrong.” Some very experienced weapons inspectors—including Mohamed ElBaradei, Hans Blix and Scott Ritter—challenged key assertions from the White House. Well before the invasion, many other analysts also disputed various aspects of the U.S. government’s claims about WMDs in Iraq. (For examples, see archived news releases put out by my colleagues at the Institute for Public Accuracy in 2002 and early 2003.) Meanwhile, journalists at some British newspapers, including The Independent and the Guardian, raised tough questions that were virtually ignored by mainstream U.S. reporters in the Washington press corps.

Reporters choose sources—and the unnamed ones that Miller chose to rely on, like the Pentagon’s pet Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, were predictably eager to spin tales about WMDs in order to fuel momentum for an invasion. Yet the official line at The New York Times has been that its news department was fooled with the rest of the media best.

Go read the entire article here. And maybe you'll realize that Ms. Miller is not the posterchild for the First Amendment, nor a martyr for any cause. Just a self-serving propagandist.

UPDATE: Just came across this scary post by Digby. I think Miller is a few cards short of a full deck to put it mildly.
...and another great editorial I found here (via atrios).

LA Times: "US labor is in retreat"

David Streitfeld points out the obvious here:

Four years into an economic recovery, workers across America should be riding high. Instead, they're facing new demands to surrender hard-won benefits and agree to wage concessions. Companies say these cutbacks are essential to stay competitive in an increasingly globalized economy.

Miers swore fealty to Texans United For Life

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment banning abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, according to material given to the Senate on Tuesday.

As a candidate for the Dallas city council, Miers also signaled support for the overall agenda of Texans United for Life -- agreeing she would support legislation restricting abortions if the Supreme Court ruled that states could ban abortions and would participate in "pro-life rallies and special events."

[...]

"The role of a judge is very different from the role of a candidate or a political officeholder," McClellan said.

"Harriet Miers, just like Chief Justice (John) Roberts, recognizes that personal views and ideology and religion have no role to play when it comes to making decisions on the bench," he said. "Your role as a judge is to look at all the facts and look at the law and apply the law to that case."

Uh, sure Scotty. Ideology plays no role in SCOTUS decisions...that's why Republican presidents nominate conservative judges and Democrats nominate liberals.

We had to destroy the village in order to save it

From AP:

Witnesses said at least 14 of the dead were civilians. After a man was wounded in an airstrike, he was brought into a nearby building that was struck by warplanes, said the witnesses, who refused to give their names out of fear for their safety.

An Iraqi journalist reporting for The Associated Press said he later saw the 14 bodies and the damaged building.

Associated Press Television News video from the scene showed the victims included at least two children and one woman. Witnesses said seven other children were among the dead. APTN also showed two children among the wounded at Ramadi General Hospital.

Some sober commentary here.

Pakistan OKs "indirect" earthquake aid from Israel

Pakistan says it will accept some aid from Israel for the devestating earthquake now predicted to have killed over 50,000 people--but only via a third-party. After all, they wouldn't want its anti-semitic populace to think it approved of Israel's right to exist. That would spell political suicide for General Musharref. and I suppose it would call for some political leadership as well.
But at the end of the day, they'll take the money, so all's well that ends well for the US's close ally in the war on terror. By the way, where's Osama?

What the West really owes Africa

Thought-provoking article by Cambridge history professor Richard Drayton on Britain's expolitation of the continent. No huge revelations here, but makes for some interesting context for the debate over the G-8 debt-forgiveness initiative.

There are many who like to blame Africa's weak governments and economies, famines, and disease on its post-1960 leadership. But the fragility of contemporary Africa is a direct consequence of two centuries of slaving, followed by another of colonial despotism. Nor was "decolonization" all it seemed: both Britain and France attempted to corrupt the whole project of political sovereignty.

It is remarkable that none of those in Britain who talk about African dictatorship and kleptocracy seem aware that Idi Amin came to power in Uganda through British covert action, and that Nigeria's generals were supported and manipulated from 1960 onwards in support of Britain's oil interests. It is amusing, too, to find the Telegraph and the Daily Mail -- which just a generation ago supported Ian Smith's Rhodesia and South African apartheid -- now so concerned about human rights in Zimbabwe. The tragedy of Mugabe and others is that they learned too well from the British how to govern without real popular consent, and how to make the law serve ruthless private interest. The real appetite of the west for democracy in Africa is less than it seems. We talk about the Congo tragedy without mentioning that it was a British statesman, Alec Douglas-Home, who agreed with the US president in 1960 that Patrice Lumumba, its elected leader, needed to "fall into a river of crocodiles".

New bankruptcy bill

From Daily Kos, pointing out that the new bankruptcy bill will be helping out credit counselers, not the working poor. This bill was a travesty and the Katrina disaster=--which has made thousands homeless and unemployed-should make individuals concerned with the plight of the working poor a lot more sensitive to these issues. The best critique of the bankruptcy bill I think was made by David Sirota, which you can read here.

Report: US contractors exploiting third country nationals in Iraq

Disturbing report from Alternet:

The menial wages paid to TCNs working for the regional contractors may be the most significant factor in the Pentagon's argument that outsourcing military support is far more cost-efficient for the U.S. taxpayer than using its own troops to maintain camps and feed its ranks.

But there is also a human cost to this savings. Numerous former American contractors returning home say they were shocked at conditions faced by this mostly invisible, but indispensable army of low-paid workers. TCNs frequently sleep in crowded trailers and wait outside in line in 100-degree-plus heat to eat "slop." Many are said to lack adequate medical care and put in hard labor seven days a week, 10 hours or more a day, for little or no overtime pay. Few receive proper workplace safety equipment or adequate protection from incoming mortars and rockets. When frequent gunfire, rockets and mortar shell from the ongoing conflict hits the sprawling military camps, American contractors slip on helmets and bulletproof vests, but TCNs are frequently shielded only by the shirts on their backs and the flimsy trailers they sleep in.

Adding to these dangers and hardships, some TCNs complain publicly about not being paid the wages they expected. Others say their employers use "bait-and-switch" tactics: recruiting them for jobs in Kuwait or other Middle Eastern countries and then pressuring them to go to Iraq. All of these problems have resulted in labor disputes, strikes and on-the-job protests.

Bush's staged video with the troops

Lies.com analyzes this scandal du jour that will really make you mad. Also, see this Reuters report for a more objective, but equally damning report:

When prompted by the president to say something, the Iraqi soldier, who was not immediately identified, said in English: "Good morning, Mr President, thank you for everything. Thank you very much for everything. I like you."
The event in a hallway in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House was carefully prepared.
During the practice session before Bush entered the room, a senior Pentagon official, Allison Barber, stood at the podium and queried the troops about topics the president later asked about, including the training of Iraqis and the level of progress. At her prompting, the soldiers raised their hands when the topic they were to answer came up.

DeLong calls out Kristol

Here:

A Conspiracy so Immense...

William Kristol says that it is mad dog John Ashcroft, who appointed special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is the head of a left-wing radical conspiracy to destroy the Bush-Cheney administration.

PREVIEW: Criminalizing Conservatives : White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby have been under investigation by a special federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald.... It now seems clear that Rove and Libby are the main targets of the prosecutor, and that both are in imminent danger of indictment.... Since 2001, they have been among the most prominent promoters of the conservative agenda of the Bush administration. For over four years, they have helped two strong conservatives, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, successfully advance an agenda for change in America....

In today's Washington, as has been true for decades, classified information is leaked by many different players in any given policy fight in the government.... Are Rove and Libby bigger leakers than, say, the CIA's George Tenet or Richard Armitage at the State Department? Do no employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (almost universally anti-Bush and anti-conservative) ever leak anything? If so, have they been indicted, or investigated by a special prosecutor? Any prosecutor?....

Why are conservative Republicans, who control the executive and legislative branches of government for the first time in living memory, so vulnerable to the phenomenon of criminalization? Is it simple payback for the impeachment of Bill Clinton? Or is it a reflection of some deep malady at the heart of American politics? If criminalization is seen to loom ahead for every conservative who begins successfully to act out his or her beliefs in government or politics, is the project of conservative reform sustainable?

We don't pretend to have all the answers, or a solid answer even to one of these questions. But it's a reasonable bet that the fall of 2005 will be remembered as a time when it became clear that a comprehensive strategy of criminalization had been implemented to inflict defeat on conservatives who seek to govern as conservatives. And it is clear that thinking through a response to this challenge is a task conservatives can no longer postpone.

Thinking through this challenge?

Perhaps the scariest thing is that William Kristol thinks the readers of his Weekly Standard are so unbalanced as to buy this.

Deepak Chopra on economic injustice

Deepak Chopra, a very wise man indeed.

In a recent radio interview, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich pointed out that the U.S. has the widest gap between rich and poor of any country except Mexico and Russia. A huge pool of capital wealth is being amassed by 1% or less of the population while economic decline, in real dollars, is being felt by the majority. This economic injustice is our Berlin Wall. It separates us more concretely than racial, political or religious differences.

Putting the prosecutor on trial

Report by AP:

WASHINGTON - Stung by his recent indictment in Texas, Tom Delay is trying to turn his legal woes into a financial boon for his re-election. The former House majority leader is using his congressional campaign to distribute to voters derogatory information about the prosecutor who brought the charges against him and to solicit donations for his re-election.

Lovely.

Report: Bush administation buried unfavorable report on outsourcing

Sirota has the goods:

Congress slated $335,000 for a report from the technical experts at the Commerce Department's Technology Administration. The timetable was well before election day as "the report was requested by Congress in an appropriations bill in December 2003, with a six-month deadline of June 2004." And to be sure, the report "was completed well before the November 2004 presidential election." However, it "was delayed for clearance by the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress due to the controversial nature of the subject." In fact, it might never have come out at all as it was only released now "as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request that [Manufacturing News] had filed on March 17, 2005."

Iran: Imperialism's second strike

From Frontline(The Hindu).

Iran is the key country in Bush's famous "Axis of Evil" (Iraq, Iran and North Korea) and the main prize in the current war on West Asia. If the invasion of broken little Afghanistan was a dry-run for the invasion of Iraq, the occupation of the oil-rich Iraq, which too had been broken quite substantially by 12 years of economic sanctions combined with internal subversion and unrelenting aerial bombardments, was itself conceived as a prelude to the subjugation of Iran. Developments over the past two years, however, have made the quick subjugation of Iran immeasurably more difficult but also, paradoxically, more urgent for U.S. strategy not only regionally but also in global terms. The fiasco of American power in Afghanistan and more crucially in Iraq has greatly strengthened Iran's regional position, to the extent that the U.S. relies on Iran's tacit cooperation in stabilising the Shia-Kurdish right-wing ruling dispensation in Iraq and keeping a modicum of peace in southeast Afghanistan. In the short run, a full-scale assault on Iran is now less likely than it was two years ago.

In a completely different trajectory, however, initiatives which had been under way for some time have matured sufficiently over the past two years for Iran to emerge as the virtual lynchpin in the making, over the next decade or so, of what China and Russia have come to regard as an absolutely indispensable Asian Energy Security Grid, for breaking Western control of the world's energy supplies and securing the great industrial revolution of Asia. The subjugation of Iran, always considered essential by the U.S.-Israel axis becomes all the more necessary because, to put it in summary terms: if Iran goes, the Asian Energy Security Grid goes. Iran is quite justified in pointing out that the battle over Iran is, in fact, a battle for securing Asian sovereignty against expansionist imperialism. The Americans too are right: Iran is strategically far more important than, say, Iraq or Syria. Unable to invade immediately, the U.S. needs desperately to break Iran through other means. The weapon at hand is that of international sanctions and regimes of surveillance and sabotage, of the kind that broke Iraq. That is what the Vienna meetings are all about. They need the fig leaf of the IAEA Board's resolutions. After that, they may not even go to the Security Council, for fear of Chinese and Russian vetoes, or the Security Council may be eventually ignored, as it was ignored when it came to the invasion of Iraq. High profile Euro-American groups have been assembled already, which are recommending that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance, or some such combination, can undertake the sanctions anyway in case the Security Council cannot be counted upon to deliver. The U.S. in any case has been saying for several years now that things like the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter have become obsolete in this age of "the war on terror" and that "the West" has to act collectively and pre-emptively to secure its own interests.

The conquest of southwest Asia

Read this controvertial article written by Pepe Escobar in Asia Times:

It was not supposed to be this way. But even before Katrina bared it all, there was an uneasy feeling - not only in the Middle East - that the Bush administration was in fact subsidizing Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the tune of $300 billion, and counting, in American taxpayers' money, by transforming Iraq into a preferred training ground for al-Qaeda. So what's with this "war on terror?"

During the first part of 2005, the first Bush administration's "war on terror" had been softly mutating into what it was supposed to mean in the first place: the conquest of Eurasia, and in the near term, Southwest Asia.

Escobar is basically arguing that while most Americans now assume the neocons have their sites set only on control of the Middle East, they are actually looking at ultimately controlling all of Eurasia. Pretty bold claim, but as evidence he points out the fact that the US has announced it will be building military bases in Azerbaijan, ostensibly as a forward operating base in a war against Iran. Of course, the US decision to maintain military bases in Central Asia is no secret, despite a lack of press coverage from the US mainstream media--Rumsfeld argues they are necessary to support operations in Afghanistan. Azerbaijan also has a lot of oil but of course that has no relevance to the need for military bases.

US battles to maintain hegemony over internets

From Inter Press Service:

Against the wishes of almost all other governments, Washington wants to maintain the current system of domain names administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private sector, non-profit body that is linked to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Lobbyists advise Katrina relief

You can't make this shit up:

WASHINGTON — Lobbyists representing transportation, energy and other special interests dominated panels that advised Louisiana's U.S. senators crafting legislation to rebuild the storm-damaged Gulf Coast, records and interviews show.

The Louisiana Katrina Reconstruction Act — introduced last month by Louisiana Sens. Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat, and David Vitter, a Republican — included billions of dollars' worth of business for clients of those lobbyists and a total price tag estimated as high as $250 billion.

One advisory panel member who discovered that most of his fellow panelists were lobbyists called the resulting legislation "a huge injustice" to the state.

"I was basically shocked," said Ivor van Heerden, director of a hurricane public health research center at Louisiana State University. "What do lobbyists know about a plan for the reconstruction and restoration of Louisiana?"

Hat tip Sirotablog.

Mayor Mike takes a play from Rove playbook

Bloomberg's decision to publicize the subway threat to NYC last week was quite fortuitous indeed. Not only did it change the subject away from his decision not to debate Ferrera in Harlem, but it gave him a nice boost at the polls as well. With the election coming soon, what does Bloomberg have in store for us next?

Tasteless

Rush Limbaugh truly is the King of Comedy

During a discussion of Oregon's assisted suicide law on the October 5 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh suggested alternative ways individuals could choose to end their lives, including "[a] six pack, and hose, and go sit in your car, and wave sayonara. You can take a cruise ship on Lake George in New York." The Oregon law is currently under review by the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the case on the morning of October 5.

Good morning Iraq

The bloodshed continues

Tal Afar police chief Najm Abdallah said 30 people were killed and 45 more wounded in the attack in the town, where less than a month ago US and Iraqi forces wrapped up an operation against insurgents.

On September 28, five people were killed when a woman suicide bomber blew herself up at a police recruitment centre Tal Afar, which lies between the main northern city of Mosul and the Syrian border.

In Baghdad, five soldiers and two civilians were killed and four others wounded in a suicide car bombing in the western neighbourhood of Al-Amariyah, a defence ministry source said.

Iraqi police also came under attack, with two policewomen shot and killed while riding in a taxi in Dura, a southern district of the capital, an interior ministry source said. Sixteen other people, including 12 policemen, were wounded in two other attacks in Baghdad, while two more targetted convoys of Iraqi officials and US soldiers, wounding four civilians, the source said.

Iraqi and US authorities have forecast that chronic violence would increase in the run-up to Saturday’s referendum, which Sunni Arabs have vowed to reject.

Privatization and the Bush administrations continued assault on government

From commondreams.

The corporate sphere has spent countless millions lobbying for deregulation of its activities, for maintaining specific legislators in office, and for the privatization of everything from health care to education to Social Security to federal lands, including national parks. The goal is ownership and control of every corner of society by a "private sector" primarily in the form of corporations. Over more than a century of legal maneuvering, corporations have been able to create for themselves the status of “persons” in US law, so that the fortunes they lavish have, absurdly, become “free speech”. They have also acquired ownership of mainstream media and so have been able to obscure the significance and gravity of the situation while simultaneously perpetuating another widely believed absurdity, that of “the liberal media”.

The deepening class divide under Bush

From In These Times

[...] according to the latest Census Bureau data, the percentage of Americans living in poverty now stands at 12.7 percent, the high point of a steady four-year increase. From 2003 to 2004 alone, the number of people living in poverty increased by 1.1 million to 37 million. And, as critics of the Census Bureau’s approach to poverty data collection point out, the number is likely conservative because the figures do not account for regional differences in housing costs—nor are they adjusted for the rising costs of childcare and health care.

American women and children have fared the worst over the last four years. During that time the number of children living in extreme poverty—defined as living with an annual income of below $7,610 for a family of three—has increased by 20 percent to reach a high of 5.6 million.

Nationwide the poverty rate for adult women stands at 12.7 percent (compared with 9.3 percent for men). Overall, the number of poor women increased for the fourth year in a row to 20.6 million. Even women with regular employment are doing worse—real median earnings for working women fell from $22,595 to $22,224 in 2004.

Joan Entmacher, of the National Women’s Law Center, says, “The new Census data show that for most women and their families, there is no economic recovery.”.

Update on the Rove/Plame scandal

I haven't posted much about this in the past few weeks (i got sidetracked by DeLay's indictment, etc.) Here's an article by David Corn, who basically broke the story, that recaps some of the major issues, who the "players" are and tosses around some legal theories.

The re-proletarianization of the US workforce

Interesting article from Daniel Gross regarding the Delphi bankruptcy. Troubled times ahead for the working stiff:

The United States isn't de-industrializing. Rather, many of its historic industries are getting smaller, and the jobs they offer are declining in quality. The scary thing is that this re-proletarianization of industrial work is moving up the value chain, from raw industrial materials (steel, coal) to components (auto-parts makers and textiles). Where's it going next? Higher up the value chain to the companies that make the finished products.

In addition, Dean Baker adds his two cents on the issue and discusses what he melodramatically terms the "war on retirees". Both are great, albeit short, articles.